Chapter 4
The bumping of uneven ground beneath the carriage was simply intolerable. Three days journey from sun-up to sundown in this esoteric seed-pod, being pitched back and forth without end, all day,to deliver them to the Gresham House. A wizard should have apparated himself to the front bleeding door, thought Draco Malfoy as he stretched a leg out across the seated bench to the opposite side.
The incessant motion of being bumped and rocked was enough to make a man scream his lungs raw to the heavens. Draco straightened his back for the umpteenth time in the last three days since piling into this bare heap of wood and shabby padding, and he groaned theatrically.
"Remind me again how these peasants deign to dictate how we travel?" He groused to his companion.
Theodore Nott raised his head from his fist as he had his attentions to the window, regarding the scenery as they had entered the endless roads through towns, and back into the plains, and various woods along their journey to the Morvan Mountains. He turned to Draco "For the third time, Drake, it wasn't exactly outlined," he huffed "it was one of the few details my father actually left out." Theodore shrugged his shoulders a few times to loosen the muscles. This endless dance of bounces and rattles was leaving him in a state of absolute ill comfort. Draco rolled his head in a circle and stretched his arms.
"Load of horseshite this is," he jerked his head toward the coachman of their horse-drawn carriage. "Any fool with the salt to tell his arse from a hole would know we could have apparated" he tossed his head with a sneer on his pale lips and leaned back. The arduous journey was nothing short of unnecessary; they were wizards. Travel was solved with the focus on your destination, a simple incantation followed by the wave of your wand, and voila, there you were.
"So your father did not broker you a reason why we couldn't apparate?" Theodore questioned. Draco motioned his head in the negative.
"You imply my father endowed me with more information than was absolutely necessary" he spat. "his cards are invariably close to his chest, lest anyone cheat him in the game". Theodore gave a cagey nod to his companion. What the blond man gave away and what he knew were surely different commodities entirely.
Theodore had been taken into his father's private chambers only a few days prior to be educated on the plan, from the perspective of Thoros. An older man when Theodore was born, his father was a great deal more removed from Theodore's day-to-day, allowing tutors and governesses to have handled his sons more formal upbringing. Time spent alone with his distant, cold patriarch was unusual, and uncomfortable. Theodore held a great deal of esteem for his father; a lifetime of investigation and tutelage in magic had made him a formidable wizard, indeed. But a warm, and loving sire, he was not.
He'd left no room for Theodore's opinions on the matter, but told him solely what to expect from the family of Gresham House. "Old House," he said in his gravely, deep voice "Loren Gresham is a man with a soft-heart for his family, and a stickler for the Law." He narrowed his eyes at Theodore. "You can use that." Theodore had simply nodded his understanding. "Keep close eye on the Lady," he drew a finger and pointed "She is an Allerton, and that House breeds no fools. She'll pin an extra eye on the two of you, see to it that you can deflect her suspicions of you.
Thoros lifted his chin and leaned back in the chair he had been sitting in, Theodore still standing before him, a youth growing into his manhood, tall, wiry and agile. He had his mother's eyes, and Thoros had always found it difficult to look into them for any length of time. It always brought back memories he wished he could rid himself. Pictures in his mind of his beautiful wife, their son before him an echo of her beauty, and her life cut short suddenly. He despised seeing her in him; and he rarely took company with his son because of it. Truthfully, Thoros was no man who felt love in him for his offspring; conceiving Theodore was a duty to him and nothing more. Now, as a man, Theodore served not only to further the future of the house, but would serve well as a pawn in tipping the scales in the favor of his Lord and Master.
No, Thoros had only ever had one such time in his life when the fluttering in his heart had stirred, and his pulse had quickened with joy. The feeling of his young palms sweating when he first saw her, how her hair had shone in the sunlight, and when she smiled at him, how it felt like a thousand sons painted the sky for the both of them. Those years were long past, and his wife's body had long ago been entombed in the crypt below the keep of House Nott, having left Thoros without any warning, a mewling bundle of infant that he felt bereft of any feelings toward.
"Will there be anything else, My Lord?" Theodore had inquired formally, remaining stoic in the face of his sire. Thoros pointed his finger to Theodore's chest, his eyes hardened and his voice steeled. "Watch closely the Malfoy boy," he offered, "his father's ambitions are that of our Lord's, but young Malfoy is a braggart and a spoilt brat, and imagines himself the ringleader in this scheme, but his ego will be his undoing." He eyed his son speculatively. "There will be no failure here, boy. You will see to it that plans prosper."
The omission was unexpected; House Nott and House Malfoy were allies. Trusted counsel to the Lord of House Gaunt. Theodore was well acquainted with Draco and his frequent self-admirations. Theodore reserved the commentary offered to him for a later time.
Seated before him, Theodore examined his companion; a long-time friend of his House, Theodore and Draco had been reluctant cohorts through their fathers. Draco's gray eyes had betrayed nothing more than what he had explained. His refined features were set in a mask of indifference as he gazed in supposed boredom out the window of their carriage. Theodore buried his wariness of his compatriot beneath a view of feigned ignorance and moved on from his memories.
Dragon riders he thought to himself, in awe, suppressing a shiver beneath his cloak. Theodore was no stranger to the skies, but the picture in his mind's eye of the air hitting his face as he surged through it astride the moving, living mass of a dragon….. He had never even seen Dragons, let alone a person riding one. It seemed a fanciful idea, at that.
"What did your father tell you, Drake?" Theodore entreated his companion. Draco had not offered a great deal to Theodore to this point, but based on what his father had told him, and what he already knew through experience, this what Draco knew, and what he let on were not mutually exclusive.
Draco looked at his nails in assumed boredom. "Not anything in too great of detail," he scraped the inside of a short nail for imaginary particles "solely that we are to get Dragons, and fly the bumbling beasts home. Once we've returned, they'll be surrendered to His Lordship, and our task will be fulfilled." His grey eyes looked out the window calmly, his face still devoid of any indications to assume otherwise.
"What of the House itself?" Theodore inquired, lightly. Now, Thoros had not offered any information to this topic. Loren; yes. A soft man with little resolve perhaps. The wife, to be wary of and avoid suspicious behaviors. But whom else? Theodore knew the House had children of its own, but not how many, nor how old. The Houses Aligned to the Lord rising from House Gaunt had not had any social contact to any houses in the alliance of the Guild Houses in one score and six years, merely terse meetings held by the House Lords, and never in the company of wives and children.
Draco was good at this game, but he was trying too hard not to give anything up, Theodore acknowledged in his head. He did not press for anything else, let Draco think his answers were sufficient to satisfy Theodore's curiosities and file the response away for a later date.
Theodore leaned back against the padded wall behind him, knocking his head a few times discontentedly. The stifling air inside was starting to get to him, and he leaned himself to the window to look out again. Keep his mind moving and in other places than the stagnation of this expedition. It was at that moment he saw along the horizon the jutting peaks of the Morvan Mountains, almost misty and blue in the distance. Theodore smirked impetuously. "The Mountains are in sight finally." He offered to Draco, who righted himself and shot over to the opposite window, almost desperate to crawl out and witness with his own eyes. Their sojourn was wearing down his icy exterior a bit; their mutual distress in their journey had left them more irritable and their guard worn more than expected. Draco made a noise in his throat in his impertinence.
"Finally" he huffed, leaning back into his seat across from Theodore. "I'm already imagining a warm bed with my body fully horizontal." The Nott scion continued to further drink in the vast stretch of mountains, the road below the carriage bearing them straight into their craggy and rugged embrace. The mountains peculiarly sprung themselves straight from the earth below without and playful hills prior to lend any buffer, only rock face soaring into the skies from the earth below, reaching into the blue heavens above to claw at the atmosphere.
Theodore rolled his head slowly around in a circle and rested his arm along the still of his window, reposing his head on his forearm. A little breeze picked up along his face as he still watched the distant mountains before them, wondering how much longer it would take them to reach the castle of House Gresham within the mountains.
The air soothed him, though the occasional crosswind brought the less desirable aromas of egesta from their horse-drawn transport. With the sun overhead, the air was drier than he was accustomed to. His home was situated much like the Malfoys in the South, and nearer the coast where there were frequent morning fogs, rains for days and cooler weather in the night. The sun overhead beat down on his face and his pasty complexion with an unforgiving heat he was not totally used to. His dark hair falling over his eyes in the front, which he pushed behind his ear. Malfoy's sigh across the interior of the carriage reminded him that he still could not completely lose himself in his thoughts with his compatriot so easily annoyed.
The paid carried on in near silence through that day, mistakenly assuming that the appearance of the broad range of mountains before them meant that their passage to Morvan was winding down. When the sun had slipped down to the end of the sky to slip behind those great mountains –now larger than before, but curiously much father from them than they presumed- the arrived in a smaller town, with the bustle of folk residing there packing up their livery and stalls from markets, and companionably quieting themselves about.
At the driver slowed the animals burdening their entourage, Draco rapped a hand to the ceiling "You out there!" he hailed the driver. He received no reply, but the abrupt yanking open of their door with a gruff voice from outside –a domestic chauffeur from House Gresham with a thick beard and dark hair, pulled back at the nape of his neck.
"Rooms await ye inside, m'lords" he ground out, not waiting to hear their response as he climbed down from his perch to attend the four dark horses drawing them through the long journey. Draco wrinkled his nose at the opened door, unamused by such a casual display from someone so clearly at the station of a serf, or menial.
"You, sir," he called "where be the valets? The coachman?" The man chuckled with his back to the door, Theodore could see already that there was no grand processional as Draco was assuming there would be in tow with them. The man barely looked back to them as he smoothed his broad and rough hands astride one of the great horses, voicelessly communicating his presence to the gelding, soothing its side as he stood there. In his touches he thanked the animal gently, paying it consideration as his large hand started working the straps to the harnesses to release the animals one by one, a soft cloth appearing from his person to wipe away the days moisture from his coat. The soft combing along the whetted hairs of the animal as he signed in little spurts, clomping his enormous hoofs into the dirt again and again. The other three mammoth animals all nickered and blew air from their noses at the carriage man impatiently. He chuckled lowly and murmured words neither could hear from inside.
"They be expecting you inside, lads" he called to them from the ground. "Ye trunks are at the door." Draco snit unattractively, the corner of his lip raising to his nose and he looked at Theodore expectantly, gesturing to the open door with no attendant perched outside it, poised to receive their whim or command. Theodore rolled his eyes and drew himself out the door and upright down the small stairs to the ground. He realized again at that moment that the ground much lower than it felt like when a person was cooped up inside. He glanced to the man busying himself with the care of his horses; the man stood more than a head higher than himself, and wore a light leather sleeved tunic which fitted his boundless shoulders. His size rather fit that of those creatures that drew the carriage forth; he mused to himself and walked onward to the door of what appeared to be an Inn. "Ready at sun-up again te'morrow den." The man called behind Theodore, reminding him of the schedule they'd kept these two days.
He swung open the door and registered that Draco had followed him out of the carriage. With how long they had spent in the damned thing, Theodore would have presumed that Draco would have jettisoned out of it at the first sign of a stop, but he had held himself imperiously back awaiting his usual flourish of attendants. As he stood completely alone save but the company of the carriage man –whose name was never once offered- Theodore came to understand quickly that there was no such subordinates in tow at this juncture.
Stepping into the Inn, there were only a few peoples in within, the ceiling vaulted upward at a far wall where disembodied antlers from wild beasts were mounted in a seemingly random array. The walls around him were of plan, rough wood, and the floor even less remarkable. Behind a bar was an older man, and a younger woman with a smile worn with lines and long dark hair. The man hailed him with the lift of his palm and gestured to stairs at the side of the room beyond the many tables. With a word Theodore had grasp his trunk, and the wave of his wand, miniaturized it into his palm and strode passed to where the man gestured.
He smiled briefly at the young man "Name's Hendry, sirs" he bobbed his head. "Rooms have been prepared and turned down. Warm food for ye when ye require," Draco sided with Theodore, not liking that he had been first through the doors. His inclinations were to maintain yourself as the figure to head the troupe, not to follow behind as an underling. Draco scrutinized the man in his shabby wears, stained with food and toils in distain. A disgusting people out here, he noted, all grubby and unkempt. His eyes wandering to the woman, who similarly bore signs at her elbows of wet, and a rag at her waist that left little to be assumed at its purpose. Though she beamed at the other end of the bar to patrons as she readied new mugs to be filled, her appearance was so unrefined that Draco simply turned back to the man, Hendry he said his name was, and spoke no response.
Theodore nodded his thanks, "These stairs, then?" Hendry agreed, pointing again, giving them a light smile.
"Just to the top of the stairs, doors are open".
The pair ascended the wooden stairs up to the next floor, and their rooms sat open and waiting for them, one assuredly as lackluster in their resplendence as the other, Theodore simply strode into the one closest to him, glancing over his shoulder to Draco at he entered the other. He could not conceive that the Draco could be, in any way, hoping for company at they ate, dressed and made ready to sleep for the night. He was not wrong; The Malfoy air shut his door behind him and Theodore did not hear another noise out of the room until the next morning.
As he was finding his way between the sheets later that evening, his bedclothes donned, food eaten and warm mead drank, he found himself looking up at a wholly unremarkable wooden ceiling, roughhewn beams above him, and white walls desperately needing another coat of wash in his small room, playing in his imagination with a scene high in the bright sky. The sun blazing and warm and the air whipping around him wildly. He percolated again as he thought how, when one rode astride a broom, the air was a wild creature you could barely contain as you barreled through it. In his musings, before he shut his lids in repose he considered that there was likely no comparison when regarding what the the back of a Dragon would feel like.
As the sun rose itself closer to the horizon at the plains, drenching the mountains at the West in its light, Theodore found himself waking with no prompt. His long body draped unceremoniously along the narrow bed, almost to the point where his limbs were ready to start dangling off.
The inn below was quiet, but there was stirring above as people moved, and walked and spoke softly in the morning. There were two sharp knocks at the door and Theodore sat up, stretching his tight back and lifting his arms overhead. With a great yawn he mouthed out a response somewhere between a "yes" and a "what". He could hear Draco chuckle from the other side.
"By your leave, your Majesty, but we simply must be going." He said through the door. Theodore groaned at Draco's constant snarking. It seemed that if there weren't complaints he was voicing, it was annoying jabs he was making. He busied himself with dressing, pausing only to splash some cold water at a basin at the side of the bed. Donning his clothes again and using a simple sorcery to clean out his mouth, he opened the door. Draco Malfoy was casually leaning in the frame of the door looking immensely put-upon. "Quite ready then, your Nobleness?" Theodore frowned.
"And here I thought you were here with a tray for breakfast." He threw back. Draco scowled and shoved off the frame.
"Not in your lifetime, or mine." And Theodore chuckled, going back only for his shrunken trunk, and he shut the door behind him as they descended the stairs. The same woman from the night before was there tending to a table with customers, though the two bade her no friendly farewells as they headed out the door, and she offered them nothing of companionable partings either. Theodore wondered if she knew already that they from the South, and they were not part of the Guild here in the North.
Outside the door to the inn was the open door at the carriage outside, open and waiting for them to climb inside. The beast-like man with his dark and heavy beard at the helm, the broad shouldered horses tethered into their harnesses, rested and ready for the remaining stretch. Theodore hedged a quick bet with himself and called out to the carriage man. "All day today, again, is it?" He tried. The carriage man's head turned to him, not having expected any outreach in conversation. The man eyed Theodore before as he stood on the steps, holding the frame of the door in his hand to see if the man would make any response.
"Past the midday." He offered simply in his gruff and deep voice. Theodore thanked him with a nod and entered, shutting the door behind him. Draco had already nestled himself into the padding of the seat at the front, his booted foot resting on the lip of the chair. He held a red apple up to his lips and crunched noisily on it. He produced another one and offered it to Theodore without any conversation. He took it and thanked him, Draco shrugged as he worked on through several more bites.
Despite that both of their fathers served the same man who had resolved himself the self-titled Lord of The Houses, neither boy in the carriage had a relationship to speak of with the other beyond the political alliances created through the reigning Lords in the Southern Houses. Not having grown up with anything outside a nurse-maid or governess, Theodore wasn't accustomed to forcing talk with boys his own age when his father's social circle consisted solely of wizards covertly laying plans within plans in various plays for power. This was the first time he had ever travelled to the North, and Draco seemed utterly disinterested in creating any sort of companionable means in which to bear this drawn out journey. Theodore hadn't the faintest inkling of how to just talk to someone. Anyone.
Languidly, he draped himself back along the sill of the window, staring quietly at the distant mountains, noting that they had grown in height since he had first spotted them. The rattling of chains and grunting of horses at the fore of the carriage in a perpetual melody. It is entirely too early to be this bored. He concluded.
…
A/N: The word 'score' is an old word for 20. So one score = 20. One score six = 26.
In response to the review from Guest:
Thank you! I am greatly looking forward to writing more of the interactions! I've kept the pairing vague intentionally, because it's going to be a slow, slow process in the telling (but yes; I'm going for a Dramione). However, you will have to be patient.
So a couple of things to note: I shaped Theodore/Theo as there's no real precedent for him in the books.
You might notice that a few people are OOC if compared with the books (Narcissa, Hermione, maybe some other people down the road who haven't made any appearances yet). This is how I'm making them for this story, because 'I do what I want' (lol. But seriously tho). Just fair warning so peeps aren't comparing them too much thinking I didn't get the character correct.