Title: A Prism of Darkening Glass
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theodore, mentions of Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: AU of fifth year, violence, torture, gore, present tense, angst, corruption arc, Dark magic, underage
Wordcount: 5200
Summary: AU. Theo Nott has gifted Harry with a few things, but the prism that he presents Harry with a few months into the school year is altogether different.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "Songs of Summer" one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. The prompt is from IronicallyPresent, who asked for Harry/Theo with Harry being corrupted to the Dark side by something Theo gives him as a gift. Hope you enjoy.
A Prism of Darkening Glass
"What's this, Nott?"
"You can't tell unless you open it."
Harry glances at Nott, snorts, and tears off the silver paper wrapped around the gift. It's small, but oddly heavy, and the way Nott handed it to him tells Harry that it might also be something fragile.
They're in their usual meeting place, a corner in a corridor left almost forgotten by others, towards the back of the fifth floor. It's well-lit enough with torches, but Harry can still barely see what he's holding.
"What the fuck?" Harry asks. Nott grins at him. They're not friends, not exactly, but Nott gave Harry a potion that healed the bloody words on the back of his hand, and an outlet with duels to get rid of some of the anger that's been plaguing him. And Harry knows he can say things around Nott that he never could around his "regular" friends.
"Hold it up closer to the torches," Nott suggests.
Harry does, and frowns. It's a triangle of glass, which seems to be filled with some kind of thick dark mist. Or maybe the glass itself is black. It's still hard to see, and it splits the light and filters it in odd ways.
"I give up. What is it?"
"A prism. You can look at various things through it and…see them as they really are."
Harry shoots Nott a hard look. There was something on the edge of those words that doesn't sound right. Nott's eyes glitter. "Try looking at the scars on your hand through it," he suggests.
The prism is heavy enough that Harry has to brace it against the wall as well as shifting it to his left hand. But finally he gets it set up, and looks down through the prism at the words on the back of his right hand that are full of congealed blood.
I must not tell lies.
Looked at it this way, they're full of other things, too, things that make Harry start and nearly drop the prism. He can see writhing small black tentacles, and a sullen green glow like the Killing Curse, and a sharp red blotch that seems to float on top of the blood in the scars and which Harry knows is diseased.
"What the fuck?" he repeats, and glances at Nott for an explanation, lowering the prism carefully so he doesn't drop it.
Nott shrugs. His eyes are bright and somewhere near mad. "There's more than one reason that most people use Blood Quills with caution. They can leave a command carved into your flesh that makes you obey it—but only if that's what the person who gives you the quill really wants. Umbridge doesn't want you to stop telling lies—"
"They're not lies!"
"As she sees it," Nott corrects himself, and his eyes shine brighter. "But she wants you to suffer. And that Dark magic is getting down further and further into the cuts on your hand, sinking in, making it worse. Making you worse."
Harry flexes his hand and decides that no matter what the price, he'll have to keep quiet in Umbridge's class from now on. He can't risk being affected by the Dark magic on that stupid quill. And he'll have to ask Nott for a potion that can make the scars disappear entirely.
On a whim, he turns and angles the prism so that he's looking through it at Nott, one of the torches at his back.
Nott smiles at him, surrounded by odd black squiggles in the air, dark lightning bolts and triangular shapes. Harry lowers the prism. He supposes that he shouldn't decide he understands everything he's seeing through it right away.
"You must practice a lot of Dark Arts, Nott," he says, for something to say.
"You have no idea," Nott breathes. He gestures at the prism. "Keep that. Look at people and things through it. You might be surprised by what you see."
Harry does, and he finds himself surprisingly enlightened (endarkened?) by what he sees when he lifts the prism in front of his eyes and directs a beam of light through it.
Hermione, for example. She looks perfectly calm as she sits there reading from a book—well, when she's not ranting about how Umbridge is preventing them from learning anything or how Snape is still taunting Harry in their OWL year—but around her in midair are images of a girl biting her lip and a girl with a scowl twisting her face. Harry sees the scowl in real life for the first time when he succeeds in keeping quiet in Umbridge's class, no matter how she taunts him.
"How could you just sit there and let her tell lies, Harry?" Hermione hisses at him as they leave the first Defense class where Harry didn't get assigned a detention. "It's wrong!"
"Listen, Hermione, all that happens when I tell the truth is that my hand gets ripped up and people laugh at me. Why should I stand up and just volunteer for that, if I can keep out of it?"
Harry keeps his voice low, since what happened in his detentions with Umbridge is still a secret, but he's still vehement enough to make Hermione step back from him with wide eyes. She studies him and then says, "It's wrong."
"Then you do it," Harry snaps, and storms away.
He feels bad later, because it's not like he wants to see one of his friends suffer the same kind of detention that he did, or get their hands cut open. But he notes that Hermione starts following his lead and just keeping quiet in Defense, no matter what kind of nonsense Umbridge is spewing.
And when Harry, after practicing on his own, manages to cast a perfect fire curse that burns up the jinx someone hurls at him in midair, he sees the scowl again.
Harry understands then. Hermione doesn't like it when someone does better than her in class, or at magic in general. Before, Hermione might have been able to tell herself that Defense class was Harry's specialty, and he has to have one thing he's good at. And Quidditch she's never cared about.
But when they don't have instruction in class and Harry can still do it perfectly…
Without the prism, Harry would never have known how insecure Hermione was, how jealous.
He did know that about Ron. Didn't Ron start that whole nonsense about the Goblet of Fire and Harry putting his name in because he was jealous and insecure? Harry can forgive him for that. Already has forgiven him.
But when he uses the prism to peer at Ron one day in the common room when he can use the light of the fire and he's fairly sure no one else will see him, he doesn't see those same images of a scowling Ron like he saw of Hermione's scowling face. Instead, he sees the images of all his brothers and Ginny floating around Ron, mingled with Harry's face.
Harry doesn't know what to make of it, until the day that he, admittedly, decides to eavesdrop on a heated conversation Ron and Ginny are having near one end of the common room. They think Harry's upstairs in the boys' dorm.
"It's not like Harry's some possession you can own," Ginny hisses, and flips her hair out of her face. Harry wonders idly what he'll see if he looks at her with the prism, and his fingers twitch. Then he shakes his head and concentrates on the conversation in front of him.
"But he's still my best friend. And that'll be true even if he dates you."
"He's my friend, too!"
"I'm not saying he's not. Just not your best."
Harry breathes out slowly. So that's it. Ron likes to lord it over other people in his family that he's friends with Harry Potter. Best friends, not just friends. And Ginny apparently wants to date him? Harry knew she did once, but he thought she'd changed her mind.
Ginny twirls her hair around her finger this time and frowns at Ron. "Does Harry know you talk about him like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like he's some toy that you can play with."
Ron snorts a little and leans back against the chair. "He's not a toy. He's my best friend.." And he lays a lot of weight on those words, but the frown on his face tells Harry that he lays a lot of weight on "my," too.
Harry slips silently away, while their argument continues. There could be worse things for Ron to think and feel about him, he supposes. For example, if Ron had continued to believe that Harry put his name in the Goblet, or really wants fame and fortune.
But Harry doesn't much like the thought of being just another possession in the wars between the Weasley children. He wonders if Ron ever writes to Bill or Charlie or Percy and slips in an oh-so-innocent mention of "Oh, yes, Harry Potter and I did these things the other day," or lies or exaggerates about the times he's helped Harry.
Perhaps he does. Harry considers intercepting his owl post and discards the idea.
The prism accompanies Harry everywhere now, wrapped in Cushioning Charms to make sure that it won't break in his robe pocket, or if Harry accidentally drops it. Harry takes the chance to linger near the doors of the Great Hall one evening and aim it at a few of the teachers as they leave dinner.
Umbridge is covered with images of her own face, open-mouthed and screaming. She's afraid of something, Harry thinks, afraid all the time, but he's not sure what.
Then he remembers what she's said in class about centaurs and half-bloods and Squibs and Muggleborns, and smiles coldly to himself.
Snape passes, and Harry expects to see the Dark Mark on his left arm. But he sees far more than that. There's a chain of what looks like barbed wire spreading from the Mark up his arm to his shoulder, and another one wound around his temples. Harry's not sure what it connects to. It seems to go beneath his skin, as if it's welded to something inside his brain.
Does Voldemort control his Death Eaters' minds? But surely if he did, he would figure out that Snape is a spy and destroy him for it.
Unless Snape really is only pretending to be a spy and is loyal to Voldemort. Maybe that chain symbolizes his tattered loyalties, all twined together.
"Enjoying it?"
Nott's hoarse whisper almost makes Harry drop the prism, but he finds, as he turns around, that he's not all that startled. Maybe part of him expected Nott to be standing there. He gives the other boy a thin smile. "I know your game."
"Oh?" Nott eases nearer, his joints moving as if all his bones are liquid.
"Yes. You want to make me see the worst in people and turn against them." Harry stalks a step closer to Nott, intrigued to find him not backing away. "Well, joke's on you. The prism's only shown me things that I already knew. I know Ron gets jealous sometimes and Hermione is insecure about her friends. That isn't going to make me suddenly throw my hands in the air and run to Voldemort's side."
Nott flinches at the mention of Voldemort's name, but he's also watching Harry with an odd, fervent expression. "That's not what I'm trying to achieve," he says softly.
"Sure you aren't." Harry snatches the prism up and stares through it at Nott's left arm, which he didn't look through before, but sees nothing there. He shakes his head. That doesn't mean anything. Maybe Voldemort doesn't Mark his Death Eaters below a certain age, or maybe Nott hasn't done anything yet to warrant it.
"Tell your Dark Lord I'll never serve him," Harry tosses casually at Nott as he tucks the prism away.
"I won't need to," Nott says, and stays where he is, in the shadowed corner, watching Harry walk back to Gryffindor Tower.
Harry doesn't get the chance to look at Dumbledore for several weeks after Nott gives him the prism. Dumbledore has been deliberately avoiding Harry, after all, so that isn't surprising.
But late one night, he hears voices winding down the corridors—Harry spends a lot more time walking them now under his Invisibility Cloak, looking at walls for hidden doors and other secrets—and recognizes one of them as Dumbledore's. Harry sneaks towards them, reminding himself that Dumbledore can probably see through the Cloak.
When he comes to the corner that he has to stick his head around, he can't believe his luck. Dumbledore is standing with his back to Harry, giving Professor McGonagall directions in a soft, hurried voice.
And the corridor is well-lit. Harry has to crouch to ease the prism out of the Cloak, but it doesn't matter. In a few seconds it's out, and he's staring through the glass straight at Dumbledore.
He's covered with blood, running down his robe and pooling at his feet. And there's an image of a young girl being struck with some kind of red curse and crumpling to the ground. And his right hand flickers and brightens again and again, covered with a disappearing and reappearing glove of broken and blackened skin.
Harry shudders and tucks the prism away. He knows now that not everything it shows him is straightforward. It's entirely possible that Dumbledore didn't kill all the people whose blood covers him, or that girl, but just feels responsible for their deaths. Maybe some of them are from the war where he dueled Grindelwald. Harry knows he waited years to do it, for some reason.
But it doesn't matter. What does is that the Headmaster has secrets, and the way he's condemning Harry, looking away from him—he wouldn't even look at Harry during his trial for casting the Patronus Charm—is hypocritical.
Harry's mouth forms into a snarl before he glides back to Gryffindor Tower.
Draco Malfoy seen through the prism is a disappointment. There's just the image of his father, repeated over and over. Okay, and the Dark Mark on his arm—one that isn't there yet in reality, Harry is sure—but that only tells Harry what he already knew, that Malfoy wants to be a Death Eater someday. He shakes his head and runs his hand down his face, slipping the prism back into a pocket.
"You still carry it."
Nott sounds pleased. Harry turns around, no longer surprised that Nott can track him. Maybe he has the Slytherin equivalent of the Marauders' Map, or maybe he put tracking charms on the prism. Harry has been careful to study it, and hasn't found any, but he doesn't know the level of Dark Arts that Nott does.
"Yeah, I do," Harry says. "That's what you were hoping for, right? To corrupt me by making me carry it?"
Nott smiles at him. "I can't make you carry it. I can only offer you the gifts and hope you accept them." He digs in his pocket, and Harry's hand jumps to his wand, but he doesn't think Nott will want to curse him before his little experiment runs its course, and isn't surprised when Nott holds out a silver-wrapped package. "Here. For you."
"What's the excuse this time?" Harry asks as he accepts the package.
"Why, Harry, Christmas is only a week away. And this might be the last time I'll see you before you leave for the holidays."
"You aren't going home?"
"Home isn't very safe for me right now."
Harry studies him and decides not to ask why, instead unwrapping the package. Inside is a book with a cover of wrinkled white leather that has a pearlescent sheen, like it was made from the skin of an Antipodean Opaleye.
"What's this?" The title is in curving golden letters, another language.
"Open it," Nott whispers.
Harry does, aware that at any second needles could rise from the surface of the book and pierce his hands. But nothing happens. He can see the words in some other language, and starts to tell Nott that he still can't read this.
But then the words slide and scramble on the page, and Harry can. He reads down what he thinks is a table of contents at first, and then he realizes it's a list of spells, in Latin, with a short description in English next to each one.
Brain-Boiling Curse. Finger-Deadening Curse. A Curs to Teach Enemies True Sorrow.
Harry looks up at Nott, who is staring at him with incredible stillness, as though his life depends on what Harry does next. "These are Dark Arts spells," Harry whispers.
"Yes," Nott says. "You wouldn't be able to read them at all if your mind wasn't a little more open to the possibility."
Harry assumes that means because he's been using the prism, which is a Dark Arts object if he ever saw one. Instead of answering Nott, he slides his hands restlessly around the book and stares down at it.
It's not that he's learned anyone is evil. Being conflicted in their loyalty to two masters, the way Snape is, or jealous sometimes, the way Hermione is, or insecure about your position in your family, the way Ron is, aren't sins.
But it does mean that they're weaker than Harry thought. It does mean that he won't be able to rely on them as much. He should take a stronger role in defending himself. Snape would probably even approve of that, Harry thinks, and snorts. And Dumbledore, although he'd be horrified at the means Harry is considering using.
"Still not serving your Dark Lord," he tells Nott, and snaps the book shut and slides it into a robe pocket.
"I'm counting on it," Nott whispers, and suddenly he steps forwards and slides one ember-hot hand down Harry's arm and to his fingers, which he squeezes. Then he turns and vanishes down the corridor.
Harry shakes his head in slow wonder. Nott still thinks that Harry's going to wear a nice little Death Eater mask someday?
Well. He's given Harry the means to show him better.
Using the prism in Grimmauld Place fills Harry's mind with facts and faces enough to haunt his nightmares.
Someone was slaughtered in the bedroom he and Ron were sharing, pinned to the wall with arrows of ivory that then exploded in their body. Wreaths of long-gone belladonna hang from the walls in the prism's vision, slowly poisoning the unlucky guests at some ancient dinner party. The windows were once ringed with bone, the garden with stone congealed from the living bodies of dragons.
And Sirius is filled with congealed iron balls of guilt and hatred, and blood covers his hands, brightening and deepening when someone speaks Snape's name. A rabid dog howls and snarls in the back of his head at all times, much like the wolf with a skull for a head that paces beneath the surface of Remus's skin.
Even Mrs. Weasley carries secrets, especially the way she has to struggle to speak Fred and George's names while Fabian and Gideon whisper in her head. Once again, Harry reminds himself that it's no crime to not have got over the deaths of your two brothers in a war. He might have been like that, if he'd had any brothers to lose.
But it is a problem not to see your children for what they are and deny their dream of opening up a joke shop and tell them to fit within the rules because you're convinced that you can have your brothers back if you just make your sons safe.
Harry had a vision from Voldemort that pushed him into the body of a snake attacking Mr. Weasley, but luckily, they managed to find Mr. Weasley in time and save his life. Harry can see the snakebite on him he looks at Mr. Weasley with the prism, and the effects of the venom coursing through him, weakening his limbs, his heart, shortening his life.
Harry thinks about telling them that, but reminds himself that he's not a Healer. He could be wrong about the poison. And how would he explain how he learned it, anyway? He's never let anyone see the prism, and he never will.
He looks at Ginny through the prism only once, and never again. The smear of black blood all over her—blood and the thicker than blood liquid that came out of the diary—the grey-dead fissure in her magic, and the audible hisses of Parseltongue, the only thing Harry ever hears through the prism, make him far more uneasy than anything else he's seen.
Harry practices curses from the book Nott gave him in the night, by himself, at the top of the house. Kreacher shows up once and stares at him. Harry turns his wand on the elf, who simply pops out. Harry gives a hard little smile.
He has no fear that the elf will tell anyone else. The vision of him through the prism is utterly covered with chains, from steel ones around his limbs to a golden one around his neck, that indicate his ties to a family legacy Sirius despises. No one else will look at Kreacher long enough, let alone listen to him, or ask about what he might know of Harry.
Dumbledore announces that Harry has to learn Occlumency from Snape. It's mind-ripping pain, humiliation, Snape's confusing and contradictory instructions. Harry tries to find out how to do Occlumency from books in the library, but there doesn't seem to be anything.
He's burning with pain, on his way from the latest "Remedial Potions" lesson, when Nott surprises him by stepping around the corner and giving him an oily smile.
Harry attacks without thinking about it, spinning a cage of cold bars that attaches to the wall behind Nott and the floor around him. It will shrink inwards, bit by bit, if left to itself. It can liquefy someone's organs with the tightness of its hug.
If Harry lets it. It's his choice here. Unlike the goddamn Occlumency lessons with Snape.
He stalks up to Nott, who watches him come with huge eyes and a growing smile. He must be mental, Harry thinks, to smile at this.
So Harry says something that he's pretty sure will wipe the smile off his face. "I'm having Occlumency lessons with Snape. Sooner or later he's going to see the prism, and who gave it to me."
"The prism will protect itself," Nott whispers. The smile is there, but changed. "You could show it to someone else, and they'd never be able to see. You could tell them I gave it to you, and they wouldn't hear. The book will do the same thing. Why do you need Occlumency lessons?"
Harry prowls closer. The cage is already a little smaller than it was before, he sees with satisfaction. "Because I have a connection to your bloody Lord," he snarls. "A connection that means he can influence my mood and emotions. They want me to close it."
Nott stares at him with eyes as wide as the ocean. Then he bows his head and whispers, "I did not want that for you."
Harry shakes his head, and then shudders as he looks at the cage. Did he enjoy it just a moment ago? Yes, he's really changed. He dismisses the cage with one flip of his hand, and draws the prism and looks at Nott through it with the other.
Nott looks like a sleek, fast predator, an ocean animal decorated in black and white. A killer whale, Harry realizes after a second. And he's leaning forwards, focusing on something. Harry doesn't know what. He seems to be looking directly at the prism, but no one in these visions is ever aware of what Harry sees. It's probably symbolic, again.
So is the lightning bolt that hangs above his head. He's thinking about capturing Harry and taking him to Voldemort all the time, isn't he?
Harry sighs and puts the prism away. "I'm never going to be a Death Eater. Tell him that."
"You'll be able to tell him yourself."
Before Harry can respond to that ridiculous idea, Nott leans forwards and breathes out on Harry's knuckles, then abruptly kneels and rubs his cheek against them. Then he turns and leaves, gone like a shadow into the dungeons.
Harry stares after him. Nott is weird.
But he's also the one who knows the most right now about the thoughts that fill Harry's head and the things he does on a daily basis, and Harry's hand burns where Nott touched it.
Apparently bored with tormenting Harry in class when he never responds to her anymore, Umbridge starts picking on Colin Creevey. Colin responds bravely, stupidly, like the Gryffindor he is, and soon he's the one coming back from her office with his hand ripped open and Dark magic writhing in the wounds.
Harry's had enough.
He walks towards Umbridge's office one evening when Colin has detention, the Invisibility Cloak wrapped around him. Just in case there's a chance that Umbridge is able to give testimony later, he's going to make sure that she never sees who it is. He pauses in front of the door, then knocks.
"Come in!" calls the girlish voice that Harry has learned to hate.
He creaks the door open and casts straight through it, a spell that he's practiced the wand movement and incantation for until they're more than second nature, but hasn't been able to test yet, since the spell has to be cast on a human being. The jet of pure-black light strikes Umbridge. She slumps back into the chair she was rising from.
Harry slips towards her, aware that his whole body is singing with the power of the spell. This one is rather bluntly named the Personality-Crusher, and will forever destroy a certain part of the target's personality named by the caster.
Harry leans over and looks into Umbridge's glazed eyes and smiles.
"Cruelty," he says.
Umbridge screams. Well, the book did say that the spell does more damage when the trait destroyed is something deeply embedded in the target's personality.
Harry watches, licking his lips, as animation leaves her face and she slumps over, staring at the ceiling. Yes. If he hasn't destroyed her mind or memories, he's at least tattered them, given how much the desire for cruelty was apparently part of her.
Harry doesn't particularly care how much damage he's done. He does use a Memory Charm on her, just in case, and then turns and leaves, humming under his breath. He'll let Colin come for his detention and discover her like that.
Dumbledore makes a grave announcement at breakfast the next morning that Professor Umbridge was apparently the victim of a blood clot in the brain and has been transferred to St. Mungo's, where she is barely clinging to consciousness. People immediately start discussing how the curse on the Defense position has claimed its victim early this year.
Harry might have been able to feel bad about it—he might retain that much of his old self—but he notices that Dumbledore doesn't even look in Harry's direction as he sits down. He doesn't suspect Harry could have done this. No one does. Hermione and Ron chatter about it and don't notice his silence. Sirius hasn't written him a letter in months given Umbridge's control of the post, but at Christmas, he said nothing to indicate that he knew Harry had changed.
The only person who knows him is Nott.
"I know it was you."
Harry turns around with a small, cold smile. He sent Nott an owl that directed Nott to meet him on the seventh-floor corridor, daringly near Gryffindor Tower. Harry almost hopes that someone else will stumble on this meeting and see Harry's ultimate triumph over all who seek to control him, including Voldemort and Nott.
Nott is walking towards him, face and eyes and skin as bright as fever. He stops in front of Harry and inclines his head. "Umbridge," he whispers. "I know it was you."
"Of course it was," Harry says. He takes a step forwards and crowds Nott against the wall, not letting him move away from it. Nott stares at him. "And you should know that no matter what you give me, any other book of curses or any other Dark artifact, I'm not going to go crawling to Voldemort's feet. I've discovered I rather like having power over my own life, and I'm not about to give that up to be his lackey."
Nott does the strangest thing, then. Harry thought he might scowl, or laugh if he decided that Harry is only speaking guff and can be persuaded around to Voldemort's cause after all. But instead, he drops to one knee and bows his head, pressing his forehead against Harry's wand hand. "My lord," he breathes.
"What the fuck?" Harry snarls. "Get up."
Nott springs up, his eyes fastened on Harry. "The prism brings those who look through it around to the cause of Dark Arts and using the secrets," he murmurs. "Believing the worst and giving up on the best. But I never wanted to follow the Dark Lord. He has no use for me, sees no value in me."
Harry narrows his eyes, while the truth Nott seems to be speaking courses through him like water running underground. "You didn't give me the prism to make me follow Voldemort."
"No. I gave it to you to make you a Dark Lord palatable to me, one who would have the sanity to do what needs to be done and the tendency to think of me as a friend and a servant because of what I gifted him."
Harry reaches out and pulls hard on Nott's shoulders, getting him closer. "Did it occur to you how badly that could have backfired?" he growls right into Nott's face. Nott flushes all over with something that Harry is suddenly sure isn't embarrassment. "I might have gone insane despite your plans. I might have been so corrupt that I'd start slaughtering people in public, or so self-interested that I'd see no value in you after all."
"It was a risk I was willing to take," Nott says, and reaches out and lets his hands wander down Harry's arms from his shoulders. "The prism had fine material to work with.'
Harry laughs shortly. He has the feeling that he could be angry about this, and Nott would even agree he had a right to be, but all he truly feels is wonder.
Nott acted like the proverbial self-interested Slytherin. But he won. He was right. Now that Harry has been freed into a world of secrets and knowledge and power, he has no intention of going back.
And if someone else wants to join him there…
Harry yanks sharply on Nott's shoulders again, pulling him forwards. When they're breathing the same air, when Nott's heartbeat is louder than his own, Harry says, "I'm going to kiss you now."
"Kiss me," Nott gasps. "Take me to bed. Do with me what you will." He bows his head. "Only say that you'll value me and keep me close, my lord."
"Be assured," Harry says, working his hand into his vassal's hair, "I will be keeping you as close as my own body, Theo." And he kisses him hard enough to bruise, to claim, to brand, like the Dark Lord he now is.
The End.