lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-11-13 08:38 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-11-13 08:38 pm
Entry tags:
[Songs of the Stormy Season]: Black Altars, Harry/Theo, R
Title: Black Altars
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, angst, violence, animal sacrifice, attempted sacrifice, discussion of past character death and child abuse, necromancer Theo, Dark Arts, established relationship, non-linear narrative, mix of tenses (present tense in present-day scenes, past tense in flashbacks)
Rating: R
Wordcount: 5200
Summary: As much as Harry believes he’s recovered from the death of his godfather, Theo has seen the blank sadness in his eyes when he discusses Sirius Black. In a way, that’s the first loss Harry truly grieved. Theo is a practicing necromancer, and he’s determined to bring Sirius back for Harry.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” series, one-shots being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s based on a request from Cloudy_dreamer for a fic where Theo becomes a necromancer and tries to bring Sirius back to life for Harry. Hope you enjoy.
Black Altars
Theo studies the altar, and nods. It’s a single block of basalt, and carved with depictions of dragons in flight, blood grooves, and traceries that resemble those left in ancient stones by ferns. In other words, it’s perfect.
Theo steps away from the altar and closes his eyes.
He’s outside, in the graveyard near the village of Little Hangleton that he’s seen only once before. That doesn’t matter, though, and it also doesn’t matter that his belly twists inside him and he wants to vomit. This is the place that the resurrection needs to happen, a place of emotional significance to both Theo and Harry.
Theo turns and glances over at the animals waiting under small bubbles of magically-conjured and reinforced glass. The black dog is lying still with wide, frightened eyes. The raven opens its beak in a silent croak when Theo glances at it. The rat is rearing and scratching at the glass with its claws.
It doesn’t matter.
Theo turns and draws his athame.
*
Theo huddled in silence next to his father, not understanding why he had been summoned home a week before the Third Task. A family member’s death, said the letter, but Theo knew better than anyone else at Hogwarts that the Nott family had no close members left, not since his mother’s death.
It hadn’t mattered. Of course the Headmaster and his Head of House had said Theo should go. So he’d gone, and spent the days locked in his room, while his father opened the door once a day when the house-elves delivered food and laughed at Theo for “thinking too high and mighty of himself.”
Theo still had no idea what his father had meant. He’d never rebelled against his father or the restrictions he’d put on Theo’s studies and motions. He’d tried to be a good and obedient son, because he was pretty sure what would happen if he wasn’t.
And then his father had shown up tonight in dark robes and a white mask, grabbed Theo’s arm, and dragged him to the edge of the wards. They’d Apparated without a word. Theo had seen that they’d landed in a graveyard, among other people clad like Death Eaters, before Father had forced Theo straight down on the ground with a hand on his back.
He was to bow before the Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord. He was really back.
Theo’s shivering got worse.
The Dark Lord made a long speech that Theo didn’t understand half of, and then turned and walked over to a headstone that Theo hadn’t truly noticed before. Someone was tied there. Theo blinked, his brain dull with terror, and tried to force himself to understand when Harry Potter climbed off the headstone and stood there with his wand clutched in his hands.
Harry Potter.
Theo stared.
The Dark Lord explained that they were going to duel. Why, Theo didn’t know. And then the Dark Lord tried to force Potter to bow. It was evident to Theo, even though he hadn’t heard the incantation, that the Dark Lord was using the Imperius Curse.
A niggling memory tried to get his attention. It had been all over the school that Potter—
“I WON’T!”
Theo felt as though something had snapped him back into mental clarity when Potter straightened and resisted the Dark Lord’s Imperius. That clarity stayed as he watched through the duel, the cage of golden light that suspended the Dark Lord and Potter in midair, and the ghosts that came out of the Dark Lord’s wand.
Theo wasn’t sure the clarity was worth anything, when it probably wouldn’t save his life, but it was there.
Potter somehow got away from the Dark Lord and scrambled towards Diggory’s body. Theo watched him, shivering. He didn’t know why his father had brought him to the Dark Lord’s resurrection, but it seemed unlikely that Theo would survive it.
He still couldn’t move. If he ran, he would have nowhere to go.
Potter glanced up then, and seemed to see Theo for the first time. His eyes widened. He promptly turned and charged towards him and the ring of Death Eaters. Theo felt and heard their shock, but he couldn’t take his eyes from Potter. He wondered if Potter was so enraged at the sight of a familiar face that he was going to kill Theo.
Honestly, it might be better than whatever his father had planned for him.
Instead, Potter slammed into Theo and rolled him to the ground. A Killing Curse flew over their heads. Potter popped back up and dragged Theo towards Diggory’s body, shouting at him. Theo had to shake his head and push his fingers into his ears, scrambling for a moment, to actually hear what Potter was saying.
“Grab the cup and hold on!”
“Cup? What—”
Then Theo saw a large cup lying on the ground. He reached out in what seemed to be a dream, and touched the cup at the same moment that Potter did. Potter was clutching Diggory’s body, Theo saw, still in that same dream.
They flew through the air. The cup was a Portkey, too. Theo had only taken them a few times before. He landed on solid ground, rolled over, and vomited.
“Get up! Get up!”
Hands were hauling at him. Theo didn’t know why. He would have liked to just lie there and let the hands get him up, but apparently someone wanted him to stand. Finally realizing they wouldn’t leave him alone, Theo sulkily braced his feet, turned away from the steaming pile of his own vomit, and rose.
It was Professor Snape pulling at him. Theo hadn’t even recognized the man’s voice through his own shock. He stumbled and swallowed, and then glanced over his shoulder.
Other people were gathering around Potter, who stood over Diggory’s body. There was Moody, and Dumbledore, and someone who looked a lot like Diggory and might be his father, and, well, lots of people.
Potter’s gaze locked on Theo, and he gave him a nod.
Theo never forgot that, never would forget that. Potter saving his life in the graveyard was one thing, and meant Theo owed him a Life-Debt, but it was almost expected. Potter was the sort of savior who thought he was responsible for everyone and everything else that the Slytherins mocked on a regular basis.
But Potter giving him that nod…
It meant he was thinking about Theo in a moment when almost no one else was.
Theo remembered that, through the interrogation with Snape and everything else that followed.
*
Theo takes a slow, intent breath, and steps back from the altar. It’s perfect, which means the next step, his Declaration of Intent, also has to be.
“I declare this altar sacrosanct to the attempt to resurrect Sirius Black,” Theo says, his voice ringing. There’s no one there to hear, no one visible, but the air grows calm and heavy in any case. “I declare that I will offer blood and transition and life to bring him back, in the oldest of all necromantic rituals.”
For a moment more, the air is heavy and calm. Then it begins to stir, and Theo inclines his head, accepting the wind that ruffles the ends of his dark hair.
It has begun.
*
“It means a lot to me.”
Theo blinked and slanted a glance sideways at Potter. They’d started meeting up, without discussion, from the day that Potter lingered behind in Potions and waited for Theo. They never talked about the graveyard, or anything very important. They sat in abandoned classrooms or found places like this, on the sill of a window that looked out towards the Forbidden Forest, and they spent almost as much time in silence as in discussion.
“What means a lot, Potter?”
Potter smiled at him. Theo started. It was almost the first time he had seen Potter smile in their fifth year, given the constant detentions that Umbridge was handing out to him and the people who called him a liar and the people who avoided him with looks of fear on their faces. Plus whatever kind of detentions he was actually serving with Professor Snape. Theo wasn’t stupid enough to think the lie of Remedial Potions was the truth.
“Your listening to me like this. Your believing me about what happened in the graveyard.”
Theo was at a loss for words for a moment. Then he said, “I was there, Potter. It would be pretty stupid for me to pretend that it didn’t happen.”
“I know. But you could have kept silent about it instead of speaking up and saying that you believed me in public.”
“It was a Potions class.”
“Still public.”
Theo had to think about it and decide that Potter was probably right. He just hadn’t thought that that particular speech would have much effect on Potter, not when he had heavy blows coming at him from left and right, and not when he did have two best friends who were loud about saying they believed him.
“You’re welcome,” Theo whispered.
Potter watched him with a continued smile for a moment, and then stirred. “I never did ask you—where did you go after the end of last term? I know you couldn’t go home.”
Not wanting to talk about it was one of the reasons that Theo had avoided raising these conversations so far. But he swallowed and said, “There was a small house that my mother owned. She warded it and linked it to her blood. She was the last survivor of her family—her grandparents and cousins all died during Grindelwald’s war, and her parents died when she was young—and my father couldn’t get into it.”
“You spent the whole summer alone?”
“Other than a few owls, yes. I did leave the wards in the last week to go to Diagon Alley so I could do my school shopping. I reckoned I would be safe enough in the Leaky Cauldron since the Dark Lord isn’t making his presence known so far.”
“I know what that’s like.”
The empathy in Potter’s voice was so distinct that Theo turned towards him. “Potter, no offense, but how could you? I doubt that your guardians would allow you to live alone in a warded house the whole summer.”
“They’d probably love it,” Potter said dryly. He pulled his hair back from his forehead. Theo was going to tell him that if he wanted people to find him attractive, messing up his hair and revealing the swollen, bloody scar was probably not a good idea, but his words were stolen entirely when Potter added, “They’re Muggles who hate magic.”
Theo’s jaw fell open. Potter was looking out the window now and didn’t seem to notice. His voice was soft, as if he was musing to himself.
“I didn’t get any letters all summer, until I got one after a Dementor attack that told me I was expelled from Hogwarts and then another one to say that I should stay right where I was. Ron and Hermione didn’t write to me because Dumbledore told them not to. And then I was put on trial for fucking underage magic, and I only got acquitted because of Dumbledore. It sucked.”
Theo swallowed several times. He wanted to say something profound, something that would express his thanks to Potter for putting this amount of trust in him, but there was nothing he could say that was adequate.
“Yeah,” he said at last.
Potter glanced at him.
“It does suck,” Theo said, and Potter laughed, and that was probably the moment when Theo started thinking of him as Harry.
*
Theo smiles as he turns away from the altar and breaks the magical glass bubble encasing the rat. It scrabbles frantically at him with its claws and tries to bite him, but Theo has charmed his skin impervious. The spell will last until the final moments of the ritual, so he turns around without a problem and lays the rat on the altar.
“Powers I entreat,” Theo breathes, “powers with the ability to return Sirius Black to life, accept this sacrifice, the Animagus form of the man who betrayed the one I seek to twelve years in prison.”
It’s important that the animals sacrificed in a necromantic ritual have some kind of connection to the person one is seeking to draw back. Theo is lucky, he thinks distantly as he picks up his athame while holding the rat in place with one hand, that he has such a plethora of connections to choose from.
He brings the knife down and pins the rat to the altar. It thrashes, squealing.
Theo watches it die, and feels the powers gathering around him.
*
Theo wrapped his arms around Harry and held on while Harry sobbed as if his heart would break.
He had come back from some journey elsewhere that he hadn’t talked about and sent Theo a message on a charmed bit of paper that would be invisible to others’ eyes and that would burn as soon as Theo had read it. He had said he needed to see him. Theo had left the Slytherin common room, gone to one of their usual abandoned classrooms, and had no chance to ask questions before Harry flung himself at him, sobbing.
It didn’t matter what it was, though. Theo leaned back in the chair he had conjured when he’d realized how long they would likely be here and cradled Harry, holding him against his chest. He would do whatever was necessary to help Harry and soothe his tears. Harry could never ask too much of him.
At last, Harry’s tears tailed off. Theo smoothed his hand down Harry’s back and waited.
“He’s dead,” Harry breathed.
Theo felt a sharp jolt. There were so few people who would cause Harry to react like this, and losing one of them—“Who is?”
“Sirius.”
Theo made a soft sound and drew Harry closer. Losing Weasley or Granger would probably have hurt Harry worse, but he knew that Harry practically worshipped Black. He’d had no parents that he remembered, and Black would have taken their place if he could have. And now he was gone.
“What happened?”
“Me. It was my fault.”
Theo said nothing about it not being Harry’s fault, just stroked his back again and waited.
“I got a vision from Voldemort,” Harry whispered at last. Theo subdued the shiver that wanted to shake him. He would do worse than this to help Harry. “It showed that he was torturing Sirius in the Ministry and I had to come save him. But when I got there, Sirius wasn’t actually there. It was a trap. Sirius came with the rest of the—the Order to rescue me, and Bellatrix Lestrange cursed him. He fell through a veil that was whispering with the voices of the dead and didn’t come back out.”
Theo simply nodded and held Harry closer still. He knew about the Order of the Phoenix and that Sirius Black hadn’t actually been a Death Eater from hearing (and overhearing) what his father had said to various other Death Eaters. Harry had been stunned and grateful to find that out, when Theo had told him. It meant he could talk freely to Theo without betraying anything.
I’m the one he came to in his hour of crisis.
“I don’t know what to do,” Harry whispered.
“You can’t bring him back,” Theo said. His hand stroked down Harry’s back again. “Do you want to duel? Let some of the energy go?”
“I’m too tired.”
Harry leaned more heavily on him. Theo drew his wand and conjured rockers on the chair to take the weight. Harry sighed like a tired child as the chair began to move, and Theo rearranged Harry—with the help of a Lightening Charm—so that his feet weren’t dangling down to the floor and he was sprawled over Theo’s lap.
Theo began to hum a soft lullaby. It wasn’t something he would ever admit to knowing in public, because that would mean admitting that he remembered his mother and missed her. But Harry would never embarrass or mock him for it. After all, he had confessed something as deep to Theo tonight.
“That’s nice,” Harry murmured, sounding as if he was already on the brink of sleep.
Theo nodded against his head and kept humming.
*
Theo smiles now and shakes his head at the memory. Yes, he had told Harry that he couldn’t bring Sirius Black back to life, and it had been true.
At the time.
Because Harry was not a necromancer, and Theo now is, and he will bring Sirius back.
For Harry, as so much in his life has been for so long.
Theo cracks the magical dome that imprisons the raven. The bird flies at him, croaking and furious, its wings flapping as if he might escape up into the warm night. Theo clasps its neck and shakes it once, and the bird subsides, staring at him with its beak open and its wings still chopping at the air.
Theo needed an animal symbolic of death for this ritual, and it’s his luck and more than his luck that the Black family crest, or some versions of it, incorporates ravens.
He uses magic to pin the bird to the altar and slowly, methodically plucks all its feathers. It takes so much time, and the bird flaps and croaks and tries to stab him with its beak. Theo accepts the stabs—which still hurt even though they can draw no blood from his enspelled skin—as part of the price. The ritual must be done this way.
The raven is exhausted by the time he’s done, still and trembling. Theo picks it up and conjures another glass dome for it, although his hand shakes with exhauastion. He will release the raven into the wild, and it will live or die. Probably die. But he doesn’t kill it, because that is not what the ritual is for.
The rat had to die. It represents the state Sirius Black is in at the moment. The raven without feathers, alive but probably destined to die, represents the transitional state, the in-between one that Black must pass through so that Theo can pull him back to life.
And the dog…
Theo smiles and tells himself not to get too far ahead of his present position.
*
“How many people are going to die in front of me?”
Harry’s voice was low and fervent with hatred. Theo moved a little closer so that their shoulders bumped. They were sitting in their classroom, the one they had come to after Black died. Theo had replaced the conjured rocking chair with a real one, Harry had added a couch he’d got from somewhere, they’d learned how to build a fireplace they could light a real fire in, and a fan of Harry’s among the house-elves had hung the walls with tapestries and covered the floor with rugs.
Now, all the warmth from a blazing fire couldn’t disguise the way Harry shivered beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said suddenly.
Theo turned around and blinked at him. “For what?” He and Harry hadn’t got to spend that much time together during their sixth year. Harry was always busy, between classes, Quidditch, his friends, and “lessons” with Dumbledore, and Draco, despite his own stupid plans, seemed annoyingly alert to Theo’s absence from the dormitories.
“For dumping all these burdens on you.” Harry ran his hand down Theo’s shoulder. Theo shivered with the touch, and Harry cocked his head as if noting it for the first time. His voice was slower when he spoke, but he didn’t speak about what he’d seen. “It wasn’t your fault that Dumbledore died. It’s not your fault that Snape was a traitor.” Harry’s voice became a snarl. “Or that I’m torn up about it.”
“You give me plenty, Harry.”
“What, though? Because, yeah, I saved your life in the graveyard, but you don’t owe me hours of listening for a Life-Debt.”
Theo smiled. He reached out and caught Harry’s hands, and Harry’s breath caught along with them. Theo bowed his head, looking Harry in the eye the entire time, and let his breath ghost along Harry’s fingers. Harry seemed to stop breathing altogether, and Theo could feel the pulse in his wrist quicken.
“You give me your friendship,” Theo said softly. “Your time. Your loyalty. You didn’t demand that I act less like a Slytherin. You didn’t blame me for being one even though Slytherins in general haven’t treated you well.” He slid his fingers gently up Harry’s arms towards his elbows. “That’s something I never would have had otherwise, Harry, with the life that I grew up in and the House I landed in. Thank you.”
Harry looked at him with shining eyes and slightly parted lips. It was the first time he’d looked halfway normal since witnessing Dumbledore’s death, and Theo smiled to see it.
Harry grabbed him by the back of his neck and kissed him.
Theo gasped, his mouth opening, and Harry leaned more heavily on him, until they fell off the couch and crashed to the floor. The rugs only made it hurt a little less. Theo reached up and caught Harry’s shoulders, kissing back for all he was worth.
This wasn’t a barrier he would have anticipated crossing so soon, but he welcomed it with all his soul.
*
Theo breaks the glass dome holding the dog. It whimpers and shivers away from him.
Theo shakes his head. “None of that, now,” he murmurs, and lets his hand caress the dog’s head.
The dog is the symbol of life, the representation of Sirius Black as Theo intends to bring him back. Therefore, the dog won’t be sacrificed. He’ll call Black to the world of the living and hold him there for long enough that Theo can complete the ritual. Because, in the end, the mere sacrifice of a dog wouldn’t be enough.
Theo draws his wand and ends the impervious charm on his skin. Then he sheds his robes. He wears nothing underneath them. The dog stops whimpering and eyes him as if it thinks Theo is insane.
Theo is not insane. He always knew how this would end. Bringing someone back to life isn’t lightly done, even for a necromancer. It requires the spilling of human blood, of human life. A life for a life.
Theo would have had to sacrifice many people, but the powers hovering eagerly in the air around him will accept a necromancer’s life as equal to those many.
Theo closes his eyes and reaches for the athame that was still pinning the dead rat to the altar. He knows how much Harry misses Sirius, how his eyes light up when he talks about him. Theo can’t give Harry back everything he left, but he can give him this thing. Anything for Harry.
Harry will miss him, too. Theo doesn’t deceive himself on that point. But Black can help Harry heal the wound.
Theo doesn’t need to chant, not for this part of the ritual, the deepest magic. He holds the athame to his throat.
“Theo!”
*
“Theo.”
Harry whispered the word.
Theo sprawled back on Harry’s bed in Gryffindor Tower, smiling at him dazedly. He had once thought he would never see Harry again. Harry had gone off on the Horcrux hunt, and as much as they’d both wanted for Theo to accompany him, it hadn’t been possible, not in close quarters with Granger and Weasley as Harry had to be.
Harry wrote to Theo as often as he could, which was irregularly, and Theo returned to Hogwarts and helped with the resistance there. Half the time no one trusted him, Slytherin that he was, but Theo ignored that and kept helping. He’d killed his father in the Battle of Hogwarts, which he considered worth it.
Anything for Harry, who had looked into his soul and seen someone worth rescuing.
And now Voldemort was dead, and Harry was alive. Alive.
“I’m so glad we’re up here,” Harry whispered. “I wanted the bed.” And he began taking off his clothes.
Theo watched him with rapturous greed, cataloguing scars and muscles and the curve of Harry’s cock, but what his gaze kept returning to was Harry’s chest, rising and falling, and trembling with the beat of his heart.
Alive. Alive.
Theo had first begun looking into death magic as a way to fight the Death Eaters. It had bred in him a new appreciation for life.
He could barely look away from Harry’s heart until Harry cast a lubrication charm on his own arse and speared himself on Theo’s cock with one thrust. Harry yelped. Theo cried out and reached up and clenched his hands on Harry’s hips, at least in part so as not to come right away.
“You idiot,” Theo squeezed out. “You’re—you’re a virgin—” He knew that, since Harry wouldn’t have been with anyone but him.
“Not anymore,” Harry said, and winked at him, and began to move.
Theo went with it, rocked and shattered by the sheer glory of Harry above him, head tossed back and skin gleaming in the golden sunlight making its way through the windows. A drop of sweat crept down and lingered above his breastbone, and Theo reached up and scratched with sharp fingernails.
Harry cried out and began to come.
There was too much heat, too much pressure, and Theo succumbed, following and soaring and crashing.
They lay together afterwards, tangled together, Harry’s eyes closed and his head flung back much the way it had been when he rode Theo. Theo wrapped his fingers in Harry’s hair and thought he could die of joy, right now, and it would be a life well-spent.
*
Someone knocks his athame aside.
Theo falls to his knees in pure shock, and feels the powers hovering in the air around him snarl. He looks up and finds Harry standing over him, glaring at him, one hand reaching out and snatching the athame before it can fall to the ground.
“What,” Harry snarls, and takes a step closer, “the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
He’s roaring by the end of the words, his eyes wide and desperate. Theo swallows slowly. He thought—
He thought Harry would miss him less than this.
“I was bringing your godfather back,” Theo explains, and glances in the dog’s direction. It jerks as he looks at it, and glances back and forth between him and Harry as though wondering what’s going on. For that matter, Theo is wondering that himself. “I could trade my life for his because a necromancer’s life is precious.”
“Yes, it fucking is!” Harry yells. “To me, you idiot! I love you!”
He’s said that before, but Theo never thought—
Well, it was just—
Of course he knows Harry means it. It’s just that he also meant it when he spoke of how miserable his godfather’s death made him, and Sirius comes up at least once a week in conversation. Theo thought he could reverse that old pain that first brought them together, and give Harry something back.
“You are not going anywhere,” Harry says, and reaches down and shakes Theo’s shoulders until his teeth rattle in his skull. “Do you understand?”
There’s a snarl, heavy and silent, as the powers around him begin to withdraw. Theo nods slowly, rising back to his feet. And something that he didn’t know was unhappy relaxes in the back of his mind.
Harry is still ranting at him. “I know that it’s hard for you to believe I love you because no one else said it to you after your mum died! I know! But I never intended for you to do this! I can love the living and the dead, too, and I want you alive, and I never want you to try this again! Losing Sirius was terrible, but losing you would be, too!”
Theo swallows and nods again, leaning close to feel Harry’s heart hammering against his chest. Harry grabs him, crushes him, kisses him brutally.
“I don’t understand one thing,” Theo says, pulling away, licking his lips.
“Oh, yeah? By my reckoning, you don’t understand a hell of a lot of things—”
“No, I mean. I completed enough of the ritual that we should at least see Black. As a shade, if nothing else.” Harry showed him the Resurrection Stone once, and only once. Theo doesn’t need it to call the dead to him. And since Harry has utterly rejected the Stone’s power, Theo is the only one who does that on a regular basis. “I don’t know where he is.”
In the silence that falls while Harry frowns at him, the black dog gives a quiet bark.
Harry spins around, staring. Theo doesn’t know why he seems to recognize the bark, when this is decidedly not his godfather, but he does.
“Padfoot?” Harry whispers.
The dog gives a joyful woof and jumps up on Harry, doing its best to lick his face.
Theo blinks, and blinks again. Yes, the dog was a symbol of life. Yes, the dog was Sirius Black’s Animagus form. Theo chose a dog as close as he could get to Harry’s descriptions and Penseive memories.
Theo just didn’t think he would call Sirius Black’s shade into the dog’s body.
“Padfoot,” Harry says, and he’s sobbing, kneeling on the ground while the dog jumps around him like a mad thing and barks and frisks and slobbers on him. “Theo, you did it!”
“He’s a dog,” Theo says, a little blankly. “I don’t know how we would get him out of the dog into a human body.”
“He spent a hell of a lot of time as a dog, anyway.” Harry pulls back from “Padfoot” and grins at Theo, using one hand to ruffle the fur around the dog’s neck. “And we have time to figure that out. It’s possible that I could pick up the Stone and the Wand and try to conjure him a body with that.”
“But you hate them.”
“I love you a lot more than I hate them,” Harry says bluntly. “I love Sirius more. I just—never thought this was a possibility. But I’ll do it if it means that you won’t try to do this idiotic sacrifice again. Can you live for me?”
A blazing light grows in Theo’s chest at the notion. He nods. His heart is full. His throat is full, too, and he can’t speak.
Harry doesn’t seem to care. He smiles at Theo and hauls him close for a kiss, ignoring Black’s protesting whine.
Things haven’t worked out the way Theo thought, but that’s been true since Harry Potter hauled him out of a graveyard. They can go on working out the way Harry wants them to, as far as he’s concerned.
He can live for Harry, too, and help with the research to restore dog-Black to a human body.
Anything for Harry.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, angst, violence, animal sacrifice, attempted sacrifice, discussion of past character death and child abuse, necromancer Theo, Dark Arts, established relationship, non-linear narrative, mix of tenses (present tense in present-day scenes, past tense in flashbacks)
Rating: R
Wordcount: 5200
Summary: As much as Harry believes he’s recovered from the death of his godfather, Theo has seen the blank sadness in his eyes when he discusses Sirius Black. In a way, that’s the first loss Harry truly grieved. Theo is a practicing necromancer, and he’s determined to bring Sirius back for Harry.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” series, one-shots being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s based on a request from Cloudy_dreamer for a fic where Theo becomes a necromancer and tries to bring Sirius back to life for Harry. Hope you enjoy.
Black Altars
Theo studies the altar, and nods. It’s a single block of basalt, and carved with depictions of dragons in flight, blood grooves, and traceries that resemble those left in ancient stones by ferns. In other words, it’s perfect.
Theo steps away from the altar and closes his eyes.
He’s outside, in the graveyard near the village of Little Hangleton that he’s seen only once before. That doesn’t matter, though, and it also doesn’t matter that his belly twists inside him and he wants to vomit. This is the place that the resurrection needs to happen, a place of emotional significance to both Theo and Harry.
Theo turns and glances over at the animals waiting under small bubbles of magically-conjured and reinforced glass. The black dog is lying still with wide, frightened eyes. The raven opens its beak in a silent croak when Theo glances at it. The rat is rearing and scratching at the glass with its claws.
It doesn’t matter.
Theo turns and draws his athame.
*
Theo huddled in silence next to his father, not understanding why he had been summoned home a week before the Third Task. A family member’s death, said the letter, but Theo knew better than anyone else at Hogwarts that the Nott family had no close members left, not since his mother’s death.
It hadn’t mattered. Of course the Headmaster and his Head of House had said Theo should go. So he’d gone, and spent the days locked in his room, while his father opened the door once a day when the house-elves delivered food and laughed at Theo for “thinking too high and mighty of himself.”
Theo still had no idea what his father had meant. He’d never rebelled against his father or the restrictions he’d put on Theo’s studies and motions. He’d tried to be a good and obedient son, because he was pretty sure what would happen if he wasn’t.
And then his father had shown up tonight in dark robes and a white mask, grabbed Theo’s arm, and dragged him to the edge of the wards. They’d Apparated without a word. Theo had seen that they’d landed in a graveyard, among other people clad like Death Eaters, before Father had forced Theo straight down on the ground with a hand on his back.
He was to bow before the Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord. He was really back.
Theo’s shivering got worse.
The Dark Lord made a long speech that Theo didn’t understand half of, and then turned and walked over to a headstone that Theo hadn’t truly noticed before. Someone was tied there. Theo blinked, his brain dull with terror, and tried to force himself to understand when Harry Potter climbed off the headstone and stood there with his wand clutched in his hands.
Harry Potter.
Theo stared.
The Dark Lord explained that they were going to duel. Why, Theo didn’t know. And then the Dark Lord tried to force Potter to bow. It was evident to Theo, even though he hadn’t heard the incantation, that the Dark Lord was using the Imperius Curse.
A niggling memory tried to get his attention. It had been all over the school that Potter—
“I WON’T!”
Theo felt as though something had snapped him back into mental clarity when Potter straightened and resisted the Dark Lord’s Imperius. That clarity stayed as he watched through the duel, the cage of golden light that suspended the Dark Lord and Potter in midair, and the ghosts that came out of the Dark Lord’s wand.
Theo wasn’t sure the clarity was worth anything, when it probably wouldn’t save his life, but it was there.
Potter somehow got away from the Dark Lord and scrambled towards Diggory’s body. Theo watched him, shivering. He didn’t know why his father had brought him to the Dark Lord’s resurrection, but it seemed unlikely that Theo would survive it.
He still couldn’t move. If he ran, he would have nowhere to go.
Potter glanced up then, and seemed to see Theo for the first time. His eyes widened. He promptly turned and charged towards him and the ring of Death Eaters. Theo felt and heard their shock, but he couldn’t take his eyes from Potter. He wondered if Potter was so enraged at the sight of a familiar face that he was going to kill Theo.
Honestly, it might be better than whatever his father had planned for him.
Instead, Potter slammed into Theo and rolled him to the ground. A Killing Curse flew over their heads. Potter popped back up and dragged Theo towards Diggory’s body, shouting at him. Theo had to shake his head and push his fingers into his ears, scrambling for a moment, to actually hear what Potter was saying.
“Grab the cup and hold on!”
“Cup? What—”
Then Theo saw a large cup lying on the ground. He reached out in what seemed to be a dream, and touched the cup at the same moment that Potter did. Potter was clutching Diggory’s body, Theo saw, still in that same dream.
They flew through the air. The cup was a Portkey, too. Theo had only taken them a few times before. He landed on solid ground, rolled over, and vomited.
“Get up! Get up!”
Hands were hauling at him. Theo didn’t know why. He would have liked to just lie there and let the hands get him up, but apparently someone wanted him to stand. Finally realizing they wouldn’t leave him alone, Theo sulkily braced his feet, turned away from the steaming pile of his own vomit, and rose.
It was Professor Snape pulling at him. Theo hadn’t even recognized the man’s voice through his own shock. He stumbled and swallowed, and then glanced over his shoulder.
Other people were gathering around Potter, who stood over Diggory’s body. There was Moody, and Dumbledore, and someone who looked a lot like Diggory and might be his father, and, well, lots of people.
Potter’s gaze locked on Theo, and he gave him a nod.
Theo never forgot that, never would forget that. Potter saving his life in the graveyard was one thing, and meant Theo owed him a Life-Debt, but it was almost expected. Potter was the sort of savior who thought he was responsible for everyone and everything else that the Slytherins mocked on a regular basis.
But Potter giving him that nod…
It meant he was thinking about Theo in a moment when almost no one else was.
Theo remembered that, through the interrogation with Snape and everything else that followed.
*
Theo takes a slow, intent breath, and steps back from the altar. It’s perfect, which means the next step, his Declaration of Intent, also has to be.
“I declare this altar sacrosanct to the attempt to resurrect Sirius Black,” Theo says, his voice ringing. There’s no one there to hear, no one visible, but the air grows calm and heavy in any case. “I declare that I will offer blood and transition and life to bring him back, in the oldest of all necromantic rituals.”
For a moment more, the air is heavy and calm. Then it begins to stir, and Theo inclines his head, accepting the wind that ruffles the ends of his dark hair.
It has begun.
*
“It means a lot to me.”
Theo blinked and slanted a glance sideways at Potter. They’d started meeting up, without discussion, from the day that Potter lingered behind in Potions and waited for Theo. They never talked about the graveyard, or anything very important. They sat in abandoned classrooms or found places like this, on the sill of a window that looked out towards the Forbidden Forest, and they spent almost as much time in silence as in discussion.
“What means a lot, Potter?”
Potter smiled at him. Theo started. It was almost the first time he had seen Potter smile in their fifth year, given the constant detentions that Umbridge was handing out to him and the people who called him a liar and the people who avoided him with looks of fear on their faces. Plus whatever kind of detentions he was actually serving with Professor Snape. Theo wasn’t stupid enough to think the lie of Remedial Potions was the truth.
“Your listening to me like this. Your believing me about what happened in the graveyard.”
Theo was at a loss for words for a moment. Then he said, “I was there, Potter. It would be pretty stupid for me to pretend that it didn’t happen.”
“I know. But you could have kept silent about it instead of speaking up and saying that you believed me in public.”
“It was a Potions class.”
“Still public.”
Theo had to think about it and decide that Potter was probably right. He just hadn’t thought that that particular speech would have much effect on Potter, not when he had heavy blows coming at him from left and right, and not when he did have two best friends who were loud about saying they believed him.
“You’re welcome,” Theo whispered.
Potter watched him with a continued smile for a moment, and then stirred. “I never did ask you—where did you go after the end of last term? I know you couldn’t go home.”
Not wanting to talk about it was one of the reasons that Theo had avoided raising these conversations so far. But he swallowed and said, “There was a small house that my mother owned. She warded it and linked it to her blood. She was the last survivor of her family—her grandparents and cousins all died during Grindelwald’s war, and her parents died when she was young—and my father couldn’t get into it.”
“You spent the whole summer alone?”
“Other than a few owls, yes. I did leave the wards in the last week to go to Diagon Alley so I could do my school shopping. I reckoned I would be safe enough in the Leaky Cauldron since the Dark Lord isn’t making his presence known so far.”
“I know what that’s like.”
The empathy in Potter’s voice was so distinct that Theo turned towards him. “Potter, no offense, but how could you? I doubt that your guardians would allow you to live alone in a warded house the whole summer.”
“They’d probably love it,” Potter said dryly. He pulled his hair back from his forehead. Theo was going to tell him that if he wanted people to find him attractive, messing up his hair and revealing the swollen, bloody scar was probably not a good idea, but his words were stolen entirely when Potter added, “They’re Muggles who hate magic.”
Theo’s jaw fell open. Potter was looking out the window now and didn’t seem to notice. His voice was soft, as if he was musing to himself.
“I didn’t get any letters all summer, until I got one after a Dementor attack that told me I was expelled from Hogwarts and then another one to say that I should stay right where I was. Ron and Hermione didn’t write to me because Dumbledore told them not to. And then I was put on trial for fucking underage magic, and I only got acquitted because of Dumbledore. It sucked.”
Theo swallowed several times. He wanted to say something profound, something that would express his thanks to Potter for putting this amount of trust in him, but there was nothing he could say that was adequate.
“Yeah,” he said at last.
Potter glanced at him.
“It does suck,” Theo said, and Potter laughed, and that was probably the moment when Theo started thinking of him as Harry.
*
Theo smiles as he turns away from the altar and breaks the magical glass bubble encasing the rat. It scrabbles frantically at him with its claws and tries to bite him, but Theo has charmed his skin impervious. The spell will last until the final moments of the ritual, so he turns around without a problem and lays the rat on the altar.
“Powers I entreat,” Theo breathes, “powers with the ability to return Sirius Black to life, accept this sacrifice, the Animagus form of the man who betrayed the one I seek to twelve years in prison.”
It’s important that the animals sacrificed in a necromantic ritual have some kind of connection to the person one is seeking to draw back. Theo is lucky, he thinks distantly as he picks up his athame while holding the rat in place with one hand, that he has such a plethora of connections to choose from.
He brings the knife down and pins the rat to the altar. It thrashes, squealing.
Theo watches it die, and feels the powers gathering around him.
*
Theo wrapped his arms around Harry and held on while Harry sobbed as if his heart would break.
He had come back from some journey elsewhere that he hadn’t talked about and sent Theo a message on a charmed bit of paper that would be invisible to others’ eyes and that would burn as soon as Theo had read it. He had said he needed to see him. Theo had left the Slytherin common room, gone to one of their usual abandoned classrooms, and had no chance to ask questions before Harry flung himself at him, sobbing.
It didn’t matter what it was, though. Theo leaned back in the chair he had conjured when he’d realized how long they would likely be here and cradled Harry, holding him against his chest. He would do whatever was necessary to help Harry and soothe his tears. Harry could never ask too much of him.
At last, Harry’s tears tailed off. Theo smoothed his hand down Harry’s back and waited.
“He’s dead,” Harry breathed.
Theo felt a sharp jolt. There were so few people who would cause Harry to react like this, and losing one of them—“Who is?”
“Sirius.”
Theo made a soft sound and drew Harry closer. Losing Weasley or Granger would probably have hurt Harry worse, but he knew that Harry practically worshipped Black. He’d had no parents that he remembered, and Black would have taken their place if he could have. And now he was gone.
“What happened?”
“Me. It was my fault.”
Theo said nothing about it not being Harry’s fault, just stroked his back again and waited.
“I got a vision from Voldemort,” Harry whispered at last. Theo subdued the shiver that wanted to shake him. He would do worse than this to help Harry. “It showed that he was torturing Sirius in the Ministry and I had to come save him. But when I got there, Sirius wasn’t actually there. It was a trap. Sirius came with the rest of the—the Order to rescue me, and Bellatrix Lestrange cursed him. He fell through a veil that was whispering with the voices of the dead and didn’t come back out.”
Theo simply nodded and held Harry closer still. He knew about the Order of the Phoenix and that Sirius Black hadn’t actually been a Death Eater from hearing (and overhearing) what his father had said to various other Death Eaters. Harry had been stunned and grateful to find that out, when Theo had told him. It meant he could talk freely to Theo without betraying anything.
I’m the one he came to in his hour of crisis.
“I don’t know what to do,” Harry whispered.
“You can’t bring him back,” Theo said. His hand stroked down Harry’s back again. “Do you want to duel? Let some of the energy go?”
“I’m too tired.”
Harry leaned more heavily on him. Theo drew his wand and conjured rockers on the chair to take the weight. Harry sighed like a tired child as the chair began to move, and Theo rearranged Harry—with the help of a Lightening Charm—so that his feet weren’t dangling down to the floor and he was sprawled over Theo’s lap.
Theo began to hum a soft lullaby. It wasn’t something he would ever admit to knowing in public, because that would mean admitting that he remembered his mother and missed her. But Harry would never embarrass or mock him for it. After all, he had confessed something as deep to Theo tonight.
“That’s nice,” Harry murmured, sounding as if he was already on the brink of sleep.
Theo nodded against his head and kept humming.
*
Theo smiles now and shakes his head at the memory. Yes, he had told Harry that he couldn’t bring Sirius Black back to life, and it had been true.
At the time.
Because Harry was not a necromancer, and Theo now is, and he will bring Sirius back.
For Harry, as so much in his life has been for so long.
Theo cracks the magical dome that imprisons the raven. The bird flies at him, croaking and furious, its wings flapping as if he might escape up into the warm night. Theo clasps its neck and shakes it once, and the bird subsides, staring at him with its beak open and its wings still chopping at the air.
Theo needed an animal symbolic of death for this ritual, and it’s his luck and more than his luck that the Black family crest, or some versions of it, incorporates ravens.
He uses magic to pin the bird to the altar and slowly, methodically plucks all its feathers. It takes so much time, and the bird flaps and croaks and tries to stab him with its beak. Theo accepts the stabs—which still hurt even though they can draw no blood from his enspelled skin—as part of the price. The ritual must be done this way.
The raven is exhausted by the time he’s done, still and trembling. Theo picks it up and conjures another glass dome for it, although his hand shakes with exhauastion. He will release the raven into the wild, and it will live or die. Probably die. But he doesn’t kill it, because that is not what the ritual is for.
The rat had to die. It represents the state Sirius Black is in at the moment. The raven without feathers, alive but probably destined to die, represents the transitional state, the in-between one that Black must pass through so that Theo can pull him back to life.
And the dog…
Theo smiles and tells himself not to get too far ahead of his present position.
*
“How many people are going to die in front of me?”
Harry’s voice was low and fervent with hatred. Theo moved a little closer so that their shoulders bumped. They were sitting in their classroom, the one they had come to after Black died. Theo had replaced the conjured rocking chair with a real one, Harry had added a couch he’d got from somewhere, they’d learned how to build a fireplace they could light a real fire in, and a fan of Harry’s among the house-elves had hung the walls with tapestries and covered the floor with rugs.
Now, all the warmth from a blazing fire couldn’t disguise the way Harry shivered beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said suddenly.
Theo turned around and blinked at him. “For what?” He and Harry hadn’t got to spend that much time together during their sixth year. Harry was always busy, between classes, Quidditch, his friends, and “lessons” with Dumbledore, and Draco, despite his own stupid plans, seemed annoyingly alert to Theo’s absence from the dormitories.
“For dumping all these burdens on you.” Harry ran his hand down Theo’s shoulder. Theo shivered with the touch, and Harry cocked his head as if noting it for the first time. His voice was slower when he spoke, but he didn’t speak about what he’d seen. “It wasn’t your fault that Dumbledore died. It’s not your fault that Snape was a traitor.” Harry’s voice became a snarl. “Or that I’m torn up about it.”
“You give me plenty, Harry.”
“What, though? Because, yeah, I saved your life in the graveyard, but you don’t owe me hours of listening for a Life-Debt.”
Theo smiled. He reached out and caught Harry’s hands, and Harry’s breath caught along with them. Theo bowed his head, looking Harry in the eye the entire time, and let his breath ghost along Harry’s fingers. Harry seemed to stop breathing altogether, and Theo could feel the pulse in his wrist quicken.
“You give me your friendship,” Theo said softly. “Your time. Your loyalty. You didn’t demand that I act less like a Slytherin. You didn’t blame me for being one even though Slytherins in general haven’t treated you well.” He slid his fingers gently up Harry’s arms towards his elbows. “That’s something I never would have had otherwise, Harry, with the life that I grew up in and the House I landed in. Thank you.”
Harry looked at him with shining eyes and slightly parted lips. It was the first time he’d looked halfway normal since witnessing Dumbledore’s death, and Theo smiled to see it.
Harry grabbed him by the back of his neck and kissed him.
Theo gasped, his mouth opening, and Harry leaned more heavily on him, until they fell off the couch and crashed to the floor. The rugs only made it hurt a little less. Theo reached up and caught Harry’s shoulders, kissing back for all he was worth.
This wasn’t a barrier he would have anticipated crossing so soon, but he welcomed it with all his soul.
*
Theo breaks the glass dome holding the dog. It whimpers and shivers away from him.
Theo shakes his head. “None of that, now,” he murmurs, and lets his hand caress the dog’s head.
The dog is the symbol of life, the representation of Sirius Black as Theo intends to bring him back. Therefore, the dog won’t be sacrificed. He’ll call Black to the world of the living and hold him there for long enough that Theo can complete the ritual. Because, in the end, the mere sacrifice of a dog wouldn’t be enough.
Theo draws his wand and ends the impervious charm on his skin. Then he sheds his robes. He wears nothing underneath them. The dog stops whimpering and eyes him as if it thinks Theo is insane.
Theo is not insane. He always knew how this would end. Bringing someone back to life isn’t lightly done, even for a necromancer. It requires the spilling of human blood, of human life. A life for a life.
Theo would have had to sacrifice many people, but the powers hovering eagerly in the air around him will accept a necromancer’s life as equal to those many.
Theo closes his eyes and reaches for the athame that was still pinning the dead rat to the altar. He knows how much Harry misses Sirius, how his eyes light up when he talks about him. Theo can’t give Harry back everything he left, but he can give him this thing. Anything for Harry.
Harry will miss him, too. Theo doesn’t deceive himself on that point. But Black can help Harry heal the wound.
Theo doesn’t need to chant, not for this part of the ritual, the deepest magic. He holds the athame to his throat.
“Theo!”
*
“Theo.”
Harry whispered the word.
Theo sprawled back on Harry’s bed in Gryffindor Tower, smiling at him dazedly. He had once thought he would never see Harry again. Harry had gone off on the Horcrux hunt, and as much as they’d both wanted for Theo to accompany him, it hadn’t been possible, not in close quarters with Granger and Weasley as Harry had to be.
Harry wrote to Theo as often as he could, which was irregularly, and Theo returned to Hogwarts and helped with the resistance there. Half the time no one trusted him, Slytherin that he was, but Theo ignored that and kept helping. He’d killed his father in the Battle of Hogwarts, which he considered worth it.
Anything for Harry, who had looked into his soul and seen someone worth rescuing.
And now Voldemort was dead, and Harry was alive. Alive.
“I’m so glad we’re up here,” Harry whispered. “I wanted the bed.” And he began taking off his clothes.
Theo watched him with rapturous greed, cataloguing scars and muscles and the curve of Harry’s cock, but what his gaze kept returning to was Harry’s chest, rising and falling, and trembling with the beat of his heart.
Alive. Alive.
Theo had first begun looking into death magic as a way to fight the Death Eaters. It had bred in him a new appreciation for life.
He could barely look away from Harry’s heart until Harry cast a lubrication charm on his own arse and speared himself on Theo’s cock with one thrust. Harry yelped. Theo cried out and reached up and clenched his hands on Harry’s hips, at least in part so as not to come right away.
“You idiot,” Theo squeezed out. “You’re—you’re a virgin—” He knew that, since Harry wouldn’t have been with anyone but him.
“Not anymore,” Harry said, and winked at him, and began to move.
Theo went with it, rocked and shattered by the sheer glory of Harry above him, head tossed back and skin gleaming in the golden sunlight making its way through the windows. A drop of sweat crept down and lingered above his breastbone, and Theo reached up and scratched with sharp fingernails.
Harry cried out and began to come.
There was too much heat, too much pressure, and Theo succumbed, following and soaring and crashing.
They lay together afterwards, tangled together, Harry’s eyes closed and his head flung back much the way it had been when he rode Theo. Theo wrapped his fingers in Harry’s hair and thought he could die of joy, right now, and it would be a life well-spent.
*
Someone knocks his athame aside.
Theo falls to his knees in pure shock, and feels the powers hovering in the air around him snarl. He looks up and finds Harry standing over him, glaring at him, one hand reaching out and snatching the athame before it can fall to the ground.
“What,” Harry snarls, and takes a step closer, “the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
He’s roaring by the end of the words, his eyes wide and desperate. Theo swallows slowly. He thought—
He thought Harry would miss him less than this.
“I was bringing your godfather back,” Theo explains, and glances in the dog’s direction. It jerks as he looks at it, and glances back and forth between him and Harry as though wondering what’s going on. For that matter, Theo is wondering that himself. “I could trade my life for his because a necromancer’s life is precious.”
“Yes, it fucking is!” Harry yells. “To me, you idiot! I love you!”
He’s said that before, but Theo never thought—
Well, it was just—
Of course he knows Harry means it. It’s just that he also meant it when he spoke of how miserable his godfather’s death made him, and Sirius comes up at least once a week in conversation. Theo thought he could reverse that old pain that first brought them together, and give Harry something back.
“You are not going anywhere,” Harry says, and reaches down and shakes Theo’s shoulders until his teeth rattle in his skull. “Do you understand?”
There’s a snarl, heavy and silent, as the powers around him begin to withdraw. Theo nods slowly, rising back to his feet. And something that he didn’t know was unhappy relaxes in the back of his mind.
Harry is still ranting at him. “I know that it’s hard for you to believe I love you because no one else said it to you after your mum died! I know! But I never intended for you to do this! I can love the living and the dead, too, and I want you alive, and I never want you to try this again! Losing Sirius was terrible, but losing you would be, too!”
Theo swallows and nods again, leaning close to feel Harry’s heart hammering against his chest. Harry grabs him, crushes him, kisses him brutally.
“I don’t understand one thing,” Theo says, pulling away, licking his lips.
“Oh, yeah? By my reckoning, you don’t understand a hell of a lot of things—”
“No, I mean. I completed enough of the ritual that we should at least see Black. As a shade, if nothing else.” Harry showed him the Resurrection Stone once, and only once. Theo doesn’t need it to call the dead to him. And since Harry has utterly rejected the Stone’s power, Theo is the only one who does that on a regular basis. “I don’t know where he is.”
In the silence that falls while Harry frowns at him, the black dog gives a quiet bark.
Harry spins around, staring. Theo doesn’t know why he seems to recognize the bark, when this is decidedly not his godfather, but he does.
“Padfoot?” Harry whispers.
The dog gives a joyful woof and jumps up on Harry, doing its best to lick his face.
Theo blinks, and blinks again. Yes, the dog was a symbol of life. Yes, the dog was Sirius Black’s Animagus form. Theo chose a dog as close as he could get to Harry’s descriptions and Penseive memories.
Theo just didn’t think he would call Sirius Black’s shade into the dog’s body.
“Padfoot,” Harry says, and he’s sobbing, kneeling on the ground while the dog jumps around him like a mad thing and barks and frisks and slobbers on him. “Theo, you did it!”
“He’s a dog,” Theo says, a little blankly. “I don’t know how we would get him out of the dog into a human body.”
“He spent a hell of a lot of time as a dog, anyway.” Harry pulls back from “Padfoot” and grins at Theo, using one hand to ruffle the fur around the dog’s neck. “And we have time to figure that out. It’s possible that I could pick up the Stone and the Wand and try to conjure him a body with that.”
“But you hate them.”
“I love you a lot more than I hate them,” Harry says bluntly. “I love Sirius more. I just—never thought this was a possibility. But I’ll do it if it means that you won’t try to do this idiotic sacrifice again. Can you live for me?”
A blazing light grows in Theo’s chest at the notion. He nods. His heart is full. His throat is full, too, and he can’t speak.
Harry doesn’t seem to care. He smiles at Theo and hauls him close for a kiss, ignoring Black’s protesting whine.
Things haven’t worked out the way Theo thought, but that’s been true since Harry Potter hauled him out of a graveyard. They can go on working out the way Harry wants them to, as far as he’s concerned.
He can live for Harry, too, and help with the research to restore dog-Black to a human body.
Anything for Harry.
The End.