lomonaaeren

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Chapter Eleven—Awakening

“Well, we knew they would do it.”

Harry grimaced and laid down the Daily Prophet that claimed in screaming headlines Harry was a Dark Lord who favored Dark creatures. “Yeah. I suppose that I thought I would feel better about it.”

“Why?”

Harry glanced at Theo. They had finally ventured into the Slytherin dormitories, which had made Malfoy stare at them owlishly and then go home for a few nights. Theo lounged on his own green-covered bed, eyes locked intently on Harry.

“Because I saved people,” Harry said. “And ended the old injustice I didn’t even know about, of people like Galahad being imprisoned in Avalon. But I just—I just want them to leave me alone.”

He realized he was whinging and stopped, but Theo got up from the bed and came forwards to gently run his hands down Harry’s shoulders, without the claws. “They aren’t worth anything compared to you,” Theo breathed. “You did do those things, and you’ve made plenty of people happy. The ones whining and squealing in the Daily Prophet and the Wizengamot are mostly worried about what happens if you claim your power instead of being a figurehead for them. You know that.”

Harry nodded sharply. “You’re right. I should be happier about the people who are happy, the Blood of Avalon and the people taking their place in the Forest.” He tried to smile.

“It’s all right to worry about the ones who aren’t happy,” Theo said, and squeezed Harry’s shoulder one more time before dropping his hands. He smiled. “Like Marcus Flint.”

Harry laughed, because Flint had come to visit yesterday, and Harry had told him outright that he could turn Flint back into a human, but the result would be him dying of the disease embedded in the Dark Mark. Flint had tried to bluster a little, but it had been pretty hard when his choices were looking trollish or death.

“Why don’t you take a holiday?”

Harry blinked at Theo. “We are sort of on holiday until the beginning of September.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Theo’s eyes glittered. “A holiday from listening to them. Why don’t you go to the realm beneath the trees that you created?”

“Opened. Not created.”

“If you say so.”

Harry grimaced at the thought that he might have the power to create worlds. “Found in my dreams and drew into reality. That’s the most I’ll accept.”

“If you say so.”

Harry narrowed his eyes at Theo. “Are you humoring me?”

“If my lord says so.”

“When I come back, I’m going to have you suck my cock so hard.”

“That is the opposite of a threat.”

*

Harry opened his eyes in a vivid green country that didn’t shine like Avalon, but felt more real. He stood there for a moment, in the shade of the great tree he had dreamed and still wasn’t sure of the reality of, looking around.

There were flickering silver flashes darting through the leaves that might be the equivalent of squirrels, and then again might not. There was the sound of trickling water, but Harry couldn’t see where it was coming from. He picked a random direction and started walking.

The sound of running water never grew louder, but Harry was abruptly on the bank of a stream. He crouched down and stretched out a hand to run his fingers through the water. It dripped softly off his fingertips and made ripples that expanded like smoke rings.

Not as solid as water at home, Harry decided. It feels more like mist.

“Have you made the choice to awaken your blood?”

Harry turned around. He expected to see the being made of light that he had seen in Avalon behind him, but there was only a pulse of silver light in the center of the air. It looked like a mirror turned sideways. Harry squinted at it.

“Are you a Sidhe?”

“Have you made the choice to awaken your blood?”

Harry sighed and sat down on the bank of the river, letting the mist-like water trail over his fingers again. It seemed that this wasn’t going to be a holiday after all. The mirror thing was probably going to hang here and question him repetitively until he answered.

And he was being pressured into an answer. He wanted to think about it and make a choice, not rush into making one because people were asking questions or telling him what they thought he should do. Theo and Ron and Hermione were trying to give him space, but it was obvious what they thought he should do.

Theo thought he should awaken the blood. Ron and Hermione were more cautious about it and had asked Harry if he actually knew what being a Sidhe meant. Harry had answered truthfully that he wasn’t sure.

“Have you made the choice to awaken your blood?”

“Shut up!” Harry snapped, swinging around to face the mirror-thing. “Shut up and go away!”

The light winked out. Harry sat down in his surprise. Then he leaned over and trailed his hand in the water again, his back tense as he waited for the repetitive thing to return.

It didn’t. The flickers of silver still dashed through the forest around him, but nothing else came to ask him a question. Slowly, Harry relaxed, and finally lay down so that both his hand and his hair trailed in the water. He closed his eyes.

Did he want to become of the Blood of Avalon like Theo and the others?

He hadn’t grown up with the stories they did, about how the Blood was so great and they’d lost it. He valued being human. There were plenty of times that no one had seen him as even that. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to start looking and acting less human and have people get frightened of him again.

They’re going to be frightened no matter what happens.

The voice sounded so like Theo that Harry almost opened his eyes and turned his head to see if his lover was standing there. But no, it was just his own inner voice, which sometimes adopted Theo’s tones. Mostly when Harry was being ruthless and practical.

Yes, Harry thought on a long exhalation. There were people who would be frightened of him no matter what happened. The purebloods who secretly clung to blood supremacy and who had collaborated with Voldemort or thought things would be fine with him in charge. The people who hated “creatures” and always would. The people who were nervous about Harry using his fame and his reputation because they were nervous about any power that wasn’t their own.

What can I do? Nothing I do can satisfy everyone, but there are plenty of things that could make them more afraid.

Harry grimaced, his hand still trailing in the water. That was another thing that separated him from other people, and which he hated. Hermione and Ron and Malfoy and so many others didn’t have to worry about everything they did being gawked at and criticized in the papers. And they didn’t have to worry about the fact that no matter what they did, someone would be upset. They could just do what they wanted, have fights or manifest Veela heritage or date the person they wanted, and that was that.

If everything is going to upset someone, if everything is going to make them more afraid, then why don’t you do what you want? asked the Theo-like voice.

Don’t I have a responsibility to not make things worse after the war? Harry asked it. Don’t I have a responsibility to not make people more afraid when they’re recovering from it, even if I can’t make them happy?

But you don’t know what will make them less afraid, the Theo-voice murmured. You could leave the country and they would worry that you were plotting with people abroad to become a Dark Lord. You could shut yourself up in Grimmauld Place for the rest of your life and they would worry that you were studying Dark Arts. You could die and they would be frightened that no one else would defend them when the next threat arose.

Harry blinked his eyes open and stared up at the beautiful sky, so blue that it faded into white along the edges.

He’d thought things like that before, but he’d never phrased them so clearly to himself before.

That nothing he did would make a real difference, that he could be blamed even after his death. The way he’d been blamed for supposedly Petrifying people, a magic so powerful and dangerous only mandrakes could undo it, when he was twelve years old. That people thought he had cheated to be in a death tournament at fourteen years old. How so many people had thought it was fine for the Minister for Magic and the country’s biggest newspaper to call him a liar and mental at fifteen.

Voldemort was dead. People were safe from him. Harry had avenged his parents and Cedric and Dumbledore.

He’d done all that was needed. Really done all that was needed.

Harry sat up. He turned his head and looked down into the water. He knew without asking that someone would be waiting there for him if he did, and in fact, the water blossomed and stretched into a brilliant white circle that looked down into blue nothingness.

Inside the circle, the Sidhe looked up at him.

You have made your decision, said the buzzing voice that was identical to the one Harry had been thinking of as Theo’s in his head.

Harry smiled. It was a comforting realization to think that the Sidhe was already a part of him, and that his thoughts were different from Theo’s, not controlled by him any more than Harry was controlled by Ron and Hermione. Yes, he agreed in the same way. I want to be able to keep up with Theo and be—as beautiful and powerful as he is. I want to be able to have more protection at my fingertips the next time people get upset with me. I want to be free of the expectations people have placed on me by making a choice that no one except maybe Theo wants me to make.

Find the blood within yourself.

Harry closed his eyes. He started. His body was lit up behind his eyelids, buzzing softly with golden radiance. He reached out, and the radiance became white and blue, and he touched it, and it was green, and—

The green light went through him like a bolt, like a resurrecting Avada Kedavra. Harry gasped aloud, and the light touched every cell in his body, all of them ringing, singing, trembling, on fire.

Some part of him that had always been there, the part that had been upset when the Dursleys didn’t love him and had worried about disrupting other people’s lives with his decisions all the time, turned to ash. Another part burst into flames.

*

Harry opened his eyes.

The far wall was so much clearer than it had ever been without his glasses that he gasped.

He sat up and found that Theo was sitting beside him on the bed, his mouth a little parted. He had horns and golden eyes, but no other trace of satyr blood right now. If anything, Harry thought the expression on his face was pure wonder.

“Wow,” Theo whispered. “Sidhe blood looks good on you.”

Harry glanced down hesitantly at his own hands. They didn’t appear paler than they had before, even though he’d thought they might. He stood and walked over to a mirror that Theo had conjured on the wall yesterday.

His eyes were greener. That was the first thing he saw, and that they burned in his face like lanterns in the windows of a distant house. Harry touched them, and watched sparks trail his fingers, forming a halo of fire that flickered up and danced around his hands when he willed it.

The fire had no heat, though, and Harry said softly, still staring down at his hands, “Why can’t I feel any heat?”

“Sidhe are creatures of light, not fire.” Theo had stood and come over to rest his hands on Harry’s shoulders from behind. “Maybe that’s why.”

Harry glanced up and continued looking at himself in the mirror, moving only his eyes. His hair was still dark, still uncontrolled, but now there was something beneath the surface, as if each individual strand was filled with a shining wire. And when he turned his head a little to the side, it looked as if the bone beneath his cheek had become sharper.

He turned it again. Yes. There were just enough differences between this face and his human face to startle and disturb someone once they started looking hard. His face might have been skin laid over a different arrangement, of glass and shattered bone.

“Wow,” Harry breathed.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s different.”

Theo fell silent and let Harry explore his cheek with his own fingers, his heart jumping anxiously. But it fell back to a more normal beat once he realized that nothing about his face felt like it might hurt or cut him. His power, maybe, if his magic had undergone the same kind of subtle change and he didn’t notice until it was too late. But not his face.

This was the way he could have looked, if magical Britain had stayed in touch with Avalon and not locked the Blood away in another world and in themselves. This was the way, maybe, he’d been meant to look.

And then he saw the best thing of all.

The scar on his forehead was gone.

Harry’s joyous laughter pulled Theo’s hands down from his shoulders and along his flanks. Harry leaned back against Theo, closing his eyes. He didn’t know why, but he was suddenly, absolutely sure and certain about what Theo was thinking and feeling, as though the surface of Theo’s mind had become animated by transparent, sparkling light.

“Harry?”

“I’m free of whatever marks I don’t wish to bear,” Harry said, and turned around. “Look.” He swept his fringe out of the way, noticing now that his hair did feel a little different, more springy and curly.

Theo stared at his empty forehead in silence, and then reached out and turned Harry’s hand over. Harry let him, although he was vaguely aware that he could have stopped Theo at any time if he’d wanted to. Theo drew in a sharp breath.

“What?’

“The words on the back of your hand are gone, my lord.”

“What did I say about that name?” Harry murmured, but he turned his right hand towards himself, and it was true. The words from Umbridge’s Blood Quill had vanished.

Harry grinned. This must be tormenting her something awful. I ought to go and see if any Blood of Avalon is awake in her.

Then he grimaced as the feeling of a bell coming awake rang in his chest. Damn. If Umbridge had the Blood, he would be kin to her, and Sidhe were supposed to save and protect their kin. He would have to hope that she was just tormented by being surrounded by “half-breeds” and hadn’t become one herself.

“What about the scar on your arm?”

It took Harry a moment to realize what scar Theo must mean, the one from the basilisk’s bite. He turned his arm over in interest, and discovered that that scar was still there. Harry studied it, then shrugged.

“Why do you still bear it, my lord?”

“Theo, that name.”

To Harry’s shock, his voice rang out like a bell through the room, and Theo reeled back a step. Harry bit his lip and kept still. He wanted to go after Theo, but he didn’t want Theo to see it as an aggressive gesture.

“I wondered about the old stories that a Sidhe’s anger was terrible to bear or behold,” Theo said, and his voice sounded normal. He was even straightening up with a little smile. “Now I know what they meant. That made my bones ring.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize. I was calling you by a name that felt natural to me, but you don’t like it. And your not liking it is more important than how it feels to me.”

Harry blinked, and then nodded. When he thought about it like that, he supposed it was normal for Theo to stop calling him a lord once he knew how much it irritated Harry. He simply hadn’t known before.

I’ll have to be careful of my anger, if it can make people react like that.

But then a new thought occurred to him, one that seemed to be borne to his inner ears on waves of rippling, light-like water.

Or they should be careful of awakening my anger.

Harry smiled. In reality, it would be more like a compromise, but it was good to remember that he had burned past the part of himself that would make all sorts of excuses for other people before and just blame himself.

“I won’t call you that again,” Theo added quietly.

“Thank you, Theo.”

Theo’s eyes widened, but Harry didn’t really know why until he stepped forwards and bent to kiss Theo. Theo surged up to meet him, his arms wrapping around Harry’s neck and his lips parting in a wild gasp against Harry’s.

Harry felt it, then.

There was a river of fire and light flowing between him and Theo, and Harry’s hands tightened on Theo’s shoulders in response to it. The fire circled back into him as Theo’s hooves and claws melted into existence, and Harry let Theo steer him back to the bed.

If awakening his Sidhe blood had more personal benefits as well as ones that would benefit the Blood of Avalon, Harry had every intention of enjoying them.