Archive of Our Own

After the war, no one would have guessed that the mansion Harry Potter purchased in the mountains of Northumberland would become as quiet and foreboding as the manor where the Malfoys still lived under house arrest. Teddy Lupin was often asked about the place at school. He'd spent every summer there since his second year at Hogwarts, when his grandmother Andromeda died of a stroke on the front steps of Gringotts. He was walking beside her when it happened, and he'd drawn his wand and turned about in panicked circles, looking for the attacker.

For a grieving child, the Potter mansion was hardly a cozy place of refuge, though Harry did try to make it so when Teddy first arrived. Teddy had never been around house elves much at all, and he was terrified of Kreacher, Harry's faithful servant. Harry allowed Teddy to spend his days with him, or, if not truly with him, than in his physical presence. Teddy would stretch out on the floor of Harry's massive study and draw pictures while his heroic benefactor sat smoking a pipe that Teddy would later learn contained ground brood flower leaves, which have a pleasant numbing effect when smoked. They would take their dinner outside on the magnificent stone patio that overlooks the Muggle village far below, and it was this time of day when Harry seemed most open to Teddy's thousands of questions about the war, his parents, and Harry's own history. Harry's answers were still rather terse, but with his mouth full of roast lamb or Peking duck or whatever else Kreacher had lovingly prepared for the evening, he was at least willing to offer a yes or no. Sometimes he offered both, such as the time Teddy asked if Harry was there when his parents died.

"Yes," Harry said, his lips still around his pipe. "And no."

As the years progressed and Teddy's final family tragedy became a distant memory, Harry's efforts at companionship lessened. He began having guests to the house, and Teddy was not invited to join them in his study, which would be shut up with a proper soundproofing charm. They were often quite older than Harry, studious-looking wizards and witches who smelt of foreign lands. Harry always seemed to forget Teddy existed when he was in the company of these whispering strangers, and by the time Teddy was fifteen, Harry seemed to have forgotten him altogether. When Teddy came home from Hogwarts after his fifth year, Harry was described by Kreacher simply as "away." He returned briefly at the start of August, and bestowed upon Teddy several extravagant presents before leaving again. Teddy hadn't even the time to ask him where he'd gotten that horrible gash on the side of his neck before he had Apparated away.

During his sixth year at Hogwarts, Teddy received only one letter from Harry Potter: a record low. As with anything to do with his famous caregiver, his classmates regarded the letter with curiosity, and Teddy had to creep off to a quiet corner of the castle to read it in private. He wasn't sure why, but he increasingly felt like he had to protect Harry's interests from the prying eyes of onlookers.

The letter began, as usual, with the only endearment Harry Potter had ever used for him:

Dear Teddy,

I apologise for my lack of communication this year. It is an important one for you at school. Many decisions to be made. Do not be hasty with any of them. I will provide you with the means to decide what to do with your life at a leisurely pace. It is important to me that you do not feel pressured to become anything in particular. If any of your professors are harassing you about your future, please let me know. Hermione Granger especially may be guilty of this. If so, I can advise you that you will have to resort almost to absolute rudeness to dissuade her. She means well, but this has been my experience with her enthusiasm.

I hope you are well. I'll see to it that Kreacher sends you some of those ginger snaps you like.

Until we meet again,
Harry

Teddy read the letter several times, looking for clues or a hidden meaning. It was a habit he could not seem to break, despite the fact that he'd never found anything secret or subtle in Harry's letters. He sighed and shook his head at Harry's familiar sign-off. Until we meet again. When would that be? Teddy would be at Hogwarts for Christmas, and when the year ended, he'd likely return to an empty mansion to begin a lonely summer of studying for his N.E.W.T.s.

As he predicted, when he arrived at the mansion that summer, the gigantic rooms were as hollow and cold as ever. Kreacher had opened up the windows and positioned fresh flowers in several key receiving areas in an attempt to make the place look somewhat lived-in, but it was a pitiful effect, only serving to further illustrate the mansion's emptiness.

"Where is he now?" Teddy asked Kreacher as they moved toward the kitchen, where Kreacher was preparing Teddy's usual homecoming meal of tomato soup and a cheese sandwich.

"Master is away," Kreacher said reverently, waving his hand as if to dismiss the need for such an inquiry. "Would Young Master care for oyster crackers with his soup?"

The summer days passed as usual, with the weather growing truly beautiful and the cool mountain air finally warming, at least when the sun was out. Teddy walked down to the valley below the house some days to swim in the lake, always hoping he would run across a hiker or a wizard collecting mushrooms for a potion, or maybe even Harry returning from wherever he'd gone this time. No one appeared, and Teddy wrote to his friends from school, dropping subtle hints about his boredom, but they never invited him to stay, only asked if they could come and visit the famous Potter mansion. That was not expressly forbidden by Harry, but Teddy had discerned that he wouldn't like it, and he knew that it would make Kreacher nervous and surly. He disliked the idea of houseguests himself; people had a macabre fascination with Harry and wanted mostly to see what sort of cage he'd constructed for himself, not to actually spend time with his orphaned charge.

Toward the middle of July, the mansion finally had a single visitor. Hermione Granger Apparated into the front room around lunchtime and found Teddy napping on the back patio, his face planted in his Advanced Transfiguration book.

"There you are!" she called, waking him. "Studying, are you?" She glanced with distaste at the spot of drool he'd left over a description of the dangers of transfiguring food. Teddy moaned and blinked up at her, the sun glowing up from behind her silhouette. Hermione was his Potions professor and apparently a childhood friend of Harry's, though they hadn't spent much time together, according to Hermione, since the death of their mutual friend Ron Weasley. He and Harry were Aurors for three years after school, working together mostly on cases that dealt with the mistreatment of house elves and various other magical creatures. Ron was murdered by a wizard in Belize whom he and Harry discovered running an underground brothel full of Veela slaves. Harry killed Ron's murderer in retaliation and then retired.

"I didn't know you were coming over," Teddy said, guiltily rearranging himself. He was wearing only a long pair of board shorts, his skin burned unevenly red by the sun.

"I just thought I'd pop in and see how things are going." Hermione gave the place a once-over. The flower arrangements on the patio were trimmed to perfection and the gleaming stone had been polished with Kreacher's usual ferocity. Still, Teddy felt embarrassed by the place. It did not belong to him, and he did not really belong within it. Were it not for Harry's detached generosity, he would be spending his summers shuffling between the harried families of his friends. Perhaps that would be more fun, but he felt also that he had a duty to fulfill in this giant, empty house, though in four years he hadn't figured out what it was exactly.

"Harry's away," Teddy said. Hermione hummed with checked disapproval.

"I don't suppose you know where?"

"I don't ever know." Teddy hadn't meant for that to come out sounding so resentful. He had no right to complain about the attention he did or didn't get from Harry. He had no real claim to anything from him.

"Are you alright?" Hermione asked. In six years of having her as a professor, Teddy had learned that she never understood when she should not ask a question like that.

"Yes, fine." He stood up and stretched, yawning out at the dozy afternoon. He had been wishing for some company, but already he wanted Hermione to leave.

"Have you seen Harry recently?" Hermione asked.

"Not since --" Teddy paused to try and remember. It was sometime before he'd left for Hogwarts last summer. Or was he thinking of the summer before that?

"I'm hearing from him less and less," Hermione said. She walked into the house and Teddy followed, enjoying the cool darkness of the hallways after so much sun. She stopped in front of Harry's study and touched her chin. The door was shut as usual. Teddy always assumed it was locked; he never tried the knob.

"Well." Hermione sounded a bit flustered, suddenly. "Can I take you down to the village for lunch?"

Teddy agreed, though he wasn't especially hungry and did not relish trips to the Muggle village at the far end of the valley that the mansion overlooked. Over a wrought-iron table covered with a wine-colored cloth, Hermione asked him the usual questions: how was his studying going, in which subjects was he going for N.E.W.T.s, what did he want to do when he finished school? Teddy answered the last question noncommittally, thinking of Harry's letter.

"Your father was an excellent teacher," Hermione said. "A natural, I would say. Very compassionate and patient. And your mother, well. A legendary Auror for someone so young --"

"I don't want to be an Auror," Teddy said, perhaps a bit sharply. He felt as if he'd been possessed by Harry for a moment, and realized suddenly what the letter Harry had sent to school that year had really tried to tell him. Harry was asking him not to make the same mistake he had, not to go on watching people die when he'd already had his share of loss.

"You haven't ruled out teaching, then," Hermione said, trying to conceal an excited grin. Teddy smiled just to humor her. He had no idea what subject he might teach. He wasn't especially passionate about any of them, though he did enjoy Defense Against the Dark Arts, which was taught by Ginny Longbottom, the late Ron Weasley's younger sister. He didn't dare tell Hermione this was his favorite class at Hogwarts; she had an odd sort of rivalry with her fellow professor, though purportedly they were great friends.

After lunch, Teddy Apparated back to the house, and Hermione back to the creaky little apartment she rented in Cambridge during the summer. Teddy was on his way to his room to check his bed for letters when he spotted one propped neatly on the front table, where Kreacher kept the house's most dramatic flower arrangements in a black and gold vase Harry had purchased on an Auror mission to Hong Kong many years ago. The letter was leaning against the base of the vase, and it was addressed simply to "Harry." Teddy recognized his professor's handwriting, which often instructed him on his returned Potions homework to pay closer attention to measurements. Hermione must have left it there before she met him out on the patio.

Teddy was normally not a snoop, especially where Harry was involved, as he completely believed that if Harry wanted to remain private he had every right to do so. But for some reason the letter, with its textured paper envelope and extravagantly thick wax seal, called out to him. He could easily open and reseal it; it was a basic spell he'd learned in his second year. He'd never before used it outside of school, but he was seventeen now and he had full license to try, except that it would be rude to poke into a letter addressed to someone else. He licked his lips and checked around the corner for Kreacher, who, though kind to him, was far more loyal to Harry. When he heard the far off sounds of Kreacher sorting through pans in the kitchen, he turned and snatched the letter off the table before he had any more time to consider whether or not he should.

His heart was pounding by the time he entered his room and shut the door behind him. He went to the window and closed the drapes, as if Harry might be lingering outside on a broom, frowning in disappointment. He lit a lamp beside his bed and knelt on the floor to read the letter, his fingers shaking. He was not a gossip and didn't generally relish learning secrets that were not meant for him, but when it came to Harry, he'd repressed his desire to learn about his life for so long that just the impulse to finally do something about that desire was exhilarating. He found himself actually whispering the contents of the letter aloud to himself as his eyes scanned down the page:

Harry,

I have arrived at your home only to find yet again that you are missing. I will attempt to speak to Ted Lupin about your whereabouts, though I'm sure that even if the boy knows anything you've asked him not to divulge this information to others. Harry, I will be frank. I am hearing disturbing rumors about your activities abroad. My potions supplier in Krakow tells me that you have been seeking black oil lilies and a friend in Hogsmeade informs me that you were almost arrested in Egypt earlier this year after you were thought to be involved in the attempted procurement of a certain antiquity that I do not dare mention in writing.

Harry, I have known this dark path you are treading. Many of us who survived the war have entertained the same notions. You are one of the few who are in a position to actively pursue the folly of exploring them seriously. You will recall, perhaps, another individual who had the means to collect artifacts and ingredients on a quest to do something extraordinarily unnatural. You killed him when we were seventeen. I apologize for the harshness of this comparison, but I cannot imagine that you have not considered it yourself.

I have regrets, Harry, and I long to see certain people we lost very much. Occasional despair over these feelings is normal and healthy. Plotting to rid yourself of them entirely is madness.

Please write soon and tell me that I am horribly wrong.

Love always,
Your friend,
Hermione

Teddy could barely get the letter back into its envelope, his heart pounding and his hands trembling. He resealed the letter on his third try, bungling the spell horribly the first two times, his voice not exactly steady. He thought he might discover something of interest inside the letter: mentions of a past love affair between Harry and Hermione, or information about where he'd been traveling this summer. He did not expect anything about near arrests, dangerous artifacts, or plots that could equal Voldemort's schemes. He couldn't get the letter out of his possession fast enough, and when he set it back in place on the table in the foyer, he felt that he'd still left a guilty mark on it somehow. He swung around looking for a sign that someone had spotted him returning to the scene of the crime, but the mansion's high ceilings and paneled walls only stared back at him with the usual disinterest in his day to day activities.

"Would Young Master like his tea now?" Kreacher asked from the dining room doorway, and Teddy yelped in surprise. Kreacher looked startled by his reaction, and held up his frail hands as if to apologize.

"Tea," Teddy sputtered. "Yes. Excellent."

*

Teddy had trouble sleeping for the next two nights, imagining Harry doing things awful enough to warrant such suspicion from one of his closest friends. He couldn't imagine that Harry's intentions weren't good, but he was unable to come up with any real theories about what he might be trying to accomplish. When he walked past Harry's study during the day, he found himself itching to try the knob, but he didn't dare. He was almost afraid to learn more. The letter remained in the spot where he had replaced it by the vase, and he was tantalized by the sight of it, as though it would contain new information if he opened it again.

He waited for word from Harry, but received nothing until the wee hours of the first morning of August, when there was a terrible crashing sound from down the hall on the second floor. Teddy awoke as if he had been waiting for it. Before he had even found his slippers, he knew that it was Harry.

"Master!" Kreacher was exclaiming with measured terror when Teddy arrived in the parlor where Harry had landed after what looked like a barely successful Apparition. He was on the floor on all fours, panting and spitting blood. His mouth wasn't the only part of him that was bleeding; his trouser leg was cut open and stained dark red, and his shoulder looked slightly splinched. His robes were in tatters around him.

"What happened?" Teddy blurted before he could stop himself. Harry looked up at him with half-lidded eyes, a thick strand of blood hanging from his bottom lip.

"Young Master will send for the Mediwizards while Kreacher tends to Master!" Kreacher instructed, his voice unusually shrill, and Teddy nodded.

"No!" Harry croaked when Teddy turned for the door. "Send for no one, Teddy."

"But Master is hurt --" Kreacher began to protest.

"No one shall come here!" Harry bellowed with surprising force. He seemed to suffer for the effort, and crumpled entirely to the ground.

Teddy had never heard Harry speak harshly to his house elf. Kreacher seemed to be at a loss for a moment, but then he gathered himself and began summoning bandages and healing ointments. Teddy watched the supplies glide past him and into Kreacher's nimble hands. Harry was lying on his side and huffing like a wounded animal.

"What can I do?" Teddy asked. He was horrified, and part of him wanted to simply turn and run, but Harry needed help that Kreacher couldn't give. Teddy considered going against his wishes and calling for the Mediwizards after all. He was afraid that Harry would die if he didn't.

"Young Master can take these away," Kreacher said, yanking on Harry's ruined robes. Teddy raised his wand and said a spell to remove Harry's clothes with as much strength as he could muster.

Harry had looked quite disturbing enough, bleeding and writhing on the floor, and once he was naked Teddy couldn't stand to look at him at all. He lingered in the doorway, breathing hard and trying not to whimper when Harry screamed in pain as Kreacher applied potions to his wounds.

"So much blood," Kreacher said fearfully. Teddy's eyes began to water.

"Do you need help?" he asked, but Kreacher didn't seem to hear him. Teddy glanced at Harry's face. His eyes were open just in slits, glazed over with a sheen of pained resignation.

"I've got to call someone," Teddy said. "Please, Kreacher, look at him --"

"No!" Kreacher said, dropping his deference and the title of 'Young Master' that Teddy had always hated. "Master has forbidden it!"

Teddy sat down the floor and watched Kreacher work, wrapping Harry's wounds after applying appropriate potions. He could defy Kreacher if he wanted to, but he didn't. They both trusted Harry enough to believe that he knew what he was doing, even when he was hovering on the brink of death. Kreacher was out of breath by the time he'd gotten all of the wounds wrapped, and Teddy wanted to help, but he didn't know what he could possibly do.

"Master will need rest," Kreacher panted. Teddy stood on wobbly legs and raised his wand. He was nervous about casting a levitation spell on Harry Potter. He'd never come near to casting anything on him before. He steeled himself before casting, and Kreacher stood back, seeming to understand that Teddy needed to calm down for a moment. When Harry was successfully floating in midair, his body trembled along with Teddy's arm. Sniffling like a child, Teddy guided him along to the master bedroom, walking close, not trusting his aim.

Teddy had never been inside Harry's bedroom. It wasn't a secret place, and he had at least glanced into the room when Kreacher was inside cleaning. The door was left open unless Harry was inside sleeping, but Teddy had never had reason to enter. It was a massive room with soaring ceilings, the centerpiece a tall, wide bed with a dark wooden frame and velvety red sheets. As Teddy placed Harry on the bed and let the levitation spell die off, he tried to imagine the cupboard Harry had been forced to live in as a child. There were mutterings among the Wizarding community about the ostentatious size of Harry's home, but Teddy understood the need for such height and width after sleeping in a place the size of a bathtub for years.

"Yes, yes, Master will be fine," Kreacher muttered to himself a bit madly as he arranged Harry's slumped form under the blankets. "Just rest, rest is what Master needs now."

Teddy stood at the foot of the bed and said nothing. His eyes were sore and burning, though he hadn't really cried. He watched the rise and fall of the blankets with Harry's breath, comforted by the sight. He wanted to climb into the bed and stay the night beside him, checking periodically to make sure he was still breathing, but he knew that Kreacher would keep an eye on him and wouldn't sleep until Harry was up and leaving on another secret mission.

"To bed, Young Master," Kreacher said, tenderly pushing Teddy from the room. "It's late, much too late to be awake."

"Kreacher," Teddy pleaded, but he had no idea where to go from there. Kreacher shook his head firmly and took Teddy's hand to lead him down the hall. Teddy turned back, and saw only a tuft of Harry's wild black hair tossed across his pillow as Kreacher drew him away.

"All will be well in the morning," Kreacher promised, but his voice was shaking with doubt.

Teddy spent the night lying on his back in bed, knowing he would never be able to get to sleep. His heart was still racing, and his body felt like it was still in motion, buzzing with some unspent energy. He listened for sounds at the end of the hall where Harry's bedroom was located, but he heard nothing.

Every time he shut his eyes, he saw Harry sprawled on the floor, covered in blood. He wanted to go to someone and talk about what had happened, but he felt that would be a betrayal of Harry's trust, and even then, who would receive him at this hour of the night? More than that, he wanted to go to Harry himself, to curl beside him in bed and have Harry wake to reassure him that things would be alright, that he was going to be fine, that he wasn't going anywhere.

He stayed where he was, feeling foolish and more alone than he'd ever been in his entire life.

*

When morning finally came, Teddy took a bath and dressed in nicer clothes than he usually bothered with during summer, as if Harry were giving a party and not just suffering in bed. He crept out into the hall with his hair still damp and looked down at Harry's bedroom door. It was shut, and the whole house was as silent as it was when he was gone.

Downstairs, Kreacher was making an elaborate breakfast. The fancy china was set out on the dining room table, along with a silver tray Teddy had never seen before. Teddy stood listlessly and watched as Kreacher arranged eggs, bacon, toast, tomatoes and everything else he could come up with neatly on the plates and then the tray. He poured a cup of tea, humming to himself nervously.

"Young Master can eat after Master has been fed," Kreacher admonished, as if Teddy was staring at the food jealously. "Master is weak, Master needs --"

"Can I take the tray up?" Teddy asked, stepping in front of Kreacher before he could bustle out of the kitchen with it. Kreacher gave him a slightly suspicious look.

"Please," Teddy said. He knew it was hard for Kreacher to refuse him anything, but it was also true that Kreacher believed no one could care for Harry as well as he could.

"Young Master will let Kreacher know if Master requires anything else?"

"Of course." Teddy eased the tray from his hands. "Thanks."

He walked upstairs with the heavy tray, wishing that he had thought to use a levitation charm before taking it from Kreacher. The food smelled good, but Teddy had no appetite. He was anxious about how Harry would react to him coming into the room and attempting to look after him the way Harry had always, quietly and from a distance, looked after Teddy.

"Hello?" he whispered when he had the door open. "Harry? Are you awake?"

There was no answer, but Teddy walked into the room anyway, closing the door behind him with a gentle nudge of his arse. The room was dark, the drapes still drawn, but Teddy could see that Harry hadn't moved since last night. He was still rolled onto one side and slightly curled in on himself, his messy hair flung across his pillow. Teddy carefully set the breakfast tray on top of Harry's long, spotlessly polished dresser, and picked up the cup of tea. He walked over to the bed with it, knowing that he should leave Harry to rest but still unsettled enough by the scene in the parlor that he needed confirmation that Harry was alive. For all Teddy knew, Kreacher might be stubborn enough to go on pretending he was even after he'd gone cold. Terrified by the thought, Teddy set the tea on Harry's bedside table and put his hands on the enormous mattress. The bed was so tall that the top of the mattress came to the middle of Teddy's chest.

"Harry?" Teddy said. He half-expected Harry to fling himself upright, grab the front of his shirt, and point his wand in his face, but Harry didn't stir. Afraid that he might have stopped breathing, Teddy reached out to cup his hand over Harry's shoulder. It was warm, and Teddy could feel the weight of Harry's breath moving through him. He sighed with relief, and didn't draw his hand back until Harry made a soft moaning noise and shifted in his sleep.

"Ron?" he said blearily.

"It's Teddy. I've -- Kreacher's made you breakfast, if you're well enough to eat."

Harry groaned and rolled onto his back, wincing. He let out his breath in a hiss and turned his head toward Teddy, opening only one eye to look at him. Teddy stood stock still and allowed himself to stare. Despite knowing him personally, at least as much as anyone could claim to anymore, Harry Potter was just as intimidating and mythical a figure to him as to anybody else in the Wizarding world. He had always seemed huge to Teddy, not just physically but also figuratively. He seemed to fill every room he occupied completely with a burning presence that demanded attention, though he rarely sought it.

"Teddy," Harry grumbled, as if he'd been struggling to remember his name. "What a spectacle I've made of myself. I'm so sorry if I frightened you."

"You didn't," Teddy lied. Being near Harry like this again after so long, talking with him in the quiet solitude of his bedroom, filled the space between Teddy's ribs like sunlight. Harry was unshaven and had dried blood in the corner of his mouth and dark shadows under his eyes, but just the sight of him, conscious and apologetic as ever, was so comforting that Teddy had to bite away a smile.

"Would you like some tea?" Teddy asked when Harry only stared at him. "And Kreacher's made you a full breakfast as well."

"Of course he has." Harry struggled to sit up, and Teddy helped him by placing several pillows behind him for leverage. He offered the tea, and Harry took it with a sigh.

"My God," he said. "How long was I out?"

"Only eight hours or so. You came in last night around two in the morning."

Harry made a disapproving noise and glanced at the dresser. Teddy hurried to get his breakfast, then felt stupid again for not using his wand.

"You're seventeen now?" Harry asked as Teddy laid the tray across his blanketed lap.

"Yes. It's hard to get used to being able to do magic outside of school. I mean -- it's not hard -- but --"

"I imagine it would be. I was forced to do so often enough before it was legal, so I wouldn't know about that. Do you want some of this?"

"Oh, no, you should eat. Kreacher will make me something when I go back down."

"Do help me finish it, won't you?" Harry ate half a slice of bacon in one bite. Teddy felt like he was in the presence of a demi-god, some insatiable creature who only ate food humans offered for fun. He felt himself blushing.

"I haven't gotten my full appetite back, and Kreacher will be insulted if I don't clean the plate," Harry said. He inched over to the other side of the bed, grimacing as he moved, and Teddy realized with mortification that he was inviting him to sit at his side and eat off of his plate. Harry started in on the eggs as if he were in no hurry to find out if Teddy would join him or not.

Teddy looked toward the door. What was waiting for him outside of this room but another aimless day of falling asleep between the pages of his schoolbooks? He hoisted himself up onto the bed with as much grace as he could manage, and placed himself at a respectful distance. Not wanting to be greedy, he took only a triangle of toast.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you," Harry said, his eyes still on his plate.

"It's okay, I know you're --"

"You're beginning to look a lot like your father."

"Oh." Teddy dragged the toast through the yellow slop from Harry's eggs. He'd seen pictures of his father, of course. He never looked as happy as his mother did.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," Harry muttered. "People told me that all the time when I was in school. It began to irritate me after awhile. I don't mean to be one of those, you know. People."

"It's okay," Teddy said. "I don't mind." He had been dumbly flattered by the comment. It seemed odd that Harry would have given a second thought to the way he looked.

"Are you in much pain?" Teddy asked after they had been eating in silence for awhile, the indifferent hum of the room making him grow uncomfortable.

"I'll manage," Harry said. He tossed the crust of the toast he'd been eating onto the plate and leaned back on the pillows. He shut his eyes and set his mouth in a very tight line until he got comfortable, and folded his hands over his stomach as he exhaled. Teddy was still sipping at the cup of tea, which had magically refilled itself five times since he and Harry began drinking from it. He knew he should collect the tray and let Harry rest, but it felt good to lean beside him in the giant bed, Harry's tattered body warm and fragrant with the clean, acidic scent of healing potions. Teddy felt a bit mad, appreciating the heat of another person so much. Hermione was the only other person he had even seen since leaving Hogwarts.

Remembering that lunch, Teddy thought of the letter that was waiting for Harry downstairs. Suddenly he wished that he had just thrown it away. Harry was in no condition to read her accusations. But perhaps she was right to be concerned.

"So what happened to you?" Teddy asked. He knew he had no business bombarding Harry with such a bold question, but he wanted desperately to have an excuse to stay with him, to talk to someone, to talk to him, finally.

"There was an accident," Harry said gravely. "I barely escaped with my life."

"Have you -- are you doing work for the Ministry?"

"Hardly." Harry leaned back and shut his eyes. A quiet space stretched between he and Teddy, like a clock whose second hand was drawing Teddy farther away from him with every tick.

"I'm going to sleep now," Harry said. Teddy pulled his wand from his back pocket and sent the tray away to rest again on the dresser. He turned to Harry, who hadn't moved. Teddy had never realized before how long his eyelashes were. He had never before been this close to him.

"Can I stay?" he heard himself ask, in a voice like a child's, one that climbed up his throat from some deep, buried place.

Harry opened his eyes just a crack, and tipped his head to look at Teddy, as if to check the sincerity of this request. He frowned slightly and reached for him. Teddy held his breath. Had Harry Potter ever touched him? Yes, he had, at St. Mungo's, when he arrived to retrieve Teddy after his grandmother's death. He was wearing the finest robes Teddy had ever seen, black and long and velvety, and when one of the nurses pointed Harry to where Teddy was standing, his face red and blotchy and his eyes raw from crying, Harry came to him and scooped him into an embrace as if they were old friends. Teddy was surprised, but too ripped apart not to wrap his arms around the man's neck and take comfort in the oddly familiar smell of him. He smelled like wealth and strength, like someplace safe.

Teddy sat perfectly still until Harry's rough hand cupped the side of his face, his thumb snug along the line of Teddy's jaw, and then he quaked, just a bit, though he had no doubt that Harry felt it move through him. Harry seemed startled by his reaction, and he took his hand away.

"Yes, you can stay," Harry said, and Teddy got the impression, somehow, that he had stopped himself from saying something else entirely.

Harry seemed to fall asleep instantly, and Teddy curled beside him, just a few inches apart from him on the mattress. What had changed? Something, certainly. Teddy felt different, warm and happy but also on the edge of something reckless, at a kind of precipice, afraid to move. Harry was the same generous man who had taken him in at twelve years old, still overly cautious and still the saddest person Teddy had ever met. Perhaps it's I who have changed, Teddy thought. Harry had always given him what he needed, but never before had Teddy been brave enough to ask for something he wanted.

*

The days that followed were blissfully filled with Harry's company. He was still weak from his injuries and spent his time moving slowly about the house, Teddy at his side under the pretense of keeping a watch should he need medical care. Kreacher was in the best spirits Teddy had ever seen him, both proud of himself for healing his beloved Master and happily preoccupied with cooking for him. Around six o'clock in the evening, when the light outside melted to an almost unbearably beautiful glow and just before the sun disappeared behind the mountains, Teddy would help Harry out to the patio, and they would both sip Elligaster Cavenston's Fortified Brandy while they watched the lights of the village come on below. Harry also smoked his brood flower, which he claimed eased the pain of his injuries better than any healing potion he'd tried. Teddy would get moderately drunk and ask Harry questions the way he had when he was young.

"What does the Department of Mysteries look like?" he asked one evening.

"I found it more frightening than the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts," Harry said.

"The chamber with the snake? The one you fought? The night you saved Professor Longbottom?"

"Yes." Harry smiled around his pipe. "Professor Longbottom. I'd like to go back to second year and tell Ginny she'd end up marrying dear old Neville. She would be mortified."

"Why?" Neville Longbottom was one of the most accomplished herbology experts of his generation. He came to Hogwarts once a year to give a demonstration on whatever rare specimens he'd been collecting in the world's most remote regions, and his talks were always well attended, with at least ten questions about his role in the Battle of Hogwarts, his beautiful wife batting her eyelashes at him from the professors' table.

"He was a bit hapless when we were in school," Harry said. "Believe it or not."

"Hmm." Teddy had heard that; it only added to the fantastic nature of Neville's story. He was a hero awkward schoolchildren could relate to, unlike the man sitting beside him and smoking with one hand while he drank with the other. Teddy smiled to himself.

"You must have had a lot of girls, in school," Teddy said. "You were a hero in your first year -- before it, even! Hermione teases Professor Longbottom about having a crush on you back then."

"Does she?" Harry didn't look especially excited about the subject, and Teddy's cheeks burned. He knew he had to be careful. It was great fun talking freely with Harry again, but he could leave anytime he wished, as soon as Teddy became annoying.

"Have you got a lot of girlfriends yourself?" Harry asked. He tapped his pipe against the iron armrest of his chair, and ashes fluttered down onto the stone.

"No," Teddy said, blushing harder. He'd never quite figured girls out. The only ones who seemed interested in him were not interesting to him, and the especially beautiful girls were far off ideals, statuettes on the horizon, nothing he dared or even wanted to actively pursue.

"I suppose you'll ask me next why I never married," Harry said. He'd had two more brandies than usual, his appetite for such things beginning to return.

"No!" Teddy's whole body flushed, and he downed the rest of his drink in a gulp, coughed. "I wouldn't -- it's none of my --"

"I'll tell you," Harry said. He often began to talk more to himself than to Teddy after a few drinks. "I was not interested in women." He turned to Teddy as if to dare him to be shocked by this. "You understand what I mean?"

"I think so." Teddy was stiflingly uncomfortable, the backs of his knees beginning to sweat. He looked to the great archway that led in from the patio, hoping to see Kreacher approaching with the announcement that dinner had been served, but he only saw the gauzy curtains over the archway wafting in the breeze.

"The love of my life died when I was twenty-one years old," Harry said. He spoke as if he was giving a press conference. Teddy's hands began to shake. He did the math, and realized who Harry must be talking about.

"Of course, he didn't know he was the love of my life," Harry continued. "At that point I'd hardly allowed myself to accept it. That's the funny thing about death, you see. The finality strips away your hesitation. It allows you to confront some things. And the more often you confront death, which, in my case, I should say, well, that is, I am the record holder there, yes? The more often you confront it, the less you care to stop yourself from trying for anything you want. This ridiculous house, for example. Ron would have found it horribly tacky. To Ron's ghost I would say: you died at twenty-one. You did not yet know the pleasure of shocking yourself with your own taste."

Harry stopped there, seemed to suddenly realize that he was still talking, or that he'd been talking aloud at all. He sucked in his breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose, pinched his eyes shut.

"Well," he said. "If I didn't frighten you well enough by nearly dying, I'm sure I've done it now."

It took Teddy a moment to find his voice, but when he did, he answered honestly: "No, you haven't."

Harry stood from his chair and hobbled over to the fat stone railing. Afraid that he would throw himself over it, Teddy hurried to join him. When Harry would only gaze forlornly down at the village, which was just beginning to glow softly against the night, Teddy touched his shoulder to let him know that it was alright. Teddy was not here to judge him. He was not like the rest of the world; he expected nothing from Harry Potter, even after Harry had given him so much.

When Harry finally turned to look at him, Teddy felt something almost solid move between them; it landed in his chest like a thing on fire and smoldered there, waiting. Harry's lips parted with a tiny, wet sound, and Teddy's fingers curled around his shoulder, pressing into the flesh beneath his shirt.

"Masters!" Kreacher chirped happily from the archway. Teddy jumped away from Harry as if they'd been caught in a torrid embrace by his wife.

"Dinner is served," Kreacher said, oblivious to the moment he had just interrupted. He bowed deeply, with relish, and Teddy followed him to the dining room without looking back at Harry. He felt ill, and light on his feet, as if he could step out of reality and into something better but far more dangerous, a place that existed only inside this mansion, and only when Harry was with him.

*

Harry went to bed straight after dinner that evening, and Teddy was left to sit alone in his room, his heart a wild drum that made his body feel unfamiliar and out of control. He thought of wanking off; it would feel good, a release of some of the energy that had been building up inside of him since Harry's return, but he was afraid of what might happen in his fantasies if he were allowed to shut his eyes, spread his legs and rub himself until he was hard and reckless about where he would let his mind wander. Just the thought of it made him shudder, a small thing that moved along the soft length of his cock, but he stood from the bed before he could do anything about it.

"Stop it," he said to himself. He slapped his cheek. He'd had enough brandy to feel dozy, but he doubted that he would be able to sleep if he tried. He paced his room until he came to a stack of schoolbooks near the window, and he selected an herbology text from last year that he'd been using to review. If he were honest with himself, he didn't care much about his N.E.W.T.s, but it was a useful distraction. He sat on the floor and read about the medicinal properties of orchid roots until his eyes began to droop.

He must have fallen asleep on the floor. This was his thought when he opened his eyes and saw a pair of boots level with his nose just before he was lifted up into the air. Assuming he was dreaming, he enjoyed the feeling of strong hands and arms drawing him against a solid body and carrying him easily before depositing him into bed with surprising tenderness. A familiar smell enveloped him, and when it began to pull away he moaned in protest and reached out to grasp the source, relieved when his hands found the warm shape of the person who had carried him.

"Teddy," someone whispered into his face, almost like a warning. Teddy had the wild, half-awake notion that it was his father, and he smiled and rubbed their faces together, pulled him closer.

"Dad," he said, his voice broken and strange. It was a word he had quite possibly never uttered, certainly never in the direction of a particular person, and he had always wanted to try it out. There was a sharp intake of breath, and Teddy kept his eyes shut, because he was beginning to wake and realize that the man who was leaning down over him was not his father but Harry. Unwilling to leave the dream world behind, he arched up and pressed his body against Harry's, which felt as warm and powerful as he had always imagined. Harry was struggling to back away, but Teddy wouldn't let him. He brought his mouth up to the strong push of Harry's breath and licked his lips. Harry whined in protest, as if Teddy had opened one of his cuts, but Teddy wouldn't let him go.

"Please," he whispered, his eyes still shut tight. He kissed Harry again, his lips soft and hot and tasting of their color, deep pink like a secret weakness. When Harry moaned into his mouth and let his weight spill onto him fully, Teddy was almost startled enough to let his eyes fly open in surprise. He had never even come close to doing anything like this, not with a classmate and certainly not with an adult. He began to suspect that he had awoken something tremendous, like a sleeping animal that would tear him to pieces, but the thought only made his cock hard.

"Harry," he breathed, wanting to peek but afraid it would ruin the illusion that this was happening without their consent. Harry's big hands were on both sides of his face, tipping it up toward his, and he was sucking the breath right out of him as he kissed him, his lap hovering above Teddy's, hot and spread open like an invitation. Teddy's hands were moving wildly from Harry's chest down to his thighs, not daring anything more. It was thrilling just to be able to touch his collarbone, his belt, and to push a hand under his shirt to feel the map of scars on his side. Teddy ran his fingers over the raises and dents in his skin, imagining the origin of every one, things he took notes about in history class, the Whomping Willow and the Shrieking Shack, the dragon and the maze, the night the Great Hall became a battleground.

Teddy couldn't stand it anymore. He opened his eyes.

Harry's glasses were dislodged, only hooked around one ear, and his eyes were shut as he licked the skin beneath the line of Teddy's jaw. He was a dark figure above him in the unlit room, a comforting invader, the threat of something too good to stand. Teddy drew a hand through Harry's thick hair, tangled his fingers at the back and arched up against him as Harry's mouth moved down Teddy's neck, soft but frantic, as if he couldn't decide where to start. When he pulled back to look at Teddy's face, their eyes finally met. Harry's were green enough to be illuminated by the moon through the window, and Teddy swallowed hard. He was the dream of every witch for the past three generations. The ruined hero, panting on all fours, his mouth wet and swollen.

"I can't," Harry said, and the words didn't make any sense to Teddy until Harry was stumbling off of him and away from the bed. He tried to find the words to make him stay, but Harry was gone quickly, and Teddy, despite what he might call progress, wasn't feeling entitled enough to ask him to come back. He lay on his back with his door half-open, Harry having only pushed it shut half-heartedly as he went. Down the hall, Harry's door shut with a polite little click, almost an apology, not quite an invitation. Teddy was motionless, trying to catch his breath. He didn't want to sleep, didn't want the chance to wonder if it had only been a dream.

*

In the morning, Teddy woke to the mess he'd left on the sheets. It had only take a few clumsy strokes after Harry left to send his orgasm rioting through him, though it immediately left him with a cold sense of anticlimax. Still, he was optimistic. He had spent several hours contemplating the situation before finally succumbing to sleep. There was something between him and Harry, perhaps there always had been, and of course it would be difficult at first, but Teddy was willing to be patient. He bathed and dressed in clothes he had bought, like almost everything he owned, with money from Harry. Maybe Harry was worried that Teddy would think he had been grooming him for this. Teddy wouldn't particularly care if he had, but he knew Harry was not the sort of person who would plot such a thing. He'd simply wanted to take care of Teddy when there was no one else who could, not properly, and Teddy was ready to let him do that in ways that hadn't been possible before. He needed taking care of, like anyone, and he smiled deviously at his reflection in the mirror as he smoothed down his wet hair.

Harry's bedroom door was open, and Teddy jogged downstairs, happy that he wasn't going to have a very long sulk over what had happened. They usually met on the patio for breakfast, bacon and eggs for Harry and French toast or waffles for Teddy. As he headed down the main staircase, his eye caught the front table, where Kreacher had arranged a collection of fiery red and orange flowers in the black vase. Hermione's letter was missing; Teddy hadn't noticed before, and wasn't sure when Harry had found it. A sense of things being amiss began to clutch at him even before he reached the patio and found it empty.

Kreacher was in the kitchen, and Teddy knew from the set of his shoulders that something was wrong. He gripped the door frame and tried to ignore the feeling that he knew the answer to his question already: "Where's Harry?"

"Master is away," Kreacher said, without turning from the dishes. Teddy knew that Kreacher was disappointed, too, but he still felt angry, as if they were conspirators.

"Away where?"

"Away, Young Master, away! Kreacher does not know where."

Teddy believed him, but wanted to throw a fit anyway. He looked at the wooden chairs that were arranged around the kitchen table -- eight of them, and why in God's name did they have more than two of anything? -- and wanted to raise one over his head and slam it against the stone floor, watch the pieces bounce violently around the room.

"When will he be back?" he asked, though he knew Kreacher didn't know this, either. The elf just muttered to himself unintelligibly, and Teddy knew the answer well enough anyway.

He may never be back, you bloody fool.

*

Teddy waited for Harry to return, but soon August was nearly over, and a letter from Hogwarts detailing the books he would need for his seventh year arrived. Harry had left money for this, of course, and enough for several new sets of robes, a new pair of boots and dress shoes and the Muggle trainers that were fashionable weekend wear at school, and enough spending money to stuff himself on every trip to Hogsmeade. Teddy went to Diagon Alley alone and greeted his school friends when he ran into them, but mostly kept to himself. He was miserably in love and didn't want to speak to anyone, see anyone, do anything. He'd spent the remainder of his summer dragging about the mansion like an invalid, barely looking at Kreacher or the sunsets that seemed to grow more spectacular as the days shortened, drinking brandy and drawing Kreacher's wrath by poking about in Harry's things. He no longer cared about any illusion of trust that he and Harry might have shared. He'd trusted Harry with his heart, and Harry had taken it away, along with everything else that mattered.

He never found anything of interest in his searches and was nowhere near understanding what Hermione had warned Harry about in her letter. He was constantly afraid that Harry would return with even graver injuries than he had arrived with previously, but was more worried that he wouldn't return at all. By the time Teddy was packed and leaving for Hogwarts, he hadn't. He left the mansion on the morning his train would leave for school, and it echoed at him, hollow and dusty, when he turned back one last time at the front door, holding his suitcase before Apparating away.

Once he was back at school, Teddy began to return to reality and understand how infantile and naive he'd been all summer, trapped in that motionless museum world and waiting for a man who had no real regard for anyone anymore, whoever he had once been. He accepted the advances of a Ravenclaw girl in his Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and caught her when other students blew her backward with overenthusiastic disarming spells. Her name was Penny and she was adorable. Teddy wasn't really interested in kissing her, and she was terrified of everything in the general vicinity of his lap, so mostly they did their homework together and held hands in the Leaky Cauldron. Penny's friends were extremely cloying and obnoxious, and Teddy got the feeling she couldn't stand his mates with their dumb jokes and nasty smirks. By Halloween he was avoiding her when he could, not meanly, just enough to get some time to himself. He would skip Quidditch games to stay in his dormitory and have the pleasure of a long, indulgent wank, and these were the only times he allowed himself to think of Harry.

In his dreams, Harry was an inscrutable shadow who came to him in the middle of the night and took him without hesitation. Teddy poked pathetic fingers into his arse, thinking of the way it would feel, the whole weight of Harry Potter poured onto him, into him, and he'd had no idea he could ever want these things until he'd felt the great burden of Harry pressing him into his mattress, his hot mouth open on his skin. It made a kind of sense, at least when his pants were bunched around his ankles and his hand was working madly on his cock, that he should want Harry to finally make some unbreakable claim to him, to come to him, vulnerable but hungry, the way Teddy had always wanted. He had spent so much time trying to convince himself that he didn't want anything from Harry that finally admitting he did was like breaking down a wall that had held back an ocean. It felt good, but he was drowning all the same.

Penny invited him to spend Christmas with her family, and Teddy could think of nothing he'd like to do less. He told her he was sorry, but he had to spend the holiday with poor, lonely Harry Potter, who would have only his house elf if Teddy made other plans.

"What is he like?" Penny finally asked. Teddy had preferred her to other admirers chiefly because she was not at all nosy when it came to Harry. Even as she asked, she seemed only politely interested, not frothing at the mouth for information like so many others.

"He's a disaster," Teddy said before he could stop himself. "I'm all he has."

"How awful! And after everything he did. I suppose it was a lot to deal with, and him being so young."

"I suppose. The way he was raised -- well, there was really no chance of him being normal, was there? You really can't blame him for shutting himself up the way he has."

"Oh, no! I don't blame him at all. I just feel for you, having to spend Christmas that way. It can't be very cheerful."

"No," Teddy said, dreading the thought of the empty house he would now have to return to, lest Penny find out he spent his Christmas at Hogwarts as usual. "It isn't."

When the holiday came, he loaded himself down with books, miserably preparing to spend the free time studying. He couldn't imagine what else he would do, especially with the house shut up for the winter and the mountains blanked over with snow. He hoped his warming charms would be up to the task; they were generally weakest when a wizard was in bad spirits. He tried to at least look forward to Kreacher's cooking, which was superior to that of the house elves the school employed.

Penny bid him a tearful farewell at the train station, and he waved from the platform as she pressed her rosy-cheeked face to the window. He thought for a moment that maybe he could love her, that they could make a real family together, with two living parents and children who didn't have to wonder what they'd been like. Teddy would teach at Hogwarts and Penny would -- what? Stay home with the children? Teddy had no idea what her career ambitions were, but he was fine with whatever she wanted. They could get one of those cottages just outside of Hogsmeade, with a big bathtub like the one in the prefects' bathroom, which Teddy had always envied. The thought was surprisingly depressing, and he Apparated away as the platform began to empty out.

When he arrived in the main hall of the mansion in Northumberland, he thought for a moment that he had Apparated to the wrong place. It looked like a Muggle department store, decorated so elaborately that it was a bit disconcerting. There was a giant Christmas tree that rivaled the one in the Great Hall where the front table that once held Hermione's letter had been, sparkling with lights and ribbons that cascaded down its fragrant branches. Garlands had been wound around the banisters on the double staircases, and a massive wreath was hung over the circular second floor window that looked out on the snow-covered mountains. Teddy stood gaping in the foyer, not sure what he was waiting for, half-expecting a surprise party to break out at any moment, but the lights that had been enchanted about the tree, garland and wreath just flickered quietly, like melting frost. He had written to tell Kreacher he would be home for Christmas this year, but he hadn't expected anything near this extreme. Kreacher was fond of going overboard with his cooking, but generally kept an austere house, aside from a few flower arrangements.

"Young Master is here!" Kreacher shouted, bounding out from the direction of the kitchen. Teddy flinched, disturbed by this reception; Kreacher had never been near this excited to see him. He had his arms thrown out as if he was going to embrace Teddy's legs like a child.

"What on earth is going on?" Teddy asked, setting his books down.

"Master, Master!" Kreacher called over his shoulder, ignoring Teddy's question. "Look who has come!"

Teddy's heart dropped through his chest like a block of ice, and it burned hard when Harry stepped from the dining room and into the foyer, hands in his pockets. He was clean-shaven and his hair was shorter, as neat as he could manage. He was dressed as if he was going to take Teddy out to a party, in pressed trousers and an untucked black Oxford. He was, however, in his stocking feet, and Teddy stared at the gold tips of his socks in stunned silence, not knowing what to say. His cheeks blazed when he remembered that he hadn't seen Harry since they'd been in bed together, unless he counted his lurid dreams.

"Would Young Master like a drink?" Kreacher asked. He was practically bouncing on his heels, and it occurred to Teddy that he probably got just as lonely here without Harry as Teddy did and that it must be truly awful during the school year without even Teddy moping about the place. He smiled and nodded, and Kreacher trotted off.

Teddy took a deep breath before drawing his eyes up to Harry's. He wouldn't be taken in again by whatever the hell Harry was up to. Harry smiled warmly, as if nothing had ever gone wrong, but Teddy wouldn't fall for that, either.

"I'm glad you came for Christmas," Harry said.

"Yeah." Teddy stared at him. He didn't know how Harry was expecting him to react. Were they pretending nothing had happened at all?

"I'm sorry about leaving the way I did," Harry said, his face changing. He looked good, more color in his face that Teddy had seen in years, and his eyes were not so deeply shadowed.

"We don't have to talk about it." Teddy gathered his books and walked toward the stairs. Harry stopped him, placing a hand on his elbow, and Teddy turned to him with an indifferent expression. He would not smile or scowl or do anything to let Harry know how hard it was to see him again.

"Let me help you," Harry said gently, and Teddy struggled not to curse his nerve and jerk out of his grip. More than anything, he wanted to dump the books in a heap and put his arms around Harry's shoulders, tuck his face against his neck and wrap his legs around his waist. He wanted to be carried up the stairs.

"Thanks," he said as Harry took most of the books from him. They could send them up to Teddy's room with their wands, but they were both too awkward to manage spellwork, and anyway it wasn't bad to have the excuse to walk together. As they did, Teddy thought of the night Harry had come into his room and carried him to bed. What had he been doing sneaking into his room, anyway? Was he watching Teddy sleep?

They came to Teddy's room and laid the books in stacks on his desk. Teddy took his school robes off and hung them over the back of his desk chair. It was a bit chilly in his room, and he wrapped his hands around his elbows, stood stiffly and tried not to look at Harry.

"School is going alright?" Harry asked.

"Of course," Teddy said irritably. He sat on the edge of the bed, then stood, uncomfortable in the presence of this bed's history.

"Teddy," Harry said, and the tone of his voice betrayed his thoughts. Teddy shook his head.

"Did you have a nice trip?" Teddy asked. Harry frowned.

"I've been back for months," he said. "I was -- doing something I shouldn't have, and I've stopped. It's a long story, I suppose. I'm going to be here now, Teddy, if you should ever need me --"

"Well, I'm nearly done with school," Teddy said. He walked out of the room in a hurry, not looking back. Harry had been home for months and he hadn't even written. "I'll be working and I'll have a place of my own."

"Right," Harry said softly as Teddy left him standing in the room.

Dinner was served in the formal dining room, snow falling heavily outside. Kreacher lit candles and refused Harry's invitation to join them, as usual. He was a traditionalist, like many elves of his age. Teddy was sorry that Kreacher wouldn't be there to distract them from each other, and he could see that Harry was sorry, too.

"Are you disappointed that I'm here?" Harry asked, somewhere between the soup and the lamb chops.

"What? No."

"You didn't know. I should have written, warned you."

"I don't need to be warned about you," Teddy snapped. Harry stared at him pitifully, and Teddy looked down at his plate, irritated with his deference. He wasn't sure what Harry was apologizing for now, but he was tired of it, generally. He wanted Harry to sweep the plates from the table and fall upon him with a growl, like they were characters in some terrible novel. Harry only sipped from his goblet of wine sheepishly, his lips beginning to turn purple. Teddy tried to decide what would be less painful: having an angry fuck with Harry before he disappeared again, or letting the opportunity pass and leaving Northumberland forever, sending Harry's cheques back if he tried to support him after school.

"How did you spend Christmas when you were living with your grandmother?" Harry asked, his voice a bit strained. Teddy groaned.

"Oh, fuck," he muttered. "Do we have to bother with small talk?" His cheeks were burning, but he pretended to be unaffected, picked at his silverware as if he was bored.

"I need to speak with you," Harry said, standing from the table. The plates clattered and the silverware rattled, as if Harry had disturbed the whole landscape. Teddy's eyes went nervously up to Harry's. Perhaps he'd gotten too comfortable. Harry looked like he was ready to hex him across the room for a moment, then his face set back into its pitying slant.

"So speak," Teddy said. "I'm not stopping you."

Harry looked stunned; Teddy had never been petulant with him before. Teddy was rather surprised himself, his heart thundering between his ribs like an alarm, a sign that he should turn back. Harry took his napkin from the place it had stuck onto his trousers with static cling and threw it onto the table.

"Don't talk that way," Harry said. It was more of a pleading request than a demand. "It's not like you."

"So why don't you put me over the table and spank me, Father?" Teddy said, and he heard the words from across the room, as if he had nothing to do with speaking them. Perhaps he'd had too much to drink. Harry's mouth was hanging open.

"Or maybe you just don't know anything about me," Teddy said. "How would you? You've never made much of an attempt -- and that's fine! I never expected it! But don't tell me I'm not acting like myself, because you might think you've bought the right to treat me however you like, but you can't claim to know me, alright, okay?"

Teddy left the table, unable to look at Harry, to see any betrayed or angry or sorrowful expression on his face. The air in the house seemed frigid, even in the presence of the glowing lights and twisted pine fronds that seemed to grace every corner of the house. He shut himself in his bedroom and sank to the floor. He considered packing his things, but he knew that Harry wouldn't throw him out. He had no place to go. Now, officially, he had no one.

He crawled over to the fire Kreacher had lit in the bedroom's fireplace and curled up on the thick rug by the hearth. He was half-hoping that Harry would come to his room in the night and lift him into bed again, and fully expecting him to be gone the next morning.

*

Teddy woke up on the floor at sunrise, his neck incredibly sore. He felt his way to the bed, moaning unhappily, and wormed under the blankets but couldn't get back to sleep even when his icy limbs were warmed. He rolled onto his back and remembered the scene at the dinner table with dizzy embarrassment. At least this time he wouldn't be surprised when he went downstairs to find that Harry had fled the scene. Guiltily, he realized that he'd been trying to make sure it would happen. He didn't want to glide out of his bedroom like an idiot again only to find that he'd been abandoned. Now he was prepared to face the reality of this perpetually empty house. He slumped out of bed, his eyes still puffy with sleep, and left the room in his t-shirt and sweatpants, his feet bare and freezing as he made his way down the stairs.

He'd actually wondered if Kreacher would take all of the Christmas decorations down in despair, or perhaps out of spite for Teddy after he'd driven Harry away, but they were still sparkling merrily in the grand lobby. Teddy yawned as he made his way to the kitchen, which was dark and cold. It was too early for even Kreacher to be awake, but he had missed most of dinner and he was too hungry to try and sleep, so he rummaged in the ice box until he came up with some cold bubble and squeak. He found a fork and ate some out of the pan at the kitchen table, listening to the wall clock tick out the seconds.

When he was finished, he moved blearily through the house, its windows glowing blue with dawn, the sky outside dull and cloudy. He was headed in no particular direction when he came to Harry's study and stopped. The door was open. It was never open, even when Harry was away.

Teddy peeked inside, and saw that it was mostly in order, except for the sprawled form of Harry on the sofa at the far end, beneath a large, octagonal window with a stained glass design. Teddy stood in the doorway and stared for awhile. Harry was asleep, his glasses askew, a blanket that had surely been set in place by Kreacher laid across his belly and pulled down over his feet. He had his arms folded over a book that was open on his chest.

So Harry hadn't gone. Maybe he'd expected Teddy to leave. It didn't really feel that way, though. Somehow, Teddy felt drawn into the study, no longer humiliated by the events on the previous evening. He felt closer to Harry, as if they had taken down another wall. He came to stand beside him, and saw that the book he was holding was a photo album. He slipped it carefully from Harry's hands and sat down on the floor with his back to the sofa, opened it up and looked at the pictures inside. He recognized Professor Granger, rolling her eyes and trying not to smile, parchment spread out in front of her and her quill scribbling busily even when she looked up at the picture-taker. There was a picture of Harry sitting under a tree on campus with Ron Weasley, laughing so hard that Teddy hardly recognized him. Ron was jabbing him in the side and egging him on, his cheeks red as if he'd just told a dirty joke. He looked a lot like his sister, and Teddy thought of the stories he'd heard about her and Harry dating briefly at Hogwarts.

Teddy turned the page and saw pictures of other teenagers he didn't recognize, one of them with his arm around young Neville Longbottom, who was fat-cheeked and did look rather doofy. Finally, he came across the pictures he'd been looking for: his dour father, who always seemed to be only trying to smile, and his mother leaning beside him in neon-blue pigtails, her clear face shining with happiness.
He felt a warm hand slide through his hair, and for a moment it scared him, but by the time he turned he knew that it belonged to Harry, not the ghost of one of these people he didn't know. Harry let the back of his fingers stroke down Teddy's cheek, then seemed to remember himself and took his hand away.

"Let me show you something," he said. He reached for the book, and Teddy handed it to him very carefully, as if the pictures were fragile miniatures of those people Harry had loved and lost, not just faded images. Harry slid his feet to the floor to make room for Teddy on the sofa, and he climbed up beside him to watch him flip through the book. Harry seemed smaller than he ever had, though he still dwarfed Teddy's skinny frame. His shoulders were sloped like a scolded child's as he came to the picture he wanted Teddy to see. It was a picture of four boys, and Teddy recognized Sirius Black from his history books. He knew, too, that the boy beside him, grinning widely, was his father. Teddy had never seen such an old picture of him, but he recognized him easily, because he looked just like him.

Teddy's father was staring at Sirius like he was the sun, brilliant and hard to look at directly. Sirius was oblivious, holding the attention of everyone in the photo, but Teddy's father seemed to be hearing something that the other boys couldn't.

"Your father was happy," Harry said. "He was happy for awhile."

"A short while," Teddy said. He reached over and shut the book, couldn't stand it. Why was his father never caught looking at his mother that way in photographs? Harry sighed and set the photo album on a table beside the sofa. He didn't stand or speak, just sat beside Teddy like he was waiting for the right words to come.

"I was trying to change the past," Harry said. "That's where I've been for the last -- three years? Four? Fourteen? There was an ancient Egyptian time turner, and a spell, very dangerous, very expensive. I'm supposed to have saved everyone, but I couldn't see what good it had really done. So many people were still gone, or ruined, alone. I thought, if I could go back far enough--" He looked at Teddy. "I was losing my mind, you see."

Teddy picked up the blanket and pulled it around himself. It was cold in Harry's office. He wasn't sure why Harry was telling him this now, but he was almost certain that he had never told anyone else, though maybe Hermione had guessed.

"I couldn't decide how far back I would go," Harry said. "I knew I wanted to save Ron, but what about his brother? His family was never the same after Fred's death, and Ron would hate me if I had the chance to save him and didn't. And I wanted to save your parents, too, Teddy, I wanted to save you from having to grow up without them. But then I thought, what about Sirius? Remus would -- well. And what about my parents? Why not? Why not go back in time and save Dumbledore's sister while I was at it? I thought that I could fix everything, but there was nowhere to start, because nothing had ever been completely right."

Teddy stared at Harry, willing him to stop talking, to put his arms around him and kiss him and promise not to go. He only sat there with his lips parted and his eyes unfocused, as if he'd lost his train of thought.

"What stopped you trying?" Teddy asked. "Why did you stop trying to figure out where to start?"

"The concern of one of the few friends I haven't managed to lose," Harry said. Teddy thought of Hermione's letter. "And you." He turned to Teddy at last, and Teddy waited for him to grab his chin and pull him close, but he didn't. "You, the way you are now, despite everything that's happened to you. Despite everything I've allowed you to live without."

"I'm sorry," Teddy said. "About what I said last night."

Harry shut his eyes and winced as if Teddy had stabbed him. Teddy's eyes watered, and he grabbed Harry's knee.

"Don't apologize," Harry said. "You have a right to feel that way. But I do know you, Teddy. I do."

"Harry," Teddy said, and when his voice broke, Harry seemed to understand what he needed. He slipped his arm around the small of Teddy's back, and held his face with his other hand. It was so big across Teddy's cheek, his thumb at the corner of Teddy's mouth.

"I wanted to save people again, the same people, I wanted to go back and do it right," Harry said. He stroked his thumb across Teddy's bottom lip, as if to still its trembling. "And you were right here all the time."

"I don't need saving," Teddy said, trying to keep his voice even, not wanting to dissolve into something boneless and blind like he had when Harry leaned over him in bed.

"I know." Harry kissed him chastely on the lips. He tasted like brandy and brood flower, like a mislaid orphan, and Teddy had always wanted to save him, too. He let out a choppy breath and leaned into the warmth of Harry's chest, sank deeper when Harry's arms folded around him, and blinked tears onto Harry's sweater. He'd thought he understood how badly he needed this, but he couldn't have known how stupidly complete it would make him feel. Harry rocked him slightly, like a child with a doll, and stroked his hair.

“Will you do something with me?” Harry asked, sitting back to look at him. He wiped Teddy's eyes dry with two soft swipes of his thumb.

“Anything,” Teddy said, and admitting this made him shudder. Harry seemed to pause, then smiled.

“Come on,” he said, pulling Teddy up from the sofa.

Sledding on the hill beside the back patio wasn't exactly what Teddy expected, but he had no objections. Harry dressed him in his own winter clothes: Harry's coat, the sleeves hanging down over Teddy's hands, his knit cap and an old scarf with the Gryffindor colors. The effect was such that Teddy felt as if he was still enveloped in Harry while he rode a sled he had transfigured from an old shutter that had fallen off the carriage house down the snow-covered banks. He had been willing to tolerate the afternoon spent sledding just to please Harry, but it was much more fun than he expected, and the release of energy was much needed. They were both out of breath and red-cheeked as they climbed to the top of the hill for their twentieth descent.

“I always wanted to try this,” Harry said when they reached the top. The bright winter day sparkled around them, crystalline and quiet, their shouts and laughter echoing down into the valley.

“You've never done it before?” Teddy asked. He wasn't sure why he was surprised; he hadn't, either.

“I've never done a lot of things,” Harry said. “I've been in stasis. That's Hermione's diagnosis, anyway. She's right, as usual. I feel like I've come out of a coma.”

Teddy didn't know what to tell him. He sat on the front of the makeshift sled, and Harry sat behind him, wrapped his arms around Teddy's waist and let his legs spill out around him. Teddy felt his hot breath on the back of his ear, and he scooted back into him, grinned at the steep drop ahead of them.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Harry said, and Teddy blushed as if he'd asked him something else, because Harry seemed to be answering another question. Sitting in front of him, it was easy to forget that he wasn't just another boy who had grown up alone. He was a man who had been all over the world, a hundred pounds heavier and seventeen years older. He'd had double the life that Teddy had, so far, going on years alone. If his experiences were taken into account, he'd already had ten times the life of anyone else in the world.

Harry used the backs of his heels to push them over the edge of the slope, and the wind blasted fast and cold in Teddy's face as they flew down the hill, Harry whooping behind him like they hadn't already done this nineteen times. Teddy laughed, and when they crash-landed into a bank of snow at the bottom, he let himself tumble off the sled along with Harry, who still had his arms around him. He stayed still until Harry leaned up to check on him, panting down into his face.

“You okay?” he asked. Teddy just smiled and kissed him. He licked the cold from Harry's lips until they were warm and soft again.

“You don't have to do this,” Harry said, speaking into Teddy's mouth, his eyes closed.

“Yes, I do,” Teddy said. “I have to do everything with you. I think I'll die if I don't.”

Harry crushed him back into the snow, kissing him until the backs of his ears went numb. He just laughed into Harry's mouth, feeling the heat of his blush against his cheeks. Harry might know him, of course he did, but Teddy could still surprise him.

They sat by the fireplace in the second floor parlor for lunch. It was the room Harry had crashed into the previous summer, bleeding and sprawled on the floor. Teddy stared at the carpet, which had once been soaked fat with Harry's blood while they sat together with their backs to the fire, eating sandwiches off of plates they held in their laps.

“How many times do you reckon you've almost died?” Teddy asked. He felt like a different person already, but maybe the change had been happening since the summer. Just a year ago, he wouldn't have dared to ask Harry anything so bold, though Harry had always humored his questions about the past.

“Enough times, I'd say,” Harry answered. “I think I'll retire from nearly dying.”

When Teddy was finished eating, he set his plate on the hearth and walked to the door. Harry watched him, and Teddy turned back to smirk with phony confidence. He didn't know how to seduce someone, or what to do afterward. He just knew that he felt found but not yet delivered. He walked down the hall and into Harry's bedroom, sorry that Kreacher always kept the beds made up. He had hoped to find the ransacked evidence of Harry's time spent alone in the bed, mussed sheets and rumpled pillows. He took his shoes off and pushed pillows out of the way, climbed under the covers and lay down as if he could sleep. His heart was pounding, his whole body like an itchy trigger wanting to be pulled.

“Teddy?”

He closed his eyes when he heard Harry shut the bedroom door behind him, and kept them shut as he listened to Harry's shoes drop to the floor, then his sweater and trousers. When Teddy opened his eyes, Harry was standing in his undershirt and shorts like an awkward teenager who didn't know what to do next. Teddy rolled onto his side and smiled at him.

“You have done this before, haven't you?” Teddy asked, mostly joking.

“Yes. But you haven't. Have you?”

“Of course not. Don't you know? I was waiting for you.”

Harry shut his eyes, and Teddy glanced down at his lap to see that he was already beginning to tent his shorts. He kicked the blankets away and reached down to undo his own trousers, let Harry watch him squirm out of them.

“Come here,” Teddy said. He took his sweater off and threw it onto the floor beside Harry's. “Come on. I'm cold.”

Harry walked to the side of the bed and took Teddy's face in his hand. He studied him, and Teddy thought he could feel Harry's heartbeat in his fingertips, but maybe that was his own.

“This isn't just a different way of going mad, is it?” Harry asked, directing the question more to himself than to Teddy.

“I'm pretty sure it is.” Teddy sat up on his knees and pulled his undershirt off. Harry's eyes wandered over his naked chest, soft and unmarred, his nipples hard and flushed pink in the chill of the room. Harry swayed on his feet and licked his lips, but didn't touch him. Teddy had never seen someone swoon before.

“But at least this way, you'll have me for company,” Teddy said. “When you go mad.” He was actually a bit afraid that Harry would, at least temporarily. He was breathing fast already, his shorts barely containing an unmistakably perpendicular shape now, and his eyes were wide with unfiltered desire.

“You know what the most frightening thing was, all the time?” Harry asked. He ran the back of his fingers down the length of Teddy's side, watched him shudder under his touch. “I knew that I could do it if I wanted to. I could go back and fuck with the past, change whatever I wanted, ruin things maybe, and no one would be able to stop me.”

It went through Teddy like a thrill, and he let himself fall backward onto the bed, bent his knees and spread his legs open, enjoying the knowledge that the sight would make Harry's cock twitch, and that he was about to submit himself to a man who was so powerful he was afraid of himself, and rightly so.

“Will it hurt?” Teddy asked when Harry climbed onto him. He could feel the heat of Harry's cock through the thin fabric of his shorts, pressing against the soft skin of his inner thigh.

“It shouldn't,” Harry said. He kissed Teddy's face with a kind of cautious reverence, moved his lips gingerly over his cheeks and nose and the corners of his mouth. Teddy put his hands under Harry's shirt and felt for the scars he remembered, running his fingertips over them with the same worshipful grace. He tried to ease into the pace Harry was setting, sleepwalked and cozy, to still his frantic need for a hand around his cock and fingers up his arse. He rubbed his lap against Harry's until their cocks brushed together, and Teddy fell limp onto the bed, cursing as his balls tightened and the beginnings of an orgasm threatened to blow his brains out.

“Wait,” Harry whispered, and he licked his way down Teddy's neck, into the hollow of his throat. Teddy brought his shaking hands back to Harry's sides and whimpered happily when his tongue moved down to circle one of his nipples, then the other. He pulled them through his teeth, and Teddy made wordless noises of encouragement, lost control of himself and jerked his hips up to rub his cock against Harry again. Harry laughed onto his skin, and Teddy was ashamed of himself. He tried again to be still, and to steady his gasping breath.

“Can I take these down?” Harry asked, his fingers slipping under the elastic waistband of Teddy's shorts.

“Jesus, yes,” Teddy breathed, and Harry grinned. He pulled Teddy's shorts off and tossed them onto the floor. Teddy spread himself open, his cheeks bright red as Harry sat back to look at him. His mouth was hanging open, and he seemed dazed, his eyes wide and hungry. Teddy tried to laugh, but it came up as a weird sort of hiccup. His cock was standing up shamelessly, the tip red and shining with the precome that had been leaking into his shorts since he climbed into Harry's bed.

Harry settled between Teddy's legs and licked his balls, cock, and parts of his body that he didn't even know he had, secret places between his legs. He had one of Teddy's arse cheeks in each hand, and he spread him just a bit wider as his tongue darted along the hot circle of his arsehole. Teddy flailed and panted, even the wild rise and fall of his own chest getting him off. He clawed at the sheets, flexed his toes and arched his head back, out of his mind with the cool air in the room dusting his skin in every place that Harry's mouth was not.

“You want your cock sucked?” Harry asked, his thumb playing over Teddy's arsehole, not opening it, just rubbing it like a promise.

“Yeah,” Teddy cried. “Please, please.”

Harry had barely fit his mouth over Teddy's prick before he was shooting come down his throat. He moaned Harry's name loud and long, his orgasm shaking through every nerve, sharp and languid at the same time. He deflated as the last waves buzzed through him, tense muscles unwinding. Harry swallowed every drop, pulled back and licked his lips, wiped his chin.

“Fucking fantastic,” Teddy murmured. Half asleep, he reached for Harry, ready to return the favor, though he was afraid he'd be absolute shit at it. Harry flopped onto him with a dumb grin, as if sucking him off had been his life's goal and now he could die happy. Teddy laughed at the idea; he felt drugged and stupid and so safe, with Harry stretched over him and the snow falling again outside, boxing them in.

“C'mere,” Teddy said, sitting up and pushing Harry back so that he was on his knees. Then he got a better idea. He climbed off the bed and motioned for Harry to sit on the edge of the mattress. Harry followed his lead, slipping out of his shorts as he did. Teddy knelt on the floor and stared at Harry's prick, long and thick and full, pointed right at his face. Harry was breathing sharply, and he dragged a hand through Teddy's already messy hair while he tried to work up his courage.

“It's okay,” Harry said. “I'm fit to burst already. Just mind your teeth.” He let his hand slide down the side of Teddy's face, and then pushed a finger between his lips. Teddy sucked on it greedily, and Harry watched him practice with a glazed-over look.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming from someplace deep, barely recognizable. “That's it.”

He was clearly exaggerating about being fit to burst, because it took Teddy quite a bit of licking and groping before Harry let go and allowed himself to moan, his head tipped back and his eyes shut. Teddy could barely fit half of Harry's cock in his mouth, the thickness more of an obstacle than the length, but he ran his tongue up and down the shaft and over the insides of his thighs, stroked his hairy balls and traced the fat vein at the base of his cock with his thumb. When Harry came they were both caught off guard, and he had time only to issue a sharp ah! before he'd pumped his come all over Teddy's face.

“Oh, God, I'm sorry!” Harry said, still breathless and recovering. Teddy just laughed, and licked a sample from the corner of his mouth. It wasn't the greatest thing he'd ever tasted, had a kind of murky flavor unlike anything else he'd tried (there were rumors of semen-flavored jelly beans in packs of Bertie Bott's, but no one he knew had ever found one), but it was Harry's, and he didn't mind it dripping from his eyelashes. Harry took his wand from his discarded trousers and cleaned Teddy up. He made a pitying sound and kissed Teddy's cheeks, pulled him into his arms.

“That was a rather rude introduction for you,” he said, smoothing Teddy's hair back into place.

“It's okay.” Teddy wrapped his naked body around Harry's, loved the sticky warmth of his damp skin and the broken landscape of his scars. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Harry laughed and pulled him down under the blankets. Teddy fit himself tightly against him, rolling so that his back was pressed against Harry's chest, Harry's cock softening against the crack of his arse. Harry was still moaning under his breath, like the aftershocks were picking their way through him, and Teddy loved the feeling of Harry's body moving against his with every sound and sigh and shuffle. Harry pushed his face down to Teddy's shoulder and nuzzled his neck with his nose.

“God,” he said, his voice thick with the start of sleep. “Feels good to finally do this with someone I love.”

“Yeah,” Teddy agreed, reaching back to palm the sweaty skin on his arse under the blankets. He forced himself to stay awake so that he could experience the slow progress of Harry losing consciousness around him. First his arm went heavy over Teddy's side, then his breath got stronger against Teddy's neck, and finally all of his muscles seemed to dump their weight onto Teddy, his massive form completely relaxed. Teddy opened his eyes with some effort, wanting to memorize the light in the room and the pace of the snowfall at the window, almost wishing that he could stand at the opposite wall and watch the scene from afar. He needed a visual, proof, could hardly believe it even as he felt it in his bones. Harry loved him, wanted him, and needed him, really. He was part of something at last, joined with the only person he had ever wanted to belong to, warm and safe and tucked in tight.

*

Teddy woke up slowly, wondering for a moment where he was. When he recognized the window across from the bed as the one in Harry's room, he smiled and rolled over. Harry was asleep on his stomach, his hands stuffed under his pillow. He blinked awake when Teddy gripped his shoulder, sighed and moved his forehead against Teddy's. The light was almost gone outside, the snow still falling.

“I've been lying here wondering,” Harry said, his lips moving over the bridge of Teddy's nose. “Am I a creep for doing this with you?”

“Sure,” Teddy said. “But you're my creep, and I'm grateful for it.”

That more or less settled the matter. They had an early dinner in the dining room and talked about Teddy's future. He didn't really have any ideas about it.

“Beware of that,” Harry said. “It didn't get me very far.”

“This from the person who told me to take my time deciding what to do with my life?”

“That was actually a rather different person who wrote that letter, but what I really meant was not to let anyone pressure you into becoming something in particular. In my case, it seemed so right to be an Auror, and it was what everyone expected. Nobody knew how exhausted and threadbare I felt, and I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want to let everyone down.”

“Well, nobody's asking me to do anything so dire. Hermione thinks I should teach.”

Harry waved a dismissive hand. “She thinks everyone should. Tried to get me to come on as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.”

“You should! Then we could be together while I'm at school.”

Harry smiled wistfully, and Teddy looked down at his plate. Perhaps it was a foolish thing to say; it wasn't as if he would walk down the halls holding Harry's hand for all to see.

“It will be a long time still before I can return to Hogwarts,” Harry said. “But thank you for the invitation.”

Teddy ate in silence after that, afraid that he'd been too presumptuous. Maybe Harry was just getting something out of his system; maybe this was just a transitional period, and after he'd done some healing he would move on to wizards or witches his own age, who could hold scintillating dinner conversations about the war years.

“I'd been thinking, actually,” Harry said when Kreacher brought the pudding. “Of maybe, I don't know. Taking you on a sort of gap year. If you'd like. You don't have to, but –”

“Really?” Teddy said, beaming. “Where would we go?” It didn't really matter; he'd never been out of England. He imagined peering over the side of the Great Wall with Harry leaning beside him and telling him the magical history of the place, pictured the two of them in a jungle somewhere, curled together in a tent with birds and monkeys screaming in the trees, and on a beach, Harry's hand spread across his sunburned stomach.

“Wherever you like,” Harry said. “I've done so much traveling by myself. I've been – longing for a companion. And now that you're done with school. Well, it was a thought I'd had.”

“Sounds brilliant,” Teddy said, holding his spoon in his fist like a child. “Can we go to bed now?”

What he really wanted, more than promises and advice and their feet together under the dining room table, was Harry inside him, locked into him like an unbreakable bond. He had heard about old magic, spells that didn't need to be spoken, things forged in real love that outlived even their casters. Making love to the mythic figure who had haunted his life like an unreachable shadow for five years was the closest he could imagine coming to such magic.

Harry was gentle that night, and infuriatingly slow, but Teddy understood that he wasn't the only one doing something this sacred and serious for the first time, so he didn't complain. Harry ran a bath for them in the big, marble tub in the master bathroom, cleaned him with soapy hands and stroked a careful finger around his arsehole until Teddy was dazed and begging him for more.

“Have you ever tried it?” Harry asked, the pad his forefinger resting over Teddy's entrance with just enough pressure to make him whine and pant.

“Yeah,” he huffed. “At Hogwarts. I would think of you and fuck myself with my fingers.”

That effectively increased the pace of things, and soon Teddy was on his back in Harry's bed, wet and laughing. Harry sucked his cock to shut him up, and pulled away before he could explode in Harry's mouth again. His fingers were thicker than Teddy's, but he was more patient than Teddy had even been with himself, and he stretched him out slowly, whipsering does that feel good, do you like that? The only word Teddy knew was yes.

He did burst into tears when Harry pushed into him with his cock, though not because it hurt. It did hurt, but whenever Harry started to slide back out, Teddy would grab his elbows and beg him not to, and for a moment it would not hurt so much, until he inched in further, and they would repeat the process. It took a long time, that first night, and when Teddy went blind with tears, Harry would stop moving and bend down to clear his eyes.

“We can stop,” he said at least five times.

“No, we can't,” Teddy said, and Harry seemed to recognize the truth in that. When he was finally pushed in completely, his balls snug against Teddy's arse, they breathed into each other's faces triumphantly, and Teddy managed a shaky grin. Harry rested his head against Teddy's chest, listened to his heart raging between his ribs.

“Why do you even want this?” he asked, as if he was speaking not to Teddy but directly to his heart.

“Because,” Teddy panted, looking up at the ceiling. “Ever since that day in St. Mungo's. When you came to get me. I barely knew you, but when you held me, I just – fit.”

Eventually, they did seem to fit together effortlessly. By the end of the Christmas holiday, Teddy could throw himself over the side of the bed and let Harry thrust into him with nothing held back. Teddy would grip the sheets and egg him on, and he'd be dizzy by the end of it, his own come spilled down the side of the bed. Harry showed him things he had only heard the vaguest mentions of in the boy's dormitory at school, like the morning he slipped beneath the blankets, pulled Teddy's arse cheeks apart and licked into him until he was bright-cheeked and cursing in blubbered ecstasy. Once, after a bit of post-dinner brandy, he really did put Teddy over his knee and spank him until his cock was hard against Teddy's stomach, and Teddy moaned happily, calling him Father and begging for mercy. They didn't talk about it afterward, but they did it again the next night, sober, Teddy on his knees and holding onto the headboard this time.

Harry showed him other things, too. When he came upon Teddy reading his schoolbooks with daydream nonchalance, he would sit behind him, pull him into his lap and scratch soft fingers down the back of his neck while he gave him tips on spellwork or quizzed him on potion ingredients. If Teddy bent into the ice box searching for a can of pumpkin juice Harry would touch the small of his back as he passed as if he couldn't help himself. As Teddy brushed his teeth Harry would stand behind him and put his face into Teddy' hair, shut his eyes and inhale deeply. If he thought Teddy looked cold, he performed warming spells that rushed over Teddy's skin like hot summer wind, and if he was having trouble sleeping he took the muscles at Teddy's shoulders in his big hands and rubbed them until they melted like taffy. Kreacher continued on with his duties as if he had always expected Harry and Teddy to fall in love.

“What do you suppose Kreacher thinks of us?” Teddy asked one evening after Kreacher had come upon them in the kitchen, Harry holding Teddy's hips while he sliced up an apple.

“He spent most of his life in the noble house of Black,” Harry said. “I doubt anything could shock him.”

When the day came for Teddy to return to Hogwarts, he felt completely unprepared for the change of the scenery. It seemed as if he'd been in the company of only Harry and Kreacher for years, though the holiday had passed quickly. He packed up his books with melancholy determination, telling himself that it would soon be summer, though the months between the Christmas holiday and the end of school seemed insurmountable, cruel punishment.

“Write to me,” he begged, clinging to Harry. They were standing in his bedroom, Teddy dressed and ready to go, and the sun was up fully. He was going to be late for his first class.

“Of course I will.” Harry stroked his cheek, felt the soft stubble that had begun dusting Teddy's unshaven face only very recently. “Though I don't know what my letters will be like. 'Dear Teddy, today I ate breakfast, wasted time wandering the house, had lunch, missed you terribly, forced down some dinner, wanked myself off whilst sniffing a sweater you left behind.'”

“I can leave behind some underwear if that would make things more exciting,” Teddy said, laughing against his neck.

“I've no objections to that,” Harry said. “But I really do need to get about the business of figuring out what to do with my life.”

“Yes, me too. I suppose we'll have our gap year for that.”

“Indeed.” Harry kissed him again, and moaned a sad little protest into his mouth. “And a stretch of suffering before that. At least you'll have your schoolwork to distract you.”

“Right, I'm sure you really envy me that. I'll trade with you if you like. You can take my N.E.W.T.s, and I'll spend the months moping around this place and taking long naps.”

“I think you've done enough of that for one lifetime,” Harry said sadly. “I'll never forgive myself for leaving you here alone.”

“Well, it was for the best,” Teddy said. “That you and I should be kept apart until I was of legal age.”

“Cheeky.” Harry shook his head and grinned, let his arms slip from Teddy's waist. “You'd better hurry.”

“Okay.” Teddy stared at him, and thought of Hogwarts, the classrooms filling up, his mates wondering why he was late and poor Penny probably already suspecting that it was over, since he hadn't written her at all. He couldn't seem to make himself Apparate, and began wondering if he should use some other form of transportation to avoid splinching.

“Go on, then,” Harry prodded, stuffing his hands into his back pockets to stop himself from reaching for Teddy at an inopportune moment and ending up on the train platform outside Hogwarts.

“I'll see you soon,” Teddy said, trying to reassure himself.

“I'll write to you tonight,” Harry said. He smiled, and Teddy took him in one last time: rumpled trousers, navy sweater that was a bit too tight, his eyes earnest and bright behind his glasses. Teddy wanted to say something foolish, like I can't believe you love me or I'd rather die than leave you now, but he Apparated away before he could embarrass himself.

He landed clumsily on the platform, which was nearly empty, and took one of the last carriages up to the castle. His only companion was a mousy girl who had her nose buried in a copy of Hogwarts: A History. Teddy watched the familiar landscape pass and thought about the chapters at the end of that book, about The Boy Who Lived and the Battle of Hogwarts, and he could hardly connect that figure with the person he had just left behind after a long and bittersweet shag at the crack of dawn. He got the feeling that Harry often felt that way about himself, as if he were a person stuck in the body of a legend. After the war, people came up to him for years just to tell him they couldn't believe he hadn't died, as if they'd found the whole thing a bit anticlimactic.

Classes passed in the usual blur of note-taking and whispered gossip, and Teddy broke up with Penny at dinnertime, so he wouldn't have to sit with her and guiltily endure her sweet glances. She seemed more annoyed than anything, and told him it was just as well since he was leaving school soon anyway. Teddy sat with the other Slytherins and gulped down a quick dinner before heading to his room to check for letters.

As promised, a letter from Harry was tucked neatly under the corner of his pillow by his clever owl, Pigwideon. Teddy cracked a biscuit in half and fed some to Pig, who knew Teddy well and didn't seem eager to leave. He stayed perched on the back of Teddy's desk chair, preening himself, as Teddy read Harry's letter:

Dear Teddy,

I do not know how you endured this place alone. It seems to grow larger and quieter every hour. I do have Kreacher for company, and I have quite a few friends I've lost touch with whom I've spent the afternoon writing to, so don't worry about me. I thought I'd grown used to and even fond of being alone, but it's amazing how quickly that feeling dissolves when you find someone who is worth a damn to spend your days with.

I hope your first day back went well. I hardly remember my own last year of school; it was after the war, and everything felt odd and different. We were all trying too hard to pretend we could restore things to 'normal.' I was so frightened at the thought of the vast future after Hogwarts and no great quests to fill it with that I actually asked your Professor Longbottom to marry me. She's a smart girl, and had by then deduced that I was rather in love with her brother (long before I had; we had this conversation many years later), so she laughed it off as politely as she could. Anyway, by then I think she had fallen for Neville along with every other girl in school.

And here I am, writing about the past. But I think I must write and talk about it. Regardless, I am no longer afraid of the future. I think about you constantly (hours since you left, I'm sure that's shocking) and I'm planning a fantastic trip for the two of us. Currently I'm hoping to keep it a secret and surprise you, but I may be unable to contain my excitement about certain destinations and begin writing to you about the details. Which would you prefer?

I'll close this letter here so that I'll have something to say in my next one. I was never a big writer of letters, I'll warn you, and I'd much rather have you here in my arms with nothing at all to say.

Until we meet again,
You have all of my love,
Harry

Teddy read the letter only once and tucked it back under his pillow. He reached over to stroke the soft feathers on the breast of Harry's owl, which had once belonged to Ron. Part of Harry would always be trapped in the nightmares of his past, but like the nightmares themselves, this was not something that could be corrected. The present was not a place where the past rested until it was healed; it was only a succession of days that could be filled with new mistakes and joys or ignored in favor of remembering. Teddy thought about the way Harry had always signed his letters before, and perhaps the missing second line had been there all along, invisible and unsaid. Until we meet again, You have all of my love, as if that love was a cold and fragile thing Teddy held for him until they came together to revive it.