Chapter Text
“Ready?”
Theo smiled at Harry. It was still odd to feel his mouth stretch in that gesture. After all, as a snake, he hadn’t been able to do it. “Yes,” he said. It was odd to speak in English instead of Parseltongue, too.
“Good,” Harry said, and reached out and took Theo’s hand.
Theo smiled at him again, and they turned and walked into the Great Hall together.
For a long moment, no one noticed them. There were people arguing and laughing and eating, as usual, a lot of their fellow fifth-years with books propped up in front of them. Theo shook his head. They wouldn’t learn and remember enough for it to matter, this far away from the OWLS.
“Mate!”
Weasley’s voice was loud. Theo forced back the impulse to sneer. He remembered how loyal Weasley had been in Theo’s days in Gryffindor Tower, standing at Harry’s side, and he would value that loyalty. He wouldn’t disdain it.
He still had to keep a smirk from his face as Weasley gaped back and forth between Harry’s face and their joined hands.
“What—what are you doing with Nott?”
Harry visibly relaxed. Theo walked beside him over to the Gryffindor table and sat down on the end of the bench beside Harry. Weasley and Granger sat across from them, and so far she had been silent, looking back and forth as if to calculate values in an Arithmantic equation only she knew the particulars of.
“We’ve been spending time together for a while without anyone knowing it,” Harry said.
Theo concealed a laugh this time, instead of a sneer. It was true, and from the way that Weasley and Granger orientated on Harry, they could tell the difference between that and a lie.
“But why didn’t you tell us?” Weasley sounded a little hurt.
“Everything about my life is so public right now, and it only got worse after Umbridge died. I just wanted to keep Theo to myself for a little while.”
Granger leaned back and raised her eyebrows. Maybe she did know Harry well enough to tell that was a bit of a lie. But it wasn’t entirely one, and Theo leaned an elbow on Harry’s shoulder and gave Granger a winsome smile.
“Are you—so are you—dating now?” Weasley spoke the words despite the way his voice shook and his ears turned red.
There is something to be said for Gryffindor courage, Theo thought, and nodded.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and started to say something else, but Finnigan spoke loudly from down the table.
“So you’re a Slytherin-loving traitor as well as mental, got it.”
Theo started to turn to face Finnigan, but Harry, without even looking at the lout as he reached for a scone, said, “I can’t imagine caring what you think anymore, Seamus.”
“Traitor!”
Weasley and Granger turned around to yell at Finnigan. Harry rolled his eyes a little and leaned closer to Theo. “He really doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “You were the one who taught me that.”
Theo looked at Harry and let his eyes flicker over the Great Hall for a moment. However, Harry seemed to have misunderstood what Theo was trying to convey. He made an apologetic gesture and started to pull back.
Theo leaned in and kissed him.
Harry gasped for a moment, and then grabbed hold of Theo and pulled him so close that Theo could feel their bodies overlapping. He ignored the spreading pool of silence. They’d had their first kiss already, in private.
This one was to show people that Harry mattered to him, and they’d never succeed in driving Theo from his side.
“Mr. Potter! Mr. Nott!”
McGonagall was striding down from the professors’ table. Her face had such a strained expression of shock that Theo snickered. He looked at Dumbledore, but the man was gazing away from them.
That’s right. Harry said Dumbledore was ignoring him.
Theo mentally shrugged. It was Dumbledore’s loss if he decided that he didn’t want to pay attention to someone as important as Harry.
“I have never been so shocked—there is nothing in the school rules about your being able to do this—”
“There’s nothing in the school rules about people being able to hex me in the corridors and rip people’s hands up with a Blood Quill, either, but you didn’t stop that.”
McGonagall stared at them for a long moment before launching into a lecture. Theo leaned his chin on Harry’s shoulder and looked at the professors’ table again, then the Slytherin table.
Snape looked about ready to start breathing fire. Blaise and Draco were giving Theo the sort of heavy stare that said he would owe them explanations.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, when Theo was with Harry.
*
“You are making a mistake in pursuing this farce of a relationship, Mr. Nott.”
Theo stood with his hands behind his back and listened to Snape say things like that and others. He was bored, mostly. Snape had no power to hurt him, and Theo had already lessened his power to hurt Harry, by standing at Harry’s side and helping him learn Potions on his own.
“Are you listening to me, Mr. Nott?”
“Not really,” Theo said, when Snape had glared at him for long enough that he decided an answer was required.
“Potter is already having a deplorable effect on your behavior.”
“You mean nothing to me.”
Snape paused and considered him with intense black eyes. Theo stared back indifferently. Father had warned him that Professor Snape was a Legilimens, but Theo had learned Occlumency young and also now had the extra protection of being an Animagus. He could call the serpentine part of himself forwards and let it hover beneath the surface of his mind, puzzling most people who tried to get through to his human thoughts.
“I am your Head of House,” Snape said after a long moment. Oddly, he had dropped the angry tone. “I hope that Potter has not already turned you against Slytherin.”
“No. You turned me against you, Professor. Your grudge against Harry is ridiculous and baseless.”
“You have been in the classroom yourself, Mr. Nott, you have seen how he botches his potions—”
“And I was there the first day we had class with the Gryffindors in first year and saw how you taunted him and took points from him by asking him questions that no one except Granger could have answered.”
“You are—unusually blunt, Mr. Nott.”
“I learned from the best.”
Snape stared at him some more. Theo stared back.
In the end, his Head of House glanced away, shaking his head in disgust. “If you want to cut your life and prospects short by associating with Potter, be my guest,” he said, and stalked off with his robe billowing around him.
Theo rolled his eyes at the melodramatic man’s back, and then went off to face the interrogation that awaited him in the Slytherin dormitories.
*
“But how did you even get to know Potter?”
“That’s my business.”
“But why would you want to date him?”
“I’m surprised that it’s you asking that question, Draco. We’ve all seen the way you look at him.”
That distracted Draco quite nicely, and made him go off into red-faced spluttering protestation of his attraction only to witches. While that was happening, Blaise leaned towards Theo from his bed, while he’d been sitting while he asked his questions, and murmured, “Does he make you happy?”
Theo looked Blaise in the eye, and thought about sleeping near Harry’s neck, and killing Umbridge for him, and nodded.
Blaise smiled at him. “Then dating the most mental Gryffindor in the school is your choice, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to date him!”
“No one was talking to you, Draco.”
In the chaos of Blaise needling Draco, Theo walked out of the dormitory. A few people visibly resisted staring at him in the common room, but one good thing about Slytherins was that they were all pretending so hard to be above it all that they didn’t notice when Theo transformed and slipped out under the door.
*
“Theo.”
Harry’s voice was soft and sweet. The crook of his neck was warm. Theo slipped into place and hissed softly, “I am here.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere else.”
Theo curled himself deeper into Harry’s heat, and felt Harry’s hand on his scales, and drifted off into the first peaceful sleep he’d had in more than a fortnight. If anyone tried to take him away from Harry, he would bite them. If anyone tormented Harry, he would kill them.
That was the way they were.