A Means of Survival – Chapter 17 – Revelations

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Chapter 17 – Revelations

Harry awoke feeling unusually safe and warm. It was a very odd sensation to experience, considering the history of his childhood. He thought back to his last waking memory and shuddered with the images therein.

He noticed that the object that he was laying against was moving up and down only mere seconds before he realized what, or whom, it was.

“How do you feel?” Professor Snape asked from somewhere just above him.

Fine, he was going to say, before remembering whose presence he was in.

And on, he thought, with a rare wry amusement.

“Scared,” he said softly, not sure who might be listening in. He was fairly positive he was in the infirmary once more, based on just the smells that had greeted him upon waking.

The arms around him tightened a fraction, filling him with a sense of calmness. With a rare level of certainty, he knew that he was safe in this position. Therefore, he fully intended on taking full advantage of the safe feeling as long as it was extended to him.

He knew that he was protected here, and the strength of that knowledge seeped through his body delicately, filling him with something that he had no words for.

“I do not wish to rush you, but I need to ask.” Snape’s voice reinserted itself into his mental awareness with the sentence.

Harry had a feeling that he knew what was coming next, and although he desperately dreaded discussing the upcoming topic, he knew that this man would not cause him any unnecessary harm in doing so.

“Okay,” he said, pressing his head in tighter against Snape’s lean torso. He closed his eyes in an effort to try and hide from his memories, but knew that it was ultimately a fruitless endeavor.

The man above him leaned over and rested his chin on Harry’s head, almost as though he was trying to pull Harry even farther into his chest.

“Child,” the man asked him softly, nearly as softly as Harry had spoken prior, “please tell me who was responsible for hurting you.”

Harry choked on a sob at the phrasing the man used to ask his question. It was perhaps the first time in his life that he could remember having someone—an adult someone too—be concerned about his being hurt.

He opened his mouth to answer, but was surprised to hear himself begin to cry instead. His tears broke through the thick wall of bravado that he was forced to employ around nearly everyone, particularly the Dursleys.

He heard Snape mumble something and soon realized that the sounds of the room around them had faded into nearly nothingness around them. Maybe he could get Snape to teach him the spell later, when he had remembered how to speak.

His tears were still falling thickly down his cheeks when he tried to speak again. He took a shuddery breath and opened his mouth only to be hushed gently by Snape, who continued to shock him even more as he began rubbing soothing circles into his quavering back with one hand, while the other brushed his hair out of his eyes gently.

He had thought that Snape had finished surprising him until the man started speaking.

“When I was a young man,” the man said in a haltingly quiet voice that Harry had never heard him use before, “I was betrayed by someone very close to me.”

Harry tried to sniffle unobtrusively and grateful when Snape handed him a handkerchief. It did not surprise him to see that it was green.

“Was it a friend?” He asked, finally finding his voice again after being soothed by man’s gentle touches on his back and head.

“Yes,” Snape answered, bitterness thick in his tone.

“What happened?” Harry asked in a wary whisper.

“In a fit of drunken foolishness,” Snape said, stopping for a moment to apparently gather his wits about him, “my friend decided that he wanted to,” Snape stopped again, before going on with a choked sound in his throat, “bed me.” He finished the sentence with a low croaky sound in his voice, and Harry wondered for a moment if he might cry as well.

While Snape’s chest did shudder a bit under Harry’s body, it soon died down as the man quickly regained control over himself, and wisely, Harry kept his silence the entire time.

“You mean he—?” Harry couldn’t say it, not to himself and certainly not to Snape.

“Yes. He raped me,” the man answered, the emotions still very fresh in his voice, even though it had obviously occurred many years prior.

Harry couldn’t comprehend the idea of anyone getting away with being able to rape the frightening potions master of the dungeons that Snape was—or seemed to be, his mind pointed out.

“Is he dead?” Harry asked, dumbfounded at the idea that a big strong man like Snape could be hurt like that, like—like he had been.

Snape barked a harsh humorless laugh at Harry’s question.

“I only wish,” he said roughly, pulling Harry in closer to his body once more, apparently in an effort to reassure himself that the boy really was still there.

“Is he still around?” Harry asked, whispering still, suddenly feeling cold all over. If a man could hurt someone like Snape, then he certainly didn’t want to meet him.

“Yes,” Snape ground out tightly.

Harry glanced up at him for a moment and was surprised to see that Snape’s eyes were shut very tightly in his tense pale face, obviously from the effort of reliving his nightmare.

Harry, having little idea of what to do to comfort the obviously tortured man, merely wrapped his arms tighter around Snape’s body and held on in an effort to let his professor know that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Finally one last question occurred to him that he knew he could not leave be.

“Do I know him?” Harry asked, suddenly wanting to take back the question as he became far too aware of the reality of the phrase, ‘ignorance is bliss.’

Silence existed between the two for the next few moments, only broken by the sounds of their breathing, combined with the sound of Snape’s heart steadily pounding under Harry’s still head.

But finally, Snape’s chest tensed under Harry’s body and he spoke.

“His name is Lucius Malfoy,” Snape’s voice whispered, speaking in the most dead sounding voice that Harry had ever had the misfortune to hear.

…

He didn’t know why he had suddenly decided to tell Harry about one of the worst nights of his life. He didn’t know how he could have thought telling a boy about something horrific could possibly do any good whatsoever.

So when he felt the boy’s arms tighten around him, he had been surprised by the boy’s continued willingness to remain in his company. He had been surprised enough to tell him more about the man who had hurt him back in his adolescence.

Then the boy had asked him whether he knew him, and he knew in that moment that he would have to tell him the man’s identity. Really, why had he told him the story if not to tell him the identity of his assailant?

So he decided to make himself say it, that he and Lucius had once been friends, only that he was to be hurt for his efforts.

The boy, at hearing the full truth of the situation, became deathly still in his arms, to the point that he almost wondered if he hadn’t passed out from the shock of it all.

“Harry?” He asked, touching the boy’s cheek softly with a stained index fingertip.

The boy looked up at him, his eyes very wide and large in his extremely young face. From this position in his arms, Harry looked like a baby primate peering out from under his parent’s arms. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, he would have been forced to laugh at himself for that hideous mental comparison.

Hell, maybe he still would later on.

He was fully aware now that his understanding of the world around him had been turned on its ear, as Poppy was inclined to say. It seemed to him that the more time that he had spent in this boy’s presence, the odder the world worked around him.

The boy was still looking at him shyly, and he wondered how much time he had spent thinking.

So he decided to do something that was completely unexpected. He pulled another page from Poppy’s book of behavior. He leaned over and kissed the boy lightly on his forehead, just above his distinctive scar.

When he looked back down at the boy, he wasn’t particularly surprised to see tears in his bright green eyes. He was however, somewhat surprised to see something like admiration staring out of the boy’s face as he continued gazing at Severus’s face intently.

He wanted to tell the boy in his arms that he shouldn’t waste his time admiring a fool like him. He wanted to tell him that he was nothing but a wretched man who had never been worthy of anything, but he chose instead to say nothing to the child who had obviously never experienced being protected, not even by a man as wretched as Severus Snape.

“I won’t let him hurt you again,” Severus promised the child in his arms. “I won’t let any of them hurt you again,” he amended, adjusting his statement to include any and all of the boy’s tormentors.

“But who will protect you?” The boy asked, reaching out a thin arm to lightly touch his lightly stubbled cheek.

Severus looked to the other side of the room to where Poppy was standing, watching them quietly from the other side of his silence charm.

The boy turned his head to see what had gotten Severus’s attention.

“See Madam Pomfrey over there?” He asked Harry softly.

“Uh huh,” the boy answered solemnly.

“That’s who protects me.” He said, speaking the truth for the first time in many years. She had watched out for him when he had been in her house, and so it was little surprise to him that she continued to do so, years later.

“Gosh.” The boy said in awe. “You must be pretty safe if you’ve got the Dragon Lady watching your back,” he said, grinning a bit up him.

He snorted at the boy’s name for the woman and her fiercely protective nature towards her charges.

“Pretty safe,” he agreed simply.

And then they fell silent again, only this time the silence was far more comfortable to wait within.

Finally though, the boy looked up at him, and he was discomforted to see the fear that was once more apparent in the boy’s face.

“I want to tell you who hurt me and Neville,” the boy said speaking in a rush.

“Okay,” he said, feeling suddenly that their roles had suddenly flip flopped.

“But you gotta promise that you’ll find some way to help him and not just have him expelled,” the boy said, his eyes intensely probing Severus’s face for reassurance that he was making the right choice in trusting him.

“Why does he need help?” Severus asked, narrowing his eyes in confusion.

“Because something was seriously wrong with them!” Harry answered emphatically, with more than a little terror creeping back into his features.

Severus watched as the boy seemed to shrink into himself, bringing his knees into his chest and pulling his arms from around Severus to wrap instead around his own small—now shivering—body.

Severus decided not to focus on Harry’s change in body position, but instead merely gathered the small—lump of boy???—tightly wound body into his arms carefully, holding him more as he would a frightened kitten, than the boy he really was.

He realized then and there that the boy’s fear initiated response did serve some kind of purpose for the child, in that his form now presented a much smaller target to anyone who chose to attack him.

“I promise,” he said, as he forced himself to speak his words calmly, “that I’ll do whatever I can to make things right once more for you.”

Almost imperceptibly, he felt the small head next to his shoulder nod his understanding of what it had cost Severus to make that promise.

After all, Severus was not the type of man to make idle threats—or promises.

Having established that, Severus watched as Harry proceeded to drop the second bombshell of the evening, through his revealing of whom was involved in the attack against the two Gryffindor boys.

Severus tried to keep his outward features calm and the tension in his body low, after having finally realized just how unusually perceptive the boy was towards moods and the non-verbal language of those around him. Painfully, he realized that the boy’s hypervigilance was likely yet another survival technique that he had picked up after spending so many years with those slugs that had posed as his worthless family.

After a few more moments of companionable silence between the two abuse survivors, Severus finally realized that the child’s body had begun relaxing in his arms. He knew that the boy needed to eat something soon, but he had already decided that he would not be the one who kept the child from falling back to sleep, if he was able.

And so, upon feeling Harry’s body continued relaxations, he decided to try and perch the boy’s head back on his shoulder. It seemed right that his head be there, and besides, Severus found the presence of Harry in his arms to be a comfort to him as well.

Within a half hour, both the boy and the man had fallen back to sleep, each granting the other unknown amounts of reassurance just because of their proximity to one another.