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Chapter Three—Working for Theo

"I found out why Malfoy was out of class during Potions the other day. His father is dying."

Nott pauses in the middle of lifting a biscuit to his mouth. He's been eating in the kitchens since the Amortentia incident, which Harry can't blame him for. The potion probably was slipped to him in the Great Hall. "Oh? Why?"

Harry sits down across the table from Nott. He ate breakfast upstairs himself, but he sips at a cup of pumpkin juice to keep the elves happy. "Apparently, Mr. Malfoy wanted to remove his Dark Mark. He did something involving runes and a ritual—no, I can't be more detailed than that, my source didn't know, so don't glare at me like that. But it backfired, and he's dying slowly."

"So Draco might have thought I had something to do with what happened to his father when I told him I was out of Potions for the same reason."

"Yes. Or maybe that something similar had happened to your father."

Nott smiles in the bloodthirsty way Harry admires. He doesn't know if he would have been able to do that himself if he was dosed with Amortentia. "My dear father has put himself in a magical coma."

"For the same reasons?" Harry blurts, and then flushes. It's not like Nott owes Harry an explanation.

Other than quickly raking Harry with a stare, though, Nott doesn't seem to take offense. "No. He thinks that it will profit him to wait out some years without aging until he can re-emerge into a world that has forgotten some of the injuries of the war."

"Huh. I didn't know you could do things like that. Wait out years in a coma without aging, I mean," he adds, when Nott raises an eyebrow. "That's kind of brilliant."

"You don't sound like someone who would admire my father, Potter."

"I don't," Harry says indignantly. "I admire the magic. I still think he's a bastard for being a Death Eater. I'm capable of feeling more than one thing at the same time. The way I want to destroy the people or person who slipped you that potion and also feel that you have the right to destroy them."

Nott watches him with eyes that look like a Patronus's, deep and wild. "Why do you want to destroy them?"

"Because they could have got you raped, or dead, or mutilated. All of those are possible!"

"Until two days ago, you didn't know me from any other Slytherin. You and I had never spoken to each other. You never tried to rescue me. I left the school with the other Slytherins during the battle when given the chance." Nott shifts a little closer. "Help me. I'm trying to understand this. Why would you care?"

"How could I—how could I not?" Harry shakes his head. "I would care about anyone in your situation, Nott. Is that what you want to hear?"

Nott keeps considering him, the biscuit forgotten in his hand. Harry keeps watching him. The fact that Nott is sitting in the kitchens and making plans for revenge instead of screaming his lungs out in a corner already makes him the strongest person Harry knows.

"My best friend wouldn't have cared," Nott says at last. "He would have thought it was a lark."

"He's a prat of a best friend, then."

"Don't think to criticize him to me."

"I'll say he's a prat, and I'll mean it," Harry says stubbornly. "How could he think that getting you raped is a lark?"

"He was only familiar with a diluted version of Amortentia, and didn't realize what the full version of the potion could do." Nott's eyes are blank as he draws back and takes a few bites of the biscuit. "Regardless, I can't count on him to tell me the names of my enemies. I did a bit of feeling out in the common room again yesterday, when some of the people in the year below ours were there. Some people reacted with laughter—"

One of the house-elves' cauldrons blows up.

Nott throws himself backwards, his hand clawing for his wand. Harry throws up a shield to keep the elves and Nott and himself safe from the flying bits of metal, and then sits there, his head bowed, breathing harshly. His hands are clenched in front of him.

"Potter."

Nott's voice is low and vibrating. Harry glances at him, and Nott meets his eyes without fear, but with some emotion that Harry can't tell the name of. He's hard to read when he's not out of his mind on a potion.

"Was that accidental magic?"

"Yes." Harry runs a shaking hand through his hair and takes a long breath, wincing as one of the pieces of the cauldron already on the floor bursts apart with a flash of red and a spang sound. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I—haven't had an outburst like that in months. I should have controlled it better."

Nott pauses for a long enough moment that Harry wonders if he's going to be asked to leave. Then he says, "Tell me why it happened."

"The thought of people laughing at you." Harry averts his eyes and concentrates on his breathing the way he used to when he was actually trying to practice Occlumency. Otherwise, he'll make something else explode, and he really doesn't want to hurt Nott. "It's—it's horrendous, that they would laugh at the thought of you being love potioned."

"Tell me something, Potter."

Harry nods slowly. Nott is eating, and seems so voracious at the moment that Harry isn't sure he's going to stop tearing at the toast he's holding to actually ask his question.

"Someone tried to use a love potion on you during our sixth year. You said it caught Weasley by mistake, and he's your best friend. But you didn't get this angry about it. Why not?"

"Because I could take him to Slughorn for the antidote right away. But that wasn't an option for you. And because it was a mistake. Ro—I mean, the person who intended the potion for me wasn't trying to rape Ron."

"But they were trying to rape you."

Harry shrugs.

"That's it? A shrug?" Nott pauses to lick a bit of marmalade off his lips. Harry ignores his own reaction to that. Since the war, he's sometimes had reactions like that, ones that he doesn't really understand, and even if he did, there's absolutely no reason to impose his own urges on Nott. Someone already is. "After you blew apart a cauldron over me?"

Nott's voice is scathing, rasping up and down Harry's spine like claws trying to dig the bone out. Harry lifts his chin and just nods.

"Why?"

Harry sighs. It's hard to discuss this with someone who isn't Ron or Hermione and doesn't just accept his "saving people thing." But Nott was hideously vulnerable in front of Harry the other night. He deserves to know.

"When it happens to me, it doesn't matter to me as much as when it happens to other people," Harry says quietly. "I told you the story about facing the basilisk. I was more worried about Ginny than myself."

Nott thrusts his head a little forwards and looks at Harry like the gargoyle outside Dumbledore's office used to. Harry finds himself smiling slightly. Maybe Nott can recover some of his balance this way.

Harry would certainly rather see Nott fierce and suspicious and demanding answers than helpless in the thrall of Amortentia.

"Is that why you said that I didn't owe you a debt?"

Harry blinks. "No. You don't owe me one because you don't owe me one." One of the tables creaks, and Harry hastily pulls his magic back into himself. Although he hasn't told anyone this, he thinks that it might be more uncontrolled now because the Horcrux he hosted was doing something to affect or suppress it.

"You would have come to the rescue of anyone under Amortentia."

"Yes, that's right. This time it just happened to be you."

"Why didn't you suggest bringing me to Professor Slughorn for an antidote?"

"We would have had to explain things to him. And you know what he's like. He likes to collect people. I didn't want you to have to go through that. The explanation or the collecting, or having him know the secret and wondering if he would try to use it for his own gain." Harry admires what Professor Slughorn did to help students at Hogwarts survive last year and during the battle, but the war didn't change the core of who the man is.

Nott draws back with a sharp hiss. Harry hops to his feet and whirls around to face the door, his wand in his hand.

"Calm down, Potter," Nott says, and his voice is low. "I—have you been spying on me? Draco said that you had some way to spy on people and make yourself appear as if you were a ghost."

"No," Harry says, turning around and sitting again. His body is shaking with adrenaline. He averts his gaze from Nott when he notices the other boy is drawing away from him a bit. "Why do you ask?"

"Only someone who really knows me would say that. Blaise might say that. But no one else knows how much I would hate telling Professor Slughorn about being under Amortentia."

Harry shakes his head. "I don't know. I just—it wasn't a solution."

Nott stares at him for a long moment still, and then goes back to eating his toast. Harry shakes his hand out and breathes slowly to control the wild magic racing around him that wants an outlet.

"I have to admit that I am not quite sure how to continue conducting the investigation into who gave me the potion when I can't rule any of the likely suspects out," Nott says abruptly. "What ideas did you have for it?"

"I could steal some Veritaserum."

Nott wheezes and chokes. Harry stands up hurriedly, then steps back as hurriedly. He doesn't want to crowd Nott or make him lash out. Harry wants to make him feel safe, he wants to—

There probably aren't words for what he wants to do, or if there are, they're probably the kind that he should keep to himself.

"Are you all right, Nott?" Harry asks, without moving closer.

Nott waves a hand at him and reaches out to take the glass of water that a house-elf is already in position to give him. He swallows and says, "Fine. Fine." He stares at his hands and the water in a way that seems to contradict that, but snaps his head up before Harry can get too worried.

"How would you steal Veritaserum?" he asks, his voice precise.

"I have a way to sneak around protective spells and people trying to see me," Harry says. "The way Malfoy was talking about." He grimaces a little, because he knows that wearing the Cloak will bring him closer to death again; that's the way it is now. But for Nott, he's willing to do this. "After that, it's just a matter of going to Slughorn's office."

"He's updated his protections."

"There are still ways to get past it." Harry might have to do some research on wards so he knows what spells he should cast, but with the burning, roiling anger in him, that's not going to be a problem.

"Fine. Answer another question for me. Why are you willing to steal a potion that's highly restricted and is illegal to use outside of certain situations in criminal trials?"

"Because what happened to you was wrong. And I'm angry about it. And we don't even know who did it, so we don't know if they're going to try again. Or if it was more than one person, and we'd be trying to guard against one suspect and get blindsided by someone else."

"We."

"Yeah."

Nott watches him with those wild, unreadable eyes again. "You are—quite invested in this."

"I already told you why."

"And if I said that I didn't want to share the hunt with you? That I wanted to find this person or these people and take vengeance on my own?"

Harry snorts. "I'd say that you were contradicting yourself, because you already admitted that you didn't have many ideas of how to find them and asked for my help. If you want me to step back after I get the Veritaserum for you, then—fine. I will." The words are almost torn out of the center of his chest, but he has to respect Nott's free will. Right now, he's one of the few people that does.

Nott abruptly jerks his head down again. "You may steal the Veritaserum for me, and then I will decide whether I want to pursue the matter on my own."

"Thank you, Nott. It'll take me a few days to look up the spells we need in the library in case Slughorn does have something unusual on his office, but then we'll have the potion, I promise."

"You say that I owe you no debt. And then you keep doing things that put me more and more in your debt."

Harry shakes his head wildly. "I know that you don't—that you might have reasons not to know what basic human decency is, Nott. But this is what this is. I'm doing it because what happened to you was wrong, okay? Not because I want you in my debt or because this is some kind of power play."

"You might have me in your debt without making a conscious power play."

Harry groans. "Look, what do I have to do? Say with some kind of complicated formula that Theo Nott owes Harry Potter no debt and never will?"

There's a silent, inwards explosion this time. White light sleets past Harry's eyes for a moment, and the tables thump and sway in place. The house-elves squeak in alarm and hide near the fireplace.

Nott wheezes again. "Will you stop doing that?"

"You mean—that really is what I had to do to disclaim any debt between us?"

"Yes," Nott says, looking cross. "It means that no matter what I say or do, no debt of any kind will form between us, no tie between our magic based on what I owe you, or any means of compelling me to behave in a certain way because of what you have done." Now he looks disturbed at the notion.

Harry shakes his head. "Well, I didn't know that's what I had to do, but I'll take it." He glances at his watch and jumps up. He has to go to the dormitory and get ready for Transfiguration, or Hermione is going to start asking questions about where he was. "See you later, Nott. I'll let you know when I've got the Veritaserum."

"Potter."

Urgency or not, Harry can't walk away from Nott when he uses that voice. Maybe because it seems like too many people have already walked away from him. Harry swallows and turns around. "Yeah."

Nott is watching him, turning a ring on one of his fingers. It's made of silver and seems to be a snake clasping its own tail in its mouth, which of course it is. Harry glances at it and then back at Nott's face. He can't meet Nott's eyes too much. They're—too intense.

"What am I supposed to do when I owe you and you won't let me owe you?" Nott whispers. He sounds honestly anguished.

Harry smiles as much as he can. He didn't mean to add to Nott's pain, but he doesn't think he can take back the words he spoke about disclaiming the debt even if he wanted to. "Be yourself. Be free."

And he turns and runs to Gryffindor Tower.

Harry grins a little as he stands outside Slughorn's office several nights later underneath his Invisibility Cloak. It took a while to research the spells that Slughorn had on his door, and Harry found out, to his annoyance, that they wouldn't be easy to break or slip past under the Cloak. So he set up a diversion.

(He ignores the way that the Cloak seems to murmur of death in his ears).

Harry glances at his watch. Countdown, three, two, one…

Several corridors away, all of the fireworks he purchased from George go off at once, accompanied by a steady scream from what George is calling a Wailing Wheeze. Harry listens contentedly to the shouts, and hears the door of Slughorn's quarters open a minute later.

He waits one more minute after that, although it makes his skin crawl with sweat, until he can step up to the door of Slughorn's office. He stares at it, thinking about the way that Nott was clawing at his eyes under the influence of the potion, how he still eats his meals in the kitchens, how someone wanted to rape him…

That's it. Magic bursts out of Harry, like the magic he let loose in the kitchens, aimed straight at the spells on Slughorn's office.

He didn't know how to break them just from his research, but raw force does the trick. Harry does have to leap back from the sharp, snapping parting of those spells, but he doesn't think anyone else is going to hear that over the noise of the fireworks. He slips into the office.

The storage cupboards with finished potions are shimmering under wards. Harry knows more about these spells, because Slughorn has invited him here for several "private chats" since the war, with delicate inquiries about his health and whether he can do anything for Harry. Anything at all.

Harry knows he can break past these wards with the same force. He also knows that doing so will probably ruin at least some of the finished potions.

He takes a deep breath. His mind is once again full of Nott's wild eyes, not like a Patronus this time but like madness, in the corridor where Harry found him.

I don't care what I ruin.

Harry faces the cupboards and pulls back his magic, as much as he can when it's wandless and unplanned, and then launches a blistering fusillade at the wards. There's a long smell of burning this time, and then Harry has to roll behind Slughorn's desk as a flash of fire breaks out.

But when he stands up, although the air is hot and ringing, he's not on fire, and neither is the Cloak, and the way to the cupboards is clear for the taking.

Harry slips quickly forwards and scans the shelves. Veritaserum, Veritaserum, Veritaserum…

There.

Harry's hand darts out and grabs the vial of clear potion. He barely gets it back under the Cloak before someone flings the door open, and Harry crouches a little, looking up at Professor Sinistra. Her lips are thin as she surveys the broken wards on the cabinets.

"Horace!" she calls. "Horace, it was a diversion!"

Damn. Harry can't slip past her, not without touching her with at least the Cloak's hem. He composes his mind, as carefully as he can, and then reaches out with a gentler flood of power.

Sinistra still goes flying out of the doorway and hits the far wall of the corridor. Harry slips around her and begins to run, ignoring the way that she shouts after him. It doesn't take long for him to reach a secret passage running up to a third-floor corridor that the twins assured him almost no one knew about. Harry leans back against the wall and breathes.

Maybe he should have brought the Map, but watching it would only have distracted him when he was trying to break the spells and the wards. He needed to focus to do that.

And besides…

Harry touches the small, cold flask of Veritaserum resting in his pocket, and smiles. He got what he came for, he didn't get caught, and most of all, best of all, he's helping Nott. That's all that matters.