A Darker Form of Magic, book two: Parseltongue

Chapter ten

It wasn't long before the peaceful holiday came to a close, the rest of the castle coming back and filling it once more. Last year Harry had been happy for this change, lonely in the large space and wanting company other than the Weasleys, but this time he mourned the loss of the peace that he and Blaise had found - the lazy mornings and days spent reading with one another, sides pressed flush against one another. He didn't think that there would be another Christmas quite like this one. Not for a while at least.

The pair went down to meet the others once the carriages had arrived, but Harry left Blaise to entertain them as he stole away Theo to their dorms, steadfastly ignoring the looks that he was getting from each boy. He wasn't one to spill secrets- even his own if he could help it - and Harry knew that this was one that Theo would likely rather take this to his grave than have another in Slytherin house know. Fear does that to you.

"What are we doing, Harry?" Theo asked finally as the boy in question sat him down on Blaise's bed, not that it looked as if it had been slept in firing the past week. He knew that it most likely hadn't and focused more on biting back a wince instead.

Harry didn't answer as he rummaged through his nightstand drawer San pulled out a small tin that looked to Theo as if it belonged in the medical wing instead of in the Slytherin dorms.

"Take off your shirt," the other boy said bluntly, leaving no room for questions as he still held the tin and looked at Theo with an expectant expression.

Theo wasn't too disappointed with the fact that his immediate reaction was to freeze in confusion and mild panic at the other snake's request, it seemed a reasonable one to have.

"What?" The boy asked in a way that he was sure made him sound dumb but was too tired and too confused to much care.

"This is a bruise balm," the bespectacled boy explained shortly, holding up the tin for the other to better see, as if it made that much of a difference.

(It did, just not enough)

Theo turned stubbornly and looked at the wallpaper of the dorms, unsurprised to find that most of the snakes had slowly made their way to Harry's corner of the room after the other boy had revealed his ability to speak to them, something that the Slytherin knew that the other had been hiding since before first year, just as he hid whatever it was that only Draco, Blaise, and Pansy had come to know about him. Theo knew that Harry had more secrets living beneath his skin than most kept in their life. Somehow, Theo's had become one of them.

"I'll take off mine."

Theo's head snapped back to the source of the noise, to the boy that now had a dead look in his eyes that was the same as those horrid first weeks of term when Harry's gaze looked like little more than open wounds as he could hardly bring himself to be within an arm's length of any of the boys within the dorm. It was the look that had told Theo that he and Harry had more in common than just their magical types. It wasn't a look that he liked seeing once more.

"What?" Theo asked for the second time in as many minutes and chastised himself for it, but in the almost two ful, hears that the six boys had been sharing a dorm together, the other snake had never shown anyone more skin than what was already revealed from the school robes. It was surprising that the other would do so now just to make Theo more comfortable.

"You take off yours and I'll take off mine," the too small boy says slowly, as if talking to a spooked horse, "then we would be even."

Then we would each be able to hurt one another, Theo heard beneath the other Slytherin's words, unsure of whether or not he meant it in such a way, but thinking that Harry just might have. For as much as he tries to blend in with the other students around him, to not be noticed, Harry was still a Slytherin after all, the hat placed him in the house for a reason. Probably, at least in part, due to his tendency to try to blend in until he needed to stand out.