A/N: So there are a ton of quotes in this one – you can find their sources at the end of the chapter. Also, work on future chapters should improve in quality due to how well my writing course is going. So, look forward to that.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Title: The Past Does Not Define Us
Rating: T
Pairing: Theodore Nott/Hermione Granger
Summary: "I'm sorry." Those two words shot like an arrow through his soul and Theodore found that there was nothing he could do to stop himself from falling.
Warning(s): Mentions of child abuse and suicidal thoughts
Chapter 7: Rain
It was raining.
Theodore finds himself watching the rain fall from his little window seat in the very empty Hogwarts library. The annual Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin was an event that always cleared the castle of students, especially from the library where few ventured into unless they absolutely had to. Madam Pince had gotten that pinched look on her face when she saw him as she always did, but had said nothing as she packed up her forms and left, presumably to watch the game.
That's one thing that he had always liked about the woman – despite everything that had happened, nothing about the way she had treated him changed. Theodore thinks that she has a soft spot for him. If there was anyone he would miss if he were to die, it would most likely be her (or Granger, but even he wasn't stupid enough to admit that out loud).
He has one foot propped up on the wooden bench, his hand holding open the book on his lap, the title already forgotten since he had been thinking about other things; he had just grabbed it from one of the shelves on his way in and hadn't even really bothered with reading it. He can feel the hard cover and frayed edges with his hands and silently concluded that one, he has read it before, and two, the familiarity of the text was not without irony – it was a product of the very people which his father sought to destroy. He snorts in derision, gaze flicking down to the object in question before his eyes return to the window.
"What book would make someone give such an ungentlemanly snort?"
It was her.
He could feel his heart threaten to stop, his breath become uneven, but kept his eyes focused on the window and the rain splattering against it.
"I am born good, and you too, and all of us are born good!" forgetting, no! pretending to forget, like misguided equalitarians, that we are all born marked for evil(1)!"
Theodore's eyes narrow as he speaks the quote, wondering if she would understand, and a glance over in her direction reveals to him the hint of a smile on her lips, the briefest twitch to her expression and one that he had never seen directed at him before.
"Baudelaire? I never knew purebloods would demean themselves by reading muggle works."
She sounded surprised, her words soaked in bitterness, suspicion, and something else. Theodore supposes that it is not unwarranted – his father would have had a heart attack if he had discovered his son's preference for muggle literature (but to be fair, most wizarding literature wasn't as diverse, completely lacking in originality; it's all about dragons and knights, sorcerers and kings, and princesses being saved from towers. Life, Theodore finds, is not as fantastical, and magic is not as godlike as many in their world believe). He looks to the book in his lap, turning it one way and then the other with a frown.
"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors(2)," he replies. "The world only goes round by misunderstanding(3)."
Her response is a snort, followed by the sound of her footsteps getting closer until she is standing close enough to touch. He turns his head to look up at her and finds her staring out the window, her eyes unfocused, the rain from outside reflecting in pools of chocolate that had seen too much for one so young.
"A world, a life full of misunderstanding; that's the way it is, isn't it?" she then asks, breaking the sudden silence. Her lip quivers and her eyes glisten, but she remains standing tall, unfaltering, "Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul(4)."
Theodore feels a pang in his heart at her words, but cannot within good conscious disagree with her.
"Even in centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction(5)," he says instead. Her head jerks, snapping to look at him. He blinks, his gaze, silently admiring, meeting hers for but a moment before he turns back to the window and the rain, resisting the urge to give himself away, to confess, to say everything that he wants to say but can't because he lacks the courage to do so (and he knows that while he lacks it, she has it in spades; it was for that reason that he had fallen for her in the first place, it didn't take him very long to figure that out).
They fall into a contemplative silence, but he can still feel her staring at him, her chocolate coloured eyes raking over his form as if searching for something. It makes his stomach do flips and he has to stop himself from shuddering. He could feel her gaze threatening to tear away his mask and expose him for the world to see, he wonders to himself whether or not he would let her (he would, she just had to ask).
She leaves after what feels like an eternity and a part of Theodore leaves with her. He wonders if she knows.
1 – "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe" part IV (1859), Charles Baudelaire
2 – Baudelaire, Henry Ward Beecher
3 – Baudelaire (again)
4 – Baudelaire (again)
5 – Baudelaire (I think you're starting to see a pattern)