lomonaaeren

Part One.

Title: Thirteen Gifts (2/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Theodore Nott
Content Notes: Getting together, Hogwarts “eighth year,” angst, present tense
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3300
Summary: Not expecting that he would get a response, Theo sent Harry a gift to tell him how much he admired him for his defeat of Voldemort. And then, wonder of wonders, Harry replied. The tale of two people learning to see each other.
Author’s Notes: This is another of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, for a request by Lullyanne for another Harry/Theodore fic. This will be the second part of three.

Thank you for the reviews!

“I wanted to make sure that I didn’t misunderstand the bracelet.”

That’s the first thing Harry says when he comes out of the fireplace, and Theo’s heart seizes for a second, because Harry might reject him, he might—

Then he sees how the bracelet has welded itself to Harry’s wrist, and he relaxes with a sigh that makes it feel as if his chest has deflated. Yes, Harry has accepted the courtship, or he wouldn’t have bonded to the bracelet like that. It would be sitting around his wrist or would have flexed and broken apart.

Theo comes to him and kisses him, soot on his lips and all. Harry accepts it eagerly, scooping a hand around the back of Theo’s neck to bring him closer. Theo gasps, and Harry’s tongue darts into his mouth, along with the soft sound of Harry’s laughter.

“I want you,” Harry says, stepping back and resting his hands on Theo’s chest when the kiss is done. “I don’t know if I can say that I love you, yet, or I want to marry you. But I want those things, Theo. I want to marry someone who loves me and live happily ever after. I just have to be sure if you—if that’s what you mean, or if the rubies and moonstones mean something other than sharing and protection.”

“And love. Granger interpreted that for you, didn’t she?”

Harry nods, never looking away from Theo. His face is flushed, but that could be the kiss as easily as fear. Theo supposes he shouldn’t be amazed that Harry has the courage to discuss this so openly, when he had courage enough to fight the Dark Lord, but somehow he is. He stretches his hand out and lets his fingers linger on Harry’s cheek. Harry closes his eyes and nuzzles his cheek into Theo’s palm, but his body is still straight with waiting.

“Let’s go have dinner, and I’ll tell you what I think it means,” Theo says, holding out his hand.

Harry takes it, and follows Theo towards the smells of food. It’s not hunger making Theo dizzy, though.

He really will accept—he’s ready—

That acceptance makes his mouth water and turns his head.

*

The feast is delicious, all sorts of delicate dishes with French names that Harry might not have liked if someone had asked him, but hell, he slurps them up. Theo grins at him more than once, until some thought seems to strike him and his face turns dark and moody.

“What is it?” Harry asks quietly, laying aside the last spoon. The pudding seemed to be absolutely made of whipped cream and chocolate, with some pieces of fruit floating in the middle, lost and lonely. He puts his chin on his hands and grins at Theo. He looks absurdly handsome with the chandelier in the ceiling throwing light over his face.

“If you—Harry, when you eat like that, it makes me wonder what you got to eat at your relatives’ house,” Theo begins, looking at him warily.

Harry thinks he knows why. He might explode, after all. He sighs a little and stares at the wall, then shakes his head. “I’ll tell you, but I want you to keep in mind that I reconciled with my cousin before the end.”

Theo narrows his eyes a little. “I didn’t say anything about your cousin.”

Because you don’t know to, Harry thinks, but he explains, quietly, the cupboard and how the Dursleys liked to lock him in and say “no meals” and, later, shove cans of cold coup through the cat flap. Theo grows stiff in his seat as Harry talks about splitting the soup with Hedwig, and Harry hesitates. “I got more food than they thought,” he says. “Especially after I started coming to Hogwarts and Mrs. Weasley would send me things.”

Theo hisses something unintelligible. At the moment, Harry thinks no one would believe that he’s the Parselmouth.

“It’s all right, really,” Harry tries to soothe him. “I know it sounds horrible, but I lived through it. And like I said, I reconciled with my cousin before the end. I saved his life from Dementors the summer between my fourth and fifth years. He was a lot better after that.”

“But your aunt and uncle?”

“I’ve never seen them again. And I’m not sorrowful about that.”

Theo runs his hands through his hair for a minute. Then he stands up and comes around the table. He clenches his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and Harry looks at him and reaches out to gently wrap his hand around Theo’s. Theo just looks so unhappy.

“I wanted to tell you the truth so that you would know it. But I never meant to make you upset.”

“I can’t travel back in time and change the past,” Theo says, his voice low and charged. “But Harry, I want you to know that you are welcome to anything I have. Your generosity, when you went out with a Slytherin after the war—”

“Why generosity? It’s not like you did anything to me.”

“But I never did anything for you, either. And it’s—Harry, when I think that we wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t seen that raven in the shop window and sent it to you—”

Harry stops Theo’s mouth with his tongue. Honestly, he doesn’t want to think about that chance running away from them, either. He kisses Theo carefully and cleverly, and rubs his bracelet against Theo’s cheek, and Theo breaks away, gasping.

“What do the copper and silver wire on the bracelet mean?” Harry asks into his ear, and nibbles it when Theo seems just about to catch his breath, so that he loses it again.

“They m-mean—I think they mean the sun and the moon,” Theo finally gasps out. Harry slips off the chair and stands behind Theo, letting his hand with the bracelet rub against Theo’s back. Theo really likes that, if the way he juts his hips forwards into the air is any indication. “You’re safe by sun and by moon as long as you wear that. I promise to protect you at all times of the day and night.”

Harry smiles into Theo’s neck as he reaches over his shoulder to rub his groin. “Well. I think that right now, I don’t need protecting.”

“Yeah?”

“Right now I need pleasure.”

Theo nearly drives him into the wall with his acceptance snog, before he drags Harry up the stairs to his bedroom.

*

The manor is never going to seem lonely again, Theo thinks, as he lays Harry down on his bed. It’s been echoing this holiday, except for the rare times he got to speak to Harry on his mirror. His father in prison, his mother long-dead, no siblings and no friends to speak of.

But now it will echo with the memory of Harry’s laughter, and the soft, burning gaze Harry gives him as he props himself up with his elbow in the middle of the pillows, and the way he tips his head back to give Theo full access to his mouth.

Theo does step away so he can say something before it gets lost between their tongues. Harry sits up and gives him a serious expression.

“I love you,” Theo says. “I don’t care if you can’t say it back right now. I don’t care if you break off the courtship someday. I love you.”

Harry smiles harder. “And I love you,” he says. “Part of me always will, even if we break off the courtship. Now, enough talking, right?” And he wriggles out of his heavy maroon jumper and Muggle trousers before Theo can even blink.

Theo falls on him helplessly, grasping him and holding him with lips and hands, only drawing back when Harry insists that he take off his clothes, too. And his robe doesn’t look ridiculous, pooled on the floor next to Harry’s very un-wizardly clothing. It just looks right.

Harry kisses him and begins to work his way down Theo’s body. Theo watches him, dazed, wondering, appreciating, and gasps aloud when Harry mouths his erection through the cloth of his pants.

“Can I?”

“Get on with it! Don’t ask!”

Harry laughs, before he pulls down Theo’s pants and dives right in. Theo, his head stretched back and his mouth full of gasps now, knows that Harry’s never done this before. But you wouldn’t know it from the way he pursues his goal: making Theo utterly incoherent. He lips and nibbles, draws back and comes back with his cheeks as much as his tongue, uses his hands to reach down and stroke behind Theo’s bollocks, and Theo comes far before he’s ready, soaking Harry’s face.

Harry is laughing gently as he pulls back. “Sorry, I can’t do anything as romantic and sexy as swallowing yet,” he says, and takes off his dripping glasses.

Theo rolls over and dives at him. Harry has time for a widening of his eyes before Theo has his hands pinned behind his back, Harry on his stomach, and he’s using his lips and tongue on Harry’s neck and naked spine alone.

“Why don’t you—Theo, touch me, please—”

“Not right now,” Theo says pleasantly, and focuses harder than ever on making Harry squirm and dance beneath him. He knows what he wants. Harry made him come with barely any experience. Theo is going to make Harry come using his hands and mouth, but not where Harry wants them.

Harry continues to gasp and beg, and the bracelet on his wrist flashes as he struggles to get up, but Theo holds him down. He thrusts away the thought that part of the reason he might be able to do that is Harry’s starvation as a child. There are no Dursleys in this bed. No Death Eaters. No past. Just them.

He kisses the knobs of Harry’s spine and holds his wrists in front of him. He licks the nape of his neck and inhales the scent of his sweat and skin. He presses down with his thumbs on Harry’s wrists, and that’s finally what makes him wail and come.

He likes a tiny bit of pain, Theo thinks, licking his lips as he moves back. He watches from beneath lowered eyelids as Harry sits up and shakes his head with a gasp.

“That was—Theo—”

He doesn’t attempt to speak after a few minutes. Instead, he curls up next to Theo, his head drooping, piled on Theo’s shoulder. He’s asleep before Theo can push his hair aside to look at the faded scar on his brow.

Theo curls himself harder around Harry, the protection and sharing that he promised, and drifts away himself. He has the best dreams he’s ever had.

Offered Ring

“I don’t know if he’ll accept it, of course.”

“He probably won’t. He’s a pure-blood.”

Harry doesn’t answer as he wraps up the ring that he went and bought in Diagon Alley the day after he got back to the Burrow from Theo’s house. Ginny sounds unhappy. She’s sounded that way since Harry clasped Theo’s bracelet around his wrist on Christmas Day.

And Harry thinks he knows why. But they’ve had enough distance from each other, and time, for Ginny to get back together with him if she really wanted to. He’s had enough of waiting. He’s going to claim what he wants, now, and not sit around waiting for it.

“What happens if he objects to it?” Ginny asks, walking next to Harry as he heads away from Gryffindor Tower to the Owlery.

“Then he objects to it.”

“What happens if he rejects it?”

“Then he rejects it.”

“You sound really calm for someone who might be betrothed tomorrow,” Ginny snaps, halting beside him. Then she turns a little so that she’s blocking the stair up to the Owlery and Harry can’t get past her.

Harry looks into her eyes and holds them, calmly, until Ginny glances off to the side. “I’m willing to take risks with my heart,” Harry finally says. “I can’t control people if they want to walk away from me. That includes Theo. But I can finally ask the question, instead of worrying that Voldemort is going to take away all my chances.”

“Then you could have made the decision earlier.”

“That, too. Or other people could have.”

Harry waits, but Ginny isn’t going to speak. He nods, a little sorrowful, and walks past her. He has a gift to post.

*

Theo opens the box at the lunch table. He knows immediately what it is, even though Harry’s note fell out of the box and he hasn’t read it yet. Harry said something about rings over the holidays, and Theo is damned if he’s going to refuse the gesture.

He slides the ring onto his finger. Only then does he study it and reach for the note, “casually” covering it with one hand so that no one else at the Slytherin table can try and read it.

The ring itself is a simple silver band, decorated with a motif of twining leaves. The stone is a small ruby. Theo smiles. Harry liked the symbolism of the rubies on his own bracelet, once Theo explained more fully. It makes sense that he would have got a ring like that for him.

Theo,

I don’t have much sense of wizarding traditions, but it would make me happy and proud if you were to wear this ring. Then we can be betrothed, or engaged, or whatever other word we need to use. Affianced? I don’t know, but I want you to be mine.

“You’re the first one who gets something like that?”

Theo glances at Draco, amused. “Should I be more worried that you’re jealous, or more worried that you recognize this?” he asks. Draco is the last one he would have expected to know about Muggle engagement customs.

Draco flushes an immediate and brilliant red and turns away. Theo turns his head slowly, savoring the motion, and meets Harry’s eyes from where he’s sitting at the Gryffindor table. He nods once.

Harry’s smile is so dazzling that it leaves Theo a little dazed. And wondering how in the world he’s going to come up with a gift that will top this.

Woven Blanket

“Hello, Harry.”

Theo is leaning against the wall outside NEWT Charms. They have the class together, but Harry can’t let himself turn around and beam at his boyfriend all the time, or he’ll just get distracted. He strides forwards now, and holds out his hand. Theo promptly slides the one that has Harry’s ring on it out, so that their fingers are intertwined.

“Come with me up to the Room of Requirement?” Theo murmurs into his mouth. “It’s time for your next gift.”

Knowing that someone is courting him still makes Harry shudder and tingle all over. He nods. “Of course.”

“Mate—”

Harry glances over his shoulder at Ron, who looks a little green, the way he always does when he’s confronted with the evidence that not just he and Hermione have sex lives. “Don’t wait up, Ron.”

Theo is good enough to hold in his amusement until they’re a few corridors away, and then he laughs in a soft way that Harry loves. “Is Weasley so ill because he doesn’t like to contemplate two boys together?”

“He’s like that every time someone else besides him talks about sex,” Harry says. He glances sideways at Theo. “You know that no gift you give me could embarrass me? You don’t have to take me up to the Room just to give me the gift.”

“I know that. But I want to have you to myself sometimes.”

Harry grins and leans harder against Theo as they take the stairs, making him struggle to keep upright for a second. “It is annoying when the reporters snap pictures of us when we go to Hogsmeade, isn’t it?”

“Most,” Theo says softly, and then they’re in front of the Room of Requirement. Theo paces back and forth, his expression intense, and then a small door appears. Theo opens it and ushers Harry inside.

Harry gasps as he ducks through the doorframe. The room beyond is blazing with light—flames from a huge hearth, radiance from lamps hanging on the walls, and moonlight reflected in a mirror that stands opposite the fireplace.

But what catches his eye and makes him shiver with desire is the huge green blanket draped over the back of a couch facing the fireplace. He can feel it softly radiating magic from here. He walks over and places his hands on it.

It feels like stroking a leopard, or at least the way Harry always imagined petting a leopard would feel. Harry leans forwards and places his cheek against the blanket. The warmth shoots straight through him, and he can feel the sensation of being held in someone’s arms.

Theo’s arms. There’s an enchantment on the blanket that will make it feel like being held by Theo when it’s wrapped around him.

“This is the best I could do,” Theo says behind him. “I know that we can’t be with each other at all times yet, but—”

Harry whirls around and grabs Theo in a tight embrace. Theo still always hesitates when he does that, but then he hugs Harry back, his chin dropping a little as if he wants to rest it on Harry’s head.

“Thank you,” Harry whispers. “It’s the best gift anyone’s ever given me—except all the other gifts that you’ve given me.”

Theo pulls back with a smile, but his smile fades a little as he catches sight of Harry’s bracelet. “You do know that if you let the courtship proceed to the end, we will—we’ll be married, for all intents and purposes?”

Harry nods, holding Theo’s gaze. “I know that. And I’m not afraid.”

He gets a deep, heated kiss for that, and happily draws Theo to the couch so they can make love on top of the blanket.

Dress Robes

“That’s a girly gift, Theodore.”

Theo just lets the side of his mouth curl up as he opens the box. “You’re jealous that you’re the one not being courted by Harry Potter, Draco, that’s all.”

The other boy begins to splutter in a way that lets Theo know his speculation is indeed right. He ignores Draco for the nonce and pulls the dress robes inside out, letting them drape over his arm in a fall of shimmering fabric.

One of Theo’s favorite colors is grey, something Harry would know, but he can’t often wear it; with his pale skin and black hair, it makes him look washed out. Harry solved the problem by getting him silver robes.

Silver worked with green, Theo sees when he tilts the hem of the robe back. It’s a simple embroidery stitch, one that makes him smile. One can have too much House pride, as he thought when he saw Harry wear scarlet robes to a Ministry gala Theo attended this summer. But Harry’s scowl stands out in his memory more than the color of his robes.

If Harry sent this…

Then that means that he doesn’t mind escorting Theo to the galas.

Theo settles back and meets Harry’s eyes from across the Great Hall. Harry quietly toasts him, his face alight. Theo has to smile. Harry hates publicity, he hates attention, but he still sent Theo this gift in public and told him, with it, that he would submit to that attention some of the time because he knows it’s important to Theo to reestablish the Nott name and not look like he’s hiding.

It’s incredible, the man he chose without even realizing what he was doing.