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Chapter Eleven—Concentration
"But do you think he's—"
Ron and Hermione stop whispering to each other the second Harry comes into the Potions classroom. Harry snorts at them and takes a seat by himself in the front row. He can't blame them for keeping secrets when he has secrets from them, but he does think they could be less obvious about it.
"Harry? Mate? I thought we'd work together today."
"Harry."
Theo's voice makes Harry spin in place, a small smile working its way across his mouth. He thought Theo would be a little bolder in public, since after all he did come to the end of the Gryffindor table this morning and practically drag Harry away, but he didn't know that would extend to class.
"Yeah?"
"I thought we could work together today."
"Yeah," Harry blurts, and does remember to nod apologetically to Ron before he grabs his bag and moves down the bench so that Theo can join him. Harry knows without asking that they aren't going to the Slytherin side of the classroom. On the other hand, no Gryffindors are sitting right here, either, so they're sort of creating their own space.
I have it so bad.
Theo sits down next to Harry, aware of the looks Granger and Weasley are giving him. They're not glares, exactly. More as if they're worried about Harry and think that Theo plans to abandon and humiliate him.
How could anyone abandon him?
Honestly, the major grudge Theo has against Granger and Weasley right now is that they left Harry to wander around alone so much in the first place. How can they not see how amazing he is? How can they not want to spend every moment with him?
Then again, if they had, he wouldn't have been left for Theo to claim.
I have it so bad, Theo acknowledges to himself, and then begins setting out the ingredients for the Veritaserum antidote they're brewing today.
Slughorn comes out of his office and blinks at seeing him and Harry sitting together, but then gives them a smile Theo has always found oily and a little nod. "Inter-House unity, eh, boys? Better later than never!"
Theo gives a polite smile back and turns to Harry. "Do you want to fetch those Whomping Willow leaves we need from the storage cupboard?" Though he has no doubt that if he asked Harry to get leaves from the actual Whomping Willow on the grounds, Harry would do that.
For him.
"Yes," Harry breathes, and stands up to go to the storage cupboard. Theo smiles after him and wonders when he'll notice that the Slytherin side of the classroom is smaller by one.
It takes Harry until he's coming back to their table with the required ingredients to notice, but Malfoy isn't here. He blinks and then slides into the seat next to Theo, holding out the leaves. Theo takes them with a murmured thanks.
Probably no one else sees that he lets his fingers brush against Harry's palm, making every nerve in his body light up. But Harry sure feels it.
"Where's Malfoy?" he hisses, under cover of Slughorn making a speech about something or other.
"Going to start panting after him next?"
Harry sucks in a startled, hurt breath, and then sees the half-smile on Theo's face as he begins tearing up the leaves. "You fucker," he whispers, unable to stop smiling fully himself. Slughorn glances at him for a second, then goes on talking.
"Not yet."
Theo's elbow brushes Harry's side, a barely-there pressure, as he speaks, and Harry's body jerks helplessly.
"Mr. Potter." Slughorn turns around to frown at him, one hand rising as though he assumes he'll have to drag Harry out of the classroom and to the hospital wing. "Are you quite all right? I thought you looked a bit peaky when you came in today…"
"No, sir, I'm all right," Harry says, and then coughs. When did that inconvenient huskiness get into his voice? "I just—thought of something I should have done before I came to class."
Slughorn laughs. "Not your Potions homework, I hope!"
Harry ducks his head and lets Slughorn assume that's it, while a few Slytherins laugh, but weakly. Some of the ones who weren't involved in the plot against Theo are staring towards them blankly, and others appear to be avoiding them. Neither Parkinson nor Greengrass are in this class, so Harry doesn't know what they're doing right now.
Probably something Theo wants them to do.
Harry shivers. He wonders if it's normal to start feeling a low, burning fire in his stomach at the thought that Theo has that much power over his tormentors.
Probably no less normal than to feel so protective over someone you find suffering from Amortentia in a dungeon corridor.
The reminder makes Harry frown at the snake eggs that Theo has asked him to crack the yolks out of. Anyone should have felt that way when finding Theo. No one should have dosed him in the first place, especially for such stupid reasons as Malfoy and Parkinson and Greengrass came up with.
"Harry?"
Harry just shakes his head at Theo and hands Theo the first cracked egg, carefully, so that the yolk doesn't all drip out before they can use it. There's really no answer to that question that doesn't make things worse. At best, people are just wrapped up in themselves and avert their eyes from the problem. At worst, they're part of the problem and laugh along.
It makes Harry start wondering about whether he can change the laws regarding love potions. Malfoy and Greengrass and Parkinson will only get in a minor amount of legal trouble even if they decide that they can tell the truth about what happened.
"Such deep thoughts," Theo teases, breath gentle on his earlobe, as he begins the stir the potion.
Harry flushes brightly. He can feel Ron and Hermione staring at his back, silently asking him what he's doing. But he has no answer for them that doesn't involve feelings too private to confess.
Besides, if he does decide to confess, Theo should hear it first.
"Can you tear up these oak leaves for me?" Theo adds, and hands over another bristling handful of leaves. "Small, fine pieces, about this size." He holds up a leaf that he's already basically shredded.
Harry takes a deep breath, and nods, and goes back to preparing the potion. It's the kind of potion that could be useful to know most of the time, he thinks, in case someone tries to go after him or Theo with Veritaserum because of what they've done. It doesn't take as long to brew as Veritaserum itself, and the ingredients seem to mostly be ones that they could gather from the Hogwarts grounds or the Forbidden Forest.
Eventually he realizes that he never got an answer to his question about Malfoy. He waits until the potion needs to be stirred in a regular pattern, and offers to take over from Theo when his frown gets more pronounced from what's probably tiredness.
Theo eyes him. "As long as you stir exactly the way I tell you to. It can't go any faster, or it'll ruin the potion."
"You can direct me any time."
Harry meant the words innocently, but from the way Theo's eyes widen and his breath hitches, he took them as non-innocently as someone possibly could. Harry hides his smile against his wrist as he takes the stirring rod and listens carefully to Theo's directions: counterclockwise only, to a steady beat measured by the tapping of his fingers.
Harry takes a few turns around the cauldron with the rod before he feels he can ask the question. "So, you never did mention where Malfoy was."
"Oh, he decided not to come to class this morning."
Harry almost drops the stirring rod, but Theo gives a little hiss at him, and Harry picks the rhythm back up again. He's desperately glad, at the moment, that Theo can't speak Parseltongue, because it would be incredibly arousing.
"So is that part of your vengeance? To make them poor students?" Harry doesn't know if that sounds like enough revenge to him. On the other hand, making them suffer exactly what Theo did would be—wrong. No one should have to claw at their own faces or worry that they might be raped. No matter what they did.
To suffer the fear that Theo talked about, though? That could work.
"This is our NEWT year." Theo speaks idly, his eyes fastened on Harry's hand as if he has no higher purpose in life than making sure their Veritaserum antidote comes our correctly. "What we do this year will determine the rest of our lives. Or at least our lives for the next few years. If someone doesn't pass their NEWTS, they have to come back to Hogwarts like Flint did. Or, well, I suppose that if someone does better in classes than Flint did but fails the exams, then they could just take the NEWTS again, in the Ministry. But a certain number of months has to pass between each attempt. To give the student time to study, you see. And few Ministry positions, even honorary ones, will accept students who don't have the number of NEWTS they demand. Other jobs, like apprenticeships? Even fewer."
Harry feels his mouth twitch violently towards a smile. It's probably the kind of smile that would get him in trouble in Potions, so he goes on calmly stirring the antidote. "And I imagine that their families will want to know why they didn't pass the exams? Why they need to take them again?"
"You would be right."
Theo's lowered voice is like a bolt right to Harry's groin, but he keeps his eyes on the cauldron and his hand on the stirring rod. Theo's slight motion out of the corner of his eye does suggest that Theo knows the effect he's having on Harry anyway.
"And what are they going to say when their families ask them why they didn't pass the first time?"
"Oh, they'll talk about stress. How stressful it was, being back at Hogwarts where everyone despises them. Parkinson will whinge about how people hated her for wanting to turn you over. Malfoy will tell them it was the Death Eater trials and the like."
"And Greengrass?"
Theo is silent. Harry glances at him and sees how dark and still he is, his eyes gleaming like a predator's through brush.
"You heard what she wanted to do to me."
"Yes. She wanted to—rape you."
Harry lowers his voice all the further, because the last thing they need to do is have someone overhear it. But he thinks it's pretty unlikely. Slughorn is on the far side of the classroom, Hermione and Ron have started to bicker behind them, and no one else is sitting nearby.
Theo glances at him, his body tense. "I wanted to punish her."
Harry just watches him, continuing the rhythm of the stirs. Then Theo reaches towards his hand, and Harry takes the stirring rod out of the cauldron, and waits.
Theo breathes out and shoots a glance at Slughorn, who is still attempting to help Ernie Macmillan figure out what's wrong with his potion. Then he leans close, and Harry tells his heart to stop leaping about like a nervous flyer on a Firebolt.
"The others' motivations were stupid and cruel," Theo breathes. "But she wanted something more personal from me than they did. They would have hated anyone in a better position than they were. Daphne wanted—to fuck me." His voice shakes, but his face is blank. "I can't just ignore that. And it's going to make a difference in the punishment she receives."
Harry nods slowly. He actually thought the way Greengrass belched at the table yesterday was milder than the ways that Parkinson and Malfoy smeared marmalade and butter on themselves, but—well, it was unique, while the punishments Theo decided on for Parkinson and Malfoy were pretty similar.
"So what are you going to do to her?"
"Are you sure that you want to carry that knowledge around?"
Harry gives Theo a look, as Theo shreds some more leaves into the cauldron and peers at their antidote. Theo laughs a little at the sight of his face, shaking his head. Harry starts stirring again, but doesn't take his gaze from Theo.
"That was a stupid question."
"Yeah. Even if you think that it's some huge and heavy burden to bear that knowledge, why should you carry it alone?"
He's brilliant. Why hasn't someone snatched him up already? I don't understand…
But then Theo remembers how many people thought Harry was mental or lying in the past, and he wants to sigh. Yes, he does understand how Harry was just left to wander around and wait for someone to arrive who appreciated him.
Well, I'll do my best to show that, Theo thinks, trying to be subtle about his watching of the muscles in Harry's arms as he explains.
"I'm going to fill her with fear of what she enjoys doing most. In her case, it's wearing pretty clothes, gossip, playing pranks like this, and so on. She'll start experiencing the kind of intense fear that I did when she tries to do them, and even when she stops, she'll experience fear when she thinks about them. If she tries to find new hobbies, she'll experience that same fear. She'll suffer like that for the rest of her life, or as long as I want her to. It sounds complicated, but it's simple to achieve."
"With the potion," Harry mouths as Slughorn sweeps back towards them. Theo looks down and nods as he finishes counting the pattern of stirs.
"Well, well, well!" Slughorn laughs as he looks into the cauldron, patting Harry on the shoulder. Theo clenches his teeth. This urge to destroy everyone who touches him could be a problem. "It seems that Gryffindors and Slytherins can achieve the impossible when they work together!"
"Yes, sir," Harry says, and beams up at Slughorn for some reason Theo doesn't understand. He knows Harry doesn't like the man much either. "Just think of the great work we could achieve if we were Potions partners most of the time!"
"I see what you're doing, young Mr. Potter, I see what you're doing," Slughorn says, his eyes shrewd as he glances back and forth between Theo and Harry. Theo experiences a momentary flash of worry, but he pushes it away. He always intended to start approaching Harry more in public. "Of course you want to spend time with your boyfriend."
Several people gasp on the Slytherin side of the classroom. Theo wonders why, since they must have suspected it after the way he and Harry used the Veritaserum, and then remembers that the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs tend to sit over there too.
"What?" Macmillan demands. Theo has never liked him.
"Boyfriends?" says the Ravenclaw Patil.
Weasley and Granger are making their own noise behind Theo, although Theo doesn't intend to look in their direction and give them the satisfaction.
He raises his chin and meets the eyes of the people peering at them from across the classroom, then glances at Slughorn and half-shrugs. "Can you blame me for wanting to work with the bravest and most brilliant person in the school, sir?" he murmurs, and watches Slughorn's eyes brighten. Slughorn thinks he knows exactly why Theo wants to work with and date Harry.
He's wrong, as it happens. But then, Theo's real words will always be saved for Harry.
Harry spins around abruptly in his seat, gaping at Theo. Theo frowns a little. Does Harry think the "Slytherin ambition" reason Slughorn will be thinking of is the real one? Theo hopes not. He doesn't want to hurt Harry, and besides, he thought Harry was brighter than that.
But Harry just breathes, "You think I'm brave and brilliant?"
And Theo understands. It doesn't matter to Harry, not really, whether Theo is playing up to Slughorn, or if they wouldn't really be boyfriends yet as most people would think of it. What matters to Harry is that Theo was willing to call him brave and brilliant in public.
Theo smiles. "Of course. Why wouldn't I?"
Harry swallows the way he did when Theo told him to put his hands behind his back. He doesn't try to touch Theo now, just keeps staring at him, and Slughorn is clapping his hands sand saying something about young love. Frankly, Theo doesn't care.
The way Harry is looking at him with rapturous eyes is everything he wants to pay attention to.