[From Litha to Lammas]: A Glass, Brightly, Harry/Theodore, PG-13, one-shot
Title: A Glass, Brightly
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theodore Nott, background pairings
Content Notes: Angst, soulmate-identifying marks, ignores the epilogue
Wordcount: 3500
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Everyone Harry knows has a soul-mark-except him. He tries to accept that being alive after the war is enough of a gift and he shouldn’t resent the lack of a perfect partner and love life that everyone also has. But until Theodore Nott sits down at his table in the Leaky Cauldron one night, he doesn’t succeed.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. The title is a twist on the phrase “through a glass, darkly.”
A Glass, Brightly
Tom gave him a narrow-eyed glance when Harry took another Firewhisky, but Harry was too tired to care. He sat down at his table and stared into it, shook his head, then slugged back another drink.
At least this was an activity he could do by himself, without a soulmate. With the accompaniment of pitying stares or smirks from the other tables, mind you, but he was used to that by now.
Harry hadn’t known anything about soul-marks when he first arrived in the wizarding world. Why would he? They were something that adults discussed among themselves, and Hagrid, the first magical adult he’d met, had one that hadn’t been fulfilled. And half the time, even people like Hagrid who knew that Harry had grown up with Muggles thought he should basic shit about the magical world, like Quidditch.
And although they apparently appeared on a person’s seventeenth birthday most of the time, his whole year and the one below at Hogwarts had had them delayed until their first birthday after the war. During times of extreme stress, Madam Pomfrey had explained to Harry, such magical changes would be put off by a wizard’s or witch’s body, the same way that someone’s body might change during a period of extreme starvation. The marks had only emerged when people’s magic thought they could handle them.
But not for Harry. Because his soul had been tattered by the release of the Horcrux, and he would never have a whole one again.
Harry clenched his hand into a fist and held it on the table. He blinked rapidly, and took another swallow of Firewhisky to give himself a better reason to have tears stinging his eyes.
Today, Ginny and Dean had got married. Harry hadn’t been waiting for her to come back to him, because he had known from the moment her soul-mark bloomed that she wasn’t meant to be with him. Hell, he’d really known it since Madam Pomfrey had explained to him why people’s soul-marks had been delayed, but something about the radiant expression on Ginny’s face as she walked towards Dean, the wonder on Dean’s face as he’d watched her…
It had just driven home that he would never have that. There had never been a record of someone without a soul-mark, even if the person they’d been meant for had died before they’d met them, but there he was, with a bare wrist.
Harry swallowed more Firewhisky, his throat working.
Hermione had tried to help him, had tried research to prove that there must have been other people born without soul-marks. But she’d turned up no cases. Everyone magical worldwide had them; Muggleborn, one Muggle parent, Squib, it didn’t matter. Even Voldemort had had one, although Harry only knew that it had existed, not whose it had been.
He had thought, more than once, of simply leaving the magical world altogether and going to live among Muggles. But he wanted what other people had, a soul-bond and a deep magical connection and a way of sensing each other’s pain and emotions. And what would happen if he married a Muggle and had magical children? Would he feel killing jealousy when he looked at his child’s wrist on their seventeenth birthday?
He never wanted to feel that. So he had committed himself to being alone, and most of the time, he’d done all right. But when he looked at Ron and Hermione and saw the small smiles of shared, internal humor quivering on their faces, when he watched Molly and Arthur communicate without words, when he saw how Bill and Fleur looked at each other…
Sometimes, he just needed to get away. Drinking until he couldn’t see straight let him forget the pain for a while. Tom would let him stay in a room here, for all that he disapproved of Harry’s drinking.
The sharp clink of a mug on his table interrupted him. Harry opened his eyes. It was a Friday night and the Leaky Cauldron was crowded, but he was still going to tell whoever this was to go the fuck away and find another table.
Theodore Nott arched an eyebrow at him from the chair where he was sitting. Harry scowled at his Auror partner and looked away. Even after years working with him, he still didn’t want Nott to see him like this.
Nott was-cold, in an odd way. He was contained and private, and Harry had seen him get cuttingly irritated, but never angry. He used spells on the edge of Dark Arts all the time and shrugged off scoldings from their Auror instructors about it. He fought well enough at Harry’s back, but barely exchanged a word with him in the office.
Harry had no complaints about Nott, except the same way he did about everyone: Nott had a name stretching down his right wrist in elegant ink. Pansy Parkinson’s, in his case.
“What are you doing here, Nott?” Harry asked tiredly, when five minutes had gone by and Nott had continued to sit there and watch him. He hadn’t taken a sip from his mug that Harry could see. “Go away.”
“I wanted to see if the reports of my partner wallowing in self-loathing were true.”
Harry rolled his eyes at the familiar tone and reached for his own Firewhisky. “So now you’ve seen. I’m allowed to have a few hours to myself and spend them how I want when I’ve been reminded again of what I’ll never have.”
Nott gave a breathless snort. “Why do you automatically assume that you’ll never have it?”
Harry swallowed and shook his head. “Because the damage to my soul is permanent. I’ve seen enough Healers to confirm it.” He didn’t have to tell Nott that it had been a Horcrux to tell him that. “There were some people who hoped I might get a soul-mark someday. I did, too. But it’s not in the cards for me.”
“That doesn’t mean you can never get married. Have children.”
Harry shrugged. “I thought about marrying a Muggle, but I’m too afraid that I’ll be envious of my own children for having what I don’t.” He grimaced a second later. That was a little too much honesty. He got out his wand and performed a Sobering Charm.
Nott’s eyes followed the movement of his wand, but he only said, “You can still marry a wizard or witch.”
Harry snorted. “Someone whose soulmate is dead? Sure, I suppose. But I’ll always be second-best to them, a consolation prize for what they couldn’t have. And I want to be with someone I come first to.”
Wow, that Sobering Charm really hadn’t worked, had it? Harry cast it harder this time, and grunted as all his clarity rushed back. He stared at Nott, and said, “If this conversation makes its way to the papers tomorrow…”
Nott put up a hand. “It won’t. And why would you assume that a wizard or witch who does have a mark wouldn’t choose you?”
“Are you kidding? Come on, the bonds that you can have, the emotional closeness, the sense of being absolutely perfect for each other? I can see soulmates getting angry at each other, but not leaving each other behind to join people they don’t have bonds to.”
Harry sighed and looked around. The charms and the company had utterly disrupted his drinking mood. He reached for a few Galleons to drop them on the table. It would probably cover more than his drinks had cost, but he didn’t care. Tom had been kind to him.
Nott caught Harry’s wrist. Harry glared at him. “What? I’m sober and I’m going home. I’ll be in the office on Monday to do my share of the paperwork.”
Nott shook his head slowly, as if Harry was such an idiot he couldn’t understand why he bothered with him. “I think we should talk about this somewhere in private, Potter.”
Harry shrugged. Nott couldn’t do anything to change things, but on the other hand, Harry was pathetic enough that he didn’t want to be alone right now. “Sure. Come on.” He left the coins, noticed that Nott put down a few Sickles, and snorted to himself. The man was fucking cheap.
A few people watched them go, but not many. Those around them were too busy celebrating their lives, their children, their love. Harry watched people locking eyes with each other, carrying on intense, silent conversations, and shook his head in equally silent misery.
Nott nudged him sharply in the ribs. “Cut out the self-pity, Potter, I can smell it from here.”
Harry just shrugged. “You might not want to come back to my flat, then.”
“Someone has to make the obvious point that you’ve evidently ignored, and I suppose it has to be me.” Nott sounded long-suffering.
Harry responded with silence, and they walked together until they reached the Apparition point. Harry turned and held out his hand to Nott. Nott hadn’t ever been over to his place, even though Harry knew that a lot of Auror partners socialized with each other outside of work all the time. He didn’t think it was Nott. He thought it was him. Those Aurors socialized as couples.
Nott took his arm, moving closer as if he thought Harry would try to Splinch him. Harry shook his head and Apparated.
*
Theo took a long, deep breath as he looked around Harry’s flat. He’d wondered what it looked like. It wasn’t as if Harry was big on describing it to anyone around him, and he never met anyone’s eyes for very long, so Theo’s (admittedly small) Legilimency talent wouldn’t have helped him pluck a picture from Harry’s mind.
The décor was darker than Theo had thought it would be; he’d anticipated bursts of shiny gold and blue, the colors that Harry seemed to favor in his office furniture. But this space had heavy dark walls and a fireplace that looked as if it was made of obsidian. The mantel above it had the only bright things in the room, photographs of Potter’s friends and himself. Theo drifted over to look at them.
It wasn’t hard to see how they had changed over the years, other than getting taller. Harry’s smile got tighter and tighter towards the end of the line of photographs, while Weasley and Granger and the other Weasleys sometimes pictured with them looked as if they were blossoming.
Because of soul-marks. Theo didn’t scoff, but he wanted to.
“What did you want to say to me, Nott?”
Theo turned around. Harry faced him with his arms crossed, his eyes quiet and still. Theo had never understood the people-and there were many-who thought Harry brash and excitable. In Hogwarts, perhaps, but at the age of twenty-five? No.
“I wanted to ask you how many people you know whose soulmate relationships haven’t worked out.”
Harry blinked and dropped his arms. “None. That’s what it means, to have a soul-mark.” His eyes strayed to the writing on Theo’s wrist for a second, and his voice was thick was yearning. He shook his head and continued after a moment. “To have someone perfect for you.”
“And have you never wondered why some people wait so long after their mark appears to get married?”
“To get careers established, money saved, that kind of thing.”
“No.” Theo took a deep breath and shifted closer to his partner. Harry kept staring at him. “It’s because soul-marks are about the person who has potential to be perfect for you. And because the person who’s perfect for us at seventeen might not be perfect for us years or months later. A lot of people wait, and see if their relationship develops to the point that they want to marry the other person or not.”
Harry blinked again. He looked genuinely uncertain for the first time. “But I don’t know anyone who didn’t get married to their partner with the mark.”
“You live in a bubble,” said Theo as kindly as he could. “Made up of both romantics and people who consider the mark sacred, so it’s an obligation on them to make it work as much as possible. Not everyone has the same idea. How many divorces are you aware of?”
“In general? Well, there’s always some announcements in the Prophet, I suppose…”
Harry let his voice trail off. Theo smiled. Good. He wasn’t stupid. He was getting it.
But Harry still didn’t say anything, so Theo completed the thought for him. “Why do those divorces happen at all if the people who are getting married are perfect for each other?”
Harry nodded slowly, his brow furrowed. Then he asked, “Do the people who get divorced ever remarry again?”
“Yes. Usually, it’s to people whose soulmates died, or else they marry someone else who got divorced. But, Harry.” Theo took a step closer and reached out to touch his arm, clasping his fingers around Harry’s bare wrist when Harry tried to pull away from him. “It’s not perfection. It’s just a chance. And sometimes, people don’t want those chances.”
Harry eyed his wrist for a moment, then looked up at Theo, so uncertain and slow that Theo felt his heart ache. “The way you don’t want Parkinson?”
“Exactly,” Theo whispered. God, why had it taken him so long to get up the courage to make a move? Standing this close to Harry, looking into his eyes and smelling the scent of his body, he also wondered why he’d spent so much time trying to make a go of it with a woman he didn’t care for and who hated him.
Harry swallowed. Good, then. He hadn’t mistaken Theo’s invitation.
But he still said, “I can’t, Nott. You heard what I said in the Cauldron. I want to be someone’s first choice. Not their second. I still know that I’m your second choice, after Parkinson.”
“No,” Theo murmured. “The only reason I tried to be with her at all is that my father insisted, and her parents were horrified at the notion of her marrying someone without her soul-mark. But she found her own happiness.” Theo couldn’t say he understood Pansy’s happiness, given that she was a third added to a soul-marked pair who clearly put each other first, but that was her business. “I’ve wanted to be with you for months.”
Harry blinked at him. Then he said, “But you can’t have a magical bond or a soul-bond with me.”
“You think I care about that?”
“I care about that.”
Harry took a long step back from him, tugging his wrist free of Theo’s grasp. Theo took a deep breath and reminded himself that he had known this required courage, and disappearing through the Floo right now wouldn’t be brave. “Let me be blunt, then. You can’t have that with anyone. But you can have a good relationship with me, where we care for each other. I don’t love you yet, Harry, but I know I could.”
*
Harry stared at Nott again. He’d never even called the man by his first name! He’d envied him that mark on his wrist, and Nott had rejected it.
This was-
Hard.
Harry shook his head a little. Nott continued watching him carefully. “Do you not want to try?”
“I want to know why you made the decision to give up your bond,” Harry said sharply. “And why in the world you think you could love me.”
“All right.” Nott didn’t flinch at the requirement, which made Harry wonder if he had come here knowing he would have to explain himself, which made him stare at Nott again. How long had he been planning this? “I didn’t care for Pansy at Hogwarts because she sold herself short. She pretended to be stupider than she was, just to get the attention of someone who never paid attention to her at all. She asked for help when she didn’t need it, because she thought that was her best route to be coddled and pampered. She gave up spellcrafting, something she was interested in, because her parents told her she didn’t need it when she was a wealthy pureblood and that was the only thing that mattered.”
Harry whistled softly. He’d never known all that, although if the person Parkinson had been pining after was Malfoy, he’d seen a bit of it. “Well. All right. And you’re absolutely sure that she’s rejected you?”
“Oh, yes.” Nott’s lips thinned. Now that Harry was looking at him in a new light, he could see how strong the line of his jaw was, how much more expressive his face was than Harry had ever thought. “She never forgave me for not being the person she’d dreamed of. She told me she hated me shortly after her parents finally gave up trying to force our marriage.”
Harry closed his eyes. How horrible would it have been to be soulmated to Ginny after all, only to find out that she had wanted it to be Dean?
He had never thought there were things worse than a bare wrist. Now he knew there were.
“And when did you decide that you fancied me?” he had to ask. His cheeks burned with embarrassment at the idea of hearing about himself, but honestly, he had to. As interesting as part of him found Nott’s offer, he’d simply been too committed to the idea that he would be alone for the rest of his life to move past it without hearing why someone wanted him.
“When you stood up for me to the other Aurors.”
Harry stared at him blankly. “But-that wasn’t anything anyone else wouldn’t have done.”
Nott snorted and rolled his eyes. “I know you really believe that, because I know what you look like when you lie,” he muttered. “It was something not many people would have done. Up until that point, I knew you defended people, but I thought they had to be Gryffindors or your friends or innocent babies. I didn’t know you could do that with someone who’d been in Slytherin and had loyalties on Voldemort’s side of the war.”
Harry shrugged a little. He had complicated feelings about the idea of Death Eaters and the way so many of them had walked away after the war, with only the very worst, like Fenrir Greyback and Rodolphus Lestrange, going to prison. But that had no place in the discussion right now. “Were you going to tell me?”
“I was still trying with Pansy at that point. And you seemed to have shut yourself away pretty effectively behind high walls of self-loathing.”
Harry winced a little. “Yeah. I-I can’t promise that I’ll be the best partner you’ve ever seen, Nott. I don’t know how to date people, really. I only dated Cho a little in fifth year and Ginny a little in sixth year, before anyone got their soul-marks. And it’ll take me a while to trust you.”
“Even though you trust me to guard your back?”
“That’s a different kind of trust than thinking you might actually solve this problem that’s been dogging me for the past seven years.”
Nott considered him and then half-smiled. “That’s true enough. After Pansy, I know better than to think that having a few things in common will make everything better.” He offered his hand, hovering in midair, palm up.
Harry knew what he wanted, although only because he’d made the gesture already. He stepped forwards and put his bare right wrist in Nott’s hand. Nott wrapped his fingers gently around it and smoothed them back and forth. Harry took some comfort in the fact that they were tracing random patterns, not ones that felt as if they could be words.
“I do have a request.”
Harry nodded.
“Call me by my first name, please. Theo. I prefer that to Theodore.”
Harry blinked, and realized with a shock like a small bolt of lightning the kind of courage that it had taken to make that request. He had put up a wall, entirely by chance, when he’d chosen to continue calling his partner by his last name, the only Auror who did.
He turned to face Theo, and studied him in silence for a long moment. Theo continued to watch him, despite what must be tension thrumming through him because Harry hadn’t openly acceded to his request.
Then Harry smiled, and reached up to trace his fingers along Theo’s jaw. Not the perfect reciprocal gesture, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch Theo’s soul-mark. “I can do that.”
*
I took a risk, and it paid off.
Theo didn’t close his eyes in relief, because he didn’t want to miss a minute of Harry’s shining face.
They could try this. And it might not work out. It certainly wouldn’t be destined or perfect. But it would be honest.
And they could try.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theodore Nott, background pairings
Content Notes: Angst, soulmate-identifying marks, ignores the epilogue
Wordcount: 3500
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Everyone Harry knows has a soul-mark-except him. He tries to accept that being alive after the war is enough of a gift and he shouldn’t resent the lack of a perfect partner and love life that everyone also has. But until Theodore Nott sits down at his table in the Leaky Cauldron one night, he doesn’t succeed.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. The title is a twist on the phrase “through a glass, darkly.”
A Glass, Brightly
Tom gave him a narrow-eyed glance when Harry took another Firewhisky, but Harry was too tired to care. He sat down at his table and stared into it, shook his head, then slugged back another drink.
At least this was an activity he could do by himself, without a soulmate. With the accompaniment of pitying stares or smirks from the other tables, mind you, but he was used to that by now.
Harry hadn’t known anything about soul-marks when he first arrived in the wizarding world. Why would he? They were something that adults discussed among themselves, and Hagrid, the first magical adult he’d met, had one that hadn’t been fulfilled. And half the time, even people like Hagrid who knew that Harry had grown up with Muggles thought he should basic shit about the magical world, like Quidditch.
And although they apparently appeared on a person’s seventeenth birthday most of the time, his whole year and the one below at Hogwarts had had them delayed until their first birthday after the war. During times of extreme stress, Madam Pomfrey had explained to Harry, such magical changes would be put off by a wizard’s or witch’s body, the same way that someone’s body might change during a period of extreme starvation. The marks had only emerged when people’s magic thought they could handle them.
But not for Harry. Because his soul had been tattered by the release of the Horcrux, and he would never have a whole one again.
Harry clenched his hand into a fist and held it on the table. He blinked rapidly, and took another swallow of Firewhisky to give himself a better reason to have tears stinging his eyes.
Today, Ginny and Dean had got married. Harry hadn’t been waiting for her to come back to him, because he had known from the moment her soul-mark bloomed that she wasn’t meant to be with him. Hell, he’d really known it since Madam Pomfrey had explained to him why people’s soul-marks had been delayed, but something about the radiant expression on Ginny’s face as she walked towards Dean, the wonder on Dean’s face as he’d watched her…
It had just driven home that he would never have that. There had never been a record of someone without a soul-mark, even if the person they’d been meant for had died before they’d met them, but there he was, with a bare wrist.
Harry swallowed more Firewhisky, his throat working.
Hermione had tried to help him, had tried research to prove that there must have been other people born without soul-marks. But she’d turned up no cases. Everyone magical worldwide had them; Muggleborn, one Muggle parent, Squib, it didn’t matter. Even Voldemort had had one, although Harry only knew that it had existed, not whose it had been.
He had thought, more than once, of simply leaving the magical world altogether and going to live among Muggles. But he wanted what other people had, a soul-bond and a deep magical connection and a way of sensing each other’s pain and emotions. And what would happen if he married a Muggle and had magical children? Would he feel killing jealousy when he looked at his child’s wrist on their seventeenth birthday?
He never wanted to feel that. So he had committed himself to being alone, and most of the time, he’d done all right. But when he looked at Ron and Hermione and saw the small smiles of shared, internal humor quivering on their faces, when he watched Molly and Arthur communicate without words, when he saw how Bill and Fleur looked at each other…
Sometimes, he just needed to get away. Drinking until he couldn’t see straight let him forget the pain for a while. Tom would let him stay in a room here, for all that he disapproved of Harry’s drinking.
The sharp clink of a mug on his table interrupted him. Harry opened his eyes. It was a Friday night and the Leaky Cauldron was crowded, but he was still going to tell whoever this was to go the fuck away and find another table.
Theodore Nott arched an eyebrow at him from the chair where he was sitting. Harry scowled at his Auror partner and looked away. Even after years working with him, he still didn’t want Nott to see him like this.
Nott was-cold, in an odd way. He was contained and private, and Harry had seen him get cuttingly irritated, but never angry. He used spells on the edge of Dark Arts all the time and shrugged off scoldings from their Auror instructors about it. He fought well enough at Harry’s back, but barely exchanged a word with him in the office.
Harry had no complaints about Nott, except the same way he did about everyone: Nott had a name stretching down his right wrist in elegant ink. Pansy Parkinson’s, in his case.
“What are you doing here, Nott?” Harry asked tiredly, when five minutes had gone by and Nott had continued to sit there and watch him. He hadn’t taken a sip from his mug that Harry could see. “Go away.”
“I wanted to see if the reports of my partner wallowing in self-loathing were true.”
Harry rolled his eyes at the familiar tone and reached for his own Firewhisky. “So now you’ve seen. I’m allowed to have a few hours to myself and spend them how I want when I’ve been reminded again of what I’ll never have.”
Nott gave a breathless snort. “Why do you automatically assume that you’ll never have it?”
Harry swallowed and shook his head. “Because the damage to my soul is permanent. I’ve seen enough Healers to confirm it.” He didn’t have to tell Nott that it had been a Horcrux to tell him that. “There were some people who hoped I might get a soul-mark someday. I did, too. But it’s not in the cards for me.”
“That doesn’t mean you can never get married. Have children.”
Harry shrugged. “I thought about marrying a Muggle, but I’m too afraid that I’ll be envious of my own children for having what I don’t.” He grimaced a second later. That was a little too much honesty. He got out his wand and performed a Sobering Charm.
Nott’s eyes followed the movement of his wand, but he only said, “You can still marry a wizard or witch.”
Harry snorted. “Someone whose soulmate is dead? Sure, I suppose. But I’ll always be second-best to them, a consolation prize for what they couldn’t have. And I want to be with someone I come first to.”
Wow, that Sobering Charm really hadn’t worked, had it? Harry cast it harder this time, and grunted as all his clarity rushed back. He stared at Nott, and said, “If this conversation makes its way to the papers tomorrow…”
Nott put up a hand. “It won’t. And why would you assume that a wizard or witch who does have a mark wouldn’t choose you?”
“Are you kidding? Come on, the bonds that you can have, the emotional closeness, the sense of being absolutely perfect for each other? I can see soulmates getting angry at each other, but not leaving each other behind to join people they don’t have bonds to.”
Harry sighed and looked around. The charms and the company had utterly disrupted his drinking mood. He reached for a few Galleons to drop them on the table. It would probably cover more than his drinks had cost, but he didn’t care. Tom had been kind to him.
Nott caught Harry’s wrist. Harry glared at him. “What? I’m sober and I’m going home. I’ll be in the office on Monday to do my share of the paperwork.”
Nott shook his head slowly, as if Harry was such an idiot he couldn’t understand why he bothered with him. “I think we should talk about this somewhere in private, Potter.”
Harry shrugged. Nott couldn’t do anything to change things, but on the other hand, Harry was pathetic enough that he didn’t want to be alone right now. “Sure. Come on.” He left the coins, noticed that Nott put down a few Sickles, and snorted to himself. The man was fucking cheap.
A few people watched them go, but not many. Those around them were too busy celebrating their lives, their children, their love. Harry watched people locking eyes with each other, carrying on intense, silent conversations, and shook his head in equally silent misery.
Nott nudged him sharply in the ribs. “Cut out the self-pity, Potter, I can smell it from here.”
Harry just shrugged. “You might not want to come back to my flat, then.”
“Someone has to make the obvious point that you’ve evidently ignored, and I suppose it has to be me.” Nott sounded long-suffering.
Harry responded with silence, and they walked together until they reached the Apparition point. Harry turned and held out his hand to Nott. Nott hadn’t ever been over to his place, even though Harry knew that a lot of Auror partners socialized with each other outside of work all the time. He didn’t think it was Nott. He thought it was him. Those Aurors socialized as couples.
Nott took his arm, moving closer as if he thought Harry would try to Splinch him. Harry shook his head and Apparated.
*
Theo took a long, deep breath as he looked around Harry’s flat. He’d wondered what it looked like. It wasn’t as if Harry was big on describing it to anyone around him, and he never met anyone’s eyes for very long, so Theo’s (admittedly small) Legilimency talent wouldn’t have helped him pluck a picture from Harry’s mind.
The décor was darker than Theo had thought it would be; he’d anticipated bursts of shiny gold and blue, the colors that Harry seemed to favor in his office furniture. But this space had heavy dark walls and a fireplace that looked as if it was made of obsidian. The mantel above it had the only bright things in the room, photographs of Potter’s friends and himself. Theo drifted over to look at them.
It wasn’t hard to see how they had changed over the years, other than getting taller. Harry’s smile got tighter and tighter towards the end of the line of photographs, while Weasley and Granger and the other Weasleys sometimes pictured with them looked as if they were blossoming.
Because of soul-marks. Theo didn’t scoff, but he wanted to.
“What did you want to say to me, Nott?”
Theo turned around. Harry faced him with his arms crossed, his eyes quiet and still. Theo had never understood the people-and there were many-who thought Harry brash and excitable. In Hogwarts, perhaps, but at the age of twenty-five? No.
“I wanted to ask you how many people you know whose soulmate relationships haven’t worked out.”
Harry blinked and dropped his arms. “None. That’s what it means, to have a soul-mark.” His eyes strayed to the writing on Theo’s wrist for a second, and his voice was thick was yearning. He shook his head and continued after a moment. “To have someone perfect for you.”
“And have you never wondered why some people wait so long after their mark appears to get married?”
“To get careers established, money saved, that kind of thing.”
“No.” Theo took a deep breath and shifted closer to his partner. Harry kept staring at him. “It’s because soul-marks are about the person who has potential to be perfect for you. And because the person who’s perfect for us at seventeen might not be perfect for us years or months later. A lot of people wait, and see if their relationship develops to the point that they want to marry the other person or not.”
Harry blinked again. He looked genuinely uncertain for the first time. “But I don’t know anyone who didn’t get married to their partner with the mark.”
“You live in a bubble,” said Theo as kindly as he could. “Made up of both romantics and people who consider the mark sacred, so it’s an obligation on them to make it work as much as possible. Not everyone has the same idea. How many divorces are you aware of?”
“In general? Well, there’s always some announcements in the Prophet, I suppose…”
Harry let his voice trail off. Theo smiled. Good. He wasn’t stupid. He was getting it.
But Harry still didn’t say anything, so Theo completed the thought for him. “Why do those divorces happen at all if the people who are getting married are perfect for each other?”
Harry nodded slowly, his brow furrowed. Then he asked, “Do the people who get divorced ever remarry again?”
“Yes. Usually, it’s to people whose soulmates died, or else they marry someone else who got divorced. But, Harry.” Theo took a step closer and reached out to touch his arm, clasping his fingers around Harry’s bare wrist when Harry tried to pull away from him. “It’s not perfection. It’s just a chance. And sometimes, people don’t want those chances.”
Harry eyed his wrist for a moment, then looked up at Theo, so uncertain and slow that Theo felt his heart ache. “The way you don’t want Parkinson?”
“Exactly,” Theo whispered. God, why had it taken him so long to get up the courage to make a move? Standing this close to Harry, looking into his eyes and smelling the scent of his body, he also wondered why he’d spent so much time trying to make a go of it with a woman he didn’t care for and who hated him.
Harry swallowed. Good, then. He hadn’t mistaken Theo’s invitation.
But he still said, “I can’t, Nott. You heard what I said in the Cauldron. I want to be someone’s first choice. Not their second. I still know that I’m your second choice, after Parkinson.”
“No,” Theo murmured. “The only reason I tried to be with her at all is that my father insisted, and her parents were horrified at the notion of her marrying someone without her soul-mark. But she found her own happiness.” Theo couldn’t say he understood Pansy’s happiness, given that she was a third added to a soul-marked pair who clearly put each other first, but that was her business. “I’ve wanted to be with you for months.”
Harry blinked at him. Then he said, “But you can’t have a magical bond or a soul-bond with me.”
“You think I care about that?”
“I care about that.”
Harry took a long step back from him, tugging his wrist free of Theo’s grasp. Theo took a deep breath and reminded himself that he had known this required courage, and disappearing through the Floo right now wouldn’t be brave. “Let me be blunt, then. You can’t have that with anyone. But you can have a good relationship with me, where we care for each other. I don’t love you yet, Harry, but I know I could.”
*
Harry stared at Nott again. He’d never even called the man by his first name! He’d envied him that mark on his wrist, and Nott had rejected it.
This was-
Hard.
Harry shook his head a little. Nott continued watching him carefully. “Do you not want to try?”
“I want to know why you made the decision to give up your bond,” Harry said sharply. “And why in the world you think you could love me.”
“All right.” Nott didn’t flinch at the requirement, which made Harry wonder if he had come here knowing he would have to explain himself, which made him stare at Nott again. How long had he been planning this? “I didn’t care for Pansy at Hogwarts because she sold herself short. She pretended to be stupider than she was, just to get the attention of someone who never paid attention to her at all. She asked for help when she didn’t need it, because she thought that was her best route to be coddled and pampered. She gave up spellcrafting, something she was interested in, because her parents told her she didn’t need it when she was a wealthy pureblood and that was the only thing that mattered.”
Harry whistled softly. He’d never known all that, although if the person Parkinson had been pining after was Malfoy, he’d seen a bit of it. “Well. All right. And you’re absolutely sure that she’s rejected you?”
“Oh, yes.” Nott’s lips thinned. Now that Harry was looking at him in a new light, he could see how strong the line of his jaw was, how much more expressive his face was than Harry had ever thought. “She never forgave me for not being the person she’d dreamed of. She told me she hated me shortly after her parents finally gave up trying to force our marriage.”
Harry closed his eyes. How horrible would it have been to be soulmated to Ginny after all, only to find out that she had wanted it to be Dean?
He had never thought there were things worse than a bare wrist. Now he knew there were.
“And when did you decide that you fancied me?” he had to ask. His cheeks burned with embarrassment at the idea of hearing about himself, but honestly, he had to. As interesting as part of him found Nott’s offer, he’d simply been too committed to the idea that he would be alone for the rest of his life to move past it without hearing why someone wanted him.
“When you stood up for me to the other Aurors.”
Harry stared at him blankly. “But-that wasn’t anything anyone else wouldn’t have done.”
Nott snorted and rolled his eyes. “I know you really believe that, because I know what you look like when you lie,” he muttered. “It was something not many people would have done. Up until that point, I knew you defended people, but I thought they had to be Gryffindors or your friends or innocent babies. I didn’t know you could do that with someone who’d been in Slytherin and had loyalties on Voldemort’s side of the war.”
Harry shrugged a little. He had complicated feelings about the idea of Death Eaters and the way so many of them had walked away after the war, with only the very worst, like Fenrir Greyback and Rodolphus Lestrange, going to prison. But that had no place in the discussion right now. “Were you going to tell me?”
“I was still trying with Pansy at that point. And you seemed to have shut yourself away pretty effectively behind high walls of self-loathing.”
Harry winced a little. “Yeah. I-I can’t promise that I’ll be the best partner you’ve ever seen, Nott. I don’t know how to date people, really. I only dated Cho a little in fifth year and Ginny a little in sixth year, before anyone got their soul-marks. And it’ll take me a while to trust you.”
“Even though you trust me to guard your back?”
“That’s a different kind of trust than thinking you might actually solve this problem that’s been dogging me for the past seven years.”
Nott considered him and then half-smiled. “That’s true enough. After Pansy, I know better than to think that having a few things in common will make everything better.” He offered his hand, hovering in midair, palm up.
Harry knew what he wanted, although only because he’d made the gesture already. He stepped forwards and put his bare right wrist in Nott’s hand. Nott wrapped his fingers gently around it and smoothed them back and forth. Harry took some comfort in the fact that they were tracing random patterns, not ones that felt as if they could be words.
“I do have a request.”
Harry nodded.
“Call me by my first name, please. Theo. I prefer that to Theodore.”
Harry blinked, and realized with a shock like a small bolt of lightning the kind of courage that it had taken to make that request. He had put up a wall, entirely by chance, when he’d chosen to continue calling his partner by his last name, the only Auror who did.
He turned to face Theo, and studied him in silence for a long moment. Theo continued to watch him, despite what must be tension thrumming through him because Harry hadn’t openly acceded to his request.
Then Harry smiled, and reached up to trace his fingers along Theo’s jaw. Not the perfect reciprocal gesture, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch Theo’s soul-mark. “I can do that.”
*
I took a risk, and it paid off.
Theo didn’t close his eyes in relief, because he didn’t want to miss a minute of Harry’s shining face.
They could try this. And it might not work out. It certainly wouldn’t be destined or perfect. But it would be honest.
And they could try.
The End.