a/n Three Very Important Things Before We Begin:
1. I'm alivvve. Ugh. That used to be a more lighthearted way to start off a belated chapter. In all seriousness though, I am alive. I keep seeing comments about my well-being pop up in the reviews and I really appreciate the concern, guys. I also very much hope you're all safe and sound!
2. This isn't quite the next chapter of Bullseye, but it is the next best thing. As the chapter's title might suggest, this is a companion piece from Theodore's POV during the current summer between years four and five. It was originally slated to be posted under its own title on Halloween (I have no intention of turning this story into a multiple POV fic). Unfortunately, it was not posted on Halloween because—and here comes the point where I'm just going to level with you guys—I've kind of been an anxious blob since March. Like, I'm alright and I've been very lucky in a lot of ways, but there's nothing quite like being stressed out and low-key scared all the time to sap the creative energy right of you. I've had large swaths of this story written for a year and it's taken me a while to get into a good head space to sit down and do something with them. I genuinely apologize. Sometimes, when you're stressed out, the best thing is a nice distraction. And I haven't been offering much of that over here. At this point, considering how long it's been between posts, I figured it was better to just go ahead and get something up before the story continues. Which brings me to...
3. The next real chapter of this story is going to be posted on Saturday 11/21/2020. From there I'm going to work on sticking to a more regular posting schedule (maybe every two weeks). So mark the date! For now, I hope you guys enjoy this little bit of strangeness. It's not quite what was promised, but hey! At least Theodore's back?!
Pea Pods & Prophesies
(Theodore's Own Chapter)
0o0
THEODORE
0o0
Midnight. The clamor of slow-struck church bells in the distance. Theodore counted each gong-like blast, his body rigid, his hands dragging anxiously at patches of wet grass beneath his long legs.
One, two, three...
The sound of the bells, though familiar, made his neck prickle and his hair stand on end. A reaction that he attributed partly to the hour, but mostly to the fact that he was drugged. Drugged and alone in a graveyard.
Four, five, six...
The close proximity of the village to his father's house (less than a mile) meant that those ringing bells were something like his oldest friends. In fact, he frequently relied upon them to keep the hour during long nights at home. But not tonight. Tonight they did not seem to know him.
Or rather, he did not seem to know them, Theodore corrected himself. Stop attributing sentience to inanimate objects. It's bad enough, what you're doing. There's no need to carry the game into outright lunacy.
Seven, eight, nine...
Except that his goal for the evening, he knew, was just the sort of thing that a lunatic might properly approve of: he was trying to commune with the dead.
Just thinking about holding a seance—or, more honestly, recognizing his genuine desperation for such a thing to even be possible—was enough to send the reliable rhythm of his highly logical brain into spasms. A clunk and screech of mind-cogs coming loose, gear teeth refusing to meet, showers of mental rust. It was a plan that his brain simply refused to view rationally. Partially because he was too intelligent to believe in such things, and partially because (although he was embarrassed to admit it) maybe he actually kind of did...
Theo was smart, of course. He recognized that—although perhaps not always in the straightforward way that people tended to assume. His face was responsible for that. He had a boring face, the kind of face that always led people straight to the conclusion that he was scholastic, reliable. Too ugly to be charming, he supposed, too ungainly for sports. Not wild or romantic enough for the arts. What else did that leave? Theodore was well aware of the effect he tended to inspire: one that was just on the wrong side of average, benign, fond of quiet and the drudgery of note-taking. The truth was rather the opposite. The oppressive silence of a still room was nothing short of murder (it reminded him too much of home). He was also less steady handed and much more angry than people suspected. The more he attempted to disguise this, the more awkward and unhappy he became. If he'd had any gall whatsoever, he'd have started wearing fake glasses long ago. Played into the image. Cultivated it a bit.
Idiot, his brain hissed at him.
Theo paused, waiting for the all-too familiar earthquake of self-loathing that usually shook his body after these kinds of thoughts: a squeamish desire to recoil, a burning shame that stiffened his face and turned his limbs to stone. None came. Probably because he was used to treating himself far worse under much less provoking circumstances. Given the reality of what he was attempting, his subconscious mind wasn't actually being that unreasonable. He was an idiot.
Because talking to the dead was impossible, of course. Well, probably impossible, if one was willing to set aside the claims of a very few (and famously lauded) Seers who claimed to have done it: Cassandra the Great, a few Greek mystics, a handful of demi-gods.
Theodore was a skeptic on the best of days. He had a first class memory for facts and figures, but zero natural predisposition for intuition. Even if summoning a spirit of the dead was far less difficult to do, he knew that he was the type of person who would never be able to manage such a miracle. He lacked the imagination for omens. He was out of his wheelhouse.
Of course, that was where the drugs came in.
Drugs. He should stop thinking of what he had taken as 'drugs'. More like poison. He had swallowed a mouthful of poison, plain and simple.
Curiously, however, he was rather proud of the horrifying mixture he'd created and measured himself: milky latex bled from the unripened seeds of his mother's poppy plants, a tangle of venomous berries, and the smashed heads of three psilocybin mushrooms that grew in a crown shaped cluster along the rotting trunk of a fruit tree in his back yard.
She—his mother, that was—had put that tree into the earth herself. He'd made sure of it. Looked into it as many times as he had compared the measurements of the poison's non-lethal dosage against his body weight in his father's old potions indexes. The terrible fear that he would intoxicate himself past the point of return, that he would accidentally kill himself, had driven him to master some of the most precise math he had ever attempted.
In the end, though, he'd had a surprisingly easy time wrapping his head around the task. To his relief, the study of lethal herbs was not so very different from the study of medicine. Mushrooms could be placed on a scale; poppy seed milk diluted. He would not die. He would wake up the next morning with a stomachache, maybe, but nothing more. (Or so he kept telling himself.)
Finding the ingredients had been harder. Regular toxins were easy enough to track down, but these were special. They'd needed to have meaning, to have come from her somehow. His mother. They'd had to, if he was to have any chance of speaking with her tonight. He knew that now, after nearly a month of continuous study. He'd come to understand many things since the holidays started. Like how, in the end, summoning the dead was just like all old, ill-advisable magic—more about feeling than ritual. A probing of the raw, connective tissue that stitched up the universe. Not a number problem to be puzzled over and sorted into sense, but a scream into the depths of space and time.
Bloody perfect for you, Theodore reflected wryly to himself. He had the mathematical force of will to bring himself to the hallucinogenic brink of death, but there was hardly anything he hated more than screaming.
Ten, eleven, twelve...
Theodore counted out the last bells with a re-summoning of grit. It was almost time. Midnight heralded the anniversary of his mother's death. She had died seven years ago today. Ten minutes more would mark the exact time of her passing. If he missed his chance he would be forced to wait a whole year for another opportunity to present itself. And he didn't have time for that. It was do or die.
With a grunt, Theo undid his wrist watch (wisely tuned to his father's military-precision office clock) and flopped it down onto the moonlit turf. He settled back to wait, his eyes trained on the grave in front of him. The tombstone bore his mother's markings: name and date, wobbling slightly in the blue-silver light.
Actually, no, probably not wobbling in the light. It was safe to assume that his own eyes were responsible for this strange visual effect.
A throb of fear constricted his chest. He really ought to have given the potion a test run before taking it himself. Surely that would have been the smartest thing to do? In fact, more than once he'd eyed his father's old dog with self-interest in mind. How easy it would have been to measure a potion for the dog's size. And how much easier still to slip it some.
If he had (and the animal had lived) he'd certainly be more at ease now. And, of course, if the dog had died, he'd have at least known not to drink any of the cauldron-dark mixture himself.
Curiously, it was the idea of how Astoria might react to his poisoning the family pet that had stopped him. A powerfully preventative thought, that. One that had led him to dose himself with nothing but his rigorously re-checked equations to rely on. Up until now, his story was one that would grip Astoria by the toes. But the death of his father's ancient corgi (so theoretically inconsequential to his own) would repulse her. He knew it would. Because he knew her. Toothless dog. Innocent victim.
A low, possibly drug induced bubble of laughter burst in the back of Thedore's throat. Because wasn't that just perfectly true? He really had swallowed his poison like a true Gryffindor. No hostages taken.
Equally true, however, was the fact that what he had (or had not) done didn't matter very much. Because Thedore was never going to tell Astoria any part of this story, least of all the part about the dog. He never talked to anyone about his mother. Ever.
Still, the phantom of his friend's imaginary disappointment was sharp like a blade, capable of cutting him even in his own daydreams. He liked the idea of telling her the whole tale, of course. He even went so far as to carefully savor the experience of playing it all out for her in his head.
First would come her shock, then her delighted awe. She would be impressed that he'd had the nerve to take things so far by himself, without the support or indulgence of an audience. Astoria was fond of amusement for one's own sake. The jokes he made without seeming to care if any one noticed (he did care, they were actually almost always carefully crafted just for her) were Astroia's favorites and she delighted in catching on.
Of course, there were plenty of other things that Theodore didn't tell Astoria. That was just the way of it sometimes. A balance had to be preserved. Like, for instance, the fact that he was probably in love with her and yet could somehow never seem to make himself want to picture what it would be like to have sex with her. Invariably, his mind recoiled from the idea the way it would from a mousetrap. Unseemly, invasive. Wrong? He didn't know. He had never loved anyone else outside of his family before. He had no idea how many varieties of love there might be in the world. Perhaps he had it all wrong? Perhaps he wasn't in love with her at all. Then again, it hardly mattered even if he was.
This was not necessarily because Theodore did not like to think about sex—he certainly did, and more than occasionally. But the idea that he might ever actually sleep with anybody struck him as a slightly unreasonable hope. And he was the type of person who had long ago learned to manage his expectations.
There was a part of him that half expected that his first time (if he ever had one) would somehow have to be obtained by gentle force—and surely not his own. This was not so much a violent fantasy as it was an acknowledgement of his own timidity. The idea of anyone touching him (or even worse, seeing him) was so anxiety inducing that he could not really picture himself being able to produce a seductive effort. Someone else (ideally someone who was genuinely and secretly fond of him) would have to do that work. Spring themselves on him when he least expected it, refuse to intellectualize any bit of it. And there was hardly a line of sexually aggressive women knocking at his door.
He'd have let Padma try, that much was undeniable. He expected he even had it in him to make it as easy for her as possible, if only she'd shown any real interest. He'd gone so far as to rest a hand on her knee once (she'd quickly found an excuse to abandon their chess game in search of a book) and he knew, loathe as he was to admit it, that her interest in him was not as physical as his was in her. She enjoyed his attention, his skillful board game prowess, but that was mostly all.
His one great condolence was that she might regret this oversight at a later date. That one day she would realize, would understand what he'd had to offer. Theodore wasn't much to look at, but he was loyal (and just desperate enough to hang the moon for her). Perhaps another bad breakup? An insightful observation on his part? Something to make her see past his hang-ups, to the real him. To a person worth dating. But these were woes to be contemplated at another time.
He let his thoughts slip back to Astoria, whose knee he would never even contemplate trying to rest a hand on. It was a minor miracle that they had even become friends, come to think of it. In fact, almost the moment she'd entered their train compartment in first year, he'd felt certain that he would spend the rest of the upcoming term hating her with a particular savor. Not just because of how provokingly self-righteous she had seemed in that moment, but because she was so hurtfully pretty that she'd had the effect of making him feel ashamed just for being near her. Loveliness often had that effect on him: instead of enjoying it, he tended to feel that it put his own inferiority on display. Made it more visible. He rioted against physical beauty. He always had.
And if he could not even find the words to tell Astoria this, then how could he possibly tell her that he did not know how his own mother had died? Especially since he had ostensibly witnessed her death himself. Because in order to explain why he had attempted to contact his dead mother, he would surely have to explain why he had wanted to do so in the first place, wouldn't he?
Theodore consulted the watch: five minutes to go. He began to rummage about in his coat pocket (sloppily, fingers clumsier than he'd have liked them to be) for the final prop that he would need. He produced seven bumpy, green pea pods from the dodgy lining of his pants and dutifully picked stray tobacco off of them.
The text he had consulted most heavily about these sort of rituals had vaguely suggested placing a seed of some kind inside his mouth for the ceremony—but that was all. No specific instructions as to which kind of seed or even how many. In the end he had chosen peas because they were the least offensive to look at, and the number 'seven' because that was how many years had elapsed since he'd last seen his mother. More convenience than instinct, but he supposed he'd done his part by honoring such a ridiculous suggestion in the first place.
Reluctantly, Theodore opened his mouth and attempted to place the peas under his tongue (where he thought he'd be the least likely to accidentally swallow them). Cursing the fact that he had not taken size into account (the peas would have been unwieldy even if he hadn't been feeling so out of it) he sat forward on his knees, this time in concentration.
Truly, there was nothing like a mouthful of peas to make the recitation of a dark incantation more dignified.
A sputter of deep, drug-giddy laughter almost sent the peas flying again and Theodore had to pinch his thigh quite viciously to make himself focus.
It did the trick. The hallucinogenic image of his father floated behind his eyes; a slightly intoxicated little grin, eyes squinty, chin flat. An expression of sneaky compliance that could almost be mistaken for one of cheer. The return of the Dark Lord had all but reshaped his features. He no longer tottered about in confusion, he flew about in a frenetic haste.
Insane. That was the word that came to mind. His father had been pushing the edge of delusional for several years now. But what had come first, the chicken or the egg? Had his mother's death left him wracked with such grief that the bedrock of his good mind had cracked, fracturing off in odd and seemingly disconnected directions? Or had it been the other way around? Had his latent madness led directly to the death that would be the catalyst for all the derangement to follow?
Theodore could not trust himself to remember well enough to guess.
"Say it out loud," he urged himself, "practice. If you can't say it now, you'll never be able to say it to her."
It was a question he had spent his entire life guarding. An ugly scab he refused to pick at. Everything hinged on the answer.
He closed his eyes, pictured his mother's face. With his right hand he drew three identical lines in the only exposed patch of grave dirt he could find (right up against the tombstone, intimate as could be).
The slight wind died down to a vacuous, dangerous silence and the leaves ceased to stir.
Now.
"Did my father murder you?"
It sounded all right in his head, but it came out a pathetic, wheezy word-storm of peas and spittle.
Angry with himself more than anything, Theodore spit out the mouthful of peas and leaned blindly forward until his forehead scraped to a rest against the granite front of the tombstone. He eyes were still strained tightly shut and the sudden fear of what he might see if he opened them kept them that way. The silence chilled him; the heat of the drugs in his cheeks surged like a feverish furnace. He very well might be dying. A single tear slid between his tightly clamped eyelids, burning a salty track down past his nose.
One full minute of silence and then another. If he didn't open his eyes soon he'd never have the guts to do it. Like a character in a Victorian novel, he might literally die from fright.
Finally, with a defiant flick of his head, he cast his eyes about the scene. Same graveyard, same moon. Vacant lawn. Lonely road beyond it.
Sadness tinged with relief flooded his tense body. Really, what would he have done if she'd been there? Probability fainted cold. He panted out a measure of sick terror, heaving in great gasps of air he hadn't known he needed.
Well that's that, he realized, his acceptance of defeat somewhat less regretful than he'd anticipated.
He dusted off the knees with shaky hands, shot a final, paranoid parting glance toward the woods behind him and stopped dead.
There, between two of the fullest low-hanging branches, hovered a set of eyes. Not dead eyes, or anything else resembling the phantom he had been expecting, but the living eyes of a large deer.
Unquestionably, Theodore knew this deer. Knew it as his own creation. Every atomic fiber of his being slowed, stilled into the sludgy stiffness of true panic. Because his mother was the deer and the deer was his mother. Yes, that made sense.
No, no stop it, he begged himself. It's the drugs.
The deer continued to stare at him. Not mournfully, or even wisely for that matter, but with just enough steadfast intensity to assure him of a greater sentience. Theodore's teeth began to chatter.
It's just a deer.
The doe snorted a gust of breath through its nostrils. The noise struck the air like a hiss.
"THEO!"
The sound of his own name cut across his nerves like a lash. He stumbled, found the wrong corner of the tombstone (was there really any right angle?). Next thing he knew, he'd bitten into a mouthful of grass without even trying to bring up a hand to defend his fall.
Overwhelmed by stimuli, Theo positively writhed in his attempt to regain his feet.
"What—" he gasped "—happening?"
"The fuck?" crowed a delighted, vapid voice. "Hah-hah!"
It was a moment before his jumpy tunnel vision could refocus long enough to make out Tracey Davis standing among the weeds.
"Why?" was all he could manage.
"Oh," Tracey trilled, oblivious to the wild, musky evidence of his panic. "I don't know, really. Mum's asleep and Astoria's who knows where for who knows how much longer. I thought I'd stop by and see if your lights were on."
In truth, Theodore had seen rather a lot of Tracey since summer had started. A surprising comfort, really, considering Astoria (normally the glue that bound them together) had been so absent. But the idea that she might casually stop by his father's house at night (especially now, invigorated as he was for the first time in years) was so genuinely horrific that he almost thought she must be joking.
"I used the floo in the village pub," she plowed on, undaunted by the obvious disgust in his expression. "I wasn't trying to intrude. You asked me to come, you know."
What? He most certainly had not.
Coming to his senses at last, Theodore's gaze whipped back to the underbrush: the deer had disappeared like smoke. All at once, his confusion turned into a sweaty and unreasonable rage. He racked his mind for the most recent letter he had sent Tracey—trying to pinpoint whatever it was he had insinuated that might have led her to believe that it was alright to drop by in the middle of the night.
"What're you on about?" he snapped back viciously. "It's midnight!"
"Sorry," Tracey deadpanned, plainly not sorry at all. "Thought you might be losing your mind or something. Lord knows I would, if I was shut up all day."
A squirrel skittered across the grass several feet behind Tracey. Theodore heard every paw-fall like a drum inside his head. All of a sudden, he realized that he was gritting his teeth so tightly that his bones might snap.
"Balls," he hissed, unable to work his jaw correctly.
"Language, young Theo!" Tracey tutted, dropping down into a messy squat at the foot of his mother's grave. The sight of her—so near to his mother's body, the scene of his failed hopes—reignited his irrational fury.
"I have to go home," he muttered, trying very hard not to show how disoriented he felt.
"Not feeling well?" Tracey wondered. "Probably the berries. The mushrooms will set in later."
Theodore struggled with this. His ability to understand nagged at him, just out of reach.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded, teeth chattering.
"The poison," Tracey insisted, plucking at a centipede that was struggling to escape from the dirt near her fingers.
Poison? How could she possibly guess that he had poisoned himself?
"How do you know about that?" Theodore wondered aloud.
"You just told me," Tracey insisted slowly. Her eyebrows bunched, suggesting concern. "Psilocybin takes ages. The berries act faster."
She held up the centipede to marvel at it. The sight of its many quivering flanks in the moonlight made Theodore want to faint.
Had he told her? The rational part of Theo's mind—or what was left of it—told him that he hadn't. Then again, perhaps he was underestimating the potion he'd swallowed. All around, the moonlight (so recently blue-ish) now looked suffused by a swampy green tinge. Perhaps he had told her and already forgotten doing so?
Theodore squinted at Tracey, his suspicions just sharp enough—just dreadful enough—to prevent him from blinking. Slowly, Tracey's smile widened into a fat grin. Without breaking eye contact, she raised the centipede to her mouth and swallowed it whole.
For the briefest of seconds, time seemed to slow. Then, Theodore kicked violently backwards, ready to run.
"Theo!" Tracey shrilled. "What's wrong with you?"
And suddenly she looked like Tracey again, the Tracey he knew from school.
"You just—you swallowed it!" He gestured pathetically toward the dirt she had plucked the centipede from.
"What?" Tracey snapped, annoyed. "No, I didn't. I didn't swallow anything. You're high, Theo. You need to sit down."
Theodore did as she said, clinging to the hope that she was telling the truth.
"There, that's better, isn't it?" she murmured, patting his knee. "You just have a nice sit down, right there, where none of the deer, or squirrels or bugs can get you."
Had he mentioned that it was a bug he thought he'd watched her swallow? Had he mentioned anything about the centipede at all? Or the deer for that matter?
"Who are you?" Theodore whispered, certain that whoever it was sitting before him was neither Tracey Davis nor his mother.
"Your friend." She smiled again. "Doesn't that seem like something I would say?"
"I don't know," Theodore admitted. "Maybe."
"There now," Tracey cooed. "That's right. Let's talk together like friends. But I must warn you, I lie."
"Okay," Theodore muttered, unsure what else there was for it. He could try to escape but something about Tracey's powerful, coil-like posture on the ground warned him that he would not succeed.
"What do friends talk about?" wondered Tracey-the-false-Tracey. "Let's play a game to find out. Two truths, one lie."
"What's that?" asked Theodore, a little disconcerted. 'Two truths, one lie' sounded an awful lot like the kind of game the real Tracey might play.
"It's the game where I tell you two truths and one lie," explained Tracey brightly. "Is there anything you'd like to ask a friend?"
"Did my father kill my mother?" Theodore all but slurred, feeling that this creature—whatever it was—might actually be capable of giving him the answer he'd wanted after all.
"Yes," the false Tracey hissed. "Next question."
"Wait," Theodore stirred, panicked. "Was that one of the truths or the lie?"
"Next question," Tracey insisted, flashing teeth.
"I need to know!" he pleaded. "Please, just tell me."
But the false Tracey showed no signs of breaking. Theodore considered the next of his three queries.
"Will Voldemort win the war?"
"No," False Tracey answered promptly.
Theodore leaned forward until his head was in his hands. "I hope that isn't the lie," he admitted shakily, surprising even himself. "I really do."
Tracey continued to smile. It obviously didn't matter one way or the other to her. Earthworms were wriggling in the dirt near her feet now. Spiders too, panicky spiders, fleeing. Fleeing from what? From Tracey...
Theodore repressed a shudder. There was nothing else he wanted to know, but it seemed as though this creature with Tracey's face felt as though he was contractually obligated to ask one last question.
"How will I die?" he finally asked, seeing nothing else for it. There. That was properly dramatic enough.
Tracey's smile finally shifted, grew stony. "Betrayal," she whispered slowly.
Theodore frowned. He had (rather unimaginatively) been expecting something along the lines of future heart disease.
The false Tracey leaned closer and Theodore was suddenly bathed in her malignant, floral odor. "Remember my face."
Theodore shrank away from her, no longer able to tolerate the cruel smile or the strange smell. Just when he thought it would become too much, he blinked and the vision disappeared.
Alone now and gasping, Theodore's head whipped from left to right. But there was nothing. No deer, no monsters.
Behind him, the clock struck one.
"THEO!"
Horrified, Theodore dropped into a hunch. No. Not again. Once was all he could bear.
"What on Earth are you doing?" demanded Tracey. "Did I scare you? Hah!"
Theodore braced himself as the twin shadows of her knobbly knees appeared before him.
Uncertainly: "Theo?"
Tracey reached out to touch his arm and he flinched away from her.
"Oy, what's happening?" demanded Tracey, sounding legitimately nervous. "Oh God, is this it? Have you finally cracked?"
She was crouching in front of him now. Theodore braced himself for the rosy-rot smell of evil but it never came. Just a waft of something distinctly candied. Chewing gum.
He looked up, quivering.
"Tracey?"
"Yeah?" Tracey gusted. With a nervous gulp, she swallowed the entire wad of gum. "What are you doing out here? I'm sorry if scared you. I was just popping though... Mum's asleep and Astoria's who knows where. Well, you know. I thought I'd stop by and see if your lights were on."
"I need to get home," Theodore let out haltingly, pleadingly. "I need..."
"Yeah," agreed Tracey, who was beginning to sound very far away. "Looks like. Up you get."
He felt a tug under both armpits and allowed himself to be drawn to his feet.
"On you march," she muttered, bearing some (if not most) of his weight on her own shoulder. "That's it."
Already he could not seem to remember crossing the lawn, but cross it must have. Dimly, he became aware of the sensation of blankets around him. Of having climbed into the hammock that hung above his real bed, tethered as it always was between a sturdy bookcase and his window lock (the only place that he could read without fear of being disturbed by his father's corgi). The fluid sensation of air beneath him...
0o0
Theodore shot upright in his hammock. Sunlight streamed in, its brightness undercut by the gauzy curtains that obscured his one pitiful window. A mixture of shock and nausea held him in place, hammock swaying slightly. His view, high up above the rest of his room, was one of cobwebs.
How had he gotten here? Theodore strained, trying to make sense of his thoughts.
The ritual. He had done the ritual.
It had not worked, he decided. But the drugs had. Yes, that made sense. And Tracey? Had probably not been there at all (indeed it made more sense that she had not). That, or she had and he'd acted so appallingly that he would never be able to face her again. Theodore pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sign. What a nightmare.
Eager to reclaim some sense of normality, Theodore kicked off his quilt and swung over the side of the hammock. In doing so, he realized that he was no longer wearing pants and his hope that Tracey had not been present the night before tripled.
Stepping over piles of books and his favorite plate (the one he liked to cut apples on), Theodore dressed himself without gusto. Downstairs, the house was silent. Too silent. His father had slept in, no doubt having fallen asleep upright in his study chair again.
Hunger gnawed at his insides. His last meal of poison had taken its toll. Unwilling to wait for his father's ancient (and very blind) house elf to prepare hard biscuits or something of the like for lunch, Theodore trudged down to the kitchen and made coffee. After banging about for a suitable pot, he filled one with water and set eggs to a boil. Massaging his temples, he watched the pot steam.
The distant ding-dong of the front doorbell rocked the house like a shot. All at once, he heard his father's dog start yapping, then the calamitous roar of his father himself.
Within seconds, Theodore had prodded out the stove flames with his wand and shot back into the hall.
"Blasted, WANKING SALESPEOPLE!" came a distant roar.
"I've got it!" Theodore yelled over the sound of his father's screams, still hopeful that the disaster could be diverted. "It's for me!"
Surprisingly, it was. He pulled the door open, cursing himself letting another day go by without disabling the damn bell, and discovered Tracey leaning against the doorstop. Holding her body in a rather extreme angle of nonchalance, she looked very smug indeed.
"Hey," Theodore grunted, unable to stop himself from wincing at the sounds still emanating from his father's study.
"Oh hell-oooo," returned Tracey, eyes dancing. Then: "What's with the racket?"
"Haven't I told you not to ring the doorbell?" hissed Theodore. They had, after all, been over this.
"I guess," Tracey scoffed.
"Tracey," Theodore snapped. "Never ring the doorbell! That is what the bloody racket is!"
"A fine good morning to you too," Tracey snickered, weaseling around him into the hall. "And how did we sleep?"
The sound of a crash behind the study door indicated that something—most probably a lamp—had been smashed. Finally, Tracey flinched.
"Outside?" she mouthed, gesturing helpfully towards their usual backyard haunt.
"Yeah," agreed Theodore tersely, following her out into the sunshine.
"So," purred Tracey, rounding on him the moment they were out of earshot of the house.
"Listen, Tracey, " Theodore hurried, dropping all trace of pretense. "Did I see you last night? Where you here? At my house?"
Tracey let out a soundless burst of glee that confirmed Theodore's worst fears. Awful. Perfectly awful. The nightmare was now complete.
"Listen, was I acting...weird?"
"Gee, you think?" Tracey snorted. "Pretty much the whole reason for this check-to-see-if-you're alive visit and whatnot."
"How did I..." Theodore faltered, embarrassed. "How did I get back to my room?"
"I put you to bed," said Tracey. "You couldn't even stand upright, ranting and raving—"
"No," Theodore realized miserably. "You did take off my pants."
This seemed to bring Tracey up short.
"Um, no," she drawled, clearly amused that the idea had even crossed his mind. "Must have been the ghost. Would you have been mad if I undressed you?"
"Ghost?" Theodore pressed. "What ghost?"
"You tell me," Tracey prompted, now laughing at the stricken look on his face. "That's all you'd talk about. You kept saying you'd seen a ghost. Really, Theo, it was dead creepy."
Tracey had not witnessed his horrifying visions, at least. That was one thing to be thankful for. Theodore sank down onto the grass.
"Want to explain what's going on?" Tracey pressed.
Theodore weighed the merits of throwing himself at her mercy, trying to think of the best possible way to explain himself without giving away too much. Helpless, he searched for the right words.
"I'm hungry," Tracey sighed. Already he had taken too long and her attention had shifted.
"I was just making breakfast," Theodore relented, disappointed despite himself.
Tracey wrinkled her nose. "Your house smells like day-old eggs. Whatever you're making in there, I want no part of it."
"Suit yourself," he grumbled, pushing his face into his sweater sleeve and wanting to die.
"Are those raspberry bushes?"
"Probably," Theodore grunted, unable to care what sort of bushes they were. "Eat up."
I hope they make you puke your brains out.
Theodore waited for her to move away before dropping his arm. He needed help and he needed it desperately. That much was undeniable. But Tracey, while seemingly well meaning, was certainly not his idea of an ideal candidate. He shivered a little, remembering: Remember my face...
No, what he needed was Astoria. Astoria had a head on her shoulders, she'd know what to do. Or rather, she'd know how to keep him calm long enough for him to figure out what to do.
As though wishing had made it so, Theodore suddenly became aware of another figure coming out of the house. He sat up, unable to believe his eyes or his luck: Astoria in the flesh, fresh from France and still dressed in traveling clothes. He signaled her down like a drowning man.
"Astoria!" his voice cracked. "When did you get in?"
"Hullo," she smiled, settling down across from him on the grass. "Late. Like midnight. You don't look so well..."
"I'm not well," Theodore gasped, scooting towards her. "Listen, Tracey's here but I have to tell you something—"
"I have something to tell you too," said Astoria, fairly well running over his panicked speech without noticing.
"Oh." Theodore floundered, unable to stop himself from feeling stung. "Ok. Well, sure. You first..."
Astoria seemed to consider him. Her lovely face was strangely cold. "Oh, I don't know," she muttered at last. "Never mind. Let's hear your problem."
"No," Theodore puffed back. He flushed with embarrassment as he registered her tone of resigned boredom. "By all means. Let's do you..."
"I don't know, Theo," Astoria warned. "I don't think you're going to like what I have to say."
"Why's that?" Theodore demanded, conscious of the fact that his stomach was growling again and that it wasn't because he was hungry.
"You've been cooped up here so long," Astoria sighed. "You have no idea whats going on. You know, you're just about the only person from school I haven't seen?"
"Alright," Theo relented, mouth dry. Had she visited someone else before him? "So what?"
Astoria let out a pitying tsk.
"What are you even talking about? Who have you seen?" Theodore swallowed hard. "You saw the Malfoys on vacation? Blaise Zabini stopped by your party? What does that matter?"
Astoria shrugged, but her eyes were brimming with secrets.
"Bully for Malfoy!" Theodore snapped, his tone escalating. "I'm glad you two had such a cozy time."
Astoria raised an eyebrow and shot him a meaningful look. Yes, the look seemed to say, that's the gist of it.
This was awful, a fresh bite out of hell, and yet it was also somehow exactly what he had expected to hear from the moment she'd shut him down.
"Alright," Theodore deadpanned, feeling oddly distant from himself. "Noted."
Astoria and Draco.
"I just can't do it, you know?" Astoria went on, suddenly more animated. "Be the good guy, or whatever it is you want from me. You're such a good boy, Theo. You really do mean well. But I'm not going to sit this war out alone. I'm throwing a body in front of me."
"What?" Theodore's voice cracked again. It was as though he was seeing her from across a moat. "So this is—what? Like, a self preservation thing?"
Somehow, that was even worse that what he'd initially pictured.
"Yeah, I guess."
"One day you just looked at Draco and thought 'your dad's important, get on me?'"
"Basically," Astoria agreed. "Actually, it wasn't even that much effort, if I'm being honest. God, he was just panting for it. Pretty much all I had to do was sit on him."
"Ok, no more," Theodore somehow managed, stricken.
"What?" Astoria chuckled, plucking a fallen crab apple up from the grass. She held it up to her face, perhaps to disguise how well pleased with herself she was. "You don't want to hear what it was like fucking him? He's such a weasel, but I liked it you know."
The crab apple, though cunningly placed, failed to hide her fat, familiar smirk.
Her fat, familiar smirk.
"Don't" Theodore jolted, suddenly understanding. "Stop it.
"What are you talking about?" Astoria sneered, but the effect no longer worked on him.
"Use a different face," he insisted quietly, seeing it now; her eyes, her grin, all wrong.
"Really?" Astoria leaned forward. "I like this one. It's meaner, I think. I should've used it first." She watched as his panic mounted, smiling widely. "Hey, Theo. You want to play a game?"
Soberly, Theodore got to his feet, prepared to fight if he had to. Because there could be no mistaking it now. There were no drugs to blame this time. If he could see it, then it was real. He hadn't imagined anything.
"Shh," Astoria tittered. "I guess we already did."
And with that, she opened her mouth wide. He caught a glimpse of something stirring there at the pit of her throat—the centipede.
"TRACE—oof!"
He reeled around and knocked directly into Tracey, scattering her armful of berries.
The phantom of Astoria was gone and Tracey did not look amused.
"Hey! It took forever getting those!"
Theodore looked down at the berries, now praying that they weren't of the poisonous variety.
"Trace," he began uneasily. "Can you come over tonight?"
"I thought you said I was 'never to come over to your house again at night!'" retorted Tracey, severely replicating his tone.
"I know, but forget about that for a minute, okay," Theodore pleaded. "I need your help."
"With what?" she returned dubiously.
"A blessing. No, more like a cleansing." Theodore considered the matter before relenting. "No, screw it, probably going to want to call it an exorcism."
Tracey squinted. "Huh?"
0o0
"So let me get this straight," mused Tracey, stepping over the circle Theodore had just spent the last half hour painstakingly chalking onto the floorboards of his upstairs hall. "The first one looked like me and the second one looked like Astoria?"
"Yes," confirmed Theodore, checking his symbol against the one in the book. "Or, no. It was the same monster both times, I think. But it used two different faces."
That was the thing about his fathers books: while they had failed to produce a means for him to have a conversation with his dead mother, they were undoubtedly rare, some of them medieval, and obviously powerful. At this point, he could only assume that he had invited a monster.
"And you accidentally summoned it during a seance?" continued Tracey. "A seance you conducted just to see if you could?"
Ignoring her skepticism, Theodore squeezed the stick of chalk a bit tighter and kept his eyes fixed on the book. "Yup. That's it."
"And the one that looked like me wanted to do riddles with you?"
"Not quite," Theo corrected. "It wanted to play a game with me. Two truths and a lie."
"Aw!" Tracey mooned. "That's a great one! What did it tell you?"
"What's that?"
"Well," insisted Tracey excitedly, "it would have told you three things. Two of them were true and one would've been a lie."
"I can't remember," Theodore fibbed. "I was too out of it."
"Because of the magical death jizz, or whatever it was you drank before the ceremony?"
"The potion, yes." Theodore snapped. "It was a potion."
"Right, whatever. The magical death potion that put you out of your mind. The lunatic juice."
Hearing his own plan reiterated to him through the lens of Tracey's perception was possibly the most discouraging thing he'd ever experienced. What in the world had ever convinced him that it was good idea?
"You could try taking this seriously, you know" he shot over the chalk circle. "We are here to fight a monster."
"Cool," Tracey chuckled. "Are you sure, though? Might be kind of useful to have a mystic version of me popping in from time to time to tell you prophecies."
"Bugs," Theodore snapped vindictively. "You ate bugs."
"Ew." Tracey pulled a face. "And the Astoria one? What did it do? Did she eat bugs?"
"The Astoria one? No." Theodore thought for a moment. "She was mean."
"That tracks," Tracey snorted, slightly amused.
Theodore paused, hunched over the nearly completed chalk circle.
"Hey, Trace?" His brow furrowed and he couldn't quite bring himself to make full eye contact. "You don't think Astoria's ever..." he trailed off, not entirely convinced that he wanted to say it.
"Ever what?" asked Tracey, examining the stack of books he'd abandoned on the top step.
"I don't know. You don't think she and Malfoy are, like, secretly together do you?"
"Hah, no!" Tracey cackled. "God. He probably wishes, though, doesn't he?"
Theodore considered this opinion. He knew he ought to be relieved by it, but it fell short of the mark somehow.
"They go off together sometimes..." he continued, thinking out loud more than anything else.
"Yeah, so?" Tracey scoffed. "I don't think it's for closet shagging. Lord, can you imagine how insufferable Malfoy would be if it was?"
Theodore's shoulders relaxed. This, at least, rang true.
"Okay," he stood up and dusted off his pants. "You ready for this?"
"Sure," agreed Tracey. "What am I supposed to do exactly?"
You stand in the middle," Theodore instructed, shooing her into the chalk circle, "and you take these."
He handed her a pair of scissors and a black and white portrait of his mother. The sacrifice of this portrait, one of the few that Theodore possessed, sent a shot of regret through his heart. Still, he'd left himself with little choice. Whatever it was he'd summoned (although not his mother, surely) there was no doubt in his mind that the key to destroying his bond with it was to destroy a picture of the image that he had used in the formulating of the original spell. Everything he had read seemed to indicate that this was the anchor to which his monster was tethered.
"All right," Tracey persisted. "Then what?"
"Then I chant for a bit and when I finish you have to cut that picture in half, alright?"
"That will destroy the monster?"
"It'll send it somewhere else," Theodore admitted.
"Won't that piss it off?" Tracey asked, finally beginning to look a little alarmed.
"Well, yeah, but the circle's blessed," Theodore frowned. "It shouldn't be able touch you in there. Besides, I don't think it wants you to see it."
"What a fun new hobby you've got yourself here," grumbled Tracey, checking to make sure she was well inside the chalk outline.
"I've given it up," Theodore muttered. "Okay, I'm starting."
He began to read aloud from the page. Across from him, behind Tracey, the monster re-materialized. Once again, it wore Astoria's face. Grinning, it mimed the act of brutally stabbing itself in the gut with an invisible dagger.
Careful not to rush (but sorely tempted to) Theodore finished the final line. He looked up and indicated that Tracey should cut.
With a satisfying rip, the scissors sheered the picture in half. The mirage of Astoria disappeared at once. Sound crept back into the room.
"Is it gone?" Tracey demanded, in no rush to abandon the safety of her chalk circle if it wasn't.
"It's gone," Theo assured her. "There's nothing there."
"Ugh, good!" Tracey exclaimed. "I could feel something watching me even if I couldn't see it. Fuckin' spooky."
Theodore nodded, unable to turn away from the last spot the false Astoria had stood.
"Yeah," he agreed. "Spooky."
0o0
Well, there we have it folks. The only break from regular POV this story will ever see. Satisfying Fun Fact: it falls right in the middle of this story arc (separating books four and five) so if ever there was a time to do it, this was probably it. There's also lots of fun potential spoilers/hints to dissect here about what's to come (of course, some of those hints may be lies, you know the drill).
Make sure to drop a review if you feel like it! I'd love hear what you guys think about Theodore (probably not the most chill little fellow, but one of my absolute favorite characters to write). It'll be back to business as usual on Saturday. Until then, wishing you all a safe and healthy week! Oh, and happy belated Halloween!