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Chapter Seven—All on Fire

"I d-don't know why I get so n-nervous even without Professor Snape right beside me," Longbottom whispered, and bent over the simmering cauldron.

Theo reached out and patiently stopped him from adding mint leaves that hadn't been properly shredded and would clog the potion and prevent Longbottom from stirring it the way he should. "I think it's because you associate him with Potions, so after a while it's as if you sense him even when he's not there."

"Oh." Longbottom blinked at him. "That's actually a g-good reason."

Theo gave him a thin smile. Longbottom had demanded that Theo help tutor him in Potions so that he stood a chance of taking the NEWT privately not long after the end of their seventh year. It was an atonement that Theo was perfectly happy to undertake, especially since he could bring Longbottom to his own warded lab in the dungeons and brew there.

And Longbottom wasn't bad company as long as someone was there to watch over his mistakes and keep him from making them.

"Wh-why can't I add the dragonfly wings yet?" Longbottom asked, when Theo reached out and prevented his hand that held them from coming near the cauldron.

"When you look at the instructions, you'll see that they need to be added after the shredded mint leaves. And the mint leaves have to be shredded all the way first."

"Oh." Longbottom thought a moment. "Until they look like caterpillars were eating them?"

Theo blinked. "I suppose they might," he conceded. He didn't know for sure, but if it was easier for Longbottom to picture them that way… "Let's try it."

And so they did, and the mint leaves, when they let them cautiously drift into the cauldron, were shredded finely enough to have made Snape proud. And seeing the way Longbottom beamed made something go to sleep in Theo that had been awake all his life.

I can do this. I can really make up for what I did.

"Nott."

Nott glanced over his shoulder. He'd been about to leave the common room, Potions book tucked under his arm and an abstracted look on his face. It wasn't time for NEWT Potions, so Harry didn't know what he was doing, but he was trying not to pay too much attention to Nott. It would only encourage the bastard.

"Yes, Potter?" Nott's voice was low, his eyes flickering back into the common room as if he didn't want anyone to overhear their conversation.

Well, Harry didn't, either, to be fair. He gave Nott a choppy nod and stood up. "I thought of something you can do to start making up for what you did to me during the last six years."

Nott blinked and then focused entirely on him. It was unnerving, given what that gaze had led to in the past. There were times that Harry wanted to stop speaking, in fact, and just run far away from the consequences he had brought on himself by standing up to Nott and attacking Snape.

But he had come this far, and there were questions that Nott was the most likely person to answer honestly.

"What is that, Potter?"

"I want you to ask you some questions about warding, and I want you to answer honestly." Harry thought it was probably unlikely that Nott had heard specifically of Tom Marvolo Riddle, but you never knew. And Harry still—well, he still thought his wards were less powerful than it seemed they were, even if he knew otherwise now about his wandless magic. He had to have some way of judging that and shedding his own inaccurate perceptions.

Nott nodded slowly. "All right. Do you want to speak of this later today, or perhaps tomorrow?"

"Why not now?"

"I'm on my way to Potions tutoring with Longbottom at the moment."

Harry stared at him. "Since when in the world do you offer tutoring?"

"That's what he wanted to make up for what I did to him."

Harry pondered that for a second, then discarded the notion. Obviously, he knew less about Longbottom than he'd thought, but it wasn't like they'd ever been friends, either. "All right. This afternoon? Free period?" Neither he nor Nott had continued with Care of Magical Creatures, so they had that block free together.

"Yes, all right. Do you want to meet in the library or somewhere else?"

"Library. The table where I hurt you." Harry smiled at Nott and waited for him to say something about the wards that had injected ice crystals into his hands, or retreat. Part of him was braced for Nott to start the taunting and bullying all over again, the minute he thought he had a chance.

But Nott just nodded and said, "Very well," and then turned and left, the door to the common room shutting behind him.

Harry was still staring after him when Malfoy's nasal, whining voice came from behind him. "Potty wee Potter, what are you doing?"

Harry turned around, and his very desire made the air beside him begin to stir into the semblance of a shining ward. He fought back the temptation to launch it at Malfoy with an effort. They were in the middle of the common room, and plenty of people would decide it wasn't accidental magic this time. "None of your business."

His voice was somewhat clipped in spite of himself. Malfoy looked delighted, maybe because it was the first time in years Harry had answered back. "I think it is," he said, and folded his arms. "I think it very much is."

Harry smiled a little. The pounding of blood and adrenaline in his ears told him this was probably a bad idea, but he was at the point where he didn't care. "Oh? Why?"

"I'm at the top of the hierarchy, Potter," Malfoy said, in a condescending voice he'd probably learnt from Snape. "And if you think that you can do whatever you like and speak to whoever you want—"

"I wouldn't have thought you'd care about me speaking to Nott."

"Tell me why that is, Potter."

"I'd be delighted, Malfoy." Harry lowered his voice a little, and some people would have taken warning from that tone, but no one except Snape had ever accused Malfoy of being the smartest student in their year. "Because I'd thought you'd want to avoid Nott. He put you down like the Crup you are, didn't he?"

A sharp gasp sounded from several corners of the common room, and Malfoy turned grey. Harry smiled. It wasn't very Slytherin-like to speak openly of something like that, but then, it wasn't supposed to be Slytherin-like to bully people in your House, either.

I'm the exception to the rule. For once, his thoughts held no bitterness.

"What did you say?" Malfoy whispered.

"I said." Harry moved forwards one step and enunciated perfectly, shaping the air beside him into a ward with idle stirs of his fingers. "He put you down. Like the Crup. You are."

It occurred to him that perhaps he was dragging Nott into a battle Nott wouldn't want to involved in, but Harry pushed that thought aside. Nott still owed him for six years of bullying, and he had started this by attacking Malfoy in the first place.

"Say it one more time, Potter." Malfoy's hand hovered near his wand.

"I don't think I need to," Harry said, and snapped his fingers to send the ward hurtling towards Malfoy when he did draw his wand.

This time, Harry had a specific purpose in mind, and the ward didn't deflect one of Malfoy's spells or affect his clothes or hand. Instead, it inflicted what Harry privately considered the most terrible consequence of his clash with Snape, and snapped Malfoy's wand into three clean pieces as he brandished it. Two of the pieces dropped to the floor with audible thumps.

In the ensuing silence, Harry looked up at Malfoy from beneath his eyelashes, smiled a little, and said softly, "Oops."

Malfoy stared at the jagged splinters of his wand and said nothing. He seemed dazed. Maybe he didn't know what had happened. Harry gave him a single wink and then turned his back and walked towards the door from the common room.

His back tingled, and he kept one hand poised at his side, ready to launch another ward if he had to.

Nothing happened. There were a few murmurs, but the people who made them glanced away when Harry met their eyes.

Harry couldn't help smiling as he stepped out through the door of the common room. He would go to his warded rooms and work on Potions for a bit, in preparation for the NEWT.

But he didn't think he would need to watch the memory of him and Ron on the train. Not today.

Theo paused a moment before he rounded the last corner of the shelves next to the library table. He examined his hand with critical eyes. No, it wasn't trembling. It was all right. He would look as cool and composed as he possibly could when he'd just heard the news bubbling and boiling in the Slytherin common room.

But still.

Malfoy's wand, broken. Such a precise and powerful application of a ward meant—

Theo shook his head. It meant certain things for him. It hadn't changed his standing with Potter, though. He had to remember that. Even Potter asking for his help wouldn't mean that he wanted to hear Theo's thoughts on this particular matter.

Settled in mind and body, Theo stepped around the bookshelf and nodded to Potter. "Do you want to begin with the Arithmancy of warding, or something else?"

Potter lifted his gaze from his book, which was hovering in front of him without anything to hold or turn it. He could have cast a spell like that with his wand, Theo thought, but it was unlikely that he had. "Do I look like I need your help with that, Nott?"

"No, but I don't know where you want to begin."

Potter's cool green eyes met his, while Potter tapped a finger on his chin and regarded him. Theo held himself still. He wouldn't sit down without being invited, and he wouldn't show what that look and the thought of the power behind it did to him.

Suffice to say that my thoughts are no longer about what kind of asset Potter can be to the Nott family, Theo thought, and pushed away other, less self-conscious thoughts about how he wanted Potter to touch him.

"I want to know if you've ever heard of a wardmaster named Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Sometimes it was a good thing that Potter wasn't a typical Slytherin who would have known how to use his power years ago. Theo knew that Potter wouldn't despise him for the sudden widening of his eyes. "The most renowned wardmaster in Europe? Yes, of course I've heard of him."

"I haven't."

"Your study of the field has been less than formal."

Potter stared at him, and then let out a harsh cackle of laughter that made Theo jump in place. "Yeah, that's one way to put it. Oh, sit down, Nott, you look ridiculous standing there. I don't know why you haven't pulled out a chair already."

One doesn't sit in front of the powerful unless invited, Theo thought, but he nodded and took a chair. There were a lot of things he wouldn't want to say in front of Potter. That was all right. He had said too much aloud in the past six years.

Nott was acting strange.

Harry thought about it, observing Nott with narrowed eyes, and finally decided to ignore it. The prat had been acting strange since Harry had cornered him on his broom. It was fine to continue ignoring that, he thought.

"I want to know if you recognize what this ward is meant to do," he said, and pulled out a piece of parchment. He'd used his Pensieve to view the memory of the ward on the disappearing letter, and he was fairly confident that he'd got the sketch right.

Nott leaned over the parchment, and frowned. "Not exactly. It has something to do with intent, but wards aren't my specialty."

Intent was close enough, Harry supposed. At least Riddle didn't appear to have lied to him.

But it raised a different kind of puzzle. Why would a renowned wardmaster, someone known all over the continent, apparently, reach out to Harry based on garbled stories that wouldn't tell the truth? Riddle might have guessed the truth, but still. There had to be more tempting targets for apprenticeship.

How can I get the right answers from Nott if he doesn't know enough about warding?

Harry tapped his fingers on the table for a moment, while Nott waited quietly. Harry tried not to enjoy that. He didn't want to be the kind of person who enjoyed other people waiting on his every move.

At last, he thought of a question that might give him the right answer even with Nott's scant knowledge of warding. "I've heard some of the sixth-years say something about you wanting to study spellcrafting. How long does it take to invent a new spell?"

Nott blinked at him for endless moments. Harry didn't know why. He waited for an answer, and Nott finally nodded and said, "It depends on how closely the spell relates to an existing spell."

"So if you wanted to invent a version of Lumos that couldn't be put out by Nox, that would be easier than if you wanted to invent a light charm that was completely different from Lumos in the way it looked and acted?"

"Yes. That's—yes."

"All right. Say that you did want to invent a version of Lumos that Nox couldn't extinguish. How long do you think that would take?"

Nott pulled a sheet of parchment out of his bag and began to scribble on it. Harry leaned over. It looked like mostly Arithmancy, which surprised him, since he'd thought spellcrafting depended more on Runes. But then he realized that Nott was probably using the maths to predict how long inventing the spell would take.

"Probably a year at my current level of skill," Nott murmured at last, sitting back. "Nine months if I essentially did nothing else and only stopped to eat and sleep."

Harry blinked, hard. He hadn't thought it would take anywhere near that long. Then again, he knew virtually nothing about spellcrafting.

"Potter?"

Nott was staring at him. Harry leaned back in his chair a little so that he wouldn't look so weak and half-shrugged. "I can come up with new wards on the fly."

Nott shivered and closed his eyes. Harry stared at him. Nott was very strange and might not prove to be much of a help after all if he just shook all the time.

He really does have no idea how powerful he is. How much he could have. How much someone could want him.

Theo shoved aside images of falling to his knees in front of Potter. There was so much mixed up in that, including his own longing to make up for what he had done to Potter and his love of powerful magic and a swelling desire that he had never known was part of him.

And it wouldn't happen. Potter had made it clear that he didn't even want atonement from Theo, let alone—anything else.

"Nott?"

Potter's voice was low and bewildered. Theo looked up, shaking his head a little, smiling, and leaned back in his chair. "It's fine. I will say that I think it unremarkable that Wardmaster Riddle should have reached out to you, if that's true. He would have known how long inventing a ward like that would take, and he would have known it unlikely that you would have been working on it as a sixth-year student."

Potter nodded, his eyes going distant. Theo held back the impulse to say something else. He couldn't. Yes, he wanted Potter, wanted to be important to Potter, but Potter had made it clear where they stood. Even being allowed this close, to offer information to Potter, was more than Theo had thought he would get.

"All right," Potter said abruptly. "So I think that I've made a decision." He stood up and began packing his books away.

"May I know what it is?"

Theo barely heard his own words emerge from his throat. Potter halted and stared at him. Theo swallowed in the face of those lambent eyes, and hoped that his ability to control his expression was as good as the other Slytherins and his father had complimented him on.

"The wardmaster's offered me an apprenticeship," Potter said at last. "I told him I would have to think about it, because I knew nothing about him and had no way of judging if his offer was sincere. What could I give him in return? But now, I might know." He raised and dropped one shoulder. "It's not enough to make up for what you did, but thanks anyway, Nott."

And he turned and walked away, leaving Theo so dizzy that he held onto the edge of the library table before he stood up.

He might…

He might have a chance in the future, if he was careful and willing to wait.

At the moment, Theo thought he would sell his soul for the opportunity.