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Chapter Eight—In the News

"How do I look?"

"Like someone who can survive an interview with Rita Skeeter."

Theo's hands came up, claws out, and smoothed gently down the shoulders of Harry's robes. Harry took a deep breath and stared at himself in the mirror. He did look fairly sharp, he had to admit. The robes were a deep blue and had been retailored from some of Theo's. Theo knew the right charms for some reason, and Madam Pomfrey had helped with some of the stitching.

"You look incredible, my lord," Theo murmured, his mouth right next to Harry's ear. "I only wish we had more time before the interview, so I could reassure you of that."

Harry whirled around and kissed Theo on the mouth, so wild and messy that he actually drove Theo back across the floor with a screech of hooves. Luckily, Theo recovered easily and ended up pinning Harry against the wall, kissing him back hard. They were both panting when they moved apart.

Theo sighed and drew his wand to repair a hole in the robes that one of his claws had apparently cut. "We really need to stop, or neither of us is going to be in any shape for the interview," he murmured.

Harry nodded and looked around the Gryffindor boys' bathroom again. There was nothing left to do. Even his hair had been combed to a tamer style and softened with some sort of shampoo that, again, Theo knew about.

"Why do you know those tailoring charms and hair products?" Harry asked, for lack of anything else to say, as Theo held out his arm and paraded with Harry out of the bathroom and down the stairs from the Tower.

Theo stiffened beside him, and Harry winced, wondering if he had asked about something that he shouldn't have. But if so, he knew Theo well enough by now to realize that Theo wouldn't resent him asking. He would just ask Harry to back off.

"For a long time," Theo said at last, in a low voice, as they came down into the common room and set off towards the portrait hole, "I studied that kind of magic to feel closer to my mother. She was good at it. According to Father."

"You don't remember?"

Theo shook his head in silence, and Harry, who only knew his mother's voice because of Dementors, reached out and squeezed his shoulder as silently.

Then they went to the interview.


"Mr. Potter, what a lovely surprise to see you so charmingly attired."

Rita Skeeter sat near the middle of the table that Theo had Transfigured from wooden boards last night. They'd chosen a classroom off a mostly unused corridor in the dungeons for this interview. Harry supposed there was less chance of someone trying to eavesdrop when the master Animagus eavesdropper herself was the one doing the interview, but still.

He gave Skeeter a strained smile and sat down across from her at the table. "Good morning, Ms. Skeeter."

"Why so shy? You can call me Rita. If I can call you Harry." She leaned a little over the table and fluttered her eyelashes at him.

Harry stared at her, frankly appalled, and then heard a soft rumble behind him. Theo was snarling, almost musically, under his breath. But he flexed and snapped his claws out, and Skeeter couldn't ignore that, as much as she might have wished to. She stared at Theo, then fixed her attention on Harry again with a slightly waxy smile.

"Well, shall we get started?"

"Of course," Harry said. "I'm sure that you have lots of questions to ask me about becoming a Dark Lord, which seems to be what you think I'm doing."

"You would say that that's not what you're doing?"

"Why would I defeat a Dark Lord only to take his place?"

"Getting rid of the competition."

"I'll tell you the real story, Ms. Skeeter, but only if you put that Quick-Quotes Quill away."

Skeeter paused in reaching for the scroll of parchment in front of her and pouted at him. Cue another disturbing nightmare in the future, Harry thought. "Are you sure, Harry? Really? It's just a little thing that helps me remember what my subjects say more accurately."

"More accurately?"

"You're no fun," said Skeeter sulkily, but she put the quill away and got out an ordinary one with an air of drama that made Harry think she might have vampire heritage like Snape did. Maybe Veela. "I do hope you know that I'll be asking you some hard-hitting questions, Harry. The public deserves to know the truth."

"Like they did with your book about Dumbledore?"

"Yes, exactly." Skeeter was apparently impossible to embarrass. She poised her quill over the parchment and beamed at Harry. "Are you ready? Here's my first question. Why did you bring back the Blood of Avalon when it's been gone so long? Many people would say that we've done fine without it."

"It was an accident."

"An…accident?"

Skeeter sounded like she disbelieved him, but also like she was struggling with shock. Probably that he'd admitted it, Harry thought. He leaned back in the chair and smiled at her. "Yes. I simply intended to cure an illness that some of the former Death Eaters were experiencing. I didn't know that I would bring back the Blood of Avalon. I wasn't even aware of Avalon or that some wizards and witches had once had creature blood."

"How could you not have been aware?"

"I had a Dark Lord to defeat, Ms. Skeeter. That took priority over learning obscure facts."

"This is not an obscure fact! Every magical child is taught it at five or earlier!"

"Ah, but I didn't grow up in the magical world, Ms. Skeeter."

She gaped at him. Harry raised an eyebrow. "I was fairly sure that you knew that, Ms. Skeeter."

"I forgot, perhaps," Skeeter said in a subdued voice as she looked down and scratched some notes to herself on the parchment. Harry felt Theo's hand rest on his shoulder, and smiled a little. Theo was standing in such a position that he could read Skeeter's handwriting, never mind that it was upside-down, and the touch was his reassurance that Skeeter had written exactly what she had said, no more and no less. "I…does this mean that you don't intend to be a Dark Lord?"

"Dark Arts are the furthest thing from my mind," Harry said firmly. That he would take them up to protect people or please Theo wasn't something Skeeter needed to know. "I only did what I did because people would have died otherwise. That can't really surprise you, can it, Ms. Skeeter?"

"I—suppose not."

Harry smiled at her, and heard her breath catch. Part of him shivered in revulsion, but if she wrote a more favorable article because she thought he was handsome, well…

Was it so bad, if it helped his people? It wasn't like Harry would have anything to do with her no matter what she thought. Harry's heart and bed and body were Theo's.

My heart?

Harry swallowed and focused back on Skeeter as Theo's hand squeezed his shoulder again. It wouldn't matter what she wrote, if he lost his place in the questions and stumbled like an idiot. Skeeter would no doubt make him look like a fool if he portrayed himself that way.

"What do you intend to do, now that you may be brought up on charges of human Transfiguration before the Wizengamot?"

Harry sighed and let his head hang a little. "Everyone is always piling their shit on my shoulders," he whispered, and it was no effort to sound exhausted, when he was. "I hoped I would be able to live a normal life after the war. I accepted the burden of supporting those with the Blood of Avalon so they wouldn't die, but still, that shouldn't dominate my life, should it? Instead, I'm going to have to go in front of the Wizengamot and probably take Veritaserum to prove it was accidental reawakening of people's creature heritage."

"Marcus Flint does seem upset to have his troll blood reawakened. Someone could perhaps argue that you should have asked the people you transformed before you did it."

"Perhaps he shouldn't have taken the Dark Mark, then, if the results are so objectionable."

Skeeter's mouth fell open a little, and for a moment, Theo's hand tightened on his shoulder in warning. But Harry had said what he meant to say, and not all of Theo's warnings would change his mind. He lounged back in his chair and smiled at Skeeter.

"Some people would say…"

"Once Voldemort died, the options for the people with the Dark Mark were to transform with the Blood of Avalon when someone like me took hold of the Marks or die of the sickness. Is Flint saying he would have preferred to die? Because I suppose I could still withdraw my support of the Mark and then he would. Maybe there are people who would prefer to die human than live as part-troll. But then he needs to say that."

"I think he would prefer to live as human."

"That isn't an option that exists. A child can whinge for a three-horned unicorn all they want, but that doesn't make three-horned unicorns exist."

Theo snorted behind him. Harry carefully didn't look back at him. He would start laughing himself if that was the case, and Skeeter would manage to twist that to make Harry look bad without lying about anything.

"You are saying he can never transform back to human?"

"I'm saying that I would need time to see if there is any way for me to both reverse the changes and end the Dark Mark sickness. There certainly wasn't when I took over the Marks. And if the Wizengamot imprisons me for human Transfiguration, that won't help Flint."

Skeeter's eyes widened some more. "You are threatening the Wizengamot into not imprisoning you because then you wouldn't try to turn the unhappy people back?"

"Is it threatening to say that water you charm to freeze could crack stone? I'm just naming the natural consequences."

Skeeter breathed out slowly as she leaned back in her chair. "I'm not sure the Wizengamot is ready for you, Mr. Potter."

"I just want to live a simple life. I'm sure that Flint and most of the members of the Wizengamot want to, as well. Why don't we all help each other do that?"


Theo waited until Skeeter was definitely gone from the school, and even then cast a ward that would alert him and Harry to the presence of any insects in the room, before he whirled around and pinned Harry to the wall of the empty classroom.

"You were magnificent."

Harry laughed a little and reached out to lay his hands on Theo's arms. "And you were a model of self-restraint."

"Some of your answers made me feel like I was drowning. But you said what you wanted to say, and you also said it perfectly truthfully. Flint could have sought you out and told you he'd prefer to die. But I bet he won't."

"No. Just to whinge, like I said."

"I want to fuck you so much when you talk about disappointing unreasonable people."

Harry felt himself flush, and he reached for Theo. But a flutter of wings overhead made him drop his hand and turn with a sigh. A large tawny owl landed on his arm and hooted emphatically at him.

"Yes, I know I'm not who you were supposed to find, but you're here anyway," Harry muttered, and detached the letter from the bird's foot. "Now go away, because there won't be an answer."

The owl hooted sadly, but did take off and fly towards one of the staircases. Harry cracked the seal on the letter and snorted. Yeah, it was a marriage offer for Malfoy. There was a lot about how the writer would be able to please a Veela because they'd gone to a lot of brothels in Knockturn Alley.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad," Harry told Theo as he crumpled up the letter and threw it away. "But I didn't get as much post as Malfoy implied once I set up the ward to direct it to me. I think he was exaggerating."

Theo said nothing. Harry looked up, wondering if he was jealous for some reason, but he was smiling, his lips just showing the edge of fang-like teeth.

"What?"

"You can go in there and show clearly that you're going to destroy people who whinge at you, and intimidate Skeeter into being honest. But you're also compassionate enough to take a minor inconvenience away from someone you were school rivals with."

Harry shrugged, feeling himself flush. "Malfoy is one of the people I changed. I feel responsible for him."

"I consider the Blood of Avalon a gift."

"I know. But we already discussed with Skeeter how not everyone's you, Theo."

Theo sighed and shook his head. "I discovered something new last night that might persuade some people to keep their heritage," he said. "Would you like to see it?"

"Yes."

"We have to go to sleep first."

"Then let's find some place more protected, because I don't fancy going to sleep in the middle of the dungeons like this."

Theo rolled his eyes.


"As if I would have let you just go to sleep in the middle of a bare classroom."

"You never know."

Theo took his wand out of the holster with more force than necessary. Harry grinned and lounged back on the Transfigured bed that Theo had made out of some stones he'd pried from the wall.

"Stop looking at me like that, or I won't be able to cast the Drowsiness Charm."

"Like what?"

"You know very well what."

Harry grinned harder. He did, in fact, know how he was looking at Theo, with his head tilted and his eyes half-closed. It seemed as if sleeping with Theo had freed some of his confidence in himself. He could charm people and manipulate them if he wanted, although Theo was the only person he was interested in manipulating to sleep with him.

"Please, Harry."

Harry smiled and leaned back on the pillow, gracious in victory. Theo spoke the Drowsiness Charm softly, and Harry felt his eyes droop shut. He was aware of Theo joining him on the bed and casting the charm again before he slid into darkness.


Harry blinked and stared around him. He stood in a strange landscape that looked as if it were made of crushed emeralds, the waving grassland glowed so brightly.

The air sparkled as if with cold, but when Harry took a deep inhalation, it was warm. He still shivered a little as he turned and saw Theo appear beside him. He relaxed when Theo reached out and slid his fingers gently down Harry's arm.

"Where are we?" Harry whispered. It was a dream, probably, since they had had to go to sleep to get here, but he still found himself uneasy about how real this seemed.

"Avalon."

Harry jumped and glanced at Theo, but he seemed entirely serious. "I thought no one could go there. That was it another world and it closed behind the creatures that used to live there if they married humans."

"It usually wasn't marriage," Theo said, and smiled at him when Harry felt his face grow hot. "You're embarrassed by that, after everything we've done? You're adorable."

"Well. Anyway."

"Yes. I think you made some assumptions about the Blood of Avalon without talking with us. Then again, I did much the same thing." Theo shook his head, eyes distant for a long moment before he focused on Harry again. "This is Avalon. Do you want me to show you how I know?"

"Yes, please."

Theo tossed his head up and then down. He had gone full satyr, but Harry had never heard anything like the shrill whistle that his horns appeared to produce. He jumped and stared a. Theo, who just looked back at him unrepentantly.

There was a sharp stir of wind around them, and then part of the air seemed to be yanked back, as though someone had been standing behind it waiting to take it away like a curtain.

Harry's mouth fell open as he stared at the being who was revealed by the disappearance of the air, and his first, vague thought was that he would never say Theo had gone full satyr again. This was a satyr, an overwhelming presence with golden staring eyes that burned like fire and a cock between his legs that—

Harry jerked his eyes away, his face burning.

Theo laughed, a dark sound. "Yes, you're mine, and you should show it," he muttered, his clawed hand coming to rest on Harry's shoulder for a minute.

Harry swallowed and said nothing. Honestly, he didn't know if he would have been able to say anything. But he did believe Theo that he had somehow found the way to Avalon in his dreams.

He swallowed again and asked, "Did you just—go to sleep, and wake up here?"

"Yes." Theo looked towards the satyr still, and Harry might have felt jealous if not for the weight of Theo's hand on his shoulder, which promised that no matter what, Theo was committed to him. "But one of my kindred told me that the barriers between the worlds will not remain upright for much longer."

"What—does that mean?"

"That soon the Blood of Avalon will return to Britain in other ways than its reawakening in those of us you transformed," Theo said, and smiled at Harry, bright and sweet. "Soon the satyrs and the vampires and the other beings will come back to live among us. And then," he said, leaning towards Harry and sending hot breath washing over his neck, "the Wizengamot will have bigger problems to deal with than accusing you of human Transfiguration."