Chapter Twenty-Two
Nor give thee any love… which were unjust
Beloved, I only love thee! Let it pass.
Harry found himself humming under his breath as he walked around the school the next day, going about his timetabled routine in a far better humour than usual. The sense of contentment and well-being that the dreams last night had instilled in him lingered for the whole day, making him feel wonderfully cheerful and relaxed. Despite the fact that they had been just dreams, they were equally obviously more than 'just' that.
They made him feel incredibly hopeful. Made him think that maybe, just maybe, all this would actually work out as he'd barely dared to… dream, for lack of a better word.
They were a promise, he rather suspected. He hoped.
Hermione noticed his good mood, naturally. For once, though, she refrained from pestering him about it, and the reasons behind it. Instead, she just returned his frequent smiles with faintly perplexed ones of her own. Harry thought that maybe his rapid change from miserable and pensive to vaguely normal to outright cheerful had managed to confuse even her. He gave her an impulsive hug when he met her in the library to work on their Arithmancy project in the afternoon, and bewildered her even more.
From the general feeling of the bond, somehow springing into greater awareness, Harry even suspected that Severus, despite being, well, Severus, for lack of a better word, was experiencing something similar to Harry's feeling of utter well-being. To Harry, everything today seemed somehow new, and flawless. Of course, nothing he could see in the man's exterior as he eyed him as usual during meals even hinted at such a thing. Still, Harry hadn't shared a link with him for more than a year now without learning how to read him at least a little. It was only a little, true, but it was enough to be able to see this.
Even the fact that Malfoy had been acting decidedly oddly since the start of term, and Harry had not the faintest clue why, couldn't put more than the smallest dent in his good humour. The strange sighting on the train appeared to have been a foreshadowing of their interaction for the last two weeks. Almost every time Harry turned around outside Gryffindor Tower, it seemed like the other seventh-year was just looking away, or disappearing around a corner. Harry almost felt as if he was being stalked.
It was actually beginning to become more than a little annoying, but it didn't happen quite often enough to make Harry speak to someone else about the whole thing. It wasn't as if Malfoy would really be stalking him, after all. It wasn't his style in the slightest, and Harry couldn't come up with a good reason for such a change of behaviour. He told himself that it had to be just his imagination. They did still have quite a lot of classes together, and it was reasonable for Malfoy to be using the same corridors as Harry to get between them. Belittling Harry was still one of his favoured past-times, so that could explain the watching. Maybe he was running out of new and interesting things to say, and was on the hunt for more. Merlin knew that Crabbe and Goyle were probably sick to death of Malfoy's old insults.
And if there was something more sinister going on? Well, Harry knew that he could defend himself now.
Still, he had better, and much more pleasant, things to think about. Like visiting Severus again. And this time, encouraged by the dream, he was prepared to try and move them forward a little more. He rather thought getting Severus to kiss him, rather than a years-old memory, might be a good thing. Actually, he was quite certain of it.
It surprised him, but only a little, that he felt almost no resentment at the memory of their first kiss now. They had both changed so much since that evening, and this time, he thought that there was little that could go wrong. He hoped it, at any rate, and for once everything he was feeling from Severus was encouraging.
He let Severus know he was coming down as he left Charms, his last class of the day.
***
Severus opened the door for Harry almost before the boy had a chance to knock. He had been expecting this visit for most of the day, had not been able to completely suppress the jump of anticipation when Harry had asked if he was free. As he stepped aside to allow Harry to enter, he didn't bother trying to hide his smile of welcome.
As the day went by, Severus had realised that the dreams of the previous night hadn't just improved his mood. That would have been quite ghastly enough by itself, and he'd found it quite hard to berate his students properly all day. At least, he'd told himself, he wasn't humming, as he had distinctly felt Harry doing from time to time.
He had also found that he had an even greater awareness of Harry. It was, thankfully, not the way it had been after last Christmas, where they'd been almost unable to separate their identities, where every fleeting thought that rose to the surface of either mind had been unwillingly shared. Rather, it was as if the information the bond constantly gave him was more accessible to his conscious mind. It probably applied to Harry too, and if the truth was told, Severus didn't particularly feel like trying to conceal himself as completely as he had always been used to doing.
After all, if there was one person in the world he could afford to trust now, it was Harry. And while trust still didn't come at all easily to him, as it never had, he was beginning to find it almost natural to contemplate trusting Harry. He felt that perhaps it should have worried, or maybe even scared, him much more than it did.
Doubtless all of this was another example of the actions of the bond, but there was no point in explaining everything like that. There was far too much interference from it, and if he was to start trying to separate his own thoughts, he would be second-guessing everything he did.
He didn't listen to the part of his mind that suspected that even if the bond was suddenly removed now, he would still like the boy.
He could not, in all honesty, bring himself to care very much, as he walked into the kitchen to fetch the obligatory tea, leaving Harry to settle himself into his usual place.
***
Harry picked up one of the books on the low table beside his chair to pass the time with while he waited for Severus to return from the kitchen. He turned it over in his hands, feeling the smooth leather, soft under his fingertips, and the gilded indentations that revealed the title and editor. 'Collected Essays' it said, informatively, and he didn't recognise the editor's name. Opening it to a random page, Harry found himself in the middle of an essay about the effects of the more benevolent types of blood magic on the practitioner and the subjects. It seemed Severus had been doing research again.
Within moments, he was absorbed in what the writer had to say about bonds in general, and blood-bonds in particular.
Harry laid the book down as a sense of movement, of nearing, through the bond told him that the man had finished making the tea and was returning. The bond had seemed much more sensitive since last night – he'd certainly never been able to pinpoint Severus' location so precisely before. A familiar mug was handed to him a few moments later, and he decided not to mention what he'd read in the book for the time being. He had other, more important, things he wanted to discuss.
"So, about yesterday," Harry began. He took a sip from his mug and found the tea slightly too hot for his liking. Naturally, it was otherwise perfectly tailored to his taste. They'd had an awful lot of cups of tea together since this whole business had started.
He turned the mug in his hands, feeling the warmth soaking through the heavy porcelain – warmth, skin, comfort, autumn, hair, blankets, morning, laughter - as he looked up at Severus, trying to judge what he was thinking. The bond gave him lots of information, of course, but the man's face had become an invaluable source of insight too. He blinked away the sudden intense flash of last night's dreams, pulling his thoughts together again.
"I umm… had some rather enjoyable dreams last night," Harry continued, hoping that he wasn't going too fast, getting into this too soon. He thought he'd read Severus right, but…
He could ruin this all too easily if he pushed too hard, too early. He bit the inside of his bottom lip nervously as he waited for the man's response. Not again, not again, something chanted inside his head.
Severus cradled his mug in his hands, unconsciously mirroring Harry and his relish of the warmth it exuded. The dungeons were no colder than any of the other rooms in Hogwarts – the fire and his generous use of Warming Charms saw to that, especially as he disliked the cold so much - but the physical sensation of heat had always appealed to him.
"As did I," he replied after a minute, lifting his gaze to Harry's face. "I… would not object to such dreams being repeated."
What about making them true? Harry almost asked. He just barely managed to hold himself back, catching the question on the very tip of his tongue and pushing it away firmly. He lowered his eyes, hiding behind drinking his tea. It was still too hot, hovering on the edge of scalding his tongue. He drained it anyway and put it down on the table next to him.
He needn't have bothered restraining himself so severely. Severus heard it anyway, and wasn't even offended. "I would not be averse to that either," he replied to the unspoken question, and Harry was almost able to ignore the //any more// that followed fast on the answer's heels.
"Oh." Harry was, in fact, close to dumbfounded by the admission, so much more easily gained than he had expected it to be. He had thought he would have to do much more, push even harder, to elicit such a response from Severus. It was without a doubt the answer he wanted, though, and something fluttered excitedly in his chest at the implications of the man's sentence. He couldn't possibly be reading in more than Severus had intended, not with those feelings accompanying the statement.
The man smiled at him for the second time that day, and Harry's breath caught at the simple perfection of it. "I may be stubborn and devious, but I can accept when something is inevitable," Severus said with gentle humour. //And it was clearly inevitable that we love each other.// The words strongly implied resentment, but Harry could read the humour and something far more positive than resignation hidden in them.
He could also decipher the love that underlay them, and it made something he rather thought might be pure joy bubble up inside him. He smiled back at Severus, so widely that his face began to ache slightly. It didn't stop him smiling, though.
And so he stood, and the man opposite stood too, laying aside his mug so that it mirrored Harry's. They both took the requisite step to bring them face to face and body to body, and made the movements that brought their mouths together, tasting faintly of tea and hope.
Their second kiss was a mutual creation, strangely like and unlike their first, bearing all the warmth of their shared dreams. This time, there were no words in their minds, because they had already said all they really needed to. There were other things between them, but those were banished for this moment. They could wait for this precious while.
And when they finally drew apart after a perfect, eternal time, no names had to be spoken.
***
This time, Harry smiled, and said "Thank you," after they finally broke for breath. Severus smiled back, and brushed a stray bit of hair out of Harry's face. He didn't need to ask for what the thanks were meant. They were for the tea, and the company, and the kiss. They were for making the dream real, if only in this one small way for the time being.
And above all, they were for the warmth and the love that Severus hadn't quite been able to make himself declare overtly, but knew that Harry understood anyway. He would not have had it any other way. Harry picked up his bag and left, still smiling slightly.
Severus stood there as Harry slipped out, trailing almost visible joy, relief and love like a cloak. As the door closed behind Harry, Severus lifted a hand to lips still imagining that they could feel the soft pressure of the boy's… no, the other man's, it had to be now. The warmth that filled him was achingly familiar, from the past and from the dreams last night. Yet it was better by far, for it was real and it was now.
More even than that, he savoured the feelings broadcast by Harry. Severus could feel him making his way through the school, attempting to make no secret from him of the emotions that matched, and perhaps even surpassed, what Severus now admitted he felt for him.
After some moments, he managed to force himself to move, to walk over to his chair instead of standing there like a love-struck fool. Even if that was, perhaps, what he was. Love-struck at least, he admitted now, if not quite, not any longer, dared he believe, a fool.
Seating himself, sinking into the comfortable shadow, he relished the lingering feeling of what was almost exhilaration. Finally he started to trust that they could make it work, despite all the obstacles and all the reasons why they should not even try. He found himself believing that they could make something great of it, this thing between them.
This… love, so fragile yet filled with hope.