Chapter Text
“I’m sorry to call you in like this.”
Harry, who was shaking snow off his cloak, paused and blinked at Bill. “What? Why?”
Bill folded his arms and sighed. He had scars all over his arms from a cursed artifact that had broken out of a tomb last year, and Harry personally found them more noticeable than the ones from Fenrir Greyback on the man’s face, although he knew Bill didn’t see it that way. “Nott’s the son of a Death Eater. Maybe a Marked Death Eater himself. I didn’t want to make you do this case.”
“Nott’s not Marked,” Harry said without thought.
“What? How do you know? He’s been practically a recluse since the war.”
Harry flushed. Trust him to blurt out this secret after keeping it for several years. “I can feel the magic of the Dark Mark,” he admitted reluctantly. “Whenever I walk into a place that’s housed a Death Eater for a long time, I can feel it permeating the walls. Maybe it’s because Voldemort was my mortal enemy or because I carried some of his magic myself. I don’t know.”
Bill blinked. “And you can’t sense anything here?’
“No. I think Mr. Nott, the Marked one, must have moved out long before he actually got arrested.”
“Huh.” Then Bill shook himself. “Well, anyway. Theodore Nott’s vanished. We wouldn’t have been that concerned about it, or even known, but he performed some ritual two nights ago that the goblins felt all over Britain.”
“The branch of Gringotts in London is hundreds of miles from here…”
“I know. And so are the few other enclaves they trust us with the knowledge of. But they felt it nonetheless. And they’re concerned about what kind of magic could have made the sky above the manor blaze. We had a hell of a time with the Obliviators making sure they got all the Muggles who saw it.”
Harry chewed his lip. “And you chose me because…”
“See for yourself.” Bill moved out of the way and gestured down the entrance hall, which was lined with mirrors, in the direction of a heavy, dark oak door.
Harry took a step towards it.
The air immediately wavered and curled around him, pressing in so thickly that he had to take a sharp gasp of breath. A step, and another step, and the floor seemed to slant beneath him at the same time that the ceiling bent down like a threatening gargoyle. Harry made it to the door, but he was sweating as he laid his hand on the knocker.
“Harry!”
“It’s all right, Bill,” Harry said, aware that his voice seemed to echo from a distance. He turned around.
Bill was standing near the door where Harry had entered. As Harry watched, he lifted his foot and tried to take a step, but the corridor warped into a corkscrew and sent him spiraling down towards what seemed to be a pool of white light.
“Bill!”
The floor shuddered and jerked, and then everything stopped. Harry watched as Bill hopped away from the pool of white light, and took a long breath, shaking his head.
“That’s what happens when I try to approach the door. Or even leave this corridor to go up the stairs. I think you only got as close as you did to the door because of your power. And that’s why I had to bring you out here.”
“Bill. My power is not a thing.”
Bill just raised an eyebrow and looked from Harry to the door knocker his hand was still resting on. Harry irritably waved his free hand, not quite daring to let go of the door. He was afraid that he might find himself floating down towards that malevolent pool of light like Bill had. “I mean, not in the way you mean it. It’s not some super-secret special power that let me defeat Voldemort.”
“I don’t think of it that way. I just mean that your magic is strong, and it seems that you’re the only one who can pierce through whatever safeguards Nott put on this door. Maybe because you can sense the Dark Mark. Maybe because you’re strong. Who knows. But I think you’re the only one who can handle this.”
Harry turned to frown at the door in front of him. He held up his hand and waved it, wondering whether the ward that he was sure was there but couldn’t sense would succumb to him.
The door unlocked with a loud click and swung open.
“But your power isn’t a thing,” Bill said.
“Shut up, Bill,” Harry muttered, aware that it was a weak comeback. He took a hesitant step into the room beyond. Torches sprang to life on the walls—or not torches, rather soft globes of crystalline water encased in more crystal. Harry blinked. They shed a light that was the closest to Muggle lamps he’d come across in the magical world.
“Harry? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Harry called back absently. His eyes darted around the room. It seemed to be a library, but all the shelves were empty. The only thing that bore any parchment was the table in the middle of the room, with a large wingback chair in front of it, made of the same dark oak as the door. Harry took a wary step forwards, but nothing tried to swallow him.
“There are lots of notes in here,” he called back to Bill, without taking his eyes from the innocent-looking table. “It looks like this was probably where Nott prepared his ritual or whatever it was.”
“You can’t tell yet?’
“Why would I be able to just from looking?” Harry shook his head. Bill was buying into Harry being some kind of genius, he thought, and of course Harry wasn’t. He might have more magical power than usual, right, and the kind of education that made him a good Curse-Breaker. But Bill had that, too.
“Can you read the notes?”
Harry moved closer and looked down at the parchments, half-expecting the words to start swimming the way they would when protected by privacy enchantments. But these remained normal. Perhaps Nott had never thought anyone would invade his sanctum to read them, if Bill was right about him being a recluse.
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“I said I can read them!”
“Harry, the warping of the house is getting worse.”
Harry turned and took a quick step towards the door of the library. He was in time to see Bill reaching out to grip the walls around him, his head bowed as if against a powerful wind. Harry couldn’t feel any trace of it.
He stepped through the doorway of the library. No, still no wind.
But his presence in the corridor had done something. Bill stopped gripping the walls and straightened up with a relieved gasp. “Well, I believe that Ragnok was right when he said you were the only one for this case.”
“I still didn’t use this unique and special power that you think I have to defeat Voldemort.”
“Uh-huh.”
Harry rolled his eyes and glanced over his shoulder at the library. “So you want me to read through the notes that Nott left and get ready to create a clean copy of them?”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to help you, Harry,” Bill said, a solemn note in his voice that made Harry snap his head back towards him. “I know we were planning on that, but the house’s distortions are too intense. I’d probably spend most of my time throwing up or freaking out and be of no use.”
Harry bit his lip. This would be the first dangerous case he had handled without backup since he had become a Curse-Breaker. Of course, he was able to handle the ones that were just a matter of erasing a certain rune or battling a crazed creature that had been imprisoned by a stone door for centuries.
But I have to stand on my own sometime.
“All right,” he told Bill, keeping his voice as casual as he could. “Then I’ll go back and get a few of my supplies so that I can spend a few nights here. Hopefully it won’t take longer than that to figure out what Nott did to himself.”
“Are you sure that you don’t want me to bring the supplies to you? I can if you tell me what to look for, and I don’t know that the house will let you back in if you leave now. I still can’t believe that you’re standing here totally unaffected.”
Harry reached out and put a hand on the wall, the way he had tried to do before the door unlocked. Nothing happened, though. In fact, he thought he felt the wood snuggle closer to his palm, the way a cat might when looking for a stroke.
And that’s not creepy at all.
“I think I’ll be fine to leave.”
“Well, you’re the expert on this one, now.” Bill nodded. “Remember that the goblins are less interested in bringing Nott back than answers about what he did.”
Harry nodded back. He could accept the goblins’ lack of care towards most wizards and witches because they had been treated so horribly in the past. And since Harry had fled into the Curse-Breaker job partially to escape some really awful people who wanted to treat him like property, he even sympathized.
But he wanted to find out what had happened to Nott.
Because, if nothing else, the notes he had glimpsed in the library were fascinating.
*
The house didn’t give Harry any trouble when he came back into it, and he carefully scouted the rooms off the corridor for one he could stay in, finally settling on one that had a comfortable couch near a fireplace. He cast charm after charm on the couch, looking for curses or traps, but there didn’t seem to be any. Then again, Nott probably wouldn’t have bothered doing that for a room this far into his house, the same way he didn’t appear to have bothered disguising the writing in the library.
Once he had unpacked his clothes, books, and other things he would need, Harry returned to the library.
The house remained docile around him the whole time. Harry didn’t really know what to make of that, since it had definitely resisted him when he’d first entered, but he decided that he should just be grateful.
He settled down in front of Nott’s library table with a ream of parchment, a dozen quills, and an inkwell spelled to refill itself several times over. He didn’t think he’d want to interrupt himself once he really got going.
And yes, glancing at the top parchment drew Harry in the second time as it had done the first time.
*
I don’t belong in this world.
There’s no one left who shares my blood. And I never made the kind of friends who wouldn’t care about blood. There are people who would be glad to befriend and use me, but I don’t want them.
I want to leave. I want to flee.
But I don’t want to live in poverty, and I don’t want to leave my past and my name completely behind. I’ve been trying to figure out a magical community I could travel to where no one would care about my name but would also offer me a fairer chance than they would any other random stranger, and I can’t identify one.
I need to solve this problem.
*
Harry sat back with a long sigh, shaking his hand out. He’d spent more than an hour copying the most important of Nott’s notes and deciphering some of the Arithmantic equations he would have to ask someone else to take a look at, and his sense of fascination and kinship was only growing.
Nott wasn’t at home in the magical world, either. Nott didn’t trust most of the people around him, either.
Oh, Harry knew he was luckier than Nott. He still had Ron and Hermione, who loved him and would fight to the death for him. It seemed from the notes that Nott had had no one.
But even Ron and Hermione…
Harry leaned back with a longer sigh.
It wasn’t that they had abandoned him. It wasn’t fair of him to frame it like that. It was just that Ron and Hermione were extremely busy with their careers, and their children, and their families when they had a free moment from the first two. Hermione’s parents hadn’t wanted to come back from Australia and insisted that she visit them a few times per year. And Ron’s family, of course, always had people Ron wouldn’t see as often and wanted to see when he could.
Harry’s divorce from Ginny, which had been amicable in the end but full of high emotions at the start, hadn’t helped. Ginny was okay now, Harry was okay, they were both fine. Ginny had accepted that she didn’t want to stay married to a man who only desired other men, and Harry had accepted that it wasn’t fair to either of them for him to try it.
But between that, and the awkwardness that had meant Molly didn’t want to invite Harry and Ginny over at the same time for a while, and Ron and Hermione prioritizing other people when they had a chance to see them, Harry and his friends had sort of drifted apart.
Hell, the Weasley he saw the most of now was Bill.
Harry stared unseeingly at the scroll, and then picked up his quill again. He could take at least another hour of notes before he would need to go and pick up food from the Leaky Cauldron for dinner. And he was intensely curious to see if he could make sense of the Arithmantic equations on his own.
It would be fine.
*
Draco tells me that the plan I have in mind is stupid and too complicated. Pansy agrees with him, and tells me that I just need to go to France and meet a few people who don’t know me and won’t care about my past. Blaise never answered when I owled him.
He never answers me anymore.
But I don’t want to go to France. I want to be around people who know me, understand me, accept me for who I am. And that doesn’t apply to anyone in Britain anymore, but it wouldn’t apply to anyone in France, either.
Draco and Pansy are busy and have their own lives. Draco has his hands full with just making sure that his father doesn’t end up in the papers for shouting about Mudbloods, honestly. Pansy doesn’t need people from her past intruding on her efforts to sell modern robes, as she told me pretty bluntly.
Blaise…
I think he regrets what we had during our seventh year—the real seventh year, the ones that’s always going to be inscribed in runes of ash and blood in my mind. Yes, maybe it was stupid to become lovers when it was our emotions running high and hot and the Carrows were swanning around torturing everyone. But stupid or not, for me it was real. I meant it.
When Blaise didn’t come back to Hogwarts, I thought it was the memories. I never thought it was me. I owled him during that “eighth year” and he responded. He didn’t talk about our relationship, but he was at least willing to talk to me.
And now he’s decided that he isn’t, and the last letter he sent was so full of vague ramblings and coded references that I literally couldn’t understand it. I do think that he’s tired of me, though. Tired of his past intruding on the present.
Or maybe he regrets sleeping with a man.
The Italian magical papers say that he’s dating women and has him describe himself as desiring women only. He even says that he’s “voracious” about having as many women as possible, and he never intends to marry.
For me, it was real. I meant it.
*
Poor bloke, Harry thought as he lay in front of the fire that night in the sitting room he’d found.
Yeah, he knew he was gay, and the only man he wanted apparently walked away from him without a qualm. Although at least he didn’t marry some poor woman and string her along in a desperate attempt to pretend he wanted her.
After a second, Harry shook his head, eyes fixed on the crackling flames. He’d forgiven himself for his stupid marriage to Ginny because he’d been young and stupid, proposing to her at seventeen the day after the Battle of Hogwarts, and marrying her at nineteen. He’d been caught up in his parents’ fairy tale and wanting that for himself, and finding Ginny a comfort when he was running himself ragged trying to attend trials and funerals and classes all at the same time, and he’d reasoned that he’d been attracted to her before the war, so why not after?
It had been a stupid thing to do, and he shouldn’t have done it. But dwelling on it for the rest of his life wouldn’t help him. Or her.
I wish I could tell Nott that, Harry thought, as he rolled over and slipped into sleep. Maybe it would have helped him move on from Zabini.
*
“Help.”
The voice was soft. Harry opened his eyes and stared around at the drifting grey smoke that seemed to have encircled him. He gripped his wand. Perhaps a trap that had lingered in Nott’s house had sprung after all.
But then he rolled over, and found how soft the bed was beneath him, and knew. This was a dream. King’s Cross, when he had walked in it right after Voldemort hit him with the Killing Curse, hadn’t felt solid, either.
“Help.”
The voice sounded like someone who was broken. Harry stood and walked towards it, ignoring the way that some of the mist seemed to form tempting shapes like piles of coins or gleaming silver harps. He already had all the wealth he’d ever want or need.
“Help,” said the voice one more time, and Harry rounded what looked like a mound of shadowy gems and found him.
Even though Harry hadn’t seen him since school, he had no doubt that this was Theodore Nott. He crouched in the corner and shivered, his arms wrapped around himself. There wasn’t a Dark Mark on his arm, but he looked so thin that Harry ached with empathy. And he stared up at Harry with eyes full of dread.
“Did you come to put an end to me?” he whispered.
“Of course not.” Harry swiftly crouched down in front of him. “I’m trying to find a way to decipher the notes you left behind and figure out what happened to you. What did happen to you? Are you able to tell me?”
“I don’t understand myself.” Nott’s voice was so soft that Harry had to concentrate to hear it over his own breathing. “The Arithmancy should have worked. It shouldn’t have disturbed anything in the outside world. All it would have done was change my own mind and thoughts, so that I was content with what I had.”
Harry frowned. “What did you have?”
“I had—”
The world snapped around Harry, and Nott gave a scream of utter despair. Harry snatched his wand up again and found himself tumbling off the couch that he’d decided to sleep on, his breath coming noisily and his knee aching where he’d hit it on the floor.
Harry scrambled up and stared around, seeking one hint of grey, one quaver of a voice.
Nothing.
Harry slowly settled back onto the couch. His breathing had calmed down, and so had his heart, but he found fear and wonder crawling through his mind on sharp claws.
Nott, what happened? How could a desire to change yourself have caused this? And why did you want to change yourself in the first place?
*
I know that my father killed my mother. I could never prove it, but I know he did.
I remember my mother’s eyes and hair, floating in the middle of space and not attached to anything. I know she had grey eyes like mine. I know the song she used to sing to me, about five small wizards and five small witches who had to bring me golden coins so I could go to sleep.
But I don’t remember anything else. Everything else I know is facts that my father told me, that he altered or distorted to make himself look better in the eyes of someone he wanted to follow the Dark Lord’s footsteps.
She was a Yaxley, and the family was so pleased she married into the Nott family that they made her an enchanted harp of yew wood. I’ve seen it. It’s sitting in the middle of the music room that even the house-elves only enter to dust. I’ve never been able to bring myself to play it.
Her name was Angelica.
I don’t know exactly how she died. My father’s story changed three times before I was eight years old. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t think anyone will ever be able to prove that he killed her, even if Aurors were interested in investigating a murder decades old.
But I know she existed. And I know she loved me.
*
Harry stretched his cramped fingers and shook his head. There were so many similarities between him and Theo Nott that his sense of the differences was fading into obscurity.
They had both grown up with family members who despised them. Their mothers had died, and they missed them. They had found only a few friends each, and lost contact with them for a number of reasons.
They were both, as Nott had made clear in his notes, gay.
Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, clearing his mind the way the goblins had taught him when he became a Curse-Breaker. (They did it much better than Snape had ever even imagined). He couldn’t let himself get too close to Nott, or rather what he thought he knew about Nott, from these pages, he told himself sternly. That would impair his ability to solve the puzzle.
Then again, from the dream last night, when a trapped and terrified Nott had reached out to him somehow from wherever he was imprisoned, Harry already thought it might be too late to stay detached.
*
I’ve tried to make other friends. I’m terrible at it. I start talking too quickly or forget to ask about them or bring up subjects that I find interesting and they find boring. And I find what they talk about boring in turn.
I wish I knew someone who was like me, who had grown up mostly by himself and had an interest in Arithmancy and other esoteric magical subjects. Someone who could hold me and reassure me when I suffer these nightmares of my father that never seem to go away.
Someone who could love me.