i write sometimes

Harry Potter was always larger than life in Theo's imagination. He wasn't as obsessed with the Boy-Who-Lived as his peers (coughcough Draco Malfoy coughcough) but his miraculous ability to survive the Killing Curse had been something he thought about quite frequently over the years. It was a theme he regularly played with in the little short stories and novellas that he scratched out in his secret notebooks. Theo couldn't help but be drawn to the mystery of how he'd snaked his way out from under the crushing dominance of death. Theo knew first-hand how unstoppable the Killing Curse was in application.

When he looked at young, eight-year-old Harry Potter's eyes, he saw echoes of that curse.

With eyes like that, and a story like he had been born into, Harry Potter should have walked the halls of Hogwarts like a god. He should have been worshipped, fawned over. He had all the power of social fascination and obsession laying in the palm of his hand, ready to be molded, harnessed, used, and yet he never made any attempt to do such a thing. In fact, for the last five years, Theo would say that Harry Potter had nearly faded into obscurity. Not the legend of Harry Potter, of course. The legend grew more legs every day with the rumors swirling about what really happened to Cedric Diggory during the final task, and Dumbledore's possible involvement, and whether or not Harry Potter was actually insane.

No, it was the real person, that Harry Potter, who had faded into the unknown.

And it seemed to Theo that even his self-professed best friends had forgotten who he was.

"You love treacle tart, mate!"

"Or what about some pie, Harry?" Granger swapped his plate out for one she had made up for him, even though Harry had timidly filled it with a small sample of everything within reach.

"Hermione, let him eat dessert first!" Weasley harped, almost dropping a hefty portion of treacle directly onto Harry's shepherd's pie. "When else does he get to do that?"

"How about every single feast at Hogwarts, Ronald?" She shot back. "He's eight, he needs to eat his vegetables."

"Harry's always been able to feed himself, so far as I can remember," Ginny Weasley threw in sardonically, giving Granger an unimpressed look. Theo liked her immediately.

"He's eight!" Granger repeated sharply.

Harry's wide green eyes tracked over to Theo again. He'd been doing that quite frequently. In fact, he refused to leave Theo's side. He even shyly asked Theo to wait outside the loo for him when he pointed out where it was before dinner. That was the only reason Theo was sitting amongst the lions on their radiantly red side of the Great Hall.

Theo swallowed. How could he be hungry with so many people looking at him? Studying him? Watching to see what will happen to him next?

"Want to go eat somewhere quieter?" Theo asked impulsively.

Harry's eyes widened a fraction more. And then, imperceptibly, he nodded.

"Nott! You can't take all that!" Weasley blustered.

"I can and I will," he snapped, summoning Harry's plate from Granger's hands and stacking an assortment of other easy to eat foods on top, then throwing a containment charm over it. "Come on, Harry."

"He hasn't eaten yet!" Granger complained. "You can't -"

Theo ignored her. He slipped his hand over Harry's and lead him away from the hundreds of watchful eyes in the Great Hall. Harry had a temporary pair of spectacles courtesy of Madame Pomfrey, but Harry had a tendency to fall behind and stare owlishly at portraits or moving statues or ghosts, so Theo had developed a tendency to hold his hand so he didn't get lost.

Theo tried to ignore the dull roar of many voices that sprang up as soon as they left, but it felt nearly impossible. Bloody vultures. For Theo to disappear was no major event. He was a nobody. The last heir to a magical name that meant nothing anymore and would probably die with him. But for Harry to choose privacy, to ask for a quiet table to eat in peace and digest the unbelievable situation he was in as best an eight-year-old muggle-raised half-blood could? That was yet another spectacle. It wasn't fair that leaving a place where Harry was simply too nervous to eat felt like running away. And it wasn't fair that when Theo brought him to his secret place, the glass-domed South Tower, it felt like they were hiding.