[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Birds of Victory, 7/9, Love in the Time of Eagles series, Harry/Theo

[lomonaaeren]

“You’ve been quiet since you came back from meeting with Dumbledore.”

Harry turned to Theo and nodded. What Theo saw there made him smother an exclamation and lean over the space between their beds.

“Harry? Talk to me. You can’t sit there looking like that and not talk to me.”

Harry took a slow, complicated breath. Then he said, “Dumbledore wanted to clarify for me why he thought the dreams were important and why he believed a Legilimens could get all our plans from inside my head without eye contact.”

“Yes?” Theo asked slowly, because he couldn’t see why Harry would look like this even if someone close to them was a Legilimens and a spy for Voldemort and they had lost the advantage because of it. It would just be Dumbledore’s fault for not having shared that information earlier.

“I’m a Horcrux.”

Theo felt as though his world had smashed to a stop like the Hogwarts Express might against a Muggle barrier.

“What?” he whispered.

Harry nodded. His eyes were wide and staring, shiny with something that was a mixture of tears and rage. “There’s a link between us that got forged the night that Voldemort came after my parents. A piece of his soul probably broke off and attached to my own, Dumbledore says. With it as unstable as it was after making five Horcruxes—”

“If he didn’t make you a Horcrux deliberately, then you’re not really one! It takes intent!”

“He probably came there intending to make one. He wanted significant deaths for some of them. Others seem to have been accidental, though.” Harry took a long, tormented breath. “The intent to create one was probably enough.”

“But Dumbledore doesn’t know.”

“He showed me a charm that detects Horcruxes and Horcrux damage, Theo. His hand glowed from it. So did my scar.”

Theo shook his head, furious and bitter himself, and choking on the grief that was rising up his throat. “It could be a spell that he invented, one that he made up so that you would believe this nonsense! Did he speak it aloud? What’s the incantation? Did he actually show it to you, and why would there be a charm that detected Horcruxes in the first place, when they’re so rare?”

“The goblins invented it. Sometimes they run into Horcruxes when they’re clearing out old tombs and archives. Apparently they used to be more common than they are now.” Harry summoned a ghostly smile. “People are more likely to understand the drawbacks and seek another method of immortality now.”

“We still need to research the spell. See what it actually does.”

“Yes. I agree to that.”

Theo leaned forwards and took one of Harry’s hands. “Can you tell me why you look as though someone has taken away your future?’

“A Horcrux in a living being can’t be like one in an object, Theo. I’m afraid that it might have started clinging to my soul and corrupting it somehow. Or it might have lodged itself in a way that…we had to destroy the others.”

“Dumbledore wants you to believe that.”

` “Why? I don’t think he wants to murder me.”

“He wants you to make it easy for him. He wants you to give up, so that there’s no chance of a trace of Voldemort lingering in the world.”

Harry gave Theo a half-incredulous glance. “Well, yeah, I kind of want that too.”

“I mean that he wouldn’t want you to think about moving the Horcrux somewhere else, or finding a less risky way to destroy it than dying.” Theo felt as though he were speaking through a throat full of syrup. Father had just died, and the thought of Harry doing the same thing—

No. It wasn’t happening. He was not going to lose Harry.

“Yes, that might be true.”

Thank Merlin, Harry looked thoughtful now instead of just accepting of the stupid fate that Dumbledore had tried to dump on his shoulders. Theo made himself breathe and think instead of react, and inclined his head to Harry. “All right. So the first thing we’ll do is find a way to move the Horcrux elsewhere.”

“You think that’s the best procedure?”

Theo lunged across the space between their beds and pinned Harry to his. Harry stared up at him with round eyes, not moving as Theo spelled the curtains shut and leaned over, even closer. Then he said, “Er.”

“You are not killing yourself,” Theo snarled.

“I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“Or walking across a battlefield into Voldemort’s Killing Curse, either!”

“I wasn’t thinking of that, either.” Harry reached up and let a hand rest on Theo’s shoulder for a long moment. “I was only thinking about whether we should pursue the research into moving the Horcrux elsewhere or something else.”

“What other solution is there?”

“Finding a way to drink a potion made of basilisk venom,” Harry said softly. “Finding out if we can destroy it with our tame Fiendfyre. It’s not as if we invented a whole array that could control that spell or anything.”

Theo paused and then closed his eyes. His anxiety and his rage were still surging out of control, especially since he thought that Dumbledore might have hoped to manipulate Harry into killing himself right away.

But Harry was saying that he wouldn’t allow himself to be tricked like that. That it was all right, and he would live, and they would do research to figure out what Dumbledore was saying could possibly be true in the first place, let alone what to do about it.

Theo didn’t let Harry go, though. He lay down on top of him, winding his arms desperately around his boyfriend, letting his ear rest atop the steady beat of Harry’s heart. Harry wrapped his arms around Theo in return.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Harry whispered. “I only knew that it was something I had to tell you about right away, and it’s so awful to think that I’m one of those tainted objects—”

“You’re not tainted. You’re not an object.”

Theo’s voice sounded almost numb, even to him, and Harry quickly shut up. He was quiet for a moment as he and Theo embraced. Then he said, “All right. It’s good to know that you can see me that way. I was afraid…”

“What?” Harry kept silent, and Theo lifted his head. “What were you afraid of?”

“That you would think of me like—like the ring that cost Eustace his life.”

Theo stared at him. And stared. Harry shifted around, a little uneasily.

“No,” Theo whispered at last, his voice thick. “Never. And if you thought that, then I have some convincing you otherwise to do.”

He bent down and kissed Harry.

Harry responded with relief and a sweeping surge of desperation that Theo let carry them away. But afterwards, when they lay in Harry’s bed and Harry was tangled as close around Theo as he could get while in the middle of a sleep of exhaustion, Theo tightened his arms even harder.

He had already lost too much to Horcruxes. The last things he was going to lose were Harry’s trust, his confidence, his love.

*

They managed to confirm from a library book that the spell to detect Horcruxes Dumbledore had used did exist. They asked Sirius to send them a chunk of stone from the edge of the runic array and cast it on the thing, and it glowed.

It could detect Horcruxes, or the remains of them.

Harry drifted through a few days, overwhelmed by the thought of carrying part of Voldemort’s soul with him. He had become so used to thinking of Horcruxes as disgusting and destructive things, like the diary dripping with Dark magic, that he recoiled from his own reflection and shadow for those days.

But Theo was always quick to notice when he did, and he would find an excuse to grip Harry’s hand or say a loud word to him that asked for his opinion—or corner Harry against a wall, if they were alone, and kiss the breath out of him.

Gradually, Harry relaxed. Theo didn’t think he was disgusting. Theo wasn’t going to withdraw from him.

Of course, that just made Harry all the more determined to find a way to take the Horcrux out of himself. If Theo refused to give up on him, Harry could do no less.

Dumbledore was no help. Harry had been to his office for a few discussions, with Theo and without him, and each time, Dumbledore had looked at them with sad eyes and shaken his head.

“I believe the need can only be answered by your death at the hands of Lord Voldemort,” he finally said, when Harry asked him outright what he thought should happen to the Horcrux buried in Harry’s scar.

That was one of the times Theo was with him, and he had grabbed Harry’s hand and all but crushed his fingers. Harry had squeezed back, then thanked the Headmaster for his time and stood.

“He’s useless,” Theo had snarled on their way down the stairs.

“To the cause of my survival, yes,” Harry had said, and then put it out of his mind. Better not to care about the way that Dumbledore thought and what he would do, better to know that he wasn’t an ally. Harry couldn’t bring himself to be bitter about it in the same way Theo was.

They had things to do.

*

“You’re not going to die hunting the Horcruxes.”

Harry glared at Black as the man stepped away from embracing him in the middle of the train platform. “I know,” Harry said flatly. “We’ve been looking day and night to make sure that that won’t have to happen.”

“But you’re not.”

Theo raised his eyebrows. It seemed that, come to that, he might have allies in his last-ditch plan of convincing Harry to flee the country. Black looked as though he would throw himself down at Harry’s feet and promise him the world as long as he agreed to live.

Of course, at the moment Black thought they were having trouble finding a Horcrux and might get killed in its pursuit, rather than that Harry actually was one. They had agreed that it would be best to tell Black about that in person. But Theo was sure the principle still applied.

“Yes, I already said that.” Harry looked around as though fearing that people would be staring at them, although honestly only a few firsties and their families who weren’t used to seeing the Boy-Who-Lived were doing that now. “Can we go home and enjoy the Easter holiday, Sirius?”

“As long as you know where we stand.”

Black stood to escort them to the Floo in the station, meeting Theo’s eyes as he moved. Theo concealed a smile as he nodded back. Yes, they were allies, and they would do whatever they needed to keep Harry alive.

They got around the train and towards the Floo. Harry was leading a little, he was so eager. Theo knew that it hadn’t been easy, with both of them involved in NEWT-level schoolwork along with constant research to figure out ways to destroy or move the Horcrux that didn’t involve Harry’s death.

A Killing Curse came flying towards Harry.

Theo felt for a moment as though he were suspended in crystal, wondered for a timeless time if Dumbledore had decided to take the “solution” to the problem into his own hands.

And then Harry Summoned someone’s trunk and sent it flying into the path of the curse, and the world exploded into sound and motion again.

People screamed. Harry whipped around with his wand in his hand, ignoring the way that Black had turned into a dog and was tugging on his robe hem. Theo used magic to nudge Black out of the way, because as things were at the moment, he would just get in the way when Harry needed to move fast.

“Who was that?” Harry asked, raising his voice.

“I can’t see—”

The Killing Curse came from the left this time, from a dense clump of Slytherin students, who immediately scattered. Theo hoped it was at least partially from the way Harry was looking at them.

Lucius Malfoy stood up from the middle of the students, his face desperate. Theo could actually see the Dark Mark pulsing green from under his sleeve, and he aimed his wand steadily at Harry despite the expression he wore.

He might not want to do this, but Voldemort is possessing him, or ordered him to do it in public, and Lucius didn’t dare defy him.

The thoughts darted through Theo’s mind like rabbits running from a werewolf, and then he ran straight at Lucius himself. A curse that Father had invented was welling up in him, dancing on the tip of his tongue.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Harry Summoned an empty owl cage into its way this time, but still had to duck under the last, trailing fringes of the wash of green light. Theo felt as though someone had shoved a blade into the center of his chest when he saw how close the outer edge had come to hitting Harry.

No more. No more.

“Carnem fervo!”

The spell struck Lucius and made him scream, a loud and ringing noise of absolute pain that Theo savored even as he ran up and crouched beside Harry, feeling at him with one hand to make sure that he had escaped any trace of death. Harry gave a deep grunt beside him, probably about to ask what he was doing.

Theo stood and aimed his wand again. “Carnem fervo!”

This time, he was aiming specifically at the Dark Mark, and the flesh rose around it, boiling as Theo had commanded it to do, snarling and popping like a potion in the cheapest kind of cauldron. Lucius simply fainted from the pain, reeling back and cracking his head on the platform. Theo started towards him.

Something grabbed the hem of his robe, causing him to trip, and Theo whirled around and glared at the black dog who stood holding his robe firmly and preventing him from moving. By the time he turned back, someone was just Apparating out with Lucius in tow.

“Traitor,” Theo said, his voice so deep that he nearly didn’t recognize it.

“Sirius is right, Theo.”

Theo turned on Harry in a fury, but his boyfriend just met his eyes and said nothing. Theo finally tucked his wand away and ignored the looks that people were giving him. Of course someone defending their family from a Killing Curse was more suspect to them than the Killing Curse itself, he thought bitterly. “Why?”

“Because you weren’t engaged in a duel with him—he was attacking me—and you were using a spell that your family invented.”

And therefore, he wouldn’t be legally protected the way he would have been if he were dueling an opponent directly attacking him and using a spell that had recognized legal status. Theo knew that. He knew that. He had just become so maddened at the thought of losing Harry that he had also lost his temper.

He closed his eyes and said nothing. Harry embraced him, and then the Aurors began appearing, and they had to think about what they would say to them.

But Harry stayed by his side all the way through, and used his Boy-Who-Lived status ruthlessly to escape having the Aurors drag Theo away for questioning, and Theo at least felt like he could breathe when they were home again.

I thought I’d lost you, he mused to himself as he clung to Harry in the dining room, ignoring the way that Black made little noises about sitting down at the table to eat. I lost Father. I lost Mother long enough ago that I don’t remember how I felt, although that loss defined my whole life.

I can’t lose you, too. It doesn’t matter what I have to do.

*

“You said that you had a surprise for me, Sirius.”

“Yeah. And one that I wanted to tell you about first.”

Harry paused in the act of walking over to a chair on the other side of the little circle in the library from Sirius. He had thought that Sirius had just happened to want to talk to him during a time when Theo was busy in his father’s study, but now he reprimanded himself for being a fool.

“You know I’ll just tell Theo.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to tell you first. Because I found this, and he thinks I’m useless and can’t find anything.”

“He doesn’t think you’re useless—”

“He does. But anyway.” Sirius reached down and took a silken bag out of the space next to his couch with a flourish that made Harry stare at him a little. “I cast that spell you told me about, and you’ll never guess what I found!”

“A Horcrux?”

“You guessed.”

“Yes, of course I did. Because that spell we sent you only had one use.” Harry stared at the bag. “Is that Slytherin’s locket?”

“How could you guess that?”

“It was the only artifact we know for sure that Slytherin left behind, and we know that Riddle likes to use Founders’ artifacts to make this shit. He probably would have used something of Gryffindor’s if he could have got it out of Hogwarts, and if there were more left than just that sword and the Sorting Hat.” Harry breathed out. “And how did you find it?”

“I was casting the spell in Grimmauld Place and some other places that my family went, because I thought it possible that he entrusted a Horcrux to either my parents, or—Regulus.” Sirius closed his eyes for a moment. “And yeah, there it was. This big, ugly golden locket in a cabinet deep inside the house.” He tipped the bag up.

Harry’s fingers twitched a little as the locket spilled on the floor. He wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to touch it, or if it was just because he knew it was the last Horcrux they had been looking for.

Almost the last Horcrux.

“You look a lot sadder than I thought you would be.”

Harry looked up with a smile that he tried his best to make less desperate. “I am happy you found it. It means that we don’t have to go looking for it Merlin knows where. But there’s something else we found out, and Theo and I agreed that we should wait and tell you in person because it’s—terrible. And a letter could be intercepted.”

“Tell me?” Sirius was leaning forwards and whispering by the time Harry had finished. “Have you been cursed by a Horcrux?”

“No. I am one.”

Sirius tried to deny it and explain it away, but Harry told him what Dumbledore had said, and his theory of an accidental Horcrux, and by the end, Sirius was simply clinging to Harry. He had his head buried in Harry’s shoulder, and Harry patted his back and made the right soothing sounds.

At one point, Theo peered in through the library door and stared at the locket on the floor and then at Sirius sobbing his eyes out on Harry. Harry smiled at him, a little pained, and glad that Theo had been the one to comfort him when he’d broken down like this, so that Harry didn’t have to hope for it from Sirius.

Theo gave him his own pained smile back, and silently went away.

*

The locket burned just like all the other Horcruxes had, but it broke open in the middle of the array and tried to promise them that it knew the deepest secrets of their hearts and could reveal those to each of them. Theo reached out and grabbed Harry’s hand, holding it steady as they continued chanting.

The locket burned at last, and Theo could turn his attention fully to his other research.

How to make sure that Harry didn’t die.

*

Harry grimaced a little as he read through the letter from Draco, which seemed to have been written with more desperation than ink.

I didn’t know my father would do that. You have to believe me. I would never try to kill you. I would never want to be possessed by the Dark Lord. But now he’s talking about possessing me because the Mark was damaged when Theo cast that spell and it’s hard for him to communicate with my father.

Please help.

“Voldemort can’t possess him without a Mark,” Theo said, barely looking at the letter when Harry held it out to him.

“He’s helped us.”

“And now he has to help himself.”

Harry blinked at Theo. He had thought Theo was more sympathetic to Draco than that, given that they had grown up together and Draco had passed on information that turned out to be accurate. “Why are you not—”

Theo looked up. Harry shut his mouth. Theo’s eyes actually seemed to glow with a mad inner light that Harry could all too easily imagine shining through Eustace’s.

“Because his father tried to kill you,” Theo hissed. “And because we have to make sure that you don’t die from the Horcrux. That is my priority right now, Harry. Draco can go aim a Killing Curse at his own head for all I care.”

Harry paused. Then he said, “He’s passed useful information on to us.”

“And he has a fucking Portkey that you provided. So does his mother. He can fucking escape.” Theo turned back to the book in front of him.

Harry paused again. It did seem, knowing that, that either Draco thought Voldemort would follow him into his sanctuary, his father would force him to take the Mark before he could flee with the Portkey, or this was a trap.

In the end, Harry compromised by sending Draco a letter with the Portkey phrase written on it. It would give him an excuse to speak it aloud if he were being watched that closely. And Sirius would be ready and waiting in Grimmauld Place in case Draco appeared with the Dark Lord’s spirit clinging to him.

Sirius did spend a little more time in Grimmauld Place than usual over the next few days of the Easter holiday, but neither Draco nor Narcissa appeared.

*

“Here. Here it is.”

Theo felt like he’d been waiting centuries to speak those words to Harry, even though they’d only known about the Horcrux being in his scar for the past few weeks. He sat down next to Harry at the breakfast table and pushed the book towards him.

Harry looked up, and he couldn’t hide the hope in his face, not from someone who knew him as well as Theo did. Theo gave him a smug smile that he knew was tinged with sadness. Harry shouldn’t have to hide his hope for a solution behind a mask of strength so that other people would feel like they could rely on him.

Black has much to answer for, Theo thought. It wasn’t a new thought.

“You found something that could work on the Horcrux?” Harry whispered.

“Yes.” Theo spun the book, one that had been buried in the Nott cellars on a shelf by one of his more paranoid ancestors, around so that Harry could read it.

Harry stared at it in silence. Theo knew why. There was only one sentence, something that would seem too fragile to bear more than a shard of hope, but Harry wouldn’t be able to stop himself from reading it over and over, the way Theo had when he’d found it.

Deirdre Nott declared that she would not marry the Dark Lady Imelda Black, and when Black locked a piece of her own soul within Nott to keep her in place, Nott slipped free with the Rite of Purity.

Harry swallowed and looked up at Theo. “What’s the Rite of Purity?”

“It purifies the soul,” Theo said softly. “It would cast out the Horcrux because the Horcrux is a filthy intruder on your own soul.”

“That—seems like something Dumbledore should have known about.”

“Not when it was invented by the Nott ancestors and never spread around. Any more than those spells I’ve been using to defend our beds in the dormitory.”

Harry nodded, his eyes hooded. He was afraid to hope, Theo saw. “And will someone who isn’t of the Nott bloodline be able to perform it?”

“You can. We’ll need willingly given unicorn blood and phoenix tears, from the two most pure and powerful magical creatures. And you’ll need my help, since I’m the—one of the only Notts by bloodline left.”

“Please don’t tell me that this will involve taking the Horcrux into yourself or something, Theo. Because I wouldn’t let that happen any more than you would let me die to take the Horcrux out.”

Theo smiled and reached across the table to run his fingers back and forth over Harry’s knuckles. “No. But it will involve a different kind of sacrifice on both our parts.”

“Please just tell me,” Harry whispered.

Theo met his eyes and waited until he was sure that Harry was serious about wanting to hear this before he whispered, “We’ll need to mingle our souls in the way that most people do on a regular basis in the magical world, since you’re not a bloodline Nott.”

“And that means…?”

“We’ll have to get married.”