lomonaaeren

“There it is.”

Nott sounded exhausted. Harry glanced at him, but Nott just shook his head and pointed forwards. Probably he didn’t want Harry staring while he tried to recover whatever strength had drained from him by walking across the grey plain.

So Harry turned to face the crystalline structure he could just see in the distance.

It was beautiful, he had to admit, but it also blazed like snow with the sun shining on it, and hurt his eyes. From here, it seemed to be a group of pillars all standing close together, and with something stretching between them near their tops. Bridges, maybe? But Harry didn’t know if the Sidhe were enough like humans to use bridges.

“The Court,” Nott said, straightening. His voice had gone posh the way it had when they were in the Ministry ballroom.

“All right,” Harry said, and kept on walking towards it, slightly in front of Nott, ready to shield him if he had to.

“You’re keeping on acting as my bodyguard even here?”

“Is there some reason why I shouldn’t?”

“I thought—I thought you would be more interested in escaping yourself, and leaving me behind.”

“I don’t think I could do that even if I wanted to,” Harry pointed out. “Given that I have no idea what kinds of Sidhe might be hostile to us and what direction anything is from the Court.”

“I—all right.”

Harry concealed his amusement as he watched Nott walk towards the glittering pillars. It probably wouldn’t go over well.

For that matter, Nott looked as if he’d left all laughter behind. His face had got more and more pale, like an ivory mask, the longer they spent in Faerie. Now his eyes swirled with more colors, but Harry didn’t know if that was something happening because of the silvery country they walked through or because of some spell Nott had cast or just a variation of what had happened in the Ministry ballroom.

I have to keep him safe. I have to keep him alive.

Harry just hoped Nott was going to cooperate in that.

*

“Hail the Sire of the Living Snake!”

The voice came from the air right in front of them, and Harry had his wand drawn almost before he knew what was happening. Nott gave a little hiss in his direction, but he was wobbling on his feet, and Harry had to move backwards to support him.

They were just outside the crystal pillars of the Court, and Harry had honestly expected a challenge before now. But not the kind where a tiny green fairy buzzed up into the air in front of him and repeated words that made no sense.

“Hail the Sire of the Living Snake!”

Harry raised his eyebrows at the fairy and asked, “Are you talking to me or Nott?”

“Potter,” Nott hissed.

“Hey, Nott, it’s rude to interrupt.”

The fairy bobbed back and forth as if wondering what it should say next. Then it drew itself up and said, “To you, Sire of the Living Snake.”

“Because I’m a Parselmouth, then? Because I’m not interested in becoming a Sidhe or siring a line of Sidhe who can speak Parseltongue. Or whatever they’re hiding in the Court afraid that I’m going to do.”

“Potter,” Nott moaned. From the solid slapping sound a second later, he’d let his head fall into his hands.

“They are not afraid of you. But they wished to send me to greet you and to see how you would react. Hail the Sire of the Living Snake!”

“I suppose that you can’t tell me what that means?” Harry asked, although his mind was going back to the way that Jaelisdaen had talked about siring and whether it was something that he could do with Nott.

Not that I should be thinking about things I could do with Nott. Keeping him alive is my job, not the fake-dating, not nearly as much.

“You are the Sire of the Living Snake,” the fairy helpfully explained.

Harry sighed. “Right.” He turned to Nott. “I suppose that you don’t know anything about this? You haven’t heard the term before?”

Nott opened his mouth, a haughty expression on his face, and then took a step and collapsed right in the middle of his sneer.

Harry looked down at him and said, “Fuck.”

“Hail the Sire of the Living Snake!”

*

Harry sighed and sat back, shaking his head. He hadn’t studied as many healing spells as he should have despite being an Auror, or maybe he hadn’t studied the right kind. He didn’t know what kind of disease or curse was eating Nott alive from the inside.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about the curse that’s been cast on him?” he asked the fairy hovering beside Nott’s head. “Or even if it is a curse instead of something else, like sickening because of the air in Faerie or something?”

“Hail the Sire of the Living Snake?” the fairy asked uncertainly.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

Harry leaned back on his heels and studied Nott’s symptoms again. He had gone pale, with his eyes darting back and forth in what looked like a frenzied form of sleep, and Harry couldn’t wake him up. His mouth also seemed frozen. When Harry had tried tugging on Nott’s lips to see if he could move them, they didn’t shift at all.

I hope, if he dies, that he wanted to die sneering.

Harry sighed, closed his eyes, shook his head, and stood. Well, when in doubt and without anything smarter to do, do something stupid.

He turned and cast a Blasting Curse at the nearest crystal pillar.

The pillar wobbled on its foundations, and a long crack ran down it. It didn’t disintegrate, the way Harry knew that most similar things on Earth would have if he’d let his magic attack them. He circled around to the side.

“I can do it again,” he called. “Unless you come out and tell me what’s wrong with Nott and how to cure him, then I will do it again.”

The silence of either disbelief or apathy came from the Court. Harry raised his wand again.

“Wait.”

That was Isolde, or at least someone who looked exactly like her, stepping out from between the crystal pillars and shaking her head. Her mouth was bent in what looked like a faint crimp of disbelief. “You would really curse us for something we had nothing to do with?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Have you not heard that the Sidhe cannot lie?”

“I don’t believe that, either.”

It looked as if Isolde were a moment away from rolling her eyes, but she only nodded and folded her hands in front of her. “Very well. What do you think we should do about Theodore?” Her eyes went past Harry and lingered.

Harry wondered if she and Nott had been lovers when Nott was here in the Court before, then dismissed the notion. It would probably just distract him if he entertained it. “Give me the means to cure him, and nothing that will damage him.”

“The means to cure him has not been thought of. He broke his word, coming back to Faerie before he had the Ministry’s seal of approval upon a contract settling the bargain. There is nothing more perilous in Faerie than breaking one’s word.”

“Even if he didn’t do it on purpose?”

“How could he not do it on purpose?”

“Someone else brought us here. It’s not like Nott volunteered.”

“Then he should have been clever and swift enough to prevent someone from bringing him here. There are those of our people who have that gift. If he did not want it used against him, he should have prevented it.”

“Jaelisdaen said something about sires.”

“Yes. That isn’t a method you can use, either.”

“Why not?”

“Because you would have to have been lovers in truth, and for a long time.” Isolde gave him a smile that looked like pity, or maybe the nearest approximation of it a Sidhe could give. “I know that you aren’t lovers. I could never be fooled by such a thing.”

“It seems that lines, or whatever else you call them, depend on blood.”

“Yes. It is an exciting moment when two of our lines cross, and children are sired of them. We never know for sure what gift they might have inherited until they display it. And sometimes an entirely new gift comes out.”

“What would you give for a new gift?”

Isolde’s eyes widened. Then she said, “I’m not of the faction that cares about such things.”

“And I can’t be fooled by that.” Harry raised his wand and drew it slowly down the outside of his arm. Blood pooled in its wake. Isolde licked her lips, and he thought he caught a glimpse of sharp, pointed teeth further back in her mouth. “There’s always the chance that blood could bring forth new gifts, correct?”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“But the way you’re looking at my arm is.” Harry turned and held his arm out. “A taste of my blood, and the chance to pick up on my Parseltongue gift, for a method that will allow me to save Nott. With no side-effects.”

“There are always…side-effects,” Isolde whispered. She hadn’t moved or taken her eyes from his arm, so if she didn’t really want his blood, she was doing a great job of pretending otherwise.

“With ones that won’t result in him being dead or permanently injured. In mind or body.”

Isolde laughed a little, and this time, Harry was sure that he’d seen the flash of those sharper teeth. “You bargain well. For a mortal.”

“I might not be one, if all goes well.”

“You intend to become a Sidhe?”

Her response was swift, and she rocked forwards a little on her toes, as if she were about to spring on him and choke him. Harry gave her a coy smile. “You should think about why the Ministry chose me to be Nott’s bodyguard. Think carefully.”

“This was their plan!”

Harry shrugged and smiled. “I don’t think they knew everything about what could happen, like that someone would bring Nott to Faerie and try to get him eaten for breaking his word. But they consider all sorts of contingencies that I don’t.”

Like blood status, and how to be an arsehole to the largest amount of people in the least amount of time.

Isolde stared at him for a long minute. Then she bared her teeth and licked her lips. “A bargain for a bargain. You promise me that you will feed me your blood and place no poison or other harm in it, and I will give you a means to cure Nott that has no poison or iron or other harm in it.”

Iron? Oh, right.

Harry nodded. “A bargain for a bargain.”

“It is spoken and done,” said Isolde, and a subtle golden glow surrounded her for a moment. Then she stepped forwards with her eyes fixed on him. “In the meantime, you have a debt to pay.”

Harry willingly turned his arm towards her. He had no idea if his blood would actually give her Parseltongue. In the human world, of course, it wouldn’t, but who knew what magical law were like in Faerie? And if a Sidhe did have Parseltongue, it wasn’t something he cared about.

Isolde fixed her mouth on the air above his blood, rather than on his skin, and sucked. Harry winced a little at the sensation of the blood streaming away from his wound and down her throat, which wasn’t painful but did feel like the touch of a slimy tentacle rising from water.

Should have let the Giant Squid go after me in the Second Task to prepare me for this moment.

Isolde shivered as his blood poured into her, and sighed. “Ahhh.” The golden magic broke into view again and shone around her like a crown, and she shook her head and laughed a little. “So thick.”

Harry decided not to ask what that meant. He glanced over his shoulder at Nott, who was still breathing but appeared to be even paler than the ivory color he’d been. “So you’ll give me the cure for what ails him now?”

“Of course. A kiss.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to kiss him?”

“No. You must. And you must do it while thinking about his good qualities. His beauty, his strength, his power of dancing—”

I suppose that’s something unique to the Sidhe. Maybe she just means the way he moves.

“—his grace, his cleverness, and so on. Kiss him as if you love him, Harry Parseltongue. That is the only way that you can bring him through the dangerous moment and ensure that he survives as a Sidhe. Or something else. Not as the human who broke his word and the laws of Faerie.”

Harry sighed and moved over to kneel beside Nott. “Why is the kiss going to work when we’re not lovers?” he asked.

“Because of what Theodore told me when he first came here.” Isolde moved over on her feet, dancing more lightly than Nott had, almost floating above the ground. She stood over Nott and regarded him. “No one has ever kissed him that way.”

“And…?”

“Right now, he is the human who has never been kissed that way, and who has broken the laws of Faerie. If you kiss him and mean it, then he will change. He will not be the first one anymore. And that means that he won’t be the second, either.”

Harry stared at Isolde for a second, then shook his head and decided he wasn’t going to worry about the Sidhe’s insane standards. He reached out and gently tilted Nott’s face up so that he could see it.

Yes, right now Nott looked as if his bones had surfaced from under his skin, and he was pretty unappealing. But Harry could think of other measures of his beauty.

The way the colors had glowed in his eyes. The way he had moved in the dance, strong and careful and gentle, as though he had thought he would crush Harry if he gripped him too hard. The grace and speed he’d had anyway.

How he’d volunteered to be the first ambassador in centuries to the Sidhe, which was something that must have taken a lot of courage. Harry could mock someone for being stupid all he wanted, and Nott probably had done it to gain some advantage, but it was still a risk. Not the kind of safe, cushy position a lot of purebloods sought in the Ministry.

Harry thought of something then, and reached down to pull Nott’s left sleeve up. His forearm was bare. No Dark Mark. Harry wondered what kind of courage it must have taken for him to resist taking the Mark when he was at Hogwarts during what should have been their seventh year, surrounded by Death Eaters and confronted by people like Draco who had taken it.

“Yes.”

A golden glow had surrounded Harry, he saw dimly. Isolde was rocking in place as if she would reach out and touch it. But Harry’s thoughts were centered on Nott now, and pulling up a lot more memories of the other man than he’d thought he had.

Nott standing beside Malfoy in school, looking tired, not laughing when Malfoy did something stupid. Oh, he’d laughed sometimes, but Harry could remember others when he hadn’t. Nott with his nose buried in a book after class, before class, at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall. Nott scurrying out with the others when the Slytherins were offered a chance to leave the Battle of Hogwarts.

The list Neville had once recited at a Death Eater trial about the students who had taken delight in torturing their fellow students, even if they were too young to be punished for it, which was seared into Harry’s memory. It hadn’t included Nott’s name.

The feel of Nott’s shoulders under Harry’s hands, the way he blinked, the colors that swam across his eyes, the way he’d prepared food and water for a week to come back to Faerie even though he knew he shouldn’t be there.

Harry bent down, his mind buzzing with memories that were focused on Nott and Nott alone, and kissed the man.

*

The golden glow that Harry had barely been aware of abruptly burst into life and light. Harry flinched back with his hand over his eyes and a cry that he hadn’t meant to escape his throat.

He looked at Nott and saw the glow reaching out to brush his face with fingers as soft as a lover’s. Under it, Nott’s bones changed, flowed, danced. He looked sharper and more dangerous, but also beautiful, in the way a polished blade might.

Harry stared.

Nott shuddered and writhed in place for a second, and Harry wondered if Isolde had managed to trick him after all. But then Nott rolled to his feet, and his fingers were long and planted in the silvery grass, and his head was turned, eyes bright as fire.

Green eyes. Like the eyes of the other Sidhe Harry had seen so far. Like the color that Harry’s eyes were.

Harry smiled.

Nott stared at him for long seconds, and then he turned to Isolde. “What price did you make him pay?” he asked, his voice like the sound of real bells. Harry wondered if the tortured sound the other Sidhe produced was because they’d been born that way, or the result of some enchantment or spell.

I hope that Nott’s voice doesn’t ever sound that way.

Harry drowned the thought in the bottom of his mind. That was becoming rather more involved with Nott than he was comfortable with. It was his part to save Nott’s life, not to make more demands on him.

“He gave me his blood, and with it the chance to gain the serpent tongue.” Isolde gave a full-body shiver. “Surely you are not upset, when you have survived despite breaking your word not to return to Faerie without your Minister’s promise?”

Nott spat words at her that sounded like silver-edged bullets. Harry raised his eyebrows. Did he know the language before he accepted the post as diplomat, or is it the kind of thing you learn when you change?

Another question he wouldn’t know the answer to, that he had no business asking.

“My, my, Theodore.” Isolde’s eyes sparkled—literally, they were shining as if they were water with light dancing on the surface. “I didn’t think that you would be so upset about living. For such a small price.”

Nott turned back towards Harry. His hair was still dark, but it had grown, Harry saw, down past his shoulders and into a curling, wavy mass at the ends that resembled the loops of ferns. “Why did you agree to do it?”

“I couldn’t let you die.”

“Because of your job.”

Harry cocked his head. Some emotion there he couldn’t place, but that probably wasn’t unusual since Nott had become a Sidhe. “In this case, because of my job, yes. But I always would have tried to save your life.”

Nott closed his eyes and stood there for a long moment. Harry wondered what was next. He thought almost anything might be, from a duel with Isolde to Nott walking away and vanishing into the silvery mists that clouded the horizon.

Nott finally whispered, “She took something precious from you.”

“It doesn’t matter to me if someone else is able to speak Parseltongue, Nott. Especially since I can’t imagine myself returning to Faerie after this.”

“It isn’t that.”

“Then what?”

Nott shook his head, sharp and wordless. Then he said, “I would appreciate it if you called me Theo. Eventually I’ll have to take another name, one that better suits my—circumstances. But Theo for now.”

“All right. You can call me Harry.”

Nott, or Theo, stood staring at him for a moment more. Harry continued to look back, as open and gentle an expression on his face as he knew how. He reckoned that when he’d essentially robbed Nott of his humanity, even as he’d saved his life, Nott was entitled to at least that.

Then Nott abruptly turned and hissed at Isolde.

Harry blinked. He understood that hiss.

“Snakes of fire, serpents of venom, beings of the water, come to me! Take this one and rend her!”

Harry fell back as he watched snakes form out of nowhere, from beneath the ground and the air and around the crystal pillars. All of them swarmed Isolde before Harry could think to say or do anything, tugging on her and biting her. Isolde cried out and raised her arms.

Harry thought she should be able to command them to leave her alone, but apparently, the blood hadn’t given her the gift, or it didn’t work like that. The snakes tugged and tugged and tugged until Isolde dissolved in a wave of silver light, cascading down to the grass and setting some of it on fire.

The fire went out almost immediately as Nott hissed commands at it. It left Nott standing alone with his arms folded, staring at the pillars of the Court.

“What?” Harry managed to ask weakly.

“She had no business binding you to a bargain like that. And one can’t kill Sidhe in the traditional ways, they’re immortal, but one can separate their bodies. It’ll take her a long time to put this one back together.”

“Uh. All right.”

Theo stood looking at him, his head bent a little, as if he were carrying a heavy weight on his neck. Then he said, “Giving me this gift might have cost you the chance to become a Sidhe yourself.”

“I truly don’t care about that. Don’t make me out to be some self-sacrificing martyr, N—Theo. I didn’t know that becoming a Sidhe was a possibility before today, this week, whatever time we’re at now.” Harry waved a hand. “I don’t feel like something was taken from me.”

“Am I allowed to be appreciative of the gift, given that I knew what it cost?”

Theo’s eyes were a warmer green than they had been, at the moment, watching him. Harry felt his cheeks heat up. He nodded. “Sure.”

“Good.” Theo reached out and slid his hand into Harry’s, fingers curling around his. “I can take you through the Court without being stopped, although we’ll face some challenges. I might have to rely on you to handle some of them, since you’re more comfortable in your magic at the moment than I am.”

“That’s fine.” Harry didn’t say that he could handle all the challenges given his job. Theo might take it amiss.

“But you should know that there’s something I would very much like to ask you before I return to the human world.”

“All right,” Harry said, his eyebrows creeping up. Theo wasn’t behaving much like the Sidhe they’d met so far, except maybe in putting the main point off. Harry wondered if he would transform into someone more like them over time.

Which will be eternal for him, now.

Harry felt a bit wistful about that. If he’d had fantasies of the kiss leading anywhere, this was defeating them.

“I’d like to see you again.”

“Er. Sure? Although I doubt I would be anyone’s first choice for ambassador to Faerie.”

Theo laughed more at that than Harry felt the joke was worth. “Not that,” he said, and ran his finger lightly up Harry’s cheek. Harry’s breathing stuttered. “I’m not explaining myself well, and I’m trying to keep this from turning into riddles, which it could too easily. I never realized how strong the pull would be.”

“Pull?”

“To speak in riddles. There are reasons for it, but I don’t think I can explain them to someone who isn’t Sidhe.”

Harry nodded encouragingly. “It’s fine. Go ahead and explain what you can.”

“I’d like to spend time with you to see if we could make that kiss real again.” Theo took a step forwards, and suddenly they were standing chest-to-chest, Theo’s skin smoother and cooler against Harry’s than he’d thought it would be. “What you did for me…there are no words for it, especially considering we were nothing to each other before. I’d like to spend time around the man who did this for me.”

“I…really?”

“Why not?”

“You have inhuman beauty and eternal life now. And even Parseltongue. I’m just not sure what I could offer you.”

“Yourself,” Theo said, and his eyes shone with hints of the other colors that had been in them before they turned green. “I explained that there are few people who would work to save the life of someone they barely know, let alone possibly share their magic or give up their chance for immortality.”

“Even if I told you that certain things don’t matter to me?”

“Even then.”

Theo’s voice was like falling snow, like drifting spiderwebs. Harry looked at him and shivered. Theo’s eyes were brilliant, yes, and his face was beautiful. Harry could imagine some people being swayed just by that.

But beauty had never been something that Harry exclusively looked for in a partner, or he never would have dated Draco.

What mattered was that Theo’s eyes were focused. On him. He didn’t see a rebellious Auror or a failed Boy-Who-Lived or someone who disappointed people because he didn’t do what they expected him to. He wanted Harry for things he’d done, for impulses he’d had.

“All right,” Harry said, and let his smile widen across his face. “If you can get us back to the human world, we have a bargain.”

Theo lifted Harry’s hand and held it, not kissing it the way Harry had thought he might, simply exploring it with his fingers. It made Harry flush hotter than a kiss would have.

“It is spoken and done,” Theo said, and he shone. Harry couldn’t help his smile shining to match.