To my dearest Sandra-Sempra, here's to all the light you have brought into my life and a massive thank you for all that you do for me! This Thilli is for you, the inspiration that you give to me and the encouragement is always appreciated 3
Thank you to my amazing twin Katalina Riddle for reading over this and turning my drivel into something beautiful!
Thank you to Sandra-Sempra for the amazing graphic to go with my story
AN: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Theodore was sitting out on his terrace, cigarette hanging between his fingers, looking up at the moon. It was his best and worst friend. Darkness was setting in, meaning he could be free and not have people staring at the scar that marred his shoulder. It was also the time that he had lost the only person that meant anything to him; he had to let her go because he couldn't be what she needed.
Milli had fought him long and hard for months. She didn't care about the scar that his bastard uncle had left on him, the story behind it wasn't particularly bad, but people assumed that it meant that he was afflicted to roam the night on full moons.
No… his uncle had sliced the joining of his shoulder and neck open when he had renounced his relations to the whole bloody dark family of his. Now he was sitting here thinking about how the night would take another thing from him.
From behind him he heard the door slide open, knowing only one person had a key. He didn't turn, he didn't want her to see how her being there affected him.
Once again Millicent Bulstrode was coming back at him… he wondered what she would do to try and convince him this time.
He heard the chair next to him slide away from the railing but didn't look, he knew she would say something sooner or later.
The silence between the two was deafening, he took a draw of his cigarette that was barely there and waited, always waiting for her to speak before making an effort. He didn't want to encourage her by starting interactions anymore.
"So… another job gone?" Finally breaking the silence between them.
"The manager didn't like my sullen attitude…" he said in his crisp, husky voice.
"I wouldn't either if I were an employer. You really can't keep living like this Theo… your father's money is only going to last so long now that he's dead and you're not earning anything!" Maybe if she was blunt enough she could knock some sense into him.
"I hate the stares I get. I like to skate under the radar not be the centre of attention." Finally looking beside him to the curvy, gorgeous woman that had changed everything for him in the months that he had been unable to leave his house after the war.
Being a known Death Eater's son had repercussions that nobody else could even fathom, he would strut into Diagon Alley and everyone would stare, eyes would follow him everywhere he went and so would the whispers, wondering if he was like his dark father and uncle or if he was different.
They never took things at face value though and he hated it. He had tried to repent in the beginning, even though he had done nothing but they would always come back to the fact that he was a son of a death eater.
"Ignore them like you used to at school. They didn't bother you back then, why do they bother you now?" She was taking none of his ridiculous excuses. Theo knew that she was hoping that one day she would get through to him.
"You know the stares of a child are nothing compared to the stares and whispers of an adult, you've experienced it as well."
"The difference between you and me is that I don't let them get to me. I've always kept an impenetrable mask up around people," he huffed, exasperated. And then, slowly he glanced at her. "But you...you wormed your way through and then you chucked it in my face."
Aha...There it was - the real reason she was here, she thought triumphantly. She had found an opportunity to talk to him about them again.
Every month, like clockwork she would show up and try and convince him again. It used to be every day, then it turned to weekly and then fortnightly and then one day she didn't show up and he had experienced a crushing feeling throughout his body. She hadn't come, why hadn't she come? Two weeks went by without a word. He had gotten drunk nearly every night and then, as he destroyed his living room, he turned and saw her with a look of utter disappointment on her face.
He hadn't seen her since she pushed him into the shower, made him a coffee, put him in his bed and walked out.
A month went by and he didn't see or hear from her until he was back out on his terrace; and there she was, sitting next to him. His night suddenly lit up.
Then the darkness spread again for a month and the same thing happened. Once a month she would bring light into his life and then she'd take it again. Maybe she was doing it on purpose, maybe she didn't know.
But she always brought their old times up and the fact that he always let her in, there was never a time when she didn't. This was now two years on and she still held hope that he would take her offer up….not going to happen.
He sat there once again, ignoring her comment, waiting for her to leave...it only took an hour of him not speaking for him to hear the sigh of defeat, her chair move once again and her walk back to the sliding door. She paused for a moment looking at him with a face of pure sadness before walking out of his life for another month.
oOo
A month later, he was sitting out on his terrace waiting again for his light to come back, in the same position as he had been last time with cigarette hanging from his fingers. He once again said hello to his old friend knowing that shortly it would recede for a bit.
For hours he sat there waiting and thinking about how she would look this time, whether she would be wearing her usual black garb or whether she would wear the sweet black and red dress he liked to see her in so much.
He was still sitting there waiting when the sun rose over the horizon and the birds started to chatter away around him. Why hadn't she come?
Theo got up from his seat and moved inside to get ready for the day, crushing his last smoke into the ground as he walked.
He went to work and all day he wondered why she didn't show up. That was the one thing he had to look forward to each month and she hadn't come.
His boss questioned him on why he was so absent-minded, but he couldn't answer. He shouldn't be thinking about her so much and yet he was.
Night time came too soon and once again he was back out on the terrace, with a glass of fire whiskey hanging from the end of one hand and a cigarette in the other. By this stage he had fallen into the abyss that was drunkenness, thinking about all the times that he had taken her visits for granted. Now she wasn't coming and he wondered if she would ever again.
Theo spent the last remaining hours on the terrace drowning himself in the sweet nectar that was fire whiskey before he would have to face the world again and go back to work.
"Hello Darkness, my old friend, I think it's time we talk again. You have taken her from me again. The sun would shine and then you come along and engulf me in your dark eyes, I think it's time I embrace the light and say goodbye to you." He let his words float off into nothingness and stood unsteadily, moving through his apartment to the front door. It was time for him to walk away from the darkness and into the light.