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Thank you for all the reviews! This is the end of the current story arc. I do not have time to write 90,000 words of this right now, which is what it would probably take to get to the end of the Hogwarts years. So I will pick this up in a sequel in the future, and hope you enjoyed the current story arc.
Part Nine
“One half-Kneazle kitten, delivered as promised,” Sirius said, holding out the squirming, hissing cat to Ron. He winked at Harry hugely over Ron’s head.
“Is something wrong with your face, Sirius?” Harry asked innocently.
By the time Ron glanced up, Sirius had smoothed out his expression again, except for a raised eyebrow. Harry turned back to Ron with a grin and found him holding up the kitten with an adoring look. He really was all black except for a few debs of white, and big enough that Harry might have thought he was older. Hermione’s half-Kneazle was pretty big, too, though.
“This is really great, Mr. Black,” Ron blurted. “Th-thank you for bringing him.”
Harry squinted at Ron, until he realized that Ron was still a little uneasy around someone who had spent time in Azkaban. Harry concealed his snort and nodded at Sirius. “Yeah, Sirius, thank you. Do you know what you’re going to name him, Ron?”
“Nightstrike! It sounds brilliant.”
Harry blinked. He would have expected Ron to take some more time, but… “Sure,” he said. “Nightstrike he is.”
“I should take him up to the castle.” Ron was stroking Nightstrike’s fur with an intent look, and the kitten sank his claws into Ron’s arm and then settled down and began to purr loudly. “You don’t mind, do you, Harry? If I abandon you part of the way into the Hogsmeade weekend?”
Harry laughed. “No, not at all. It’ll give me some time to spend with Sirius, and then Theo’s going to come out later. He prefers to sleep in until eleven when he has the chance.”
“Still don’t know what you see in that creepy Nott,” Ron muttered, but it was half-hearted. He grabbed Harry in a quick hug and then ran out of the small alley where they’d met between shops, clutching Nightstrike close.
“Ready to walk the street with your infamous godfather?”
“Sure. Do you enjoy it when they’re nervous around you?”
Sirius sighed. “Not really.” He ruffled Harry’s hair, and they stepped out of the alley. They got a few glances and gasps, but not as many as Harry had expected. Most of the people swarming the village were Hogwarts students far more intent on sweets or dates than recognizing someone who had been in Azkaban.
“I wish someone had paid attention years ago,” Sirius continued in a low, choked voice. “That’s what I really wish. That I’d never gone to prison at all, or I could have been out earlier and raising you.”
Harry patted Sirius’s back and then steered him towards Tome and Scrolls. A bookshop was the best remedy for everything, he had decided two years ago. Some of it was probably being influenced by his Ravenclaw Housemates, but a lot of it was just being able to choose what he did when he wasn’t around the Dursleys.
“This is your idea of a good time?” Sirius had halted in the door of the shop and was staring around.
Harry considered Sirius carefully. He didn’t sound upset, just disbelieving.
“Come on, let’s buy some of the ridiculous books they publish about my so-called adventures and then go make fun of them over butterbeer.”
It seemed that he knew how to distract his godfather with books. Sirius’s face cracked open in a wide grin that made Harry have a sudden glimpse of the handsome man he had been in the pre-Azkaban pictures he’d found to show Harry. “You do know how to show a bloke a good time.”
Harry smiled back, and led the way over to the stupid books about Harry Potter’s Adventures, which were barely saved by the label on the shelves that identified them as Children’s Fiction.
*
“You’re going to confront Lupin? Like a Gryffindor?”
“I want to know why he never tried to contact me after Sirius went to prison. He believed Sirius was guilty, sure, but I was innocent. Why didn’t he come and try to find me? And Sirius just growls and doesn’t say anything when I mention him. Anything we want to discover, we’ll have to do on our own.”
Theo had sighed loudly when Harry had explained his reasoning, but he also stood beside his best friend as Harry knocked on the Defense professor’s office door. Because what kind of best friend would he be otherwise?
Lupin opened the door with a pleasant expression that altered dramatically to a sickly one when he saw them. Then again, he looked kind of sickly at all times. His hair was greyer than it should have been for someone Black’s age, and his skin sallow with an underlying tone of yellow.
“Mr. Nott. Harry.” His eyes moved to Harry and lingered, and Theo suppressed a snort. If Lupin really wanted to hide that he had known Black and Harry’s parents, he shouldn’t address Harry by his first name all the time. “Do you need help with something?”
“We need to talk to you, Professor. Can we come in, please?”
Harry looked politely unstoppable, and that might have been the reason Lupin opened the door. Theo glanced around the office with his own version of polite interest. There were books on shelves, but not as many as Theo would have had if he were a professor. More of the space was taken up by a grindylow in a tank and what seemed to be dueling targets leaning against the wall.
Can’t he just conjure and Vanish his own? So far, everything pointed to Lupin being a somewhat competent teacher, but not a powerful wizard.
And that, of course, is absolutely who should be teaching something as vital as Defense, Theo thought in annoyance.
“I’m here because of Sirius Black,” Harry announced, and Lupin froze in the middle of walking towards a tea service in the corner. “He says that you were friends with him and my parents, but you haven’t written or come by since he was pardoned. And you never visited me when I was a kid, either, and living with my mum’s horrible Muggle family. Why not?”
Lupin turned around. His eyes were stricken and sad. Theo kept in a snort with difficulty. He thought Lupin probably felt those emotions more sincerely than Dumbledore would have, but the conversation would probably be just as hard for him.
Well, then he should have come to visit Harry and Black.
“I never meant to,” Lupin whispered. “I always meant to go to Azkaban and confront Sirius about why he did it. I always meant to check up on you and see that you really were being raised as well as Albus thought you were. But it never happened.”
“You mean you never did it?”
“It never happened.”
From Lupin’s averted gaze, Theo thought he might know what that meant, although Harry’s tightening mouth said he didn’t. Lupin was one of those people who liked to let the world wash past him and make no effort to keep up with it. If he went on like that, terrible things would happen, but they wouldn’t be his fault.
“Well, now Sirius is out of prison, and I know about the connection you had to him and my parents, and you might as well talk to me,” Harry said sharply. Theo couldn’t remember seeing him lose his temper like this with Black or Dumbledore. “Now you know that you can resume those relationships you should have done.”
“I—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“There are things going on that you don’t understand!” Lupin spun towards them with speed that made Harry jump, although not Theo. He was too interested in studying Lupin, in seeing those things that Lupin probably wouldn’t have wanted him to notice. “I can’t possibly—there’s no way—”
He broke off, panting.
“You could, but you don’t want to.” Harry stood still, but he was hiding hurt. Theo could see it in the curl of his mouth, as well as feeling it in the tightness of his back when Theo touched him gently. “Fine. I suppose I should have known that when you didn’t approach me during the first two months of school. All right. I’ll leave you alone, Professor.”
Harry turned around. Lupin’s mouth moved helplessly, and he reached out, but he didn’t make a sound to call Harry back.
Theo sighed and did it for him.
“He doesn’t want to be close to you because he’s a werewolf,” Theo said, and ignored the way that Lupin gaped as if he would howl. “It all fits. The pallor and the way that he gets sick during certain periods of the month and the scars and the prematurely grey hair and the speed he just used to spin around. He thinks he’ll corrupt you, probably. Or disappoint you, that’s more likely. I don’t think he can really be afraid of infection, or he wouldn’t be working in a school.”
Lupin’s body shook as if Theo’s words had been so many curses hitting him. “You need to go,” he whispered, but so softly that Theo felt free to ignore the words, and Harry, who had turned back around and was staring at Lupin, might not have heard them.
“You thought I would care if you were a werewolf? If I had got to know a friend of my parents and you’d rescued me from that awful prison?”
“You—you weren’t in Azkaban.”
“Might as well have been,” Theo drawled, because Lupin wasn’t apologizing in the way he should have been, and he didn’t think Harry needed to bear all the burdens of that shit. “Do you know that his relatives made him sleep in a cupboard and do all the chores and never told him about magic? Did you know that?”
Lupin clapped his hands over his ears. Harry folded his arms. “I know very well that you can still hear us, and we don’t even need to speak very loud.”
“I could have done something wrong!” Lupin shouted, and there really was a distinct howl in the back of his voice that made Harry jump. Theo shifted closer to him, but Harry didn’t seem able to take his eyes from Lupin. “I could have lost control and injured someone! I could have done something that would get the Obliviators called out! I could have infected someone! I’ve nearly lost control more than once. I can only be here now that Wolfsbane’s been invented. And I could have—I could have—” He broke off and wrapped his arms around his head.
He’s so afraid of doing something wrong, he doesn’t do anything, Theo thought.
“I could have said the wrong thing to Sirius if I’d gone to see him,” Lupin whispered. “Or I could say something now and taint all the memories of our friendship. I don’t know what to say.”
“Sirius is still loyal to you,” Harry said flatly. “He still keeps your secrets. He didn’t say anything to me about your being a werewolf.” He took a deep breath, eyes half-closed, and shook his head. “And your friendship is already tainted by the memories of what Pettigrew did and that Sirius was imprisoned unjustly, I would have thought.”
“You don’t understand. We were closer than brothers.”
“I wouldn’t have any idea what a friendship of that magnitude is like, of course.”
Lupin glanced up. “No, you wouldn’t.”
Theo said nothing, because Harry would say it for him, but there was an odd quickness to his pulse as he thought, I think we’re closer than brothers, but I don’t want Harry to be just a brother.
It was an insight he had to put aside, because Harry made a noise of disgust. “If you ever get over staring into your own navel and obsessing about your evilness, then maybe we would welcome you back into our lives,” he said, and turned his back. “For right now, I’m going to spend my time with people who want to spend it with me.”
“Harry,” Lupin whispered.
Harry stopped walking. Theo knew that even now, Lupin could speak in such a way as to make Harry turn around. He was ridiculously forgiving towards everyone except Pettigrew and the Dark Lord—people who had done things that had resulted in years of torment for him.
Lupin hadn’t done anything, which was the problem. But because of that, he could still regain Harry’s care and attention.
Theo wrinkled his nose. He personally thought Harry shouldn’t be that forgiving. But it was his choice.
Lupin said nothing. He had one hand stretched out, but as Theo watched, it fell to his side.
Does he really require Harry to make every single move?
Apparently he did, and this time, the silence stretched too long. Harry walked to the classroom door, and Theo followed, keeping his hand in place on Harry’s back so that he would have all the support he needed.
They walked out of Lupin’s office, and down the corridor, and around the corner, and then Harry turned and practically flung himself at Theo, shaking with anguish and beginning to make a low sound that wasn’t sobbing.
Theo held him close, only taking his hand away to draw his wand and flick a Silencing Charm up around them. Harry shouldn’t have to worry about other people intruding on his privacy.
Then they stood there, and Harry mourned what could have been, and Theo held him close until he was ready to go on.
*
“Why do you have all those law books, Hermione?”
“Malfoy is trying to get one of Hagrid’s hippogriffs executed!”
Harry blinked at her, and then at the law books, which were spread across most of their usual table in the library. “Do you think that you’ll manage to keep it safe by looking up the relevant laws?”
“There has to be something here! Something about how if you provoke a magical creature, they have a right to bite you!”
“What happened?”
Hermine told a rambling, impassioned story that made Harry glad he hadn’t taken the Care of Magical Creatures class. Harry sighed as he listened. He liked Hagrid, but he was showing the same bad judgment with introducing magical creatures to third-years that he had when he’d kept a dragon egg in a wooden house.
From across the table, Theo looked like he was about to say the same thing, which would upset Hermione further. Harry caught his eye sternly and then said to Hermione, “Do you want some help?”
“Really, Harry? You would?”
Theo was giving him a disgruntled look, but Harry ignored that. He nodded. “A hippogriff doesn’t deserve to suffer because Malfoy’s a prick.”
“Harry Potter! Your language!”
But she looked happier now, and Theo not too upset, so Harry pushed aside his books and went to work with a will. More to make Hermione and Hagrid happy and get one over on Malfoy than because he cared about the hippogriff specifically, but what did that matter, when he could achieve so much?
*
“Ready?”
Harry gave Theo a hard smile as he stepped back from the array that was laid out on the floor. It was the one of his smiles that Theo liked the best, the one that meant Harry was determined to tackle the obstacle in front of him and find a way past it.
“Ready.”
Theo took a deep breath and stared down for a moment at the diagram carved into the floor in front of them. It showed a nine-square board, with an equation in each space. Surrounding the board was a Runic sentence, the runes flowing into each other, connected and almost dripping down in reach the board.
But not quite. It wouldn’t be a safe experiment the first time to have the equations and the runes actually touching.
Not the first time. Theo did look forward to other times.
“Then let’s begin.”
Theo took out a parchment and quill and began to write down the equations and the answers to them as fast as he could. Meanwhile, Harry concentrated on the runes, and someone seeing him from a distance might have thought he was relaxed. His breathing was slow and his hands hanging down at his sides.
But in reality, he was concentrating intently on the runes, willing them to fill with his magic.
Theo saw the first sign that they were succeeding when the Sowilo rune closest to the upper right-hand square begin to shine with subdued sunlight. He continued writing down his equations and answers, and saw the same subtle glow creep into the parchment.
He avoided cheering, mostly because it would distract Harry.
He finished the last equation and tossed the parchment into the air. If they had done this correctly, then it would grow—
It did. It grew to the exact size of the array carved into the floor, and then fluttered forwards and draped itself across the board. The equations lit with a dusky blue light that seemed to sparkle with white like stars, and caught up the light from the runes encircling them. Theo held his breath and watched as number after number and rune after rune took fire.
There was only the lower left-hand square still dark when Harry abruptly collapsed.
Theo didn’t even waste time calling out Harry’s name. He leaped straight over the array and the sentence, landing next to Harry, and raised his wand and called the strongest shield Father had taught them that summer.
As it was, he was barely in time to protect them from the explosion.
Splinters and shards of stone rained against the shield, and Theo heard something ping off the far wall. He winced as what sounded like part of that far wall of this unused dungeon classroom collapsed, but he continued to hold the shield steady.
Harry stirred a few minutes later. He looked up at the shield, blinked blearily around at the dust and stone fragments on the floor, and sighed. “I lost control of my magic on the last rune, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Theo said. “You know, I think we could ask Babbling and Vector for help with the combination of Arithmancy and Runes we’re trying to do. I think they would see the practical applications and even be excited to help us.”
“But you don’t believe that they would let us practice with the actual arrays yet.”
“Well, no. Probably not for years.”
Harry nodded and stood up. “Then we’re going to do everything we can on our own, until we’re forced to break down and go to them.”
Theo sighed, but nodded. He had been pretty sure it would come to that, and he hadn’t wanted it to.
But he would be loyal to Harry no matter what happened. And he believed they had the tools and self-discipline necessary to handle even dangerous magic like this. It would just take more practice than he’d originally reckoned on.
*
“Look, Harry, I got you a godfather for a gift!”
Harry laughed as Sirius stuffed a bow into his hair and rolled about under the Christmas tree. He seemed to have adapted well to staying in Nott Manor most of the time while Harry and Theo were at Hogwarts, but he had moved into his own house a few weeks ago. It was the house where he had grown up, and he had wrinkled his nose when Harry had asked him about it and said that he would take Harry one of these years when it was clean.
Now, though, they were all together, sitting around the tree with the scattered wrapping of gifts around them, and their stomachs full of warm chocolate.
“Why do I need a godfather for a gift when I already have one?”
“You can never have too many godfathers!”
“But I already have the best one!”
Sirius stared at Harry with his mouth open for a moment. Harry started to ask what was wrong, and Sirius suddenly turned into a giant black dog and sprang onto Harry with a woof, bowling him over and starting to lick his face.
“Sirius, gross—ew!” Sirius nearly got his tongue into Harry’s mouth while he was talking.
Harry thought he might have to reach for his wand and cast a Stinging Hex to get Sirius off him, but then Sirius yelped and sprang free, and Harry saw that Theo had got there first. Sirius was growling at Theo, who just tucked his wand away and said, “If you don’t want to be treated like an unruly dog, stop acting like one.”
“Dinner is served, gentlemen.”
Eustace was standing near the doorway of the sitting room, eyeing Sirius and pointedly not saying anything. He shook his head and focused on Harry and Theo when they turned towards him. “Although I believe there is one more gift for Harry.”
Harry swallowed, his heart pounding oddly. He half-wondered if Remus Lupin had come to visit, and what his own reaction would be if that was the case. He wasn’t sure, any more than he was sure what Sirius’s would be.
“Under the tree.”
Harry turned around and squinted. Now that he was looking, he realized that, yes, there was a huge package shoved back into the shadows around the base of the tree.
“Happy Christmas, Harry!”
Of course Sirius had got it for him. Harry had to admit that it was nice to be spoiled sometimes, just as it was nice to be able to depend on Eustace never to do that. He reached in under the tree’s branches and pulled the package out.
He blinked when he saw it in the light. There was absolutely no doubt that it was a broom now that he could see it.
“Sirius—”
“Nope!”
“What?”
“You’re not going to say that it’s too expensive or I shouldn’t have got it for you! Nope!”
“I was actually going to say that I don’t fly all too often,” Harry muttered, but he tore open the paper, and then gasped as it fluttered to the floor.
“Is that a Firebolt?” Theo demanded from his right shoulder.
“It is!” Sirius sang.
“Of all the irresponsible gifts,” Eustace began.
Harry didn’t listen. He caressed the broom gently, the handle gleaming with beeswax polish under his touch, and then looked up at his grinning godfather, who had told him stories of his dad being a Chaser again and again.
“Thank you,” Harry whispered.
“You’re welcome! You should try out for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team next year! Chaser! Or maybe Seeker.” Sirius squinted at Harry. “With as little as you are, you’ll never make a Beater.”
Eustace said something displeased about that, probably because Sirius was treating the evidence of Harry’s abuse at the Dursleys lightly. Sirius made a pert answer, and Harry ducked his head and smiled into his robe.
Theo’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. Harry looked up at him, ready to reassure Theo that of course he could have a turn at flying on the Firebolt, but his tongue dried up when he saw the light in Theo’s eyes.
Theo wasn’t even thinking of being jealous because Harry had a Firebolt and he didn’t, even though Theo was the one who had the most practice and interest in flying between them. He was just smiling because he was glad Harry had a broom like this.
“Happy Christmas, Harry,” he whispered.
Harry felt a strange, warm squirming in his stomach. He wasn’t sure what he could do with it yet, or if he wanted to do anything at all.
So he just smiled back and whispered, “Happy Christmas, Theo.”
Sirius and Eustace bickered in the background, and lights shone around them, and Theo smiled.
*
“You have been experimenting on your own, gentlemen?”
Professor Vector’s voice was calm and displeased. Theo had the urge to look at the floor, which was silly, because he’d never done that with shame in his life. Father had other means of getting Theo to feel repentant when he was displeased.
So he squared his shoulders and held his head up and said, “Yes, Professor.”
“That was irresponsible.” Vector, as was her way, didn’t say anything after that, but Theo flushed and felt as if the stone chips he had prevented from hitting him and Harry several times had cut into him after all. He still held his head up, though, while Vector bent over the parchment Theo had covered with equations. “Interesting, but irresponsible,” she added. “Do you know what this array might have done when combined with Runic sentences?”
“Did do, Septima.” Professor Babbling had looked up from the parchment that Harry had given her on the other side of her classroom, and she was shaking her head. “We’re lucky that they achieved nothing more than a few minor explosions.’
“Why did you go ahead and decide to experiment in advance of the class?”
Theo hesitated. He knew what he wanted to say—it was his own relentless academic curiosity that had driven them to this—but he couldn’t imagine that would go over well with the two professors, who had emphasized safety again and again, and ignoring curiosity if necessary.
“It was partially my fault, Professors.”
Harry spoke the words with his chin lifted. He was standing near one of the windows in Babbling’s tower classroom, and a stray shaft of March sunlight lit his hair and made his cheek blaze. Theo sneaked a look at him and then glanced away. Harry looked—
He looked too good for Theo’s peace of mind, was the truth.
“Why is that, Mr. Potter?” Professor Vector asked.
“Yes, why? And while I know that you two are best friends, I hardly think that you coerced Mr. Nott into going along.”
Professor Babbling sounded mild, but the tone of her voice made Theo flush hotter than ever and open his mouth to defend Harry. Harry said quickly, “We wanted to learn the best combination of Runes and Arithmancy to defend ourselves.”
“What do you need to defend yourself from, Mr. Potter?”
Harry blinked at Professor Babbling, and then moved his head a little so that his hair fell away from his scar. “What do you think, Professor?”
Theo almost thought Babbling would deny it, but she and Vector must know that the Dark Lord had been possessing Quirrell, because Babbling flushed a little. “My apologies, Mr. Potter,” she said quietly.
“It makes sense, why you were doing this,” Vector breaks in. “But I must tell you if that you keep on as you are, you will kill yourselves before you achieve the necessary speed and skill to use Arithmancy and Runes in battle.”
Harry sighed a little. “I was afraid of that. So what can we do to improve our success rate? Can you help us?”
“We would have helped you from the beginning, if you had come to us.”
“We haven’t had the best history of getting help from the professors in this school,” Theo said. “We’ve had to do a lot for ourselves.”
“I see,” said Professor Vector, and she and Babbling exchanged a long look that hinted at some history Theo didn’t know about. In the end, Vector nodded and focused on him. “But you have us now. And we shall be helping you.”
It was said as flatly as a pronouncement, but Harry smiled, and that let Theo do the same thing a second later.
Finally. Finally we have people here we can trust.
*
“So Buckbeak got completely away?”
“Um. Completely.”
Harry narrowed his eyes as he stared at Hermione. She had never been the best liar, and right now, she was blushing hard enough to make herself look like a firework. “Hermione, what did you do?”
“Why do you assume I did something?” Hermione’s ears turned bright red, although it was harder to see in the sunlight, and she spun around to face him. “Just because you think that I must have done something--!”
“Well, yeah, because you look guilty as hell.”
Hermione stopped walking towards Herbology. She had asked to talk to Harry alone, but now she scowled at him as if he was the one who had cornered her and started interrogating her. “I had nothing to do with it!”
“Li-ar,” Harry sang softly.
“And what about it, Harry Potter? Are you going to report me? Try to get Buckbeak back for the Ministry to execute him?”
“Execute, honestly,” Harry muttered. “The Ministry treats hippogriffs as they’re mindless beasts and worthy of being killed for one instance of hurting someone, but they also call it an execution, as if they were human criminals who should know very well what they’ve done. They can’t have it both ways.”
Hermione blinked. “What?”
“Never mind. I’m getting distracted by a theorical consideration in the middle of a practical discussion.” Harry ran a hand down his face. “All right, so you did what you did for the best and the greater good and everything. But are you going to tell me how you did it? Or are you just going to make me worry and wonder all day?”
Hermione blushed one more time, but then reached down and hooked a delicate golden chain from under her shirt to pull it into the light. “This.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called a Time-Turner…”
*
“A ¬Time-Turner, Theo! She had a Time-Turner!”
“Yes?”
“Think about what we could have done if we’d had that! We could have mastered Runes and Arithmancy by now! We would have been able to—”
“Blow ourselves up faster?”
“No! Put together those arrays and matrices that Vector and Babbling are showing us more quickly! Employ full sentences with—”
“You know that we weren’t going to make progress without our professors’ assistance, Harry. You know that we’d reached the point where theory didn’t do us any good anymore, but we didn’t have the practical experience we needed to keep things from exploding. You do know this, right?”
Stubborn silence.
“You do know it, Harry,” Theo said, gently, and leaned forwards to touch a hand to Harry’s cheek. Harry started and turned to look at him. Theo pulled his hand back hastily, even though no one else was in the third-year boys’ bedroom in Ravenclaw right now. “We’re smart, but we aren’t geniuses. And we’re thirteen. We don’t have the magic to do everything we want with Arithmancy and Runes yet.”
Harry sighed and slumped back against the pillows of his bed. “I know, but—we could have done it with a Time-Turner.”
Theo rolled his eyes and made a mental note to have a serious talk with Granger. She would have the Time-Turner until the end of the term, and he wanted to make sure that she understood she was not to lend it to Harry.
*
“So, mate.”
Harry looked up curiously. Ron had come to the compartment that Harry and Theo had been sharing for the ride home for the summer holidays, and had looked supremely uncomfortable and cleared his throat awkwardly until Harry had asked loudly if Theo needed to use the loo. Theo had rolled his eyes, but gone.
“Yeah, Ron?”
“You don’t like Hermione, do you?”
Harry narrowed his eyes. Ron and Hermione still bickered a lot, but this sounded like the beginning of some more of the nonsense that had driven Hermione to hide in the girls’ bathroom in first year. “Of course I do! She’s one of my best friends.”
“I didn’t mean like that.” Red was crawling up Ron’s face as if he were the one who had used the Time-Turner to free Buckbeak, and he had started to sweat. “I mean, would you want to date her?”
Harry stared at Ron with his mouth open.
“What?”
“What?’
“She’s—she’s my friend, Ron. Not someone I want to date.”
“Oh, good.” Ron smiled hugely, and the flush started disappearing from his face. “Because I thought I might ask her to go to Hogsmeade with me next year, but it would be bloody awkward if you’d already asked.”
“No, I…”
“Harry?”
Theo and Ron actually said that at the same time, since Theo had popped his head back in. Apparently, Ron only got five minutes alone with Harry at a time. Harry stared back and forth between them, and then cleared his throat, struck by his own awkward revelation.
“No, Ron, I don’t want to date Hermione. But someone else might. Anthony Goldstein studies with us sometimes, and I know he admires her intellect. Why don’t you go ask her now, so no one else will ask her on a date before you do?”
Ron bristled. “Right! That pillock? I’ll make sure to ask Hermione before he does!” And he turned around and ran away.
Theo snorted as he stepped back into the compartment and sat down on the seat across from Harry. “He thought you wanted to date Granger? He truly knows nothing worth knowing.”
“You know that you and Hermione are friends,” Harry said absently, studying Theo, while the revelation that had come to him when Ron asked if Harry wanted to date Hermione hammered sharp wings at his brain. “You could call her by her first name.”
“Someday I will.”
Theo, who had been stubborn enough to stay by Harry’s side and get along with Hermione but still resisted calling her by her first name. Theo, who had never asked Harry about his fame or whether he remembered the night Voldemort had killed his parents. Theo, who had shared his father and home with Harry without complaint.
Theo, who was as curious and driven and Ravenclaw as Harry was.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Harry?”
Theo, whose voice was a little deeper and whose cheeks had flushed a little as Harry stared at him. Harry decided that he could take a chance.
“Ron likes Hermine, so he thinks everyone does,” Harry murmured. “He couldn’t take into account that some of us like someone else.”
“What?”
Theo’s voice had gone all high and strained. Harry stood up, edged along the wall as the train bounced and jolted, and sat down on the same seat as Theo was sitting on.
Theo stared at him with silent, wide eyes, and said nothing.
“Theo,” Harry said, feeling as though his heart had left his chest, “will you come with me to Hogsmeade on the first weekend next year?”
There was a suspended moment when everything was made of crystal that might have broken.
Then Theo whispered, “Yes,” and reality came back, like always.
Except not always. Ten thousand times better.
*
He really does want to date me. He doesn’t—he’s not only attracted to witches, he doesn’t want a goody-goody Gryffindor, he wants…
“Yes,” Theo repeated, and leaned forwards a little.
Harry’s eyes were wide, bright, with the kind of focused, intense curiosity that he usually gave to Ancient Runes. When Theo’s lips brushed his, Harry sat still for a moment, and then he leaned forwards and kissed Theo back.
It was nothing more than a light brushing of lips, but it was real, and they both shivered as they parted.
“Good,” Harry said, and they stared at each other a little more before Harry leaned over and picked up his Ancient Runes book.
“The professors said we were getting pretty close to the perfect combination of sentences and arrays. Reckon that your dad will let us keep practicing this summer?”
Theo blinked at Harry for a moment, and then smiled, because some things had grown sharper and clearer. But not really changed. Their friendship had begun in what they studied together, and would grow and continue that way.
“Only if you promise not to explode the manor,” he said, reaching for his Arithmancy book.
“I never even managed to explode Hogwarts!”
“That sentence you chose the other day came near to exploding the classroom, and that was with Vector’s shielding.”
As they argued about it, and Harry’s eyes shone at him, Theo realized that he couldn’t wait for the years that lay ahead of them.
The End.