... Depths of Black ...
2. Single Word, The Second to Be Appreciated
After the bare introductions Harry had been told to follow the snake into the castle.
Being thrown into the situation at hand the way he had been Harry had quite an inner turmoil going on. Thanks to it he did not notice the two of them had arrived on the intended location until he nearly greeted the door with his face as they swung back after the snake came through.
In that room food had been prepared, the room being a dining room of sorts. Or maybe it should have been called a dining hall?
The room in which the food was served was a grande one. Harry had a feeling that Severus liked it out of pure comfort, not having to restrain himself from movements, given his size... And if he dared to ask, he might have found out his thought to be true. His enforced submissiveness however did not let him. One of the first rules ever taught to him was not to ask questions.
Even years of that however did not help when a small being appeared next to him and brought him a glass of juice. And he asked the snake as soon as the creature disappeared.
"What was that?"
"That was a House Elf, a servant..." the snake said as he curled on one side of the room, his head placed on the rest of his body in a way which enabled him to watch Harry still. "Doesn't your uncle have House Elves? He seemed well off."
"My uncle has..." Harry swallowed the "me" which has tickled on his tongue and replaced the word with something different. "... human servants. The only magic one would find if searching the Mansion would be in things Uncle brings to Cousin."
'What about you?' Severus felt like asking, feeling the magic the boy held, his senses being able to pick up the gentle hum of it. He however chose to try explain the matter a bit further instead.
"It is not unusual for muggles to have magical servants at home, they are associating with us after all."
"Muggles? Us?" Severus already thought that there was something wrong with the way the boy dressed, behaved and most of all arrived, but his obvious lack of knowledge was astounding.
"Muggles, the people without magic." Severus explained. When he saw the understanding of the fact in the boy's eyes he continued. ""Us" meaning the magical folk. Wizards, witches, creatures..."
"Ah, like the Weasleys." Harry understood. He has always knew that there are people with and without magic, however no one thought to tell him the correct terms for that.
"Weasley? I think I've heard that name before. Don't they have a shop on the Diagon Alley?" Severus asked, trying to remember.
"They do. The twins have just opened it recently. How would you know, sir?"
"It's Severus and... What do you mean by "How"?"
"Umm..." Harry by no means wanted to be rude, he only wondered how could a creature which took up quarter of the room exactly frequent the shopping alley the Diagon Alley was. And so his eyes only slid to the rest of the snake's body, thinking just how big the snake was, even if curled like that.
"Ah, true. I don't exactly seem like a type to go around for walk, do I?" Severus said in amusement. "I knew from The Prophet. It's as much of a human touch as I can get here."
"I'm sorry, I did not mean to be disrespecting." Harry said in a tiny voice, his head bowed. It was as the boy's hands slid of the table with that motion that Severus noticed that he ate nearly nothing.
"I'm not going to punish you for asking questions, Harry." Severus said, sighing inwardly. He really needed to have a look into the boy's background. He however needed to have a degree of his trust first, for he did not mean to sort through his mind uninvited. Who knew how the boy with untrained magic would react to that. Or how his magic would for that matter.
"Just eat."
Saying that the snake curled into a spiral and fell asleep, the soft clinking of the cutlery accompanying him on his way there.
...
Once Harry ate what had been laid before him he sat in the chair still, not knowing what to do.
The House Elf which appeared to take away the dishes disappeared as quickly as it came and the Master of the castle was sleeping silently from what Harry could tell.
Harry was also pretty sure that he would get lost in the castle if he tried to find the way back to the entrance... not to mention that he did not want to risk enraging one of the very few beings that did not seem to come to hate him on first sight by roaming his house unallowed. And so he just sat, waiting.
If only he did not feel so sleepy.
...
Severus woke up to a soft sound of distress.
Being the light sleeper he was it did not take much to wake him and so even though the volume of the sound has been low it woke the snake just enough to start to search for its source immediately.
He found the source in the boy who still was on his seat by the table, however seemed to have fallen asleep at some point and by the twitching of his muscles, the sounds which escaped his lips and the way his facial expressions changed from bad to worse it was easy to guess that he must have gotten caught in throes of a nightmare.
'What could he have nightmares about?' Severus could not help but wonder as he slid across the floor to get closer to the distressed boy.
"Don't..." The boy's whisper was almost inaudible even from the shortened distance. "Please don't..."
Severus watched the boy for a while, not knowing what to do. He however did not really need help choosing the option when the boy's whimpers became louder and tears started streaming down his face.
"No!" Harry cried out in his sleep as his body jerked when he must have wanted to push away someone in his dream and he would have fallen off the chair if the snake did not support it with his tail. Moment later he came to a decision that he did not want to watch the boy's tortured sleeping pattern anymore and poked the boy with the tip of his tail until the said boy was startled awake.
Harry looked around himself in confusion as he shot up from the chair only to crumble back into it later as the room swayed from his point of view. Once the dizziness which came with it passed he looked around the room once more.
"Where..." he asked, however soon his eyes fell on Severus.
At first he smiled a bit, however his smile fell quickly and he bowed his head again as he spoke to the snake.
"I'm sorry, sir. I..."
"There's not need to be sorry for something like that Harry." Severus said, wishing that as a snake he could actually sigh.
'Was he punished in past when something of the sort happened? When any of the things he apologizes for happened?' the snake could not help but wonder. Which made him think of the reason for the boy's presence in the room.
"Why didn't you leave when you finished your food?" Severus asked, seeing that it was already getting dark outside, which meant that few hours must have passed already from their lunch.
"You did not a..." Harry swallowed the "allow me to" he wanted to say. The snake was aware what was about to have been said however he let it pass for the moment and listened as the boy restructured his sentence. "I'm sorry sir, but I did not yet get to know where I shall be staying during my stay here and I though it rude to wander around the place without your knowledge."
"Severus, I said... Why didn't you wake me then?" Severus asked, already thinking of giving up on the hope of the boy ever calling him by his name.
The expression he received from Harry when the question was spoken could only be described as frightened. Harry's eyes widened and he paled considerably. It also did not go unnoticed by the snake that the boy's arms subconsciously reached to wrap around his ribs.
'So a beating?' Severus analysed from the boy's behaviour. He was by then sure that this was no spoled nephew the fat muggle made him out to be. This was a mistreated child. It was however yet to be discovered just how badly.
...
Harry looked at the snake who seemed to study him from his place and only when a shiver ran through him did he notice the arms he has wrapped around himself, in a subconscious feat of self-protection. It never helped anyway, but at least it were his arms that got broken at times. "Ribs would have been tricky." Mrs. Weasley always said to him when having to repair his broken bones.
His ribs suffered only rarely.
"I'll show you around the castle." Severus said, causing the boy to snap out of his reverie.
He was actually quite interested in what more could he expect from the stony structure.
...
Seeing the boy run back and forth in the gallery full of mostly moving paintings Severus was glad that he thought to have brought the boy in there.
Harry was running from one painting to another, greeting all the people in them politely, always bowing when he realized he was speaking to someone of a higher circle which - given the contents of the gallery - pretty much equaled to having the boy take turns between walking, bowing and speaking.
"One will never be bored with you, or will I be?" Severus hissed to himself in amusement over the boy's behaviour. However what he would have never even dared to guess was that the boy understood his words... and so when a response to the language of snakes came he could only straighten his stature, the only possible way to show his shock.
"Why wouldn't you be?"
The answer came in a language of humans. It was at that moment that Severus realized that the boy was probably not aware of his rare gift.
"What an interesting child you are..." he continued in the ancient language of serpents, hoping to draw the actual words from his new charge.
"Why would someone like you think of me as interesting?" the boy asked. It was almost pitiful how unaware of having some worth the boy seemed. There definitely had to be more to his upbringing than just the guess Severus had... much more to it. Harry was not behaving like someone brought up as the rich man's kid in any way and Severus wanted to find out the details all the more with each sign he saw on the boy.
"Because there is more in you than you might think." Severus continued, leaning closer to the boy.
It was at that moment that Harry got to a distance from which his extended hand was able to reach to the scales, the closest distance the two of them got to in the short hours they spent in each other's presence.
In Harry's eyes the scales were equal to jewels. He thought so from the very first moment he had looked at them. And it was when Harry's hand touched the scales that a series of low hissing sounds left his mouth.
"Beautiful."
Severus was not exactly the type that would bask in praise from others... however to refuse the genuine appreciation from the boy who seemed to not exactly be happy in his previous life seemed wrong... and so the master of the castle let it pass by and let the boy's calloused hands feel his scales.
'You're the one who's beautiful here.' Severus could not help but think as he saw how the boy's emerald eyes lit up in a second and a warm feeling of a content spread through his scaly body. He however would not dare to voice this one thought out loud. He himself did not understand what brought it up yet.
Done~
I'm sorry not THAT much is happening in this chapter, and that it is even shorter than the first one - which has NEVER happened to me before - but I hope you enjoyed anyway (^^)
The POLL you were all told about - and in which surprisingly quite a lot of people voted in the short time I let it up - ended with an utmost victory of a "Yes" option, so yes, there will be an MPREG in this for you guys xD (I somehow find the fact that no one disagreed with the possibility of Mpreg as amusing xD)
[ Yes (18 votes) » 90% ; It's up to you... (2 votes) » 10% ; No (0 votes) » 0% ]
Anyway... If you liked the chapter please do review, I appreciate that a great deal. (^^)
See ya~ ( "-.-)/