Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Harry sighed as he squinted at the Charms book in front of him. Once again, it was referencing a theory he’d never heard of. This was his seventh year at Hogwarts and he’d spent the last two in intense study. Why hadn’t he heard of it?

Harry waved his hand and floated another book up from the end of the table. This was a Charms tome so huge that Harry only opened it when he had a question like this one. The print was too small and the book too unwieldy to make it the only one he read.

A choking sound came from behind him. Harry whirled around, seething internally. He’d found the most obscure corner he could and made sure he wasn’t intruding on anyone’s study groups and set up wards that should have warned him if someone came near.

He understood the last problem when he saw Nott standing just outside the wards. He was staring at Harry with a stunned look on his face, as if magic had hit him over the head. Harry stared back and said nothing. Nott wasn’t the worst of the bullies among his roommates, but he’d still sneered at Harry about his blood status, claimed loudly that Harry must have tricked the Hat to be placed in Slytherin, and pranked his trunk until Harry had set up wards that opened gashes in people’s hands when they did that.

His eyes darted back and forth from Harry to the Charms tome now. Harry waited impatiently. He wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. He went days without speaking to people, unless a professor called on him in class. It wasn’t unusual for a Slytherin outcast with no friends who people talked about rather than to.

“What the hell, Potter?” Nott asked.

Harry said nothing.

“What was that?”

“What do you mean, Nott?” Harry didn’t really want to talk to his Housemate, but this seemed to be the only way that would clarify what Nott meant and get him out of here.

“You—you used wandless magic.”

Harry blinked. That was what Nott was on about? Wandless magic was common. Malfoy and Zabini in particular bragged nonstop about being able to do it, and the older Slytherins in Harry’s earlier years were always talking about times that they had Summoned a Snitch at the last minute or warmed themselves up in the cold or repaired a broken quill just in time for an exam.

And everyone used it as children.

“So?”

“So?”

God, Nott was an idiot. “Spit it out, Nott.”

“You Summoned that book!”

“Yes, just like other people Summon Snitches and biscuits and the like,” Harry drawled, and turned towards the table again. Nott obviously had nothing useful to say.

Nott must have taken a step closer, because Harry’s wards twanged suddenly in his mind and Nott burst into curses. Harry glanced over his shoulder with a small smile and saw the way that Nott was holding up his hands, staring in disbelief at the frostbite on his fingers.

He met Harry’s eyes with an expression less blank than usual.

“Go the fuck away,” Harry said softly.

Nott retreated. Harry shook his head. He’d probably report this to Snape and Snape would have Harry in detention for “hurting a fellow student,” but it wasn’t like Harry was ever out of detention with the bastard anyway. Snape gave him detention for being in the common room when someone else got hexed, for slouching at dinner, for “breathing too loudly” if Snape walked past the Slytherin table, and for not being in the Potions NEWT class (as if Harry could when he had an E instead of an O).

God, I’ll be so glad to get out of Hogwarts.

*

Theo stepped several corridors away from the library to stare at his hands. He’d of course cast Warming Charms on them right away, but the frostbitten feeling still lingered.

Theo knew the Chill Ward. It was meant to give the person who touched it a quick zap of cold that would make them back off. It wasn’t meant to cause this.

He flexed his fingers and tucked his wand back into his pocket, then turned, aiming for a section of the dungeons not far from the common room that he’d made his own. His own wards surged over him in a welcoming tide, and Theo relaxed as he stepped into the furnished classroom with a roaring fireplace that he’d hooked up to the Floo network with house-elf help.

He sat down on the couch in front of the fire and held out his hands, mind still occupied with Potter.

Theo had never thought much about Potter. Sure, he was the Boy-Who-Lived, but he was also a halfblood in Slytherin, and not particularly strong or ambitious or clever. He received less than no notice now from most of the school, except Draco, who liked to stir up people about Potter’s blood status on an idle day, and Professor Snape, who hated him for reasons Theo had never understood.

In first year, people had still expected something of Potter, and had watched him eagerly in the corridors and classes, whispering about his defeat of the Dark Lord. But nothing unusual or intriguing had ever happened. Potter mastered spells slowly, he didn’t volunteer answers, he messed up his potions on a regular basis, and he didn’t go around being the epitome of kindness and goodness that other people were obviously waiting for him to be. He wasn’t even part of the group of students who had tried and failed to prevent the theft of the Philosopher’s Stone at the end of that year. So the attention had ebbed.

Sure, when Potter had accidentally revealed he was a Parselmouth in dueling club in second year, some people had been shocked and appalled (Draco had ranted for days about how a Mudblood’s son didn’t deserve Slytherin’s gift). But that shock had rather waned in the face of the continuing Petrification attacks. The attacks had stopped as suddenly as they had begun after the apparent death of the Weasley girl in the Chamber of Secrets, with no one ever caught as far as Theo knew.

And since then, there had been silence from the Dark Lord, silence from Potter, and silence from those who had once waited for Potter to save them.

Potter had used controlled, casual wandless magic today, and then spoken of it as it were nothing. Theo snorted. Obviously he’d been fooled by Draco and Blaise’s bragging into thinking that such wandless power really was casual, and he’d probably fallen for some plain lies from other people and mixed up a child’s accidental magic with the wandless kind.

Draco and Blaise bragged so much because they could create tiny wandless Lumos Charms the size of their little fingers. They might be able to do something more impressive later on. Might. Theo didn’t personally think so. Neither Draco nor Blaise had the self-control.

But then again, he hadn’t thought Potter had, either.

When Theo glanced down, glinting ice crystals had crept back across the flesh of his right hand. He scowled and cast another Warming Charm, then stood to fetch a Pepper-Up Potion from his private stores.

He was going to keep an eye on Potter. Someone that powerful who didn’t even know it, someone ignored by everyone so that no one else had known about his power either…

That kind of person could be an asset for the Nott family.

Chapter Text

Harry sighed as he surfaced from the Pensieve memories. For a long moment, he considered the white basin of the Pensieve where it sat on the pedestal in the middle of the dungeon rooms he had claimed for his own.

Then he shook his head and reached out with his wand to retrieve the memories.

He knew how pathetic it was to revisit those particular memories over and over again. Especially when they were memories of only one day six years ago.

But that had been the one, shining day when he’d had a friend. So Harry couldn’t stop looking at the memories of the day he’d spent with Ron Weasley when he felt as if he was going to surrender to despair.

He’d made a friend once. He would do it again, once he was outside Britain and away from the people who hated him for his blood status or expected impossible things of him. It wasn’t impossible.

The wards that he had clustered around the door that entered this particular circle of rooms, all connected to each other and hidden within the dungeon walls, abruptly rang. Harry stared towards the door and waved his hand.

The stone walls turned transparent, in his vision only, and faded. Harry snorted when he saw the person standing on the far side of the door. Nott didn’t give up. He had tried to talk to Harry in the common room, sit next to Harry in classes, and invade his library corner, although Harry’s wards meant he hadn’t tried that last more than once.

Nott is weird.

It wouldn’t be that weird if he was trying desperately to lure Harry into some position where the others could bully him, though. Harry shrugged and willed the walls to fade back into regular stone ones. He would simply stay behind the wards, and Nott would give up and go away eventually.

*

Theo stared at the warded door. It had taken hours for him to figure out where Potter was disappearing to, and then longer to confirm that the warded door was actually Potter’s. Even knowing the strength with wards Potter had displayed in the library, he hadn’t been sure.

But now he knew for sure that, yes, Potter had created a sanctuary for himself that was protected by powerful magic, and he presumably knew Theo was there since he wasn’t coming out.

Theo waited a moment more, and then turned away with an impatient sigh. He couldn’t blame Potter for assuming Theo was here to prank him or track him down for someone like Malfoy, based on their past interactions.

But it was annoying to realize that his own past behavior had cost Theo the opportunity to easily make friends with someone who might be the most powerful wizard in their year.

*

“Detention, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

This time it had been for “eating food with atrocious manners.” Harry agreed to the detention without looking up. There was no point in it anyway. Nothing would ever affect or change Snape’s hatred of him, and it was best to try and get it over with as soon as possible.

“I suppose your dead family couldn’t teach you to eat with your fork and spoon like a proper wizard, Potter?”

Harry ignored Malfoy’s taunts, too. They were as predictable as the sun and the sky and the sea and Snape. He finished his mashed potatoes and stood up. His detentions with Snape were always at the same time in the evenings, and he had about an hour before this one began.

A little to his surprise, Nott slipped away from the table to follow him to the library. He either wanted revenge for Harry afflicting his hands with frostbite the other day or he wanted to continue the ridiculous conversation about wandless magic. Harry wasn’t entirely sure what Nott would gain from convincing Harry wandless magic was rare and powerful, but then again, a moment’s fleeting entertainment appeared to be enough for most of his roommates.

“Potter? Can I talk to you?”

Nott sounded weirdly tentative, but Harry knew that was probably just a setup for this prank. He turned around, making sure that he kept enough distance between him and Nott to set up a ward if Nott went for his wand. “Talk.”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Nott looked briefly puzzled, but rallied to say, “For offering you insults based on blood status in earlier years. For trying to get into your trunk. For treating you poorly.”

Harry shrugged. “Apology not accepted.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because you don’t mean it, Nott. The instant you see some kind of gain for you in pranking me or laughing at me with Malfoy or Snape, you’ll do it. I don’t need to listen to someone who only seems to regret what he did because he thinks the object of his bullying is powerful.”

“I promise, I really do think you’re powerful. And Malfoy and Snape are the ones who are mad if they don’t see that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s true!”

“Uh-huh.”

Nott took a step towards him. Harry narrowed his eyes and twitched his finger. The Chill Ward he’d set up the other day wasn’t powerful or unique or something he’d invented himself, but it did have a twist to it that meant—

Nott cried out and staggered back as ice crystals bloomed across his hands. Harry gave him a faint smile. Someone touched by his wards once essentially carried a tiny sliver of Harry’s magic inside them after that. Harry could inflict the damage again any time he wanted.

He was only sorry that he hadn’t discovered that particular twist when he’d set up the wards that had cut Nott’s and Malfoy’s hands when they tried to get into his trunk. It would have been entertaining to make Malfoy start bleeding whenever he was rambling on about Harry’s blood status in the future.

“Leave me alone,” Harry said softly, and turned around to finish the walk to the library. He only had about fifty minutes before Snape’s detention now, thanks to bloody Nott, and he wanted to finish his study of Summoning Charms theory in peace.

*

Theo stared down at his hands, which were trembling so badly with the cold that he could barely pick up his wand to cast a Warming Charm. He had never heard of a ward’s effect lingering so long like this. Either the ward was broken and gone, or it wasn’t broken and the person who had tried to break it simply stayed outside it.

How is he doing this?

Then again, Potter didn’t seem to know he was breaking the rules of magic any more than he realized wandless magic was particularly powerful.

Giving up, Theo headed for the hospital wing. He wasn’t able to grip his wand, and he was determined to get rid of the ice crystals before someone else saw them and asked or figured out what had happened. For right now, he wanted to keep the secret of Potter to himself.

But I’ll have to figure out what he requires other than an apology.

*

“Scrub each cauldron until all the traces of the Swelling Solutions brewed in them are gone.”

“Yes, Professor Snape.”

Severus hid a snarl as he watched Potter roll up his robe sleeves—a proper Slytherin would know a charm for that by now—and settle into the scrubbing. Potter’s spawn was as exasperating as ever.

Oh, he played at being a diligent student, with the hours he’d spent in the library, and a quiet one, given that he appeared to have no friends. But he had somehow convinced the Hat to Sort him into Slytherin. Why would he have done that, if not because he’d thought it a grand lark? Otherwise, he would have been in Gryffindor where Potter’s spawn belonged.

Severus had heard a few times from Albus that his punishments of the boy were excessive. But what would happen if he eased back now? Potter would think Severus had gone soft, that was what would happen. Then he’d start to play the pranks and spew the insults that only Severus’s vigilance had prevented the other Slytherins from suffering so far.

And of course, Potter pretended that the detentions didn’t bother him. But he would have been visibly seething with resentment and calling Severus insults if he thought he could get away with it.

No, better to maintain a firm hand. Potter kept his head down and his hands busy scrubbing the cauldrons, and Severus got clean cauldrons and the satisfaction of knowing that Potter’s spawn wouldn’t try to be a bully the way his father had been, because he was always watched.

Severus would not tolerate the boy becoming a high-and-mighty, strutting prankster. He hadn’t turned into the little hero Albus had thought he would, either, of course. But Severus thought the other destiny well within the boy’s reach. It would remain that way until he was out of Hogwarts.

Then…

Well, Severus felt sorry for the boy’s future co-workers and any witch he managed to trick into marrying him. That was all.

*

“What are you doing here, Potter?”

Harry stood up and moved away from the aisle of books he’d been investigating, which talked about requirements to move to another country and some of the NEWT requirements for jobs there. He was mostly looking to move to the States, or maybe Australia or New Zealand. Parts of Canada were a possibility, too. Harry didn’t want to have to learn a language other than English. He doubted he would be any good at it.

“I asked you a question, Potter.”

Harry turned around with an empty expression that he knew would unnerve the Ravenclaw boy behind him. The boy’s name was Michael Corner, and he had started antagonizing Harry about two years ago. Harry had never known the reason behind it. It wasn’t like he did better than Corner in classes.

“I don’t need to answer you,” Harry said, as mildly as possible. He didn’t want to face down Corner or his friends, a couple of other Ravenclaw boys standing behind him, but neither did he have to dance as carefully around Corner as around his Housemates.

“I want an answer. That should be enough.”

“Looking at books.”

“What?”

“That’s what I’m doing here. Looking at books.”

Corner stared at him. Harry had the feeling that he hadn’t expected the answer, maybe hadn’t thought Harry would answer at all. But then he snorted and drew his wand. Harry tensed, and could tell from the way the boys behind Corner sniggered that they’d seen it.

“I don’t think we should accept that response, should we?” Corner asked softly, eyes locked on Harry. “I think we should make sure the little Parselmouth knows his place.”

Maybe that was the reason why Corner had started to get angry at Harry. Harry remembered hearing that Corner’s father had died a few years ago, bitten by some kind of venomous snake, and that no one knew how it had got in the house. He had evidently decided that a Parselmouth was responsible.

But it was still ridiculous.

Harry decided abruptly that he was done suffering insults and abuse from Corner. He might not be able to do anything about the bullies in Slytherin, where Snape backed them up, but he could do it here and make it look like an accident.

He focused on Corner’s wand, and used his own magic to yank it to the side at just the right moment as Corner fired a Binding Hex. It hit one of his friends instead, who yelped and went down, covered in ropes. Harry smiled a little.

“Mike! What do you think you’re doing?”

“It was an accident, Stephen, don’t be so melodramatic,” Corner snapped, and aimed at Harry again.

This time, Harry sent the Burning Mouth Hex at Corner’s other friend, and made the friend’s Body-Bind land on Corner. Then he stood there and watched as they cursed loudly, waiting for the moment when—

“You were using spells in my library?”

Madam Pince was as fierce as ever, the other reason that Harry spent a lot of time in the library beyond wanting to study for his NEWTS. She loomed over Corner and the other Ravenclaws and huffed and roared, and Harry just stood there, lifting his empty hands when Corner and the others tried to accuse him of hexing them.

“Nonsense, he isn’t even holding a wand,” Madam Pince snapped, and undid the various hexes and herded them out of the library, never stopping her scolding.

Harry smiled a little. Maybe he could defend himself, as long as he did it this way. Wandless magic might be common and not that powerful, but perhaps students in other Houses than Slytherin weren’t trained to watch for it.

He turned back to browsing the shelves. It was possible he might find more countries to visit if he learned the Translation Charms properly.

*

Theo stepped back from behind the shelves where he’d been watching Potter, shaken. He’d thought of accosting Potter, but then the Ravenclaws had shown up, and he’d waited, curious to see how Potter interacted with students from other Houses.

It seemed that perhaps Potter had just taken their insults in the past, but now intended to return fire with wandless fire.

Theo glanced down at his own hands. Madam Pomfrey had melted the ice crystals, but had frowned worriedly when Theo had told her they’d shown up out of nowhere, which was more or less true.

Theo needed to figure out how to confront Potter without making him defensive. Yes, Potter could be an asset and an ally and that was worth treating him well, but…

Theo glanced back at the spots on the library floor where the Ravenclaws had lain.

He had the impression that Potter could also be very dangerous, if handled wrongly.

Chapter Text

Albus sighed as he watched young Harry pick at his food over at the Slytherin table. He truly regretted his choices when it came to the boy. He had thought Harry would be in Gryffindor, that he would find friends and perhaps someone to fall in love with as his father had, and that Albus’s main task would be guarding the boy from people who wanted to use him as he lived out his childhood.

Instead, Harry had gone to Slytherin, and been isolated. And Albus had held back and hesitated.

He had been afraid to bring Harry into his confidence, especially concerning details like the prophecy, because he had known that at least some of the children in Slytherin could know Legilimency. They could not be permitted to rip details out of Harry’s head. And even if they didn’t know mental magic, well, young boys made friends.

Friends they wanted to impress. Friends they wanted to brag to.

Albus had been in that position, once upon a time.

All it would take was Harry saying the wrong word in front of Draco Malfoy or Theodore Nott, and the Death Eaters would know all Harry knew. Or Blaise Zabini, whom Albus had not expected to attend Hogwarts, might have taken those secrets to his mother, who would have sold them to the highest bidder.

Albus couldn’t chance it. He had held back, resolving to watch Harry’s behavior and tell him certain truths when it seemed safe.

It had never seemed safe. Harry had warred with the students of Slytherin and made no friends in other Houses who might have bolstered his confidence and taught him to be less bitter and more forthright. By the time Albus had come to believe that Harry would not tell other Slytherins those secrets, affairs had reached the point where he had to worry about whether Harry would act contrarily out of spite.

And, well, there was still Legilimency to contend with.

Albus breathed out slowly. In one way, his plans to give Harry a normal childhood had worked. He hadn’t been burdened with the defeat of Voldemort, or figuring out the Dark artifact that had been releasing the basilisk—something Albus had accomplished too late, when he’d found an empty diary and an empty body on the floor of the Chamber.

Albus would do those things on his own, or with the help of the Order. And if in the end Harry Potter had to die, as Albus had begun to fear…

At least he would not have spent years being used as a weapon, or prepared for war.

*

“Potter, I’d like to apologize—”

Crunch.

“Potter, I’d like you to know that I would defend you in front of—”

Crunch.

“I could take revenge for you on Snape if you w—”

Crunch.

Every time Nott approached him, Harry made ice crystals blossom over his hands. He had thought the sliver of his magic residing within Nott’s body would make it easier, but he had also expected the sliver to fade over time and not react within a fortnight or so.

It seemed that it was continuing to affect Nott and might indefinitely. Harry was enormously pleased with the success of his variant Chill Ward.

*

Theo was not.

He could feel himself tilting dangerously close to an edge he hadn’t known was there every time Potter glanced at him with cold eyes and made Theo’s hands cold in retaliation. Theo didn’t know what else he could do.

He had apologized. He had offered to stand up to Snape, an enemy Potter had never confronted himself, at least not after his first year. He had offered to be Potter’s defender in Slytherin House, to lend him tomes of obscure magic, to give him a place to go for the holidays (everyone had long since noticed that Potter always stayed at school for those, another thing Draco made fun of him for).

And now his latest offer, to hex Draco’s mouth to burn every time he said something about Potter, had been rejected with a silent glare. Theo lost it and spoke before Potter could send the ice gliding over Theo’s hands.

“What can I do? I’ve offered everything I know how to offer! I’ve apologized, and I’ve never done that for anyone else! How do you expect me to show you that I’m sincere in wanting to be your ally?”

Potter’s eyes widened, and he moved a step closer. Theo abruptly shivered. They were in the middle of a corridor that ran from the Potions classroom towards the common room, and while Theo preferred privacy for his confrontations with Potter, he was abruptly reminded how—alone they were.

But he was still angry, and he watched as Potter’s lips twitched and curved with the same feeling of anger.

“You can run,” Potter said softly.

“What?”

“You can run,” Potter repeated, and twitched his fingers and wand in an intricate gesture Theo had never seen before.

The world around them shuddered and bounced. Theo took a step back and bumped into something hard. He whirled around, because he had been sure that there wasn’t a wall there.

There wasn’t. Instead, he had apparently backed into an invisible ward that ran the length of the corridor. Theo reached towards it, and then stopped. He had had enough of touching Potter’s wards with his bare hands.

“Potter, what—”

“You can run,” Potter said again, like a chant, and took a long step towards him. “Unless you think a poor little half-blood couldn’t hurt a pureblood?”

Poor little half-blood was something Theo had called Potter in the past, and mortification burned in him even as he fell back one step, and then another. His back slammed into another ward on the other side, and he realized that they seemed to be making a long, narrower corridor down the one he and Potter were in, aiming straight ahead and leading—somewhere.

Theo didn’t want to run. But Potter was coming towards him, smiling, and Theo’s anger burned out into icy flames of fear.

He whirled and ran.

*

Harry laughed softly as he strode after Nott, who darted around the corner and vanished. It was all right. Nott could only run where the wards guided him, and Harry knew exactly where they were leading him.

His exultation burned hot and clean in him. He should have tried this years ago. Why had he been so cowed and frightened for so long?

But Harry knew the answer to that. Whenever he stood up to the Dursleys, they did something worse. He had been afraid of finding out what that “something worse” was when it involved magic. And, well, after a while he had just wanted to be left alone and silent, and as long as people did that, standing up to them hadn’t been an attractive option.

Now, though, he was in his seventh year, and no one would have the power to hurt him or stop him in a few months. He could use magic legally. He might as well get some revenge.

Harry followed Nott out to the Quidditch pitch, where Nott ran for the shed that held the school brooms. Harry smiled as he reached into a robe pocket.

He’d never been allowed to try out for the Slytherin Quidditch team; the laughter and mockery the one time he’d shown up still burned in the back of his head. And his first flying lesson had been nothing extraordinary. He had felt the way the broom responded to him, but Neville Longbottom had tumbled off his own broom and distracted everyone, and then Malfoy and Weasley had got into it over Longbottom’s Remembrall.

Still, Harry had bought himself a broom the way he’d bought himself a Pensieve. He didn’t have a lot else to use his gold on, fancy robes not being a distraction for him the way they were for Malfoy. And he had come down to the pitch sometimes or the Forbidden Forest at night and flown in silence, rejoicing in the pull of the air over his face.

Neither the broom nor the Pensieve were things Harry could easily replace, so he hadn’t trusted them even to his newly-warded trunk. He kept the Pensieve hidden behind the wards in his secret suite of rooms in the dungeons, and his broom shrunken and in his pocket when not in active use.

Harry pulled it out and resized it now with a small smile as he watched Nott run into the broom shed and come out with a Cleansweep.

The arsehole was in for a surprise.

*

Theo wasn’t sure why he had been allowed to reach the pitch and take a broom. For all he knew, Potter was going to use him for target practice in the air.

Still, Theo was fairly confident of his broom skills for all that he’d never tried out for the Quidditch team. He could dodge Potter’s magic more easily than Potter thought, and—

Theo looked down at a sudden movement behind him and almost fainted.

Potter was rising on a broom that was clearly a Nimbus, his eyes narrowed and his hair whipping around him from his speed. Theo turned sharply to the left, and Potter shot past him, but he was already correcting, swinging in a wide circle.

The only saving grace up here was that no wards constrained Theo.

He arced to the side again as Potter came back towards him, but this time, Potter let the tails of their brooms brush together in a Quidditch move this side of illegal. Theo swore as it sent him rolling and he barely scrambled upright again. Potter had never lost his balance, it seemed, simply twisting with the broom as if they were two parts of the same being.

Shit.

Theo had no idea why Potter had chosen to essentially duel him with broom movements instead of spells, but he would take what he could get.

He continued to brake and back and fly defensively. Potter swept around him with effortless ease, eyes narrowed with amusement. Even when Theo could have sworn that he was distant enough from Potter to avoid any collision between their brooms, Potter managed to close the distance and knock him spiraling.

Theo finally dived towards the ground. It seemed Potter was getting towards the point when he would knock Theo off, and at least this would give him less distance to fall.

He glanced back to find Potter following him in a dive that looked—

It was. It was a perfect Wronski Feint.

Theo barely got out of the way in time, and still got knocked over so that he was dangling from the Cleansweep by his hands. It didn’t matter, the pain or the fear or the sudden weight on his arms. He couldn’t keep his eyes from following Potter as he blazed past Theo and turned smoothly above the grass, rising back into the air as if he was doing this at the Quidditch World Cup before thousands of spectators.

A sensation like a blow hit Theo beneath the breastbone, and it had nothing to do with the way that his broom had finally fallen to the ground and he’d had to let go and land on his feet.

Potter had kept everything hidden. Wandless magic was one thing, and Theo could envision keeping that hidden as a last-resort defensive weapon. Or because Potter wouldn’t have wanted people to see it and try to manipulate him the way Theo had admittedly tried.

But being on the Quidditch team could have made Potter popular and respected. There was no reason to hide his broom skills except that he hadn’t trusted anyone to see them.

We could have had that. The Quidditch team could have had that.

Theo took a deep breath and felt as though something was growing out beneath his breastbone.

Potter could have had that.

Theo swallowed, and swallowed again. He had never—he had clashed with people before, and mocked them, and bullied them, and he’d never felt this way. He hadn’t felt this way even when he’d seen Potter’s wards and wandless magic and realized what kind of asset Potter could be to the right person.

It was a sense of absolute and shocking loss. And shame that Theo had caused this, had caused Potter to hide everything simply because he hadn’t been able to believe that anyone would honor it.

Theo closed his eyes, and only winced a little when he felt Potter’s wand come to rest in the center of his throat.

“Are you going to leave me the fuck alone, Nott?”

“Yeah,” Theo said softly, and opened his eyes. Potter stepped a little closer, his wand digging into Theo’s throat, but it was difficult for Theo to take his eyes from Potter’s. The clear gleam there, as if they were only glass before fire. “Yeah. And I’m sorry.”

Potter paused. Then he said, “Why does that sound different from your other apologies?”

“Because this time I really realize what I did wrong.” Theo rubbed his hand across his eyes. He felt tired, in a way that had nothing to do with the broom chase or running down to the pitch. “I was trying to come up with a way that would let me use you. And that was wrong.”

“I knew it,” Potter said, but his eyes were puzzled. “What brought this on?”

“You never would have kept your broom skills secret if not for me. And people like me.”

“And you’re sore about the Slytherin team losing the Cup. I get it.”

“No.” Theo didn’t raise his voice, but he did try to keep it solid, which stopped Potter from turning away. “I’m sorry for the effect it had on you. I thought—it would have—it would have let you live up to a certain kind of ideal. I’m not explaining this well.”

“No bloody kidding.”

“You could have been great. And I kept you from being that way. And it wasn’t because we were in direct competition. That would be something I could be proud of, beating a worthy competitor. This was just—I kept you from being everything you could have been because I was concerned with blood status, and I’m sorry.”

*
Harry stared at Nott. He didn’t understand what the idiot was babbling about, or why he had changed his mind after seeing Harry on a broom when wandless magic and wards apparently hadn’t changed his mind, or why Nott would be upset with himself when Harry was the one who had chased and threatened him.

“You’re not making any sense,” Harry finally said.

“I know.”

“You know? And you don’t care?”

Nott gave him a faint expression that started out as a smile and died halfway through. “It’s hard to explain a revelation that’s changed you.”

This at least sounded like more familiar ground. Harry folded his arms. “I don’t believe that you’re telling the truth when it comes to this. Any more than you did with the other apologies.”

Nott nodded. “I know. I understand. And just apologizing doesn’t do anything to help you or make up for what I did.” He turned and walked back towards the broom shed, tossing the Cleansweep through the door with an absent motion of his hand.

Harry watched him go with narrowed eyes. Nott didn’t turn or look back. Harry, in turn, permitted him to walk away instead of trying to keep him confined to the pitch to figure out what the fuck he meant.

Perhaps it would mean that Nott ceased his futile attempts to apologize. That alone would be worth it. And if it really did mean that Harry didn’t have to watch for this particular threat at his back anymore, that would be an improvement, too.

*

Theo stared out the window at the slice of Hogwarts grounds that led towards the Forbidden Forest, lying dark and cool in the half-moonlight. This was a window on the fourth floor he had found years ago and hidden under a semi-permanent Disillusionment Charm attuned to him, because he liked the wide sill and the view.

The shock of learning that he was a considerably worse person than he’d thought he was was still reverberating through him.

Oh, Theo had known he was never a particularly good person, the way the world understood such things. He had mocked people and laughed at others’ insults too often for that. He had hexed and jinxed and pranked Gryffindors who had never done anything to him except exist in a rival House. He had threatened people with worse than he’d done, threats that had made them back off and walk around him with lowered eyes.

But that had always seemed justifiable because it made people back off, or because it allowed him to deflect unfriendly attention, or because it made other Slytherins laugh with him instead of at him. Theo had never had to see it from someone else’s point-of-view.

Specifically, the point-of-view of people he had mocked or threatened.

And he had never felt this scalding shame at the thought of what he had cost someone else.

Maybe he would have if he had seen them the way he now saw Potter, as practitioners of powerful magic or skilled flyers. He would never know. Theo didn’t even remember every insult he had flung, every hex he had cast.

He was starting to suspect that the people he had insulted or hexed did.

Theo winced and closed his eyes. All right. He couldn’t time travel to the past. Apologies by themselves weren’t enough to make up for his actions, as Potter had made quite clear. And while he wouldn’t be doing it again going forwards, that wasn’t enough to ease the burning in Theo’s chest.

He would have to do something. Something that helped Potter, whether or not he ever ceased to blame Theo. It wasn’t about him accepting it. It was about doing it.

Theo would have to decide, soon, what that would be.

Chapter Text

“Pathetic Potter messed up his spell in Defense again. That’s why Slytherin lost ten points this afternoon.”

For a moment, Theo’s hand clenched on the side of his book. He would have preferred to wait longer to challenge Draco.

But they were in the middle of the Slytherin common room, and Draco was getting laughs as he mimed Potter’s casting performance. Potter wasn’t here at the moment. That was how Theo knew Draco was bored.

It didn’t matter. If things were going to change, if Theo was going to change, he had to do it when Potter wasn’t watching, too, or it didn’t matter.

“Just what I would expect of a half-blood—”

“Just how closely related are your parents, Draco?” Theo interrupted in a pleasant voice that nonetheless cut through the noise in the common room. It was the way his father had trained him to speak. “Your great-grandmother on your mother’s side was a Malfoy, from what I understand? Of course, there are all the rumors about your mother’s father being a Malfoy, too, because of her blonde hair? Or am I mixing up the rumors?”

Draco stared at him. So did a few of the other Slytherins. Blaise had put down his book on the couch for some reason and was leaning forwards, his eyes wide.

Theo didn’t understand the reaction, but he didn’t have time to contemplate it. Draco had narrowed his eyes and was twirling his wand between his fingers. “You have a death wish, Nott?”

Theo laughed at that, genuinely amused. That part wasn’t new. “Have you forgotten what happened the last time we dueled, Draco?”

Draco flushed to the tips of his ears. It was desperately unbecoming. Strange that his parents hadn’t trained that out of him. “That wasn’t in public.”

“I’m sorry, you think people watching is going to make you better?”

No one except the two of them would understand the subtext behind that. Theo and Draco had dueled often when they were younger, including at some private parties where their parents had watched, and Draco had lost in front of an audience every time. He grew too nervous with critical eyes on him.

And seventh-year Slytherin and unofficial top Crup in the House or not, there were plenty of those on Draco right now.

Draco shot a Stinging Hex at Theo. Theo turned to take it on the shoulder, shaking his head a little, keeping his tone light and mocking. Let all of them see how impervious he was to pain, and keep what he had to say in mind. “Beginning a duel without going through the formal declaration, Draco? What would your father say?”

“You shut up about my father!” Draco snapped.

“I don’t think I will. He mustn’t have taught you very well, after all, if you can forget a step as basic as this. Maybe he wasn’t training you as any sort of political successor to him, of course. Maybe he was training you like a pet.”

And Draco lost his head, starting to his feet and casting the Entrail-Expelling Curse, of all things, at Theo.

Theo had already been poised to move. In seconds he was on the floor, rolling, and the curse crashed over him and into the back of the couch. Someone screamed. Someone else, more sensible, raised wards around him and Draco.

Theo was on his feet, and his wand was in his hand. Draco was storming towards him, face darker than Theo had ever seen it.

Theo acknowledged a distant thrill of fear. But a plain thrill was stronger.

He should have done this a long time ago.

“What are you doing, Nott?” Draco hissed, halting in front of him. “You could have chosen easier ways to die.”

“And you could have chosen easier ways to humiliate yourself than accepting the bait,” Theo said softly. “You do realize that by using that kind of potentially deadly curse, you’ve opened up the field?”

Draco turned pale at the same moment as Theo bowed to him. And Draco had no choice but to bow back, as jerky as the gesture was. The wards that the other Slytherins had raised only protected the bystanders from spells. They were transparent, letting the audience watch the duel.

Theo smiled at Draco, and Draco’s clutch on his wand tightened.

For all that, he was the one who struck first, a curse that would have shocked Theo with lightning if it had landed. And Theo was the one who raised a casual shield, one that distributed the lightning along its length, crackling, and dissipated it at the same time.

Draco stumbled back a step. Presumably that was one of the curses his father had taught him that was supposedly unblockable.

Theo moved a step forwards. Draco promptly struck again, lashing out with spells both silent and verbal, ones that were meant to hurt, to maim, to humiliate, to flatten.

Theo caught all of them on his shields. He could have stepped back or dodged away from at least some of them, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to humiliate Draco and to show how weak Draco was, that Theo wouldn’t even become exhausted shielding from him.

By the time Draco had retreated almost to the edge of the wards, his arm was trembling with exhaustion and his wand was drooping. Theo hadn’t broken a sweat. He smiled at Draco, and Draco swayed as if he was going to faint.

But of course, that couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t be fun if that happened.

“Vigilans,” Theo cast softly, a spell that would keep Draco awake through what followed, and then, “Quasso ossa.”

It was a variation of the Bone-Breaking Curse, but not a commonly-used one. It hit Draco in the right foot, where Theo had aimed, and delicately began to break his toes.

One by one. The regular Bone-Breaker would have done it all at once, and would have shattered the bones of his foot and then stopped.

But this one spread slowly upwards, moving onto the bones of the foot and the ankle when the toes were done, and aiming for Draco’s femur.

That kind of injury, even a Healer might not be able to treat well if treatment was delayed. For example, if the victim was isolated behind wards and no one was able to drop them and Floo the hospital wing in time.

Draco knew that as well as Theo. Draco, screaming, knew what would happen to him.

“Nott! Nott, wait! I yield!” Draco shouted, and then went back to shrieking in pain.

Theo waved his wand, and the curse halted, hovering just short of Draco’s tibia. That was another reason he had chosen this spell. It remained under the command of the caster, and Theo could stop it any time he wanted—and let it start again, any time he wanted. “You’re ready to admit you lost the duel and give me your forfeit?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yes! Yes!”

There was snot on Draco’s face. It didn’t seem polite to mention it. Theo nodded. “You’ll cease talking about blood status and using the word ‘Mudblood’ for as long as I tell you to.”

That got more than one person staring at him. Theo ignored the stares, his gaze locked on Draco. He had to start here, or he would never get anywhere. Draco had enough power in Slytherin that he would simply intimidate anyone else Theo talked to about blood status comments into agreeing with him.

“What? Why?”

Theo tilted his head and lifted his wand.

“All right, all right, it doesn’t matter! What are the time limits for this?” Draco was shaking with fear and probably pain, his eyes locked on Theo’s wand rather than Theo’s face.

“The rest of your life.”

“What? Nott, I can’t…”

“Then I suppose that you’ll be relearning how to walk. Or perhaps forgetting to,” Theo said, and loosed the curse from his control. Draco’s tibia broke with a crunch, and Draco wailed and spoke quickly.

“I agree! I agree! No more comments on blood status or the word ‘Mudblood’ for the rest of my life!”

“A pleasure making bargains with you,” Theo said, and ended the curse. He heard someone lower the wards, but didn’t linger to see who. He turned around and sauntered back to his chair, where he sat down and picked up the Charms book he had been reading when things started.

More than one person came up to stare at him, but no one actually asked him what had inspired that, or why he had made the bargain he did with Draco. Theo kept his head down and his smile to himself.

*

“Did you think I would be impressed?”

Harry was beyond pleased at the way his words made Nott jump. He’d come up behind the other boy in the library, and used a spell that, twisted a little, silenced every sound Harry made, not just his footsteps, which it had originally been designed for. Harry had used it to sneak around and in and out of the Slytherin common room many times.

Nott turned around and blinked at him, keeping one finger in his Charms book. “What?”

“I heard about what you did in the common room. You probably think you’re noble, torturing Malfoy like that.” Nott stayed silent, and Harry forged closer to him, grabbing the back of his chair. “Did you think you were going to impress me?”

“No,” Nott said flatly. “Or I would have waited until you were in the audience.”

Harry paused. That was something he hadn’t thought about in any detail. He had simply heard what had happened, and that it was Nott attacking Malfoy out of nowhere, and felt the same kind of blinding rage that he had the day he’d confronted Nott in the air.

“Why did you do it?” Harry said.

“Because I learned that I’d been wrong, and—I always knew that blood status didn’t have anything to do with talent. I felt pretty stupid when I realized I’d been acting as if it did.”

“That’s a stupid realization.”

“Yes, stupid that it took me so long to come to it.”

Harry moved a step closer. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he snapped. “It’s stupid that you decided that the way to make up for your bullying was to torture Malfoy.”

Nott shrugged, although a flash of emotion moved through his eyes that Harry couldn’t name. It wasn’t like he’d ever spent time watching Nott for more complex emotions than anger or cruelty or the boredom that might mean he was about to start taunting Harry. “I’m doing what I can.”

“In what way? Did I ask you to be my champion?”

“No. But I don’t know any other way to stop Draco from making more blood status comments. He would just go back to doing it unless someone terrified him into stopping, and an ordinary prank spell or jinx wouldn’t do that.”

“You—” Harry bit his tongue and closed his eyes, taking a long, deep breath. “You can’t make up for what you did to me.”

“Yes. That’s one reason that I attacked Draco even though you weren’t there.”

“You shouldn’t have attacked him at all!”

“I’m afraid that’s out of your hands.” The flash of what might have been humanity was gone from Nott’s face, and he spoke coolly. “You told me I can’t apologize or make up for what I did to you. Very well, I’m not trying to. I’m doing what I can to make myself feel better for how stupid I was all these years.”

“And you think—what? That stopping Malfoy from making blood purist comments will make other people feel better?”

“The Muggleborns he might run into after school will feel better. I know that we’re in our seventh year now and he doesn’t have much time left at Hogwarts, so maybe that won’t matter as much. But I wanted to do it, and I did.”

“And what next?”

“Professor Snape.”

“He doesn’t make blood purist comments,” Harry said quietly, while a soft, uncertain drum began beating in his ears.

“No,” Nott agreed, with a flash of teeth that wasn’t a smile. “But you’re not the only one he picks on. Just the only Slytherin. He basically destroyed Longbottom’s chances of becoming an Auror, and Longbottom could have been decent in Potions, with his Herbology knowledge. I know that Granger kept going in the class in spite of him, and she does a lot of studying on her own. Even Millicent gave up on Potions because she couldn’t bear the thought of spending two more years with Snape teaching her. She studies on her own, too.”

Millicent? Harry almost asked, but then remembered Bulstrode. Right. He was so used to thinking of Slytherins by their last names that he hadn’t considered her at all.

She was also the only other half-blood in Slytherin, as far as Harry knew. She deferred to Malfoy all the time. Harry had thought that was because she was toadying to the blood purists, but now he recognized it as a tactic she had taken to protect herself.

Just a different one from mine.

Harry took a deep breath and said, “I don’t want you to try and handle Snape, Nott. I want to do that on my own.”

Nott watched him with deep, wild eyes. “I told you that I wasn’t handling Malfoy for you.”

“But I know where the inspiration came from,” Harry snapped, and took a step forwards. “You want to make things up to me? Let me do this.”

“And if you don’t manage to make him back off from tormenting you?”

“Then I’ll try something else. But I’m fairly sure that this tactic is going to work.”

Nott nodded slowly. “All right. I suppose you deserve the right to confront him.”

“So good to know that I have your consideration,” Harry sniped, and turned away.

*

Theo sighed a little, quietly, as he watched Potter go. There was a scar of disappointment in him.

He hadn’t confronted Draco for Potter, not exactly. But it would have made him happy to have Potter’s approval of his actions.

Then Theo shrugged. Potter didn’t owe Theo anything, and Theo could hold back from confronting Professor Snape. It had been his next plan, but not his only one.

Potter wasn’t the only person he had bullied, and there were other people out there who might still accept Theo’s apologies.

Chapter Text

You are powerful.

That was the conclusion Harry had heard ringing in his head like a bell for hours and days on end.

It had to work against the other, older rhythm that was already there, of course, the one that insisted he was weak and worthless. The one that insisted wandless magic was something everybody could do and that everyone else did better than he did in classes and the one that said he was pathetic because he couldn’t even stand up to the Dursleys.

But he had frightened Nott. He knew that now. Power was there, waiting for him to claim it, and it didn’t need to look like the way Malfoy or Snape or Nott defined it.

Harry stood up and looped his tie around his neck, hesitating for just a moment before he deliberately tied it in an untidy circle.

Snape would probably pick on him at breakfast this morning anyway, because that was what he did, but this way, Harry at least knew what it would be for.

Then he reached out and smoothed his hand down the air next to his bed. The ward he had already prepared and coiled around emptiness hissed its readiness at him. In fact, it wanted to explode right now and wrap itself around Malfoy or Zabini or someone else snickering under their breaths at him.

Harry didn’t let it, but it was difficult to restrain his magic.

“Why are you petting empty air, Potty?” Goyle asked with a sneer.

“Only kind of pet he has,” Zabini said, and both of them broke into guffaws.

Harry clenched one hand down at his side, out of their sight, but he found it was easier to ignore them than ever, given what he—and he alone—knew was going to happen in a few minutes. He walked out of the dormitory, and the ward came with him, an invisible coil of magic that wanted to choke somebody.

Harry smiled.

Snape was going to hurt, and in public. And although he would probably suspect the truth and assign Harry more detentions than ever, he would only do it because he blamed Harry for everything. No one else would, because they thought Harry too weak to do something like this.

A slight noise sounded behind him, close enough that Harry turned with his hand on his wand. But it was only Nott, watching him with opaque eyes before he turned back to reading his book on the couch nearest the fire.

Harry shook his head and walked out the doorway of the common room.

Maybe one person. But Nott would keep quiet if he knew what was good for him.

*

Theo walked to breakfast with a tingling sense of anticipation that he didn’t try to hide. And not only because both Blaise and Millicent watched him closely, and Draco avoided him with rosy cheeks.

Something was going to happen today. To Snape.

Potter had walked with too much of a spring in his step for that not to be true.

Potter sat down near the far side of the bench, as usual. He kept his head bowed, as usual, and ate small portions. Theo narrowed his eyes a little. Things that he had once made fun of, and then dismissed, were striking him in the eyes like grains of sand these days.

Had Potter always been that thin? Had his wrists always stuck out of his sleeves as though he had Transfigured sticks to use as arms?

Snape swept into the Great Hall. Theo picked up a piece of toast and ate it dry, turning his head enough so that he could still see both Potter and their Head of House, but slowly enough that he wouldn’t be obvious about it.

“Potter!” Snape barked, coming to a stop by the table.

Theo thought he was the only one who felt the air around Potter thrum, and something twisting towards Snape like a snake. But he could turn with the rest of the Slytherins to watch the morning’s “entertainment.” Draco in particular was leaning forwards, one hand braced on the table, as if he looked forward to this the more since Theo was no longer letting him make fun of Potter based on blood status.

Potter looked up. His face was blank.

Not his eyes.

Theo had to swallow, and then hold back the urge to choke on his toast, at what the look in those eyes did to him.

*

Harry looked up. For a moment, it seemed the air all around him sang like sunrise, like the hope he had felt when he made friends with Ron on the train. He knew what was going to happen and he didn’t know.

He knew his ward would take care of Snape, though, and for long moments, that was enough.

“Your tie isn’t straight!” Snape said, and pointed at Harry’s throat as if Harry might have forgotten where his tie was. “Detention for—”

The ward shot out and coiled around Snape.

Harry had made the ward out of will as much as magic, and it would adapt itself to any given situation. Had he intended it to protect him, then it would have become a ward that kept away spells if someone had hexed him, and one that bounced physical objects off itself if someone had flung a stone at him. This one reacted to Snape’s intentions and turned the thing he’d intended to punish Harry for back on him.

Snape’s robes undid themselves with a loud, harsh snapping of buttons, and sagged down around his shoulders.

The sound had gained a lot of people’s attention, where the sound of Snape scolding Harry wouldn’t have. There was a long moment of silence as people stared at Snape’s pale shoulders and thin chest, and maybe his black trousers, if they could see them from a distance.

And then the laughter started.

Snape looked frozen, as though the ward had removed him from time as well as clothing. He stared at Harry, and said nothing. Harry wasn’t entirely sure that he could have said anything.

And Harry himself wasn’t laughing. He just stared at Snape with a cold, vicious satisfaction, and waited for what would happen next. It would probably be more detentions, but that was worth it. Anything was worth it.

Then Snape drew his wand.

*

Theo surged to his feet. The people sitting frozen around him, who included Blaise and Millicent, cowered back at the sudden movement.

Theo didn’t care. He vaulted over the Slytherin table, cursing his own decision to sit on the other side and a fair distance away from Potter. It had been necessary for the deception, but what was deception going to matter if either Snape or Potter died today?

Theo drew his wand, but his hand was moving slowly, so slowly, and Potter only sat there as if he didn’t believe that Snape drawing his wand could actually threaten him—

*

Albus stood.

“Severus!” he called, his voice as strong as he could make it. “Remember your oath!”

*

Harry wasn’t sure what the Headmaster was talking about, and he wasn’t sure it mattered. He sat and stared at Snape, whose wand—ebony, Harry noticed—was leveled straight at Harry’s throat.

“How did you know?” Snape whispered. There was the sound of someone running towards them, but Harry couldn’t turn away from the sheer hatred Snape was looking at him with. “You will tell me how you knew.”

“How I knew what?”

Snape snarled, and struck.

And the second ward Harry had prepared, lying coiled around his feet like a silent snake, rose and deflected the spell back at Snape.

There was a moment of light and noise that Harry hadn’t counted on, because he hadn’t actually thought the ward would do anything more than bounce a curse, and then someone grabbed him around the middle and twisted hard with him. Harry fought back instinctively, memories of almost being drowned by Dudley that one time rearing their heads, but then went still under the other person as he heard cracking wood and grunts of pain.

When the noise had died, Harry shoved. The other person let him go and backed away. Harry bared his teeth when he saw Nott.

“What do you want?”

“Only to shield you,” Nott said, and then stepped to the side, as if he knew how intolerable Harry would find it not to see what had happened right now.

Harry stared. They were about two meters away from the Slytherin table, which was missing the part of the bench where Harry had been sitting and a good portion of the tabletop. Wooden splinters lay scattered over the burn marks on the floor. Students were sobbing or gasping as they dealt with numerous small wounds the exploding table had apparently inflicted on them.

Snape was lying on the floor, unconscious. His right hand was a mangled mess of bones and meat and blood.

Lying next to him was approximately a third of an ebony wand, with a dragon heartstring sticking out of it.

Harry breathed out slowly and shook his head. The ward was only meant to answer violence for violence, spell for spell, which was why he didn’t think the consequences would be this bad. He hadn’t anticipated—

Snape was actually going to use a Blasting Curse on him?

Harry exhaled shakily this time and glanced at Nott. “Why did you get in between me and the curse?” he asked, noting for the first time that there were little spots of blood all over Nott’s cheeks and chin. When he drew his wand, Harry instinctively tensed, but Nott was apparently healing a wound over his ribs.

“Because I wanted to.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Is this part of your campaign of—”

He didn’t have a chance to say more. Professor McGonagall and the Headmaster had both swept down from the professors’ table, and both reached them at about the same time. The Headmaster reached out as if to jerk Harry to his feet from where he was sitting on the floor.

Nott turned and stared at Dumbledore with an absolutely blank expression. The Headmaster paused, and then took a step back and shook his head a little.

“We will have to investigate this,” he said. “Professor McGonagall, if you will take Professor Snape to the hospital wing?”

Professor McGonagall was staring at Harry as if she had never seen him before. Harry stared back. She probably never had. He had done well enough on the Transfiguration OWL to get into the NEWT class, but, well, he didn’t see the point in trying too hard in class when that would just make his roommates more focused on taunting him and wouldn’t lessen the professor’s disappointed looks. It was the NEWT that was important and which people would look at in the future, not the daily classwork. And Harry understood both theory and practice better when studying on his own.

“Yes, of course,” McGonagall said a few moments later, and turned away from Harry with a slight twitch of her head. She went over to Snape and floated him into the air. Harry wondered idly if they could heal the man’s hand.

Well, probably. They healed more severe injuries all the time, including some Quidditch ones. Probably they would take him to St. Mungo’s, though. Harry didn’t know how well Madam Pomfrey would handle this.

The thought caused a surge of vicious satisfaction in him.

“Mr. Potter,” the Headmaster said. “If you would come with me?”

Harry stood up. He could feel eyes focused on him, but he ignored the ones from the Slytherin table. They would probably try to attack him for this, the ones who liked Snape, or taunt him more. The taunts would have no more impact than they had for years now, and if they came after him…

Well, they would regret it, now.

But Harry did feel as if someone was watching him from another direction, too, a specific and pointed gaze. He turned and met Ron Weasley’s eyes from the Gryffindor table. Ron was motionless, one hand planted on the tabletop.

Harry just nodded to him and then turned and walked after Dumbledore. If questioned later, Ron would honestly be able to say that he hadn’t known anything about Harry’s plan to get revenge on Snape.

Footsteps followed him. Harry swiveled his head a notch and saw Nott pacing after him.

Harry frowned. Nott was a problem, and one that at the moment concerned him a lot more than whatever awaited him in the Headmaster’s office.

*

No one had told Theo not to go with Potter and Dumbledore, so he followed. He caught Draco’s eye on the way out, and Draco flushed and looked away as if he had been burned.

Theo smiled. It didn’t greatly concern him if people did decide that Theo had cursed Draco out of some loyalty to Potter. Potter could obviously defend himself if attacked. Theo could do the same thing.

And if Potter didn’t want Theo to speak up in his defense when they got to Dumbledore’s office, then Theo would keep silent.

But if he did, or if the Headmaster asked questions about why Theo had moved as he had…

Theo felt a low thrum of excitement in his belly.

He felt more alive than he had in years.

Chapter Text

“Have a seat, Mr. Potter.”

Dumbledore’s voice was low and somewhat sad. Harry barely managed to hold back a shrug as he sat in one of the overstuffed chairs across from the desk. A quick glance told him that Nott was taking the chair next to his, and that Dumbledore probably didn’t intend to toss the git out.

The glance at Nott turned into one around the office, because Harry hadn’t been here before, and it was stunning. The whirling silver instruments alone made Harry’s fingers itch to investigate them and see what kind of magic they ran on. The walls were covered with books that were probably older than most of the ones in the Hogwarts library. And there was a perch with a phoenix sitting on it, bright scarlet head cocked at Harry. Harry nodded to it and then focused on the Headmaster.

Dumbledore took a deep breath and put his hands together in front of him. Harry half-braced himself. He would be accused of attacking Snape, he knew. He would defend himself, but it would be a detention at the very least.

“I am sorry,” Dumbledore began.

Huh? Harry was afraid he was gaping, and did his best to shut his mouth, only to find it already closed. He swallowed a little and ended up coughing. “I—don’t understand what you mean, sir.”

“I never knew that Professor Snape’s admonishments of you were so severe that they could produce such strong and defensive accidental magic.”

Accidental magic? That hadn’t been the defense Harry intended to use—he would have relied on the nature of his wards and the fact that they wouldn’t act unless Snape did something to provoke them—and he only stared at Dumbledore.

It was probably better to say nothing, though. Harry had found refuge in silence for many years. He intended to use it now.

*

Albus looked at the boy sitting across from him with a sense of weariness settling on his shoulders that he hadn’t felt since he looked at Ariana’s body.

How had he missed this? How he had he missed the growth of Severus’s enmity to the point that he would try to attack the boy? Albus couldn’t even blame the backfiring of Severus’s spell on his oath; that would have allowed him to injure, although not kill, Mr. Potter. And all Harry’s professors had reported that he wasn’t particularly gifted in his classes, which meant that it couldn’t have been any spell young Harry had done.

So Albus knew it was accidental magic. No child should have experienced such fear and anger that their power would strike out like that in a public setting, but Harry had not had a normal childhood or a normal adolescence.

“I—I didn’t know that you would take that view of it, sir,” Harry said at last, fiddling with the green tie around his throat, the one that Severus must have taken exception to. It was the only thing that fit with Harry’s anger and embarrassment removing Severus’s robes. “I thought you would—”

“Condemn you without a trial?” Albus smiled, trying to urge Harry to smile along with him, but Harry just looked solemn. Albus sighed. “I am capable of listening to both sides of the story, Mr. Potter.”

“Of course, sir.”

But Harry was still looking at his lap as if he didn’t believe it. Albus shot a quick glance at young Mr. Nott. The boy was scowling at his lap, too, and biting his lip hard.

Albus wondered why he had come. Did he think he would need to be a character witness for Severus? If so, that was probably why he was angry now, at hearing that Albus didn’t intend to punish Harry.

Albus turned back to Harry and made his voice as soothing as he could. He didn’t want his office to blow up, either. “I am sorry for ignoring the years of torment that Professor Snape inflicted on you, Mr. Potter. I know that you no longer take Potions and do not have to interact with him in the classroom. But I wondered if you would be interested in trying on the Sorting Hat again, so that you do not have to deal with him as your Head of House, either.”

Harry’s head flew up, and his eyes widened. There was so much surprise and what Albus thought was cautious hope in the back of them. “I—what, sir? I thought no one was allowed to try it on more than once.”

Albus chuckled and turned to pick up the Hat from the shelf behind him. In truth, he was experiencing his own version of cautious hope. If Harry was in Gryffindor, then Albus would be able to trust him with more secrets, since he wouldn’t be constantly surrounded by Death Eaters’ children. Perhaps even give him James’s cloak without worrying that someone was about to steal it.

“I think that these are unusual circumstances,” he said, and held the Hat out. “Please, Mr. Potter, humor an old man who played his own part in your troubles.”

*

Harry reached for the Hat slowly, feeling as if he was moving underwater. There was once a time when he would have given anything to be Sorted into Gryffindor. He still often thought of how much easier his life would have been.

And Ron had been looking at him from the Gryffindor table. They weren’t friends now, but the memories of the day they had been comforted Harry all the time. Maybe there was a chance they could resume it for at least a few months if Harry joined Gryffindor.

But…

Harry swallowed and put the Hat on his head, not wanting to think the thoughts. It didn’t fall over his eyes the way it had when he was eleven.

Hello, Mr. Potter, the Hat whispered into his head. It’s not often that I get a chance to speak a second time with someone who isn’t a school official.

You said I would make my real friends in Slytherin, Harry thought back, as fiercely as he could. You were an idiot.

The Hat rustled as if uneasy. I did make a mistake, Mr. Potter, and for that, I am sorry. I should have heeded your pleas to go somewhere other than Slytherin. But you are a different person now than you were at eleven, are you not?

Harry swallowed and nodded. He ignored Dumbledore’s curious gaze and what felt like a piercing one from Nott. A lot more ruthless. A lot worse.

A lot more practical, I would say. And there are goals that you have decided on and that nothing will prevent you from reaching. That seems ambitious to me.

Harry smiled a little grimly. So?

“SLYTHERIN!” said the Hat.

Harry took it off and handed it back to the Headmaster, who was watching him with something like sorrow. “I think it’ll be all right, sir,” he said as calmly as he could. “I’ll keep my interactions with Professor Snape to a minimum. If you tell him to stay away from me and give my detentions to someone else if I earn them, then things should be all right.”

Professor Dumbledore nodded slowly and put the Hat back on its shelf. “All right, Mr. Potter. I did want to mention that my office is open to you if you ever need to speak with me.” He gave Harry a heavy glance.

Harry wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. He sat and smiled until Dumbledore waved a hand and said something about how Snape would stay away from him from now on, and then he stood up and left.

Nott walked beside him in absolute silence, at least until they had put a couple of corridors between them and the gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office. “Why do you think he wanted to Sort you into another House?” he asked.

Harry shrugged. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have answered, but Nott had saved him from getting hit with a bunch of wooden shrapnel and was weird enough that not answering him might mean something worse happened. “Some of it probably was that he thought I would be better off away from Snape. And some of it might be because he thinks I was supposed to be a Gryffindor, like a lot of people thought my first year.”

“You’re the perfect Slytherin. I can’t see why anyone would think you would ever fit in Gryffindor.”

Nott’s voice had a strange sound. Harry turned around and narrowed his eyes at him. “Yeah, I can’t see why anyone would think that the House I’ve been an outcast in for six years wasn’t the perfect fit for me.”

Nott looked at the floor. “I’m sorry for that.”

“You can’t apologize for other people’s actions, so don’t try.”

“I wasn’t. I was still apologizing for mine.”

Harry shook his head. “Just—go away, Nott.” And he turned and walked down the corridor, relieved when Nott didn’t try to follow.

*

Theo stood where he was and took slow, deep breaths, closing and opening his fists in a regular pattern that Father had taught him to control himself.

The mere thought of someone taking Potter away and putting him in a different House was…distressing.

Theo would have to figure out why and also how to control his reactions. But for now, he stood still and let himself see, over and over again, the operations of what could only be wards on Professor Snape.

Intent-based wards were common, of course. But they usually needed Runes or at least Arithmancy, and to be anchored hours ahead of time.

Potter seemed to have been keeping wards with him that weren’t anchored but were triggered, primed to go off in Snape’s face. He seemed to have left his tie sloppy on purpose.

If he had done all that…

It spoke to a level of foresight and planning that Theo hadn’t known he had. And it spoke to a level of confidence that had certainly increased since Theo had confronted him about his wandless magic in the library.

It also spoke to a complete flattening of the laws of magical theory concerning wards that Theo was familiar with.

Theo ended up shaking his head. At the moment, he didn’t think he could do anything that would help him understand Potter or help Potter without his knowing, either. It was best to back off and continue to work on his project of apologizing to people who would accept it. Longbottom was next.

*

Harry turned around with Transfiguration books in his arms, and recoiled so hard that he almost dropped them.

There was a letter in a plain white envelope with a discreet red seal on it sitting on his library table. The table was still contained in wards of Harry’s own design, and no one could have bypassed them without his knowing. Not even an owl could have done it.

Harry waved his hand, and his wandless magic caught the letter and turned it over. The envelope then got subjected to all the detection charms that Harry could bring to bear on it. He was looking for hostile intent, curses, and poison, but also for some sign of how it had got past the wards.

The only result he got was a brief, blurry blast of blue light that didn’t tell him anything, and oddly had been the response to one of the spells to find out how the envelope had got past the wards. Harry shook his head, let the letter fall to rest on the table, and drew up one of the wards in front of him to shield himself. Then he flipped a hand to open the letter, noting that the red seal bore what looked like a rearing cobra.

Nothing exploded out of it. A piece of folded parchment was the only thing that it contained. Harry frowned and floated it up in front of him, then brought it closer, although he left it on the other side of the ward.

Dear Mr. Potter, it began, in a flowing sort of hand that Harry was pretty sure he’d never seen before.

Reports have come to me of your intense use of magic against Professor Severus Snape in the middle of the Great Hall. Most people seem convinced it was accidental magic. But I believe it might have been a ward. Perhaps something like this?

Harry studied the circle of runes on the parchment with narrowed eyes. Yes, that might have been the sort someone else would use to create a ward like his.

Harry had used plain will and intent, building on a simpler ward that could be cast as an incantation, but other people could achieve the same thing different ways.

He went back to reading the letter.

To build and hold such wards in check, to make them portable, is an astonishing feat in one so young. I feel that it would be to our benefit to meet. I am an accomplished wardmaster myself. I could take you on as an apprentice or recommend you to someone who would. I understand that you might not want to stay in Britain, after the way it has treated you. Luckily, I have international connections.

You will be rightly wary of this offer. For that reason, if you send me back a letter agreeing to meet, I will send you a parchment with an oath signed in my own blood swearing not to harm you during our meeting or on your way to or from it. I have no doubt that a wardmaster of your strength would manage to use my own blood against me in unpleasant ways even if I did not break the oath, so I will give you no reason to do so.

If you agree to meet, simply place your left thumb over my signature. If you want more information, use the right. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Wardmaster Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Harry stared at the letter some more. He could believe that someone would have reported the scene in the Great Hall to their parents, but why the parents would reach out to a wardmaster, he had no idea.

Unless this Riddle had a child at Hogwarts himself and knew that way? It was possible, Harry had to admit. He didn’t even know everyone in Slytherin all that well, let alone people in other Houses or years. That was a natural consequence of keeping his head down so much and being isolated.

If this man did have international connections…

On the other hand, all Harry knew about him was what was stated in the letter. He didn’t even know for sure if a blood oath on parchment worked the way the letter said it did. He would have to research that.

Harry did the cautious thing, the Slytherin thing, and pressed his right thumb over the signature. The letter flashed once, turning as bright red as a Howler for a moment, and then disappeared.

Harry sighed and slapped the Transfiguration books he still held onto the library table. International offer or not, he still had to study for his NEWTS.

But the idea lingered in the back of his mind, distrust that he could have drawn positive attention outside the school and unrelated to his fame crossbreeding with the hope that he had.

Chapter Text

“I d-don’t know why I get so n-nervous even without Professor Snape right beside me,” Longbottom whispered, and bent over the simmering cauldron.

Theo reached out and patiently stopped him from adding mint leaves that hadn’t been properly shredded and would clog the potion and prevent Longbottom from stirring it the way he should. “I think it’s because you associate him with Potions, so after a while it’s as if you sense him even when he’s not there.”

“Oh.” Longbottom blinked at him. “That’s actually a g-good reason.”

Theo gave him a thin smile. Longbottom had demanded that Theo help tutor him in Potions so that he stood a chance of taking the NEWT privately not long after the end of their seventh year. It was an atonement that Theo was perfectly happy to undertake, especially since he could bring Longbottom to his own warded lab in the dungeons and brew there.

And Longbottom wasn’t bad company as long as someone was there to watch over his mistakes and keep him from making them.

“Wh-why can’t I add the dragonfly wings yet?” Longbottom asked, when Theo reached out and prevented his hand that held them from coming near the cauldron.

“When you look at the instructions, you’ll see that they need to be added after the shredded mint leaves. And the mint leaves have to be shredded all the way first.”

“Oh.” Longbottom thought a moment. “Until they look like caterpillars were eating them?”

Theo blinked. “I suppose they might,” he conceded. He didn’t know for sure, but if it was easier for Longbottom to picture them that way… “Let’s try it.”

And so they did, and the mint leaves, when they let them cautiously drift into the cauldron, were shredded finely enough to have made Snape proud. And seeing the way Longbottom beamed made something go to sleep in Theo that had been awake all his life.

I can do this. I can really make up for what I did.

*

“Nott.”

Nott glanced over his shoulder. He’d been about to leave the common room, Potions book tucked under his arm and an abstracted look on his face. It wasn’t time for NEWT Potions, so Harry didn’t know what he was doing, but he was trying not to pay too much attention to Nott. It would only encourage the bastard.

“Yes, Potter?” Nott’s voice was low, his eyes flickering back into the common room as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear their conversation.

Well, Harry didn’t, either, to be fair. He gave Nott a choppy nod and stood up. “I thought of something you can do to start making up for what you did to me during the last six years.”

Nott blinked and then focused entirely on him. It was unnerving, given what that gaze had led to in the past. There were times that Harry wanted to stop speaking, in fact, and just run far away from the consequences he had brought on himself by standing up to Nott and attacking Snape.

But he had come this far, and there were questions that Nott was the most likely person to answer honestly.

“What is that, Potter?”

“I want you to ask you some questions about warding, and I want you to answer honestly.” Harry thought it was probably unlikely that Nott had heard specifically of Tom Marvolo Riddle, but you never knew. And Harry still—well, he still thought his wards were less powerful than it seemed they were, even if he knew otherwise now about his wandless magic. He had to have some way of judging that and shedding his own inaccurate perceptions.

Nott nodded slowly. “All right. Do you want to speak of this later today, or perhaps tomorrow?”

“Why not now?”

“I’m on my way to Potions tutoring with Longbottom at the moment.”

Harry stared at him. “Since when in the world do you offer tutoring?”

“That’s what he wanted to make up for what I did to him.”

Harry pondered that for a second, then discarded the notion. Obviously, he knew less about Longbottom than he’d thought, but it wasn’t like they’d ever been friends, either. “All right. This afternoon? Free period?” Neither he nor Nott had continued with Care of Magical Creatures, so they had that block free together.

“Yes, all right. Do you want to meet in the library or somewhere else?”

“Library. The table where I hurt you.” Harry smiled at Nott and waited for him to say something about the wards that had injected ice crystals into his hands, or retreat. Part of him was braced for Nott to start the taunting and bullying all over again, the minute he thought he had a chance.

But Nott just nodded and said, “Very well,” and then turned and left, the door to the common room shutting behind him.

Harry was still staring after him when Malfoy’s nasal, whining voice came from behind him. “Potty wee Potter, what are you doing?”

Harry turned around, and his very desire made the air beside him begin to stir into the semblance of a shining ward. He fought back the temptation to launch it at Malfoy with an effort. They were in the middle of the common room, and plenty of people would decide it wasn’t accidental magic this time. “None of your business.”

His voice was somewhat clipped in spite of himself. Malfoy looked delighted, maybe because it was the first time in years Harry had answered back. “I think it is,” he said, and folded his arms. “I think it very much is.”

Harry smiled a little. The pounding of blood and adrenaline in his ears told him this was probably a bad idea, but he was at the point where he didn’t care. “Oh? Why?”

“I’m at the top of the hierarchy, Potter,” Malfoy said, in a condescending voice he’d probably learnt from Snape. “And if you think that you can do whatever you like and speak to whoever you want—”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d care about me speaking to Nott.”

“Tell me why that is, Potter.”

“I’d be delighted, Malfoy.” Harry lowered his voice a little, and some people would have taken warning from that tone, but no one except Snape had ever accused Malfoy of being the smartest student in their year. “Because I’d thought you’d want to avoid Nott. He put you down like the Crup you are, didn’t he?”

A sharp gasp sounded from several corners of the common room, and Malfoy turned grey. Harry smiled. It wasn’t very Slytherin-like to speak openly of something like that, but then, it wasn’t supposed to be Slytherin-like to bully people in your House, either.

I’m the exception to the rule. For once, his thoughts held no bitterness.

“What did you say?” Malfoy whispered.

“I said.” Harry moved forwards one step and enunciated perfectly, shaping the air beside him into a ward with idle stirs of his fingers. “He put you down. Like the Crup. You are.”

It occurred to him that perhaps he was dragging Nott into a battle Nott wouldn’t want to involved in, but Harry pushed that thought aside. Nott still owed him for six years of bullying, and he had started this by attacking Malfoy in the first place.

“Say it one more time, Potter.” Malfoy’s hand hovered near his wand.

“I don’t think I need to,” Harry said, and snapped his fingers to send the ward hurtling towards Malfoy when he did draw his wand.

This time, Harry had a specific purpose in mind, and the ward didn’t deflect one of Malfoy’s spells or affect his clothes or hand. Instead, it inflicted what Harry privately considered the most terrible consequence of his clash with Snape, and snapped Malfoy’s wand into three clean pieces as he brandished it. Two of the pieces dropped to the floor with audible thumps.

In the ensuing silence, Harry looked up at Malfoy from beneath his eyelashes, smiled a little, and said softly, “Oops.”

Malfoy stared at the jagged splinters of his wand and said nothing. He seemed dazed. Maybe he didn’t know what had happened. Harry gave him a single wink and then turned his back and walked towards the door from the common room.

His back tingled, and he kept one hand poised at his side, ready to launch another ward if he had to.

Nothing happened. There were a few murmurs, but the people who made them glanced away when Harry met their eyes.

Harry couldn’t help smiling as he stepped out through the door of the common room. He would go to his warded rooms and work on Potions for a bit, in preparation for the NEWT.

But he didn’t think he would need to watch the memory of him and Ron on the train. Not today.

*

Theo paused a moment before he rounded the last corner of the shelves next to the library table. He examined his hand with critical eyes. No, it wasn’t trembling. It was all right. He would look as cool and composed as he possibly could when he’d just heard the news bubbling and boiling in the Slytherin common room.

But still.

Malfoy’s wand, broken. Such a precise and powerful application of a ward meant—

Theo shook his head. It meant certain things for him. It hadn’t changed his standing with Potter, though. He had to remember that. Even Potter asking for his help wouldn’t mean that he wanted to hear Theo’s thoughts on this particular matter.

Settled in mind and body, Theo stepped around the bookshelf and nodded to Potter. “Do you want to begin with the Arithmancy of warding, or something else?”

Potter lifted his gaze from his book, which was hovering in front of him without anything to hold or turn it. He could have cast a spell like that with his wand, Theo thought, but it was unlikely that he had. “Do I look like I need your help with that, Nott?”

“No, but I don’t know where you want to begin.”

Potter’s cool green eyes met his, while Potter tapped a finger on his chin and regarded him. Theo held himself still. He wouldn’t sit down without being invited, and he wouldn’t show what that look and the thought of the power behind it did to him.

Suffice to say that my thoughts are no longer about what kind of asset Potter can be to the Nott family, Theo thought, and pushed away other, less self-conscious thoughts about how he wanted Potter to touch him.

“I want to know if you’ve ever heard of a wardmaster named Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

Sometimes it was a good thing that Potter wasn’t a typical Slytherin who would have known how to use his power years ago. Theo knew that Potter wouldn’t despise him for the sudden widening of his eyes. “The most renowned wardmaster in Europe? Yes, of course I’ve heard of him.”

“I haven’t.”

“Your study of the field has been less than formal.”

Potter stared at him, and then let out a harsh cackle of laughter that made Theo jump in place. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it. Oh, sit down, Nott, you look ridiculous standing there. I don’t know why you haven’t pulled out a chair already.”

One doesn’t sit in front of the powerful unless invited, Theo thought, but he nodded and took a chair. There were a lot of things he wouldn’t want to say in front of Potter. That was all right. He had said too much aloud in the past six years.

*

Nott was acting strange.

Harry thought about it, observing Nott with narrowed eyes, and finally decided to ignore it. The prat had been acting strange since Harry had cornered him on his broom. It was fine to continue ignoring that, he thought.

“I want to know if you recognize what this ward is meant to do,” he said, and pulled out a piece of parchment. He’d used his Pensieve to view the memory of the ward on the disappearing letter, and he was fairly confident that he’d got the sketch right.

Nott leaned over the parchment, and frowned. “Not exactly. It has something to do with intent, but wards aren’t my specialty.”

Intent was close enough, Harry supposed. At least Riddle didn’t appear to have lied to him.

But it raised a different kind of puzzle. Why would a renowned wardmaster, someone known all over the continent, apparently, reach out to Harry based on garbled stories that wouldn’t tell the truth? Riddle might have guessed the truth, but still. There had to be more tempting targets for apprenticeship.

How can I get the right answers from Nott if he doesn’t know enough about warding?

Harry tapped his fingers on the table for a moment, while Nott waited quietly. Harry tried not to enjoy that. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who enjoyed other people waiting on his every move.

At last, he thought of a question that might give him the right answer even with Nott’s scant knowledge of warding. “I’ve heard some of the sixth-years say something about you wanting to study spellcrafting. How long does it take to invent a new spell?”

Nott blinked at him for endless moments. Harry didn’t know why. He waited for an answer, and Nott finally nodded and said, “It depends on how closely the spell relates to an existing spell.”

“So if you wanted to invent a version of Lumos that couldn’t be put out by Nox, that would be easier than if you wanted to invent a light charm that was completely different from Lumos in the way it looked and acted?”

“Yes. That’s—yes.”

“All right. Say that you did want to invent a version of Lumos that Nox couldn’t extinguish. How long do you think that would take?”

Nott pulled a sheet of parchment out of his bag and began to scribble on it. Harry leaned over. It looked like mostly Arithmancy, which surprised him, since he’d thought spellcrafting depended more on Runes. But then he realized that Nott was probably using the maths to predict how long inventing the spell would take.

“Probably a year at my current level of skill,” Nott murmured at last, sitting back. “Nine months if I essentially did nothing else and only stopped to eat and sleep.”

Harry blinked, hard. He hadn’t thought it would take anywhere near that long. Then again, he knew virtually nothing about spellcrafting.

“Potter?”

Nott was staring at him. Harry leaned back in his chair a little so that he wouldn’t look so weak and half-shrugged. “I can come up with new wards on the fly.”

Nott shivered and closed his eyes. Harry stared at him. Nott was very strange and might not prove to be much of a help after all if he just shook all the time.

*

He really does have no idea how powerful he is. How much he could have. How much someone could want him.

Theo shoved aside images of falling to his knees in front of Potter. There was so much mixed up in that, including his own longing to make up for what he had done to Potter and his love of powerful magic and a swelling desire that he had never known was part of him.

And it wouldn’t happen. Potter had made it clear that he didn’t even want atonement from Theo, let alone—anything else.

“Nott?”

Potter’s voice was low and bewildered. Theo looked up, shaking his head a little, smiling, and leaned back in his chair. “It’s fine. I will say that I think it unremarkable that Wardmaster Riddle should have reached out to you, if that’s true. He would have known how long inventing a ward like that would take, and he would have known it unlikely that you would have been working on it as a sixth-year student.”

Potter nodded, his eyes going distant. Theo held back the impulse to say something else. He couldn’t. Yes, he wanted Potter, wanted to be important to Potter, but Potter had made it clear where they stood. Even being allowed this close, to offer information to Potter, was more than Theo had thought he would get.

“All right,” Potter said abruptly. “So I think that I’ve made a decision.” He stood up and began packing his books away.

“May I know what it is?”

Theo barely heard his own words emerge from his throat. Potter halted and stared at him. Theo swallowed in the face of those lambent eyes, and hoped that his ability to control his expression was as good as the other Slytherins and his father had complimented him on.

“The wardmaster’s offered me an apprenticeship,” Potter said at last. “I told him I would have to think about it, because I knew nothing about him and had no way of judging if his offer was sincere. What could I give him in return? But now, I might know.” He raised and dropped one shoulder. “It’s not enough to make up for what you did, but thanks anyway, Nott.”

And he turned and walked away, leaving Theo so dizzy that he held onto the edge of the library table before he stood up.

He might…

He might have a chance in the future, if he was careful and willing to wait.

At the moment, Theo thought he would sell his soul for the opportunity.

Chapter Text

Once again, Harry was in the Headmaster’s office, with silver instruments scattered around him and a quietly crooning phoenix on the perch. But this time, the look in Dumbledore’s eyes was heavy, and he wasn’t offering smiles or sweets or the Sorting Hat.

Snape stood against the wall, scowling, his hands clasped behind his back. Harry was a little sorry that he wouldn’t get to see the damage he’d done.

“Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore said, with a long sigh that made it sound as if he was falling away down an invisible staircase. “Damaging Mr. Malfoy’s wand was unacceptable.”

“Really?” Harry smiled at him. “And what about what he’s been doing to me all these years?”

“He has done nothing to you,” Snape snarled.

Harry ignored him, eyes fastened on Dumbledore. The Headmaster at least blinked and wrinkled his forehead as if he was trying to recall what Harry meant. “What would that be, Harry?” he asked finally, after seeming to make a valiant attempt to think it through.

“Curses. Hexes. Jinxes. Stealing my things. Tripping me down stairs, resulting in at least five trips to the hospital wing. I can’t even remember how many trips I made because of the spells he used. Taunting me. Calling me names. Freak. The son of a Mudblood. Idiot. Weakling. No one ever did anything about those things, probably because my Head of House hates me for stupid irrational reasons that he’s never disclosed. Why should you get involved when I snapped Malfoy’s wand?”

Dumbledore blinked rapidly and sat back a little from the desk. Meanwhile, Snape took a long step forwards. Harry’s hand dropped to his side, and the air stirred with a forming ward.

“Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore said at last, slowly. “I never heard about any of that.”

“Probably because Snape never reported it to you,” Harry said, smiling pleasantly and ignoring the murmur of “Professor Snape, Harry. “And even though I gave up on reporting anything to him after the spring term of my first year, I know that he still heard about it, because Malfoy would brag and Snape would taunt me about it in class when I still had Potions. I also refuse to believe that you’re ignorant of the amount of detentions Snape assigned me for things like breathing too loudly and the way I got treated by Malfoy in the Great Hall, where you could see it. Sir.”

Dumbledore was silent. Harry could be silent, too, and he waited, ignoring the way that Snape tried to loom over him. He knew, now, that he could strike back. Even if he received detention because Dumbledore wouldn’t think it was accidental magic anymore, Harry would simply hurt Snape until he backed off.

“I never knew that,” Dumbledore finally repeated.

“Now you do,” Harry said softly. “If the reason that you care about me snapping Malfoy’s wand when you never cared about what I suffered is because of who he is and that is father is on the Board of Governors—”

“No, Harry, of course not. Blood status does not matter, and I strive to treat all my students equally.”

Strive, and fail. “I’ll serve the detentions if you assign them,” Harry said. “Or if Snape does. But not with Snape. I won’t apologize to Malfoy. I won’t pay for his new wand. I won’t do anything that implies remorse on my part when he wouldn’t apologize for six years of relentless bullying. I’m done pretending that I don’t care about that.”

Dumbledore just sat there as if mystified, tapping his fingers slightly on his desk. Harry continued to watch him, and to keep the air coiled and ready. He doubted he would need to use a ward against Dumbledore, but Snape was still a possibility.

“To snap a wand,” Dumbledore said at last, “the core of a witch’s or wizard’s strength, practically part of his or her personality…”

“Would you have given me the same speech if Malfoy had snapped my wand, the way he threatened to do years ago? Or would you have shaken your head and ignored me because it apparently only matters when I strike back?”

Dumbledore peered at him through his glasses. Harry peered back.

“It has now happened twice,” Dumbledore said quietly, no humor in his voice. “I thought it accidental when it happened to Professor Snape, but it was not, was it? You deliberately made the choice to harm Mr. Malfoy and Professor Snape as much as you could.”

“As much as six years of bullying harmed me?”

“Mr. Potter, we are not here to discuss that—”

“Ah,” Harry said, and felt something inside him relax. He didn’t enjoy that Dumbledore was putting himself on the opposite side, exactly, but at least a teacher being there was familiar. “We’re only here to discuss my retaliation, right, sir? Not what I was retaliating for?”

Dumbledore watched him in silence for another long moment. Harry kept part of his attention on the Headmaster and part on Snape. If either of them made a move, he was ready.

*

It had been a long time since Albus had felt this weary.

He had hoped—it was no more than a distant, dusty hope at this point, but still—that Harry had not been blunted and tarnished by his experiences within Slytherin. Albus had known of Severus’s grudge, and he had seen the way that Harry had sat at a distance from his Housemates in the Great Hall, but he hadn’t known the extent of the bullying that Harry had described.

It seemed that the blunting had gone deeper than Albus had feared, making Harry not corrupt but callous, and indifferent to the pain of others. He had not been able to reach across House lines. He had not been able to find friends in his own House.

Albus did have questions about the way that young Mr. Nott had rescued Harry from the flying wooden splinters of Severus’s wand, but he doubted Harry would answer them if he asked them now. Harry’s clear green eyes were too bright, too hostile.

“Words would have been acceptable to answer words. Hexes to answer hexes. Not the destruction of a wand.”

Harry studied him for a moment longer. Albus frowned some more at him. Harry only watched as if he didn’t really understand the words, and then shrugged a little.

“Are you going to have me break my wand, sir?”

Albus blinked, flummoxed. He couldn’t tell what Harry was feeling at the moment, but it seemed a sincere question. “No, of course not, my boy.”

“You should, Albus,” Severus said, his voice low and ugly. Albus shot him a chiding glance. Severus didn’t notice, his glittering eyes fixed on Harry, who stared back at him. “It would be nothing but justice.”

“You were trying to use a Blasting Curse on me,” Harry said, and he had an ugly smile of his own that came and went. “Where is the justice in that?”

“Mr. Potter, Severus, please,” Albus said, and sat back, shaking his head. Honestly, it was like dealing with children. “Mr. Potter, you are going to serve detention every evening for the rest of the term. It will rotate between different professors, and you will be expected to copy lines and read books about the supreme importance of a wand to wizards and witches.”

Harry twitched his head towards Severus. “Fair warning, sir. If you want me to attend any with him, then I simply won’t attend them.”

“I will take what would have been Professor Snape’s evenings.”

Harry just nodded, not turning a hair. Albus stared at him, frustrated, longing to go back in time and make a difference, and knowing there was nothing he could do that would make that difference. The bullying had been done. The damage to Severus’s wand and hand—although that had been mostly healed—was done, and now Mr. Malfoy would suffer in trying to find another wand that would choose him.

He would undoubtedly find one, if Albus knew Garrick Ollivander at all. But he would struggle for months trying to find the same level of comfort with it that he had with his old, broken one.

The most disturbing part, Albus thought, was that he had the feeling Harry would simply smile and shrug if Albus told him that.

“You may go,” Albus said wearily. “Your first detention is at six on Monday evening in my office.”

Harry nodded, and stood, and glided out of the office like a shadow.

“Bad blood will out,” Severus growled, flexing his hands. He had a new wand, but it was even worse for older adults to adapt to a new wand than it was for a teenager, and Albus didn’t blame him for not drawing it. “I told you about that one, Albus. I warned you.”

“You spent six years warning me and putting him in detention for things like breathing, Severus. And you cast a Blasting Curse at him.”

“What happened the minute I stopped? He broke Mr. Malfoy’s wand.”

Albus sighed, and said nothing. In some ways, he would have liked to punish Severus more severely for trying to maim a student, at the very least, and in other ways, he was very much aware of how much he would depend on Severus as his spy when Voldemort made his move.

Albus knew that a wardmaster calling himself Tom Marvolo Riddle had appeared in Europe, but so far, Riddle had not called his followers to him, had made no raids, had never struck at Muggleborns. If Albus acted before he did, then his efforts to convince people that Voldemort was alive would make Albus himself look mad and delusional.

Magical Britain had become used to peace. Albus dreaded how badly it would have to crack before they could accept that it had always been an illusion.

*

Harry studied the letter in front of him. Beside it were several journals, more recent publications than the ones that Harry had been using to study for his NEWTS, that held articles written by Wardmaster Riddle or commenting on his work.

He was a genius, from what Harry had been able to discover. A certified one.

But even he didn’t talk about anything like Harry’s wards.

Smiling thinly, Harry glanced down and read the letter again.

Dear Mr. Potter,

I applaud your caution. Not only do you have an admirable grasp of warding for one so young, but of course you would not want to enter into an apprenticeship contract without an assurance that I would not steal your secrets.

I will swear any oath you like that I will not take your secrets or harm you unless you decide to attack me first. Research the kind of oaths that can be sworn by writing with a Blood Quill and send me your choice.

I look forward to meeting you soon, and perhaps making you my apprentice.

Yours,
Wardmaster Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Harry had already looked up the oaths, and sent back his choice a few days before. Riddle would have to sign with a Blood Quill and would have to imbue the parchment with a bit of his magic to prove his sincere intent. Harry had kept Riddle’s letter, though, because it made his heartbeat pick up when he looked at it.

At last he was taking a concrete step towards the goal he had set himself when he realized that he should have enough study time for his NEWTS when he was no longer taking OWL classes like Potions: leaving magical Britain.

Nott had said that Riddle was a well-respected wardmaster in many places on the Continent, and from what Harry could see after researching the man’s work, that was true. Even if he didn’t want to take Harry on as an apprentice after meeting him, he should be able to give Harry some advice about where he could immigrate.

Harry, his smile still in place, went to put the journals away and attend his detention with Dumbledore.

*

It took everything in Theo to keep from pacing the Slytherin common room like an idiot. He sat in a corner with a book instead, one on the history of Arithmancy that he’d read many times before, and to all appearances, he was perfectly placid. But he raised his head at once when he heard the door open at nearly nine.

Potter walked into the common room, his face blank in the way that Theo had come to realize it’d been for most of the last two years. He paused when he saw Theo, and then he jerked his head at him and walked towards a far corner. The air around him stirred and shimmered with what must be a ward.

Theo didn’t bother trying to hide his impatience as he stood up and paced after Potter. The other people in the common room were either firsties and second-years who ducked the notice of seventh-years as much as possible, or people who had been avoiding looking at both Theo and Potter since Malfoy’s second punishment.

Malfoy was still out of school, presumably searching for a wand that would match him, or more likely, practicing to make sure that he wasn’t clumsy with the new one. The thought warmed Theo’s heart.

Potter turned around when they reached the corner, and gestured the ward into being. Theo relaxed with a sigh when he felt the air around them heat up in crisscrossing patterns, and reckoned it was simply a ward that would protect their privacy.

“What is it, Nott?”

“Why the fuck did they give you detention?”

Potter’s eyebrows twitched upwards. “I did break another student’s wand,” he said, mildly, but with a warning underneath the words that made Theo pause and try to wrestle his own indignation back under control. “I’m told that’s not acceptable.”

Theo rubbed his fingers back and forth over each other, a tell that he had managed to stop in public. Potter’s eyes darted to his fingers and then rose back to his face.

“Ah,” Potter said, “you’re not summoning wandless magic.”

Theo flicked a smile at him. “No,” he said. “I just—they didn’t give Malfoy detentions for his taunting. Or me. Or Crabbe or Goyle or Blaise. Why did Dumbledore decide that now was the right time?”

Potter shrugged. “He thought that my destroying Snape’s wand was accidental magic. Now he’s been proven wrong, and he’s angry about it. Plus I think he thinks differently about things he can see or hear about and things that were never reported to him. And finally, he told me wands were different than words or hexes.”

Theo sneered. “He sees his own perspective, but no one else’s.”

“Until a few weeks ago, I would have said the same thing was true of you.”

Theo met those green eyes that he sometimes felt now would decide his future, and swallowed and bowed his head. “I know,” he whispered. “I can offer no excuses except that I’ve changed my mind.”

“I still want to know why.”

“I started thinking about what you could have been, if I hadn’t bullied you,” Theo said. It was hard to pull the words from what felt like the depths of his stomach, but at the same time, he was consumed by a need for Potter to understand. “Accepted by Slytherin. An acclaimed Quidditch player. Someone who would probably already have multiple offers of apprenticeships and whose talents with wards and wandless magic would have been recognized. I bullied you to pass the time, because I was bored, because I was ignorant. But I had to realize how thoroughly I had destroyed someone who could have been great.”

Expressions darted across Potter’s face, so fast that Theo couldn’t sort them out, no matter how avidly he watched. Then Potter shook his head a little and murmured, “It wasn’t like you were the only reason.”

Theo shrugged. “I know. But I was part of it, and I can never know how much damage I caused specifically. Plus, no one else seems likely to change their mind or regret it. And after I started thinking about it with you, I started thinking about it with other people. So I offered Potions tutoring to Longbottom, and Granger said that she wanted to practice dueling and a few other things with me.”

Potter considered him, the most open look he’d given Theo yet. Then he said, “Even if I was inclined to allow you to make it up to me, there’s nothing you can offer me like you’re offering it to them. I don’t trust you enough to duel against you, and I understand Potions better on my own.”

“I understand.”

“But you have something in mind.”

Potter had a Slytherin’s clear insight into other people when he could trust it, Theo thought, and brushed off thoughts about how he had been partially responsible for crippling that ability. “I do. But you’ve already made it clear that I can’t truly make it up to you. And this is something I thought of, not you, so I don’t know if you would want it.”

“What is it?”

“You could use me as a source of information, if you want. The way you did with information about Riddle and the ward. I can offer you information on who was a Death Eater in the past, their current plans, rumors of the Dark Lord’s capabilities, what I know about other Slytherins like Malfoy, some potential blackmail—”

“How would you know the parts about the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord?”

“My father was a Death Eater, and he trusts me.”

Potter’s eyes flew wide. He stared at Theo in silence for a few minutes, and Theo basked in it.

At last, Potter said, “I thought purebloods were all about family.”

“I would be pleased if you didn’t attack my father or use the information against him. But I accept that I can’t stop you. I can only offer it and hope you don’t.”

“You—would still be turning against him, though.”

“He wouldn’t be pleased with me if he knew. But I hold personal loyalties above family ones. There’s just never been anyone I could choose before.”

Potter continued to stare at him. Theo waited quietly. He felt as though he had just performed the most dazzling dueling exhibition of his life, and now he had simply to wait for the judgment. His heart beat with a gentle cadence. Everything was done. There was nothing more to be worried about.

Potter tilted his head. “I accept.”

Theo had never known what his father meant before about feeling like a sun had risen inside him—the way he’d described feeling when he met Mother—but he did now.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“I’ll destroy you if you betray me. Do you know that, Theo?”

Potter had taken a long step towards him, and his voice was low and mocking, his fingers crooked with magic spluttering around them. Theo knew he had chosen the first name only for intimidation purposes, too.

But it didn’t matter. Theo looked into Harry Potter’s green eyes and said, “I know it. You need never worry. I’ll swear any loyalty oath you like.”

Potter canted his head backwards and looked uncomfortable for the first time. But also cold enough to enthrall Theo. “I don’t want to trust something like that. You’ll prove yourself to me without one.”

“Yes,” Theo said. “Yes, I will.”

Potter’s face turned thoroughly bewildered, but he nodded and let the privacy ward fall.

Theo turned to watch him go. Potter didn’t look back.

He didn’t need to. Theo felt the thrum of what he had promised in all his heart and soul, another thing his father had told him about and that Theo had thought he would never find.

Now that he had, he would do all he could to prove himself worthy of it.

Chapter Text

“I have a meeting with Riddle in two days.”

Truthfully, Harry wasn’t sure what made him tell Nott that. It wasn’t like he really trusted Nott. Or thought he was useful beyond providing information. Part of him was always watching Nott, waiting for him to go back to being the bully he had been for so many years.

But Harry wanted to tell someone. And it wasn’t as though Nott had many people he could tell and expose Harry to. Most of the House was as wary of Nott as they were of Harry after what Nott had done to Malfoy. Dumbledore wouldn’t listen to him any more than he would the other Slytherins. And Snape probably had a grudge because Nott had decided, for reasons best known to himself, to rescue Harry from the blowback of Snape’s wand shattering.

Nott stopped working on his Arithmancy equation across the table in the library, and kept his head bowed for a long moment. Harry smiled a little. Wariness, respect—that was what he liked to see.

He still intended to leave Britain when his seventh year was done, but he was starting to think that he could have a lot of fun first.

“Can I come with you?”

That was the last question Harry had expected Nott to ask. He started at his confusing yearmate. Nott had lifted his head and was watching Harry with wide eyes. They didn’t have much emotion in them. Just wideness.

“He wouldn’t share anything with me if you were there,” Harry said shortly. “And if you think that you’re going to steal secrets you can use against me—” He snapped his fingers, and Nott twitched as his hands abruptly sparkled with ice. “Think again, Theo.”

Nott closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t want to steal your secrets.”

“Then why would you want to come?”

“I’ve read more about Riddle since we spoke about him the first time. I think he might be dangerous to you.”

“Oh, come on, Nott. He’s brilliant and published and has a lot more accolades than I’ll ever have. And it’s not like he’s the bloody Dark Lord.’

“And yet, you can do things that he can’t. He’s willing to offer you an apprenticeship sight unseen. What if he wants to steal your secrets? Wants to bind you up in an apprenticeship contract that would make you his servant?”

Harry paused. Nott’s eyes had changed, and more than enough emotion was filling them now, but Harry still a hard time telling what Nott was going on about. Nott was leaning a little forwards, and hadn’t glanced down at his hands where a few ice crystals still shone. His fingers tightened and flexed on the table, tightened and flexed, relaxed and released.

“What does it matter to you if he does?” Harry asked softly. “Then you would have your revenge for the way I bullied you on the broom, wouldn’t you?”

“You didn’t bully me.” Nott seemed to be struggling to say something, but finally settled for, “You woke me up.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Really? Would someone who only wants revenge be working with Longbottom and Granger?”

Harry had to admit that that part was the most puzzling thing about Nott since their confrontation on the pitch. Nott was acting as though he wanted to do good for other people. And he had bullied Longbottom and Granger, true, but there would have been no reason to help them as part of a long-term revenge plan. He could have focused all his efforts on Harry instead.

“You’ve accepted information from me,” Nott went on. “Trusted that information. If you believe that nothing has changed and I would just try to sabotage you or take revenge on you, why trust that?”

“I know I shouldn’t have allowed you to be useful.”

“Please don’t send me away.”

Nott seemed to have realized how needy he sounded, because he flushed a second later, and bowed his head. Harry eyed him. Nott was a little weirder than he had ever thought, stranger than the other bullies. Not that he’d acted different from them then, but he was now.

Harry sighed and tapped his fingers on the table again. Nott was strange, but so far he hadn’t turned on Harry. And honestly, Harry was more than confident of his ability to handle anything Nott threw at him.

“You can come with me to the meeting,” he said at last. “But if Riddle says you have to leave, you have to leave.”

“I can accept that as long as you’re the one who tells me that, and he’s not trying to command me.”

Harry relaxed a little. At least Nott did still have some of the same pride and hadn’t changed completely. That meant Harry might still be able to predict and outmaneuver him.

“Agreed.”

*

For some reason, Theo had assumed Wardmaster Riddle would send a Portkey, but Potter said it had been Apparition coordinates. So now they were waiting on the edge of Hogsmeade where the Hogwarts anti-Apparition protections gave out, and Potter was standing with his eyes locked on the moon.

Theo watched him. Potter out here looked entirely different from the victim Theo remembered during six years of school, the victim he had helped to create. Potter was quiet and still, the moonlight making his skin even paler, and highlighting a few scars Theo had never noticed before. But he also looked poised and confident, a wolf who could tackle an enemy.

“It’s time,” Potter murmured at last, and reached for Theo’s arm.

Theo had never liked Side-Along Apparating, but he had accepted that Potter wouldn’t want to share Riddle’s coordinates with him. Now, he gasped a little as he came out of the smoothest squeeze he had ever felt. Potter looked at him sidelong.

“All right, Nott?”

“Yes, fine,” Theo said, peering around at the area ahead of them.

It seemed to be a manor’s grounds, flat and scalloped with flowers, filled with glowing pools of moonlight. Theo didn’t recognize the exact grounds, though, and saw no sign of a house. Potter strode forwards as if he knew where he was going, so Theo had to follow, although his hand hovered above his wand.

Potter halted abruptly perhaps three dozen meters later, and Theo came alert. Potter looked around, and then uttered a quiet chuckle.

I want to hear him laugh more, Theo thought, setting himself another perhaps impossible goal.

“A test,” Potter said, sounding cheerful for some reason. He reached out, and gold sparkled in the air a centimeter from his fingertips. Theo frowned. He couldn’t think of any ward that sparkled that color.

Then again, there was a reason wards weren’t his specialty.

Potter laughed aloud, and then curled his fingers inwards and appeared to hook them in the air as if he was sliding them through loops in a piece of cloth. He yanked. There was a hissing noise that sounded surprised to Theo, although he didn’t know why, and then a pressure in the air he hadn’t paid attention to vanished.

“A test to see if I could sense it and dissipate it with my own magic,” Potter announced cheerily, and walked on.

Theo followed him, staring around and trying to catch a glimpse of another ward or even movement on the moonlight-streaked grounds. He saw nothing.

Potter is even more powerful than I thought.

*

There were two more wards before they reached a chair of ashen grey wood standing underneath the arching branches of a black tree. One was a subtle intent ward, a variation of the first, where any intention to dissipate the ward itself would make it attack. The second was supposed to respond to the presence of any being with magic.

Harry recognized them and broke them with growing exhilaration.

At least he takes me seriously. I don’t know how long that will last once he meets me, but he respects me enough to give me a difficult path.

But not so difficult that Harry couldn’t break through them. That was the thing that made Harry’s blood sing through him when he came to a halt in front of the figure seated on the throne and bowed. Nott bowed beside him, although Harry stopped paying attention to him after a few moments.

Wardmaster Riddle was more than compelling enough to hold all his attention.

He was a tall man, who didn’t look much older than Harry himself. His eyes were dark and liquid, his skin paler than Harry’s. He had carelessly tousled black hair that Harry was nonetheless sure had been carefully styled. And he had a wand of ebony that he toyed with in long fingers.

Harry met his eyes calmly as he straightened. It didn’t matter that this stranger had his wand drawn and Harry didn’t, even though for years he had tried to avoid that exact situation at Hogwarts. What mattered was that Harry had broken the wardmaster’s wards.

He could handle anything Riddle threw at him, just like he could with Nott.

“Greetings, sir,” Harry said quietly. He didn’t feel self-conscious at seeing Riddle’s poise and beauty, even though he knew he should have. Riddle had invited Harry here for his magical power and his skills. If he weren’t impressed with those, he would have no trouble sending Harry away. But Harry knew he would be judged fairly. “My name is Harry Potter, and this is my companion, Theodore Nott.”

Nott hissed a little as Harry spoke his first name. Harry made sure that his face was turned enough so that Nott couldn’t see his grin.

Riddle leaned forwards. His face coming more into the moonlight, which seemed to intensify around him in what was probably a wandless spell-effect, did nothing to lessen Harry’s impression of his handsomeness.

“Greetings, Harry Potter. I am impressed with the way that you broke the wards I set in your path when you were walking through the manor grounds. Will you tell me how you did it?’

Nott seemed to flinch. Harry supposed this was probably where the strange boy thought Riddle was going to steal Harry’s secrets.

But Harry didn’t mind sharing this. Riddle still had a more formidable reputation than he did, and he was the one who had been published and had been offering this apprenticeship. Harry didn’t care if other people eventually learned his trick of breaking wards. He would be on his way to creating other, newer tricks by then.

“Yes,” he said. “When I sensed the intent ward, I shaped a ward around my thoughts, inside my head. The ward couldn’t sense my intent, then, before I broke it. For the ward that was supposed to respond to the presence of beings with magic, I shaped the air around it.”

“The air?”

“The atmosphere,” Harry said. “Not the physical air.”

“Ah, yes, I see,” Riddle said, nodding slowly. Harry felt another leap of exhilaration at the thought that Riddle really did and would be able to suggest new techniques for Harry to learn that weren’t a complete departure from his own magic. “And that meant you turned its own magic against it? It attacked itself?”

“Yes, sir. You’re really good at this.”

Riddle threw his head back and laughed like a werewolf howling. One of their Defense professors had had a charm that played the sound. Harry just smiled, while Nott shivered and flinched next to him.

Nott was really weird.

“I should be good at this, should I not?” Riddle asked at last, letting his laughter subside. “Being a wardmaster.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” Harry said, but he refused to feel embarrassed. Riddle still looked intrigued, and that was good. He still wasn’t telling Harry to leave, and that made him an improvement on other professors like Snape.

Although even a flobberworm would be an improvement on Snape.

“Can you tell me why you have not sought an apprenticeship before this?” Riddle asked abruptly. “Surely you must have known what you could do was extraordinary. Surely you would have looked for a mentor?”

This was actually the part Harry had dreaded a lot more than the invitation or the fact that Riddle would probably have tests for him like the wards. He had to tell the truth, and he had to do it without looking like he was pathetic or like he was fishing for compliments.

He met Riddle’s eyes and spoke in the simplest, truest voice he could. “No one liked it when I was Sorted Slytherin. All the professors and most of the students thought that I was supposed to go to Gryffindor. My Head of House also hates me. So I studied on my own and came up with my own innovations. Because my roommates bragged and exaggerated their magical strength, I thought what I could do was normal or even weak. I’ve been studying hard for NEWTS, but with the intention of leaving magical Britain as soon as I could.”

He waited, letting his heartbeat slow to fill the silence. Riddle had a thoughtful look on his face, and he also hadn’t dismissed Harry out of hand, so Harry hoped that meant he would be able to see to the heart of things without being dismissive.

*

Potter wants to leave Britain?

Well, of course he did. Theo could admit that it made sense when he thought about it. No one here was his close friend. He had no reason to stay in the way that most people with family and friends did. And he must already know that damn few people in Britain would offer him any understanding or any chance to develop his magic.

But still…

No. No, please don’t leave, Theo thought, a thought he had no right to think, let alone speak aloud.

Of course, Potter didn’t hear his silent plea, still locked in a silent staring contest with Riddle. And he would have no reason to heed it if he did, given how awful Theo had been to him.

I shall have to be better. Enough to try and persuade him not to leave. Or to try and make sure that I could be invited to go along with him, or visit him.

“I am surprised,” Riddle began, and Theo snapped himself back to the present and the incredibly dangerous man they were facing, “that you would admit to being weak enough to be affected by the shunning of others.”

Potter bared his teeth. “I thought someone as brilliant as you wouldn’t be taken in by that mythos of the Boy-Who-Lived,” he murmured, his tone smooth and low and so sarcastic that Theo’s breath caught. “I was a child. I grew up in the Muggle world and had no idea that I was a wizard until my eleventh birthday. No, I wasn’t all-wise or superior enough not to be hurt. I was a child.”

Theo closed his eyes in a slow blink. He would have liked time to discuss what Potter had just admitted with him, but he thought it a risk in front of Riddle, and he kept his hand hovering near his wand, ignoring the chaos of his own thoughts.

Riddle blinked, too, and leaned back in his chair. “I did not know that you grew up with Muggles,” he said. “I am brilliant—” a warning undertone to his voice “—and I never believed the children’s stories of the Boy-Who-Lived. But I believe the common wisdom was that you had grown up in a sheltered environment with a magical foster family who would have been able to teach you what you needed to know.”

“Now you know better,” Potter said. “If you believe it would affect your desire to apprentice me—”

“I am smarter than that,” Riddle said, and his smile was much more a smile than Potter’s baring of teeth, but no less dangerous. “I find myself more intrigued than anything. Why did no one check up on you during your childhood?”

“I don’t know,” Potter said shortly. Theo wanted to touch his arm, to silently warn him not to show so much emotion, but Potter ignored him completely. “Perhaps I would have received some answers if I'd been Sorted into Gryffindor. The Headmaster intimated as much when he offered to re-Sort me.”

“What?” Riddle asked, his eyes widening slightly.

“Yes,” Potter said, planting his feet and bracing his shoulders. Theo thought he looked magnificent, and also that he should have acted as if he was anticipating an attack before this—unless he thought that would have insulted Riddle. “When he had me in his office for what he believed was the use of accidental magic against Severus Snape, he offered me the Sorting Hat. It put me back in Slytherin, of course.”

“Of course,” Riddle echoed, and shook his head a little, his smile widening. “I could have told the old man that would happen. Whatever you might have been six years ago, you are far past that now.”

Potter inclined his head and said nothing.

*

Harry thought so far, the conversation with Riddle had gone relatively well. The man should know what he was getting: someone weak in some ways, damaged in others, but still strong enough to produce wards of an unprecedented level of skill and strong enough to want an apprenticeship with someone brilliant.

Someone who could withstand the challenge.

Harry knew his worth, now, and he didn’t intend to accept a lesser offer.

Riddle leaned forwards a little more and studied Harry as if needing to see his face from another angle. Then he said, “I have something rather particular to say to you, Mr. Potter, but it will need to be without the presence of your companion. I trust that is agreeable?”

Harry nodded. He thought of trying to explain that Nott’s presence hadn’t really been his idea, but then he would probably look weak for letting Nott come along in the first place. He looked at Nott and gestured with his eyes more than his head.

Nott bowed and withdrew. Harry fought to keep his face from puckering in distaste. Yeah, he didn’t want to look weak or strange in front of Riddle, but he hated the idea that Nott was bowing to him now. It just made things even weirder.

Maybe the bow was for Riddle.

Riddle tapped his fingers on the arm of the throne-like chair and raised wards around them with that gesture. Harry tilted his head. Interesting. He could tell that the wards were linked to a particular feature of magic and would keep out people without that feature, but not exactly what it was.

Riddle leaned forwards, smiled a little, and said, “I am interested in more than one of the kinds of magic you can wield, Mr. Potter.”

Harry felt his eyes widen at the sound of Parseltongue. He wondered if Riddle had wanted to hide from Nott that he spoke it or just that he knew so much about Harry. But he said in the same language, “You’ve researched me thoroughly, then.”

“Perhaps it is otherwise with other wardmasters, but I would never take someone as an apprentice I did not know everything about. I have mastered other branches of magic as well, or have those at my command who have. I hope you understand that I will need to have one of my—associates read your thoughts for signs of hostile intent towards me and mine.”

Harry winced at the thought of being subjected to a Legilimens’s power, but nodded. “And I trust that you will say I will have wards around me when that happens, to spring traps in my thoughts on him if he tries to read more than he is allowed.”

Riddle gave that howling laugh again. Harry was still able to stand in front of it and watch Riddle with eyes that he hoped didn’t give much away, although knowing Riddle’s reputation, he probably read a lot more than Harry would have hoped he would.

“Indeed. I am excited to have an apprentice that I can learn so much from and about, Mr. Potter. Let us begin discussing the agreement.”

*

When Potter came out of the ward that Riddle had raised around them, he glanced at Theo and gave him a single, distant nod. Theo took that as an invitation to fall in beside Potter as he paced towards the Apparition point.

No wards ambushed them on the way back, Theo couldn’t help noticing. Then again, it probably wouldn’t have served any purpose. Riddle presumably had the knowledge of Potter that he wanted.

“What did he say?” Theo asked, when they were beyond any reasonable person’s earshot and Potter had reached for his arm again.

“I’m sorry, you expect me to divulge something that he asked me to keep secret?”

Theo flushed. “Not that. Just—I didn’t know if you had reached an agreement to become his apprentice or not.”

“I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

“You wouldn’t have to.”

Something, maybe his mild tone or maybe not, made Potter stop and tilt his head at Theo. He nodded after a moment and murmured, “Yes, we reached an agreement. But there are a number of stipulations we need before we’ll be able to trust each other, and I won’t be able to bring you along for those.”

“I understand.”

“Do you, now.”

“Yes, I do.” Theo met Potter’s eyes and tried to convey as much calm reassurance as he could. “I think it’s great that you’ll have this apprenticeship. And the stipulations, because Riddle could be very dangerous if he wanted to.”

“You have no idea,” Potter murmured with an odd tilt to his lips. “But I trust that everything will work out the way we want it to, or I’ll pursue studies on my own and not take up the apprenticeship.” He held out his arm.

Theo grabbed on, already thinking, as they Disapparated, of the other ways that he might be useful to Potter in the event that he wanted to leave Britain.

*

So that is Harry Potter.

Even though no one was there to listen, Tom Riddle—who had been nothing more than a memory in a diary until Ginny Weasley’s soul and magic resurrected him—laughed again, for the soul-deep irony of it.

He had come back to life madly determined to do everything he could to gain power and live. He had quickly discovered that his own madness was nothing next to that of his elder counterpart, who had resurrected himself with the Philosopher’s Stone a year earlier. But that very insanity was a weakness that meant Tom had put himself firmly in charge in their relationship. Voldemort was on a leash, and Tom had built his power and reputation quietly, secure in the knowledge that Dumbledore would have told no one about his former identity.

He always did like his secrets, that one. And now I don’t even have to worry about the prophecy that Voldemort kept obsessing about. Dumbledore has lost Harry Potter.

I will bind him up, to our mutual advantage, and if I cannot hold him on a leash, I will make sure that he is never any danger to me. Why should he attack his loyal master, who shares so much information with him? Why should he not, in fact, fight for him, against a man his loyal master tells him is dangerous and who has damaged Harry himself?

You have lost, Albus, and you have no idea when the war began.

Chapter Text

“Why have you been spending so much time with Potter?”

Theo was a little surprised that his fellow Slytherins had taken so long to approach him about this, and more surprised that it was Pansy who’d asked. They had been close in their second and third years, but hadn’t talked much since then. He eyed her thoughtfully. She was sitting on the chair across from his in Theo’s own dark corner of the common room, spinning a strand of black hair around one finger.

Her eyes were not at all casual.

“For reasons I don’t think you’ll understand,” said Theo. He might as well warn her.

Pansy’s mouth pulled in a little. “If you think I’m stupid—”

Theo managed to restrain a sigh. “It’s not that. It’s because my reasons are personal, and I’ve come to regret bullying Potter. I reckon you haven’t, so it won’t make sense.”

Pansy sat up slowly. Theo watched her, one hand resting close enough to his wand holster to draw it in an instant. But Pansy was just blinking and looking at him as if Theo had changed into a mooncalf when she wasn’t looking.

“Why would you ever change your mind?”

“Because I ruined what could have been a great wizard,” Theo said. It wasn’t his place to tell her that Potter was still a great wizard. “He showed me his potential, and how I was responsible for crippling it. I regret that.”

“But if you destroyed a rival…”

Theo laughed before he could stop himself, and saw more than one head snap in their direction. He ignored them as best he could. “I wasn’t bullying him because he was a rival, Pansy. That wouldn’t be great either, but it would be more understandable. I was bullying him because he was a half-blood and I was bored.”

Pansy’s mouth got smaller still. “You think his blood status doesn’t matter?”

“Not next to his magical power.” Father had emphasized that again and again, although more in the nature of Theo learning from and then surpassing Muggleborns in school rather than giving up on the ideal of blood purity. There was no reason to disdain someone who could be useful. “You saw what he did to Snape and Malfoy. Are you going to argue he’s weak?”

“Not weak. Soft.”

Theo shook his head slowly. “You’re seeing the wrong things, Pansy.”

“I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t know that I want to know.” Pansy shifted back and forth for a moment, her hand clenching down at her side as if she wanted to reach up and throttle Theo. Or maybe Potter. “Not if it’s made you this.”

“If it’s made me what?”

Pansy looked him straight in the eye, ignoring what some other people would have considered a threat. “This boring version of yourself. You serve someone now. What fun is that?”

Theo blinked. He wondered if he should be surprised that Pansy had seen it before Potter had. Theo had acknowledged it to himself days ago. If Potter called on him, asked him for help, for advice, for defense, then Theo would give it.

He let a slow smile widen across his face. From the way Pansy narrowed her eyes, she hadn’t expected that, either.

“We all serve,” Theo said quietly. “My father served. Draco’s father served. From what you told me, so did your aunt.”

Pansy’s eyes fluttered in a tell of nervousness that most people wouldn’t have picked up on. Theo wondered that she hadn’t corrected it since third year, but then again, she hadn’t had many challenges—or many friends—that would have forced her to do so.

“You’re talking about Potter as if he were a Dark Lord.”

He is more. Theo shrugged. “I’m not saying that he is. I’m saying that you’re so contemptuous of me for choosing to serve, but members of our families have made the same choice in the last twenty years.”

“But you could be on your own. A leader on your own. Someone respected on your own.”

I would never be that. But Theo didn’t intend to share his personal revelations about why with Pansy. “Why would I want to be?”

“Why would you…”

Pansy sounded incredulous. Theo twisted his wand and raised a silent Privacy Charm around them. “Some people want the power because they want to succeed on their own, stand on their own,” he said. “Because they want to accomplish some immense personal or political goal. I don’t want that. I don’t need that.”

“But you if follow someone…” Pansy sounded as if she were speaking about Theo whoring himself out in Knockturn Alley. “You’ll never be any more than their vision for you.”

Theo smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “It’s good that Potter doesn’t have one particular vision for me.”

He had no idea what Potter would end up doing with him, which made it exciting. And Potter obviously didn’t think that he should command Theo, which meant that he was the only one Theo would even consider taking as a Lord.

Pansy closed her eyes for a second, as if trying to meditate her way past this difficulty. Then she shook her head and opened them again. “I came to give you a warning.”

Theo just nodded. He wouldn’t ask about her motivations. Maybe she’d been bored, maybe it was their old friendship, maybe the warning was a trick. But he wouldn’t know until he heard what she had to say.

“Draco’s father is so upset about what happened to him that he’s pulling strings outside the school,” Pansy said softly. “And you’re going to be caught up in it, because you tortured Draco even before Potter broke his wand. Watch out, Theo.”

She stood up and walked away from him, tossing her head. Theo heard her say something to Daphne about regretting sitting there.

Theo leaned back against his chair and thought calmly about the best way to approach Potter with the information. It might not be true, but it made sense, and whether or not they had to prepare now for an assault from Lucius Malfoy, it would be good to plan for the future.

Maybe Potter will allow me to handle it. Or stand in his defense.

Theo closed his eyes. The thought of dueling Lucius Malfoy so that Potter could do other things, or because Potter couldn’t bothered…

Well, it was a good thing he was sitting in a darkened corner, so no one could see him getting hard in the middle of the common room.

*

“Lucius Malfoy will be trying to hurt us.”

Harry started and jerked his eyes up. Nott stood near their usual library table, his head half-inclined.

Harry didn’t know why he hadn’t heard Nott approach. He glanced at his wards strung across the air, and narrowed his eyes. There was a little exception in the proximity alarm, a twist of will and intent that he hadn’t noticed when he made it. It was enough to let Nott approach without sounding the alarm at all.

When did I start trusting him that much?

Harry shook his head and gestured for Nott to sit at the table. He would have to deal with that unwelcome revelation later. Nott had brought more important news that had to be dealt with right away.

“Why us?”

“We both hurt his precious son.”

“Ah. So is this information you got from someone, or just an inference you came up with on your own?”

“Pansy told me.”

“Are you sure that you can trust Parkinson?”

Nott leaned back in his chair a little. His eyes were wide and expressive, when Harry took the time to notice them. Of course, he was still a little concerned about how much he was trusting Nott, and he didn’t necessarily think that he should notice them. “We were friends for a few years, and she acted concerned about me in the first part of the conversation. Her information could be wrong, of course, or she could have lied. But I think it’s worth acting on.”

“Why was she concerned about me?”

“She said that she didn’t know why I was subordinating myself to you.”

Harry felt his own eyes widen. He remained in place, staring at Nott. Nott just sat there and gave no indication that he was concerned himself, or that he’d said anything startling, except that perhaps his breath was a little faster.

“I trusted that you disabused her of the notion?”

“Yes. I said it wasn’t what she thought and that serving someone more powerful than I am had historical precedent.”

Harry started to reply, then paused. “But you didn’t tell her that you weren’t subordinating yourself to me.”

“No. I thought I shouldn’t lie to her, even if her information about Lucius Malfoy was a lie.”

Harry stared at him some more. Nott watched back, eyes calm. Harry was used to finding his face about as expressive as a lizard’s, but there was something more there now, something more alert. As if Harry had been admitted behind some curtain that Nott usually kept drawn under the surface of his eyes.

“Why are you—why would you want to subordinate yourself to me?”

“Because you’re powerful. Because you could have been greater and more confident, and I played a part in making sure you weren’t. Because I find you interesting. Because I think that people like Draco and Snape who continue to deny that you’re a great wizard are infuriating.”

Harry shook his head. “I won’t—become a Dark Lord like You-Know-Who and turn you into a Death Eater, Nott.”

“I told Pansy that it wasn’t all that different from the way members of our families had followed you, but I’m not looking for that. I’d be considerably less interested in following you if that was the case.”

Harry nodded slowly. That was at least something. “You should know that I have no interest in becoming a lord, either.”

“I can still follow you in that case.”

“Why, though, Nott? Is this just your strange attempt at atonement? Because I assume that most of the time, a pureblood wouldn’t be interested in following a half-blood no matter what temptation that half-blood offered.”

Nott laughed a little, a breathless sound that Harry might have thought was a croak if he hadn’t watched Nott doing it. Then he leaned forwards and said, “The other things I told you still matter. You’re interesting and powerful.”

“Power isn’t something you should enslave yourself to.”

“Are you planning to enslave me, Potter?”

After a moment, Harry shook his head. Honestly, he didn’t know why he was arguing so hard. So Nott wanted to be useful? Then Harry would let him be. He would just make sure not to become so depended on Nott that he would be devastated or, worse, left weak when Nott inevitably changed his mind. “What do you think we should do about Lucius Malfoy?”

Nott smiled.

*

Severus watched from half-lidded eyes as Potter took his place at the end of the bench. The rest of the Slytherin table glanced over and then ignored him. That was good, that was right, that was the way it should be—

Then Theodore Nott strode into the Great Hall and sat down across from Potter. Potter still lifted his head warily, but relaxed in the next moment and took a large book out of his satchel. Together, they bent over it.

Severus’s fingers clenched around his fork.

“Severus, I must ask you not to glare at Harry that way.”

Severus relaxed and turned to Albus with an expression of faux contrition on his face, nodding. “Of course, Headmaster. My apologies. I am sometimes unable to help myself, given what happened with him.”

Albus could doubt that it was accidental magic, could say that what had happened to Draco’s wand proved it was deliberate, but Severus knew better, now that he’d time to think about it. What Potter wanted was to hurt people, including people like Draco whom he would have bullied if Severus had not stood vigilant against such a thing. He had lashed out with his magic to do that.

But he had not shaped wards, not truly. Such a thing was beyond even a master of the art. And Potter was too stupid to learn more than the basics of wards.

For now, though, Severus could do nothing about it. He would have to wait until Albus’s alertness in this matter had relaxed and he could strike back without anyone immediately suspecting him.

He did not know yet if he would aim to kill Potter. Perhaps the boy would still be needed to face the Dark Lord, as Albus insisted.

But he did think that he would try his best to solve the problem of Harry Potter once and for all.

*

“You’re sure you can do it?”

Nott’s voice was soft. Harry lifted one shoulder in a partial shrug. He had come to accept that he was all right having Nott this close, although he seriously questioned the taste of that part of himself.

It wouldn’t matter that much in the end. When Harry left Britain, he wouldn’t take Nott with him, and Nott wouldn’t follow.

“Yes,” Harry said briefly, and then he began to raise his power.

They were standing just outside the boundary of the Forbidden Forest, looking towards Wiltshire, which Nott said was where the Malfoys lived. Harry had never been there, but he and Nott had studied maps until he felt as if he knew that part of the landscape almost as well as Hogwarts. And they had read magical theory books that said what he wanted to attempt was possible.

Although, given his skill in wards, Harry was no longer sure that he had to worry about what was possible.

He concealed a smile that might make Nott ask questions, and closed his eyes. He had to concentrate for this.

The air all around him shone. Harry knew that without opening his eyes, knew it the way he knew where the moon was. He heard Nott’s startled gasp, but put it aside, and kept pouring power into the forming ward.

When he opened his eyes again, he felt almost as if he were floating, so much magic had he poured into the damn thing. The air all around him was stitched with what looked like pale drapes of light, swaying slightly back and forth. Harry took a deep breath and felt a rasping pull in his lungs.

“Are you all right, Potter?”

“I’ll be better when this is settled where it’s supposed to go,” Harry said flatly, and held out his hand. Nott dropped a strand of Draco Malfoy’s blond hair into his palm. Harry closed his fingers around it and shut his eyes again.

He knew what he wanted to do. He knew what should be possible. But he was already feeling the strain of holding the unanchored ward, and part of him doubted that he could reach the distance.

When had doubts ever been important, though? Harry had allowed doubts to enchain him for seven years, because he had accepted the words of the Slytherins who had made him feel inferior. He was going to succeed at this because he willed it.

He pushed confidence into the ward, along with power. He remembered what Nott had said about him being a great wizard, and he let that flow down his spine and straighten it. He held up the hair and focused on it.

“Incendio,” he whispered.

The hair burst into flames. Harry heard Nott take a breath, but he said nothing, which was good. Harry was floating too deeply in the cocoon of his own concentration to be disturbed.

As the hair burned, Harry waved his wand in rapid patterns over it. He was using a modification of a spell that was normally used to channel smoke and fumes away from the caster’s face. He would do this, and he would modify it the way he wanted to, and—

The ward trembled around him. Harry gritted his teeth and sent out another surge of power.

There was a loud, whispering exhale that seemed to travel into him and around him. Harry opened his eyes and his hands at the same moment.

The billowing smoke made from the burning hair flew into the ward and congealed there, etching bright grey patterns across the shifting curtains of white. Harry grinned in savage joy, his hands clenching, even as he dropped to his knees.

He was going to achieve what he wanted to. He willed it.

The ward snapped once, and then began to circle around him. Harry let out a low breath. He needed it to build up speed until he could launch it, because that was the way he had conceived it.

He refused to let himself think that his magic might run out before then, but—

Abruptly, something rested on his shoulder, and magic flowed into him. Harry snapped his head around, barely keeping control of the ward, and stared up at Nott, whose eyes were shut in concentration.

The magic, Nott’s magic, flowed into Harry’s body and made his veins sing.

Instead of shouting at Nott for breaking his concentration, the way he really wanted to, Harry reached out and grabbed hold of the extra magic, then sent it surging into the ward. The ward picked up speed, circling around Harry as a brilliant ball of white and grey light on the end of an invisible tether. Harry waited until the right moment—he knew the moment because it thundered through him—and then launched it.

The ward spun over and over as it went careening through the night, to the south, in the direction of Malfoy Manor. Harry knelt there for minutes on end, listening, waiting, sensing, until he felt the ward settle around the house.

He smiled with a hard mouth. The ward would let him know the instant Lucius Malfoy left the Manor with hostile intent towards either Harry or Nott. Harry might not have included Nott, but he had been the one to warn Harry, and he might be a first target if Lucius Malfoy thought he was the easier one to attack.

And he had given Harry his magic.

Harry turned around to speak to Nott, and then stared. Nott was sprawled on the grass, his mouth sagging open, his snoring so loud that Harry was glad that they all had Silencing Charms on their curtains in the Slytherin boys’ dormitory.

Magically exhausted.

Harry shook his head slowly. He still had enough power himself, with Nott’s gift, to Levitate the other boy and walk with him towards the castle.

All the while, Harry studied Nott and wished he understood what the git was doing.

Chapter Text

“Where am I?”

“That’s your first question? Of course it is.”

Theo frowned at Potter and then looked around the room again. He thought it was a fair question, not a predictable one. This was a quiet space with an arched ceiling and a shut door with an arch above it leading off to the side. Theo lay on a cot not far from a fireplace, while Potter was sitting in a small chair with his legs propped up on a low bookcase.

“Where am I?”

“One of the spaces that I made my own but didn’t ward like I did my real space, because it’s too close to the common room and I didn’t want to deal with abandoning anything important if someone found it,” Potter replied. He let his feet fall to the ground with a thump and leaned forwards. “You exhausted yourself. Are you all right?”

Theo felt something jump in his chest. “You could have left me there.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“It’s what you would have done with most people.”

“Most people wouldn’t have lent me their magic for a ward like that. Even if the ward was also to protect themselves.” Potter was staring at him as if Theo was the most puzzling person he had ever met. “Why did you do it?”

Theo rolled towards the side of the bed. The odd jumping was still there, and it made words like fizzing water rise to his lips. Maybe it was a mistake to say them now, but he wanted to.

“Because you matter to me, Potter. Harry. You’re powerful and brilliant and beautiful and I want…” Theo let it trail off, because he wanted many things and he didn’t know how to speak in a way that would encompass them all. “I want to be with you.”

“You could have died of exhaustion before I noticed, if I took all your magic. That’s not something you can just play off as wanting to—have sex with me, or whatever it is you want.” Potter dashed a hand through his hair, frowning at Theo.

“I could have died. But I didn’t. I knew that you would notice, and not take too much.” Theo stretched out a hand, and Potter clasped it with a motion that looked half-unwilling. “I want to be with you.”

“You want to have sex with me.”

“I wouldn’t be opposed. I also wouldn’t be opposed to serving you.” Potter looked utterly baffled. Theo battled back the laughter that wanted to rise now, because he knew that Potter wouldn’t understand it, and that was probably a good way to lose him forever. “But most of all, I just want to be with you. In your presence. Following you. Lending you magic or studying with you, if you don’t want to allow me anything more.”

Potter opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. He still looked baffled, but also as if he had finally managed to mentally grasp what Theo was talking about. He craned his neck back and forth, staring at the bookshelves.

Theo waited in the silence. It was enough to lie there and look at Potter, the man who had at least cared enough to bring Theo here instead of to the Slytherin dormitories, or simply abandon him outside. Theo could think of other people who would do that, like Draco or Professor Snape. Perhaps even Pansy.

Potter finally turned back to Theo. “You know that I want to leave Britain in a few years.”

“Yes.”

“What would you do then?”

“I would ask to come with you.” Theo leaned forwards, ignoring the way that Potter frowned at him as if to make him stay on the Transfigured cot. “But if you don’t want me to, please let me write letters to you.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Potter said, half to himself. “If—I mean, you should hate me, Nott. For humiliating you and then being so weak as to lean on you afterwards. Don’t want you to serve someone who’s a tower of strength, like your father’s Dark Lord?”

“You didn’t humiliate me,” Theo said passionately, and Potter started. “You introduced me to myself. Made me see who I was. I’ve drifted through the last seven years, not wanting to acknowledge to myself that half the time I was bullying people out of boredom, and half the time just because I was going along with what other people thought was right. I believed I was independent, aloof, better than the people around me. I wasn’t. The only reason I have a chance to be better than I was is because of you.”

Potter pushed his glasses up his nose. “But if you think of yourself as independent—”

“Why do I want to serve you?” Theo let his mouth twist wryly. He didn’t want to look away from Potter, but he would have done it if he had thought it would have helped. “Because it’s the purest expression of the debt I owe you.” He pushed on through an instinctive headshake from Potter. “And because I don’t trust myself not to slip back into the way I was if I just drift back into Slytherin again. I don’t want to rule. I don’t want to lead. I thought I wanted to exist by myself. Now I know I don’t. I want to have companions, friends. If that’s what you want, I’ll be happy to be your friend. But if you don’t want that from me, I can at least be useful.”

Potter continued staring at him in the wake of Theo’s declaration. Theo tamped down his impulse to ask lots of questions. Potter probably wouldn’t answer them anyway. He lay there and stared back, waiting for an answer.

*

He—honestly wants that?

Harry’s head was reeling hard enough that he had to realize something. He didn’t just find this unbelievable because it was Nott, a past bully of his, who was making the offer. He would have found it unbelievable from anyone, even a Gryffindor like Granger who had never participated in the bullying.

And that was a little more than messed up.

Harry took a deep breath and pushed away speculations and thoughts that didn’t matter. Granger wasn’t in front of him right now. Nott was. “You’re sure that you would want the burdens that came from following me?”

“What burdens are those?” Nott asked at once, his eyes bright and his hands clenching on the edge of the bed as he leaned forwards.

“The Malfoys hate me,” Harry said dryly. “Snape hates me. Dumbledore is wary. Riddle seems like he might offer me a decent apprenticeship, but he could be dangerous if provoked. I don’t think that your father will be very happy if you follow me instead of the Dark Lord. Shall I go on?”

Nott lifted his shoulders in a way that just made him look like a lean wolf, especially with how thin he was. “I already have the Malfoys’ hatred on my own merits. Dumbledore and Snape aren’t very happy with me after how I reacted when Snape tried to curse you. I don’t trust Riddle, so I’ll support any decision you make about him. And my father…allow me to handle him.”

“Won’t he be upset if you forsake the Dark Lord?”

“If the Dark Lord is back, my father hasn’t told me about it,” Nott said quietly. “It could be that he’s trying to spare me from making a choice. It could be that the Dark Lord is fighting a war so silent I wouldn’t be an asset. Or maybe my father just thinks I’m too young and is hoping to leave me out of it.”

“You’re an adult.”

“Are you arguing for me to follow the Dark Lord, Potter?”

“I’m saying that it would make more sense,” Harry said softly, and turned away to stare at the wall. “More like the way I thought the world was.”

Nott snorted a little. “Good luck getting the world to map to a specific shape. No one managed it with you. They want to see a good little Gryffindor or a broken little Slytherin, and that’s not what they got, is it?”

Harry turned slowly back to Nott, a new idea revolving in his head. If he was different from what other people expected him to be, and was changing still further from the broken victim he had been for years into someone more powerful and capable of defending himself, then there was no reason other people couldn’t change. Nott, for example.

That shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was.

Harry gave Nott a shaky smile. It felt strange to trust him, as if Harry was leaning off a cliff over a sickening drop. “In that case, I’d like to ask your advice about the offer I received from Riddle.”

Nott sat up in the bed faster than he probably should have, given how pale his face promptly went. But he also focused on Harry, and his slow nod was on the edge of being a bow. “I would be honored.”

Hoping that he was powerful enough to defend himself if he’d made a mistake, Harry took Riddle’s letter out of the robe pocket where he’d been keeping it and unfolded it.

*

Theo stared down at the contract and shook his head. Harry promptly leaned forwards across the small table they’d spread it out on. They were still in the private rooms Harry had brought him to, and Harry had only left to fetch food from the kitchens.

“What is it?”

“It’s too perfect,” Theo said softly, letting his fingers trace across Riddle’s spiky black letters. “I think there should be shaky clauses and harsh punishments for you if you break the letter or the spirit, but they’re not there.”

“Perhaps he simply wants a sincere apprenticeship with me.”

Theo shot Harry a look. Harry shrugged. “It’s worth saying.”

“And it’s not something I think is true,” Theo muttered. If nothing else, Riddle was a wardmaster who would want to be able to defend his own secrets. He should have included demands binding Harry to oaths not to talk about what he would see during his apprenticeship.

There was nothing like that. There was a simple and apparently sincere list of terms and demands, along with what he would teach Harry. No loopholes, but Theo would have felt better if he could have spotted both them and the language trying to obscure them.

Harry was apparently going to have the best relationship with a master that anyone had ever had if he signed the contract with Riddle. The perfection made Theo distrust it. Why wouldn’t someone like Riddle try to chain Harry to his side with stricter terms? Or include a clause that would inflict some horrific punishment if he betrayed Riddle?

Of course, that left the possibility Theo thought likeliest: that there was a trap somewhere under the surface, and neither he nor Harry was clever enough to spot it.

“Perhaps he thinks that he can get me to make another oath or sign another contract later?” Harry offered, leaning forwards. Even with the exhaustion Theo had expected to see Harry suffering under because of the ward that he had sent to Malfoy Manor, he looked healthy and content, and had eaten his food with more of an appetite than Theo had managed. “He wants to lure me closer and trap me more thoroughly once I’m loyal to him?”

“Riddle doesn’t strike me as the kind of man with enough trust in anyone else for that.”

“He might have enough trust in his charm and his powers of persuasion. Or just what he can teach me.”

Theo looked back at Harry and stifled what he wanted to say.

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Theo shook his head a little. “You know more than he could teach you already.”

Harry rolled his eyes, something that startled Theo. He didn’t think he had seen Harry do it without anger and contempt before. “Come on, Nott. You know that’s not true. He’s a published expert and I’m—”

“Someone who can achieve incredible things even without any teaching.” Theo leaned forwards. “Do you want to become his apprentice? Or are you only doing this because it would give you some kind of foundation for when you leave Britain?”

“Of course I want that foundation! I don’t want people on the Continent to laugh at me because they think I’m some snot-nosed kid trying to set himself up as an expert—”

“No one would do that once they knew what you could accomplish.”

“They wouldn’t get close enough for me to demonstrate if I didn’t have credentials.”

Theo sat back and slowly nodded. He had to admit that, as far as it went, Harry’s plan sounded like he’d considered the possibilities and chosen the one that made the most sense.

It still made Theo itch, though. There should be more options than this for someone as powerful as Harry, he thought. More choices that Harry could use to get some leverage on Riddle and stay free of an apprenticeship contract if he wanted to.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” he asked abruptly. From the way that Harry’s eyes widened, the question was unexpected to both of them.

Harry spent a moment tapping his fingers on the table. The fire crackled softly on the hearth. Theo waited, and Harry finally seemed to recognize that Theo wasn’t going to give up and just retreat.

He sighed and shook his head a little. “I can’t picture a place, or a person. I just want to be somewhere safe, where I have friends, and where I can practice any kind of magic I want without having to apologize for it.”

“You don’t want revenge on people like Snape and Malfoy?”

“I hope I would have taken that before five years had passed.”

Theo had to smile. And if there didn’t seem to be room for himself in Harry’s vision, well, Harry had confirmed how vague it was. They would just have to keep going, and Theo hoped that he would be allowed to share the home that Harry eventually settled in.

Or at least visit.

*

Harry hesitated outside the classroom where Granger and Nott had been studying, and took a deep breath. He almost didn’t want to do this.

But after studying the contract for another day, Nott had admitted that if there were loopholes in the offer or deadly clauses, they escaped him. Granger was the brightest person in the school who didn’t have some kind of grudge against Harry or some kind of power over him. Having her look over the contract wasn’t a bad idea, and Harry knew it.

He still…

He banished the thoughts and knocked on the classroom door.

Granger was the one who opened it, her eyes widening a little as she stared at him. “Potter?”

Harry nodded to her, keeping his expression as cool as he could. “Granger, hello. I wanted to make a bargain for you. Your looking over a legal document that I think is too good to be true, and in return, I offer you tutoring in wards if you want.”

Nott had been the one who’d told him that that was the kind of deal likely to appeal to Granger. Sure enough, a gleam came into her eyes, and she leaned forwards a little. “How long is the tutoring going to be?”

“I can do a couple hours a week until the end of term,” Harry said. He retained his cool expression, but internally, he was reeling with surprise. He’d still thought it would take more time than this to convince her, appealing bargain or not. “I have to spend the rest of my time studying for NEWTS.”

“A few hours a week is all I can spare as well,” Granger said, and opened the door wide. Harry slipped in and nodded at Nott, who sat next to a table covered with open books. Nott smiled a welcome.

Granger turned back and echoed the smile, but only at Nott. Harry blinked, shocked at his own shock. This was a different kind of shock than the kind he had felt that Granger had agreed so quickly. Granger was…

Comfortable around Nott.

A second later, while Harry took the scroll from his pocket and explained some of his interactions with Riddle without much listening to his own words, he felt stupid about that. Nott and Granger had been working together for weeks now. Of course she was more comfortable around him.

But, somehow, Harry had still thought it would be a mere business arrangement between them, despite Granger’s Gryffindor tendency to brush through barriers and probable loneliness because she didn’t have many friends in her House. Because Nott would have done this only out of some sense of obligation, and Granger would probably have sensed that and been prickly.

Now, it seemed as though Harry had been the one who had misjudged. Granger was sincere, and had accepted Nott’s offer to make up for his bullying fully.

Which meant Nott was sincere, too.

Harry sat down across from Nott as Granger bent her head over Riddle’s offer. Nott stared back at him, one dark eyebrow creeping up.

Harry shook his head and stared at the tabletop. His mind was whirling.

Nott was sincere. That probably meant he was sincere with his efforts to help Harry as well, even if he was also attracted to Harry’s power or insistent on securing the protection of someone stronger than he was or interested in learning what Harry knew about wandless magic and wards.

Harry had really changed Nott, somehow, with that confrontation on the Quidditch pitch.

If Harry had misjudged Nott, and he wasn’t just starting out on a different road, but already far down it—

Then it was about time that Harry started thinking of him differently.

Enough to include him in my visions of five years hence?

Harry didn’t know yet. But it was at least a possibility now.

Chapter Text

“It’s an interesting contract.”

Harry nodded. He was sitting in the library with Granger and Nott, but not at the table that he and Nott usually took. It hadn’t seemed—right, somehow, to meet with Granger there. And Nott had looked at him when Harry had guided them to a different table with a flutter of dark eyelashes and a flash of grey from his gaze that—

How I feel is stupid, Harry told himself, and turned back to Granger. “Is it as straightforward as it seems to be?”

“About his obligations to you, yes, that I could find.” Granger’s head bobbed as she bent over the contract, finger stabbing at certain words almost too fast for Harry to follow. “But not about the part where he mentions your obligations to him.”

She glanced at Harry, her eyes wide and solemn. “There’s no end date.”

Harry hissed between his teeth. He couldn’t believe he had missed that. Then again, Nott hadn’t spotted it either when Harry had let him glance over the bloody thing. He sighed and slumped back in his chair, running a hand down his face. “So he could hold me under apprenticeship indefinitely?”

“Keep you loyal to him indefinitely,” Granger corrected. “There’s an end date for his obligations as your master. I said that.”

Harry held back the impulse to hex her. He didn’t want to, really. He wanted to take out his anger on Riddle, but the man wasn’t here. “Does it say anything about obligations to him I have that would end?”

Granger shook her head. “No. Be loyal to him, share your secrets with him, live in his house…that’s the oddest part, I thought, because even if he wanted you to stay loyal to him for the rest of his life, why would he invite you to live with him?”

“It’s a standard part of apprenticeship contracts,” Nott put in. “The master’s expected to provide shelter for the apprentice.” He craned his neck, and Harry caught himself watching it stretch. “Most of them want their apprentices nearby so that they can make sure they’re not getting up to dangerous experimentation by themselves, especially if it’s a Potions apprenticeship. But I thought that had an end date.”

“No.” Granger smoothed her fingers over the contract, something wistful in her face. Harry wondered if she was interested in warding and would have liked to be taken on by a famous wardmaster herself. “It’s not entirely visible, because the language about the end date in the master’s part of the contract is non-standard. But nothing about an end date appears in Potter’s.”

Harry nodded. “Well, now at least I know it was too good to be true.”

“Going to refuse?”

Harry tipped his head at Nott. Nott just kept looking at him, his eyes bright and calm and curious.

“The contract as it stands, yes,” Harry said. “But give up the chance to study with a renowned wardmaster? Hell, no.”

Nott wrinkled his nose, presumably at the vulgarity. Harry wasn’t sure if he found that gesture attractive, but he knew he shouldn’t have stared the way he did.

He wrenched his attention back to Granger. “Was that the only irregularity that you found, or was there something else?’

“It isn’t an irregularity, exactly, but…”

Harry waited, but Granger evidently had no intention of coming back to rescue her dangling words. Harry leaned forwards, smiling a little. “I wanted to look over this because I know you’re intelligent, Granger, and you’ve already spotted one thing that we both missed. Don’t feel that you need to hide your intelligence.”

Granger stared at him. “Plenty of people in this school know I’m smart.”

“But how many of them acknowledge it with respect unless they’re begging you for homework help?” Harry asked, and nodded as he saw the way her shoulders hunched and her head dipped down. “I acknowledge it. I’ll make another deal with you if you think that’s fair and you should be paid more for your help, but I don’t want you to hide because you’re afraid of revealing how smart you are.”

Granger drew in a slow breath, blinked at the middle distance, and then turned back to the contract. “I looked up some other standard apprenticeship contracts. Not ones that allowed the apprentice to live in the master’s house,” she added, with a glance at Nott, as if she thought she would need to defend herself against an attack from that direction. “But a lot of them. And most of them are focused on balancing the trading of knowledge with the passing on of secrets.”

Harry nodded. Not that he had looked at those contracts himself, but that was about what he would have expected.

“They have an emphasis on loyalty, but not that much, compared to the teaching aspect. And some of them include provisions for the master to claim a share of an apprentice’s discoveries if the apprentice makes them with equipment or ingredients the master lends them. Or even on the master’s property. To take the example of a Potions contract again, an apprentice who uses the cauldron and ingredients a master lends them instead of ones that are a gift could be expected to share credit with their master.”

“Do you want a Potions apprenticeship, Granger?”

She whirled to face him, one hand banging down in the middle of the table. “How do you know that?”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected her to act as though it was some important, highly-guarded secret. “I just guessed,” he said slowly. “You’ve mentioned multiple examples from that kind of contract, and—”

“I mentioned one! Theo mentioned the other one!”

“That’s enough for someone like Harry,” Nott said.

“What kind of person would that be, Nott?”

Nott met Harry’s eyes without flinching, a small smile curling up the corners of his mouth. And where Harry would once have thought he’d like seeing Nott afraid—some small payback for all those years of torment—now he’d found that he preferred someone who would talk back to him.

“Someone who puts together lots of pieces that no one else ever even notices,” Nott said quietly. “Someone who doesn’t always feel the need to act on that information, but can do what he wants with it, at any time.”

The rest of the time and the room seemed to vanish as Harry stared at Nott, until Granger brought her hand down in the middle of the table again and said loudly, “Can you flirt or whatever it is you’re doing when I’m not in the room?”

Harry felt his cheeks burn, and jerked his eyes away from Nott, who looked smugly satisfied. “Sorry, Granger,” he mumbled. “You said that there were irregularities in this contract because it’s not focused on secrets?”

“Or ingredients or equipment,” Granger said, while she eyed Harry as if she thought he might explode. “But this one is focused on assuring your loyalty, and it has…vague terms about that. It keeps emphasizing loyalty and trust and confidence and all sorts of other synonyms. It’s not even clear what he means to do to secure that loyalty.”

Harry felt as though ice had invaded his veins. “So if I signed it, he could do whatever he wanted to secure it.”

“Yes. The Imperius Curse, potions that blunt your will, potions that increase your trust in him. It wouldn’t even be illegal, not if you signed this contract. You would essentially have given him permission.”

Harry swore softly under his breath. Nott was looking at him grimly. Harry nodded to him, acknowledging that he had been right to suggest Granger look over the contract. His mind was whirling down more important tracks, though.

Why did Riddle feel the need to take such extreme measures? Why would he think Harry was set on betraying him? Harry was as sure as he could be that he hadn’t done anything in his meeting with Riddle to indicate that.

It could be Riddle’s personality, that of a famous wardmaster paranoid someone would steal his secrets.

It could be something else.

“You’re not going to sign this.”

Harry looked at Granger and shook his head. “No, of course not. But I will be interested in seeing what the fuck he was thinking.”

Nott was sitting up across the table, eyes wide with something Harry didn’t think was fear. Granger squinted at Harry. “Do you have blackmail on Riddle or something? Because I don’t think you could find a way to compel him otherwise.”

“No,” Harry said, and he smiled. Nott’s breathing quickened. “I intend to meet with him as if I were going to sign it, and then ask him what the fuck he was thinking.”

“I don’t think he’ll like that,” Granger said cautiously.

“I don’t intend to give him a choice about answering,” Harry replied.

*

Theo felt as if a thousand fiery winged horses were galloping through his veins.

Harry was magnificent.

Theo had half-feared that when Hermione found some problems with the contract—and he had known there would be some, just not what they were—Harry would be upset with her, or he would crumble under the knowledge that Riddle was another person trying to use him or bully him. But he hadn’t yelled at Hermione. He had praised her and showed he understood her, and part of Theo was as thrilled by that as if he had asked for it and Harry had done it to please him.

Another part of him, admittedly, was dreading how the confrontation with Riddle would go.

But there would be one, instead of Harry crumbling. And Theo fully intended to be there.

“You’re quiet, No—Theo. Why is that?”

Theo turned to face Harry. They had left the library and Hermione behind a few minutes ago, after Hermione had extracted the promise that they didn’t intend to run off and confront Riddle right now. They were in the middle of a still corridor with no portraits. It was the safest place to talk outside one of their warded rooms at the moment.

“I want you take me with you when you confront Riddle.”

Harry blinked. Tilted his head. Theo wondered if he would get contemptuous laughter and braced himself.

“I never intended to leave you behind,” Harry said slowly. “Did I do something that made you think I would?”

Theo felt as though there was a sunburst in his chest, but he managed to hold his expression neutral. “No. I—suppose that both of us are stuck in the past, to a certain extent. I was thinking of what you might do. Not what you will.”

Harry’s eyelashes fluttered for a second, and then he said, “Yeah. I—get that.” He moved a hesitant step towards Theo, then stopped again. Theo was aware of his breath coming loud and fast. This wasn’t the best place for anything to happen, but if something did, then he would be incapable of regretting it.

“You’ve really changed.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks now.”

“You understand why I had a hard time letting myself trust that.”

“Of course I do,” Theo said, and tried to keep his voice as gentle and calm as he could. Harry looked like he might bolt if confronted. “And that’s why I was willing to keep trying as long as necessary to prove myself to you.”

Harry watched him, then lifted a hand and cupped Theo’s cheek. Theo tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes. It was perhaps more vulnerable than he should have been, but he was past hearing what his father would have said in his mind.

“Thank you,” Harry whispered. “I—can’t say what will happen after the confrontation with Riddle, if we can—do something like you appear to want or not yet, but—I’m thinking about it.”

That is more of a chance than I deserve, but I will seize it with both hands.

“Thank you,” Theo said softly, and watched Harry give him a smile all the more valuable for its uncertainty.

*

Harry had no idea why Theo appeared to have invested so much of himself into Harry’s success, which made him uncertain of his ground with the other boy. But confronting Riddle and weaving the kind of wards that would mean he wouldn’t get away with what he had tried to inflict on Harry…

That, Harry had no doubt about.

They slipped out of the school again on the night Riddle had invited Harry to sign the contract. This was a different set of Apparition coordinates, and a wider, more open place. Harry cocked his head as they passed between a pair of stone pillars into what seemed to be an empty field.

“Standing stones,” Theo murmured.

“Riddle’s going to try something related to them?” Harry checked the two wards straining on leashes in the back of his mind. They were variants of the one he had used to take revenge on Snape. These were less visible, and one had a much more firm and certain purpose, but Harry had woven contingencies into them. It might be possible that Riddle would tell him the truth about the contract when asked and Harry wouldn’t have to use his wards.

Harry knew exactly how likely that was, but the contingency still existed, so it existed in the wards, as well.

“I don’t know.” Theo frowned at the nearest standing stone, a shapeless dark lump about the height of Harry’s shoulder. “Standing stones can make ritual magic more possible, but they have to be charged by either natural forces or spells. And in either case, we would sense their magic.”

“They are not standing stones.”

Riddle’s casual voice came to them from behind a low, twisted tree with black bark and dead leaves. Harry shaped a ward in his mind, a crude thing that might not be necessary, and nodded to him. “Hello. What are they?”

“Cairns,” Riddle said, half-smiling. “Necessary for the comfort of my associate, who, as I told you, is here to perform Legilimency to assure your honesty.”

Harry smiled back. “I’m interested in your honesty, too, Riddle. Such as why you offered me an apprenticeship contract without an ending date.”

Riddle paused. The air around them tightened. Harry’s fingers curled into his palm.

“I wondered if you would notice that,” Riddle whispered at last.

“So it was a test?” Harry’s fingers curled tighter.

“A test and a binding,” Riddle said. “I wanted to make sure that you would have reason to be loyal to me until the end of your days.”

Harry experiences a brief flood of bitterness, hot enough that flickering magic danced on the surface of his skin and Theo shifted uneasily next to him. One thing. I wanted one thing that was sincere, one person who didn’t want to use me or take advantage of me somehow—

But he cut off the flood before the magic could do anything. So Riddle wasn’t what Harry had hoped. It didn’t mean that he couldn’t find someone who was, someday.

“So I won’t be your apprentice after all,” Harry said lightly. “I hope that you don’t disappoint your associate too much. He must have had a hard journey here, unless he can take a cairn with him.”

“You will be my apprentice, Harry Potter. The contract would have been the simplest way, and the way I would have treated you the best, but you won’t leave here until you are bound not to act against me.”

“You could have fucking asked me,” Harry snarled, and the magic around him leaned forwards. Riddle didn’t move, but Harry was sure he had shaped his own wards and held them ready for the moment of battle. “I would have sworn not to interfere with your plans or research or whatever you wanted, in return for a lesser commitment than an apprenticeship. And now you’ve fucked that up. Good fucking job, Riddle.”

Riddle watches him with an odd half-smile. “I could never have trusted someone’s word freely given, no matter how honorable you might think yourself.”

“So you’ve committed us to battle instead.”

“A grander word than I would have—”

Harry uncurled his fingers from his palm.

Riddle screamed as Harry’s ward came to life, a crude but effective manipulation of ready magic in the area and air that turned all of Riddle’s gathered power to fire in his veins. It only lasted a moment. That was all Harry needed.

He spun to shield Theo with a wanded spell, and then launched both the wards had been waiting on leashes at Riddle. They roared in happiness probably audible only to Harry as they landed, winding around Riddle and sinking into his skin with a flare of white and yellow light. Harry half-smiled. They were doing as he had designed them to do.

One was a truth ward, to compel Riddle to honestly answer three questions. Harry might have tried for more than that, but it would have weakened the power of the ward and perhaps allowed Riddle to slip free or to lie. Harry wasn’t risking that.

The other one…

Riddle snarled, looking half-demented now, and slashed his wand down in a wordless motion, a purple curse fizzing at the tip for a moment. Then the light turned and streamed back into his wand, and he screamed again.

“What is that?” Theo whispered.

Harry moved a step back towards him without turning away from Riddle, who was staring at Harry in absolute stillness, his body half-hunched. “A karma ward,” he said, loudly enough for Riddle to hear. “Everything he tries against me gets turned back against him.”

Riddle bared his teeth, but said nothing.

“I didn’t know you were powerful enough to create something like that,” Theo said, voice low and reverent.

Harry didn’t dare turn to face him even now, but smiled. “I am.”

“My associate is still here,” Riddle whispered. “And you will regret facing me without binding him.”

Harry started to answer, but a dragging sound came from the center of the field. He turned so that he could keep one eye on Riddle while looking at the taller grass.

A figure was heading towards them, one that glided in such an odd manner Harry wasn’t sure it was human. When it lifted its head, he was certain. The face was serpentine, pale, with a long, forked tongue darting out of the mouth as it hissed.

“Meet my associate,” Riddle said, his voice light and mocking now as if Harry had never hit him with wards. “Lord Voldemort.”

Chapter Text

Theo stood there for a moment that he knew was shorter than a moment, feeling as if the veins in his brain were throbbing.

Voldemort. That thing was Voldemort. The thing his father followed, and probably wanted Theo to follow.

And Harry was going to—

Theo moved before he even thought about what he was doing. There were some spells that his father had drilled him in so often that they’d become automatic. Theo cast a Cutting Charm on his arm near his elbow, and as blood came spurting out, he waved his wand through the air underneath it and thought the spell as hard as he could. Sanguis murus!

The blood reared up and formed into a glittering construct like a wall at Hogwarts, except that it was made of transparent, red stones. Theo breathed out slowly. No spells that he knew of could get through that wall, but it would also only hold as long as someone was bleeding to keep it up.

“Theo?”

Harry’s voice was low and a pressing, throbbing presence against Theo’s skin. Theo smiled. “Do whatever you’re going to do quickly,” he whispered, and began casting the spells that would transform other matter in his body into blood and give him longer with the wall.

It would still only hold for a few minutes. Then again, Theo expected that a few minutes would see this settled, one way or the other.

*

I have to get us away.

Harry’s magic punched the ground as he thought about it, and he gestured, casting half a spell with his wand that got absorbed into the forming ward in the next moment.

The air around them was wild, stirring with spitting strokes of lightning that never quite formed. The blood wall loomed high enough to prevent Harry from easily getting a spell over it, but that would have to change. And Tom Riddle and Voldemort were moving slowly. It looked as if Voldemort might be doing that because he was incapable of doing it faster.

But Riddle was doing it because he thought he had time. His eyes were full of laughter, his hand splayed as though he were casting his own wandless ward.

No time to worry about it. Only time to act.

Harry began snapping his magic around him, the spell he had almost cast, the ward that he had been forming when he saw Voldemort, and the magic that was humming through Theo’s blood. He was vaguely aware that Theo was going to his knees. Harry couldn’t turn to look at him. He was too busy acting.

He whirled the magic around and around, like a lasso, similar to the way that he had aimed the wards at Malfoy Manor, but tighter circles.

“What are you doing?” Riddle asked. Harry saw that he had stopped smiling, saw the fanged snarl opening in the middle of Voldemort’s face.

Around, around, around. Around, around, around.

Harry knew he would only need a few more small, tight circles to complete the ward. And he was also aware, from the way that Riddle gestured and Voldemort sprang forwards like a thestral in the middle of a lightning storm, that he wasn’t going to get them.

Voldemort came over the blood wall, flying on invisible wings.

Harry whirled the very end of his and Theo’s combined magic once more and cast that loop around Voldemort, as if it was the only one. Voldemort broke through it easily, the way Harry had been anticipating.

And broke into the larger, tauter circle of the waiting ward, which immediately tightened around him as Harry leaped backwards and bodily dragged Theo with him by the arm.

Voldemort screamed in what seemed like panic as much as fury while Harry looped the ward around him. Bright, gleaming cracks opened in the middle of his pale skin, filled with what seemed to be blood lit on fire with gold. Harry had no idea what that was, a condition that Voldemort was suffering from or what.

He didn’t intend to find out, either. He waved his wand and used the bit of magic he had left that wasn’t involved in holding Voldemort back to reach out to the anti-Apparition wards around them. He would normally need more force to punch through them, but he wasn’t trying to punch through them. Making a small hole at the right place would cause the wards to fold down like the flaps of an umbrella, and Harry only needed the smallest of spaces to Apparate out.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Riddle moving, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. Protecting Theo and holding Voldemort and drilling through the anti-Apparition spells towards freedom were taking all his attention.

*

Theo saw Riddle moving to cast a spell, and because of his education at his father’s hands, he knew what it was.

It would blow up the ground at Harry’s feet. He probably thought that because it would do nothing more than scatter a bit of dirt and distract Harry from his magic, the karma ward wouldn’t punish him severely for it.

But Theo could feel the intensity of Harry’s concentration shivering in the air around him like another bit of magic. He knew that the slightest disruption could be fatal for both him and Harry.

Theo shouted, “Riddle, my father no longer follows you!”

Riddle swung towards him with a snarl, his wand still raised but the spell gone. “Little you would know about it, or about my plans, young Nott,” he said.

Theo smiled a little, ignoring the way that he could still feel the blood draining from his wounds. For now, they needed the blood wall more than they needed him conscious. And he could still give his magic to Harry even if he fainted. He would use the next few moments to be as irritating as he could to Riddle. “I know that you’ve kept yourself quiet, and hidden behind the name of the wardmaster.”

“From that, you cannot divine—”

“I divined it from hearing my father speak.”

Riddle was still for a moment, eyes fastened on him. Theo knew he was panting, but he didn’t try to disguise it. Riddle would be exquisitely aware of how much magic and blood Theo was spending at the moment. If he wasn’t the one who had taught Father the Blood Wall spell, he certainly knew it.

“What did he say of me?” Riddle whispered at last.

“Sixteen years without a word,” Theo said, and imitated his father’s intonation exactly, even as black spots danced in front of his eyes. “Sixteen years without showing a sign that you had come back. His Mark never darkened. He’s given up on you. He’s preparing for—”

Several things happened at the same moment.

Voldemort broke free of whatever magic Harry had woven to hold him with a snarl. He bounded towards him on all fours, touching down and then flying off from each landing point with his hands and feet hitting the ground like slaps. His mouth was wide and hungry.

Theo slumped sideways, his vision darkening more than it had, and saw the Blood Wall turn into wisps of red light.

And Harry broke through the anti-Apparition wards.

Theo felt a tug so deeply rooted in his belly it felt as if someone had made a Portkey out of his intestines, and then they were gone.

*

“Theo.”

Harry whirled around the second they landed on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, just outside the range of Hogwarts’s own anti-Apparition wards. He fell to his knees and cast the healing spells he’d learned when the Slytherins’ pranks got more and more vicious in second and third year.

It became obvious quickly that the cut on Theo’s arm was resistant to most magical healing. But Harry continued to stubbornly work, head bowed, forcing his way through the magic layered over Theo’s wound.

Whether because they’d left the bloody wall behind or because Harry had had some of Theo’s magic bound up in their escape route, the protections at last cracked and flaked away. Harry drew in a shaky breath when he saw how deep the cut seemed to run, exposing flesh and bone.

But he’d seen worse. He waved his wand again, and this time the cut was cleaned and bound the right way. Harry gently lifted Theo to his feet. He would probably still have to take him to the infirmary. Harry didn’t have any Blood-Replenishing Potion or the like on hand.

Theo blinked and turned his head. “H-Harry?”

Harry took a slow, deep breath. He hated hearing Theo sound broken and uncertain. “I’m here,” he murmured, looping one arm around Theo’s shoulder so that he could help him in the direction of the hospital wing. “We’ll get you to Pomfrey and make sure she can—”

“What are you going to tell her?”

Well, yes, I don’t have a good story to explain Theo’s wound or the magical exhaustion. Even if she doesn’t sense mine, Theo is too weak to prevent her from seeing his. “I don’t know. But I know you need treatment.”

“I cast a spell on myself to transform some of my bone marrow and other matter into blood to power the wall,” Theo said, his voice so hoarse that Harry had to concentrate hard to make out the words. “I need sleep and I’ll need a big breakfast, but I don’t need a Blood-Replenisher.”

Harry hesitated. He didn’t want to go to the infirmary because of Madam Pomfrey’s piercing eyes, but it felt selfish to keep Theo away from it.

“I promise I’ll be all right.”

“Will your sleep cure the magical exhaustion, too?”

Theo managed to smile at him, an open expression Harry had never seen from him before, and which made something tremble into being in the center of Harry’s chest. Something he couldn’t examine right now. “It really is just physical exhaustion, not magical. At least, when you return the magic that you borrowed from me.”

Harry started. It hadn’t even occurred to him that part of Theo’s power was still wrapped around Harry himself, and the magic that had brought them to the school and healed Theo’s wound. “Sorry,” he murmured, and took a moment to disentangle them and sent the power flowing back into Theo.

Theo blinked and stumbled for a second. Harry held him more firmly upright. Theo nodded and rolled his head on his neck. “Yes,” he murmured thickly. “Yes, it’s back now. I’m going to be all right.”

And then he passed out again.

Harry staggered beneath his weight, and sighed a little. Theo had been right that Harry really didn’t want to go to the hospital wing, and as long as Theo was also right that he would recover with nothing more than sleep and food, Harry would get to stay away from it.

But he would have gone, for Theo.

Harry pondered that silently as he took Theo deeper into the dungeons, and hesitated only a little when he realized that they were outside the door of his most warded rooms. Then he shook his head and brought Theo inside.

They had already confronted the apparent two parts of Lord Voldemort together. What other secrets mattered next to that?

*

Theo woke feeling as though he was wearing a second skin. It took him all of a moment to realize it was Harry’s magic.

He cracked his eyes open and let his gaze sweep the room. This time, he was lying on a couch that he thought must be permanent. There were several workstations he could see, all of them with at least one open book, and one with a cauldron. Harry’s wards hummed everywhere.

Yes. This was the set of rooms Theo had been searching for when he was still trying to simply understand Harry, before the confrontation on the Quidditch pitch that had changed his life. It felt like Harry.

“Are you all right?”

Theo nodded and turned his head to look at Harry, who was balancing a huge platter of food over to a sturdy table. “Yes. Hungry, though.” His stomach echoed the words with a noise so loud and gurgling that Theo flushed.

Harry smiled a little. “I went to the kitchens. The elves were thrilled to have the chance to make a specialty breakfast.”

Theo managed to make a polite noise himself, but still fell on the tray of sausages and ham that Harry handed over. After the enchantment had forced his body to consume parts of itself to make blood, his craving for meat was no surprise. The elves had also included a whole roast chicken for some reason, and Theo tore that apart as well.

Harry picked at his food, Theo finally managed to notice after he looked up from inhaling most of a second plate. He cocked his head. “Your own magical exhaustion doesn’t manifest as hunger?”

“It—I just keep thinking about what last night means,” Harry said, and shook his head with his lips pinched shut. “I was relying on the apprenticeship with Riddle to open doors for me in other countries. Now I can’t do that.”

Theo blinked at him. “Surely you know the obvious solution?”

“What solution?”

“Start promoting your own magic and selling some of your skills,” Theo said, leaning back in his seat and rolling his shoulders. He began eating again, but more slowly this time, not taking his eyes from Harry. “There are contacts you can make here among some of the students, ones with older siblings or who have family members running businesses in Diagon Alley, that will get your name out there.”

“But on the Continent?”

“You might have to wait a little while to establish your name there,” Theo acknowledged. “But you could also approach another wardmaster and seek an apprenticeship with them. I might be able to get a few names from my father.”

Harry stared at him. Theo stared back. “What?” he added after a moment. “I would think you would be more worried about the Dark Lord being resurrected and after you for being the Boy-Who-Lived than your future.”

Harry snorted. “I can run. I always intended to leave Britain, anyway. And after what’s happened to me for years at Hogwarts, I’m less than inclined to fight for most people here.”

His voice weighed heavily on the word most, and his eyes lingered on Theo. Theo ended up ducking his head to hide his pleased smile. “So why didn’t you think of this?” he still added, looking up at Harry.

“I…”

Harry laid down his food, untouched, and walked in a slow circle around the room. Theo could only think that he must have eaten last night, not to be hungry now. Theo kept eating himself, watching Harry lean his head for a moment on the wall.

“I thought Riddle was my one chance,” Harry whispered. “I hadn’t thought much of my own skills; I thought everyone could do wandless magic because of all the bragging in our dormitory. I only learned better recently. And then Riddle reached out to me, and I thought, all right, I can find one person who’s interested in me and willing to mentor me. And it turned out to be a trap.”’

“Anything else might be a trap, too.”

“Rationally, I know that’s not true,” Harry said, turning around to face Theo and leaning his shoulders on the wall. He closed his eyes, his voice thrumming with frustration. “Rationally. But I keep thinking it.”

“I can approach my father,” Theo said quietly. “He can find you a mentor or a place to advertise your skills. Would that work to help rebuild your confidence?”

“Why would he do that for me, though? He was a Death Eater.”

“Was. I wasn’t lying about what I told Riddle. He hasn’t mentioned Voldemort to me at all in the last few years, and I think that he probably would have, at least to warn me. Riddle’s strategy of lying low has cost him at least one follower.”

“What would he want in return?”

“A discounted price on some of your wards,” Theo said promptly. “Maybe a free commission, if it was a small enough space or a ward that would protect a small object. An introduction to a wardmaster isn’t worth more than that.”

Harry narrowed his eyes and studied Theo as if expecting him to sprout wings, or horns, or anything else that would mark him as a stranger to Harry. “But if the introduction changed my life, it would be worth more than that.”

“For Merlin’s sake, don’t tell my father it would change your life. Then he would feel compelled to charge you more.”

“But you know. How can—how can you work for me, against him?”

“I don’t see it as against anyone.” Theo eased forwards, meeting Harry’s gaze and smiling. He put a hand on Harry’s arm. “I see it as serving someone I desire very much, and also earning my father a place in your regard. Bringing him over to our side, if you will. It seems clear that we’ll have to flee Voldemort, or fight him if worst comes to worst, and I’d like to make sure my father is completely separate from that.”

*

Harry stared at Theo, who was—

Who was willing to lie to his own father, against all the rules of pureblood families that Harry had ever seen enacted in the common room, who—

Who was willing to do this for Harry, and who didn’t think Harry had made such a stupid mistake that Theo would never associate with him again, and who wouldn’t let him sink into despair, either.

Harry reached out and closed his hand on Theo’s, hard enough that Theo winced a little. But he didn’t move his gaze away from Harry’s face, and half-nodded encouragingly, as though he thought Harry would need a little more persuasion.

“Thank you,” Harry whispered.

“It’s my pleasure,” Theo whispered back.

Harry had thought Theo might want to claim a debt. After all, he had saved Harry with the blood wall and then lent Harry his magic and persuaded Harry out of taking him to Madam Pomfrey even though it would probably have been the safest option.

But Theo didn’t even seem aware that Harry might owe him anything. And that made something deep and wondering open, again, in the middle of Harry’s chest.

Chapter Text

Theo smiled a little as he looked down at the letter in his hands. He couldn’t have asked for his father to contact him at a better time.

Theo,

Disturbing rumors have reached me about your involvement in placing a curse on Draco Malfoy and some incidents with Potter. I would speak to you this evening in the Forbidden Forest. Be prepared to meet me at eleven in the clearing where we once bargained with centaurs.

Theo nodded and folded the letter into a small packet to tuck away into his robes. No need to write back and bargain or hint or anything of the kind. Some purebloods found Father too direct for their taste. Theo was personally glad that he had been raised this way.

“What did he say?”

Harry was lurking near the door of the Owlery, probably thinking he was subtle. He made Theo’s breath catch even just standing there. He was also glad that he would meet Father for the first time since the school year began without Harry. He wasn’t sure that he could conceal all his reactions if Harry was there.

“He’ll meet me in the Forest this evening.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

“You know why you can’t. You would accidentally betray how important this is.”

“Rather than just a favor that you’re asking for a friend?”

“Or even something that could give Father an advantage in the future,” Theo said, glad that Harry was exercising some of his Slytherin understanding more openly now. “I can sell it to him that way. But if you’re there and you show that you would do so much for an introduction a wardmaster…”

Harry nodded. His eyes had gone steely. “The one thing that would make me regret this is if you come back hurt, Theo.”

“Not if you don’t get what you want from my father?”

Theo suspected what Harry’s answer would be before he reached out and snagged his fingers in Theo’s robe, pulling him closer. But his breath sped anyway, and he found that he needed to hear Harry say it.

“I can try and find what I need somewhere else,” Harry said softly, one hand rising to touch and gently caress along Theo’s cheekbone. Theo felt as if his heart would leap out of his chest. “I wasn’t thinking that I could before, but I’ve got too used to defeat. If you got hurt, there’s nothing that would make up for that.”

Theo turned his head and did something he wouldn’t have done if he’d been thinking. He let his lips come to rest against Harry’s thumb.

Harry took a long, wild breath. Then he stood there and said nothing.

It was better, much better, than it could have been. Theo pulled back after a long moment and inclined his head. “I’ll remember that, and I promise you that I’ll take precautions going into and coming out of the Forest.”

“Yes,” Harry said hoarsely. His eyes rested on Theo.

It was pleasant, for once, to be the one to slip around Harry and leave him behind staring and reeling. Theo smiled all the way down the Owlery steps.

*

“Theo.”

“Father.”

Helios Nott stepped forwards to embrace Theo. Theo hugged him back. His father felt slender in his arms. He had always been that thin, he’d told Theo once, a dueler’s build and whipcord endurance, although he needed the cane that supported him now rather than using it as a decorative emblem.

Theo stepped back and surveyed his father. He had dark hair like Theo’s and all the others Notts Theo had ever seen in portraits, and had given Theo most of his face, but Theo’s eyes had come from his mother. Father’s eyes were a deep and brooding violet that Theo sometimes wished he had inherited.

“You had news for me?”

“Yes, Father. Voldemort is back, although he’s a puppet of the wardmaster calling himself Tom Riddle.”

Father stood as still as an oak tree. Theo watched him and waited. It was never wise to try and hurry Helios Nott along when he was thinking, and Theo could see the way that his words had gone home to his father like lightning.

“How do you know this?” Father whispered at last.

“Tom Riddle offered Harry Potter an apprenticeship contract,” Theo said. “I was with him when he did, but the contract had no end date and essentially represented an attempt to enslave Potter—”

“And you cared about this? Why?”

“If you’ll allow me to explain, Father.”

Father took a step back and nodded. “Do forgive me, Theo.”

Theo smiled. It wasn’t often that Father yielded this way to a conversational partner, but he must have been able to see how important this was to Theo. “Thank you, Father. So when Potter and I went to question Riddle about it, he had an ‘associate’ with him. An associate called Voldemort, who had red eyes and looked half-mad and ran on all fours like a creature.”

Theo himself didn’t share all the pureblood prejudices against goblins and Veela and the like, but he knew that Father did. And he would use any kind of manipulation that didn’t hurt his father to ensure he was on Harry’s side.

Father’s lips drew back from his teeth. “You could not have been mistaken?”

“I think Riddle had no reason to call that thing Voldemort unless it was,” Theo said, watching Father closely. “I think that Voldemort has had at least two chances to return, after the theft of the Philosopher’s Stone in my first year and after the sudden cessation of the Petrifications in my second year and the death of the Weasley girl. I don’t know for sure which one spawned him or made him the way he is now, but I think it was one of them.”

Father took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he said, “You are right.”

“I am?” Theo hadn’t expected Father to confirm it outright like that.

Father nodded and opened his eyes. His gaze was distant, inwardly-focused, but steely. “Tom Riddle is the Dark Lord’s true name. Tom Marvolo Riddle, Jr. I don’t know—for certain how he could have split himself into two pieces, but it seems the saner part of him is controlling the part I knew as my lord.”

“But you know something.”

Father grimaced in a way that told Theo how serious this was. Father was rarely that expressive. “I once swore an oath.”

“But an oath that would not cause you to be on the Dark Lord’s side now?”

“Tell me what he did.”

Theo described the way that he and Harry had escaped from Voldemort and Riddle, while Father’s eyes grew darker and darker. He stared over Theo’s head into the woods, and his hands tightened on his cane several times. Then he took a deep breath.

“Why do you think that you were able to escape?”

“Harry’s wards and my knowledge of the Blood Wall. If you think that Riddle was holding back because I’m your son, Father, I assure you that isn’t the case.”

“I did not think that.” Father lifted his head, and Theo took a step back, a weakness that he would only allow himself in private like this. Father was not killing, and he wanted to kill, and the obvious effort he was exerting to hold himself back was impressive. “I think that you are extraordinarily lucky, and if you had died, I never would have known what happened to you.”

“Probably not.”

“This Potter…is he worth it?”

“There would be no way that I could ever follow the Dark Lord, not now. And Potter has power, yes. His wards are things of legend. I’m sure he would give you a demonstration if you asked.”

“I would see it another way, Theo. I would see your memories.”

Theo took a deep breath. This was something he had been afraid of. There was no way that he could hide his adoration of Harry if his father used Legilimency.

But he also knew that it was probably the best way to make sure that his father understood how serious Theo was. How Harry had changed him.

“Yes,” he said, knowing that no more than a flicker of a second had passed, but that it was still enough to make his father’s eyes narrow suspiciously on him. He stepped forwards and tilted his head so that his father could meet his gaze.

Father’s hand gripped his chin. Theo’s head became filled with memories being rifled through, like gently falling leaves. He set himself and endured.

*

Helios Nott had lived long in the world. He had learned early on that the best way to survive intact, in soul and heart as well as body, was to love few and guard those few with all his strength.

He had thought Theo would go long years without finding someone he loved strongly outside his family. The early death of his mother had scarred both Theo and Helios.

But as Helios traveled through Theo’s memories, and saw the shining wards, the way that Potter had confronted his son, the way that Theo had flushed with shame and a new purpose both, the way that he had lent his magic to Potter without hesitating…

Helios drew himself out of Theo’s mind with a long sigh. He had thought it would be years before Theo found someone to love like this, yes. He had hoped it would be, because then Theo would be out of Hogwarts and back safely beneath the Nott roof, where Helios could easily protect anyone Theo fell in love with. That was not the case while Theo still resided at school.

But it had come, and Helios would not deny Theo the prize he had already chosen and devoted himself to.

“I will introduce Harry Potter to wardmasters,” he said, meeting Theo’s eyes. Theo nodded and started to say something else, but Helios tilted his head, and his wise son fell silent. “And more than that. I will send him the pendant that was intended for Mariah.”

Theo paled. “I never—Father, I never would have asked you for that.”

“I know,” Helios said wearily. “But I always intended to gift it to the lover you chose, Theo. Earlier than I thought, but what of it? Nothing will change the fact that she is dead.”

Theo stared at the ground. Helios looked over his head into the forest. There were no images of Mariah in his mind’s eye, because she was the daughter who had died with his Eloise when Eloise was cursed by one of the Unspeakables. Mariah had never been born, never worn the pendant that should have protected her from all dangers.

But that made Theo, the one surviving legacy of the woman Helios had loved with all his being, the one he would fling his heart into the abyss to defend. And that made Harry Potter worthy of wearing the pendant.

“Father…”

“If you value him this much, then I do not mind giving the pendant up.”

“I just don’t want you to regret it because you don’t value him the way I do.”

Helios reached out and cupped Theo’s cheek. Theo went still and still, staring at him. Helios tightened his hold.

Has it been this long since I have shown my son affection like this? I should remedy that.

“How can I not value him when he wrought such changes in you?” Helios murmured. “I might not know him yet, but I will. And for that knowledge to come about, then he should have protection from Riddle and the Dark Lord.”

The weight of the vow he had sworn never to speak of Horcruxes burned on his tongue, but then, neither Theo nor Potter needed to know of Horcruxes right now. Helios would begin working on their problem from that end.

“I thought—because you had the Dark Mark, I thought that you might need more persuasion to protect us from the Dark Lord.”

Theo’s voice was strangled. Helios let him go and shook his head. “I gave up on him when he took so long to return. And now he has threatened my son and my son’s betrothed.”

“I—what? Father, I haven’t asked Harry to become engaged to me yet.”

“And will you simply stand aside if he finds someone else he wishes to wed? If he takes another follower as a lover?”

Theo’s throat bobbed; his eyes darkened. But he surprised Helios. “Not willingly. I would do everything I could to make him see me the same way I see him. But—in the end it would have to be his free choice, or I would destroy everything I value about him.”

Helios nodded slowly. He could see feeling the same way about his Eloise, if she had truly chosen someone other than him. But they had committed to each other so early on that he had never had to fear that.

“See that you do everything you can to make him yours. I would not have our family owe a debt to an outsider.”

Theo’s eyes grew bright at the bottom, in a way Helios had not seen them do since his son was a small child. “Yes, Father.”

Helios nodded to Theo, touched his face once more, and stepped back. When he Apparated, he was looking at his son.

He stood a moment when he arrived in his study, leaning on his cane, before he opened his eyes and looked up at the portrait of Eloise.

“What happened, dear? You look…complicated.”

Helios reached up and let his hand rest on the surface of the portrait over the widespread fingers of she whom he had lost and would never see again. Eloise’s hand trembled for a moment, and she bit her lip.

“Our son has found someone,” he said simply. “I have much to do.”

*

“Potter!”

Harry pivoted slowly around. He’d planned to wait in the Slytherin common room for Theo to come back from the Forest, but he’d got too restless, and he didn’t want to chance the other Slytherins discovering something was going on from watching him. He’d gone out to pace in the corridors.

It was after curfew, but Harry didn’t think for one moment that was why Snape was approaching him now.

“Careful,” Harry breathed.

Snape came to a halt and stared at him. Harry glanced towards Snape’s right hand, which looked shiny and waxen, as if the new hand the Healers must have given him hadn’t finished growing in yet. Harry wondered how competent he was with his new wand.

“You are telling me to beware of you?”

Harry lifted his gaze to Snape’s face. “Do I need to destroy your left hand or your new wand before you get the message?”

Snape stood still. There must be some sense of caution left to him, then. But his breathing was getting faster and faster, and Harry didn’t think he was getting out of this one without a confrontation.

Good, hissed something low down inside him. Good.

“You are presumptuous,” Snape whispered. “Arrogant. Destructive. Deceitful. Stupid.”

Harry laughed. “And here I was thinking that those first four qualities were ones that you valued in your students.”

Snape did draw his wand then. Harry snapped up a hand, and coiled a ward around his fingers with a twist of a thought. It wasn’t a complicated one, and wouldn’t defend him against all the curses that Snape might cast, but it didn’t need to. Snape went an awful, cheese-like color at the sight of it and stepped back.

It was Snape’s fear that had become Harry’s best shield.

“You would truly try to harm me with a ward again?”

“Why not? You were about to try and cast a spell on me again.”

Into the charged silence between them fell the sound of footsteps. Harry tilted his head towards it without taking his eyes from Snape.

It was interesting that he could tell it was Theo even without seeing him, just by the quality of his silence. He was utterly prepared to charge to Harry’s defense, Harry could tell. His breathing had quickened.

And maybe I know him by the sound of his breathing, too.

“What are you doing, Professor Snape?” Someone who was an idiot might have thought Theo sounded pleasant.

“What are you doing out of bed, Mr. Nott?”

“I do believe that I asked you the question first. Sir.”

Theo came to a halt at Harry’s side, and his magic writhed out and intertwined with Harry’s, making the ward Harry had been cradling in his hand flare with brilliant and intimidating light. Harry was so startled that he nearly lost control of it. But then he steadied it, and he and Theo stood together in the light and looked back at Snape.

Snape had lowered his wand, at least. He looked badly shaken. His eyes actually darted back and forth between Harry and Theo one time before his face locked into an impenetrable mask.

“I wonder what your father will say about your taste in acquaintances, Mr. Nott.”

“I have told him.”

Snape hissed under his breath. Harry watched. He didn’t think he was getting all the nuances here—probably something to do with Snape and Mr. Nott both being Death Eaters and Snape assuming that Mr. Nott would hate the Boy-Who-Lived—but it was enough to make Snape turn and walk away, the sound of his footsteps echoing loudly off the corridor walls.

Theo immediately spun to face Harry. Harry checked him over the same way Theo was checking him over, although Harry was sure that Mr. Nott probably wouldn’t have left obvious wounds.

“You’re all right.”

They said it almost simultaneously, and paused. Harry smiled first. Theo inclined his head and did the same.

“It went well?”

“Father looked at my memories of you.”

Harry tensed, but Theo reached out and pressed a hand lightly on his arm. “He’s going to send you a pendant woven with protective charms.”

“He—has that sort of thing just lying around?” Harry asked to cover his shock.

Theo had gone as unreadable as Snape a moment later. “It was one that my baby sister would have worn. If she had been born. If my mother hadn’t been pregnant when she died.”

Harry swallowed. He knew less than nothing about his parents, but for the first time, he wondered if that might have been a blessing.

“Thank you,” he said.

Theo bowed his head and let his lips brush against Harry’s fingers for an instant, the way he had before he’d gone out to talk with his father.

Harry turned slowly, and they walked back to the common room together. The whole time, Harry listened to the beat of his heart, and Theo’s footsteps, and wondered that they seemed to match so well together.

Chapter Text

“The boy is out of control, Albus. I insist you do something.”

Albus leaned back in his chair and sighed a little as he looked at Severus. The man radiated fury on a level Albus had rarely seen from him. Of course, until this point they hadn’t had much reason to discuss Harry Potter, outside a few incidents when Albus had asked to make sure that Harry wasn’t being bullied too badly by his Housemates. Severus’s reports had always reassured him.

It had been years before Albus had realized that shouldn’t be the case.

“What did he do that was so concerning, Severus?”

“He threatened to curse me.”

“Foolish of you to confront the boy in a situation like this when he already used accidental magic on you, Severus.” Albus was becoming less and less convinced it was accidental, but he wouldn’t encourage Severus to distrust Harry. They would lose the war before it began if that happened.

Severus snarled and turned away, pacing towards a silver whirligig that Albus had inherited from his mother. He had never been sure what it did, but it had been fascinating when he was a child, shuddering and dancing in all sorts of directions. Severus’s hand closed on the device and wrenched as though he would tear one of the arms off.

“He is dangerous, Albus. He already knows Dark Arts and he’ll learn more from the Nott boy. You should not have permitted that friendship to flourish.”

“I was unaware they were friends. And I did nothing to promote it.”

“You should have kept more of an eye on the irresponsible, immature, reckless, completely unsuited to Slytherin—”

“You know the reasons why I have kept my distance from Harry, Severus. And I will thank you to put down that device before you break it.”

Severus gave him a blank glance, and Albus decided that he had indeed forgotten he held the silver device. Then he shook his head and removed his hands from it. “This needs to be handled, Albus. Some of the reasons that you maintained your distance no longer apply. Do you think that the Dark Lord will find it hard to exploit that?”

Albus sighed. He had thought that allowing Harry a childhood instead of turning him into a weapon would keep him from Tom’s notice, but, well, it seemed that Harry had found the path of the Dark Arts and a Dark friend to guide him down them anyway. If he hadn’t come to Tom’s notice already, it would happen very soon. “I agree, Severus. I will call Harry to my office and speak to him in the next few days.”

*

“This is beautiful.”

Theo didn’t preen when Harry unwrapped the pendant that Father had sent him, but it was a near thing. He smiled and leaned a little closer. “It says that you are a treasured child of the House of Nott.”

“Oh,” Harry said, and ran the pendant through his hands. It was a silver crescent moon on a silver chain, both the metal and the shape chosen to convey the strongest sense of protection possible. “Does this mean…”

“Yes?”

“Well.” Harry shifted back and forth, and Theo, who would have thought his discomfort absurd if this was someone else, found the word adorable rising to the forefront of his thoughts instead. “Brothers don’t date.”

Theo didn’t laugh, but he came even nearer to it than he had to preening. He leaned in and put his hand delicately on Harry’s thigh. “They don’t,” he agreed, watching Harry shiver and turn in search of Theo’s warmth probably without realizing what he was doing. “But there are other ways that one might become a child of a House.”

Harry’s eyes darkened. He didn’t need that spelled out for him. And for the first time, he was staring at Theo as if Theo was the center of the universe, or at least as fascinating as Harry had been for him since the first day he saw Harry doing wandless magic.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry drew back with a low hiss. Theo leaned back in his seat and smiled a little at the incredulous looks he was getting from Blaise and Draco. Not his fault if none of them had recognized the treasure in front of them.

“You are wanted in the Headmaster’s office.”

Theo stood up when Harry did. Snape’s gaze cut to him immediately, his eyes flat and dark as beetle shells. “You are not invited, Mr. Nott.”

“You didn’t say that, sir.”

“I am saying it now.”

Theo continued to gaze at Snape for long moments, ignoring the way that Harry shifted uneasily beside him. It seemed that a confrontation Harry was ready to have in the bowels of the dungeons read differently to him when they were in the public Great Hall.

“All right,” Theo said, and then turned and gently let out the pendant’s chain, moving it so that it dangled over Harry’s head and hung most of the way down his chest. “Don’t forget to keep this close, Harry.”

“What is it?”

Theo utterly ignored Snape’s question, gazing into Harry’s eyes and waiting for his nod. Harry nodded back at last. His right hand rose and played with the chain, while his left, down by his side, showed Theo the crossed fingers in a gesture he had sometimes used to summon wards.

Theo smiled. He had no desire to deprive Harry of his impressive magic, even if he liked that Nott magic would now join in protecting his chosen. “All right.”

“All right,” Harry echoed back softly, and followed Snape out of the Great Hall.

Theo sat back down and reached for Harry’s plate of scones and toast, casting a Preservation Charm over it and conjuring a bubble that would hold it exactly level. Then he floated the bubble over to the empty end of the bench beside him and went on with his breakfast.

“What are you doing?”

Blaise’s question was low and pointed. Theo acknowledged him with a nod, but kept eating. “Making sure that Harry has breakfast later on.”

“Since when do you call him Harry?”

“Since recently.”

Blaise was silent for a long moment, as if realizing that he could keep asking questions and Theo would just keep returning him the same bland answers. Then he shook his head. “I hope that you know what you’re doing, Nott.”

“Well, yes. Me too.”

Blaise rolled his eyes, but turned back to participate in a conversation with Draco and the others. Draco glared at Theo until he saw that Theo had noticed him glaring. Then he found better things to look at, like his lap.

Theo finished eating and made his way towards the Charms classroom with the bubble containing Harry’s meal floating alongside him. He paused to make it opaque before he entered the classroom. He didn’t want to answer more questions about it.

“Is—you and Potter are friends?”

Theo glanced up. Longbottom was standing inside the door of the Charms classroom, his lip caught between his teeth like a particularly nervous rabbit. Theo nodded. “You remember I told you that Harry was the one who encouraged me to reach out to the people I bullied and try to make it up to you?”

“Sure. But you called him Potter then.”

“Things change. You and Hermione decided that I could make it up to you faster than Harry did.”

Longbottom frowned and made his way over to his usual chair, a few desks behind Theo. Theo assumed the conversation was over and pulled out his book. But a second later, Longbottom spoke again. “Why do you think Snape hates him so much?”

“I think it’s a personal grudge to do with his family,” Theo said, which was as much as he wanted to talk about this with someone Harry hadn’t given him permission to share with. “But I don’t know why it’s been allowed to go unchecked.”

“Maybe someone should check it.”

Theo smiled, and he could tell by the way Longbottom started that the expression might be wilder than he’d been prepared for. But he sat where he was and didn’t back away. “Maybe someone should,” Theo agreed. “Someone will.”

And then Professor Flitwick arrived, and they had to pay attention to the class.

But Theo’s head was still buzzing with his plans, and he found it hard to concentrate on the intricacies of Face-Changing Charms. Especially because Harry still hadn’t come back from the Headmaster’s office.

I wonder if Dumbledore and Snape know what price they will have to pay if he’s hurt?

*

“Harry, my boy, I have perhaps waited too long to have this chat with you.”

Probably, Harry thought, as he sat back and trailed one finger down the links of the silver chain around his neck. “All right, sir,” he said. “What did you want to say to me?”

Snape snorted from where he was leaning against the wall. Harry ignored him. He didn’t know why Snape was here. He could have delivered the message and then left, but no, he’d had to march beside Harry to the Headmaster’s office as if Harry were a simpleton who had no idea where it was.

“You are the subject of a prophecy.”

Harry stared at Dumbledore. The Headmaster stared back, his expression somber. He didn’t appear to be joking. “A prophecy,” Harry said slowly. “Excuse me, sir, but you’re my Headmaster, not an Unspeakable. I thought they were the ones who dealt with prophecies.”

“I am also the one who led the resistance against Voldemort in the first war,” Dumbledore said, and turned around to pick up a silvery Pensieve that was resting on the lowest shelf of a cabinet beside him. “That means that a prophecy concerning you and Voldemort was of great concern to me.”

Chills ran down Harry’s back for a moment. “That’s the reason he attacked my parents.”

“Yes. In truth, he was searching for you, the child prophesied to defeat him.” Dumbledore gestured towards the Pensieve. It looked ominous, already full of a silvery memory as it was. “So it is time now for you to listen to this, and take up the responsibilities that the prophecy implies.”

“Are you going to help me do that, sir?”

“Yes, Harry.” Dumbledore’s sorrow seemed sincere, but Harry had learned that that could be the case and someone could still fail him when it counted. “Please forgive me for not approaching you before now. I was afraid that if you knew the prophecy, you would communicate it to one of your Housemates who could carry it to Voldemort.”

Harry swallowed. He thought it a poor excuse. He just waited, though, as Dumbledore pushed the Pensieve a little towards him and then tapped the edge with his wand. A shadowy figure twisted out of the silver surface, someone who looked vaguely familiar.

“Professor Trelawney?”

“Indeed. Hush and listen, Harry.”

Harry listened, but he had to admit that part of his mind had been stirred up into chaos the way it hadn’t been by Dumbledore’s revelation that a prophecy existed. It just seemed impossible that that drunken hack could…

Then he heard what that drunken hack was saying, and his stomach seemed to dissolve and fall in particles of lead on his toes.

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”

Harry stared at the Pensieve for long moments after the image of Trelawney had sunk out of sight again. Behind him, Snape made a slight hissing noise through his teeth. Probably getting ready to tell me how terrible I am and that I could never fulfill a prophecy like that, Harry thought distantly.

But then again, who would want to fulfill a prophecy like that?

“Do you see now, Harry? Why I kept this from you, and why you needed to know at last?”

“I think you kept it from me too long,” Harry said, distracted, staring at the Pensieve and not really thinking about what he was saying. “Because I don’t have any motivation to fight the Dark Lord. Why would I? No one here has ever done anything for me.”

Theo.

But Theo wasn’t in the office, and the more Harry could keep Dumbledore and Snape from looking in Theo’s direction, the better.

“What?”

Dumbledore’s voice was a croak. Harry blinked, and looked up, and saw Dumbledore staring him with his mouth slightly open, his hand stretched out imploringly.

Oh. This is good. Harry sat back and smiled slightly. “What part of that is a surprise, professor? Even you knew about something that seems highly important, and yet didn’t tell me about it. People in Slytherin bullied me, or snickered at me and ignored me. The Dursleys locked me in a cupboard and deprived me of food and told me I was a freak and lied to me about how my parents died—”

“You are lying.”

“You’re a Legilimens, professor,” Harry said, without even looking at Snape. He kept his gaze on Dumbledore, who looked more and more haggard, as though Harry was pressing a knife against his throat. “You know I’m telling the truth.”

“No one would treat the Boy-Who-Lived that way!”

Harry snorted. “You did. Not sure why you think it’s so unbelievable in anyone else.”

“My dear boy.” Dumbledore reached up and took off his glasses with a shaking hand, rubbing that hand down his face. “Why did you never say anything?”

Harry laughed. “Yeah, I was Sorted into a House full of people who hated me for my blood status, and then I found out my Head of House, supposedly the one professor I could go to for anything, hated me too for some reason and assigned me detention for breathing. You never approached me. Why should I have trusted you? Why should I have come to you? There’s no reason for it. You just ignored me, and this is the result of your ignorance.”

“There were…excellent reasons why I ignored you, Harry. And…I expected you to seek me out, to ask me…”

“Why? Why in the name of Merlin would I?”

“You knew that I was the only one Voldemort ever feared. And you knew that you were the one who defeated him. It made sense, didn’t it, that I would have information you required? I only had to wait.”

“Wait for what?” Harry ignored the way that Snape was shifting behind him. Snape couldn’t hate Harry any more than he already did. Harry was, frankly, more interested in Dumbledore’s weak excuses. “Because you said nothing, I just assumed you had nothing to say.”

“I had to wait to make sure that you were not involved in the usual preoccupations of Slytherin students of your generation, namely the Dark Arts and following Voldemort.” Dumbledore had put his glasses back on and was regarding Harry with pity and—something else. Harry wasn’t sure that he could read it. “To make sure that you had a glimmer of compassion and respect and understanding for others. For you to show that you were different from the rest.”

“And I never studied Dark Arts, and I was bullied by the rest of my classmates. That should have shown you—”

“It showed me that you were sunk within yourself,” Dumbledore interrupted. “Seeking out other people—friends of other Houses—would have helped rehabilitate your image in my eyes.”

“Rehabilitate,” Harry repeated softly. It was probably a bad idea to show his hand so openly, but the rage burning within him wouldn’t be denied. “What had I ever done to you, except not behaved as you wanted me to? Except not be a Gryffindor?”

Dumbledore sighed. “Selfish apathy is not the sort of material a hero is made of, Harry. It’s better than someone who slings Dark Arts around, but not by much. If you had only befriended a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff—if you had taken a Muggleborn under your wing—”

Harry’s ears were ringing. He was sure the Headmaster was saying other things, but he couldn’t hear them. All he could think was, He’s basically upset at me for growing up abused with Muggles and not knowing about magic right away.

Everyone else would have been allowed to just behave the way they wanted. Or if I was in Gryffindor, I would have had Dumbledore’s attention and I would have known how to fight against Riddle.

He hates me for being—me. For a situation he exacerbated and ignored and—

The magic rising in Harry battered against his chest. Harry found his hands winding into positions to shape a new ward without thinking about it. A defensive ward, he had to protect himself against the force of the magic that would otherwise devour him from within—

The magic surged through his fingers, burning his skin so severely that Harry cried out, and then carried on in front of him, sweeping outwards and around and around and around—

Harry felt something hot and hard crash against him, buffered away by the ward. He heard shrieks and screams. He opened his eyes and found himself sitting in the middle of Dumbledore’s office.

In the only intact chair.

Around him was a scene of chaos. Dumbledore’s desk had been cut in half, the pieces leaning against each other like drunken men in a pub. Fine ash covered them, the remains of the parchments that had probably been there. Dumbledore’s chair was missing its legs, tipped on its side, and Dumbledore lay on it, covered in burns, stunned.

Harry turned his head, gaping. Shards of silver and other metals that had probably made up the strange instruments were embedded in the walls and the bookshelves. Fawkes’s perch was gone, and the phoenix was hovering in midair, singing shakily to himself. Snape was lying on the floor with a shard of something in his neck.

Harry stared at him. He didn’t—

He didn’t appear to be breathing.

Harry lurched to his feet. Fawkes immediately began singing harder, as if he wanted to calm Harry down, but Harry shook his head and turned and ran for the door, snapping his hand out. The pendant around his neck, glowing with magic, spluttered and fell silent again.

It probably helped protect me against some of the magic that escaped the ward.

But it can’t protect me against a murder charge.

Harry got the door open, and ran.

Chapter Text

Helios started to his feet as magic spread through his body and bones and being, and then flooded out of the rest of the house. He snapped his fingers, and the wards stopped ringing in his head and collected in front of him in a shifting, glowing pattern that would tell him who the intruders launching an attack on the house were.

There was no sign of intruders.

Helios stared, eyes narrowed. If something was wrong with his Theo, he would have known, no need for the wards currently shrieking like wounded Abraxans in his head. The same if anyone had attacked the cache of artifacts one of his ancestors had buried. So what—

“It’s our other son.”

Helios looked up at Eloise’s portrait, and nodded. “Yes, of course. You are right.” The amulet Harry Potter wore had never been activated, so it was no wonder that Helios hadn’t recognized it beginning to ring. “The boy is in danger.”

“Or experiencing such strong emotion that his magic is leaking out of his body and overpowering the amulet.”

“It is probably both,” Helios said, and turned away in a swirl of robes to fetch what he would need if the boy was escaping Hogwarts and coming home.

A pleased smile lifted his lips as he recalled that that probably meant Theo would come home as well, and Helios would get to see him much sooner than he would have if the school term had played out normally.

But pleasure was for later. Urgency was for now. Helios reached out a hand and laid it on the wall, and was tugged through the stone walls to his Potions lab.

*

Harry ran for two corridors once he got off the moving staircase that led down from Dumbledore’s office. Then he tucked himself against a wall and closed his eyes and made himself think instead of just run.

He had to get out of here. It was clear that he couldn’t stay in Hogwarts after attacking the Headmaster and—killing his Head of House, or whatever had really happened to Snape.

But if he went hurtling through the corridors like a wild thing, someone would notice and stop him. Someone who might know that he’d been meeting with Dumbledore and would decide to ask him what happened. Or one of his Housemates who would hold him in place and torment him for fun. Or try.

No. He had to leave Hogwarts, obviously, but he had to do it carefully, and he had to take what mattered most to him.

Harry straightened up and created an impatient ward that wrapped around his chest and lungs and forced him to stop breathing as though he’d just jumped off a dragon. Then he Disillusioned himself and made his way calmly towards the Slytherin common room.

Halfway there, the thought of Theo almost made him stumble.

Harry swallowed, and then swallowed again. He didn’t want to leave Theo behind. Theo was—close to becoming part of him.

But he couldn’t exactly go into the classroom and collect Theo. And Theo would be in danger if he was associated with a known murderer and attempted murderer. Harry could say that he’d just lashed out with his magic at Dumbledore without realizing what he was doing, but that admission wouldn’t make what he had done better.

I have to leave Britain. And Theo has his father and his home here. I—knew that I would leave him behind. I thought about it. I planned on going alone until a few months ago.

Harry shook his head roughly. He had no idea when Theo had become so important to him, and he really didn’t know why it had happened, either. Was he so lonely that he would latch onto someone who had bullied him for six years?

Still, it had happened, and that meant he had to go. He would try to leave some kind of note for Theo, though. Maybe tucked under his pillow, a warded area that Theo had once mentioned he used all the time for sweets he wanted to keep away from Crabbe and Goyle’s greedy hands.

Yes. That was what he would do—

Then something throbbed against his chest, and Harry looked down. The way he felt, he wouldn’t be surprised to see that he had somehow expelled the heart from Snape’s chest and it was clinging there and beating with hatred.

But no. Instead, the amulet that he had got from Theo’s father hung there and radiated silvery spirals of magic, overlapping him and spilling out into the corridor. When Harry squinted, he could see some of those rings passing through the walls. To alert someone?

Theo? His father?

Harry swallowed. Maybe they would know what happened, or at least know he’d had some kind of explosion of magic and temper. He reached up, closing his hand around the amulet, ready to remove it. It wasn’t his, not if he was going to run away, and he couldn’t imagine that Theo’s father wanted to still have Harry visit or whatever. Not when he was going to be a political liability.

“Harry.”

Theo’s voice was low and powerful, and it came from the end of the corridor, not from the amulet, which was what Harry had thought for a minute. He spun towards it with a gasp, and saw Theo staring at him with dark eyes that seemed to shine. The silver magic from the amulet was reflecting in them.

Is that even possible?

Before Harry could get lost in that particular series of spinning thoughts, Theo whispered, “Would you really break the chain and leave me behind? Leave my father and the promise of what we could have behind?”

“I,” Harry said, and swallowed. Then he said, “Your father is—politically savvy, and he’s going to see me as a liability after this.”

Theo blinked, and blinked again before he asked, “What happened?”

Harry twisted a ward for privacy and silence around them, and Theo said, “I already have a Proximity Charm up. I’ll know if anyone comes close to us.”

Harry caught himself smiling at Theo, and snatched it back.

Theo was perfect in some ways, and Harry would have to leave him behind.

He swallowed again and managed to force the words out of his throat. “I—got upset when Dumbledore told me that there was a prophecy about me and Voldemort, and he’d kept it from me. My magic exploded. Dumbledore is covered with burns, and I think Snape is—dead.” Theo’s eyes were so wide that Harry thought he could see straight through them, into the churning morass his confession would have thrown Theo’s mind into. “So I have to leave. I’m not going to be arrested, and I never meant to stay in Britain. I’m just leaving a little early, that’s all.”

He tried to make his tone light, but Theo’s slashing glance stopped that. Harry clasped his hands tighter and said, “I know I can’t stay here. And I know that your father won’t want to shelter someone who committed a murder—”

“You mistake his priorities badly. As well as mine.”

“Theo, I killed someone! A professor! Our Head of House!”

“I’ve never cared about Snape being our Head of House, only what he could do for me, or not. And he’s tormented you. That makes him my enemy.” Theo moved a step closer. “If you’ve rid of us of one enemy, I have nothing but applause for you, Harry.”

“And my attack on the Headmaster?”

“Of everything they’ve tried to blame on your accidental magic, it sounds like this really is it.”

“Theo, you’re—you’re laughing, but what happens if my magic explodes someday because of something you or your father did?” Harry asked desperately. He could feel what seemed to be cage bars closing in on him, and he was a little breathless. “Don’t you—don’t you want to keep yourself safe?”

“Not more than I want you. And I trust you. I know that you would never do something like that to my father or me, because we would never give you reason to.”

Harry started to snap back, but Theo had somehow stopped right in front of him without Harry having seen him move. He supposed that said something about how much he trusted Theo. Theo reached out and put a hand on Harry’s lips.

“Don’t you trust me?” he whispered.

Harry swallowed and nodded.

“Then we can simply leave, and if we can never come back, then I don’t mind much. Hogwarts has always bored me, and you’re the only intriguing person here. I can continue helping Longbottom and Granger by owl if they want me to.”

Harry ducked his head and said nothing. He hadn’t thought about Longbottom or Hermione at all. Theo had reformed enough to take those relationships more seriously than Harry was right now.

“Come on.”

Theo’s hand was steady and warm in his, and he was leading Harry towards the Slytherin common room. Harry gave up any thought of arguing and followed him.

*

Albus stood on trembling legs, and had to catch the back of his chair to keep from falling over. The burns on his hands and cheeks hurt in a cacophony of shrieking pain, the likes of which he had never felt. It was what he imagined running face-first into a Fiendfyre chimera would be like.

But he wasn’t the one in the room most badly off. Albus’s legs shook as he walked over and managed to drop into a clumsy kneeling position next to Severus.

Who was breathing. Albus closed his eyes for a moment in profound relief.

“You warned me about Harry Potter, Severus,” he whispered. “And I didn’t listen.”

There was no response. Albus opened his eyes with a frown and leaned over Severus, shifting his fingers in front of the man’s motionless, glassy eyes. There was no response, still, and Albus drew his wand with a shaking hand and cast a diagnostic charm.

The results unfolded in spidery letters above Severus’s head. Magical coma, cause unknown, prognosis unknown.

Albus swallowed. Then he tucked his wand away and turned his head. Fawkes was already flying to his arm, crooning anxiously. Albus spared a thought for why Fawkes hadn’t stopped the attack, but dismissed the notion. Fawkes probably hadn’t recognized Harry as an immediate threat any more than the rest of them had.

“If you will take Severus and me to the infirmary, Fawkes?” he whispered, reaching out to grasp Severus’s arm.

There was a brief moment of confusing, flurrying fire, the usual result whenever Albus asked Fawkes to take him somewhere on the grounds, and then they materialized in front of Poppy, who shrieked and nearly dropped a vial of some glutinous potion.

“Albus! What in Merlin’s name—”

“Severus is unconscious,” Albus said. “And I need to leave to try and stop his attacker before he flees. Can you please make him comfortable and see if your advanced diagnostic charms can reveal a possible treatment, Poppy? My own rather basic one offered no useful information.”

“Yes, of course.” Poppy was in her element when she could act as a mediwitch, and she floated Severus to a bed immediately and bent over him.

Albus sighed in relief and laid his hand on Fawkes’s tail again. The pain of his own burns had lessened, perhaps soothed by the very different nature of a phoenix’s fire. “If you could take me to the gates, Fawkes?”

Harry would not be able to Apparate unless he could get off the grounds, and he would have no access to a Floo, not being close with any of the professors. It was possible he could take a secret passage, but Albus had never heard that he was close with the Weasley twins or other students who knew the best of them, either.

Albus rather thought Harry would leave through the gates as soon as possible. If he had already left, they would pick up his trail there.

And if he had not gone yet…

Albus would be there to catch him, and require him to answer for what he had done.

*

Theo walked beside Harry as they made their way into the Slytherin common room, and got a number of stares from the sixth- and seventh-years who were mostly the ones lounging there. It seemed that some people hadn’t yet adapted to the new reality where Theo Nott was Harry Potter’s protector and champion.

They should, Theo thought, and sent a thoroughly nasty look in Draco’s direction just as Draco opened his mouth.

Draco turned pink and looked down.

For a last interaction between us, that really couldn’t have gone better, Theo decided smugly, and accompanied Harry into the bedroom they had shared for so long without his ever seeing what kind of person Harry really was. Harry dithered for a moment, but then forced himself to close his eyes and stand still. Theo waited.

“I want to take my trunk,” Harry whispered. “And all my clothes. I don’t want your father to have to purchase—robes for me.”

“That’s fine,” Theo said. In fact, Father would have all the resources necessary to help Harry, and clothes were a trivial expense compared to books and tutors, but he understood why Harry wanted to keep a sense of pride. “I’ll guard the door and make sure no one stumbles in.”

Harry nodded and began casting packing charms haphazardly. At least his hands had stopped shaking after they’d met up, and Theo no longer felt the distress blaring as clearly as the call of a screech owl through the amulet Harry wore.

Theo kept one eye on the door and one on Harry, so that he wouldn’t forget and leave anything behind because of nerves. Harry seemed to be stabilizing as the minutes passed, though, and tossed the last robe in with a decisive nod. Then he looked around and shook his head a little.

“What?” Theo asked.

“I suppose I can take down the wards around my bed. I wouldn’t want someone to learn anything about me from studying them.”

Harry clenched one hand, and wards that Theo hadn’t ever noticed were there started to unpeel themselves from his bed curtains, the sheets, the pillows, and the floor around the bedposts as well. Theo let himself go enough to stare open-mouthed. It wasn’t like Harry would think less of him for openly expressing his astonishment.

Nor did he. Harry caught his eye and looked pleased with Theo’s awe, instead. His ears turned pinker than Draco’s, but his smile was smug.

“Good,” Theo said, when Harry swept one last hand over the bed and nothing responded. “We should go now.”

“Yes.” Harry looked around the bedroom with a hard expression on his face that Theo couldn’t interpret, and then fell into step beside Theo as they walked out. “Hedwig will follow me. She did once before.”

Theo suppressed the urge to ask questions about that, and just nodded. They had to present a calm front to the Slytherins to get out without someone questioning them, especially if they—

Draco was gone from the common room.

Theo snapped his wand into his hand. People immediately drew back out of the way, some with huge eyes and pale faces, and squeaking cries of alarm from the younger kids. Harry jolted and turned to look at him.

“I think it’s possible that they know,” Theo said.

Harry nodded and raised his hand. A shining ward snapped out across the common room, shoving everyone within ten meters of it off to the sides. Then Harry ran down the clear path, and Theo followed, determined not to be left behind.

Never. Never again.

*

Albus lifted his head slowly. Someone had Apparated behind him, he knew it from the sharp crack, but when he turned, he could see nothing. Albus narrowed his eyes as Fawkes warbled uncertainly.

Uncertainty was not something Albus really wanted to hear in his phoenix’s voice right now.

“Who are you?” he called commandingly. The pain of the burns had faded completely at the thought that perhaps Tom was here, if he had spies in the school who might have told him of Severus’s condition. It would have been quick, but Albus had always been aware that some of his students would make the wrong choices. “Show yourself!”

Silence. Albus cast his eyes back and forth, and then Fawkes trilled sharply and turned to face the gates. Albus faced them, too.

Two slender shapes were running towards him. Albus sighed when he saw Mr. Nott at Harry’s shoulder. He did not know when the connection between those two students had begun or why, but it made Harry’s behavior less of a surprise than it might have been.

“Harry,” he said, and moved forwards, spreading his arms out. “I cannot let you—”

There came the shattering sound of a glass vial behind him, and the next second, Albus went to his knees as he was engulfed by smoking green poisonous fumes.

Albus immediately held his breath and tried to cast a Bubble-Head Charm. The fumes twined themselves around his wand and tried to yank it out of his hand. Albus had never encountered a potion that could do that and was nearly betrayed into a gasp.

On his shoulder, Fawkes began to sing, and slowly, a patch of air cleared right in front of Albus’s face. The potion promptly began to try and take it over again, and Albus nearly missed seeing Harry and Nott pelt past him.

“Stop!” he called, and although they were beyond the gates of Hogwarts now, the grounds within still responded to him. Stones and earth began to shift aside, reaching out in tendrils to extend the Headmaster’s will.

And the fumes shot down his throat.

Albus fell to the ground, hearing his heels drumming from a great distance away. The tendrils of earth and stone collapsed as his will turned to keeping himself alive. Fawkes poked his head down and sang again.

Albus’s lungs cleared, but they felt as burned on the inside as his skin had been on the outside immediately after the explosion of Harry’s magic. He rolled over, coughing, and got to his knees.

Harry was already in the grasp of a tall, dark-cloaked figure who was giving Albus a glance that felt like contempt. Young Nott stood between Albus and Harry, his wand drawn, a vicious expression on his face.

“You were a fool to think Harry would work with Voldemort.”

The shock of hearing Nott say the name stayed Albus’s hand for a second too long. Nott stepped back and Apparated, at the same moment as the cloaked figure disappeared with Harry.

The fumes of the potion finally faded as Fawkes circled above them, singing a song of mourning. Albus continued kneeling, despite and because of the pain in his joints, feeling mourning of his own join his familiar’s.

Harry was lost to him.

And, simply, lost.

Albus would have to make sure that the war would not be, as well.

Chapter Text

“Come here, please, and let me look at you.”

Harry started and looked up. Helios had landed with him outside the house and brought Harry in through the wards carefully, telling him he could tour the grounds later. Harry had been perfectly in agreement with that. He was shaking with adrenaline and the idea of how near an escape he had had from Dumbledore at the end.

And he had thought that Helios and Theo lived alone except for maybe some house-elves, so being addressed like that was startling.

He winced when he saw a portrait of a beautiful woman staring at him from the wall of what looked like a huge entrance hall with a soaring ceiling. She made Harry aware of his sweat-soaked hair and the robes that hung raggedly around him.

“Um. Sorry, ma’am.”

The woman laughed a little and leaned forwards with her hands on the frame of the painting like someone peering through a window. “You have no need to apologize to me. My adopted son is welcome in our home however he comes to us.”

“You’re—Theo’s mum?”

The woman smiled and inclined her head a little. “Eloise Nott, at your service.”

Harry stared at her with his mouth a little open. She really was beautiful, for all that Harry was starting to think he didn’t find women that attractive. She had long, rippling dark hair that curled slightly at the ends, and her eyes were Theo’s, that shining stormcloud grey. Her smile was his, too.

“Er,” he said, when he had become aware of a choked cough from behind him. “Sorry to meet you looking like this.”

“Like this?”

Harry swept a hand down his robes.

“It doesn’t matter,” Eloise said softly, staring at him. She looked as if she were unwrapping a gift that had sat under a tree for a hundred Christmases. “It doesn’t matter at all, beloved son.”

Harry swallowed and turned away, because frankly he had no idea what to do with that. He latched on to Theo, who had come in behind him and was looking at him with an easier kind of expression. “Is there a place I can shower?” he asked helplessly. “And some place I can—put my things down?”

“Of course. You have a room here, Harry.”

“I do?”

*

Theo felt an ache under his breastbone as he watched Harry stare around the suite of rooms Father had set aside for him. It was the suite that would always have belonged to Theo’s chosen while he courted them, but Harry looked as if he didn’t think he deserved any of it.

“I’ve never had any place this—big,” Harry said, and trailed his hand over the desk of dark wood that stood near the bed. “Are yours this big?” He hadn’t glanced at Theo since they stepped through the door into the bedroom.

“Bigger,” Theo said. “But I assume you’ll be seeing them soon enough.”

Harry turned a brilliant red, which was at least different from the desperate pallor he’d had. He cleared his throat and shook his head a little. “I can’t just—accept all this, you know? Not without payment of some kind.”

“What payment do you think Father and I would accept, Harry?”

Harry sneaked a glance at him and then turned away again. “I could work on the wards for the house?”

“Of course Father hopes that you’ll take a look at them. But you aren’t paying for yourself that way.” Theo made his voice as gentle as he could, because Harry was looking increasingly distressed. “You’re enough payment in yourself, Harry. Forever and always.”

Harry stood there, his face going back to pale again, and looked like he was drowning. Theo decided he should step back, even though it wasn’t what he wanted to do. “You haven’t even eaten yet other than the few bites at breakfast, have you?”

“No,” Harry said in a quiet voice.

“Then I’ll get one of the elves to bring you something. You have the shower you were talking about.”

Harry just nodded, looking lost.

Theo stepped out of the bedroom and shut the door gently behind him, then summoned Rory, the oldest of the elves and the most diplomatic. He thought Harry would need the help in adjusting to his new surroundings.

He looks like no one ever told him that he was worth anything.

Well, no one at school ever did. And I have my suspicions about those Muggles.

Theo hoped Harry would talk about the Muggles, in time. But now was precisely the wrong time to press him. Theo would wait, because now they had months and years and spiraling decades ahead of them.

Theo shook himself out of his satisfied trance to give orders to Rory.

*

The sitting room could have swallowed Dudley’s bedroom back at Privet Drive.

The bedroom looked as if it had fallen out of some old Muggle film about rich people.

The bathroom was—

But at that point, Harry’s mind kind of shut down. He just stripped off his robes in a mindless whirl and walked into the shower. The water began pouring immediately, the way it did in the showers at Hogwarts, which Harry was glad of, because he was far too tired to work out what the hell he should have done if it hadn’t.

He braced his palms flat on the wall of the shower and leaned his forehead there, too. The tile was a soothing blue-grey color. It seemed to be the dominant color in his rooms.

His rooms.

Harry had been thinking, less than an hour ago, that he would probably be arrested for the murder of Snape and the Headmaster. Or his attack on them, anyway, since the Headmaster had been well enough to come after them at the Hogwarts gates. He had been thinking about how he would flee into exile, mad half-made plans of going to Gringotts and emptying out his vault dancing in his head.

He had heard about a prophecy an hour and a half ago. He had found out how much his ignorance had fucked up his life an hour and a half ago.

And now he was here.

Harry sank down to crouch on the shower floor. The water poured over him endlessly, and he knew it would for as long as he wanted to sit there, but he couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t stop the tears that were creeping down his face to mingle with the water.

How could—

He had this now. How had it happened?

What would happen if he changed his mind about being with Theo? How would he feel when it was all taken away?

Harry shuddered and curled in on himself. Then he reached down into his soul and pulled himself to his feet with the same effort of will that had let him survive six years in Slytherin with no one who liked him. He reached for the delicately-scented shampoo that sat on a shelf near the showerhead and began to steadily scrub his hair.

It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t let it matter. If he had to reject Theo, he would be able to use what the Notts had given him and he would still soar high. That was it. That was all.

*

Helios sat at the head of the dining room table, his cane propped near his chair. Normally he let it stand where he pleased, because he could Summon it easily enough with a flick of his wand, but at the moment, he thought Harry needed to see him weaker than he was.

The young man who came into their dining room with a half-bow of his head in Helios’s direction was as wild as a dragon. Theo didn’t seem to see it, from the dazzled smile he was giving Harry, but Helios had more skill at observing people. And more important, observing magically powerful people in distress, the way they had tended to be in Death Eater meetings and before the Wizengamot.

Harry sat down in the chair next to Theo. He was thin. He was silent. He watched the way that Theo and Helios put food on their plates, and Helios didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that he had eaten a late lunch.

Starvation. Used as a punishment. That would explain some things.

Helios put aside the first five things he wanted to say. Harry served himself from the plate of delicate roast beef, taking two slices fewer than Helios would have liked, and ate in silence, head still bowed. Theo was staring at him with a steadily growing frown.

At least he knows something is wrong, although I doubt he knows what.

“Mr. Potter,” Helios said softly. He was incapable of calling someone Theo had chosen by last name in his head, but the boy would be comforted by a more formal address at the moment.

“Yes, sir?” Harry laid down his knife and fork the moment Helios addressed him.

“What subject do you think you need the most extensive tutoring in?”

Harry blinked, and some of the defensive coil to his shoulders fell away. He picked up his fork and knife after a long moment of unsubtle encouragement from Theo. “Would I be allowed to ask about tutors for subjects I wasn’t taking the NEWTS for?” he asked.

Helios bit back the temptation to reply with exasperation. That would only drive Harry further into his shell and make it harder to bring him out again. He nodded. “Of course.”

“Because Snape didn’t teach Potions well enough for me to really learn it, and he particularly hated me, but I’d still like to take the NEWT in Potions if I had the chance…”

Helios listened as Harry talked about NEWTS, with Theo adding his own ideas, and explained some of his thoughts about tutors and the schedule of studying that he would want the boys to follow. By the time that they were eating the meringue the house-elves had made, Harry was calmer and watching Helios less as if he would have to flip over the table and make an escape out the window.

“Do you want to talk about what happened to you in the Headmaster’s office?” Helios asked at last, because it would influence some of the decisions he made about tutors.

Harry tensed up at once, and his left hand twitched in a subtle gesture. Helios raised his own hands. “I am not asking you to blame you, Mr. Potter. I am asking because we need to make political decisions of some kind going forwards.”

Harry swallowed and then nodded, although he still gave the doorway he’d entered through a longing look.

“They summoned me because they wanted to scold me, basically,” Harry said, and his mouth twisted. “Well, the Headmaster summoned me, but Snape was there, too. Dumbledore said there was a prophecy about me and the Dark Lord. That I’m the only one who can defeat him or some nonsense like that. That I have to kill him, or he’s going to kill me.” Harry took a deep breath, while Helios sat there and felt as though someone had reached into his chest to jangle his viscera. “And Dumbledore acted like he was disappointed in me for not knowing more about magic, not being in Gryffindor, not having Muggleborn friends, everything else. My magic lashed out. I didn’t mean to hurt them, but I did.”

“The Headmaster seemed well enough when he tried to intercept you at the gates.”

“Thank you for stopping him.” Harry’s eyes were shadowed. “I think I burned him. I don’t know how badly. But Snape looked dead.” He swallowed the last of his butterbeer, the only drink he’d asked for. Helios had not thought it wise to serve him wine. “On the other hand, if the Headmaster survived, maybe he did, too.”

Helios nodded. “Would you mind if I looked at your memory of the moment? I might be able to tell you more conclusively if he did.”

“Legilimency?”

“Yes.”

“How much would it hurt?”

Helios tamped down his own instinctive reaction to that statement, and reminded himself that Severus Snape was a Legilimens and might have inflicted his own pain on Harry’s mind in the past. “Not at all. But you would know that I was in your mind, and that makes some people uncomfortable.”

Harry considered the matter for long enough that Helios expected a negative answer, but in the end, he nodded and stood. Helios didn’t tell him that it wasn’t necessary, and he could have read Harry’s mind from his seat. Let the dragon have some control.

Harry looked into Helios’s eyes. Helios reached out, twitching his wand a little and whispering, “Legilimens,” even though he was a skilled enough practitioner that casting the spell each time was no longer necessary.

He slipped into noise and chaos, but it wasn’t any trouble to find the specific memory he was looking for. It hovered under the surface of Harry’s mind still, and blazed with such anger and fear and pain that Helios doubted he could have seen anything else right now. He touched it.

He was whirled away. He watched and listened in growing disbelief, wondering how in the world Snape and Dumbledore could have handled this so badly. They might not have any fondness for Harry, but cornering him, acting as though everything that had happened to him was his own fault, and dumping the prophecy on him was so ill-advised that…

Helios stepped back a bit in the memory and looked at the hatred on Snape’s face. Yes, perhaps a normally subtle and clever man might have made extraordinarily stupid decisions while feeling that.

But there was no excuse for Dumbledore. Helios wished only that the potion he had unleashed on Dumbledore at Hogwarts’s gates had succeeded in doing more than inflicting minor damage the phoenix was able to heal.

When he parted from the memory at last, Harry blinked and shook his head. “Feels weird,” he murmured, keeping his eyes on Helios.

Helios just nodded. “Thank you for allowing me to view it.”

“Do you think Snape lived?”

“I am not sure, but I think he might.”

Harry looked so relieved that Helios reevaluated him a bit. A dragon still concerned with who he killed might be less volatile than Helios had assumed. Or perhaps Harry had simply worried about the difference between facing punishment for injuring someone and facing a murder charge.

“We will add Occlumency studies to your tutoring,” Helios said, and leaned back a little in his chair as Harry nodded eagerly. “Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Ancient Runes, Astronomy, Herbology, Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy…what am I forgetting, Theo?”

“History of Magic.”

Helios grimaced. “That is ill-taught enough that it may take extra tutoring.”

“I don’t mind,” Harry said quickly. “But I’m not taking all those classes, sir. I dropped Astronomy after the OWL.”

“That does not mean that you cannot take the NEWT in it, as long as you are properly prepared.”

Harry blinked and looked as though he were swimming in a new ocean in his mind. Helios hid his satisfaction and settled back in his seat. He thought he knew how to handle this dragon now.

Gently. Carefully. With respect and transparency, so that Harry would not feel the need to lash out or leave them behind.

Given what Theo had described of Harry’s wandless magic and wards, Helios was not sure how much of the house would be left standing should Harry feel the need to lash out. On the other hand, having someone who would freely give his allegiance and power to help the Nott family if treated kindly?

We will be a force to be reckoned with, once again.

*

“Are you all right?”

Harry turned around in the doorway of his suite, smiling at Theo. Theo felt his heart thump with satisfaction. Harry had looked awful earlier, as if fault lines were running through his soul. Now he looked more like the wizard who had got them away from Tom Riddle and Voldemort.

“Yes, I am.” Harry sighed a little. “It was an—overwhelming day.”

Theo nodded. “I promise that anything you need from us, you’ll get, Harry.”

“Because I’m your—chosen.”

Theo inclined his head, refusing to feel embarrassed. It might not have been the term that he would have used, but it was true. “Do you not want to be?”

Harry was silent enough that Theo clenched his fists. Had something broken between them and he hadn’t realized it? Or did Harry not feel the need to depend on Theo now that he had Theo’s father involved?

“I do want to be,” Harry said softly at last. “I just wonder what will happen if this—breaks apart.”

“I can’t imagine it doing so.”

Harry’s smile was quick and quick to fade. “I know, Theo, but we’re only teenagers yet. Even if we’re adults. I never anticipated lashing out at Dumbledore and Snape or leaving Hogwarts the way I did, either. How can you promise that this will last?”

“I can promise this,” Theo said, and took a step closer while Harry watched him pensively. “I will always be your friend, even if for some reason we’re not lovers. And I’ll always help you and advocate for my father to help you, Harry. I think you’re brilliant and powerful and deserve a much better future than you were going to have. And I still remember the way you woke me up and made me see what kind of person I’d become without even intending to. I pay my debts.”

Harry’s shoulders settled, which Theo was glad to see. He had wondered if he should have sounded more friendly and Gryffindor-like, but there was a reason that Harry had been Sorted into Slytherin, after all.

“I trust that you will, Theo.”

Theo eased a little closer. “Can I kiss you now?”

“You sound like you’ve been waiting all month for it.” There was muffled laughter in Harry’s voice now, brightness around his eyes.

“I have.”

Harry’s eyes widened, and then he leaned in and began the kiss. Theo shuddered and lifted his hands to settle them on Harry’s shoulders. Harry held onto his arms and kissed him like he meant it, and Theo’s world tumbled around him.

Harry pulled back sooner than Theo would have liked, but the blush on his cheeks said that it wouldn’t be wise to push him. “I liked that,” he whispers.

Theo knew he would embarrass himself if he tried to talk. He squeezed Harry’s hand once and drifted down the corridor to his own rooms, where he collapsed on his bed and replayed the kiss again and again in his head.

And if he had to use his own hand to take a little of the edge off…

It didn’t matter. He could wait for Harry, and the anticipation cutting him like a blade now would be all the sweeter for the delay.

*

Harry closed the door behind him and stood there, staring at the wall.

He didn’t understand how the day had started like that and ended like this.

He also didn’t know for sure if he trusted Theo’s easy assurances, if they would manage to last or if any parting between them would be as simple and straightforward as Theo seemed to think. Harry had to shake his head as he thought about all the possible ways their paths could split and he could be left on his own again.

Then Harry took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

He would grow stronger. He would take the tutoring and the study time and pass all the NEWTS he could and gain favors from Helios. He would take what he could from the Notts, and he thought he could gain a lot.

And if he wasn’t certain that his path would lie with Theo’s forever…

At least he would enjoy that while he could, too.

Chapter Text

“Hello, Harry. Please come in.”

Harry hesitantly entered the sitting room that seemed to be done all in shades of pearl. Or maybe it was some other fancy color he didn’t know. Eloise Nott smiled at him from her portrait on the wall. It seemed to be one of several she had in the house, and this one showed shelves dense with books and a table that had towering piles of papers on it.

“Yes, ma’am?” he asked, when he came to a stop before the desk that stood in front of the fireplace and echoed her table.

“None of that, Harry. Please call me Eloise.”

“I—all right. You’re sure? Not even Mrs. Nott?”

Her smile deepened. “Do you think that you should go on calling the woman who’s going to be your mother-in-law someday by such a formal title? I believe it would be tiring.”

“What,” Harry croaked. Her words made him feel as though he’d been standing in a lift without knowing it, and the floor had suddenly rushed downwards.

Eloise studied him with a faint frown. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have? I find that I’m more prone to that as a portrait than I was in life. I thought Theo had made his intentions clear, but maybe he hasn’t.”

“I was—” Right now, Harry couldn’t remember if anyone had ever spoken formal words of betrothal. It would be betrothal, right? That was the kind of thing Parkinson and Malfoy talked about. He ran his tongue around his teeth. “I didn’t think Theo would be that serious about marrying me,” he whispered, and that at least was the truth.

“Why not?”

Eloise’s astonishment was painful. Harry turned away and studied the gleaming wall for a long moment until he could find his voice. “I don’t—belong here,” he said at last. “I didn’t grow up in this kind of luxury. I would be an embarrassment to Theo if he really wanted me to—live here—”

He shook his head, unable to say more.

“I believe Helios said you grew up with Muggles.”

“Yes,” Harry said, turning around, relieved that she had been the one to say it.

“Why should that be a problem?”

Harry paused, staring at her incredulously. Eloise only put up her eyebrows and looked a little like the Unspeakable Theo had told him she’d been.

“Because you’re a blood purist? Your husband fought for a blood purist Dark Lord? I’m a half-blood? I grew up in the Muggle world?”

Eloise sighed. “I respected power, you know, not blood.”

“Well, yeah, I’ve heard blood purists say the same thing, but then they claim only purebloods are powerful enough for them—”

“Just a moment, Harry. Please.”

Harry had never heard an adult woman say anything to him in that tone. His professors all acted disappointed and disapproving, Aunt Petunia upset and disapproving. He blinked and fell silent.

“A portrait concentrates the essence of the person it’s painted of,” Eloise said quietly, gaze fixed on him. “The most important beliefs and thoughts and emotions enter the canvas and the paint. Memories, too, of course, but the way we think about them and talk about them is influenced by the more important things.”

“All right,” Harry said slowly.

“I was a blood purist when I was alive,” Eloise said. “I can remember that. But that conviction didn’t enter my portrait, because it wasn’t important to me in the same way other convictions were.”

“Such as?”

“Taking care of my son. Loving my husband. Swearing that I would protect and nurture the power of whoever Theo chose.”

“I bet you wouldn’t have been this understanding if he’d—chosen a Muggleborn, though.” Chosen was a good word, Harry thought. It meant that he didn’t have to say certain things it would be difficult to unsay.

“I think it unlikely, yes. But Theo came to speak to me about you yesterday evening. The way his face shone…I would do much to protect it in my son. And in you as well, if you think you can look at him the same way.”

“I don’t even know what way he looked.”

“Well, perhaps I ought to let him describe that to you.” Eloise settled back in her portrait. “But please believe that I am…more than pleased with his decision. And I am pleased to offer you tutoring in Astronomy and battle magic, Harry.”

Harry walked slowly back towards the desk. “Isn’t battle magic just Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

“Perhaps we might better call it Offensive Magic Against Anyone Who Would Hurt You. Rather like your wards.”

“You’re going to teach me wards?”

“No. Hexes, curses, and jinxes, but ones that are aimed to create such a dazzling or effective offense that your enemies will retreat simply because they do not know how to handle it.”

Harry eyed her. Eloise leaned her arms on the portrait frame like a woman looking out a high window and smiled winsomely. Harry snorted. “I don’t trust that you actually smile like a sweet little girl for a second.”

“Oh, no. But I can teach you to make your enemies underestimate you, too, and control of your expression is part of that. There are even spells that can reinforce that.”

Harry hesitated one more time. Then he nodded decisively. Whether or not Eloise was Theo’s mother, he could learn a lot from her, and if there came a time when he got kicked out of Nott House—

Well, he would be able to take his knowledge with him. He didn’t think Helios or Theo would try to Memory Charm him, no matter what happened.

“Good,” Eloise said, her expression lightening. “Now, I asked Helios to put out a book that talks about the influence of stars on wards. It’s true that it’s faint most of the time, but you can still notice and incorporate it, if you want. The Stars Our Servants?”

“Yes, here it is,” Harry murmured, taking out a thick blue book from the pile. The cover had a moving image on it of the kind that was more usual in newspaper photographs, a swirling, dancing star in the center of a sphere.

Eloise smiled at him. “Excellent. Let’s begin with Chapter One…”

*

Helios,

I will not chop my words like Potions ingredients. You are sheltering two boys who hurt my son in their different ways. I require payment of the debt.

Lucius.

Helios sneered at Lucius’s handwriting. He had always despised the man, even when they supposedly stood as equals in the Dark Lord’s favor. And to think that the man was ordering Helios to give up his own son?

He knew Harry had wrapped wards around Lucius and Malfoy Manor, but it was time that the man learned another lesson.

“Father.”

Helios set the letter aside and looked up with a smile he didn’t need to feign. Theo stood in the doorway of Helios’s study, his back very straight and an expression that was far from a smile draped across his face.

“Yes, Theo?”

“I need to know how to—Harry is convinced that we’ll kick him out of the house the minute he does something we don’t like.”

Helios blinked. “Surely he must know that we would not go to war as we have done for almost anyone else?”

“I think intellectually, he may know that,” Theo murmured, pushing his hair out of his face. “But I also think that he was more comfortable accepting favors from me when he hadn’t seen how much you and Mother love me.”

“Ah.” Helios hid his own discomfort. Of course he loved Theo, and so did Eloise. It just wasn’t something they spoke of often. “So Harry believes that because we—care for you so much, all he would need to do is upset you, and we would get rid of him?”

“Yes. Mother was hinting at it after her session with Harry this morning, and although she didn’t want to betray his confidence, I put what she said together with some other things that I’ve heard Harry say, and that has to be it.” Theo drifted towards the chair in front of the fire that he had sat in most often as a child, and flung himself into it. “So I need to know how to speak to reassure him.”

“I am not sure that you can.”

“I must.”

Theo’s voice rang with determination, rather than the desperation Helios had thought he might hear. Helios waited for long moments, to see if anything would change, but Theo simply stared at him.

Good, Helios thought, with a small curving of his own lips. He has indeed chosen, and minor inconveniences and oppositions will not turn him aside from his course.

Not that Helios had thought they would, given what he had seen in Theo’s memories and the way his son acted around Harry. But there was always the chance that he might have misjudged, led astray by Theo’s own implacable faith in his devotion to Harry. Theo might have that faith, and yet crack when the time came to prove it.

“I cannot give you the exact words you need, son, because every situation will be different, and what would work if you had chosen someone different might not work in Harry’s case. But I can give you permission to reveal certain secrets to him.”

From the way Theo’s eyes widened, he had anticipated what Helios would say to him. But Helios told him anyway, for the pleasure of seeing Theo’s eyes widen even more, and the lightness in his son’s step when he stood and left the room.

“He’s chosen well.”

Helios leaned back to look up at his Eloise, who stood in the portrait frame on his wall that held a fireplace and her own study. “Yes,” Helios said quietly. “And yet…”

“Yes, husband?”

“If something happens to Harry, then Theo will experience what I did when you died. It is the only thing that troubles me about Theo’s gift of his heart.”

“We must defend Harry and teach him so well that he will not die as I did. So that he will survive the Dark Lord, and he and Theo can have the life after the war that we would wish for them.”

Helios closed his eyes and remained still for a long moment, so that the trembling, shattered pieces in his belly could seal themselves back together. Then he nodded. “We will do so.” And he reached for the much more interesting letter that had come that morning, in response to his request for a tutor for Theo and Harry in the History of Magic.

He had few associates he respected, and fewer enemies. But one of those enemies had written to him, and although he thought she was probably accepting his offer so that she could spirit Harry away from Nott House if she judged him in danger, that didn’t matter. Helios would still welcome her presence in his home.

Anything, if would keep Harry and thus Theo’s heart safer.

*

“Harry Potter. It is wonderful to meet you. My name is Andromeda Tonks.”

Theo watched the way that Harry blinked in bewilderment at the tall, dark-haired woman, and managed to hold back a laugh. Harry looked so young at the moment, in a way that Theo suspected he rarely got to be. He did glance hesitantly at Theo for a moment before going over to shake Mrs. Tonks’s hand.

“Um, hello, Mrs. Tonks. I don’t know you…?”

“No.” Mrs. Tonks had a sad smile that reminded Theo of the way his mother looked in some photographs he had of her. “But we have a connection nonetheless. I sometimes passed information to the Order of the Phoenix during the war—Dumbledore’s organization working against You-Know-Who,” she added, when Harry stared at her. “Your parents fought with them. And my cousin was your godfather, of course.”

“What?”

“You don’t know about Sirius?”

“No. Who’s he?”

Theo blinked. He hadn’t thought that particular piece of ancient history would come up during this meeting. Then again, he hadn’t heard anything that suggested Harry didn’t know the history.

Mrs. Tonks swallowed. “You don’t know Sirius.”

“Uh, if he’s dead, how could I?”

“He’s not dead. He’s in Azkaban, for betraying your parents.” Mrs. Tonks pulled her hand back and folded her arms, swaying a little in place, although Theo didn’t know if even she knew she was doing that. “He was their Secret-Keeper, the one who told You-Know-Who where to find you on the night your parents died and you lived.”

Harry closed his eyes for long moments. “Why did he do that?”

“No one knows.” Mrs. Tonks’s voice was gentle. “He was your father’s best friend all through school, and he despised You-Know-Who and his family, our family. But I suppose perhaps You-Know-Who offered him something he wanted. I don’t think anyone has ever asked him.”

“What did he say when he got arrested?”

“He was found just after he’d killed over a dozen Muggles and Peter Pettigrew, another of his friends, and your father’s.” Theo watched Harry instead of Mrs. Tonks’s voice, grim although her voice was, watching as the words slammed into Harry. “He was laughing and saying it was all his fault. I think at that point, he was considered so mad that the Aurors saw there wasn’t much point in questioning him.”

“Harry?” Theo asked softly.

Harry turned towards him and opened his eyes, and Theo reached for him instinctively. Harry was burning alive with rage, it seemed, standing there, and Theo wanted to save him and draw him closer, help him, protect him.

“It’s his fault,” Harry hissed, and he sounded remarkably like a snake. “I could have grown up with my parents if not for him! Had a normal childhood! Not been Voldemort’s target like this!”

Mrs. Tonks gave a soft gasp at the sound of the Dark Lord’s name, but Theo ignored her, focused on the most important being in the world. “It was probably both of their faults, but Voldemort’s more than Black’s. He turned him into a Death Eater somehow…”

“I still never knew. I want to talk to him. Find out why. Yell at him, if nothing else. Make him pay.” Harry whipped around to face Mrs. Tonks. “What’s their policy on visitors at Azkaban?”

Mrs. Tonks stared at Harry as if she thought he had gone mad in turn. Theo held him gently, but managed to flash her a smile when Mrs. Tonks briefly met his eyes. Father had said something about how she had probably accepted the commission to teach them history in order to make sure that Harry wasn’t being tortured or something similar.

Know who you’re dealing with. Harry is as Dark as me, my chosen.

Mrs. Tonks cleared her throat and turned her face away for a moment. Then she said in neutral tones, “You might be able to arrange a visit to the island. But the guards who are normally the only ones there would—have to be contacted, and bribed.”

“Because I’m a fugitive now. I know.” Harry was already calming down again, but his skin felt warmer than normal where Theo’s fingers rested against it.

“No, because they wouldn’t be able to resist bragging about seeing the Boy-Who-Lived. A fugitive? What are you talking about?”

Theo raised his eyebrows. He would have thought Father would have told Mrs. Tonks all about the way he and Harry had fled Hogwarts before inviting her to the house. But he said only, “Professor Snape and Headmaster Dumbledore confronted Harry without warning, and he lashed out with his accidental magic. He wounded the Headmaster, and we don’t know for sure what happened to Snape.”

Mrs. Tonks stood still for a moment, her eyes darting over them. Then she said, “I don’t have news of Snape, either, but Dumbledore has pressed no charges. He’s told no one that Harry fled the school, in fact.”

Theo narrowed his eyes. He could guess at a few reasons for refraining from doing that, but none of them were ones that he would have guessed.

Harry shifted restlessly in his arms, and Theo reminded himself of what was most important. He drew Harry closer and said, “Whether or not Dumbledore chose to alert the Aurors, he’ll be looking for Harry. I’m not going to hand him my chosen on a silver platter.”

“I doubt he would expect Harry to go to Azkaban.”

“But as you pointed out, the guards might still gossip.”

“I need to bribe one of them,” Harry said intensely. “I need to get in there and make Black pay. But I don’t have that much money in my trust vault. Do you know of any guards who might want something else, Mrs. Tonks?”

Theo stared at Harry. Harry seemed to feel his gaze, and swung around to glare.

“I’m going. You can come with me or you can stay here, but I’m going!”

“Listen to me, Harry. Why would you think that you don’t have the money to bribe a guard?”

“Why would you think that I do? I have a single—”

“We’ll help you with the bribe money, of course. You git.”

Harry blinked and stared at Theo. Mrs. Tonks cleared her throat and moved back, looking around uncomfortably.

“You—would?”

“Of course. When will you accept that we wanted you here for a reason?”

Harry just blinked and stared some more. Then he said, “I thought that was partially about securing a political ally for you and your father. And for—for—because of the way that you feel about me.”

“Of course it is.”

“But you would bribe people for me?”

Theo leaned close, uncaring of the way that Mrs. Tonks was creeping towards the wall, and stared into Harry’s eyes until he watched them nearly cross. Then he said, “I would do anything for you.”

Harry stared at him for a cascade of heartbeats.

Then he surged up and kissed Theo, and Theo kissed him back, feeling the desperate strain in Harry’s body, in the press of his lips, in the clarity of his mind and the way that Harry was giving soft desperate sobs of relief.

Later he thought Mrs. Tonks had probably left the room at that point, but he honestly didn’t care.

Chapter Text

Severus opened his eyes and found himself standing in a dark tunnel.

He moved back with a hiss, staring around. The walls seemed to be perfectly black stone, although they reflected the light of the rare torches in rippling blue and purple sparks that he associated with the Department of Mysteries, the one time he had visited. The silence spread around him like water.

“Who has done this?” Severus raised his voice. “Release me!”

Silence did not reply.

Severus reached for his wand, and found it missing. In fact, when he looked down, he saw that his entire wand hand was missing, as if in a more severe version of the wound Potter had hit him with when he’d destroyed Severus’s old wand.

That at least soothed his anger, because now he knew where to direct it. Potter. The brat had been nothing but trouble ever since he had come to Hogwarts and been Sorted into Slytherin. What had he been playing at? No Potter would belong in Slytherin, so he must have asked the Hat for it to annoy Severus.

Severus stepped forwards, and then started more violently than he would ever admit as a shimmer of color formed in front of him. It had a crimson tint to it, and Severus braced himself against any number of curses.

But he was helpless against the figure that stepped out of the light.

“Sev.”

Lily, her eyes fixed on him, brighter than they had been the day she repudiated his friendship, and so full of sorrow and anger that Severus recoiled back against the unyielding wall behind him.

“Lily,” he whispered. “What are you—did you come to—”

“I came to ask you what you were thinking, treating my son the way you did.”

Severus’s crawling guilt and rage dived down his throat again. He took a step towards her. “Come out, Potter!” he called, his eyes darting back and forth. “I know that you conjured this apparition! Come and let me destroy you for it!”

“How would Harry know your nickname, Sev?”

Severus shook his head. “Someone could have told him. The wolf. Someone I don’t remember from our school days. Maybe Potter made his way to Azkaban and learned it from Black! I don’t care. I know this is not real.”

“Then it ought to be simple for you to wake up.”

Severus closed his eyes, reorienting himself to the center of his own mind, not this maze of black walls and nonexistent dead women. He reached down into the discipline of his thoughts that had allowed him to become a skilled Occlumens, and reminded himself of what was real and what was not.

What was real was that Lily was dead, and Potter an arrogant bastard like his father.

When he opened his eyes, he still stood in the dark stone corridor, and Lily still stood in front of him, although with a mocking smile twisting her lips that Severus had only seen on her son’s face.

“Still convinced that this isn’t real, Sev?”

Severus turned and walked down the corridor in the opposite direction, without replying. Conversing with the figure that Potter had somehow burned into his mind with a discharge of magic was fruitless. He would have to find a way out, by convincing himself of what was real and what was not.

The silence felt real. So did the stone that his reaching fingers met a moment later.

But he would not allow it to be real. Severus shook his head and moved on, ignoring the mocking laughter from behind him. That was not real, either. His Lily would never have laughed like that at him, no matter what he had done.

*

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Albus leaned back against his chair and shut his eyes. Fawkes gave an anxious croon, and Albus reached up to ruffle his familiar’s breast feathers. “What did the Dursleys say about Harry?”

“They called him a freak the entire time they were talking about him.” Kingsley’s voice was soft, subdued. “They said they hadn’t seen him since summer, and good riddance. The son, the cousin, he was home for a holiday from his own school, and he said—he said that he’d hunted Harry.”

“It wasn’t a good situation.”

Albus opened his eyes and nodded to Hestia Jones, who was standing next to Kingsley and looked nearly as upset. “I am sure you are right about that, Hestia.”

“Why did you send him there, Albus?”

“There was no place safer.”

Hestia’s face grew sharp and stubborn, but Kingsley was the one who spoke, with a warning glance at his Auror partner. “And if they molded him into the boy you described, Albus? The one who attacked you and Snape?”

“I have told you to call him Severus, Kingsley. You are colleagues in the Order of the Phoenix.”

Kingsley stared at him, and Albus reckoned that it was hard for anyone who had not been present when Harry had attacked Severus to feel much sympathy for the man. He sighed and leaned forwards. “Yes, I do believe that. And I believe that there is nothing to be done for that. Many Dark wizards had sad childhoods. That does not mean that we need to excuse them their deeds.”

Kingsley and Hestia exchanged silent glances, but in the end, they didn’t contradict him. Kingsley turned back to Albus. “You don’t intend to call for the boy to be officially brought in.”

“No. It would weaken people’s hopes to know that their Savior has gone Dark.”

Kingsley inclined his head, but said nothing outright. “And how are we to find him if we can’t utilize the Aurors?”

Albus gave a small, painful smile and reached down to a drawer in the desk. It yielded to a tap of his magic, and he took out a vial glimmering with Preservation Charms. The blood inside was as fresh as it had been when it had been drawn from Harry’s veins as a baby.

“As it happens, I have the means for an excellent tracking spell.”

*

Harry felt as though his jaw and fists had both been clenched for the entire ride to Azkaban’s island. Mrs. Tonks had stared at him a few times, but hadn’t commented on it. Helios had simply looked at Harry before they left the house and advised him not to burn everyone at Azkaban to a crisp.

Theo was by his side, as steady as though they were just walking to the Slytherin common room. When Harry glanced at him as they came out of the Apparition onto the island, Theo smiled at him.

“Why are you so bloody calm?” Harry hissed under his breath as they entered the small guardhouse that shone with bright silver anti-Dementor wards. Some form of modified Patronus, from what Mrs. Tonks had said.

“Because we’re together.”

Harry swallowed. Theo reached down and slid his fingers gently into Harry’s clenched hand, and Harry nodded and focused on the floor ahead.

Yes, all right. They were together, and they would be for the rest of their lives if Theo had anything to say about it, Harry knew.

He needed to relax as much as he could.

“Mr. Potter?”

The breathless voice made Harry snap his head up, staring. He hadn’t heard that tone since his first year at Hogwarts, when people still expected him to be some kind of hero.

Either the Auror in front of them hadn’t heard all the rumors about what a terrible person Slytherin Harry Potter was, or he didn’t care. His hands were fluttering and his breath misted in the air as he came over and pumped Harry’s free hand. “It’s so wonderful to meet you! Imagine! I’m in the same room as the person who defeated You-Know-Who…”

Vague memories of what it had been like when everyone was shaking his hand in the Leaky Cauldron, his first trip there with Hagrid, managed to keep Harry from yanking free. He smiled as politely as he could. “Thank you.”

“For what? Oh, no, Mr. Potter, I should be thanking you! Just giving back a little of what you gave to us…”

The Auror was off again, grey eyes misty. Theo snickered next to Harry, but he made no sound. Harry just felt it through their joined hands.

“Be that as it may,” Mrs. Tonks said at last, “we do need to get on with seeing Sirius Black if we’re to be out of here before most of your coworkers arrive for the day.”

The Auror, whose name Harry hadn’t bothered to listen for, started guiltily and nodded. “Of course, of course, Andromeda. I’m so sorry. My word! I was just hoping—” He glanced at Harry and bit his lip. “If Mr. Potter here would mind signing an autograph?”

Mrs. Tonks looked at Harry calmly, which was a nice change from the way the Auror had treated him. “Would you mind, Harry?’

And at least she sounded sincere in the question, like she wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to.

Harry would do whatever he had to so he could face Black, though. He smiled at the Auror and spun the fingers of the hand Theo wasn’t holding. A ward shaped and sharpened the air, turning into a solid surface. “Do you have a quill and parchment?”

The Auror left off gaping at him long enough to scramble for them.

Harry wrote his name in a flowing, looping signature that he usually didn’t bother with, and then sank the ward into it. The parchment started to fall, but Harry caught it and handed it back to the Auror. “Here you are.”

“Th—thank you!”

As they followed the babbling Auror down the stairs that apparently led to the part of Azkaban where Black was kept, Mrs. Tonks eyed Harry and murmured, “Was it the wisest course to leave your name behind? That could give anyone who came looking for evidence of you a clear trail.”

Then why didn’t you raise the objection before I signed it?

But Harry had no right to expect her to do that, really. They didn’t know each other. She had no reason to make any sacrifices for him. He shrugged a little. “I put magic into the signature so that it’ll destroy itself if he tries to show it to anyone.”

Mrs. Tonks stared at him.

Theo laughed quietly, and the sound rang in the staircase in a way that Mrs. Tonks seemed to find disturbing. She turned and walked quickly after the Auror, leaving Harry and Theo to make their way down the stairs into silence.

“You’re brilliant,” Theo breathed.

Harry had been experiencing the heavy effects of the Dementors more the more they descended, but those words made them lighten to the point that he could have flown.

*

Black was on a level of Azkaban that was apparently reserved for the criminals the Ministry considered worst. Theo curled his lip as he walked past the cells where people yelped or screamed or lay silent. Father had been a Death Eater, and he hadn’t heard of any murders that Black had committed during the war. Not until the thirteen at the war’s end. Black wasn’t like Bellatrix Lestrange or even Augustus Rookwood, whose information passed from the Unspeakables had seen countless Muggleborns and halfbloods betrayed and murdered.

Then again, the Ministry was probably reacting to the fact that it was the Boy-Who-Lived’s parents Black had betrayed.

For what he did to Harry, he definitely belongs here.

They halted at last in front of a cell whose bars looked grimier than the rest, although that might have been Theo’s imagination. There was a movement far back in the cell, and then someone flung himself at the bars.

Or something. Theo took a long step back. Why in the world was there a black dog in the cell? Since when were Azkaban inmates allowed pets?

“Sirius?”

Mrs. Tonks’s voice trembled. Theo shot her a narrow look, letting his hand rest on his wand for a moment. Had it been a mistake to bring her? Was she so sympathetic to her cousin that she might betray Harry?

“Sirius Black.”

Harry’s voice was low. Theo turned to look at him in turn, and watched the way that the light from Mrs. Tonks’s glowing leopard Patronus was hitting his face. He swallowed. Harry wasn’t blazing with fire or burning with light the way that some people got when their magic was stirring around them, but still.

He looked magnificent. He looked like someone Theo wanted.

“Harry.”

The voice was low, so savage a growl that Theo whipped back to the cell, putting himself between Harry and the bars. But it turned out that he would have been useless, because he was left staring with his mouth open as the dog transformed into a man.

“Sirius,” breathed Mrs. Tonks again.

He’s an Animagus? Theo supposed that was typical of someone who was so powerful and so dangerous that he’d managed to be a spy on the Potters for years and the Dark Lord’s second-in-command. And it also made sense of how he was sane enough to stare at Harry and recognize him.

It didn’t mean Theo liked him, but it was better to understand an enemy even if you despised them.

Black ignored Mrs. Tonks, and he ignored the way that Theo had stepped in front of Harry. He stared at Harry, only Harry, and his eyes were hungry. He just stared.

“Black,” Harry said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Theo blinked. He’d never heard of Dementors making someone genuinely remorseful, only driving them further and further into their worst memories. Then again, people who went into Azkaban either didn’t come out or came out after only a year or two. He had no idea what someone who had been in for as long as Black really felt.

“Then why did you betray them?”

The air in the corridor turned tense and vibrating. Theo could feel it like the snap of a rope against his skin. He took Harry’s hand again, and Harry turned his own to capture Theo’s, although he didn’t remove his eyes from Black’s face.

“I didn’t!”

“You said it was your fault!”

“Peter Pettigrew’s fault! We switched Secret-Keepers, and that little rat betrayed James and Lily! He never could have if I hadn’t suggested they switch! It’s my fault they’re dead!”

Theo opened his mouth, but nothing came out. To be fair, he didn’t know if he could produce coherent sound when his head was reeling so hard.

“Sirius?”

Mrs. Tonks was the one who spoke, but she wasn’t the important one right now, Theo thought. Only Harry and Black were. He herded Harry a little closer to the bars, which Black gripped as he stared at Harry with a dark, powerful yearning.

“What?” Harry croaked.

Black didn’t say anything, so Theo took it on himself to ask the obvious question. “Why did you kill the Muggles, then?”

“That was Peter. He was always quick. He blew up the street and cut off his finger to leave behind. He knew they would blame me. Blacks are all mad and have Dark magic. That’s what they said.”

Black mumbled it in a quick voice, leaning forwards so that he almost poked Harry with his nose. Theo asked, since Harry was obviously in no shape to do so, “And why did Pettigrew manage to do that?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Black asked, and although he didn’t take his eyes off Theo and his face was still hollow and staring and mad, that question alone proved he was capable of keeping track of a conversation. “Peter was a rat. An Animagus, like me. He knew he could escape. Probably dodged into the sewers. Little rat.” A growl rumbled out of his chest that it was frankly amazing anyone in human form could make.

Harry closed his eyes for a long moment. Theo let him be. Mrs. Tonks seemed paralyzed, and he didn’t think she would interfere, either.

“You were my godfather,” Harry whispered. “Do you ever think that you could have—not run after Pettigrew, and raised me instead?”

“That’s what I should have done. That’s what I regret most, Harry. Lily and James are dead and I can’t bring them back no matter what happens.” Black’s voice was ragged along the edges. “But I could have saved you.”

Harry whirled away from the bars, his hands clasped across his face. Black stared at him with the same longing that he’d shown for so many minutes so far, but he didn’t reach for him.

Mrs. Tonks still stood frozen when Theo glanced at her.

So Theo acted, because it was obvious to him that someone had to. They couldn’t leave Black here even if he was lying or had somehow gone mad about this one specific thing while managing to sound sane otherwise. They had to give Harry a chance to question Black and lay his ghosts to rest.

Theo swung his wand. Black went to sleep as a result of a nonverbal spell, and Theo broke the bars with a Blasting Curse. Mrs. Tonks jumped and said something sharp about the Azkaban guards that Theo didn’t pay attention to, except to say absently, “If magic reached past the bars from inside, it would alert them, but not from the outside.”

“How do you know that?”

“How do you think?” Theo sneered over his shoulder at her, and then focused on Black. He had only ever read about this spell, not cast it, but the desire to help Harry was pounding so strongly through him that he had no doubt he would manage it. “Animal creo!”

The spell would Transfigure most humans into an animal, but with someone who had an Animagus form, it should force them into it. For a moment, the light swirled white and gold around Black, shifting sluggishly back and forth, and Theo wasn’t sure it would work. But he bore down with the force of all he was—

I am Harry’s betrothed. I am my father’s son.

--And it smoothed out and grabbed hold of Black. He became the enormous dark hound once again.

Theo floated him out of the cell and then repaired the bars with a single swirl of his wand. Dementors were blind. They wouldn’t notice that a particular cell was empty any more than they had noticed Black had been a dog all these years. And if they noticed the feel of Black’s mind and memories missing…while the Ministry could communicate with Dementors enough to control them, Theo had never heard of the Dementors being able to talk back.

Theo Disillusioned Black and turned to face Mrs. Tonks, keeping his arm around Harry. “Let’s go.”

“We can’t—we can’t just—”

Mrs. Tonks’s voice faltered, but Theo knew it wasn’t because of weakness. He could feel it himself. Cold, flowing towards them. Hopelessness, descending the stairs. The light of her Patronus was already flickering.

Theo rolled his shoulders. It seemed that breaking the bars had alerted them after all, or maybe the Repairing Charm. It didn’t matter. He didn’t know the Patronus and he couldn’t deal with Dementors by himself, but he knew someone who could.

“Harry?”

*

Things could have been different. I could have lived with my godfather, and not the Dursleys.

Harry had fallen so far down the hole of blackness and what-if inside his soul that it was an incredible effort to drag himself out of it. He hadn’t seriously considered being able to stay with anyone except the Dursleys since he came to the magical world and saw how people had shunned him for Sorting into Slytherin. He’d put idle fantasies out of his head and focused on leaving the bloody country as soon as he could.

But now…

Now despair was howling and pinching at him, but so was something else, something that cut through the cold and rose at Theo’s voice.

Rage.

Harry looked up. The wavering shadows of Dementors played across the walls, and then the hem of a tattered robe, or what looked like one, drifted around the corner.

Harry had never mastered the Patronus Charm. But he lifted his hand, and his magic answered his call, forming into a ward as splayed and wide as his fingers.

Harry infused it with his own magic, the way he had that morning he had broken Snape’s wand and wand hand in the Great Hall, and all his rage at what he had just learned.

Destroy.

The ward snapped outwards from his hand, and the darkness filled with the sound and the light of death.

Chapter Text

Harry’s ward sang to him as it expanded throughout the prison.

There were prisoners everywhere. There were shrieks, and screams, and tattered minds, and cold. The ward hummed all of that information to him, and it hummed that that had come about because of the Dementors.

And where it touched the Dementors, it forced them out of existence.

Harry could feel them bursting like overripe fruit in his mind, a pulse of rottenness there and then gone. He could feel his magic, so eager to obey his will, lunging against the leash that Harry had instinctively called up to hold it. It wanted to go further, to destroy all the Dementors in Azkaban and any that might be elsewhere.

But Harry could feel Theo’s hand on his arm, and he could Mrs. Tonks standing trembling behind him, and he could feel the dead weight of Black in Theo’s arms.

He couldn’t exhaust himself trying to kill all the Dementors, or they wouldn’t get out of here. And he couldn’t destroy them all, anyway.

Harry yanked sharply on his magic’s leash, and it whinged and came trotting back to circle around him. Harry could picture it as a huge silver dog, like the one Black had changed shape from in the cell, but opposite in color, with big dark eyes that fixed on him appealingly.

Destroy. Destroy.

Harry stamped out the will to do that in himself, and felt Theo’s hand tighten on his elbow. He reckoned that it had been there all along, but he had been—absent from his body, too busy to feel it.

He wondered for a moment how he could be so certain that it was Theo’s hand, and then shook off the thought. He had things to do.

“Lead us out of here,” he told his magic, and as he infused it with a new will, the silver hound sniffed about and then raced up the steps. Harry tried to follow, only to find himself wobbling on the edge of collapse.

“Here.”

There was a long, complicated moment of movement, and Harry managed to look up long enough to see that Theo had transferred the unconscious, magically Lightened Black to Mrs. Tonks’s hold. He cast the Lightening Charm on Harry himself and scooped him up.

Harry swallowed the protest he wanted to make, and held out his arm. He could do that, at least. “Follow. That way.”

Theo pounded up the stairs. Mrs. Tonks followed them. Once they emerged into the prison proper, they could hear the wailing of alarm spells and the distant shouts of Aurors who were—

Probably too terrified to actually approach whatever had destroyed a load of Dementors.

Harry felt his lips draw up in a snarl of a smile. Theo glanced at him once as they sped towards the door, and shook his head. “You’re incredibly smug at the most inopportune moments.”

“Do we need to worry about wards trying to get out of here?” Harry began to spin magic around his fingers, wondering if he would have to use it to bring down those wards. He hoped he had enough strength left to do that.

“No. They relied too much on the Dementors.”

“Anti-Apparition wards,” Mrs. Tonks cut in. “That’s why we had to come in the boat.”

Harry nodded, his attention already focused inwards. He reached out to the wards around the island and felt them thrum. The magic he had directed to destroy the Dementors had harmed them, he thought, but not unraveled them.

That meant…

It ought to mean…

He heard distant footsteps running towards them after all, and shook his head. It would have to mean what he thought it did, because otherwise, none of them were going to escape. And Harry was determined to survive and have the life he had dreamed of, and the answers from Black.

He reached out and spun his magic at the wards. They thrummed again. It felt as if they didn’t know how to react to him, Harry thought distantly. They were supposed to prevent Apparition, but Harry wasn’t trying to Apparate. No one was supposed to interact with those wards unless they were trying to Apparate off the island, but Harry was interacting with them.

He touched them again, and felt the thrum building towards a breaking point. They would try to prevent whatever he was doing in a few moments, if they figured out what he was doing.

Harry grinned, aware that his mouth was stretching in a way that made Mrs. Tonks look askance at him. It didn’t matter. His mind felt cool and smooth, like a crystal, the way he had felt the morning he set up the ward to get revenge on Snape.

“The two of you will have to handle the guards,” he murmured, his eyes closing, his attention drifting away from his Lightened and exhausted body. The exhaustion wouldn’t matter, soon. “Illusion would be the easiest. I’m going to be occupied with getting us out of here.”

“What are—”

“We’ll handle it, Harry,” Theo said, interrupting Mrs. Tonks’s question. Theo’s hands tightened on Harry’s arms and back at the same time, and he bent down to press his lips to Harry’s cheek.

Harry nodded. Then he returned his attention to the puzzle of the wards, and how they would leave.

*

“What in the world is he talking about?”

Mrs. Tonks sounded so bewildered that Theo nearly laughed. But he had the impression that wouldn’t go over well, and also that she might start interrupting delicate spellwork if she didn’t get an answer. So he simply said, “He’s a genius with wards. If anyone can get us past them, it’s Harry.”

Mrs. Tonks gave a little huff, but Theo didn’t have time to worry about it. He reached the top of the staircase they’d been running up and set Harry down on the floor. Then he lifted his wand.

Harry was right that an illusion would be easiest. The problem was, Theo didn’t want easy. He wanted to use the curses his father had taught him when he was a child, curses he could feel tearing at his good intentions with eager claws.

But there was also the fact that Harry was exhausted, and might not be able to get them out of here. There was the fact that Theo might have to fight in his lover’s defense later on.

So easy it was right now, to conserve his strength.

Theo blended memories of pictures he’d seen in a book with magical strength, and spun illusion through his wand. A shape began to appear between him and the running Aurors, and filled in with silvery light. But Theo held it back from fully forming until he heard the scrape of a boot right around the corner.

Then he filled it in, and a huge, glowing, Nundu Patronus lunged towards the guards with its mouth open the moment they came around the corner.

More than one person screamed, and some people actually turned and ran the other way. Theo grinned. Everyone knew that only a hundred wizards working together could fight a Nundu, and that overruled, for some of them, the impossibility of finding something like this here.

But the other Aurors and guards were made of harder wood. A spell crackled down the corridor and hit the wall, and Theo had to duck into a little alcove, crouching to shield Harry.

“I cannot fight well while carrying my cousin.”

“Then put him down.”

Mrs. Tonks huffed again, but Theo didn’t have time to listen to what she thought about things. Another spell shot through the Nundu, and it sounded like more people were coming back. He had to stand and cast an illusion like a hood over his head. Father had taught him that one. As long as it seemed to connect with his cloak, most people took it for the real thing and didn’t try to dissipate the glamour to see his face.

Theo cast the same glamour for Harry, leaving it up to Mrs. Tonks if she wanted to act sensible or not, and then the first Auror rushed through the Patronus illusion.

Theo smiled. It seemed it would be curses after all.

*

Harry grinned as he plucked at the strands of the anti-Apparition wards around the prison and made them thrum in protest. Yes, he’d been right. They were only supposed to prevent Apparition from the prison and had no idea how to react to anything else.

And as long as someone else wasn’t actively trying to Apparate away from Azkaban—which no one would, because everyone here would know it was impossible—then they represented a reservoir of passive but potent, untapped power. One that Harry could use to get them out of here.

He gathered the force of the wards in his palms, as he saw them here, like dipping into shimmering, vertical, silvery walls of water. The wards again thrummed unhappily. Even if the guards could sense that, though, Harry thought, they would have no idea what was going on.

This wasn’t supposed to be possible.

But Harry had done enough that wasn’t supposed to be possible, he didn’t care.

*

The first Auror through the illusion hesitated at the sight of the four of them, maybe because he hadn’t expected this many intruders, or hadn’t expected so few. It didn’t matter. Theo hit him with the Bone-Melting Curse, raised a wordless shield while the other Aurors were distracted by his screams, and then cast a curse which the Unspeakables had invented and that Mother’s portrait had taught him

“Mentes filiorum!”

The corridor filled with blue and black lightning, and Mrs. Tonks gasped behind Theo, so maybe she recognized the spell. Theo didn’t care, as long as it did its job, and it appeared to. The Aurors in front of him dropped their wands and clutched their heads as the curse struck and forcibly cast their minds back to childhood.

“Where are we?” wailed several voices.

Theo raised another shield as someone further back cast a Stunner. It seemed he hadn’t caught everyone with the curse. He scooped Harry up in his arms and jerked his head at Mrs. Tonks. “Come on, bring Black,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“We shouldn’t—we shouldn’t use such magic—”

“Come the fuck on!”

From the way Mrs. Tonks set her jaw, she’d simply decided not to argue further rather than accepting that he’d won the argument, but Theo didn’t care, as long as she followed him. He ran with Harry cradled in his arms, mobile shield hovering in front of him, and prepared to return spellfire the moment he saw someone who would be a worthy target.

He didn’t let himself worry about the fact that they were essentially running in circles unless Harry found them a way off the island. He had the right amount of trust in his lover.

*

Harry grinned as he wrapped the silver magic more and more strongly around him and Theo, Mrs. Tonks and Black. Really, it was amazing that with so much magic like this just waiting in the wards, no one had tapped them before now.

Or maybe they can’t, Harry acknowledged to himself a second later.

It didn’t matter. Harry kept wrapping the magic, until probably their bodies in the physical world were shining with the same kind of silvery shimmer that a Patronus had.

And then he swung them, using his body as a conduit for the magic rather than the source of it, and propelled himself and Theo and Mrs. Tonks and Black higher into the air, over the wards, rather than through them. And as they fell down the outside of the wards, he slammed the gathered magic back into those ward walls, propelling all four of them back to the place that he was imagining as strongly as he could, the front of the Notts’ house.

He felt a breathless gasp of power, and he heard people stumbling and swearing, and a rough whimper that he thought might be from Black. It was strange, when Harry forced open his eyes to judge the others’ reactions, to find that he was making the sound himself. Worse, he couldn’t seem to stop. He frowned.

“Harry!”

And then the pain hit him, so incredibly powerful that Harry didn’t even have time to scream before he passed out.

*

“Fix him!”

Helios swept his gaze across the people collapsed on his doorstep: Theo, pale and sweating and distressed; Andromeda Tonks, looking so shocked that it had settled into her bones; a convulsing Sirius Black; and Harry, with thick blood trickling out of his eyes and ears and nostrils and mouth.

“Father! Fix him!”

Helios cast two Stasis Bubbles without pausing, one on Black and one on Harry. Those would stretch an endless moment around them and hold them the way they were, with no time passing, until he could fetch a Healer. Grimacing at the drain on his magic, Helios swung around and glared at Theo.

“Theodore.”

The name brought Theo’s eyes and attention up, and he snapped out of his attempts to reach through the Stasis Bubble and get to Harry. He straightened up with his hands behind his back. “Yes, Father?”

“Healer Thalestis. You know her Floo name.” He wasn’t about to reveal it in front of Andromeda Tonks.

“Yes, Father.” Theo slipped past him and ran into the house. Helios, meanwhile, shook his head as he stared at the damage in front of him.

“What happened?” He didn’t know if he would get an answer from Mrs. Tonks, but he did have to ask.

“We—we discovered that Sirius Black claims he’s innocent,” Mrs. Tonks whispered. “Your son broke him out of the prison, and Harry destroyed some Dementors that were attempting to attack us. Then we were in flight through the prison, and your son fought some Aurors, and—and Harry got us out of there. I don’t know how. It’s impossible to Apparate from Azkaban.”

“That was not Apparition,” Helios said absently. He would have heard the crack, and his wards would have felt the characteristic press of such magic. “Perhaps it does not have a name. But Harry is brilliant with wards, so he could have found a way to do it regardless of the protections at the prison.”

“It doesn’t matter how brilliant he is if he dies for it!”

Helios considered Mrs. Tonks for a moment, and then nodded and summoned one of their house-elves. “Please ensure that Mrs. Tonks has a private place where she can recover,” he told the elf, and ignored the way that she spluttered protests, instead using his wand to direct both Stasis Bubbles into the house. There was a set of comfortable but secure rooms he had already planned for Black to take, and he installed that bubble in there, shaking his head as he did so.

I suppose fostering a young dragon is bound to expose one to all sorts of new experiences, he thought, as he watched Harry’s bubble settle on his bed.

“Healer Thalestis is on her way, Father.”

Theo stood in the doorway of Harry’s suite. Helios nodded and backed off. He knew from the look on Theo’s face that his son wanted to be alone with his betrothed.

“I will be downstairs if you need me, Theo.”

Theo nodded without taking his eyes from Harry. Helios sighed and floated down the stairs so that he didn’t strain his old injuries, shaking his head again when he was settled in a chair in front of the fire.

I suppose I will only get a more coherent account of what happened when Harry wakes up. Although perhaps only marginally more coherent. When one is pushing the boundaries of magical theory as much as this, one is breaking into unexplored territory.

*

Andromeda knew she was alarming the house-elf by how hard she laughed after swallowing most of a glass of wine, but no one could blame her who had been there. She buried her head in her hands and kept laughing, not able to identify the point where laughter turned to tears.

What had that been? How could someone destroy Dementors instead of drive them back?

How could someone Apparate off Azkaban when it’s impossible to do so? And without breaking the wards? I would have felt the backlash if the wards had broken. It’s not likely we would have survived it, anyway.

There had been a sensation like flying without a broom, and a sensation like falling from a great height, and then her knees had hit the stone outside the door of the Notts’ manor.

Andromeda looked up and saw that the elf had brought Firewhisky, maybe because it thought that would calm her down. She reached for it with hands that were steadier than she’d expected, and gulped most of the liquid once she held it in the glass. Then she reeled back against the wall and choked down another wave of inappropriate laughter.

Harry Potter was powerful, and Dark, and not afraid of destructive spells Andromeda hadn’t even known were possible, and capable of getting one of the more loyal Death Eater families to follow him instead.

By all rights, she should have reported him to someone, some department like the Unspeakables that could help him control his magic—

But even the thought made a sharp string pull taut in her chest. Andromeda took a deep breath and rubbed the throb gingerly.

No. She owed him her life, and her parents had taught her to take life-debts seriously. This one wouldn’t let her act against Harry’s best interest.

So all she could do was see how this played out, and give Harry guidance if he asked for it, perhaps help getting away from the Notts if he wanted it.

“An appropriate godson for you, Sirius,” Andromeda whispered, and then she remembered the fact that Sirius was apparently innocent, or claimed to be, and began to cry again.

Chapter Text

“You did a lot of damage to yourself.”

Helios’s voice was calm and neutral. Harry grimaced as he leaned back against the pillows behind him. At least the Healer who had taken care of him—and ranted under her breath the entire time, as if Harry were more trouble than the Galleons Helios had paid her were worth—wasn’t in the room right now.

“I’m sorry. I do think that I’ll be back on my feet soon, and I can start working to pay you the money back. I might have enough in my trust vault as it stands.”

Helios stared at him in silence. Harry ran the words he’d spoken over in his head. Had he not been sufficiently respectful? It had sounded that way to him, but then again, he had a pounding headache, and he didn’t know if his perceptions were the best at the moment.

“You need not pay me back.”

“Well, I thought—” Harry stopped. He hadn’t really thought that he’d have to pay Theo’s father back. Theo hadn’t said anything about it. But Helios had sounded so angry without anger that Harry had assumed it had to be the cost of the Healer. What else would it be? Harry hadn’t actually died, so it couldn’t be that he had broken Theo’s heart.

“Listen to me, Harry.”

Helios walked over to Harry’s bed with short strides and stood there, leaning on the cane that normally seemed more like one of his legs than a tool to hold him up. But now, from the grim set to his mouth, he needed it.

“You nearly died. That is what I am upset about. I would like to ask you to avoid such risks in the future.”

“We needed to escape from Azkaban. Theo, too.”

“I completely agree with that. But you did not need to bring your godfather with you, or escape in such a dramatic manner, or one that hurt you so much.”

“The Healer sounded upset, but she said I would make a full recovery?”

“And so you shall,” Helios said, maybe because he could hear more fear in Harry’s voice than Harry would admit was there. “But you will be on a Potions regimen for more than a month to heal the damage to your organs. And your magic is—have you tried to use a ward since you came home?”

Prickling unease crawled up Harry’s spine. Some of it was because Helios had said this was his home, but not all of it. “No,” he whispered. “Am I a Squib?”

“No, of course not.” Helios sounded so dismissive that Harry relaxed even before he wondered if he should have. “But your magic has changed, the Healer said. The way you engage with wards has changed.”

“What does that mean?”

“That was why I asked if you had attempted to use them. I thought that you would be the one best positioned to know.”

Harry swallowed and bent down to place his hand on the twist of the bedclothes around his legs. It was uncomfortable, and he had meant to do something about it earlier, but then Helios had come in. He shaped his fingers in the sign that he would use to cast a ward to make him more comfortable. Most of the time, he had used it to cushion minor injuries when he had them.

There was a shiver, and the air around him started and came to life. Harry flinched back from the pooling silvery—liquid, was it? Or was it more like shadow?

The liquid darted down and formed for a moment into a loop around Harry’s leg. Then the bedclothes went flying up, swayed in the air as if invisible people were weaving them back and forth in a dance, and floated down again. This time, they were perfectly smooth atop Harry’s legs.

“I take it that is not what happened before?” Helios had a touch of sarcasm in his voice that made Harry stop gaping at the results at last.

Harry shook his head. “I would sometimes see a glint of light in the air from where a ward was forming, but—no.”

“Well.” Helios took a step back, his head cocked. Harry wondered if he would say something else about it, but in the end, he shrugged and turned away. “You should keep practicing with minor things. I will send Theo to you this afternoon.”

Harry frowned at the air after the door had shut behind Helio, wondering if his magic was—what? More creature-shaped? More sentient?

And if it was that last, did it mean it would sometimes refuse to work for him? That he could no longer depend on it?

Harry swallowed back the feeling of panic. He would have to be able to depend on it. He would have to keep working with it, soothe it, show that he respected it or whatever would get it back under his control.

Because, even if he had a house that would shelter him and a lover who would never desert him, and maybe even a godfather to talk to, Harry had been helpless so often before. In his early years at Hogwarts, with the Dursleys. He would never be that way again.

*

“How is Harry?”

“Well enough. How is Black?”

Theo sighed. He had sat with Harry’s godfather for about fifteen minutes that morning, when Harry wasn’t awake. Black wasn’t awake most of the time, either, and when he was, he seemed to mistake Theo for Harry and babbled to him about how they would have to go back to Godric’s Hollow as soon as possible, since James and Lily were in danger. “Not sane at the moment. Asleep.”

“I will bring in someone that I know.”

Theo paused as he was about to turn down the corridor towards Harry’s room. “What do you mean, Father?”

“I think it is as well if Sirius Black was healed as soon as possible. Forcibly healed, if that is necessary.”

Theo swallowed. There wasn’t much that frightened him, not after surviving Dementors at Harry’s side—well, other than the way Harry had been bleeding when they got back. But he had learned enough about forcible healing as a child that the thought of it terrified him.

“Is that—necessary?”

“I think it may be. I think that we need to know both more details about what happened to land Black in prison, and we need someone else who can cooperate in giving Harry a sense of place here. A home.”

“This is his home!”

Father glanced at Theo, and Theo held himself still and didn’t recoil. There was a flatness moving in Father’s eyes that Theo had seen before, after Mother died.

“Of course it is. But it seems that Harry has some difficulties accepting that. And his magic has changed. It may be minor, or it may not.” Father’s cane tapped for a moment on the floor. “I would that we have as much comfort and care to offer this young dragon as possible, if he is angry and afraid.”

He’s both, Theo thought, suddenly sure.

He nodded at Father, and hurried down the corridor. He would do his part in cradling and comforting Harry, of course. He would make him see that Nott House was his home, and if not, then anywhere they were together would be.

Anything else was unacceptable.

*

Harry blinked as Theo hurried into his bedroom and shut the door behind him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course.” Theo sat down in the chair beside Harry’s bed that the Healer had used most often, and stared at him intently. “But something Father said made me think you might not be.”

Harry flushed. Having Theo this close, after a few days when he’d mostly slept and listened to the Healer doing her best to avoid ranting, was overwhelming. Somehow, he had forgotten the way that Theo’s dark hair slipped across his forehead when he was concentrating on Harry, the way that his eyes brightened when he leaned near.

“Yeah. Um.”

“Yes?” Theo took Harry’s hand and held it, delicately spreading out Harry’s fingers and staring at them as if he’d never seen anything so fascinating.

“Can you not do that?”

Theo tensed, his openness fleeing as if it had never existed. Harry didn’t actually know how he had managed that, when he kept his head bowed and the same expression on his face as before.

I suppose I am that good at reading him.

“Of course I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to,” Theo said in a precise tone, putting Harry’s hand back on the sheets and leaning away. “I hoped that you might accept that this is your home and I want to be your lover, but I see that—”

“Come off it.”

Theo glanced at Harry, his face definitely arranged in a different expression now. He looked calm and polite. “Yes?”

“It’s just that—you don’t have to touch me that tenderly,” Harry said desperately, flushing when Theo stared at him. “I—almost killed you. I could have got you killed by doing what I did. The Healer says that she doesn’t know how we survived. And then you come in here and act like nothing happened, like—nothing’s changed when it comes to how you feel about me—”

Theo’s smile was like dark lightning, the way it crackled across his face. He leaned forwards and kissed Harry in a way that made Harry open his mouth with a gasp. Theo’s tongue was there, his hands were there on Harry’s shoulders, and there was so much warmth thudding through him that it felt like a second heartbeat.

“Nothing has changed,” Theo whispered harshly as he pulled back. “If you knew what I felt for you—if you knew—you saved us, Harry, you did the impossible.” His fingers traced restlessly around the edges of the blanket. “You redefine magic for me every day.”

Harry felt nearly helpless with how happy he was. He swallowed and asked, “And is that still going to be true even if I—messed up somehow and destroyed my ability to use wards?”

Theo picked up his hand and kissed it. “Yes, your magic might be different. But the impact you make on me never could be.”

Harry found he was well enough to sit up and continue the kiss, something that hadn’t been true the last few days.

And, well, it wasn’t like Theo was objecting.

*

Andromeda didn’t really know why Nott—Nott the elder—had asked her into Sirius’s room with the Healer. The Healer was a tall woman in green robes and with a fussy expression.

“I require you that you tell me again what you want done, Mr. Nott.”

“Forcible healing on Mr. Black here.”

Andromeda’s spine snapped straight, and she took a long step forwards. “I forbid it!”

“And who are you, Madam?”

“His cousin. Andromeda Black Tonks.” Andromeda rarely used her middle name nowadays, but she wanted to make it clear that she had an actual relation to Sirius. She glared at the Healer. “Forcible healing is obscene.”

“I do not necessarily disagree with you, Madam Tonks. But that is what Mr. Nott has requested.”

“Why have me here, if not to advocate for Sirius?” Andromeda hissed, swinging around to face Nott.

Nott met her eyes, and Andromeda felt as though someone had dragged a chilled claw down the length of her spine. Of course he didn’t care that Sirius was hurt or that she might forbid the healing. He intended for it to happen anyway. He wanted her here for another reason.

“Because I want you to see what I am willing to do for Black that no one else is,” Nott said, and nodded.

Andromeda turned around too late. It felt as though she were struggling against air that had turned to syrup, and she reached out a hand that didn’t seem to move. Instead, she watched as the Healer touched Sirius on the forehead, and her cousin jolted up off the bed with a heartbreaking scream.

The healing magic whirled and sped through Sirius’s body, consuming his bone, his magic, his blood, to power itself. Andromeda tried to fight past the magic barrier, whatever it was, but Nott held out his cane and touched her, and then she couldn’t move at all.

She had to watch as Sirius screamed and writhed, and the black lightning grasped and shook him like a dog with a rat. Like Sirius himself in his cell.

Why? Why couldn’t it have waited?

Nott answered as if he knew she was thinking—which wasn’t impossible, but Andromeda hadn’t received any indication that he was a Legilimens. “We have little time. We must know the truth of that night, and Mr. Black cannot tell us what it is if he is insane.”

“He could still have—” Andromeda said, forcing her jaw to move against the barrier. It dissipated a few seconds later with a sparkling crash.

“James! Lily!”

Andromeda turned hastily back to the bed. Sirus was sitting up, his eyes wide and staring. There were still shadows in them, but he looked at her and knew her. “Andromeda? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Sirius,” Andromeda said helplessly.

Sirius looked around, obviously not knowing what to make of the Healer standing with her head hanging and sweat pouring down her temples, or the luxurious bedroom he was ensconced in. But his face tightened with hatred at the sight of Nott. “You!” he barked, and tried to swing his legs out of bed.

Even though he looked so much better to Andromeda, the Healer promptly cast a spell that bound him to the bed. Sirius began to struggle, a high whine on the edge of madness making its way out of his throat.

“Loosen the bonds enough so that he can lift his arms,” Nott ordered.

“Sir, I can’t guarantee—”

“You’ll be out of here soon, and if you have to come and heal more damage, I’ll pay you triple your fee for it.”

Andromeda shivered at the thought of a Healer who would risk a patient like that, but it evidently made sense to this particular Healer. She nodded and released her hold on Sirius. He shot up and strained against the invisible bonds, his teeth bared, snarling like the dog Andromeda now knew he hid inside.

“Going to torture me, Death Eater? I’ll never tell you anything.”

“Given that it was my son and my ward who rescued you from Azkaban, I find that ungrateful, Black.”

“You saved me to torture me, and maybe to try and manipulate Harry! You—”

“Harry was there in Azkaban, Sirius,’ Andromeda interjected, trying to keep her voice as gentle and understanding as possible. Her tears wouldn’t help here. “Remember? He was the one who insisted that we had to rescue you and bring you back to Nott House.”

Sirius stared at her, his brow wrinkled. Andromeda felt a flare of indignation. If he had gone through the forcible healing and suffered that pain for nothing because it didn’t bring his memory back—

“No, I remember that,” Sirius whispered. “But I thought it was a dream. Harry isn’t that old.”

“He’s seventeen, Sirius,” Andromeda said, as gently as she could. “You’ve been in Azkaban sixteen years.”

Sirius wavered back and forth in the bed, until it looked like only the magical bonds the Healer had created were holding him up. He mouthed something, his eyes blank, and then slumped back in a dead faint.

The Healer sighed and looked at Nott. “I can wake him up again, sir.”

“No, let him rest.” Nott studied Sirius with the same interest he might have used for a skinned Potions ingredient. “When he wakes again, he should be calmer and more willing to absorb the information.”

He turned and clumped out of the room. Andromeda hesitated, glancing back and forth between the Healer and her cousin.

“It will cause no harm if you stay,” the Healer said indifferently, and left herself.

Andromeda sat down next to Sirius’s bed and took his hand, squeezing tightly. Sirius moaned a little in his sleep, and Andromeda didn’t know if that was happening because he was reliving the nightmare of Azkaban or just because he was in pain.

“I’m here,” Andromeda whispered, and set herself to being there, when for so many years she hadn’t been.

*

“There isn’t an understandable result.”

Albus started to open his mouth, to say that there must be a result, that blood-based tracking spells wouldn’t have failed. Then he listened to what Kingsley was saying. “What kind is it?”

“Hard to read,” said Hestia, handing him the parchment on which the results of the spell were inscribed.

Albus unrolled it and stared in silence at the odd black tracks covering the parchment. He was used to tracking spells creating spirals and paths and jumping arcs when someone Apparated, which then had to be matched up with a map of the territory covered. But he had never seen one like this, with a star-shaped flare at what he knew was Hogwarts, another odd flare a long distance away, and then nothing in between.

The flare couldn’t be where Harry was now. For one thing, it was colored black like ink, not the ruby-red of the person’s current location.

On the other hand, the spell wouldn’t have worked at all if Harry was dead.

It’s as if he simply vanished off the face of the earth, Albus thought, and glanced up at Kingsley and Hestia. They were leaning slightly forwards, as if they expected him to explain everything there and then.

“Thank you for doing the tracking,” Albus said politely. “I will let you know as soon as possible when I have a result.”

Kingsley sighed a little, Hestia scowled, but they departed through the Floo without protesting. A good thing, Albus thought. They needed to get back to the Ministry before anyone missed them.

He placed the parchment on his desk, meanwhile, and gazed at it.

When that didn’t prove fruitful, Albus looked through some of the books on his shelves, thinking that there was bound to be a description of a similar map in one of them. But he couldn’t find anything there, either. In the end, he shook his head and fetched a real map, laying out the tracking parchment on it with the star-flare of the beginning centered at Hogwarts.

The second flare of ink was centered on—

Azkaban.

Albus stood up, his heart pounding so hard that for a second, his vision blurred. He took a quick breath and shook his head. He couldn’t—this couldn’t possibly—

But then he took a deep breath and shook his head. No. The tracking spell had worked, so Harry was still alive. And he hadn’t died in Azkaban, and he wasn’t still there now, or the flare of ink would have been a brilliant red.

It didn’t answer the question of where he was now, of course. No wards were so powerful that they should have been able to intervene with the tracking spell, which was one reason that blood magic was so carefully restricted.

It wouldn’t be out of line, however, for Albus to check up on Azkaban. There had been no news released, but then, Cornelius was the cautious sort. He would suppress and hush up any incident there to prevent a “panic.”

There are some things worth panicking about, Albus thought, as he swirled his cloak around his shoulders, and one of them is Harry becoming vulnerable to the greatest enemy our society has ever seen.

Chapter Text

“Try, Harry. That’s all I’m asking.”

Harry narrowed his eyes at Theo for a moment, then nodded and faced the far wall of his room. The Healer had approved him getting out of bed yesterday, although all Harry had really done was walk back and forth down the corridors and then go down—assisted by Levitation from Theo—to eat dinner. This would be the first time that he’d really tried to summon a complex ward.

He stared at the wall, his fingers moving in front of him, and then imagined the loops and the dance of intention he needed.

The silvery cords formed in front of him, winding back and forth with each other. Harry thought he saw a serpentine head, a flickering tongue. He concentrated on that, and on how snakes could do what he wanted.

Two snakes came into view, and then more, a set of linked serpents down each cord, the ones behind holding the tails of those in front in their jaws.

When Harry was sure that he could feel as much solidity in these snakes as he’d been able to in his old wards, he faced Theo and nodded.

“You know what’s going to happen if you’ve misjudged your readiness,” Theo murmured, raising his wand.

“Yeah.”

Theo cast the spell silently, but Harry knew what it was. They’d agreed on it beforehand. He watched intently as the blue paint came flying towards him, the sort that would cling to his skin and stain it for hours before a spell would remove it.

And Harry angled his shield towards the flying gout of paint and instructed, Bounce it!

The snake-shield rippled with power, silver edging towards white, and became a solid, lovely, mirror-like object. The blue paint bounced off in a perfect arc that Harry thought for a moment would go towards the far wall of the room, as they’d discussed and planned on.

Instead, it soaked Theo from head to toe.

Harry stared with his mouth open.

Theo raised a slow hand and pushed the paint back from his eyes and forehead. Those eyes were wide, dark grey islands circled by a perfect sea of blue. His mouth opened, then closed hastily as some of the paint tried to run past his lips.

Harry lost the battle against his own shock and began to laugh.

Theo just kept staring at him. Harry leaned back against the bed behind him and laughed until his throat ached and his stomach muscles hurt. He held out a hand, stumbling forwards, and Theo grabbed his wrist.

And smeared the paint all over Harry’s palm by running Harry’s hand up and down his shoulder.

Harry scowled. Theo winked at him and leaned forwards, waving his wand to move the paint a little back from his lips. “I suppose that you wouldn’t like me to kiss you like this,” he whispered.

Harry leaned forwards in answer, then jumped and spun around as the door to his room snapped open. Helios stood there, his gaze moving from Harry to Theo. His eyebrows went up, but all he said was, “Harry, your godfather is awake and asking for you.”

*

Harry was painfully aware of the streak of paint along his arm, but it didn’t seem to matter that much when he met his godfather’s painfully shining eyes. He paused, biting his lip.

Sirius Black looked—better than Harry thought he would have looked in his place, anyway.

Granted, Black was sitting up in a bed against a fancy headboard with thick blankets draped across his legs, and his face had more color and his eyes more sanity, and he had a tray on the table beside him from which he’d cleaned up even the crumbs. So he looked a lot better than he would have otherwise.

But the forcible healing had obviously done him good. Black was leaning forwards, as keen as a hound with hope. “Do you remember me, Harry? At all?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

Black’s face shut down, and he slumped back against the pillows. For a second, he stared past Harry’s shoulder, and then his eyes seemed to catch on Theo’s face. He stared for a far longer second, then turned to Harry. “Who is this?”

“Theo Nott. My betrothed.”

Theo caught his breath in a harsh noise, but he didn’t object to the name. Harry reached back, fumbling. Theo’s hand closed on his strongly enough to make the bones ache.

Definitely not objecting, Harry thought happily.

“Nott?”

“Yes.”

“His father was a Death Eater!”

Black really was a lot saner than Harry had thought was possible after sixteen years in Azkaban. “I know. But he’s also the only person who’s offered me the sanctuary and training I need to face up to Voldemort.”

Black flinched at the name with a little yelp that Harry liked to think would have revealed his Animagus form even if Harry didn’t know about it. But maybe not. Black had managed to keep that secret from an awful lot of people for an awfully long time. “And he doesn’t mind you saying the name?”

“Voldemort, and Tom Riddle, another of his guises, tried to kill me,” Theo drawled. He pressed up behind Harry, linking his arms together around Harry’s waist. “My father will not resume his old allegiance.”

Black stared some more, then closed his eyes and muttered something Harry couldn’t hear.

“I’m really anxious to hear more about your story,” Harry said, and hooked the chairs in front of the bed apart with his foot so that he and Theo could both sit. “You don’t have a Dark Mark and you seem like you’re innocent, but if you are, what really happened?”

Black spent a moment staring at him. Then he spoke in a voice that had a touch of a low growl to it. “Peter Pettigrew. Have you heard of him?”

“He was the one you supposedly killed.” Harry decided not to mention the half-story that Black had told in Azkaban, since it didn’t seem as though he remembered it. “And he was—what, your friend and a friend of my parents?”

Black’s teeth flashed. “He was until he betrayed us.” His voice was raw with passionate hatred, something Harry found relatable. He did think that Black deserved to be angry for the people who had let him rot when he was apparently innocent. “He was an Animagus like me, and no one would have suspected him of being the real Secret-Keeper. Oh, no, not cowardly little Peter.”

“Whereas they would have suspected you,” Theo prompted. He leaned forwards a little and reached out. Harry tangled their fingers together again.

Black stared at their hands for a second, but didn’t bring it up. “Yeah. I was practically James’s brother. I ran away to stay with his family after my family disowned me. And that means that everyone knew I would have been James’s Secret-Keeper.”

I wonder how much he mourns my mother?

But Harry dismissed that thought. It didn’t matter. He was more interested in the specifics he hadn’t heard yet. “And Pettigrew—did he become a Death Eater? Or did he just march off to Voldemort and turn them over?”

Black gave a full-body shiver. Harry wondered if it was at the name, but thought it was more likely to be the man’s memories. “Yeah, he was a Death Eater. Not that anyone knew that at the time. And he led You-Know-Who to you, and your parents died.”

“Do you know how I survived?” Harry asked. “No one seems to.”

Black gave his head a quick shake. “I found you, and you were crying in your cot, and Lily was dead, and James—” He choked, confirming Harry’s suspicion that Black had been a lot closer to his dad. “I picked you up, and I was crying too, and trying to decide what I should do next, and Hagrid showed up.”

“Hagrid?”

“Yeah. He worked as the gamekeeper at Hogwarts. Does he not do that now? Oh, Merlin, I’ve lost so much time—”

“No, he’s still there.” Harry reached out, and Black grabbed his hand. Harry winced a little from the force of his hold, but shook his head subtly when Theo started looking as though he wanted to detach Harry from Black. “I just don’t know what he has to do with this. He took me to Diagon Alley my first year and said he knew my parents, but then he gave up on me when I got Sorted into Slytherin.”

“Wow. You’re a Slytherin?”

Harry raised his eyebrows, but Black sounded more surprised than judgmental. “Yeah. Although I suppose I should say I was a Slytherin, since Theo and I fled Hogwarts and we won’t be going back.”

“You—fled Hogwarts?”

“It seems that Theo and I have some explaining to do, too. Do you want some water while we do this?”

*

Theo watched closely as Harry talked to Black about his years in Slytherin, how he had felt outcast and hadn’t got along with his Head of House and hadn’t even realized, because of other people’s bragging, that his wandless magic abilities were unusually powerful. Black actually barked at the mention of Snape.

“He hated all of us. To be fair, we hated him too. But he was Lily’s best friend! I never suspected he would take it out on her son to this extent…”

Theo shook his head slowly when he heard that. He suspected Snape had survived the wounds Harry had inflicted on him in the course of his attack, if only because Dumbledore would have announced it if he hadn’t, so that he could come up with more of a justification for hunting Harry down. But to hear that all of this was based on a grudge going back more than twenty years made Theo want to bang his head against the wall.

Well, all right, no, it didn’t. What it made him want to do was hold Snape against the wall and flay the skin from his skull.

Harry reached out for him without looking away from Black. Theo got his anger under control and reached for Harry’s hand in turn. Their fingers tangled together again.

Black broke into the story Harry was telling about how Dumbledore had never stopped Snape from taking his revenge. “So are you boyfriends or something?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “I said we were betrothed, remember?”

“But you told me that you were all alone in Slytherin. So where does Nott come into it? Because I think he’s a poor boyfriend if he stands back and lets his boyfriend get assaulted and harassed by other Slytherins.”

Theo winced, and knew Black had seen it. But then he lifted his chin. Harry had forgiven him, and Harry’s forgiveness was all Theo needed. If Black wanted to judge him, it wouldn’t end their relationship.

And it couldn’t be more than Theo blamed and judged himself, in the end.

“Theo was one of the people who bullied me.”

Black promptly tried to lunge at Theo from where he was propped against the pillows. Of course, all that happened was that he ended up dangling out of the bed. Harry gave what sounded like a resigned sigh and waved his hand. Silver snakes appeared from midair, coiled around Black, and hauled him back into the bed.

“Harry! Why are you sitting there with him, how can you sit there with him—”

“I’ve forgiven him. He’s changed.”

Theo’s heart could have burst at the cool way Harry said those words, sitting there with his chin uplifted and his eyes bearing down steadily on Black. Black seemed to see it as well, although Theo thought Black probably didn’t know how to value it the way Theo did. Because the madman leaned back, and stared at Harry, and nodded, and then sighed gustily.

“All right. If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

Black scowled a little, as if he would have liked to object to that, and then just shook his head in an extremely dog-like gesture. “So explain more to me about the two versions of You-Know-Who you were talking about.”

Harry started doing that. Theo sat with his hand in Harry’s, and marked the way that Black’s eyes sometimes returned to him with no friendly look in them.

But it didn’t matter. Black hadn’t actually attacked him, and Theo thought he had tried in the first place just because of protectiveness towards Harry, which was a trait Theo actually wanted to encourage. They would find plenty of real enemies for Black to fling himself at like a dog against a pile of bones.

And Black was listening to Harry, even if his jaw gaped a little and he asked sharp questions now and then. Theo let himself feel a cool wave of hope.

This would work. They had someone else on their side now, and someone who was utterly devoted to Harry in a way that Theo didn’t trust his father to be. Of course he loved Father, valued him, would fight to protect him.

But if worst came to worst, Father would grab Theo and try to remove him to safety, even if it meant leaving Harry behind.

Black would be back on his feet soon, able to Apparate and probably capable of dueling if he was able to become an Animagus and maintain this level of sanity in Azkaban for more than a decade and a half. Harry would have his own protector.

Theo curled a little closer to his boyfriend, and Black grimaced, but went on listening to Harry’s story. Yes, this would work out just fine.

*

The Azkaban guards—and there were more of them than Albus had ever seen on the prison—had tried to stand up against Albus, babbling something about how no one except the Minister and people with his personal seal had permission to be here. A few Memory Charms had taken care of that.

Now, Albus stood in silence before Sirius Black’s empty cell.

He couldn’t understand why Harry would have taken Black. Or, for that matter, why he would have broken into Azkaban to settle accounts with the traitor more than sixteen years after his betrayal. Had Harry gone mad, that this seemed like a good idea?

Perhaps he has, given the attacks that he performed on Severus and me.

Albus grimaced and shook his head. He would gain little from standing and thinking like this. He turned and cast a charm that would coat the walls in magic rather like that which ran around the inside of a Pensieve. When there was a subtle silvery glow Albus was sure he wasn’t imagining, he drew in his breath and closed his eyes.

This particular spell was powerful and risky even for someone like Albus to perform, one reason that it generally wasn’t employed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, despite its usefulness. Albus meditated for a few minutes until he was sure that his magic was settled and ready to go.

Then he stabbed his wand forwards.

“Memoria saxi!”

The spell flooded out of him, and Albus had to catch the wall as he swayed on his feet. But he managed to force his eyes open in time to see the magic splash on the stone and draw out the memories of what it had seen here.

He saw a flicker-quick rendition of months and years where Dementors had floated past and Sirius had—turned into a dog to escape them? Albus stared. He had never known that Sirius was an Animagus.

It seemed like something they should have told him!

Then Harry appeared, and Albus exerted his will over the spell so it would show him what had happened in more detail. He pressed down with all his strength trying to get sound, but got nothing more than a few broken words here and there.

Sirius mentioned Peter. Harry had a discussion with the younger Nott and Andromeda Black—Albus swallowed a burst of betrayal—that didn’t make sense. And then Harry raised his hands and—

The flare of magic flung Albus out of the spell, and out of the memory. He staggered, shuddering as he clung for a second to the stone in front of him.

Harry had done something. Something unexpected, something that was so different and new that the memory spell simply couldn’t capture it.

Or it had captured it, but Albus had no ability to interpret it.

He shut his eyes and swallowed. He could feel the chill in his body increasing as the Dementors drew near, but it was hard to bring himself to care about that.

No. He had to care about it. He had to live and leave, because he was the only one who might know how dangerous Harry was.

Albus gritted his teeth and concentrated on the memory of being surrounded by the Order after the defeat of Voldemort had been announced. There had been grief for James and Lily and their son threaded through the moment, but also the kind of joy that he had forgotten, and other people had forgotten, that they could feel. There had been laughter and Firewhisky and dancing—

“Expecto Patronum!”

The air in front of him turned silvery and shimmering, and the Dementors floating down the stairs cowered back from Albus’s phoenix as it spread its wings.

Albus took a deep breath and managed to calm down the temptation to make more of a fuss than was warranted. He had to leave. And given that whatever Harry had done, the wards around the island were still as strong as they had been, he would have to follow his Patronus and use the Memory Charm here and there.

It was not the most ethically clear thing he had ever done.

But he would do far worse, in the pursuit of a world where Tom would be defeated forever.

Chapter Text

Sirius lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinking about the wild turns his life had taken in the last few days.

Azkaban had become the same after so long. He hadn’t really been alive. He was a dog, he wasn’t a dog. There were Dementors, and then there weren’t. There were times with food and without it. No matter how different he might have considered those experiences in the outside world, they had become a blended—paste, really. That was what his life had been like. Like swimming through a thick paste constantly.

And then he had opened his eyes and seen his godson.

Now that his mind was clear again after the forcible healing, Sirius was a little embarrassed about mistaking Nott the Younger for Harry. They were so intensely different. Everything from the way they held themselves to the feel of their magic to the color of their eyes. So what if they both had dark hair?

But neither of them seemed to hold his mistake against him, so Sirius did his best to shake off that embarrassment.

He had emerged. There was light and darkness again. There was something that might be life again.

There was a war that had never really ended.

Somewhere, there was Wormtail.

Sirius was utterly sure that the traitor was still alive. If he had faked his death and hidden this well, he might be somewhere on the Continent, or the States, or in China for all Sirius knew. But now he had the chance to hunt Peter down, which he never would have had if he’d remained in Azkaban.

He had the chance to get to know Harry, who he should have put first on that night long ago. Both he and Harry had suffered for his choices.

But now Sirius had better ones. He would make better ones. If either of the Notts turned on Harry, Sirius would be there to pick up the pieces, but he was slowly coming to accept that that was unlikely to happen.

It was there in the way that Nott the Younger stared at Harry with his heart in his eyes.

It was there in the way that Nott the Elder had offered the shelter of his house to Sirius as well as Harry.

It was there in the way that Harry and Andromeda and Nott had come to rescue him, or just to yell at him, which no one had in the sixteen years he’d been in prison.

Sirius took a long, slow breath, and sank into the meditative practice that he’d done as a child when his parents still gave a shit about him learning Occlumency, and which the Healer had said was absolutely necessary for him to recover all his scattered thoughts.

He was going to do this, and that meant focusing on the steps to get better, no matter how boring they would have been to him when he was younger.

Sirius could never go back to the person he had been, and Harry could never go back to the childhood that he should have had. But no one could prevent them from reaching out and grasping the future.

No matter how sharp-edged it is.

*

“She wants to see you alone.”

Helios watched Harry’s eyes as the young man paused in the doorway of the room where Andromeda Tonks waited. Harry glanced back at him, and then at Theo, who had tensed as if he were going to charge ahead and break down the door to confront Andromeda.

“Do you really think she’ll harm me?” Harry asked Theo. “After all, she helped us get Sirius out of prison.”

“And she knows that her cousin’s well-being depends on my grace now,” Helios drawled. He saw some sense come back into his son’s eyes, thank Merlin.

“There’s that, too.” Harry brushed a hand down Theo’s shoulder and gave him a look that made Helios turn around to study the frame of a landscape nearby. “I promise you can stand right outside the door, and you’ll hear me if I need you.”

“You still don’t have complete knowledge of the ways that your magic has changed,” Theo muttered, but he was obviously giving in. Helios was doubly glad that he had turned away when he heard the sound of lips meeting.

“I know enough to keep myself safe.”

Harry sounded amused, but not condescending, and Helios turned back in time to see Theo nodding reluctantly. “But I’ll be here.”

“I would never want you to be anywhere else.”

Were Eloise and I ever that sappy?

Helios started a little as Harry disappeared through the doorway, and Theo turned and looked at him. “Father? What is it?”

“Nothing that matters,” Helios said, and shook his head. He need not confess to Theo that for the first time in his memory, the thought of Eloise did not hurt him. “Now, at least conjure a chair so that you might wait in comfort.”

As Theo did so, Helios turned and moved down the corridor. He trusted that Theo and Harry could protect each other, and he wanted to spend a little time with his wife’s portrait.

With the reminder that there was love in the midst of pain.

*

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Harry.”

“Why did you want to talk to me alone?”

Andromeda swallowed as she watched the young man standing in front of her. She had thought he might be a pawn of the Notts when she first accepted Helios’s invitation, she remembered. That idea seemed impossibly distant now. He was so much more than even magical theory or understanding could contain, let alone manipulation.

“Because I wanted to know what you are going to do about Sirius.”

“Do about him?”

“Are you—how will you treat him?”

“I mean, I think the treatment plan is really up to the Healers. I don’t know anything about Healing magic.”

Andromeda shook her head impatiently. She didn’t think Harry was deliberately being obtuse, but she needed to know more than this. “I mean, do you intend to let him play a part in your life as your godfather? If not, then I think it might be kinder if you let me take him home. I can make sure that he continues to follow his treatment plan and recovers, and has the chance to put you out of his mind.”

Harry’s eyes widened. Andromeda had only met Lily Potter a few times, and didn’t know if her eyes had been this bright. Somehow, she thought not.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk with my godfather in any depth yet. He’s the one who needs to make those decisions. I plan to let him act as my godfather if that’s something he wants to do.”

“Then you won’t shut him out?”

“Not unless he wants to be.”

Andromeda closed her eyes. All right, there was one worry assuaged. Time to go on to the next. “What is your goal after this?”

“Survival.”

“I know that you were meeting with me originally as a tutor so you could take your NEWTS. I assume you’ll do that. But what are your plans for the war against You-Know-Who?”

“Unless you plan to help me, I don’t see why I should tell you that.”

Andromeda paused, then nodded slowly. Yes, fair. She had to give in order to get. “I would like to help. But until recently, there were only rumors here and there. That some Death Eaters were active again, that wealthy purebloods were donating suspicious sums of money to suspicious causes, that a few people had disappeared. Certainly it didn’t seem as if Albus Dumbledore were worried.”

Harry gave a soft, bitter laugh. “He keeps so many things to himself that I don’t believe he would tell anyone if he did think that Voldemort was already back and moving around before this year.”

“Then you know he’s back?”

“I’ve faced him. Both of him.”

Andromeda swallowed and fought back the impulse to be sick. “Explain what that means, please.”

“There are two versions. One of them, Tom Riddle, posed as a wardmaster who offered me an apprenticeship, and he seems to be in control of the other one, Voldemort, who’s more like a beast.” Andromeda controlled her flinch at the name, and told herself she would just have to get used to it. “He tried to trap me and Theo. We did manage to escape, but I think that he’ll want to hunt us down and make us pay for it.”

“And Mr. Nott?”

“Well, he won’t want to follow Voldemort when the man wants to hurt his son, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I had the impression that the Dark Mark might not give him a chance.”

“He’s been talking about rebelling against Voldemort since I got here. I don’t think he would have said anything like that if he really thought the Dark Mark was like a compulsion to make him obey.”

Andromeda fought back her instinctive distrust of Helios Nott. Yes, more than likely, Harry was right. And Nott was also the type who would take steps if he did think he was close to helpless, so that he could fight freely.

“What is your plan?”

“I haven’t really planned much,” Harry admitted. “I was kind of busy with the escaping Hogwarts, making plans for my academic future, and freeing my supposed traitor godfather from Azkaban thing.”

“You must think.”

“Yes, maybe so.” Harry’s voice audibly chilled. “But your pushing me into it and wanting me to rush isn’t going to make anything better, and it might mean that I make mistakes I wouldn’t otherwise.”

Andromeda clenched her hands. She didn’t do well with being told to slow down, and never had since she’d been at Hogwarts. But it was possible that it really was better, this time, to listen to the young man who had a kind of magic she had never seen before.

“How can I help?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Andromeda curbed her impatience. “What is your sense of what these two versions of—” She took a deep breath and committed herself to the name. “Voldemort want?”

“Revenge, and also, I think the Tom Riddle version is capable of careful plans and the long game. He’s existed long enough to establish himself as a wardmaster with a certain reputation. He hasn’t just started to destroy things or burn the wizarding world down. So I don’t think he’s as insane as Dumbledore believes.”

“Then—you might join him?”

Harry stared at her for a moment, and then silver snakes flared into being around his shoulders, as if he were draped in a corona of serpents like Medusa. Andromeda recoiled, and Harry moved a step in her direction before he visibly reined himself in. The snakes vanished, and he turned his head away from her.

“He tried to kill me. He would have enslaved me if he could have. He would have killed Theo. I don’t know how much help you’ll be, if you can ask stupid questions like that.”

Andromeda said nothing. The sight of the snakes had shocked her, since it was yet another manifestation of magic that she’d never seen before, and she didn’t know what Harry might have done to her. And it was hard for her to find the words that would retrace her thought process for him.

But he was staring at her in a cold way that might mean she wouldn’t get to see Sirius again, if Sirius sided as fully with Harry as Andromeda expected him to do. She swallowed and said softly, “It only sounded as if you were saying that Dumbledore was wrong about him and he wasn’t insane. That—I have heard such language only from people who are on his side, or thinking about joining it.”

Bellatrix. Narcissa.

Harry looked at her, and then he snorted, and some of the sense of imminent danger around him diminished. “No. I won’t join him. I said that the Tom Riddle version of him seemed saner because it’s true and I don’t believe in lying about that just because it might fit your preconceptions better.”

Andromeda opened her mouth, then closed it again and nodded. “Very well,” she murmured. “But I would like to know if you have any idea what I can help with. Even if it is merely telling people not to trust the name of Tom Riddle.”

“Actually, that might help,” Harry said, and Andromeda blinked. “I don’t think that he’s famous under that name, but if they know it is his name, then it might take away some of the mystique that clings to the name Voldemort. And it would make him seem more mundane to people who might be afraid of him.”

“You are better at planning than I thought you might be.”

“I did spend six years in Slytherin.”

Andromeda gave him a small smile. “Do you think there is any possibility of cooperation with the Headmaster in the future? I know you don’t like him, but he is a powerful wizard and the only one that—Voldemort ever feared.”

“He hasn’t made any progress in keeping either version contained, that I can see. And let my Head of House torment me for six years and only acted disappointed when I retaliated. Given what he told me right before I left Hogwarts, I think that he might pretend to work with me, but I could never fully trust him.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That there’s a prophecy saying I’m the one who has to face and defeat Voldemort. But he never even hinted at this before, and he certainly did nothing to prepare me for a war that you’d think he’d have some interest in making sure I win.”

Andromeda’s heart pounded oddly. Harry Potter had been a symbol of hope for so many in the wake of the war. If they had known he was truly chosen by fate, then he might have been even more of one. He might have soothed some of the wounds because people like Lucius Malfoy who still had hopes of their Dark Lord returning someday might have given up and accepted that they would lose the war.

“And instead, we have this,” she whispered.

“We have what?”

“We have a situation where the Headmaster and the Boy-Who-Lived aren’t speaking to each other and have no collaborative plans about how to handle—Voldemort.”

“Yes,” Harry said, and shrugged. “That’s the reason we need to act on our own to defeat him. I won’t say that Dumbledore couldn’t make some contributions, maybe by making sure that Hogwarts students are protected. But I‘m not going to go running to him. He would nod and smile and keep secrets.

“Do you want to start spreading word about Tom Riddle’s real name? Like I said, it would help.”

“Yes,” Andromeda said, clutching the concrete action with some relief. “I’ll let a few people who use my husband’s services privately know.”

“Your husband’s services?”

“It’s not what he does publicly, but those who know the truth think he’s the best Healer who’s ever lived.”

“I’m surprised that you didn’t want him to treat Sirius.”

“He treats the body only, not the soul or the mind.” Andromeda set her shoulders. “Whatever I can do to help you defeat Voldemort, that I’ll do,” she said, and infused her words with enough magic to make them an oath.

Harry blinked as the air snapped around him, and looked at her carefully. He probably didn’t know enough to recognize all the nuances of an oath, but he knew she had done something.

“If you’re sure,” he said.

“I am. I lost enough people I loved to this war already. And I might have recovered Sirius, but I’m not even the one who did that. You got him out of Azkaban, and you were the one who wanted to go there and speak to him in the first place.” Andromedas took a deep breath. “I don’t like owing people.”

Harry murmured something.

“What?”

“I never had the chance to owe people debts before this, I said.”

Andromeda just nodded. She didn’t think that starting to talk about Harry’s troubled past in Slytherin would lead the conversation in the best direction. “That is completely understandable.”

Harry gave her a faint smile and said, “I’ll let you know what other plans I have to fight the war as soon as I know about them.”

“That is completely understandable,” Andromeda repeated.

Harry paused, as though wondering how the conversation was supposed to conclude. Andromeda honestly had no help to offer him. This hadn’t gone in any direction that she’d thought it would when Harry walked through the door.

“Thank you for your help,” Harry finally murmured, and then turned and left.

Andromeda closed her eyes and stood still, trembling a little with the force of the emotion that she refused to express fully in the house of a Nott. That full expression would have to wait until she could go home and bury herself in her Ted’s arms.

But ultimately?

She was finally moving, finally taking some steps in a war she’d never managed to fully fight in last time.

Finally getting some vengeance for Sirius, whom she’d never known she would have to get vengeance for.

And it felt wonderful.

*

“She didn’t demand more of you than you were willing to give?”

Harry shook his head as he leaned into Theo’s arms. He found himself oddly calm now that he was past the moment when he had thought he might have to lash out at Mrs. Tonks. He had an ally, someone who wasn’t Theo and wasn’t Helios.

And he thought she might even have been his ally if Sirius wasn’t in the picture, which was an odd feeling.

Something occurred to him, and he laughed. Theo drew back so that he could look Harry in the face, one eyebrow rising. Harry supposed he must look strange.

“I told Mrs. Tonks that I wasn’t used to owing debts,” Harry murmured. “I don’t think that I’m used to having allies, either. I mean, obviously I’m not, but she brought it home to me in a way that nothing else has.”

“You never need be afraid of that again,” Theo said softly, and kissed him in a way that seemed to pour strength into Harry’s body through his lips. “Shall we go and see if Black is up and about?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and closed his eyes, trusting Theo to lead him safely through the corridors.

He had gone from no one to four people—five, if he counted Eloise’s portrait—to support him in less than a month.

He thought he had the right to feel a little dizzy.

Chapter Text

Albus stared blankly at the front page of the Daily Prophet. No matter what he did, the words didn’t blink and didn’t change, but he couldn’t help feeling that they might if he applied all his strength, as he was now, to his Occlumency, trying to wake from the dream that someone had cast him into.

Someone hammered on the door of his office. Probably the first of many, Albus thought with a sigh as he waved his hand and opened the door.

“Albus!”

“Yes, Minerva?”

Minerva slammed the paper down in the middle of his desk with her nostrils flaring like an enraged dragon’s. “Did you have something to explain to me about You-Know-Who’s real identity, Albus?”

Albus stared at the front page again, as though he had not already seen it enough that morning. There was a photograph of Tom as he had been as a student, smirking at the camera, those handsome features undistorted by any hint of the creature he had become later—although Albus fancied the picture had captured a tint of red in his eyes.

The headline above the photo said simply, YOU-KNOW-WHO PAST HEAD BOY!

The only way it could actually be more disastrous, Albus thought, was if they had announced the name Tom Marvolo Riddle in the headline itself. But then again, anyone who saw the headline would certainly go on to read the story.

“Albus!”

“Minerva.” Albus sat back behind his desk and linked his hands together. He would not let his Deputy Headmistress intimidate him, he reminded himself. If could not stand up to Minerva, he had no hope of doing so when it came to the Howlers he would surely get. “Yes, I did know his name.”

“And you never released it?”

“What good would it do when most people believe him dead beyond recall?” This time, Albus spread his hands. At least Minerva, fiery on the surface like any Gryffindor, was visibly calming down now. She had always had a vein of good sense. “And it could have been important information if he did return when it came to finding him.”

“The paper explains that he has returned! That he’s been living under the name of a wardmaster on the Continent named Tom Riddle, and has been for at least five years! Although he might have established that identity before he fell, still, Albus!”

“I truly did not know that, Minerva.”

For a long moment, his Deputy stared at him, as if she didn’t know who he was anymore, as if he had betrayed her. Albus felt a flare of agony that he expertly stifled. He was the one who had made the decisions that had led them to this point. He would have to live with the results.

Minerva drooped, a second later, and stared at the floor. “You’ve really never heard of a wardmaster called Tom Riddle?”

“I had not. Please believe that I would have acted at once.”

Minerva nodded for a long moment, her fingers worrying at the edges of the Prophet. Then she looked up and at him. “Does this have to do with the way that—Mr. Potter left the school?”

Albus had wondered when they would come to that. For all that Minerva had had little to do with Harry, given that she hadn’t been his Head of House the way they’d all suspected she would be, of course she would want to know that he was safe and still have some concern for Lily and James’s son.

“It does,” Albus said. “I told young Harry of some of the suspicions I had with regard to the role he had to play in Voldemort’s defeat, and he—disagreed.”

“He doesn’t want to fight? The man who murdered his parents, and he doesn’t want to fight?”

Albus nodded a little, pleased to see that Minerva looked as horrified as Albus had felt on learning the truth. What was love for the dead, if not fighting to carrying their principles forwards? But young Harry didn’t seem to care about his parents at all. “Yes. I am afraid, Minerva, that Harry cares only for himself and his survival.”

“He fears so much that he might die in the war that he won’t fight at all?”

That at least was a useful way to put it. Albus nodded again, splaying out his hands with sorrow. “I wish things were different. I wish I had taken more of an interest in young Harry and recognized how he was tending, how he was being influenced by Slytherin. But we cannot do that now.”

“And Severus?”

“He helped drive Harry away from relying on adults, I am afraid.”

“No, Albus, I meant whether his current condition had something to do with the way Harry left the school.”

“Yes.” Albus had decided not to hide this, either, although he did intend to hide the fact that neither he nor Poppy knew how to awaken Severus. “When Harry escaped, he lashed out with his magic. And that magic is both unknown to me and perhaps influenced by the Killing Curse that was cast at him when he was younger.”

Minerva’s white-knuckled hand crept over her mouth. “Surely not, Albus.”

“I do not know for certain. But I am afraid so.”

“We must find him. Perhaps we can explain to him the importance of making sure that Lily and James’s memory does not go neglected.”

Albus nodded. There were certain tactics Minerva had learned during her work with the Ministry that might mean she could track Harry where he had failed. “There is something I can show you, but I must have a vow of secrecy from you. If other people learned that Harry Potter has abandoned his duty to protect them from Voldemort…”

“Of course.” Minerva’s face was calm and grim as she drew her wand. “I am prepared to swear whatever you tell me to.”

*

Theo stared at the large blue book that his father had left on the polished desk in the middle of the family library, and then looked at the house-elf, Tia, who had led him here. “And Father didn’t say anything more than that he wanted me to read it?”

“Master Helios did not.”

Theo turned the book over, baffled. It had no title or author, or perhaps they had been rubbed off with the book’s age. There did seem to be dusty remains of letters.

He finally opened it, noting the silky texture of the pages beneath his fingers, and its evident age.

Secrets of the Soul.

Theo choked and spun around to stare at Tia. Tia just looked back at him, her blue eyes hard and glittering. She was the oldest of the Nott house-elves, and the one who had most often tended to Theo when he was a babe. She seemed to spend a lot of time now talking with the other elves about ways to make Harry feel more welcome in the house, but she still deferred to his father first and foremost.

“This is—about soul magic.”

“If Master Theo says so.”

Theo glared at Tia again and shook his head. “Why did my father want me to study a book on soul magic?”

“Master Theo must be asking Master Helios that.”

And then Tia disappeared with a soft pop, and left Theo to stare disconsolately at the book in front of him.

Well. He wasn’t going to learn what his father wanted him to learn by simply staring at the cover. And maybe it related somehow to why there were two versions of Voldemort. Theo couldn’t think of any other comparable secret that would have involved his father giving him the book.

He cracked it open, and began to read.

*

“Again.”

Sirius could be as harsh a taskmaster as some of the professors at Hogwarts. But Harry couldn’t blame him. After all, Sirius’s safety would depend partially on the kind of magic that Harry would manage to use.

Harry lifted his hands and crooked them, eyes closed. He imagined the silver snakes coiling up and around his arms, spreading out in front of him, opening their mouths and baring their fangs.

“Stupefy!”

The Healers might not be very happy to learn that Sirius was handling magic already, but Harry doubted a Stunner would hurt anything. The spell hurtled towards him, and one of his snakes turned and swallowed it.

“Again! Stupefy!”

Another Stunner soared in a different direction, looking as if Sirius were trying to curve it around the shield of snakes in front of Harry. But a serpent that was towards the bottom of the trio swung up and opened its mouth, and the Stunner went down its throat as well.

Sirius laughed wildly. Harry was starting to think that the forcible healing had actually done him a lot of good, but also that some things might have been a little cracked in his brain even before Azkaban. “Very good! Try this one for size! Confringo!”

“You said it would only be Stunners!” Harry yelped, but he stood tall by the bed his godfather had lain in for what seemed like days and ordered the snakes to swallow the curse. Two of them vanished as the spell sliced through their necks, but the others did their work, and Harry stood there while Sirius laughed and laughed and clapped.

Then he dropped his wand and rushed across the bedroom to embrace Harry.

Harry found himself holding his breath and standing very still. He didn’t think that he should act too enthusiastic about the hugs because—well, Sirius might leave, or he might decide that he had too much to do to coddle a godson who should have rescued him years earlier, or.

Anything might happen, just the way that Harry had thought Theo might withdraw his welcome. And although Harry had accepted that it wouldn’t happen with Theo, Sirius was still mostly an unknown.

“None of that, now.”

Harry blinked and looked up at his godfather. Sirius was bending towards him with an anxious smile and eyes that were wild in a different way than they were when he laughed.

“None of that,” Sirius repeated, his voice gentle. “I know that you don’t really know how to be a godson, and I don’t really know how to be a godfather. But we’ll get through this together, I promise you, Harry. I’ll give everything you could ever need from me.”

“What—what about what you need from me? What if I do it wrong?”

Harry couldn’t help but curl his shoulders in the minute after that, anticipating Sirius getting angry and upset. But Sirius just shook his head with a wistful smile.

“It’s not like it would be if you’d grown up with me. But that’s my fault, not yours, that it didn’t happen that way.”

“No, it’s Pettigrew’s.”

“We can say that it’s multiple people’s.” Sirius kissed him on the forehead, and then stepped back and raised his wand again. “Ready to keep testing your magic?”

Harry nodded with a grin, and snapped the silver snakes into the air with a motion of his fingers when Sirius cast a Bludgeoning Hex that made the air around it swim and ring and tremble like ripples in a pond.

*

“Have you given up yet?”

Severus refused to look towards the voice that was not Lily’s, that could not be Lily’s. At the moment, he stood on a pathway between shining walls of red stone that formed part of the maze he was trapped in, studying the wall immediately in front of him. It was shiny enough to reflect his face and the paths he had taken up until this point.

And the specter of Potter’s magic hovering behind him.

“I must go through this wall,” Severus murmured, and grimaced when he heard the sound of his voice. He hadn’t realized he’d been alone for so long that he had started speaking aloud to himself.

“That’s not the way to freedom. But you can keep telling yourself that.”

Even though Severus had promised himself he wouldn’t, he turned to face the specter, and felt his heart hurt all over again. Potter must have reached into the deepest of Severus’s memories to create this image of his mother. She looked exactly as Lily had looked in life, down to the shadows in her deep green eyes that had appeared after their confrontation at the end of fifth year.

But, of course, the mockery on her face was all Potter’s, and not any part of the memories of her that Severus had. Severus hardened his heart against the temptation to think her real.

“I suppose that you’ll tell me the path out?”

“I’ve been telling you all along, Severus. When you feel true remorse for your actions against my son, then all the walls of the maze will open for you.”

“I did nothing to him!”

“You didn’t assign him detentions for the way he breathed? You didn’t intend to strike at him the day he crippled your wand hand?”

Severus shut his eyes and turned his head away. Just a projection of Potter’s magic, he reminded himself bitterly. My Lily would never have scolded me this way.

“Were you always this bitter, furious wanker? Or was I just blinded by our friendship when we were teenagers?”

“I’m bitter because of the way you died!”

“Which you had more than a little to do with.”

Severus turned his back on the shiny red wall and started walking. He had better things to do than stand here exchanging barbs with a ghost who didn’t even exist.

For one thing, he wouldn’t find the path out of the maze this way.

And for another, he was afraid that if he listened to her too long, the barbs would sink under his skin, and fester there, and start to convince him that maybe she had a point.

*

“Father.”

Helios looked up, and smiled a little when he saw Theo clutching the book on soul magic he had ordered Tia to lead his son to. He caressed the top of his cane and leaned back in his chair, while on the wall, Eloise’s portrait watched silently. “Yes, son?”

“Is this what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?”

Theo made a frustrated noise and stalked over to slam the book down on the top of Helios’s desk. Helios thought fleetingly of his own father. Alexander Nott would have made Helios pay for any such infraction of decorum. But Helios was glad that he had raised a son who felt free to do this.

“Is this about Horcruxes? Did Voldemort make some?”

Helios felt the grip of the oath he had sworn never to speak of Horcruxes on his throat for an instant, but he was not the one who had brought up the subject. And the Dark Lord had left Helios free to speak of them to one who knew, because he had thought that he might want to someday discuss his Horcruxes with his “loyal” followers. Helios nodded.

“What kind of sick, disgusting freak is he?”

Helios was startled into laughter before he thought about it, but he held up a hand and shook his head when Theo glared at him. “I am only surprised that you came to the conclusion so quickly,” he said. “I cannot tell you information about the Horcruxes in particular, but I can agree with you.”

Theo nodded, his eyes locked on the book. “You think that there are multiple artifacts lying around? How many?”

“The Dark Lord was deeply interested in Arithmancy when I knew him.”

“Arithmancy,” Theo whispered. “Powerful numbers. Numbers with a ritual significance or a symbolic one—” He jerked his head up. “Three or seven. Surely it would have to be three? Seven is madness.”

“Does the Dark Lord strike you as a paragon of sanity, Theo?”

Theo breathed out slowly. “It would account for why there’s more than one of him,” he whispered. “If a Horcrux managed to resurrect itself in the body.” He started pacing back and forth in front of Helios’s desk, his hands locked behind his back. “But it doesn’t tell us how to find and destroy them.”

“I think the book itself will tell you how to destroy them. As to whether one can find them…” Helios spread his hands. “I know of no ritual or spell that can do so, but remember that we have a young man under our roof who has unique magic on his hands, and who is singularly motivated to get rid of the Dark Lord.”

“You think Harry can find them even with his magic changed the way it is?”

“I have heard of no diminishment in his power. And you and Black have both been working with him. Have you seen that diminishment?”

“No,” Theo mumbled, as if reluctant to admit it. “If anything, Harry is just learning to do old things in a new way, and that way’s often more powerful.”

Helios nodded. “It may take us some time, but I think we have that. The Dark Lord still hasn’t announced his return to the world, and he’s not going to if he thinks that it will bring him opposition. He has to know that he will have at least yours and Harry’s. He may know about mine. He may know about Black’s escape, as well.”

“Do you think he’s ready to face Dumbledore?”

Helios paused. It was an interesting question. “Well, he’s spent the last five years, at least, establishing himself as Tom Riddle the wardmaster. He doesn’t seem to have worried about Dumbledore noticing him, even if he was operating mostly on the Continent.”

“And now?”

“It will be interesting to see.”

Theo stood still for a moment, his fingers drumming on the cover of the book, and then nodded. “Thank you for the book, Father. For the chance to make a difference. I know exactly where I stand, and regardless of oaths, I know where you do, as well.”

Helios smiled, even as that old oath twisted through his throat for a moment. “You’re welcome, my son. I will do whatever I can, whatever is not explicitly forbidden to me, to help you. You know that.”

Theo leaned across the desk and caught him in a hard and surprising hug. Then he turned and left the room as silently as a shadow. Helios blinked after him.

“You look surprised,” Eloise said from her portrait, her voice rich and gentle and for a moment making Helios wish a Time-Turner had been invented that could take him back years.

“I once thought that Theo would spend most of his life devoid of passion, outside of great good luck,” Helios said quietly. “And that he might refuse the temptation to spend his life with someone even if it did come along. That he might fear the risks of love too much to jump at the chance.”

“Of course he would not do that.” Eloise leaned her elbow on the painted windowsill in this frame. “He’s your son.”

Chapter Text

“If a Horcrux did resurrect itself, do you think there’s any way that we can get it out of the body again?”

Theo cocked his head. Harry had read most of Secrets of the Soul himself now, and seemed to have accepted the idea of multiple Horcruxes more calmly than Theo had. Then again, he hadn’t grown up with tales of the Dark Lord’s power and how he had been sane once, so it was probably easier for him to just decide that the monster had always been insane. “I don’t know.”

“I wonder if we could ask Ted Tonks.”

Theo leaned back behind the desk in the tiny library where one of his mother’s portraits hung. She was there now, watching with her chin on her hand as Harry prowled back and forth. Theo had expected her to be more talkative, but she had taken the same tactic Theo had, waiting and seeing what Harry would come up with.

“Why would Ted Tonks be a good idea?”

“Because Mrs. Tonks says that he’s a great Healer.”

“Of the body only, right?”

“Right.” Harry flashed Theo a smile over his shoulder. A hint of silver magic flickered around his hair, present and then gone again. “But if what we want is to get a Horcrux out of its body…”

Theo smiled, and heard his mother’s soft laughter echo through the room for a moment.

“You are a treasure, Harry,” she said.

Harry flushed so brightly that it made Theo’s body pulse with hunger. “Thank you.”

*

Andromeda couldn’t help the tension that threaded through her shoulders as she walked into the sitting room where she had spoken with Harry before. Only Ted’s sturdy tranquility, flowing behind her like clear water, like he always did, let her keep moving forwards instead of turning around.

She had wanted to make a difference, and she knew Ted wanted the same thing, but her few days away from Harry had made her think more about his immense power and what he might do if he didn’t like someone. Or even if he became afraid and lashed out without thinking about it.

“It’ll be all right, love.”

Andromeda leaned briefly back against Ted, but straightened as she heard footsteps coming towards the room. This time, it was both Harry and the younger Nott who came in. He was almost the image of his father, although the way he stood protectively close to Harry was hard for Andromeda to imagine Helios doing with anybody.

“Hello,” Ted said, cheerfully, unconcerned. “I’m Ted Tonks, as you may have heard, and I’m Andy’s husband.”

He held out his hand. Harry stared at it for a moment, then extended his own and shook Ted’s, a little limply.

Andromeda might have been offended at that a few days ago. Now, she was simply struck with pity. He hasn’t had anyone to teach him even the most basic ways people interact, has he?

“Hello,” Harry said quietly.

“Andy tells me that you’re prepared to carry the war to Voldemort.” Nott jumped, but Harry just met Ted’s eyes and nodded. “I’m no soldier, but I can do my best to help with the healing. Do you have any role in mind for me?”

Astonishment flared in Harry’s eyes for a second. Andromeda wondered why. Had Harry really thought that Ted wouldn’t be thinking about this, when it was what Andromeda had told him she would be bringing Ted for?

Maybe he just thought that Ted wouldn’t keep his promise.

“Yes,” Harry said. “We do actually have something in mind. But it’s more research than something that would bear immediate results, and it’s going to use your Healer skills in a way that you might not want them used.”

Andromeda blinked.

Ted lost his cheery smile. “I won’t use them to kill someone. I could, and I know that, but that’s not what I was meant for.”

“It wouldn’t be directly killing someone. It would be doing what you could to damage You-Know-Who’s body so that we can expel his spirit from it.”

Andromeda found herself, not for the first time around Harry Potter, with no idea what to say.

*

Harry, still reeling from these adults treating him like a leader, watched Ted Tonks closely. He didn’t know the man, didn’t know anything about him but the description Andromeda had given, and even though the Healer seemed gentle and straightforward, that didn’t necessarily increase Harry’s trust in him.

In Slytherin, the most earnest and blunt Slytherins were the ones you had to be the wariest of, as they had figured out how to get the most people to trust them.

But Ted just stood there, obviously thinking. Theo was the one who put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezed a little.

Not in warning, Harry thought, leaning back against Theo. Against getting my hopes up too much, maybe.

“I think I could do that,” Ted murmured at last. “I do think that it’s going to take a lot of study and research. It won’t be a quick thing. What’s your sense of the timeline on this?”

“What do you mean?”

“How quickly do we need to move? Are these two versions of—Voldemort—trying to take over the world right now?”

“As far as I know, they aren’t close to that. Your wife told you what I said about one of them acting sane and one acting like a beast?” Harry waited for Ted to nod, which he did quickly enough. “It would draw too much attention to Riddle, the sane version, if he unleashed the beast version on people and then so happened to be the only one who could stop him.”

For a moment, a bright, cold smile touched Ted’s face, like sunlight of the back of one of Harry’s magic snakes. “And he’s spent too much time building up his reputation as a harmless wardmaster.”

“Precisely.”

“Then I can take the time to study and research, and find the means to drive his soul out of his body. But I need to know more about why you think that’s possible, what kind of construct the body is, and why you believe the soul is particularly vulnerable.”

Harry glanced at Theo. Theo looked back at him with calm eyes, obviously leaving it up to Harry to decide if he was going to tell Ted or not.

Harry nodded and turned back to face Ted. “There’s a book called Secrets of the Soul that we’ll let you borrow. It explained it in more detail and better than I can. For now, what do you know about something called Horcruxes?”

*

“They didn’t take it well.”

Harry’s voice was subdued. Sirius curled his arm around Harry’s shoulders and tugged his godson against him. Harry went, but his magic was bristling all around him, poking up like needles, and Sirius knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold him like this for long.

“You realize that’s not your fault, right, Harry? No one would take the news of Voldemort chopping up his soul and strewing little pieces all over the world well.”

“Yes. But…”

Sirius waited a bit, but when Harry persistently kept staring at the wall and said nothing, he gently shook Harry’s shoulders. “Yes, but?”

“Ted said something about how he’d hoped Voldemort was gone forever after he confronted me as a baby. I thought they blamed me for not doing something about Voldemort before he could chop up his soul.”

“Did they say that?”

A longer pause this time, during which Sirius successfully controlled his impatience. Then Harry mumbled, “No.”

“Then I think Ted was just expressing a wish that things were better and that monster was dead, not blaming you for his not being dead. That’s all.”

Harry leaned a little harder on Sirius. Sirius wrapped him in a fierce hug. Harry was so strongly independence and distrustful of adults that this was the first time Sirius had got to do that without Harry pulling away in a few seconds. Sirius held him, and held him, and wished that he could have been there to hold him all those years ago when Harry was a baby instead of tearing off after Peter.

For a moment, his mental balance wobbled, and he seemed to be staring down into a dark chasm that pierced into the ground among layers of grey stone—

No.

Sirius took a deep breath and nodded to the ghost of his forcible healing. Thinking like that, that he could change the past and should have been able to and knowing he couldn’t, was going to make him spiral further into the kind of madness that he’d been healed from. He had to stay strong and not think about that. For Harry.

“You don’t think Ted and Andromeda blame me?”

Harry sounded hopeful. Sirius kissed the top of his head, daring, but Harry didn’t pull away or curl up in rejection. “I know they don’t. They’re reasonable people. And Andromeda herself is intensely practical. She’s partnered with the Notts, when she despised all Death Eaters, to make sure that you and I are safe and she and Ted can have a part in this war. It would make no sense to blame you.”

“…Okay.”

Harry rested in Sirius’s grip for a few moments more, then stirred in a way that indicated he wanted to sit up. Sirius let him go reluctantly. Harry at least stayed close instead of standing up to pace the room the way Sirius had thought he might. “So Ted has to study the book. What’s the next step?”

“You’re asking me?” Sirius blinked.

“These people want to treat me like some kind of leader. I’m no leader, Sirius. I have powerful magic, but that’s not the same as having a war plan in mind. What do you think I should do?”

“You think I have a war plan?”

“You at least fought in a war once.”

Harry looked as if he were close to withdrawing again, his shoulders hunched. Sirius frantically racked his brain. He wanted to help, but he also didn’t know anything that would really give a clear road for Ted to act the way Harry seemed to want.

No, wait. No. He at least had one idea.

“We have to decide on the place and time to ambush Voldemort,” Sirius said, as firmly as he could. “He obviously won’t come to meet you again the way he already did. We need to set up a trap, and we need to make it worthwhile for Riddle to bring both his forms with him.”

“Why?”

“We ideally need to expel them both from their bodies. With the way that Voldemort tore his soul, he’ll probably go back to being a wraith without much prodding. That memory you showed me of him attacking you made his body look in bad shape.”

“What about Riddle’s? I thought the Horcrux would have a weaker connection to his body, but maybe I’m wrong.”

“He killed someone to get it, right?” Sirius asked.

“I mean, probably. The book Theo read was more about how to use a Horcrux to resurrect someone than it was about Horcruxes acting independently.”

“So we may be able to call on the spirit of the person he sacrificed or tricked or murdered. We’d have to find out who it was, and reach out to them with necromancy, but there’s every chance they would come back and help us oust Riddle. They’ll be tethered here as a kind of invisible ghost, probably, unable to move on until Riddle’s body dies.”

Sirius was speaking off half-memories of the time before Azkaban when he’d listened to Regulus or Mother or Father talking about necromancy. It had always made him ill, so he hadn’t paid that much attention. But if he could bring some light of hope to Harry’s eyes, then he would try.

And they didn’t know for sure that necromancy wouldn’t work. They hadn’t tried it.

“Where will we find a necromancer?” Harry asked with a small frown.

“Some of the basic rituals can be done by anybody with access to the right knowledge. I’m sure Mr. Nott would do it, or one of his friends. Maybe even Ted, if we can convince him if it’s for a good cause.”

“Would you?”

Sirius hesitated. Harry was staring at him with bright, begging eyes, and on the one hand, it reminded Sirius of what he’d been like as a baby before all this shit happened, but on the other, he didn’t want to do necromancy. Ever. It was one of the few lines he had never crossed in his life.

“Oh,” Harry said, drooping abruptly. It was like the light had gone out. “You hate it so much you don’t want to do it at all. I understand.”

That was, in fact, true, but Sirius still found himself saying, “Now wait a minute. Why—why would you rather ask me than Helios?”

“Are you joking?”

“No. Why would I be?”

Harry stared at him with his forehead wrinkled. Sirius looked back, helpless. Yes, he ought to stand up and assert himself, but this was Harry asking for a favor, really the first big one he’d asked for since Sirius had been healed, and theoe hopeful green eyes were having an effect on him.

“Because I trust you more than I trust Helios,” Harry said simply. “He did take me in and he’s been good to me, but that’s because of the connection with Theo. And Andromeda is here because you’re her cousin, and Ted because he’s her husband. You’re the only adult I know who’s here for just me.”

Put like that, what could Sirius do but sigh and say, “All right, if you really want me to do it, I will.”

“Yes!” Harry threw his arms around Sirius. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Sirius patted Harry’s back and thought privately that he had pictured a scene like this, when Harry was a baby, as him giving Harry a broom or a pet his parents thought was dangerous and didn’t want him to have. Not being about to practice necromancy.

But what else could he do? Harry needed an adult he could trust, and Sirius…

Well, he needed Harry.

*

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Like a charm. Of course, it helped that I meant it.”

Theo smiled and pushed himself off the wall where he’d been leaning while Harry had some private time with Black. Harry had come out of the room with his eyes wide with wonder, but a smile had darted across his face the instant he saw Theo. Frankly, Theo preferred the smile.

“Black is the only adult you trust.”

Harry shrugged. “Yeah, that’s true, and you said he would be reluctant to use Dark Arts, and he was, but all I had to do was look at him and be plaintive. I didn’t know that would actually work.”

“It hasn’t worked on my father in a long time,” Theo admitted, falling into stride with Harry as they headed back to Harry’s suite. “But then again, he knows what kind of effect I’m looking for when I do it to him.”

“I find it hard to imagine your father giving in to it.”

“I think it was half exasperation when he did, and half pride, because I was using the skills he taught me.”

Harry paused when they got to the door of his suite and reached out to trail his fingers down Theo’s chest. “Would you come in with me? There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Of course,” Theo said, unable to hide the eagerness in his voice. It inspired a delicious darkness to Harry’s smile this time, so he didn’t really regret it.

They stepped into the room, and Harry abruptly turned and pressed Theo against the door. Theo swallowed, excited and afraid all at once. If Harry struck with his magic serpents, there would be little Theo could do to stop him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harry whispered against his jaw.

“Have you?” Theo replied, light-headed and not entirely sure of what he was saying.

“Yeah.” Harry rested a hand against Theo’s cheek and smiled up at him with luminescent eyes. “I think I’d like a little more than kissing, if you feel comfortable with that.”

“Yes,” Theo blurted at once, and then felt himself flush as Harry chuckled. “I’ve wanted that—for a while.”

He didn’t know if he should hide his growing excitement, not that he probably could when Harry’s hand drifted gently along the front of his robes. Harry drew back, smiled at him, and then came closer to press his mouth against Theo’s.

Theo fell easily into the rhythm of the kiss, known to him no matter how little they’d done this before, and drew Harry to him until their mouths felt like one hungry, warm point of contact. When Harry’s tongue darted out and over his, Theo shuddered. Harry paused, but Theo pulled him closer with more murmurs of encouragement, and Harry relaxed enough to do it again.

And again.

At the same time as his hand slid beneath Theo’s robes.

Theo knew he wouldn’t last more than one stroke, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself like that the first time they were intimate. So he touched Harry’s wrist, and Harry’s hand pulled back like a startled snake.

“Theo?”

“I want to wait a little,” Theo said, managing to speak the words instead of gasp them. Harry’s eyes fell to the tent Theo was making in his robes, and his expression was calm and satisfied and the kind Theo wanted to devour. “Just—a bit, until we can make it to a bed and I know we’re the same—we can do the same thing.”

Harry smiled at him, a glorious thing that Theo congratulated himself for being the only one ever to see, and reached down to pull his own robes open. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Theo might have set a record with how fast he stripped off his own robes, but he would have challenged anyone not to do the same with a willing Harry Potter waiting for them.

Not that anyone else would get to.

He’s mine. He’s mine. I love him.