I woke in the morning to find that the events of the previous day were not, in fact, simply a disturbing dream. The boy was still asleep, or at least appeared so, clutching the edge of the bed as if he were terrified to move any closer toward the middle. I got up from the bed and dressed for the funeral I would be playing at that morning. Thoughts of what I would do with the boy were still milling around my mind, but I knew for certain I was going to have to take him to the funeral with me. I roused him from bed and told him to get dressed. Not surprisingly, he looked at me with the same curious and confused expression of the previous night. I gave a sigh and walked to his suitcase, pulling out a set of clothes for him to wear and shoving them at him. At length, he took them from me and retreated into the bathroom. When he emerged, I had my cello packed up and I opened the door, beckoning for him to follow. He stood watching me at first, but eventually fell into step behind me.
Along the walk to the church I often had to turn and look behind me to make sure the boy had not gotten distracted by something in a store window and stopped following me. We came to a cross walk and I reached for the boy to make sure he would stay with me, but he demurred, moving out of my grasp. I found I had to stand behind him and sort of herd him across the street; a most undignified exercise if I do say so myself.
Once at the church, the boy leaned over the edge of the loft, watching the funeral's progress. At times he would lean so far over it made me wonder if he wouldn't fall right over the ledge. At those times, I saw fit to poke him with my bow and gesture to him to sit down. He seemed surprisingly perceptive of what these gestures meant and almost always obeyed, but eventually began to slowly rise over the edge of the loft again.
I called Albus again and again, but again and again he objected to taking the boy from my care on the grounds that he and his wife were watching enough children as it was. The boy slowly grew more and more aware of what different words meant when I said them to him, until, at length, he was able to speak more Czech than before. He grew comfortable to living with my presence more easily than I did with living with his. He seemed to become acclimated to walking (and eventually riding once I'd bought a car) along with me to my funeral performances and various other errands. It was on the way to one such performance that I found Harry had truly grown to trust me. As we made to cross the street as was always necessary to get to the church, I saw him look up at a sign, showing a man holding the hand of the boy who was crossing the street with him. As the light showed it was safe to walk, he took hold of my hand, keeping it until we had reached the opposite side of the street.
It was shortly after Harry's unsolicited display of trust that I decided the money his aunt had been keeping from him would be well spent on him. I paused in playing my cello one day to look at what he was drawing. I shouldn't have been so disturbed by what I saw, but something about Harry drawing a coffin being taken away back to the hearse in a funeral sent a shiver down my spine. Something in my mind snapped, and I decided then that the boy needed more exposure to the world than watching funeral after funeral. After that, I took him out almost every day; to the movies, to carnivals. At length, I realized that it was the summer, and I took him camping with a group of friends of mine and their sons. By that time, Harry had learned how to speak Czech very well, but was hesitant to use his knowledge. One night when we laid down inside the tent, Harry sat up in his sleeping bag and smiled at me. I gave him a confused look,
"What?"
With that, Harry leaned down and kissed me on the cheek,
"Good night, Severus."
In retrospect, it's almost humorous how such a simple act could cause such an outpour of desperate, racing thoughts. In truth, ever since Harry had taken my hand that day on the way to church I had been wondering just how he saw me. Was his kiss just an act of innocent affection? Did he feel no more for me than he would for any surrogate father figure? And another thought that was as frightening as it was pressing was how I felt for him in return. Frightening, I thought to myself, because deep down I knew just what kind of reaction would meet considering Harry more than just a charge and it was neither to scoff nor to be appalled. But what if I were seeing something that wasn't even there? Harry obviously trusted me to take my hand as he did, but he must have known that even between a father and a son his act would seem oddly affectionate. Perhaps even romantic. As I was worriedly turning these thoughts over in my mind, Harry was looking at me with the expression of curiousness and confusion.
"Is something wrong?" he asked innocently.
I did something I never do then: I stuttered.
"W-well, I… I-I rather…" I paused, collecting my thoughts,
"Harry, why did you kiss me just now?"
He looked nonplussed at my question, and I wondered if perhaps he didn't understand what I was asking him when abruptly he answered,
"Because I love you."
Before I could respond, he bid me good night again and lay down in his sleeping bag.
