Standard Disclaimer: Not my characters.
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He wasn't learned, her lover. He knew nothing of spells or potions or theories of transfiguration.
He wasn't reticent or mysterious; his every thought and emotion drifted across his face as she looked on.
He didn't second guess or belabor every meaning of every word of every sentence as it passed through her lips.
He couldn't have guessed one-tenth of one-hundredth of the things that went through her mind when she looked at him. Or, perhaps more importantly, the things that didn't.
He hadn't any shared history with her or any true concept of suffering.
He wasn't shy, or insecure, or self-effacing.
He didn't and couldn't and wasn't so many things. All leading and building and culminating to what he was.
Perfect. Beautiful. Whole.
For too many months she'd suffered in ignorance an anger, unable to let go of a past that now seemed fleeting and desperate to be forgotten. A rough beginning to a story, an epic, scrapped and buried but still skittering beneath the surface of every new passage.
For an ungodly long time, she had raged bitterly over what she had lost in the process. Dozens of moments, tiny and profound, gifted and stolen, magnificent and unbearable. Hundreds of words and glances and touches that made up a history. Thousands of moments that made up a life. A million memories that clicked and clung and coalesced into another place in time, into another world. A place and time where they belonged to each other as certainly as the earth to the sun. Eternally. Violently. Intractably.
Collision was inevitable.
The first time they made love he was surprised, but passive -- utterly docile as she straddled his hips and began removing his robes. His breath had caught once or twice as she tugged his shirt free from his trousers and unfastened them only as far as need be. He had watched her stiffly, almost apprehensively, as she hiked up her robes so they could both see what she was doing.
She could feel him tremble with excitement, restraint and painful uncertainty. Was she just teasing again? He didn't know. He didn't dare to hope. He didn't dare to move.
She could pull away if she wanted to. Even as she pressed her wet center against the smooth, warm length of him, heard his whimper and felt his resolve not to need, not to want, not to hope begin to crumble, she knew he wouldn't stop her if she chose to reject him again. And she relished that power. That control.
She watched his expressions shift from intense arousal to worshipful amazement to agonizing insecurity. Her heart stuttered and she moved her hips forward then back as she felt him align with her. As his tip slid into her, he let out a small strangled groan then for a long moment remained very still and very stiff as his face turned from pink to red, and his fingers dug into the cushions of the divan.
"Breathe, you silly boy," she had ordered, lightly, more concerned than annoyed, but just barely.
He let out his breath and reflexively sucked in another as she slid down and took him fully. Slightly stunned by the ease and quickness of it all and obviously still full of nerves, he had stared at her, his eyes swimming with surprise, wonder and delirious love.
And, oh, he was beautiful. So beautiful.
She remembered his face, flushed and sweaty, the look of concentration that marked his perfect brow while he struggled and shook with the ecstasy of making love for the first time and the awful fear of disappointing her. He had bravely moved his hands from the cushions to her hips and gently tugged and rocked in rhythm with her. His breathing was slightly labored and was delivered with just barely audible grunts and moans and whimpers. Those little noises egged her on so, and she could scarcely believe it when she hit her climax just minutes into the act.
She had never… it had never… no one had ever…
She had stared down at him, her fingers still clenched in his shirt and her lips hovering just inches from his, and felt awash with joy and power and an indescribable completeness. It tingled in every nerve ending, rushed through her veins and lingered sweetly on the tip of her tongue. Love.
She loved him.
He hadn't closed his eyes once, and, mercy, how they had lit up with understanding and pride and pleasure as he followed her into that bliss.
That was his moment. The one memory he kept closest. The one he cherished above all others. His perfect, perfect moment. He swore he would never let it go. He would never, ever forget.
But he did forget.
He forgot everything they wanted him to forget.
He'd claimed that not even a dementor could pull her from him, but all it took was a few flicks of Hestia Jones' wand.
Oh, the murderous rage she had felt when they told her.
It was a mercy, Harry had tried to convince her. Theodore was better off not remembering magic once he could never do it again. He wouldn't even know what he had lost.
But what about her? What about what she lost?
Her lover. Her friend. Her perfect, perfect, perfect…
Ronald was smug and unforgiving -- not that she cared anymore to have lost him. Ron had always, always been a selfish, jealous and spiteful prat when things didn't turn out his way. This was his idea, his demand, and it was as much her punishment as it was Theo's. A cruel retaliation, no matter what they said.
Theodore forgot, and she couldn't.
She couldn't forget the life and love they had shared. She couldn't forget the heat in his eyes, the scent of his body, or the taste of his magic. She couldn't even grieve him properly.
For how could she grieve the loss of someone she saw every day? In an obscene and bitter irony, she was more a prisoner now than she had ever been during the war.
It wasn't him, she had tried to tell herself.
So like him, but not him.
It was an imposter. An outrageous imitation. His easy, assured smile a ghost, a shadow, a perverse facsimile of his smile, shy and quiet and beautifully understated.
He was confident and happy and beautiful. So goddamn beautiful.
It hurt. It hurt so fucking much that she wondered how she'd stayed sane, how she'd not broken apart in her anger and bitterness.
But it didn't last long. It couldn't. Hermione wasn't the sort of person to suffer delusions or ignore facts. And he wouldn't have let her if she tried. When curiosity and obsession didn't drive her to seek him out, he found her all the same.
And he found her everywhere, as if by magic. On the streets, in the park, in book shops and cafés. He found her lost. He found her lonely. He found her longing.
Her face would screw up in the frustrating panic and pleasure that finding him suddenly before her invariable wrought.
His face would flush with pride and embarrassment and irrepressible joy each time they met and he could see how he affected her.
Even in her rage, it was undeniable.
This stupidly disarming boy was Theo.
This was Theo without the bitterness and the pain, without the fear and dejection and loneliness. This was Theodore Nott without all the losses and horrors that had broken him down.
And he was better off this way.
He didn't remember school or the war or anything magic. But he obviously remembered other things. Ordinary things. Useful things.
He remembered how to walk and talk and read, but not the woman who taught him how. He remembered stories and constellations and the name of every flower in the park garden, but not the books he learned them from.
He remembered how to make love to her, but not the tumultuous days and nights he'd spent mapping her body.
Theodore Nott may have been the only person in the world to have, in effect, lost his virginity twice.
In many ways, the second first time was just like the first. Again, she had taken charge, and pushed him down to mount him. Though, this time she had waited until they were in her bedroom.
The first first time, she had wondered if his father or any of the house elves might have seen. It was hardly discreet, pushing him down on the divan in the library like that. The second first time she wondered how well the Aurors kept track of him.
Caught up in the idea of pinning him down and taking him, fully claiming him for her own instead of giving in to the inevitable and falling open before him, the first first time she hadn't bothered to undress him nearly well enough. The second first time, his shirt needed to go. And the trousers. She wanted him all before her to see and touch and taste.
His willingness and approval of her actions didn't seem to vary much. He still gasped and shuddered in all the same places. He even held his breath.
But his kisses, sweet Circe! His kisses were much more divine. Hungry and assertive, while still naturally deferential toward her reactions. It didn't occur to him to let her have all the control or that she would want or demand it.
The second first time, he was adventurous and unwavering. His passion was thrillingly unrestrained.
And she knew it was silly, wrong, unhealthy to go on thinking so, but she couldn't help but savor the thought. He'd never had another lover. That he could still hold and grip and move with her with such skill, such precision, meant that somewhere, in some subconscious place, he remembered her.
What made it harder to suppress was the way he slept, curled around her snugly, possessively. In sleep he was so much the same. So goddamn needy. She couldn't help but relish it.
He wasn't the same, her Theodore, and yet he was no different.
They had taken his memory, but not his nature.
They took his wand, but not his magic.
They took that time: 29 weeks, 4 days, 7 hours, and a handful of minutes that added up to a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship.
They took those words and glances and struggles for normalcy.
Washing away that other self, that other life. Leaving behind that other place, that other time, only to have it begin again.
Another time.
Another life.
Another world.
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A/N: Apologies for the long wait. This sat on my hard drive for many months whilst I wibbled and attempted to rewrite the whole senario over, and over, and over until the lovely Diabolica betaed this last vignette and told me to stop my wibbling and obsessive rewriting because I had already finished the damn thing and it was good. I hope that you all feel the same. Please let me know what you think, good or bad? Not what you were expecting or hoping for?