Title: The Strength of Gold
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Theo Nott
Content Notes: Angst, violence, murder, Dark Arts, gore, Dark Harry, Dark Theo
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3400
Summary: Theo grimaced when Harry Potter was transferred in to be his Hit Wizard partner. He was sure that he'd spend all his time completing the real work while Little Pacifist Potter cried about his morals. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics, chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This will probably have three chapters, but may have more. It was written for a prompt left by ten10, who asked for Harry being too violent to be an Auror and becoming Theo Nott's Hit Wizard partner. Note that this is a dark and violent story.
The Strength of Gold
"Nott."
"Potter."
Theo waited a long moment as Potter stood in the doorway of Theo's office, staring around. Well, not Theo's office, anymore. It was both of theirs. Theo bristled internally. The desk for Potter had already been added, which took up space Theo could have used for his targets, and the walls were covered with banners of curling, hissing, spitting snakes that Potter would probably ask Theo to remove.
So he can put up pictures of Weasley and Granger, probably.
But Potter said only, "I like it," and then walked over to the desk sitting naked near an enchanted window that showed a snowfield and dumped a set of pristine Hit Wizard robes on it. They were neutrally-tinted at the moment, not yet melded with their wearer's magic and will to take on concealing colors.
Theo turned around in his chair to hide his confusion, and also because no one really needed to watch Potter take his clothes off, if he was going to do that. He did sneak one more look, in time to see Potter run a hand roughly through his hair and mutter something that sounded like, "Thank fuck."
"Our prey will hear you coming if you swear all the time, Potter."
"It's a good thing I don't."
Theo narrowed his eyes, leaning a little further forwards to watch as Potter stacked a series of books on the side of the desk and gestured with his wand, a charm Theo didn't know, that created a small shelf next to the desk. Then he put a photograph of what looked like a cliff above the sea on the edge of the shelf and draped the Hit Wizard robes around himself, making a face as the robes melded with his magic.
Theo couldn't let him just stand there, of course. "No pictures of Weasley and Granger?"
"They're not happy with me. And we're not as close as we used to be."
Theo waited for more—one thing he knew from the papers was that Potter loved to talk about himself—but Potter seemed disinclined to give him anymore. He took off the robes and hung them on the back of a chair. The ones he wore were a plain black, and he sat down in the chair behind the desk and began to organize files without glancing Theo's way again.
Theo hated feeling wrong-footed, but he wasn't going to continue the conversation if Potter wasn't. Why would he actually want to know the man he'll be working with? Theo thought snidely as he turned back to his own files. Not like I'll have to save his little arse in the field or anything. He probably thinks he can aim his wand at our prey and they'll fall dead of fear.
"I don't like it."
"Then it's a good thing it's not your decision."
Harry kept his voice as relaxed as he could. Really, he didn't want to be talking to Hermione on the Floo. He wanted to read over the files one more time so that he would know more about Elias Flint, the person he and Nott were going after tomorrow.
"Why couldn't you just control—"
"I controlled myself perfectly well during that arrest you're going on about," Harry snapped. "You know I wouldn't torture an innocent, Hermione. Weatherby just told the press that because she was angry about me killing her husband."
"You still killed him."
Harry just shook his head. "He was flinging Killing Curses around. What was I supposed to do?"
"Report him—"
Harry stared into his glass of Firewhisky and said nothing. Honestly, he wasn't sure why he even bothered answering Floo calls from Ron and Hermione anymore. They had all grown apart. Ron had decided that the Aurors weren't what he wanted and gone to help George in the joke shop. Hermione had delved deep into law and bureaucracy and really thrived in the Ministry, as well as in the Weasley family.
Harry—well, he would still have been welcome at the Burrow if he wanted to go, he knew that, but he'd broken up with Ginny years ago and he saw Ron and Hermione less and less frequently with his mad workload, so it had been natural not to do that.
"I'm worried about you, Harry."
"You know that I'll be fine in the field, Hermione. The criminals they send us after aren't as strong as two wizards working together, and they aren't the type to trust someone at their backs, either."
"I don't mean that. I worry about the moral risk."
Harry shrugged. "I took plenty of risks like that in the Aurors. They just insisted that I take physical ones as well as moral ones."
"The rules are there for a reason."
Harry made a face at her. It was easily the worst thing about Hermione's interest in law, that she'd lost some of the flexibility she had in Hogwarts. This Hermione wouldn't have cursed Marietta Edgecombe, Harry thought, even though the idiot had deserved it for betraying the DA.
"I don't like it."
"I didn't ask you to."
Hermione said a few more words, obviously noticed that Harry wasn't listening, and existed the Floo in a huff. Harry lifted his Firewhisky in front of him and smiled a little at the reflection of the hearth's light through the glass.
Tomorrow, he got to hunt down someone he was expected to kill. It was freeing.
No more hypocrisy, Harry thought, and swallowed the rest of the whisky in his glass, ignoring the way that it scorched his throat.
Theo started to stand up. They'd spent hours circling around Flint's house and the wards, and they were as ready as they would ever be to break through them.
Potter's hand shot out and gripped his wrist. Theo gave him a dirty look, but Potter didn't seem to notice. He remained crouched behind the clump of hawthorn bushes on the edge of the wards, his eyes fixed on Flint's house.
"Let me go, Potter," Theo snarled under his breath.
"Can't you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"The edge to the nearest ward," Potter said, and twisted his wand in a circle, Transfiguring a pebble into a rabbit. He used a gust of wind to propel the rabbit towards the gleaming edge of the ward.
Theo watched open-mouthed as the ward sliced the rabbit in half. Potter Vanished the chunks—at least, the one that had fallen outside the wards—and raised his eyebrows a little at Theo.
"How did you sense that?" Theo asked. He had thought the wards were like stone walls, the kind that could be torn down with brute strength. That edge said they were a different configuration, and changed how they would have to approach them.
"They felt different."
"Felt different."
"That's what I said," Potter agreed, and faced the wards. His wand was already spinning in his hand, the dance of a spell that Theo had studied since he was a child. "Come on, help me bring them down."
Theo did, keeping one eye on Potter's wand as he wove his own magic through the intricate dance of the spell that would act like a huge pair of scissors on the wards instead of a battering ram. If he saw Potter holding back at any point, preparing to trick him…
But he didn't. The wards snapped apart like cut curtains, and Potter ran forwards, his eyes bright and joyous. Theo trailed just behind.
They cornered Elias Flint on the balcony of a large room that seemed to be where he'd been eating breakfast. There were strawberries and a bowl of melted chocolate on the table.
Harry stalked towards the man. He was related to Marcus Flint, but didn't look too much like the Slytherin Quidditch Captain except for the heaviness in his jaws. His eyes were winter-blue and mild, the eyes of someone who conducted experiments. Or looked at other people as experiments, Harry thought.
Some of those "experiments" had been brought to the Ministry, and the Department of Mysteries had tried to rehabilitate them. It had taken them a long time to die.
"Harry Potter, a Hit Wizard," said Flint, his voice smooth. His wand was a length of oak, which he kept down at his side instead of lifting as if he would strike at Harry and Nott. "How the mighty have fallen."
Harry didn't reply, because he didn't see the sense in wasting his breath, but Nott sneered as he moved up beside Harry. "You're one to talk."
"I always sought to create beauty," Flint replied, in a gently chiding tone that reminded Harry horribly of Professor McGonagall. "Only beauty. If I had succeeded, can you imagine how my subjects would have thanked me? Eyes of jewels that could see farther than an eagle's! Pelts like the snow leopard's that would have allowed them to spend more time in the cold than any Warming Charm! Alas, I did not succeed."
"They didn't survive."
"As I said—"
Harry had been watching Flint's wand, while it seemed that Nott was distracted by his words. Flint lashed out while he spoke, and the curl of an Ice Wave Curse headed straight for Nott. Flint had apparently disregarded Harry as a threat.
Stupid of him, Harry thought, his blood singing through his veins, and spoke the incantation for the Inner Fire Curse. "Anima ignis!"
Flint screamed as Harry's curse blazed to life in his body, sending tendrils of smoke and curls of flame out through his eyes. Harry laughed aloud. It was a quick spell, and that meant it didn't count as torture and didn't cross the personal lines that he'd set up for himself—lines that meant he would never be like Flint—but it was justice to watch him die.
When Harry turned around, Nott was standing in the middle of shards of ice that meant he had defeated Flint's curse. Harry nodded. "Good work." It wasn't everyone who could have mustered a shield in the middle of the shock of suddenly being attacked.
"What was that, Potter?"
"The death of a Dark wizard."
"No, I mean—the curse you used on him."
Harry felt his face heat up, and he shrugged. In the chaos of the moment, he hadn't even thought about the spell before he cast it. It was one he had invented, a variation on Incendio. "Um. One I invented."
"You stayed an Auror when you could have been a spellcrafter?"
Harry shook his head and then wrinkled his nose at the smell of cooking meat coming from Flint's charred corpse. He cast a spell that would waft the stench back towards the wall. "I couldn't do that. They have to be good at all kinds of spells. Offensive magic is the only kind I like to invent."
"The only kind you find interesting enough to stick with."
But Nott's voice wasn't accusing, and Harry shrugged in acquiescence. "I suppose we should get out of here in case Flint's wards are going to go wild with the death of their master."
Nott started and got moving. Harry did, too, feeling something in him quiet and spread out like a lake of cool black water as he looked back at Flint.
He fought me, and he lost .
It was a kind of peace.
Potter was nothing like Theo had expected.
He had thought Potter would have only the kind of strength that gold did: a soft, shiny surface, but one that would bend and melt under any kind of pressure. Theo had expected vomiting after the first kill they made—or rather, Theo made and Potter didn't manage, because that was the way it would work. He had expected to report, duly, up the chain, that his partner, like the last one, was weak-willed and needed to be transferred out of the Hit Wizards.
Instead, Potter had killed Flint without visible bloodthirstiness but also without visible upset.
Theo looked up as Potter came into the office the next morning. Potter nodded to him and shed his black robes with the kind of twisting shrug that seemed usual for him, then sat down at the desk and opened the next file.
"Ohhh," he said softly, on an exhale that seemed, to Theo, to have a touch of pleasure in it. "Muggleborn? That's unusual for a Dark wizard."
"Because purebloods are more likely to be evil?"
"No," Potter said, giving Theo an odd look. "Because they're more likely to have the books and resources that let them learn Dark magic. Although I think the majority of Dark wizards I've confronted have actually been half-bloods," he added, sounding a little interested.
Theo shook his head. Potter looked at him and tilted his head. "You don't think they are? You think purebloods are the majority?"
"No. I don't mean—" Theo reordered his thoughts. Potter waited for him to do so, eyes patient. He looked as far as someone could be from the wizard who had invented a spell to burn someone from the inside out.
"Potter, what happened to you?"
Potter's lip curled upwards, in the most perfect expression of contempt Theo had ever seen. "Are you going to get all moralizing on me, too?"
Theo blinked. "What are you talking about?"
"Ron and Hermione are always asking me what happened," Potter said, and crossed his eyes while he pitched his voice high. "What trauma occurred to make me kill my enemies instead of leave them alive behind me. As though the war wouldn't be enough explanation." He snorted and shook his head.
Theo tapped his fingers on the desk. Well, yes, he hadn't thought about that. But then again, he had assumed Potter was pure gold, so sweet and shining that he wouldn't even want to kill his enemies. He hadn't exactly killed the Dark Lord.
"I wasn't about to put the question that way—"
"But you still want to put the question?"
"Yes, because you're different than I thought you were. I'm trying to understand."
Potter eyed him for a few seconds, then shrugged. "I suppose it might make us work together better, and that's something I could use when the person at my back might have to save my life. All right.
"I was too violent to be an Auror. They tried to explain the rules to me, but there were all these sorts of regulations that only came into play during certain kinds of duels, and if the person you were fighting had done certain kinds of crimes, and if they were citizens of another country, and so on. I didn't have time to fuss with all the rules in the middle of a battle. I did try that a few times, during my first years in the Aurors, and I nearly died."
Now that Theo thought about it, he did remember news stories about Potter going to hospital a few times. "How did you survive?"
"They weren't that lucky, and my Healers were good. But after that, I developed my reflexes and my dislike of being hurt even more. So the next time I faced someone who was trying to kill me, I killed her instead."
"They hushed that up?"
Potter snorted and waggled his hand back and forth. "Sort of. They couldn't hide that she was dead, but they said that she had got caught in the crossfire of spells between me and another Auror."
"Wait. Are you talking about Elissa Selwyn?"
"Yes? Why do you sound so surprised?"
"She had a reputation as an immaculate duelist, that's all. My father respected her. I would have thought she'd beat you."
A second later, Theo wondered if he should have said that, but Potter just gave him a slightly bloodthirsty grin. "She thought she was winning, too, right up until the point that I used a curse that pulverized all her bones."
"I don't know that one."
"It was a Bone-Breaking Curse, but my rage combined with it and created an effect I haven't been able to duplicate since."
Theo leaned back in his chair. "You sound as if you might be dangerous to your partners, Potter."
"I never hurt someone on the same side as me," Potter insisted. "But my partners didn't want to work with me because they were nervous about my power and whether someone who faced us might end up dying. And this last death was too much for them. The last one I actually caused, not Weatherby's, the last one most people think I did," he added, as if it was an afterthought.
"Who was that?"
"What, don't read the papers, Nott?"
"I'd rather read the files on the people we have permission to kill."
Potter tilted his head in acceptance. "Tessa Malfoy."
"You killed Lucius Malfoy's cousin?"
"She had started casting the Imperius when she was thirteen," Potter said. "She got addicted to it the way that people can when they're not that strong of will, and she had been behind a string of supposedly accidental deaths and suicides, by using the spell to make people jump to their deaths and the like. People who had never done anything to her, just. because she could." His eyes shone for a second as if reflecting firelight. "Yes, I killed her. I doubt Azkaban would have been able to hold her. She was on her way to casting the Imperius wandlessly."
Theo shook his head slowly. They had hushed that one up. In fact, they had made the death of Tessa Malfoy sound like an accident, something that had happened when she ran into a former Death Eater burgling her house.
"Why didn't they get rid of you instead of sending you over here?"
Potter's smile was grim. "Because my personal status is nearly as high as the Malfoys', due to my fame. And when Lucius demanded an investigation, I told him what they would find. I still don't know for sure if he knew what his cousin was doing. But he could tell the word would get out and ruin her reputation posthumously. He backed off really fast."
Theo blinked at nothing for a long moment. Then he snapped back into focus as he realized that Potter had turned back to the stack of files in front of him as if they were more important than Theo.
"You enjoy it."
Potter kept his head still, but his eyes tracked over to Theo. "Killing? Yes."
"Why has no one dragged you to a Mind-Healer yet?"
Potter's eyes widened, and for a moment, Theo thought he would lash out at the suggestion, but Potter merely spoke in a high, breathy voice, the way he had earlier when apparently imitating Granger. "Oh, no, why would Harry Potter need a Mind-Healer? Everyone knows that he's over that awful war! It's so terrible if he does! Only think about what the weakness would reveal, how weak he might look to other people…" He trailed off and shook his head. "That's why, Nott."
"They don't want to think about what it did to you to rescue them."
Potter snorted. "They."
"What?"
"You don't want to think about it, either, Nott."
Theo said something he'd long thought of as true, but had never expected that he'd have the chance to tell Potter. "I don't like the way they used you. If they had at least paid you or promised you some reward for it—if you'd been older—it would have been one thing. You could have hunted the Dark Lord the way you and I hunt Dark wizards now. But your rewards being fame and dead parents and people at school turning on you again and again? No, I never thought it was fair."
Potter turned towards him this time. "But you took the rescue."
"Yeah, because I'm not stupid. I just never thought you owed it to me."
Potter studied him in silence. Theo tried to ignore the cold prickle traveling up his spine, as he thought of Potter's coiled silence in the moments before he had killed Elias Flint. Perhaps he didn't believe Theo, or didn't think his conditional gratitude a good thing.
Then Potter smiled, slightly, bright and cold.
"I could get to like you, Nott."
Theo turned back to his own files at the same moment Potter did, listening to the rustle of parchment from across the office and the absent way that Potter tapped a quill against his teeth.
Theo thought he might be able to return the sentiment.
