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She doesn’t even bother bolting down the narrow steps when she sees Leo, instead apparating into his arms with a crack of magic. Smoke still clings to her robes malodorously but all of that soon fades into the background. He catches her before she can fall, like he always does, like he isn’t dripping blood onto the cold stone floor. Harry lets out a soft gasp when she realizes and wriggles free of their embrace to assess him.
“What happened?” she asks, voice pitched low despite the relative safety of their lodgings. The cramped basement flat might be secure enough for Dumbledore’s purposes, but he’d thought the same of the last proposed rendezvous. Nicolas Flamel, no doubt, would beg to differ. Harry tugs Leo over to a threadbare loveseat, waving a hand to cast the familiar diagnostic spell. “Didn’t you get my message before you left the ceremony?”
Leo’s lips are pressed in a thin line, but he shakes his head and manages a tight smile as she begins the healing process. “Thought I could catch you before you made it to the new safe-house, met Scar and his new crew on the way. My fault, really.”
“You should have followed Plan B like we talked about,” Harry chides, but she hasn’t the zeal to stay cross with him. Leo does whatever he sees fit; they're alike in that way. It's why they clash, sometimes, but it’s also why they get along so well. “You thrashed him again, I presume?”
“The shady git sends his regards,” he replies with a cocksure grin. He dutifully offers a hand to Harry as she begins healing up the fresh wounds running down his wand-wielding arm. She holds on tighter than is strictly necessary, for her own sake as much as his. “He’s trickier than when we last fought, for sure. This new patron of his must be…motivational.”
Voldemort’s pallid countenance flashes through her mind’s eye like a rapid-fire hex and she struggles to keep her hands steady. Here in Dumbledore’s hideaway, safe as she can be given the circumstances, her heart starts pounding all over again. “He’s dangerous. You’re lucky he wasn’t there too.”
Which only begs the question of where the fledgling dark lord could be. It was undoubtedly his hand in tonight’s events, undermining Riddle and Dumbledore’s well-laid plans both. Harry isn’t actually sure whether this was intentional sabotage or merely a side effect of his predisposition for wanton violence. Though it hardly matters now, trapped here in Rigel’s skin once more with all her enemies closing in. How could she have thought this nightmare was over, even for a moment? After so many years, she’s learned quite well that it can never be so easy.
“This sort of thing is exactly why I’m here, lass,” Leo intones, his hands closing around hers to stop them trembling. Harry heaves out a breath she didn't realize had caught in her throat. “You don’t have to face him alone. Whatever you need, Harry…I’ll always be here.”
“Leo.” Her voice is so soft she can’t be sure he’s even heard her. A slight squeeze is all the confirmation she needs. Harry takes another breath. “I can’t thank you enough for coming along. For risking everything like this. But I…I can’t…”
She hesitates and Leo—decent, honorable, kingly Leo—just shakes his head again. He wears a knowing smile, as though he always expected to be rebuffed. This is one confrontation she hadn’t planned for today, but she should’ve known the Rogue had his own designs. It’s little wonder his next words manage to surprise Harry.
“…But there’s someone else, isn’t there?” He relinquishes his grasp and knits his fingers together in his lap. She notes, distantly, how small and almost delicate her hands are relative to his. “Don’t fret over my heart, lass. I always knew I was playing a dangerous game.”
‘Someone else.’ She can feel her heart as it thuds against her ribs, almost thunderous in the stillness of the derelict flat. Harry shakes her head, but not in disagreement, and forces herself to speak. To say something that might dull the sting.
“I never meant to—I don’t know. I always thought it’d be you.” Those last words come out in a whisper. She flicks her eyes up to meet Leo’s and sees the flash of pain that gives way to understanding. He’s too good for her, far too good. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re free now, Harry. Don’t tie yourself down all over again at my expense.” He leans back, the earnest teenage boy swallowed up in the mantle of the Rogue tout de suite. “I know you highborn families like arranging marriages in exchange for allies, but the Court does things differently. You owe me nothing.”
She wants to protest that it’s not obligation she feels, that it’s more than that, truly. It might not be love, but it’s close enough to make things work. She knows there’s no point in arguing. Leo could never settle for ‘close enough,’ and neither could she. Harry bites her tongue and presses her face into her cupped palms.
“So what now?” she asks dully, a rhetorical question to fill the agonizing silence. She wishes he would get angry, like Draco, or insolent like Rosier. It’s easy to deal with the prickly dilemmas head-on, a skill she’s honed in her years at Hogwarts. Leo offers only a thoughtful hum in response.
“Now you make your way to the new meeting place. With luck on our side, the Aurors will have finished their investigation, and you should be able to scarper home.” He pushes off the couch and looks down to regard Harry with far more warmth than she deserves. His hand reaches out to ruffle her hair like he has a thousand times before. “I’ll be right behind you, lass, if anything goes wrong.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she says, which is not entirely true but feels like the right thing to say in these situations. She stands too, knuckles white as she grips her wand. Her confidence rises with her, and for a moment she can pretend that she’s the intractable Rigel Black Child once more. “You don’t have to worry on my account.”
“I don’t have to do anything, lass. I chose this.”
She can’t bring herself to meet his eyes after that; it’s rare that she finds herself lost for words. As Harry turns to flee, Leo catches her arm. His eyes glitter with keen curiosity from beneath a mop of tousled brown hair. “If I may ask though…who’s the lucky man?”
She hesitates, hardly daring to speak the words into reality. Next to Leo, what man could possibly measure up? He’s the perfect gentleman, gallant as any Arthurian knight, strong enough to stand on equal footing with her. And why isn’t that enough for Harry? She has a penchant for taking the road less traveled, sure, but she wishes so badly that she could take the easy route for once.
Yet she already knows her answer. The fact of the matter is that there’s no ‘lucky man’ as Leo so aptly put it. There is, perhaps, a dream. Or a chance for a dream, or something even more ephemeral than that. Like a qilin passed from one hand to the next, so impossible and precarious and wondrous that she can hardly believe it’s real. But it is, was, could be real.
“He’s my brewing partner,” Harry says at long last.