lomonaaeren

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Chapter Fourteen—A Meeting in the Hog’s Head

“How much attention do you think we should pay to Mrs. Malfoy?”

Harry watches Theo’s face as he waits for him to answer. They’re sitting on one of the staircases in Hogwarts that doesn’t get used that often; it doesn’t move and stubbornly runs only from the seventh floor to the fourth. Light is falling through a window high above, striping Theo’s face, making light out of his narrowed grey eyes.

He’s so beautiful that he steals Harry’s breath.

“She could make our lives very unpleasant in defense of Draco,” Theo says, his head tilting a little further. Sunlight spills down his cheekbones, leaving his eyes dark, and Harry’s heart beats as if it’ll break. “I’m sure that she’s only testing the waters right now, seeing how much she needs to threaten us before we let Draco go.”

“But you shouldn’t have to let him go! It’s your revenge.”

“Yes, it is.” Theo smiles with one side of his mouth. Forget the people who think it’s strange that Harry’s taken up with Theo; Harry is stunned that Theo was still available for him to date in the first place. “But I think we should speak to Mrs. Malfoy, and perhaps attempt to make her understand that.”

Harry just nods. He can’t see anything wrong with speaking to Mrs. Malfoy, although he also thinks it’s likely that she won’t give up no matter what, and will just want them to stop tormenting Malfoy.

Maybe he could have thought of that before tormenting Theo.

*

“Mr. Potter, it seems to me that you are not taking this class entirely seriously.”

Theo smirks at Harry as he whips around back to the front of the classroom, his face turning so red that a house-elf could roast chicken on it. “Um, sorry, Professor Flitwick. I promise that I want to pass the NEWT.”

“And perhaps you also want to do well in my class in the meantime?”

There’s silence except for the scuff of Harry’s shoe on the floor. He’s turning an even brighter red. Someone giggles.

Theo supposes he should intervene and rescue his boyfriend, or at least say something to turn Professor Flitwick’s attention towards himself. But frankly, he doesn’t want to. He’s still overcome by the feeling that someone wants him. It’s heady and arousing and all he wants to do is let Harry suffer so the whole world knows.

Mine.

“Er, yes, sir. Of course I do.”

“Then perhaps you could demonstrate the Double Summoning Charm wordlessly?” Professor Flitwick steps back and makes a courteous little gesture at Harry with one hand. “Since I’m sure that you were paying attention?”

That’s Flitwick all over, Theo thinks. Nothing seems to really change it, not even last year with the Carrows, who went out of their way to torment Flitwick for being half-goblin. He just puts people to an impromptu practical exam if they seem not to be paying attention.

“Right, sir. Of course.”

Harry stands up, but doesn’t get the chance to cast from his seat before Flitwick says with gentle malice, “Perhaps you could come up in front of the class and demonstrate, Mr. Potter? So that everyone can see.”

Harry’s face is redder when he turns around, but then he catches Theo’s eye, and seems to relax. Theo isn’t sure why. He doesn’t think his smirk can possibly be comfortable for Harry to deal with.

But maybe just his presence is inspiration for Harry, because he flourishes his wand with an unnecessary twist and flick, and the two cushions that they were practicing on from the opposite side of the classroom shoot towards him. They even take different paths, which is the purpose of the Double Summoning Charm. It’s more precise than the Summoning Charm, so that it calls two specific objects instead of every cushion in summoning distance, and also applicable to combat, since you can direct the objects to hit two people at once.

Flitwick’s eyebrows are up when Theo glances at him again. “Impressive, Mr. Potter,” he allows. “In the future, perhaps pay attention to me, and you can do even better?”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry sounds calmer now, and he sits down and listens to his friends fuss over him with an amused expression, which proves it. But his eyes come back to Theo, and Theo thinks his tactic might have backfired, because now the heat in Harry’s eyes is making him hot.

He stares back, and if Flitwick is going to call him up to demonstrate the Double Summoning Charm next, Theo doesn’t particularly care. He relishes the thought of showing off for his boyfriend.

*

“And she really agreed to meet you here?”

“Why wouldn’t she have? She knows the value of discretion in this as well as we do.”

Harry frowns and says nothing as he holds the door of the Hog’s Head open for Theo. He’s not sure why he wants to say that Mrs. Malfoy would be more at home in Madam Puddifoot’s. That’s not discreet, and it’s not as if he really knows her.

Even if she did save his life.

Aberforth Dumbledore peers at them over the bar and snorts loudly. “Heard the rumor that you’d taken up with a Death Eater’s son, Potter. Didn’t believe it. Reckon I should pay more attention to my sources.”

Theo tenses in the way that he hasn’t done since the discovery of who was giving him Amortentia. Harry very obviously shifts so that he’s protecting Theo from Aberforth’s gaze. “You’ll have to accept him as his own person, sir.”

“Oh, really? Why’s that?”

“Because otherwise, we’re going to walk out of here, and I’ll spread rumors around that will make the goat ones look paltry. You should hear how many people are waiting to get juicy gossip from the Boy-Who-Lived.”

Aberforth blinks at him for a long moment. Then he cackles hard enough to make Harry wince and comes around the bar to shake Harry’s hand. “So you didn’t change when you took up with the Nott boy. Good thing. You can meet your contact here.”

From the way he winks, Harry thinks that he already knows Mrs. Malfoy is coming. But it doesn’t matter, as long as he keeps it to himself. Harry smiles coolly back and leads Theo over to a table, where they can both sit with their backs to the wall.

“Why did you threaten him?”

“He threatened you.”

“He did not.”

“He made you tense up.”

Theo hesitates for a moment, and then sips the butterbeer that comes floating over to them from mugs that Harry hopes are clean. At least he knows, from the dragon-shaped piece of his own magic on Theo’s shoulder, that they don’t have anything worse than maybe a bit of dirt in them. “I didn’t…Harry, you can’t base all your reactions on how other people treat me.”

Harry starts to answer, but the door of the Hog’s Head opens and a slim cloaked figure steps inside. Sure enough, Aberforth shows no surprise as he jerks his head towards the table where Harry and Theo are sitting. Harry stands up and goes around the table to greet Mrs. Malfoy, but he does murmur on the way, “Don’t be a hypocrite, Theo. It’s how you react, too.”

He grins at the stunned look on his boyfriend’s face before he turns and holds his hand out to her. Mrs. Malfoy takes it, while staring at him hard enough that Harry can feel it through the cloak hood that still hides her face. “Hello. Thank you for coming.”

“Mr. Potter.” Mrs. Malfoy’s voice is cool, reserved. Well, Harry didn’t expect anything else, given the reason for this meeting. “I assure you we shall not take long.”

“I mean, unless you agree with us and think Draco should be punished, it’ll probably take longer than you think.”

Mrs. Malfoy catches her breath, but says nothing. She sits down across from him at the table, and Harry doesn’t think it’s his imagination that she avoids looking at Theo. Although he’s not sure until she raises a Privacy Charm that blurs the air around the table and takes down her hood.

Then, yeah, he’s sure.

“We have come to discuss the issue of my son,” Mrs. Malfoy says a little stiffly, settling back in the chair. “As if you were professors or parents, to have taken on the role of discipling him.”

“We’re here more about his lack of self-discipline than anything else.” Theo’s voice has taken on a soft, cold tone that Harry hasn’t heard him use before. Maybe he thought it was too respectful for Malfoy, Greengrass, and the rest. “Do you know all the details of what he was planning to do to me, Mrs. Malfoy?”

“Assume I do not.”

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. He wants to know how much she knows, so that he knows whether she thought Draco raping Theo was perfectly fine, or just thinks everything Draco does is great, or—

Theo’s hand slides across to grip his.

Harry has to take several deep breaths, but eventually he’s able to nod to Theo. He’s calm. Yes, he is. He’s going to sit here and listen to Mrs. Malfoy and not hit her with some violent, random burst of accidental magic.

If Theo can do it, Harry can, too.

“He brewed Amortentia,” Theo says pleasantly. Anyone watching from the bar or another table might think that Theo is speaking about the weather, he’s so controlled and calm. Harry is the one who watches something twist the side of his mouth, and knows that Theo is battling down the cruelty, the need to lash out at this woman watching them so haughtily. “He thought it a grand joke. He resents me for the way his father tarnished the name of the Malfoy family, and that I had the sense not to take the Dark Mark when he didn’t. He intended to see me raped, Mrs. Malfoy. I cannot forgive that.”

Mrs. Malfoy takes a harsh, deep breath. Harry watches her curiously, wondering what hit her the hardest. The revelation about the rape? Theo’s lack of forgiveness?

“Draco is reeling under the harshness of the war,” she murmurs, and Harry reckons that it was Theo’s words about Malfoy’s reaction and the reasons he hates Theo. “You should, perhaps, understand that it was pure luck you were not forced to take the Dark Mark and your father was not placed in prison, Mr. Nott. Not any cleverness or strength on your part.”

Harry burns to say something, but he bites his tongue. Theo is the one leaning forwards across the table, his smile gentle now, and terrible.

“We all went through the war, Mrs. Malfoy. I understand perfectly well that my father could have been imprisoned, too, and that I might have taken the Mark if things were different. But that is not the world we live in. In the world we live in, Draco tried to rape me. He will suffer and suffer for that.”

Harry briefly closes his eyes. He’s pretty sure that Theo’s words shouldn’t be making him hot and hard, full of—

He doesn’t even know how to name the emotion it fills him with.

“And I tell you that I will not allow you to make him suffer forever.”

“Shall I kill him, then?”

Harry’s eyes shoot open. That’s not something they discussed. And he thinks he might feel differently about murder than torment, even if torture is supposed to be worse.

Mrs. Malfoy is frozen, staring at Theo with eyes that seem like Malfoy’s, suddenly. Harry saw the same expression in them the other day when Theo was forcing him to brag about his huge “donation” to St. Mungo’s.

“Kill him and make an enemy of me forever,” she says, lips barely moving.

“That would not deter me. As it is, I prefer Draco alive and suffering to dead.”

“You do not understand what I would do as your enemy.”

“I understand that right now, you don’t seem inclined to restrain your son.” Theo leans back in his chair. He keeps his fingers tangled up in Harry’s. Harry isn’t entirely sure if that’s to reassure him or Theo himself. At least their hands are out of Mrs. Malfoy’s line of sight from where she sits. “Why should I leave him alive to be a threat to me and mine?”

“You said you preferred—”

“If you won’t restrain him and he’ll just go right back to his stupidity if I let him go, maybe it would be easier to kill him.”

“How are you controlling his actions?”

Theo smiles at her, and returns no answer.

Mrs. Malfoy leans forwards, her hands steepled on the table in front of her. She doesn’t even seem to notice that the edge of a wet ring from some drink is soaking into her sleeve. “You have presented yourself as pragmatic, but not entirely so,” she begins. “You are someone who would enjoy a certain amount of poetic irony. Therefore, I believe it is a potion.”

“And if so?”

“I could report you. I am sure that what you have done is illegal.”

“Prove it.”

“My son is acting unlike himself—”

“No one noticed when I began to act unlike myself.” Theo smiles suddenly, a deaths-head rictus that also makes Harry hard, to his despair. “And the level of tolerance for the Malfoys is lower than you imagine. Do you know why Draco has as much prestige in the school as he does?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Because Harry testified for him. And you. The same Boy-Who-Lived who is now my boyfriend.”

Harry manages to repress the instinct to startle or flinch as Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes lock on him. He also suppresses the urge to raise a hand and wave. Theo would scold him for making it worse.

“Why have you turned against my son, Mr. Potter?”

“He tried to rape someone, and you can ask that?”

“I am sure that you did not give a toss for Mr. Nott two months ago.” Harry has to blink, it’s so weird to hear the word “toss” coming out of Mrs. Malfoy’s mouth. “You had no reason to care if Draco was aiming to rape him or not.”

Harry stares at her, then at Theo. “Is she serious?”

“I believe she is.” Theo is watching Mrs. Malfoy with a more normal hard smile now, not that it does much less for Harry’s erection. “She may be forgetting the difference between Gryffindor and Slytherin mindsets. A Slytherin often has their few people that they care for, would do anything for. That results in neglecting the rest of the world. Or maybe she thought that since you’ve only had two friends for years and years, you wouldn’t care about anyone else. Especially not a Slytherin.”

“Right, but she’s saying this after knowing that I testified for her. I didn’t think she was stupid.”

“I am right here, Mr. Potter,” Mrs. Malfoy whispers, through lips that sound numb with rage.

Harry turns to face her. “I didn’t think you were stupid.”

Mrs. Malfoy clenches her hands together beneath the table, as though she’s trying not to fly at him. Harry lounges back in his chair, grinning lazily at her, daring her to try it.

“Harry.”

“What? If she attacks me—sorry, if you attack me, Mrs. Malfoy, then I don’t have to worry about your opinions concerning my treatment of Draco in any capacity.”

“Harry,” Theo says, gently, but with a chiding tone of laughter in his voice.

Harry sits up and rolls his eyes. “Fine. I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you, Theo. I hope you know how much I love you.”

Theo is silent. Harry glances at him, wondering if he shouldn’t have said that in public, only to find that Theo’s eyes are wide and dark, and fixed on him.

Harry could go on staring into them all day, which Mrs. Malfoy seems to know, because she clears her throat. “I am right here,” she says again.

“Right. But are you going to attack me? Or are you going to accept that Draco is acting stupidly and is getting what he deserves?”

“He could not deserve years of torture!”

“Right. Like Theo didn’t deserve rape.”

“I could make your life very hard if you do not—”

“And I could make his very difficult.” Harry thinks it best to avoid the word “hard” right now, considering how he’ll probably choke when he speaks it. “Since I’m actually at Hogwarts and around him all the time.”

Mrs. Malfoy eases back into a tight, coiled posture. Harry just watches. He really isn’t afraid of her, unless she manages to send him and Theo cursed post or something. She isn’t as strong as Theo, and she doesn’t have the violent edge to her magic that Harry does.

Harry’s magic is stirring and crackling around him like the flames of a distant fire, begging to be unleashed. Harry concentrates on Theo’s hand holding his in order to calm it.

“I have no choice, then.”

Her eyes are full of hatred, but Harry just shrugs. Honestly, that’s the way she looked during the Death Eater trials, too. She hated and resented the necessity of relying on someone else to save her family. Or maybe just relying on a half-blood. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

“You will regret this one day, Mr. Potter.”

“All I have to do is show this Pensieve memory to the Minister, and you’re the one who would.”

Mrs. Malfoy’s whole face freezes. Harry blinks at her. Did she really never consider that he would take the memory to Kingsley? Or maybe she didn’t know that Harry had a friendly relationship with him. That would be understandable. Harry and the Ministry were at odds for a long time.

Mrs. Malfoy glances down at her hands. Then she says, quietly, “It is unfair that we have survived the war and are still judged this way.”

“No, I think it’s pretty fair that your son is being judged for trying to rape someone.”

Mrs. Malfoy opens her mouth as if to say something else, then stands and leaves the Hog’s Head. Harry leans around the table to watch the door and make sure she actually leaves. But yeah, it seems she is.

Harry leans back in his chair and rolls his eyes. “Do you think that Malfoy gets his melodramatic tendencies from her instead of from his dad?” he asks, turning to look at Theo.

All his breath goes out of his body when he does. Theo is watching him closely enough to make sparks dance up and down Harry’s spine. It’s a very specific way of watching him.

“I think he might,” Theo whispers. “I also think that I don’t care.”

“Don’t you?” Harry’s voice is a low croak, and it makes Aberforth stare disapprovingly at him from behind the bar.

“No.” Theo reaches out, hesitates, and then slides his hand up the back of Harry’s neck. “I think we need to go somewhere else so I can prove what I do care about.”

Harry might knock over his butterbeer in his haste to stand up and get going, but honestly, he doesn’t care enough to check. Not with that tone in Theo’s voice, that shine in Theo’s eyes.

This is all he wants. All he needs.