There, In That Silence

Someone had seen me. At least, that was what I had heard. Someone had seen me with Zabini, and we were doing more than kissing. The picture painted was marvelous in its intensity: Blaise half out of his robes, me, the perfect blond paragon, sucking his throat, running my hands over his naked shoulders.

Only I had not done anything remotely like that.

Blaise had taken the Mark half a year ago. I knew. We'd fucked, over the course of our last year at Hogwarts. It was something we never chose to hide. I don't remember caring when Blaise and I were outted by a jealous Pansy Parkinson in the Great Hall three nights after Halloween. It was the path then, the best pairing for me. Secure under the dark cloak of our families, and I sneeringly flaunted it to everyone who glanced our way. We parted long before Blaise received his Mark, in a fit of fury I'd barely managed to protect myself from. Blaise wanted me to come with him but I couldn't. Potter had returned from his yearly battle with Voldemort hollow-eyed and unable to breathe, blood sliding from his mouth, and I could smell Blaise's magic all over him. I couldn't stand to look at Blaise anymore, and I did not try to figure out why for a year. Just moved through my days until it became habit to shy away from my old life.

Blaise received the Mark later that year and killed sixteen Muggles in the middle of London before Disapparating. The stares I received for the next few months told me few had forgotten what we had been to each other.

I'd decided, to hell with them. Only one person needed to know that I was safely Mark-less, that I was in his bed night after night. It had been enough to sneer at the wizards and witches around us, glare coldly into stony eyes and dare them to jerk up the sleeve of my robe and bare the white skin there. They never did.

Harry ran his fingers over that place every night we were together, body slick with sweat as he thrust into me. His fingers left marks of their own, half-moons that brought back his wrenching cry when he climaxed, head thrown back, every time I looked at the shallow cuts he'd left on my skin. Harry glistened when he came, bit my neck and whispered Mine into my ears repeatedly. I never argued, and I came silently, mouth open and voiceless. I knew whose I was. He knew. He said it over and over as he moved inside me until I was gasping with the force of it. I don't think he realized he said it so many times.

It was his battle. I realized it the first time we fucked. The hard look in his eyes saw Zabini somewhere, and yet he never hurt me, and he could have. I could feel it simmering under his skin like fire. The nights I did not come to his bed he never mentioned. I walked those nights, staring at the sky trying to argue myself away from being in anyone's grasp, even Harry's. I'd gone to Voldemort, and Zabini, but not as theirs. A spy. Always with the Dark side, but working toward the light. It was confusing, remembering where I stood when Voldemort slaughtered a Muggle in front of me, when Zabini used his magic to force others to do his bidding, and my continued stony silence in the face of it was the only way to keep from screaming my confusion. I walked until my legs burned and my shoes had holes in them, and then came back to him because the only thing in the stars was the truth I was beginning to want with my entire being. His eyes questioned, but he did not. Eventually he would take me again and I gave him his answer mutely because I could not force the words out yet.

Mine. Night after night.

I never confirmed it in voice. Just with my body, and he understood, I'd thought. After the nights I was not with him, he never asked where I was and I was thankful.

But he'd been away. A fortnight, hunting for Voldemort. I'd let him go in silence. My nights were lonely, full of wine and haze, but always alone. I would have known if someone had been near me, because that person would not have been him. It would have made me choke, freeze up.

When he returned, they began speaking in low whispers. I ignored it at first, content to stare at them until they backed away. The Mark was nothing. He knew I did not have it. He must have known.

But the rest...

I heard it in a wizarding pub off Charing Cross. A snide whisper, a glance my way. She was from the Ministry, an Auror in training. I don't know why it hit me so hard. The image of Blaise moaning under my fingers made me shake, not in anger, but in disgust. It was as if they had seen me there, giving my body to Zabini the moment Harry stepped away.

I didn't want him to hear it, suddenly terrified that if he didn't hear it from me, he would never hear me. The battle he fought every night, his battle for my soul, would be torn to ribbons.

He would break. I could see it, a fiery tableau in my mind. His eyes would go empty and he would believe them.

So I stood there before him now, in the bedroom where I had kissed him until I couldn't breathe only two weeks before and tried to tell him what to expect from his friends.

But I was too late. He'd already heard it.

"Zabini." His voice was as empty as I feared his eyes would be. He looked down at some spot on the carpet. His body was rigid, jaw clenched. Not breaking yet, but it was shock, and I knew it would not last. He looked at me and I could see every night of the past year, every whisper of mine, every gasp against climax, every forceful push inside my body or his, fading. He was remembering each one as a failed attempt once viewed as triumphant, then casting them from himself. Even the few nights it had been slow, sensuous, when he had forgotten his battle and accepted the fact that he had won, if only for one breathless evening.

"I don't have the Mark, Harry." I pulled my sleeve up. The skin there was still pale, but he narrowed his eyes.

"Are you sure about that?"

His face was contorted in the dim light. Smoothed over, but roiling underneath. He looked at the bed we shared, his battleground, and a ripple passed through him. His magic licked at me with angry fingers and my heart began a slow dull thump in my veins.

"Zabini," he said again flatly, dangerously soft. "They say they saw you."

I heard knocking at his door. He'd spelled it shut when I arrived, but they knew I was in here. His friends; they were there, begging to be let in, demanding my exit.

"I would never do anything like that to you."

He slowly swiveled his head to stare at me. "But you'd do it to someone else?"

I swallowed, stared into his green eyes. All my nights of silence when we fucked, the unanswered claims he had made over me again and again, sang through my head. I'd said nothing. I'd trusted nothing to be enough, the unspoken to be just as loud, if not louder, than every word he'd gasped, every kiss he'd given me, tongue deep in my mouth sliding over me as he slid against my body. Claiming.

I realized suddenly - couldn't breathe - that I had nothing to show him. No proof that my words were truer than theirs. I had nothing but myself.

"Would you?" he asked again.

"I don't... know."

His eyes flickered. A surge of emerald fire. I sucked in as much air as my clouded lungs would allow, but he tugged it back from me with his gaze and I could not breathe. I looked straight into those eyes as they bit at me. "I don't know. But I do know I would never do that to you."

He watched me silently. They were hammering on the door now. Eventually his bindings would fold under their assault and their words, their eyes, would rush into the room like a flood. He would allow himself to be swept.

There had been a night when he'd returned from a battle with the Death Eaters and pushed me down onto the bed, eyes snapping, mouth twisted in a grimace I didn't recognize. He'd tried to be forceful, to take what he wanted from me, but moments later he'd collapsed against my body, chest heaving, and begged me in soft whispers for what he wanted. Kissed my throat tenderly and gasped out the words Stay and Why. And Can't. That was the one I remembered, the one that spiked a hot spear through me because I'd been afraid that he could, that he would finally win his battle by breaking me, and suddenly I knew that he would never be able to do that. That was something for Blaise. For the darkness. It was not in Harry, and he thought he wanted that fire in order to keep me. I gave myself to him completely that night, in silence except for sharp gasps, eyes leaking tears that he kissed away, and I wondered now if he knew the depths of that gift.

"Please, Harry, please, I'm begging you to believe me." My voice was failing, tangling inside, thin strings snapping in my chest.

The pounding on his door grew louder. His face was stonily indifferent.

"Why?" was all he said.

I could hear them coming, rattling the knob, but the sound was dying away, strangely, my world collapsing into nothing but struggling breaths and piercing green eyes. I dropped down in front of him and closed my own eyes against the stinging, clutching at his knees as if the constant give and pull would be proof.

"Because I need you to believe me." My voice shattered at last, falling into the nothingness I had let it wallow in for so long. I didn't think I could move. My soul was pouring out of my mouth, scalding my throat. It had nowhere else to go; he was drawing it out, as he did every night we were together, and that wretched silence had won out at last. He was staring at me.

And then the door opened.

I didn't see them. I could only see him. He stared at me, his eyes flaming oddly as they came across the room. One reached out to touch me, to grab my shoulder. I was frozen, caught in his gaze, no longer hoping because there was nothing left inside me to hope with. It was all poured out at his feet. My hollowed mind whispered with crystal clarity that he had not heard me.

The hand touched my sleeve.

Harry's head snapped around. He looked at the person for the longest instant I'd ever known. Then his arm shot out and smacked the grasping hand away. He was on his feet, pulling me from the floor into his arms. I choked at the sudden movement. My chest was cinched too tightly. But he gathered me up, curled me to him and walked to the bed. He laid me down on top of the soft coverlet and let his hand drift over my face before turning away from me.

His shouting drove them out. I could feel the air crackling, but it was a struggle to breathe. Blackness tinted my vision. I heard them screaming at him, saw them pointing at me, but he strode forward and pushed them from his room, and they went, cowed by the fire filling him. He slammed the door shut and the sound of them was cut, sliced with a blade.

He was beside me in an instant, gripping my shoulders. I could hear his voice but I could barely see him. Everything was going gray. My chest was burning, collapsing in on me, squeezing. There was no air. He made a frightened sound and jerked me off the bed against his chest, running his hands over my face, loosening the collar of my robes, the buttons of my shirt. He put his mouth to mine and breathed into my lungs and I think I heard my name.

I came up out of the water, his name bursting from me in a ragged hiss. Breath rushed into my body and I sagged. He let me fall, climbed onto the bed and wrapped himself around me. Massaged my chest with warm fingers until I coughed, until my eyes swam with tears, until I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe normally again. He was silent, pulling me closer and releasing me over and over, as if he could not decide whether to touch me or not.

I could not look at him, and I looked at the ceiling instead until my eyes burned. He said my name, and his fingers were on my chin, jerking me to face him. I blinked, saw the same anger in his eyes and felt my chest begin to contract again. But he bent down and kissed me, hard, his tongue moving slowly in my mouth. I could not help it. I kissed him back, my brain beating dully that this was the last time.

He pulled away and took my face in his hands, looking at me with narrowed eyes. "Don't."

I realized I was crying and closed my eyes, swallowed against the tears. He gripped my face gently once and I heard his voice. So soft.

"I believe you."

I couldn't stop the tears then. They slid down my cheeks and wrenched sounds from me, made my entire body heave. He looked startled, eyes darting over my face, and he clutched me tightly in his arms and didn't speak. I could not bury the sound. It fought through the ever-present web of silence and I realized that that night had not been what I thought it had been. I had not given myself to him completely before this moment.

My body felt light, unbound, and still I shook, sobbing against him. A question floated up amidst the tremors, one that needed a voice, just as I'd needed his voice. I gasped, choked out a word. "Why?"

He brushed my tears from my face, stroked my hair away from my eyes. I saw the gentleness in his gaze that I had only seen on the nights when he forgot himself and made love to me slowly. The nights he realized I had never been anyone else's and that he had never needed to fight.

"Because you needed me to."

I looked at him, and the words reverberated dully in my head. He touched his lips to mine so softly they might not have been there.

"If it had been any other reason, I..." He trailed off, looked at me for a moment in confusion, then bent and opened my mouth with his tongue, kissing me thoroughly. I pulled him down onto me, felt his hands clutching mine, locking our fingers, and kissed him back.