Chapter Text
Will woke up in the main courtyard this time, feet still bare and throbbing from his unexpected journey. He sat on the floor, knees tucked to his chest, missing Hannibal desperately but unwilling to admit it. He’d have to walk back to his room soon, but his legs ached. Maybe he could heal them with some wandless magic, but at the moment, he was simply too tired.
A snuffling sound by his ear interrupted his thoughts. Will glanced up in shock. He had never hallucinated his stag while conscious before. Dark and majestic as always, the stag nuzzled up against Will until he gave into the creature’s unspoken demand and clambered onto its back.
Were you supposed to be able to touch hallucinations?
Will decided to figure it out tomorrow.
The stag took him back to his bedroom, but Will had already fallen asleep on its back, so the stag merely extended the trip by a few hoovesteps and brought him to Hannibal’s room instead.
***
Will woke up as he usually did, clinging tightly to Hannibal. He sprang back in shock, still twisted up in the sheets. He didn’t remember coming here last night.
“I’m sorry, Hannibal. I must have sleep-walked here.”
Will avoided his love’s madder eyes. If he looked into them, he knew all his anger would dissolve like mist.
“Will…”
“I’m going to leave now.”
Will stood up and moved towards the door. His feet were healed.
“William, stop.”
Will ignored him and left back to his own room. It felt like some nightmarish version of the Walk of Shame.
The bodies stretched out, mirrors for eyes. Will kneeled sadly by the dog, which the killer had shot before attacking the rest of the family.
“Their corneas were transfigured into mirrors after they died,” Will explained, staring at his reflection in the victim’s eyes.
Jack kissed his teeth impatiently. “Ripper or no, Will?”
“This is something entirely different, Jack. We have a new killer on our hands.”
“Are you sure, Will? Because I look at the artistry and the layout of the bodies and I think Ripper.”
“The Ripper doesn’t do mass murders on this scale. He doesn’t kill whole families much less shoot pets.”
“Escalation.”
“The Ripper wouldn’t escalate this way. He would be more likely to change the art inspiration of his tableux instead of increasing victim numbers. Also, these bodies have no clear artistic influence. They seem to be more of a reflection of the killer’s own psychological state.”
“You’ll let me know if anything else comes to mind?”
“Of course,” Will said, swinging one leg over his broomstick.
He took off, leaving Jack and the crime scene behind. He took the long route home, lying back on his broomstick and letting it take him where it wished. He landed back at Hogwarts eventually, the sun already setting. He went back to his empty room, throwing the file on his bedside table and crawled under the sheets. He reached across the bed out of habit, leaving his hand there when it was met with nothing.
Much as he wanted to, Will didn’t allow himself to ditch duelling club. He had made a commitment as one of the instructors and he wasn’t about to break it. Hannibal was already in the room, eyes widening in surprise when Will walked in.
“Today we’ll be doing practice duels tournament style. Professor Lecter and I will demonstrate.”
“Make a circle,” Hannibal instructed, acquiescing to Will’s change in lesson plan, even though he hadn’t been consulted before.
They bowed to each other as was customary.
The duel began and Hannibal immediately cast a protego . Will shot shield breaking spells, but the golden barrier held. Growing frustrated, he cast finestra on the glass window, sending broken shards flying towards Hannibal. Hannibal let his shield fall to dodge the shards.
“Rictusempra.” Will immediately felt a light and feathery sensation spread through his entire body. He covered his mouth with his left hand but couldn’t stop the laughter from breaking through. Hannibal approached.
“Impedimenta,” Will gasped through his laughter. Hannibal fell backwards. The tickling charm stopped.
“Expelliarmus,” they chanted at the same time.
Both wands went flying in opposite directions. Will clapped his hands and conjured a jet of fire. Hannibal dove to the ground sending a stream of water spiralling to put out the flames. They picked up each other’s wands, intent on continuing the duel.
They gained no ground on each other. The battle continued for nearly the entire hour of duelling club. It was relentless. Highly focused as they were, they nearly forgot there were students even watching them in the first place. Finally, Will cast a levicorpus which Hannibal did not block. He dangled by his ankles as Will approached, pressing Hannibal’s wand to its owners throat.
“Do you forgive me, Will?” Hannibal asked, looking like a fool upside down, his robe flapping like bat wings.
“I wasn’t aware you even apologized in the first place.”
Will grabbed his wand, throwing Hannibal’s to the ground and left, leaving Hannibal to clean the mess they had made of the classroom in their fight. He went to his room and changed, grabbing the file Jack gave him. He then headed to the Astronomy tower where he knew he would get some peace of mind.
To be honest, he did feel a little better after landing some curses on Hannibal. But now that his anger was burnt out, he could only feel the misery that he had buried under his fury.
He wished they could have just been two normal people who met and fell in love, without the complications his lost memories brought. But maybe Hannibal wouldn’t have even bothered without their past. After all, they were on different levels. Hannibal was a pure-blood and rich as hell. He was, well, neither of those things.
He opened the file, noting that Jack had included both Ripper murders and the new killer they were calling The Tooth Fairy. He buried himself in the artistry of the Ripper kills, noting the ever present feeling that the Ripper was somehow speaking to him in particular. He doubted the Ripper even knew his name, much less had followed his life for some odd 8 years.
If Jack knew his ambiguous feelings for the monster they were hunting, he’d have him locked up in St. Mungo’s faster than you could say “Ripper.” He had confided in Hannibal some of those feelings, but now it was hard not to regret divulging so much. If Hannibal wanted revenge…
He turned to the Tooth Fairy kills, letting the pendulum swing back and forth, trying to piece together the man from the faintest reverberations of his magic in the crime scene. The backs of his eyes filled with the curl of smoke and flame.
Realization sparked within him and he packed up the file, running to the library.
The Tooth Fairy was quickly rebranded The Great Red Dragon once Will explained the influence behind the kills. The Blake drawing was hung all over the lab, people poring over books for spells that could transform wizards into dragons.
“He could be trying to achieve his animagus form,” one of Will’s colleagues proposed. There was simply no way of knowing.
Jack had called him to a new scene today, distinctly different than the Red Dragon kills.
Will stilled as he realized it was the Ripper. He multiplied the time he’d have to spend at the scene in two. Luckily, Alana had agreed to take his classes today. He took a deep sip of coffee, preparing himself to analyze the murder. He shivered, noting the goosebumps on his skin. He was weirdly excited. It had been a little over a year since the last Ripper murder.
The scene that lay in front of him came straight from The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Coincidentally, it was Will’s favorite tale: The Warlock’s Hairy Heart.
A man with silver blonde hair lay with two hearts in his hand next to another man, dark-haired and blue-eyed, who was missing his heart. Will let the pendulum swing, becoming overcome with the killer's feelings of love and remorse.
The heartless warlock who was lost with the idea of love and had confused it with possession.
Oh god no.
Hannibal.
It was basically the both of them lying there.
I’m not opposed to butter.
The Ripper is an artist.
A lover scorned.
Will dropped his coffee and cursed.
The signs had been there all along.
Hannibal Lecter was the Ripper.
He had slept with the Ripper.
He had fallen in love with the Ripper.
He had been so blind.
Of course, the only person who could completely understand him would be a serial killer.
He knew in his mind that he should go right now and tell Jack everything. That was the only logical course of action.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he went home to his dogs and cried long and hard, regretting everything.
The week went on and Will continued to avoid Hannibal.
He didn’t know what to do.
He couldn’t understand why he didn’t just turn in Hannibal once and for all. He’d never have to deal with the other man again and maybe his heart would finally stop hurting once he got some closure.
But every time he reached for his phone to dial Jack, he found himself putting it down again. He still had so many questions. Maybe it was possible now that the Ripper truly had been reaching out and communicating with him this whole time. He needed to relook at the file. He almost reached for it, but a wave of unease overcame him—he didn’t want to know what he would find.
The real question was: why was the Ripper so eager for him to recover his memories? Who had he been in the past and just what had he meant to Hannibal? He wasn’t ready for the answer.
By the end of the week, Will grew sick of it all. He was wracked with dual sensations of anxiety and guilt. The file haunted him from his bedside table but he refused to look. He had to move on. He refused to be in love with the Ripper—Hannibal—any longer.
Beverly took him out for drinks Friday with Alana.
The whole school had heard of their break-up. It was a disaster of epic proportions, but Will couldn’t really bring himself to care after his epiphany earlier in the week.
Will kissed Alana at the end of the night.
It was pleasant, but deeply unsatisfying.
After Hannibal, all affection would be.
She said, “Let’s not do that again.”
And Will agreed.
He went home and opened the file, laying out the photographs in order. He had to look, or he’d wonder for the rest of his life.
He emerged from his mind palace almost three hours later, eyes red and damp. Hannibal’s love for him was spelled out over the years and years they had spent apart. It was hard not to be moved. Hannibal had reached inside of him and taken hold of his soul. It felt impossible not to forgive the other man after examining the love letters Hannibal had written over and over again for him. Those lost years were unimaginable to him—he didn’t know what they had been together, but whatever it was, it had to have been unimaginably intimate based on what the bodies and Hannibal himself said. Hannibal was what his life as an auror had been missing this whole time. The other man had never wavered and never looked at anybody else despite the many years that had passed and the fact that Will couldn’t even remember him. He had been faithful beyond any words. He thought of his kiss with Alana and the shame burned.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to see Hannibal now. He left his chambers, almost sprinting to the other man’s door.
He knocked and it swung open almost immediately. Hannibal stood stoney and silent.
“I kissed Alana Bloom,” Will blurted out. The guilt was driving him insane.
“I know,” Hannibal replied coldly.
“Oh. Y-you do?”
“I was there. I was hoping to speak to you. Needless to say that didn’t happen.”
Will exhaled sharply. “You followed me to the bar? Seriously, Hannibal?!”
“I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t avoided me all week.”
“I avoided you because I needed space. Our relationship is unhealthy, Hannibal. Surely you can see that? You have some idealized notion of me based on memories I no longer have.”
Hannibal’s eyes grew hot, like a beast emerging from slumber.
“Regardless of our past together, we have spent over half a year together, Will. If I truly had harbored any misconceptions about you, don’t you think they would have been corrected by now?”
“You’ve just been waiting for me to get my memories back to clear any flaws in my personality.”
“You’re being unfair, Will.”
Will turned away uncomfortably.
“I swear to you, William, even if you recovered what we shared together, I would still remember the you from this time forever.”
“You can’t possibly mean that.”
“Don’t you think I should be the judge of that, mano meilė?”
Will exhaled a shaky breath.
He loved the Ripper.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
He loved Hannibal.
And Hannibal loved him too.
Stepping forward, Will pulled Hannibal into a kiss, feeling the other man’s brief surprise before it was drowned by lust.
The door closed behind him.
***
Hours later, they were half-asleep, snuggled up together on Hannibal’s bed. Will lay against Hannibal’s bare chest, basking in the feeling of being exactly where he belonged.
“I have to show you something, Will.”
Will gave Hannibal a sleepy nod and his lover whispered a brief incantation.
“Hannibal, what’s this?” Will asked in awe.
He knew his lover glamoured a spot on his chest, but he had assumed it was an embarrassing scar. People usually magicked away the marks life bestowed on them. It was fairly commonplace.
Will never did it. He should have known Hannibal wouldn’t either.
“We match,” Will whispered, placing his palm flat against the matching stag tattoo on Hannibal’s heart.
“We came up with the spellwork together our sixth year and marked each other the beginning of our seventh,” Hannibal confessed hesitantly.
“It’s beautiful,” Will murmured, pressing down to kiss it. “You’re beautiful.”
Hannibal flushed red.
Will delighted in seeing how far it spread.
They were late to breakfast that morning and Will fought the anxiety that came with the entire school knowing exactly what had happened between them. Beverly shot him an approving glance when he and Hannibal took their breakfast together as they always did before their fight. Hannibal was even more doting than usual, and Will knew it was his way of apologizing.
That week marked a return to the honeymoon phase of their relationship but with much greater intensity than before.
And one day, sitting on his desk in their shared office, watching the sun set, Will knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Hannibal.
“Hey, do you want to get married or something?”
Hannibal looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
“I mean, I’m fine the way we are now, but if you want to, I’d be down.”
The vein on Hannibal’s forehead throbbed. “This was not how I envisioned the proposal.”
Will laughed. “How did you imagine it?”
“For one, I thought I’d be the one doing the proposing. Secondly, I did not think our office was a fitting romantic setting for such a monumental event.”
Will frowned ruefully. “I guess I should’ve waited before blurting it out. I just thought of us getting married and it felt right, you know?”
“You don’t mean to tell me this is the first you’ve thought of marriage?”
“Well, I knew I wanted to stay with you as long as you’d have me, I just didn’t immediately translate that in my head to marriage.”
Hannibal gave a petulant sigh.
“Are you mad? I’m sorry, honey.”
“I think I will propose anyway.”
“Please do.” Will waited patiently, looking expectantly at Hannibal.
“Certainly not now, teacup. I will ensure you do not expect it. But, there’s one thing you must know if we are to get married,” Hannibal confessed in a voice wrought with nerves. Will turned to look at his love, noticing that Hannibal was literally trembling, a thin sheen of sweat covering his skin. “Forgive me. I cannot lose you again.”
“You won’t, Hannibal. I’m yours.”
“You say that now.”
Will swung down from the desk, moving across the room to Hannibal’s desk. He climbed up Hannibal’s desk, hugging the other man’s head to his chest.
“It’s okay, babe. I already know who you are. I can see you. All of you.”
His lover looked up in shock.
“ The Warlock’s Hairy Heart . Did you know that was my favorite fairy tale?”
Before he could blink, Will found himself shoved down on the desk, being kissed within an inch of his life. Hannibal quickly began covering all of Will’s face in kisses: his eyelids, his chin, his forehead. Then, his fiancee slowly began progressing downwards with his lips. Will moaned as Hannibal sucked a dark bruise on his throat.
“Say you’re mine again,” Hannibal demanded.
Will gasped as Hannibal unbuttoned his robe, moving from his neck to his collarbones.
“I’m—I’m yours, Hannibal.”
“Again.”
“I’m yours.”
“Yes, you are,” Hannibal agreed before they both stopped speaking for far more pleasurable pursuits.
***
That night, when Will and Hannibal were bare and tangled up in their sheets once again, Hannibal asked the question.
“Will, would you ever consider working with me?”
Will frowned, uncomfortable. “I know who I am. I can’t kill for the reasons you do, Hannibal.”
“I know, mano vilkas. Your fire and brimstone is motivated by righteous fury. I don’t expect you to change that. But I am more than willing to be flexible and allow you to pick. Who we do is not as important to me as what we do and that we do it together.”
Will smiled. “Right now, the only who I want to do is you.”
“You’re incorrigible.” Hannibal leaned down and bit Will’s lower lip. He laved his tongue across the bleeding wound. Will bit back. They entangled their mouths and bodies together again—a perfect interlacement of hearts and minds.
Together they were one complete soul. One complete being.
“As tave myliu, Hannibal,” Will whispered against their lips.
“As tave labai myliu, Will,” Hannibal whispered back. “I won’t let you go again.”
“I won’t let you go either.”
A few days later, Will woke up screaming.
His head was exploding.
Hannibal rushed him to St. Mungo’s.
It felt like the world was ending.
His memories were fragmented and non-linear, like a meaningless jumble of sensory information.
The flash of the machines. The light of spellwork. The cedarwood, aromatic smell of Hannibal’s cologne.
—
Lips on his brow. A hand in his.
Terrible terrible pain.
—
“We might have to obliviate him again, Dr. Lecter. The more he remembers, the more it begins hurting him. His mind is more fragile to those sort of intrusions.”
—
Hannibal wheeled Will back to his apartment.
The dogs rushed to greet them.
He would be returning to St. Mungo’s the following week to have his memories wiped.
“I can’t forget you again, Hannibal. I don’t want to. I’d rather die,” he said later, resting his ear on Hannibal’s heart. It amazed him how steady the pulse was.
“Calm, brangusis. Do you trust me?”
Will frowned.
“Mostly.”
Hannibal chuckled.
“I know how to break the curse, mylimasis, but you may get all of your memories back. How does that make you feel?”
Will growled. “How does that make you feel? Don’t be an idiot, Hannibal. I don’t care if I get my memories back. I just can’t lose them again.”
Hannibal smiled, triumphant.
“Have you heard of horcruxes, darling?”
Will frowned.
“That’s some very dark magic.”
“In most cases, those who make just one are fine.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The night Mischa died, her killer made a horcrux.”
Will frowned.
“What was his name?”
“Grutas.”
“And what was the object he chose?”
“It was you, darling. We were both present when she died, but due to the adhesive property of your magic, it cottoned on.”
Will shuddered, having the sudden urge to crawl out of his skin.
“Of course we killed him soon after, but to prevent him from taking over your body, you had to sacrifice your memories.”
“So how do we get rid of it?”
“I can replace his horcrux with my own.”
Hannibal looked at him closely, clearly expecting some kind of protest.
Will snorted. “I suppose all those other murders were just practice then?”
“Maybe, in a manner of speaking,” Hannibal reasoned with a wide grin.
“So how will this play out?”
“You choose someone for us to kill—a proxy. We attack them together. I deal the finishing blow and say the spell to create the horcrux. I make you the object of my horcrux. As I do, Grutas’ horcrux will release and likely enter a nearby object or conduit. We destroy it with fiendfyre and then your memories should naturally release as there is no longer a maleficent spirit contained within them.”
“I mean, there’ll be you. You’re pretty maleficent,” Will pointed out. “Imagine: a shard of the Big Bad Ripper’s soul inside me.” Will could tell Hannibal was terribly aroused by the idea.
“You already have my heart, teacup. It’s fitting you have some of my soul too,” Hannibal replied sentimentally, before rolling so Will was trapped under him. Before Will could say anything, Hannibal was devouring his mouth. It was intimate—all tongue and teeth. As it receded, gentler kisses took its place.
“How about I put something else in you first, darling,” Hannibal teased.
Will groaned. “You’re terrible. Shockingly terrible. Honestly don’t know how I stand you.”
A week later, with Hannibal’s assistance, Will chose their man: the Great Red Dragon. Hannibal had been receiving strange letters from a wizard by the name of Francis Dolaryhyde, and after reading all of them, Will knew without a doubt that Dolarhyde was the one who had killed the families and given them mirrors for eyes. All in the name of some great becoming. Ritual sacrifice was not uncommon in the old wizarding world, but in modern times, it had been deemed barbaric. Dolarhyde was indeed a monster worthy of being Hannibal and Will’s prey, but Will could sympathize with the feeling of not being the sole inhabitant of your body. When he thought of Grutas there, hiding inside of him, he had to actively resist the urge to claw him out. But unlike Will, nothing could help Dolarhyde but death.
They waited on a cliff by the ocean in one of Hannibal’s private houses.
Will pitied the man, but he would be put out of his misery today.
Not their first kill together, according to Hannibal, but perhaps the most significant.
Hannibal would strike the final stroke.
***
The dragon appeared in a whirl of bright deadly curses and teeth.
It was a glorious becoming.
Will was ripped apart before he was put together.
He now carried a piece of Hannibal’s soul with him.
Always.
He was Hannibal’s in the most intimate way blood could give them. The fire burned everything else away.
They embraced.
Will felt the thousands of strands of possibilities between them stretch on the cusp of infinity. The great dark night felt quiet and immense, like air filling the lungs of some great unknown beast.
Hannibal’s soul in Will’s hands.
Will’s heart in Hannibal’s hands.
Hannibal’s heart against Will’s teeth.
Will’s soul against Hannibal’s lips.
They fell.