[Songs of Summer]: Blood of My Blood, Harry/Theo, R, 1/2

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Blood of My Blood
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: AU in fifth year, blood magic, violence, gore, torture, underage, angst, blood-drinking
Wordcount: This part 4300
Summary: AU. Theo knows that someone in Hogwarts is using blood magic, the kind that scrapes at his senses. But without knowing more information, he can’t seek them out or stop them. Purely by chance, he finds Harry Potter with blood soaking through bandages on the back of his hand, and discovers the power of taking a risk.
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 is to fulfill a request by rightsidethru: Harry/Theo - Fifth year. Theo is a blood mage and discovers the damage that Umbridge is doing to Harry using the Blood Quill. Hope you enjoy. This will have a second part, to be posted tomorrow.



Blood of My Blood

Theo rubbed his forehead.

“All right there, Nott?”

Theo looked up. Draco had been much more annoying this year than usual, acting as though the Dark Lord’s return and claim on his father somehow also granted Lucius Malfoy’s son status. Theo simply looked at Draco, though, and Draco looked down and away.

“What are you looking at, Goyle?” he said loudly.

Starting a fight to distract the other Slytherins from his moment of weakness. Typical. But it was also a distraction from Theo’s moment of weakness, so he wouldn’t undermine it.

Theo didn’t rub his forehead again, but the jangling pain was still there, as if a wire hung with iron medallions was strung through his skull and leading to whatever unskilled blood mage kept using the Art in a school. Theo got a blast of pain and irritation every time that happened. Whatever instrument the blood mage was using, it was unwilling.

Theo carefully did not shake his head and sat in the common room for another forty minutes, until he could go to bed without looking weak. He wasn’t that surprised when Blaise followed him upstairs.

“How bad is it?” Blaise asked, when they were alone.

Theo shrugged. “I’ll live.”

“You could do more than that.”

Theo gave him a thin smile. Blaise was the only one who knew about Theo’s blood mage status, since it was a gift that manifested in unpredictable and often undetectable ways, and there hadn’t been one in the Nott family for a long time. But Blaise’s mother considered blood mages dangerous, and had given Blaise an amulet that reacted in the presence of one.

Somehow, it had ended up in friendship rather than mutual destruction. Theo still wasn’t sure how that had happened.

“You’ll have to find out soon, won’t you?”

Theo grunted and went to lie down on his bed. Yes, he would have to. And he had at least traced the pattern of jangling disruption to the evenings, and only certain nights of the week. But those nights still weren’t enough to tell him what was causing it or where the blood mage was. Hogwarts was home to hundreds of people, many of them doing things hidden from sight.

Theo couldn’t openly search, but once he had one thing—either a name or a room or the name of the instrument being used—then he could create a tracking spell.

And once he knew who he was doing this, he would cut them open for defiling the Art.

*

Theo was walking down the middle of a corridor, for once thinking of nothing more important than the Transfiguration essay McGonagall had assigned, when a sharp jangle pulled him on high alert.

Someone with blood magic smeared all over them was coming down the corridor in his direction.

Theo bowed his head and promptly bit his thumb. His father had paid a Transfiguration master well to alter a few of Theo’s teeth on the right side of his mouth when they’d found out his gifts. They were sharper, more pointed than they should have been, and they pierced Theo’s skin easily.

Theo closed his eyes and held his hand up in front of him. For a moment, the blood simply dripped, and then Theo’s will entered it and it sprang out from him, stitching a pattern reminiscent of a spiderweb on the air. Theo plucked on the web with his will.

There was a sharp twang, and Theo vanished from the sight of everyone with human blood in their veins. It wouldn’t hide him from animals, but Theo considered it unlikely that Filch was a blood mage or that Mrs. Norris would be leading him along.

Theo stepped back near the wall and waited.

The footsteps sounded clearly a moment later. They were dragging, trudging. Theo smiled tightly. That increased the chances that this defiler of the Art had just conducted yet another ritual they didn’t know how to do properly and would be tired and weak, easy prey for someone who did know.

The person rounded the corner. Theo moved silently and swiftly to press a wand to their neck.

The person went bowling back into the wall, and hissed. Theo stared. The person was Potter.

He refused to believe that the Chosen One was cutting himself or someone else open on a regular basis and using the blood to work magic. Yes, his reputation had suffered in the papers that declared him a liar, but Theo knew the truth just like every other Death Eater’s child did.

The protective web that had hidden Theo had broken when he moved. Potter stared back at him with dark, defiant eyes, and said nothing.

“Potter,” Theo began slowly. His senses thrummed and thrummed. Yes, this was the carrier of blood magic he had felt coming.

Potter still said nothing. He seemed too weak to leap at Theo or push him back. Yet, from his face, he very much wanted to.

Theo glanced slowly sideways and down. There was no blood on Potter’s robes, where it would probably have been if he had knelt to cut open a sacrifice or place his own blood on the floor. It took experience to avoid that, and everything Theo knew about this “practitioner” said they weren’t very experienced.

But his hand—

His hand was gleaming.

Theo seized Potter’s wrist and turned it upwards. Potter parted his lips in an utterly silent snarl. He didn’t go for his wand, probably because of the tremor that had invaded his limbs.

He could feel like he was carrying blood magic if he was the victim. But why would he allow someone to cut him? He should think it’s Dark just like every other Gryffindor would.

Theo’s thoughts tumbled to a halt when he saw the words carved on the back of Potter’s hand. Carved. They gleamed red with blood, but also shimmering black with a taint that only someone with Theo’s gift would see, and they said, I must not tell lies.

And they had drained so much of Potter’s magical power that he couldn’t even lift a wand.

“Where did you get this?” Theo whispered, without taking his eyes from the words.

“Detention with Umbridge,” Potter spat. “Bastard.”

Theo reached out and tried to touch the words. Potter pulled his hand back and punched him in the face.

Theo staggered, his ears ringing and sparks spinning up in front of his eyes. Potter drew himself up and managed to move a few steps more down the corridor. His head was turned so that he could look at Theo over his shoulder, but he was too exhausted to go much further. He sprawled against the wall a second or so after that, mouth open as he panted.

Theo blinked and held a hand to his aching cheekbone. Various thoughts battled for his attention, but he ignored them except for the most important.

Potter, as the victim of blood magic worked on him by an inexpert caster, was naturally weak, but not as weak as Theo would have expected. He still had enough physical strength that he was probably channeling some of his magical strength into his muscles.

And he’d used some of that strength to hit Theo. His eyes still shone with hatred.

Theo found himself laughing before he thought about it.

Potter just watched him without moving. That might be because he couldn’t, but Theo also thought he wasn’t unfamiliar with laughter, and didn’t get upset when someone gave it to him. He still wouldn’t bow down, though, and he wouldn’t flinch and lower his eyes and try to get some lesser punishment for himself the way so many of Theo’s Housemates would have.

Defiant to the end.

“You are a wonder,” Theo said, grinning. Potter stared at the blood that must be on his teeth and said nothing.

“What you might not know,” Theo said, while he smeared the blood that Potter’s punch had drawn over his face and willed some basic healing into the injury, “is that being the victim of a blood magic instrument like this should have left you both drained and utterly obedient to the will of the caster. You should have done what she wanted, even if you were telling the truth originally. Intent matters more than literal truth in a situation like this. That you didn’t,” Theo said, and smiled, “means you have some natural affinity for blood magic.’

He could feel the wonder he had spoken of coiling and dancing along his veins like wine. No, Potter wasn’t a blood mage. That was a gift that had to be present since birth and wouldn’t only have shown up within the last few months.

But Potter was quite possibly a Phoenix. They drew strength from blood and violence, including the shedding of their own blood, and it charged their magic in a way that normally only food or sleep did. The name as applied to the bird was only a dim memory of these mages that had once burned across so many battlefields.

There was a price to be paid for such magic, of course. Phoenixes died in war all the time, bleeding so much that they went past the limits of what their bodies could tolerate, or they literally burst into flames, consumed by their own magic burning brighter than a mortal conduit could hold.

That Potter hadn’t done that so far when he had been in so many violent situations was an excellent sign. Especially for his potential of working with a blood mage, the two of them channeling so much magic back and forth that they could create spells that did two or three things at once, that operated across vast distances or bound their minds and souls together—

“I don’t care.”

Theo blinked, pulled out of his own thoughts of working with a Phoenix in the future. “What?”

“I said, I don’t care.” Potter pulled himself to his feet. “She can’t make me do what she wants with her stupid quill. And you can’t make me do what you want.”

“I didn’t say that it would be that, Potter—”

“It’s like that every time I meet a Slytherin.”

And Potter gave Theo a dismissive glare before he limped away. He was moving faster than he had been a few minutes before.

His hand swung down at his side, and Theo happened to catch a glimpse of it. The words were already scabbing over.

Theo stared blankly at the stone walls for a bit. The only answer he could find was that Potter was drawing strength not only from the bloody letters on the back of his own hand, but also from the blood he’d spilled from Theo.

Cautiously, Theo reached up and explored his cheekbone with his fingers. He should have found a few spots of dried blood.

There was nothing. The blood was simply gone.

Theo exhaled shakily, desire spinning around and around in him. It was a long time before he was steady enough to make his way back to the Slytherin common room.

*

Now Theo had a name—Umbridge—and the kind of instrument she was using to cause the jangling, corrupt magic that assaulted him—a quill. He could have done several things, including a spell that would destroy any quill she had in her possession.

He told himself he didn’t do it because she would probably only get more, and because such a simple revenge wasn’t enough for the pain she had caused him.

Theo knew very well that wasn’t the real reason, and he admitted that real reason when he was lying behind his bed curtains at night with one hand wrapped around himself. He hadn’t done anything because he wanted the bloodshed to continue and see what the effects on Potter were.

If anything could bring Potter close enough to wakening his Phoenix powers and then accepting them, it was this torture.

Theo heard plenty of reports of Potter’s worsening temper and his tendency to snap at even his best friends. He sometimes watched the trembling hands Potter exhibited in Potions, or the way he visibly bit his lip or tongue when Professor Snape scolded him. But Theo didn’t see the magical effects he would have expected, and privately lamented than this wasn’t a NEWT year when he would have had a chance of sharing more classes in wanded magic with Potter.

Very well. Simply leaving Potter to suffer under Umbridge’s control wasn’t working (and was unacceptable when Theo thought of how it might end up destroying Potter’s affinity for blood magic if he conceived a disgust for it). Theo would need to make a move.

*

Finding Potter alone was easier than he’d expected. And it also explained some of the reasons that Theo hadn’t seen any magical effects in class. Potter was casting curses methodically at a stone wall deep in the dungeons. Curses that exploded the stone, froze it, chipped it, blackened it, set it on fire.

And as Theo watched from around the corner, he saw how the bloody words on the back of Potter’s hand visibly altered, blood disappearing, turning to scabs, turning to old scars. When they reached the scar stage, Potter suddenly staggered and stood there, panting.

He would probably attribute it to ordinary magical exhaustion. It was up to Theo to show him better.

“Potter.”

Potter snapped his head around to face Theo and lifted his wand. This time, Theo, watching for it, didn’t miss the sharp spark momentarily illuminating one of his veins from within. Potter was drawing on the blood inside him for magic and didn’t even realize it.

Theo barely heard the words “Go away, Nott,” he was so staggered by the notion of what that meant. So hungry.

Not one in a hundred Phoenixes could just do that without training. Not according to the ancient texts Theo’s father had had him read.

“I don’t think so,” Theo said, whirling and high on the evidence of magic so strong. I want him. I want him so much. “Did you never wonder why you’re so much stronger than other wizards and witches our age?”

“I’m not.”

Theo laughed at him. “I’ve heard the rumors, Potter. Corporeal Patronus at thirteen, resisting the Imperius Curse at fourteen, survived a basilisk bite at twelve, Parseltongue—”

“That’s not a magical strength. That’s just a fucking stain.”

“Interesting. Why do you think so?”

Potter flushed in the sign of someone who knew he had said too much, and shoved his wand back into its holster. The spark Theo had seen dancing along his vein died. “Go away, Nott,” he said, and shoved past Theo towards the corridor behind him.

Theo reached out and caught his arm, holding above the vein where the spark had been.

Then he bent double from the roar that filled him.

There was suddenly heat in every single drop of blood in his veins, blazing so that when Theo managed to open his eyes again—he didn’t know when they had closed—he could see light shining from him and casting sharp shadows on the walls. Potter was lit up the same way, and the shadows he cast were edged with red.

Phoenix, yes. But more than that, a Phoenix whose magic was tuned to Theo’s blood magic, who would work well with him.

Theo crowded Potter back into the wall behind them, the one marked with their shadows. Potter’s eyes were open wide, and he didn’t resist, instead staring back and forth between Theo and Theo’s hand on his arm.

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

Theo thought he knew. And he didn’t intend to hold back and let Potter slip away from this again, or let him deny and reason himself out of it, or tell himself that Theo was a fucking Slytherin, and not to be trusted.

Theo bent his head and bit Potter’s arm at the place where his hand rested. Potter’s blood streamed out in seconds, glittering with that fire Theo had seen before, and Theo clamped his mouth over it.

He got two swallows of hot, glorious power before Potter gripped the back of Theo’s head and sank his fingers into Theo’s hair, tearing so hard that Theo had to let go because he’d cried out in involuntary pain.

Potter shoved him back and snarled. His wand was in his hand again, and his wound had stopped bleeding already, as the magic streamed into the outline of a dark purple light on his wand. The Entrail-Expelling Curse.

Theo raised his hands above his head at once and hoped that Potter’s Gryffindor values wouldn’t let him attack a helpless opponent. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “Sorry for hurting you like that. I just had to see.”

“Had to see fucking what, Nott?”

“You have gifts related to blood magic,” Theo said quickly. “And I can help you exercise them.”

“Uh-huh. If blood magic is what Umbridge is doing with that quill—”

“It’s not. She has no idea what she’s doing. Watch.”

Theo held out his hands. The strength of Potter’s blood streamed through him, and he forced it into a vision of the one thing that might be powerful enough to make Potter pay attention to him.

Or angry enough to kill him. But Theo would just have to deal with that if he tried.

The image that formed above his fingers was dark red, but Theo made it out well enough. Gravestones, and trampled grass between them, and a large cauldron standing at the ready with steam rising from it, and a small figure bound to a headstone.

A figure approached him to cut his arm, and then threw Potter’s blood in the cauldron. The tall figure that rose out of it shone pale even in the blood that couldn’t produce colors, at least until the one who had cut Potter’s arm scrambled to wrap him in dark robes.

Others Apparated in, and that was when Potter crashed into Theo, grabbing him by the arms and forcing him up against the wall.

Theo went with the push, shivering in delight. Potter was glaring at him from less than three inches away, but he was also pulsing with power, the magic circling back and forth. This close, with some of Potter’s blood inside Theo’s body, they shared the power, and Potter could have made Theo bleed with a glance.

Either Potter didn’t know that, or he didn’t care. He shook Theo roughly and snarled, “How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. I just asked the blood to create an image of the Dark Lord’s resurrection. I didn’t know what it was going to look like.”

Potter turned his back and paced angrily away, rubbing his arm. By twisting his head to the side, Theo could make out what looked like a knife scar.

Hmm. That might have something to do with awakening Potter’s Phoenix gifts. At least as much as the blood quill had.

“How do I get rid of it?”

Potter’s voice was low and hoarse. Theo felt his face harden. “You don’t.”

“I don’t want to have magic that links me to blood and violence and—” Potter cut himself off, but then a moment later, he seemed to decide that he had to say it. “Voldemort.”

Because they were by themselves, Theo didn’t pretend to flinch at the name. “It’s not linked to him,” he said quietly. “It existed in you before him, and the potential you can find because of it doesn’t have to have anything to do with him.”

“Then why did my blood show you that vision?”

“I asked it to. To convince you that I do know what I’m talking about, and blood magic can do remarkable things.”

Potter stood where he was for a long moment, rubbing his face with one tired hand. Theo kept watching him. He could find other Phoenixes, probably, although many of them didn’t openly advertise who they were anymore. But finding someone else his age, in his school, so perfectly matched to his own magic was out of the question.

“Leave me alone, Nott,” Potter said quietly, and walked away.

Theo let him go. This would have to be a longer process where he explained the advantages of blood magic to Potter and accepted occasional rebuffs. Given that Potter was going off on his own to practice powerful magic, simply to control his temper, Theo suspected that his resistance wouldn’t last as long as it might have otherwise.

*

The jangling intruded on Theo’s studying a few nights later. He sighed, put a bookmark in his History text, and stood up.

“Something wrong, Theo?” Blaise asked.

“Yes, something wrong?” Pansy asked, and added a slightly inane giggle. It was for the audience. Pansy pretended to flirt with Theo mainly to drive Draco mad with jealousy; both she and Theo knew absolutely nothing but duels lay between them.

“Maybe,” Theo said, and walked out the door of the common room. People watched him go, whispering. As long as they were simply whispering more legends of the infamous Theo Nott, he didn’t care.

He Disillusioned himself once he left the dungeons and strode in the direction of Umbridge’s office. Once he was across from her door, and the jangling of the misused blood magic had grown harsh enough to make his teeth hurt, he folded his arms across his chest, bowed his head, and delved into the connection he should still have with Potter, by drinking some of his blood—

Ah. There. It was faint, but it functioned well with only a door between them.

Theo breathed, deeply and slowly. Then he reached out through the path that opened for him, red and glittering like a vein, across the magic between him and Potter, up through the blood already welling from the cuts on the back of Potter’s hand, and into the quill. It was covered with Potter’s blood, and had been other nights. It would listen to him.

Burn, Theo thought, and welled heat down the tunnel of magic.

A shriek announced his success. Theo heard Umbridge begin speaking sharply, probably berating Potter, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying when her voice was so muffled by the door, and it didn’t matter that much anyway. He stepped forwards and knocked.

Umbridge said one final thing and opened the door a minute later. “Mr. Nott,” she said, frowning at him too strongly to maintain her usual simpering little-girl voice. “What are you doing here?”

Theo smiled at her. “Cleaning up your mess,” he said, and shoved past her into the office.

Potter turned his head and stared at Theo. His hand glistened with what looked like ropy burn scars. Theo half-bowed his head and then turned to Umbridge.

He hadn’t done this often. His father had forbidden the kind of experiments on humans that would have made Theo a better blood mage, but had allowed him to experiment on animals. He would see now whether he had done them correctly.

Theo curled his hand in Umbridge’s direction. He concentrated on the blood inside her veins, the liquid where it curled around her heart, where it flowed in the carotid. And he pulled and coiled it.

Umbridge went to her knees, a shriek bubbling up in her throat that died. For a moment, her hands clawed at her skin, and then fell rigidly to her sides. Theo sensed Potter shifting, but it seemed he had the sense not to ask questions when someone was in the middle of a delicate magical act. Theo smiled to himself and twisted Umbridge’s blood further.

Then he closed his eyes. As little as he wanted to miss a moment of her agony, he wasn’t sure of his concentration if he got distracted by the expression on her face.

“You can’t speak of what happened here,” he whispered. “Your blood will turn against you if you do. It owes its allegiance to me now.

“You cannot write of what happened here. Your blood will turn against you if you do.

“You cannot torture Harry Potter with any instrument of blood magic again. Your blood will turn against you if you do.”

Theo would have liked to bind her to more than three directives, but he could already feel the magic shuddering in his grasp, and knew he wasn’t strong enough to lay more than three upon her. Experienced blood mages could make their victims do all sorts of things. He wasn’t there.

Yet.

Theo opened his hand and released his hold on Umbridge’s blood. She slumped over, red froth trailing from between her parted lips.

Theo turned to Potter. His eyes darted back and forth between Umbridge and Theo for a moment.

“Why?” he asked quietly.

“Because she was torturing you with instruments she had no right to use, and making a mockery of my Art,” Theo said, taking a step closer to him. “Because she was torturing someone who has gifts I admire. Because I know that if you come with me, you can become more than you’ll ever be if you let rubbish like Umbridge abuse you.”

He held out his hand.

Potter looked at Umbridge and then back at Theo. “I can learn how to do that?”

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to master the exact same spell,” Theo said, because Potter wasn’t a blood mage and Theo had no idea of the limits of a Phoenix’s capabilities. “But you’ll be able to do similar things to as many people as you want.”

“Voldemort?”

Theo smiled.

Potter stood up. “No one else came for me, anyway,” he said. “You’re the one who stopped her, for whatever insane reasons you have.” And he reached out and took Theo’s hand.

Theo lifted Potter’s hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it, and feeling the warm thrum of the blood underneath his skin. “I promise you,” he whispered. “You will never regret it.”