lomonaaeren

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Chapter Nineteen—Words

“Mr. Potter. Come with me, please.”

Harry raises his eyebrows. He left breakfast a bit early, because he wanted to finish revising some Potions material he didn’t get a chance to do yesterday, what with the duel and everything else. The last thing he expected was for Professor McGonagall to sweep up to him in the entrance hall.

“Is this going to be another useless interrogation?”

“Mr. Potter.”

“What? I think I have a right to know, when you didn’t even check Malfoy and Parkinson’s wands for a spell they could have cast on themselves.”

McGonagall’s mouth tightens with irritation. Then she says, “In truth, Albus’s portrait wants to talk to you.”

Harry thinks about it, then shrugs. He supposes that he won’t get much out of either resisting or talking with the portrait, but maybe he’ll get a chance to try and make McGonagall and Dumbledore understand his point-of-view. Emphasis on the try.

“All right. Lead the way.”

*

“Harry. My boy.”

Harry sighs as he sits down in the seat in front of Professor McGonagall’s desk. She’s hovering in front of him instead of sitting down himself. Harry has no idea what that means. “Headmaster,” he says, as politely as he can.

“Can you leave us alone, Minerva?”

McGonagall’s mouth opens, but then Dumbledore shoots her a look, and they seem to silently communicate that way. She nods without much moving her head and goes through the door that leads to her private quarters. That door shuts behind her with a decisive click.

Then Dumbledore turns and stares at Harry with a heartbroken look.

“Oh, come off it,” Harry says, not able to help himself.

“What?”

From the look on Dumbledore’s face, maybe no one has ever told him he should come off it before. Grindelwald should have tried it. Harry leans forwards a little. “If you’re going to talk to me about how terrible it is that I defended myself instead of just letting Mrs. Malfoy kill me, I’m going to walk out of here right now.”

Dumbledore shakes his head. “Of course I don’t think that.”

“Then what do you think?”

Silence drips to the floor and pools around them, and Harry really thinks the portrait won’t answer. Then he takes a deep breath and whispers, “I wish you could have had a happy life after the war, and what you have done almost assures that you will not. If nothing else, young Mr. Malfoy will wish for vengeance on you.”

“He won’t be able to take it.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t have to tell you.”

Dumbledore looks stricken. “Harry, please. If you have been influenced by the Horcrux, or if young Mr. Nott has persuaded you that threatening Mr. Malfoy with death is the best path forwards, then—”

“You can’t ever think that I just want to fucking live, instead of having to act perfect all the time? You can’t ever think that the professors should have checked Malfoy’s wand when he accused me of trying to put him in a coma, instead of just believing him? You can’t ever think that I deserve to be happy and attack people when they try to attack me, instead of being a martyr? I thought you were happy I survived. But now you can’t wait to see me die.”

“Harry.” Dumbledore’s voice is a croak, and he reaches forwards as if he could really get his hand out of the portrait. “No. I never meant that. I promise, I never did.”

“All right. Then tell me what you meant.”

Dumbledore drops his hand. He stares at Harry, then starts pacing back and forth in his portrait. Harry watches him and wonders idly if the hardest thing for the man is being honest, instead of clutching secrets close to his chest.

He’s starting to think he doesn’t want anyone to paint a portrait of him. They just go around being confusing for the people left behind.

Dumbledore finally halts, takes a breath, and says, “I want you to live happily. I want you to do it without becoming consumed by Dark Arts or—or taking actions that you would never have taken before the end of the war. Are you happy with Mr. Nott? I think if you search your heart, you will find—”

“Don’t.”

Dumbledore blinks and stares at Harry, who is rising to his feet. “Don’t what?”

You cannot destroy the Headmistress’s office in a rage, you cannot destroy the Headmistress’s office in a rage, Harry is chanting silently to himself. If he does, people will just think he’s unstable and won’t take his side. And he’s only mildly angry at McGonagall, compared to what he feels about what Dumbledore just said.

And he doesn’t think he would be able to destroy the portrait, which is what he really wants to do, by just lashing wildly around with wandless magic, anyway.

Harry grabs hold of his magic, makes himself calm down instead of screaming, and says, “Don’t speak that way about Theo.”

“You changed after you began dating him.”

“I changed after I died.”

The words flow through Harry’s mouth before he thinks about speaking them, before he thinks at all about how true they are. And then they’re out there, and he’s realizing, from his own sharp inhalation, that they’re real.

“Harry…”

Dumbledore doesn’t seem to know how to follow that up. Harry is too busy thinking anyway.

The way that he doesn’t want to wear the Cloak. The way that he feels impatient with people who chatter about how he owes them perfection when none of them died to save him. The restless search for something to care about and do, which he thought was just because he’d defeated Voldemort, but also could be because nothing that happened before he died seems that important.

“I died,” he whispers.

“Are you saying that you—do not have the heart to be the good person you once were?”

“I don’t have the heart to continue on the way I did before I died.” Harry runs a hand through his hair. “I need to think more about what I want, and not just charge ahead and follow leads blindly. We had to fight Voldemort, that was a good thing, but the enemies I have now aren’t as clear and straightforward. That’s what I need to understand and think about.”

“I do not know how that is different from what I said.”

Of all the impossible things, Harry feels a smile creeping across his mouth as he looks up at Dumbledore. Maybe because of the revelation he just had, which has a lot less to do with the portrait than it feels like. “Oh, come on, sir. Of course you do.”

“I do not.”

And now Dumbledore sounds offended, of all things. Harry rolls his eyes, but he’s willing to explain. “Before the war, I might have been basically a good person, but I also only survived several times because of luck, like with Quirrell and the basilisk. And other times I put people in danger, like casting Sectumsempra. Or I just reacted in the heat of the moment, like when I beat Malfoy up along with the twins in fifth year.”

“I do not see how you can regret what you did to Mr. Malfoy in the past but excuse what you have done to him now.”

Harry stares at the portrait. Dumbledore only looks back, and Harry is the one who shakes his head and feels that he has to explain. “Because when I hit him with the spell from Snape’s book, he hadn’t done anything to me that would warrant it. I mean, outside that one moment. He was trying to cast the Cruciatus. But I never would have used the spell for that because it’s not a good response. I should have just dodged and Stunned him.”

“And now?”

“Now he’s done something that warrants it.”

“Minerva told me that you used Parseltongue to transform Mrs. Malfoy into a half-snake creature.”

“Yes.”

“And the curse cannot be undone except by another Parselmouth?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you should not have done that, Harry.”

Harry leans forwards a little. “Perhaps,” he says, “she shouldn’t have decided that she would challenge me to a duel I couldn’t back out of, based on a ploy from her son. After I spoke for them during the trials, too.”

“After she saved your life during the war.”

“After she tried to take it.”

Dumbledore considers him in more silence, but this time, at least Harry has the impression that the man doesn’t feel as helpless to break it. That’s a good thing, actually. Harry doesn’t want Dumbledore to feel as though Harry is just crushing all his arguments flat. He wants him to understand, and cease the attempts to change Harry’s mind, and he won’t do that if he assumes Harry isn’t listening to him.

And there is the fact that Harry was fond of this man, or rather, the man the portrait represents. This is all that’s left of him, but Harry will at least try to have a conversation with him, the way he wouldn’t bother with most other people.

“I think I see what you are saying,” Dumbledore murmurs at last.

“Good, sir.”

“There are a range of possible ways to react to something like Mrs. Malfoy challenging you to a duel, a range of possible reactions to consider. You would have given some of them more importance before the war. Now you are giving a different set precedence.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does this have something to do with young Mr. Nott?”

Harry smiles, and doesn’t reply.

“You were open before this, even when you made it clear that you disagreed with me, Harry. Why do you cease speaking as soon as I bring up Mr. Nott?”

“Because you’re questioning me in the other instances, and I know what kind of trouble you could make for me, and I’m prepared to push back against it. But I won’t let you make that kind of trouble for Theo.”

Another considering pause. Then Dumbledore says, “If you say that Mr. Nott is influencing you to consider different strategies than you would have before…”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you spared Mrs. Malfoy’s life, and didn’t kill her.”

“There is that.”

Dumbledore watches him again. Harry can’t really understand the expression on his face now. But it’s not anger or disappointment, and that’s a good thing.

“I was a fool to think that you could survive the war, and finding out you were a Horcrux, and dying, without changing,” Dumbledore whispers. “Not to mention the way I had kept information from you. Go, with my wish for your continued good health and thoughtfulness.”

It’s so much more than Harry thought he would get, even if thinks that Dumbledore is rather overstating the way that Harry felt when he discovered Dumbledore knew he was a Horcrux. And there’s no point in arguing with a portrait who’s not arguing with him.

Harry nods to Dumbledore and stands up. “Have a good—existence, sir.”

Dumbledore watches him with a sad smile as he leaves. But Harry feel quiet coolness stirring inside him, as if he’s drunk a whole pool of refreshing water, not sadness.

I’m my own person. Theo will be part of what I do going forwards, but not the whole. Ron and Hermione and being a “good” person won’t be the whole, either.

What will he do next?

Harry can’t wait to find out.

*

“You fucking bastard! You traitor! I should have fucked you to death!”

“Are you done?” Theo asks calmly, his gaze on Draco. They’re in a room deep in the dungeons that Father once used for some…experiments that he told Theo about years ago. That story was a test of how strong Theo’s stomach was, and if he could be as “great” as Father wanted him to be.

Theo brought Draco here and then relaxed his control long enough that Draco could speak all the words he wanted. He can’t attack Theo, and he can’t even use his wand. But he’s enjoyed stalking back and forth and waving his hands in the air and spitting vitriol at Theo and about Harry.

At least, Theo hopes that he’s enjoyed it. It’s the last time that he’ll ever do so.

“Of course not! How could you—”

“You planned to rape me. You planned to kill my lover.”

Draco falls silent. He seems to have turned and really looked at Theo for the first time since he started ranting, and now his mouth is open a little. Now he’s paling with fear.

“I thought that my revenge on you so far would be enough,” Theo says softly. “After all, you didn’t get to go through with the rape, and you hadn’t tried to get at Harry in the ways that I thought you would. I thought I had you under control. I thought you were no worse than Pansy and Daphne, in the end.

“But now I know better. And that’s why I’ve chosen a deeper vengeance.”

“Theo—”

Theo looks at him, and Draco seems to realize that he won’t get a reprieve. He chooses to throw his shoulders back and glare. “I won’t beg. You’re still a bastard, and you still came back here lording it over everyone how you didn’t suffer as much during the war.”

Theo sneers wordlessly. He has no need to answer that accusation, and also no reason to discuss his relationship with Harry further. It’s not like Draco will ever be privileged enough to hear any more of it.

Except in the way that Theo has chosen.

“Perseco mentem.”

The spell makes Theo’s wand buck as it flows through it. He has to be careful. This is the kind of curse that, like Fiendfyre, wants to turn on its caster, and it will so easily be able to get out of control.

But it’s worth it, for the flash of despair in Draco’s eyes, the cut-off scream before it perishes, and then he straightens and smiles slightly at Theo.

“I’m glad for you. And you were right.”

“Right to punish you?” Theo asks.

Draco nods. “Yeah. Although I’ll tell anyone who asks that of course it was because of plans I had that don’t relate to the real ones. Who would believe me anyway, with the hit to my reputation now that Mother tried to duel Potter?” He laughs.

Theo listens carefully, but no, he really doesn’t think that there’s any difference between that laughter and the normal kind that Draco gives when he thinks he’s among friends. “Would you be willing to exonerate me to the Headmistress?”

“Of course, Theo! But why would I need to?”

“She called Harry up to her office this morning. It has something to do with the fact that she thinks we’re hurting you.”

Draco’s eyes widen, and he shakes his head. “Oh, no! Of course I have to go up there and make sure that she knows better!”

He smiles at Theo. And somewhere deep in his mind, the real Draco Malfoy wails in horror.

Theo smiles at him. The Divided Mind Curse gives complete control of the victim’s thoughts, words, and action to the caster, but unlike the Imperius, it leaves a conscious sliver of the victim’s original awareness trapped in the back of their mind. Draco can hear and see and feel what Theo is ordering him to say, but he’ll be able to do nothing but watch.

And scream.

Forever.

“Then you should go see the Headmistress,” Theo agrees.

Draco beams at him and trots out of the dormitory. Theo stretches out and lies back on his bed. He knows that Blaise is in the common room right now, and his best friend will want to talk to him as soon as he sees the smile on Draco’s face.

“What did you do to him?” Blaise’s voice asks less than two minutes later.

Theo opens his eyes and smiles a little. “The Divided Mind Curse.”

Blaise stills, eyeing Theo as though he thinks that he might leap to his feet and use that curse on Blaise. Theo stares back in a silent demand for an explanation, and Blaise finally sighs and gives it to him.

“I could see you doing that right after you found out he was responsible for the Amortentia. But why do it now? Why do it over Potter, of all people?”

“You know what he is to me.”

“No. I don’t think I do.”

Theo sits up slowly. Blaise keeps not moving. “Are you sure you want to know? It’s—” And he cuts himself off, because even to Blaise, it’s difficult to speak the words aloud.

Something I want to speak of, but I thought you didn’t want to hear.

Blaise curls his lip a little. “How could you think I wouldn’t want to know?”

I want to hear.

Theo smiles. He showed good judgment, making a friend of Blaise all those years ago.

“He’s the star I found to light my path,” Theo says. “And someone I would kill and die to protect.”

“It’s good that you have more than one person like that.”

“You should, too, Blaise.”

Blaise has an odd expression on his face. “I have two people. Had. I will bring my mother’s last killers to retribution, and that will earn me a little peace. But I don’t aspire to find something like you have with Potter. I want something else.”

Theo nods, and something in him stretches and purrs and relaxes. He can have both Harry and Blaise in his life, and if the implications of that decision are still sometimes unclear to him, he’s made it.

Blaise leans forwards, and the set of his shoulders tells Theo that they’ve moved onto something that’s less uncomfortable for both of them. “How did it feel to cast the Divided Mind Curse on Malfoy?”

Theo laughs, and begins to tell him.