Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-One—Preparing for a Meeting

"I've done well, haven't I, Harry?"

Theo is starting to wish that he hadn't come. Yes, he didn't want Harry to meet Black unguarded in Hogsmeade, but the way that Black begs for Harry's gratitude and appreciation is just…

Pathetic.

Harry sets down the butterbeer he's been drinking and leans forwards. They're in the Three Broomsticks, but behind one of Theo's wards, which means that other people in the pub can catch only blurry glimpses of them and can't hear anything they're saying. "Sirius, have you been going to your Mind-Healer appointments?"

Theo blinks. He didn't think that was the root of the problem. Then again, that's one reason Harry is so brilliant. Theo looks at him in appreciation.

"Why should I? They aren't doing anything!"

Harry sighs. "Sirius, you know you felt better over this summer when you went to them, and that you were doing better for a long time. Things only got worse when I left for Hogwarts, didn't they? And you started thinking that you weren't—worthy of me or something."

"I just want to help."

"You did. You sent those books on soul magic that I asked for."

"But I want to help with whatever you're doing that means you need the books on soul magic, Harry." Black's hands work back and forth along the table, and his gaze is so wide and appealing that Theo is sort of surprised even a dog Animagus can do that with his eyes in human form. "Please. Please. You know that I regret not being a good godfather to you up until this point. Please don't cut me out of your life now."

"I'll never cut you out of my life, Sirius," Harry says, his voice gentle.

Pity.

"But I do need you to do better than you are now in order to participate in the sorts of things I need the books on soul magic for. I need you to trust Theo. I need you to attend your Mind-Healer appointments. Can you do that for me?"

Black casts Theo a distrustful glance. Theo smiles at him. Delightfully, that makes Black look away with a flush.

"It's hard for me," Black says, hoarsely, in what's probably one of the most honest confessions he's ever made. "When I distrusted Death Eaters for so long. But—I have to trust you, and I know that you trust him, Harry. So I'll do it."

"And the Mind-Healer appointments?"

"Can I stop them in a month if they're not doing anything?"

"Only if they're not doing anything."

Black nods so eagerly that his head looks almost ready to fall off his neck. "I get it, Harry. I know that you want me to be well, and I would never want to take away the chance from you. I promise that I'll do the best I can. Be the best I can."

That's at least something.

"Want to tell me what your disgust was all about?"

"What?"

"Your disgust." Harry's voice is even as he turns around and walks backwards down the main street of Hogsmeade. Theo eyes the people around them, but no one is specifically trying to get close right now. "You were disgusted with Sirius, and I don't know why."

Theo takes a calming breath and reminds himself that just because Harry might not like some of his behavior doesn't mean he's about to leave. "The most important thing for Black right now is having a place in your life and making up for the years he was gone by being a good godfather."

"Yes? So? Do you have a problem with that?"

"Of course not," Theo snaps. "But it's incredibly grating to me that you're still the one having to act like the adult in the relationship and hold his bloody hand!"

Harry pauses for a long moment, long enough that someone almost bumps into him. Theo sends the witch a glare that has her backing off. Harry shakes his head and starts into motion, wandering towards the front window of Tomes and Scrolls. Theo follows him.

"That's not…"

"What you want to do? What you are doing?"

"I'm protecting him and making him take measures to get better." Harry spins around to scowl at Theo. "The way I would protect anyone else who was in that situation and needed that kind of help from me. It has nothing to do with him being an adult and what he would or wouldn't do for me. It has to do with him needing help."

Theo nods slowly. Honestly, that's probably true. Harry would protect Weasley or Granger or Neville or Theo and insist they attend Mind-Healing appointments if he thought they needed them.

Not that Theo would need them, because he knows very well his specific brand of madness is good for protecting Harry. But the others.

"And yet, you're disgusted."

"He demands so much of you and offers so little in return. And it has nothing to do with the fact that he's your godfather or a Gryffindor," Theo adds, when Harry opens his mouth. "Not even specifically to do with the fact that he abandoned you to go chasing after Pettigrew. Because he takes and takes and takes."

"And you give and give."

Harry's voice is soft, and he's reaching for Theo with a fond expression. That's the only reason Theo doesn't react negatively to the words, the soft hand smoothing over his cheek.

Well, maybe for a few more reasons than that. He has a bit of self-control. "What?"

"The reason I have enough to spare for people like Sirius is that you give me so much." Harry leans forwards and kisses him, softly, ignoring the way that a few people gape and gasp around them. He truly doesn't seem to see them, and that makes Theo able to wrap his arms around Harry and kiss back. When Harry pulls back, he's flushed and smiling and bright-eyed. "I love you, Theo. If you ever get tired of giving me so much, you have to let me know right away, all right? I'd never tax you."

"I can't imagine that I would," Theo says, dazed, contented, floating deep in an ocean made of longing and desire and love. He swallows and wrestles back the temptation to guide Harry over to a wall and all but fuck him in public. "You realize that you give to me as well?"

"I want to make sure I do. That I never just take and take the way you say Sirius does."

And so many of the others. But Theo doesn't feel the need to say that right now, with Harry looking right at him, that little half-smile lingering on the corner of his mouth that no one else ever gets to see.

Not just his friends don't get to see it. Or Black and Lupin. Or the professors. There's—that smile is just for Theo, alone.

Before Harry, there was no one and nothing in Theo's life that was just for him alone, except maybe his father's hatred. Father always emphasized his duty to the Nott family. Slytherin was a mess of power plays and people who paid no particular attention to one youngster from a Death Eater family. Blaise is his best friend, but his first loyalty will always be to his mother.

Harry is his. And Theo will do anything and everything to protect that. Put up with Black. Swallow the words that he would want to speak about Harry's friends. Protect those friends, if he has to.

Theo leans forwards and gives his mouth to Harry.

"Father wanted me to give this to you."

Draco's eyes are cast down on the floor, as if he wants to show very firmly that he knows Theo is above him. Normally, Theo would enjoy the demonstration, and the fact that Draco felt the need to do this in the Great Hall, in front of everyone, instead of in the common room, just in front of the Slytherins.

But Theo is, at the moment, too concerned about what a letter from Lucius Malfoy might mean, particularly given the way that the man attempted to communicate with him in the past. So he offers Draco a cool nod and takes the letter from him, then tucks it away and goes on with his breakfast.

A small wave of murmurs spreads out from him, but Theo isn't here to be their entertainment.

"I don't know how Potter stands it," Blaise murmurs under his breath, and Theo gives him a short half-smile and stands up as soon as he finishes eating.

Blaise joins him on his walk out of the Great Hall, and there's a brush and ripple of motion on his right side that makes Theo relax a moment later. Harry is there under his Invisibility Cloak. They walk together, the three of them, until they reach the classroom that Theo and Harry have made their own.

"What does that bastard want?"

Theo smiles at the spark in Harry's eyes as he casts off the Cloak and glares at the letter in Theo's hand. Blaise clears his throat loudly, or Theo might really have stepped forwards and snogged Harry for his anger on Theo's behalf.

"I don't know yet," Theo says. "But I do think it says something that he used his son to deliver the letter to me and not an owl."

"Good things?"

"Not bad things, anyway. There might be bad news in the letter itself, but if he'd cursed it, it would have reacted to Draco touching it first."

"Not if he used the sort of curse that means it was subdued around blood family but would react to you."

"I'm wearing a permanent detection charm that would have warned me about that."

"Good, because otherwise I would have had to send Draco back to Malfoy in pieces, and Draco's annoying, but he doesn't deserve that."

"Have I told you lately that I really bloody love you?"

Blaise clears his throat again.

"You're a spoilsport, Zabini," Theo says, making his voice as sulky as possible so Harry will smile, and then slits the letter open.

The parchment inside is silky and looks like cream. Theo raises his eyebrows. He thinks he knows what it is, but he would be surprised if he's right. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that Lucius Malfoy would send.

Then he turns over the letter, and he's proven right after all.

To Theo Nott,

This message is a call for truce for a period of two hours to be agreed between the two of us within three days of your receipt of this letter. My Lord wishes to meet with you and speak with you on a matter of mutual benefit. This parchment will be signed by both you and him and guarantee that you will not be harmed by curse, spell, hex, disease, poison…

On and on it goes, the list of things that Theo will be exempt from. He skims it, doesn't see anything obvious missing from it—it even includes Legilimency—and resumes reading near the bottom of the sheet.

My Lord's word that he can offer you more than you have ever dreamed of. Send back your proposal for the day and hours. My Lord will accept anything reasonable.

Lucius Malfoy, of the Malfoy family.

Theo whistles softly under his breath and extends the letter to Harry when he makes a motion to take it. Blaise moves around so that he can read the letter over Harry's shoulder, but that's not a problem. Theo is already considering how they can use this to their advantage.

"No."

"What?"

Harry's eyes are flaring as he lowers the letter and stares at Theo, and his magic does the same thing a moment later, surrounding his body like a waterfall of golden and silver light. "You think I'm going to turn you into the spy that Dumbledore would have wanted you to be if you'd claimed sanctuary from him? That I want you to take the Mark? Of course bloody not, you bloody fucking fool."

Theo revels for a moment in the strength of Harry's love for him, but then says, as gently as he can, "No, Harry, I would never take the Mark, not even if I thought that you wanted me to. It would render me useless, given that the people who take the Mark don't have the choice to disobey the Dark Lord directly. What matters is that I can use this to get close enough to earn an advantage for us."

"I don't want you spying!"

"I was rather thinking about using one of the spells that Tonks taught us on the Dark Lord himself."

"What spells?" Blaise asks.

Theo smiles at him. "Tell you in a minute." He will trust Blaise with the full information, as long as he makes an oath. Then he turns back to Harry and waits.

Harry pales and flushes by turns. Then he says, "You prat. You let me think—"

"I never mentioned taking the Dark Mark. You jumped to that conclusion all on your own, dearest conclusion-hopper."

"The air in here is thick with sweetness," Blaise says loudly.

Theo rolls his eyes at his friend, and turns back to Harry.

"So you want to pretend to agree, and then go and talk to Voldemort for me." Harry ignores the way that Blaise flinches.

"No. I want to talk to him for us."

"Theo, now is not the time to be an overly literal prat."

It probably isn't, Theo has to agree when he sees the green tint to Harry's face, but he reaches out and gathers his boyfriend into his arms. "The parchment would mandate that I agree to two hours of peace and no attempt to harm him," he murmurs. "But it doesn't matter if I cast a spell, if it doesn't harm him. And it wouldn't."

"He could do something anyway. He could poison you with a snake—"

"Poison and snakes are on the list of things that he can't use," Blaise interrupts, waving the parchment around.

Harry closes his eyes tightly. "How much can we trust that Voldemort and Malfoy will actually keep the terms?"

"If he signs this parchment, he'll be as bound by it as I am. I was surprised that Malfoy sent it, because it really does guarantee a binding truce for as long as the parties who sign it agree on. I would think it's a trick, and there are spells I can perform that will test it. I'll do them. But if it's genuine…"

"It would be a chance," Harry whispers. "A chance that we might not ever have without this."

Theo nods.

"I thought of another problem," Blaise says suddenly. "I know that the Dark Lord has more than one name. What happens if he signs with his—moniker? Would that bind him? He probably won't consent to sign with his birth name."

"No," Harry says. "But I'm fairly sure that he no longer thinks of himself by his birth name. Even the—well, we'll tell you in a few minutes, a shade of him, that I met in second year in the Chamber of Secrets, only used his birth name to try and fool me and the student that he possessed. He was very insistent about claiming the name Voldemort—honestly, Blaise!—once he told me who he was."

Theo nods again. "I'm not worried about that. I'll insist on the name he made up for himself, and if he signs the parchment with that, it will signal that he is just as bound by it, and considers it his name, as much as anyone else would be by their birth name."

"We'll have to be careful."

Theo ducks his head and smiles at Harry from under half-closed eyelids. Not even Blaise's loud throat-clearing can stop him from doing that. "Of course we will. I have no doubt that we can manage to trick him."

"But if you're bound by the same parchment, wouldn't he suspect that drawing your wand on him would be some sort of spell? Even if he didn't think it would be a harmful one?"

"The spell that I'm thinking of can be placed in an object beforehand, and enchanted to release with a touch of a finger. And although I'll respond within three days, I'll set the time when we should meet for a fortnight hence. That'll give me time to enchant the object."

"I'm the object-enchanter around here," Blaise says, with the kind of haughty imitation of offense that he's so good at.

"I wouldn't command you to help, Blaise."

"I want to. I want him dead."

Theo pauses. Blaise has never said that Voldemort wasn't his enemy in particular, and he obviously wouldn't want him to win, given that he's Theo's friend and Theo is Harry's boyfriend, but Theo didn't think—"Why?"

"He made threats to my mother. Recently."

Theo clenches his hands for a long moment. Then he nods. "We'll make sure he pays."

Blaise tosses him a bloodthirsty smile. "It would be my honor to enchant this object for you, Theo. Once you tell me what kind of spell you would need to cast, and what you would need the object to do."

"Of course."

Theo turns back to Harry, who has gone silent. Theo doesn't think it's just because he was speaking with Blaise and Harry thinks interruptions would be rude. He would have interrupted if he had something important to say.

Those vivid green eyes lock on Theo for a long moment. Theo gazes back and exudes quiet confidence. It's true that they'll need to take precautions, but also true that they'll have the time and bloodthirstiness to take those precautions.

"Okay," Harry whispers, and nods. "Okay."