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Chapter Twenty—Finding

Theo casts the spell that he's been casting on every floor of Hogwarts for the last few weeks. It's familiar by now, the way that he has to brace against the rush of magic and energy leaving him, the way he reaches out to grasp the air or the wall or Harry's arm when he's done. Harry supports him and murmurs gentle words to him.

Theo closes his eyes for a moment in exhaustion.

And then he snaps them open, because a light is imprinting dancing lines across his eyelids.

A light.

He exchanges a look with Harry, who is leaning forwards as though he's going to charge through the wall to the glow. Because the glow is coming from within the wall. As though something is hidden within the stones, Theo thinks, taking a step forwards. Or a secret passage?

It's probably a secret passage.

"I don't know why he would have chosen this particular hiding place," Harry whispers, his breath close enough to Theo's ear to stir delicious little shivers in him. "Do you think that he couldn't think of a better one? Maybe he got surprised by Dumbledore when he was hiding it, and had to scramble?"

"I don't know if he's capable of being surprised like that. He would be overconfident and think that Dumbledore wouldn't suspect what he was doing."

Harry snorts a little. "Which must mean that he thought no one else could find it." He steps forwards, running delicate fingers over the stone. "What do you think the trick of it is?"

Theo casts a Stinging Hex that makes Harry yelp and jerk his hand back from the wall. He turns to Theo with a look of extreme irritation, and Theo just shakes his head a little. "Let's not fumble around with a wall that Voldemort might have hidden a curse or a blade in, all right? Let's not."

"You're a wanker."

"But a practical wanker."

"Remind me of that when we're alone next."

Theo swallows, feeling himself get hard, and turns away from Harry to study the wall in silent dignity. Harry laughs at him, not at all silently.

Just to prove that they might be facing traps, Theo casts a Detection Charm on the wall. He raises his eyebrows when it comes back clear. It seems that there isn't something lurking within the wall, or at least not anything that Voldemort planted to be an obvious first deterrent to finding his Horcrux.

"I wonder…"

"Yeah?" Theo turns to where Harry is standing near the tapestry of dancing trolls on the wall, his head cocked.

"Something I heard from the house-elves," Harry murmurs. "Luna likes to visit them, and she took me along last time. They were talking about a secret room that becomes whatever you need on the seventh floor. The Come and Go Room, they called it."

"You went to visit the house-elves with Luna?"

"Yes. Is there something wrong?"

"I just didn't know that."

Harry leans forwards and kisses Theo abruptly. Theo curls his fingers around Harry's neck and hair and holds on, lapping greedily at his boyfriend's mouth. He doesn't know what brought this on, but he's not going to give up the opportunity to kiss him.

Harry pulls back with a little shake of his head and a laugh. "Theo, I love you. And I can do things without you sometimes, and that's healthy, as Hermione would probably say. I didn't deliberately keep this a secret from you. I just didn't think to mention it."

Theo nods, not much appeased. "It's a matter of your safety, not your privacy," he adds, when Harry raises an eyebrow. "I don't know if any other Slytherins are going to strike at you because Voldemort told them to, and I don't know if Luna can defend you."

"After the way you put down Rosier, you really think they would strike?"

"After the way I put down Davis and Draco, they shouldn't have, but they did."

"I promise that I wouldn't hesitate to cast Dark Arts spells in self-defense just because Luna was there. She would probably accept it better than most people. And I'll tell you where I'm going in the future if that would make you feel better."

"Thank you."

Harry rolls his eyes a little, but Theo is too pleased to mind. (And his lips are still tingling). "Now, the elves said the Come and Go Room only appears when called. You have to walk back and forth in front of the tapestry three times thinking about what you want."

"What happens if we say that we want the room where the Horcrux is?"

"I don't see why we couldn't have that."

Theo nods and begins to walk back and forth. He would feel stupid in other circumstances, but Harry is leaning against the wall with his posture alert and calm, his arms folded in front of him so that his wand is dangling down against his thigh. Theo knows that he can trust Harry to never laugh at him.

(Without a good cause, anyway).

He concentrates as hard as he can on the flash of light that the Horcrux-detecting spell produced when they cast it, and the sight of the stone wall. Then he turns around on the end of the third walk and hears Harry gasp. There is a door in the wall, a heavy oaken one with an iron knob shaped like a coiled snake.

"Did the elves say anything about that?"

"They said a door would appear. They didn't say what it would look like." Harry points his wand at the door and casts a detection spell, but nothing happens. "Let's go."

Theo does cast a shield spell that's specifically for the skin of his hand, to imitate a glove, before he opens the door. Probably this is magic that Tom Riddle took advantage of rather than created, but why act stupidly?

Nothing happens except the touch of cold iron, though, and then the door opens and reveals…

"A rubbish room?"

"One of the elves said another name for this is the Room of Hidden Things. I think I can see why."

"You could hide anything in this junk," Theo mutters, staring around at stuffed animals, brooms missing bristles, robes missing sleeves, beheaded busts, broken wands, and lots more. "I wonder why Voldemort put it here?"

"He might have been thinking that no one would be looking for one thing specifically in this mess."

Theo nods and follows Harry into the winding corridors of rubbish. It's a good thing it's a Sunday and they have nothing planned, not even a trip to Hogsmeade. He can tell already that this will take all day.

It does take most of the day, and in the end, they find it almost by accident. Harry is bending down to look at a vintage Cleansweep—while Theo argues that the thing would dump him the moment Harry tried to sling a leg over it—when he abruptly straightens and jerks his head to the side, hissing. Theo sees why a moment later.

A drop of blood is making its way down Harry's forehead from his scar.

Theo whirls immediately, putting his body between Harry and the direction he's facing. It's impossible at the moment to tell what that is, exactly, or what the Horcrux is, but he does it.

"It's over there," Harry whispers hoarsely.

"Yes."

Theo walks slowly in the direction that Harry was staring, shouldering his boyfriend behind him even though Harry tries to protest. A few seconds later, they're staring at a cabinet with a bust on it.

And a diadem draped over the bust.

Even knowing what it is, even after exposure to the Dark and cursed objects in the Nott cellars, Theo's fingers itch to touch it. He's fairly certain that he knows what it is, and it makes him want to spit in disgust.

And desire.

"Theo?"

Theo jerks back to himself to realize that he was reaching out for the diadem. He pulls his hand back. "That's the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw," he whispers, and keeps going when Harry just stares at him with a baffled expression. "An incredible treasure. It increased the wisdom and the knowledge of anyone whose head it sat on. It's been lost for centuries."

"So for Voldemort to find it and turn it into a Horcrux…"

"It's obscene."

Harry is silent for a long moment after Theo speaks. Then he says softly, "We could try to remove the Horcrux with some of those spells that we haven't studied yet in the books. If you want to keep the diadem—"

Theo shakes his head immediately, although it feels physically painful to do so. "No. We could never trust it. And I don't want to delay our quest by months or years because we're trying to rescue something that can't be rescued."

Harry leans forwards and kisses his shoulder. "All right. Do you want to destroy it right here, or move it?"

"You want to cast Fiendfyre in the middle of Hogwarts?"

"Of course not! I was going to go down to the Chamber and get a fang, and I was going to leave you here to watch it."

"I don't trust myself with it, Harry."

Harry pauses, and then he rests a hand on Theo's shoulder. Theo leans back against his boyfriend, his eyes closed. He's grateful, for once, that Harry isn't trying to make him speak of it.

"All right. I'll put it in the moleskin pouch, and then we can take it down to the Chamber with us."

Theo watches with his hands clenched as Harry prods the diadem into the air with little jabs of his wand. Theo knows it isn't his imagination that a subtle glow surrounds the diadem, and that it's trying to drift towards Theo. Attracted to the one who wants it, not to the Horcrux in Harry, despite that being active enough to show up to their Horcrux-detecting spells.

I don't want you, Theo thinks, as hard and as clearly as he can. The temptation is immense—with wisdom like the diadem promises, he could see the future threats ahead, and he could access any knowledge he wanted to protect Harry—

"Theo."

Theo shuts his eyes and turns his head away. Harry kisses his shoulder again and says nothing as he floats the diadem into the pouch. Theo takes a deep breath and shudders as he feels the pouch close and shut the temptation away.

"Do you want to come down to the Chamber with me or not?"

Theo takes a breath and opens his eyes, wrapping his mind in Occlumency. It's not something he usually does when he's not practicing with Harry, because he doesn't like the way it muffles his emotions and reactions. But it appears to be necessary to do when he's dealing with Horcruxes. "Of course."

"You'll be all right?"

"It's mortifying that you're so worried about me when you have the biggest burden of all."

Harry tugs Theo towards him, so abruptly that Theo almost crashes into the cabinet. Harry leans his forehead against Theo's and closes his eyes.

"You are so, so dear to me," Harry whispers. "I don't know if I say it as often as I should, as often as you do, but Theo, I love you more than my next breath. I don't know—what to say to convince you that you're important, as important as I am, and that my burden is lightened immeasurably by you being there."

Theo leans on Harry for a long moment, trembling. Of course he never really doubted that Harry loves him, but it's something else to hear Harry say it, to feel the way that Harry's hands close on his shoulders.

"I know," Theo whispers back at last. "I love you, too."

Harry kisses his temple, his cheek, and his lips this time, each kiss a slow and solemn blessing. Then he pulls back with that vicious smile that is also part of what Theo loves about him. "Let's go to the Chamber."

Theo willingly follows Harry out of the Room of Hidden Things, eyes fixed on the back of Harry's neck, how much even that seems to say how much he loves Theo.

Harry is more than enough for him, and maybe Theo doesn't deserve him, but he will cling to him with both hands.

"Ready."

Theo nods. He's fully Occluding now, standing on the other side of a small circle of salt that Harry conjured. In the center of the circle lies the diadem, and in Harry's hand is the fang that destroyed the diary, which was still lying on the stone floor of the Chamber in an explosion of something darker than blood.

Theo swallows at the thought of the diary. He wishes he had been here with Harry then.

But he couldn't have done much at that age, and maybe he would have fallen victim to the diary with the way the diadem is so insistently calling him. He fixes his eyes on the diadem and watches as Harry steps across the circle and drives the fang down.

The diadem explodes.

Theo reels back with his hand across his face, and then realizes the explosion was metaphorical. The sapphire has gone flying, and the diadem is shaking and screaming with a human voice. No, worse than a human voice, something filled with hissing, on the edge of Parseltongue. Theo has never before been glad that he doesn't speak it.

Black blood, something darker than blood, is spurting from the diadem. Harry ignores that and drives the fang home again and again.

It seems like forever until the screaming is finally quelled, and Harry and Theo are standing in the silent Chamber where now two Horcruxes have been destroyed. The diadem is in ruined pieces, and Theo stares at it and can hardly believe that he ever desired the bloody thing.

"Are you all right?"

Theo blinks and looks up. Harry is in front of him, stepping across the salt circle even as Theo watches. "Of course."

Harry leans on him, shaking, and Theo hears the clatter of the basilisk fang falling to the ground. Theo catches Harry close and holds him. Of course he can understand why Harry was reluctant to destroy the thing. He knew the kind of horror it would cause, the kind of effort it would take.

But he did it anyway.

Theo's boyfriend is amazing and hot.

Harry half-laughs when Theo seeks out his mouth, but he draws back only long enough to say, "Here?" before diving back in.

Theo wraps his arms around Harry's waist and back, and knows that he can convey what he's feeling, that Harry understands it as well as he does. In the wake of death, destruction, horror, the loss of an artifact so precious to Voldemort's mad ambitions, they are alive.

They will keep being alive.

Theo intends to let nothing, not Horcruxes and not Voldemort, take either one of them.

"Why am I here, sir?"

"Because I wished to speak with you."

Snape is as uncommunicative and stupid as ever. Theo just sighs and settles into the chair that stands across from Snape's desk. There's a small desk in front of it where Theo might write lines if this were an ordinary detention, but Snape just stalked up to him when Theo was on the way back from dinner to the common room and barked at him to come along. Theo did, mostly out of curiosity.

He might regret that, he thinks, as he watches Snape swish dramatically around the office.

"You are losing yourself in the Potter boy."

"Oh, is this another intervention to proclaim that no one can love a Potter?" Theo rolls his eyes up so high he can see the ceiling and leans forwards. "Let me tell you something, sir: I am never going to abandon Harry no matter what."

"You know…Albus told me you knew…"

There's a long silence. Theo doesn't see why he should offer anything, particularly with Snape glaring at him like a gargoyle.

Snape finally takes a deep breath and says, "Albus told me you know about the Horcruxes."

"Yes. Although I'm horrified he would trust you with the information."

"What?"

"You could decide to turn against Harry at any moment because you hate him. Or maybe you would decide to offer the information to Voldemort because he would make it worth your while. It's hard to know what side you're on, sir."

Theo doesn't really think that Snape would offer the information to Voldemort, but watching him puff up in indignation is hilarious to watch. So is watching him struggle to say something other than what's probably the immediate curse he wants to cast on Theo.

"You are a foolish young man," Snape finally growls.

"Right."

"You should turn away from Harry Potter immediately. You know that he is a Horcrux. Albus told me. You know there is no hope and he will have to sacrifice his life."

"We're finding a different path."

"The sooner he dies, the better, because as long as he's alive, the Horcrux can influence and taint you—"

Snape shuts up then. Theo imagines that it's rather difficult to speak when a wand is being pushed into your throat by someone who's so light-headed with rage that his hand is shaking.

"Mr. Nott," Snape whispers a second later. "You will back off."

"Not until you swear a vow to never harm Harry again. Not in word, not in deed, not in thought, not by spell."

It's the kind of oath that his father would have put an associate who had betrayed him but was still useful under. From the furious widening of Snape's eyes, Theo rather reckons he knows that.

"Do it," Theo says quietly.

"You can do nothing to me if I do not."

"I'll kill you. I don't care what the Headmaster says. I'll do what's needed. Choose between your life and your loyalties, Snape. I hold the first in the palm of my hand."

Snape tries to snap and twist away from him. Theo follows without thought and then puts him under the sensory deprivation curse that he used on Davis. Snape doesn't react as strongly as she did, given that he's so much older and better-trained, but Theo can see the sheen of sweat on his face as he searches Snape's robe pockets and takes his wand. When he lifts the curse, Snape stares at him as if seeing a stranger.

"All this time—"

"Yes?"

"I thought Draco was the most dangerous in your year."

Theo smiles without bursting into laughter the way he wants to, because that might be enough of a distraction for Snape to overcome him. "Did you perhaps confuse Draco with his father? He isn't dangerous to anything except his own ego."

"I see," Snape says quietly. Theo has no idea what's running through his head, but he's not that surprised when Snape tries to snatch his own wand back with wandless power. Theo keeps hold of it easily enough and drops it on the floor, pinning it under his boot. Snape's eyes travel silently back and forth between his boot and his face.

"What is it to be, Snape?"

Snape stares at him with glittering eyes. Then he says, "I will swear the vow that you ask of me. And you will watch your back."

"I respect you, which means I distrust you," Theo says cheerfully. "But maybe it'll be a bit easier after the vow."

Snape makes the vow in a slow, careful voice, but Theo listens to every word and is sure that he's not sneaking in words that he speaks softly or something like that. He nods when it's done, and then he touches his wand to Snape's wand and casts silently at it.

"What did you do?"

Snape's voice is low and threatening, but Theo killed his own father and stood against the Dark Lord. He looks at his professor without fear as he returns the wand. "I cursed your wand to break if you try indirect actions against the vow."

"That could be anything."

"You're dangerous, Professor. You're smart. I trust you to know what would be against the vow and not to do it."

"Potter has corrupted you."

"No," Theo says, and smiles in a way that even Snape has to look away from. "I rather think this was my father."

To that, Snape has no answer.