lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-06-27 11:44 am
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-06-27 11:44 am
Entry tags:
[Songs of Summer]: Ebony Houses, Harry/Nott Sr., R, 1/4
Title: Ebony Houses
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Nott Sr.
Content Notes: AU (Slytherin Harry), Dark Lord Harry, drama, mentions of torture and violence, minor character deaths, references to child abuse, present tense, underage
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3300
Summary: AU. Harry missed Ron on the train, but met Theo, and was Sorted into Slytherin. He’s wary enough of Theo’s father to spend some of the holidays at Hogwarts, but meets Justinian Nott during his third year. It’s fascination at first sight.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” short fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. A few different people gave me the prompt for Harry being paired with Theo’s father. This should have four parts.
Ebony Houses
Harry steps through the doorway, nodding a little as he studies the entrance hall. Theo laughs from behind him. “You look as though you’re adding up the price of all the gold frames and the ivory on the shelves, Harry.”
Harry grins over his shoulder as Theo shuts the heavy portal (it’s a portal, not a door) behind them. “You taught me well.”
“Yes.” Theo grips his shoulder briefly. “You deserve more than those Muggles left you with.”
Harry inclines his head. It took a while for Theo to convince Harry that he could buy his own robes and didn’t have to wear his cousin’s clothes everywhere. Harry felt as though there was a good reason for that, but now he understands that his relatives abused him and he was wallowing in the abuse by wearing Dudley’s clothes.
If Mr. Nott is amenable, then Harry will never have to see the Dursleys again.
“Father!” Theo calls, taking a step forwards “We’re here!” One of the Nott house-elves came to the station to meet them and Apparated them to the front portal. Harry doesn’t know why, but Theo said something about security, which he supposes makes sense.
“Theo,” says a deep, warm voice from up the great staircase that sprawls down into the entrance hall. Startled, Harry looks up, hand twitching towards his wand. Being surprised isn’t a good thing in Slytherin. “And Mr. Potter. Welcome.”
Harry catches his breath when he sees Justinian Nott standing in the middle of the staircase. Theo said his father looked a bit like him, but otherwise the only things Harry knew about him before this moment were his first name and the fact that he’d been a Death Eater.
There’s more than that. There’s a lot more than that.
Justinian Nott is beautiful.
Harry can feel his heart beating hard and a blush rising into his cheeks as he thinks that. But it’s true. Mr. Nott isn’t handsome the way that Muggle stars on the telly are—not that Harry’s seen a lot of them, anyway, what with being in his cupboard half the time—but he glows with power. His dark hair is long and braided over and around itself, and still falls halfway down his back. His eyes are a deep, startling blue that Harry can see from here.
Theo snickers next to him. Harry glares at him a little, and Theo raises his hands. “Just thought you’d like to know that you’re mooning over my father,” he murmurs from the side of his mouth.
That breaks the spell. Harry is used to Theo telling him things like this, pointing out the moments when Harry might do something that would make him stand out or look stupid in Slytherin. He nods, blinks, mutters back, “Thanks,” and steps forwards to hold out his hand to Mr. Nott.
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
“A true pleasure.” Mr. Nott has come down the steps so swiftly and gracefully that Harry has hardly seen him do it, and now clasps Harry’s hand, half-smiling down at him. “Theo has spoken highly of you. Thank you for taking the chance and being his friend.”
“Taking the chance?”
“The reputation of our family is rather—unnerving.”
“Father,” Theo complains.
Harry takes his hand back carefully, not wanting to look weak in front of Mr. Nott, even though, of course, he knows exactly what the man is referring to. He tilts his head back a little and says, “I have an unnerving reputation in the Muggle neighborhood I was raised in, Mr. Nott. I think it’s one of the best assets one can have.”
“Do you intend to have one in the future, Mr. Potter?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
Theo coughs and breaks the intense eye contact that otherwise Harry might have found difficult to back away from. “I’m hungry. Have the elves made dinner yet?”
“I do believe it’s been served, yes.” Mr. Nott turns back to Harry. “This house is fully yours for the duration of the time that you are here, Mr. Potter. Please enjoy it.”
“Please call me Harry, sir.”
“Then you must call me Justinian.”
Shivers run up and down Harry’s back as he follows the Notts into their dining room. He’s not sure if it comes from the way that Mr. Nott’s—Justinian’s—voice seems to caress his name, or something else.
Being invited to stand as his equal, maybe.
For a little while.
*
“I know something about you, Harry, from Theo’s letters, but he tends to talk much more about his own ambitions to become an expert Arithmancer than about yours. What are your plans and desires?”
Harry flushes at the last word, and doesn’t need Theo—who’s not here—to tell him he’s being stupid. He still accepts the glass of butterbeer from Justinian’s hand and leans back. They’re in Justinian’s study, which seems to be the heart of the house, an oddly-shaped room with five walls, so many books that Harry can practically feel them breathing, and a semicircle of chairs in front of a huge fireplace.
Justinian is sitting opposite Harry, sipping his Firewhisky and staring at him inquiringly. Harry takes a small sip of his own from the butterbeer and says, “I’m going to make sure that no one can even have power over me again.”
Justinian’s eyebrows rose. “An unusual ambition.”
“Is it? I had the impression that many of the other Slytherins felt the same.”
“I would say that many of them—except my dear Theo, of course, whose academic pursuits are his life—would have the ambition to have power themselves, over others. Or perhaps to take revenge on those who had hurt them.”
Justinian knows about the Dursleys. Harry just nods. “Yes, s—Justinian. But I would rather be free. To make my own decisions, to be sure that I can’t be controlled.”
“Has someone tried to control you, Harry?”
Harry takes another sip of his drink, considering Justinian. Justinian simply looks back. He’s wearing deep blue robes that have gold edgings, and they look too stiff to be comfortable to Harry, but he supposes perhaps they’re better when you’re used to wearing them.
“Yes,” Harry finally says. “My relatives most of all, but even some people at Hogwarts.”
There are some people at Hogwarts far too invested in the Boy-Who-Lived nonsense. Harry is grateful that his parents were magical and that they gave their lives for his, but he doesn’t particularly understand the admiration that surrounds him because of what they did. And some people, like Professor Snape, seem to assume that they can make Harry do what they want if they assign him detentions, or, like the other students, if they mutter loudly enough about him being the Heir of Slytherin.
There are others, too. Professor McGonagall trying to tell him stories about his Gryffindor parents and how they would want him to act a certain way. Malfoy, saying constantly that Harry doesn’t really belong in their House. The older Slytherins, trying to make Harry ashamed of his blood status. Gryffindor Quidditch players, trying to tell Harry how much his parents would hate him for playing Seeker on the Slytherin team.
Harry hates it. He won’t put up with it.
“Ah,” Justinian says, and Harry blinks and lets his attention stray back to the conversation. He has to admit, thinking about his own ambitions is about the only thing that could take his mind off the fascinating man across from him. “I knew another like you, once. Someone who wanted to ensure he was never controlled by anything again. Not time, not death, not fate.”
It’s obvious who Justinian is talking about. And that he’s watching Harry’s reaction. In general, Harry thinks, Justinian doesn’t play the same kind of games of hiding behind casualness or cruelty or disinterest that the other students do. He’s powerful enough not to need those masks.
Harry meets his eyes head-on. “I wouldn’t care about this other person,” he says carefully, “if he doesn’t interfere with me. If I could go my own way without clashing with anyone else, I would. But I am prepared to defend myself if someone tries to control me again.”
Justinian smiles around his glass. “I understand you perfectly, Harry.”
“Do you?”
“And I have some books that you might find interesting.”
“Do you?”
“I do.”
Harry relaxes back into his chair. Theo was the one to tell Harry that his magic is abnormally powerful—and that’s the word he used. Harry honestly appreciates it. He used to yearn to be “normal” like the Dursleys, but after his years at Hogwarts, now he wants to be as strange as possible.
I can be strange all I like, as long as I’m free.
Harry nods to Justinian. “I’d like to read them.”
Justinian smiles at him, the fire reflecting in his deep eyes. “You are most welcome.”
Harry’s sure that he’s not just talking about the books, and he smiles and gestures lazily at the bottle of butterbeer on the table next to him, watching Justinian watch him as the bottle floats over and pours into his glass.
“Thank you.”
*
Harry can see at least five people in the Great Hall staring at him as Justinian’s gyrfalcon glides to a stop in front of him and offers the letter attached to its leg. Two of them are at the professors’ table.
Snape just glares at Harry because this is yet another sign that Harry isn’t doing what he wants. Professor Dumbledore stares because—Harry isn’t sure why, actually. He’s never spoken to the man, except for one cryptic conversation at the end of his second year about what really happened in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry is going to keep stabbing that diary with a basilisk fang to himself, thank you.
He might have bragged about it, but the only reason he managed to stab the diary at all is that he talked to young Voldemort’s spirit and asked him questions until he could blind the basilisk with a spell and break off one of its fangs with another. That meant, by the time he managed to kill the book, Ginny Weasley was also dead.
Harry doesn’t fancy being accused of murder.
“My father sent you more books?” Theo asks, looking up from his Arithmancy tome. Harry smiles at him. It’s a rare honor that Theo pays attention to something besides his books at meals, especially since they’re in third year now and they can take Arithmancy.
“A letter this time.” Harry opens it and quickly scans the contents, laughing softly to himself. Malfoy edges away from him. “He went and had a discussion with those people we talked about, Theo.”
And oh, Justinian’s description of the colors Uncle Vernon’s face turned is wonderful.
“He did?” Theo asks, blinking, mind obviously far away. Then he laughs aloud. “He did? And what did they say?”
“That I can do exactly as I want,” Harry says.
He folds up the letter and tucks it away in a robe pocket that he’s spelled against things being Summoned from it. He should probably burn the letter, he knows. It’s a bit incriminating.
But he wants to keep everything that Justinian ever sends him. Call it sentiment.
*
“Mr. Potter, I need to know everything you know about what happened at your relatives’ house.”
Harry blinks. He got hauled up to the Headmaster’s office, the way he anticipated happening after the letter from Justinian, but this is almost the end of the term. There was some kind of commotion last night, he knows that, something to do with Sirius Black being in custody and then escaping. But Harry didn’t have anything to do with that, the same way he didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of Professor Quirrell in his first year.
“Sir?”
“I know that a wizard visited Vernon and Petunia Dursley in March,” Dumbledore says heavily, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him. His phoenix trills on the perch off to the side. Harry gives it a sidelong glance. It’s a very pretty bird, but according to Justinian, it can also do things like transport the Headmaster anywhere. That might mean it could spy on him. “I said nothing about it at the time because I thought you had more important matters to deal with, like the escape of Sirius Black, but now…”
“Now, sir?”
“I visited them and learned that they are adamantly opposed to your returning there over the summer.”
Harry has to laugh a little. “They were adamantly opposed to it the last two years as well, sir.”
“But they allowed you back.”
“They won’t do that now, sir?”
Dumbledore stares at him. Harry, warned by Justinian, doesn’t let the man catch his eye.
He and Dumbledore both know why Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia can’t take him back. But they’ll both pretend ignorance of the other person’s game.
Dumbledore sighs at last and taps his fingers on the desk once before folding his hands in his lap, as if he thinks that he can conceal from Harry how frustrated he is that way. “You have no idea why they would—why the magical protections on your house have been stripped away, Harry?”
Ah. Justinian didn’t think that the Headmaster would actually admit those protections had existed. Harry will have to taunt him about being wrong.
“I think those protections barely existed in the first place, sir,” Harry says. “I mean, I don’t know much about them, but you told me last year that they were based in my mother’s blood and love, right?” It was in the course of Dumbledore telling Harry urgently how important it was for Harry to never act with hatred in his heart if he had hatred when he killed the diary, because it was love that saved him once and love that will save him again and again.
Harry would actually agree with that. He just loves different things than the Headmaster thinks he does.
“Yes, that is true.”
“My aunt never loved me. She never made that place a home for me. Neither did my uncle or cousin.”
“But surely, the natural bonds of family…”
“They don’t always exist. They didn’t this time. I don’t think whoever visited them would have had to do anything much to get them to agree I should never come back.”
“You know who it was,” Dumbledore accuses him, low-voiced.
“My aunt and uncle should surely know as well, sir.”
“They have been Obliviated.”
Harry shrugs a little. He’s more than familiar with the spell, given that he ended up having to cast it on Lockhart when he came back from the Chamber and the man tried to Memory Charm Harry so he could claim victory over the basilisk. It was Theo who acted quickly enough to save Harry’s memories that time. “Well. Then how could anyone know?”
“You know.”
Harry smiles and says nothing, and eventually, the Headmaster has to let him go.
*
“Welcome home, Harry.”
Justinian’s voice is warm and low. Harry finds himself turning instinctively to see how Theo is taking this, but Justinian’s arm curls around him and tugs him back against the man’s chest, holding him there, hot and strong.
“Theo understands,” Justinian murmurs into Harry’s ear. Instinctively, Harry finds himself relaxing. “He is not jealous at sharing me with you. If anything, he finds comfort in your presence. The house has been too empty since my Sabrina died.”
Harry finds that he doesn’t want to think too much about Justinian’s deceased wife, so he doesn’t. “And my relationship with you is hardly that of a son, even if I am Theo’s brother,” he says softly.
Justinian’s hand brushes down his back as he lets Harry go. “If you wanted a father-son relationship with me, you could have it,” he responds. “But I don’t think that you desire such a thing.”
The weight on the word “desire” is barely present, but Harry is good at noticing those things, now, much better than three years ago when he was first Sorted into Slytherin, and better than ever after spending the Easter and Christmas holidays with Justinian. He turns around, holding the man’s eyes, not looking at his left arm.
“No,” he says. “I don’t.”
Justinian smiles at him like a fox, his eyes seeming to flicker with firelight, even though there’s no fire lit in the entrance hall.
*
“The most important thing you will need to remember when mastering the art of Occlumency is knowing what belongs in your mind and what does not.”
“Does that mean keeping track of my memories?” Harry murmurs. He keeps his eyes closed. It’s hard not to fall asleep, sometimes, in this enchantingly warm and fire-lit room where Justinian is teaching him. But that’s one of the things that Justinian is making sure he can’t do, by poking him with questions and at times little flickers of Leglimency.
“To an extent.” Harry hears Justinian shuffling, becoming more comfortable on the thick rug spread out on the floor. It seems to be woven of the wool of black winged goats that live on the edges of the Nott grounds. “But it also means your emotions, your thoughts, and the changes in them must be under your control.”
Harry frowns. “That sounds awfully difficult.”
“I have taught Theo the rudiments of it,” Justinian says dismissively. “And for all that my son is more academically gifted than you, Harry, I believe you will be more gifted than he is at this.”
Harry opens his eyes and focuses on Justinian. The man smiles at him, a deep smile that goes all the way to the back of his blue eyes. Merlin, he’s so handsome that Harry never wants to stop looking at him.
“Why is that?”
“Because you want it more than he does.”
And while Justinian is speaking, he flings out a Legilimency probe. Harry probably only feels it because he was thinking about what doesn’t belong in his head.
Harry doesn’t have shields good enough to deflect the probe yet. He knows in theory he should be able to build them, and that’s what Justinian is trying to help him do by reading his mind. But it occurs to Harry abruptly that just deflecting someone who wants to have control over him, which an enemy Legilimens would do, isn’t enough.
No, he should trap them. Punish them. Make them think twice about trying that again.
Harry collapses his shields in front of Justinian and calls up an image that has haunted him since his childhood in the cupboard. A blocky house made of polished black stone—or ebony, Harry thinks suddenly, it’s ebony—wavers into being and solidifies around Justinian’s probe.
Justinian gasps aloud. Harry opens his eyes and sees the man swaying where he sits in place, as if the floor is shaking with an intangible earthquake. Sweat runs down his face into his blank eyes.
Harry’s alarm shatters the ebony house, and Justinian closes his eyes and hisses under his breath. Not the snake language Harry can speak, just regular sound. Harry watches with unspeakable relief when he looks at Harry with sense again.
And with sharp amusement, and with respect.
“What was that visualization you used at the end, the dark house?” Justinian asks.
“Something I used to dream of when I lived with the Muggles,” Harry says. “Based on the dark space—the cupboard—where they kept me.” Justinian tenses, but doesn’t interrupt. “If I could take the darkness and make it into that kind of ebony house, it would keep me safe from anyone snatching me and dragging me out of the cupboard.”
“It will work very well as an Occlumency trap,” Justinian says, nodding. “And if you can sculpt the whole of your mind in a reflection of it…”
He smiles with sharp white teeth. Harry smiles back.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Nott Sr.
Content Notes: AU (Slytherin Harry), Dark Lord Harry, drama, mentions of torture and violence, minor character deaths, references to child abuse, present tense, underage
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3300
Summary: AU. Harry missed Ron on the train, but met Theo, and was Sorted into Slytherin. He’s wary enough of Theo’s father to spend some of the holidays at Hogwarts, but meets Justinian Nott during his third year. It’s fascination at first sight.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” short fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. A few different people gave me the prompt for Harry being paired with Theo’s father. This should have four parts.
Ebony Houses
Harry steps through the doorway, nodding a little as he studies the entrance hall. Theo laughs from behind him. “You look as though you’re adding up the price of all the gold frames and the ivory on the shelves, Harry.”
Harry grins over his shoulder as Theo shuts the heavy portal (it’s a portal, not a door) behind them. “You taught me well.”
“Yes.” Theo grips his shoulder briefly. “You deserve more than those Muggles left you with.”
Harry inclines his head. It took a while for Theo to convince Harry that he could buy his own robes and didn’t have to wear his cousin’s clothes everywhere. Harry felt as though there was a good reason for that, but now he understands that his relatives abused him and he was wallowing in the abuse by wearing Dudley’s clothes.
If Mr. Nott is amenable, then Harry will never have to see the Dursleys again.
“Father!” Theo calls, taking a step forwards “We’re here!” One of the Nott house-elves came to the station to meet them and Apparated them to the front portal. Harry doesn’t know why, but Theo said something about security, which he supposes makes sense.
“Theo,” says a deep, warm voice from up the great staircase that sprawls down into the entrance hall. Startled, Harry looks up, hand twitching towards his wand. Being surprised isn’t a good thing in Slytherin. “And Mr. Potter. Welcome.”
Harry catches his breath when he sees Justinian Nott standing in the middle of the staircase. Theo said his father looked a bit like him, but otherwise the only things Harry knew about him before this moment were his first name and the fact that he’d been a Death Eater.
There’s more than that. There’s a lot more than that.
Justinian Nott is beautiful.
Harry can feel his heart beating hard and a blush rising into his cheeks as he thinks that. But it’s true. Mr. Nott isn’t handsome the way that Muggle stars on the telly are—not that Harry’s seen a lot of them, anyway, what with being in his cupboard half the time—but he glows with power. His dark hair is long and braided over and around itself, and still falls halfway down his back. His eyes are a deep, startling blue that Harry can see from here.
Theo snickers next to him. Harry glares at him a little, and Theo raises his hands. “Just thought you’d like to know that you’re mooning over my father,” he murmurs from the side of his mouth.
That breaks the spell. Harry is used to Theo telling him things like this, pointing out the moments when Harry might do something that would make him stand out or look stupid in Slytherin. He nods, blinks, mutters back, “Thanks,” and steps forwards to hold out his hand to Mr. Nott.
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
“A true pleasure.” Mr. Nott has come down the steps so swiftly and gracefully that Harry has hardly seen him do it, and now clasps Harry’s hand, half-smiling down at him. “Theo has spoken highly of you. Thank you for taking the chance and being his friend.”
“Taking the chance?”
“The reputation of our family is rather—unnerving.”
“Father,” Theo complains.
Harry takes his hand back carefully, not wanting to look weak in front of Mr. Nott, even though, of course, he knows exactly what the man is referring to. He tilts his head back a little and says, “I have an unnerving reputation in the Muggle neighborhood I was raised in, Mr. Nott. I think it’s one of the best assets one can have.”
“Do you intend to have one in the future, Mr. Potter?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
Theo coughs and breaks the intense eye contact that otherwise Harry might have found difficult to back away from. “I’m hungry. Have the elves made dinner yet?”
“I do believe it’s been served, yes.” Mr. Nott turns back to Harry. “This house is fully yours for the duration of the time that you are here, Mr. Potter. Please enjoy it.”
“Please call me Harry, sir.”
“Then you must call me Justinian.”
Shivers run up and down Harry’s back as he follows the Notts into their dining room. He’s not sure if it comes from the way that Mr. Nott’s—Justinian’s—voice seems to caress his name, or something else.
Being invited to stand as his equal, maybe.
For a little while.
*
“I know something about you, Harry, from Theo’s letters, but he tends to talk much more about his own ambitions to become an expert Arithmancer than about yours. What are your plans and desires?”
Harry flushes at the last word, and doesn’t need Theo—who’s not here—to tell him he’s being stupid. He still accepts the glass of butterbeer from Justinian’s hand and leans back. They’re in Justinian’s study, which seems to be the heart of the house, an oddly-shaped room with five walls, so many books that Harry can practically feel them breathing, and a semicircle of chairs in front of a huge fireplace.
Justinian is sitting opposite Harry, sipping his Firewhisky and staring at him inquiringly. Harry takes a small sip of his own from the butterbeer and says, “I’m going to make sure that no one can even have power over me again.”
Justinian’s eyebrows rose. “An unusual ambition.”
“Is it? I had the impression that many of the other Slytherins felt the same.”
“I would say that many of them—except my dear Theo, of course, whose academic pursuits are his life—would have the ambition to have power themselves, over others. Or perhaps to take revenge on those who had hurt them.”
Justinian knows about the Dursleys. Harry just nods. “Yes, s—Justinian. But I would rather be free. To make my own decisions, to be sure that I can’t be controlled.”
“Has someone tried to control you, Harry?”
Harry takes another sip of his drink, considering Justinian. Justinian simply looks back. He’s wearing deep blue robes that have gold edgings, and they look too stiff to be comfortable to Harry, but he supposes perhaps they’re better when you’re used to wearing them.
“Yes,” Harry finally says. “My relatives most of all, but even some people at Hogwarts.”
There are some people at Hogwarts far too invested in the Boy-Who-Lived nonsense. Harry is grateful that his parents were magical and that they gave their lives for his, but he doesn’t particularly understand the admiration that surrounds him because of what they did. And some people, like Professor Snape, seem to assume that they can make Harry do what they want if they assign him detentions, or, like the other students, if they mutter loudly enough about him being the Heir of Slytherin.
There are others, too. Professor McGonagall trying to tell him stories about his Gryffindor parents and how they would want him to act a certain way. Malfoy, saying constantly that Harry doesn’t really belong in their House. The older Slytherins, trying to make Harry ashamed of his blood status. Gryffindor Quidditch players, trying to tell Harry how much his parents would hate him for playing Seeker on the Slytherin team.
Harry hates it. He won’t put up with it.
“Ah,” Justinian says, and Harry blinks and lets his attention stray back to the conversation. He has to admit, thinking about his own ambitions is about the only thing that could take his mind off the fascinating man across from him. “I knew another like you, once. Someone who wanted to ensure he was never controlled by anything again. Not time, not death, not fate.”
It’s obvious who Justinian is talking about. And that he’s watching Harry’s reaction. In general, Harry thinks, Justinian doesn’t play the same kind of games of hiding behind casualness or cruelty or disinterest that the other students do. He’s powerful enough not to need those masks.
Harry meets his eyes head-on. “I wouldn’t care about this other person,” he says carefully, “if he doesn’t interfere with me. If I could go my own way without clashing with anyone else, I would. But I am prepared to defend myself if someone tries to control me again.”
Justinian smiles around his glass. “I understand you perfectly, Harry.”
“Do you?”
“And I have some books that you might find interesting.”
“Do you?”
“I do.”
Harry relaxes back into his chair. Theo was the one to tell Harry that his magic is abnormally powerful—and that’s the word he used. Harry honestly appreciates it. He used to yearn to be “normal” like the Dursleys, but after his years at Hogwarts, now he wants to be as strange as possible.
I can be strange all I like, as long as I’m free.
Harry nods to Justinian. “I’d like to read them.”
Justinian smiles at him, the fire reflecting in his deep eyes. “You are most welcome.”
Harry’s sure that he’s not just talking about the books, and he smiles and gestures lazily at the bottle of butterbeer on the table next to him, watching Justinian watch him as the bottle floats over and pours into his glass.
“Thank you.”
*
Harry can see at least five people in the Great Hall staring at him as Justinian’s gyrfalcon glides to a stop in front of him and offers the letter attached to its leg. Two of them are at the professors’ table.
Snape just glares at Harry because this is yet another sign that Harry isn’t doing what he wants. Professor Dumbledore stares because—Harry isn’t sure why, actually. He’s never spoken to the man, except for one cryptic conversation at the end of his second year about what really happened in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry is going to keep stabbing that diary with a basilisk fang to himself, thank you.
He might have bragged about it, but the only reason he managed to stab the diary at all is that he talked to young Voldemort’s spirit and asked him questions until he could blind the basilisk with a spell and break off one of its fangs with another. That meant, by the time he managed to kill the book, Ginny Weasley was also dead.
Harry doesn’t fancy being accused of murder.
“My father sent you more books?” Theo asks, looking up from his Arithmancy tome. Harry smiles at him. It’s a rare honor that Theo pays attention to something besides his books at meals, especially since they’re in third year now and they can take Arithmancy.
“A letter this time.” Harry opens it and quickly scans the contents, laughing softly to himself. Malfoy edges away from him. “He went and had a discussion with those people we talked about, Theo.”
And oh, Justinian’s description of the colors Uncle Vernon’s face turned is wonderful.
“He did?” Theo asks, blinking, mind obviously far away. Then he laughs aloud. “He did? And what did they say?”
“That I can do exactly as I want,” Harry says.
He folds up the letter and tucks it away in a robe pocket that he’s spelled against things being Summoned from it. He should probably burn the letter, he knows. It’s a bit incriminating.
But he wants to keep everything that Justinian ever sends him. Call it sentiment.
*
“Mr. Potter, I need to know everything you know about what happened at your relatives’ house.”
Harry blinks. He got hauled up to the Headmaster’s office, the way he anticipated happening after the letter from Justinian, but this is almost the end of the term. There was some kind of commotion last night, he knows that, something to do with Sirius Black being in custody and then escaping. But Harry didn’t have anything to do with that, the same way he didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of Professor Quirrell in his first year.
“Sir?”
“I know that a wizard visited Vernon and Petunia Dursley in March,” Dumbledore says heavily, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him. His phoenix trills on the perch off to the side. Harry gives it a sidelong glance. It’s a very pretty bird, but according to Justinian, it can also do things like transport the Headmaster anywhere. That might mean it could spy on him. “I said nothing about it at the time because I thought you had more important matters to deal with, like the escape of Sirius Black, but now…”
“Now, sir?”
“I visited them and learned that they are adamantly opposed to your returning there over the summer.”
Harry has to laugh a little. “They were adamantly opposed to it the last two years as well, sir.”
“But they allowed you back.”
“They won’t do that now, sir?”
Dumbledore stares at him. Harry, warned by Justinian, doesn’t let the man catch his eye.
He and Dumbledore both know why Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia can’t take him back. But they’ll both pretend ignorance of the other person’s game.
Dumbledore sighs at last and taps his fingers on the desk once before folding his hands in his lap, as if he thinks that he can conceal from Harry how frustrated he is that way. “You have no idea why they would—why the magical protections on your house have been stripped away, Harry?”
Ah. Justinian didn’t think that the Headmaster would actually admit those protections had existed. Harry will have to taunt him about being wrong.
“I think those protections barely existed in the first place, sir,” Harry says. “I mean, I don’t know much about them, but you told me last year that they were based in my mother’s blood and love, right?” It was in the course of Dumbledore telling Harry urgently how important it was for Harry to never act with hatred in his heart if he had hatred when he killed the diary, because it was love that saved him once and love that will save him again and again.
Harry would actually agree with that. He just loves different things than the Headmaster thinks he does.
“Yes, that is true.”
“My aunt never loved me. She never made that place a home for me. Neither did my uncle or cousin.”
“But surely, the natural bonds of family…”
“They don’t always exist. They didn’t this time. I don’t think whoever visited them would have had to do anything much to get them to agree I should never come back.”
“You know who it was,” Dumbledore accuses him, low-voiced.
“My aunt and uncle should surely know as well, sir.”
“They have been Obliviated.”
Harry shrugs a little. He’s more than familiar with the spell, given that he ended up having to cast it on Lockhart when he came back from the Chamber and the man tried to Memory Charm Harry so he could claim victory over the basilisk. It was Theo who acted quickly enough to save Harry’s memories that time. “Well. Then how could anyone know?”
“You know.”
Harry smiles and says nothing, and eventually, the Headmaster has to let him go.
*
“Welcome home, Harry.”
Justinian’s voice is warm and low. Harry finds himself turning instinctively to see how Theo is taking this, but Justinian’s arm curls around him and tugs him back against the man’s chest, holding him there, hot and strong.
“Theo understands,” Justinian murmurs into Harry’s ear. Instinctively, Harry finds himself relaxing. “He is not jealous at sharing me with you. If anything, he finds comfort in your presence. The house has been too empty since my Sabrina died.”
Harry finds that he doesn’t want to think too much about Justinian’s deceased wife, so he doesn’t. “And my relationship with you is hardly that of a son, even if I am Theo’s brother,” he says softly.
Justinian’s hand brushes down his back as he lets Harry go. “If you wanted a father-son relationship with me, you could have it,” he responds. “But I don’t think that you desire such a thing.”
The weight on the word “desire” is barely present, but Harry is good at noticing those things, now, much better than three years ago when he was first Sorted into Slytherin, and better than ever after spending the Easter and Christmas holidays with Justinian. He turns around, holding the man’s eyes, not looking at his left arm.
“No,” he says. “I don’t.”
Justinian smiles at him like a fox, his eyes seeming to flicker with firelight, even though there’s no fire lit in the entrance hall.
*
“The most important thing you will need to remember when mastering the art of Occlumency is knowing what belongs in your mind and what does not.”
“Does that mean keeping track of my memories?” Harry murmurs. He keeps his eyes closed. It’s hard not to fall asleep, sometimes, in this enchantingly warm and fire-lit room where Justinian is teaching him. But that’s one of the things that Justinian is making sure he can’t do, by poking him with questions and at times little flickers of Leglimency.
“To an extent.” Harry hears Justinian shuffling, becoming more comfortable on the thick rug spread out on the floor. It seems to be woven of the wool of black winged goats that live on the edges of the Nott grounds. “But it also means your emotions, your thoughts, and the changes in them must be under your control.”
Harry frowns. “That sounds awfully difficult.”
“I have taught Theo the rudiments of it,” Justinian says dismissively. “And for all that my son is more academically gifted than you, Harry, I believe you will be more gifted than he is at this.”
Harry opens his eyes and focuses on Justinian. The man smiles at him, a deep smile that goes all the way to the back of his blue eyes. Merlin, he’s so handsome that Harry never wants to stop looking at him.
“Why is that?”
“Because you want it more than he does.”
And while Justinian is speaking, he flings out a Legilimency probe. Harry probably only feels it because he was thinking about what doesn’t belong in his head.
Harry doesn’t have shields good enough to deflect the probe yet. He knows in theory he should be able to build them, and that’s what Justinian is trying to help him do by reading his mind. But it occurs to Harry abruptly that just deflecting someone who wants to have control over him, which an enemy Legilimens would do, isn’t enough.
No, he should trap them. Punish them. Make them think twice about trying that again.
Harry collapses his shields in front of Justinian and calls up an image that has haunted him since his childhood in the cupboard. A blocky house made of polished black stone—or ebony, Harry thinks suddenly, it’s ebony—wavers into being and solidifies around Justinian’s probe.
Justinian gasps aloud. Harry opens his eyes and sees the man swaying where he sits in place, as if the floor is shaking with an intangible earthquake. Sweat runs down his face into his blank eyes.
Harry’s alarm shatters the ebony house, and Justinian closes his eyes and hisses under his breath. Not the snake language Harry can speak, just regular sound. Harry watches with unspeakable relief when he looks at Harry with sense again.
And with sharp amusement, and with respect.
“What was that visualization you used at the end, the dark house?” Justinian asks.
“Something I used to dream of when I lived with the Muggles,” Harry says. “Based on the dark space—the cupboard—where they kept me.” Justinian tenses, but doesn’t interrupt. “If I could take the darkness and make it into that kind of ebony house, it would keep me safe from anyone snatching me and dragging me out of the cupboard.”
“It will work very well as an Occlumency trap,” Justinian says, nodding. “And if you can sculpt the whole of your mind in a reflection of it…”
He smiles with sharp white teeth. Harry smiles back.