lomonaaeren

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Chapter Thirteen—For the Struggle

“So you and Nott are really boyfriends. Slughorn wasn’t making that up.”

“Hmm. Yeah.”

“Harry, are you listening to me?”

Harry looks up and blinks a little. Neville is standing beside his bed, staring at him in what looks like exasperation. Harry shrugs and flushes. “Sorry,” he admits. “No.”

“Why are you boyfriends with him, though?”

“Because I find him attractive?” Harry isn’t sure what Neville is asking, and Neville must see it, because he rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“Not what I meant. I more meant, why him? I don’t think you spoke a word to Nott all these years. You never mentioned him. Ron did a few times, but not you. Why would you want to date him?”

“It’s kind of private, Neville.”

Neville tilts his head. “Does it have something to do with what got you called up to the Headmistress’s office yesterday?”

“It’s private.”

Harry is surprised by the bite in his voice. Neville blinks and lifts his hands. “Yeah, okay. I can see that.” His eyes are bright with humor, though, and his mouth is twitching, so Harry reckons he can’t be too upset.

“Sorry,” Harry says, and eases back with an effort. “It’s not you. It’s just that I don’t want to talk about it to anyone. Not without Theo’s permission. And he hasn’t given me his permission to do that yet.”

Neville stares at him for a long moment. Then he sighs. “When you talk about permission like that, it makes it sound like he has you on a leash. That’s why I was a little worried. Because I never knew that you would stand to be someone’s pet.”

Harry narrows his eyes, and his magic bounces up and down beside him for a moment, waiting to be used. He shakes it away. Neville can’t understand, and Harry doesn’t need him to. Keeping Theo’s confidence is more important than getting rid of a few people’s mistaken impressions. “I reckon that most other people won’t understand, either, and I’m in for a fun few days,” he says lightly as he stands.

“Yeah, I reckon so.” Neville grins suddenly. “What I wouldn’t give to be there when the first person comes up and complains that you’re dating a bloke instead of the witch they all thought you would.”

“Just come down to breakfast. It’ll probably happen there.”

*

“But why are you gay? That’s all I want to know. Just tell me, Harry. Once I know, I’ll leave you alone, I swear.”

Theo can, vaguely, remember a time when he would have ignored those words, or only looked up to watch the latest Potter drama so that he could tell Draco he knew all about it later. Now he snaps his head up, his eyes catching on the witch standing in front of the Gryffindor table with her hands clasped together as if wringing them.

Standing in front of Harry.

“I don’t owe you an explanation, Romilda.”

Romilda. The witch who tried to give a love potion to Harry, and who only didn’t succeed because Harry accidentally gave the potioned sweets to Weasley instead.

Theo is out of his chair before he’s made a conscious decision. Blaise catches his eye and raises one brow. He’s probably speaking against the advisability of making a scene in public, exactly the way Theo’s father would have.

Theo doesn’t care. Some things will stay private, including the reason that Daphne flinches away from Theo when he passes her side of the table, but others are going to be public, and everyone is going to understand right the fuck now.

“I just want to know,” Vane is saying in an impassioned voice as Theo approaches behind her. “I promise. I just want an explanation. Then you never have to talk to me again, but I think you owe me an explanation for this.”

Harry is opening his mouth, annoyed, but then he catches Theo’s eye, and his whole body relaxes. He falls back into his chair and gives Theo a silly smile. Theo moves around the Gryffindor table and stands with his hand on the back of Harry’s chair, staring at Vane.

Vane glares back at him. She doesn’t want for courage, in the manner of the rest of her House. But if she thinks she can cow him, then her bravery has crossed the line into stupidity.

“You want to know why Harry’s gay?” Theo asks her.

Harry tenses in his seat and turns around to look at Theo over his shoulder. He’s almost vibrating with something that might be wariness. Perhaps he’s wondering how far Theo will go to keep him, and if that might include spilling secrets.

It won’t. Neither Harry nor Theo owes anything to Vane. But it does mean that Theo is going to be as open as he feels comfortable being, and at the end of it, Vane won’t have any doubts who Harry belongs to.

Nor will anyone watching.

“Harry doesn’t owe you an explanation,” Theo says. “Not to the girl who tried to love potion him, and now is acting as if she has a right to his attention even after the war, when he died for you and the rest of us.”

“What?”

“Did you forget he died?” Theo asks in genuine wonder. He can’t remember, now, off the top of his head, if Vane was at the school last year. Maybe she wasn’t and has only heard the story of what Harry did through second-hand accounts.

“He didn’t really die,” Vane says quickly. “It was a trick to take You-Know-Who off-guard.”

“Was it a trick to take You-Know-Who off-guard, Harry?” Theo asks, turning to look down at Harry, who’s been watching Theo and Vane trade barbs in absolute silence. “Would you describe it that way?”

*

Having Theo this close is not good for Harry’s desire to grab and kiss him. But even though Theo has his hand resting on Harry’s chair, Harry knows well enough that’s not license to just seize him.

And if just sitting here and speaking gently will make Vane go away and stop bothering him, it’s worth it.

“No, it wasn’t a trick,” Harry says quietly. “He cast the Killing Curse on me, and I died. I came back. Then Malfoy’s mum lied when Voldemort—” Theo’s hand presses down, but Vane jumps back “—asked her to check if I was dead or not. I only pretended to be dead after that, not when I was actually facing the Killing Curse.”

Vane stares at Harry with her mouth slightly open. It doesn’t make her any more attractive. But then, Harry can’t imagine finding anyone but Theo attractive ever again.

“You can’t have really died.”

“Why not?”

“Because you would be dead!”

From the intense stares they’re getting from other tables, even as a lot of people pretend to be continuing with their breakfasts, Harry is sure that Vane isn’t the only one who thinks like this. He lets a humorless smile play around his mouth.

“You don’t know what it was like, Vane.” He lets his eyes scan the Great Hall, and notices a number of people who jerk as if they didn’t expect him to catch them staring. “None of you except the people who actually spent time around Voldemort or helped me fight him know what it was like.”

“I helped you fight him!”

“You were in the battle, Vane. That’s not the same thing.”

Vane looks as if she’s been slapped. Harry wonders if it’s a point of pride for her that she fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, and he’s attacking that pride by saying the things he is.

But he doesn’t need the worry about the emotional well-being of a girl who tried to use a love potion on him. Or that’s what he imagines Theo would say, and Harry and Theo are coming to agree on that.

For all that what Theo suffered was a thousand times worse, she shouldn’t have tried to use one on me, either.

“Then what do you count as helping you fight him?”

“Going on the quest to destroy artifacts important to him with me,” Harry says, and leans so that he can smile at Ron and Hermione down the Gryffindor table. They smile back at him, even though Hermione’s eyes are also darting between Harry and Theo over and over again. “Going into danger with me at the Ministry at the end of fifth year.” This time, he catches Neville’s and Ginny’s eyes, and Luna’s, where she sits serene and smiling at the Ravenclaw table. “And there are people I can’t thank, the ones who died doing it.”

Sirius. Cedric. Dumbledore. Even Snape.

The names don’t all burn in his chest with the same force or fire, but they’re there. Harry will never forget them, and he won’t let someone who was at the Battle of Hogwarts but didn’t go straight into the thick of things, or get killed as a casualty, or spy, be treated the same way.

“Well, your boyfriend didn’t fight him either!”

“He knew what it was like.” Harry doesn’t turn to look at Theo. He’s only saying this much at all because everyone knows what Theo’s father used to be. “And anyway, I don’t owe you anything. I’m gay because that’s the way I am. I’m with Theo because I want to be. Now, keep your promise after the explanation and go away.”

Vane turns bright red. Of course she doesn’t go away. Harry sighs silently as she splutters, “You—you don’t have to be! You could—you could date—”

“You?”

“I love you, Harry!”

“No one who loves me would give me a love potion.”

“But that’s the sign that I love you! Please, won’t you give me a chance? You’re beautiful and I could worship you all day—we could go on dates and you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else coming up and bothering you—”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Theo says, his voice dark, and pulls Harry to his feet by his shoulders. Harry swallows, tingling all over from the touch. He hopes he doesn’t get an erection in front of everyone.

“Harry doesn’t want to date you,” Theo says, his voice clipped and his eyes, when Harry dares a look, dark with fury. “He doesn’t have to explain or justify himself to you. Leave him the fuck alone, Vane, do you hear me?”

“Mr. Nott, language!”

Harry just rolls his eyes. Professor McGonagall is on her feet, but if she only chose to interfere now and not when Vane made a big scene in the Great Hall, he has to wonder about her sense of timing.

“Harry can say that for himself if he wants!”

“I already said it,” Harry snaps. “I’m gay and I want to date Theo. You said you would leave, and you’re already breaking your promises. I wouldn’t even trust you as a friend, let alone someone I want to date, Go away.”

Vane flushes so red that she would rival Ron on a bad day. She glances around as if she hopes someone else will speak up and be upset about Harry dating a Slytherin, but in the end, she turns around and runs off.

Harry shakes his head and leans back against Theo for a moment. Then Theo begins tugging him in the direction of the Great Hall’s doors.

“Theo?”

“I think I want to eat in the kitchens this morning, instead of sharing you with everyone else.”

Harry smiles and follows him. He can still barely believe that Theo’s hands were on him, gripping and pulling him, and that he didn’t react badly when Harry leaned back against him. He’s the one Theo trusts this close.

It matters.

*

“Please take it, Nott.”

Theo glances at Draco over the top of his Potions book. He’s seated in his favorite chair close to the fire in the common room, now that he knows for sure Daphne isn’t spreading Amortentia around via the fire. Draco is holding out a folded piece of parchment to him with a shaking hand, his eyes lowered.

“Who’s that from?”

“My mother.”

“Did you tell her about your plan of donating half the Malfoy Galleons to the Janus Thickey Ward?”

Draco swallows hard. Theo smiles and reaches out to take the parchment. The plan isn’t one that Draco would have come up with himself, of course, but it does mean that he’ll be giving away what he values most, other than his family, because Theo does want it.

And he’ll look so good in the eyes of society, he might begin to rehabilitate the Malfoy name sooner than he’d thought possible. Really, he should thank Theo for looking out for him.

“I—told her.”

“And she approved?”

Draco turns and walks off. Theo lets him go. He’s past the longing he had in the first days of his vengeance for Draco and Daphne and Pansy to stand in front of him and answer all his questions. Frankly, that becomes boring. It’s less obvious then how much they hate him and are trying to fight the potion.

Not that they can.

Theo casts a bunch of detection charms on the letter, because he isn’t stupid, but finds only ordinary parchment and ink. He slits the envelope open and raises his eyebrows a little when he sees how deeply the words are pressed and scribbled. He doesn’t know Narcissa Malfoy well, but it seems unlikely she would write like this most of the time.

Then again, it’s just as unlikely that she would write to him in the first place.

Dear Mr. Nott,

Draco has informed me that you are dating Mr. Potter. May I offer you my congratulations? Not an easy man to catch or choose, but someone who will repay you with undying loyalty once caught.

Theo narrows his eyes. Yeah, Mrs. Malfoy wouldn’t just offer him a compliment for no reason. This time, he whispers a charm that will show him the presence of any substance besides ink on the parchment. There are potions that charm will find that wouldn’t respond to the detection ones because they technically aren’t poisons. They can just subtly influence and change someone’s behavior over time.

He doesn’t find any of those, either. Theo shakes his head and goes back to reading.

The confrontation in the middle of the Great Hall this morning is apparently the talk of the castle, according to Draco. It seems Mr. Potter was mannerly enough to remember that my courage saved his life in the Forbidden Forest. I will not claim a life-debt, as he has amply fulfilled that by his testimony that kept Draco and myself out of Azkaban, but I hope that Mr. Potter will continue to think pleasantly of me.

And I hope that Mr. Potter’s lover will do the same thing.

Theo smiles so widely his lips crack. Ah. So Mrs. Malfoy knows that Draco’s behavior isn’t natural, which he already suspected she would, but she’s intelligent enough to link it to Theo himself, which he didn’t think she would be. She has no reason to look in his direction. Theo is quiet and reserved enough that he’s been in Draco’s shadow all their lives as children and all their years at Hogwarts.

Theo’s not sure how she did figure it out, but it’s entirely possible that Draco bragged about his “prank” with the Amortentia. It’s the sort of thing the idiot would do.

Please let me know if I can be of service to you, Mr. Nott. After all, both you and Mr. Potter were children who unfortunately had to grow up without a mother. I hope that a grown witch’s protection would not come amiss.

Regards,
Narcissa Malfoy.

Theo leans back and taps the parchment against his knee. There’s no open threat in the letter, nor anything that even hints at one. Of course, she could be subtler than that, but Theo also trusts himself to recognize even the subtlest.

No, it seems instead that Mrs. Malfoy doesn’t know exactly how Theo is influencing Draco and is playing the long game, giving herself time to find out if it’s blackmail, a curse, or another option. She is the only one of Theo’s targets’ parents smart enough to figure it out, too. Daphne doesn’t tell her parents anything, and Pansy’s don’t care.

It’s one reason Theo and Pansy were friends, for a while. But that’s done.

Theo smiles. Well, he supposes it would be boring if everything just bent to his will now. Although he did hope he would get a little more time with Harry before things began moving in this direction.

But what’s done is done. And what isn’t done is asking Harry how involved he wants to be in countering Mrs. Malfoy.

Theo stands. At once, people orient on him, even the ones who don’t look up from their essays or books or chess games. He’s become someone important in Slytherin, and a lot of them don’t seem to know how to deal with that.

Theo will teach them. He never dreamed of dating Harry Potter or being the type to command his Housemates’ attention with a glance, but he never dreamed of falling victim to Amortentia, either.

One way or another, he will turn this to his advantage.

He goes to find Harry, humming under his breath.