[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Strength of Gold, Harry/Theo, 4/4, R

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story.

Part Four

“The wards are the same as you remembered?”

Theo smiled over his shoulder at Harry as they stood behind Disillusionment Charms a good distance from the gates of Malfoy Manor. “Yes. The only change I can see is that they added an alarm to warn them if someone with the Dark Mark approaches.”

“Good thing you never took it,” Harry said, his gaze focused on the gates.

Theo didn’t know why he said it, when their attention should be on the gates and the wards and attempting to break in, but he did. “It was a near thing. My father wanted me to. But I managed to avoid it.”

Harry swung to face him, the fire in his eyes only growing brighter. Theo had the impression that Harry would be as happy to direct it at Theo’s father as he would at Lucius Malfoy. “What happened?”

“I fought him in a duel and destroyed his wand.”

Harry’s eyes lit up brighter. He reached out and glanced a hand down Theo’s arm, fingers tracing the muscles and rousing a distinctly inappropriate tingle below Theo’s waist. “Brilliant,” Harry whispered, his voice thick with hunger. “The things you do, the things you make real…”

Yes, I’m going to have to do something about this.

But in the meantime, they really were going to be distracted if they didn’t stop, and that wasn’t something Theo was looking forward to. He moved back a step, not without regret, and nodded at the Manor. “You want to cut through them like we did with Flint’s?”

“No,” Harry said. “I want everyone in there to know what’s happening and fucking dread it.”

“That might make it more likely that Lucius could escape by Floo.”

Harry smiled thinly. “Good thing that all the Floo exits in the house are blocked, then. And that Portkeys don’t work right now. You said that the wards themselves prevent Apparition. What are they going to do, run on foot? Escape on brooms?”

Theo stared at him. “More spells you invented?” He croaked a little as he said it. He’d heard of anti-Portkey spells before, but they usually couldn’t encompass a space as big as Malfoy Manor and its grounds. And he’d never heard of a way to block a Floo except from the inside of the building it connected to.

“Yes.” Harry lifted his head. “Lestrange isn’t the only fugitive Death Eater I’ve hunted. Just the most recent. And I wanted to make absolutely sure that none of them was going to slip away again and leave me behind.”

“You’ve killed a lot more than the Ministry knows.”

Harry’s mouth quirked up as he turned back to Theo. “Yeah.”

Perhaps that should have caused some other reaction in Theo than the most delicious shiver, but he simply nodded. He trusted that Harry wasn’t going to kill his partners, or he would have harmed someone in the past already. He trusted that Harry wouldn’t harm him, and that realization and trust was worth more than anything else Harry could have given him.

“Let’s take care of Lucius, then.”

Harry turned and aimed his wand at the wards. “Let’s.”

*

By himself, Harry wouldn’t have tried to act as a battering ram against the Malfoy wards. They were simply too thick, and although he could have got through them, he would have been magically exhausted by the time he did. Probably even Draco Malfoy could have dueled him to a standstill then.

But with a magically strong and accomplished partner wielding brute force next to Harry…

There’s nothing that I can’t do with him by my side.

Their magic struck the wards again, and again, and again. Harry smiled when he saw the house actually trembling. It seemed the Malfoys had hooked their wards to the actual structure, something that people were told again and again not to do, but which was a shortcut taken by the lazy.

Like the shortcut Lucius Malfoy took when he cast the Imperius on Theo, Harry thought, and hurled more magic at the wards.

They broke with a little sigh and a waver like a heat shimmer in half the time it would have taken Harry to bring them down by himself. He smiled fiercely at Theo, gripped his wand, and charged across the boundary.

Theo followed him, calling low warnings about how the Malfoys might still have traps on the grounds that hadn’t fallen with the wards. Harry nodded, but cast shields around his skin and shoving ahead of him through the air to disarm them, while his eyes sought the high windows of the Manor. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he saw someone fling a curtain open and stare out.

I hope it was Lucius. I hope he’s afraid.

*

Theo wasn’t proud of the fact that he had to pause before they crossed the threshold of the Manor to cast a spell that subdued his erection, but the truth was what it was. And at least he could suggest to Harry that they take some time after this particular attack to—address what was between them.

They came into the entrance hall where Theo had been many times, and a Blood-Boiling Curse came flying out of the room on the left. Harry dropped to the floor, and Theo stepped forwards and shielded him.

Draco was the one who came out of the room, his eyes so wide that it looked painful. “Theo?”

Theo half-inclined his head. “We’re not here for you,” he said softly. “Or your wife, or your mother.”

“What can my father possibly have done—”

“Cast Imperius on my partner.”

Harry’s voice was lower than it had been just a moment ago, and he moved up behind Theo and put a hand on his shoulder. Theo shot a confused glance back at him, and then saw the way that Harry’s eyes were fixed on Draco and he was lightly poised on his toes.

Oh. He’s jealous. Does he think…?

Theo’s blood tingled and fizzed like butterbeer, and he barely managed to keep from laughing aloud. He wasn’t about to discourage Harry’s notion that Draco and Theo had been lovers, not until after they were out of here. They had more important things to think about right now.

“He couldn’t have,” Draco said, sounding shocked. “He wouldn’t risk our family’s standing like that.”

“Apparently he thought I wouldn’t notice,” Harry said, and leaned more heavily on Theo’s shoulder. Theo followed the silent suggestion of that pressure, and stepped back from Draco, letting his weight rest more fully against his partner. “Or that finding out information about his cousin’s death was more important than his family.”

“Tessa? What about Tessa? She was killed by a Death Eater.”

“No. I killed her.”

Draco reeled and caught himself with one hand on the doorframe. Theo heard a sound behind him, and shot a Stunner without looking. Draco shot him an ugly look. “My mother could have fallen down the stairs.”

“I don’t trust her with a wand at our backs,” Theo said coolly, and smiled a little at the way Draco blinked. Yes, Theo had separated himself from the Death Eaters and even a man he had once considered a friend. He and Harry were on their own side now.

“Why did you kill Tessa, Potter?” Draco whispered.

“She was using the Imperius on people to make them commit suicide and murder for her entertainment,” Harry said flatly. “The Ministry covered up her death so that your family wouldn’t lose the reputation that it managed to gain since the war.”

“What are you going to do to Father?”

Theo could feel Harry’s smile without seeing it.

Draco swallowed and shook his head, then lifted a shaking wand to point at them. “I won’t let you. Father—he’s not a good man, but—he’s my father. And he’s Mother’s husband, and he’s going to be the baby’s grandfather—”

“We aren’t going to kill him.”

Theo spoke in the calm, certain tone that had used to make Draco listen to him when he was panicking about essays and exams. Draco turned to him without lowering his wand. Harry tensed with barely constrained violence, and Theo touched his arm.

“You promise?”

“No. He might wish he was dead, but we won’t kill him.”

Draco closed his eyes. He probably lowered his wand out of practicality more than anything else, Theo thought. He knew that he couldn’t duel both of them at once and live, and he might be smart enough to see that if he kept aiming his wand at Theo, he would leave his child without a father as well as a grandfather.

“Go, then,” Draco whispered. “But Theo? We’re no longer friends.”

“I knew that the first time you looked through me after the war, Draco,” Theo said lightly, and turned to follow the man who would do anything for him up the stairs.

*

They found Lucius Malfoy in a high room that looked as if it might have been a dueling room. There were obstacles, low walls of stone and wood, set up all over the place, and conjured or Transfigured trees and bushes that would probably have provided good places to hide.

Have provided. Harry halted in the doorway when he saw it and glanced at Theo. “I don’t have patience for this. Do you?”

Theo smiled. “No.”

Theo leveled his wand. Harry did at the same time, and they linked their magic together the way they had when they’d hammered the wards into shreds. Harry watched the bushes and trees collapse back into the stones and tiles they’d been Transfigured from with a pulse of satisfaction.

Lucius Malfoy stood up from behind one of the stone walls and cast the Imperius at them, because he didn’t learn.

Harry stepped into the way of it, since it was aimed at Theo and that made him homicidal, and let the curse wash over him. It felt nowhere near as strong as Crouch Jr.’s, let alone Voldemort’s. He laughed at the expression on Lucius’s face, too. It was funny. The man looked as if he couldn’t comprehend someone willingly taking a curse for someone else.

Well, he probably could have understood doing it for Draco or Narcissa. But it was as if he thought Theo was of no account, or as if he thought people outside one’s family couldn’t possibly matter to anyone.

The thought of the first one being true made Harry light-headed with rage. He snapped his hand forwards, fingers curling, and pulled.

Lucius flew towards him, hitting the floor with both knees at once. He gave a short scream. Harry heard something pop and hoped it was a broken bone.

He leaned over Lucius and said softly, “Have you thought about how your choices have led you here, Lucius?”

The man stared at him with glassy eyes. Harry sighed. “That would be a no,” he told Theo.

“I don’t know if he’s capable of thinking about it like that,” Theo said thoughtfully. “He always believes he’s right and that no one else in the world is a subtle political thinker. Which means that he thinks his decisions are always right, too.”

Harry snorted and turned back to press his wand into the soft skin of Lucius’s throat. Lucius panted for a moment, and then leaned back on his haunches and spat, “You would be the first suspect in my murder, Potter.”

“Who said we were going to murder you?”

Lucius stared at him with wild eyes. “You put up wards to prevent Portkeys—you blocked our Floos—you took down our wards—”

“Murder is all he knows,” Theo said softly, and stepped forwards, his wand aimed at the center of Lucius’s forehead. Harry held still, despite how much he wanted to hurt Lucius. Theo was the one whose mind had been messed with; he was the one who deserved the most vengeance, if it had to come down to a choice.

“We’re not going to kill you, Lucius,” Theo said, and smiled in a way that cut across his face like a slash. Harry caught his breath. He needed to get Theo to a room with a bed after this, and he wasn’t particularly choosy about where. In fact, it didn’t even need to be a bed. Just a flat, vaguely comfortable surface. “We’re going to take what you hold dearest.”

“Don’t touch Draco or Narcissa,” Lucius whispered. “Please.”

Theo shook his head. “I have no doubt that you care about them, but you care about your pride more, or you wouldn’t have done what you did, and risked their safety and social standing.” He leaned closer, wand still prodding at Lucius’s forehead, and then let out a sharp, gasping laugh.

“What is it?” Harry asked.

“He didn’t even think about it,” Theo said scornfully. “From the way he’s looking at me, he thought he would never be caught. That you wouldn’t notice I was under Imperius.”

Harry burned with the temptation to cast the Cruciatus Curse. He caught himself back from the brink, though. He’d only done that once, and regretted it ever since. He would kill, but he wouldn’t torture.

Except in the way that he had already settled on torturing Lucius for casting the Imperius on Theo.

“You’re an idiot,” Harry told Lucius softly. “I don’t know if you used to be smarter and long years of getting away with everything convinced you that everyone who opposed you was actually the idiots, or if you just never got unlucky. Now you have.”

“You owe me the truth about my cousin’s death,” Lucius snapped. “If you’re going to—to strip me naked and take pictures of me, you owe me that.”

Harry stared at him. “Why would you think we’d do that?”

“He can’t imagine anything worse,” Theo said, and his voice was blank with surprise. “Shit, Harry. He really can’t.”

Harry laughed aloud, and felt Theo move closer to him. Harry glanced at Theo, and smiled when he saw the fire burning in his eyes. Theo wanted that bed or flat surface, too.

And that made Harry impatient to finish with what they were doing. It wasn’t worth it, to stand here and trade banter with Lucius Malfoy.

“Well, he’ll have to,” Harry said, and shrugged a little. “If he has much of an imagination by the time that we’re done with him.”

Theo nodded. “You want to cast the Imperius?”

“I thought I might let you…”

Harry trailed off as Theo shook his head. “I don’t trust myself to hold the curse,” he said. “I’ve never been good with holding spells at a distance like that. Now, if we had decided on the Cruciatus, I could have done that.”

The dark look in his eyes made Harry swallow. He turned back to Lucius, who looked as close to panicking as he had probably ever come.

“Wait—”

“Imperio.’

*

“Hit Wizard Potter! How do you feel about Lucius Malfoy’s unprovoked attack on you?”

Harry turned with a little smile back to the Daily Prophet reporter who had followed him most of the way down Diagon Alley. Behind the smile, he was seething. He and Theo had left Malfoy Manor as quickly as they could and, in the chaos of setting up the attack that Harry had commanded Lucius to make, they hadn’t had time for that bed or flat surface after all.

“I think he deserves to go to Azkaban,” Harry drawled. “He was spared that after the war because I testified for him. He got house arrest instead. And now he decides that a half-blood shouldn’t be in such a prominent position in the Ministry? That Hit Wizards should be purebloods alone?” Harry rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t deserve freedom.”

The reporter, a young woman with hair dyed snow-white, crowded closer, eyes sparkling with excitement. “And why do you think that he attacked you because of blood purity, when for years he spoke no word about that?”

Harry laughed sharply. “I think that you can’t convince a bigot to change. Only to pretend to play nicely for a little while.”

“I heard he was raving when the Aurors arrested him.”

Harry nodded. “Yes, he was.”

His mind still rode Lucius’s, carving the grooves of the Imperius deep into his thoughts, making Lucius rave about blood purity and insist that Harry Potter hadn’t deserved to live after the death of the Dark Lord. Harry wouldn’t take the curse off until Lucius was in the depths of Azkaban.

And then, no one but the Dementors would hear his screaming.

Theo had been a little concerned that Draco might say something, but that was why he had sent Draco a certain owl. Harry had read it before Theo had sent it off. He’d laughed.

Draco wouldn’t.

“Can you tell us any more about—”

Harry could see other reporters heading up the Alley towards him. He thought about lingering to answer questions, and then pictured what might happen to them if he lashed out with his magic in a fit of sexual frustration.

Best not to stay.

“Sorry, have to go,” he said, and took a few more steps to the nearest Apparition point before he leaped into darkness, heading to Theo’s house.

*

Theo stepped back from the door, holding it open so that Harry could enter. For the first time in years, he didn’t feel self-conscious about someone coming to visit. Harry, unlike his other visitors, wouldn’t have grown up in those enormous manor houses Death Eaters and their families considered “normal.”

And in any case, Harry only gave a quick glance around at the charcoal-grey walls and Theo’s bookshelves before he nodded, said, “Nice place,” and then focused his gaze on Theo.

He was obviously burning with anticipation.

Theo couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. He smiled and opened a door that led to a small room that the previous owner of the house had used as a study, but which Theo didn’t because it was too small and had no windows. Now, though, he’d Transfigured the couch in there to a bed. He thought it would work better than getting up the stairs to the bedroom.

“Shall we?” he whispered.

Harry slammed him into the wall and kissed him desperately.

Theo kissed him back, raising one leg to wrap around Harry’s waist. Harry shuddered and drove forwards against him, hardness perfectly positioned against Theo’s. Theo hissed and tugged Harry into the room, nearly falling on the floor, even though the bed was only a few meters back.

Harry shoved him onto it and began stripping off his robes. Theo lifted himself on an elbow, smiling appreciatively when he realized that Harry wasn’t wearing a shirt and trousers underneath the robes, as was his usual habit. He wore pants and boots and nothing else.

And then Harry kicked off his boots and slid his pants down, and Theo stopped breathing.

It wasn’t that he had never seen an erect cock before. It was that this erect cock belonged to the wizard who had fought by his side, and taken down the Malfoys’ wards by his side, and become furious when Theo was being controlled by Lucius Malfoy.

Seeing how desperately Harry—a powerful, violent wizard—wanted him made far more heat swell up and radiate through Theo than should have been possible.

He kicked off his own boots and pulled his robes back lazily. He’d taken the liberty of removing his pants as soon as he felt Harry Apparate in.

Harry choked in turn, and then reached forwards and wrapped his hand roughly around Theo’s cock. Theo flung his head back, moaning, and losing track of the next few moments in a haze of white.

When he came to again, Harry was grinding on top of him, hips rolling. Theo had pictured something more complicated, but this was good, too. He twisted slightly so that their cocks were perfectly aligned and pulled Harry in.

Harry made a rumbling sound as their skin connected. He kissed Theo like he was starving, like he wanted to use their magic to take down another set of wards, and pinned him flat to the bed with his hands on his shoulders.

“I’m not going to last long,” Harry whispered into his ear.

“For fuck’s sake, Harry—” Theo was nearly incoherent with need, and resented having to speak the next words instead of simply giving into the fire burning them both. “Do you think I am? Hurry the fuck up!”

Harry’s eyes widened, and then he laughed and began to thrust.

Theo wrapped his legs around Harry’s waist and managed to pull him down and around, so that they were lying on the bed next to each other. Harry grabbed his neck and promptly kissed him, harder, while wrapping his own legs awkwardly above and around Theo’s and using that to pull him closer.

Closer. Theo hadn’t known it was possible to get any nearer. His eyes shut despite himself, and the white haze invaded his vision again, and he listened to the slap of skin and the sting of sweat, and let the world dance around him.

He came as sharply and brutally as the fall of the Malfoys’ wards. Theo cried out as he sagged forwards. His head met something that was probably Harry’s chest, shaking with Harry’s half-shout as he emptied himself all over Theo.

Theo lay there silently, wrung out, and hoped that no one would attack them right now, because he would be bloody useless.

*

Harry’s legs hurt where they were wrapped around Theo. His hand ached where it was caught between Theo’s neck and the bed.

He still didn’t want to move.

He opened his eyes, and Theo blinked and looked at him. Harry smiled and ran a hand through Theo’s hair, then down his back. “No one has ever made me feel that way,” he whispered.

Theo smiled slowly. “No one has ever been your equal on the battlefield either, I’d wager.”

“No,” Harry said simply. He didn’t need to say how extraordinary that was. Theo knew already.

Theo traced a finger up Harry’s brow, down the lightning bolt scar and further, ending up on his cheekbone under his left eye. “I can only imagine what it will be like when we have fifty kills together,” he whispered.

Harry closed his eyes and imagined it. Imagined the way they would orbit around each other without needing to speak, imagined how their spells would fly together, imagined how they would fuck and laugh.

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick. He looked up and watched Theo’s eyes steadily darkening. “I can imagine it. But right now, I think I’d like to bring some of it into reality.” His cock was already stirring again, and he pulled Theo towards him.

Theo smiled and reached for his wand, casting a Lubrication Charm. Harry caught his mouth in another blade-sharp kiss.

I used to think I was made for protecting people. Then for fighting.

But this…

I was made for this.

The End.