[This Lordship Business]: Seeking Whom He May Exasperate, 14/?, Harry/Theo

[lomonaaeren]

*

“We can’t just disappear him, then.”

Theo sounds disappointed. Harry turns around so that Theo can see him rolling his eyes. He and Ron and Hermione and Theo and Justin and Susan are all in the Room of Requirement. Oh, and Blaise. He talked himself into this for some reason. Harry let him come along, but he’s just been sitting back and listening so far.

“No, Theo. We can make it look like the curse took him, but a disappearance would have Ministry people swarming all over this school.”

“Just because he’s an Umbridge? Surely that’s not the real reason. Umbridge can’t be that popular.”

Harry laughs a little at the look of deep disgust on Susan’s face. “Well, she was popular enough to get a position of power as the Undersecretary. But no, it’s because Fudge wants any chance that he can get to investigate me right now. The curse would be best.”

“What about manipulating the curse itself?”

Harry turns to blink at Blaise. The Room created a fairly large round table and a set of comfortable chairs upholstered in green for them, and Blaise is lounging in the one nearest the door, his eyes fixed on Harry. “What do you mean?”

“The curse exists. And it’s connected to the castle, which had shown it’s fond of you. What if you ask the castle to activate the curse, so that Umbridge gets taken out earlier than he otherwise would be?”

Harry blinks again and turns to exchange looks with the rest of his friends. Hermione is on her feet, her hands clasped in front of her and a mixture of admiration and frustration on her face. Harry knows that means she probably wishes she’d thought of it herself.

“Could we do that?” Ron asks, a thoughtful look on his face. “Would it be a good idea, or would it cause the same kind of problems that any disappearance would for Harry, if Fudge was determined to dig into it?”

“Well, to a certain extent, anything would cause a problem.” Blaise leans back and tucks his hands behind his head. “But there are certain advantages to this solution.”

“What are they?” Harry asks, when he realizes that Blaise is waiting to be asked. It’s a little irritating. Harry prefers when someone just goes ahead and offers their opinions, or says what they want outright. But then again, Blaise has his quirks, just like anyone else who follows Harry, and Harry’s had to adapt to plenty of them.

Blaise leans forwards and begins counting the points off on his fingers. “They’ve ignored the curse for years; this is a way to make them look guiltier than anyone else could, because they’ve put off dealing with something that’s been harming our Defense education for decades. Harry could say honestly that he didn’t touch Umbridge, and even if for some reason they put him under Veritaserum or managed to feed it to him—”

Justin scribbles something down on a piece of parchment. Harry reckons that Blaise might have given him ideas about what to look up next.

“He could say that the culprit was the castle, and how are they going to punish Hogwarts?”

“They’d find some way to try.”

Blaise shrugs at Hermione. “True enough, but it would be a lot harder. And they’d spend a longer time arguing in the Wizengamot about the relationship between Lord Slytherin and Hogwarts and how to restrict it than they would just trying to punish Harry if he were more directly responsible. Or if one of us was,” he adds, maybe because he can see the same open mouths that Harry can out of the corner of his eye.

Theo shuts his mouth and gives Blaise a long look. Harry steps forwards to put his hand on Theo’s shoulder. Theo leans back against him and says nothing.

Hermione does, though. “And there isn’t a law they could pull into this about it being illegal to curse someone? Even if the curse is indirect? I thought some of those laws were written as vaguely as possible so they could accuse anyone they wanted of anything they wanted.”

“By Merlin, she understands!” Blaise lifted his hands to the ceiling, a beatific smile on his face.

“Stop being such a berk, Zabini.”

Harry blinks at Hermione. He thinks most of the room does. Theo is still watching Blaise, though.

Hermione turns red, but keeps pushing forwards. “I just want to know if there’s a law like that, because the Minister will try to use it.”

“Of course he will,” Justin says, snapping the parchment he was scribbling on shut. “Fudge will always try to do everything that he thinks would cement his power and keep him in power. But Blaise is right that they’d spend a lot of time trying to argue how it applied to the situation. Whereas if Harry just curses Darius or forces him out using Lord Slytherin powers, then they’d be able to argue that he’s directly responsible.”

“Just…”

Harry glances at Ron. He seems to be staring into the distance, but there’s a faint smile on his face that gets bigger and bigger the longer he stands there.

“What?” Hermione demands, turning to look at him.

“I read some of those parchments that Justin gave me,” Ron says, which is a little unexpected. “Come on, Harry, I’m not useless,” he adds impatiently, maybe because there’s an expression on Harry’s face that he didn’t realize was there.

“Yeah, you’re right, mate. Sorry.”

Because Ron’s Ron, he just nods and accepts that apology instead of arguing about it. “So the thing is, Lords have all sorts of rights that no one thinks much about nowadays. It’s sort of like the way that Harry can connect to Hogwarts. Previous Lord or Lady Slytherins maybe could do that, but no one thought of it and tried to prevent it before Harry did it because they’d forgotten. And there must be something in there about the kind of people who’re allowed to court Lord Slytherin, right?”

Theo comes to life under Harry’s hand, his viper’s smile darting across his face as he turns to look at Ron. “If I weren’t taken, I might give you a kiss for coming up with that idea,” he says, his voice throaty.

Ron turns so red that Harry thinks he’s going to shout, but instead, he just looks down and clears his throat. “Thanks, mate.”

Harry wrestles back his own jealousy—and when did the thought of Theo kissing someone else become something that would hurt so much?—and just nods. “Great idea, Ron. The other betrothal contracts weren’t covered by that because they were just offers. But Darius is acting as though he can actually court me just because he’s here in front of me.”

“He doesn’t even know the dueling conventions of a century ago,” Theo says in his haughtiest voice, which does interesting things for Harry. “He almost certainly won’t know the courting conventions he’s violating.”

“We just have to find it,” Justin says, and opens a bag sitting on the floor next to him. There must be one of those Bottomless Bag charms Hermione likes on it, because he removes a huge, tilting stack of parchment that never could have fit into it. “Here’s what I took out of the Ministry archives.”

“We’ll sort through them.”

Theo slips away from Harry to settle at the table and look at Justin expectantly. Harry sighs, trying not to feel like he’s been abandoned, and turns away to join Ron and Hermione and Susan. And Blaise, who looks torn between his obvious desire to stay with Theo and Justin and his desire to follow the rest of them. But the second one wins.

“Do you think that they’ll manage to find anything?” Blaise asks as they step out of the Room.

“If not, we can try your plan. Manipulating the curse is a good idea.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Your simpering doesn’t make you more attractive. And besides, Theo would kill you.”

Blaise freezes for a long moment, and Harry wonders if he’s offended him beyond bearing. That’s part of the problem with spending time with someone he doesn’t know as well and treating him like he would someone who’s part of his inner circle.

But then the moment breaks, and Blaise laughs. “You’ll have to meet my mother sometime, Lord Slytherin. She’d like you.”

Knowing what he knows about Mrs. Zabini, Harry isn’t sure that he ever wants to meet her, but he manages to give Blaise a temperate smile. “Thank you.”

Then Hermione starts talking about the various ways that they might be able to use the curse and the castle against Darius, and Harry gratefully turns his attention to her. Blaise has a slightly disturbing glint in his eye.

*

“You are to come with me and stand witness.”

Harry sighs and rubs his eyes with one hand. It’s early in the morning, before breakfast even starts, and Ahalam woke him up twenty minutes ago. He barely allowed Harry to put on clean robes and attend to his bathroom needs before insisting they had to leave. And now they’re riding the moving staircase up to Dumbledore’s office.

Harry actually won’t be surprised if the Headmaster is awake. But he doubts Dumbledore will be pleased to see them.

“You have to—”

“I know, Ahalam. I said I would. I’m here, right?”

“You do not have to sound sulky about it.”

Harry just shakes his head and glances at Ahalam out of the corner of his eye, where his little snake is wrapped around his upper arm. The glance at least makes him feel warm and prone to bursting out into laughter, which he just manages to suppress.

Ahalam is wearing the silver bracelet that Harry gave him last term, and the feathers that Fawkes has given him are woven into it. He looks ridiculous and pretty and very proud. Harry pictures the expression on Dumbledore’s face, and the way that Fawkes will look, and he’s smiling as he raises his hand and knocks on the door.

There’s a long pause. Harry wonders if maybe Dumbledore is asleep after all, or if he’s just sitting there with a teacup in his hand and staring at the door, hoping they go away.

“Open up, human!”

Harry knocks again.

Finally, the door swings slowly open. The Headmaster is indeed sitting behind his desk with a cup of tea in his hand. He lowers it to his desk as slowly as the door moved. “Harry. What a surprise this early in the morning.”

“Surely Fawkes told you what day it is, sir.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“It is the day of our betrothal!”

Harry sighs a little, but manages to keep a smile on his face as he walks over and stands facing Fawkes’s perch. The phoenix has started to shimmer with red and gold and bright shades of blue. “It’s the day that Fawkes and Ahalam make their relationship official.”

Dumbledore stares some more before he picks up his cup and takes a long swallow of his tea. “I thought…”

“Yes, sir?”

“I thought that that was a game. Not serious.”

Harry shakes his head, determined to conceal that he thought the same thing, for a little while. “No, sir. They’re courting, and this is the day of the official betrothal. Admittedly, I didn’t know that until Ahalam woke me up, but I thought Fawkes would have told you.”

“Fawkes is very coy.”

Ahalam sounds approving about this. Harry has to swallow his laughter. He waits as earnestly as he can, while Dumbledore glances back and forth between the phoenix and the snake with slow, heavy movements of his head.

Finally, he sighs, as though this is only the latest indignity in a long line of them, and stands up. “What do we have to do?”

“Just act as witnesses, from what I understand. Fawkes and Ahalam will do the official steps.”

Harry honestly isn’t sure if it’s really a dance, with steps, but the way Ahalam described it made it sound a little like that. He holds out his arm so that Ahalam can slither towards Fawkes. Ahalam rears up on his arm and weaves back and forth, and an echo of the song that he used to enchant the trident soars up from him.

Dumbledore starts. “Is your snake singing?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore shakes his head, but says nothing when Fawkes lifts his head and trills back. Harry feels his heart leap and bound the way it did when Fawkes came into the Chamber of Secrets in his second year, but he doesn’t move. He just keeps holding out his arm so that Ahalam and Fawkes can be near each other.

Ahalam tastes the air with his tongue. Then he abruptly soars off Harry’s arm and into the air.

“What…”

Harry gestures at the feathers emerging from Ahalam’s bracelet. “I—assume that’s the reason, sir,” he says weakly. The feathers are flapping like little wings. They carry Ahalam over to Fawkes’s perch.

Fawkes lowers his beak to rest on Ahalam’s head for a long moment. Then he leans back and extends his foot.

Ahalam twines around it, still singing, and then draws back and dances, reared up, the way he was at the end of Harry’s fingers. When he turns and flutters back to Harry’s arm, there’s a glittering band around Fawkes’s foot. It’s so bright a red that it looks like it’s made of rubies that’ve caught fire. Harry has to avert his eyes.

“What is the meaning of this, Fawkes?” Dumbledore sounds stern.

Fawkes turns and trills at him, a sharp sound that Harry can’t translate the way he would Parseltongue, but which sounds rude. Dumbldore turns so red that the color seems to run under his beard.

“Maybe we should just…go,” Harry says, and edges back towards the office door.

Dumbledore doesn’t try to make them stay, instead engaging in an argument with Fawkes in some language that Harry can’t follow. Fawkes is turning his beak up towards the ceiling and shaking his banded foot tauntingly at Dumbledore.

Harry sighs and leaves. He argues with Ahalam sometimes, but at least it’s never as vehement as what Dumbledore and Fawkes are doing now.

“Did it go well?” he asks Ahalam, as he and his little snake go down the staircase again.

“Very well! Fawkes accepted my bracelet.”

Harry smiles. He reckons that humans might call what Fawkes is wearing a ring or just a bird band, but the thing that matters is what Fawkes and Ahalam think of it. “Good. What’s the next step?”

“We must figure out an appropriate chaperone.”

Harry loses it and laughs.

*

“Lord Slytherin. A moment of your time.”

Harry glances over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing. Professor Babbling hasn’t ever interacted with him much. He never took Ancient Runes, and he thinks that the most she ever said to him was something disappointed about not having the Tournament at Hogwarts. Given that, he isn’t much inclined to trust her.

“Yes, Professor?” he asks, turning to face her. Ahalam shifts on his shoulder and stops naming people who might be chaperones for him and Fawkes if they could breathe above water or a snake and a phoenix could breathe under it.

“A moment of your time?”

“This corridor is empty, Professor. We can talk right here.”

The moment Harry says it, he wonders if Babbling didn’t catch up to him on purpose because the corridor is empty. He shifts his balance. Ahalam recognizes that movement, as Harry knew he would, and rears up on his shoulder.

Babbling sighs a little. “I would feel better if we could talk in my office.”

“Why’s that, Professor?”

“There are people who wouldn’t like what I have to say to you. People loyal to you and to the Headmaster.”

Harry smiles a little, and sees how Babbling flinches. Isn’t that interesting. “Then we probably shouldn’t have the conversation at all, Professor. I keep no secrets from my followers. I would just tell them what you said later.”

“You have no independence from them?” Babbling asks, sounding genuinely horrified.

“I have no secrets from them,” Harry repeats. Even that isn’t strictly true, but he doesn’t feel inclined to share the complications of the truth with Babbling. “That doesn’t mean I can’t make independent decisions.”

“Then make one now, and come with me.”

“What do you want to discuss?”

“I can’t do it in an open corridor, Lord Slytherin.”

Harry sighs sadly and shakes his head. “Then I’m afraid that I can’t visit you, Professor Babbling. Maybe we can come to a compromise? I can summon a few of my stronger friends to cast a Privacy Charm that will envelop us.”

“They might still read my lips, or someone else would. No, it has to be my office and in privacy, or nothing.”

“That’s truly unfortunate, Professor Babbling.”

A moment passes. Then another. Then the professor seems to finally realize that Harry has no intention of accompanying her anywhere. She narrows her eyes. “I had no idea that you were so rude, Lord Slytherin.”

“Only in response to people who’re this secretive, Professor Babbling.”

Harry watches her turn her back and walk away. She’s a slight older woman with white hair that looks like one of the scrub brushes that Aunt Petunia sometimes had Harry use in the kitchen, and it wobbles indignantly as she walks away. Harry shrugs. He’ll find out what she was on about when it explodes in his face, probably.

“She would be appropriate.”

“What?” Harry turns back to Ahalam, who’s calmed down but still has his tail wrapped around Harry’s neck so he can lean out a little from Harry’s shoulder to watch the departing professor.

“She is old and stern and not impressed by anything. She would make an appropriate chaperone for Fawkes and me.”

Harry laughs, even though he can see the way that Professor Babbling’s shoulders jerk up around her ears. She’ll probably think that Harry is laughing at her. Well, that’s also unfortunate. “You and Fawkes need a chaperone like that?”

“You would not believe the liberties a phoenix would try to take.”

Harry laughs again and shakes his head as they walk down the corridor. He’ll find a few of his followers and tell them about Babbling, so all of them are prepared if something happens. “If you say so.”

“I am only a very young and pretty snake. We must have a chaperone.”

“All right.”

At the very least, Harry reflects as he sees Theo turn the corner ahead of him and smile back in response to Harry’s wave, their lives are never going to be boring.