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Theo has to admit he’s curious to see Harry Potter’s face on the first day of school. He’s had a summer of being smeared in the Daily Prophet, and there are rumors circulating that he was tried in front of the full Wizengamot for some kind of underage magic use.
He just looked devastated last year, but that was right after Diggory’s death. No one could have judged anything about him by that. Draco talks a good game, but Theo would defy him to have met the Dark Lord and seen one of his classmates die and take it any better than Potter did.
(Of course the Dark Lord is back. That’s obvious even to people without Death Eater…connections. Theo wonders if more people would believe it if they’d been sitting in the front row of the stands at the Third Task, the way he was, and had seen Harry Potter’s face as he was Portkeyed back with Diggory’s body).
Potter comes into the Great Hall with hard eyes and hands clenched down at his sides. He takes a seat the Gryffindor table and listens more than he speaks. But he stares at their new Defense professor with raw hatred.
Theo watches with his eyebrows rising, pleasantly surprised. He had no idea that Potter knew how to hate. Of course he spars with Malfoy and gets irritated when Professor Snape goes after him in class, but that’s not hatred, that’s dislike returned for dislike and insult returned for insult. He even manages to hold it together better in Snape’s class than Theo thinks he himself would in the same situation.
Maybe Potter is going to survive this war.
*
“Insane.”
“Liar.”
“Delusional.”
“Just wants some kind of fame for claiming that You-Know-Who’s back…”
The insults whisper through the corridors. Some of them are said right to Potter’s face. Some of them are said behind his back, but loudly enough that there’s no way he can avoid hearing them. And Potter clenches his jaw and marches straight through them.
Draco mocks Potter shrilly and loudly in the common room, and people laugh. Theo hides behind a book, which everyone is used to him doing, and so avoids having to laugh himself, and lets his eyes pass across various faces. Pansy and Blaise and Millicent are all smart enough, although Millicent prefers not to demonstrate it. Surely one of them is only going along because otherwise Draco might press them on the issue.
But there’s no sign of that (unless they’re better liars than Theo ever gave them credit for). They just laugh and shake their heads.
No one seems to see what Theo sees. None of them see the strength that it takes just to keep coming to the Great Hall day after day, the self-control Potter must have not to hex people, the way that he continues to brew his potions even with all the other stress on top of the fact that Snape has never been a fair teacher to him. They just mock him and pass around rumors of him yelling at someone in the Gryffindor common room or talking back to Umbridge in Defense as if the gossip is the most delicious sweets.
It occurs to Theo abruptly, one evening about a fortnight into term, that they don’t seem to think of Potter as human. And neither do many other people in Houses less full of Death Eaters’ children. He’s just a symbol, someone distant from them for all that he’s also a student with whom they share a school, and when the symbol doesn’t do as it’s supposed to do, it’s fine to make fun of him.
Theo’s hands curl around the edge of the book.
If they were strong enough to survive a school, a country, laughing at them and angry at them, it wouldn’t matter to Theo at all. But he despises the kind of weakness that laughs at strength, and would never dare to put itself in strength’s place.
There is also the fact that watching Potter is interesting, and school will be less interesting for Theo if Potter gets expelled by Umbridge or taunted into doing something expulsion-worthy by Draco or Snape.
So Theo decides to do something about it.
*
It’s beyond easy to do something to upset Draco’s potion. Yes, Draco’s good at the art, but he spends too much time lately jeering at Potter or waiting eagerly for Snape to begin taunting Potter. Theo simply waits until he’s looking away and then edges some gillyweed into the air, concentrating fiercely. His wand sticks out from his sleeve, a little, but Theo has practiced over and over again until he can cast some spells not only wordlessly most of the time, but with more restricted wand movements than usual.
You never know what kind of strength you’re going to need.
The gillyweed slips over the edge of Draco’s cauldron and into the top of his potion. The result is immediate. Draco’s cauldron dissolves under the torrent of hissing, creeping sludge, and Draco shrieks as some of it spills onto his boots.
Snape immediately spins around, his eyes widening at the sight of Draco’s cauldron. “Fifty points from Gryffindor for interference with another student, Potter!” he roars, sprinting over to stop the mess from spreading. “And detention!”
Potter’s cauldron is on the other side of the room, and Snape was looking straight at him when Theo inserted the gillyweed. It’s ridiculous that Snape would blame Potter.
But it seems he is, and that Theo’s attempt to relieve some of the stress on Potter has just resulted in some extra stress.
That won’t do.
*
“Where’s Snape?”
It’s Weasley who blurts the question out. Theo lets the corner of his mouth curl up a little. No one among the Gryffindors looks at him. He’s lurking near the back of the Slytherin pack, as usual, and he doubts that many of the Gryffindors even know who he is. Potter might only have heard his name in passing.
“Quiet, Ron, I’m trying to read the sign on the door.”
Granger does it, the scowl on her face fierce, while Slytherins mutter about how close she is to it and speculate on what kind of note Snape could possibly have left behind. Theo slouches against the wall and pretends not to pay attention while listening himself.
“What?”
Granger’s screech fills the corridor. Theo lets the corner of his mouth curl up again.
“What is it?” Weasley is demanding, trying to lean close enough to read over Granger’s shoulder. “What’s happening?”
“Potions is canceled for today,” Granger is saying, her eyes darting back and forth along the parchment. “Professor McGonagall says that Professor Snape was brewing in his private lab and suffered an accident with the potion.” She pauses to gasp at that, or maybe just to catch her breath. “He should be back tomorrow, but we won’t have any work to make up for from our class today, Professor McGonagall says.”
There’s an astonished surge of murmurs through the people around them, while Draco says loudly, “You must be reading it wrong, Granger, Professor Snape would never poison himself,” and shoves forwards to read the note on the door. Over the sound of Granger and Malfoy’s bickering, Theo smiles reminiscently.
It didn’t actually take that much to tamper with one of the ingredients that Snape owl-ordered. Snape’s owl is distinctive, and he keeps it hungry; flinging out a mouse in front of it was easy. It was harder to arrange to be in the area of the professor’s private lab on the previous evening, and to make it look natural when he summoned Professor McGonagall because Theo was “concerned.” Theo wanted McGonagall because he knew she would be scrupulously honest about the cause of the canceled class, while the other professors might leave the details out.
Theo wants Professor Snape humiliated, the way he humiliated Potter.
Theo has heard of the Muggle saying “an eye for an eye,” but he rather prefers pain for pain.
*
Something is wrong with Potter’s right hand.
Theo has been sure of it for several days, but it’s not easy to catch a glimpse of Potter’s hand when most of the time he’s only close to Potter in Potions. In Herbology, they work on opposite sides of the greenhouse; Care of Magical Creatures is always outside, and Potter would see Theo sneaking towards the Gryffindors; and glimpsing something so ordinary across the Great Hall would take sharper eyes than Theo possesses.
But finally he tracked Potter down in the library and lingered under a Disillusionment Charm behind a shelf, and now he knows. Potter is writing with a grimace, his lip caught between his teeth, his eyes darker than ever.
And Granger is hissing at him about it, but Potter finally snaps at her, “I went to McGonagall already, Hermione, and she just said to keep my head down! I can’t do anything!” He flaps his hand at her, and his sleeve flops back from his hand.
Theo stares, unable at first to understand what he’s seeing. The bandages on the back of the hand have slid back, too, soaked with blood, and he can make out—
The ragged shapes of letters.
Theo’s stomach surges with cold. A Blood Quill. A Blood Quill. Who is making Potter cut words into the back of his hand?
I must not tell lies, Theo manages to read before Potter slides his hand back beneath the table and adds, “Besides, Dumbledore—”
“Professor Dumbledore, Harry—”
“Is avoiding me,” Potter continues, leveling Granger with a truly impressive glare that tells Theo how much strength he’s using right now not to burst out shouting in the middle of the library. “If he won’t do anything about Umbridge, I don’t have the ability to.”
Theo feels his lips part. Umbridge. Of course. He should have guessed. Potter has had detention after detention with her, and Theo hasn’t interfered, has rather admired it as part of Potter’s strength, that he can stand being humiliated in class so often.
But it seems he should have stepped in earlier.
Well, he will now.
Theo turns away and slips back to the dungeons. There’s probably no more to be gained from listening to Granger berate Harry for not using Dumbledore’s title. And he could use some time for his next plan, because he doesn’t have any idea what kinds of traps or defenses Umbridge might have on her office, or even if she has an owl. Oversights that will now have to be rectified.
After all, he can’t have Potter so weakened when he might have to duel for his life any second. He might die, and who would be Theo’s entertainment then?
*
It takes some time to arrange.
But in the end, Father is amused by Theo’s request for blackmail on a Ministry employee named Umbridge. It seems that he does have some of it, and doesn’t have any particular plan to use it any time soon. He’s busy with other things.
Theo half-shrugs when Father’s gyrfalcon lands in front of him with the information he requested strapped to its leg. So Father is busy trying to make life more difficult for Potter, and Theo is working to try and make it easier.
It isn’t the first time that they’ve found themselves on opposite sides. Theo thinks they might stand there on their own in the end, without any interference from Potter or the Dark Lord, and until that day comes, they will be unfailingly courteous to each other and help each other with things, like this, that don’t truly touch the war.
It’s an odd relationship Theo has with his father, but one he rather enjoys.
*
Umbridge receives the owl at breakfast, which is convenient and the way Theo hoped it would work, but he couldn’t tell for sure. Sometimes owls fly faster or slower than you’d think, and he had to release the school owl from down the road to Hogsmeade because of the restrictions on post.
Umbridge reads it and goes pale enough that the pink ribbon near her throat looks like blood dripping from a wound.
(Theo wishes it was. But the fact that he chose to handle it this way cuts out some possibilities).
Umbridge writes back, of course, demanding with a tone that comes across as shrill even in her written words who he is, and how he knows her blood status, and what he wants. Since Theo was perfectly clear in his first letter about the last part, and has no intention of telling her either of the first two, he simply responds, Do as you’re told.
He thinks at first it might not work. Umbridge gives Potter another detention in Defense the same day. But when Theo arranges himself so he can catch a glimpse of Potter’s hand in Potions the next day, it at least doesn’t seem to be worse. There’s no new, fresh blood soaking the bandages.
And then he manages to creep in to listen to Potter holding a whispered conversation with Weasley and Granger in the library, and hears Potter’s laughter, full and free, as he says, “It was lines. Just regular lines! Tedious as all fuck, but not dangerous.”
“Harry! Language!”
“Wonder what made her change her mind?” Weasley asks.
“I have no idea. But I’m not sure I care.” Potter pushes his glasses up his face and yawns. Theo has noticed that he was looking rather exhausted lately, but attributed it to the lateness of Umbridge’s detentions. He wonders now if it’s something else, because both his friends are giving him looks of concern. He also wonders what he can do about it. “I’d like to thank whoever did it.”
Weasley abruptly whips around and lifts his wand, and Theo pauses. Did he make some sound or movement that could have revealed him? He didn’t think he did, but—
And then Potter steps around the corner of the bookcase and stares at him, his own wand poised. After long moments in which he’s visibly struggling to recall Theo’s name, he says blankly, “Nott?”
Theo can’t subdue the impulse that makes him do it. Maybe just because it will be more hilarious if Potter knows.
He holds that green gaze and says calmly, “You’re welcome.”
Potter’s mouth falls open a little. But he tugs himself together faster than Theo ever thought he could, and stares, and then asks, “Why did you do it?”
His eyes are full of shadows. Theo wonders if he knows that Father is a Death Eater, wonders if Father gave something about himself away in the graveyard where Potter said the Dark Lord was resurrected. Theo doesn’t think so, but it’s not the sort of thing he and Father would ever talk about.
Or maybe Potter just thinks that Theo is a nasty, suspicious Slytherin, and not the sort to be nice to a Gryffindor for no reason.
Theo shrugs. “You’re more entertaining than the vast majority of people in this school, and you have less chance to be entertaining when you’re shut up in detentions with the toad. Repay me by continuing to stand up for yourself and insist that the Dark Lord is back. I like watching the faces of the deniers turn red.”
“You call him the Dark Lord,” Weasley butts in. “Are you a bloody Death Eater?”
Theo raises an eyebrow and reaches for his left sleeve, then freezes as Potter’s wand jumps to follow him. Theo didn’t realize Potter was that on edge. He keeps his hand in place and looks at Potter and says, “I’m trying to show you proof.”
Potter finally gestures for him to go ahead, although given that he does so with his wand, it’s not reassuring.
Theo pulls back his sleeve and bares his left arm. He doesn’t ever want it decorated with a Mark, truth be told, but the Dark Lord might still win, and Theo is the practical sort. “See? Just regular skin.”
“Whatever, Nott,” Weasley says, and folds his arms. Granger is watching him silently, intently, probably trying to figure him out.
But Potter is the one who matters. And Potter is the one who nods after long seconds of apparently thinking about it.
“Thanks,” he says.
*
It’s not a coincidence that Theo finds Potter staggering through the corridors with a hand pressed to his forehead and a headache apparently so blinding that he doesn’t see Theo and walks right into him. But it’s still a surprise, because Theo’s charm that lets him know when Potter is nearby made him think that Potter was coming into the dungeons to see him. Potter didn’t have a detention with Professor Snape tonight that Theo knows of.
“Potter?”
“Nott.” Potter makes a pathetic effort to brace himself against a wall.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Snape,” Potter says, and then looks furious with himself for saying anything. His mouth is half-open and he’s snarling at Theo as though he thinks Theo will laugh and kick him in the bollocks, or mock him.
Theo blinks slowly. He didn’t do enough to neutralize the man, then. At least the embarrassment has kept Snape from picking on Potter in class, but Theo doubts this was a class. “What was he doing?”
“I have Remedial Potions,” Potter begins, and he’s the strongest person Theo knows, but he’s not much of a liar, not when you know what to look for. It’s a mystery to Theo how everyone thinks Potter can be lying day after day.
“Come off it,” Theo says softly. “I know how to keep a secret. Tell me what you were really doing down here.”
Potter breathes harshly for a few minutes, glaring at him. Theo doesn’t take the bait, and he doesn’t walk away. He waits. And is silently ready to catch Potter if he’s about to fall over, but he doesn’t think he reveals that to Potter too badly.
“Fine,” Potter says at last, and he looks still more furious but also relieved. He must have wanted to tell someone for a long time, Theo thinks, as detached as a Healer. “Occlumency lessons.”
Theo staggers himself, appalled at the news and the thought of the headache Potter must have. “But he hates you!”
Potter laughs, a sound that seems to curl into the crannies of Theo’s soul and wrench them open. “Yeah, fucking tell me about it.”
“What can you take for the pain?”
“What do you think, Nott? I can’t tell anyone that I have these lessons.”
“I’ll get you something.”
Potter stands there and stares at him coolly for still longer. He can focus past the pounding, crippling pain, and Theo’s estimation of him creeps higher and higher. He stands there and tries to look as open as possible, tries to convey how much he admires Potter without saying the words. He doesn’t think Potter would appreciate it.
“Fine,” Potter says finally, and turns away and goes limping back towards the stairs that will take him out of the dungeon.
Theo goes back to the common room and sits a long time by the fire, thinking. He doesn’t want to ask his father for blackmail on Snape. He could, and his father would probably give it, but that would also make Theo look too dependent.
No, he has to do something else. Something that will send a pointed message to Snape and make him understand what’s going on and that he should back the fuck off while not stopping the lessons, because Potter needs them for some reason.
It takes Theo almost until morning to think of something, but he goes to bed for a snatched hour of sleep with a smile on his face that he thinks both Potter and Father would appreciate.
*
“Mr. Nott, what are you doing?”
Theo has deliberately messed up his potion—not much, but enough that it’s producing grey vapor instead of blue. Snape swoops down on him in obvious irritation that one of his Slytherins made a mistake which is pulling him away from yelling at the Gryffindors.
“I’m not sure, sir,” Theo says, and looks up in time to catch Snape’s eye.
Now that he’s looking for it, he feels the flicker-thin probe of Legilimency sliding into his brain. Snape is good. Light and fast, he touches Theo’s thoughts and then withdraws.
But because Theo is pushing the image to the forefront of his mind, Snape sees it. Theo is thinking of Snape screaming on the floor under the influence of a headache far worse than Potter’s, which Theo can induce through a curse his father invented. If he wants to. If he wants to make Snape clutch his head and scream and scream until his voice gives out.
Snape takes a step back, his hand darting towards his wand. That makes multiple people turn to stare at him. Theo smiles. It’s not as though Snape can say anything in public about what he saw. Reading the minds of underage students is so very illegal, after all.
“Mr. Nott,” Snape says, his voice low enough that it’s hard for Theo to be sure of what he’s feeling. “Are you quite all right?”
“Of course, sir. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason,” Snape says slowly, his eyes narrowed now in what looks like confusion, and sweeps away. But Theo expects the “invitation” to stay after class, and he calmly ignores the way that Potter watches him for a moment before Weasley and Granger sweep the other boy out the door.
He did get a Painkilling Draught for Potter that took care of the headache. So at least it doesn’t seem to be suspicious watching.
Snape wastes no time setting up a few strong Privacy Charms and asking, “Why was that vision in your mind, Mr. Nott?”
“What vision, sir?”
Now Snape has to admit that he read Theo’s mind or else dance around the subject. He picks the dance, the way Theo knew he would. “I hope you have not been listening to any…stories that Gryffindor students might have told you about certain private abilities of mine,” he says. “They are exaggerated, as Gryffindor stories often are.”
Theo smiles brightly. “I haven’t been listening to them any more than you’ve been reading my mind, sir.”
“You could not truly do as I saw you—”
“Oh, believe me, sir,” and Theo drops all of the masks for the first time since he’s been at Hogwarts, “I could.”
Snape pauses. Then he asks, “Are you that invested in the welfare of a student whose House is not your own, Mr. Nott?”
“Unlike some people, sir, House rivalry doesn’t control my every reaction.”
Snape looks and looks at him. Theo keeps his face blank and neat. He could say that he’s talking about Draco. That’s what he would claim if Snape tried to show this to anyone as a Pensieve memory and accused Theo of threatening him. But they both know who he means, and they both know what will happen if Snape keeps pursuing his current course of Occlumency.
Snape clears his throat and looks away. “There are books on many subjects in the Hogwarts library. I will—consider delivering them to some of the students who could benefit from them.”
“I am glad that you’re a good professor in more subjects than Potions, sir.”
No one could even accuse his voice of being sarcastic. He does get a glare from Snape, but what matter? Theo simply smiles at him and turns away, walking out of the Potions classroom and in the direction of the Great Hall for lunch.
*
“What did you do?”
This time, Theo’s charm did ring because Potter came into the dungeons to find him. Theo is beyond pleased, but tries to hide that in the way he smiles at Potter and half-lifts one shoulder. “I threatened Snape with a headache worse than the one he caused you.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Planted a vision in my mind of what I’d like to do to him.” Theo admires Potter, sure, but he’s not going to admit to the existence of a highly illegal spell just because Potter would like him to. Admitting to the existence of a vision in his mind that someone could pick up with Legilimency is all right, because Snape still isn’t supposed to be looking.
Potter chews his lip for a moment. It’s darker red than Theo’s ever seen it in the light of the torches. He admires that, too.
He did hear about Potter having some kind of doomed romance with Chang, which he simultaneously understands and doesn’t. On the one hand, Chang isn’t worthy of someone like Potter. On the other hand, how could she not cling to him, if she ever once saw Potter looking the way he does right now?
“You’re trying to help me,” Potter whispers. “You’re trying to be my friend.”
“Ally,” Theo says instantly, because he doesn’t think friend is the right word. No, thinking about it, he’s sure it’s not. “You’re stronger than you think, stronger than you know, but the kind of headaches you get with misdirected Occlumency could chip away at that strength, and that’s unacceptable.”
“Aren’t you on his side?”
Theo knows exactly who Potter means, but he’s pleased by Potter not giving the name. He half-shrugs. “Has anyone decided for sure yet which side they’re on?”
“I have!”
“I mean, yes, of course, you haven’t got a choice,” Theo says. “He tried to kill you, he killed your parents, he kidnapped you and used you in a resurrection ritual last year. But would you be a figurehead for your side if you had the choice?”
“A figurehead?” Potter’s expression falters.
Theo sighs a little. He didn’t intend to get into this, really. The help he’s given Potter can all be excused as wanting Potter to last longer for Theo’s entertainment, and beating down people like Umbridge and Snape who are annoying in their own right. But this? “Well,” he says, “people expect you to defend them, but they also turn on you at a moment’s notice. And when you do something substantial like stand up to Umbridge or fight your way out of a situation like the one at the end of the Third Task, they hate you for it.” He shrugs. “Most people just see you as a symbol, I think.”
“Not Ron or Hermione.”
“No,” Theo agrees. That’s obvious enough, and he would even envy Potter his friends if not for the fact that Granger’s nosiness and Weasley’s insecurity would drive Theo insane in a day.
“And not you.”
Theo smiles. “No.”
Potter moves a step closer to him, staring. Theo carefully doesn’t move or flinch when Potter reaches out to lay a hand on Theo’s cheek.
“Why?” Potter whispers. “If it’s so obvious to you, why isn’t it obvious to more people? Why do I live with someone who calls me a nutter?”
That would be Finnigan, Theo surmises. He idly wonders if he ought to do something about him next, but Potter doesn’t seem visibly distressed or hurt by him the way he was by Umbridge and Snape. “Because most people are stupid.”
For some reason, the words appear to catch Potter in the chest like a fishhook. He bends over, coughing. Theo stares at him, and then around. There are no portraits in this part of the dungeons who could report him killing Harry Potter, but the noise is loud enough to possibly attract a prefect’s attention.
Then Potter straightens up, and Theo realizes he’s laughing, not choking.
“They really are,” Potter says fervently, and he smiles at Theo. It’s an enchanting smile that tugs on something in Theo, although it feels more like a spiked chain than a fishhook. He finds himself gaping.
Potter narrows his eyes and then says, “Why not?”
Theo tries to imagine what he could have said or done that would inspire that response, and then realizes that it sounds like Potter is talking to himself. He opens his mouth to speak, and Potter darts forwards and kisses him.
It’s far from an ideal first kiss. It’s just a dry brush of Potter’s lips across his cheek, in fact. But Theo still gasps, and Potter pulls back and smiles at him and walks away, swaggering out of the dungeons as if he kisses Slytherins every day.
Theo finds himself licking his lips and thinking, He’d better not.
*
Somehow, he and Potter don’t talk about it, even as Potter transforms into Harry.
It sounds mad to Theo when he thinks that, but no, it works when they don’t. Instead, he and Potter catch each other’s eye across the Great Hall and in Potions and sometimes in other public places when a Daily Prophet article’s just come out or someone is making a huge fuss about Harry’s supposed mental state. And all they have to do is smile, or roll their eyes in mutual exasperation, and that’s that.
In fact, the next time they have a conversation more than a few words long is Harry leaning against a wall in the dungeons, not far from the Slytherin common room, and telling Theo about the secret Defense group that Granger wants him to lead.
“I resisted her for a while,” Harry mumbles, “because the last thing I want is to land in more detentions with Umbridge and have her come up with something even nastier.”
Theo trails a finger over his closed fist. “You know I would stop her.”
“I know, but I don’t want to suffer even that much pain. Does that make me a coward?”
“It makes you realistic.”
Harry ducks his head, but not before Theo sees his smile, a little desperate, a lot fond. He smiles back, and Harry murmurs, “There’s going to be a charmed parchment that will hurt people who betray us. And it would look suspicious as hell if I invited any Slytherins into the group. I’m sorry.”
Theo shakes his head. “I like spending time with you, not other Gryffindors. And—”
He can’t explain, even to himself, his sense of how fragile this thing between him and Harry is, like an egg that he could crush with one careless movement of his hand. How he has to keep his distance as well as spend time with Harry, in case the crushing happens despite himself.
Harry leans forwards and kisses him. Theo tilts his hand up beneath Harry’s chin and kisses him back.
It works. They don’t talk about it, Theo provides Harry a refuge from all the people who want nothing more than to talk to him or talk about him, and Harry shares part of his strength with Theo, and it works.
*
Theo can do nothing about it when Marietta Edgecombe betrays Harry’s group, but he can, and he will, do something about this nonsense Harry is spouting about his godfather being trapped in the Department of Mysteries, trapped under the Dark Lord’s wand.
“How do you know that, Harry? Did the Dark Lord Floo you? Owl you?”
“No! He sent me a vision—look, it’s the thing that I’ve been practicing Occlumency with Snape to try and keep out—”
“He sent it to you. That would imply he knows this link between you is there, right?”
Harry pauses, another impressive reminder of his strength even when he’s steaming like a Granian ready to take off. Finally, he nods.
“Then how can you trust it? And how could the Dark Lord have captured your godfather in the first place?” Theo will just have to deal with the fact that Harry is apparently in contact with a mass-murdering Death Eater who must not be a Death Eater after all, and move on. “The Aurors can’t find him, no one’s seen him in months, but somehow the Dark Lord just managed to find him?”
“He’s been—he could have been in the Department of Mysteries trying to guard something he wants, I know people have been doing that—”
“But did they use your godfather?”
Harry clenches his hands so hard that a second later he goes white from pain. “No, but they could have!”
“Could have isn’t good enough, Harry.” Theo’s voice is deeper than it usually goes, and he doesn’t like that much, doesn’t like the way that he could be on the verge of doing something that will carry him past a line and solidify him on a side that he didn’t think he’d be choosing yet. “Do you have proof your godfather is there?”
“No, but—Voldemort said I had to come, he said—”
Theo flinches at the name, and Harry tries to dash around him. His eyes have the slightly glazed look of someone laboring under powerful Legilimency, similar to but different from the way he looked when he had a headache from Snape’s Occlumency “lessons.”
Theo casts a Body-Bind at him, and hits. Harry stiffens and falls against the wall like a plank. Theo sighs and walks in front of him.
Harry’s eyes are so murderous that Theo flinches harder than he did at the sound of the Dark Lord’s name. But he leans forwards and says, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe the people who must have been protecting your godfather would be so careless of his life. I don’t believe the Dark Lord would just happen to capture him right now and send a vision to you. I don’t believe that the Dark Lord doesn’t know about the link or would tell you the pure truth if he sent that vision to you deliberately. So we’ll wait right here, nice and quiet, and eventually you’ll come back to your senses and remember if there’s some way you can contact your godfather to make sure.”
From the minute twitches in Harry’s jaw, he really wants to break free and start yelling. The nice part of the Body-Bind is that it doesn’t let him do that, while also not hurting him. Theo leans against the wall and waits.
Finally, there’s a change in Harry’s eyes, and not towards utter despair. Theo casts a carefully modified Finite so that the spell releases Harry above the neck but nowhere else.
“You absolute fucking bastard wanker—”
Theo lets Harry have a literal minute of insults, which he times on his pocket watch, which seems to make Harry angrier. And then Theo looks up and asks, “Did you think of another way to communicate with your godfather, or do I need to put you back under the spell and let you think about it some more?”
Harry breathes out, an explosive puff that nearly makes Theo expect to see smoke escape his nostrils, and then says, “Sirius gave me a mirror earlier this year. He said something about being able to talk to him on it.”
“And you still have the mirror?” Theo struggles to keep his voice even. Those mirrors are priceless artifacts.
“Of fucking course I do—”
“And you’ll contact him if I let you go, instead of dashing off to the Department of Mysteries?”
Harry’s teeth grind against each other hard enough to sound like rocks in a clashing stream. Then he nods.
Theo lets him go, and Harry bulls straight up to him and hits him in the nose with all his strength. Theo’s head snaps around, and he gasps. But when he reaches up, his nose isn’t broken, just hurting, and Harry is glaring at him with ordinary anger, not the kind of fury that would mean the end of everything.
“You had better be right,” Harry says.
“Pretty sure I am,” Theo says thickly, through the dripping blood from his nose.
Harry glares at him one more time, and stalks off. Theo carefully manipulates his nose back and forth, wincing, then casts an Episkey, and goes back to the Slytherin common room to wait.
He’s sure he’s right. But even if he isn’t, he’s also sure that Harry’s strength can carry him through this.
Especially since Theo stuck a little tracking charm on Harry’s clothes to let Theo know if he’s about to leave school grounds.
*
“You were right.”
It’s taken almost a week for Harry to approach him again. His voice is sullen, and he looks down and avoids Theo’s eyes when they meet in their favorite dungeon corridor.
But he’s admitting to it, and he’s alive, and the kind of pale he was in the last week isn’t the kind that would have accompanied the death of someone close to him. Theo might have been watching more fiercely than he used to.
“It was a trap?”
“Yeah. There was something in the Department of Mysteries that he wanted me to get for him. He was trying to lure me there so I’d get it and he had less chance of revealing he’s back, I suppose. I don’t really know.” Harry scrubs his eyes. He looks exhausted.
Theo gathers him close, the first time he’s done that. Harry makes a little startled noise, and then collapses forwards. This time, Theo nearly mistakes the sounds of tears for laughter.
“What if I didn’t run into you?” Harry is whispering against his collarbone. “What if I’d just gone off—what if you weren’t here—what if you didn’t take an interest in in me earlier in the year—”
Theo wants to say it’s all right, but his tongue is stuck awkwardly in his mouth. They’ve never done anything like this before.
And then Harry looks up and kisses him with desperate strength for the first time, not gently, throwing his arms around Theo’s neck and driving him backwards into the wall behind them. Theo hits hard enough that his head aches like his nose did.
But he wouldn’t give it up, not when he has an armful of Harry, warm and close and pressing closer, half-sobbing still, but warm and solid and alive and strong.
Harry finally finishes the kiss. He doesn’t ask Theo for an answer to any of his questions. He doesn’t ask Theo what side he’s on. He just huddles in Theo’s arms, and Theo gets to appreciate that he’s one of the few people in the world who’s ever glimpsed Harry Potter’s weakness.
Which is its own kind of strength. Harry trusts people. He takes a chance on them. Theo doesn’t know many people like that, and it’s not even just because he’s in Slytherin. All the petty lions and badgers and eagles who mutter about Harry’s sanity and are eager to forget any disruption the Dark Lord might bring to their little world—they wouldn’t do it, either.
Harry is strong beyond any dream of strength, precious beyond any dreams of price, water in a dry country.
They stand like that, and Theo basks in it, and Harry lets him.
The End.