[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Chapter Twenty-Four of 'Adagio'- A Conversation About Unhappiness

[lomonaaeren]

“Sir? Do you have some time to talk today after class?”

Severus supposed that he should have known this confrontation would be coming. The time he had already spent talking to Harry in the Dark Lord’s presence was not sufficient for all they had to say to each other.

But it was still difficult to keep a bland expression on his face as he nodded. “I am at your disposal, Mr. Potter.”

No one else would have seen the anxiety that blazed in Harry’s eyes for a moment before he dipped his head and turned back to the bubbling Draught of Peace in front of him. Severus had started the class on a few potions that were normally covered during the OWL year. He had thought he might as well.

There was every chance that he would not be here next year.

Severus swooped about the classroom and took points from Gryffindor to make himself feel better. But in the end, nothing could compensate for the fact that the other students trooped out, bickering, and Severus turned to find himself alone with Harry.

The boy he had thought he knew so well. The boy he might have mentored into becoming a Death Eater.

“Can you lock the door, please, sir?”

It was more than an hour until Severus’s next class, given that it was lunch now. He nodded and did as Harry asked.

He wasn’t sure what he anticipated when he lowered his wand. Perhaps Harry giving him some instructions from the Dark Lord. Perhaps Harry apologizing for lying to him about “Moody.”

What he got was Harry hurling himself forwards and hugging Severus again.

Severus swallowed and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry seemed to feel the difference, because he pulled back and stared into Severus’s face.

“You’re unhappy,” he whispered.

Severus sought a way forwards. He could keep this conversation secret from the Dark Lord, but Harry could not. And there was always the chance that the Dark Lord might harm the boy in his rage, no matter what Barty had said about the Dark Lord feeling more sane with Harry near. That might have been a lie.

“Why are you so unhappy?”

Severus stared into Harry’s eyes and decided to take the risk of speaking the truth. In the end, even if the Dark Lore was enraged with him for saying it, he was likely to kill Severus instead of the boy.

“I did not mean to turn you into a Death Eater,” he whispered.

Harry blinked. “But it’s the choice that you made.”

“Yes, when I was a teenager and foolish. Do you think—do you think I want to see you branded? A slave to the Dark Lord?”

“Oh, he’s not going to do that. He promised. He swore an Unbreakable Vow,” Harry added, before Severus could tell him exactly how much promises from the Dark Lord were worth.

“Why would he do such a thing?”

Harry smiled, and here was the dark expression that Severus had sometimes glimpsed out of the corner of his eye and mistaken for something else. Or thought wasn’t that dark. “Because I promised that I would do what he says unless it would endanger me or you, and he really wants me out of the war. I don’t know all the nuances of why, but I’ll learn. And in the meantime, I get what I want the most.”

I know the nuances.

Severus knew he should reveal the secret of how he had told the Dark Lord the prophecy, before the Dark Lord did so to drive a wedge between Severus and Harry. He took a deep breath.

“Safety.”

Severus blinked, having been so occupied by his thoughts that it took him a moment to realize how Harry’s word connected with what had gone before. Then he said slowly, “And you thought the Dark Lord would give you that, more than Dumbledore.”

“Dumbledore left me for ten years with people who would have killed me if they thought they could get away with it. I would still have been with them if not for you. Yes, I know who gives me the most safety.”

Harry’s eyes were blazing, and Severus wondered if this was the best time to tell him about the prophecy. But no, he needed to.

For him or whom? whispered a dark voice in the back of his head. Are you trying to protect him against the Dark Lord’s manipulations, or are you trying to make sure that he doesn’t hate you and render your service to the Dark Lord more intolerable than ever?

“There is something you must know.”

“Do you mean the prophecy?”

Severus couldn’t breathe. He stared at Harry and felt his breath stick in his lungs, and then he coughed and whispered, “You knew.”

“Of course I knew.” Harry’s face bore an expression that Severus couldn’t classify, even after so many years spent among Slytherins of all kinds. “I started suspecting that there must be a pretty compelling reason for the Dark Lord to attack me in my second year. And it was one of the first questions I asked Barty once I figured out who he was.”

“How exactly did you do that?”

“I smelled the Polyjuice on him.”

Severus swallowed. He had not done that himself, and he was the one who was supposed to have the sensitive olfactory sense and be good at Potions partially because of it.

Then again, he usually only noticed the smells of potions when he was in a place where he expected to smell them. In the classroom, he was on guard against anything that could go wrong with a student’s potion. But outside of that, he relaxed and didn’t pay attention to those messages.

“I have been stupid, it seems,” he whispered.

“No, you’ve been great.”

“I am the reason that you’re an orphan!”

“No, the Dark Lord is the reason for that, and I got past that because he promised me safety. Did you really think that I would turn on you, after all you’ve done for me, because of your part in carrying the prophecy to him?”

“You should,” Severus whispered, and sank down on the chair behind his desk. “Merlin, Harry, you should.”

Harry shook his head, the indefinable expression on his face. “Severus, you rescued me from that house. No one else has ever done that. I thought Hagrid would, at first, but he just sent me back to them the same day that he took me to Diagon Alley. You let me stay with you and lied to the Headmaster for me. I don’t know any other adult who would do that, either. You protected me and you would have become a spy and attacked the Dark Lord for me. Do you understand what that means?”

Harry raised eyes shining like stars to him. “I trust you. Nothing you can do would change that.”

“You stupid boy, you should know—”

“Nothing will change it, because the things that could, you wouldn’t do,” Harry said, and smiled at Severus as if that made sense and he should be comforted. “I know you inside and out. It’s one of the reasons that I knew you would follow me into the Dark Lord’s service instead of turning around and running back to Dumbledore.”

Severus swallowed because—he wasn’t wrong.

He should have been, perhaps. Severus should have felt more allegiance to the man who had kept him out of Azkaban and given him a path to redemption when he had been partially responsible for killing Lily, perhaps.

But that was not the way it was. All of Severus’s trust and loyalty and whatever capacity for affection he had left were tied up in the boy in front of him.

Albus told me once that love is the most powerful force in the world. I suppose he never thought that it would damn the world instead of saving it.