"I don't understand," she repeated for the third time.
"Granger," Theo sighed, rolling his eyes. "It's not a difficult concept. If Madame Greengrass adopts you, by all rights you become a pureblood, with all the privileges - and drawbacks - that entails. It's one of the few Blood Rites the Ministry still endorses." There were only so many different ways he could say the same thing; though he understood her confusion, he was frustrated that she was allowing it to cloud her usually rational thought processes.
Not replying, she fell silent and turned her face towards the water. It was early enough in the day that mist was still rising off the surface; Theo thought it looked peaceful, but didn't dare to presume she would think the same. After a few minutes, he heard a muffled sniffle, and had a moment's panic before allowing his nicer manners to take over; he quietly wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He may not have understood why she was crying, but he knew better than to ask. If she wanted him to know, she'd tell him.
Finally, she took a deep, shuddering breath, and when she spoke, her voice was oddly flat and detached. "I Obliviated my parents at the end of my sixth year and sent them to Australia. When Kingsley found out, he offered to send an Obliviator to check on them, see if we could reverse it..." Her voice cracked, and she shook her head, unable to continue.
This was all news to Theodore, and while he couldn't say it wasn't clever, he also understood what precisely she was telling him. She had, essentially, orphaned herself.
"You can't reverse mind magic on Muggles. I don't know why they wouldn't tell you, instead of getting your hopes up."
Her entire body tensed up and her breathing became suspiciously even; peeking at her face from the corner of his eye didn't tell him anything, as her hair had fallen in a wall around her face. "Is that one of those bits of magic lore that everyone is simply expected to know?" Theo was smart enough to feel the dangerous bite underlying the words, and even if he hadn't been, the sparking in her hair would have been hard to miss.
He shook his head quickly, telling her, "No, it's really more of a history lesson, passed down the older families." He would have expected a Shacklebolt to know it. "Back in the days when Muggle-baiting was just another sport, certain individuals thought it entertaining to Obliviated Muggles and replace their memories with absurdities. I believe one French victim became quite famous... Joan of Arc, I think."
She shuffled her shoulders in tacit acknowledgement. She was interested in the history for its own merit, but at the same time, thinking about her parents after a summer filled with attempts to forget what she had done to them was tearing her up inside.
"Anyway, there were other people who didn't believe sending defenseless Muggles insane was sporting and tried to reverse the spell damage, only to discover they couldn't. When I was growing up, it was taught as an admonishment not to get caught; I'm sure a family like the Shacklebolts would have taught it as a lesson against hubris."
"Putting aside the feelings I have that accepting this offer would be an even bigger betrayal of my parents, what do you think I should do?" she finally asked. To anyone who hadn't been at Hogwarts for the last few months, her faith in a Slytherin's opinion would have seemed absurd; she knew, however, that Theo would tell her both the positives and negatives of the arrangement without trying to skew it in his favor. After all, he was already the Head of the Nott Family, and since he had no interest in her as a marriage prospect, he had no real reason to attempt to unduly sway her one way or the other.
"Perhaps," he began slowly, mind rapidly turning over all the different angles. "As a member of the Greengrass Family, you would be a part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. As biased as the author of that particular directory was - and trust me, I would know, his portrait is obnoxious - it still carries weight in polite society today. You would most definitely have more political clout than a Muggleborn witch, even the Muggleborn brains behind the Dark Lord's fall. You do want to go into politics, if I'm remembering properly?" The question was practically rhetorical; he knew she would, even if it was only long enough to crusade for the betterment of those she considered downtrodden before moving on to something more intellectually rewarding. "The downsides to accepting, of course, depend entirely upon the wording of the adoption contract itself, so let's see it."
Hermione looked at him blankly for a moment, then her lips parted in a silent 'oh' of realisation and she unfolded the last, grey sheet of parchment before passing it over. Clever as she may be, she trusted a pureblood raised to political doublespeak over her own admittedly limited knowledge of legalese. Especially since most of it probably didn't apply in the Wizarding world.
He didn't take nearly as long to read the elegant script as she expected; in fact, he seemed just as bewildered as her. "This was the only page?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes."
"Bloody hell, Granger. Mister Greengrass would break himself out of Azkaban if he ever laid eyes on this contract. If I didn't know Madame Greengrass was a Ravenclaw, I would accuse her of being a particularly dim Hufflepuff; the benefits to her hinge entirely upon you wanting to make a name for yourself, independent of Scarhead. You could accept this contract and then practically vanish into obscurity with quite a large fortune."
As much as she appreciated Theo's candor, Hermione wanted to know what had shaken him so much. "Yes, but what does it say? You know I don't weigh things the same way as a Slytherin."
He nodded and elaborated, "Madame Greengrass is offering you a sizable dowry, but hasn't stipulated that she be allowed to arrange a marriage for you... In fact, the only thing she wants you to do for her is attend university at Cambridge on hergalleon! This is absurd!"
His voice had risen several octaves, until his voice was even higher than hers, but that just served to strike home exactlyhow odd the entire proposal was. "Do you think she's counting on my honest nature to change the contract more favourably for her?"
He shrugged weakly, the whites of his eyes showing brilliantly against his tanned skin. "I don't think so. She wants you to rebrand the Greengrass legacy. This would be a public, irreversible step away from everything her husband made the Name stand for; so long as you were seen with them, using the Name positively, the Greengrass Family would regain social standing. It would make Astoria and Daphne more attractive for marriage as well - some of the old families that wouldn't deal with Mister Greengrass' politics would become amenable to offering contracts."
Hermione snorted once, then fell backwards with raucous laughter; it broke the solemn mood, and as he was used to her odd sense of humor, Theo simply waited patiently for her to calm down and explain the joke. When she did, he laughed just as loudly.
"Do you think Pansy could convince her father to offer for Daphne if I accepted this contract?"
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