[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A Game of Eagles, Harry/Theo, PG-13, 6/9

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Six

“I am disappointed that you lied to me, Mr. Potter.”

Dumbledore had come up to Harry and Theo as they were walking towards the library to study with Granger (and Goldstein, whom they’d decided to invite and see if he behaved himself). Harry turned around and stared at the Headmaster. Around them, other students were slowing down.

Theo normally disliked finding himself at the center of attention, although he’d had to get used to some staring, what with being Harry’s best friend. But he did have to wonder what Dumbledore thought he was doing, holding this confrontation in the middle of the public corridor.

“Sir,” Harry said calmly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never lied to you.”

“You let me believe that you were spending the holidays with your family, Harry. Instead, I learn that you’ve spent them at Nott Manor.”

Theo grimaced. He wondered if someone in Ravenclaw was a spy for Dumbledore. But it was probably more likely that someone had overheard them talking, gossiped themselves, and persuaded other people to treat the gossip as worthwhile because it was about the Boy-Who-Lived.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Harry repeated. “And I don’t see why I need to spend my holidays in any particular place, sir. I stayed at Hogwarts last year. Why should it matter so much where I stayed?”

“Do you feel safe in the home of a Death Eater?”

“You know, sir,” Harry said, staring up at Dumbledore with wide eyes that made Theo brace himself for the words that would be coming, “I walked all over Nott Manor, but somehow I missed people being sacrificed to a demon while their hearts were eaten. Mr. Nott must have hidden it really well. It was disappointing! I wanted to see it.”

A few people in the corridor either gasped or giggled. Theo resisted the urge to run a hand down his face. That was the kind of private gesture that only Harry and Father got to see, and he wouldn’t do it now.

Even though he really wanted to.

“What are you talking about, Mr. Potter?”

“I thought Death Eaters did that kind of thing. At least, it’s the only way I can make sense of people asking me if I feel safe around Theo or his dad all the time. Do you know where they hold the demon sacrifices? I’d really like to see it.”

Dumbledore looked tired and old, the first time Theo had ever seen him look like that. “Mr. Potter, you are logical and intelligent enough to know that people have reasons for their fear of Death Eaters that are not that literal.”

“And you’re logical and intelligent enough to understand that deciding the son is the same as the father, and that the father would be stupid enough to kidnap or kill me when people know where I went and Theo is my best friend, is pretty stupid. At least, I would assume so. Sir.”

Even more peopled gasped and giggled. Theo wanted to say many things, but none of them were appropriate for the ambience.

Dumbledore stood for a long moment gazing at Harry as if Harry were a puzzle that he lacked all the pieces to. Then he turned and walked away with a heavy step that made it seem as if he were carrying all the burdens of the world.

“You shouldn’t have said that, Harry.”

“He shouldn’t have said what he said.”

Theo couldn’t deny that, but he was afraid there would be consequences because of this that neither of them would ever see coming. It seemed he would have to write to Father for political advice again, and soon.

*

“How could you say that to the Headmaster, Harry? He really cares about you!”

Harry sighed. Hermione had been on the edge of the crowd in the corridor for Dumbledore’s speech, although he hadn’t seen her, and now it seemed she was intent on protecting Dumbledore’s reputation.

“You know that Mr. Nott was a Death Eater—”

“Yeah, and Dumbledore was the only one the Dark Lord ever feared, blah blah blah,” Harry interrupted her. “But he didn’t get off his arse and defeat Voldemort, did he? He sat there until Voldemort came up against me and I did it somehow. So if Dumbledore’s going to accuse me of becoming a Death Eater by visiting Nott Manor, then I’m going to accuse him of being a coward.”

Hermione stared at him for a long moment with her mouth slightly open. Harry looked back evenly. He liked Hermione, he really did, but her tendency to decide that Dumbledore just had to be right was irritating.

Goldstein snickered.

Harry glanced sideways at him. He didn’t feel like he really knew Goldstein. His obsession with Gobstones and Quidditch meant they still didn’t talk much, but he had asked about studying with Harry and Theo after the two of them had got the highest scores on the last Charms exam, and Harry hadn’t really seen a reason to object.

“Give it a rest, Granger,” Goldstein said lazily, picking up his quill and twisting it between his fingers. “If Dumbledore was really worried about Potter, he could have called him up to his office and asked him questions in private. Instead, he decided to force a public confrontation and act as though Potter is his grandson or something who’s playing with the naughty Death Eater boy. Potter didn’t have to go along with that.”

Harry was pretty sure he was the only one who noticed Theo’s shoulders relaxing. Harry leaned in and nudged him a bit with one foot under the table. Theo gave him a smile in response.

“Professor Dumbledore is the Headmaster.”

Harry shrugged. “And I haven’t ever talked to him except now, once before Christmas when he made weird remarks about my having a childhood, and once last term when he thought I should have gone with you to stop a professor who turned out to be possessed by You-Know-Who. If he has something he wants to explain to me or something he wants me to do, he’s doing a terrible job of persuasion.”

Hermione frowned down at the parchment in front of her, apparently daunted. Harry patted her on the shoulder and glanced at Goldstein. “You said you were having trouble with the Basic Banishing Charm?”

And the conversation moved on.

*

“It’s kind of strange that there haven’t been any other Petrifications, isn’t it?”

“I wish there were. I would have helped the Heir of Slytherin get rid of the Mudbloods.”

Theo drew his wand. He and Harry were walking behind Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson on their way to Herbology. Harry eyed his wand and then smiled.

Theo cast the Tongue-Lengthening Jinx on Malfoy with a murmur, and Malfoy wailed as his tongue grew out of his mouth and draped across the floor. Parkinson began to shriek for help and look around, probably for who had done it.

Harry and Theo were already gone halfway to the greenhouse, laughing breathlessly.

*

“A lion!”

Luna’s voice sounded small as she gave the answer to the riddle, but also happy. Harry patted her on the back and smiled a little, not particularly nicely, as the door to Ravenclaw Tower swung open and a boy standing on the other side stared at them with a round mouth.

“Why do you think you can bully her?” Harry asked the boy. He was a fourth-year, and Harry thought his name was Matthew Culler. He also thought that it didn’t matter, and that he would shame the bully in front of the common room regardless.

“She’s—look at her!”

Harry deliberately looked Luna over. She had flyaway hair at the moment, a necklace of corks around her throat, and bare feet. She looked harmless and startled, like someone had interrupted her while she was composing poetry.

“Yes? What about her?”

“She’s so—annoying!”

“Still doesn’t mean that you need to pick on a girl three years below you.”

Culler looked around as if for support, but even some of the other older Ravenclaws Harry had suspected of bullying Luna were looking at the floor and the ceiling and their textbooks as intently as if this had nothing to do with them. Culler flushed.

“Give her back her shoes,” Harry added softly. He and Theo had been studying the Summoning Charm enough that Harry thought he could probably find them unless they were locked in someone’s trunk, but he didn’t necessarily want to reveal that advantage.

“I—I don’t have them.”

“But you know who does.”

It was just a guess, but it was a good one, and Culler waved his wand and muttered the Summoning Charm a little shamefacedly. Luna’s small dragonhide shoes came drifting down the staircase that led to the fourth-year boys’ dormitory.

Harry took them from the air while maintaining eye contact with Culler. Culler spluttered, then shook his head and walked over to a game of Gobstones on the other side of the fireplace. Harry didn’t think it was his imagination that some of the people playing deliberately shifted to block Culler from sitting down.

No one wants to play with the fourth-year who got humiliated by a second-year.

Harry looked around with a bright smile, and that seemed to be a cue for conversations to start up again. Luna waved to him and skipped over to a corner, where she sat down and studied the shoes intently. Harry hoped it was just Luna being Luna and not because someone had cursed or jinxed her shoes, although he wouldn’t precisely put it past them.

Harry wandered over to the corner where Theo was watching Harry over his Potions textbook. Theo slowly shook his head. Harry smiled at him with a lot of teeth. “What?”

“You know they’ll resent you for shaming them. They may attack you.”

“And? Would you leave me to stand by myself?”

“Prat,” Theo said, and retreated behind the book.

Harry smiled, and reached for his own.

*

“Harry, wait up.”

Theo narrowed his eyes as Weasley hurried towards them, looking out of breath. It was close to the Easter holidays, and both he and Harry were set to spend them at Nott Manor. If Weasley was going to babble on about how Harry was visiting a Death Eater’s house again…

But Weasley came to a stop, looked at Theo, coughed, and then looked at Harry and said, “I asked Ginny about that diary she had, you know, the book she was writing in at the beginning of last term? She admitted that she thought you had something to do with it disappearing. So, can you tell me—did you take it?”

Theo tensed. He had no doubt the diary was the kind of object powerful enough to ensnare someone who had just seen it and not written in it.

At least, if they couldn’t feel how foul it was.

“What if I did?”

“Then just—I want to say thank you.” Weasley’s mouth was firm, and he stood up straight, not casting Theo a bunch of dark glances for the first time ever in his presence. “Ginny was so pale and acting so strange, and now she’s laughing with her friends and eating regular meals and talking about trying out for the Quidditch team next year. So. Thank you.”

Harry hesitated. Theo had the impression that he didn’t know what to do both because people didn’t thank him and because he’d never imagined being thanked for this.

But finally he just nodded and said, “You’re welcome.”

Weasley smiled at Harry and hurried off to whatever class the Gryffindors had next with what looked like no small relief. Harry watched him go, then cocked his head at Theo.

“Do you think she told him it was a Dark object?”

“I don’t think she ever knew herself. Although you would assume that anyone would know that something with such a powerful enchantment on it had to be Dark…”

“Aren’t you the one who wants people to stop making assumptions?”

They bickered comfortably as they went to the library to return the books they’d borrowed, and something in Theo that had been waiting for Ginny Weasley to confess and cause trouble for them relaxed.

*

“Why is Anthony Goldstein writing to you?”

“We decided he was all right, remember?”

“But why to you and not to me?”

“Maybe because you made up that story about your father’s plants strangling owls, Theo. Remember that one?”

Harry enjoyed Theo’s scowl through the rest of breakfast. He thought that Mr. Nott might be amused, too, but it was difficult to tell and Harry didn’t want to presume.

*

“Come in, Mr. Nott. May I ask if you know why you are here?”

Theo let the door of the Headmaster’s office fall slowly shut behind him. He could disguise some of his nervousness in gaping at the office’s contents, at least. The silver whirligigs and the phoenix on its perch were something.

He could also see four books on the shelves he would have immediately liked to borrow, not that he thought Dumbledore would ever let him.

“Please come in and sit down, Mr. Nott.”

Theo did, although he wondered why Dumbledore had given up on waiting for an answer to his question. Not enough time had passed for him to decide Theo wasn’t going to reply. Perhaps he didn’t care about the answer.

Yes, that would fit him.

Theo sat with his hands folded in his lap and stared at the floor. Dumbledore made some loud cheery noises about how busy he was, and Theo bit his tongue to avoid asking why he had the time to interview random Ravenclaws, in that case.

“Ah, well. I will come to the point, Mr. Nott.”

Thank Merlin.

“I do not like the influence that your father has on Mr. Potter. I believe you know enough of your father’s history and Mr. Potter’s to realize why it would be a bad thing to continue encouraging them to associate. May I count on your assistance in detaching them? It would mean the Headmaster’s goodwill.”

He might actually be trying to bribe me? Would that count?

“And I am sure that you would like to have your father all to yourself for the holidays, at least sometimes,” Dumbledore added. His eyes were probably twinkling, not that Theo intended to look up and confirm that. “And Harry would continue to know the love and comfort of his family.”

Theo looked up, then, although not far enough to meet Dumbledore’s eyes. “He always knows when he’s being lied to” screamed Legilimens to him, and Theo didn’t really know any Occlumency except a few breathing exercises Father had taught him, because Father didn’t believe one should always rely on Calming Draughts in case one was far away from potions.

“Do you know much about Harry’s childhood, sir?”

“I know that he grew up with his family, Mr. Nott.”

“Did you know how they treated him?”

There was a small pause, while the sound of the phoenix shifting on its perch and the ticking of what might have been a clock or another strange Dumbledore metallic object filled the room. Then Dumbledore sighed raggedly.

“What I know is that he is safe there, Mr. Nott.”

“So you do know how they treated him?”

Dumbledore sighed and pulled off his glasses to rub his eyes. Theo was still, watching him. There was something off here, but he looked down anyway when the Headmaster glanced at him. He wasn’t going to meet those eyes.

“Sometimes someone’s safety matters more than their happiness, Mr. Nott.”

“All right, sir. And now Harry’s chosen another way.”

“You do know that your father would kill him?”

“You do know that his family might have?”

“Muggles don’t kill wizards, Mr. Nott. I believe it is rather the other way around.”

Theo felt something in him move away and backwards from the conversation. This was a man who believed such different things that no way of engaging with him would help, Theo decided. He just looked down at his hands in his lap again.

“Mr. Nott?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you care about Harry’s safety?”

“More than you do, sir.”

A long, long pause. Theo might have trembled at his own daring, but he was past that now. He was in a quiet, cold realm, where he didn’t think that he feared anyone. He would attack anyone save his father or Harry who approached.

He hadn’t been there before. He thought he liked it.

“And you won’t persuade him to stop visiting your father’s house.”

“Just like you won’t remove him from the home of people who hate him and call him a freak all the time and made him sleep in a cupboard and swung frying pans at his head. No, sir.”

Theo spoke the words with calm deliberation. Harry might be angry at him for releasing that kind of information, but he would understand the need for it if Theo explained. And Theo was gambling that Dumbledore wouldn’t speak those actual words in a conversation with Harry.

He would be too ashamed. I suppose shame and guilt are good for some things.

“That is not the same thing as death or torture, Mr. Nott.”

Theo nodded remotely and stood up. The cold realm melted around him a little bit, but some of it was still there. He thought he might be interested in exploring it with Father’s help. “Then I suppose we’re done, sir.”

“I thought you Harry’s friend.”

“And I thought you would pretend to care about him.”

Another pause, but by now, Theo was walking out of the office. The last thing he heard before the door swung shut behind him was a long trill from the phoenix. It sounded surprised.

I suppose it’s something, to surprise an immortal creature.

*

“I have no choice, Mr. Potter.”

Harry said nothing. He just kept quiet as he stood beside Dumbledore and watched him knock gently on the Dursleys’ front door. He was seething with fury inside, but Theo had told him about Dumbledore’s Legilimency, and he didn’t want to look up at the man or just start yelling. It wouldn’t gain him anything.

Besides. He had done one more thing that Dumbledore didn’t know about, that even Theo didn’t know about. If no one knew about it, then Harry was the only one who could betray it, and he wasn’t fool enough to look into Dumbledore’s eyes.

Aunt Petunia opened the door. Her sneer was locked firmly in place, and she shook her head even before the door was fully open. “No. He said that he wasn’t coming back. He renounced it. And you said that was what he shouldn’t do.”

“What are you talking about, Petunia?”

“I sent them a letter, sir,” Harry said, and kept his voice polite and calm. He smiled straight at Aunt Petunia as Dumbledore swung around to stare at him. “I told them that I didn’t want to live with them if they didn’t want me to, but I didn’t know whether I could stop. And she was the one who told me that I just needed to say it wasn’t my home. That you sent her a letter last year about that.”

It had been the strangest thing in Harry’s world up until that point, stranger than magic, that Aunt Petunia had been willing to write a letter for Hedwig to carry back, explaining about how he could get free of the Dursleys and what Dumbledore had told them when they’d complained about Harry returning from Hogwarts after his first year. It spoke to how much she wanted to get rid of him.

Part of Harry still hurt when he thought about that. But he buried it and only spread his hands in fake surprise as Dumbledore made a sound of disgust.

“If Harry stays where his mother’s blood and love resides—”

“There’s no love,” Harry said. “I don’t know if there ever was, but they killed it over the years if there was.”

“There was none,” Aunt Petunia whispered. She was staring at him with the purest look of loathing that Harry had ever seen. “I hated my sister. She wanted to play at being perfect, but she was like all the rest of you freaks at the end, pitying me for being born without magic. No, I’m not going to let you ruin Dudders’s life that way, by drawing war down onto us and making him jealous of your magic. Never again, do you hear me?”

Her voice was steadily rising, and Harry could hear some of the doors opening up and down the street. He trusted that Dumbledore would cast the necessary Memory Charms if he had to—which had turned out to be what that fool Lockhart was using—and just stood and watched his aunt. The hatred burning in her eyes.

Theo had described the cold place his mind had flown away to when he was in the Headmaster’s office, and Harry had been jealous, because he’d thought he would never be able to do that. But he thought now that maybe he could, his eyes locked on Aunt Petunia’s twisted face.

Remember this. Not all Muggles are bad. But not all are as good as the Headmaster thinks, either.

“Where there is family, there must be love,” Dumbledore whispered.

Harry glanced at him and tilted his head thoughtfully. He suddenly thought he understood Dumbledore, or part of him. He had known a family in the past that didn’t have love, and it had been the worst thing in the world to him. Or maybe it had been his own family.

“There’s none here,” Petunia snapped, and slammed the door.

Dumbledore stood on the step, staring down at Harry. Harry looked at him and then across the street, where the neighbors were murmuring and peering and already gathering in little clumps. He smiled. He didn’t think it would be his worst memory of Privet Drive, if he left it with the Dursleys’ reputation stained.

“Where am I going to put you, Harry?”

Dumbledore’s voice was so weak a whisper that Harry could hardly hear it. He shrugged a little. “Let me stay at Hogwarts over the summer, sir?”

“Students cannot stay at Hogwarts during the summer.”

“Let me stay with Ron’s family?” Ron had reassured Harry that he’d hinted to his mum what Harry had done for Ginny, and although Mrs. Weasley didn’t know much about it, she had sent Harry a gift for Christmas again. Harry knew he could be sure of a warm welcome if he went there, although it wouldn’t be the same as saying at Nott Manor.

“There are no wards strong enough on the Burrow.”

Harry blinked. That really had been what he thought the Headmaster would suggest, and Harry would have simply compensated by sneaking off to Nott Manor whenever he could. Or even having Mr. Nott disguise himself as a “long-lost relative” of Harry’s and show up to whisk him off after a week.

“Have me stay in Diagon Alley at the Leaky Cauldron? Or with Hermione’s parents?” Maybe that would be the solution the Headmaster chose, if he thought Harry would only be safe in the Muggle world.

“No wards.”

Harry snorted. He couldn’t help himself. “It sounds like the only wards that would be strong enough are the ones at Hogwarts, sir. Or on an old house like Nott Manor,” he couldn’t help adding, because Dumbledore was staring at him with hopeless eyes, and Harry honestly didn’t know what the man expected him to do.

“Would you—would you promise, Harry?”

“Would I promise what? I’m not agreeing to anything without knowing what I’m agreeing to.”

Dumbledore abruptly reached out and grabbed his hands. His eyes were wide and desperate. But Harry realized abruptly that he was looking too much into the eyes of someone who could probably use Legilimency on him, and promptly dropped his gaze again.

“Would you promise that you would not become like Voldemort?” whispered Dumbledore. “That was what began it, Voldemort staying with the purebloods he convinced to follow him. And Eustace Nott was one of those people. You might say whatever you want about Mr. Nott being a Death Eater only in the past and your friendship with his son, but if you become corrupted, the world is doomed.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because of the way that people depend on you. The idea of the Boy-Who-Lived—you have no idea what it meant to signal the end of the darkest times we have ever known in Britain, Harry.”

“Well, no, sir, I don’t,” Harry felt compelled to say. “Because I grew up in the Muggle world.”

Dumbledore sounded weary as he said, “It was for your own safety.”

“But it means that I don’t know what you want me to know about history, or magic, or the importance of living with my family, or—well, anything, really.”

Harry wondered for a second if Dumbledore would tell him something important. It seemed he was on the verge of it. His mouth opened a little, and his eyes intently searched Harry’s face. Harry looked back as best as he could without meeting Dumbledore’s eyes and letting him use Legilimency.

He hoped it would be enough.

But then Dumbledore sighed and stepped back from whatever moment he’d been on the verge of. “That is indeed my fault, Harry. I thought I was protecting you from those who would use you for your fame and money. It seems that was no use, as you fell into their clutches the minute you came to Hogwarts.”

Harry had to laugh. “You think Theo and his dad want to use me for my fame and money, sir? That’s really funny. Theo hasn’t even mentioned how wealthy I supposedly am in all the time we’ve been friends. Maybe it’s because the Notts have their own wealth.” Or maybe because it really doesn’t matter to him, but I think Dumbledore would have trouble accepting that.

“They are waiting until you are older. Then they will begin to manipulate you, when you are a worthy political tool.”

Harry sighed. That was probably really the problem with Dumbledore. He didn’t look at the past and see it as any indication of good intentions on Theo’s part, or his dad’s. He would just always be sure that a horrible thing was around the next corner.

Right now, though, Harry was tired, and wanted to go home to Nott Manor the way he’d thought he would, before the Headmaster whisked him away at the train station and brought him to the Dursleys’ house.

“What do you want me to promise, sir?”

“It doesn’t really matter. If you’re unable to see that the Notts are going to use you and are merely waiting for the right moment—”

“Or maybe you’re wrong, the way you were about the Dursleys,” Harry snapped, unable to listen to this any longer. “You thought I should stay with family. You thought family had to love each other. You thought Aunt Petunia didn’t hate my mum. You were wrong. Maybe you’re wrong this time, too.”

Dumbledore blinked thoughtfully. Then he said, “But If you persuaded me otherwise and I were right in my initial suspicions, the cost would be too grave.”

“You’d have to fight Voldemort, then, the way that you fought Grindelwald,” Harry said. Dumbledore looked at him sharply, but Harry was plowing ahead. He was so tired of this. “You defeated one Dark Lord, sir. You can defeat another. You can’t seriously think a twelve-year-old who was raised in the Muggle world is any match for Voldemort. And you didn’t think the consequences were too grave when it was me being forced to sleep in a cupboard or beaten up by my cousin, did you? Even though that seems like it would have made me hate Muggles and turn into Voldemort faster than anything the Notts could do.”

Dumbledore caught his breath, staring at Harry. Harry had no idea what he was seeing. Voldemort again? Someone who could have been a Gryffindor?

“You—Mr. Nott wasn’t lying, then.’

“No. Of course he wasn’t. Because he’s my best friend.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes in anguish. “And what would happen if Lucius Malfoy or another Death Eater came to visit the Notts?” he whispered, although he sounded as if he were fighting with himself. “What is to prevent Eustace from simply handing you over to Malfoy and their killing you?”

“His swearing an oath.”

“What?”

Harry sighed and folded his arms. He would have to speak carefully, to make sure that Dumbledore couldn’t sense the lie hovering on his tongue.

So it was good that he’d got lots of practice at this with things like speaking the literal truth to Dumbledore and Ron and other people.

“If someone swore an oath not to hurt me,” Harry said carefully, “wouldn’t you trust him? Someone who swore an oath to protect me because he was afraid of disappointing his only child? Someone who’s already sworn an oath to never get married or never have another child because he misses his wife so much?”

“Mr. Nott swore this oath?”

“Yes,” Harry said with perfect truth, because Mr. Nott had sworn the oath to never have a child again.

“I—my boy, if I’d known this…it would have made a difference. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you seemed to think a second-year Ravenclaw was evil. I didn’t know it would convince you.”

Dumbledore looked off to the side. “You shame me, my boy,” he whispered. “You have grown into a nobility I had no right to expect, now that I know what your childhood was like.”

Harry could have said something sarcastic and cutting then, but he didn’t judge that it was the right time. He stood still instead, and Dumbledore nodded and sighed.

“I can trust you behind wards and oaths,” he said. “In a way that I clearly cannot trust you behind wards alone.” He gave the Dursleys’ house a long look.

“Yes, sir, you can.”

“And you will resist such temptations as do present themselves?”

“Except studying, sir, of course.”

After a long, silent moment, Dumbledore smiled at him. “I did hear that you had signed up for both Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, my boy. An ambitious and challenging set of classes, but you are a Ravenclaw.”

Harry smiled slowly back. It felt like Dumbledore acknowledging something, maybe finally dropping the idea that he’d had (and who knew where he’d got it?) that Harry should be different. “Yes, sir, I am.”

All the way to the Apparition point that they’d used to arrive in Little Whinging, Dumbledore chatted lightly about his own adventures in learning Arithmancy and Ancient Runes in his youth. Harry listened politely, never looking Dumbledore in the eye, and wondered if Mr. Nott would be quick enough to swear the oath protecting him if Dumbledore demanded he do so.

He spoke the welcoming words. He essentially already has.

Harry smiled to himself.

*

“And you think he really will let you stay here again? That he won’t check in on you from time to time?”

“He never did at Privet Drive.”

“Point. I—Harry—”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“So am I, Theo.”