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Chapter Seventeen—Charms

Harry grins as the tarantula in front of him turns transparent and reveals all the creature’s inner organs. Such as they are. Harry doesn’t know the names for them all, and doesn’t particularly want to make a study of spiders to find out.

“Excellent, Mr. Potter. It seems your attention to Charms is paying off.”

Flitwick has an eyebrow raised, and Harry flushes a little. But he accepts the professor’s praise and sits down between Ron and Hermione. Theo is in this class, too, of course, but they’ve both adapted to the fact that they’ll never get anything done if they sit next to each other. Hermione smiles at Harry.

“That was really good, Harry. I’ve never seen you cast so smoothly and confidently.”

“Thanks, Hermione.”

They’ve been dancing around each other a bit in the past few days, since Hermione confessed that she’s not going to remove the jinx from Edgecombe. Several times Hermione’s looked like she wants to say something, especially since Malfoy, Parkinson, and Greengrass look like they’re molting, shedding hair and strips of skin. But she’s swallowed everything she almost said, and Harry is grateful.

His loyalty to his friends won’t waver. But neither will his loyalty to Theo. If Theo tried to make Harry pick between him and Ron and Hermione, Harry wouldn’t do it, either. But he doesn’t think Theo would.

If only because he’s smart enough to know that it won’t work. And for once, Harry isn’t revolted by Slytherin practicality.

“Weird article that Skeeter wrote this morning, huh?”

“Are you still trying to make me say something about that, Ron? It’s not going to work.”

“No.” Ron frowns Harry over the top of his own enlarged grasshopper. Flitwick listened when Ron said he couldn’t handle a spider, and didn’t make fun of Ron for it, which is enough to put him in Harry’s good graces. “I’m just saying it was weird.”

Harry swallows and nods. He needs to calm down, he thinks distantly. Not everybody who talks about something is out to make him admit a crime. And that counts the professors, some of whom still sometimes look at him and Theo as though wondering what problems they’ve caused.

Lots.

But Harry can keep his face straight as he says, “Yeah, it was weird,” and goes back to the next charm on his own enlarged grasshopper, making small sections of its body turn different colors.

The article Skeeter wrote was about how former Minister Fudge made the war with Voldemort worse by ignoring the reports Dumbledore and Harry tried to give him at the end of Harry’s fourth year. Harry suspects she didn’t have enough recent scandalous material that Theo’s truth spell will force her to play nice with, so she went for the older stuff.

Which is fine with Harry. If he never has to speak with Skeeter or deal with her poisonous writing again, then he’ll be happy.

He and Ron and Hermione all manage most of the charms, and Harry settles back in his chair and looks around the classroom. He lets his eyes touch Theo’s for a moment, but then a fiery blush threatens to consume him, so he has to keep looking around.

He happens to look in Malfoy’s direction just as the git collapses to the floor.

Harry starts to his feet, while Parkinson screams and Professor Flitwick hurries over to Malfoy. Hermione grabs his elbow. “Does this have something to do with—”

“No,” Harry says shortly, not because he knows all the nuances of Theo’s vengeance but because Theo wouldn’t be the sort to attract attention by having Malfoy do something this dramatic. Theo doesn’t want the professors involved at all.

For long moments, it doesn’t look as though Flitwick is going to manage to bring Malfoy around. Then his wand traces in a rapid circle Harry doesn’t know, nearly long enough to encompass Malfoy’s body, and Malfoy comes flying to his feet, his hands clasped over his throat and heart, his breathing shallow.

“Mr. Malfoy? Are you quite all right?”

“Potter!”

“Yes, that’s Mr. Potter over there,” Flitwick agrees, obviously thinking that Malfoy is suffering from some sort of brain problem. “I think we should get you to the hospital wing, Mr. Malfoy, and Madam Pomfrey can—”

“No, Potter did this!”

Flitwick blinks and spends a moment looking back and forth between Malfoy and Harry as though he expects the situation to resolve itself somehow. Harry glances at Theo from the corner of his eye, and Theo half-shakes his head.

Whatever Malfoy’s doing, Theo’s not able to stop it. Damn.

“Draco!” Parkinson grabs hold of Malfoy’s arm.

“Did you see what happened, Miss Parkinson?”

Harry can see the moment Theo intervenes. Parkinson casts her eyes down and shakes her head, but the motion is slow and reluctant.

“Mr. Potter, will you come here, please?”

Harry stands up and does so, fighting to keep a calm expression on his face. He really has become a lot more Slytherin since he started dating Theo, but he doesn’t think that’s something that can help at this moment.

As he expected, Flitwick wants to see his wand. He makes little humming noises over it and nods as he casts Prior Incantato. Harry watches the misty shapes of the spells flood out. He doesn’t understand all of them, but Flitwick nods and says, “These are the charms that we were casting in class—”

“He could have cast something before class started, sir, something that would only take effect now,” Terry Boot from Ravenclaw offers anxiously.

Harry can feel Theo snap to attention, swinging to look at Boot. Harry moves a hand behind his back. The last thing they need at the moment is more enemies.

He reckons they’re going to get them anyway, but maybe they can keep down the numbers of the people who want to actually attack them. Or the ones Theo has to spend time and mental effort and magic on controlling.

“What is this, Mr. Potter?”

Harry can feel his cheeks turning rosy. The picture of this particular spell appearing in midair isn’t a formless cloud the way some of the charms were, or a diagram of the wand movements, as in others. It’s—well, it’s a cock, and there’s a sheath of—of liquid on it. He clears his throat. “It’s a lubrication spell, sir.”

It takes a moment for Flitwick to get it, during which he’s still blinking at the hovering image of the cock. Then his eyes go very wide, and he coughs as that picture fades and another one appears, this one a Cheering Charm that Harry cast to show Ginny how to do it. “I—of course, Mr. Potter. You’re a healthy young wizard…”

People are laughing all over the classroom and not even bothering to hide it. But Flitwick glances around and gets them under control at once. Harry sort of wishes he had that kind of presence.

“No spell that could have affected Mr. Malfoy the way he appears to be affected,” Flitwick murmurs, and then turns back and starts casting more spells at Malfoy with a frown. Several of them look like diagnostic charms.

“You don’t know that!”

Shit. That’s Millicent Bulstrode, her voice high and piercing. Harry grimaces, and meets Theo’s eyes for the briefest moment. No, Theo has no control of her, and no means to stop her.

“I just performed a spell that showed—”

“His magic could be wandless! Potter is powerful enough for it!”

Harry wants to close his eyes, but he doesn’t, as Flitwick turns and looks sadly at him. “She’s right about that, Mr. Potter. I will ask that you accompany me to the hospital wing with Mr. Malfoy, so that Madam Pomfrey can check him over and make sure that you haven’t used your own magic to injure your old school rival.”

Harry wants to say that no one else would be suspected like this. But he only nods. Since when do professors stand up for him?

He does catch Theo’s eye on his way out the doorway of the classroom, and manages to shake his head minutely. He doesn’t want Theo to get in trouble for hurting Bulstrode or the like.

Although, from the way Ron and Hermione are glaring at her, Theo might have to get in line.

“Come, Mr. Potter.”

Harry straightens his shoulders and keeps walking. Nothing they do to him can hurt him too badly, not as badly as he thought they could when he was younger and stupider. He has to remember that.

*

Theo wants to hurt them. He wants to inflict Draco with ripples of pain that will make whatever he did to himself look minor. He wants to have Pansy gnaw her fingers off. He wants to make Bulstrode chew off her own tongue.

He can’t, not when there are this many people in the classroom and all of them are watching him.

Draco cast a charm on himself that would hurt him. Theo didn’t think to forbid that kind of thing because he didn’t anticipate how Draco would use it, to cast blame on Harry.

Now he tightens his control, weaving it around his victims like iron ribbons, and ensuring that they’ll remain silent on the subject and lie to Madam Pomfrey, in Draco’s case, or anyone else who asks them about this. But it’s too late. He endangered Harry, something he never meant to do.

“You shouldn’t have done it to them in the first place.”

Bulstrode, leaving the classroom, is the one who pauses by his desk and says that. Theo leans back slowly. She flinches at the sight of his eyes, but keeps going. She always had more spine than sense.

“It was enough. You took your revenge, but you should have given it up. Do you really intend to torment them for the rest of their lives?”

“That wouldn’t be long enough. And you should consider what it means to have someone like me angry at you, Millicent.”

Bulstrode’s sense comes roaring back. She stumbles away from Theo’s desk with an expression of horror on her face so stricken that Theo sees Granger take notice. Then she turns and runs.

Theo stands, slinging his satchel over his shoulder. Weasley and Granger have already gathered Harry’s things. Good. Theo would hate to burn them up accidentally from the amount of magic that’s pounding through him.

He has to get somewhere by himself and get rid of that magic. He sends Pansy and Daphne ahead to the common room with a wordless order and starts stalking down the corridors, not caring if people scuttle out of his way right now.

“Nott!”

Theo swings around, one hand up and a snarl bubbling through his throat. Do Weasley and Granger even understand the peril they’re in right now? Theo could destroy them with one flick of his will and only feel bad about it later.

Maybe they do, because Weasley turns pale enough to make his freckles look like a stain. But Granger stands her ground with only a slight shiver, folding her arms. “What did you say to Bulstrode?”

Theo shakes his head. He isn’t about to tell anyone but Harry that, let alone this self-righteous Gryffindor. “None of your business.”

Granger visibly chews on that, while Theo wrestles with the temptation to just curse them and walk away. Harry would dislike him for it later. “All right,” Granger says. “Then what just happened back there?”

“Malfoy cursed himself and plotted with Parkinson to make it look like Harry did it. I should have foreseen this.”

“How could you have stopped it?”

Theo just shakes his head again. He isn’t about to explain how the potion works, either. “Never mind, Granger. The point is, I didn’t stop it.”

Granger and Weasley exchange a quiet look. Theo watches them. He wants to get away, but Harry might be upset if Theo just completely disregarded his friends like that.

Then again, he’ll be more upset if Theo hurts them with his magic, which is more and more of an option the longer they force Theo to linger like this.

Theo has just made up his mind to leave and put up with Harry’s disappointment later if he must, when Granger announces, “I think we should work together to make sure Harry doesn’t get in too much trouble.”

“You won’t be able to do much.”

“And you would, Nott?” Weasley challenges him.

“I can do a lot more than you can because I have fewer limits.”

Weasley shivers and takes a step back. Granger looks between them and then said, “Harry probably told you I have fewer limits than Ron does.”

“Still too many to make it worthwhile working with you.”

Granger opens her mouth, but Theo shakes his head and takes off at a fast jog. He can hear them following him, but it doesn’t matter. He makes it to a secret passage that will lead him towards the Slytherin common room and opens it with a sharp knock of his palm against the wall. Once he ducks inside, the wall snaps closed, and Granger and Weasley run past without even slowing down.

In the darkness, Theo leans for a moment against the stone and closes his eyes.

He failed. He swore that he would keep Harry safe, and he failed.

He stands there for a long, silent moment, head lowered and breathing soft, before he forces himself to look up and move forwards, his steps measured and calm.

He can still go to the common room and punish Bulstrode. And rake Pansy’s mind to get her to reveal every step of the plan.

And then he’ll wait for Harry to come back from the infirmary, and hope that the consequences are less dire than he hoped.

*

“This is the result of a Temporary Coma Charm,” Madam Pomfrey says, bustling around the bed where Malfoy is lying, doing his best, Harry thinks, to look pale and pathetic. “We’re lucky that it didn’t catch hold for long! It was sloppily cast, and in such cases, the coma can become permanent.”

“Please let me see your wand again, Mr. Potter.”

Harry rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother to hide the motion as he holds his wand out to Professor McGonagall. She takes it, but her eyes are locked on Harry even as she casts the Prior Incantato charm.

Harry braces himself for embarrassment, but McGonagall doesn’t say anything about the lubrication charm. She only watches him as if waiting for him to confess.

Harry stares back and says nothing. They can be here all day long, and he’ll say nothing. He’s not going to get Theo in trouble.

“Headmistress.”

That voice Harry knows, but it’s not one he expected to hear in the hospital wing. He snaps his head around, and he knows that he can’t keep his eyes from going wide. Narcissa Malfoy is standing in the door of the infirmary, and she strides in a second later, her robes swirling around her legs.

“Someone cast a Temporary Coma charm on my son,” she says, and her eyes pierce Harry like throwing knives. “This boy?”

“Mr. Malfoy accused Mr. Potter, but there is no record of the charm on his wand,” McGonagall says. Harry thanks Merlin silently that the images of the spells he did cast have already disappeared. “And no one else in the classroom saw Mr. Potter cast anything, either.”

“You will forgive me for not trusting that report,” Mrs. Malfoy murmurs, “when the room was doubtlessly full of Gryffindors sympathetic to Potter, and I have heard disturbing rumors about his wandless magic.”

“No one could cast the Temporary Coma Charm wandlessly—”

“But this one was cast sloppily, Minerva.”

McGonagall turns stricken eyes to Harry. Harry just glares back at her. Yeah, this is what happens when she’s half-heartedly committed to trying to find people out for doing something wrong. She ends up giving weapons to people who really are doing something wrong.

“I—you can’t mean, Poppy—”

“I certainly can’t prove that Mr. Potter cast the charm on Mr. Malfoy, no, for the reasons that we already talked about. But it is true that Mr. Potter has powerful wandless magic, and it’s equally true that Mr. Malfoy accused him.”

“That is proof enough for me,” Mrs. Malfoy says, and she crosses the space between her and Harry with light, quick steps.

Harry braces himself for a slap or a curse, but instead, Mrs. Malfoy holds her wand up and casts something at the ceiling. It spreads out in rippling waves of crimson light, but they don’t touch any of the people in the room before they fade away. McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey look as though someone has punched them in the gut, though.

“What was that?” Harry snaps.

Mrs. Malfoy smiles at him with her lips only, a firestorm of triumph in her eyes. “That, Mr. Potter, was the Dueler’s Geas. You are now bound to meet me on the dueling field. If you try to flee, you will lose your magic.” She folds her hands in front of her. “I could not have cast the charm at all if I did not believe I have due cause.”

This is the reason that we didn’t hear from her after our conversation in the pub. She was setting up this trap with Malfoy. I’m sure of it.

Harry, staring into Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes, is also sure that he’ll have to do his best to kill her. Because she’ll be doing more than her best to kill him.