[From Litha to Lammas]: Blame It on the Firewhisky, Marcus/Harry, R, 3/3

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last part of this story, although I may write a sequel someday in the future.

Part Three

“Ron thinks I have a girlfriend.”

Marcus got up and handed Harry a glass of Firewhisky, which he sniffed at cautiously. He had a reluctance to drink it that Marcus thought was hilarious. “Why?” he asked, perching on his usual chair and watching Harry fall onto his. He’d only seen Harry a few times since Christmas, what with him having to sneak out either from Hogsmeade or, now, from the Burrow during the Easter holidays, but each time they’d talked for hours. Marcus felt as though he knew Harry better than he did even his own parents.

Harry sipped the Firewhisky and coughed. “Because I keep sneaking off and I haven’t said anything about where. Ron’s pestering me to introduce them to her.”

“What do you say when he asks?”

“That I deserve some privacy and anyway, he has no room to talk when he has Hermione so upset that she’s shooting birds at him.”

Marcus snorted and leaned back to listen to Harry talk about the latest misadventures of his friends, who sounded to Marcus like they would make each other miserable. But luckily, he didn’t have to date Weasley or Granger, and even if he was introduced to them and integrated more into Harry’s life, he wouldn’t have to spend every minute of his time with them.

“Let me know if you ever want them to break up,” Marcus offered, when Harry paused long enough to let him get a word in edgewise. “I can think of all sorts of things I could say to put kindling on the fire at the right moment and make both of them think it was their own fault.”

“Marcus.”

“I don’t like seeing people make you unhappy.”

“It’s not making me unhappy…”

“Bollocks. You’ve spent a lot of time talking about how Granger cried when Weasley was snogging this Lavender person and how Weasley got upset when Granger went on a date with McLaggen. That makes you unhappy.”

“Seeing them break up would just make it worse.”

Marcus shrugged in acknowledgement, and grinned as he watched Harry look unsubtly at his lips. “You want a snog of your own?”

“Well, it would make up for not being able to see you for three weeks,” Harry admitted, and put down his Firewhisky, crossing the room as quickly as Marcus could do himself when he’d made up his mind.

Marcus wrapped a hand around Harry’s waist and tugged him in, kissing him hard enough to drive all thoughts of his friends from his mind. They ended up nearly tipping Marcus’s chair backwards again, Harry’s hands locked on his shoulders and Harry’s legs around his waist, rutting together so hard that Harry was shuddering and glazed-eyed before very long.

“You want to come?” Marcus whispered into his ear, running a hand down Harry’s back.

“Marcus,” Harry said, and then he hissed something in Parseltongue.

Marcus bucked up without meaning to, his whole body humming, and Harry crushed their mouths together as he came, bucking back, hissing softly, hips stuttering. Marcus muttered and sighed and found his own climax a second later, rubbing so hard that he was probably going to have friction burns afterwards.

But seeing Harry’s face flushed and shining with pleasure, his body going languid with release, was worth it.

In the aftermath, Harry promptly tried to hide his face in Marcus’s neck. Marcus laughed and pried at Harry’s nape with two fingers, raising his head up again. “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.

“But I—I acted like a—a teenager—”

“Which you are,” Marcus said, with a small roll of his eyes. Harry wanted to pretend he was older, and it was true he had responsibilities like fighting the Dark Lord that most teenagers didn’t have. But he ought to have little corners of his life where he could escape it. “And I certainly enjoyed it.” He leered at Harry.

“You came, too?”

Apparently Harry had been too caught up in his orgasm to even feel Marcus’s. Marcus was immensely proud of himself. He caught Harry’s hips and pressed him forwards so he would feel the softness and wetness in Marcus’s trousers. “Yeah.”

Harry shivered and leaned in for another kiss. Marcus stroked his shoulders, more than happy to let him have it.

*

“Marcus? What are you doing?”

Marcus wiped sweat from his forehead and grinned at Harry, who was standing in the doorway to the small dueling room Marcus had added to the flat. He’d paid the expenses for that first of all as well as the payment to his landlord to modify the flat’s basic structure, which was part of the reason there was no money for owl-wards. “What’s it look like?”

“Charring a defenseless target on the wall?” Harry stared at the scorched pattern covering the stones. Marcus was sure that Harry didn’t miss that it was human-sized and human-shaped, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Practicing with fire spells. I have an affinity for them. Have to practice them.” Marcus swung his wand arm, limbering it up, wondering idly if Harry would like to duel him, or would prefer a different kind of physical activity.

“Marcus.”

Harry’s voice was quiet. Marcus put down his wand and turned around. Harry was leaning on the door of the dueling room, his eyes deep and serious. Marcus thought he had never seen anyone with eyes as deep as Harry’s.

“What?” he asked as quietly.

“I want to tell you what’s going on,” Harry said in a rush. “What the cup meant and why it was important. Now that I know it’s really important. But I would need you to swear that you’re not going to join Voldemort first.”

Marcus snorted. Harry flung his head back and stared at him from his shorter height with far more than Marcus’s bravery.

“If you find it ridiculous—if you plan on joining him after all—”

“Harry, I’m fucking his nemesis, and I’d like to go on fucking his nemesis. I didn’t realize that you didn’t know what that meant. My politics are already decided, because I’m never going to give you up.”

Harry’s smile was like phoenix fire, bursting all over his face. He ran forwards and hugged Marcus, and Marcus hugged him back, running his hands down Harry’s back. Good, Harry appeared to be eating more. Marcus had told him that wanting to remain small to be a good Seeker wasn’t reason enough to skip meals, and Harry had agreed, saying that most of the time he just forgot to eat, especially when he was nervous.

“I thought,” Harry breathed against his shoulder. “But I didn’t know—especially since Voldemort can read minds—”

“I don’t intend to let him near enough to read mine,” Marcus said shortly, and steered Harry into the drawing room. “And anyway, I think the reason he might come after me is if someone figures out we’re together, not because he might think I’m the one who led you to the cup. No one’s been aware that Tolliver overheard that, as far as I know.”

Harry nodded, somber again as he perched in his usual chair. Or tried to. Marcus was having none of that, and hauled Harry over so that he had to sit in Marcus’s lap. Harry leaned his head against Marcus’s shoulder and sighed.

“You deserve to hear this. Because you helped me get hold of it, and because—the more people who know it, the more can try to stop him.”

Marcus ran his fingers through Harry’s hair and watched the way he half-collapsed against Marcus’s chest. If Voldemort really wanted to defeat Harry, Marcus thought idly, he should have used pleasure instead of pain. “Tell me.”

*

“And he’s just chopped up bits and pieces of his soul and left them lying around all over the place?” Marcus felt nauseated, keeping one hand on Harry and holding him in his lap. Otherwise, he would probably have jumped up and run to the bathroom to dry-heave into the loo. “Gross.”

Harry laughed in a shaky way, eyes closed. Marcus had conjured a glass of water for him after a while, when his voice grew hoarse telling Marcus about the Horcruxes and how the cup was one of them. Dumbledore had apparently destroyed it with the Sword of Gryffindor. Then Marcus had to ask why a sword would work, and Harry had to explain about second year and the basilisk. “Yeah, that was my reaction when I first heard about it.”

Marcus ran his fingers down Harry’s back, scratching gently, pleasantly, at his spine. Neither of them mentioned that Harry was hours late getting back from the May Hogsmeade weekend and would probably have to explain quite a lot to his friends. They knew.

“I’ll ask you to make an oath before I leave,” Harry murmured.

Marcus grinned at him. “Good.”

“I’m sor—what?” Harry’s eyes flickered open and he looked at Marcus in surprise. Merlin, he was gorgeous like this. Marcus burned to stretch Harry out in his bed and fuck him and watch how he would arch his back and scream his way into a world of pleasure he’d had no idea existed.

“I said, good. You shouldn’t just let me run around with information like this and have no guarantee that I’ll keep it to myself. And Dumbledore would probably come and try to Memory Charm me if I didn’t make one.”

“But I trust you.”

“I know, but this is war. And a particularly important secret.” Marcus shook his head, shivering. The basics of Horcruxes as Harry had described them, the black blood and the screaming, were gross. “How much have you told Dumbledore about how you recovered the cup?”

“Nothing with your name in it. I said I heard about how I could claim a forfeit from Lestrange’s vault for Sirius’s death, and that someone I know passed on information from a Death Eater about the cup she was guarding there.”

“Tolliver wishes he was a Death Eater.”

“Well, Voldemort will have to be content with him from the Flint family, because he can’t have you.”

Harry’s arms clutched possessively around Marcus’s neck and he kissed him hard enough to hurt his lips. Marcus didn’t mind. He kissed back, and he clung back, and the Dark Lord would have to tear out his fingernails before Marcus gave Harry up.

Harry had him swear an oath on his wand; they had no one to bind an Unbreakable, and Marcus wasn’t fond anyway of an oath that might kill him if he broke it. He did think, in a month or two, that he would be willing to take an Unbreakable for Harry.

But not yet.

Harry gave him a single passionate kiss before he vanished into the fire, and Marcus touched his mouth with one hand for a long time, swore, and went to have a wank. Persephone hooted after him.

*

Marcus stepped into his flat and shook out rain from his cloak. A late squall had caught up with him as he was leaving the Ministry, and he was Apparating, so he hadn’t bothered casting an Impervious Charm.

“Mr. Flint.”

That voice was low and cold and deadly. Marcus glanced up and stared, frozen, as a being that could only be the Dark Lord glided into his drawing room from the direction of the bedroom. Beside him moved an enormous snake, dark green and with distinct black lines between her scales.

Marcus stared at the Dark Lord’s bald head and glittering red eyes and could only think, That’s what chopping up your soul does to you? Yeah, I’ll take death.

He jerked his head downwards in the next second, not because he particularly wanted to bow but because he wanted to keep a formidable Legilimens from reading his mind. “My lord,” he said hoarsely.

“Marcus Flint,” the Dark Lord said, and made an odd hollow sound that Marcus realized a second later was his tongue clucking. “I had built such hopes on you. Your cousin is an idiot, but he told me you had a useful position in the Ministry, and lately, you had been seen with Harry Potter. It was a perfect chance to get close to him, to kill him without Albus finding out.”

Marcus bared his teeth and said nothing, although he still didn’t look up. Yeah, they would get him to kill Harry only if he was under Imperius, and nothing else.

“And then Tolliver told me what else he had said.”

The Dark Lord’s pale yew wand was spinning in his hand. He was going to kill Marcus. Marcus felt a weight fall from his shoulders and another one settle into his gut at the same time. Well, then. He might as well hit as hard as he could.

“Nagini,” the Dark Lord said. Marcus knew it was the name of the snake, because Tolliver had bragged about that, as though knowing it conveyed some kind of power. Marcus didn’t understand the next thing the Dark Lord said, which was hissed in Parseltongue, but he didn’t need to, not when it was perfectly obvious what it would be.

He raised his wand as the serpent reared to strike. She was going slowly, maybe because the Dark Lord wanted to frighten him.

But that just gave Marcus time to use one of the fire spells he had practiced but struggled to control. Now, there was no time or reason to control it. He’d never be coming back here. At least Persephone wasn’t on her perch, and either she was dead or she’d had the sense to leave once she saw who had showed up.

As the snake moved slowly closer, Marcus snapped his wand down and snarled, “Fiendfyre!”

The flames sprang out of the end of his wand and splashed madly all over the room, claiming books and turning the walls to ash in instants. They also caught the snake, and she screamed, aloud and like a dying thing.

Like Harry had said the Horcruxes screamed.

The Dark Lord was roaring somewhere beyond the fire. Marcus darted sideways, creating a clear path for himself by sheer force of will. The manticores of the fire drew back for him reluctantly, but they drew back.

Harry had told him the password to Headmaster Dumbledore’s Floo, if he had to use it, and said it would be open to him. Only in an emergency, he’d said, but if there was ever a bloody emergency, it was now.

Marcus tossed Floo powder into the fireplace, where the kindling was burning like everything else, and roared, “Sherbet lemons dipped in blood!” before he dived through. The fire flashed all around him, and he fell and whirled.

*

He landed so hard on the floor of the Headmaster’s office that he lost consciousness for a second. When he opened his eyes again, Marcus forced himself back to his feet.

He had to find Harry, and it was beyond lucky that the office was empty at the moment.

Marcus staggered to the door, and snarled as his vision blurred. He aimed his wand at his temple and snapped one of the charms he’d learned early on to stabilize his brain inside his skull. The Slytherin Quidditch team didn’t slow down when one of them took a Bludger to the face.

It worked. The incipient concussion essentially froze in place, and Marcus strode out the door and down the moving staircase beyond it, not waiting for it to carry him to its destination. The gargoyle at the bottom of the steps sprang open as he got there.

Marcus stepped out, and promptly had to duck a curse. He put his back to the wall and stared in disbelief at the figures running down the corridor. His first thought was that it was odd Dumbledore had managed to mount a defense so quickly when he hadn’t even been in his office.

And then he saw the bone-white masks and black cloaks of Death Eaters, and snarled hard enough that they spun around to face him.

Marcus aimed at their legs and cast a spell that mimicked a Bludger’s strike. More than one of them went down, shrieking. One shielded in time, and Marcus had to jump a return curse. But then he let loose one of the fire spells he was practiced with and burned their wand to ashes, and they turned and ran away.

Marcus glanced around slowly, feeling the effects of his concussion and magical exhaustion more now. What in the name of Quidditch was going on?

He heard a sharp growl from around a corner, and made his way in that direction, peering cautiously to avoid outlining himself against any light from the torches. A figure with dirty, claw-like nails and flowing grey hair was backing a child who could only be a first-year up against a wall.

“I like children,” the figure whispered.

Fenrir Greyback. Marcus had only seen a few photographs of the werewolf in the Prophet, but he was suddenly sure. He aimed and set the werewolf’s liver on fire, a curse that bypassed the skin to start the inferno from the inside.

The werewolf shrieked and began to claw his skin. Marcus caught the firstie’s eye and jerked his head. The kid ran towards him and behind him and past him. Well, that was fine. He wouldn’t have been much help in a fight anyway.

Marcus kept an eye on Greyback, but he appeared to have stowed his wand somewhere and have no idea where he’d put it, preferring to use his claws. If he even knew what was happening to him. While he was still scratching the air and howling, Marcus aimed at his legs and broke his kneecaps, then cast another fire curse at his eyes. He died not too long after that.

Marcus panted and glanced around the corridor, wondering who would show up next. Then he shook his head and did what he should have done in the first place, casting a spell that would lead him to Harry.

*

“I saw him die. Snape just—killed him.”

Harry was shaking in his arms. They were in the infirmary, and Marcus was sitting up in a hospital bed he’d pushed together to be right next to Harry’s. Madam Pomfrey had taken one look at him, shaken her head, and forced a potion for concussions down his throat. Then she’d bustled off to tend to other wounded patients, who were pouring into the hospital wing.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, awkwardly. He’d never cared much for Dumbledore, but Harry had trusted and respected him. All Marcus could do was hold him and watch as shivers of shock traveled through Harry’s body.

Harry blinked and licked his lips and leaned so close that Marcus could feel his words more as vibrations against his own earlobe than hear them. “We went in search of another one of them. We found one, and Dumbledore had to drink this potion, and there was a lake full of Inferi—it was horrible. But then it turned out it was fake. Dumbledore died for nothing.”

Harry was breathing hard by the end, and Marcus could only hold him. And promise himself that they would find the real Horcrux, and any others out there. Once he’d sworn his oath, he’d learned that Harry and Dumbledore had destroyed three of them: a diary, a ring, and the cup. Harry thought there were six altogether, so three left.

No, wait. Two.

Marcus smiled like a shark and pulled back a little to look into Harry’s eyes. “I killed Voldemort’s snake tonight.” He could speak the name, he told himself. Never call him the “Dark Lord” again. He wasn’t any Lord of Marcus’s.

“You what?”

Harry sounded breathless. They’d only talked about the Death Eater invasion of the school and Dumbledore’s death so far, not what Marcus had faced before he got here. Now Marcus explained what had happened, and Harry’s eyes grew wider and wider as Marcus described the Fiendfyre and the snake’s scream.

He was quiet when Marcus had finished speaking, still lying huddled against him. Then he licked his lips and asked, “Can you teach me that spell?”

“It’s proper Dark Arts,” Marcus warned him. “And hard to control.”

Harry turned and stared at him, eyes glittering like embers. “I don’t care. Snape killed him. I’m going to destroy those things with it, and maybe I’ll burn Snape alive with it. If I can find him.”

Marcus pulled Harry closer and nodded into his shoulder. He could feel the inevitable drowsiness from magical exhaustion overcoming him now. With the concussion healed, it would be safe to sleep.

“I’ll be here for you,” he whispered into Harry’s ear. “And you’ll be here for me.”

Harry’s hand smoothed over his forehead. “Rest. I’ll stand guard.”

Marcus locked one arm into place around Harry’s waist, just in case he had any ideas about going anywhere, and slipped off into dreams about Horcrux-hunting and being at Harry’s side for the rest of his life. He’d chosen his loyalty. Maybe he’d chosen it the day he decided to seduce Harry.

Hang on, Voldemort, you arsehole. We’re coming.

The End.