[From Litha to Lammas]: Forget-Me-Not, Harry/Theodore Nott, R, 4/7
Part Three.
Title: Forget-Me-Not (4/7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: AU (Harry is not the Boy-Who-Lived), socially awkward Harry, angst, present tense, violence
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 5500
Summary: AU. Harry isn’t the Boy-Who-Lived, but his parents still died, and Albus Dumbledore, concerned that Death Eaters might seek the boy’s death, cast a powerful charm on him to make wizards ignore him before Harry was left with the Dursleys. Except, with the Elder Wand in play, the charm was far too powerful, and made others essentially forget Harry existed when not directly interacting with him. Sorted into Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, Harry lives a contented life with no one either loving or hating him…until the charm breaks on his seventeenth birthday, and he’s suddenly plunged directly into the middle of a living world at war.
Author’s Notes: This is obviously a major AU, as you can see from the summary, and also one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This will have seven parts, to be posted over the next seven days.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Four
Snape is the Defense professor, which is all right. He teaches Defense with more clarity than he does Potions, which he doesn’t really bother to explain, but he still sneers and belittles and mocks people, and he says nothing about Runes or any other form of magic that could be integrated with it. Harry sometimes listens and sometimes brings a book to read through class.
Slughorn, the new Potions professor, is much better. Harry is a little concerned on the first day, when he explains about Amortentia. Love potions are a threat that Harry didn’t even think about, although from the nauseated look on Longbottom’s face, he’s dealt with them before.
Then Harry wants to shake his head and snort at his own absurdity. No one will love potion him because they can’t see him. And Death Eaters are unlikely to choose love potions as a means of attack.
Harry continues on with his own private studies and his runic circles. He’s working now on ways that would let him link the four circles on his body into a fifth one that would essentially hover above his head when all four were activated. That way, he should be able to react instantly to any threat that would come up in battle.
He becomes aware, somewhere near Christmas, that there are other things going on. For example, he happens to pass Dumbledore on his way to the library one morning, and notices that the Headmaster’s right hand is blackened and looks sick and diseased. Harry blinks. He doesn’t know what kind of curse could do that, but he wants to. That way, he could defend against it.
For another, Dumbledore and Neville happen to come into the Headmaster’s office when Harry is up there browsing through Dumbledore’s private library. (Overhearing the password a time or two makes the gargoyle respond to him). And Harry hears the word “Horcrux.” After that, he visits on a more regular basis.
It seems that Voldemort has created Horcruxes, pieces of his soul that are embedded in objects. Harry finds the idea revolting. Did Voldemort even do any research before he tried to pull something like that? Apparently, it was one of those Horcruxes that possessed the red-haired girl in Harry’s second year. That means that there could have been another Voldemort running around, probably committing murders and possessions, and Voldemort would have been revealed pretty soon.
Harry despises stupid enemies more than he despises people who just want to commit murders. Voldemort is supposed to be the most powerful and intelligent wizard in the world, but obviously, he’s not.
Longbottom is still pasty white when Dumbledore talks about a prophecy of some kind and how Longbottom is meant to defeat Voldemort, but he’s there and he’s listening, and Harry is grateful. Grateful that Longbottom is so brave, grateful that it’s not his burden.
It could have been. At one point, in response to a question from Longbottom, Dumbledore says, “Well, remember, it had to be a child born at the end of July to parents who had thrice defied him. There weren’t that many candidates. Just you and…” He trails off, his brow wrinkling. “Someone else. Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
Ugh. Harry shudders at the thought of people following him around and staring at him with lovesick eyes the way they do Longbottom. Fate, or Voldemort, or whatever, chose otherwise, and he’s damned grateful.
*
I consider this debt like a noose around my neck. Will you not allow me to fulfill it?
That wasn’t the only letter that Harry’s got from Theodore Nott in the year and a half since he sent him the protective rune that would have freed him from having to take the Dark Mark, but it’s the one that got Harry to break down and tell Nott that he would meet him near the entrance of one of the “secret” passages on the third floor.
Harry will explain, in person, that he has no intention of claiming this “debt” that Nott owes him. That hopefully ought to make him rest easier and spare Harry from any further melodramatic letters.
Nott comes striding around the corner right on time, but of course, his eyes slide right over Harry. Harry steps up to him and waves his hand. Nott still looks past him. Harry sighs and puts his hand on Nott’s arm.
Nott flinches and tries to draw his wand. Harry narrows his eyes a little. “Do that, and I’ll let go and you’ll never be able to find me again,” he warns.
It seems to take him a long moment, but Nott slowly nods. “How did you know that?”
“There’s a protective spell I have on me that keeps me safe unless I really want to be seen,” Harry says, with a shrug. He doesn’t mind revealing that to Nott. Nott is going to forget it after Harry walks away. “Anyway, I wr-”
“Who are you?” Nott is staring him up and down, his eyes bright with a cross between fear and astonishment. “I-you look like you’re in my year, or fifth, but I don’t know you at all.” He peers at Harry’s Ravenclaw House tie. “And I damn well should.”
“My name’s Harry Potter.”
Nott’s eyes sharpen. “Then I damn well should know who you are. You’re in my year?”
Harry nods. “Yes. Anyway, the protective magic I have on me is going to prevent you from remembering a lot of what I had to say, so I wrote down my response to your letter. I promise, I’m not going to claim a debt. I saw you researching how to protect yourself from the Dark Mark, and I thought I could help, so I did,” he adds, to Nott’s mask-like expression.
“You’re a Ravenclaw, not a Hufflepuff.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “And you’re a Slytherin, not a Death Eater. People give Houses too much credit. Anyway. Do you want the letter that says I have no intention of claiming the debt or not?”
Nott nods, his face revealing no hint of what he’s thinking. That’s fine with Harry, as long as Nott doesn’t try to hex him. He reaches slowly into his robe pocket, because he thinks that’s a good idea when Nott’s so jumpy, and takes out the parchment. Nott slides it into his own pocket.
“Why don’t you want to claim the debt?”
“I wrote down-”
“Tell me. I want to hear you say it.”
“You won’t remember it.”
“I don’t care.” Nott’s eyes are darting all over Harry’s face and robes and legs and eyes, as if he can burn the memory into his mind by looking at everything at once. “I still want to hear it. I want to know your reasons.”
Harry stares at him, then shrugs. “Fine. I saw that you were trying to research something, and some pieces fell into place, and I realized that were you probably looking for ways to protect yourself from the Dark Mark. It fit with research I was already interested in doing, like the runes on the Goblet of Fire-”
“You researched that? Why?”
“Why not? It was interesting.”
Nott appears at a loss for words, so Harry hurries on, willing to have this over with as soon as he can. While he’s visible to Nott, other people can come along and see him, too, and Harry doesn’t like that one bit. “I hate Voldemort. I think he’s stupid and incompetent. Oh, stop flinching, will you?” he adds impatiently, when Nott looks like he’s about to bolt down the corridor. “I might have researched protective runes like that anyway, because I don’t have a family to care for me and I don’t want to get caught up in the war.”
“How would anyone notice you, if you have protective magic like this?” Nott shifts closer and touches Harry’s forehead as if he expects to find a lightning bolt scar like Longbottom’s. Harry shivers a little. It’s so strange to have someone else touch him. He can’t remember the last time someone human did.
“There’s always the chance they might. I saw a chance to help you, too.” He glances towards Ravenclaw Tower. Was it his imagination, or did he hear the slight click of claws that might mean Mrs. Norris is about? “As far as I’m concerned, this was a research project that let me help someone who was innocent and let me help myself. You don’t owe me a debt. I won’t claim it. Don’t worry about it.”
Nott is silent for a long time. Harry pulls away from him, but Nott follows him, this time with his hand turned over so he’s the one clasping Harry’s fingers.
“If I want to help you, would you allow me to do so?”
“How can you do that, Nott?” Harry asks as gently as he can. “I presume that you had to run from your father, and so you probably have a struggle of your own for a home and money at the moment. And after this conversation, you’ll only remember what’s written on the parchment.”
“That’s not true. I can’t imagine forgetting you.”
Nott’s face is closer to Harry than anyone else’s has ever been, his eyes wide and probably sincere, his mouth open in an expression that isn’t a smile and isn’t a plea. Harry stares at him, then sighs.
“You will, though. That’s the way my protection spell works.” He disengages his hand from Nott’s and pats his arm awkwardly. “I hope that you’ll be more at peace now and won’t feel like my giving you that rune is a noose around your neck.”
“Harry.”
He isn’t proud of it, but Harry gives Nott another startled look. He can’t remember the last time someone called him that, either. People like Lupin, when Harry willed them to see him, just used “Mr. Potter.”
This is a night of firsts, and it seems that Nott isn’t done with them yet. He steps in and brushes his lips over Harry’s. Harry has no idea what he’s going to do until it’s done, and no idea why Nott did it, and no idea why the expression Nott’s mouth has taken on now is very much a satisfied smile.
“I don’t think I’ll forget,” Nott repeats softly.
Harry pulls back and withdraws his touch from Nott. It takes a second, but Nott is glancing around for him after that. Harry surges past him in the direction of Ravenclaw Tower, trying to calm his stupid fast breathing.
No one has ever done that. Not a boy, not a girl. Of course, no one has ever known that Harry was there to do it to.
And Nott probably did it was because he was emotional. From what Harry has observed, the bloke doesn’t have that many friends in Slytherin House. So someone who has “saved” him, as he sees it, and someone he’d never seen before, probably made him react weirdly.
Harry settles back into his bed with a sigh. It was a strange moment for both of them. If Nott does have any fading, half-clear memories, he must be wondering why he kissed someone.
And Harry…
Part of him has never regretted that protection spell so fiercely.
*
The Death Eaters come to Hogwarts on a clear spring night, and pull Harry out of a sound sleep that he’s only had for a few hours. He exhausted himself today trying to make all the runic circles join together into a sixth one that would protect him from potions.
But he comes flying out of sleep when he hears the shrieks, and runs down the stairs from Ravenclaw Tower with his wand in his hand. People in dark cloaks and white masks are everywhere. Harry begins Stunning them in the back as he runs. At first, he doesn’t even know where he’s running.
Then he does, and curses himself for a fool. But he can do this, and probably no one else will think of it, and if someone did turn traitor-which they had to have to let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts-then they might know about this, too, and tell Voldemort’s minions.
He attended a “Horcrux lesson” with Neville in the Headmaster’s office in the last week, so he knows the password for the gargoyle. He pelts up the stairs, not waiting for them to finish turning, and bursts into the office. He can hear the fighting beneath him and around him, strange muffled echoes traveling through the stone walls.
Harry tears open the drawer that Dumbledore showed Neville, pausing for a shake of his head when he finds out that there’s no lock on it, even. The diary that was possessing the red-haired Weasley girl is still there, intact. Dumbledore figured out no way to destroy it.
One of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Harry can’t leave it here, and he has no idea if Neville will be able to come back for it.
He dumps it into his robe pocket, ignoring the tingle of sharp energy that races up his arm at contact with a Dark object. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no temptation great enough to convince him to write in the thing. Besides, the tingle stops the minute it hits his engaged runic shields, anyway.
Harry runs out of the office door, and nearly slams into a Death Eater. This one is a hulking figure with shaggy grey hair and yellowed teeth and nails, who’s laughing as he corners a man who looks like a Weasley.
Harry Stuns the werewolf in the back, too, and runs away while the ginger man is still staring. He’s halfway back to Ravenclaw Tower when someone starts yelling, “Stop Snape! Stop Snape! He killed the Headmaster!”
Harry whips around. The corridor is mostly empty, but still, it’s hard for him to see the black robes snapping as Snape runs down a staircase. There’s a flash of bright hair next to him that probably means Malfoy is accompanying him.
Harry lunges forwards. If not for the protection spell, he wouldn’t dare to follow them at all, but it’s just possible that he can catch a murderer, and then Voldemort would lose a powerful Death Eater.
And it would be some revenge for the low marks on Harry’s Potions and Defense essays, too.
He comes out onto the grounds and sees Longbottom frantically chasing Snape and Malfoy, roaring something about cowardice. Of all the insults, that’s the one that gets Snape to stop and turn around.
Are you sure you weren’t a Gryffindor? Harry thinks, shaking his head, although to be fair he doesn’t know if he’s addressing Snape or himself. This kind of casting spells on people who haven’t done anything to him personally is just irresponsible.
Then again, he already “interfered” when he found that protective rune for Nott. So he should just give up the notion that he’s going to stand back and stay neutral when Death Eaters are running around killing people.
Snape is yelling at Longbottom, interrupting whatever spell he was about to cast. Harry carefully lines up his wand so that he won’t hit the brave idiot while he aims at the murderous idiot.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Just as Harry’s Stunner, supercharged by the runic circle on his chest, leaves his wand, Malfoy grabs Snape’s arm and screams in his face, trying to drag him away. Harry’s spell hits him instead. Malfoy falls, his arms slack, and Snape backs away and runs for his life.
Or freedom. Or whatever.
Longbottom is staring in all directions, but after a second, the protective spell does its work, and he forgets about someone he can’t see and goes over to Bind and secure Malfoy. Harry’s happy to leave him to it. He’s on his way back to Ravenclaw Tower to contemplate his own stupidity, and what he’s going to do now.
*
As it turns out, from the conversation he eavesdrops on between Longbottom and his friends at Dumbledore’s funeral, he’s probably not going to come back to Hogwarts next year. Dumbledore thought Voldemort would take over the school as soon as he could, despite not actually coming with the Death Eaters during the attack. And Longbottom and his merry band of Gryffindors are going to search out and destroy the Horcruxes.
Dumbledore actually did find the location of a Horcrux, Longbottom tells Weasley and Granger, but when he and Longbottom went there, they only found a fake locket. Harry’s disappointed to hear that. If it had been real, he would have stolen it from Longbottom so that he could keep it away from terminally suicidal Gryffindors while he sought a way to destroy it.
Of course, he does have the diary…
And there are runic theories that lend some credence to means to use it, as well.
*
Harry backs up from the diary. He had to isolate the damn thing in two circles he drew in his room at the Leaky Cauldron, one so huge that it takes up most of the floor. That one is just to negate the book’s continual attempts to grab hold of his magic.
The other one is covered with depictions of stars and cost him a solid week of research into Astronomy, which he dropped after his OWL. But it’s at least the right conjunction of stars for what Harry wants to use it to do.
Track the other fucking Horcruxes down.
He rests his wand over the runic circle on his chest, and it comes to life, beaming soft green-golden light through his clothes. Harry isn’t sure why his personal magic shows up in that mixture of colors, but he’ll take it. At least the gold isn’t Gryffindor colors and the green isn’t the sickly light of the curse that probably killed his parents.
“Invenire,” Harry breathes. He essentially created this ritual, and he could have chosen a long Latin chant, which would have spread out the burden of the magic drain over many syllables, but he chose the brutal drain and the short casting time instead. He can still remember what he sees while he’s lying on the floor.
The magic lights the outer rune circle, turning silver as it dances over the depictions of the constellations overhead right now, and then zigzags down the inner tines of the circle that surrounds the diary directly. In seconds, the book is pulsing with silver flame. It starts to turn black, and Harry grunts as he drops to his knees, the spell draining him swiftly.
The thing is fighting back. Harry didn’t think it could, he’d thought he neutralized it, but-
“Invenire,” he barks again, and the magic listens to him and not the Horcrux’s persuasions.
In seconds, the diary sparkles and six lines radiate out from it like the spokes of a wheel. Harry is staring in horror. Voldemort made seven of the damn things? Why?
But Harry knows the images won’t hold very long, and he begins memorizing them instead of wondering why Voldemort is such a fucking idiot.
There’s a locket like the one Longbottom must have been talking about, tucked away in a dusty cabinet. Harry squints and manages to see that there’s a family crest on some kind of cup next to the locket. That’ll have to do until he can look it up.
There’s a huge snake, rearing up to lean its head on a throne while a bony hand pets it. Voldemort’s snake? Probably.
There’s a little crown or diadem or tiara of some kind hanging off the ear of a bust, which is sitting on another cabinet. The stone walls behind that make Harry think of Hogwarts.
There’s a ring lying in a shallow dish in what seems to be the Headmaster’s office. Harry blinks. He supposes he knows now why Dumbledore’s hand was blackened.
There’s a cup high on a shelf in what seems to be a Gringotts vault.
And there’s Longbottom’s face, with its wide and staring eyes.
Harry crumples over, and passes out.
*
When he wakes, it’s to find blackened runes inscribed around the diary, with more of them turning black as he watches, and someone pounding on the locked door. Harry grimaces and rubs his face.
He’s already moving to cover the diary with the square of enchanted silk that he’s been keeping it wrapped in when the strangeness of the second thing hits him. He spins around and stares at the door of his room.
He’s stayed in his room at the Leaky Cauldron for years. No one can find it because Harry wills them not to, and even the story they spread at first about a poltergeist taking it over has faded from their minds. When he’s here, that’s easy enough. When he’s away, he uses runes that make it forgettable to everyone. Why have they failed now?
“I mean it, open up in there, or I’m going to summon the Aurors!”
It sounds like Tom, the barkeep. Harry limps over to the door and manages to open it with one hand that feels like it’s been flayed. The runic circles on his left side and chest, in particular, feel dead, and his stomach aches as if it’s been deprived of meals for a solid year.
It is Tom, and he has his fist upraised as if to knock again. Harry manages to keep from flinching back. Then he tells himself it wouldn’t matter anyway, because it’s not as though Tom can see him-
Except that the man’s eyes focus on him, and his fury only dims a little under the confusion.
“Who the hell are you?”
Harry coughs and shakes his head. He really needs to rest. He needs to eat. He needs to figure out why his protective spell has failed. He does what is most instinctive under such circumstances, and wills his protective magic to rise and surround him.
It doesn’t work. Tom is still glaring, still reaching out as if he’s going to grab hold of Harry’s shoulder, and saying, “Well? I’m waiting.” Then he looks over Harry’s shoulder into the room, and his face undergoes a terrible change. “What are you doing? Is that Dark magic?”
And Harry can’t even really say that it isn’t, because after all, the diary is a Dark object, and it’s corrupted most of the runes surrounding it when he turns to look. He backs away from Tom, and finds himself swishing his wand. After all, the Ministry can’t get after him for violating the Trace even if his protective magic has failed. It’s Harry’s seventeenth birthday today, and the Trace has broken.
The runes vanish from the floor. The diary’s magic halts, swirling and uncertain, with the disappearance of its cage, and Harry hastily casts another spell to wrap the enchanted silk around it and drop it into his robe pocket.
“You still haven’t told me anything.” Harry never thought Tom could sound threatening, but he does, growling deep in his chest like a bear. “What are you playing at?”
Harry sighs. Something has happened, and it seems plain that the room at the Leaky Cauldron isn’t going to be a sanctuary anymore. He clings to the calm tenor of his thoughts as best as he can, to prevent the panic that thunders and leaps in the back of his head from overwhelming him. “My name’s Harry Potter. I’ve been using this room for a while, using powerful magic so that no Death Eaters can find me. Sorry, I overdid it. I obviously made people forget about the room altogether. I did wonder why I wasn’t getting any meals-”
“That’s not the way it was, boy,” Tom interrupts him. “You might as well know that this door appeared from bloody nowhere and startled one of my paying customers so much she screamed!”
Harry stares at him in silence. “But that’s what I mean,” he says, when he realizes from the glare that he has to say something. “I overdid it, and made people forget the room existed.”
“There’s no magic like that,” Tom whispered. “And there’s no magic that would make me forget I had nine rooms instead of eight, and especially no magic that would make me remember forgetting that I have nine rooms!”
Harry’s blood chills so abruptly that he breaks out in a bout of shivering. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. This isn’t some temporary failure of his protective magic, the way he was already thinking it might be. This means that people will remember him.
People will remember that he was in rooms with them, probably. Lestrange, who was fighting with the other Death Eaters at last report, might remember that Harry was the one who stopped him from resurrecting Voldemort in the middle of Hogwarts. Lupin will remember talking with him in third year. Nott will know that it was Harry who sent him the protective rune.
Everyone can find him.
“I want to know what you’re going to do to make good-”
Harry spins around, his wand already in motion, grabbing every single thing out of the room that he can: his books, his parchment, his trunk, his quills, his socks scattered on the floor by the bed. By the time that he’s finished turning a complete circle, the packing spells have finished and the objects are shrunken and clustered on his person.
And although Harry has grown more than he once thought would be possible given the scattered and irregular nature of the meals he got at the Dursleys, he’s still shorter than most of the boys at his age, and it’s an advantage now as he ducks under Tom’s arm and runs.
Tom is shouting after him, and Harry half-feels bad about not going back and paying the reckoning, but he doesn’t look back. He keeps running, and feels the aching in his lungs and the bouncing of his trunk in his pockets against the runic circle on his right side.
A bloody wasted runic circle, since it’s the one that would pull him back to the Leaky Cauldron, and he can’t redo it, he would have to carve the others all over again, too-
He comes to the staircase and slides down the banister, avoiding what looks like a Stunner from the back. There’s a girl he vaguely recognizes as a Hufflepuff in his year in the taproom, opening her mouth to yell. Harry ducks past her without a second glance, hating the way that his skin crawls-she can see him-and performs a Disillusionment Charm on himself as he skids out the door.
It’s not a very good one. Harry’s never had to perfect it, given his protective magic. But although more than one person frowns at the shimmer of motion he must be performing, no one catches up to him, and no one is able to tell Tom, who comes panting and roaring out a second later, where he’s gone.
Harry finally fetches up in a small alcove off the mouth of Knockturn Alley. He leans against the brick and closes his eyes, breathing in deep, tearing gasps that nearly counteract the usefulness of the Disillusionment Charm.
Fuck.
What went wrong? He knows that nothing he ever did before had an effect on the protective magic, unless he really wanted to appear to someone. And of course things he wrote always appeared once they left his possession, and animals could sense him.
(There’s going to be hell to pay with Merlin, who’s out hunting right now).
Is it something to do with the ritual he performed last night? Could he have overtaxed the magic or something? Harry grimaces at the thought of that, and feels the malevolence of the Horcrux diary radiating at him through the cloth it’s wrapped in and the fabric of his robe.
Shit, he wishes he’d never got involved in this stupid escapade. He should have just left defeating Voldemort up to Longbottom, who’s destined to do it. But not even the Headmaster ever discovered a way to destroy a Horcrux…
Harry reins himself sharply back in. This isn’t the time to let his research-brain take over and make things worse. He has to find shelter, and he has to find safety. He’s not even sure that they’ll be in the same place.
He still has plenty of money in his trust vault, but not enough to pay for lodgings for the rest of his life, probably, which was the whole reason that he made the room in the Leaky Cauldron fade from Tom’s memory in the first place. He can buy meals, but he would rather have a quiet room where he can do what he likes and cook when he wants. He sighs. And he has to figure out why the protective magic dissipated, and whether he should send the Horcrux he has and the knowledge of more to Longbottom.
He wants the protective magic back, with a longing like hunger.
That he probably won’t be able to have, at least not right now. But Harry vows to himself that he’ll do some research so that he can move through the world the way he’s used to again.
Well. He has two choices, given that he can’t go back to Hogwarts and blend seamlessly into the stone-and he’s not sure that Voldemort hasn’t taken that over, by now. There’s already statements circulating that there won’t be any Muggleborns attending this year.
He can write to Longbottom, explain that he’s the person who would have been the other choice for that stupid prophecy, pile on the guilt about losing his parents to the same war that took Longbottom’s, and ask for sanctuary.
Or he can write to Nott.
Harry slumps against the alley wall as he thinks about it. Nott is going to know everything, now, including that kiss in the corridor that he must regret. And he’ll know that Harry kept a bunch of knowledge from him, and who he is.
Harry sighs. The problem is, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be safe if he writes to Nott-no guarantee, even, that Nott still feels that he owes Harry a debt-but he doesn’t have any better ideas.
He looks up as Merlin lands on the wall in front of him and bends over. It doesn’t puzzle him that the owl can see through the Disillusionment Charm. From the way he bends over and fixes his devouring eyes on Harry, it’s likely that someone will just think he’s hunting mice.
“Will you take my message to Theodore Nott?” Harry asks the owl, half-thinking he’ll get a rejection. It would fit with the tenor of his morning so far.
But Merlin instead hops down to the cobblestones in front of him and hoots softly. Harry blinks. That almost sounded approving. Huh. Maybe Merlin wants to live in a building with a proper owlery and recognizes the name of Nott as someone who would probably have one. Harry doesn’t feel like anything can surprise him at this point.
He tears off a piece of parchment from the first scroll he can dig out and writes the simplest message he can think of. If Nott’s going to reject him, Harry doesn’t want to spend too much time on it.
Nott, you probably woke up this morning with memories that you didn’t have when you went to sleep last night. I can explain, if you want me to. My name is Harry Potter, and I request sanctuary if you still feel that you owe me a debt.
He hands the parchment to Merlin and watches him fly away, then shakes his head and drops the Disillusionment Charm. He’s starving, and he’ll need to be visible to buy something.
Visible. It still makes Harry’s skin crawl.
*
Merlin finds Harry when he’s eating the fish and chips he got from a Muggle pub in the middle of a park. At least Harry got his food before Merlin came back. He absolutely believes that ruddy owl would fly straight at him in the middle of a Muggle pub.
The parchment says only, Come ahead, and gives some detailed Apparition coordinates.
Harry swallows, nods, and feeds the edge of a piece of fish to Merlin, who looks like otherwise he’s going to take Harry’s whole plate. Then he stands up and makes sure that he’s left nothing behind, that his trunk is secure in his robe pocket, that his wand is in his holster, and that he has everything else, until Merlin nips at his boot.
Now, he has to go be visible.
Part Five.