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lomonaaerenTitle: Moorless
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Theo, mentions of other pairings
Content Notes: AU (Harry is not the Boy-Who-Lived), child abuse and neglect, honor bondage, orgasm denial, Dom/sub, angst, past character deaths, underage (18/17)
Wordcount: This part 4400
Summary: Harry, not the Boy-Who-Lived, grew up with the Dursleys and fell through the cracks when he got to Hogwarts. Theo grew up with a father who believed children should be seen and not heard. When they find each other in their seventh year, they cling to each other with all the strength they have.
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. This one, in response to several requests for Harry/Theo, will have two or three parts. Warning that this story gets very heavy in some parts.
Moorless
Harry rolled onto his back and turned his face up to the sun.
He had found that very few people came up to the top of the Astronomy Tower in the middle of the day. The Astronomy classes were all held at night, and snogging couples seemed to like the lower floors better. Harry could lie here, in the sun that was still warmer than anywhere else as October waned, and pretend that the heated stone under his skin was the touch of someone who loved him.
There was no one like that.
Harry had thought he might make friends at Hogwarts, once. It hadn’t worked out. The closest he’d come was when he was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team in second and third years. Fourth year there’d been no Quidditch due to the Tournament, fifth year Umbridge had disbanded the team and denied them permission to reform, and during sixth year, Harry had made a stupid attempt to get Snape to stop going after him and been given detention every night there was a practice. Katie Bell, the Captain for that year, had finally told Harry they were replacing him with Ginny Weasley as Seeker. “You understand, don’t you, Harry? We need someone who’s not having so many conflicts with the professors that they can’t get to practice.”
And Harry had smiled and said he understood. He did. He understood a lot of things.
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t want to think of that right now. He only had a few more months left at Hogwarts anyway, since he was in his seventh year, and after that, he could disappear into the Muggle world. He had enough gold to live lightly for a few years while he studied and got a Muggle education and caught up on all the things he’d missed, first because of the Dursleys and then being here. He could give up magic with ease. It had given him nothing worth keeping.
And then, maybe, finally, he would find a place he belonged.
Footsteps on the Tower’s stairs snapped Harry’s eyes open. He turned his head and squinted at the person stepping into sight.
One of the Slytherins. Nott. That was right. The one with dark hair and such silence about him that Harry had several times missed him sitting in a corner of the classroom when Harry thought he was the only one there.
But more than enough presence to make Harry feel uneasy about being up here. Harry rolled over, sat up, and averted his gaze.
Nott paused when he caught sight of him. Harry stood up and edged over to the side. The Hat had been wrong to put him in Gryffindor, Harry often thought now. He was cowardly enough to make a Slytherin, retreating when someone pressed too close.
He’d asked for Gryffindor to make his parents proud. His dead parents, who had died fighting to protect the Boy-Who-Lived, Neville Longbottom.
Not Harry.
Avoiding Nott’s eyes, he made his way back down the stairs inside the Tower, already letting his mind run into the grooves of the essay he had to write for Professor McGonagall’s class. It would be difficult to do well, but Harry was lucky. He only had to do it sort of well. Nothing that mattered for the NEWTs would matter to his future.
*
Theo stared after—yes, that was Harry Potter, wasn’t it? Theo made a point of knowing the names of everyone in his year, even the most useless.
Names were important. Names had clicked and rung in his head when Father had kept him Silenced for months at a time. Theo would read books and use his lips to shape the names even though he couldn’t speak. When he could, he would call out the names of house-elves just to hear them. He would carve them into the walls.
When he came to Hogwarts, he’d had to modify that habit. But he was still known for talking more in the Slytherin common room than almost anyone else.
Father would have been angry to hear that, a fact that could still make a smile dance on Theo’s lips.
He had come up here to speak aloud just because the silence he still fell into on a regular basis couldn’t always be dispelled by speaking in the Slytherin dormitories, not where people would hear him. The Dark Lord had been defeated during the summer by Longbottom, working under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and now people like Draco went around in a cloud of their own self-generated silences, glaring at people who dared to interrupt them. If Theo had known Potter was up here, he would have spoken to him, invited him to stay.
But presumably Potter had homework to do. Theo turned around, shaking his head, and began to speak aloud some of the thoughts that he’d had to keep caged up inside for the past week.
*
“Hi there, girl.”
Hedwig ducked her head and rubbed her beak enthusiastically against Harry’s face. Harry smiled and touched her breast feathers. Hedwig nuzzled close and stood with her head almost tucked into her own chest, letting Harry stroke her neck.
She at least loved him.
She was also the one hitch in Harry’s plans to disappear into the Muggle world. Someone would notice a snowy owl circling around and entering a house sooner or later. But on the other hand, he had months to perfect his grasp of the wards he would need to prevent anyone from noticing that. Magic that kept things invisible and undetectable wasn’t the sort that would get the Ministry called out to monitor him.
Harry had few people to write to, so Hedwig—an impulse purchase when Professor McGonagall had taken him to Diagon Alley—rarely got exercise. But he spent time with her in the Owlery every day, soothed by the soft hoots and shifting of the owls, the rustle of feathers, the soundless passage of wings as they swooped in and out of the windows.
Someone cleared their throat behind him. Harry stiffened, but Hedwig pecked at him, and he forcibly relaxed. She didn’t like it when he was tense.
Other people had a perfect right to come up to the Owlery, even during dinner, when it was usually deserted. Harry had to remember that.
He turned around and blinked a little when he saw it was Nott, the Slytherin who had surprised him on the roof of the Tower the other day. Harry nodded to him, ran one more hand across Hedwig’s breast feathers, and stepped back to leave.
“Wait.”
Harry glanced at Nott. They only had two NEWT classes in common, Charms and Transfiguration. Harry had dropped Defense, since he was good at it but didn’t have any practical need for it in the future, and since Snape was still teaching it after You-Know-Who’s defeat. Harry wondered if Nott was going to ask him about classwork. It was the only thing he could comprehend Nott asking him.
“You’re Harry Potter, right?” Nott didn’t really speak the words as a question, though. “I wanted to talk to you.”
It took a long moment for the words to struggle up Harry’s throat, working against the force of his astonishment. “All right,” he said. “But you didn’t look as though you needed any help in Charms or Transfiguration. You’re one of the smartest people here.”
Nott blinked twice and said, “It wasn’t about Charms or Transfiguration. Why did you run away when I saw you on the roof of the Astronomy Tower the other day?”
“You looked like you were there for something. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“But you were there first.”
“So?”
Nott looked baffled. It was the first time Harry had ever seen him look that way. Harry wanted to sigh. Of course it would be him, without human friends and just all-around useless person, who made Nott do that. “But…why were you there? Why are you in the Owlery? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Gryffindor who’s alone as much as you are. Slytherins, yes.”
Dazed, Harry reflected that Nott talked a lot more than he’d ever known about. It made Nott’s silences in classrooms even more unusual. “The others were pretty close friends from the beginning,” he said with a jerky shrug. It was a bit of a lie. Seamus and Dean had been close from the beginning, and so had Parvati and Lavender, Neville and Ron. But Neville and Ron hadn’t become friends with Hermione until after something involving a troll that made them all exchange private smiles when it came up. Harry had tried to befriend Hermione, but he wasn’t smart enough, and then it was too late. “I don’t really fit in.”
“You don’t have friends in other Houses?”
“I didn’t even approach Slytherin,” Harry said, with a glance at Nott’s snake-shaped tie pin that he knew Nott was quick enough to catch. “And I’m just not great at making friends.” It was the truth. Harry wasn’t smart enough for the Ravenclaws or nice enough for the Hufflepuffs, and when he did try with them, it was like everyone else was dancing to music, and Harry was half a beat behind.
“Okay,” Nott said. “So you spend time with your owl.”
‘
“Yeah.” Nott didn’t sound obviously judgmental or pitying, but Harry could have lived with it if he was. It was the truth.
And this was the longest conversation he had had that wasn’t with a professor or about homework in at least two years. It made Harry twitch, a bit.
“Did you know, when I came in, for a minute I thought no one human was here?”
Nott was looking straight at Harry as if he thought that ought to be significant to him, but Harry didn’t know why. Not everyone spoke as much as Nott did. “I wasn’t talking aloud.”
“No,” Nott said, and at least his voice had dropped down and was quiet now. “I mean I was looking directly at you, or the place where you should be, and for a minute I thought one of the ghosts was here. I could see through you. You were transparent. How did you do that?”
Harry shivered a little. Neville had an Invisibility Cloak that Harry had heard about and seen once or twice, but he knew very well it wasn’t anything like that. He shrugged.
“Potter?”
“It happens sometimes,” Harry said. “I’m not very good at controlling my magic. I’m just an average student, you know. My accidental magic still sometimes escapes my control and makes me do things like that.”
Nott’s eyes widened. “That’s not—”
“Have to go,” Harry said, and hurried out of the Owlery, listening behind him for any sound of footsteps following. He relaxed when there were none. Nott might be curious about what was happening with Harry’s magic, but not enough to actually chase him down.
Harry did pause on the stairs and stare at his hand. It was solid. He could reach out and pinch the skin on the back of his hand the way Dudley used to like to do and feel both the skin and the pain.
Right now.
Sometimes Harry’s magic really answered his desires, although not usually in class. And if one of those desires was simply leaving the magical world without really caring about how he did it…
The Muggle world was an ideal, not a definite plan.
Harry clattered down the rest of the stairs.
*
Theo rapped his fingers on the wall, and jumped when a bird hooted angrily. He whipped around to see Potter’s snowy owl watching him, her wings half-spread as if she was going to jump off her perch and fly at him.
“I didn’t chase him away,” Theo said softly. He would have preferred that Potter stay and explain what the hell was going on. If nothing else, it might have explained the mystery of his magic. Accidental magic, Theo’s arse.
And that bit about not having any friends in his year or other Houses was true, but Theo couldn’t figure out why. Potter didn’t have personally off-putting mannerisms the way Malfoy did. He hadn’t been a Death Eater’s child. His parents were heroes for dying defending the Boy-Who-Lived.
Theo snorted at that particular thought. Yes, well, there were some people who knew otherwise, but it wasn’t like they were going to spread the truth around when the public story so perfectly fit the legend and the whole magical world was encouraged to fall at Longbottom’s feet.
Potter’s owl gave another hoot, a softer one. Theo went up to her and thrust a hand out. Most of the time, post-owls didn’t actually attack human beings unless those people threatened the owls’ humans or attacked first. Theo had had better luck with owls than with some of his Housemates.
It worked now. Potter’s owl twisted her head slowly back and forth, then stretched out a foot and edged onto Theo’s arm.
“You’re a beauty,” Theo murmured, stroking her feathers. “And I have to think that you wouldn’t like it if Potter faded, or became a ghost, or whatever it was he was doing.” He ran his fingers over her breast feathers, and she blinked in a way that told him it was probably a frequent gesture from Potter. “Hey, girl, would you like to carry a message to Potter from me?”
The snowy owl hooted excitedly.
*
Harry jumped when Hedwig flew in with the morning post-owls and slanted down towards him. She visited him all the time, but she was never carrying packages or letters when she did so. Harry just wasn’t the kind of student who got packages or letters.
He heard the chatter near him die down as he reached over and slowly untied the letter from her leg. Harry felt his face heat up under the stares. He knew it didn’t mean they thought he had done anything wrong, the way it would have on Privet Drive, but he still didn’t like being the focus of attention.
“What’s that, Potter?” Ron leaned over.
“A letter,” Harry said, and unsealed the envelope. Hedwig nudged him and chirred.
“What’s it say?” Hermione was reaching over his shoulder.
“Do you mind?” Harry snapped, louder than he’d meant to, and turned to stare at her. She fell back in her chair, looking shocked. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had raised his voice to her. If ever? It usually happened the other way around, especially after his disastrous attempt to stand up to Snape last year.
“Hey, don’t yell at her!” Ron said, flushing brightly.
“Come on, Ron, leave Harry alone,” Neville said. He was the only one who called Harry by his first name, despite them all sharing classes and a common room for seven years, and a dormitory in the case of Harry and the other boys. “The letter’s his private business. Hermione, you don’t need to see it.”
Hermione subsided with a frown that Harry could easily translate. She didn’t need to see it, but she wanted to, and for some people, that was the same thing as having permission.
Harry shuddered at the thought of them looking over his shoulder while he read, and held out an arm for Hedwig. She hopped on happily enough. Harry stood up.
“I hope we haven’t chased you away from breakfast,” Neville said, his brow crinkling. The lightning bolt scar had shrunk to a small silver line that you would have to look for carefully to know it was there after Voldemort’s defeat.
“No, it’s okay,” Harry said. “I was done.” He walked away from the Great Hall, flushing as he felt more people staring at him. He hated that.
He could feel his left leg start to thin out and go transparent, foot not touching the floor, and he concentrated hard. That was not going to happen right now. He didn’t want to disappear, especially with so many people watching. He just wanted to get out of their sight.
He ducked out of the Great Hall, and find a private alcove to read the letter.
Potter,
I’m sending this message with your owl to apologize, and also to tell you I’d like to talk to you more, about magic and privacy and other things. How does the top of the Astronomy Tower at noon on Saturday sound to you?
Theo.
That’s right, Harry thought, after a long second of forcing his numb brain to work. Nott’s first name is Theodore.
Harry stared at the letter. It was weird enough that Nott had shown up a few times in the places where Harry had been, and weirder still that he had decided he should talk to Harry instead of just ignoring him like most people did. It wasn’t like Harry could offer Nott anything in return, after all, like tutoring or intelligent conversation.
Hedwig hooted at him. Harry looked up at her, and Hedwig nipped gently at his ear.
“What? You think I should write back?”
Hedwig waved her wings around excitedly.
Harry laughed a little. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” Worst case scenario, Nott would just learn what everyone else had learned, that Harry was awkward and ignorant, and would stop writing to him.
Best case scenario…
Harry didn’t let himself think about that.
*
“I’m here, Nott.”
Potter’s voice was unnaturally quiet, Theo thought. He probably hadn’t been under Silencing Charms most of his life, but he still spoke as though he was afraid to take up space, as though someone might get angry at him for doing so. He sat down on the top of the Astronomy Tower with quite a bit of space between them and stared silently at Theo.
Theo was too eager for a conversation partner to let Potter’s little oddities put him off. “Good,” he said. “So what’s the reason that your body seems to disappear sometimes?”
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
“I asked you here partially because I wanted to discuss it. Because it’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen.”
Potter blinked at him for long moments. Then he shook his head. “Why, though? You grew up in the magical world. You’ve probably seen and cast more magic than I could ever remember.” His voice was wistful.
Theo opened his mouth to talk, not at all reluctant to brag about his academic achievements, but managed to stop himself. Potter’s voice echoed in his ears. “Wait. You didn’t grow up in the magical world?”
Potter shrank a little backwards, even though he didn’t move. Theo was absolutely sure that for a second, his shoulder went transparent and flickered. Not like the way that a ghost would disappear to move through a wall, or someone would vanish under a Disillusionment Charm. Those things were still solid (well, for a given value of “solid,” with ghosts). Potter’s shoulder looked as if it just wasn’t there anymore.
That was driving Theo more mental by the second.
“No,” Potter said softly. “My mother’s Muggle relatives.” Then he shut up.
Theo blinked at him. There was no reason for the son of two of the most famous people in the first war to have grown up in the Muggle world, he thought. Even if more people knew the truth of his parents, that wouldn’t have been a reason to leave him with Muggles. It would have been a reason to raise him “properly” and watch him very, very closely, in case Potter started following the same path as Lily and James Potter had.
“Why?”
“No Potter relatives left. What was it like, growing up as a wizard?”
Potter sounded so wistful that Theo allowed himself to talk about his childhood, in a way that he rarely did with anyone anymore. How he missed his mother, who had died when he was five of a potion that had gone badly wrong. How he had mastered wandless magic that would layer a skin-tight shield over him for protection when he was six. How he wanted to be good at Potions but not pursue it as a passion, in case he ended up like his mother.
He didn’t say much about his father. Potter didn’t ask. He looked utterly enthralled, lying there and listening, and Theo felt an odd sensation pour over him like warm oil. It was the sensation of being able to say all that he wanted, of talking enough.
At last, he paused, and conjured a glass of water to swallow. Potter stretched and rolled over as though surprised by how much time had passed and how cramped his arms and legs were. Theo stretched out himself. “Your turn. What was it like, growing up Muggle?”
In an instant, all the tension that had flown out of Potter during the hours he’d listened to Theo flew back. His shoulders hunched, and he said, “Boring. Compared to the way that you grew up. Muggles have to do everything by hand, you know.”
“But I thought they had…machines? To cook and wash dishes and the like?”
“Oh, yeah. They do. But you have to put the dishes in the machine by hand, and take them out that way. No Summoning, no Repair or Cleaning Charms, no quick healing.”
Theo had got good down the years at listening to voices, what they said and didn’t say. And he saw the way that Potter kept his head ducked as he spoke, and the way his voice went a little low and dry on the last words.
Surprise stirred inside Theo. Suspicion. Anger.
“They hurt you, didn’t they?”
Potter vanished.
Theo stumbled to his feet, staring around in shock. There had been no crack of Apparition, and Theo really didn’t think Potter could have mastered silent Apparition. That was if there even was a way to silently Apparate inside the Hogwarts grounds, which Theo knew very well there wasn’t.
“Potter?” he asked.
Silence answered him.
*
Harry came back together on the staircase that led up to the Astronomy Tower, his face hot with tears.
Then he pulled himself back together figuratively as well as literally, and shook his head, wiping the tears away. No more came. That was—that had been the worst pulse he’d ever felt, as he called them, but it didn’t matter much. He had come back together. He wasn’t floating nothingness, silent bolts of perception striking through the air, never to be touched again.
He had never vanished entirely for that long before. The first times had been when he was a child in the cupboard, and he would go away into nothingness when the Dursleys left him for a particularly long time. It was just a way to pass some time mindlessly, and sometimes his body as well as his mind was affected by it.
Harry had once hoped it would stop happening when he went to Hogwarts. He would make friends there, ones who knew nothing about his relatives or how Harry was always blamed for things Dudley did, and he would be able to smile and laugh and play Quidditch and study with his friends and perform great feats of magic, and no one would harm him again, except during the summers.
It hadn’t happened. Staying with the Dursleys too long had damaged the part of him that could make friends, Harry thought. It was the reason he was going back to the Muggle world.
It was the reason he vanished.
He’d vanished in front of Nott, too, the only person in a long time who’d wanted to talk to Harry. Nott probably thought he was dangerous now, or stupid, or both. Harry shut his eyes and winced.
Then he kept going, down the stairs, the way he always did. Until the day he vanished completely, then he would just have to keep going.
*
Theo straightened up from leaning against the stones near the Great Hall’s entrance. Draco had tried to ask him what he was doing there earlier, but Theo had sneered at him until he went away.
There was Potter, walking along with his satchel slung over one shoulder and his hands in his robe pockets. He caught Theo’s eye for a second and froze.
Theo waited, but Potter didn’t come over to him. Theo rolled his eyes and walked over. A few people glanced their way, but there was little curiosity in their eyes, more pity. Potter was right. He didn’t have any Gryffindor friends.
“Where did you go yesterday?” Theo asked.
“Away.”
Potter was avoiding his eyes, shoulders still hunched the way they’d been yesterday when Theo had started talking to him about the Muggle world. Theo shook his head. He wanted to solve the mystery, wanted to get Potter talking—Theo enjoyed the sound of his own voice, but a monologue was never as much fun as a conversation—but it wasn’t likely to be a good idea right now.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get a basket from the house-elves and go eat outside. I think this is the last really fine day we’ll have before winter.” And he reached out and touched Potter on the shoulder, because he wasn’t sure he had the other boy’s attention.
Potter spun around, eyes wide. Theo stared calmly back at him, eyebrows arching. Potter swallowed.
“I—you want to eat with me?”
Normally, this kind of cringing deference would have irritated Theo. But thinking about what the Muggles had probably done to Potter, and the way that the other Gryffindors just ignored him, and the expression of interest on his face as he’d listened to Theo explain even minor details of growing up magical, made him only sad. And angry.
And determined to get to know Potter better.
“Yes, why not?” he asked.
As he’d expected, Potter didn’t question him. “Okay,” he said, and followed Theo to the kitchens.
Theo stilled all the questions he wanted to ask on his tongue, and started talking about the modifications he’d made to a potion the other day that meant he could successfully combine powdered moonstone and powdered ruby without the potion exploding. Potter, who wasn’t taking NEWT Potions, still listened and absorbed like a drought absorbing rain.
Theo found it—very pleasant.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairing: Harry/Theo, mentions of other pairings
Content Notes: AU (Harry is not the Boy-Who-Lived), child abuse and neglect, honor bondage, orgasm denial, Dom/sub, angst, past character deaths, underage (18/17)
Wordcount: This part 4400
Summary: Harry, not the Boy-Who-Lived, grew up with the Dursleys and fell through the cracks when he got to Hogwarts. Theo grew up with a father who believed children should be seen and not heard. When they find each other in their seventh year, they cling to each other with all the strength they have.
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. This one, in response to several requests for Harry/Theo, will have two or three parts. Warning that this story gets very heavy in some parts.
Moorless
Harry rolled onto his back and turned his face up to the sun.
He had found that very few people came up to the top of the Astronomy Tower in the middle of the day. The Astronomy classes were all held at night, and snogging couples seemed to like the lower floors better. Harry could lie here, in the sun that was still warmer than anywhere else as October waned, and pretend that the heated stone under his skin was the touch of someone who loved him.
There was no one like that.
Harry had thought he might make friends at Hogwarts, once. It hadn’t worked out. The closest he’d come was when he was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team in second and third years. Fourth year there’d been no Quidditch due to the Tournament, fifth year Umbridge had disbanded the team and denied them permission to reform, and during sixth year, Harry had made a stupid attempt to get Snape to stop going after him and been given detention every night there was a practice. Katie Bell, the Captain for that year, had finally told Harry they were replacing him with Ginny Weasley as Seeker. “You understand, don’t you, Harry? We need someone who’s not having so many conflicts with the professors that they can’t get to practice.”
And Harry had smiled and said he understood. He did. He understood a lot of things.
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t want to think of that right now. He only had a few more months left at Hogwarts anyway, since he was in his seventh year, and after that, he could disappear into the Muggle world. He had enough gold to live lightly for a few years while he studied and got a Muggle education and caught up on all the things he’d missed, first because of the Dursleys and then being here. He could give up magic with ease. It had given him nothing worth keeping.
And then, maybe, finally, he would find a place he belonged.
Footsteps on the Tower’s stairs snapped Harry’s eyes open. He turned his head and squinted at the person stepping into sight.
One of the Slytherins. Nott. That was right. The one with dark hair and such silence about him that Harry had several times missed him sitting in a corner of the classroom when Harry thought he was the only one there.
But more than enough presence to make Harry feel uneasy about being up here. Harry rolled over, sat up, and averted his gaze.
Nott paused when he caught sight of him. Harry stood up and edged over to the side. The Hat had been wrong to put him in Gryffindor, Harry often thought now. He was cowardly enough to make a Slytherin, retreating when someone pressed too close.
He’d asked for Gryffindor to make his parents proud. His dead parents, who had died fighting to protect the Boy-Who-Lived, Neville Longbottom.
Not Harry.
Avoiding Nott’s eyes, he made his way back down the stairs inside the Tower, already letting his mind run into the grooves of the essay he had to write for Professor McGonagall’s class. It would be difficult to do well, but Harry was lucky. He only had to do it sort of well. Nothing that mattered for the NEWTs would matter to his future.
*
Theo stared after—yes, that was Harry Potter, wasn’t it? Theo made a point of knowing the names of everyone in his year, even the most useless.
Names were important. Names had clicked and rung in his head when Father had kept him Silenced for months at a time. Theo would read books and use his lips to shape the names even though he couldn’t speak. When he could, he would call out the names of house-elves just to hear them. He would carve them into the walls.
When he came to Hogwarts, he’d had to modify that habit. But he was still known for talking more in the Slytherin common room than almost anyone else.
Father would have been angry to hear that, a fact that could still make a smile dance on Theo’s lips.
He had come up here to speak aloud just because the silence he still fell into on a regular basis couldn’t always be dispelled by speaking in the Slytherin dormitories, not where people would hear him. The Dark Lord had been defeated during the summer by Longbottom, working under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and now people like Draco went around in a cloud of their own self-generated silences, glaring at people who dared to interrupt them. If Theo had known Potter was up here, he would have spoken to him, invited him to stay.
But presumably Potter had homework to do. Theo turned around, shaking his head, and began to speak aloud some of the thoughts that he’d had to keep caged up inside for the past week.
*
“Hi there, girl.”
Hedwig ducked her head and rubbed her beak enthusiastically against Harry’s face. Harry smiled and touched her breast feathers. Hedwig nuzzled close and stood with her head almost tucked into her own chest, letting Harry stroke her neck.
She at least loved him.
She was also the one hitch in Harry’s plans to disappear into the Muggle world. Someone would notice a snowy owl circling around and entering a house sooner or later. But on the other hand, he had months to perfect his grasp of the wards he would need to prevent anyone from noticing that. Magic that kept things invisible and undetectable wasn’t the sort that would get the Ministry called out to monitor him.
Harry had few people to write to, so Hedwig—an impulse purchase when Professor McGonagall had taken him to Diagon Alley—rarely got exercise. But he spent time with her in the Owlery every day, soothed by the soft hoots and shifting of the owls, the rustle of feathers, the soundless passage of wings as they swooped in and out of the windows.
Someone cleared their throat behind him. Harry stiffened, but Hedwig pecked at him, and he forcibly relaxed. She didn’t like it when he was tense.
Other people had a perfect right to come up to the Owlery, even during dinner, when it was usually deserted. Harry had to remember that.
He turned around and blinked a little when he saw it was Nott, the Slytherin who had surprised him on the roof of the Tower the other day. Harry nodded to him, ran one more hand across Hedwig’s breast feathers, and stepped back to leave.
“Wait.”
Harry glanced at Nott. They only had two NEWT classes in common, Charms and Transfiguration. Harry had dropped Defense, since he was good at it but didn’t have any practical need for it in the future, and since Snape was still teaching it after You-Know-Who’s defeat. Harry wondered if Nott was going to ask him about classwork. It was the only thing he could comprehend Nott asking him.
“You’re Harry Potter, right?” Nott didn’t really speak the words as a question, though. “I wanted to talk to you.”
It took a long moment for the words to struggle up Harry’s throat, working against the force of his astonishment. “All right,” he said. “But you didn’t look as though you needed any help in Charms or Transfiguration. You’re one of the smartest people here.”
Nott blinked twice and said, “It wasn’t about Charms or Transfiguration. Why did you run away when I saw you on the roof of the Astronomy Tower the other day?”
“You looked like you were there for something. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“But you were there first.”
“So?”
Nott looked baffled. It was the first time Harry had ever seen him look that way. Harry wanted to sigh. Of course it would be him, without human friends and just all-around useless person, who made Nott do that. “But…why were you there? Why are you in the Owlery? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Gryffindor who’s alone as much as you are. Slytherins, yes.”
Dazed, Harry reflected that Nott talked a lot more than he’d ever known about. It made Nott’s silences in classrooms even more unusual. “The others were pretty close friends from the beginning,” he said with a jerky shrug. It was a bit of a lie. Seamus and Dean had been close from the beginning, and so had Parvati and Lavender, Neville and Ron. But Neville and Ron hadn’t become friends with Hermione until after something involving a troll that made them all exchange private smiles when it came up. Harry had tried to befriend Hermione, but he wasn’t smart enough, and then it was too late. “I don’t really fit in.”
“You don’t have friends in other Houses?”
“I didn’t even approach Slytherin,” Harry said, with a glance at Nott’s snake-shaped tie pin that he knew Nott was quick enough to catch. “And I’m just not great at making friends.” It was the truth. Harry wasn’t smart enough for the Ravenclaws or nice enough for the Hufflepuffs, and when he did try with them, it was like everyone else was dancing to music, and Harry was half a beat behind.
“Okay,” Nott said. “So you spend time with your owl.”
‘
“Yeah.” Nott didn’t sound obviously judgmental or pitying, but Harry could have lived with it if he was. It was the truth.
And this was the longest conversation he had had that wasn’t with a professor or about homework in at least two years. It made Harry twitch, a bit.
“Did you know, when I came in, for a minute I thought no one human was here?”
Nott was looking straight at Harry as if he thought that ought to be significant to him, but Harry didn’t know why. Not everyone spoke as much as Nott did. “I wasn’t talking aloud.”
“No,” Nott said, and at least his voice had dropped down and was quiet now. “I mean I was looking directly at you, or the place where you should be, and for a minute I thought one of the ghosts was here. I could see through you. You were transparent. How did you do that?”
Harry shivered a little. Neville had an Invisibility Cloak that Harry had heard about and seen once or twice, but he knew very well it wasn’t anything like that. He shrugged.
“Potter?”
“It happens sometimes,” Harry said. “I’m not very good at controlling my magic. I’m just an average student, you know. My accidental magic still sometimes escapes my control and makes me do things like that.”
Nott’s eyes widened. “That’s not—”
“Have to go,” Harry said, and hurried out of the Owlery, listening behind him for any sound of footsteps following. He relaxed when there were none. Nott might be curious about what was happening with Harry’s magic, but not enough to actually chase him down.
Harry did pause on the stairs and stare at his hand. It was solid. He could reach out and pinch the skin on the back of his hand the way Dudley used to like to do and feel both the skin and the pain.
Right now.
Sometimes Harry’s magic really answered his desires, although not usually in class. And if one of those desires was simply leaving the magical world without really caring about how he did it…
The Muggle world was an ideal, not a definite plan.
Harry clattered down the rest of the stairs.
*
Theo rapped his fingers on the wall, and jumped when a bird hooted angrily. He whipped around to see Potter’s snowy owl watching him, her wings half-spread as if she was going to jump off her perch and fly at him.
“I didn’t chase him away,” Theo said softly. He would have preferred that Potter stay and explain what the hell was going on. If nothing else, it might have explained the mystery of his magic. Accidental magic, Theo’s arse.
And that bit about not having any friends in his year or other Houses was true, but Theo couldn’t figure out why. Potter didn’t have personally off-putting mannerisms the way Malfoy did. He hadn’t been a Death Eater’s child. His parents were heroes for dying defending the Boy-Who-Lived.
Theo snorted at that particular thought. Yes, well, there were some people who knew otherwise, but it wasn’t like they were going to spread the truth around when the public story so perfectly fit the legend and the whole magical world was encouraged to fall at Longbottom’s feet.
Potter’s owl gave another hoot, a softer one. Theo went up to her and thrust a hand out. Most of the time, post-owls didn’t actually attack human beings unless those people threatened the owls’ humans or attacked first. Theo had had better luck with owls than with some of his Housemates.
It worked now. Potter’s owl twisted her head slowly back and forth, then stretched out a foot and edged onto Theo’s arm.
“You’re a beauty,” Theo murmured, stroking her feathers. “And I have to think that you wouldn’t like it if Potter faded, or became a ghost, or whatever it was he was doing.” He ran his fingers over her breast feathers, and she blinked in a way that told him it was probably a frequent gesture from Potter. “Hey, girl, would you like to carry a message to Potter from me?”
The snowy owl hooted excitedly.
*
Harry jumped when Hedwig flew in with the morning post-owls and slanted down towards him. She visited him all the time, but she was never carrying packages or letters when she did so. Harry just wasn’t the kind of student who got packages or letters.
He heard the chatter near him die down as he reached over and slowly untied the letter from her leg. Harry felt his face heat up under the stares. He knew it didn’t mean they thought he had done anything wrong, the way it would have on Privet Drive, but he still didn’t like being the focus of attention.
“What’s that, Potter?” Ron leaned over.
“A letter,” Harry said, and unsealed the envelope. Hedwig nudged him and chirred.
“What’s it say?” Hermione was reaching over his shoulder.
“Do you mind?” Harry snapped, louder than he’d meant to, and turned to stare at her. She fell back in her chair, looking shocked. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had raised his voice to her. If ever? It usually happened the other way around, especially after his disastrous attempt to stand up to Snape last year.
“Hey, don’t yell at her!” Ron said, flushing brightly.
“Come on, Ron, leave Harry alone,” Neville said. He was the only one who called Harry by his first name, despite them all sharing classes and a common room for seven years, and a dormitory in the case of Harry and the other boys. “The letter’s his private business. Hermione, you don’t need to see it.”
Hermione subsided with a frown that Harry could easily translate. She didn’t need to see it, but she wanted to, and for some people, that was the same thing as having permission.
Harry shuddered at the thought of them looking over his shoulder while he read, and held out an arm for Hedwig. She hopped on happily enough. Harry stood up.
“I hope we haven’t chased you away from breakfast,” Neville said, his brow crinkling. The lightning bolt scar had shrunk to a small silver line that you would have to look for carefully to know it was there after Voldemort’s defeat.
“No, it’s okay,” Harry said. “I was done.” He walked away from the Great Hall, flushing as he felt more people staring at him. He hated that.
He could feel his left leg start to thin out and go transparent, foot not touching the floor, and he concentrated hard. That was not going to happen right now. He didn’t want to disappear, especially with so many people watching. He just wanted to get out of their sight.
He ducked out of the Great Hall, and find a private alcove to read the letter.
Potter,
I’m sending this message with your owl to apologize, and also to tell you I’d like to talk to you more, about magic and privacy and other things. How does the top of the Astronomy Tower at noon on Saturday sound to you?
Theo.
That’s right, Harry thought, after a long second of forcing his numb brain to work. Nott’s first name is Theodore.
Harry stared at the letter. It was weird enough that Nott had shown up a few times in the places where Harry had been, and weirder still that he had decided he should talk to Harry instead of just ignoring him like most people did. It wasn’t like Harry could offer Nott anything in return, after all, like tutoring or intelligent conversation.
Hedwig hooted at him. Harry looked up at her, and Hedwig nipped gently at his ear.
“What? You think I should write back?”
Hedwig waved her wings around excitedly.
Harry laughed a little. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” Worst case scenario, Nott would just learn what everyone else had learned, that Harry was awkward and ignorant, and would stop writing to him.
Best case scenario…
Harry didn’t let himself think about that.
*
“I’m here, Nott.”
Potter’s voice was unnaturally quiet, Theo thought. He probably hadn’t been under Silencing Charms most of his life, but he still spoke as though he was afraid to take up space, as though someone might get angry at him for doing so. He sat down on the top of the Astronomy Tower with quite a bit of space between them and stared silently at Theo.
Theo was too eager for a conversation partner to let Potter’s little oddities put him off. “Good,” he said. “So what’s the reason that your body seems to disappear sometimes?”
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
“I asked you here partially because I wanted to discuss it. Because it’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen.”
Potter blinked at him for long moments. Then he shook his head. “Why, though? You grew up in the magical world. You’ve probably seen and cast more magic than I could ever remember.” His voice was wistful.
Theo opened his mouth to talk, not at all reluctant to brag about his academic achievements, but managed to stop himself. Potter’s voice echoed in his ears. “Wait. You didn’t grow up in the magical world?”
Potter shrank a little backwards, even though he didn’t move. Theo was absolutely sure that for a second, his shoulder went transparent and flickered. Not like the way that a ghost would disappear to move through a wall, or someone would vanish under a Disillusionment Charm. Those things were still solid (well, for a given value of “solid,” with ghosts). Potter’s shoulder looked as if it just wasn’t there anymore.
That was driving Theo more mental by the second.
“No,” Potter said softly. “My mother’s Muggle relatives.” Then he shut up.
Theo blinked at him. There was no reason for the son of two of the most famous people in the first war to have grown up in the Muggle world, he thought. Even if more people knew the truth of his parents, that wouldn’t have been a reason to leave him with Muggles. It would have been a reason to raise him “properly” and watch him very, very closely, in case Potter started following the same path as Lily and James Potter had.
“Why?”
“No Potter relatives left. What was it like, growing up as a wizard?”
Potter sounded so wistful that Theo allowed himself to talk about his childhood, in a way that he rarely did with anyone anymore. How he missed his mother, who had died when he was five of a potion that had gone badly wrong. How he had mastered wandless magic that would layer a skin-tight shield over him for protection when he was six. How he wanted to be good at Potions but not pursue it as a passion, in case he ended up like his mother.
He didn’t say much about his father. Potter didn’t ask. He looked utterly enthralled, lying there and listening, and Theo felt an odd sensation pour over him like warm oil. It was the sensation of being able to say all that he wanted, of talking enough.
At last, he paused, and conjured a glass of water to swallow. Potter stretched and rolled over as though surprised by how much time had passed and how cramped his arms and legs were. Theo stretched out himself. “Your turn. What was it like, growing up Muggle?”
In an instant, all the tension that had flown out of Potter during the hours he’d listened to Theo flew back. His shoulders hunched, and he said, “Boring. Compared to the way that you grew up. Muggles have to do everything by hand, you know.”
“But I thought they had…machines? To cook and wash dishes and the like?”
“Oh, yeah. They do. But you have to put the dishes in the machine by hand, and take them out that way. No Summoning, no Repair or Cleaning Charms, no quick healing.”
Theo had got good down the years at listening to voices, what they said and didn’t say. And he saw the way that Potter kept his head ducked as he spoke, and the way his voice went a little low and dry on the last words.
Surprise stirred inside Theo. Suspicion. Anger.
“They hurt you, didn’t they?”
Potter vanished.
Theo stumbled to his feet, staring around in shock. There had been no crack of Apparition, and Theo really didn’t think Potter could have mastered silent Apparition. That was if there even was a way to silently Apparate inside the Hogwarts grounds, which Theo knew very well there wasn’t.
“Potter?” he asked.
Silence answered him.
*
Harry came back together on the staircase that led up to the Astronomy Tower, his face hot with tears.
Then he pulled himself back together figuratively as well as literally, and shook his head, wiping the tears away. No more came. That was—that had been the worst pulse he’d ever felt, as he called them, but it didn’t matter much. He had come back together. He wasn’t floating nothingness, silent bolts of perception striking through the air, never to be touched again.
He had never vanished entirely for that long before. The first times had been when he was a child in the cupboard, and he would go away into nothingness when the Dursleys left him for a particularly long time. It was just a way to pass some time mindlessly, and sometimes his body as well as his mind was affected by it.
Harry had once hoped it would stop happening when he went to Hogwarts. He would make friends there, ones who knew nothing about his relatives or how Harry was always blamed for things Dudley did, and he would be able to smile and laugh and play Quidditch and study with his friends and perform great feats of magic, and no one would harm him again, except during the summers.
It hadn’t happened. Staying with the Dursleys too long had damaged the part of him that could make friends, Harry thought. It was the reason he was going back to the Muggle world.
It was the reason he vanished.
He’d vanished in front of Nott, too, the only person in a long time who’d wanted to talk to Harry. Nott probably thought he was dangerous now, or stupid, or both. Harry shut his eyes and winced.
Then he kept going, down the stairs, the way he always did. Until the day he vanished completely, then he would just have to keep going.
*
Theo straightened up from leaning against the stones near the Great Hall’s entrance. Draco had tried to ask him what he was doing there earlier, but Theo had sneered at him until he went away.
There was Potter, walking along with his satchel slung over one shoulder and his hands in his robe pockets. He caught Theo’s eye for a second and froze.
Theo waited, but Potter didn’t come over to him. Theo rolled his eyes and walked over. A few people glanced their way, but there was little curiosity in their eyes, more pity. Potter was right. He didn’t have any Gryffindor friends.
“Where did you go yesterday?” Theo asked.
“Away.”
Potter was avoiding his eyes, shoulders still hunched the way they’d been yesterday when Theo had started talking to him about the Muggle world. Theo shook his head. He wanted to solve the mystery, wanted to get Potter talking—Theo enjoyed the sound of his own voice, but a monologue was never as much fun as a conversation—but it wasn’t likely to be a good idea right now.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get a basket from the house-elves and go eat outside. I think this is the last really fine day we’ll have before winter.” And he reached out and touched Potter on the shoulder, because he wasn’t sure he had the other boy’s attention.
Potter spun around, eyes wide. Theo stared calmly back at him, eyebrows arching. Potter swallowed.
“I—you want to eat with me?”
Normally, this kind of cringing deference would have irritated Theo. But thinking about what the Muggles had probably done to Potter, and the way that the other Gryffindors just ignored him, and the expression of interest on his face as he’d listened to Theo explain even minor details of growing up magical, made him only sad. And angry.
And determined to get to know Potter better.
“Yes, why not?” he asked.
As he’d expected, Potter didn’t question him. “Okay,” he said, and followed Theo to the kitchens.
Theo stilled all the questions he wanted to ask on his tongue, and started talking about the modifications he’d made to a potion the other day that meant he could successfully combine powdered moonstone and powdered ruby without the potion exploding. Potter, who wasn’t taking NEWT Potions, still listened and absorbed like a drought absorbing rain.
Theo found it—very pleasant.
