A/N: Music inspiration: 'When your dreams all fail / And the ones we hail / Are the worst of all / And the blood's run stale...' - Demons, Imagine Dragons

Ch. 9 The Blood's Run Stale

Theo

It was about ten minutes into his first seventh year Muggle Studies lesson when Theo realised there was going to be a class at Hogwarts more full of hippogriff-shit than Divination was.

He knew all the doctrine, the ideology, already of course. His father had had him memorising the 'indicators of pure-blood status' from when he was eight years old. And so he had, and absorbed it all without really questioning it. When he had got to Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin, he was then surrounded by children of other elite pure-blood families who had been taught the same - his prearranged tribe - who he'd already met at countless dinners and weddings and parties throughout his childhood. For many years it had seemed safer to not question it so he hadn't. Doubts had crept in but he'd discarded them because, well, did it really matter anyway? The pure-blood supremacists believed what they believed and others believed differently. And that was that.

But then Harry Potter had come back from that graveyard cradling Cedric Diggory's broken and dead body in his arms and shouting about the Dark Lord's return. He remembered how Goyle had turned to him and Draco as they sat in those stands overlooking the maze, excitement glinting in his eyes as he'd slowly whispered 'Shit's about to get real.'

Theo knew then that the tables were turning, that allegiances were shifting, that things were changing irrevocably.

He'd come back in his fifth year to most of the school believing Fudge's cover up but him and some others in Slytherin house knowing the truth. They knew because, like his father, some of their parents had been in that graveyard too, apparated there as soon as they had felt the Dark Lord's summons.

Theo knew then that these beliefs, this ideology, mattered now more than any other time in his life.

So he sifted through it all in his head. An advantage of having been made almost emotionally numb was that it could sometimes be easier to be objective, logical, deductive. It wasn't through any compassion for Muggles or Muggle-borns that he started to secretly reject the ideals he had grown up with. It was because, well, pureblood supremacist beliefs just didn't make sense.

The most talented, brightest witch in his year - the one that had beaten him to first place in potions for four years out of six - was a Muggle born. And the process of stealing magic was so full of holes it didn't stand up. If everyone could steal magic than surely everyone would be doing it and there would be no Muggles at all? In fact, the idea of stealing magic actually made magic less special, less unique, something that was transient and ubiquitous.

And those apparent pure-blood indicators: his five year old cousin, an apparent pure-blood of course, certainly hadn't shown any magical ability before he was three. He himself had been rubbish on a broom up until he was seven. Well, he still was. And if pure-bloods just kept breeding with pure-bloods they were bound to just bloody die out one day which was surely not the point.

The stupidity of it - the illogic - offended Theo.

And then Theo had snuck into his father's study and read through his grandfathers old notebooks and parchments that filled one of the bottom draws of his father's desk. His grandfather, Cantankerous, had written the compendium of the 'Sacred Twenty-Eight'. The more Theo absorbed himself in the papers, the more he could see the prejudice, the bias, with which his grandfather had conducted his 'research'. He could sense the desperateness with which Cantankorous had distorted the truth, bent it and molded it into shapes of intolerance and prejudice.

Theo was not sure how long he'd sat there, on the floor of his father's study, surrounded by the yellowing papers of his grandfather, as the beliefs he had grown to base his identity, his life on, splintered and smashed and shattered in to pieces.

Then, not satisfied with part-truths, he had done his own research and had reached the pretty certain conclusion that more than one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families had Muggles in their family tree a few generations back or more. Including the Notts. Some of the families had been declaring that for years of course, like the Weasleys - unashamed of their Muggle ancestry.

And during this research, Theo made another discovery that shook him to his core. He'd understood why it had been kept a secret, but it was definitely there, in the papers and diaries he'd unearthed throughout his family home.

Only three generations back.

A werewolf.

His mother's grandfather. Making him a direct descendant.

He'd went on to learn that, although werewolves could have magical children not afflicted with lycanthropy, certain wolf-like traits could be passed down through the blood. And suddenly, the pieces slotted together: his powerful sense of smell, and less so hearing, made sense now. And the overwhelming, feral-like urges he had to fight - to hit, to kick and of course, sometimes to even bite. He had put those down to the fact he'd been forced to suppress all emotions except anger but he knew now that there was something more to it. Over the following months, Theo had paid more attention to the patterns of these urges and realised that, yes, they were always stronger during a full moon…

No wonder his parents wanted to keep it a secret - the remnants of wolf in his blood. Not being solely pure-blood was one thing, but something as sullied and dirty as a werewolf, a half-breed, was something else entirely.

And Theo wondered whether the fear of his wolfblood, and what it could do, was the reason why his mother had asked him to make that Unbreakable Vow. The vow that had become his prison.

This had all taken place over his fifth year. He'd managed to accept it all over the course of that year, despite having no confidantes, except of course Snape. Theo had started off by repeatedly asking Snape about werewolves, wolfsbane and lycanthropic heritability, under the guise of academic interest. But Snape had observed him with that detached shrewdness he had and finally guessed at the truth. It had actually been a relief to unburden himself of his secret and so Theo hadn't denied it.

As far as Theo knew, Snape had never broken his confidence and had taught him how to brew a type of wolfsbane potion that suppressed the worst of the urges and took the edge of the scents when they became eye-wateringly overpowering. Like during the full moon or when a group of the older Slytherin girls' cycles synced together - why did they do that for fucks sake, it wasn't like he didn't have enough to deal with. The few days a month when they were most fertile were the most...distracting for Theo.

It was this part of himself that made him feel like an animal, base and primal, and ashamed of the monster that lurked in his blood. But by talking to Snape and thinking logically and rationally about it all, Theo came to accept this part of himself. But accepting that had meant rejecting the beliefs and principles he'd grown up with.

Because the two were irreconcilable.

And another logical conclusion that Theo had had to make from all of this was that the concept of 'blood status' was total, utter hippogriff-shit. Which meant the persecution and the bigotry became, well, distasteful.

Problematic.

Wrong.

But of course, he couldn't say any of this. Because that would probably mean disownment by his family and ostracisation by his peers and to be put in the camp of 'blood traitor', which, now the Dark Lord was back, was really not a great place to be. He had wondered if he would be accepted by 'the other side', but after years at Hogwarts he'd seen and heard how prejudices went both ways and was convinced that he'd never be trusted by Potter and his followers. And then he'd be left with no one; belonging nowhere.

And so it was something else he had to squash down - biting his tongue, nodding and sometimes, with his stomach twisting in self-loathing, even joining in - whilst he sat in classes and walked the halls with people who voiced illogical beliefs and jinxed his schoolmates for being 'mudbloods'.

So when Alecto summarised their curriculum at the beginning of Theo's first Muggle Studies class, he switched his brain off to avoid getting too agitated. He knew it all anyway. And if it wasn't lies, it was stupid.

Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid.