[From Litha to Lammas]: Having No Objections, Harry/Theo preslash, 3/6, PG-13

[lomonaaeren]

“It’s not Professor Snape.”

Harry starts and looks up. He and Ron and Hermione have been in the library for the past two hours, arguing with each other about why they can’t find Nicholas Flamel in any books, and honestly, he’s pretty bored.

Hermione is scrambling to hide their notes.

“Don’t bother, Granger,” Theo says, and sits down in the chair beside Harry as if he’s been there all along and only got up to stretch his legs. “I can tell you who Flamel is. The most famous alchemist in magical history, the inventor of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life.”

“That’s where I’ve heard of him!” Ron says, and snaps his fingers. “Dumbledore’s Chocolate Frog card!”

Theo nods, a flash of amusement in his eyes before it’s gone. “And Professor Snape isn’t trying to kill you, Harry.”

“How do you know?” Snape is still the best suspect in Harry’s view. After all, he makes threats to poison Harry or use him for Potions ingredients all the time. Why not drop a stone on Harry’s head if he’s annoyed?

“I went and asked him.”

Ron snorts, leaning forwards with his elbows on the table. Theo looks at them. Ron doesn’t bat an eye. “As if he would tell you the truth!”

“He is, in fact, invested in getting me away from you, Harry.” Theo glances at Harry with a cold smile. “He thinks that I’m going to die because I’m betrothed to you, and so he’s trying to persuade me to break the contract.”

“Did you—did you tell him that not even Dumbledore could do that?”

“I did. I’m not sure he believed me. But I did tell him that I was worried about the threats to your life, and he immediately told me to stay away from Professor Quirrell.”

“Professor Quirrell?” Hermione asks in disbelief.

Ron explodes, “There’s no way that he did anything, it was always Snape—”

“Mr. Weasley, you will be quiet in my library!” Madam Pince snaps, looming out of nowhere next to the table.

“We’re sorry, Madam Pince,” Theo says, and turns an angelic expression to her that makes Harry want to gape at him. It works exactly the way Dudley’s best impressions of being sorry always did, but it’s a lot better. “We found out something upsetting concerning the way Harry almost died. We didn’t mean to yell.”

Madam Pince stares at Theo, then looks around the table. Maybe it’s Hermione that makes her decide to leave, because she sniffs and turns away. “You won’t do it again.”

“No, Madam Pince.”

She leaves, and Harry laughs a little as he looks at Theo. “You’re really good at manipulating people.”

“Yes.” Theo’s contrite look fades, and now he just seems cold. “And that’s one reason I’m sure Professor Snape told me the truth. Think about it. I know that you believe Snape was the one who jinxed your broom, but didn’t you knock over Professor Quirrell when you were running to set him on fire, Granger?”

Harry wants to curse himself. Hermione gasps. “I did. But—that doesn’t mean it’s him.”

“His stutter sounds unnatural,” Theo says flatly. “He was trying to get through the door on the third floor the night when you confronted the troll. And as Defense professor, he was supposed to maintain the protections that would have kept the troll from getting into the school.”

“How do you know that?”

“Those are all things Professor Snape told me. Yes, he could have been lying, but there’s not much reason that he would tell me those specific lies.”

“We saw Snape limping after Halloween!” Ron bursts out. Hermione waves a hasty hand at him, and he lowers his voice, but he’s still blazing angry, Harry can see. “That three-headed dog must have bitten him!”

Theo laughs a little. “And do you think that Snape is powerful and evil?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then why couldn’t he come up with some solution to get through the dog? You think he would have hesitated to hurt it if he wanted to?” Theo leans forwards insistently. “But Quirrell is a weak wizard, isn’t he? He would have trouble getting through the dog, probably. And he would have found it easier to set the troll roaming the school as a distraction than cast some spell that would serve the same purpose.”

Harry watches Ron and Hermione exchange disturbed glances. He nods. He has to admit that what Theo is saying makes sense, even though he didn’t think about it before.

“But can we really just—I don’t know, just watch Professor Quirrell on Snape’s word or something?” Ron asks, his face wrinkled. Harry knows it’s hard for him to believe that someone they’ve all thought was evil was actually trying to keep the object safe.

“He also told me something he made me promise not to repeat to you.”

“Nott, come on, you have to!”

“Nott, it’s in the interests of the safety of the school!”

Harry rolls his eyes as Theo looks more and more smug while Ron and Hermione try to badger him into speaking. That’s not the way to handle Theo. You just look at him and ask sincerely, instead of begging, and he’ll give in.

Like this.

“Theo, will you please tell us?”

Theo turns to him at once with a pleased smile. Harry doesn’t roll his eyes again when his other friends glare at him, but honestly, it’s not hard. They can make nice with a Slytherin once in a while to get information.

“He said that there’s a whole gauntlet of traps past the three-headed dog,” Theo breathes. “He was involved in setting up one of them. And the traps are there to protect the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Which grants immortality,” Hermione whispers.

Theo nods without looking away from Harry. “So you don’t have to worry about it. I doubt that Quirrell could get past Snape’s trap even if he got past the rest of them.” He squeezes Harry’s shoulder for a moment. “Just relax and trust the professors.”

*

Of course it’s not that easy,

Because when Harry starts thinking about it, if Quirrell is a weak wizard and he wouldn’t be able to get past the traps, then why is he here? He would be a bad professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts if he’s that weak.

And if he’s doing something evil, why is Snape the only professor who knows and is doing something about it?

(Snape. That’s still wild to think about).

Harry can’t come up with answers to those questions. But he does notice a few things during their weeks of watching Professor Quirrell.

Sometimes Quirrell acts like he’s too scared to describe the vampires and the other creatures he’d encountered in his travels, and sometimes he talks about these bloody stories lovingly. Sometimes he stutters, and sometimes he speaks a few sentences without the stutter. And once…

Harry is almost afraid to tell Ron and Hermione and Theo about it, because it seems so strange.

But once, when Quirrell glanced at him, Harry was sure that his eyes were red.

All in all, it makes Harry a lot more cautious around Quirrell, and a lot more sure that Snape was right, after all.

(Even if he sometimes thinks that maybe Snape and Quirrell are working together).

*

Harry keeps his Invisibility Cloak wrapped tightly around himself as he follows Quirrell. The professor is heading straight for the third floor, his stride brisk and his face set in a small, pinched smile.

Harry doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Professor Dumbledore apparently got an owl that lured him out of the school, from what he overheard a few Slytherins talking about while following Quirrell around.

Quirrell comes to a halt in front of the door that hides the three-headed dog, and takes a small harp from his robes. Harry barely stifles a gasp. Didn’t Hagrid say that you could put Fluffy to sleep with music?

This is it. He’s really going after the Stone.

Harry makes sure to crowd closely behind Quirrell as he walks into the little room where Fluffy stands on the trapdoor. The dog’s three heads start to snarl, but Quirrell touches the harp, and it begins playing a tune on its own. Fluffy promptly flops down to the floor, six eyelids fluttering shut as he snores.

Quirrell has to cast a spell that moves Fluffy off the trapdoor, but he does it easily. Harry watches him and swallows. If Quirrell is a weak wizard, how did he manage that?

Then Quirrell opens the trapdoor and jumps down.

Harry jumps down after him.

They land in a writhing mass of tentacles, but Quirrell casts a fire spell, and Harry sees that the tentacles are Devil’s Snare, flinching back from the fire. Harry hastily hurries after Quirrell as the plant draws back, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as he can.

He wonders, as he moves, if he really should be doing this, but on the other hand, who’s better than he is? There’s no one else here to stop Quirrell right now.

Quirrell Summons a flying key and knocks a troll unconscious and gets past a giant chess set by casting some kind of spell that blows one of the chessmen into flying stone chunks. Harry follows him, frowning. He wonders if these are really all the traps that the teachers set up. They don’t seem very impressive.

Then again, it seems that Quirrell isn’t a weak wizard, either, because he’s casting all these powerful spells without slowing down.

Then why didn’t he get the Stone before this?

Lost in his thoughts, Harry abruptly realizes that Quirrell’s laughing softly and drinking a potion on a table that’s covered with little bottles. And then he turns and walks right through a black fire, and—

Harry’s going to lose him!

Harry lunges forwards, grabbing Quirrell and falling to the floor with him. Quirrell’s laughter turns to a shriek. For a moment, the black fire seems to batter at Harry, but it flinches back from the Cloak, as if it’s a body-shield made of ice.

They’re in a large room that has a mirror on the far side of it. Harry snatches Quirrell’s wand and backs away from him, panting.

He thinks he sees a stir of color behind him, and thinks that it’s probably the Mirror of Erised. That would be his luck.

Quirrell, meanwhile, is sitting up and staring at him with his mouth slightly open. Then his face hardens, and he says without a trace of a stutter, “Show yourself.”

Harry yanks back the hood of his Cloak and yells at Quirrell, “You’re not getting the Stone!”

For a moment, the professor continues to stare at him. Then he stands up and races towards Harry.

Harry yelps and pulls up his hood again. Then he hunches down to the floor so that Quirrell won’t be able to see his ankles under the Cloak and runs behind the Mirror, and crouches down, as quiet as he can be.

Quirrell stops running and stands listening for a moment. Then he chuckles. It doesn’t sound like his normal laughter, not that Harry really knows what that sounds like. It’s cold and too high-pitched.

“Come out, come out, little Potter, wherever you are,” he calls, beginning to circle.

Harry remains where he is, since it seems to be the safest option, but swallows when he realizes that he doesn’t know what he’ll do when Quirrell does sense that he’s behind the mirror. And how can he use any hexes or jinxes against Quirrell? Quirrell is the one who taught him all of them!

No, there’s really only one chance he has. Harry doesn’t think he’s strong enough, not really, but he has the strength of desperation. He crouches down and begins to push.

“Little Potter, I grow tired of this game. Come out and give me the Stone, and I may let you live.”

Why does he think I have it?

But that’s not a question that Harry can answer, either, so he keeps pushing, and the Mirror begins to rock on its stand. Quirrell spins towards him, with a sharp exclamation that sounds like a hiss.

“If you believe—”

The Mirror falls over. It hits the floor, and there’s a sharp ringing sound that doesn’t sound like glass breaking, not really. But there is a shriek from Quirrell as a tornado of what looks like golden dust sweeps into the air.

Harry runs for the door as Quirrell casts some kind of spell, maybe to blast away the dust. Harry wraps himself completely in the Invisibility Cloak and jumps through the dark fire that guards the passage back to the room with Snape’s potions riddle.

It works the way it did the first time, with the fire scorching Harry but also being defeated in some way by the cold magic that seems to hang around the Cloak. Harry takes desperate gulping breaths of air on the other side, and then runs as he hears Quirrell screaming something.

Harry has to find Dumbledore or another professor as soon as possible!

*

“Harry. Can I talk to you?”

Theo’s voice is so tight that it sounds like it might twang. Harry turns around from where he’s just come out of the hospital wing and looks at Theo uncertainly.

He visited Harry just once during the past two days, when Madam Pomfrey kept Harry in the hospital wing for “mirror dust exposure,” which honestly sounds like nonsense to Harry. Theo was tight-lipped and pale then and didn’t say much.

Theo knows, because Harry told him, that Harry found Dumbledore coming back from the Ministry and told him about Quirrell, and then Harry fainted. He knows that Harry saw Quirrell personally and heard him laughing and talking in another voice without the stutter. He knows that Harry is okay.

But he’s staring at Harry now like he’s a stranger. Worse than the argument they had about Muggles months ago.

Harry is eager to get to the leaving feast and see if Dumbledore will announce what actually happened to Quirrell. When the Headmaster visited Harry in the hospital wing, he said Harry was too young to know. But Theo looks like he can’t wait, so Harry says, “Yeah,” and walks around the corner with him.

When they get there, Theo spins around to face him. Harry flinches, because movements like that are what Vernon and Petunia use when—

“You almost died. You could have died.”

Theo’s voice is hoarse. His eyes are blank, as though he’s actually staring past Harry and somewhere far away. His arms come up and he stretches them past Harry, not touching him, but caging him against the wall. He keeps staring.

“I,” Harry says, and wonders if Theo thinks that this is a dream and Harry didn’t actually survive or something. He reaches up and gently touches Theo’s shoulder. “I’m alive. I promise, I’m alive.”

“But you could have died.”

“Well, yeah. But I’m alive.”

“Why did you go after him?” Theo whispers, and his hands slide down and grasp Harry’s shoulders now, and—his touch hurts. Harry flinches back. Theo doesn’t seem to notice, even though it’s the kind of thing that he would normally see and react to at once. “You couldn’t have stopped him! You didn’t stop him! You could have been killed!”

“Because—well, he might have taken the Stone. I wanted to stop him.”

“But why you?”

“Because no one else was doing anything!” Harry realizes that his anger is rising from the corner of his soul where it apparently got chased when Theo grabbed him at first. He grabs Theo back, shaking his shoulders. Theo stares at him with wide eyes. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but someone should have stopped Quirrell before this!”

“You could have waited for Dumbledore to come back—”

“I thought Quirrell would have stolen the Stone by then!”

“So bloody what?”

Harry gapes at Theo. He’s never heard him swear before.

“So bloody what?” Theo repeats, his eyes flashing, his hands not moving from Harry’s shoulders. “Who cares? So he would have stolen the Stone. So he would have lived forever or had a lot of gold—or someone would have tracked him down and taken it back, that’s more likely. The Stone isn’t worth dying for.”

Harry never phrased it like that to himself before. It just seemed so important that someone not get away with something obviously evil. And the Stone was behind all those traps, so the professors wanted to protect it.

Then they could have protected it better.

Harry takes a deep breath and nods. “You’re right.”

“I am?”

Theo looks as if someone could knock him over with a quill. Harry gives him a smile that he knows comes across as strained and unhappy, and he’s sorry for that, but just because he understands this doesn’t mean he can say all the fancy words that Theo would to make it sound good.

“Yeah. I risked my life, and I could have waited for Dumbledore to come back and then told him it was Quirrell. Or I could have tried one of the other professors—well, I did try McGonagall, but she told me to stop worrying about it, that it wasn’t mine to worry about.”

“She was right.”

“But Quirrell was really stealing the Stone!”

“It’s not that she was right about who was doing it, Harry. It’s that you didn’t have to defend the Stone by yourself, or even care. Most of the students in the school didn’t know or care, did they?”

Harry hesitates. This feels like another time when Theo is wiser than him, but Harry has to make a point. “If—just because they didn’t know about it or didn’t care doesn’t make them right.”

Theo unexpectedly smiles at him. “Of course. But this isn’t really a situation where anyone’s life was in danger. Until you went down there.”

Harry wishes that Theo would move on from that. His eyes get a very disturbing gleam when he’s apparently thinking about Harry’s death.

Like he wishes that he got to kill Harry himself. Or like he wants to take Harry and tie him up somewhere and never let him out of a cupboard.

Harry’s smile falls.

“Harry?”

Harry shakes his head and lets his breath out. “Just a strange thought,” he says. “Nothing to do with you.”

Theo arches an eyebrow, but nods. “All right. Harry, in the future—will you please think about taking someone along? Or just not jumping into a situation that doesn’t endanger you or anyone else?”

“You don’t want me to avoid danger altogether.”

“It would be my preference. But you’re a Gryffindor. That’s like asking you to change your House.”

Harry swipes at him with one hand. Theo ducks, and comes up closer to him, smiling into his eyes. Harry’s throat closes up a little at the shine in Theo’s face.

“Just watch out,” Theo whispers. “Please?”

“Yes, I promise,” Harry says.

“Good.” Theo squeezes his shoulder. “I’m glad that you didn’t die.”

*

“And to Harry Potter, for daring, nerve, and chivalry unknown in Gryffindor House in my lifetime, I award Gryffindor two hundred points.”

The other Gryffindors explode around Harry as the number of points puts them firmly in the lead, and Dumbledore smiles and changes the banners on the walls to red and gold. But Harry’s gaze goes across the Great Hall to the Slytherin table, even as people slap him on the back and drown him in cheers and whistles.

The Slytherins look unhappy. Especially Malfoy. But Theo just looks—

Resigned.

Harry is standing up before he even realizes that he’s going to do it. He wonders for a second how he’s going to get people to calm down and listen to him, but one of the Weasley twins starts yelling, “Speech! Speech!”, and Dumbledore turns towards him with a smile, and lots of other people fall quiet, too.

“Yes, Harry?” the Headmaster asks.

Harry takes a deep breath. He thinks that some of his Housemates might hate him for this, but so what? They’ve hated him for not being the perfect Boy-Who-Lived already, and he’s survived. The Dursleys hated him, and he’s survived. Snape hates him, and Harry’s still alive.

And Snape is a lot more likely to kill him than any Gryffindor.

The thought gives Harry the strength to say, “Sorry, Headmaster, but I’d like to refuse the points. What I did was ill-advised and could have got me killed. It really wasn’t heroic. I didn’t even manage to stop Professor Quirrell.” The Headmaster is staring at him with surprise painted across his face. Harry doesn’t bother to look at anyone else. “The Slytherins earned the points during the year. I think they should get the House Cup.”

There’s a moment of perfect silence. Harry still keeps looking at the Headmaster, but he’s sure that he can feel burning embers boring into the side of his head, and he reckons that’s probably Professor Snape.

Then noise explodes.

“Harry, are you mental?” Ron demands, crossing over with Hermione’s “That’s not the right thing to do!” and loud boos from the Gryffindors.

There are cheers from the Slytherin table, but low, uncertain ones. They obviously can’t decide what Harry is doing, or why, and so they don’t know if they should be happy about what he said or not.

Harry glances at the other professors. Snape is indeed staring at Harry as if Harry just grew wings. Professor McGonagall is shaking her head no over and over again, lips as pursed as they were when she came to talk to Harry in the hospital wing after his confrontation with Quirrell. The Headmaster still looks utterly shocked.

But it’s the right thing to do. Harry knows it is. Maybe if he’d really—stopped Quirrell, somehow, or made sure to keep the Stone safe. But he didn’t. And Harry doesn’t want to be awarded points for a failure. It’s no fairer than when Snape gives Slytherins points in class for “breathing correctly” or whatever his latest justification is.

Snape can be as unfair as he likes. Harry can’t stop that. But Harry doesn’t have to.

Dumbledore clears his throat. “Well, ah, Harry, it’s not traditional for students to refuse to accept points…”

“If you give them to me, sir, I’ll just immediately do something that will cost Gryffindor two hundred points.”

More shock, outrage, yelling. Harry keeps looking at the Headmaster. Dumbledore appears truly perplexed, not angry. Harry kind of enjoys the sensation of having confused the Headmaster with something that he’s never seen in his hundred fifty years or however long he’s lived.

“Are you quite serious about this, Harry?”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry has to raise his voice to get above the shouting, but it’s clear that Dumbledore hears him. He nods and then abruptly blinks out in a smile.

“The two hundred points to Gryffindor for Harry Potter’s heroism are reversed, at the request of Mr. Potter himself,” Dumbledore announces, and the banners on the walls turn green and silver. “Congratulations, Slytherin!” And he turns and raises his goblet to the Slytherin table.

There’s more shouting. Harry sits down and ignores them, and even ignores the way that Ron and Hermione pull at his arm, whispering urgently. He knows that he’s done the right thing.

Only now, when he’s sure the points won’t suddenly be reversed again and Slytherin really has the House Cup, does he let himself look across the Hall at Theo.

Theo’s eyes are alight.

That’s all Harry needs to keep him floating through the rest of the meal, and the shouting in the common room, and the shouting the next day on the train. He knows that he’s going back to the Dursleys, and that that isn’t good.

But he doesn’t care if his Housemates hate him. It was the right thing to do. It would have been the right thing even if Theo hated it for some reason.

But, Harry has to admit, it’s a lot easier to do the right thing when it makes someone that happy.