lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-07-11 08:39 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-07-11 08:39 pm
Entry tags:
[Songs of Summer]: Dark Temptation, Harry/Theo, R, 1/2
Title: Dark Temptation
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, violence, light angst, Dark Arts, Auror Harry Potter, Dark Lord Theodore Nott, humor
Wordcount: This part 4500
Summary: Theodore Nott has become a Dark Lord for the sake of carving out his own kingdom in the midst of magical Britain with everything ordered exactly to his specifications. Harry Potter just wants to know why, even years after killing Voldemort, he’s still catnip for Dark Lords.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics, one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It will have two parts as it got longer than expected.
Dark Temptation
The path to becoming a Dark Lord was shorter than Theo would have expected.
He had been content to sit out the war. Nothing that happened in it mattered greatly to him, except his own survival and the survival of a few of his friends, like Pansy and Blaise. Muggleborns were neither important enough to fight for nor important enough to kill. If Voldemort won, then Theo would pretend to always have been a loyal Death Eater. If Potter, Theo would go his own way and practice esoteric magic, the true love of his heart.
Potter won, and things should have worked out. Perhaps they would have, if not for the stupidity of Apollo Nott. Sometimes Theo wondered if his mother, Veronica Selwyn, had simply created Theo in a ritual that replicated herself except for making him a son. It would explain why Theo was so much more intelligent than his father.
Apollo had been a Death Eater. The Ministry seized his property when he was arrested. Theo could have let the Nott vault and the draughty house where he had never been happy after his mother’s death go. He still had her property, including a small house, and enough Galleons to live on. He could brew potions and cast basic Dark spells for those who needed them and maintain himself and his book habit that way.
But the Ministry decided to take the Nott library.
Theo had tried reasonable arguments, including that Apollo had barely added to the library and the vast majority of the books were simply old, not illegal or full of Dark Arts or even the kind that Hogwarts would have put in the Restricted Section to keep them out of the hands out of children. He had drawn up comparisons of his own library to the Hogwarts one and to the small libraries kept in various sections of the Ministry for Aurors, Unspeakables, and the like to use in research. He had found various relatives without Death Eater connections to swear they would house the books in their own homes and comb through them, handing anything illegal over to the Ministry at once.
The Aurors hadn’t cared. Caught up in the exhilaration of arresting Death Eater after Death Eater, they had told him no, and had tried to take the books.
That was when Theo had found out that he could, in fact, cast the Dark Arts spells he had always thought would simply remain a subject of academic study for him because he didn’t have the power to cast them. One simply had to be motivated enough.
When Nott House was surrounded by a ring of eternally burning fire that wouldn’t let through anyone Theo didn’t like, then Theo thought that might be the end of it. After all, the Ministry wouldn’t want to admit they’d lost to him. It would make them the laughingstock of the wizarding public. They could ignore him. Theo would go out of the country to purchase books and Potions ingredients, and would ignore them.
It turned out the Ministry cared, very much, about what was essentially a small independent country in the middle of their territory, and they didn’t care about how small it was. They threw Aurors at the fire. They tried devices that Theo thought the Unspeakables must have invented. They printed denunciations of him in the papers. (Theo had learned to cast a spell that would simply abstract the nearest paper from whoever held it, so he didn’t have to open the fire to owls). They talked gravely about “Dark Lord Nott” and how Theo was picking up from where the true Dark Lord had left off.
And that was when Theo began to think that if they called him that, he might as well behave like that. And there were all the books he wanted to own that he didn’t, and his mother’s Galleons wouldn’t last forever. And if he had more territory, he could have more houses, and more libraries. And if he had followers, he could have people to set to research and people to practice his newly-found Dark Arts skills with.
So he began to expand.
*
Harry stared at the ring of fire in front of him that had apparently burned without consuming all its kindling for five years, and shook his head slowly.
He had never seen anything like it. It definitely wasn’t Fiendfyre. It burned hot, clear white with now and then a tone of blue, not the red and gold and orange and black colors common to Fiendfyre. And it couldn’t be quenched with anything, including every variation of a water spell the Ministry had tried to throw at it. And it was a barrier to everyone and everything that tried to fly above it or tunnel beneath it, including brooms, nifflers, and those weird experimental moles with steel claws that the Unspeakables had tried.
(The last Harry knew, some of the moles had escaped and were making tunnels underneath the Ministry. People didn’t often stay late by themselves in the building anymore).
In the end, the Ministry had come to the same conclusion they probably always would. “A Dark Lord? Let’s throw Harry Potter at him.”
Harry sighed. He had only been a full-fledged Auror for two years, and yes, he’d faced down some Dark wizards, many of them former Death Eaters, and once a Dementor breakout. But he was no more powerful than anyone else—
(“That’s not true,” said a buzzing voice in his head. Harry gritted his teeth and ignored it).
And he was less experienced than a hell of a lot of other people. They should have given up before now, in Harry’s opinion. At least Theo Nott didn’t seem to be hurting anyone—unless they tried to burn books or take them away from him—and people were moving behind his fire line if they wanted to live somewhere that made very little magic illegal and let them ignore Ministry laws. Some of them were Muggleborn, even. Harry thought the Ministry coming to a treaty so Nott wouldn’t take over too much land or accidentally expose magic to Muggles was better than trying to defeat him.
But Kingsley was disturbed about it, believing that Nott, whose father had been a Death Eater, was on the verge of changing his mind and embracing Voldemort’s ideology. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have accepted the title of “Dark Lord.”
So here Harry was. And he had to make a good-faith effort on the fire before they would give up.
Harry frowned at the fire again, and decided that, since he didn’t know a spell to counter it, he would just do his best to bear down on it with the full force of his magic. He ignored the Elder Wand’s calm attentiveness from the wand holster on his left side—the holster Harry hadn’t even bought, it had just appeared there one morning all covered with skulls and holding the Elder Wand—and closed his eyes.
His accidental magic had never been as accidental as other people’s, Harry had learned after he’d started studying to become an Auror. A child might be upset that they didn’t get a biscuit and bring the ceiling crashing down. Harry, on the other hand, had wanted to escape from Dudley and had Apparated; had been angry at a teacher and had turned her hair blue; had wanted the cupboard where his things were locked to open when he was running away the summer before his third year and had unlocked it.
Aunt Marge inflating like she did was a bit of an outlier, admittedly. But Harry had wanted to do something that would embarrass her and make her stop talking, and that had worked.
Concentrate, Harry thought as he felt the magic slipping away from him, and he began to build it up around him again. The air went tense and hot and still. Harry leaned forwards a little, forcing his magic towards the fire.
I want it to go out. I want it to go out. I want—
With a splutter and a hiss, part of the fire did. Harry opened his eyes and found a path laid out in front of him straight across the line where the flames had been. The grass was blackened, but not smoldering, and Harry could see the walls of at least one house beyond it.
Harry hesitated, then shrugged. He couldn’t hear or see wards or any sorts of alarms. He took a step forwards.
Someone Apparated into place in front of him.
Harry snapped his (holly) wand into his hand and dropped into a defensive crouch. The figure had a thick cloak, ill-suited to the summer air around them, and dragonhide boots that looked as if they should be tromping through harsher terrain than the tall grass of a meadow. He didn’t wear a hood, but Harry didn’t recognize the pale, stern face.
Then he squinted, and decided that it did look a little like the older photographs of Theodore Nott on file. They had nothing more recent, since no one had been able to get beyond the fire in years. Harry nodded choppily. “Nott.”
Nott stared at him with storm-grey, distant eyes, and then said, “Potter.” He said nothing else.
Harry remained in the defensive posture. Nott knew all sorts of Dark magic, as evidenced by the fire barrier that he could keep moving when he wanted to, and the way that he’d Apparated people’s whole houses behind it when they wanted to join him. He would probably fire some sort of spell any second that Harry would be hard-pressed to block.
“How did you make the fire go out?”
Seriously? But then, the reports Harry had read about Nott also said that he had started this war over a library, of all things. Apparently he was more academic than Voldemort.
Hermione might sound like this if she ever became a Dark Lady, Harry thought, but he answered, “With will magic.” He didn’t know if that was the formal name or not. Accidental magic hardly applied, though, and wandless magic, from the theory he knew, was casting specific spell effects without a wand. You still used the incantation and probably a hand gesture that substituted for the wand.
“Will magic.” Nott stared at him, and then smiled. It was an odd smile, fascinated and creepy. “I would love to talk to you about it.”
“Uh, Nott. I’m here to stop you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a Dark Lord, and apparently that’s what Harry Potter is good for,” Harry grumbled. He didn’t resent the idea that he could take down Dark Lords, because, well, he could. But he resented the idea that he wasn’t good at much else.
“I’m not making a war,” Nott said. “I ask people if they want to join me. I only take land that’s already Unplottable. I offer beyond reasonable prices for books.”
“You’re defying the Ministry.”
“You did that in your time.”
Nott had tucked his chin into his chest, and his smile had changed. Harry didn’t know what it looked like now. He didn’t think he wanted to come up with a description. It made him bloody uncomfortable, that he did know. “Are you going to duel me?” he asked.
“I suppose we should see what you’re made of,” Nott agreed, and then a curse Harry had never seen before, dazzling yellow and shaped like a wide net, unfurled from his wand. Harry dodged and dropped to the ground to roll away before it.
When he came up, there was another curse heading for him, red and bright. Harry threw up a Protego and took the spell on it, although his shield cracked through almost all the way.
“Avada Kedavra Maxima!”
Three brilliant green bolts of light stabbed out from Nott’s wand, straight for Harry, and all of them aimed in a triangle such that he couldn’t simply dodge out of the way in a different direction. Harry threw his will up instinctively.
Protect me!
Part of Nott’s fire leaped out of the intact part of the barrier and straight into the way of two of the Killing Curses, stopping them long before they got anywhere near Harry. Harry dodged the one that was remaining on the right, and heard the Elder Wand buzzing angrily. It wanted him to draw and use it. Harry ignored it. It had its opinions, he had his, and his were always going to win.
“That was your will magic?” Nott asked. He still sounded calm, for all that he’d come close to killing Harry.
“Yeah.” Harry glared at him. “What, did you do that to force me to use it?”
“I thought you might not otherwise, because you knew I was interested in it.” Nott smiled at him again. “You are remarkable, Potter. Your magic is incredible.”
Harry said nothing, because responding to compliments from Dark Lords wasn’t really a Harry Potter thing.
“Would you not like to join me?” Nott asked, softly, coaxingly. “You could explore the parameters of your will magic within my circle of fire. The Ministry wouldn’t be able to touch you there or make demands on your time. And you would have access to my library, and be able to learn the kinds of magic you need to learn.”
“I don’t think I need any lessons on how to control my magic from you.”
“I mean the kind of magic necessary to control the wand you bear.” Nott nodded unerringly at the holster that held the Elder Wand. “And the nightmares and bouts of irrationality that come from your missing piece of soul.”
“I am not missing a piece of my soul!”
“Perhaps it was not yours originally. But you carried it for a long time, and I can see the gaping hole its loss produced in yours. You might as well call it yours. I have books on soul magic, the sort that have been banned and burned by the Ministry for fifty years.”
Harry felt cold. It was true that he’d had nightmare after nightmare in the years since the war. No longer the visions of Voldemort, but things that felt like memories or premonitions of him snapping and killing people. And sometimes he would lose control and just—want to scream at people and curse them until they went away.
Some of the same symptoms that had come about when Voldemort had made Horcruxes, he thought.
He snapped back to reality when he realized Nott had just stepped forwards and offered his hand. “Will you not come?” Nott asked again. “I promise that I will be gentle when I study you, in a way that the Unspeakables would not if they ever learned of your condition. You are too powerful to mistreat.”
Harry stared at him, appalled. “You were trying to kill me a minute ago!”
“But I didn’t.”
Harry just shook his head and said nothing. Nott was mental and couldn’t be reasoned with. Not unusual for a Dark Lord. At least now Harry could go back and tell the other Aurors what he’d discovered, and they could probably find other people with will magic.
“You get along with other people who tried to hurt you in the past,” Nott continued, his voice very soft. “I heard Draco Malfoy entered the Aurors, right? And some of the people who fought on the other side of the war from you were pardoned. You don’t mind working with them.”
“You know nothing about me, Nott.”
“I’d like to learn.”
Harry turned his back and Apparated away without a word. He’d also need to tell Kingsley that Nott had invented a major alteration of the Killing Curse.
Maybe they would send other people to go after him, Harry thought, now that Harry had proven his fiery barrier could be broken. And Harry could see about trying to do some research on the Elder Wand and soul magic.
*
Theo couldn’t stop his quick breathing or the swirling pressure of desire in his abdomen as he stared at the place where Potter had stood. He had felt nothing like this for years.
Well, for books, yes. But that desire to hold and touch and caress and study was—different than it was for a human.
As far as Theo knew, it was theoretically impossible for someone to have such command of will magic. And to be walking around with such a powerful wand without it forcing him into duels. And to have a piece of his soul missing without succumbing to the side-effects of necromantic rituals much earlier.
But Potter, of course, bent the rules and survived.
Theo glanced at his fiery barrier and shook his head. He would have to strengthen it with some spells that he would doubtless find in the Malfoy library. So far, the Ministry didn’t seem to have noticed that while Draco had become one of their Aurors, Malfoy Manor had disappeared and moved quietly beyond Theo’s border.
Theo would need to owl Potter from somewhere outside the border, but that was hardly a deterrent when the rewards were so great.
*
Harry’s hands trembled as he opened the package that he’d found on his desk that morning. An owl no one had seen must have brought it. Otherwise, he’d have had to fetch it from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement’s Detection Spell Specialists, most of them junior Hit Wizards.
There was no curse on it. But the aura of power it radiated made Harry’s hands sting and caused the Elder Wand to stir in its holster.
Secrets of the Soul’s Art.
Harry swallowed. He wanted to reject the book. He wanted to say that nothing in a book that looked like it talked about the creation of Horcruxes would ever be relevant to him.
But he didn’t know that, especially if he really did have a gap in his soul and his weird moods and nightmares were attributable to it. And he could hardly go searching for a copy of this book himself. If it had been banned by the Ministry for fifty years, he’d get in trouble for even mentioning it.
Harry turned the book over, and something fell out of the packaging, a small note. Harry read it with a scowl. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but he sure as hell knew the symbol at the top of the slip of parchment. Nott had started using it a few months after the Ministry had declared him a Dark Lord: a spread-winged raven surrounded by flames.
Potter,
I believe that you’ll find this book of value. And I want it back. I’m giving you a month with it. Then I’ll require you to bring it to the spot where you dimmed the fire at nine-o’clock at night on the thirtieth of August. If you don’t, the consequences will be unpleasant.
The note flared with white light that reminded Harry of the border around Nott’s lands and burned. Harry sighed and sat back, then cast a spell that would obscure the title of the book with a combination of a Disillusionment Charm and a Misdirection Hex that would make people uninterested in it. He used the same thing on his scar when he went most places in public.
Harry shook his head a little. He knew Hermione would scold him for even thinking of researching in the book instead of turning it over to the Ministry. She would have wanted to look at it herself, but in general, she did think that there were some books—a few—that were too dangerous to be available to the general public. This one would certainly be one of them.
But Harry already knew he would read it. He knew he wanted to survive, and control the effects of the missing Horcrux on him if possible.
He opened the book and began to read. He wouldn’t have any meetings or assignments of cases for at least an hour.
*
Potter was waiting where Theo had instructed him to be waiting, and that made Theo smile as he Apparated in. From what he knew—from what Draco had said—Potter was rarely obedient.
But he already looked better. The aura that had surrounded him before, pointing straight to the gap in his soul for anyone with the strength to sense it, had diminished. His magic no longer throbbed as if wounded.
The wand in his holster, whichever it was, still buzzed angrily and clashed with Potter’s power, but the book Theo had sent Potter hadn’t contained anything to help with that.
“You look better,” Theo said softly.
Potter stared at him in silence, his jaw set. His eyes blazed with defiance that Theo thought could probably endure much more hammering on the forge than Theo intended to give him. He just nodded and dug Secrets of the Soul’s Art out of the bag slung over his shoulder and held it out towards Theo.
Theo leaned towards him and acted for a moment as if he would float the book out of Potter’s hand to his own. Potter relaxed, as if he expected that to happen.
Then Theo took a quick, sidelong step and folded his hand around Potter’s instead. Potter tensed. His holly wand rose to jab into Theo’s throat.
Theo allowed it to happen. He could have stopped it, easily, and would have had he felt in danger. But Potter needed to feel in control of the situation. And Theo liked being this close to Potter, to the magic running like lava in his veins, and the strength that pulsed around him, whispering in a steady voice of dangers measured and survived.
Theo couldn’t hear most people’s magic unless he cast a special spell and made a supreme effort. That he could hear Potter’s without that was a delightful surprise.
“Going to hurt me, Potter? When I helped you?”
Potter’s throat worked. Then he shoved the book at Theo. “Here. Take it.”
Theo laughed as he did. “You really are not afraid of Dark Lords, are you?”
“Why would I be? I already defeated one a lot worse than you.”
“I’ve heard some of the details, and it sounds like a certain amount of that was luck, and a certain other amount wandlore.”
Potter gave a jerky shrug. “Yeah, I never claimed to be some all-powerful savior or anything. People who want to categorize me that way are wrong.”
Theo swept his hand down Potter’s jaw for a second. Potter’s eyes narrowed, but he stood still. Theo smiled. It was delightful, Potter’s resistance to fear that translated into an acceptance of being touched. It made him a target for seduction in ways that he probably didn’t even realize. Theo already suspected, just from watching Potter and seeing some of the same telltales as he had himself, that Potter hadn’t been touched often.
And Theo hadn’t wasted this last month. He had done his own research as Potter was delving into ways to combat the effects of a gap in the soul.
“I have it on good authority that this book contains some of the information the Dark Lord used to make himself immortal,” Theo murmured. Bribes and intimidation still worked on Horace Slughorn. “Why do you think he didn’t undertake to guard himself from the side-effects, the way you have learned to?”
“He was overconfident,” Potter replied instantly. “If he had this book, he probably read that section and thought it would never happen to him. Or he didn’t even bother with reading it, because the only thing that mattered to him was the information on Horcruxes.”
Theo nodded. “That was also my guess. I don’t plan to be that kind of Dark Lord, Potter. You’ll notice that my fire is still burning.”
Potter looked at it for a second, then at him. “I could change that for you if you wanted.”
“Be my guest.” In reality, Potter couldn’t bring down the entire barrier. Theo and the fire were tied to each other, the flames fueled by his life-force. As long as his heart beat, the fire wouldn’t burn out, and as long as the fire blazed, Theo wouldn’t die.
Potter concentrated on the fire. The air around him paused and seemed to quiver. Theo breathed in the heady scent of magic he barely understood, magic he had hardly ever been in the presence of. His hand twitched to touch Potter again, but he restrained it. He didn’t want to disrupt Potter’s concentration.
Potter breathed out. A larger section of the barrier than before turned into blackened grass, and Theo’s heart lurched in his chest, unpleasantly. But the rest of the barrier was still there, and a second later, the dead patch sprang up into constantly shifting white light once again.
“You’ll need to do better than that,” Theo said softly.
Potter glanced at him. “You didn’t bring it back like that last time.”
“You didn’t cause as large a disruption last time.”
Potter shrugged, and said nothing.
“You don’t truly want to defeat me, do you?” Theo asked. It was something he had been thinking about, but hadn’t been sure of. Potter was easier to understand when he was near and Theo could see, as well as the unusual energy of his magic, all the minute expressions on his face and the way his breath hitched now and again.
“I think you’re less destructive than the last one,” Potter said. “That doesn’t mean you’re a good person, and it doesn’t mean the Ministry can tolerate you just gobbling up all the land you want in the middle of the country.”
“I didn’t ask if you thought I was a good person. I assume there are many people who do not fit that definition for you and yet whom you leave alone.”
“Whom,” Potter muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes.
Theo ignored that. “And I didn’t ask if the Ministry wanted to defeat me. I asked about you.”
“I’m an Auror. I work for the Ministry.”
“And do they control your every thought and action? Do they own you because they pay you?”
Potter’s eyes flashed, and Theo worked hard not to smile. He had Potter, this hook baited more subtly than the book had been.
“I can decide on my own that you’re a ridiculous, petty idiot who’s worth taking down,” Potter spat.
“Then think about it,” Theo advised him softly. “And I have a gift for you.” He tossed another book at Potter, a much smaller one that he could grip with one hand alone. Potter snatched it out of the air, and then caught his breath as he stared down at it.
“Books on wandlore are never just—free for the taking.”
“They’re free for me to give,” Theo said, and inclined his head, and smiled at Potter, and turned and Apparated back behind his fire. He was the only one who could do so without special permission or an amulet that worked only once and only one way. Enchanting those amulets to allow some of his people to go back and forth to jobs in “regular” magical Britain was one of the tasks that occupied him occasionally, others of his followers more regularly now that Theo had more of them.
Theo wondered, softly content, how long it would be before he was hanging one around Potter’s neck.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, violence, light angst, Dark Arts, Auror Harry Potter, Dark Lord Theodore Nott, humor
Wordcount: This part 4500
Summary: Theodore Nott has become a Dark Lord for the sake of carving out his own kingdom in the midst of magical Britain with everything ordered exactly to his specifications. Harry Potter just wants to know why, even years after killing Voldemort, he’s still catnip for Dark Lords.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics, one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It will have two parts as it got longer than expected.
Dark Temptation
The path to becoming a Dark Lord was shorter than Theo would have expected.
He had been content to sit out the war. Nothing that happened in it mattered greatly to him, except his own survival and the survival of a few of his friends, like Pansy and Blaise. Muggleborns were neither important enough to fight for nor important enough to kill. If Voldemort won, then Theo would pretend to always have been a loyal Death Eater. If Potter, Theo would go his own way and practice esoteric magic, the true love of his heart.
Potter won, and things should have worked out. Perhaps they would have, if not for the stupidity of Apollo Nott. Sometimes Theo wondered if his mother, Veronica Selwyn, had simply created Theo in a ritual that replicated herself except for making him a son. It would explain why Theo was so much more intelligent than his father.
Apollo had been a Death Eater. The Ministry seized his property when he was arrested. Theo could have let the Nott vault and the draughty house where he had never been happy after his mother’s death go. He still had her property, including a small house, and enough Galleons to live on. He could brew potions and cast basic Dark spells for those who needed them and maintain himself and his book habit that way.
But the Ministry decided to take the Nott library.
Theo had tried reasonable arguments, including that Apollo had barely added to the library and the vast majority of the books were simply old, not illegal or full of Dark Arts or even the kind that Hogwarts would have put in the Restricted Section to keep them out of the hands out of children. He had drawn up comparisons of his own library to the Hogwarts one and to the small libraries kept in various sections of the Ministry for Aurors, Unspeakables, and the like to use in research. He had found various relatives without Death Eater connections to swear they would house the books in their own homes and comb through them, handing anything illegal over to the Ministry at once.
The Aurors hadn’t cared. Caught up in the exhilaration of arresting Death Eater after Death Eater, they had told him no, and had tried to take the books.
That was when Theo had found out that he could, in fact, cast the Dark Arts spells he had always thought would simply remain a subject of academic study for him because he didn’t have the power to cast them. One simply had to be motivated enough.
When Nott House was surrounded by a ring of eternally burning fire that wouldn’t let through anyone Theo didn’t like, then Theo thought that might be the end of it. After all, the Ministry wouldn’t want to admit they’d lost to him. It would make them the laughingstock of the wizarding public. They could ignore him. Theo would go out of the country to purchase books and Potions ingredients, and would ignore them.
It turned out the Ministry cared, very much, about what was essentially a small independent country in the middle of their territory, and they didn’t care about how small it was. They threw Aurors at the fire. They tried devices that Theo thought the Unspeakables must have invented. They printed denunciations of him in the papers. (Theo had learned to cast a spell that would simply abstract the nearest paper from whoever held it, so he didn’t have to open the fire to owls). They talked gravely about “Dark Lord Nott” and how Theo was picking up from where the true Dark Lord had left off.
And that was when Theo began to think that if they called him that, he might as well behave like that. And there were all the books he wanted to own that he didn’t, and his mother’s Galleons wouldn’t last forever. And if he had more territory, he could have more houses, and more libraries. And if he had followers, he could have people to set to research and people to practice his newly-found Dark Arts skills with.
So he began to expand.
*
Harry stared at the ring of fire in front of him that had apparently burned without consuming all its kindling for five years, and shook his head slowly.
He had never seen anything like it. It definitely wasn’t Fiendfyre. It burned hot, clear white with now and then a tone of blue, not the red and gold and orange and black colors common to Fiendfyre. And it couldn’t be quenched with anything, including every variation of a water spell the Ministry had tried to throw at it. And it was a barrier to everyone and everything that tried to fly above it or tunnel beneath it, including brooms, nifflers, and those weird experimental moles with steel claws that the Unspeakables had tried.
(The last Harry knew, some of the moles had escaped and were making tunnels underneath the Ministry. People didn’t often stay late by themselves in the building anymore).
In the end, the Ministry had come to the same conclusion they probably always would. “A Dark Lord? Let’s throw Harry Potter at him.”
Harry sighed. He had only been a full-fledged Auror for two years, and yes, he’d faced down some Dark wizards, many of them former Death Eaters, and once a Dementor breakout. But he was no more powerful than anyone else—
(“That’s not true,” said a buzzing voice in his head. Harry gritted his teeth and ignored it).
And he was less experienced than a hell of a lot of other people. They should have given up before now, in Harry’s opinion. At least Theo Nott didn’t seem to be hurting anyone—unless they tried to burn books or take them away from him—and people were moving behind his fire line if they wanted to live somewhere that made very little magic illegal and let them ignore Ministry laws. Some of them were Muggleborn, even. Harry thought the Ministry coming to a treaty so Nott wouldn’t take over too much land or accidentally expose magic to Muggles was better than trying to defeat him.
But Kingsley was disturbed about it, believing that Nott, whose father had been a Death Eater, was on the verge of changing his mind and embracing Voldemort’s ideology. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have accepted the title of “Dark Lord.”
So here Harry was. And he had to make a good-faith effort on the fire before they would give up.
Harry frowned at the fire again, and decided that, since he didn’t know a spell to counter it, he would just do his best to bear down on it with the full force of his magic. He ignored the Elder Wand’s calm attentiveness from the wand holster on his left side—the holster Harry hadn’t even bought, it had just appeared there one morning all covered with skulls and holding the Elder Wand—and closed his eyes.
His accidental magic had never been as accidental as other people’s, Harry had learned after he’d started studying to become an Auror. A child might be upset that they didn’t get a biscuit and bring the ceiling crashing down. Harry, on the other hand, had wanted to escape from Dudley and had Apparated; had been angry at a teacher and had turned her hair blue; had wanted the cupboard where his things were locked to open when he was running away the summer before his third year and had unlocked it.
Aunt Marge inflating like she did was a bit of an outlier, admittedly. But Harry had wanted to do something that would embarrass her and make her stop talking, and that had worked.
Concentrate, Harry thought as he felt the magic slipping away from him, and he began to build it up around him again. The air went tense and hot and still. Harry leaned forwards a little, forcing his magic towards the fire.
I want it to go out. I want it to go out. I want—
With a splutter and a hiss, part of the fire did. Harry opened his eyes and found a path laid out in front of him straight across the line where the flames had been. The grass was blackened, but not smoldering, and Harry could see the walls of at least one house beyond it.
Harry hesitated, then shrugged. He couldn’t hear or see wards or any sorts of alarms. He took a step forwards.
Someone Apparated into place in front of him.
Harry snapped his (holly) wand into his hand and dropped into a defensive crouch. The figure had a thick cloak, ill-suited to the summer air around them, and dragonhide boots that looked as if they should be tromping through harsher terrain than the tall grass of a meadow. He didn’t wear a hood, but Harry didn’t recognize the pale, stern face.
Then he squinted, and decided that it did look a little like the older photographs of Theodore Nott on file. They had nothing more recent, since no one had been able to get beyond the fire in years. Harry nodded choppily. “Nott.”
Nott stared at him with storm-grey, distant eyes, and then said, “Potter.” He said nothing else.
Harry remained in the defensive posture. Nott knew all sorts of Dark magic, as evidenced by the fire barrier that he could keep moving when he wanted to, and the way that he’d Apparated people’s whole houses behind it when they wanted to join him. He would probably fire some sort of spell any second that Harry would be hard-pressed to block.
“How did you make the fire go out?”
Seriously? But then, the reports Harry had read about Nott also said that he had started this war over a library, of all things. Apparently he was more academic than Voldemort.
Hermione might sound like this if she ever became a Dark Lady, Harry thought, but he answered, “With will magic.” He didn’t know if that was the formal name or not. Accidental magic hardly applied, though, and wandless magic, from the theory he knew, was casting specific spell effects without a wand. You still used the incantation and probably a hand gesture that substituted for the wand.
“Will magic.” Nott stared at him, and then smiled. It was an odd smile, fascinated and creepy. “I would love to talk to you about it.”
“Uh, Nott. I’m here to stop you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a Dark Lord, and apparently that’s what Harry Potter is good for,” Harry grumbled. He didn’t resent the idea that he could take down Dark Lords, because, well, he could. But he resented the idea that he wasn’t good at much else.
“I’m not making a war,” Nott said. “I ask people if they want to join me. I only take land that’s already Unplottable. I offer beyond reasonable prices for books.”
“You’re defying the Ministry.”
“You did that in your time.”
Nott had tucked his chin into his chest, and his smile had changed. Harry didn’t know what it looked like now. He didn’t think he wanted to come up with a description. It made him bloody uncomfortable, that he did know. “Are you going to duel me?” he asked.
“I suppose we should see what you’re made of,” Nott agreed, and then a curse Harry had never seen before, dazzling yellow and shaped like a wide net, unfurled from his wand. Harry dodged and dropped to the ground to roll away before it.
When he came up, there was another curse heading for him, red and bright. Harry threw up a Protego and took the spell on it, although his shield cracked through almost all the way.
“Avada Kedavra Maxima!”
Three brilliant green bolts of light stabbed out from Nott’s wand, straight for Harry, and all of them aimed in a triangle such that he couldn’t simply dodge out of the way in a different direction. Harry threw his will up instinctively.
Protect me!
Part of Nott’s fire leaped out of the intact part of the barrier and straight into the way of two of the Killing Curses, stopping them long before they got anywhere near Harry. Harry dodged the one that was remaining on the right, and heard the Elder Wand buzzing angrily. It wanted him to draw and use it. Harry ignored it. It had its opinions, he had his, and his were always going to win.
“That was your will magic?” Nott asked. He still sounded calm, for all that he’d come close to killing Harry.
“Yeah.” Harry glared at him. “What, did you do that to force me to use it?”
“I thought you might not otherwise, because you knew I was interested in it.” Nott smiled at him again. “You are remarkable, Potter. Your magic is incredible.”
Harry said nothing, because responding to compliments from Dark Lords wasn’t really a Harry Potter thing.
“Would you not like to join me?” Nott asked, softly, coaxingly. “You could explore the parameters of your will magic within my circle of fire. The Ministry wouldn’t be able to touch you there or make demands on your time. And you would have access to my library, and be able to learn the kinds of magic you need to learn.”
“I don’t think I need any lessons on how to control my magic from you.”
“I mean the kind of magic necessary to control the wand you bear.” Nott nodded unerringly at the holster that held the Elder Wand. “And the nightmares and bouts of irrationality that come from your missing piece of soul.”
“I am not missing a piece of my soul!”
“Perhaps it was not yours originally. But you carried it for a long time, and I can see the gaping hole its loss produced in yours. You might as well call it yours. I have books on soul magic, the sort that have been banned and burned by the Ministry for fifty years.”
Harry felt cold. It was true that he’d had nightmare after nightmare in the years since the war. No longer the visions of Voldemort, but things that felt like memories or premonitions of him snapping and killing people. And sometimes he would lose control and just—want to scream at people and curse them until they went away.
Some of the same symptoms that had come about when Voldemort had made Horcruxes, he thought.
He snapped back to reality when he realized Nott had just stepped forwards and offered his hand. “Will you not come?” Nott asked again. “I promise that I will be gentle when I study you, in a way that the Unspeakables would not if they ever learned of your condition. You are too powerful to mistreat.”
Harry stared at him, appalled. “You were trying to kill me a minute ago!”
“But I didn’t.”
Harry just shook his head and said nothing. Nott was mental and couldn’t be reasoned with. Not unusual for a Dark Lord. At least now Harry could go back and tell the other Aurors what he’d discovered, and they could probably find other people with will magic.
“You get along with other people who tried to hurt you in the past,” Nott continued, his voice very soft. “I heard Draco Malfoy entered the Aurors, right? And some of the people who fought on the other side of the war from you were pardoned. You don’t mind working with them.”
“You know nothing about me, Nott.”
“I’d like to learn.”
Harry turned his back and Apparated away without a word. He’d also need to tell Kingsley that Nott had invented a major alteration of the Killing Curse.
Maybe they would send other people to go after him, Harry thought, now that Harry had proven his fiery barrier could be broken. And Harry could see about trying to do some research on the Elder Wand and soul magic.
*
Theo couldn’t stop his quick breathing or the swirling pressure of desire in his abdomen as he stared at the place where Potter had stood. He had felt nothing like this for years.
Well, for books, yes. But that desire to hold and touch and caress and study was—different than it was for a human.
As far as Theo knew, it was theoretically impossible for someone to have such command of will magic. And to be walking around with such a powerful wand without it forcing him into duels. And to have a piece of his soul missing without succumbing to the side-effects of necromantic rituals much earlier.
But Potter, of course, bent the rules and survived.
Theo glanced at his fiery barrier and shook his head. He would have to strengthen it with some spells that he would doubtless find in the Malfoy library. So far, the Ministry didn’t seem to have noticed that while Draco had become one of their Aurors, Malfoy Manor had disappeared and moved quietly beyond Theo’s border.
Theo would need to owl Potter from somewhere outside the border, but that was hardly a deterrent when the rewards were so great.
*
Harry’s hands trembled as he opened the package that he’d found on his desk that morning. An owl no one had seen must have brought it. Otherwise, he’d have had to fetch it from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement’s Detection Spell Specialists, most of them junior Hit Wizards.
There was no curse on it. But the aura of power it radiated made Harry’s hands sting and caused the Elder Wand to stir in its holster.
Secrets of the Soul’s Art.
Harry swallowed. He wanted to reject the book. He wanted to say that nothing in a book that looked like it talked about the creation of Horcruxes would ever be relevant to him.
But he didn’t know that, especially if he really did have a gap in his soul and his weird moods and nightmares were attributable to it. And he could hardly go searching for a copy of this book himself. If it had been banned by the Ministry for fifty years, he’d get in trouble for even mentioning it.
Harry turned the book over, and something fell out of the packaging, a small note. Harry read it with a scowl. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but he sure as hell knew the symbol at the top of the slip of parchment. Nott had started using it a few months after the Ministry had declared him a Dark Lord: a spread-winged raven surrounded by flames.
Potter,
I believe that you’ll find this book of value. And I want it back. I’m giving you a month with it. Then I’ll require you to bring it to the spot where you dimmed the fire at nine-o’clock at night on the thirtieth of August. If you don’t, the consequences will be unpleasant.
The note flared with white light that reminded Harry of the border around Nott’s lands and burned. Harry sighed and sat back, then cast a spell that would obscure the title of the book with a combination of a Disillusionment Charm and a Misdirection Hex that would make people uninterested in it. He used the same thing on his scar when he went most places in public.
Harry shook his head a little. He knew Hermione would scold him for even thinking of researching in the book instead of turning it over to the Ministry. She would have wanted to look at it herself, but in general, she did think that there were some books—a few—that were too dangerous to be available to the general public. This one would certainly be one of them.
But Harry already knew he would read it. He knew he wanted to survive, and control the effects of the missing Horcrux on him if possible.
He opened the book and began to read. He wouldn’t have any meetings or assignments of cases for at least an hour.
*
Potter was waiting where Theo had instructed him to be waiting, and that made Theo smile as he Apparated in. From what he knew—from what Draco had said—Potter was rarely obedient.
But he already looked better. The aura that had surrounded him before, pointing straight to the gap in his soul for anyone with the strength to sense it, had diminished. His magic no longer throbbed as if wounded.
The wand in his holster, whichever it was, still buzzed angrily and clashed with Potter’s power, but the book Theo had sent Potter hadn’t contained anything to help with that.
“You look better,” Theo said softly.
Potter stared at him in silence, his jaw set. His eyes blazed with defiance that Theo thought could probably endure much more hammering on the forge than Theo intended to give him. He just nodded and dug Secrets of the Soul’s Art out of the bag slung over his shoulder and held it out towards Theo.
Theo leaned towards him and acted for a moment as if he would float the book out of Potter’s hand to his own. Potter relaxed, as if he expected that to happen.
Then Theo took a quick, sidelong step and folded his hand around Potter’s instead. Potter tensed. His holly wand rose to jab into Theo’s throat.
Theo allowed it to happen. He could have stopped it, easily, and would have had he felt in danger. But Potter needed to feel in control of the situation. And Theo liked being this close to Potter, to the magic running like lava in his veins, and the strength that pulsed around him, whispering in a steady voice of dangers measured and survived.
Theo couldn’t hear most people’s magic unless he cast a special spell and made a supreme effort. That he could hear Potter’s without that was a delightful surprise.
“Going to hurt me, Potter? When I helped you?”
Potter’s throat worked. Then he shoved the book at Theo. “Here. Take it.”
Theo laughed as he did. “You really are not afraid of Dark Lords, are you?”
“Why would I be? I already defeated one a lot worse than you.”
“I’ve heard some of the details, and it sounds like a certain amount of that was luck, and a certain other amount wandlore.”
Potter gave a jerky shrug. “Yeah, I never claimed to be some all-powerful savior or anything. People who want to categorize me that way are wrong.”
Theo swept his hand down Potter’s jaw for a second. Potter’s eyes narrowed, but he stood still. Theo smiled. It was delightful, Potter’s resistance to fear that translated into an acceptance of being touched. It made him a target for seduction in ways that he probably didn’t even realize. Theo already suspected, just from watching Potter and seeing some of the same telltales as he had himself, that Potter hadn’t been touched often.
And Theo hadn’t wasted this last month. He had done his own research as Potter was delving into ways to combat the effects of a gap in the soul.
“I have it on good authority that this book contains some of the information the Dark Lord used to make himself immortal,” Theo murmured. Bribes and intimidation still worked on Horace Slughorn. “Why do you think he didn’t undertake to guard himself from the side-effects, the way you have learned to?”
“He was overconfident,” Potter replied instantly. “If he had this book, he probably read that section and thought it would never happen to him. Or he didn’t even bother with reading it, because the only thing that mattered to him was the information on Horcruxes.”
Theo nodded. “That was also my guess. I don’t plan to be that kind of Dark Lord, Potter. You’ll notice that my fire is still burning.”
Potter looked at it for a second, then at him. “I could change that for you if you wanted.”
“Be my guest.” In reality, Potter couldn’t bring down the entire barrier. Theo and the fire were tied to each other, the flames fueled by his life-force. As long as his heart beat, the fire wouldn’t burn out, and as long as the fire blazed, Theo wouldn’t die.
Potter concentrated on the fire. The air around him paused and seemed to quiver. Theo breathed in the heady scent of magic he barely understood, magic he had hardly ever been in the presence of. His hand twitched to touch Potter again, but he restrained it. He didn’t want to disrupt Potter’s concentration.
Potter breathed out. A larger section of the barrier than before turned into blackened grass, and Theo’s heart lurched in his chest, unpleasantly. But the rest of the barrier was still there, and a second later, the dead patch sprang up into constantly shifting white light once again.
“You’ll need to do better than that,” Theo said softly.
Potter glanced at him. “You didn’t bring it back like that last time.”
“You didn’t cause as large a disruption last time.”
Potter shrugged, and said nothing.
“You don’t truly want to defeat me, do you?” Theo asked. It was something he had been thinking about, but hadn’t been sure of. Potter was easier to understand when he was near and Theo could see, as well as the unusual energy of his magic, all the minute expressions on his face and the way his breath hitched now and again.
“I think you’re less destructive than the last one,” Potter said. “That doesn’t mean you’re a good person, and it doesn’t mean the Ministry can tolerate you just gobbling up all the land you want in the middle of the country.”
“I didn’t ask if you thought I was a good person. I assume there are many people who do not fit that definition for you and yet whom you leave alone.”
“Whom,” Potter muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes.
Theo ignored that. “And I didn’t ask if the Ministry wanted to defeat me. I asked about you.”
“I’m an Auror. I work for the Ministry.”
“And do they control your every thought and action? Do they own you because they pay you?”
Potter’s eyes flashed, and Theo worked hard not to smile. He had Potter, this hook baited more subtly than the book had been.
“I can decide on my own that you’re a ridiculous, petty idiot who’s worth taking down,” Potter spat.
“Then think about it,” Theo advised him softly. “And I have a gift for you.” He tossed another book at Potter, a much smaller one that he could grip with one hand alone. Potter snatched it out of the air, and then caught his breath as he stared down at it.
“Books on wandlore are never just—free for the taking.”
“They’re free for me to give,” Theo said, and inclined his head, and smiled at Potter, and turned and Apparated back behind his fire. He was the only one who could do so without special permission or an amulet that worked only once and only one way. Enchanting those amulets to allow some of his people to go back and forth to jobs in “regular” magical Britain was one of the tasks that occupied him occasionally, others of his followers more regularly now that Theo had more of them.
Theo wondered, softly content, how long it would be before he was hanging one around Potter’s neck.