Chapter Fifteen of 'Imago'- Chosen

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! While this is the last chapter of Imago itself, I’ll be writing a sequel to it at some point in the future.

Chapter Fifteen—Chosen

“It’s going to be fine.”

“It’s not going to be fine,” Theo mutters, but Harry is the one who sends him a chiding glance this time and pulls Theo towards him with an arm around his waist.

Theo lets himself be pulled. They’re in the classroom that Theo enchanted with decorations to make it look like they’re underwater, and no one else can see. And Harry is warm and smells good, like sweat, when Theo leans against him.

“You know that Crouch confessed,” Harry whispers. “There’s no one else in Hogwarts who can deliver me to Voldemort. The Tri-Wizard Cup isn’t a Portkey anymore. And Voldemort only has Pettigrew with him, and he’s not bold enough to walk into the middle of Hogwarts and kidnap me. There are wards up to catch Animagi anyway. Bagman insisted.”

Theo snorts. It’s true that Bagman’s desire to have Harry compete in the Tournament and earn publicity and probably money from the bets Bagman’s made on him is a more powerful force than any protests Harry or Theo could have made. The adults just do not want to listen to them. “I still don’t like it.”

“I know.” Harry rubs his chin across the top of Theo’s head. “But let’s be honest, Theo, you don’t like it any time I’m out of your sight.”

Theo grunts. It’s true, and he resents knowing it’s true. “I’m trying to be better about that. You deserve to have more than a single friend. Or a boyfriend who’s clinging to you all the time.”

“You deserve more, too. Is Zabini your only friend other than me?”

Theo sighs. “Yeah, but I don’t have the same need for friends you do.” He rolls his eyes when Harry gives him an extremely skeptical look. “I mean it, Harry. I don’t. I grew up in a terrible way, but not the same terrible way you did. I decided long before Hogwarts that I couldn’t rely on other people, and letting you and Blaise in is about as far as I can lower my barriers.”

Harry sighs a little in turn. “All right. I understand. But you won’t murder the Tri-Wizard judges if I don’t come first, will you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.”

“Only if you don’t come back at all.”

“Theo.”

But Harry can’t hide from Theo. There’s gladness shining in his eyes. He’s flattered at the fact that Theo would vow to kill someone for him, which makes him different from any of the other Gryffindors, and even some of the Slytherins. Draco, for instance, might pretend that he’d want someone to kill people for him, but he’s too soft to really want it.

And Harry also needs someone to kill people for him in a way that most students don’t. Theo tilts his head back and kisses Harry until both their heads spin and neither one of them can think.

Theo is the right partner for Harry. He knew that already, but each additional confirmation makes him just the right amount of smug.

*

“The Champions will enter the maze in the order of how many points they have received!”

Bagman’s voice booms over the crowd. Theo stands in silence near the edges of the seating, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the maze. Harry will be out of his sight inside those high hedge walls, and as he’s accurately stated, Theo does not like it.

But it’s safer than it would have been a few months ago, that’s true enough. Anti-Animagus wards—Theo heard Professor McGonagall complain about not being able to transform when she didn’t know he was around, so he thinks they’re real—and Crouch being found out have really diminished the Dark Lord’s options. He can try, but he won’t be able to use the same plan that he’d spent months setting up.

They didn’t manage to capture Pettigrew or Voldemort’s spirit, though. Crouch Junior either didn’t know where they were or gave the DMLE outdated information.

That’s the part that makes the underside of Theo’s skin itch.

“Tied for first place: Harry Potter and Viktor Krum!”

Theo grimaces as he watches Harry and Krum step forwards at the same moment. Bagman is talking now, complacently, about how the Champions should send up red sparks if they get into “real” trouble.

Theo just hopes that Harry will. Harry is more responsible with his own safety since he’s become Theo’s, but he still tends to overestimate his own ability to respond to it. And he still has that damn conviction that he should leave other people out of handling the danger, because, of course, it would be dangerous for them.

Theo is utterly convinced that Dumbledore knows more than he’s let on about the way Harry grew up. If nothing else, apparently Hagrid’s confirmed for Harry that Dumbledore was the one who took him from Hagrid’s arms and put him om the Dursleys’ doorstep. So that means he was the one who chose Harry’s living space and living conditions and people who would raise him.

And Dumbledore hasn’t done anything to counter Harry’s attempts to protect people at the cost of his own life. He got points for confronting Professor Quirrell in first year. And he got praised for putting another student’s life above his own when he went down into the Chamber of Secrets and slew the basilisk. Why Professor Dumbledore couldn’t do it is beyond Theo.

So Theo is going to wait, and watch as much as he can from outside the hedges, and with the help of the Locator Charm that he placed on the skin between Harry’s fingers. Unlike clothing, it can’t be taken from him. And it’ll lead Theo to Harry across miles and continents.

He’ll cross continents if he has to, if that’s what it takes to get Harry back.

*

When the moment comes, Theo doesn’t recognize it at first. Someone touches him on the shoulder, and he whirls around with his wand out, picturing Snape or Dumbledore trying to ensure he isn’t helping Harry “cheat.”

It’s his father.

“Father,” Theo says, not banking the fury that’s driving him or lowering his wand. It’s too late. Father has to know what Theo’s feeling. And if he assumes that that’s just a mask for other people, the same way he assumed Theo was using Harry rather than dating him, that’s the best outcome.

Father smiles at him, the small, careful smile that he usually only uses when he’s teaching Theo curses. “It’s time, Theo.”

“Time for what?”

Father sighs and leans over until he’s touching Theo’s shoulder with a bit of stone. Immediately, the colors of a Portkey seize them, and at the same moment, Theo feels the locator charm he’s placed on Harry shudder and jump.

So they are both being taken.

If it’s to the same place, Theo doesn’t actually care. He uses the moment of instantaneous travel to make plans, and to burn with rage.

*

They arrive in a graveyard.

Theo thinks he knows why, when he sees Harry bound to a headstone and the grave beneath him gaping open. There are certain necromantic rituals that are inexpressibly more powerful when the bone or blood of a family member is used.

Theo takes a step to the side, away from his father’s hand. Yes, he can see the word RIDDLE carved on the stone. Harry did tell him the Dark Lord’s true last name when they discussed the basilisk incident.

Father grabs his shoulder and bends down to say into his ear, “Do not be a fool, Theo.”

He must suspect, then, that Harry and Theo were really dating, and not just Theo manipulating Harry as part of a plan. Theo manages to nod, although he doesn’t want to. Father nods back and lets go of Theo’s shoulder as he steps to the side.

Theo remains motionless, eyes darting between Harry and the bubbling cauldron. A short man in a cloak is dumping what looks like bone dust into the potion inside, and then Father draws Theo along as they walk towards it, probably to supervise the brewing. Father never met anything or anyone he didn’t want to control.

Theo turns his head. Harry’s eyes meet his and widen. Theo hopes that Harry isn’t about to start shouting about him being a traitor. As much as that would add to the verisimilitude around here, Harry would really believe it if he said it, and that would mean Theo would encounter some problems getting him away.

But instead, Harry chooses to drop his head and close his eyes. It might look like giving up to a casual observer (let it look like that to Father, Theo hopes). But Theo can see the way Harry’s body has relaxed.

Harry still trusts him. Harry will wait for the signal to handle this situation in whatever way Theo wants to handle it.

Theo breathes out slowly. They can’t do anything yet. But they are going to do something. And he’ll strike the minute he sees a way to.

*

The sight of Pettigrew taking blood from Harry’s arm nearly breaks Theo’s control. But his hands clench only under the sleeves of his robe, and he arches his eyebrow when Father turns and stares down at him, as if he thinks this should be a test.

“Is that the final ingredient?” Theo mutters, deliberately sounding as bored as he possibly can.

“Yes,” Father says, and his attention goes to the cauldron as it begins to bubble and something to rise from it. His hand slackens on Theo’s shoulder. Pettigrew is sniveling on the ground because of his severed arm. The giant snake—about which, admittedly, Theo doesn’t know what to do yet—is coiled up on the other side of the cauldron, watching it intently.

Theo acts.

He casts a Blasting Charm, as quick and strong and clean as he possibly can. It flies straight at the cauldron, and incidentally through Pettigrew, who’s in the way. Pettigrew screams for a moment before he dissolves into a rain of flesh.

And the cauldron breaks in half, spilling the potion and the thing inside it that was beginning to form. Theo hears a shriek, and then a hissing noise that is decidedly not the snake. Something collapses on the ground, writhing and screaming like Pettigrew.

As if in slow motion, Father starts to turn around.

Theo is already rolling, dodging, moving. In seconds, he’s beside Harry, and a Severing Charm slices through the ropes. Harry scrambles off the headstone, crying out as his limbs buckle beneath him, and Theo hones his mind to a blade of sheer concentration and snarls, “Accio Harry Potter’s wand!”

It comes flying, from Pettigrew’s remains. Theo tosses it to Harry and shoves him behind the headstone.

A Cruciatus Curse crackles overhead.

Theo breathes out a little. That defines some of the things they’re up against, and it also means that he can drop some of the chains that he might have put on his temper otherwise.

“You take the snake,” he tells Harry. “I’ll take my father.”

He doesn’t have to say that if Harry can’t handle the snake, they’re all in deep shit. Harry senses it well enough. He nods, and his trembling legs have stopped trembling. For that matter, Theo is pretty sure that Harry would cast at the snake if he had to crawl.

“Right,” Harry says, and his hand grips Theo’s arm and squeezes, a burning brand of desperation, before he cocks his head and listens. Theo can hear steady hissing coming nearer, which is probably understandable Parseltongue to Harry.

“Theodore. Come out.”

Theo straightens his shoulders and steps out from beyond the headstone.

Father stares at him across the short space of grass between them. His face is frozen and still. Theo thinks distantly that he has never seen his father look surprised before.

“What have you done?” Father whispers.

“Chosen my allegiance,” Theo says, using words that Father used to describe what his initiation as a Death Eater was like. “Confirmed my loyalties.”

Father shakes his head, slowly. He doesn’t even look towards the sounds of hissing or the smash of stone that Theo hopes means Harry has blasted the snake into another monument. Theo can’t look, either. He doesn’t dare take his eyes from Father. “What kind of power can this callow schoolboy promise you, Theodore?”

Theo smiles, and lets it run over his face like quicksilver. “What makes you think that I am in it for power, Father?”

“You have been affected,” Father murmurs. “Well. After I confine you to the manor for the summer and spend some time working on you, then you will change your mind back.” He nods and aims his wand.

Theo feels as though something in his chest has hatched from a fiery egg. Those words have set another boundary of the contest between them. Father wants to reorder Theo’s mind, which means he won’t kill him.

Theo has no such restrictions.

Father begins with a silent curse that tries to surround Theo with a wall of fire. Theo dampens magic all around himself in response, and then aims his curse high over that effect and hits Father in the chest with a crackle of lightning. Father staggers a step back, but although he’s frowning, he doesn’t seem upset yet. He probably assumes that Theo is softening his curses against him because Theo doesn’t really want to hurt him.

“I have raised a weak son,” Father says in conviction, and he attacks again.

Theo parries and dodges and shields. Ice for flying bladed knives, a Transfiguration of grass into mud for a pain curse that makes Theo’s teeth rattle in his head and his eyes tear up, a Bone-Breaking Curse for one that nearly twists Theo’s elbows backwards. And each time, the contempt in Father’s eyes deepens a little more.

Theo knows what he wants to do. And while it won’t depend so much on Father dropping his guard, it does mean that he has to be able to lure Father closer and not have him dodge at the last minute.

The moment comes. Theo can feel it as if someone is singing to him and pausing to hand over the song.

Father laughs at him and uses a curse that will put him into a deep sleep if it lands. And Theo’s body is aching. He won’t be able to keep up the string of taunting, apparently weak spells for much longer.

Theo drops to his knees beneath the curse, remains there for a moment as if fainting or partially hit and fighting off sleepiness, and then aims his wand at his father and speaks the words in a soft voice of intense hatred. “Avada Kedavra.”

The green beam rises from his wand. It seems to curve slightly. Theo follows the path with his eyes, and has the time to see Father’s widen before the curse hits.

The curse that nothing can block or deflect, unless you’re Harry Potter.

The curse you have to mean to cast.

Father crumples in place.

Theo whirls around then, towards the battle Harry and the snake must be fighting. But the snake is paralyzed with—is that a Body-Bind?”

Theo finds himself laughing half-hysterically, and stuffs his hand in his mouth. He fights his way back to his feet, feeling the drain and the drag of casting so much magic on his body and spirit, and staggers towards the headstones.

There is still one more thing he and Harry have to do before they leave the graveyard, but Theo has to make sure that Harry is all right first.

Harry is leaning against the far side of a headstone that also has the name RIDDLE on it but no open grave, and he’s panting so hard that Theo’s heart picks up its speed. But Harry just gives him a tired, shaky smile and reaches for his hand. Theo grabs it and hauls him close.

There’s warmth trembling in his arms, and love, and the future.

Theo would do it all again.

*

They kneel there in silence until at last Harry stirs and whispers, “I’m sorry you had to kill your dad.”

Not a hint of condemnation for how Theo did it. Theo doesn’t think that Harry is suddenly all right with Unforgivable Curses, especially given how that one killed his parents, but he accepts what Theo did because he’s Theo, almost certainly. The way he managed to forgive Weasley for saying his name came out of the Goblet when he wouldn’t have forgiven other people.

Theo has wished in the past that Harry wasn’t quite so forgiving, but right now, he’ll accept it. He’ll accept everything Harry chooses to give him.

“It’s all right,” Theo murmurs. “I stopped thinking of him as my dad long ago. Father is just what I called him.” He eases back on his knees and looks at Harry. Harry stares at him, tired and grim and quiet, but still clutching his wand. Still ready to fight.

“There’s something else we have to do,” Theo says quietly. “Two things, actually. Do you think you can do them?” Because if not, then Theo will send Harry back with the Portkey that he hopes his father made two-way and do them by himself.

“Yes,” Harry says instantly, and struggles to his feet, pulling Theo with him. “One of them is—that thing that came out of the cauldron, right?” His gaze goes beyond Pettigrew’s remains and darkens.

“Yes. We can kill it.”

“I don’t think we’ll kill him,” Harry says, his voice haunted. “He’ll just become a wraith again the way he did after I killed Quirrell.”

“I know, but we can at least destroy his construct body and make him flee again.” Theo squeezes Harry’s hand and draws him forwards. “Come on.”

He and Harry walk towards the remains of the cauldron, side-by-side. Theo checks on the snake as they go. Harry’s spell is still holding, but Theo casts another Body-Bind at her just in case.

“I tried to kill her, but nothing—” Harry says, and breaks off.

Theo nods. Frankly, the snake is a low priority compared to what else they have to do. If she escapes, she’ll likely reunite with her master, but that’s not as disastrous as him having human help.

“You’re trembling,” Harry says softly. “Are you—is your magic exhausted? Do you need me to kill him with a spell?”

Theo shakes his head. “I’ll live.” He has to, so they can accomplish the second task they have before they leave the graveyard. “And I wasn’t planning on using a spell to kill this thing.”

Harry blinks at him. Theo smiles back and leads him around the edge of the cauldron, and around the edge of what was once Peter Pettigrew. Theo feels nothing about that killing except dark satisfaction.

He shouldn’t have helped kidnap Harry if he wanted to live.

The thing that came out of the cauldron is lying on the ground, thrashing weakly. Theo saw it go in as something small, but it seems it grew before Theo’s spell broke the cauldron apart and spilled the potion. It’s about half Harry’s height now, covered with black-red scales molded to raw flesh, limbs waving, mouth with sharp teeth open in an endless silent wail.

Harry shudders. Theo steps forwards and kneels down beside the thing.

Slitted red eyes focus on him. Theo smiles at it and reaches back without taking his eyes off it. It doesn’t take him long to find a twisted iron shard of the cauldron, or to bring it around and slit the thing’s throat.

The body kicks and thrashes for long moments after that, and Theo wonders if he has to stab it some more. But the thick liquid pouring out—which isn’t blood—forms into a black, smoky face, which flies up and hovers in front of Theo. Theo stares at it in silence, so full of hatred that there’s no room for fear.

“I will remember this, Theodore Nott,” Voldemort whispers.

Theo bares his teeth. “And I’ll remember that you were so weak I could drive you away.”

Voldemort fades as he’s still snarling.

Theo stands up slowly and turns around. Harry’s eyes are blank, and he’s shaking. Theo winces. “I’m sorry. That was too much for you.” He should have sent Harry away before he did something that will read a lot more like cold-blooded murder than a battle casualty.

“No, I just…” Harry shakes his head. “I’m not rejecting you, Theo. It wasn’t too much for me.” He swallows air and sits down abruptly on the grass near another shard of the cauldron. “What’s the second thing we have to do before we leave?”

“They’re probably going to inspect our wands,” Theo says softly. “Aurors, Ministry officials, Dumbledore, whoever we see first after we come back. I can’t afford to be found with the Killing Curse record on my wand. There’s a way to remove the traces of it, but it’s a ritual that uses blood. Can you give me some of yours?”

Harry smiles wanly and extends his arm without taking his eyes from Theo. “Seems a lot better use for it than what Pettigrew was going to do.”

Theo bows his head, accepting the gift, and gently cuts Harry’s arm open again along the scabs with a different shard of the cauldron. Harry hisses but doesn’t flinch. Theo harvests the blood as gently, with a simple Levitation Charm, and mixes it with the earth directly next to his feet.

Harry watches in something Theo thinks is revolted fascination. Theo elects to ignore the revulsion part of it.

It doesn’t take long to create the small runnels of blood in the earth, or for Theo to cut his own arm and add his own blood to it. He bends down and breathes on the rumpled mud, adding air to the water and earth, and then conjures a small, quick spark of fire. The fire dances on empty air above the blood. Theo hears Harry’s breath catch.

“May my wand show only the elements,” Theo says softly, and lowers his wand to roll it through the mixture of soil and blood. They cling to it, shining. Theo skims his wand through the fire and breathes on it, and sees a dark shiver pass through the wood. For an instant, it grows cold in his palm.

And then a sharp, dark green film peels away from it and fades and is gone, and Theo sits back with a long sigh. “Did you cast any Dark spells?” he asks Harry.

“No,” Harry says. He’s staring at Theo’s wand with something like awe. Theo decides, as he wearily forces his way back to his feet, that that’s a good sign.

“Come on,” he says, holding out a hand to Harry as he waves his wand to Summon the pebble Portkey from his father’s corpse. “Let’s go home.”

*

There’s chaos when the Portkey deposits them both in front of the maze, of course. People are shouting and screaming and bubbling around them and asking questions and shooting dark glances at Theo. Theo ignores all of that as much as he can, standing with one arm curled around Harry, supporting him. He hopes that someone will take them to the hospital wing soon.

But when McGonagall comes bustling up and tries to pull Harry away from him, Theo turns and points his wand at her. McGonagall stares at him in astonishment. “Mr. Nott. I am only—”

“Wherever you’re going to take him, we’ll go together,” Theo says flatly. His wand doesn’t waver. He does feel the burning of magical exhaustion in his veins, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll do whatever he has to do to defend Harry.

He already has, after all.

“Mr. Nott,” Snape says from the other side of McGonagall. “I presume that you will allow me to question you, if not Professor McGonagall?”

“I think the hospital wing would be more appropriate than an interrogation,” Theo says. “We’re both wounded.” He pointedly holds up Harry’s arm, still bleeding sluggishly from the cut Theo reopened.

There’s a flurry of movement and shouting them, and Theo and Harry are whisked away to the hospital wing. Theo can hear Dumbledore’s voice asking them to stop and saying that he has to question them, but for once, McGonagall and Snape ignore him or pretend not to hear him.

Theo is grateful for that, but not grateful enough to move away from Harry’s side.

*

Theo is the one who tells the story—or the lie.

Sitting by Harry’s bedside in the hospital wing, his own bloody cut already healed, he explains how his father must have got near the Tri-Wizard Cup to charm it into a Portkey, probably when it was on public display for the audience to see before it was put into the maze, and came and took Theo to punish him by making him witness his boyfriend getting killed. Theo does close his eyes when he tells that part, to make them all think he’s affected by more than his own dizzy hatred.

They tell him he was brave and ask him what happened next. Theo invents a tale of accidental magic blowing up the cauldron and Pettigrew getting caught in the backlash, but he makes sure to never use the words “accidental magic,” given that two people who practice Legilimency and can sense lies are listening to him. He simply says, “I wanted it gone so badly, I concentrated and concentrated—” and lets them draw their own conclusions.

Then he explains how he sent Harry’s wand flying to him and asked Harry to duel the snake. He elides the duel with his father as much as he can, talking about a few of the spells, the ones with the elements of ice and lightning that they’ll find when they examine his wand. He swallows before he reaches the part about his father’s death and stares at the floor.

Then he says, “I don’t know how I found the strength to kill him. I don’t—I think he must not have wanted to kill me.” True enough. “I just—I would have said I didn’t hate him enough for that, you know, before tonight?” Again, true. “But then I did it. I don’t even—I don’t know what spell you’ll find on my wand that did it.”

There.

They murmur and exclaim. Well, a few of them do. Dumbledore preserves a grim silence. But Theo keeps his eyes on the floor, and hands over his wand for the Prior Incantato easily enough when they ask for it.

Even with his eyes on the floor, he can see the smoky images leaving his wand. Lightning bolts, the flickering incantation of the Body-Bind, ice shards, a flame.

Dumbledore sighs at the end and lays Theo’s wand down on the bed beside Harry, who is silent, watching Theo with big eyes. “Then what happened, Mr. Nott?”

“I made sure Harry was all right. And then—then I knew I had to kill the thing that had come out of the cauldron.”

“So much blood on your hands,” Dumbledore says in an empty voice.

“Harry was tied to a headstone when Pettigrew took his blood,” Theo snaps, and it’s no trouble at all to infuse his voice with panic and anger. “I had to do something! I didn’t know it would kill him, I just had to do something!” And even that’s true. Theo’s main target was the cauldron. He didn’t care that Pettigrew was in the way, of course. “And then Harry was fighting the snake, and I was fighting my father, and—and that happened. And someone besides Harry should do something about Voldemort! He shouldn’t have to do it all by himself!”

The flurry of gasps that sweeps across the room is something else. Theo keeps his head bowed, so none of them will see the smile pulling at the corners of his eyes. Speaking the Dark Lord’s name has won him points, has convinced at least one of them, probably, that’s he changed sides.

In truth, Theo doesn’t think of the war as Voldemort’s side and Dumbledore’s side. For him, there’s Harry’s side, and there’s everyone else.

“That is, perhaps, true enough,” says Dumbledore, and sighs, and turns away to say something to Snape and Madam Pomfrey. Theo doesn’t care what. He’s done with his story, the blood ritual worked, and he’s nearly as exhausted as he was pretending.

And Harry is safe.

Theo turns to Harry. He’s prepared to encounter judgment there, of many kinds. For using Dark Arts, for lying, for killing a helpless thing that might have been dying anyway. For killing his father.

But Harry’s eyes are deep and accepting. He reaches out and clasps Theo’s hand. Theo lets his lips form the question Why?

“You kept me safe,” Harry whispers. “You saved my life. You did—what you had to do.”

Theo tightens his hold on Harry’s hand, and they sit there as the world sweeps around them.

The End.