Chapter Text
Harry sighed as he read through the letter that Bill Weasley, Ron’s older brother, had sent him. Harry had remembered Ron talking about Bill once and had asked if he could write to him, professing an interest in ancient Egyptian curses. But the letter had come back without any useful information.
“You knew it was a gamble that didn’t have much chance of working.”
Harry grunted and tucked the letter away.
“You knew that.”
“You know how you tell me that I don’t always handle people the right way? Right now, you are being very annoying, Theodore.”
Theo blinked a bit, then smiled faintly. “But you knew,” he said, and took another scoop of mashed potatoes before devoting himself to the Arithmancy book in front of him and ignoring Harry entirely.
Harry settled back and ate without much enthusiasm. Tomorrow they would be heading home for the Christmas holiday, and while Harry would be happy to see Eustace and Sirius, he and Theo hadn’t made any progress on a cure for Eustace, and only a little on the runes that would allow them to master Fiendfyre. They hadn’t managed to find a Horcrux in Hogwarts, either.
Harry had to wonder if this was part of the way Voldemort had felt, if he had been driven mad by the sheer inability to do anything.
“If I could have your attention, please.”
Harry raised his head to pay polite notice to Dumbledore, although most of his mind was still tangling with his problems. Dumbledore, he noticed, looked tired. He hoped that Hermione was annoying the Headmaster on a regular basis.
“I have been—informed, and agree, that the curse on the Defense post has gone on long enough. After the holidays, we will receive a visit from a Curse-Breaker that I hope may be able to do something about it.”
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then murmurs swept the Great Hall. Harry knew why. It was the first time that one of the professors, as far as he knew, had admitted there was a curse instead of just extreme bad luck plaguing everyone who taught Defense.
Hermione raised her hand, practically vibrating out of her seat. Dumbledore ignored her, but Harry saw his cheek twitch.
“I will, ah, ask that everyone send me any recommendations they have for Curse-Breakers, of course, if they wish. I will also ask that you refrain from sending me names of specific people you would like to become the Defense professor. Madam Umbridge does have a contract with us until the end of the year.”
“Of course I do,” Umbridge said in her simpering voice, looking around the Great Hall for a moment. “Not that that should prevent anyone from reporting the truth to me, of course not! I invite the truth. I countenance it.”
Harry concealed a snort. No one was stupid enough to fall for that except perhaps some of the first-years and Seamus Finnigan.
“Not that I won’t be happy to return to the Ministry,” Umbridge added a moment later, folding her hands in front of her. “But only if I am assured that my duties here are being fulfilled as well as possible.”
“Spying for Fudge,” Padma muttered.
Harry smiled at her. “Yeah.”
Padma smiled back, and then turned and dug into the book of Astronomy lore in front of her. Harry watched her thoughtfully. Lately, Padma had been spending a lot of time with Astronomy tomes, more than she would have needed simply to study for the OWL.
Maybe Padma had finally found something she was passionate about in Astronomy, although she might not know everything she was going to do yet. Harry wished her luck getting free of her family and spreading her wings.
He would be glad, himself, when he was free of Hogwarts, and the constant expectations and pressures placed on him.
*
“What is this?”
Harry’s voice was quiet. Theo glanced up from the gift Father had given him, a stone dog that was the replica of the one in Mother’s portrait. The original had been destroyed when she died, at her request, but this one was indistinguishable, and Theo’s hands shook as he touched it.
“A book that I finally think you’re old enough to read.”
Black spoke the words in a joking tone, the way he did everything, but his eyes were shadowed, and Theo thought he might mean it. He turned around to face Harry more fully, and found Harry’s arms shaking as he held up the book. It wasn’t from the weight.
“It—Sirius, there are spells in here that…”
“Yeah, I know. That are Darker than anything you’ve studied with Eustace.” Black sighed and dragged his hand down his face. “You’re heading in that direction, Harry. I can’t turn you back, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to lecture you into being more like me or like your father. Where did that land us? In Azkaban for twelve years. Dead.” His voice cracked. “You’ll protect yourself the best you can, won’t you? I want you to live, no matter what. Don’t die in the confrontation with Voldemort. Please—”
Harry leaped up and hugged Black. “I won’t,” Theo heard him whisper. “I promise.”
Black hugged Harry back desperately, but it was at Theo he looked, over Harry’s head. Theo nodded once. He would make sure that Harry didn’t die.
Theo turned to look at Father as Black and Harry collapsed into a hugging heap. Father smiled back at him and lifted his cup of Firewhisky with a steady hand, despite the long black line that cut through the middle of his palm.
In the months that Harry and Theo had been at Hogwarts, Father’s curse hadn’t got worse, but it hadn’t got better, either.
Father saw Theo looking, and simply gave him a calm, even look. Theo turned his head away, the conversation they’d had about blame still ringing in his head.
He would say that it isn’t my fault, and so it isn’t my responsibility to find a cure, either.
But Theo simply and quietly disagreed. No need to trouble Father with his disagreement, just like Harry hadn’t troubled Granger with his.
But it was going to happen.
*
“I don’t know exactly what you’re going to use this array for, Mr. Potter, but I do trust you to use it responsibly.”
That was all Professor Babbling had said when she gave Harry’s runic array back to him. Harry had smiled at her tightly and said, “I’m trying to find something that’s lost, Professor. I think this will do that nicely.”
“Something lost.” Babbling had looked at him with the kind of gaze Harry had once been afraid of, and now could politely resist. “Has anyone ever told you that you ought to have been a Slytherin, Mr. Potter?”
“But imagine having to be Malfoy’s roommate,” Harry had said, and smiled as Professor Babbling had laughed.
Now Harry and Theo were on the seventh floor. The array had pulled them there with a discreet but strong tug when they spelled a compass onto the parchment and paused at each corridor. They’d walked slowly up and down the seventh floor, and there was no doubt that the pull was strongest when they were opposite a tapestry of dancing trolls.
The problem was, there was absolutely no door or room there.
“Could Riddle have hidden it inside the wall?”
“I think that would have been too noticeable for him,” Harry murmured, slowly swinging the parchment with the runic array back and forth. The parchment fluttered like a strong wind was blowing it near one of the stones, though, so Harry had to concede that maybe there was a draught blowing from behind it. “A secret passage, though…”
“All right. Let me bring the compass forwards.”
Harry moved out of the way as Theo leaned down with his own parchment. The compass drawn on it, formed of numbers inscribed in blood and nearly too small to see individually, abruptly flared, and the arrow drawn in it swung to point at the wall.
“It has to be a secret passage.”
“But would Riddle have just put that thing in the passage and left it there? Really? We know some of the precautions he took with the ring.”
“He’s arrogant. Maybe he thought no one else would find this passage.”
Harry frowned, because that was true. It still seemed odd to him that Riddle would trust the security of a Horcrux to something someone else had built, though. On the other hand, messing around with the wards on Hogwarts would be noticeable, and Riddle might also assume someone could undo what he had done.
“What are you doing?”
The whispery voice made Harry start and look over his shoulder. The Grey Lady, the Ravenclaw House ghost, was hovering behind them. Harry nodded at her, at a bit of a loss why she would be here. There were a few Ravenclaws the Lady spoke to, but never to him or Theo.
“We’re trying to find an artifact, my lady,” Theo said, his voice so smooth that Harry blinked at him. “We believe it was hidden inside Hogwarts by a former student named Tom Riddle, and might have to do with one of the Founders.”
The ghost shuddered backwards. Harry had never seen one do that, any more than he’d heard the Grey Lady speak, and watched in fascination. “Where did you hear that name?” she whispered. “No one speaks it anymore.”
Harry straightened up slowly. When Eustace had suggested speaking to some of the older people at the school, he’d never thought of ghosts, but of course he should have. “He was Head Boy here and a brilliant student, according to Professor Sinistra,” Harry said, watching her closely. “And he’s also called Voldemort now.”
The ghost slapped her hands over her face and wailed. Harry shuddered. He had never heard a banshee’s cry and didn’t want to, but he assumed it would be like this if he did, the flight of a clutch of knives past his ears.
“He stole it!”
“What?”
“He stole it! He stole my mother’s diadem!”
Theo choked, and Harry reached out to pat his back, while part of him reeled around and felt as if it would fall over. Of course. Of course it would be the lost bloody legendary diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw that Tom Riddle had managed to turn into a Horcrux.
“You’re Ravenclaw’s daughter,” Theo whispered.
The Grey Lady wavered on the brink of vanishing for a long moment, and Harry thought they might have to chase her down. He was perfectly willing to do it. It seemed like she hated Voldemort for things that he’d done before he even became Voldemort, and also might be able to tell them how to get to a Horcrux’s hiding place.
But the ghost settled back into visibility at last and said, in a voice like the hissing of the ocean, “I am. I am Helena Ravenclaw.”
“Your mother’s diadem wasn’t the only Founders’ artifact that Tom Riddle took and misused,” Theo said instantly. He was standing tall, with a hand extended to the ghost as if she could actually take it, and Harry admired his profile intensely. “We’re trying to find all of them and make sure they can never be misused again. Please, will you show us where he hid the diadem? How we can reach it? We only know that it’s inside the wall somewhere.”
The ghost stared at them in silence for long moments. Harry just nodded in support of Theo’s speech and said nothing himself. He doubted Helena Ravenclaw would take it well if they said they were actually trying to destroy the Horcruxes.
“There is a Room hidden within Hogwarts’s wards,” the Grey Lady whispered at last. “Contained within the very magic of the school. My mother was instrumental in creating the theory for it. Currently, it is linked to the tapestry of the trolls. You must walk past it three times while thinking about the version of the Room that you want to access.”
Harry whistled under his breath. There was no way that he and Theo would have ever figured that out. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I promise, we will make sure that no one can misuse the diadem, and that Tom Riddle will never get his hands on it again.”
“It must have been torment for you to know that he took the diadem and not be able to retrieve it,” Theo said softly. His hand was still extended to the Grey Lady. “Your suffering does not go unnoticed. Thank you for your help, my lady.”
The ghost did vanish this time, her body seeming to be sucked into a mist-colored hood she was wearing and blowing out like a candle. Harry shook his head as he rolled up the parchment with the runic array on it. “When did you learn how to talk to ghosts?”
“It’s just common sense, if you think about it.” Theo had a superior little smile on his face that made Harry want to kiss him and also hit him into a wall with a Knockback Jinx. “Most of the time, no one speaks to them or really acknowledges them unless they make themselves known. All they want is attention and respect.”
Harry rolled his eyes and walked over to the tapestry. Then he began to pace slowly back and forth in front of the wall where the compass had pointed them, eyes closed as he pictured the diadem the way he had seen it on the statue of Ravenclaw in the common room.
We need to find the place where the Horcrux is hidden, where Riddle put it, where he tried to hide it from everyone…
There was a grinding sound and an astonished gasp from Theo, and Harry opened his eyes. A door had formed in the wall that had felt as if a draught was blowing from it, a huge wooden one with stone curlicues decorating it.
“What, you paid attention and respect to the ghost but didn’t trust her to actually know what she was talking about?” Harry taunted as he reached out to open the door.
Theo glared at him.
*
I am pleased that you managed to secure the item, but keep in mind that your safety is worth more to me than any amount of items you may manage to find.
Theo nodded a little at the letter from his father and folded it away into his robe pocket. Padma gave him a curious glance but didn’t ask about the content. She had accepted that he and Harry had their secrets just as she did hers.
“Nott!”
Theo glanced up with a little frown. The speaker was a Ravenclaw from the year below them—what was her name, Clara Elliot? Something like that. She was leaning forwards and smiling at him as if they were the best of friends.
“Yes, Elliot?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to form a study group. Everyone’s always saying how hard OWLS are and how you really need to start a year in advance to make sure that you’re learning as much as you should…”
“Sorry, but my schedule is full with the study groups I already have,” Theo said, wondering what she wanted. Did she see it as a chance to get close to Harry? She might as well have asked Harry about study groups directly.
Elliot stared at him for a moment, and then her whole face went red, and she turned away. She was practically drooping as she started talking to one of the girls beside her. Theo frowned at her. She looked as if her whole morning had been ruined.
Harry choked beside him. Theo glanced over at him, wondering if he could still possibly be coughing from the dust in the rubbish room where they had discovered the diadem, and found Harry smiling at him.
“What?”
“You realize she was trying to flirt with you, right?”
“What?”
Harry cackled. “You’re tall and handsome and you have the most perfect grey eyes. I heard Elliot sighing about it to one of her friends yesterday. You’re adorable, Theo, and some people would want to date you, not just me. Get used to it.”
Theo shook his head, uncomprehending. Even for a Ravenclaw he was quiet, and his reputation had suffered last year when he was one of the few who hadn’t believed Harry was a cheat and a murderer. A lot of people also avoided him because of Father. To Theo, none of that added up to wanting to date him.
Harry leaned over to kiss his cheek, and it did sound like someone down the table in Elliot’s group was having a choking fit. “I love you, but it wouldn’t be fair to leave you entirely oblivious to it.”
Theo glared at him again.
*
“Hermione said that we should study together.”
Harry glanced at Hermione out of the corner of his eye, but she just gave him an extremely innocent smile. Harry shrugged. He didn’t mind studying with Ron and Hermione since they had Charms with the Gryffindors this term, and probably no one was going to try to get him to go on a self-righteous crusade in class.
Probably.
“All right.”
Professor Flitwick called the class to order with a little bang of his wand, and told them they could have the rest of the time to study for the OWL. Harry and Theo picked up their bags and walked over to the small cluster of desks that Ron and Hermione had claimed.
“What do you think is the hardest charm for you?” Harry asked, flipping his book open and staring down the long, long list of things he should study. Now that they had found the Horcrux in Hogwarts and their work on the runic array that might master Fiendfyre was temporarily stalled, it was time to really plan for OWLS.
“The Privacy Charm.”
Harry nodded. “Yeah, all right. Then we can start with that—”
“No, it’s code!”
Harry stared at Ron, then at Hermione. “What?”
Hermione sighed. “Ron means, can you raise a Privacy Charm around us? We have a few things to tell you that no one else should really hear about.” She lowered her voice. “Not even some of your Housemates.”
“We can cast it if we do it and then take it down again quickly,” Theo said, drawing his wand. “Professor Flitwick probably won’t think it’s practice if it stays up for too long.” He gave his wand an expert flick, and the professor nodded at them from the front of the classroom and awarded a point to Ravenclaw.
Ron lowered his voice, too. “Hermione means that during the Easter hols, we heard my parents talking about the Order of the Phoenix. They were Dumbledore’s group that he used to fight You-Know-Who during the war. They’re assembling again. They think something big is about to happen with You-Know-Who.”
Harry nodded, not surprised. Even though no one seemed to know where Voldemort’s wraith was right now, Crouch’s impersonation of Moody would have been enough to start the Order again. “Okay. Why do you think Theo and I need to know that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it’s not, Ron,” Hermione said, and shook her head at Harry with a cluck of her tongue. “You need to know so that you can start asking Professor Dumbledore to let you join the Order!”
“I don’t think he’d want to do that, probably,” Theo said, with the kind of pensive expression on his face that Harry knew meant he thought this was an interesting philosophical question. “After all, he wants mostly adults to fight, doesn’t he? Sirius Black said something about Harry’s parents being part of the Order, and he was, too, but not until they were out of school.”
“Right, but Harry’s not his parents! I’d think Headmaster Dumbledore would want Harry to work with him because he’s You-Know-Who’s bane, and that means that Harry could join the Order and—”
Hermione broke off, flushing deeply. Harry blinked at her. “What?” He couldn’t think of anything she would suggest that would embarrass her so much.
“Tell us what’s going on!” Ron said. “We’re going mad not knowing! Mum says that no one underage can join and we can’t attend meetings, but if you join, they’ll have to tell you, and you can tell us!”
“You poor deprived soul,” Theo drawled.
Ron glared at him. “Shut it, Nott! You don’t know how important this is! There could be Marked Death Eaters in this school right now, and they still wouldn’t tell us about it because of how young we are! We need to have some part in this. We need to help, or they’ll just coddle and try to keep us out of the war when it actually starts, too.”
“We need to have a part,” Hermione added, more soberly. Harry thought she hadn’t considered how the words about Harry telling them would sound until they were out, but now she gave Harry a pleading look. “Ron and his family will be targets because people think of them as blood traitors, and I will because I’m Muggleborn. It’s important that we have the information we can use to protect ourselves.”
Harry settled back in his chair and thought of all the things he could say. That he didn’t trust Dumbledore enough to think he was getting accurate information, that the Headmaster kept secrets, that he had no intention of joining the Order, that the Order probably had no idea where Voldemort was and had no reason to involve a pair of teenagers if they did…
But Theo was right, as he had been when Harry and Hermione argued. Speaking the unvarnished truth, for all that it was a bit of a Ravenclaw stereotype, wasn’t something Harry needed to do. Best to avoid arguments by just telling a version of the truth.
“Are your brothers part of the Order?”
Ron nodded. “Bill and Charlie, yeah.”
“But not Fred and George?”
Ron hesitated, and looked at Hermione as if she might have a better idea than he did. Then he turned back to Harry with a small frown. “No.”
“And they’re of age. I could ask Dumbledore and your mum about joining the Order, but I think I know what they would say.” Harry shook his head. “I’ll keep an ear out and let you know right away if I do hear anything, but I think that all the adults would say is that I’m too young, just like the rest of you.”
“You could ask Professor Dumbledore, though, Harry!”
“But so could you, Hermione. I know that you were the one who made him think that he ought to bring in a Curse-Breaker. Good job, by the way.”
Hermione blushed. “Thanks, but—I think Professor Dumbledore is kind of tired of me, honestly. The last time I tried to visit his office, the gargoyle said that he didn’t need to tell me the password.”
Theo valiantly didn’t laugh, by the sound. Harry managed to keep his reaction to a tempered smile. “Well, we’ve had our conflicts, too. I think maybe writing to Professor Lupin would be better still. He’s a member of the Order, or that’s what he told Sirius, and he knows you better than some of the other adults. Maybe he would be willing to write letters to you.”
“Can you promise that we’ll get information?”
Ron sounded half-desperate. Harry turned and studied him. “No,” he said slowly. “But he’s actually taught you, and he knows how more mature certain students are than others.”
“We need information.”
“So did I, last year, but it turned out that Professor Dumbledore was investigating the person who put my name in the Goblet of Fire without even telling me. And if he can keep the secrets that he does from me, why do you think he would tell me anything now?”
Ron slumped over a little, and Hermione patted his shoulder. Her shrewd gaze remained on Harry. “It’s a good idea, writing to Professor Lupin,” she said slowly. “But if one of the Order members does ask you to join, Harry, will you tell us what you learn?”
“Sure, if they ask me to join, I will.”
Hermione nodded, and Theo took down his Privacy Charm. And then they really could start working on the long list of spells. Harry sighed a little as he realized how rusty he was on some of the incantations and descriptions. He would have to do a lot of reading.
It was a good thing he was a Ravenclaw.
*
“Oh, I’m sure that I failed every question on the History of Magic exam! Don’t any of the proctors know the way Binns teaches? They ought to be asking questions just about goblin rebellions if they want to tailor the exams to students who are taking the classes—”
Harry rolled his eyes at the back of Hermione’s head, and Theo felt free to do much the same. They were on their way to the Express in the carriages, several days after the OWLS, but Theo still felt wrung-out. He slumped a little further sideways and let Harry’s shoulder catch him, and felt Harry’s hand rise and smooth his hair.
They had finally come up with a combination of Runes and Arithmancy that seemed like it would help them master Fiendfyre, and the diadem Horcrux was safely locked in a lead-lined box at the bottom of Harry’s trunk. And Father had written a letter expressing restrained hope that perhaps his condition could be bettered.
Voldemort was still out there somewhere, and probably other Death Eaters who would be preparing to help him regain a body. But for the moment, Theo felt they were credible threats to the monster, while still being able to live their lives.
He’ll wish he never made an enemy of the Notts, along with Harry.
Harry’s hand clenched down on Theo’s shoulder as if he were thinking the same thing, and Theo looked up with a smile to find the same hard smile reflected back at him from Harry’s face.
We can do anything, together.
The End.