[Theo/Harry Confectionary]: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Runemaster, 2/5, R

[lomonaaeren]

A Small Part

I consider this debt like a noose around my neck. Will you not allow me to fulfill it?

Theodore knows that he’s being melodramatic and exaggerated with the letter, but he sends it anyway. The sense of not being able to breathe because of the debt he owes and can find no way to repay has tightened around his neck as they continue into sixth year.

Soon his runemaster will leave the school, or Theodore will, or they’ll leave together, if they’re in the same year. Soon Theodore won’t be able to find or reach him, and he won’t be able to pay his debt.

Theodore will never find him, if he doesn’t answer the damn letters. Theodore has sent others that simply disappeared into silence.

This time, however, he does get something. He can almost hear his runemaster sighing about it.

I will meet you by the tapestry of galloping unicorns on the third floor at three-o’clock on Thursday to talk about the debt.

Theodore stares hungrily at the words. There’s a clue here, there must be, in the way his runemaster’s letters swoop across the page. Something that can tell Theodore how he grew up, where he comes from, whether he’s older or younger.

But in the end, there’s nothing to do but go to the meeting.

And if Theodore spends a few moments spelling his hair flat and his teeth white before he goes, no one sees fit to comment on it.

*

Theodore reaches the tapestry on time, to see no one there. Then his runemaster materializes out of absolutely fucking nowhere with a hand on his arm, and Theodore nearly draws his wand at the apparition before him.

It’s a boy who looks to be his age, a boy with wild black hair and brilliant green eyes, with a Ravenclaw tie. Theodore assumed he would be familiar if he ever saw his runemaster, that he would know him without speaking, that there would be an intuitive spark of recognition.

He has never seen this boy before.

“Do that, and I’ll let go and you’ll never find me again.”

It takes Theodore a long moment to realize that the boy is talking about drawing his wand. He nods and takes his hand off it. “How did you know that?” he asks. Obviously, the boy has some kind of protection on him, or Theodore would have been able to find him before this, but why does he assume it would continue functioning now that Theodore knows what he looks like?

“There’s a protective spell I have on me that keeps me safe unless I really want to be seen,” the boy says, with a shrug, as if this is the kind of unremarkable information that he hands out to everyone. It rather dulls Theodore’s excitement at finally finding his runemaster. “Anyway, I wr—”

“Who are you?” Theodore interrupts, because now that the moment of first meeting is past, the sense of unfamiliarity is striking him anew. “I—you look like you’re in my year, or fifth, but I don’t know you at all.” He peers at the boy’s Ravenclaw House tie. “And I damn well should.” There are only five Ravenclaw boys in his year, after all.

“My name’s Harry Potter.”
A name Theodore recognizes, at least. A name from the files that his father keeps on enemies, and has insisted Theodore study extensively. James and Lily Potter died in the war, taking an impressive number of Death Eaters with them before that, and it was speculated their son survived. But no one knows what happened to him, as far as Theodore has heard.

“Then I damn well should know who you are. You’re in my year?”

Potter nods and goes blithely on, as if he doesn’t realize how much the concept of a completely unknown student in his own year is rebuilding Theodore’s memories of the past. “Yes. Anyway, the protective magic I have on me is going to prevent you from remembering a lot of what I had to say, so I wrote down my response to your letter. I promise, I’m not going to claim a debt. I saw you researching how to protect yourself from the Dark Mark, and I thought I could help, so I did.” He says the last part a little defensively.

I thought I could help, so I did.

Theodore did know that his runemaster was compassionate, or why do something like that and not claim the debt right away? But he didn’t know it would be so—casual.
“You’re a Ravenclaw, not a Hufflepuff.”
The runemaster rolls his eyes. Apparently he is casual about everything. “And you’re a Slytherin, not a Death Eater. People give Houses too much credit. Anyway. Do you want the letter that says I have no intention of claiming the debt or not?”

Is this the only thing I’m going to get out of him? Were my fantasies about a recognition and a power I could follow just that?
Theodore nods, because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. Potter takes the letter out of his robe pocket slowly, proving he does at least have the common sense to know Theodore is on the verge of firing a hex right now. Theodore puts the letter in his own pocket and stares at Potter.
He might be disappointing, but Theodore can’t imagine forgetting him now that he’s found him. There must be a way around that protective magic. Or Potter is wrong about it, which seems likely. Already Theodore is revising his initial impression of a genius into someone who’s a genius about Runes and clueless about many other things.
“Why don’t you want to claim the debt?” he asks, because if Potter hands out information like sweets, Theodore might as well ask.
“I wrote down—”
“Tell me. I want to hear you say it.” Theodore’s voice is a little more snappish on those words than he’d like, but he does.
“You won’t remember it.” Potter is looking at Theodore as if he thinks Theodore is the stupid or clueless one here, which is annoying.
“I don’t care.” Theodore looks at Potter as carefully as he can, trying to memorize the exact way he stands and the exact color of his eyes. He can build a hedge against forgetting with intense memories. He must be able to. He’s good at other arts that involve memory, like Arithmancy and History as not taught by Binns. “I still want to hear it. I want to know your reasons.”
Potter shrugs in a way that Theodore reads as angry. “Fine. I saw that you were trying to research something, and some pieces fell into place, and I realized that you were probably looking for ways to protect yourself from the Dark Mark. It fit with research I was already interested in doing, like the runes on the Goblet of Fire—”

“You researched that? Why?”
“Why not? It was interesting.”
Theodore stares at Potter and wonders how that qualifies as interesting to a genius. Well, maybe that’s part of the reason he’s not one.
Potter goes on, apparently not wanting to discuss that any further.
“I hate Voldemort. I think he’s stupid and incompetent. Oh, stop flinching, will you?”
Theodore can’t help it. As far as he knows, Longbottom and Dumbledore are the only ones who say the name. Then again, Potter wouldn’t have much to fear, sheltered behind the unbreakable protective magic as he is.
Not unbreakable. It can’t be.
“I might have researched protective runes like that anyway, because I don’t have a family to care for me and I don’t want to get caught up in the war.”
“How would anyone notice you, if you have protective magic like this?” Theodore reaches out and rests his hand on Potter’s forehead, almost expecting to find a lightning bolt scar like Longbottom’s there. Runes carved on an infant would explain this. Maybe James and Lily Potter were even stronger opponents than his father thought, and one of them was a Runes genius, too.

Potter shivers, his eyes wide, at Theodore’s touch. Theodore tilts his head. Maybe he can use that.

“There’s always the chance they might. I saw a chance to help you, too.” Potter glances up like a startled deer, which makes Theodore wonder if there’s some flaw in the magic that Potter isn’t telling him about. “As far as I’m concerned, this was a research project that let me help someone who was innocent and let me help myself. You don’t owe me a debt. I won’t claim it. Don’t worry about it.”

Theodore says nothing. He can say nothing. He doesn’t know how to approach what sounds like pure disinterested academic curiosity, on the one hand, and the way it’s entwined with compassion, on the other. Potter is almost the perfect stereotype of a Ravenclaw, but there’s the fact that he reached out and saved Theodore.

Not because he had to. Not because they’re blood kin, or allies on the same side of a war. Because he saw Theodore, and he decided to help.

Theodore has almost never been seen.

Potter takes a step back, but Theodore follows him, hand shifting to close around Potter’s fingers. He doesn’t know if it’s true that his memory of Potter will fade if one of them isn’t touching the other. He knows that he doesn’t want it to be true.

He knows that he will have to approach this differently than any other interaction he’s ever had, and so he opens his mouth and speaks the words that he hopes will make the difference.

“If I want to help you, would you allow me to do so?”
“How can you do that, Nott?” Potter asks, in a stupidly gentle voice. “I presume that you had to run from your father, and so you probably have a struggle of your own for a home and money at the moment. And after this conversation, you’ll only remember what’s written on the parchment.”
“That’s not true. I can’t imagine forgetting you.” Theodore can’t say that he’s not struggling for a home and money at the moment, that he ran because he needed to, that he has a cottage his grandfather willed him that his father can never take away, but he can say this.
“You will, though. That’s the way my protection spell works.” Potter pulls his hand away and pats Theodore’s arm as if Theodore is much younger than he is. “I hope that you’ll be more at peace now and won’t feel like my giving you that rune is a noose around your neck.”
Theodore makes an unconscious decision. He doesn’t know that he’s going to speak the word before he speaks it, which is the first time that’s happened to him in—months. Years.
“Harry.”
Harry stares at him as if this is the most startling thing anyone has ever done. And it makes Theodore do what he wouldn’t have dared otherwise; he moves closer and kisses Harry, with a closed mouth and barely there, but still a kiss.
“I don’t think I’ll forget,” he says when he draws back.
He could say that he kissed Harry to bind him closer, because Harry is a fabulous runemaster and this is a method Theodore can ensure his loyalty, because seduction is a time-honored way of making someone pay attention, because making Harry feel happy and good is a way of paying the debt.
But the truth is that he did it because he wanted to.
Harry steps back, eyes wild—
And Theodore glances around wildly in turn. First he wonders where he went. Then he wonders why he’s in the middle of the third-floor corridor by himself. Has his runemaster already come and gone?
His hand goes to his robe pocket as if by instinct, and he sighs when he feels the crackle of parchment there. Right. He takes out the note and opens it.
Nott,
I have a powerful protective spell on me that doesn’t allow anyone to remember me when not directly interacting with me. We did speak, but you’ll forget that now. And you can read what I’ve written, but it’s not as though I intend to communicate with you by note a lot. It would put you in danger, and I don’t want to put you in danger.
There’s no debt. I promise. I helped you because I wanted to. Please stop acting as though that means I’m a merciless predator out for your blood. I promise, all I want is to make sure that you live your life safer and happier than your father intended you to be.
Theodore closes his eyes. The runemaster doesn’t understand. That last sentence is already more than anyone has wished for Theodore since his mother died.
That last sentence is a promise that Theodore intends to see his runemaster keep.
Are One

Theodore wakes from a sound sleep, clawing at the blankets covering him and rolling over so suddenly that he falls out of bed and lies on the floor.

He remembers.

He remembers forgetting.

Suddenly, everything is there. The kiss with Harry in the corridor, the way he looked, the words he spoke. The way that the memory faded so suddenly from him when Harry stopped touching him that it’s as if he lost half his mind to a lightning strike.

Theodore stands up, shaking. He wonders why the protective magic would have broken. If Harry is right and it’s always been on him and kept him safe even from the professors who were hunting for Umbridge’s enemy and Moody’s magical eye, why would it suddenly be gone?

Theodore would like to think that Harry ended it just for him, but that’s not likely. Not if he didn’t do it after that kiss.

Theodore brought copies of the files on the Potters and other enemies with him from his father’s house, and sorting through them very quickly brings him the answer. This is July 31st, the day that Harry Potter turns seventeen. It would be completely understandable if the protective charm broke because it was cast by an adult on a child, and the child, in a sense, no longer exists.

Theodore wonders if Harry will come to him for help. If he will give Theodore a chance to either repay the debt or show Harry his own reasons why there should be no debts between them.

Thinking of that, Theodore touches the back of his hand to his lips.

*

The note comes that afternoon, courtesy of a large grey owl who is the most disapproving bird Theodore has ever seen. But he does consent to settle on the perch in Theodore’s dining room and take bits of bacon while Theodore reads the letter.

Nott, you probably woke up this morning with memories that you didn’t have when you went to sleep last night. I can explain, if you want me to. My name is Harry Potter, and I request sanctuary if you still feel that you owe me a debt.

Theodore’s lips twitch a little. No explanation offered in the letter, and the invocation of the debt now, when Harry is desperate enough to probably feel he has no sanctuary left. Of course. There’s a trace of Slytherin in this Ravenclaw, after all.

Not that Theodore has any qualms about inviting Harry to his home. He would do it even if he didn’t feel he owed something, if he didn’t want to see the runemaster again. Harry will never hurt him.

Theodore seizes a twist of parchment and writes Come ahead, along with the cottage’s Apparition coordinates. He assumes Harry knows how to Apparate. Why wouldn’t he? And there’s really no point in writing anything more than that. Harry will trust him or he won’t.

(Merlin, Theodore hopes he does).

The owl might want to rest, Theodore thinks, but instead, he swoops over and seizes the parchment from Theodore’s hand as though it’s the thing he was born to do. Then he soars out the window, and Theodore shakes his head as he watches the owl vanish.

In a few hours, he may see Harry.

His skin burns and tingles.