Title: Watching
Author: Keri - unreliablenarrator (a) gmail
Rating: PG Genre: Angst
Pairing: HP/SS
Disclaimer: The story's mine, characters aren't.
Summary: Dumbledore discovers Harry and Severus's relationship.

The difference between seventeen and thirty-six is small even amongst Muggles when both parties are virtual prisoners in their small worlds. Forced to grow up too early and yet robbed of any chance to mature emotionally, they are in a sort of limbo where no one else can relate to them, nor they to anyone else.

I realize that it was my interfering that caused it to happen, but even I am fallible and cannot predict everything. I've heard the rumours about my ears and walls and secrets, but I only let them persist because it is they which tell me everything in the castle. I am an old man, people like to underestimate me, despite their lofty ideas that I am the greatest wizard since Merlin and shall live forever.

I hadn't a clue that they were getting on so well until I made a fire-call during one of their evening appointments. By their matching expressions of guilt, I knew they had been involved in something illegal. Their odd state of dress when I looked again told me it wasn't so much illegal as unethical. As people do when surprised by me, they assumed I knew what was occurring and after that first time, they no longer attempt to hide it from me.

Wisdom has fled from me and I am in a quandary now. I could forbid them from what it is they're doing (and I admit that I don't quite like to think about the details, even to myself), but that would only force them to secrecy and rid them of any last perceptions of me as a gentle mentor, or the father figure I've tried to portray and have even truly felt myself to be. I could let them continue on, but that goes against my very grain of being. If anyone were to find out, there would be an outcry of scandal. It would surprise me very little if a new headmaster were appointed in my place, should that happen.

No, for now, as I have been doing, I must continue to discourage them and hide any evidence from prying eyes. Yet how do you discourage two people such as they? Both believe that fate cares nothing of them, that they are two against the entire world. They trust no one but each other, and even then it is only because each sees the other as the same as himself. They disregard any rules that prove to be inconvenient and I wouldn't doubt if they laughed at the blinders their friends wear.

Until this, I had trusted them implicitly. I understood the difficulty of their lives and I believed that I could ease the burden. I believed that they could help each other. But this - I believe that this will destroy them.

I have no doubts that Severus will be found out. It is only a matter of time before something comes up, before something is done, before something is said, to garner Voldemort's attention. He will kill Severus for it and I believe that Severus would gladly die.

But for Severus to die, Harry will, too. He had given up on growing close to anyone else after Remus's death. He might die anyway, in our seemingly endless struggle against the Dark, and with him, so would Severus. One would not go without the other.

There is still a chance that neither will die. But then what? Two such as they...they could not last for too long together before the bitterness becomes overpowering or the darkness suppresses them. Harry would never get a chance for a normal life and Severus would always blame himself for everything. It would be too unhealthy to survive.

No, I cannot conscientiously allow them to continue as they are. I could even add the argument of them being professor and student, though I discarded that rule as soon as I encouraged them to become friends. After all, Severus is older and should have never allowed it to happen while the previous relationship still exists. And Harry - for all that he has done and experienced, he is still a child in many ways. He could not have realised all the consequences of his actions.

Everything conspires against me. I must sit and watch as they irreparably tangle themselves together, knowing that they are destined for destruction. And I can do nothing else but watch.