lomonaaeren

Harry was watching under the Cloak when the homunculus marched with Ron and Hermione onto the train. It had paused on the way there to toss Harry’s shrunken trunk to Theo under the guise of dropping something on the ground. Harry’s friends didn’t appear to notice anything wrong, content with the quiet mumbled responses that the homunculus gave now and then. Harry shook his head in wonder.

Theo’s hand came to rest on his back. Harry jumped, but he couldn’t show how surprised he was at the moment, given that people would be watching. He had to get on the train under the Cloak, and walk with Theo until they reached the compartment where Theo had said they would spend most of the ride. Apparently, Theo liked to get another compartment by himself, and other Slytherins might visit there, but they wouldn’t bother him.

Harry waited until Theo had locked the door and obscured the window with spells. Then he took off the Cloak and asked, “How could you tell where I was when I was under this to touch me?”

“I told you.” Theo’s eyes were so intent it was hard to meet them. “I can smell you.”

Harry just shook his head, because he would have asked why Theo knew exactly where to touch him—which couldn’t have come with smell alone—but he didn’t think he was ready to have that discussion. He sat down on the bench in the train compartment and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. Theo sat down across from him.

The train shuddered and pulled out of Hogsmeade. Harry stared blindly out the window. He had seen the thestrals pulling the carriages that morning, and Theo had explained what they were, but it wasn’t the same thing as really understanding them.

He thought about asking more about them now, but it wasn’t thestrals he was interested in.

“Who put your name in the Goblet?”

Oh, right. Harry had forgotten that Theo wouldn’t have known that part. He turned to face him. “A Death Eater named Barty Crouch, Jr. He took Moody’s place using Polyjuice, apparently all year.”

Theo went very still, staring at him. Harry just looked wearily back. He didn’t know why this news appeared to have upset Theo, and he honestly wasn’t sure he had the capacity to care, either.

“I know who he is.”

“I’m not surprised, with your father.”

“I heard tales of him from other sources. Saw memories in Pensieves that didn’t come from my father.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “All right. Other Death Eaters?”

“Yes.”

Theo didn’t seem like he wanted to discuss it, even though he was the one who had brought it up with Crouch’s name. Harry just leaned back against the wall again and watched the blurred landscape whip by outside.

“So you could have died even after you came back from the graveyard where the Dark Lord rose.”

Harry blinked and turned back to Theo. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t mention this before?”

“It didn’t come up?” Then Harry shook his head. He could have told Theo about it in the hospital wing when Theo visited, if he’d really wanted to. It was more like—it just didn’t matter, next to all the other shit he’d been through. “I didn’t think about it. It didn’t seem important.”

“All danger to you is important.”

“I’m surprised that you would say that.”

Theo went stiller than ever, until Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to reach out and feel stone in his arm instead of muscle. “You think that I cannot care about you because I’m a Slytherin?” he asked at last, when they had stared at each other for long enough to make Harry’s eyeballs ache.

“You’ve been through the blood curse. It’s a more terrible danger than anything I’ve faced. And you were willing to do something desperate to escape it. You know more about death than I do.”

“So you thought I wouldn’t care about it because I had faced worse.”

It still wasn’t the way Harry would have put things, maybe, but it was more accurate than a lot of what he could have said. He leaned back against the wall and shrugged. “Yes.”

“You were wrong.”

Harry frowned, but nodded when Theo glared at him, because this was something important to Theo for some reason. “All right. I’ll keep that in mind for future dangers.”

“See that you do.”

Harry’s response had been at least half-sarcastic, but it seemed Theo was determined not to take it that way. So Harry sighed, and then looked up as someone knocked on the compartment’s door. He tugged the Cloak back over his head and vanished beneath it as Theo opened the door to let Malfoy in.

Honestly, at the moment, it felt easiest to just stay invisible and watch the countryside unfold outside the window.

*

“That wasn’t a problem.”

Harry nodded absently, eyes still fixed on the place where Uncle Vernon had gathered up the homunculus and shepherded it off the platform. Theo had assured him it would last as long as he needed it to, and would actually be better off at Privet Drive than it had been at Hogwarts. According to Theo, there was a “sympathetic connection” between the homunculus and Harry that weakened with distance, and meant it would actually act more independent when it was further away.

“Have I not told you the truth?”

“Of course, Theo. I haven’t accused you of lying, you know.”

“It is more than that,” Theo said, but turned away before Harry could ask him what he had meant. He scurried along at Theo’s heels as Theo walked towards the Floo on the far side of the platform. “We’re going to my home.”

“But your father---”

“He can neither understand Parseltongue nor detect a Cloak as fine as yours with any wards or spells. Honestly, I don’t know if anyone could detect that Cloak of yours.” Theo swept Harry with a long look. “There’s something uncanny about it.”

“It was my dad’s.”

Theo nodded, his face set in a calm expression. “Invisibility Cloaks don’t generally last that long, so there must be something special about it.”

Before Harry could ask him more questions, Theo threw a pinch of Floo powder into the fire that came from somewhere Harry hadn’t even noticed, and then hooked an arm around Harry’s waist and drew him sharply against Theo’s side. Harry gave an undignified squeak. It was true that someone might notice the Floo flaring up again if Harry tried to go through by himself, but he hadn’t expected this.

“Thunderhaven!” Theo cried.

They whirled through and were gone, with Theo’s arms firmer than steel around Harry.

*

They landed in a room that made Harry instinctively want to cringe. It was made of marble, black marble, with a slickness that caused Harry to wince at the thought of slipping on the floor. The walls glowed with subtle flickers of gold and blue, and the torches cast dizzying shadows.

Other than the torches and the fireplace they had come through, it was entirely empty.

Theo turned to Harry and gave him a faint smile. “My father thinks to punish me by staying away from me when I come back from Hogwarts,” he hissed. “He would be here to greet me every time if he knew how much of a punishment his presence is for me.”

“Should we be speaking aloud?”

“Parseltongue sounds like nothing more than noise to those who don’t speak it. Creepy, but only noticeable if they get close enough. He’ll think it the hissing and flaring of the fire.”

Harry nodded uncertainly and followed Theo out of the Floo room. Theo carried his trunk and kept his gaze aimed straight ahead. Harry’s trunk, still shrunken from where the homunculus had dropped it, rested in a pocket of Theo’s robe.

Harry trusted Theo. Of course he did. But it was hitting him that he had willingly come to a Death Eater’s house for the summer, and he had to question whether that was really a good idea.

They trooped up stairs that at least were made of dark wood instead of black marble, and accented with a dark red carpet. Theo’s room was enormous, a suite really; Harry could see doors in the distance. Theo put his trunk down at the foot of his bed and then sat on it and stared vaguely at the wall.

Harry at least knew why they were doing this. Theo had told Harry that his father spied on him through spells for an hour or so after he’d come back, to see his despair over the blood curse growing year by year.

Harry really hated Alexander Nott. Maybe even more than Uncle Vernon.

It turned out the ending of the spy spells wasn’t subtle, although maybe it was to Theo’s father. Harry had to stifle a gasp as the pop of magic echoed over his skin. Theo stirred and sighed a little, then stood, blinking, and nodded to Harry. He walked towards one of the doors that led further into the suite.

Harry followed, wondering if there was another bedroom there, or maybe a library Theo wanted to show him. But instead of walking through one of the actual doors, Theo halted in front of a patterned patch of stone on the wall. He reached out and ran his fingers over a tracery in the stone that looked like a carved vine.

The wall rumbled aside. Harry jumped. He didn’t know why he had never considered that there might be secret passages in Theo’s house, but. Well. Surely Hogwarts wasn’t the only old magical building with them.

“Come with me?”

Theo’s voice was soft, but his eyes hard and glittering as he rested them on Harry. Harry nodded and walked into the passage. He did trust Theo by now. And this couldn’t be any more dangerous than the Chamber of Secrets.

The passage in the wall twisted back and forth, until it seemed as if it must occupy far more space than there could possibly be in the wall. Harry didn’t let that bother him too much. After all, he had stayed in the Weasleys’ enormous tent at the Quidditch World Cup.

The passage sloped very slightly downwards, but not enough that it ever resembled a slide or stairs. And part of it kept going past the point where Theo stopped, his hand resting on what looked like an unremarkable wall.

“I learned this secret when I was nine years old,” Theo said softly. “This is the reason that I had to become a Parselmouth specifically, instead of seeking some easier magical gift to drive out the blood curse. And the reason I had to have you feed me a basilisk heart instead of something else.”

For the first time since Voldemort had risen in the graveyard, Harry felt clear-headed. His heart was pounding with excitement and curiosity. He nodded.

Theo spun his fingers over the wall. If he was tracing some pattern, it was invisible to Harry. The wall still opened.

The tunnel beyond this was lit with some distant fire, and did slope downwards more sharply. But Theo reached back and caught Harry’s hand, so Harry didn’t hesitate to follow him.

They arrived at the entrance to what looked like a natural cavern, or maybe had been made to look like it. There was a ceiling high overhead, studded with small flickers of magical light that resembled stars.

Harry didn’t pay much attention to them, though, because the flickering light of the fire gleamed on a solid green wall of scales.

In front of them slept a basilisk, smaller than the one Harry had killed.

Theo’s hand tightened on Harry’s. “She was my only companion for so long,” he whispered, his voice full of pain. “The only one who knew about my father’s torments, because she suffered them, too. I promised to free her. Will you help me, Harry?”

Harry swallowed, and nodded, pressing his shoulder to Theo’s. They watched the sleeping basilisk in silence.

Harry shivered, alive and awake with wonder. Fear, too, but it was so much better than the dull state that had gripped him since Cedric’s death.

“I will,” he whispered.

*

Theo had gone to extraordinary lengths to communicate with the basilisk before Harry had given him Parseltongue. He’d used a telepathy spell that he’d found in a Dark Arts book, and which, he’d explained to Harry, was usually used by the caster to command animals to attack someone else. Theo had communicated with the basilisk in thoughts and impressions.

Theo had shown Harry the book with the spell, which he kept in the basilisk’s chamber. There were notes that remaining in contact with an animal’s mind for too long could damage the caster, warping their worldview if doing nothing else.

Harry had held back his reaction to that. Even if it was the reason for things like Theo being so still at times, Theo was the only one who had done something so that Harry didn’t have to go back to Privet Drive for the summer.

He was the one who rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders as they stood watching the basilisk sleep, and whispered in a shaking voice, “Now I can know what her true name is.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Her thoughts could give me an impression of what she wanted to be called. But she told me was it only a small impression, and Parseltongue was the only way I could actually know.”

Harry reached up and found Theo’s hand and held it. Again, he thought Theo had endured more than he had, no matter what Theo might say on the matter. At least Harry had been able to speak his friends’ names.

“What did you call her?”

“Basilisk. She said it was as good as anything else when I couldn’t know the full truth.”

Harry nodded slowly. Then he said, “Shall we wake her?”

“I am awake, Speaker of the Dark.”

The basilisk was shifting, great green coils unfolding. Harry could see that there were blue and gold flecks in the deep green, sort of like the marble in the Notts’ Floo room, before he ducked his head and shut his eyes.

“I would not harm you, Speaker. Have you encountered snakes that did?”

Harry cleared his throat. Better that she should know this now, before he made some reference to it, or Theo did, and she got upset. “Two years ago, I killed another of your kind that wanted me dead. I had to kill—them.” It wasn’t like he knew if the basilisk who had died in the Chamber had been male or female, but it felt wrong to call them “it” now.

The basilisk paused in her unfolding. Harry got ready to move.

Well, it would have been easier to do that if Theo’s hand on his shoulder hadn’t been as heavy and gripping as that of a stone statue, but still. He hadn’t come here to die.

Then the basilisk continued slinging her great coils around, and said, “I am aware. Only the heart of a basilisk could have enabled Theo to understand me.”

“Because you are a basilisk?”

“Because I was the first snake that spoke to him, connected with him. Only the heart of my kind would make him a Parselmouth. Many things would have been easier if I were not—what I am.”

“Never say that!” Theo took a step past Harry, without letting go of his shoulder, and raised his hand. “I always wanted to free you. You showed me what my father had done to other people besides me, and you gave me hope where I would have given up when he cast the blood curse.”

The basilisk ducked her head and moved forwards. She had done something to her eyes to keep them from killing, Harry thought, or maybe they only killed when a basilisk wanted them to. She was staring straight at Theo with a golden gaze that made a thrum of disquiet travel through Harry, but he was alive.

“I am glad that you can understand me, finally.”

“Your name. Please, your name.”

Harry stared at the floor of the basilisk’s prison. He—didn’t think he ought to look at Theo when he sounded like that.

The basilisk sighed, or the sound was a sigh in Parseltongue, a rustling, rattling, bouncing sound. “My name is Stolen-Prey-in-the-Night-of-Sacred-Dark.”

Theo sobbed. Harry leaned towards him, lending Theo, he hoped, the comfort of his presence while still keeping his head ducked so that Theo could have this private moment with his friend.

But Theo turned so that Harry had to turn with him, and he stared into Harry’s eyes as he touched his face and said, “Thank you for letting me understand her.”

Harry tried to duck or turn away. It didn’t work. Theo was still watching him, his eyes so luminous that Harry shuddered in reaction. Stolen-Prey-in-the-Night-of-Sacred-Dark made a hissing sound that Harry thought was supposed to be a chuckle. “You told me that you wanted him, but I didn’t expect that you wanted him as your mate.”

Harry felt his eyes widen, and tried to pull back. Theo let him do it, but only to the length of his arms. He was watching Harry with an odd little smile.

“Did you think I wanted you merely as a friend?”

“I—I thought you wanted to balance the scales! That was what you talked about!”

“He is precious, and does not assume. The opposite of your father. I can see now why you wanted him.”

Harry didn’t know what to do with the basilisk’s interjection, or the smile that had lifted one side only of Theo’s mouth. He turned back to the basilisk and asked, “Could we call you something a little shorter than your full name?”

“Why?”

“It takes a little while to say.”

That appeared to puzzle Stolen-Prey-in-the-Night-of-Sacred-Dark. “But that does not matter. Time is common, not like prey. Or freedom.”

“But it takes time for us to say, and when we’re talking about you and you’re not here, it would save us time. We don’t live as long as you.”

“You would talk about me when I am not here?”

Harry swallowed. He hoped that he was getting it right that she sounded happy but disbelieving, instead of upset. “Yes, of course. You’re Theo’s oldest friend, and I’m sure that he would want to talk to me about you.”

“He is right,” Theo hissed, his hand on Harry’s shoulder heavier and hotter than ever as he stared up at the basilisk. “You have done so much for me, and so has he, and I would wish to speak of one to the other.”

Harry swallowed again. Theo hadn’t said, “talk about one of my friends to the other.”

Theo wanted to…what? Date him? Why?

I suppose we’ll have the chance to talk about it.

The basilisk’s tail twitched. Then she said, “Considering what your father did with my egg, Stolen would be appropriate, but I do not want to be called that. Call me—Sacred.”

Harry nodded. He had no problem with that, although the basilisk was watching him as if she thought he would. “Thank you, Sacred. And thank you for doing so much for Theo. His father is a bastard.”

The word “bastard” came out as “the kind of snake who would eat the most precious eggs,” and Sacred gave another hissed chuckle. “Yes, he is. I am beyond glad that you have saved him from the blood curse, Speaker of the Dark.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“Did you not know?” Sacred lifted her head and pointed with a flickering tongue at Harry. “I can feel that your gift comes from the darkness in you.”

At first, Harry thought she was pointing at his black hair, as weird as that was, and then he realized that she was indicating his scar. He thought of the way that Professor Dumbledore had talked about Voldemort transferring some of his powers to Harry at the end of second year, and swallowed yet again.

“Do you—you think there’s darkness in me?”

“Dark Arts, dark power, darkness underground, darkness of many things that are wonderful,” Sacred said, sounding for a moment as if she were singing. She swayed back and forth. “But not born in you. The darkness came to you from outside, from someone else. And it is a piece of soul.”

Harry tried to sit down. Theo leaned on him and wouldn’t let him. He was the one who asked, “What do you mean, a piece of soul?”

“It is a piece of soul that does not belong to this Speaker, but comes from another Speaker. What is confusing about it?”

Harry didn’t hear the answer Theo gave Sacred. He was standing with his head lowered between his arms, breathing so hard and fast that he wasn’t surprised black and white spots had started to flicker across his vision.

He hadn’t questioned Dumbledore’s claim that Voldemort had transferred some of his magic to him, because why would he? Harry himself certainly wasn’t smart enough or powerful enough to have been born a Parselmouth on his own. But that a piece of Voldemort’s soul might be linked to his own…

I might not be a cheater like they were saying, but I am corrupt.

“Harry? Harry?”

Harry couldn’t respond to Theo’s anxious question. He was slumping towards the floor, and it was rising to meet him, and he sagged, and then he was deep in darkness and silence.

*

Harry came back to find out that Theo was sitting next to him, and he was lying on Theo’s bed. A house-elf had appeared with a small glass of something red and thick and sweet-smelling.

“Theo—Theo, the elf—”

“I bound Barion to me with a potion made of basilisk venom after the first time I met Sacred,” Theo said, a little impatiently. “There’s no way that he could rebel, even if he wanted to. And I needed to make sure that you were all right. Here.” He thrust the glass at Harry.

Harry took it and sipped slowly, shuddering as the potion flowed into him. He could taste the sweetness on his tongue, and concealed his own flash of irritation. One time he had asked Madam Pomfrey why potions had to taste so awful, and she had said that the taste was part of the effectiveness. Obviously, that was wrong, given how quickly the pounding in his head and the ache in his muscles from falling to a stone floor stopped.

The potion, of course, could do nothing for the real pain in his head and heart.

“Why did you take it so hard?”

“That I have a portion of Voldemort’s soul in me?” Theo didn’t flinch at the Parseltongue version of the name, a distant portion of Harry noted. “That I’m corrupt to the core?”

“You’re not corrupt. Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth! I’m corrupt, I’m corrupt, I’m corrupt, it would be better if I hadn’t survived that night—”

Harry wasn’t even entirely sure whether he was talking about the night when he was a baby that Voldemort had attacked him and his mum and dad, or the graveyard. Nothing made sense except to dig his fingers into the scar on his forehead and claw it as hard as he could. Maybe if he did it hard enough, the piece of soul would come out, or he would at least bleed to death and—

Theo jumped on top of him.

Harry gasped and rolled about, hands lifted above him. Theo was leaning on him, chest against chest, hands gripping Harry’s wrists to hold them out to the sides, hissing into his face.

“You are not corrupt. Don’t say that again.”

“A piece of the foulest Dark Lord in fifty years is attached to my soul! Of course I’m foul! How can you even stand to be near me?”

Harry rolled, trying to fling Theo off and curl up so that he could at least mourn in private the loss of the kind of person he had thought he was. But Theo came with him and ended up pinning him so effectively that Harry could only lie still and stare up at him.

“You are not corrupt,” Theo repeated, when he saw that he had Harry’s attention. “The scar is part of you, and the Parseltongue gift is yours. Not his.”

“But I only have it in the first place because of Voldemort.”

“And you’ve made it your own. Unless you think that he would have helped me shed the blood curse, or killed the basilisk in the Chamber.”

Harry breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and managed to get himself under control enough that he wouldn’t claw at his scar. He pushed at Theo, as much as he could when Theo was holding his arms out to the sides. “You can fucking let go now.”

Theo didn’t move, and he didn’t switch back to English, either, although he usually did when Harry started speaking in it. He just continued in Parseltongue, low and insistent, winding into Harry’s ears like the venom two years ago had gone into his arm. “You are yourself. I’m not going to let you hurt yourself tearing that piece of soul out. Come back to me, Harry.”

Harry gasped, and gulped, and reached for words that would make Theo let go of him. And oddly enough, they were there, singing harshly through his head. He’d only ignored them this long because of what Sacred had said about the piece of Voldemort’s soul.

(Voldemort’s soul. Who even knew how much of Harry was really Harry?)

“You’re only saying that because you want to date me or fuck me or whatever.” Harry lifted his chin in a challenge, staring up into Theo’s suddenly wide eyes. “That’s what Sacred said. Was she wrong? Did you only approach me in the first place because you thought that would get me for yourself? Did you enjoy sleeping in the bed with me last night because of that?”

Theo’s hands loosened. Harry bolted out of the bed and rolled on the floor to fetch his Cloak. He was getting out of here. He had to get out of here, immediately. Theo’s motives couldn’t be trusted.

And that hurt, it hurt so much when Harry had trusted Theo with more than he’d thought he’d ever be able to trust someone with, but he had to get back to Dumbledore or someone else who would take this piece of soul out—

“Petrificus Totalus!”

Harry froze in place. He heard Theo’s footsteps coming closer, and he raged in silence. But all he could do was direct that through his glare when Theo rolled him back over and Levitated him into the air to put him back on the bed. Only then did he remove the Petrification, but he stood with his wand ready so that Harry couldn’t leap off the bed and punch him the way he deserved.

“Listen to me, Harry. You need to listen.”

“Speak English, you traitor.”

“No. You need to listen.” Theo’s hand danced across Harry’s brow, lingering on his scar. Harry shuddered and yanked his head away. “Listen to me.”

“Fine.”

Theo leaned closer, and the firelight made his eyes so multicolored and hypnotic that Harry wondered if he hadn’t been influenced by his contact with Sacred’s mind that way, too. “What matters is what you did with the Parseltongue. That makes it yours. You’re not foul. Not dirty. Not him.”

Harry closed his eyes. “I want to believe that.”

“But?”

“It might just be a convenient excuse. Because I want to live and not die, but what if I need to die to kill Voldemort?”

“You won’t die.”

Harry just shook his head. He was thinking now of the diary in his second year, and how it had managed to possess Ginny, and had bled and screamed when Harry had killed it. Could that same thing happen to him?

Could I be possessed?

At least I’m pretty sure that I would die if a basilisk fang pierced my arm and no phoenix was around to cry on it.

“Why did you try to run away?”

Harry forced his eyes open and stared up at Theo dully. “Because I know that you won’t kill me, and you won’t want me to remove the piece of soul because then I wouldn’t be able to speak Parseltongue. I have to reach people who would.”

“Dumbledore.”

“Yes. He’s the one who told me that Voldemort transferred some of his powers to me, so—”

“Dumbledore. Who left you with the Dursleys, even though you just saw someone die. Who didn’t protect you from your name being put in the Goblet of Fire in the first place. Who never noticed that his old friend was a Death Eater. And that’s just this year.”

Harry jerked. He rolled over to look at Theo more directly, and Theo was right in front of him, looming, hissing, spitting rage.

“Who wasn’t there to prevent you from having to kill Quirrell or the basilisk. Who could have saved Ginny Weasley himself, but who never did. Who could have done something that would let you save your godfather without time traveling, but never did. Who—”

“Stop!”

Theo did, maybe because Harry had finally spoken in Parseltongue. He stood, panting harshly, staring directly into Harry’s eyes. Harry stared back, his hands clenched into fists on the bedcovers beside him.

“I did want you,” Theo whispered. “Your help, after you were revealed as a Parselmouth and I started thinking you could help me. Then I thought that we could be friends, because I knew that we were similar for the homes we lived in, if nothing else. And then you were brave and compassionate towards me and helped me just because I asked—Yes, I want you. And I’ll protect you and be there for you in a way that Dumbledore never managed.”

Harry swallowed over and over again. It felt like he had a choking web in his throat that might not go away, as if the potion had left something behind after all.

Did he have the right to ask this? Shouldn’t he die to remove the piece of Voldemort from his soul?

Except that he didn’t know if death would even remove it. Tom Riddle’s diary had been able to create a new body based on Ginny’s magic and walk around with it, make it solid enough to hold things before Harry had killed the diary. Maybe the soul piece would just possess Harry’s body and go on.

Harry took a deep, deep breath. No, no, that couldn’t happen. He had to survive at least long enough to figure out what this thing was and how to make sure that it didn’t possess his corpse. Or do something even worse.

And, as much as it galled him to admit it when Theo had flung him on the bed and liked to Harry about some of his motivations, Harry no longer trusted Dumbledore to tell him the truth. He might just shut Harry away at the Dursleys’ again while he worked on the mystery of the soul-shard.

Harry sat up slowly. Theo watched him, wand still poised.

“I trust you,” Harry said, and Theo shivered all over at the sound of Parseltongue. Harry wondered that he’d never noticed it before. “But I don’t trust—what I might become with the soul piece in me. So you need to keep a close eye on me and let me know right away if you see my behavior changing.”

Theo smiled, wide and hungry. “That’s not a problem. I wasn’t kidding about how much I wanted you.”

“But why?”

“I already gave you a list.” Theo took a step towards him. “Are you reaching for compliments? Greedy Harry.”

Harry stared at Theo and wished he knew what to say. No one had ever talked to him like this before, certainly not Parvati when he took her to the Yule Ball or Ginny when she’d had a crush on him. Theo just stared at him, eyes wide and fanatical.

Harry swallowed. “I don’t want to kiss you right now.”

“That’s all right,” Theo replied instantly. “I’ll await any chance you feel like giving me.”

Harry swallowed yet again, and finally the choking web in his throat seemed to dissolve. “Would you—hold me?”

“Of course,” Theo said, softly, and climbed onto the bed, pulling Harry back against him with his arms around Harry’s waist, the way he’d held him in the Slytherin dormitory the night before. Harry let his head loll to the side and rest on Theo’s shoulder.

Too much had happened already today for him to decide everything about what had to happen next. But he knew some things.

He was committed to freeing Sacred, who had already helped him, and to finding out more about the soul-piece.

And he was committed to thinking about this thing with Theo. Even though, right now, he had no idea what would happen with that, either.

Theo was there, though. And Harry didn’t think he was going anywhere.

Slowly, hesitantly, he let himself lean back, let himself trust that Theo would support his weight. Theo’s arms tightened instantly.

Maybe this is something I can have, Harry thought, and let himself absorb Theo’s warmth and closeness, his soft wordless hisses, before he fell into natural sleep.