lomonaaeren

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Chapter Five—Emotions, Sensations

The spell was like nothing Harry had ever experienced.

Someone seemed to reach in and snatch his soul out of his body. He found himself borne along a tide rushing so deep and thick that he gasped and drowned. And then he was in another body, looking through another pair of eyes, living another life.

*

Theo stared at himself in the mirror, tilting his head and parting his hair. Father had told him another story that night of the satyrs the Nott family had once been in Avalon, and he was hoping, hoping that if he looked hard enough, he might find a trace of horn nubbins on his head, or his feet might turn into hooves.

Nothing.

Theo stamped a small foot. He wanted to be a satyr! Father said sometimes he wasn’t very good at being a normal boy. But he could be good at being a satyr! Avalon just had to give him a chance!

His head remained human.

*

“We’re never going to be as powerful as we once were,” Father said in a maudlin voice, staring into his glass and turning it back and forth. The light sparkled off the drink inside it. It was bright amber, the color he had once told Theo that a Nott man’s eyes would turn if he had inherited enough satyr blood to matter. “We’re never going to be able to make a destiny for ourselves without following someone stronger…”

“Is that why you followed the Dark Lord?”

Father hiccoughed and blinked at him over the glass. Theo crossed his arms. He had seen the Dark Mark on his father’s arm, and he thought he was entitled to ask questions about it. He was nine, that was old enough.

“Yes,” Father admitted at last, fingers tracing lazy patterns up and down the outside of the glass. “There’s no—there’s no other alternative, Theo. I bound myself to the Dark Lord, and we lost. But I didn’t know we would lose! Someday you’ll have to risk everything, too. Because we can’t protect ourselves. Because we lost it.”

“The blood of Avalon.”

“Yes.” Father stared over Theo’s head at the far wall, where Theo knew the portrait of his grandfather hung. But maybe he was looking at something else, like Mother’s ghost that was visible only to him. Half the time, Theo couldn’t tell.

“What was Avalon like, Father? We left, or our ancestors did. The satyrs and the other Beautiful Ones left and came here to our world to have children. So why does everyone act like it’s that grand a place?”

Theo didn’t even really want to call their ancestors “Beautiful Ones.” He’d seen pictures, and some, like the brilliant trolls that were extinct now, had been ugly. But it was the name Father had taught him.

Father sighed and stared into his glass. “It’s not Avalon that abandoned our ancestors, Theo. It was us who abandoned it.”

“How?”

Father was stubbornly silent and said nothing. Theo sat back with his arms wrapped around his stomach, the way he sat when Father sent him to his room, and waited for Father to say something.

Finally, Father took a long breath and whispered, “Avalon was a small community. As long as our ancestors lived within it, they couldn’t have as many children as they wanted to. And it had no humans. We—the Beautiful Ones wanted to have children with humans, to see what they looked like, to create new worlds.”

He fell silent. Theo thought about it. He had no very strong feelings about having kids himself. But someday he would have to. He supposed he could see why it would be good to spread out and have room and have as many kids as you wanted.

“That doesn’t sound like us abandoning Avalon. It just sounds like us moving somewhere else.”

“We did,” Father said, so harshly that Theo jumped. “We came to a world with Muggles instead, and we created ugly things. Ugly children, ugly truths. We would have been better served to stay in a world saturated with beauty.”

Theo didn’t think he understood. But he knew Muggles were bad and Father hated them, so maybe he didn’t have to.

*

“…so stringy and pale…”

Theo kept his head down over his book and didn’t lift it until he was sure the group of Slytherin girls, with the giggling Pansy Parkinson in the center of them, had gone. Then he bowed his head and silently screamed into his hands, curling his fingers to tear at his hair.

They made fun of his looks, which he could do nothing about. It wasn’t his fault his ancestors had chosen to inbreed sometimes and Theo had ended up taller than normal and paler than normal.

It wasn’t his fault that his satyr ancestors had left Avalon and chosen to breed so much with humans—and those children so much with humans—that his bloodline had lost the satyr gifts.

Not everything would have been different if he had had visible non-human heritage, and Theo knew that. But enough would have been different, and the longing filled him like the ocean tide.

*

“You understand that you will be compelled to obey me?”

“Yes,” Theo gasped. He was kneeling in front of the Dark Lord, holding out his left arm. He’d been holding it out for more than ten minutes, first while the Dark Lord did a silent inspection of his bare skin, and then while he answered the various questions the Dark Lord was putting to him to determine his worthiness as a Death Eater. His arm was shaking now.

Theo knew without looking that his father would be shaking his head and curling his lip in contempt. There was a reason that Theo wasn’t looking at his father.

“You understand that you would be compelled to be loyal to me, even if I could not give you what you most wanted?” The Dark Lord bent towards him, terrifying face and shining red eyes only a few inches away. Theo tried to swallow and found his throat was too dry to do it.

Theo blinked for a long moment. He wanted protection and distinction, because his father’s oft-repeated lament about his family not being able to protect themselves was right. He needed to be sheltered. How could the Dark Lord not give him that?

But then his mind seemed to burn as the Dark Lord’s gaze dug into it, and the hissing voice spoke directly into his head. I cannot give you the satyr gifts. You must serve me anyway.

Theo twitched and nodded, and kept his arm extended.

The Dark Lord laughed, for some reason, as he pulled back from Theo’s brain. “You have raised a rare son,” he said in Father’s direction, and laid his wand along Theo’s arm. “I will Mark you, and you will have the thing you desire the second most. Morsmordre!”

Theo screamed in agony as the pain spread through him. The Mark was being carved into his skin, branded, and he couldn’t get away, he couldn’t get away, this was neverending—

And then it ended.

Theo’s breaths were loud in the gasping silence. He lifted his head and found the Dark Lord watching him, along with Bellatrix Lestrange, her hand twitching towards her wand. Theo bowed his head. He didn’t want to look weak before them, because he knew that made them more likely to attack.

But so did strength. Theo had long noticed that, and thought that becoming a Death Eater would be a mistake.

Not as much of one as remaining with an unmarked arm in the house where his father dwelled, though.

“Arise, Theodore Nott,” the Dark Lord said at last, his voice whipping Theo like the sting of a chain. “I will have none of my followers cower before those who should be their peers. Their family.”

Theo thought he had never heard anything more laughable in his life, but he stumbled to his feet and turned around to bow to the Dark Lord’s Inner Circle. Slowly at first, definitely led by Father, they started to applaud.

Theo summoned a smile to his lips and bowed in all four directions, as Father had told him he should do. Then he stepped back and waited for the next initiate to come forwards, who turned out to be Gregory Goyle.

Father came up to his side and bent his head a little, while everyone else stared at Goyle extending his muscular arm. “The Beautiful Ones would be proud of you,” Father breathed into Theo’s ear.

All Theo could think was that they wouldn’t, that they had come in search of beauty and excitement, but that the brand on his arm was the ugliest thing he had ever seen.

Then he buried that idea deep as he watched Goyle scream and writhe his way through the initiation. He wouldn’t survive if he went around letting thoughts like that bob on the surface of his mind. And he did still want to survive.

He had to want it more than being a satyr, something he was never going to get.

*

Theo found ugliness, too, in the way that the Carrows tortured students at Hogwarts, and laughed about Mudbloods, and lectured them on magical history that Theo knew was all wrong, and pretended that non-humans were beneath notice when once pureblood families had been proud of the Avalon blood they carried.

But he couldn’t do anything. And he didn’t care enough about Mudbloods to stand up to the Carrow for them. He felt sick when he saw the youngest kids get tortured, but what good would it do if he protested and got tortured along with them? It would just mean two people in pain instead of one.

Besides, he was watched every minute of every day. They had their instructions from the Dark Lord, the young Death Eaters in Slytherin. They securitized each other for disloyalty. Theo was supposed to keep an eye on Draco and Pansy.

Goyle watched him. He was open about it, and didn’t care. He even followed Theo to the bathroom a few times, although Theo at least terrorized him into letting Theo use the loo in peace.

Alone in the only place he could be—they even had to charm their bed curtains transparent—Theo leaned his head against the wall of the bathroom and breathed long and slow. His body shuddered, and the snake on his arm seemed to writhe. Theo stared down at it with hazy eyes.

I shouldn’t have got this.

But a spike of pain ran up through his arm. The Dark Lord himself couldn’t sense disloyal thoughts from a distance, but the Mark did, and would punish the traitors in the only way it could. Theo bowed his head and moved on, moved forwards.

Because he had made this decision, and he would never have the opportunity to make a different one.

*

Harry staggered as he came out of the spell and the wash of Theo’s memories and emotions, even though he was sitting down. He caught himself with his hands flat on the table before his chin could hit it and then sat back and stared at Theo.

Theo held his eyes. “I told you I wasn’t a good person,” he whispered.

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think—you weren’t evil in the same way Voldemort was, either,” he said, struggling to process the tidal wave of fear and helplessness and indifference towards the fates of others that was still settling into his mind. Harry wouldn’t have felt the same things in the same situation, but then again, he wouldn’t have been in the situation, either, because he hadn’t been raised by Theo’s father. “I think I understand a little more why the satyr gifts mattered so much to you.”

Theo’s mouth quirked. “Going to psychoanalyze me?”

“How do you even know that word?”

“Listening to chatter from Ravenclaws in the library when I had literally nothing else to do. Are you?”

“No.” Harry sighed and leaned back. “I just—the satyrs were this vision of freedom and escape and beauty that you wanted to have and resented not having. Then it seemed more impossible than ever when you got the Dark Mark.” He glanced at Theo’s left arm, and Theo obligingly pulled his sleeve up. The Mark was nothing more than a twisted version of a bruise, now. “And now you have them, and it’s overwhelming. You didn’t expect that, even when you came to me and asked me to heal you and the others. You can’t really believe, even now, that I’m the one who gave you your vision.”

“No.” Theo leaned forwards, tossing his head a little. Harry was absolutely sure it to was to feel the weight of his horns, to make sure they were still there after remembering a time when they weren’t. “And I don’t know what to say to you. I’d like to take you to bed, yes. But there’s also…it’s such a weight, my gratitude.”

Harry winced. He like the thought that he might have given Theo something he’d wanted for so long, but he loathed the idea that he might have made Theo feel an obligation to give him something in return. He found Theo’s hand and squeezed it.

“Do what you want,” he said. “Not what the past you would have wanted, the one who was trapped and thought he had no other choice. Don’t feel trapped by this. Make it a source of beauty and freedom in your life, like you hoped for.”

“And you would encourage that?” Theo asked in a low voice, eyes on him.

“What? Of course I would.”

“Even if the path I chose led me away from you and to choose another?”

“Yes. You deserve to be free, Theo. You did—some of the choices you made in the past were horrible ones, yeah. But you don’t deserve to have your other choices dictated to you. There’s no way that you’ll become a happier or better person if that happens.”

Theo’s breath hitched. Harry watched him in concern, and a sudden stab of panic that Theo might be crying. He wasn’t sure he knew what to do with crying boys any more than he did with crying girls.

But Theo lifted his head and looked at Harry, and there was nothing in his eyes but pure and shining desire.

“Yes,” he said softly. “That’s why I want you.”

“Because I make speeches about your happiness?”

“Because you care about it.” Theo’s hand squeezed his. “My father cared about my survival when he encouraged me to become a Death Eater, and he really didn’t see any other path for me, not when he’d already made that decision so long before I was born. He knew, better than I did at the time, that the Dark Lord would never let the children of his followers go. But while he was sorry about it, he wanted me to repeat the same choice. You don’t want me to repeat yours. You’d let me go, even if you want me.”

Harry nodded firmly. “Yes. It has to be—it has to be a free decision. Or it means nothing.”

“Now I understand better why you were so worried that we might be laboring under some kind of compulsion to keep you happy or serve you.”

Harry smiled, although he could feel that the smile was strained, and he dropped it after a minute. “Yeah. It makes everything worthless if it isn’t free. Your life, and the choice to be around me, and—whatever we can have. Whether it’s a satyr-influenced fling or something else.”

“It is not,” Theo said with hard precision, “a fling.” And he leaned forwards and pressed his lips to Harry’s.

Harry sighed out and kissed Theo back, raising one hand to touch the edge of Theo’s right horn. Theo jumped, and Harry hastily took his hand back, pulling his lips free, too. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Are they sensitive?”

“You could say that.”

Harry stared at him. Theo’s eyes had gone so dark that Harry was pretty sure he would have known it was with lust even if he hadn’t just been inside Theo’s head, sharing his emotions. Theo shifted, and the sound of his hooves on the floor was loud. He reached out and slid his fingers up the inside of Harry’s left wrist.

Harry jumped and shuddered, groaning a little. He hadn’t known he was so sensitive there, and wondered how Theo had.

On the other hand, perhaps it was part of his satyr powers.

On the first hand, we’re in the middle of the kitchen surrounded by house-elves, and I don’t really want to make out in front of them, Harry thought, and drew back, licking his lips, when Theo would have gone in for another kiss. “Let’s find somewhere more private,” he said. He didn’t jump at the sound of his own voice, dark and husky, but he came close.

“I agree,” Theo said, and stood up and held out a hand to him. The minute Harry took it, Theo turned his hand and let the prickle of the claws he had grown when Harry wasn’t looking race up Harry’s skin.

Harry groaned and shuddered again, and pulled Theo out of the kitchen, only to push him up against a stone wall right by the painting of the fruit bowl that guarded the kitchen entrance and kiss him hard enough to make his own head spin. He hoped it was doing the same thing to Theo.

He hoped he could make Theo feel as good as Theo was going to make him feel.

Kind of sorry that the memories he’d shared with Theo hadn’t included any of sex so he knew what would make Theo feel that way, but also relieved that he wouldn’t “remember” being in competition with anybody, Harry stepped back and held out his hand again, smiling. “Shall we?”