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It was as if the winter would never end.
Harry had been thinking all day of the cold because it was impossible to ignore, wearing a pair of Hermione’s leggings underneath his threadbare trousers, two shirts and a jersey and this worn-down jacket Ron had left behind. He was drowning in it. He was stoking the flames with a reedy stick, remnants of a scavenged meal congealing in their one battered pan beside the stone circle of the campfire. It was in the sheen of condensation, dripping sweatlike from the shiny rim of the steel pot. He rubbed a forearm over his forehead and it dislodged some frost that had been stuck in a shimmering heap in his tousled hair for what must've been mere minutes to the last time he brushed it away. Ron took off in Harry's favourite hat. Mrs Weasley had made him that hat.
It was winter and it had been for agonisingly long. And there was winter to go, still. They were not yet in the thick of it. He almost couldn't bear to watch the trees, the slickness of iced over rocks, the way dark, colorless leaves moved in shudders and birds flew from branch to branch. It was inky even in the daytime. Harry felt like the rabbit Hermione had skinned hours ago, that was left bare bones in the pan beside him. He was ripped clean. He shivered again, and ended the fire with a few kicks of snow. Too paranoid for more than the occasional warming charms, too on edge to hide in the barns a few hills away.
‘We've already been here long enough,’ he said, lifting the flap of the tent.
Hermiones's head lifted in response. Her eyes looked big and miserable.
As if he’d spoken it into existence, the both of them paused. Outside there was a sound getting closer. The sound of footsteps on frosted grass and men talking. Angry men.
He felt dread icing over his palms.
They moved immediately.
All tracks covered, the tent wrapped up, the cloak tossed at Hermione who had the locket on and she whispered a shaky Celare, her spell hurled at his chest quick as a breath exhaled. Her wide, panicked eyes roved over his disappearing face till they were searching for nothing. He stepped forward and whispered, ducked near her ear, ‘Go as far west as you can. That barn we saw, maybe. I'll join you. Now put it on, quickly,’ the last part urgent and agitated.
She moved on command, and the last he saw was her bushy, tangled head disappearing under the cloak.
Over time he’d found the cloak made your steps silent, too. And Hermione was small and agile like him. She was good at hiding. Harry was better.
And hide was what he ought to have done, after they split apart.
But as if called for, he moved closer to the sound of men speaking, low, pissed voices, a distinct Northern dialect on one of them. And a surly rasp that sounded sickeningly like Greyback.
Her disembodied voice said, pleading, ‘Harry, come on.’
He raised his wand and tugged Ron's giant, oversized cargo tighter over his shuddering, pounding chest. His mind was racing. He tossed a rock toward the end of the clearing, hoping she’d think it was him.
He watched as Hermiones's footsteps finally moved.
He covered her tracks with a flick of his wand.
Then moved closer to the sound.
He had seen the other glade a while ago, and once he was close enough, arm pressed to a thick pine tree, feet caught between its giant roots, it was the voices that confirmed he was getting sloppy. Careless.
‘Close enough, lads,’ rumbled a heavy set voice. ‘Now no more bitching from you.’
‘We don't even know if this is the fucking forest they saw them in.’ Thinner, sharper, a slight gasp to it. A curve to the vowels.
‘This far up south is where any mudblood prey would go to hide,’ and finally, that coarse sneer he'd been craning his neck waiting for. Harry turned in increments, and watched with his heart in his throat.
Not just any group of snatchers.
He catalogued them as much as he could.
There was Greyback, of course. A fur slung over his shoulder, blood matted on the edges. The werewolf was only wearing a thin undershirt beneath, like he was boasting his immunity, his superiority over the wizards next to him, huddled in thick dragonhide and leathers. The heavyset man seemed like a grunt to Harry. The thin, sharp voiced man looked like a Travers. He must've been, his nose resembled that of the man Harry had met and fought and seen tortured in his dreams.
Then there was a fourth in the party, far younger than the older men he stood surrounded by. Tall and muscular and pale.
Another fur, some skinned animal, tucked over his shoulders and hung from his back like a cape. His thick biceps were bare, too, but Harry's breath caught not at the baring of skin in midwinter but at his gaunt, familiar face once it lifted.
His low voice when he spoke, a puff of cold air released. ‘And if we’re lucky, they're still here.’
‘I’m feeling fucking lucky.’ Greyback bore his teeth in a bloody grin, a scarred hand grasped the forearm of the other Snatcher, the grunt, tugged him close with madness in his eyes, ‘They're in the trees, I can smell them.’
Harry's blood was ice.
They had just begun to set up a camp, logs dragging and wands moving to set flame, but they perked up and moved at Greyback's word. ‘They can't have gone far!’ he crowed, a shove to Traver's back and his own, stolen wand clutched tight in his other hand, held like a blade.
It was stranger still, how they seemed to be chasing some specific group. It could’ve been Harry they were after, but they hadn’t mentioned his surname. Snatchers were never so dedicated to stay out the night, were they?
Or was it just Greyback. His thirst for blood.
‘West, maybe,’ Travers guessed, the same mental look in his eyes, and they pushed through the frozen trees as Greyback growled about smoke and Harry tipped his head back and swallowed at his howl of victory when he found the still wafting remnants of the fire. So recently doused. The terror laid thick and heady in the air.
And that last man standing, with his pale skin and cut up tunic, a brown fur over his back, threw up a Muffliato and trekked into the trees, until he was two feet from Harry.
His head was turned, ear cocked to listen in on Greyback as he tore through the forest like a hellhound.
‘He’s going East,’ said Theodore Nott.
Harry couldn't think.
Nott, of all people. Stood still in the Forest of Dean instead of limping through the cold halls of the castle, clutching some tome Harry would never touch. There were remnants of his haunted frame, nothing but fuzz left of his mousy head of long, lank hair. He had been the tallest, thinnest boy in their year the last Harry saw him. Ron had him beat now, Slytherin eating well, the thought was bitter. He had filled out a bit sometime in between tonight and the last Potions class Harry had taken, and it was odd like seeing an elongated, overstuffed hare. Like seeing the snake at the zoo had felt, at eleven. Are you real?
His war-run body was tense, his tawny hair cropped to nothing. His skull was blackened at the left, near his temple. In the dark, white night, Harry knew in his gut it was blood. The same blood on the furs he and Greyback wore. The same blood from the werewolf’s teeth. Nott’s body moved slowly, and it begged the question—where was the wound, if there was one? His back, Harry thought. Somewhere under that bloodened fur.
Or was Harry overthinking? It could’ve been far simpler, a violent spray from the kill of some prey animal. Some little bunny they’d caught and cut up and had for dinner, just like he did. He felt cold again, thinking of its bones.
Nott turned, breathing in, scanning, and his eyes fixed somewhere on Harry's face.
Harry felt his legs weaken then go rigid with a strange sort of dread. It was the shoddy charm. It was the way his breathing was harsh and uneven. It couldn’t have been his body—his feet were immobile, tight between the overgrown roots of the massive pine he was plastered to.
He was trapped, really. If he fought back, it would only take a word for Nott to call for reinforcements. He could take each of them alone, but Greyback himself, a rabid Travers, some anomaly tough guy and Nott—and Voldemort, summoned from nothing but a hand to the arm. He wracked his brain to think back, if Nott had ever excelled in Defense but the only thing he could see behind his eyelids was a faint smirk, dull skin and lowered eyes. Unassuming and reedy, walking past after classes.
He knew nothing about the guy.
‘Are your friends safe?’ Nott asked.
Harry’s wand was ready to spit a jinx, already glowing an alarmed red at the tip. It faded when the words registered.
He was panting. ‘What?’ he said, soundless.
Nott stepped forward, and cautioned, ‘Breathe slow. Fenris's ears are sharper than you think and the privacy charm could fail.’
His eyes were dark and deepset, when he held your gaze. Harry pressed back harder against the tree and finally spoke, wand still up and wary, ‘Who taught you Muffliato, then?’
It was just the first thought in his head, though it felt like a mockery of the trust-fall questions the Order had taken to demanding at every new first meeting. Wands and offices, words and vows. Ticking death tolls. Nott’s head turned this way and that, considering. They could hear the Snatchers’ voices dimming, spreading apart, rustling through the forest.
‘Myself, mostly,’ he answered, evenly. ‘Observation. Snape used it a few weeks back.’
Harry had asked the wrong question, really. It was Snape’s spell but what was Snape, now, the turncoat. But it meant Nott had watched him, up in the castle. It said nothing of his loyalties but plenty about him still. And the realization hit suddenly that it had been long enough that Hogwarts’ fall term had ended quietly. He stared, shivering under his clothes. Nott should’ve been at home.
Was it a punishment? Harry’s eyes fell to his left wrist, a makeshift looking leather holster strapped several times over, cracking and peeling material and his wand tucked in securely. As if Harry was harmless.
It struck something in him, sharp and fast. Irrationally, he was angry.
‘Your friends,’ Nott repeated, stepping closer once more. He stopped, white palms open, when he saw Harry’s hand jerk and wandlight flare briefly. His deepset eyes were grey, aglow for that split second.
Then they went dark again.
‘I’m alone.’
Nott almost seemed to smile. ‘You’re not alone, Potter.’
‘I am alone,’ Harry repeated, harder.
‘Your friends would never abandon you,’ he said, a bit too quiet. Then, wry, ‘And very serious, very important quests like yours are done in threes, aren’t they? It’s not exactly a job for one man.’
Harry scoffed a laugh. Showed what he knew. That something in him that was so terrified of this unknowable Nott and really wanted a fight, it straightened up again.
Harry tilted his chin and said, ‘You don’t know anything about what I’m doing.’
Nott’s eyes fell slightly, to the jut of Harry’s chin. Or higher, maybe, and Harry was so cold but the fire in those hollow eyes made his back stiffen.
‘Sure I don’t,’ he whispered. It was really the most Harry ever heard him speak.
‘Why don’t you go tell them I’m here like a good dog,’ he breathed.
‘You don’t trust me,’ Nott said. He was almost smiling. ‘C’mon, Potter. I won’t sell you out.’
‘You could,’ he responded darkly. ‘You came with them, didn’t you?’
In answer, Nott turned his left arm to the side and tugged at the makeshift holster until it fell open. His wand fell straight into his hand, and he tucked it into his pocket briefly, and it was bare, corded veins and pale skin. A dusting of fawny hair. Maybe his father had no control over him. Maybe his father had a spine the way Malfoy’s didn’t.
Harry realized the disillusionment charm really, really wasn't working. Then Nott said, ‘Don't shake like that.’
‘I’m not—I’m not shaking,’ he said automatically. ‘I’m just cold.’
It was daunting, how Nott crept in closer again, and finally smiled just a bit. A crooked sort of half smile. ‘Just tell me your quest is going well.’
It was a coaxing sort of tone. Like he didn’t want to spook Harry, words gentle and softened, as soft as anyone could be with blood on their back and those kind of eyes. What kind of eyes? It was hard to say. They were just predatory, something about them was greedy. He really wanted to know about the fight. He’d really wanted to know about Harry’s friends. He was the kind of person who liked to lay low and know everything. Another know-it-all.
Harry watched him warily. Huddled into Ron’s coat, his hair probably full of snowflakes again. His ears felt frozen.
Nott waited, at that small distance. Smile gone, arms bare of cover and of any suspicious snake tattoos. His wand away.
He exhaled. It held in the air for a moment. ‘It’s going well.’
Nott’s head tipped back sharply for a second, jaw tense. He sighed too. ‘Good. That’s good.’
It was odd, in the blinking of the night. His pale palm ran over his jaw. The relief wasn’t made up. Or he was a very, very good actor.
He was out of patience. ‘Why are you out here?’
Nott gave him a look, just as guarded as any of Harry’s. ‘Hunting mudbloods, obviously.’
Harry bristled instantly, but his wry tone held him off. ‘Not funny.’
‘You’re right, it’s not funny at all,’ he agreed.
They both paused, and listened in for the Snatchers. Harry wondered if they were sticking together, if Nott would be in trouble when they regrouped and he was asked what took him. If Greyback had him on a leash.
‘Found any yet?’ Harry asked abruptly.
Nott’s eyes were telling even if his face was dreadfully impassive. It was oddly fascinating, how he had no tells that Harry could see as of yet. But his eyes looked dark and tense.
Harry remembered Dean, then, and Mr Tonks, Dirk Cresswell. The other goblin and Griphook. He felt colder. They had been chasing too hard hadn’t they? They were looking for someone.
‘They found some yesterday,’ Nott said evenly. His tall frame looked hunched again, and he looked over his shoulder, then back at Harry. Mouth flat. ‘Thomas ran. The others were killed. Avadas to the head.’
‘And the goblins?’ Harry asked, after a sick moment. His chest hurt.
Nott’s face shifted. His lips parted, and he said, slightly stilted, like he hadn’t expected the question but automatically went to answer, ‘Oh. Oh, one of them ran too. Greyback ripped apart the other one.’
Harry grimaced at the wording. His expression smoothened again, and he shook his head silently. After a moment, ‘I apologize. I’m still sickened.’
‘No stomach for war, Nott?’ he said sharply.
‘So you do know my name,’ Nott said.
Satisfaction. It was in the slight curve of his mouth and the way his eyes creased. How he was zoned in again, on Harry’s face, however much he could see of it.
‘What a stupid thing to worry about,’ Harry said aloud.
‘My friends say I have an ego, sometimes,’ Nott said pleasantly. He stepped in again, and Harry went stiff against the tree behind him as Nott suddenly seemed to loom.
‘Your friends,’ Harry whispered, after a long, haunting moment of looking up into Nott’s pale, focused face. ‘Are they safe?’
Nott’s expression, once again, went undone. ‘My friends?’ he repeated.
Voldemort’s home base is likely Malfoy Manor. That tall black boy might have left the country, but Crabbe and Goyle’s fathers were Death Eaters. Harry couldn’t remember who else Nott might be friends with—the Greengrass sisters were likely safer than most. That half-blood in Slytherin, Tracey Davis, she could’ve been in trouble. Harry wasn’t thick. It was those children, stuck in those homes who were in almost as life-threatening of situations as people like Dean. People like Hermione. People like Mr Tonks. Mr Tonks, whose daughter was with Lupin, who had a grandkid on the way, who had never even gotten to meet the child.
Harry felt ill. He asked again, ‘Yes, are they alright?’
Nott was so close they were standing in between the same overgrown roots of the same tree. He lifted a hand and brushed snow out of Harry’s hair.
‘They’ll be fine,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘When all this ends.’
It was frightening to slowly realize, staring up at the other boy, that the solemn look on his face, the way his eyebrows were tight and furrowed, an angry red scratch on his exposed forehead and the faith in his eyes everything all of it together meant he really meant to say when you do it, Potter, when you handle it, when you save the day. It’ll be over when you end it. The die is cast and it’s up to you to move the pieces.
Harry had never thought about anyone else while saving the day. He only thought of whoever was in danger. This time it was everybody in Britain, wandmakers in Europe, goblins and castaways and runoff Muggleborns and purebloods who were being tortured and turned into creatures against their will for refusing the dark mark.
‘I—I don’t know when it’ll end,’ Harry said, all of a sudden desperate to explain but unable to go beyond what felt like false assurances. ‘But I hope it’s soon. I can’t promise you, I wish I could but I can’t. It could take years, Nott. I’m sorry it’s like this.’
‘Take it easy.’
How was he to take it easy? Ron had left and Hermione was waiting and the locket spoke at night and Voldemort was waiting at the end of this nightmare. It would be Christmas soon. Nothing was as it should be.
A warm hand touched his frozen cheek, thumb to the groove of his cheekbone. Harry went still like prey.
His hand retreated, and he stood with this unreadable, faithful look in his grey eyes.
In the cold, silent forest, he was mysterious and beautiful and odd. Like a white stag on a full moon, like an omen sent to pass on wisdom. Maybe he had some very intelligent things to say. Maybe he knew how to kill a Horcrux. Maybe he would come along, ditch the Snatchers, join Harry in the quest to be done in threes. Maybe he would reveal the wound on his back and let Harry tell him about Remus. Maybe he already knew. Nott was a dead end, because he would never speak aloud. But Harry stared breathlessly into his eyes for whatever he would eventually reveal. They were unfathomable. They were crinkling slightly at the edges and it was funny, wasn’t it, he had probably kept his hair long just to hide them from the world.
Harry’s eyes felt burnt through to the insides from the way he was regarding him right back.
The thinnest of grins crossed his colorless mouth.
‘Some of us still believe in you, hero,’ Nott said evenly.
At the abandoned barn, Hermione was pacing around a stack of empty crates. Harry stood in the giant, empty doorway, wearing the skin of some huge beast on his back and watched her blindly. His body was burning up a fever when she finally noticed him and leapt with a sob, chill to the touch.
She touched the bloody, matted fur of his back and pushed away, eyes wide and brown.
‘Oh but—where did you get that? Is that Greyback’s? she said, horrified.
‘I get now why that bastard is into trophies,’ Harry said half-seriously, and it made her laugh a bit, and they slept like children in the sweet smelling hay.