Chapter Four-Bounties

"I think we could use space for a shop."

Potter looked up and considered Theo thoughtfully. It was late September, and their flat would have been considerably colder if not for the Warming Charms that they'd tucked into the corners and around the window. Potter was leaning back in his chair across the table, reading a week-old copy of the Daily Prophet that Min had given him.

Theo would be the first to admit the old creature-blood was a valuable ally, although it drove Theo silently mad that he couldn't figure out if she was a human under a curse, a human who had deliberately chosen to dabble in Dark magic, a hag with Veela blood, or something else entirely. In Knockturn Alley, it was never easy to tell, and the questions weren't asked.

But she had made sure that they had a regular source of news if anything unusual rippled through the Alley, and the other inhabitants were much more eager to come to them and hire Potter for curse-breaking projects and Theo for his potions with Min's word behind them. So Theo kept his curiosity private.

"I can see why it would be useful for you to have a bigger space to brew," Potter said. At the moment, Theo's makeshift Potions lab—which he had promised he wouldn't use to brew illegal potions—occupied one half of a small building in the alley that was mostly given over to a menagerie filled with scabby animals. "But where are we going to get the money? And what contributions do you think I could make to the shop?"

"You don't think it would be good to have a place for people to hire you that's more impressive than this flat?"

"Where are we going to get the money, Nott?" Potter simply repeated, as patient as steel.

"Min told me about someone she wants dead."

Potter immediately dropped his feet from the table legs, ignoring the way that the chair screeched as it fell back to the floor. "Are you insane?" he asked flatly, his magic coiling in close to him and then streaming out again. It still fascinated Theo, both the way that it traveled, which was so different from any other person's magic he'd ever seen, and the way that Potter had remained unaware of it for so long. "I told you I wouldn't be an assassin."

"You didn't ask who it is."

"It doesn't—"

"It's Fenrir Greyback."

Potter's eyes widened, and for long moments, the dance of his magic went still. Then he said quietly, "But he would be ancient by now, even for someone who isn't a werewolf fugitive. There's no way that he's still alive."

Theo smiled, enjoying the impact the revelation had on Potter. "The only werewolf you knew well was one who fought his curse. The ones who embrace it, who let some traits of the wolf pass into their human bodies? They can easily double their lifespans. And you know that they gave up the hunt for him years ago."

Potter nodded, his eyes gazing past Theo. Theo took the moment to just look at him, and luxuriate in the fact that someone who had been such an enemy of everyone Theo had once been—Slytherin, morally flexible person, Death Eater's son—could listen to him and trust him the way Potter did.

Of course, the circumstances were hardly normal. But it also hardly mattered.

"All right," Potter whispered. "Does she have any certain information about him?" His eyes focused again, snapping back to Theo. "And will we be able to withstand the scrutiny if we collect the bounty on him?"

Theo half-smiled. "They'll likely be embarrassed that someone who wasn't an Auror or part of the Ministry captured him, Potter. And you can claim the bounty anonymously. I don't think they'll be spreading the word of what we did around any time soon."

"Except to the people who matter."

The ones in Knockturn Alley, he meant. Theo nodded. "Exactly."

"All right." Potter seemed to have chilled and coiled sometime in the last few minutes, perhaps gathering his magic into him. "Let's do it."

Min's information had them starting near the northern end of Knockturn Alley, where the buildings petered out into shacks and temporary constructions held together with magic. Theo swallowed a potion that would make him far more sensitive to the scents of wolves and tilted his head up. His nostrils twitched and fluttered, sorting the messages from the air.

There. He touched Potter's shoulder and pointed down a path—you could call it that, if you really stretched the meaning—that ventured between piles of rubbish. Potter nodded and took the lead.

Theo walked behind Potter, thoughtfully touching his wand and then one of the three potions slung across his chest in an old warmaster's bandolier that had been buried with the cache of Galleons he'd taken. He hoped he wouldn't have to use them, because he couldn't easily replace them, but needs must when hunting an ancient, insane werewolf.

Potter, who had been walking cat-soft in front of Theo, abruptly lifted a hand. Theo froze obediently. Potter swirled his wand in a deft pattern, using a wordless spell that channeled the air current towards them. Theo thought at first it was in deference to his temporarily enhanced sense of smell, but then he heard the voices speaking, low and rough.

"—don't believe you can find anyone here who wants to be a werewolf."

"There's always the desperate."

Theo snarled silently at the sound of that thick voice. He saw tension invade Potter's frame ahead of him, and although he didn't move, his magic gathered close around him and grew claws that Theo could feel.

"And once someone's a lycanthrope and they realize that not even the dregs of Knockturn Alley will accept them," Greyback went on, "you'll see what I can do with them."

Potter's jaw had firmed. Theo knew that Potter had still harbored reservations about this plan, and probably would have preferred to capture Greyback instead of kill him. But Greyback's intending to turn people and possibly raise a werewolf army changed things.

"Especially if I turn their children." Greyback gave a hoarse, heavy laugh, and then there was the sound of claws clicking on the stone. "Although the two waiting to start some kind of fight with me aren't children."

Theo was already moving, dodging to the side to avoid either a charge from Greyback or, as it turned out, the Cruciatus that came flying down the middle of the path. Potter had leaped out and was trading spells furiously. Theo wasn't sure if that was with Greyback or whoever he had been talking to.

Time to even the odds. Theo reached up and removed the stoppered potion from the highest pouch of the bandolier, uncapping it and whispering, "Harry Potter," then tossing the flask into the air.

It didn't really matter where it landed. The power of this potion lay in the fumes, not the liquid, which faded more rapidly than dew as it fell. The fumes lashed out and encircled Potter, lending extra speed and power to his limbs.

Theo emerged from the path and saw the man who had been helping Greyback, a short, sandy-haired wizard, on the ground and bleeding from a wound that crossed most of his torso. Potter and Greyback were trading blows so fast that Theo could hardly see them, and he exhaled a little in relief. He hadn't been sure the potion would make Potter fast enough to match a werewolf's strikes, but it seemed it had.

Theo stalked slowly around the outskirts of the battle, waiting for a chance to use a spell himself. As it stood, he would have too much chance of hitting Potter if he cast blindly.

At last, Potter and Greyback broke apart from each other. Potter breathed as if he had plague, his eyes wide, his face red. The potion did sometimes have that side-effect, but it shouldn't be anything permanent, Theo judged. And Greyback was in much worse shape, with one hand gone and his right hanging from a strip of skin and blood flowing from a dozen small cuts and nicks.

Theo cast at once, a spell that would entangle Greyback in a net and bind him to the ground. In deference to Potter's sensibilities, he really would prefer to capture the werewolf. And there was a bounty for delivering Greyback alive, too, although not as much as the one for delivering him dead.

Greyback spun towards Theo with a roar, so that the net missed, and charged him.

Theo raised a Dark Shield in front of himself without a thought. It deflected any attacks back on the attacker, and Greyback screamed as he hit it and it filled him with the kind of pain that he would have caused if he'd slammed into Theo.

Potter hit the werewolf with a curse from the side. Theo stared with his mouth open as Greyback sprawled on the ground with blood running out of his sides and chest. He had never seen something like that before.

He was just turning to ask Potter what that was when Greyback heaved himself back to his feet.

Theo backed up, his shield floating with him, and maintained his concentration as fiercely as he could. Greyback didn't pay him the slightest bit of attention, though. With things Theo didn't want to think about sliding out of his belly and tripping him up, he lunged at Potter with his mouth open.

You have to stop him! Theo shrieked in his head, thinking of what it would mean for Potter to be turned into a werewolf. But he didn't even know whether he was shouting at Potter or himself.

As it happened, it didn't matter. Potter hit Greyback in the side of the neck with an overpowered Cutting Curse. Or, at least, it must have been overpowered, the way it decapitated Greyback and made his head fly to land, bouncing, a few meters away.

The clearest and most ringing silence Theo had ever heard descended.

He let go of his Dark Shield with a grimace and a flex of his hand. Potter considered him for a second, but didn't say a word about the spell. Then again, the curse he'd used to cut Greyback open was Dark Arts if Theo had ever seen it. "Do we take the whole body to the Ministry? Or just the head?"

"The head…ought to do." Theo fought off the temptation to be sick, and the next temptation, and the next one. He bent over, dry heaving, hands clasped around his stomach, wand poking him in what felt like the liver.

Potter's hand fell to rest on his shoulder, heavy and warm. He said nothing, but turned so that he was positioned between Theo and Greyback's remains. Theo gagged, but got himself under control and managed to stand up, blinking and nodding.

"I don't know why I reacted so badly to that," he muttered, irritated with himself. "I've seen decapitated creatures of all kinds before. Some of them I've used as Potions ingredients."

"Did you ever decapitate them yourself? And were any of them humanoid?"

Theo focused on the rock-dry tone in Potter's voice to ground himself. He shook his head and opened his eyes. "No," he said, keeping his gaze firmly away from the corner into which Greyback's head had bounced.

Of course, that left him little to look at other than Potter, but Potter didn't sneer at him or make any reference to his weakness, the way Theo had thought for sure a battle-hardened Auror would do to anyone less hardened. He simply nodded, squeezed Theo's shoulder once, and stepped back. "Do you want me to take him in?"

"Yes." Theo didn't add the word "please," because there were some levels he wouldn't stoop to, but Potter just nodded again.

"Okay." He turned away, then paused. Standing with his back to Theo, he said, "I didn't react well, either, the first time I cast a spell that took a human being's life. She would have killed the child she was using as a hostage and probably Ron, too, but…"

He didn't finish the sentence, striding over and muttering a charm that Theo recognized as a Preservation one, followed by one that would create a stasis box of sorts around the head.

Theo said nothing until he saw that Potter was getting ready to Apparate. Then he forced his lips to work and muttered, "Thanks."

Potter glanced back, nothing in his eyes except understanding, and nodded, then vanished with a crack.

When he stepped around him, Theo saw that Potter had cleaned up Greyback's body, too, and presumably taken Greyback's injured accomplice with him. There was nothing Theo had to do except go back to their flat and wait for Potter to arrive with the bounty money.

Surprisingly, Theo found that he entirely trusted Potter to do that.