OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMERS: I don't own anything, least of all the excerpts I've quoted from the show, movie, song lyrics, or Meredith Willson's novelization of The Music Man. Also, this is an M-rated fic – proceed at your own peril.

XXX

It's a long lost cause I can never win
For the civilized world accepts as unforgivable sin
Any talking out loud with any librarian
Such as Marian… Madam Librarian.

Marian looked pleadingly at Harold. "You've got to go, Harold – please."

Winthrop dropped his head. "Go on, Profethor, hurry up."

"I can't go, Winthrop," he said looking straight at Marian.

"Why not?"

Harold and Marian both heard the yelling approach of the returning mob, heard Marcellus cry out loudly and clearly, "Greg, they're coming! Run – run!" The Professor still might have taken to the back-yards and made his getaway, but he stayed where he was and calmly answered Winthrop's question, as though he had all the time in the world.

"I can't go," Harold said, "because for the first time in my life, I got my foot caught in the door." He drew Marian into his arms. "There was love all around – but I never heard it singing… No, I never heard it at all – till there was you."

In a moment, he was surrounded on all sides, Charlie Cowell in the lead, Constable Locke close behind, stomping toward him, snapping the handcuffs off his belt.

~The Music Man by Meredith Willson, page 134

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If it weren't for the handcuffs chafing his wrists, Professor Harold Hill, bandleader not-so-extraordinaire, could almost have pretended there was nothing unusual about the situation in which he'd found himself on this beautiful midsummer evening. For once again, he was smack-dab in the center of a flurry of activity. Only this time, he wasn't the master puppeteer pulling all the right strings that got the crowd to bend to his will. Instead, he was being buoyed along by a throng of angry men, trapped in their iron grasp and forced to proceed whether he wanted to or not, like the fallen branch of a mighty oak caught in in a raging river.

The sensation of rushing inexorably toward his own doom was something Harold had only experienced a handful of times during his long and ill-spent life, and it was the only circumstance in which he'd ever felt real fear churning in the pit of his stomach. Fortunately, the spell-binding cymbal salesman – as Mayor Shinn was so fond of calling him – had long ago learned that there were times when his silver tongue would only make things worse, so he wisely kept quiet as Constable Locke and his posse hustled him along the town's broadly paved and well-lit streets.

But however painful or disfiguring the punishment the mob ended up meting out in the name of justice, Harold refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing his spirit break – even if, he ruefully reflected, he deserved exactly what he was going to get. If he could bite back his howls of pain when the enraged Appalachians poured boiling tar over his forearm, if he could stanch his tears of agony when the infuriated Tennesseans pressed a white-hot branding iron into his shoulder, he could surely endure whatever it was the River City-ziens decided to do to him. But it was best not to think too much about the future, as his knees were beginning to wobble alarmingly and threatened to give out beneath him, should he continue his contemplations in this disquieting vein. No, Harold Hill was firmly resolved to do as he had always done: steel his formidable resolve, take each moment as it came, and outlast his adversaries through brazen endurance.

"Profethor Hill!" Winthrop's tearful voice called out.

Don't look, his mind sternly admonished. You'll never get through this if you do.

"Profethor – please!" the boy cried plaintively, sounding so much like his older sister when she'd begged him to leave town without delay, that Harold had to look. Indeed, Winthrop was racing after him with an expression that was both panicked and heartbroken. This tableau would have been heart-wrenching enough on its own, but it was made ten times worse by the stunning sight of Marian, Mrs. Paroo and Marcellus Washburn all trailing along behind the boy, their countenances equally as distraught as they gazed upon their fallen music professor. At this unexpected outpouring of hysterical concern on his behalf, Harold's knees did give out, and he sagged helplessly in the arms of his imprisoners.

Winthrop burst into tears. "Harold!"

Inwardly cursing himself for losing his composure like that, Harold called out in as harsh a tone as he could muster, even as the men jostled him roughly about until he was standing upright again, "Marcellus – take the boy home! Take Marian and Mrs. Paroo with you, as well – "

"Quiet, you!" The man to his right elbowed him in the side. Fortunately, the blow was too soft to make him keel over again, but it was definitely hard enough to knock the wind out of him and render further speech impossible. As Harold struggled to regain his breath, he was dimly aware of a boyish howl of indignation, followed by a brief scuffle and then a sharp, surprised masculine grunt.

"Winthrop!" Marian cried, aghast.

As boyish footsteps skittered over the pavement, Mrs. Paroo's scolding voice rang out, "Winthrop, you march back here right this instant and apologize to Mr. Washburn for kicking him in the shin!"

"No, leave him be, Ma'am," Marcellus said, wearily but understandingly. "The poor kid's had a rough enough evening, as it is… "

Mrs. Paroo began to protest, but her voice faded out of earshot fast as Harold was pushed relentlessly forward. Although the silence continued to stretch and the disgraced conman was reasonably sure he was no longer being followed, he hazarded a glance over his shoulder.

He got only a brief glimpse, but it was enough: Marian was still hastening after him in a most unladylike fashion, her skirts tightly clenched in her hands, her cheeks flushed crimson with exertion as she ran. Yet she remained heedless of the damage she was causing to both her newly repaired reputation and her physical well-being; her gaze was fixed squarely on him, her eyes burning with the fierce determination of a woman who refused to let go of the man she loved. Just as he had sacrificed his last chance of escape, she was willing to pay any price to stay by his side, for however brief a time they could manage to be together.

But he had to make her let him go; Harold wouldn't allow the River City-ziens to break her spirit as well. Marshaling the last of his strength, the erstwhile music professor broke free of his captors' grip and whirled around to tell off the most wonderfully, infuriatingly tenacious woman he'd ever met in his life. This was not a fairy tale and there could be no happy ending for them; it would be a lot better for her if she despised him as much as everyone else in River City presently did.

However, Harold's voice caught in his throat when he spied not just Marian following him, but Mrs. Paroo and Marcellus, as well. He would have thought they'd be rushing after Winthrop by now, but they'd left the boy to his own devices and resumed their worried pursuit of him, instead. Abandoned a hurt, innocent child – a child he had wounded with his glittering lies and empty promises – in favor of a dirty, rotten crook who'd shamelessly stolen every last cent he could wheedle out of their boodle bags! It was too much.

Before he could shout at his foolish but stalwart supporters to leave him be, he was seized, turned around and dragged onward. However, Harold was determined to have his way in at least this small matter, and stubbornly attempted, once again, to face the trio trailing behind him. Unsurprisingly, the mob of men surrounding him refused to countenance his continued lack of cooperation: No sooner than he'd swiveled his neck, several pairs of hands instantly clamped down on his head, mussing his carefully coifed tresses and forcing him to face front again.

Giving up at last, Harold let Constable Locke and his posse lead him along without further fuss. Although he wanted nothing more than to make Marcellus take Marian home and keep her there until this unpleasantness was all over and he was ridden out of town on a rail, he reflected that perhaps it was better that he wasn't allowed to speak. Because even if he could have mustered up the nerve to loudly denounce the woman he inconveniently but inexorably loved more than his own freedom, his outburst would probably have only firmed the librarian's obstinate resolve to stick by him to the bitter end.

Although these stiff-necked Hawkeyes struck Harold as a bit less barbaric than the denizens of the Appalachian backwoods, even in the midst of their (admittedly well-deserved) anger, this was going to be one of the hardest trials the conman ever had to endure. Not only did he have the unsettling prospect of gaining yet another permanent (but again, well-deserved) scar from whatever physical punishment was in store for him, he would have to henceforth live with the knowledge that Marian's final memories of him would be ones of agony as she witnessed his pain and humiliation. Perhaps Winthrop was right – perhaps he never should have come to River City.

Yet selfishly, Harold couldn't regret the one and only sublime, untainted and true love he'd unexpectedly discovered, however little he deserved the lovely librarian's fair regard. Not even his long-dormant conscience, which had fully reawakened to hector him with a vengeance the moment his lips first touched Marian's, could make the chastened conman wish that the beautiful and indomitable Marian Paroo had never come into his life, invading his very dreams in a way no woman ever had before, and doing so long before he realized he was in love with her…