Harry scowled and looked down at himself. He didn't think he looked that good, he'd definitely preferred the red robes to the blue, but other than that, he looked normal. He turned back to the mirror and frowned harder, he was exactly the same as always.
"Stop perving on my brother." Draco snapped. "He's not free anymore, he worked out his problems with his betrothed like a man. Now come here, I have something to tell you before everyone else arrives." Harry chuckled at Draco's protectiveness and he ignored the both of them as they started gossiping like old women in a tea shop about this and that. Harry certainly wasn't interested in any gossip as he sat and daydreamed about Rabastan and how good he'd looked in the charcoal grey dress robes that he'd chosen to wear for tonight. Harry was almost sure that Rabastan had ordered them especially for tonight because Harry had commented on how good Rabastan would look in dark grey and honestly, he did look very good in dark grey.
The door knocked again and Draco and Blaise were too busy giggling like girls over whatever Draco had needed to tell Blaise to take any notice, so Harry rolled his eyes and went to open the door.
He smiled genuinely at Theo and invited him in.
"How have you been?" Harry asked him.
"Alright."
Theo
answered
unconvincingly. "You?"
"Fine, but I get the feeling that you aren't being entirely truthful, Theo. Are you sure everything's okay?"
Harry clicked then, as he remembered that Daphne was supposed to be staying with the Notts' for Christmas and that Daphne should have arrived with Theo.
"Where's Daphne?"
"Who cares?!" Blaise called out from where he and Draco were sitting.
Harry sighed. "Don't listen to them, what's happened?"
"I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up the façade that nothing's wrong." Theo told him quietly so that the others couldn't hear him.
Harry nodded. He opened Draco's door wider and led Theo out and down the corridor, all the way to his own bedroom and he shut the door and offered Theo a seat and then sat next to him.
"We'll have privacy here. Now, tell me, why do you feel the need to keep up the façade in the first place?"
"Because my father wants me to!" Theo told him, hunching forward and putting his face into his hands.
"Theo, this is your life, not his." Harry said kindly. "If you don't love her then you shouldn't be with her."
"I don't. I don't love her, I haven't for a while now."
Harry was surprised at that. He hadn't seen past the façade that Theo had put up, though, if truth be told, he hadn't actually looked all that hard. He'd just accepted it, which was even worse as Theo had probably wanted someone to see past the ruse and to reach out to him, but now that carefully constructed façade was cracking, Theo was at his absolute limit. "Break off your contract." Harry urged him. "You have other options."
Theo snorted. "What other options? One of Lord Selwyn's hideous daughters? Pansy?"
"There are foreign pureblood witches." Harry told him. "Think of how much harder it'll be for them over yourself. They have to leave their home country, their family, perhaps not even knowing any English, to come here to marry you, to live in your home. But, think about it, Theo, you might actually like someone else, you could actually fall in love. Don't you even want to try for that instead of letting Daphne humiliate you time after time?"
"She does humiliate me, doesn't she?" Theo sighed as if he'd been trying not to think of it. "She…she actually fucked one of my father's business associates in my bed the day before Christmas. He was fifty-four years old and she didn't care. She made sure that it was in my bed and not the one in the guest room that she had been given, but my own bed, at a time when she knew that I'd come to find her. I think that was once too many. It was too unforgivable, but my father is still insisting that I let it go, like all the other times. He's insisting that I still go ahead with the betrothal and the wedding, but I don't know if I can anymore, Harry. That…seeing her in my bed with a man older than her father, it broke something in me. I can't ignore it and carry on as if I hadn't seen it."
"Then don't. You should not accept such behaviour from anyone, it's so disrespectful, Theo and you know it too. You know you don't deserve it or you wouldn't be having such thoughts and doubts. You're right, Theo, what she's done is unforgivable, it was unforgivable from the very first instance, but this, she's pushing you with the full belief that she'll get away with it. She thinks that you'll just take it because you always have before and she's doing it purposefully. She knows that your father wants the money, along with the prestige and the title of heir of the Greengrass line that'll come with her marrying you, so she believes that she can always get away with it. Everything that she's done to you is unforgivable and you shouldn't have to accept it. Do you really want to look at your children in ten years and have to wonder if they're actually even yours? Fuck what your father wants, what the hell do youwant?"
"Not this." Theo told him. "Not her."
"Do you have any idea what people say about you, Theo? How weak they think you are because you put up with Daphne and everything that she does to humiliate and shame you? She thinks that she can do no wrong, that she can do anything and get away with it and still have a respectable marriage at the end of it. People think that you're a pushover because you won't get rid of her, this isn't your father's betrothal, it's not his marriage or his life, it's yours!" "I've tried to broach the subject with him, but…"
"Don't 'broach the subject' with him, bloody tell him!" Harry insisted sternly. "In his quest to get more money and power, he's going to ruin your entire future, your happiness! How can you just stand passively by and watch him do that to you, Theo?"
Theo looked away unhappily and Harry was saddened to see how broken Theo was over all of this. He shook his head and reached forward to hold Theo's hands comfortingly.
"You need to do what makes you happy, Theo. You need to break off this poisonous betrothal and put it behind you. Your father can't dictate to you who you love. He put you into this betrothal when you were just a child because of greed. Because he wants the Greengrass money, you know that yourself. Everyone knows that. He isn't thinking of the most important thing in all of this, you. Don't let him ruin your life for money, Theo. Please, I don't want to see you hurt."
Theo chuckled mirthlessly and pulled one hand from Harry's and covered his eyes.
"You've only known me properly for a couple of months, how can you care more about me than anyone else? Than my own father?"
"Because I'm not a greedy, money-grabbing prick?" Harry said and he got a laugh for his efforts. "You're worth more than this, Theo. You deserve more than a wife who'll sleep with anyone and everyone, even a fifty-four-year-old married stranger, and a father who cares more about money than he does about you and your happiness. Fuck them both and do what you want."
"What if he disowns me?" Theo said quietly, voicing one of his deepest fears, Harry realised, by the way that he avoided eye contact. "I couldn't take the shame of being a pureblood with no house, with no family name." "There is no shame on you for his actions, but there is for your own, you gather more shame the longer you allow yourself to be treated like a doormat by your father and by your future wife. That is your shame because it is your choice to put up with it. If that bastard you call a father actually disowns his only child, bereaving his own line of its only heir, then he's a complete fucking fool. He won't risk it, Theo."
"But what if he does?" Theo argued angrily.
"Then I'll adopt you as a member of the Black family, or did you forget that I'm the lord of House Potter and House Black?"
Theo looked totally shocked. "You…you'd do that? You'd adopt me as a Black?"
"If you needed me to, I will. Of course, I don't expect your father to disown his only heir, no matter how foolish he is, but if he actually did, yes, I would adopt you. I already have to worry about producing an heir for the Potter and Lestrange families, without worrying about the Black line too. Three houses are just too many to juggle. I'd need three sons just to cover all of the houses."
"I…I don't really know what to say, Harry. Thank you."
"You may not even need it, your father can't afford to lose you as his only heir, you don't even have any sisters who could bring the lordship of the Nott family to her husband or her sons, but if you do need it, the offer is there." Harry insisted with a smile. "Now, you do what you want to do and you don't need to worry about anything or about being disowned, because I'd adopt you straight away into the Black family and I would strike your father down to nothing. I'd discredit and ruin him in all social and professional circles and I'd make sure that he thoroughly regretted ever disowning you in the first place. For not seeing the son he actually has and instead thinking only of monetary gain."
Theo stood up and pulled Harry to his feet and embraced him so tightly that Harry was worried that his very newly healed bruises on his ribs would come back, but he happily hugged Theo back and just held him as Theo cried silently in gratitude and released tension and emotion into his neck, having to slump down in order to do so.
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