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lomonaaerenTitle: The Onyx in Radiance
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Orion/Harry, brief mentions of others
Rating: R
Content Notes: Violence, time travel, AU, minor character deaths, discussion of canonical child abuse, present tense, angst, flashbacks (in past tense), non-linear narrative
Summary: Harry’s time travel back to Tom Riddle’s Hogwarts years was a complete accident, and he tries to keep his head down so as not to change anything while also trying to find a way back home. But when Riddle’s Knights of Walpurgis begin seeking Harry’s help and protection in resisting Riddle, that plan goes flying out the window. Meanwhile, Orion Black is determined to court Harry as well as follow him, and Harry doesn’t mind as much as he should.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to “Onyx and Silver” and will make no sense without that. This story should update mostly on Saturdays and be around twenty to twenty-five chapters.
The Onyx in Radiance
Chapter One—Relative Power
Orion doesn’t have to try hard to get Abraxas’s attention. In fact, Abraxas follows him out of Defense in a way that’s almost too obvious.
Orion chances one look back. Riddle is occupied with baiting Alphard, Orion’s younger cousin, who unwisely arrived at Merrythought’s classroom early. Orion grimaces a little, but he can’t go back and step in. Alphard should be fine.
Orion hopes, anyway.
“And you said Potter seemed to understand you might bring him more recruits?” Abraxas asks under his breath as they dodge the crowds flowing between classes and take a secret passage hidden behind a tapestry depicting the death of a unicorn.
Orion nods and murmurs, “He asked me to spy among Riddle’s Knights for him and only talk to him in private about what our real relationship is going to be.”
“Has anyone else approached you yet?”
“The plan’s been in place for less than a day. I would have asked you first, though. Next to Riddle, you’ve always been the smartest of us.”
Abraxas smirks, and Orion smiles back. He’s using flattery, but also the truth, and Abraxas knows about both, and Orion knows he knows that, and there’s nothing else to be said.
They turn into the library, and Orion leads Abraxas back to the isolated table where he went when he wanted to ask Harry for Defense help. Harry is waiting, a stack of books in front of him, almost all of which are History, to Orion’s surprise. Harry blinks and looks up.
Orion finds himself staring. Harry has a half-smile, and although he tenses when he looks at Abraxas, he doesn’t reach for his wand. He trusted Orion to bring him someone who wouldn’t spring a trap, then.
Trusted.
The idea spreads through Orion’s veins like sparkling wine. He’s never experienced anything like this, not even the first time he felt his father’s power, or Riddle’s. He smiles at Harry, glad his back is to Abraxas so that no one else can see how sincere it is, and then says, “I think you’ve met Abraxas Malfoy.”
“Known about you, more than known you,” Harry says, and nods to Abraxas. “Can you tell me why you want to work with me? Riddle is still our roommate and still stronger and scarier than me.”
Abraxas is staring at Harry. Orion glances at him, but luckily doesn’t see lust or anything that could challenge the kind of claim Orion wants to make on Harry. It seems to be surprise, maybe shock. And it could be at Harry’s power or his lack of fear.
“I—I never thought anyone could come along who was able to challenge Riddle. But you did, last night. And Orion hinted to me today that you could give us greater protection. Including protection from Riddle.” Abraxas clears his throat. “I want in.”
“One duel doesn’t mean I can protect you from Riddle.”
“No one has ever knocked Riddle down like that except for a few times in first year,” Orion says. “And those were Slytherins five or six years older than he was. He’s made himself the—the ruler of our year and a large part of Slytherin House. But you came in and tilted the balance in just a few months. That’s enough, Harry.”
Harry grimaces. “Tilted the balance doesn’t mean win.”
“You don’t understand how huge this is,” Abraxas says. He glances at Harry, who stares blankly back at him, and then gestures to the chair on the other side of the table. Abraxas sits with a grateful smile, while Orion takes the one at Harry’s right hand. “There’s been no one who could do anything like that. No one who dared try.”
“You sound as if you hate him.”
“He held me under the Cruciatus Curse last year.”
Harry’s eyes widen, and he looks at Abraxas’s hands. Orion is a little surprised that he knows to look for the tremors that could result from the curse, but many things about Harry are surprising. He stores the fact away for later reference.
“But I don’t dare act against him,” Abraxas finishes. “He’s a lot stronger than I am.”
“He’s a lot stronger than I am, too. I’m willing to fight him, but there’s nothing to keep him from cursing me in the back with something a lot Darker than I know.”
Orion glances at Abraxas. Abraxas gapes for a second—he obviously didn’t believe Orion that Harry didn’t know the extent of his own power—but then he lifts his chin and nods firmly.
“If you’d let me perform a charm that can show us our relative power levels?” Abraxas murmurs.
Oh, very good. Orion only knows the charm that will show the power level of a single person, and that’s invisible to anyone except its caster. Harry is obviously stubborn enough that he’ll require this kind of visual proof, but it has advantages, too, in that he’ll find it hard to disregard what they’re saying after this.
“Why should I let you aim your wand at me?”
Orion doesn’t lick his lips when he sees the mistrust splayed across Harry’s face, because, really, he shouldn’t give such obvious signals in public anyway. And he does consider this to be public—a different kind than the kind he’ll have to maintain when spying on Riddle. Harry’s eyes flicker briefly to him.
“I will make a promise that I will only use it to cast the charm that will show our relative power levels,” Abraxas murmurs. “Do you want me to swear on my wand, or is my word as a Malfoy good enough?”
Harry stares at him. Then he says, “Your word as a Malfoy is good enough, if you keep in mind that I’ll tell everyone in sight that you broke your promise if you don’t keep it.”
Orion half-smiles. Harry has teeth and claws when he wants to use them. He just doesn’t seem to care about Slytherin politics often enough to really do so.
“My word as a Malfoy,” Abraxas says, and then waves the wand slowly back and forth, as if he were using a dowsing rod. He doesn’t speak the incantation aloud, which disappoints but doesn’t surprise Orion. Then again, if they become allies in the way he’s hoping, there’s every chance that Abraxas might teach him the charm.
The magic surges out and across the table, then around, grasping all of them briefly. Orion fights off his discomfort at the sensation of metal bands clamping his arms to his sides, but sees the way Harry’s lip curls and his eyes darken. He hates it for some reason, which isn’t what Orion would have expected. Why?
But then Orion’s attention is stolen by the sight of the light flooding away from their skins.
Abraxas glows like a shining star, which Orion supposes he should have expected. Orion’s own power is quiet and dark and spreading, and drapes itself across the table like a cloth laid beneath invisible dishes.
Orion’s eyes water when he looks at Harry.
“Holy Merlin,” Abraxas gasps. Orion has to smile even as he hides his eyes with one hand. Abraxas wants someone to oppose Riddle, and he wants revenge for the Cruciatus Curse, but it’s obvious that he didn’t really believe Orion before about Harry possibly being the means to his end. Now he does.
“That—that can’t be me.”
Harry’s voice is rattled. Orion squints into the brilliant silver light, but it’s too bright, and he can’t make out Harry’s expression. He can see his hands, though, clenched so tightly on the edge of the table that it looks as if he might break the solid wood.
“There’s no trick to the charm,” Abraxas says, and clears his throat, and ends the spell. He puts his wand down on the table and spreads his own hands. They shake a little. “Believe me, I would be most pleased if I could make myself shine brighter and look stronger than I am, but I don’t have the ability.”
“Orion.”
Orion turns at once towards Harry. “Yes,” he says. “That was really you. I performed a similar charm on you weeks ago that showed the truth only to me, and you shine—you shine brighter than a star, Harry.”
Harry looks utterly bewildered. Abraxas stirs a little, but Orion taps his foot against his friend’s under the table, and Abraxas subsides. He must be wondering how Harry is allowing himself to show this weakness, but Orion already understands things differently. This isn’t a weakness.
Harry’s depth of compassion is the reason that he’ll be able to become the kind of leader Orion dreams about following. A true lord.
And, in time, a wonderful husband. If Orion has his way.
“Why didn’t it ever help me in the past?” Harry bursts out. “If I’m this strong, why did I—why did things happen to me that the power didn’t stop?”
Orion blinks. “What happened to you that this power could have stopped?”
Harry stares at him with haunted eyes. “Duels that didn’t go my way,” he says. “People I tried to help and couldn’t save from dying. People I grew up with who gave me—”
Abruptly, he shakes his head and seems to snap out of a trance. “Never mind. It’s not something you’d like to hear, anyway.”
“Perhaps not something I would like to hear,” Orion agrees quietly. He’s a little shaken. He thought Harry came from a background where he was used to being shamed and ignored, given his likely experience as an illegitimate Potter, but he didn’t think it was anywhere near this bad. “But I think it might be important for—us to hear.” He has to remember to include Abraxas, not act as if he wants to leave him outside this.
“You’re bloody sixteen like the rest of us,” Abraxas is saying now, incredulous. “How could you—”
“I’m sixteen,” Harry agrees, a sharp curl to his mouth that Orion has never seen before. “That doesn’t mean I’m like the rest of you.” He turns back to Orion. “I still want answers. Why wouldn’t my power have acted to save me or save other people in the past, if I really have that much?”
“I can’t say for sure without knowing all the details—”
Harry scoffs.
“But,” Orion presses on, a little irritated, wanting Harry to listen to him, “I would think that at least some of it happened because of lack of training. Did anyone else ever tell you that you have power, and try to train you to use it? Offensive spells? Dueling-specific spells?” He won’t say “Dark Arts” yet, because he doesn’t know how Harry will react, but he knows from the gleam in Abraxas’s eyes what his friend is thinking.
“I had someone work with me for most of a year when I was thirteen to teach me to cast the Patronus. Other than that, no.”
Orion doesn’t bother to hide his jaw dropping open. “You could cast a Patronus at thirteen?”
“Yeah.” Harry eyes him.
“I think you could do anything you bloody well wanted to do,” Abraxas says fervently, and then he says a stupid thing. “My lord.”
Harry recoils so hard that he nearly smashes his head into the bookshelf behind them. He bolts to his feet, shaking as though someone has cast a Leaf Tremor Charm on him. “No,” he says. “No. I’m not going to do like—him. Like Riddle.”
“Of course you’re not,” Orion says, and kicks Abraxas in the shin hard enough to bruise this time. Abraxas glares at him. Orion ignores that and turns back to face Harry. “But I think I have part of an answer to your question. Have you ever wanted to be powerful? To defeat people in duels? To save people from dying?”
“Of course! The last one.”
“But did you try to use your magic to do it, Harry?” Orion softens his voice when he sees the upset expression on Harry’s face. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to help.”
“I mean, once. When I used the Patronus to save my godfather from a h—a lot of Dementors.” Harry’s face is shadowed as he sits back down. “But I suppose not the other times. I was mostly—trying to rescue them, or trying to stop someone from doing something. And at least a few times, my wand wouldn’t have done me any good anyway.”
Abraxas looks as though someone has hit him with a Stunner. Orion kicks him again for good measure. “Then I think that’s probably the answer, Harry. Our magic does what’s important to us, what we will it to do. If you wanted to cast a Patronus to keep someone safe from Dementors or yourself safe from curses like the ones Riddle cast last night, it would help you. If you haven’t tried to use it to become good at duels…” Orion lets his voice trail off suggestively.
Harry laughs a little. “That’s it? Want something enough, and my magic will do it for me?”
“Not all the time,” Orion says. “But we can help you train. And if what you want is to survive Riddle and protect the rest of us, I think your magic will help you.”
“I’ll be happy to aid you,” Abraxas says, right on cue. “I want to pay Riddle back, I told you that. And I’d be just as glad if a wizard as powerful as you owes me a favor, someday.”
Harry eyes Abraxas with distrust, but that’s only good sense, and at least he’s not reacting with the kind of panic he showed when Abraxas attempted to acknowledge reality. “All right. We can try that. I need to brush up on—more offensive spells. My spell repertoire is more defensive at the moment.”
“It would help to know how good you are at Charms and Transfiguration, too,” Orion says. “They can be of use in battle, too, you know.”
“Average,” Harry says firmly.
“You weren’t holding back in class or anything?” Orion suspected Harry was doing that in Defense at first, although after Harry agreed to tutor him, he was less sure. It seems that Harry is right and he’s just not very good at the offensive branch of magic.
Something we can definitely change, Orion thinks, catching Abraxas’s eye.
Harry shakes his head. “I never—well, before I came to Hogwarts here I never really studied Charms or Transfiguration in depth. There was always something that seemed more important going on.”
“Then we can help you prepare for your NEWTS at the same time as we’re training,” Abraxas says cheerfully. “At the moment, of course, what you have to worry about is Riddle trying to curse you in the back.”
“Yeah, I know. But do you think it’ll be a curse, or do you think it’ll be a snakebite?”
Orion blinks. He didn’t consider that. But Slytherin is full of carved and painted snakes, and Riddle is perfectly capable of controlling them. He just doesn’t bother for most purposes beyond frightening someone. He likes to do things with his own wand, or his hands.
For someone he fears, though, the way he fears Harry? He might.
“He doesn’t have an actual snake here,” Abraxas says. “And as far as I know, the bites from the snakes on our bedposts and so on can’t be venomous. They might be painful, but—”
“They could cause blood loss. Enough blood loss would still equal death, Malfoy.”
Orion is surprised but pleased that that’s the first place Harry’s mind went. It means that they’ll need to teach him mostly sheer spells rather than the mindset to use them, which is harder. Orion has watched some younger Slytherins struggle with it for years.
“Oh, ah.” Abraxas stutters a little, then tilts his head. “Do you have some way to make sure it doesn’t?”
“I might.”
“How?”
Harry stares at Abraxas flatly, then turns to Orion. Orion sits up in his seat and tries to look polite and attentive and smarter than Abraxas. “I think we need to work on shields that will make sure Riddle finds it harder to curse me.”
“And spells that will make him think twice about doing it, too.” Orion tries to say it with utter confidence, in hopes that Harry will agree with it and not really think that he might be starting down the road to learning Dark Arts.
Harry pins him with a gaze that seems to have fire seething beneath the surface. “Nice try, Black,” he says a second later. “I might be interested in learning countercurses, but I think we’ll leave the Dark spells to Riddle, hmmm?”
“And what happens if it turns out that you can’t?” Orion asks softly, leaning forwards. Harry’s eyes fasten on him as if there’s no one in the world but the two of them. It’s a sensation Orion likes, one he could get used to. “What happens if it turns out that he’s going to use them on you faster than you can use the countercurses?”
“He’s better at Dark Arts than I am,” Harry says dismissively. “And if it turns out that we really need to use them, that’s why I have you two, hmmm?” He glances back and forth between Orion and Abraxas and gives the fakest smile Orion’s ever seen. “You can protect the poor little almost-Gryffindor from the evil nasty Dark curses, right?”
“Almost-Gryffindor?” Abraxas sounds like he’s choking.
“The Hat considered it,” Harry says, and for some reason, his eyes are distant and full of pain. “It didn’t go with it, in the end.”
Harry abruptly stands up, and nods to both Orion and Abraxas. “I’ll be in the common room if you want to talk to me,” he says. “But if you know somewhere we could go to practice shields, I’d appreciate it.”
Orion hesitates, then gives up a secret his father entrusted to him. “There’s a room on the seventh floor that only appears if you’re really looking for it. I’ll make sure the door appears. Seven tonight?”
Harry’s eyes widen for a second. “Yeah, all right, that ought to work, Black.”
“Orion, please.”
Harry nods, but not as though he forgot, more as though Orion reminded him of something else. “See you there,” he says, and gathers his books, and walks out of the library, his stride long and steady.
Abraxas stares after him, then turns to Orion. “He’s the leader that you want me to follow?”
“Your charm didn’t lie about his power levels, Malfoy. And you can see the way he is.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m not sure he’s going to survive three more days around Riddle, let alone be able to provide us protection!”
“But you also saw the way he treated us. Like equals.” Orion raps Abraxas’s arm hard with two fingers, deliberately touching a bone he broke playing Quidditch a few years ago. Abraxas shoves his hand off with a scowl. “He didn’t act high and mighty. He didn’t try to hint that he has mysterious secrets we don’t get to know about. He’ll never offer to curse us. He just needs more training, that’s all.”
“And if we never get there? If he won’t learn Dark Arts at all?”
“Well, then he has us, like he said. And can you imagine being able to study all the Dark Arts we want, without Riddle there to take the books away and demand what we’re doing, trying to become more powerful than he is?”
Abraxas pauses. Orion can see how tempted he is. Riddle is beyond jealous of other people’s power, and hoards any Dark Arts books that do come out of the library or the Restricted Section as though he’s a niffler with gold. Harry’s leadership could be good for them in that respect, as long as his only objection to Dark Arts is casting them himself.
“All right. But, Orion—a Gryffindor?”
“Almost-Gryffindor. He said. The Hat still put him in Slytherin.”
“Yeah.” Abraxas stares down the aisle after Harry, then pulls himself together with a visible shake. “Yeah. All right.” He looks at Orion and grins. “This could work after all. Thanks for including me, Black.”
Orion half-smiles back, and goes to find a library book that will contain some shield charms Harry has problem never seen before.
And some curses, because there’s always the chance that Harry might change his mind.
Orion’s heart is thrumming and stuttering with excitement, actually. But he makes sure to show no sign of it as he saunters along, browsing the shelves, and taking down a book on complicated spells that contains both defensive and offensive magic of all kinds.
He’s glad that he hasn’t allowed it to show when he comes around the corner of the shelf and runs straight into Riddle.
“My lord,” Orion says, since they’re alone, even though it’s a lie, half-bowing his head.
“Come with me, Black,” Riddle says, and stalks towards the doors out of the library.
Orion has no choice but to follow.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Orion/Harry, brief mentions of others
Rating: R
Content Notes: Violence, time travel, AU, minor character deaths, discussion of canonical child abuse, present tense, angst, flashbacks (in past tense), non-linear narrative
Summary: Harry’s time travel back to Tom Riddle’s Hogwarts years was a complete accident, and he tries to keep his head down so as not to change anything while also trying to find a way back home. But when Riddle’s Knights of Walpurgis begin seeking Harry’s help and protection in resisting Riddle, that plan goes flying out the window. Meanwhile, Orion Black is determined to court Harry as well as follow him, and Harry doesn’t mind as much as he should.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to “Onyx and Silver” and will make no sense without that. This story should update mostly on Saturdays and be around twenty to twenty-five chapters.
The Onyx in Radiance
Chapter One—Relative Power
Orion doesn’t have to try hard to get Abraxas’s attention. In fact, Abraxas follows him out of Defense in a way that’s almost too obvious.
Orion chances one look back. Riddle is occupied with baiting Alphard, Orion’s younger cousin, who unwisely arrived at Merrythought’s classroom early. Orion grimaces a little, but he can’t go back and step in. Alphard should be fine.
Orion hopes, anyway.
“And you said Potter seemed to understand you might bring him more recruits?” Abraxas asks under his breath as they dodge the crowds flowing between classes and take a secret passage hidden behind a tapestry depicting the death of a unicorn.
Orion nods and murmurs, “He asked me to spy among Riddle’s Knights for him and only talk to him in private about what our real relationship is going to be.”
“Has anyone else approached you yet?”
“The plan’s been in place for less than a day. I would have asked you first, though. Next to Riddle, you’ve always been the smartest of us.”
Abraxas smirks, and Orion smiles back. He’s using flattery, but also the truth, and Abraxas knows about both, and Orion knows he knows that, and there’s nothing else to be said.
They turn into the library, and Orion leads Abraxas back to the isolated table where he went when he wanted to ask Harry for Defense help. Harry is waiting, a stack of books in front of him, almost all of which are History, to Orion’s surprise. Harry blinks and looks up.
Orion finds himself staring. Harry has a half-smile, and although he tenses when he looks at Abraxas, he doesn’t reach for his wand. He trusted Orion to bring him someone who wouldn’t spring a trap, then.
Trusted.
The idea spreads through Orion’s veins like sparkling wine. He’s never experienced anything like this, not even the first time he felt his father’s power, or Riddle’s. He smiles at Harry, glad his back is to Abraxas so that no one else can see how sincere it is, and then says, “I think you’ve met Abraxas Malfoy.”
“Known about you, more than known you,” Harry says, and nods to Abraxas. “Can you tell me why you want to work with me? Riddle is still our roommate and still stronger and scarier than me.”
Abraxas is staring at Harry. Orion glances at him, but luckily doesn’t see lust or anything that could challenge the kind of claim Orion wants to make on Harry. It seems to be surprise, maybe shock. And it could be at Harry’s power or his lack of fear.
“I—I never thought anyone could come along who was able to challenge Riddle. But you did, last night. And Orion hinted to me today that you could give us greater protection. Including protection from Riddle.” Abraxas clears his throat. “I want in.”
“One duel doesn’t mean I can protect you from Riddle.”
“No one has ever knocked Riddle down like that except for a few times in first year,” Orion says. “And those were Slytherins five or six years older than he was. He’s made himself the—the ruler of our year and a large part of Slytherin House. But you came in and tilted the balance in just a few months. That’s enough, Harry.”
Harry grimaces. “Tilted the balance doesn’t mean win.”
“You don’t understand how huge this is,” Abraxas says. He glances at Harry, who stares blankly back at him, and then gestures to the chair on the other side of the table. Abraxas sits with a grateful smile, while Orion takes the one at Harry’s right hand. “There’s been no one who could do anything like that. No one who dared try.”
“You sound as if you hate him.”
“He held me under the Cruciatus Curse last year.”
Harry’s eyes widen, and he looks at Abraxas’s hands. Orion is a little surprised that he knows to look for the tremors that could result from the curse, but many things about Harry are surprising. He stores the fact away for later reference.
“But I don’t dare act against him,” Abraxas finishes. “He’s a lot stronger than I am.”
“He’s a lot stronger than I am, too. I’m willing to fight him, but there’s nothing to keep him from cursing me in the back with something a lot Darker than I know.”
Orion glances at Abraxas. Abraxas gapes for a second—he obviously didn’t believe Orion that Harry didn’t know the extent of his own power—but then he lifts his chin and nods firmly.
“If you’d let me perform a charm that can show us our relative power levels?” Abraxas murmurs.
Oh, very good. Orion only knows the charm that will show the power level of a single person, and that’s invisible to anyone except its caster. Harry is obviously stubborn enough that he’ll require this kind of visual proof, but it has advantages, too, in that he’ll find it hard to disregard what they’re saying after this.
“Why should I let you aim your wand at me?”
Orion doesn’t lick his lips when he sees the mistrust splayed across Harry’s face, because, really, he shouldn’t give such obvious signals in public anyway. And he does consider this to be public—a different kind than the kind he’ll have to maintain when spying on Riddle. Harry’s eyes flicker briefly to him.
“I will make a promise that I will only use it to cast the charm that will show our relative power levels,” Abraxas murmurs. “Do you want me to swear on my wand, or is my word as a Malfoy good enough?”
Harry stares at him. Then he says, “Your word as a Malfoy is good enough, if you keep in mind that I’ll tell everyone in sight that you broke your promise if you don’t keep it.”
Orion half-smiles. Harry has teeth and claws when he wants to use them. He just doesn’t seem to care about Slytherin politics often enough to really do so.
“My word as a Malfoy,” Abraxas says, and then waves the wand slowly back and forth, as if he were using a dowsing rod. He doesn’t speak the incantation aloud, which disappoints but doesn’t surprise Orion. Then again, if they become allies in the way he’s hoping, there’s every chance that Abraxas might teach him the charm.
The magic surges out and across the table, then around, grasping all of them briefly. Orion fights off his discomfort at the sensation of metal bands clamping his arms to his sides, but sees the way Harry’s lip curls and his eyes darken. He hates it for some reason, which isn’t what Orion would have expected. Why?
But then Orion’s attention is stolen by the sight of the light flooding away from their skins.
Abraxas glows like a shining star, which Orion supposes he should have expected. Orion’s own power is quiet and dark and spreading, and drapes itself across the table like a cloth laid beneath invisible dishes.
Orion’s eyes water when he looks at Harry.
“Holy Merlin,” Abraxas gasps. Orion has to smile even as he hides his eyes with one hand. Abraxas wants someone to oppose Riddle, and he wants revenge for the Cruciatus Curse, but it’s obvious that he didn’t really believe Orion before about Harry possibly being the means to his end. Now he does.
“That—that can’t be me.”
Harry’s voice is rattled. Orion squints into the brilliant silver light, but it’s too bright, and he can’t make out Harry’s expression. He can see his hands, though, clenched so tightly on the edge of the table that it looks as if he might break the solid wood.
“There’s no trick to the charm,” Abraxas says, and clears his throat, and ends the spell. He puts his wand down on the table and spreads his own hands. They shake a little. “Believe me, I would be most pleased if I could make myself shine brighter and look stronger than I am, but I don’t have the ability.”
“Orion.”
Orion turns at once towards Harry. “Yes,” he says. “That was really you. I performed a similar charm on you weeks ago that showed the truth only to me, and you shine—you shine brighter than a star, Harry.”
Harry looks utterly bewildered. Abraxas stirs a little, but Orion taps his foot against his friend’s under the table, and Abraxas subsides. He must be wondering how Harry is allowing himself to show this weakness, but Orion already understands things differently. This isn’t a weakness.
Harry’s depth of compassion is the reason that he’ll be able to become the kind of leader Orion dreams about following. A true lord.
And, in time, a wonderful husband. If Orion has his way.
“Why didn’t it ever help me in the past?” Harry bursts out. “If I’m this strong, why did I—why did things happen to me that the power didn’t stop?”
Orion blinks. “What happened to you that this power could have stopped?”
Harry stares at him with haunted eyes. “Duels that didn’t go my way,” he says. “People I tried to help and couldn’t save from dying. People I grew up with who gave me—”
Abruptly, he shakes his head and seems to snap out of a trance. “Never mind. It’s not something you’d like to hear, anyway.”
“Perhaps not something I would like to hear,” Orion agrees quietly. He’s a little shaken. He thought Harry came from a background where he was used to being shamed and ignored, given his likely experience as an illegitimate Potter, but he didn’t think it was anywhere near this bad. “But I think it might be important for—us to hear.” He has to remember to include Abraxas, not act as if he wants to leave him outside this.
“You’re bloody sixteen like the rest of us,” Abraxas is saying now, incredulous. “How could you—”
“I’m sixteen,” Harry agrees, a sharp curl to his mouth that Orion has never seen before. “That doesn’t mean I’m like the rest of you.” He turns back to Orion. “I still want answers. Why wouldn’t my power have acted to save me or save other people in the past, if I really have that much?”
“I can’t say for sure without knowing all the details—”
Harry scoffs.
“But,” Orion presses on, a little irritated, wanting Harry to listen to him, “I would think that at least some of it happened because of lack of training. Did anyone else ever tell you that you have power, and try to train you to use it? Offensive spells? Dueling-specific spells?” He won’t say “Dark Arts” yet, because he doesn’t know how Harry will react, but he knows from the gleam in Abraxas’s eyes what his friend is thinking.
“I had someone work with me for most of a year when I was thirteen to teach me to cast the Patronus. Other than that, no.”
Orion doesn’t bother to hide his jaw dropping open. “You could cast a Patronus at thirteen?”
“Yeah.” Harry eyes him.
“I think you could do anything you bloody well wanted to do,” Abraxas says fervently, and then he says a stupid thing. “My lord.”
Harry recoils so hard that he nearly smashes his head into the bookshelf behind them. He bolts to his feet, shaking as though someone has cast a Leaf Tremor Charm on him. “No,” he says. “No. I’m not going to do like—him. Like Riddle.”
“Of course you’re not,” Orion says, and kicks Abraxas in the shin hard enough to bruise this time. Abraxas glares at him. Orion ignores that and turns back to face Harry. “But I think I have part of an answer to your question. Have you ever wanted to be powerful? To defeat people in duels? To save people from dying?”
“Of course! The last one.”
“But did you try to use your magic to do it, Harry?” Orion softens his voice when he sees the upset expression on Harry’s face. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to help.”
“I mean, once. When I used the Patronus to save my godfather from a h—a lot of Dementors.” Harry’s face is shadowed as he sits back down. “But I suppose not the other times. I was mostly—trying to rescue them, or trying to stop someone from doing something. And at least a few times, my wand wouldn’t have done me any good anyway.”
Abraxas looks as though someone has hit him with a Stunner. Orion kicks him again for good measure. “Then I think that’s probably the answer, Harry. Our magic does what’s important to us, what we will it to do. If you wanted to cast a Patronus to keep someone safe from Dementors or yourself safe from curses like the ones Riddle cast last night, it would help you. If you haven’t tried to use it to become good at duels…” Orion lets his voice trail off suggestively.
Harry laughs a little. “That’s it? Want something enough, and my magic will do it for me?”
“Not all the time,” Orion says. “But we can help you train. And if what you want is to survive Riddle and protect the rest of us, I think your magic will help you.”
“I’ll be happy to aid you,” Abraxas says, right on cue. “I want to pay Riddle back, I told you that. And I’d be just as glad if a wizard as powerful as you owes me a favor, someday.”
Harry eyes Abraxas with distrust, but that’s only good sense, and at least he’s not reacting with the kind of panic he showed when Abraxas attempted to acknowledge reality. “All right. We can try that. I need to brush up on—more offensive spells. My spell repertoire is more defensive at the moment.”
“It would help to know how good you are at Charms and Transfiguration, too,” Orion says. “They can be of use in battle, too, you know.”
“Average,” Harry says firmly.
“You weren’t holding back in class or anything?” Orion suspected Harry was doing that in Defense at first, although after Harry agreed to tutor him, he was less sure. It seems that Harry is right and he’s just not very good at the offensive branch of magic.
Something we can definitely change, Orion thinks, catching Abraxas’s eye.
Harry shakes his head. “I never—well, before I came to Hogwarts here I never really studied Charms or Transfiguration in depth. There was always something that seemed more important going on.”
“Then we can help you prepare for your NEWTS at the same time as we’re training,” Abraxas says cheerfully. “At the moment, of course, what you have to worry about is Riddle trying to curse you in the back.”
“Yeah, I know. But do you think it’ll be a curse, or do you think it’ll be a snakebite?”
Orion blinks. He didn’t consider that. But Slytherin is full of carved and painted snakes, and Riddle is perfectly capable of controlling them. He just doesn’t bother for most purposes beyond frightening someone. He likes to do things with his own wand, or his hands.
For someone he fears, though, the way he fears Harry? He might.
“He doesn’t have an actual snake here,” Abraxas says. “And as far as I know, the bites from the snakes on our bedposts and so on can’t be venomous. They might be painful, but—”
“They could cause blood loss. Enough blood loss would still equal death, Malfoy.”
Orion is surprised but pleased that that’s the first place Harry’s mind went. It means that they’ll need to teach him mostly sheer spells rather than the mindset to use them, which is harder. Orion has watched some younger Slytherins struggle with it for years.
“Oh, ah.” Abraxas stutters a little, then tilts his head. “Do you have some way to make sure it doesn’t?”
“I might.”
“How?”
Harry stares at Abraxas flatly, then turns to Orion. Orion sits up in his seat and tries to look polite and attentive and smarter than Abraxas. “I think we need to work on shields that will make sure Riddle finds it harder to curse me.”
“And spells that will make him think twice about doing it, too.” Orion tries to say it with utter confidence, in hopes that Harry will agree with it and not really think that he might be starting down the road to learning Dark Arts.
Harry pins him with a gaze that seems to have fire seething beneath the surface. “Nice try, Black,” he says a second later. “I might be interested in learning countercurses, but I think we’ll leave the Dark spells to Riddle, hmmm?”
“And what happens if it turns out that you can’t?” Orion asks softly, leaning forwards. Harry’s eyes fasten on him as if there’s no one in the world but the two of them. It’s a sensation Orion likes, one he could get used to. “What happens if it turns out that he’s going to use them on you faster than you can use the countercurses?”
“He’s better at Dark Arts than I am,” Harry says dismissively. “And if it turns out that we really need to use them, that’s why I have you two, hmmm?” He glances back and forth between Orion and Abraxas and gives the fakest smile Orion’s ever seen. “You can protect the poor little almost-Gryffindor from the evil nasty Dark curses, right?”
“Almost-Gryffindor?” Abraxas sounds like he’s choking.
“The Hat considered it,” Harry says, and for some reason, his eyes are distant and full of pain. “It didn’t go with it, in the end.”
Harry abruptly stands up, and nods to both Orion and Abraxas. “I’ll be in the common room if you want to talk to me,” he says. “But if you know somewhere we could go to practice shields, I’d appreciate it.”
Orion hesitates, then gives up a secret his father entrusted to him. “There’s a room on the seventh floor that only appears if you’re really looking for it. I’ll make sure the door appears. Seven tonight?”
Harry’s eyes widen for a second. “Yeah, all right, that ought to work, Black.”
“Orion, please.”
Harry nods, but not as though he forgot, more as though Orion reminded him of something else. “See you there,” he says, and gathers his books, and walks out of the library, his stride long and steady.
Abraxas stares after him, then turns to Orion. “He’s the leader that you want me to follow?”
“Your charm didn’t lie about his power levels, Malfoy. And you can see the way he is.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m not sure he’s going to survive three more days around Riddle, let alone be able to provide us protection!”
“But you also saw the way he treated us. Like equals.” Orion raps Abraxas’s arm hard with two fingers, deliberately touching a bone he broke playing Quidditch a few years ago. Abraxas shoves his hand off with a scowl. “He didn’t act high and mighty. He didn’t try to hint that he has mysterious secrets we don’t get to know about. He’ll never offer to curse us. He just needs more training, that’s all.”
“And if we never get there? If he won’t learn Dark Arts at all?”
“Well, then he has us, like he said. And can you imagine being able to study all the Dark Arts we want, without Riddle there to take the books away and demand what we’re doing, trying to become more powerful than he is?”
Abraxas pauses. Orion can see how tempted he is. Riddle is beyond jealous of other people’s power, and hoards any Dark Arts books that do come out of the library or the Restricted Section as though he’s a niffler with gold. Harry’s leadership could be good for them in that respect, as long as his only objection to Dark Arts is casting them himself.
“All right. But, Orion—a Gryffindor?”
“Almost-Gryffindor. He said. The Hat still put him in Slytherin.”
“Yeah.” Abraxas stares down the aisle after Harry, then pulls himself together with a visible shake. “Yeah. All right.” He looks at Orion and grins. “This could work after all. Thanks for including me, Black.”
Orion half-smiles back, and goes to find a library book that will contain some shield charms Harry has problem never seen before.
And some curses, because there’s always the chance that Harry might change his mind.
Orion’s heart is thrumming and stuttering with excitement, actually. But he makes sure to show no sign of it as he saunters along, browsing the shelves, and taking down a book on complicated spells that contains both defensive and offensive magic of all kinds.
He’s glad that he hasn’t allowed it to show when he comes around the corner of the shelf and runs straight into Riddle.
“My lord,” Orion says, since they’re alone, even though it’s a lie, half-bowing his head.
“Come with me, Black,” Riddle says, and stalks towards the doors out of the library.
Orion has no choice but to follow.
