Chapter Text
"Harry you gotta," Pansy slurred, slapping at his shoulder, "c'monnnn, you said you'd play fair-"
"Fine," he groaned, "dare, then."
"YES!" Blaise shouted from the other side of the circle. "Do it do it-"
"I dare you," Pansy drawled, "to prank call your boyfriend-"
Harry grimaced-
"-no! Wait. Even better," she gasped, staggering to her feet, "to let us prank call your boyfriend! Gimme his number."
"What?" Harry held his phone close to his body, out of range of her reaching hands. "No way-"
"IT'S GONNA BE HILARIOUS," she shouted.
"But-"
"NO BUTS GIVE INFO!"
Bracing himself, Harry handed it over with the number already open on the call app. (He did not want to risk them seeing the text conversation history.) Pansy reached for a Sobering Draught, downed only half of it, and copied the number into her phone, floating the device into the center of their circle with speakerphone on.
Harry's stomach clenched with the certainty this would not go well.
It rang.
Twice.
Three times.
And then:
"..Hello?"
The voice on the other end didn't sound like Sir, but it didn't not sound like him, either. Nobody seemed to notice, though; they were more focused on what Pansy was saying, and rightly so.
Breathing harshly like she was trying not to hyperventilate, Pansy gasped into the phone, "You're- you're his boyfriend, right? There's been an accident at Hogwarts, they're taking him to the hospital wing-"
"What." Harry had never heard the word spoken that way. "He's injured?"
"Y-yes," the witch held back a sob. (She was a damn fine actor; if only it weren't being used for this.) "We were- and- there's so much blood-"
Harry dug his fingernails into his thighs, sensing something over his bond with Voldemort that he never had sensed before. Was it- alarm? Panic?
There came the sound of breaking glass over the phone. Several breaking glasses. Harry tried to grab the phone out of Pansy's hand, but she evaded him. "They won't let us in the wing," she went on, rushing her words, "but we were listening and they're saying he won't make it and-"
"No," Sir said, and it sounded like something heavy fell over - Harry suspected he'd upended the divan, and not entirely on purpose. "He will not- I will not permit him to-"
Harry realized, with growing horror, that this was the very worst prank Pansy could have chosen - because Voldemort believed it, had not even questioned it. Merlin, he couldn't even say the word. There was something not unlike fear coming through the bond; fear, and then, rage.
"We'll meet you at the gates," Pansy offered, gesturing to the others to get up - surely she wouldn't take it that far?
But-
"No need," the Dark Lord told her, his tone gone dangerously blank. "I will go to his side directly."
He hung up.
And then, there came a terrible, echoing groan of wood and grind of stone, and a thunderous resonant ringing as if a massive bell had been struck, and Harry realized, his earring coming into view as it glowed, that the Portkey Sir had given him went both ways.
Oh, no.
"Is that-" Blaise yelped-
"-the wards?" Theo finished, leaping to his feet.
"But no one has ever broken the wards from the outside," Draco gasped, secret history nerd that he was.
(Elsewhere in the castle, Albus Dumbledore tried and failed to reinforce the wards against the attack, and found himself faced with something insurmountable, greater and more terrible than human imagination could name.)
Harry had his hand in the mokeskin pouch, reaching for the hood, when arms encircled him from behind, pulling him upright and back against a familiar solid chest. There was heat at his back, and the mingled smells of gin and Severus' proprietary sobering elixir and brimstone, burning high in his sinuses. He gasped, eyelids fluttering, and sank into the hold, dizzy on his feet. "S-Sir."
"Assistant," the Dark Lord growled against his neck, on the side opposite his earring. "You are alive and well."
"Ah- yes, Sir," Assistant promised, biting his lip as he was squeezed tighter. "It was a lie-"
"A lie," Voldemort rumbled, and by the look in the others' eyes, Harry guessed that Sir's were glowing, his piercing glare directed at the once-drunken group. (They had to be stone-cold sober, now.)
"Y-yes, my lord," Draco squeaked, going to his knees first in a bow that had his forehead on the floor, "it was Pansy's prank- we didn't know-"
"And you thought it was acceptable," words ice-cold and piercing, directed at Pansy now, who looked like she was going to faint in terror, "to lie about the death of a loved one, Pansy Parkinson?" A wordless, furious hiss; Pansy began to rise from the ground by her neck, clawing at it, terror in her eyes. "Of my loved one?"
"Sir," Assistant gasped, "please-"
(He was blushing furiously at the Dark Lord's unintended admission, not able to process that entirely at the moment.)
Sir's fingers dug into his sides, and Harry felt teeth dig into the junction of his neck and shoulder, just shy of breaking the skin even through his shirt - he made a noise at the sensation that should not have sounded as loud as it did, except that the room had gone completely silent. Harry could only imagine what this looked like to the rest of them, if they could even look in his direction; everyone except Pansy was bowed to the floor in fear.
Sir huffed a breath against his shoulder. "..Assistant," he murmured, quieter again. Relieved. Then: "You do not have your hood."
"No, Sir," he said quietly, "but I have it with me."
"..My pulse is loud in my ears," Sir informed him, a promise; "such that I have not clearly heard your voice; nor in my tunnel vision have I glimpsed your face. I will close my eyes, that you may put it on."
Harry swallowed. "..and the others here?" he wondered. "Obliviation?"
"Or I could kill them," the Dark Lord growled, and Harry knew it was not an idle threat. Pansy was not being strangled tightly enough to suffocate her, at the moment, but she still could be.
Assistant quickly retrieved the obscuring hood and made ready to pull it up around his head. But before he did, he remembered again the words Sir had used to describe him - and considered.
"Sir.." he paused. "What if I didn't hide anymore?" A nervous swallow. "Would you - like to know?"
"Assistant," came the murmur of lips against his ear, "I would know anything you wish to tell me, and nothing you don't." A kiss to his earlobe, a graze of teeth. "Anything you wish hidden. At your word, I would forget the color of the sky."
Pansy gasped, despite the magic at her throat; she was not the only one in their audience who reacted to the words.
It was an exaggeration, but Harry could feel the sincerity of it, needle-sharp.
"When I first hid my identity," Harry explained, closing his eyes, "it was.. out of fear. For my safety, and my reputation, if I were found out." He breathed deeply. Exhaled. "I only had Light friends. I feared their retribution."
"You've said as much, before," Sir agreed, not holding him as tightly now, but just as carefully.
Harry nodded. "But I don't fear that now."
And he turned around in Sir's arms, so they at last were face to face.
Red eyes blinked down at him, wide with surprise - but not the rejection Harry had secretly feared. "Oh," Sir breathed. "I see what you mean."
Then he kissed him anyway.
Harry couldn't help but smile.