Summary: Harry and Severus hide out in Muggle London on Dumbledore's orders. They run into Harry's not-exactly-ex-boyfriend, who wants to propose to Harry. How will Harry get out of this mess? What does Severus have to say about all this?
A/N: In case you were wondering, Harry is seventeen in this story.
Oh, and in this fic, let's assume that men can get married, I mean REALLY married, not the 'civil unions', like in a church and all, with the ceremony. I guess that kind of makes this an AU fic, but hey, maybe that'll change in the future, eh? *crosses fingers*
Marriage
Chapter 2:
"So where exactly are we going?" said Snape, sneering.
"A nice restaurant. That's all you need to know," said Harry shortly, throwing a glare at the mirror image of Snape. He nervously fixed his collar, then smoothed out his shirt. Snape snorted and stalked out of Harry's bathroom.
"Oh, and change your jacket!" Harry called after him.
Snape came back in, his face livid. "What did you say, Potter?"
Harry turned to finally face the real Snape, hands on his hips. "I said 'change your jacket'. It's too…wizard looking."
Snape looked down at his dueling robe. It was the closest thing he had to a muggle dinner jacket.
"It's perfectly acceptable, Potter. Don't expect me to go out of my way to impersonate a muggle and don't," he held up a hand to silence Harry's protests. "Expect me to participate in this sham you're putting on as a date."
"Fine!" Harry shouted, throwing up his hands in frustration and pushing past Snape, grabbing his own dinner jacket. "I don't know why I thought you would help anyway!"
"Perhaps because your brain is the size of a walnut."
"Argh!"
* * *
"Okay, just
relax; it's just a date," Harry muttered as he and Snape entered through the
lavish doors of the restaurant.
"I don't know why you're
telling me, Potter. I'm not the one meeting up with my–
"I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to myself," Harry snapped, thrusting his coat into the abashed coat checker's hands.
"Oh really. You know, some believe that to be a sign of the brain's incapacity to– "Shut up."
"That is the second time you've interrupted me in less than ten seconds. Why, someone would think you were raised by wolves, the way you behave."
"Are you going to take away points, Professor?" Harry asked mockingly, pushing in front.
Before Snape could snap back, Harry stopped. Snape crashed into him.
"Potter! Is your head on straight or –"
"He brought his mother." Harry whispered, dread injected into his voice.
Snape looked up. Sure enough, Malcolm was sitting beside a rather pudgy woman in a lavender dress. She looked pleasant – nothing to make anyone stop dead in their tracks, as Potter had done. Snape looked down at the boy's mop of hair.
"What's the problem?"
Harry turned to look up at him, his eyes wide with an almost amusing amount of fright.
"Listen…can we go talk in the loo really quickly?"
"What?" Snape glared down at him.
"Please?" Harry looked positively pathetic, his eyes wide and pleading. "Quick, before they see us!"
Snape glanced at the chatting pair, glanced back at Harry, then nodded curtly.
* * *
"Oh, this is bad. This is so very bad."
Snape watched incredulously with his arms crossed over his chest. Potter was pacing back and forth like a caged animal, muttering and generally 'freaking'. Yes, that was the term teenagers used these days…
"Potter, what the blazes is going on?"
Harry stopped and looked at Snape, face pale.
"Er…remember when I said Malcolm was clingy?"
"Vaguely."
"Well..," Harry ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Well, sometimes he got…scary, you know?"
Snape raised an eyebrow. "Do elaborate."
Harry heaved a sigh. "He used to be a friend of Dudley's. You know about Dudley, right?"
Snape made an impatient gesture. "I know that he is your cousin. That is all."
Harry nodded. "Yeah, he was. I mean, is. Anyway, Dudley and his gang used to beat me up. Malcolm didn't," Harry added hastily, seeing Snape's dark look. "Well, not really."
"Did he or didn't he?"
"He teased me and stuff. He might have hit me a bit when we were in grade school, but I don't remember too well."
Judging by Harry's shuttered face, Snape thought Harry remembered very well.
"Anyway, we saw each other again last summer and talked a little after my sixteenth birthday, about being…you know. Gay."
Snape raised a slow eyebrow.
"I see."
"Yeah, er, so this summer we hooked up, went out a bit," Harry shuffled his feet, looking extremely embarrassed about sharing this with Snape. "And then he started saying that he loved me and all that." Snape rolled his eyes at the boy's eloquence. "And I definitely don't love him. It was just fooling around, you know?" Harry looked imploringly at Snape, as though he would confirm what he was saying.
Snape began to wonder when Potter would get to the point. Some of his impatience must have shown on his face because Harry stepped closer to him, looking scared again.
"I told him that and…he got really angry. It was like he was a different person."
A thought suddenly entered Snape's mind. "He didn't hit you, did he?" he asked sharply.
"No!" Harry said quickly; maybe a little too quickly. "No, nothing like that. Well, he did say a lot of mean things; things about when we were younger. Anyway, he apologized later. Told me he loved me again. I couldn't think of a way out of it. So I left." Harry stopped talking and looked at the tiled bathroom floor. Snape flexed his fingers around his arms edgily.
"The point, if you please, Mr. Potter. Why are you afraid of his mother?"
Harry's reminiscing demeanor changed back to frightened again. "Don't you know anything, Snape? His mother's here! He didn't tell me she was going to be here! I think –" Harry dropped his voice to a hiss. "I think he's going to propose!"
There was a long silence.
"Ah."
"Exactly."
Snape let out a long suffering groan. "Why me? Why must I always be drawn into these things?"
"You're not the one being proposed to," Harry snapped.
"You could always say 'no', Potter. Or did that not cross your arguably small mind?" sneered Snape. "And furthermore, how do you know he will propose? Don't you think you're over-analyzing this?"
"No way! He's crazy! He used to ask me what kind of ring I wanted! And I can't say no!" Harry hissed angrily. "His mother's here! I don't want to hurt him in front of her!"
"He certainly didn't seem to have a problem hurting you." said Snape harshly. Harry glared.
"Look. I don't want to cause a scene, nor do I want to say yes." Harry looked Snape square in the eye. There was a gleam there that Snape didn't like.
"Just what exactly are you thinking, Potter?" said Snape warily.
Harry bit his lip, his eyebrows drew together, then he looked up at Snape with that "I'm-Harry-Potter-and-I've-got-a-plan" look that everybody knew.
"You have to propose to me before Malcolm does."
TBC
A/N: Wasn't their little 'old married couple' banter in the beginning cute? Well I think so. I'm glad you all liked the first chapter. Oh, and abut the format. I'm trying to make it seem almost cinematic. In movies, you never see every second of someone's life. They always cut the scene to the next relevant part (for instance, I'm not going to write about Harry and Sev's journey in a taxi to the restaurant because it would seem pointless because nothing important happens). I'm sorry if you want more detail. This is how I'm writing it. I also think the format allows the reader to have a little more imagination about outfits, places, expressions, and all that stuff. It also makes the reader pay more attention to the dialogue, which I'm hoping you all find amusing, because I certainly do.