Chapter 7: Cast Me Away

They said almost nothing as they walked the path to the Shack. The steps were familiar, the distance the same as it always was, but the woods looked different in the afternoon light than they usually did; it seemed the trees curved mournfully along the path now, reaching tenderly towards them.

Or perhaps it was Harry who was different now.

Theo opened the door to the shack—he had a way with locked doors, Harry noted; things never managed to stay locked around Theo Nott for long—and gestured Harry inside, opting to linger for a moment in the doorway. Harry, meanwhile, sank into the ragged old sofa, the upholstery torn apart after too many parties and too little care, and waited for words to come.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

u know somethign i think it actually rly sucks here

Dudley, of course.

like do u ever get the feeling my mum and dad r like massive liars or psychopaths or smthng idk

Harry sighed, exhaling the irony.

or something, he replied, and slid his phone back in his pocket, glancing up at Theo.

"Car crash," Harry managed eventually, and Theo looked up, frowning.

"What?"

"Car crash," Harry repeated. "That's what my aunt and uncle told me." He looked up, pained. "That they died in a car crash. I didn't—" he exhaled, eyeing his hands. "I didn't know." Then he frowned, glancing back up at Theo. "You knew something, though, didn't you?"

"Draco ran a background check on you," Theo supplied, clearing his throat. "I didn't ask him to, but he does a lot of things I don't ask for."

"Or don't have to ask for," Harry amended for him, and then reached up, rubbing wearily at the back of his neck. "Strange to think Draco Malfoy knows more about where I come from than I do."

"Makes me wonder if he ever ran a background check on me." Theo laughed sharply, though it didn't reach the rest of his face; it was more a brisk, relieving expulsion of sound than anything with meaning. "Bet he did. Bet he knew." Theo looked up from his hands, glancing over at Harry. "You have money somewhere, if you didn't know that," he ventured, changing the subject. "Your father was wealthy. Your grandfather was insanely wealthy. You must have a bank account somewhere."

"I don't know where," Harry mumbled, though he assumed Theo probably knew as much already.

"Draco could find out. Or Pansy. Or Daphne, actually, seeing as her father's the chairman of the board at Gringotts Bank." Harry looked up, surprised, and Theo's smirk twisted in agreement. "Yeah. They're scarily well-connected."

"Good thing they're your friends and not your enemies," Harry remarked, and Theo shrugged.

"Your friends too, if you wanted. If you needed." He shifted, sitting himself beside Harry, and stared out into the vacant space of the Shack's dilapidated living room. "You'll have to leave," Theo commented perfunctorily, holding his hands to his mouth. "You can't afford to wait. You've got a magic sword, Potter, and after what happened back there, I'm positive my father will check for it soon." Theo cleared his throat gruffly. "You probably shouldn't go back to Stonewall, either. My father will look for you there, and he can get you expelled, so—"

"You told your father magic didn't exist," Harry cut in neutrally, and Theo let out a sound that was mostly a scoff, though Harry thought it had elements of wistfulness.

"Yeah, well, I'm a liar. A fake." Theo turned, smiling bitterly at Harry. "And to think, a little more time spent with you and I might have been something else. A hero. A wizard." The muscle tightened around his jaw. "Might have managed to be something, at least."

Harry looked over, eyeing the familiar shape of Theo's silhouette.

"Come with me," Harry said, and its effect on Theo's placid expression was jarring, all his sharpened features contorted with surprise.

"What? But—"

"I know what this is," Harry confessed. "I know it, I've always known it." Silence. "I can't go backwards, Theo. I can't unbelieve in magic. I can't unmeet you. I can't go back to a life where I don't know what it feels like to hold Excalibur in my hands, just like I can't unknow what you taste like, what you feel like—"

A sharp inhale. Harry waited, cataloguing the signs.

Theo merely blinked, his mouth parting around something that seemed to be processing too slowly inside his impossible brain.

"What are we?" Harry asked quietly, and when Theo didn't answer, he let the sword drop to the floor, twisting himself around to take Theo's face in his hands. "Theo. What are we?"

"I love you." Harry heard the words and processed them slowly, too slowly, as slowly as Theo had just seconds ago, before he replayed it fast and slowed it down again, letting the words drip through his soul like honey. "I can't unlove you, Harry."

"Then don't," Harry growled approvingly, dragging his thumb across Theo's lips. "Then don't. What are we?"

"We could die," Theo informed him neutrally, clearly not listening. "You heard my dad. We don't even know what actually killed our parents. We don't know what possessing a magic sword could do to us. And what about the paper they were writing? That—that cup, or—"

"What are we?" Harry repeated gruffly, shoving Theo back on the sofa and waiting for the inevitable sting of Theo's fingers on his hips, for the unerring meanness of his touch.

"I'd die with you," Theo informed him deliriously. Harry dropped his chin and Theo kissed him, wrenching Harry's head back to slide his lips along Harry's neck. "For you. Because of you. Whatever. Nothing ever seemed worth doing until you." He slid the words between kisses, between the vacancies of his teeth. "Until you, I swear, there was nothing."

A relatable sentiment, Harry thought, but couldn't speak, couldn't slow down. Theo's nails clawed into his spine and Harry channeled years of torment and confusion and vast, wild emptiness into the pressure of his hips against Theo's, into the promise of undying fealty he spilled from his lips.

"What are we?" Harry muttered, his hands tight on Theo's collar, and this time Theo yanked Harry's head towards him, his lips next to Harry's ear.

"We're fucking magic," Theo said, and then he reached down to heft the sword upwards in his left hand, filling the old shack with a piercing, blinding light.

Theodore Nott Senior walked slowly from his son's empty bedroom back to his office, channeling his weariness into each step. At this age, his knees were starting to bother him; to stridently wail and creak, just like the old familiar stairs in the castle he couldn't bear to leave. He paused, resting a hand against the aged stone, and raised his free hand to his forehead, knowing what the old caretaker was going to say even before he said it.

"Potter's not here either," Filch grunted. "Gryffindor Tower's empty."

"His things?"

"Gone."

Most of his son's things were gone, too.

"Thank you, Argus," Nott sighed, resting a hand fraternally on Filch's shoulder. "I'm sure Theodore will be back soon."

He wouldn't, of course.

Theodore Nott knew his son.

He knew Theo was never coming back if he could help it.

He barely registered the walk into his classroom, nor the one up the narrow stairs of his storage room. It was harder than he remembered; the steps were steeper, the distance longer. The lights flickered on and the room was dustier, less inviting, and just as haunted as it always was.

He paused by the door, entering the digits of the day he'd last seen his wife ('3-1-1-0,' each impact more punishing than the last, but still the only series of numbers he would never conceivably forget) into the hidden alarm system and disabling it, aiming himself towards the sword.

He wasn't sure what about the sword had called to him. He'd procured it as a special favor, from one academician to another, but he'd always hidden it away. It was worth a fortune, obviously, so it wasn't exactly impractical to have done so, but there was something else about it. Something eerie, and it flashed in grim, bitter welcome now, blinding him momentarily as he reached for the hilt and picked it up, glancing over the blade.

It felt the same as it had when he'd first picked it up. The same give, same mobility, same heft—all words he'd used to describe it back then, despite not knowing what damn impractical purpose he'd ever have for a fucking sword. It still shone exactly the same, the rubies glittering precisely as he remembered, and it had precisely the same eerie feeling.

Perhaps even eerier, if that were possible.

Nott shifted, about to put the sword away and consider filing police reports (and canceling credit cards and cell phone service, too, though Theo certainly knew enough amoral rich children who'd sort that out for him) when he suddenly paused, something on the blade catching in the light. He eyed it closely, recognizing the script; the spindly handwriting he'd seen so many times.

He froze, disbelieving, but once he'd convinced himself that it was not, in fact, a trick of the light, he started to laugh, his faulty knees almost collapsing beneath him as he convulsed first in hysterical peals of mirth, and then in bitter, painful choked-out sobs.

This was not the sword he had purchased.

Though it was a perfect forgery, and its one flaw was obviously not a flaw at all.

Theodore Nott stepped back and stared down at it; at the sword that was a consummate lie, just like its creator.

Then he put the sword away and turned, resetting the alarms and replacing everything just as it had been, except for one thing: he turned the blade of the sword on the opposite side, allowing one word to catch in the dim fluorescent light of the small, cramped storage loft.

One word; a final message from his son.

'Lumos.'

Then Theodore Nott turned out the light and went to sleep, leaving the police reports behind.

FIN

a/n: This story means a lot to me, and I thank you immensely for reading. If you take nothing else from it, a final reminder:

Your crazy is your magic.