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Chapter Text

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”

-Robert Kennedy

“I’m happy to see that you’re recovering so well from Sirius’s death, Harry.”

If one more person said something like that to him, Harry was going to—

Keep silent and bite his tongue and nod along, really. The same thing he’d been doing so far. He didn’t have much choice. He had already decided on his course for this year, and exploding at people over every single thing they said wouldn’t serve him.

It hadn’t served him last year. It hadn’t kept Umbridge from cutting up his hand or issuing those ridiculous Educational Decrees. It hadn’t kept his friends from following him into a hopeless battle.

It hadn’t kept Sirius safe.

Harry breathed, and blinked, and said, “I’m trying.”

*

Blaise frowned as he stared at the gap on the shelves. One of the books that he regularly used for pleasure reading had gone missing, and it wasn’t as though it was the sort of book that most people would be eager to borrow. A history of the magical communities in Italian city-states during the Renaissance and how they had handled conflicts with each other wasn’t their idea of either useful or light reading material.

He cast a Summoning Charm that would target the book, and was more puzzled when it didn’t come zooming back to him immediately. If it had simply been reshelved carelessly, it would have.

Which meant someone had it.

Blaise then cast a Locator Charm, and strolled through the shelves in the direction of one of the nearly-hidden reading tables. Unusual, to find someone so far back here. These corners were both tucked away from the front of the library and almost without sunlight, making them more popular as snogging spots than study ones.

And then the sight of the person who had the book spread out in the table in front of him, along with curls of parchment at least as long as his right arm, slammed Blaise to a halt, and made him stand there just staring in shock.

It was Potter. And he was writing notes on yet another scroll in front of him, muttering under his breath and flipping back and forth in the pages of the book.

Blaise could have understood Granger, or one of the Ravenclaws. Potter?

It was so intriguing—especially since Potter had ended up back here without either of his constant orbiting features laughably known as “friends”—that Blaise decided he had to ask. He stepped out of the space between the shelves.

Potter looked up at once. His eyes were flat and green. Oddly enough, he didn’t draw his wand or spit an insult, the way Blaise would have said he’d do at the sight of any Slytherin. But he looked at Blaise in a way that meant he’d be striking to disable if they dueled, at the very least.

“Hello,” Blaise said, when he realized he would have to make the first move. “I’m Blaise Zabini.”

“I know who you are.”

The dismissal in Potter’s voice made Blaise bristle. “Oh, do you? Why are you taking that tone, when we’ve never even spoken before?”

“I know that you’re someone who talks about blood traitors and Mudbloods. Someone neither good nor useful,” Potter said, and flicked him one more glance before he went back to his reading.

Blaise blinked, half-opened his mouth, and then shut it again. From the tension in Potter’s shoulders, he was aware that Blaise was still present, but he was also very engaged in very busy scribbling, and real note-taking. Blaise wanted to know, with more interest he’d felt in anything except Arithmancy, what he was looking for.

“Why do you have my book?” he asked.

Potter wrote what looked like the end of a sentence and then stared at him. “It’s not yours.”

“It’s the one I read most often when I need a distraction.”

“A bit of light reading,” Potter murmured for some reason, but then shrugged. “Should have checked it out of the library, then.”

“I did ask you a question,” Blaise said, and pulled out a chair across from Potter to sit down in, which just made Potter stare at him harder.

“I don’t have to answer it.”

“I could help you if I knew what you were looking for. I know that book better than anyone else in the school, I’m certain.”

Potter arched his eyebrows and gave Blaise another glance that felt more in-depth this time, as if looking past whatever shallow surface he had thought Blaise had. Blaise found himself straightening his shoulders and sitting up. His interest deepened. For all that the Daily Prophet talked as if Potter was destined to lead the war against the Dark Lord, this was the first time Blaise had seen him looking at someone like a leader might.

“I’m looking for patterns in what cities were victorious,” Potter said at last. “How they manipulated their wars to end sooner and fooled their enemies and escaped conflict with the lowest amount of casualties.”

Blaise felt his mouth twitching. “Honestly, Potter? The way a lot of people did it was either poison or marriage.”

Potter shuddered. “Well, the second one’s out. And I don’t know if Voldemort’s body is susceptible to poison, considering he created it in a ritual—”

“Will you stop saying his name?”

“Why?”

“During the first war, he put a Taboo on it,” Blaise snapped. He felt a shudder crawling up his spine, and fought it back. “He could tell where someone was when they said it, and he could send people right to them—or come himself. It’s one reason that people who said it tended to die violent deaths right afterwards.”

“See, no one’s ever told that to me before.”

“They probably assumed you knew. Why wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t an orphan raised in the Muggle world by relatives who hate magic know everything about a wizarding war?” Potter said, and rolled his eyes. “If someone could have explained that to me in between the flinching and shrieking, I would have listened.”

He went back to writing on his parchment. Blaise stared at him and blinked. “You were raised by Muggles?” he said finally.

“Yes?” Potter drew the word out, glancing up at Blaise. “I only found out this year that the Noseless One killed all my Potter relatives. I had nowhere else to go, so I got deposited with my mother’s sister and her husband.”

Blaise licked his lips. This was interesting news, and also terrifying news. He had assumed, like the rest of the sane half of Slytherin that didn’t follow the Dark Lord, that Potter had been reared by some cronies of Dumbledore’s, or even the Headmaster himself, and taught dueling and Dark Arts and all the other magic he needed to know to survive. Blaise had also assumed that Potter had been ordered to keep that hidden, or he would have been dazzling people in Defense and Charms a lot more than he had.

To find out that Potter had been Muggle-raised and apparently hadn’t known basic facts about the first war was terrifying.

“Listen,” Blaise said, his voice low and urgent. Potter pulled his eyes from his notes again to look at him. “You—you needed to know these things years ago.”

“Yeah, I agree.” Potter’s voice was sharp with what was probably frustration, but he was doing it a good job keeping it under control. “But I didn’t, and I don’t have a Time-Turner, so I just need to try and learn it now the best I can.”

“In your NEWT year?” Blaise asked, scandalized despite himself.

“What use is getting ready for NEWTS when the Man With a Snake Affinity is trying to kill me?”

“But—you have to look beyond the war, too. To try and survive. Otherwise, what’s the point of anything?”

Potter laughed, a harsh cawing sound that reminded Blaise of his mother’s raven familiar. “I can try and survive by learning the things I need to know. Someday, if he doesn’t kill me, then I’ll be able to take my NEWTS at the Ministry or whatever. But not now.”

“You expect to die?”

Potter paused and looked at him, and his voice was oddly gentle when he said, “Zabini, of course I do. I’ll try my very best to take him with me or at least make sure my death costs him, but I’m a lot younger than he is, a lot less powerful, and a lot less knowledgeable. Of course I think I’ll lose.”

Blaise closed his eyes. “Why aren’t you running?”

“Because I can’t leave people to face him by themselves.”

Blaise stared at Potter again. He was looking calmly back at Blaise, although with his quill tapping on the scroll as if he wanted Blaise to leave so that he could start writing again.

Blaise didn’t understand that kind of stubbornness. Or courage. Whatever it was. Then again, that was probably why Potter was in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin.

Blaise took a long breath, and said, “Let me help you.”

“How, Zabini? By sharing your knowledge of this one book, you said, but what I need to do is so much wider than that—”

“History is my best subject,” Blaise said quietly. “Actual history, the kind that I can take courses by owl in outside this school, not the kind that Binns teaches. I can tell you about the first war, teach you about the workings of the Ministry and the Wizengamot, show you how to get people on your side. How to read people. I’m good at that, too. If you want to convince people to help you so that you have a better chance of—of protecting them, I can help with that.”

Potter studied him in silence for a long moment. Then he said, “Two questions.”

Blaise nodded.

“What’s your motivation for doing this? Fear? Something else?”

“You’re our only chance for keeping him off,” Blaise whispered. “And I don’t even believe the bollocks in the Prophet about Chosen One this and Savior that. You’re the one he’s targeted, and you’re the one who’s fighting. Even Dumbledore isn’t doing that much.” Potter’s face twitched, but he didn’t say anything. “I want to live, Potter. And I owe you for keeping him off this long, when you aren’t trained and you grew up in the fucking Muggle world.”

Potter nodded. “Okay, acceptable. And the second question. Why do you want to work to save other people when you call them Mudbloods and blood traitors?”

Blaise lowered his eyes. “I don’t care about them.”

“All right. My question remains.”

“I mean,” Blaise said, and flapped a hand helplessly. He’d never had to explain this before. His mother knew how he felt, and people in Slytherin assumed enough things about his views that Blaise just had to make the right noises at the right times.

But here was Potter, sitting there with eyes as bright as a rainbow, and he needed the answer. Blaise tried to spell out what he hadn’t put in words even for himself before this.

“I don’t—they don’t matter to me,” Blaise said. “Not enough to hate them, not enough to hold them in contempt or have whatever Draco has against them. I just say the words so people like Draco leave me alone. I don’t care about them enough to work to save them on my own, either. But they matter to you, and you’re the one I need to save me. So I’ll work to save them because of that.”

Potter kept tapping his quill against his scroll. Blaise found himself incredibly tense, and tried to relax his muscles. So what if Potter rejected him? What did it matter? Blaise would then do his best to help Potter from the sidelines, such as sending him information with anonymous owls.

But it would make things so much easier if he did accept what Blaise said.

“Okay,” Potter said quietly. “Thank you for being honest.” He took another piece of parchment out from beneath the book and slid it towards Blaise. “This is my list of what I need to know about and don’t know yet. Please look it over. If you can think of any topics that relate to these and which I need to know, please write them down.”

Blaise took the parchment with fingers that trembled. He hadn’t thought Potter would extend him this much trust, handing Blaise literal written proof of his ignorance.

It would have been his downfall with some of the Slytherins. But Blaise would feel an endless nagging irritation if he didn’t reciprocate trust with trust. It was just who he was. He had made his peace with it.

“I will,” Blaise said, and Potter smiled at him.

*

“Don’t you think that you’re spending a little too much time in the library, Harry?”

Harry looked up and laughed. “I never thought I would hear you all of people say that, Hermione.”

Hermione blinked, then laughed herself. She looked down at the books spread across the table in front of Harry and shook her head. “Well, yes, that’s true. But these aren’t for classes.”

No. They were some of the books that Zabini had assigned to him (because it really was like homework, Zabini’s idea of helping him). History, descriptions of government structure, texts on body language written for actors who would have to compete with magical effects for an audience’s attention, scrolls on persuasive techniques in writing and speaking, and on and on. Harry had to read them, but his primary task was taking notes in his own words, because they were both shorter and would be clearer to him later when he revised them.

“No,” Harry said, and took a risk. “They’re things I hope will help me build on my knowledge of politics and turn more people to our side.”

Hermione’s eyes widened, and she sat down on the other side of the table. “Goodness, Harry, should you be doing this?”

And here we go. “Yes, of course. If I don’t want to be just a figurehead, then I’m going to have to take charge of my fame, and decide what I want to do with it.”

“Manipulating people like that isn’t the best use of your time. What about learning from Professor Dumbledore?”

“He’s giving me those lessons I told you about that look into Voldemort’s memories, so I can know him better. But he’s not teaching me dueling spells or history that doesn’t relate to Voldemort or anything like that.” Harry waved his hand at the books. “That’s why I’m looking up that stuff.”

“Well, if Professor Dumbledore isn’t teaching you that, he probably doesn’t think you need it.”

Harry shrugged. He didn’t know for sure what Professor Dumbledore thought. Harry had tried asking him for dueling lessons, and Professor Dumbledore had said that Harry would get on quite well without them. He’d tried asking the Headmaster whether he’d thought Harry would survive a duel against Voldemort, and Professor Dumbledore had smiled and said it would probably never come down to a duel. So Harry had given up.

“Every little bit can help, don’t you think?” he asked Hermione. “If we can persuade people to our side or at least get them to stay out of the way?”

“You can’t persuade people like Umbridge.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about people like her. More about people like Seamus, who do get misled by the papers sometimes.”

“I thought you were talking about Umbridge.”

From there, the conversation devolved sort of the way Harry had expected. It was all right. Hermione had other things on her mind: the NEWTS, her endless longing after Ron and the fact that Ron was dating Lavender, why the Ministry wouldn’t do something about Voldemort now that they’d been forced to acknowledge he was back.

She didn’t know how much Sirius’s death was driving Harry. Pretty much no one talked about Sirius anymore. She didn’t know why Harry thought politics might be worthwhile, to make an impression on people and have others step up to lead the war effort if Voldemort killed him.

She didn’t have to. That was one of the reasons Harry was allying with Zabini.

He would protect his friends and other people who depended on him in any way possible. Including leaving them free to pursue what they wanted without disagreeing with them.

The conversation slid sideways into Hermione’s concerns, and never came back. And when she left the library, Harry went back to working.

*

“Why haven’t you concentrated on dueling spells before now?”

“Because magical power isn’t the be-all and end-all of ways to fight the Pale One,” Potter muttered, shaking back his hair as he did the stretching exercises that he had looked up in some obscure dueling text. They were in the Room that Potter’s Defense group had apparently worked in last year, but smaller than they’d probably used, the walls white stone and the floor covered with rugs. Warmth filled the room from floating balls of fire rather than a hearth. “And I’m not that strong. And I had other concerns, like teaching people what I knew.”

“You’re not that strong,” Blaise echoed in disbelief. “You could cast a Patronus at thirteen. Do you understand how rare that is?”

From the half-lidded look Potter cast him, probably not. Blaise sighed in defeat and started working his own arms and shoulders in the patterns his mother had taught him long ago. “Okay, so this is probably something else that you didn’t learn because you grew up in the Muggle world.”

“Of course not, Zabini. I didn’t even know magic was real until I was eleven.”

Blaise’s brain slid sideways into a ditch. He’d thought, somehow, that Potter might have grown up in the Muggle world knowing about magic in general and that he would attend Hogwarts someday, even though he didn’t know the finer points of the first war or history or anything like that. But to hear that he hadn’t known even that…

Potter caught a glimpse of his face and burst out laughing. “You look like a Kneazle who stepped in a puddle,” he said, through his chuckles.

“I’m glad I amuse you,” Blaise said, but he couldn’t help smiling himself. It was a pity that it would take more than Potter just standing in front of people and laughing like that to change their minds and make them follow him, but the laugh would be a good start. It seemed to fill Blaise’s soul with light and warmth.

“Anyway,” Blaise went on, dragging his mind back to their conversation, “a Patronus is hard to cast because you have to put so much magic into it. You have to commit yourself. You can’t go around losing your concentration to fear of a Dementor, or fear that you’re going to get your soul eaten, or passing thoughts about what you had for breakfast that morning, or a Shield Charm, or whatever. You have to fling yourself into it to a frankly dangerous degree. So it’s not much good for dueling.”

“Then I probably won’t be good at dueling magic, either.”

“Then why bother to learn?”

“Because I’m going to try, Zabini. I said that already. I don’t expect to survive, but I want to survive long enough that other people can take up the fight.”

Blaise wanted to stomp his foot the way he’d done when he was younger and his mother had denied him a biscuit. It wasn’t fair. Potter accepted the inevitability of his death but wanted to keep fighting, while other people didn’t accept anything and just bleated for Potter to save them.

Blaise could at least comfort himself that he hadn’t been one of those. But he knew it was only because he’d had the other options, like leaving the country, that most people didn’t and Potter would never exercise.

“What I am saying,” Blaise explained as delicately as he could, “is that you might be able to treat some dueling spells like the Patronus and commit yourself to them so completely that you can make a difference. Overpower them, in fact.”

Potter glanced up, eyes gleaming sharp with interest, and Blaise’s breath caught. Damn, when he looked like that, Blaise saw the future politician and leader of armies and defeater of the Dark Lord.

And Blaise’s own commitment hardened. Maybe he couldn’t make sure Potter would survive the Dark Lord, but damn if he wasn’t going to try.

“How could I do that?”

“First,” Blaise said, “we’re going to work on your Shield Charm, since your strength lies in defensive magic.”

And although Blaise didn’t say it, it was also a means of getting Potter past his self-imposed block on using offensive magic, the conviction that he wasn’t powerful. If he really believed that, then all the magical strength in the world wouldn’t help. It would just stay locked away behind barriers built of Potter’s own unwavering belief.

But if he got used to doing certain spells, the way he had with the Patronus, and got used to flinging magic into them…

Then he could use those spells in a dueling situation, and there was more potential for his survival.

Blaise didn’t intend for his time to be wasted.

*

“Harry, my dear boy. What are you doing up here?”

Harry blinked and looked down from the stars that he’d been watching. He came to the top of the Astronomy Tower every night now, to look for Sirius. “Hello, Headmaster. Just stargazing.”

Professor Dumbledore stood a few steps below Harry, looking up at him. “Stargazing,” he repeated. “An odd thing to do outside of Astronomy class, one might think. And I do understand that you’re not in NEWT Astronomy.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s a way to keep connected to Sirius, sir. To look at his star and remind myself that I’m going to do my best to win this war. And not allow any more Siriuses dying at the wands of a Bellatrix.”

Professor Dumbledore sighed. “I told you once, Harry. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

“I know,” Harry said, surprised by the context of that reminder into blinking at Professor Dumbledore. “But that was the Mirror of Erised, sir. Something I was never going to have because my family is dead. And I’m not trying to bring Sirius back or anything. I know he can’t come back.” The hole inside Harry seemed to widen as he spoke, but he ignored it as best he could. He would just have to live with it, and remember. “I can try my best to win this war. Isn’t that what you were thinking I should do, when you were showing me Voldemort’s memories?”

Professor Dumbledore was silent for a long time, the breeze on top of the Tower blowing his silvery hair back. Harry waited, a little impatiently. If it was just going to be silence and cryptic riddles now, he would rather the Professor leave him to his stargazing and remembering and planning.

A thought intruded into Harry’s mind. Zabini at least fucking gives me things to learn. And doesn’t get upset when I learn them.

“The idea that you can spare everyone from dying is what I meant,” Professor Dumbledore said at last. “There will be casualties. It is the nature of war. I would not have you break your heart by wishing for impossibilities, Harry.”

Harry held back his sigh with difficulty. “I know that, sir. I would have hoped you wouldn’t take my words that literally. But I am going to try my best. That’s the important part.”

“Have you considered,” Professor Dumbledore whispered, “that you may not live until the end of the war?”

“Of course I have. I think about it every day. Why should I let that stop me from trying my best?”

Professor Dumbledore blinked at him, and then smiled abruptly. “Of course. Do forgive me, dear boy. Sometimes the old cannot keep up with the racing minds of the young.”

And he turned and walked down the Tower steps again, leaving Harry alone.

Harry shook his head and turned to look up at the sky again, and the bright stars. It didn’t really matter if Professor Dumbledore was hinting that he knew about Harry’s pursuit of political studies and disapproved. Harry would still keep going.

He was going to protect people with any means at his disposal. It didn’t have to be just Professor Dumbledore’s lessons.

It could be the outstretched hand of a Slytherin, too.

Chapter Text

“It sounds like he wants you to die.”

Potter flinched a little as he looked up at Blaise. They’d been practicing with the kind of speech that Potter might have to make if the Prophet’s insistent requests for an interview were granted. Potter was staring at Blaise with wide eyes, his mouth relaxing.

“You think so?”

“He doesn’t want you practicing dueling spells,” Blaise said, ticking off the points on his fingers as he roamed around the version of the Room of Requirement where they met a few times a week now. “He doesn’t think you need to worry about politics. He doesn’t even want you trying your best for the sake of people who might be alive after you die.”

“Well, yeah, but—” Potter rubbed his face. Blaise narrowed his eyes and decided he would have something else to bring up in a minute. “If he wants me dead, then he wouldn’t have any reason to discourage the last one, right?”

“He would have plenty of reason if he thinks that it might help you avoid death. Or make you so attached to life that you don’t want to sacrifice yourself.”

Potter considered for a bit, his head bowed. Then he nodded slowly. “I suppose—I can see that.”

“And you’re not shouting or full of rage?” That was the part that baffled Blaise. Potter was taking this calmly?

Potter sighed and ran a hand down his face. “Last year, Professor Dumbledore spent months not looking me in the eye in case the Former Wraith looked out of my eyes and at him. And he wasn’t even wrong about that. He—he cares about me, but would he sacrifice caring about me to the greater political game? Oh, yes, in a heartbeat.”

Blaise just sat there and had no idea how to feel. Of course, he had a mother who would keep husbands for a certain period of time while her magic drained them and kill them when they were useless, but she would never harm Blaise. You weren’t supposed to harm the people you cared for, no matter what you did to the rest of the world.

“And you’re going to let him?”

“Just let him persuade me to sacrifice myself without any explanation or idea of why it would benefit people? No. But I told you before that I expect to die in battle with the Scaly-Pigmented One. I wouldn’t try to avoid that if it meant that I would hurt someone I cared for, just so I could live a little longer.”

“Oh.” Blaise was shaking. He clenched his fists and forced himself to say in a voice as steady as Potter’s, “And what the people left behind would feel doesn’t matter, does it?”

Potter blinked. Then he said gently, “Zabini, you’re one of the people I would do it for.”

Blaise put his face in his hands. He didn’t like this. How had he become so close to Potter, so fast? Political alliances and teaching him some basic facts and helping him with a few dueling spells wasn’t supposed to result in this—this storm of feeling racing through him.

“What if I would rather that you live for me instead?” he whispered, unable to look at Potter while he said it.

“I’d have to make a choice depending on what the greatest benefit to you was at the moment.”

Blaise tore his hands away and glared at Potter. Potter looked back at him, half-smile weary and sad. “We’re still putting in the training to make you as good a politician as you can be in a limited amount of time,” Blaise snapped.

Potter blinked. “Of course. I never thought otherwise.”

“And you’re going to contact the Prophet tomorrow and tell them to send someone other than Skeeter to interview you. Understand?”

“But why? We agreed that waiting until someone approached me was better, because otherwise it might look like I thought a lot of myself and I was attempting to control who talked to me—”

“You have the right to control who talks to you. And the Prophet will be dying to get an interview. No one is going to think you’re stuck-up if you ask them to run something for you when they’ve been talking about the Chosen One shit for weeks.”

“Okay,” Potter said quietly. “I do trust your assessment of what I can use my fame for more than I trust my own.”

And that’s another thing he does, Blaise thought in irritation. Trusts me, and then I can’t do anything that—that violates that—shit. This is annoying.

But he had the opening now to say something that he wanted to say. “Do you trust me when I say you should be getting more sleep?”

Potter flushed. “Uh, well—”

“You don’t benefit anyone if you collapse face-first in the corridor, Potter.”

“Yeah, but staying up to do my homework is—”

“Ridiculous and unnecessary. You know as well as I do that the things you’ve told me you need to learn are more important.”

Potter grimaced. “You don’t know Hermione like I do. She’ll be a lot more upset and spend a lot more time trying to watch over what I do if I’m not getting my homework done. She thinks classes come first.”

“Tell her they don’t.”

Potter blinked. “You—think I could without losing my friendship with her?”

Blaise closed his eyes in a slow blink of his own. That one sentence told him a lot more about Potter’s Muggle childhood than Potter would probably have wanted him to know.

He’s so frightened of losing his friends that he’ll sneak around and keep secrets from them and risk his own health so that he doesn’t have to confront them.

“Yes, I think you could,” Blaise said. “Granger and Weasley are real friends to you, Potter. And I know you’ve had arguments in the past. You made them up, didn’t you?”

Potter nodded. He seemed to be thinking. “You’re right. And being honest with them would mean less sneaking around.” He gave Blaise a sudden, brilliant, blinding smile that made Blaise feel as if he was staring at the flash of light off someone’s Potions knife. “Thank you, Blaise.”

And Blaise didn’t even know if Potter realized that he had called Blaise by his first name. The next instant, he was drawing out a sheet of parchment with notes scribbled on it. “What do you think about starting the interview with this line?”

*

“But Professor Dumbledore doesn’t think you need politics,” Hermione said for the third time.

“Yeah, mate, and you’ve got along fine without using your fame for the last few years.” Ron’s voice was more muted.

Harry sighed and leaned back to kick his feet up on the small stool in front of him. They were in a different version of the Room of Requirement than the one he and Blaise used, one just big enough for three chairs and a small smoky fire. Why the fire needed to be smoky Harry didn’t understand, but somehow the Room thought it was best. “What was giving the interview to the Quibbler last year, if not using my fame? What is the Prophet doing now, if not using it? This would just be me using it for more productive purposes than selling newspapers.”

“But you don’t need to,” Ron and Hermione said at the same time, and then eyed each other. It was the most agreement they’d shown each other about anything in months, Harry knew. Ron dating Lavender had really destroyed the way they’d used to get along.

“Well, I think I do,” Harry said quietly.

“Professor Dumbledore doesn’t think—”

“I know,” Harry said. “But he also thought it was the best idea to avoid me last year, and that didn’t work well. I understand why he did it,” he added, seeing Hermione open her mouth. “It still didn’t work well. Neither did Occlumency lessons with Snape, or not telling me the prophecy. So he makes mistakes sometimes. There’s no reason that I can’t make some of my own decisions and do what I think makes sense for the situation and can help people.”

“But what if that gets in the way of some plan he has?” Hermione’s eyes were wide and nervous.

“Then he can tell me that, can’t he?”

Hermione glanced down and nodded slowly. Harry knew it bothered her, too, when Professor Dumbledore refused to admit anything but the most basic information.

“And you can go on making people think you’re a pompous, puffed-up prick?” Ron muttered. “Is that the plan?”

Harry snorted. “You think the Prophet calling me the Chosen One and running wild with rumors while I never say a thing is going to make people think better of me? It doesn’t, Ron.” He had started paying attention to the rumors around him while sorting them from fact, the way Blaise had taught him to do, and had noticed the amount of people at Hogwarts who thought Harry was content to sit back and let the Prophet run his publicity. They’d never once appeared to consider that it was Harry trying to be modest.

“But for you to do that—”

“What?”

“I don’t like it!”

Harry looked his best friend in the eye. Ron was still his best friend and always would be. Harry had to take a chance that they could work past this. “I’m still going to do it.”

Ron stared at him for a long moment. Then he said, “If you turn into a pompous, puffed-up prick like Percy, I’m going to puncture you.”

Harry laughed. “If I turn into someone like Percy, I’d deserve it.”

*

Blaise didn’t know to feel about the fact that he was the only one with Harry when they met with the Prophet reporter, not Granger or Weasley.

Well, yes, he did know how he felt, which was surprised and gleeful and possessive as he watched Harry sit down at a table opposite the reporter and Blaise in the Three Broomsticks.

“Ron and Hermione both probably would have jumped in at the wrong time,” Harry explained in an undertone as the reporter, a Tamsin Honeycomb, fussed with her camera and quill. “Ron because he just can’t help himself, Hermione because she would think she had a better idea or wanted to clarify something I said.”

“And you think I won’t feel that way?”

“Yeah, you would, but you’d just kick me under the table.”

Blaise sat there and thought about trust again while Honeycomb cleared her throat and patted her hair. It was as red as any Weasley’s, but much curlier. “Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Potter,” she said, voice throbbing with an undertone of excitement. “Is it true that this is the first real interview you’ve done?”

“No,” Harry said, and smiled at her, a smile that invited her to join him in a laugh. “I did an interview last year with the Quibbler.”

“Of course.” Honeycomb shook her head and laughed. “I should have been more specific; my apologies. The first real interview you’ve done with us.”

“Yes,” Harry leaned a little in his chair and put an arm on the back of it. His smile was reassuring and warm now. Blaise had to say that Harry could learn his lessons well, when he wanted to. Maybe it was because body language was a practical, physical thing, like Quidditch. “Unfortunately, Ms. Skeeter had too much tendency to concentrate on her own interests in past interviews. In this one, I’d like to concentrate on mine.”

“And what are yours, Mr. Potter?”

“Safety is a huge one.”

“Really! And yet, the Ministry’s emphasis on safety in the past few months is something that I’m not sure you’d support?”

Harry half-ducked his head and shook it. “No.” A deep breath, a look at Honeycomb from under his eyelashes, and Blaise could practically see her melting. Blaise himself wasn’t faring much better. “Of course, the Ministry is doing the best they can, and I support that,” Harry said earnestly. “Everyone should be doing the best they can. But they’re encouraging ordinary people to rely on the Aurors and report scenes with the Dark Mark and do nothing else. I’m here to encourage people to save themselves.”

“How, though, Mr. Potter? You’d agree that the Aurors are the best-trained Ministry workers when it comes to dealing with Death Eaters?”

Honeycomb had the voice of someone who wanted to be convinced otherwise, and luckily Harry noticed it without Blaise having to signal him. “Well, in terms of pure training, of course. But the Aurors can’t be everywhere at once, and once the war begins in earnest, I expect their numbers to be reduced. And we all know that it takes three years to get through Auror training. It’ll help the Aurors enormously if ordinary people can start taking their safety seriously.”

“How, though?” Honeycomb’s quill scribbled busily away.

“Brush up on Stunners, the Shield Charm, and the Disarming Charm,” Harry said instantly. “And learn at least five or six minor pain hexes.”

“Pain hexes?”

“Yes.” Harry reacted as Blaise had coached him, not getting upset that Honeycomb sounded upset, simply looking at her with those deep, sincere green eyes that could convince a Dementor it was meant to take care of Kneazle kittens. “It’ll be disabling and earn you a bit of time to keep the enemy away. And because they’re hexes, not curses, the damage is reversible.”

Honeycomb was blinking at him. “I had no—I thought the distinction between hexes and curses was mostly an academic one,” she said, and scribbled busily on her parchment.

“That’s a common misconception,” Harry said, and gave her yet another grin that invited her into the joke. “In reality, hexes are the kind of spells that wear off quickly and aren’t as regulated by the Ministry. Curses are regulated, last a long time, and need a specific countercurse to stop them from hurting someone.”

“So if you used a hex—”

“Or a jinx, yes.”

“Then it would wear off, but it might buy you the time to get away?”

“Yes. And of course, you can also make common cause with your neighbors and raise wards together.”

Blaise stiffened. This was not in the script he and Harry had discussed. Harry caught Blaise’s eye and gave him a wink. Blaise knew what he would say as clearly as if he was hearing them with Legilimency.

I trust you. Trust me.

Honeycomb was staring at Harry with her mouth slightly open. “A—forgive me, Mr. Potter, but collective wards are a lost art. They haven’t been raised in centuries. Well, by people in Britain, at least. I heard once that some of the witches and wizards on the Continent still know how to do it.”

“Well, and why can’t we reach out to ask them how to do it?” Harry waved an expansive hand and lounged back in his chair for a moment. “You-Know-Who isn’t going to stay Britain’s problem. He’ll never be satisfied with just one island or just one group of people to control. That means that we need to start looking out for each other, and seeking allies elsewhere. As it is,” he said, and cast a glance sideways at Blaise, “I have a friend here from a prominent family in Italy who just happens to know something about collective wards.”

Blaise took a long breath. Yes, this wasn’t something they’d planned on. And he’d worried that taking a more prominent role in Harry’s interview might mean danger for him.

But his mother could take care of herself. And Blaise hadn’t really thought that Honeycomb would leave him out of the interview or let him be anonymous. Even if she had, a description would have identified Blaise for anyone who knew him.

“Do you, Mr.…?” Honeycomb was studying him with keen interest.

“My name is Blaise Zabini,” Blaise said, and ignored the little flinch she couldn’t hide at the sound of his last name. “Yes, as it happens, I do know something about collective wards.”

Harry took his hand under the table.

That, out of everything, was what made it hard for Blaise to answer Honeycomb’s excited questions.

*

“Going to be giving out signed photos next, Potty?”

Harry just leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Malfoy. Malfoy was spending a lot of time on the seventh floor and had been obviously irritated during some of the times that Harry and Blaise were in the Room of Requirement and came out of it, but that wasn’t Harry’s problem. He’d told Professor Dumbledore about Malfoy, and the man had smiled and said not to worry about it. So Harry wouldn’t. “You haven’t changed your insults since second year, Malfoy. Going to be giving out new ones any time soon?”

Malfoy turned bright red. Harry just watched him, and Malfoy turned away with a splutter a moment later and went back to the Slytherin table.

“Why were you doing an interview with Blaise Zabini?” Hermione demanded in a low voice. The school was buzzing over the Prophet, and sneaking glances at both Harry and Blaise the entire time. Blaise, at least, was serenely eating his breakfast. Harry envied him.

“Actually, the interviewer’s name was Tamsin Honeycomb.”

“Harry.”

“Because he’s been helping me,” Harry said, with a shrug. “He’s taught me a lot about history, and politics, and making alliances, and—”

“But he’s a Slytherin,” Ron broke in. “You can’t trust him! You know that rumor about his mum and her husbands!”

“Which aren’t reasons to distrust Blaise,” Harry snapped back. “That would make me exactly like Snape, judging me for the actions of my father. I don’t judge Blaise that way.”

“I don’t know why you decided to talk to him, though,” Hermione said, and wound a piece of hair around her finger, frowning distractedly at the paper. “If you needed that kind of thing, you could have gone to Professor Dumbledore—”

“He was one of the people who told me that I didn’t need this, Hermione.”

“Has he told you any more for sure about what he does want you to do?” Ron interrupted.

Harry shook his head. “No.” Professor Dumbledore had asked him not to mention Horcruxes to Ron and Hermione, so he wouldn’t, but also, some of the memories didn’t seem to have much to do with Horcruxes. Like the memory of Tom Riddle in the orphanage. Unless Professor Dumbledore thought Riddle had hidden a Horcrux in the orphanage? But the building had probably been knocked down long ago.

Hermione sighed and glanced at the newspaper. “I suppose it can’t hurt to encourage people to learn defensive spells and accept help from abroad…”

Harry concealed a smile behind his teacup.

*

“Can I call you Harry?”

Harry blinked and glanced up from the book in front of him, this one on the history of Grindelwald’s war. “Of course, Blaise.” His smile was genuine and warm and seemed to reach straight into Blaise’s chest.

Blaise took a deep breath. The last few months had been a whirlwind. His mother had been more than happy to help him and Harry bring magic-users who knew how to cast collective wards to Britain, even amused in a way that suggested to Blaise she thought he had chosen his side for reasons other than pure altruism.

Which was true, of course.

Harry had given speeches now, other interviews, and appearances at public places to encourage people to defend themselves. Blaise was the one who had come up with the idea for him to appear at Quality Quidditch Supplies and sign brooms, proceeds to be donated to raising collective wards for Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley and other areas with a large magical population. But Harry was the one who had visited the sites of the Dark Lord’s attacks and spoken with the survivors personally.

Blaise knew which side he was on. Whom he wanted to work with.

“Why did you wait so long to ask?” Harry added. “I’ve been calling you Blaise for months.”

“I’ve been calling you Harry in my head for months,” Blaise said, and reached out. Harry caught his hand halfway across the library table. Always halfway, Blaise thought. Harry was right there when he needed to be, and Draco’s jealous sneering just made Blaise smugger about it. “But I wanted to wait, to see if—you would regret it.”

“Allying with you?”

“Yes.” Blaise half-ducked his head and watched Harry in his own heavy-lidded way. “Do you?”

“Not at all,” Harry said, and Blaise knew what he looked like when he lied, when he did little dances around the truth for the papers, and there was none of that here.

“Then,” Blaise said, while his heartbeat choked him, “there is something else I would very much like to do.” And the next second, he scolded himself for being so nervous. Even if Harry didn’t want him back, he would never be angry or mocking about rejecting Blaise.

“What’s that?”

Harry had a husky voice when he wanted. Blaise stood and moved forwards, sitting down smoothly in the chair beside Harry on the other side of the table. Harry’s eyes were enormous, and he wasn’t smiling now, but he also wasn’t laughing.

Blaise reached slowly out and put a hand over the pulse pounding in Harry’s throat. It pounded harder.

Harry exhaled shakily.

Blaise leaned as slowly forwards. It was an exquisite slowness, one that he knew could seduce and persuade, having seen his mother use it. But Harry didn’t pull away. His eyes flickered downwards to Blaise’s lips, and then back up. He seemed so utterly enthralled that Blaise was flattered at the compliment.

He kissed Harry, slow and deep. Harry made a noise as though he was surprised after all, and grabbed fistfuls of Blaise’s hair.

It hurt, a little. But it was also a reminder that Harry was here, and alive. The way Blaise intended to make sure he stayed.

He might have got a little too enthusiastic about making sure of that, given that Madam Pince came and kicked them out of the library for “unseemly activities.” But all Harry did when they were gathering up their books and notes was grin, and Blaise’s heartbeat nearly choked him again with his own happiness.

*

“You do know, my dear boy,” Professor Dumbledore, said looking at Harry over his glasses, “when you suggested reaching out to the Slytherins, I didn’t think you meant it so literally.”

Harry laughed. He and Blaise had been caught kissing in an alcove outside the Great Hall, which they’d planned on, or they would have chosen some place more private. Snape still looked as if someone had cast a spell that had forcibly shoved the sight into his eyes, and had immediately dragged Blaise away for a “talk.” And Harry had been summoned to the Headmaster’s office a day earlier than their next scheduled lesson. But nothing could touch the joy that beat like a second heart in Harry’s chest.

“Why did you do it?” Professor Dumbledore asked.

Harry leaned back in his chair. “Blaise is the one who’s been helping me with things like preparation for the interviews,” he said. “And I like him. And he makes me feel alive and helps me take on a new perspective.” It was the kind of thing he couldn’t really say to Ron and Hermione yet. He hadn’t even said it to Blaise.

Then again, Harry was pretty sure that Blaise already knew.

Professor Dumbledore sighed patiently. “And did you think that he could prove a distraction?”

“A distraction from what, sir?”

“The kind of life that you would be living otherwise. A distraction from our lessons.”

Harry took a breath. Okay. He and Blaise had already talked about what would happen when the Headmaster started making noises about Harry pursuing his own path, and he knew what to do. “Sir, with all respect, so far, we’ve talked about memories from Tom Riddle’s childhood and we’ve talked about Horcruxes. If you have ideas about where things like Hufflepuff’s cup are now, you haven’t shared them with me. If you have some kind of larger message you want me to take away from this, except that we have to find and destroy the Horcruxes, you haven’t told me what it is. So I’m doing what seems best to me.”

Professor Dumbledore nodded slowly. “Acting on that information, I can see why it would make sense to you. But I must ask you to desist, Harry. There is information I cannot tell you at the present that makes your relationship with young Mr. Zabini dangerous.”

Well, he and Blaise really hadn’t planned for this. But despite how useful politicking and the like had proved itself in the recent past, Harry also knew that he didn’t want to just let this moment go.

And sometimes you had to jump in with both feet and hope something worked.

“Does that mean you want me to die, sir?”

Professor Dumbledore made a harsh movement with one hand. But Harry thought it was because he was startled, not because he was upset. “What?”

“The only thing I could come up with,” Harry said, “why you were keeping information from me and didn’t even want me to try and help people who could continue on after my death, is that you thought I had to die, and didn’t want me to develop bonds that could tie me back to life.” He felt a little bad depriving Blaise of credit, but like hell was he explaining the truth, in case Professor Dumbledore thought he could “change” things by “encouraging” Blaise to forget about Harry. “And now I have a boyfriend, and you’re more upset still. If you think I need to sacrifice myself, I really would prefer that you spit it out, sir. No matter how much it hurts you, you’re still not the person it primarily affects.”

Professor Dumbledore blinked, and blinked again. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his fingers across his forehead for a long moment.

“How I wish it was not true, Harry,” he whispered.

Harry felt a long lurch in his stomach that ended with a jolt, but, well, he had anticipated this, hadn’t he? Blaise had anticipated this.

Harry swallowed. “Please tell me why.”

*

“Because I have a fucking Horcrux in my scar.”

That had been the only thing Harry had whispered when he had found Blaise after he’d escaped from the Headmaster’s office. Blaise stood holding him while his mind whirled. They were in their version of the Room of Requirement, and no one would find them. They had all the time they needed to think.

Because I have a fucking Horcrux in my scar.

Blaise smoothed a hand down Harry’s back, and asked the first question that came to mind. “Does that mean you will be finding some way to end your life?”

Harry shook his head. He had been leaning with his face tucked against Blaise’s shoulder, but he stood up now and swallowed air. Blaise had to smile at the grim look Harry wore. That was the way he had looked when he’d told Blaise that he didn’t anticipate surviving the Dark Lord.

So not as much has changed as I was afraid of.

“No,” Harry said. “And Professor Dumbledore doesn’t think it would work, either. It’s why he hasn’t killed me yet.” His hand trembled for a second on Blaise’s shoulder, then steadied. “He thinks it has to be under special circumstances. Probably the same ones that led to the Horcrux’s creation. A Killing Curse fired at me from the wand held by the Snaky One himself.”

Blaise let out a sigh. “Okay. Then we’ll find a different way to remove it.”

“How, though? Professor Dumbledore can’t find any way.”

“Did he tell you how long he’s known about the Horcruxes?”

“Yes. A year and a half ago is when he started to suspect, after he did a bunch of research on the connection I had with him and couldn’t come up with anything else it could be. Then Professor Dumbledore looked at this diary that I fought in second year, and he was pretty sure it was a Horcrux. And he destroyed one over the summer, too. Basilisk venom will take care of one. He doesn’t know for sure what else would.”

“Then he hasn’t had that much time to do research,” Blaise said fiercely. “We’ll do some more. We’ll find a way, Harry. My mother will join us.”

Harry blinked at him. “She will? But why would she care about me?”

Blaise placed his palm under Harry’s chin and leaned in to kiss him. Harry closed his eyes and opened his mouth, and Blaise kissed him thoroughly, then stepped back with a small, smug smile as Harry leaned after more. Harry started, his eyes flying open.

“Because you’re my chosen,” Blaise said simply. “Harry, no one knows more about poisons than she does. She can help us find a way to poison that Horcrux, or for you to survive drinking basilisk venom and make sure the venom hits the Horcrux instead of you. We’ll do it. We will. Come home with me for the summer. We’ll find a way to do this. I promise.”

Harry blinked, slow and unsure. Blaise could understand that. He’d already had one enormous revelation today, and now another one was probably making him feel like the ice was cracking under his feet.

“All right,” Harry whispered. “I—I do want to live, Blaise. I’m prepared to die if I have to, but I want to live. For my friends and to keep my work going. And most of all, for you.”

Blaise felt the soaring sensation in his chest that it seemed Harry Potter endlessly inspired in him. He smiled and slid his fingers gently down Harry’s neck to his arm.

“Then come with me,” he said. “And we’ll take them by storm.”

He could see part of the future as Harry smiled at him, and it was filled with the death of a Dark Lord.

I’ve chosen my side. I’ve chosen him. I’ve chosen.

The End.