lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifteen—Earthquake

By the time they get back to Hogwarts, part of Theo is shaking within him, as weak as the Lumos Charms that he tried to cast before his first year. What if he freezes in the middle of making love with Harry? What if he upsets Harry because he can’t do everything he should be able to?

But all he has to do is turn and look into Harry’s eyes to remember how stupid that fear is. Harry is staring at him with absolute awe. If Theo asks him to stop, Harry will stop.

And he won’t judge Theo for being weak. He thinks Theo’s weakness is strength. He liked it when Theo told him to put his hands behind his back during their kiss.

Besides.

Theo is so tired of living with the fear churning and brewing through him like a ruined potion. He wants to reclaim his power, the choices that Draco and Pansy and Daphne tried to take from him.

When they reach Hogwarts and Theo starts to steer them upwards rather than down to the dungeons, Harry blinks at him, but Theo stops and asks, “Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

Swift. Unhesitating. Maybe Theo hasn’t done anything to deserve this kind of partner, but he’s going to do everything he can to prove worthy of Harry.

“Then trust me why I say I don’t want to share this with anyone else.”

Harry’s smile is small and bright and so unmistakably shy that it stirs something impatient and tender at the same time in Theo’s chest. He leans forwards and places his hand under Harry’s chin, tilting his mouth gently upwards.

Theo kisses him, and kisses him, and the warmth Harry is feeling bleeds over into him. He could do this forever—

Except that the warmth has also bled over into his chest, and his heart is going so fast, and he’s so hard that it’s going to be impossible to walk soon.

“Come on,” he says, pulling back and hearing Harry’s subtle sigh with a smile that warms his face, in turn. Theo tugs gently at Harry’s hand, and they walk further up the stairs, and turn, in search of a secret room that Theo’s father told him about and he’s only been to a few times.

But it will be the perfect place to have—this—with Harry. It’s a room that Theo has no negative memories of, the way that he does the Slytherin dormitories right now.

Harry follows him, and from the way he leans against Theo’s back for a moment when Theo pauses to open the door, daring and tentative and ready to pull away again if Theo wants him to, he’s more than in agreement with this plan.

Theo doesn’t want him to pull away. Theo just wants him.

*

The room that Theo leads him into is a strange, five-sided one, with a skylight high above that casts down a beam of cloudy radiance on a bench in the middle of it. Harry squints, feeling a strange pulse of familiar magic from the bench.

Even as he watches, the bench dances and wavers and turns into a large, fluffy bed covered with what are probably silken sheets.

Something like the Room of Requirement, only just in this one place and on this one piece of furniture—

Theo spins him around, hands on his shoulders, and Harry lets all thoughts of magic theory fly away from him. Theo’s eyes are wide and dark and suddenly the center of his world. Harry bows his head and lets his lips hover above Theo’s wrist in what is not a kiss, but almost.

“I may want you to stop,” Theo whispers.

“I know.”

“You will—”

“Of course I will.”

Theo swallows and nods, and then stands there staring at Harry as if he can’t believe he has Harry right where he wants him. Harry tingles with desire, but it’s a gentle burn that will only explode when Theo wants it to.

Theo has to want it. Harry can’t imagine anything he wants less than to go to bed with his boyfriend right now because Theo feels obligated.

“Fuck it,” Theo whispers abruptly, and leans forwards.

Harry feels something melt away in his stomach as they kiss. This is the way it should be. He gets to give Theo back something to feel more confident about. His hands curve around Theo’s shoulders, and they’re solid beneath Harry’s touch, as they should be, and he wants to kiss Theo, touch him, hold him—

Theo shoves him gently backwards. Harry goes with a laugh, and sprawls on the bed, his legs and his arms open. Theo crawls up and over him, then halts. His eyes are so wide that Harry feels as if he can see to the bottom of them.

Not that there might ever be a bottom, not when it comes to Theo.

“Will you touch me?” Harry whispers.

Theo stretches his hand slowly out, and they both watch it as it settles on Harry’s chest. Harry arches his neck back with a sigh. He always assumed that the first time he was with someone would be frantic and furious and he would come before he even thought about anything. But to have it be otherwise is fine.

No, more than fine. It’s wonderful.

“Harry.”

Theo bends down to kiss him again, and then he carefully sits back and adjusts his position. Harry thinks he’s taking his robe off, but then Theo slides down between Harry’s spread legs, and Harry bites back a gasp.

No, Theo was positioning himself so that he could rub their cocks together.

Fuck. Fuck.

“Harry?”

Harry reaches out and gropes for Theo’s hand so that he can squeeze it hard enough to make his chest hurt. He’s wonderful. Marvelous. He just can’t open his eyes or speak right now, because pinwheels of color are dancing behind his shut eyelids, and all he can think is—

He’s feeling like this because it’s Theo.

No one else. He doesn’t want anyone else.

Theo’s weight on top of him, his warmth, his heat between Harry’s legs, the pressure that means a promise of more sometime in the future—

Harry’s hips jerk up and he comes hard enough to make his ears ring. Theo thrusts a few more times and then follows with a grunt that sounds surprised. He drops down and drapes himself across Harry’s chest, breathing heavily.

Harry lifts his hands and lets them hover over Theo’s shoulders. Theo moves, and Harry opens his eyes to see him firmly settling into Harry’s grip.

“You’re incredible,” Theo murmurs, his eyes shut, his voice already slipping towards sleep.

That startles a laugh out of Harry that makes Theo open an eye and look at him. “I didn’t do much except lie there.”

“You think that I wanted more from you?”

Harry shakes his head and reaches up, still watching Theo’s eyes for permission. Theo nods. Harry trails his fingers along Theo’s forehead and knocks the lock of hair resting above his eyes out of the way. “Just that you were the one who did everything.”

“That’s what I wanted.”

“To reclaim some kind of power?”

“To reclaim myself. And claim you.”

Theo has a devastating leer when he wants to. Harry feels himself flush, and squirms in the middle of the bed. Theo rolls over a little and reaches sideways, and Harry bucks as Theo’s hand slips straight into his robes and rubs over the head of his cock.

“You could go again?”

“As long as you’re looking at me like that, yeah.”

Theo’s eyes are blazing with triumph as he bends down to kiss Harry, and it turns out that they can, indeed, go again.

*

“You did it. With Potter.”

Theo jerks to a halt inside the door of his bedroom, his wand flying into his hand. Blaise is the one who’s lounging in his bed, though, the only one here right now. And he’s grinning at Theo in a way that Theo hasn’t seen him do since his mother died.

“Not what most people would probably call it,” Theo says, and tucks his wand away. Then he smiles at his friend. “But yes.”

“And when you do it?”

“What about that?”

“Are you going to fuck him? Tie him up and ride him? Let him on top of you? What?”

Theo shivers with the thought of things he’s barely pictured even to himself. “I think I should share that with Harry first, instead of you,” he teases.

Blaise sighs and flops back on his pillow. “You realize that you have a much more exciting sex life at the moment than I do?”

Theo blinks. They haven’t discussed it in any detail, but he was under the impression that Blaise had a girlfriend outside of school, an Italian witch he met at one of the gatherings his mother used to host. And knowing Blaise, the prohibitions on the students going anywhere other than Hogsmeade aren’t going to stop him. “What about—what’s her name? Marcella?”

“Yes, it’s fine,” Blaise says. “But it’s not as exciting as yours. Marcella doesn’t trust me. We have fun together, but she’s always talking about what will happen when she finds a wizard she wants to actually play a game of honesty with.”

“Oh. You—want that?”

Theo doesn’t know what to say in the face of the glance Blaise gives him. It feels as though this is something he should have known about his best friend, but, well, he didn’t.

“Yes, I want to trust someone like that. I did think it would be Marcella, but according to her, well.” Blaise rolls his shoulders.

“Well, what?”

“I’m not someone she can trust like that.”

Theo grimaces and nods. There could be lots of reasons for that, and he won’t ask for them, not when Blaise has seemed reluctant to share this much with him. “I hope things change for you soon, Blaise.”

“I could maybe borrow your b—”

Theo snarls in spite of himself, turning around and darting his hand down towards his wand where it rests in the holster on his waist. And then he realizes Blaise is laughing, his hands spread wide and his chest heaving.

“You were joking.”

“Of course I was joking. Potter would destroy me if I made a move on him.”

Theo tosses his head irritably. All right, so Blaise was getting some of his own back for the questions Theo asked him. It still makes Theo want to kill someone in the abstract, the thought of anyone else touching Harry.

“Go be homicidal elsewhere, Theo.”

Theo rolls his eyes and goes. He has homework to finish, anyway.

*

“Can you ask Nott if he would let you tell us what happened to him?”

Harry blinks and looks up. Hermione and Ron have been working in silence broken only by small smiles and bickering, and Harry has been drifting through his homework in utter silence, dreaming about Theo’s smile. “What?”

“Can you ask Nott—”

“Yes, I did hear that part,” Harry interrupts, because he did. He puts down his quill, feeling as though someone is trampling on his stomach. “Hermione, you don’t know what you’re asking. You really don’t.”

Hermione takes a deep breath. Ron puts a supportive hand on her shoulder and whispers something. Hermione doesn’t respond with words, but she bites her lip and nods before she speaks to Harry again.

“Harry, what’s happening with Greengrass and Malfoy and Parkinson, it’s—torture. I saw Parkinson the other day with tears pouring down her face while she wore a letter, and then the Prophet announced the arrest of one of her relatives the next morning, based on information that Parkinson apparently gave the Ministry. I don’t believe for a second she did that on her own. Nott is controlling them somehow, and I need to report that unless you can convince me that it’s for a good reason.”

Harry grimaces. He really did think the potion Theo used was more subtle than that, but he reckons he can see why Hermione got suspicious. He looks at Ron, who grimaces back.

“I know you don’t want to tell us the truth, but I think you have to,” Ron says reluctantly. “It was funny when it was just Malfoy giving money to St. Mungo’s and Parkinson embarrassing herself in class, but Nott’s going too far. Whatever they did to him, it can’t possibly be worth this.”

“You have no idea what they did to him.”

“No, I know, mate, but—”

“No matter what they did, it can’t be worth this,” Hermione says. “It can’t. Harry, I don’t want to report you to the professors. I’m willing to believe it was bad. But it—I can’t put up with the torture of people, even the guilty ones. They could be tried and put in Azkaban if it was that bad, but not tortured. Why doesn’t Nott just turn them over to the Aurors?”

Harry wants to tell them that brewing Amortentia and using it the way Malfoy and Greengrass and Parkinson did isn’t illegal, it’s just wrong, but he won’t tell them even that much, since it might mean that they could figure out what happened to Theo. He shakes his head a little. “I’ll ask Theo, but he might say no.”

“Then I’ll have to report Nott to the professors.”

Harry swallows. “Go ahead.”

“What?”

“McGonagall already called me up to her office once, because she thought that I did something wrong. She couldn’t find any proof that I did anything to them, and she won’t find proof that Theo did, either.”

Hermione stares at him, and then swipes one hand across her eyes. “Harry, you—can’t really think that this is a good thing.” Her voice trembles. “Not really. It might seem fun to let it go on, but it’s like when Crouch turned Malfoy into a ferret and bounced him up and down. He didn’t deserve that. No one could.”

Harry thinks that he probably won’t be able to stop Hermione from going to the professors, unless he does something like Obliviate her. And he doesn’t want to do that. Inconvenient as Hermione’s sense of morality sometimes might be, she’s his friend. And so is Ron. It would be wrong to do that.

She has morality that—

Wait.

Harry leans forwards. “You would think it’s immoral to let someone suffer for months on end, no matter what they did?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s what I think.” Hermione sounds hopeful.

“When did you take the pimples off Marietta Edgecombe’s face, then?”

Hermione stares at him, her expression so blank that Harry’s about to repeat himself when she says weakly, “What?”

“The pimples. That you hexed Edgecombe with because she betrayed the D.A.,” Harry says slowly. He can see Ron gaping at him over Hermione’s shoulder, but he dismisses that and locks his eyes on Hermione’s face. “I saw her at the Ministry this summer when I testified in the Death Eater trials. She still has them.”

Hermione opens and then closes her mouth. Harry just waits. He would feel a little bad about forcing Hermione to think of this, but he does believe that it would be a huge piece of hypocrisy if she thinks that Theo should really stop tormenting his would-be rapists, when that’s only been a matter of weeks and Edgecombe has had those pimples for years.

“You know what she did.”

“Yes.”

“We don’t know what they did to Nott!”

Harry rolls his eyes. “And there are probably people who don’t know what Edgecombe did and think the punishment is too much. It doesn’t matter, Hermione. I just think it’s a bit rich for you to worry about Malfoy and Greengrass and Parkinson when you did something that’s lasted a lot longer than what Theo’s done.”

Hermione is quiet. Ron clears his throat and looks a little uneasily back and forth between Harry and Hermione. “Are you—going to take the pimples off Edgecombe, Hermione?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Hermione’s voice is very small. Harry just nods. “I wasn’t thinking that you should,” he admits. He just doesn’t care that much about Edgecombe. He mostly forgot about her. If Hermione had told him that she was planning to take the hex off, Harry would have shrugged and accepted it. “But I don’t think that deciding on one standard of morality and enforcing it all the time works very well.”

Hermione gathers her parchments together with a stiffness in her shoulders that Harry doesn’t think has anything to do with him. Hermione probably forgot about Edgecombe, too. She leaves, and Ron hesitates, one hand flat on the table, face so agonized that Harry takes pity on him. “You can go after her, Ron. I won’t take it the wrong way.”

“Will you ask Nott if he’ll tell us?”

“I’ll ask him,” Harry says. “But I think you already know what he’s going to say.”

Ron grimaces and darts after Hermione. Harry takes a moment to ponder the fact that he’s friends with people who do things like permanent hexes and a mind control potion.

Then he shrugs. He probably is a lot more mercenary and sharp-edged than he ever knew. Hermione and Ron and Theo are the ones who matter to him. He doesn’t care if they have the same morality he does.

And given that I helped Theo feed them the potion, it’s not like I can claim the moral high ground, either.