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Chapter Twenty-Two—Silvery Magic

"Try, Harry. That's all I'm asking."

Harry narrowed his eyes at Theo for a moment, then nodded and faced the far wall of his room. The Healer had approved him getting out of bed yesterday, although all Harry had really done was walk back and forth down the corridors and then go down—assisted by Levitation from Theo—to eat dinner. This would be the first time that he'd really tried to summon a complex ward.

He stared at the wall, his fingers moving in front of him, and then imagined the loops and the dance of intention he needed.

The silvery cords formed in front of him, winding back and forth with each other. Harry thought he saw a serpentine head, a flickering tongue. He concentrated on that, and on how snakes could do what he wanted.

Two snakes came into view, and then more, a set of linked serpents down each cord, the ones behind holding the tails of those in front in their jaws.

When Harry was sure that he could feel as much solidity in these snakes as he'd been able to in his old wards, he faced Theo and nodded.

"You know what's going to happen if you've misjudged your readiness," Theo murmured, raising his wand.

"Yeah."

Theo cast the spell silently, but Harry knew what it was. They'd agreed on it beforehand. He watched intently as the blue paint came flying towards him, the sort that would cling to his skin and stain it for hours before a spell would remove it.

And Harry angled his shield towards the flying gout of paint and instructed, Bounce it!

The snake-shield rippled with power, silver edging towards white, and became a solid, lovely, mirror-like object. The blue paint bounced off in a perfect arc that Harry thought for a moment would go towards the far wall of the room, as they'd discussed and planned on.

Instead, it soaked Theo from head to toe.

Harry stared with his mouth open.

Theo raised a slow hand and pushed the paint back from his eyes and forehead. Those eyes were wide, dark grey islands circled by a perfect sea of blue. His mouth opened, then closed hastily as some of the paint tried to run past his lips.

Harry lost the battle against his own shock and began to laugh.

Theo just kept staring at him. Harry leaned back against the bed behind him and laughed until his throat ached and his stomach muscles hurt. He held out a hand, stumbling forwards, and Theo grabbed his wrist.

And smeared the paint all over Harry's palm by running Harry's hand up and down his shoulder.

Harry scowled. Theo winked at him and leaned forwards, waving his wand to move the paint a little back from his lips. "I suppose that you wouldn't like me to kiss you like this," he whispered.

Harry leaned forwards in answer, then jumped and spun around as the door to his room snapped open. Helios stood there, his gaze moving from Harry to Theo. His eyebrows went up, but all he said was, "Harry, your godfather is awake and asking for you."

Harry was painfully aware of the streak of paint along his arm, but it didn't seem to matter that much when he met his godfather's painfully shining eyes. He paused, biting his lip.

Sirius Black looked—better than Harry thought he would have looked in his place, anyway.

Granted, Black was sitting up in a bed against a fancy headboard with thick blankets draped across his legs, and his face had more color and his eyes more sanity, and he had a tray on the table beside him from which he'd cleaned up even the crumbs. So he looked a lot better than he would have otherwise.

But the forcible healing had obviously done him good. Black was leaning forwards, as keen as a hound with hope. "Do you remember me, Harry? At all?"

"No. I'm sorry."

Black's face shut down, and he slumped back against the pillows. For a second, he stared past Harry's shoulder, and then his eyes seemed to catch on Theo's face. He stared for a far longer second, then turned to Harry. "Who is this?"

"Theo Nott. My betrothed."

Theo caught his breath in a harsh noise, but he didn't object to the name. Harry reached back, fumbling. Theo's hand closed on his strongly enough to make the bones ache.

Definitely not objecting, Harry thought happily.

"Nott?"

"Yes."

"His father was a Death Eater!"

Black really was a lot saner than Harry had thought was possible after sixteen years in Azkaban. "I know. But he's also the only person who's offered me the sanctuary and training I need to face up to Voldemort."

Black flinched at the name with a little yelp that Harry liked to think would have revealed his Animagus form even if Harry didn't know about it. But maybe not. Black had managed to keep that secret from an awful lot of people for an awfully long time. "And he doesn't mind you saying the name?"

"Voldemort, and Tom Riddle, another of his guises, tried to kill me," Theo drawled. He pressed up behind Harry, linking his arms together around Harry's waist. "My father will not resume his old allegiance."

Black stared some more, then closed his eyes and muttered something Harry couldn't hear.

"I'm really anxious to hear more about your story," Harry said, and hooked the chairs in front of the bed apart with his foot so that he and Theo could both sit. "You don't have a Dark Mark and you seem like you're innocent, but if you are, what really happened?"

Black spent a moment staring at him. Then he spoke in a voice that had a touch of a low growl to it. "Peter Pettigrew. Have you heard of him?"

"He was the one you supposedly killed." Harry decided not to mention the half-story that Black had told in Azkaban, since it didn't seem as though he remembered it. "And he was—what, your friend and a friend of my parents?"

Black's teeth flashed. "He was until he betrayed us." His voice was raw with passionate hatred, something Harry found relatable. He did think that Black deserved to be angry for the people who had let him rot when he was apparently innocent. "He was an Animagus like me, and no one would have suspected him of being the real Secret-Keeper. Oh, no, not cowardly little Peter."

"Whereas they would have suspected you," Theo prompted. He leaned forwards a little and reached out. Harry tangled their fingers together again.

Black stared at their hands for a second, but didn't bring it up. "Yeah. I was practically James's brother. I ran away to stay with his family after my family disowned me. And that means that everyone knew I would have been James's Secret-Keeper."

I wonder how much he mourns my mother?

But Harry dismissed that thought. It didn't matter. He was more interested in the specifics he hadn't heard yet. "And Pettigrew—did he become a Death Eater? Or did he just march off to Voldemort and turn them over?"

Black gave a full-body shiver. Harry wondered if it was at the name, but thought it was more likely to be the man's memories. "Yeah, he was a Death Eater. Not that anyone knew that at the time. And he led You-Know-Who to you, and your parents died."

"Do you know how I survived?" Harry asked. "No one seems to."

Black gave his head a quick shake. "I found you, and you were crying in your cot, and Lily was dead, and James—" He choked, confirming Harry's suspicion that Black had been a lot closer to his dad. "I picked you up, and I was crying too, and trying to decide what I should do next, and Hagrid showed up."

"Hagrid?"

"Yeah. He worked as the gamekeeper at Hogwarts. Does he not do that now? Oh, Merlin, I've lost so much time—"

"No, he's still there." Harry reached out, and Black grabbed his hand. Harry winced a little from the force of his hold, but shook his head subtly when Theo started looking as though he wanted to detach Harry from Black. "I just don't know what he has to do with this. He took me to Diagon Alley my first year and said he knew my parents, but then he gave up on me when I got Sorted into Slytherin."

"Wow. You're a Slytherin?"

Harry raised his eyebrows, but Black sounded more surprised than judgmental. "Yeah. Although I suppose I should say I was a Slytherin, since Theo and I fled Hogwarts and we won't be going back."

"You—fled Hogwarts?"

"It seems that Theo and I have some explaining to do, too. Do you want some water while we do this?"

Theo watched closely as Harry talked to Black about his years in Slytherin, how he had felt outcast and hadn't got along with his Head of House and hadn't even realized, because of other people's bragging, that his wandless magic abilities were unusually powerful. Black actually barked at the mention of Snape.

"He hated all of us. To be fair, we hated him too. But he was Lily's best friend! I never suspected he would take it out on her son to this extent…"

Theo shook his head slowly when he heard that. He suspected Snape had survived the wounds Harry had inflicted on him in the course of his attack, if only because Dumbledore would have announced it if he hadn't, so that he could come up with more of a justification for hunting Harry down. But to hear that all of this was based on a grudge going back more than twenty years made Theo want to bang his head against the wall.

Well, all right, no, it didn't. What it made him want to do was hold Snape against the wall and flay the skin from his skull.

Harry reached out for him without looking away from Black. Theo got his anger under control and reached for Harry's hand in turn. Their fingers tangled together again.

Black broke into the story Harry was telling about how Dumbledore had never stopped Snape from taking his revenge. "So are you boyfriends or something?"

"Yes," Harry said. "I said we were betrothed, remember?"

"But you told me that you were all alone in Slytherin. So where does Nott come into it? Because I think he's a poor boyfriend if he stands back and lets his boyfriend get assaulted and harassed by other Slytherins."

Theo winced, and knew Black had seen it. But then he lifted his chin. Harry had forgiven him, and Harry's forgiveness was all Theo needed. If Black wanted to judge him, it wouldn't end their relationship.

And it couldn't be more than Theo blamed and judged himself, in the end.

"Theo was one of the people who bullied me."

Black promptly tried to lunge at Theo from where he was propped against the pillows. Of course, all that happened was that he ended up dangling out of the bed. Harry gave what sounded like a resigned sigh and waved his hand. Silver snakes appeared from midair, coiled around Black, and hauled him back into the bed.

"Harry! Why are you sitting there with him, how can you sit there with him—"

"I've forgiven him. He's changed."

Theo's heart could have burst at the cool way Harry said those words, sitting there with his chin uplifted and his eyes bearing down steadily on Black. Black seemed to see it as well, although Theo thought Black probably didn't know how to value it the way Theo did. Because the madman leaned back, and stared at Harry, and nodded, and then sighed gustily.

"All right. If you say so."

"I do say so."

Black scowled a little, as if he would have liked to object to that, and then just shook his head in an extremely dog-like gesture. "So explain more to me about the two versions of You-Know-Who you were talking about."

Harry started doing that. Theo sat with his hand in Harry's, and marked the way that Black's eyes sometimes returned to him with no friendly look in them.

But it didn't matter. Black hadn't actually attacked him, and Theo thought he had tried in the first place just because of protectiveness towards Harry, which was a trait Theo actually wanted to encourage. They would find plenty of real enemies for Black to fling himself at like a dog against a pile of bones.

And Black was listening to Harry, even if his jaw gaped a little and he asked sharp questions now and then. Theo let himself feel a cool wave of hope.

This would work. They had someone else on their side now, and someone who was utterly devoted to Harry in a way that Theo didn't trust his father to be. Of course he loved Father, valued him, would fight to protect him.

But if worst came to worst, Father would grab Theo and try to remove him to safety, even if it meant leaving Harry behind.

Black would be back on his feet soon, able to Apparate and probably capable of dueling if he was able to become an Animagus and maintain this level of sanity in Azkaban for more than a decade and a half. Harry would have his own protector.

Theo curled a little closer to his boyfriend, and Black grimaced, but went on listening to Harry's story. Yes, this would work out just fine.

The Azkaban guards—and there were more of them than Albus had ever seen on the prison—had tried to stand up against Albus, babbling something about how no one except the Minister and people with his personal seal had permission to be here. A few Memory Charms had taken care of that.

Now, Albus stood in silence before Sirius Black's empty cell.

He couldn't understand why Harry would have taken Black. Or, for that matter, why he would have broken into Azkaban to settle accounts with the traitor more than sixteen years after his betrayal. Had Harry gone mad, that this seemed like a good idea?

Perhaps he has, given the attacks that he performed on Severus and me.

Albus grimaced and shook his head. He would gain little from standing and thinking like this. He turned and cast a charm that would coat the walls in magic rather like that which ran around the inside of a Pensieve. When there was a subtle silvery glow Albus was sure he wasn't imagining, he drew in his breath and closed his eyes.

This particular spell was powerful and risky even for someone like Albus to perform, one reason that it generally wasn't employed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, despite its usefulness. Albus meditated for a few minutes until he was sure that his magic was settled and ready to go.

Then he stabbed his wand forwards.

"Memoria saxi!"

The spell flooded out of him, and Albus had to catch the wall as he swayed on his feet. But he managed to force his eyes open in time to see the magic splash on the stone and draw out the memories of what it had seen here.

He saw a flicker-quick rendition of months and years where Dementors had floated past and Sirius had—turned into a dog to escape them? Albus stared. He had never known that Sirius was an Animagus.

It seemed like something they should have told him!

Then Harry appeared, and Albus exerted his will over the spell so it would show him what had happened in more detail. He pressed down with all his strength trying to get sound, but got nothing more than a few broken words here and there.

Sirius mentioned Peter. Harry had a discussion with the younger Nott and Andromeda Black—Albus swallowed a burst of betrayal—that didn't make sense. And then Harry raised his hands and—

The flare of magic flung Albus out of the spell, and out of the memory. He staggered, shuddering as he clung for a second to the stone in front of him.

Harry had done something. Something unexpected, something that was so different and new that the memory spell simply couldn't capture it.

Or it had captured it, but Albus had no ability to interpret it.

He shut his eyes and swallowed. He could feel the chill in his body increasing as the Dementors drew near, but it was hard to bring himself to care about that.

No. He had to care about it. He had to live and leave, because he was the only one who might know how dangerous Harry was.

Albus gritted his teeth and concentrated on the memory of being surrounded by the Order after the defeat of Voldemort had been announced. There had been grief for James and Lily and their son threaded through the moment, but also the kind of joy that he had forgotten, and other people had forgotten, that they could feel. There had been laughter and Firewhisky and dancing—

"Expecto Patronum!"

The air in front of him turned silvery and shimmering, and the Dementors floating down the stairs cowered back from Albus's phoenix as it spread its wings.

Albus took a deep breath and managed to calm down the temptation to make more of a fuss than was warranted. He had to leave. And given that whatever Harry had done, the wards around the island were still as strong as they had been, he would have to follow his Patronus and use the Memory Charm here and there.

It was not the most ethically clear thing he had ever done.

But he would do far worse, in the pursuit of a world where Tom would be defeated forever.