FIC: A Study in Violets [Theo/Hermione]
Title: A Study in Violets
Author/Artist: ally_147
Prompt: #108 - She’s the weather girl on the wireless. He’s in love with her voice. by gjeangirl
Pairing(s): Theodore Nott/Hermione Granger
Word Count: 10,602
Rating: M
Warning(s): Language, mentions of violence, and some colourful imagery.
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Many thanks to KH for beta-ing for me once again. Some house-keeping: There is a character in the second part named Susie. She is inspired by Suzie Mathers, an Australian musical theatre actress known for playing blonde, perky characters. The line towards the end, regarding the name of the cat, was taken from the novel ‘The Universe vs. Alex Woods’ by Gavin Extence.
I’m still kind of on the fence with this story, but I do hope that you’ll all enjoy it.
Summary: Maybe he should move to Morocco. Or Iceland. Or fucking Grenada. Anywhere where the name Theodore Nott wouldn’t incite such unmitigated terror.
September 29, 2004
Midday
Maybe he should move to Morocco. Or Iceland. Or fucking Grenada. Anywhere where the name Theodore Nott wouldn’t incite such unmitigated terror. Somewhere where he wouldn’t be violently set upon while buying his sodding groceries or visiting his mother’s grave. The Ministry had already put an embargo on his wand, restricted his movements, monitored his purchases, seized all his possessions and Nott Manor - what else was left for them to take but his country, too? Theo pressed a bag of frozen peas to the throbbing bruise on his temple and let out a low, pained groan.
He was this fucking close to being done with all of it.
The world that had grown out of the wake of the second wizarding war wasn’t exactly one Theo would call hospitable to former Death Eaters - not those who had been well underage, coerced, and as terrified as anyone else, nor those who had been tried and cleared, found innocent of all charges. Draco had already left, fleeing after a year of what Theo could only describe as Hell on Earth to an ancestral property in rural France as soon as Narcissa’s house arrest came to an end. Even Blaise Zabini, who had remained entirely neutral during the war, had been deemed guilty by association and subjected to the same cruel scrutiny by sheer dint of his house and affiliations. He retreated back to Italy not long after his beloved pet dogs had been murdered, their remains strung about the fence which surrounded his supposedly private property for all to see. As time wore on and more of his friends moved out, Theo could only come up with fewer and fewer reasons as to why remaining in England was a good idea.
Theo held a finger to his split lip and pulled it gingerly away for inspection. It glistened bright red with his blood, mingled with a smear of dark dirt. Slowly - and careful of the dark bruise that was blooming up the side of his knee - Theo hauled himself up from where he was slumped against the leg of his kitchen table and reached across the plain beige bench for his box of sand-papery tissues. He pulled a thick wad of them out and pressed them to his lip, wincing at the dry scratch on exposed flesh. He’d need disinfectant, too; falling - getting shoved, kerb-stomped, left for fucking dead - face-first into the dirty footpath with an open wound or ten showing was hardly a winning combination for sanitation.
One would have thought that waking up at the fucking crack of dawn to do his shopping - since a quick, speedy, safe Apparition to and from was a big no-no now - would have allowed him a wide enough berth to avoid the mobs that had taken to stalking him up and down the alley. Perhaps he shouldn’t have had such faith in humanity. There was surely a fucking armada bent on maintaining the peace camped out in front of his building, just waiting for him to make a move, judging from the speed with which they took his knees out from under him.
Wankers, the lot of them.
He imagined it was moments like those that his liaison officer was so bent on knowing about. Some irritatingly cheery, blonde Hufflepuff from a year or two ahead of him, who made it her duty to know each and every facet of his life’s story, up to and including who had hurt him, and where and why and how, like it would make his transition to ‘productive society member’ an easier one. Not that he had a clue whom the bright sparks who had taken it upon themselves to throttle him were, anyway. If he had any idea… and if he tried to defend himself… he’d probably get slapped with that Azkaban sentence the dicks at the Ministry seemed so fond of dangling over his head.
"One foot out of line, Nott," the rheumy-eyed old bitch at the wand registry counter always wheezed at him when he checked in for the week, "one foot out of line and you’ll rot in Azkaban like the scum you are."
To which he would always toss her his most cheerful grin and bid her a happy farewell until next time, complete with a wink and a blown kiss, because he so loved seeing the rotten old bag squirm.
It didn’t matter what the world had become, though. Someone like him had about as much impact on the course of day-to-day wizarding life as a speck of flea shit. All Theo could do was keep his mouth shut and his head down and try to swim along with it. It wasn’t as though the Ministry was ever going to do anything about his shitty situation, anyway. The fine, law-abiding citizens could never do any wrong, of course.
The cuckoo clock on his wall loudly rung the midday hour, and all of Theo’s faculties flew back to him at once. He dropped the bloodied tissues to the floor and made a mad lunge over his bench again to where the wireless sat. He reached out and spun the manual dial to turn it on, until he landed on the familiar series of melodic notes leading into the midday weather report.
"Good morning, listeners," greeted the soft, lilting, feminine voice. Theo immediately sunk with relief back down to the dusty tiled floor and let the voice wash over him, calming and quiet.
The thrice-daily weather reports were probably his favourite thing left about the wizarding world now. Perhaps it was the harbinger, the death-knell, the sign he was waiting for - because when your last favourite thing about a place boiled down to a radio weather broadcast, maybe it was time to count your losses and move on.
She had started calling the weather reports a little over four months before, replacing a gruff man with a voice like jagged metal. Her voice though, it was stunning; all things at once and none of them as well. Smooth as silk, rich as honey, as innocent as light and yet bewitchingly sensual, as though for an eager lover….
He’d had an awful lot of time to ponder the romance of the situation. It was tragic, really. Or maybe it was insane. Pathetic probably even closer still. How could a person be in love with a voice, especially one on the sodding radio that called the weather?
"I hope your day is going as wonderfully as it is outside!" she chirped on happily. He could hear the smile in her voice, and there was little else he could do but smile back, cringing as the motion pulled on the cut on his lip. "Here is your local weather forecast for the day…"
Theo rested his head against the low edge of his tiny kitchen table and closed his eyes, letting the low - almost entirely inappropriate for the radio - voice wash over him. There was a magic to it, Theo swore, as clichéd as it sounded. The pain seemed to ebb away from his head and leg as quickly as it had come upon him when he listened to her. Problems lessened and cares floated away. He felt he could be forever content with that voice whispering in his ear.
Underneath it all, though, there was the oddest sense of familiarity. Something that tickled at the back of his mind and took him back to his Hogwarts days. Something that he could see, but hovered just outside of his reach. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew the woman in some way, that she had made him feel that way before then, but as for how or why or when, he did not know.
Merlin, though, did he want to know!
"… and London should be bright and sunny, with an expected top of nineteen degrees, and an overnight low of eleven."
And then his absolute favourite part -
"Remember, ladies and gentlemen: anyone who says only sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain - without their wand, that is. Take care, and have a sunny day," she bade them - him - before the show cut out, fading to the latest Weird Sisters release.
Theo let out a bitter, though genuine laugh. The well-wishing always made him laugh. Bullshit like if you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm, and a change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves. Perhaps it was his cynicism showing, but he thought she was full of shit, even if she did have just about the sexiest voice this side of London.
Theo sighed and reached his arm up to flick the switch on the wireless, plunging him into blissful silence -
For another three hours at least, until the next forecast came on.
XXX
October 4, 2004
Mid-morning
He met his Ministry Liaison Officer in a Diagon Alley café in the midst of an autumn storm. He made a point to arrive slightly late, when he knew she would already be there, because if there was one thing he had learned about dealing with violent mobs as of late, it was that they wouldn’t dare try anything if he wasn’t already alone.
Perhaps it was cruel to leave her like that, a single drop of blood to stir the sharks, but Theo wasn’t sure that he could handle any more of that wonderful bedside manner the staff at St. Mungo’s were always so determined to heap upon him when he needed his wounds dressed. Besides, she was a perky blonde with a big, happy smile and a generous pair of tits shown off to full-effect by a veritable wardrobe full to the brim with low-cut blouses; no one was going to do so much as frown at her.
"Is there anything new you’d like to report?" asked Susie. She was an irksomely idealistic, cheerful woman with a ridiculous crush on him, and a frightfully different breed of Ministry Minion. In the six months that Theo had been dealing with her, he had yet to determine if that was a good or bad thing. She’d be the perfect agent to lull him into a false sense of security and coldly strike him down when he least suspected it.
Theo shrugged, wincing at the shot of pain that coursed through him from his lingering injuries, and twirled a spoon through his cup of milky tea. He barely looked up from the little whirlpool he had created, just in case some tosser on the street took issue with the general direction of his fleeting gaze. "No," he muttered. His voice was a distinctive one, or so he’d been told once upon a time, so he’d taken to speaking like a dedicated pack-a-day smoker to disguise it, just in case. "Nothing new."
"Oh, come now!" Susie gushed. Theo felt a nerve in his cheek twitch and jump. "Do you think I can’t see the cut on your forehead? Or the bruise on your lip? Just what are you getting yourself into, Mister Nott?"
Scowling, Theo dropped the spoon to his saucer with a clatter. His skin pricked and itched with the sensation of a dozen sets of eyes watching him then, waiting. He slowly met Susie’s eyes and hissed, "It’s nothing, Miss Mathers. Can we please get on with it?"
Susie’s smile dropped for a blink before it was back to its million-watt best. "If you insist! How about your job hunt, hmm? How’s that coming along?"
Oh, brilliantly. Every job application he’d sent out received a prompt response: a scathing Howler all but demanding that he dropped dead.
Oh, but that he would if he could, random shop-keeps. He would if he could.
Theo snorted. "About as well as you could imagine."
"Not to worry!" she assured him. "Something will open up, I’m sure. Perhaps a more behind the scenes sort of role. One that wouldn’t require you to show yourself in public quite as much."
That was perhaps the greatest - albeit the most ridiculously obvious - idea the daft bint had ever given him.
"It’s not ideal, obviously," she went on, taking a long, languorous lick at her spoon covered in cappuccino foam with no shame whatsoever. "Quite the opposite of what we’re after, actually, being a re-integration program and all, but it might be something to consider until all the hoopla dies down a little."
"Maybe," Theo said with an unconvinced shrug.
"I’ll put out a few calls, if you’re interested?"
He shrugged again. "I won’t argue."
"Wonderful!" She clapped her hands together. "I have just the thing in mind. Now, onto other things…"
Theo’s eyes felt heavy as he listened to her prattle on and on about things of little to no consequence. Shit about how if he got into a relationship at any point he’d have to register the change of circumstances with the Ministry. If it he hadn’t known it would be the last thing he would do as a free man, he would have laughed; he doubted he could pay, with his non-existent funds, a woman to look at him as anything more than a smouldering pile of rubbish that needed to be spat on.
Not his kink, but he did know some people…
Theo nodded and shook his head at the appropriate intervals, answered her questions with carefully considered answers, and gave her the abridged version of how he had taken to spending his day to day life. He’d made the mistake once of telling the Ministry about the abuse he had hurled at him; now he was watched like a hawk by some nameless, faceless entity, had weekly wand inspections - even though he couldn’t use the damn thing - and was subjected to bi-monthly appointments with a suspiciously perky Ministry drone. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
He feigned a yawn and a stretch and glanced at his watch. 11:42. Fuck.
"…and I think that’s it!" She dropped her mug back to its saucer with a feeling of finality, bestowing upon him a wide, model-worthy smile. "You’ll contact me if you need anything, yes?"
"Yes," he said monotonously, pointedly ignoring the painful emphasis she had put on the word anything. His knee bounced beneath the table, itching to up and leave. It was almost midday, almost time for the weather report…
"I’ll call and make another appointment next month."
Theo nodded as he rose from the table. "I’ll be waiting."
Her cheeks turned rosy and she averted her eyes down to the table, making Theo entirely too uncomfortable.
"Until next time, then, Mister Nott… Theo," she said, sounding suddenly, strangely, bashful.
At her excruciating dismissal, he nodded once and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head and started back home through the rain.
XXX
October 21, 2004
Midday
After two weeks of self-imposed seclusion, Theo had a part-time job. Susie had made good on her word, securing him a position in the massive warehouse for one of the wizarding world’s premier bookstore chains. There were surely more books in the warehouse than were in all of Hogwarts library, and certainly more than he’d ever seen in one place at one time, covering every subject that he could imagine, and even some that he couldn’t.
It wasn’t a bad job, really. Theo had come to rather enjoy it over the few days he’d been working there. There had been no interview and no exchanging of information on his part - just a Floo call from Susie telling where and when to arrive the next day, and he’d been pleasantly surprised; his days would be spent sorting through and sending away the books that had been ordered via owl, never dealing face-to-face with any customers, and only barely interacting with his co-workers.
His favourite part, though? The renewed use of his wand to perform his duties, albeit with a number of stipulations: no Apparating - no matter the circumstances - no conjuring any wards, no playful hexes, no harmful hexes, and definitely no Dark Magic of any sort.
What kind of daft sod the Ministry thought him to be, Theo had no earthly idea.
Lovely, as well, was the wireless that was piped through, all day every day.
"Good morning, listeners," greeted the familiar, demure voice, sounding far more as though she was addressing a lover rather than an audience of thousands. Theo grinned to himself and slowed his pace around the massive warehouse to a carefree amble as he listened. "I hope your day is substantially less dreary than it is outside."
Theo cast a quick glance out the window, where the outside world was grey and blurred with thick sheets of rain, and let out a derisive snort.
"… and London will remain wet, chilly and possibly stormy for the remainder of the week, with an expected high today thirteen and an overnight low of two. Remember, ladies and gentlemen: a rainbow is the sky’s way of apologising for the storm. Take care, and have a sunny day."
The sky cracked overhead, and the dimly lit interior was flooded for only a second with a blinding flash of lightning. The sky would have a fucking lot of apologising to do by the end of it.
Theo shook his head and moved towards the on-site Owlery. Two dozen sad, pitifully damp and ruffled birds sat perched along the criss-crossing bars, all carrying small pouches attached to their legs. One eager little bird hopped down from the topmost perch and held out its leg in invitation, imploring Theo with big, sparkling eyes to relieve him (her?) of the pouch. He carefully slipped the form and money from the pouch, and couldn’t help but grin as he turned it over in is fingers; Theo could identify its sender on first glance, just by looking at the crisply folded edges.
The one name, he’d noticed, that seemed to appear on the order forms more than any other: Hermione Granger.
Hermione Granger.
Hers was a name he wasn’t sure he would ever have cause to speak again. She’d been a tentative friend at Hogwarts, one that - for a brief time, at least - verged on something… more. They’d paired together for many an Arithmancy project, and during those times, Theo had come to anticipate her company, waiting on her arrival at the library with a stomach full of butterflies and a nervous tongue that only barely cooperated with him. When she arrived, though, casting a sweet smile his way, his mind would muddle and his body would warm, and he’d wonder why he’d ever been so nervous to begin with.
Towards the end of their sixth year - when he was knee-deep in shit he never wanted to think of again, and when they both knew that everything about their world was going to change and certainly not for the better - he knew he had lost himself to her.
He began to conjure small violets, which he surreptitiously hid between sheets of wax paper in the pages of her books when her back was turned. She would come back the following nights with a pretty pink glow about her cheeks and a smile he was certain was just for him, but she never acknowledged any part of it, except to continue using the flowers as makeshift bookmarks.
But becoming a Death Eater, Theo had noticed, tended to make an enemy of everyone. Hermione included. She disappeared during seventh year to help Potter save the world, and that had been that; Theo never saw or heard from her again.
Thinking on it more, he hadn’t seen or heard anything at all about her in the intervening six years since their Hogwarts years came to their messy, eventual end. Nor Potter, or Weasley, either. There had been something in the Prophet a few years back where she, Potter and Weasley sued the publication for continued libel. Perhaps the media taboo that had been put on their names still hadn’t been lifted yet.
He read the box on the form listing the titles she had ordered: Meteorology and Magic: Weather Spells to Help You Divine the Elements, Understanding Mother Nature, Cosmopolitan Meteorology and Animagi Theory. The final title was a bit out of place, though hardly surprising given the sort of witch Theo knew Hermione was. But the other three… surely she had all the books they had to offer on the subject by now?
The little owl butted against his hand in thanks, nuzzling into his palm before flying back out the topmost window. Theo watched until he could make out the bird no longer, then took the list and wandered up the long, tall aisles until he reached the section dedicated to textbooks and education. Removing his wand from his pocket, he levitated the necessary texts down from a shelf high above him, settling them in the cradle of his outstretched arms.
Hermione Granger was an entirely unresolved figure in his mind, one that he’d spent many nights wondering what might have been if he’d been a little braver, or she a little more open, or the world in which they dwelled a little more war-free. Since seeing her name of the forms, he’d wondered what, if anything, he should do next.
The smart thing to do, he knew, would be to do absolutely nothing. What use was there opening old wounds that had been closed for years? What good would it do either of them for Theo to come swanning back into her life now, as though a deadbeat former Death Eater had any right to do so?
The stupid thing to do, by comparison, held a far greater reward.
Theo levitated a box down from one of the stacks and methodically arranged the first three books and neatly laid them down. When he came to the fourth, he paused.
Before he bagged the last and largest of the books, he took his wand and conjured a single, cheery violet and set it between two scraps of parchment in the middle of the tome. He stared at it for a long moment, the pretty purple petals taunting him, before he sighed, let out a whispered, "Fucking hell," and slammed the book shut, bagged it, and stacked it in the box with the others.
For the first time in years, Theo felt damned once more.
At least, though, he conceded, it was a damning of his own making.
XXX
October 21, 2004
Evening
As Theo prepared his dinner for the evening, he wavered between periods of hopeless optimism and the sort of cringing, burning shame that made him want to bury himself in his bedsheets so he’d never have to face the outside world again. As soon as he’d released the pair of large barn owls to ferry Hermione’s delivery to her, he knew he’d made a stupid, juvenile and - above all - unwelcome mistake.
Hermione Granger wasn’t perfect. Of that, Theo was perfectly aware, and he felt he would go insane well before he’d gained the opportunity to even attempt to understand her. There had been moments, though, where he felt he might have come close to doing so. Moments of quiet understanding where no words had to pass between them for them to share exactly what they were thinking, times where only their expressions had conversations. Moments, too, where she had smiled at him and the world had faded, where he felt like he could have understood everything.
No, she wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t mean someone like him even had a hope of deserving her. Hermione Granger didn’t deserve to stroll the streets on the arm of someone who routinely had rocks and shit that smelled like… well, shit thrown at his head.
He shook the thoughts from him head; he was getting too far ahead of himself. Not even three hours had transpired since the package was sent out. Besides, he reasoned to himself, there was no need to even think that Hermione would recognise the gesture of the violet, let alone remember him. It had been him with the schoolyard crush, after all, not her.
It was times like these that he would have killed for one of his best mates to talk to, though even in sixth year, they’d hardly been jazzed about his none-too-subtle crush on Hermione Granger to begin with. And fuck knew what they would have made of his obsession with the weather girl whose name and face he’d likely never know short of stalking the poor woman down!
He wondered how Draco was coping with life amongst the Muggles. And Blaise. All his friends, really. Nearly four years had passed since he’d spoken to any of them.
Theo never thought he would have missed there being a person to tell him what a tosser he was being. Or to offer sarcastic, back-handed words of wisdom. Anyone, really, who could have sat with him for the night and knock back shot after shot of Firewhisky.
He was quite proud of himself for never succumbing to the increasingly insistent urge to drink himself into a numb stupor every night. He had no desire whatsoever to become a depressing cliché.
Theo maintained a constant study of the saucepan full of soup in front of him, watching the off-white lumps of potato (maybe?) float to the surface of the murky brown stock. One day, he swore to himself, he would have enough Galleons to stop buying the cheap tins of Stockman’s Beef and Vegetable soup from the discount Muggle supermarket. No one yelled at him there, or threw rocks at his head… Muggles were positively nice compared to the shit he’d had to endure from wizards over the past few years.
As the soup reduced to a simmer, he took a ladle in hand and decanted an amount into a bowl, avoiding with zeal the lumps of carrot that already looked half-chewed. Without bothering with a spoon - because he’d rather avoid all the cleaning he had to do by hand that he could - he lifted the bowl to his lips and sipped the soup down, savouring the slow, smooth trickle of warmth that heated him from the inside out.
As he slept that night, he dreamed of a ground covered in violets, sunlight, Hermione Granger’s soft, sweet smile shining down upon him, and the faceless voice of the woman on the radio whispering in his ear.
XXX
October 22, 2004
Morning
"Someone was in here looking for you earlier."
Theo paused in his brisk stroll through the narrow entrance to the warehouse that morning and privately lamented the apparent demise of polite civility and common fucking courtesy.
"Good morning to you, too, Miss Artemisia," he said, calmly, as he shucked off his coat. He shook it to remove any trace of anything that might have gone out of its way to land on him, and looped it onto a hook by the warehouse door. "I trust you’re feeling well this morning?"
The young woman at the customer service desk rolled her eyes and shot him a look of disdain. "Yes, just wonderful. Shocking, really, considering the sort of vermin I have to work with."
She gave him a pointed sneer and held a scroll of parchment out for him, waving it rudely when he made no move for it.
"Who’s it from?" he asked, suspicious. The last unsolicited note he’d received had been covered in a particularly vicious sort of itching powder that had rendered him blind. St. Mungo’s had to completely regrow his eyeballs!
She rolled her eyes again, and they made nearly a full circuit in her skull. "How should I know?"
Theo sighed patiently. "What did she look like?"
Miss Artemisia scowled at him. "She wore a cloak."
"An Invisibility Cloak?" Theo bit back, sarcastic. "I doubt she was that well-covered."
She let out a deep, tired huff. "Female, brown curly hair, sounded as English as you or me. Short of being able to invade the girl’s mind with Legilimency, which isn’t as much my area of expertise as I’m sure it is yours, I can’t tell you a whole lot else except that she was very, very insistent - borderline irritating, in fact - that I give you this." She waved the parchment around again, and Theo caught the odd scent of something familiar - something floral wafting from it.
Theo felt a lump of something rise in his chest, a sort of lightness that he hadn’t felt since before the war. "Female, with curly brown hair?" he repeated.
Miss Artemisia wore a look of exasperation. "That’s what I said. Are you going to take it or not? I could have burned it just as easily, you know; you ought to consider yourself fortunate I’m telling you about it at all."
Theo stalked towards the desk and took (snatched) the outstretched piece of parchment from Miss Artemisia’s hand, ignoring her squawk of indignation - as though she had any right at all to feel affronted by his supposed rudeness.
Bringing it to his nose, he inhaled and was filled with the scent of violets. He had to hold back the grin that was itching to stretch his lips and turned away without another word to stalk through the warehouse and down a vacated aisle. Once assured of his solitude, he sunk down to the ground and slowly unfurled the parchment, revealing a short paragraph of text written in painfully, wonderfully familiar hand. He couldn’t help but smile at the first line of the neat, looping script:
Hello, Theo…
XXX
November 19, 2004
Mid-morning
It was doubtlessly the most unorthodox relationship he had ever been part of.
Not even the strange, three-month block during his second year, where Tracy Davis would barge her way into the boy’s dormitory to fold his messy laundry, could compare.
For nearly a month, Theo and Hermione built a relationship based entirely on ink and parchment. They never met face-to-face, or through the Floo - even their method of ferrying their notes back and forth was a strange one. He would slip his missive in between the pages of whatever books she was ordering next, alongside another perfectly preserved violet, to which she would fold her reply within yet another order form.
How the woman wasn’t entirely broke yet, and as to where she was storing all these texts, Theo could only guess.
That first note hadn’t contained anything long or superfluous, nor did it contain any flowery sentiments about long-lost love or ‘the one that got away’. It wasn’t in any way romantic or inviting, but it was filled with surprise - pleasant surprise, he could only hope - that left Theo feeling, if nothing else, quite bolstered by the fact that she had not forgotten him as he had previously thought. There was a certain satisfaction in things going not at all how you planned them, and after so bloody long of expecting the very worst, Theo was most pleased to be proven wrong.
And so, they continued on, exchanging notes that grew steadily flirtier to get to know each other again, in a way wholly unconstrained by the pressures of face-to-face.
Theo whole-heartedly embraced that particular facet of their ‘relationship’.
"Nott! For the love of Merlin, pull your head out of your arse!"
Theo blinked and looked up, finding the irate, portly form of his boss in front of him; what had he been doing again?
He looked down at his hands and promptly dropped the stack of first-year Transfiguration texts he had been shelving to the floor. Immediately, Theo dropped to his knees to retrieve them and was quickly cast in shadow as his boss moved to loom over him. The sudden rumble of thunder and burst of lightning combined with the shadow made Theo feel as though he was playing some part in a horror novel.
"I never wanted to be a part of that sodding reintegration program that blonde twat at the Ministry kept bloody singing to me about, and I certainly didn’t want one of yours under my employ," his boss snapped at him. Theo was certain the man had been a Hufflepuff back in his day and was absolutely relishing in the experience of making a Slytherin squirm. "No more chances, Nott. Pick up your game or I’ll blast you out of here myself, and you know no one would have any problems with that."
Theo held back a sneer. "Of course, sir," he bit back, but there was no point; his boss was already gone.
He let out a frustrated sigh and leaned back against the precariously balanced shelf behind him. For years, he’d built up a mental hit-list in his mind - not just names, but faces and figures and voices, any breed of arsehole who seemed to relish making things just that little bit harder. He pulled a childish face at his wanker boss’ back - the only power he had over anything anymore - and added him to the tally.
He looked about to make sure no one was watching, then slipped from his pocket that very first note Hermione had sent to him and brought it to his nose to take in the fading scent of violets. Sometimes, on particularly shitty days, he would pull out the note and turned it over in his hands, reading over the familiar words and script, just to assure himself that it hadn’t all been an elaborate, vivid dream.
After that, he felt very nearly Zen - like he could take on the world.
He hauled himself back to his feet and held his wand above the stack of fallen books. A whispered incantation, and the books flew into the odd free spaces that dotted the cluttered shelf. He grinned at the thought of anyone else having to find them in the utter jumble that the warehouse was. If he had to fuck around trying to find random titles in the stacks, so could everyone else!
So he whistled along with the cheery jingle that proceeded the weather report - not even the persisting storm could dismantle any part of his newfound good cheer!
"Good afternoon, listeners!" came that ever-warming voice on the radio for the last weather report of the day. Theo could hear the grin in her voice and had no choice but to reciprocate the gesture, even if to no one in particular. "I hope you’re all having a wonderful afternoon, despite the storm."
It could have been pissing down literal cats and dogs, and Theo doubted his mind could have been swayed.
She repeated the weather forecast from earlier in the day, as deftly as lines memorised from a play, and Theo found comfort the warm familiarity of her once again.
He’d never felt so happy to be so completely and utterly fucked.
"Remember, ladies and gentlemen: bad weather always looks worse through a window." She paused then, and let out a contemplative hum. "I’m sure whoever said that never looked out over the grounds of Hogwarts from the Gryffindor Tower during a storm. The view from up there is absolutely beautiful. Take care, and have a sunny day."
Gryffindor Tower. Theo slowed his pace and tipped his head thoughtfully. That narrowed down his field considerably.
As a consummate member of Slytherin house, he’d never paid much attention to Gryffindor witches. Not like Draco, who seemed to really get off on the forbidden fantasy of an inter-house relationship, probably just to laud it over his wanker father. But he’d shared many a class and Quidditch match with them.
He felt confident in ruling out the Weasley female, the grating blonde girl (Daisy? Rose? It was some sort of flower, he knew that much…), and the Gryffindor half of the Patil twins. Likely not that Alicia girl, or the other one who married the surviving Weasley twin, and certainly not that ghastly Romilda Vane. The only other Gryffindor female he had any sort of steady contact with was Hermione, and she…
Theo came to a dead stop in the middle of the corridor.
Hermione Granger…
It was as though a massive mat of puzzle pieces was rearranging themselves before his eyes. Clarity came in small patches, leading to larger realisations, before the picture materialised entirely in front of him.
No fucking wonder the voice was so familiar!
Not knowing what else to do, Theo tipped back his head and laughed; full-bodied bellows that cramped his stomach and stung his face.
Then, all that was left to do was smile. Of course the voice on the radio brought him so much comfort: it belonged to the one woman - besides his late mother - who could even come close to calming him, to making him feel as though all would be well as long as he could hear that voice again - the woman he’d been half in love with since he was fifteen.
She hadn’t ordered anything that afternoon. A feat for her if he'd ever known one. Instead, he called one of the business owls down from one of the criss-crossing perches and settled it down at the workbench, where it preened itself and watched as he tore a scrap of parchment and penned a short note:
Hermione,
I know your secret…
XXX
November 20, 2004
Mid-morning
Since leaving Hogwarts for the horrors of the real world, Theo liked to think that there was little left that could really surprise him. He thought he could re-enter society after the war; it had been a nasty little shock when that happened to not be the case. He had also believed that he might be able to eat something other than cheap, tinned soup every fucking day, and he’d been proven soundly wrong on that front, too.
So, when Theo received a note - the note - that gave him a place and a time; a note that told him that Hermione Granger actually wanted to see him again, delivered again in the folds of yet another bloody order form requesting a children’s book called Wow, Said the Owl, he’d actually felt… surprised. Happy, even.
And then, he’d felt like he was going to be ill.
He wasn’t sure he could go through with this next phase of her plan, not if it involved meeting her in a very open, very public place that very bloody day, where she would be shamed and ridiculed purely for being seen with him.
And yet, he wasn’t sure he couldn’t go through with it, either.
So he did the only reasonable thing he thought he could do: he feigned illness, put on a stellar performance for his boss (dry-retching and coughing as though he’d come down with the Black Plague) so he’d get sent home, tucked the nicest copy of Wow, Said the Owl under his arm, and fairly ran the distance from the warehouse to the café of Hermione’s choosing before he could talk himself out of it.
So, it was with clammy palms and a thumping heart that he took a terrace seat, per her request, outside Gino’s, a tiny Italian café just beyond the outskirts of Diagon Alley. It was far more sparsely populated there than the shopping district, but he still pulled the hood of his jacket over his head to conceal his face. He impatiently shooed away a persistent waitress - so very bent on telling him the available coffee blends for the day - so he could wait and prepare himself in relative silence.
Before long, his pensive meditation was broken by the soft thwump of beating wings.
A familiar little owl soared down to land on the chair across. Theo quirked a brow at the bird, and felt something in his stomach sink. It was the same owl Hermione used to send her order forms, with the same little pouch tied to its leg. There could only be one reason why Hermione would send an owl in her stead.
An invisible punch landed in his stomach, and the sudden pain puzzled him. Really, Hermione not wanting to meet him shouldn’t have been such a great shock to begin with. He had absolutely no right to feel so hurt.
He let out a sigh and offered his arm for the owl to jump on. "All right, then," he said, resignedly. "Let me have it."
The owl hopped forward to land on the tabletop, and tipped its head to the side to stare at him. Theo shrunk back; there was something about the little creature’s eyes that made him feel as though he was being examined, a volatile potion held up to the light. Of course Hermione Granger’s owl would be just as inquisitive as her. He sighed and scratched its head, smiling as it nuzzled into his hand and closed its eyes in satisfaction.
"Really, though, little one, I should take your note so you can get back home. It’s quite dreary out."
And it was. Rain would begin to pour at any moment from the heavy, dark clouds sinking in the sky.
The owl hooted softly in reply, and pressed itself more firmly against his fingers, directing the scratch to a place behind its neck.
Theo had to smile at the little owl’s persistence.
"Your mistress is probably wondering what’s taking you so long," he said absently. "She’s a bit paranoid, you know. Some people used to say she was crazy."
The owl quickly spun its head and nipped his fingers in rebuke.
"Ow!" Theo chuckled. "All right. I won’t badmouth Hermione."
He swore the bird almost looked smug.
While it was distracted by his fingers, Theo lifted his spare hand to untie the little leather pouch from around its scaly leg and remove the note inside. It was difficult with only one hand, but he managed to unfold the stiff parchment. His brow furrowed in puzzlement, and his scratching hand stopped as he read the words:
Please don’t panic…
Suitably distracted, Theo didn’t even notice the owl flit to the ground, ruffle its feathers, and slowly begin to grow. He gawked as, almost instantaneously, the small form of the bird shifted and morphed, growing and extending and lengthening into the svelte form of Hermione Granger.
He goggled at her for a long moment - she had barely changed since he last laid eyes on her. Her hair was a little shorter, and her eyes a little jaded, but apart from that… nothing. She was as beautiful as she ever was.
"Hermione?" he spluttered. "But… you’re…"
"Surprise?" she said, weakly.
"You’re an Animagus?" he hissed at her, after glancing around to ensure no one had witnessed Hermione’s… transition.
She looked puzzled as she took the seat opposite him. He could see it now - her eyes were the exact same shade of toffee-brown as the owl’s ones, her hair the same many-hued colour as its feathers. She gestured quickly at a server at the doorway, who jotted something down in their notebook and promptly disappeared. "That’s why I ordered the book." She gestured to the copy of Wow, Said the Owl that he held clutched to his chest. "So it would be a joke. Admittedly, though, I’ve never been very good at jokes. I thought you knew. You said you knew my secret."
He was stunned, his mouth working soundlessly as he fought his brain for the rights to his words. "Yeah," he eventually got out. "That you’re the weather girl on the wireless!"
"Oh, that." She laughed - actually laughed! - and tipped her head back, exposing the long, smooth line of her neck. When she quieted, she reached over the table and prised the book from his hold. He relinquished it without a fight, still too surprised to move.
She ran her fingers over the textured cover and said, "May I ask how you worked it out?"
Theo squirmed in place and looked about the street distractedly. "At the risk of humiliating myself, I’d vastly prefer not to. Suffice it to say, you dropped enough hints."
She looked up from the book, giving him the oddest flash back to when they were students and she would survey him over the top of a massive tome, and smiled at him. "You know, you’re the first person who’s worked that out on their own."
He felt inexplicably proud at that. Regaining his composure, of which there hadn’t been a whole lot to begin with, he smirked, leaned forward, and asked, "Really?"
"Hmm." She nodded and took a sip of water from a bottle from a bag at her side. Theo blinked again, and realised that her handbag was an enlarged version of the tiny pouch that would be wound around the owl’s leg. "I mean, Harry and Ron know, but only because I told them," she went on. "They said they wouldn’t have been able to pick that it was me if I hadn’t told them. The voice I use… it’s not one that really sounds -"
He quirked a brow. "Appropriate for daytime radio?"
She shot him an amused smile. "I was going to say that it sounds nothing like my everyday voice, but I suppose that would apply as well. My manager has a theory that more people tune in if they like the voices, or if there’s something that draws the listeners in, so he asked us to try to sound a little more…"
"Sensual?" he finished for her, grinning. "Beckoning? Alluring?"
"All of the above," she confirmed, nodding. "And since I didn’t see any real risk in doing so, I embraced it. There’s something quite liberating about letting yourself go on air like that, becoming someone wholly different from who you really are."
"I’d imagine so," he replied with a smile. "So how, may I ask, did the Brightest Witch of our Age come about to calling the weather in the first place?"
She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug. "I didn’t want to work in the Ministry, I had no desire to become an Auror with Harry and Ron, and frankly, my aptitude for Healing spells is average at best." She paused and leaned back, accepting the cup of tea that had been deposited on their table with a smile at the server. She tore open a sachet of fake sugar and tipped it into the cup and went on, "Teaching at Hogwarts requires a Mastery which I don’t yet have, so I took the first job that allowed me flexibility for my studies, which just so happened to be calling the weather."
"Your studies?"
"I did say I didn’t have a Mastery yet," she said, a glint in her eye and a smile upturning her lips. "Almost, though. I estimate another six months before my studies are completed."
"Your area?"
"Charms, with some Transfiguration and Astronomy on the side."
"Must keep you busy," he said, conversationally.
"Ridiculously so," she confirmed as she took an experimental sip of her tea, hissed, then set it back on its saucer. "But very rewarding, too. I’m guaranteed a place on Hogwarts staff starting next year."
Theo laughed. "You couldn’t possibly be that busy. I saw you in your adorable little owl form nearly every day."
"I didn’t do it every day," she retorted, even as she smiled. "Only if I had the time, or the inclination. Flying rather hurts, you know. Even after you change back, you feel it in your arms and down your back."
"Most days, then," he amended cheekily. "So, what changed your mind? The promise of fresh air? The scent of a warehouse full of books?"
She blushed again and reached a hand over the table to tentatively take hold of his. Theo watched her fingers in fascination and twisted his hand around to caress the smooth skin of her inner wrist. "After I first saw you working in there," she quietly admitted. "I wanted to see you again. I made the time."
There passed another fleeting moment of quiet understanding, a silent acknowledgement that perhaps they weren’t quite as done with each other as Theo might have assumed. He brought her hand to his lips and gently brushed a kiss against her knuckles, his gaze never once leaving hers.
"Death Eater scum!" came a scream from across the road. Theo’s grip on Hermione’s hand slackened before she tightened her grip, as if daring him to let her go. In his head, Theo berated himself for his complete and utter stupidity; somewhere deep inside, he knew this would happen. He tensed in his seat, his eyes downcast as he waiting for the next scream, since they rarely came on their own.
"Filth!" shouted another.
"Worthless piece of shit!" came one more, accompanied by a wet smack of something Theo could only hope was mud to the side of his face.
His cheeks burned a vicious shade of red. Hermione only squeezed his hand tighter and took out her own wand to wave away the muck on his face. She turned back to his attackers with a look of thunder on her face, glaring at them as they made a hasty retreat at the sight of her.
She swung back around in her seat and leaned forward, so her face was barely an inch from his. "Does this happen often?" she asked in a low hiss.
Theo ran his free hand down his face, grimacing even though it came back clean. "Unfortunately, yes." He ripped his gaze from the ground and looked up at her. "I’m sorry, Hermione. I never wanted you to see any of this."
She scowled at him and took a firm hold of his arm. Before he could protest, the sharp tug of side-along Apparition pulled him away just as the first ring of thunder sounded.
XXX
November 20, 2004
Midday
He stumbled into a small, but comfortably furnished living room. A cursory glance revealed an entire wall of bookshelves which were filled to bursting with familiar titles he had sent her over the past month, and a mantle above a crackling fire lined with both Muggle and magical photographs.
Hermione let go of his arm and set about pulling his soiled cloak from his shoulders. He held his arms lax at his sides to make the task easier. "Make yourself at home," she said, gesturing towards a chintz-print sofa. She folded the cloak over her arm and disappeared down a narrow hallway.
He kicked off his shoes and set them neatly on a mat beside the door - he had no wish to track a path of dirty footprints over her plush carpets. For a long, uncomfortable moment, Theo stood perfectly still in the centre of Hermione’s living room. The room was an odd juxtaposition of things: cluttered but neat, warm but still, inviting, and yet not at all. There was a single armchair turned towards the fire, away from the sofa, and a table beside it covered by another small mountain of books and a half-empty cup of tea. So many things about the room indicated Hermione did not have visitors often, nor did she want to encourage them.
Hermione reappeared at the doorway. She paused there and just looked at him for a long moment, studying him with curious intent. He felt strangely vulnerable in that moment - there was something disturbingly familiar - intimate, even - about standing in a house that wasn’t yours, in socks.
"I’ve just put your cloak in the washer. The cleansing charm from earlier didn’t get the stains out."
He nodded. "Thank you."
She strode towards him, pausing just slightly beyond his reach, her arms crossed and her chin jutted forward. She looked purposeful, determined, incensed. "Would you tell me what just happened out there?"
"I think you can guess that, Hermione," he told her, bitterly. "You always were uncommonly smart."
She pursed her lips and fixed him with an admonishing look, as though he was a wayward child and not a man of twenty-five. "Do they ever get violent? Physical?"
"Sometimes, but… Merlin, Hermione…"
"But what?"
"But it’s none of your fucking business!"
She recoiled then as though he struck her. Theo flinched as she took a step back, and let out a weary sigh.
"Sorry," he said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over his tired eyes. "But truly, Hermione, there is nothing you can do."
"I might be able to," she said, cryptically. "You wouldn’t be the first person to underestimate my abilities."
"And it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve overestimated yours," he snapped. "Merlin, Hermione, it’s not as though I don’t deserve what’s happening to me."
"Do you honestly think that?" she asked, disbelief colouring her tone.
"I was a Death Eater," he stated simply. There was nothing else that needed to be said.
"You weren’t, though," she said, adamantly. "You never took the Mark."
He shrugged. "Formalities," he said tightly. "I did everything short of taking the Mark. You had every right to think the way you did. You weren’t wrong; I did terrible things in Voldemort’s name."
"Like what?" she asked, so quiet that the words might have been a whisper on the wind ratting the windows outside. "Tell me, Theo: what did you do?"
"What the fuck didn’t I do?" he yelled over the wind howling a gale outside. "Whatever horrible thing you’re thinking, Hermione, I probably did worse. I’m not the noble, tragic figure you’re painting me to be, love, so please, please stop kidding yourself. Even you thought I had the Mark at the time, remember?"
"But you didn’t take the Mark, and I’m sorry for thinking you did!" she stressed again, and her voice strained with an honesty that pulled at his gut. "I should have had more faith in you."
He felt his lips curl upwards in a brief flicker of a smile. "No need to be so apologetic, Hermione. I probably would have done much the same were our positions reversed."
She shook her head, the swaying of her hair hiding the smile he knew was there. "No, you wouldn’t have. You would have sat me down and forced me to talk about it, to explain myself, until you could understand, like you did when I was upset about Ron and Lavender."
"Prick didn’t deserve you," Theo muttered.
"And you don’t deserve what’s happening to you!"
"I made my bed, Hermione. Now, I get to lie in it. Forever."
"No, you don’t," she said, in a calm, placating tone, one she might use to talk down a rabid animal. "There is no reason whatsoever why you can’t live a whole, happy life full of warmth and love -"
"I’m a fucking pariah, Hermione!" he snapped. "There will never be any warmth or love. I refuse to drag you - or anyone else, for that matter! - down with me!"
"Don’t be ridiculous, Theo," she dismissed with a scoff. "You’re hardly dragging me anywhere. And even if you were, isn’t it my decision to make? I’m a grown woman, Theo, I make my own choices. Besides, you were cleared, weren’t you? I was at your bloody trial!"
Was she? He could barely fucking remember anymore. "No one gives a toss that I was cleared!" he bit back. "Mob rules, love; that’s what gets things done here. That’s what I have to live by."
"So that’s it?" she spat. "You’re just going to lie down and take it? You’re just going to let people tear you apart when you haven’t done anything wrong?"
He held his arms out in a shrug. "What else can I do? I can’t fight back, love. That’s a one-way ticket to Azkaban."
"I could help you."
He paused at that, looked at her closely for a long moment, before bursting into laughter. "Oh, Hermione, my darling little bleeding heart."
"What?" She held her hands to her hips, a pose of utter defiance, and took a menacing step towards him. Instinctively, he took a step back; all five-foot-five of her was poised and coiled, ready to strike. "Why couldn’t I help you?"
He huffed a cynical laugh. "I can hardly hold you responsible for the state of the wizarding world, Hermione."
"Perhaps not, but this isn’t what Harry, Ron and I fought for. We didn’t fight so you and others who might or might not have worn the Dark Mark - through no fault of their own! - could be subjected to the types of horror you and others have suffered through!" she exclaimed, all in one breath. "Harry, Ron and I… we’re like… unelected officials, almost. The world has this nearly terrifying fascination with what we’re doing, and the how and the why of it all, but none of us use this influence! I have never spoken up about acceptance or forgiveness in the wake of the war. I should have done that a long time ago."
Theo shook his head. "No, you shouldn’t have. It’s hardly your place to tell people how and where and why to think."
"Yes, I should have. And I should have looked for you."
"You have no obligation to me whatsoever, Hermione."
"I still should have tried," she said again, and he could hear the finality on the matter in her voice before she sighed. He watched her feet shuffle about before she steeled herself and said with resolve, "You should know, Theo, that I… I liked you, in sixth year. Quite a bit, actually…"
Despite everything, Theo still felt a swell of pride at her words.
"… and I don’t think that ever really changed."
He glanced up from the floor, finding her eyes fixed squarely on his, burning with an imploring sort of sincerity that begged him to understand.
"I think I was half in love with you in sixth year," she confessed. "You were the only boy who didn’t make me feel like I was somehow… lesser for loving books and classes. When you gave me those violets, you made me feel like I was pretty, like I could be worth someone’s time for something other than research and homework help. Don’t get me wrong, I love Harry and Ron dearly, but they rarely saw me as a woman, and it was nice to be seen as one from a person who I wanted to see me as one, and -"
Theo held his forefinger to her lips, stalling her words. "Has anyone ever told you that you ramble terribly?" he asked, amused.
Her lips quirked against his finger. "A time or two, yes."
Something soft, solid and furry butted against his shin. Theo glanced down to see a sleek grey cat weaving between his legs, no doubt leaving a swath of fur clinging like glitter to his trouser legs. He pulled his finger from her lips and asked, "You have a cat?"
Hermione grinned. "Yes. Another kneazle. Or a quarter kneazle, actually. When I found him again, after the war, Crooks had made friends with a lady cat, and they had kittens. Her name is Lucy."
He leaned down to scratch its head. "Cute."
The cat hissed and swiped at him with sharp, extended claws. Theo swore and pulled his hand back. Examining it revealed four neat, three-inch long red lines.
Hermione’s grin turned positively devilish when she said, "It’s short for Lucifer."
Theo grimaced and watched as Hermione took his hand and healed the line of scratches with a swish of her wand. "Of course it is."
"See?" she remarked, still holding his hand in her warm, soft one. She traced over the prominent veins and tendons on the back of his hands with her fingers, and Theo shivered at the sensation. "Letting me help you isn’t so bad."
"I’m sure my wand isn’t approved to perform healing spells, anyway. It might look like I’m covering up my tracks." At her look of reproach, Theo sighed and rolled his eyes. "You cannot possibly be comparing healing some cat scratches to rebuilding my position in society. The two are at opposite ends of an incredibly long spectrum."
"Just promise me you’ll think about it," she implored him.
"I can promise that," he conceded, "so long as you promise me something."
She quirked a brow at him, gesturing for him to go on.
Theo took a quick, deep breath, praying he had not read their interactions wrong. "Let me cook for you. Dinner, I mean, or lunch, if you’d prefer. I can’t really… go out right now."
Whatever warm, muddling feelings Theo may have felt waiting for her in libraries, or waiting for her letters, expanded a thousandfold at the smile on her face then, just for him. "You’re incredibly sneaky, Theo," she said, a warm blush lighting her cheeks. "But… I think I’d like that."
There was little else for him to do then, but tug on the hand still holding his to pull her to his chest and wrap his arms around her waist. The jolt of movement sent a rebellious curl tumbling down over her eyes. Theo’s fingered positively burned with the urge to reach out and touch the curl, to learn for once and for all if it was as soft as it appeared.
Hermione’s hands splayed across his chest, steadying herself even as she moved her fingers in slow, barely-felt circles over the thin fabric of his shirt. Theo felt a shiver run the length of his spine as a rush of goose-bumps rose on his skin. Then the burning in his own fingers couldn’t be ignored any longer.
Keeping one arm firmly around her waist, Theo raised his spare hand and pushed the defiant little curl behind Hermione’s ear. He took his time with the task, brushing his fingers along the satiny skin of her cheek, to her temple and ear. Hermione held perfectly still, watching him with eyes full of something Theo couldn’t quite identify. Arousal? Trepidation? Eagerness?
He took a deep breath, releasing it on a shaky exhale. "I’ve wanted to kiss you for nearly ten years," he admitted softly. "I never once thought I’d be able to. May I kiss you now, Hermione?"
Her eyes slipped slowly from his to fix on his lips, then back up again. There it was, as bright as day and clear as night: anticipation.
"Please," she whispered.
Ten years of pent-up longing all but exploded on contact. Theo found he couldn’t be soft, couldn’t be gentle, but by the way Hermione latched onto his bottom lip with her teeth and soothed the sting with her tongue, he knew restraint would be entirely unnecessary.
One hand moved to the back her neck, to tilt her head back to kiss her even deeper, while the other travelled the sway of her hips, waist and higher, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast on each upstroke. Hermione moaned into his lips and tightened her grip on his hair when he started to pull away, focussing his attentions on the sorely neglected skin of her jaw and neck. She tasted exactly as sweet as he had always imagined.
When he finally pulled away, Hermione’s lips were red and swollen, her skin marred by a rash of pink from his stubbled chin. Theo grinned at the thoroughly debauched picture she made, and couldn’t help but dive for her lips again, this time with all the softness and sweetness he had originally intended. She sighed at the change of pace, and Theo held her to him just that little bit tighter.
"So, Hermione," he murmured against her lips sometime later, "are you having a sunny day?"
She laughed and tilted her head to kiss him again. "Why, Theo, my day has been positively luminous."
Author/Artist: ally_147
Prompt: #108 - She’s the weather girl on the wireless. He’s in love with her voice. by gjeangirl
Pairing(s): Theodore Nott/Hermione Granger
Word Count: 10,602
Rating: M
Warning(s): Language, mentions of violence, and some colourful imagery.
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Many thanks to KH for beta-ing for me once again. Some house-keeping: There is a character in the second part named Susie. She is inspired by Suzie Mathers, an Australian musical theatre actress known for playing blonde, perky characters. The line towards the end, regarding the name of the cat, was taken from the novel ‘The Universe vs. Alex Woods’ by Gavin Extence.
I’m still kind of on the fence with this story, but I do hope that you’ll all enjoy it.
Summary: Maybe he should move to Morocco. Or Iceland. Or fucking Grenada. Anywhere where the name Theodore Nott wouldn’t incite such unmitigated terror.
September 29, 2004
Midday
Maybe he should move to Morocco. Or Iceland. Or fucking Grenada. Anywhere where the name Theodore Nott wouldn’t incite such unmitigated terror. Somewhere where he wouldn’t be violently set upon while buying his sodding groceries or visiting his mother’s grave. The Ministry had already put an embargo on his wand, restricted his movements, monitored his purchases, seized all his possessions and Nott Manor - what else was left for them to take but his country, too? Theo pressed a bag of frozen peas to the throbbing bruise on his temple and let out a low, pained groan.
He was this fucking close to being done with all of it.
The world that had grown out of the wake of the second wizarding war wasn’t exactly one Theo would call hospitable to former Death Eaters - not those who had been well underage, coerced, and as terrified as anyone else, nor those who had been tried and cleared, found innocent of all charges. Draco had already left, fleeing after a year of what Theo could only describe as Hell on Earth to an ancestral property in rural France as soon as Narcissa’s house arrest came to an end. Even Blaise Zabini, who had remained entirely neutral during the war, had been deemed guilty by association and subjected to the same cruel scrutiny by sheer dint of his house and affiliations. He retreated back to Italy not long after his beloved pet dogs had been murdered, their remains strung about the fence which surrounded his supposedly private property for all to see. As time wore on and more of his friends moved out, Theo could only come up with fewer and fewer reasons as to why remaining in England was a good idea.
Theo held a finger to his split lip and pulled it gingerly away for inspection. It glistened bright red with his blood, mingled with a smear of dark dirt. Slowly - and careful of the dark bruise that was blooming up the side of his knee - Theo hauled himself up from where he was slumped against the leg of his kitchen table and reached across the plain beige bench for his box of sand-papery tissues. He pulled a thick wad of them out and pressed them to his lip, wincing at the dry scratch on exposed flesh. He’d need disinfectant, too; falling - getting shoved, kerb-stomped, left for fucking dead - face-first into the dirty footpath with an open wound or ten showing was hardly a winning combination for sanitation.
One would have thought that waking up at the fucking crack of dawn to do his shopping - since a quick, speedy, safe Apparition to and from was a big no-no now - would have allowed him a wide enough berth to avoid the mobs that had taken to stalking him up and down the alley. Perhaps he shouldn’t have had such faith in humanity. There was surely a fucking armada bent on maintaining the peace camped out in front of his building, just waiting for him to make a move, judging from the speed with which they took his knees out from under him.
Wankers, the lot of them.
He imagined it was moments like those that his liaison officer was so bent on knowing about. Some irritatingly cheery, blonde Hufflepuff from a year or two ahead of him, who made it her duty to know each and every facet of his life’s story, up to and including who had hurt him, and where and why and how, like it would make his transition to ‘productive society member’ an easier one. Not that he had a clue whom the bright sparks who had taken it upon themselves to throttle him were, anyway. If he had any idea… and if he tried to defend himself… he’d probably get slapped with that Azkaban sentence the dicks at the Ministry seemed so fond of dangling over his head.
"One foot out of line, Nott," the rheumy-eyed old bitch at the wand registry counter always wheezed at him when he checked in for the week, "one foot out of line and you’ll rot in Azkaban like the scum you are."
To which he would always toss her his most cheerful grin and bid her a happy farewell until next time, complete with a wink and a blown kiss, because he so loved seeing the rotten old bag squirm.
It didn’t matter what the world had become, though. Someone like him had about as much impact on the course of day-to-day wizarding life as a speck of flea shit. All Theo could do was keep his mouth shut and his head down and try to swim along with it. It wasn’t as though the Ministry was ever going to do anything about his shitty situation, anyway. The fine, law-abiding citizens could never do any wrong, of course.
The cuckoo clock on his wall loudly rung the midday hour, and all of Theo’s faculties flew back to him at once. He dropped the bloodied tissues to the floor and made a mad lunge over his bench again to where the wireless sat. He reached out and spun the manual dial to turn it on, until he landed on the familiar series of melodic notes leading into the midday weather report.
"Good morning, listeners," greeted the soft, lilting, feminine voice. Theo immediately sunk with relief back down to the dusty tiled floor and let the voice wash over him, calming and quiet.
The thrice-daily weather reports were probably his favourite thing left about the wizarding world now. Perhaps it was the harbinger, the death-knell, the sign he was waiting for - because when your last favourite thing about a place boiled down to a radio weather broadcast, maybe it was time to count your losses and move on.
She had started calling the weather reports a little over four months before, replacing a gruff man with a voice like jagged metal. Her voice though, it was stunning; all things at once and none of them as well. Smooth as silk, rich as honey, as innocent as light and yet bewitchingly sensual, as though for an eager lover….
He’d had an awful lot of time to ponder the romance of the situation. It was tragic, really. Or maybe it was insane. Pathetic probably even closer still. How could a person be in love with a voice, especially one on the sodding radio that called the weather?
"I hope your day is going as wonderfully as it is outside!" she chirped on happily. He could hear the smile in her voice, and there was little else he could do but smile back, cringing as the motion pulled on the cut on his lip. "Here is your local weather forecast for the day…"
Theo rested his head against the low edge of his tiny kitchen table and closed his eyes, letting the low - almost entirely inappropriate for the radio - voice wash over him. There was a magic to it, Theo swore, as clichéd as it sounded. The pain seemed to ebb away from his head and leg as quickly as it had come upon him when he listened to her. Problems lessened and cares floated away. He felt he could be forever content with that voice whispering in his ear.
Underneath it all, though, there was the oddest sense of familiarity. Something that tickled at the back of his mind and took him back to his Hogwarts days. Something that he could see, but hovered just outside of his reach. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew the woman in some way, that she had made him feel that way before then, but as for how or why or when, he did not know.
Merlin, though, did he want to know!
"… and London should be bright and sunny, with an expected top of nineteen degrees, and an overnight low of eleven."
And then his absolute favourite part -
"Remember, ladies and gentlemen: anyone who says only sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain - without their wand, that is. Take care, and have a sunny day," she bade them - him - before the show cut out, fading to the latest Weird Sisters release.
Theo let out a bitter, though genuine laugh. The well-wishing always made him laugh. Bullshit like if you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm, and a change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves. Perhaps it was his cynicism showing, but he thought she was full of shit, even if she did have just about the sexiest voice this side of London.
Theo sighed and reached his arm up to flick the switch on the wireless, plunging him into blissful silence -
For another three hours at least, until the next forecast came on.
XXX
October 4, 2004
Mid-morning
He met his Ministry Liaison Officer in a Diagon Alley café in the midst of an autumn storm. He made a point to arrive slightly late, when he knew she would already be there, because if there was one thing he had learned about dealing with violent mobs as of late, it was that they wouldn’t dare try anything if he wasn’t already alone.
Perhaps it was cruel to leave her like that, a single drop of blood to stir the sharks, but Theo wasn’t sure that he could handle any more of that wonderful bedside manner the staff at St. Mungo’s were always so determined to heap upon him when he needed his wounds dressed. Besides, she was a perky blonde with a big, happy smile and a generous pair of tits shown off to full-effect by a veritable wardrobe full to the brim with low-cut blouses; no one was going to do so much as frown at her.
"Is there anything new you’d like to report?" asked Susie. She was an irksomely idealistic, cheerful woman with a ridiculous crush on him, and a frightfully different breed of Ministry Minion. In the six months that Theo had been dealing with her, he had yet to determine if that was a good or bad thing. She’d be the perfect agent to lull him into a false sense of security and coldly strike him down when he least suspected it.
Theo shrugged, wincing at the shot of pain that coursed through him from his lingering injuries, and twirled a spoon through his cup of milky tea. He barely looked up from the little whirlpool he had created, just in case some tosser on the street took issue with the general direction of his fleeting gaze. "No," he muttered. His voice was a distinctive one, or so he’d been told once upon a time, so he’d taken to speaking like a dedicated pack-a-day smoker to disguise it, just in case. "Nothing new."
"Oh, come now!" Susie gushed. Theo felt a nerve in his cheek twitch and jump. "Do you think I can’t see the cut on your forehead? Or the bruise on your lip? Just what are you getting yourself into, Mister Nott?"
Scowling, Theo dropped the spoon to his saucer with a clatter. His skin pricked and itched with the sensation of a dozen sets of eyes watching him then, waiting. He slowly met Susie’s eyes and hissed, "It’s nothing, Miss Mathers. Can we please get on with it?"
Susie’s smile dropped for a blink before it was back to its million-watt best. "If you insist! How about your job hunt, hmm? How’s that coming along?"
Oh, brilliantly. Every job application he’d sent out received a prompt response: a scathing Howler all but demanding that he dropped dead.
Oh, but that he would if he could, random shop-keeps. He would if he could.
Theo snorted. "About as well as you could imagine."
"Not to worry!" she assured him. "Something will open up, I’m sure. Perhaps a more behind the scenes sort of role. One that wouldn’t require you to show yourself in public quite as much."
That was perhaps the greatest - albeit the most ridiculously obvious - idea the daft bint had ever given him.
"It’s not ideal, obviously," she went on, taking a long, languorous lick at her spoon covered in cappuccino foam with no shame whatsoever. "Quite the opposite of what we’re after, actually, being a re-integration program and all, but it might be something to consider until all the hoopla dies down a little."
"Maybe," Theo said with an unconvinced shrug.
"I’ll put out a few calls, if you’re interested?"
He shrugged again. "I won’t argue."
"Wonderful!" She clapped her hands together. "I have just the thing in mind. Now, onto other things…"
Theo’s eyes felt heavy as he listened to her prattle on and on about things of little to no consequence. Shit about how if he got into a relationship at any point he’d have to register the change of circumstances with the Ministry. If it he hadn’t known it would be the last thing he would do as a free man, he would have laughed; he doubted he could pay, with his non-existent funds, a woman to look at him as anything more than a smouldering pile of rubbish that needed to be spat on.
Not his kink, but he did know some people…
Theo nodded and shook his head at the appropriate intervals, answered her questions with carefully considered answers, and gave her the abridged version of how he had taken to spending his day to day life. He’d made the mistake once of telling the Ministry about the abuse he had hurled at him; now he was watched like a hawk by some nameless, faceless entity, had weekly wand inspections - even though he couldn’t use the damn thing - and was subjected to bi-monthly appointments with a suspiciously perky Ministry drone. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
He feigned a yawn and a stretch and glanced at his watch. 11:42. Fuck.
"…and I think that’s it!" She dropped her mug back to its saucer with a feeling of finality, bestowing upon him a wide, model-worthy smile. "You’ll contact me if you need anything, yes?"
"Yes," he said monotonously, pointedly ignoring the painful emphasis she had put on the word anything. His knee bounced beneath the table, itching to up and leave. It was almost midday, almost time for the weather report…
"I’ll call and make another appointment next month."
Theo nodded as he rose from the table. "I’ll be waiting."
Her cheeks turned rosy and she averted her eyes down to the table, making Theo entirely too uncomfortable.
"Until next time, then, Mister Nott… Theo," she said, sounding suddenly, strangely, bashful.
At her excruciating dismissal, he nodded once and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head and started back home through the rain.
XXX
October 21, 2004
Midday
After two weeks of self-imposed seclusion, Theo had a part-time job. Susie had made good on her word, securing him a position in the massive warehouse for one of the wizarding world’s premier bookstore chains. There were surely more books in the warehouse than were in all of Hogwarts library, and certainly more than he’d ever seen in one place at one time, covering every subject that he could imagine, and even some that he couldn’t.
It wasn’t a bad job, really. Theo had come to rather enjoy it over the few days he’d been working there. There had been no interview and no exchanging of information on his part - just a Floo call from Susie telling where and when to arrive the next day, and he’d been pleasantly surprised; his days would be spent sorting through and sending away the books that had been ordered via owl, never dealing face-to-face with any customers, and only barely interacting with his co-workers.
His favourite part, though? The renewed use of his wand to perform his duties, albeit with a number of stipulations: no Apparating - no matter the circumstances - no conjuring any wards, no playful hexes, no harmful hexes, and definitely no Dark Magic of any sort.
What kind of daft sod the Ministry thought him to be, Theo had no earthly idea.
Lovely, as well, was the wireless that was piped through, all day every day.
"Good morning, listeners," greeted the familiar, demure voice, sounding far more as though she was addressing a lover rather than an audience of thousands. Theo grinned to himself and slowed his pace around the massive warehouse to a carefree amble as he listened. "I hope your day is substantially less dreary than it is outside."
Theo cast a quick glance out the window, where the outside world was grey and blurred with thick sheets of rain, and let out a derisive snort.
"… and London will remain wet, chilly and possibly stormy for the remainder of the week, with an expected high today thirteen and an overnight low of two. Remember, ladies and gentlemen: a rainbow is the sky’s way of apologising for the storm. Take care, and have a sunny day."
The sky cracked overhead, and the dimly lit interior was flooded for only a second with a blinding flash of lightning. The sky would have a fucking lot of apologising to do by the end of it.
Theo shook his head and moved towards the on-site Owlery. Two dozen sad, pitifully damp and ruffled birds sat perched along the criss-crossing bars, all carrying small pouches attached to their legs. One eager little bird hopped down from the topmost perch and held out its leg in invitation, imploring Theo with big, sparkling eyes to relieve him (her?) of the pouch. He carefully slipped the form and money from the pouch, and couldn’t help but grin as he turned it over in is fingers; Theo could identify its sender on first glance, just by looking at the crisply folded edges.
The one name, he’d noticed, that seemed to appear on the order forms more than any other: Hermione Granger.
Hermione Granger.
Hers was a name he wasn’t sure he would ever have cause to speak again. She’d been a tentative friend at Hogwarts, one that - for a brief time, at least - verged on something… more. They’d paired together for many an Arithmancy project, and during those times, Theo had come to anticipate her company, waiting on her arrival at the library with a stomach full of butterflies and a nervous tongue that only barely cooperated with him. When she arrived, though, casting a sweet smile his way, his mind would muddle and his body would warm, and he’d wonder why he’d ever been so nervous to begin with.
Towards the end of their sixth year - when he was knee-deep in shit he never wanted to think of again, and when they both knew that everything about their world was going to change and certainly not for the better - he knew he had lost himself to her.
He began to conjure small violets, which he surreptitiously hid between sheets of wax paper in the pages of her books when her back was turned. She would come back the following nights with a pretty pink glow about her cheeks and a smile he was certain was just for him, but she never acknowledged any part of it, except to continue using the flowers as makeshift bookmarks.
But becoming a Death Eater, Theo had noticed, tended to make an enemy of everyone. Hermione included. She disappeared during seventh year to help Potter save the world, and that had been that; Theo never saw or heard from her again.
Thinking on it more, he hadn’t seen or heard anything at all about her in the intervening six years since their Hogwarts years came to their messy, eventual end. Nor Potter, or Weasley, either. There had been something in the Prophet a few years back where she, Potter and Weasley sued the publication for continued libel. Perhaps the media taboo that had been put on their names still hadn’t been lifted yet.
He read the box on the form listing the titles she had ordered: Meteorology and Magic: Weather Spells to Help You Divine the Elements, Understanding Mother Nature, Cosmopolitan Meteorology and Animagi Theory. The final title was a bit out of place, though hardly surprising given the sort of witch Theo knew Hermione was. But the other three… surely she had all the books they had to offer on the subject by now?
The little owl butted against his hand in thanks, nuzzling into his palm before flying back out the topmost window. Theo watched until he could make out the bird no longer, then took the list and wandered up the long, tall aisles until he reached the section dedicated to textbooks and education. Removing his wand from his pocket, he levitated the necessary texts down from a shelf high above him, settling them in the cradle of his outstretched arms.
Hermione Granger was an entirely unresolved figure in his mind, one that he’d spent many nights wondering what might have been if he’d been a little braver, or she a little more open, or the world in which they dwelled a little more war-free. Since seeing her name of the forms, he’d wondered what, if anything, he should do next.
The smart thing to do, he knew, would be to do absolutely nothing. What use was there opening old wounds that had been closed for years? What good would it do either of them for Theo to come swanning back into her life now, as though a deadbeat former Death Eater had any right to do so?
The stupid thing to do, by comparison, held a far greater reward.
Theo levitated a box down from one of the stacks and methodically arranged the first three books and neatly laid them down. When he came to the fourth, he paused.
Before he bagged the last and largest of the books, he took his wand and conjured a single, cheery violet and set it between two scraps of parchment in the middle of the tome. He stared at it for a long moment, the pretty purple petals taunting him, before he sighed, let out a whispered, "Fucking hell," and slammed the book shut, bagged it, and stacked it in the box with the others.
For the first time in years, Theo felt damned once more.
At least, though, he conceded, it was a damning of his own making.
XXX
October 21, 2004
Evening
As Theo prepared his dinner for the evening, he wavered between periods of hopeless optimism and the sort of cringing, burning shame that made him want to bury himself in his bedsheets so he’d never have to face the outside world again. As soon as he’d released the pair of large barn owls to ferry Hermione’s delivery to her, he knew he’d made a stupid, juvenile and - above all - unwelcome mistake.
Hermione Granger wasn’t perfect. Of that, Theo was perfectly aware, and he felt he would go insane well before he’d gained the opportunity to even attempt to understand her. There had been moments, though, where he felt he might have come close to doing so. Moments of quiet understanding where no words had to pass between them for them to share exactly what they were thinking, times where only their expressions had conversations. Moments, too, where she had smiled at him and the world had faded, where he felt like he could have understood everything.
No, she wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t mean someone like him even had a hope of deserving her. Hermione Granger didn’t deserve to stroll the streets on the arm of someone who routinely had rocks and shit that smelled like… well, shit thrown at his head.
He shook the thoughts from him head; he was getting too far ahead of himself. Not even three hours had transpired since the package was sent out. Besides, he reasoned to himself, there was no need to even think that Hermione would recognise the gesture of the violet, let alone remember him. It had been him with the schoolyard crush, after all, not her.
It was times like these that he would have killed for one of his best mates to talk to, though even in sixth year, they’d hardly been jazzed about his none-too-subtle crush on Hermione Granger to begin with. And fuck knew what they would have made of his obsession with the weather girl whose name and face he’d likely never know short of stalking the poor woman down!
He wondered how Draco was coping with life amongst the Muggles. And Blaise. All his friends, really. Nearly four years had passed since he’d spoken to any of them.
Theo never thought he would have missed there being a person to tell him what a tosser he was being. Or to offer sarcastic, back-handed words of wisdom. Anyone, really, who could have sat with him for the night and knock back shot after shot of Firewhisky.
He was quite proud of himself for never succumbing to the increasingly insistent urge to drink himself into a numb stupor every night. He had no desire whatsoever to become a depressing cliché.
Theo maintained a constant study of the saucepan full of soup in front of him, watching the off-white lumps of potato (maybe?) float to the surface of the murky brown stock. One day, he swore to himself, he would have enough Galleons to stop buying the cheap tins of Stockman’s Beef and Vegetable soup from the discount Muggle supermarket. No one yelled at him there, or threw rocks at his head… Muggles were positively nice compared to the shit he’d had to endure from wizards over the past few years.
As the soup reduced to a simmer, he took a ladle in hand and decanted an amount into a bowl, avoiding with zeal the lumps of carrot that already looked half-chewed. Without bothering with a spoon - because he’d rather avoid all the cleaning he had to do by hand that he could - he lifted the bowl to his lips and sipped the soup down, savouring the slow, smooth trickle of warmth that heated him from the inside out.
As he slept that night, he dreamed of a ground covered in violets, sunlight, Hermione Granger’s soft, sweet smile shining down upon him, and the faceless voice of the woman on the radio whispering in his ear.
XXX
October 22, 2004
Morning
"Someone was in here looking for you earlier."
Theo paused in his brisk stroll through the narrow entrance to the warehouse that morning and privately lamented the apparent demise of polite civility and common fucking courtesy.
"Good morning to you, too, Miss Artemisia," he said, calmly, as he shucked off his coat. He shook it to remove any trace of anything that might have gone out of its way to land on him, and looped it onto a hook by the warehouse door. "I trust you’re feeling well this morning?"
The young woman at the customer service desk rolled her eyes and shot him a look of disdain. "Yes, just wonderful. Shocking, really, considering the sort of vermin I have to work with."
She gave him a pointed sneer and held a scroll of parchment out for him, waving it rudely when he made no move for it.
"Who’s it from?" he asked, suspicious. The last unsolicited note he’d received had been covered in a particularly vicious sort of itching powder that had rendered him blind. St. Mungo’s had to completely regrow his eyeballs!
She rolled her eyes again, and they made nearly a full circuit in her skull. "How should I know?"
Theo sighed patiently. "What did she look like?"
Miss Artemisia scowled at him. "She wore a cloak."
"An Invisibility Cloak?" Theo bit back, sarcastic. "I doubt she was that well-covered."
She let out a deep, tired huff. "Female, brown curly hair, sounded as English as you or me. Short of being able to invade the girl’s mind with Legilimency, which isn’t as much my area of expertise as I’m sure it is yours, I can’t tell you a whole lot else except that she was very, very insistent - borderline irritating, in fact - that I give you this." She waved the parchment around again, and Theo caught the odd scent of something familiar - something floral wafting from it.
Theo felt a lump of something rise in his chest, a sort of lightness that he hadn’t felt since before the war. "Female, with curly brown hair?" he repeated.
Miss Artemisia wore a look of exasperation. "That’s what I said. Are you going to take it or not? I could have burned it just as easily, you know; you ought to consider yourself fortunate I’m telling you about it at all."
Theo stalked towards the desk and took (snatched) the outstretched piece of parchment from Miss Artemisia’s hand, ignoring her squawk of indignation - as though she had any right at all to feel affronted by his supposed rudeness.
Bringing it to his nose, he inhaled and was filled with the scent of violets. He had to hold back the grin that was itching to stretch his lips and turned away without another word to stalk through the warehouse and down a vacated aisle. Once assured of his solitude, he sunk down to the ground and slowly unfurled the parchment, revealing a short paragraph of text written in painfully, wonderfully familiar hand. He couldn’t help but smile at the first line of the neat, looping script:
Hello, Theo…
XXX
November 19, 2004
Mid-morning
It was doubtlessly the most unorthodox relationship he had ever been part of.
Not even the strange, three-month block during his second year, where Tracy Davis would barge her way into the boy’s dormitory to fold his messy laundry, could compare.
For nearly a month, Theo and Hermione built a relationship based entirely on ink and parchment. They never met face-to-face, or through the Floo - even their method of ferrying their notes back and forth was a strange one. He would slip his missive in between the pages of whatever books she was ordering next, alongside another perfectly preserved violet, to which she would fold her reply within yet another order form.
How the woman wasn’t entirely broke yet, and as to where she was storing all these texts, Theo could only guess.
That first note hadn’t contained anything long or superfluous, nor did it contain any flowery sentiments about long-lost love or ‘the one that got away’. It wasn’t in any way romantic or inviting, but it was filled with surprise - pleasant surprise, he could only hope - that left Theo feeling, if nothing else, quite bolstered by the fact that she had not forgotten him as he had previously thought. There was a certain satisfaction in things going not at all how you planned them, and after so bloody long of expecting the very worst, Theo was most pleased to be proven wrong.
And so, they continued on, exchanging notes that grew steadily flirtier to get to know each other again, in a way wholly unconstrained by the pressures of face-to-face.
Theo whole-heartedly embraced that particular facet of their ‘relationship’.
"Nott! For the love of Merlin, pull your head out of your arse!"
Theo blinked and looked up, finding the irate, portly form of his boss in front of him; what had he been doing again?
He looked down at his hands and promptly dropped the stack of first-year Transfiguration texts he had been shelving to the floor. Immediately, Theo dropped to his knees to retrieve them and was quickly cast in shadow as his boss moved to loom over him. The sudden rumble of thunder and burst of lightning combined with the shadow made Theo feel as though he was playing some part in a horror novel.
"I never wanted to be a part of that sodding reintegration program that blonde twat at the Ministry kept bloody singing to me about, and I certainly didn’t want one of yours under my employ," his boss snapped at him. Theo was certain the man had been a Hufflepuff back in his day and was absolutely relishing in the experience of making a Slytherin squirm. "No more chances, Nott. Pick up your game or I’ll blast you out of here myself, and you know no one would have any problems with that."
Theo held back a sneer. "Of course, sir," he bit back, but there was no point; his boss was already gone.
He let out a frustrated sigh and leaned back against the precariously balanced shelf behind him. For years, he’d built up a mental hit-list in his mind - not just names, but faces and figures and voices, any breed of arsehole who seemed to relish making things just that little bit harder. He pulled a childish face at his wanker boss’ back - the only power he had over anything anymore - and added him to the tally.
He looked about to make sure no one was watching, then slipped from his pocket that very first note Hermione had sent to him and brought it to his nose to take in the fading scent of violets. Sometimes, on particularly shitty days, he would pull out the note and turned it over in his hands, reading over the familiar words and script, just to assure himself that it hadn’t all been an elaborate, vivid dream.
After that, he felt very nearly Zen - like he could take on the world.
He hauled himself back to his feet and held his wand above the stack of fallen books. A whispered incantation, and the books flew into the odd free spaces that dotted the cluttered shelf. He grinned at the thought of anyone else having to find them in the utter jumble that the warehouse was. If he had to fuck around trying to find random titles in the stacks, so could everyone else!
So he whistled along with the cheery jingle that proceeded the weather report - not even the persisting storm could dismantle any part of his newfound good cheer!
"Good afternoon, listeners!" came that ever-warming voice on the radio for the last weather report of the day. Theo could hear the grin in her voice and had no choice but to reciprocate the gesture, even if to no one in particular. "I hope you’re all having a wonderful afternoon, despite the storm."
It could have been pissing down literal cats and dogs, and Theo doubted his mind could have been swayed.
She repeated the weather forecast from earlier in the day, as deftly as lines memorised from a play, and Theo found comfort the warm familiarity of her once again.
He’d never felt so happy to be so completely and utterly fucked.
"Remember, ladies and gentlemen: bad weather always looks worse through a window." She paused then, and let out a contemplative hum. "I’m sure whoever said that never looked out over the grounds of Hogwarts from the Gryffindor Tower during a storm. The view from up there is absolutely beautiful. Take care, and have a sunny day."
Gryffindor Tower. Theo slowed his pace and tipped his head thoughtfully. That narrowed down his field considerably.
As a consummate member of Slytherin house, he’d never paid much attention to Gryffindor witches. Not like Draco, who seemed to really get off on the forbidden fantasy of an inter-house relationship, probably just to laud it over his wanker father. But he’d shared many a class and Quidditch match with them.
He felt confident in ruling out the Weasley female, the grating blonde girl (Daisy? Rose? It was some sort of flower, he knew that much…), and the Gryffindor half of the Patil twins. Likely not that Alicia girl, or the other one who married the surviving Weasley twin, and certainly not that ghastly Romilda Vane. The only other Gryffindor female he had any sort of steady contact with was Hermione, and she…
Theo came to a dead stop in the middle of the corridor.
Hermione Granger…
It was as though a massive mat of puzzle pieces was rearranging themselves before his eyes. Clarity came in small patches, leading to larger realisations, before the picture materialised entirely in front of him.
No fucking wonder the voice was so familiar!
Not knowing what else to do, Theo tipped back his head and laughed; full-bodied bellows that cramped his stomach and stung his face.
Then, all that was left to do was smile. Of course the voice on the radio brought him so much comfort: it belonged to the one woman - besides his late mother - who could even come close to calming him, to making him feel as though all would be well as long as he could hear that voice again - the woman he’d been half in love with since he was fifteen.
She hadn’t ordered anything that afternoon. A feat for her if he'd ever known one. Instead, he called one of the business owls down from one of the criss-crossing perches and settled it down at the workbench, where it preened itself and watched as he tore a scrap of parchment and penned a short note:
Hermione,
I know your secret…
XXX
November 20, 2004
Mid-morning
Since leaving Hogwarts for the horrors of the real world, Theo liked to think that there was little left that could really surprise him. He thought he could re-enter society after the war; it had been a nasty little shock when that happened to not be the case. He had also believed that he might be able to eat something other than cheap, tinned soup every fucking day, and he’d been proven soundly wrong on that front, too.
So, when Theo received a note - the note - that gave him a place and a time; a note that told him that Hermione Granger actually wanted to see him again, delivered again in the folds of yet another bloody order form requesting a children’s book called Wow, Said the Owl, he’d actually felt… surprised. Happy, even.
And then, he’d felt like he was going to be ill.
He wasn’t sure he could go through with this next phase of her plan, not if it involved meeting her in a very open, very public place that very bloody day, where she would be shamed and ridiculed purely for being seen with him.
And yet, he wasn’t sure he couldn’t go through with it, either.
So he did the only reasonable thing he thought he could do: he feigned illness, put on a stellar performance for his boss (dry-retching and coughing as though he’d come down with the Black Plague) so he’d get sent home, tucked the nicest copy of Wow, Said the Owl under his arm, and fairly ran the distance from the warehouse to the café of Hermione’s choosing before he could talk himself out of it.
So, it was with clammy palms and a thumping heart that he took a terrace seat, per her request, outside Gino’s, a tiny Italian café just beyond the outskirts of Diagon Alley. It was far more sparsely populated there than the shopping district, but he still pulled the hood of his jacket over his head to conceal his face. He impatiently shooed away a persistent waitress - so very bent on telling him the available coffee blends for the day - so he could wait and prepare himself in relative silence.
Before long, his pensive meditation was broken by the soft thwump of beating wings.
A familiar little owl soared down to land on the chair across. Theo quirked a brow at the bird, and felt something in his stomach sink. It was the same owl Hermione used to send her order forms, with the same little pouch tied to its leg. There could only be one reason why Hermione would send an owl in her stead.
An invisible punch landed in his stomach, and the sudden pain puzzled him. Really, Hermione not wanting to meet him shouldn’t have been such a great shock to begin with. He had absolutely no right to feel so hurt.
He let out a sigh and offered his arm for the owl to jump on. "All right, then," he said, resignedly. "Let me have it."
The owl hopped forward to land on the tabletop, and tipped its head to the side to stare at him. Theo shrunk back; there was something about the little creature’s eyes that made him feel as though he was being examined, a volatile potion held up to the light. Of course Hermione Granger’s owl would be just as inquisitive as her. He sighed and scratched its head, smiling as it nuzzled into his hand and closed its eyes in satisfaction.
"Really, though, little one, I should take your note so you can get back home. It’s quite dreary out."
And it was. Rain would begin to pour at any moment from the heavy, dark clouds sinking in the sky.
The owl hooted softly in reply, and pressed itself more firmly against his fingers, directing the scratch to a place behind its neck.
Theo had to smile at the little owl’s persistence.
"Your mistress is probably wondering what’s taking you so long," he said absently. "She’s a bit paranoid, you know. Some people used to say she was crazy."
The owl quickly spun its head and nipped his fingers in rebuke.
"Ow!" Theo chuckled. "All right. I won’t badmouth Hermione."
He swore the bird almost looked smug.
While it was distracted by his fingers, Theo lifted his spare hand to untie the little leather pouch from around its scaly leg and remove the note inside. It was difficult with only one hand, but he managed to unfold the stiff parchment. His brow furrowed in puzzlement, and his scratching hand stopped as he read the words:
Please don’t panic…
Suitably distracted, Theo didn’t even notice the owl flit to the ground, ruffle its feathers, and slowly begin to grow. He gawked as, almost instantaneously, the small form of the bird shifted and morphed, growing and extending and lengthening into the svelte form of Hermione Granger.
He goggled at her for a long moment - she had barely changed since he last laid eyes on her. Her hair was a little shorter, and her eyes a little jaded, but apart from that… nothing. She was as beautiful as she ever was.
"Hermione?" he spluttered. "But… you’re…"
"Surprise?" she said, weakly.
"You’re an Animagus?" he hissed at her, after glancing around to ensure no one had witnessed Hermione’s… transition.
She looked puzzled as she took the seat opposite him. He could see it now - her eyes were the exact same shade of toffee-brown as the owl’s ones, her hair the same many-hued colour as its feathers. She gestured quickly at a server at the doorway, who jotted something down in their notebook and promptly disappeared. "That’s why I ordered the book." She gestured to the copy of Wow, Said the Owl that he held clutched to his chest. "So it would be a joke. Admittedly, though, I’ve never been very good at jokes. I thought you knew. You said you knew my secret."
He was stunned, his mouth working soundlessly as he fought his brain for the rights to his words. "Yeah," he eventually got out. "That you’re the weather girl on the wireless!"
"Oh, that." She laughed - actually laughed! - and tipped her head back, exposing the long, smooth line of her neck. When she quieted, she reached over the table and prised the book from his hold. He relinquished it without a fight, still too surprised to move.
She ran her fingers over the textured cover and said, "May I ask how you worked it out?"
Theo squirmed in place and looked about the street distractedly. "At the risk of humiliating myself, I’d vastly prefer not to. Suffice it to say, you dropped enough hints."
She looked up from the book, giving him the oddest flash back to when they were students and she would survey him over the top of a massive tome, and smiled at him. "You know, you’re the first person who’s worked that out on their own."
He felt inexplicably proud at that. Regaining his composure, of which there hadn’t been a whole lot to begin with, he smirked, leaned forward, and asked, "Really?"
"Hmm." She nodded and took a sip of water from a bottle from a bag at her side. Theo blinked again, and realised that her handbag was an enlarged version of the tiny pouch that would be wound around the owl’s leg. "I mean, Harry and Ron know, but only because I told them," she went on. "They said they wouldn’t have been able to pick that it was me if I hadn’t told them. The voice I use… it’s not one that really sounds -"
He quirked a brow. "Appropriate for daytime radio?"
She shot him an amused smile. "I was going to say that it sounds nothing like my everyday voice, but I suppose that would apply as well. My manager has a theory that more people tune in if they like the voices, or if there’s something that draws the listeners in, so he asked us to try to sound a little more…"
"Sensual?" he finished for her, grinning. "Beckoning? Alluring?"
"All of the above," she confirmed, nodding. "And since I didn’t see any real risk in doing so, I embraced it. There’s something quite liberating about letting yourself go on air like that, becoming someone wholly different from who you really are."
"I’d imagine so," he replied with a smile. "So how, may I ask, did the Brightest Witch of our Age come about to calling the weather in the first place?"
She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug. "I didn’t want to work in the Ministry, I had no desire to become an Auror with Harry and Ron, and frankly, my aptitude for Healing spells is average at best." She paused and leaned back, accepting the cup of tea that had been deposited on their table with a smile at the server. She tore open a sachet of fake sugar and tipped it into the cup and went on, "Teaching at Hogwarts requires a Mastery which I don’t yet have, so I took the first job that allowed me flexibility for my studies, which just so happened to be calling the weather."
"Your studies?"
"I did say I didn’t have a Mastery yet," she said, a glint in her eye and a smile upturning her lips. "Almost, though. I estimate another six months before my studies are completed."
"Your area?"
"Charms, with some Transfiguration and Astronomy on the side."
"Must keep you busy," he said, conversationally.
"Ridiculously so," she confirmed as she took an experimental sip of her tea, hissed, then set it back on its saucer. "But very rewarding, too. I’m guaranteed a place on Hogwarts staff starting next year."
Theo laughed. "You couldn’t possibly be that busy. I saw you in your adorable little owl form nearly every day."
"I didn’t do it every day," she retorted, even as she smiled. "Only if I had the time, or the inclination. Flying rather hurts, you know. Even after you change back, you feel it in your arms and down your back."
"Most days, then," he amended cheekily. "So, what changed your mind? The promise of fresh air? The scent of a warehouse full of books?"
She blushed again and reached a hand over the table to tentatively take hold of his. Theo watched her fingers in fascination and twisted his hand around to caress the smooth skin of her inner wrist. "After I first saw you working in there," she quietly admitted. "I wanted to see you again. I made the time."
There passed another fleeting moment of quiet understanding, a silent acknowledgement that perhaps they weren’t quite as done with each other as Theo might have assumed. He brought her hand to his lips and gently brushed a kiss against her knuckles, his gaze never once leaving hers.
"Death Eater scum!" came a scream from across the road. Theo’s grip on Hermione’s hand slackened before she tightened her grip, as if daring him to let her go. In his head, Theo berated himself for his complete and utter stupidity; somewhere deep inside, he knew this would happen. He tensed in his seat, his eyes downcast as he waiting for the next scream, since they rarely came on their own.
"Filth!" shouted another.
"Worthless piece of shit!" came one more, accompanied by a wet smack of something Theo could only hope was mud to the side of his face.
His cheeks burned a vicious shade of red. Hermione only squeezed his hand tighter and took out her own wand to wave away the muck on his face. She turned back to his attackers with a look of thunder on her face, glaring at them as they made a hasty retreat at the sight of her.
She swung back around in her seat and leaned forward, so her face was barely an inch from his. "Does this happen often?" she asked in a low hiss.
Theo ran his free hand down his face, grimacing even though it came back clean. "Unfortunately, yes." He ripped his gaze from the ground and looked up at her. "I’m sorry, Hermione. I never wanted you to see any of this."
She scowled at him and took a firm hold of his arm. Before he could protest, the sharp tug of side-along Apparition pulled him away just as the first ring of thunder sounded.
XXX
November 20, 2004
Midday
He stumbled into a small, but comfortably furnished living room. A cursory glance revealed an entire wall of bookshelves which were filled to bursting with familiar titles he had sent her over the past month, and a mantle above a crackling fire lined with both Muggle and magical photographs.
Hermione let go of his arm and set about pulling his soiled cloak from his shoulders. He held his arms lax at his sides to make the task easier. "Make yourself at home," she said, gesturing towards a chintz-print sofa. She folded the cloak over her arm and disappeared down a narrow hallway.
He kicked off his shoes and set them neatly on a mat beside the door - he had no wish to track a path of dirty footprints over her plush carpets. For a long, uncomfortable moment, Theo stood perfectly still in the centre of Hermione’s living room. The room was an odd juxtaposition of things: cluttered but neat, warm but still, inviting, and yet not at all. There was a single armchair turned towards the fire, away from the sofa, and a table beside it covered by another small mountain of books and a half-empty cup of tea. So many things about the room indicated Hermione did not have visitors often, nor did she want to encourage them.
Hermione reappeared at the doorway. She paused there and just looked at him for a long moment, studying him with curious intent. He felt strangely vulnerable in that moment - there was something disturbingly familiar - intimate, even - about standing in a house that wasn’t yours, in socks.
"I’ve just put your cloak in the washer. The cleansing charm from earlier didn’t get the stains out."
He nodded. "Thank you."
She strode towards him, pausing just slightly beyond his reach, her arms crossed and her chin jutted forward. She looked purposeful, determined, incensed. "Would you tell me what just happened out there?"
"I think you can guess that, Hermione," he told her, bitterly. "You always were uncommonly smart."
She pursed her lips and fixed him with an admonishing look, as though he was a wayward child and not a man of twenty-five. "Do they ever get violent? Physical?"
"Sometimes, but… Merlin, Hermione…"
"But what?"
"But it’s none of your fucking business!"
She recoiled then as though he struck her. Theo flinched as she took a step back, and let out a weary sigh.
"Sorry," he said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over his tired eyes. "But truly, Hermione, there is nothing you can do."
"I might be able to," she said, cryptically. "You wouldn’t be the first person to underestimate my abilities."
"And it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve overestimated yours," he snapped. "Merlin, Hermione, it’s not as though I don’t deserve what’s happening to me."
"Do you honestly think that?" she asked, disbelief colouring her tone.
"I was a Death Eater," he stated simply. There was nothing else that needed to be said.
"You weren’t, though," she said, adamantly. "You never took the Mark."
He shrugged. "Formalities," he said tightly. "I did everything short of taking the Mark. You had every right to think the way you did. You weren’t wrong; I did terrible things in Voldemort’s name."
"Like what?" she asked, so quiet that the words might have been a whisper on the wind ratting the windows outside. "Tell me, Theo: what did you do?"
"What the fuck didn’t I do?" he yelled over the wind howling a gale outside. "Whatever horrible thing you’re thinking, Hermione, I probably did worse. I’m not the noble, tragic figure you’re painting me to be, love, so please, please stop kidding yourself. Even you thought I had the Mark at the time, remember?"
"But you didn’t take the Mark, and I’m sorry for thinking you did!" she stressed again, and her voice strained with an honesty that pulled at his gut. "I should have had more faith in you."
He felt his lips curl upwards in a brief flicker of a smile. "No need to be so apologetic, Hermione. I probably would have done much the same were our positions reversed."
She shook her head, the swaying of her hair hiding the smile he knew was there. "No, you wouldn’t have. You would have sat me down and forced me to talk about it, to explain myself, until you could understand, like you did when I was upset about Ron and Lavender."
"Prick didn’t deserve you," Theo muttered.
"And you don’t deserve what’s happening to you!"
"I made my bed, Hermione. Now, I get to lie in it. Forever."
"No, you don’t," she said, in a calm, placating tone, one she might use to talk down a rabid animal. "There is no reason whatsoever why you can’t live a whole, happy life full of warmth and love -"
"I’m a fucking pariah, Hermione!" he snapped. "There will never be any warmth or love. I refuse to drag you - or anyone else, for that matter! - down with me!"
"Don’t be ridiculous, Theo," she dismissed with a scoff. "You’re hardly dragging me anywhere. And even if you were, isn’t it my decision to make? I’m a grown woman, Theo, I make my own choices. Besides, you were cleared, weren’t you? I was at your bloody trial!"
Was she? He could barely fucking remember anymore. "No one gives a toss that I was cleared!" he bit back. "Mob rules, love; that’s what gets things done here. That’s what I have to live by."
"So that’s it?" she spat. "You’re just going to lie down and take it? You’re just going to let people tear you apart when you haven’t done anything wrong?"
He held his arms out in a shrug. "What else can I do? I can’t fight back, love. That’s a one-way ticket to Azkaban."
"I could help you."
He paused at that, looked at her closely for a long moment, before bursting into laughter. "Oh, Hermione, my darling little bleeding heart."
"What?" She held her hands to her hips, a pose of utter defiance, and took a menacing step towards him. Instinctively, he took a step back; all five-foot-five of her was poised and coiled, ready to strike. "Why couldn’t I help you?"
He huffed a cynical laugh. "I can hardly hold you responsible for the state of the wizarding world, Hermione."
"Perhaps not, but this isn’t what Harry, Ron and I fought for. We didn’t fight so you and others who might or might not have worn the Dark Mark - through no fault of their own! - could be subjected to the types of horror you and others have suffered through!" she exclaimed, all in one breath. "Harry, Ron and I… we’re like… unelected officials, almost. The world has this nearly terrifying fascination with what we’re doing, and the how and the why of it all, but none of us use this influence! I have never spoken up about acceptance or forgiveness in the wake of the war. I should have done that a long time ago."
Theo shook his head. "No, you shouldn’t have. It’s hardly your place to tell people how and where and why to think."
"Yes, I should have. And I should have looked for you."
"You have no obligation to me whatsoever, Hermione."
"I still should have tried," she said again, and he could hear the finality on the matter in her voice before she sighed. He watched her feet shuffle about before she steeled herself and said with resolve, "You should know, Theo, that I… I liked you, in sixth year. Quite a bit, actually…"
Despite everything, Theo still felt a swell of pride at her words.
"… and I don’t think that ever really changed."
He glanced up from the floor, finding her eyes fixed squarely on his, burning with an imploring sort of sincerity that begged him to understand.
"I think I was half in love with you in sixth year," she confessed. "You were the only boy who didn’t make me feel like I was somehow… lesser for loving books and classes. When you gave me those violets, you made me feel like I was pretty, like I could be worth someone’s time for something other than research and homework help. Don’t get me wrong, I love Harry and Ron dearly, but they rarely saw me as a woman, and it was nice to be seen as one from a person who I wanted to see me as one, and -"
Theo held his forefinger to her lips, stalling her words. "Has anyone ever told you that you ramble terribly?" he asked, amused.
Her lips quirked against his finger. "A time or two, yes."
Something soft, solid and furry butted against his shin. Theo glanced down to see a sleek grey cat weaving between his legs, no doubt leaving a swath of fur clinging like glitter to his trouser legs. He pulled his finger from her lips and asked, "You have a cat?"
Hermione grinned. "Yes. Another kneazle. Or a quarter kneazle, actually. When I found him again, after the war, Crooks had made friends with a lady cat, and they had kittens. Her name is Lucy."
He leaned down to scratch its head. "Cute."
The cat hissed and swiped at him with sharp, extended claws. Theo swore and pulled his hand back. Examining it revealed four neat, three-inch long red lines.
Hermione’s grin turned positively devilish when she said, "It’s short for Lucifer."
Theo grimaced and watched as Hermione took his hand and healed the line of scratches with a swish of her wand. "Of course it is."
"See?" she remarked, still holding his hand in her warm, soft one. She traced over the prominent veins and tendons on the back of his hands with her fingers, and Theo shivered at the sensation. "Letting me help you isn’t so bad."
"I’m sure my wand isn’t approved to perform healing spells, anyway. It might look like I’m covering up my tracks." At her look of reproach, Theo sighed and rolled his eyes. "You cannot possibly be comparing healing some cat scratches to rebuilding my position in society. The two are at opposite ends of an incredibly long spectrum."
"Just promise me you’ll think about it," she implored him.
"I can promise that," he conceded, "so long as you promise me something."
She quirked a brow at him, gesturing for him to go on.
Theo took a quick, deep breath, praying he had not read their interactions wrong. "Let me cook for you. Dinner, I mean, or lunch, if you’d prefer. I can’t really… go out right now."
Whatever warm, muddling feelings Theo may have felt waiting for her in libraries, or waiting for her letters, expanded a thousandfold at the smile on her face then, just for him. "You’re incredibly sneaky, Theo," she said, a warm blush lighting her cheeks. "But… I think I’d like that."
There was little else for him to do then, but tug on the hand still holding his to pull her to his chest and wrap his arms around her waist. The jolt of movement sent a rebellious curl tumbling down over her eyes. Theo’s fingered positively burned with the urge to reach out and touch the curl, to learn for once and for all if it was as soft as it appeared.
Hermione’s hands splayed across his chest, steadying herself even as she moved her fingers in slow, barely-felt circles over the thin fabric of his shirt. Theo felt a shiver run the length of his spine as a rush of goose-bumps rose on his skin. Then the burning in his own fingers couldn’t be ignored any longer.
Keeping one arm firmly around her waist, Theo raised his spare hand and pushed the defiant little curl behind Hermione’s ear. He took his time with the task, brushing his fingers along the satiny skin of her cheek, to her temple and ear. Hermione held perfectly still, watching him with eyes full of something Theo couldn’t quite identify. Arousal? Trepidation? Eagerness?
He took a deep breath, releasing it on a shaky exhale. "I’ve wanted to kiss you for nearly ten years," he admitted softly. "I never once thought I’d be able to. May I kiss you now, Hermione?"
Her eyes slipped slowly from his to fix on his lips, then back up again. There it was, as bright as day and clear as night: anticipation.
"Please," she whispered.
Ten years of pent-up longing all but exploded on contact. Theo found he couldn’t be soft, couldn’t be gentle, but by the way Hermione latched onto his bottom lip with her teeth and soothed the sting with her tongue, he knew restraint would be entirely unnecessary.
One hand moved to the back her neck, to tilt her head back to kiss her even deeper, while the other travelled the sway of her hips, waist and higher, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast on each upstroke. Hermione moaned into his lips and tightened her grip on his hair when he started to pull away, focussing his attentions on the sorely neglected skin of her jaw and neck. She tasted exactly as sweet as he had always imagined.
When he finally pulled away, Hermione’s lips were red and swollen, her skin marred by a rash of pink from his stubbled chin. Theo grinned at the thoroughly debauched picture she made, and couldn’t help but dive for her lips again, this time with all the softness and sweetness he had originally intended. She sighed at the change of pace, and Theo held her to him just that little bit tighter.
"So, Hermione," he murmured against her lips sometime later, "are you having a sunny day?"
She laughed and tilted her head to kiss him again. "Why, Theo, my day has been positively luminous."