A/N: Sorry about not updating for a while – school started up again, I've started playing D&D with some friends (for the first time, so we're all learning our roles and trying to find times to play that match up with all of our schedules), I need to talk to my boss about hours, [insert other stuff that you probably don't care about here].

In short, I've been busy. As Fridays are some of the least busy days I have, I'll probably stick to updating then, bi or triweekly. I'll let you guys know if I need to stop updating for a time because of schoolwork or other.

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 16: The Difference

There's something different now.

That's what Theodore thinks to himself whenever Hermione sees or speaks to him. She's more open, her smiles more frequent, her eyes lighting up, bright and flickering. She flags him down in the halls, rushing over with her bushy hair bouncing all the while, and he finds himself stopping (even before he avoided her, he would only slow his stride until she caught up; it's the little things that he hadn't noticed before).

Even the other students had noticed that something changed.

Maybe it was in the way she looked better, healthier, less like a walking corpse with haunted eyes and a mile-long stare (he kicks himself for not noticing before, for being blind to her faults). Maybe it was in the way she ate more at meals, when she would walk with a skip to her step and a slight swing of her hips. Maybe it was in the way her hand shot into the air like lightning, mimicking her habits from when things were simpler.

Whatever it was, people were beginning to associate the change with him.

He could see it – the suspicious stares in stone hallways between classes and the sudden silences when he enters a room (but to be fair, he had always been able to see it, unable to ignore it; he starts to understand what Potter might have felt like whenever something happened). They would watch as Hermione would run up to him, chattering excitedly about something or another, silent, judging, analyzing. He could feel their piercing gazes digging into his back, making tingles creep up his spine.

Dread. Anxiety. Worry. These were emotions that he was used to feeling, especially with her. But something has changed, he realized. Not just with her, but also with him.

The glares, while vicious, have lost most of their bite (when he's with her, he can push them aside; when he's with her, nothing else matters). Hermione helps when she's with him; her presence alone could brighten a room, could influence his mood for good or ill. She makes him stronger. So much stronger that he can almost ignore the burden he carries.

Almost.

For every silent stare, there's another that is spiteful, arrogant, degrading (it stares at him from his dorm's bathroom mirror, from the windows, plates, and cutlery where he can see his reflection). For every whisper behind his back, there is another that is in his ear, hissing its disapproval (the doubts in his mind made manifest, always sounding exactly like his father). He knows that it's just his past coming back to haunt him, and he desperately tries to block it out, to pretend that it doesn't exist, because she needs him, she said so herself, she needed him to be strong, when she couldn't be.

And if that was because all she needed was a friend, then that was fine with him.

Even though her hand clutched his heart, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, tighter and tighter and tighter, that was fine with him.

It was fine.

It was fine.

It was fine.