lomonaaeren

Thank you for all the reviews! Because Theo has to really prove himself, this is now going to be five chapters.

Part Three

Harry wrinkled his nose at his reflection in the mirror. The dress robes looked all right, he thought. They were gold, and he didn’t think he looked terrible in them. He was just dreading the thought of interacting with Lucius Malfoy, and Gawain Robards, and some other people at the Ministry gala today.

“Hermione or I could go instead,” Ron offered from behind him. He was leaning against the wall of Harry’s bedroom and scowling.

Harry shook his head. “You took that gala the other day when I was meeting with the goblins. No. This is better. They’ll be clamoring for the Boy-Who-Lived otherwise, or accusing you and Hermione of something stupid like trying to keep me away from the Ministry.” He straightened his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Ron kept a close eye on him as they took to the Floo to the Atrium, but hesitated when they came out of the fireplace. “Hermione and I do need to meet with that centaur representative today.”

“Of course you do.”

“You don’t need—”

Harry turned and clasped his friend’s arm, ignoring the curious glances of some of the other “important” guests arriving via the Floo. “No. Please don’t worry about it, Ron. I’ll talk to Malfoy the way I do at the Board of Governors meetings, and if I need to,” he lowered his voice, “I have a Puking Pastille with me.”

Ron laughed and finally seemed to relax. “George would love to hear about that.”

His face darkened a second later, at the reminder of Fred, as always. Harry hugged him a little, sideways, and stepped back. “Go, before I get tempted to skip it altogether or slap a glamour on you and go meet with the centaurs.”

“How come we didn’t think of—”

Harry shoved Ron back towards the Floo. Ron winked at him and left with a blast of powder and a cry of, “A Friend in Need!”

Harry sighed as he turned to walk towards the ballroom where the gala would be. He had meant what he’d said about the public needing to see their “savior,” and the way that they would react if he had a friend at his shoulder at all times.

But Ron and Hermione also needed some time by themselves. They often canceled dates to do the work for A Friend in Need, just like Harry did, and Harry knew Ron had been holding off on proposing to Hermione even though he really wanted to. Maybe he finally would today. Or at least relax a little and think about something other than shielding Harry.

Harry did wish he could find someone who was as close to him, as devoted, as Ron and Hermione were to each other. It was what the name on his wrist had seemed to promise.

But, well, he hadn’t. Harry banished the thought from his mind as he stepped into the ballroom and looked around to locate Lucius Malfoy. The man was resisting the introduction of compulsory Muggle Studies and Magical Studies classes for all the students at Hogwarts, because supposedly “Purebloods don’t need to know anything about their inferiors.” Harry wanted to see what he’d say if Harry surprised him in front of the cream of the Ministry.

*

Theo sipped from a glass of champagne, not caring that only a few people had come up to talk to him. He was here to see Blaise presented with an award for his charitable work (read: donations of large sums of money to St. Mungo’s). It was nothing to him if people shied away from him. That meant that he would only need to talk with his intellectual equals.

He briefly caught Lucius Malfoy’s eye across the room. The man nodded stiffly to Theo. Theo nodded stiffly back.

Then he saw Lucius’s expression change, and followed his gaze to see Harry Potter walking into the ballroom in swirling robes of gold and a bored expression.

Theo’s eyes widened despite himself. This was—Potter looked good. Formidable. Older than twenty-two, and as fit as an Auror for all that he’d decided not to pursue that path. His hair was tousled, but not more than always. He moved as if he had someplace to be and would cut down anyone in his path without slowing his stride.

He must have stared too long. Potter canted his head to the side and held Theo’s gaze, nodding briefly.

Theo snapped his attention away hard enough to hurt his neck. He supposed he looked ridiculous. Draco, who had followed his father, was watching him with a faint frown.

But when Theo chanced another look, Potter hadn’t lingered to look at him. He was baring his teeth at Lucius and saying something in a voice that made Lucius bare his teeth back. Then they started going at it in voices that Theo suspected he couldn’t hear only because someone had cast a Privacy Bubble around them.

He wasn’t hurt by seeing me. He wasn’t affected. He doesn’t want to look at me.

Of course, that was what Theo had wanted. He had gone on and lived his own life after finding out Potter was his soulmate—although, at Blaise’s suggestion, he had tried to stop complaining about Potter so much and following the progress of his Friend in Need organization in the papers. He shouldn’t want Potter to pay attention to him.

Why do I?

Theo stared into his glass and wished he knew a spell that would Transfigure champagne to Firewhisky.

*

“What you are demanding is impossible, Mr. Potter, simply impossible.”

“Oh? Purebloods are incapable of learning as much as Muggleborns and half-bloods?”

Malfoy looked like he’d drunk a Pepper-Up Potion. He was only missing the literal clouds of steam from his ears. “You know very well that I would not put my son in such a position.”

“Good thing that Draco’s not a Hogwarts student.”

Now Malfoy apparently wanted to murder him. Harry smiled at him and kept his hand near his wand. Malfoy had only attacked him once at a public gathering, but Harry still wanted to be ready.

Malfoy visibly forced his temper back under control. “You know that I am not the only pureblood who will object,” he said, voice chill with warning. “Other parents will. Other members of the Board of Governors. Even some professors. Why would you continue to push for these Muggle Studies classes, Potter?”

“Because I don’t want my children or grandchildren to have to fight another blood purity war,” Harry said. “And as long as purebloods are allowed to consider themselves above Muggles and not learn about them, that will happen.”

“And you really think a class will change their minds?”

“I think it’s a start. And something that will contradict the messages they might be getting from certain prejudiced arseholes.”

Malfoy reddened. Amazingly, Harry saw Draco standing behind his father, his expression agonized. He caught Harry’s eye and mouthed, Sorry about him.

Harry blinked. That was a surprise. Then again, Hermione had said something about running into Draco and a woman named Astoria Greengrass at one of the events A Friend in Need had attended, and apparently Greengrass came from a less prejudiced family.

If she can get Draco to change his mind, she must be some witch. I don’t think his father ever will, though.

Harry turned back to continue arguing with Malfoy. In the meantime, he accidentally looked at someone else.

Speaking of not changing one’s mind.

Harry gave Theodore Nott a meaningless smile and went back to the argument.

*

Theo found himself lurking on the outskirts of the dance, watching as Potter danced—and argued—with an Auror Theo vaguely recognized as Crystal Yaxley. They seemed to be enjoying their debate more than Potter or Lucius had enjoyed theirs.

You’re pathetic, looking at him. Looking after him.

Theo took a deep breath and leaned back against the pillar that sheltered him, closing his eyes. No one would see him in these shadows. He could think about what he pleased, and one of the things that was burrowing into his brain, in the way that only equations usually did, was the slowly-growing conviction that he had been wrong.

Potter’s not stupid. He doesn’t seek out publicity for any reason except to keep his little venture running.

Theo peeked around the pillar. Potter had swapped partners and was dancing with Neville Longbottom now. He looked more relaxed and was laughing openly at something Longbottom had said, his head tossed back.

He hasn’t told anyone who his soulmate is. Maybe that he has one. Or maybe someone knows but decided not to approach me.

He kept my secret. He honored my wishes.

Theo folded his arms and stared down at the drink floating near his elbow, which still hadn’t changed into Firewhisky despite all his wishing. When he had been eighteen, it had all seemed so clear. He had lived through a war, through a year of school where he was tortured or torturer. It had seemed like paradise to wake up the morning after the Dark Lord’s defeat and think no one would ever look at him again the way people had during that dreadful year, waiting for him to fulfill the Carrows’ orders or rebel against them.

So he had rejected Potter. He hadn’t wanted to thrust himself into prominence again, to have people looking at him with jealousy or dislike or even admiration. He had wanted to—well, go into his lab and never come out again, basically.

But it hadn’t worked out like that.

He still had friends, little as he thought he deserved Blaise and even Pansy sometimes. He still had a father who sometimes utilized the wards of Nott’s Eyrie specifically to lock Theo out of the lab so he had to go do something else. He still came to galas like this, as little as he enjoyed them.

He had thought once he would be content to live his life in books and the lab, but he hadn’t been content the last few years. He’d been frozen. Unhappy. Waiting.

In a holding pattern, like someone on a Merlin-be-damned broom.

Theo suspected, now, that he knew what direction he’d like his future to take.

But Potter’s dating other people. Why would he let me even approach him? He wouldn’t read a letter. He’d turn away if I came up to him.

Theo peeked back around the pillar again. Now Potter was dancing with Hannah Abbott, who was engaged to Longbottom or something like that if Theo remembered correctly, and his expression was pleasant but faintly bored.

Theo swallowed. He might turn away, unless I approached him in a situation where it would be seen as rude.

If he rejects me, in turn, then maybe I can finally move on. At least I’ll know.

*

“May I have this dance?”

Harry looked up sharply. Theodore Nott was standing in front of him, and he had cut in so that Hannah was on the other side of him. Hannah’s face was a study in a few things Harry didn’t want to think about.

Harry managed to plaster a smile on his face, but it was an effort. “I don’t believe that anyone here wants you to do that,” he said, eyes flickering to Hannah for a second. “Including you, if you really think about it.”

Nott flinched and then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He didn’t seem to care that some people had halted in their dancing to stare at them, even though Harry had thought it was the kind of thing that would matter to him a lot. “I made a mistake. I’d like to try again, if you’d let me.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. It was an apology he hadn’t thought would receive. Why would Nott reconsider when he hadn’t in three and a half years?

The name on Harry’s wrist seemed to tingle and burn, the way it had right after Nott’s rejection. He flexed his fingers and murmured, “Let’s dance so that we can talk about it a little. But you ought to know that I’m not going to give you the chance to reject me again.”

Nott’s pale cheeks flooded with color. He reached out and took Harry’s hand, and Harry whirled him into the dance.

Nott was a good dancer, moving with what seemed to be unconscious grace. Harry found himself watching the way that Nott’s dark blue robes fell around him, and looked to the side, annoyed.

Then again, he had done the same thing with Neville and Hannah, even though they were very engaged. It didn’t have to mean anything, Harry reminded himself.

“Are you going to start?” he added, when he realized Nott had been staring at him but not saying anything.

“I’m not sure how to.”

Harry held back the temptation to say something sharp. Nott’s voice had wavered, and he sounded younger than Harry knew he was. Maybe as young as Harry had been the day that he’d thought having a soulmate meant unconditional love.

But on the other hand… “You were the one who approached me,” Harry said, and watched Nott flinch as if he’d conjured a handful of poisoned darts and flung them at the other man. “You’re the one who has to start. I can walk away any time.”

Oddly enough, that made some of the wheeling chaos in his head calm down. He didn’t have to listen to anything. He was here because he was curious. It mattered more to Nott than it did to Harry.

It’s nice to be the one with the power this time.

*

Up close, Harry Potter was overwhelming. Of course Theo knew exactly what he looked like, from all those newspaper photographs if seven years in Hogwarts hadn’t been enough, but he hadn’t ever been this close.

Except during the moment when he’d rejected Potter, and then, Potter hadn’t learned how to wear power like a cloak.

“I rejected you because I thought it would make me happy,” Theo said, keeping his voice low enough that their closest neighbors glanced at them but couldn’t hear anything. “I was wrong. I’m terribly unhappy, and I was wrong about you, too.”

“Uh-huh.”

Potter’s face wore a politely uninterested mask. Theo plunged ahead, wishing he had thought to put together equations that would allow him to predict the outcome of a conversation with his soulmate.

“I thought I wanted to be detached from the world. I thought you were too alive for me.” Potter’s eyebrows rose. “Too involved in the world, too involved with your fame and publicity.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“No, wait!” Theo nearly tugged them to a stop, which made them nearly crash into Crystal Yaxley and her current dance partner. Theo got them moving, turning redder than he could remember being. Father would flay him with a single look if he heard about that clumsiness. “I’m sorry. I—I was stupid, okay? I thought that you reveled in your fame, but you use it like a tool.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“No, I admire you for it. If you want to put it in terms of school Houses, which I was doing at the time, it’s a very Slytherin thing to do, and I didn’t think that you would ever do that. I just thought you were being a Gryffindor all the time. Saying whatever you wanted and either not caring what the papers published about you or laughing about it.”

“I learned how to do that. I assure you that I didn’t revel in my fame during our last years at school.”

I have learned that.

*

“Yeah,” Nott said quietly. “I can see that.”

“But you didn’t at the time.”

“I don’t know how many people did see the truth, Potter. Your friends knew you, and knew the truth. But can you blame me for believing the papers when that was what most people thought? Even some of the professors?”

Harry inclined his head. “I can’t blame the boy you were. You’ve yet to prove why the man you are wants to be with me.”

“Because I can’t stop thinking about you.” Pale rose color had flooded Nott’s cheeks again. “I—it’s mental, how much I keep thinking about you. My best friend pointed out how much I complained about you.”

“Not persuasive.”

“I realized that you were so much more than I thought you were. That you cared about people because you just—care about them, not to make political points, the way the Malfoys do. That you were perfectly capable of intellectual work, but you didn’t make it the whole of your life, the way I did.” Nott shivered a little. “And I feel like half a person because of that.”

Harry continued to eye Nott skeptically as they swirled though the last phase of the dance and came to a stop near a pillar. Nott was gazing at him with wide-open eyes, and he at least seemed honest.

Harry wasn’t dating anyone at the moment. He had to admit dating Nott might not be terrible. He still sometimes thought about the potential the soul-mark had hinted at.

But Nott was on a lot thinner ice than anyone else he’d ever dated had been.

“I don’t know that I want to give you a chance to hurt me again.”

Nott flushed. “All right.”

“All right?”

“If you want to reject me in turn, that’s—fair.”

“You look like it was actually painful for you to say that word.”

“I’m used to thinking of fair as for Hufflepuffs.”

Harry smiled despite himself. Nott was a strange combination of the Hogwarts student he had been—not that Harry had really known him then—and a man who did seem to have realized he’d made a mistake and was trying to apologize.

“I can give you a chance to impress me,” Harry said, leaning a shoulder on the pillar. “But it’s one chance. Mess it up and you’re gone.”

Nott smiled in a way that broke open his mask for the first time that Harry had ever seen it.

Not that I ever really saw him. Not that I paid much attention to him when we were boys, and less in the years since.

Because of that, Harry was more inclined to give Nott a chance than he would have been someone like Seamus, who ought to have known him and yet had believed the rumors in fifth year.

“Oh,” Harry said, abruptly remembering. “Ernie Macmillan said to tell you that you’re a fool.”

“What?”

“I dated him for a while. He saw the mark. He said that you’re a fool.”

Nott blinked for a bit. Then he said, “That’s also fair.”

“No wincing this time, an improvement.” Harry nodded. “Okay. I meant it, Nott. One mistake and you’re gone, but I’ll give you the time to make that mistake.”

“Thank you,” Nott breathed. “What should we do for our first date?”

“You’re the one who had this idea. Come up with it yourself. Impress me.”

On an impulse, Harry purred the last words, and took a step closer to Nott. The way he seemed to stop breathing was fairly spectacular.

Harry turned and sauntered away, not displeased by the way that Nott’s eyes followed him.

*

He gave me the chance. He did.

And that was another thing Theodore Nott had never known about Harry Potter: that he could be fair, and forgiving.

He was going to do all he could to prove himself worth it.