Chapter Two of 'Chrysalis'- Deadly Spells

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Two—Deadly Spells

“So. Why did you never tell me about Sirius Black?”

Harry sighs and puts down the Daily Prophet, which is blandly reporting that Harry won the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Theo takes his time to sneer at the thing. It’s worse than useless a lot of the time, given the lies it reports, unless you want to know what the average idiotic wizard or witch is thinking.

“At first I didn’t trust you,” Harry murmurs, eyes on his hands. “Even when we went to the Yule Ball together, I didn’t think I could talk to you about secrets that affected more people than me. Things like the basilisk and the Philosopher’s Stone…” He shakes his head. “The only other people they would have implicated were Ron and Hermione, and I already knew how you felt about them.”

Theo carefully revises his memories and realizes Harry is right. Harry didn’t breathe a word of Lupin’s lycanthropy, for example, despite the fact that it was all over the school by the end of their third year. And he’s never told Theo who Riddle’s diary was possessing.

Theo leans forwards. “And when you did trust me?”

Harry swallows and toys with the scrambled eggs that the Nott house-elves have prepared for him. (He reduced two of them to tears with his thanks. It’s a little disgusting). “I…”

“Hey, it’s all right,” Theo says softly, and leans forwards to put a hand on Harry’s. They’re using the small dining table once reserved for unfavored guests instead of the huge one Theo always ate at growing up. Theo had no desire to sit six whole chairs away from Harry. “I didn’t mean to distress you. I just want to know.”

Harry takes a deep breath and meets Theo’s eyes. “Sirius offered to let me live with him last year,” he blurts. “It’s the first time someone ever offered that. I wanted to. But he had to go on the run because the Minister refused to believe he was innocent and Hermione and I had to take a Time-Turner to rescue him and Buckbeak from the Dementors. Well, we rescued Buckbeak from the Ministry executioner, and Sirius rode him to freedom. But we had to do that because of the Dementors.”

Theo feels a headache knocking on his temple. He takes a slow breath. “Buckbeak.”

“The hippogriff that supposedly attacked Malfoy last year.”

“The one his father was going to have executed. Right. I take it he wasn’t executed?”

Theo says it as dryly as he can, and Harry flushes, but nods. “Yeah. Hermione had a Time-Turner that she’d received so she could use extra time to study for classes, and she and I used that go back and rescue Buckbeak. Then we…rescued Sirius…”

He trails off and stares at the far wall. Theo leans forwards and says as gently as he can, “Harry?”

“Um, there’s something about how we rescued Sirius that I don’t think will make you very happy.”

“None of this makes me all this happy. But I’m not going to yell at you, if that’s what you mean.”

“Are you sure?”

Theo stares into Harry’s eyes and holds back the things he wants to say. How Harry was raised is influencing him here, Theo knows. He can’t help looking for disapproval and being sure that everything someone says is another instance of it. But Theo shrugs and leans back. “You’re here, and you survived. I might ask you never to do it again, but that’s different from yelling at you about it.”

Harry nods, not looking as if he’s all that convinced, but then says, “Sirius had been almost eaten by Dementors earlier. I mean, before he was imprisoned and we took the Time-Turner to go back. A stag Patronus came charging across the lake and saved him—and me. I thought at the time—it doesn’t matter.”

“Harry.”

“It’s stupid.”

“I’d still like to hear it.”

Theo gets a suspicious stare of the kind that he’d really rather not see from Harry again, but then Harry nods. “I thought maybe it was my dad,” he breathes. “Because the stag was my dad’s Animagus form. I really would have liked it to be my dad.”

Theo reaches across the table and lets his hand rest on top of Harry’s. He can’t relate exactly to that desire, his father having been—what he was, but he knows exactly how it feels to wish that someone would keep him safe, keep him warm, and keep him from having to fear.

Harry bows his head. “But, anyway, it wasn’t. It was me.”

“What?”

“When we time-traveled back, then I used the stag to save myself and Sirius from the Dementors. Don’t ask me exactly how it works. Time travel makes my head hurt. So I sent my Patronus against dozens of Dementors, and scared them away from me and Sirius. I don’t like to think of how close I came to getting my soul sucked out. But in the end, everything was fine,” Harry ends on a false light note, sitting back and beaming at Theo. “Because I was never in danger since I already traveled back to save myself, see.”

Theo sighs and stares at the wall for a minute. He doesn’t want to yell at Harry, not exactly. He wants to yell at the people who thought this was a good idea. Granger, for going along with it. Dumbledore, for probably giving them the idea in the first place. Maybe McGonagall, if she thought it was a grand idea for Granger to have a Time-Turner.

But none of those people are here, and getting angry at Harry is counterproductive for all the reasons Harry has already named. Theo nods gently and holds Harry’s eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry that you had to do it.”

“You’re angry.”

“I’m angry you were in danger, and that you had to do that,” Theo corrects him. “But I’m not angry at you.”

“It saved my godfather, though.”

The look in Harry’s eyes reminds Theo of an Abraxan who’s just been hit over the head with a stick. Danger, no rationality in view. He sits back a little and cocks his head. “And that makes it okay?”

“I mean…he’s special, Theo.”

Special. Protected. Harry didn’t tell me about him even after he got to know me better, because he couldn’t bear the idea of me disapproving of his precious godfather who apparently never wrote or came to see him during the whole of the Tournament.

But that sort of argues that Theo has a special status, too, if his mere disapproval gets Harry so distressed. He tries to remain as calm as he can. “Are you going to run out and do something stupid to save him again without telling me?”

“Um. Only if I really had to.”

“Will you please tell me if something like this happens again?”

Harry looks down at their clasped hands and nods. “But I don’t know if I’ll have to,” he adds in a tiny voice. “Because Sirius hasn’t written to me in months. I sent him a letter telling him that I went with you to the Yule Ball, and he didn’t write back.”

Theo squashes the flare of triumph inside himself. It’s not something he can indulge until and unless it turns out that Black is just as much of an aresehole as Dumbledore. “It could have been for the same reason that Weasley and Granger said they wouldn’t write to you this summer,” he says, in as neutral a tone as he can muster. “If he was in contact with Dumbledore, and Dumbledore convinced him it was too dangerous, then he probably wouldn’t.”

“Do you think?”

Harry’s eyes are so painfully bright. Theo’s hand tightens on Harry’s for a second. He doesn’t understand how someone could see Harry like this and then obey Dumbledore’s orders to leave him alone.

But maybe none of them have seen Harry like this. Another flare of triumph tears through Theo.

“I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible.” Theo stands up and comes around the table to hug Harry. “I’ll try not to hate him for acting like an arsehole. But I’m not comfortable with him coming inside the wards until we can determine his motivation, either.”

Harry holds him back, and then initiates another kiss. Theo is more than happy to half-lay him across the table and knock some dishes to the floor.

Knocking some dishes to the floor while he snogs his boyfriend should be part of his everyday life.

*

“I want you to teach me Dark magic.”

Theo stares at Harry, dropping the quill he was using to compose a letter to Blaise. “You what?”

Harry is standing in the doorway of the library, and luckily, he doesn’t look intimidated by the dark, close-set, crowded shelves of books the way he did at the start of the week. He looks directly at Theo, his hands half-clenched.

“The spells you used in the graveyard were really what saved us,” he says softly. “I did my part, I know, but at the very least, we would have had to cope with your father if you hadn’t killed him and they would have found the Killing Curse on your wand if you hadn’t cleansed it. That’s the kind of thing I want to know, Theo. The kind of thing I have to know.”

“Not all of those are Dark Arts. They’re just…”

Theo finds himself groping for words to describe them. They’re the kind of magic he had to learn growing up because someday, he knew he would face opponents across a battlefield who wouldn’t hesitate to use them. They’re practical magic.

They’re also not the kind of thing he would have expected Harry to want to learn, for a very specific reason.

“The Killing Curse is the reason you have no parents, Harry. Are you sure you want to learn it?”

“Voldemort is the reason I have no parents,” Harry says, and he can draw his lips back from his teeth and look like a right scary bastard when he wants to, Theo discovers in that moment. “Yeah, I know it’s illegal, and I’d have to be careful who I cast it around. And I don’t really have any interest in the Cruciatus. I want to kill people, not torture them.”

“A fine distinction,” Theo says faintly, but his mind is racing.

He just assumed that there were certain lines Harry wouldn’t want to cross, and the Unforgivables were one of them. Right now, all Theo can think is how stupid he’s been. Of course Harry would want to learn the most powerful magic he could, after seeing Theo wield it in the graveyard.

Or does he want to learn it because it was Theo, and that proves to him that someone can use that magic in defense of him?

Theo studies Harry closely, looking for signs that he’s overly emotional about this or doesn’t really want to learn but thinks he has to be able to stand up for himself because Theo won’t always be there. (Theo intends to always be there). But although Harry’s cheeks are flushed and he looks frustrated, he meets Theo’s eyes calmly enough, and he doesn’t look distressed. He looks determined.

Theo nods. “I’ll teach you. The most important thing is that you have to mean it, though. So do you think we can come up with a target you could mean it at?”

“I think we can find a few,” Harry says, his voice fierce.

*

“How did your father teach you the Killing Curse?”

Theo breathes out slowly and turns to face Harry. They’re in the large, bare garden towards the end of the Nott grounds that his father always kept as a dueling area. There’s no grass here, only dirt, and Theo can remember plenty of times when there was blood.

“He used animals. He threatened to kidnap a Muggle and bring one here for me to kill, but either he wasn’t serious or he never really got a chance to kidnap one.”

Harry covers the distance between them in seconds, wrapping his arms around Theo. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into his ear. “That must have been so awful.” One of his hands rubs soothing circles on Theo’s back.

Theo blinks and stands there for a long moment, surprised by how completely he feels embraced by Harry’s warmth. Then he clears his throat. He feels obscurely that he won’t deserve the comfort Harry is showing him unless Harry knows the whole, the worst part. “The last time, he used a house-elf.”

Harry jerks, but doesn’t back away from Theo. “What happened?” he asks, and his hand presses harder in the middle of Theo’s back.

“I killed her.”

Theo can still see the elf’s wide eyes, the way her silence—commanded by his father—transformed into a deeper silence when the Killing Curse hit. Theo meant it because he knew that his father would torture him if he didn’t make the kill. And afterwards, Father laughed and congratulated Theo, but Theo saw the cool contempt in his eyes as well.

Father never thought he had anything to fear from Theo’s Killing Curse, not when Theo struggled to bring down an elf.

You should have thought better, Theo directs, towards whatever might be left of his father’s shade.

“Oh, Theo.”

Harry’s voice is quiet. Theo clings to him, and silence clangs and turns around them. Theo doesn’t know what Harry might say about Theo murdering an elf, and he doesn’t want to know. He steps back before Harry seems ready to let him go, clearing his throat. “Shall we?” he asks, tilting his head at the bare ground.

Harry is watching him with troubled eyes. Theo wonders if he wants to back out of learning this. But then Harry says, “How are we going to get an animal? Send the elves for one?”

“I’m good enough at Transfiguration for this,” Theo says. “And I don’t expect you to succeed the first time, anyway.” He touches his wand to a rock that he brought with him on purpose from the more garden-like part of the grounds, and manages, after a bit of struggle with the incantation, to Transfigure the stone into a rat. He puts it on the ground and casts a Sticking Charm to keep it from running. “All right?”

Harry is looking distinctly green. But he nods. “Pettigrew’s Animagus form was a rat,” he says softly. “This is—it’s a lot better than if you did a dog or something.”

“I wouldn’t do a dog, not when your godfather is one,” Theo says, and then steps back and out of the way. “I know you know the incantation.” He keeps his voice as gentle as he can. “Do you need the wand movement?”

Harry closes his eyes and stands there for a second. Theo thinks he might be remembering Crouch-Moody showing them the spells in class. After a second, he breathes out and shakes his head. “No, I have it.”

And then he opens his eyes and stares at the rat. Long moments pass.

Theo doesn’t fidget. Father shoved him in front of a mouse and made him start casting immediately. Theo can’t go back and change the past (unlike some people with their Time-Turners and hippogriffs), but he can give Harry what he wasn’t given.

More moments tick past, the rat crouching in place solely due to the Sticking Charm that Theo used on it, until Harry lifts his wand.

His hand trembles. Theo watches and says nothing.

“Avada Kedavra,” Harry whispers, and chops his wand through something approximating the correct wand movement.

Nothing happens. The rat shivers and crouches further, drawing into itself, probably sensing the hostile intent even though Harry didn’t actually cast the spell. Harry drops his wand and abruptly claps his hands over his eyes.

Theo strides over to embrace him. Harry turns and leans his face against Theo’s shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Theo whispers, stroking Harry’s back this time. “You don’t have to learn if you don’t want to.”

“But I do want to.” Harry’s voice has all the strength that his wand movement and casting lacked, surprising Theo. “I was so weak in the graveyard, and I did all right with Nagini, but you killed—you killed three people to protect me.”

“Two,” Theo says mildly. “I don’t think you can count Voldemort as a person.”

Harry laughs shakily and pulls back. “I know that it’ll take me time to get it,” he says, and he firms up his jaw as he stares at Theo. “But I want to get it. I want to be someone you can rely on, and someone who can defend myself, and someone who can—there’s that prophecy. I’m going to have to fight Death Eaters and people Voldemort’s possessed even if it takes him ages to get a new body. I have to learn this.”

“There are other spells I could teach you that would kill someone and aren’t the Killing Curse,” Theo says quietly. “They’re bloodier. But they might be easier for you to learn.”

Harry hesitates and looks at the tethered rat. Then he nods and steps back. “All right. I think—I do want to come back to this. Sooner or later, I think I’m going to need it. But let’s start with something else.”

Theo smiles at him, and draws his wand. “The first lethal one that I remember learning is the Blood Fountain. It pulls all the blood in someone’s body out at once, and leaves them looking like they’ve been drained by a vampire. The wand movement is this…”

Harry nods and pays close attention, his eyes narrow and considering. Theo hopes that he’ll learn all he can, without changing who he is.

Theo doesn’t think that he changed a lot, himself, after he killed the house-elf. It was something he went through, and the elf went through, and Father went through, and now two of them are dead.

Theo will make sure Harry doesn’t end up the same way. Harry will survive this war.