[From Litha to Lammas]: Forget-Me-Not, Harry/Theodore Nott, R, 6/7
Part Five.
Title: Forget-Me-Not (6/7)
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 8800
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 Six
Harry sits back as he watches his letter to Longbottom fly away with Merlin. He included the list of Horcruxes in the vision and his and Theodore’s speculations about where they were, instructions for the only method they know works to destroy them, and Pensieve memories in vials of both the diary’s and the locket’s destruction. Merlin insisted on carrying them this time, and Theodore talked sternly to him about breaking the vials and losing the memories. From Merlin’s soft hoots, he actually listened.
Harry tried asking Merlin why he’s with Harry when he likes other people so much better and certainly they would be willing to give a magnificent owl like him treats and space in their homes, but he got a haughty stare and an attempted nose-removal for his troubles. Owls are strange, too.
“What will you do now?”
Harry glances over his shoulder at Theodore. He’s standing in the arched doorway that all owleries seem to have, even when they’re just a small stone room at the top of the house like this one. “Oh, hello. I think I’m going to start studying runes in earnest to resurrect my protective magic.”
Theodore goes absolutely still, his hands resting on the stones. Writing the letter to Longbottom and considering what to include and what not to took almost all day, so it’s dusk now, and Harry has trouble seeing his face, but he has the feeling that he wouldn’t understand the expression on it even if he could see it clearly. “You-want to disappear again?”
“Yes,” Harry says, puzzled. “I thought I mentioned that several times.”
“I thought you were speculating,” Theodore says, coming a few steps towards him, and yes, Harry was right. Theodore’s face is clearer now in the moonlight falling through the windows, but he still doesn’t understand the expression. “Or giving in to wishful thinking. Why would you want to disappear again?” He reaches out, and his fingers close around Harry’s arm almost like Merlin’s talons. “You have NEWTS to study for.”
“I think I should delay NEWTS a year anyway. It’s not like I can go back to Hogwarts to study with the ban on non-purebloods, and if That Bastard takes over, I’ll have to leave the country. If Longbottom defeats him, I can study then along with all the other Muggleborns and half-bloods whose education is being disrupted.”
“That doesn’t answer the question about why you want to go back behind the protective magic.”
Harry sighs. “You saw the way Kreacher stared at me yesterday, and the way you did, and you can say that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t belong in this world,” Harry says, waving his hand around the owlery and making the birds start a little, but really meaning the whole wizarding world. “Maybe I would have if I’d grown up in it, but I grew up outside it, and then no one remembered who I was until a week ago. I don’t know how to act with people. I don’t know how to do some normal magic. I don’t know how to treat house-elves. I don’t have parents or family or-anyone who really cares what happens to me.”
“That’s not true,” Theodore says fiercely.
“Well, yes, okay, there’s Lupin, but-”
“There’s also me.”
Harry stares at him. Then he says, “I mean. I said the debt was settled between us, and then I unfairly called on you to give me shelter when you should have just been able to ignore me. I’m the one taking advantage of you, if anything.”
Theodore shakes his head. He has an intense expression on his face now. At least Harry thinks he’s reading this one correctly. “I chose to give you that shelter. I want-to know you, Harry Potter. I want to know what kind of mind saw me in the library one day and decided to just invent the rune that changed my life.”
He sounds like he has some grand speech planned, but Harry interrupts, because he can’t let Theodore continue in that mistake. “I didn’t decide that. I was already researching runes, and I was looking for something that could help you, but also something that could help me. I’m not as compassionate as you’re making me out to be.”
“You’re still more compassionate than anyone in my life has been.”
“You didn’t have-friends in Slytherin?”
“Did you ever see me with them?” Theodore’s mouth twists as if he’s drawn a rune wrong.
“No, but before fourth year, I didn’t pay you that much attention. You were just one among several Slytherins. Malfoy got on my nerves, but the others were just a blur to me.”
Theodore jerks his head in a motion that could mean anything. Harry is still paying attention to him, though, still letting Theodore grip his arm, and maybe that reassures Theodore; at least the tumble of words seems a little calmer than it might have been. “I didn’t have friends in Slytherin. I had people who wanted to take advantage of me, and some people who hoped they could lure me into the Death Eaters or get updates on my father through me. There are no friendships possible with people like that. Maybe some of the others did better. I think Malfoy and Zabini were really friends, I don’t know. But not me. You’re the only person I would trust, Harry. The only person I would go to a grimy old house with and give shelter in the only home I have for myself and trust to protect me and talk to like this.”
He stops, panting. Harry squeezes his hand a little. “And you don’t want to lose that because I’ve gone back under my protective magic.”
Theodore swallows and nods. His grip is no longer painful, which lessens Harry’s longing to get away from it. He thinks, glancing at the other birds in the Owlery and out the window where Merlin has taken his letter. It’s-
“But you would forget about me if I went back under the magic,” he murmurs. “Other than the letters I wrote you. So you wouldn’t be hurt.”
“You’re telling me losing my only friend wouldn’t hurt?”
“I mean, you wouldn’t remember the pain.”
Theodore leans closer to him, his expression fierce. “And that somehow makes it better? You’re willing to hurt me that way?”
Harry shudders a little, because no, he doesn’t like to think of that. He doesn’t like hurting people. He would even be unwilling to destroy the Horcruxes if they didn’t belong to Voldemort, and he has never been easy about essentially stealing the Leaky Cauldron room from Tom.
But he does say again, “I don’t belong in this world.”
“Give people a chance to know you. Give them a chance to help you.” Theodore’s fingers curl under his chin, and lift it. “Please. You remember what happened when we were in that corridor in Hogwarts?”
Harry nods. “When I revealed myself to you?”
“Yes. I kissed you. Do you know why?”
Harry feels something heavy settle in his stomach. “I didn’t then, but hearing that you didn’t have any friends in Slytherin…did you choose me out of desperation? I’d hate to be a choice someone made in desperation.”
Theodore shakes his head and leans his forehead against Harry’s. Harry can’t really see him and his eyes cross trying, but maybe the point isn’t to read every nuance on his face, he thinks a second later.
“Maybe I made the only choice I could,” Theodore breathed. “But the only choice doesn’t have to be a bad one. If you knew how much your intelligence strikes me, and your beauty-”
“Beauty.” Harry says it flatly. He knows that he has crooked glasses and sallow skin and a mess of a hairstyle. It’s probably worse right now after ducking away from Merlin’s talons.
“Just listen,” Theodore says, and presses closer. “Yes, beauty. I’m not necessarily talking about just face and form, although those are worth more than you want to acknowledge. But I also mean that you’re kind and have a sense of humor and you don’t want to cause people pain and-if you knew how rare those people had been in my life.”
“Then you have low standards, is what you’re saying.”
Theodore huffs a laugh and steps back, but only far enough to bring his face into the moonlight again, and loop his fingers around Harry’s. “Won’t you at least try? Or do you find me disgusting? Or do you not like blokes?”
Harry hesitates. “I never considered dating someone or getting married. The protective magic would have hidden me from anyone unless I made an enormous effort, and probably destroyed it.”
“And now it’s gone.”
Harry closes his eyes and nods. “If I-if I just pretend that it’s gone forever, and I date you, and it doesn’t work out, where does that leave me?”
“In a world you could revolutionize with your Runes discoveries.” Theodore shakes his arm a little, making Harry open his eyes and look at him. “Did you not realize that multiple people have been searching for ways to invent rituals that interact with Astronomy and create runic circles that work together on your body the way you did? For centuries? You’re brilliant, Harry. You don’t need me. It’s very much the other way around.”
Harry stares at him with his mouth falling open a little. Yes, on some level, he knew his Runes discoveries were new, or it would have been easier to find what he wanted in books, but-
But he never thought that he was coming up with something completely new. If anything, he thought he was hacking a new path through a well-traveled jungle, and someday he would reach the right path and smack himself over the head with how much simpler following it would have been.
“Harry,” Theodore says in a low voice. “You haven’t made much clear about what you want.”
“I just wanted a safe place to stay,” Harry mutters. “The reason I keep saying I don’t belong in this world is that I’m so inexperienced. I barely know how friendship works. Or sex, either.” He meets Theodore’s eyes, shadowed as they are, because he knows he won’t find mockery there. “If you want to try for it…”
“And your only choice is me?” Theodore’s hands are tight on Harry’s shoulders now despite his light tone, as he leans closer again.
“I’d rather you than anyone else I observed,” Harry says, the most honest thing right now, and then Theodore kisses him for the second time.
It’s soft and warm, and much less surprising now that Harry knew it was coming. He prefers this way, he thinks. He tightens his hands on Theodore’s hips and leans in, gently tapping with his tongue until Theodore opens his mouth with a little gasp.
The inside of Theodore’s mouth is even warmer, and Harry shifts as he hardens. Theodore presses in until their foreheads are touching again, with a little murmur, and Harry opens his legs and feels Theodore.
“We could-” Theodore does say then, which means he’s got enough distance between their mouths to say it, which is unacceptable.
Harry kisses him soundly once more and says, “Among the experiences I missed out on is snogging in some secluded area in Hogwarts,” and then urges Theodore back against the wall of the owlery as he gasps in surprise.
For the first time in his life, Harry presses against someone else and rocks just so, and he’s thrilled to discover that this is one thing he didn’t muck up by not understanding people. And then he’s just thrilled with how it feels.
Theodore rides along with him, mouth wide open and eyes dazed, until the moment before he comes. Then he sharpens all at once, and shoves a leg between Harry’s thighs and holds still for a long moment.
Harry grunts in shock as he suddenly has a firmer surface to press against, and then he’s gone, high and flying, good in a way that didn’t have a name until now. He sags forwards with his forehead on Theodore’s shoulder and steps back with a little gasp, shaking his head.
“That was-satisfying,” he says.
“And not at all bad for a first time.”
Theodore is busying himself with straightening his clothes and casting Cleaning Charms, but Harry can hear the tremor in his voice, now that he’s looking for it. Maybe people are easier to understand after sex, he thinks, as he steps forwards and kisses Theodore, curling one hand around his left one.
Theodore stands there and kisses back until Harry draws away to whisper, “It was great. Let’s go downstairs and do that again.”
*
Merlin gets back early the next morning, trying to drop both Longbottom’s letter in front of Harry and a load of feces on Harry’s head. Harry invokes his runic circle that defends against physical objects and watches as the shit bounces back up and into Merlin’s tail feathers.
Merlin lands on his perch, staring, so horrified that he apparently can’t even make threatening noises.
“Serves you right,” Harry says, and ignores Theodore’s wide eyes at the shimmer of light through his robes as he checks over the letter. He supposes it isn’t beyond the Death Eaters to set up a trap for letters going to Longbottom and send false messages back, although Harry thinks Merlin probably would have sensed that and flown away.
But the letter’s clean. Harry tears it open and laughs aloud.
“What?” Theodore asks, leaning forwards.
“It’s a long list of demands as to how I knew about the Horcruxes, even though I explained about the protective magic and he remembers how I attended those sessions in Dumbledore’s office with him,” Harry mutters, shaking his head as he scans through the letter. “And I sent him Occlumency books-”
“Why?”
“I knew he had a connection with That Bastard through his scar. It must be the Horcrux in him, now that I think of it. And Dumbledore had Snape trying to teach Longbottom, which of course did worse than no good at all. So he acknowledges that, but then accuses me of ‘nefarious Slytherin tactics.’ Apparently my spell breaking didn’t make him remember that I was actually in Ravenclaw.”
“You sent him books?”
“Yes?” Harry looks up and blinks at the expression on Theodore’s face. Already they’re back at things he doesn’t understand again. “Why is that a problem?”
“You didn’t send me books. And what if he wants to meet with you and thank you or something?” From the look of it, Theodore’s breakfast tea has really upset him.
“Believe me, Theodore, not everyone thinks ‘thanking someone’ means ‘sticking your tongue down their throat.’”
Theodore refuses to smile, but a blush does rise up in his cheeks. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, but you mean more to me than he does,” Harry says quietly. He pushes away his breakfast and the letter and focuses entirely on Theodore, because he needs it, for whatever reason. “He might be the one who saves the world, but you were the one who wrote back to me and kissed me. And went with me to the creepy old Black house when you didn’t have to. And inspired me with so much-”
“You’d better not say pity.”
“Inspiration,” Harry continues smoothly, “that I researched that protective rune for you. In a way, you could say that you’re the foundation of what I’ve achieved in Runes. The person who inspired me to try my best.”
Theodore is staring at him with slightly parted lips. “Did you get that out of a book or something?”
“How could I get that out of a book? Books are short on people rescuing each other with Ancient Runes. Even wizarding books.”
Theodore laughs, free and aloud, and finally picks up his spoon again. “Fine. Write back to Longbottom and have your little information-romance with him. I know what I have.”
Sometimes, I’m not sure either of us does, Harry thinks, but he goes back to his room to write a reassuring letter to Longbottom and some clarification, and some suggestions on what Longbottom should do with the Horcrux in himself, since he could hardly survive a strike of Fiendfyre.
And then he goes to the library. He’s taken to heart what Theodore said about not hiding again completely, but he’d still like to hide again when he wants to. He just finds the thought of interacting with dozens of people in a day the way he would have to if he goes to Diagon Alley overwhelming.
*
“The bastard did it.”
Harry glances up. He was sunk in his own misery most of the morning because nothing he could find in Theodore’s library or the books he’s sent Merlin to fetch is like the protection he was gifted with. There are runes that keep someone safe while they’re in the runic circle or make someone invisible, but nothing that would make him utterly undetectable to scent and hearing and sight the way he was, while still making people move out of the way. And nothing that would make the objects he carries around with him invisible, which is important.
“What bastard did what?” Harry asks, snapping himself out of his mood, while Theodore glares at him pointedly.
“Made Snape the Headmaster of Hogwarts,” Theodore says darkly, and puts the paper on the table.
Harry reads through the story with growing disbelief. Yes, Snape is Headmaster of Hogwarts, and Muggleborn students are encouraged to “register for their own sakes,” and half-bloods will be considered for admission to Hogwarts “on an individual basis.” It’s much more blatant than Harry expected it to be.
And Snape being Headmaster when he killed the previous Headmaster is just as open a proclamation as it can be that the Death Eaters are in control and don’t care what other people know, or think they know. Harry hopes Longbottom is staying safe.
“Why are Muggleborns being asked to register?” he asks, handing the paper back to Theodore. “Since they aren’t being allowed at Hogwarts as students, anyway?”
“Apparently, there’s a commission being set up.” Theodore doesn’t sound as outraged as he does about Snape being Headmaster, but then, he is a pureblood, so Harry can’t really expect him to be. “To investigate where their magic comes from. They aren’t saying it yet, but the implications in the articles I’ve read are that they’re going to say all Muggleborns stole magic from purebloods.”
“And then?”
“What?”
“What are they going to do with them after that?” Harry’s breath is huffing past his lips despite himself, his hands clenched on his lap. This all seems terribly familiar, from the Muggle history books that he read when trying to add to his own knowledge of wizarding history because Binns is a terrible teacher. “Azkaban couldn’t hold them all, and I doubt they’d be satisfied with exiling them to the Muggle world, because then they couldn’t control them or find them. Are they going to execute them? Send them somewhere?”
“I-don’t know.” Theodore looks through the newspaper article again, then shakes his head. “It doesn’t say. Harry? What is it? Are you all right?”
“There’s Muggle history I know,” Harry says flatly, and ignores the face that Theodore makes at the word “Muggle.” “It starts with things like this, with people having to register and having their things taken away from them, and it ends up with them being sent somewhere else. Camps, usually. Where they’re worked to death, or executed.”
Theodore recoils. “But why would Muggles do that? They’re all the same. They can’t do magic. That should be a common bond between them!”
“Just like all wizards and witches get along because of being able to do magic?”
“You have a point.” Theodore sounds like he wishes Harry didn’t. He frowns at the newspaper again. “But surely even if they do start executing Muggleborns or taking them somewhere else for death, they’re not going to talk in the paper about it? How are we going to find out and stop them?”
“You want to join me in stopping them?”
“Of course I do. You won’t be happy if you don’t, and I don’t think a bunch of people deserve to be executed just because of who they were born.”
Harry eyes Theodore in spite of the fact that he would welcome the help. It’s not like he can rely on his protective magic to sneak around in offices and eavesdrop on conversations now, after all. “I thought you were a blood purist who just didn’t want to be a Death Eater.”
Theodore sighs. “It was a half-blood who saved me. My father would have sacrificed me on the altar of blood purity. My companions in Slytherin-made bad choices. Yes, I’ll follow you, but I want some kind of plan, Harry. How in the world are we going to prevent what they’re going to do?”
Harry can’t help the smile that crosses his lips. “Let me spend some time in the library, and we’ll soon have one.”
*
“Hello, Professor Lupin.”
“Please call me Remus, Harry. I haven’t been a professor in a long time. And I don’t deserve a respectful title when I failed you-so badly.”
Harry pauses before he sits down across from Remus at the little outdoor table. They’re meeting at a small restaurant not far from Diagon Alley. Harry judged it the safest place, and Lupin said in his letter that he had no trouble getting there.
But the man in the patched suit who leans forwards and stares hungrily at Harry is exuding too much regret and guilt. Harry sighs silently to himself as he sits down after all. This is going to be a problem.
“I can’t believe I didn’t remember my best friends’ son,” Lupin is rambling on, one hand clutching the side of his head as if he thinks that the lost memories are his own fault. “I taught you. I even talked to you once! In depth! And I just forgot like you didn’t matter-”
“It’s all right, sir,” Harry interrupts. He can’t bring himself to call Lupin by his first name just yet, and it has nothing to do with respect. Harry got used to addressing everyone in his life by last name when he arrived at Hogwarts, and before that, he really had no one to talk to either way. Calling Theodore by his first name still feels painfully intimate.
“No, it isn’t! I can’t believe I-”
“It was a very powerful protective spell.” Harry picks up the menu lying in front of them as a gesture of self-defense and looks over it. He keeps talking without looking at Lupin, hoping that will encourage the man to calm the hell down. “It was set when I was still a child, and it expired on my seventeenth birthday, when people who had interacted with me in the past got their memories back. I don’t blame you, sir, and I hope you won’t blame yourself.”
Lupin finally sighs and nods when Harry picks out a simple sandwich, indicating he wants the same one. “If you say so, Harry. Now. I’m very eager to listen to what you want, of course. I wanted to know if you’d consider joining the Order of the Phoenix.”
“Hmm. That’s been restarted?” Harry listened to some lessons Longbottom had with Dumbledore where they talked about it, but it was almost always the historical one. The modern Order didn’t seem to do anything very much, except send some people on diplomatic missions to the giants and the like (which didn’t work).
“Yes. I’m very pleased to find that you know of it.” Lupin smiles, and his eyes shine a little. “Minerva McGonagall is doing what she can to help us, although with the Death Eater takeover of the school, she can’t assume the place of leadership like she was meant to. And I’m helping. And of course Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley and the rest of the Weasleys.” He seems to hesitate.
“Don’t worry, I know more about Longbottom’s mission than you probably assume.”
Lupin leans back as their sandwiches pop onto the table between them. Harry picks up his own cheese one and says, “Mustard?”, and a little pot of mustard follows.
“Neville did mention that he got help from an unexpected source. You?”
“Mm-hmm.” Harry smiles as he eats. Theodore’s house-elf, who’s called Misty, is a fine cook, but she basically never makes plain food except for breakfast, and Harry’s years of living in the Muggle world and the Leaky Cauldron have accustomed him to it. “I don’t know if there’s anything else I can do about the quest he’s on, though. I wanted to help the Muggleborns.”
“To escape the country? I know of some who could use an escort-”
“I want to stop them from being executed or going to camps.” Harry pauses when Lupin flinches. “So you know something about Muggle history. You know what’s probably coming.”
“Yes, but I think the Order is too small and too focused on fighting You-Know-Who to really oppose it. I’m sorry.” Lupin is poking at his own sandwich, his face ill.
“Okay.” Harry can’t say that he didn’t expect that answer. He swallows the last of his own sandwich and leans back in his chair. “So would you personally help us fight any Muggleborn relocation and execution orders?”
“I-I have a wife and a child on the way.”
“Oh,” Harry says, deeply surprised. Lupin didn’t mention them in the letter, and Harry is pretty sure that he wasn’t married when he taught at Hogwarts, but then again, he didn’t pay all that much attention to the Defense professor outside the one conversation he had with Neville about Harry’s parents. “Well, that’s fine. If I can keep you as a safe contact and have a friendship with you, that would work out.”
“And you think you can do this all on your own? Harry, please. I don’t want to see you lose your life when I’ve just found you again. I really think working with the Order would be best.”
“I’ve done my part for you. I’ve helped Longbottom succeed at things he’s going to have to succeed at to bring down Voldemort.” At least Lupin doesn’t flinch like Theodore when Harry mentions the name. “I’m going to do this.”
“It’s a waste, though.” Lupin is leaning forwards, and there’s something lean and wolfish about his face that makes Harry wonder, for the first time, if he might be a werewolf. Yes, he was sick around the full moon multiple times in their class, wasn’t he? And there are old scars on his face that might very well come from a werewolf attack, although they’re faint enough that Harry never noticed them before. The shine in his eyes is also sort of like the shine an animal’s would get-
“Harry, are you listening to me?”
Harry jumps and then smiles sheepishly at Lupin. “Sorry. I go off on these kinds of research-flights connecting different ideas, and forget to pay attention to the world around me.”
“Then that makes me worry even more about you going off and doing this on your own. Please, Harry, I see so much of your parents in you. I’d like to know you better. Come and work with the Order, and you’ll be protected.”
“I didn’t say I was alone, though. I said we. I have someone who’s sheltering me and who’ll be at my side when we start doing something about the Muggleborn Registration Commission.”
“Who?”
Harry just raises an eyebrow. Lupin hasn’t confided in him about a lot of things, like the wife and child. Fuck if Harry is going to expose Theodore to him now.
“I won’t ask, then.” Lupin gives Harry a sweet smile that makes Harry see suddenly why his parents might have trusted the man. “But I will ask that you pay close attention to this person. Make sure that you know you can trust them. There’s-so much history in our last few decades of being betrayed by false friends.”
Harry nods. He knows Lupin must be thinking of Pettigrew, but he himself is thinking of Snape and how Snape turned on the Headmaster, and how Theodore can’t trust the last living member of his family.
“And I very much would like to get to know you,” Lupin says. He’s eating his sandwich now, and seems more relaxed. “I never had any friends in Ravenclaw House. Everyone I was close to in Hogwarts was in Gryffindor, as I was. So what is it like?”
*
“Lupin won’t help us.”
Harry shakes his head as he steps through the door of Theodore’s cottage and takes off his cloak. “No. He was actually apologetic about it, although he wanted me to join the Order of the Phoenix, but he’s married and has a child on the way, so he has a pretty good excuse not to get involved in something more dangerous than that.”
Theodore stares at him. “He found someone who would marry a werewolf?”
“So he is one!” Harry snaps his fingers as he walks towards the library. “You know, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Only you must not have paid enough attention to know that.”
“Then why didn’t he get sacked because of it?”
Theodore sighs as he follows Harry into the library. “All right, so I’m used to thinking of just people in Slytherin House again. We all knew because Professor Snape made a habit of dropping hints to us. I think he had some personal reason to distrust Lupin.”
“Lupin said something about playing pranks on Slytherins when I was talking to him today. Maybe one of them was Professor Snape.”
“That would make sense.” Theodore sits down in the chair next to him. “And I think Lupin’s not coming back did have something to do with his being a werewolf, but I don’t know exactly. There was just some escapade that supposedly happened the night Lestrange came to the castle.”
Harry shrugs. He supposes it doesn’t matter. He isn’t afraid of Lupin. “You don’t need to sit here with me, you know. I’m probably going to be very boring.”
“What do you mean?”
“Reading for hours and writing down notes that don’t make any sense. Sometimes I get ink in my ear because I use my quill to scratch it.”
“I think that’s adorable,” Theodore says firmly. “Besides, I can help, as long as I know what we’re searching for.” He reaches for one of the books on Runes Harry has lying in front of him and lifts an expectant eyebrow.
“I told you that I wanted to do research on reestablishing my protective magic-”
“And I told you that you didn’t have to.” Theodore’s voice is low and hurt.
“Not for me, calm down.” Harry rolls his eyes. “But it occurs to me that if we can find something like the spell that was used on me, but use it for Muggleborns and just target it towards the people who are trying to find them and destroy them…”
Theodore blinks. “Give me that book,” he says, and snatches the one in front of Harry, switching it for the one he’s already holding.
Harry chuckles and faces his own pile of notes. He suspects it’s the research challenge that’s exciting Theodore, as well as the relatively safe way to work with Harry, and not some new impulse of compassion. But that doesn’t matter, as long as it works.
Harry’s long thought results are better than intentions.
*
“You didn’t have any luck identifying the actual charm that someone cast on you?”
“Oh, I found that out a few hours ago. Why I don’t know is why it’s so powerful, and I have to know that if I’m going to use it to help the Muggleborns.”
Theodore’s silence across the table is helpful for a few minutes, but then it starts to feel weird. Harry looks up and sees that Theodore’s hands are clenched in front of him, his eyes wide and staring directly at Harry.
“What?” Harry adds.
“You didn’t tell me that you found it? You let me waste my own efforts?”
“You said that you were researching ways to create a runic circle that’s big enough but also hard to notice. When did you switch to the spell that was cast to keep me safe?”
They stare at each other in mutual antagonism for a few moments-or maybe it’s antagonism for Theodore. Harry just feels like he doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Then Theodore sighs. “Yes, all right, perhaps I should have told you that I was switching my focus. But I thought you would notice because I was picking up that book you were using first.”
Harry sighs in turn and rubs his face. His eyes are stinging a bit from squinting at print that’s too small. “Theodore, I don’t know what to say. This is-the way I am when I start researching. I get really focused and it’s hard for me to even think about anything else.”
“What about dinner?” Theodore seems to be looking at the pendulum clock near the entrance of the library, which Harry can’t see since it’s behind his shoulder. “Misty should be ready to serve us our food.”
“All right.” Harry scribbles down a quick note to himself and leaves a bookmark in the tome as he stands up. His legs tremble beneath him, and he frowns. Did he eat lunch? He thought he did. But when he glances over, there’s an empty plate in front of Theodore, and nothing on his side of the table.
“I didn’t eat lunch, did I?”
“I thought you’d ordered a quick snack from Misty when I went to the bathroom.”
“No,” Harry says, and falls into step beside Theodore as they head for the dining room.
“How did you take care of yourself, when you were under the charm?”
“I ate when I was hungry and slept when I was tired and went to the loo when I needed to do that.”
Theodore shakes his head a little as he settles into place on the other side of the table. “I’m beginning to realize how completely different you are from anyone else I’ve ever met.” Beef Wellington appears in front of them, and Theodore watches to make sure Harry takes the first bite before he does. “And I’m sort of amazed that you haven’t had more trouble coming out from under the charm.”
Harry blinks. “Oh, that’s simple enough. I’ve been doing things that I’ve been good at, and I met Lupin in a quiet place, and I’ve mostly been with you since my birthday. And I wrote to Longbottom with an owl.”
“So you’re saying being around lots of people is the problem.”
“Lots of people who might pay attention to me.” Harry has to put down his fork for a second. Honestly, his stomach is squirming so hard as he thinks about what might happen after the end of the war-if it’s ever safe for him to go back to Hogwarts-that he would probably drop it. “I don’t want that. I never did, even if I used to think about how nice it would be to have friends.”
“It’s all right,” Theodore says, calmly and with a confident air that Harry could see himself clinging to. He’s going to have to make sure he doesn’t get too dependent on Theodore, then. “I’ll be here, and I’ll help you navigate things.”
Harry frowns at him. “I notice there’s no mention of just letting me stay at home.”
Theodore smiles with some triumph. “I didn’t realize you regarded this cottage as home. But, Harry, more than that, you need to be known. I meant it when I said you’re a genius at Runes, and when people start to know what you’re planning to do for the Muggleborns, then your fame will only-”
“I’m not a Slytherin, Theodore.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m not ambitious. I’m not going to tell anyone about what I’m doing for the Muggleborns. If we do this right, then when they get to reappear, people will just get the memories back the way they did of me after my charm ended, but they won’t know who did it. I don’t want to tell people. I don’t want credit,” Harry hastily adds as Theodore opens his mouth. “Let it just become part of the common repertoire of spells and runic circles that people use on a regular basis. I don’t want it connected to me.”
Theodore shakes his head slowly. “So even when you do something heroic, you won’t want to be known?”
“That’s right.” Harry is relieved, for a second, that Theodore is going to be reasonable about this, and then he sees the look on Theodore’s face as he stands up.
“You can’t live your life like that,” Theodore says, in a voice that’s low and passionate and shaking. “You can’t just expect people to ignore you without that spell. That it happened at all is unnatural in the first place. I can’t think that whoever came up with it intended for everyone to turn a blind eye to you all your life. They probably just intended a few years of protection, or a decade of lesser protection. Harry, you have to live in the world the way it is, not go back under your protection spell.”
“I don’t know how!”
“And I told you that I would help you!”
“But I don’t want to be helped! I want them to not look at me!”
Theodore shakes his head and then turns and walks away from the table. Harry watches him go with a curious helplessness. He’s sure that a normal person would know how to speak to Theodore and soothe him and say that he didn’t exactly mean it, and make everything all right again.
But if Harry was normal, he wouldn’t be sitting here at all.
In the end, he finishes a few more bites of dinner and goes back to the library. He doesn’t know how to be normal or how to be a good person, but he knows how to do research, so he’s going to do that, damn it.
*
“Did you ever go to bed last night?”
Harry drags his face off the book he was sleeping on, and rubs it. He finds ink on his fingers. That makes him flush more than the cool, judging way Theodore’s eyes are looking at him. He sighs. “No.”
Theodore sits down in the chair he took yesterday and just keeps watching him. Harry has read in more than one book that this is a tactic that the Aurors use, just keeping silent and letting people rush to fill the silence with words.
The problem is, it works. Harry feels the push at the edges of his mind, the fear that if he doesn’t say something and make Theodore understand him, he might find himself on the streets without his only-
Friend? Lover? Ally?
“I’m not normal,” Harry says, looking down at the book again. His cheek probably holds the smeared note he was writing last night, on the precise measurements of the giant runic circle he would need to hide thousands of people. “I’m never going to be. I know why you’re pushing me to be better-known, but I can’t be.”
“All right,” Theodore says, in such a calm tone that Harry blinks at him in surprise. “Now it’s my turn. If you don’t adapt at least a little, we can’t stay together.”
Harry swallows. “Then-we can’t stay together.”
Surprise and hurt blows across Theodore’s face like a winter wind, and for a minute, Harry thinks he’s going to get up and stalk out of the library. But he doesn’t. He leans forwards and says, “Why not?”
“Because I can’t change, Theodore. I can’t start being ambitious and loving crowds and selling my Runes skills to whoever will be in charge after That Bastard is defeated. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the kind of person you need me to be.”
“Did I say anything at all about that being the kind of person I need you to be?”
“You want me to be a famous one.”
Theodore sighs. “I said that you deserve to be famous, Harry. But I also said that I would help you navigate through this, didn’t I?”
“But why would you want to?”
Theodore rubs the sides of his eyes with tired fingers. “You saved my life, and my freedom, and my sanity,” he says, not looking at Harry. “My father would have forced me into being a Death Eater, and stolen my future from me, too. I think the Dark Lord is going to lose. You did all that, and all you asked for was shelter in a house I already owned and a little help defeating the Dark Lord, which is a good thing for me, too. You’re brilliant in a way I’ve never seen. And you wonder why I want to stay near you?”
Harry stares at him. He’s honestly never thought about himself from that angle, before. “What-what would you need to change about me, then?”
Theodore drops his hands and stares at him. “I need you to listen to me when I make suggestions. And take care of your own health. And start thinking about what you’re going to be in the future, other than a recluse who’s good with Runes.”
Harry shuts his eyes. “When I think about walking down Diagon Alley and having people look at me-”
“Yes?”
“I want to be sick. I want to lock myself in a room and never come out.” Harry bows his head, shaking. “And that’s just people paying me ordinary attention. It would be so much worse if I was famous, Theodore. I saw what happened to Longbottom at Hogwarts. How can I stand that?”
“We’ll take it a step at a time,” Theodore says, his voice warmer than it’s been since last night. He reaches across the table to take Harry’s hand. “Think about it this way. If people aren’t leaving you alone anymore, that means you don’t have to stand on your own, either.”
It does help, a little, to think about it that way. Harry clasps Theodore’s hand, harder, and Theodore’s fingers tighten until it might actually hurt to separate their hands.
It still feels alien. But Harry has someone who wants to teach him how to fit in better. How many people can say that?
*
“And you’re sure this is the only way.” Theodore’s voice is smooth, which is his way of keeping emotion out of it. His fingers rap hard on the table beside Harry’s hand as he leans over Harry’s shoulder and stares down at the parchment with the huge runic circle Harry has traced.
Harry nods. He’s enlarged the parchment twice, and at that, this representation isn’t to scale. “This circle will move with them. Otherwise, the people we hid would have to stay in the same spot, and sooner or later That Bastard would find them. This way, we can cast the circle and they’ll have the protection with them anywhere, the way I did.”
Theodore’s hand moves up and squeezes the back of Harry’s neck. “Promise me that you won’t disappear with them.”
Harry leans back against him and smells the leather and glue of the library books without answering. Misty keeps them impeccably dusted, or Harry might imagine he smelt that, the lazy, drifting smell that characterized so much of his research at Hogwarts.
A wave of soft sickness strikes him. Even if he makes it back to the library at Hogwarts, things won’t be the same. People will mutter excuses as they brush past him. They’ll come up and ask if they can borrow a book that he’s using. Harry tenses, and his shoulders hunch.
“Harry.”
“I want to,” Harry whispers. “So badly. You have no idea.”
Theodore sounds for a second as though he’s going to swear, but one of the things he asked of Harry was honesty, and he’s smart enough to realize that’s what he’s getting. He rubs down the middle of Harry’s spine instead. Harry sighs and lets his head hang back.
“But you’ll position yourself on the outside of the circle instead,” Theodore says, and lets go of Harry to step around him and study the runic circle again. His hand shifts so that he’s holding Harry’s arm instead. “And you’ll use your life to power it.” Disapproval creeps into his voice.
“It’s the only way,” Harry says quietly. “Most of the time, a circle of this size requires a blood sacrifice. Obviously I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“I can think of a few people who deserve to die.”
Harry shakes his head. “I can’t.”
“Even though you participated in destroying the Horcruxes that help the Dark Lord to hang on to life?”
“Even then.” Harry turns so he’s looking Theodore in the eye. “I helped locate the twisted artifacts that he was using to cling to life. That’s not the same thing as standing in front of him and uttering a curse. I know I couldn’t do that.”
Theodore stands with his mouth pursed for a long moment, in a way that makes Harry think his voice is going to emerge as smooth. Then he sighs and nods. “You’ll be letting me cast the Everlasting Healing Charm and brew the Blood-Replenishers you’ll need.”
Harry has to smile. “Of course. I was never all that good with Potions even when Slughorn started teaching instead of Snape.”
“Good,” Theodore says, and then he kisses Harry and coaxes him into thinking about more pleasant things for the rest of the evening.
*
“I respect that this was the only completely magical place outdoors that you could think of which was large enough,” Theodore mutters, everything about him radiating displeasure into the air like heat, “but did you have to align the runic circle with moonrise?”
“Yes,” Harry says, and then doesn’t bother to say anything about it. He did try to explain the magical necessity for that already, and Theodore didn’t understand it. Harry doesn’t want to emphasize the gap again, or Theodore will think Harry is mocking his intelligence. He’s a little prickly sometimes, Harry’s found.
At least he doesn’t have a little prick, Harry thinks, and laughs, then lets the calm he’ll need for the runic circle flow into him.
He looks up through the leaves of the Forbidden Forest at the rising crescent moon, and nods. Then he lifts his wand in front of him, and closes his eyes. Magic shimmers and twists around him, in his head, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Gradually, Harry sinks deep into his trance, and the magic becomes more real for him than the things outside his head. Harry rests one hand against his right side, over his ribs, and the now-useless circle that would pull him back to the Leaky Cauldron room where he lived for so long if he invoked it.
This circle will require a powerful sacrifice rooted in his own magic. Harry can think of nothing better than a flesh-inscribed circle that’s now useless.
There’s no incantation for this. There couldn’t be, not when Harry is creating a runic circle unique in its size and effect. Instead, he focuses all the elements that he needs to pay attention to in his mind, including the sequence of runes he’s chosen, and then rips his will down in a sharp slash.
His right side tears open, the runes of that circle flying away from him. Harry opens his eyes and smiles as he watches the shapes, made of blood, funnel into the air.
Behind him, Theodore begins to chant, casting the Everlasting Healing Charm. It races against the damage the creation of the circle causes, healing Harry and then healing him again as the sacrifice continues on and on, more blood flowing out.
Merlin hoots menacingly from the tree behind him, the signal that Harry needs to take one of the Blood-Replenishing potions and a duty that the grey menace was more than happy to take up. Harry snatches up a flask on the ground beside him and swallows. He feels strength briefly surge up through him, and then more blood flows out and he has to tilt his head back and focus on the moon.
Theodore expressed doubts about this part of the plan, Harry remembers dreamily. But Harry is absolutely settled and centered in himself, and he reaches out his hands and lifts them high.
The moonlight moves and bends with them.
“Gebo,” Harry says simply, and the moon shudders in its course.
Its light ignites around him in the clearing, a waterfall that foams around him and is lit so intensely from within that it’s like standing in a rain of windchimes. Harry laughs aloud, and the blood spins away from him and joins with the moonlight, and Harry sketches the next rune of the circle in them both.
“Algiz!”
The rune appears in front of him, and hovers off to the side, joining the blood-runes from the circle he had constructed on his side. Merlin hoots. Harry scoops up another potion and swallows it, listening to Theodore’s chant.
“Raido,” he says, and the magic leaps and bubbles in his chest and joins the blood and the moonlight.
Harry closes his eyes. The final rune is hovering in front of him. The runes he’s cast so far would make Muggleborns and anyone else he wanted to protect disappear from the sight of those who wanted to harm them at night, but the final rune completes the protection and extends it to all twenty-four hours.
And it also makes it possible for those affected by the circle to still see and locate each other, and interact with those who have helpful or neutral intentions. Harry knows he has to cast it. It’s a necessity, a welling push to complete the circle, as righteous and needed as the last component in an Arithmancy equation.
Harry just didn’t tell Theodore about it, because he knew Theodore would have had hysterics.
Harry spreads his arms and hurls himself, with power and joy, into the middle of the casting.
“Sowilo!”
There’s a howl that seems to come from every corner of the Forbidden Forest, or maybe that’s in Harry’s head, too. He turns his head and opens his eyes, and he knows what he’s seeing, and he’s glad that this is near the end of the ritual, because Theodore’s voice has faltered in the chant behind him.
The sun is shining in the midnight sky.
Harry gathers the sunlight that’s required and binds it into the circle with simple motions of his hands. Merlin hoots. Harry stoops down and gathers up the last Blood-Replenishing Potion and swallows it.
Then the circle flames into being in front of him, lines of light that trace the ley lines of the earth, that piece to the hearts of those who need protection from That Bastard’s regime, that shroud the minds of those who serve him, even passively. Harry laughs, and watches the circle race away to every corner of Britain. Beyond that, it will cross the sea and reach to Ireland, as well.
Harry sinks to his knees when it leaves, drained. The sun has vanished from the sky, so that should make Theodore less hysterical, he thinks, his mind fuzzy. His hands tremble, and he slumps on his side. At least he manages to make sure it isn’t the right side, which would probably be a bad idea. He’s fairly sure that his rib bones are exposed to the air right now.
“Harry!”
Harry glances up and smiles as Theodore leans over him. He’s pale and trembling, and Harry hopes that the Everlasting Healing Charm hasn’t taken too much of a toll on him. But Theodore’s powerful, and he was prepared. It ought to be okay.
Harry yawns, and then yawns again. Right now, he does feel awfully sleepy. He lets his head slip to the side and his eyes close.
Theodore mutters something that might be a curse and then scoops Harry up with a Levitation Charm and jogs somewhere.
Harry isn’t really interested in where. And he doesn’t know why Theodore’s cursing like that. He did it, didn’t he? And it’s a great magical accomplishment.
He knows he falls unconscious with a smile on his face.
Part Seven.