Chapter Thirty-Five of 'Winged Victory'- Matters of Trust

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty-Five—Matters of Trust

“I can’t believe that you brought Gellert Grindelwald to our actual house.”

Theo smiles, and decides he has to ignore the proud little glow in the center of his chest about Harry calling it our house for right now. It wouldn’t be the right time to tease Harry about it. “Well, I did.”

“That’s such a poor comeback. Theo.” Harry turns and paces the length of Theo’s bedroom again, his hands coming up to sink into his hair.

Theo allows that for a minute more, and then gets up and rests his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry glares at him, shoulders rising up to hover near his ears. Theo makes a soothing noise and presses them down.

“I told you all about the oaths that I had him swear. And Black was with me when he swore them. I know that he would have pointed it out if there were loopholes in the wording or anything I was forgetting.” Theo lets himself roll his eyes. “He wouldn’t have been able to help himself even if I’d told him not to.”

“Theo…”

“I suppose it comes down to how much you trust me.”

“That’s unfair,” Harry snaps at once, raising his eyes to Theo’s with a dark expression in the back of them that makes Theo have to swallow and ignore the temptation to touch Harry lower down. “Of course I trust you. It’s just that even someone I trust, and someone who’s taking all the precautions, can make mistakes with a wizard that dangerous.”

“The way we both did with Dumbledore, right.”

“Are you sure this is the best way to distract Dumbledore?”

It appears Harry’s not interested in the chance to have an argument about who did what wrong with Dumbledore in the past. Theo sighs a little mournfully and hauls Harry closer to him, ignoring the way that he yelps and flails for a second before settling against Theo’s chest.

“He told us that he and Dumbledore were lovers. I told you that, too. Yes, this is the best distraction we could ever have.”

“But he’ll figure it out pretty easily that it was an illusion, right?”

“I don’t know why he should. He’ll know that we took Grindelwald from the prison; it’s obvious that he’s gone, and any spell he performs in Nurmengard will tell him that. And in the meantime, an illusion can flit about the Continent and disappear, but so can a fugitive Dark wizard. And people who are scared and telling tales will add further to the confusion. It’s one of the reasons that it can be so hard for Dragon-Keepers and the like to track a magical creature who’s escaped one of the preserves. People see the wrong thing even when they’re staring right at it with their own eyes.”

Harry looks at him, long enough that Theo prepares himself to make another argument. And then Harry gives an exhausted sigh and nestles into Theo’s arms.

“Fine. I understand. I give up, as a matter of fact. I just hope that you know what you’re doing.”

Theo kisses his forehead. “I don’t know that I’ve known that since I fell in love with you.”

Harry’s laughter is exhausted, too, but real. His forehead rests for a long moment, precious, against Thoe’s collarbone. And then he takes a step backwards and shakes his head. “Would you prefer that I stay away from him?”

“Would I prefer that my love stay away from one of the Darkest wizards in the world, who might take the chance to manipulate him, if only because of how close Dumbledore tried to keep him? Let me think.”

“Prat. Of course I will.”

Theo opens his mouth to offer a sarcastic congratulations, and then whirls around. The wards around the manor, hyper-sensitive since Theo rewove them and then strengthened after he brought Grindelwald in, are jangling. Someone’s tried to open the door to the heavily protected suites where Theo stashed the old Dark Lord.

“Theo? What’s wrong?”

Theo starts running while waving for Harry to follow. Yeah, it’s not like he wants Harry anywhere near Grindelwald, but he also thinks this might be a distraction to separate the two of them if Dumbledore left something behind that would let him manipulate the wards. Theo really doesn’t think so, he thinks that he went all the way through the wards and removed every trace of foreign influence, but—

He concentrates on running.

*

The last thing Theo expects to see when he rounds the corner of the corridor that leads to Grindelwald’s suite is Luna sitting on the floor, weaving a crown of yellow flowers together with intense concentration.

She glances up and gives Theo a friendly nod. “Hello. I was going to take this gift in to Gellert, but I can’t get past the wards.”

“How did you know we had Gellert Grindelwald here, Luna?” Harry asks. He sounds amused, which allows Theo to breathe and get his anger under control. He knows as well as Harry does that Luna doesn’t mean anything malicious, even if she accidentally set off the wards.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Luna blinks. “There are strong wards here, and you would only need wards that strong to trap either Grindelwald or Dumbledore, and obviously you would never trust Dumbledore in your house. So it has to be Grindelwald.”

She beams at them.

Harry laughs. Theo swats him on the back of the head and takes a slow breath. “I think it’s best if you don’t visit him, Luna. We made him swear an Unbreakable Vow, but we didn’t bind him to not hurt you specifically.”

“Oh.” Luna sounds disappointed. “Maybe I can hand him the flower crown through a flap in the door? The way that Mummy used to let the Kneazle in and out of the house?”

“We’ll see,” Theo says diplomatically, aware that Harry’s stiffened next to him. “But for right now, I’ll ask you to move away from the door. It’s making the wards ring and hurting my teeth.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Luna stands up fluidly. “I know that I hate when that happens at home.”

“You’re tied to the wards at home?” Harry asks.

“Of course. Daddy is gone so often that he can’t hold them himself. He goes so far away that he wouldn’t feel them. I visit by Floo every few days so that I can check on the protections and make sure that the nargles are fed.”

Theo just nods when Harry does, even if he’s a little sad for Luna that she has to take control of the wards so young. Even he never had to do that, and he only has control of the Nott ones now because he killed his father.

That makes a dark satisfaction pulse through him. But something else concerns him more, so after he’s gently herded Luna away from the warded door and back towards the rooms she has in the house, he turns to Harry. “Is something wrong? Only I noticed that you got upset when Luna mentioned a flap for a Kneazle to go through.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Harry. When has that ever worked on me, in the history of this relationship?”

Harry looks at him, then blinks and glances away. “I just mean that—it was a small thing when it happened, compared to everything else. And I shouldn’t be so upset about it years later. I suppose I am now just because I wasn’t expecting Luna to mention it.”

“What does it refer to? Did you have a cat once?”

“Sirius mentioned that my parents had a Kneazle. I should ask him for more stories.”

Theo waits patiently, one arm darting around Harry’s waist. Harry stares down at his own hands as if determined to avoid Theo’s eyes, or as if struggling to contain his own unexpected reaction.

“Okay,” Harry finally whispers. “The summer before my second year, my relatives were saying that I was never going to go back to Hogwarts. And they shut me in my room with seven locks and fed me and Hedwig through a cat flap in the bottom of the door. I just—I don’t know why Luna talking about it reminded me of that so strongly.”

Theo closes his eyes, then opens them. His hatred of Harry’s Muggles is familiar by now, and so is his reluctant acknowledgment that they have more important things to pay attention to. “I really would like to visit them someday.”

“You’d kill them.”

“Yes. But it would still be a visit.”

Harry steps towards him and rests his face against Theo’s neck. His voice is muffled in consequence, but Theo knows what he’s saying, can almost mouth the words along with him. “Please don’t kill them.”

Theo sighs. But as much as he’d like to make the Dursleys pay for Harry’s suffering, what Harry wants is more important. “I won’t. But what about terrorizing them?”

Harry pauses.

Theo is smiling widely by the time Harry lifts his head again, because this is the most responsive to that suggestion Harry has ever been. Harry still rolls his eyes a little. “Don’t do it.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“I still don’t want you to do it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s that grin for?”

“You were thinking about it. That means you might change your mind someday.”

Harry narrows his eyes and drags Theo away from the warded door into Grindelwald’s suite. “I don’t think that my reply is a good idea for this corridor.”

Theo laughs, and lets himself be dragged.

*

“I can create the illusion of Grindelwald.”

Theo’s been speaking to Harry during dinner about the necessity of making sure that the illusion is in place and unmistakable before they go back to Hogwarts, but Black is the one speaking now. Theo turns to him and blinks. Black has his mouth crimped as though he’s trying to prevent any words from escaping.

“Can you?” Theo asks quietly.

“Yes. The help that I told you I got, the one that gave me the Apparition coordinates for Nurmengard, will let me do this.”

“It must have cost you something, that help.”

Black flinches and looks away. Harry puts his hand on Theo’s thigh in a way Theo knows. Harry won’t approve if he keeps tormenting Black.

Theo sighs mournfully, because taunting Black is fun, and asks, “Are you going to create the illusion of Grindelwald exactly as he is?”

Black shakes his head, still staring at the window in the dining room that looks out on the gardens—well, currently looks out on them. It’s one of the most enchanted windows in the house and shifts image and orientation regularly. “No one would believe that he’s much of a threat if I did that, or even that he could have survived escaping prison. It’ll look like him if he was cleaned up and had spent some time recovering.” He gives a sound that’s incredibly like a dog growling. “Serves Albus right if he starts wondering whether his lover escaped the prison a long time ago.”

Theo nods. He can approve of all the things that Black is talking about. “Do you want help? Or is this a matter of using a device or artifact to create the illusion, and only one person can operate it?”

Black whips around to face him so fast that he nearly sends himself out of his chair onto the floor. “How did you know that?”

“You spoke of help, and you sound reluctant when you talk about it. I think you would have told Harry, at least, about any person you were going to contact, because they would have to have known our secrets to a dangerous degree. But it’s not a person. It’s an artifact, and you went back to a property your family owned to get it, didn’t you?”

Black stares at him, then at Harry. “How—how would he know—”

“Theo just does that,” Harry says, and gives Theo a hungry look that makes Theo lick his lips and wish they were somewhere out of Black’s sight already. “His brain is one of the things I love most about him.”

“Too much information!” Black squeaks, and claps his hands over his ears.

Theo waits until he takes them away, then says, “It’s not like he’s going to try to fuck my skull or anything—”

Black yelps this time, and his hands go back into place.

Harry collapses in laughter, his hand clapped across his mouth. Theo smiles at him and leans over so that he can touch Harry with the left side of his body, while keeping his eyes fixed on Black. “What kind of artifact did you find?” he asks.

“I don’t know if you can understand it…” Black trails off at the withering look Theo gives him, and yields with a sigh. “Fine. But I don’t even understand how it works myself, just that it does.” He pulls a dark blue orb from his pocket.

Theo blinks. He can see silvery shadows darting under the surface of the globe, and it makes him imagine for a moment that this is some kind of aquarium with fish inside it. But he looks more closely, and the silver shadows fade, and there’s nothing but endless blue in front of him.

“Theo!”

Harry’s shaking him. Theo blinks hard and pulls his gaze away from the artifact. “I’m all right, Harry.”

“But you weren’t! You were staring, and your mouth was a little open, and you looked as if you were going to faint—”

Theo curls his lip. He despises the thought of being so weak, especially in front of Black, who he doesn’t trust much. “Ugh. Well, I don’t know what that thing is, either.” He has to keep his eyes away from the orb. It’s too tempting.

“Don’t recognize it?”

“Stop taunting Theo, Sirius.”

Black sighs and shakes his head. “There’s still a single house-elf alive who worked for my grandfather, who wasn’t as mad as some of the rest of the family. I asked her whether my ancestors had had an artifact that could create illusions, and this is what she came up with.”

“You didn’t ask her about the cost of it, of course.”

“Cost? It was free.”

Theo pushes his head very gently into Harry’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to look back towards the orb or speak with Black further right now.

“I don’t think that’s what he meant, Sirius,” Harry says. He’s struggling against laughter from the sound. “I think he means that there might be some kind of cost for using the artifact. Magical power? Years of your life? Or just getting hypnotized by it for a while the way Theo was.” He pokes Theo in the side.

“Not hypnotized,” Theo whines.

“I don’t know what there would be. But I think Nissy would have warned me if using it really was a bad idea.”

Theo thinks about what Black family house-elves might feel about someone who abandoned the family, and holds his tongue. He at least wants to see Black try the orb, even if he also wants to be out of the room and tug Harry with him while he’s doing so.

Black, meanwhile, stands on the other side of the dining room table with the orb in his hands and frowns at it for a long moment. Then he mutters something that Theo can’t hear well, but which doesn’t sound like an incantation, and projects one hand towards the far wall of the room.

There’s a soundless explosion of light, and Theo jerks back a little as he watches the brilliance flood the room. It’s dark blue, and gold around the edges. Pretty, but Theo doesn’t see how it’ll create a realistic illusion of Grindelwald.

Maybe Harry can feel Theo getting ready to say that, because he presses down on Theo’s arm. Theo sniffs and keeps his peace.

The light continues to sparkle, with golden specks moving around in it, reminding Theo of the way that Harry’s eyes sometimes look when candles are shining in their bedroom. Then the specks collide. There’s another soundless explosion that makes Theo duck his head and put his hand over Harry’s eyes. Harry makes a protesting sound.

When Theo looks up again, when he can, there’s a younger version of Grindelwald standing in front of them.

Theo controls the impulse to recoil, and stares in what he has to admit is fascination. This man does look a lot like a cleaned-up and healthier version of the one they rescued from prison. He has age lines on his face and white hair, like the original, but stronger, cleverer hands, and a thick ring on one of them that makes Theo cock his head. That ring has a black stone that looks a little familiar.

Before he can ask Black why he chose to make that ring part of the illusion, the fake Grindelwald looks around the room and laughs in a mocking way. “Love what you’ve done with the place, Nott, truly.”

Black gasps, and the illusion flickers and vanishes.

Theo looks closely at Black, wondering if the orb is going to exact a price from him after all, and Harry tenses next to him. Theo pats Harry’s shoulder and stands back. Harry nods to him and goes over to Black.

“Sirius? Are you all right?”

“I felt—it was as if someone were spying on me inside my mind.”

“Like Legilimency?” Theo asks, eyeing the orb and wondering if its price is putting your mind in contact with the mind of one of its prior owners.

“No. This was as if it knew all about the terrible things I think sometimes, and the way that I hate my life, and the way that I even sometimes resent James and Lily for dying—”

Black jerks to a stop, his eyes wide. Harry is reaching out towards him, but Black doesn’t seem to notice. He suddenly turns into a dog in a whirl of clothes and flesh and fur and tumbles out of the room, running silently.

“That hasn’t happened in a while,” Harry says with a sigh, and comes over to sit beside Theo. “I really did hope that we were done with it.”

“You think that he’s most upset about the last thing he said?”

“Oh, of course.”

“And you aren’t?”

Harry smiles at Theo, a little sadly. “There were times when I was a child that I resented my parents for dying. Of course, part of that was because I thought at the time that my relatives were telling the truth and they had died drunk while driving a Muggle vehicle.”

Theo looks consideringly at Harry.

“No, Theo. I told you that I would tell you if I changed my mind about wanting them hurt.”

“But they really deserve it,” Theo says as earnestly as he can.

“And I’m the one who should get to decide, right?”

After a long moment of inner struggle, Theo dips his head reluctantly. Harry reaches out and draws Theo against his side, kissing him gently on the side of the neck as he does.

“I promise I will tell you.”

“All right. In the meantime, do you want to go find Black, or should I?”

“Leave him for a little while. It won’t do any harm. I think we should go raid your library for books on things like the orb instead.”

Theo agrees readily, and they leave the dining room, with the illusion orb lying in the middle of the floor. Theo doesn’t want either of them to touch it until he knows more about what it does, what price it exacts.

And whether they should use it at all.