average human’s Reviews > Expecto Patronum > Status Update

“Yeah, of course,” he said with an actual smile. “Come in Darlin. George is at Angie’s, we can talk in here.”

Harry stepped inside the room that Fred shared with George and looked around in mild curiosity while Fred cleared away the products he was working on. The room was a mess, but Harry knew it was an organized type of chaos, with books and parchment everywhere and brightly packaged products filling every corner of the room.

“D’you wanna sit?” Fred asked, plopping on the side of his bed and patting the space beside him.

“No.” Harry stayed in the open doorway, putting a privacy shield up so they weren’t interrupted by any of the Weasley’s staying in the house. “We need to talk...”

“We do,” Fred agreed, his eyes tight with worry. “About the other night, Harry-“

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Harry said quickly. He needed to say what he came here to say so he could leave. The resolve that he’d built up the last few days was wavering when he stood here in front of Fred and he would do the right thing. Harry didn’t usually do the right thing, according to Snape, Theo, Hermione, Neville, and a lot of other people actually, but he would now.

Fred deserved that.

“We can’t be together anymore.”

Harry felt guilt squeeze his insides as Fred’s eyes, blue like Harry imagined the ocean might in the twilight, filled with a look of sadness.

“What? No.” Fred sounded momentarily lost, as if Harry had just ripped the floor beneath him and he found himself falling. “Harry I’m so sorry, please-“

“It wasn’t you,” Harry cut him off, not wanting Fred to feel guilty for anything. Fred wasn’t at fault here, Harry was. “And that’s not why anyway,” he lied. “It’s this war, yeah? It’s not safe for us to be together. And you’re leaving Hogwarts this year, you’ll be busy with the shop and I’ll be busy with school. It’s just- this is just how it has to be,” he said flatly but firmly. “I’m sorry.”

“But...” Fred’s eyes were beginning to water, and Harry knew he needed to leave before he selfishly gave in. “But I love you,” Fred said softly. “I don’t care about being in danger, I’m ready for it. And we still have all year this year, and next year we’ll see each other every Hogsmeade week-”

“I don’t want to be together anymore,” Harry interrupted flatly, covering his own hurt with his blank mask. A mask he could hide almost anything behind. “Someone will either try and take you from me, just because you’re mine, or you’ll leave anyway. So... so this is it.”

Harry took a step backwards, focusing on Fred’s hands instead of his face, and paused in the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “But it’s better like this. You can...” Harry cleared his throat as he felt his voice break. “You can be with someone else; you deserve it.”

Harry stepped through his own privacy bubble, dispelling it with his motions, as he turned to go back to Sirius’ old bedroom.

He left so quickly that when the first tear streaked down Fred’s gobsmacked cheek he missed it.

And when Fred whispered that he didn’t want to be with anyone else, he missed that as well.



“Harry?”

Harry looked up from the dying fire that he had been staring at and saw Snape giving him an inscrutable look from the sitting room doorway.

“What happened?” Snape asked perceptively. Harry briefly wondered what his face must look like before he cleared it of any emotion at all.

“Nothing,” Harry told him flatly. “‘M fine.”

Snape moved until he was in front of Harry, looking down at him with a steady gaze.

“You are not fine,” Snape said, once again proving how well he could read Harry’s mood. “Did your visit with Frederick go poorly?”

“No.” It hadn’t, it went how Harry had planned for it to go. That didn’t mean Harry was happy about it though. “We- No- I broke up with him.”

Snape quietly sat beside Harry and Harry shifted away slightly, not wanting to be crowded or touched.

“Would you like to discuss it?” Snape offered.

“Nothing to discuss,” Harry shrugged. “There’s a war coming. It’s better this way.”

Harry could practically feel the waves of unease rolling off Snape’s body beside him. He figured Snape felt pretty out of his depth right now, and it would have been nearly amusing if Harry had been in a mood to be amused. Instead, the two of them sat there quietly.

“It is admirable to try and protect him, but I believe Frederick is as capable as any of your friends in defending himself in any conflict.”

Harry made a small hum at Snape’s quietly spoken words. He wasn’t wrong, Fred could handle himself okay in a fight, especially if he was partnered with Harry or George, but that wasn’t the problem.

And Harry sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about the problem with Snape.

He knew what Snape would say already;

‘You are not a freak. You are not broken. Perhaps you should discuss this with Lupin.’

Okay, maybe he wouldn’t precisely say the bit about Lupin, but he’d want Harry to talk to him. And this wasn’t something Harry wanted to talk about with them.

They didn’t get it.

Fred deserved someone whole, healthy, normal.

And that wasn’t Harry.

“I’m going to go upstairs,” Harry said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Harry, wait.” Harry paused and looked back at Snape. Snape’s face was calm, if only betraying a mild hint of concern.

“I will not interfere in your relationships nor in the decisions you are perfectly within your rights to make on your own,” he said. “However, I am always available at any time to talk if you would like to do so.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Harry shrugged. “But I’m fine.”

And he was. Mostly. There was no use crying about it now.

What’s done is done and Harry wasn’t going to mope about, whining when he knew he made the right decision.



And he didn’t mope, not really.

Harry threw himself in his books- reading as much as he could. Using the Theory of Magic to block out the Theory of What the Fuck is Wrong With Him.

He painted his and Theo’s room, a clean white color that made it feel less oppressively dark at night.

He tried to explain human concepts to Stevie, and attempted to get Sevvie to stop being so terrified of the giant snake.

He also unwittingly made his housemates discuss his behavior and plot ways to cheer him up from his first breakup.



“I will be brewing a batch of Felix Felicis for my seventh year students,” Snape said during breakfast. “Perhaps you would like to assist me?”

Harry held in a scowl, knowing Snape preferred to brew alone and was likely only offering because he thought Harry needed company.

“No thanks.”



“Hey Harry, do you want to come see some of the stuff from Grimmauld Place?” Barty asked, hesitating in Harry’s bedroom doorway. “There’s a lot of Slytherin history and dark curses hidden in the stuff Black brought over.”

Harry felt a pang as he recalled Fred helping Sirius relocate all the items Barty wanted from the Black home.

“No thanks.”



“Are you drowning?” Theo asked quietly late at night when Harry assumed his faux-sibling had long sense fallen asleep.

“No,” Harry whispered back to him, knowing his voice would carry through the dividing wall clearly without a silencing charm put up.

“It’s okay if you are,” Theo responded. “I’d be pretty depressed if me and Mione broke up.”

“I’m not depressed.”

Which was true. Harry felt guilt and regret when he thought about losing Fred, but it wasn’t the powerful waves of depression that he had experienced before.

“We could go to Italy tomorrow,” Theo said. “Just us and Draco and Blaise- maybe go swimming or something?”

Harry briefly considered it; he liked Italy. And he did miss his friends. But he wasn’t really in the mood to be pestered or cheered up, which he was sure was Theo’s real goal in the offer.

“No thanks.”



“God damnit.” Theo swore loudly as he dejectedly slumped on the sofa in the sitting room with Snape and Barty a few days after Harry’s breakup. “We aren’t helping any.”

“What do we do?” Barty asked hesitantly, unsure if this was some sort of regular occurrence in the Snape/Potter/Knott household. Snape and Theo exchanged a loaded look and seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. Theo with a sigh of relief and Snape with a huff of exasperation at the necessity.

“We get Susan,” Theo said. “We make Susan handle this.”

***

“You idiot.”

Harry, who was curled up on his bed and trying to explain what a breakup was to Stevie, looked up in surprise as Susan came in his room and made her way to his bed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice sounding more dull than truly curious.

“Theo said you broke up with Fred,” Susan told him, climbing over Stevie and moving Harry’s head to her lap. “What happened?” she asked, stroking Harry’s hair as Harry pet Stevie’s head with his index finger.

“You already know,” Harry said, “I broke up with him.”

“Why?”

Harry sighed, not really wanting to rehash it all, but knowing if he had to that Susan would be the best one to do it with.

“Lots of reasons.”

“Top three?” Susan asked. Harry imagined she was rolling her eyes at his vague answers, but if he was going to be talking about his relationship and his ‘feelings’ then he wasn’t going to look up at her while he did it.

“One, he’s going to leave me anyway. Or two, someone’s going to take him from me. And three, I’m a freak,” Harry admitted quietly, focusing his gaze on Stevie’s cool brown scales while Susan calmed Harry by merely running her fingers through his hair.

“Why would he leave you? Who would dare try and take him from you? And you are not a fucking freak Harry,” she said stoutly. “I’ll kill anyone who calls you that.”

Harry scoffed lightly, “There’s a whole list of people who think it if you want it,” he said.

“I do,” Susan told him, her tone hard. “But I’ll get it later. That’s the main reason you did it, isn’t it? Why do you think that you’re a freak? Because Fred doesn’t think so, I know he doesn’t.”

“You don’t get it.” His friends all thought Harry was so great, powerful and important, but they didn’t really know the real him. The Harry on the inside that he hides. Harry let out a deep breath before he exposed himself for the person he truly was. “I- I freaked out Sue. I had this whole freaky thing happen and Fred saw it and now he knows. He knows what I am.”

“Start at the beginning,” Susan said calmly. “What exactly happened?”

“We had sex,” Harry whispered. “And we’ve never done that before, you know? So it was was supposed to be special or whatever, but right in the middle I just freaked out. And it was so stupid Sue. I’m a fucking freak. I’m broken. And...” Harry’s voice dropped as he admitted the true reason that he ended it with Fred, “And he deserves someone whole, someone normal, yeah?”

“Oh Harry.” Susan’s empty hand reached over Harry’s shoulder and grabbed his free hand and squeezed it once. “Fred deserves whoever he wants. And you are not a freak, and you’re not broken. I freaked out a bit the first time I had sex, it’s a normal reaction to taking such a big step in your relationship. It’s totally normal, Harry.”

It wasn’t normal.

Susan just didn’t get it.

But that was because she didn’t know. Didn’t understand all of it.

“It wasn’t normal and... and it wasn’t my first time.”

Susan’s hand that was stroking Harry’s hair paused for a split second after he admitted one of his most shameful secrets to her.

“How old were you your first time?” she asked, her voice steady and calm.

“Eight,” Harry said softly.

“I love you.” Susan’s voice sounded a bit strangled as she said that. She cleared her throat then repeated herself, “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone in the entire world.”

Harry looked up at Susan’s face. He was searching for pity, or mockery, or anything else that would have shut him up, but all he saw was a serene sense of honesty and a fierce look of affection in her eyes.

“It was different with Fred,” he said, turning his head back in her lap to stare at the pattern on Stevie’s scales as his mind focused on the past. “It wasn’t like before, but then it was. I liked it, wanted it, but then I couldn’t breathe Sue. It was like I was a stupid weak kid all over again and I couldn’t move and I was just... I was just frozen.”

Harry tried, he really did because he was too old for whinging like this, but a small sob ripped it’s way free of his chest and broke the damn he’d built up since he’d spoken with Fred. Despite how he’d told himself that none of it mattered, the past was the past and he’d never live like that again, never let himself be owned like that again, it all just came rushing back at him. In that moment with Fred he wasn’t fifteen year old Harry; figurehead of an important gang, powerful wizard, aspiring political leader. Instead he had just suddenly been kid Harry; starving, weak, willing to trade the freedom of his body for food and warmth, convinced that the touch of strangers inside him was worth it if it meant he’d live another day.

Harry would never admit something so pathetically weak out loud, but it had been terrifying when he switched from who he was now to who he used to be when he had been with Fred that night.

But what had been almost equally terrifying was the shift in who Fred was in that moment. When Harry changed, so did Fred. Fred went from his boyfriend of over a year, someone who loved him, respected him, and turned him on to a stranger with a leering smile and rough hands and an indifference to Harry’s pain.

No matter how much Harry had told himself that neither of them actually changed who they were when Fred was inside him, it hadn’t mattered. That’s how it felt, how it truly seemed in that moment, and Harry had panicked. Panicked and freaked out and exposed one of the most utterly, and irreparably, damaged parts of himself to Fred. He couldn’t take it back, he couldn’t fix it, and he cared about Fred too much to let him be with someone so entirely broken.

Harry turned in to Susan’s lap to hide his face while he cried, his anger at himself and sadness over losing Fred causing him to forget himself for a while. Susan continued petting his head, knowing there was nothing to say in the moment and simply being a calming presence for him.

“I don’t want to be a freak,” Harry finally said, breathing in Susan’s sweet coconut scented lotion as he calmed himself. “I want one thing about me to be normal Sue. One fucking thing. It’s not so much to ask for, is it?”

“Of course not,” Susan murmured. “But you’re the only one who thinks you’re a freak Harry. I don’t. I’m sure Fred doesn’t, and pushing him away isn’t fair. He deserves better than that.”

“Of course he does,” Harry agreed, turning his face back to Stevie and seeing the lazy snake fell asleep while Harry had his head buried. “But that’s why I ended it, because he deserves better.”

“You’re an idiot,” Susan sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Harry shrugged and released Susan’s hand to flex his fingers out- she had been squeezing them tightly up until then and he could feel them aching slightly.

The two of them laid in Harry’s bed, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Harry thought of Fred while Susan thought about what Harry had shared with her.

“I’m going to kill whoever it was,” she eventually said, clueing Harry in to the direction her thoughts had carried her to.

“Too late,” Harry said with a forced casualness to his voice, knowing who and what she was referring to. “I killed one of them when I was ten and I dunno who the others were.”

Susan’s leg muscles twitched underneath Harry’s head. ”One of them?” she hissed. “There was more than once?”

“There’s only so many ways that a kid can survive on his own for three years,” Harry said as nonchalantly as he was able to. He knew that Susan would be his friend no matter what, she wouldn’t care that Harry admitted to being on the streets before, but that didn’t make his anxiety that she would find him disgusting lessen any.

“Three years plus the two weeks in our second year?” Susan guessed wryly, and accurately.

“Oh yeah.” Harry had made a valiant attempt at blocking out those long, miserable, cold, two weeks in his second year when he was expelled and thought his friends had all abandoned him. “Those too,” he said.

Susan took a deep breath, Harry could feel her chest expanding and shrinking behind his head as she did so, before she spoke again. “I am going to kill your muggle relatives and Albus Dumbledore with my bare hands,” she swore. “And also in case you didn’t know it already, I love you Harry Potter.”

Harry released a shaky breath, relieved that it didn’t seem as if Susan was going to end their friendship over the secrets he shared with her. He felt the empty feeling of regret diminish inside him as his chest was filled with an overwhelmingly warm sense of affection for Susan.

His first friend. His best friend.

One of the few people that Harry knew he could tell absolutely anything to and she’d still always be there for him- ready to wreck vengeance on his behalf or simply hold him together when he didn’t think he was holding himself together very well.

“I love you too,” he said as he nestled further in his lap.

Chapter End Notes

Up Next: Potter is petty and Severus is entirely (un)amused.

Ps: posted before the proofreading edits were implemented, excuse me as I correct those. I warned you all I had a bit of rust in my writing lol

13% petty potter

“I’m leaving,” Potter called to Severus, who was seated in the sitting room one morning enjoying tearing apart a new Potions text with corrections and updates that the idiot publisher had missed.

“Be safe brat,” he murmured, his sharp eyes gleeful as he spotted yet another obvious mistake.

Truly Severus wondered at the incompetency of some self proclaimed professionals. Though, as he had once been coworkers with Gilderoy Lockhart, perhaps it should not be so surprising.

“Don’t you want to know where I’m going?”

Severus looked over at Potter and smirked at him. Potter was dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a grey long sleeved shirt with a teal A on the front. It was hardly an exercise in deduction as to his plans for the day.

“I would venture to say that either I need Narcissa to speak with you about proper attire, again, or you are attending a sporting event,” Severus said sardonically.

“I’m going to watch the Arrows and Harpies game.” Potter smiled blandly at Severus before tacking on, “With Sirius.”

Severus snorted internally at Potter’s obvious ploy here. He could not be more transparent if he screamed it:

Severus is spending time with Theodore, causing Potter to be jealous, so he will spend time with Black in an effort to provoke the same reaction in Severus.

Which, as terribly amusing as it was, would hardly work. Potter was a child, Severus an adult. An adult who had no reason to envy Black for going on an outing with Potter.

“I presume you will be supporting the Arrows?” Severus asked, attempting to show an interest in Potter’s most beloved hobby and future career aspiration.

Potter sent a pointed look at his shirt before raising a brow at Severus in an irritating gesture to indicate ‘what do you think?’ that he learned from Severus himself.

“Then I hope that your team wins and you enjoy the time with your godfather.”

Potter glowered at him for a short instance before he cleared his expression to one of disdainful boredom.

“Well, see you then,” he said flatly.

Severus sighed after Potter left.

Petty.

Potter was quite petty in his attempts to make Severus jealous.

Severus returned to his book with much less enthusiasm than he previously had as his disobedient mind kept imagining Potter and Black bonding at a quidditch match.

It was hardly Severus’ fault that the only quidditch games he could bear watching were ones that Potter himself participated in. Quidditch matches that he was watching of Potter’s long before Black had came in to the picture. Black who Severus was treating medicinally to ensure he even had the presence of mind to have outings with Potter.

He scoffed lightly at the thought that Potter could even imagine Severus would be jealous of Sirius fucking Black.

He absolutely was not.

Though at lunch that afternoon he mentioned to Barty that perhaps he could offer to fly with Potter, as he knew Barty enjoyed flying quite a bit.

And if it carried the pleasant result that perhaps Potter would not become too enamored with Black then all the better.



“I don’t understand why you reduce the flame beneath the cauldron before you add the belladonna seeds but not before you add the Jobberknoll saliva?”

“Here, let me show you.”

Severus grabbed the parchment from Theodore and began carefully scrawling out the differing equations he had calculated when he developed the Lithium Potion.

“See-“

“Dislocated shoulder, I embarrassed him in front of his coworkers when I was 9.”

Severus and Theodore looked up from the table they covered in parchments at Barty’s entrance in the kitchen, followed by a grinning Potter.

“First time? Pft,” Potter scoffed, showing no attention to the curious duo at the table. “I was four the first time I had mine dislocated and I don’t remember what it was for.”

“Alright, well have you ever been locked in your bedroom for three days straight?” Barty asked Potter, plucking an orange from the counter and digging his nails in to the peel. “I only got to leave to use the bathroom, a house elf popped in with my meals.”

“You got a bedroom? And bathroom breaks? And meals?” Potter laughed mockingly with his head buried in the pantry. “Try a cupboard for over a week at a time; no food and a bucket to piss in.”

“What??” Theodore gaped at Potter as Barty sighed dramatically and Severus frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a game,” Potter said coolly, now digging in the pantry and tossing various packages to Barty. “One I’m winning.”

“It’s 7-3 now,” Barty protested. “I can still make a comeback.”

“Perhaps you could explain this game to me,” Severus suggested with a raised brow. He knew Potter had taken a recent shinning to Barty, one that Severus had encouraged a few days ago. Yet when he suggested it, he had not anticipated how much time the pair was willing to spent together as he considered them to have more differences than similarities.

Potter was a rash ‘act first and think second’ young man who found a thrill in life threatening situations and maneuvered his way through social situations with outward ease. Barty had a much more inquisitive and logical view of the world and preferred books to people, a sentiment Severus reverently shared. Severus had only suggested they fly together because he knew that it was the only thing they had a shared interest in.

Though apparently beyond merely flying, the two of them carried a fondness of all sports that Severus and Theodore did not. Barty enjoyed applying his analytical mind to different physical aspects to analyze the results, and Potter simply enjoyed exercising it seemed. They were also both terribly competitive. It was this competitive edge and enthusiasm for sports that had them outdoors most afternoons, arguing and debating as they flew, threw around various muggle sporting equipment, and on one memorable occasion they had somehow acquired a ‘bench press’ (a muggle machine that Severus had never seen before) and Severus had to repair a tear in Barty’s shoulder socket while Potter smirked smugly.

And now it also seemed almost as if they had created a game out of-

“Who had the worst childhood,” Barty said, answering the question that Potter ignored as he opened a package of biscuits and tossed a few to Potter. “You guys want in?”

“No,” Theodore said immediately. “That sounds barbaric.”

Severus privately agreed with the boy, though he was curious how Barty got Potter to share even snippets of his abusive childhood.

“How did this game begin?” he asked them neutrally.

“Barty said it was cathartic to kill his Dad, because he made his childhood terrible,” Potter said as he slyly stole half of a snack cake from Barty’s hand. “And I said ‘bet mine was worse’, and here we are. I’m winning.”

“You made a game from being abused as a child??” Theodore asked, his voice laced with the same surprise that his bulging brown eyes betrayed.

“I was not ‘abused’,” Potter glowered at him while Barty nodded in agreement beside him. “Loads of people have crummy childhoods, we’re just seeing whose was worse.”

Theodore glanced shiftily at Severus, who shook his head subtly. They could hardly force Barty and Potter to acknowledge that their ‘crummy childhoods’ were actually categorically abusive.

“Gotta go,” Potter said abruptly, his arms loaded with boxes of snacks. “Barty’s teaching me muggle football.”

Severus and Theodore stared as the two of them rushed back out the back door to the yard.

“Do we... do we stop them?” Theodore asked uncertainly.

“No,” Severus decided. “At least they are talking.”

Theodore nodded, but he still looked unsure as the two of them returned to their research.



“Hey, which is worse- being told your parents abandoned you or being told you were a mistake?”

Theodore gawked at Potter at the question, but Severus was begrudgingly becoming accustomed to playing referee in Potter and Barty’s ‘game’.

“Yours,” he said after careful consideration, already being well aware of which statement belonged to which pitiable player. “Being told your parents abandoned you also implies that you were a mistake.”

“Ha!” Potter laughed as he slammed Severus’ office door behind him. “18-12!”

“Professor?”

“Yes Theodore?”

“Are they...” Theodore hesitated to find the proper way to word his question. “Are they mad?”

“Undoubtedly.”



Severus had initially been relieved to have Potter and Barty finding a mutual way to discuss their uniquely horrifying childhoods and possibly become support for each other. However, the longer they carried on their competition, the less amusing Severus found it.



“You only spent one night outside? Barty, mate, try three years, yeah?”

“22-19.”



“My Father held me under the Imperio for ten years Harry. Ten. Years.”

“Yeah alright, fine. 36-28.”



“I tried to not make friends because I thought they’d all see the monster in me that my Father did.”

“I knocked Snape out cold in a playground because I thought he was trying to attack me or kill me when he was trying to deliver my acceptance letters.”

“Sev, which is worse?”

“I refuse to participate in this macabre game any further,” Severus grumbled, both irritated and concerned at this point.

“Theo?”

“Uh...” Theodore tapped on his leg as his eyes flicked between Potter and Barty. “They’re both pretty messed up.”

“We’ll call that one a tie then,” Barty said.

Potter scowled and took a vicious stab at his carrots with a fork.

Severus had truly never realized how competitive his ward was.

14%

Potter’s childish jealousy at the time Severus spent with Theodore was abruptly, and entirely, forgiven one morning as summer came close to an end. Potter’s tiny grey owl flew through the open window of the kitchen, landing on Potter’s shoulder, and dropped three envelopes off on the table for presentation.

“Look Mione,” Potter laughed, waving one of the letters in his hand, “Hogwarts sent your school list here!”

Severus’ eyes bulged in momentary horror as he saw that Minerva had indeed sent Miss Granger’s supply list for the upcoming year to their address.

Merlin.

How was he meant to explain that when Minerva undoubtedly brought it up?

’Of course I am a competent guardian to Theodore, Miss Granger simply sleeps on the sofa.’

Minerva would never believe such a thing, Severus certainly wouldn’t if he heard it.

“Oh my God!” Granger squealed happily as she pulled a navy and bronze prefects badge from her envelope. “I’m prefect!”

“Congratulations!” Barty said, pleased for the girls accomplishment. “You’ve officially eclipsed me and Sev in power as a student.”

Son of a bitch.

Severus had forgotten that prefect badges would be delivered along with the supply lists.

He had forgotten to prepare Potter for them to be delivered. An alarming oversight on his part. He had no idea how the child was going to react when-

“What the fuck?”

Potter blinked at the green Slytherin badge he pulled from his own envelope.

What the fuck? Severus echoed Potter’s statement in his own mind.

“You- you made me prefect?” he asked Severus. Severus calculated his answer quickly as he saw the shock and excitement in Potter’s eyes.

“It certainly appears so,” he said carefully.

“Not-“ Potter hesitated and glanced quickly at Theodore, who politely busied himself with congratulating Granger. “Not anyone else?” Potter asked rather diplomatically when his true question had been rather obvious.

“You are the male prefect for the fifth year Slytherin’s,” Severus said, choosing his words with exceeding care. “Congratulations.”

Potter beamed as he looked down at the badge.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “You won’t regret it!”

Severus inclined his head in acknowledgment as Potter and Granger rushed off to discover if Longbottom or Bones had also been chosen, leaving Severus alone with Barty and a very quiet Theodore.

“It’s fine,” Theodore said quietly, looking down at the table meekly. “Harry’s top of our year. I can see why you chose him.”

Severus, who now knew that Theodore harbored wishes of being Head Boy his seventh year alongside Miss Granger who he believed would be Head Girl, felt a terrible wave of guilt course through him.

“I chose you.”

Theodore’s head snapped up at that and he scrutinized Severus incredulously. His forehead crinkled in confusion as he read the truth in Severus’ eyes.

“But Harry got the badge?” he said, making the obvious statement a question.

“He did,” Severus said quietly, unwilling for Potter to overhear his confession. “And yet I chose you.”

“But... but why?”

Severus merely hummed in response. He was quite sure what it meant that Albus awarded Potter the badge instead of Theodore, who Severus truly had chosen as prefect, though he would prefer to keep it to himself at present time.

It meant that Albus has not entirely given up hope of dragging Potter to his side and using him in the coming war.

Chapter End Notes

Up Next: Werewolves and ...what the hell?