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Chapter Text

Harry sits at a table in the library, his hands wrapped around his head. English words still echo in his thoughts, mostly ones spoken by other people.

Freak! What kind of freak speaks like a snake?

What do you mean, he can’t speak English anymore?

But how are we going to break this curse, Professor Dumbledore?

I do not know that it can be broken, Miss Granger.

Harry, what do you want for lunch? Oh, um, sorry, I mean, do you want soup? Nod yes or shake your head.

Harry lifts his head and forces away all emotions with a long hiss that means something worse than “Fuck.” The one advantage of being cursed to speak only in Parseltongue, he thinks as he reaches for his quills and parchment. No one can scold you for swearing.

A bag heavy with books thumps down on the table next to him. Harry narrows his eyes and lays his hand on his wand, even though that’s an empty threat for right now. He still hasn’t mastered more than a few spells that he can cast without words.

“Mind if I sit here, Potter?”

The voice that speaks is utterly unfamiliar, but the face isn’t. Harry blinks and stares for a second. The boy leaning one hip against the table and looking as if no answer would surprise him has dark skin, dark hair, and ink-splattered hands that clutch a thick Potions book. He also has a Slytherin crest on his robes.

Harry draws the ever-present parchment towards him so he can scribble on it. Going to carry back tales to Malfoy and his minions? He turns it around so the Slytherin can read it.

The boy does read it, and snorts. “Honestly, he’s not that interesting. Besides, he spends all his time licking Umbridge’s boots now. He wouldn’t have time for friends if they promised to write all his Transfiguration essays for him.” He seems to take Harry’s permission as a given and throws himself into a chair across from Harry. “Blaise Zabini.” He holds out his hand.

Harry glances at it warily, mostly to make sure that he doesn’t have one of the twins’ pranks in it, and then shakes it. He does recognize Zabini, now that he thinks of it. He’s always sitting quietly in the back of the Potions classroom, or partnering with Theodore Nott over a cauldron. Harry can’t remember if he’s ever laughed at Harry when Malfoy threw something into his cauldron or this year when Snape made every cruel joke imaginable on muteness, but he probably did.

“Don’t need to look at me like I’ll bite, Potter,” Zabini murmurs, opening his Potions book. “I have an essay to write, same as you.”

And you don’t care about writing it with the human snake at the table next to you?

“I wish I could convey how little that matters to me,” Zabini says, twisting back upright in his seat after craning his neck to read the parchment. Harry feels a little offended. He would have pushed it all the way across the table so that Zabini could read it if he had just waited. “But you don’t know Legilimency, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

Legilimency?

“The art of reading someone’s thoughts,” Zabini says. He’s flipping through his Potions book and frowning. “Did I write down the wrong page number? There’s nothing on here about the Draught of Peace.”

Harry hesitates. On the other hand, Zabini isn’t ignoring him the way so many people do because they don’t want to hear him hissing. Page two hundred twenty-three, he scribbles.

“Thanks, Potter.”

And then Zabini goes on—writing his Potions essay, apparently. Harry still studies him from the corner of his eye sometimes, but it’s actually surprisingly easy to work on his Transfiguration essay with someone sitting next to him, and then the book Hermione gave him of British Sign Language. Harry is dutifully learning it because Hermione is, but he doubts that he’ll get much use out of it at Hogwarts. It’s not like anyone except a couple Muggleborns will know it.

He looks up an hour later when Zabini gathers his books, nods to him, and starts to return to his book. Zabini taps him on the shoulder. Harry turns to him and hisses, “What?” before he can stop himself.

A second later he cringes in mortification, but Zabini only shakes his head and asks, “Aren’t you going to dinner? It started fifteen minutes ago. God knows that you don’t want to be later than that, with the way Weasley eats.”

Harry stares at him. Zabini taps his fingers on the curl of a scroll sticking out from under his arm. “Yes or no, Potter.”

It’s true that Zabini phrased his question in a way that Harry can answer with a gesture, and it’s true that not everyone is so courteous. Harry hesitates, then nods. Zabini gives the tumble of his books and parchment on the table an elegant raised eyebrow. Harry starts to pick it up.

Zabini waits for him, which is a strange thing, but they go separate ways once they get into the Great Hall, so it’s not a big deal. Harry settles himself at the Gryffindor table and fishes for a platter of roasted carrots that ended up in front of Ron. Zabini was right. They’re more than half gone.

“Zabini, mate? You want to associate with him?”

That’s the kind of question Harry doubts he could answer even if he still spoke English. He shrugs instead. Ron looks uncomfortable the way he does whenever he remembers that Harry can’t talk now. However, he makes valiant attempts to include Harry in the conversation anyway.

Hermione flashes sign language at him, too, but she’s going too fast for Harry to keep up, although he thinks he recognizes the signs for “thank you” and “friend.” In the end, he tells her to talk to him in English, and because she’s patient enough to wait while he writes, they are able to talk.

Sort of. But Harry wishes, more than anything, that this curse was gone.

*

“Detention, Mr. Potter. For willful refusal to answer a professor when she asks you a question.”

Umbridge says that again and again, and each time, Harry can’t do anything but stare at his desk and prove her point, because the other students get so upset if he says anything in Parseltongue. And now he’s staring at the back of his hand covered in bleeding marks from the blood quill and wondering—

He pushes the thought aside. It wouldn’t work anyway. He tried to go to Professor McGonagall, and she let him only get as far as writing Umbridge’s name before she was telling him to keep his head down and stay away from Umbridge.

What if I can’t?

Harry shakes his head and casts the healing charm that congeals the blood on top of his hand. He’s getting better at nonverbal spells purely by necessity. Then he starts walking towards Gryffindor Tower.

“Fifty points from Gryffindor for being out after curfew, Potter.”

Harry turns his head, watching Malfoy with flat, dead eyes as he comes prancing up the corridor and stands in front of him, chuckling. Magic stirs softly inside Harry’s body. He wants to do something, anything, that will punish Malfoy, but he can’t, not when Malfoy is part of the Inquisitorial Squad.

“What’s the matter, Potter? Cat got your tongue?” Malfoy pauses, then adds, “Another fifty points from Gryffindor for not answering a perfect. And anyway, I suppose it’s a snake that has it. Or maybe Diggory?”

Harry strikes before he can think about it, but not with a fist to Malfoy’s nose. Instead, he hisses violently, “Fuck you!”, and a wave of power seems to sweep out of his tongue, picking up Malfoy and throwing him across the corridor. For a minute, he hangs against the wall, vivid bruises showing against his throat as if invisible fingers are gripping there. Then he falls.

Harry runs over to him. Malfoy is still breathing, but his eyes are wide open and staring at Harry, and terror and rage are battling so strongly that Harry isn’t sure which one will emerge on top.

Harry tries something else. “Forget,” he orders in Parseltongue, concentrating all his magic on how much he hates Malfoy and how much he doesn’t want his House to blame him for losing points.

Malfoy’s eyes glaze, and then he blinks and looks around the way Lockhart did after he was hit with his backfired Memory Charm. Harry turns and hurries away, rounding several corners before he dares to relax.

“Impressive, Potter.”

Harry ducks and turns around with one hand raised in front of him. It might actually be a deadly weapon, now. But Zabini only smiles at him from the door of what looks like an abandoned storage room he stepped out of.

“Merlin knows I’ve wanted to do the same thing to Malfoy myself, many a time,” he says, and shakes his head. “I wanted to say thank you.”

Harry wishes he had parchment at hand, because he wants to ask why in the world Zabini doesn’t like Malfoy, when they’re Slytherins together. But Zabini, watching his face raptly, seems to understand without writing.

“Malfoy’s a prat,” he says, quietly but intensely. “He assumes that everyone agrees with him just because we’re in the same House he is, and he’s so unpleasant that he makes the rest of you lot believe it and you all avoid us.”

There’s lingering bitterness there. Harry hesitates, then tries to make a gesture he hopes won’t be misunderstood. He points to the Gryffindor crest on his own robes, to the Slytherin crest on Zabini’s, and gives a massive shrug.

“Really, Potter? You’re heading in that direction?”

“Half my House hates me because I can speak like a snake, and the other half is terrified out of their wits,” Harry says, glancing away, discovering one more small advantage of Parseltongue. He can speak the truth and no one will ever know.

Zabini circles around in front of him, as if he wants to see Harry’s eyes, which is disconcerting. Harry blinks at him. No one ever wants to see his eyes when he’s speaking like a snake.

“I don’t know what you said, but from the tone, let me guess,” Zabini murmurs. “More bitterness? Like mine?”

Harry sighs, and his fingers twitch. To his utter surprise, Zabini digs a quill and parchment out of his satchel and hands them over. Harry braces them against the wall to write with. Not for exactly the same reason. I hate Malfoy and he is a prat, but I was thinking of the fact that Gryffindors dislike me for having Slytherin traits. House differences don’t seem like a big deal right now.

Zabini nods to him thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can see that.” He falls silent, and Harry realizes he’s waiting. For more? Not even Hermione is always this patient when he writes; the latest thing she wants him to learn is shorthand, which she can read.

Harry hesitates, then puts down, The Hat wanted me in Slytherin. I don’t see as big a difference between the Houses as I used to when I was in first year.

Zabini’s mouth falls softly open as he reads that. He glances up. “And you think that you belong there because of your Parseltongue?”

Harry nods, shrugs, shakes his head. Zabini seems to understand without the need for more parchment explanations. He nods back and then checks over his shoulder. “I think Malfoy is probably fully conscious by now. You should get to Gryffindor Tower.”

Thanks, Harry writes. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s thanking Zabini for, but it makes him grin when he reads it, which brings a little thump of excitement to Harry’s heart.

“You’re welcome, Potter.” For an instant, Zabini touches his shoulder in a way that’s almost like when Ron does it. “Now, go on. Don’t make me waste my good will on a Gryffindor who can’t even listen when someone tells him the rules.”

Harry bolts for Gryffindor Tower. His hand doesn’t hurt as much, and he’s grinning hard enough when he reaches the Tower not to mind the way the first-years in the common room shift away from him.

*

“The Headmaster says that we are to begin Occlumency lessons, Potter.”

That was the beginning of a torturous series of “lessons” for Harry, who doesn’t even get to talk to Dumbledore himself anymore because Dumbledore looks away the minute he enters a room and ignores his owls. Harry sometimes isn’t sure what hurts more, his head or his hand.

He soldiers on, bearing it, because there’s nothing else he can do, and he knows that defeating Voldemort is important, and there’s no one except Voldemort who can listen to him anyway. But one evening, he closes his eyes and leans against the wall to rest when he comes out of Snape’s classroom, and Zabini finds him there.

“Merlin, Potter. What happened to you?”

Harry cracks one eye and says nothing, of course. But Zabini doesn’t go away. He stands in front of him as if he wants an answer. He’s also holding a quill and parchment out to Harry, and Harry takes them without hesitation even though the skin on his hand is stretched painfully over the bleeding words and Hermione keeps nagging him about learning sign language instead of writing.

Remedial Potions. And Umbridge’s detentions.

Zabini stares at his hand for a second. Then he stares at the writing. Then he says, “If she dares to torture you, she could do it to other students, right?”

Harry shrugs. Zabini’s stare says that isn’t going to be good enough, so Harry sighs and writes, Some other students have had detention with her. Mostly Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, though. No Slytherins. I don’t think you have to worry.

“Because I could only worry about myself, because Slytherins are so selfish, right, Potter?”

Harry rolls his eyes with careful expressiveness and hands the quill and parchment back to Zabini. He doesn’t have time for this right now. He turns to walk back to the Tower. There’s the chance that Hermione will have more Essence of Murtlap.

Zabini grabs his arm. Harry spins around with a hiss that, for once, doesn’t mean anything. That sent a jolt of pain up his arm, which means down to his hand, and shit, it hurts.

“You need to get this looked at, Potter,” Zabini says, looking at Harry’s face instead of his hand. “That means Madam Pomfrey.”

Harry makes his eyeroll even larger this time. Madam Pomfrey is afraid of him just like all the rest. She pities him, sure, but she can’t control her flinch when he starts speaking in Parseltongue. And just like so many other people, she doesn’t have the patience to read his writing. That means Harry has no way of telling her what he needs anyway.

“You’ll come with me if I have to Stun you,” Zabini says, in a cold voice that puts Malfoy’s best threatening efforts to shame.

Harry stares at him. Why do you care? he mouths. Sometimes he can do that, and the motions do emerge in English instead of Parseltongue.

“Because you’re—you’re still alive,” Zabini says in a rush that Harry wouldn’t have thought any Slytherin capable of. “You faced the Dark Lord last year, and you’re still here. You don’t complain about the way Umbridge is targeting you and your House is blaming you and Snape is doing whatever he does that makes you look like you’re going to collapse. Gryffindors aren’t the only ones who admire courage, Harry. I can see—someday you’re going to be great. If other people don’t grind you into nothing before then because they can’t understand how special you could be.”

Harry stares at him some more. This has to be some kind of plot or trap, except he doesn’t see how. It’s not like he will believe in Zabini’s goodness and follow him around until Zabini can deliver him to Voldemort.

Zabini catches his eye, and snorts, seeming to understand a lot of what Harry wants to say but can’t, as usual. “I don’t want to serve the Dark Lord. So that’s part of it. But I also look for people who could be great, or important, or interesting. Call it a family weakness.”

Harry feels a faint uneasiness. He’s heard the rumors about Zabini’s mother and the string of husbands she’s buried. On the other hand, it seems weird that Zabini would admit to that, now.

“I’m not close to anyone in my year at Slytherin because I don’t see that kind of potential in them. I only deserve to spend my time with the best.”

Harry snorts. Now that sounds familiar.

“I kept waiting for you to crumble, or break and whine, or lose your temper in some spectacular fashion. But you just kept silent.”

Harry points one thumb at his throat.

“You could have made yourself known if you wanted to, Potter. Merlin knows you have with me, and I’ve barely spent time with you. But you just endured, instead. What I worry about now is that all that quality is going to be wasted because you’re too stubborn to realize when you can’t handle things on your own.”

Harry shrugs, and then stops. That really hurts his hand.

“If you absolutely won’t go to the hospital wing, I have Essence of Murtlap,” Zabini says quietly. “And other potions that will work better, that will make the scar heal completely. If she says anything about it,” he adds, when Harry opens his mouth again, “well, she can hardly do it publically, without acknowledging what she’s doing, can she? And if she does it in private…”

He pushes a vial into Harry’s hand. Harry looks down at it. To his perplexity, it’s filled with small purple four-sided crystals, not a potion.

“This will take care of it.”

Harry stares wildly at the crystals, then wildly at Zabini. Zabini lifts his eyebrows and nods to him without a smile.

“It’s exactly what you think it is. And if you need to use it, then you should.”

He turns and strides away before Harry can demand anything further. Harry starts on his way back to Gryffindor Tower.

Zabini actually catches up with him on the way there, but the only thing he does is tap Harry on the shoulder and hand over a vial that stinks with what Harry knows well is Essence of Murtlap, plus a sloshing bottle printed with directions Harry squints at. Then he turns around and makes off without a word.

Harry finds a deserted staircase to smear on the Essence of Murtlap. Reading the directions on the bottle reminds him of the ones on some of Aunt Petunia’s Muggle medicine, only oddly wizardly. Take in front of a mirror and before a red flame.

Harry does go into the bathroom when he gets back to the Tower and conjure a red flame from his wand. Then he swallows the potion in the bottle, which is green and gurgles like the ocean and tastes like the underside of someone’s bookbag.

He locks eyes with himself in the mirror. He supposes he can see why Zabini stopped him. He’s pale and his face is stripped of every one of his defenses and his eyes are incredibly grim. He looks like he might jump off a cliff or do something else desperate.

But Zabini definitely underestimated how desperate he was. Harry locks the little vial with the purple crystals up. He’s not going to use it.

But when he wakes up in the morning, his hand is entirely healed except for a slightly shiny scar that forms the word I, and the pain in his head has eased. And Harry spends some time thinking about Zabini’s words about quality and how he can appreciate someone special and stubborn.

Probably rubbish, of course, all going back to Zabini’s desire not to be a Death Eater. But it’s nice to be hear the words.

*

There’s not one particular thing that pushes Harry to do it. Umbridge of course stepped up the detentions again when she realized the scar on his hand was gone, and Harry of course said nothing. People keep telling him to be quiet and bear with it, and fine. That’s what he’s trying to do.

But the pain got worse immediately, and Snape’s Occlumency lessons have lately started with him ripping memories of the Dursleys out of Harry’s head and mocking him mercilessly for being so weak as to let Muggles torment him, and Ginny told him today that she’s sorry but listening to him mutter Parseltongue under his breath when he’s upset reminds her of You-Know-Who, and Malfoy ruined his potion again today and…

So it’s not one particular thing. It’s the enormous, swarming ball of misery that his life has been since Voldemort cursed him.

“Dear, dear, Mr. Potter,” Umbridge says, clucking her tongue at him as she stands up from her desk. “If you were in so much pain that you had to stop writing, you could have asked for an early end to the detention.”

Harry looks up at her smug face, and opens his mouth. But this time, what he hisses is not a comment or a curse but a command.

“Come to me, snakes from the portraits on this floor.”

“Were you cursing out your Defense professor?” Umbridge asks, widening her eyes and putting a hand over her heart. “Of course, perhaps everything you say in a beast-language sounds like that, but that’s why you need to speak English, Mr. Potter. Can you say it after me? Eng-lish.”

Harry is looking past her. As he was envisioning when he spoke the command but hardly dared hope for, serpents are appearing in every single kitten plate she owns, crowding out the cats in most cases. But a particularly large python that Harry thinks he remembers in a jungle landscape threatening a knight has a kitten halfway down its throat, and a cobra is killing another with rapid strikes.

He’s staring a little with his mouth open, and it becomes obvious to Umbridge. She turns around, and lets out what Harry thinks is the first genuine noise of distress he’s ever heard from her. “W-what are you doing? Stop this right now, Mr. Potter!”

Harry stands up, smiling. The pain in his hand seems to diminish. “Come to me, more serpents,” he calls, and pours all his will into the Parseltongue, the way he’s been working on mastering nonverbal casting.

More snakes appear, shoving aside the ones in the portraits so they can crowd in. One even makes it into the photograph of herself and Cornelius Fudge that Umbridge keeps on her desk, swaying and looking stately and impressive. Harry grins. It’s one of the stone snakes that he sees wreathed around the sconces near the Slytherin dungeons.

It makes him think of Zabini.

Umbridge quivers and sobs for a little while, but then she turns around. Her wand is out. And the first thing she snaps is, “Crucio!”

Harry screams as he falls to the floor, convulsing. His bloodied hand flops back and the pain makes him want to faint for a second as it hits the stone, but then the agony racing through his body is so much worse that he forgets all about it. More blood trickles from his mouth and nostrils, and then he is gone, not aware of that or how his shrieks have an edge of a hiss to them. He just hurts, and hurts, and hurts.

It’s not as bad as Voldemort’s Cruciatus, but it goes on a lot longer. By the time Umbridge lifts the spell, Harry is panting on the floor, black spots whirling in front of his eyes. He looks up and blinks. There’s kind of a mist floating in front of him, too. He hopes, distantly, that it didn’t damage his eyes.

Umbridge stands above him, still panting, wand still aimed. She smiles at him, though, and whispers, “You can tell someone about this if you want and can persuade anyone to listen to you, Mr. Potter. It won’t matter. I am the absolute authority in Hogwarts at the moment, and that is going to remain the truth as long as you’re a student.”

Pure hatred rushes through Harry. It’s oddly freeing. He thought he hated her before. He thought he hated Voldemort. But he’s never hated like this.

And he makes his decision in that moment.

*

How do I use the crystals?

Harry sends the letter to Zabini with one of the school owls. Hedwig’s way too distinctive, and there’s at least the chance that a Slytherin student’s post won’t be stopped and inspected the way Harry is sure his own is.

The response comes back to him with the flood of morning post, when no one can count or notice one letter dropped near his plate among the hundreds of other school owls. Harry seizes it and tucks it under his robes, ignoring the way that the words on the back of his hand break open again. He’s used to eating with his right hand turned so that the blood drips down the side of his wrist, anyway.

He reads it later, in History of Magic, which Umbridge’s inroads into the other professors still hasn’t managed to affect.

You need to carry them into her presence and crush them. Then you need to throw them at her and cast a Bubblehead Charm right away. You mustn’t breathe them in.

Zabini has underlined “mustn’t” so hard that his quill must almost have broken through the parchment. Harry finds himself smiling at it for long moments before he tucks it away.

Hermione catches his attention and flashes her hands slowly through something in BSL. Harry can catch the signs for “letter” and “what,” and that tells him well enough what she’s asking, but he stubbornly writes his answer. He doesn’t know enough BSL yet to say anything so complex in it. Hermione is still the only one who’ll practice with him.

Someone saying they believe in me that Voldemort is back.

Hermione’s face softens, and she makes at least one sign that includes the word “Good!” Then she goes back to writing down what Binns is saying.

Harry practices the Bubblehead Charm that night instead of sleeping, until he can do it flawlessly even when he’s not concentrating on the English incantation.

*

In his next detention with Umbridge, Harry only has the patience to wait until Umbridge is sitting behind her desk chuckling to herself as she fails Gryffindor Defense essays. Then he pulls the vial containing the crystals from his pocket.

“Mr. Potter, what on earth¬—”

Harry crushes the crystals while staring straight at her, and then casts the Bubblehead Charm. He throws the spewing pods of the crystal into the air. What looks like dozens of glittering purple seeds drift up and out, arching like dandelion fluff towards Umbridge’s desk and the floor.

Umbridge stumps to her feet and moves towards him, her wand out again. She starts to speak the first syllabus of the Cruciatus Curse, and Harry feels something painful move in his chest as he realizes that maybe Zabini was lying to him after all. Maybe he’s even on Umbridge’s side—

Then Umbridge coughs.

She keeps coughing, and that handily disrupts any chance she has to cast the torture curse at him. Harry backs away anyway, watching in fascination as Umbridge bends at the waist and continues to hack, her hands lifted and pressed against her chest. He wonders if she’ll start vomiting blood or something.

But no. Instead, enormous purple tendrils burst from inside Umbridge’s chest and reach up and tear off her face. Harry stares with his mouth open. Blood splashes onto the floor, and guts, and other things that Harry can’t identify. He backs another few steps away, so that blood won’t get on his robes.

Umbridge was probably dead when the plants tore open the front of her chest, Harry thinks later. Nevertheless, she keeps trying to crawl towards him, and grip her wand. Her mouth is open in a breathless scream.

And then her whole body slumps over, and turns mushy, and into something that smells a lot like the fertilizer that some people on Privet Drive spread on their gardens. And out of Umbridge’s back bursts an enormous purple flower.

Harry swallows. He doesn’t know if the air is safe to breathe yet. But he stands and memorizes what Umbridge looks like. Then he ducks out of the room and carefully releases the Bubblehead Charm. He doesn’t start coughing and turn into plant food.

He’s alive, and Umbridge is dead, and it’s thanks to Zabini that she is.

Harry stands there for a few minutes, quietly planning his lies. He’s going to be questioned. Pretty much everyone knew that he had detention with Umbridge tonight. It’s not like he can escape suspicion.

But there are things he can do that might mitigate it.

Harry casts a few spells like Lumos and Wingardium Leviosa to hide the fact that he cast the Bubblehead Charm. Then he reaches down, after bracing himself for the jolt of pain, and digs his fingers into the wound on the back of his hand. He screams as he opens it wider, but luckily, even his screams are in Parseltongue now. No one comes to find out what the dusty hisses in an old corner of an even older corridor mean.

Then he turns and walks back into the chamber. He tosses the vial into a corner, braces himself—but what is this kind of pain after what he’s already gone through this year?—and flings himself, hard, into the floor.

The crack shoots through his head like the memory of his mother screaming in front of Voldemort, and then he knows no more for a long period of time.

Chapter Text

“Could you tell us exactly what happened, Mr. Potter?”

It’s an Auror from the Ministry, scowling at him suspiciously, because of course he would. None of the Aurors who are part of the Order of the Phoenix are here, and Harry doesn’t dare hope one might show up.

He touches his throat and looks up at the Auror questioningly. The man, who has slicked-back blond hair that reminds Harry a little of Malfoy, sneers and starts to say something that’s probably disparaging, but his less slick partner leans in and murmurs something. The Auror gives both of them a sour look.

“Yes, yes, we’ve been told about the curse that compels you to speak Parseltongue, Mr. Potter. We simply want to know as much as you can—write down.”

Harry nods and reaches for the parchment, ink, and quill that Madam Pomfrey left beside his bed. That brings his heavily bandaged hand into view, and the other Auror, the one with brown hair and brown skin and a kind smile, mutters, “Fuck.”

“Not in front of children, Brandon!” his partner says back.

Brandon pays no attention, reaching out and gently turning Harry’s arm towards him. “What happened with that?” he asks in a low voice.

Harry tugs on his hand until it’s free, then braces the parchment against his knee and writes down, A quill that made me write lines in my own blood.

Both Aurors recoil, even the slick-haired one apparently revolted. Harry watches them under his fringe, and ignores the pounding in his hand and the back of his head. Madam Pomfrey did her best, but she couldn’t heal all the damage from his self-inflicted concussion right away.

“That’s sick,” Brandon manages to say. “Do you think she—”

“Why were you writing lines in your own blood?” the slick-haired Auror interrupts.

It was detention. From Professor Umbridge. That was what she wanted me to do.

The Aurors exchange glances again. Then Brandon clears his throat and asks softly, “So you were in detention with her when the—accident happened?”

Harry wants to laugh aloud. Yes, it was an accident that Umbridge ended up dead with an enormous fleshy purple flower growing out of her back.

But that’s exactly the lie he was going for when he damaged his hand and flung himself down on the floor, so Harry nods and writes carefully, in sentences as short as he can make them, because his hand does hurt. She made me really angry. I thought she was going to cast the Cruciatus on me. She already did it one time before. I just—got really angry. He carefully underlines the word “really,” and is reminded of how Zabini wrote to him. I remember yelling at her, and then things kind of seemed to snap and pop around me. I think I fainted then? I woke up in the hospital wing.

“That’s all you can remember?” The slick-haired Auror is turning bright red.

“She cast the Cruciatus on you?” That’s Brandon, horrified.

Harry nods in response to both of them, and writes, I think—was it accidental magic? I blew up my Muggle aunt once when she made me really angry. Before my third year of school.

“I did read about that,” the slick-haired Auror says slowly. “The Accidental Magic Reversal Squad had to go out there.” He squints at Harry. “But aren’t you a little old for accidental magic?”

“When she tortured him?” Brandon is on his side now, Harry knows. It feels oddly wonderful, to know that he can manipulate an experienced Auror to consider that, although not as wonderful as knowing that Umbridge is dead. “You think he should have held back and been more restrained when she tortured him?”

The slick-haired Auror raises his wand without answering and casts a charm. Harry flinches and cowers before he can stop himself.

Oh, well. That will probably make the lie seem more real.

“He has been subjected to the Cruciatus recently,” the slick-haired Auror says when he’s done looking at the dark purple glow manifesting around Harry’s body, “within the last week.” His voice is a lot more subdued. “Shit,” he adds then, seeming to forget that he scolded Brandon about swearing in front of children. “If this gets out…”

“I don’t think Harry wants it to get out,” Brandon says, holding both Harry’s eyes and his arm this time. “Right?”

Harry frantically shakes his hand and writes down on the parchment, I did something horrible, but I don’t remember it! I just want to go on and live my life.

“That’s right,” Brandon says soothingly. “No one can punish you for accidental magic. And we did find that vial, remember, Corwin? The one in Umbridge’s office?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Corwin mutters. “No way a student could have brewed something like that.”

But maybe a woman who’s murdered seven of her husbands could have.

Harry buries that thought quickly, just in case one of the Aurors is a Legilimens, although he has to admit it’s not likely. He lies back on his pillow and tries to look as exhausted as he can. Brandon gently touches his shoulder.

“Rest,” he says. “It was accidental magic, exacerbated by torture and by a definitely illegal potion that Professor Umbridge shouldn’t have had in her quarters. You’re not going to be charged, Mr. Potter. I’ll testify for you myself if I have to.”

Harry gives him an honestly tired smile and closes his eyes. His hand does still hurt, although he also feels himself slipping closer and closer to sleep as the Aurors quietly leave the hospital wing.

However horrible he should feel, he doesn’t. Guilt for Umbridge is not going to haunt his dreams like guilt for Cedric does.

I wish Zabini could come visit, he does think as he drifts away again.

*

When Harry wakes up, his wish has come true. Zabini is sitting in a chair next to his bed, reading a book with the aid of a Lumos Charm on his wand. The rest of the hospital wing is dark, which tells Harry something about how late it is.

He sits up, and Zabini is focused on him even before he manages to get all the way up. He studies Harry for a second, as though he has to count his limbs, and then focuses back on him. His face breaks out in a smile that—

It takes Harry’s breath away more than the potion would have, to be honest.

“You did it,” Zabini says softly. “You came through. I knew you were more of a survivor than all of those rumors about you running recklessly into danger suggested.” He shifts a little. “I’m sorry I can’t give you more potions right now, but I think Pomfrey would notice something off about how fast your hand healed now that she’s treated it.”

Harry shakes his head. Zabini doesn’t need to give him more potions. He gave Harry the means to earn his own freedom, to strike back at his enemies. That’s something no adult has ever done for Harry that he can remember, except for Remus teaching him the Patronus Charm in third year.

“You’re looking at me as though I’m your savior.”

And Harry is grateful that he’s managed to convey that just with a look, because he can’t use English right now, and putting it down in writing would feel stupid. He ducks his head and nods instead.

Zabini reaches out and gently lays a hand on the back of Harry’s undamaged one. Harry turns his over to catch Zabini’s fingers.

“I would be honored,” Zabini says, “if you would call me Blaise.”

Harry smiles at him and points to himself. Zabini nods. “I already called you Harry in my thoughts, but I have to admit, this is going to make it easier.”

Harry holds Blaise’s eyes and mouths, What next?

“The school is celebrating, and you might have gone back to being a hero again, at least until the next time you hiss at them,” Blaise says, and rolls his eyes to show his own opinion of that. “The Aurors already said it was accidental magic. Pretty brilliant, Harry.” His admiration envelops Harry like a warmer version of the Invisibility Cloak. “I’m not sure I would have thought of something like that.”

Harry wants to clear his throat, but that would only result in a dry hiss, so he touches the Gryffindor crest on his robes and hopes Blaise will know what he means.

“Your friends have visited you more than once.” Blaise curls his lip. Harry thinks it’s his right. Whatever Blaise’s reasons for getting close to Harry, it’s not like he knows Ron and Hermione. “They argued all the time about what they should tell you when you woke up and how Umbridge died and whether it had something to do with the curse that makes you speak in Parseltongue. Weasley, in particular, is ready to attribute everything evil that happens to you to that curse.”

Harry blinks hard. Blaise shrugs without an ounce of shame. “Yes, I followed them and listened to their conversation from outside the hospital wing.”

Harry does laugh, and even if he does it soundlessly, Blaise obviously recognizes it. He gives Harry a smile of slow delight that’s nearly as beautiful as his other one.

“You’ll live. Do.” He squeezes Harry’s hand. “Live, Harry. Live. Grow stronger. I’m going to help you as much as I can, still, but I’m likely to be the one that needs help when I start to position myself openly as a Slytherin opposed to the Dark Lord.”

Harry squeezes Blaise’s hand hard enough to make him gasp and then lets his hand go so he can reach out and touch Blaise’s cheek. This time, he projects his thoughts through his eyes as hard as he can, although he probably isn’t lucky enough to have Blaise be a Legilimens and just read it out of his mind. I’ll protect you.

“I know,” Blaise whispers, hoarse, and then he shakes his head and all but flees the hospital wing, as if he thinks he might do something stupid if he stays.

Harry lies back, his wounded hand cradled on his chest, and closes his eyes. Blaise’s face is in a lot of his dreams that night.

*

“But what really happened with Umbridge, mate? We’re your best friends! You can tell us!”

Ron and Hermione have obviously been dying to talk to him, but up until now, they’ve been at meals or classes or walking through public corridors with other fascinated people trailing after Harry, so they haven’t been private enough to do it. But Hermione finally dragged all of them into the Room of Requirement, and they’re sitting in a comfortable set of chairs before a roaring fire, a smaller replica of the Gryffindor common room.

Harry gestures for parchment and quill. Hermione passes them over. Ron slumps back a little when he remembers that Harry can’t talk in English.

Harry does smile at him. It’s oddly endearing, the way Ron keeps forgetting about that, even if it’s also irritating that he flinches when he hears Parseltongue.

He writes down, Umbridge held me under the Cruciatus last week. I was so angry at her I could hardly think, but I also hurt too much to do anything that evening. Then, when she acted like she was going to do it to me again this week, I snapped. You remember I told you about blowing up Aunt Marge? Well, this time I used so much accidental magic I actually passed out. I honestly don’t remember anything from the time that the world started turning blurry around me. Maybe a little about seeing the flower burst out of her back.

And that’s all Harry intends to tell them. He isn’t going to risk Blaise, or the help that Blaise gave him. He doesn’t know if Ron and Hermione would actually turn him in to Dumbledore or something, but he knows they wouldn’t approve.

Harry isn’t going to put up with arguments that try to argue him into feeling guilty about Umbridge’s death or the method he used to take care of her. Or that try to argue Blaise is evil.

Perhaps especially not that last.

“The Cruciatus? Mate.” Ron’s face is white as he reaches out to pat Harry shakily on the shoulder.

“Accidental magic?” Hermione pounces on that. “Is it really that strong? That’s not what really happened, is it?”

Harry stares blandly back at her. Hermione might be pretty good at detecting his lies, but she’s not a Legilimens and he’s not speaking them right now. Another minor advantage of the curse, he supposes.

No, it is, he writes. I mean, as far as anyone can determine. The Aurors certainly believed me, and how could I make a giant purple flower grow out of Umbridge? I don’t know a spell that can do that.

He tenses for a second, wondering if Hermione will think to ask about a potion (not that Harry thinks the crystals were a potion, either, just that they come closest to that out of magical objects he knows), but Hermione doesn’t even seem to think that’s a possibility. “Accidental magic can’t do that!”

“Accidental magic isn’t supposed to inflate a Muggle like a balloon and float her around, either,” Ron points out. “I actually never heard of that before Harry told me about it. Most accidental magic is just things like fetching toys or getting a kid out of danger. Affecting objects at the most. Not actually affecting other people like that.” He beams at Harry. “But Harry here is powerful.”

“Ron, doesn’t it bother you that Harry murdered someone?”

Harry flinches. Ron doesn’t. “Considering the amount of havoc she was causing? Not in the slightest.”

“But she’s dead.”

“Yes, and she tortured Harry. Honestly, Hermione, you’d think you’d be more upset about that.”

Hermione then rants at both of them for a while. For once, it’s nice not being able to talk. Harry leans back and lets Ron do all the talking. And Ron does, pointing out that Umbridge was giving detentions to other people and Harry did a good thing by stopping her, and no one else is going to mourn her, and the Ministry isn’t bringing charges against Harry, and they might actually get a decent Defense professor because of this now, and Merlin, Hermione, will you shut up about how this is murder when Harry is sitting right there?

That last brings a bright ink flush to Hermione’s cheeks, and she turns to Harry and swallows at him. “I’m sorry, Harry. I—forgot.”

Harry shrugs. He’s too happy Umbridge is gone to care, and it’s not as though he didn’t anticipate Hermione reacting this way. It’s one reason he didn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” Ron says, leaping back to his feet, “I think this has gone on long enough. We’ll miss curfew if we don’t hurry.”

And they do hurry back to Gryffindor Tower, but Blaise is walking with a few older Slytherins from the library to the dungeons, and Harry manages to catch his eye and smile. Blaise gives him a cool smile in return, nodding to Ron and Hermione in a way that neither of them seem to notice.

Maybe trying to bridge Harry’s two worlds is going to work after all.

*

“Harry, my boy, thank you for indulging me in my request for a moment of your time.”

Fat lot of good it does me now, Harry thinks, but he keeps his eyes on the silver trinkets whirring around Dumbledore’s office rather than the Headmaster’s. He knows Dumbledore is a Legilimens now. Harry doesn’t want anyone to see his thoughts.

“It’s come to my attention that you have been avoiding your Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape.”

So that’s it, then? No apologies for ignoring me all year? No questions about Umbridge’s demise or the way she tortured me? No explanation of whether he’s been working on breaking the Parseltongue curse?

But Harry keeps it all inside, not like it’s that hard with the curse. He nods.

Dumbledore waits for more, and then sighs hard enough that Harry would have been blown away on the wind of his disappointment last year. But that’s last year, this is this year. “Harry, if you knew how important the Occlumency lessons are for the war…”

Harry shrugs. He hasn’t been going to Occlumency lessons because he thinks that Snape would probably find out about the crystals Blaise gave him. Harry could bear his own part in Umbridge’s death being discovered that way; they need him for the war, they can’t just throw him away. But Snape and Dumbledore might hurt Blaise if they realize he helped Harry.

That is something Harry cannot allow. Every beat of his heart and every thought in his head are in complete agreement. No.

“Professor Snape is being extremely indulgent—”

Harry whips his head up, and he gives Dumbledore a glare stern enough that the man actually pauses. Then he turns away before Dumbledore can read his thoughts. He’d only find curdled poison if he tried.

Yes, it’s all about him indulging himself in his sadism while pretending that I actually get to learn anything.

Dumbledore gives another sigh that seems to fill the office with wind—or maybe hot air. Harry is leaning more and more towards that interpretation. “Harry. You must learn to block the connection with Voldemort.”

Harry turns around and pulls the piece of parchment he actually came prepared with out of his satchel. Then give me another Occlumency teacher.

“There is no one else who can do this, Harry.”

Harry points straight at Dumbledore.

“I cannot, my dear boy, for the same reason that I have been forced to ignore you all term. Voldemort could learn too much if he managed to peer out of your eyes and into mine.”

Harry stares at him incredulously. That strikes him as a pretty poor excuse. After all, if that could happen, then Voldemort could learn that Snape is a spy the same way, and whatever secrets of the Order of the Phoenix Snape knows.

Dumbledore frowns and laces his fingers together. “I must say, Harry, that I have become concerned by your behavior this past term. I did not know that you carried so much anger inside yourself that you could kill someone with accidental magic. That rage is most likely a product of your connection with Voldemort. I urge you to control it. You may strike an innocent victim the next time.”

Harry turns over the parchment he’s holding about his desire for another Occlumency teacher and looks around for a quill. There isn’t one in reaching distance, but he spots a small stack of them on a shelf near what looks like a silver globe on a thin stand. He gestures with one hand. “Come here,” he hisses in Parseltongue.

The whole stack of quills levitates over to him, which was not what Harry planned on, but okay. He dumps the other five of them back on Dumbledore’s desk and dips the quill into a convenient inkpot.

Why would someone innocent make me angry enough to kill them?

He turns the parchment around so Dumbledore can read it, but Dumbledore is watching him with his eyebrows furrowed instead of his writing. “Harry, my boy, how long have you been casting spells in Parseltongue?”

Harry gives him a stare. What a supremely useless question. Since the beginning of the term, he writes anyway.

“It is an affectation that Voldemort often indulges in. I do not wish to see you become caught up by the power that this curse seems to promise. You should rather be working on ignoring the temptation.”

That’s enough. Something inside Harry breaks into small cold pieces. Have you been researching ways to fix the curse? he demands.

“It has not been a research priority, my boy—”

Harry stands up and walks out. Dumbledore doesn’t stop him. He thinks the Headmaster might just be too stunned that a student is ignoring his authority like that. Some of the portraits do call after him, but their voices fall silent when the door to the staircase shuts behind Harry.

On the way down the moving staircase, Harry leans against the wall and shakes. He knew, he tells himself, that of course Dumbledore was worried about his connection to Voldemort and wanted to use him as a tool in the war. But it still hurts to know that Dumbledore is more worried about secrets and the Order of the Phoenix and whether Harry is giving Snape a “chance” than whether he’s ever going to speak fucking English again.

Harry walks out of the staircase and nearly runs straight into Blaise. He jerks himself still and manages to avoid it, but he still gives Blaise a Look.

Blaise tilts his head. “Simple Emotion Monitoring Charm,” he murmurs. “It lets me know when you’re upset, and it tells me where you are when that happens.”

Harry supposes it would be consistent of him to feel angry about that when he’s angry about the way that Dumbledore keeps tabs on him, but he isn’t. Blaise explains it, for one thing, and he cares enough to come and see what’s the matter when he knows that Harry’s upset.

For another, Harry is just feeling a lot more charitable to Blaise right now.

He nods, and they walk towards Gryffindor Tower for a second before Blaise seems to realize where they’re going and plants his feet. “Oh, no, you don’t, Harry,” he tells Harry firmly. “You’re going to tell me what happened to get you that upset.”

Harry hesitates, then nods and aims for the library. Classes are done for the evening and curfew is an hour away. He’s already working out how he’s going to express some of his displeasure without telling Blaise about the Occlumency lessons, though.

As it turns out, when he explains that Dumbledore isn’t working on the curse and thought Harry might accidentally kill an innocent, Blaise still gives him a narrow-eyed look, leaning across the table to see the parchment, and says, “There’s more.”

It’s the kind of secrets that would put you in danger of being captured and tortured by Voldemort. More than you already are for being seen with me.

Harry thought that would put Blaise off, but Blaise only asks, “Do your friends know?”

Bewildered, Harry nods.

Blaise’s expression turns cold. “After what I helped you do, I think you owe me those secrets.”

Harry bristles. Blaise waits a second, and then adds, “I want to know them. And they’re not that incredibly dangerous if people as open as Weasley and Granger know them.”

Harry licks his lips. Yes, he wants to tell Blaise. And come to think of that, he decides, Blaise knowing that he’s trying to practice Occlumency with Snape’s “help” has to be less damaging than Blaise knowing Harry murdered someone.

So Harry writes down a brief explanation of his connection with Voldemort, the dreams and the emotions he seems to get, and then that he’s trying to learn Occlumency to combat them, and he’s refusing to go back to Snape’s lessons because he knows Snape would figure out Blaise helped him.

Blaise reads the words rapidly, but then goes back and does it again. When he looks up, his eyes are full of rage. Harry sits back instinctively, his hand rising to summon some books with a Parseltongue word.

“Not at you,” Blaise breathes out. “Never at you. But—how in the world does the Headmaster think someone can teach you Occlumency when there’s no trust between you? Snape has to be hammering and ripping at your mind!”

He is. Only your potions helped with the headache.

“That day I found you when you looked like something a snake had thrown up. It wasn’t just the curse from the blood quill, then?”

Harry shakes his head, and watches in silence as Blaise sits there, his face still, his body so absolutely still that he almost looks like a statue. But Harry has the feeling that he’s witnessing Blaise’s own kind of cold anger. He just doesn’t explode with it the way Harry does.

Blaise looks up after a second. “Did you have a plan to end the Occlumency lessons other than just avoiding Snape forever?”

Going in and making him so angry that he throws me out, so he’s the one ending them.

Blaise’s face warms again. “Yes, that’ll do it. But then you’ll still need a qualified teacher. Harry, I can do this, although only basic Occlumency. I don’t know any more than that. It should block a connection like this—I think. To get more advanced Occlumency training, would you consider coming home with me over the summer? My mother’s a strong Legilimens. She can help you make and test the right kinds of shields.”

Harry sits frozen, staring at him with shock. Blaise seems to understand that it’s not a rejection of his offer. He gives Harry a smug smile. “You aren’t used to people doing nice things for you, are you?”

It’s a lot harder to stutter on paper than it is in English, which saves Harry from being embarrassed, and he finally manages to write, I’d love to, but Dumbledore makes me go back to the Dursleys every summer.

“I’ve never heard of that last name.”

They’re Muggles. My aunt and uncle.

Blaise goes still again. Then he says, “I thought you lived with a wizarding family who took you in. This—makes no sense.”

My blood family. They’re the only ones left.

Blaise gives him one of those incredulous looks that warms Harry down to his toes, because he knows that Blaise is being incredulous for him, not at him. “But all pure-bloods in Britain have interbred with each other to the point that it should be easy to find someone with some Potter blood. Or the blood of some other family that’s shared with them.”

Well, as you know, my godfather went to Azkaban for betraying my parents, otherwise he would have adopted me. Harry doesn’t think he’ll tell Blaise about Sirius’s innocence for the moment. It doesn’t have any bearing on the possible Occlumency lessons and the other secrets they share right now.

“Still.” Blaise thinks about it for a second, then shakes his head. “This is completely ridiculous. You can’t get the training that you need in the Muggle world, and all it would take is a Death Eater doing some research through the Ministry to discover who your mother’s relatives were listed as being. There’s some varieties of Dark Arts that focus on names and tracking people born to those names down. I don’t know how to use them, but I know they exist. I doubt you have powerful enough wards on your relatives’ Muggle house to warn you when a Death Eater is nearby and you shouldn’t leave it. We do have those wards. Coming back to Italy with me and my mother is for your safety.” Another smug smile in Harry’s direction.

Harry can barely breathe through the dizzy hope. Maybe it’s just the way that so many people have been ignoring him and wearing him down this year, but he barely has any concern about the question he asks next. Are you sure your mother would welcome me?

“Don’t worry, you’re too young for her to marry.”

Harry recoils a little. Blaise laughs at him, low and soft. “Relax, Harry. No, you’re not going to be a target. My mother does have a method to her madness, if that comforts you. Every single one of them was either involved in my father’s murder or involved in the affairs of the business for which he was murdered in the first place.”

Harry blinks. There are probably still people who would find fault with that, but he just can’t right now. His life has been hell for months. He wants to be free of this curse and free of the pain, and no one but Blaise has offered to help him.

“Now,” Blaise says, and leans forwards to take hold of Harry’s chin and tilt it gently. “Hold my eyes. I’m going to probe into your mind and see what you need the most help with when it comes to Occlumency.”

Harry holds still. Blaise’s eyes seem to become bigger and darker and overwhelm the world, and he jumps when he feels a sensation like someone swimming through his mind. Blaise raises an eyebrow, and Harry sighs and holds still again. This time, the swimming sensation is less ticklish.

Blaise looks around calmly, then pulls back with a nod. “There are wounds in your mind that will need to heal first. Only time and rest will do that. Once you’ve healed those, we’ll begin with ordinary Occlumency.” His voice is shaking a little, and Harry looks curiously at him.

Blaise catches his eye. “Snape tortured you no less than Umbridge did,” he whispers. “I—Harry, I would have already tried to kill him if it was me. How could you put up with this?”

Harry immediately shakes his head and reaches across the table to clasp Blaise’s hands. He squeezes them twice, then pulls back and writes, No killing on the parchment in front of him.

Blaise swallows, then says, “Okay. That was kind of hyperbole, anyway. I only had that weapon in the first place because my mother sent it to me when she heard about Umbridge.” He sighs. “You’re stronger than anyone I know. How can they not see it?”

Harry feels his heart warm. He writes, And you’re a great friend.

“Great, yes. Friend, we’ll see about.”

Harry is a bit confused about that, but maybe Blaise means that Harry won’t think he’s a friend once they begin practicing Occlumency. Which he’s wrong about. Harry is always going to think that Blaise is pretty bloody awesome.

Chapter Text

“You are late, Potter.”

It’s going to be even easier to infuriate Snape than Harry thought. The minute he steps into his office, Snape is swirling towards him, wand aimed, eyes narrowed as if he thinks that intimidates Harry anymore.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” A second later, Snape pauses and laughs in a way that frankly sounds more hissing than some of the laughter Harry gives in Parseltongue. “Of course, nothing.”

Harry holds Snape’s eyes and shoves forwards the memory of the last time they were all in Grimmauld Place and Sirius called Snape “Snivellus.” They didn’t think he was there, listening, but he was. It’s strange how much easier it’s been to disappear since he’s stopped speaking English, as if mute means deaf as well.

Snape takes the bait, and although the pain wells through Harry’s head like blood as Snape dives in, it’s beyond satisfying to see Snape rip his way out again with rage blooming on his face.

“You insolent brat,” he says, softly enough that Harry would be frightened except that he’s kind of gone beyond that at this point, and this is exactly the result he wants anyway. “You think that your godfather’s childish insults give you a right to ignore my teaching? I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart—”

Harry laughs. It’s an honest reaction and a hiss anyway, but Snape seems to have figured out what that particular one means. He stares at Harry for a second. Harry stares back with a mocking smile.

And Snape loses it.

“Get out of my office!” he roars, and snatches a jar of what looks like cockroach clusters from Honeydukes to launch directly at Harry’s head. Harry dodges easily—compared to Aunt Petunia and the frying pan, it means nothing—and ducks back into the corridor with his heart banging crazily.

An end to pain, a perfectly acceptable reason for stopping the Occlumency lessons with Snape, and a way to protect Blaise.

Not bad for an evening where all he had to do was conjure a memory he’s actually rather fond of.

*

“Harry, I don’t understand why you don’t say anything when I’m trying to use sign language with you!”

Harry glances up with a sigh. Hermione has joined him in the library in the afternoon more often lately, which means Blaise can’t. And it means more one-sided conversations, too. Hermione will happily talk to him in either English or BSL, but she still isn’t patient enough to read most of what he writes down.

Harry taps his throat with his wand now.

“I know that! I mean, why don’t you sign back?”

You go too fast, Harry decides to bluntly write down now. He hasn’t done it before because he does appreciate what Hermione is trying to do for him, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Besides, usually she signs fast and then goes back to her own homework or conversation with Ron or whatever it is. So that means she doesn’t look at his parchment.

When he turns it, Hermione reads it and immediately turns red. “Oh, Harry, I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”

Now you do, Harry mouths. Hermione turns redder and slumps down in her seat for a second. Then she sits back up and nods determinedly.

“Okay. What can I do to make it better? Do I need to go slower? Do I need to work on the words with you? Would that help?”

Harry feels part of him relax. It seems that his worries that he would hurt Hermione too badly and she would get incredibly upset were groundless. He wonders if some of the other ones are, too, while he gets out his book on BSL and shows Hermione some of the signs that he’s having trouble with, because they look a lot like each other.

“Oh, of course, because you wear glasses.” Hermione looks more embarrassed than ever, before she perks up. “You know, Harry, there are some magical ways to fix your eyes! I looked into them a while ago. You can’t do it until you’re seventeen, because they need a legal adult’s permission to cast certain spells on your eyes, and well, I know the Dursleys would never go for it.”

Harry smiles and lets Hermione tell him about that, while he wonders, fleetingly, whether they might have those methods of correcting a wizard’s eyesight in Italy, and whether Blaise’s mother would be willing to give permission for the right spells to be cast.

*

Harry rolls his eyes a little as they walk out of Defense Against the Dark Arts. He supposes Professor Greer, a retired Auror who agreed to become the new Defense teacher as a favor to the Ministry, is better than Umbridge. It’s not like she’s torturing people, and she does let them use their wands in class. But she insists on explaining all the theory behind a spell before she’ll let them cast it, and she explains it in a way that only rivals Binns for dryness.

Harry sees Blaise step into the corridor ahead of him and make a small gesture with his head. Harry looks at Ron and Hermione, who are already bickering about whether the new professor’s way of teaching is a good thing or not, and falls quietly behind. With any luck, that’s the kind of argument that will keep them occupied all the way to the Great Hall. And Blaise is weirdly insistent that Harry not miss meals, so Harry can follow them to lunch soon enough.

Blaise draws Harry lightly into the corridor, and smiles at him. “How’s Professor Greer?”

Harry holds up his hand and tilts it back and forth. Blaise snorts. “Yeah, that’s my impression, too. Listen. I’m getting a bit worried about passing my Defense OWL. Would you mind teaching me?”

Harry stares at him.

“I hate whoever put it in your head that you’re not good at things,” Blaise says, softly but with enough intensity to make Harry flush. “I know that you’re good at Defense. I’ve heard rumors about the Patronus Charm, and I’ve read your essays—”

Harry raises a doubtful eyebrow. Blaise shrugs the way he did when he admitted to spying on Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing. “Early mastery of the Disillusionment Charm and Defense professors who don’t lock their doors all the way.”

That’s all the explanation Harry’s going to get, so he reluctantly tilts his head and, this time, taps his wand against his throat. Blaise only smiles at him. “So the impressed way Granger was talking about you mastering wordless casting of some spells is a lie? And the way that you can cast some spells in Parseltongue?”

Harry isn’t sure those spells could include the Patronus Charm or others that would be useful for Defense, and he knows his doubt shows on his face. Blaise reaches out, careful to keep the motion of his hand open and ordinary, and feathers his fingers through Harry’s hair. Harry closes his eyes before he thinks about it.

Do friends touch each other like this? Harry doesn’t know. He’s never had any friends other than Ron and Hermione. But it feels too good to pull away.

“All I ask is that you try,” Blaise murmurs to him. “We can work on the Patronus Charm together. It’s not like I would get it on the first try, either. How old were you when you cast it? Third year?”

Harry nods, his own motions as slow as the way Blaise reached out to him. Blaise laughs, low and warm. “You’re a prodigy, Harry.”

Harry wakes up and pulls sharply away. Blaise stares at him. “What is it? You take some kind of exception to that word?”

Harry doesn’t know what to say, except that it’s a Hermione word, and it doesn’t belong to him. But he also doesn’t think Blaise is lying or anything. It’s just—it sounds wrong.

But he doesn’t have to stammer that aloud thanks to the curse, so he pulls out a piece of parchment and writes on it, Can we combine the Defense lessons with the Occlumency lessons? Is my mind healed enough for that?

“Let me see.”

Blaise’s hands also feel absurdly warm as he reaches out and cradles Harry’s cheeks to hold his face still for the Occlumency. Harry concentrates on remaining as relaxed and open as he can. It’s easier when he concentrates on how Blaise’s hands feel instead of his own stupid emotions.

“Yes, they’re healing nicely,” Blaise says at last. “All right. Eight tonight? We’ll meet in the library? There are a few private places we could go to have the lessons, but some of them are too close to the dungeons, so we’d be better off finding somewhere else.”

I know a place, Harry scribbles, and tucks the parchment into his bag. He flicks his eyes down the corridor Ron and Hermione took, and tilts his head apologetically at Blaise.

“I wouldn’t want you to miss lunch anyway. You’re too skinny. It’s like someone denied you food.”

Harry stumbles in spite of himself, and Blaise laughs, a sound that Harry can only identify as laughter because it’s not a snort or sobbing or anything like that. “I thought so. I have plans for that.”

Harry doesn’t bother telling Blaise not to, because it’s never going to happen anyway—he literally cannot picture Blaise and the Dursleys in a room together, his brain shuts down when he tries—and because it makes him warm inside, the way Blaise’s hands do. He squeezes Blaise’s shoulder once and goes down to lunch.

Hermione and Ron are indeed still arguing about Professor Greer, and immediately both try to enlist him on their side of the argument. Harry smiles peacefully at them, and eats his lunch. He’s hungry, and Blaise will ask him what he ate later anyway.

He doesn’t want to lie to Blaise.

*

Harry is on his way to the library to meet with Blaise when Dumbledore seems to step out of the wall in front of him and say, “Harry? I’m afraid that I need to speak with you. It’s about Sirius.”

Harry stops at once, because Sirius is important, and he hasn’t had any news from him lately. Even though the Ministry is no longer monitoring Harry’s owls or Floo calls, he can’t get over the impression that it’s dangerous. He looks up at Dumbledore and waits.

“In my office, please,” Dumbledore says.

If they climb all the way to Dumbledore’s office and Harry has to come back down, he’s going to be late to meet with Blaise. He frowns unhappily. Then he takes out a piece of parchment, writes on it, I’m going to be late. Headmaster, and folds it into a semblance of an airplane. Holding it up to his lips, he hisses, “Find Blaise.”

The paper animates and darts off at once, sailing kind of drunkenly around the corner. Dumbledore sighs. “I believe I have told you about casting with Parseltongue, Harry.”

Harry only waits. He doesn’t have another way to cast quite a few spells if he doesn’t use Parseltongue, either because he hasn’t practiced them enough wordlessly in English before he has to cast them in class, or because he never knew how to cast them in the first place. He doesn’t know how to make a paper airplane find someone not in his direct line of sight in English. Or Latin. Whatever.

He finds himself wondering if Dumbledore would rather he just fail his classes instead of use Parseltongue.

“My office, Harry,” Dumbledore says again, and begins to walk.

Harry follows him, thinking all the way. It seems weird to him that Dumbledore cares about things and doesn’t care about them at the same time. Does he want Harry to pass his classes or not? Does he want Sirius to be okay or not? Sirius won’t be okay if he stays cooped up in Grimmauld Place all the time. Does he want Harry to stay safe or not? Or does he not class the Dursleys or not being able to cast spells at all as “unsafe”?

It’s a puzzle, and one that Harry isn’t sure he’ll solve. He walks just behind Dumbledore and thinks it’s at least a new perspective. And Blaise is the one who taught him to think about things like that, because Blaise fucking listens and wants to know what Harry’s thinking.

It’s weird. Why would a Slytherin Harry never interacted with before this year be better at it than the Headmaster of the school who’s saved Harry’s life a few times?

Harry has to come out of his thoughts when they enter Dumbledore’s office, because Sirius is standing there. “Sirius!” Harry hisses before he can stop himself, and Sirius smiles back at him, even if a little nervously, because he learned to recognize that particular Parseltongue word for his name before Harry had to leave Grimmauld Place.

Harry leaps forwards and hugs him. Sirius hugs him back, his hands running up and down his back as if he’s counting Harry’s ribs.

Then he sits down in a chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk and clears his throat awkwardly. Dumbledore is gone, Harry notices, maybe to a back room.

“Um,” Sirius says. “Dumbledore wanted me to talk to you about Occlumency. Even though Snivellus ended the lessons and I think it’s a fantastic thing he did. So is there any reason I should persuade you to go back to them?”

Harry shakes his head violently and looks around for parchment. Sirius promptly hands him a piece. Harry writes down, No. I have someone else who can teach me, and he says Snape was basically tearing my mind apart.

Sirius reads those words, and his eyes widen. Then they narrow, and he bares his teeth. “He was doing what?”

Harry nods and writes down, You have to have trust between teacher and student for Occlumency to work. I know Dumbledore thinks I should trust Snape, but I just don’t. So it’s never going to work.

“I should say not!” Sirius folds his arms and nods as violently as Harry shook his head. Then he asks, “Who have you found, pup?”

Harry looks at him and says nothing. It’s partially because he thinks Dumbledore is probably hiding in the next room and listening, and even if he isn’t, the portraits who yelled at him last time might report something. But it’s also because Harry thinks, in a confused way, that if he’s keeping Sirius secret from Blaise, he should also keep Blaise secret from Sirius.

Sirius takes it better than a lot of adults, just chuckling and reaching out to ruffle Harry’s hair. “Like a true Marauder, huh? Protecting your friends? Saying he?”

Harry relaxes as he realizes that Sirius probably thinks Hermione is teaching him. Well, that’s fine. Even if Sirius or Dumbledore asks Hermione and she denies it, they might assume she’s just keeping the secret.

And meanwhile, Harry can keep his.

Harry nods to Sirius, and they spend the rest of the visit talking about what’s going to happen during the summer (with Harry lying more than a little), and making vague plans for some time in the future when Sirius is going to be free, and they can live together. Harry’s heart aches for that when Sirius finally hugs him one more time and vanishes into the Floo, but not as much as it used to.

He loves Sirius, but it’s nice to also have other options.

*

Blaise’s eyes are fixed on him, and Harry can’t think of any reason to delay any longer. He steps forwards, aiming his wand, because part of him can’t let go of the idea that he needs it even if the Parseltongue works, and hisses, “Expecto Patronum!”

For a second, a silver light bobs at the end of his wand, and his heart sinks to his heels. But then the silvery light bursts into mist, and his stag forms and rears up as though he thinks Dementors are on the ceiling and he’s going to strike them with his antlers.

“Wow.”

Harry grins and turns around to face Blaise. They’re in the Room of Requirement, which Harry made almost a replica of the Defense classroom, except that there’s no chairs or desks. There are some Defense books on a shelf and a huge map of Britain on the wall like Professor Greer’s got, though.

Blaise looks at the stag, and back at him. “How many Dementors can you drive away with that thing at once?”

Harry hesitates. It’s going to sound like bragging if he tells the truth.

“Harry,” Blaise says, with that slow lifting of his lips and spark in his eyes that always manages to convince Harry to spill his secrets even when he thinks he might not.

Harry turns and aims his wand at the wall of the classroom. “Make my wand a writing tool with light,” he says in Parseltongue, confidence rising as he watches another spark hover at the end of the wand, this one amber, and then fly away and impact with the wall. Carefully, Harry draws the number 100 on the stones.

Silence behind him. Harry shifts from foot to foot, but doesn’t turn around, just in case this is the case that proves too remarkable for Blaise to believe after all.

Blaise steps up behind him and links his arms around Harry’s waist, leaning his chin on his shoulder. Harry leans backwards instinctively. Hermione has hugged him like this before, although that was after he’d known her for a long time. It’s different with Blaise, but—nice.

“Next time you think you’re no good,” Blaise whispers into his ear, “I want you to think of that number written on the wall, and remember that no one else could do what you did. No one I can think of.”

Harry could protest that maybe Dumbledore drove that number away from the Quidditch match where he fell off his broom, but he doesn’t feel like giving Dumbledore the credit right now. He nods and closes his eyes, leaning more heavily on Blaise. Blaise runs his hand through his hair again, in the way that Harry’s rapidly coming to like.

“All right.” Blaise steps away. “Now, I know the incantation is Expecto Patronum, but would you make the wand movement more slowly? There’s no way I can imitate a wand-whip that fast.”

Harry winces a little, since it reminds him of his own difficulty with Hermione’s BSL, but he already knows that being self-deprecating isn’t something Blaise appreciates. He nods and goes through it slowly. Blaise has him do it several times while he walks around Harry, studying it from all angles.

“All right,” Blaise says. “And what kind of happy memory do you think about?”

Harry pauses. He sometimes doesn’t focus on a particular happy memory; he’s cast the Patronus so many times that it simply leaps from his wand. But now…

He thought of Blaise visiting him in the hospital wing. He thought of his friends visiting him and, even when they were arguing, sitting by his unconscious body faithfully. He thought of being free of Snape and Umbridge.

He points his wand at the wall again and writes in careful sweeps of amber light, My happiness since you came into my life.

He turns around to see Blaise giving him a look that’s not really a smile, since his lips don’t turn up, but the light is there in his eyes. He nods as if Harry has confirmed all his dearest hopes and then exhales slowly.

“All right.” Blaise draws his wand up, his eyes closed. His wand looks to be made of cherry wood, Harry thinks, but then again, he never was that good at identifying wood. Blaise’s wand snaps down in the first movement of the Patronus Charm.

He stops in a second, though, looking disgusted. “I’m not doing it right, am I?”

Harry shakes his head. Your wand motion is too sharp, he writes on the wall. I can show you again if you like.

Blaise has a smile that’s deep and shark-like for some reason. “Stand behind me and guide me?”

Harry nods and steps behind Blaise, gently cupping one hand under Blaise’s elbow and the other over his shoulder. Blaise seems to draw in his breath and hold it without moving, which is annoying, so Harry pokes him in the stomach with his own elbow to make him release it. Blaise lets out the air in a shaky chuckle.

“Like this,” Harry hisses near Blaise’s ear, and then feels like an idiot. He moves his hands in the right patterns instead, and this time, Blaise’s motion is natural and more flowing as he completes the standard set of gestures for the Patronus Charm.

Harry gently guides him one more time, lingering purely for the sake of getting to touch someone who isn’t pulling away for once, and then steps back and in front of Blaise. He gives him an encouraging smile.

“All right.” Blaise closes his eyes to focus a second, and then moves his wand through the first three gestures perfectly. The fan-like circle at the end is a little off, but Harry can see how he can improve it. “Expecto Patronum!”

A bit of silvery mist flips away from the end of his wand. Blaise snarls and tosses his sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes. “That’s it?”

Harry uses his wand to write on the wall again. A little less emphasis on the circle at the end. Think of it as a fan that’s rotating with your wand as one of the blades, not as though your wand is trying to fling something sticky off.

It’s hard to tell with Blaise’s brown skin, but he looks as if he’s flushing for a second. Harry glances at the wall in concern, wondering if he did something wrong. Well, Blaise is staring at the words “something sticky.” Harry flushes himself, but leaves them up. It would just look stupider now if he tried to erase them.

Blaise glances at him with wide eyes, and licks his lips. “How long did it take you before you got the charm right?”

Months of trying, Harry writes honestly.

“Well.” Blaise frowns, then taps his wand against his palm and gives Harry another of those smiles that he makes more with his eyes than his lips. “Luckily we’ve got months ahead of us, since you’re coming to Italy for the summer with me.”

Harry smiles back, even though he mistrusts enough of what happens to him that he’ll believe he’s standing in Italy when he feels the sun on his face. It’s pleasant, the way his stomach flips when he looks at Blaise smiling at him, even if he never sees Italy or meets Mrs. Zabini.

*

“Okay, so you’ve been sneaking off somewhere, mate, and we want to know where.”

Harry swallows and turns away from the fire in the Gryffindor common room to study Ron and Hermione. Hermione has her hands on her hips. Ron is just finishing casting a Silencing Charm around this little group of chairs.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to hide his lessons with Blaise from his friends forever, but this is more quickly than he expected.

“We don’t want to hurt you or take anything away from you,” Hermione says, softening her voice, maybe because of his expression. “We just want to make sure that you’re not getting in trouble or hurting yourself.”

Harry knows they don’t mean to be condescending. They’re his best friends (he keeps exempting Blaise from that category for reasons he doesn’t really understand yet). But still, something snaps in him the way it did with Dumbledore the other day.

I always have to be getting in trouble? he writes jerkily on the side of his Defense notes, and holds it up so they can see.

Hermione blushes the way she did when he told her about her fast signing. Ron takes over. “No, mate, of course not. But—you’re just sneaking off, and it’s pretty frequent, and you haven’t told us who—”

Then his eyes widen, and he says, “Shit. Sorry, mate. It’s about a girl, right? And Merlin knows you deserve it, after all the people who run in fear when you start talking to them.” He looks around the common room and glares hard enough at some people outside the Silencing Charm to make a couple of firsties squirm.

“It is?” Hermione looks startled, as though this never, ever occurred to her.

Harry sits there like a stone, because it has occurred to him, he realized now, but not as consciously as Ron’s words are making him think about it. The way he likes to spend time around Blaise, and to touch him, and for Blaise to touch him back, and the way Blaise’s smiles flip his stomach, and even the way Blaise talked about not wanting to be his friend when they were first discussing Occlumency lessons.

Harry would panic, except that he does remember Blaise’s words, too. And the self-satisfied look in his eyes when he studies Harry sometimes, and the way he wants to know all his secrets, and the way he was the one who touched Harry first.

He knows what he wants. He was waiting for me to catch up.

Harry becomes aware that he’s been silent too long when Hermione and Ron start peering at him. He ducks his head and writes, Yeah, there’s someone. Sorry. But I don’t want to give them up so soon.

There. He’s not lying about Blaise, not calling him a girl, which is important. Very important. But he’s also not telling Ron and Hermione anything they can use to figure him out, which is also very important, until Blaise tells Harry that he doesn’t want to be a secret anymore.

“Oh, of course, Harry.” Hermione’s voice is very soft now, and she leans forwards and gives him a gentle hug of the kind she’s never given him. “You deserve all the happiness in the world. If they don’t want to meet us yet, that’s fine. We’ll wait. Won’t we, Ron?” She nudges him with one elbow.

“Of course,” Ron says, rolling his eyes a little at Harry when he thinks Hermione can’t see. Harry wants to laugh, but he’ll just hiss again, so he contents himself with smiling warmly at Ron.

Curse and everything, his life is still so much better than it was a few months ago.

*

“Yes, you need to shift your shields so that your will is what’s blocking me from seeing that memory—yes, that’s it!”

Harry falls back in his chair in the modified Room of Requirement, panting and exhausted. Blaise said they needed softer chairs for the Occlumency lessons in case one of them managed to knock the other on his arse, so Harry called up overstuffed armchairs and long, padded couches. It’s nice to fall onto them even though no one has been knocked on his arse yet.

Maybe Harry has, though, metaphorically. Every time he glances at Blaise he notices something else new and wonderful he can’t believe he didn’t notice before.

Like his eyes, for instance, the way they tilt up at the corners and seem to glow when he’s giving Harry that smile. Or the way his mouth opens in what’s almost a laugh when he’s angry. Or the way his chest flexes when he stretches with his hands behind his head.

Luckily, Blaise seems to be peering at him and smiling a little almost as often, so Harry can be confident he’s not alone in his new obsession.

“All right,” Blaise says, and picks up one of the sandwiches they stopped by the kitchen to collect before they came up here. It’s after curfew, but with Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, they aren’t going to get caught on the way back anyway. “Your mind is healing rapidly, and you’re also getting better at Occlumency rapidly. I told you you could do it. What the hell was Snape doing, that he left bleeding wounds in your mind like that?”

Harry munches on his own sandwich as he aims his wand at the wall. He kept telling me to clear my mind. Nothing about how, of course.

Blaise snorts. “Well, that must be the method that worked for him, but it’s very hard to think of nothing at all. Instead, it’s about will, like I showed you.”

Harry nods. Blaise taught him how to clear his mind by telling him that he has to want to keep that memory hidden, which makes so much more sense that Harry has decided Snape is just a poor teacher in everything, from Occlumency to Potions.

“You aren’t perfect yet, but you’re getting there.” Blaise toasts him with his butterbeer, and Harry leans over the table to clink their bottles together. “And now that we’re getting somewhere, we can talk about some of the memories I did see.”

Harry pauses. He wonders for a second if Blaise is going to talk about the conversation with Ron and Hermione in the common room. Harry wasn’t really trying to hide that one.

But no, Blaise’s eyes are intense the way he gets when he has murder on his mind. “Harry. I want to know. How often did the Muggles abuse you? I saw the cupboard and the going without food, but—other things.”

I was never beaten or raped the way you’re thinking, Harry immediately says via the amber letters on the wall. His hand is shaking, a little, but if Blaise can read his sloppy handwriting on parchment, he can do it here.

Blaise looks at him with his face full of cold rage. “It doesn’t need to be those things to be bad.”

Harry hesitates. He trusts Blaise, of course he does. He just never got used to talking about this. Hell, he doesn’t even talk about it with Ron and Hermione. They know some things, like the bars on his window and how much he doesn’t want to go back to the Dursleys, and that’s just the way it is. No more than that.

Tell me.

Blaise doesn’t say it aloud this time. Instead, he’s holding Harry’s eyes and projecting the thought. Harry takes a deep breath and waits for his stupid hand to stop shaking before he starts writing again.

The cupboard was my bedroom for ten years. My aunt used to try to hit me in the head with a frying pan. They yelled at me about being a freak all the time, and they lied about my parents. I didn’t know wizards existed until I got my Hogwarts letter. They punished me for accidental magic. My cousin chased me all the time and beat me up with his friends and warned the other kids at school about me. I didn’t have any friends until I was eleven, either.

Harry stops, because Blaise is clutching the table so hard that he might actually flip it over. Harry tries to rescue the food.

“That settles it,” Blaise says, and his voice seems to ring too loudly in the silent room, like Harry was actually speaking aloud and Blaise is talking after him. “You are coming to Italy with me this summer. If you try to avoid it, I will take you, Harry. I will Stun you some evening when you aren’t expecting it and bind you and carry you back home in my bloody trunk, if that’s what it takes.” He faces Harry and waits.

Harry swallows. Thank you, is the next thing he writes.

Blaise pauses, and then backs down and nods. He seems to understand why Harry is saying it. “Why hasn’t anyone tried to do anything about the abuse before this?”

Most people don’t know. Dumbledore says that I have to go back there to build up the blood protections my mother put around me with her love when she sacrificed her life.

“Blood protections don’t work where there’s no love,” Blaise snarls. “Dumbledore’s a fool.” He pauses and closes his eyes. Harry cradles his butterbeer and watches him carefully.

“I was worried that you would be put off by how violent I got when I was talking about kidnapping you,” Blaise murmurs without opening his eyes. “Not that I still wouldn’t have done it.”

Harry isn’t put off. If anything, he’s a bit thrilled that someone is willing to do all that for him, even if it would be against his will. Blaise really does sound as if he would do anything for Harry. He’s already helped him kill.

He’s staring at Blaise in what must be admiration when Blaise looks at him again. Time seems to turn to crystal around them.

Blaise smiles, and this time, it’s a new smile Harry hasn’t seen before, one so dark and glowing it’s like seeing into the inside of a diamond. He gets slowly to his feet, never taking his eyes from Harry, and walks equally slowly around the table. He holds out his hand, caressing Harry’s face for an instant before he tilts it up.

He leans down most of the way, but Harry surges up, and their mouths meet together.

God, it feels good. A river of warmth purrs through Harry, and he reaches out and grips Blaise’s shoulders, not wanting this to end. He’s swaying on his feet, moaning a little, when Blaise opens his mouth, and Harry feels a whole new heat, a spark like a needle, as their tongues touch.

Blaise eases back from the kiss after that, and stands with his own hands resting on Harry’s chest. “I’ve wanted to do that for a bloody long time,” he whispers.

Harry just nods. Nothing he could write would encompass that experience anyway.

Blaise trails his fingers along Harry’s cheeks for a moment, up into his hair, his expression so focused and possessive that Harry can only look back at him. Then he nods. “You’re coming with me to Italy,” he says. “It looks—I can’t be sure, but it looks as if the Parseltongue curse might be anchored to that connection with Voldemort that you’ve talked about in the back of your head. It means that a good Legilimens, like my mother, might be able to cure it. Maybe,” he adds hastily, because Harry can feel his eyes widening. “I can’t promise it. But either way, you’re going to be there, and if you’ll trust her to look into your head—”

Harry will trust her if Blaise vouches for her. He’ll trust anything that Blaise vouches for.

Right now, he trusts that he really wants to kiss Blaise again. So he does.

*

The next morning, Blaise comes over to the Gryffindor table and puts his plate down next to Harry. And takes the seat next to him, nearly sitting on Seamus before he squawks and moves out of the way. Harry wants to say that Blaise didn’t see Seamus sitting there, to his fellow Gryffindor’s offended look.

But besides the fact that he literally can’t, Harry knows it’s not true. Blaise saw Seamus sitting there. He just didn’t give a fuck.

Hermione, who has been chatting with Harry in slow BSL about OWL exams, stares at them in shock and wonder. Then Blaise drops a casual, possessive hand on Harry’s hip and starts eating with his other hand, and she blinks and smiles. “This is the someone you’ve been sneaking off to see?” she asks in English.

Harry nods. He should have known that Hermione wouldn’t be fooled by the fact that he used “someone” and “they” instead of “she.”

“Mate?” Ron asks. “Um?”

“Is it because he’s male?” Hermione spins around to face him at once. “Because I’ll have you know that it should be perfectly acceptable for Harry to date a boy—”

“He’s a Slytherin!”

Harry rolls his eyes. That, of course, is what Ron would care about.

“And so what? If a Slytherin is good to Harry, Ron Weasley, I for one welcome him to our table!”

The bickering breaks out, right on schedule. Harry looks around surreptitiously. Ginny is gaping at them. Malfoy is gaping even wider, which makes Harry’s day.

Well, it makes his day until he turns around and looks at the Head Table, and Snape is staring at them, utterly pale, with his jaw so far down his chest than Harry can probably see his tonsils if he squints.

Harry hiss-laughs. Blaise kisses him on the cheek and leans harder against him, then murmurs into his ear, “And you’ll be partnering with me in Potions from now on. We’re going to get you at least an Exceeds Expectations on that OWL exam.”

Harry nuzzles against Blaise and watches as though Snape looks like he’s going to vomit. He listens to his friends—who are now arguing about the feud between Gryffindor and Slytherin that started the House rivalry in the first place—and knows everything is going to be fine there. Dumbledore is staring disapprovingly at him, but he doesn’t matter. Malfoy glares, but he has no power now with Umbridge gone.

Harry is going to take his OWL exams, and he’ll do fine. He’ll go to Italy with Blaise for the summer, and meet his mum, who is not going to murder Harry. He’ll maybe even get rid of the Parseltongue curse.

He’ll spend time with someone who wants him. Someone who helps him. Someone who listens to him.

Harry leans back. Blaise is waiting for it, and their eyes meet. Blaise projects a thought with all his strength. Harry is a good enough Legilimens by now to catch it from a direct stare and a really strong yearning to have it heard.

Your life is going to be so much better than it’s ever been.

Harry smiles at him, and sends the thought flying back. Thanks to you. You’re what I want, Blaise. I could be happy in a cupboard with you.

Blaise smiles with his eyes, and kisses him again. Someone drops a fork, someone else a glass. Harry gives in and laughs, hisses, into Blaise’s mouth.

His life is going to be so much better than it’s ever been.

The End.