[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A Game of Eagles, Harry/Theo, PG-13, 4/9

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Four

“Mr. Potter.” Snape sounded as though someone had poured Bubotuber pus down his throat. “Why did you put powdered moonstone into your cauldron instead of the whole moonstone that the recipe calls for?”

Harry looked up. He could feel the tension of his Housemates behind him, waiting for lost points. It would happen no matter what Harry said, an apology or a protest or anything.

Given that, Harry thought suddenly, he might as well say what he really thought and felt.

“The recipe in the book calls for powdered moonstone, sir,” he said quietly. “You put whole moonstones on the board, but I think you forgot to copy out the word powdered.”

It sounded like everyone else in the room had swallowed all the air. Snape stared at him. Harry lowered his eyes a little, but only because he sometimes got an odd piercing sensation when he met Snape’s gaze, and not because he was afraid or wanted to miss what was going to happen next.

“Detention, Mr. Potter,” Snape whispered.

“For what? Telling the truth?”

“Detention. Every night this week.”

“Is the recipe in the book wrong?”

Snape turned and swept away from Harry’s table. Harry sneaked a quick look at the board, and then back at his Potions book. Yes. He hadn’t made a mistake. The recipe in the book did say powdered moonstone.

He looked back up at the board, in time to see Snape’s wand retracting into his sleeve. The notes on the board now had the word “powdered” where the word “whole” had been.

Harry felt his face crease in a small, hard smile.

*

“I just can’t believe that the Potions master of Hogwarts would have made a mistake like that.”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he did it so that he could catch someone out. It doesn’t have to have been me. You know that he dislikes a lot of people in our class because we have the gall to be Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws instead of Slytherins.”

Theo closed his eyes and let his head sag back against the couch behind him. They’d been brewing a variant of the Calming Draught, not a volatile potion. If it exploded, the worst it would do was make someone feel sleepy if it landed on them, or maybe blister their skin a bit.

But the thought that Snape might have put the wrong ingredients on the board deliberately to catch someone out…

He might do it with a volatile potion. He hates Harry that much.

Theo swallowed. He hadn’t respected Professor Snape, exactly, not after his stupid attacks on Harry last year. But he had thought that the man was competent enough and cared enough about safety in his classroom not to put the wrong instructions on the board.

Shit. I’m not safe in Potions. I’ll never feel safe again.

“Theo.”

Theo turned towards Harry. He didn’t feel safe, but he desperately wanted to. And from the way Harry was looking at him, holding his eyes steadily, he was about to suggest something they could do.

“I don’t know if Professor Flitwick would act on my word alone,” Harry continued. “You know that Snape’s got away with favoring the Slytherins and taking random points from Gryffindor years. But he might act on yours. And you have a concerned parent.”

Theo suddenly couldn’t breathe. “I—you think I should bring Father into this?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“He—he wouldn’t like it that I came whinging to him instead of being able to stand up to Snape on my own. And.” Theo swallowed. “Harry, there are rumors that Professor Snape was a Death Eater. They might know each other. Father might be reluctant to act against an old comrade for me.”

“Would he?”

“Harry, you don’t know him.”

“Yeah, I realize that. But this is his heir we’re talking about, Theo. You’ve told me over and over again how important children are to purebloods. And that your father won’t have more of them because he swore not to marry again after your mother died.”

It was one of the memories most seared into Theo’s mind, kneeling in front of Mother’s portrait with Father while Father swore that his hand would fall off and he would sacrifice his magic before touching another woman with the intention of making a child. But he hadn’t thought he’d conveyed anything of that seriousness when he hinted at the truth to Harry.

Harry was standing with his hands on his hips now, and he looked as if he would storm Nott Manor himself and drag Father out of it if he had to.

“Harry…”

“Do you think he’s more inclined to stick up for an old ‘friend’ than his son? Because if so, then we’ll go straight to Professor Flitwick and make as much of a fuss as possible.”

Theo shook his head slowly. He didn’t really think that, he had to admit to himself. He had just never assumed that the matter would come up, because he hadn’t expected to encounter anything at the school worth owling Father over.

At least, past the ordinary owls Father demands with reports on my marks and the like.

“Think about it,” Harry went on. “If they were Death Eaters together, but Snape got released and is trusted to teach at Hogwarts, around children, probably most people don’t know everything he did.”

“So?”

“So maybe your dad has blackmail on him.”

After a long moment, Theo began to smile. Harry smiled back at him and leaned forwards so that he could cover Theo’s hand with his.

“I promise that you’ll be safe,” Harry whispered. “I don’t think it’s right or fair that anyone should be endangered in Potions, but especially not you, and not because of Snape’s stupid grudge against me. We’ll make this right, Theo. I promise.”

Theo’s hand closed, crushingly tight, on Harry’s. Harry only leaned a little closer.

Theo didn’t know what he had done right in some past life—because it couldn’t have been anything in this one—to be blessed with Harry Potter as a friend, but he would do anything he could not to fuck that blessing up.

*

Professor Flitwick listened to them describe what Snape had done with a little frown on his face. Harry was waiting for this not to be enough. After all, it couldn’t have been if Snape had got away with taking unfair numbers of points from other Ravenclaw students, which he had.

Sure enough, when they reached the end of the description of what had happened, Professor Flitwick sighed and sat down on the high, cushioned chair behind his desk. “You say that you were brewing a Calming Draught?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In other words, not a dangerous potion to have explode.”

“So it doesn’t matter, then?” Harry asked. “You would only be concerned if someone got injured or died, sir? But I thought prevention was important.”

Theo coughed beside Harry, probably holding back laughter. That was something Professor Flitwick had told them himself, when describing graphically how some Charms could go wrong and how they should try to prevent accidents as much as possible, instead of doing risky things because the charm seemed safe.

Professor Flitwick beamed, which wasn’t something Harry had expected. “So you do remember those lessons! You do Ravenclaw proud, Mr. Potter.”

“Thank you, sir. And the class?”

“I do wonder,” Flitwick said with a tilt of his head, “if it was a test. If he wanted to see who would notice the difference between the recipe on the board and the recipe in the book, and who would be quick enough to say that they didn’t match.”

“If that was the case, sir,” Theo said, taking up the argument, “then he would have had to reward Harry with points for following the recipe in the book. Not give him detention for every night of the week.”

Flitwick looked startled. “Professor Snape did that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Theo could radiate innocence when he wanted to. Harry didn’t know how he’d learned to do that, but it did come in handy.

“I shall speak with Severus.” Flitwick now looked massively uncomfortable. “But you ought to know that it might come to nothing, Mr. Potter. Professor Snape is…passionate in his hatreds, and sometimes unreasonable.”

“Why does he hate me so much, sir? I’ve never known.”

“It’s not my story to tell.” Flitwick looked far too relieved to have an excuse to say that, Harry thought a little viciously. “But I shall speak with him, yes. Passing a test correctly is no reason to give you detention.”

Harry inclined his head. They would see if anything changed. From the glimpse he got of Theo’s face, his friend didn’t think it would.

*

“Detention for every night this week, Potter.”

“Why, sir? What did I do?”

“You leaned towards the cauldron and belched as if you were inhaling, Mr. Potter. Don’t you know that you could have breathed in dangerous fumes? I am merely looking out for your safety, as your Head of House asked me to do.”

Theo’s hand tightened on the edge of the table. It was going to be easier than he had thought it ever would be to ask his father to intervene.

*

“Harry? Are you all right?”

Harry started and turned around. Theo had let Harry accompany him to the owlery stairs with the letter that he was going to send to his father, but he had insisted on going up alone. He had said that he wouldn’t send it if Harry were with him, which didn’t really make sense, but Harry was willing to respect his friend’s wishes.

“Er, yes,” Harry said, when he saw Ron’s sister standing behind him. Ginny, yes, Ginny. She had the little black book that practically flooded the air with Dark magic under her arm. Theo had been teaching Harry what to look for, and Harry had a hard time keeping his eyes away from it. “You—you know who I am?”

“Everyone knows who Harry Potter is!”

“Right,” Harry said, a little disappointed. He had thought that somebody from Ron’s family would be more sensible. But Ron had said something about Ginny having a crush on him, now that Harry thought about it. She was blushing furiously and avoiding his eyes. “I’m fine. Are you fine?”

“You’re talking to me.”

Ginny actually swayed on her feet as if she was going to faint. Harry started to reach towards her, concerned, but she uttered a squeak and took off around the corner before Harry could touch her. Now that he thought about it, she might have thought he was trying to take her book away.

They needed to get a container ready for that damn book as soon as possible. Ginny looked more pale and feverish every time Harry saw her.

“Are you all right, Harry?”

It was so like the question Ginny had asked that Harry almost turned towards the owlery stairs with his wand drawn, but of course it was only Theo waiting for him with one eyebrow arched. Harry nodded firmly. “Yeah, but I think that diary or whatever it is is eating more and more of Ginny Weasley. We need to act quickly to take it away from her.”

“All right. I did ask my father for a lead-lined casket as an excuse for sending the letter.”

“An excuse?”

“He would think less of me if I had only one motivation.”

Harry snorted and fell into step beside Theo as they headed back to the Tower. “Of course. He’s a Slytherin to the bone. You told me.”

Theo nodded but said nothing else. He was a little pale himself, his eyes unfocused and searching. Harry nudged him hard with an elbow, and Theo started and looked at him.

“What?”

“Thanks for doing this. Really, Theo, thanks.”

“It’s for you as much as for me.”

“And I can be grateful to you all the same.”

Theo’s smile, when it came, was slow and difficult, but it warmed Harry like sunshine after a storm.

*

Theo cocked his head a little when his father’s black eagle-owl, Nigel, swooped through the windows of the Great Hall with the morning post. He hadn’t really thought he would get a response so soon. With a sigh, he prepared himself to deal with Nigel’s temper, which was always terrible. Nigel really didn’t like anyone except Father.

But to his shock, Nigel flew straight past the Ravenclaw table without turning towards Theo. He was aiming at Snape, Theo saw a second later.

He—Father just did it? Without a discussion?

Theo leaned back against his chair a little as he thought about that. Harry’s hand touched his shoulder, and then Harry leaned back himself and picked up some bread and butter. There was a faint smile on his face.

Theo looked back at Snape in time to see him staring at the owl as it landed on the table. There was such a deep wrinkle on his forehead that Theo knew he must recognize the bird, but he must not have known why it was here.

I’m privileged to be here to watch this.

Snape undid the letter from Nigel’s foot, and unfolded it while picking up his teacup with the other hand. Then he went still, only the tightness of his fingers around the letter and the cup indicating his mood.

When he put down the parchment, his gaze fastened on the Ravenclaw table, and his eyes were terrible.

Harry was looking back in such a way that Theo had to suppress a chuckle. He had a feeling that Harry might have been a good fit for Gryffindor if he hadn’t valued learning slightly more.

Snape stood from the table and left in a snap of robes. At least he had the sense or the caution not to approach Harry and Theo in the middle of the Great Hall. Theo had to swallow some disappointment, though.

“Do you think he’ll stop?” Harry breathed.

“I think he’ll make an effort to show that he’s independent and doesn’t obey my father,” Theo said. “But Father’s hand isn’t light. If Snape doesn’t do what he’s told…” He shrugged and picked up his teacup.

“Yeah. We’ll see.”

*

For the first time since the first day of classes, Harry was sort of looking forward to Potions.

Snape gave him a narrow-eyed look when he stepped into the classroom, and then turned his head away and ignored him. Harry set up his cauldron with a light heart. If Snape just ignored him, that would be fine. That would be great.

As long as he kept from endangering Theo, too.

Harry watched from under his eyelashes as Snape cracked his wand at the board and the recipe appeared. He checked the book and nodded when he saw the words were the exact same as the ones on the board.

Theo got a hostile look when he started chopping ingredients beside Harry’s workstation, but Snape didn’t say a word to him.

Harry smiled. The way Snape treated them still wasn’t kind, but as long as it wasn’t actively dangerous and he wasn’t going to actually insult them, then Harry would let things play out.

And we did it ourselves, when Flitwick refused to help us and Snape refused to stop.

We’ll protect ourselves.

*

Theo had to admit that they’d delayed without much of a reason, except that Ginny Weasley was sometimes hard to find and neither of them had classes with her. Well, and they’d been handling the Snape situation and he’d been teaching Harry how to feel Dark objects, as well as the usual homework and classes and spending time with Granger and Weasley.

But they’d delayed too long, and now they stood staring at the wall where a cat hung paralyzed and large letters proclaimed the return of the Heir of Slytherin. And Malfoy, of course, proclaimed the death of all Muggleborns like an idiot.

Harry was tense with anger next to Theo. Theo was the one who put a hand on his shoulder this time, the way Harry had when Nigel carried the letter to Snape. Harry took a deep breath and nodded.

“It was you!”

Harry blinked and turned. Theo turned at the same time. A Gryffindor he didn’t know was pointing at Malfoy, who puffed up and started talking about how he didn’t know who the Heir of Slytherin was, but he would help them if he did.

Harry’s eyes met Theo’s. Theo nodded slightly.

They knew who the so-called Heir of Slytherin was. They were going to stop her.

*

“Hi, Ginny.”

Ginny immediately flushed and dropped her quill. She’d been scribbling in the little black diary as though it was an essay due for Snape in the next hour, but now she stared up at Harry with big, hero-worshipping eyes.

Harry held back a flinch. Since the first night in Ravenclaw, the hero-worship in his House had really died down, maybe because they had seen that he was just a normal child who didn’t know very much about the magical world. But Ginny looked as if he was all her heroic fantasies come to life.

This is to save her, Harry reminded himself. And far worse things will happen if those Petrifications go on and someone doesn’t intervene. He mustered a smile and sat down in the chair across from her. “Are you doing all right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Ron keeps telling me that you’re fighting with him. And the twins said something about you looking a bit peaky. Is it the Heir of Slytherin? I mean, that scares me, too.” Although talking to the Weasley twins about their little sister and having to make it clear that he had no threatening intentions towards her personally scared Harry more.

Ginny bit her lip. “Some of is it just them being overprotective older brothers,” she said, staring down at the diary. “But I was sick for a week or two a month ago.”

Harry nodded. “I always hate being sick.”

“Me, too!”

From the way she was beaming at him, she had just discovered that they were future husband and wife. Harry didn’t grimace, but it was close. He nodded again to Ginny and said, “Were you allergic to something? I thought I was allergic to some of the food when I first came here, but then I learned I just had to eat smaller portions.”

Ginny giggled with her hand over her mouth. Then she leaned closer and confessed in a whisper, “Ron can never do that.”

“I’m kind of glad that we don’t eat at the same House table.”

“I sit all the way down it so I can avoid him sometimes!”

“Who are your friends, Ginny? I don’t know many of the first-years, and I’m kind of sad about that. I do know one first-year named Luna Lovegood who’s in Ravenclaw with me. She has some interesting ideas.”

“Oh, yeah, we grew up together.”

“So you and Luna are friends?”

“I suppose, but we haven’t really spent time together since we got to Hogwarts. It’s hard when you’re Sorted into different Houses. I would say that my best friend right now is—Tom. Tom Riddle. That’s his name.”

Harry had watched Ginny carefully over the past few days, and he was pretty sure that he hadn’t noticed any of the Gryffindor first-year boys sitting with her. He made his voice light and casual. “I don’t think I know him. He’s not in Ravenclaw. Is he in Gryffindor?”

“No. No.” Ginny edged her chair a little nearer to the table. “Can you keep a secret, Harry?”

“Ravenclaws are great at keeping secrets.”

And so was Harry. He had kept the secret of how his relatives treated him for years until he came to Hogwarts and met Theo. Now he sometimes wondered why he had been so desperate to do that when the Muggles on their street and his primary school teachers already despised him, but Theo would probably say that there was no accounting for taste.

“Okay. Well.” Ginny took a deep breath. “Tom is—my friend. But he’s not human.”

“Oh, wow. Is he a goblin?”

“No!”

“A house-elf?”

“No!” Ginny was giggling now, and Harry felt a little bit of happiness to see that at least she could act more like a normal girl when she wasn’t writing in the diary. “He’s—he’s actually part of an enchanted object. He’s in here.” She reached out and dragged the diary closer to them.

Harry sometimes regretted that Theo had taught him how to sense Dark objects. Right now, it felt like he was being introduced to a pile of rotting flesh. He kept his face grave as he nodded. “Is he the person who wrote the book? I know sometimes I like books so much that the authors feel like my best friends.”

That was a lie, but bringing up Theo would be counterproductive at this point.

“No, not the author.” Ginny lowered her eyes, and for a moment, Harry wondered if the compulsion that the diary must be projecting at her to keep the secret would win. But maybe it had lost to Ginny’s crush on him, because Ginny abruptly pushed the book further towards him and held out her quill. “Here. You can write to him, and he’ll answer. It’s the most brilliant thing!”

Harry took a deep breath. He had promised Theo that he wouldn’t write in the diary, or read it, or even touch it with his bare skin if he didn’t have to. But he also knew that he couldn’t just snatch it and run. He didn’t have that much of Ginny’s trust yet, and she would make a fuss about the loss of her diary.

And probably get it back, too, because if any of the professors in the school were competent beyond their own immediate subject areas, Harry hadn’t seen it yet. They would probably just nod and hand the book back to Ginny without even feeling how Dark it was.

Harry picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink, and looked down at the page Ginny had been writing on. Or he thought she’d been writing on. It was blank now. “What am I supposed to say?” he asked, a little helplessly.

“Anything you like! Tom has been trapped in the book for decades. Maybe centuries. He’s really bored, and he’ll like anything you say! But maybe you could introduce yourself first? I told him about you.”

Harry stared at her. “What?”

“I mean—I just—he didn’t know who you were, of course, because he’s been trapped in the book for so long, but he’s interested in famous wizards and witches. He said something once about wishing he could have known the Founders. And you’re the most famous person I know!”

Harry just nodded and then lowered the quill and wrote in the book, Hello. I’m Harry Potter.

The ink lingered there for a moment, and Harry actually had time to wonder if he and Ginny and Theo had somehow all been mistaken, before the glittering black letters sank out of sight and a neat, looping hand replied, Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle.

*

“Give it here, Harry, quickly.”

Theo hadn’t watched the whole interaction Harry and Weasley had had in the library, which meant that he hadn’t been there when Harry had made the monumentally stupid choice of writing in the book. But Harry had talked to Weasley enough to get the book away, which was all that mattered.

Now Theo held out the lead-lined casket that his father had sent him and rattled it a little impatiently. Harry moved slowly as he took the diary out of his robe pocket and lowered it towards the casket.

“Theo, it’s—there’s someone trapped in it—do we have the right to imprison him more than he’s already been imprisoned—”

“Harry. Listen to me.”

Harry blinked and looked up at him. His eyes were wide and desperate, and Theo leaned forwards and pressed down on his wrist. Harry drew a shuddering breath and blinked for a moment.

“I need you to put the book in the casket,” Theo said, as gently as he could. He ignored the way that Dark ripples now seemed to travel through the air from the direction of Harry’s hands. He had worried about this, but the point was that he could spare Harry from some of the effects.

And if he had privately hoped to see a test of Harry’s trust in him that Harry would pass…

He would think that only to himself.

“Why?”

“We discussed this, Harry.”

“But it’s different, now that I’ve talked to Tom. That’s his name, Tom Riddle.”

It wasn’t a name that Theo recognized, but it was one that he promised himself to remember. And he stood there, gazing at Harry, until Harry uttered a loud, shuddering breath and leaned over to deposit the book in the casket.

Theo kept to himself the sensation of being an eagle soaring upwards, and only nodded gravely. “Thank you, Harry.”

“Theo?”

Yes, Harry’s voice was different now. Theo swung the lid of the casket shut, and Harry staggered backwards, finally sitting down hard on the couch near the fire that Corner usually occupied. But none of their roommates were here right now, meaning they were as private as they could reasonably get.

“Theo,” Harry whispered, and plastered his shaking hands over his face.

Theo slid the casket beneath his bed. It was locked with a drop of his blood, and it would take another drop of it, willingly shed, to make the bloody thing open. He wasn’t worried about one of their roommates getting into it. He draped his arm around Harry’s shoulders and held him as Harry shuddered and shook against him.

“I don’t—I wasn’t—”

“Was it a feeling like spiderwebs stretched across your mind?”

“Yes! Wait, how did you know?”

Theo smiled, and he knew it wasn’t his best smile, and he also knew, from the earnest way that Harry kept gazing at him, that his best friend wouldn’t care. “How do you think my father trained me to recognize them?” he asked softly. “I was exposed to an awful lot of them, over the years.”

Harry’s hands clamped down on Theo’s hands for a long moment, hard. Theo kept watching him, and Harry finally leaned back and nodded and shut his eyes.

“I know your dad helped us with Snape, and I’m grateful to him for that,” he whispered. “But I also really hate him for what he did to you.”

Theo swallowed, not knowing what to say. In the end, he shifted closer to Harry, who shifted closer in response. And they sat like that until they heard the footsteps on the stairs that signaled their roommates coming back.