Fanfic100 post!

[channonyarrow]

Title: The Rainbow Bends
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theodore Nott
Character(s): Theo Nott
Prompt: #11-#20, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Brown, Black, White, Colourless
Word Count: 10,700 in total
Rating: This post rated R for: Murder, both premeditated and not, moderate graphic violence, torture, language, moderate gore, mild sexism, non-graphic sexual fantasising, consideration of incest, child abuse, and anything else I can think of to toss in there.
Author's Notes: I took the colour prompts and arced a series of vignettes around the titles of the colours. While they are not connected stories, in any true sense, they are, at the same time, not completely independent of each other, either. I am, consequently, posting them under one rating and author's note set, and with their individual titles/prompts/word counts with each story. The stories skip around a fair bit but are generally set in the timeline of Book 7 (1997-98) and the year after. All thanks to my beta, graeae.

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Title: In The Snow
Prompt: #19, White
Word Count: 910


There is blood scrawled on the snow in large, messy letters that seem a writ of accusation presented in the Wizengamot, but Theo simply stares at it dispassionately. By this point in the war, you are used to killing people or else you are dead yourself, and you stop taking the sight of blood - or intestines or brain matter or bodies unmarked by anything other than, possibly, a small scorch mark where the spell hit them - as anything other than for granted.

The snow is an irritation, though, and he hears the others complaining about it. But there is no help for it. It is part of their cover, and their hope is that no one will be patrolling far out because of it.

One of the things that Theo was surprised to learn, and not under the Headmaster's tutelage, was that wizards have never availed themselves of Muggle weapons. This does not mean that he is about to run out to the nearest country where such things are legal and come back to England with an Uzi under his robes, to use on the Ministry at some point when the opportunity presents itself, but it takes some thinking about.

He was very young when his father told him this. It is, he knows now, the only reason he was allowed to be surprised that there is no mass-application of the Killing Curse. One wand, one target, one death.

Wizards fight one on one, while Muggles do not. He hears the heavy oxlike breathing of Crabbe as they climb this hill, on the way to assault the latest stronghold of the Light, and Theo is well aware that if anyone had any sense, they would have cast a Silencing Spell on Crabbe.

It is impossible to sneak when you bring a pair of living siege engines with you. At least this death scene is far enough from the rest of the Light for them to know that the Dark is here yet. There is still time for the Silencing Spell.

They've come far enough to see the bodies now, the ones who gave the blood that wrote on the world in a way that its owners never would again, and he is, he finds, shocked to realise it's someone he could tolerate at school. But then, he did hate Ravenclaws only marginally more than he hated his Housemates.

It is Michael Corner. His hair is spread out as if he was knocked backwards suddenly, and Theo decides he probably was. The blood and the rest of it is post mortem, he thinks.

Not that one gains any experience of wounds when in a war.

It is not Corner's death that is a surprise to him; the surprise is that he can spare a moment to be mildly upset by it. He berates himself mentally. (Crabbe is still breathing noisily near him, but he has stopped as well, as if wondering what Theo is doing, but Theo thinks with a deep part of his mind that is not concerned with Corner's death that that sort of thought is more than one can expect of Crabbe.) This is weakness, mourning, or even noticing, the death of one's enemies.

The thought is shocking in its implications. There should be nothing at all weak about such a thing, because it proves that you are still human, and Theo is entirely prepared to accept that Muggles, mudbloods, half-bloods, and purebloods are part of the same race. It's the sort of thing you learn to accept, when you grow up being told that you are the same species as something like Crabbe.

Even if you go to war against your own species, there is nothing at all wrong with noticing their deaths. It must not stop you from delivering the killing blow or the spell that will cause death, because that truly is weakness, but it is right and proper to notice their deaths. Never is it right to regret them, but it is always honourable to notice them.

Theo wonders whether he has finally turned into a monster, that this death does not affect him as much as it should, or whether it is simply the months of war making everyone tired, or if the war has pulled away the last layer of learned honour and behaviour and rightness, leaving the monster he always was bare and revealed underneath.

But if he has turned into a monster, at least it was not one of the sort who would go get a gun and begin killing. For all his self-believed though never spoken of faults, Theo is the sort to be pleased that this young man his own age has died well, taken out in a combat of one on one, rather than by someone finding a Muggle weapon and applying it to this scene. Then the snow would not tell him what he was fighting for and what he was fighting against, and there would be no message left in the rubble of the killing ground. As it is, this arrangement of body, blood, and snow is almost a note left by a lover, and Theo reads the scene carefully and well, memorising it for no reason other than that it tells him much about his people and tells him the things that he loves about them.

After a moment, the snow crunches again, and Crabbe is still breathing heavily at his side.



Title: In The Library
Prompt: #12, Orange
Word Count: 996


When Aram stands in the window and blocks the sunlight coming in, turning it orange around the corners as if his shape is poison to it, Theo looks up from his book, marking his place politely, setting it to one side politely, and folding his hands in his lap politely.

Not that this sort of thing is not a ritual, and he knows what his father will speak of. It has been days since he said anything of Alida Petalas, Theo's mother, who left Aram when Theo was very young. She was pregnant at the time; Theo neither knows nor cares whether the child was born, what it is, or if it is healthy. The point of the matter is that she left, left him with his father, who is...difficult to get along with. Though he is easier now that Theo has started fighting back.

Theo, with the patience characteristic of him, did not fight his father for years. There was no point, particularly since the lectures on every subject conceivable (though usually Theo's mother and Aram's total disdain (or hatred) for her and her get were favourites) could so easily tip into violence if Theo did anything other than sit and listen politely. It was not that Aram was attempting to teach him anything, nor that Theo needed to respond. It was understood without ever being said that Theo would listen to anything that his father chose to say because it was the price they each paid, Aram saddled with an heir that he did not understand, Theo because he wanted to live.

Aram Nott was, Theo thought, watching his father prepare to speak, noting the way the dust motes danced around him, not a good caretaker of children. He fundamentally disliked children, the amount of care they required - but he liked adults just fine. Theo had been an adult in his father's eyes from the moment he could feed, dress, and clean himself, and Aram had treated him as an adult. It made for an interesting childhood.

But once he went to school - there he learned things. Tactics in how to fight back. His grasp of hexes and jinxes was, perhaps, unparalleled, and his tongue was nearly as acid and sarcastic as his Head of House's. He learned things and kept them secret, waiting.

Aram turned towards him finally and said "You're going to be Marked soon." He paused and Theo nodded. Of course he was - there was no other option that he wished to take. Joining Potter and his cronies...well. That was unthinkable, in the same way that the Cruciatus Curse was Unforgivable.

"You are," and the other man paused as if it physically pained him to admit it, "as ready as you can be. You know why you wish to do this, you know that you are doing so because you wish it." Theo heard these words and said nothing to them, though inside his head he was railing and shouting that his father was some exceptional kind of idiot if he thought that Theo had free will in this matter. Yes he wanted to do this, but it was as much a result of his upbringing as everything else about him. Just because he could not conceive of the idea that he did not want to be Marked did not mean that he was taking the step of anything that might be considered his own will. But his Aram was not done. "You are prepared. Except for one thing."

The vicious smile was what tipped Theo off to his father's next move, not the swift drop of Aram's wand into his hand from its sheath in his sleeve, and he was distantly grateful he had put the book aside for a moment as his fingers dug into the arms of the chair so hard that cloth tore and his entire body tensed in ways it was not meant to.

Someone screamed far off and Theo was conscious of nothing but the pain, the tension, the PAIN, the cloth under his hands, the PAIN and then it was done, the Curse lifted as quickly as it had come, even quicker, since Theo had not been aware of his father's actions after the Curse hit him.

He never was, not for several seconds. It was a reaction his father had tried to train out of him, and at least Theo could now function within thirty seconds of the lifting of the Cruciatus, rather than five (or more) minutes. The first time his father had Cursed him, it had been fully six hours before he'd even tried to stand up from where he'd dropped - the library floor, near the books on Dark artifacts, just to the left of the antique grey chair - and he'd wound up crawling to his rooms.

This time, his reaction was to stay still. Where normally he might try to draw his own wand and curse his father (he did not dare to use the Cruciatus on Aram) in some appropriately schoolboy fashion, the other man's speech implied that this was done for some other reason. So he waited.

"You are as prepared as I can make you, Theo," Aram said quietly. "But it will hurt more than that. I expect you will not disgrace us."

Theo felt no worry at all, listening to his father's words - what he heard was the unexpected gift of his elevation to near-equality with his father. The word "us" was one Aram seldom felt a need to use, and never when speaking of disgrace. Theo would only disgrace Aram in the past; never both of them.

He wondered why he thought that the quality to his father that turned the light orange as it fell around him had been poison. As he heard Aram's footsteps leaving the room, he smiled, reveling in the gift more precious than wealth, land, anything one could imagine, that had been given him.



Title: In Her Eyes
Prompt: #15, Blue
Word Count: 960


Her blue eyes turned to his, and she begged for her life, with the quiet, gasped words of one at the end of their endurance, who needs badly to live, but wants to die for a number of reasons, and only one of those is the insults given to the body.

Theo grinned and lifted the wand he held loosely. His grip firmed over the shaft of wood as his arm moved, and by the time the wand was raised to a useable position, he and it gave the sense of being one creature, well in tune with each other. It is as if his wand - seemingly ordinary Blackthorn and chimera scale - was simply waiting for this day to come, because it has always been a good wand, Ollivander is no fool, but it is a better one now. As if waiting for the sight of the pain that filled her blue eyes. As if it hungered for the violence he and it lived with daily now.

"Did anyone ever teach you about Sectumsempra? Did you see Malfoy last year, after Potter attacked him?" A flick of his wrist and he cast the spell. It was as if a knife - perhaps a small sword - danced over her body, bringing with it gouts of blood, and he debated for a moment adding a Cruciatus to the mix, but chose not to.

Yet.

If there was one tenet of his father's beliefs that Theo shared unquestioningly, it was that women had no place in battle. He fully accepted, though he did not agree, that women had equal rights in society. His belief that, by and large, they should be protected from the seamier side of life, that they should be kept apart as things of beauty and kindness while men did the necessary dirty work of life, was, he knew, not a popular one - assuming it had enough adherents to call it a view, rather than an idiosyncrasy.

He had thought long about it when he realised that they were not going to stay out of this war, and come to the conclusion that it was his job to protect as much as possible, but if they insisted on denying that protection, one that any well-bred man would offer, and the lack of which merely indicated that most of the men in this world were poorly bred indeed, then it was not his responsibility to continue to protect them.

And gradually he had found that the sex of his opponent did not matter to him. It was a surprise and a way of understanding how far he had separated the essential Theoness that her eyes tried to speak to from this Theo who fought a war like a machine. The tiny inside part that remained unchangingly him deplored that these actions were necessary.

He finally stanched the blood with another spell, and looked at her a moment longer. She was close to passing out, if not to death, and he had no urge to give her a restorative simply to prolong this.

Instead, another flick of his wand and he watched impassively as she bowed under the Cruciatus, her throat visibly forcing a scream past hoarsened vocal chords. This had gone beyond the point of getting information from her, this had gone beyond anything else, any other considerations.

It was an unpleasant thing to watch, and he knew that, at least, he was not a monster yet. To know that it was no use trying to protect these women, at least not in war, when they would do what they could to slip away from the protection of men and put themselves at any risk to prove themselves equal, that any consideration like numbers of Muggles versus numbers of wizards was - he paused and was charitable - not one they considered (was meaningless to them) - to know all these things was to know that there was nothing to do now but treat them as they asked to be treated - as men.

And the punishment for spying was one that Theo was all too pleased to render against one he had considered his own, one he remembered touching her forearm carefully, being protective of it, all the dead giveaways of what was on that arm.

But now was not the time to ask questions, not even to find out what had turned her, made her regret her decision. Now was not the time to find out why she thought she would get away with it, or if she had thought that.

Now was simply the time to administer justice.

And it was the small part of Theo, even changed as it was, that remembered what it was like to care for women and who knew that this display, this look of battle between them, would be her final protection, for if she was taken with her treachery to their Lord, she would wish for death even harder and sooner than she was now. But this was merely battle between them, and he reminded himself to find one of the others who would stay quiet and get him to add some marks to Theo to make his story that much more convincing.

Knowing that was all the protection he dared give her, that she not face the wrath of their Lord when a battle had gone badly as it was, he raised his wand a final time and whispered "Avada Kedavra."

Daphne's eyes fluttered shut half a second before the green light of the Killing Curse struck her in the heart, and Theo stood there only a moment longer before he turned, his duty as done as it could be under the bastard perversions of this war.



Title: In The Hallway
Prompt: #14, Green
Word Count: 1031


The colour of Slytherin is not prominent at the Nott family home - if you can consider two people living in a building only removed from a castle by name, rather than size or style either a family or a home - as it is in others of the Pureblood Slytherin homes. Green and silver, as if allegiance to Slytherin means anything.

Though it does. The ones who are Sorted remain Sorted all their lives, whatever life may bring to them, and whether or not they accept all the perversions of their house. Gryffindors who dislike the idea of being world-savers as they always are in a proud tradition that extends back to Godric himself; Ravenclaws who like something other than the sight and smell of fine, antique bindings and the facts and ideas contained therein; Hufflepuffs who cover their fear with bluster and call it loyalty.

Slytherins who do not follow the latest Dark Lord to rise.

There are not many of them, and none of the two humans who currently reside in the Nott home amidst at least a small platoon of house elves.

But Aram never chose to celebrate his allegiance in his home decor - or perhaps his wife did not. And whether or not he hated her, Theo thought, he never bothered to change it after she left him and returned to Greece. They were not divorced because Purebloods did not do that, but they were separated, and Theo knows that most of his father's hatred for women, hatred that has been carved into the son's skin, comes of the fact that he could not control the one he had, and the only one he will ever legitimately have.

It is a long life, and made longer if you cannot control a mere woman. Made much, much longer.

And he has never known why their Lord did not depose Aram for his failure to keep Alida Nott in her place, why he allowed Aram the favour that was shown him.

Deep inside, some part of him that is not Slytherin, nor is a Death Eater, and that remembers the stories the other children in the school told about Death Eaters and their bacchanals that they called initiation rites, he wonders if that does not have some truth to it, for there is no reason at all that the Notts should not be stricken root and branch from their Lord's plans because Aram Nott is not enough of a man to have the wit to leave his wife before she left him.

Leaving one's wife is perfectly acceptable. It is, in fact, something of an established tradition in certain circles. No one at all would question Aram if he had left her.

But he did not see the warning signs - or more likely refused to believe that they had any meaning for him and she left and he retained his place, and Theo did not know how that feat was achieved. He did not think it was through the stories, for children make stories first of what they fear and then of what they want, and sex is often a marvellous example of something that fills both roles. There is something terrifying about the sights and particularly the sounds that accompany very good sex (not that Theo would know this for himself, virgin that he still is). And then it becomes the focus of your world as you try to understand the things that are happening to you, the sudden wants and changes you have.

Sex is the story that children tell when they wish to convey a certain feeling, and that is one of power because it seems to control you, whether you want to be controlled or not. It is larger than any one person, and - perhaps - larger than the world.

But his father did not pay that price for his place, Theo knows. Aram Nott was as close to a Puritan as their world and class ever produced. He was not, in fact, sure that his father could have paid that price.

Part of him knows that this is as much a self delusion as the students' stories of long and involved Death Eater bacchanals. He has overheard all of them, he is sure - the Dark Lord watches the others in their orgy, the Dark Lord requires his servants to give him everything, including access to their bodies, the Dark Lord has no genitals of his own any longer, so twisted and malformed has he become, and he uses Nagini to take his own pleasure over some weird mental link between them.

Theo snorts gently, derisively, as he thinks.

And if he told those same students that he had seen nothing of the sort, despite living in a house that was Slytherin to the core and to the perversion even if green was an uncommon colour in that house, would they have believed him? Better to ask if shouting at the Muggle god would stop the rain.

But children and adolescents and adults fear things they do not understand, and things that are larger than they are, and sex is both, and sex is power and a tool and a weapon.

There are other weapons in life. The weapon of a symbol - he touches his arm and wonders that it is not worn smooth from his constant touches, his wish to ensure that he is still tied to something that is more than a family and more than a faith for him - is the same as sex - something half understood by those who do not share it. The first symbol begats more symbols, and there is nothing surprising to Theo that what started with green and silver ended with a snake with a skull twining through an eye socket and out of the mouth burned in black into the pale flesh of people who believe in that set of symbols.

A symbol is a weapon as powerful as sex, in the right hands.

And some people are children who never grew up.

Theo snorts again, still quietly, and silently travels the halls that do not bear green.



Title: In Scotland
Prompt: #17, Brown
Word Count: 929


The land here was simply brown, as if the goats that had disastrously grazed Scotland so long ago had been here only recently and had left nothing at all in their wake except the inedible dirt.

Theo stood in the middle of the desolation with Pansy Parkinson and looked at it. "Some kind of curse?"

"Fire, maybe," she said. "I don't know. He wants us to do what?"

"Determine what happened here, and tell him about it." Theo shrugged and automatically moved off to the scanty cover afforded by trees that had escaped the blast of...whatever it was. "Wouldn't it be like him to decide that he didn't need followers too stupid to get out of a cauldron left by an atomic blast?"

She stared at him blankly, and he cursed that his interest in Muggles was so very foreign to the rest of his House. "Nothing you need to worry about, never mind. It's highly unlikely that he sent us here to simply die."

She grinned, a rare expression on her face and one that did nothing whatsoever to make her more attractive - though Theo fully admitted he was biased on that matter - and said quietly, as if there was a chance their Lord might overhear. "You have more faith in him than I do, then."

"Do you really think he would do that?" Theo stopped walking away and turned to look at her again. It was still early enough in the war to believe that they would win this, that the death of the Headmaster and everything else that had happened in the weeks since had the Light too far on the defensive to strike against them. But it was never far enough into their Lord's service to believe that he would not kill them on a whim, however the war progressed; for that reason, Pansy's thoughts bore listening to.

The fact that they had turned to each other for friendship late in their first year had nothing to do with it. The fact that they remained, against all odds, close friends, the fact that they fought like demons and still allowed the other to walk away from it, the fact that when the Headmaster was sent a troublemaking Slytherin, if it was one of them the other was automatically sent along on principle, those facts had nothing to do with his trust in her.

And he ever tried to lie to himself. The truth was that Theodore Nott listened to what Pansy had to say because she was so very often right, and he had learned to trust that sense of hers. She had blind spots that encompassed most of the world outside their House and their cause, but within her scope of vision, she was no idiot.

She was probably right now, too.

"Of course I do," she said immediately. "He likes suicide missions. I can't make anything of the reason for it other than that he likes to see blood shed and doesn't care whose it is."

"You're talking sedition," Theo said automatically. "If you're overheard, you'll be next - I don't particularly care," he added, smiling extravagantly, "except that he seems to have learned a few key lessons quicker than Dumbledore ever did, and I'd be sent with you."

"Sent like hell," she said, smiling affectionately at him. "You'd go before me. You're far too chivalrous, my dear Theo."

"Only because I don't dare tell you what your place is." It was an honest statement. He had tried to treat her as he expected that women should be treated - with deference, with care, and with protection - and she had broken three of his ribs when her spell slammed him into a wall for his pains. Strength per se was not impressive, but the willingness to use it was one that he respected, even if it was with some reservations based on sex.

Her smile changed, lifting away from the points of her teeth in a near-snarl, and she said "No, you don't. And the only chance you'll ever be able to will be if you marry me, and I've no intention of letting that happen, thank you so much."

"No," he said, irritated. "You'll marry Malfoy and throw out a welcome mat for the Aurors, won't you?"

"If that's what it takes to survive," she said, her already-dark eyes even darker. "I would do that. If it meant survival."

"If you marry him," Theo said, trying to remain contemptuous of Malfoy, "it will be. Assuming he manages to stay out of Azkaban, they'll monitor you both until the day you die. He's too obvious and too flamboyant."

"Perhaps," she said, dismissing the conversation entirely. "But that will only matter if we lose, and if we don't do what he wants, we won't even find out if our side wins or loses. So let's get on that task again. The dirt's blowing into my hair."

"Then you'll have to have a nice long wash tonight. Where are we staying, anyway?"

"I've no idea," she said. "Here, apparently, if you don't get on with finding out what happened here." She stood with her arms folded, wand in her left hand, pointed casually off to the side and glared at him. He expected her foot to start tapping.

"Right," he said, taking his own wand out and crouching on the dirt. "I forgot that you don't do any work as long as I'm around to do it for you."

"I see no reason to change that," she said, looking down at him.



Title: In The Skin
Prompt: #16, Purple
Word Count: 1315


Only rarely did Theo bear the bruises of his father's hate and love for the world around him, but when he did they were very impressive. It was possible, he thought, standing in the bathroom at the house - if standing was a term that could be applied to someone sore enough to need to support himself on the sink - that this was the most impressive collection yet.

He touched the bruise on his hip, then traced the one that was just under his ribs. That one had a small raw-red patch at the centre of the spreading expanse of purple and black and blue that marked it as coming from his father's hand; the one on his hip was when he'd struck the marble plinth under the bust of Moradoc the Lonely, and there was probably another bruise three-quarters of the way round his other hip that he simply couldn't see from this angle that had come from his father's foot as he propelled his son forward.

He cast a reflecting spell behind him, and looked. Yes, there was. At least that one was small and rather more decently sized than the others, obscene in their largeness.

He sighed again. There was no point whatsoever to healing the bruises, not because Aram cared but because Theo did. Bruises, he had been taught in another context and he believed in this one, taught the best. They showed you what you had done wrong, and next time you would remember not to do it.

A harsh laugh at his reflection, one that nearly tipped over and became hysteria. But it was deserved; it was unlikely that the situation that had earned him this beating would likely prevail ever again.

The night of Dumbledore's death - such a short, short time ago, and a hundred years all at once - he had not left the castle, had seen no need to. His role in the fight had been reduced to one of support, and Theo had carried it out faithfully, never uttering an Unforgiveable, and only striking when there was a chance that anyone who remembered would remember that Theo had been struck at first.

He could plead innocence, in other words, and had done. Pled innocence and falsely-grieved for the Headmaster, and that obeisance had been enough to let him remain at the school.

It was an interesting place after the death of the Headmaster. For one thing, the phoenix, a powerful ally for the Light, was apparently gone. Some of the magic that was bound to the Headmaster himself had weakened - possibly lapsed entirely - and Theo realised that his Lord had never assumed that Draco would succeed in killing Dumbledore - after the fact the thing that Malfoy had been tasked with had come to light, if only to Theo, because Crabbe and Goyle were not smart enough to keep a secret, but Theo was smart enough to ask them questions and give them instructions. The bits and pieces they knew - not even Draco was dumb enough to trust them with much - and the events that Theo had seen personally made a very interesting picture.

The death of Dumbledore must have thrown his Lord's next course of action off track entirely. There was no point at all in trusting Malfoy with a task like that without having made him prove himself beforehand - not to ensure that he was trustworthy but that he was capable of such a thing - and the logical attack that would have exploited the school's weakened defences and the general disarray of the people inside never came. The next planned attack, Theo thought - and had said - was to kill Dumbledore and probably Draco at the same time.

That was when his father had punched him.

The best thing that could be said about the beating was that at least it was entirely non-magical in nature. It still hurt, but adding the Cruciatus would have made it infinitely worse, both at the time and for days to come.

It was not, apparently, administered because Theo saw the mistake in his Lord's plans but because he had remained precisely where he was, and had escaped suspicion other than that that naturally fell on their House and their year, and his father, an impetuous man in some things, particularly when blood was running if only metaphorically, would have been with Snape and Malfoy on their dash across the castle grounds.

Theo had thought about it and decided it was worth it and pointed out that his father would not have been sure of a reception on the other side of that run, or at least not a positive one. Their Lord had a tendency to dislike people who did not do what he expected, and in this case he expected the other students to hold their places and disguise their allegiances.

That had been the kick, the plinth, and the doubled fists to the back of the neck.

He raised the mirror. That bruise spread across his neck and halfway over his shoulders; it probably went up under his hairline and it definitely crossed over to his throat. He'd passed out at that one and he was bloody lucky - and knew it - that he hadn't died or been paralysed. Hitting the spine was a tricky business, and for that reason his father hadn't previously done so. Theo supposed that he was lucky that his impact with the plinth had turned him slightly off-centre to his father, and Aram's interlocked fists came down at just the wrong angle. Or at least it had been the wrong angle given that Theo had survived it.

He hadn't been forgiven, though, not even when he dropped - his last memory of that hallway had been falling through something that seemed amazingly like water, falling to the floor on his knees and not even hesitating there but simply continuing over and then it went dark.

He touched the small bruises over his ribs on the opposite side from the bruise on his hip. The fact that he'd been unconscious hadn't stopped Aram from putting the boot in, perhaps the finest sign of all of his anger at the insolence Theo had displayed. But they were smaller than they had been at times in the past when he'd fallen to the ground and been kicked, and no ribs had broken.

It really was a very skillful beating, he thought, looking at the bruises again. Something he'd not forget in a hurry, something that taught the lesson - respect - that Aram wanted it to, and something that would not involve the attentions of a mediwitch or his Lord. He was still capable of functioning, and if the call to action came, he could remove the residual stiffness with a spell. The blurred vision and ringing in his ears had ceased after two days in bed; the phantosmia had lasted a bit longer, making him think he was smelling bread for three days.

By the time that went away, he wasn't sure he could eat bread any more. The smell of baking bread was all very well and fine and evocative, but try smelling it for three days and see if you like it, he thought sarcastically at his reflection.

The lesson had been learned, though. Theo would never again point out the obvious flaws in his father's logic to Aram. He would point it out to someone else; not Lucius Malfoy who couldn't, in Theo's opinion, be trusted, and you knew you had personal problems when Slytherins thought you were too slimy to trust, but someone who could bring the story to the correct ears.

Oh yes, he had learned his lesson. But Aram had never learned how to command obedience, and had not commanded his son's obedience for years.



Title: In Dreams
Prompt: #11, Red
Word Count: 966


When Theo closed his eyes, Malfoy stepped out from the place that Theo kept his lust and want safe from prying eyes. His mind filled with the images that he had no more hope of seeing directed at himself than he did of flying to the moon under his own power, Malfoy laughing, pleasant, worried - all the expressions the other kept locked inside himself.

Mainly what he and Theo showed each other was a sort of tolerant antagonism. It was that laughing, jovial sort of thing where you explain it by saying that no one's really fighting, and you know that you are lying every time you say it.

Malfoy on a broom, face intent on the Snitch and set with hatred for Potter.

But at night, when Theo's eyes were closed and Malfoy was not, realistically, that far away, that was when the Draco that Theo saw only in his head walked, clean limbed and loose jointed like the predator that he was not in real life, for Theo knows this about Malfoy - he is not the man he wants to be, nor the man he should be. He is, in some fundamental way, weak. Why that is, Theo does not know.

The only part that matters is that it is.

Malfoy smiling under Snape's praise in class.

Theo falls asleep dreaming of Malfoy every night at the start of their sixth year together in school, a logical continuation of their knowledge of each other that started almost from the moment of birth. Whether he thinks that this want that Theo has for Draco is also a logical continuation of their lifelong relationship, Theo will not say.

He simply waits and wants and dreams. He is silent in this as in so many other things, the time when he could be simply open around Malfoy before school and puberty and want started long over, and Draco has never spoken to him of the fact that they do not share the secrets they used to. Theo wonders if he has ever noticed, or if Draco is too busy holding in secrets of his own to say.

Malfoy's eyes are closed, and the firelight casts red shadows on his skin that is nearly albino.

For he will say nothing of this love - it has never truly been lust, or not solely lust, though Theo wants nothing more than the feel of Malfoy against him - because it is a weakness. It is a weakness and it is a distraction, and he wants neither because he wants to come out of this war alive and the only way to do that is to not care about anyone else that much. Malfoy's fate in the war must be his own, and Theo will do what he can to assure his survival, but Theo must first focus on his own survival, on the difficult tasks that lie before them all.

Surviving is the hardest, perhaps, when death comes daily.

Malfoy, head bent over a book in the library, a book that he is not reading because he is staring at someone that Theo can't quite see from his own angle.

Theo tries to remember these vows, that he will stay in this war for himself, and that he will save himself first of all, even at night when he simply sees Malfoy, and falls in love all over again with the way that the blood tints his skin red and pink and the way his hair falls and the expressions he will share with Theo. But it is cruelly hard to consider that the war is heating up - people have disappeared, people have died, people have been found tortured and worse - and they will come to a breaking point soon and Draco seems to have some particular burden on him that might not be noticed because he still carries the rest of their House around with him, always with all eyes on the Malfoy scion who has dominated them casually since they were old enough to know it, but the rest of their House is not in love with him, Theo thinks when he looks up from his texts long enough to see the soft shadows that lie in Draco's grey eyes. It is a cruelly hard task, but the Notts have done their duty before now.

Theo thinks that probably dreaming of Malfoy and fantasising of his touch is not doing his duty, but he doesn't care. It gets him through the days, this boy that he cannot have and would not ask for if he knew the words. For that is what it comes down to. He does not know the words to tell Draco the things that Draco does not care about - love and affection and always and forever.

Malfoy sitting upright at the table in the Great Hall, looking over the ranks of people who served him, in their green and silver.

If only there was a chance that there would be a next week, a next month, a next year. Theo should not think of things like forever until he can promise later.

The Muggle saying about red skies suddenly occurs to Theo and he thinks that it might be an accurate way of forecasting the weather but it's not right for anything else, because red skies make Theo think of Malfoy and that makes him think of things that no warrior should think of.

Malfoy in a chair across the common room from Theo, his eyes open but looking far away and a secret smile playing over his face as his fingers gently press together.

It does not matter whether the skies are red in the morning or at night. For Theo, red skies are always a warning.



Title: In The Stars
Prompt: #18, Black
Word Count: 997


The sun was not yet up when Aram shook his son awake. Some things were too precious to trust to house elves, and his son was one of them, as the son regarded his father.

"Theo," he said quietly. "Wake up. It's started."

Theo turned and stretched, reluctant to leave the comfort of his bed, pretending to still be asleep even as he pretended he was waking. He could feel Aram's smile as he crouched beside the bed, trying to wake his recalcitrant son, and turned again to avoid showing his own small smile. But it was no use to pretend - he was awake, and there was nothing for it but to get up.

As he sat up, the covers falling away, his father shifted, but did not move away. Notts did nothing so crass as flinch at the sight of flesh even if it was family, and Aram looked Theo over for a moment.

Theo knew what he saw, the skinny chest that had not settled into adulthood well, had not broadened much though he carried some muscle - the slim muscles of a runner rather than the bulky ones of an athlete - and the rest of the body that was not so much slender as weedy. He hadn't adapted to his height yet, newly gotten as it was.

Aram stood and stepped away slightly though his eyes did not turn more than necessary to determine that he was not going to set himself on fire as he lit a cigarette. "You're too thin, boy." It was as close as he was likely to get to a gesture of care, at least an overt one, but the fact that he was here, waking Theo in the middle of the night to go to the roof with him was enough of a sign of that for Theo. His contentment, as he shoved his feet into slippers and pulled on a shirt and jacket, was complete.

But there was something of the little boy left in Theo - or perhaps it was the dangerous man he would some day become when he finished teetering on the older side of adolescence and fell fully into adulthood - when he took Aram's hand as they went to the roof. His father did not resist, and indeed closed his own hand about Theo's. It was a comforting feeling precisely because there was no fear in it, no reluctance to touch, as Theo sometimes saw in other people.

He could not understand the fear of your offspring that permeated so much of the world, and it was something he saw in both Muggles and wizards. The moment when the parent didn't touch the child who expected it but was now too old in one person's estimation was visible, if you wanted to see it.

The air was cool, but not cold, when they finally stepped out on the roof. It was, after all, August, and it never seemed to get cold during this summer of change. No one knew what would happen with the Dark Lord's rebirth - Theo was not, as a nearly-fifth-year, privileged to know what the Death Eaters planned now - and that tension seemed to infect the world around them, making it hotter, muggier, worse to live in.

But some things were still beautiful, and the heavens above them as they stood, still hand in hand on the roof, were one of them. It was August 12th, and somewhere in the world it was not dark out, and somewhere else in the world it was another day, but in this part of the world at this moment, the only thing that tied them to it their hands clasped in each other's and their feet touching the slightly slick surface of the roof, Theo and Aram stood, quietly and calmly, and watched the Perseid meteor shower, the lights cutting through the blackness that seemed to extend for eternity.

"The tears of St. Lawrence," Aram said quietly, and Theo was surprised and not surprised at the same time. He knew that his interest in the Muggle world had not come out of a vacuum; it was an interest his father shared, and yet it was a surprise to hear Aram refer to it.

"The Dark Lord would have a curse for you, if he heard you say something like that." Theo smiled, a fleeting gesture, as his eyes looked out of the darkness and found his father's face. It was a risk, but on this night, as the meteors fell from the sky and Aram held his son's hand, he thought it one worth taking.

Sometimes slaves need to be allowed to sing.

"He would," Aram agreed simply, and he let go of Theo's hand. Theo tensed slightly, but Aram did not take out his wand, and did not gesture a curse lazily at his son. Instead, he stepped behind him, and wrapped his arms around Theo's waist, holding him close, Aram's chest pressed to Theo's back. Like lovers, Theo thought, not uncomfortable with that thought either.

They were not, of course, and the thought had never been formally said between them, but sometimes there were moments that were hard to explain. The moments, like those where Aram watched Theo dress a few minutes ago and did not flinch, and this where Aram held Theo, and the one that lasted so very long where Theo took Aram's hand. They were hard to explain to anyone who was not them, but to Theo they were the moments he looked at later, the ones he ran fingers of memory over to feel their facets.

The moments when their lives were almost normal were the moments when their lives were the most fucked up, and that paradox was very appealing to Theo, as paradox always was.

He leaned back against Aram, comforted in the circle of his arms, and his fingers traced the Dark Mark while he watched the stars fall.



Title: In The Mirror
Prompt: #13, Yellow
Word Count: 703


The roses sat in a vase on the hall table, their colour - yellow, that of friendship - reflected in the mirror. But either the mirror was far enough away, or else his eyesight was bad, because it was simply their colour that shone in the mirror. Not their shapes, beyond the sense of a vague roundness that did not show petals.

There was the suggestion of leaves, as well, below the yellow that was the head of the flower, but the leaves were so negligible as to be unimportant. And it was the mirror, Theo thought, looking closer, that made the reflection what it was. His eyesight was perfect.

It was like looking at a Muggle carnival mirror, and it was fascinating like the gaze of a snake, the hard edges glittering, the mirror looking almost soft where the roses were trapped in it.

He touched it.

The mirror ran under his fingers, silver sliding down the glass towards the frame and the floor beyond, tiny refractions of self and roses and chandelier in the rivulets. He pulled his fingers away and stared at the mirror with a look of shock that verged on horror. There were many mirrors in the wizarding world; the Mirror of Erised was simply the best known. And he looked up, wondering if this mirror too said what it was.

It did, but not in words. It was simply a mirror, hung in the entry way of a country house, a mirror that had been there forever, for he had grown up with it. This was the Nott family home, his home now - had been for years - and the mirror had hung there more than five times as long as his own 24 years. It had been put there by Theo's great grandfather, when he took the house as a young man, and it had been, at least if the family legend was anything to go on, one of the first mirrors of its sort ever made. All that the mirror announced itself to be was a mirror, one that reflected a country estate's front hall. It did not show you the future as you wished it, it was not a foeglass, and it did nothing at all magical until now.

Theo looked at the trace of running glass and silver and picked up a bead of it on his finger. It showed him himself in impossibly tiny miniature, and upside down.

There was nothing unusual about the damn thing except for what it was doing, he thought, frustrated. Drawing his wand, he pointed it at the mirror and said "Finite Incantatem!"

The mirror resisted. The roses reflected as they had always done, and the mirror did not change. Not an enchantment, then. Theo might well be weak at some types of magic, but that was not one of them.

Then it was something else. And yet, nothing else looked odd.

Except the roses, he thought, cursing himself for a fool. There was a card with them, one that he had not bothered to read, and he looked at it now. The signature in particular was noted, and he laughed, suddenly, before tossing the card back onto the table and incinerating the roses with a carefully-controlled Incendius.

Yellow was for friendship, but there was not a chance that Zabini would ever regard Theo as a friend again. He had not before, though Theo had been expedient, but now he was not indeed. He had avoided Azkaban (barely) as so many had not, and Zabini held that against him. But Zabini did not seem to realise that Theo was quite capable of knowing from the wording of the cards and the choice of name signed who had sent something like this.

Yellow roses for friendship indeed. And Ugone da Lucca's soporific, made from mandrake and known to so very few, had been added by accident, of course.

Theo walked out of the hallway whistling, wondering how many house elves had died from the poison the flowers carried. He did not concentrate on whether or not he was lucky to have escaped it, but he did resolve that it was probably time to do something about Zabini.



Title: In The Blood And The Bone
Prompt: #20, Colourless
Word Count: 1861


It struck him later that he should have been wakened out of a sound sleep, perhaps by torchlight. That would have been the sort of thing to tell him what was wrong, or even that something was wrong as he woke.

Instead, Aram found him in one of the drawing rooms of the Nott home in Glastonbury, England's witching country and centre of many cults of spirit, ranging from the Tor to the ruined Abbey to the New Age shops in the Muggle town's High Street.

Theo was looking out the window over the estate's grounds when the footsteps alerted him. They were the footsteps that dogged his memory, and that he knew awake and asleep. They were the footsteps of his father.

"Have you heard?" Even with the evident urgency conveyed by his words, Aram gave no indication of physically feeling any urgency. He was not rushed, and he was not breathing heavily. Instead, he simply stood, rotating into Theo's view when the latter turned from the window to look at his father.

"Heard what?" A hairsplit of time and he remembered himself and who he was talking to. "I've heard nothing of import today, Father."

"Then you haven't heard about Lucius." Now that Theo was looking closer, he could see the sweat on the other man's forehead, sure sign that he was very agitated. Perhaps, Theo thought with a stab of something like glee, even nervous.

"What about him?" He had to be careful, he thought. He was skirting the edge of politeness as it was, and his father was not the sort of man to refuse to take offence simply because it was his son speaking. If anything, Aram would take more offence that Theo dared to be rude to him.

"He's dead."

That seemed to rule out the odds that Aram would be monitoring deportment today. Theo felt his jaw drop and stared at the other man, who allowed a flicker of amusement into his eyes, apparently at his son's discomfiture. "How did it happen?"

"The Killing Curse," Aram said quietly. "No one saw it delivered - though he was last seen with our Lord." He quirked an eyebrow. "Draw your own conclusions, Theo."

Theo did so. Either their Lord had tired of Lucius' comfort with treachery, or else he was spying. The possibility that someone else was involved and their Lord was not hurt was remote at best. "Was the body found in a location that tells who did it?"

"No." It had been left close enough to their Lord's current location to be him removing a threat, and far enough to be Lucius meeting someone, then.

"What will happen now?"

"I don't know," Aram said. "He may wish to question all of us, but he hasn't" - he touched his own Mark - "summoned either of us, at least."

Theo noticed something interesting when Aram touched the Mark - he hadn't looked as though it was the devotion it normally was for the older man, and still was for the younger. He had looked, in fact, distracted from something more profound by the mundanity of this brand and this device and this curse that he embodied even as it embodied him.

He considered tactics. "He hasn't summoned us - does that mean we're clear or that we're the suspects?"

Aram smiled without humour. "It could be either, boy." But something had shone there... Theo puzzled it out, deliberately ignoring the rough word that was meant as insult to a man of eighteen and a warrior for nearly a year.

When he finally prized it loose, it startled him to realise what was in his father's eyes. Not because it was unfamiliar but because it was so very familiar - it was the look that Theo wore when he was not on his guard and images of Draco came to his mind, the look of lust and love for something that could never, ever be had. Something that the holder of those emotions would not stoop to ask for.

Shit, he thought, the comfort of the Muggle curse that he had learned at school a heavy, blunt touch in his mind. It was inconceivable that the Notts should have the same passion for the Malfoys from generation to generation, and for a moment he found himself wondering if there was a family curse, but then he remembered that they had all gone to the same school, and his father was Lucius' age, and the Notts had a habit of being superior to the Malfoys in all but wealth and number of arrests by the Ministry, but the Malfoys were very beautiful, and tended to wear the rest of their House like an ornament, leading with no effort, the Princes of Slytherin. And for a moment he was smug.

But Aram looked at him with an expression Theo found unpleasant now. "Shall we go to him anyway, or wait to find out what's happened?" It was a deliberately poorly framed question, and as usual, it distracted Aram.

His hand was heavy across Theo's face as he slapped him, the signet ring that Aram wore with their family crest on it tearing a cut in his cheek, and he touched it as it began to bleed, looking at his father with the same dulled hate that he always wore after such an event, even though inside he was singing. He had learned to play his father for a reason, but Aram had never bothered to learn to play his son, and now Theo had a secret about the older man.

"I'm amazed you've lived this long, you idiot." Aram's voice was satisfied, though, and Theo relaxed slightly. "We'll wait. It's not even openly known yet. Turning up at his side would be suspicious at best." He tossed Theo a handkerchief. "Stem that before you ruin your shirt."

It was on the tip of his tongue to deliver a retort, but Theo simply took the square of material and pressed it to his cheek. His eyes were turned aside, and he missed the moment that his father decided to break cover.

"There is another option," he said, thoughtfully.

"Unless you intend for us to run," Theo said, deliberately nastily as was his habit after such a strike, "I don't see it. Either we wait to be summoned, in an agony of suspense, or we turn up now and become suspects one and two."

"You're not bleeding from both sides of your face yet." The tone was warning, and Theo subsided with a quiet apology. The other man relaxed even more. "But you've raised a point."

Theo nearly dropped the cloth at that. Aram Nott, suggesting they leave? Leave this war they'd worked and waited for?

The surprise must have been obvious. His father's voice was deliberately casual. "How much of a chance of success do you imagine there will be, without Lucius and his contacts?"

Aram was very good, Theo though. He hadn't even let a trace of his longing for the other man's body into his voice, though it was still in his eyes, very faint and at the back, but no challenge to find for someone who had spent so long studying the other man, and the thought came to him that Lucius must have known that Aram lusted after him, perhaps even loved him, and Theo wondered if he'd ever said anything about it.

"I don't know," he said finally, biting back the instinctive A great deal better, if he can't sell us out, that he'd wanted to say. "Apparently you don't consider them to be good."

"And the first rule of Slytherin is survival."

"True."

Theo pulled the handkerchief away and examined it, then dabbed it against his cheek again. The cut had apparently stopped bleeding already, or at least most of it had, and he touched it to the very end of the cut, the bit closest to his ear where the ring had dug deepest.

And his right hand was empty. Aram turned away slightly, pacing, that habit that Theo had learned from him. "How would we justify it to the other side? I assume we'd go to them, unless you'd like to be hunted men for the rest of our lives - because this war will end soon and both sides will be after us; it will not matter who won." For a moment he thought he'd pushed too far, but Aram continued pacing.

"We'd have to," he said finally. "And we will not claim that there was any sort of coercion. But it would work to say that it became too much. You are not the only Nott to have been noticed as not taking part in the...excesses of this side's war."

He meant that they had not killed Muggles. Nonetheless, Theo's wand dropped into his hand. The Unforgiveables were not possible without a wand.

"I think that is a story that would work," he said carefully. "Particularly if we could wait long enough for another excess to happen."

"There will be one, after this night, I am sure. Either the Dark Lord will arrange it out of anger at the loss of Lucius, or out of celebration." Theo noted the use of the phrase "Dark Lord" - not one that the Notts were accustomed to, and he thought that his father had already broken faith, both with his Lord and with his son, whether he knew it or not.

"You would have us wait until morning, then."

"When they begin to realise how disastrous this night was for them, and for the Muggles, yes."

"It makes sense," he said, and he dropped the handkerchief, arresting Aram's attention on it even as his wand hand came up. His father stared and Theo shouted "Avada Kedavra!"

His father fell, nothing in his eyes now, not even the lust for a Malfoy that Theo called curse. It would destroy them all in the end, this futile lust for those men.

He turned back to the window then, tears running down his face. He would not give voice to the sobs that threatened, though, would not disgrace himself that far - this had been what needed to be done, to keep everyone else safe, and to keep their war, Theo's chance to make the world safe, intact. It had been what needed doing; Theo cursed himself for sentimental weakness.

The sun was setting, and the colour was leaching out of the world around him, not even simply out of the world outside, but also of the one inside. It was becoming flat, colourless, and his tears were blurring it.

He stood at the window long enough to ensure that he would be under control when he turned in the darkness and stepped over the fallen body to leave the room and Apparate to his Lord's side.

To report the death of a man who spoke treason.

To report the death of his father, the centre of his world long before that world was burned on his arm.

To report his own death, though his body still walked through the colourless world around it.