lomonaaeren

“No, that’s not right…”

Blaise sighed as he watched Theo tap his wand against the bow on the box he held, frowning, and then enchant it again. He got progressively deeper shades of scarlet, but he seemed dissatisfied with all of them. Blaise frankly couldn’t see the difference between one and the other.

“That’s not right, either!”

Theo sat back and ran his hand through his hair. They were alone in their bedroom at the moment, Draco elsewhere. Greg hadn’t come back to the school this year, which was—understandable, after all. And Vincent was dead.

Dead as part of some mule-headed pursuit of the boy that Theo was currently pursuing in another way.

“Is he worth it?” Blaise asked, as Theo went through another round of enchantments on the gift.

“Yes, of course,” Theo said absently, his eyes locked on the box. It was a black wooden one, from what Blaise could see, with the telltale sheen of ebony. Of course that was appropriate for this stage of the courtship—or the stage that Blaise thought Theo and Potter had entered—but it didn’t need to be ebony. It could just have been a cheap wood enchanted black. “Harry is worth everything.”

“How did you fall in love, anyway?”

Theo paused for a moment. Blaise wondered if he had asked a question that cut too close to the heart of the matter. At times he had thought that Theo was unreasonably jealous over Potter, and at others, he had thought that the change had happened so suddenly Theo might be uncertain of his own heart.

But then Theo looked up, his face dreamy, and Blaise stifled a groan. No, it wasn’t either of those things, was it? Theo was just thinking about how to put his impression of Potter into words.

“Never m—”

“It was watching him at the Battle,” Theo breathed. He had said something like this before, but Blaise still didn’t really understand, so he reluctantly shut up and listened. “Watching him as he taunted the Dark Lord, and destroyed him with a Disarming Charm.”

“But we know it was because of the wands. Not because of his power.”

“But you know what happened before that,” Theo said, in a tone that was still dreamy, not sharp at being contradicted. Blaise was glad enough for that.

“That the half-giant carried him out of the Forest? Yeah—”

“No. That he died and came back.”

Blaise blinked and stared at his best friend. Theo stared in turn, and there was steel underneath his expression now. Blaise could only shake his head and mutter, “That’s the rumor, but that doesn’t mean that’s what happened. No matter what Potter did to survive the Killing Curse as a baby, why would he be able to repeat it this time?”

Blaise also thought it would be a rather limited invulnerability. All someone would have to do was hit Potter with a curse that wasn’t the Killing one, and he would be as dead as anyone else. The Dark Lord might have done that if not for his exaggerated sense of the dramatic.

“What I’m about to tell you cannot leave this room.”

Blaise narrowed his eyes as Theo raised the shimmering curtain of a ward over the doorway that was decidedly illegal, given what it would do to anyone running into it. “Theo, what—”

“I’m going to need you to swear a blood oath.”

“To know the source of the rumor?”

“To know why the rumor is true.”

Blaise wavered for a long moment. Then he decided that his curiosity, and his hope that Theo had fallen in love sensibly and not stupidly, was greater than his wariness. He nodded and drew his wand, using it to cut a small wound on his palm.

“I swear this blood oath that the knowledge of how Harry Potter came back from the dead does not leave this room, until Theo Nott or Harry Potter gives me permission to communicate it. This includes communication in any fashion whatsoever.”

The oath appeared in front of both of them, written with blood on the air, and then whirled and vanished. It was the sign that Blaise had meant it. And the cut on his palm had closed completely. It would open and run with blood, never stemming until it had drained Blaise, if he broke the promise.

Blaise crossed his arms and looked at Theo expectantly.

“Harry is the Master of Death,” Theo said, and tapped his wand against his left hand.

Blaise already had his mouth open to deny it, but he slammed it shut again as an illusion he hadn’t even noticed fractured and fell apart from Theo’s hand. There was a large ring sitting on his left fourth finger, steel like the metal Theo so resembled.

And there was a black stone in the middle of it.

Blaise stared, and then looked his lips. He glanced at Theo for permission, and Theo nodded, beaming. Blaise wondered how much of an effort it was for him to conceal the ring under an illusion at all instead of going around flaunting it in people’s faces.

Blaise leaned closer.

The symbol of the Deathly Hallows was etched into the surface.

Blaise might still have scoffed, might have said that anyone could etch that symbol into a stone. But as it happened, he knew more than most about magical jewelry, since that was the main method his mother had used to secure their fortune. The symbol of the Hallows was one that couldn’t be carved into a stone by magic. It was as if the stones themselves, or magic itself, rejected the idea.

Maybe Muggle tools could have done it, but why would Harry Potter have used Muggle tools to do this?

“That’s amazing,” Blaise whispered. “He gave you the bloody Resurrection Stone in a ring?”

“He said it had been in a ring once in the recent past, and at least this way, someone he trusted would be wearing it.”

“And how did you gain his trust? How did he fall in love back?”

Theo hesitated, then shook his head. “That memory is so private that I don’t think he would want me sharing it,” he said, pulling his hand away.

Blaise sighed, but he wasn’t actually heartbroken at being denied the story. What Theo had revealed was—more than shocking enough.

“All right. Thank you for sharing with me what you have.”

“And you can understand why I want to get the bow right?”

“Yes,” Blaise said, his voice softer than he’d willed it to be. “Of course I understand. He trusted you that much.”

And, although Blaise didn’t think he would be saying this in front of Theo, Harry Potter was probably the one being on earth, as Death’s Master, who could promise that he wouldn’t die before Theo. Thanks to losing his mother so young, Theo had—a bit of a complex about that.

Theo smiled, and turned back to enchanting the bow the color of a bleeding heart at sunset. Blaise watched him, understanding, but glad that he wouldn’t get any closer to knowing it than this.

*

Draco took a moment to study his hair in the mirror. Yes, it conveyed “unruffled, cool, pureblood, in control” perfectly.

He took a step outside the bathroom, and a wand dug into his throat, forcing him onto his toes. Draco squeaked in anger and humiliation, hating the way his eyes watered. This was just too—too much like the way that the Aurors had treated him when he was briefly under arrest before his trial as a Death Eater.

He was allowed some trauma about that, surely.

Theo leaned towards him, his smile the deranged grin that he wore most of the time now. It was no wonder that the Dark Lord hadn’t taken him as a Death Eater. He was too mad even for that. “I do hope that you’re not on your way to bother Harry Potter, Draco.”

“I—I didn’t—”

“You know that I would have no trouble sending him part of you in a box,” Theo said thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should anyway, given the trouble that you’ve caused him down the years. Perhaps not as much as Umbridge or Skeeter in short, concentrated bursts, but there’s something to be said for the length of your bullying.”

Draco got himself under control with a gasp. “Potter testified for me in the trials. I don’t think he would like it if you sent him my head in a box.”

“Not your head. Just something that no one except you would miss.” Theo lowered his wand, still smiling like the Dark Lord, and jabbed his wand against Draco’s cock.

Draco couldn’t help the sob of fear that escaped him. It didn’t help that Blaise laughed quietly from where he was lounging on his bed, watching this like it was the Quidditch World Cup.

“If you think that I should spare you that—”

“I do! I do!”

“Then you won’t trouble Harry again. I saw that letter you were composing in various drafts, begging him for money and positive attention. It’s as well that you tore it up and threw the drafts in the bin. Try again, speak to him, so much as look at him if you don’t have to, and I’ll tear it off, Draco.” Theo leaned closer to Draco. “I fucking swear it.”

Draco nodded, knowing his eyes were wet and his legs and bowels both trembling. But he would defy anyone to say that Theo Nott wasn’t terrifying.

As he escaped back to the bathroom to smooth his hair into pureblood neatness again, Draco thought that it didn’t help that—

That he had been, well, thinking about approaching Potter.

Potter had wealth, and fame, and the kind of reputation that Draco couldn’t have bribed people to accept, nowadays. And he was handsome and able to accept the kind of violent courtship Theo offered him. Who wouldn’t look twice at Harry Potter?

Someone who wanted to keep his cock, evidently.

Draco swallowed, and shivered, and vowed, silently to himself, and very carefully, to hold to his promise.

*

Severus lingered in the corner of the Fat Lady’s portrait. Once she went to sleep—a human affectation that some of the portraits kept up, although Severus could not understand why—she could have slept through a dragon’s entrance. He only had to wait for Potter to come back from the tryst he had been on with Nott.

Merlin, I thought the Nott boy had better sense.

He heard the sound of kissing from down the corridor, and grimaced, shaking his head. When he was alive, kissing had held little attraction for Severus. His passion for Lily had been beyond such physical urges.

Even if others are not, who would want it to be with a Potter?

The two figures tumbled around the corner, laughing in their throats in the way of teenagers who thought they’d got away with keeping a secret. The exact same way the Marauders had always laughed.

Severus sometimes wished he had been painted with claws, if only to use them on the edge of a frame to express his frustrations.

“Theo, Theo, stop, someone’s going to hear.”

Someone already has, you idiotic boy.

“But I wanted to make sure that you enjoyed your gift.”

Severus’s curiosity got the better of him. What kind of gift had Nott obtained for Potter that would be of any use in this—sport? He seemed to tend more to severed body parts. Severus leaned towards the edge of the portrait again.

Potter was standing with his back to Severus, but Severus could still make out the flush on the disgusting boy’s ears. He had a hand lifted as if to hold the Nott boy back, but he pressed closer anyway, his eyes dark and brilliant at once.

“How does it feel when I kiss you, Harry?” Nott whispered. Severus shuddered, but didn’t move from his post. He had a question for someone he had once thought the cleverest of his Slytherins, and he didn’t want to chance losing track of him. “The way it felt when I poured the potion down your throat?”

Severus blinked. There were indeed potions that could enhance the pleasure of touch. He had brewed them often enough himself for the apothecaries that would pay him prices that somewhat offset Albus’s stinginess.

Nott had brewed one of those?

It is wasted on Potter.

“It feels great,” Potter said in a low voice that Severus could have gone his afterlife without hearing.

“Show me, Harry.”

Nott bent Potter back into the wall, his hands clasping his shoulders. Potter moaned, and Severus made a low sound of contempt in his throat, not the kind of sound that anyone would notice if they weren’t standing right beside the portrait.

And yet, Nott noticed.

In seconds, he was spinning to face Severus, shoving Potter behind him. His wand aimed straight at Severus without flinching. For a moment, Nott still stared, as if he didn’t know what he was seeing.

Severus thought about slipping away then. But why should he? He had as much right to be here as two teenagers breaking curfew. He stared back.

Nott laughed softly a moment later. It wasn’t a laugh Severus remembered. “It seems we have a guest, Harry,” he said, and tucked his wand away. “I think that we should make him welcome, shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t want him to spy on us, Theo.”

Potter sounded vulnerable. Severus craned his neck, and made out Potter leaning on Nott’s shoulder, hiding behind him. Severus laughed, an incredulous croak. Who would have known that the day would come when a Death Eater’s son would tame a Potter?

“Don’t worry, he won’t.”

“I shall go where I want,” Severus said, and shook his head when Nott started a step forwards. “What exactly would you do to stop me? There is no way that you can stop me. You may dream all you like. There is no way to do it.”

“I’ve wanted to do this since Harry told me about going to the Headmistress’s office and seeing you spying on him.” Nott smiled. “I didn’t know if I would get the chance to do it, and I don’t know why you came here tonight. But I’m glad.”

“I came here because I wished to ask you if you are mad, risking your future on someone as worthless as Potter, and I knew you would be escorting him back to the Tower.”

At least Severus got to see Potter flinch. He smiled, staring at the boy, hoping that the father could feel the pain through the son. Once he would have disdained such suspicions, but he had learned something about life beyond death now.

“Yes, this is the end,” Nott said, with a nod that Severus only barely saw in the corner of his eye.

Severus turned to him, curious to ask why he had changed his mind about the courtship. Severus had thought he would have to present at least a few more compelling arguments, and that he would—

He had not felt pain since he died, but he felt it as Nott’s enchanted knife slammed into the canvas he was occupying.

He screamed.

The Fat Lady didn’t wake. Nott carved, carefully, cutting Severus out of her portrait. All the time, Severus screamed. He had forgotten enough about pain to be shocked, more than hurt, by the agony of it.

“I did wonder what I was going to get you for your next courtship gift, Harry,” Nott said, and tore the canvas roughly free. Severus felt his life flowing and swirling away, blurring like wet paint. “But I think this one appropriate.”

Severus never heard Potter’s answer, never heard anything more at all.

*

Hagrid straightened from examining the foot of the injured thestral foal—nothing too wrong there, he would be right as rain in a few days—and blinked when he saw two figures standing outside the gate of his hut. He walked over briskly, seeing that one of them was Harry and the other one—

Young Nott, yes, the boy who was courting him. Hagrid shook his head. He didn’t trust the Nott family, the ones who had come through Hogwarts had all been bad, but he reckoned Harry knew what he was doing. It would take a little more to fool Harry than most people, that was for sure!

“Harry!” He shook Harry’s hand and then turned to Nott. Some of the bad ones, they would startle and run like that, like an easily spooked unicorn, when you confronted them.

Nott only looked amused. “Professor Hagrid,” he said, and leaned on the gate. His right hand was entwined with Harry’s left, Hagrid saw. He shook his head again. Peculiar, damn peculiar. “We have a special favor to ask of you.”

“Do you?”

Hagrid was being as unfriendly as he could with a student, but Nott only inclined his head and looked amused again. “Yes. Do you think we could come in?”

Hagrid sighed, but it wasn’t like he thought Nott would really harm Fang or anything lying around the house. He didn’t have secrets that he needed to hide, not like other people. “Suppose so,” he said, and popped the gate open.

When they were inside the house, Harry looked around with a wide-eyed, happy expression. Hagrid softened despite himself. The courtship couldn’t be all wrong, not if it made little Harry this happy.

“You gather materials from the Forest, don’t you, Professor Hagrid?”

Hagrid squinted at Nott, wondering why he was doing all the talking, but then remembered something he’d heard about the pureblood courting traditions, what seemed like a lifetime ago. The person who’d started the courtship was supposed to be the one to ask for favors when it came to gifts. Hagrid sighed. It seemed weird to him. Thank Merlin Maxime hadn’t wanted anything like that. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Nott nodded, his smile still firmly in place. “So. I was wondering if you ever happened to gather thestral tail hairs?”

Hagrid blinked. “I do. Sell ‘em to some of the apothecaries in Diagon Alley, as a matter of fact.”

“Excellent. I’d like to have as many as you have on hand.”

Hagrid chuckled. The Nott boy was canny, canny, but he was better, oh yeah. “And you’re going to pay me for them? Isn’t that against those pureblood traditions you put so much stock in?” He winked at Harry.

Harry smiled a little, but didn’t say anything. Nott smirked—you had to call it a smirk—and reached into his robe pocket. Hagrid rocked from foot to foot, but didn’t stop him. Weren’t that many spells that could affect a half-giant.

“I might pay you for the favor with something other than money,” Nott murmured, and offered him a parchment scroll.

Hagrid took it suspiciously, squinting when he saw the seal of the Ministry on it. He held it up and turned it back and forth, finally getting it at the right distance from his eyes to rightly read.

He struggled through a few lines of the dense legal language, and then lowered the scroll to his side and glared at Nott. “Making fun of me for not being as educated, are you?”

“Actually, no.” Nott’s eyebrows went up. “That’s an official pardon from the Ministry for your supposed involvement in the Chamber of Secrets mess more than fifty years ago. It offers you the right to carry a wand again on the completion of the relevant Hogwarts coursework, which you can complete by owl through the Ministry.”

Hagrid stared at him, and then at the parchment again. It might say that, he thought. There was at least a mention of expulsion that he could see, and something about wand rights. But who knew, with all that fancy Ministry language?

He cleared his throat. “Why would you—why would you get this for me?” he asked, and was at least grateful that he sounded gruff instead of like he was about to start crying. Then Nott would hate him for sure.

“Because your happiness is important to Harry, and Harry’s is important to me.” Nott cast Harry the kind of glance that most of the Notts Hagrid knew wouldn’t have been caught dead giving anyone. They were all about arranged marriages and politics and not love—them. “And this way, I can pay for the thestral hairs that I need to weave a cloak for Harry.”

Hagrid stared at him. “Those hairs are tiny, like.”

“Yes?”

“So it’ll take you forever to weave a cloak from them!”

“I’m sure that Harry will wait for me.” Nott gave Harry another look that made Hagrid feel like he ought to turn and face the wall and give them a little privacy. But it was his house, so he didn’t. “And neither this gift nor the pardon I procured for you cost me any money, which is indeed how these courting gifts are supposed to work.”

Hagrid wavered. But this—

No matter why Nott had done it, it meant so much. And meant he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life here.

If he didn’t want to.

“Let me get the hairs,” he said.

Harry spoke for the first time, glancing away from Nott to smile at Hagrid. “I’m glad. You’re free, Hagrid.”

“Yeah, I reckon I am,” Hagrid said, dazedly, and went out into the back garden where he kept the thestral hairs. If that left Nott and Harry alone, that was a sort of coincidence, like.

And if it meant that no one could see his tears if they fell, that was also a coincidence.

*

Theo leaned in and brushed his lips against Harry’s in a light, tender kiss. Harry gasped and knotted his fingers together behind Theo’s neck. Theo kissed him again, harshly enough that Harry’s mouth opened up beneath his.

They were hidden, out of sight at last of all the staring eyes and inquiring tongues. They were behind the greenhouse furthest from Hogwarts, where not even Sprout went unless she was harvesting some of the wilder plants, and Harry’s skin was glowing like moonstones in the soft starlight.

Theo couldn’t stop touching him. His hands slid down Harry’s arms, beneath his robes, beneath his shirt. There was so much warm skin everywhere, and there was, best of all, Harry looking at him with that love and devotion dark as the roses Theo had grown in his eyes.

Theo had thought, once, that love and devotion weren’t worth pursuing. After all, what was the chance that he would find them? People who had grown up like he did didn’t get those things. Lessons in trickery and treachery didn’t promote them.

People with Death Eaters for fathers weren’t supposed to want them.

But then he had seen Harry Potter rise from death and defeat the Dark Lord, and Theo had tumbled headlong. He hadn’t even thought of what might happen before he’d sat down that evening and written his first courtship offer. He didn’t think about rejection, or whether this was madness, or what his father would think. None of those things could stand in his mind next to the glow of power radiating around Harry Potter.

(What his father would have thought. His father had fled the country the moment he saw the Dark Lord fall. Theo could say that he owed Harry for his freedom, too, if he wanted to speak of owing).

The owl had carried the courtship offer to Harry in the morning, when they were eating a hastily prepared breakfast in the Great Hall. Theo could have been elsewhere, but he’d come back to Hogwarts after the Slytherins had been escorted away. He couldn’t stand to be that far from the new center of his life.

Harry had taken the letter from the owl with a puzzled frown, and read it with his shining eyes steadily widening in disbelief. Then he’d turned his head and looked straight at Theo.

Theo would always remember that. They’d barely interacted in school, Harry would have had no reason to think he’d be there, and yet he’d turned and looked.

“Harder, Theo. Harder.”

Theo shook himself out of his memories and bit down on Harry’s lip, digging his hands into his lover’s shoulders. Harry was all but free of his robes now, and his hair was even more disheveled than usual, and his eyes were wild.

Who would have thought that Harry Potter wanted someone who would be violent in defense of him, someone who would court him with no heed to anything but whether he could feel joy from it?

“You know what I want.”

Theo lifted his head and looked at Harry. Harry stared back at him, eyes challenging.

“It will be my ultimate pleasure,” Theo whispered, and dropped to his knees.

*

Harry tilted his head back, hands scrabbling wildly at the glass of the greenhouse, as Theo took Harry’s cock into his mouth.

It was the warmth, the wetness, the way that Theo’s dark eyes were focused utterly on him before Harry shut his own eyes—

It was all those things, and more.

It was the way that Theo had met Harry at the edge of the grounds three months ago, the day he’d sent the courtship offer, and explained what he wanted.

It was the way that he’d stared straight at Harry, and his eyes were covetous. For Harry himself, as Harry had fully understood after a few minutes, not because he wanted Harry’s wealth or fame or even because he wanted to thank Harry for killing Voldemort. Harry couldn’t have stood any of that.

It was how Theo had stammered when he’d spoken. How he’d let his words tumble over each other, and he’d said—

He’d said—

Harry broke apart in a rush of pleasure, crying out and jerking his hips the way he wouldn’t have done with anyone else, wouldn’t have dared do with anyone else. They wouldn’t have been Theo. They wouldn’t have been able to take it, to ride it with not only acceptance but their own choked cry.

No one was like Theo.

Harry opened his eyes with luxurious slowness, and looked down at his lover, his suitor, his beloved. Theo was kneeling there and looking up at him, his lips and chin wet. And the front of his robes.

He had come just from sucking Harry off.

It was radiance and love and power.

Harry dragged Theo to his feet, kissing him so hard that Theo shuddered and clung back. Harry let their hips move together, delighting in the little hiss of pain Theo gave. Neither of them could get hard right now, but this was still something Harry wanted to do.

And because Harry wanted to do it, Theo wanted to do it.

It was the way, above all things, that Theo had knelt to Harry that evening when he’d come to tell him he’d fallen in love. The way he’d bowed his head as though Harry was his executioner, and then how he’d lifted it again and looked at Harry with bright, dazed eyes and gone on kneeling.

I love him, I love him, I love him--

They were meant for each other, made for each other.

Harry kissed Theo and drowned in his love.

The End.