lomonaaeren

He didn’t bring meat for the thestrals this time. He just walked into the woods, and a cloud-silver foal danced up to him and leaned against his leg, tiny tail flicking. Harry stroked the filly’s neck. He was suddenly sure she was a filly, even though he didn’t have any evidence for that.

The silver mare came over and stood in front of him, gently breathing into his face. Harry looked back at her without fear. She was so much better than most of the student population at Hogwarts, he thought. She was honest in her desires for blood and meat, but she welcomed him even when he didn’t have any.

Hands settled gently on his shoulders. Harry closed his eyes and leaned back into Nott.

They stood there and said nothing, but Nott gently pressed the lightest of kisses against Harry’s cheek. Harry knew he was testing, even as the thestral foal was. Waiting to see what would happen if they touched Harry.

Harry reached back and wrung Nott’s wrist so hard that he felt Nott jolt against him. But he made no sound. Harry ended up turning his head and kissing Nott’s wristbone as an apology.

Nott was looking down at him. They stood there in silence for a long time, between thestrals, looking at each other.

*

“You have some idea who cast that ritual and created that shield for you, Harry. You must.”

Harry put his head down between his hands on the library table. Hermione had been hinting and dancing around this for weeks, but now she was saying it outright. And Harry didn’t want to tell her, didn’t even want to tell her that he didn’t want to tell her.

He wanted to protect Nott. Nott had done so much for him. Harry’s loyalty was the only thing he had to offer.

He had thought of trying to send a gift to Nott or meet up with him somewhere other than the Forbidden Forest, but he was sure that someone would have noticed.

“Please, Hermione, can you leave it alone?” Harry pleaded to the table. “It’s not hurting anyone as long as they don’t try to hurt me. It’s like the most harmless Dark ritual you can do. I—”

“Harry, if someone pushed you to do it…have you thought that the impulse might have come through your scar?’

Harry jerked his head up and stared at Hermione. She met his eyes, her own wide and scared.

It made sense, Harry reckoned. He had had dreams from Voldemort, although he’d been ignoring the last few, and there hadn’t been any in almost a fortnight. From his friends’ point of view, maybe he’d finally snapped and killed Umbridge, but that wasn’t something they could imagine him doing without Voldemort influencing him.

Harry swallowed. “Hermione, I promise that I didn’t kill Umbridge, and I promise that I didn’t perform the ritual.”

“But you know who did.”

Harry didn’t answer. He might not be a great liar, but he could keep his silence.

“Harry…” Hermione reached out and put a hand over his, and Harry let her, even though he suspected he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “Maybe Voldemort is influencing you to ignore that Darkness,” she whispered. “You didn’t murder Umbridge, I believe that, but ignoring murder is terrible, too! We have to bring the person who did this to justice, even if Umbridge was a horrible person. Don’t you see?”

“No. I’m glad she’s dead.”

Hermione’s eyes filled with tears. “That isn’t something you would have said before this year, either,” she said. “Oh, Harry.”

“Aren’t you glad she’s dead?”

“No. I just said I think she was a horrible person, but even horrible people deserve rights and justice! She should have been tried and sent to Azkaban, not just poisoned!”

“Well, maybe if she’d had you cut your hand open with a Blood Quill, you would feel differently,” Harry snapped, and tore her grip away.

“I’m just trying to understand how much Voldemort has changed you.”

“Not at all. It’s this year that’s changed me. The Blood Quill that’s changed me. The students hexing me that’s changed me. The Minister’s campaign against me. Someone not talking to me during the summer because Dumbledore said so.”

“He was worried that Voldemort would intercept the owls, Harry. You know that. And you know that he was worried about Voldemort influencing you!”

“And you’re still thinking that, because someone kept me safe,” Harry said, and turned away.

“Harry, that’s not what I meant!”

Harry walked away. He didn’t think that this would end his friendship with Hermione, but if it wasn’t going to, then he had to have some time by himself.

*

The next time he entered the Forest, Nott was waiting, and without even the pretense of meat for the thestrals. The coal-black stallion was standing in front of him anyway, cropping at what looked like the corpse of a bat and glancing up at Nott now and then.

Nott turned and saw Harry. Harry opened his arms.

Nott was the one who moved into them this time, with a sound so faint that Harry couldn’t make out whether it was a word or a name or a moan. He stroked Nott’s back and hair and thought about why Nott might have tried to save him.

One thing seemed likelier than any other, now that Harry had begun to watch Nott.

He has no one else.

Nott might cling to the first person he had ever met who was like him, who valued silence and came to see the thestrals. And the thing was, before this year, Harry hadn’t been either of those things.

Now he could see the value of them, and he never wanted to give them up again.

Harry touched the back of Nott’s neck, gently cupping it and then stroking it. Nott shuddered in his hold. Harry took a step back and looked up to the top of the trees, his eyes seeking out the stars.

He wished he could be up there with them, as cold and as silent. Although only if a few other stars could come to visit him, he thought. Nott and the thestrals and—

There were no others. Not when the other stars had obeyed Dumbledore’s order not to write to him, or wouldn’t look him in the eye themselves, or thought every possible change in Harry was a result of Voldemort’s influence and not just becoming fed up with all the shit the magical world piled on him.

Harry stood there and held Nott, and he held Harry back, and the thestrals watched both of them.

*

“Harry! Mate! Wait up.”

Harry slowed for Ron with a sigh. He didn’t want to argue with Ron, and he didn’t want to hear about how he’d been too mean to Hermione. They had apologized to each other, sort of, but Hermione was still writing lots of things down on a piece of parchment every time Harry said something about Umbridge’s death or about how he didn’t care about Potions or the like.

She still thinks that every facet of my personality is being influenced by Voldemort.

Ron coughed a little as he came to a stop beside Harry. “Where you were going so fast, Harry?”

“The Forbidden Forest.”

“Do you think you should be spending as much time there are you do, mate? I mean…it’s full of Dark creatures, and…it might be the kind of place where you’d want to go to practice Dark Arts, but I know you don’t do that…”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m going there because it’s quiet and peaceful and I can think, Ron. Not have to put up with people sneering at me and then acting frightened when I catch them doing it.”

“Some of them are really afraid, you know.”

Ron’s voice was so soft that Harry was pretty sure he included himself in that group. Harry calmed down enough to nod. “Sure. But their fear isn’t something I can fix. I can’t soothe them because they don’t want to hear the truth and I won’t agree with them that I’m mental and going Dark.”

“You don’t have to agree with them. Just—not say some things as loudly, perhaps.”

Harry cocked his head. “Do you and Hermione think I shouldn’t tell the truth about Voldemort?”

“No, that’s not it, mate! Not lie! Just leave it up to Dumbledore, maybe? He’s a lot older and people trusted him before. I think they’ll swing back to trusting him in time. Maybe thinking that if he says something so persistently, then it has to be true.”

“They’re calling him mad and evil, too.”

“But that’s just going to be for a little while.” Ron rubbed the back of his neck. “Hermione says we should just wait for this to wear off and the Ministry to get bored of hating on you in the Prophet. She says, and I agree that—that it would be better if you didn’t argue with idiots.”

Harry laughed shortly. “And that means that I should get rid of the shield and ignore people who hex me in the corridors, too, right?”

“I mean, no, I don’t think that. Hermione sort of does. But I think you shouldn’t have cast the shield in the first place.”

“You think I did it?”

“Who else? I can’t think of anyone who uses Dark Arts who would want to do something good for you. And I can understand why maybe it looked like a good idea.” Ron’s eyes were wide and earnest. “It’s just that Dark rituals always have a price. I think it’s probably left you more open to influence from him. But I understand why you did it.”

“What if I told you that I didn’t do it?”

“Then I believe you.”

But Ron was giving him a skeptical look, and Harry turned and swirled his Invisibility Cloak, which he was keeping on himself most of the time now, out of his robe pocket and around his shoulders. He scurried down the corridor, keeping his footsteps as soft as possible so that Ron couldn’t track him, ignoring the way his first friend called after him.

No one believed him. No one thought he should act to protect himself. Or they didn’t care.

Except for Nott.

*

Harry and Nott sat under a huge oak that night, with thestrals lying with legs curled under them on either side, and great reptilian heads in their laps. Now and then, either Nott or Harry let go of each other to stroke a cold black or silver or grey neck.

*

Harry,

I know that you’re having some sort of stupid argument with Ron and Hermione. I just wanted to write to you to say that I know how you feel. Sometimes I felt I was going mad in my own house, listening to my family spout nonsense that anyone ought to be able to see was nonsense.

But if you know it’s nonsense, you don’t have to argue with it. I realized arguing with my parents and Regulus was futile. So I ignored them, and sometimes pranked people when my fury got the better of me. But I didn’t cast Dark Arts rituals or hex them. There would have been no point.

Ignore Ron and Hermione for a while if you want. Or just don’t have deep serious conversations with them. You’ll still be friends in the future.

Let Dumbledore do what he needs to do. He’ll outmaneuver those idiots in the Ministry in the end. And he knows more about fighting You-Know-Who than any of us.

Ignore the students who hex you. Or prank them. Just don’t hex them back. That’ll make you no better than they are, and it won’t win you any sympathy.

Just do the best you can, Harry, and don’t let the pressure in your daily life or through your scar make you turn to Dark Arts. Nothing is worth that, not even personal safety. I used some Dark Arts in the war and I’ve always regretted it.

Your Snuffles.

Harry folded the letter and stood there in the owlery next to Hedwig for a long moment. Hedwig hopped towards him and pulled on a strand of his hair. Harry smiled at her and ran his hand over her back.

“It’s not your fault that he’s telling me to just ignore the bullying and be the better person,” he mumbled. “Like some sort of Muggle primary school teacher. And if he used Dark Arts and that’s the reason he’s alive today, why is it fine for him, but not for me?”

There were answers that he could find under the surface if he looked hard enough, Harry knew. Sirius would say that their situations were different. Sirius hadn’t had someone influencing him through a curse scar. And maybe using Dark Arts was part of the reason that Sirius had gone to prison for twelve years, if people were more willing to believe that he was evil because he’d used them.

But…

Harry didn’t want to look under the surface. He didn’t want to be fairer than everyone was being to him. He didn’t want to be the better person and hope it meant that people stopped muttering and hexing him and believing he was a liar.

He wanted to go.

Sirius thought that Harry should leave Dumbledore alone to do whatever he was doing in the Ministry and that Harry and Ron and Hermione could be friends again after a break? Sure. Harry would do that. He would leave, and he would come back someday. Maybe by then people would be so desperate to be saved from Voldemort that they would have decided he was a good person again.

Maybe Ron and Hermione would believe that he hadn’t cast Dark Arts and that it wasn’t wrong to do whatever he needed to to feel safe in the corridors of this bloody school.

Maybe Dumbledore would talk to him by then.

Harry nodded, and leaned close to bury his face in Hedwig’s soft breast feathers. She pulled at his hair again.

“If I were to leave,” Harry whispered, “would you fly with me?”

Hedwig bit his ear, but gently, as a way to tell him not to be so ridiculous.

Harry smiled, and went to find the person he wanted to come with him.

*

Nott was waiting for him in the Forbidden Forest, clad in a thick black traveling cloak. When Harry smiled at him, Nott picked up the black trunk sitting next to him and shrank it in a flash of magic.

They didn’t need to talk any more than they ever had. But Harry did find himself wanting to change one thing about what they’d done together so far.

He stepped forwards, put his hands on Nott’s shoulders, and pulled him close enough to kiss.

Nott froze for a long second, and then melted like summer snow, wrapping his arms around Harry with hungry urgency and kissing him to the point that Harry’s head spun. When they parted, Harry was gasping, and Nott had a smile on his face. Harry had never seen a sincere one there before.

Harry gently cupped his cheek and whispered, “Call me Harry,” breaching the silence for the first time.

“Theo.”

The name settled within Harry like a sparkling crystal. He hadn’t wondered if Nott was Theo or Theodore, because he had simply called him by his last name in his head and sometimes aloud, but Theo was perfect.

Harry kissed him one more time and stepped back, looking around. The silver mare was already stepping forwards and kneeling, bat-like wings drooping on the earth. Harry slung a leg carefully over her back, and shivered. The body beneath him was colder and less substantial than he thought riding a horse would be.

Still, she was there, just as she had been when she licked the blood from the wounds on his hand.

Harry looked over. Theo had mounted the coal-black stallion, and was sitting easily on his back, smiling at Harry. Smiling suited Theo, Harry thought, and made a private vow that he would do everything he could to keep that smile there from now on.

“Where are we going?” Theo whispered.

“I thought we would let the thestrals choose,” Harry said back, as softly. “They’ve made other good choices so far.”

Even as he spoke, the silver mare began to canter beneath him. The stallion followed her, and they floated off the ground, far faster than a broom, although the motion of the wind around Harry and Theo didn’t weep as quickly as Harry would have expected. He grasped the mare’s thin, cold mane and laughed aloud.

Theo didn’t laugh, but he was still smiling when Harry checked.

The thestrals ascended in great circles over the Forbidden Forest and Hagrid’s hut and the Hogwarts grounds. Harry looked only at the parts of the school revealed as the thestrals swept past it. He was at peace, now, and could let go of his resentment that so many people feared and whispered about him, even the ones who knew him best.

He wouldn’t resent them by the time he came back. He was certain of it.

The thestrals abruptly ascended faster, and then they were hurtling through the black night, starlight brushing over them, on their way to an unknown destination. Harry reached out without looking.

Theo’s hand met his.

The End.