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Chapter Fourteen—Recovered Memories
"Tom, I don't like this."
"It's all right, Ginny. I'll protect you."
Theo curls his lip at the boy who's standing in front of Weasley in this memory. She's in the Chamber, and she's crouched on the floor, her hands splayed in front of her, and the boy hovers like a flickering flame before her face. He's handsome, but there's a cruelty in his expression that reminds Theo all too much of his own father.
"How can you—you had me write that bloody message, how can you protect me—"
"I'll protect you against what's coming. The basilisk isn't going to kill you."
Theo pulls his gaze away from the memory of Tom Riddle and the memory of Ginny Weasley and looks around the Chamber of Secrets. It's a lot less impressive than he always thought it would be from the rumors that darted around Slytherin. Plain stone walls except for carved snakes, puddles of water on the floor, an ugly statue.
"Why are we in this memory?" Harry whispers next to him. "It's the most recent one."
"The spell takes you into the most powerful one first," Theo says softly, and watches as horror and fear creep across Weasley's face. "So it brought us here. It's probably the first time that she really realized she had to be afraid of him."
"Tom? Tom, you can't—"
"I can, although I'm a little sorry for it. You've been a good host." The boy turns and floats, only mimicking the motion of walking, across the stone floor to the small black book not far from Weasley's splayed right hand. He crouches down and touches the cover of the book, then steps back, shaking his head. "I think you could do more for me, but I'm strong enough that I don't have to take the risk of being discovered now. You already tried to get rid of the book once. I don't want to wait for you to try again."
"But Tom—wait, Tom—you were my friend—"
"That's what I told you." Riddle smiles at Weasley and turns away. "But you were a means to an end. You ought to know that at least you will lose your life for a good cause." And he slashes his hand in an odd motion, as if his fingers are a wand.
Blackness tears across the memory. They flicker and dart through scattered moments when Weasley seems to be trying to come back to consciousness in the middle of the fight Harry's having with the basilisk, and they can hear Riddle's taunting voice. Theo, though, draws Harry over to the side where they can avoid watching the Horcrux shade and the basilisk, so that they can attune themselves to the miasma flowing from the book.
It's foul, so foul that Theo wants to snarl. It's a little puzzling to him that neither Harry nor Weasley evidently reacted to it.
But when he glances to the side, he realizes that might be a thing of the past. At least here, Harry's eyes are wide, and he's pressing back so that he's up against Theo's side instead of out in the memory of the Chamber.
"Why did I never sense how foul the thing was before?" he whispers.
Theo shakes his head. "Maybe because you only had brief contact with it, maybe because you're learning more about mental effects like Occlumency and Legilimency now." He thinks that having Crouch cast the Imperius on him last year, and the way that Harry managed to resist it, might have sensitized Harry to noticing when something tries to mentally control him, but he doesn't want to bring it up right now.
"I can't imagine that I won't recognize another one." Harry swallows next to him as more black flashes tear across their vision, Weasley's memory juddering and breaking up along the lines of her consciousness. "It's terrible."
Theo nods and says nothing. The miasma of this Horcrux is like nothing he's ever felt before, and he's had plenty of exposure to cursed artifacts that Father used to teach him what Dark Arts feels like.
Tom Riddle got into this at sixteen, at least, if not younger.
It makes Theo's contempt for Voldemort run all the deeper.
The memory finally collapses back into a basilisk fang stuck through the diary and Weasley crying as Harry stoops down next to her. Then fog rolls in from the sides and consumes the memory, and they're inside another one, this time of Weasley tearing frantically through a trunk that looks like Harry's.
"Looking for the diary after she knew I had it?" Harry murmurs. "I wonder if she could partially sense it, and it led her there, because I didn't think we talked about it in front of her. But I could be misremembering."
Theo nods in silence, and they watch as Weasley pulls out the diary and holds it in shaking hands. She looks awful, and the stink of the book is as bad as it was in the Chamber. Theo wouldn't be surprised to see it rolling around her in a choking cloud.
Weasley turns around at a slight noise, and once again, fog comes in to consume the memory. Then they're in one of her sliding down an enormous pipe covered with slime.
"Where's this?" Theo murmurs to Harry.
"The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, off the girls' bathroom Moaning Myrtle haunts," Harry whispers back. His eyes are fastened on Weasley as they follow slowly behind her in the odd floating way that a memory can achieve.
Theo grimaces, but he reckons that even the entrance to the legendary Chamber would get like this if no one were coming down and cleaning it regularly.
They follow Weasley through a long tunnel past a crumbling basilisk skin, and up to two huge stone doors covered with carved snakes that have emeralds for eyes and make Theo shudder. Weasley strides up to them, not the way she usually moves, and hisses. Harry is the one to shudder this time.
"You told me she could speak Parseltongue when she was possessed…"
"Yeah. Of course. I just didn't get her to hear her do it, and it—sounds different when someone is speaking it who isn't born to it or isn't a snake. Or doesn't have it because of having a Horcrux in their soul, I suppose."
Harry sounds so bitter that Theo squeezes his hand even as they edge nearer the doors so they can watch Weasley entering the Chamber and going up to the statue to release the basilisk. "We can work on that, if you like."
"Work on what?"
"Work on making sure that you can retain Parseltongue even when we have the Horcrux out of you. If you want."
Harry is silent. Theo assumes he's thinking about it, and so he concentrates on where Weasley is caressing the side of the basilisk's head. She's giving commands to it in Parseltongue, obviously, but it's not like Theo can understand them. He shifts his focus, after a moment, to the blazing foulness of the book in an outer pocket of her robe.
"You would do that?"
Theo blinks and glances back at Harry. "Do what?"
"You'd—do extra research and maybe—it would take longer to try and make sure that I can keep part of the magic the Horcrux gave me instead of just getting rid of all it—but you would do that for me?"
"Of course I would." Theo makes his voice as slow and gentle as he can, all the while wondering why Harry seems so shocked. Has Theo said or done something to make Harry think his love is conditional? "But of course, only if you wanted to. I can see Parseltongue mattering more to someone who's a Slytherin or likes snakes than it does it to you."
"I—I don't use it much, but I do sort of think it would be cool to keep on using it—I should use it more—keep it as a sort of fuck you to all the people who thought I was the Heir of Slytherin in our second year—"
"It's up to you."
"I love you a lot. You know that?"
Theo smiles and leans over to kiss him even as the fog rolls in again, confident that they won't miss anything in Weasley's memory. Harry shining in front of him, face and eyes and soul alive with hope, is more important.
"D'you think that we should tell her?"
Theo looks up, blinking. He's writing down notes on what he thinks most important in Weasley's memories, and Harry is the one still standing and staring down into the Pensieve. It takes him a moment to bring his mind back to the matter of Weasley, whom Harry must be talking about. "Tell her what?"
"That we took her memories. If we told her why—"
"We are not telling her about the Horcruxes."
Harry shoots him an exasperated glance. "I didn't mean that. But we could tell her that this has to do with defeating Voldemort, and I think she would be more than glad to help us."
Theo struggles in silence with his feelings about that, while Harry watches him and waits in what seems to be mounting impatience for him to say something. Theo finally swallows and admits, "I was afraid that if we told her that, she would take this as a chance to get closer to you and try to convince you to date her instead."
"But—I don't want to date her," Harry says slowly.
"I know, but she could try to convince you."
"And you think I'm so shallow that I would just dump you like that? Just because she talked to me about her memories of being possessed by the diary? Yeah, that sounds like a great romantic subject."
It does sound ridiculous, put that way. But Theo manages to speak the truth, because Harry has done nothing less with him, and revealed some terrible and incriminating things. "She's—more like you. Gentle and moral. She would be worried about things like taking someone else's memories without telling them. I'm not. She might be jealous, but she would suppress her jealousy and think she should let you go if you fell in love with someone else. I already told you how impossible that is for me. And sure, right now you're flattered and you want to cling to me, but what if you don't, someday? What if, after the war, you want to slow down and be gentler and find someone who's like that for yourself? Then I'll be trying to hold onto you, and you'll be trying to push me away, and it's—it will be terrible."
Especially since Theo knows that he wouldn't be able to let go even then. Harry is the rhythm his heart beats by. He would look pathetic and embarrass himself, but he would do that rather than have no part in Harry's life at all.
"Hey. Theo. Hey."
Harry's voice is soft. Theo becomes aware that he's turned his head away from his boyfriend and is staring at the back of the Transfigured couch he's been lying on while he wrote down his notes. He swallows and turns back.
Harry is reaching out to him. He could easily touch Theo if he just stretched a little, but it seems important to him that Theo make that reach. So Theo does, and does his best not to cling to Harry like a Dementor.
"I understand why you're afraid of that," Harry says quietly. "We were pretty different people and didn't know each other at all until the middle of last year. But I promise you, I have no interest in someone who's gentle, or a Gryffindor, or—I don't know, moral the way you were phrasing it. I thought it might be a good idea to tell Ginny about the memories because I know her, and she's Ron's little sister, and she's suffered from Voldemort's possession, too. She might want to know that we're working on defeating him. But if she was a stranger I didn't care about? I wouldn't care about telling her, either."
Theo raises his eyes, makes himself raise his eye. Harry is there, waiting for him, smiling for him. His hand tightens on Theo's, and he squeezes so hard that Theo is reminded again of the way that he thinks of himself as bound to Harry by a goshawk's talons.
Mine. But he's saying that he's mine, too. That he won't leave me.
Theo finally swallows and lets himself believe it. He bows his head and clings to Harry, trembling, and Harry wraps his arms around him.
"It doesn't matter how much Ginny wants to date me," Harry whispers. "It doesn't matter how many other people want to date me or have crushes on me. The important thing is that we have each other, and we have our quest to defeat Voldemort, and I'm not backing down from either."
Theo leans his head on Harry's shoulder and lets the feeling of belonging sweep around him until he's calm and past the fear that Harry might leave him for a pretty Gryffindor girl.
"All right," he says at last. "We can tell her."
Weasley takes the news well, Theo has to admit that, with nothing more than a slight flicker of her eyes back and forth between them. They decided to meet at a library table near some of the shelves on Divination that very few students investigate.
"And you couldn't just trust me and ask me openly, why?" she asks, with a glance at Theo.
"Because we didn't know how you would feel about sharing your memories," Harry says. It's true, after all, even though it's not the ultimate truth that exposes all of Theo's insecurities. She doesn't need the ultimate truth. "And, well, I thought that you might hate me for asking."
"I could never hate you, Harry."
Weasley is leaning forwards with her eyes big and brilliant and her teeth worrying at her lower lip. Theo opens his mouth. Harry hits Theo's ankle with his foot before Theo can even make up his mind about what to say, and says with a friendly smile, "That's great, Ginny. I hope we can be closer friends than we have been."
"Friends?"
"Yeah. I have a boyfriend, Ginny. I'm not interested in dating anyone else."
Weasley blinks rapidly a few times, and then she sits back in her chair with a little sigh. "I suppose not," she whispers. "I hoped, but…you never really looked at me, and then you were looking at a boy, and…I suppose not."
"No." Harry reaches across the table to squeeze her hand, which Theo doesn't think he specifically needs to do, but it's Harry's choice. "So. Sorry for not trusting you and taking your memories like that; I should have trusted you more. Are you angry at me?"
"If it helps you defeat Tom? I suppose not." But Weasley's voice is subdued, and she's avoiding looking at Harry for the moment, staring at the table instead. After a moment, she nods. "Thank you for telling me. But never do that again without telling me."
She snaps a bit on the last word, and Harry smiles and raises his hands. "Don't worry, Ginny. I won't."
She nods, gives Theo a long look, and then stands up and leaves them. Harry takes a deep breath and leans his head on Theo's shoulder. "Wow, that felt a lot more fraught than dealing with Ron and Hermione ever has."
"You don't know her as well. And that meant you didn't owe her as much, either." Theo turns and places his lips gently against Harry's temple, rejoicing in the way that Harry leans on him even more heavily. "But now it's done, and now we know that maybe we can count her as an ally."
Maybe Weasley can even be a friend to Harry the way Neville is. But Theo doesn't know if he can count on that yet. It will depend on how serious she is about giving up her crush.
"Yeah," Harry says, with the kind of bright smile that says he knows exactly what Theo is thinking. "Maybe we can."
"Detention."
"Sorry, Professor? What for?"
Theo raises his head from the Slinkhard book, or rather, the book on soul magic that he's wrapped up in a cover charmed to look like the cover of the Slinkhard book. Umbridge is standing in front of Harry with a smile so sweet that Theo thinks it would crunch between his teeth if he bit into it.
"Well, for not paying attention, Mr. Potter. I saw you look up from the book three times in the past five minutes!"
"I was reminding myself of your instructions on the board, Professor. I'm afraid that I don't have a very good memory."
"Oh, dear, Mr. Potter. Then I think we should use the detention time to discuss how we can work on improving your memory."
Harry just nods without expression and listens to Umbridge giving him an appointment for six that evening. He shoots a quick glance at Theo as he lowers his eyes to the book again—his own book on various methods of destroying cursed artifacts.
Theo smiles a little to himself. There's no way that he's letting Harry get anywhere close to Blood Quills or Veritaserum. And that means they need to move a little faster on disabling Umbridge than they had planned on.
But it doesn't matter. Theo will come up with some way to use the mad surge of rage inside him, instead of making it too obvious, the same way he did when he forced Davis to back down from attacking him.
He'll do it. And Umbridge will be no one's problem anymore.