lomonaaeren

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Chapter Forty-Six—Armies of Dust

“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“I was the first time.”

“But now we know what Lupin intends to do.”

Harry leans forwards with a smile and lets his nose rest against Blaise’s. Blaise lets out a little shuddery little breath and cups Harry’s cheeks. He knows that Harry is doing this partially to reassure him, partially to manipulate him into letting Harry go alone to the Ravenclaws’ Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

But it’s still true that Blaise hasn’t come up with a way to kill Lupin that will evade the people who have been put on alert because of Greengrass’s death, and that keeping Harry out of the class, which Mother did consider, would make people wonder why. And then Harry’s Parseltongue and Artemis might come out.

Blaise can’t deny part of him is impatient for that, that he honestly thinks things will be better when people know about Parseltongue and not to mess with Harry. But he can respect the way Harry feels about it.

It isn’t Blaise’s secret to reveal, anyway.

“All right,” he says at last, his hands smoothing up and down the sides of Harry’s face. “But if he does something this time, then we really are going to let Mother loose on him. Or I’ll kill him, and we won’t care about the chaos that his death will cause.”

Harry nods and steps back. “I’ll let you know right away if anything happens,” he says, and it has the sound of a vow. “I don’t think he would be that stupid, but you’re right that we can’t be sure.”

“Why is he so stupid?”

Harry laughs a little, darkly, in the way that Blaise loves and which makes him glad that he snatched Harry up before anyone else could decide they wanted to date him. “I think that he’s let his own werewolf nature blind him. It dominates his life. He always thinks that people are going to reject him because of it, or he has to hide it, or it’s an excuse for what he does. He hasn’t bothered to learn that people might reject him because of his actions or his personality.”

Blaise snickers. Part of him thinks that Lupin might be more complex than that, but he doesn’t need to understand all the man’s traumas. He just needs to know enough about his routine and when the people around him will relax enough for Blaise’s next murder attempt.

But Harry might be right. And his depth of understanding allows Blaise to kiss him once more and then step back and watch Harry walks towards Defense with a spring in his step.

Maybe Harry sort of hopes Lupin will try something, so that Mother will feel compelled to act. To tell the truth, Blaise doesn’t understand why she hasn’t so far, except that she might be wary of someone noticing, the same way Blaise is.

He sees Harry at dinner, waving happily at him from the Ravenclaw table, the signal they planned on to say that all was well. Blaise relaxes and begins to eat more naturally, while Theo looks back and forth between him and Harry in wonder.

“Tell you later,” Blaise says under his breath.

Theo is a good friend, because he nods and returns to his own meal. And Blaise ignores the glances that come his way. It’s nothing more than jealousy from others that he’s dating Harry in the first place.

Or because Blaise is so good-looking and deadly. It could be that, too.

*

It’s the day of the Slytherin-Hufflepuff match, and Harry has business with Alexander Callahan.

Not that Callahan knows about it. Not that he’ll know anything, very soon.

Harry walks briskly towards the Quidditch pitch, trailing a confused Padma and Anthony. They were willing to go with him when they saw him get up from the Ravenclaw table, but they seem to have thought he was heading for the library and planned to skip the match altogether. Reasonable, when he isn’t friends with anyone on either team.

“Harry? Why do you want to watch the match so badly?”

Harry turns around and smiles at Padma, and Artemis hisses a greeting from his sleeve that makes Padma’s face soften. “You know I told you about that confrontation I had with Lupin?”

He hasn’t told them many details, but the ones he did are enough to made Padma freeze and Anthony’s face harden. “Yeah?”

“He might try to corner me again if I’m alone the way I prefer to be during the match. But he won’t do anything in the midst of a crowd.”

“That’s so unfair! You should go to Flitwick!”

Harry sighs a little. “It’s not that Professor Flitwick is useless, but—”

“If he won’t protect you from someone as biased as Lupin, he’s more than useless!”

Harry rejoices internally, because it’s proof that he does have friends other than Blaise, Artemis, and Theo. But he shakes his head. “He thinks of Lupin as a colleague, and my stories of him as exaggerated.”

“Why does he think that, though?”

“Lupin got to him first, and told him I was exaggerating.”

“Did you ever get the impression,” Padma says, her voice low and charged, “that most of the professors in this school are idiots?”

Harry laughs. “Yeah, sort of. I mean, I respect McGonagall in the field of Transfiguration, and Babbling is really good at Runes.” And she’s smart outside of class, according to Blaise, so any stupidity she exhibits is just acting to fit in with the other professors. “But they act like they’re so unbothered by the students until we do something that hits them. Flitwick doesn’t care if Gryffindors bully Ravenclaws, but he would go mental if I smashed up his classroom even accidentally.”

“Maybe we should.”

Harry listens to Padma and Anthony’s plans to make the professors sit up and pay attention, entertained by how violent they get. It seems like he really does attract violent people. He finds it hard to have regrets about that, though.

“I am not that violent.”

“You bit Lupin,” Harry tells Artemis, which just makes Padma and Anthony glance over at him with fond smiles. Harry doesn’t miss Neville often, not anymore, but he does wish that the other boy could have accepted his Parseltongue like his Ravenclaw friends do.

“Because he was touching you! But I am not violent.”

“What would you do if Dumbledore was trying to get me to go Azkaban instead of Lupin?”

“Bite his head off!”

“I rest my case.”

Artemis argues the rest of the way to the pitch, which amuses Harry to no end, but she does fall silent when they’re surrounded by other people. For one thing, she knows that someone might notice the hissing and discover the secret that they’ve worked so carefully to keep.

For another, she knows that Harry needs to concentrate if he’s going to kill Alexander Callahan and make it look like an accident today.

Harry leans back in his seat in the Ravenclaw stands, glad that he chose a game between two Houses he’s not part of. It means that no one gives him much of a glance when he’s quiet, although Padma’s decided to cheer for Slytherin and Anthony for Hufflepuff. Harry’s fairly sure that’s just to give them something to bet on.

Harry, meanwhile, is calm and relaxed. He doesn’t need his eyes to feel a connection to his little dust-snakes, slithering over the ground. Steel has taught him to feel them from a distance, and Harry knows that they’re swarming Callahan’s broom.

Callahan is a rough-looking Slytherin with a crooked nose and piercing blue eyes. Harry has learned what he looked like to make sure he could put his creatures on the right broom, but he doesn’t much care other than that.

Ugly or pretty, smart or stupid, no one gets away with hurting Theo.

(Although Harry thinks that someone would have to be pretty stupid to think hurting Theo is a good idea, because of Aradia’s reputation and the rumors around Blaise if nothing else).

He lets his mind drift, his thoughts circling idly around each other, and nearly misses the start of the game. Slytherin immediately starts passing the Quaffle in a series of plays that provoke boos from the Gryffindors. Harry shakes his head. They’d probably be happy if they were playing this game and their Chasers did that.

Callahan is hovering off to the side, waiting for his chance to engage. Harry leans forwards, his breathing light.

“You are doing it now?”

Harry strokes Artemis’s head with one finger, and she falls silent again. She knows as well as he does that it might be bad if she were heard speaking right before Callahan’s “accident.”

Not that Harry thinks Anthony or Padma would betray him even if they knew. But someone else might hear, and it’s not good to have that connection in the mind of anyone he doesn’t completely trust.

He completely trusts two humans on this planet, and that is all.

But yes, he is indeed doing it now.

He focuses his attention on Callahan’s broom, which is already weaving back and forth as if the dust-creatures are affecting it. Harry knows better than to hope they are, but it’s a good sign. He reaches out with his will, his magic, what Steel has come to call his “invisible hand.” He concentrates his entire being on what he wants to happen.

And his dust armies respond.

The creatures break away from the tail of Callahan’s broom and soar towards his face. Harry can’t see them from this distance, which is part of the point, but he can feel them. And Callahan swerves abruptly as they obscure his sight.

Harry orders the creatures to swirl, and they do. Some of them are dragons, some are winged snakes. No one will ever know that except Harry and whoever he chooses to share it with, but he does find it deeply satisfying that creatures like Callahan’s House symbol are going to kill him.

The game is so intense on the other side of the pitch that no one even notices the problems Callahan is having at first. Then shouts arise. Harry half-smiles and keeps his gaze fastened on the boy and the broom as he flies awkwardly towards the stands, swatting at the air around his face.

“What’s the matter with him?” someone who sounds like Brown from Gryffindor shrieks.

“Gust of wind? Dust?” someone else calls back.

It is, but not dust like you’ve seen before, Harry thinks, and pushes one of his dragons to go a little further.

That dragon has a sharp little stinger made out of dust mingled with glass shards that doesn’t exist when Harry doesn’t will it to, the glass shards merely whirling within his dragon’s body instead. But now the creature stoops towards Callahan’s face and slices its tail across his eyes.

Callahan screams and shoots forwards as his legs squeeze down and his magic pushes him to get away, away from the pain—

Without being able to see what’s in front of him.

More than one person shouts in shock or fear as Callahan slams into the side of the Slytherin stands. He’s going so fast at that point that his broom shatters beneath him and he becomes little more than a rain of splinters and one falling body. Harry hears the thud when Callahan collides with the ground. It’s curiously silent by then.

Only for a moment, of course. Then shouts and howls and questions pour across the pitch, and Harry makes sure to add his voice to the rest of them. It wouldn’t do to have them think that he’s indifferent to Callahan’s fate.

“What was that?” Padma breathes. She sounds shaken.

Harry glances at her. “Are you okay?” he asks, and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“I just—I think we saw someone die right in front of us,” she whispers, and huddles against him. “No, I’m not okay.”

Harry nods soberly. He can understand the kind of effect that seeing someone crash his broom like that—and probably die, although they don’t know that yet for certain—would have on someone normal. He supposes that he ought to be trembling more than he is and seeming shaken, even though most people are staring at Callahan instead of glancing in his direction.

But all Harry feels is satisfaction.

And all the more so when Madam Pomfrey, summoned by Madam Hooch from the audience, stands up and announces his death with a Sonorus Charm. Apparently a piece of the broken broom pierced Callahan’s throat, and that was what actually caused his death.

Harry hides every bit of the satisfaction as they make their way back to the school. He thinks Dumbledore and Lupin might be watching him.

But inside, that satisfaction still burns.

*

“You did it for me.”

Harry turns to face him. Theo had known that Harry was in the library, but he was studying with his Ravenclaw friends and neither Blaise nor Theo joins him on those days, mostly.

But right now both Patil and Goldstein are away from the table, and it’s just Theo standing between shelves of books where someone won’t easily see him and Harry looking at him with brilliant green eyes.

“Did what?”

“Come off it,” Theo says, not angrily the way he thought he would, but softly. “I know that you attacked Callahan on my behalf, and Blaise attacked Greengrass.”

Harry is still for a moment more, as though considering whether Theo can be trusted with the secret. Theo finds it surprisingly easy to remain still, even though he also feels a little insulted that Harry’s not trusting him. This isn’t about him or their friendship, not really. It’s about Harry admitting that he committed murder and disguised it so perfectly that Theo hasn’t heard anyone even in Slytherin suggest that Callahan didn’t suffer an accident.

“If I did?”

“Then I admire you, and I’m glad you’re my friend,” Theo says simply.

A smile spreads across Harry’s face that’s so cold Theo gives his own back before he can reconsider it. He’s had to think carefully about who he shows his secrets to all his life, including his Defender power and his true self. But Harry and Blaise accept him so easily that Theo can tell they’ll stand by him.

Because they’re hiding selves just as cold as Theo’s, or worse.

“Admire me, hm?”

“It’s not easy to interfere with the charms on a broom. How did you do it?”

Harry chuckles a little. “That’s something I’ll discuss in detail later. But not right now.” He turns his head, and Theo realizes one of his friends is probably coming back down an aisle. “This evening at seven, outside your common room?”

Theo nods and slips away before Goldstein can question why he’s here. Honestly, Harry’s friends would probably be better than most Ravenclaws about accepting him, but he just doesn’t want to draw attention right now.

Besides, he thinks he might have found a way to track the third person who hurt him.

He has a hunt to concentrate on.

*

“You’re sure that you want to reveal the full extent of your powers to him?”

“It’s Theo, Blaise. I trust him.”

Blaise sighs. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Theo, just that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to reveal something like Harry’s power to create life to anyone. Well, anyone outside their circle. Obviously, it’s a good thing he and Mother know.

But Parseltongue is one thing, something other wizards have, even if it’s prone to make British ones freak out. Blaise hasn’t ever heard of anyone else except Steel who can do what Harry does, and from what Mother says, Steel’s power is considerably more limited.

“Hey.”

Blaise glances reluctantly back down at Harry—reluctantly, because he knows Harry has the power to convince him despite his better judgment. Harry stands on his toes to kiss Blaise, his eyes shining.

“Are you upset about this?”

“Not upset. Just wondering if it’s a mistake.”

“Trusting me is never a mistake.”

Theo comes silently out of the shadows, a wicked half-smile on his face. Blaise shifts around so that he can stand next to Harry and face his friend. He’s reluctant about that, too. He doesn’t want to make Theo think they’re creating a group that excludes him, but Merlin, he’s nervous about revealing this.

Theo eyes both him and Harry, and cocks his head. “You don’t want to tell me this secret, do you?”

“I do need you to make a vow,” Harry says, sounding and probably really feeling apologetic. The way that Harry can alternate between gentle innocence and true coldness will never cease to baffle Blaise. “Not to reveal what I’m about to share with you to anyone else. But that’s all.”

“Who would I reveal it to? You two are the first friends I’ve ever had in my life.”

The moment Theo speaks the words, he flushes a dusky crimson and glares at them as if they’ve tricked the admission out of him. Blaies just snorts a little and reaches for his wand.

“I’ll be the Binder.”

“I didn’t mean for the Vow to be Unbreakable.”

“I did.”

Harry glares at Blaise for a moment. Blaise just stares back. He knows Harry doesn’t have Mother’s permission to show this to Theo, because he would have mentioned if he did. That means Blaise has to protect the source of the most joy and wonder in his life.

“Fine.”

Harry doesn’t manage to hiss the word since it doesn’t have sibilants in it, but he’s pouty as he flings himself on the floor and holds out his hand. Theo is slower to follow, but drops to his knees when Blaise glares at him in turn.

He really doesn’t want to drive Theo away, or alienate him. It’s nice having someone besides Harry who isn’t afraid of him.

But…

Harry is still more precious.

“This must be some secret.”

Theo’s voice is light, but the way he’s balanced means that he could move in one direction or the other to get out of the way or cast a curse at them as easily as breathing. Blaise gives him a tight smile. He hasn’t forgotten the power of Theo’s Defender magic, the times he’s seen it in action. “It is.”

Theo studies him and then gives a quick glance at Harry. Maybe he thinks Harry’s motivations are simpler to understand. “All right.”

Blaise blinks a little. “That’s it?”

“I want to know this,” Theo says quietly, voice and face both intense and dark. “And it seems that you’re not willing to let me know without an Unbreakable Vow, so…” He wriggles his hand back and forth.

Blaise takes a deep breath and shoves away the weight of his mother’s eyes. Not that she’s here staring at him, but he can just imagine her reaction when she hears that he had Theo swear an Unbreakable Vow.

But the moment is upon them, and it isn’t going past. Harry had incredible good luck when he used that Memory Charm on Lupin. Blaise doesn’t think they’ll have the same luck again if they try to charm Theo.

Not to mention, he doesn’t want to. Theo is his friend. And he seems to have agreed to the solution Blaise chose, as mental as it is.

Blaise kneels on the floor to act as Bonder, and they begin.

*

Theo doesn’t think it’s his imagination that his wrist tingles a little, as if from a golden chain wrapped around it, when they’re done with the Vow. Blaise looks drawn and grey, but he only sits back and looks at Harry.

“Blaise told me that you met Ignis.”

Theo has to strain his mind back to the evening when Blaise found him wounded and healed him. The little glass dragon on his shoulder? At the time, Theo just accepted it as one more strand in the web of impossibilities.

“Yes,” he says slowly.

“What he didn’t tell you is that Ignis isn’t unique.”

“You’ve made other glass animals? Why?”

“Not glass,” Harry says, and then moves his fingers sharply back and forth.

Between one moment and the next, dust rises from the floor at their feet and coalesces into a dragon the exact shape of Ignis, or what Theo remembers Ignis looking like. He jerks back, staring. Harry twists his hand, a visible conduit of magic flowing in ways that Theo can’t even imagine, and the dragon settles on his shoulder and tucks its gold-brown tail tightly around Harry’s neck.

“What?” Theo whispers.

“I can create life,” Harry says, and his voice is calm and doesn’t sound crazy. “Out of materials like dust and glass and feathers and stone. When I concentrate hard enough, I can create life like Ignis, but most of the time it’s just little creatures who do my bidding.”

“The way they did when Callahan died.”

Harry meets his gaze and gives a sweet smile that terrifies Theo down to his bones. “Yes.”

Theo thinks that through, while Harry balances the little dust-dragon on his shoulder. Then he looks down to where Artemis has her head sticking out of Harry’s sleeve. “You created her, too, didn’t you?” he whispers. He’s not sure why the knowledge makes him feel bereft.

Well, no, he is, a little. He likes snakes, and he liked thinking that one of them liked him in return.

“I made her and gave myself Parseltongue. My first magic.” Harry hesitates. “She’s not like the others, though. She has her own will, and she can talk to me. She doesn’t always obey me at all.” He pokes Artemis in the side.

That makes her hiss something Theo is sure is an insult, from the way Harry snaps back at her in Parseltongue. Theo swallows. “So she doesn’t only like me because you like me? She has her own reasons for doing it?”

From the way Blaise stares at him, Theo might have been too vulnerable, but Harry just smiles. “Yeah. She’s not the same as me. We have our own likes and dislikes.”

Theo nods, and lets himself absorb the words Harry spoke without worrying so much about Artemis herself. They’re astonishing. “No wonder you wanted to protect this secret.”

“Yeah. I don’t know anyone else who can do what I do.”

A slight hesitation on those words makes Theo wonder if he’s lying, but he’s sure Harry would fervently protect someone else who could do this even if he is, so Theo just nods again. “Do you think…”

“Yeah?”

“That someday, if we become good enough friends, you might make a creature like that for me?”

Blaise hisses under his breath, as if he thinks that Theo shouldn’t be asking favors like that. But Theo just keeps his eyes on Harry. He’s pretty sure that Harry’s gift has nothing to do with Blaise, although Blaise obviously knows about it. Harry is the one who has to make the decision about whether to give a dragon or another creature to Theo.

Probably another creature. Theo would honestly like a snake. But Harry is the one who would make that choice.

“Yes,” Harry says slowly. “I think I might.”

Theo relaxes and doesn’t push it. Blaise might think he’s trying to take advantage of Harry, and Blaise seems quicker to kill than Harry does. Then again, maybe that’s just the rumors about his mother influencing Theo.

He doesn’t intend to let things like that influence him, though. He intends to hold both Blaise and Harry’s friendship precious, and show them that he can do so, and that he’s worthy of their trust.

And in the meantime, he will protect them to the best of his ability. And…

“I think I might know who the third person who attacked me is,” he says.

Blaise leans intently forwards. “How?”

“I read about a spell in a book from the library that allows someone to project their magic back in time and show a vision of the past.” Theo basks a little in the awed looks that both of them can’t hide. “It said most wizards can’t do it, but my Defender magic makes me better than most people at that kind of thing. It’s part of the power that keeps me safe and tries to neutralize all threats to me.”

Blaise looks as if he’s thinking about that part of “all threats,” but Harry just bounces in place. “And? Who is it?”

“Hollis Lestrange.”

Blaise whistles softly, but Harry frowns. “I know the name Lestrange from books I read about the war, but I didn’t know there was one in the school. Or why he would want to do something to you.”

Theo lets his mouth twist. What he speaks is only the truth. “The Lestranges are all rabid blood purists, and Hollis is a sadist. Most of the time, he keeps it under control, because he knows what would happen if he didn’t. But my being friends with a half-blood would be enough to make him attack.”

“I should have suspected him,” Blaise whispers.

“You used that Defender magic to show you a vision of the past?”

“Yes. And Hollis was definitely there. Although, to be fair, the vision ended before I could see if he was participating in all the torture, or only at the beginning.”

“That’s enough to take him down.” Blaise exchanges a glance with Harry and smiles, and Theo smiles a little, himself, at the bloodthirsty nature of their looks.

He has such great friends.