Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Potter.”

Harry turned his head. He had spent a good portion of the afternoon on the shore of the lake. At least that wasn’t full of people glaring at him and muttering about how he was a cheater.

The boy standing next to him made Harry tense for a second, because he just thought Slytherin. Then he saw that it was Nott. Nott didn’t follow Malfoy around and wasn’t as awful as some of the others. In fact, Harry couldn’t remember hearing him say anything before.

He was still. Harry thought he looked like a coiled snake waiting for someone to pass so he could sting them on the foot. But he continued not to say anything, so finally Harry asked, “What do you want?”

“What do you know about blood curses?”

Harry blinked. “Nothing. Why, going to test one on me?” He gripped his wand. Maybe Nott would win, but Harry would at least strike back.

“No. I—of course not. No.”

Nott came a few paces closer. He stopped and went still again when he was perhaps a meter from Harry. His eyes were bright, a brown that reminded Harry a little of Hermione's. He swallowed back pain.

If I were living with Sirius, I bet things like this wouldn’t be happening.

“All right. Why do you want to talk to me about them?”

“There’s a blood curse on me.” Nott spoke in a quiet voice that settled to the ground like snow. “I’ll be its victim the day I turn seventeen if I can’t find a way to cure it before then.”

Harry grimaced. “Look, Nott, I really didn’t put my name in the Goblet. I can’t tell you how to do the impossible and cure a curse like this because I didn’t do the impossible with the Goblet.”

“That isn’t—oh, for the love of Merlin.”

Harry blinked as Nott collapsed on the shore next to him, his head bowed into his knees. It was how Harry had sat for most of the morning, and he felt sympathy for Nott whether or not he wanted to.

“Then why come and talk to me about this?”

Nott sat like that a long moment, his head still bowed. Then he raised his head and turned to face Harry.

“My father cursed me when I was a child,” he said quietly. “He’s convinced that I’m a misfortune to him, and that I deserved to suffer as he was convinced I was making him suffer. The blood curse is destroying my magic and undermining it.”

“That’s horrible, Nott. I’m sorry.”

Nott huffed a little as if he didn’t know what to do with Harry’s apology and kept talking. “Precisely because it destroys my magic, if I had another powerful spell laid on me or given to me, it would—fill the space taken up by the blood curse now. That’s not an exact statement, but it’s accurate enough.” Then he leaned forwards and stared at Harry intently.

“I don’t know how to cast a spell like that, either.”

“You could give me Parseltongue.”

“What? How?”

Nott abruptly raked his hands through his hair. Harry stared. He hadn’t known Nott could do something like that. “Parseltongue can be given as a gift to someone else if they eat a heart of a snake the Parselmouth killed,” he recited rapidly. “Someone who has your gift should know that.”

Harry rolled his eyes. So Nott thought he should know and do things he didn’t know and couldn’t do. They were back on familiar ground. “Yeah, because my Muggle childhood included such a large number of books about Parseltongue.”

Nott gaped at him. Harry sneered back. He thought he’d got quite good at sneering since his name flew out of the Goblet. “Which part is making you do that, the Muggle one or the fact that I’m not a reader?”

Nott slammed his mouth shut and seemed to think furiously about what he was going to say next. Harry turned back to face the lake, ignoring the way that Nott’s gaze was fastened on his neck.

“That explains some things.”

“Get on with it, Nott. Or go away. I don’t really care which.”

“You could feed me the heart of the basilisk you killed. And then I would have Parseltongue, and it would banish the blood curse.”

Harry knew that he smeared mud across his robes with how fast he turned to gape at Nott, but frankly, he didn’t care what he looked like at the moment. “You want me to what?”

“There aren’t that many people who know the truth about what happened in the Chamber of Secrets, but I’m one of them.” Nott gave him the kind of thin, cold smile Harry would have expected from the person he usually seemed to be. “I know you killed a basilisk. I know that no one’s been down in the Chamber since you did. I know that you can give me its heart.”

“I mean—fine. I could do that.” Harry felt a bit of relief at thinking of something he could do. “I suppose I could take you down in the Chamber and you could use Cutting Spells?”

“You have to give me its heart.”

“What? Cast some kind of promise spell or something?”

“No. Cut it free yourself and feed it to me.”

Harry thought this was one of the weirdest things he had ever heard. But he shook his head. “All right, Nott. If that’s what you want.”

Nott froze, staring at him. Harry stared back. He wondered if Nott had thought he wouldn’t agree, or wouldn’t agree so easily, and was now waiting for Harry to laugh and say he’d been lying.

But then Nott whispered, “That’s not the way it works.”

Harry groaned. “Look, I already agreed to feed you the heart and help with your blood curse. I don’t know what else you want.”

“It has to be balanced.”

“Do you know how to conjure scales to weigh the heart? Because I don’t.”

Nott muttered something that sounded like, “Merlin grant me patience.” Harry just waited, and resisted the temptation to say that they would already be discussing real things if Nott hadn’t resorted to cryptic little statements.

Nott finally took a long breath and faced him. He held out his hands, palm-up. Harry eyed them and waited.

“The enormous gift that you’re granting me has to be balanced out in some way.” Nott let his hands dip up and down like the scales Harry had been discussing. “You’re saving my life, granting me a rare magical gift, and protecting—well, I can tell you about that later, if this works out.

“Those are enormous gifts. You have to let me balance them out. Give you something that’s of equal value.”

“Everything that I would value equally, you can’t give me.”

Harry tried to say it gently, but Nott still paled, his nostrils flaring. “I have to,” he said so quietly Harry had trouble hearing him. “You don’t understand how ancient this magic is, how it has to work.”

“No, I don’t. But you can’t kill Voldemort—” Nott flinched so hard it looked like he was about to stand “—and you can’t take away my fame, and you can’t bring my parents back, and you can’t make people realize my godfather’s innocence. It’s the way things are.”

Nott narrowed his eyes and stared at Harry as if looking for secrets in his aura or something like that that would tell him how Harry really felt. Harry maintained eye contact as gently as he could.

“I’ll give you the heart for free,” Harry added, at the same time as Nott tried to say something. Nott jerked his head in irritation, but let Harry speak. “I can swear a vow or something like that says there’s no debt, can’t I?”

“No. Because of the magic involved.”

“You’re so frustrating, Nott,” Harry muttered, and rubbed his forehead. It felt like his scar was hurting again. “There’s nothing I want from you.”

“I can offer you something that you might not know you want.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Freedom from the Muggle world.”

Harry jerked and looked up at Nott. He had leaned near enough that Harry felt uncomfortable, but he also wasn’t going to retreat and look weak. He stared into Nott’s dark brown eyes, which looked as if they had flecks of gold and blue around the edges. It was the closest he had ever looked at someone’s eyes.

“I told you that you can’t make my godfather innocent,” Harry whispered.

“There are ways and means around the Ministry’s decrees,” Nott whispered back. “People who think that Black is guilty right now, or just want him dead because it would be more convenient, can be bribed to think differently.”

Harry swallowed. Maybe he should feel bad about the thought of bribing people, but—

After third year, he knew that Minister Fudge was exactly the kind of person Nott was talking about. And the kind of person who got manipulated by Lucius Malfoy, too. If someone was going to be manipulating him, then Harry should just as well be the one doing it.

But he didn’t think he had enough money in his trust vault for that, or at least not for the whole Ministry, even if it was enough for Fudge. Harry shook his head reluctantly. “I would need a lot of Galleons.”

Nott smiled, a triumphant expression that glowed more in his eyes than on his face. “So get them by selling the basilisk.”

“But you want its heart.”

“That still leaves the scale, and the venom, and the fangs—”

Harry jumped despite himself.

“You didn’t sell the fangs already, did you?”

“No. It just made me jump because one of them went through my arm and Fawkes had to cry on it to heal me. Dumbledore’s phoenix?” Harry added, when Nott stared at him as if he didn’t know what Harry was talking about, and pulled back his sleeve.

Nott stared in silence at the puckered scar on his arm. Then he said, “You are impossible.”

Harry shrugged and covered the scar up again. He didn’t see what was so much more impossible about surviving a basilisk bite than about surviving the Killing Curse, and that seemed to be just the kind of thing everyone around him thought he should accept. “Believe me or not.”

“The fangs are still in the Chamber?”

“Yeah. I mean, maybe the one that bit me is broken because I rammed it through the Dark artifact that was possessing G—er, the student who was possessed. But the others ought to be okay.”

Nott rolled his eyes and muttered something. Then he shook his head. “Venom and scales and fangs—they can be used in potions, or sold to strengthen goblin weapons, or to help with breeding experiments, or to make special robes, or—”

“Yeah, I see what you mean.”

Nott stilled and stared at him expectantly. Harry looked off to the side and wondered if he should do this.

Then he shrugged. At this point, it didn’t sound as though anyone else wanted the basilisk. No one had been going down in the Chamber as far as he knew. The worst thing would probably be if he and Nott went down there and then couldn’t cut the thing because they didn’t have strong enough magic.

Nott seemed to know the answer before Harry could speak it to him. He climbed back to his feet and swatted some dirt off his robes. He was still smiling.

“Shall we go?”

*

The only good part so far of the way the school shunned him, Harry thought, was that people deliberately turned away from him when they saw him walking down a corridor. They didn’t even bother to comment on the fact that Nott was with him. And he wouldn’t be missed if he went down into the Chamber of Secrets, either.

Harry swallowed the loneliness he felt. He would still speak to Hermione later today.

But she also wanted to spend time with Ron, to reassure him that she hadn’t forgotten him, and Harry was—

He put the thought aside. He and Nott were here for something else.

Moaning Myrtle dived out of sight when they came into her bathroom instead of trying to speak to them. Harry went over to the sink and hissed uncertainly. Part of him didn’t believe it would really work. The events at the end of second year still seemed more like a dream than anything else.

But it did. The sink shuddered and ground into the wall, and Harry found himself staring down the black pipe.

“Potter?”

Nott’s hand on his back made Harry start. He stepped back and nodded. “There’s a pretty slimy slide down this way,” he said. “I suppose we should have brought brooms or something.”

“I know Cleaning Charms.”

Harry shrugged and leaped onto the slide.

This time, he was prepared when they came to the end, and he rolled and dropped the way he would if he’d fallen off his broom during Quidditch practice. Nott didn’t seem to know that, but Harry snapped his wand out and said, “Arresto momentum!”

Nott half-floated to the floor and blinked at him. “I’m surprised you know that spell.”

“The Gryffindor Quidditch practices taught it to me.” Harry spelled the slime off his robes at the same time Nott did and turned to face the corridor that led to the Chamber. “There’s a fairly large skin here, and lots of bones. More slime.”

“How big would you say the skin was?”

“Not as big as the basilisk itself, but big.”

“Then we can sell that, too.”

Harry nodded and began walking, his lit wand in front of him. Nott walked in near-silence, or as quiet as he could get when things were crunching beneath his feet, so Harry didn’t say anything, either.

They came to the cave-in, and Nott looked at him. “Did this happen when you were here?”

“Yeah. Lockhart tried to Obliviate us—Ron and me—but he used Ron’s wand, which was broken, and the backfiring brought down the ceiling.”

Nott stared at him again.

Harry shrugged, rubbed the back of his neck, and aimed his wand at the scattered rocks. He hadn’t really thought about how they would clean them out of the way, because he hadn’t remembered this part, but he might as well try the plan that had just occurred to him. “Reparo!” he yelled, putting all his strength into it.

The rocks went hurtling off the floor and crashed into the ceiling. Harry yanked Nott with him as he dived back, thinking that they would probably drop again, but when he looked up, the cracks were closing behind the stones. He smiled a little. Good enough.

“Warn me next time, Potter,” Nott said faintly from the floor.

“Sorry. Let’s go before they decide to fall again.”

“They wouldn’t decide to do that.”

Harry walked ahead, leaving Nott to have his philosophical debate with empty air if he wanted to, and they eventually came to the Chamber doors. Harry flinched instinctively, but there was no hissing and no foul stench, either. The doors had in fact sealed themselves, and the snakes’ emerald eyes glinted at them.

“What an impressive set of doors,” Nott whispered.

Harry shrugged and spoke to the doors. “Open.”

As the doors obeyed, Nott asked, “What word was that in Parseltongue?”

“Just open.”

“I would have thought Salazar Slytherin would choose something more impressive for his Chamber.”

Harry shrugged again and stepped in.

There wasn’t any thick smell, and the basilisk didn’t look rotted in any way at all. Harry shuddered a little as he looked at it. He didn’t know if his memory was faulty or if he just hadn’t really had time to take in its size when he was twelve and trying to get Ginny out of the Chamber, but the thing was huge.

After what felt like an eternity of staring, Harry realized that he wasn’t hearing any movement from behind him. He turned and found Nott holding as still as a rabbit, eyes fixed on the snake.

“It’s all right,” Harry said quietly.

“I know it’s all right, I’m not stupid.”

But Nott still inched along the wall, with his back to it, as he came into the Chamber. Harry would have thought that a Slytherin would be overcome by awe at the sight of the Chamber, since their House probably told stories about their Founder, but Nott just stared at the basilisk and didn’t even look up at the statue.

Harry waited for a minute, then two. Nott didn’t stop staring. Harry cleared his throat finally, and felt a little bad for the way that Nott jumped and spun around. But he had to say it. “Are you ready to cut the scales?”

Nott lowered his eyes and nodded. Then he turned to the body and lifted his wand. Harry didn’t hear the spell he hit the corpse with, but it sliced scales aside. Harry wondered if he could have done that when he was fighting it, but—

Well, Riddle had had his wand. Or maybe the basilisk’s scales were resistant to spells like this when it was alive, but not after death.

Harry wrinkled his nose as congealed, jelly-like masses of blood fell out of the corpse. Nott turned and stared at him, making a noise that was too nervous to be a giggle. “You want to do the honors, Potter?”

Harry stepped cautiously forwards, thinking about saying that he didn’t know exactly what the heart looked like. But it turned out there was no mistaking it. The organ didn’t look that much like a human heart—the illustrations of them Harry had seen in some Muggle science textbooks in primary school—but it looked enough like it.

Harry swallowed, then gagged and had to hold his breath as he cast the spell that would cut the heart out of the basilisk. It fell and rolled on the floor of the Chamber.

It was wider than the span of Harry’s arms. He turned and stared at Nott. “How exactly are you going to eat this?”

“You’ll cut pieces of it off it and feed them to me.” Nott seemed to be past whatever nervousness had gripped him when they entered the Chamber. He lifted his head now, his face proud, eyes glittering. “We’ll come back across multiple evenings and Saturdays if we have to.”

Harry nodded. He’d been about to say that he needed to devote some time to studying for the First Task, but he supposed that this didn’t really have a deadline, unlike the First Task.

What is it? How am I going to survive it?

But Harry shoved that aside. He might not be able to help himself much with the school’s shunning and the like, he might not be able to figure out who had put his name into the Goblet, but he could help Nott get rid of the stupid blood curse his father had cast on him.

Harry could hardly believe a father would act like that. Well, except that Nott’s father had been a Death Eater. So he supposed that made sense.

“Going to cut off the first piece, Potter?”

Harry jerked himself back to the present and nodded. “Can you show me the spell that you used on the basilisk? I think I’m going to need something as tough as that to slice through this.” He eyed the black-purple flesh of the heart.

“Of course.”

Nott stepped forwards, his eyes resting on Harry instead of the heart. Harry swallowed. There was something weirdly intense about Nott’s gaze, as though he was trying to pierce through all the nonsense that people thought and thought they saw about the Boy-Who-Lived and work through to who Harry was underneath.

But then, Harry thought, that would make sense. Nott wanted to have the blood curse removed and be able to live. He wanted to trust that Harry was going to give him that ability.

So Harry let Nott guide his wand through the right motions, and then he turned and shot the charm at the heart.

The first sliver pulled away, looking more blue-black than anything else. Harry walked over and picked it up, then turned.

Nott was right there. Harry honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had been this close to anyone except Ron and Hermione.

And even Ron and Hermione had never stared at him like this, eye to eye, close enough for Harry to feel their breathing, a warm hand on his wrist as Nott stooped down and bit into the piece of raw flesh Harry was offering him.

Harry had had some concerns still, like whether Nott would be able to eat the thing at all, what raw meat from a dead magical beast might do to him—

But as Nott swallowed the meat and licked the last of the blood off his lips, those thoughts reeled into quietness like birds flying home to roost for the night.

“I can manage another few strips,” Nott said, watching him with that same intent gaze.

Harry nodded, dazedly, and stooped to cut another piece.

Chapter Text

Harry woke harshly, gasping. There had been a flash of green light in his dreams, like the one that he had dreamed of when he was in the cupboard at the Dursleys when he was a kid—

But this one was a lot brighter.

Of course it is, I only saw it a few hours ago, Harry thought bitterly, and rubbed his still-aching scar with his hand. He took a deep breath.

“Harry.”

Harry started and aimed his wand in the direction of the voice. He didn’t even remember grabbing it from the table next to the hospital bed. Or maybe it had been beneath the pillow. He honestly didn’t remember.

“Lumos,” he snapped, when the voice didn’t say anything else and no one came hurtling out of the darkness to attack him.

He sighed when the light worked enough for him to see Nott sitting on one of the other beds. He leaned back against his pillow and wiped his hand across his face. “What do you want, Nott?” They had finished selling the third-to-last load of basilisk parts a few weeks ago, and then Harry had got caught up in preparing for the Third Task and hadn’t had the time to meet or talk with Nott.

The way that Nott was staring at him now, Harry wondered if something had happened to him, too. Harry had heard Voldemort speak Nott’s name in the graveyard, and despite the soul-deep pain and panic he’d been feeling, his eyes had still gone to the stooped man who had cast the blood curse on his son.

“I came to see what happened.”

“Voldemort is back.”

Nott considered that for long enough that Harry thought he would nod, get up, and walk out of the hospital wing, having the information he’d come for. Instead, Nott leaned forwards, his eyes fastened on Harry. “I know that. I want to know how you’re going to escape your Muggles now that this has happened.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t even thought of their plan since he’d seen Cedric die. Even though in the months before that, he’d thought about it every day.

Now, though?

Harry shrugged and laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. I think they’ll be keeping a close eye on me to make sure that I actually get to the house.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Then they’ll just search for me.”

“So you’re giving up?”

Harry snarled, pricked in the way that only Nott had managed to annoy him in their past few months of arguing, skinning, slicing, selling, and heart-feeding. Even Malfoy didn’t manage it. “No. But I think it’s going to have to be next summer, or at least next term. They’ll be watching me now, and you know I can’t get to the basilisk parts over the summer.”

Nott’s eyes shone, and he switched to Parseltongue. Speaking it with him, Harry had started to notice the difference from English. The only thing he could describe it as was to say that it sounded like dark water was flowing out of Nott’s throat when he spoke it. “I have a different idea.”

“What?”

“We send a homunculus of you to your relatives’ home.”

Harry swallowed convulsively. Nott had weird interests, and Harry knew enough about them by now to realize what Nott meant. He also knew that the body Voldemort had grown from in the graveyard had been a homunculus at first.

He didn’t know if he could make himself do it.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Voldemort used a homunculus to come back as part of the ritual.”

“So what?”

“He also used me as a ritual ingredient, Nott!”

Harry winced at the echoes of the shout, and looked over his shoulder, instinctively seeking out Madam Pomfrey. Then he remembered that to anyone else, the shout would probably just sound like a bout of whispery hissing, and relaxed.

Nott hadn’t moved, of course. He seemed still even in contexts like the Chamber where Harry had seen him moving plenty of times. Harry thought the snake’s gift suited Nott better than it ever had him.

“I’m getting you out of your relatives’ house. Remember what I said about the gift having to be balanced?”

“We still didn’t really talk about where I would go.”

“I know exactly where you’re going to go. But I can’t reveal it to you until we get there.”

Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to say that he didn’t trust Nott, that the other boy’s father having been in the graveyard had ended all the ties between them.

But of course, that wasn’t true. He couldn’t speak Parseltongue with someone for months and sell the basilisk and feed him a bloody heart without coming to trust him.

“All right. How are you going to get me away from the people who will be expecting to be able to watch me on Privet Drive?”

Nott stood, a smile tugging at his mouth. It was gentler and less intense than the others Harry had seen him wear before. He glided forwards until he stood in front of Harry, not seeming to notice the way Harry stared at him searchingly.

“My name is Theo.”

“Yeah, I know?”

“No. I mean that I want you to call me that, Harry.”

Harry swallowed. The sound of his name in Parseltongue was intense and intimate enough to make up for any lack in Nott’s smile. “Fine. Theo.”

Theo nodded. It would take Harry time to get used to calling him that, when they’d been so careful before to avoid first names. “Trust me. I’ll come and get you the night before the Leaving Feast.”

Harry wanted to say that they would doubly notice if Harry vanished right out of Hogwarts, but he held his tongue. Theo had said to trust him, and at the moment, Harry had no reason not to.

If nothing else, he thought, rolling over and burying his face in the pillow as Nott slid out of the hospital wing like a ghost, he might have a more peaceful summer than he was expecting to at the moment, with the nightmares about Cedric that he knew Dudley would taunt him about if he had the chance.

*

“Are you all right, Harry? You’re jumpy.”

“Oh, I wonder why that could be.”

Hermione and Ron frowned at each other over his head. Harry knew it. He didn’t bother looking up to confirm it.

His relationship with his friends had changed since the First Task. Ron had apologized, and Harry had accepted him back, because in the end, Ron was his first and best friend, and Harry still wanted there. With him came Hermione, and they had spent plenty of cozy evenings together in the common room and trying to figure out who had put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire.

But all the while, Harry had known he would slip out of the common room with his Invisibility Cloak that night, or the next night, and meet Nott down in the Chamber of Secrets.

It was strange, but he had never once thought about telling Ron and Hermione about the heart, or the blood curse that Nott—Theo—was under, or the steadily growing fortune in Galleons that he and Nott were accumulating by shuttling the basilisk parts to goblins they met under illusion-disguises in Hogsmeade. Theo hadn’t told Harry that it would be best to keep it secret. He hadn’t said anything about not trusting Ron and Hermione, or about Gryffindors gossiping, or anything that Harry might have thought would be the case if he’d thought about it.

Harry himself had simply decided that it was for the best if he didn’t say anything, and Nott had glided in his wake, and—Ron and Hermione didn’t know.

“You know you’re going to be safe over the summer, Harry. Dumbledore won’t let any harm come to you.”

“Right. Except what my relatives are going to inflict on me.”

“He wouldn’t let them do anything too bad!”

Harry didn’t shake his head or tell Hermione she was wrong, because there was no point. She wouldn’t believe him or change her mind or challenge Dumbledore. And now, there was the fact that arguing with her might alert her to his plan not to be on Privet Drive for the summer.

Harry stared at the window that looked out over the grounds and thought how mental it was to be trusting a Death Eater’s son, of all people.

He closed his eyes and saw Cedric, falling.

*

“What did you think the homunculus was going to be made of?”

“Flesh. That’s what he used.”

“But both you and I are Parselmouths. It changes what we can do.”

Harry had looked at Theo with some skepticism, but he’d agreed to use the shreds of basilisk hide, and one last, precious strip of the heart, that Theo had brought out of the Chamber to make the homunculus.

Now he sat back and stared at it, shaking his head. It really was an ugly thing, uglier than the little baby form that Voldemort had had. Its head was molded out of a mandrake root and covered with the basilisk hide, and its hands were just crude carvings of fingers in bark. The legs and body were made of bark, too, and smeared with crushed flowers that Theo had brought from the greenhouse.

“And you’re sure we can do this?”

“Of course.” Theo sat back and stretched. They were behind the greenhouse where Theo had gone to get most of the ingredients, and he turned the same intent stare on Harry that he had used when Harry was feeding him the heart. “You know what you have to do.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. Then he reached for the potion Theo had brought.

This one smelled softly foul, like a rotting corpse that had been around for a while stinking at such a low rate that you only noticed when you were close to it. Harry wasn’t happy about drinking it, even though he didn’t have to swallow it.

He held his nose and poured the first mouthful in.

He could feel the way that the potion changed when it touched the lining of his mouth. Suddenly it was bubbling and foaming, and he knew that it could harm him badly unless he spat it out.

So he leaned over and did.

The venom, which the potion had transformed into on the tongue of a Parselmouth, soaked the homunculus’s legs, but the rest of it was still dry. Harry grimaced and used the potion again and again, until the stupid little figure was running with poison and Theo had sat all the way up, staring.

The homunculus was moving.

As Harry watched, it whirled and changed and grew. Well, parts of it stayed the same, but the venom was projecting the illusion, the way Theo had told him would happen. When the change finished, the homunculus was him, stumbling about with button-bright green eyes and a mockery of his glasses on its face. Harry thought it was a little shorter than he was, but not enough that anyone would really notice.

Hopefully Ron and Hermione would attribute it to the hunched posture he’d used a lot since Cedric’s death.

“Do you think that’s really going to work?” Harry whispered, eyes fastened on the creation as it lumbered around and looked confused. “Really?”

“I do.”

Harry glanced at Theo, at the absolute confidence in his posture, and the way that he reached out to take Harry’s hand without taking his gaze from the homunculus. He might have been discussing the results of an ordinary potion.

“All right,” Harry said. “All right.”

*

In the end, it worked much better than Harry had ever dared to hope it would.

They took the homunculus back to Gryffindor Tower, and it mumbled the password to the Fat Lady. Its voice sounded like a strained and blurred version of Harry’s. Harry thought that might give it away, but Theo shook his head and tightened his hold on Harry’s hand. He hadn’t let go of it since they’d watched the homunculus come to life.

“It’ll sound like you don’t want to talk. And they shouldn’t even expect you to. After what you went through in the graveyard? You have every right to be as silent as you want.”

“But I was talking before this.”

“And now you’re not.” Harry opened his mouth to object again, and Theo turned and pinned him with an intense look that—well, all his looks were intense, but this was especially piercing. “You have the right to decide to stop anytime, Harry.”

“Does that include with you?”

Harry meant the question to be sarcastic, but Theo just flashed him a smug grin. “You don’t want to stop talking with me. Especially in our language.”

Harry nodded, refusing to speak Parseltongue just because he didn’t want to gratify Theo, and then turned and walked with him towards the staircase that would lead them downwards. He glanced back once, but no one was tearing out of the Gryffindor common room yelling that Harry Potter had been kidnapped and replaced by an illusion.

“Told you it would work.”

“You don’t have to be that smug,” Harry said, and shoved Theo’s shoulder. Theo staggered, looking surprised, and then recovered his feet and laughed, full and free.

“Yeah, I do.”

Harry shoved him again, but his lips were twitching and Theo was watching him with ardent interest, and they went down the stairs laughing. It was only when they reached the dungeons that Harry started to think that he might not have considered this situation carefully enough.

“Where am I going to sleep?”

“In my bed.”

Harry stopped. Theo kept walking, and then turned around and looked at him with a mildly impatient expression. “What?”

“You—wouldn’t object to sharing your bed with me?”

“Why would I invite you to share it if I objected?”

Harry took a long breath and scrubbed his hand across his eyes. “Theo, I just—it’s a big step, isn’t it?”

“A step in what?”

Theo always seemed to retreat to Parseltongue when a discussion threatened to get too emotional. Harry rolled his eyes but hissed obligingly, “You’re showing that you trust me in a way that I would guess you don’t trust all your friends.”

Theo pulled him closer. Harry went with a stumble and a gasp. He hadn’t expected that, and even though he wouldn’t say that he felt as if he were in danger standing close to Theo, still, it was—

Unexpected.

“You are my closest friend,” Theo hissed. “You gave me the gift of Parseltongue. You saved my life. And you’ve done something else, something you don’t understand yet.” They stood there with Theo holding his hand and staring at him, while Harry wondered if Theo was going to tell him about that other thing. But apparently not yet. Theo just pulled insistently on his hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

So they trooped down to the dungeons, and Harry draped the Cloak over himself as Theo drew him into the common room, and then they were arriving in the Slytherin boys’ bedroom for fourth year. Harry looked around curiously. He’d seen the Slytherin common room before, of course, but nothing like this.

“Are you all right sleeping in your robes?”

Harry nodded. It hadn’t even occurred to him to get his pyjamas from Gryffindor Tower. “Yeah. Do you have a toothbrush I can use, though?”

“Yes.”

Theo guided him into the bathroom, although Harry thought he could have found it on his own, and then went and found a toothbrush from somewhere in his trunk, probably. Harry mumbled thanks and brushed his teeth. He had to keep ducking his head to see out from under the Cloak’s hood, but honestly, that wasn’t a big problem. He was already yawning hard, and the realization that he wouldn’t have to go back to the Dursleys was finally settling in on him.

When he left the bathroom, he tiptoed across the floor to Theo’s bed, which was an enormous one draped in green—of course—set against one of the windows that looked out into the lake. Harry crawled in and lay down.

Theo promptly crawled in. Harry had thought he would lie on the other side of the bed and try to avoid touching Harry, but instead, he molded himself to Harry’s back, arms linking together around his stomach.

Harry swallowed in surprise.

“I know that you’re okay with this,” Theo whispered. “Because I can feel it in your breathing.”

“I—what?”

“My senses are enhanced, like a snake’s, now that I ate the basilisk heart. I wanted that protection. That was one reason it had to be a basilisk and not another snake.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“There’s more than one, but I’ll tell you in time.”

Harry breathed out and shut his eyes. “You’ve given me as great a gift as I’ve given you,” he whispered. “Even more than just getting away from the Dursleys. The homunculus, and somewhere else to stay for the summer.”

Theo chuckled against the back of his neck, his breath like a fire. “Good night, Harry,” he murmured.

“Good night,” Harry hissed back, and passed into darkness.

Chapter Text

Harry was watching under the Cloak when the homunculus marched with Ron and Hermione onto the train. It had paused on the way there to toss Harry’s shrunken trunk to Theo under the guise of dropping something on the ground. Harry’s friends didn’t appear to notice anything wrong, content with the quiet mumbled responses that the homunculus gave now and then. Harry shook his head in wonder.

Theo’s hand came to rest on his back. Harry jumped, but he couldn’t show how surprised he was at the moment, given that people would be watching. He had to get on the train under the Cloak, and walk with Theo until they reached the compartment where Theo had said they would spend most of the ride. Apparently, Theo liked to get another compartment by himself, and other Slytherins might visit there, but they wouldn’t bother him.

Harry waited until Theo had locked the door and obscured the window with spells. Then he took off the Cloak and asked, “How could you tell where I was when I was under this to touch me?”

“I told you.” Theo’s eyes were so intent it was hard to meet them. “I can smell you.”

Harry just shook his head, because he would have asked why Theo knew exactly where to touch him—which couldn’t have come with smell alone—but he didn’t think he was ready to have that discussion. He sat down on the bench in the train compartment and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. Theo sat down across from him.

The train shuddered and pulled out of Hogsmeade. Harry stared blindly out the window. He had seen the thestrals pulling the carriages that morning, and Theo had explained what they were, but it wasn’t the same thing as really understanding them.

He thought about asking more about them now, but it wasn’t thestrals he was interested in.

“Who put your name in the Goblet?”

Oh, right. Harry had forgotten that Theo wouldn’t have known that part. He turned to face him. “A Death Eater named Barty Crouch, Jr. He took Moody’s place using Polyjuice, apparently all year.”

Theo went very still, staring at him. Harry just looked wearily back. He didn’t know why this news appeared to have upset Theo, and he honestly wasn’t sure he had the capacity to care, either.

“I know who he is.”

“I’m not surprised, with your father.”

“I heard tales of him from other sources. Saw memories in Pensieves that didn’t come from my father.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “All right. Other Death Eaters?”

“Yes.”

Theo didn’t seem like he wanted to discuss it, even though he was the one who had brought it up with Crouch’s name. Harry just leaned back against the wall again and watched the blurred landscape whip by outside.

“So you could have died even after you came back from the graveyard where the Dark Lord rose.”

Harry blinked and turned back to Theo. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t mention this before?”

“It didn’t come up?” Then Harry shook his head. He could have told Theo about it in the hospital wing when Theo visited, if he’d really wanted to. It was more like—it just didn’t matter, next to all the other shit he’d been through. “I didn’t think about it. It didn’t seem important.”

“All danger to you is important.”

“I’m surprised that you would say that.”

Theo went stiller than ever, until Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to reach out and feel stone in his arm instead of muscle. “You think that I cannot care about you because I’m a Slytherin?” he asked at last, when they had stared at each other for long enough to make Harry’s eyeballs ache.

“You’ve been through the blood curse. It’s a more terrible danger than anything I’ve faced. And you were willing to do something desperate to escape it. You know more about death than I do.”

“So you thought I wouldn’t care about it because I had faced worse.”

It still wasn’t the way Harry would have put things, maybe, but it was more accurate than a lot of what he could have said. He leaned back against the wall and shrugged. “Yes.”

“You were wrong.”

Harry frowned, but nodded when Theo glared at him, because this was something important to Theo for some reason. “All right. I’ll keep that in mind for future dangers.”

“See that you do.”

Harry’s response had been at least half-sarcastic, but it seemed Theo was determined not to take it that way. So Harry sighed, and then looked up as someone knocked on the compartment’s door. He tugged the Cloak back over his head and vanished beneath it as Theo opened the door to let Malfoy in.

Honestly, at the moment, it felt easiest to just stay invisible and watch the countryside unfold outside the window.

*

“That wasn’t a problem.”

Harry nodded absently, eyes still fixed on the place where Uncle Vernon had gathered up the homunculus and shepherded it off the platform. Theo had assured him it would last as long as he needed it to, and would actually be better off at Privet Drive than it had been at Hogwarts. According to Theo, there was a “sympathetic connection” between the homunculus and Harry that weakened with distance, and meant it would actually act more independent when it was further away.

“Have I not told you the truth?”

“Of course, Theo. I haven’t accused you of lying, you know.”

“It is more than that,” Theo said, but turned away before Harry could ask him what he had meant. He scurried along at Theo’s heels as Theo walked towards the Floo on the far side of the platform. “We’re going to my home.”

“But your father---”

“He can neither understand Parseltongue nor detect a Cloak as fine as yours with any wards or spells. Honestly, I don’t know if anyone could detect that Cloak of yours.” Theo swept Harry with a long look. “There’s something uncanny about it.”

“It was my dad’s.”

Theo nodded, his face set in a calm expression. “Invisibility Cloaks don’t generally last that long, so there must be something special about it.”

Before Harry could ask him more questions, Theo threw a pinch of Floo powder into the fire that came from somewhere Harry hadn’t even noticed, and then hooked an arm around Harry’s waist and drew him sharply against Theo’s side. Harry gave an undignified squeak. It was true that someone might notice the Floo flaring up again if Harry tried to go through by himself, but he hadn’t expected this.

“Thunderhaven!” Theo cried.

They whirled through and were gone, with Theo’s arms firmer than steel around Harry.

*

They landed in a room that made Harry instinctively want to cringe. It was made of marble, black marble, with a slickness that caused Harry to wince at the thought of slipping on the floor. The walls glowed with subtle flickers of gold and blue, and the torches cast dizzying shadows.

Other than the torches and the fireplace they had come through, it was entirely empty.

Theo turned to Harry and gave him a faint smile. “My father thinks to punish me by staying away from me when I come back from Hogwarts,” he hissed. “He would be here to greet me every time if he knew how much of a punishment his presence is for me.”

“Should we be speaking aloud?”

“Parseltongue sounds like nothing more than noise to those who don’t speak it. Creepy, but only noticeable if they get close enough. He’ll think it the hissing and flaring of the fire.”

Harry nodded uncertainly and followed Theo out of the Floo room. Theo carried his trunk and kept his gaze aimed straight ahead. Harry’s trunk, still shrunken from where the homunculus had dropped it, rested in a pocket of Theo’s robe.

Harry trusted Theo. Of course he did. But it was hitting him that he had willingly come to a Death Eater’s house for the summer, and he had to question whether that was really a good idea.

They trooped up stairs that at least were made of dark wood instead of black marble, and accented with a dark red carpet. Theo’s room was enormous, a suite really; Harry could see doors in the distance. Theo put his trunk down at the foot of his bed and then sat on it and stared vaguely at the wall.

Harry at least knew why they were doing this. Theo had told Harry that his father spied on him through spells for an hour or so after he’d come back, to see his despair over the blood curse growing year by year.

Harry really hated Alexander Nott. Maybe even more than Uncle Vernon.

It turned out the ending of the spy spells wasn’t subtle, although maybe it was to Theo’s father. Harry had to stifle a gasp as the pop of magic echoed over his skin. Theo stirred and sighed a little, then stood, blinking, and nodded to Harry. He walked towards one of the doors that led further into the suite.

Harry followed, wondering if there was another bedroom there, or maybe a library Theo wanted to show him. But instead of walking through one of the actual doors, Theo halted in front of a patterned patch of stone on the wall. He reached out and ran his fingers over a tracery in the stone that looked like a carved vine.

The wall rumbled aside. Harry jumped. He didn’t know why he had never considered that there might be secret passages in Theo’s house, but. Well. Surely Hogwarts wasn’t the only old magical building with them.

“Come with me?”

Theo’s voice was soft, but his eyes hard and glittering as he rested them on Harry. Harry nodded and walked into the passage. He did trust Theo by now. And this couldn’t be any more dangerous than the Chamber of Secrets.

The passage in the wall twisted back and forth, until it seemed as if it must occupy far more space than there could possibly be in the wall. Harry didn’t let that bother him too much. After all, he had stayed in the Weasleys’ enormous tent at the Quidditch World Cup.

The passage sloped very slightly downwards, but not enough that it ever resembled a slide or stairs. And part of it kept going past the point where Theo stopped, his hand resting on what looked like an unremarkable wall.

“I learned this secret when I was nine years old,” Theo said softly. “This is the reason that I had to become a Parselmouth specifically, instead of seeking some easier magical gift to drive out the blood curse. And the reason I had to have you feed me a basilisk heart instead of something else.”

For the first time since Voldemort had risen in the graveyard, Harry felt clear-headed. His heart was pounding with excitement and curiosity. He nodded.

Theo spun his fingers over the wall. If he was tracing some pattern, it was invisible to Harry. The wall still opened.

The tunnel beyond this was lit with some distant fire, and did slope downwards more sharply. But Theo reached back and caught Harry’s hand, so Harry didn’t hesitate to follow him.

They arrived at the entrance to what looked like a natural cavern, or maybe had been made to look like it. There was a ceiling high overhead, studded with small flickers of magical light that resembled stars.

Harry didn’t pay much attention to them, though, because the flickering light of the fire gleamed on a solid green wall of scales.

In front of them slept a basilisk, smaller than the one Harry had killed.

Theo’s hand tightened on Harry’s. “She was my only companion for so long,” he whispered, his voice full of pain. “The only one who knew about my father’s torments, because she suffered them, too. I promised to free her. Will you help me, Harry?”

Harry swallowed, and nodded, pressing his shoulder to Theo’s. They watched the sleeping basilisk in silence.

Harry shivered, alive and awake with wonder. Fear, too, but it was so much better than the dull state that had gripped him since Cedric’s death.

“I will,” he whispered.

*

Theo had gone to extraordinary lengths to communicate with the basilisk before Harry had given him Parseltongue. He’d used a telepathy spell that he’d found in a Dark Arts book, and which, he’d explained to Harry, was usually used by the caster to command animals to attack someone else. Theo had communicated with the basilisk in thoughts and impressions.

Theo had shown Harry the book with the spell, which he kept in the basilisk’s chamber. There were notes that remaining in contact with an animal’s mind for too long could damage the caster, warping their worldview if doing nothing else.

Harry had held back his reaction to that. Even if it was the reason for things like Theo being so still at times, Theo was the only one who had done something so that Harry didn’t have to go back to Privet Drive for the summer.

He was the one who rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders as they stood watching the basilisk sleep, and whispered in a shaking voice, “Now I can know what her true name is.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Her thoughts could give me an impression of what she wanted to be called. But she told me was it only a small impression, and Parseltongue was the only way I could actually know.”

Harry reached up and found Theo’s hand and held it. Again, he thought Theo had endured more than he had, no matter what Theo might say on the matter. At least Harry had been able to speak his friends’ names.

“What did you call her?”

“Basilisk. She said it was as good as anything else when I couldn’t know the full truth.”

Harry nodded slowly. Then he said, “Shall we wake her?”

“I am awake, Speaker of the Dark.”

The basilisk was shifting, great green coils unfolding. Harry could see that there were blue and gold flecks in the deep green, sort of like the marble in the Notts’ Floo room, before he ducked his head and shut his eyes.

“I would not harm you, Speaker. Have you encountered snakes that did?”

Harry cleared his throat. Better that she should know this now, before he made some reference to it, or Theo did, and she got upset. “Two years ago, I killed another of your kind that wanted me dead. I had to kill—them.” It wasn’t like he knew if the basilisk who had died in the Chamber had been male or female, but it felt wrong to call them “it” now.

The basilisk paused in her unfolding. Harry got ready to move.

Well, it would have been easier to do that if Theo’s hand on his shoulder hadn’t been as heavy and gripping as that of a stone statue, but still. He hadn’t come here to die.

Then the basilisk continued slinging her great coils around, and said, “I am aware. Only the heart of a basilisk could have enabled Theo to understand me.”

“Because you are a basilisk?”

“Because I was the first snake that spoke to him, connected with him. Only the heart of my kind would make him a Parselmouth. Many things would have been easier if I were not—what I am.”

“Never say that!” Theo took a step past Harry, without letting go of his shoulder, and raised his hand. “I always wanted to free you. You showed me what my father had done to other people besides me, and you gave me hope where I would have given up when he cast the blood curse.”

The basilisk ducked her head and moved forwards. She had done something to her eyes to keep them from killing, Harry thought, or maybe they only killed when a basilisk wanted them to. She was staring straight at Theo with a golden gaze that made a thrum of disquiet travel through Harry, but he was alive.

“I am glad that you can understand me, finally.”

“Your name. Please, your name.”

Harry stared at the floor of the basilisk’s prison. He—didn’t think he ought to look at Theo when he sounded like that.

The basilisk sighed, or the sound was a sigh in Parseltongue, a rustling, rattling, bouncing sound. “My name is Stolen-Prey-in-the-Night-of-Sacred-Dark.”

Theo sobbed. Harry leaned towards him, lending Theo, he hoped, the comfort of his presence while still keeping his head ducked so that Theo could have this private moment with his friend.

But Theo turned so that Harry had to turn with him, and he stared into Harry’s eyes as he touched his face and said, “Thank you for letting me understand her.”

Harry tried to duck or turn away. It didn’t work. Theo was still watching him, his eyes so luminous that Harry shuddered in reaction. Stolen-Prey-in-the-Night-of-Sacred-Dark made a hissing sound that Harry thought was supposed to be a chuckle. “You told me that you wanted him, but I didn’t expect that you wanted him as your mate.”

Harry felt his eyes widen, and tried to pull back. Theo let him do it, but only to the length of his arms. He was watching Harry with an odd little smile.

“Did you think I wanted you merely as a friend?”

“I—I thought you wanted to balance the scales! That was what you talked about!”

“He is precious, and does not assume. The opposite of your father. I can see now why you wanted him.”

Harry didn’t know what to do with the basilisk’s interjection, or the smile that had lifted one side only of Theo’s mouth. He turned back to the basilisk and asked, “Could we call you something a little shorter than your full name?”

“Why?”

“It takes a little while to say.”

That appeared to puzzle Stolen-Prey-in-the-Night-of-Sacred-Dark. “But that does not matter. Time is common, not like prey. Or freedom.”

“But it takes time for us to say, and when we’re talking about you and you’re not here, it would save us time. We don’t live as long as you.”

“You would talk about me when I am not here?”

Harry swallowed. He hoped that he was getting it right that she sounded happy but disbelieving, instead of upset. “Yes, of course. You’re Theo’s oldest friend, and I’m sure that he would want to talk to me about you.”

“He is right,” Theo hissed, his hand on Harry’s shoulder heavier and hotter than ever as he stared up at the basilisk. “You have done so much for me, and so has he, and I would wish to speak of one to the other.”

Harry swallowed again. Theo hadn’t said, “talk about one of my friends to the other.”

Theo wanted to…what? Date him? Why?

I suppose we’ll have the chance to talk about it.

The basilisk’s tail twitched. Then she said, “Considering what your father did with my egg, Stolen would be appropriate, but I do not want to be called that. Call me—Sacred.”

Harry nodded. He had no problem with that, although the basilisk was watching him as if she thought he would. “Thank you, Sacred. And thank you for doing so much for Theo. His father is a bastard.”

The word “bastard” came out as “the kind of snake who would eat the most precious eggs,” and Sacred gave another hissed chuckle. “Yes, he is. I am beyond glad that you have saved him from the blood curse, Speaker of the Dark.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“Did you not know?” Sacred lifted her head and pointed with a flickering tongue at Harry. “I can feel that your gift comes from the darkness in you.”

At first, Harry thought she was pointing at his black hair, as weird as that was, and then he realized that she was indicating his scar. He thought of the way that Professor Dumbledore had talked about Voldemort transferring some of his powers to Harry at the end of second year, and swallowed yet again.

“Do you—you think there’s darkness in me?”

“Dark Arts, dark power, darkness underground, darkness of many things that are wonderful,” Sacred said, sounding for a moment as if she were singing. She swayed back and forth. “But not born in you. The darkness came to you from outside, from someone else. And it is a piece of soul.”

Harry tried to sit down. Theo leaned on him and wouldn’t let him. He was the one who asked, “What do you mean, a piece of soul?”

“It is a piece of soul that does not belong to this Speaker, but comes from another Speaker. What is confusing about it?”

Harry didn’t hear the answer Theo gave Sacred. He was standing with his head lowered between his arms, breathing so hard and fast that he wasn’t surprised black and white spots had started to flicker across his vision.

He hadn’t questioned Dumbledore’s claim that Voldemort had transferred some of his magic to him, because why would he? Harry himself certainly wasn’t smart enough or powerful enough to have been born a Parselmouth on his own. But that a piece of Voldemort’s soul might be linked to his own…

I might not be a cheater like they were saying, but I am corrupt.

“Harry? Harry?”

Harry couldn’t respond to Theo’s anxious question. He was slumping towards the floor, and it was rising to meet him, and he sagged, and then he was deep in darkness and silence.

*

Harry came back to find out that Theo was sitting next to him, and he was lying on Theo’s bed. A house-elf had appeared with a small glass of something red and thick and sweet-smelling.

“Theo—Theo, the elf—”

“I bound Barion to me with a potion made of basilisk venom after the first time I met Sacred,” Theo said, a little impatiently. “There’s no way that he could rebel, even if he wanted to. And I needed to make sure that you were all right. Here.” He thrust the glass at Harry.

Harry took it and sipped slowly, shuddering as the potion flowed into him. He could taste the sweetness on his tongue, and concealed his own flash of irritation. One time he had asked Madam Pomfrey why potions had to taste so awful, and she had said that the taste was part of the effectiveness. Obviously, that was wrong, given how quickly the pounding in his head and the ache in his muscles from falling to a stone floor stopped.

The potion, of course, could do nothing for the real pain in his head and heart.

“Why did you take it so hard?”

“That I have a portion of Voldemort’s soul in me?” Theo didn’t flinch at the Parseltongue version of the name, a distant portion of Harry noted. “That I’m corrupt to the core?”

“You’re not corrupt. Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth! I’m corrupt, I’m corrupt, I’m corrupt, it would be better if I hadn’t survived that night—”

Harry wasn’t even entirely sure whether he was talking about the night when he was a baby that Voldemort had attacked him and his mum and dad, or the graveyard. Nothing made sense except to dig his fingers into the scar on his forehead and claw it as hard as he could. Maybe if he did it hard enough, the piece of soul would come out, or he would at least bleed to death and—

Theo jumped on top of him.

Harry gasped and rolled about, hands lifted above him. Theo was leaning on him, chest against chest, hands gripping Harry’s wrists to hold them out to the sides, hissing into his face.

“You are not corrupt. Don’t say that again.”

“A piece of the foulest Dark Lord in fifty years is attached to my soul! Of course I’m foul! How can you even stand to be near me?”

Harry rolled, trying to fling Theo off and curl up so that he could at least mourn in private the loss of the kind of person he had thought he was. But Theo came with him and ended up pinning him so effectively that Harry could only lie still and stare up at him.

“You are not corrupt,” Theo repeated, when he saw that he had Harry’s attention. “The scar is part of you, and the Parseltongue gift is yours. Not his.”

“But I only have it in the first place because of Voldemort.”

“And you’ve made it your own. Unless you think that he would have helped me shed the blood curse, or killed the basilisk in the Chamber.”

Harry breathed, and breathed, and breathed, and managed to get himself under control enough that he wouldn’t claw at his scar. He pushed at Theo, as much as he could when Theo was holding his arms out to the sides. “You can fucking let go now.”

Theo didn’t move, and he didn’t switch back to English, either, although he usually did when Harry started speaking in it. He just continued in Parseltongue, low and insistent, winding into Harry’s ears like the venom two years ago had gone into his arm. “You are yourself. I’m not going to let you hurt yourself tearing that piece of soul out. Come back to me, Harry.”

Harry gasped, and gulped, and reached for words that would make Theo let go of him. And oddly enough, they were there, singing harshly through his head. He’d only ignored them this long because of what Sacred had said about the piece of Voldemort’s soul.

(Voldemort’s soul. Who even knew how much of Harry was really Harry?)

“You’re only saying that because you want to date me or fuck me or whatever.” Harry lifted his chin in a challenge, staring up into Theo’s suddenly wide eyes. “That’s what Sacred said. Was she wrong? Did you only approach me in the first place because you thought that would get me for yourself? Did you enjoy sleeping in the bed with me last night because of that?”

Theo’s hands loosened. Harry bolted out of the bed and rolled on the floor to fetch his Cloak. He was getting out of here. He had to get out of here, immediately. Theo’s motives couldn’t be trusted.

And that hurt, it hurt so much when Harry had trusted Theo with more than he’d thought he’d ever be able to trust someone with, but he had to get back to Dumbledore or someone else who would take this piece of soul out—

“Petrificus Totalus!”

Harry froze in place. He heard Theo’s footsteps coming closer, and he raged in silence. But all he could do was direct that through his glare when Theo rolled him back over and Levitated him into the air to put him back on the bed. Only then did he remove the Petrification, but he stood with his wand ready so that Harry couldn’t leap off the bed and punch him the way he deserved.

“Listen to me, Harry. You need to listen.”

“Speak English, you traitor.”

“No. You need to listen.” Theo’s hand danced across Harry’s brow, lingering on his scar. Harry shuddered and yanked his head away. “Listen to me.”

“Fine.”

Theo leaned closer, and the firelight made his eyes so multicolored and hypnotic that Harry wondered if he hadn’t been influenced by his contact with Sacred’s mind that way, too. “What matters is what you did with the Parseltongue. That makes it yours. You’re not foul. Not dirty. Not him.”

Harry closed his eyes. “I want to believe that.”

“But?”

“It might just be a convenient excuse. Because I want to live and not die, but what if I need to die to kill Voldemort?”

“You won’t die.”

Harry just shook his head. He was thinking now of the diary in his second year, and how it had managed to possess Ginny, and had bled and screamed when Harry had killed it. Could that same thing happen to him?

Could I be possessed?

At least I’m pretty sure that I would die if a basilisk fang pierced my arm and no phoenix was around to cry on it.

“Why did you try to run away?”

Harry forced his eyes open and stared up at Theo dully. “Because I know that you won’t kill me, and you won’t want me to remove the piece of soul because then I wouldn’t be able to speak Parseltongue. I have to reach people who would.”

“Dumbledore.”

“Yes. He’s the one who told me that Voldemort transferred some of his powers to me, so—”

“Dumbledore. Who left you with the Dursleys, even though you just saw someone die. Who didn’t protect you from your name being put in the Goblet of Fire in the first place. Who never noticed that his old friend was a Death Eater. And that’s just this year.”

Harry jerked. He rolled over to look at Theo more directly, and Theo was right in front of him, looming, hissing, spitting rage.

“Who wasn’t there to prevent you from having to kill Quirrell or the basilisk. Who could have saved Ginny Weasley himself, but who never did. Who could have done something that would let you save your godfather without time traveling, but never did. Who—”

“Stop!”

Theo did, maybe because Harry had finally spoken in Parseltongue. He stood, panting harshly, staring directly into Harry’s eyes. Harry stared back, his hands clenched into fists on the bedcovers beside him.

“I did want you,” Theo whispered. “Your help, after you were revealed as a Parselmouth and I started thinking you could help me. Then I thought that we could be friends, because I knew that we were similar for the homes we lived in, if nothing else. And then you were brave and compassionate towards me and helped me just because I asked—Yes, I want you. And I’ll protect you and be there for you in a way that Dumbledore never managed.”

Harry swallowed over and over again. It felt like he had a choking web in his throat that might not go away, as if the potion had left something behind after all.

Did he have the right to ask this? Shouldn’t he die to remove the piece of Voldemort from his soul?

Except that he didn’t know if death would even remove it. Tom Riddle’s diary had been able to create a new body based on Ginny’s magic and walk around with it, make it solid enough to hold things before Harry had killed the diary. Maybe the soul piece would just possess Harry’s body and go on.

Harry took a deep, deep breath. No, no, that couldn’t happen. He had to survive at least long enough to figure out what this thing was and how to make sure that it didn’t possess his corpse. Or do something even worse.

And, as much as it galled him to admit it when Theo had flung him on the bed and lied to Harry about some of his motivations, Harry no longer trusted Dumbledore to tell him the truth. He might just shut Harry away at the Dursleys’ again while he worked on the mystery of the soul-shard.

Harry sat up slowly. Theo watched him, wand still poised.

“I trust you,” Harry said, and Theo shivered all over at the sound of Parseltongue. Harry wondered that he’d never noticed it before. “But I don’t trust—what I might become with the soul piece in me. So you need to keep a close eye on me and let me know right away if you see my behavior changing.”

Theo smiled, wide and hungry. “That’s not a problem. I wasn’t kidding about how much I wanted you.”

“But why?”

“I already gave you a list.” Theo took a step towards him. “Are you reaching for compliments? Greedy Harry.”

Harry stared at Theo and wished he knew what to say. No one had ever talked to him like this before, certainly not Parvati when he took her to the Yule Ball or Ginny when she’d had a crush on him. Theo just stared at him, eyes wide and fanatical.

Harry swallowed. “I don’t want to kiss you right now.”

“That’s all right,” Theo replied instantly. “I’ll await any chance you feel like giving me.”

Harry swallowed yet again, and finally the choking web in his throat seemed to dissolve. “Would you—hold me?”

“Of course,” Theo said, softly, and climbed onto the bed, pulling Harry back against him with his arms around Harry’s waist, the way he’d held him in the Slytherin dormitory the night before. Harry let his head loll to the side and rest on Theo’s shoulder.

Too much had happened already today for him to decide everything about what had to happen next. But he knew some things.

He was committed to freeing Sacred, who had already helped him, and to finding out more about the soul-piece.

And he was committed to thinking about this thing with Theo. Even though, right now, he had no idea what would happen with that, either.

Theo was there, though. And Harry didn’t think he was going anywhere.

Slowly, hesitantly, he let himself lean back, let himself trust that Theo would support his weight. Theo’s arms tightened instantly.

Maybe this is something I can have, Harry thought, and let himself absorb Theo’s warmth and closeness, his soft wordless hisses, before he fell into natural sleep.

Chapter Text

Harry spent a lot of time in the underground chambers and tunnels that Theo’s father had used to contain Sacred.

The wards that wrapped around the place were impenetrable to the basilisk, and Harry didn’t really know why. It wasn’t because of Parseltongue; he could move through them easily, and so could Theo. But the minute Sacred tried, she was stopped. Harry would stand and stare at the empty space that had stopped her for up to an hour. It never did anything but halt her. There didn’t seem to be any visible effect.

It drove Harry mental, but he kept researching.

Theo had shown him the hidden room where he had slept himself, sometimes, as a child, when he wanted to avoid the chance of Alexander Nott showing up and cursing him out of sleep. There was a bed and a fireplace and a small bathroom. Harry slept there when Alexander Nott spent time around Theo and Theo had to act as if he were still broken by the blood curse.

It just made Harry want to curse Theo’s father more, of course.

He spent hours reading the books Theo brought, sitting with his leg and hip and arm pressed against Theo’s. Theo breathed softly, stretched across the bed and scribbling notes on a parchment beside his own book.

Harry got more and more used to his presence. And more used to the lonely fact that nobody ever wrote to him, which meant the enchantments on the homunculus were holding up, and letters directed to Harry Potter were finding their way to it.

No one had noticed, yet. No one had come and got him, or brought Harry around Dumbledore or anyone else powerful enough to notice and unravel the magic.

The homunculus was probably still at Privet Drive.

Where Harry would have been, if not for Theo.

He thought about that, the thoughts rattling around in his head as he lay in the borrowed bed and stared up at the canopy, and—

It pretty much broke him of any temptation to go to Dumbledore and tell him about Voldemort’s soul piece, even if it didn’t completely reconcile him to everything Theo had said.

And Theo was—

Being patient. Not acting any different than he had been before Sacred had told Harry that Theo wanted him for a mate or something, except that he was more open about touching Harry. He always waited to see if Harry would tell him to leave, though.

Harry never did.

He might tell himself it was just because without Theo, he would be alone here, but he knew that wasn’t the truth.

*

“A trial for underage magic?”

“Yeah.”

Theo’s eyes were sharp as he watched Harry stare at the front page of the Prophet Theo had handed him. Harry shook his head, dazed. He really hadn’t expected anything to happen with the homunculus unless Dumbledore or someone equivalent did decide to show up at the Dursleys’ over the summer.

Instead, it seemed Dementors had decided to show up.

Harry read through the article, numb. The details were scanty, at least for a Prophet reporter who wasn’t also Rita Skeeter. The article rambled on about how Harry Potter lived with Muggles, and how he had claimed Dementors were in the area but no one knew for sure, and how the Ministry was giving him such a chance by taking him seriously and giving him a trial before the full Wizengamot.

Harry paused at the end of the article and looked up at Theo. “It sounds like they interviewed the homunculus.”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”

“How?”

Theo leaned back and shrugged. “The article in that one—” he nodded at the second Prophet folded up on the table nearby “—says that Harry Potter is being watched over by concerned guardians. But it came out three days later. So it sounds like Dumbledore, or whoever has your double now, might have waited a few days before they came and got him.”

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his scar, then realized what he was doing and snatched his hand away. Theo got upset whenever he touched his scar, probably thinking that Harry would start clawing at it the way he had after finding out about the soul-piece. “Yes, that sounds like the sort of thing they would do.”

“Who?”

“Dumbledore. The Prophet. Both of them. Or Professor Lupin and Sirius, if they’re the ones who have the homunculus now.”

It hurt more than Harry could say, that he’d seen Sirius so rarely during his fourth year and that Lupin had never written to him. Or that they couldn’t tell the difference between a homunculus version of Harry and himself.

He knew, of course, that Sirius had never spent very much time with him and that Lupin felt such intense self-loathing because of his lycanthropy, he probably did believe that Harry was better off without him.

It still hurt.

“You can feel hurt, no matter what their motivations are.”

Harry looked up, shivering a little. He spoke Parseltongue rarely enough now outside of the times he was with Sacred that it sounded—sharp. Stinging. And Theo of course was leaning forwards, his eyes as sharp and intense as they had ever been.

“I can, but it’s not fair to them.”

“Please speak our language with me, Harry.”

“Look, what if I never want to date you?”

“Then you never want to date me. I can wait and see if you do someday, or if you make the decision final. It still makes you the one who saved my life and gave me this gift and is working with me to free Sacred.”

Harry bowed his head. “When we free her, I want—I want to buy a place of my own with the Galleons that we made selling the basilisk parts. I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”

“Of course not. I hope you’ll welcome me there, of course. Once Sacred is free, I have no reason to come back here, either.”

“Even to curse your father?”

Theo’s expression was complicated. “I learned long ago that vengeance against him would be more costly than I can afford right now. Maybe later, when I’ve learned enough magic to survive a duel against him? Then I will try.”

Harry nodded. He could appreciate Theo’s cool pragmatism, even if he also thought it wasn’t a very Gryffindor way to approach things.

Theo eased closer to him on the bed. “Can I hold you?”

“Yeah.”

And as always, it was a relief to lean back against Theo’s warmth. Whatever traits he had taken from being connected to Sacred at a young age, having a cool body temperature wasn’t one of them.

Harry closed his eyes and let all the confused, confusing feelings ebb away for a bit.

*

Harry had reached the point of frustration in his research that he was trying random things to free Sacred. He stood in the middle of her chamber casting at the walls, and the wards that kept her from leaving the place, while Sacred swayed back and forth and watched him with interested eyes.

“Theo says that you do not like being a Speaker of the Dark.”

“No, I don’t.” Harry took a step back and stared around the prison. It seemed that all the floors and walls were completely solid stone. Of course, they couldn’t be, not with the passages woven into them, but if they had a curse on one particular stone, or if the wards were anchored in one place, he couldn’t see them.

“Why not?”

“The bastard who gave me this piece of soul also killed my mother and father.”

“But your gift is your own, and you are yourself.”

“You sound a lot like Theo.”

“I taught Theo to be sensible.”

Harry turned to face her, both to escape the inescapable fact that he didn’t know how to free her, and because he was interested. “What did you teach him?”

“To be sensible.” Sacred’s tail twitched in a way that said she didn’t like having to repeat herself.

Harry just nodded and looked around the chamber that imprisoned her again, straining his eyes to see the least flicker of wards or spells that guarded secret passages or something that kept her here.

“I have looked and scented.” Sacred lowered her head to Harry’s level and touched his arm with her tongue, making him jump. “I do not think it can be discovered that way.”

Harry lifted his head, not yet ready to give up, and then stopped with a long breath, his eyes locked on the “stars” that dotted the ceiling of the chamber.

“What are you looking at?”

“Those lights up there. Do you know why your captor put them there?”

“No. They were there the first time I woke here, after I tried to kill him in the first room he kept me in, and he Stunned and moved me.” Sacred curled her neck back over her scales to look up, her tongue darting out. “Do you think they are important?”

“Maybe not. They could just be for light. And if you haven’t scented anything about them in all the years you’ve been here, they might just be that.”

“Test them.”

Harry nodded, stepped back, and aimed his wand. The stars seemed to sparkle in his vision as he narrowed his gaze. “Reducto!”

The spell went flying up, and up. And then it stopped in midair and went out in a fizzle of sparks, caught in a net of wards Harry hadn’t noticed half a handspan away from the lights of the “stars.”

Harry let out a slow, satisfied breath. This didn’t solve the problem, but at least now he knew which direction to look in.

*

“They acquitted him.”

Harry blinked at Theo over the top of a book on wards. So far, he’d found nothing that seemed to apply to the wards Mr. Nott had used on Sacred’s chamber, but at least he was learning. “What?”

“They acquitted the homunculus. He went before the Wizengamot for a full trial, which he shouldn’t have done if it was only for a Patronus to drive Dementors away, but that’s what happened.”

Harry blinked again and slowly picked up the paper that Theo had dropped in front of him. He read through it, shaking his head a little. “He shouldn’t have been able to cast a Patronus without a wand, should he?” They couldn’t have given the homunculus a real wand, of course, but it shouldn’t have mattered when they’d thought that he would have the excuse of not doing magic during the summer anyway. They’d given him a Transfigured stick that should at least satisfy people that “Harry” had a wand.

“No. But it’s possible that the magic binding him—it—would have reacted to keep itself together in the face of a Dementor by doing the only thing that would save him. It.”

Harry nodded absently, still reading through the article. Apparently Dumbledore had been at the trial, and Fudge, and someone named Dolores Umbridge, who had given a quote about how there couldn’t have been any Dementors in Little Whinging. Then he put down the paper and turned to face Theo. “But you don’t think that the magic reacted like that.”

“No. It would be unprecedented for a homunculus to be able to produce any spell as powerful as a Patronus.”

“So?”

“Someone else cast it. And they’re covering for him.”

“And you think they probably know that he’s not me.”

Theo nodded, eyes locked on him. “What have you—have you thought about what Sacred said? What I feel?”

Harry closed his eyes. Honestly, he’d buried himself in research for the past few weeks as a way to avoid that. But he no longer wanted to run straight to Dumbledore and tell him about the soul-piece in his head.

Even when Dumbledore—or someone—probably knew the homunculus wasn’t Harry, they didn’t send him a Howler or make an effort to have his friends find him. They just kept the secret and worked on it in silence.

Harry couldn’t trust them to be open and honest with him, so he couldn’t trust them in general.

“I have a question to ask you.”

“Yes?”

Harry understood now why Theo kept retreating into Parseltongue to handle emotionally difficult conversations. He’d spoken telepathically with Sacred down the years when it was the only way he had to communicate with her. Speaking to a snake, like a snake, with a snake, made Theo feel more at ease.

“What do you feel about me, really? I know that you built me up into a savior in your head, but now you’ve been saved. What now? I have enough Galleons to buy a house of my own, and I’ll need to do it anyway in case your father starts coming down into these tunnels again. Or after this summer, if he doesn’t. But what do you feel about me?”

Theo remained quiet, giving the question the consideration it deserved. His eyes were still intense, and Harry didn’t think he was wrong that they had begun to gain slit pupils. Becoming a Parselmouth because someone fed you a snake heart evidently had different effects than being born with it or—

Acquiring it the way Harry had.

Theo finally nodded and spoke. “I agree that it would be safer to have you move out, But I wouldn’t want you further away, if it were possible to keep you close. I want you here to touch, to smell, to hold. I’ve been saved, but it makes me want more and more of you. I don’t know if what I feel is love, Harry, because I don’t know that I’ve ever felt it. But I want to be with you.”

“Even if I—don’t love you right now?”

“You heard what I said about what I feel.”

Harry nodded, casting his eyes to the floor. There was value in honesty. And Theo had told him the truth when Sacred had said it. He hadn’t tried to prevent her from telling Harry that. There was value in that, too.

“Do you not want to date a boy?”

“I’m worried about the amount of danger that dating me might put you in. I’m worried about what will happen at the end of summer, when people find out about the homunculus and that kind of thing.” Harry looked up. “But no, it’s not because you’re a boy, Theo. I just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Theo sat on the bed beside him and reached for his hand. Harry held it out without much thought, and shivered a little as Theo bent his head to touch his lips to the back of it, eyes not moving from Harry’s.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen when I was a child,” Theo whispered. “I made a vow to free Sacred not knowing if I could ever do that. I longed to communicate with her and didn’t know if I would ever manage better than the telepathy spell. I still did it. Do you know why?”

“No,” Harry whispered, shivering again.

“Because doing it is better than not doing it. Because being uncertain is no reason to give up.”

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, he was that kind of person too, he thought. It was why he had wanted to investigate the Philosopher’s Stone and the Heir of Slytherin even if some people would have said it was none of his business. Because he couldn’t just sit still once he knew there was danger to other people out there.

“Harry.”

Harry looked up. Theo was leaning towards him, and Harry didn’t know if he was deliberately swaying like a snake, but he might be. Harry twitched his hand in Theo’s grasp, but didn’t pull away.

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“You have been.”

“On the lips. Not the hand.”

Harry hesitated. But Theo didn’t move or back off—or press him, either. He just waited. And Harry thought that Theo might have been uncertain of the answer, but he had asked anyway.

And that made Harry’s own resolve firm, because fuck it, he wanted to see what this was like.

“You can,” he said, and leaned forwards into the swaying, still, slit-pupiled, crazy boy who had brought him here.

Theo kissed like he was starving, his hands moving at once to Harry’s shoulders, gripping, tight, almost painful, but Harry knew he could pull back and free if he wanted. He didn’t want. There was Theo’s tongue, flickering and darting against his, and Harry turned his head and gave himself up to the kiss.

It was warm.

It was heady.

It was something that he might give his life for.

When they pulled apart from each other, Harry’s eyes were wet. He cleared his throat and didn’t call attention to it. Theo just watched him, a slight smile tugging at his lips. At least Harry knew that the smile wasn’t mocking.

“Have you found out anything more about the lights in the top of Sacred’s cavern?”

“I have not. The books that are probably about the wards are in my father’s study, and I don’t dare go there.”

Harry nodded and responded to Theo’s unspoken request for him to speak Parseltongue. “I don’t want you to risk your life or your health or even just him noticing that you’re not under the blood curse anymore. We’ll find something out in these books.”

“The house-elves are delighted that someone is requesting them from the library. My father hasn’t read them in years.”

“What does he do all day?”

Theo’s expression was as cold and slow and complicated as Sacred’s. “He drinks and practices obscure Dark Arts and mourns my mother.”

“Did he kill her?”

“Yes. But it was while she was in the middle of trying to kill him, so someone could call it self-defense. The Aurors who investigated the case did.” Theo’s expression said what he thought of that. “He mourns the enemy who could challenge him, not the woman he loved. He has never loved anyone in his life.”

Harry nodded slowly. In this respect, he thought he was luckier than Theo. At least he’d had parents who loved him, even if he’d only had them for a year. And Sirius loved him, even if they couldn’t be together right now. And he’d even been raised by an aunt and uncle who loved each other and their son.

At least he knew what it looked like, even if he had no idea whether what he felt for Theo right now was love.

“We’ll get revenge on him someday.”

Theo looked at him, the warmth with which he’d kissed Harry dancing across his face in invisible waves. “Yes. We will.”

Chapter Text

It might not have happened at all, except that Harry was frustrated as he stood in the middle of Sacred’s chamber, having once again failed to make any impression on the star-like lights in the ceiling, and Sacred had nudged him with her nose in the middle of his chest, so hard that he almost fell down.

“Ow,” Harry complained as he stood, scowling at her. “What was that for?”

“You should duel Theo.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t thought of that. “Huh?”

Theo turned away from the series of charms he was testing methodically on the lights, his head tilted and swaying slightly. Sometimes Harry wanted to see him with a longer neck, to see what his resemblance to a serpent would be like then.

And sometimes, he thought that he just wanted to look at Theo the way he was for the rest of his life.

“It’s a good idea,” Theo murmured, his tongue darting out over his lips as he spoke. “We’ll take out some of our frustrations that way.”

“But we could hurt each other.”

“I would never use the kinds of spells that could really hurt on you, Harry. And I wouldn’t gloat when I won, either.”

“Are you so sure that you’ll win?”

“When you’ve only recently started studying Dark Arts, and I’ve been immersed in them all my life? And when you’re so worried about us hurting each other? Of course I’m going to win. I just hope your loss isn’t too embarrassing for you.”

Harry scowled and drew his wand. Theo did the same thing, his eyes bright with excitement.

They started by bowing to each other the way Snape and Lockhart had during that absurd dueling club in third year, and then Theo cast his first hex, a bright Stunner. Harry dodged out of the way and tried to Disarm him, but Theo danced back, mouth open in a soundless laugh.

Then they really started hammering at each other.

And even though Theo kept his word and didn’t use any of the spells that could have really hurt Harry, it was obvious that he wasn’t exaggerating when it came to how good he was. In seconds, Harry was struggling to hold his own. In desperation, he turned to a powerful spell that he thought Theo probably couldn’t counter.

“Expecto Patronum!”

The silvery stag exploded out of his wand and then paused, tossing his antlers. Harry tried to will him to go get Theo, but Prongs didn’t seem interested in doing that. He just trotted back and forth, tossing his antlers again at Sacred, and then turned and cantered towards Theo.

Finally! Harry was about to yell, but he paused when he realized that Prongs wasn’t trying to drive Theo into the floor or anything like that. Instead, he extended his muzzle, and Theo raised his hand and patted Harry’s Patronus on the nose.

Harry stared with his mouth open.

“I have read that Patronuses are never hostile to friends or those the caster cares for.” Theo caressed Prongs’s face one more time and stepped back. “An important lesson to learn before you try to use one in a duel—”

Harry pulled his magic back and sent an uncoordinated blast of pure wandless power at Theo, who fell, rolled, and came back to his feet laughing.

They dodged, tripped, fell, rolled around on the floor trying to punch each other at one point, and then came back to their feet with their wands pressed into each other’s throats. Harry tried to swallow and choked. Theo leaned a little closer.

“I could kiss you from here.”

“Then who would win?”

“Both of us?”

Harry kissed Theo over their wands, waited until he was distracted, and then tripped him to the floor and dropped straddling him.

Theo looked a little startled but not at all upset to have lost. He smiled at Harry, letting his head fall back against one curled arm. “Are you having fun, Harry?”

“Yeah.” Harry smiled at him. He was grateful for Sacred’s suggestion that he and Theo duel. He felt more relaxed, less frustrated at his inability to figure out the riddle of the stars embedded in the ceiling. “With you, most of the time.”

It was kind of amusing to know that was all it took to make Theo’s breath catch, and it happened even more when Harry used his hand to grasp Theo’s and haul him back to his feet. Of course, Harry had to lean in to steal another kiss, and, well.

He was distracted and relaxed by something other than dueling for quite a few minutes.

*

Theo came running into Sacred’s chamber with so much speed that Harry spun to face whim, holding out his wand in a defensive crouch, before he realized Theo was alone.

“Father’s coming. He wants some of Sacred’s venom.”

Harry nodded and immediately turned, ghosting through the tunnels back to the little bedroom. He sealed the door. Theo would go back to his own bedroom to avoid suspicion.

With the door shut behind him, Harry sagged against it, closing his eyes. He could feel his stomach leaping and shuddering. They had come so close to finishing the summer without any encounters with Alexander Nott.

If he hurts Theo…

Harry usually didn’t think of himself as someone who was willing to kill, even Voldemort, except maybe in self-defense. In the graveyard, he’d just wanted to get away instead of trying to get vengeance for Cedric or his parents.

But he would go up against Mr. Nott for Theo’s sake. He knew that perfectly well.

He waited, ear pressed to the sealed door, until he heard a soft hiss from the other side. “It’s me, Theo. The lion is purple.”

It was the phrase they had agreed on that would mean it was okay for Harry to unlock the door. Even if Mr. Nott read Theo’s mind—and Harry didn’t think Mr. Nott was a Legilimens—he wouldn’t have been able to reproduce the Parseltongue sounds himself.

And Harry was confident that Theo wouldn’t have tricked Harry into opening the door, either. He would have found some way to throw off the Imperius, if he had to.

Harry opened the door, and Theo practically collapsed against him. Harry wrapped his arms around his boyfriend—that was probably what Theo was—and cradled him. Theo shuddered several times, but said nothing.

Finally, he straightened. “He still thinks that I’m under the blood curse. He laughed at me. But he did say something about how he was going to reap a guest soon. It’s the way that he always talks about Sacred. He doesn’t think I know about her.”

Harry nodded. “Then we have to get her out of here as soon as possible.”

“How? We still haven’t made progress with the lights on the ceiling.”

“I thought of something.”

“Something that wasn’t in the books?” Theo stirred and stood upright against Harry, staring into his eyes. “How did you manage to come up with it?”

Harry licked his lips. “I’m going to ask the piece of soul in my scar for help.”

*

Theo was opposed to it. But Sacred, when she heard Harry’s plan, hissed in excitement and swayed back and forth enough to make the floor rock. Harry would have stumbled if not for Theo’s arm, flung out to catch him.

“Yes! Yes! The power is your own, you are yourself, I told you that! You should make it work for you, eat it, absorb its power.”

“We only have a fortnight before we go back to Hogwarts,” Theo whispered. “What do you think you can do to conquer and absorb the shard in that time?”

“That spell you said was too desperate for you to try even when you wanted to connect with Sacred using deeper telepathy than you had managed so far?”

“Harry. No. Please.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Harry said as steadily as he could. “Yes, you’re right, he’s going to kill Sacred as soon as we leave for Hogwarts. We’ll get her out of here, and in the meantime, we’ll do something to let me master this soul-piece.”

It was going to hurt. He knew that. There were all sorts of reasons that Theo hadn’t used that spell, and physical pain wouldn’t have stopped him. This would be spiritual and mental pain on a level that Harry wasn’t sure he was ready to bear.

But he knew it would be more unbearable still if Mr. Nott killed Sacred, or if the shard possessed him, or if Dumbledore found out about it and did something drastic to free Harry from it.

Or if Harry really did have to die to kill Voldemort.

Theo was silent for long moments. Harry leaned against him. Theo squeezed his shoulder and his hand, and then hissed, “You pitted my care for you against my care for Sacred. Well done. And as ruthless as any Slytherin.”

“The Hat did consider me for Slytherin, you know. I thought it was because of the Parseltongue when I found out about that, and then because of the piece of Voldemort when Sacred told me. But maybe it was for my own merits.”

Theo leaned on him hard enough to nearly take Harry from his feet. “Yes. I think it was.”

*

Harry leaned back against the pillows of Theo’s bed. Theo had insisted that they do this in his bedroom, not in the sealed little room in the dungeons. Harry had been nervous about Mr. Nott intruding, but apparently Barion, Theo’s bound house-elf, had filled Mr. Nott’s Firewhisky with something that would make him sleep.

They would never have a better chance.

Theo’s arm was pressed against his. Harry leaned his cheek against Theo’s for a second. Then he said quietly, “You need to move away now.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I know.” Harry opened his eyes and smiled at Theo as reassuringly as he could. Theo was tense with anguish, but Harry himself had accepted it. This would work or it wouldn’t. “It’s still better to do something than give up because of the uncertainty.”

There was a long moment when he thought Theo would snap at him for throwing those words back in his face. Then Theo leaned forwards and kissed Harry’s forehead over the scar.

“Be well. Come back to me as yourself.”

Harry nodded and took up his wand, touching it to his scar. He revised the words in his mind one more time, then spoke them.

“Mentem meam patefacio.”

The spell shook him. He could feel the wand falling from his hand, his body slumping back against the pillow, but most of his attention was focused on the way that his brain seemed to slosh inside his skull, and then a brilliant white pathway opened that he had never seen before.

Harry dived down it.

*

He arrived in a quiet, clean, dark place. Harry glanced around, knowing he shouldn’t be able to see, but he could. There was a single figure sitting in a corner formed by two wooden walls, head bowed.

Harry sat down in front of it, and waited.

The figure finally looked up at him. It looked a little like him, but the scar on its face was jagged and wound all the way around its right eye, down the cheekbone. And its eyes were red instead of green.

“Hello, Voldemort.”

Harry had known from the beginning that he would need to speak in Parseltongue. He didn’t mind. He thought that the snake language would calm the soul-shard if anything could.

The figure’s lips lifted away from its teeth. It had two in the front that looked like basilisk fangs. Harry supposed that shouldn’t have surprised him. “Don’t call me that. It hasn’t been my name for years.”

“Why not?”

“Because I got stuck here. I’m not the same as him anymore. He would kill me if he got the chance. He’s already tried to kill you multiple times.”

Harry nodded. “All right. What do you want me to call you?”

“I do not know. I have no name. I have no being. I am caught between what I was. You know about me now, but you hate me the same as you hate him. I have no being.”

Harry hesitated. He’d intended to speak to the soul-shard and persuade it to help him, or force it if he had to. It had to have knowledge of so many Dark spells like the ones that had imprisoned Sacred.

But now he thought he saw another way. Especially given that so far he’d spoken to the shard without the pain that the spell had claimed he would feel.

“I could offer you a name and being if you joined with me.”

The shard stared at him. Its eyes were wider and wider now, spreading like pools of blood across its face. “But you hate me.”

“You made the point yourself that you’re not the same as Voldemort. I can’t hate you when you’ve been a part of me for so long. Unless you tried to turn against me. But if you joined with me and gave me your help to free Sacred…”

The shard shivered. Licked its lips with a forked tongue. Then it said, “But you would still hate me. You would always hate me.”

“How could I hate part of myself?”

“You hated the part of yourself that the Hat saw which made it want to put you in Slytherin. I listened to you. I saw. I heard.”

“I’ve moved past that. Theo and Sacred have helped me. And now I can move past it further, if we become one. You won’t feel your loneliness anymore. I won’t feel my self-loathing. Come on.” Harry held his hand out.

The shard stared at his hand, and then his face. “You aren’t worried I’ll possess you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Harry swallowed. He didn’t like being this honest with anyone except Theo. Well, actually, he might not have been this honest with him, either.

But no one could hear what he and the soul-shared were saying to each other, here in the privacy of his own head that, he was beginning to realize, looked a lot like the inside of his cupboard at the Dursleys’.

So he met those red eyes and said, “You and I will have what we want most deeply. We’ll have someone who understands us completely. No one else knows what you do. No one else was there with me in the cupboard at the Dursleys’. No one else knows what it’s like to survive a game of Harry Hunting. No one else knows how we felt when we killed Quirrell. No one else knows the pain of having a basilisk fang in our arm. No one else even knows how we feel about Ron and Hermione right now.”

“You do not know what you feel about them.”

“Right. But you share in all the reasons for that uncertainty, and you know the reasons that it’s hard for me to define. Even to myself.”

The shard licked its lips and crept a little closer. Green was bleeding into its red eyes. Its teeth looked human.

Harry said softly, “I know that you won’t possess me and try to make me do things I don’t want to, or turn me over to Voldemort, because you are me.”

And he held his arms out.

The shard dashed into them and clung to him with all the strength and wildness that Harry had known he would use if someone had ever come to get him out of the cupboard. Harry rocked backwards with the force of it, and closed his eyes to keep the tears in.

He could feel the shard sinking into him, becoming part of him, absorbing even more of his memories than it already had.

And absorbing his sincerity, too. Harry would never betray it, would never betray himself. He didn’t care what the shard had been before it became part of Harry. He didn’t care that it had broken loose the night Voldemort had tried to kill him.

Because it had been there, ever since, enduring with him.

The shard gave a little sigh, and a little shiver, and ceased to exist as a separate part of him. It was deep within his soul, curling around him like a young basilisk, and Harry soothed its loneliness, its defining quality.

That loneliness faded.

Memories came storming into Harry’s head, memories of an orphanage, cold, hunger, hatred from Muggles, hatred of Muggles, torture, defiance, murder, Horcruxes—

That was what they were called. That was part of the gift of the knowledge that the shard, the Horcrux, that had been living inside Harry had now given to him in return for the gift of his warmth and acceptance.

Mine. Me.

And the last part of it settled. Harry had kept his word, and there had been few enough people who had ever done that to Lord Voldemort.

There were few people who had ever done that with him.

Harry touched his hand to his chest, feeling pain rebounding through him, tears squeezing out from under his eyelids, and then—

Then there was pain.

*

Harry woke screaming, and Theo grabbed his wrists and held them the way he had after Sacred’s revelation, probably aware that Harry would start clawing at his scar again. Harry could hear him hissing frantically in Parseltongue, but his mind was on the pain in his chest instead.

It sliced and cut and seemed to dive deeper towards his heart, and he didn’t know what he would fucking do if his heart stopped—

But the pain stopped instead.

Harry slumped back on the bed, breathing unevenly. The book where he’d found the spell had said the greatest agony would show up when Harry was opening the pathway into his mind to speak with the shard. But perhaps because of his acceptance of it, the pain had only come afterwards.

There had to be pain, though, apparently. Harry rubbed his chest with a grimace.

“Harry?”

Harry looked up at Theo and smiled. “I’m all right. The soul-shard was lonely, and I accepted it into me. And I have Voldemort’s memories. I know how we can break through the wards and attack the star-lights.”

Theo shuddered and fell across him, shaking so hard that he rattled Harry, too. Harry wrapped his arms around him and held him, a little unsure why Theo felt this way now. Had he not thought it would work?

“I thought the pain would destroy you, and then my father would come and kill Sacred, and I would have lost you both.”

Oh. Harry clasped Theo, drawing him closer. It was his turn to be a source of strength for Theo, instead of the other way around. “I’m here,” he said, repeating it in Parseltongue, since that was Theo’s preferred language.

Theo turned his head and put his cheek on Harry’s with a final shudder. He fell asleep that way, and Harry did the same after a few more minutes of stroking Theo’s shoulder.

He knew how to free Sacred now. A few more hours would do no harm.

*

“Destroy them. Please, destroy them.”

It seemed Sacred didn’t agree with waiting a few more hours, and wanted to be free the instant she heard that Harry had successfully absorbed the memories of how to attack wards like this from the soul-shard.

Harry backed up a step and aimed his wand at the stars. The memories churned in his mind, sluggish and slow, but he waited, and they warmed and began to move more quickly, like snakes in the sun.

He traced his wand in the intricate pattern that echoed the one of the wards he couldn’t see and breathed, “Lux stellarum delenda est.”

The air in front of him flickered with dark light. Harry barely managed to resist jumping as the spell left his wand and sped, purple and coiled, up to the stars.

The wards that defended them leaped to life again, but this time, it didn’t matter. Harry watched with a vicious exultation in his chest as the wards burned, and Sacred raised her head and gave a long hiss that held no translation.

When the spell faded, the lights were gone, and Harry had to start a fire on the floor of the cavern, burning nothing but air, to see again. That was another spell he had learned from the shard’s memories.

Sacred was lifting her head, flickering her tongue out wildly, making little darting motions of her body that were more delicate than the ones Harry had thought such a huge serpent could make. And then she surged towards the entrance on the far side of the cavern from the one he and Theo had used to enter the first time.

“Sacred, wait!”

“I cannot wait. There is fresh prey out there. There is freedom.”

As she poured through the tunnel, Harry cursed once and then turned to Theo, who was tracing Sacred’s path with wide, greedy eyes. “We can’t be sure that your father doesn’t have some alarm up that would alert him she’s gone. We have to move, now.”

“Where are we going to stay in the days until Hogwarts?”

“I think it’s time to tell the goblins we would really like to buy that house now.”

Theo smiled at him and turned and ran for his room. Harry went to the one in the tunnels and gathered up his Cloak and his trunk. A tap of his wand shrank it, another spell that he didn’t need to study how to cast now that he had the shard’s memories.

Harry looked around the room one more time, then shook his head. It had only been a temporary sanctuary.

He and Theo were still going to find their real home, with Sacred.

And he would have to have it out with his friends, and maybe Sirius and Dumbledore, about the homunculus.

Running footsteps said Theo was coming his way. Harry stuck out his hand and grabbed Theo’s, and they ran in Sacred’s path, laughing, half-stumbling, giddy.

“How are we going to get away?” Theo murmured as they ran. “There’s no Floo here.”

“I’m pretty sure I can Apparate.”

“Pretty sure?”

“The memories showed me how.”

Theo took a breath as if he was going to question that, but then he just shut his mouth and ran along at Harry’s side. Harry pressed a hand briefly to his back in gratitude.

The tunnel led out into a thick forest that apparently encircled the Nott property. Sacred was sliding back and forth, her nose buried in tree branches. The soft sounds that came from her were only partially Parseltongue.

But she turned her head when they came near her, and her tongue darted out in acknowledge of them. “Speaker of the Dark. Theo.”

“You’re free.”

Theo lifted his head with tears streaming down his face, and Sacred lowered her head. Harry watched this time, his heart still aching, as Sacred nudged Theo gently in the chest with her snout.

“Yes. And no one will ever take me captive again.”

“Can you stay on the Nott property and out of reach of Theo’s father?” Harry had to ask, when a few minutes had passed with Theo and Sacred doing nothing else but looking at each other. “I don’t think we can Apparate you, but you’re in danger as long as you’re here.”

“There is much wild ground here. And when Theo’s father took me captive, I was helpless, an egg and then a young hatchling who had no idea what freedom really meant. I am older and wiser now.”

Harry doubted that, because it seemed like being locked up in a cavern all her adult life wouldn’t have taught Sacred any wisdom—

But the memories he had got from the soul-shard stirred and blazed weakly to life in his head, like embers Harry had touched with a poker. Basilisks knew a certain amount when hatched from the egg, instinctively, like most other snakes. The knowledge took a longer time to awaken in them, however, because of their long lives.

“But you should establish a home somewhere soon, Speaker of the Dark. A place where I can hunt and be welcome.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. He would have to tell the goblins that they were only interested in houses with a lot of land. “I will.”

“Go now. Take Theo with you, far beyond reach of his father. I am going to hunt.”

Sacred slid out of sight into the dark forest, between the tangled branches. Harry blinked and stared. He would have thought that her size would reveal her even if her color didn’t, but she moved with absolute silence. And her dark green scales blended in well with the shadows of the forest.

“I will miss her,” Theo whispered.

Harry looped an arm around his shoulders. “Hopefully not for long. We’ll have a home, and it will be a place where she can hunt.”

“Do you promise?”

“I do.” Harry kissed his temple. “For now, we need to get beyond the wards so that we can Apparate.”

Theo nodded and slipped along beside Harry as they made for the edge of the wards. Harry could feel it when they reached it. A slimy burden, like seaweed, seemed to slide off his head, and he tilted his neck back and took in a deep breath of cleaner air.

“Shall we go?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and clasped an arm around Theo’s waist and Apparated, the image of Gringotts clear in his mind.

Chapter Text

“You couldn’t have chosen a more perfect home if you’d tried.”

Harry smiled at Theo. It meant something that he was speaking English now, and had done so more often in the past few days. “Isn’t it magnificent? Come on, let’s look at the inside as well.”

The key the goblins had given him had already dissipated the wards. Now it unlocked the door, and Harry stepped in with Theo crowding close to his back. When they got into the entrance hall, though, Theo halted with a wordless sound of awe.

Harry looked around, and smiled.

The front of the house had a huge room soaring up to the ceiling, which was covered with a replica of the enchantment in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Right now, it showed fluffy, darting clouds, and a sky on the dark blue edge of evening.

On the far side of the room was a staircase going up to a balcony running around two walls. There were doors visible there, ones that Harry knew led to bedrooms, a library, a room that could be connected to the Floo, bathrooms, and several empty, stripped spaces that could be made into a Potions lab plus a study or another library or whatever they needed.

The color scheme, other than the ceiling, was deep greys and blues. Harry thought that was a little somber, and he’d like to change it up. But the house was great otherwise. Spacious. And they’d already seen the half-wild, tangled grounds where a basilisk could hunt.

“This is brilliant.”

Harry reached back and clasped Theo’s hand. “Isn’t it? Let’s go choose the bedrooms we want.”

“I want three.”

“Do you mean a suite, like the one that you had at home? I don’t think this house has any.”

“No. I mean that I want one for you, one for me, and one that we can share together.”

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. That might be a further leap into the future than he’d planned on.

Then again, it might also be perfect.

*

“According to my father, I’ve been kidnapped.”

Harry blinked and looked up. Theo’s voice was flat, his eyes locked on the front page of the Prophet gripped in his shaking hands. Harry had given up reading the paper a few days after their escape because of how persistently they kept insisting that he was mental and had been lying to everyone for years.

Now, though, he stood up and eased around the table, since he thought trying to take the paper away from Theo would be a mistake.

The front page did indeed contain a moving photograph of Alexander Nott—the first time Harry had ever seen his face clearly, cold and seamed with old scars—and an article about how Theo had been “kidnapped out of the Notts’ ancestral home.” The article also said something about the theft of a priceless magical treasure, which made Harry chuckle a little. He supposed you could call Sacred that.

If you were a bastard.

“Of course he would say that,” Harry muttered. “He can’t possibly be letting anyone think that he had something to do with your disappearance. Although you would think sane people would decide that’s a good possibility, after what he did to your mother.”

Theo took a long, slow breath, then another one. He looked up at Harry with the same sort-of hypnotic eyes that Harry had seen for the first time on the lakeshore last year. “This will make it hard to go back to Hogwarts.”

“Not with the story I plan to spread.”

“What story is that?”

Theo was still gripping the paper with fingers so pale that seeing them clenched like that made Harry ache a little. He bent down and kissed Theo. Theo’s mouth opened beneath his, as always, and Harry ran his fingers slowly down and into Theo’s hair.

When Theo had relaxed enough to listen, Harry whispered, “A story about there being only Death Eaters in that graveyard.”

“What?”

“We don’t know how to fight Voldemort yet. We don’t know how to destroy these Horcruxes he has, or how powerful they are. I was one, the diary was one, but there are at least four more. And the shard in me never fought one except when sharing my memories of the fight in the Chamber..” Harry took a deep breath. “And we can’t fight him if we make the war too open, too early. The homunculus has probably already received Howlers because of the Prophet’s smear campaign. I’m going to recant my story and say that it wasn’t Voldemort in the graveyard, but it was Death Eaters trying to resurrect their master. Your father’s name is going to feature prominently.”

“Will that work? My father was acquitted.”

“I think it will. It’ll give people something to talk about besides my supposed mental state, and it’ll give the Ministry a more palatable story, to them, to work with. And I’ll get Rita Skeeter to write the article.”

Theo swallowed. Then he said, “You shouldn’t have to lie.”

“I shouldn’t have had to go back to the Dursleys, either, the way Dumbledore thought he was sending me. You shouldn’t have had to suffer under that blood curse. Sacred shouldn’t have had to be captive. But we suffered that and we survived. This will work. Too many people will want to believe it.”

“It will give the Dark Lord cover, of a kind.”

Harry tilted his head in a slow nod. “But he’s taking that anyway. He’s not launching any big attacks or raids so far. We won’t get anyone to believe me right now, so we do what we can to defeat him in slowness and silence.”

“And collect the Horcruxes.”

“Yes.” Harry knew he would have to go more deeply into the memories he’d got from the shard so that he could be sure he understood the traps that protected the Horcruxes and how to get them out. But he would have to do research anyway, since the shard had never studied how to destroy itself.

He needed time. Time to think of new plans, to absorb the cascade of memories inside himself and that he had been a Horcrux and now—

Was no longer one.

What am I now? I will have to decide.

“Harry?”

Harry gave Theo a reassuring smile and bowed his head to kiss Theo’s knuckles. “I promise, we’ll make it so that we can live. And in the meantime…”

“Yes?”

“I need to send an owl to Ron and Hermione.”

*

Harry honestly hadn’t been sure if Ron and Hermione would accept his owl, or how they would respond to being asked to come to an unknown Floo address without any of the adults. He was waiting by the fireplace that he and Theo had had the goblins connect to the Floo, and Theo stood around the corner with his wand drawn. If someone else came out of the fireplace or if Ron and Hermione showed signs of having only come because Dumbledore or someone else had asked them to, then he would Stun them and Memory Charm them.

But at the appointed time, two in the afternoon, the Floo lit, and Ron and Hermione came out, alone. They stared at Harry with wide, shining eyes. Although in Hermione’s case, they were shiny because of tears.

“Harry?” she whispered. “But—we just left you in—” She seemed to choke, unable to speak the name of wherever they came from. “What is going on?”

“Is that really you, mate?” Ron asked tightly, his fists clenched.

“Yes, it is. I know you told me in the chess game we played in first year that you play chess by making some sacrifices.” Harry took a deep breath. “And I’m willing to do whatever else I need to do to preserve my identity.”

“But then who is that in—where we were? Someone under Polyjuice?”

“No. A homunculus I made with snake’s venom and a potion.”

Hermione and Ron stared at him. Harry wondered for a second if the word was unfamiliar. He thought he had talked about Voldemort using a homunculus to come back from the dead, but maybe they hadn’t absorbed that—

Then Hermione reached a trembling hand towards him. “Oh, but Harry, that’s Dark Arts,” she whispered. “Why would you have done that? Why?”

“What even is a homun-cule thingy?”

Harry smiled a little at Ron’s words, but his gaze was on Hermione. “Because there was no way that I was going back to the Dursleys’ after the year I had. After seeing Cedric die. I wasn’t going to be isolated again.”

“The blood protections at the Dursleys’ would have kept you safe, though. That’s what Dumbledore said.”

“Did they keep my copy safe from Dementors?”

Ron and Hermione exchanged a helpless glance. Harry nodded a little. “I don’t think you’re at fault for that, or for believing that the homunculus was a copy of me,” he added. “There’s no reason that you would be. But you can see the blood protections really didn’t do much at all.”

“I just—I can’t believe that something like that would have lasted this long,” Hermione whispered.

Harry shrugged. It was time to reveal another part of the truth, but also move onto the next subject. “I used Parseltongue and snake venom to make it. There’s a lot about Parseltongue that I never understood as being valuable before now.”

“But who told you about that?” Hermione’s eyes were wide. “How could someone, if you and Voldemort are the only Parselmouths left?”

“There is another one, now.”

Harry held in a sigh as Theo stepped around the corner of the fireplace with his wand raised. They hadn’t discussed how he was going to reveal himself, but Harry decided that he had done it in the most dramatic way possible.

Then again, there wasn’t really a possibility in this situation that wasn’t dramatic.

“Who are you?” Ron asked, apparently so stunned by Theo’s presence that he didn’t recognize him.

“Nott?” Hermione said.

“Theodore Nott, yes.” Theo draped himself down Harry’s back and wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck. Harry rolled his eyes. “Given the gift of Parseltongue by Harry feeding me a basilisk heart. We fled to a sanctuary to help a friend of mine, and when that became dangerous, we bought this house. We’ll move our friend here soon, too.”

Ron and Hermione just gaped at him, then at Harry, and didn’t have anything to say.

Harry cleared his throat. “Maybe we could go and sit down and have this conversation?”

*

“I still don’t understand why you trusted Nott.”

“He already explained about the blood curse and why it had to be a basilisk heart, Weasley.”

Harry held up his hand before either Ron or Theo could go further, and they both shut up. However, Theo was tense and trembling where he leaned against Harry on the couch. Harry had an arm around his waist, partially to reassure him and partially because it would be ugly if Theo went for his wand, and he could feel that.

Hermione had remained mostly silent throughout the story of what Harry had done to help Theo and how they had survived the summer, although Theo had insisted beforehand that they not tell Harry’s friends they’d been at Thunderhaven. The tale of a basilisk kept captive by a relative of Theo’s, however, had to come out, and Harry was pretty sure Hermione could figure out that it was Theo’s father who had enslaved Sacred. So far, she didn’t seem inclined to complain much about it.

Ron was the one who just didn’t understand.

“You should have told us about this, mate!”

“When?”

“When—” Ron flushed, probably remembering that he would have been ignoring Harry during the time when Theo had first approached Harry for help. He cleared his throat. “You could have found someone else to cure his blood curse.”

“No, I really couldn’t. It had to be me, and I’ve already explained why it had to be a basilisk heart.”

“But it doesn’t—you could have told us!”

“Would you have kept it to yourself? Or would you have run off and told your mum or Dumbledore or something?”

Ron looked at a loss for words. Harry sighed and softened a little. He didn’t hate Ron. He had been the one to make the decision to keep Theo a secret. Theo had never pressured him to do so. And so now he just spoke honestly.

“I felt at the time that I couldn’t trust anyone else to listen to me or help Theo. Maybe that was wrong, but it was the way I felt. And now it’s done. It’s not like I can go back in time and cast the blood curse on Theo again.”

He thought the way he phrased it was what made Ron move past it. He clenched his fists, breathed in and out for a second, and then nodded. “Fine. But you still haven’t really explained why you sent a homunculus to the Dursleys’.”

“I wasn’t going back there.”

“He wasn’t going back there.”

Ron and Hermione looked back and forth between him and Theo. Their speaking at the same time hadn’t been planned. Harry simply leaned harder on Theo and stared at his friends, and Hermione was the one who swallowed and nodded slowly.

“I suppose that was an ill-considered decision on Dumbledore’s part.”

Theo curled his lip, but said nothing. Harry slid his hand slowly up and down his boyfriend’s arm and said, “Yes. It was.”

“And were you ever going to tell us the truth about the homunculus?”

“I just thought it would stay in the Dursleys’ house all summer and no one would notice. After all, I wouldn’t be able to use magic during the summer most of the time, so why would it matter?”

“You weren’t planning to tell us.”

“No. I already explained why when I told you about Theo’s blood curse. I thought you would go and tell someone, and I would have been forced back to Privet Drive.”

Hermione sucked in a long breath and held it. Then she asked, “Harry, you’ve told us a little—how exactly do they treat you?”

“They’ve called me a freak every day I’ve spent with them since I could remember. My bedroom was a cupboard until I was eleven. They let my cousin chase me and beat me up, and they told me that my parents were drunks who died in a car accident. My aunt and uncle both knew about magic, but they never bothered to tell me. They told me I couldn’t have food on a regular basis.”

With each word, Hermione’s eyes grew wider and wider. Then she closed her eyes and nodded. “I see,” she said. “I’ll—I’m so sorry that you had to endure that, Harry.”

Despite Theo’s clear disapproval, Harry got up from the couch and went to hug her. “It’s all right, Hermione. It’s not your fault. And I never told you all the details until now.”

“I still should have done something.” Hermione hugged him hard, then sat up and dashed the tears from her eyes. “Now that I know the truth, I will do something. I’ll tell Dumbledore that you can go back there. I’ll get my parents to adopt you if I have to.”

Harry smiled. Those were the loyal friends he knew. Ron hugged him next, telling him that he never would have agreed with Dumbledore that Harry should go back if he’d known.

Harry forgave him, too, and clapped Ron on the back, and went to sit back down with Theo.

Theo wrapped his arm around Harry’s waist, again, and barely spoke for the rest of Ron and Hermione’s visit. Harry knew why. Theo would be thinking that Harry hadn’t told them about the Horcrux, or about Sacred, and he would be happy and proud, knowing that he was the only one privy to those secrets.

Before they left, Hermione did hesitate by the fireplace and say, “I think you should tell Sirius and Dumbledore the truth, Harry. I don’t think they would force you to come to—to where we’re staying.”

“That place is under the Fidelius, isn’t it?” Theo asked, his first words for more than half an hour.

Hermione started and glanced at him. “Yes. How did you know?”

“That’s how the Fidelius works, making it impossible for you to say the name of the place.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes. It’s—I can’t explain it to you, and I don’t know if they would let you go there, but they could come here.”

Theo’s snarl next to Harry said how little he liked that idea, but Harry gently touched his arm. “They could,” he said.

There were wards on the house, old and deep, that would keep someone from kidnapping him, especially since Harry was the one who had bought the house. He would make sure to have them fully engaged before Sirius and Dumbledore arrived.

“What’s going to happen to the homunculus?” Ron blurted.

“I’ll leave it in place until after you’ve told people what happened. I think they would just get more upset if they saw it collapse on itself.”

“Uh, yeah, mate?”

Harry smiled and hugged his friends one more time before they went back through the Floo. Then he turned and met Theo’s gaze.

“Are you going to tell them about the Horcrux? Or that you’re stepping back from confronting the Dark Lord directly for a while?”

“The first one, no. Not right away. I don’t know when. And the latter only when they’ve had time to get used to the idea.”

Theo’s smile was radiant, and he leaned down for a kiss. Harry lifted his hands and wound his fingers into Theo’s hair, sighing a little into his mouth.

He was beyond glad that he still had Ron and Hermione’s friendship. He didn’t intend to give it up, and he didn’t intend to give Theo up, either.

Somehow, he would find a way to balance his wants, his needs, his desires. He would have what he needed.

*

“Harry.”

Sirius’s voice was cracked, broken, shaken. Harry sighed and embraced his godfather. He felt as if he didn’t even know how much he had missed Sirius until now, until he got the chance to hold him.

But Theo was still hovering behind him, and Dumbledore still stood between Sirius and the fireplace, looking at Harry with no expression at all.

“When Ron and Hermione came back and said that we hadn’t had the real you all summer,” Sirius said, and then didn’t finish the sentence, just stepping back and giving Harry’s shoulders a little shake. “I knew that you’d been quiet, but I thought it was because of the Diggory boy dying and him coming back.”

“That was part of it,” Harry said, and then turned to face Dumbledore, looking him directly in the face. “And then I learned that I was going to be sent back to the home of my abusive relatives after what I’d gone through.”

Dumbledore’s lips tightened in the moment before he stared at the floor with a long sigh. “There truly was no safer place, my boy. I regret it, but there was not.”

“The Dementors would seem to disagree,” Theo drawled.

Dumbledore examined Theo then, the same way he’d been looking at Harry. “Young Mr. Nott. I confess, your friendship with Harry is—unexpected.”

“Given that you were ignoring him the majority of the year even when he was participating in a deadly Tournament, I’m not surprised you never noticed.”

Harry stepped back and wrapped an arm around Theo’s waist to quiet him down. Dumbledore’s eyes blew wide, and he took a deep, pained breath. Harry wasn’t entirely sure why, and he didn’t know if he wanted to know.

He had to make peace with Dumbledore somehow, had to tell Sirius the truth.

“I wasn’t going to be locked in the Muggle world where I couldn’t know anything or do anything,” he said, his gaze on Dumbledore. “I’d already helped Theo become a Parselmouth to get rid of a blood curse. He offered me his home.”

“His father claims he’s been kidnapped.”

“My father is the one who cast the blood curse on me in the first place,” Theo said, and didn’t bother to hide the sibilance under his words. “It would have killed me by the time I was seventeen.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes and seemed to hold his breath. At least he didn’t look like he disbelieved them, Harry thought. “My boy, I am sorry.”

“Harry cured the curse. Of course I would offer to help him escape Muggles who abused him.”

Dumbledore didn’t say anything to contradict it, just watched them. Harry nodded and turned to face Sirius.

Sirius looked half-mad with guilt. He reached out and grabbed Harry’s free hand so hard he left little scratches in the flesh on the back of his knuckles. “I’m so sorry,” he babbled. “I should have known—I should have done something, Harry, I’m so sorry—”

“I know,” Harry said. “I don’t blame you. Everyone around here was acting for what they thought was the best. I really do believe you, sir,” he added, turning to Dumbledore, “that you thought the blood protections on the Dursleys’ house would keep me safe. But they didn’t. And I’m not going to tolerate being shuffled back there and forgotten.”

Dumbledore waited another moment or two, as though listening to a voice that wasn’t Harry’s speaking softly into his ear. Then he sighed and inclined his head. “You are right, Harry. You have enemies in the Ministry, and one of them must have sent the Dementors. I am sorry, my boy, that I have driven you to these desperate measures.’

Theo hissed next to him. Harry knew that Theo didn’t think the apology was enough—or maybe he thought it wasn’t for the right thing. But Harry ignored that. He had more important things to do.

“You should know that I’m going to tell the Ministry I was wrong about seeing Voldemort rise that night in the graveyard.”

Sirius flinched and yelped. Dumbledore just raised his eyebrows. “Why is that?”

“Because I want to protect Theo by casting the blame on his father instead. Obviously coming back to Hogwarts will challenge the story that Theo was kidnapped anyway, but we should make sure his father can’t just say it was a mistake or he was worried.”

“Just Mr. Nott?”

“Other Death Eaters, too. I’m going to say the names of the Death Eaters that were there.”

“Fudge might not believe you. He is already saying that you are simply reciting names from newspaper articles you have seen in the past.”

Harry smiled thinly. “This is where we can take advantage of the fact that I grew up in the Muggle world and wouldn’t have seen those newspaper articles as they came out. And I’d like it, sir, if you can vouch for me by saying I was too busy studying for the Tournament to look through old newspapers.”

Dumbledore watched him again. Then he said softly, “I presume there is a reason behind this unprecedented move?”

“Yes, sir. Voldemort is keeping a low profile, or he would have done something to announce himself by now. And there was information I learned in Theo’s father’s house about his goals that—I need to use it. I need to take time to figure out a new strategy for fighting him.”

There was another moment when Harry really wasn’t sure what Dumbledore was going to do next. Then he gave a nod that was glacial in its slowness. “I trust you’ll tell me what that is.”

“If can work together? Yes, sir.”

“It would help,” Dumbledore said, his fingers tapping on his robes, “now that I know you do intend to continue the fight against Tom and have not been persuaded or coerced into abandoning it, if you would also share the secret of constructing homunculi like the one you created to represent you. Such things could be invaluable in the war effort.”

“Yes, sir. I’d be happy to.”

“Then let us—bargain, Harry.”

Harry settled down to it, touching Theo’s shoulder or leaning against him when he felt like his boyfriend needed reassurance. He didn’t know if he could trust Dumbledore with everything, and he would definitely reserve some of the truth about Horcruxes.

But they both wanted Voldemort defeated, and that outweighed everything else. Harry didn’t need to trust Dumbledore completely to work with him.

*

“Are you sure that I must simply wind about you?”

“As sure I can be.”

Sacred swayed back and forth in front of him for a moment. Harry bit his lip and resisted the urge to tell her to hurry. The longer he spent in proximity to Thunderhaven, the more danger he was in.

He hadn’t wanted Theo to come with him, because he’d thought it likely that Mr. Nott would have spells up that would warn him of his son’s approach. But the danger wasn’t much less for Harry.

“It is good hunting here. Is it good hunting around your house?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know? Have you hunted prey that would interest me?”

Harry had to laugh. “I haven’t, but I haven’t really had time. And you know that you can’t stay here.”

“I know. But I wish I had had time to get vengeance on my captor before I left.”

Luckily, Sacred didn’t hesitate any longer, slipping forwards so that her head was hovering above Harry’s. Harry took a slow breath of the kind that was becoming familiar to him, and then reached out and put his hands on her scales.

The Horcrux had shared the memory of Apparating with several large beings before, including the corpse of a giant once. It still made Harry a little unhappy to vanish with Sacred, she was so large, but—

Not as large as a giant. Not as large as the basilisk in the Chamber.

They vanished, and for long moments, the soul-deadening black cold of Apparition sucked at Harry’s soul. He came out of it staggering, and Sacred also hissed in surprise and dropped several coils back, apparently striving to keep her balance. But then she was rearing and turning her head to face Theo, who had come running to meet them despite promising to stay back from the Apparition point.

“Sacred!”

Harry stepped back with a smile as he watched Theo run up to Sacred. Just as he had Ron and Hermione, Theo had Sacred. They had been all in all to each other from the time Theo was nine until he was fourteen.

He would never give her up.

But then, Harry would never ask him to.

He leaned his elbow on the wall of the house as he watched them chatter together in Parseltongue. Theo apparently had hunted one of the animals that had come with the woods around the house, and was telling Sacred about it. Harry breathed in deep, flooding his lungs with the clean air that the wards created.

Nothing was perfect. He would still have to hunt down the Horcruxes and find out how to kill them. He would have to put up with the fallout of telling people that only Death Eaters had been in the graveyard. He would have to work out a way, somehow, to tell Ron and Hermione (and maybe Sirius, and maybe Dumbledore) about the Horcruxes.

But for right now, watching his boyfriend speak to the giant basilisk in the tongue that all three of them shared, it didn’t matter.

His heart was at peace.

The End.