and by the time your father's heard
of all the wrong you've done
then i'm putting out the lantern
find your own way back home
Theodore watches her, an intangible mess of bushy hair and too-thick eyebrows; he falls into step behind her, his face smoothed over like clay, an impregnable mask of no emotion.
His father will never approve, hell, he's not sure he approves. This is not a textbook romance, they are not the substance of dreams, no matter how many fairytales cast the role of the forbidding parent.
They are Theodore and Hermione, the starcrossed lovers who may never meet, and nobody has ever written a story from that. He changes direction to another corridor, snuffing out his lantern, and he wonders if the dying flame is the most symbolic gesture of them all.