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Chapter Two—Awakening

Theo awakes in the kitchens with house-elves fussing over him.

He lies still, one hand clenched on the floor at his side, and remembers the events that brought him here. Potter, his green eyes big with compassion. The terrible feeling of losing control, of wanting to run and tear and kick and punch and rip his own skin open. The sound of Potter's voice, wandering among Theo's wandering thoughts and binding them back together.

He is alive. He is sane. He did not do something that would have scalded him every time he remembered it.

He owes Potter a debt he cannot repay.

Theo closes his eyes and lies there in the last extreme of humiliation. He never owed Potter anything before this, except the vague and ill-defined sort of debt that everyone living owed him in the wake of the Dark Lord's destruction. And now, he owes him everything. Potter could claim every Galleon from Theo's vaults, and it wouldn't tally the cost of Theo's sanity and life to him.

Theo pushes away the thought, finally. He has no idea how to repay the debt right now, and Potter hasn't come to talk about it. And Theo is also not up to thinking about how Potter was probably the best option to find him. Most Gryffindors would have mocked Theo and not been able to prevent him from hurting himself or going to the bed of whoever fed the potion to him. Most Hufflepuffs would have insisted on bringing Theo to Madam Pomfrey, and most Ravenclaws would have done the same. Any Slytherin who found him could have been part of the plot.

Don't think about it.

That advice served him very well in the war. Theo turns his mind determinedly to thoughts of revenge.

The problem is, there are so many options. By the time the door to the kitchens opens, Theo is cupping a bowl of hot tomato soup in his hands, sipping from it, and daydreaming about the kind of burns he could inflict on his enemies with it.

"Hello?"

Potter. Of course it is. Again, he's better than the alternatives. Theo nods to him without moving from the pallet. "Potter. What do you want?"

Potter sits down on the floor across from Theo, leaning against the leg of a table. "I thought we could start searching for the person who did this to you. Or people, since there might be more than one."

Theo checks himself in the middle of swallowing, which leads to coughing and Potter casting a silent Anti-Choking Charm on him without being asked. Theo swallows what's left in his throat and rasps, "Potter, what the hell?"

"Do you not even want that much help? I thought, since you said—"

"Why would you want to help me? You know what I'm going to do them when I find them."

Potter blinks a few times. Then he said, "You thought I would object to what you want to do to them."

"Yes? You're a Gryffindor. Nice and moral. You didn't even kill the Dark Lord. You defeated him instead."

Potter blinks again. Then he smiles. Theo stares at him. He's never seen a smile like that, not in the mirror and not on the faces of Quidditch players or Housemates or other Gryffindors.

Potter says softly, "They did something that could have resulted in you dying, or tearing out your eyes, or getting raped." His voice rises, then lowers back down, as if he thinks that he'll scare Theo. "Yes, I'm fine with whatever you do to them. And I want to help." He looks at Theo for a second, then adds, "As much as you'll allow me to."

Theo has to shove away all the emotions that want to clog his throat and cloud his mind. He nods, once. "You should know that I'll be taking the lead on this."

"As it should be."

"Harry! Where have you been?"

Theo pauses and leans back against the wall of the dungeon corridor, blending easily into the shadows. Potter does no more than nod at him as he turns to face Granger, who's come bolting down the corridor waving her arms.

"Right here, Hermione," Potter says, giving her a puzzled smile.

"We're going to be late for Potions! Haven't I told you not to wander the corridors at night? Or at least take your Cloak if you do?"

"I don't like wearing the Cloak anymore, I told you that…"

Granger goes on scolding, and Potter goes on offering her half-hearted responses. He's maneuvered her so that she's facing back down the corridor and towards Slughorn's classroom, and thus away from Theo. Potter glances back at Theo once more before he steps around the corner and out of sight, and nods with a slashing motion.

I'll be here if you need me.

His eyes give the same message that his words have all that morning. Or the words under the words. It seemed so obvious to both of them that Theo realizes abruptly he didn't need to listen to Potter say it.

He has his own confrontation to head towards. But he lingers where he stands for a moment, staring after Potter and wondering at his own sudden sense of loneliness. He's never felt it before, while the pain he experienced after the Amortentia dosing was at least familiar.

Theo shakes his head. The Amortentia changed him in many ways, including exposing him to depths of fear and rage he's never felt before. Perhaps this is just another one of them.

He turns and walks towards the Slytherin common room, ignoring the fact that he's supposed to be in Slughorn's Potions classroom with the Gryffindors right now. Of everyone he knows, Slughorn will be the easiest to talk around.

And Potter—who knows?—might actually offer excuses and the like for him.

"Sanguis."

Eyes all over the common room are watching Theo as he walks calmly through the door and inside, sitting down in a chair by the fire.

He has had time to consider how he wants to play the game. He could have stormed in with wand blazing. But he still doesn't know how he was fed the Amortentia, and too many reactions to the sight of a wand in a hand would be frightened because of the war, which would make it impossible to sort out the guilty.

He could have played vulnerable and affected by the Amortentia. But he's been gone too long without trying to seek out the object of his forced affections. They already know something is wrong.

So the way he's chosen is cool and unaffected, to see what happens and who approaches him.

"Why aren't you in Potions, Nott?"

"The same reason you aren't, I imagine, Malfoy," Theo says carelessly, turning to glance at his yearmate, who's leaning forwards from a chair on the other side of the hearth.

Malfoy is certainly a good suspect for who could have fed him the Amortentia. He has the Potions skill necessary to brew it. And for all that his family escaped any deadly consequences of the war because of Potter's testimony, Malfoy is filled with a low, simmering rage that makes him convinced everyone else has had a better bargain with fate than him. He could have thought it would be funny to watch Theo crawl at his feet, begging—

Or someone else's feet, if he brewed it for another person. Theo will have to see.

Interestingly, Malfoy turns pale. "It can't possibly be the same reason."

"Oh? Why not?"

Malfoy appears lost for words, gazing at him. Theo crosses his legs and turns to stare into the fire. He's watching from the corner of his eye and notices when the door to the girls' dormitories opens and Pansy comes down the stairs.

Pansy is also a good choice for the Amortentia, Theo thinks. She doesn't have the Potions skill to do it herself, but she would think it's funny to humiliate him. She's a social outcast among the rest of the school for urging others to give Potter to the Dark Lord, but not in Slytherin, where most people think she did the only thing she could. She has more power than Theo does, more pull.

She sees Theo looking at her and sticks her nose up in the air, flouncing a little as she makes her way towards a couch on the far side of the room. It's not unusual for her to be here. She doesn't have Potions.

Theo still thinks it's interesting.

"Answer me, Nott. What's the reason?"

Theo glances back at Malfoy and curls his lip. He can't believe he once thought this jealous, raging arsehole was his friend. Or maybe Malfoy was actually different in the days when Theo called him Draco. Theo supposes he can't discount the possibility. "If you don't know, I don't see the need to tell you."

"It's not the same reason as mine."

"You sound sure of that."

"I am!"

"Then you don't need me to reassure you," Theo says with a lazy smile, and leans back in the chair. Out of sight in the chair itself, he flicks his wand in a Detection Charm, and the furniture in the common room lights up only to his eyes, furiously glowing with charms to preserve it, the traces of ancient duels, hexes laid by students to protect their favorite seats, and magic that relates to the house-elves' duties.

Theo can see nothing that relates to Amortentia. Then again, he has already accepted that he probably didn't get it from sitting in a chair or on a couch in the common room.

He still has to check the most obvious routes.

"Explain what you mean by this, Nott!"

Theo turns his attention back towards Malfoy, who, at this point, is pale and sweating. He smiles and shakes his head. "You were sure that I had nothing to do with it. I have no reason to contradict you."

"Theo."

That's Blaise Zabini's voice. Theo turns to face him without getting up from the chair. It will hurt if Blaise was in on the Amortentia trick, but he can't discount that. Blaise is as close a thing as Theo has to a friend in Slytherin, but he's also someone who has become infinitely dangerous since his mother died. He might think that inflicting Amortentia on Theo was a lark and that he could have stepped in before anything bad happened.

He might have been the target of the potion.

Blaise walks down the staircase, past the chair Draco is sitting in, and right up to Theo. He studies him for a second, and then says, "Would you stop teasing Draco and come with me? I have something to talk to you about."

"If it's important," Theo says, and stands up. "You know how fun it is to tease Draco. How easily convinced he was that I was infatuated with him last year."

That's true; somehow Draco convinced himself, without Theo's intervention, that Theo's attempt to keep out of both sides' way last year meant Theo must be pining after Draco, who was too prominent to escape the Carrows' attention. But it should also be interesting to see who reacts to this.

Draco begins a furious protest. Pansy leans forwards and stares at Theo with wide eyes, her face all attention. That could just be hunger for gossip, though.

Blaise sighs, as if this is all irritating and beneath him, and jerks his head towards the boys' dormitories. "Come on, Theo. Yes, it's important."

Theo nods and follows him, a little disappointed. The reactions are too general and vague to tell him anything.

Or the real culprits aren't in the common room.

Theo will have to figure out a way to determine which is the true cause, after he speaks with Blaise.

"Be careful."

Theo jerks to a stop, narrowing his eyes. Blaise would ordinarily make some cryptic pronouncement, or launch into a long explanation about how he's going to punish those responsible for his mother's death, or tell a joke and laugh when Theo doesn't. But now he just stares at Theo with hooded eyes and doesn't smile.

"What do you know?" Theo asks softly.

"I know that certain people think they can get away with anything." Blaise leans forwards a little, and Theo does the same thing. "I know that you've taken precautions, but they weren't enough last night. And I know that you can't count on the same lucky chance happening again."

In a heartbeat, Theo has his wand drawn, and in another one, he's hurtled across the bedroom and is pressing Blaise to the wall. Every inch of his skin feels seared—he doesn't want to be this close to anyone so soon after being dosed with Amortentia—but that doesn't matter much, compared to the searing hatred he can feel tearing through him. "Did you do it?" he snarls.

"Do what?"

"You know what happened last night. You know." Theo can feel the edge of a blade against his ribs, where Blaise must be holding it, but he doesn't care. He's angry enough to kill right now and not care if Blaise takes Theo with him. "What did you know? What did you let happen? What did you do?"

Blaise blinks and stares at him in wide-eyed silence. Then he says, "You took it that badly?"

"They were trying to rape me. Of course I took it that badly." Theo shoves his wand a little closer. The pressure from Blaise's knife grows in response. Theo honestly doesn't care. He will tear and rip Blaise apart if he must. "Tell me what you know."

Blaise takes the time to stare at Theo some more. Theo can feel his mind responding, bending under the pressure. If it breaks—

"I honestly didn't know you would take it that badly," Blaise says. "My mother used Amortentia on my stepfathers, and it never affected them much, except to make them a little more susceptible to suggestions. You're talking as if that potion would have you crawling on your knees for whoever brewed it."

Theo makes himself take a step back. It does sound as if Blaise didn't know about it, or wasn't in on the brewing, but more to the point, Blaise will get bored soon and stab him. "Your mother must have used a diluted form of it. This made me tear at my eyes."

Blaise blinks. It's the equivalent of a shout of shock on anyone else. "Why?"

"I took a resistance potion. One of the ingredients in it interacted badly with an ingredient in the Amortentia."

Blaise thinks about it, then shakes his head. "I have no idea which one. And I heard rumors of what was going to happen, but I don't know who brewed it, and I don't know who it was targeted to. Or if they were the same person."

Theo half-nods. It'll be more time before he can fully accept Blaise's assertions, but at least he thinks it's true that Blaise saw it as a lark and no harm. "Very well," he says, and makes his wand vanish.

Blaise presumably does the same thing with the knife, although Theo can't tell. He's never been able to tell when Blaise holds one except for the way he stands. Or if he feels it. "Why did you manage to resist tearing your eyes out?"

"I'm very strong of will."

"Right."

Theo shakes his head. He isn't about to talk about Potter with anyone, even Blaise, when they were just threatening each other with knives and wands. "I hope that I don't find out you had anything to do with this, Blaise. I hope you're being honest."

"Yeah," Blaise says, and his lips draw back in a smile that is probably honest in its sheer bloody-mindedness. "Me, too."

"Did you find anything out?"

Potter sent a silvery stag to tell Theo that he would be in the kitchens, and Theo tilts his head as he watches Potter start up from the bench on one side of the table. He half-shrugs and walks towards Potter, sitting down across from him. Potter sits back, but his shoulders are tense.

"Not enough to be going on with. Why are you that tense, Potter? Surely you don't think I think you had anything to do with this."

"I didn't think you would want anyone this close to you. That's why I sat down where I did this morning. And kept the distance from you that I did when we were walking through the corridor."

"So you see me as a victim."

Potter pauses, probably not understanding the anger in Theo's voice. "I don't think you gave yourself the potion, either," he says slowly.

"But you see me as someone helpless, someone who needs to be protected and coddled." Theo leans forwards and bares his teeth. "I don't want you to see me that way. I don't want you to pity me. If you do, I won't work with you."

Potter watches him with quiet, wild eyes. Theo wonders how often other people have seen this wildness in Potter, and then tells himself with disgust not to be such a stupid sentimentalist.

"I don't see you as a victim. I don't pity you. I admire you. I think you're strong and almost no one else could have resisted the Amortentia that way. I don't think I could have." Potter takes a deep breath. "That doesn't mean I'm not angry about what happened to you. And I'm trying to make you comfortable, the way I would by conjuring a stretcher for someone with a broken leg."

No one else would say that to Theo, Gryffindor or Slytherin, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. Theo was found by the one person who might not pity him and admired by someone who defeated a Dark Lord. And that just means that Theo owes him more of a debt.

Theo bares his teeth. "I owe you a debt. Greater than a life-debt. I owe you for preserving my freedom and my sight and my pride. I don't want to."

"You owe me nothing."

"Don't dismiss so quickly what you don't understand, Potter."

"I understand that you shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place, because they shouldn't have used Amortentia on you," Potter snaps back. "That's the reason you don't owe me a debt. Because I was only doing what should have been done to repair the situation."

Theo clenches a hand down by his side and inclines his head. "All right."

He has to let this go for now. He needs Potter's help to hunt down the people who did this, and that means not arguing with him about debts.

But he will not forget.