A/N: I feel like I should apologise for the long update time. It's a shame, because I was doing so well at keeping up a standard of efficiency with this one, but the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, and between illnesses, exams, and general periods of meh, I haven't been finding the time to fic much lately. Please accept this ridiculously angsty chapter in apology.
Chapter title shamelessly ripped off from Stephen King's short story of the same name.

11 - That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French

"Why?"

He was sitting on the bed in the guest room, where he'd – there was no other way of putting it – fled after she'd... done that. Laura stood in the doorway, arms wrapped around herself. He didn't look at her, because to look at her would be to recognise not only that she was here and that this was happening, but that his reaction was hurting her. He didn't need to be reminded that his reaction was hurting her, not when it was hurting him as well.

"Severus, I just—"

"Why?" he repeated, harshly, fists clenching and unclenching in his lap, but he thought he knew. That was the trap. He'd known there was a trap in all this, somewhere, he'd known it was too good to be true. But he'd fallen for it anyway, let himself be lulled into a sense of security, and of course that was exactly the point of all this. "Don't lie, don't try to appeal to me, don't do any of that, just tell me why. Did Potter put you up to this? Trying to get me away from Evans, maybe?" The part of his brain that still retained some kind of sanity whispered to him that he was being stupid, irrational, this wasn't Potter's style at all and nor did the motive fit the execution. Unfortunately for all concerned, that part of his brain was currently being drowned out by the waves of hurt and resentment and anger which continued to crash against his mind, knocking aside all the barriers of willpower and self-preservation. The worst part was, he knew. He knew he was being stupid and irrational and breaking down all his chances and letting his heart rule his head, which was always exactly the worst thing to do, he knew that by acting this way he was lowering himself to the level of Potter and Black and their fellow Neanderthals in Gryffindor, he knew all that but he couldn't stop.

She was starting to protest, in slow motion, that she hadn't... she wouldn't... how could he even think she'd... and with Potter... He couldn't hear her over the rush of blood in his ears, but he knew that would be what she would be saying, and he couldn't bear it any more. He was used to anger, and to fear, and to sadness and even to loss, but this profound feeling of betrayal was one he'd only felt once before, and it cut him to the quick.

Pushing himself to his feet, he reached for his suitcase, grateful to himself for having kept it packed all the time he'd been here, and slammed it shut. "Well, you can tell him from me he doesn't need to play his stupid games any more, and tell her too, tell her I'm not as pathetic as they make out, and I don't need trickery or traps or lies to stay away, because I don't want her and I don't want you and I don't want any bloody Mudblood!"

He pushed past her, out of the door and down the stairs with his shoulders tensed and his knuckles yellow-white and his back ramrod-straight, and if she called after him or shouted or cried – if she reacted at all – he didn't hear. He just stalked down the stairs and along the hallway and out of the door, past her parents, whose mouths hung slackly and stupidly open, past the living room where everything had gone so wrong, and out into the heavy grey clouds of Christmas morning.

He didn't cry. Part of him wanted to, and there was a lump in his throat which stubbornly refused to be dislodged, but he didn't cry. Crying was stupid. Crying was weak, and he had exposed far too much weakness already today. Crying would change nothing, nor would it let him go back there, so he didn't cry. Instead, he tightened his grip on his light, battered suitcase, reached back with his free hand to untie his hair, and went on walking. It was cold outside, but the snow which had been lazily drifting down the night before was gone, as if it had never been, leaving only a few puddles on the tarmac. Although his coat still hung in the Baineses' porch, and although he was starting to shiver, he didn't move to cast any charms to warm himself up. Being cold felt curiously apt; he felt cold. Numb. It was easier than letting himself feel hurt.

It wasn't the first time he'd walked out, he reminded himself, and tried not to think that it hurt more to leave a house he'd been in for under a week than it had to leave the house he'd been born in. The point was, he only had to keep going until he could get back to Hogwarts. He'd done it before, and he'd do it again.

Somehow. Without food, without money, without a home, and in the middle of December. The rational part of his brain spoke up again, telling him this was insane, that he should go back and apologise and ask them, beg them, to let him stay there until the end of the holidays. The chances that they would were slim, of course, but they were better than no chance at all. But the wall which rose to counter that rational voice was stronger and more familiar than the crashing wave of emotion which had done the job before, and the name of the wall was Pride. He couldn't go back. Not now. You could never go home again.

In the end, he found himself sitting on a park bench, his suitcase between his feet and his head slumped low so that the slick fall of his hair cancelled out most of the world. He couldn't keep walking, he couldn't go back, and any sense of drama and purpose which might have slithered into his mind would have found it hard to withstand the sickening reality; he was sitting in the middle of nowhere, in a Muggle town he didn't know, with all his worldly possessions in a suitcase at his feet, and the puddles of rainwater on the bench were starting to seep through the seat of his unfamiliarly Muggle trousers.

And it had all happened before.

He still didn't cry. It was tempting, but he ignored the sting of his eyes and the tightness of his throat, and he kept his eyes fixedly on the yellowing, trodden-down grass under his feet. He hadn't cried then, and he wouldn't cry now, because that was what children did, and adults who were pretending to be children to escape what they'd done. He had nobody to blame but himself, not for any of this, and he refused to be blamed. He refused to be blamed because he had done everything right, he knew he had, and in the end, that must be true, because he was alive, and he was sane, and he was strong. Too strong to fall for whatever the motive was behind all this. Too clever. He should have listened to his gut instinct in the first place, the one that told him alone was always best and you should never, never trust. It might hurt, oh, Merlin, it did hurt sometimes, but survival hurt, and that was what was important; survival, and power, and pride, and...

...And so on, over and over, retreading the same mental pathways and getting nowhere. The sick, hurt feeling in the pit of his stomach stayed right where it was, he continued to shiver, the raw wind continued to blow. Only the light shifting let him know that time was passing at all, and how much time it was, he couldn't have begun to guess.

Until, at last, something happened, and took him so off-guard that, when he saw her shoes out of the corner of his eye, he recoiled violently enough that he bruised his arm against the iron frame of the bench.

She'd been crying, he saw at once, when he regained his composure enough to actually look at her, but she wasn't crying any more. Now, although her face was pale and her eyes pink, she had a grim kind of determination to her, like a condemned prisoner or a messenger sent to deliver bad news to a particularly unctious monarch. Whatever she was about to say, he didn't imagine either of them would enjoy, so he braced himself against it, turning his face away again and trying to ignore the shame threatening to sneak into his mind.

"Mum and Dad just put the turkey out," she said, quietly. "You should come back and eat it, or it'll get cold."

It was so far from what he'd expected that he almost flinched. Then, slowly, he stood up, heavy eyebrows drawing together. "Why in Salazar's name are you doing this?" he asked, but this time, it wasn't angry. He would never have admitted it, but it was more distressed than angry, and came out with an embarrassing hint of a whine to it. "You should be glad to see the back of me."

"Yes, I should," Laura agreed, her voice flat and almost angry. "I should, but I don't. And I should have let you spend Christmas at school, and you should have been happy not to give me anything, and I should not have kissed you, but, Severus, perhaps if you spent less time thinking about what should happen and more about what does, you would be both a better wizard and a better friend."

He managed to stop himself from gaping like an idiot, but only barely.

"Part of me really, really wants to let you walk away and never come back." She wasn't done. The tone of her voice said she wasn't even nearly done. "That part of me also kind of hopes that after you walk away, you get lost in the snow and never come back to Hogwarts, either. You really hurt me. Again." Her voice was starting to shake a little. "But I'm not like that, Severus. Maybe you think you should push everyone away from you, but I know you better than that, and I think you do, as well. And I refuse to let you keep doing it, understood? I refuse to let you walk away from me like you walk away from everyone else. Like you walked away from her." She was breathing heavily, the colour returning to her face now, her eyes shiny with tears which he would not acknowledge, he would not fall for this obvious emotional manipulation, and he certainly wouldn't allow himself to be goaded by the fact that she'd mentioned Lily, because...

"You don't know me." His voice cracked slightly, and he tightened his jaw against it, picking up his suitcase. He could walk away. He would walk away. This settled it; she wasn't safe, and she'd said herself that she should be glad to see the back of him. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know that you ran away." Her voice was quiet, but sharp, and even as he turned away, it pulled him up short.

He turned, slowly, his dark eyes flashing dangerously. "What?"

The look on her face suggested that not only had she not meant to blurt that out, but she was sincerely regretting it now. She looked as surprised by it as he was, and about as pleased. She also looked just a little scared by him, drawn up as he was to his full, fairly considerable height and with anger and shock fighting for precedence on his face.

"I know that you ran away," she repeated, a little less certainly, but she met his eyes. "In the summer. And I think I know why." She swallowed, but didn't quail or turn away as he was ferociously wishing she would. "Severus, I just want to help you. Please. Come home with me."

And, slowly, angry and shocked and not knowing what compelled him or how it could possibly be so much stronger than his pride and fear, he did.