Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or it's characters, this is merely a work of fanfiction.
A/N: This is a fem!Harry x Theo Nott pairing. I am open to writing more in the future if people like this pairing. Hope you enjoy :)
"Just like your father," they lauded when Harriet was eleven and showed she was handy with a broom.
Those words turned from a compliment to an epithet soon enough. The gentle voices she relied on to guide her grew razor sharp edges as she grew up and asked questions.
When she was eleven she knew things, like some people were good and some people were bad. The Weasleys were good, and the Malfoys were bad.
Simple…or so Harriet thought.
Things still existed in shades of black and white when she was twelve, except for Lord Voldemort, who had always been the most violent shade of red she had ever seen.
She faced the teenaged Lord Voldemort, and was left alone all summer to deal with the memories by herself. She started to wonder if maybe her heroes weren't so perfect after all.
At the age of thirteen, when her godfather Sirius Black returned, she began to see people in various shades of grey. He was neither wholly good, or wholly bad. He was good and bad. He was grey.
That was the year Harriet noticed that all the Weasley children seemed terrified of their mother, and pulled away from them. She also noticed how Malfoy never seemed scared of his parents, despite their many faults. He loved them, and was loved in return, without hesitation or condition.
She thought maybe she should give Slytherins more of a chance, and she did just that.
At fourteen she became aware of all the many things that she did not know, and needed to learn very quickly, if she wanted to survive. Sirius snuck into the castle time and again to teach her, despite the danger to his life. Eventually he set up residence in the Room of Requirement with the help of Dobby.
She learned all kinds of new things that year, like Dark Magic, and runes, and that Theodore Nott Jr had the most stunningly grey eyes in existence. She survived the tournament, and managed to keep Cedric alive, but had received a warning from the Ministry for using a forbidden spell. It didn't matter that she had saved Cedric's life.
That was when she realized that just because something was the law, did not mean that it was right. That summer Remus and Sirius worked a series of illegal spells on several people so she would be able to live with them, and not the Dursleys.
It was worth it.
They made alliances with the families they could behind the Order's back. It turned out that several families wanted a way out of the Death Eater's. A betrothal agreement was signed, and suddenly she was the future Lady Nott. If they survived the war their family's wealth would rival the Malfoy's, and that was something that even the famously cantankerous Lord Nott couldn't turn down.
"Stubborn, arrogant, just like your father." Snape snarled at her when she was fifteen.
She bit down on her tongue and dug her fingernails into Theo's hand under the cover of her Potions desk. She left marks on the back of his hand, and would later soak them in Murtlap Essence to soothe the pain. He pushed it away and told her to let it scar. He wanted proof of her love for him on his body.
"You know what you have to do," Narcissa told her in hushed tones when she visited the school for a Board meeting. She passed her a book that would come to prove instrumental in the war, and looked over Harriet's face. "Just like your father," she whispered. For the first time in years, it didn't feel like a curse.
Harriet approached the locket with a basilisk fang in her hand when she was sixteen. A distorted, horrible version of her father emerged in a plume of smoke, whispering all manner of evil things to her. She faltered until she felt a strong hand curl around hers and bring the fang down upon the locket. It pushed her backwards, and she fell on top of Theo in a heap. He held her in his arms while she cried for hours.
"Just like your father," Sirius told her, tears streaming down his face. She was seventeen, and she had finally done it, she had finally won. Riddle was dead. The violent red of his eyes seeped out of her world with his death.
Sirius turned her towards Theo, and she ran into his arms. When he bent down and kissed her, she melted into it, and wondered if maybe she could finally begin to see the world in colors. He placed a ring onto her finger, and it was the most stunning shade of emerald she had ever seen.