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lomonaaerenTitle: An Easy Path Downwards
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: AU starting with fifth year, seduction to the dark side, corruption to the dark side, underage, angst, mentions of violence and torture, brief self-harm
Rating: : R
Summary: Harry leaves Gryffindor Tower after a fight with Ron and Hermione over his detentions with Umbridge. Running into Theodore Nott isn’t a coincidence, but Harry doesn’t understand that for a while—or exactly how intent Theo is on recruiting him.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” short chaptered sotries being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice, and based on a request from IronicallyPresent for Harry/Theo, seduction to the dark side. It will have three parts.
An Easy Path Downwards
“You need to stop speaking up and provoking her, Harry—”
“Or maybe she needs to stop lying about Voldemort being back!”
It seemed half the people in the common room who had been crowding close to watch the fight with avid eyes flinched back at his pronouncement. Harry glared at them, and they avoided his eyes and muttered and murmured.
He caught more than one mutter of “mental” and “Prophet said,” and one of “Maybe Umbridge has a point.”
“Why don’t you go and—”
Hermione intervened hastily, probably to prevent him from alienating their Housemates. Pity she never interfered to protect him from them, Harry thought as he turned back to her. “I’m just saying that she’ll lie, and you have to let it go, Harry. We all know that she’s a Ministry plant. What does it matter what she says?”
“I think she might be telling the truth, Hermione,” Seamus said, and stood up and folded his arms, glaring back at Harry when Harry swung around. “After all, what evidence do we have that You-Know-Who is back at all, except Potter’s word? And he—”
“So do you think I murdered Cedric Diggory?” Harry snapped. “Or do you believe that—”
“Who knows, maybe you did!”
“Yeah,” Harry said, scowling at Cormac McLaggen, a git in the year above them who he’d never especially liked. “And if you really believe that I could kill Cedric in cold blood, then maybe you’ll be next.”
“Harry!”
The way Hermione yelled his name snapped Harry’s head back around. She was on her feet, staring at him with horrified eyes. And Harry knew without asking that her horror was for what he had said, not because people were accusing him of murder.
Harry shook his head in disgust and shot to his feet. He glanced over at Ron, but Ron was staring at Harry with a furrowed forehead and the same upset gaze. He would protect Hermione and support her.
Harry was always coming second best, the way he had this summer when Ron and Hermione were with each other and talking to each other all the time, and not writing to him at all.
Harry turned and ran for the doorway out of the common room, ignoring the calls of his name and the laughter behind him, both.
*
“Potter.”
Harry glanced up, panting, his blood surging through his veins to the point that he wasn’t surprised he’d missed someone approaching him. On the other hand, he hadn’t known that the person who showed up was going to be a Slytherin. He promptly grabbed his wand.
The Slytherin in question stared at him, and then at Harry’s hand. Harry shrugged. So he’d been punching walls to relieve some of the feelings that his Housemates had stirred up in him, so what? Everyone already thought he was mental. Some random Slytherin could do the same thing.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?”
Harry squinted at him. Pale, rabbity, taller than Harry but so were most people—
“Oh, right. Nott.”
Nott hadn’t ever made fun of Harry or Ron or Hermione the way Malfoy had, but he’d laughed at Malfoy’s snide jokes, looked amused when Snape turned on one of them, and acted delighted with the way that other professors didn’t believe Harry during the Tournament. He was the same as all the rest of them. Harry trained his wand on Nott.
“I haven’t done anything to you.”
“With Slytherins, it’s always more that you’re about to do something.”
Nott blinked. Then he said, “That’s a distrustful view of the world you have.”
“I wonder what could have given me that.”
Nott laughed quietly. It sounded exactly the way it did when he laughed at Malfoy’s jokes, and Harry blinked at him, unnerved. Nott took a step towards him, although he stopped at a movement from Harry’s wand, and nodded at his bleeding hand. “Why were you punching the wall?”
“Why do you think?”
“That bad?”
Harry threw him an incredulous look, and then turned to walk down the corridor, all his back muscles tight, in case Nott hurled a hex at him. The most direct route to Gryffindor Tower lay behind Nott, but Harry didn’t want to make any movement that brought him closer to the Slytherin.
“Wait.”
There was a heavy wealth of meaning in Nott’s voice, and Harry found himself pausing despite his better judgment. Maybe Nott was going to brag about knowing Voldemort’s plans and reveal some information. Or maybe it would just be tiresome sneering, but at least Harry might have the justification to strike back that he didn’t with Gryffindors.
Something different was enough of a temptation.
When he turned around, Nott was watching him with intense eyes. They were almost silvery, like those of the odd fourth-year, Luna Lovegood.
“What do you know about why Umbridge was allowed to come to the school?” Nott asked abruptly.
“Dumbledore couldn’t find a Defense professor to hire, so the Ministry had to appoint one.”
“It’s more than that.” Nott’s eyes seemed to reflect some distant light as he tilted his head back and forth. “Don’t you want to come with me and find out what it is?”
Harry bared his teeth. “You think I’m foolish enough to follow you when you want to lure me somewhere?”
“I could tell you right here.”
“Then you wouldn’t have said that I had to come with you.”
Nott studied him closely enough that Harry tensed in preparation for an attack, but then Nott laughed again and said, “When you’re ready to meet with me, Potter, you should know I can usually be found at the table in the library nearest the Restricted Section.” And he turned and vanished back into the shadows.
Harry stood there for a long time before he turned and went back to Gryffindor Tower.
*
Hermione and Ron had got upset when they’d seen Harry’s bloody hand and wanted him to go to the hospital wing. Harry had refused, and they’d had another argument, this one coming back, as always, to the fact that they thought he should stay quiet in Umbridge’s class. Hermione believed that ultimately, Umbridge would start torturing more people if Harry spoke up.
Suffice it to say, Harry was in a bad mood when he stepped into the library, and not one that would let him study with Ron and Hermione.
Of course, that didn’t mean he necessarily wanted to study with Nott, either. But he found himself wandering towards the Restricted Section as if he were just going to stand at the outer shelves and stare at the books inside, and Nott was sitting at the table nearest to them. When he looked up, he caught Harry’s eye and motioned him over.
Harry bit the inside of his cheek and walked over. It wasn’t like he was afraid.
“Finally decided to come and see me, hmmm?”
Harry narrowed his eyes and waited a long moment to make sure Nott had no other smart comments to make. Then he shook his head and said, “I’m only here because you said you had something to tell me about Umbridge.”
“Sit down.”
Harry did, although his back prickled with the knowledge of what might happen if a Gryffindor walked through the doors of the library. Still, he told himself, that didn’t matter. Except for Ron and Hermione and Ron’s siblings, they all thought he was a mad liar anyway. They would just have another story to tell, one that was slightly juicier than the gossip so far.
Nott leaned forwards. “You should understand that I was told this by a privileged, confidential source.”
“Someone who knows Umbridge?”
“Someone in charge of handling Umbridge.”
Harry didn’t know what that meant for a long second, and only sat there and blinked. Nott was giving him such an extraordinarily patient look that Harry flushed with anger, but Nott only waited.
Then the truth dawned, and Harry pushed his chair back with a hiss. “You mean that Umbridge is one of Voldemort’s—”
“Don’t speak that name, Potter.”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I please. You think I don’t have the right, when I was there while he killed Cedric and tried to kill me and tortured me and—”
“If you want to find out about this, you won’t speak the name.”
Harry bit his lip until he could feel actual blood trickling down his chin, which he saw Nott’s eyes dart towards. His lips pinched in a frown. Harry wondered if he was too mental even for a Death Eater spy.
Or whatever Nott really is.
“Say that I believe you. If you’re supposed to keep this secret, why tell me?”
“Because I think you might do better if you know that Umbridge isn’t just here because she’s useful to the Ministry, although I’m sure that’s the only reason she knows about. Someone highly placed put the idea into Fudge’s ear. The more chaos she causes, the worse she makes you and Dumbledore look, the better for our cause.”
Harry shut his eyes and said nothing for long moments. Yes, all right, he might have guessed that, if he’d been able to think instead of—reacting. He let out a sharp breath and eyed Nott again. “So now answer this question. Why would you want me to do better, when you’ve said it’s your cause?”
Nott’s eyes were alight, shining like stars deep in a black river. “Because I think that you have the potential to be more than just the toy or weapon other people are trying to make you. And I think you might eventually agree—”
Harry burst into laughter.
He could hear people muttering about it, see Madam Pince bustling towards him, but it didn’t matter. The cold bands that always seemed to be wrapped around his chest lately broke with the laughter, and Harry shook his head and shook and shook it, just laughing some more when the librarian told him he had to leave.
“You are so mental, Nott,” he said over his shoulder in parting, and ignored the way that Nott’s face had frozen.
He was never going to join the people who had killed his parents and tried to kill him and had tortured him and had tried to kill his friends. He might feel like an alien from himself right now, and he might argue with Ron and Hermione most of the time, but it didn’t matter. There were some things he would never be mental enough to do.
Maybe I ought to write to the Prophet and tell them that. It would give them something new to insinuate.
*
“I don’t want to teach a Defense group, Hermione!”
And that had sparked another argument, the biggest of them all, with Hermione pushing him to get past the things the other students had said—about Harry this year, about Harry last year, about Harry second year when so many of them had believed he was the Heir of Slytherin—
Harry was just tired of it. Why didn’t she found a fucking Defense group if she wanted it so badly?
He stepped into the shadow of a staircase and stared at the wall, his fingers itching with the desire to punch the stone. But he knew that eventually, Madam Pomfrey would start asking more questions than she had the last time he’d come to her.
And he’d probably done it too often, because it was losing its effect anyway. Harry sighed and turned away from the wall.
Nott stood there. Harry promptly dropped into a defensive crouch and drew his wand.
“Peace, Potter. I’m not here to hurt you.”
Harry snorted from his crouched position. “Sure.”
“I offered you the truth once before. And I offer you more now. But you probably won’t grasp the chance, because you’re too stupid to do so.”
Harry snorted again and stood. “That’s your idea of a clever insult? Maybe you ought to take some lessons from Malfoy and Seamus Finnigan. They can at least do it better than you can.” He slid his wand into its holster and started to step past Nott.
Nott grabbed Harry’s arm and swung him around. Harry had his wand out again in a moment, and for all that his blood was thundering with anger, he also felt a thrill. Maybe Nott would give him a real duel, the kind of thing no one else would when they could just snicker behind their hands about how mental he was instead.
Nott crashed Harry into the wall behind him and elbowed him in the stomach. Harry lost his breath, and by the time he’d recovered from wheezing, Nott was standing there with his wand stabbing Harry in the throat.
Harry soothed his own fears and stared mockingly at Nott. “Well? Going to kill me?”
“I fucking should.”
“Bet that would make Voldemort happy.”
It was darkly hilarious that the name could still make Nott flinch almost enough to lose his grip on his wand. Harry grinned at him, and wished blood painted his teeth. “Come on. Are you going to do it fast or slow?”
“You’re so much worse off than I thought,” Nott whispered.
“Yeah. Does that mean you’re not going to hurt me?”
“The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
Harry groaned and let his head fall back, relishing in the crack as the back of his skull met the wall. “Then could you decide one way or the other what it is you do want? This is getting boring, all these little secret meetings.”
Nott’s eyes were bright with temper when Harry looked at him again, but he didn’t say anything about Harry’s mental behavior. Instead, he whispered, “Did you know that my father was one of the Death Eaters in the graveyard?”
Cedric. Grief and anger tightened Harry’s throat, and he scrambled for his wand. But Nott jerked it out of his hand and tossed it down the corridor. Both of them were panting now, chests nearly touching each other.
“Yeah, I fucking knew,” Harry finally spat, when he realized he couldn’t twist out of Nott’s grip. “What are you going to do about it now? Try to make my nightmare worse?’
“He showed me the memory of what happened in a Pensieve.”
“Oh, good. Then you got to see me tortured and nearly killed. Got a fetish, Nott?”
Nott shoved in until he was close enough for his breath to fog up Harry’s glasses. Harry snarled back, trying to hook his leg around Nott’s and throw him off the way he’d sometimes fantasized about being able to do to Dudley. “It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that I saw you survive the Dark Lord, and I wanted you.”
Harry stared at Nott with his mouth open. He had no experience with this, unless he counted Ginny’s crush in first year and the people who had asked him to the Yule Ball last year. And no boy had done that.
“You’re the mental one,” he finally breathed, when he realized how long they’d been standing in silence. “Or you really are into pain.”
“Have you listened to what I’m saying at all?”
“Yeah, your discussion of your fetishes is very illuminating.”
“I wanted you because you were strong and stood up to the Dark Lord and managed to escape. That’s the kind of strength I want on my side. It’s not the same as the Dark Lord’s side.”
“How can it not be, when your father is a Death Eater?”
“You think the son and the father are the same thing?”
Harry laughed, hating and admiring, at the same time, the way it echoed around the little alcove they were in. They couldn’t make him stop laughing, even if they could affect the sound of his laughter. “When you’re the one talking about your side and dropping information you learned from Death Eaters? Yeah, might as well be.”
“I can offer you something no one else can, Potter.”
“What’s that? Besides your fetishes.”
Nott’s hand tightened on his robe collar for a moment. Harry leaned a little into it, wondering if Nott would start choking him, but Nott only shook his head. “Freedom from the war.”
“Because Voldemort would kill me, I get it.”
“You know nothing.” Nott let Harry go with a contemptuous little twist of his lip. “I might have stopped wanting you, except that I have an unfortunate predilection for watching people stand up against authority.”
That might actually be the truth, Harry admitted as he dusted himself off. “Don’t worry, Nott. Sooner or later, someone will kill me, and that’ll solve both our problems.”
Nott opened his mouth again, but Harry turned and walked away. He had places to be that didn’t involve a Death Eater with a fetish for pain.
I have my own fetish, thank you very much.
*
“Have you thought at all about starting up the Defense club I mentioned, Harry?”
“Yeah. I’ve decided not to do it.”
Hermione clutched the edges of the library chair for a moment, taking a deep breath. Harry watched her, considering. She was more impressive when she was holding her temper, he supposed. But he did think that she should have just given in and shouted. That was where this conversation was going to end up anyway.
He looked back down at the essay in front of him and scribbled another few lines. The essay was for Snape, which meant it would fail anyway. He didn’t have to care.
It was hard to care about anything but the sharp ache in the back of his right hand, most of the time.
“Don’t you think that other people deserve a chance to pass their OWLS, mate?” Ron asked. It wasn’t really a surprise. He’d been allied to Hermione for weeks now. “Just—give them a chance?”
“They can learn from you. Or Hermione. Or the twins. They must have some good ideas, with all the pranks they’ve invented.”
“You’re the best in our year in Defense!”
“Was. I doubt I’m going to pass Umbridge’s class.”
“You could be, if you would just—”
Harry let the words flow past his ears, much the same way as he was doing with the thought of Snape’s essay. He wrote down a few more notes and checked his textbook, then wrote a few more lines.
Hermione thought other people were more important than him, which was way she was urging him not to speak up in Umbridge’s class. Or maybe she thought he would be able to pass it better if he was just concentrating on this Defense club and not worrying about what Umbridge did one way or the other.
It didn’t matter. Nothing much mattered, Harry was starting to think.
Someone stepped up to their table. Harry glanced up and blinked when he saw it was Nott, with the kind of glittering smile that Harry knew already meant bad news.
“Do you mind keeping quiet, Granger? Some of us are trying to study, you know, without your voice ringing through the library.”
“Hey, don’t talk to her like that!”
“What would you know, Nott?”
Nott stood there and let them snap and tear at him, now and then adding a few words that kept the argument going. Harry stared at him, and saw Nott close one eye, the only one facing him, in a slow wink.
He’s deliberately getting them angry at him instead of me.
Why?
Nott said something particularly outrageous about how Madam Pince allowed too much noise from Hermione in the library at the same time as he gave Harry a subtle nod. Harry scooped up his Potions book and the essay for Snape slowly, hardly believing that he would manage to just leave.
But both Ron and Hermione were leaning towards Nott and shouting at him now, and that meant neither noticed as Harry slipped away to the library’s entrance.
When he got there, he looked over his shoulder. Madam Pince had descended on Ron, Hermione, and Nott, and was roundly scolding them. Nott somehow managed to look contrite at the same time as he tilted his head and smiled at Harry.
Weird, Harry thought as he slipped out, but couldn’t help feeling as he went that he did owe Nott something.
*
Come to the dungeons just outside the Potions classroom at midnight. Come alone.
The note, which had been brought in through Harry’s dormitory window by a black owl with white slashes across its feathers, was unsigned and mysterious and probably dangerous. So was the place, since prefects and probably Snape would be patrolling around there.
Harry flung the Invisibility Cloak over his head and went anyway.
Nott was leaning against the wall next to the classroom. He turned his head sharply when Harry walked towards him. Harry was pretty sure that his footsteps were as silent as they could be under the Cloak without using a Silencing Charm, but he supposed he had made some slight sounds.
Impressive that he picked it up.
Harry shook back the Cloak from himself in such a way he knew Nott would see nothing but a faint shimmer as it vanished. “I’m here. What is it?”
“What was that, Potter?”
“I’m a master of the Disillusionment Charm,” Harry said lightly. “Come on, tell me why you summoned me here.”
Nott stared at him with dark eyes for a long minute. But his gaze grew softer a moment later, and Harry shivered, as Nott’s words came back to him. I want you.
“I appreciate the information about Umbridge wasn’t enough to change your life in any useful way. So. This will be.”
“All right. Tell me.”
Nott reached slowly inside his robes, while Harry watched with rising tension and his hand hovering over his wand. And then he took out something that appeared to be bound in white silk.
“What’s that?”
Nott smiled, a horrible expression that seemed to crack his face open and let all the darkness in his soul spill across his skin. “You mean you don’t recognize it? Father was sure you would.”
He twitched the silk-wrapped package and dropped it on the floor. The silk grew transparent, and Harry was staring down at—
Peter Pettigrew in his rat form.
He found himself moving before he thought about it, snatching up the packaged rat and swinging him up to the level of his face. Pettigrew struggled and squeaked frantically, but that didn’t get him free.
Nothing would get him free, if Harry had his way.
He stared at Nott. “Voldemort just gave him to you?”
Nott flinched, then took a deep breath. “I told you my side is not exactly the same as the Dark Lord’s.”
“Yeah, but that’s—I thought that was just a pretext.”
“No. You could say that I have made an alliance with the Dark Lord because we have complementary goals, but it’s not the same as following him. He wishes to rule. I do not. I wish to study magic and be free to do as I please, which would not be the case in a world controlled by the current Ministry.”
“I’m not the studious type. What could I even give to you?”
“You are yourself.” A fierce smile was growing on Nott’s face. “That’s all I would ask of you.”
“Yeah, and to sleep with you, right?”
Nott’s gaze slid down Harry’s body like a hand, touching him in places that only Harry had ever thought about. He flushed. “I wish you to want to be with me, and in time, I hope you would.”
“And where does Pettigrew fit into that?”
“Don’t you recognize a courting gift when you see one?”
Harry gaped at him. Nott took a step forwards and bent his head in a swift motion. Harry started, but he didn’t have time to evade or get frightened before Nott’s lips brushed along the back of his hand.
And then Nott had vanished, and Harry was staring down at Wormtail, so completely bound he couldn’t even move, and left alone with his own confusing thoughts.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: AU starting with fifth year, seduction to the dark side, corruption to the dark side, underage, angst, mentions of violence and torture, brief self-harm
Rating: : R
Summary: Harry leaves Gryffindor Tower after a fight with Ron and Hermione over his detentions with Umbridge. Running into Theodore Nott isn’t a coincidence, but Harry doesn’t understand that for a while—or exactly how intent Theo is on recruiting him.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” short chaptered sotries being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice, and based on a request from IronicallyPresent for Harry/Theo, seduction to the dark side. It will have three parts.
An Easy Path Downwards
“You need to stop speaking up and provoking her, Harry—”
“Or maybe she needs to stop lying about Voldemort being back!”
It seemed half the people in the common room who had been crowding close to watch the fight with avid eyes flinched back at his pronouncement. Harry glared at them, and they avoided his eyes and muttered and murmured.
He caught more than one mutter of “mental” and “Prophet said,” and one of “Maybe Umbridge has a point.”
“Why don’t you go and—”
Hermione intervened hastily, probably to prevent him from alienating their Housemates. Pity she never interfered to protect him from them, Harry thought as he turned back to her. “I’m just saying that she’ll lie, and you have to let it go, Harry. We all know that she’s a Ministry plant. What does it matter what she says?”
“I think she might be telling the truth, Hermione,” Seamus said, and stood up and folded his arms, glaring back at Harry when Harry swung around. “After all, what evidence do we have that You-Know-Who is back at all, except Potter’s word? And he—”
“So do you think I murdered Cedric Diggory?” Harry snapped. “Or do you believe that—”
“Who knows, maybe you did!”
“Yeah,” Harry said, scowling at Cormac McLaggen, a git in the year above them who he’d never especially liked. “And if you really believe that I could kill Cedric in cold blood, then maybe you’ll be next.”
“Harry!”
The way Hermione yelled his name snapped Harry’s head back around. She was on her feet, staring at him with horrified eyes. And Harry knew without asking that her horror was for what he had said, not because people were accusing him of murder.
Harry shook his head in disgust and shot to his feet. He glanced over at Ron, but Ron was staring at Harry with a furrowed forehead and the same upset gaze. He would protect Hermione and support her.
Harry was always coming second best, the way he had this summer when Ron and Hermione were with each other and talking to each other all the time, and not writing to him at all.
Harry turned and ran for the doorway out of the common room, ignoring the calls of his name and the laughter behind him, both.
*
“Potter.”
Harry glanced up, panting, his blood surging through his veins to the point that he wasn’t surprised he’d missed someone approaching him. On the other hand, he hadn’t known that the person who showed up was going to be a Slytherin. He promptly grabbed his wand.
The Slytherin in question stared at him, and then at Harry’s hand. Harry shrugged. So he’d been punching walls to relieve some of the feelings that his Housemates had stirred up in him, so what? Everyone already thought he was mental. Some random Slytherin could do the same thing.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?”
Harry squinted at him. Pale, rabbity, taller than Harry but so were most people—
“Oh, right. Nott.”
Nott hadn’t ever made fun of Harry or Ron or Hermione the way Malfoy had, but he’d laughed at Malfoy’s snide jokes, looked amused when Snape turned on one of them, and acted delighted with the way that other professors didn’t believe Harry during the Tournament. He was the same as all the rest of them. Harry trained his wand on Nott.
“I haven’t done anything to you.”
“With Slytherins, it’s always more that you’re about to do something.”
Nott blinked. Then he said, “That’s a distrustful view of the world you have.”
“I wonder what could have given me that.”
Nott laughed quietly. It sounded exactly the way it did when he laughed at Malfoy’s jokes, and Harry blinked at him, unnerved. Nott took a step towards him, although he stopped at a movement from Harry’s wand, and nodded at his bleeding hand. “Why were you punching the wall?”
“Why do you think?”
“That bad?”
Harry threw him an incredulous look, and then turned to walk down the corridor, all his back muscles tight, in case Nott hurled a hex at him. The most direct route to Gryffindor Tower lay behind Nott, but Harry didn’t want to make any movement that brought him closer to the Slytherin.
“Wait.”
There was a heavy wealth of meaning in Nott’s voice, and Harry found himself pausing despite his better judgment. Maybe Nott was going to brag about knowing Voldemort’s plans and reveal some information. Or maybe it would just be tiresome sneering, but at least Harry might have the justification to strike back that he didn’t with Gryffindors.
Something different was enough of a temptation.
When he turned around, Nott was watching him with intense eyes. They were almost silvery, like those of the odd fourth-year, Luna Lovegood.
“What do you know about why Umbridge was allowed to come to the school?” Nott asked abruptly.
“Dumbledore couldn’t find a Defense professor to hire, so the Ministry had to appoint one.”
“It’s more than that.” Nott’s eyes seemed to reflect some distant light as he tilted his head back and forth. “Don’t you want to come with me and find out what it is?”
Harry bared his teeth. “You think I’m foolish enough to follow you when you want to lure me somewhere?”
“I could tell you right here.”
“Then you wouldn’t have said that I had to come with you.”
Nott studied him closely enough that Harry tensed in preparation for an attack, but then Nott laughed again and said, “When you’re ready to meet with me, Potter, you should know I can usually be found at the table in the library nearest the Restricted Section.” And he turned and vanished back into the shadows.
Harry stood there for a long time before he turned and went back to Gryffindor Tower.
*
Hermione and Ron had got upset when they’d seen Harry’s bloody hand and wanted him to go to the hospital wing. Harry had refused, and they’d had another argument, this one coming back, as always, to the fact that they thought he should stay quiet in Umbridge’s class. Hermione believed that ultimately, Umbridge would start torturing more people if Harry spoke up.
Suffice it to say, Harry was in a bad mood when he stepped into the library, and not one that would let him study with Ron and Hermione.
Of course, that didn’t mean he necessarily wanted to study with Nott, either. But he found himself wandering towards the Restricted Section as if he were just going to stand at the outer shelves and stare at the books inside, and Nott was sitting at the table nearest to them. When he looked up, he caught Harry’s eye and motioned him over.
Harry bit the inside of his cheek and walked over. It wasn’t like he was afraid.
“Finally decided to come and see me, hmmm?”
Harry narrowed his eyes and waited a long moment to make sure Nott had no other smart comments to make. Then he shook his head and said, “I’m only here because you said you had something to tell me about Umbridge.”
“Sit down.”
Harry did, although his back prickled with the knowledge of what might happen if a Gryffindor walked through the doors of the library. Still, he told himself, that didn’t matter. Except for Ron and Hermione and Ron’s siblings, they all thought he was a mad liar anyway. They would just have another story to tell, one that was slightly juicier than the gossip so far.
Nott leaned forwards. “You should understand that I was told this by a privileged, confidential source.”
“Someone who knows Umbridge?”
“Someone in charge of handling Umbridge.”
Harry didn’t know what that meant for a long second, and only sat there and blinked. Nott was giving him such an extraordinarily patient look that Harry flushed with anger, but Nott only waited.
Then the truth dawned, and Harry pushed his chair back with a hiss. “You mean that Umbridge is one of Voldemort’s—”
“Don’t speak that name, Potter.”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I please. You think I don’t have the right, when I was there while he killed Cedric and tried to kill me and tortured me and—”
“If you want to find out about this, you won’t speak the name.”
Harry bit his lip until he could feel actual blood trickling down his chin, which he saw Nott’s eyes dart towards. His lips pinched in a frown. Harry wondered if he was too mental even for a Death Eater spy.
Or whatever Nott really is.
“Say that I believe you. If you’re supposed to keep this secret, why tell me?”
“Because I think you might do better if you know that Umbridge isn’t just here because she’s useful to the Ministry, although I’m sure that’s the only reason she knows about. Someone highly placed put the idea into Fudge’s ear. The more chaos she causes, the worse she makes you and Dumbledore look, the better for our cause.”
Harry shut his eyes and said nothing for long moments. Yes, all right, he might have guessed that, if he’d been able to think instead of—reacting. He let out a sharp breath and eyed Nott again. “So now answer this question. Why would you want me to do better, when you’ve said it’s your cause?”
Nott’s eyes were alight, shining like stars deep in a black river. “Because I think that you have the potential to be more than just the toy or weapon other people are trying to make you. And I think you might eventually agree—”
Harry burst into laughter.
He could hear people muttering about it, see Madam Pince bustling towards him, but it didn’t matter. The cold bands that always seemed to be wrapped around his chest lately broke with the laughter, and Harry shook his head and shook and shook it, just laughing some more when the librarian told him he had to leave.
“You are so mental, Nott,” he said over his shoulder in parting, and ignored the way that Nott’s face had frozen.
He was never going to join the people who had killed his parents and tried to kill him and had tortured him and had tried to kill his friends. He might feel like an alien from himself right now, and he might argue with Ron and Hermione most of the time, but it didn’t matter. There were some things he would never be mental enough to do.
Maybe I ought to write to the Prophet and tell them that. It would give them something new to insinuate.
*
“I don’t want to teach a Defense group, Hermione!”
And that had sparked another argument, the biggest of them all, with Hermione pushing him to get past the things the other students had said—about Harry this year, about Harry last year, about Harry second year when so many of them had believed he was the Heir of Slytherin—
Harry was just tired of it. Why didn’t she found a fucking Defense group if she wanted it so badly?
He stepped into the shadow of a staircase and stared at the wall, his fingers itching with the desire to punch the stone. But he knew that eventually, Madam Pomfrey would start asking more questions than she had the last time he’d come to her.
And he’d probably done it too often, because it was losing its effect anyway. Harry sighed and turned away from the wall.
Nott stood there. Harry promptly dropped into a defensive crouch and drew his wand.
“Peace, Potter. I’m not here to hurt you.”
Harry snorted from his crouched position. “Sure.”
“I offered you the truth once before. And I offer you more now. But you probably won’t grasp the chance, because you’re too stupid to do so.”
Harry snorted again and stood. “That’s your idea of a clever insult? Maybe you ought to take some lessons from Malfoy and Seamus Finnigan. They can at least do it better than you can.” He slid his wand into its holster and started to step past Nott.
Nott grabbed Harry’s arm and swung him around. Harry had his wand out again in a moment, and for all that his blood was thundering with anger, he also felt a thrill. Maybe Nott would give him a real duel, the kind of thing no one else would when they could just snicker behind their hands about how mental he was instead.
Nott crashed Harry into the wall behind him and elbowed him in the stomach. Harry lost his breath, and by the time he’d recovered from wheezing, Nott was standing there with his wand stabbing Harry in the throat.
Harry soothed his own fears and stared mockingly at Nott. “Well? Going to kill me?”
“I fucking should.”
“Bet that would make Voldemort happy.”
It was darkly hilarious that the name could still make Nott flinch almost enough to lose his grip on his wand. Harry grinned at him, and wished blood painted his teeth. “Come on. Are you going to do it fast or slow?”
“You’re so much worse off than I thought,” Nott whispered.
“Yeah. Does that mean you’re not going to hurt me?”
“The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
Harry groaned and let his head fall back, relishing in the crack as the back of his skull met the wall. “Then could you decide one way or the other what it is you do want? This is getting boring, all these little secret meetings.”
Nott’s eyes were bright with temper when Harry looked at him again, but he didn’t say anything about Harry’s mental behavior. Instead, he whispered, “Did you know that my father was one of the Death Eaters in the graveyard?”
Cedric. Grief and anger tightened Harry’s throat, and he scrambled for his wand. But Nott jerked it out of his hand and tossed it down the corridor. Both of them were panting now, chests nearly touching each other.
“Yeah, I fucking knew,” Harry finally spat, when he realized he couldn’t twist out of Nott’s grip. “What are you going to do about it now? Try to make my nightmare worse?’
“He showed me the memory of what happened in a Pensieve.”
“Oh, good. Then you got to see me tortured and nearly killed. Got a fetish, Nott?”
Nott shoved in until he was close enough for his breath to fog up Harry’s glasses. Harry snarled back, trying to hook his leg around Nott’s and throw him off the way he’d sometimes fantasized about being able to do to Dudley. “It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that I saw you survive the Dark Lord, and I wanted you.”
Harry stared at Nott with his mouth open. He had no experience with this, unless he counted Ginny’s crush in first year and the people who had asked him to the Yule Ball last year. And no boy had done that.
“You’re the mental one,” he finally breathed, when he realized how long they’d been standing in silence. “Or you really are into pain.”
“Have you listened to what I’m saying at all?”
“Yeah, your discussion of your fetishes is very illuminating.”
“I wanted you because you were strong and stood up to the Dark Lord and managed to escape. That’s the kind of strength I want on my side. It’s not the same as the Dark Lord’s side.”
“How can it not be, when your father is a Death Eater?”
“You think the son and the father are the same thing?”
Harry laughed, hating and admiring, at the same time, the way it echoed around the little alcove they were in. They couldn’t make him stop laughing, even if they could affect the sound of his laughter. “When you’re the one talking about your side and dropping information you learned from Death Eaters? Yeah, might as well be.”
“I can offer you something no one else can, Potter.”
“What’s that? Besides your fetishes.”
Nott’s hand tightened on his robe collar for a moment. Harry leaned a little into it, wondering if Nott would start choking him, but Nott only shook his head. “Freedom from the war.”
“Because Voldemort would kill me, I get it.”
“You know nothing.” Nott let Harry go with a contemptuous little twist of his lip. “I might have stopped wanting you, except that I have an unfortunate predilection for watching people stand up against authority.”
That might actually be the truth, Harry admitted as he dusted himself off. “Don’t worry, Nott. Sooner or later, someone will kill me, and that’ll solve both our problems.”
Nott opened his mouth again, but Harry turned and walked away. He had places to be that didn’t involve a Death Eater with a fetish for pain.
I have my own fetish, thank you very much.
*
“Have you thought at all about starting up the Defense club I mentioned, Harry?”
“Yeah. I’ve decided not to do it.”
Hermione clutched the edges of the library chair for a moment, taking a deep breath. Harry watched her, considering. She was more impressive when she was holding her temper, he supposed. But he did think that she should have just given in and shouted. That was where this conversation was going to end up anyway.
He looked back down at the essay in front of him and scribbled another few lines. The essay was for Snape, which meant it would fail anyway. He didn’t have to care.
It was hard to care about anything but the sharp ache in the back of his right hand, most of the time.
“Don’t you think that other people deserve a chance to pass their OWLS, mate?” Ron asked. It wasn’t really a surprise. He’d been allied to Hermione for weeks now. “Just—give them a chance?”
“They can learn from you. Or Hermione. Or the twins. They must have some good ideas, with all the pranks they’ve invented.”
“You’re the best in our year in Defense!”
“Was. I doubt I’m going to pass Umbridge’s class.”
“You could be, if you would just—”
Harry let the words flow past his ears, much the same way as he was doing with the thought of Snape’s essay. He wrote down a few more notes and checked his textbook, then wrote a few more lines.
Hermione thought other people were more important than him, which was way she was urging him not to speak up in Umbridge’s class. Or maybe she thought he would be able to pass it better if he was just concentrating on this Defense club and not worrying about what Umbridge did one way or the other.
It didn’t matter. Nothing much mattered, Harry was starting to think.
Someone stepped up to their table. Harry glanced up and blinked when he saw it was Nott, with the kind of glittering smile that Harry knew already meant bad news.
“Do you mind keeping quiet, Granger? Some of us are trying to study, you know, without your voice ringing through the library.”
“Hey, don’t talk to her like that!”
“What would you know, Nott?”
Nott stood there and let them snap and tear at him, now and then adding a few words that kept the argument going. Harry stared at him, and saw Nott close one eye, the only one facing him, in a slow wink.
He’s deliberately getting them angry at him instead of me.
Why?
Nott said something particularly outrageous about how Madam Pince allowed too much noise from Hermione in the library at the same time as he gave Harry a subtle nod. Harry scooped up his Potions book and the essay for Snape slowly, hardly believing that he would manage to just leave.
But both Ron and Hermione were leaning towards Nott and shouting at him now, and that meant neither noticed as Harry slipped away to the library’s entrance.
When he got there, he looked over his shoulder. Madam Pince had descended on Ron, Hermione, and Nott, and was roundly scolding them. Nott somehow managed to look contrite at the same time as he tilted his head and smiled at Harry.
Weird, Harry thought as he slipped out, but couldn’t help feeling as he went that he did owe Nott something.
*
Come to the dungeons just outside the Potions classroom at midnight. Come alone.
The note, which had been brought in through Harry’s dormitory window by a black owl with white slashes across its feathers, was unsigned and mysterious and probably dangerous. So was the place, since prefects and probably Snape would be patrolling around there.
Harry flung the Invisibility Cloak over his head and went anyway.
Nott was leaning against the wall next to the classroom. He turned his head sharply when Harry walked towards him. Harry was pretty sure that his footsteps were as silent as they could be under the Cloak without using a Silencing Charm, but he supposed he had made some slight sounds.
Impressive that he picked it up.
Harry shook back the Cloak from himself in such a way he knew Nott would see nothing but a faint shimmer as it vanished. “I’m here. What is it?”
“What was that, Potter?”
“I’m a master of the Disillusionment Charm,” Harry said lightly. “Come on, tell me why you summoned me here.”
Nott stared at him with dark eyes for a long minute. But his gaze grew softer a moment later, and Harry shivered, as Nott’s words came back to him. I want you.
“I appreciate the information about Umbridge wasn’t enough to change your life in any useful way. So. This will be.”
“All right. Tell me.”
Nott reached slowly inside his robes, while Harry watched with rising tension and his hand hovering over his wand. And then he took out something that appeared to be bound in white silk.
“What’s that?”
Nott smiled, a horrible expression that seemed to crack his face open and let all the darkness in his soul spill across his skin. “You mean you don’t recognize it? Father was sure you would.”
He twitched the silk-wrapped package and dropped it on the floor. The silk grew transparent, and Harry was staring down at—
Peter Pettigrew in his rat form.
He found himself moving before he thought about it, snatching up the packaged rat and swinging him up to the level of his face. Pettigrew struggled and squeaked frantically, but that didn’t get him free.
Nothing would get him free, if Harry had his way.
He stared at Nott. “Voldemort just gave him to you?”
Nott flinched, then took a deep breath. “I told you my side is not exactly the same as the Dark Lord’s.”
“Yeah, but that’s—I thought that was just a pretext.”
“No. You could say that I have made an alliance with the Dark Lord because we have complementary goals, but it’s not the same as following him. He wishes to rule. I do not. I wish to study magic and be free to do as I please, which would not be the case in a world controlled by the current Ministry.”
“I’m not the studious type. What could I even give to you?”
“You are yourself.” A fierce smile was growing on Nott’s face. “That’s all I would ask of you.”
“Yeah, and to sleep with you, right?”
Nott’s gaze slid down Harry’s body like a hand, touching him in places that only Harry had ever thought about. He flushed. “I wish you to want to be with me, and in time, I hope you would.”
“And where does Pettigrew fit into that?”
“Don’t you recognize a courting gift when you see one?”
Harry gaped at him. Nott took a step forwards and bent his head in a swift motion. Harry started, but he didn’t have time to evade or get frightened before Nott’s lips brushed along the back of his hand.
And then Nott had vanished, and Harry was staring down at Wormtail, so completely bound he couldn’t even move, and left alone with his own confusing thoughts.
