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something wicked (this way comes)

Summary:

Knowing the price and the value of something:

Tiberius Nott made sure his son understood this lesson well.

Work Text:

Nighttime in the Slytherin common room was a time of grays, of muted silvers, of wintertime deep evergreens, and the darkest of midnight obsidians: a shadowed home for a shadowed House.

Harry sat curled up in a pile of cushions he’d taken from the various sofas scattered across the common room, stacking them all into a nest-like mess before the window that looked out into the Black Lake. It was too late to see anything—long past the witching hour—but the chill that seeped from the window reminded Harry of the cold of his cupboard; and while that may not have normally been a comfort under regular circumstances, right now it was… familiar. And Harry wanted familiar, even if it hurt more than it helped.

He shifted his weight to rest his cheek against the glass, letting his eyes go half-mast as his fingers pressed gauze harder against the cut he’d received earlier that evening. The echoes of Mudblood, mongrel, and blood-traitor still rang in his ears, and the eleven year-old boy fought hard to keep his mouth from downturning unhappily. It was hard not thinking back to what the Sorting Hat had said a month ago during their first night here--Or perhaps in Slytherin, you’ll make your real friends.--and feeling bitterness and not a small bit of betrayal.

(Should have paid attention to what came after: Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.)

Friends, Harry thought and his fingers wrapped strangling-tight around his forearm and its curse damage to slow the blood flow. What friends. I should have asked for Gryffindor instead. I should have stayed with Ron.

His eyes were dry and hot, though tears would not come. Harry had learned long, long ago that there was never any point in crying. No one ever came to wipe away the tears—shouts and swung fists were a more likely reaction.

His fingernails dug into the meat of his arm, trying to bury the bitterness as well as he could, trying to cut the pain with a different sort of hurt even though he already knew that it wouldn’t help. Harry breathed in, let the air still quietly in his lungs, and slowly breathed out in a steady exhale. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. --mirroring the beating of his heart, the distant undulation of the broken rays of moonlight that managed to puncture through the inky void of the Black Lake.

There was a soft scuff against stone, the small rustle coming from the entrance to the dorms. Harry breathed out one last time, sinking down into the Not Caring, as deep and as dark as the lake outside, and tilted his head just enough to look over the curve of a shoulder.

Theodore Nott stood at the base of the stairway, features sharply shadowed in the low light of the common room. Slim and soft spoken, with quicksilver-bright eyes that glittered with intelligence: he reminded Harry of a knife, the ones with an incredibly sharp edge that Aunt Petunia always had him use for cooking. Harry had cut himself by accident on one of those knives once; he couldn’t get the bleeding to stop for hours and Aunt Petunia had screamed about all of the food he wasted by bleeding all over it and the kitchen counter and tile.

Theodore Nott looked like he would cut anyone who came too close to his edges.

Remaining silent, Harry met the other boy’s gaze with his own Killing Curse green—and waited.

Eventually, the corners of Nott’s eyes crinkled upwards in silent amusement, an equally silent acknowledgment of the waiting-game-who’ll-break-first standoff that Harry had settled into. The boy took a step further into the common room. “You weren’t in your bed,” he commented idly, tone blank and carefully neutral.

“Didn’t want to get my dirty blood on the sheets.”

Harry’s response was flat, a purposeful challenge to the fact that it was their fellow Housemates that had caused the initial bleeding. Nott blinked, startled by the claws hidden within the green-eyed boy’s reply, and the creases at the corners of his eyes deepened with his amusement. It had been so easy to mistake the quiet, unassuming boy for someone who didn’t truly belong in their House: but Harry’s words had bite, and Nott was very careful to not overlook the fact that the other’s fingers were partially hidden beneath the pile of pillows—and wrapped around the dark wood of his wand.

He took another step forward, slowly creeping his way across the common room floor, mirroring the stalk of the shadows as they took over the shaded corners of the room. Silent, feet no longer making any noise against the flagstones of the castle, and Nott eventually stopped when he saw the way that Harry’s barely-visible fingers flexed as he readied for a potential strike.

“The wound isn’t healing because Amicus used a… different… cutting curse,” Nott murmured quietly in the space that still stretched between them both, and it was easy enough—familiar enough—for Harry to read between the lines: the upper year Slytherin had used a Darker version of the cutting curse. Reaching into a pajama pocket, the gray-eyed wizard pulled out a sealed jar and held it towards the other. “This should help.”

Harry’s lips tightened, and his gaze flickered between the proffered solution and Nott’s too-calm eyes. “What’s the cost?”

“An answer to a question I have.” –and Nott tossed the jar towards Harry, who plucked it easily out of the air when it came within reach. Seeker, the older boy thought, fascinated by just how graceful Harry’s movements were. Blinking, he shifted his attention back to the other and asked: “Why haven’t you bothered going to any of the professors for help?”

“Adults never help,” Harry whispered, facial features carefully smoothing out.

Oh, delighted, thought the child who was more blade than boy.

Theodore Nott smiled (sharpsharptoosharp) and stepped closer to join Harry in his nest of pillows.