No matter how hard he tried to shake the feeling, Harry couldn't help but believe that this was all his fault. He'd given his word that he'd keep Severus safe. Fat lot of good his promise had done. He wondered if Severus held him as responsible as he held himself.
Nothing in Severus' attitude suggested that Severus was harbouring any resentment towards him. He could ask, of course. Harry was tempted to do just that, but . . . the only point in bringing up the topic would be to ease his guilty conscience. That wasn't exactly fair to Severus. Right now, the only important issue was Severus' recovery. Everything else had to take a backseat.
So Harry just held on, hoping that the closeness would somehow help.
It sure went a long way in easing his own anxieties.
*~*~*
Burke had been right, Severus acknowledged. He was a weak, snivelling coward.
He knew that after what had happened, after what Harry had heard, that their . . . romantic connection was a thing of the past. Yet, he was allowing himself to go along with the pretence that nothing had changed, allowing himself to give in to his weakness and accept the comfort Harry was offering.
It was all terribly confusing. When he'd awoken, he'd expected Harry to be gone, or at the very least, for Harry's attitude towards him to have changed irreparably. Only, Harry wasn't acting as if Burke's disclosure of the unfortunate choices he'd made in his youth had changed anything. But, then, Harry was such an utter Gryffindor that it was entirely possible he'd continue to offer an incapacitated lover the comfort and support he'd been lavishing on him these last few weeks until he was healed. Never kick a man while he was down was the credo of most true Gryffindors, and Severus had to admit that he'd never felt as down as he was at the present moment.
Burke had crippled him more than physically. He couldn't speak to utter a spell. His wand hand was gone. And, for all that he was a powerful wizard in his own right, he'd never been capable of the instantaneous magic that Harry and Voldemort accomplished so easily. He'd tried holding his wand in his left hand to cast spells, but magic flowed in very much the same way that rivers did. It was difficult to impossible to induce the energy to reverse its course once direction had been decided. The power wanted to flow through his right hand to his wand, and no matter how hard Severus concentrated, he couldn't reroute the energy to his left hand. He hadn't been able to manage so much as a simple levitation or summoning spell. He couldn't perform a cleansing charm or the simplest transfigurations that he'd been capable of since first year. For all intents and purposes, his magic had been ripped from him. He wasn't any better off than a Squib at the present moment.
The most frustrating ordeal of all was his missing tongue. Not being able to speak was a trial like none he'd suffered in his often miserable life. He couldn't tell Poppy to decrease the dosage of the pain killer she was administering. He'd rather suffer the pain than a dulled mind. He couldn't respond to conversation with anything but a nod or headshake. He couldn't tell people to go away and leave him the hell alone. He'd tried writing his thoughts with his left hand, but the resulting scribble was incomprehensible even to himself. Hermione Weasley had brought that portable computer device to help, but it took him so long to pick out the letters that he rarely employed it. The end result was that he couldn't communicate on anything but the most primitive of levels. The mental isolation was driving him slowly insane, not that that was a very far trip these days.
In the silence of his own mind, all he could do was relive those horrible two days Burke had held him captive. He'd faced torture in his past – there wasn't a single follower of Lord Voldemort who hadn't felt his master's displeasure – and yet, the worst that Voldemort had done to him had been nothing compared to what Burke had inflicted upon him. That Muggle rack was unlike anything he'd ever encountered, excruciating beyond words. As for the more inventive of Burke's entertainments . . . Severus could barely bear to remember the rest of it.
Of course, the ache in the stump at the end of his right arm and the empty place where his tongue had been were constant reminders. And those hadn't even been the worst of it. The rapes had been . . . he couldn't even find an adjective that would describe those brutal, dry violations. He knew on a mental level that those sexual assaults had been just another form of torture, no different than the whip that had violated his flesh, but . . . the whip hadn't left him feeling dirty. He could have returned to Potter's bed after all the rest.
Hell, he might even have been able to carry on after the sexual molestation, but what Burke had done in his mind was with him constantly. That bastard had laid bare everything he felt for Harry, held his pathetic hopes up to the light and made him see how utterly impossible they were. He'd known from the start that Harry was too good for the likes of him, but he'd thought that perhaps just this once . . . well, Burke had made sure that those hopes would die as all his hopes always had.
Burke had told Harry what he'd done with Malfoy in school.
He couldn't bear the thought of Harry knowing about that sordid business. His entire life before Harry, sex had been in the same category as what Malfoy had done to him. He'd been there to be used for others' pleasures. That he'd learned to enjoy being used that way was fortunate for his sake, but it didn't change what he'd been. His whole life, he'd known that he wasn't . . . worthy of the type of caring relationships most wizards enjoyed. He'd been ugly and dislikeable from birth. He was such a disappointment that his parents hadn't even been able to love him. Harry was the only lover who had ever treated him with respect and kindness, who had ever . . . cared.
And now Harry knew the truth.
Severus realized that things would change between them now – how could they not? Harry was carrying on as though he hadn't heard Burke's words or as if they hadn't mattered to him, but how could it not matter to Harry that the man he was sleeping with had been little more than a whore? Gryffindors embodied the spirit of honour, and what he had been was so far from honourable that he knew Harry had to hold him in contempt now.
Doubtless, Harry was waiting until he was healed and back on his feet to break it off with him.
And healed, he would be. Every day the flesh in his mouth and at the end of his right arm grew exponentially as this mighty wizard forced the laws of magic and nature to conform to his will. If it had been anyone other than Harry, the unnatural healings would have been terrifying, because if Harry could change those previously immutable laws of nature, then what couldn't he change?
Even with it being Harry exerting these unheard of levels of power, there was still something frightening about how easily Harry was accomplishing what should have been downright impossible tasks. Of course, Severus had witnessed Harry do things that had forever shattered the illusion that Harry Potter was simply a carefree, innocent young wizard like other young men his age.
Severus knew on a visceral level what most people forgot, that this man had bested a dark wizard while in diapers and killed another at age eleven. Harry Potter was no more simple, innocent, or normal than he himself had ever been. Harry just hid his aberrations better.
Severus had the vivid, chilling memory of the blue mage fire flaring from Harry's fingers in that god-awful dungeon. It had passed harmlessly over Severus where he himself lay chained to the rack, but hit Burke like the wrath of the gods. Perhaps even more disturbing than that dramatic, thaumaturgical tour-de-force was the expression on Harry's normally gentle face as he'd watched Burke burn to death. There had been absolutely no hint of remorse, which had surprised Severus on some level. He knew the sadistic bastard had had it coming in spades, but that Harry could consciously inflict that kind of damage without regret was more than a little unnerving.
He knew if he had a whit of sense, he'd be scared to death of Harry, but he knew him too well to fear him, at least magically. Emotionally, he'd never felt as frightened of anyone as he was of this handsome man who sat by his bed all day, every day.
That last was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, Severus acknowledged. Harry did leave him briefly to change and shower every morning, and check in with Ron Weasley, who was standing in for Harry as the DADA teacher while on his extended leave from the Aurors. But most of the day, Harry was at his side.
Severus knew he should be similarly concerned about who was teaching his classes, but at the moment, he couldn't spare the energy. He was hurting, physically weak, confused, and increasingly depressed as he acknowledged the course he was going to have to take once he was better. In a way, he was grateful that he wasn't capable of speech, for it had postponed the inevitable, but Severus knew that the only way he was going to be able to save face at all in this situation was to break it off with Harry, before Harry could dump him.
"Ah, you're awake," the subject of Severus' thoughts said as he entered his infirmary room. Harry was looking particularly attractive today in his light blue jumper. It was a sharp contrast against his black teacher's robes and black trousers. "Hermione sent down another stack of books for you to read. She and Ron will be in to see you later."
Harry rested the impressive pile on the nightstand where a similar pile was standing. Severus hadn't touched any of the books himself, but Harry and the Weasleys seemed to enjoy reading to him.
He didn't understand the Weasleys' continued presence in his sickroom. Snatches of conversation that he'd overheard when they'd thought him asleep had told him that they'd been here the night Harry rescued him from Burke. They had to know what Burke had done to him. For that matter, it was entirely possible that Harry might have told them what Burke had disclosed about his past. He knew Harry had no secrets from his oldest friends, and, yet, every day, both Hermione and Ronald Weasley stopped in to sit with him. Sometimes they took turns with Harry reading to him, but most times they just shared school gossip.
It made no sense at all to Severus. They should be gone, and urging Harry to separate himself from him as quickly as possible, and, yet, the Weasleys returned here every day, smiling and filling the room with an insufferable cheer that Severus would have cursed them for were he able to access his magic.
Or perhaps not. It shamed him to admit it, but in his current condition, he was horribly susceptible to their kindness. He didn't understand their reason for continuing to associate with him. It was more than simply for Harry's sake, because they often came to visit when Harry was unconscious after healings and fussed over him as much as Potter did. Whatever the Weasleys' motivation, he was grateful for their presence, for it fostered a sense of normality that he was clinging to quite desperately at the moment.
"Dobby snuck some of that blancmange that you like so much out from the kitchens," Harry said, withdrawing a charmed bowl of the golden sweet and a spoon from one of the voluminous pockets of his robes and coming to sit beside his hips on the bed. Severus couldn't help but wonder if the house elf had really done so or if Harry had simply manifested the pudding to please him. "Would you like some?"
Severus looked away, as he always did, whenever food was on offer. He was trying hard not to be melodramatic, for he wasn't the first wizard in the history of the world to endure either torture or rape, but he really couldn't help but wish that he hadn't been alive when Harry had found Burke's hiding place. It would be easier for all concerned if he'd simply died there.
He heard Harry's stifled sigh. He managed not to flinch this time when Harry's free hand cupped his cheek and guided his face back.
"Have some, please? For me?" Harry pleaded.
As he did every time Harry voiced that particular request, Severus succumbed. He knew it was weak. He knew he should be denying all this fussing and walling himself off, but he nonetheless opened his mouth when Harry held a spoonful of the blancmange to his lips.
They both knew he could have eaten it himself with his left hand, but Harry seemed to like doing these small things for him.
"I don't know what you're thinking," Harry said in a gentle tone as he continued to patiently feed him the pudding. "But I can tell that it isn't good."
His thoughts were so far from 'good' that Severus couldn't hold back the snort that huffed out his nose.
"Understatement of the century, huh?" Harry asked.
The abject concern and understanding in those gentle green eyes was devastating. Severus didn't know how to deny or respond to it. All he knew was that he didn't deserve it.
"Please, don't let that son of a bitch win. You're the strongest person I know. You will get through this. Just . . . don't give up, please?" Harry whispered, looking as if he weren't sure he should speak at all.
It was almost as if Harry were reading his mind. Severus would almost have suspected him of it, but after the recent violations, he was unnaturally conscious of his mental integrity. He would have known if Harry were peeking into his thoughts. For all his power, Potter wasn't that skilled in the mental disciplines. Harry's mind touch was too blunt and open for subtlety.
No, the explanation was even more frightening than that. Harry simply knew him well enough to suspect the course his thoughts were taking. But then, again, his attempts at refusing food had hardly been subtle, either.
The hand not holding the pudding spoon reached out to stroke Severus' none too clean hair back from his forehead.
"Have you any idea how grateful I am to have you back?" Harry asked.
The energy Potter was expending for his healing and his refusal to leave his side had given Severus a pretty good idea of how shaken Harry had been by his abduction. When Harry looked into his eyes like this and touched him so tenderly, he could almost believe that the things Burke had told Harry made no difference to him.
"I know this whole thing has been an unending nightmare for you. And I know it's taking a terribly long time, but I'm working as fast as I can to heal you. Please, Severus, hold on a little longer?"
