lomonaaeren

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Chapter Six—Into the Thick of Things

Harry can’t sleep.

That’s not unusual, of course, since the war or even before that. But in the past week, he’s learned to meditate effectively enough that he can usually slip under even if he wakes up again a few hours later. It’s really unusual for him to be sitting up and leaning against a pillow to read by the light of his wand because he’s too alert to even lie still with his eyes shut.

And now…

Now he feels a subtle itching spread up and down his spine, and he’s gritting his teeth, because he can’t ignore the thing sitting like a boulder in the back of his head.

The conviction that something is wrong.

It’s annoying, because it’s not as though he really needs to get involved in someone having a fight with their boyfriend or whatever this is. And he doesn’t believe Death Eaters are invading the school. And there’s no Voldemort anymore.

Go to sleep, idiot, Harry can imagine Ron saying. Hermione saying. Theo saying.

But he can’t.

Instead, he ends up dimming his wand and closing his eyes, but not to sleep. He concentrates on the sense of wrongness that seems to have bubbled up in the back of his mind like foul water, and tries to follow the stench, as he thinks of it, to the source.

His magic flails around. Harry grimaces, eyes still closed. He wasn’t lying to Theo about it being more volatile all the time, even if he can control it better than he pretended.

And then his magic and the foulness in the back of his mind seem to merge, and Harry opens his eyes and gasps and vaults out of bed.

He hears someone make a sleepy complaint behind him, but Harry can’t turn and see which of his roommates it is, or even if they’re completely woken up and coming to yell after him. He’s hurtling down the stairs, he’s crossing the common room in great bounds, and he’s past the portrait and running through a secret passage the twins told him about before he takes his next gasping breath.

Something is wrong with Theo.

*

Harry doesn’t know where he’s going, not consciously, but he gets easily pulled along like a toy on a string, and he ends up outside the kitchens. He tickles the pear and tumbles inside, staring anxiously around.

Theo is sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, his arms wrapped around his head. He doesn’t look up, and he might seem anonymous to anyone else, a student with a hidden face wrapped in a black uniform, but Harry would know him on a moonless night. He immediately runs towards Theo.

A house-elf appears in front of Harry so suddenly that he stumbles. The elf catches him, but shakes his head when Harry tries to get past him.

“Master Harry must not! Master Theo be in a bad mood!”

“What…”

Theo looks up at Harry’s voice. His face is covered with blood, and Harry recognizes the look in his eyes.

He’s been dosed with Amortentia again.

Harry probably couldn’t have stopped the explosion of magic that bursts out of him even if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. He lets that magic flow from him and straight at Theo, surrounding him, encircling him, bathing him and lapping him in warmth.

Theo makes a harsh cawing sound like a crow and scrabbles backwards across the floor from him. Harry swallows to calm his own rage and raises his hands, retreating to stand by the door of the kitchens.

“If you want me to, I’ll go,” he says, even though the words are the hardest he’s ever had to force past his lips. “But I wanted to leave you my magic. If you trust it, it’ll save you.”

Theo stops moving. His own rage is present on his face, so great that Harry has to think it’s the only thing holding back Theo’s desire to scratch at his eyes again. Theo’s voice is deep and hoarse as he asks, “What do you mean?”

“It can make you feel like someone is there, ready to defend you, if you let it. Or it could purge you of the potion.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

Theo shifts around. Then he says. “If that were possible, you would have offered it last time.”

Part of Harry feels as though someone has brushed him with a gentle wing, to know that Theo trusts him so much. He’s warm inside as he replies, “I didn’t know you that well last time, and I didn’t think of it. Now I have.”

Theo reaches down and begins running a pinch of skin on the back of his hand through his fingers. It’s hard for Harry to make himself stand still, but he does. Theo isn’t actually harming himself yet. He just looks like he will.

“Do it,” Theo says abruptly.

“It won’t be pleasant—”

“You think anything you could or would do to me would be worse than this?” Theo’s voice spirals up until he’s almost shouting. “Do it, Potter, do it now!”

Harry nods, and swallows, and sends the warm magic that’s still wrapped around Theo flowing into him through his skin and robes and pores and all sorts of other things that he probably isn’t even consciously thinking about at the moment.

Theo trembles. Then he falls to the floor and begins thrashing. Harry casts a Cushioning Charm beneath him right away, but doesn’t come near. He doesn’t know what would happen if Theo felt Harry touch him while he was in the thrall of Amortentia.

Besides, Harry is close enough to get there in time if Theo really does begin having a seizure or something. For now, he waits, and bites his tongue, and watches.

Gushes of fluid begin tearing out of Theo, from the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet and the skin of his arms. It’s not red, to Harry’s relief, just a dull gold like the Amortentia potion mixed with something else, maybe another potion that Theo’s drunk. It flows and sweeps and drips and runs, and soaks the floor around Theo. But Theo’s thrashing grows less and less as it leaves him, and Harry leans back against the wall on shaky legs as Theo abruptly curls up and lies still.

His breathing is hoarse, but Harry can hear it, which is what matters.

Theo shudders suddenly and starts tearing at his robes. Harry turns his back and conjures a ball of water to float above Theo, then crash down on him.

“Pott—what the fuck—” Theo splutters, through some water that probably went in his mouth.

“I thought you’d like to be clean as soon as possible,” Harry explains, still not looking. “Was I wrong?”

“This isn’t the same as a shower.”

“Would you want to leave the kitchens for one right now?”

There’s a long pause, then Theo says, “Point,” and, from the sound of it, conjures his own water, and probably a basin. Harry sighs and keeps looking determinedly at the wall, while absently sorting through his thoughts. The sensation of foul wrongness in the back of his head has died, so he knows it’s what was wrong with Theo that woke him up, but there’s something else that…

It’s like a word on the tip of his tongue that he can’t remember. It’s ridiculous. So he lets himself think of everything he would like to do to the people who keep using this potion on Theo, and how they managed it again.

Theo’s been eating most of his meals in here, and he would have been so careful of anything he took into the dormitory that Harry can’t see how they could have fed it to him—

There. That’s what was missing. Harry shakes his head and swears softly.

“What is it?” Theo asks behind him, already sounding less hoarse. He mutters an incantation and adds, “You can turn around now.”

Harry turns around. Theo has Transfigured something into clean robes, it seems, and wrapped them securely around himself. The floor is covered with water and fluids, but Theo waves his wand even as Harry watches and it vanishes.

“You didn’t vomit,” Harry says quietly.

“What? That upsets you? Be grateful that I didn’t, that would have been a right m—”

Theo stops, because he must have seen the same thing Harry did. Harry nods determinedly, feeling ill. “They didn’t feed the potion to you,” he says quietly. “They’re giving it to you some other way.”

Theo is staring at the wall with eyes so haunted that Harry wants to torture someone, a way he’s never felt since the night Bellatrix killed Sirius. He takes a deep breath, controls himself, takes a deep breath again, and says, “Look. Stay in the kitchens until we figure this out, okay? Or I can help you find another safe place. I just don’t want you to have to be in danger until we figure out who’s doing it.”

“Then they’ll know they affected me,” Theo whispers.

“They already know, Theo. What’s more important, the small pride of acting normal or the bigger pride of stopping them?”

Theo’s head twitches towards him. Harry hides a smile. He’s learning how to deal with prickly Slytherins.

“You’re manipulating me,” Theo says, but he just sounds bewildered instead of angry.

“Will you? Please? I can help you find another place if you think this is too vulnerable. I’m happy to help you carve out a territory in the Forbidden Forest right now if you want. But please.”

Theo swallows and then says, “Yes. I—the thought of trying to walk back into Slytherin right now is too overwhelming.”

Harry beams at him. “Great! Then do you want to stay here, or find somewhere else?”

*

Theo lies on the bed that he and Harry managed to Transfigure together in the kitchens. He chose to stay there because the house-elves will provide far more eyes and far stronger protection than either he or Harry would manage, and because even if the Slytherins who did this to him know where he is, they haven’t managed to get in to bother him so far.

They did manage to give him the potion again.

Harry’s magic purged the Amortentia completely. Theo knows there’s nothing of the potion lingering in or on him. But Harry didn’t get rid of the defensive anger that was making Theo claw at his eyes, and now Theo lies there and can’t sleep because of the rage running around his head.

It combines with the thought that he owes Harry for yet something else that Harry will never claim the debt for, and his helplessness at the thought of how this happened again, and it drives him out of bed and to his feet.

“Mist,” Theo says to a house-elf with grey eyes he’s started to recognize, “do you know where Professor Snape might be this evening?”

Luckily, Mist understands that he means the portrait and not the living man, which Theo can see some of his Housemates being dumb enough to think. Mist nods, her ears flapping against her head. “He is walking through a series of portraits on the second floor. Master Theo is going there?”

“Yes. Come with me.”

Theo isn’t stupid. If he has to leave the kitchens—and he has to, the fury and the bewilderment itching under his skin give him no rest—then he’ll do it in the company of a guardian house-elf.

Mist has no objection, and they make their way to the second floor. Theo doesn’t know how an elf can track a portrait, and he doesn’t care. What matters is that he comes around a corner and hears a familiar caustic voice.

“—think that even if Potions supplies were painted into my portrait, I would be brewing? Dark Arts was my passion, not—”

Theo smiles and steps around the corner. Mist is cowering behind him, probably because of the smile. Theo isn’t displeased about that. What matters is that he can see Snape, and speak to him.

And even if Harry would never claim the debt, at least Theo is able to—

He has to do something to repay and protect Harry, because of what he’s doing that no one else would ever do for Theo. Theo has to.

“Mr. Nott,” Snape says, breaking off his lecture, which seems to be directed to a portrait of a wizard with a full grey beard. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to ask you some questions, sir.” Theo takes a step forwards. The air seems to buzz around him, the way it did around Harry when he unleased the magic that cleansed Theo. “Not about Dark Arts or Potions. But about Occlumency.”

“I was under the impression that you knew it, Mr. Nott.”

Snape’s attention is intense, even as a portrait, and Theo spares a moment to be glad that Harry isn’t with him. He might have liked to see Theo attack Snape, but he would be disconcerted at best by Snape’s words.

And Harry has been hurt enough.

“I do,” Theo says, smiling. “So I know how it works. I know that trying to teach it to someone when that person doesn’t like or trust you is a form of torture. I was wondering if you knew it.”

There is silence. The grey-bearded wizard has crept away from the portrait Snape is standing in, leaving the corridor to him and Theo. Snape has stepped forwards so that his hands are flat on the lip of the portrait.

Theo smiles and smiles.

“Whatever Potter told you, he was lying,” Snape whispers. “If you knew how I told him to clear his mind, how he resisted—”

“And you could have seen that it wasn’t working, and suggested another technique,” Theo said. His voice is building. At this point, he doesn’t care if someone hears them, but it’s late enough at night that he thinks it unlikely. And he’s only concerned because of Harry, not himself. He takes a step forwards. “You knew enough about it to know it wouldn’t work. But you didn’t stop your ineffective teaching, did you? You simply ripped into Harry’s mind.”

“Potter is incompetent!”

“He’s learning fast enough with only basic meditation techniques. Did it ever occur to you to try those?”

“The connection between him and the Dark Lord—”

“I know what it was. And I call the Dark Lord Voldemort.”

It makes something bloody and satisfied unfold in Theo’s chest to watch Snape stumble back with his flinch. He wishes Snape was real. He wishes that he could draw his wand and exact physical vengeance.

But because Snape is dead, there is one thing that he could that wouldn’t be otherwise possible.

“He is lying,” Snape whispers, but his voice is uncertain. And he doesn’t leave the way Theo thought he might. He too obviously has to try and have his say. “Trying to gain sympathy. I am surprised that so experienced a Slytherin would—”

“I could say the same thing about so experienced an Occlumens not realizing that he was failing. But you knew, didn’t you? You wanted Potter to suffer. If you really wanted to block his connection to the Dark Lord, if it was urgent, you would have done that. But it wasn’t, or you didn’t care. You wanted to watch him suffering.”

“You have no idea what—”

“No, I don’t, but I don’t need to. What matters is that you pay for what you did.” Theo draws his wand.

Snape might be able to save himself if he retreats right now, but he leans forwards with his hands on the portrait frame again and scoffs. “What magic do you imagine you can level against me now that you’re a portrait?”

“Ligo animam,” Theo answers, a spell he once watched his father cast on an ancestor’s portrait who had betrayed Nott secrets to a rival family.

The spell spirals out of his wand and glows around the portrait frame Snape is in for a moment. Snape recoils into another painting and then laughs aloud. “You cannot bind me from traveling, Nott!”

“That wasn’t what I was trying to do.” Theo lowers his wand and waits.

It starts a moment or so later. Snape begins to shudder, and raises his hands to clasp them around the sides of his head. He bows his head, but the shuddering doesn’t stop, and a second later, he’s gasping as if he’s breathing smoke.

“What have you done?” he says, but it isn’t a bellow anymore.

“Destroyed the barriers that a portrait has against feeling the guilt and pain and other negative kinds of emotions that they left behind when they died,” Theo says calmly. He feels calm. The awful rage has drained out from under his skin, along with the urge to hurt himself. “It’s not even a Dark spell. I rejoined the part of your soul in the painting to a large part of your soul left outside it. I hope you enjoy yourself, Snape.”

“No! No! You do not understand!”

“No, I don’t. I don’t understand how you could make someone like Harry suffer.”

“He was—his father—his mother—”

“Aren’t him.” Theo laughs a little as watches Snape shake with his head in his hands. “For Merlin’s sake, Snape, even my father knew things like that. He didn’t look to me to be a reflection of himself. He didn’t expect to see Lucius’s reflection in Draco. How could you not know that?”

Snape snarls and hurls himself out of the portrait. Theo watches him go, and takes a soft, slow breath.

“Master Theo is coming back to the kitchen?”

Mist is peering around the corner, her eyes so wide that Theo can see the torches’ reflection in them. He nods. “Can you take me by passages secret enough that we don’t disturb anyone?”

“I can pop you,” Mist says, and holds out her hand. Theo blinks, grasps it, and finds himself back in the kitchen before his next heartbeat.

“You couldn’t pop me to Snape?”

Mist looks at him like he’s insane. “Master Theo is not asking.”

Right, I wasn’t, Theo thinks as he lies back down on the Transfigured bed and draws the heavy blanket—red, of course it is—over himself. I need to start asking more questions. Listening to more people. I need to find out how they’re slipping me Amortentia. I need to take my vengeance.

And I need to figure out how to keep Harry safe, because nothing less will pay what I owe him and he can’t claim.