A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! Can you believe we are officially over half way done with this one? You can follow me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions. Huge thank you to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading this chapter!

Please let me know what you thought of chapter fourteen and be on the lookout for chapter fifteen in a few days.

Hermione hadn't had anywhere specific in mind of where she'd wanted to go, so she left it up to Theo to decide. They drove out of the city, eager to put as much space between them and the neighborhood as possible. They didn't talk about Hermione's seething anger towards all the adults in her life and instead reminisced about memories they'd shared as children — trick-or-treating even in freezing sleet or burning their fingers on hot fish and chips or when Theo's mum had taken them to the V&A. It was light and happy and for once Hermione was able to look back on her childhood with some fondness.

After about an hour of driving, they decided to stop for provisions. Hermione realized that she hadn't actually eaten dinner, since she'd stormed out before she'd even eaten half a slice of pizza and she'd also missed lunch too. Once all the adrenaline had worn off, her stomach was gnawing at itself in hunger. Almost feeling guilty for asking, she wondered if Theo couldn't get them some beer or something.

"I will get you anything you want, Hermione," he said, looking at her with puppy dog eyes.

They entered the grocery store together. Hermione went off to the aisles in search of suitable snacks — plenty of crisps and sour candy — while Theo took responsibility for the alcohol. They met back up at the register and Theo insisted on paying, despite Hermione's protests.

"Hey, I'm the one who is taking you out tonight," he told her with a smirk, hinting that this might be something more. "When you ask me out on a date, you can pay."

Hermione had blushed pink, thinking that it sort of had been her that had asked him out, even if she didn't consider this a date.

The line was slow to move with only one cashier at that time of night, but neither one of them was overly rushed, happy instead to giggle at the pointed looks they were getting from other customers. For once, Hermione refused to allow herself to feel embarrassed by what other people thought of her. It wasn't like she was ever going to see them again either.

Theo had no such qualms, like he never even imagined that someone could look down on him. It was refreshing and freeing, in a way, to see him so confident in himself. He took a step closer to her despite the murmurs of a little old lady, until they were nearly touching. With a bottle of flavored rum in one hand, he lifted the other until he was cradling her jaw gently, turning her face to investigate her bruise in the fluorescent light of the grocery store.

"Heard you fought Pansy for me today," he said, casual, but obviously pleased.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but didn't step back out of his grasp, enjoying the feel of his fingertips on her skin too much, bleeding his heat into her body. "Who told you that?" she asked, unwilling to believe that rumors would have already started.

"Draco told me," he said, one corner of his mouth pulling up as he fought not to smile.

"Draco doesn't know shit," she countered, knowing that she was going to have to have words with her cousin about sticking his pointy nose where it didn't belong.

The old lady tutted much louder this time, giving Hermione a glare.

"Whatever you say," Theo answered, this time a smirk having transformed his face. It was clear that despite her denials, he wasn't about to believe her.

"Yeah, well don't get a big head, Nott," she teased, hoping that her interaction with Pansy didn't give him any ideas about them. "She said I was a prude and a—a tease. And it was just the last straw in a long line of jabs, so I got fed up."

He nodded, taking a step forward when it finally got to be their turn to check out. He plucked the snacks from her hands and placed them on the conveyor belt along with their rum. "She has a way of doing that," he agreed, though he didn't say if he agreed with Pansy's assessment of her.

The cashier looked them up and down disdainfully when she rang them up, but also didn't kick up a fuss and ask for an id or anything like that. She just happily took the paper money that Theo offered, probably glad to see them leave rather than cause a big scene. With their things in a plastic bag, Hermione was eager to leave the store and get back in Theo's car.

They drove for another thirty minutes or so while the last vestiges of civilization melted away, until they were in a part of the county that was dotted with farms, sprawling enough that you could drive for a while without seeing a house or another car. Theo pulled over by a small grove of trees and turned off the engine.

"Is this far enough for you?" he asked, casually.

Hermione nodded. "Yeah, this is perfect," she agreed, grateful that he'd agreed to take her on this insane adventure. "Thanks for doing this. I hope that I didn't ruin your night."

"'S no problem," he said, turning to face her with a genuine smile. "It's not like I was doing anything better."

"Reading would probably be better than having to put up with my whining," Hermione said, knowing that she'd probably rather read than spend time talking to her, especially when she'd been so rude and petulant these last weeks.

"Want to sit in the back?" Theo asked. "I can grab a blanket from the boot."

Hermione blushed, but was grateful that he didn't notice in the poor light of the car. "Sure," she agreed. "I'll just find some music on the radio." Her shaking fingers fiddled with the dial until she found something that she wanted to listen to, before getting out of the front and slipping into the back, bag of snacks in hand.

Immediately, she pulled out her sour gummy worms and ate one. When Theo reappeared, she offered him one.

"How can you still eat these?" he asked with a laugh. "I've not had the stomach for them since we ate so many on my sixth birthday and it made my tongue bleed."

Hermione smiled, remembering that particular memory. "I just like them. I don't think that I could ever get sick of them," she answered. "Sirius never really got them for me, except at special occasions. The rest of them all preferred coconut clusters."

"Gross, who likes coco clusters?" Theo asked, skeptical.

"I know," Hermione agreed, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Don't worry, I got you something, too."

She reached into the plastic bag, shuffling things around until she found a chocolate covered toffee bar and handed it to him. Theo smiled in genuine happiness when he took it from her.

"Thanks," he said. "These are my favorite."

Hermione bit her lip to hide a chuckle. "As if I could forget that," she goaded him, knowing that Theo was a fiend for toffees. She ate another gummy worm, the acid making her jaw ache. "I don't know what is about the sours. I guess I just like when it finally gives way to sweetness. Having to get through the sour first seems to make it taste so much better."

"That sounds like you," he said, nudging his shoulder into hers. "You've got this sour outside that you have to get through to find the sweet middle. But it is there."

"You said I was too sweet," she countered, remembering his insistence that she was a good girl.

Theo turned the cap on the bottle of rum to open it and took a small sip, before passing it to her. Hermione gladly took a big swig, her mouth filling with the sweetened alcohol, making her sputter and cough as it burned all the way down her throat.

"That's because you are sweet," he laughed. "And I don't mean that as a negative honest. You don't have to pretend with me. I know that you aren't like your parents, not really anyway. You never were even when we were little."

She felt tears spring to her eyes at his statement, shocked by just how soothing it was to have someone finally acknowledge that she was the same girl she had always been. It wasn't like she'd just woken up one morning and completely changed the way that everyone expected. With Theo...it was like he knew the real her.

"Want to talk about it?" he asked, softly, keeping his eyes directly ahead so that he wouldn't spook her.

Hermione thought about it for a moment. Her immediate reaction was to deny that anything was wrong again, but she knew that Theo wouldn't believe it, even if he wouldn't press her into talking about something that she didn't want to. Before she realized it, she was agreeing, breathless and off kilter.

She took another drink — more of a dainty sip this time — to bolster her resolve. "I don't know what people want from me," she whispered, barely heard over the music on the radio. "I feel like I'm being pulled in eighteen different directions and I don't know which way to look anymore."

"Your parents—"

Hermione cut him off before he could continue. "They missed and loved me and wanted me, I know. You've told me that," she said, a bit annoyed, wondering if it had been a mistake to talk about this with Theo.

"I was going to say...your parents aren't perfect," he said, not offended by the way that she'd snapped at him. "They don't really know what they are doing."

She snorted at that. "I'll say," she agreed. "Sirius said some of the worst things to me today when he picked me up from school. He said that I was basically a bad kid, that he was disappointed in me, and that my parents have ruined me in less than a month. He said they are irresponsible," she explained, feeling a familiar knot in her throat.

"Well, that's just stupid," Theo commiserated, taking back the rum so he could take another drink. "You aren't ruined just because you got into trouble one time. I'm positive that he's done much worse than you've done, even just since he was a cop."

It was oddly comforting to think of all the terrible things that Sirius must have done. Hermione was sure that it was true, but needed to be reminded that he was only human, too. "And...if he really did think that my parents were so irresponsible, what does that make him?" she asked, rhetorically. "After all, he was the one that left me with them. He's the one who isn't fighting for me. So maybe he ruined me."

Theo turned to face her. He brought his hand up to her jaw to turn her face to look at him. "You aren't ruined, Hermione," he repeated.

She gave him a watery little smile. "I needed to hear that," she told him, honestly. Hermione turned her own body so that she could look at him, pulling one leg up onto the seat and leaning her arm on the rear deck. "I thought that my parents were on my side for once. It was nice for a while. Mum even babied me a little bit. It felt like...it felt like home for a second."

He gave her a sad sort of smile, like he shared a similar nostalgia for his own mum. Hermione took the rum back from him and took another little sip, enjoying the sour lemon flavor.

"But then suddenly, they didn't understand. Even though it's exactly what they would do if they were put in that sort of situation," she said, her voice getting stronger the more she opened up to them. "They were disappointed in me as well ...they told me that I was better than fighting someone. I mean, how could they even be so fucking hypocritical? When they are criminals who work for such an odious man? How do they have any moral high ground to tell me how to behave?"

"You are so passionate," Theo said with an amazed little half-smile. "When you believe in something, you really light up."

"Be serious," she said, feeling a bit exasperated with his compliments.

"I am being serious," he said, still trying to hide a smile. "But to be honest, I think you might be looking at this a little bit wrong. They aren't treating you like Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange would treat some random friend. They are treating their daughter like a parent would. And honestly, you are better than pretty much everyone in our neighborhood."

She supposed that did sound reasonable, even if she was still rankling from them finally deciding that they wanted to actually parent her. "I guess," she said. "You know, Pansy said I think I'm better than everyone else. Is it wrong for me to agree with you?"

"No way," he said smartly. "It's not wrong to recognize the truth. You are really smart, Hermione. Anyone with eyes can see that you are going places."

"And what if I don't want to do what everyone expects me to?" she asked, her voice soft and unsure. She wasn't sure what she wanted anymore, but she knew that everyone in her life seemed to have some idea of what she should.

Theo went silent for a second, looking her over. His face was pensive as he really thought over his next words carefully. "I say, fuck them," he said. "You just worry about what you want to do. And if anyone has anything to say about it, I guess you don't really need them."

She sighed, feeling about a thousand pounds lighter after having finally talked to someone about everything that was weighing her down. She never would have guessed that the person who would be giving her the best advice would be Theo Nott, secondary school dropout. "Thanks," she said with a pleased sigh. "For everything. I don't think anyone else would do this for me."

"I'm sure that's not true," he said. Hermione could tell that he was still pleased at getting to play the dashing hero to her damsel in distress once again.

"So," she said slyly. "You want to show me your tattoo? Daphne told me that all of you got one."

His cheeks were a bit pink. "Oh, I'm sure you saw enough of it when you were ogling me in my room," Theo waved her off.

Hermione scooted closer to him, trying to get a hold of the bottom of his t-shirt hem. "Come on, she told me I would like it," she basically begged, overcome with an insane need to see what he'd decided to put on his body. "I want to see."

He grinned and pulled her even closer, until she was practically perched on his lap. "Go on, then," he dared her to, perhaps thinking that she wasn't brave enough to go for it on her own.

She bit her lower lip, thinking it over for a moment, before she resolved to do it. Rearranging herself until she was straddled across his lap, Hermione took hold of the hem of his shirt once again. She looked into his eyes, hoping for some kind of encouragement, but instead she was struck by the heat in his eyes. His face was completely still, as though he was trying to make himself still enough not to spook her.

Hermione sucked in her breath as she let her fingers slide under the cotton fabric, feeling the shallow ridges of his stomach, the searing heat of his skin. He made no move to stop her, so she took a deep breath and pushed up the loose fabric of his shirt, revealing the skin of his chest to her greedy eyes. She drank in every inch of him, until she finally settled on that flash of green she'd seen before.

There, just above the place where his real heart pumped away below the sinew and ribs, was an artificial green heart — a candy heart — with the words 'be mine' written in pink block letters. Her fingertips traced the slopes of the shape, possessed.

When she met Theo's blue eyes once again, they were full of a gnawing sort of want that Hermione knew too well. She could feel it too, deep inside of her, throbbing away.

"I do like it," she revealed to him, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She leaned forward, lips parted, until they were only a hair's breadth apart.

"Hermione—" he said, sounding pained...like he knew they should stop even if he didn't want to.

She couldn't have that.

"Just shut up and kiss me, Theo," she ordered, bossy.

Theo didn't put up any further arguments. One hand slipped around her waist to rest on her lower back, pulling her completely flush with him, while the other slipped into her wild hair, holding her at the perfect angle.

And then he was kissing her.

Hermione gasped, parting her lips to him. She hadn't realized just how long she'd wanted this, but it must have been simmering under the surface for a while, there was so much lust pinging in her veins and boiling over. This wasn't tentative or tender like the kisses she'd shared with Harry or Viktor. Instead, it was something dark and delicious and devastating and...

She never wanted the moment to end.

She moaned, feeling his tongue slip against hers in a lazy pirouette again and again and again. Her own hands delved into his soft hair, unwilling to be parted from him for even a second. She shifted against him and moaned again, feeling the unexpected friction of rocking against the hard length she rested on. Her body felt like jelly — a gooey, sticky mess — and she loved it.

Theo's lips slipped against hers, a bit sloppy, but at least she knew that he was as affected as she was by the moment. He kissed her down the curve of her jaw and the column of her neck in wet, open mouthed kisses, sucking against porcelain skin long enough to leave a mark, followed by a tongue to sooth the exquisite sting.

It was like sinking into a pit of decadence, but she wasn't fighting to get free. Instead, she welcomed the warmth that radiated out to every last cell in her body, her gasps of pleasure echoing in her head. When she couldn't stand it another second, she pulled his lips back up to hers, catching his lower lip between her teeth, giving him a playful bite that made him groan. The feeling reverberated through his body and into hers, making her shudder in delight.

She slanted her lips against his again, amazed at how perfectly the pair of them seemed to fit together.