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Chapter Text

Chapter 23: Motion

19 May, 2018
Nott Townhouse, London

Love in the Time of Public Consumption

With the Palace's reluctance to release any details about the nature of Hermione and Prince Draco's relationship, the entire country gradually fell into a state of ravenous curiosity, scavenging for want of news. Ironically, it was during this time of nescience that Hermione's influence on digital media became increasingly undeniable. With the rise of social media and blogging, Hermione's public presence, however unenlightening, was practically synonymous with the dawn of guerilla 'journalism,' with all such content voraciously speculating whether a royal proposal was indeed impending. It became nearly impossible to go anywhere without further commentary as to the truth of Prince Draco's intentions, and with the release of Lady Bellatrix Lestrange's shocking memoir, Sister Cunning, Sister Fair: Dark Truths from the House of Black, the prospect of Hermione as the next Princess of Wales became an unavoidable source of idle gossip.

By the time the two were seen attending the wedding of

Hm. Well, I hate to stop on such an elusive note (mmm actually I don't, not really, the whole book is rubbish and I do not understand why I continuously fail to simply cast it into the nearest river and/or source of flames) but I do feel it necessary I should pause here, if only to revisit my own memory of this particular era. The entire book is utter nonsense, obviously—so obvious it's hardly worth pointing out—but for whatever reason, I can't resist the nightmarish lure of Rita Skeeter's complete and total disengagement from reality. Her ability to rewrite the past as if she were not entirely responsible for said 'idle gossip' is as simultaneously disturbing and difficult to look away from as the average outfit from cousin Hortense.

It's quite outstanding, too, how many details Rita Skeeter managed to miss about all of us, and I say that as someone who very nearly missed the most important detail in my own life. Of course, fortunately for me, what I lack in personal foresight I make up for in other observations. That, and luck. Quite a lot of luck. An impossibly vast fortune of luck.

What was I saying? I'd better just get on with it. My wife will be nearly dressed by now, and as good as displeasure looks on her, it's best if, for once, I manage not to keep her waiting long.

22 September, 2013
Nott Manor

For the entirety of his life, Theo Nott would put great stock in the comportment of motions. He had been born the sort of child who noticed things other people were disinclined to see, and who would eventually become the sort of man who listened for things other people were disinclined to say, except by gestures. This led him to think, correctly or incorrectly, that he had an exceptionally keen understanding of what people really were.

"Come to a party tomorrow night," he would say one day to a girl who was studying quietly—or rather, pretending to, motions suggesting otherwise, one knee jostling in constrained agitation beneath the table. She'd been staring moodily into nothing, sketching something with the pads of her fingers in the air and idly tapping her pen against the table, but the ease with which she transferred her attention from nothing to him led him to suspect she hadn't been thinking about anything, really. Or, at least, if she'd been daydreaming, her little doldrums of fantasy were closer to earth than to impossibility. "It's for Halloween, at the Hog's Head. You should come," he repeated, and did not explain why.

Nor did she ask. "Come with you?" she asked, doubtful, and he shook his head.

"A group of us," he said, and she leaned back, considering him.

"You're one of Prince Draco's friends," she noted after a moment, succinct and formal in her observations. "You and the loud one and the mean one."

"Yes," he confirmed, "that's us. And you can be the skeptical one, if you like."

She tapped her nails lightly against the table, neither amused nor unamused. "Can my friend come?"

He had a feeling the friend was, in this case, a form of armor. "It's a party, Greengrass, not a binding social contract."

"You know my name," she said, still notably unsmiling, and he shrugged.

"You know mine," he said.

"I don't."

"You do."

"I do not."

An easy trap, but a reliable one.

"You see," he said, "you do know it."

"How did I—" She stopped. "It's Nott, isn't it," she sighed, looking disappointed with herself, and he smiled. "Well, if I know it, it's only by terrible mistake, I'm sure. Just my very good hearing," she assured him, "and a memory limited to collecting useless trinkets of observation."

"You're bored," he said, falling into the seat across from her, and she gave him a disapproving look.

"I don't believe I told you you could sit, Nott."

"On the contrary, Greengrass, you practically begged me," he informed her, swiveling her textbook around to face him. She tensed up, obviously guarding herself from his disapproval, but he pretended not to notice, instead feigning surprise. "Anatomy," he noted. "Would not have guessed."

"Why?" she asked, instantly combative.

"Well, I expected a book on world domination," he said, "but then, I suppose, one wouldn't just keep such things lying around." He flipped a page, observing that she'd been looking specifically at what he perceived to be a spliced-open skeleton leg, and then noticed she was covering her page of notes with her hand. He opted not to look up, sensing her discomfort, and added, "Why anatomy?"

She would confess to him later that evening, influenced by several of the Hog's Head's libations and their discussion of the universe's insufficiencies, her difficulties crafting the human leg in drawings. She always drew the thighs too long, she said, the calves were too short, her proportions were off, she had to learn to do it properly. He would say, innocently, I thought this was just a hobby?, and she would say, Yes, it is, obviously nothing will ever come of it but I can't stand the not knowing, I think I hate the not knowing of how to do something more than anything in the world.

At the time, though, she merely said, "None of your business," and snatched the book back from him, cradling it to her chest as if he'd burst in on a very private thought.

"Very well," he said, rising to his feet, but she stopped him with the parting of her lips; with the thing she bit back right before she said something else, instead.

"I might come," she said, and then, "Is there a theme?"

"Cowboys and Indians," Theo said, and nodded when she pulled a face. "Yes, I know, but it is what it is. Blaise always makes a fuss, so be sure to dress up," he warned. He didn't know yet that she would come dressed as a Bollywood dancer, a 'misinterpretation' of the theme that would ultimately thrill Blaise and quietly impress Pansy, thereby winning them both to her side. He didn't know yet that when he kissed her, unprompted and foolish and only the once, he would run his fingertips over the jewel-colored material and remember the taste of her like the feel of the fabric between his fingers, satin soft. She would say, Thank you for seeing me, and he would say, How could I not see you? and she would say, You know what I mean.

And he would kiss her because he was careless and she would kiss him back and he would destroy it, destroy everything, when he told her the truth. He grew more protective of them, truths, after that night, and eventually he would meet another girl, and it would surprise him to find that her motions were perhaps the least informative thing about her.

"You're bored," she would say, an oddly symmetrical moment, sidling up to Theo as he observed Draco initiating one of his painfully forced smiles, Prince Lucius speaking rapidly in his ear. "And I don't believe I've ever seen you at one of these before."

"Invisibility is one of my special skills," Theo said without thinking, turning to find the French president's daughter smiling at him without a trace of coquetry. He recovered quickly, adding, "No talent whatsoever at runes, though. Abysmal at divination. Can't tell a dream from a palm."

"Pity," she said. "I'd love to know how the evening is going to end."

"Might I recommend flannel pajamas and a hot bath?" he said. "Or perhaps compression socks, for maximum blood flow."

"I meant relative to sex," she said, prompting him to choke on his wine, "but you're not wrong."

It was Fleur who taught Theo to stop looking for hidden things, for meaning, because she laid them all out in front of him. Over the next few weeks he would watch Daphne for any hint that she wanted him, that she liked him more than the others, more than a friend, more than anyone, until it finally occurred to him that looking for signs was a hopeless activity. At the same time he'd strain to see something half-imagined from Daphne, his phone would buzz with a message from Fleur: I miss you, I like you, did you know? Everyone here is so dull and I keep wondering, what would Theo say about this or that? I'm ruined, you know, I have always thought myself the best company and now because of you everything will always be boring to do alone—all of her thoughts expressed for his consumption as easily as she breathed.

"Why" had been a frequent question in the beginning, at least until Theo realized he was as much a reprieve for Fleur as Hermione had been for Draco. That it would go somewhere beyond a single tryst, or two or three trysts, or a lackluster sequence of trysts was unfathomable. He had expected it would end with little more than faltering communication and an occasional nudge to his recollections; remember when Fleur Delacour, beautiful and smart and Important, deigned to choose you, plucked you out of everyone from a superfluity of better choices? Remember how she said, Of course I noticed you, look at you, you've got an energy, I don't know the word in English but you've got it, and then remember how you told her, surprising yourself with your honesty, that you'd be shit in bed, the last girl you slept with felt so close to your destiny that it scarred you, it broke you, you woke up alone and decided you'd simply be celibate until you withered to dust, and Fleur, charmed, said, Oh look at you, so dramatic, you're funny, don't worry I'm good enough at this for the both of us, and then remember she pulled you into an empty room and taught you never to doubt her judgment ever again? Remember that, can you ever forget?

"You always see things so clearly at a distance," Fleur would tell him one night in her bedroom in Paris, whispering to him with such closeness it made him hurt, it made him ache, it made him long to say don't leave, please don't leave, filling him up with things he couldn't bear to ask for. "You see things clearer than anyone until you get up close, don't you? And then you're hopeless," she teased him, long blonde hair falling around his face. "You see nothing, you don't even see how much I like you. Theo," she said between kisses, "I like you," and then he was done for, helpless to argue, telling himself, That's it, this is it, I choose this.

It was easy to love Fleur, not simply because of who or what she was, but because she showed him how. She knew herself, unrepentantly, and taught him how to know her just as well. He had tried desperately to read Daphne, had studied her intently and still come out as empty-handed as if he'd known nothing at all, so this, with Fleur, was like a breath of relief. But he couldn't unlearn the habit—certainly hadn't with Daphne, still learning and re-learning her as she re-shaped herself, grew, became someone exactly the same as the girl he'd first met and yet entirely, unrecognizably different—and realized very quickly during the weekend spent at his house that year that he was even more untalented at it than he'd initially thought.

It started, as most things of that nature typically did, with a thing he shouldn't have said.

"No wait, don't," specifically, blurted out without a hint of forethought when Fleur's hand had lingered worryingly on the top drawer of his antique desk. She'd been looking for something, for nothing, a spare charger or something of the like and then he'd said that, and then the rest of her had frozen, startled by the sharpness of his reaction.

They'd been dating two years by then, and it was a point of pride between them that they didn't keep secrets. He trusted her, she trusted him, and minus one small hiccup early on (which had, in fact, led to a long night of confession, and subsequently led to the aforementioned point of pride) they had never encountered any issues like the one he suspected they were about to have. It wasn't a matter of trust, he reasoned silently—he'd certainly done nothing to give her cause for doubt—but when she gave him a wary look of disapproval, he sighed.

"Fine," he relented, "but you'll see why when you open it."

She slid the drawer open, still frowning at him, and glanced down at the oversized envelope that would have been unremarkable if not for his outburst. Already, he was fairly certain the conversation was going to consist mostly of things they both already knew.

For example: "Who did these?" she asked, sucking in a breath as she removed one of the drawings, which he hadn't looked at since they had been given to him.

Fleur had to have known who had done them; could have guessed, at least, but surely didn't need to. Theo only knew one person talented enough, firstly, and only one person for which he would say, "I'll sit for you, then," when she complained she never got a good enough seat in class to see the model.

He understood, though, that point wasn't that Fleur knew it, but that he say it aloud. "Daphne," he said, obliging with a predictable disturbance somewhere in his gut, warping the air between them. "She did them for her anatomical drawing class the first term of our final year at Hogwarts."

"Oh." Fleur was rifling through them, the two or three full drawings and the little studies Daphne had done of his legs, his arms, his fingers and toes, the sketches of his mouth. Fleur's expression as she glanced over them was unreadable, despite his best efforts. "You didn't want me to see these?"

"I thought you might get the wrong idea," he said, uncomfortably. He was unsure yet what the 'right' idea was, and was having more than a small amount of trouble identifying it.

"I like them. They're very good, she's very talented."

Yes, she was, but it didn't seem fitting to agree. "I don't really care for the subject matter, personally." He'd certainly never looked at them closely. With everything that had followed, he'd hardly looked at them at all.

It was meant to have been a joke, but Fleur wasn't listening. "These are copies," she noted, holding up one of the pages for his inspection and then returning her attention to the others. "Does Daphne have the originals?"

"I assume she submitted them for class," he said, shrugging.

"Surely she would have gotten them back once they were evaluated, wouldn't she?"

"I don't know, Fleur." And he didn't.

"Does she still have them?"

He cleared his throat, uncertain. "Does it matter?"

"Well, I'd like to see them. The copies don't do them justice, there's erasure marks." She paused, glancing down at the drawing again, and repeated, "She's very talented."

It wasn't the first time Fleur had praised Daphne. Fleur was free with compliments, extravagant with praise, and that was true for all of his friends. Hermione was immensely clever, Blaise was full of life, Harry was le plus charmant, Draco was thoughtful, smart, poised, even Neville was endearing. Daphne was talented, always talented, and never had saying so felt anything outside of ordinary. This was the first time Theo could recall that any mention of someone else's strengths appeared to have taken something from Fleur. It was overspending, even with her limitless fortune in kindnesses, and this time it had cost her.

"I doubt she kept them," he said, and to that Fleur looked up sharply, seeming agitated; as if he'd said something truly idiotic, and he was beginning to suspect that he had.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" she asked.

(The inevitable question.)

"There never seemed to be a good time to bring it up," he said, which was true, or at least mostly true. "Besides, I don't see why it matters." That was less true, but he wanted to believe he might have thought that. "I'd have sat for you if you asked," he hurried to assure her, stumbling over his own urgency. "For Blaise, or for Hermione… for Harry, even, and we all know he'd have bungled it entirely."

"I don't care that you sat for her," Fleur said, and he believed that she didn't, though something continued to be obviously wrong. "But you know these are good, don't you? More than good. You know it, don't you?"

She was holding up the page, insistent, imploring him to see something he couldn't; that he hadn't, but that he'd tried to, countless times, and had since given up.

"We're friends," he said helplessly, and Fleur gave him a look of sadness, or perhaps sympathy. As if she felt something for him that was something like, Poor you, you try so hard and still you don't know anything, poor thing.

"I need some air," she said. She replaced the drawings in the folder, replaced the folder in the drawer, replaced the drawer in the desk and then replaced herself in the room with her absence.

Once she'd gone, Theo simply stood there, uncertain.

Then he darted out of his bedroom, racing through the corridors.

"Greengrass," he said breathlessly, skidding to a halt in the doorway of the bedroom she was occupying for the weekend, and she looked up from her computer, eyeing him expectantly. "Something's happened."

"Seems that way," she agreed, making a small motion for him to come inside. He'd had every intention to sit beside her, to explain it with words—perhaps even large, multisyllabic ones, maybe even sentences if he really put his mind to it—but instead he paced beside the bed, trying to recall the sophistications (or, if none could be found, then merely the basic guiding principles) of language.

"Well?" Daphne asked, brow arched. She was watching him with amusement, lips curled up in half a smile, all her motions splintered by some lack of commitment to whatever she was thinking.

"She found them." There, he thought, those were words, excellent work. "Those drawings you did, she found them."

He fell to a sudden halt, staring accusingly at Daphne as if to say, Do you understand the weight of this, do you hear what I'm saying?, but she was only looking back at him, a strange sense of calm on her features. In fact, where they should have gone wide with panic her eyes had simply narrowed, brows compressed in thought.

"So?" she said.

"So," he parroted desperately, holding his hands up, Don't you see it? Help me, please.

"Was she upset?" Daphne guessed, prompting him, and Theo frowned.

"No," he admitted. "No, she wasn't, she was—" Something else. Disappointed? No, he'd seen her disappointed, that wasn't it. "She wasn't upset at all, actually."

"Well, of course not," Daphne said with a sense of easy languidness, almost distractedly, her attention drifting somewhere he couldn't follow. "She already knows, Theo."

That Daphne could remain so calm about this was utterly bewildering. "Knows what?"

"Oh, come on, Nott, you're not a total idiot." Daphne rose to her feet, eyeing her watch. "Nearly time to eat, isn't it?" she mused to herself, thinking. "I should fetch Hermione. I swear," she sighed fondly, "she and Draco haven't taken a breath in at least twelve hours—"

"Hold on, Greengrass," Theo said, catching her floating hand as she moved to pass him. She glanced down at where he'd taken command of her knuckles, thumb floating over them, and then immediately released her, feeling his cheeks burn slightly. "Knows what?" he asked again, nearly pleading this time.

She obviously had every intention to refuse an answer. He could see it in her posture, combative as she always was with him, but perhaps something in the way he'd asked it had caused her to bend. Same as when he'd said, Come to a party, and she'd said, I might come, which he'd always secretly hoped had meant, Okay, but only because you asked, because you asked me, because of you, because my choice is you.

Daphne stepped closer, glancing up at him, and shook her head; Poor thing, poor stupid Theo, you know even less than you thought you did.

"She knows," Daphne said, "that you're the boy I'm going to marry."

Abruptly, he thought about the one question Fleur asked that he hadn't been able to answer: Does she still have them?

She hadn't meant the drawings. Theo realized it with a clang, and in a split second of remarkable cognition, he was so painfully full of wretched understanding he felt certain he could burst.

Then Daphne reached up, gave him a reluctant, blinding smile, and turned away, exiting the room without another word while he gaped at her retreating back, dumbfounded.

That particular motion, he thought with anguish, had left him feeling even more impossibly inept than before.

"I can't believe you're just telling me about this now," Draco said in disbelief, and Theo rolled his eyes.

"I don't know if you recall, but we thought we were going to have to pry you out of that bedroom by force," he said. "That you were even able to walk is positively astonishing."

"Still, to wait an entire week," Draco insisted, beckoning Theo into the chairs near the window of his father's sitting room. "How very thoughtless and rude of you not to consider my feelings on this matter. I have half a mind to sentence you to petty theft for your crimes against our friendship."

"Well, my liege, I besiege you, don't," Theo said drily, and Draco smiled his boy's smile, so familiar after twenty years of friendship. "Or do, actually. Some prison time might do wonders for my feeble constitution."

"What are you going to do?" Draco asked, sipping his coffee. "Tell me you've thought about it."

"No, of course not," Theo said. "It hardly plagued me. I've slept at least six hours."

"A night?"

"This week," Theo grumbled, slumping down in the chair and casting a moody glance out the window to where autumn was progressing far more rapidly than he'd have liked.

Summer had been so very simple, hadn't it? He and Fleur had been happy together, even content. He and Daphne had been better than usual, nearly back to normal. Minus one small disagreement, discovering her blog and being sworn to secrecy about the reasons behind her newfound satisfaction—which had shown so clearly on her face, in her voice, in her laugh—had felt raucously familiar, nearly like being younger, when they'd both so effortlessly been friends.

Though, had they ever really been friends? It was an old question by then, and one Theo had thought he'd grown tired of asking himself—until now.

"Knock, knock," Draco said, interrupting his thoughts, and Theo grimaced, turning his head.

"I'm naked," he said.

"Nothing I haven't seen before," Draco replied blithely.

"The house is a mess."

"Well, pick it up, then."

"I can't, I'm too tired for houseguests. I've caught the dreaded ills of melancholy."

"Humours out of balance?"

"Immensely."

"Got the morbs?"

"Without a doubt."

"Fine, I'll wait outside."

"Don't wait outside, you'll catch cold."

"Sorry, Mum, I've got to."

"I haven't any food in the house."

"Well, lucky I'm not hungry."

"Draco Wales, you irreverent fiend, are you really going to press this?"

"You brought it up, Theodore, did you not?"

"I should have kept it to myself another week."

"A capital offense, had you done it."

"What do you want from me?"

"Open the door," Draco said firmly, "and let me in."

Theo sighed. Once a prince, always a prince.

"Fine," Draco said, "I won't wander much, I'll stay in the foyer. How did Fleur react?"

"While you were otherwise occupied, you mean?"

"Yes, that, what happened for the rest of the weekend?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yes, nothing."

Fleur had come back to pepper him with questions: You understand I trust you, don't you? Yes, he understood. This isn't an accusation but it's a surprise, so do you understand why I was displeased? Yes, of course, he wouldn't appreciate it either if he were in her position. You know I love art, you know I can see that's what this is—art? Yes, he knew that, he knew that if anyone was capable of understanding, it was her. Good, good, so we can put this behind us, then? Yes, they should put it behind them, it was years ago, anyway.

You know I love you, Theo, don't you?

Yes, he knew, he loved her, too, and that was that.

"And Daphne?" Draco asked.

Nothing. Less than nothing. Just a very casual, Oh, you? You're my destiny, you idiot, as if those exact words from him had not sent her into an incalculable spiral five years prior, and then back to normal, as if nothing at all had happened.

"Has Hermione not said anything to you?" Theo asked, and Draco shook his head.

"Though, she wouldn't, would she?" he replied. "None of this is new to her, or to Daphne, either. Just you, apparently."

"And you," Theo said.

"Well, sort of," Draco replied.

"What do you mean sort of?"

"These particular events are new, obviously, but as for the rest—"

"What rest?"

"You know, the rest. The stakes, et cetera."

"You're being elusive and I hate it. Get out of my house."

"No, listen," Draco said with a laugh, reaching forward for Theo's arm, "you can't seriously tell me you didn't know Daphne's had feelings for you forever, can you?"

"Okay, that's it," Theo scoffed, irritated. "Please defenestrate into the moat immediately and without del-"

"You really didn't know?" Draco said, transitioning rapidly from humor to surprise. "I just assumed you were keeping that information locked away somewhere so as to more easily proceed through life."

That Draco could be so ruthlessly matter-of-fact about what had been Theo's own personal cataclysm was somehow so outrageous as to drag his thoughts to a plodding halt.

"She never said," Theo began slowly, "anything."

"Well, I know that, but—"

"SHE NEVER SAID ANYTHING," Theo bellowed, abruptly rising to his feet as Draco sighed, setting down his coffee and following after him. "Do you understand? Two years, Draco, two of them, and she never said a word—"

"Since when are you so blind, Theodore?" Draco said, chasing doggedly at his heels. "And where are you going?"

"Away. I don't know. Elsewhere," Theo snapped, taking a sharp left up the stairs and then pausing, sending Draco colliding into his back before pivoting to face him. "When you say feelings—?"

"She's in love with you," Draco said, astonished. "Theo, everyone knows!"

"NOT EVERYONE, YOU POMPOUS REGAL KNOB," Theo retorted, resuming the process of storming up the stairs as Draco hastily chased after him, bewildering the palace staff.

"This is why you're so upset?" Draco asked, half-panting. "I thought… well, I don't know what I thought, frankly you're mystifying to me—"

"For two years, she's pushed me away," Theo ranted, before rapidly amending the thought. "No, for five years, actually—since the moment I told her how I felt, Draco, she's kept me at arm's length, and I'm supposed to interpret that as love? WHAT SORT OF MONSTERS ARE THEY, DRACO?"

"What on earth are you shrieking about, Nott?" Prince Lucius cut in, stepping out from his study with a narrow-eyed glance from beneath his spectacles.

"OH, AS IF YOU DON'T KNOW," Theo said hotly, adding a perfunctory, "Sir," under his breath before marching up another set of stairs.

"Sorry, Father, he's fine—look, Theo," Draco said, reaching for his arm and slowing him slightly, "much as I admire your sudden devotion to exercise—"

"I all but told her I loved her and she told me not to wait," Theo seethed, falling again to a halt and glaring at Draco. "I called her on her birthday, don't you remember? After I met Fleur, I called her, I said—"

"Nothing," Draco reminded him, and Theo grimaced. "I was there, Theo, you simply said you missed her, you certainly said nothing about Fleur—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Theo demanded, helplessly turning the tables, and Draco sighed wearily, brushing a thumb over his temples.

"Would it have mattered?" he asked, and Theo swallowed, quieting as he considered it.

No, he realized, it wouldn't have. Not then. Not if she hadn't said it herself. He'd waited and waited for her to say it, for her to say anything at all, to tell him he hadn't foolishly imagined everything between them, but she'd said nothing he wanted to hear and Fleur had said everything, and for all his reading between the lines it was the lines themselves he'd really wanted.

"You see?" Draco said, placing a fraternal hand on Theo's shoulder. "It wasn't my information to give."

Theo let his chin fall, dismayed at himself.

"Now what?" he mumbled, and Draco's grip tightened.

Draco knocked twice in the air with his free hand, waiting, and Theo, resignedly, glanced slowly up.

"I put her behind me," he confessed. "I was living a different life. I was making a new one."

Draco nodded, sympathetic as always. "And now?"

"She's better off without me," Theo said, shaking his head. "Look how much she's done, Draco, how far she's come, how happy she is—"

"You're not answering the question," Draco said.

"Maybe some things aren't meant to work out," Theo said, postulating through the thickness at his throat. "Maybe some are too… too heavy, too stifling. Maybe she and I can't get it right, or maybe we were never supposed to—"

"Not an answer," Draco said.

"What does this change, really? Should it change anything, even? If it's always been true and I've only just been informed, then what does that matter? I should ask California to write a thesis on it, she seems to love philosophical quandaries—"

Draco sighed loudly, exasperated. "Theodore, this is still not an answ-"

"BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER," Theo hurled back, frustrated, and Draco gave him an admonishing look, albeit a quietly supportive one.

"I wish I could help you with this," he said, and as Theo opened his mouth to retort, he shook his head. "No, really, I wish I could. You've helped me with everything and I wish I could take this decision from you and spare you the discomfort of having to make it, but I can't. This one is yours."

"Outrageous," Theo muttered. "What does the monarchy even do?"

"We wear various oversized hats," Draco replied solemnly, and Theo sighed.

"Well, I should go, anyway," he grumbled, glancing down at his watch. "Hermione's coming soon, isn't she?"

Draco nodded. "I'm gone again tomorrow. Doesn't mean you have to go anywhere," he said. "She'll understand, if you want to keep talking—"

"No, no, I'm done talking." Theo fidgeted in place, helplessly trapped within the prison of his insufficient limbs. "I'll just come back and see you once you've captured Spain."

"I'm not going to capture Spain, Theo, no matter how many times you ask."

"All the good princes try for Spain, Draco. It's science."

"It's absolutely not science, but fine. I'll lend it some thought."

"At least frighten the Vatican a little."

"I think it's a bit late for that."

"I'm concerned you're not fully committing to this, Draco."

"A valid concern," Draco replied, "but not my main one. At least not for the moment."

Theo sighed, recognizing an unwelcome dose of sentimental nonsense in Draco's meaningful glance.

"You're sure you don't want to stay?" Draco asked him, and Theo shook his head.

"I'm tired," he said, turning to head down the stairs. "I think I'll have a nap."

Theo woke to the sounds of Blaise talking in low tones outside his door.

"It's been nearly a week," Blaise was saying to someone. "I've never known him to be so reprehensibly inactive." A pause. The other party must have been on the phone. "Yes, of course I did the obvious thing, I detracted thirty entire points!" Another pause. "Oh, no, I didn't do that. Or that." A long pause. "Fine, so I've done nothing, then. Are you happy now? I've rung you, at least." More pausing. "He says he's fine. Yes, he's eating, I think. I don't know. I can't be here constantly, I have continued obligations and he simply won't discuss anything with me. No, not Draco, either. It's as if his own mad brain is exhausting him."

Theo's eyes slowly floated shut again.

"Oh yes, he's definitely got the morbs," Blaise said, just before Theo drifted off to sleep again, burrowing deeper in the covers. "Though, that did give me an idea, so I think we should discuss Halloween. What do you think about Victorian morbidities as an overarching theme? Of course it makes sense, nothing's ever made more sense, minus five for doubting me—"

Theo woke again to his drapes being brusquely pulled aside, light streaming directly into his eyes from the living room window.

"Draco's not the only one who remembers what you were like as a boy," came a voice as Theo groggily struggled to sit up, the blanket now twisted around his lap. "You always get like this, you little idiot. What is it about your emotions that you find so utterly destructive to your psyche?"

"Pans," Theo said hoarsely, rubbing at his eyes, "what are you doing here?"

"Draco called me. And Blaise. And Hermione." She paused, staring in revulsion at the sparsity of items on the floor (upsettingly out of place, apparently) before gingerly stepping over an overturned shoe, settling herself at a distance beside him on the sofa. "They seem to think it's my responsibility to fix you," she clarified, sparing him a sidelong glance that very nearly challenged him to a fight.

"You don't have to," Theo muttered, scraping a hand through his hair. "It's not like I'm one of your favorites."

Her glance turned moderately peeved. "Don't be ridiculous, Theodore. You know perfectly well what we've done for each other."

His posture sagged slightly at the reminder. "Still doesn't mean you have to do anything. I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're never fine, and furthermore, you've always been a total imbecile," she said, though she slid a little closer to him on the sofa, resting a hand in the space remaining between them. "You really need a hobby," she said softly, the same way someone more reasonable might have said, I care about you, you're not alone, I'm here.

"Could always take up knitting," he said, in the same tone of voice someone else might have said, Thank you.

"Don't be ridiculous, you'd only poke your eye out." She paused, and then, "You mustn't be like this, you know. You're hardly doing anyone any favors by sulking."

"I'm not trying to sulk," he said. "I'm trying to decide."

"Please. You already know, Theodore," she said, briskly losing patience with him. "We both know you know."

"Untrue," he said. "If I knew, why on earth would I be sitting here with you? I'm not a sadist."

"You don't want to hurt someone. You never do." She leaned her head back, looking at him. "You're the sort of person other people hurt," she said with her usual this-is-the-gospel-truth mannerisms, "I'm the sort who hurts people. It's impossible for us when the roles are reversed, isn't it?"

"You help people, too, Pans."

"Shut up," she said, and from Theo, a smile crept out.

"Fine. You're demonic, you're selfish and spiteful and a merciless shrew."

"Whereas you," she sniffed, "are self-sacrificing to the point of lunacy."

He turned to look at her, and she pursed her lips, displeased.

"You're not your father, you know," she said, still apparently in the business of scolding him.

"You're not your mother, either."

"This isn't about me, Theodore, don't be a child."

He opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it shut. "What exactly do you want from me, then?"

"I want you to get up," she said, exasperated. "I want you to put on a clean shirt and some trousers—"

"I'm wearing trousers," he said, revealing them beneath the blanket. "Did you really think I was sitting here with you without them?"

"—and I want you to clean this up," she continued, waving a hand over the living room and ignoring him. "And then, when all that's done, I want you to drag yourself out of this nonsensical brooding period and change your life entirely. And find a new aftershave," she added. "Yours is entirely too zesty, too much spice. It offends."

"It's my cologne, Pans, and you're the only one who doesn't like it."

"Well, it's disgusting, dispose of it immediately. No, on second thought, I'll do it," she said, rising to her feet, but Theo pulled her back by her blazer, tugging her back into her seat. "I beg your pardon, Theodore, have you lost your entire mind—"

"Pans," Theo said, "I can't do this."

"Don't be an idiot," she said, her favorite thing to say to him, and she said it in a tone that meant, with no exceptions, Don't be an idiot. "Of course you can, Theodore. You've been through far worse."

"The thing is," Theo said slowly, "the moment I get up, I'll have to go somewhere."

She seemed narrowly skeptical of this as a fact. "You mean you'll have to choose a direction?"

"Yes."

"A life? Or a version of it, I suppose."

"Yes, that."

"Well, how positively unfortunate for you, with your freedom and your choices and your blatant white male privilege," she said, and he rolled his eyes. "Someone should really take those away from you."

"They should, definitely, but Pansy—"

"You can live without one of them," she said, rising to her feet and dusting off her skirt as if he'd dumped his problems into her lap and thereby stained the material. "Figure out which one it is. It'll be difficult, Theo," she added stiffly, "but people do difficult things every day and still manage to rise again the next morning."

She picked up her handbag, obviously tired of his insufferable indecision and heading for the door, but to his surprise she paused after a single step, turning slowly to face him.

"Perhaps I'm being unreasonable," she said, and he blinked, careful to hide his astonishment.

"You always are," he confirmed, "but in what way, specifically?"

She considered it, looking tartly inconvenienced at having to explain herself.

"Well, it's really very difficult, isn't it?" she managed. "That we are all so essential to each other, however implausibly. That I cannot imagine any version of my life without you in it," she admitted with a brush of reprehension, "even if I was never overly thrilled to have you there to begin with."

"A fault of circumstance, I'm sure," he said, the way he might have said, I love you, Pansy.

"Curse, you mean," she replied, with a shudder of, I love you, too.

She flicked a glance over him, shaking her head.

"Shower," she advised with disdain, adding, "And pick a costume soon, Blaise is getting unbearable," before she turned and went, chin in the air as she removed herself from his flat.

It wasn't as if Theo hadn't known who Fleur Delacour was when he'd first met her. He wasn't Hermione Granger, blindly running into the heir to the throne while carrying luggage; he was apprised of the relevant media, and besides, being Draco's friend meant he was keenly aware of who in the world was worth the value of his attention. He was no blushing ingenue by any means, but he'd have been lying if he'd said setting eyes on Fleur hadn't brought a little color to his cheeks.

Seeing her again now, her blue eyes lighting up at the sight of him, was no different this time from the first. Her beauty was never not astonishing; he'd grown accustomed to it the same way one grew accustomed to a sunrise. It was expected, but still, not without some awe. She tugged him into her flat, into her arms, lips warm and exuberant against his.

"Theo," she said, and it was like the first time, like the first ten thousand times.

The thing about falling in love with Fleur Delacour was that it had not been inevitable. In fact, it had felt so strikingly different from anything that had existed before that he'd scarcely been able to recognize the sensation when it arrived. It hadn't struck him in the face or ruptured any of his internal organs, it hadn't been violent, it had hardly even been intrusive or impolite. Instead it was quiet, something that festered and grew, expanding through the tunnels of his veins until he could no longer look down at his own limbs without thinking they belonged somewhere with hers. She was branded into his skin, permanently etched into his memory, living in the echoes of his thoughts.

"Oh, I don't believe in fate," she'd said once, toying idly with his fingers. "Not in the kind of fate other people believe in, anyway, where everything is trap."

"A trap?" he echoed, laughing a little, and she turned to him with her brilliant smile.

"Well, maybe that's not the word," she admitted, resting her chin in his chest, "but it seems to me other people think life is some sort of snare, some cage. They're supposed to do one thing, like they're set on one path. I don't believe in that, I think it's disappointing. I want to have choices, I want to believe in my own freedom, in myself."

Fleur knew how to be Fleur Delacour better than Theo had ever known how to be himself; he had only ever been variations on roles. Draco's best friend, his father's disappointment, the underperforming bane of his teachers' existence for being so very clever and yet so deeply antagonistic it rendered the cleverness an utter waste. "So is nothing predestined, then? Is it all just us making it up as we go?"

"Not so dire as that, but yes, I think so," Fleur said. "I think there are little—what did you call them, predestined? Yes, predestined strings," she said, "many millions of them tied to our fingers, and we have only to choose which ones we follow. And when we pick one, three more fall away, but then six or perhaps ten or more future strings replace it, and we carry on like that, picking strings and moving throughout our lives, casting off futures and picking them up whenever it becomes necessary."

He loved her mind, her voice, her view of the world. He loved her, and he had come to Paris to tell her that.

And other things, too.

Her smile faded as she looked at him. "You have no suitcase," she said, and he swallowed.

"Fleur," he began, and she took a step back.

"No, wait, let me talk first," she said. "Please?"

He nodded slowly, and she exhaled.

"You saw I was… strange," she said tentatively, "when it came to seeing those drawings?"

He nodded again.

"You have to understand." She was looking directly at him, always alarming with how easily she could confess things. "Everyone loves me," she said, and then laughed. "Well," she said with a graceful trace of sheepishness, "when I say it like that—"

"No, you're right," Theo said, shaking his head. "They do, it's a fact. Keep going."

Her lips twitched up, grateful. "That's why I wanted you," she said. "Because you weren't simple, because I had to chase you. Because it was appealing, exciting, to have something that wasn't so easily mine." She slid her arms up, holding herself loosely, like she'd suffered an imperceptible shiver. "But," she exhaled after a moment, "I think I always knew it was because I would never really have you."

She paused, and then, "I miscalculated. I wanted only to want you, but then I loved you, instead. I loved you selfishly, I wanted your love for only me—but there are so many pieces of you that you've already given to others, even I knew I could never have you all for myself. And so it kept going like that," she said with a little laugh, "me loving you, knowing it would end, and loving you all the more for that."

"Fleur," Theo said, shaking his head and stepping towards her, "it wasn't like that, you weren't—"

"The drawings," she said, pausing him with a gentle hand on his chest and bringing him back to her point. "I didn't understand her love for you, how different it was from mine, until I saw it. Until I saw you through her eyes."

She was quiet a moment, her fingers toying with his collar, slipping under the fabric to linger over his beating pulse.

"I knew then my time with you was even more limited than I thought," she said, and he swallowed, knowing she would feel it. Wanting her to feel it, how it would have never been easy, severing himself from her like this. Not with the way she'd already been in his heart.

"Fleur," he said again, and she shook her head.

"Let me do it?" she asked him, glancing up. "My ego is much more delicate than yours, you know. Always has been."

It hurt to smile. "No, it isn't."

"It is. Look at this," she said, gesturing to her hair, her makeup, her fashionable clothes. "Look at me. Entertain my vanity, Theo, please," she murmured, reaching up to brush her fingers over his cheek, and he closed his eyes.

"Well," he said, "if you want."

"I do," she said. The tips of her fingers slid over his lips, tasting of her reluctance to release him. "I don't want to live in a world where you don't love me."

"That world doesn't exist," he said. "Not in any string."

She smiled broadly. "Yes, keep going like that," she said, and replaced her fingers with her lips, kissing him softly. "I have to let you go, Theo Nott," she said to his mouth, the words dissolving between them. "I'm selfish, you know, too selfish to be with someone who doesn't worship my every step, and besides, she loves you more, you'll make her happy. You're her muse," she whispered, and Theo shivered. "You were mine, too, but it has to be over, now."

He played along, did what she asked. "Don't go."

"Oh, but I have to," she said, pleased. Her hips pressed against his as she ran her fingers over him, committing him to memory. "You love her, Theo."

"I do," he said, and she sighed, nails digging briefly into his waist.

"She's so very talented," she said. "She drew you like I could have never drawn you."

He recognized concession in her tone and took her hands in his, taking a step back from her.

"Thanks for letting me down easy," he said, and Fleur smiled, faint sparkles of sadness in her eyes. Even sorrow, even tears, she wore them like jewelry. He lamented that no one would see how lovely she looked like this, saying goodbye, and then remembered many people had probably seen it before, and probably many would see it again.

"Au revoir, Theo Nott," she said, and cast off an invisible string from her finger, tossing it symbolically out the window and into the Seine below.

Only she could have made a moment like this seem so desperately beautiful.

"Goodbye, Fleur," he replied, and tore himself away, blinded a little by the consequence of loss, and the threads of fate not taken.

His father had taught him very few memorable lessons; most of the things Theo had learned from him had been by consequence of misapplication. "Let it breathe," the elder Theodore Nott had often said about wine, "it's fragile."

So that's it, Theo thought. I'll let it breathe.

After Paris, he didn't return to London, but to the place he would have once called home only under duress, had the others in his life not managed to turn that around for him. In every room that his father had berated him, ridiculed him, admonished him for his very existence, Theo had plastered over it with memories of his friends' laughter, and their insistence that for them, his house contained only joy.

He wanted badly to believe as much now, but it was empty and dark when he arrived, save for a single lamp in his father's study.

"Ah," Nott Senior said, glancing up. "What are you doing here, then?"

"I just thought I'd stay for a couple of days," Theo said. "Unless you'd rather I didn't."

Nott leaned back, frowning. "Why?"

"Nothing." Theo glanced askance, then back at his father. "Fleur and I broke up."

"Unsurprising," Nott said, but pursed his lips, considering Theo for a moment. "Fine," he said eventually. "I'll have your bedroom made up, if that's what you want. I'm leaving in the morning, anyway."

"I can make up my own bedroom," Theo said, and Nott gave him the look that meant, You're being tiresome, I'm being accommodating, hasn't this been enough for one day?, and Theo swallowed. "Or you can have someone do it. If you want."

"Well, it was bound to fail, anyway," Nott said, glancing back down at his notes and scribbling something. "I hope you haven't mucked it up too badly, have you? She'd make an excellent prospect for Draco."

Theo flinched, and then shook his head. "No. It's not… mucked."

"Good," Nott said, glancing up with a nod. "Glad to hear it."

Theo waited, wondering if he might continue, but that seemed to be all the conversation either of them could handle. He wandered over to his father's liquors, pouring himself a scotch, and then padded out of his father's study, heading upstairs to his bedroom.

Theo woke in the morning to the sounds of his father leaving, barking orders as he went. He curled up in bed, seeing how long he could hold his breath until his father had gone.

"—ridiculous, Abraxas is waiting—"

…12, 13, 14…

"Nevermind, I haven't the time for your incompetence. Where's my coat?"

…31, 32, 33…

"Not that coat, you imbecile, does this look right to you? It's freezing outside—"

…45, 46, 47…

"For the love of god. Forget it, then—"

…51, 52, 53…

The door slammed and Theo exhaled with a burst of relief, having come disastrously close to the edge of his abilities. It occurred to him, morosely, that his father would not appreciate the inconvenience of him rotting in his bed. After fifteen minutes spent half pondering it, half waiting to hear if his father might say, No no, I need that coat, I'll just come back and fetch it myself (i.e., the impossible), Theo couldn't decide whether the inconvenience of his loss would amount to a good or bad thing. Eventually he rose to his feet, rolling out his neck and making his way downstairs, not bothering with clothes outside the trousers he'd slept in.

He came to a sudden halt, however, when he realized he was not remotely alone.

"Hi," said Daphne, falling to a halt when she saw him. She was dwarfed by the architecture of his father's gothic tastes, gleaming a little against the dark beams of the ceiling, and it brought Theo's thoughts back to another moment; a similar one, only one that had been five years before, almost precisely to the day.

"Things here are just so sluggishly large," Daphne had been saying, eyeing the castle from where they stood outside the sweaty, debaucherous Hog's Head. "They're designed to loom, you know? Even the buildings make you feel small, which I hate."

"I find it difficult to believe anything is capable of shrinking you," Theo said, and she turned to look at him, one brow arched.

"You don't know me," she said.

"Don't I?" he countered, gesturing to her hands. "I know you're an artist."

"I just told you I draw, that doesn't mean you knew I'm an artist."

"No, I knew before you said it," he corrected her, touching her fingers, drawing them over her knuckles. "See," he said, showing her the callus beside her middle finger, the way her pinky crooked to the left and back again.

"I don't see anything," she said.

"Ah, well, I make it my business to see," he informed her. "One of the benefits of being invisible is being the observer, not the observed."

"You're not invisible," she said, frowning. "Do you really think no one sees you?"

"What reason would I have to think otherwise?" he said. "My own father trips over me, mistakes me for plants. I'm like a recalcitrant cat, constantly underfoot, soiling the furniture."

"You're joking," she said, "but also, you aren't, are you?"

She stepped forward abruptly, narrowing her eyes as she stared at him, neither intimate nor clinical. He blinked at the closeness, startled, and her brow furrowed in thought as she scanned him for something, for meaning, for nothing.

"What are you studying?" she asked him. "Literature, is it? Something that ruined your eyes a bit as a child."

He swallowed, saying nothing, and she continued, "Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm right, you must have read in the dark." Her gaze rose to his hairline, his ears, his cheek, lingering on his mouth. "You look like your mother," she said, wavering somewhere between certainty and a guess.

"You've never seen my mother, have you?" he managed to force out, and she shrugged.

"These lips," she said, touching them lightly, "the shape of them, you must have gotten them from a woman. Don't be offended," she added offhandedly.

"I'm not," he said, and he wasn't.

Not if she was looking at them like that.

He lost track of how long she was looking at him, observing him, seeing him piece by piece. She took his hand in hers, stretched it flat across her palm, said nothing. She put her attention, her thoughts, her artist's eyes all over him. She looked at him—really looked, saying things he could hardly hear for being the object of her looking—and when she said, "You're masterful, really, you are," he finally broke down, seizing her hand with an urgency that seemed to wash over her with surprise.

She looked up at him when they touched, her startlement softening to, Ah, yes, of course, good thinking, and then it was, "Thank you for seeing me," and "How could I not see you?" and "You know what I mean," and then he tilted her chin up and she slid forward onto the balls of her feet, tugging him into her and meeting his mouth for a kiss.

And then he ruined it. He said, "You're the girl I'm going to marry," and only now did he understand how it had been a mistake.

Now, facing Daphne again in the dim light of his old house, he finally understood it.

"That's not how you should have told me," he said, an opening line which was two parts: It was, firstly, I should have known better than to say I loved you without learning how to love you correctly, and then reflexively, You should have known by now how to properly say you loved me, because you have always been the one whose love I want.

"I know," she said.

And then, "I should have done it like this," she informed him, taking several long strides towards him until she caught him, snatching him up by the hand and glancing up at him with defiance, with determination, with something he knew another version of her would have wanted to get right but that this one, this Daphne, didn't care if she failed.

"I'm in love with you," she said. "I've always loved you. I loved you even before you tried to say it to me, I just didn't know it yet, and once I did I should have told you sooner. I should have told you the moment I knew, and I should have never stopped saying it."

"Daphne," he said, and she cut him off.

"No, let me finish," she said, and he swallowed, feeling an odd, quieting sense of symmetry in the way the women he loved absolutely refused to let him speak. "There wasn't a right way to tell you, Theo, but I should have known with us there was no right or wrong way. I just didn't understand it yet," she said, beginning to rant a little in her urgency, "and I swear, I'd have let you be happy with Fleur, only I said that silly thing and then Draco called me, he told me you were here and I thought my god, I might never get another chance, and if I let him go this time I won't ever deserve him—"

"Daphne," he attempted, fruitlessly.

"—and maybe I don't, really, but maybe it's not about deserving and earning things, maybe there'll be plenty of time for that, and in the meantime I just have to try, I just have to, Theo, because without you—"

She broke off, fingers tightening around his hand.

"I'm not going to say I'm not me without you," she said, "but something close to that. I think, actually, once I learned there was a me, it was easier to love you. It was less terrifying," she explained, and he stared at her for a moment.

Several moments.

She swallowed, obviously uncertain what his silence meant, and he shook his head, pulling her into him.

"Greengrass," he said, bending to wrap his arms around her waist and turning to speak in her ear. "You complete and utter fool."

She relaxed into his hold with something that was half a laugh, half a sob, entirely an unplanned outburst. "Don't be a dickhead, Nott," she said, her voice so flooded with relief it trembled in her throat.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head, cradling her against his chest.

"What happened?" she asked, voice muffled into his skin.

"I went to Paris," he said. "Broke it off with Fleur, or tried to."

She looked up. "Tried to?"

"Well, I had every intention to," he said, "but she ended it first. She had this mad theory I was in love with someone else," he mused, feigning indifference, and Daphne's brows rose, prompting him.

"Someone else, hm?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "Friend of mine. Artist, blogger, fashion designer, philanthropist—"

"Philanthropist?" she asked doubtfully.

"I presume," he said with a shrug, "given the aforementioned talents."

"You're so weird, Nott," she said, though she hadn't released him. He hoped she wouldn't.

"Really," he said, lifting her chin, "I'm so proud of you. I'm prouder of you than you can possibly know."

"And?" she asked expectantly, and he rolled his eyes.

"Really, I'm supposed to say it prompted like this?"

"Well, if we wait for it to happen organically, it might be another five years."

"The first five years were your fault," he informed her, and she grimaced.

"Nott, honestly, you're impossible—"

"They are, though," he said. "I think you owe it to me far more than I owe it to you, don't you?"

"You never actually said the words!" she said, cheeks flushed from her usual frustration with him. "If we're going by technicalities—"

"Who said anything about technicalities?" he countered. "This is history, Greengrass, you're the only one trying to rewrite it—"

"I'm not rewriting anything," she protested. "I'm just saying, you still haven't technically said it—"

"Daphne," he sighed.

"—so if anything, the scores are totally uneven, I mean at least I used the same ludicrous line about us being destined for one another—"

"Daph," he said.

"—so really, if anyone owes it to anyone, it's you owing it to m-"

He cut her off with a kiss even less planned than the first one, a brusque little collision between still-open mouths that meant her teeth tapped against his in the same moment her arms flew around his neck, securing them both within the radius of the disaster they'd always been.

"I love you," he said. "I don't want to be with anyone else, I don't want you to be with anyone else, I want you to be with me, Daphne, and I want to be with only you. I want us, forever, until one of us dies—"

"One of us?" she echoed, skeptical.

"It'll be me, but fine, until both of us die—" He exhaled with a shake of his head, her fingers grasping at the strands of his hair. "I will love you."

That, it seemed, was satisfactory. Satisfactory enough, anyway, that she pulled him up the stairs to his room, passing his father's long-abused housekeeper—"Lovely morning, isn't it?" Theo said cheerfully, shirtless and mussed and being led by a very small, very determined woman dragging him forth for the very obvious purpose of defiling the freshly laundered sheets—and shoving him in through the door frame, pausing only to catch her breath.

"I feel like," she began uncertainly, "after waiting so long, it should be… I don't know, meaningful in some w-"

"We have all day for meaningful," he told her, gruffly discarding his trousers, and she seemed to hastily agree, sliding out of her yoga pants (bless Hermione, Theo thought, that wonderful angel who'd brought such marvelous items such as cling-fitting spandex trouser-things into their lives) and willingly leaping into his arms. He shoved her back against the wall, bracing with one hand as the other wrapped tightly around her waist, and she wriggled against him, her lips finding his ear.

"Remember the drawings I did of you?" she said softly. "I kept them."

His shudder was a full-bodied convulsion and she laughed, she caught his lips with hers, she kissed him with longing and he kissed her with desperation, shifting to tangle his fingers in her hair.

"I never drew anyone else like I drew you," she whispered, and he, in response, drew the honeyed taste of confession from her tongue in the same moment he slid a hand over her parted legs, stroking her softly.

The words he'd hoped would leave him with dignity instead turned to mush somewhere between his brain and his mouth, fleeing with a groan of, "Jesus, Greengrass," and getting caught in another maelstrom of a kiss, him sliding easily into her and her hissing the sound of her approval into him.

"You got me?" she asked him, which meant, Are you really going to fuck me like this, holding me upright like this you're so skinny, do you even eat, are you sure you want me like this because if you can't there's a bed behind you but actually no, you seem fine, you're doing great and I want you terribly, want your hands on me and your mouth and all of you, want you just like this so don't move, I mean yes move but don't move, but while I have you here, while I'm asking, will you tell me you won't walk away, even if it all goes wrong, even if it fails, if we fail, will you promise you won't let me go?

"I've got you," he promised her, and in the moment, it meant precisely what he said.

They spent the rest of the morning alternating between sex and confession, whispering revelations and obscenities to each other in equal measure where they were sealed beneath the privacy of the sheet pulled over their heads. Between episodes of salacity—I want you, I want you so badly, god yes, like that, do that again, worth the wait? Fucking hell, worth a thousand waits—there were truths.

"Did you really know it when you kissed me that first night?"

"I knew it before I kissed you. Didn't you?"

"Hard to tell anymore. You've gotten me all caught up in your little lunacies I can't remember anything before then."

"Sure, sure, makes sense. What about on my birthday, that trivia game?"

"Oh, I got all the questions right, yeah."

"I knew it. I was positive I saw you typing something, and after the question about desserts—"

"Hush, don't be smug. Next question."

"The thing with Roger?"

"Oof. I don't know, really. I was scared, I guess. I didn't want to lose you."

"So you slept with someone else?"

"I didn't say it made sense!"

"Fine, fine—"

"What about the phone call on my birthday? You wanted me to confess, didn't you. I knew it, I wasn't ready but I knew it—and you'd already met Fleur, hadn't you?"

"I… yes, okay, fine. Yes. I was hoping you'd say something."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know. Change your mind, tell me you wanted me immediately, pine for me in song, et cetera."

"You're ridiculous. What would you have done if I had?"

"Back then? Dropped everything. Flown back from Paris. Well, bought macarons, then flown back. Maybe eaten a few baguettes, caught a matinee—"

"I was going to tell you on Draco's birthday, actually."

"Were you?"

"Yep. Had it all planned out. I wore that green dress, remember?"

"Ah, I love that green dress."

"I know. I wore it for you."

He toyed with her hand, contemplating the gaps they'd tried to fill between them, the way her fingers fit with his.

"We should take this slow," he said, which was, in its way, I've learned my lesson, I won't rush you, I'll let you lead, however you want to go I'll go. "We can keep it between us for a while, if you want."

She tilted her head up, twisting around to look at him, and gave him a look of gratitude that made him feel, for once, that he'd managed to get something right. Finally, he'd managed to read her correctly, to predict her with whatever meager divination skills he possessed.

But then, without warning, she ruptured it, crushing his sense of satisfaction with three impossible words.

"Let's get married," she said, and he blinked.

"I'm sorry, what did you just s-"

"I'm tired of a life knowing I'm meant for you without really living it," she said, her tone as perfunctory as if she'd ordered him off a menu. "I want it, Theo," she said, struggling to sit upright, "so do it. Put your money where your mouth is."

She raised his hand to her lips, kissing his knuckles, and looked at him imploringly.

"Marry me," she said, voice quiet, but steady. He recognized the signs of her immovability, aligning herself with him, with the inevitability of their joining, with the fate of their choosing. It was everything he would have hoped from her, unpredictability incarnate, and he thought to himself, Well, you idiot. You have only the rest of your life to learn everything there is to know about her, so you had better start today.

He waited only until he thought his lungs were certain to burst, and then, when there was no longer any hope of containing it, he smiled.

"Yes," he said, and she smiled back. "Yes, definitely yes."

"Good," she said, sliding up to kiss him, "then it's settled," the same way she might have said, I will love you forever, idiot boy.

"It's settled," he agreed, which was in turn, without question, I am always yours.

Let's just say that our wedding plans—begun so innocently in that bedroom with the two of us jubilantly confessing our sins—didn't turn out quite the way we initially expected. But then, this isn't about our wedding day, is it? This is about Draco and Hermione, who are quite the story of their own.

Maybe someday, someone other than Rita Skeeter will tell it, and then the world will finally know what happened to Hermione Granger the night she disappeared before her wedding.

I mean—I'll know, of course. I'm fairly sure I already do.

But then, like I mentioned, I've got an eye for seeing everything, so long as I'm not the one up close.