A/N: I'm beyond sorry with how long this update took. The chapter was ready to go last week but parenting and all that reality mumbo-jumbo... also, chapter 8 was a veritable BATTLE. It's still not written but I will continue to attempt to stick to a bi-weekly update. I appreciate all those views, those follows, those favorites. The reviews bring joy to my soul. Now, enjoy!
The Taste of Crow
Luna was in turmoil. Although Theo had dropped his hands from her shoulders upon hearing her confession, she still felt him everywhere. Her skin sung at the contact and it now throbbed at the absence of him.
He towered over her, vibrating from anger and quite a bit of fear, and turmoil turned to despair. She knew he didn't believe her, that he wouldn't, but decency propelled Luna to divulge the most vulnerable part of herself to an almost-stranger. An almost-friend.
She might as well have handed over her heart to the nearest passerby. It was pretty clear she cared naught about its welfare.
Looking at Theo now, Luna attempted to untangle the meticulous case she planned to lay at his feet as proof of her claim, but his once-familiar eyes now closed her out.
No entry. Turn back.
The words fluttered with her heartbeat in her throat. Luna forced them up and out, trading eloquence for honesty. "It's true. I Saw Draco's runes right after I read Hermione's entry. It's how I knew what they were and that they had to do with Draco, presumably his Mark. And I Saw this too."
Believe it, her mind screamed.
It's the truth, urged her heart.
The blue of Theo's eyes flickered with intrigue for only a moment but then cynicism clouded it over. His movements now stiffened with formality, he stepped away. Luna willed her legs to hold her up even as he spoke his cruelest observation yet.
"You really are loony." Theo's voice faded off into some sort of reflective mumble, the way one would speak of a creature newly discovered.
Luna crumpled now that only the wall held her up.
Theo left the room.
Her father served dinner on a tray beside her while vaguely patting her head.
oOo
Theo returned home in a daze. One of the elves greeted him at the door- like he was a bloody guest in his own house- and informed him he was late for dinner.
Immediately, the whirlwind of new information abated. All thoughts of Lovegood disappeared as Theo reoriented himself to the situation at hand, which was a dire one at that. His father abhorred a lapse in etiquette.
Other than fucking legacy, it was the one thing that separated them- as in Purebloods- from the animals- as in anyone who wasn't a Pureblood. Theo knew this intimately because it had been beaten into him from a young age.
Literally so.
Hands trembling, Theo rushed down the halls of the main floor before stopping shy of the closed dining room doors. He stretched out one hand to grip the antique knob- the iron felt warm, as if someone recently grasped it. Theo swallowed hard and pressed forward.
The doors opened onto a familiar scene- the ostentatious room lit by bronzed sconces equally spaced on the wall, supplemented by a dearth of pure white candles on the table. Every seat was set with crystal and china from one end to the other, where his father sat.
With Bellatrix fucking Lestrange.
Theo's pace stuttered for a moment, then he headed to his usual seat with Nott Sr at the head, Theo on his left…
And Bellatrix fucking Lestrange seated on his father's right.
Someone was going to die tonight.
"Father," Theo greeted. His hands flexed under the table and then balled into fists, the feel of anger warm in the confines of his fingers. Nott Sr smiled thinly at his son and Theo knew he was in trouble.
Clearing his throat, Theo attempted to direct the conversation away from whatever sadistic intent curled his father's lips. "I didn't realize congratulations were in order. Is this your new bride?"
The spurious question rang ridiculous in the silent air; yet, the ensuing echo of Theo's words bounced back his true intent.
Do you have any fucking integrity?
Do you really allow that bitch to sit in her seat?
His mouth couldn't, wouldn't form the accusations but his eyes bore into his father's shamelessly, spelling out the message in their navy depths.
Nott Sr huffed a dry, soundless laugh, his mouth rounded with sick amusement. Bellatrix leaned across the table, cackling, as her bosom spilled from her black corset dress.
"Your father couldn't handle me, baby Theodore," Bellatrix cooed. She propped her head up on deadly fingers. "Do you think you could?"
The challenge, so teasingly thrown, curdled Theo's stomach as he didn't miss the implication of her words. Ignoring the dread, he strived for his usual irreverent demeanor.
"I'm flattered," he demurred, pushing back on two legs of the chair. His lack of robes left him nimble as he balanced languidly, and the action caught Bellatrix' attention long enough for Theo to wrap his thumb around his wand peeking from his sleeve.
His father, however, was not distracted and least of all, entertained.
"Enough with the theatrics." Nott Sr pushed back from his seat, the voluminous black Death Eater robes folding on itself as the man crossed his arms. "It's time to earn the Nott name," and Theo couldn't help but mutter from the side of his mouth, "Must I?"
"THEODORE!" His father's roar rattled the china. Taking her cue, Bellatrix stood to echo his father's pose and Theo felt his heart jump into his throat. The legs of the chair felt like the only steady thing in the room as two seasoned Death Eaters started to round the table.
Bellatrix lagged behind his father like a shadow and said, "The Dark Lord calls, baby Theodore. And he will not be denied."
Inevitability coated Theo's tongue as he spared a single moment to Luna, the insufferable wench, who heralded this scenario, who had been incredibly right less than an hour ago.
Pushing past the cruel certitude of the present, Theo managed to ask, "What does he want?"
But he already knew. Because she did.
Nott Sr loomed within arms' reach now and seethed with impatience for his constantly defiant heir. It seemed the time for questions was long past.
"Draco," the man hissed. "And if not him, a replacement."
Theo knew with absolute certainty that would not be him. Or else, true to his word, someone would die tonight. It's not like his father hadn't taught him how.
He stared at this man who was more stranger than kin and focused on the deft sliding of his wand into his palm as his arms hung loose on his sides. Then, he fiercely shot a wordless spell in the Death Eaters' direction; thick smoke poured from the tip, eating up the visibility in the space.
A muttered invocation to Salazar.
The there-and-gone-again brush of Nott Sr's fingers as Theo let his chair cascade backwards.
He disapparated before it even hit the ground.
-Somewhere in Diagon Alley-
Theo felt like a fucking idiot as he stood in some unfamiliar yet fashionable section of Diagon Alley, his left leg bleeding all over the cobblestone. He evidently did nothing by halves as he quickly assessed the sizable splinch. A part of his brain, high on adrenaline, absurdly mourned the lost section of his leg. The rest of him that retained rationality, however…
Get it together, arsehole, before you bleed out in Wizarding London.
Theo stared up at the stone townhouse, identical to about a dozen that lined the street. An intricate rod iron fence boxed off the lot from the walkway; with effort, Theo limped through the gate and up the steps to the door.
When Blaise entered his mind in the seconds he hurtled towards the ground at the Manor, Theo wasn't really sure if all-consuming thoughts of a person would produce a location. He hadn't known where Blaise lived, having never visited him outside of school during the span of their friendship.
He didn't even entertain the idea during his cascade toward escape of how a continental jump during disapparition would have splinched him into fleshy sprinkles.
Theo had thought of Blaise. Only Blaise. And hoped his split-second decision wouldn't get him killed. He started trembling as he glanced down at his trousers, soaked through with blood.
Killed? No. But quite possibly maimed.
He rapped three times and hoped again.
Silence on the other end.
Theo gripped his wand hard. His back grew stiff against the vulnerable open space of the walkway, where anyone could pop into existence and Avada him from behind.
Theo rapped harder. Would it be catastrophic to try and disapparate again?
The numbing sensation spreading up his leg strongly suggested that catastrophic would indeed be the result. Come on Blaise. I fucking need you.
And then his friend appeared like a manifested wish, the inky black of Blaise's face going gray as he wrenched the door open and found Theo struggling to stand. Blaise caught him as his legs finally gave out. He dragged him into the parlor and laid Theo out on the floor which, of course, was laid with exquisite black and white interlocking Italian marble tiles.
After Blaise slammed the door he yelled for an elf.
"Find me dittany. Blood replenishing potion," Blaise switched to a gentle mutter of 'diffindo' against the fabric of Theo's trouser, cutting away the left side to better expose the splinch. The dark man sucked in a breath at what lay beneath and shakily he amended, "Several blood replenishing potions. Now!"
The elf, wide-eyed, disappeared. Blaise stripped out of his waistcoat, then Oxford, using the latter like a fabric safeguard against Theo's wound. Blaise pressed hard, ever silent, tense. Theo attempted a joke. "Don't want me ruining any of your fancy Persian carpets, then?"
Lips tight with stress, Blaise only pressed harder which caused Theo to curse.
"Fuck! Blaise!" The name was wrenched out of Theo on an unwilling groan, twisting under the weight of desperation that threatened to suffocate him.
He'd found Blaise, yes, but the adrenaline from the escape and subsequent injury was fast draining from his system, and it was leaving behind only stark reality.
Theo found Blaise but he lost everything else.
Eyes falling closed, he tumbled into the pain as it spread like a fever from his leg, as it consumed his chest cavity, and the heat of it cleared out every delusion and expectation that had pieced together Theo's facade for the whole of his life.
He was a phoenix, set to rise from the ashes.
Needle pricks of sensation poked through the numbness of his injury, and his reverie, so Theo opened his eyes to discover the elf had come back; Blaise was applying the dittany with movements borne out of rash worry and the liquid poured from the vial in a waterfall.
But the skin started to knit with every drop.
Blaise moved to Theo's head, propping it up gently on his pants now stained with Theo's blood.
"Drink," Blaise clipped and he held the potion to Theo's lips. Its effects spread quickly and after only a few minutes, Theo felt stable enough to sit up. His mate braced him with a hand on his shoulder the grip of which pulsed comfort, security. It also reminded Theo that these assurances could only be temporary.
He shifted his gaze to Blaise to find his friend's eyes dark with anger. They narrowed on Theo in a way that spelt out poorly repressed fear which, unfortunately, Theo was about to exacerbate.
"It's not safe here for me," he stated. Blaise's hand spasmed.
"Why?"
The question opened up a chasm between them, full of all the dark dangerous details that could swallow the two of them whole but Theo refused to let that happen.
Blaise saved him and he intended to repay the favor.
"It wouldn't be safe for you to know," he admitted before struggling onto his feet. Blaise kept hold of Theo and the hand that previously felt like haven turned constricting, alluding to Theo it was past time to go.
"Trust me," Theo urged into the tense space. "I will tell you everything but for now you need to trust me."
Blaise remained unmoved, his grip iron-hard. His fathomless stare bore into Theo as if he could see the suppressed secrets sitting quietly under the skin. When the silence stretched thin, Blaise stubbornly lifted the second blood replenishing potion.
Theo kicked it back with a good dose of panic chasing the liquid down his throat.
He ran from Nott Sr. And Bellatrix fucking Lestrange.
He defied the direct order of Voldemort.
Repercussions were imminent. Inevitable.
There was no bloody time. The second potion, having infused Theo with new strength, allowed him to maneuver himself free of Blaise's grasp. Quickly he pointed his wand at his friend's face. Blaise froze.
"You need to trust me," Theo reiterated, a terrible hazy plan taking shape in his mind with every second that ticked past. His words dripped such severity that Blaise slowly paled.
"You need to trust me to obliviate you so there's no evidence of me being here." Theo's voice bowed under the immense weight of 'obliviate', knowing the responsibility that came with the word, with its intention.
All of which Theo would gladly carry in order to keep Blaise safe.
"I promise I'll tell you after," Theo stuttered as the urgency of the situation pressed to the forefront, blocking out all poise and all reason, "I swear on my magic, Blaise."
Blaise took two long strides forward until the tip of Theo's wand indented his forehead.
"Will you be safe?" Blaise asked.
Thinking of his next stop, and of the inhabitants he was choosing to trust his life with, Theo couldn't help but respond with a wry, "Safe is a relative word."
The rare moment of impudence on Theo's part seemed to be enough to convince Blaise as he nodded his assent, tacit trust clear in his eyes. Theo mouthed the words 'thank you', unable to get them past the appreciation blocking his throat.
Then, after a hard swallow, he intoned, "Obliviate."
oOo
Luna kept getting Ginny's eyes wrong. She squinted at them from her position on the levitating mattress, a place she hardly strayed from over the past 24 hours. Wand in hand, Luna cast a 'tergeo' in a quick little rhythm and she watched as her third attempt at Ginny's eyes sifted away from the ceiling.
Flecks of blended paint fell onto Luna's shirt and tinted her a navy blue. It was too dark a color for Ginny, or any Weasley for that matter.
It was just right for someone else, though.
Luna sighed then dropped the supplies on the comforter next to her. Painting usually served as an effective distraction, a dampener on her overactive mind.
Everything grew quiet with brush in hand.
Yet this time the quiet was causing more harm than good; Luna may have been able to finally suppress the more painful details of her last conversation with Theo but even so, his eyes continued to swim to the forefront.
Dark blue, rimmed with black, like the threshold of night. Everything to know about Theo Nott could be found in the stark vastness of his eyes and Luna wanted to know it.
Very, very much.
Even the disquiet and uncertainty that kept her from initially trusting Theo, that had her obsessing over the people on her ceiling as her only confidences, those thrums of caution had melted away in the summer heat. Then it evaporated instantly at the vision of Theo's fate.
Luna's breath backed up in her throat, made it burn, so she quelled the Sisyphean tread of her thoughts. Nothing productive came from worrying, a fact she was growing tired of drilling into her head.
She picked up her brush, ignoring how the statement still didn't chase the feeling from her chest. She ran the bristles through blue and swirled it with white until the cloudless clime of summer met her stare.
Until Ginny's eyes were well and truly unveiled.
With a practiced hand, Luna dabbed them into existence on the ceiling, not at all appeased. The feeling morphed quickly to agitation when she heard the muffled calling of her father's voice.
She was quite beyond having to fake an appetite.
The calling turned clearer and louder as it was now being magically amplified. "Luna bug, come down! I've made your favorite."
She steeled herself against her father's lure as she was far too temperamental to even enjoy ratatouille with béarnaise sauce. For once, Luna wanted to sulk like a proper adolescent.
Was that really too much to ask?
The next shout from her father came straight through the walls, startling Luna so much that she accidentally dropped the levitation spell…
"Luna Pandora Lovegood, you come down to dinner at once!"
…and the mattress crashed back into its frame.
The paintbrush hit her in the face just as her wand rolled off the bed. Thankfully, the palette of blended paints hovered only for a moment during the fall before settling back on Luna's torso. Muttering about pushy patriarchal figures, she slogged through tidying up the mess from her unexpected fall then, the agitation bubbling over, she stomped past her wand to descend the stairs in all her disheveled glory.
Her father wanted her for dinner "at once"? Fine. Then he could have her, paint and all.
Immediately, Luna regretted that decision when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Theodore Nott stood in the kitchen with her father, clutching a humongous toffee pudding.
"Hey Lovegood," he greeted, his voice a far cry from its usual geniality. "I brought pudding."
Luna remained rooted to the bottom step, intensely aware of the paint smeared on her right cheek. An uncomfortable thrum of embarrassment built in her face, hot like an overdone warming charm, but beyond that was a deeper, less tangible reaction that didn't show on her cheeks but burned all the same.
Betrayal wasn't a regular bedfellow for Luna, who typically only indulged in a handful of friends, but the feeling was there and present now and she hated that she was feeling it over him of all people.
"Come, Luna. The ratatouille's getting cold," and her father turned away from the pair to serve up the peasant dish, a fact that had her turning redder now that the meal was to be shared with a Pureblood elitist.
Theo. Theodore Nott.
Luna looked to him then, and found the blue eyes she'd been longing for darkened by wariness… and guilt. The latter sliced through her as a reminder of what he did, what he said just a short 24 hours ago. Tentatively, she backtracked up the stairs a step; Theo's expression turned suddenly frantic as his mouth dropped open into a silent 'o' and his eyes- that wretched blue again- arrested Luna's movement with the outright fear that glittered there.
At this point, the table was set. Her father turned around, somehow oblivious to the undercurrents swirling in the air. "Come Luna. No need to tidy up, dear." He bunched up his ruffled cooking apron as he spoke before taking a seat.
"Mr. Night knows you well enough by now," and, with unintentional insult delivered, her father dug into dinner.
In the end, Luna's curiosity over Theo's atypical disposition propelled her fully down the stairs. She took her usual seat, which Theo pulled out for her. Then he finally deposited the ridiculously sized pudding on the counter before taking the only other seat at the table.
A seat that's been empty for nearly half of Luna's life.
Her chest remained hollow, strangely absent of any pang of protest or echoing hurt, and in that moment Luna believed that her mother would actually approve Theo of all people to take her spot.
Luna wasn't sure why, but she thought it to be true. She started to fork pieces of the tender, now-lukewarm ratatouille into her mouth, eyes surreptitiously intent on Theo as he made meticulous, little cuts into his gratin.
One bite and his eyes widened. "This is excellent, Mr. Lovegood," he complimented quite demurely. The tone sounded too proper coming out of the likes of his snarky mouth. Luna hated it and wondered what it would take to bring back the droll curl to Theo's lips.
She oh-so-wanted to scrutinize that look again, until it was tattooed on the back of her eyelids.
Her father, having finally finished his bite, replied. "Thank you, son," the innocuous phrasing shot a spasm of emotion across Theo's face, "but the compliment should be Luna's. She grew the vegetables."
Returned to polite aloofness, Theo turned an inquiring gaze on Luna which had her skin prickling.
"I'm not really a dab hand," she admitted into her plate, "but after talking with Neville, it seems to come naturally." Luna looked up through her eyelashes and saw Theo's lips purse at that.
Interesting.
"Is something wrong with your meal?" Luna prodded in reference to his expression. Theo shook his head quickly before doing a little prodding of his own.
"So, are you close with Longbottom then?"
Very interesting.
Luna focused exclusively on that, instead of the hammering heartbeat in her chest. She could rely on her intelligence any day of the week but her emotions?
They eluded her like smoke, obscuring her perspective one moment and then clearing away to show she was seeing it all wrong in the next.
Luna did not want to be wrong about Theo and his strangely subtle signs of jealousy.
The side of her mouth lifted, mischief an irresistible hook. Luna's answer was a vague "close enough".
Theo remained pensive after that.
Once dinner was finished, and as her father served up the dessert, Luna's curiosity reached its breaking point.
"Daddy, is it alright if we eat pudding in my room?" Her father smiled fondly at the pair of them and handed over the plates, spoons, and his seemingly naive approval of Theo being alone and unsupervised in Luna's room.
At night.
Her stomach might have just turned over at the thought as Theo carried the no-longer-appetizing pudding up to her space.
Once they were ensconced behind the door, Luna retrieved her wand and discreetly disappeared the paint from her cheek. She turned around and found Theo's eyes on her, consuming every visible inch as if she were the dessert.
Mustering up some bravado, Luna tried to recalibrate. To remember that she was still angry with him. That she couldn't be aroused… and really- why was it that this particularly infuriating boy was arousing to begin with?
She threw the sentiment aside. "What are you doing here?" Luna crossed her arms in a fair impression of Hermione, tone snappish and all, which worked to break Theo from his staring.
"I…" he tapered off. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, a void of space between them which he could be filling up with charm and witty turns of phrase but instead, left aggravatingly empty. A disappointment, if she were being honest...which she intended to be.
Luna looked at the forgotten pudding clutched in each one of his hands, what she believed was Theo's attempt at a peace offering, as it listed dangerously toward the plate's rim. For a moment, she wavered in that honesty.
The boy in front of her was not Theo Nott. This was a collage of shattered delusions pasted together with the veneer of etiquette, broken pieces of a once-irreverent boy jammed up against the newly-forming cynicisms of manhood.
This was not the Theo Nott Luna knew and the observation caught her unawares, like an unexpected Stupefy to the chest, until it pressed on her so hard she felt unable to breathe.
Her next question was forced out of her by the tremendous weight that sat on her sternum. "What happened?"
Theo's mouth clicked shut, lip curling. "You know," and the bitterness of the statement pursed Luna's cheeks. She gustily exhaled the taste of Theo's resentment as she attempted to keep composed.
"Tell me anyway." Luna then sat on the floor and gestured for her share of pudding. It took him an age but Theo eventually caved and came across the room, sitting next to Luna. His pudding remained untouched.
Turning in on himself, he started his story in a low, defeated tone.
"I went home and by the time I got there, I was late for dinner. So I rushed to the dining room to find not only my-" his throat gurgled around the words, "not only Nott Sr. but also Bellatrix."
This detail stayed Luna's hand halfway to her mouth. She knew this name and it jangled around her head, loosening memories long repressed.
A single tear trail down Neville's cheek as he stared at a picture of his parents.
The Ministry battle as her spell knocked Harry's godfather into the veil.
Medusa curls and her cackling, crystal-cut shouts of joy as she clutched her death stick.
Luna brought the fork the rest of the way to her mouth. The pudding tasted like cardboard.
Theo continued. "I went about like things were normal until my- Nott Sr." he grounded this between his teeth as if he could make the moniker stick, "got impatient. He told me about Voldemort, about how I was next in line."
Sympathy swelled in Luna so she put down her half-finished dessert, her hands palm up on the ground between herself and Theo. He stared right through the offer for support, completely occupied by the story as it replayed in his mind.
"I fled after that. Disapparated straight from my falling chair."
"Where did you go?" Luna asked, curbing the unseemly hurt that flared in her chest when he didn't go to her first.
His eyes reconnected with hers. "Blaise."
The word somehow unlocked him as the remainder of the story flowed uninterrupted from his tongue. "I didn't know where Blaise lived. I just thought of him, fiercely, and landed at his mother's townhouse with a nasty splinch. He was home, thank Merlin, and patched me up. Then I obliviated him."
Theo's face crumpled in anguish. Abandoning her timidity, Luna leaned forward to take hold of one of his clammy, trembling hands. A soothing hum vibrated in her throat, cradled the confession against the unforgiving silence, then she finally said, "It's okay. You did what was necessary."
His hands curled into defensive claws and his nails pressed painfully into her skin.
"That doesn't make it right," Theo gritted.
She smiled sadly, tipped up his chin with her free hand. "It also doesn't make it wrong."
Eventually, Theo blinked away the cloud of reminiscence and with it, all visible despair.
Eventually, the skin turned back to smooth, his eyes flat, his lips unquestionably straight and the picture he cut was so sharp that Luna backed away. Afraid of being cut.
She folded her knees into her chest, held them tight. The space turned vast between them once more, nearly untraversable, which ignited a flare of panic in her chest. It unfurled like the break of day, stretching its fingers outward, shedding light on all the doubts that crowded in the space between Luna and Theo.
She thought of the way he dismissed her after the Vision. The descriptor 'loony' rolling off his tongue like poison.
She thought of the Theo that has since returned. Hardened by reality. Carved with the scalpel Luna herself handed him.
Did he resent her now? Hold her responsible in some way for what happened to him? Luna's thoughts wandered away from Theo and to another man entirely- her father- as new understanding dawned.
It made sense now why he didn't speak of Luna's mother, his wife, the Seer. It wasn't wise to breathe existence into such a portent of knowledge, even a dead one. You never know what would come to life if you did.
Luna tightened her grip on her legs, trying to keep the internal crisis contained, but Theo ever the observer, caught the shift. Held it. Tried to unravel it by its loose ends.
His stare turned intense as Theo studied Luna, the blue of his eyes less cutting and more cajoling as he tried to figure out her crouched position and vulnerable eyes. He clearly found what he was after in her quivering gray irises.
"Luna," he called, he coaxed. Her name sounded too familiar on his tongue. She hated how she craved to hear the way it rolled around in his mouth, like a toffee being savored. Luna stared past Theo, frozen in fear. She didn't want to answer, didn't want to curse him with more of her words.
He edged a bit closer and turned his eyes to the floor. In an undertone, he reflected, "I don't know what would have happened to me if I wasn't warned."
The observation was dropped like a pebble into the distance and doubt that still separated them, its gentle concession soon rippling outward. Luna felt the vibrations of it lap at her feet. The tension slowly bleeding out from the point of contact, she returned her still-wary gaze to Theo.
"I have nowhere else to go." His eyes were blown wide with the insistence of his apology, tucked in the spaces between the words he actually said.
The closest any Slytherin would come to apology, I imagine.
It took Luna an eternity but she eventually gathered together the vulnerable bits of herself and threw them in the back of her mind. She brushed off the remaining, weakened doubts. Her body relaxed into a crossed leg position and with her now unoccupied hand, Luna grabbed her wand that lay on the ground beside her.
She flicked it and accioed sheets from her dresser, an extra blanket from a cedar chest. Then, infusing forgiveness in her gaze, she replied.
"But you do."