lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eleven—Private Rooms

“Where am I?”

“That’s your first question? Of course it is.”

Theo frowned at Potter and then looked around the room again. He thought it was a fair question, not a predictable one. This was a quiet space with an arched ceiling and a shut door with an arch above it leading off to the side. Theo lay on a cot not far from a fireplace, while Potter was sitting in a small chair with his legs propped up on a low bookcase.

“Where am I?”

“One of the spaces that I made my own but didn’t ward like I did my real space, because it’s too close to the common room and I didn’t want to deal with abandoning anything important if someone found it,” Potter replied. He let his feet fall to the ground with a thump and leaned forwards. “You exhausted yourself. Are you all right?”

Theo felt something jump in his chest. “You could have left me there.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“It’s what you would have done with most people.”

“Most people wouldn’t have lent me their magic for a ward like that. Even if the ward was also to protect themselves.” Potter was staring at him as if Theo was the most puzzling person he had ever met. “Why did you do it?”

Theo rolled towards the side of the bed. The odd jumping was still there, and it made words like fizzing water rise to his lips. Maybe it was a mistake to say them now, but he wanted to.

“Because you matter to me, Potter. Harry. You’re powerful and brilliant and beautiful and I want…” Theo let it trail off, because he wanted many things and he didn’t know how to speak in a way that would encompass them all. “I want to be with you.”

“You could have died of exhaustion before I noticed, if I took all your magic. That’s not something you can just play off as wanting to—have sex with me, or whatever it is you want.” Potter dashed a hand through his hair, frowning at Theo.

“I could have died. But I didn’t. I knew that you would notice, and not take too much.” Theo stretched out a hand, and Potter clasped it with a motion that looked half-unwilling. “I want to be with you.”

“You want to have sex with me.”

“I wouldn’t be opposed. I also wouldn’t be opposed to serving you.” Potter looked utterly baffled. Theo battled back the laughter that wanted to rise now, because he knew that Potter wouldn’t understand it, and that was probably a good way to lose him forever. “But most of all, I just want to be with you. In your presence. Following you. Lending you magic or studying with you, if you don’t want to allow me anything more.”

Potter opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. He still looked baffled, but also as if he had finally managed to mentally grasp what Theo was talking about. He craned his neck back and forth, staring at the bookshelves.

Theo waited in the silence. It was enough to lie there and look at Potter, the man who had at least cared enough to bring Theo here instead of to the Slytherin dormitories, or simply abandon him outside. Theo could think of other people who would do that, like Draco or Professor Snape. Perhaps even Pansy.

Potter finally turned back to Theo. “You know that I want to leave Britain in a few years.”

“Yes.”

“What would you do then?”

“I would ask to come with you.” Theo leaned forwards, ignoring the way that Potter frowned at him as if to make him stay on the Transfigured cot. “But if you don’t want me to, please let me write letters to you.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Potter said, half to himself. “If—I mean, you should hate me, Nott. For humiliating you and then being so weak as to lean on you afterwards. Don’t want you to serve someone who’s a tower of strength, like your father’s Dark Lord?”

“You didn’t humiliate me,” Theo said passionately, and Potter started. “You introduced me to myself. Made me see who I was. I’ve drifted through the last seven years, not wanting to acknowledge to myself that half the time I was bullying people out of boredom, and half the time just because I was going along with what other people thought was right. I believed I was independent, aloof, better than the people around me. I wasn’t. The only reason I have a chance to be better than I was is because of you.”

Potter pushed his glasses up his nose. “But if you think of yourself as independent—”

“Why do I want to serve you?” Theo let his mouth twist wryly. He didn’t want to look away from Potter, but he would have done it if he had thought it would have helped. “Because it’s the purest expression of the debt I owe you.” He pushed on through an instinctive headshake from Potter. “And because I don’t trust myself not to slip back into the way I was if I just drift back into Slytherin again. I don’t want to rule. I don’t want to lead. I thought I wanted to exist by myself. Now I know I don’t. I want to have companions, friends. If that’s what you want, I’ll be happy to be your friend. But if you don’t want that from me, I can at least be useful.”

Potter continued staring at him in the wake of Theo’s declaration. Theo tamped down his impulse to ask lots of questions. Potter probably wouldn’t answer them anyway. He lay there and stared back, waiting for an answer.

*

He—honestly wants that?

Harry’s head was reeling hard enough that he had to realize something. He didn’t just find this unbelievable because it was Nott, a past bully of his, who was making the offer. He would have found it unbelievable from anyone, even a Gryffindor like Granger who had never participated in the bullying.

And that was a little more than messed up.

Harry took a deep breath and pushed away speculations and thoughts that didn’t matter. Granger wasn’t in front of him right now. Nott was. “You’re sure that you would want the burdens that came from following me?”

“What burdens are those?” Nott asked at once, his eyes bright and his hands clenching on the edge of the bed as he leaned forwards.

“The Malfoys hate me,” Harry said dryly. “Snape hates me. Dumbledore is wary. Riddle seems like he might offer me a decent apprenticeship, but he could be dangerous if provoked. I don’t think that your father will be very happy if you follow me instead of the Dark Lord. Shall I go on?”

Nott lifted his shoulders in a way that just made him look like a lean wolf, especially with how thin he was. “I already have the Malfoys’ hatred on my own merits. Dumbledore and Snape aren’t very happy with me after how I reacted when Snape tried to curse you. I don’t trust Riddle, so I’ll support any decision you make about him. And my father…allow me to handle him.”

“Won’t he be upset if you forsake the Dark Lord?”

“If the Dark Lord is back, my father hasn’t told me about it,” Nott said quietly. “It could be that he’s trying to spare me from making a choice. It could be that the Dark Lord is fighting a war so silent I wouldn’t be an asset. Or maybe my father just thinks I’m too young and is hoping to leave me out of it.”

“You’re an adult.”

“Are you arguing for me to follow the Dark Lord, Potter?”

“I’m saying that it would make more sense,” Harry said softly, and turned away to stare at the wall. “More like the way I thought the world was.”

Nott snorted a little. “Good luck getting the world to map to a specific shape. No one managed it with you. They want to see a good little Gryffindor or a broken little Slytherin, and that’s not what they got, is it?”

Harry turned slowly back to Nott, a new idea revolving in his head. If he was different from what other people expected him to be, and was changing still further from the broken victim he had been for years into someone more powerful and capable of defending himself, then there was no reason other people couldn’t change. Nott, for example.

That shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was.

Harry gave Nott a shaky smile. It felt strange to trust him, as if Harry was leaning off a cliff over a sickening drop. “In that case, I’d like to ask your advice about the offer I received from Riddle.”

Nott sat up in the bed faster than he probably should have, given how pale his face promptly went. But he also focused on Harry, and his slow nod was on the edge of being a bow. “I would be honored.”

Hoping that he was powerful enough to defend himself if he’d made a mistake, Harry took Riddle’s letter out of the robe pocket where he’d been keeping it and unfolded it.

*

Theo stared down at the contract and shook his head. Harry promptly leaned forwards across the small table they’d spread it out on. They were still in the private rooms Harry had brought him to, and Harry had only left to fetch food from the kitchens.

“What is it?”

“It’s too perfect,” Theo said softly, letting his fingers trace across Riddle’s spiky black letters. “I think there should be shaky clauses and harsh punishments for you if you break the letter or the spirit, but they’re not there.”

“Perhaps he simply wants a sincere apprenticeship with me.”

Theo shot Harry a look. Harry shrugged. “It’s worth saying.”

“And it’s not something I think is true,” Theo muttered. If nothing else, Riddle was a wardmaster who would want to be able to defend his own secrets. He should have included demands binding Harry to oaths not to talk about what he would see during his apprenticeship.

There was nothing like that. There was a simple and apparently sincere list of terms and demands, along with what he would teach Harry. No loopholes, but Theo would have felt better if he could have spotted both them and the language trying to obscure them.

Harry was apparently going to have the best relationship with a master that anyone had ever had if he signed the contract with Riddle. The perfection made Theo distrust it. Why wouldn’t someone like Riddle try to chain Harry to his side with stricter terms? Or include a clause that would inflict some horrific punishment if he betrayed Riddle?

Of course, that left the possibility Theo thought likeliest: that there was a trap somewhere under the surface, and neither he nor Harry was clever enough to spot it.

“Perhaps he thinks that he can get me to make another oath or sign another contract later?” Harry offered, leaning forwards. Even with the exhaustion Theo had expected to see Harry suffering under because of the ward that he had sent to Malfoy Manor, he looked healthy and content, and had eaten his food with more of an appetite than Theo had managed. “He wants to lure me closer and trap me more thoroughly once I’m loyal to him?”

“Riddle doesn’t strike me as the kind of man with enough trust in anyone else for that.”

“He might have enough trust in his charm and his powers of persuasion. Or just what he can teach me.”

Theo looked back at Harry and stifled what he wanted to say.

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Theo shook his head a little. “You know more than he could teach you already.”

Harry rolled his eyes, something that startled Theo. He didn’t think he had seen Harry do it without anger and contempt before. “Come on, Nott. You know that’s not true. He’s a published expert and I’m—”

“Someone who can achieve incredible things even without any teaching.” Theo leaned forwards. “Do you want to become his apprentice? Or are you only doing this because it would give you some kind of foundation for when you leave Britain?”

“Of course I want that foundation! I don’t want people on the Continent to laugh at me because they think I’m some snot-nosed kid trying to set himself up as an expert—”

“No one would do that once they knew what you could accomplish.”

“They wouldn’t get close enough for me to demonstrate if I didn’t have credentials.”

Theo sat back and slowly nodded. He had to admit that, as far as it went, Harry’s plan sounded like he’d considered the possibilities and chosen the one that made the most sense.

It still made Theo itch, though. There should be more options than this for someone as powerful as Harry, he thought. More choices that Harry could use to get some leverage on Riddle and stay free of an apprenticeship contract if he wanted to.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” he asked abruptly. From the way that Harry’s eyes widened, the question was unexpected to both of them.

Harry spent a moment tapping his fingers on the table. The fire crackled softly on the hearth. Theo waited, and Harry finally seemed to recognize that Theo wasn’t going to give up and just retreat.

He sighed and shook his head a little. “I can’t picture a place, or a person. I just want to be somewhere safe, where I have friends, and where I can practice any kind of magic I want without having to apologize for it.”

“You don’t want revenge on people like Snape and Malfoy?”

“I hope I would have taken that before five years had passed.”

Theo had to smile. And if there didn’t seem to be room for himself in Harry’s vision, well, Harry had confirmed how vague it was. They would just have to keep going, and Theo hoped that he would be allowed to share the home that Harry eventually settled in.

Or at least visit.

*

Harry hesitated outside the classroom where Granger and Nott had been studying, and took a deep breath. He almost didn’t want to do this.

But after studying the contract for another day, Nott had admitted that if there were loopholes in the offer or deadly clauses, they escaped him. Granger was the brightest person in the school who didn’t have some kind of grudge against Harry or some kind of power over him. Having her look over the contract wasn’t a bad idea, and Harry knew it.

He still…

He banished the thoughts and knocked on the classroom door.

Granger was the one who opened it, her eyes widening a little as she stared at him. “Potter?”

Harry nodded to her, keeping his expression as cool as he could. “Granger, hello. I wanted to make a bargain for you. Your looking over a legal document that I think is too good to be true, and in return, I offer you tutoring in wards if you want.”

Nott had been the one who’d told him that that was the kind of deal likely to appeal to Granger. Sure enough, a gleam came into her eyes, and she leaned forwards a little. “How long is the tutoring going to be?”

“I can do a couple hours a week until the end of term,” Harry said. He retained his cool expression, but internally, he was reeling with surprise. He’d still thought it would take more time than this to convince her, appealing bargain or not. “I have to spend the rest of my time studying for NEWTS.”

“A few hours a week is all I can spare as well,” Granger said, and opened the door wide. Harry slipped in and nodded at Nott, who sat next to a table covered with open books. Nott smiled a welcome.

Granger turned back and echoed the smile, but only at Nott. Harry blinked, shocked at his own shock. This was a different kind of shock than the kind he had felt that Granger had agreed so quickly. Granger was…

Comfortable around Nott.

A second later, while Harry took the scroll from his pocket and explained some of his interactions with Riddle without much listening to his own words, he felt stupid about that. Nott and Granger had been working together for weeks now. Of course she was more comfortable around him.

But, somehow, Harry had still thought it would be a mere business arrangement between them, despite Granger’s Gryffindor tendency to brush through barriers and probable loneliness because she didn’t have many friends in her House. Because Nott would have done this only out of some sense of obligation, and Granger would probably have sensed that and been prickly.

Now, it seemed as though Harry had been the one who had misjudged. Granger was sincere, and had accepted Nott’s offer to make up for his bullying fully.

Which meant Nott was sincere, too.

Harry sat down across from Nott as Granger bent her head over Riddle’s offer. Nott stared back at him, one dark eyebrow creeping up.

Harry shook his head and stared at the tabletop. His mind was whirling.

Nott was sincere. That probably meant he was sincere with his efforts to help Harry as well, even if he was also attracted to Harry’s power or insistent on securing the protection of someone stronger than he was or interested in learning what Harry knew about wandless magic and wards.

Harry had really changed Nott, somehow, with that confrontation on the Quidditch pitch.

If Harry had misjudged Nott, and he wasn’t just starting out on a different road, but already far down it—

Then it was about time that Harry started thinking of him differently.

Enough to include him in my visions of five years hence?

Harry didn’t know yet. But it was at least a possibility now.