lomonaaeren

Thanks again for all the reviews!

Involved In What I Know

“I don’t belong in this world.”

Harry says that, says he has to design runes that will allow him to disappear again because he doesn’t know what else to do. He has no one, he seems to think, standing there with Theodore right in front of him and ready to give anything for him.

“Give people a chance to know you. Give them a chance to help you.” Theodore reaches out and takes Harry’s chin, lifting it, so that he can look into those brilliant eyes and maybe make his plea more convincing. “Please. You remember what happened when we were in that corridor in Hogwarts?”

Harry nods. “When I revealed myself to you?”

“Yes. I kissed you. Do you know why?”

Harry hesitates, and Theodore feels something in his stomach sink. Please don’t let him be such a complete innocent that I have to explain everything.

“I didn’t then,” Harry says slowly, “but hearing that you didn’t have any friends in Slytherin…did you choose me out of desperation? I’d hate to be a choice someone made in desperation.”

Theodore shakes his head and leans his forehead against Harry’s. His heart is beating, soaring, leaping around inside his chest. His body feels as if it’s burning up.

“Maybe I made the only choice I could,” Theodore breathes, and he does believe that. But he has to explain it in such a way that Harry sees it the way he does, not an option born of desperation. “But the only choice doesn’t have to be a bad one. If you knew how much your intelligence strikes me, and your beauty—”

“Beauty.” Harry half-shakes his head, and if he could see himself from the outside, he wouldn’t, but he can’t, and it’s up to Theodore to convince him.

“Just listen,” Theodore says, and presses closer so that Harry can’t disappear, in either body or mind. “Yes, beauty. I’m not necessarily talking about just face and form, although those are worth more than you want to acknowledge. But I also mean that you’re kind and have a sense of humor and you don’t want to cause people pain and—if you knew how rare those people had been in my life.”

The words tear themselves out of his chest. This is what he once thought he couldn’t speak to Harry. He’ll have to, because letting Harry disappear out of his life again is not an option.

“Then you have low standards, is what you’re saying.”

Theodore laughs, although he feels a quick flash of pain that that’s Harry’s reaction to his confession. He reaches down and links his fingers with Harry’s. “Won’t you at least try? Or do you find me disgusting? Or do you not like blokes?”

Harry blinks up at Theodore like a startled owlet. “I never considered dating someone or getting married. The protective magic would have hidden me from anyone unless I made an enormous effort, and probably destroyed it.”

“And now it’s gone.”

Harry closes his eyes and nods. “If I—if I just pretend that it’s gone forever, and I date you, and it doesn’t work out, where does that leave me?”

Ah. So that’s part of it. He’s too wary to trust that this will last.

“In a world you could revolutionize with your Runes discoveries.” Theodore shakes his arm a little, making Harry open his eyes and look at him. “Did you not realize that multiple people have been searching for ways to invent rituals that interact with Astronomy and create runic circles that work together on your body the way you did? For centuries? You’re brilliant, Harry. You don’t need me. It’s very much the other way around.”

It makes Theodore feel as if he’s stripped naked to admit that, but he also doesn’t see any other way to tell the truth. So he stands naked and shivering in what could be the cold wind of Harry’s disapproval, and waits to see what he’ll say.

Harry looks up with slightly parted lips. He’s lovely and strange and brilliant in the moonlight, and Theodore squeezes his fingers again, because he has realized something, and he wants to ask about it before Harry manages to distract him again.

“Harry,” Theodore says, and he can’t prevent the words from coming out softly and he doesn’t really want to. “You haven’t made much clear about what you want.”

“I just wanted a safe place to stay,” Harry mutters. “The reason I keep saying I don’t belong in this world is that I’m so inexperienced. I barely know how friendship works. Or sex, either.” He looks up, and at least he’s gifting Theodore with his own honesty, when he could so easily have tried to retreat into a shell. “If you want to try for it…”

“And your only choice is me?” Theodore puts his hands on Harry’s shoulders. He thinks it’s going to be a light touch, but it’s not. It’s hard, and it’s shaking, and he’s leaning closer so that he can hold Harry close, because—

“I’d rather you than anyone else I observed,” Harry says.

The burning in Theodore’s chest eases, and then transforms, becoming something so much more beautiful and nuanced and interesting that he presses close to Harry and kisses him for the second time.

Harry leaps into the kiss as if he’s the one who initiated it, as if it’s part of what he wants. In fact, he’s the one who laps at Theodore’s lips until Theodore lets his tongue inside with a gasp.

I’ve never done this before—never done this—

The mists that seem to be haunting Theodore’s head break apart, and he can admit the truth, if only to himself.

Never thought I would get a chance to do it.

Theodore shifts closer, but Harry is the one who opens his legs so Theodore falls between them.

“We could—” Theodore says, pulling back with a gasp.

Harry closes the gap.

Then he says, in the brightest and hottest voice imaginable, “Among the experiences I missed out on is snogging in some secluded area in Hogwarts,” and then urges Theodore back against the wall of the Owlery as he gasps in surprise.

Harry rocks against him.

Their cocks are aligned.

It’s brilliant. More than brilliant. More brilliant than Harry’s Runes.

More brilliant than Theodore’s hand on his cock, in lonely, furtive moments, when—

And then the memories are gone, because Theodore is in the now. Pleasure, bright and searing, and warmth, against his chest and on his shoulders and cock and between his legs, and breath panting in his face.

He comes, he knows he’s coming, but somewhere beyond the fall of his own pleasure, he does remember to shove a leg between Harry’s.

There’s a grunt that’s not his own, there’s the pulsing of warmth not his own against his leg, and Theodore lets go.

Harry is there when he pulls back and gasps, and Harry is the one who looks at Theodore and smiles and says, “That was—satisfying,” and pulls honesty from Theodore before he even realizes he’s going to use it.

“And not at all bad for a first time.”

Theodore didn’t plan to say that. He didn’t plan to reveal that he was a virgin, not knowing any more than Harry about what was going on, what there was to this, what it was like to share his body with someone else. He wasn’t going to show vulnerability—

But he kisses Harry, and Harry is the one who whispers, “It was great. Let’s go downstairs and do that again.”

So he thinks something went right.

Marked the Edge

Harry is the one who realizes the Ministry will probably round Muggleborns up soon. He’s the one who comes up with the idea of hiding them, using Runes, of course, but also based on the charm that kept him protected for so long.

Harry is the reason that Theodore is standing in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, chanting the Everlasting Healing Charm, while Harry casts a spell that will hide Muggleborns from the sight of those who want to harm them, but still allow them to interact with each other. Theodore has to heal him to keep Harry from bleeding out while he did something with one of the runic circles on his body.

Harry didn’t explain all the parameters of the spell, just that he would need Theodore to chant and that the ritual would take some of his blood, so Theodore has Blood-Replenishers on hand. Harry didn’t explain that he would call the sun into the fucking night sky. With his runes. With nothing but his magic and intellect.

He didn’t explain that he would sag to the floor of the Forbidden Forest, dying, afterwards.

“Harry!”

Theodore seizes Harry from the Forest floor. Harry tips his head towards Theodore, smiling dreamily. That’s the blood loss, Theodore knows, and maybe the fact that the ritual succeeded.

Because Harry is suicidal.

Theodore thinks, as he Apparates, that he believed Harry’s neglect of his health just extended to things like forgetting to eat when he was deep in his research. It turns out that he just doesn’t care about his life.

Not if the magic is going right.

And as much as Theodore admires Harry’s Runes genius, he is not going to lose Harry to it.

*

“Fix him.”

“I’m doing the best I can, Mr. Nott.”

Theodore remembered the name of a Healer who owes his father some favors, and he went to her. She lives on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, so at least it wasn’t a far Apparition from the Forest. She keeps casting Theodore dubious glances as she casts spells that will speed up the production of new blood in Harry’s body, and make sure that he doesn’t bleed out from the stupidity he did.

Theodore knows that she’ll probably contact his father the minute he and Harry have left. He doesn’t intend to leave her the choice.

He can admit that holding her at wandpoint as she works is perhaps an overreaction, but the fury, the grief, the potential loss pounding inside him mean that he doesn’t care.

“That’s as well as I can fix him,” the Healer says at last, her voice indicating her distaste for Theodore’s terminology. “The majority is going to be rest and potions.” She tries to step into the other room, saying, “I’ll be a moment while I fetch you the potions—”

Theodore moves with her. The other room has a Floo, and he isn’t going to leave her the chance to contact his father.

“Mr. Nott, this is highly irregular!”

“Do it.”

Theodore has never tried to be particularly threatening. He just wanted to keep his head down at school and go mostly unnoticed, so that the other Slytherins wouldn’t pull him into their games or try to recruit him for the Dark Lord. He always hoped that Father would pay less attention than he ended up paying to Theodore.

But it turns out that he can be threatening enough to make the Healer’s face turn white.

“Of course,” she whispers, and she goes into the other room, and she does only sort through potions until she finds several cloudy bottles that do look like standard healing potions. Theodore still thoroughly examines them, but finally he’s satisfied and tucks them away.

The Healer relaxes, eyes darting towards her Floo. Theodore laughs softly, attracting her attention. “Did you think that I would let you inform my father?”

The Healer’s eyes widen, and she puts her head up, gambling with no cards in her hands. “If I disappear or die, you shall hear from Teyrnon!”

“Good thing that I don’t intend to do anything like that,” Theodore says, not keeping the contempt from his voice as he aims his wand at her. “Obliviate.”

And he goes back to the other room to take the center of his life home.

Cry Out Sharply

“I need to ask you something, and it’s not about Longbottom, and it’s important.”

“All right.” Theodore braces himself. They were talking about the secret Defense group that Longbottom apparently ran in their fifth year and didn’t invite any Slytherins to, but it’s also obvious that something else has been on Harry’s mind from the very beginning of the conversation.

Maybe he’s upset about the way that Theodore scolded him when he was recovering from his wound. Maybe he’s going to tell Theodore he wants to go back under the protective magic after all, since he cast it for the Muggleborns. Maybe—

“Misty said something about how you loved me. Is that true? Is there something I can do to make this easier for you?”

Theodore’s mouth falls open, and his world reels and crashes to the floor. “Misty—told you that?” Misty is a loyal house-elf, and Theodore has never had cause to doubt her before. “Why would she tell you something like that?”

“I asked her why you were so upset during the sun part of my ritual, and she told me.”

Only Harry would wonder why someone was upset with him in the first place, when he—

Theodore grabs the edge of the table and stares at the wall. It’s easier to speak when he isn’t looking at Harry, at least at the moment. “What do you mean by ‘make things easier for me?’”

“I don’t know how to be in love with someone,” Harry says, voice beautiful and beloved and blunt as always. “Or have someone be in love with me. I thought I was sparing you some worry by not telling you about the sun rune, but obviously it doesn’t work that way. So. How can I make this easier? Will you tell me what you want to know? What I can do so you don’t worry so much?”

Colorful patterns swarm for a moment across the wall before Theodore closes his eyes, and then they swarm across the blackness of the backs of his eyelids.

I had no idea—I didn’t know—

I have to answer something.

Finally, Theodore turns back to Harry, and decides that he has to clarify something before all else. “I—you mean that? You really don’t want to just vanish back under your protective magic?”

“There are plenty of times I want to do that,” Harry says, his words weighted with quietness that seems to make them splash against the tabletop like water. “But on the other hand, what would that gain me? I couldn’t imagine any other sort of life, at one time. Now I can. Here with you and Misty and even Merlin. Around larger crowds, someday.” He meets Theodore’s eyes, and Theodore can see how difficult this is for him, but he’s still looking, not looking away. “Getting my NEWTS. Having a business of my own. Being with you. If that’s something you want.”

Theodore has to sit there and just hold the happiness inside his chest for a moment, the happiness he never thought he would have. Then he nods. “That’s all I want.”

“I mean, you should work on other ambitions, too.” Harry gives him the kind of anxious look that Theodore sometimes wishes he would have, but sure enough, what comes out of his mouth is another Harry non sequitur. “I know I’ve read things that say you should never depend too much on just your partner, and—”

Theodore gets up and comes around the table with a laugh that he can’t hold back. He wraps his hands around Harry’s wrists and strokes the bones gently, and Harry sits there and literally gapes at him.

Theodore once thought that he would never be the center of anyone’s attention like that. Not for himself. Just because of his money or his connections or his blood or what he could provide to his partner.

Now he’s wanted, just for himself.

He’s so happy.

“I know that,” Theodore says, when he decides that he can’t just go on stroking Harry’s wrists forever. “But right now, it’s all I want. Just like I want food when I’m hungry and something else when it’s satisfied. Except that I don’t know if I’m ever going to get enough of being with you.” He cups Harry’s cheek and turns his head, marveling at the softness of Harry’s skin and the brilliance of his eyes. He tries to honor that with the way he kisses Harry’s mouth and forehead. “We’ll find the way forwards together, Harry. I know that everything isn’t perfect yet. But you’re willing to try, and that means the world to me.”

Harry leans against him, looking up at Theodore. Theodore strokes his hair back, and doesn’t spend any time worrying about what comes next, or the fact that Harry hasn’t yet said he loves him back.

It doesn’t matter. The joy is all-consuming, soaring, piercing, a bird singing in the center of Theodore’s chest.