Proof of Life

When the Bough Breaks, Part II



When Harry finally woke up, he realized that it was already early evening. He silently consulted the house wards to learn that Severus had arrived home hours ago, and isolated himself in the study. Harry sighed slightly, regretting that he\'d missed the chance to take Severus out to lunch. Maybe they could do dinner instead, Harry thought, before carefully lifting Marietta\'s head from his lap. She coughed in her sleep and mumbled something, but didn\'t wake. Harry touched her forehead and frowned – it seemed she was running a fever in spite of all the healing potions she took hours earlier.



“Marietta?” Harry asked quietly, giving her shoulder a small shake. “Do you want to go sleep in a proper bed? You can have my bedroom.”



She brushed his hand off, mumbled something, and Harry left her alone for the time being, heading downstairs to talk to Severus. He couldn\'t help but wince inwardly, for some reason feeling a bit embarrassed at the realization that Severus must have seen him and Marietta together asleep on the couch. Not that Severus would care about that sort of thing, but he still felt somewhat unnerved for a reason he couldn\'t quite identify.



Ridiculous, Harry told himself and lifted his hand to knock on the door to Severus\' study.



“Severus?” Harry called out.



“What do you want, Potter?” The unhappy, and slightly muffled response followed shortly.



“How are you?”



“Fine,” he heard Severus shout back a moment later. “Everything\'s bloody fine, Potter. Go away.”



“Can I come in?”



“I wouldn\'t recommend it,” Severus\' irritated voice responded, and Harry pondered his response. It wasn\'t a no... as far as he could tell.



“I\'ll take my chances,” Harry said, and opened the door cautiously, before entering and making his way towards Severus. “What\'s wrong?”



“Nothing is wrong, Potter,” Severus said with an impatient shrug. “Didn\'t you know? You\'re living in a magical world. Life is beautiful. Nothing is ever wrong here.”



Harry sighed deeply. “You\'ve been drinking alone.”



“Your powers of observation never cease to astound me.”



“Look – maybe you should stop now,” Harry suggested mildly, reaching for the bottle.



“I\'ll replace your precious Firewhisky, Potter,” Severus said with an impatient twitch of his shoulders, and brushed Harry\'s hand off. “I\'ll buy you an entire case.... just... please, fuck off, and leave me alone.”



“Can you tell me what happened today?” Harry probed quietly, leaning against Severus\' desk. “Please?”



“Get off my desk this instant!” Severus barked, and Harry obeyed quickly.



“Sorry?” Harry asked hesitantly.



“Don\'t be sorry, Potter,” Severus said venomously, as it seemed Harry\'s quick compliance infuriated him even further. “Perhaps, I should be apologizing. Technically, it\'s your desk, after all.”



“No, the desk is definitely yours,” Harry said calmly. “Look -”



Severus grinned mirthlessly. “Don\'t you get it, Potter?” Severus asked with quiet, furious despair in his voice. “Nothing here is mine. Not the desk, not the bloody Firewhisky I\'m drinking, not the money I\'ll be using to replace it... Nothing is mine! Not even me! Everything is – fucking – yours!”



A long, heavy silence ensued, with Harry standing awkwardly, once again, not knowing what to say. Realistically Harry had known for a long time that this moment would eventually come – the moment when Severus would finally blame him for everything, including the enslavement spell. In fact, Harry had been fully prepared for Severus to rage at him the moment the man opened his eyes at St. Mungo\'s, but having the accusations spill out now, after a few months of what had seemed like genuine friendship was a great deal more painful than Harry had ever thought it might be.



“I\'m sorry it worked out that way,” Harry said at last. “I\'m sorry for my part in it, too. I really... don\'t understand how I could have made so many mistakes all at once.”



“I understand,” Severus spat angrily. “Contrary to what you may think, Potter, I do understand why. I understand why you spied on Draco Malfoy for an entire school year, effectively nullifying efforts – mine, and Dumbledore\'s – to de-escalate the situation and not let it reach the point where I ended up having to cast an Unforgivable on the Headmaster in public. I understand why the Pensieve with my memories was worth so bloody little to you that you simply left it sitting in public view, where anyone could have taken it – and they did.” Severus glared at Harry pitilessly. “What I don\'t understand, however,” Severus said, lowering his voice slightly, “is why, after all that, you\'ve chosen to engage in this ridiculous charade.”



“What do you mean?” Harry asked, suddenly uncertain where the almost completely one-sided conversation was headed.



“What I mean, Potter, is why you decided to... humour me,” Severus explained in an incredibly brittle tone with a slight element of danger in it. “Why did you choose to play this ridiculous game, pretending that I could ever be anything other than your slave? What is the meaning of all this?” Severus\' head jerked back awkwardly, as if to point to his surroundings. “Please, Potter, do tell me. I would really like to know.”



“Look,” Harry started saying cautiously, trying to bring some sort of rationality back into their conversation. “I realize that... this isn\'t much. I realize that this is unfair, and that you can\'t have everything that you want right now... but... it\'s better than nothing, right?”



“Better than nothing,” Severus repeated. “Better than nothing? This...” he twitched slightly, pointing at his study, “this... illusion of freedom... this... mockery of life, is better than nothing, you say? Would you present a starving man with a smell of food, and tell him that it\'s better than nothing, Potter?” Severus lips twisted into a sour sneer. “You really have no idea ... no idea what you\'ve done to me. What you, with your good intentions, and heroic actions, have turned me into.” Severus hiccoughed slightly and pushed the bottle of Firewhisky aside. “I hope you\'re enjoying yourself, Potter. You should. Not many get a chance to have this much power over someone... especially someone who\'d made them miserable for years and years... as you so kindly pointed out to me the other day.”



Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Severus waved him off impatiently.



“What I find curious, however,” Severus said, almost calmly this time, “is why you aren\'t enjoying yourself more.”



Slowly, Severus lifted himself to stand up. Walking in unsteady steps, he began to approach Harry, who instinctively took a step back, and then another one, until his back was against the wall, and Severus stood right in front of him, the angry, pale face within a few inches of Harry\'s.



Harry gulped when Severus\' breath, thick with alcohol, brushed against his cheek.



“Tell me,” Severus murmured, his palms pressing against the wall, so that Harry was effectively trapped between the exposed brick and Severus\' thin, tall form. “What exactly is stopping you from enjoying yourself as much as you could? What\'s preventing you from taking everything – absolutely everything – from me?”



“You don\'t know what you\'re saying. You\'re drunk,” Harry muttered, shifting slightly to the side, towards the direction of the door, only to have his shoulder rub against Severus\' slender arm. The brief physical contact sent a shiver down Harry\'s spine.



Severus smirked slightly. “Yes, Potter, I\'m drunk. I am also sick, half-mad, and ugly. But I still know what I\'m saying, I assure you.” The enormous black eyes stared at Harry in the same intent way that always led Harry to believe that the man could read his thoughts without even trying. “What? Did you think I failed to notice that you enjoyed seeing me just the way I was when you first bought me home? Helpless? Scared? Grateful? Kneeling? Eager to please?”



Harry shook his head in furious denial, but Severus moved even closer to him, until his lips were almost touching Harry\'s flushed cheek. The man\'s warm breath enveloped his ear as Severus whispered,



“Would you like that again, Potter, hmm? Would you like me to be yours in every way? Would you like to see me at your feet, with my head between your legs? Would you like me to please you and expect nothing in return? By all means, make it happen. Take everything you can from me. I certainly won\'t mind, and your Gryffindor friends will never know. Nobody needs to know. It can be your little secret. Your little, hideous secret.”



Severus\' voice, silky, dangerous, coming out as a serpentine hiss, as well as the images it was painting, was sending shivers down Harry\'s spine. And then, ridiculously and incongruously, in spite of the inhuman misery of Severus\' angry words, Harry realized that he was getting hard...



Something like bitter triumph flashed in Severus\' eyes, and Harry abruptly came to his senses.



“Stop,” Harry snapped, barking the order out at himself, even more so than Severus. “That\'s enough. I mean it. You need to stop, and... I need to leave.”



For a quick, horrifying moment Harry thought that Severus was too far gone to hear him, but Severus removed his hands from the wall quickly, as if he\'d been burned. Harry used the sudden window of opportunity to make his escape from the cellar without looking back.



~ * ~



Severus finished what was left of the Firewhisky when Harry was gone.



Tripod jumped off the desk and started weaving himself around Severus\' feet with small, plaintive noises that made Severus chuckle slightly.



“Yes, yes, you\'ve made your point. We\'re going to bed, all right now,” he muttered, stepping over the cat, and ambling upstairs, using the walls to support himself. When he finally made it to the living room, he saw that both Marietta and Harry had already gone to bed, presumably together.



He walked to his bedroom, Tripod on his heels, and noticed that the door to Harry\'s bedroom was tightly shut. Severus smirked unhappily and exhausted, collapsed on his bed.



He couldn\'t remember the last time he was so ridiculously, shamefully drunk – and he didn\'t care much. But to his surprise, in spite of his intoxication and weariness, he wasn\'t able to fall asleep for a long time. He remained in bed for what seemed like hours, aware of nothing but some sort of terrible, stupid, idiotic loss, although he wasn\'t certain whether he\'d lost something just now, or simply noticed a void that had always been there.



Tripod settled on his chest, and Severus sensed the feline warm breath under his chin. He lifted his hand to stroke the cat\'s back and was rewarded by loud, almost mechanical purring that eventually lulled him into an odd, restless state of being neither awake nor asleep.



It was still early when Severus opened finally gave up on rest and decided to get up.



Severus got up and quietly walked out of his bedroom. The door to Harry\'s bedroom, where Harry was undoubtedly sharing his bed with Marietta, was still tightly shut.



Slowly and almost soundlessly, Severus made his way downstairs, trying not to dwell too much on the events of last night, and not quite succeeding.



A fresh wave of nausea assaulted him, not all of it caused by the hangover. Embarrassment didn\'t quite begin to cover it - he got drunk on Potter\'s Firewhisky, then in a fit of ridiculous, jealous rage, obscenely threw himself at Potter, sent him running, and then – drunk some more... He felt humiliated, mortified, and exposed – and he had nobody else to blame other than himself. The urge to leave the house and be alone continued to build, almost akin to a physical pressure in his chest, that was threatening to explode if not released.



Nothing else mattered at the moment – not the threat of capture by renegade Death Eaters, not the danger of being apprehended by the Ministry, and not even the concern that Potter might feel when discovering Severus\' absence. The only thing that mattered was getting away, and experiencing at least a tiny, fleeting glimpse of something like freedom and privacy.



Moving quickly, before giving reason an opportunity to kick in and stop him, Severus walked out of the house, shutting the door behind him.



The grey mist of the rainy morning greeted him, and Severus inhaled deeply, before heading down the street, neither certain nor caring where the road was going to take him.



He walked, hearing only his footsteps, and the heavy raindrops hitting the pavement in rapid succession. The icy streams fell on him, drenching his robe in a matter of seconds, but suddenly he realized he could barely feel them, as a wave of sudden, intoxicating relief flooded him... relief at simply doing something human – walking outside, alone, unescorted – how long had it been? Seven years, or maybe longer – he could no longer remember.



But then, even remembering seemed less important, as he continued to walk alone through the ever shifting, all-obscuring veil of autumn rain.



To Be Continued...