Chapter Text
Theo
June, 1995
The world had gone to shit, and Theodore Nott, as angst-ridden fifteen-year-olds were so oft wont to do, was moping about it.
He was doing it spectacularly, he might add. Sulking in his dorm room hadn’t felt quite grand enough for the sheer magnitude of tumult roiling about his body, so he’d snuck out onto the grounds. The night air was quite pleasant this time of year, but Theo had donned a black hooded sweater regardless. The hood was drawn up, of course, because he had to be dressed properly for the occasion.
He wasn’t so overwrought that he’d taken himself to the forest— Theo was depressed, not suicidal— and instead he had found himself a nice, concealed patch of grass, surrounded by camouflaging shrubbery and overlooking the lake. It was a nice touch actually, the way the moonlight cascaded rather eerily over the black surface of the water. Theo commended himself as lowered himself to the ground and stared stonily across it, settling in for a nice, long brood.
In fairness, the dramatics were a touch warranted. The world as Theo knew it had well and truly gone to shit that year. He had a list, which he agonised over in his head on repeat as he watched the rippling lake. It went as follows, in no particular order:
He had not yet hit a growth spurt and remained rather small and runty, and there was a patch of deep-rooted pimples on his chin that kept bloody reappearing no matter how many times he’d charmed them away. Theo’s unchanged body wasn’t a new development this year, per se, but the majority of the boys around him had seemingly grown like weeds over the last term break, leaving Theo woefully behind. The acne however was new, and the culmination of the two had him feeling this hideous new sensation that he hadn’t prior been acquainted with— insecurity. It very much did not suit him. Theodore Nott never had anything to be insecure about before. He’d always been brighter than his peers, his family was filthy rich, and looks-wise, he’d always been quite on-par with the students around him. Not anymore. Factor in the way that girls and sex had suddenly become a more concrete possibility for many of his peers this year, as opposed to shadowy fantasies indulged in private moments, and you had one very bitter boy. It bothered him beyond belief. No, shame did not suit Theo Nott, not one bit.
Perhaps more pressingly, a teenager was dead, and by consequence, the Dark Lord had returned. Oh, yes, he understood that Cedric’s murder was sad, but Theo had a complicated relationship with death and grief— he’d get to that in a moment— and was more distraught about the latter aspect of the statement. The majority of the school thought Potter was quite mad, but Theo, unfortunately, had a raving fanatic for a father who had lost the final shred of his conscience when he’d lost his better half. Edmond had confirmed Voldemort’s return with a rather manic glee, which Theo had wanted to punch from his smug, wizened face entirely. Were he larger, he might have attempted as much. But, alas, see item number one. Puberty eluded him.
Blood purity did not rank high up on the list of things Theodore Nott gave a rat’s arse about. Actually, it didn't make the list at all. His father had tried to sink his bigoted claws into him growing up, yes, but his mother had shielded him from most of it. Not out of a difference in opinion, mind you, but because her little boy was much too young for all of that, Edmond, and you shouldn’t be burdening him with all that talk of war and death, and the like. Theo, being in possession of a keen mind, overdeveloped critical thinking skills for his age, access to exhaustive libraries both at home and at school, and an overbearing mother who considered outdoor play entirely too rough-and-tumble for her precious son, had spent the majority of his time since he’d mastered literacy at the age of six reading whatever he could get his hands on.
Naturally, he’d formed his own conclusions about muggles, muggleborns, purebloods and the importance of preserving their purity— he was completely indifferent. None of it mattered all that much to him, and he found it odd, and secretly, a mark of his father’s own insufficient intellect in comparison to his own, that Edmond cared about it to the point that he’d made it a hallmark of his identity. The same contempt was extended to his father’s zealous associates. While he’d come to find later that bigotry did not, unfortunately, always walk hand-in-hand with stupidity, there was nothing quite like the ego of a clever fifteen-year-old boy.
Furthermore, Theo considered himself a pacifist. His parents being as they were, he was never going to have anything better than a slightly skewed moral code, but human suffering did bother him. A war, which Edmond was jovially certain lay in the near future, was not something Theo regarded with anything other than acute dread. From a humanist perspective, he didn’t relish the idea of the sheer scale of the death that would follow. More selfishly, it would also wreak havoc on his future— the specifics of which he hadn’t quite ironed out yet, but he was sure it would be quite grand. If he were to take a stance against Voldemort, he’d likely wind up dead. It was unlikely the whole “stone-cold killer baby” fluke would happen a second time, unfortunately. On the flip side, if he did align with the blood purists, he imagined he’d be in for the dullest existence imaginable. Oh, yes, his conscience would be marred, but that had been operating a little wonkily since— no, he was getting there, just hold on. Being of “pure” blood, if Voldemort won he’d have everything handed to him on a silver platter. Where was the fun in that? The challenge? The chase? Merlin, he’d find it quite unbearable. Then, say he pledged allegiance to the cause and the other side actually won. He’d be thrown in prison, undoubtedly. Which, again, would be terminally boring.
Everything was so bloody bleak it made his head hurt.
The final point, the one he kept returning to, was this: Theodore’s mother was dead. It had happened two years ago, granted, but one does not simply get over the death of a mother. The how of it made it all the more awful— she’d done it to herself. She’d let him find her like that— paper-white, lips stained an awful black, slumped face-forward on the table of her settee and staring at him with wide, glassy eyes, with an empty vial still clutched in one manicured hand. So, yes, while Theo missed his mother, all of her, even the fussing and clucking and coddling, like it was a raw and jagged open wound reft clear through his chest, he was also angry. The woman who thought him too precious to so much as breathe in the general direction of a broomstick, had decided to off herself the one night of the week that his father imbibed at Malfoy Manor over cards, during the Christmas break, when the only other souls inside the home was a house elf too terrified of her master to check in on her unbidden and her fourteen-year-old son.
Theo had been alone with his mother’s body for a full twenty minutes. Edmond had been fetched by the house elf and, to his credit, had forced Theo from the room immediately upon his arrival— but, the damage had been done. Something had changed in him that night. Something was gone.
Sociopathy wasn’t the word— though it was an interesting concept, one he’d encountered in a muggle book at the Hogwarts library. Theo felt. A lot. He felt so much that sometimes his body seemed fit to burst. This night, he’d been vibrating with so many bloody feelings that he’d needed to flee his dorm. Theo felt sadness and happiness and empathy. The prior week, he’d heard sniffling coming from Malfoy’s direction in their dorm, and he’d nobly ignored it because he, too, was afraid of what the future held. No, Theo was no sociopath. He just had a somewhat crooked sense of right and wrong. Or rather, his moral code wasn’t hinged on any value system so much as it was based on personal vested interest. He understood bad and good in the abstract, yes. Murder? Bad. Diggory’s death? Sad, but secretly more so for what it marked for Theo’s future. Theft? Wrong. Stealing Millicent Bulstrode’s cat yesterday and magically concealing him in his closet— comfortably and humanely, mind you? A non-issue, as now Theo had a pal for when he returned to his father’s house of horrors at the week’s end, and besides, that cat had always preferred him, he was sure of it. He was considering returning it upon returning after the break anyway, provided Millicent had eased up on the grating blubbering she’d been recently engaging in in the common room by that point.
Elena’s death had also leeched at the colour in Theo’s world. Figuratively, of course. His eyesight was fine. He was despondent, oft-numbed, and above all else, bored. Somehow, with everything going on— aside from these little fits of misery, of course— Theo was so incredibly bored. Schoolwork was no challenge for him, and his classmates, while physically larger, were just so… petty, and juvenile. That might be a consequence of his House more than anything, to be fair. The Venn diagram tracking the bullies at Hogwarts against their House denomination was a circle, filled in with green and silver. Maybe he would’ve fared better in Ravenclaw— too late for that, now, though.
Theo sighed, drawing his knees up to his chest and winding his arms about them. Everything was just so shit. It was about to get shittier, too, as next week he’d be returning home, which promised to be unbearable what with recent events.
With the night air cooling a touch and Theo having sulked so thoroughly that his eyelids were beginning to feel heavy, he made to rise from his little perch— when the faintest crunch of grass underfoot sounded from up the hill. Theo lay flat on his back, lest it was Filch, the grumpy old coot. The footsteps drew closer, then closer still, and Theo attempted to shrink into the shrubbery as the past by his spot. The steps were too light and even to belong to Filch; Theo rolled onto his side, peering through a little hole at the base of the squat bushes.
It was a girl, clad in jeans and a sweater, with wild, unruly hair that seemed to dance beneath the glow of the full moon. She stood by the water for a moment, looking out, then turned to the side. Theo studied her profile intently— pert lips, a small slope of a nose, slightly too-big eyes. Granger, he realised after a beat. Hermione Granger, notorious do-gooder, had for whatever reason broken curfew to come gaze at the moon. She held something aloft in front of her body, the object concealed by the clasp of both her hands.
Theo had only ever been aware of Hermione Granger in abstract. He knew she existed, of course— Malfoy certainly had a lot to say about her, and, besides, she was the only person in their year who Theo knew to be potentially cleverer than himself. Oh, fine. It wasn’t a potential, it was a fact, one that Theo had considered with bitterness a while ago but now was indifferent to. She was brilliant, immutably so; aside from the yearly heroics herself and her famous pals pantomimed so irritatingly, he didn’t know much about her. He didn’t care to know, either. She was good, righteous and clever. She always had been, and likely always would be— it was predictable. It bored him.
So why, then, was she here? Alone, to boot? It was rare to see her without her entourage— Golden Boy Potter and his loutish Weasley sidekick were always in her general vicinity. Or maybe she was in theirs. Either way, this was singularly odd, as far as Theo was concerned. It wasn’t boring, though, so he stayed where he was, tucked away in the bushes.
It was a jar in her hand, he realised when she shifted her grip, and Theo watched in consternation as she slowly screwed it open. She took a deep breath, as though steeling herself, before removing the lid, and Theo had to squint to make out the insect that emerged, catching the moonlight with a green glint. There was a moment where they simply looked at one another, Hermione and the bug— as insane a notion as that sounded— before a tall, blonde woman stood in the latter’s place with a faint pop.
Theo’s eyes were likely as wide as saucers, by this point. His earlier melancholy had become nothing more than a faint memory. The scene playing out in front of him was enrapturing— if he weren’t so painfully aware of the coldness of the ground pressed against his shoulder, or the itch at his knee that he so desperately needed to scratch but didn’t dare for fear of alerting the pair, he might’ve thought it was a dream.
“You meddling little cunt,” seethed the woman, stepping in toe to toe with Hermione. Theo couldn’t make out much of her face on account of the helmet-like hair styled to frame it rather expertly, but he could imagine what her expression might resemble. Those were strong words right out the gate.
“That’s a bit rich coming from you, Rita. Don’t you think?”
Hermione, to her credit, had not backed down. Quite the opposite, actually. Despite her diminutive height in comparison to the other woman, she stared back at her coolly, acting for all intents and purposes unbothered, with a side of veritable contempt.
This Rita character reached for her wand, the motion a little stunted with it being shoved inside the back pocket of her pantsuit. Hermione was much more seamless, slipping hers from her front pocket and raising it with a healthy dose of menace.
It was around this point that Theo realised that he had seriously underestimated Hermione Granger. The witch had layers— she had a depth to her that he hadn’t previously thought her capable of.
“Don’t you dare,” Hermione warned. The moonlight caught her eye, and in that moment she wasn’t a slight slip of a fifteen year-old-girl, but a force.
“You kept me in a jar for a week.” Rita’s voice was shrill, and her wand hand was twitching. “A week! I will have you fucking expelled! I— I’ll—“
“Maybe so. I’ll take expulsion over Azkaban,” Hermione cut across silkily. Theo didn’t have to see the other witch’s mouth to know it had abruptly snapped shut. “That’s where you’ll land yourself, I imagine. After I report you for being an unregistered Animagus, that is. I've read up on it— historically it's carried very harsh sentences.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I fed Britain’s preeminent gossip-rag journalist— and believe me, I use the term journalist very generously there— sugar syrup through a pipette for a week, Rita, then left the jar in my trunk while I sat my exams. I think that maybe I would.”
Journalist? Rita… Rita Skeeter? Hermione Granger stashed Rita fucking Skeeter in her trunk for a week? If he could’ve risked it, Theo might’ve laughed.
It took a moment for Skeeter to reply; when she did, she sounded resigned, the wind under her sails entirely extinguished. “What do you want?”
“I want you to leave,” Hermione simply replied. “I want you to walk to the moat, and then I want you to keep walking. After you’ve done us all the favour of ridding the castle of your presence, I want to you back off from me, and my friends. and— you know what, Rita, no.” Hermione bared her teeth in a savage little grin, “No, what I truly want from you is a hiatus. Set aside your libellous quill for a year and take some time to yourself to, oh, I don’t know, try your hand at introspection.”
“I— I can’t just stop working—“
“Can’t work from prison, Rita. Take your pick.”
There was a long silence. Hermione’s lips had tugged up in a smirk, and from his prone position amidst the shrubbery, Theo found himself mimicking it. This was the kind of thing he fantasised about doing to his father; to anyone he perceived as having wronged him, in truth. Tiny teenage Granger had brought the adult woman to her knees using nothing but a charmed jar and quick, dazzling wit, and Theo found himself quite awed by her.
Skeeter never replied. Her answer came in the form of a haughty little sniff as she turned on her heel and marched, wobbling a touch precariously on her pointy shoes as she went. Theo pressed himself as flat as he could muster against the ground as she passed by his bush, and when her footsteps became safely faint he chanced a peek back at Hermione, unable to help himself.
She hadn’t lingered to gloat at the retreating witch’s back, as Theo imagined he might’ve done. Instead she’d sat herself on the bank, her knees curled up to her chest as she looked out across the water. Theo regarded her back curiously, marked the way she checked her watch once, then twice. Obviously, she hadn’t had enough excitement for one night. She was waiting for someone. Likely the Weasel, or Potter. Maybe both. Fill them in on the creative way she’d saved their skin.
Theo found the notion strangely disappointing, for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Heavy footfalls soon sounded from above, and Theo went through the motions of making himself as invisible as possible yet again. It was only one person, he quickly discerned, and he wondered which member of the ragtag trio he’d find once they passed by the bush. Would she downplay what had happened? Had they seen that look she’d worn mere moments ago before? It had been cold and cruel, and a touch giddy. Were Harry and Ronald acquainted with it? If they were, he wondered if they enjoyed seeing her wear it as much as Theo had.
The soft thump of a body sitting down on the ground beside Granger sounded, and he returned his gaze to the bank, just to check.
Theo blinked. Closed his eyes for a brief second, just to be sure they weren’t playing tricks on him, then opened them back up. No, his first glance hadn’t been a trick of the light. Victor Krum, seeker for the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team, had sat himself down beside Granger, slinging a familiar arm over her shoulder. That had just been on Theo’s first peek, mind you. They’d wasted no time— Granger was astride Krum’s lap when he looked the second time, murmuring something Theo couldn’t catch into his ear.
Theo could see her face in its entirety with this change in position, and though it was a touch shadowy, he was struck by how utterly beautiful she was. How he hadn’t noticed it before, he wasn’t sure. Her eyes weren’t cold like they’d been with Rita; they were alight, warm and honeyed and transfixing.
Theo had never felt more jealous of a single person than he did of Victor Krum in that moment. It wasn’t for the sheer bulk of the boy, either, which was his usual fixation as far as envy went. It was because he was touching Hermione Granger, snogging her, learning her. She was an utter enigma to Theo and inexplicably, suddenly, he found we wanted nothing more to unravel it. How was it possible that she could be the righteous little know-it-all he’d see scurrying about the halls, and also this alluring creature before him, aglow beneath the moonlight? He’d watched her threaten to ruin a witch more than twice her age, and now, not even ten minutes later, she looked well on her way to shagging a celebrity quidditch player in the open air, on school grounds no less.
It was absurd. What in the bloody hell would she do next? Theo, for all of his smarts, didn’t have the faintest clue. But, oh, he was so very compelled to find out.
When Krum divested Hermione of her sweater, Theo felt he should’ve looked away. Really, he should’ve. It was wrong— even his twisted little brain knew as much.
He couldn’t bring himself to do it, though. Even as more stretches of pale skin were bathed with moonlight, and the still quiet of the lake was broken with small, intimate little sounds that he had no business hearing, all Theo could do was watch.
September, 2004
Hermione was in a good mood today. Theo knew this because she’d thrown a handful of knuts in the tip jar at The Boiling Brew, which she never did when she was frazzled or morose. She’d also ordered a coffee, which was another tell— she preferred the stuff, but when her nerves were overwrought she never drank it, opting for herbal tea instead. The caffeine made her too jittery. Theo had seen it a few times, the way she’d be vibrating with anxiety if she drank her coffee on a bad day. It made her quite percussive, tapping her quill against her desk, bouncing one knee, gnawing obsessively on a dry patch on her lower lip until it bled. If they’d been on speaking terms the last time it’d happened, he might’ve told her to knock it off— but, alas, she’d initiated something of a Cold War since that night in December of last year, so he’d been forced to watch it all unfold from afar.
It was a shame, but it wasn’t the worst thing. Even on her bad days, watching Hermione Granger was a pleasure from which Theo doubted he’d ever tire.
He was happy that she was happy today. Lately, her happiness was fleeting, good days coming few and far between. When her order was called, he downed the remainder of his tea with a wince. Merlin, but the name of the cafe was apt. He’d been coming here most mornings for years now, and he still wasn’t acclimated to the temperature they served their drinks at. Waiting a few moments for the door to close behind her before he followed, he double-checked his reflection in the glass. The face he wore today was that of an older gentleman, face wizened and adorned with a white, scruffy beard— this glamour was one of his favourites actually, because the outfits were always so charmingly dapper. He gave his paperboy cap a jaunty little flick before stepping out onto the street, his feet moving instinctively in the direction he knew she’d gone. She wasn’t predictable, no, but she was a creature of routine. Theo, on his part, was very good at memorisation.
Their next stop was the Ministry’s Floo port on Diagon. Theo hung back at the mouth of his usually alleyway, fidgeting superficially with with the neckline of his waistcoat— truly, the wardrobe on this particular glamour was downright delightful— with his eyes trained upon the tight braid that hung between Hermione’s shoulder-blades. When it disappeared, the next person in line shuffling forward to the gilt archway built into the side of a weathered old pub, Theo backed deeper down the alley. Stepping into an alcove housing an ancient and boarded-up doorway, Theo slipped his wand from his pocket and replaced it with the heavy ring from his index finger. Double-checking wasn’t necessary, not after all this time, but he did it anyway, briefly eyeballing the now smooth and unlined skin of his hands before smoothing them down the sleek black of his Ministry robes. With everything in order, he disapparated back to his home, to the usual spot in the manor’s dining room, directly in front of the grand marble fireplace. Then, without preamble, he stepped inside and went to work.
Timing was a tricky thing. There’d been a few kinks when he’d first started out, but now he had it, the timing of it all, down to a fine art. He knew when to pull it taut, and when to let it slacken. Since the blow-up last year, it had been a balancing act of giving Hermione enough space to soothe the part of her that needed some distance between the pair of them, while still putting himself in her line of sight enough to ensure she couldn’t completely erase him from her mind altogether.
Today was a “reminder day.”
Theo stalked through the Atrium toward the elevators, hanging left; the fireplace connected to the Diagon port lay on the opposite end, and he used that convergence to his advantage as often as he could get away with. From over the tops of the heads of the crush, his eyes locked on a head of dark-brown hair, cowlicks already threatening to escape their tight confines at the front. Her head was bowed, as per— she avoided eye-contact on her way to her office, for fear of being drawn into a bout of inane small-talk on her way upstairs. Sometimes, Theo marvelled at just how easy she made this for him.
Theo cast his eyes to the ground at the very last moment, before colliding with Hermione’s smaller frame.
It was gentle, of course— he had no interest in hurting her or bowling her over— and he let out a soft grunt of surprise to make it convincing, clasping a loose hand about her elbow as he teetered back a step. His grunt was immediately followed by a hiss, an authentic one. Theo looked down, wincing as boiling hot coffee soaked through the front of his robe.
“Oh! Oh god, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t—” Delicate hands fluttered in the air over the spilt coffee, and Theo looked up, searing burn forgotten. They locked eyes at the same time, and he tracked the light flush of realisation that spread across Hermione’s cheeks as she realised just whom she’d bumped into with a keen interest. “Theodore. Hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to— let me just—“
“No need.” Theo slipped his wand from his pocket, casting a quick scourgify before looking back up at her with an easy grin. It would've been easy to get lost there, for his facade to slip. She was so expressive, giving away so much and yet nothing at all. Theo could spend hours trying to deduce the thinking behind every expression that crossed her face. It would be his pleasure to do so. “There. No harm done. It was my fault anyhow, I wasn’t looking where I was going— I’m sorry about your coffee.”
“No, no, it was me, I tend to—“ Hermione zipped her lips, those big, hazel eyes looking up at him with a whisper of panic, making them appear even wider. Fuck, but she was adorable when she was skittish. “Er, yes. Sorry again.”
“No need,” he repeated. “How have you been, Hermione?”
“Good!” she squeaked, eyes darting the the elevator over her shoulder as though plotting her escape, that light blush spreading to the tip of her nose. “Quite busy, though, which is why I should probably, erm, get going…”
“Of course,” he said blithely, stepping to the side. “Take care, Hermione.”
“You too,” she managed before scurrying to the elevator, all but throwing herself inside. Her eyes were locked on him as the doors closed, he marked gleefully, that dusting of pink no where near subsided and lending to the effect of making her look rather frazzled as she disappeared from view.
Theo had a few hypotheses with regard to her nervous reaction to his presence. The first was that it was nothing more than a physical reaction, that his nearness flustered her for reasons that didn’t extend to the cerebral. That one wasn’t a hypothesis so much as it was a fancy, in truth, wistful and probably a touch deluded. The more likely reason was that she was embarrassed after spilling her guts to him last year, that night that they both pointedly pretended had never happened— well, to one another. On his own time, Theo had replayed that particular memory so many times over that it was all but seared into the backs of his eyelids.
Secretly, he hoped it was a mixture of the two. Embarrassment intermingled with a physical awareness. It would be nice, to have some of this infatuation reciprocated, even just a little— he wasn’t counting on it, though, and he’d never expect it. Yes, of course, he had an end goal here, but if it never came to fruition he would be content. He’d be more than happy to continue as he had been, for as long as required— standing guard, watching over, playing as the right-hand man she never knew she had. That would be enough for him.
Theo made for the elevator, then paused. Unwittingly, he’d ruined her coffee, and in doing so he had probably thrown off her day a little. That hadn’t been apart of the plan this morning, and while it had worked in his favour, he didn’t like the thought of her being disappointed. There’d been too many tea-days lately, and far be it from him to take away her first indulgence in a while. It simply wouldn’t do. After a moments deliberation, Theo wheeled back to the nearest fireplace, stepping through to one of the ports stationed on Knockturn where he knew there was a new, obscenely overpriced cafe that had just cropped up around the corner.
He couldn’t well go back to the Boiling Brew— that would make her take pause, no doubt. It was safe to get her usual mocha, however, because back when they’d worked together in Magical Creatures they’d both done many a coffee run for one another. A few minutes later, and more than a few galleons lighter, Theo returned to the Atrium with a fresh coffee in hand and a little grin of satisfaction tugging at the corner of his lip. He took the elevator down to six, seeking out the closed door of the Floo Authority instinctively, behind which he knew Hermione was likely already hunkered down over some paperwork at her desk. Approaching the Reception, he let his grin widen into something less indulgent— more professional, but still affable.
“Morning, ah…” He dropped his gaze to read the little plaque sat slightly askew atop the desk, “Hilda. Could you please drop this at Ms Granger’s desk for me? We had a little run-in this morning and I ended up wearing the vast majority of her first cup.” Hilda, very evidently, wasn’t overly taken with the idea of playing errand-girl, and Theo couldn’t quite blame her what with the thick piles of parchment on either side of her elbows. He widened his smile, leaning over her desk on his elbows and letting his eyes go lidded, just a touch. Theo wasn’t above much; flirting his way into getting what he wanted was actually rather par the course, to be honest. “You look busy, so I hate to ask, I really do… I just don’t like to leave a lady out of sorts, you know, and Ms Granger looked all kinds of put out about the spilt coffee—“
“She can be irritable, that Granger,” Hilda quipped across conspiratorially.
Theo had to fight to keep his grin fixed in place. “I wouldn’t know,” he said mildly. “I just wanted to make amends for my own carelessness.”
“Very kind of you.” She’d softened to him now, hard look from her eyes all but gone.
“Do you think so?” He leant in even closer, placing the coffee down on the desk between his hands, and Hilda’s eyes widened at the proximity.
“Yes,” she said on a sigh, then blinked, embarrassment written starkly upon her face as she drew back. “I mean, er, yes! Yes, I can run it in to her for you. Of course.”
“Brilliant.” Theo flashed her a slow smile, if only just for the fun of it. “Much appreciated, Hilda.”
With that, Theo made for the fourth floor, to his official job. It was significantly more boring, as far as things went, but it was a means to an end. Oh, it wasn’t all bad— at times, projects would teeter onto the side of challenging for him, which could be fun. For the most part, though, it was a lot of paperwork and administration, which took about as much effort as sneezing. Theo had been bumped from the House-Elf Liaison— previously known as Relocation Services, the credit for that particular departmental shift lay entirely at Hermione’s feet, and had earned her her foray upstairs to Transport. He was now in Goblin Liaison, which had its moments, certainly, solely due to the tense bouts of negotiation he found himself embroiled in with various goblin representatives almost weekly. There was something rather thrilling about warring with words, anticipating your opponent’s next move through nothing but imperceptible shifts in body language. Goblins were notoriously stoic, so— yes. Fun, from time to time. It was high stakes, too, on account of the prosperity of the entire economy resting squarely on the shoulders of the office, and Theo had always found that he thrived under pressure.
He was also working on something on his own time, a project that, when he set it into motion, might earn him a space up on a higher floor for the sheer audacity of it. The aforementioned timing had to be right, though, so Theo was content to sit on it for while. Patience, after all, was a virtue— that was the adage by which Theodore Nott lived his life, down to the very letter.
“Morning, Nott.”
Sofie Hopfner was one third of their rather diminutive office, a middle-aged German witch who spoke with the slightest of accents and oversaw their operations with a rather lax fist. Theo quite liked her, actually; she was blunt, which was an attribute Theo always enjoyed in others, and moreover, trusted him to get his work done with very little oversight on her end. She was happy so long as he was meeting his deadlines and performing to a reasonable standard— beyond that, she cared little for how he spent his hours on the clock. Sofie obviously suspected that tasks took him a third of the time that he claimed they did, that much was evident. Irregardless, it seemed of little consequence to her. His first boss in the Relocation Office, prior to his eventual ousting by Granger, had seen fit to pile the most banal, inconsequential bullshit upon him after cottoning on to his turnover speed, which had irritated Theo to no end. Sofie had no such inclinations— as such, while he’d only been working under her since the beginning of the year, Theo considered her something of a friend.
“Sofie. Good morning,” he said, easing himself into his chair. “Any word from Gornar on the minting negotiations?”
“Mhm. On your desk. Oh, Burgock’s also sent you another letter,” she added wryly, chuckling when Theo groaned.
“Fucks’ sakes,” he muttered, reaching for the offending parchment. “He is relentless. Abolishing the Knut isn't feasible, and I’m not quite sure how many times I have to— oh, morning Lloyd. You alright?”
Lloyd grunted an unconvincing yes, the dark smudges under his eyes all but confirming otherwise as he slumped down at his desk. Sofie made a sympathetic noise, looking up from her desk to take him in. “Loretta keeping you up?”
“You could say that,” Lloyd replied with a weak laugh. “She’s got a mighty set of lungs on her, and it feels like they reach full strength once the clock strikes midnight. Tell me, do all babies have such a precise internal clock or have I just lucked out?”
“It’s universal,” Sofie said. “It’ll pass soon enough— then, you’ll be wishing you could go back.”
Lloyd snorted. “Yeah. We’ll see.”
His daughter was three months old now, and Theo did not envy the man the constant sleeplessness. Loretta was curiously tiny— Lloyd kept the rest of them up to date, his desk littered with a growing collection of photographs of the child. Theo had never had much to do with babies, and he couldn’t say that Lloyd was selling it to him. It was fascinating though, now she was slightly less pink and shrivelled-looking, the way she was growing into a perfect miniature of her parents. Loretta had Lloyd’s shock of blonde curls and her mother’s button-nose and startling blue eyes, and sometimes when Theo’s mind was left aimless after a conversation with his sleep-deprived coworker it would wander, conjuring up images of a tiny son or daughter with wide, honeyed eyes and—
And then he would promptly shut it the fuck down, because that avenue of thinking was entirely fruitless.
Unachievable goals were simply delusions, and while Theo had many flaws, being delusional was not one of them, not if he could help it. With a little sigh, he set about penning a cordial reply to Burdock’s latest in a long, long string of letters.
As he did most days, he was all but counting down the seconds until Hermione clocked off. It was a Wednesday, so it would likely be a little later, which was fine.
Theo could wait.
Their trek home had been diverted by a pitstop outside of the magical borders, to a small Greek joint in muggle Notting Hill that Hermione frequented from time to time. Theo had gone in after she’d left to grab himself a souvla, just for the hell of it. The price had been eye-watering, but, no matter. It wasn’t exactly like he was strapped for cash— it was her he was more worried about in that regard, but he placated himself with the knowledge that he’d find some way to finagle a covert transfer to her were it ever to come to that. Only once he’d seen the lights flick on in the window of her flat, signifying that she was safe and tucked away for the evening, did he disappear into an alleyway a few blocks over, divesting himself of the glamouring ring and making for Knockturn to indulge in what was likely his second-favourite pastime: irritating Draco Malfoy.
The ring had been a labour of love and very illegal magic conceived during that year of limbo after the War, where the vast majority of Theo’s cohort had returned to Hogwarts to resit their eighth year. Operative word being majority; some, like Draco, were not given the option due to their involvement in the war and what have you. Hermione Granger, ever the exception, had been allowed to forgo the year entirely, sitting her NEWTs after a half-year of personal study that December, leaving Theo broody and with very little to occupy his time back at the school. The particular illicit tome had been discovered entirely on accident, in a secret room down in the Potions dungeons that he’d later come to find out had served as a personal workspace for the late Severus Snape. Spelling the ring hadn’t been a step in his nefarious plan so much as it had been a challenge, just to prove to himself that he could do it. It wasn’t until later, much later, upon seeing Hermione for the first time since the Battle, that Theo had been compelled to put it to actual use.
It had almost been fateful, the Dark magic he’d pottered away at over the course of that year. He’d had no idea of just how much it would serve him over the years to come; sometimes, he fancied his compulsion to create the ring was the work of some particularly industrious stars above, working overtime to weave Theo’s future inextricably just so.
There was a modest line out the front of The Gallery when Theo arrived, which he bypassed with a courteous clap on the back of the doorman for the evening. After retrieving a generous glass of red currant rum from the bar, Theo made for the elevator, skipping that particular queue too and heading straight up to Malfoy’s office on the fourth floor. It was a wonder he hadn’t respelled Theo’s token yet, really, with the amount of times he’d barged in on his friend and his red-headed little witch in various states of compromising positions. He sipped pensively as the elevator ascended, averting his gaze to the ground just as the doors flung open.
“You decent, Malfoy?”
“Unfortunately.”
When he looked up he found Draco sitting at his desk wearing an expression that was already halfway to vexed, quill in hand and paperwork strewn about the desk. Malfoy was in a black mood, which worked just fine for Theo. Better than, actually. Made him much easier to rile up. Theo loped inside, falling into the chair opposite his friend and pulling his food from his briefcase. He made a show of reheating the foil parcel under Malfoy’s irate eye, ripping it open much louder than necessary and moaning on the first bite.
“Y’alright, mate?” he asked around his mouthful. A vein in Draco’s temple twitched.
“What did we say about eating in my office?”
“We?” Theo took another gargantuan bite, pretending to ponder it. “Nope, sorry. I can’t quite recall. Refresh my memory?”
“I told you to stop bloody doing it, you twat.”
“Did you?” Another noisy bite. Draco seethed at him across the desk. “Sorry, mate. My bad— next time, yeah?”
Draco didn’t dignify that with a reply, the set of his jaw hardening as Theo made quick work of his supper. Once he was done— he licked his fingers noisily at the end, of course, for maximum effect— Draco looked fit to blow a fuse. Theo gave him a wide, cheshire-cat grin, balling up the foil packet and throwing it into Draco’s wastepaper bin; they both watched as it bounced off the rim and onto the carpet. “Oops,” Theo exclaimed, unable to drum up even a note of false-repentance.
Draco snatched up his wand, floating the wrapping wordlessly into the bin. “Is there an actual reason that you’re here, Nott, or did you come solely to torment me?”
Yes. “No.” He arranged his features into a wounded expression, which Draco marked with something that looked a little like defeat. “Nothing of the sort. Lighten up, yeah? What’s got you in such a foul mood?”
“I have a mountain of paperwork to get through with no end in sight, and a girlfriend waiting for me in my bed.”
So Granger was alone in her flat tonight. Again. As happy as he was that Draco had managed to make things work with Ginny, Theo wasn’t over the moon at how lonely it had left her flatmate. He suppressed a frown, keeping his expression even, if not a little commiserating. “Ah. That’ll do it.”
“Won’t it just.” Draco sighed, scrubbing a palm down his face. “I’m still trying to catch up after the weekend—“
“Oh, the wedding,” Theo cut in, snapping his fingers. “How did that go?”
“About as well as you’d expect. The Weasel conducted himself like a right—“ Draco broke off, meeting Theo’s expectant gaze. “Right, of course. I should’ve known, really. Yes, Granger was there. She seemed to enjoy herself, all things considered. Looked, er, lovely. I suppose.”
“Of course,” Theo demurred with satisfaction. She had looked lovely, though Theo supposed he had significantly more bias than Malfoy when it came to such things. She’d worn a floaty, ankle-length blue number, and between her and Malfoy, Weasel had looked quite fit to burst.
Draco didn’t know that Theo had spirited himself in under glamour, lurking with the waitstaff, chancing the occasional glance from behind the bar. Theodore Nott, waiter? He’d find it quite ludicrous, were he able to wade through the no-doubt consuming umbrage he’d take at the implications of his presence there, his presence everywhere Hermione was. No, Draco Malfoy was not a good man— and yet, even he would have a problem with the depths Theo was willing to sink to satiate his obsession with Hermione Granger. Theo was self-aware enough to know that he was a far sight more villainous than his friend could even conceive of being. Draco wouldn’t understand. He doubted any of his friends would. As such, he was content to play this role around them; slightly-bumbling, lovestruck clown. Sharp of mind, yes, but mostly harmless. Asking after Hermione, accepting the scraps when they fell into his lap and remaining content to abstain from taking more. If they knew the truth… It didn’t bear thinking about.
Theo lurked about Draco’s office for a little while longer, poking at his beleaguered friend until he was a hair’s-breadth from hexing him, before making his way downstairs. He was a little pent-up, truth be told, so he headed for the first floor, pondering over which role he wanted to play tonight.
Theo enjoyed the act of looking. He liked watching; he liked being watched. It made his pulse thrum, his blood run hot. Fucking for hidden eyes was a high that he chased as often as he could— more often than he’d admit, he’d imagine them wide and the colour of cinnamon, watching him from the shadows like he’d done that night, so many years ago. Being on the other end was its own bliss, too. It felt simultaneously powerful and denigrating, and the sweet dual edges of that blade would lash him into a rather dizzying state of arousal.
Theo paced down the glossy hallway of the first floor, nursing another drink as he pondered.
Tonight, he fancied he might watch.