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Chapter Text

“Granger and Weasley aren’t here?”

“Do you think I would have asked you to come if they were?”

Theo smiles a little and sits down at the table across from Harry. Harry’s eyes and cheeks are both bright, watching him. He’s been an odd combination of shy and straightforward with Theo ever since Theo admitted to fancying him after the First Task.

“Sooner or later, if this is serious, I’ll have to learn to get along with your friends,” Theo says as he spreads out his Herbology textbook and his essay for Sprout. He watches Harry from beneath his lashes.

He’s chosen his words carefully, and his caution is rewarded when Harry’s mouth tightens. “They should try to get along with you.”

“No sign of that yet?”

“No. Ron still keeps insisting that you did something to me before the First Task, or just after it.” Harry gives a sharp little laugh. “I reminded him that I could resist the Imperius Curse, and he just got upset because he thought I was mocking him for not being able to.”

Theo did, in fact, do something just after the First Task, but since it was to Weasley, not Harry, he can smile with perfect innocence and purr, “I’m glad you don’t suspect me, Harry.”

Harry flushes brilliantly. “Yeah, uh. About this essay.” He hastily digs out his own in a sheaf of rustling parchment.

Theo finds out that Harry isn’t terrible in Herbology, but he doesn’t have the same instinctive feel for the right answers that Theo does. Of course, spending part of your formative years in a magical greenhouse will give you that. Theo doesn’t have Longbottom’s genius-level touch for the plants themselves, but he does have more knowledge about the subject than almost all the other Gryffindors.

“You’re a really good teacher,” Harry remarks, after a period of companionable silence during which Theo’s moved his chair to Harry’s side of the table to show him the answers in the book more easily.

“Probably not as good as Granger,” Theo says, looking down at the table a little like he believes it.

Luckily, after years of lying to his father, Harry is no challenge at all. He looks almost horrified, shaking his head. “No. honestly, Hermione isn’t—she doesn’t really teach. She lectures, and she tells us when we got something wrong, but she says helping us is doing too much of the work for us.”

Theo conceals a snort. With Weasley, he can well believe that. But when it comes to Harry, he suspects Granger’s touch is just too heavy. Harry needs dedication, delicacy, coaxing.

It makes Theo wonder what sort of education Harry had before he came to Hogwarts, but that isn’t something he thinks he can ask about yet.

“Did you tell them that you were going to meet me?”

“Um. Not yet.”

Theo nods. He has no intention of hiding the whatever-it-is that he and Harry have, because that would make it impossible for him to annoy Draco and Weasley, or be with Harry for any length of time.

And amazingly, being with Harry has become something that he does, sincerely, want to do.

It’ll provide me some protection against my father. It’ll give me a loyal friend at my back, even if the dating thing doesn’t work out between us. And it does, still, annoy Weasley and Draco all the time.

Theo sometimes thinks that’s not all there is to it, for him, but it’s the sort of thing that he needs to hear right now. He smiles and says what Harry needs to hear, too. “We can take this as slowly as you want to, Harry. As long as you don’t plan to hide me forever.”

“I would never want to.”

Their eyes cling for a moment in that kind of intense stare that seems to be cropping up between them more and more often since the end of the First Task, and then Harry turns back to the essay and asks another question. Theo happily answers it.

Part of it is just because so many people stare warily at him in the Slytherin common room and ask questions that are intended to work out, one way or the other, if he’s planning to be a Death Eater like his father, but honestly, this time with Harry is the most peaceful Theo’s ever spent.

*

“What are you doing with him, Nott?”

Weasley has a confrontation with Theo practically every day now, accusing him of “stealing his best friend,” but it’s taken Granger some time to confront him. Theo turns around. They’re in a dungeon corridor not far from the Potions classroom, with Theo trailing behind the other Slytherins, as usual.

“Granger,” Theo says. “I’m being his friend. Eventually I hope to be dating him.”

Granger stares at him. Theo smiles at her and wonders if it’s the answer or the blatant honesty from someone she must think of as a lying Slytherin that’s taken her off guard.

She’s not off guard for long. Granger folds her arms and narrows her eyes. “You just want to use him for something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You—you just ignored him for years, you didn’t even really interact with him like Malfoy does, and now you want to date Harry? Why?”

“I fancy him.”

Theo makes a mental note to use honesty more often around Gryffindors. The way it makes them react is hilarious. Granger is staring at him now with her mouth slightly open, as if showing her teeth will make him confess the “shameful” truth.

Granger takes a huge breath and then shakes her head. “That can’t be the real reason.”

“What do you think is the real reason?”

“You want to gain political power and prominence through him. Or something.”

Theo snorts. “Yes, I’ll gain that by associating myself with one of the most unpopular boys in school. Oh, I know that some people changed their minds for a while after the First Task, but they’re already swinging back around to saying that Harry cheated and Diggory is the real Champion.” Theo has hexed a few of the people, mostly Hufflepuffs, who are saying that. One spent a day in the hospital wing with his tongue literally fused with the roof of his mouth; another lost her ability to hold a wand for several days.

“But at least they sincerely believe Harry put his name in the Goblet. That’s better than whatever you’re thinking about doing to Harry.”

Theo thinks about sharing some of the things he intends to do to Harry in the future, but honestly, he wants Harry to hear them first. “Well, I suppose it makes sense that you believe that about his detractors when you all but insisted that Harry take Weasley back.”

Granger, predictably, flushes. Theo isn’t sure whether her loyalty to Weasley or Harry runs deeper—even the intelligent Gryffindors have the wildest ideas about Harry—but he knows which one she’s decided to stare at with big, doe eyes. It makes Theo’s task easier, but he still despises her for it.

“Harry wanted to forgive Ron! He was miserable without him!”

“And he’s also told me how he’s miserable with him, with Weasley harassing him endlessly about having me for a friend.”

It still stuns Theo, a little, how much he managed with one little Confundus Charm on the day of the First Task. Weasley is doing everything else himself: insisting that Harry is too stupid to recognize Theo’s “twisted designs” on him, throwing a fit whenever Harry wants to study with Theo, and even falling back on how Harry only accepted Theo’s friendship in the first place because he’s “desperate for friends.” That last one caused a shouting match between Weasley and Harry that echoed across the Great Hall and rendered Draco speechless with delight.

Granger sighs and pushes hair away from her face. “Look, Nott, we were his best friends for years—we stood by him through the Chamber of Secrets accusations and the time in first year when our House shunned him for losing all those points—”

“You didn’t stand by him through this.”

“I did!”

“But not Weasley. And Weasley is the one who really has the problem with me, right? He’s shrieking at me all the time instead of asking questions like you’re doing.”

Granger’s cheeks flush, and she looks away. Theo stands there being extremely helpful for himself and not at all for her. Granger should really have known what the end result would be if she asked him questions like this. If she expected him to admit that he’s got an evil scheme or something, she’s far more of a pathetic Gryffindor than he thought.

“Ron has—problems with Slytherins,” Granger acknowledges. “But you can’t blame him. He hears that kind of thing all the time from his family, and he’s got five older brothers who were all Sorted into Gryffindor, and—”

“Spare me the list of Weasley’s insecurities. I don’t care.”

Granger jerks her head up and glares at him. “You should, if you care about Harry! You can’t make him choose between you and Ron!”

Theo gives her a long, slow smile. “I’m not the one doing that, am I? I’ve said I’d like to spend time with you lot and learn to get along. Weasley is the one who’s trying to make Harry choose, by acting like a spoiled brat because Harry doesn’t spend every hour of the twenty-four stuck to his side.”

Granger swallows convulsively. “Ron thought things would go back to the way they were before. After he apologized.”

“I was there for that apology, Granger, remember? It was pathetic. He couldn’t even say that he was relieved his best friend survived fighting a dragon before he was snapping at him again.”

Granger looks away again. Theo waits until he’s sure she’s not going to continue the conversation, and then nods and says, “Whenever you think that you’re ready to be on the side with the intelligent people instead of the side of the idiot that you’re attracted to for whatever reason, Harry and I will be right here.”

It really is beautiful, the way she splutters as Theo strolls away.

*

“Hermione said she tried to talk to you about me.”

“Funny she would characterize it that way. We spent most of the time talking about Weasley and how understanding I should be of him.”

Harry’s quill stops moving. Theo sets aside his own Transfiguration book and focuses on Harry. No one else seems to notice the way that Harry is so quiet when he’s upset, not screaming and yelling like a typical Gryffindor (well, all right, a typical Gryffindor who also has red hair). He’s barely breathing as he stares at his parchment.

“Harry?” Theo asks gently.

Harry throws down the quill and turns towards him. Theo gently moves the quill so that it doesn’t dribble ink on Harry’s essay for McGonagall without taking his eyes off his—

Crush? Future boyfriend? Friend?

While Theo is wondering which word is most appropriate, Harry is blurting, “Is it bad that I’m so fed up with him?”

Theo conceals his smile of delight. He knows that this isn’t pleasant for Harry, no matter how much it is for Theo. “No, I don’t think so. He’s been going on and on about this for weeks, hasn’t he?”

Harry sighs. “Well, I mean—not the thing with you. But the thing with the Goblet. He still hasn’t apologized more than he did right after the First Task. And he’s saying that I should have been loyal—”

“What does he mean by that?”

Harry eyes him for a second. “Wow. You’re scary when you make that face.”

Theo attempts to restrain himself. It’s difficult. Most of the time, he’s alone when he looks into the mirror and sees that expression.

Most of the time, there’s no one else he would want to make it for.

He takes a deep breath and spends a moment tapping his fingers on the side of his Transfiguration textbook before he smiles. “Sorry. I do want to know what he means by that, though. You didn’t put your name in the Goblet, so he can’t object about that.”

Harry shakes his head. “He means that if I was really loyal to him, I wouldn’t have made friends with a Slytherin.”

Theo stares at him. It’s the kind of thing that Draco would say, from the opposite perspective.

It’s startling to realize that Theo actually did think better of Weasley than that. He’s been Harry’s friend for so long that Theo didn’t think he was as stupid a prat as he looks like right now, because Harry would never tolerate that.

Or…

Maybe, maybe, there were long-term effects of the Confundus Charm after all. They don’t happen often, or the Ministry wouldn’t have approved the spell for use on Muggles who see magic. But sometimes, the charm intertwines itself into the mind of the person it was cast on, and they simply go on acting like they did at the moment they were under it. And the behavior gets worse and harder to change as it moves forwards.

Theo feels a sharp throb under his breastbone. He would suspect Harry of hexing with something if it wasn’t Harry. He doesn’t do things like that. At least not to people he likes, and he does like Theo.

This feels more like…guilt.

Theo scowls. He hasn’t felt that for a long time, and he really did hope that that time was the last one.

“Theo? Are you all right?”

Theo takes a deep breath and focuses on Harry. Well, his guilt changes nothing. He can’t time travel and prevent himself from casting that spell. He doesn’t regret casting it, in that otherwise Weasley would probably have prodded Harry into turning away from him, and Theo likes having Harry focus on him and spend time with him. He only regrets that it’s causing pain to Harry.

And Theo is not a Healer to be able to reverse the effects. The best thing he can do is provide support to Harry—the kind of support Weasley should have been providing in the first place, or Theo wouldn’t have had to cast the charm—and hope that things change and Weasley grows more accepting of Slytherins.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Theo says. “I’m sorry this is happening. And I’d leave if it would make things easier for you, but—”

“I don’t want you to.” Harry’s mouth flattens into a stubborn line. “Ron being a prat just makes me glad I have a friend who’s not like that, you know? And who isn’t forever trying to go back and forth between me and him the way Hermione does.” Harry shakes his head. “I haven’t even told them what Professor McGonagall told me yesterday, they’re both so busy talking about this—”

“What did she tell you yesterday?”

Harry’s face flushes a bright, bright red. Theo watches the line of color travel down his throat, the way he did in the tent after the First Task, and thinks, hungrily, Yes.

“Um.”

“Harry.” Theo lowers his voice, and watches the way Harry’s eyes widen. “What did she tell you?”

He thinks about saying that Harry doesn’t have to tell him if he doesn’t want to, but it’s obvious that Harry wants to tell someone. And honestly, Theo wants to hear it. He wants to know what makes Harry this nervous, this flustered, this—

He wants to touch Harry, honestly.

Harry swallows and tries to smile. “It’s ridiculous for me to be so nervous about it. I’m feeling worse about it than I did the morning I walked out to face the dragon.”

“That just makes me want to know what it is more.”

Harry nods slowly. “She told me that I have to take a date to the Yule Ball and the Champions have to lead off the ball with a dance. I wasn’t planning to take a date. I don’t know how to dance! I just—don’t want to do it.” Harry clenches his hands and looks away. “And I don’t want to date someone who thinks I cheated or who just wants to go to the Ball with the Boy-Who-Lived.”

Theo can’t breathe. He knew about the Yule Ball, of course. He planned to attend by himself and make amusing remarks on the dancing for the benefit of the few people in Slytherin who can keep up with him.

But right now, all he can think of is, Harry shouldn’t go with anyone but me.

And he has no idea how to speak about that. No idea how to deal with that.

This is more complicated than the bloody guilt.

Chapter Text

“Theo, stop pacing a hole in the floor,” Draco snaps, flinging a pillow at Theo from the bed.

Theo has his wand drawn and catches it neatly in midair with a charm that his father taught him young. Father is…fond of throwing things, Theo thinks as he watches the pillow hover. He steers it over to his own bed instead of Draco’s.

“Hey,” Draco complains, turning over so that his head almost hangs off the edge of the bed. Theo sneers automatically. Draco likes to present himself as pristine and sophisticated to anyone who looks at him, but he’s a child in a way Theo has never been.

Maybe not Harry, either, Theo thinks, and resolves to ask about that when he can think of talking to Harry about something other than the damn Yule Ball.

“Draco is right that you’re unusually twitchy lately, Theo,” Blaise says, intervening to keep the peace as he so often does. “What has you like this? Potter?”

Draco rolls over and scowls. Vince and Greg glance up briefly, but then go back to stuffing the sweets into their mouths that they’ve persuaded house-elves to bring up from the kitchen for them.

“A little,” Theo says. “You know that Weasley is still taking exception to me spending more time with his supposed best mate than he does.”

As Theo suspected, the subject makes Draco immediately perk up. “It’s so fascinating to see how their friendship falls apart at the first hint of an outside challenge,” Draco says, staring dreamily up at the ceiling and seeming to forget that Theo stole his pillow. “Bet Potter’s wishing he took my hand now.”

Blaise groans. “Draco, now is not the time tell that story again.”

But Theo, for the first time, finds an interest in the old, worn tale of how Potter turned down Draco’s offer to shake hands on the Hogwarts Express their first year. “Why did he choose Weasley in the first place? Had they met before the train?”

“I doubt it,” Draco says, and puffs himself up with self-importance. Theo resolves to conjure a needle one day and poke him with it when he’s like this, to see how much hot air he lets out. “I overheard Potter talking once to some older Gryffindor who wanted to get all friendly with the Boy-Who-Lived. He said Weasley was his first friend, and he had to honor that.”

Blaise hoots appreciatively, probably because this story is at least new. Theo, on the other hand, feels cold.

“His first friend? But surely he had friends before Hogwarts?”

Draco shakes his head smugly. “Didn’t sound like it. I mean, I don’t know where he was living, other than with someone who would give him those dreadful clothes he has, but apparently he didn’t have any friends there.”

“Could he have been lying?”

“I don’t see why he would bother, Theo. I’m certain that he didn’t know I was there.”

Draco goes off into a tirade about how he’s so clever and sneaky, which means he’s paying less than no attention to the other people in the room with him. Blaise leans over and asks softly, “Why so pensive, Theo?”

“Where do you think Potter grew up?”

Blaise blinks. “I have no idea.”

“Do you think he lived in the magical world?”

Blaise opens his mouth, and then closes it and shakes his head slowly. “Now that you mention it…”

“Yeah.” Theo is thinking of the worn clothes under Harry’s robes or that he wears on warm days outside when there are no classes, his bewilderment visible in first year, the claim that Weasley is his first friend, how he doesn’t react to some of the insults or some of the family names the way that Theo would have thought he would.

“Muggles?” Blaise hisses. “Really? For the Boy-Who-Lived?”

“Who knows where he was before Hogwarts began? It’s all just rumors, really.”

Rumors that Theo suddenly can’t wait to ask Harry about. He turns and begins striding towards the common room.

“Theo? Where are you going? Theo!”

But Theo has no time for Draco’s nonsense right now. By the time he gets to the common room door, he’s all but sprinting.

*

“Nott.”

Granger says it in a frigid voice, but Theo’s eyes are on Harry, who’s standing between his supposed best mate and the Muggleborn who’s appointed herself their peacekeeper in a corridor near the Transfiguration classroom and looking utterly exhausted. His face brightens when he sees Theo, and he takes a step forwards, one hand reaching out as though for a lifeline.

Theo gives him a smile, but he knows it must appear strained, because Harry notices. “What is it?” he asks quietly, and glances over his shoulder at his friends only when Weasley makes a snorting noise.

“There’s something I really need to talk to you about—”

Theo thought he would have to provide more background than that, but Harry says quickly and loudly, “Well, Theo wants to talk to me, I’ll talk to you later, Ron,” and promptly jogs around the corner, ignoring his friends’ calls for him to come back. With a wink at Theo, he ducks behind a tapestry that shows a lion hunt and brings Theo with him. Weasley and Granger trot past outside.

“Now,” Harry says, and spins around to face Theo, not looking at all bothered to be alone in a small space with him despite what he knows about Theo fancying him. “What is it? You look awful.”

Blood is pounding in Theo’s ears and fingertips, and it’s harder than he thought to keep his focus on the questions he wants to ask instead of reaching out to touch Harry. But then he sees the edge of a wrinkled grey shirt underneath Harry’s robe, and that brings him back to earth with a jolt.

“Is it true that you grew up with Muggles?”

Harry’s face closes down so efficiently that it’s like watching Longbottom blow up a potion. He eases backwards until he’s nearly standing against the tapestry and says, “What, you don’t like that, Theo?”

“No!” Merlin, Theo should have known Harry would take this the wrong way. “I mean, Harry, I don’t—I don’t have the prejudice against Muggles that you’re probably thinking.” And that’s a lie, but it’s true that it’s not uppermost in Theo’s mind right now, or the reason he’s asking Harry about it. He takes a deep breath and forces as much calmness into his face and voice as he can. “I meant that I realized I didn’t have any idea where you grew up, and then I heard someone say Weasley was your first friend, and…”

Harry nods, his face still shut compared to the vibrant openness he usually shows around Theo. “Yes, it’s true.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Theo makes a despairing noise, eyes darting to the grey sleeve that’s sticking out from under Harry’s this time. “Do they treat you well?”

For a moment, he thinks Harry is actually going to draw his wand. His eyes widen, and the spark in them looks like anger this time instead of gladness to see someone. He clenches his fists for a second.

“Why are you asking?”

“Because I’m worried about you,” Theo says, pitching his voice low, and sees the sheer astonishment blow across Harry’s face like a storm. The implications of that astonishment make rage coil in Theo’s chest, but he keeps his voice as calm and normal as he can. “Because your clothes are too big and baggy, and I don’t know why you didn’t have Muggle friends before you came to Hogwarts, but I bet it wasn’t for a good reason. I want to know so I can help you, Harry.”

By the end of that little speech, Harry is almost gaping at him. Theo stares back. He supposes he knows some of the reasons for that expression. Harry’s friends don’t seem to have noticed the problem—or Theo is sure that Granger would have told everyone in sight in an effort to get Harry help—and obviously no professor has taken Harry in hand and helped him. He must be used to people not knowing.

Theo wouldn’t do this for just anyone, either. But he understands. Living with his father must not be the same as living with the Muggles, given that Theo has clothes that fit, but it’s not—good. And he doesn’t want Harry to live with that.

It boils in the bottom of Theo’s stomach. It’s wrong.

Harry finally swallows and says hesitantly, “I mean, they don’t like magic. They never told me I was a wizard until they had to, when Hagrid came to give me my letter when I was eleven. But it’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking.”

“You didn’t know you were a wizard? You thought you were a Muggle?”

Harry tosses his head back and faces Theo with all the pride that Theo’s ever seen him use on Draco. “Yes, and if you think that I should—”

“Harry.” Theo reaches out and runs his fingers gently down the side of Harry’s wristbone, which gets him another stare—and a blush, which is nice. “I’m impressed.”

“Why?”

“You had to deal with your fame and learning about magic and the expectations that people had of you all at once,” Theo says. He shudders to think what that would be like. “I’m sure it was hard.”

Harry blinks. Then he says softly, “Oh,” and gives Theo a self-deprecating smile. “Sorry. Sometimes I think that you’ll act like a typical Slytherin, or Ron, and then I remember that you’re different.”

“I’m not sure which of those comparisons is more insulting, so I’ll let them both pass.” Of course, Theo knows which one really is—it’s the comparison to Weasley—but he won’t do anything to alienate Harry from Weasley. He’ll let that happen all on its own.

If you can, when the Confundus Charm you cast is probably part of it.

Theo ignores that thought and smiles at Harry. “What else did you learn for the first time that day?”

“Er, well, about Hogwarts, of course, and that more people than just me had freakish—I mean, magical things happening around them.” Harry blushes harder, and Theo nods and smiles and pushes down his anger that wants to explode. “And how my parents really died, and about You-Know-Who.” Harry makes a face. “My aunt and uncle had told me my parents were drunks who died in a Muggle accident.”

Theo just stares at him. Even his father respects James and Lily Potter’s determination to protect their son and stand up to the Dark Lord. Theo can’t envision the level of contempt that would be needed to lie about the manner of their deaths and what kind of people they were.

“Don’t you usually say the Dark Lord’s name?” he asks, to distract himself.

“Thought I was giving my Slytherin friend a chance not to jump six feet in the air.”

Then Harry abruptly blushes, and Theo nearly laughs as he figures out why. “Friend” is dancing through Harry’s head, and apparently not rousing the echoes that he wants it to.

Theo takes a deep breath. He understands Harry much better now. He was mistreated by his relatives and stumbled into a magical world that revered him with no preparation or training for it. No wonder he grabbed at Weasley’s offered hand when he got it, and despised Draco for trying to ruin that friendship, as Harry would see it.

And that might mean he’ll snatch someone else’s extended hand for the Yule Ball. Theo can’t let that happen.

“About that,” Theo says, and lowers his voice a little. “I was hoping you would go to the Yule Ball with me.”

Harry’s mouth and eyes round to the point that Theo winces. He never thought about going with you, he doesn’t fancy you as much as you fancy him, you’re going to have to do something death-defying to get his attention or you’ll lose it the minute a pretty girl smiles at him—

But what Harry says is, “I’d love to. But is it safe for you?”

“Safe for me?”

“If you’re in Slytherin, and people think the Death Eaters are coming back, and I’ve heard the rumors that your father was one. So I wanted to make sure that it would be safe for you to date me.”

Theo swallows back some complex emotions. He thought Harry either hadn’t heard the rumors about his father or paid them no attention, because otherwise he would have brought them up, wouldn’t he? But instead, it seems he’s heard them, and decided that Theo has to be protected and sheltered because of them. There are people who have known Theo for a decade who haven’t separated him from his father so thoroughly.

Theo’s voice is a little husky through no effort of his own, his eyes fixed on Harry, when he says, “It’ll be safe.”

“If you’re sure, then,” Harry says, and sighs as if he’s getting ready to fly a broom around another dragon. “Then I’d love to go with you, Theo.”

Theo’s smile widens to what’s probably a sappy extent, but Harry doesn’t seem to mind. He’s flushed and his eyes are all the brighter for it, fixed on Theo as if there’s no one else in the world right now.

There might not be.

Theo catches himself staring at Harry’s lips and makes himself ask the question. “Is it going to cause trouble with your friends or your House, if you come with me?”

Harry snorts, and there’s a flash of something cynical and utterly delightful, if unexpected, in his eyes. “What do I care? Ron still hasn’t apologized. Gryffindor likes me now, but who knows when something will come along and change their mind? An article Skeeter writes, or something.” He shakes his head and sighs. “I might as well date who I want and let them stop controlling my life.”

“All right,” Theo says. “And I’ll try not to insult Weasley or Gryffindors.”

“Insult them when they’re not around. That’s fine.”

“Draco was saying something about Weasley’s horrid dress robes that he saw on the train or something,” Theo says, indulging himself. “Is it true that they look like something Longbottom’s grandmother would wear?”

Harry laughs, full and free. Theo stares at his lips and his throat and only winks when Harry sees him staring. Harry catches his breath and then coughs. “I mean, I’ve only really seen something like her robes once. But yeah, it’s—they’re lacy and frilly and kind of horrid, yeah.”

“Is Weasley taking Granger to the Yule Ball?”

Harry gives a long, complicated grumble. “No, she has a date and Ron keeps asking people and getting turned down. He asked Delacour—”

“Really?” Theo regrets intensely that he wasn’t around then.

“Yeah, it was probably the Veela allure getting the better of him.” Harry rolls his eyes with all the casualness of someone who can resist the Imperius Curse and likely Veela allure, too. “But I’m glad that I have you, Theo. Now the question’s settled, and I don’t have to worry about being the only Champion without a date.”

His words are casual, but his eyes are still shining, and Theo doesn’t start to feel the paranoia about just being a convenience that he might if this was a fellow Slytherin. He smiles at Harry, and Harry pauses.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“You’re looking at me like I’m—treacle tart.”

Theo smiles at that, long and slow. “I rather like the comparison,” he says, and steps forwards, gently backing Harry against the wall of the alcove. Harry’s breath is coming faster, but it’s in excitement, and his eyes are glued to Theo’s lips, too.

Theo leans in and kisses him, giving him a chance to shy away but not too much of one, and Harry’s hand comes up and clasps the back of his neck at once.

It’s so much better than the only kiss Theo has had before this, with Pansy at the start of the year when she was angry at Draco, and it makes Theo’s head spin and his belly fill with fireworks. He groans and draws Harry more strongly towards him, one hand winding in that wild but soft hair, and Harry is clasping his shoulders and kissing back with strong, slightly wet enthusiasm, and—

“Oi, mate!”

Weasley, of all people, is flinging open the tapestry. His face turns red at once, and he begins yelling something so hoarse that Theo can’t even make it out before Harry spins around and glares at him.

“Shut up, Ron! You don’t want to apologize, and you don’t want to be my friend when you’re jealous, and you thought I wanted more fame and more money and—just shut up, you don’t get to choose my boyfriend!” And Harry stalks out of the alcove with only one dark look back at Weasley, which turns all soft and adoring when it falls on Theo.

Weasley is gaping too much to continue yelling. Theo nods a little and pushes his robes back into order, doing nothing about his grin or his swollen lips or his hair.

“Quite a show, Weasley,” he says, and saunters out, convinced that at the very least, the Confundus Charm didn’t make Weasley yell at Harry and hasn’t left any obvious trace like the extra dilation of his pupils. Maybe Theo’s magic didn’t cause that much of a problem after all.

Granger is standing on the other side of the tapestry, nearly as red as Weasley. Theo nods to her. “Good show not dating that one,” he says, and walks back to Slytherin, feeling as if he might grow wings at any moment and fly without a broom.

Chapter Text

“You can’t go to the Yule Ball with Potter!”

Draco’s shrieking is just as entertaining as Theo imagined.

“Why not?” Theo frowns a little bit at his dress robes and turns them from side to side. It’s not that they’re bad—he would never have been permitted to come back to the castle without stylish dress robes, once his father heard what he needed them for—but he doesn’t know whether they’ll complement Harry’s. Theo needs to ask him what color his are.

He’ll make it work if they’re red and gold, but Theo does hope they won’t be.

“He’s a Gryffindor!”

“Careful, Draco, you sound remarkably like Weasley probably would shrieking that I’m a Slytherin.”

Draco claps his mouth shut and scowls at Theo. Theo hangs his dress robes back in his armoire without changing anything about them. He does have to have that conversation with Harry first.

“Why him?”

Blaise’s question is quiet, and it’s only better that Draco seemed to be opening his mouth to ask another one and now snaps it shut, scowling. Theo turns around with a slight smile and a slight shrug for Blaise. “I fancy him, he’s handsome, and the expressions on his friends’ faces were priceless.” That’s all he’s willing to go into in front of Draco, given that Draco’s expression is also one of the priceless ones.

“And that’s really all that’s needed?” Blaise lifts a skeptical eyebrow.

Theo looks back evenly at him. “Of course.” Blaise knows more about Theo than anyone else in Slytherin does, as his closest friend in that House, but there are things Theo keeps from him. It’s not a problem most of the time. He knows Blaise has secrets about his mother, and his level of skill in Potions, and his interest in a girl—if he’s interested at all in girls—and other things. Blaise respects Theo’s secrets, too.

But the way he’s trying to pry into this one makes Theo wonder if there’s something Blaise has against Harry that he doesn’t know about.

“He’s from the rival House!”

Draco is still wailing on, it seems. Theo glances at him and deliberately rolls his eyes, and leaves again while Draco is spluttering incoherently about the disrespect such a Muggle gesture implies. Theo thinks tiredly that Draco is the ridiculous one, to assume that Muggles invented such gestures.

It’s only a few hours since he saw Harry, but he wants to see him again, perhaps just wave and smile secretly across the Great Hall at dinner. Not everyone will notice, but a few people will, and that’s what Theo wants right now.

*

His plans are foiled when Harry isn’t at dinner.

Theo frowns at his boyfriend’s empty place and then deliberately ignores it, serving himself with large helpings of vegetables and smaller ones of meat. His father has a habit of eating meat as raw and bloody as he can get it, more, Theo thinks, as a demonstration of his masculinity than anything else. Theo hasn’t been able to bring himself up to give up the taste, but he eats less of it than other kinds of food.

He eats while casually scanning the Gryffindor table, noting that Weasley and Granger are there, and looking anxiously at the door. That relaxes him a little. At least that means Harry isn’t somewhere with them gulping down indoctrination against Slytherins.

Theo swallows the last of his water and stands. It’s a little early to leave dinner, but he wants to find Harry. Maybe he’s eating in the kitchens, or wandering around the corridors feeling sorry for himself.

Theo grins at the last thought. He knows the cure for that.

“Mr. Nott. With me.”

Professor Snape has billowed down from the high table and walks past the front of the Slytherin table, speaking nothing more than those words over his shoulder. Theo blinks at him, and then follows. He passes Blaise on the way out of the Great Hall. Blaise looks a question at him. Theo shrugs an answer.

He thinks he feels both Blaise and Draco turn to stare after them, but Theo keeps walking, keeps his face locked in a bland expression, and shows no surprise when Professor Snape abruptly turns around long before they reach his office and beckons Theo into a side corridor that branches off near the stairs down to the dungeons.

“Have you been spending time with Potter?”

Theo isn’t surprised that Professor Snape has heard by now, but he is a little surprised that he cares. He keeps his face in the neutral expression as he murmurs, “Yes, sir.”

“Why?” Professor Snape drags a hand down his face, more expressive than Theo has ever seen him. But Theo realizes he’s staring and locks that emotion away again. “The boy is a walking target! He could make things difficult for…your family.” His eyes flicker to his left arm and then back to Theo’s face.

Theo already knew about Professor Snape’s previous allegiances from his father, so he just blinks a little. “He could, sir. But so could a number of other things I do. A target for interference from Professor Dumbledore, if nothing else.” Theo, along with other Slytherins, has received “anonymous” letters offering them sanctuary from their Death Eater parents for years, mostly near the holidays and the first days of term. He knows perfectly well where they come from.

“Spending time with Potter will not content the Headmaster.”

“I don’t care.”

It’s Professor Snape’s turn to blink, something Theo has only seen before when someone does something unexpectedly clever in Potions. “You should,” he snaps a moment later, now looking irritated to have been betrayed into surprise. “You will make enemies with both sides by consorting with Potter.”

Theo smiles a little. “I appreciate the warning, sir.”

“You will not back off?”

“Why should I?” Truthfully, Theo thinks his father and his father’s allegiance to the Dark Lord will prove the strongest obstacle, not Dumbledore or Professor Snape’s disapproval.

“You foolish boy—”

“I want him.”

Professor Snape squints irritably at him, and Theo wonders if he didn’t want to hear that confession of teenage desire. But in that case, he shouldn’t have asked.

“No one can possibly want a Potter,” Professor Snape says, as if his own strange prejudice encompasses the whole world. “If someone has tricked you into this, Mr. Nott, or if you think that you must give your support to Potter because it would hurt you in the Headmaster’s eyes if you were to withdraw it now—”

“From what you told me, sir, the Headmaster would be most pleased if I stopped seeing Harry. I don’t plan to.”

Professor Snape stares at him some more, and then draws his wand. Theo tenses, but he isn’t good enough to prevent Professor Snape’s spells from reaching him even if he could draw his wand in time. He waits.

The charm that Professor Snape casts on him is one that’s meant to get rid of Confundus Charms and the like. Theo carefully memorizes the wand movement. He should probably perform it on Weasley soon, if only for his own satisfaction.

Professor Snape steps back with a hiss like a dragon a moment later. Theo smiles impudently at him. “I’m not under any charm that would disorder my mental processes, am I, sir?” he asks. His voice is taunting even though he didn’t plan for his words to come out that way.

“You are not. Why in the world you chose the one boy that would cause the most trouble for you to choose…” Professor Snape makes a disgusted sound and tucks his wand away. “I have done what I could to spare you from trouble, Mr. Nott. From here on out, you must handle it yourself.” And he turns and swishes away down the corridor like a Dementor.

Theo sneers after him, but only after his Head of House is around the corner and can’t see it, because he’s not stupid. Then he starts back to the common room with his head held high. It remains high as he enters it and crosses the room with more than one pair of eyes following him.

Let them gawk. It’s not a hundredth of the gawking that Harry has to put up with every day.

And frankly, it’s good practice for the future, Theo thinks, closing his bed curtains with a thin smile, when he’ll be in public on the arm of the Boy-Who-Lived.

*

“What color are the dress robes you’re wearing to the Yule Ball?”

Harry jumps and whips around with his wand out. Then he sighs, puts it away, and slumps against the bookshelf behind him. “Hello to you, too, Nott,” he says crossly, but a smile is playing around his lips, and Theo returns it as he makes his way to Harry’s side.

“Well? You didn’t answer my question.”

“Green.”

“Really.”

Harry shoves him, lightly, and Theo doesn’t curse him in response. “Don’t give me some guff about how it’s a Slytherin color. It’s a color. I’ll wear them that one night and it’ll be over with.”

Theo raises a doubtful eyebrow, but decides he doesn’t need to ask right now why Harry thinks he’ll only ever wear these dress robes one time. “And would you like me to wear red and gold?”

Harry stares at him. “No. Why?”

“I don’t plan to give you any guff about it being a Slytherin color, but there are people who might,” Theo says, as gently as he can. “People who would be soothed by the fact that I’m in Gryffindor colors. It would show that we honor each other’s Houses.”

Harry lets his head thump back against the books behind him. “Who even thinks like that?”

“Half the people in Slytherin, at least. Some in other Houses. Most of the professors. Maybe your friends?”

“If anything, Ron and Hermione would just think that you’re wearing red and gold because you’re trying to lie yourself into my good graces or something.”

“What will make them accept that I want to be with you and there’s nothing deceptive about that? I mean it, Harry. I’m prepared to say whatever would make them comfortable and try to get along with them.”

Harry’s silent for a moment; Theo assumes he’s thinking. But then he straightens up and shakes his head, face unusually serious.

“I don’t want you to change yourself to try and get along with them, Theo,” he says, quietly but earnestly. “I think—I think that they’ve had, I don’t know, too much of my friendship down the years or something. They think that I should only have them as friends and do whatever Hermione says when it comes to homework or—or right and wrong. I think it’s good that I’m reminding them I have my own opinions, too. I haven’t dated someone before, but Merlin knows I don’t want them hanging over my shoulder and telling me who I can date and what we can go do. It’s—nice that you want to get along with them, but I think it’s fine if you don’t.”

Theo doesn’t let his jaw drop, but it’s a near thing. He eyes Harry, who continues staring at him with earnestness that wouldn’t look out of place on a Hufflepuff. He reaches out a second later and clasps Theo’s shoulder.

“What are you thinking, Theo? Say something.”

Theo coughs and finally manages to say, “I didn’t think I would hear you say that. I thought I had to get along with them or you wouldn’t want me around anymore.” Admittedly, he was also hoping that Weasley and Harry’s friendship would crack and fall apart, but for all that he’s enjoying the current chaos, he doesn’t think it likely.

Harry sighs gustily, eyes fixed on Theo’s. “Ron’s been my best friend for years. He can be my best friend again. But I’m not going to let him without a real apology and if he stops running his mouth about you. And he’s just going to have to get used to me spending time with you and without him.”

“And Granger?”

“It’s like Hermione doesn’t know what to do with herself when it comes to Ron and me being upset with each other and me spending time with someone who’s not them.” Harry shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. Theo’s hand twitches with the impulse to reach up and smooth it back into place. “But, well, she’s going to have to get used to that, too. It’s not hurting her.”

Theo feels himself gazing at Harry in a way that he knows is silly, but he can’t seem to stop. He thought he’d have to use all sorts of strategies to stay in Harry’s good graces. Yes, Harry said Theo could insult Weasley and Granger as long as it’s not in front of them, but, well, he’s annoyed with them right now. Theo fully expected him to take back that permission as soon as they were getting along better.

“What?” Harry whispers. He’s blushing again.

“You’re more insightful and perceptive than I thought,” Theo says, and does give in to the urge to reach up and smooth his hair down. “It’s nice to see, that’s all.”

“Ah, you expected me to be some sort of idiot.”

“Why would I fancy someone I thought was an idiot? No, just more committed to never challenging your friends, is all.”

Harry’s eyelids flutter shut as Theo touches his hair, and Theo resolves to keep that in mind for the future. Then Harry’s eyes abruptly pop open, and he says, “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Theo turns to stare down the aisle of shelves, wondering if someone else has come in to see them and Harry doesn’t want to be seen.

“I just remembered. I can’t dance.”

Theo blinks several times. “You—can’t dance.” But then, the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. Would the Muggles have taught Harry to dance? Surely not.

“No.” Harry slides his hands into his trouser pockets and looks miserable. “Does that mean you won’t go to the Yule Ball with me?”

Theo firmly keeps his twitching lips still and reminds himself of how he would feel if Harry looked about to laugh at him. “Of course not,” he says softly. “It just means that you’ll have to learn.”

“Professor McGonagall said something about giving us dance lessons, but…”

This time, Theo can’t control his snort at the thought of Harry trying to dance with the Head of Gryffindor. Harry smiles back at him, and at least he no longer looks like he’s on the verge of panic. “No,” Theo says. “You’ll learn to dance with me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Theo leans a hand on the shelf beside him and edges in towards Harry, who looks fascinated and enthralled and confused. “Did you think I couldn’t dance?”

“I thought you could dance,” Harry says softly. “I’m sure you do it well. I just didn’t think you’d want to teach me.”

Theo shakes his head. “You’ll have to get over that, you know.”

“What, thinking that you wouldn’t teach me to dance? How many times is it likely to come up, Theo?”

“Thinking that you’re not going to be good enough for me, or that I don’t want to be seen with you in public. Would I have agreed to go with you at all if it was that? I want to be seen in public with you, Harry. And I meant it when I offered to wear red and gold. I will if you want.”

Harry’s ears are a bright pink, much more attractive (in Theo’s admittedly biased opinion) than Weasley’s bright red. “But don’t you already have a set of dress robes that are a particular color?” he asks, with a high-pitched tone that seems determined to ignore the deeper part of what Theo said.

Theo lets it go, for now. He won’t, always. “I have a set that I can charm to be any color I want. Right now, they’re silver and green—”

“So stereotypical, Theo.”

Theo smiles contentedly. He prefers Harry like this, teasing and brilliant in everything, the smile and the gleam of his eyes, to the almost cowed person he was a moment ago. “I didn’t see a reason not to be. I planned on going, but not dancing or taking a date. But now I have you. And I’ll change them if you want me to.”

Harry continues gazing at him, looking almost worshipful, as if he can’t believe how lucky he’s been to collect Theo. Theo does think Harry is rather lucky, but his luck is outweighed by Theo’s immense amount of it.

“No,” Harry says softly. “Leave them the way they are. I don’t want to change you, Theo. Be exactly as you are. Come to the Yule Ball with me exactly as you are.”

Theo feels as though someone has stuck a needle into his chest, and he doesn’t want to think about why, or why he would be content to stare at Harry until curfew. Instead, he smiles and murmurs, “Good. But I haven’t given up on the dancing lessons. Meet me—hmm, there’s a corridor fairly near Professor Snape’s classroom that has some large classrooms off it. We’ll need a large space to practice all the steps. Can you find it?”

“As long as you tell me which direction.” Theo opens his mouth to do that, and then Harry adds, sharply, “But—first, what did Snape want with you? Did he tell you something bad about—I don’t know, your marks? Or your family?”

“He thought I had been charmed into dating you.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Right. He hated my father. He probably thinks it’s nonsense that anyone could actually want to date me.” He adds, not quite under his breath, “Mind you, until a few weeks ago, I thought the same thing.”

Theo reaches out and seizes his hands. Harry turns to look at him, and Theo loses the courage to say everything he wants to. But he manages to smile and say, “I’ll teach you to be such a good dancer that people will be competing to see who takes you to balls in the future.”

“They can compete all they want,” Harry says, reaching out and hauling Theo close with one hand. “I know who I’m going with.”

It turns out that snogging in the library is just as excellent as snogging in an alcove behind a tapestry, and significantly less likely to be interrupted.

Chapter Text

“Any luck with Weasley and Granger?”

Harry makes a huge face that causes Theo to snort laughter as he steps through the door of the small classroom Theo’s modified. “I don’t want to talk about them—Theo, what did you do?”

Theo smiles as he looks around at the walls he’s Transfigured into marble, and the floor into something showy and blue and brilliant. The small globes that will conjure music are something he owl-ordered from Hogsmeade, since none of the ones he has would really play songs appropriate for dancing. “Do you like it? We needed a ballroom.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. Um, I do.” Harry swallows and glances anxiously over one shoulder, even though Theo has already shut the door with his wand and cast several Locking and Silencing Charms on it.

“We don’t have to practice if you don’t want to,” Theo says, even though he knows he’ll be horrifically embarrassed if his date shows up to the Yule Ball with no idea of what to do.

Harry takes a deep breath and turns back to him, shaking his head. “No, it’s fine. I just—it looks like a really nice place with the Transfiguration.”

“So?”

“I just—I don’t want to mess it up.”

Theo blinks hard and slowly, absorbing more information about the way the Muggles treated Harry with that one statement than he ever thought he’d know. “It’s okay,” he says, as gently as he can when his hands are shaking with the impulse to track down Harry’s Muggles and perform a few innovative spells on them. “I promise that it’s just Transfigured rock and it’ll all go back to normal when we’re done. And we’ll be dancing in the Great Hall, remember? Do you think that’ll look too nice for you no matter what they do to it?”

That’s the right tack to take, because Harry’s laughing a second later, full and free, shaking his head so that his hair falls in a way Theo finds mesmerizing. “No, you’re right. I didn’t bring my dress robes. Is that okay?”

Theo nods. “This is just a first lesson. We can practice dance steps in dress robes later.”

“Okay,” Harry says quietly. His laughter is gone and his eyes are wide, fixed on Theo. Theo isn’t nervous about the dancing itself, but he can guess that they share at least one problem: Am I going to mess this up? What will he think of me if I do?

But, Theo thinks, that’s one of the perks of dating a Gryffindor. He won’t rub it relentlessly in Theo’s face if they do mess up the way someone from Slytherin would. Theo gently extends his arms. “Come here.”

Harry does, willingly, and Theo feels a heady fire lick through his temples and down his body. Who knew that Harry Potter would do whatever you tell him to if you just use a coaxing enough tone and a broad enough smile?

Theo jerks his mind away from paths it wants to go down with that. This isn’t the right time. Now is the right time to get Harry comfortable with being touched the way Theo will be touching him when they dance.

He settles one hand on Harry’s shoulder and winds the other arm around his back. Harry makes a muffled noise as they step closer together. Theo smiles. “Position your hands like mine,” he says, pretending not to notice the way Harry’s turning bright red.

Harry slowly, clumsily imitates him. Theo withholds a sigh. It’s not true, that old saying that the best Quidditch players make the best dancers.

On the other hand, Harry hasn’t had any chance to use knowledge like this. Theo can hardly blame him.

“Ready?” Theo asks softly when Harry’s hands are in the right place, courtesy of some directions from Theo.

Harry nods, looking down at the floor for a second as if trying to calculate where the hems of their robes will be when they’re wearing the dress ones (the school ones are shorter). Or maybe he’s just trying not to look Theo in the eye.

“All right,” Theo says, and stomps his foot on the floor. The music globes are pre-enchanted to respond to signals like that without having to worry about your wand, and Theo set the stomp when he got these. He knew he wouldn’t want to take his hands off Harry to use his wand, and if he tried to show Harry how and where to touch after the music started, the song would probably play at least twice before they were ready. “Now, one…two…three…”

Two steps in, Harry stomps on his foot.

Theo meets Harry’s eyes and smiles a little at the utter mortification on his face. “It’s all right,” he murmurs. “Come on. Follow me. Keep your eyes on my face rather than my feet.”

“But then I’ll probably just stomp on your feet even more,” Harry mutters. He looks on the verge of pulling away from Theo and running out of the room.

“We’re doing this so that you get better and stop doing that. If that means you step on my toes a few times now, that’s all right. It means you’ll do it less at the Yule Ball. Come on, again. One…two…three…”

The music, a waltz that Theo learned when he was eleven, gradually smooths out and gives way to a faster song by the Weird Sisters. Harry obediently follows Theo’s direction and keeps his hands in place, but he’s still tense and desperately unhappy. Theo thinks that if he didn’t already believe that Harry hadn’t put his name in the Goblet of Fire, this would convince him. Why would anybody want public attention if they’re this upset about leading one dance?

The Weird Sisters song ends, and Theo stomps on the floor to pause the music. He touches Harry’s cheek and looks into his eyes as he says softly, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not good at dancing. I’ve never done it before.”

“I know that you couldn’t have flown before your first lesson here, but you did it wonderfully.” That was actually a rumor Theo never paid credence to before when it circled the school, but now he knows there’s no way the Muggles would have put Harry on a broom before his first year. “This is different, but not so different that it—”

“I don’t want to make you look bad.”

Theo blinks. “What?”

“If I fell off my broom or looked bad on it, the only person it would affect would be me. And then I realized I was good at it and I got confident. But if we go up in front of all those people and dance, you look bad, and I don’t want to make you look bad, and wouldn’t that make a bunch of Slytherins laugh at you?”

Harry says that all at once in a nearly endless stream of breath. Theo blinks and blinks again, then smiles as tenderly as he can and cradles Harry’s cheek. Harry leans his face against Theo’s palm and sighs.

“I truly do believe that you can get better at dancing,” Theo says, and keeps his voice quietly confident. “If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t be here giving you lessons, and I wouldn’t have agreed to be your date to the Yule Ball.”

Harry blinks for a second, and then lets out a gentle huff of breath. “Slytherin, self-interested as possible,” he mutters.

“I’ll have you know that I am usually not this direct with someone else.”

“I know, and I appreciate it.” Harry’s eyes are bright and calm. “Just—do you really think I can get better?”

“We’ve only been dancing for two songs,” Theo points out. “Let’s try again, and with the kind of music they’re probably going to play when we open the Yule Ball.”

Harry straightens his shoulders at that we. It would be so easy to manipulate him if Theo wanted. Use all his tells and his little signs and his uncertainties to pry him apart and break him down and spread him out like a sacrifice on an altar.

It’s a good thing, really, that Theo is here to protect him from people who might try to use him like that. And good that Harry will give his all in return: protection for protection, honesty for honesty, strength for strength.

Theo smiles at him, and stomps his foot to signal the globes again.

*

I have heard the most interesting rumors about you, Theo.

Theo smiles, which he knows is a thin slash of a thing that travels across his face and makes him look like he’s going to bite somebody. Draco, who’s been walking towards him across the common room with his Ancient Runes book held out, pauses, then turns around and goes up to Pansy.

The rumors say that you’re dating the Boy-Who-Lived, that you even plan to take him to the Yule Ball. This is an interesting reversal of course from the principles I raised you with.

Theo folds up his father’s letter and tucks it into the cover of his Herbology textbook, then goes back to reading. It gets rid of the impulse to toss the letter into the fireplace or curse someone, and for some reason, rage always produces this crystal-clear impression in his head, as if he’s a music globe recording sound. He remembers what he studies in this mood better than any other.

And something slips into his head as he sits there.

He hasn’t widely spread the word that he plans to go to the Yule Ball with Harry yet. In fact, the only people who know other than him, and who would write to Theo’s father about it or tell their parents about it, who could then tell Theo’s father, are…

Draco and Blaise.

Theo’s fingers curl hard enough to dig into his trousers, but his hand is down at his side and not in view of the whole common room.

Blaise first.

*

Draco is in the bathroom. Vince and Greg are lingering in the common room, as per usual, trying to get someone to help them with homework that’s due tomorrow. Blaise is lying on his bed flipping through a Charms book and sighing theatrically.

A Body-Bind pins Blaise to the bed. Theo stalks slowly around him to stand in front of him and stare down.

Blaise’s eyes shouldn’t have the ability to widen under such a powerful spell, but it seems that they do. Theo smiles happily at him and removes the spell from Blaise’s face and jaw. Rage also powers his magic; normally, he wouldn’t be able to use such finesse with a first-year spell, but now he can.

“Did you write to your mother about my planning to take Harry to the Yule Ball?” Theo asks pleasantly.

Blaise understands quickly, especially since half of Slytherin must have seen Father’s great horned owl deliver his letter that morning. “No,” he blurts, head trembling a little as he instinctively tries to shake it. “I d-didn’t think—it’s your business. And Mother wouldn’t care anyway.”

Theo nods. That’s probably true. Blaise’s mother has social and business interests in several countries and spends far more time in Italy and France than in Britain. “All right,” he says. “Then I won’t have to curse you.” He lifts the Body-Bind and turns around as the bathroom door opens.

“Blaise,” Theo says without taking his eyes from Draco, who’s emerging backwards so he can peer at his hair in the mirror, “find something else to do.”

He hears Blaise scramble off his bed and out of the room. Draco turns around and frowns after him, then looks at Theo and goes very still.

At least that confirms that Draco can recognize potential danger when he sees it. Theo honestly wasn’t sure he was that smart. After all, Draco does his share of stupid things, like baiting Harry every chance he gets, or making those badges, or dressing as a Dementor at that Quidditch game last year.

Or writing to his father about Theo taking Harry to the Yule Ball.

“What did you tell your father about Harry?” Theo asks softly.

Draco’s eyes widen, but he still tries to play it off. Or maybe he’s less smart than Theo thought and doesn’t know how much danger he’s in. “I just—I wrote to him about how you were spending time with that git, and how ridiculous it was that you were taking a Gryffindor to the Yule Ball—what do you care, anyway?” he adds, suddenly belligerent, which is so like Draco that Theo would sigh if his mind were less crystalline. “What I write to my father is none of your business—”

“Dolor digitalis,” Theo hisses.

Draco bends over and screams like a fox as the spell hits him. It simulates his fingers being broken, one by one and individually. Theo learned it last summer, and practiced until he got good at it.

He screamed less than Draco the first time someone cast it on him, too.

After less than five seconds, Theo cancels the spell with a slice of his wand. Draco stumbles backwards, holding up his robes but barely, snot and tears on his face, eyes so wide that they look like lightless tunnels into another dimension.

“This is the rule,” Theo says pleasantly, not moving towards Draco. There isn’t a point. He can say what he needs to with his voice alone, and from the way Draco flinches, it’s working a treat. “If you say anything to your father again about what I’m doing with Harry, then what I just did is going to form one of your fondest memories compared to what I’m going to do.”

Draco huddles in on himself for a long minute. Then he nods slowly. “I won’t say or write anything to my father about you and Potter,” he whispers.

“Good.” Theo smiles at Draco, and Draco almost faints. Theo knows himself, having seen Father do it, how jolting the transition is between murderous rage and pleasant good humor. “Then we understand each other.” He winks at Draco and saunters out to the common room. Blaise takes one glance at him and makes for the door.

Theo wonders idly where he’s going, as it’s almost curfew, but it’s none of his business. He has a letter to respond to. He takes his former seat, which no one touched, and thinks about it for a minute before reaching for quill and parchment.

Dear Father,

It might interest you to know that Draco Malfoy has been Harry Potter’s rival for years and has drawn a number of incorrect conclusions about him…

*

“Hermione.”

Theo looks up with narrowed eyes. At least the way Harry is sitting in the chair across the table from him, hands clenched on the edge hard enough to make some books near it rattle, tells him that Harry didn’t anticipate Granger showing up at their library study session, either. Theo sits back a bit and awaits events.

“Harry.” Granger gives him a stiff nod and then stares at Theo with open hostility for a second before wrenching her eyes back to look at Harry. “I wanted to come and talk to you.”

“Right now, I’m studying with Theo.” Harry seems to have grown extra teeth when Theo wasn’t looking. “I’ll be happy to talk to you at dinner tonight, or when we’re in the common room after it—”

“No, Harry. This has gone on long enough. Listen.” Granger straightens up and puts her hands on her hips and says firmly, “Ron is sorry. He might not ever say those exact words, but if you want him as a friend again, then you’re going to have to accept that he’s sorry, and the exact words aren’t important.”

“I’m impressed Weasley mastered the spell that made you into his servant,” Theo says thoughtfully. “Tell him I want to learn it.”

“Theo,” Harry hisses out of the corner of his mouth.

Theo raises his hands and sits back. It seems that Harry wants to handle this himself, even though it’s so stupid that Theo thought he might like help. Very well, he’ll control himself and let Harry face down Granger.

Unless Granger says something else so witless that Theo has to interject, of course.

Granger seems to be doing her best to pretend Theo doesn’t exist. She faces Harry and gives him a melting glance that Theo might be jealous of if he didn’t know how thoroughly besotted Granger and Weasley are with each other (although whether they’ll figure it out before the end of the century, he doubts). “Harry. Please. Can’t you just accept it?”

Harry hisses so long between his teeth that Theo almost thinks he’s speaking Parseltongue. Then he says, “No.”

“But Harry—”

“Tell him that if he wants to be my friend,” Harry says, leaning forwards a little, “then he can accept that we’re friends again. No more fights. No more grumbled complaints that I’m meant to hear about Slytherins. No protests that I should be dating, and I quote, a pretty Gryffindor girl. Do you think he can do that?”

Granger gnaws her lip for long seconds, and her eyes dart to Theo. Theo tries to look at the shelves above her head so as not to show how scornful he is of her.

“I don’t know,” Granger said at last. “I’ll ask him.”

“Wow, you are his servant.”

Granger glares at him and storms away. Harry raises his eyebrows. Theo shrugs. “What? It had to be said.”

Harry smiles, but it’s a strained one. Theo asks quietly, “What bothers you more? That Weasley still refuses to apologize, or that Granger is playing messenger girl for him?”

“I—mostly that if they walk away from me,” Harry whispers, “where am I going to get more friends?”

Theo blinks. He never in ten thousand years of the stars would have guessed that was the problem. He reaches out and presses his hand on top of Harry’s. “You can start with me,” he says firmly, “and we’ll go from there.”

Harry’s smile isn’t completely free of worry, but it’s closer, and Theo counts that as a victory.

Chapter Text

Theo starts the quest for an answer to Harry’s heartbroken confession a day later. He waits by the entrance to the Great Hall, and he can be very still when he wants to. He evaluates the Gryffindors going by. There are few Slytherins who would be a candidate for Harry’s friendship, and most of them are in younger years. Theo doesn’t know if Harry would want to spend a lot of time with a first-year or the like.

He dismisses Finnigan out of hand, although he lingers for a moment over Dean Thomas. Yes, the boy is a Muggleborn, but he seems quieter than Finnigan and less prone to believe whatever rumor comes along.

Perhaps, Theo decides, and turns his eyes away from Thomas just in time to see his first pick come down the stairs.

Neville Longbottom is chubby, although not so much as he was a few years ago, and he stumbles over things and apologizes too much and runs late. But Theo doesn’t think he’s stupid, the way Draco always seems to (Longbottom is his favorite target after Harry, Weasley, and Granger). No one who handles plants with his assured touch could possibly be. He just doesn’t want to express that confidence for some reason.

“Longbottom,” Theo calls softly.

Longbottom twitches and turns around with his hand on his wand. He doesn’t look reassured when Theo steps away from the wall, but his eyes are on the serpentine crest on Theo’s robe, not his face, which comforts Theo that it might just be a House issue. “Y-yeah?” he asks.

“I’m Theo Nott,” Theo begins.

“I know who you are.” Longbottom’s voice is a little deeper now, and although most people wouldn’t notice the way his eyes flick to Theo’s left forearm, Theo isn’t most people.

Theo smiles while his stomach squirms with delight. Longbottom is observant, then. And he doesn’t hate Slytherins so much as to start hurling insults or run away screaming. Already he’s more promising material for Theo to work with than Weasley was.

“As a general person, sure. But did you know that I’m Harry’s boyfriend?”

Longbottom coughs and almost drops his wand. “Y-you’re what?”

“Harry’s boyfriend. Of course, not many people know that yet, but I thought his friends should.”

Longbottom swallows and squints at him. “Ron and Hermione haven’t said anything.”

“They’ve decided that it’s more important for Harry to accept Weasley’s nonexistent apologies and forgive him for everything he did in relation to the Goblet and believing Harry put his name in it. You must have noticed that they’re spending time apart now.”

The subliminal flattery gets to Longbottom. He stands up a little straighter and lowers his wand. “Yeah, but so what? That doesn’t mean Harry would date a Slytherin.”

Theo laughs a little, because he can see Harry dashing down the staircase right now, leaping steps two at a time, on his way to breakfast. “Why don’t you ask him? Here he comes now.”

Longbottom eyes him as if he thinks Theo will stab him when his back is turned, but he does call out, “Harry! Is it true that you’re dating Nott?”

Harry’s eyes dart over the situation, and Theo wonders how anyone can claim that Harry is stupid and doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. He looks a silent question in Theo’s direction, and Theo answers it with a tilt of his head. He doesn’t mind Longbottom knowing this.

“Yeah, I am,” Harry says, and leaps down the last two stairs and comes up to Theo at an easy jog. “Morning, gorgeous.” His eyes glint as he hooks his hand behind Theo’s head and drags him forwards, kissing him hard enough to make Theo’s head spin.

He’s aware that they have an audience, of course he is, but he can’t help digging his fingers into Harry’s shoulders and leaning closer for more. Harry draws back with a half-laugh and licks his lips., then glances at Longbottom. “If you’re going to bring up the same problems with it as Ron—”

“I did believe that you didn’t put your name in the Goblet.” Longbottom sounds miserable. “I just didn’t want to—to s-say it and make the others angry at me.”

Theo eyes him. That’s enough of a bravery problem that he wonders how Longbottom ever got into Gryffindor.

Harry, the prat, is too forgiving and accepts it instantly, something wistful passing through his eyes and then gone. “I get it, Neville. I haven’t always been as brave as I should be, either.”

“When?” Theo snaps before he can stop himself.

Harry glances at him, and Theo has the sense of scales tipping in Harry’s mind before he answers, “The kids that my cousin beat up. I didn’t try to help them if Dudley wasn’t going after me. Sometimes I felt as if they deserved it, because they should have tried to help me when Dudley and his gang were chasing me.”

They absolutely did deserve it, in Theo’s opinion, but Longbottom is talking again. “S-so, you really aren’t friends with Ron and Hermione anymore?”

Harry tenses, but that’s the only sign of what he told Theo, that he’s afraid without Weasley and Granger he won’t have any friends. Part of Theo relaxes, to know that he’s still the most trusted confidant Harry has. “I don’t know what’s going on. Hermione said Ron wanted to apologize, but he wouldn’t come and do it himself, and she sort of expects me to—I don’t know, just accept that’s the way he is or something.”

“Don’t do that.” Longbottom has a firm voice when he wants to. “You deserve to be the way you are, too, and if that means not listening unless he apologizes in person, then that should be fine.”

Theo tilts his head. Longbottom is a more than tolerable friend, if he can say things like that to Harry. Theo wishes Harry had found him first on the train and decided that Longbottom was his friend no matter what, rather than Weasley.

“I think we should get along to breakfast,” Harry says suddenly. “It’s almost eight-thirty, isn’t it?”

Longbottom gasps. “I need to eat, or I’ll never keep anything down when we’re in Potions!”

As he hurries away, Harry does say, “Nev? Thanks.”

Longbottom gives Harry a flustered smile before he darts off. Theo nods. Longbottom doesn’t have a bravery problem, then, just a confidence problem. It’s one that Theo will be more than willing to work on with him, because he does want Harry to have a close Gryffindor friend. Just one who’s tolerable to Theo, too.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t give me that innocent look, Nott. I know that you think I need friends other than Ron and Hermione. But you didn’t need to reach out to Neville. I could do that myself. I could—you don’t need to coddle me.”

Theo might have taken offense, but he can see the heaviness in Harry’s eyes, how he probably doesn’t even notice his arms are curving around his stomach as if to shield it from a blow. Harry doesn’t want anyone to be friends with him, or boyfriends, out of obligation. He desperately wants to be liked and protected for himself, not the Boy-Who-Lived.

“I didn’t do it because of that.”

“Why, then?”

“You do need friends.” Theo reaches out and steers a piece of Harry’s wild hair back behind his ear. “And I know that you’ll never leave Weasley and Granger in the dust if you don’t have someone else. So, see, it’s for me, too. I find Weasley and Granger very annoying. The sooner they leave you alone, the better.”

Harry stares at him, and then laughs. Theo smiles. It’s all right. They both know something significant happened here, and if Harry wants to downplay it for right now or pretend it didn’t happen, all right, they can do that. Theo still knows the truth.

And he knows that right now, as Harry hauls him towards a cupboard tucked away in a corner near the staircase, snogging is more important than breakfast.

*

“Granger!”

Granger turns around and clutches her books to her chest. “What do you want, Nott?”

“Just this.” Theo comes to a halt a few feet away from her, so she won’t feel cornered. Not that she should when the open doors of the library are behind her, but Gryffindors take offense to the strangest things. “You ought to think about whether being attracted to someone else makes them right.”

Granger’s cheeks flare with a fiery cascade of pink. “I am not attracted to Ron!”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m not going to the Yule Ball with him—”

“That means nothing. Just listen to what I’m saying. Think about it. If Weasley has the right to be accepted for himself and his mistakes treated as just part of his personality, then doesn’t Harry, too?” That’s a good enough line that Theo is going to steal it, no matter that Longbottom is the one who came up with it.

Granger turns a different kind of red. “It’s just—Ron won’t apologize, so Harry has to accept that he’s sorry, or it’s the end!”

Theo folds his arms and studies Granger until she’s squirming in place. “Why can’t Weasley say it?”

“He just can’t! He doesn’t want to!”

“Then I suppose he values his pride more highly than he values his friendship with Harry.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Look, Granger, you’re smart. You know the problem is with Weasley, not Harry. So you can either make him see that and the three of you can go back to being friends, or you can pander to his stupid pride and lose Harry in the process!”

“Why is Harry being so stubborn?” Granger demands in a shrill voice. “Why can’t—it’s you, isn’t it? He would have accepted Ron’s apology by now if not for you!”

Theo rakes her with an amused glance. “You’re making excuses for Weasley, accusing Harry of being weak-minded enough to obey me like a dog, and acting like there’s nothing anyone can do in this situation except for Harry to give up his very reasonable demands. I think it’s easy to see whom you value more.”

“I don’t! I value them both!”

“But you want to drag Weasley into a broom cupboard, so you’re letting your libido make the decisions,” Theo says, and enjoys the absolutely new shade of red Granger cycles into. “Look, I’d like Harry to be happy. That means—”

“Then you should go away and tell him to accept Ron’s apologies!”

“Rather difficult to do that when I’ve gone away, isn’t it?”

Granger gives a scream of frustration and fumbles for her wand. Theo shakes his head and Disarms her with an easy twitch of his own. “I’m not going to let you actually curse me.”

She stares at him, trembling on what he thinks is the brink of throwing herself at him and hitting him the way she hit Draco that once. “Why?” she whispers. “What in the world can you possibly gain from interfering? Why did you have to come out of nowhere and step into the middle of our friendship?”

Theo can only blink at her for a second. He doesn’t play Quidditch, but he thinks he knows what someone feels like when they’ve been hit by a Bludger. “Wow,” he says softly. “You actually can’t see Harry as anyone of value in and of himself, can you? You want everything to go back to the way it was, which was Harry giving up what he wants to appease you and Weasley getting what he wants because he’s the one you’re obsessed with.”

“I am not—I’m not—”

Granger looks like she might cry. Theo shakes his head in contempt and tosses her wand back to land near her feet. She snatches it up and stares at him with wide, sullen eyes, in silence.

“Listen to me, Granger. Harry does value you and want you back. I have no idea why, but I don’t have to know. Stop acting as though Weasley is incapable of speaking some simple words. Stop acting as though you have to keep Harry safe from the big, bad, evil Slytherin. Respect his bloody decisions. And maybe then you’ll be able to come to terms with the new status quo.”

She doesn’t say anything. Theo turns around and walks back towards the end of the corridor, his back prickling with the knowledge that she can curse him if she wants, but she doesn’t do anything, either

Theo sighs. On the one hand, he knows Harry will be lonely if Granger doesn’t remove her head from her arse. On the other hand, it really will be a boon to Theo personally if she doesn’t, and Longbottom looks to be coming along nicely, if the way he sat with Harry in Potions today is any indication.

So maybe he’s done all he has to do, and it doesn’t matter what Granger says or does now. It will be a relief to Theo to stop caring about her.

*

“Mr. Nott, a word.”

Harry freezes at the back of the Potions classroom. Theo can feel it without even looking in his direction. He just nods to Professor Snape, says, “Of course, sir,” and sticks his hand behind his back to mime a shaking head in Harry’s direction.

Harry boils with frustration, at least to Theo’s senses, but he also turns and heads out of the classroom, which is the only thing that he can do at the moment.

“That which I warned you of has come to pass,” Professor Snape says when they’re alone. He heaves a hard sigh. “Professor Dumbledore wants to see you. I’m to take you to his office.”

Theo just nods. He didn’t particularly expect this, but he’s also not panicking. He’s chosen his side—Harry’s—and Dumbledore isn’t going to drive him away from that. If he wants to somehow ensure Theo’s loyalty, he won’t have to.

He and Professor Snape walk up the stairs in silence. Now and then, Theo thinks he hears a quick whisper from behind them, but when he subtly casts a charm that turns his palm to glass and holds it so he can see behind him, there’s never anyone there.

Professor Snape almost spits the password at the gargoyle, evidently finding the sweet names as silly as Theo would in his position. They ride up the moving staircase in the same silence they’ve used so far, and step into a room that is filled with too many silver instruments for a space that small. Theo disapproves. You could hardly duel in here without breaking something.

There is also a phoenix sitting on a perch next to the Headmaster’s desk. Theo nods quickly to it in respect and turns to face Professor Dumbledore, half-bowing his head in feigned respect. “Headmaster. You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes, yes, I did, Mr. Nott. Please sit down.”

Theo does it, while wondering idly how differently Dumbledore treats Harry. It’s not something they’ve discussed. Harry doesn’t seem to want to, or maybe he doesn’t know how, and Theo already knows that he won’t let Dumbledore drive him away from Harry, so nothing else really matters.

“Lemon drop, my boy?”

Theo simply gives a faint smile and shakes his head. “No, thank you, sir.”

“Now. Professor Snape tells me that you’ve been spending a lot of time with young Mr. Potter.”

“Harry. Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“I like him.”

There’s a heavy silence. Theo keeps his gaze fixed on a point near Dumbledore’s hands, which are folded and lying there. He won’t get anything from them, he knows, no hint of Dumbledore’s real mood, but it’s better than looking Dumbledore in the eyes, which would be a mistake. Theo doesn’t know for sure that Dumbledore is a Legilimens, but some of the rumors that swirl around him would make a lot more sense if he was.

“Given who your father is, Mr. Nott,” Dumbledore says at last, “you must forgive me for not believing that that is your sole or primary reason.”

“My father didn’t assign me to get close to Harry and seduce him to the Dark side, if that’s what you’re wondering, sir.”

Professor Snape stiffens. Theo sits there and lets the silence wash over him. He can do this all day. He has played more uncomfortable games with his father since he could walk.

“I would never accuse a student of such a thing,” Dumbledore says when he seems to have assumed that Theo won’t crack under the pressure.

“Oh, all right, sir,” Theo says, and sits there radiating innocence and doubt.

“But—you perhaps understand that Harry’s position in the school is more precarious than many others?”

“Oh, you mean, since a bunch of idiots believe he put his name in the Goblet of Fire? Yes, sir, I understand. I’m doing my best to make sure that Harry has a place with me where he can relax and doesn’t have to think about that.”

“I understand that you are also making efforts to separate him from his best friends, Mr. Ron Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger.”

Theo wants to laugh, but he holds it in and gives Dumbledore’s hands an earnest look. “Honestly, sir, they’ve mostly been doing it themselves. Weasley keeps fighting with Harry, and then he sent Granger to make an announcement that Harry just has to accept his non-apologies. And Granger won’t say or do anything concrete because she fancies Weasley and wants everyone to pander to him.”

“The Weasley boy is an idiot,” Professor Snape says, seemingly involuntarily.

“Yes, sir,” Theo agrees, perfectly bland.

“I do not think you will make strides with Harry by denigrating his best friend, my boy.”

“You want me to lie, sir?”

More silence while Dumbledore peers at him, seeming honestly not sure what to make of him. Theo smiles and sits, and sits and smiles, until the Headmaster finally heaves a long sigh and waves one hand.

“You may go, Mr. Nott.”

Theo rises and half-bows his head again. “Thank you, sir.” He thinks he sees the phoenix watching him as they leave, but he doesn’t know what it’s thinking, and he wouldn’t presume to fathom the thoughts of such an ancient creature.

Professor Snape says nothing on the ride down the moving staircase, but gives Theo a look of profound disquiet before he turns in the direction of the Great Hall. Theo turns his palm to glass again and sees the subtle flickers of movement behind him. He waits until he’s around a corner, and then reaches out and grabs what seems to be—

It is an Invisibility Cloak. And it slides right off Harry when he pulls. Harry is staring at him with huge eyes, and doesn’t even give Theo a chance to ask questions before he blurts, “I followed you up the stairs, but I couldn’t get in the door and I couldn’t hear anything,” and flings his arms around Theo for a bone-shattering hug.

Theo grunts and staggers, then grabs him back, holding him close. Harry is babbling in his ear about how worried he was and asking how it went with Dumbledore and saying that he’d better be okay or there will be words, and Theo manages to whisper that he is all right, all the while with his mind spinning dizzily.

No one else would have followed him to the Headmaster’s office to try to find out what’s going on and if he’s okay. Not even Theo’s father would risk confronting Dumbledore like that.

It doesn’t matter what his father thinks, or Professor Snape thinks, or Dumbledore, or Weasley, or Granger. Theo is never going to let Harry go.

Chapter Text

“No luck with Weasley?”

Harry grimaces and leans in for a quick kiss before he steps back so Theo can arrange them in the proper position for another dance lesson. “Not as such. His latest tactic is pretending that nothing happened, and we should just ignore everything. He invited me to play chess with me this afternoon.”

“What happened?”

“We played for about ten minutes, and he was joking the way he used to.” The expression on Harry’s face is wistful. Theo quietly tucks away his jealousy. He doesn’t want to, but he knows Harry is loyal. He wouldn’t simply give up on dating Theo because Weasley wanted him to. “Then I said I was leaving, and he asked me where, and I told him.”

“And he didn’t take that well.”

“Bloody well blew up. Said I couldn’t trust a Slytherin, and you were a Death Eater, and probably the one who put my name in the Goblet.”

Theo chokes and ruins his dance step. Harry’s the one to haul him back into the pattern, his eyes glinting with humor.

“Did you explain to him about the Age Line, again?”

“I didn’t see the point. I said you weren’t and started to walk out, and Ron started yelling that you were and I was too blind to see it, and I decided that there was nothing to be gained by continuing the conversation.”

Theo shakes his head. He no longer thinks that his Confundus Charm is solely responsible for Weasley’s behavior, because there’s simply no way that it could be. Not when Weasley’s behavior has varied this much from what it was after the end of the First Task, when he first spoke to Harry about it.

Ron Weasley is just very, very good at self-sabotage, apparently.

“This way,” Theo murmurs, and guides Harry to the side, only to find that Harry has anticipated him and is moving in the right direction. “You’re getting good at this.”

“Thanks.” Harry flushes appealingly. “I don’t want to embarrass you at the Yule Ball.”

“You won’t.” Theo is already anticipating all the looks when he and Harry walk in on each other’s arms. That would make the whole thing worth it, even if Harry was the worst dancer in the world. Harry makes things worth it, including the fact that word will surely reach Theo’s father right after the Ball, if not during it, of what he’s doing.

“Merlin, I like that look on your face.”

Harry mutters that softly enough that he probably didn’t intend Theo to hear, but Theo has to pounce on it. “Which look?”

Harry flushes harder and pretends to concentrate on his steps, but Theo knows well enough by now that he’s beyond that simple level of dancing. He pulls gently on Harry’s chin and hauls his face back up. “What look?” he whispers. They’re standing close enough that he can feel Harry’s breath on his lips and is tempted to steal a kiss, but this is too important to mess up.

Harry takes a deep breath. “The look like you’re plotting something. I know—I know it’s either going to be my advantage or something that won’t hurt me. And I like to watch you think.”

Theo doesn’t know what to say, which makes it the perfect opportunity to draw Harry near and steal a kiss after all. Harry groans into his mouth, and Theo clasps his shoulders, and together they forget about the dancing lesson for a while.

*

“You’re really doing it, then.”

Blaise sounds more than vaguely disquieted. Theo turns away from the mirror, where he was adjusting his green-and-silver robes for the last time. “Doing what?”

Blaise stands behind him and stares at him. Theo studies his expression. He did wonder, when he was thinking about Blaise’s possible objections, whether Blaise had a crush on either him or Harry, but he understands now.

Blaise is worried for him.

“You’re going with Potter to the Yule Ball.” Blaise makes a vague gesture that nonetheless takes in Theo’s robes, Harry’s status as a Champion, and who exactly Harry is. “Dressed like that. Going at all. You know what your father’s going to do.”

Theo meets Blaise’s eyes calmly. “Yes, I do. And I’ve planned for it, Blaise. I would hardly be worthy of the name of Slytherin otherwise.”

“You’re,” Blaise says, and then takes a deep breath. “I always thought you would be older when you moved against your father. Merlin knows I’ll have to be when I move against my mother.”

Theo reaches out and puts a hand on Blaise’s shoulder for one fleeting second. They’ll have to be quick, since Draco could come of the bathroom or Vince and Greg into the bedroom at any second, assuming they remember that tonight is the Ball. “I know. But I’m taking the chances that matter to me and can provide me with the best cover.”

“That’s what Potter is? Cover?”

Theo takes his hand back and shakes his head. Blaise sucks in a noisy breath and glances down at his own robes, which are a rich blue and flatter him, not that Theo would expect anything less from Blaise.

“Good bloody luck,” Blaise whispers.

“Thanks.” Theo gives him a fleeting smile and then walks out of the bedroom just as the bathroom door opens and Draco’s loud, complaining voice spills out. Tonight of all nights, he doesn’t want to listen to that prat’s whinging.

Besides, Draco’s best reaction, just like everyone else’s, will happen when Harry and Theo enter the Ball together. Theo plans to be fashionably late to where the Champions are gathering, to make sure of it.

*

“Theo.”

Harry is wearing dark green robes that make Theo smile. There’s a scattering of silver on the cuffs and hems that he thinks Harry or someone else might have charmed into place, since it doesn’t look like it came with the robes.

Harry is making a statement. Not the same kind that Theo is making, but complementary to it, and Theo’s heart swells with wonder and delight and affection as he steps forwards to take Harry’s elbow.

Harry leans briefly against him, then stands up and turns around to face the other Champions. Theo studies them briefly. Delacour is standing next to Roger Davies, the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, and Theo wonders if she chose him for his looks, his prestige, or some combination of the two. Certainly not his ability not to drool on the floor like a puppy.

Cedric Diggory is with Cho Chang, no surprise. Theo has overheard enough details of that courtship from Pansy to not make him need anymore.

The real surprise is Granger standing next to Krum. Huh. Theo is a little startled, both by her beauty when she puts in an effort and that Krum chose to escort her, but Granger is smart enough (when not pining over Weasley) to attract his notice, and of course it makes sense that she wouldn’t want to spend hours on her hair or clothes every day.

It does mean Weasley will probably be more volatile in the coming days due to Granger not dancing attendance on him, of course. Theo conceals a sigh as he thinks of what that will mean for Harry.

“Harry?” Granger whispers. Harry’s date with Theo should have got the least surprised reaction out of her from everyone in the room, but she’s staring at them with something that verges on both horror and disbelief.

“Hermione,” Harry says, and then deliberately looks away. Theo steps up to stand next to Harry and smirks at Granger a little. Granger chooses to focus on Professor McGonagall, who’s bustled into the room and let her gaze sweep over all of them.

Theo meets her gaze with an innocent smile. Professor McGonagall visibly crashes to a halt, both in attention and in steps. It’s so satisfying that Theo has to battle not to let his grin widen.

“Mr. Nott,” Professor McGonagall says faintly. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s my date, Professor,” Harry says, moving a little as if to get in between her and Theo and shield Theo from her sight. Theo pats Harry on the back to tell him he doesn’t have to do that. Harry shoots a glance over his shoulder that says yes, he does.

“I—I thought you were taking Miss Weasley, Mr. Potter. That is certainly what Mr. Weasley said.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything the twins say, Professor.” Harry’s tone is light, and Theo squeezes his elbow in appreciation for the way that Harry has handled and defused the situation. Theo likes to think he had something to do with that, giving Harry an example of Slytherin guile, but maybe not.

Professor McGonagall gives a gusty sigh and visibly gives up on controlling the situation. “The Champions will enter the Great Hall after everyone else,” she says, sweeping her stern gaze around the room. “You will lead the first dance, and you will be on display for others the entire time, making good behavior mandatory.”

Her gaze lingers on Theo. Theo just smiles innocently back, and thinks she should have saved that speech for Granger.

They wait a little more, while the sound of chattering voices and music fills up the Great Hall beyond the doors, and Professor McGonagall finally nods and lifts her wand. The doors snap open, and Delacour surges forwards to lead the way, as if thinking this is another Task they need to earn points for.

Theo much prefers the way that Harry offers his arm, and how they walk in together, third in line after Diggory and before Krum. The murmurs from their audience build to a roar. Theo hides a smirk. He suspects some of that roar is probably for Krum and Granger, but a lot of eyes are focused on him, too, and so are dropped jaws. He looks faux-innocently around for some of the reactions he expected to see and love.

Draco’s jaw is somewhere around his knees; he obviously thought Theo wouldn’t really show up with Harry no matter what he wrote to his father. Professor Snape is staring at them with a scowl that will probably imprint lines in his face for years. Weasley looks as if he might have a stroke, but Theo probably won’t be that lucky.

Professor Dumbledore is staring at them with a deep frown of his own, and absolutely no twinkle in his eye.

Theo makes sure to beam at the Headmaster, and to keep perfectly in stride with Harry as they head for the table where the Champions will be dining.

*

The pork chops Theo ordered were delicious, if he does say so himself, and he made sure to dump a piece of them on Harry’s plate, once Harry looked a little disappointed with the goulash he’d ordered. Harry beamed at him and ate with a good appetite, so Theo ordered another pork chop for him. Harry looked astonished, and pleased.

Such a simple thing, Theo thinks as they stand to dance, but one he never would have thought of for himself.

He glances over at Weasley, but sadly, no stroke symptoms have appeared. Weasley seems divided between glaring at them and glaring at Granger. Theo loops his arm around Harry’s shoulders as they step onto the dance floor and murmurs, “Why didn’t Weasley ask Granger, since they’re obsessed with each other?”

Harry sighs, but not as if he doesn’t want to talk about the matter. Theo pulls him a little closer, and watches as Harry’s eyes half-close in pleasure. “He said something about how she was a girl and she could go with him. That was right after he’d asked Delacour.”

“He what?”

“Yeah, something about catching the edge of her charm when he was walking past, and he couldn’t help it.” Harry shakes his head with a small smile, but with pain hidden in his eyes that Theo decides he isn’t going to ask about in public. “But then he refused to believe Hermione had a date.”

Theo thinks someone from the Department of Mysteries ought to study Weasley, assuming they have a department dedicated to self-destruction. “And said she was simply a girl, and ought to go with him?”

“Yeah.” Harry lifts his eyes and focuses on Theo. “But I don’t want to talk about them anymore. I want to enjoy dancing with you.”

“Your wish is my command,” Theo says, and draws Harry closer. Harry looks deliriously happy. For an instant, Theo thinks that he might get a kiss, but Harry clears his throat and draws back a little.

That won’t do. Theo looks at Harry like he’s the only one here who matters—which is true, as far as Theo is concerned—and adjusts the pace of their dancing so that they’re perfectly in tune with the music, and each other. They’re easily whirling around each other now, the most graceful couple on the floor. Krum and Diggory look as if they’ve heard of those aphorisms comparing dancing to Quidditch but don’t understand their finer points, and Delacour’s date is too dazed to keep up with her.

Theo catches a glimpse of Dumbledore shaking his head at them from the corner of his eye, and is very smug about spinning Harry in place, and kissing him when the song ends. Harry is bright-eyed and red-cheeked, and looks much too happy to object.

In fact, he leans in and grants Theo a proper snog right in the middle of the dance floor. Theo runs his hand up Harry’s back into his hair, and Harry responds with a heady groan.

“Boys.”

That’s Professor McGonagall, who must have taken on the role of Professional Ruiner of Fun for the night, standing at the edge of the dance floor. Harry looks a little chastised, but Theo squeezes his hand until he’s smiling again.

“Yes, professor?” Harry asks innocently as he turns to face her and leads Theo off the dance floor with him.

“You have not made a wise choice, Mr. Potter,” the professor says, her eyes darting over to Theo briefly.

“Because I’m dating a Slytherin and everyone thinks he’s out to get me, right,” Harry says, unsubtly inserting himself between Professor McGonagall and Theo again. “No one seems to know that he’s the one who taught me to dance, and he’s the one who’s been kindest to me in the past few weeks because my supposed friends can’t get their heads out of their arses, and he makes me smile, and he stands up for me! No one knows that!”

Well, now they do, Theo thinks, looking around at more than a few stunned, dazed faces.

Professor McGonagall is looking down her nose at Harry, and her words prove to Theo that she doesn’t know how to respond to most of what Harry’s said, so she’s seized on the thing that’s easiest. “You are not to use such language to a professor, Mr. Potter.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Harry says, so insincerely that Theo wants to choke.

“Five points from Gryffindor for language,” Professor McGonagall says in a tight voice.

“Shouldn’t you take ten points from yourself for interrogating me about my boyfriend?” Harry asks in the most innocent of all possible innocent tones. “For implying that he wants to hurt me or something, just because he’s, what, a Slytherin?”

“That is not the reason, Mr. Potter. The Headmaster has informed me—”

“Yeah, he tried to interrogate Theo, and that didn’t work, so he sent you to do it to me, right?”

“Mr. Potter.”

Theo is dizzy with delight to have Harry defending him like this, and in public, no less, but he does manage to lean forwards and squeeze Harry’s shoulder and murmur, “Now maybe isn’t the time, Harry.”

Harry turns and stares at him doubtfully, but then shrugs. “All right. If you’re sure.”

“Mr. Potter—”

“My Head of House doesn’t get to say who I date,” Harry interrupts. “House rivalries are stupid, anyway.” And he drags Theo towards the door that leads out into the gardens, which seem to have been decorated for the night.

Theo looks back to see Professor McGonagall watching them go. “I think she’s not done,” he murmurs. “She’ll have words for you later.”

“You know what? I don’t care.”

Theo blinks and turns back to Harry. It’s hard to see his face in the dim light coming from the Great Hall’s windows now that they’re outside, but Theo has learned to recognize that stubborn jut of Harry’s jaw by now. “What?”

“They all want to just bloody interfere all the time,” Harry mutters in a low voice, his hands clenched at his sides. Theo thinks about reaching out to pry them open, but it sounds like Harry really needs to say this, and Theo certainly wants to hear it. “Constantly. With you and when they think I’m not living up to their standards or whatever. But where were they when people were blaming me for putting my name in the Goblet? When I could have died facing a dragon? When people were calling me the Heir of Slytherin?”

Theo could point out that Granger did help Harry with spells to fight the dragon, if he remembers correctly, but he doesn’t need to. And it’s fascinating to watch Harry reaching some of the conclusions that Theo knows he would have reached a lot faster in Harry’s place.

Harry lifts his head. His eyes are visibly blazing in the dim light. “I’m done listening to people who only interfere in my life when they want to control me,” he spits.

“What does that mean for your friendship with Weasley and Granger?” Theo asks as delicately as he can.

“That I’m still open to it if they want to renew it, but I’m going to stop bloody chasing them. They can come to me if they’re so bloody keen on that.”

Theo knows his smile is threatening to split his face open. He leans forwards and hugs Harry, pulling him close. Harry takes a deep breath and rests his chin on Theo’s shoulder for a moment.

“What are you going to do when your father hears that I was your date to the Yule Ball?” Harry finally asks.

“I have some plans in place, don’t worry,” Theo says, and leans over to touch Harry’s scar. “He’ll be angry, but I already knew that I couldn’t just have things stay the way they were until I reached the end of my seventh year. He already suspects that I’m more intelligent than I pretended and wouldn’t just obey him.”

“If you need help, Theo—”

“You’re the only one I would trust to help me. But I don’t need it.”

“Do you want it?”

Theo pauses, and swallows. Harry has the ability to disarm him with a word every time, and it’s shocking to Theo even though it keeps happening.

Harry looks straight at him, eyes shining with devotion and determination, and Theo discovers that he feels he can tell the truth to Harry and not be vulnerable. He nods, once.

“Then you’ll have it,” Harry promises, and leans forwards to kiss him.

The words are more than a promise, Theo thinks as he kisses back; they’re ground to stand on, shelter in a storm.

Should I be thinking about him like this? Am I falling in a way I can’t control?

Theo decides he doesn’t care.

Chapter Text

Theo kisses Harry lightly one more time and leads him back into the Great Hall. There are a few dances they can still do, but Theo also has part of his plan to put in motion before he goes back to the Slytherin common room.

Accordingly, he waits until Madame Maxime and Dumbledore finish a dance, and then steps up to them with a polite bow. The Beauxbatons Headmistress looks at him without any recognition, but Dumbledore fetches a sigh that seems to rise from his boots.

“Mister Nott?” he asks.

“I’ve come to claim sanctuary, Headmaster. As you promised in the letters that you’ve sent Slytherin students?” Theo adds, when Dumbledore’s brow furrows and he blinks with what seems to be honest confusion.

Dumbledore’s eyes widen a little. He raises his wand and casts a Privacy Charm around them so powerful that it makes the air shimmer and distort. Theo can see Harry waiting on the other side of the spell, and winks at him, although he doesn’t know if Harry can see it. The Privacy Charm doesn’t matter. Theo is going to be telling Harry everything later anyway.

“A rather bold claim to make in earshot of your Housemates, my dear boy,” Dumbledore murmurs.

“They’ve all received the letters from you, too, Headmaster,” Theo tells him softly. “They might not have decided to take you up on them, but we know who they were from. Now I’ve come to take you up on this.”

“Why don’t more of you?”

Oh, hell. Dumbledore’s eyes are big and seem to be—vulnerable? They’re probably not really, but Theo didn’t expect even the appearance of vulnerability from the Headmaster. For a moment, he’s fumbling amid his horror of possibly being expected to comfort the powerful wizard he thought he was going to get sanctuary from.

Then Theo gets control of himself, and shakes his head. “They’re worried about what the price would be, and what you would demand from them.”

“Truly? I never thought to demand anything from you.”

Theo glances sideways and leads Dumbledore’s gaze to Professor Snape, who’s currently sneering at a half-Veela girl pouting about being separated from her dazed Slytherin partner. “The way you haven’t demanded anything from other Slytherins?” Theo asks softly. “We know or suspect the price he has to pay, sir.”

Dumbledore doesn’t deny it, interestingly enough. He just looks back and forth between Theo and Professor Snape as if deep in thought. Then he asks, slowly, “And you and the other children think I would make you pay the same?”

“As near as you could, sir.”

Dumbledore looks into Theo’s eyes. Theo looks back unwaveringly at the point of his nose. No sense in letting Dumbledore use Legilimency on him now, after so many years of avoiding it.

“Does this desire for sanctuary have anything to do with your dating young Mr. Potter?”

“Yes. My father isn’t likely to be pleased.”

Theo thought of making his voice break here, his eyes fill with tears. It would probably make him look more sympathetic and malleable to Dumbledore, and easier to manipulate. But he hates the thought of appearing weak when he wants to be strong for his boyfriend, and Dumbledore might try to manipulate him away from Harry. So he stands there and says the words calmly, and watches silent stormclouds pass across Dumbledore’s face.

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before openly dating Mr. Potter?”

He wants me to have come to him first, so that I would be dependent on him, and Harry wouldn’t have fought so strongly for me.

Theo smiles. “Perhaps,” he agrees. “But I do have other plans in motion as well, and I really, really like Harry. I would do a lot to protect him. Hiding in the background and pretending that I find him shameful wouldn’t have helped with that.”

Dumbledore just looks completely puzzled now. Theo radiates the kind of confused innocence and sincerity he did during their session in Dumbledore’s office, and Dumbledore is the one who breaks first, looking away with a sigh and a pass of his hand across his face.

“All right. You can, of course, claim sanctuary with the school, Mr. Nott. We will protect you during the school year, and ensure that you have a safe place to stay during the summers and holidays. That place will not be at the school, but it will be behind wards.”

“And you have procedures in place to ensure that my father can’t just claim legal custody of me?”

“Ah, well, that will be a bit more difficult, yes. The preferred procedure would be for your father to agree to a parting of the ways and surrender your custody to the Wizengamot or the Headmaster’s office.”

Theo smiles with all his teeth. That’s the way that Dumbledore is going to try and separate him from Harry, then: say that Theo can have sanctuary, but pretend there’s nothing he can do if Father makes a legal objection.

Unfortunately for Dumbledore, Theo has a plan already in place for that. It would be simplest to claim the sanctuary from Dumbledore that he’s promised, especially because it means that Theo wouldn’t have to shake Harry’s faith in Dumbledore so soon. But a Slytherin always has more than one path of escape.

“Well, of course,” Theo says softly, lowering his eyes, “if you can’t do it, sir, there’s nothing more to be said. Sorry to have troubled you.” He turns around and starts to step out of the Privacy Charm to return to Harry.

Dumbledore lays a restraining hand on his shoulder. Some people would call it gentle; Theo wouldn’t. “That doesn’t mean we will just give up at the first sign of trouble, of course. Perhaps you can write to your father in advance of the inevitable article coming out? Even our industrious Rita can hardly publish one before the morning.”

He wants to use me as a lever to manipulate Harry, and he can’t if I’m somewhere else. Theo gives a long sigh. “I’m afraid my father isn’t likely to be understanding no matter when I inform him.”

Dumbledore is silent, apparently thinking. Then he says, “Do you believe your father would force you into the role of a Death Eater?”

“I would estimate it’s about the same chance of your forcing me into the role of a spy, Headmaster.”

Dumbledore draws his hand back as if burned. “I was not suggesting such a thing, Mr. Nott. But there is another solution, it seems to me. You play this off to your father as your attempting to get close to Harry in order to serve Voldemort better, you let yourself be Marked, and you do turn spy.”

So you can have another Snape. So your chains on Harry are heavier than ever. Theo shakes his head. “I’m not willing to serve the man who wants to kill Harry, Headmaster.”

Dumbledore is apparently stumped now. Theo waits a little longer, but Dumbledore doesn’t renew his offer of sanctuary. Presumably the price Theo is willing to pay isn’t high enough.

Theo steps through the charm and walks over to Harry. Harry promptly grabs his hand, studying him. “What happened?”

“The Headmaster has been sending these letters to Slytherin students every year that offer us sanctuary if we need it,” Theo says, keeping his voice low. “I tried to claim it. First he suggested that he could give it to me but there would be a problem if my father mounted a legal challenge, and then he suggested that I pretend to be a loyal Death Eater and spy on the Dark Lord for him.”

“What?”

Theo pauses and looks at Harry speculatively. Harry’s jaw has dropped, and there’s anger burning in his eyes. Theo half-smiles. That anger is for him. Harry would do anything to keep him safe. He knew that, but every new affirmation of it sends a soft pulse of wonder through his chest.

“Yeah, not surprising, but disappointing,” says Theo evenly, watching Harry’s continued transformation—clenched fists, gritted teeth, hardening jaw. “So I’ll be finding sanctuary with Blaise instead.”

“Zabini?”

“Yes. His mother cares mostly about screwing people over in politics rather than standing with one side—well, that, and protecting her business interests. She would adore being able to get one over on my father and also rub it in Dumbledore’s face that she was able to protect me when he failed to do so.”

Harry clears his throat. “I’ve heard the rumors about her. Is she—safe?”

“As long as I don’t transform overnight into a fabulously wealthy and handsome adult wizard who owns a business she’d like to buy, I’m pretty safe,” Theo answers dryly.

He expects Harry to laugh, and he does, a little, but his eyes lower, too. He clears his throat and mutters, "I think you’re plenty handsome.”

Well, and that’s nice to hear in a way that sends a thrum throughout Theo’s body. He’s never prided himself much on his looks. He knows he’s thin, knows he’s pale, knows his eyes are his best feature and he’s usually looking at someone sarcastically. But Harry can think it, Harry can say it, and it’s nice that he does.

Gently, Theo reaches out and pulls Harry’s chin around to face him. Harry bites his lip, and his face is still red in a way that isn’t with anger. Theo draws Harry with him towards a shadowed corner of the Great Hall. There are more of them now that some of the candles have burned down and a lot of people have left.

“Dance with me one more time?” Theo whispers.

Harry smiles brilliantly and reaches out to put his hands on Theo’s shoulders. They sway back and forth in place, a dance Theo didn’t explicitly teach Harry but they both know by heart anyway, eyes locked on each other’s.

Theo is burning, and calm. He’s wild, and content. He reaches out to frame Harry’s face with his hands and leans in to kiss him, more softly and sweetly than he once thought he would be able to kiss anyone.

Harry clutches at him desperately, pressing their mouths together, and Theo allows it. He wouldn’t have thought himself capable of this, either. Clinging and possessive and needy—it’s not the way he wants people to react to him.

But for Harry, there’s nothing he wouldn’t give.

*

“It looks like I’ll be taking advantage of your mother’s offer after all, Blaise.”

Blaise tenses for a long moment, staring down at the notes spread out in front of him. They have Charms right after breakfast, and Flitwick likes to give them sudden practical exams on a moment’s notice. Blaise slowly lifts his head to look at Theo.

“If that’s all right?” Theo adds calmly. He doesn’t think Blaise ever expected him to take up the offer, but he has that offer both verbally from Blaise and in writing from Madam Zabini. He trusts it, allowed himself to trust it.

Blaise says quietly, “You’re really doing it, then.”

“Doing what?”

“Breaking from your father.”

Theo gives him a tiny nod. Again, Draco could come of the bathroom at any moment; Vince and Greg, still snoring, could wake up any time. And all of them have Death Eater fathers who would want to know this. “I find that our interests don’t align anymore.”

“And the Headmaster?”

“Offered me sanctuary, then said he couldn’t prevent my father from taking me back, and then said I should become a Death Eater and his little spy while pretending to Father and the Dark Lord that I was only dating Harry for the look of the thing.”

Blaise’s face contorts with outrage. “He wanted you to do what?”

Theo explains a little more of the conversation from last night, and Blaise’s hands wrinkle his sheets with how tight he’s gripping the sides of the bed. At the end, he scowls and says, “I’ll write to Mother. She can poison him.”

Theo sighs. “Blaise, is it really the wisest course to have your mother poison the only wizard the Dark Lord fears?”

“I didn’t say it would kill him. Just make him suffer for a long time. She has one that would make him unable to use the loo for a week, and then after that he’ll wish he was still unable.”

Theo thinks about that, but there’s no way that Dumbledore wouldn’t connect it to what happened in his conversation with Theo, even if Harry didn’t. Regretfully, Theo shakes his head. “If you would tell her that I appreciate the idea…”

“It’s my idea.”

Theo makes a half-bow at the waist to Blaise. “Then I appreciate your courtliness and chivalry, O My Knight of the Black Widow.”

“Fuck off,” Blaise snarls, and throws a quill at him. But he’s smiling, and Theo smiles back.

*

“You are dating Potter!”

“You learned that just from the several hours we spent on the dance floor together? Congratulations, Draco, your comprehension time has improved.”

Draco snaps his mouth shut and glares at Theo across the Slytherin table. Theo gracefully selects a few pieces of fruit from the bowl and sits back to peel his orange, humming and ignoring the way that Pansy stares between him and Draco.

“Why would you want to date a Gryffindor?” she finally asks, sitting back with her arms folded and her nose high.

“You’re really asking why someone wouldn’t want to date you.”

Pansy’s eyes widen. “I was not!”

Theo turns to face her and gestures with his orange. “Yes, you were, Pansy, because you judge everything in terms of yourself. We know that you’re pursuing dearest Draco here with the kind of vigor usually reserved for Crups and sticks, so it’s natural that you would see this situation in that light, but I have to tell you that I’m not interested, and learning why I’m dating Harry can’t help you in any way.”

Laughter spreads up and down the table. Pansy continues to stare at him, and then shoves her chair back and stalks out of the Great Hall. Draco leans towards him with a hiss of, “What do you think you’re doing? She was crying!”

Theo turns around and gives Draco a glimpse of his real self again. Draco recoils.

“She was prying into my dating life. I don’t appreciate it.” Theo smiles brightly at him. “Let it be a lesson, dearest Draco.”

Draco finds a reason to move down the table and sit between Greg and Vince.

Blaise shakes his head as the owls wing into the Great Hall carrying the morning post. “You can be vicious when you want to.”

“Vicious for a fourteen-year-old, I’m sure,” Theo says absently, his eyes on his owl Victoria bringing his copy of the Daily Prophet. He’s curious to see whether he and Harry are the lead story by themselves or only part of it. “Nothing compared to your mother or Dumbledore.”

“It’s interesting that you say that—”

Victoria lands, and Theo unrolls the paper with a sense of anticipation. He wants to know if it will bring a Howler from his father or a letter that will be furiously and coldly polite.

RUBEUS HAGRID: HALF-GIANT MENACE?

Theo blinks at the headline, and skims the article. Apparently Skeeter is convinced that Hagrid is a half-giant, and has a “source” that proves it—who sounds an awful lot like Draco in some of their phrasing—and is horrified that Dumbledore hired him to teach at a school. Theo has to flip to the second page to find a short article filled with more insinuations than statements about their “beloved Boy-Who-Lived” dating a Slytherin, “Theodorus” Nott.

Theo snorts. The Prophet could stand to hire a better quality of proofreaders.

“Theo, mate.”

Theo looks up and across the Great Hall at Blaise’s low words. Harry is red-faced as he glares at the Prophet, and it does look like the front page instead of the inside one where the article about the Ball is. Theo’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. Of course, Harry is taking the Care of Magical Creatures class, but there was something about Hagrid being his friend outside that, wasn’t there?

Clearly, Theo will have to do something about Rita Skeeter. He can’t have Harry upset.

He glances at the article once and nods, sure that the bit that sounds like dear Draco probably actually is, which means that Theo will have to do something about him, too. Then he stands up and marches across the Great Hall.

Weasley is saying something urgently to Harry, but he glances up, sees Theo, and promptly turns an even brighter red than he’s achieved so far. “Go away!” he yells, gesturing at the paper. “This is probably all your fault! You told Skeeter—”

“I’m sorry that you’re upset,” Theo tells Harry. “Do you want my help to do something about it?”

Harry looks up at him, and for a second, his eyes are wide with wonder. Then he stands up and reaches out, drawing Theo close. Theo puts his hands on Harry’s shoulders and notes happily that one side-effect of holding Harry like this at the Gryffindor table is that Weasley is actually stunned speechless.

“I want her to suffer,” Harry whispers. “And I want her to stop writing this stuff about Hagrid.”

“What about the articles she writes about you?”

“Hagrid is more important.”

Theo disagrees with that, actually, but he shrugs as if he doesn’t care enough to disagree. “All right. So we’ll stop her, and I think one of her sources is Malfoy. We can make him stop.”

Harry’s eyes widen, and he leans over and kisses Theo right in the middle of the Great Hall. Theo ignores the storm of yelling and comments and laughter that provokes, and kisses him back.

A thunk is either Weasley fainting or dropping something. Theo hopes he breaks his toes.

There, he thinks, as he draws back and watches Harry’s eyes brighten. Now I can help make him happy.

And if that doesn’t catch Father’s attention, nothing will.

But Theo knows himself well enough to realize that making Harry happy is the bigger part of his motivation at the moment.

It seems that he’s successfully manipulated himself into falling in love with Harry Potter, after all.

Chapter Text

“Nott! Wait up.”

Theo blinks and turns around. Although he hoped that Harry would start becoming friends with Longbottom and forget a little about Weasley and Granger, he didn’t expect Longbottom to take it as far as accosting him in the halls.

Longbottom runs straight up to him, starts to say something, and then bends over, panting. Theo curbs his impatience. He should know better than anyone that just because someone is physically fit doesn’t mean a brain lives in their heads, after watching Draco play Quidditch all these years, and panting after a short run doesn’t mean you’re stupid, either.

“Ron and Hermione cornered Harry and dragged him into the classroom next to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom on the second floor a few minutes ago,” Longbottom gasps, once he straightens up again. His face is bright pink. “I don’t know what they wanted, but I know that Harry didn’t want to go with them.”

Theo feels a smile crawl across his face that must be unnerving, from the way that Longbottom visibly tenses his shoulders. “Thanks, Longbottom.”

“Er. You’re welcome.”

Theo nods to him and then speeds up, aiming for the stairs to the second floor instead of the ones to the library, where he was going to look up some of the laws constraining reporters in Britain from writing stories about people younger than seventeen. The books will be there in a few hours, but Weasley and Granger might not be.

As he runs, Theo mentally sharpens his tongue. If Harry gives him permission, or if he doesn’t but things are bad enough, then Theo won’t have to hold back on what he thinks of them.

*

Their voices are audible only when Theo comes within a few meters of the classroom, which tells him that someone must have put Silencing Charms up. Either not very good ones, or—

Or Harry’s power is simply breaking them, as Theo realizes when he steps through the doorway and feels a press of heat and silent roiling magic like a thunderstorm rising against his skin.

“I don’t have to apologize!” Weasley bellows. “I’m not the one hanging out with a slimy Slytherin!”

“If you call Theo slimy one more time—”

“Calm down, Harry!” Granger snaps, her hands on her hips. “We just wanted to talk to you—”

“No, you want to insult Theo and imply that I must be under the Imperius or something,” Harry snarls, spinning towards her. He doesn’t appear to have noticed Theo in the room yet. “Do you even remember that I broke that curse when Moody cast it? It’s bloody insulting to Theo that you’d suspect him of that, but it’s bloody insulting to me, too!”

Theo feels like cheering, and also that this is an appropriate moment to interrupt. “So sorry to intrude,” he says. “I’m not late, am I?” He saunters towards Harry and drapes an arm around his shoulder, leaning over his back to smile at Weasley and Granger.

Harry lets out a relieved breath and leans back against him, for a moment tightening his arm around Theo’s neck. It’s a grip that Theo’s never felt before, but he would endure a lot more discomfort than this to stand at Harry’s side.

And he has never seen Harry do it with Weasley or Granger, either, which makes it particularly valuable.

“You don’t need to be here, Nott,” Granger says. Theo thinks the tremor in her voice is rage, not upset. “We were just trying to make sure that Harry had a chance to talk to us, and talk this out—”

“That’s hard if you’re expecting him to do all the talking, and no apologies are forthcoming.” Theo glances at Weasley.

Weasley takes the bait, because you could dangle him off a cliff and he would still try to bite the hand holding him if it was a Slytherin’s hand. “The only thing I’m sorry about is staying away long enough for you to sneak in!”

“And that’s it,” Harry says, and his voice is soft and dark. Granger and Weasley shut up immediately. Theo has heard Harry talk like this before, but he suspects they never have. Unlike the way Harry touches him, Theo doesn’t mind sharing this.

“Theo has been there for me when you weren’t,” Harry says, staring at Weasley. “And you’re still refusing to be. Just say I’m sorry, Ron! Two little fucking words, and you’re acting as though they’ll Crucio you if you speak them!”

“Harry Potter! Language!”

“He can say what he fucking wants,” Theo tells her helpfully.

Granger gapes at him, not sure which victim to strike at first, but all that does is provide an opening for Weasley to slip in. “You—you corrupted him, Nott! You never paid attention to him, and then you were just suddenly there? What do you think that means, huh? That you just want to use him for your own good?”

“I never noticed him before because I wasn’t paying attention, and there was the little matter of our being in rival Houses.” Theo tightens his own hold on Harry. “But I’ve been honest with him since then, and haven’t refused to apologize when I was in the wrong after being his best friend for three years.”

Honest, except for the Confundus.

Theo bats the thought away with the ease of long practice. It’s something he’s had to do before, when he was surviving the summers.

“I am his best friend!” Weasley really might have a heart attack if his face gets any redder.

“Wrong tense,” Theo says mildly.

Harry reaches up and squeezes one of his hands, and Theo settles back with a little sigh and pout. All right, he won’t say any more, if Harry really doesn’t want him to.

Harry shakes his head at Theo, but only in such a way that someone touching him can pick up on it, and turns back to Weasley and Granger. “You’ve been my best friends,” he says. “I think that deserves some consideration.” He seems to ignore the way they perk up. “But it doesn’t mean that I need to listen to you whispering about Theo, and it doesn’t mean I just need to accept you back into my life without apologies. Apologize, Ron.”

Weasley turns redder still. Theo thinks about commenting that Weasley probably has trouble with the words because his native language is Git instead of English, but Harry might not appreciate that.

“What’s the problem?” Harry finally adds, coaxingly. “I’ve never seen you too proud to admit when you aren’t as good at something as Hermione, and I know that you get jealous sometimes, but it’s never been this bad. What is it, Ron?”

“I could have apologized after the dragon!” Weasley finally bursts out. “And instead, you were there with Nott, and you acted as though you were more interested in seeing him than in seeing me!”

“He hadn’t spent weeks calling me a cheat and a traitor.”

“But you just turned away from me and acted as though you were happy to see him, instead!” Weasley’s hands really might tear apart his robes if he keeps fisting them like that. “I could have apologized! I would’ve! But you didn’t miss me! You didn’t want me! And ever since then, you’ve acted like—like I have to bargain to be your best friend or something! That’s not the way friends work, Harry! Unless you’re a slimy Slytherin,” he adds, because apparently he can’t let go of those words, and he can’t stop glaring at Theo, even when Theo could have told him it wouldn’t end well for him.

Theo sighs a little. There are many things he could say, but Weasley wouldn’t understand them, and it has nothing to do with his native language.

“Apologizing isn’t a bargain, Ron. It’s just something you should do. Because you were wrong, and I didn’t put my name in the Goblet.”

“But you chose him!” Weasley stabs his finger at Theo.

“Harry,” Granger interrupts then. “Can’t you just—”

“No,” Harry says, standing there with his gaze pinning Weasley. Theo can feel the tension in his body, and the sorrow. He waits. “Can’t Ron just apologize? It’s not some huge sacrifice.”

“You’re making it into one by insisting on it!”

Harry tenses so hard this time that Theo touches his cheek, and ignores the way that Weasley and Granger both glare. They can think whatever they want. What matters is that Harry needs Theo, and needs to be touched, and not enough people in his life have ever done that for him.

“Look,” Harry says finally, his words precise. “This is the way it’s going to work—”

“You’re trying to make friendship into a bargain again, Harry!”

Harry’s wand slashes down, and Weasley is Silenced, his mouth still working open and shut for a minute before he catches a drift of good sense and shuts it. “I have every right to do that,” Harry whispers coldly, “when you keep trying to insist that to be friends with you I have to forgive you without apologies and give up Theo.”

Weasley casts his eyes down. Granger sucks in her breath, but says nothing. Theo raises his eyebrows. Look at that. They can learn.

“This is the way it’s going to work,” Harry repeats, after a moment when he seems to be waiting for them to interrupt him again. He relaxes a little in Theo’s arms. “You can spend time around me without apologies if you don’t criticize Theo or try to insist that I spend all my time with you or get upset when I want to do something with Neville or Theo or by myself. You can’t if you try to control me like you’ve been doing. You just dragged me in here, and you didn’t listen to what I wanted!”

Neither Weasley nor Granger says anything. Well, admittedly, in Weasley’s case, that’s not by choice, but Theo sees the way he flinches, and thinks that he might not have said anything even if he could speak.

(Not that Theo would wager any Galleons on that. Knuts, maybe).

“Okay,” Harry adds. “Can you agree to that?”

“Yes, Harry,” Granger whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Weasley nods, but doesn’t even try to mouth the words I’m sorry. Theo rolls his eyes, and doesn’t bother to disguise the gesture. Well, yes, Harry did say that they didn’t need to apologize, but holy Merlin, Weasley’s dedication to preserving his pride is stronger than Draco’s ego at this point.

That realization is slightly horrifying. Theo puts it aside to consider later.

“Good,” Harry says. “Now, I want to spend some time with Theo. Go away.”

Weasley opens his mouth, but Granger grabs his hand and tows him away. Theo is mildly satisfied to see that she at least manhandles people who aren’t Harry, and beyond satisfied that it probably is all Weasley’s personality that’s doing this and not his Confundus Charm.

Harry turns around the minute they’re out the door and throws his arms around Theo, leaning close.

Theo cradles him and murmurs, “Harry? Are you okay?” It can’t have been easy for him to face down two people who, whatever their faults, were loyal friends to him for a long time until this stupid Goblet fiasco happened.

“Yes,” Harry whispers. “It’s just—it hurts, you know? I know what they mean about just wanting everything to go back to the way it was. With them, not you,” he adds hastily, before Theo can even stiffen. “But I can’t go back. And so I have to have this kind of compromise with them, when I used to be able to trust them without compromising.

“You’re the only one I don’t have to compromise with.”

Theo slides his hand into Harry’s hair and tilts his head up. Harry’s eyes aren’t wet, but they’re hollow. Theo hates seeing him like that.

“Now, you know that we had to compromise about how much I would be allowed to insult Weasley and Granger in front of you. I do consider that a severe imposition.”

Harry’s face lightens, even though he doesn’t laugh. He nestles his cheek into Theo’s hand, and sighs. “Sorry I was late to meet you for our trip to Hagrid’s hut.”

It actually isn’t that time yet, which is why Theo was on his way to the library when Longbottom found him, but he simply smiles. “We have a few minutes yet. What do you want to do until then?”

Harry looks up at him with a gleam in his eyes, and drags Theo’s head down.

Theo goes happily in for the kiss. Harry has the best ideas.

*

“We know you’re in there, Hagrid, and we’re not going to stop knocking on the door until you let us in. So you might as well.”

Harry says that calmly, leaning his elbow on the door of the gamekeeper’s hut and waiting. Theo casts the spell that makes a thunderous knock roll through the building again. Because of the hut’s small size, it’s even louder than it would be on a house the size of Theo’s father’s.

He casts the spell two more times before Hagrid tears the door open and glares at them from rheumy, teary eyes. Theo stares before he can help himself. Wow, that is a lot of snot dribbling down his face.

I never knew half-giant bogies were also gigantic.

“You might as well come in, then,” Hagrid says, ungraciously, and backs away. A dog shoots out of the hut before Theo and Harry can go in and relieves itself with a desperate expression on the nearby grass. Theo shakes his head. Hagrid at least cares about his animals, if not his students. He really must be in a bad way.

“Why are you hiding here?” Harry asks, as they step in. Theo looks around and winces at the amount of cobwebs on everything. Harry elbows him.

Theo elbows him back. It’s not as if he would have said anything. But one doesn’t have to be a house-elf to find this all a little disgusting.

“Because everyone knows, now,” Hagrid says gloomily, flopping onto his chair. It creaks underneath him. Harry sits down on something that can be called a stool if you’re as polite as Narcissa Malfoy. Theo opts to stand. “I thought I could keep it a secret, but now—they’re all sending Howlers and calling on Dumbledore to sack me!”

He gets out a white-spotted red handkerchief and blows his nose into it, which at least gets rid of some of the bogies but half-deafens Theo.

“I don’t care,” Harry says firmly. “Ron and Hermione don’t care. Dumbledore doesn’t care, and you know he’s not going to sack you. What does it matter?”

“They’ll say that I’m a vicious beast! That I don’t have any business teaching you kids!”

“And they’ve called me the Heir of Slytherin, and a cheater and a liar, and shunned me for losing all those points for Gryffindor along with Ron and Hermione in first year. I’m still walking around, Hagrid! I didn’t let them make me hide!”

Theo stares at Harry with his mouth slightly open. That’s not a tactic that he thought Harry would try to manipulate Hagrid—well, all right, to help him, but manipulation is manipulation, and Theo doesn’t think the motivation differentiates it all that much.

Hagrid is turning bright red. “Harry—you don’t understand—”

“Right. I don’t understand why you’re hiding in your hut and letting the opinions of people you don’t even care about matter to you. Who cares if some people send Howlers? They did that with Professor Lupin last year, and he was the best Defense professor we ever had!”

(Theo would disagree with Harry about that, but only because Moody is fantastic for teaching them spells that you can actually use to defend yourself, by making people hurt so much that they leave you alone).

“And who cares if some of the Slytherin students drop your class because you’re a half-giant? Let them! You know that it doesn’t matter, that they’re just going to be messing up their own schedules by dropping Care of Magical Creatures! Come on, Hagrid, you were a Gryffindor, come out of hiding!”

Theo didn’t know Hagrid was a Gryffindor, although of course it makes perfect sense. He does stash the knowledge away for later, in case it’s ever useful.

Hagrid sniffles into the handkerchief again and produces something furry and horrifying from his nose that Theo has to look away from. “All—all right. But Harry, I also—I just wanted to date Olympe, and now she won’t look at me—”

“She’s a half-giant, too, though, right?”

“She likes to pretend she isn’t. She says she’s just tall.”

Theo bites his lips very, very hard so he won’t laugh.

“Well, then you can either tell her that she can date you when she admits it, or she can date you and just ignore what people are saying, or she doesn’t have to date you. But you get to make that choice, Hagrid. I learned a lesson about that this morning. You can’t force other people to do what you want, but if they won’t, then you can tell them to leave or they have to compromise.”

Hagrid seems to really notice Theo for the first time. “Is that why you’re here with the Nott boy and not Ron and Hermione?” he asks slowly.

Theo doesn’t react, but just keeps watching him. At least his nose isn’t furry anymore.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Ron and Hermione want me to stop dating Theo. I don’t want to. So I told them they can either not make fun of him or they can walk away from being my friends.”

Hagrid looks shocked. “To just—just abandon them when they’ve been through so much with you, Harry—”

“They weren’t with me through the Goblet,” Harry says coolly. “Theo was. And he was my date to the Yule Ball, and he’s my boyfriend. Are you going to get all upset about something that doesn’t matter, Hagrid? About him being a Slytherin? The way people did about you being a half-giant, when that doesn’t matter, either?”

Theo is lost in admiration. Harry is really good at this, when he wants to be, although he would probably just say that he doesn’t need to be very often.

Hagrid’s face softens as he looks at Harry, who’s reached out to clasp Theo’s hand. “No. No, of course not. You’re right, Harry. House doesn’t matter.” He sighs a deep breath and sits up a little. “And I can’t let what they say matter to me, either. If it really matters to Olympe, then I reckon we just aren’t meant to be.”

“That’s the spirit,” Harry says with a smile, and pats Hagrid’s knee. Hagrid pats him back, nearly crushing Harry down in the chair.

They stay there for a little longer, but they’re on their way back to the castle, trampling through new snow, when a familiar black owl comes gliding towards Theo. He looks up with a smile, and braces his arm to accept her weight, freeing the letter tangled around one of her talons.

“Who’s that from?” Harry asks curiously.

“My father’s responded at last,” Theo says, and feels pleasure and anticipation stir in his gut. And now, the next step of the dance can begin.

Chapter Text

My dear son,

I am beyond impressed that you have managed to so successfully fool Harry Potter that he believes you are really dating. Tell me, has he never heard the rumors that I was a Death Eater? Or does he simply discount them because he believes he knows you?

I, of course, do not have to explain all the implications of your romantic coup, or caution you to exercise care in keeping it. I do hope that you will be able to preserve your connection until the end of the school year in June. I understand that there is someone who much wants to meet Mr. Potter, someone known to me but whom you have never met. It would be a shame if you lost control of Mr. Potter before then.

Of course, I expect you to enjoy yourself, but never forget that this is only a teenage romance that can be given up, if needs be, in pursuit of your larger goals.

Your father.

Theo sprawls back in his chair at the table in the library where he and Harry arranged to meet while Harry reads the letter, grinning at the ceiling. Honestly, Father probably doesn’t believe that Theo is doing this just to entice and entrap Harry for the Dark Lord, but that doesn’t matter. He also doesn’t believe that it’s real for Theo, or he would have written a different kind of letter, one full of a different kind of warning.

Theo is capable of the respect and warmth that Father never can be, and that in and of itself is a sharp weapon aimed at his father’s throat.

“I don’t…”

Theo rolls over. Harry is blinking, fast and furious, his hands clenched on either side of the letter. Theo smiles gently at him. “I’ll answer any questions you have, Harry, including ones about my relationship with my father. But I mean it when I say that I feel honestly about you. My father has no clue about that, and no hope of understanding it, either.”

Harry swallows and puts the letter back on the table between them. “It’s not that. It’s that…is this going to cost you your relationship with your dad? The fact that we’re dating?”

Theo blinks. He hadn’t anticipated that being one of Harry’s concerns, but of course he should have. Harry hasn’t had a real family since his parents died, and his best friends have done their level best to destroy their friendship with him, too. Of course he would be anxious about Theo possibly losing something that’s part of his life, no matter how bad it is.

Theo sits up in the chair and reaches out, clasping Harry’s hand on the table between them. “No. My father destroyed his relationship with me a very long time ago, and I’m only keeping up the pretense of it because until now, it suited me to do so.”

“And you’re sure that Zabini’s mum will take you in for the summer?”

“Very sure.”

Theo has to smile at the amount of delight Mrs. Zabini is probably going to feel, in fact. He’ll have to get Blaise to tell him about it when Blaise comes back after Christmas. A lot of the students went home after the Yule Ball, but not Harry, for obvious reasons, and not Theo.

“Um. Okay. I just—I would never want you to do this if it cost you something.”

Harry’s face is lowered, his forehead furrowed in a way that wrinkles his famous scar. Theo reaches out and traces it, then lifts Harry’s face and kisses him gently until Harry is relaxed and leaning forwards in his chair. Then he lets go and says softly, “This is a sacrifice for you I’d gladly make, Harry.”

Harry is all one giant and gleaming blush from the top of his forehead to the base of his throat, where Theo’s eyes lock and where he wants to kiss. “Oh,” he says faintly.

Theo smiles back and looks away to let Harry recover a little. “Did you want your Christmas gift here, or somewhere more private?” he murmurs.

“You didn’t—you didn’t have to—”

“I know. I wanted to.” Theo smiles a little. “And I think you got me one, didn’t you? I’d never want you to think I didn’t want to reciprocate.”

“It would be okay if you didn’t.”

Theo just lets his thumb sweep back and forth across Harry’s knuckles without answering, and Harry finally says, “Your gift is up in my bedroom. Let me go get it and we’ll meet in that classroom where you taught me to dance, okay?”

Theo smiles as he thinks of another gift he can offer Harry before they meet there. “Of course.”

*

“Theo, I’m h—what is this?”

Theo smiles at Harry’s choked-off exclamation. He’s sure it’s one of surprise and delight, rather than dismay. “Do you like it?”

Harry turns in a slow circle, his mouth open. Theo’s spangled the room with moving illusions of twinkling fairy lights, rather than trying to conjure any, something he’s not that good at. He’s Transfigured the walls into the dark green shade of a pine forest, and covered the floor with the illusion of snow. And overhead, he’s changed the ceiling of the room into a dark night sky pocked with stars. It’s hardly the Great Hall, but it’ll do.

Harry’s whole face is bright and warm when he turns back to Theo. “I love it. How did you know—” He cuts himself off.

Theo is sure that he was about to say something like, “That I’ve never had a real Christmas with my family,” but he doesn’t need it said. He shrugs and smiles and pulls out Harry’s gift from behind his back, privately a little concerned that Harry’s is bigger than his. He just hopes that Harry won’t be too disappointed.

From the way that Harry’s smile is wider than any Theo’s seen him wear, Harry isn’t disappointed at all. He takes Theo’s gift, in bright green paper with red holly berries on it, from him, and hands over his bigger present, wrapped in black paper with glittering silver stars that imitates the look of the ceiling in the classroom. “Hope you like it,” he mumbles, and tears Theo’s package open.

Theo would have liked to savor it, but he copies Harry, while making sure that he’s not looking away from Harry’s face and can see it when Harry lifts the lid off the little box and catches his breath.

It’s completely worth it. Harry’s cheeks are bright red and his eyes are on Theo a second later. “Thank you,” he whispers.

Theo smiles as he lifts Harry’s present to him out of its box. It’s an incredibly huge and thick cloak. Theo flips it over, curious as to what makes it so heavy when the outside seems to be woven of silver wool, and blinks at the lining. “Wow, Harry. Thank you. But—what is lining it?” It looks like dragonhide, but it’s shinier and a more brilliant green. By the time it gets done with the enchanting and tanning process, dragonhide is usually black.

“Um.”

Theo shoots a glance at Harry. His cheeks are a brighter red than the holly berries on Theo’s wrapping paper. “I promise that I won’t be angry, Harry,” he coaxes him. He thinks a second, then adds, “Or think it’s too expensive.” He can guess that’s a problem Harry might have had with Weasley in the past.

(The sooner Harry sheds that dead weight, the better).

“It’s not that,” Harry says. “It, ah, I thought you might be angry because of what I went through to get it. It’s basilisk hide.”

Only the fact that Harry gave the gift to him lets Theo clench his hands around the cloak in time to avoid dropping it. “It’s what?” he says, and barely manages not to snap.

“It’s hide from the basilisk that I killed in second year.”

Theo stares at him, but he knows what Harry looks like when he’s joking or trying to hide something, and he doesn’t look like that now. He is ducking his head, but maintaining a steady gaze into Theo’s eyes at the same time. And there were rumors. It was just that Theo knows exactly how much stock to put into rumors about Harry Potter.

He swallows. “You—harvested it yourself?”

“Well, the harvesting, yeah. But I sent it away to be tanned and fastened into the cloak. I told them it was dragonhide from a really old hereditary pair of boots I had that I wanted turned into something else.”

Theo feels a smile tugging at his mouth. Harry can lie well when he wants to. It’s clear that most of the time, he just doesn’t see the point. “Well, I know that barely anything can get through basilisk hide, spells included. Thank you, Harry.” He folds the cloak around his shoulders, not surprised to find it fits perfectly.

“And you for the watch,” Harry says quietly, taking the present Theo gave him out of its box.

Theo smiles and steps up to him, reaching out to take the silver watch on a dragonhide band from Harry. “Look,” he says, and turns his wrist, revealing the matching watch on his own wrist. “We tune them to each other’s.”

Harry blinks, and then laughs aloud as he watches Theo adjusting the watches. When he’s done, after a few whispered spells and taps of his wand, Harry’s watch now bears a hand for Theo and stops around the watch face at places like Safe, At Home, Mortal Danger, Slytherin Common Room, In Class, and so on. Theo’s watch has a hand for Harry, but he has two possible kinds of danger, Minor and Mortal.

Theo just raises an eyebrow when Harry complains about that. “You get into danger more often than I do, especially with this bloody Tournament.”

“True enough.” Harry turns the watch back and forth, admiring it after Theo clasps it on his wrist (and lets his fingers linger stroking Harry’s pulse point). “Did you set Home for you to be Mrs. Zabini’s and not your dad’s?”

“Yes.” Theo can’t stop smiling. “I wouldn’t be that careless, Harry.”

Harry rolls his eyes at him. “You forget that I’ve known people who would.” He doesn’t sound as if he’s about to go on talking about Granger and Weasley, but that’s okay. The important part is that he’s able to rely on Theo now, and he knows Theo isn’t like them.

Harry hesitates, and then reaches out and grabs the collar of the cloak, pulling Theo closer by it. Theo smiles at him and comes, leaning against his chest. Harry’s eyes travel over him, and there’s a heat in the back of them that hasn’t been there before. Theo thinks that Harry might really like seeing Theo in the cloak he bought for him, and promptly resolves to give Harry more opportunities to see it.

“You know,” Harry whispers, “I’ve never had a Christmas like this. I’ve celebrated with my friends and other people at school, but not just—not just me and one other person.”

“Happy Christmas, Harry,” Theo whispers back, and rests his forehead against Harry’s. Harry’s skin where the lightning bolt rest is rough under his.

“Happy Christmas, Theo,” Harry says, his voice as soft and joyful and uncertain as the beginning of day.

*

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Theo doesn’t look up as Draco drops down on the couch next to him. “Writing a letter to my father.”

“He must be awfully angry.”

Theo answers, because Draco trying to sound sly and insinuating is just painful, and dating Harry has taught Theo to be kind to other people. “Not really. He understands what was happening, and he’s advised me to continue it.”

There’s a long pause. Theo continues writing. He could lie to his father, really, but as it is, it amuses him to write completely truthful responses that also happen to leave out entirely the emotional complexity of what’s blooming between him and Harry.

He’s just finished with Harry Potter is not the sort to judge someone based on rumors of Death Eater connections once he really knows them when Draco blurts, “But he can’t possibly—you can’t possibly—”

“What?” Theo balances the letter on his knee and glances at Draco. That he hasn’t retreated already is more than interesting.

“You can’t love Potter!”

Theo tilts his head. He hasn’t named his emotions to Harry yet, and he certainly won’t name them to Draco before he does that. But he only shrugs and says, “You don’t understand much about me, Draco, or about Harry.” He checks the letter over again, corrects one misspelling in a long sentence, and signs his name with a flourish. Then he casts a Drying Charm at it and stands up. He needs to go to the Owlery.

“You’re not doing it right!”

Theo has to bite his lip to keep from laughing, and again to look at Draco with a serene expression. “You have opinions on the proper way to court Harry Potter?”

“It’s just—” Draco throws up his hands. “Why in the world aren’t you going to Skeeter and spilling all his secrets? Or writing to your father with a plan to trap him? I can’t believe that you’re acting all sincere and Gryffindor about it.”

“Oh, not completely. For example, a Gryffindor would probably just punch someone who disapproved of his relationship in the nose. Whereas I like to curse them.” Theo smiles and draws his wand, holding it low down at his side where the rest of the common room won’t see it, but Draco can.

Draco shrinks backwards, clutching the sides of the cushion. “I just—I wasn’t suggesting anything,” he whispers.

“You were. And more to the point, I’m now utterly convinced that you’ve leaked some information to Skeeter, instead of just having strong suspicions. Dolor tacitus.”

Draco opens his mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. That’s the beauty of this curse, and Theo smiles as he puts his wand away. The sufferers can’t make any sound even as pain ravages their bodies. They can’t tell anyone about it. They can’t speak a counter, either. Draco will endure the random jolts and shocks of agony until Theo decides to remove the curse.

“Think about it, the next time you presume to offer me a suggestion,” Theo says softly, and then leaves and goes to the Owlery, glancing once at his watch. Harry is in the Gryffindor common room.

He makes it most of the way to the Owlery before he decides to do something about the loud footsteps. Someone is following him incompetently, which narrows down the suspects quite a bit, and since Theo left Greg and Vince wagering on the fall of a Knut in the fourth-year boys’ dormitory…

He turns around with a sigh. “If you have something to say to me, Granger and Weasley, come out and say it to my face.”

There’s a scuffling and whispering and pushing, and Granger and Weasley slip into the corridor. They’re staring at him, not scowling. That makes Theo curious enough to stand there and watch them until Granger clears her throat.

“Where are you going, Nott?”

This could be an attempt to spy on him, but it could also be an attempt to honestly ask about his life and get to understand him, so Theo answers calmly. Harry seems to want them around some of the time even if Theo doesn’t. “To the Owlery. I have a letter to send off.”

“Who’s it to?” Weasley is squinting at him, eyes lingering on the cloak from Harry, which Theo is wearing in deference to the chill in the corridors. But he doesn’t make an accusation, so he probably didn’t see Harry walking around with it before Harry wrapped it up.

Theo half-shrugs. “I don’t think we’re close enough for me to really have to answer that question, Weasley.”

Weasley and Granger look perplexed. Theo thinks, amused, that they didn’t plan for this result. They probably either thought Theo would never notice them, Gryffindor geniuses of sneaking that they are, or they thought he would immediately confess to some evil plot.

“Look, Nott, can we try to get along?” Granger asks at last.

“That’s what I thought we were doing,” Theo says, and paints an expression of innocent confusion on his face.

More silent glances between them, but Weasley’s face is igniting with red. Theo thinks it probably won’t be long before he starts shouting.

And as entertaining as that might be, Theo doesn’t really want to wreck Harry’s friendships in such a way that Harry would mourn them later. Let Weasley and Granger make the decision to do that if they want to, or let Harry make the decision to reject them. Theo lifts his eyebrows and asks, “What happened to your promise to leave me alone?”

“We didn’t promise to leave you alone,” Granger says. “We promised not to criticize you. Which means things like calling you a slimy snake. It doesn’t mean following you.”

Theo thinks about it, and then shrugs. Technically, that’s true. “All right. I mean, Harry has to be the one to make the final decision, but you’re right that you weren’t insulting me and there’s no rule that says you can’t follow me. But I don’t want you following me to the Owlery. See you.” He turns his back.

“Wait! Nott!”

That’s Weasley, and the modicum of politeness in his voice is enough to make Theo turn around. “Yes?”

“You don’t have to tell Harry about this. You know, since we didn’t break the promises that we made to him.” Weasley tries to smile, but it falls flat, and he gives it up as a bad job a second later. “You know that he’d worry and probably feel bad, and—and we don’t want to make him feel that way.”

Theo places a hand over his face and shakes his head slowly back and forth.

“Nott?”

Theo lowers his hand. Weasley takes a step backwards. Theo is a little surprised that he’s showing his own indignation so powerfully, but at least it serves its purpose.

“I’m not going to lie to Harry. I’m not going to hide secrets from him. If he decides that this doesn’t break the rules, that’s up to him. If he does, that’s his decision, and I’ll support him either way. But it’s up to him. You might think, Weasley, about why you find it easier to ask me to lie for you than you do to apologize to your supposed best friend.”

Weasley recoils so hard that he almost falls over. Granger turns bright red. Theo turns and continues his trek up to the Owlery, this time with no one following him.

Chapter Text

Harry closes his eyes when Theo tells him about Weasley and Granger confronting him on the way to the Owlery. And then he shakes his head and sighs, and reaches up to clasp Theo’s arm.

“Thank you for telling me,” he whispers. “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to ignore it unless one of them says something about you in front of me. Or if they confront you again. I just…”

Theo understands what Harry means without his saying it. Dealing with the people who used to be his best friends is tiring and painful. And Harry would rather ignore it and just—keep going in other ways. Theo can understand that perfectly.

“Have you spent more time with Longbottom in the last week?” he asks, leaning against Harry. They’re in “their” classroom, the one where Theo taught Harry to dance and they had their Christmas celebration, and which right now has a few old desks that Theo has Transfigured into a couch. Harry is sprawled along the seat, and Theo finds leaning on him instead of the back surprisingly comfortable.

“Yeah. And Ron and Hermione said nothing. And frankly, Neville’s a lot of fun once you get to know him.”

Theo smiles, and pulls out a book. Behind him, Harry does the same. Theo catches sight of the title, Waters and Watery Creatures, and blinks. “Why are you reading that?” he asks. He doesn’t think they’re doing that next in their Care of Magical Creatures class.

“I think I’ve figured out the clue in the golden egg.”

Theo turns around enough to see Harry’s face, and blinks again. “Really? I know you thought it was some sort of code, but I didn’t know that you’d cracked it.”

“I got a warning from Diggory about listening to the egg underwater, and he told me the password to the Prefects’ bathroom.” Harry ducks his head and shrugs when Theo stares at him. “Sorry. I would have told you, but I sort of forgot.”

Theo relaxes. As long as Harry’s not keeping secrets deliberately, this is fine. “And you went in, and listened to the egg underwater?”

“Yes. It’s Mermish. Some kind of warning about how they’re going to take something from me, and I have an hour to get it back.” Harry exhales slowly and shows Theo the cover of the book again. “So I’m reading about this to learn spells that I can use underwater, and which I can use to help me swim. Because I really can’t.”

“We can work on that.”

“We can?”

Theo would feel insulted by most other people sounding that incredulous, but this is Harry, who hasn’t had positive reinforcement almost ever in his life. He laughs. “Yes, of course. I taught you to dance. Why can’t I teach you to swim?”

“No reason, I suppose. Other than I thought maybe it would be beneath your dignity to swim in the lake in January.”

“That’s what magic is for,” Theo says, “and snogging afterwards, to get us warm again.” And he waggles his eyebrows to make Harry laugh.

They go back to their reading, Theo paying attention to Harry’s breathing and heartbeat whenever he wants, reaching lazily back to touch him whenever he wants. And Harry responds with a soft sigh and a resting of his cheek in Theo’s palm what feels like every other minute.

It’s absorbing. It’s enthralling.

And Theo will never give this up, not for his father, and not for the Dark Lord, and not for all the stupid requests that Hogwarts professors can make of him.

*

Draco has had the sense not to talk to Skeeter again, but then Skeeter publishes an article about Harry “pining for” Ginny Weasley, and Theo is reminded of his determination to do something about her. He waits until he sees her walking across the grounds, away from Hagrid’s hut. The gamekeeper has been out with Madame Maxime and to teach their Magical Creatures class, but Theo can’t fault his decision to hide from Skeeter.

Theo walks quickly over to intercept her. Skeeter turns and watches him coming with interest, which to Theo only proves she can’t know that much about him.

“If it isn’t Mr. Theodorus Nott. Right?” Skeeter bats her eyelashes at him. “I’ve heard so much about you from Mr. Draco Malfoy. Are you ready to tell me what it’s like, to be Harry Potter’s boyfriend?”

“I could tell you that. I could tell you a lot. But—” And Theo makes a dramatic show of checking over his shoulder. “Not here. Do you know a place where it’s more private and we could speak without being overheard?”

Skeeter’s got a smile that could curdle milk, if she wanted.

*

They go to the Three Broomsticks, and Skeeter hands over a mess of Galleons to Madam Rosmerta that make her bring them butterbeer and then ignore them entirely. Theo tucks away the knowledge that Madam Rosmerta can be bribed and has probably taken money from Skeeter in the past. That’s something worth knowing.

“Do tell me, Mr. Nott,” Skeeter purrs as she poises her Quick-Quotes Quill over a piece of parchment. “What is it like, being the lover of the Chosen One?”

“Well, before I answer that question, I’m going to need some reassurance. Like this.” Theo flicks his wand and casts a spell that lights the Quick-Quotes Quill and the parchment both on fire.

Skeeter drops them both with a little shriek that makes Madam Rosmerta glance over at them for a moment. Theo uses his wand to put out the small fires that would otherwise have started on the table and the floor, and sips from his butterbeer, waiting. Skeeter leans back in her chair and stares at him.

“Why did you do that, Theodorus?” She seems to have decided that she should play the part of an older woman scolding a naughty schoolboy. “Did you think I was going to write down lies? I assure you, I wouldn’t have—”

Theo leans closer and drops his mask, to show her what Draco saw. Her mouth and eyes both widen, and she says nothing, her voice catching with a nasty click in her throat.

“Don’t patronize me,” Theo whispers. “I can destroy you. I’m thinking about it, for the part you’ve played in making Harry’s year miserable so far. For the part you’ve played in making Harry’s friends miserable.”

Skeeter licks her lips and tries a tinkling laugh, this time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Theodorus. I simply write what I’m told.”

“No, you make up lies. But I’m not going to tolerate it any longer. Do you have any idea what will happen if one of your articles about Harry winds up in the paper again?”

“Yes,” Skeeter snaps, some of the color coming back into her face. “I make a lot of money and the Prophet gains a lot of readers. Don’t think you can frighten me or threaten me, boy. You’re just fourteen—”

“A fourteen-year-old who knows all sorts of spells,” Theo says, and casts before Skeeter can retrieve her wand from the holster that he thinks is along her left arm. “Ombras animae.”

Skeeter’s mouth shudders open, and hangs there like that. Theo sits back with a smile and tucks his own wand away, sipping his butterbeer, while she deals with the horrifying vision conjured in front of her eyes, something only she can see.

When she finally slumps back in her seat and closes her eyes, whimpering softly, Theo leans across the table to pat her hand. She shudders back from him, but Theo doesn’t let her go too far, leaning in closer still so that he can whisper to her. “That’s what you’ll see every night and day for the rest of your life if you write another article about Harry, or that even mentions or alludes to him. I suggest you ask yourself if it’s worth it.”

“Y—you can’t control it,” Skeeter whispers. Her eyes open, shiny with tears. Theo wonders academically what her vision was. Theo knows exactly what his was when his father cast that spell on him, although he suspects that his vision of his mother dying might be replaced with one of Harry dying now. “I didn’t hear you make an oath or say anything when you cast that spell. And if I’m going to see it anyway, why shouldn’t I go ahead and write the articles?”

Theo smiles. She’s bluffing, but it’s a rather good bluff. He can admire an opponent who tries this kind of thing, for all that she won’t win. “The spell obeys the caster’s will. I don’t want you to write articles about Harry. So that’s what you’ll see if you do. Try it. Take out a piece of parchment and put a quill to it with the intention of writing something about Harry.”

Skeeter swallows, and doesn’t move.

“What?” Theo asks softly. “It was only a bluff, surely? A joke? Something you don’t believe I can do?”

Skeeter looks away from him and wipes at her wet cheeks. “All right,” she whispers. “You win. But you should know that I’ll hate you forever for this. What if I write articles about you?”

“Well, anything that mentions or refers to Harry is still out,” Theo says helpfully, while he shoves his chair back and stands from the table. “And I can’t imagine that I’m of much interest to you otherwise. You could still try, of course. It might be interesting to see what you come up with him.”

Skeeter stares at him, still trembling. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“I imagine you don’t understand anyone whose primary motives aren’t fame and money,” Theo says, and smiles at her, and walks out of the Three Broomsticks.

As he walks up the path to the school, he finds he’s glad that his father used that particular curse to make Theo stop asking about his mother. Nothing about how Theo couldn’t defy him in general, or had to follow the Dark Lord, or had to obey him.

Now Theo is free to do whatever he needs to do to ensure Harry’s safety without seeing a vision of horror in front of him every time he does it. He’s smiling as he sticks his hands in his robe pockets and wanders off to find Harry.

*

“What is going on?”

Theo keeps his voice low as Professor Snape guides him up to the Headmaster’s office with an iron grip on his arm. Professor Snape pauses to give him a quick, sardonic look before the door.

“You were the one who brought this on yourself, boy. I told you to distance yourself from Potter. But you were so sure that you knew better.” Professor Snape shakes his head. “This is one of the consequences.” And he knocks on the Headmaster’s door and ushers Theo inside before Theo can even protest.

“Ah, there you are, Severus. Mr. Nott.”

Dumbledore’s greeting is a lot cooler for Theo than it is for Professor Snape. Theo reckons he’s supposed to be worried about that, but his eyes are too busy darting among the other people present in the office. Madame Maxime (standing against a wall that Theo is sure must have space-expansion charms on it). Karkaroff. Ludo Bagman and Percy Weasley, who is apparently standing in for Barty Crouch yet again. A small silver-haired girl who looks a lot like Delacour. Granger. Chang.

A cold feeling settles into the bottom of his stomach. He and Harry have practiced their swimming, and the water-breathing spells that will let Harry stay beneath the surface for an hour, but they thought it would be Harry’s broom that the merfolk took, or maybe his Invisibility Cloak. Not people.

Granger glances at Theo and then down at the floor, biting her lip. Dumbledore claps his hands and beams at them all. “Now, as you may or may not know, the Second Task will involve the Champions diving into the lake to retrieve things they’ll sorely miss from the merfolk village there. They will have one hour to find you. But don’t worry, you won’t be in any danger! It’s simply that they won’t receive as many points if they don’t fetch you and return within the hour. You’ll be under a sleep spell until your heads clear the surface.”

The little Delacour girl looks confused, but Madame Maxime is translating for her in French. Granger smiles. “I understand, professor. Of course.”

Chang nods, too. Theo supposes she’s there for Diggory, and, well, probably likes the thought of Diggory coming to rescue her, the Hufflepuff in shining metaphorical armor that he is.

“Mr. Nott?”

Theo becomes aware that he’s the only one who hasn’t nodded or otherwise indicated approval of the plan. He stares at Dumbledore. “Are the Champions aware that we’re in no danger?”

“Oh, it’s obvious if you think about it!” Granger breaks in before Dumbledore can answer. “The Champions consented to being entered, they agreed to be in danger, but we didn’t, so they can’t—”

“My Champion didn’t.”

Granger shuts up, at least. She flushes, too. Theo turns back to Dumbledore, glad that he’s made his point. “So the Champions aren’t aware,” he says, mind flashing through the various ways that he might be able to get a message off to Harry before the Task begins. It’s a pity that he doesn’t know how to cast a Patronus, given that he’s read they can act as messengers.

“No. Of course, their urgency might be somewhat diminished if they knew,” says Bagman, and then rubs his hands together and chuckles as if he’s made some kind of joke worthy of the name.

Theo turns and stares at the man in silence, and Bagman flushes heavily.

“I am afraid,” Dumbledore says with a lack of sincerity so marked that Karkaroff looks at him oddly, “that we cannot allow you to tell Mr. Potter, either, Mr. Nott. He cannot have an unfair advantage over the other Champions. If you decline to be placed at the bottom of the lake, you will be put under a sleeping spell but kept here, and Mr. Weasley will be chosen as what Mr. Potter will most miss.”

It’s a threat that works on multiple levels, especially since Theo has no idea when that sleep spell would end. He inclines his head without looking away from the spot on Dumbledore’s robes he’s chosen to avoid Legilimency. “Then I’ll remember that he doesn’t know, and I consent to the sleep spell.”

Dumbledore pauses, as if expecting something more than that, but Theo has locked his blandest expression on his face, and Dumbledore won’t be able to find a way around that unless he manages to catch Theo’s eye, which he won’t be permitting. In the end, Dumbledore sighs and draws his wand.

Theo doesn’t try to fight the spell as it settles around him, thick and muffling, but he clings to the knowledge that Harry doesn’t know, and that he can be there for Harry instead of Weasley, and that—

That he is asleep.

*

“Theo!”

Harry’s voice is shouting right in his ear. Theo splutters back to life, and finds himself staring up at the brilliant sun. They’ve reached the surface of the lake, and Harry is swimming towards the shore with a stroke so strong that Theo feels himself hauled along for a bit. Then he manages to win free of Harry’s arms—with a little reluctance—and starts swimming himself. Harry gives him an anxious smile and shakes his head. The gills from the spells he studied break apart into drops of water on his skin and slide into the lake.

“You’re all right?” Theo studies Harry as best as he can for wounds while they’re still swimming.

“Yeah.” Harry glances at him. “It was a good thing I read that book on water creatures, though. I was able to get away from the grindylows myself and stop them from attacking Delacour. That way, I didn’t feel obliged to rescue her little sister when I got down there and saw her.”

Theo carefully doesn’t roll his eyes at the notion of helping Delacour. She’s not competition to Harry, he reminds himself. She’s just someone else caught up in this Tournament, and that she volunteered for it wouldn’t matter that much to Harry once he saw the little girl in danger. Because that’s who Harry is.

That’s the only reason Theo has a chance with him at all.

“I wanted to let you know about the sleep spell and that we wouldn’t really be in danger,” Theo mutters as they finally reach the shore. He can see Madam Pomfrey waiting for them with a large blanket, and he has to say this before he gets swaddled and swept away by the mediwitch. “But Dumbledore said he would put me to sleep so I couldn’t tell you and put Weasley in my place. I didn’t want that to happen, especially when he might have forgotten to wake me up soon.”

Harry’s hand finds Theo’s and grips it crushingly. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispers. “I understand.”

Madam Pomfrey forcibly separates them as Theo comes up on the shore. Theo leans against Harry for a second anyway, and then sits back and looks around. Granger is already sitting next to Krum, shivering and talking to him. He can see Delacour still swimming towards the shore with the little girl—her sister?—in her arms, and Diggory is surfacing with Chang.

Harry got back second, it seems. But he won’t care about the points. His eyes are bright as he watches Theo, and Madam Pomfrey begins bustling around with more blankets and Warming Charms and Drying Charms and hot chocolate that Theo knows will be magically sweetened and heated.

Then Dumbledore says something to the other judges, and Harry turns his head and narrows his eyes as he stares at the Headmaster.

Theo smiles. He doesn’t mean to encourage dissension between Harry and the Headmaster, exactly—they still have to fight on the same side of their war—but it’s good to see Harry being more wary of the man and thinking more critically.

Anything that leads to a greater chance of survival for Harry is something to be encouraged, as far as Theo is concerned.

Chapter Text

“I need you to teach me spells that I can use against bullies.”

Theo sits up immediately from the couch where he’s been leaning against Harry, half-asleep, while Harry works on an essay for Care of Magical Creatures. “Weasley and Granger again?” he asks softly.

Harry blinks at him, then shakes his head. “Oh, no. They’ve just been quiet really, since the Second Task. I think they were upset that neither of them was my hostage, but they haven’t said so.” His face hardens. “No. There’s a little Ravenclaw third-year named Luna Lovegood I came across some people bullying the other day. Ones in her own House.”

“The one they call Loony?’

Harry glares at him. Theo lifts his hands. “I didn’t say I called her that. I just wanted to know who you meant.”

“Yeah. Her.” Harry kicks his legs where they’re dangling of the edge of the couch and glares at the far wall. “How can people in her own House do that? And students two years older, too? They’re supposed to protect her.”

Theo doesn’t point out that Gryffindor has turned on Harry often enough, with the Tournament and the Heir of Slytherin thing, because he doesn’t think it would be productive. “All right. Do you want to convince the bullies to leave her alone? Stop calling her names? Stop stealing her things? What?”

“They steal her things?”

“Yes. I’ve seen her walking around barefoot a lot.”

Harry’s glare is even more murderous now, his crooked fingers rippling up his knee in a long scratch. Theo waits. Then Harry says, “I want you to teach me curses.”

Theo blinks. “What kind?”

Harry stares at him for a second. Theo stares back. “I can’t just know which ones you want without being told,” he points out finally. “That’s not the way silent communication works.”

“No. Just—you didn’t even balk when I said I wanted to learn curses, you just assumed that what I wanted was going to be a good idea and you could trust me to—” Harry grabs Theo and hauls him closer, half-draping him over Harry’s chest and legs. “I love you,” he says fiercely, and kisses Theo so hard that Theo’s head spins.

Theo manages to pull back with a slight gasp and say, “I do, too,” because all his plans and strategies of keeping the words to himself a little longer mean nothing around Harry bloody Potter, as bloody usual.

Harry laughs aloud and smiles into Theo’s eyes, petting his hair for a second. Then he leans back against the couch. Theo manages to arrange himself so that he’s sitting more upright and neither of them are leaning against each other strongly enough to affect their breathing, but he can do nothing about the wild, wide grin on his face.

“I want to know curses that will convince them not to do it again,” Harry mutters. “The name-calling, the stealing, the laughing at her, any of it. That happen whenever one of them starts to bully her.”

Theo sits up a little more. “You’re talking about Contingency Curses. They only activate when someone starts to do something named in the curse,” he adds, because Harry is frowning at him. Theo makes a mental note to get some of his own books out of storage, collections of stories and novels that are written from a magical perspective. They’d probably appeal to Harry, as well as teaching him more vocabulary.

“Yeah. Those. Can you do it?”

“We’ll have to study them for a while before we cast them,” Theo warns him. “They’re complicated and they take a lot of power. And some arrangements beforehand, like practicing casting them in unison.”

“That’s all right.” Harry’s eyes are wide and bright. “But in the meantime, we’ll at least give Luna somewhere to go where she doesn’t feel scared.”

*

“Hello, Harry Potter. Hello, Harry’s Theodore.”

Theo twitches a little at the address. “I prefer Theo,” he says.

Lovegood’s brow wrinkles a little, and her blue eyes, which seem to be perpetually staring at something else, focus on him for what Theo thinks is the first time since they’ve been in school together. “But the name you were given is Theodore.”

“I don’t call you Loony. Don’t call me Theodore.”

Harry stares at him from behind Lovegood as he closes the door of the classroom they brought her to- not their private one, another one Theo has decorated and they’ve Transfigured a few pieces of furniture for—but Lovegood just thinks that through before nodding. “All right,” she says.

Harry relaxes and walks over to sit down in one of the chairs near the wall. Theo sits down on a couch beneath an illusion of seashells. He twitches a little again as Lovegood sits down right next to him. If anything, his position on the couch was meant to be a clue to Harry that Theo would like to sit with him, but subtlety is wasted on Gryffindors, and Lovegood is the kind of person who does what she likes. “I wanted to bring you here to discuss the people who bully you, Luna.”

“Nargles are quite mischievous,” Lovegood says.

“Huh?”

Harry is better and better with metaphor the more Theo works with him, but not always. Theo leans forwards and asks, “What would you say is their favorite kind of mischief, Luna?”

His gamble to use her first name instead of her last one pays off, or maybe she just isn’t formal. Luna frowns a little and then says, “They take my clothes to line their nests, you know. And they like to enchant my food so that it floats off my fork. They eat mistletoe berries, but perhaps they aren’t very nutritious.”

Harry looks ready to explode, and Theo thinks he knows why. Harry is—weird about his food. He looks really carefully at anything he puts on his plate, he doesn’t like other people touching it, and he eats it fast. That’s when he doesn’t just skip his meals altogether.

Theo lifts a hand, and Harry manages to calm down enough to nod jerkily instead of getting really upset. Theo smiles at him and turns back to Luna. He’s willing to join in making the lives of Luna’s bullies hell if Harry wants that to happen. He just needs more information first. “And would you say that the nargles live mostly around you? Or do they spread out and fly from corner to corner? In the Great Hall, say?”

Luna pauses. Theo waits. He hopes she doesn’t go off on one of her irrelevant tangents, but there’s not much he can do if she does, except wait for her to come back to the subject.

“They’re mostly around me,” Luna says, slowly, suspiciously. Theo wishes he knew whether that’s because she doesn’t think they’ll help her even with more information, or because she doesn’t like being made to abandon her metaphors. But it doesn’t matter that much. “And at my table in the Great Hall.”

Ravenclaws, then. That makes it a little easier. Theo doesn’t have friends in that House, although some of them he doesn’t mind, and he won’t cause the kind of chaos that he would if he were defending Luna against Slytherin bullies. “Thanks, Luna. That’s all I needed to know.” He stands up.

“It is?” Harry stands up with him, and Luna joins in enthusiastically, maybe thinking they’re playing some sort of game. Harry is peering at Theo and squinting, though. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“No, Theo. You’re going to tell me the reason.”

A heavy pressure like a building storm gathers around Harry’s shoulders. Theo blinks at him. “You want to know?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d want to,” Theo says frankly. Luna is humming under her breath and looking back and forth between them. “Because you’d disapprove of some of the spells I want to use. This way, you don’t have to worry about it.”

Harry is quiet for a long moment. Theo waits. He expected immediate anger or denial, one way or the other, Harry getting upset about the implication that Theo is going to curse some Ravenclaws or Harry saying that he does want to worry. Not this silence, which seems like Harry’s struggling.

Harry finally swallows and says, “I think some people need to suffer a little, in order to keep others from suffering a lot.”

Theo stares at him, and experiences an intense desire to kiss him, which he only doesn’t indulge because Luna is here.

But then again—

“Luna, would you mind turning your back for a bit so Harry and I can kiss each other?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Luna says. “There are lots of stones over here that might attract a Blibbering Humdinger.” She wanders towards the far wall of the room, which Theo has decorated as a motif of Transfigured shells.

Harry is blushing and spluttering as Theo drags him forwards. “Theo! You know that we shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t?” Theo asks delicately, his hands resting on Harry’s shoulders.

Harry sighs heavily, and leans forwards to kiss him. Theo grips him and draws him close and shows with his tongue and hands and body exactly how much he appreciates Harry being a little more morally flexible than he used to be.

Harry is blushing bright red when he draws back, but that’s all right. Theo winks at him and turns to Luna, who is still studying the wall. “You can turn around again if you want to, Luna.”

“No, that’s all right,” she says vaguely. “I’m following a vein and it might disappear if I look away.”

Theo could get used to Harry spending time around Luna Lovegood.

*

“I can’t believe that Cho is one of the bullies.”

“We have plenty of evidence,” Theo begins, leaning towards Harry but keeping his voice down. They’re at the bottom of one of the staircases that leads directly up to Ravenclaw Tower, and it won’t do to be spotted or overheard.

“Not what I meant.” Harry frowns at him and looks back at the staircase again. “I just meant I’m disappointed. Cho is—she seemed nicer, that’s all.”

Theo shrugs. In his experience, niceness is a façade that gets discarded when it’s convenient. Look at Weasley and Granger, who gave up on being nice to Harry the minute he started pursuing his own path. Or look at Cedric Diggory, who’s lauded as being kind but hasn’t done anything to stop his Housemates from wearing those stupid Potter Stinks badges.

(Speaking of which, Theo needs to do something about those, too).

Harry might be an exception to that, but he’s still waiting with Theo to curse Luna’s bullies. His niceness gets discarded in favor of a higher niceness, maybe.

The greater niceness, Theo thinks, and bites his lip, because there’s no way that he can explain to Harry why he’s laughing.

“Here they come,” Harry says softly. Theo looks up, and yes, there’s a group of Ravenclaw fourth- and fifth-year girls descending the stairs, with some boys trailing behind them, chattering and laughing. In the center of the group are Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, and a girl named Lisa Turpin, who’s in Harry and Theo’s year and participates a lot in stealing Luna’s things, evidently. Coming behind them are Michael Corner and fifth-year Malachi Fawley, who laugh loudly at Luna at meals and mock her.

Theo and Harry also worked on the spells that would let them identify the subtler bullies, but mostly, they just had to use their eyes. The people who laugh the loudest when Luna turns up without shoes or wave their wands at her while she’s eating mostly get away with it because no one else seems to care.

The way that Dumbledore pretends to care about Slytherins but really just wants us to serve his agenda, Theo thinks, and cool anger pours through him. The way that McGonagall was more upset about Harry dating a Slytherin than his being unfairly entered in the Tournament in the first place.

“Ready?” Harry mouths to Theo.

Theo nods. They lift their wands simultaneously. By themselves, neither one of them is powerful enough to cast a Contingency Curse, but they can combine their magic when they cast together, and that’s another thing they’ve worked on. By now, the movements mirroring each other’s are automatic.

“Fortuna si,” Harry whispers, Theo echoing him. He wishes they could cast silently, but neither of them is strong enough for it, and they need the curse to take effect the first time. Luna has already suffered long enough.

The soft glow around the group shows that they’ve succeeded. Technically, this curse will also be laid on the people who don’t bully Luna, but since they don’t, it shouldn’t ever affect them.

Unless they start. Theo is perfectly willing to make the curse wide-ranging. They don’t need to start.

“Consequence returned for consequence,” Theo and Harry chant together softly. They have to speak hurriedly so that the group doesn’t get past them and out of range of their wands, their voices, and the spell itself. “For bullying Luna Lovegood. Consequence returned for consequence.”

Their voices die into silence, and the group of Ravenclaws reaches the bottom of the steps. Theo and Harry duck out of sight, but Theo does pause to wave his wand at Turpin, Corner, and Fawley, the ones who are closest to him.

“Threefold,” he whispers.

It’s not going to take much effect without Harry there to help him, but he still sees the glow shine briefly on the back of their robes. Theo smiles, satisfied.

“Theo.”

Harry sounds deeply disapproving, or as much as he can while still keeping his voice down in a hiss. Theo turns to watch him and widens his eyes. “What?”

“We said that we weren’t going to return the consequences threefold!”

“No, you said that we wouldn’t be powerful enough to do it, and I didn’t contradict you.”

Harry stares at him with his mouth open. Theo looks back innocently. He’s perfectly willing to fight about this, especially as casting that part of the curse by himself means that it probably won’t be effective anyway.

“Why did you want to?” Harry finally asks.

Well, asking for a reason is better than a yelling session. Theo tucks away his own surprise that Harry can be reasonable about something like this, and shrugs. “Some people wouldn’t back off because they’re humiliated a little bit, or might think it’s a joke from someone else, or not connect it to their actions. Threefold consequences punish them more and make them more likely to stop.”

Harry visibly thinks about that for a bit, leaning against the wall beneath the staircase. Theo listens, but doesn’t hear anyone coming, which means he doesn’t need to hurry Harry out of what looks like some deep thought.

“You’d prefer to hurt them badly enough that they never come back at all.”

“Yes. I think that’s the best thing to do if you can. It’s just that sometimes you have powerful enough enemies that it’s not practical.”

From the fierce light in Harry’s eyes, Harry knows exactly who Theo is talking about. But he just nods. “And you want to fight Luna’s enemies for her.”

“For you.” Theo knows he isn’t imagining the way Harry twitches, the way he starts to open his mouth. Theo adds, “I feel sorry for her and I’m glad that we can do something to protect her from the people in her House. But I’ve known for years that she was bullied, and I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t care until you started caring.”

Harry blinks and takes the time to think. Then he motions Theo to follow him down the corridors to their classroom. Theo is glad to go with him. Part of his self-assigned duties is keeping Harry safe, too, and that’s easier to do in a space they know and understand.

When they’re back in the classroom, Harry turns around and says, “You’re the most honest person I know.”

“Despite being a Slytherin?”

“Because of it, I think. You don’t see the point in lying or pretending to care about things or people when you don’t.”

Theo smiles. “No, I don’t.”

“But you’re…” Harry trails off a bit, clearly struggling with how to express it. Theo waits. Harry finally sighs and continues with a face so red that he looks like he has a sunburn. “You’re willing to fight for me and be honest and protect me. Not someone else. Not just yourself. I don’t understand it.”

“If you need me to tell you again how much I value you—”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I just mean I don’t understand how I got so lucky.”

That’s the beating heart of what lies between them, and it’s the kind of thing that they don’t talk about in detail, for fear of finding out that neither of them means it, Theo thinks. But the expression on Harry’s face is wonder bordering on awe, not anger or anything like it, and after a long moment, Theo steps forwards and cups Harry’s cheek.

Harry closes his eyes, and they stand there for some moments, not moving, not trying to snog. Theo thinks this is probably the closest they’ve been to each other for the longest period of time without kissing, or dancing.

He likes it.

Harry sighs and shivers and opens his eyes. “I’m glad I found you now,” he says. “But I sometimes wish you could have been there when I was younger.” He swallows. “I wish you could be there when I go back to the Dursleys’ for the summer.”

Since Harry isn’t going back to the Dursleys’ for the summer, even if Theo has to learn enough about the Muggle world to travel around in it and make a house explode, Theo simply smiles and says, “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I,” Harry says, and his hand closes on Theo’s in a grip as strong as iron.

Theo thinks back to the ways that his father tried to teach him to behave when he was younger. Always wary, always vigilant, never trusting anyone enough to relax around them. But he also tried to teach Theo to be obedient and grateful—to his father, anyway. He never seems to have considered that Theo would take those lessons and turn them against the person who taught them to him.

Somehow, Theo retained enough confidence to trust someone else, to fall in love with someone else instead of just becoming the cold, merciless Dark wizard his father wanted him to be.

He doesn’t know for sure whom he owes that debt to. But he thinks that person is standing right in front of him, and Theo will dedicate the rest of his life to protecting him if need be.

Chapter Text

Theo is entertained to notice the resigned look on Weasley’s face when Harry gets up and comes over to the Slytherin table the next morning. He offers Harry a piece of thickly-buttered toast and asks, “Is Weasley being better about the whole dating a Slytherin thing?”

“Yeah, since you were in the lake,” Harry says, and devours the bread with a fervor that makes the other Slytherins stare at him in horror. Theo looks around, and they find better things to stare at. “I think he’s finally had to accept that we just won’t go back to the way we were. He complains sometimes about specific things, like Crabbe tripping him in the corridor the other day, but that’s different from ranting about slimy snakes. And when he did that the last time, I just got up and walked away.”

Theo nods, pleased. He’s just as happy that things have worked out so Harry can have both his friends and Theo, but Theo never needs to interact with them.

A movement at the Ravenclaw table catches his eye, and he turns his head, smiling. “Here we go, Harry,” he says softly.

Harry looks up with eager eyes as Corner makes a loud remark about “Loony Lovegood” and the food floats off Luna’s fork.

The food promptly jumps off the forks of the nearest two Ravenclaws and slams into their faces. And Corner says in a loud voice that carries even over the gasps, laughter, and shrieks at the table, “I’m an idiot.”

Theo smiles. Harry is bent over laughing into his sleeve. Luna is staring at Corner with wide eyes.

“I didn’t mean to say that!” Corner declares then.

“Who threw that food?” Lisa Turpin, who seems to have been splashed by the backwash of a bowl of porridge, is wiping it off her face and glancing around furiously. She then decides it must be Luna, based on nothing but her own idiocy, Theo thinks. “Loony, if you did that, that I swear—”

Her voice cuts off, and for a second her hand reaches up to clasp her throat. Then she stands up and declares, “I still sleep with the teddy that my mummy bought me when I was three, and I’m afraid of the dark.”

There’s a series of louder gasps this time. Theo thinks he knows why. Turpin is popular even among the Slytherins, and she gets away with a lot because she manages to smile and act as though she knows secrets that you don’t know. And now she’s just revealed one of those secrets to the inhabitants of the entire Great Hall.

Turpin’s face goes a deep purple color, and she starts to cry. Then she turns and stumbles out of the Great Hall.

The laughter and speculation are building up to a thunderous noise when Dumbledore stands up and fires off a gleaming spell from his wand. It rocks the Great Hall with the noise if makes, and Dumbledore frowns around at everyone else. Silence falls. Theo smirks into his cup of pumpkin juice, and feels Harry lean against his side for a second. He glances at him. Harry’s eyes are sparkling.

If he disapproved of me casting the threefold consequences spell, he doesn’t now.

“The behavior at the Ravenclaw table this morning is obviously the result of a curse,” Dumbledore says quietly. He’s staring hard at the Slytherin table, but the seventh-year Slytherins, Theo is delighted to see. Of course, if Dumbledore knows that it’s the result of a Contingency Curse, he probably assumes no one under that age has the power to cast them. “It would be better for the one who did this to remove the curse at once and apologize. The punishment will not be as severe if you do.”

“Headmaster.”

To Theo’s utter surprise, it’s Luna who’s speaking up. He tenses. If she reveals them after all they’ve done for her—

But Dumbledore is already turning to face Luna, and there’s no way to tell her that. “Yes, Miss Lovegood?”

“The people who acted like that or got food in their faces were all laughing at me and trying to take my food away,” Luna says calmly. “What’s their punishment for bullying? Will they have to serve as many detentions as the person who cursed them?”

She’s looking at Dumbledore with an extraordinarily clear and straightforward gaze, but she seems mildly interested, at most. Theo stares at her. There’s more courage there than he knew, and more cleverness.

Dumbledore frowns. “Mild pranking and laughing at another student are not punishable offenses in the same way, Miss Lovegood.”

“Oh.” Luna stares at the table.

There’s another murmur this time, and Theo is vastly entertained to see how red Granger’s face is, and how fast she’s speaking to Weasley and Longbottom. Dumbledore, meanwhile, glances around at the seventh-years at all the tables now, including the Ravenclaws, as if he assumes that the House that bullied Luna the most also harbors the people who want to protect her.

Theo idly wonders why Dumbledore doesn’t seem to suspect him and Harry at all. Is it only the age thing? Or is it partially the fact that he assumes Harry is too self-righteous to cast those curses, and Theo would never defend a student in another House?

Maybe a combination of all of them.

Dumbledore sighs heavily when no one makes a move to condemn themselves. “Very well. Please remember that you may come to me at any time if you have a concern about your fellow students or something to report.” He sits back down and bends another heavy look on the seventh-years.

Theo abruptly smiles. Harry glances at him and raises an eyebrow. “I’ve learned not to trust that smile,” he murmurs.

Theo takes his hand and squeezes it. He’s come up with a plan to take advantage of what Dumbledore said and somewhat punish him for refusing Theo sanctuary unless he became a spy, but he’ll have to wait to tell Harry about it until they’re out of the Great Hall.

*

“Harry, my boy, I need to discuss something with you.” To Theo’s delight, Dumbledore is speaking between gritted teeth.

They turn around and smile at him. Well, Harry smiles. Theo’s not sure what Dumbledore would call the expression on his face. After one look at Theo, however, Dumbledore focuses on Harry and asks, “Why are you sending Hedwig to me every day with a list of minor complaints?”

“I don’t think they’re minor, sir,” Harry says, and there’s a quiet dignity about him that makes Theo’s breath catch. “Luna being bullied, a fourth-year Gryffindor struggling in Potions and finding Professor Snape profoundly unhelpful, Snape in general, Moody promising us that we’ll die from Dark curses unless we listen to him—that’s harmful. Those affect students’ health and well-being just as much as magical accidents could.”

“Do you have information about Luna Lovegood’s bullies being cursed?”

Theo wishes he could make some signal to Harry not to look into Dumbledore’s eyes, but Harry just snorts. “I told you that I did, sir. I sent you that detailed list of explanations about what happened to her, including thefts of her things. Her own House! Even when everyone hated me because of losing Gryffindor fifty points or because they thought I was the Heir of Slytherin or I cheated to get into the Tournament, they didn’t do that to me.”

“It’s for Professor Flitwick to handle, Harry. Not for students to take into their hands.”

“Luna did try going to see him, sir. And she had five or six other students speaking against her and being each other’s alibis. He hasn’t done anything about it. Why should she have to suffer?”

Dumbledore looks very old. Theo idly wonders if he’s regretting mistakes in the past, or if he really thinks that nothing that happens to Luna matters, because it’s not like she’s being hunted by the Dark Lord.

There’s been lots of complaining in Slytherin about how much Dumbledore favors the Gryffindors, but except for when Dumbledore took the House Cup away from Slytherin in first year, Theo’s come to realize Dumbledore doesn’t do a lot of favoring of the whole House. Instead, he picks a few people and concentrates on them. Harry is one. Harry is one of the whole reasons the House Cup got taken away from Slytherin in the first place, in fact.

And when Harry stands up to Dumbledore and challenges him on things he’s done wrong or ignored, it has a lot more impact than it would if a random Slytherin or Ravenclaw, or even a Gryffindor, was doing it.

Theo can imagine that some people might have started resenting Harry once they figured out how he’s favored. But not Theo. Because he knows that Dumbledore’s doing it partially so that he can make Harry into a fucking soldier.

“Harry, my boy, I never imagined you felt this way.”

“You didn’t think I would get indignant about my fellow students being bullied?”

Dumbledore clears his throat. “Well, Harry, pardon me for saying so, but you never did before this, until certain…influences…came into your life.” He glances at Theo.

Theo just raises his eyebrows and looks firmly at the purple buttons of Dumbledore’s robes.

“That’s because I was oblivious before,” Harry says, his voice cool. “I shut myself away with Ron and Hermione. They were my whole world. They’re still my friends, but I’ve grown beyond just thinking of nothing else but my friendships. I can think of other people, too.” He pauses. “I thought you’d be pleased at that, sir. That I’m becoming more mature.”

Theo hides his cough, but badly. Dumbledore doesn’t quite glare at him, but his disapproval fills the air with a certain chill. Theo ignores it.

Dumbledore shakes his head. “You’re right, my boy, and I apologize. As you are now more mature, you are ready to hear some of the secrets that I felt it right to keep from you in first year. I need to speak with you alone.”

“I don’t see why Theo can’t come with me.”

“Because I do not trust him,” Dumbledore says, with a firmness and honesty—well, at least it sounds like honesty—that Theo didn’t expect from him. “And I will not speak to you of these secrets with him there.”

Harry sighs and turns to look at Theo, indecision an agony in his eyes. “Do you mind being left out, Theo?”

“I mind because I think that he might hurt you,” Theo says, and ignores the expression of hilarious outrage on Dumbledore’s face. “But no, I don’t think it’s a huge problem.” They both know that Harry will tell him anything important, so all Dumbledore’s secrecy does is delay Theo hearing about it for an hour or so.

Harry flashes him a look of relief and turns to Dumbledore. “All right, sir,” he says. “But just for the record, I think this is an incredibly silly position to take, distrusting Theo just because he’s a Slytherin.”

“My dear boy, it’s not about that…”

Theo watches them go, and shakes his head. Dumbledore could do so many things to earn Harry’s trust back, including showing that he’s able to get past shallow, silly stereotypes of Houses or judging children based on their parents. But he won’t do it. He really does prize keeping secrets over keeping Harry on his side, even if he also favors Harry obscenely.

“Mr. Nott.”

Theo doesn’t let his sudden tension show on his face as he turns around, arching an eyebrow. “Professor Moody?”

“Good, you’re not with Potter,” Moody says, his magical eye and his normal eye for once fixed on the same target—Theo, in this case. “I need to clarify some things with you. Things Potter needs to hear, but he’s been avoiding me.”

Harry’s been avoiding Moody partially on Theo’s advice, but also because he confessed to Theo that the professor’s attempts to speak to him privately, only to drop cryptic hints, made him uncomfortable. He said one Dumbledore was bad enough. This, though…well, Theo is more prepared to both counter any curses Moody throws at him and to sort through the hints that the man might drop.

Theo gives the thin, bland smile that he uses most often when dealing with professors. “Lead the way, sir.”

*

Moody makes several references to “your father, the Death Eater” as he rattles around his office, preparing tea. He seems to be under the impression that Theo is foolish enough to drink the stuff. Theo doesn’t correct him. He just lounges in a chair and nods and says “Hmmm” a lot.

Moody finally sets a cup of tea in front of him, one that smells as though someone’s urinated in it. “Drink up, boy, drink up,” he says, waving a hand, and seizes a cup of tea himself, turning his back for a moment to drop something from his flask into it.

Theo slides his wand to the edge of its holster and flicks it to Vanish his own tea. Then he picks up the cup and does a convincing sipping motion from it as Moody turns around. He knows all about these tricks from dear Father, and neither Veritaserum nor poison are going to take him by surprise.

Moody shows neither surprise nor satisfaction. He just sits down behind his desk, points with one finger at Theo (who does tense despite himself), and says, “You, boy, are a bad influence on Harry Potter.”

“Hmmm,” Theo says.

“I’ve heard all about you from Albus and Minerva.” Moody’s magical eye is zooming around the office again, seemingly full of nervous energy and peering at everything from the shadows in the corners to the Foe-Glass on the wall. “The quiet, sneaky type. You don’t wear your beliefs on your sleeve like Malfoy. That means you could be pretending you don’t believe in blood purity, trying to make it seem as if you’re sympathetic to Potter’s beliefs.”

“Hmmm,” Theo says.

“You know you won’t be allowed to get away with it.” And now both of Moody’s eyes are focused on Theo again, and he’s leaning slightly forwards. Theo wonders if the tea was dosed with a Malleability Potion instead of Veritaserum or poison, the way Moody is reacting. “Corrupting the Chosen One. You’ve picked a stupid target, Nott.” His voice deepens to a rumbling growl. “If you’d been a bit more subtle, gone for friendship instead of dating, you might have got away with it, but you didn’t. And there’s no way that your father will let you date Harry Potter for real.”

Theo could say that he’s fooling his father the same way that he’s fooling Dumbledore and the rest of them, because no one but Harry and Blaise really knows who Theo is, and they see what they want to see instead of the reality. But he sees no need to justify himself to Moody. “Mmmm,” he says.

“Are you listening to me, boy?”

Moody looms over him and tries to intimidate him with height, but Theo just stares at him and says nothing. Moody probably can’t be fooled with lies the way Dumbledore or his father might. He’ll distrust everything Theo says just because of his last name. So Theo chooses silence as his best defense.

Moody finally turns away with a disgusted huff and waves his wand at the door. “Fine. Go away, boy, and remember that you’ll always have someone watching you.” He uncorks his flask to pour some more of whatever drink is in there into his own tea. His magical eye is still firmly fixed on Theo.

“What is it, boy? Think of something you’d like to tell me?”

Theo curses himself internally for letting his eyes widen, but he couldn’t prevent it, not when he recognizes the smell bubbling up from the flask. Polyjuice Potion.

This man is not Alastor Moody.

But there’s no way that Theo can give away that he knows, so he just shakes his head and murmurs, “Thank you for your time and devotion to the cause of protecting Harry, Professor Moody.”

“Moody” chuckles darkly. “Stop looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and get out of here, boy.”

Theo jerks his head down and does that, pretending to be intimidated, pretending that his heart isn’t beating so fast that he feels as though someone is jerking a string in the center of his chest. He manages to get back to the dungeons and stand there with his eyes closed before he allows himself to seriously consider what he now knows.

Moody is an imposter. He is almost certainly the one who put Harry’s name in the Goblet. He has no affection at all for Theo, or Draco, or anyone else who has Death Eater connections, but his interest in Harry can’t be protective or neutral, either.

Theo doesn’t have a name, not yet. But he thinks he has an allegiance.

*

Theo waits for Harry in their sea-themed decorated classroom. He thinks that he’ll have the most important thing to tell Harry, but then the door opens and Harry stumbles in, his eyes so wide they seem to encompass the entire world, his hands groping and fluttering in front of him, and Theo knows he doesn’t.

Theo crosses the floor between them in a few strides and catches Harry close, whispering into his ear. Harry leans against him, trembling.

“What is it?” Theo asks. “What did he tell you?”

“He told me—” Harry chokes. “Theo, he said there’s a prophecy—I’m the only one who can defeat Voldemort, I have to do it or die trying—”

And Harry is crying, and Theo holds him close, sheltering him, while new plans spin to life in his head like falling puzzle pieces to be put into a new order.

Well, Theo thinks, and ruthless, cold determination fills him, hard as his arms around Harry’s shoulders.

We’ll just have to do something about this.

Chapter Text

“I just don’t understand what he thought telling me in private would do,” Harry whispers, after some minutes have gone by. He told the full story, stumbling over his words with tears in between, and Theo just stood with him, smoothing his hands down Harry’s shoulders and not trying to say anything. “He should—he should have understood that I’d go to you right away and tell you.”

Theo takes a deep breath. “I have a theory. You won’t like it.”

“Don’t be like him.” Harry abruptly wrenches himself out of Theo’s arms and glares at him from right there, which is overwhelming, given how much his magic is snapping around him and how close his eyes are. “Don’t think that you have to hold off on telling me the truth because I’m too weak to handle it.”

Theo nods, and speaks. “I think that he thought you would tell me. And I would run away and abandon you. At heart, Dumbledore believes I’m a coward and out to save my own skin. Someone like that wouldn’t be able to bear the revelation that you’re in personal danger from the Dark Lord, and would only think about the danger to themselves.”

Harry opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t say Theo is lying, though, which Theo was half-afraid would happen. He shuts his eyes and seems to think it through. Theo moves back towards him, but doesn’t touch him.

“I—what is his motivation?” Harry finally whispers. “Why does he think that you’re going to betray me? Why does he want me away from you so badly?”

“My father is a Death Eater,” Theo says softly, holding Harry’s eyes. “His distrust of me isn’t irrational.”

“But you’ve never—”

“No. And I only said it wasn’t irrational, never that it was right, or good.” Theo takes a deep breath. “There’s the fact that I would know the prophecy afterwards, of course, and after that I could carry it to my father or the Dark Lord. But he probably had contingency plans in place for that as well.” A well-placed Obliviate from someone of Dumbledore’s power, and Theo would forget just enough about his dating Harry to ensure that he wasn’t a threat. Not too much, because that wouldn’t make sense if Harry tried to approach him and talk to him in the future.

But Harry would cut back on that, too, furious and embarrassed that he’d been cast aside. Theo has to admire Dumbledore’s cleverness and restraint even as it makes him boil inside.

“So he wants me alone?” Harry whispers.

“I think he would be delighted if you went back to the status quo at the beginning of this year, with Weasley and Granger your main friends—”

“My only friends, you mean.” Harry lifts his head, and his eyes are bright and faraway at the same time. “They were great friends. But not the kind you are.”

Theo manages a smile that he hopes doesn’t make him look sick to his stomach. “Neither Weasley nor Granger regularly think about snogging you, right?”

Harry’s eyes warm and shine even as he shakes his head. “No, I meant people who try to figure out what’s being hidden from me and tell me the truth. Ron is great, but he just doesn’t see that kind of thing. And Hermione would never think to look for it on Dumbledore’s part.”

Theo nods. “But I also have some proof that Dumbledore might not be as all-knowing as you think it is.”

“What is it?”

“Professor Moody is an imposter drinking Polyjuice Potion.”

Harry freezes, staring at him. Then his face colors with what Theo thinks is anger. “What?” he snaps, and takes a step towards Theo, grabbing his shoulders. “How in the world could Dumbledore not know that?”

“I don’t know,” Theo says, and then outlines all the pieces of evidence he has. In retrospect, they don’t seem like that much. If it wasn’t for the fact that someone had to put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire, Theo might have discarded the idea altogether.

But Harry believes him. From the way his fists clench, he wants to go curse “Moody” right now. But to Theo’s relief, Harry shakes his head and just paces in a circle instead, swearing and sending sparks flying out of his wand.

“Dumbledore is one of Moody’s best friends,” Harry says at last. “Really old friends. Multiple people told me that. Do you think he doesn’t know? Or he knows and he’s ignoring it for some reason?”

“I don’t know.” Once again, Theo thinks, he doesn’t want to completely turn Harry away from the only wizard the Dark Lord ever feared. But he can’t just give the man a free hand to manipulate Harry, either, which is what Weasley and Granger would unknowingly have handed him. “But there is the fact that Moody’s been retired for at least five or six years. If Dumbledore hasn’t seen him in that time, he might have just reckoned that Moody had changed.”

“He fucking gave him permission to cast Unforgivables on us!”

“I know,” Theo says quietly. “And I’m ready to do whatever you need me to do, including take him down or report him to Dumbledore or try and expose him for what he really is. I just want you to be able to see all perspectives—”

All the air goes out of him as Harry tackles him. Theo’s arms pinwheel for a long moment, but then he catches himself on the wall, and Harry is still hanging onto him, hug so fierce that Theo swears he can feel his ribs creaking.

“Thank you,” Harry whispers into his hair. “For trusting me, for just—telling me instead of running away or thinking this is something you should keep to yourself—”

It’s on the tip of Theo’s tongue to tell Harry this is the minimum that someone should do, but he doesn’t really want to sound like he’s criticizing Harry’s friends or downplaying what matters to Harry. So he just holds Harry close and marvels at the fact that things he considers normal are the ones that win Harry’s undying loyalty.

“You’re welcome,” he whispers back.

*

Theo waits near the entrance to the Great Hall, his wand in his hand and shining cold clarity settling into his mind. The plan Harry came up with is brilliant, but it’s up to Theo to carry it out with a minimum of fuss. Harry has the raw power, but not the familiarity with potions or Switching Charms that it requires.

“Moody” walks past Theo, dragging the wooden stump of a leg that he probably stole from the actual Moody and discoursing loudly with McGonagall about something a Slytherin did in his class the other day. McGonagall’s face is pinched as she listens. Maybe it will help their plan that a lot of the professors don’t seem to like the imposter, either.

Theo takes a deep breath and concentrates on “Moody’s” flask, hyper-aware at the same time of the closed flask hanging from his own belt. Then he flicks his wand and thinks the incantation of the Switching Charm as hard as he can. It has to be cast silently, or something is going to go wrong. Theo’s sure of that.

He practiced for a week, and he got it right every time. That has to mean that he can get it right now.

He practiced it silently, too, Theo tells his doubts, and feels the flask at his belt tremble. He shrinks back into the shadows, watching as “Moody” passes through the doors. Then he moves a full three turns of the corridor away before he dares to uncap his flask.

Theo smiles. Polyjuice Potion fills the flask and sends its sullen smell into the air. Theo has to crush a surprisingly Gryffindor impulse to take it himself and walk into the Great Hall as Moody, accusing the other of being the imposter.

What matters is that Moody’s flask is now filled with Sweetbreath Draught, which is used to clean out your mouth after a hangover. The consistency and look is roughly that of Polyjuice. The smell is different, though. Theo and Harry have to hope that Moody isn’t paranoid enough to examine his flask every time he takes a drink, or their plan won’t work. “Moody” will get undercover before he can revert back.

They also have to make sure that “Moody” doesn’t leave the Great Hall for at least an hour, because they have to assume the worst cast is true and he took a drink of Polyjuice right before Theo made the switch. But that will be up to Harry.

Theo straightens his shoulders and walks into the Great Hall. By now, no one thinks it unusual for him to wink across the Hall at the Gryffindor table, or for Harry to give him a wide grin in return.

But if all goes well, Theo thinks, as he sits down at the Slytherin table and serves himself some sausages, then they’re going to be treated to a sight they’ll never forget.

*

About forty minutes later, “Moody” takes a casual drink from his flask and glances around the Hall. He scowls at Draco. Then his magical eye moves on to Theo, and narrows.

Theo looks innocently back. He’s not sure if the imposter can see the Polyjuice in the flask on his belt. He wanted to keep it nearby so that no one could accuse him or Harry of making this up or claim that they were the ones using the Polyjuice. But there is the possibility that “Moody” could see through the flask with his enchanted eye and recognize what’s in it.

If so, then Harry is going to spring into action to stop him, the instant he tries to leave the Great Hall.

A second later, “Moody” chokes and grips his throat. Theo squints. He doesn’t think it’s his imagination that it’s swelling and changing shape under the imposter’s clutching hand. Theo conceals a smile.

“Alastor? Are you quite all right?” Dumbledore is leaning over from the end of the table, an expression of concern on his face.

“Not choking on something, are you?” adds Professor Snape, looking very much as if he hopes for that. Theo cocks his head. Maybe Professor Snape will be their ally if it looks like “Moody” is trying to sneak off somewhere.

“No, no,” “Moody” says thickly, and coughs. Theo smiles. A thick, hoarse voice is a good disguise to conceal the way that a voice changes when Polyjuice begins fading, but not good enough to get Moody out of here. “Perhaps some kind of sickness, though. Best to see Poppy as soon as possible.” He stands up.

“I’m right here, Alastor,” Madam Pomfrey says, and hastily stands from the far end of the table, undoing the napkin that she’s knotted around her neck. “Please—everyone, move out of the way, I need room—”

“Moody” falls back a step, his magical eye darting around. Theo also doesn’t think it’s his imagination that the eye trembles for a second at the far end of its orbit, as if the face can no longer contain it. “Best to go up to the infirmary, Poppy—not have to—”

“But you’re so important to the school, Professor Moody!” Harry is on his feet, face radiating concern. “The best Defense Against the Dark Arts professor we’ve ever had! We need to make sure that you haven’t been cursed by an enemy!”

“Silly to wait to cast a diagnostic charm, Alastor—”

“I must agree with our esteemed medwitch,” Dumbledore says cheerfully, and stares at “Moody.” “Just clear off that portion of the table, Filius, Severus, if you would—”

And everyone in the Great Hall, or at least a decent portion of the students and all the professors, are watching at the moment when “Moody’s” peg leg falls off and a new leg sprouts in its place. The magical eye takes the same path a second later. “Moody” now has two pale blue eyes, and sandy hair sprouting across his forehead, and a face twisting in a way that seems to make the scars drop off into the air.

A lot of people scream. The imposter spends a moment on his knees, heaving with what seems to be shock and exhaustion, while the professors surround him and stare at him. But then he springs to his feet and aims his wand across the Great Hall.

Straight at Harry.

Harry, luckily, is already on his feet from jumping up before, and he rushes out of the mass of crowding Gryffindors, his wand in his hand. Theo watches with fear and pride thundering through him as Harry dodges the imposter’s first curse and then casts a shield that takes care of the second. When a third one comes at him, he rolls under the Gryffindor table and uses an offensive spell of his own at the imposter’s legs.

For a second, the imposter tumbles to the floor, but he’s back up in another breath and aiming his wand. “Avada Kedavra!” he yells, strongly enough for Theo to hear it above all the screams in the Great Hall.

No—

It’s all Theo has time to think, before Harry Summons the entire Gryffindor table into the path of the curse. The green light dies, the table falls to the floor cracked in two, and someone finally Disarms the imposter and Stuns him. Theo swallows and edges out from behind the Slytherin table.

He meant to look cool and collected as he walked up to Harry, but that changes at the first sight of Harry’s wide eyes and pale face. He crosses the Great Hall in a few swift strides, grabbing his boyfriend close. Harry leans his face against Theo’s shoulder and murmurs a few reassurances, stroking down Theo’s arm with one hand.

“Mr. Potter! Explain this! What did you do?”

Snape is right behind them, because of course he is. Theo turns around, and gives Snape a glimpse of the boy he carries around on the inside, the boy who learned curses and survived his father’s torture. The Head of Slytherin takes a step back before looking enraged at himself for doing so.

But Theo has achieved what he wanted, which is for Snape to stop accusing Harry. He turns around with his arm still linked in Harry’s and surveys the Great Hall.

The imposter is lying slack-jawed near the edge of the professors’ table. Dumbledore is standing over him with his wand in hand and a furious expression on his face. McGonagall is right behind him, adding the finishing touches to some complicated dome-shaped spell over the imposter that Theo has never seen before. Madam Pomfrey has her hand to her mouth; Professor Flitwick appears to be holding her arm and murmuring soothing words.

And the students are variously staring at the professors, staring at Theo and Harry, screaming, and demanding to be told what happened. Granger is the loudest of the last group, yelling almost in Harry’s face from a meter away. Harry is ignoring her entirely, holding Snape’s gaze.

“It appears that someone was impersonating Professor Moody,” Dumbledore says with finality. He Summons the wooden leg and magical eye where they’ve fallen and shakes his head. “Defense Against the Dark Arts classes are canceled for today and tomorrow. Students, please return to your common rooms. Prefects, escort them. Heads of House, do your duty by your students and then come to my office, please.”

Theo rolls his eyes when he notices that McGonagall hurries out after Dumbledore, floating the imposter inside the dome, instead of attending to her Gryffindors. The Gryffindor prefects are shouting loudly and ineffectually. Neither Harry nor Theo—or half of the House—pays them any mind. At least Snape has to go attend to the Slytherins and can’t do anything but glare for a minute.

“What happened?” Granger is still insisting, now pulling on Harry’s elbow.

Harry sighs and says, “I’ll tell you later, Hermione.” He nods to Weasley, and to Longbottom, who’s watching him with some concern, in the moments before Professor Sinistra sweeps up to them.

“Mr. Potter, Mr. Nott, if you would come with me to the Headmaster’s office, please,” she says briskly.

Theo expected a summons like this, which is why neither he nor Harry tried to follow their Houses. He nods and makes sure the flask of Polyjuice is hanging from his belt before he grips Harry’s hand. “Ready?” he mutters.

“Yes,” Harry says, and smiles. He still looks a little shaken, but that’s fine, when he almost died. Theo could wish for more fear, honestly, so that Harry will see he doesn’t have to go up against his enemies alone in the future.

“But what happened?”

“I will tell you later, Hermione,” Harry says, and maybe that finally gets through to her or maybe she sees the flash of exasperation in his eyes, because she nods and falls back so that Professor Sinistra can lead them away.

“I do expect a full explanation, Harry,” she says.

Theo keeps his voice low as they leave the Great Hall. “Do you want to tell them the whole thing?”

“The thing with Moody, sure,” Harry says. He’s practically whispering, which Theo thinks is a good idea. Sure, Professor Sinistra might not tell Dumbledore what they say, but maybe she will. “Not the rest of it. Not yet. Until—we can think through it more and see what he might say.”

Professor Sinistra probably thinks they mean Moody. Theo knows Harry means Dumbledore. He takes Harry’s hand and squeezes it, and then just leaves their fingers entwined as they walk up to Dumbledore’s office.

Best to let the Headmaster know right away that they have no intention of giving up on each other.

Chapter Text

“Why did you suspect that Professor Moody was using Polyjuice, Harry?”

“Theo smelled that potion when Moody took Theo to his office to talk to him.”

Theo has to smile at the expression that crosses Dumbledore’s face when Harry says that. But he can’t watch it as much as he’d like, because he has to keep his eyes aimed downwards and away from any chance Dumbledore can use Legilimency on him.

Sometimes caution is a pain.

“And you decided…” Dumbledore sighs. “Well, you were right, so I cannot fault your instincts. But I wish you had come to me instead of deciding that you needed to handle this problem on your own, Harry. It was reckless and dangerous.”

Theo would like to say many things to that, but he feels the magic boiling on the surface of Harry’s skin a second before Harry, unexpectedly, starts saying some of them.

“What would you have done, sir?” Harry asks, softly, and rhythmically clenching his fists at his side. “Would you have believed me? Or would you have told me how disappointed you were in me for trusting the word of a Death Eater’s son?”

“Harry,” Dumbledore says in surprise, at the same time as Snape’s hiss and McGonagall’s “Mr. Potter!” come from different corners of the Headmaster’s office. Sprout and Flitwick have been dismissed to watch over "Moody" and call the Aurors.

“I don’t think you would have,” Harry says. “I trust Theo, and I know that you told me about the prophecy because you thought it would make him run away in fear for his own life. Well, he hasn’t. He’s staying, and he’s acting a damn sight more brave than some other people in this room—”

“Potter!” Snape thunders, and Theo can feel Harry’s flinch. He seems to do that around tall men with loud voices, which isn’t a surprise if some of the things he’s told Theo about the Muggles are true. “You will apologize to the Headmaster this instant!”

Harry turns a little to the side. Theo is waiting for him, and braces Harry, shoulder to shoulder. Then Harry draws a calming breath that probably gets rid of the impulse to shout back at Snape and says, “No.”

“Potter—”

“None of you are even talking about what it means that this person who impersonated Moody just tried to kill me!” Harry snaps. For a moment, the books on Dumbledore’s shelves rattle in place, and the silver instruments on his desk chime like glasses clinking together, but Theo presses himself hard into Harry’s side, and it passes. “Or that he’s probably the one who put my name in the Goblet, or that he was an imposter in the first place! You just want to accuse me and Theo of things! Why? Why aren’t you talking about this?”

There’s a long moment during which the adults exchange glances. Theo does notice, with some interest, that McGonagall looks unhappy. He wonders if that’s because she wanted to tell Harry about the imposter or just because she thinks Harry’s being disrespectful.

Dumbledore finally says, “You no longer need to worry about that, Harry. That business will be handled by the Aurors.”

Theo laughs. More than one gaze comes shooting straight at him. Theo ignores that. “And you think that treating Harry like a child after you’ve been treating him like an adult is going to work, Headmaster? Forcing him to compete in the Tournament, to bear the burden of the prophecy? But this is too far? For that matter, you wanted me to join the Dark Lord and become a spy for you. Why is that acceptable but telling us the truth about Moody isn’t?”

“Albus!” McGonagall gasps.

“Why did you tell Potter of the prophecy?” Snape hisses. Theo squints towards him while not really lifting his head. He knows that he’s got to avoid Snape’s eyes as well as the Headmaster’s, and Snape tends to be obscure. But he seems afraid to Theo.

“I could not get Harry out of the contract that required he compete,” Dumbledore whispers. He sounds sad, and sincere, but Theo doesn’t believe him. “And I am simply trying to spare him from adult responsibilities he need not handle.”

“Why don’t you answer Theo about why you wanted him to become a spy?”

“My dear boy—”

“I just want to hear an answer, sir. Or a reason why you can’t explain that. But you don’t get to just duck the question.”

Theo’s quiet, but he hopes that he’s conveying his pride to Harry as best he can with the press of his shoulder and ribs. Harry leans back in response, but he doesn’t take his eyes from Dumbledore.

Finally, the Headmaster shakes his head a little and murmurs, “Surely you can see for yourself that he’s been a bad influence on you, Harry? Alienating you from your friends, encouraging you to take action against professors instead of coming to me, pushing you to use Darker magic than you have before.”

“Given that I had to act against a professor in my first year and burned him when I touched him, and no one believed anything I said about it when I did try to tell them, that’s a little rich, sir.”

Dumbledore doesn’t know what to do, from the look of him. Indecisive because his little puppet has finally started talking back, Theo thinks, beyond satisfied, and leans a little harder than ever on Harry.

“But you don’t deny that Mr. Nott has alienated you from your friends?”

Harry sighs. “Being in the Tournament alienated me from Ron, sir. And we did have some arguments about it, but we’ve repaired things as best we can. I do have room for more than just two friends in my life. If you think I don’t, then I think you’re the one who should worry about it.”

“Mr. Nott’s father is a Death Eater,” Dumbledore says, in a way that tells Theo honesty isn’t his first choice. “He could be influencing you in ways that you have never considered.”

“And so Theo helps me expose the Death Eater and the spy in the middle of Hogwarts who probably put my name in the Goblet and is even more probably trying to help Voldemort return? Wow, yes, that makes so much sense.”

“We don’t know what Mr. Crouch was doing. We have not had the chance to question him—”

“Mr. Crouch?” Theo has to interrupt then, and he doesn’t care that they can all hear the derisive tone in his voice. “So one of the judges of the Tournament was using Polyjuice and putting underage students’ names in the Goblet, and you think I’m the problem?”

“Not Crouch Senior,” says McGonagall, and Theo wonders if she’s staking out a side of some sort by saying this. “Crouch Junior, his son.”

“He was a Death Eater, and he’s supposed to be dead,” Theo says, staring.

“It appears that Mr. Crouch has been involved in—”

“Now, now, Minerva, we don’t want to speculate without further proof,” Dumbledore says firmly, cutting her off. Theo sneaks a look to see that McGonagall’s lips are bloodless as they’re pressed together, and he smiles to himself. Dumbledore has done himself no favors by trying to control everyone in the room.

“But he was a Death Eater, then,” Harry says. “So that means he is the one who put my name in the Goblet.”

“As I was saying, we have no proof,” says Dumbledore firmly. “We do not know. And I don’t want you jumping to conclusions based on this, Harry. You have already done quite enough, you and Mr. Nott.”

“And are you sorry that Crouch tried to kill me?” Harry asks curiously, his muscles tensing against Theo in a way that Theo isn’t sure will be visible to anyone but himself. “I mean, he shot the Killing Curse at me, and I had to use the whole Gryffindor table to deflect it. And he’s been trying to kill me by putting me in the Tournament tasks.”

“Of course I am sorry, Harry.” Dumbledore looks as startled as though someone’s tweaked his beard. “My apologies if I didn’t express it aloud. I thought you would know.”

“I think a lot of us are learning new things today,” says Harry, and shakes his head a little. “Anyway, it doesn’t sound like you have any use for us if you’re not going to tell us anything about what happened with Crouch. Can we go, then?”

“In a moment. Harry, I must impress on you how dangerous your plan was. Again, if you suspect something like this, I must ask that you come to me. Or another professor. Perhaps you would feel more comfortable with your Head of House? You need to make sure you have someone watching over you who can protect you…”

Theo glances sideways, sees Harry’s slightly glazed eyes, and smiles a little. It seems that Harry has learned the value of pretending to listen and setting aside his instinctive defiance for a little while.

Theo himself keeps an eye on both McGonagall and Snape. McGonagall still looks displeased with essentially being told to shush. Perhaps she can be an ally in the future.

And Snape is glaring harder at Harry, as usual, then Theo or Dumbledore. Theo doesn’t intend to move against him unless he openly moves against Harry, but the man’s tendency to blame Harry for everything is a problem Theo is thinking about, and Snape may not like the conclusion of his thoughts.

*

Granger is waiting for them a few steps away from the gargoyle that guards the base of the Headmaster’s moving staircase. Theo hears the hiss of Harry’s irritated breath and glances at him. “One word, and she’ll go away,” he mutters.

Harry hesitates, then shakes his head. “I’d rather have this confrontation here than in front of the entire Gryffindor common room,” he says, and draws Theo along with him to face her.

Granger glances once at Theo, but seems to decide he’s less important than what she wants to say to Harry. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she demands, and gestures at Weasley, standing a few steps behind her. “Harry, that was so dangerous! Confronting someone who would use a Killing Curse on you—”

“He was Barty Crouch Junior, apparently,” Harry interrupts. “Mr. Crouch’s son, and a Death Eater who was supposedly dead.”

Granger’s mouth works for a moment as she takes in that information. Theo wonders, amused, if they’ve overloaded her brain with it. Then she shakes her head and snaps, “It doesn’t matter! Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Why should I have?”

“We could have helped you, mate,” Weasley whispers. He sounds more subdued than Theo has ever seen him. He glances at Theo, and then chooses to look away. “We could have—we could have planned—it seems like we never get to come along on your adventures anymore!”

He practically shouts the last words, and Theo blinks. That’s an unexpected perspective, both because it makes a lot of sense of why Granger practically tackled Harry in the Great Hall and because anyone who could think of this as an adventure is mad.

Or just a Gryffindor, which he supposes amounts to close to the same thing.

“This wasn’t a usual adventure,” Harry says steadily. “We had to work closely together, Theo and I, to replace his Polyjuice Potion with another one, and then we had to make sure he didn’t leave the Great Hall before what he drank wore off. I didn’t know he would try to kill me, but I’m not surprised.”

“But I could have helped you brew the other potion!” Granger insists. “And we could have told Professor Dumbledore together!”

Harry sighs. “He didn’t want to hear it, Hermione. He didn’t even do anything to keep me out of the Tournament, not really. Why would he have taken me seriously? He thought Crouch was Moody, and Moody was an old friend of his. I know he would have believed Crouch over me. And then maybe Crouch would have been alerted that we knew about the Polyjuice.”

“You still could have.”

“I could have. And I chose not to.”

Granger looks at Harry with narrowed eyes. Theo braces himself to get in the way if he has to, but keeping silent and staying back has worked well for him so far, and he intends to do it unless something demands he intervene.

“All right,” Granger says at last, and her tone is calmer than Theo expected. “Why did you choose not to tell us?”

“Because of what you said about telling Dumbledore,” Harry says quietly. “You would have wanted to tell him, and I think that would have messed things up. And you might have done something that would warn Moody—Crouch. I care about you lot, but I don’t trust you with something like this. Not anymore.”

Granger winces, opens her mouth, closes it, and winces again. Weasley is bright red, but he’s looking at the floor. And he’s actually the one who speaks again, and he’s not shouting, to Theo’s vast surprise. “Does that mean you would trust us with other things, though?”

Harry grins at him, and something coiled tight in Theo relaxes. No one is getting abandoned here, not him and not Granger and Weasley. That means Theo doesn’t have to compete with anyone. “‘Course, Ron. You’re still my first friend. The train compartments were all full, remember?”

Theo blinks. That sounds like an inside joke, but also, if it’s really a reference to the way that Weasley and Harry became friends…

That’s all it took? If Theo had found Harry on the train and asked to sit with him because all the other compartments were full, he would have been Harry’s first friend and friend for life?

Theo sighs to himself. No, that’s not all it took, of course not. Weasley’s been loyal to Harry before this year, and he’s the sort of person who would have thought to say something like that, which Theo wouldn’t have, not at eleven. And Harry was the sort of kid who would believe in that kind of thing and accept it. Now he’s not.

It’s the Harry in front of him, the clever and capable boy smiling at Granger and Weasley and welcoming them back into his orbit while not fully trusting them, that Theo wants, not the past one who was starved for friendship.

Weasley groans, but he’s smiling. “Yeah. I get it. And…” He looks as if he’s about to breathe out fire, which makes Theo shift his weight a little, ready to get in front of Harry. “I’m sorry.”

Everyone in the corridor stands there and blinks. Theo decides he’s probably blinking the hardest, and definitely the only person having the thought that he’s having right now.

Damn. It wasn’t my Confundus Charm, was it?

“Thanks, Ron,” Harry says softly, and goes up to hug Weasley. Theo hangs back, and just shrugs when he catches Granger’s eye. She gives him a disbelieving look, but that’s her problem.

And then, after some conversation with Weasley that Theo doesn’t bother to listen to, Harry comes up, and claims Theo’s hand, and drags him away. Theo doesn’t look back to grin at Weasley and Granger, because, frankly, he doesn’t need to. He just walks along and feels the warmth of Harry’s hand in his.

And remembers the events that took place in the Great Hall that day, and licks his lips.

He can’t wait to get Harry alone.

*

“What d’you think they’ll do about Crouch?”

Theo shakes his head. “It’s too early to tell yet. They don’t even know for sure how he escaped death. They’ll know more after they question him under Veritaserum. And I wouldn’t bet on the Ministry releasing any truth at all.” He pushes off the wall of their decorated classroom where Harry led him and stalks slowly towards his boyfriend. “But I can think of something more important.”

“You can?”

“Yeah. You.” Theo springs forwards and grabs Harry’s hands, holding them across his chest. Harry’s eyes are wide and startled. “Did you know what you were doing when you cracked the whole Gryffindor table in half deflecting Crouch’s Killing Curse?”

“I—are you upset at me for that? It’s not like I knew he would use that spell! Or even meant to crack the table! I just reached out and grabbed the nearest thing I thought was big enough to deflect it.”

“I know,” Theo says, and slides a hand around Harry’s hip, pulling him closer still. When he’s nearer, Harry’s expression changes. He seems to understand what Theo means without Theo having to spell it out, but Theo does, for the sheer pleasure of the thing. “Seeing you use magic like that makes me want to throw you on a bed.”

Harry opens his mouth, and Theo takes advantage, almost diving at Harry’s lips. Harry gasps as their tongues twine together, but gives as good as he gets, his fingers digging into Theo’s hips through his robes, his foot curling around one of Theo’s ankles and dragging him off-balance. Theo finds himself leaning heavily on Harry, snogging as if their lives depend on it, and maybe part of them does.

When they draw back from each other at last, Harry slides a hand through Theo’s hair and messes it up. Theo keeps his eyes closed, the better to focus on the gentle scratch of Harry’s nails against his forehead.

“And now there’s only the Third Task to go,” Harry whispers at last.

Theo nods, not opening his eyes. He suspects they’ll have to be wary at that Task, although not as much as if they still hadn’t figured out a way to expose Moody as Crouch. The Dark Lord will still try something else to kill Harry.

But he can’t try his original plan, and part of Theo is sleek and smooth and content as a predator, absolutely sure that no matter what kind of plan the Dark Lord does come up with, he and Harry will be able to meet it.

Chapter Text

“It’s going to be fine.”

“It’s not going to be fine,” Theo mutters, but Harry is the one who sends him a chiding glance this time and pulls Theo towards him with an arm around his waist.

Theo lets himself be pulled. They’re in the classroom that Theo enchanted with decorations to make it look like they’re underwater, and no one else can see. And Harry is warm and smells good, like sweat, when Theo leans against him.

“You know that Crouch confessed,” Harry whispers. “There’s no one else in Hogwarts who can deliver me to Voldemort. The Tri-Wizard Cup isn’t a Portkey anymore. And Voldemort only has Pettigrew with him, and he’s not bold enough to walk into the middle of Hogwarts and kidnap me. There are wards up to catch Animagi anyway. Bagman insisted.”

Theo snorts. It’s true that Bagman’s desire to have Harry compete in the Tournament and earn publicity and probably money from the bets Bagman’s made on him is a more powerful force than any protests Harry or Theo could have made. The adults just do not want to listen to them. “I still don’t like it.”

“I know.” Harry rubs his chin across the top of Theo’s head. “But let’s be honest, Theo, you don’t like it any time I’m out of your sight.”

Theo grunts. It’s true, and he resents knowing it’s true. “I’m trying to be better about that. You deserve to have more than a single friend. Or a boyfriend who’s clinging to you all the time.”

“You deserve more, too. Is Zabini your only friend other than me?”

Theo sighs. “Yeah, but I don’t have the same need for friends you do.” He rolls his eyes when Harry gives him an extremely skeptical look. “I mean it, Harry. I don’t. I grew up in a terrible way, but not the same terrible way you did. I decided long before Hogwarts that I couldn’t rely on other people, and letting you and Blaise in is about as far as I can lower my barriers.”

Harry sighs a little in turn. “All right. I understand. But you won’t murder the Tri-Wizard judges if I don’t come first, will you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.”

“Only if you don’t come back at all.”

“Theo.”

But Harry can’t hide from Theo. There’s gladness shining in his eyes. He’s flattered at the fact that Theo would vow to kill someone for him, which makes him different from any of the other Gryffindors, and even some of the Slytherins. Draco, for instance, might pretend that he’d want someone to kill people for him, but he’s too soft to really want it.

And Harry also needs someone to kill people for him in a way that most students don’t. Theo tilts his head back and kisses Harry until both their heads spin and neither one of them can think.

Theo is the right partner for Harry. He knew that already, but each additional confirmation makes him just the right amount of smug.

*

“The Champions will enter the maze in the order of how many points they have received!”

Bagman’s voice booms over the crowd. Theo stands in silence near the edges of the seating, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the maze. Harry will be out of his sight inside those high hedge walls, and as he’s accurately stated, Theo does not like it.

But it’s safer than it would have been a few months ago, that’s true enough. Anti-Animagus wards—Theo heard Professor McGonagall complain about not being able to transform when she didn’t know he was around, so he thinks they’re real—and Crouch being found out have really diminished the Dark Lord’s options. He can try, but he won’t be able to use the same plan that he’d spent months setting up.

They didn’t manage to capture Pettigrew or Voldemort’s spirit, though. Crouch Junior either didn’t know where they were or gave the DMLE outdated information.

That’s the part that makes the underside of Theo’s skin itch.

“Tied for first place: Harry Potter and Viktor Krum!”

Theo grimaces as he watches Harry and Krum step forwards at the same moment. Bagman is talking now, complacently, about how the Champions should send up red sparks if they get into “real” trouble.

Theo just hopes that Harry will. Harry is more responsible with his own safety since he’s become Theo’s, but he still tends to overestimate his own ability to respond to it. And he still has that damn conviction that he should leave other people out of handling the danger, because, of course, it would be dangerous for them.

Theo is utterly convinced that Dumbledore knows more than he’s let on about the way Harry grew up. If nothing else, apparently Hagrid’s confirmed for Harry that Dumbledore was the one who took him from Hagrid’s arms and put him om the Dursleys’ doorstep. So that means he was the one who chose Harry’s living space and living conditions and people who would raise him.

And Dumbledore hasn’t done anything to counter Harry’s attempts to protect people at the cost of his own life. He got points for confronting Professor Quirrell in first year. And he got praised for putting another student’s life above his own when he went down into the Chamber of Secrets and slew the basilisk. Why Professor Dumbledore couldn’t do it is beyond Theo.

So Theo is going to wait, and watch as much as he can from outside the hedges, and with the help of the Locator Charm that he placed on the skin between Harry’s fingers. Unlike clothing, it can’t be taken from him. And it’ll lead Theo to Harry across miles and continents.

He’ll cross continents if he has to, if that’s what it takes to get Harry back.

*

When the moment comes, Theo doesn’t recognize it at first. Someone touches him on the shoulder, and he whirls around with his wand out, picturing Snape or Dumbledore trying to ensure he isn’t helping Harry “cheat.”

It’s his father.

“Father,” Theo says, not banking the fury that’s driving him or lowering his wand. It’s too late. Father has to know what Theo’s feeling. And if he assumes that that’s just a mask for other people, the same way he assumed Theo was using Harry rather than dating him, that’s the best outcome.

Father smiles at him, the small, careful smile that he usually only uses when he’s teaching Theo curses. “It’s time, Theo.”

“Time for what?”

Father sighs and leans over until he’s touching Theo’s shoulder with a bit of stone. Immediately, the colors of a Portkey seize them, and at the same moment, Theo feels the locator charm he’s placed on Harry shudder and jump.

So they are both being taken.

If it’s to the same place, Theo doesn’t actually care. He uses the moment of instantaneous travel to make plans, and to burn with rage.

*

They arrive in a graveyard.

Theo thinks he knows why, when he sees Harry bound to a headstone and the grave beneath him gaping open. There are certain necromantic rituals that are inexpressibly more powerful when the bone or blood of a family member is used.

Theo takes a step to the side, away from his father’s hand. Yes, he can see the word RIDDLE carved on the stone. Harry did tell him the Dark Lord’s true last name when they discussed the basilisk incident.

Father grabs his shoulder and bends down to say into his ear, “Do not be a fool, Theo.”

He must suspect, then, that Harry and Theo were really dating, and not just Theo manipulating Harry as part of a plan. Theo manages to nod, although he doesn’t want to. Father nods back and lets go of Theo’s shoulder as he steps to the side.

Theo remains motionless, eyes darting between Harry and the bubbling cauldron. A short man in a cloak is dumping what looks like bone dust into the potion inside, and then Father draws Theo along as they walk towards it, probably to supervise the brewing. Father never met anything or anyone he didn’t want to control.

Theo turns his head. Harry’s eyes meet his and widen. Theo hopes that Harry isn’t about to start shouting about him being a traitor. As much as that would add to the verisimilitude around here, Harry would really believe it if he said it, and that would mean Theo would encounter some problems getting him away.

But instead, Harry chooses to drop his head and close his eyes. It might look like giving up to a casual observer (let it look like that to Father, Theo hopes). But Theo can see the way Harry’s body has relaxed.

Harry still trusts him. Harry will wait for the signal to handle this situation in whatever way Theo wants to handle it.

Theo breathes out slowly. They can’t do anything yet. But they are going to do something. And he’ll strike the minute he sees a way to.

*

The sight of Pettigrew taking blood from Harry’s arm nearly breaks Theo’s control. But his hands clench only under the sleeves of his robe, and he arches his eyebrow when Father turns and stares down at him, as if he thinks this should be a test.

“Is that the final ingredient?” Theo mutters, deliberately sounding as bored as he possibly can.

“Yes,” Father says, and his attention goes to the cauldron as it begins to bubble and something to rise from it. His hand slackens on Theo’s shoulder. Pettigrew is sniveling on the ground because of his severed arm. The giant snake—about which, admittedly, Theo doesn’t know what to do yet—is coiled up on the other side of the cauldron, watching it intently.

Theo acts.

He casts a Blasting Charm, as quick and strong and clean as he possibly can. It flies straight at the cauldron, and incidentally through Pettigrew, who’s in the way. Pettigrew screams for a moment before he dissolves into a rain of flesh.

And the cauldron breaks in half, spilling the potion and the thing inside it that was beginning to form. Theo hears a shriek, and then a hissing noise that is decidedly not the snake. Something collapses on the ground, writhing and screaming like Pettigrew.

As if in slow motion, Father starts to turn around.

Theo is already rolling, dodging, moving. In seconds, he’s beside Harry, and a Severing Charm slices through the ropes. Harry scrambles off the headstone, crying out as his limbs buckle beneath him, and Theo hones his mind to a blade of sheer concentration and snarls, “Accio Harry Potter’s wand!”

It comes flying, from Pettigrew’s remains. Theo tosses it to Harry and shoves him behind the headstone.

A Cruciatus Curse crackles overhead.

Theo breathes out a little. That defines some of the things they’re up against, and it also means that he can drop some of the chains that he might have put on his temper otherwise.

“You take the snake,” he tells Harry. “I’ll take my father.”

He doesn’t have to say that if Harry can’t handle the snake, they’re all in deep shit. Harry senses it well enough. He nods, and his trembling legs have stopped trembling. For that matter, Theo is pretty sure that Harry would cast at the snake if he had to crawl.

“Right,” Harry says, and his hand grips Theo’s arm and squeezes, a burning brand of desperation, before he cocks his head and listens. Theo can hear steady hissing coming nearer, which is probably understandable Parseltongue to Harry.

“Theodore. Come out.”

Theo straightens his shoulders and steps out from beyond the headstone.

Father stares at him across the short space of grass between them. His face is frozen and still. Theo thinks distantly that he has never seen his father look surprised before.

“What have you done?” Father whispers.

“Chosen my allegiance,” Theo says, using words that Father used to describe what his initiation as a Death Eater was like. “Confirmed my loyalties.”

Father shakes his head, slowly. He doesn’t even look towards the sounds of hissing or the smash of stone that Theo hopes means Harry has blasted the snake into another monument. Theo can’t look, either. He doesn’t dare take his eyes from Father. “What kind of power can this callow schoolboy promise you, Theodore?”

Theo smiles, and lets it run over his face like quicksilver. “What makes you think that I am in it for power, Father?”

“You have been affected,” Father murmurs. “Well. After I confine you to the manor for the summer and spend some time working on you, then you will change your mind back.” He nods and aims his wand.

Theo feels as though something in his chest has hatched from a fiery egg. Those words have set another boundary of the contest between them. Father wants to reorder Theo’s mind, which means he won’t kill him.

Theo has no such restrictions.

Father begins with a silent curse that tries to surround Theo with a wall of fire. Theo dampens magic all around himself in response, and then aims his curse high over that effect and hits Father in the chest with a crackle of lightning. Father staggers a step back, but although he’s frowning, he doesn’t seem upset yet. He probably assumes that Theo is softening his curses against him because Theo doesn’t really want to hurt him.

“I have raised a weak son,” Father says in conviction, and he attacks again.

Theo parries and dodges and shields. Ice for flying bladed knives, a Transfiguration of grass into mud for a pain curse that makes Theo’s teeth rattle in his head and his eyes tear up, a Bone-Breaking Curse for one that nearly twists Theo’s elbows backwards. And each time, the contempt in Father’s eyes deepens a little more.

Theo knows what he wants to do. And while it won’t depend so much on Father dropping his guard, it does mean that he has to be able to lure Father closer and not have him dodge at the last minute.

The moment comes. Theo can feel it as if someone is singing to him and pausing to hand over the song.

Father laughs at him and uses a curse that will put him into a deep sleep if it lands. And Theo’s body is aching. He won’t be able to keep up the string of taunting, apparently weak spells for much longer.

Theo drops to his knees beneath the curse, remains there for a moment as if fainting or partially hit and fighting off sleepiness, and then aims his wand at his father and speaks the words in a soft voice of intense hatred. “Avada Kedavra.”

The green beam rises from his wand. It seems to curve slightly. Theo follows the path with his eyes, and has the time to see Father’s widen before the curse hits.

The curse that nothing can block or deflect, unless you’re Harry Potter.

The curse you have to mean to cast.

Father crumples in place.

Theo whirls around then, towards the battle Harry and the snake must be fighting. But the snake is paralyzed with—is that a Body-Bind?”

Theo finds himself laughing half-hysterically, and stuffs his hand in his mouth. He fights his way back to his feet, feeling the drain and the drag of casting so much magic on his body and spirit, and staggers towards the headstones.

There is still one more thing he and Harry have to do before they leave the graveyard, but Theo has to make sure that Harry is all right first.

Harry is leaning against the far side of a headstone that also has the name RIDDLE on it but no open grave, and he’s panting so hard that Theo’s heart picks up its speed. But Harry just gives him a tired, shaky smile and reaches for his hand. Theo grabs it and hauls him close.

There’s warmth trembling in his arms, and love, and the future.

Theo would do it all again.

*

They kneel there in silence until at last Harry stirs and whispers, “I’m sorry you had to kill your dad.”

Not a hint of condemnation for how Theo did it. Theo doesn’t think that Harry is suddenly all right with Unforgivable Curses, especially given how that one killed his parents, but he accepts what Theo did because he’s Theo, almost certainly. The way he managed to forgive Weasley for saying his name came out of the Goblet when he wouldn’t have forgiven other people.

Theo has wished in the past that Harry wasn’t quite so forgiving, but right now, he’ll accept it. He’ll accept everything Harry chooses to give him.

“It’s all right,” Theo murmurs. “I stopped thinking of him as my dad long ago. Father is just what I called him.” He eases back on his knees and looks at Harry. Harry stares at him, tired and grim and quiet, but still clutching his wand. Still ready to fight.

“There’s something else we have to do,” Theo says quietly. “Two things, actually. Do you think you can do them?” Because if not, then Theo will send Harry back with the Portkey that he hopes his father made two-way and do them by himself.

“Yes,” Harry says instantly, and struggles to his feet, pulling Theo with him. “One of them is—that thing that came out of the cauldron, right?” His gaze goes beyond Pettigrew’s remains and darkens.

“Yes. We can kill it.”

“I don’t think we’ll kill him,” Harry says, his voice haunted. “He’ll just become a wraith again the way he did after I killed Quirrell.”

“I know, but we can at least destroy his construct body and make him flee again.” Theo squeezes Harry’s hand and draws him forwards. “Come on.”

He and Harry walk towards the remains of the cauldron, side-by-side. Theo checks on the snake as they go. Harry’s spell is still holding, but Theo casts another Body-Bind at her just in case.

“I tried to kill her, but nothing—” Harry says, and breaks off.

Theo nods. Frankly, the snake is a low priority compared to what else they have to do. If she escapes, she’ll likely reunite with her master, but that’s not as disastrous as him having human help.

“You’re trembling,” Harry says softly. “Are you—is your magic exhausted? Do you need me to kill him with a spell?”

Theo shakes his head. “I’ll live.” He has to, so they can accomplish the second task they have before they leave the graveyard. “And I wasn’t planning on using a spell to kill this thing.”

Harry blinks at him. Theo smiles back and leads him around the edge of the cauldron, and around the edge of what was once Peter Pettigrew. Theo feels nothing about that killing except dark satisfaction.

He shouldn’t have helped kidnap Harry if he wanted to live.

The thing that came out of the cauldron is lying on the ground, thrashing weakly. Theo saw it go in as something small, but it seems it grew before Theo’s spell broke the cauldron apart and spilled the potion. It’s about half Harry’s height now, covered with black-red scales molded to raw flesh, limbs waving, mouth with sharp teeth open in an endless silent wail.

Harry shudders. Theo steps forwards and kneels down beside the thing.

Slitted red eyes focus on him. Theo smiles at it and reaches back without taking his eyes off it. It doesn’t take him long to find a twisted iron shard of the cauldron, or to bring it around and slit the thing’s throat.

The body kicks and thrashes for long moments after that, and Theo wonders if he has to stab it some more. But the thick liquid pouring out—which isn’t blood—forms into a black, smoky face, which flies up and hovers in front of Theo. Theo stares at it in silence, so full of hatred that there’s no room for fear.

“I will remember this, Theodore Nott,” Voldemort whispers.

Theo bares his teeth. “And I’ll remember that you were so weak I could drive you away.”

Voldemort fades as he’s still snarling.

Theo stands up slowly and turns around. Harry’s eyes are blank, and he’s shaking. Theo winces. “I’m sorry. That was too much for you.” He should have sent Harry away before he did something that will read a lot more like cold-blooded murder than a battle casualty.

“No, I just…” Harry shakes his head. “I’m not rejecting you, Theo. It wasn’t too much for me.” He swallows air and sits down abruptly on the grass near another shard of the cauldron. “What’s the second thing we have to do before we leave?”

“They’re probably going to inspect our wands,” Theo says softly. “Aurors, Ministry officials, Dumbledore, whoever we see first after we come back. I can’t afford to be found with the Killing Curse record on my wand. There’s a way to remove the traces of it, but it’s a ritual that uses blood. Can you give me some of yours?”

Harry smiles wanly and extends his arm without taking his eyes from Theo. “Seems a lot better use for it than what Pettigrew was going to do.”

Theo bows his head, accepting the gift, and gently cuts Harry’s arm open again along the scabs with a different shard of the cauldron. Harry hisses but doesn’t flinch. Theo harvests the blood as gently, with a simple Levitation Charm, and mixes it with the earth directly next to his feet.

Harry watches in something Theo thinks is revolted fascination. Theo elects to ignore the revulsion part of it.

It doesn’t take long to create the small runnels of blood in the earth, or for Theo to cut his own arm and add his own blood to it. He bends down and breathes on the rumpled mud, adding air to the water and earth, and then conjures a small, quick spark of fire. The fire dances on empty air above the blood. Theo hears Harry’s breath catch.

“May my wand show only the elements,” Theo says softly, and lowers his wand to roll it through the mixture of soil and blood. They cling to it, shining. Theo skims his wand through the fire and breathes on it, and sees a dark shiver pass through the wood. For an instant, it grows cold in his palm.

And then a sharp, dark green film peels away from it and fades and is gone, and Theo sits back with a long sigh. “Did you cast any Dark spells?” he asks Harry.

“No,” Harry says. He’s staring at Theo’s wand with something like awe. Theo decides, as he wearily forces his way back to his feet, that that’s a good sign.

“Come on,” he says, holding out a hand to Harry as he waves his wand to Summon the pebble Portkey from his father’s corpse. “Let’s go home.”

*

There’s chaos when the Portkey deposits them both in front of the maze, of course. People are shouting and screaming and bubbling around them and asking questions and shooting dark glances at Theo. Theo ignores all of that as much as he can, standing with one arm curled around Harry, supporting him. He hopes that someone will take them to the hospital wing soon.

But when McGonagall comes bustling up and tries to pull Harry away from him, Theo turns and points his wand at her. McGonagall stares at him in astonishment. “Mr. Nott. I am only—”

“Wherever you’re going to take him, we’ll go together,” Theo says flatly. His wand doesn’t waver. He does feel the burning of magical exhaustion in his veins, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll do whatever he has to do to defend Harry.

He already has, after all.

“Mr. Nott,” Snape says from the other side of McGonagall. “I presume that you will allow me to question you, if not Professor McGonagall?”

“I think the hospital wing would be more appropriate than an interrogation,” Theo says. “We’re both wounded.” He pointedly holds up Harry’s arm, still bleeding sluggishly from the cut Theo reopened.

There’s a flurry of movement and shouting them, and Theo and Harry are whisked away to the hospital wing. Theo can hear Dumbledore’s voice asking them to stop and saying that he has to question them, but for once, McGonagall and Snape ignore him or pretend not to hear him.

Theo is grateful for that, but not grateful enough to move away from Harry’s side.

*

Theo is the one who tells the story—or the lie.

Sitting by Harry’s bedside in the hospital wing, his own bloody cut already healed, he explains how his father must have got near the Tri-Wizard Cup to charm it into a Portkey, probably when it was on public display for the audience to see before it was put into the maze, and came and took Theo to punish him by making him witness his boyfriend getting killed. Theo does close his eyes when he tells that part, to make them all think he’s affected by more than his own dizzy hatred.

They tell him he was brave and ask him what happened next. Theo invents a tale of accidental magic blowing up the cauldron and Pettigrew getting caught in the backlash, but he makes sure to never use the words “accidental magic,” given that two people who practice Legilimency and can sense lies are listening to him. He simply says, “I wanted it gone so badly, I concentrated and concentrated—” and lets them draw their own conclusions.

Then he explains how he sent Harry’s wand flying to him and asked Harry to duel the snake. He elides the duel with his father as much as he can, talking about a few of the spells, the ones with the elements of ice and lightning that they’ll find when they examine his wand. He swallows before he reaches the part about his father’s death and stares at the floor.

Then he says, “I don’t know how I found the strength to kill him. I don’t—I think he must not have wanted to kill me.” True enough. “I just—I would have said I didn’t hate him enough for that, you know, before tonight?” Again, true. “But then I did it. I don’t even—I don’t know what spell you’ll find on my wand that did it.”

There.

They murmur and exclaim. Well, a few of them do. Dumbledore preserves a grim silence. But Theo keeps his eyes on the floor, and hands over his wand for the Prior Incantato easily enough when they ask for it.

Even with his eyes on the floor, he can see the smoky images leaving his wand. Lightning bolts, the flickering incantation of the Body-Bind, ice shards, a flame.

Dumbledore sighs at the end and lays Theo’s wand down on the bed beside Harry, who is silent, watching Theo with big eyes. “Then what happened, Mr. Nott?”

“I made sure Harry was all right. And then—then I knew I had to kill the thing that had come out of the cauldron.”

“So much blood on your hands,” Dumbledore says in an empty voice.

“Harry was tied to a headstone when Pettigrew took his blood,” Theo snaps, and it’s no trouble at all to infuse his voice with panic and anger. “I had to do something! I didn’t know it would kill him, I just had to do something!” And even that’s true. Theo’s main target was the cauldron. He didn’t care that Pettigrew was in the way, of course. “And then Harry was fighting the snake, and I was fighting my father, and—and that happened. And someone besides Harry should do something about Voldemort! He shouldn’t have to do it all by himself!”

The flurry of gasps that sweeps across the room is something else. Theo keeps his head bowed, so none of them will see the smile pulling at the corners of his eyes. Speaking the Dark Lord’s name has won him points, has convinced at least one of them, probably, that’s he changed sides.

In truth, Theo doesn’t think of the war as Voldemort’s side and Dumbledore’s side. For him, there’s Harry’s side, and there’s everyone else.

“That is, perhaps, true enough,” says Dumbledore, and sighs, and turns away to say something to Snape and Madam Pomfrey. Theo doesn’t care what. He’s done with his story, the blood ritual worked, and he’s nearly as exhausted as he was pretending.

And Harry is safe.

Theo turns to Harry. He’s prepared to encounter judgment there, of many kinds. For using Dark Arts, for lying, for killing a helpless thing that might have been dying anyway. For killing his father.

But Harry’s eyes are deep and accepting. He reaches out and clasps Theo’s hand. Theo lets his lips form the question Why?

“You kept me safe,” Harry whispers. “You saved my life. You did—what you had to do.”

Theo tightens his hold on Harry’s hand, and they sit there as the world sweeps around them.

The End.