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Title: The Morning Of the War
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theodore Nott
Prompt: #31, Sunrise
Word Count: 1773
Rating: R for mild (like, one sentence) sexual content.
Author's Notes: As far as I've been able to tell, nothing I've said is explicitly prohibited by canon, though it may be a stretch to accept that it has happened. I'd love to have some ethereal note like "Theo talks to Blaise about responsibility the night before the war starts," but that's not really what it is. Maybe "There is only one thing in life Theo likes better than responsibility, but whether that is war or Malfoy is unclear." Or even "Theo is capable of having a conversation while fantasising about the war and pretending that he is not fantasising about Draco." If you hold your head to the side and squint, I suppose there is the chance that this includes an HBP spoiler. Yes, I owe the title to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song Easily.
It is so late that it is very early when Blaise comes into the common room where Theo sits in front of the fire, reading a text book. This is not a school-approved text, nor even a school-approved lesson; it is a book that his father sent him by the last Owl, and it is one that Theo is somewhat surprised made it through the wards.
But then, Aram Nott always has been very good at disguising charms. And odd things have a habit of getting into the school anyway, wards or no. How else to explain the diary that electrified the Slytherins when the rumours finally leaked out? Or the Mirror of Erised, well-known to about half the school, though - perhaps - never looked into. Quirrell...the fake Mad-Eye Moody, though no one ever knew the details of that, nor who he had been, but there was no reason to impersonate an Auror if you were also one, Theo thought sardonically.
Dumbledore, Theo thought in the moment before he looked up and saw Blaise standing there with that slightly mocking grin on his face, ran an interesting school, for someone nominally of the Light. Dark artifacts and dark-inclined persons, and he embodied both, with the Mark on his arm. Compared to the other things Dumbledore let in knowingly, a book like this was nothing very special.
Though Theo did admire the artistry of the spells his father had used to disguise it, on the off-chance that Dumbledore had come to his senses and started caring about Dark magic, though it would be like locking the barn door after the horses had left.
Then he looked up, then he saw Blaise, looking - it was difficult to tell on his skin, but Theo thought he could see the touch of redness - slightly flushed and definitely rumpled as well as smug. For someone who was normally as sleekly groomed as Blaise, that meant a very good date indeed. Theo grinned unpleasantly.
"Still studying, Nott?" Blaise's voice was bored and disinterested, but it was countermanded by the way that he sat in the chair opposite Theo's.
"Of course. I've nothing better to do, since I haven't made playthings of half the castle." He closed the book. There was something about disguising books that always worked better when the book in question was shut, and it would hardly do to have Blaise looking at it. Even he, in his current state, might notice that it wasn't what it seemed.
"How very interesting," Blaise said, mock-brightly. "Planning to try to get better marks than the Mudblood this year? Though I think," he added, "that if Draco hasn't managed it, you'll not either."
The use of Malfoy's first name was a deliberate taunt, and Theo cursed himself again for a fool for his infatuation that was, apparently, visible to everyone in their House except Draco. He couldn't imagine why someone hadn't said something to the blond by now, but if they had, Malfoy was oblivious anyway.
He cursed himself as well for the involuntary use of Malfoy's first name. It might have only been in his thoughts, but it was a weakness and a lapse, and indicative of his poor mental state at the moment. Tonight was not a night for such a thing, either.
"Actually," he said after only a split-second pause, "I was simply hoping to get better marks than you. Or are you only shagging students?" This time Blaise definitely flushed, though with anger, and a laughing demon capered inside Theo's head as he added "Pity; it would seem so much smarter to shag someone who might be able to alter your grade. And Merlin knows that three quarters of them stare at you anyway. How unfortunate that you're not part of the great Potter's circle."
If there was one thing he was skilled at, it was taunting his House mates, he thought with some small pride as his eyebrows arched in a very camp portrayal of interest in Blaise's reply.
But Blaise wasn't terribly bad at it either - certainly better than Malfoy, who couldn't verbally sting you unless you were a Gryffindor - or a Hufflepuff, he was ace at reducing Hufflepuffs to tears.
His voice was very smooth when he said "It's called gathering intelligence, Nott, at least by our Lord." There was a fractional hesitation and Theo knew that hesitation well; it was the moment that you extended your senses outward to see what waited and lurked and wondered what you were doing, and perhaps it was paranoid, but Parkinson had overheard a conversation in the girls' loo in which it was mentioned that Potter had an invisibility cloak.
Sometimes Theo thought that the only thing that even gave them a fighting chance was that no one at the school other than the Slytherins and some of the staff had any notion at all of security and the things you did and did not discuss - and where they were and were not discussed. Rumours were the lifeblood of the school, and the Slytherins capitalised on them whenever they could. Certainly if you left everything up to a man like Lucius Malfoy - well, the joke in some circles (Aram Nott's, to be specific, and only rarely and when safe) was that his coat was beautifully tailored on both sides.
And fully reversible.
Blaise added "But then I can understand why they wouldn't task a skinny ragpicker like yourself with such a job, so I suppose the confusion is understandable."
But the thing that Blaise - and everyone else - did not know, Theo thought, sitting back and pleased, was that he cared not one bit if anyone found him attractive - at night, when he lost control enough to wank and his hands slipped slowly, increasingly faster, over his cock and his body, he imagined Malfoy's hair in his hands and trailing over his skin, and the teeth marks on his hand when he bit down as he came would last for days - because that was not the measure of a man that he had been taught or that he recognised. His measure of a man was his effectiveness. His dreams were sometimes only of Malfoy, moving, turning, stretching, playing Quidditch, and most of all head thrown back and eyes closed as Theo had only seen him once, and it stung only a little to know that Malfoy had no idea he'd seen him.
He did not, in short, want to be seen as merely another attractive Slytherin, though there were surprisingly few of them, from some standpoints.
He wanted his name in the history books for the things he did rather than what he looked like.
And Blaise must have recognised that - he started to speak - but Theo cut him off. "You have your talents in this war, and I have mine. And I don't care," - it was the only sign of anger he showed - "if anyone finds me attractive. Least of all do I give a shit if Malfoy does."
Blaise looked askance of him for a moment, but then - very evidently - chose not to continue the conversation on those lines, because it would only devolve to him standing, hands in fists on the table, shouting at Theo, and Theo more and more obviously leaning back, relaxed, and laughing at him.
Theo had paid a price to keep his temper that firmly under control, but he blessed his father and every second of pain he'd put his son through, for that and for other things. His father's philosophy was that the student must experience the spell to understand it, and to know what will happen to his opponent, and to know what he will be capable of when he is in such pain. And that theory extended to more than merely spells.
He could take any taunts Zabini cared to dish out, take them and give them back better than Zabini ever could manage.
Theo looked at his watch. Almost midnight. Time for bed. But first he said "Dumbledore will be gone tomorrow. He's taking Potter on the trail of something called a Horcrux."
Blaise smiled, a smile that might have been a cruel grin in a different face, one less schooled in emotion and poise, and said "He never learned not to talk in front of anything that can hear him, did he?"
"No," Theo said, his own face settling awkwardly into the same hard smile. "He didn't. Personally, I'm beginning to wonder whether he's on their side or ours." But that wasn't strictly true. There was no question, to his mind, of which side Dumbledore was on, and it had to be his own, neither Light nor Dark.
How else did you explain things like talking in front of portraits that had no reason to love the things Dumbledore's followers had done? Portraits that could leave and take messages to other portraits, until the words were whispered in the Dark Lord's ears. Letting the Dark Lord escape punishment for the death of the weepy ghost in the girls' bathroom, a tale he rather imagined he and his fellow Slytherins had heard from a different perspective - assuming Potter had heard it during the incident with the Chamber of Secrets. Allowing Dark Marks, unregistered animagi, and all manner of dangerous beasts into the castle.
The only one who benefited from it all was Albus Dumbledore. Theo could see no one else who profited. And though he could not understand the Headmaster's fascination with allowing such things, causing them in some cases, he could well understand the coin that the other man was about to pay in.
"It's to be tomorrow," Blaise said, in a tone of wonder, and Theo knew very well what it meant. After years of waiting, action. After years of waiting, preparing, it was finally to happen, the purpose to which his father had forged him and the purpose that he had shared from the first time he looked at a history book and heard the hissings as Slytherins walked the halls of the school, hisses made of insults and muttered words that should not matter.
But they did. Between the words in the halls and the stories in books, Theo had been created under his father's hand, and tomorrow would find his purpose.
"It's the morning of the war," he said quietly, and Blaise nodded. As one, they stood and went to the sixth-year boys' dorm, still smiling the hard smiles of young killers who knew they held weapons and were prepared to use them.
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theodore Nott
Prompt: #31, Sunrise
Word Count: 1773
Rating: R for mild (like, one sentence) sexual content.
Author's Notes: As far as I've been able to tell, nothing I've said is explicitly prohibited by canon, though it may be a stretch to accept that it has happened. I'd love to have some ethereal note like "Theo talks to Blaise about responsibility the night before the war starts," but that's not really what it is. Maybe "There is only one thing in life Theo likes better than responsibility, but whether that is war or Malfoy is unclear." Or even "Theo is capable of having a conversation while fantasising about the war and pretending that he is not fantasising about Draco." If you hold your head to the side and squint, I suppose there is the chance that this includes an HBP spoiler. Yes, I owe the title to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song Easily.
It is so late that it is very early when Blaise comes into the common room where Theo sits in front of the fire, reading a text book. This is not a school-approved text, nor even a school-approved lesson; it is a book that his father sent him by the last Owl, and it is one that Theo is somewhat surprised made it through the wards.
But then, Aram Nott always has been very good at disguising charms. And odd things have a habit of getting into the school anyway, wards or no. How else to explain the diary that electrified the Slytherins when the rumours finally leaked out? Or the Mirror of Erised, well-known to about half the school, though - perhaps - never looked into. Quirrell...the fake Mad-Eye Moody, though no one ever knew the details of that, nor who he had been, but there was no reason to impersonate an Auror if you were also one, Theo thought sardonically.
Dumbledore, Theo thought in the moment before he looked up and saw Blaise standing there with that slightly mocking grin on his face, ran an interesting school, for someone nominally of the Light. Dark artifacts and dark-inclined persons, and he embodied both, with the Mark on his arm. Compared to the other things Dumbledore let in knowingly, a book like this was nothing very special.
Though Theo did admire the artistry of the spells his father had used to disguise it, on the off-chance that Dumbledore had come to his senses and started caring about Dark magic, though it would be like locking the barn door after the horses had left.
Then he looked up, then he saw Blaise, looking - it was difficult to tell on his skin, but Theo thought he could see the touch of redness - slightly flushed and definitely rumpled as well as smug. For someone who was normally as sleekly groomed as Blaise, that meant a very good date indeed. Theo grinned unpleasantly.
"Still studying, Nott?" Blaise's voice was bored and disinterested, but it was countermanded by the way that he sat in the chair opposite Theo's.
"Of course. I've nothing better to do, since I haven't made playthings of half the castle." He closed the book. There was something about disguising books that always worked better when the book in question was shut, and it would hardly do to have Blaise looking at it. Even he, in his current state, might notice that it wasn't what it seemed.
"How very interesting," Blaise said, mock-brightly. "Planning to try to get better marks than the Mudblood this year? Though I think," he added, "that if Draco hasn't managed it, you'll not either."
The use of Malfoy's first name was a deliberate taunt, and Theo cursed himself again for a fool for his infatuation that was, apparently, visible to everyone in their House except Draco. He couldn't imagine why someone hadn't said something to the blond by now, but if they had, Malfoy was oblivious anyway.
He cursed himself as well for the involuntary use of Malfoy's first name. It might have only been in his thoughts, but it was a weakness and a lapse, and indicative of his poor mental state at the moment. Tonight was not a night for such a thing, either.
"Actually," he said after only a split-second pause, "I was simply hoping to get better marks than you. Or are you only shagging students?" This time Blaise definitely flushed, though with anger, and a laughing demon capered inside Theo's head as he added "Pity; it would seem so much smarter to shag someone who might be able to alter your grade. And Merlin knows that three quarters of them stare at you anyway. How unfortunate that you're not part of the great Potter's circle."
If there was one thing he was skilled at, it was taunting his House mates, he thought with some small pride as his eyebrows arched in a very camp portrayal of interest in Blaise's reply.
But Blaise wasn't terribly bad at it either - certainly better than Malfoy, who couldn't verbally sting you unless you were a Gryffindor - or a Hufflepuff, he was ace at reducing Hufflepuffs to tears.
His voice was very smooth when he said "It's called gathering intelligence, Nott, at least by our Lord." There was a fractional hesitation and Theo knew that hesitation well; it was the moment that you extended your senses outward to see what waited and lurked and wondered what you were doing, and perhaps it was paranoid, but Parkinson had overheard a conversation in the girls' loo in which it was mentioned that Potter had an invisibility cloak.
Sometimes Theo thought that the only thing that even gave them a fighting chance was that no one at the school other than the Slytherins and some of the staff had any notion at all of security and the things you did and did not discuss - and where they were and were not discussed. Rumours were the lifeblood of the school, and the Slytherins capitalised on them whenever they could. Certainly if you left everything up to a man like Lucius Malfoy - well, the joke in some circles (Aram Nott's, to be specific, and only rarely and when safe) was that his coat was beautifully tailored on both sides.
And fully reversible.
Blaise added "But then I can understand why they wouldn't task a skinny ragpicker like yourself with such a job, so I suppose the confusion is understandable."
But the thing that Blaise - and everyone else - did not know, Theo thought, sitting back and pleased, was that he cared not one bit if anyone found him attractive - at night, when he lost control enough to wank and his hands slipped slowly, increasingly faster, over his cock and his body, he imagined Malfoy's hair in his hands and trailing over his skin, and the teeth marks on his hand when he bit down as he came would last for days - because that was not the measure of a man that he had been taught or that he recognised. His measure of a man was his effectiveness. His dreams were sometimes only of Malfoy, moving, turning, stretching, playing Quidditch, and most of all head thrown back and eyes closed as Theo had only seen him once, and it stung only a little to know that Malfoy had no idea he'd seen him.
He did not, in short, want to be seen as merely another attractive Slytherin, though there were surprisingly few of them, from some standpoints.
He wanted his name in the history books for the things he did rather than what he looked like.
And Blaise must have recognised that - he started to speak - but Theo cut him off. "You have your talents in this war, and I have mine. And I don't care," - it was the only sign of anger he showed - "if anyone finds me attractive. Least of all do I give a shit if Malfoy does."
Blaise looked askance of him for a moment, but then - very evidently - chose not to continue the conversation on those lines, because it would only devolve to him standing, hands in fists on the table, shouting at Theo, and Theo more and more obviously leaning back, relaxed, and laughing at him.
Theo had paid a price to keep his temper that firmly under control, but he blessed his father and every second of pain he'd put his son through, for that and for other things. His father's philosophy was that the student must experience the spell to understand it, and to know what will happen to his opponent, and to know what he will be capable of when he is in such pain. And that theory extended to more than merely spells.
He could take any taunts Zabini cared to dish out, take them and give them back better than Zabini ever could manage.
Theo looked at his watch. Almost midnight. Time for bed. But first he said "Dumbledore will be gone tomorrow. He's taking Potter on the trail of something called a Horcrux."
Blaise smiled, a smile that might have been a cruel grin in a different face, one less schooled in emotion and poise, and said "He never learned not to talk in front of anything that can hear him, did he?"
"No," Theo said, his own face settling awkwardly into the same hard smile. "He didn't. Personally, I'm beginning to wonder whether he's on their side or ours." But that wasn't strictly true. There was no question, to his mind, of which side Dumbledore was on, and it had to be his own, neither Light nor Dark.
How else did you explain things like talking in front of portraits that had no reason to love the things Dumbledore's followers had done? Portraits that could leave and take messages to other portraits, until the words were whispered in the Dark Lord's ears. Letting the Dark Lord escape punishment for the death of the weepy ghost in the girls' bathroom, a tale he rather imagined he and his fellow Slytherins had heard from a different perspective - assuming Potter had heard it during the incident with the Chamber of Secrets. Allowing Dark Marks, unregistered animagi, and all manner of dangerous beasts into the castle.
The only one who benefited from it all was Albus Dumbledore. Theo could see no one else who profited. And though he could not understand the Headmaster's fascination with allowing such things, causing them in some cases, he could well understand the coin that the other man was about to pay in.
"It's to be tomorrow," Blaise said, in a tone of wonder, and Theo knew very well what it meant. After years of waiting, action. After years of waiting, preparing, it was finally to happen, the purpose to which his father had forged him and the purpose that he had shared from the first time he looked at a history book and heard the hissings as Slytherins walked the halls of the school, hisses made of insults and muttered words that should not matter.
But they did. Between the words in the halls and the stories in books, Theo had been created under his father's hand, and tomorrow would find his purpose.
"It's the morning of the war," he said quietly, and Blaise nodded. As one, they stood and went to the sixth-year boys' dorm, still smiling the hard smiles of young killers who knew they held weapons and were prepared to use them.
