lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2024-07-05 07:02 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2024-07-05 07:02 pm
Entry tags:
[Songs of Summer]: Such Spaces, As They Are Filled, gen, 1/4
Title: Such Spaces, As They Are Filled
Pairing: Gen, minor mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU, time travel, angst, bullying, canon minor character deaths, implied child abuse, violence, unreliable narrator
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the war, Theo Nott doesn’t have the kind of life he wants. He decides to travel back in time and fix the world. Nothing turns out the way he expects.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” short chaptered stories being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have several parts, and is told in snippets, rather than giving every interaction, in accordance with the title.
Such Spaces, As They Are Filled
Theo stood with the delicate amulet clasped in both hands. As he watched, shimmers of golden-black light filled its wings and began to radiate back and forth between them. Its body was shaped like a bird’s, but the wings were a butterfly’s.
Theo had made it. Theo had called upon the power of Time, and it had answered, delicate and malevolent. Few understood that Time was that way, a force that would grind every human, including wizards and witches, beneath its coils if it could.
Theo understood. And that made the wings of Time, as they opened around him with a snap like the sound of a breaking spine, his to ride.
Theo stood a moment more with his eyes closed, ignoring the spirals dancing around him, and made sure he had his destination in mind. It helped that it was a place that didn’t exist anymore, along with a year, and that made it much less likely that he would arrive in the room at the same time someone else was standing there.
Then he thought the destination at the amulet.
Theo Nott’s bedroom, Nott Manor, March 11th, 1991.
The wings began to beat around him. Theo was tossed, turning so fast that blood rushed to his head and his feet seemed to fall off, through the roaring tempest of time.
*
Theo opened his eyes and nodded. This was his bedroom, the one he had thought he would never come to again, decorated in light greens with white curtains over the window and sunlight falling through them. He didn’t have an enchanted window like most of the rooms in the rest of the Manor. His father considered that such windows were for those who had earned them.
He wandered around the room for a moment, letting himself stumble and lean into things. He was over a foot shorter than he had been when he’d used the amulet. Adjusting to his smaller body was an acceptable excuse for weakness.
There was a buzzing sound in his mind, the noise all that was left of the amulet. Theo turned towards the window just as the glass blinked out of existence and a tawny owl sailed through. He took the letter from the owl with a hand that only didn’t shake because he had spent so much time thinking about this moment.
When he turned the letter over, he smiled at the direction.
Theo Nott
Upstairs Bedroom
Nott Manor
Surrey, England
Yes, he had done it right. He was here. And now was the time to make sure that other things changed for the better.
Theo turned towards the door with a pleasant expression as it opened and Father’s voice said, “I trust that your letter came, Theo?”
“It did, yes, Father,” Theo said, and held out the letter for Father to examine. He couldn’t do anything about the Dark Mark on Father’s arm, which he could feel as a burning stain under the man’s clothes. It seemed his magic sensitivity had come back with him. But he could make sure that he would never wear his own.
Theo’s left arm seemed to tingle at the pronouncement, as if the ghost of what could have been lingered in the sunlight of what was.
Theo ignored it.
*
“What have we here?”
The Hat whispered to Theo in a way that made him glad it was enchanted not to share what it or he said with anyone else. He stayed motionless underneath it, his expression determinedly bland. He’d avoided everyone on the train, and ignored the three prattling idiots who had shared his boat on the way over.
He knew what he wanted. He thought at the Hat, You have a Ravenclaw.
“Why is that?”
Theo sighed. He would have thought it would be obvious. Because I was clever enough to invent a device that called on the power of Time itself to bring me back. Because I understand more about Time than some of the Unspeakables do, and certainly more than anyone here does. I deserve the House of intellect.
“You claim that you were here once before. Which House were you in then?”
Slytherin.
“And you do not ask me for that House?”
Theo shook his head, but the Hat only stayed in place, and Theo had to answer if he wanted to have any chance of getting to sit down and eat at a reasonable time. Slytherin doesn’t suit my current ambitions. Everyone will watch me more closely there, and assume that I’m on my way to becoming a Death Eater.
“You were one.”
I don’t want to be now.
The Hat was silent for a short moment, thinking about it. It was still long enough that Theo could feel the incredulous eyes on him. He fought the urge to hunch his shoulders defensively.
“You know that your father will disagree with you.”
Yeah, well, it’s my life, not his. It was a lesson that Theo had taken far too long to learn in his old time, but he understood it now.
“I do have the perfect place to put you.”
Good.
“Clever, resourceful, willing to defy your father, making a different choice than you made the first time with your eyes wide open to the consequences. Willing to strike out and make a life different from any a Nott has had in quite some time.”
Theo narrowed his eyes. There was a smug tone to the Hat’s voice that he didn’t trust. Wait.
“I just can’t wait to put you in GRYFFINDOR!”
There was a wave of gasps that ran around the Great Hall and seemed to break like a cresting wave that stung Theo’s skin. He tore the Hat off and stared at it in betrayal, at least until Professor McGonagall—his new Head of House—made an impatient little noise, and caused Theo to get off the stool.
Well, fuck.
*
“Hey, Nott.”
Theo looked up warily. So far, he hadn’t interacted much with his roommates, because what would be the point. In Slytherin, he could have formed connections, and in Ravenclaw, he would have been able to make a mark as a genius. Even in Hufflepuff, which he would have thought would be the Hat’s third choice, he could have had solid allies who were convinced he was their friend.
But in Gryffindor, everyone except him and Granger was an idiot.
Now Harry Potter was hovering in front of him, a desperate, half-hopeful smile on his face. Theo contained the urge to say the kind of thing that would get him punched in the nose. He still had to share a room with this idiot and the other four idiots of the moment. “What, Potter?”
Potter’s face fell a little, but he straightened his shoulders and said, “Look, you’re about the only Gryffindor that Snape doesn’t yell at in class. Would you study Potions with me?”
Theo stared at Potter. Potter stared back. This wasn’t some odd daydream, then, not with Potter still waiting for an answer.
Theo breathed out slowly and said, “He doesn’t yell at me, as you put it, because he knows my father. It’s not a benefit I can give you.”
“But your knowledge is. You obviously know a lot.”
Well, yes, Theo knew a lot. Because it would have been pathetic if he couldn’t master first-year Potions half-asleep, with how old he really was.
“How will you make it worth my while, Potter?”
He expected an outburst of some kind, about how trading favors like that wasn’t very Gryffindor, or a blustering attempt to think of something that would appeal to Theo, But instead, although Potter’s face fell again, he nodded and said, “I can’t,” and then turned and walked away from the Potions classroom door, trailing after Weasley.
Theo blinked after them.
“I believe you have Transfiguration class to get to, Mr. Nott.”
Theo turned around and looked at Professor Snape. The man’s voice was cool, without the overt mockery that he used for Gryffindors—most Gryffindors—but not warm, either. He seemed far angrier than Theo had thought about Theo being Sorted into Godric’s House. Before this, Theo would have said that the only people whose Sortings the Potions professor cared about were Draco and Potter.
Why does it matter to him if he has one Death Eater’s kid more or less in his House? You’d think it would actually make him relieved that he doesn’t have as many first-years to look after.
“Yes, sir,” Theo said, and turned and walked after his Housemates, as he had to think of them, because of one stupid Hat.
While they were in Transfiguration, and he was watching Granger breeze through turning a needle into a matchstick and then annoy the people around her, it occurred to Theo that he couldn’t continue living by the precepts of his old life. He had spent a fortnight resenting the Hat and impressing his professors in classes and making no allies.
He was in Gryffindor now, for all that he might hate it. He needed to use the people around him, not the ones he wished he could have had. And a Gryffindor could probably still make allies in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. More easily than a Slytherin, at least. Theo had had no connections who weren’t already Slytherins in his last life.
So, when they were packing up their books and parchments to leave Transfiguration, he took a deep breath and called out, “Wait, Potter.”
Potter was laughing at something Weasley said, but he stilled and turned around. “Yeah, Nott?”
Theo hid a private frown. Potter looked as if he expected to be hit, which made no sense. But Theo forced a smile onto his face and said, “You’re right, about what you said earlier. I do know a lot about Potions, and I can—help you.”
“But you’re also right. I don’t have anything to offer you.”
Theo shook his head and dredged up honesty that made him feel like a Kneazle attempting to vomit a hairball. “That doesn’t matter. I expected to be in Slytherin. Most of my family has been. So I reckon I was still thinking like one. But I want to have friends, not just prove all my disappointed ancestors right. So. Study partners?”
“Watch out, Harry, it might be a trap!”
Theo turned a withering glance on Weasley. He suspected he would have to cultivate the fool, if only because he was Potter’s best friend, but he certainly didn’t need to extend the hand of courtesy before Weasley did. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re a Death Eater’s kid!” Weasley had his arms folded and a self-satisfied expression on his face. “So you could be trying to trap Harry for You-Know-Who!”
Theo opened his mouth to express his opinion of the idea that the Dark Lord would ever trust a first-year with such a trap, but Potter interrupted first. “What’s a Death Eater?”
Theo gaped at him. Potter turned bright red and shuffled his feet, but kept staring steadily at Theo.
“But—you must know,” Theo said, at a loss. If there was anything he’d thought Potter missing knowledge of, it would be subtlety, nuance, and cunning, not a basic fact of his own history. “Who taught you history and left that out?”
Potter stiffened in front of Theo’s eyes, as though someone had cast the Ice Statue Spell on him. His voice was clipped as he said, “I grew up with my Muggle family, so I only learned Muggle history.”
Theo gaped at him some more. He knew he looked stupid doing it, and that gave Weasley occasion to look superior, because he must have already known this. But—
Theo had never thought much about the way Potter grew up, except to note that it hadn’t taught him self-preservation. And he’d never known this.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last, fumbling for words, feeling like a real eleven-year-old for the first time since he’d landed here.
“Oi, Nott, Muggles aren’t that bad!”
“I never said they were, Weasley,” Theo murmured smoothly, regaining control of himself. He had just seen a way that he could make himself useful to Potter, and in a way that Weasley obviously wasn’t, despite being a pureblood. “I only meant that I’m sorry Potter grew up away from magic and away from the history that should have been his.”
“What is a Death Eater?” Potter asked, not looking eager to talk about his Muggle childhood.
Theo gazed at him thoughtfully. He had come back to make a different life for himself than the one he’d had, still living in the shadow of the Dark Mark years after the war. He had assumed that would be done by dazzling and impressing the right people in Ravenclaw, earning gratitude and gathering blackmail, and eventually securing an apprenticeship of the sort that had been closed to him as his father’s son in his first timeline.
But here was a different path to power, as counselor to Harry Potter, the only Gryffindor with any true power.
“A Death Eater is a follower of the Dark Lord,” Theo explained. “They frequently tortured and murdered and attacked people at his orders. My father was one.”
Potter stared at him with wide eyes. Theo watched expertly until he saw the tiny signs of withdrawal, and then he glanced down and said in a mumble, “I don’t believe any of it. I don’t agree with my father.”
“Come off it, Nott, we’ve all seen you avoiding Granger—”
“Have I insulted her at all? And as for avoiding, you do that, too, Weasley.”
Weasley began to splutter. “She’s just—she’s just annoying, I don’t hate her for her blood—”
“I don’t, either,” Theo said, which was true. He had always found much better reasons to hate people, like their conspiring to force the Dark Mark onto his arm. He turned to face Potter again. “What do you think, Potter? Do the crimes of the father pass on to the son? Are you going to reject me for my blood, the way that some of the Dark Lord’s followers rejected Muggleborns like your mother?”
Potter took a breath that seemed to be pressed into his lungs from outside, and shook his head, standing a little taller. “No. No, Nott. As long as you don’t believe any of that stuff, then I’ll be happy to stand beside you.”
Theo allowed himself a tiny smile, ducking his head. “Thank you.”
“Nott, you can’t just walk in here and—”
“Mr. Weasley, Mr. Nott, Mr. Potter! You are supposed to be going to your next class!”
Theo leaned back and looked up at his Head of House with his best faux respectful expression. “I’m sorry, Professor,” he said. “We just lost track of time, since we were talking and making friends.”
As he knew it would, that softened McGonagall’s expression enough that she nodded. “Very well, but do leave now. We wouldn’t want you to be late.” She hesitated, then added, “And two points to Gryffindor.”
Theo held back a smirk as he left the class, walking side-by-side with Potter. If the narrowness of the corridor at this point forced Weasley to walk behind them, that was a coincidence, Theo was sure.
“Why did she give you points?” Potter asked.
The bluntness and honesty both made Theo wince a little, but he could see a purpose for it, as long as he was guiding Potter. “She’s been a little uncertain about having me in her House,” he said, and let himself wince visibly. “This way, I can convince her that I do really belong here, and prove I’m really a Gryffindor.”
Potter caught his breath a little. “That’s something I want to do.”
“Prove you belong in Gryffindor?” What in the world could Potter have to prove?
Potter hesitated and glanced over his shoulder. Then he lowered his voice so Weasley couldn’t hear them, although Weasley was muttering so much to himself about “Nott” and “Death Eaters” and “points” that he probably wouldn’t have anyway. “The Hat said I would do well in Slytherin.”
Theo gaped at him again. He was doing that a lot lately, and he didn’t like it.
On the other hand, at least he could prove he was shocked because everyone in this timeline did expect Potter to be in Gryffindor, not because of information he shouldn’t have. He smiled a little. “Well. That gives us something in common, given that my father never once thought I would be here.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s dead.” Theo was able to speak without emotion. For him, Mother’s death had happened two lifetimes ago.
And, well, as much as Theo sometimes pictured what his life would have been like if she had survived, she shouldn’t have been trying to steal werewolf fur on a full moon.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Potter was so painfully sincere. It made Theo want to smash the boy’s head through a wall.
But it could also be a road to win Potter’s trust, so Theo let his shoulders round and his head droop a little. “Thanks,” he whispered, and then glanced back at Weasley. “It’s nice to be understood. It’s sometimes hard when everyone around you still has parents and siblings, you know?”
Potter lapped it up at once, his face brightening. “I understand. Completely. I live with my Muggle aunt and uncle, and my cousin, and seeing them pamper him while they just encourage him to beat me up whenever he wants—” He cut himself off, flushing.
Well. That was more information than Theo had expected to be gifted with in the opening stages of an alliance, but at least he could grasp and use it. He offered Potter a bashful smile. “Yeah. I understand.”
Potter gave him a smile that Theo let himself bask in. Potter was the first person he had ever got to know whom he could be sure meant it. “Friends?”
There was a hopeful note in his voice. Theo had never thought that Potter wanted more than the two friends he had, but why wouldn’t he, especially since he hadn’t made friends with Granger yet in this timeline? “Of course. Friends.” He held out his hand.
Potter shook it with enthusiasm, which made Theo wish, briefly, that he could go backwards in time, find Draco, and tell him about how Potter would so shake hands with Slytherins; you just had to approach him the right way.
But it would have been silly to wish for that, especially since he wasn’t a Slytherin now. So Theo smiled at Potter, ignored Weasley’s grumbles, and went to Charms.
Pairing: Gen, minor mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU, time travel, angst, bullying, canon minor character deaths, implied child abuse, violence, unreliable narrator
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the war, Theo Nott doesn’t have the kind of life he wants. He decides to travel back in time and fix the world. Nothing turns out the way he expects.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” short chaptered stories being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have several parts, and is told in snippets, rather than giving every interaction, in accordance with the title.
Such Spaces, As They Are Filled
Theo stood with the delicate amulet clasped in both hands. As he watched, shimmers of golden-black light filled its wings and began to radiate back and forth between them. Its body was shaped like a bird’s, but the wings were a butterfly’s.
Theo had made it. Theo had called upon the power of Time, and it had answered, delicate and malevolent. Few understood that Time was that way, a force that would grind every human, including wizards and witches, beneath its coils if it could.
Theo understood. And that made the wings of Time, as they opened around him with a snap like the sound of a breaking spine, his to ride.
Theo stood a moment more with his eyes closed, ignoring the spirals dancing around him, and made sure he had his destination in mind. It helped that it was a place that didn’t exist anymore, along with a year, and that made it much less likely that he would arrive in the room at the same time someone else was standing there.
Then he thought the destination at the amulet.
Theo Nott’s bedroom, Nott Manor, March 11th, 1991.
The wings began to beat around him. Theo was tossed, turning so fast that blood rushed to his head and his feet seemed to fall off, through the roaring tempest of time.
*
Theo opened his eyes and nodded. This was his bedroom, the one he had thought he would never come to again, decorated in light greens with white curtains over the window and sunlight falling through them. He didn’t have an enchanted window like most of the rooms in the rest of the Manor. His father considered that such windows were for those who had earned them.
He wandered around the room for a moment, letting himself stumble and lean into things. He was over a foot shorter than he had been when he’d used the amulet. Adjusting to his smaller body was an acceptable excuse for weakness.
There was a buzzing sound in his mind, the noise all that was left of the amulet. Theo turned towards the window just as the glass blinked out of existence and a tawny owl sailed through. He took the letter from the owl with a hand that only didn’t shake because he had spent so much time thinking about this moment.
When he turned the letter over, he smiled at the direction.
Theo Nott
Upstairs Bedroom
Nott Manor
Surrey, England
Yes, he had done it right. He was here. And now was the time to make sure that other things changed for the better.
Theo turned towards the door with a pleasant expression as it opened and Father’s voice said, “I trust that your letter came, Theo?”
“It did, yes, Father,” Theo said, and held out the letter for Father to examine. He couldn’t do anything about the Dark Mark on Father’s arm, which he could feel as a burning stain under the man’s clothes. It seemed his magic sensitivity had come back with him. But he could make sure that he would never wear his own.
Theo’s left arm seemed to tingle at the pronouncement, as if the ghost of what could have been lingered in the sunlight of what was.
Theo ignored it.
*
“What have we here?”
The Hat whispered to Theo in a way that made him glad it was enchanted not to share what it or he said with anyone else. He stayed motionless underneath it, his expression determinedly bland. He’d avoided everyone on the train, and ignored the three prattling idiots who had shared his boat on the way over.
He knew what he wanted. He thought at the Hat, You have a Ravenclaw.
“Why is that?”
Theo sighed. He would have thought it would be obvious. Because I was clever enough to invent a device that called on the power of Time itself to bring me back. Because I understand more about Time than some of the Unspeakables do, and certainly more than anyone here does. I deserve the House of intellect.
“You claim that you were here once before. Which House were you in then?”
Slytherin.
“And you do not ask me for that House?”
Theo shook his head, but the Hat only stayed in place, and Theo had to answer if he wanted to have any chance of getting to sit down and eat at a reasonable time. Slytherin doesn’t suit my current ambitions. Everyone will watch me more closely there, and assume that I’m on my way to becoming a Death Eater.
“You were one.”
I don’t want to be now.
The Hat was silent for a short moment, thinking about it. It was still long enough that Theo could feel the incredulous eyes on him. He fought the urge to hunch his shoulders defensively.
“You know that your father will disagree with you.”
Yeah, well, it’s my life, not his. It was a lesson that Theo had taken far too long to learn in his old time, but he understood it now.
“I do have the perfect place to put you.”
Good.
“Clever, resourceful, willing to defy your father, making a different choice than you made the first time with your eyes wide open to the consequences. Willing to strike out and make a life different from any a Nott has had in quite some time.”
Theo narrowed his eyes. There was a smug tone to the Hat’s voice that he didn’t trust. Wait.
“I just can’t wait to put you in GRYFFINDOR!”
There was a wave of gasps that ran around the Great Hall and seemed to break like a cresting wave that stung Theo’s skin. He tore the Hat off and stared at it in betrayal, at least until Professor McGonagall—his new Head of House—made an impatient little noise, and caused Theo to get off the stool.
Well, fuck.
*
“Hey, Nott.”
Theo looked up warily. So far, he hadn’t interacted much with his roommates, because what would be the point. In Slytherin, he could have formed connections, and in Ravenclaw, he would have been able to make a mark as a genius. Even in Hufflepuff, which he would have thought would be the Hat’s third choice, he could have had solid allies who were convinced he was their friend.
But in Gryffindor, everyone except him and Granger was an idiot.
Now Harry Potter was hovering in front of him, a desperate, half-hopeful smile on his face. Theo contained the urge to say the kind of thing that would get him punched in the nose. He still had to share a room with this idiot and the other four idiots of the moment. “What, Potter?”
Potter’s face fell a little, but he straightened his shoulders and said, “Look, you’re about the only Gryffindor that Snape doesn’t yell at in class. Would you study Potions with me?”
Theo stared at Potter. Potter stared back. This wasn’t some odd daydream, then, not with Potter still waiting for an answer.
Theo breathed out slowly and said, “He doesn’t yell at me, as you put it, because he knows my father. It’s not a benefit I can give you.”
“But your knowledge is. You obviously know a lot.”
Well, yes, Theo knew a lot. Because it would have been pathetic if he couldn’t master first-year Potions half-asleep, with how old he really was.
“How will you make it worth my while, Potter?”
He expected an outburst of some kind, about how trading favors like that wasn’t very Gryffindor, or a blustering attempt to think of something that would appeal to Theo, But instead, although Potter’s face fell again, he nodded and said, “I can’t,” and then turned and walked away from the Potions classroom door, trailing after Weasley.
Theo blinked after them.
“I believe you have Transfiguration class to get to, Mr. Nott.”
Theo turned around and looked at Professor Snape. The man’s voice was cool, without the overt mockery that he used for Gryffindors—most Gryffindors—but not warm, either. He seemed far angrier than Theo had thought about Theo being Sorted into Godric’s House. Before this, Theo would have said that the only people whose Sortings the Potions professor cared about were Draco and Potter.
Why does it matter to him if he has one Death Eater’s kid more or less in his House? You’d think it would actually make him relieved that he doesn’t have as many first-years to look after.
“Yes, sir,” Theo said, and turned and walked after his Housemates, as he had to think of them, because of one stupid Hat.
While they were in Transfiguration, and he was watching Granger breeze through turning a needle into a matchstick and then annoy the people around her, it occurred to Theo that he couldn’t continue living by the precepts of his old life. He had spent a fortnight resenting the Hat and impressing his professors in classes and making no allies.
He was in Gryffindor now, for all that he might hate it. He needed to use the people around him, not the ones he wished he could have had. And a Gryffindor could probably still make allies in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. More easily than a Slytherin, at least. Theo had had no connections who weren’t already Slytherins in his last life.
So, when they were packing up their books and parchments to leave Transfiguration, he took a deep breath and called out, “Wait, Potter.”
Potter was laughing at something Weasley said, but he stilled and turned around. “Yeah, Nott?”
Theo hid a private frown. Potter looked as if he expected to be hit, which made no sense. But Theo forced a smile onto his face and said, “You’re right, about what you said earlier. I do know a lot about Potions, and I can—help you.”
“But you’re also right. I don’t have anything to offer you.”
Theo shook his head and dredged up honesty that made him feel like a Kneazle attempting to vomit a hairball. “That doesn’t matter. I expected to be in Slytherin. Most of my family has been. So I reckon I was still thinking like one. But I want to have friends, not just prove all my disappointed ancestors right. So. Study partners?”
“Watch out, Harry, it might be a trap!”
Theo turned a withering glance on Weasley. He suspected he would have to cultivate the fool, if only because he was Potter’s best friend, but he certainly didn’t need to extend the hand of courtesy before Weasley did. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re a Death Eater’s kid!” Weasley had his arms folded and a self-satisfied expression on his face. “So you could be trying to trap Harry for You-Know-Who!”
Theo opened his mouth to express his opinion of the idea that the Dark Lord would ever trust a first-year with such a trap, but Potter interrupted first. “What’s a Death Eater?”
Theo gaped at him. Potter turned bright red and shuffled his feet, but kept staring steadily at Theo.
“But—you must know,” Theo said, at a loss. If there was anything he’d thought Potter missing knowledge of, it would be subtlety, nuance, and cunning, not a basic fact of his own history. “Who taught you history and left that out?”
Potter stiffened in front of Theo’s eyes, as though someone had cast the Ice Statue Spell on him. His voice was clipped as he said, “I grew up with my Muggle family, so I only learned Muggle history.”
Theo gaped at him some more. He knew he looked stupid doing it, and that gave Weasley occasion to look superior, because he must have already known this. But—
Theo had never thought much about the way Potter grew up, except to note that it hadn’t taught him self-preservation. And he’d never known this.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last, fumbling for words, feeling like a real eleven-year-old for the first time since he’d landed here.
“Oi, Nott, Muggles aren’t that bad!”
“I never said they were, Weasley,” Theo murmured smoothly, regaining control of himself. He had just seen a way that he could make himself useful to Potter, and in a way that Weasley obviously wasn’t, despite being a pureblood. “I only meant that I’m sorry Potter grew up away from magic and away from the history that should have been his.”
“What is a Death Eater?” Potter asked, not looking eager to talk about his Muggle childhood.
Theo gazed at him thoughtfully. He had come back to make a different life for himself than the one he’d had, still living in the shadow of the Dark Mark years after the war. He had assumed that would be done by dazzling and impressing the right people in Ravenclaw, earning gratitude and gathering blackmail, and eventually securing an apprenticeship of the sort that had been closed to him as his father’s son in his first timeline.
But here was a different path to power, as counselor to Harry Potter, the only Gryffindor with any true power.
“A Death Eater is a follower of the Dark Lord,” Theo explained. “They frequently tortured and murdered and attacked people at his orders. My father was one.”
Potter stared at him with wide eyes. Theo watched expertly until he saw the tiny signs of withdrawal, and then he glanced down and said in a mumble, “I don’t believe any of it. I don’t agree with my father.”
“Come off it, Nott, we’ve all seen you avoiding Granger—”
“Have I insulted her at all? And as for avoiding, you do that, too, Weasley.”
Weasley began to splutter. “She’s just—she’s just annoying, I don’t hate her for her blood—”
“I don’t, either,” Theo said, which was true. He had always found much better reasons to hate people, like their conspiring to force the Dark Mark onto his arm. He turned to face Potter again. “What do you think, Potter? Do the crimes of the father pass on to the son? Are you going to reject me for my blood, the way that some of the Dark Lord’s followers rejected Muggleborns like your mother?”
Potter took a breath that seemed to be pressed into his lungs from outside, and shook his head, standing a little taller. “No. No, Nott. As long as you don’t believe any of that stuff, then I’ll be happy to stand beside you.”
Theo allowed himself a tiny smile, ducking his head. “Thank you.”
“Nott, you can’t just walk in here and—”
“Mr. Weasley, Mr. Nott, Mr. Potter! You are supposed to be going to your next class!”
Theo leaned back and looked up at his Head of House with his best faux respectful expression. “I’m sorry, Professor,” he said. “We just lost track of time, since we were talking and making friends.”
As he knew it would, that softened McGonagall’s expression enough that she nodded. “Very well, but do leave now. We wouldn’t want you to be late.” She hesitated, then added, “And two points to Gryffindor.”
Theo held back a smirk as he left the class, walking side-by-side with Potter. If the narrowness of the corridor at this point forced Weasley to walk behind them, that was a coincidence, Theo was sure.
“Why did she give you points?” Potter asked.
The bluntness and honesty both made Theo wince a little, but he could see a purpose for it, as long as he was guiding Potter. “She’s been a little uncertain about having me in her House,” he said, and let himself wince visibly. “This way, I can convince her that I do really belong here, and prove I’m really a Gryffindor.”
Potter caught his breath a little. “That’s something I want to do.”
“Prove you belong in Gryffindor?” What in the world could Potter have to prove?
Potter hesitated and glanced over his shoulder. Then he lowered his voice so Weasley couldn’t hear them, although Weasley was muttering so much to himself about “Nott” and “Death Eaters” and “points” that he probably wouldn’t have anyway. “The Hat said I would do well in Slytherin.”
Theo gaped at him again. He was doing that a lot lately, and he didn’t like it.
On the other hand, at least he could prove he was shocked because everyone in this timeline did expect Potter to be in Gryffindor, not because of information he shouldn’t have. He smiled a little. “Well. That gives us something in common, given that my father never once thought I would be here.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s dead.” Theo was able to speak without emotion. For him, Mother’s death had happened two lifetimes ago.
And, well, as much as Theo sometimes pictured what his life would have been like if she had survived, she shouldn’t have been trying to steal werewolf fur on a full moon.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Potter was so painfully sincere. It made Theo want to smash the boy’s head through a wall.
But it could also be a road to win Potter’s trust, so Theo let his shoulders round and his head droop a little. “Thanks,” he whispered, and then glanced back at Weasley. “It’s nice to be understood. It’s sometimes hard when everyone around you still has parents and siblings, you know?”
Potter lapped it up at once, his face brightening. “I understand. Completely. I live with my Muggle aunt and uncle, and my cousin, and seeing them pamper him while they just encourage him to beat me up whenever he wants—” He cut himself off, flushing.
Well. That was more information than Theo had expected to be gifted with in the opening stages of an alliance, but at least he could grasp and use it. He offered Potter a bashful smile. “Yeah. I understand.”
Potter gave him a smile that Theo let himself bask in. Potter was the first person he had ever got to know whom he could be sure meant it. “Friends?”
There was a hopeful note in his voice. Theo had never thought that Potter wanted more than the two friends he had, but why wouldn’t he, especially since he hadn’t made friends with Granger yet in this timeline? “Of course. Friends.” He held out his hand.
Potter shook it with enthusiasm, which made Theo wish, briefly, that he could go backwards in time, find Draco, and tell him about how Potter would so shake hands with Slytherins; you just had to approach him the right way.
But it would have been silly to wish for that, especially since he wasn’t a Slytherin now. So Theo smiled at Potter, ignored Weasley’s grumbles, and went to Charms.