A/N: Hey babes! This chapter is technically a Theo x Hermione, but not really. This one is dedicated to julist, who has been so super supportive of my writing throughout the years and throughout the pairings, lol! This one seems a little dramatic, but it is meant to be a companion piece to a story that I will be getting started on soon, hopefully! It will be a Daphne x Theo and I hope that it is titled Whistle For the Choir (haha, I have been wanting to use that title forever!). So I hope you will keep an eye out for that. You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates, and answer questions!

Please let me know what you thought of this!

He wasn't entirely sure when it happened to him, but Theodore Nott found himself head over heels for a girl. Everytime he was with her, his could feel his heart pounding away against chest, so loud that he was sure that she probably could hear it too. His palms would get sweaty and make his quill slip, leaving his normally impeccable handwriting into a terrible mess that he was sure his late mum would be horrified to see.

And just who was it that had captured his attention, without even being aware of it? None other than the Gryffindor golden girl herself, Hermione Granger.

She was perfect.

Well, she'd always been perfect, since the first day that she walked into Hogwarts. Perfect marks, perfect uniform, perfect life. Everyone in the entire school knew who she was and knew that she was going places since she was eleven. Not like Theo Nott, who had excellent marks himself, excellent breeding, but no one paid him half a mind. No one whispered that Theo Nott was going places, as he was content to just fly below the radar. Anonymous.

Theo had never given Hermione Granger a second thought in his life until he started working with her during their so called Eighth Year. She had to show off how perfect she was by being a friend to the disgraced Slytherins. She made a big speech about how they all deserved second chances, that they'd all been misjudged, and that she was willing to leave the past in the past, if they were too. It was a little self-righteous speech that had him, Daphne, Pansy and Draco giggling away at the way that she acted.

And he might have stayed thinking that she was just an annoying swot with a stick up her self-righteous arse, if he hadn't been paired with her for an arithmancy assignment. He was annoyed with her at first, but slowly, surely, things began to change. He quickly began to see that she was so much more than he ever thought. She was much more than just a swot. She liked kneazles and oranges and she enjoyed a muggle sport called football that Theo actually took the time to learn about. She revealed to him that she always hated the way that Ron and Harry had counted on her to help with her homework.

She was genuinely interested in him too. Asked him why he liked thestrals so much. Listened to him when he revealed that he'd watched his father murder his mother. Talked to him about his favorite Quidditch squad, or what he wanted to do after Hogwarts. She didn't expect anything of him.

They became friends.

And that was when he started seeing her through new eyes. Pink lips parted to show off perfectly straight white teeth. Brown eyes that Draco had once described as mudblood brown now seemed more like the sweetest toffee. The sunlight streaming in through the dusty windows of the library shined on light brown, curly hair. Oh Salazar, what he wouldn't give to run his fingers through that wild hair.

Theo felt his breath catch in his throat whenever she smiled at him. Theo Nott was head over heels for Hermione Granger.

And it made him feel like dragon shite.

Because he knew that she could never return those feelings. They were destined to remain unrequited.

Hermione had revealed to him one afternoon with quite, excited whispers that she and Viktor Krum had just resumed their relationship. The Bulgarian beefcake, as he'd once been described, had swept Hermione off of her feet at the Yule Ball in fourth year, and they'd never stopped writing each other. Now that Krum had been traded to a Quidditch squad in England, they had been going on dates in Hogsmeade, but they were trying to keep it quiet, seeing as the press had been so rude to her last time around.

Theo had been absolutely crushed, unreasonably so, and once he found his voice over the lump in his throat, he'd made a passing comment about how disappointed Weasley must be.

But even if there was no Viktor Krum, or if Theo could somehow gather his courage like a Gryffindor would, and by some miracle, she actually felt the same way about him as he felt about her, they was still no way that they could be together. Because Theo was betrothed to Daphne Greengrass, and he had been since the age of six. It was the kind of pureblood betrothal that had been outlawed well before Theo had been born, but anyone in the circles that his parents had run in still practiced anyway. And there was no way to break blood magic.

So, instead, Theo would spend his days, knowing that Daphne despised him, and Hermione Granger would only ever see him as a friend, and he would drown in his feelings, unrequited.