[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Birds of Victory, Love in the Time of Eagles series, Harry/Theo, 4/9

[lomonaaeren]

“Hey.”

Theo glanced up, miserable. Harry was sitting next to him in the corner of the cellars Theo had fled to, his arms around his legs and his eyes big and solemn.

Theo turned his head away.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“About how my father didn’t try hard enough?”

Harry hesitated. Theo knew that even though he wasn’t looking at him. He had never known anyone so well as he knew Harry.

But he knew his father second most well, and the knowledge was burning through him like acid.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked at last. He turned and sat so that his shoulder nudged into Theo’s and he was looking at one of the tables in the cellar with old stone artifacts gathered on it, rather than trying to take Theo into his arms. Theo appreciated that more than he could say.

Theo took a deep breath. “I don’t think he tried enough to really find a cure for the curse. I think he wanted to die and be with my mum, and so he didn’t try.”

Harry spun his head to stare at him. He was shaking it even before Theo had fully finished his words. Theo could only see the motion in the corner of his eye, though, since he was still staring forwards.

“That can’t be true, Theo. He wouldn’t want to die and leave you.”

“He’s always missed my mother. I think he would have died to join her earlier, but he had a son to bring up, and it would have been seen as unjustifiable. Maybe he even thought it would have been unjustifiable himself. But now I’m a few months away from being seventeen, and he chose…” Theo closed his eyes. “He chose death over me.”

Harry made a noise of distress, and now he did gather Theo close. Theo let his head drop sideways and his cheek rest on Harry’s shoulder. He might want to be alone in some respects, to shake with the cold of knowing that his father had loved death more than his son, but Harry was also the only one Theo had left to depend on. He could hug Theo if he wanted to.

“That can’t be true,” Harry repeated. “Not really. He couldn’t want to die and leave you. How could anyone want to leave you, Theo?”

Theo gave a dry chuckle that he hadn’t thought would come out of him until it appeared. “Don’t be naïve, Harry. To most people, I’m just that cold Ravenclaw who never talks to anyone but you, and doesn’t care about people. If I died, who would miss me? You, maybe Professor Vector. That’s it.”

“Your father.”

“Not if he was dead already!”

Harry took a slow, difficult breath and looped his arms even more around Theo, dragging him closer. “Do you want me to speak to Eustace? You shouldn’t have to put up with this, with even the suspicion of this. He should be there for you.”

“He’s chosen.” Theo wished his voice wasn’t so flat, wished he could put more emphasis into it, but he couldn’t. Harry would understand, though, from the crushing way his arms tightened. “I can’t make him regret his choice or change his mind.”

“We—Sirius said last year that it wouldn’t work to cut off his arm, because the curse would just appear in another place, but—we could ask him to try—”

“And what happens if we’re wrong and it does appear on his other arm? Then he would be without an arm, and no reliable replacement. They haven’t advanced very far with medical replacements for limbs yet. You saw Moody’s wooden leg in fourth year—” Theo broke off and closed his eyes. “I’m rambling. I shouldn’t be.”

“You have every right to ramble.”

Harry’s voice was low and strong. He wrapped his arms around Theo again. Theo leaned on him and shook, the last of his walls finally falling.

Harry held him while he sobbed, too, and then called Heidi, one of the Nott elves who always obeyed Harry, to bring them biscuits and milk. Theo ate the food that had comforted him as a child, and it comforted him now. He went to sleep with his head on Harry’s shoulder, uncaring that he would wake up stiff tomorrow.

This was the last crumb of comfort he might have before he needed to accept the power of his father’s sacrifice.

*

“I still say my plan would have worked.”

“We aren’t going to use your plan, Sirius.”

Sirius turned and glared at Harry in a way that made him blink. He’d thought that Sirius would be—not happy about Eustace dying, but accepting. Instead, he seemed almost as upset as Theo was. “But we could have tried!”

Harry and Sirius had been walking in a part of the Nott grounds that was distant enough from the house that there was absolutely no way that either of them would meet Theo or Eustace right now. Harry thought the Notts needed to work out what lay between them, not just talk in clipped voices about what would happen when Eustace sacrificed himself near Gringotts. But even if they didn’t end up doing that, Harry wanted to give them privacy.

He turned now, and faced Sirius. “What are you upset about?”

“What do you mean?” Sirius avoided Harry’s eyes with grim determination, staring at the Quidditch pitch Harry and Theo hadn’t touched so far this holiday. Theo had always been more for flying than Harry, anyway.

“You sound upset about something more than Eustace dying. Or more upset than I expected, considering how much you squabble with him. One of the two.”

“I can be upset at the man’s death. I’m a human being, Harry, and so he is.”

“And at one point, you said he was a Death Eater and evil.”

“And I’ve changed my mind.”

Harry just watched Sirius with narrowed eyes, trying to think through what he knew Sirius believed, and then gasped a little as it occurred to him. Sirius turned to him with his hands in his robe pockets and a smile that he obviously didn’t mean stretching his lips.

“It’s cold out here. We should go back in and—”

“You think that I’d prefer you were the one dying rather than him.”

Sirius paused. Then he said, “No, that’s not it at all.”

“You never learned to lie that well,” Harry said, with a sigh. “It’s amazing that anyone ever believed that you were really the Secret-Keeper. You think I love Eustace more and I wish that you were the one dying instead of him. Or the one who was going to sneak into Gringotts and possibly die instead of him.”

“No. That’s not it at all…”

But Sirius’s words trailed away, and Harry just shook his head, at a loss for words. “How could you think that, Sirius?”

“You’re more like him than you are like me.” Sirius kept his head bowed and walked in an aimless little circle in the snow. “You need him in ways that you don’t need me. He was the one who gave you a safe space away from the Dursleys before I ever escaped Azkaban. And you love Theo, and Theo loves him, and you don’t want to see Theo hurt. So of course you need Eustace more than you need me.”

“Sirius.”

Maybe it was the calm tone of Harry’s voice, but Sirius stopped talking and turned to stare at him.

“I love you,” Harry said. I should say that more, he thought, noting the utter incredulity on Sirius’s face. “Yes, it’s different than what I feel for Eustace, because you’re a different person. And both of you have different roles in my life. But I don’t want anyone to die in pursuit of this goal of destroying the Horcruxes, whether it’s Eustace or you or Theo or me. Or anyone else, really,” Harry added. “Except Voldemort. If Eustace has to die and chooses it, that’s one thing. But I would never wish you dead. I love you.”

Sirius stared at him with his mouth open, and then he gave a little sob and swept forwards, snatching Harry off his feet to hug him. Harry hugged back, for once not resenting that he was so short because of the Dursleys’ habit of denying him food.

He needed Sirius to believe that Harry loved him. Because it was the truth.

Sirius finally stepped back and cleared his throat with a shaky little laugh. “All right. So now that we’ve made fools of ourselves, do you think that we should go back inside? Or do Theo and Eustace need some more time?”

Harry smiled. He had wondered if Sirius would notice that was why Harry was delaying out here, but of course he had. Harry needed to stop underestimating Sirius’s intelligence as well as tell him that he loved him more. “Let’s stay out here a little longer. I think Theo had some—pretty sharp things to say to his father.”

“Does he think that Eustace doesn’t love him?”

“He thinks Eustace loves his dead mum more.”

Sirius hesitated. “Ah.”

Harry nodded, and then he had a stupidly good idea. He Summoned the Quaffle from where it was under a Stasis Charm after his last game with Theo. “Let’s get on our brooms and toss this back and forth for a while.”

Sirius’s answering smile was luminous and wistful. “I wish your dad could be here, to see who you’ve become.”

“I’m glad that you are.”

He got another crushing hug, and then Sirius ran away to get his own Nimbus and Harry’s Firebolt. Harry stepped back with a shake of his head and started tossing the Quaffle up in the air and catching it.

He was going to tell everyone he loved them more, he thought. That sounded like a good life lesson.

*

“It’s because you love Mother more.”

The time that Harry and Black had considerately tried to give him alone with his father had dragged on in silence. Father wanted to talk about how his sacrifice was going to work and how Theo should arrange to absorb his power if he had to use it later instead of in Gringotts. But Theo didn’t want to talk about that.

Father started now and looked up from the glass of Firewhisky he’d been staring at. “What?”

“You love her more than me,” Theo repeated. Maybe he hadn’t planned on saying it that bluntly, but seeing Father’s wide mouth and staring eyes, it felt satisfying. “Enough to die for her. Not enough to stay alive for me.”

“Theodore.” Father stretched out a hand to him, his normal hand. “That is not true.”

“Then why are you so peaceful?” Theo found himself on his feet, shouting, without having planned on it. “You’re not fighting to stay alive! You didn’t even consider letting Black sneak into the bank as an Animagus! You’re dying, and you don’t care!”

Father stared at him in more silence. Theo waited, his chest heaving. They were in Father’s study, and as assured as they could be of privacy, even with two other people in the house. Black and Harry had cleared out to give them this time together.

And Father was wasting it.

Father abruptly sighed. “Do you think I was idle all these months while you were at school, Theo?”

“Of course not.”

“I researched the curse,” Father went on, as if Theo hadn’t spoken. His eyes were distant. “I knew a little about it from what the Dark Lord had said in the past, even if I didn’t know everything about how he invented it. I investigated—so many avenues. I went to a diviner, even, and you know that I’ve never believed in Divination.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I was trying to avoid giving you false hope. Perhaps I should have told you.”

That was one of the only times that Theo could remember Father coming close to admitting he was wrong. He swallowed. “And there’s no hope.”

Father shook his head. “Nothing I could find. All the research ran into dead ends. And even someone I Imperiused, a Death Eater who had been the closest of all to the Dark Lord in the past, gave me nothing. He didn’t even know about the curse. The Dark Lord didn’t trust him as much as I thought.”

“Who was that? Crouch?”

Father nodded. “I made the trip to Azkaban. It yielded nothing.”

Theo closed his eyes. “I’m sorry of accusing you of not fighting,” he said at last. “But you still don’t have to act—so blasé about it.”

“I am sorry for that as well,” Father said. “I began to think, when I knew that it was indeed hopeless, how I would prefer to use my death so that you and Harry need not suffer, and you can get both some vengeance and a good chance at defeating Voldemort. And this is what I came up with when you brought home the information about a Horcrux being in Gringotts.”

“But it might not be. You might die for nothing!”

“I will die on my own terms, and that is not nothing. And you can keep my power, as I said, for the next time that you encounter a real Horcrux, if this one is not.”

Theo gazed at him helplessly. There was a time in his life when he would have said that he hated his father. Another when he would have said he was indifferent. Or that Father only saw Theo as an heir, not a son.

That had changed for good after Harry came home with him. Father had begun to stir from the grief that had mired him since Theo’s mother’s death, act and work and move towards a purpose.

Theo had thought—well. He’d thought Father would be there. That he would be able to enjoy years of time when he knew that he loved his father and Father loved him.

He closed his eyes. He felt a fine tremor making its way up his hands, and he despised it, but he couldn’t curb it.

“Come here, Theo.”

Father drew him into an embrace, and Theo went. He trembled against Father, too, and that was disgusting, that was unforgivable. He knew now that Father wouldn’t punish him for being weak if he did this, but the last thing he wanted to do was fill one of Father’s final days in the world with worry about him.

“You will do well,” Father breathed into his ear. “You are strong, but more than that, you are happy. I once thought that you would never find someone who could make you happy, and I knew that was more than partially my own fault.

“But Harry lit a fire inside me, and he has given you the warmth of his presence. Even Black has. I know that you will not be perfect, Theo, but you will be well, and joyful someday.”

Theo clung back, burying his face in Father’s robes. He would have said that was the action of a child not even an hour ago—but at the moment, he wanted to be a child. He wanted to be cradled and held and told everything would be all right.

It wouldn’t be all right. But Father held him, and maybe that was the next best thing.

*

“You’re ready?’

“As ready as I can be.”

Harry squeezed Theo’s hand once, and then they turned around and left Theo’s room for the sitting room where they would Floo to the bank.

On the way there, Theo suddenly swung Harry around until he hit the wall. Harry grunted as the wall drove the air out of him, and looked at his boyfriend with dazed eyes, as he wondered if he had done something wrong.

Theo leaned forwards and fiercely covered Harry’s mouth with his.

Harry reached up and clenched his hands on Theo’s shoulders, drawing him near, holding him. They kissed and kissed until Harry’s head was spinning and he nearly wanted to forget about the mission to destroy what might be a Horcrux and just drag Theo back into his bedroom and down on the bed—

Theo pulled back, his hair mussed, panting, and said, “As a reminder that we’re alive.”

Harry swallowed, managed to nod, and cast a charm that he hoped would make his hair lie flat. Theo laughed a little and recast it for him. “You shouldn’t point your wand at anything when you’ve just been thoroughly snogged,” he said smugly.

Harry kissed him again, lightly, glad to hear any emotion from Theo that wasn’t dead apathy, and said, “Come on.”

They entered the Floo room, and Sirius gave them both a look and then burst into laughter. Eustace raised his eyebrows and shook his head a little, but then turned and cast the Floo powder into the fire.

Harry swallowed back the realization that this was the last time he would ever get to see Eustace do that, and instead reached back and clenched Theo’s hand. Theo squeezed, hard.

“You know your instructions,” Eustace said, and then he paused, his eyes moving to Sirius. “Including you, Black.”

“I won’t do anything to disrupt it,” Sirius said, looking a little injured.

Harry gave him a warm smile, and Sirius perked up, even if there was an edge of sadness to his face when he looked at Eustace.

“Just don’t improvise,” Eustace said, and paused with his hand only in the green flames. “I hope you know, Theo, how very much I love you, how proud I am of you. And how proud and loving your mother would be, if she could be here.”

Theo nodded. He was dry-eyed, hiding everything, Harry suspected, behind the Occlumency that he had learned but rarely employed. “Thank you, Father. I—love you as well.”

Eustace smiled and stepped through the fire. Sirius followed after a long glance back at the pair of them.

Harry looked at Theo, wondering if he should ask whether Theo still felt that his father was dying specifically to be with his mother, and hadn’t made enough of an effort to survive. But Theo gave him a little push and shook his head, and Harry took the hint. They were about to do something extremely reckless and important at Gringotts. They couldn’t take the time for a weighted discussion about Theo’s feelings right now.

We’ll have plenty of time to have them, come to that.

Harry cast in more Floo powder, just in case, and called out, “Gringotts!”, while missing the feel of Theo’s hand as he whirled through the flame.

*

Theo stepped out of the fire feeling oddly as though he were about to begin one of the formal dances Father had insisted that he learn when he was younger, but which he hadn’t studied since before Harry came to stay with them.

Everything at the moment had a process, a certain order it had to go in. They were going to be performing the steps, and if something went wrong, then everything would go wrong.

So I won’t be the one who does the equivalent of stepping on someone’s toes.

He turned back and looked just as the fire went from green to red and the door of the small anteroom where they had landed opened and a goblin came bustling in. Theo knew this was his father’s part of the dance—

Almost the last one.

--and stepped back to let him perform it, even though part of him was still faintly disbelieving that Father had managed to create the conditions necessary for it.

“Mr. Nott!” The goblin froze, staring at them. He was taller than most of his kind that Theo had seen, and had black eyes with a sharp glitter. He glanced back and forth between them, then focused on Father and said, “Have you—come for your Galleons?”

“I have come for the debt to be repaid, Farnuk.”

Theo watched, fascinated, as Farnuk swallowed, his throat bobbing. “You know that I have no information to pay you with,” he began cautiously.

“The agreement was for payment in deeds, not information.”

“I—you cannot seriously mean—”

“I seriously do,” Father said quietly. Behind them, Theo heard the sound Harry hitting Black in the ribs before he could make a stupid joke. “You are to lead me to the vault that I tell you to lead me to, and leave me alone there.”

Theo almost said something, because the last he knew, he was supposed to come with Father, but he reckoned that Father knew what he was doing, and remained silent.

Farnuk stared at them. He opened his mouth a few times to say something, but Father’s merciless, piercing stare remained fixed on him, and he finally bowed and whispered, “If you will come with me.”

“I intended to do nothing else.”

Theo shook his head. He still wanted to know how Father had managed to blackmail a goblin, but that was something Father hadn’t shared with him. Apparently, he had taken his promise to Farnuk that the information would remain just between them seriously.

Father glanced back and said, “Theo. With me. Black, you know what to do. Harry…” Father remained silent a moment as though thinking about what he would say, and then murmured, “Farewell.”

Theo turned to look at Harry, too. Harry was standing with his hands linked together behind his back, his gaze just as sharp as Father’s. He dipped his head as Theo watched, the first time he had ever seen Harry do anything like bowing.

“Farwell, Eustace,” Harry said softly. “I hope that you enjoy this day more than you have any in your life.”

Father smiled in the skull-like rictus a few people had whispered about around Theo, but he’d never actually seen before. “You have no idea how much I will enjoy myself,” he said, with a nod, and then he placed his hand behind Theo’s back and ushered him out of the anteroom and after Farnuk.

Theo caught Harry’s eye, and Harry nodded once to him, his face as calm and implacable as granite.

I’ll see you soon, Theo thought, and knew Harry was thinking exactly the same thing. I love you.

*

“Can I do the distraction now? Can I do the distraction?”

Harry grinned at Sirius, doing his best to think about his godfather and the absolute hilarity he was going to cause now instead of the way that Eustance and Theo had looked as the door shut behind them. “Yeah, you can do the distraction.”

Sirius nodded eagerly, and then transformed. He ran to the door that they had gone out through with a loud woof, and Harry opened it. Sirius pranced into the center of the bank, but given that they were in a shadowy corner of it, no one was paying much attention to them.

Sirius sat down, tilted his head back, and howled, and that changed.

Sirius had cast a spell on his voice that he had said would make him sound exactly like a hound of the Wild Hunt. Harry didn’t know for sure if that was what it did, never having heard a hound of the Wild Hunt himself, but he really hoped he never heard one, if this was what it resembled. The sound sawed up and down the scale, running in circles, weirdly loud and then deep and echoing, making the stone under Harry’s feet rumble.

Then a few stones, accompanied by some dust, fell from the ceiling of the bank, and Sirius sat back and panted, the object of incredulous stares.

And furious ones.

Apparently, goblins had legends about hounds of the Wild Hunt. None of them complimentary.

Into the silence, Harry said, “Bad dog.”

Sirius panted at him.

Then the guards seized their axes and spears, and Harry and Sirius turned and ran, Sirius letting out another howl as he did. Some people cowered and covered their ears, but that was drowned out by the angry yelling of the goblins. Harry lowered his head and ran as hard and as fast as he could, despite his temptation to cast spells that would turn the floor slick or Transfigure it behind them.

The point was to cause a distraction. Not to do something that would cause the goblins to ban them from the bank.

*

“We are here, Theo.”

Theo lifted his head. He hadn’t recognized any of the tracks that the cart went hurtling down, but then, he wouldn’t. They were heading to the Lestrange vault, which apparently wasn’t anywhere near the Nott vault.

Farnuk looked nervously back and forth between them.

“Thank you, Farnuk,” Father said in an absent tone, his eyes fastened on the vault’s door. Theo thought that he was aware of every one of the goblin’s movements, though. “Your services are no longer required, and the debt is paid.”

The cart hurtled away. Theo didn’t worry about it, didn’t take his eyes from Father. Either Father would give Theo enough power to blast out of the bank as well as retrieving the Horcrux from the vault, or both of them would be too dead for escape to matter.

Father shook his sleeves back from his arms and began to chant.

The chant wasn’t in Latin, or any other language that Theo had ever heard. What little Father had explained to him about this ritual said that the one who performed it had to choose the sounds that made the most sense to them as willing their death and transferring the power of that death to another. This language, or these words, or these sounds, were full of whispering noises like water running deep underground and startling tonal glides.

Father ended so abruptly that Theo blinked and started a step forwards. Then Father held out his arms, and Theo could see that it had started.

There was a vivid golden glow along the edges of Father’s fingers, and it crept up his arms. As it moved, it replaced his skin.

Theo wanted to close his eyes. But he had promised himself that he would watch, and right now, a promise to himself was all he had to cling to. He moved closer, staring.

The golden glow rose towards Father’s shoulders, and he tilted his head back with a smile. Theo wondered, a little spitefully, if it was because Father knew that he was finally dying and leaving this world for the one where he would be with Theo’s mother.

“The pain is gone.”

The words emerged from Father’s mouth in a deep wonder, and Theo stopped wondering. No. He was happy because of the end of the curse.

Theo lowered his eyes.

The golden glow was so bright now that Theo thought someone passing by in a cart might notice. But maybe part of the bargain with Farnuk had been to keep other people away, because the glow went on growing and spreading, and there wasn’t even the sound of another wheel rattling along one of the tracks nearby.

Father strode forwards and let his hands rest on the door of the Lestrange vault.

Theo almost cried out, because bank vaults had the kind of nasty traps on them that his Nott ancestors would have been interested in. But the glow sheathing Father’s hands must have protected him. Or maybe he had gone into the realm where no pain mattered anymore.

Father laughed.

Theo moved a step nearer, shivering, in spite of himself. He wanted to share these last moments, but he didn’t want to distract Father, either, or somehow make his sacrifice worth less than it was.

“Oh, my son,” Father said, and his voice was as deep as a hunting horn. Theo had never heard him sound that way. He suspected that the last time Father had was before his birth, or at least before his first conscious memory. “There is a Horcrux there. A golden cup, bursting with life. Even the taint of the Dark Lord’s soul in it cannot corrupt it entirely. But you will destroy it. It is better so.”

Hufflepuff’s Cup. Theo was abruptly sure of that. And he was furious at the notion that the Dark Lord had desecrated so many Founders’ artifacts. Probably something of Slytherin’s, too, although maybe not of Gryffindor’s, given that their rivalry would have been alive even in the days Voldemort had attended Hogwarts.

He was furious at the notion of the desecration, to stop being furious other things.

Father bowed his head. The golden light flowed away from his arms—which mostly didn’t exist anymore—and concentrated on the door. And then the metal faded away in what looked like a rush of sunlight.

Theo gaped at the stacks of books and coins and weapons in the Lestrange vault. He had never seen a fortune so inefficiently arranged.

“There are curses on almost everything, including the Horcrux,” Father said, in a casual voice, while spirals of shining radiance, now more white than gold, rose throughout the vault and towards a shelf where Theo thought the cup might be. He was standing too far back to see it from this distance. “I will destroy them for you, my son. I will bring out the cup and give it to you in a protective hold that will prevent it from harming you.”

“Thank you, Father,” Theo whispered, although he wasn’t sure that Father could hear him any longer.

The light spirals soared higher and higher, and even though there was so much gold everywhere, Theo did see the Cup when they lit on it. It seemed to glow with a deeper, richer, truer radiance than everything else. From this distance, at least, Theo couldn’t sense any of the Dark miasma that had crept from the diary and the diadem.

Or maybe Father’s magic was blunting that effect.

“Here!”

Father’s shout probably rang beyond the corridor they were in and down the tracks, but Theo couldn’t look to see. He was too busy watching as a clean flame burst into being around the Horcrux and burned off a dark miasma that was probably the curse on it.

Not the Horcrux aura, though, which Theo could feel as the thing floated closer to him.

“I grant the last of what I am to you, Theo. As you have had everything since the day your mother died.”

Theo jerked his eyes away from the cup and saw Father smiling at him through a storm of light. His face was growing fainter and fainter, and seemed to be a hovering mask of glass. He bowed his head and spoke his last words.

“I love you.”

His body dissolved.

Theo watched as the golden light rose up and formed a massive flame-shape for a long moment, losing any connection to or coherence of a human body. Then the light turned and slammed into Theo, along with the cup.

For a second, Theo felt bowed with the weight of wisdom, Dark Arts, gossip, knowledge, hunger, curiosity, wonder, hatred, all that had made up Eustace Nott while he lived—

And love.

So much more of it than Theo had ever known.

Burning with his father’s power, with another soul gifted wholly to him, it was no trouble at all for Theo to slip out past the traps that the goblins had set, and to bear the cup with him. There were indeed goblins running towards him with spears lifted, but none of them could strike the stream of light that Theo was now. He billowed past them, a gleam on stray rocks and in faint shadows, and formed back into himself outside the doors, just one of the crowd come to gape outside the bank at the chaos inside.

He covered the Horcrux cup with an illusion, but didn’t bother to tuck it away. His flame-filled hands could still hold it harmlessly.

This thing his father had died for.

This life his father had left.