Two: I'm Sorry, Mr. Auror, I'm Just Trying to Have Some Fun
14 July 1994
Draco shifted for the hundredth time, frowning severely at Theo.
"Relax, won't you? I swear, they won't bite. Probably."
Draco, despite the reassurances, was regarding the muggles flittering about the patio with great suspicion.
"I don't know why I let you talk me into these things," he muttered, his temporarily brown gaze fixing Theo with a glare.
"Because it's fun , you know that word right?"
"Go fuck yourself, Nott. I mean, muggle Padova is one thing–"
"It's just Padova–"
"But polyjuicing? As girls ?"
"Women– just shut up and enjoy your wine, won't you?"
Draco scowled, but did as Theo suggested. The git's mood immediately lifted as the wine hit his lips, his pinched brow relaxing as he set his glass back down and leaned back so the sun hit his face– unfamiliar as it was. Across the piazza, the church bell tolled.
"I remember now," muttered Malfoy. He peeked an eye open to half-heartedly glare. "Still not sure about the polyjuicing, though. We're countries over and you had a wandless confundo mastered last Christmas, what is it we're hiding from?"
"Maybe I just wouldn't be caught dead in public with you , Malfoy. Some of us have reputations to uphold." Theo smirked, sipping his own glass.
"Oh yes, alert the Prophet , the society pages ought to prepare for the scandal of the century: heir Malfoy drags Nott for aperitivos–"
A whistle pierced the heavy piazza air and a crass voice boomed: "Ciao, bella!" Though not perhaps tossed in their direction– Theo couldn't be bothered to confirm the source– Draco's scowl returned and he fussed with the layering of his skirt, crossing his legs.
"I hate you for this."
Theo snorted. "Come off it, Draco, you make a very pretty girl. Why if Potter could see you now–"
"You keep that thought to yourself, Theodore," Malfoy growled. "Potter is my bitterest rival and mortalest enemy. I'll not have you spinning that any other way with your 'I am Nott, writer of history' nonsense."
Theo threw up his hands placatingly as Draco hid his reddening face behind a rather large gulp of wine. He recovered, smacking his lips and diverting the discussion as he sat back:
"Anyways, I've gone steady with Pansy."
Theo choked. Draco shot him an exasperated look. "Parkinson?"
"You know another?"
"Well, it's just– she's rather annoying, isn't she?"
"You're annoying, and I tolerate you."
Theo shrugged. "Yes, but I come with the added benefit of no marriage contract."
Draco scowled. "I'm not marrying her. I'm dating her. Courting her, whatever."
"First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby Scorpius–"
"I'm not naming my child Scorpius no matter how many times you ask," snapped Draco. "And, besides, who said anything about love?"
"Well, that is rather the point, isn't it?" offered Theo, knowing this argument was useless. If the Notts obeyed Love, then the Malfoys obeyed Legacy. Draco would tie himself in knots if his filial duty demanded it and asking him not to do so was like asking Theo not to care about anything at all.
The argument was useless, but it was a familiar one, and so Draco replied:
"Well, we can't all just do whoever we want, society be damned. There are rules and expectations , Theodore."
"Ironic, but alright, I'll play along. You say 'expectations,' I say 'boring and predictable.' What do I need society for, anyways?"
Draco looked pointedly over the rim of his glass. "You underestimate the Ministry, Theo. Here you are, an heir no one thought would appear and not only that, but your father, with his Ministry watchdogs, has gone above-board, after centuries of your family isolating themselves as madmen and fugitives. A Nott, held accountable and considered, for all intents and purposes, an upstanding member of society, of course said society is interested in you." Satisfied with his lecture, Draco dropped back in his seat. "Society doesn't care if you like to indulge in a little dick every now and then," he continued on with a proud little smirk, "so long as you find a decent wife and give everyone the next generation to obsess over."
Theo sighed, and relaxed back himself. He dragged up the first girl he could think of. "What about the Greengrasses?"
"Astoria?"
"I was thinking Daphne, the one in our year."
Draco remained limp, basking in the sun. "Oh, yes, I forgot about her. The Greengrasses are good stock, pretty, pure-blooded. A little… soft, if you follow." Theo coughed. Malfoy peeked an eye open and rolled it. "On the mudbloods, you barbarian. The Greengrasses favor assimilation over segregation. Aster got into a proper row over it with Mitch Crabbe at the last session. My father had to demand a recess to break it up." Malfoy frowned. "Why? Do you like her? Daphne, I mean."
"I–" Theo thought for a moment. "Well, she has nice… hips." Right? That was something to like about a woman, wasn't it?
Draco's laugh, an octave higher than usual, echoed like the bell around the square.
"I can't believe this!" yelled Malfoy, his voice cracking as the polyjuice faded. They barrelled around a corner, the waiter yelling behind:
"Cazzo– Ragazze!"
Theo, stumbling to a stop on the back side of the church, pulled out his beechwood Gregorovich and tapped the stones.
"How could you forget to bring money?" Draco snapped as the stones unrolled and the church opened up.
They stepped into the room, a cavern, really, with a low ceiling and littered with candles. Long and narrow, a fireplace was lit, flickering lazily at one end, a tiny, gold-leaf cabinet shielded by a similarly gold-coated cross atop a table at the other. In the middle of the whole thing were work tables, slanted, with books and papers strewn around haphazardly. One man was hunched over, scribbling furiously.
"I didn't forget ," said Theo, his voice bouncing. "I just only have British pounds."
"Stupid muggles, why do they need different types of–"
"Sh!" The man at the work table glared.
Draco, red faced and chided, bit his tongue; Theo sniggered, and before they could disrupt the peace anymore, Theo tossed a handful of floo powder into the fire and dragged Draco through to St. Barnabas Cathedral, Nottingham.
It was a twenty minute flight north into the woods of Nottingham to the front entrance of Temple Nott. A square, stout, building, just two storeys, abutting a pond and centered around a glass-topped courtyard, it was not a luxurious estate but it was an ancient one, made of old weathered stone and ivy run rampant. It had undergone art deco renovations at some indeterminate point in time, a reflection of the growing arcades in Leeds to the north, and, set as it was under a glamour as a tumble-down shack, the real structure unfurled to magical folk in a clearing in the middle of the medieval forest like something belonging to Camelot. Perhaps the hidey-hole for Robin Hood or, more likely, the villainous King John. The land had belonged to the Notts since the time of Alfred, long before declaring itself a magical settlement in the Domesday Book, and Theo was very sure the faeries lay in wait to reclaim it.
(It should be noted that all magical settlements were removed from the Domesday Book post-Statute, and only the Library at Temple Nott retained the very original 1086, magical-muggle-and-everything-in-between King's Book. Theo'd read it last summer over a particularly dreary few weeks his father was away.)
Of the three Nott residences, it was Theo and Amadeus's favorite. Though Mother had always preferred the dilapidated castle in the North Sea. She would, though.
The entry opened and Theo, kicking off his shoes, stepped through, Malfoy close behind. A pop broke the air and Theo picked up his shoes. He passed them to Ziggy, taking the house slippers offered by the house elf in exchange.
"We left the brooms out on the lawn, Zig. See they're put away properly, would you?" The house elf gave a curt nod and cracked away like a bolt of lightning.
"And what time do you call this?" came the voice of Amadeus. He was leaned against the door frame of the library, watching them with an amused expression on his face. Theo grinned back, tossing his hands in his pockets with a shrug and lazily stepping forward.
"Got a bit carried away, soz."Amadeus scowled, his cane coming out and making to whack at Theo's ankle, stopping short. Theo bounced as though struck anyways, if only to drum up pity and support as the ne'er-do-well he was.
"Queen's English, boy. I let you run wild, but I'll not have you howling with the wolves."
"He's a hooligan, Mr. Nott, nothing to be done about it," Draco lamented, the kiss-ass.
"You," said Amadeus, pointing his cane at Malfoy. "Your father sent a half dozen owls already. You best be off; swimming in the pond only works as an excuse when the sun's out."
Draco blanched, immediately heading for the parlor side floo.
As Malfoy disappeared into the flames, Amadeus regarded his son, back in proper form: a pleated knee-length skirt and a slightly sheer blouse, complete with ruffles, fitting not exactly the way it was supposed to.
Amadeus took a step towards his son, hobbling as he put his full weight on the cane, and reached out, gaze fixed on Theo's shoulder. When he withdrew, a single strand of long, light hair hung pinched between his fingers.
"Tell me, Theodore," said Amadeus, wrinkled brown eyes reflecting Theo's own amusement back at him, "if I use the hair of a polyjuiced form, would you become the form you polyjuiced as, or would you just become yourself?"
Theo grinned.
24 July 1994
The evening was spent in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps. It was the music room, tucked away on the second floor in the farthest reaches of the house, a space used only by Theo and his father– the fireplace was unmagical, for heat only, and the door to the room itself disappeared into the wall when unneeded.
Theodore was not much musically inclined; his mother had taught him a bit of the violin (she herself had been a proficient fiddler, but hoped to encourage some refinement in her son), and Amadeus had taught him how to read sheets. But Theo's favorite thing about music was listening to it, and so most summer evenings ended like this: Theo sprawled on the old horse-hair sofa, Book levitating just so, while his father plucked away at the old black-keyed baby grand. Amadeus could play anything and everything it seemed; these days, though, he was partial to American ragtime, looping over and over, the jaunty melodies echoing endlessly.
Theo was but staring at the page in front of him, the Book hovering in the air and open– some page halfway through The Mediocre Memoir of Kate Batts – his fingers tapping idly and absently against his stomach to the tune rolling around in the air.
A thought struck him and he sat up suddenly. Amadeus spooked on his bench, fingers slamming hard and discordantly on the keys.
Theo twisted to look at him. "Whistleblower !"
"Come again?"
"Whistleblower, that's the word I was trying to think of earlier. For the witch."
Amadeus frowned pensively. "A whistleblowing witch? As opposed to, say, a spy."
"Is it ever that simple?"
"Most often," said Amadeus, "things are simple. We make them complicated."
Theo's response was cut off by the crack of Ziggy, the house-elf.
"Aurors at the door, sirs," said the elf.
"Ten p.m. on a Tuesday. Not a shred of common decency," Amadeus sighed, closing the keyboard as Theo peered over the back of the sofa.
"What do you think, Zig? Which one's better? Ragtime or jazz?"
"A whole lot of racket, they is," whined the old elf. "Bang, bang, bang– noise, noise, noise. Ziggy will crash pots together if sirs like noise that much."
"Let's get those pots ready then, hm?" Nott Senior muttered. Louder, he continued: "Theo, help me up, will you?"
And Theo did, standing up from the sofa, tucking his Book under his arm.
"Wand and Book on the table, please," insisted Amadeus and Theo, again, did as requested, relinquishing his Book and his beechwood wand, with only minor muttering. Something about his other wand, the elm wood Ollivander, being bent and pointy in all the wrong spots.
(The mismatching of the Ollivander wand was not Garrick Ollivander's fault. Amadeus had a bias towards Gregorovich wands, seeing as he'd apprenticed there in his youth, and owl ordered his son a nondescript, locally produced stick only when the Ministry started taking an interest in Theo's education.)
(Theo's coming of age couldn't come any sooner, Amadeus often lamented.)
They left the room, Theo carrying his father's cane in one hand and his other arm crooked as support. The door vanished, fading into the dark, wainscoted wall before sealing itself completely, Theo's real wand and the Book safely hidden inside.
Because they were wizards, and had been so on this spot since time immemorial, this house of theirs adapted to their needs. Doors and walls shifted for Amadeus as he hobbled through, acutely aware as the place was of his limited mobility and encroaching age. It even ignored staircases, differing stories, shapes and sizes, disregarding even the most seemingly fundamental laws of space and time. It was, in a lot of ways, similar to Hogwarts, but it was small, contained, and so finely tuned to just Amadeus himself. Even Theo, who was maybe the house's second favorite, was sometimes impressed with what could be done when something not unlike Love transcended the most basic rules of the universe.
Through three doorways, they were coming out of what was usually a coat closet tucked under the grand marble staircase of the front hall.
"Alastor," greeted Amadeus as they came upon the three guests darkening their front door. "Always a pleasure." It was not, but Amadeus preferred the humor of false pleasantries, and nodded amiably at the other two lingering by the door: Nymphadora Tonks, broken pieces of a vase in her hands, and– how peculiar– Remus Lupin. Not an auror and not, expressly, just your average wizard.
Amadeus dropped Theo's arm (a sign for him to keep to the sidelines), grabbing his cane and taking a few steps up to Alastor Moody.
"Well, this is certainly a surprise, to be sure."
"Stupidity doesn't suit you, Nott. You know why we're here."
Moody was a rude bloke and while it was nothing new, Amadeus still frowned. He was not a man to be rushed and generally speaking kept a strict sort of schedule– the Ministry work he did and the guests he attended arrived and were dismissed between specific hours. The rest of his time was for Theodore and for his own experiments and hobbies, and he might not be allowed to leave the houses without minder permission but not even the Ministry could keep watch over everything he did in the innermost rooms. Nevermind the ones they didn't know about.
"Let's sit, then," Amadeus offered, and the door to the parlor swung open. "Theo, ready some tea won't you?"
The young Nott didn't look up from the spot he'd taken up beside Tonks, gathering up the pieces of the broken vase from her and laughing quietly at something Lupin had whispered. But Amadeus knew he'd heard the request and didn't pause before heading in.
"I am sorry," offered Tonks and Theo dismissed it again.
"Don't fuss over it," he said. "It's just a vase. Ziggy will sort it."
"Ziggy?" asked Lupin.
"My mum's elf. Bit mad, actually," joked Theo, knowing that Ziggy was probably going to give him an earful over the old pot.
"Tonks!" hollered Moody, and with one last sheepish glance, she hurried off to the parlor. With a nod at Theo, Lupin followed behind.
Having tucked away the ceramic sherds for experimenting on, Theo was in the pantry, warding up the wall.
"Come on, you rotten thing, work!" he hissed, rapping his wand against his hand. He was making decent progress at it, despite the cursing he gave his wand. Elms were reliable, anyways, if slow to start for a poor match.
Ziggy was making the tea– he was quite adept at it– and that was what Amadeus had meant, after all. Ready the tea generally meant: hide the contraband. The Ministry didn't often stop by unexpectedly, unless they had a point to prove or a power trip to take, and even then, someone somewhere was typically able to give Amadeus a quick owl.
But Moody was known for doing things unannounced and, frankly, the reason that Moody and the Notts had never seen eye to eye was very much because both parties subscribed to constant vigilance. Alastor Moody was very good at catching things, and the Notts were particularly good at not getting caught– well, there was that one time–
A crack from out in the tiny kitchen alerted Theo that someone else was coming. Ziggy had hightailed it, and Theo, shoving his elm wood wand in his sleeve, was quick to the hob. He stared at the kettle, willing it to whistle, wondering if he could get away with a warming charm.
But then, someone was loitering at the door, so that was a no.
Theo waited a moment, then, without looking away from the kettle, he asked, "Did you get lost on the way to the bathroom?"
No answer. Theo pushed off the counter he'd leaned on, arms crossed, and glanced over at Moody blocking the doorway.
"This house'll drive you mad," Theo continued. "It's a big fan of vibes, you see, and yours are absolutely retched. You'll never find the washroom with that attitude."
Amadeus would scold him for being belligerent, but Theo didn't like Moody– how could he be friendly with the man that locked his father up, after all– and besides, Moody was an auror. Rules and expectations and all that. Theo had other things to be scared of. He couldn't think of any, at the moment, but he was sure he did.
He looked back at the kettle. "Down the hall, second door on the left. Think relieving thoughts–"
"Depulso!"
Theo, of course, hadn't been watching Alastor Moody, and found himself slamming abruptly against the wall separating the kitchen from the pantry. He'd not travelled far, but even with the lack of momentum, he fell forward, winded.
"Tell me about the Death Eaters, boy," Moody snapped.
Theo, still on his hands and knees, one hand pressed against his chest as he worked to catch his breath, muttered: "What's a Death Eater?"
The lie did not land, and Moody prompted Theo up with the tip of his wand. The two glared at each other.
"I know you know something. Your father's a lost cause, but you – you're just a kid–"
"That you threw into a wall–"
"That was wrong, I shouldn't have done that. Your face makes me angry." That almost apology was horribly bizarre. Coupled with the way Moody's glass eye rolled haphazardly, Theo could admit he was now properly afraid of this man.
"Don't worry, the feeling's mutual," Theo grimaced.
Moody didn't give up any ground, and while Theo'd caught his breath, he was tense, cornered still against the wall. He was feeling rather lightheaded, the adrenaline kicking in and making his blood feel strangely cold. A bit electric.
A ragged moment later, the kettle finally blew.
Theo kept his eyes on Moody. "Do you want tea, or are we just going to wait this out?"
"What is it you were really doing in here?"
" Obviously," Theo drawled, intentional and forced, "I was putting the kettle on. It's magic, not rocket science."
"You have a house-elf."
"He's shit at making the tea. Over-steeps it, too much sugar, not enough milk– you name it, he wrecks it."
"What do you know about the body in the basement?"
Theo almost asked which one, but choked out: "We have a basement?"
See, the thing about Moody was that Theo would never convince him one way or another that he didn't know anything (Theo did know a bit, he supposed), and so the real goal was to annoy the bastard until he gave up and moved on (not likely), or until someone stopped in and interrupted their little chat. Ziggy wouldn't have apparated far, surely he would have already gone for Father–
"What were you and the Malfoy boy talking about in Italy?"
In spite of himself, Theo's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He hadn't even considered that as suspect. He didn't answer– he hadn't really been trying to hide anything when he dragged Draco to Italy. It'd been a spur of the moment decision, and the polyjuicing, that was mostly to rile Draco up. It had also been Theo's first attempt at brewing the potion himself and he wanted to test how he'd done.
Perfectly, if anyone was curious.
But Theo's silence agitated Moody more than any cheek ever could, and, wand tip firmly digging into a soft part of Theo's neck, the auror stepped in closer. Theo tried very hard to sink into the old stone wall.
"Tell me about the plan to bring back You-Know-Who ," Moody hissed.
"You can't be serious," Theo choked out, not entirely sure himself what he was commenting on. The ridiculous, nonexistent plan? The fact an auror had cornered Theo in his home, like he was some nefarious Dark wizard? Shady, sure, but Theo didn't consider himself all that Dark.
A spell seemed on the tip of Moody's wand and tongue; a voice from across the room boomed over the screeching of the kettle.
"Expelliarmus!" Moody's wand dragged hard against Theo's neck as it flung away.
There was a crack, a tiny pull on Theo's robe, and he was vanishing, reappearing on the other side of the room, safe behind his father.
"Threatening a man's son is low, even for you, Alastor," Amadeus snapped. "I ought to file a complaint–"
"He's retiring!" Tonks said hurriedly, pushing her way into the room and rounding between the two men. Lupin hovered by her. "He's retiring, and we're all stressed over those rumors. It would be chaos if You-Know-Who resurfaced, you must know that. No one– none of us would be safe."
Theo certainly hadn't been feeling very safe a few moments ago.
He panted, pressing a hand to the inflamed bit of skin on his neck. It had been nicked, judging by the dusting of red that came back on his fingers.
"Get out of my house," Amadeus growled. "Don't come back without a warrant, or Scrimgeour himself."
Tonks looked like she might say something else, but Lupin shook his head at her and led her forward, out of the room.
Moody summoned his wand and, glaring at Amadeus and then Theodore behind the old man, tucked it away. He limped his way towards them, towards the kitchen door, and paused.
"There are things far worse than me out there," he warned. "You'll get the boy killed."
Amadeus glowered, and if anyone was ever capable of casting a wandless Killing Curse, it'd be him in this moment. But the real thing that frightened Mad-Eye off was Ziggy behind him, preparing to bang kitchen pots together.
A/N: Chapter Title: 'Sorry Mr. Policeman' by Gypsy Unit