Chapter 9

Disclaimer: You know the drill.

"I have to tell Severus," Harry said as he sat beside Draco on the bench across from Rita Skeeter's office. The pair had been trailing her all morning, if you could call her sitting in her warm office and them freezing their bollocks off trailing her.

"What about Tom Riddle?" Draco asked, turning to look at him.

"What about him?"

"Are you going to tell Uncle Sev that part as well?"

"Everything," he affirmed. "Hopefully he will be as forgiving as he was last night."

"Amazing," Draco said shaking his head in mock disgust. "So what if Uncle Sev wants you or all of us to stop what we're doing?"

Harry watched as Draco brushed a piece of lint from his trousers and answered after a moment with a very shaky: "I dunno."

"Brilliant," the blonde said shaking his head.

His morning conversation with Draco had sort of left him reeling on how he thought Severus might react to his date with Tom Riddle and that they'd all been going behind his back for weeks now. He'd asked the man to meet him at his flat, saying nothing more than that they needed to talk.

Nervous was an understatement when it came to describing how he felt about confessing his misdeeds to the man. As if going behind his back, because he thought the man's plan to fix things wasn't going to work, wasn't enough. He'd also gone on a date with none other than Tom Riddle. The same Tom Riddle that Severus had once sworn his allegiance to and the one who also happened to one of the most dangerous men in the world. Yeah, he'd really done it this time.

In an effort to pass the time, while suppressing the urge to just flee the country and say to hell with it, he needlessly tidied his already neat apartment. He was convinced that if he stayed busy then he wouldn't have to think about his confrontation with Severus, but much to his disappointment it was futile in the end. He nearly jumped out of his skin when the knock at the door came. He took a deep breath and went to open the door, to face the man and their future or lack of one together.

"What's wrong with you?" Severus asked as he immediately picked up pacing the small sitting room.

"The date I had was with Tom Riddle," he blurted out then stopped wide eyed to see how the man might react.

"What!?" Severus demanded.

"It was all an accident! Well meeting him was," he added quickly. "He hit on me first and then he just sort of showed up here and asked me out and it was too good an in to refuse."

"You knew who he was but you deliberately agreed to the outing? What could you possibly need an in with Tom Riddle for?"

"It was all a piece of a bigger plan that we put together."

"What plan? What are you talking about?" Severus' dark eyes narrowed at him.

"Well we've sort of been scheming behind your back," Harry said fumbling for the right words.

"We? We who?"

"Um...well...Draco, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and me. We've been working on a plan to take out Rita Skeeter.

Harry watched as Severus ripped his coat on and started to pace quickly back and forth. He was angry, but clearly attempting to suppress it as he searched for his next words. He had to admit the man sort of resembled a bat, the way his coat tails fluttered behind him and he had to suppress a grin.

"So you've gone behind my back and you didn't even respect me enough to tell me?" Severus hissed. "Did you not trust me?"

"Of course I did! I just didn't trust them!" Harry shot back. "Money can only get you so far Severus! What happens when the money runs out and one of them decided to dredge all of this back up? Are we supposed to just worry about that the rest of our lives and then just go and dole out their intended amount every time?"

"I was handling this and you went behind my back. You didn't even have it in you to tell me!"

He hated how he couldn't read the man's thought process. Severus never showed anything on his face that wasn't meant to be seen. He was so contained and all he could do was worry about what else was swimming underneath the man's anger. He'd known that Severus would be upset and maybe even hurt by all of this, but he wasn't sure how to make it okay or if he'd ever be able to. He'd done what he thought was best in the moment, this situation wasn't exactly ideal for either of them.

"This was so incredibly stupid of you!" He growled, his eyes blazing.

"I didn't know what else to do! You would have been quick to dismiss me!" He countered.

"How do you know? You could have told me! A relationship is a partnership!"

"Some partnership! You treat me like a child! Having some bloke follow me about, even when you promise not to! That's not how a partnership or a relationship works! You stop in whenever it's good for you and leave whether I want you to stay or not!"

Severus stopped and looked at him and all he could do was emit a deep sigh, and Harry wasn't sure if it was from anger, exasperation, or hurt. He had a feeling that it might have been a bit of all three, and he'd caused it. But he was hurt too, it felt like telling Severus had only made thing worse, but how good had they been since Rita had intervened. It was as if ever since she'd made him leave they'd both been living half a life and he found himself wondering if it was even worth it.

"What you did was so monumentally stupid!" Severus said picking back up.

"I told you! I didn't know what else to do!"

"You don't seem to have any regard for me or your own personal safety!"

Severus stopped and rubbed his face in exasperation, closing his eyes in frustration.

"I think we need to take a break. I think everything has changed and become blurred. I think it's best we don't see one another right now. We should go our separate ways and regroup, see if this is what we both still want."

"So you're leaving then? Harry asked half panicked. "I thought you said you'd wouldn't leave!"

"I can't be with someone who has no regard for their own safety," Severus said after a moment. "Someone who goes behind my back and shows me no trust. Someone who takes both of our futures into their own hands without even consulting me."

"What was I meant to do? Sit by and let things go to shit? What you were doing was never going to work!"

"How do you know?!" Severus shot back, anger glittering in his eyes.

"I just do! You know what? You should go! It's obvious that you want to! What's the point of putting all of this into something that was never going to work!?"

"What do you want from me? You're the one that felt the need to lie and go behind my back. You don't trust me, how am I supposed to trust you when you can't even afford me the same respect?!"

"I'm sorry!" He shouted at the man.

"For what?"

"What I said. What I did."

"I think it's best we separate and see how things go. See if at the end of it all we both still want the same things," Severus said shook his head.

"I don't think I can be everything you want me to be," he said quietly.

"All I'm asking is that you're honest with me, and that you trust me with things like this."

"Right now, I don't think I can be that."

"Right, I guess we know where we stand," Severus said and was out the door before Harry could say anything to stop him.

It had been three days since his row with Severus. Three days since he'd talked to or seen the man. Three days since he'd been to his flat.

After Severus had walked out after their argument he just couldn't stand to be there. His apartment felt incredibly empty, like the small amount of warmth that Severus had brought with him the night of their anniversary had been diminished. The place had never felt like home to him, but Severus had made it bearable to him, he'd breathed a new life into the place. Now the place felt almost as empty as he did. It was a terrible pit, a black hole, in the center of London, where his happiness came to die.

He'd left not long after Severus had. He'd packed a bag and walked to the nearest hotel and booked a room indefinitely. If he could have he might have burned his flat to the grown, if it had been a house he probably would have.

The final kick to the teeth came on the fourth day when he'd been sitting in a nearby Starbucks trying to study and Rita Skeeter had sat down in the chair across from him. She'd given him one of her sickeningly sweet smiles and quietly reapplied her lipstick.

"I know what you did, how you and those friends of yours broke into my office," she said looking up from the small compact in her hand.

"I haven't the foggiest," he said nonchalantly and closed his textbook.

"Don't play stupid with me," she smiled again. "I also know that you did a fine job of destroying your relationship with that beau of yours. You didn't think I wouldn't know about all of that would you? It was just so much sweeter watching you do it yourself. Well done, by the way."

"You're an evil bitch," Harry said balling his hands into fists under the table.

"And you're just a child that doesn't have a chance in the game he's decided to play," she hissed back at him.

"It's not over yet," he shot back.

"Oh, I'd say it's quite done. You singlehandedly destroyed the relationship you were so desperate to save," she said examining her freshly manicured nails.

He stared at her, trying his best to contain his tempter, anger seething from every pore of his body. She was going to pay, oh was he going to make her pay. Severus might not be at stake anymore, and that made it so much easier for him to want her out of the picture. She had tapped into a deep seeded anger and she didn't know what was he was going to do to her for it. He didn't even know what he was going to do, but whatever it was he'd make sure that it ruined her world, that she'd never be able to do this to another person.

"Be a dear and tell your little friends that they don't have to follow me about anymore, because I do believe this is checkmate," she said getting up and walking out.

He shoved his books into his bag and hurried out of the shop and onto the street. He all but ripped his cellphone out of his pocket to dial Draco's number.

"Harry?"

"If this bitch wants to play a game, let's show her a bit of opposition," he said hotly. "I want to ruin her life."

"Now that sounds like it," he could hear the grin in Draco's voice. "What's the plan?"

"I don't know yet, but oh the game is afoot, the game is definitely afoot," he said ending the call.

He quickly scrolled through the phonebook before coming to a stop at someone else's name. He hit the call button and waited for the person on the other end to answer.

"Hello, yes Tom, it's Harry. I was wondering if you might like to take me out?" He asked maybe a little too cheerfully.

A/N: I hope you liked it! Thanks for reading and reviewing!