Title: Gravity
Character: Theodore Nott
House: Slytherin
Name: oh nargles/Tenzy
"To be or not to be, that is the question."
- Shakespeare
From his birth to his death, Theodore Nott could swear he had never read a single Muggle text.
He would be lying, but the fact that he could say it with a straight face in a room occupied primarily by fanatic purebloods said something, or so he thought.
His decision was fairly straightforward: to be or not to be, to fight or not to fight. He felt reluctant to do much of anything at all, he didn't want to die, but he didn't want to be branded a coward either for not deciding.
He just knew his father would know if he wasn't there, supporting the swarm of Death Eaters that was to buzz around Hogwarts and take it for the Dark Lord.
He blamed it all on Malfoy, the stupid, pale and pointy git.
Theo could beat the blond at a game of chess any day, but ultimately it was the pillocks with the most money that affected anything in their capitalistic world full of Lucius Malfoys, Dark Lords and unfairly inherited looks. He punched the pillow he'd been laying his head on.
"You could go back you know?" A voice behind him spoke quietly.
"No I can't." He replied, not bothering to turn around, he didn't need (or want) to kiss the arse of a sort-of-stranger who pitied him once in their lifetime out of boredom, he had a certain sense of pride after all.
"Yes you can," the voice insisted. "You just won't because you're a coward who likes self-loathing."
Theo's nostrils flared and with his face screwed up in part confusion and part anger he pushed away the white, fluffy pillow the sort-of-stranger had lent him. He still refused to look at her.
"Who likes self-loathing?"
"Masochists, sadists and you."
Theo blinked.
"You're lying."
"Maybe." He smiled and she knew it.
He still couldn't make his mind up.
"It's not a life decision you know."
"How much time's passed?" he asked, ignoring her attempt at advice.
She gave him a withering look but he ignored that as he did most things.
He began to repeat himself but she interrupted.
"It's two in the morning."
"You're lying."
"Maybe."
Try as he might Theodore Nott knew he could never give up the pillow given to him, and try as he might he would never know if someone was lying to him. Some people claimed they knew, as if they were a human polygraph, not that he knew what a polygraph was.
"Is it over yet?" he asked Horace Slughorn.
He watched his Potions Professor carefully, looking for clues of any kind.
"Wha – what my dear boy?"
He repeated himself.
Professor Slughorn shook his head, visibly uncomfortable.
Do I go? He asked himself, laying his head on his pillow once more and staring at a wall in need of renovation. He didn't know long the battle would or was supposed to last. His father hadn't told him anything, his father hadn't done anything except send him a letter consisting of one word: be.
So helpful Father, he thought embittered.
"I want my pillow back," an insolent voice demanded.
"You can't," he said simply, but he stood up straight and held it protectively in his arms.
"Accio pillow."
Theo tried to snatch the pillow as it whizzed down from his grip and up and across into the waiting arms of she-who-must-not-be-named.
"It was a gift." He glared.
"It was a loan," she countered.
He huffed.
"Just ask Professor Slughorn to transfigure something into a pillow."
"I'd rather not."
"Why not?"
Theo was stumped, he had never questioned his pride; he accepted it and lived by its doctrine, no matter how ridiculous.
The girl snorted.
Theo glared once more.
"It's too late," she said suddenly.
He didn't look up from his hands, they were refined in his opinion, he had lovely hands, much better than Draco bloody Malfoy's.
"You're lying," he said inspecting his fingernails nonchalantly.
She sounded genuinely frustrated.
"Coward."
"You are what you say," he countered.
"Berk."
"What I said before."
"Poxy, barmy, divvy duffer!"
"I've never heard the third one."
She threw her pillow at him and unfortunately, for her, he caught it and proceeded to back up towards a wall, sat down and snuggled with it.
"Sleep tight," she said passively.
He knew he wouldn't sleep, that he couldn't even if he wanted to.
He had tormented himself in the time spent at wherever Professor Slughorn had taken him and the rest of the Slytherins. As he peered into the desecrated Great Hall, he shivered and remembered the others in that suffocating room.
At the time, he hadn't thought it was suffocating, at the time he'd been focused on the wonderful pillow given to him by an almost-stranger, at the time he'd been hoping he wouldn't have to make a decision.
He'd gotten a wish he hadn't wished. The opportunity to make the decision he'd been dreading in the first place had passed him by, and somehow that saddened him.
The sound of footsteps grew louder as it came towards him.
"Are you going to find your father?" a quiet voice asked.
"He was never lost," he pointed out.
Theo could see a faint smile but the point was that it didn't reach the eyes.
"Maybe," he echoed.
"You can't say maybe to everything," she retorted.
"Why not?"
She had no answer for that but similarly he had no reason for his support.
"Make a decision," she demanded.
"No," he replied immediately.
She sighed.
"It was worth an attempt."
A slightly bloody, more than slightly dirty, boy of ten or eleven by Theo's guess, scratched names on a ripped piece of parchment:
Rose Zeller
Colin Creevey
Bea Beatrice McDonald
Lara O'Callaghan
Freya Banham
Colin Creevey
Theo knew what the names formed almost instantly: a list of the dead. They were just names to him but it stuck with him as he ran away from the unarmed boy.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, he screamed in his head.
What he wasn't befuddled him but it became clearer as voices other than his own filled his ears.
"A pile of them looks gruesome."
"Dead, the lot of them deserved everything they got."
"You think?"
"You think murdering marauders thinking they're superior because they're part of the good old boys club deserve an ovation?"
"Of course not, but – "
"But nothing, leave them here to rot, Merlin knows they'd do the same for us."
Theo's fists clenched tightly. He could only guess at what was in the room before him. He only needed to push the door, there was a slight crack and for the life of him, Theo couldn't work up the courage to have a peek. It had to be fully confrontational he knew that, dead bodies were confronting and sneaking a peek was disrespectful.
His father had taught him that.
Father.
A panicked look on his face Theo looked at the door and breathed carefully, placing his hand an inch away from the carved wooden door. He chanced a glance at the empty corridor, closed his eyes and pushed the door abruptly, startling the women inside.
"Theo?" One of them called out in confusion.
"Flora, Hestia!" Theo looked from the Carrow twins to the pile of dead bodies.
Each one was missing a Dark Mark, he pulled and pushed the the dead around to check twice and then he checked again.
"Your father's not here," said Flora, or was it Hestia?
"Where is he?" he managed to croak out.
"Azkaban."
Theo felt his mouth go dry.
"Will you visit him?" the twins chorused.
"No, of course not," he laughed.
"The war's over and done with. I have to start afresh, my father would understand."
To be or not to be?
Not to be, my fair withered lady.
The tale's not dull if all's a plea
The light is shady still