lomonaaeren

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Just After

Theodore hears the crack and walks rapidly out his front door, which he, admittedly, was waiting right beside. He sees Harry standing in the field the Apparition coordinates directed him to, looking as if he’s about to fall over.

He can Apparate, but he probably never had to before.
“Harry.”
Harry turns around, hair as wild and eyes as bright as Theodore remembers—has been allowed to remember. He can’t help the smile that reaches his eyes, despite the wand in Harry’s hand. He hopes that the Lumos on his own wand provides enough illumination.

“Thank you for coming.” Theodore keeps his voice as calm as possible while he nods towards the cottage. “Will you follow me?”

Harry nods and follows. He seems put-off by the way that Theodore keeps looking at him. Well, he will have to get used to it.

“I’m not going to put you in danger, am I? I suspected your father was a Death Eater.”

“I have my own house.” Theodore knows he sounds clipped, probably angry about something that is not Harry’s fault, but he can’t help himself. “He grew so angry when he couldn’t force me to take the Dark Mark last summer that it was necessary.”

It’s not something he likes to remember: the spells flying, the shouting, the way that his father nearly caught him before Theodore could leap into the Apparition.

“And you had a spare house lying around?”

Theodore smiles, and Harry looks disconcerted. “Not in the sense you mean. There was a property that my grandfather owned which he willed to my father’s firstborn child. My father’s never been able to alter the will or the terms of the bequest.”

Theodore watches narrowly as Harry takes in the house. He peers at it like a curious cat at a caged bird, and Theodore doesn’t know what to make of half the expressions passing across his face. It’s fascinating. It’s worrying.

It’s enthralling.

“I apologize for how small it is.”

“No, I mean, it’s fine,” Harry says, and he rolls his shoulders like he’s trying to shrug some memory of his own off. “Before this, I spent my summers in a room at the Leaky Cauldron that I made the barkeep forget about. Sharing a house with one person is going to be something of a luxury.”

He did what?

Theodore stops walking. “And are you going to explain to me how you managed that? I thought it was only you that people forgot about when they weren’t looking at you.”

Harry studies him. “If you’re really interested, sure, I can do that. Not that I know that much about my protective magic or why it disappeared today.”

“Today’s your seventeenth birthday, isn’t it?”

“How did you know that?”

“My father thought it was a good idea to keep detailed records about his enemies. Or people he thought of as enemies. I stole some of them when I left to set up my own house. He wrote down details about your parents, and that you were born on July 31st, 1980.”

“All right. But I don’t see what that has to do with my protective magic disappearing.”

Theodore can’t help smiling. It’s endearing that there are things Harry doesn’t know.

Reassuring, too. Theodore was a little worried about how he could manage to offer any help beyond simple shelter to a bloody genius who has probably advanced Rune theory beyond anything that Professor Babbling’s contemporaries have managed.

Harry, from what Theodore understands of him, would probably accept the shelter as just compensation. But that’s not all he wants to be able to offer.

“You’re of age. The protective magic was probably placed on you as a child to help you survive. It makes sense that it would vanish when you legally became an adult in the wizarding world.”

Harry mutters curses under his breath. Theodore is vaguely worried at himself for finding it adorable.

“Come on, then. There’s no sense in standing outside the house.”

Theodore tries to understand what Harry is seeing as he walks into the house, but he has no context for this, or maybe Harry doesn’t. He just looks around at the walls and colors as if they’re fine, and nods as if they’re fine, and yawns as if they’re fine.

Well, Theodore supposes Harry is tired. But he’s a little miffed.

Then Harry asks, “Can you feel what this is?” and takes a package out of his pocket, and unwraps the silk, and Theodore stumbles back from the chair he was sitting down in. The waves of Darkness that fill the room are worse than what burned from his father’s Dark Mark, worse than the spells his father fired at him as he escaped, worse than—

Worse than hope’s death.

If he’s a Dark wizard after all…

“What the fuck is that? I’ve never felt anything so Dark in my life. Except once, and then—” He cuts himself off. He’s not going to tell even Harry what he felt at his mother’s grave. Not now. Not yet.

Harry nods. “I know. This belongs to Voldemort.” He rolls his eyes at the hiss Theodore can’t help. “Relax, I can—” And then he curses again, not so adorably this time. “Are the rumors about him putting a Taboo on his name true?”

“As far as I know,” Theodore barely manages to say. He no longer thinks that Harry created the Dark thing he’s holding in his hands, but he just casually carried it around and took it out of his pocket and—

The way he casually saved Theodore’s life, and casually got rid of Umbridge, and casually said that Theodore owed him no debt.

What is he? Who is he?

Harry sighs. “Fine. I’ll call him That Bastard.” He doesn’t seem to notice how Theodore chokes. “This belongs to That Bastard. It’s called a Horcrux. One of the seven anchors that he’s using to hold on to life,” he adds, in the tone of a patient professor. “From what I’ve heard by eavesdropping on Dumbledore and Longbottom, they need to destroy the Horcruxes before they can destroy That Bastard. But they didn’t figure out a way to do that before Dumbledore died. I performed a ritual that showed me where all the Horcruxes were, using this one as a beacon. At least one of them is in Dumbledore’s office, so they had two at one point, but they didn’t destroy either one.”

“How did you get this one?”

Theodore has to say something, so he says that. In reality, he would like to sit down again and stare at the walls for a while. But Harry is right in front of him, as real as if the protective spell never existed, and watching Theodore as patiently as if he should already understand, and he has to say something.

“I sneaked into the Headmaster’s office to grab it when the Death Eaters came to Hogwarts. I thought that they might find it and take it. It was there because it was possessing some girl in our second year and making her Petrify the students.”

Theodore puts his hand over his eyes. He remembers the Petrifications, of course he does, and Dumbledore’s announcement when they stopped. He just never thought to connect it to a—Horcrux.

(The Dark thing is still making Theodore feel slimy).

“And you know how to destroy them?” he asks, Again, he has to say something. And maybe Harry will have a good answer for once.

“No. That was something I was hoping to research, actually. If you have access to a good library? Can you sneak books over from your father’s house?”

“I have some. And the rune means that I can go into the house and sneak more out, as long as he isn’t there. I’ll have to look.” Theodore leans forwards and picks one question from the mess of them swarming inside his head. “But I want to hear more about this ritual that you said used this book as a beacon.”

Harry frowns at him, and Theodore wonders for a moment if he doesn’t want to share the secrets of his academic accomplishments. But he speaks freely a moment later, so that can’t be it.

“All right. I surrounded the diary with a circle of runes designed to suppress its Dark magic, as otherwise it reaches out. Then I surrounded that with a second circle that used the position of the stars in the midsummer sky to imbue the runes with power, and I used spokes to channel the magic, and—”

“You can use Astronomy with Runes?” Theodore feels as though the sky has dropped on him. The sky that was never that interesting.

“Er, yes.” Harry eyes Theodore as if he’s the one walking around with revolutionary magical theory here. “I thought you did pretty well with Astronomy. Better than me, anyway. I had to do a solid week of research before I figured out which constellations and specific stars I should target. Why don’t you know this?”

A week. He thinks a week is a long time to blend two previously incompatible fields of magic.

Theodore leans back and shakes his head. “Listen. You belong in Ravenclaw. I don’t know half the things you know, and I don’t even fully understand the description of the ritual. You created this ritual?”

“Based on other rituals.” Harry sounds modest, which is irritating. “So that means—”

“It means that you’re incredible.” Theodore speaks the words softly. He can’t help the tone, the way his eyes fasten on Harry, any of it. “And you’re better with Runes than anyone I’ve even heard of.”

Harry smiles then, and flushes a little. Theodore is glad that he at least doesn’t deny the praise. Living with a true Gryffindor or Hufflepuff who would go around protesting they didn’t deserve the credit for their discovery would be—

Harry sits up so suddenly he almost bounces off the chair.

“What did you just think of?” Theodore asks. He hopes that he doesn’t sound too indulgent, and then gives up on the hope.

“A way to start hiding again,” Harry says.

Theodore feels as though someone has punched him. But he doesn’t want to explore that feeling even for himself, let alone speak of it to Harry. What it would mean to him if Harry disappeared back behind the protective charm, and Theodore forgot him all over again.

The only person in his life who has saved him, cared for him—

Theodore stands.

“You said something about being tired?”

Harry looks at him as if this is a total non sequitur, but he also stands. “And you don’t mind helping me engage in research to destroy the Horcruxes?”

This, at least, is something Theodore can do. He draws his wand. “If you’ll trust me to put a ward around that thing, I might know something we could do right now.”

“What’s that?”

Harry sounds interested, eager, excited, which is not something Theodore wants to find charming. He is not getting a great deal of what he wants, tonight.

“Fiendfyre.” He looks at Harry as calmly as he can, projecting the steadiness that Harry will need to hear. “I can control it, I promise.”

It will probably still take Harry some time to agree—

“Let’s try it.”

Perhaps not.

“Should we be doing this outside? Do you want to burn down the house and build another one?”

Theodore sighs, another thing he has no choice about. “A containment ward based on the rune that you gave me is already around the house, which is why I had to give you the Apparition coordinates some distance away. And I know how to cast that ward on a miniature scale.” He raises his wand and twists it in in the flourishes of the containment ward. Harry watches him like an owl watching a mouse.

“Did you base that on some of the images from The Book of Six Wizards?”

He knows that just from seeing the wand movements?

Theodore twitches, which luckily doesn’t disrupt the ward. Not even the book bucking and twisting in the ward as if it really can break out can stop him from blurting out, “You’re a bloody genius.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you.”

No reaction to compliments? But who would have paid them to him, exactly?

“You’re just a genius, that’s all.” Theodore looks at Harry and waits for him to absorb the words, but Harry only nods to the book. Theodore sighs and faces it. “Fiendfyre!”

The flames rise in a tornado, and Theodore clenches his teeth as he watches the black spirit struggling in the middle of a winged lion’s open mouth. The explosion that follows makes Harry flinch. Theodore can’t help the way he looks at Harry then. Apparently Harry trusts his runic circles more than he does any containment ward Theodore casts.

And why should he not? Who has ever done something like this for him?

Theodore forces his emotions back under control, and the Fiendfyre with them. The last of the flames vanish, and take the last of the diary with them.

“Sorry,” Harry mutters, which Theodore didn’t expect. “That was brilliant.”

Theodore can’t help the flush that overcomes his face, but he can hide it. He turns and walks towards the staircase to lead Harry up to a guest room. “You’re ready to sleep, then?”

“Yes, fine,” Harry says, and he follows Theodore up to the guest room and curls up on the bed without even glancing at Theodore again.

Theodore stands there staring at him. Then he goes down the stairs and leans against the wall near the front door, where he begins to laugh.

He has a wizard sleeping upstairs who managed to create a whole new ritual in a week, to combine Astronomy and Ancient Runes in some kind of tracking ritual, who recognizes certain wand movements as coming from a book so obscure that Theodore reckons fewer than twenty people in Magical Britain have read it.

Who thinks that there’s nothing out of the ordinary about any of this.

Theodore laughs and laughs until he feels as if someone has wrung him out to dry, and then goes and collapses on his own bed, too tired to do anything else.

His dreams, at least, are pleasant.

An Indecipherable Cause

Harry Potter sends a letter to Longbottom with his notes on the Horcruxes and how to destroy them, while claiming that Longbottom is a living Horcrux as well as the Dark Lord’s nemesis and needs to know.

Harry Potter stopped Rabastan Lestrange from resurrecting the Dark Lord at Hogwarts during their third year.

Harry Potter wants to help defeat the Dark Lord so he can sit his NEWTS in peace.

Theodore has never been around anyone like this. He went to the same school as Longbottom for six years, but it’s not the same thing. Longbottom was just someone people like Malfoy complained about. Theodore never spoke a word to him and was rarely ever close enough to hear him speak.

And he has the weight of destiny and prophecy on his side, anyway, or so the Daily Prophet claims.

Harry doesn’t need to do this. No one expects it of him. Despite his protective spell breaking, few people will remember that he exists because so few people have ever interacted with him.

Harry is going to do it anyway.

Theodore knew Harry was compassionate, but it was a lot easier to cope with the idea of compassion directed towards him, an individual he knows deserves it, then towards someone like Longbottom who already has a lot of help, or what seems to be the whole bloody world.

But he plans to accompany Harry to the dangerous Black house that his godfather, Sirius Black, apparently left him, and where one of the Horcruxes might be according to the ritual Harry conducted, because Theodore won’t let him go alone.

That’s the kind of person he is. The kind of person Harry has apparently turned him into.

Imagine, Golden

“From what you’ve said about the Black family being a nest of blood purists, I’m amazed they were willing to live here.”

Theodore can’t believe it, either, considering how Muggle the area they’re in is, but he tries to find a reason that would make it make sense. “Perhaps they weren’t always as bad as they later became. Or they came up with ways to make the house secure enough for them.”

Harry spins around to look at him as if what Theodore said is far more interesting than it deserves credit for. “What’s wrong, Nott?”

All right, so perhaps the way Theodore is constantly looking around for danger at the moment is noticeable. He says weakly, “There’s so many Muggles.”

Harry blinks. “Sorry?”

“How can you stand being around them so much?”

Harry shrugs at him and speaks in that casual tone Theodore knows about but will probably never be used to. “I grew up with them during my childhood, when I just knew that something was different about me, but not what. Come on, we can go into the house and get out of their sight anyway.” He trots merrily towards Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Theodore takes a long moment to calm his breathing before he follows.

Theodore starts despite himself when a serpent-shaped illusion rears around the door knocker, but it does turn out to be just an illusion. Harry casts almost without using his wand, it seems, and the snake vanishes in a puff of smoke.

“You’re not a Parselmouth, are you?” Theodore asks. It would explain how Harry knew that wasn’t a real snake.

“That’s Longbottom, not me,” Harry says, and touches the door with one hand, now apparently talking to the house. “My name is Harry Potter. Sirius Black made me his heir. His brother is dead. His parents are dead. His cousins are in Azkaban or disowned or not here. I am come to claim the house.”

Theodore doesn’t think it will work for a long moment. Some ancient houses, like his father’s, for example, have much stricter standards for entry than this, especially by someone who has never been inside them before—

But with nothing more than a sense of gathering power and a little hiss from Harry that isn’t Parseltongue, the front door swings open.

The entryway they step into stinks with both mold and decaying wards, and Theodore has to fight the temptation to hold his breath. Harry is grimacing, but he joins Theodore in casting Air-Freshening Charms, and the smell finally swishes away. Harry is obviously looking around for the Horcrux that is supposed to be here, but he turns to Theodore a second later. “Well, it’s not right here. Upstairs or downstairs?”

Theodore starts to answer, but jumps instead, as a pair of curtains off to the side go flying open, accompanied by a scream. A portrait of a woman who looks like a typical Black, but uglier, glares at them and begins to scream in words, not that that’s an improvement. “DEFILERS OF MY ANCESTORS’ HOUSE! TRAITORS! FILTH! MY FOREFATHERS—”

Theodore is already preparing a Deafening Charm, which works on portraits along with people, but Harry—does something. There’s a blast of focused light from him, a glowing shimmer about his body, and the portrait disappears from the wall.

“What did you do?”

“Got rid of it,” Harry says, and turns around with a frown that looks chiding. “You don’t wear glasses, but you sound like you need them.”

I don’t want to kill him. I want to shake him.

“But I don’t know a spell that could just destroy a portrait like that,” Theodore says, and keeps his voice as calm as he can. “And I don’t know anyone whose body would glow when they cast it.”

“Glow?” Harry seems surprised, but when he looks down, he doesn’t seem upset. “It’s not a side-effect that I thought about before. Or noticed. Of course, there was no one before this to see me and tell me it happened.”

“But what did you do?”

Harry doesn’t hesitate long before he takes his robe and shirt off, and turns around. The thoughts Theodore believed he would have the first time he saw Harry half-clothed burn away like mist in sunlight when he sees the circle carved onto Harry’s back.

He carved it directly into the skin.

“I drew runic circles on me,” Harry explains, glancing back at Theodore and speaking as if this were all completely normal. “My body is the only thing that absolutely no one can take away from me without killing me. And they act together to give me magic of various kinds. I draw magic from the air all the time, and they make the spells half-formed before they can be cast—”

“You carved circles in your flesh.”

“I had to, if I wanted them to work.” Harry is frowning in the way that Theodore has learned means he’s annoyed about something that wouldn’t annoy anyone else sane. “But I’ll have to redo them because I can’t stay where I was staying anymore.”

Theodore wants to say that he won’t just stand back while Harry casually cuts himself up, but he can’t say anything. He just stands there. Harry shakes his head, as if Theodore is the one who goes around doing things no one can understand, and then smiles at some private thought of his own.

My runemaster is brilliant and compassionate. My runemaster is also far too casual about threats to his own safety.

“Can you—put your clothes back on? We need to find the locket Horcrux and get out of here.” Theodore hopes that he’s not betraying himself too obviously with the way he looks away. He does want to look at Harry, even follow the pattern of all those cut runes and circles with his fingers, but this isn’t the context to do it in.

“Of course. Sorry, Nott.”

Maybe I can’t get him to stop carving circles into himself, but I can stop that.

“And can you call me Theodore?”

“Er, sure, if you want.” Harry sounds puzzled, but he puts his robes on and nods to Theodore as if reviving the important part of the conversation. “Upstairs or downstairs?”

That question is apparently cursed, because Theodore doesn’t get to answer it this time, either.

“Evil filth be destroying Mistress’s portrait!”

Theodore bares his teeth at the house-elf who appears before them. He’s dirty and aged in a way that Theodore has never seen an elf be, which argues that he was probably exposed to powerful Dark magic, or performing it himself. Either way, Theodore wouldn’t trust him.

Harry, because that’s who he is, casually asks, “Have you seen a golden locket around?”

The elf stares as if he’s considering the potential of sacrificing Harry to whatever magic twisted him. Then he screams, “Filth not be taking Master Regulus’s locket!” and runs straight at Harry with his arms uplifted.

Harry raises a shield before Theodore can move. He tries to tell Harry that the elf will just Apparate around it, but when the elf tries, the shield turns into a circular wall around Harry and Theodore. Harry gives his chiding frown at the elf and murmurs, “If you don’t want to say, don’t. We’re not going to steal it, though. It’s a Horcrux, and it belongs to V—a real bastard, and we’re going to destroy it.”

That at least gets the elf to stop attacking, although Theodore doesn’t know why until it speaks. “You be destroying Master Regulus’s locket?”

If it belonged to his late master—yes, Regulus Black was a Death Eater.

“Yes. We know how to do it. We’ve already destroyed another one.” Harry turns back to Theodore as if for his approval, but Theodore just stares at him in silence. No, he doesn’t think it’s the best idea to give a mad elf twisted by Dark magic the information that there are other Horcruxes out there.

“Kreacher be getting Master Regulus’s locket,” the elf whispers, and vanishes. Theodore stares at the place where it stood.

Harry smiles. “Well, that was easy.”

“You are insane, Potter.”

“I thought we were calling each other by our first names now, Theodore.” Harry turns around and pouts at him, in a way that sends Theodore’s thoughts careening down new paths. “My feelings are hurt.”

Right, I did say—

Theodore is on the verge of apologizing when he catches himself by remembering, among other things, what he just witnessed. “You are infuriating.”

“I don’t see why,” Harry says, and smiles at him, a blast of sunshine in the dark house that silences Theodore. Harry is the one who turns to face the elf as he appears again. “Thank you, Kreacher? That’s your name, right?”

“No one bes asking,” the elf says, and practically tosses the locket at Harry. At least he has silk ready to wrap around the Horcrux. Theodore wouldn’t rescue him if it possessed him.

All right, yes, he would. But not without going into a separate room to scream at the wall a little first.

“I’m asking,” Harry says, and puts the locket away in a pouch hanging from his belt. “Thank you, Kreacher. I promise you it will be destroyed.” He glances over his shoulder at Theodore. “Can you send a Pensieve memory through the post?”

“You could bottle it and give the owl instructions to be careful,” Theodore says. He’s never done it or heard of it being done before. “Which means that we shouldn’t use your Merlin.”

Harry smiles, and Theodore smiles back without meaning to. “But who do you want to send it to?” he adds, because he can’t imagine who else needs to know about the Horcruxes or any of Harry’s immediate memories.

“I was going to send Kreacher a Pensieve memory of us destroying the locket.”

Theodore stares. He’s peripherally aware of Kreacher doing the same thing, and wants to roll his eyes. At least the house-elf agrees with him that Harry is a strange person.

“Kreacher would be liking that,” the elf whispers a second later, wringing its hands.

Theodore struggles with himself for a minute. There’s no need to treat an elf like that. Of course you want to be as kind to them as they need and deserve, but Kreacher is both twisted by Dark magic and not an elf of the family.

Theodore reckons Harry doesn’t care about that, though, or wouldn’t if he knew more about elves. He would just want to help them for the same reason he wants to help Longbottom defeat the Dark Lord.

“We can do that,” Theodore says, and moves on from what that moment of compassion means to the practical matters. “But we’ll have to be careful with the owl, like I said, and you should watch the memory beforehand, to make sure that it contains exactly what you want it to contain.”

“That’s no problem if you have a Pensieve,” Harry says, and he does at least wait to see if Theodore will nod, which he does—it’s another thing he stole from Nott’s Nook—before turning back to the elf. “Thank you, Kreacher.”

After Kreacher vanishes, Harry goes to leave. Theodore follows him quietly, and decides that he might as well bring up the elf thing, because bringing up the runic circles carved into Harry’s flesh and the casual way he destroyed Mrs. Black’s portrait feel beyond him right now.

“Most wizards don’t treat house-elves like people, you know. I’m sure the Blacks who used to live there probably didn’t, or the elf wouldn’t be so—insane.”

“I’m not most wizards,” Harry says.

No, you fucking aren’t.

“We’ll do this, and then Kreacher won’t come to your house and try to steal the locket back or something. We’ve got to worry he might do that, if he’s protected it for this long and thinks of it as something that belongs to his dead master instead of That Bastard.”

Theodore has to concede that that’s true, and not a danger he would necessarily have thought of.

They destroy the locket with Fiendfyre, later, and they do send a memory to Kreacher. Theodore shakes his head as he watches the owl vanish into the distance.

It sems more and more likely that he’ll have to be the one keeping an eye on Harry in the future, and making sure that his sense of compassion and curiosity doesn’t kill him.

Runic circles carved into his flesh.

Theodore leans on the wall and contemplates seriously, for long moments, whether he wants to be friends, or lovers, with someone this insane.

But that doesn’t come into it, really. Harry still saved Theodore’s freedom and sanity, and that makes him someone who Theodore owes—but Harry doesn’t want the debt and will never claim it. So the only thing Theodore can do is remain close to him, and try to save Harry’s freedom and sanity in return.

He hopes it will be enough.