Chapter Eleven of 'Imago'- Like a Mirror Refracting Light

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eleven—Like a Mirror Refracting Light

“I need you to teach me spells that I can use against bullies.”

Theo sits up immediately from the couch where he’s been leaning against Harry, half-asleep, while Harry works on an essay for Care of Magical Creatures. “Weasley and Granger again?” he asks softly.

Harry blinks at him, then shakes his head. “Oh, no. They’ve just been quiet really, since the Second Task. I think they were upset that neither of them was my hostage, but they haven’t said so.” His face hardens. “No. There’s a little Ravenclaw third-year named Luna Lovegood I came across some people bullying the other day. Ones in her own House.”

“The one they call Loony?’

Harry glares at him. Theo lifts his hands. “I didn’t say I called her that. I just wanted to know who you meant.”

“Yeah. Her.” Harry kicks his legs where they’re dangling of the edge of the couch and glares at the far wall. “How can people in her own House do that? And students two years older, too? They’re supposed to protect her.”

Theo doesn’t point out that Gryffindor has turned on Harry often enough, with the Tournament and the Heir of Slytherin thing, because he doesn’t think it would be productive. “All right. Do you want to convince the bullies to leave her alone? Stop calling her names? Stop stealing her things? What?”

“They steal her things?”

“Yes. I’ve seen her walking around barefoot a lot.”

Harry’s glare is even more murderous now, his crooked fingers rippling up his knee in a long scratch. Theo waits. Then Harry says, “I want you to teach me curses.”

Theo blinks. “What kind?”

Harry stares at him for a second. Theo stares back. “I can’t just know which ones you want without being told,” he points out finally. “That’s not the way silent communication works.”

“No. Just—you didn’t even balk when I said I wanted to learn curses, you just assumed that what I wanted was going to be a good idea and you could trust me to—” Harry grabs Theo and hauls him closer, half-draping him over Harry’s chest and legs. “I love you,” he says fiercely, and kisses Theo so hard that Theo’s head spins.

Theo manages to pull back with a slight gasp and say, “I do, too,” because all his plans and strategies of keeping the words to himself a little longer mean nothing around Harry bloody Potter, as bloody usual.

Harry laughs aloud and smiles into Theo’s eyes, petting his hair for a second. Then he leans back against the couch. Theo manages to arrange himself so that he’s sitting more upright and neither of them are leaning against each other strongly enough to affect their breathing, but he can do nothing about the wild, wide grin on his face.

“I want to know curses that will convince them not to do it again,” Harry mutters. “The name-calling, the stealing, the laughing at her, any of it. That happen whenever one of them starts to bully her.”

Theo sits up a little more. “You’re talking about Contingency Curses. They only activate when someone starts to do something named in the curse,” he adds, because Harry is frowning at him. Theo makes a mental note to get some of his own books out of storage, collections of stories and novels that are written from a magical perspective. They’d probably appeal to Harry, as well as teaching him more vocabulary.

“Yeah. Those. Can you do it?”

“We’ll have to study them for a while before we cast them,” Theo warns him. “They’re complicated and they take a lot of power. And some arrangements beforehand, like practicing casting them in unison.”

“That’s all right.” Harry’s eyes are wide and bright. “But in the meantime, we’ll at least give Luna somewhere to go where she doesn’t feel scared.”

*

“Hello, Harry Potter. Hello, Harry’s Theodore.”

Theo twitches a little at the address. “I prefer Theo,” he says.

Lovegood’s brow wrinkles a little, and her blue eyes, which seem to be perpetually staring at something else, focus on him for what Theo thinks is the first time since they’ve been in school together. “But the name you were given is Theodore.”

“I don’t call you Loony. Don’t call me Theodore.”

Harry stares at him from behind Lovegood as he closes the door of the classroom they brought her to- not their private one, another one Theo has decorated and they’ve Transfigured a few pieces of furniture for—but Lovegood just thinks that through before nodding. “All right,” she says.

Harry relaxes and walks over to sit down in one of the chairs near the wall. Theo sits down on a couch beneath an illusion of seashells. He twitches a little again as Lovegood sits down right next to him. If anything, his position on the couch was meant to be a clue to Harry that Theo would like to sit with him, but subtlety is wasted on Gryffindors, and Lovegood is the kind of person who does what she likes. “I wanted to bring you here to discuss the people who bully you, Luna.”

“Nargles are quite mischievous,” Lovegood says.

“Huh?”

Harry is better and better with metaphor the more Theo works with him, but not always. Theo leans forwards and asks, “What would you say is their favorite kind of mischief, Luna?”

His gamble to use her first name instead of her last one pays off, or maybe she just isn’t formal. Luna frowns a little and then says, “They take my clothes to line their nests, you know. And they like to enchant my food so that it floats off my fork. They eat mistletoe berries, but perhaps they aren’t very nutritious.”

Harry looks ready to explode, and Theo thinks he knows why. Harry is—weird about his food. He looks really carefully at anything he puts on his plate, he doesn’t like other people touching it, and he eats it fast. That’s when he doesn’t just skip his meals altogether.

Theo lifts a hand, and Harry manages to calm down enough to nod jerkily instead of getting really upset. Theo smiles at him and turns back to Luna. He’s willing to join in making the lives of Luna’s bullies hell if Harry wants that to happen. He just needs more information first. “And would you say that the nargles live mostly around you? Or do they spread out and fly from corner to corner? In the Great Hall, say?”

Luna pauses. Theo waits. He hopes she doesn’t go off on one of her irrelevant tangents, but there’s not much he can do if she does, except wait for her to come back to the subject.

“They’re mostly around me,” Luna says, slowly, suspiciously. Theo wishes he knew whether that’s because she doesn’t think they’ll help her even with more information, or because she doesn’t like being made to abandon her metaphors. But it doesn’t matter that much. “And at my table in the Great Hall.”

Ravenclaws, then. That makes it a little easier. Theo doesn’t have friends in that House, although some of them he doesn’t mind, and he won’t cause the kind of chaos that he would if he were defending Luna against Slytherin bullies. “Thanks, Luna. That’s all I needed to know.” He stands up.

“It is?” Harry stands up with him, and Luna joins in enthusiastically, maybe thinking they’re playing some sort of game. Harry is peering at Theo and squinting, though. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“No, Theo. You’re going to tell me the reason.”

A heavy pressure like a building storm gathers around Harry’s shoulders. Theo blinks at him. “You want to know?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d want to,” Theo says frankly. Luna is humming under her breath and looking back and forth between them. “Because you’d disapprove of some of the spells I want to use. This way, you don’t have to worry about it.”

Harry is quiet for a long moment. Theo waits. He expected immediate anger or denial, one way or the other, Harry getting upset about the implication that Theo is going to curse some Ravenclaws or Harry saying that he does want to worry. Not this silence, which seems like Harry’s struggling.

Harry finally swallows and says, “I think some people need to suffer a little, in order to keep others from suffering a lot.”

Theo stares at him, and experiences an intense desire to kiss him, which he only doesn’t indulge because Luna is here.

But then again—

“Luna, would you mind turning your back for a bit so Harry and I can kiss each other?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Luna says. “There are lots of stones over here that might attract a Blibbering Humdinger.” She wanders towards the far wall of the room, which Theo has decorated as a motif of Transfigured shells.

Harry is blushing and spluttering as Theo drags him forwards. “Theo! You know that we shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t?” Theo asks delicately, his hands resting on Harry’s shoulders.

Harry sighs heavily, and leans forwards to kiss him. Theo grips him and draws him close and shows with his tongue and hands and body exactly how much he appreciates Harry being a little more morally flexible than he used to be.

Harry is blushing bright red when he draws back, but that’s all right. Theo winks at him and turns to Luna, who is still studying the wall. “You can turn around again if you want to, Luna.”

“No, that’s all right,” she says vaguely. “I’m following a vein and it might disappear if I look away.”

Theo could get used to Harry spending time around Luna Lovegood.

*

“I can’t believe that Cho is one of the bullies.”

“We have plenty of evidence,” Theo begins, leaning towards Harry but keeping his voice down. They’re at the bottom of one of the staircases that leads directly up to Ravenclaw Tower, and it won’t do to be spotted or overheard.

“Not what I meant.” Harry frowns at him and looks back at the staircase again. “I just meant I’m disappointed. Cho is—she seemed nicer, that’s all.”

Theo shrugs. In his experience, niceness is a façade that gets discarded when it’s convenient. Look at Weasley and Granger, who gave up on being nice to Harry the minute he started pursuing his own path. Or look at Cedric Diggory, who’s lauded as being kind but hasn’t done anything to stop his Housemates from wearing those stupid Potter Stinks badges.

(Speaking of which, Theo needs to do something about those, too).

Harry might be an exception to that, but he’s still waiting with Theo to curse Luna’s bullies. His niceness gets discarded in favor of a higher niceness, maybe.

The greater niceness, Theo thinks, and bites his lip, because there’s no way that he can explain to Harry why he’s laughing.

“Here they come,” Harry says softly. Theo looks up, and yes, there’s a group of Ravenclaw fourth- and fifth-year girls descending the stairs, with some boys trailing behind them, chattering and laughing. In the center of the group are Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, and a girl named Lisa Turpin, who’s in Harry and Theo’s year and participates a lot in stealing Luna’s things, evidently. Coming behind them are Michael Corner and fifth-year Malachi Fawley, who laugh loudly at Luna at meals and mock her.

Theo and Harry also worked on the spells that would let them identify the subtler bullies, but mostly, they just had to use their eyes. The people who laugh the loudest when Luna turns up without shoes or wave their wands at her while she’s eating mostly get away with it because no one else seems to care.

The way that Dumbledore pretends to care about Slytherins but really just wants us to serve his agenda, Theo thinks, and cool anger pours through him. The way that McGonagall was more upset about Harry dating a Slytherin than his being unfairly entered in the Tournament in the first place.

“Ready?” Harry mouths to Theo.

Theo nods. They lift their wands simultaneously. By themselves, neither one of them is powerful enough to cast a Contingency Curse, but they can combine their magic when they cast together, and that’s another thing they’ve worked on. By now, the movements mirroring each other’s are automatic.

“Fortuna si,” Harry whispers, Theo echoing him. He wishes they could cast silently, but neither of them is strong enough for it, and they need the curse to take effect the first time. Luna has already suffered long enough.

The soft glow around the group shows that they’ve succeeded. Technically, this curse will also be laid on the people who don’t bully Luna, but since they don’t, it shouldn’t ever affect them.

Unless they start. Theo is perfectly willing to make the curse wide-ranging. They don’t need to start.

“Consequence returned for consequence,” Theo and Harry chant together softly. They have to speak hurriedly so that the group doesn’t get past them and out of range of their wands, their voices, and the spell itself. “For bullying Luna Lovegood. Consequence returned for consequence.”

Their voices die into silence, and the group of Ravenclaws reaches the bottom of the steps. Theo and Harry duck out of sight, but Theo does pause to wave his wand at Turpin, Corner, and Fawley, the ones who are closest to him.

“Threefold,” he whispers.

It’s not going to take much effect without Harry there to help him, but he still sees the glow shine briefly on the back of their robes. Theo smiles, satisfied.

“Theo.”

Harry sounds deeply disapproving, or as much as he can while still keeping his voice down in a hiss. Theo turns to watch him and widens his eyes. “What?”

“We said that we weren’t going to return the consequences threefold!”

“No, you said that we wouldn’t be powerful enough to do it, and I didn’t contradict you.”

Harry stares at him with his mouth open. Theo looks back innocently. He’s perfectly willing to fight about this, especially as casting that part of the curse by himself means that it probably won’t be effective anyway.

“Why did you want to?” Harry finally asks.

Well, asking for a reason is better than a yelling session. Theo tucks away his own surprise that Harry can be reasonable about something like this, and shrugs. “Some people wouldn’t back off because they’re humiliated a little bit, or might think it’s a joke from someone else, or not connect it to their actions. Threefold consequences punish them more and make them more likely to stop.”

Harry visibly thinks about that for a bit, leaning against the wall beneath the staircase. Theo listens, but doesn’t hear anyone coming, which means he doesn’t need to hurry Harry out of what looks like some deep thought.

“You’d prefer to hurt them badly enough that they never come back at all.”

“Yes. I think that’s the best thing to do if you can. It’s just that sometimes you have powerful enough enemies that it’s not practical.”

From the fierce light in Harry’s eyes, Harry knows exactly who Theo is talking about. But he just nods. “And you want to fight Luna’s enemies for her.”

“For you.” Theo knows he isn’t imagining the way Harry twitches, the way he starts to open his mouth. Theo adds, “I feel sorry for her and I’m glad that we can do something to protect her from the people in her House. But I’ve known for years that she was bullied, and I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t care until you started caring.”

Harry blinks and takes the time to think. Then he motions Theo to follow him down the corridors to their classroom. Theo is glad to go with him. Part of his self-assigned duties is keeping Harry safe, too, and that’s easier to do in a space they know and understand.

When they’re back in the classroom, Harry turns around and says, “You’re the most honest person I know.”

“Despite being a Slytherin?”

“Because of it, I think. You don’t see the point in lying or pretending to care about things or people when you don’t.”

Theo smiles. “No, I don’t.”

“But you’re…” Harry trails off a bit, clearly struggling with how to express it. Theo waits. Harry finally sighs and continues with a face so red that he looks like he has a sunburn. “You’re willing to fight for me and be honest and protect me. Not someone else. Not just yourself. I don’t understand it.”

“If you need me to tell you again how much I value you—”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I just mean I don’t understand how I got so lucky.”

That’s the beating heart of what lies between them, and it’s the kind of thing that they don’t talk about in detail, for fear of finding out that neither of them means it, Theo thinks. But the expression on Harry’s face is wonder bordering on awe, not anger or anything like it, and after a long moment, Theo steps forwards and cups Harry’s cheek.

Harry closes his eyes, and they stand there for some moments, not moving, not trying to snog. Theo thinks this is probably the closest they’ve been to each other for the longest period of time without kissing, or dancing.

He likes it.

Harry sighs and shivers and opens his eyes. “I’m glad I found you now,” he says. “But I sometimes wish you could have been there when I was younger.” He swallows. “I wish you could be there when I go back to the Dursleys’ for the summer.”

Since Harry isn’t going back to the Dursleys’ for the summer, even if Theo has to learn enough about the Muggle world to travel around in it and make a house explode, Theo simply smiles and says, “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I,” Harry says, and his hand closes on Theo’s in a grip as strong as iron.

Theo thinks back to the ways that his father tried to teach him to behave when he was younger. Always wary, always vigilant, never trusting anyone enough to relax around them. But he also tried to teach Theo to be obedient and grateful—to his father, anyway. He never seems to have considered that Theo would take those lessons and turn them against the person who taught them to him.

Somehow, Theo retained enough confidence to trust someone else, to fall in love with someone else instead of just becoming the cold, merciless Dark wizard his father wanted him to be.

He doesn’t know for sure whom he owes that debt to. But he thinks that person is standing right in front of him, and Theo will dedicate the rest of his life to protecting him if need be.