A/N: Honestly at this stage I'm not sure why I'm even pretending that I'm sticking to an update schedule... Warning: mention of rape and generalised violence.
12: Bend
Theo woke to the warmth of sunlight on the back of his neck and the rain-and-roses scent of Granger's hair filling his nose. He realised that he was curled around her, that his face was buried in the back of her neck, mouth almost touching the nub of bone at the top of her spine.
He froze, noting that he was still wearing the muggle jeans and jumper from the day before, and trying to remember falling asleep, before Granger shifted in his arms, turning over to stare into his eyes.
Their faces were very close together; Theo could feel the eddying current of their breath as it swirled between them. Again he sensed it, that gentle pull that he told himself was the Vow, the faint hint of vertigo drawing him to her. Granger blinked, not moving otherwise, and he could feel the tension of her muscles, the patient waiting. He swallowed and leaned away, pulling his arm from beneath her and rising from the bed.
He didn't look back as he slipped out of the door, as he made his way down to the kitchen where a flick of his wand had the kettle whistling steam. Granger entered and he wordlessly passed her a mug of tea, made just as he had watched her do it: Earl Grey with the barest dash of milk.
She took the mug from his hand, offering him a murmured "Thank you," without looking at him before moving to sit at the table, pulling a book towards her from the stack that she had left the day before.
Theo sipped his own tea, leaning back against the kitchen counter and watching her for a long moment, noting the determined force of her attention on the book; the too-casual blankness of her expression.
A mind of winter.
He leaned over to the pile of books and lifted one off the top, settling himself opposite her and opening it to the first page.
OOOOO
The days passed like this, the pair of them migrating from the kitchen to the sitting room to Grimmauld Place and back again. Hermione checked books off her reading list, compared her notes to Nott's; pulled more heavy volumes from the shelves at Grimmauld and carried them back through the Floo to read in the relative quiet of her own home.
She took Nott for long walks around a nearby park, distracting him from the sheer proliferation of Muggles by quizzing him about the novels that he devoured every evening. To her surprise Nott became almost talkative when discussing books, and she found it easy to tease him, to draw him out further with quiet questions, tipping her head thoughtfully and feeling a flutter in her stomach when she saw his eyes follow the motion, cataloguing the emotions that flitted across his face as he answered her.
They didn't mention the morning that he had woken up in her bed, and after that night Hermione was careful to place silencing charms on her room before she went to sleep. She assumed that Nott did the same, because she hadn't heard him cry out again. From the shadows under his eyes, and the hunted expression he wore most mornings when he appeared in the kitchen, she guessed that the ghosts of his past still disturbed his sleep.
Though she and Harry had planned for her and Nott to move into Grimmauld as soon as he seemed up to it, the insistent attentions of the Aurors made this impossible. By the end of the first fortnight of Nott's release Hermione's house had been inspected five times, and it became clear that Davies had no intention of leaving them be.
"Honestly, Hermione," he drawled the next time she let him in, stalking past her and starting up the stairs to the sitting room. "Aren't you getting bored of your little rehabilitation experiment yet?" He twirled his wand between his fingers and grinned nastily at Theo, who glowered at him from the armchair.
"It isn't an experiment," Hermione said evenly, following him into the room and folding her arms so that Davies wouldn't see her knuckles whiten as she squeezed her hands into fists. "Nott is innocent, he doesn't need rehabilitating."
Davies laughed harshly. "Nott was found guilty by the Wizengamot and by rights he should be in Azkaban," he said, voice low and venomous. "Whatever fucked-up little crusade you and Potter are leading, you need to stop." He pushed himself away from the bookcase he had been leaning on and advanced towards her. "I don't know who's been teaching you how to play politics, Granger, but you've got your little Slytherin puppet now. This needs to stop."
They were nearly nose to nose, and Hermione glared back at him. "He isn't a puppet," she insisted, "and it won't stop. The Ministry is rotten, Roger, and I will play whatever games I need to to try and fix it."
"You meddling bitch, Granger, you need to learn to leave things -"
"I think that's enough, don't you?"
Nott's voice was even, but it came from closer than Hermione expected, and she realised that he was standing right behind her. She didn't need to look over her shoulder to feel the strength of the glare he was levelling at Davies, and she saw the other man blink, recoiling slightly.
"What a good little dog you are," he sneered. "Ready to defend your mistress." His eyes slid from Nott to Hermione. "I've wasted enough time here, so I'll just need you to demonstrate that the Vow is still in place, and then I'll be going. Tell Nott to stand still and stay silent."
Hermione swallowed, her mouth going dry. She knew Davies was aware of how much she hated this, how much she loathed commanding Nott to do things. "Nott," she murmured, turning to look at him, stepping back slightly. "Please stand still, and don't say a word until I tell you to." He narrowed his eyes, and a muscle flickered in his cheek, but other than that he stood as though frozen.
"Good," Davies said, "Now -" he leaned close to Nott's ear, saying something in a tone too low for Hermione to catch, though she saw the other wizard go pale, his hazel eyes glittering with anger.
Davies stepped back, surveying Nott with satisfaction, and then threw Hermione a mocking nod. "Until next time," he said, turning on his heel and making his way downstairs.
Hermione waited until she heard the crack of disapparition before she looked back to Nott. "You can move now, and speak." She sighed, "What did he say?"
Nott's face was still white, and now the muscles tightened across it as she saw him struggle to keep a rein on his fury. "Nothing that bears repeating," he said eventually, between gritted teeth, before crossing to the stairs and climbing up them. She heard the door of his room slam and felt her heart sink.
OOOOO
"Good thing she has you muzzled," Davies had breathed, "I've heard that Notts have trouble keeping their women in line."
Blood and his mother calling his name and the slash of his father's wand and Granger's eyes her eyes her mouth her scent her blood her blood her blood -
There was a knock at his bedroom door. "Nott?"
A mind of winter, he told himself, as he rose from the bed and crossed to open it. "What?"
"I'm going to the Ministry." Granger had buttoned herself into formal robes and thrown a dark red cloak around her shoulders. With her hair swept away from her face to fall down her back she was a far cry from when she was wearing the casual, muggle clothing that seemed to be her go-to. It took him a moment to even register what she had said, but when he did he frowned. "So I'll need your wand."
"Why?"
"Because I have to ward you inside the house," she answered. At his glower she sighed, her shoulders drooping. "Davies is being a prick," she said bluntly, "And we need answers which we aren't getting from the Black library, which means we need to get into Nott Manor."
Theo had explained the problem a few days after his release, sitting at the table at Grimmauld Place with Granger, Potter, Draco and Narcissa.
"It isn't the blood wards that are an issue," he'd told them. "It's the fact that my father made it unplottable."
"I need to get the request for a visit with Thoros expedited, and I can't do that with you there," she said now, fixing him with the haughty look he knew she'd learned from Narcissa. It didn't suit her, he thought, the haughtiness. It made her beauty cold where it should be warm.
"What makes you think they'll let you? Narcissa can't get in to see Lucius."
"I'm not Narcissa," Granger said, "And your father is not -"
"Granger," he said flatly, "My father was one of the - the - Voldemort's," he spat the name as though it were poisonous, "Most trusted advisers." She made a frustrated gesture with her hand and he caught it, unthinking, gripping her fingers tightly. "Even if you can get in to see him you can't go alone, you can't -"
"Oh, is that right," she spat, suddenly furious. "I think I can handle visiting your father in prison, Nott. I fought in a war, you know. I wore his bloody locket around my neck. I was tortured." She wrenched her hand from his, tugging her sleeve up to bare the scar from Bellatrix's knife. "I was ready to die to stop Voldemort."
Theo laughed bitterly. "Oh well done, Granger. How bloody brave of you." He felt years of fear and anger welling up inside him, and then suddenly they were spilling from his mouth. "Dying is easy," he spat, and her eyes gleamed but Theo pressed on. "If he'd ever got his hands on you Voldemort would have obliterated you. He would have dug into your heart and pulverised everything you hold dear."
"Everything I hold dear was either right beside me fighting or already ripped away," she snarled, and he remembered what Draco had told him she had done to her parents.
"Was it?" Theo whispered, giving a tiny but emphatic shake of his head. "Doesn't matter. He'd have gone into your head and made you attach the very memory of everyone you've ever loved to pain and horror." He took her hand again, keeping his voice quiet and even, desperate to make her listen. "He would have had you violated in every way you can imagine. And if you thought that it was worth the sacrifice, he would have found everything you wished to save and ensured it was destroyed. And he would have bent your mind until you were glad."
He swallowed, feeling faintly ill, before he went on, "And my father would have watched, and laughed, and thought that you deserved all of it just because you weren't born in a Manor and your name isn't written in the book of sacred twenty-eight, and I don't want you going to seem him alone."
He paused, hearing the ricochet of his own wild heartbeat in his ears, then, "How do you think Bellatrix became as she was?"
Granger frowned at the sudden change in tack. "Bellatrix Lestrange was mad," she breathed, and he saw the glimmer of fear in her eyes as she remembered.
"No," another shake of his head. "No, Narcissa told us. Me and Draco, when she first escaped from prison. Bellatrix Black was hungry. She wanted power, she wanted knowledge. And he filled her up so full of it that her mind burst its banks, and my father watched him do it."
Somehow his grip on her hand had drawn her closer, and there was barely any distance between them now, he realised, as she looked up at him.
"You're hungry too, Granger," he murmured, tilting his head thoughtfully, though it scared him to realise the truth of it. "And he - Voldemort - he would have taken that hunger and used it to break you, because you do not know how to bend." He stretched his mouth into a small, joyless smile. "You do not know how to comply just enough that you can still hate yourself for what you do, because that's how you know that you remain your own. And my father will see that - he'll see it and he'll -"
He stopped, remembering the Carrow twins in his final year; remembered raising his wand on command, willing the spell to be gentle, gazing into the terrified eyes of the first-year students.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry -
A mind of winter.
Granger didn't move, breathing his air. At this distance he could see the way that brown and gold mixed in her eyes, could smell the sharp, floral scent of her.
"Is that what you did then, Nott?" Her voice was low, the tone biting. "Did you comply just enough? Break just enough for him to believe that it was all the way?"
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
Theo closed his eyes, too ashamed to hold her gaze, so he didn't see her lift her hand, only felt her run her finger gently down his cheek and across his bottom lip. He inhaled sharply, eyes opening to burn into hers.
"And what if I don't bend now?" she whispered, "Which of us will break then?"
"Tell me to break and I will," he said, his voice sounding suddenly breathless, even to himself. "For you, I will."
He felt for the fluttering tug that linked them, knew that if she commanded him he would not fight it. The desire was his: the need, the yearning for her - he couldn't fool himself into thinking it was a side-effect of the Vow. It was just her.
"No," Granger said, shaking her head violently and trying to push him away, "No, I won't, you can't-"
"I can bend instead," Theo heard himself say, as he caught her wrists to hold them between their bodies, leaning his head down to hover his mouth above hers.
Her breath tickled his lips.
"Not like this," she whispered, and then she was pulling her hands from his, taking his wand from his unresisting grasp and backing away towards the door, leaving him alone with his anger and his fear and the horror of his memories.
Alone in the house that felt empty as soon as she had left it, as much of a prison as the cells beneath the Ministry. It was the Vow that imprisoned him though, Theo told himself, but he knew that he was not so much captive as captivated. His awareness occupied at every moment with the knowing of her. The needing of her. He squeezed his shaking hands into fists and rested his forehead on the wall, trying to stamp down on the impotent rage that coursed through his blood.
By the time she returned it was late and Theo lay in bed listening to the weariness of her feet on the stairs. Listening as she paused outside his bedroom door, imagining her laying her fingers on the wood, before she continued upstairs.
He lay there, counting the minutes, trying to go to sleep and not dream of brown and gold. He was tired of fighting it; tired of fighting her.
When he pushed her door open he could see her eyes open, catching the faint gleam of light that spilled into the room behind him. Granger didn't say anything, but she moved over in the bed and Theo climbed onto it behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and tucking his head into the back of her neck.
Even with her ridiculous hair, it seemed he could breathe easier here, her body a shield against his nightmares as he hoped his was for her.
Bend, he told himself. Bend so as not to break.
A mind of winter.
A/N: Thank you very much as always for all the review love - reading them makes my day! This chapter is for eiralu and others who have asked - I know where this is going, and I have every intention of getting it there, but my personal schedule means that updating more than once a week is difficult. Unusually however I've actually got the next chapter at least partly written, so that should be out sooner rather than later. My other WIP, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ginevra, is coming to a head though so trying to balance the two...
