Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry to call you in like this.”

Harry, who was shaking snow off his cloak, paused and blinked at Bill. “What? Why?”

Bill folded his arms and sighed. He had scars all over his arms from a cursed artifact that had broken out of a tomb last year, and Harry personally found them more noticeable than the ones from Fenrir Greyback on the man’s face, although he knew Bill didn’t see it that way. “Nott’s the son of a Death Eater. Maybe a Marked Death Eater himself. I didn’t want to make you do this case.”

“Nott’s not Marked,” Harry said without thought.

“What? How do you know? He’s been practically a recluse since the war.”

Harry flushed. Trust him to blurt out this secret after keeping it for several years. “I can feel the magic of the Dark Mark,” he admitted reluctantly. “Whenever I walk into a place that’s housed a Death Eater for a long time, I can feel it permeating the walls. Maybe it’s because Voldemort was my mortal enemy or because I carried some of his magic myself. I don’t know.”

Bill blinked. “And you can’t sense anything here?’

“No. I think Mr. Nott, the Marked one, must have moved out long before he actually got arrested.”

“Huh.” Then Bill shook himself. “Well, anyway. Theodore Nott’s vanished. We wouldn’t have been that concerned about it, or even known, but he performed some ritual two nights ago that the goblins felt all over Britain.”

“The branch of Gringotts in London is hundreds of miles from here…”

“I know. And so are the few other enclaves they trust us with the knowledge of. But they felt it nonetheless. And they’re concerned about what kind of magic could have made the sky above the manor blaze. We had a hell of a time with the Obliviators making sure they got all the Muggles who saw it.”

Harry chewed his lip. “And you chose me because…”

“See for yourself.” Bill moved out of the way and gestured down the entrance hall, which was lined with mirrors, in the direction of a heavy, dark oak door.

Harry took a step towards it.

The air immediately wavered and curled around him, pressing in so thickly that he had to take a sharp gasp of breath. A step, and another step, and the floor seemed to slant beneath him at the same time that the ceiling bent down like a threatening gargoyle. Harry made it to the door, but he was sweating as he laid his hand on the knocker.

“Harry!”

“It’s all right, Bill,” Harry said, aware that his voice seemed to echo from a distance. He turned around.

Bill was standing near the door where Harry had entered. As Harry watched, he lifted his foot and tried to take a step, but the corridor warped into a corkscrew and sent him spiraling down towards what seemed to be a pool of white light.

“Bill!”

The floor shuddered and jerked, and then everything stopped. Harry watched as Bill hopped away from the pool of white light, and took a long breath, shaking his head.

“That’s what happens when I try to approach the door. Or even leave this corridor to go up the stairs. I think you only got as close as you did to the door because of your power. And that’s why I had to bring you out here.”

“Bill. My power is not a thing.”

Bill just raised an eyebrow and looked from Harry to the door knocker his hand was still resting on. Harry irritably waved his free hand, not quite daring to let go of the door. He was afraid that he might find himself floating down towards that malevolent pool of light like Bill had. “I mean, not in the way you mean it. It’s not some super-secret special power that let me defeat Voldemort.”

“I don’t think of it that way. I just mean that your magic is strong, and it seems that you’re the only one who can pierce through whatever safeguards Nott put on this door. Maybe because you can sense the Dark Mark. Maybe because you’re strong. Who knows. But I think you’re the only one who can handle this.”

Harry turned to frown at the door in front of him. He held up his hand and waved it, wondering whether the ward that he was sure was there but couldn’t sense would succumb to him.

The door unlocked with a loud click and swung open.

“But your power isn’t a thing,” Bill said.

“Shut up, Bill,” Harry muttered, aware that it was a weak comeback. He took a hesitant step into the room beyond. Torches sprang to life on the walls—or not torches, rather soft globes of crystalline water encased in more crystal. Harry blinked. They shed a light that was the closest to Muggle lamps he’d come across in the magical world.

“Harry? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Harry called back absently. His eyes darted around the room. It seemed to be a library, but all the shelves were empty. The only thing that bore any parchment was the table in the middle of the room, with a large wingback chair in front of it, made of the same dark oak as the door. Harry took a wary step forwards, but nothing tried to swallow him.

“There are lots of notes in here,” he called back to Bill, without taking his eyes from the innocent-looking table. “It looks like this was probably where Nott prepared his ritual or whatever it was.”

“You can’t tell yet?’

“Why would I be able to just from looking?” Harry shook his head. Bill was buying into Harry being some kind of genius, he thought, and of course Harry wasn’t. He might have more magical power than usual, right, and the kind of education that made him a good Curse-Breaker. But Bill had that, too.

“Can you read the notes?”

Harry moved closer and looked down at the parchments, half-expecting the words to start swimming the way they would when protected by privacy enchantments. But these remained normal. Perhaps Nott had never thought anyone would invade his sanctum to read them, if Bill was right about him being a recluse.

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I said I can read them!”

“Harry, the warping of the house is getting worse.”

Harry turned and took a quick step towards the door of the library. He was in time to see Bill reaching out to grip the walls around him, his head bowed as if against a powerful wind. Harry couldn’t feel any trace of it.

He stepped through the doorway of the library. No, still no wind.

But his presence in the corridor had done something. Bill stopped gripping the walls and straightened up with a relieved gasp. “Well, I believe that Ragnok was right when he said you were the only one for this case.”

“I still didn’t use this unique and special power that you think I have to defeat Voldemort.”

“Uh-huh.”

Harry rolled his eyes and glanced over his shoulder at the library. “So you want me to read through the notes that Nott left and get ready to create a clean copy of them?”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to help you, Harry,” Bill said, a solemn note in his voice that made Harry snap his head back towards him. “I know we were planning on that, but the house’s distortions are too intense. I’d probably spend most of my time throwing up or freaking out and be of no use.”

Harry bit his lip. This would be the first dangerous case he had handled without backup since he had become a Curse-Breaker. Of course, he was able to handle the ones that were just a matter of erasing a certain rune or battling a crazed creature that had been imprisoned by a stone door for centuries.

But I have to stand on my own sometime.

“All right,” he told Bill, keeping his voice as casual as he could. “Then I’ll go back and get a few of my supplies so that I can spend a few nights here. Hopefully it won’t take longer than that to figure out what Nott did to himself.”

“Are you sure that you don’t want me to bring the supplies to you? I can if you tell me what to look for, and I don’t know that the house will let you back in if you leave now. I still can’t believe that you’re standing here totally unaffected.”

Harry reached out and put a hand on the wall, the way he had tried to do before the door unlocked. Nothing happened, though. In fact, he thought he felt the wood snuggle closer to his palm, the way a cat might when looking for a stroke.

And that’s not creepy at all.

“I think I’ll be fine to leave.”

“Well, you’re the expert on this one, now.” Bill nodded. “Remember that the goblins are less interested in bringing Nott back than answers about what he did.”

Harry nodded back. He could accept the goblins’ lack of care towards most wizards and witches because they had been treated so horribly in the past. And since Harry had fled into the Curse-Breaker job partially to escape some really awful people who wanted to treat him like property, he even sympathized.

But he wanted to find out what had happened to Nott.

Because, if nothing else, the notes he had glimpsed in the library were fascinating.

*

The house didn’t give Harry any trouble when he came back into it, and he carefully scouted the rooms off the corridor for one he could stay in, finally settling on one that had a comfortable couch near a fireplace. He cast charm after charm on the couch, looking for curses or traps, but there didn’t seem to be any. Then again, Nott probably wouldn’t have bothered doing that for a room this far into his house, the same way he didn’t appear to have bothered disguising the writing in the library.

Once he had unpacked his clothes, books, and other things he would need, Harry returned to the library.

The house remained docile around him the whole time. Harry didn’t really know what to make of that, since it had definitely resisted him when he’d first entered, but he decided that he should just be grateful.

He settled down in front of Nott’s library table with a ream of parchment, a dozen quills, and an inkwell spelled to refill itself several times over. He didn’t think he’d want to interrupt himself once he really got going.

And yes, glancing at the top parchment drew Harry in the second time as it had done the first time.

*

I don’t belong in this world.

There’s no one left who shares my blood. And I never made the kind of friends who wouldn’t care about blood. There are people who would be glad to befriend and use me, but I don’t want them.

I want to leave. I want to flee.

But I don’t want to live in poverty, and I don’t want to leave my past and my name completely behind. I’ve been trying to figure out a magical community I could travel to where no one would care about my name but would also offer me a fairer chance than they would any other random stranger, and I can’t identify one.

I need to solve this problem.

*

Harry sat back with a long sigh, shaking his hand out. He’d spent more than an hour copying the most important of Nott’s notes and deciphering some of the Arithmantic equations he would have to ask someone else to take a look at, and his sense of fascination and kinship was only growing.

Nott wasn’t at home in the magical world, either. Nott didn’t trust most of the people around him, either.

Oh, Harry knew he was luckier than Nott. He still had Ron and Hermione, who loved him and would fight to the death for him. It seemed from the notes that Nott had had no one.

But even Ron and Hermione…

Harry leaned back with a longer sigh.

It wasn’t that they had abandoned him. It wasn’t fair of him to frame it like that. It was just that Ron and Hermione were extremely busy with their careers, and their children, and their families when they had a free moment from the first two. Hermione’s parents hadn’t wanted to come back from Australia and insisted that she visit them a few times per year. And Ron’s family, of course, always had people Ron wouldn’t see as often and wanted to see when he could.

Harry’s divorce from Ginny, which had been amicable in the end but full of high emotions at the start, hadn’t helped. Ginny was okay now, Harry was okay, they were both fine. Ginny had accepted that she didn’t want to stay married to a man who only desired other men, and Harry had accepted that it wasn’t fair to either of them for him to try it.

But between that, and the awkwardness that had meant Molly didn’t want to invite Harry and Ginny over at the same time for a while, and Ron and Hermione prioritizing other people when they had a chance to see them, Harry and his friends had sort of drifted apart.

Hell, the Weasley he saw the most of now was Bill.

Harry stared unseeingly at the scroll, and then picked up his quill again. He could take at least another hour of notes before he would need to go and pick up food from the Leaky Cauldron for dinner. And he was intensely curious to see if he could make sense of the Arithmantic equations on his own.

It would be fine.

*

Draco tells me that the plan I have in mind is stupid and too complicated. Pansy agrees with him, and tells me that I just need to go to France and meet a few people who don’t know me and won’t care about my past. Blaise never answered when I owled him.

He never answers me anymore.

But I don’t want to go to France. I want to be around people who know me, understand me, accept me for who I am. And that doesn’t apply to anyone in Britain anymore, but it wouldn’t apply to anyone in France, either.

Draco and Pansy are busy and have their own lives. Draco has his hands full with just making sure that his father doesn’t end up in the papers for shouting about Mudbloods, honestly. Pansy doesn’t need people from her past intruding on her efforts to sell modern robes, as she told me pretty bluntly.

Blaise…

I think he regrets what we had during our seventh year—the real seventh year, the ones that’s always going to be inscribed in runes of ash and blood in my mind. Yes, maybe it was stupid to become lovers when it was our emotions running high and hot and the Carrows were swanning around torturing everyone. But stupid or not, for me it was real. I meant it.

When Blaise didn’t come back to Hogwarts, I thought it was the memories. I never thought it was me. I owled him during that “eighth year” and he responded. He didn’t talk about our relationship, but he was at least willing to talk to me.

And now he’s decided that he isn’t, and the last letter he sent was so full of vague ramblings and coded references that I literally couldn’t understand it. I do think that he’s tired of me, though. Tired of his past intruding on the present.

Or maybe he regrets sleeping with a man.

The Italian magical papers say that he’s dating women and has him describe himself as desiring women only. He even says that he’s “voracious” about having as many women as possible, and he never intends to marry.

For me, it was real. I meant it.

*

Poor bloke, Harry thought as he lay in front of the fire that night in the sitting room he’d found.

Yeah, he knew he was gay, and the only man he wanted apparently walked away from him without a qualm. Although at least he didn’t marry some poor woman and string her along in a desperate attempt to pretend he wanted her.

After a second, Harry shook his head, eyes fixed on the crackling flames. He’d forgiven himself for his stupid marriage to Ginny because he’d been young and stupid, proposing to her at seventeen the day after the Battle of Hogwarts, and marrying her at nineteen. He’d been caught up in his parents’ fairy tale and wanting that for himself, and finding Ginny a comfort when he was running himself ragged trying to attend trials and funerals and classes all at the same time, and he’d reasoned that he’d been attracted to her before the war, so why not after?

It had been a stupid thing to do, and he shouldn’t have done it. But dwelling on it for the rest of his life wouldn’t help him. Or her.

I wish I could tell Nott that, Harry thought, as he rolled over and slipped into sleep. Maybe it would have helped him move on from Zabini.

*

“Help.”

The voice was soft. Harry opened his eyes and stared around at the drifting grey smoke that seemed to have encircled him. He gripped his wand. Perhaps a trap that had lingered in Nott’s house had sprung after all.

But then he rolled over, and found how soft the bed was beneath him, and knew. This was a dream. King’s Cross, when he had walked in it right after Voldemort hit him with the Killing Curse, hadn’t felt solid, either.

“Help.”

The voice sounded like someone who was broken. Harry stood and walked towards it, ignoring the way that some of the mist seemed to form tempting shapes like piles of coins or gleaming silver harps. He already had all the wealth he’d ever want or need.

“Help,” said the voice one more time, and Harry rounded what looked like a mound of shadowy gems and found him.

Even though Harry hadn’t seen him since school, he had no doubt that this was Theodore Nott. He crouched in the corner and shivered, his arms wrapped around himself. There wasn’t a Dark Mark on his arm, but he looked so thin that Harry ached with empathy. And he stared up at Harry with eyes full of dread.

“Did you come to put an end to me?” he whispered.

“Of course not.” Harry swiftly crouched down in front of him. “I’m trying to find a way to decipher the notes you left behind and figure out what happened to you. What did happen to you? Are you able to tell me?”

“I don’t understand myself.” Nott’s voice was so soft that Harry had to concentrate to hear it over his own breathing. “The Arithmancy should have worked. It shouldn’t have disturbed anything in the outside world. All it would have done was change my own mind and thoughts, so that I was content with what I had.”

Harry frowned. “What did you have?”

“I had—”

The world snapped around Harry, and Nott gave a scream of utter despair. Harry snatched his wand up again and found himself tumbling off the couch that he’d decided to sleep on, his breath coming noisily and his knee aching where he’d hit it on the floor.

Harry scrambled up and stared around, seeking one hint of grey, one quaver of a voice.

Nothing.

Harry slowly settled back onto the couch. His breathing had calmed down, and so had his heart, but he found fear and wonder crawling through his mind on sharp claws.

Nott, what happened? How could a desire to change yourself have caused this? And why did you want to change yourself in the first place?

*

I know that my father killed my mother. I could never prove it, but I know he did.

I remember my mother’s eyes and hair, floating in the middle of space and not attached to anything. I know she had grey eyes like mine. I know the song she used to sing to me, about five small wizards and five small witches who had to bring me golden coins so I could go to sleep.

But I don’t remember anything else. Everything else I know is facts that my father told me, that he altered or distorted to make himself look better in the eyes of someone he wanted to follow the Dark Lord’s footsteps.

She was a Yaxley, and the family was so pleased she married into the Nott family that they made her an enchanted harp of yew wood. I’ve seen it. It’s sitting in the middle of the music room that even the house-elves only enter to dust. I’ve never been able to bring myself to play it.

Her name was Angelica.

I don’t know exactly how she died. My father’s story changed three times before I was eight years old. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t think anyone will ever be able to prove that he killed her, even if Aurors were interested in investigating a murder decades old.

But I know she existed. And I know she loved me.

*

Harry stretched his cramped fingers and shook his head. There were so many similarities between him and Theo Nott that his sense of the differences was fading into obscurity.

They had both grown up with family members who despised them. Their mothers had died, and they missed them. They had found only a few friends each, and lost contact with them for a number of reasons.

They were both, as Nott had made clear in his notes, gay.

Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, clearing his mind the way the goblins had taught him when he became a Curse-Breaker. (They did it much better than Snape had ever even imagined). He couldn’t let himself get too close to Nott, or rather what he thought he knew about Nott, from these pages, he told himself sternly. That would impair his ability to solve the puzzle.

Then again, from the dream last night, when a trapped and terrified Nott had reached out to him somehow from wherever he was imprisoned, Harry already thought it might be too late to stay detached.

*

I’ve tried to make other friends. I’m terrible at it. I start talking too quickly or forget to ask about them or bring up subjects that I find interesting and they find boring. And I find what they talk about boring in turn.

I wish I knew someone who was like me, who had grown up mostly by himself and had an interest in Arithmancy and other esoteric magical subjects. Someone who could hold me and reassure me when I suffer these nightmares of my father that never seem to go away.

Someone who could love me.

Chapter Text

“Are you all right, Harry?”

Harry blinked when he stepped out of the Nott house. It was Fleur who stood on the gravel path leading up to the house’s doors instead of Bill, her face set in a frown. And she held a huge basket of food whose origins Harry knew well enough. Molly had never stopped trying to feed him, even when he wasn’t her son-in-law any longer.

“Yes, I’m fine, thanks, Fleur.” Harry smiled and took the basket when she handed it to him. “What are you doing here?”

“I can sense the differences between fine shades of Dark Arts, because I am a Veela.” With the passage of time, Fleur’s French accent had grown lighter, but it was coming out more strongly now. “Bill wanted me to investigate whether the house, it has a grip on you that prevents you from coming out.”

Harry laughed and extended his arms. “You can look, but I really don’t think so.”

“Then I must look so.” Fleur twirled her wand and whispered several incantations under her breath. Harry stood patiently through them. He thought they were in French, since he didn’t recognize them the way he would have Latin.

Fleur finally holstered her wand, giving him a look that made Harry grin. “You didn’t find any signs that I was being affected by the house, did you?”

“I did not, but.” Fleur paused after she said that, her light eyes still intently scanning Harry. Harry waited, and waited, and waited, but she didn’t go on.

“Yes?” Harry asked finally.

“You are emotionally involved.” Fleur pronounced the word delicately, as if picking up a strange creature with tongs. “This Nott boy, he was not someone you knew in school?”

Harry shook his head, feeling a pang of loss. Maybe he could have done something to prevent Nott from being trapped, or imprisoned, or whatever was going on, if he’d got to know him. “No.”

“But I can sense a strong emotional connection. Why is that?”

“I think because I’m reading through his notes to find out what caused that magical explosion the goblins sensed. He really was brilliant, Fleur. Someone I would have liked to know, even though I didn’t.”

“Be careful, Harry. That kind of involvement can be something that writing can encourage. Did he use runes?”

“Some of them, but more as part of the incantations to create the magic—whatever it was—then as actual writing.”

“I would like to look at them.”

Harry felt a surge of protectiveness, a strong sense that Nott wouldn’t want her to look at the notes, but he breathed out and let it go. He had to remember that Nott wasn’t here right now, and the man Harry had got to know from the parchments left behind would want to be rescued even if it meant someone invading his privacy.

Hell, you could say that I already am, given that he didn’t know me, either.

Harry shook off the feeling that it was different for him for some reason, and nodded. “Of course. Let me go make copies.”

Fleur waited outside the house until he came back with those copies. Harry smiled slightly as he handed them to her. “Sorry if I sound ungrateful or something.”

“You do not.” She eyed him. “I simply wonder why you have found such an interest in this case. Bill, he told me that you are not the sort to pore over notes and magical theory for hours. That is more your friend Hermione’s specialty, yes?’

“It is, but I undertook the training I had to when I became a Curse-Breaker.”

Fleur finally nodded. “I hope that reading through the notes will allow me to help you. And Nott, too. He deserves to be buried with dignity or at least knowledge if we can find his body.”

I don’t think he’s dead.

But Harry wouldn’t have been able to clearly explain why he thought that, so he nodded and waved Fleur away, remembering to float the basket of food into the house first. Then he turned around and went back to the library.

He wanted to read more of what Nott had to say.

*

I’ve always felt alone.

It really had nothing to do with my mother dying at a young age or living alone with Father most of the time. I could be in a whirl of other people and still feel that way. I could be with tutors, studying intently and hearing them speak to me, and it would feel as if I were on the other side of a large empty room.

There was no one exactly like me in all the places I looked, and I wanted someone. That longing has grown keener and keener as the years have passed.

I don’t know what to do with it.

Other people seem to be able to shed it and go on. Draco and Pansy have made their own lives and comfort since the war, and Draco is even getting married. He didn’t have to find someone exactly like him to live. Or maybe Astoria is more like him than I know. I didn’t know her well in Slytherin.

I don’t know anyone well, and that’s the problem.

I have to find some way to cure this loneliness. At this point, I don’t care if it ends up being a permanent solution or takes all the Galleons in my vault. I just need to find a way to cure it.

*

“Help.”

This time, Harry was more alert when he woke up and stood with his wand in his hand. He hadn’t tumbled off the couch, at least. He made his way towards the figure sprawled in what looked like a mist of spiderwebs as quickly as he could.

Nott turned and looked up at him with agony in his eyes. He tried to reach out towards Harry, but the webs pulled his hand back and made him look as if he were fighting clouds. “Help,” he whispered again.

Harry knelt down next to him and began to steadily burn the webs with a controlled flame spell that he’d found in the first tomb he’d ever investigated as a Curse-Breaker. “What can I do to rescue you, Nott? What kind of ritual were you doing?”

“Not—a ritual. A working.”

Harry’s hand never paused, but his mind reeled. He’d had enough education by now to know the difference between the two. A ritual created a temporary space in which someone used ingredients, much like a potion outside a cauldron, to cast a certain magical effect. A working created something permanent, an artifact or a spell or something else that went on existing outside the immediate timeframe and could be used by more than one person.

“What were you trying to make?”

“A way to not be lonely anymore. A way to find someone who would love me.”

Harry didn’t grimace, any more than he had paused in clearing the webs, but dread moved through him. He had seen devastation left behind by people who had tried workings without a clear idea of what they were trying to achieve. It was sort of a miracle that Nott’s house was still standing.

“Did you succeed in making it?”

“I did.”

Nott stared up at Harry with desperate eyes even as Harry burned the last of the webs and tried to haul him to his feet. But he didn’t come. When Harry looked down, he saw that Nott’s legs were buried in the wood of the floor, as though he had grown up through it like a tree.

“Where is it, then? What is it? Do I need to destroy it to free you?”

“You’re looking—”

The dream faded, and Harry opened his eyes to find himself in a corner of the library with a handful of real dust and cobwebs. He grimaced and flung them into the air, burning them with a more violent spell for good measure.

The dreams seemed to be at least partially real, given that he was moving around the library when he had them. But Harry still had no idea where Nott was, or if he had somehow trapped himself in a dream version of the house, or what.

I have to help him.

*

I found a solution that might at least take away my loneliness.

Rituals won’t help, the way I knew they wouldn’t. Even rituals that transform someone’s body or soul are always temporary. It’s only workings that will succeed.

The equation is as follows…

*

Harry leaned back in his seat with a long sigh. He should have known that he wouldn’t be able to decipher the Arithmantic equations on his own. He would need to summon Bill after all.

Or maybe Hermione, but she was so busy that he was reluctant to do anything that would take her away from her family.

Abrupt booms sounded throughout the library. Harry leaped to his feet and brandished his wand before he realized that it was the spell he had set up to notify him when someone was knocking on the front door. Somewhat sheepishly, he trekked towards it. It seemed he wouldn’t have to summon Bill after all.

Unless it was Fleur with another basket of food from Molly, but she had much of the same experience with reading Arithmancy that Bill did.

Harry walked towards the door and opened it with a joke ready on his tongue about how he hoped they’d come ready to help him read stubborn Arithmancy. But he swallowed it when he saw who was there.

Draco Malfoy folded his arms and scowled at Harry. “What are you doing in Theo’s house, Potter?”

Harry leaned one shoulder on the door and told the part of himself that wanted to shrink from Malfoy’s tone—so similar to the way Aunt Petunia’s had been at times—that he was a fully-grown Curse-Breaker and didn’t have to put up with being scolded. “I was called in to investigate when Nott disappeared.”

“What are you talking about? Theo didn’t disappear.”

“He caused an explosion of magic that should have leveled his house and that the goblins could feel beyond his wards. So they summoned a Curse-Breaker to look at what happened when they couldn’t find any trace of Nott.”

“And that Curse-Breaker is you?”

“Me.”

“I don’t believe you finished the education necessary to become a Curse-Breaker. I don’t believe it at all.”

“Going to take it up with the goblins?”

“Maybe I will!” Malfoy took an aggressive step forwards. “But in the meantime, I’m going to get you out of Theo’s house.”

Harry waited with his arms folded. Malfoy came up the steps and through the doors, making Harry start to reach for his wand. He didn’t want to harm one of Nott’s friends, but he also wasn’t going to let Malfoy chase him away from his rightful case before he found out what had happened.

However, when he glanced up, he found Malfoy rooted to the floor, his eyes shut, and a fine tremor invading his limbs.

“Malfoy?”

“No,” Malfoy breathed. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t.”

“What are you on about?”

Malfoy turned and bolted out the door without answering. Harry leaned out to watch him. Malfoy went running down the drive, back out the wrought iron gates that would shut the house’s gravel path off from the rest of the world, and up to what must be the Apparition point. He disappeared without slowing his stride.

Harry stared after him, then stepped back into the house and shut the door. The house seemed to creak a little around him, and Harry wondered if it had frightened off Malfoy the way it had done with Bill.

But Malfoy hadn’t seemed to be affected by magical motions of the corridor the way Bill had been. He had talked as if he were speaking with someone who could hear him.

Nott felt betrayed by Malfoy and Parkinson, from what his notes say. Did he leave something in the house that would accuse them of betrayal if they visited?

Harry gave a long sigh. There wasn’t much he could make sense of here, one way or the other.

And he still needed to contact someone who could help him read Nott’s Arithmantic equations.

*

That should do it. That should bring me to where I want to be.

I will become the kind of person who does not care about loneliness, who is beyond it. It’s not the person I wanted to be, but it’s the one I need to be, to leave behind this desperate stain of embarrassment and need.

I must only make sure that the artifact I create is small enough to be worn around my neck, so that I might take it with me and have it soothe me always.

*

“Potter! I know you’re in there!”

Harry sighed. On the one hand, this wasn’t going to be Bill or Fleur, or even someone else from the Weasley family he wouldn’t have expected to see.

On the other hand, at least it would give him some distraction from searching for Nott’s artifact, which wasn’t in any of the rooms he had investigated and wasn’t in any of the hidden niches he had found. He strode to the front door.

Pansy Parkinson was standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring. “What have you done with Theo?” she snapped, the minute Harry opened the door.

“Nothing. I was called in to investigate his disappearance. And I know Malfoy would have told you that, so don’t act like it’s news to you,” Harry added, as Parkinson wrinkled her nose and opened her mouth.

Parkinson shut her mouth and subjected him to a critical stare. Harry stared back. While Malfoy had become pointier and blonder with the years, Parkinson looked different enough that Harry probably wouldn’t have recognized her from school. She had blazing dark eyes and dark hair cut at a defiant angle.

“You’re on thin ice, Potter.”

“Why is that?”

“How do we know that you were called in to investigate Theo’s disappearance instead of because you did something to him?”

Harry rolled his eyes, and let Parkinson see it. “Look, I let Malfoy into the house. He was the one who stood there and shivered and screamed nonsense and ran away. Literally Apparated as he was running. I didn’t know someone could do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said that he didn’t do—something. He didn’t name it. And then he turned and ran towards the Apparition point and disappeared.”

Parkinson tapped her nails on a silver bracelet of some sort fastened around her arm. Harry watched her impassively. He would defend himself if he had to, but he didn’t think he’d have to. Parkinson looked like she believed him.

Not like she was happy about it, though. She hissed under her breath before she fastened her eyes on him. “I’ll have another talk with Draco. But if you did have anything to do with Theo’s disappearance, you’ll be sorry.”

“I would be. I wish I’d got to know him in school.”

Parkinson stared at him hard enough that Harry wondered if she was about to say he was presumptuous. But then she shook her head and whispered, “You should have. Theo thought you were handsome, and there was a time that he dreamed you would rescue him from his father and the way the man was pressuring him to become a Death Eater.”

“What?”

Harry’s voice was a little louder than he’d meant it to be. Parkinson sneered at him. “Don’t take it too personally, Potter. It was a common fantasy for all of us who had family who wanted us to serve him.”

And she turned and marched away. Harry hadn’t stopped staring when she Apparated.

Harry took a deep breath and rubbed his face. Of course he had moved beyond the childishness that meant he thought of all the Slytherin students—the former Slytherin students—in his year as evil, but he hadn’t thought they would want him to rescue them. Why would they? Everyone had been childish at the time, caught up in the beliefs of their families.

It was—

They had? Nott did?

Harry shook his head and turned to go back into the library. He would Floo Bill soon, but he wanted to spend a little more time studying the equations first, to make absolutely sure that he couldn’t solve them. He thought he owed Theo that much.

*

“You’re sure that these equations were copied correctly?”

“Those are the original parchments.”

Bill turned them back and forth, his eyes intent. Then he looked up at Harry. “I know you said you weren’t good at Arithmancy, but in this case, you were putting yourself down unnecessarily. These equations make no sense.”

“They don’t add up to anything?”

Bill waved his hand vaguely, still looking at the notes. They were sitting outside the Nott house on a pair of chairs Transfigured from a stone bench someone might have once used to watch the gardens. “Arithmantic equations don’t always add up to something, exactly. It’s common for them to be laid out like a map to a certain conclusion, instead.”

“The divination function.”

“Yes. But these don’t lead anywhere. That was why I asked you if something was missing.” Bill laid down the parchments. “Maybe there are other notes hidden somewhere in the library?”

“Maybe.” Harry honestly hadn’t thought to look for them. His impression had been that Theo had disappeared so suddenly he hadn’t had time to move or hide anything. But of course that was sort of a stupid assumption.

Bill handed the parchments back to Harry, and Harry accepted them absently, still thinking about potential hiding places. Then Bill hissed sharply, and Harry looked down.

A very faint blue radiance was creeping along the notes, gleaming like sunlight on snow.

“What is that? What are you doing, Harry?”

“I’m not doing anything!”

The blue radiance went on creeping and glowing. Harry jerked back, but the light followed him, twining up his fingers and along the line of his shoulder like a weightless snake. Harry drew his wand and hissed a spell in Parseltongue in case it helped, but of course it didn’t.

“Hang on, Harry!”

Bill cast something wordless and complicated. The spell throbbed and vanished the moment it touched the light. Bill swore under his breath and cast the spell again. This time, it vanished long before it touched the light.

Harry felt an enormous tug in the area of his stomach. He gasped and tried to lurch away, dropping the parchments. It felt like the beginning of a Portkey, although slower than any Portkey he’d ever experienced.

“Harry!”

The air warped and wrapped around Bill, and Harry nearly stumbled as the light continued to pull on him. He tried to Apparate, but the house still had wards on it other than the Apparition point, wards Harry hadn’t wanted to take down because he’d thought they might interfere with finding out what had happened to Theo.

Now, he wished like hell he had.

Bill yelped something. Harry didn’t get to hear what it was as the blue light took him in crushing jaws and whirled him away.

Chapter Text

Harry landed in a crouch and came up rolling.

He stopped after a minute, though, when nothing struck at him the way he’d expected. He leaned his elbow on the ground and stared above him.

There was a plain, blank blue sky there, although the longer Harry stared, the less it looked like the sky. A bit of blue parchment, maybe? It drooped and curled over the edges of what seemed to be the horizon like parchment, anyway.

What the hell?

Harry slowly stood, brushing off what seemed like a mixture of soot and dried ink flakes, and did some more staring around.

The ground beneath his feet was a trembling, blank whiteness. Harry scraped his foot over it, and, yeah, he could feel what seemed to be the silkiness of parchment, too. Not that it made things less weird, admittedly, but at least it was consistent with the way the sky looked.

The “horizon” was made of sullenly glowing mountains, black heaps of stone backlit by red. Other than that, Harry wasn’t sure where the light was coming from. No sun shone in the parchment sky, and he didn’t see any fires or lamps or even Muggle electric lights, which might have been the best match for the illumination as far as the shade went. Harry’s hand tightened on his wand.

“Nott?” he called.

No answer.

At least my voice sounds like it has normal echoes. But then again, Harry wasn’t sure if that was comforting. Something else would have fit better with the strange aesthetics of the place.

Standing in one place and complaining or waiting probably wouldn’t do anything, though. Harry oriented himself towards what seemed to be the biggest of the distant mountains and started walking.

Along the way, he silently evaluated his body, the way he’d been taught to do when he first trained as a Curse-Breaker. Some of the tombs that he might have entered could trap people in pocket dimensions and the like, so a physical survey was always the beginning of how you understood it.

He had been slightly hungry when he’d spoken to Bill outside the Notts’ house, but now that hunger was gone. He also didn’t have any dryness in his throat. Harry licked his lips and blinked his eyes, and found that there was moisture missing there, too, but he didn’t feel dehydrated by the lack.

Interesting.

On he walked, and on, and he didn’t get tired. The mountain he was aiming for also never seemed to get any bigger, but Harry kept walking. It seemed that this was a kind of pocket dimension where the needs of the body didn’t exist.

Of course, if we’re inside a book, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Characters don’t get hungry or thirsty or need to sleep all the time, only when the needs of the plot demand it, and often those scenes are skipped over.

What had gone wrong in Theo’s life to make him think retreating into a book was the wisest choice? Or had this been an unwitting side-effect of the working he’d been trying to create?

Harry couldn’t wait to meet him and find out.

*

The web appeared suddenly out of the parchment plain after Harry had been walking for an unknown length of time. Harry promptly dropped into a crouch again, his wand ready, but nothing attacked. Instead, a moan of pain drifted to his ears.

Hadn’t there been a web holding Theo in the library, those times Harry had dreamed about him?

Harry sped up.

By the time he reached the web, it had started to flicker and glow with the same blue light that had outlined the parchments in Bill’s hands before that light had reached for Harry. Harry hoped that didn’t mean this web would disappear, but there was no sign of it so far.

“Help—help me.”

A solid-looking Theo Nott lay in the middle of this web, his limbs spread so that they were stretched in the four cardinal directions, his eyes wild with pain. Harry winced and cast a Cutting Spell at the web to test what would happen, although he hardly thought such a simple solution would work.

The spell faded away before it got there. Harry nodded and picked up one of the small rocks near the large ones the web was spread among, Transfiguring it into a knife. Maybe no magic would work here, but at least he could try what would happen with the edge of a blade.

“Who are you?”

Harry blinked a little, but kept cutting at the web. It did seem to be yielding to the knife he’d made. Theo sobbed aloud in relief as his right arm came free, and tucked it into the middle of his chest with a shudder.

“Harry Potter. We went to school together. Do you remember?” Harry kept his voice brisk and impersonal as he started to cut the web around Theo’s left arm.

“Harry…Potter? That’s impossible.”

“Why?” Harry sliced sharply to the side, making sure not to cut Theo’s skin, and his left arm came free.

“Harry Potter would never be here. He’d never be able to pass the wards.”

“Into your house?”

“Into this place.”

Harry shook his head a little as he knelt to cut around Theo’s legs. It seemed that Theo didn’t know what to call this inside of the parchments, either, which might not be a good sign. But he kept his voice calm and soothing. “I didn’t actually think I would. I was discussing the notes you left behind with someone, and this blue light started crawling around the edge of the parchments, and then grabbed me and brought me here.”

Theo didn’t say anything. Harry cut his right leg out from the web and leaned back on his heels, looking up at Theo’s face.

Theo was staring at him as if he had never seen him before. There seemed to be blue sparks deep in his grey eyes, circling back and forth as if Theo’s eyes were reflecting a supernova somewhere.

“But how could you—”

Theo screamed abruptly. Harry lurched to his feet and held his wand over Theo, staring around. Then he stared down again as he realized the pain that hurt Theo seemed to be coming from inside him.

Theo tossed his head back and forth. Harry leaned down over him, his hands on Theo’s shoulders, holding his arms down. He would have to hope that Theo didn’t punch him in the face or have some kind of bad association with people’s hands on him.

There were a few more screams, and then Theo went limp as abruptly as he’d started to cry out. Harry looked down and watches runes crawling across Theo’s arms, intricate arrays that seemed to be done in ash.

At least nothing else happened, and the runes didn’t seem to be harming him. Harry took a deep breath and resumed cutting the web. Then he cast a Lightening Charm on Theo and scooped him up into his arms.

They needed to reach some place Hary could set up wards. Only then would he feel secure enough to study Theo and see what in the world was going on.

*

A spire of black rock seemed to be the only distinguishing feature on the parchment plain, and the only place Harry was going to be able to pick to camp. In the end, he grimaced, cast some stabilization charms on the base and wards around the whole spire, and then floated up to the top with a charm that the Curse-Breakers and goblins used among themselves.

The top was broad enough, at least, a good twelve meters from side to side, and relatively flat. Harry cast some more spells to smooth out the ridges of rock that stuck up, and settled Theo down in the middle of the black stone.

It was good that the temperature here seemed constant and unvarying and neither of them were going to get hungry or thirsty, he thought. There didn’t seem to be any water here, or food, or places to use the bathroom.

Reckon I don’t have to do that, either.

Harry sat down beside Theo and examined the runes on his arms closely. They weren’t growing or spreading anymore, but they did seem to continue up Theo’s arms, to his shoulders and beneath his sleeves.

Harry took a deep breath and used as gentle a charm as possible to fold Theo’s sleeves back, without touching him.

Yes, luckily, the runes did end on his shoulders. Harry squinted at them and felt a deep foreboding squirm in his stomach.

He’d never seen runes this complicated. He wondered if he could have worked them out even with the sort of dictionaries that the goblins had in their training libraries.

But he could get a general idea of what had happened, and it made him reel inwardly.

“How?” he whispered, looking down at Theo. “You were going to create some artifact to help you. How did you make yourself into the working?”

Theo continued to breathe softly, steadily, and didn’t wake up or answer him.

Harry shook his head and went back to studying the runes. He reckoned this would take a long time, but on the other hand, most of the consequences of time passing here wouldn’t harm them.

And maybe he could learn some of the reasons that they appeared to be trapped inside Theo’s notes, as well.

*

“Potter? What are you doing here?’

Harry blinked and lifted his head. He’d been bent over Theo’s notes for so long that his eyes were starting to burn. It seemed he could still feel ordinary tiredness if he looked at something for too long.

Then he heard his neck crack, and winced a little. Or if I bend over for too long in one position.

“You don’t remember me cutting you free of the web?”

“That didn’t happen.”

The way that Theo snapped out the words made Harry blink again. But he watched those grey eyes dart away a second later, and then he understood. For some reason, Theo thought that having been imprisoned in the web made him weak, and he hated having someone there to witness his weakness.

“What do these runes do?” Harry asked, tracing a finger through the air above Theo’s arm without touching it. “It looks like you became the working you were trying to create, but I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

“How did you know I was trying to create a working?”

“From the notes that you left in your library.”

“You shouldn’t have—the house should have been warded against you, against anyone entering that room—”

Theo was breathing so hard it made Harry wince. He took a step back and turned away, studying the downslope of the black spire, to give him time to calm down. Theo did it with a gulp and a gasp.

“How did you enter it?” he asked, in a more normal voice.

Harry glanced over his shoulder and did his best to keep his voice calm and matter-of-fact instead of sounding soothing. That might set Theo off right now. “The ward was bending the walls and doors, but I was powerful enough to make my way past it. I’m the only one who could, though. A couple other people tried to come in and failed.”

“Who?”

“Bill Weasley, who’s a Curse-Breaker like me. And Draco Malfoy.”

Theo shuddered and closed his eyes. Harry was pretty sure it had been the mention of Malfoy that had done that, not Bill. He waited in respectful silence, and Theo finally opened his eyes and shook his head.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “I didn’t set up a ward based on power. The ward should have kept everyone out.”

“So it was meant to keep you isolated?”

“It had conditions that would have allowed someone to pass, but—there’s no way that you could have fulfilled them.”

“Tell me what those conditions are, and maybe we can understand together. Maybe it’s the same reason the magic brought me here?”

Theo turned his head away.

Harry waited, and waited. But it seemed that Theo was content to stare towards the horizon of black mountains and the red, sullen glow that backlit them, so after a while, Harry sighed and went back to studying the runes.

He didn’t understand all the arrays instinctively, not the way Hermione would have, but there was something there, like reading a text in a language that was related to English. The meaning danced and flickered through his brain, but he would find it. He would grasp it. They would get home.

*

“Why are you so dedicated to this?”

Theo’s voice broke what had become hours of silence. Harry blinked and glanced up. Theo was leaning forwards with his arms wrapped around his knees, his head half-bowed and his chin thrust out.

Harry shrugged a little. “It started out as a job, but I really am interested in the runes and other ritual magic you put together. The Arithmancy was a bit beyond me, but it’s a fascinating concept.” He faced the runes he’d inscribed in front of him with dust from the bottom of the spire and started to read them again.

“That can’t possibly be your motivation.”

“Why not? Figuring this out is the only way that we can get home.”

“I mean—you must hate me.”

Harry blinked at Theo. Theo had his head ducked so that his chin rested on his arms now, and he was staring at Harry hard enough that Harry might have thought someone had replaced his eyes with gemstones. Although they’d have to be unique gemstones…

Harry scolded himself away from thinking that. Now wasn’t the time. “Why would I hate you? We never really interacted at Hogwarts.”

“I was a Death Eater’s son.”

“But not a Death Eater.”

“I suppose you saw that when you clipped my sleeves back to look at my arms.”

“No, I could feel it from the magic in your house. There was a faint trace of the Dark Mark there, but it was old. If you’d had one, then the reek would have been fresh.”

“Reek.”

Harry shrugged. He’d spent enough time when he was younger apologizing for his magical abilities and his strangeness. He wouldn’t do it now. And if Theo was the kind of person who thought the Dark Mark was fine even if he hadn’t taken it himself, then Harry had really misjudged him from all those notes.

He once again started to turn back to the runes, but Theo spoke. “Why aren’t you forcing me to work with you?”

“How could I possibly accomplish that?”

“The Imperius Curse would be a very handy way to do it.”

Harry stared at Theo. Theo stared back. Harry finally shook his head, deciding to put this down to the fact that Theo must have dealt with so many Death Eaters who wouldn’t hestate to use the curse.

“I’m not that kind of person,” Harry said simply. “Do you want to help me?”

“No. When you see behind the runes, you’ll understand why.”

Harry wanted to argue that he would have seen it a lot faster with Theo helping him, but instead, he just nodded and went back to tracing translations of various types beneath the runes. Theo watched, his head on one side.

*

“Don’t you think we ought to leave?”

“Why? Nothing’s attacking us here.”

“But we’ve been in the same place for an awfully long time.”

Harry stood up and stretched. Theo watched him, wary as a wild animal. That hadn’t changed in the hours, or days, that they had spent on top of the spire. Harry honestly wasn’t sure how to keep track of time when there was no change in the light and he didn’t get hungry or thirsty or tired. He had tried casting a charm that should have told him the time, but it had fed him a lot of numbers that didn’t make sense before flickering out in what appeared to be a temper.

“We can move if you want to walk,” Harry said. “I’ll copy the runes onto parchments and keep them hovering in front of me.”

“How can you stand this?”

Theo had bounded to his feet and was standing there with his arms waving around. Harry blinked at him, and blinked again. Then he said slowly, “Do you mean being in this place with nothing much to do? I’m trying to find a way to get us home.”

“You’re so calm! Why?”

“Because I learned to be as a Curse-Breaker. And running around screaming won’t get us closer to getting home.”

“But you should—you should—”

Theo shuddered and fell towards the ground. Harry managed to flick his wand before he hit, and Theo floated on a cushion of air, trembling. Then he screamed the way he had before he’d fainted the last time.

This time, though, he didn’t faint. He went on screaming, and it tore at Harry’s heart. He hurried over and cast all the healing spells and diagnostics he knew, but apparently, he was powerless to stop it.

A shining silver blade abruptly emerged from Theo’s chest.

Harry stared at it for what felt like endless moments, while Theo screamed and thrashed. He had time to notice there was no blood on the edge of the blade, that it seemed as though it was just part of Theo’s body, and then more of them started to stick out.

Harry flicked his wand almost without thinking, a spell he had learned during his training to dispel powerful curses rising to his lips. “Evanesco malem!”

The spell collided with the blades and sparked, and for a long moment, Harry held his breath, not sure it would work. But then the spell grabbed the edges of the blades and forced them back inside Theo’s body. He stopped screaming again, and when Harry glanced at him, he was unconscious once more, hovering in midair.

Good enough.

Harry sighed as he shook his head at Theo. “Stubborn bastard,” he muttered, as he floated Theo back down to the stone and then conjured a blanket beneath him. “If you would only tell me what you were trying to do in the first place…”

Then Harry paused, his mind going back to some of Theo’s notes that he’d revised in the Nott library.

Someone who could love me.

“Is that what you were really trying to do?” Harry whispered to the motionless man in front of him. Theo breathed and didn’t answer him. “You felt abandoned by your friends, you felt unlovable, and you wanted to bring someone to you who could love you? Or did you want to change yourself so you didn’t need to feel those emotions anymore?”

Theo breathed, and didn’t answer.

Harry shook his head and turned to study the runes written on the stone in dust again. He would study the arrays with a new eye, and see if maybe he could figure out what Theo had been doing because of those goals that were apparently struggling in him. Or had been struggling? Had he tried to do something else before the end?

Make himself a machine who wouldn’t hurt? Is that what the swords are about?

Harry sighed, and sat down in front of the arrays.

*

A period of time that might have been two hours later, Harry stood up with a stretch and a shake of his head. He had read the arrays until his brain was dizzy, and he thought he knew what had happened now, including why the explosion of magic had extended beyond Theo’s wards for the goblins to feel.

He looked at Theo and shook his head again. Theo continued to breathe, as quietly and peacefully as if he’d never done otherwise. The wounds the swords had caused trying to break through his skin were entirely gone.

“You’re mad,” Harry murmured. “I can respect that, in a way, but why you did it…”

He let that trail off. He knew why Theo had done it, now.

And it was time for Theo to wake up.

Harry reached down and shook Theo’s shoulder as gently as he could. Theo promptly shot to his feet, breathing hard, his hand groping for a wand that didn’t seem to be there. Then he saw Harry, and his face froze.

“It wasn’t a dream.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’m ready to talk about what you did. Are you?”

Theo closed his eyes, his hands clenching on air for a long moment. Harry watched. Sympathy and wonder warred inside him. On the one hand, Theo had done something remarkable, something Harry would have said couldn’t be done with any combination of Runes and Arithmancy and pure will magic the way Theo had done it.

On the other hand, he was an almighty idiot who was lucky his conflicting desires hadn’t destroyed him.

“I only wanted…”

“I know.”

“How could you possibly know, Potter? You who grew up surrounded by fame and adoration and people who loved you?”

Harry blinked, then snorted. He supposed there hadn’t really been an exposé on his childhood by the likes of Skeeter, so he couldn’t blame Theo for not knowing about it.

“I grew up in the Muggle world with relatives who hated my magic and didn’t tell me about it until Hagrid brought my Hogwarts letter and they were forced to, Nott. So believe me, I understand.”

Theo stared at him with such wide eyes that Harry probably could have read all his thoughts if he were a Legilimens. Then Theo shook his head and breathed, “That can’t be true.”

“Why not?”

“We all heard the rumors about you. That was never one of them.”

Harry did have to roll his eyes this time. “And you think the rumors got it right? Of course not. The rumors also said I cheated to get into the Tri-Wizard Tournament and I was the Heir of Slytherin. And I hope you’re smart enough to know that neither of those things happened.”

Theo studied him in silence for a while. Then he said, “You’re really very different than I thought when I was in school.”

“Agreed. Are you ready to talk about why I was able to enter your house and then the parchment world through the light?”

Theo paused again, and turned away in a motion that almost made Harry think he might leap off the spire. He tensed. He might find Theo an irritant in some ways, but that didn’t mean Harry wanted him to harm himself.

Theo finally swallowed and whispered, “Ready.”

Harry smiled at him, and sat down next to Theo on the spire, ready to discuss how to go home.

Chapter Text

“You’re right. I did want two separate things.”

Theo had his head turned, staring down off the spire towards the distant mountains. Harry waited, his arms looped around his knees. If he admired the curve of Theo’s cheek and the way that his dark hair looked tousled, that was his business.

“I wanted to be someone who didn’t care about being alone,” Theo whispered. “Able to stand on my own, not have to think about—about all the different times that I could have had a friend and didn’t. Not someone who cared about being lonely.”

Harry nodded. Some of Theo’s notes confirmed that, and a working to change his own heart wasn’t beyond the question.

“But at the same time…”

The silence lingered. Theo licked his lips, and licked them again. Harry waited.

“I wanted someone to love me.”

Theo spoke it so softly that Harry could barely hear it, and with all the self-loathing in the world. Harry didn’t reach out to comfort him, although he badly wanted to. Instead, he murmured, “And those two desires fought in you and made it impossible for you to decide what you really wanted?”

“I wasn’t aware of it.”

Theo’s voice was sharp now, and he turned back to face Harry as if he were glad that he’d found an enemy he could attack. Harry didn’t move to defend himself, though. For one thing, he was sure that doing that would utterly shatter Theo’s trust.

For another, he didn’t think that he needed to.

Sure enough, Theo sagged a moment later, as if he didn’t know what to do when confronted with a lack of hatred. He ran a trembling hand over his face, across his eyes. “I wasn’t aware of it,” he whispered.

“I believe you.”

Theo stared up at him with wide eyes. “But why?”

Harry took his time about answering. Just as he could shatter Theo’s trust with an ill-timed gesture, he knew he would do it if he sounded like he was being too glib or flippant. He was starting to think that had been part of the problem with Theo’s relationship with Parkinson and Malfoy.

“Because I saw your notes,” Harry said at last, slowly. “Because I know exactly what you were feeling, and those conflicting desires. Although the desire to be loved for myself won out for me most of the time.”

“Potter,” Theo said. His voice was calm, but shaking nonetheless. “The only way the wards would have let you past, let alone brought you here, is if you were a candidate who could help me fulfill one of those two desires. And you obviously aren’t going to turn me into someone who stands on his own and doesn’t care for the opinions of other people, so…”

His voice trailed off.

Harry held Theo’s eyes, as gently and sincerely and kindly as he could. He didn’t think anything about this was going to be easy, but he owed Theo his honesty. “Yes,” he said at last.

“But why?”

This time, the question was more desperate. Harry reached out, as slowly as he’d spoken, but it seemed the time for slowness was past. Theo grabbed his hand and held it, almost yanking Harry towards him.

Then Theo froze, as if he thought he’d done something wrong.

Harry said quietly, “Because I saw a brilliant mind behind that Arithmancy and those runes. Because I thought that you were a fascinating person even when I was only seeing you in my dreams. Because I know what it’s like to feel as though people have abandoned you, and not have someone close enough to really call dear.”

“But Weasley and Granger…”

“They have their own lives now. The way your friends do. I wouldn’t want to intrude on them. And even if they would say it wasn’t intruding, they’re busy with their kids and their jobs and each other. It’s one reason I pursued the training to become a Curse-Breaker, so I would have something of my own.”

“And if I come out of the parchments with you? Where do I fit in your life?”

“That’s something we would need to figure out together. But I’d very much like to be beside you as we figure it out. You’re fascinating.”

Theo’s breath quickened for a moment. Then he said, “I would ask you not to lie to me.”

“Where did you think I was lying?”

“You—you said that I was fascinating.”

“And you are. I know some reasons that you might not have been able to hold onto your friends and—other people, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find you fascinating.” Harry held still after he said that, waiting for Theo to say something.

But Theo didn’t speak about the topic Harry assumed he would. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and asked, “Who were these other people that you were skipping around referencing?”

Harry sighed. Of course Theo would pick up on that. He had a cleverness that bordered on paranoia. “Zabini.”

“You read that section of the notes?”

“I’m sorry. There was no separation between it and the rest, so I didn’t realize that it was personal and special until I was already reading it.”

“That’s not it.” Theo closed his eyes, and Harry was just hoping that he wouldn’t retreat into silence again when he whispered, “I thought—no one should have been able to access those notes at all unless—unless they were already filled with a sympathy for me that I didn’t think existed.”

It seemed to Harry that Theo had made a lot of assumptions about different things that he would have to rethink. But he wasn’t about to bring that up now. He tightened his grip on Theo’s hand and waited for the moments when Theo’s breath quickened and then calmed. He turned towards Harry and abruptly tugged on Harry’s arm.

Harry went with the motion, curious about what would happen, and then he found himself wrapped in Theo’s embrace. There was a warmth beating through Theo’s skin that was intense in a way Harry hadn’t felt in a long time.

Not since he’d tried dating Ginny, maybe.

“That section of the notes was warded more heavily than the others,” Theo whispered. “I didn’t want anyone else to know that I was still longing for Blaise when we’d only shared a few times years ago. And yet you parted the wards like nothing.”

Harry licked his lips. He could use lots of words, he thought, but it was even more important to choose the right ones than it had been a few moments ago. “I—didn’t notice wards.”

“And that means that you have the kind of power and the kind of sympathy that I thought would never be in my life again.” Theo wrapped his arms and his legs around Harry until he was clinging to him like an octopus. “I need to—you’re real.”

Harry felt the touch of wetness against his robe collar and hair, and he wrapped his arms around Theo in turn. Theo wept without a sound, and Harry rocked in him gently back and forth, trying to give Theo what so many people had failed in turn to give both of them.

The world around them dissolved.

*

“Theo!”

Harry started and tried instinctively to disentangle him from Theo, thinking that he’d be embarrassed at Parkinson seeing them like this. But Theo clung back like a monkey climbing a tree. Harry just succeeded in rolling them over.

Parkinson was standing with her hand over her mouth and her eyes bright with tears. Harry felt his heart jump. It reminded him of how Hermione had looked the one time he’d said something casual about how “You don’t need me in your life right now.”

Harry had underestimated how much his friends cared about him. It looked like Theo had done the same thing.

I ought to Floo Ron and Hermione.

But at the moment, they did have other things to worry about, as Parkinson proved when she saw Harry looking at her. The tears vanished, and she whipped her wand out and pointed it straight at his heart. “What did you do to Theo, you pervert?” she demanded.

Harry opened his mouth.

“He rescued me from a slow death, Pansy,” Theo said, and he rolled back and let go of Harry, standing up. Harry pushed down a pang of loss, and instead watched in appreciation how Theo took a long step forwards. “What have you done for me lately?”

There was a moment of silence in which Theo and Parkinson stared at each other, and a quiet conversation flowed back and forth between them. Harry pushed down his envy and concentrated on spelling black dust off himself.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

Parkinson let out one long, large sob and flung herself into Theo’s arms.

Harry turned away and began humming tunelessly under his breath while he studied the books on the shelves of Theo’s library, where they’d come back. Then he realized something else about Parkinson’s presence here.

The twisted wards that guarded the house and prevented anyone but me from coming too far in must be gone.

Harry smiled. He didn’t understand the whole theory behind what Theo had done to himself with the working, but he knew that something profound had changed in him to have allowed other people inside.

“Don’t you ever do that again!”

Parkinson’s voice cut through Harry’s attempts to distract himself. He turned around just in time to see her slap Theo so hard that he staggered.

Harry started forwards.

Theo drew his wand and shocked Parkinson. She leaped and shrieked, but by the time she touched down on the floor again, she was smiling. Harry shook his head. This was one good reason, among many, for Theo to resume his friendships with Parkinson and Malfoy. Just from watching this, Harry thought he wouldn’t ever understand Slytherins.

Theo reached out without looking and drew Harry hard against his side with a pull of his arm. Harry was happy to go. It turned out that Theo’s warmth had lasted through the vanishing of the world inside his notes, and it was wonderful to stand against him in the sunlight pouring through the windows of the library.

“He really did rescue me, Pansy.”

“That remains to be seen,” Parkinson said, with a sniff and an evil look at Harry, but she did sound like she was calming down. Thank Merlin, Harry thought. “I know that he acted very suspiciously when I came here before.”

“He got pulled into the in-between space where I was trapped in the middle of creating a working,” Theo said evenly. “He had the power to get past the wards and find me, and I’m never going to forget that.”

Harry glanced at Theo. Theo’s arm squeezed around his waist, and Harry understood. Theo wasn’t ready to admit to Parkinson yet that only someone with the potential to love him could have got past the wards.

Harry wasn’t going to push it, either. At least not right now. He thought it would be a good thing for Theo to talk openly with his friends about that part eventually.

But on his own schedule.

“Hmmm.” Parkinson squinted at Harry. Then she said, “Maybe you’re not as useless as I always thought you were, Potter.”

“Not so useless that Voldemort didn’t value me.”

Parkinson jumped, although Harry thought it was less because of the name and more because of the reminder that she’d been ready to hand him over to Voldemort the day of the Battle of Hogwarts. But instead of retreating, she just tossed her hair over her shoulder and muttered, “I suppose you have claws, Potter.”

“I can’t wait to find out.”

Harry had to duck his head to hold the laughter inside. Honestly, if Theo kept being this funny, Harry was going to start regretting the years they hadn’t spent together.

“Draco has to be informed immediately. I don’t suppose that either of you bothered to send an owl to him?”

“We literally just appeared, Pansy.”

“You know that Draco isn’t going to care about that. If anything, he’ll think that he should have been informed before you appeared.”

“Well, Draco will just have to wait.”

Parkinson blinked. So did Harry. The certainty in Theo’s voice didn’t come from bitterness, he thought, or the frantic fear that his friends were going to reject him. He just sounded normal and calm.

“If you say so,” Parkinson finally murmured, shrugging. “You’re the one who’s going to have to deal with the shrieking and the declarations that no one cares about him anymore and no one ever cared about him.”

“I’ll deal with it.”

Parkinson lingered for a long moment, staring back and forth between Harry and Theo as though looking for someone to explain this to her. Harry couldn’t help her. He honestly didn’t understand why Theo had changed his mind so completely.

He was only glad it had happened.

“You’re good for him,” Parkinson finally said to Harry. Her voice was soft and shocked and her eyes so round that Harry thought he might be seeing the upper layer of her brain. “Merlin. What?”

“Go away, Pansy.”

Parkinson turned and nodded to Theo, but said, “The only reason I’m leaving is because you’re in good hands. Against all odds.” She shot Harry another look, this one full of disbelief, and then turned and left the room with a shake of her head.

“You can owl Malfoy, if you want. I won’t be upset.”

Theo turned back to Harry, and Harry caught his breath. There was light in Theo’s eyes, and he hadn’t known how they would look when it was there. They were the color of shining crystal, blazing down at the bottom.

“This is what I want to do,” Theo said softly. “I want a few hours with you before you have to owl your friends, or before Draco shows up and I have to deal with him.” He picked up Harry’s right hand, looking him directly in the eye, and brought Harry’s knuckles slowly to his lips.

Harry felt full-body shivers wrack him. He hadn’t ever felt undone by such a simple gesture, but—

It was becoming clear that Theo wasn’t a simple person.

“Yeah,” Harry said, faintly, when Theo continued to look patiently at him. “I think that can be arranged.”

*

“We are so glad that you are all right, Harry.”

Fleur spoke softly as she hugged him, but her arms were firm, and Harry could feel her trembling a little. He patted her back, awkwardly. He could also feel Theo watching keenly from behind him, and still doing the same thing when Bill stepped in to hug Harry. Theo had known Ron and Hermione at school, but he wouldn’t ever have seen Fleur except from afar during the Tournament, and Bill maybe not at all.

“Yeah, we are,” Bill said, and added a clap on Harry’s back before he stepped away.

They were in the front corridor whose walls had warped when Bill had tried to go into the house, and Harry could see the way Bill glanced around, as if he thought it would happen again at any moment. Harry smiled and shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about that. We’ve solved the problem.”

“We?”

“Yes, we,” Theo said, and looped his arm around Harry’s waist right in front of Bill and Fleur. Harry blinked, but said nothing. “Does that surprise you, Weasley?”

“There was a profound curse on this house, and I saw it snatch Harry away right in front of me. Yeah, I’m surprised.”

“The curse was caused by my having two conflicting desires in mind when I tried to conduct a ritual. Harry was able to help me see that I didn’t have to believe those two things were separate and I could reconcile them. So it’s fixed.”

“And the explosion of magic that the goblins sensed?”

“Also the magic of the ritual escaping beyond its confines.”

“That must have been a hell of a ritual.”

“It was.”

Bill went on staring at Theo for a moment, but he seemed to realize that he wouldn’t get anything else, so he raised his eyebrows pointedly at Harry. Harry nodded. “I’ll write a report about the curse and how we fixed it. Don’t worry, Bill.”

“But he’ll owl it to the bank.”

“Will he?” Fleur cut in. “It seems to me that Harry can speak for himself.”

“Of course I can,” Harry said, and rolled his eyes, even though he felt warm inside when he saw the way Bill and Fleur looked at him. He had better friends than he’d known. “But I do want to stay here for a bit.”

“This ritual. It does not have the effects of a love potion, no?”

“How dare you.”

So Theo could sound threatening when he wanted to, a distant part of Harry noted. In the meantime, he stepped between Theo and his friends, shaking his head a little. He had an interest in keeping the peace, even if it seemed no one was going to agree with him.

“Everyone should be reassured that I’m fine,” he said, loudly. “I want to stay here so I can clean up the remnants of the curse and make sure that both Theo and I aren’t affected by the time we spent inside the parchments.” Bill had told him it had been more than five days, but Harry wasn’t hungry or thirsty or tired. He did really want to make sure that didn’t mean he was going to have ill effects later.

And if it let him spend more time with Theo, why would he be upset about that?

“It doesn’t sound like a love potion,” Fleur said doubtfully.

“It isn’t.”

“I know, Theo.”

Harry put a hand on Theo’s arm. Theo darted his eyes back and forth between Harry and Fleur suspiciously, as if thinking that Harry would walk away from him the minute he glanced away.

And doesn’t he have reason to think that?

Harry’s mind darted to a child in a cupboard, and then to the notes that he’d read about Theo’s longing for Blaise. He stepped towards Theo and squeezed his arm a little. Theo relaxed.

“Very well,” Fleur said, and nodded with a smile. “I am glad that you have found a way to soothe some of your own loneliness, Harry.”

“I’ll soothe it,” Theo said, and leaned heavily on Harry, this time while smirking at Fleur. Harry hid a sigh. Honestly.

“Good,” said Bill, who looked on the verge of rolling his eyes. “But the bank will still await your report, Harry.”

“They’ll have it.”

“Good,” Bill repeated, and looked back and forth between Harry and Theo for a minute, shaking his head. “Honestly, this is one of the strangest cases I’ve ever been involved in, but it seems to have worked out for the best.”

“Yes,” Theo said, and smugly pulled Harry closer to his side.

Harry smiled at Bill and Fleur out of sight of Theo, and turned his head so that it rested on Theo’s shoulder. “I’m sure you have all the parchment and ink and quills I could ever need,” he murmured into Theo’s ear.

Theo’s hand tightened. “Yes,” he whispered again, this time with a sound like a promise.

*

“Potter! Nott!”

Harry groaned and rubbed his eyes. He’d been up late into the evening composing his report for Gringotts and asking Theo to explain some of the Arithmancy that he hadn’t been able to translate. They’d almost finished, and now Malfoy, who had apparently walked through the wards into the house, was shouting for them.

“I can get rid of him.”

Harry looked at Theo, the way his pale skin was glowing in the firelight, and forgot to breathe for a moment. An echo of the smug smile Theo had shown Bill curved up the side of his mouth.

With an effort, Harry shook his head. “He would probably just come back at six in the morning.”

“Untrue. Draco never gets up before seven.”

“Well, still,” Harry said, and got up to bundle his report together, while Theo went to answer the door, or guide Malfoy into the library. One or the other. Honestly, Harry’s head had begun to spin as if all the exhaustion he’d avoided in the realm of Theo’s notes was catching up to him.

“You!”

Harry raised his eyebrows. Malfoy had posed dramatically in the doorway of the library and was pointing a finger at him.

“Me?”

“You were the one who kidnapped Theo and took him away from us! I don’t care what Pansy says, I know it was you—ouch!”

Theo, who had tapped Malfoy sharply on the back of the head, stepped past him into the library with a long sigh. “Didn’t you listen to what else Pansy told you, Draco? What Harry is to me now?”

Malfoy folded his arms and huffed.

Harry was becoming less convinced that Malfoy would be a good friend to Theo than he was about Parkinson. But he maintained a polite expression. He wouldn’t make this harder for Theo, or even Malfoy, than it already was.

“Fine,” Malfoy said.

“Fine, what, Draco?”

“Fine, I can accept Potter as part of your life. Since you claim that he saved your life.” Malfoy gave Harry a glare as though to say that he was the only one who knew the truth, and knowing the truth was suffering.

Harry smiled at him. “Thank you, Malfoy. Considering all our past conflict, that’s really gracious of you.”

Malfoy squinted at Harry sort of the way Parkinson had done, but with less depth. “What?” he asked faintly.

“I said it was really gracious of you. Considering I didn’t shake your hand on the train and everything.”

Theo coughed behind his hand in a way that said he’d heard that story too many times down the years. Harry wanted to turn and grin at him, but it might spoil the effort he was making with Malfoy. Instead, he went on beaming at the man, who looked as if he were a second away from stamping his foot.

“Yes, well, see that you don’t forget it,” Malfoy finally spluttered.

“How could I, with you here to remind me?”

Malfoy gave Harry another suspicious look and pulled Theo out of the library for a “private conversation.” Harry shook his head and went back to inspecting his report. At least Theo had helped him with the theoretical parts that Harry wouldn’t have been able to distill into clear language on his own.

*

“Harry.”

Harry lifted his head, yawning. He’d fallen asleep over his books and parchment, not that much of a surprise when Theo’s conversation with Malfoy had stretched long. “Hey,” he said, blinking hazily at where Theo stood in the doorway. “You all right?”

Theo looked at him for a long moment before walking slowly towards him.

Harry sat up. He was pretty sure nothing Malfoy could have said would have changed Theo’s mind about Harry, but there was a quiet, cold gravity to Theo’s face now that worried him a little.

Then Theo knelt down in front of Harry, bringing his face within the light of the dying fire.

Harry swallowed. There was such fierceness there that he relaxed instantly.

“Draco tried to convince me that you must have been up to something when you came after me,” Theo whispered. “Striving for glory or some such. He still believes that you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, you know.” He shook his head and reached out to rest his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry blinked down at them, then back at Theo’s face.

“I know that you came for me,” Theo said softly, “because my wards wouldn’t have let anyone else through. No matter which desire was uppermost in my mind at the time, wanting to be left alone or wanting to be loved, that was the case. I honestly thought they would let no one through, ever.”

“Theo.”

“I know I can trust you. I know you’re here for me. Pansy and Draco—and—Blaise—” Theo’s voice cracked a little. “They told me over and over again that you can never completely trust anyone’s intentions, and you just have to get used to that. Accept it. But I couldn’t bring myself to.

“And now I don’t have to. I have you. I can trust you. Harry, I don’t ever want you to leave me.”

There was silence for a moment, and Harry took a deep breath, appreciating the way Theo had torn himself open. Then he said, as quietly, “Well, that’s convenient. Because I never want you to let me go.”

Theo’s eyes widened, and he leaned forwards and kissed Harry.

It was sort of rushed. It was hazy, with Harry’s tiredness. He could feel the clamp of Theo’s fingers on his shoulder, hear the pulse of Theo’s desperate breath, and taste worry in the kiss.

It didn’t matter. Harry held on, deepened it.

They weren’t in love, but they could be. They had the chance to find out if they would be.

It was all that mattered.

The End.