# 72 - Theodore Nott, Eating Sin
Title: Eating Sin
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theo Nott
Prompt: # 72, Fixed
Word Count: 1429
Rating: This post rated R for character suicide, memories of involuntary murder, gore.
Author's Note: Eating Sin was written for the Seventh Sense rpg; when I left the game, I felt that it would be better to kill off the character than assume that someone who could play him to the satisfaction of the other players in his relationship would apply. Obviously, since I still have something like 80 more fanfic100 pieces to write, those will be set prior to this, which, just for fun, will be set present-day, so mid-February, 2006.
Theo stood on the roof of St Paul's cathedral, the rain coming down with that curious touch that is at once evocative of London and extraordinarily, overly, good at getting anyone caught in it soaked to the skin in no time. And as he stands there in the rain, his feet leaving the leads every now and again as he nearly unconsciously casts the Hovering charm that he likes when he does not have the room to pace, he considers the dreams.
His dreams had changed since his contamination, and he realised now that it was foolish in the extreme to expect that they would not have done so. There is always a price that Notts must pay, and when it appears that the price is less than it should have been, that means that payment has not been completely rendered. So, yes, in one sense, he should have expected that there would be a further price for not becoming a werewolf.
But there was no time for self pity, no time nor wish, for Theo had not been raised that way. Instead, there was only time for consideration of what to do next. For the dreams were unendurable, now. They were horrorshows, decorating his mind in blood and death, but even that could have been endured if necessary; Theo had created scenes just as bad in the past.
But these were out of his control. These were, he had no doubt, true dreams, but he could not stop them. He could not find the key to tell him who was creating these dreams, and he was quite smart enough to think that the key had probably been broken in the metaphorical lock when he failed in his duty after Greyback's bite.
"They started then," he said quietly to the rain and to a raven, roosting under an overhang. "They end now."
He dropped off the side of the building, in free fall for a moment only before the Hovering charm caught him and lowered him to the ground. There was only one place to go and one way to make this right.
It wasn't to Firenze. Theo could not consider the idea that he went to his mentor to explain this, that he was such a poor adept of Oneiromancy that he could no longer sleep if he wanted to keep people from dying. He could not, more to the point, swallow his pride and explain that he had not meant to remove himself from Firenze's life, but there were no other choices than to take the Mark and fight at his Lord's and his father's sides. More, that there was nothing he wanted more than to do that.
It was time for the brutal self-honesty that he had only ever managed to hide a little bit. He was afraid of Firenze's response, afraid of seeing what the other would think in his face for a flash before he shuttered his eyes and locked his disapproval away and told Theo calmly and coolly how to do what needed to be done.
Afraid of seeing what the other would think to know that his student, the one who loved the centaur more than he could ever say or show, was a murderer so many times over that the only surprise was that his hands didn't drip with blood when he awoke from the sleep he could not keep himself from.
His route through London meandered; not that he had any intention of walking to Glastonbury, but he wanted to think. To remember.
The owl was set to go to his brother - and his mother - tonight. The letter was written, and if his actions were not fair, at least there was no question that they were his actions and they were what he deemed necessary. An explanation was provided.
He didn't expect that they would be overly upset. Possibly his brother would be, over inheriting the estate a century early, but that was his to deal with, not Theo's.
His lips quirked into a grim smile as he passed through Regent's Park. He'd told his brother what he intended and why, and it was to destroy the family curse in the most final way possible. The true valuables had been removed from the house, for not even in the depths of sleeplessness and despair could Theo consider destroying a thousand years worth of family artifacts and treasures, but he could not leave the remains of either himself or his home to tempt Gabrielle and Draco, to taunt them into coming and to hurt them as it would.
It was time to make a clean sweep of things.
The letter that he had written to his spouses did not, perhaps, console, but it stated what he had done, and the only thing of his that had gone to his brother was the house and the land attached. All the rest, if inconsiderable next to the Malfoy and Delacour estates, was to go to them and eventually to their child. And that was consolation to Theo, at least, who preferred to know that he had left them what he could and taken away what he could not control.
Theo had considered asking them not to include his name in the child's, but a trace of vanity had stopped him. He could not have infected it with this madness, and it was innocent of his crimes and his sins. And it was his child.
Notts claim what is theirs, always.
Theo claimed his crimes. Theo claimed his dreams. Theo claimed the moments in sleep when the path opened before him and he could not stop himself from going down it to the clearing where horrors lurked. There were people there, always, and they were never people he knew, but they had one characteristic in common. They smelled like meat.
The smell of meat filled his throat as the ground sped past under his feet until that brief moment when weightlessness turned into weight turned into the ground again and the scent of meat turned suddenly more urgent, sharper and harder, a Muggle gunshot to Theo's head, every time.
Every time he turned into a wolf in his dreams, human bodied though he might be, Theo lived the savagery that could be his in the waking world, and it was only a matter of time before he was no better than his sire, awake or asleep.
The letter to Dumbledore was a similar recitation of facts and reasons, but at the end, he had not been able to stop himself from adding "I call you father, for you are such in name, if not deed, and you are a balance to the teachings of my other father."
There was no need to explain that he had intended always that their friendship could be destroyed if it needed to be to further his plans for their world. The sentiment was true nonetheless.
Out the other side of Regent's Park, and this was where Theo Apparated, taking delight in doing so in full view of a group of Muggles. A last present for the Ministry, even if it was not the present of fire and blood and war that he had intended to give them, and the thought made him laugh. By the time the Obliviators traced him down, there would be nothing left, and it was amusing to consider that the Ministry would finally gain their entrance into his family's home only after it burned.
*****
Sending the owls took only a few moments, and that was commitment. Until that moment, Theo thought, he had been waiting for something to change, to find a way through the mess that was his life, but the owls made it permanent.
He held his wand loosely as he approached the house's front doors, and carefully set about destroying the wards. That alone should tell anyone who came there that there was nothing of any note in the house itself, except for valueless furniture and a corpse.
When the only ward that remained was the one that hid the house from Muggle eyes, Theo stepped inside. There was nothing that he cared to see left, and his wand threw fire around him as he moved through the house, eventually coming back to the room that he had claimed as a bedroom when he became master of the house.
He was alone with his memories and his own ghosts for a long time before the fire claimed him as it claimed the house.
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theo Nott
Prompt: # 72, Fixed
Word Count: 1429
Rating: This post rated R for character suicide, memories of involuntary murder, gore.
Author's Note: Eating Sin was written for the Seventh Sense rpg; when I left the game, I felt that it would be better to kill off the character than assume that someone who could play him to the satisfaction of the other players in his relationship would apply. Obviously, since I still have something like 80 more fanfic100 pieces to write, those will be set prior to this, which, just for fun, will be set present-day, so mid-February, 2006.
Theo stood on the roof of St Paul's cathedral, the rain coming down with that curious touch that is at once evocative of London and extraordinarily, overly, good at getting anyone caught in it soaked to the skin in no time. And as he stands there in the rain, his feet leaving the leads every now and again as he nearly unconsciously casts the Hovering charm that he likes when he does not have the room to pace, he considers the dreams.
His dreams had changed since his contamination, and he realised now that it was foolish in the extreme to expect that they would not have done so. There is always a price that Notts must pay, and when it appears that the price is less than it should have been, that means that payment has not been completely rendered. So, yes, in one sense, he should have expected that there would be a further price for not becoming a werewolf.
But there was no time for self pity, no time nor wish, for Theo had not been raised that way. Instead, there was only time for consideration of what to do next. For the dreams were unendurable, now. They were horrorshows, decorating his mind in blood and death, but even that could have been endured if necessary; Theo had created scenes just as bad in the past.
But these were out of his control. These were, he had no doubt, true dreams, but he could not stop them. He could not find the key to tell him who was creating these dreams, and he was quite smart enough to think that the key had probably been broken in the metaphorical lock when he failed in his duty after Greyback's bite.
"They started then," he said quietly to the rain and to a raven, roosting under an overhang. "They end now."
He dropped off the side of the building, in free fall for a moment only before the Hovering charm caught him and lowered him to the ground. There was only one place to go and one way to make this right.
It wasn't to Firenze. Theo could not consider the idea that he went to his mentor to explain this, that he was such a poor adept of Oneiromancy that he could no longer sleep if he wanted to keep people from dying. He could not, more to the point, swallow his pride and explain that he had not meant to remove himself from Firenze's life, but there were no other choices than to take the Mark and fight at his Lord's and his father's sides. More, that there was nothing he wanted more than to do that.
It was time for the brutal self-honesty that he had only ever managed to hide a little bit. He was afraid of Firenze's response, afraid of seeing what the other would think in his face for a flash before he shuttered his eyes and locked his disapproval away and told Theo calmly and coolly how to do what needed to be done.
Afraid of seeing what the other would think to know that his student, the one who loved the centaur more than he could ever say or show, was a murderer so many times over that the only surprise was that his hands didn't drip with blood when he awoke from the sleep he could not keep himself from.
His route through London meandered; not that he had any intention of walking to Glastonbury, but he wanted to think. To remember.
The owl was set to go to his brother - and his mother - tonight. The letter was written, and if his actions were not fair, at least there was no question that they were his actions and they were what he deemed necessary. An explanation was provided.
He didn't expect that they would be overly upset. Possibly his brother would be, over inheriting the estate a century early, but that was his to deal with, not Theo's.
His lips quirked into a grim smile as he passed through Regent's Park. He'd told his brother what he intended and why, and it was to destroy the family curse in the most final way possible. The true valuables had been removed from the house, for not even in the depths of sleeplessness and despair could Theo consider destroying a thousand years worth of family artifacts and treasures, but he could not leave the remains of either himself or his home to tempt Gabrielle and Draco, to taunt them into coming and to hurt them as it would.
It was time to make a clean sweep of things.
The letter that he had written to his spouses did not, perhaps, console, but it stated what he had done, and the only thing of his that had gone to his brother was the house and the land attached. All the rest, if inconsiderable next to the Malfoy and Delacour estates, was to go to them and eventually to their child. And that was consolation to Theo, at least, who preferred to know that he had left them what he could and taken away what he could not control.
Theo had considered asking them not to include his name in the child's, but a trace of vanity had stopped him. He could not have infected it with this madness, and it was innocent of his crimes and his sins. And it was his child.
Notts claim what is theirs, always.
Theo claimed his crimes. Theo claimed his dreams. Theo claimed the moments in sleep when the path opened before him and he could not stop himself from going down it to the clearing where horrors lurked. There were people there, always, and they were never people he knew, but they had one characteristic in common. They smelled like meat.
The smell of meat filled his throat as the ground sped past under his feet until that brief moment when weightlessness turned into weight turned into the ground again and the scent of meat turned suddenly more urgent, sharper and harder, a Muggle gunshot to Theo's head, every time.
Every time he turned into a wolf in his dreams, human bodied though he might be, Theo lived the savagery that could be his in the waking world, and it was only a matter of time before he was no better than his sire, awake or asleep.
The letter to Dumbledore was a similar recitation of facts and reasons, but at the end, he had not been able to stop himself from adding "I call you father, for you are such in name, if not deed, and you are a balance to the teachings of my other father."
There was no need to explain that he had intended always that their friendship could be destroyed if it needed to be to further his plans for their world. The sentiment was true nonetheless.
Out the other side of Regent's Park, and this was where Theo Apparated, taking delight in doing so in full view of a group of Muggles. A last present for the Ministry, even if it was not the present of fire and blood and war that he had intended to give them, and the thought made him laugh. By the time the Obliviators traced him down, there would be nothing left, and it was amusing to consider that the Ministry would finally gain their entrance into his family's home only after it burned.
*****
Sending the owls took only a few moments, and that was commitment. Until that moment, Theo thought, he had been waiting for something to change, to find a way through the mess that was his life, but the owls made it permanent.
He held his wand loosely as he approached the house's front doors, and carefully set about destroying the wards. That alone should tell anyone who came there that there was nothing of any note in the house itself, except for valueless furniture and a corpse.
When the only ward that remained was the one that hid the house from Muggle eyes, Theo stepped inside. There was nothing that he cared to see left, and his wand threw fire around him as he moved through the house, eventually coming back to the room that he had claimed as a bedroom when he became master of the house.
He was alone with his memories and his own ghosts for a long time before the fire claimed him as it claimed the house.