lomonaaeren

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Chapter Eight—Dangerous Things

Harry snapped his eyes open.

There were bad dreams waiting for him in the waking world, he knew. But for at least several hours in Gaunt’s spare bedroom, he’d managed to forget them.

Now he sat up and watched dawn coming in through the window. The window looked out across a larger garden than Harry would have expected Gaunt to have, covered with tightly-closed flowers. Harry blinked.

He only likes flowers that bloom at night?

Not that it mattered. Harry took a deep breath as the memories from last night pressed hard on him, and got up to use the loo. The door off to the right led, as he’d hoped, to a small bathroom, and he relieved himself while looking around. The bathroom was a plain white room with a few basic towels and absolutely no personality.

What does it matter to me if Gaunt’s bathroom has a personality?

Harry shook his head roughly. He was just trying to distract himself from what he’d discovered yesterday, what he would have to deal with.

The first step is asking Gaunt to end the curse on me.

When Harry came back into the bedroom, he jumped a little when he saw Gaunt standing next to his bed. Gaunt was looking out the window into the garden the way Harry had, his gaze steady and thoughtful.

He turned around and nodded when he saw Harry. “Do you want breakfast?” he asked. “I have the means to make eggs and sausage, although I usually have toast or fruit myself.”

“I want this spell off me,” Harry said.

His voice was scratchy, as if he had been screaming, even though Harry didn’t remember doing it. Gaunt didn’t look surprised about that. He simply nodded again and stepped closer, raising his wand.

Harry braced himself, but he wasn’t ready for the pain that lanced through him in bright silver rivers that flowed down his back and into his belly. He doubled over, screaming, and Gaunt’s arm wrapped around his waist.

“Hush, Harry, my Harry, it will all be over soon.”

Harry, unable to breathe for the pain, heaved and gasped and floated in the middle of the agony for so long that he believed it would never end. Then it did, and Gaunt took a step backwards so abruptly that Harry nearly slid to the floor.

“Do you need support?” Gaunt asked.

“Please,” Harry moaned, and if Gaunt thought he was weak, it still didn’t stop him from stepping up and hauling Harry back to his feet again, then sitting down on the bed with him.

Harry leaned against him and breathed softly. Gaunt raked his fingers through Harry’s hair and hissed something that sounded like Parseltongue flattened out and darkened. No words, really. Harry wondered what Gaunt would say if he described it as a lullaby, and then decided he didn’t need to find out.

Experimentally, he thought about Snape, and shook from the hatred that flooded him. Then he thought of his sisters, and felt confusion and grief and love—but not the overwhelming desire to write to them that he’d felt before Gaunt removed the curse.

I wish the love had been real. I wish there was some way we could meet up without Snape and Lily being in the picture.

Lily…

His feelings for her had probably changed the least, Harry thought, after trying to think through them as best he could and probing at them with his mind. Confusion, hatred, love, shock that she had known about Snape abusing him and had let it happen anyway. They didn’t seem to be stronger or weaker.

Why is that? Why would she leave herself out of the spell?

Harry frowned. He would have to ask Gaunt that.

The last of the pain faded. Gaunt leaned back from him and cocked his head. He looked like a snake, Harry thought, or an owl. His feelings about Gaunt hadn’t really changed since the removal of the spell, but Harry did feel as if he were really seeing Gaunt clearly for the first time. “Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes, thank you,” Harry murmured. “But I noticed that my feelings for my mother haven’t really changed. Why do you think she would leave herself out of the spell?”

“It’s possible that, as the caster of the spell, she would be less caught up in it,” Gaunt said, but from his frown, that explanation didn’t satisfy him. He tapped his fingers on the bed for long moments, then stood, so abruptly that Harry was caught by surprise. “Come on, we’ll have breakfast and discuss it further.”

*

“Complete honesty, Harry.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been completely honest in your life.”

They’d finished breakfast and gone to Gaunt’s library, which was one of the biggest Harry had ever seen. The shelves, full of books, wrapped around the walls, leaving no space for windows, and made Harry feel as if he were inside a book-lined cave. Gaunt had drawn Harry over to a small circle of chairs by the fireplace, which cast just enough light to make their shadows huge.

“That’s an interesting accusation for you to make,” Gaunt said slowly. He had been tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair, but now he stopped and focused on Harry like a snake focusing on a juicy frog. “Why would you make it?”

“Because I think it’s true.”

Harry looked back at Gaunt without flinching. He’d agreed to come here out of weakness last night, and he didn’t regret it, but that feeling of clear sight had continued.

Why would Gaunt tell Harry that he was a Horcrux without more of an incentive than he’d had last night? Why would he accept Harry into his home when their only real connection was both being targeted by Voldemort, and both being Parselmouths? Harry didn’t think Gaunt was the kind of tutor who would have felt a strong connection to his students.

Gaunt leaned further back in his chair. He was relentlessly handsome, but Harry wasn’t bothered by it the way he might have been if a random handsome man had approached him in the street. What mattered more was the twist to his smile and the depth of his glittering eyes.

“Well?” Gaunt breathed.

“Well, what? I told you.”

“Why do you think I’m not completely honest?”

“You want something. The way you touched me at first hints at that. You were too excited to find out I was a Parselmouth. You told me that you were a Horcrux, too—and don’t try to tell me it was out of kinship or something. I don’t think you feel much kinship.”

Gaunt’s eyes had widened. And now he was sitting in the chair like a doll someone had posed. Harry continued watching him. He already knew what spell he would cast to defend himself if Gaunt leaped out of the chair at Harry’s throat, which he had to admit seemed a more and more likely possibility.

Then Gaunt tossed his head back and laughed.

Harry continued to sit still, and hold the incantation in the forefront of his mind. He wasn’t always good with wordless magic, but right now, he thought he would have no problem.

“You are a wonder, Harry,” Gaunt said, when he’d finished laughing. “Do you know that?”

“Will you tell me why?”

“Because you’re a Horcrux, and you’ve lived with that all your life, and yet you haven’t been corrupted by it.” Gaunt smiled without humor. “I had to use Occlumency and a potion I hadn’t perfected and a spell that I invented on the spot to keep the Horcrux in me from taking me over. Sometimes I can still feel it pressing against my barriers. But you…”

Harry flushed. There was no reason to, but he did. “Maybe the one in more is dormant or something. Especially if he made it accidentally.”

“Perhaps,” said Gaunt, without sounding like he believed it. “Very well. I will be more honest with you than I have been.

“There are few wizards or witches like me. I don’t feel much sense of kinship, you’re right. I knew from an early age that I was the smartest one of the children I knew, and stronger in magic than anyone there, either.” Gaunt smiled as if enjoying a private joke. “When I got older, I met some people who were as smart or strong as I was, but not many. I grew more and more isolated, and I made a mistake.”

“What was that?”

“Getting so involved in studies that I began to pursue more and more esoteric tomes without reckoning the cost or alerting other people of what was happening. And in the end, the Horcrux that I told you about trapped me. I had a mighty struggle to keep from becoming a slave to it, and in the end, I was still permanently affected. I might have attained the skill I now have in Potions years earlier without that.”

Harry just shook his head.

“You do not believe me?” Gaunt’s voice gained an edge like a dagger.

“No, I just—I mean, you’re already incredibly accomplished for as young as you are. Are you seriously telling me that you could have attained this level of Potions knowledge at twenty, or earlier, if not for the Horcrux?”

“Yes, I do believe so. And that was a lovely compliment, Harry.”

“You can stop giving me doe eyes.”

“I do not believe I was.”

No, maybe not, Harry thought. He looks like something that would eat the doe. “All right. And then what happened, after you ran into the Horcrux?”

“I began to realize that I could not handle every situation on my own. That was why I sought out the masters I did for Potions tutoring. I discarded the notion that I knew everything, an arrogant idea that had doomed me to becoming the host of a Horcrux. I accepted that I was in need of others.”

“That was such a revelation?”

“For the person I used to be? Yes, it was.”

Harry leaned further back and studied Gaunt for a moment. The man looked at him, and he was being honest as far as Harry could tell.

Of course, he hadn’t even realized that his perceptions were constrained or altered by the spell Gaunt had told him about. Maybe Harry shouldn’t think he was all that trustworthy in determining truth from lie.

“That still doesn’t explain why you seized on me as someone whose help you needed.”

“If I help you, then I gain a potentially powerful ally. Someone who would be grateful to me because I freed him from an insidious spell. Someone who can also speak Parseltongue and has powerful magic that can aid me in my goals.”

“Not powerful enough to defeat you in a duel.”

“If you knew how long it had been since someone else even came close to doing so…”

“All right. So what are your goals?”

Gaunt studied Harry intently in silence for a moment. Harry wondered if he would ask Harry to swear an oath or something. Harry could see that, especially with the way that Gaunt seemed to have spent so much of his life only relying on himself.

But he said, “I wish to find a way to reverse the Horcrux possession while making sure that I can keep the gifts that it gave me, like Parseltongue.”

“And you think you could do the same thing for me?”

“Another advantage is that I have an ally who only needs a bit of leading.”

Harry ignored the implied insult. “Then I would be even more tied to you by strong bonds of gratitude.”

“Yes. And perhaps something else?”

“Oh?”

“How many lovers have you had, Harry?”

Harry felt his face flame. But Gaunt was the one who had asked the question, and that meant Harry didn’t have to be embarrassed about bringing the topic up. He lifted his head and said, “Two.”

“At twenty-four?” A slight hissing noise entered Gaunt’s words. “I confess myself surprised.”

Harry coughed. “I don’t—well, maybe it was the effect of Lily’s spell, or just because I couldn’t trust that people weren’t trying to get close to me because of my fame. But I didn’t feel attracted to that many people, and of the ones I was, some of them weren’t available.”

There had been a time when he’d had a crush on Ron. But even then, Harry had always known that Ron would want to be with Hermione. So he had moved on from that sooner than he might have otherwise.

“I see.” Gaunt leaned back in his chair and gave Harry one of those thin smiles that had irritated Harry before. “But you might be interested in a lover who knows your situation and doesn’t want you for your fame?”

Harry cocked his head and gave Gaunt a frank stare. Gaunt sat there and didn’t scold him for doing it, although he did laugh under his breath, as though he thought that Harry would come to a good conclusion.

It was hard not to, Harry had to admit. Gaunt had those handsome features, after all, and he could speak in Parseltongue, and, well, it might be interesting to see what that was like. It wasn’t something Harry could have ever revealed to his past lovers.

Gaunt could be the instrument of his protection. Of his vengeance. Of finding out what the hell was going on.

Yes, Harry could make worse choices for a lover, and he knew it. From the slow, expansive way Gaunt stretched his arm along the back of the chair and leaned back so that the muscles in his chest rippled, he did, too.

But…

“I’m not interested in that sort of thing really now,” Harry said. “If we find out what’s going on and put a stop to it, or if we manage to stop being Horcruxes and break free of Voldemort’s influence, why not?”

“And you would find me interesting if I were not a Horcrux?”

“Uh…yes?” Harry said, after a long moment of waiting to see whether this was a joke, and finally deciding, from the way Gaunt’s eyes locked on him, that it wasn’t. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I might not have Parseltongue then. I would be less different from the common run of mortals. Perhaps less interesting.”

“I’m not seriously considering anyone as a lover right now, Gaunt. But I would still be more interested in the person who came when I called for help and broke me free of that stupid curse than I would be in some random person.”

Gaunt tilted his head back and forth, apparently weighing Harry’s words on some invisible scale. Then he nodded and stood, reaching out to hold his hand hovering in the air a few inches above Harry’s.

“If you will swear a vow to bind us to each other, as allies, then we might proceed forwards,” he said. “And leave all questions of being more than allies for later, perhaps when we have both emerged from our Horcruxes.”

Harry blinked, then nodded. “It won’t be Unbreakable. I won’t do that.”

“Believe me, Harry, I have less than no intention of trapping you in that. What I want from you, I want you to give willingly.”

Harry bit the inside of his cheek to avoid saying something unfortunate, and nodded again. Gaunt drew his wand with a delicate gesture and spent a moment thinking, before he laid it alongside the vein in his own wrist.

“I will swear to you that I will never betray you, that I will tell you the truth about all matters concerning your family and Horcruxes, that I will fight for you freedom as for my own.”

Blowing out a surprised breath, Harry swallowed and said, “I accept that vow. I will swear to you that I will never betray you, that I will tell you the truth about all matters concerning my actions and what I might learn about my mother’s actions, that I will fight for your freedom as for my own.” He laid his own wand along his own wrist.

The words seemed to shine in the air around them, and then settle on their skin like falling flakes of snow. Harry felt a shot of cold pierce through his magic, and nodded at Gaunt, taking a moment to readjust his own mental balance.

Gaunt really meant the words. It was—freeing, to know that someone besides Ron and Hermione, or Sirius and Remus, could swear loyalty to him and mean it.

“What shall be the first action we take?”

Harry blinked at Gaunt. “I assumed you would take the lead.”

“Why?”

“You have so far.”

Gaunt gave him a look as bright and cold as the vow joining their magic. “I am not the one who overheard that conversation about Horcruxes and decided to share the knowledge instead of keep it to myself. I am not the one who suffered at the hands of Lily and Severus Snape. You should make the first decision.’

“And if you think it’s a stupid decision?”

“Be assured that I shall tell you so.”

Gaunt’s lips were twitching towards something that might be a smile, his voice mock serious, but his eyes bright. Harry relaxed and nodded to him. “Then I vote that the first action we take is to involve my godfather. We can’t let him come back to Britain, because he’s a fugitive here, but we can ask him for advice and maybe get him to come up with some cool ideas to spy on the Snapes based on pranks.”

“Interesting people you know, Potter.”

“I count you as one of them.”

Gaunt took a step back, eyes widening, and Harry worried that he might have said something wrong for reasons he didn’t know. But then Gaunt caught himself and simply inclined his head and murmured, “Thank you.”

Harry stood in Gaunt’s drawing room staring at the man, who stared back, and felt the air stretch and snap and charge between them with tension.

Maybe this is going to be more than allies after all. Soon, if we can get rid of these damn Horcruxes and figure out what Mother is up to.

And, well, Gaunt was interesting. Harry could see himself wanting to spend time around the man even after this adventure ended.

Maybe. We’ll see.