[From Litha to Lammas]: Shadows of Ambition, Harry/Theodore, Shadow Magic series, 2/2, R

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you for all the reviews! This is the last part of this twoshot, but I will probably be continuing the series in the future.

Part Two

“Padma is upset again.”

Harry shoves his plate away as Susan comes into the dining room. Theodore is away in Knockturn Alley with shadows running behind him, and Harry keeps a constant, light touch on them, to see if they’ll manage to lure out their enemy. But he can spare enough attention for Susan, too. “Did her boss say something else?”

Susan sighs as she sits across from him. She looks as if she’s been up most of the night. “Sent her a Howler. He said that no matter what she does, she can’t make up for the fact that she’s dating me.”

Harry flexes his hands on the edge of the table. “You didn’t put up anti-Howler wards?”

“They had an exception for her family and family friends I didn’t know about. Padma…” Susan shakes her head. “I don’t know. She stood up well enough to Parvati before Parvati got marked and was scolding or arguing with her sometimes. But she has this odd soft spot for people she knew as a kid. She said that she needs to know if Flourish wants to send her a Howler, because that would mean he has advice she needs to listen to.”

Harry breathes out and scrubs a hand over his forehead. “All right. Well, you both share the house, right? So you can revoke that access through the wards. That’s a starting point. And I’m going to do something that…”

He trails off. He smiles.

Susan narrows her eyes. Of course, she has reason to know and be wary of that expression. “What is that for, my lord?”

“I need to take care of a problem involving someone who thinks he can hurt Theodore,” Harry says, and waves a hand when she stares at him in horror. “It’s fine. There was only a cursed bruise so far that I took care of yesterday. And I know that Padma doesn’t want me to hurt Flourish, and I probably can’t change his mind. But I can make sure he behaves himself.”

Susan has always been one of the cleverest of his vassals. She smiles. “By warning him off with a grand show?”

“Exactly.” Harry stretches, and hopes that Theodore runs into Holbrook soon.

*

There.

Harry has got much, much better at feeling out and controlling his shadows from a distance than he used to be. He can close his eyes and be in Knockturn Alley with Theodore, as close as his breath, and see Roger Holbrook walking up to Theodore with a sneer.

Holbrook is a huge man with scars on his face that Harry would think came from a werewolf if he didn’t have experience with werewolf scars already, and a diamond apparently sewn into one eyelid. That tells Harry he can bear pain.

That’s all right. Harry can use fear when someone is apparently immune to pain.

“What are you doing here, Nott?” Holbrook asks, and shoves Theodore with one arm extended in front of himself. “Thought I told you that this isn’t your daddy’s territory anymore. Clear out.”

One of the shadows that’s been pacing Theodore turns and rears up between them, displaying sharp teeth. Holbrook falls back with a startled curse. Theodore turns and regards him with the cold look he uses on almost everyone except Harry, his lip curled.

“What the fuck is that?” Holbrook demands.

“One of my lord’s companions,” Theodore says. “One of my companions, too. I already told you that I have no intention to set up a Potions business competing with yours. I visit Knockturn Alley for shopping only. Are you going to leave me in peace, or do I have to tell my lord about you?”

Holbrook laughs uneasily. “The Dark Lord vanished. We all heard that. No one’s heard from him for, what, five years now?”

“It’s not the Dark Lord. Go away, Holbrook.”

Theodore turns his back and walks towards a shop that sells secondhand wands. Holbrook scowls, and for a second Harry thinks that’s going to be the end of it. But then he draws his wand.

One of the shadows curls around Holbrook’s wand and wrenches it out of his hand, sucking it down the long path of shadow that leads…elsewhere. Another grabs his feet and trips him, hard enough to bang his head on the cobbles.

By now, people are gathering around to see, and Harry can see more than one person fingering their wands. Those would be Holbrook’s allies, he supposes. Theodore did warn him that it might get hard to avoid notice with as many of them as he has.

But a bigger audience also means more people to see Holbrook getting humiliated.

When Holbrook has sat up, groaning, a hand held to his head, Theodore turns and traces his path back across the cobblestones towards him. Holbrook practically inflates like a toad, one hand twitching down to what might be a battle potion or poison inside his robes.

“My lord doesn’t give a damn about you if you don’t interfere with me,” Theodore says, his tone calm and cold enough to be eerie, just because Harry has so often heard it be different. “There’ll be no repercussions if you just accept that I don’t intend to start a competing Potions business and leave me alone. Walk away.”

“Fuck you, Nott.”

“No, thanks,” Theodore says, and gives Holbrook a swift glance that conveys contempt better than any gesture or word could.

Holbrook surges to his feet and charges Theodore. The shadow that’s still coiled around his feet and never left seizes him again, and this time he goes rolling and bangs his head into the base of a silent fountain nearby. More than one person snickers, even though none of them seem to be the people who might be there to support Holbrook.

“I told you,” Theodore says, his face bored. “Are you going to listen now?”

Holbrook is fighting his way back to his feet, mouth set in a grimace that tells Harry fear might not touch him very much, either. Very well, then.

He reaches out with the shadow that reared up before, the one that’s grown jagged teeth. Insubstantial, they sweep across the cobblestones and up Holbrook’s leg, but they’re not insubstantial when they close around his face.

There’s a scream, briefly cut off.

Theodore steps back, watching, and then nods a little when Holbrook’s face reappears, streaming blood from the place where his eye should be, the one with the diamond sewn into the eyelid. “Perhaps you’ll see more clearly this way,” he murmurs, and turns to saunter on.

This time, people, including some of the ones who seemed to be about to attack on Holbrook’s behalf only a minute before, scatter out of the way, looking nervously into the shadows.

Harry opens his eyes in his house and smiles.

*

“Hey, Shadowfire!”

Harry breathes out very slowly and stares at the ceiling for a long moment, before turning his head so that he’s looking at Sirius, who has popped out of the doorway that leads to the Floo room. Harry wants to show that he trusts Sirius, and so he let him come in by himself and stroll through the house until he got here. But apparently he can’t be trusted with some things. “What did I say about nicknames?”

Sirius pouts and flops down on a couch across the room from Harry. They’re meeting on their own for the first time, without Theodore. Harry does want to see how he and Sirius get along, but he never really doubted Sirius’s willingness to spend time with him. It’s Theodore Sirius still acts weird around. “But it’s perfect! You master shadows, you set your enemies on fire.”

Harry blinks. “What are you talking about?”

“The rumors are all over Knockturn Alley.” Sirius waves a hand and turns over to lie on his stomach. He’s the biggest fan of random movements Harry has ever met. But maybe that’s not a surprise, not after the way that he lived in a cramped Azkaban cell for twelve years. “That there’s a Dark Lord who commands shadows and defends Theodore Nott.”

“But I didn’t set anyone on fire.”

“Tales grow in the telling. So. Shadowfire?”

“No.”

Sirius turns so that his head is hanging over the nearest arm of the couch and he’s staring at Harry upside-down. “But whyyyyy not?” he whines. “I mean, you aren’t an Animagus, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a nickname.”

Harry grimaces. This gets into things that he didn’t want to explain to Sirius so soon, but if Sirius is going to be his godfather and take a real role in his life, then he needs to know them. “People barely called me by name when I was a kid, did you know that? It was always ‘Potter’ and ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ in the wizarding world and ‘freak’ when I was with my relatives.” He’s not ready to tell Sirius yet that he hasn’t seen the Dursleys since the summer before his first year. “None of them knew who I really was. Just being called ‘Harry’ is precious. I’d like to hear that from you.”

“But Nott calls you his lord. I’ve heard him.”

“Theodore is special.”

Sirius holds his hands up at the warning, cool tone in Harry’s voice. “And the rest of your—minions?”

“My lord, usually.”

“So there!”

“But that’s a title and not a nickname, Sirius. I don’t want you to swear to me.” Harry grimaces at the thought of what having Sirius as a vassal would be like. “And a nickname implies that I’m a child.”

Sirius blinks. “It does?”

“To me.”

Sirius chews on that for a while—literally, moving his jaw back and forth. Harry resists the temptation to glance at the clock. Being in his presence is exhausting. How does Sirius move this much and then have the energy to argue about things like nicknames?

“How about this?” Sirius asks at last. “If I can come up with a nickname that you really like, will you let me call you by it? Especially if it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that an adult would call a child?”

Harry forces himself to consider it instead of rejecting the idea right away. Sirius has been a lot more persistent about trying to be Harry’s godfather than he would have been if he just wanted the prestige of being close to the Boy-Who-Lived or if he felt guilty about missing twelve years of Harry’s life. Harry at least owes him the courtesy of thinking about something important to him.

“It would have to be an extremely special nickname,” Harry says at last.

Sirius begins bouncing up and down on the couch, clapping his hands with glee. “Don’t worry! Don’t worry! I’ll come up with the best nickname!”

Harry smiles at him, a little fatigued by his energy, and says, “Tell me more about these rumors that are spreading in Knockturn Alley.”

*

This time, it’s Padma who comes to him, her face wan and drawn.

Harry makes tea for her without being prompted, while she sits at the dining room table with her face in her hands. He listens to the whistle of the kettle and drapes a shadow over her shoulders that’s imbued with more warmth than others from lying near the fire. It half-purrs in response to her distress, and Padma lifts a hand and strokes the side of its fox-shaped face.

Harry sits down across from her and offers her the tea. Padma takes a deep breath and finally looks at him from underneath the shadow, although she could have looked at him straight through it and his gifts would have allowed him to see her face.

“I thought I cared about getting Mr. Flourish to admit there’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian,” she whispers. “I thought that it mattered to me that he changed his mind and accepted me. But now I don’t care what he thinks. I just want him to stop.”

“What did he do?”

“He sent a complaint to Susan’s supervisor at the Ministry,” Padma says dully. “Complaining that her law apprenticeship is ‘suspect’ and she shouldn’t be allowed to even learn from solicitors at the Ministry. They looked into it and found out that the apprenticeship is legitimate.” Harry nods. He should know; some of his shadows found blackmail that got Susan the excellent letters of recommendation she needed to get that apprenticeship. “But she was so stressed. And now I know that he’s not going to just rage at me. He’s trying to get Susan sacked or blacklisted so she can’t do anything she loves.”

A few moments of silence go by, with Padma staring into her teacup. She finishes it, and Harry adds some more, pouring from a distance with one of his shadows.

“I don’t even understand why,” Padma says at last. “I didn’t even say I don’t want children! Just that it’ll happen differently because I have Susan. And maybe someday I’ll break up with her and have children a different way, but…I don’t want to break up with her.”

Harry nods again. How his vassals handle dating each other isn’t his business unless they start threatening or hurting each other. But he won’t let someone come in as an outside threat and break up vassals who don’t want to stop dating each other. “You want me to do something.”

“Yes.” Padma looks at him with haunted eyes. “Just don’t kill or disfigure him, please. Theodore told us what happened to that Potions brewer in Diagon Alley. I don’t want something like that. I just want him to leave us alone. He can think whatever he likes! Just make him stop.”

Harry smiles at her. “I will. Don’t worry.”

*

It doesn’t take much investigation through shadows to reveal that Arnold Flourish has connections to Knockturn Alley. They seem to be minor; he pays for a certain recreational potion that can’t be found anywhere else in London but from some brewers there; he contributes to funding a rival newspaper to the Daily Prophet that hasn’t ever taken off in wider magical society but is read by some people there; he sells some items or buys some from Borgin and Burke’s on occasion.

But Harry has never needed much of a connection to make his threats and intimidations work. One is enough.

He stands one night in the corner of what is apparently Flourish’s trophy room, which contains a Hand of Glory, a cursed necklace of blue topaz, and other artifacts from Borgin and Burke’s. At least Flourish is more sensible than to put them on public display.

Harry waits until the man comes through the door, locking it behind him with a complicated ward that is presumably meant to keep his wife and son out. Then he steps forwards and weaves shadow so that Flourish is bound to his chair, gagged and blinded.

The man darts his head around as much as he can when he’s tied like that and makes muffled sounds behind his gag. Harry steps forwards and bends over. “I want you to stop interfering with Susan Bones and Padma Patil,” he says, his voice muffled and altered.

Sounds behind the gag seems to indicate that Flourish disagrees with that. Harry smiles and gestures with one hand.

The shadows around his eyes press down, harder and harder. Flourish utters a shaky, panicked scream.

“That’s better,” Harry says, and eases up on the pressure. “I could pop your eyes out, you know. I don’t particularly want to.” And he won’t, because of his promise to Padma. But he can certainly make Flourish think he will. “I could fill your lungs with shadow one night when you lie dreaming, and you would stop breathing, and no one would have any idea what happened to you.” He laughs quietly at the way that Flourish tries to shove himself backwards and only succeeds in making the chair rock. “I could do lots of things. And in return for your safety, I only want one thing. A promise that you’ll leave Padma Patil and Susan Bones alone. That’s easy, surely?”

Flourish makes urgent noises at the gag. Harry sighs. “I’m uninterested in your justifications. You can shake your head or nod. Do it.”

Flourish makes more noises. Harry rolls his eyes and presses down, this time on his mouth. He wonders a little how much pressure he can use before he’ll crack the older wizard’s jaw.

Finally, Flourish howls in pain and frantically nods. Harry vanishes the gagging shadow, the blinding shadow, and the bonds at the same moment as he flows backwards into the shadows and stands watching from them.

Flourish rubs his wrists as he stares around with a sick expression on his face. He finally swallows and says, “I was only worried because there are so few children being born in our society nowadays…”

Harry flows away, taking the crisscrossing shadows that will bring him back to Nott House. He meant it when he said he has no desire to listen to Flourish’s justifications. As long as he stops, that’s the only thing that matters.

*

“Prongslet?”

“No, Sirius.”

“Oh, wait, wait, wait! Harrigorn! It sounds like your name, but, like, brilliant and mysterious.”

“No.”

*

“The rumors are starting to spread,” Theodore says randomly when they’re in bed that night.

Harry opens one lazy eye. They’re cuddled together with brewing warmth and hardly any space between them, and it takes him a long moment to bring his mind around to what Theodore probably means. “Hmmm? Oh, the ones in Knockturn Alley. Are they still leaving you alone?”

“Yes. Of course.” Theodore glances at him sideways, one clump of bedraggled black hair hanging above his eyes. Harry smiles at him. It takes Theodore’s breath away, Harry smugly notes, and it takes him a moment to swallow and continue. “Rumors about a Shadow Lord are spreading, and some of them are connecting with your presence.”

Harry shrugs. “They can’t prove anything. And I’m not involved in politics at the Ministry. Not openly involved,” he has to amend. His vassal Hermione Granger is making strides at the Ministry, and Harry does sometimes threaten a particularly stubborn Wizengamot member for her so she can more easily get her legislation through. “They can search our house at any point. They won’t find any books that talk about shadow magic.”

In fact, Harry has only ever found one himself, the one that informed him it was a possible side-effect of the Horcrux in his head, and has only ever met one other person who had the gift. They can’t catch up with him. They can’t incriminate him. They can’t touch him.

“I simply wanted to tell you,” Theodore says. His voice is drowsy, his eyes drooping. “In case people started getting to know you as the Shadow Lord and you had to get more involved than you wanted.”

Harry smiles and closes his eyes. One of the best things about being him is that there’s very little he wants. To be left alone, to have people leave his vassals alone, to punish or avenge them if someone hurts them, to read good books. That’s really about it. People can’t hold debts or secrets of the kinds that Harry often uses his shadows to discover over his head because he doesn’t have any.

Harry doesn’t know why everyone doesn’t live like this, but he supposes their lack of shadow magic explains it.

*

“Hadrian the Black Dread!”

“No.”

“Well, Grey Dread, then, for your shadows.”

“No, Sirius.”

“But it’s so cool!”

“No.”

*

“Flourish sacked me.”

Harry sighs as he looks at Padma. Both she and Susan have come over this time, and Susan is standing with her arms folded and a Do something look on her face. “I’ll make tea.”

This time, it takes a lot of coaxing to get Padma to take even one sip, and Harry is feeling thoroughly exasperated with Arnold Flourish by the end of it. He sits back and listens as Padma stumbles through a story of how Flourish started acting oddly, then claimed that Padma stole a large amount of Galleons from him and he was sacking her immediately.

“Is he threatening legal action?” Harry asks. He needs to know if they should be prepared for that.

“No.” Padma blows on her tea, casts a Warming Charm before Harry can offer to do it, and sips again. “He just said he couldn’t trust me anymore and sacked me.” She blows her nose. “And now I’ll never be able to open my own bookshop if I can’t see how one works and make the necessary connections…”

“There are other bookshops,” Harry tells her, disturbed. He hates to see one of his vassals this despairing. It hasn’t happened since the war.

“Where? Flourish & Blotts is the only one on the Alley. Yes, all right, I grant you, Tomes and Scrolls in Hogsmeade, but they’re so small that they’re only open two days a week during the summer when school isn’t in session.”

“In Knockturn Alley,” Harry replies, because Theodore has mentioned seeing some when he goes to buy Potions ingredients.

Padma is startled enough that she puts down her handkerchief to stare at him. “But the kinds of books they sell are Dark Arts, and they probably have fewer customers even than Tomes and Scrolls does.”

“They make enough money to let their owners survive,” Harry says. “And are you worried about making a living from this? Because you know that my coffers are always open to you.” Besides the Potter and Nott vaults, he has “lost” Galleons and Muggle money that he finds all over the places his shadows explore, and which he always squirrels away, a habit that he never lost from his childhood.

Padma shakes her head a little. “I—know that. And Susan has money, too, and she’s making enough in her apprenticeship.”

“If you tried to convince me not to support you, you would have an argument that would make your one with Mr. Flourish look small,” Susan agrees in a lulling voice, her fingers curling like talons on the table.

“I wouldn’t.”

Harry gives them a moment to make eye contact and smile at each other, and then clears his throat. “So. What do you think? Would you ask for an apprenticeship with a bookseller there? I can send shadows with you if you’re worried about it being safe.”

“Theodore said that he was worried about how much you’re playing into the politics of Knockturn Alley.”

Padma’s eyes are shrewd, but Harry only shrugs. “It was probably inevitable that more people would learn about me,” he murmurs. “I actually thought it would be Hermione who forced me to move openly first. She’s bound to run into something at the Ministry soon that she can’t get past, or blood purists who disregard her. But I know that this is part of the bargain Lords make with vassals. I look out for your interests. Sending shadows to Knockturn Alley with you is the least I can do.”

Padma and Susan both look at him. Susan is smiling, leaning her elbow on the table and making little flapping motions at Padma with the other hand.

Padma breathes out slowly. “It would be—it would be a good thing, my lord. An important thing for me. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry says, delighted that she’s going to be sensible. He could wish all his vassals were like this. “And my revenge on Mr. Flourish?”

“Do you need to t—”

Harry stares at Padma, and so does Susan. Padma bites her lip and finally sighs. “Yes, all right,” she says. “I was thinking of the good times when he came to our family dinners and gave me advice about how to excel in Transfiguration. But he isn’t like that anymore.”

Harry nods.

“But I still don’t want you to disfigure or kill him,” Padma says firmly, and stares at him.

“Don’t worry,” Harry says softly. “I have something else in mind. Especially since, from what you told me, he’s concerned with his social standing.” Although Padma didn’t say so in so many words, Harry thinks that at least part of the reason Flourish sacked her is because of embarrassment at the idea that one of his similarly prejudiced cronies would walk into the shop and see a woman working there who lived with a woman.

“Yes, he is,” says Padma, and squints at him.

Harry squints back, and makes a shadow-kitten jump up on the couch with her. Padma laughs and reaches out to stroke the kitten, which will at least feel like heavy warmth to her. Harry leans back, satisfied, and catches Susan’s eye.

She gives him a bloodthirsty smile.

Harry winks at her, and distracts Padma with talk about the bookshops in Knockturn Alley that she might want to work at.

*

“You could call yourself Harrison.”

“That sounds like a name, not a nickname. Besides, it’s longer than Harry. Aren’t nicknames supposed to be shorter?”

“What about Shadowmaster?”

“No, Sirius.”

*

“What is this?”

Harry grins at Theodore over the breakfast table. He didn’t tell anyone what he was planning to do for revenge on Flourish, just that it was coming, and that makes the startled expression on Theodore’s face as he stares at the front page of the Daily Prophet more than satisfying.

“What, that article about Arnold Flourish’s fetishes and little collection of Dark artifacts?”

“Yes,” Theodore says, and snaps the paper out while giving Harry a smile with laughter quivering on the edges of it. “That.”

“Oh, it was just something I noticed when I investigated his house,” Harry says, and waves his hand. “He might suspect that it was me, but he doesn’t know who I am—not for sure. And what is he going to say? That someone threatened him for being a homophobic bigot and therefore he shouldn’t get into trouble for buying things that are illegal? It would be a crime no matter what I’d done.” Harry shrugs and sips his tea.

Theodore is still smiling, but there’s an edge of worry there, too. “And what will happen when he does make the claim, even if it’s not on the front page of the paper? There will be people who listen to him, believe him. Who make demands of the Shadow Lord, or seek him out, or think he’s a threat and move against him.”

Harry sighs. “Do you doubt my power or commitment to protecting us, Theodore?”

“No, my lord.” Theodore’s eyes are steady, which pleases Harry more than he can say. There would have been a time when Theodore would have looked away, even if he gave the same advice. “But I know that you can’t fight dozens of enemies on every side. And since Voldemort more or less disappeared and no one except us and the other vassals knows exactly what happened, there’s going to be more paranoia and fear about a new Dark Lord just appearing and taking over.”

“I’m not a Dark Lord.”

“They don’t know that.”

Harry sits there and wrestles with that idea for a bit, then nods. “You’re right, Theodore. I’ll be careful. But I’m not going to back down on protecting my vassals or taking revenge for them. I’ll be sending the shadows to protect Padma when she finds a place to work. I’ll send them with you as long as Holbrook’s connections might be a danger. I would send them with Sirius if I thought he got into the kind of danger where he’d need them on a regular basis.”

“You do care for him, don’t you?”

“He’s funny,” Harry admits reluctantly. Admittedly, part of the humor is the futility in some of the games Sirius plays, like trying to find a nickname for Harry, but Harry likes having him around nonetheless. “And he isn’t the kind of godfather I would have wanted growing up, but maybe the one I can have now.”

“Not need?”

“You’re the only one I need.”

And from the way Theodore relaxes and smiles, Harry knows he was waiting for that answer. Harry is glad to have said it. He will always be glad to please his Theodore.

*

Sirius comes into the sitting room looking exhausted. Harry gets up in concern, but Sirius flops down on the couch, looks at him mournfully, and says, “You’re just never going to accept any nickname I come up with, are you?”

“I did tell you that it would have to be a special one.”

“The ones I came up with are special!”

Harry looks closely at him. Then he goes and sits on the couch next to Sirius. Sirius moves his feet a little, but otherwise just lies there and stares at him.

Harry shakes his head. “I don’t need a nickname, Sirius,” he says softly. “It’s enough that you’re here and calling me Harry. I know it would be fun for you to call me something else, but I don’t want it. Any more,” he adds, because he wonders if this isn’t getting close to the heart of the problem, “than I want to marry a red-haired witch like my dad, or give up my relationship with Theodore, or go back in time and be Sorted into Gryffindor. I’m not him, Sirius.”

Sirius closes his eyes and struggles to swallow a lump in his throat. Harry puts a hand on his leg and wishes he was better at this.

Of course, he would never want to give up what he has, what he’s built, to become a better person. But for Sirius’s sake, he wishes he could be just a little different.

Sirius finally sighs, a sound that rises up and drifts down again, soft as snowflakes. “All right. I understand now.”

“Thank you, Sirius.”

Sirius opens his eyes and smiles at Harry, although pain is still torn all across his face. “Ginny is going to be awfully disappointed, of course.”

“Who?” Then Harry remembers it’s the name of the youngest Weasley. He shrugs. “She can be. We’re not friends, she’s not my vassal, and I don’t have to care.”

Sirius abruptly surges upright and hugs him. Harry hugs him back, freezing in place a little first. “What was that for?” Harry asks when he pulls back.

“It’s just—you’re you.” Sirius is half-laughing, and he raises a hand to wipe a tear away from his face. “You’re powerful in shadow magic, and you don’t bother to remember the names of people you don’t care about, which is almost everybody. You’re just yourself, unapologetic. You know, maybe James could have used some of that. Maybe he would have—lived, if he had.”

Harry nods, but doesn’t say anything. He leans sideways into Sirius’s embrace, and they sit there for a little while.

And maybe this is being a good godfather and godson. It’s not like Harry would know. Maybe they can create their own definition of it, and forget about things like red-haired witches and how much Sirius wishes Harry was James.

Harry can’t be James. Or Shadowmaster, or the Grey Dread, or Harrigorn. But he can be himself, as hard as he can, and be there for Sirius.

It’s more than he deigns to do for most people.

*

“My l—are you all right, Harry?”

Theodore doesn’t often call him Harry. Harry reaches out a hand blindly from where he sits behind the desk he uses only rarely, usually when he has to deal with tax documents or the like. Theodore comes over at once and places a hand in Harry’s, twining their fingers tightly.

“What is it?” he whispers, staring at the letter in the middle of the desk along with Harry.

“Padma got accepted to work at Giles Munkin’s Rare Books,” Harry mutters. “I sent some shadows along with her.”

“And? Did someone figure out who you were?” Theodore is trembling slightly with the tension, ready to draw his wand and charge at a moment’s notice, but that’s only visible through their clasped hands. His voice is completely flat and calm.

“No. But someone sent a letter to the Shadow Lord, which of course found me.”

“A challenge to a duel? Threats of blackmail?”

“No.” Harry reluctantly drags his gaze up to Theodore’s face. “They want to become my vassal.”

Theodore chokes and turns his head away. Harry can feel the tremors of laughter making his way through his body just the way he felt the tension, though.

Harry scowls at him. He has enough bloody vassals. He doesn’t need more.

He especially doesn’t need the leader of a vampire coven deciding they’d like to be his vassal.

Harry goes back to scowling at the letter, and Theodore goes on being no help, and Harry despairs about how, no matter which way he answers the letter, it’s going to be involve being political.

Bloody politics.

The End.