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

[lomonaaeren]

The Shadow of His Equipage

No one is supposed to be able to view a new initiate’s induction into the Unspeakable who isn’t already an Unspeakable or the initiate himself. But Harry has an Invisibility Cloak (courtesy of Longbottom returning it) that cannot be seen through except by things like Moody’s magical eye.

And Harry already explained that he wants Theodore there for his initiation, and that none of the Unspeakables present will have anything like the magical eye, or even a wand. The initiation has to be passed by knowledge or some other kind of power that doesn’t involve wands, to show that the new Unspeakable has already passed beyond the common and everyday sorts of magic.

(No guess which Harry will use).

Theodore trails after Harry under the Cloak, and they come out into a space with a glittering black floor that seems to be speckled with dots of purple and dark blue. It hurts Theodore’s senses. He clings to the Cloak as best he can, and the dizziness does actually seem to ease a bit.

Harry is standing in the middle of the circular room, with just enough torches burning around him to make things visible. Three Unspeakables face him in a triangular formation, clad in their own impenetrable cloaks, their hands folded.

“Harry Potter. What do you come seeking?”

“Knowledge beyond worlds. Wisdom beyond wealth.”

The first Unspeakable lifts their clasped hands, and a fireball blazes from them straight at Harry’s face. Theodore has to bite his lip, hard, to avoid revealing his presence by crying out.

Harry, though, only smiles as though this is everything he expected. He opens his mouth and breathes, and—

His breath assumes the shape of a rune.

Theodore’s brain flips over for a second. He’s seen Harry trace runes in blood, in flesh, in the air, and by speaking them. But not just by breathing them out, especially in an environment that’s not cold enough for his breath to form a mist.

But there the rune is, turning into a rain of water that puts the fireball out.

The Unspeakable who cast the fire bows their head and keeps it bowed. The one on their left moves forwards and asks, “Harry Potter. What do you want to achieve?”

“The darkest of knowledge, in the brightest of ways. The brightest of power, in the darkest of ways.”

Theodore isn’t entirely surprised when the Unspeakable spreads their hands as if letting a bird go and light and darkness together flood out from under them, searing and blinding, hurling themselves as Harry like arrows. He’s alarmed, but not surprised.

Harry laughs, and sings.

It’s a single, high note that pierces Theodore’s ears, although not in an unpleasant way. It also speaks to him, and it says, “Sowilo.”

That’s a rune he should bloody well know, when Harry nearly died using it.

This rune manifests as a sun on the air, sucking in the light the Unspeakable flung at Harry and lighting up the darkness. Theodore doesn’t think he’s imagining the startled breath from the Unspeakable who cast the spell, or the muttered oath from another. Maybe now they understand how Harry hid the Muggleborns during the war.

Three years since, and Harry hasn’t claimed credit for that. Theodore wishes he would, but he doesn’t want to push.

There are other things Harry can do that are so much more intriguing.

The Unspeakable of the light and darkness joins the other with bowed head. The third one moves a step forwards, swaying as if dancing. “Harry Potter. What do you want to overcome?”

“Fear in its highest. Fear in its lowest.”

The Unspeakable does something that might be a nod. Then they spread their hands, and what comes forth are—

People.

Floating, circling, staring faces, and laughing, gasping voices. Theodore can see the illusions of fingers pointing at Harry, and hear the laughter turning to jeers.

This is Harry’s worst fear, being seen by crowds.

Theodore tenses despite himself, ready to rush forwards and rescue Harry, but although Harry’s breathing has quickened a little, he doesn’t run away. He clenches his fists down by his sides and closes his eyes.

And then he vanishes.

Theodore’s brain stumbles again. It’s the way that Harry vanished when he still had his protective spell, except that was a result of someone else casting an overpowered charm on him. And Theodore can still remember him, so this isn’t the same as that spell.

The Unspeakable’s spell, however, has broken apart, as all three of them stare around, and then they look at each other. “What are we doing here?” one of them asks.

Harry reappears.

Their attention snaps to him at once, and there’s a long moment when Theodore holds his breath and fears this will go badly, if they resent Harry’s interference with their minds. But the third Unspeakable steps back with a bowed head and folded hands, and then all of them bow to Harry, deep and sweeping.

“Hail the Unspeakable whose breath is runes,” says the first one.

“Hail the Unspeakable who sings the ancient language,” says the second.

“Hail the Unspeakable who carves his runes in thought,” says the third.

Harry smiles slowly, a smile so brilliant that it’s physically painful for Theodore not to take off the Cloak and go to him. He listens with half an ear as Harry receives the congratulations of the Unspeakables, and then turns and walks out of the initiation hall with Theodore trailing behind him.

“That was bloody impressive,” Theodore whispers, as soon as he thinks they’re far enough away that Harry won’t get in trouble.

Harry turns around and grins at him. “Thank you,” he says, leaning forwards and taking down the hood of the cloak to kiss Theodore, softly, sweetly. “Thank you for coming to watch.”

“You could have disappeared back under that spell at any time, couldn’t you have?’

Harry smiles at him.

“Why didn’t you?” Theodore has to ask. It’s not that he wants Harry to, of course not. It’s that he knows how much some of the pressure is, how it gets to Harry just walking down Diagon Alley, and he would have expected at least one vanishing.

“Because it would make you afraid I was leaving you,” Harry says simply. “It took ages for me to work out the spell variation that would make me undetectable to everyone but not make you forget me.”

Theodore leans on him, and they make their way out of the Department of Mysteries together, Harry as a full-fledged Unspeakable, Theodore as unspeakably devoted.

The River Is Moving

“You could invite someone if you wanted.”

“You could invite someone if you wanted.”

Theodore knows that Harry has a friendship of sorts with Neville Longbottom, since they defeated Voldemort by both destroying Horcruxes. But Harry just shakes his head, eyes wide, fastened on Theodore as if he’s the only person that exists. “No. I want us to be the same.”

And so it is that they hold their bonding in private, with just the two of them.

*

Theodore’s father killed himself after the fall of the Dark Lord. Frankly, Theodore doesn’t often think of the man anymore. What matters is that he can hold his bonding to Harry on the grounds of Nott’s Nook, where members of his family have done it since the beginning.

He values that in a way that makes his hands shake and his eyes blur when he thinks about.

He’s standing now by the small silver river that encircles the garden, trained by magic into a perfect loop. He faces the house, and his hands are clasped behind his back. He wears dark blue robes, the color of dusk.

He looks up to see Harry walking slowly towards him. He wears silver robes the tricky color of stars and the moon overhead.

Theodore extends his hands, palms up. Harry walks over and puts his own hands in Theodore’s, beaming his joy at him. A wind of magic picks up, stirring Harry’s hair and putting a blaze of color in his cheeks.

It’s a signal that the magic is working, approving. They can begin.

“I take Harry James Potter for my beloved and my own,” Theodore begins, and the wind falls into stillness. Harry is watching him with such devoted attention that Theodore’s face burns. “I ask him for his defense, and to permit me to defend him in turn. I ask him for his springs, his summers, his autumns, his winters. I ask for his sorrows and his joys, his anger and his laughter. I will share all this with him, and stand beside him in mind and soul and magic beyond the parting of death.”

He once never thought he would speak such words to anyone, which supposedly bind beyond death and mean that he and Harry will be reborn into another life to find each other again. Theodore couldn’t imagine anyone he would care about that way.

Now, he doesn’t have to imagine.

“I take Theodore Michael Nott for my beloved and my own.” Harry’s eyes are shining, and small traceries of runes begin to appear in the air next to him. Theodore already knows that he won’t use the exact same words as the ones in the Nott ritual. Harry told him he wanted to choose his own, but he would use some of the same words because he liked them. “I ask him for his love, and to never leave me. I ask him for his mornings, his afternoons, his evenings, his nights. I ask him for his sorrows and his joys, his anger and his laughter. I will share all this with him, and stand beside him in mind and soul and magic beyond the gates of death.”

The runes glowing next to Harry spring into the air. For a moment, Theodore has the impression that they have little golden wings they’re using to flutter around him, and then—

Then they settle, burning, into his skin, and he stares as new patterns appear that look almost like the runic circles Harry has carved into his own flesh.

“Harry,” Theodore whispers, enthralled, staring, moving their joined hands as close as he can get to the new runes. “What did you do?”

“You wanted to be reborn together. This ensures we will be,” Harry says simply.

Theodore drags Harry towards him and crushes him with his kiss. Harry responds eagerly, willingly, and uses some more runes that aren’t new to Theodore to make his arse slick and open. Theodore lowers him to the ground and drives into him. Harry throws his head back to face the stars, ignoring the dirt that’s getting all over his star-colored robe.

Theodore does, too. He’s losing himself in the warmth, the pleasure, the sheer feeling of what’s happened, the building sensation of binding—

And the rush of knowing exactly how much he matters to Harry, how his runemaster wants to be joined him for this life and all the lives to come.

Evening All Afternoon

Theodore clutches his daughter and feels his heart vibrating through his chest hard enough to shake the baby in his arms.

“Theodore, I want to hold her.”

Theodore holds out the baby, slowly and reluctantly. It’s not because he doesn’t want to share her with Harry. Of course not. Harry’s runic circles, his impossible genius for combining blood and semen and gently taken pieces of their souls, are the reasons that she lives at all.

He just—wants to hold her. This miracle child, this daughter he never thought he would have.

Harry looks down at her with a deep softening in his face that Theodore has never seen before. Then again, Theodore doesn’t need that kind of devotion.

Harry brushes the baby’s dark hair out of her face. She stirs, and her eyes open, dark and unfocused.

“What shall we name her?” Harry asks, so enthralled that his words are little more than a mumble.

Theodore takes a deep breath. They didn’t discuss names, by mutual agreement, until they knew if the miracle would work. But now they know it does, and he can only think of one thing he wants to call her.

“Vianna,” he whispers.

“Why that name?” Harry looks at him at last, although his arm still cradles their child defensively against his chest.

“Because it’s what my mother—thought to name a sister I never had. She said it reminded her of twilight, and—it’s twilight now.”

Harry stares at him for a long moment, long enough that Theodore thinks he might not agree. Theodore doesn’t want to name her after his mother, though, or Harry’s mother, although maybe that will come.

(It will come, part of him thinks, remembering that Ollivander spoke once of their eldest daughter).

Then Harry leans forwards, trembling slightly, and kisses Theodore across the glowing rune circle where she appeared with all the tenderness he knows. “Yes,” Harry says thickly. “I agree. Vianna Nott.”

“Not Potter?”

“No, just one last name.”

Theodore decides not to correct the misunderstanding. They will have other children, and perhaps some of them will bear the Potter name, or choose Nott-Potter. He reaches out his arms, and Harry steps forwards, bringing both himself and Vianna into Theodore’s embrace.

Theodore bows his head over the two people he fiercely adores, and thinks that his life is a brilliant, starry eternity.

The End.