AN: I thought I wouldn't add anything else to this, but I might post the occasional chapter whenever I feel like exploring an odd pairing. So don't expect constant updates with this one.
Scars
[1]
Theo knew immediately that something was wrong. He knew it just as soon as he entered his flat.
For one his wife wasn't in the kitchen. She wasn't cooking of course, since she couldn't cook for shit. But she should be eating whatever take-out she ordered. She loved take-out. She liked to eat it while the Record Book was open and playing something. Anything.
And when Theo opened the door, his wife would usually greet him. Not particularly cordially, of course, and she wouldn't come to the door. She would say "You're home already?"
He was home at the same time every day during the weekdays: 5:30. His wife talked like she expected him to hit a few bars or ten after work every day. He'd actually do that if he thought it would help.
Depowering those dark artifacts was a pain in the ass. Only that wasn't true at all. It was ten times worse than that. It left him and Draco drained. It took something out of them besides energy. He didn't know what, and didn't want to guess.
They'd dealt with a horcrux today. Not Voldemort's, that much was certain. Neither he nor Draco knew who it'd belonged to. That filled them with a growing sense of horror that Theo didn't want to acknowledge.
It was a sword. Not ornate like the one those the goblins had made for Gryffindor, but a simple gladius. When it was unsheathed, a specter came out. It had blood-red eyes. It was horribly emaciated, its ribs and skull so prominent in its chest and head that Theo thought it was supposed to be a skeleton.
"The sunless sea." The ghost had said. "The sunless sea. We plunder deep and run from creatures from beneath the sunless sea."
The two of them had screamed a little.
No. That wasn't true. The truth was Draco and Theo had screamed a lot. Screamed so much that they wouldn't be able to speak much above a whisper for the rest of the day.
Draco had acted first. The depowering room was actually a metal cell with flat lead walls and no windows. He casted Fiendfyre. A terrible curse. An awful curse. Out from his wand poured not dragons or hairy beasts but hell-demons, things which (Theo hoped) were not real at all.
Then pulled Theo out as the horcrux was destroyed. There was a terrible sound. Not the Fiend, but whatever
(whoever)
the thing was destroying.
The eyes of the roiling demon-Fiends slowly turned their eyes to them as Theo hit the switch on the half-ton lead door. It closed slowly—much too slowly. The Fiends nearly reached them. Had even a lick of the flames escaped, that would be the entire Ministry.
"You guys were lucky." Harry Potter had said. "You know that? What were you thinking, casting that curse, Malfoy?"
Draco and Potter still weren't on good terms. Draco looked like he was about to shoot back with a quip, but only managed a frayed laugh. It sounded like masked sobbing. Theo had buried his face in his hands and said nothing.
What was there to say? Another horcux, another Voldemort (maybe). And tomorrow there would be more dark artifacts. More subtle whispers that would follow Theo into the bedroom, into his uneasy sleep. His own father was a stupid Death Eater, but Theo didn't think there could be so much madness in the world. He hurt almost all the time. He could be...raping himself. That's something he couldn't tell anyone, not even the head doctor quack at St. Mungo's.
[2]
He blinked and he was back in his flat. Back where he was supposed to be. The relief was faint, and very brief. The matter at hand.
His wife. Where was she? He felt that familiar disquiet. Had she closed the damn curtains?
He went into the kitchen, and got his answer.
The kitchen had two windows facing the backyard, one on either side of the fridge. The one on the left was drawn. The one on the right was not. The moon hung low and red, a hungover eye, plainly in view of the windows.
The rest of the kitchen was in shambles. The fridge's door had been ripped open. Soda bottles and Tupperware lied crushed on the floor. Food was all over the place. The bag of red potatoes had been torn asunder and lay under the kitchen table, most of its contents gone. The lone survivor, was lied smashed next to the fridge.
The kitchen table itself had been split in two, with the edges splintered, as though something insanely heavy had tried to use it for a chair.
The pie Granger had made had been thrown into the far corner. The dishes, which had been piled high in the sink, were scattered all over the floor in pieces.
Theo's eyes took all this in, and his throat closed up.
He slowly searched the rest of the house, with his wand drawn, in both hands like a gun. The light-blue walls had claw marks here and there, long and jagged. His shoes crunched down on wood chips that had fallen away.
There was a rattle from the spare bedroom. Theo turned into a statue.
"Hello?"
It took him a long time to start moving again.
He stood at the bedroom door, afraid to move. He blinked and his mind filled with awful, red images.
He kicked the door open, like he'd seen in those Muggle cop shows.
The noise was coming from the owl cage in the far corner of the room. It was his wife's owl, Gold. Gold was frantic, smashing his body against the cage. Theo let him out, and Gold nipped him a good one on the wrist.
"Dammit!" Theo shouted, and swatted at him. Gold retreated back into the cage.
"I was trying to help you, you little shit." Theo said. His voice was breaking up. He was afraid.
His wife was nowhere to be found in the house. It was actually a relief. He was an okay duelist—certainly nothing special.
[3]
He went to the fireplace, threw in the Floo powder from the container sitting on top of it.
Theo spoke clearly: "Ministry of Magic, Auror Department." And stepped through.
The fireplace of the Auror Department was charmed so that Theo could not move inside of it, or out from it. He would not be released from its hold until a word was spoken. The word changed every two hours.
Aurors immediately surrounded him. Weasley and Potter were among them.
"Nott?" Potter said. "What is it?" But the look on his face made it seem like he knew.
"It's the full moon." Theo said. "Lavender...she must've seen it."
