[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Basilisk Heart, 2/5, R, Harry/Theo

[lomonaaeren]

Harry woke harshly, gasping. There had been a flash of green light in his dreams, like the one that he had dreamed of when he was in the cupboard at the Dursleys when he was a kid—

But this one was a lot brighter.

Of course it is, I only saw it a few hours ago, Harry thought bitterly, and rubbed his still-aching scar with his hand. He took a deep breath.

“Harry.”

Harry started and aimed his wand in the direction of the voice. He didn’t even remember grabbing it from the table next to the hospital bed. Or maybe it had been beneath the pillow. He honestly didn’t remember.

“Lumos,” he snapped, when the voice didn’t say anything else and no one came hurtling out of the darkness to attack him.

He sighed when the light worked enough for him to see Nott sitting on one of the other beds. He leaned back against his pillow and wiped his hand across his face. “What do you want, Nott?” They had finished selling the third-to-last load of basilisk parts a few weeks ago, and then Harry had got caught up in preparing for the Third Task and hadn’t had the time to meet or talk with Nott.

The way that Nott was staring at him now, Harry wondered if something had happened to him, too. Harry had heard Voldemort speak Nott’s name in the graveyard, and despite the soul-deep pain and panic he’d been feeling, his eyes had still gone to the stooped man who had cast the blood curse on his son.

“I came to see what happened.”

“Voldemort is back.”

Nott considered that for long enough that Harry thought he would nod, get up, and walk out of the hospital wing, having the information he’d come for. Instead, Nott leaned forwards, his eyes fastened on Harry. “I know that. I want to know how you’re going to escape your Muggles now that this has happened.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t even thought of their plan since he’d seen Cedric die. Even though in the months before that, he’d thought about it every day.

Now, though?

Harry shrugged and laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. I think they’ll be keeping a close eye on me to make sure that I actually get to the house.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Then they’ll just search for me.”

“So you’re giving up?”

Harry snarled, pricked in the way that only Nott had managed to annoy him in their past few months of arguing, skinning, slicing, selling, and heart-feeding. Even Malfoy didn’t manage it. “No. But I think it’s going to have to be next summer, or at least next term. They’ll be watching me now, and you know I can’t get to the basilisk parts over the summer.”

Nott’s eyes shone, and he switched to Parseltongue. Speaking it with him, Harry had started to notice the difference from English. The only thing he could describe it as was to say that it sounded like dark water was flowing out of Nott’s throat when he spoke it. “I have a different idea.”

“What?”

“We send a homunculus of you to your relatives’ home.”

Harry swallowed convulsively. Nott had weird interests, and Harry knew enough about them by now to realize what Nott meant. He also knew that the body Voldemort had grown from in the graveyard had been a homunculus at first.

He didn’t know if he could make himself do it.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Voldemort used a homunculus to come back as part of the ritual.”

“So what?”

“He also used me as a ritual ingredient, Nott!”

Harry winced at the echoes of the shout, and looked over his shoulder, instinctively seeking out Madam Pomfrey. Then he remembered that to anyone else, the shout would probably just sound like a bout of whispery hissing, and relaxed.

Nott hadn’t moved, of course. He seemed still even in contexts like the Chamber where Harry had seen him moving plenty of times. Harry thought the snake’s gift suited Nott better than it ever had him.

“I’m getting you out of your relatives’ house. Remember what I said about the gift having to be balanced?”

“We still didn’t really talk about where I would go.”

“I know exactly where you’re going to go. But I can’t reveal it to you until we get there.”

Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to say that he didn’t trust Nott, that the other boy’s father having been in the graveyard had ended all the ties between them.

But of course, that wasn’t true. He couldn’t speak Parseltongue with someone for months and sell the basilisk and feed him a bloody heart without coming to trust him.

“All right. How are you going to get me away from the people who will be expecting to be able to watch me on Privet Drive?”

Nott stood, a smile tugging at his mouth. It was gentler and less intense than the others Harry had seen him wear before. He glided forwards until he stood in front of Harry, not seeming to notice the way Harry stared at him searchingly.

“My name is Theo.”

“Yeah, I know?”

“No. I mean that I want you to call me that, Harry.”

Harry swallowed. The sound of his name in Parseltongue was intense and intimate enough to make up for any lack in Nott’s smile. “Fine. Theo.”

Theo nodded. It would take Harry time to get used to calling him that, when they’d been so careful before to avoid first names. “Trust me. I’ll come and get you the night before the Leaving Feast.”

Harry wanted to say that they would doubly notice if Harry vanished right out of Hogwarts, but he held his tongue. Theo had said to trust him, and at the moment, Harry had no reason not to.

If nothing else, he thought, rolling over and burying his face in the pillow as Nott slid out of the hospital wing like a ghost, he might have a more peaceful summer than he was expecting to at the moment, with the nightmares about Cedric that he knew Dudley would taunt him about if he had the chance.

*

“Are you all right, Harry? You’re jumpy.”

“Oh, I wonder why that could be.”

Hermione and Ron frowned at each other over his head. Harry knew it. He didn’t bother looking up to confirm it.

His relationship with his friends had changed since the First Task. Ron had apologized, and Harry had accepted him back, because in the end, Ron was his first and best friend, and Harry still wanted there. With him came Hermione, and they had spent plenty of cozy evenings together in the common room and trying to figure out who had put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire.

But all the while, Harry had known he would slip out of the common room with his Invisibility Cloak that night, or the next night, and meet Nott down in the Chamber of Secrets.

It was strange, but he had never once thought about telling Ron and Hermione about the heart, or the blood curse that Nott—Theo—was under, or the steadily growing fortune in Galleons that he and Nott were accumulating by shuttling the basilisk parts to goblins they met under illusion-disguises in Hogsmeade. Theo hadn’t told Harry that it would be best to keep it secret. He hadn’t said anything about not trusting Ron and Hermione, or about Gryffindors gossiping, or anything that Harry might have thought would be the case if he’d thought about it.

Harry himself had simply decided that it was for the best if he didn’t say anything, and Nott had glided in his wake, and—Ron and Hermione didn’t know.

“You know you’re going to be safe over the summer, Harry. Dumbledore won’t let any harm come to you.”

“Right. Except what my relatives are going to inflict on me.”

“He wouldn’t let them do anything too bad!”

Harry didn’t shake his head or tell Hermione she was wrong, because there was no point. She wouldn’t believe him or change her mind or challenge Dumbledore. And now, there was the fact that arguing with her might alert her to his plan not to be on Privet Drive for the summer.

Harry stared at the window that looked out over the grounds and thought how mental it was to be trusting a Death Eater’s son, of all people.

He closed his eyes and saw Cedric, falling.

*

“What did you think the homunculus was going to be made of?”

“Flesh. That’s what he used.”

“But both you and I are Parselmouths. It changes what we can do.”

Harry had looked at Theo with some skepticism, but he’d agreed to use the shreds of basilisk hide, and one last, precious strip of the heart, that Theo had brought out of the Chamber to make the homunculus.

Now he sat back and stared at it, shaking his head. It really was an ugly thing, uglier than the little baby form that Voldemort had had. Its head was molded out of a mandrake root and covered with the basilisk hide, and its hands were just crude carvings of fingers in bark. The legs and body were made of bark, too, and smeared with crushed flowers that Theo had brought from the greenhouse.

“And you’re sure we can do this?”

“Of course.” Theo sat back and stretched. They were behind the greenhouse where Theo had gone to get most of the ingredients, and he turned the same intent stare on Harry that he had used when Harry was feeding him the heart. “You know what you have to do.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. Then he reached for the potion Theo had brought.

This one smelled softly foul, like a rotting corpse that had been around for a while stinking at such a low rate that you only noticed when you were close to it. Harry wasn’t happy about drinking it, even though he didn’t have to swallow it.

He held his nose and poured the first mouthful in.

He could feel the way that the potion changed when it touched the lining of his mouth. Suddenly it was bubbling and foaming, and he knew that it could harm him badly unless he spat it out.

So he leaned over and did.

The venom, which the potion had transformed into on the tongue of a Parselmouth, soaked the homunculus’s legs, but the rest of it was still dry. Harry grimaced and used the potion again and again, until the stupid little figure was running with poison and Theo had sat all the way up, staring.

The homunculus was moving.

As Harry watched, it whirled and changed and grew. Well, parts of it stayed the same, but the venom was projecting the illusion, the way Theo had told him would happen. When the change finished, the homunculus was him, stumbling about with button-bright green eyes and a mockery of his glasses on its face. Harry thought it was a little shorter than he was, but not enough that anyone would really notice.

Hopefully Ron and Hermione would attribute it to the hunched posture he’d used a lot since Cedric’s death.

“Do you think that’s really going to work?” Harry whispered, eyes fastened on the creation as it lumbered around and looked confused. “Really?”

“I do.”

Harry glanced at Theo, at the absolute confidence in his posture, and the way that he reached out to take Harry’s hand without taking his gaze from the homunculus. He might have been discussing the results of an ordinary potion.

“All right,” Harry said. “All right.”

*

In the end, it worked much better than Harry had ever dared to hope it would.

They took the homunculus back to Gryffindor Tower, and it mumbled the password to the Fat Lady. Its voice sounded like a strained and blurred version of Harry’s. Harry thought that might give it away, but Theo shook his head and tightened his hold on Harry’s hand. He hadn’t let go of it since they’d watched the homunculus come to life.

“It’ll sound like you don’t want to talk. And they shouldn’t even expect you to. After what you went through in the graveyard? You have every right to be as silent as you want.”

“But I was talking before this.”

“And now you’re not.” Harry opened his mouth to object again, and Theo turned and pinned him with an intense look that—well, all his looks were intense, but this was especially piercing. “You have the right to decide to stop anytime, Harry.”

“Does that include with you?”

Harry meant the question to be sarcastic, but Theo just flashed him a smug grin. “You don’t want to stop talking with me. Especially in our language.”

Harry nodded, refusing to speak Parseltongue just because he didn’t want to gratify Theo, and then turned and walked with him towards the staircase that would lead them downwards. He glanced back once, but no one was tearing out of the Gryffindor common room yelling that Harry Potter had been kidnapped and replaced by an illusion.

“Told you it would work.”

“You don’t have to be that smug,” Harry said, and shoved Theo’s shoulder. Theo staggered, looking surprised, and then recovered his feet and laughed, full and free.

“Yeah, I do.”

Harry shoved him again, but his lips were twitching and Theo was watching him with ardent interest, and they went down the stairs laughing. It was only when they reached the dungeons that Harry started to think that he might not have considered this situation carefully enough.

“Where am I going to sleep?”

“In my bed.”

Harry stopped. Theo kept walking, and then turned around and looked at him with a mildly impatient expression. “What?”

“You—wouldn’t object to sharing your bed with me?”

“Why would I invite you to share it if I objected?”

Harry took a long breath and scrubbed his hand across his eyes. “Theo, I just—it’s a big step, isn’t it?”

“A step in what?”

Theo always seemed to retreat to Parseltongue when a discussion threatened to get too emotional. Harry rolled his eyes but hissed obligingly, “You’re showing that you trust me in a way that I would guess you don’t trust all your friends.”

Theo pulled him closer. Harry went with a stumble and a gasp. He hadn’t expected that, and even though he wouldn’t say that he felt as if he were in danger standing close to Theo, still, it was—

Unexpected.

“You are my closest friend,” Theo hissed. “You gave me the gift of Parseltongue. You saved my life. And you’ve done something else, something you don’t understand yet.” They stood there with Theo holding his hand and staring at him, while Harry wondered if Theo was going to tell him about that other thing. But apparently not yet. Theo just pulled insistently on his hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

So they trooped down to the dungeons, and Harry draped the Cloak over himself as Theo drew him into the common room, and then they were arriving in the Slytherin boys’ bedroom for fourth year. Harry looked around curiously. He’d seen the Slytherin common room before, of course, but nothing like this.

“Are you all right sleeping in your robes?”

Harry nodded. It hadn’t even occurred to him to get his pyjamas from Gryffindor Tower. “Yeah. Do you have a toothbrush I can use, though?”

“Yes.”

Theo guided him into the bathroom, although Harry thought he could have found it on his own, and then went and found a toothbrush from somewhere in his trunk, probably. Harry mumbled thanks and brushed his teeth. He had to keep ducking his head to see out from under the Cloak’s hood, but honestly, that wasn’t a big problem. He was already yawning hard, and the realization that he wouldn’t have to go back to the Dursleys was finally settling in on him.

When he left the bathroom, he tiptoed across the floor to Theo’s bed, which was an enormous one draped in green—of course—set against one of the windows that looked out into the lake. Harry crawled in and lay down.

Theo promptly crawled in. Harry had thought he would lie on the other side of the bed and try to avoid touching Harry, but instead, he molded himself to Harry’s back, arms linking together around his stomach.

Harry swallowed in surprise.

“I know that you’re okay with this,” Theo whispered. “Because I can feel it in your breathing.”

“I—what?”

“My senses are enhanced, like a snake’s, now that I ate the basilisk heart. I wanted that protection. That was one reason it had to be a basilisk and not another snake.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“There’s more than one, but I’ll tell you in time.”

Harry breathed out and shut his eyes. “You’ve given me as great a gift as I’ve given you,” he whispered. “Even more than just getting away from the Dursleys. The homunculus, and somewhere else to stay for the summer.”

Theo chuckled against the back of his neck, his breath like a fire. “Good night, Harry,” he murmured.

“Good night,” Harry hissed back, and passed into darkness.