#c: leontius nott

[tnott]

[18 December 1993]

“So,” Theo’s father said, “what would you like to do for your birthday next week?”

He had picked her up from the Hogwarts Express earlier that day, and now the two of them were sitting across from each other at the small table in the kitchen, partway through a meal of fried cod and spiced red lentils. Normally Theo would have been enjoying the food — it was one of her favorite dishes — but she hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, and so far she’d only managed to swallow a few mouthfuls.

She answered her father’s question with a shrug, pushing the lentils around her plate with her fork. She’d be turning fourteen on the coming Wednesday, but she hadn’t given the occasion much thought; she’d spent the past few weeks simply focusing on the fact that she would soon be home, home with her dad and her dog, and away from those horrible Dementors. Just riding past them in the thestral-drawn carriage had nearly made her sick, and she’d felt clammy and chilled for the entire train ride back to London.

“We could go to a museum,” her father suggested. “Or a concert, perhaps. A trip to the city would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

With her attention fixed on her plate, she couldn’t see the look in Leontius Nott’s eyes as he gazed at his daughter — weighing, assessing, and more than a little worried.

“You’re not eating,” he said gently. “Are you feeling well, Theo?”

Once more, she shrugged. “I’m not really hungry,” she said. “I think I’ll go to bed early.” She didn’t wait for permission, but got to her feet, pushed in her chair, and placed her half-full plate on the counter beside the sink. Nell, the house elf, would take care of it. Then she kissed her father on the cheek.

“Goodnight, Dad,” she said.

He squeezed her around the shoulders and said, “I’ll come tuck you in once you’ve changed, all right, my girl?”

She nodded, once more missing the look of concern on her father’s lined face, and then left the kitchen. Hal padded along behind her, his collar jingling as they climbed the stairs; the dog followed her nearly everywhere when she was home, keeping her company as she read or played, and spending his nights sleeping at the foot of her bed.

When she reached her room, she closed the door behind her and sank onto the mattress, staring up at the familiar blue ceiling with its smattering of silver stars. She didn’t change right away, but simply lay there, feeling too listless to move. She’d thought she would be all right here, safe at home, far from the looming Dementors and the dark castle and her beastly classmates. She’d expected the leaden weight that had settled in her chest to fall away when she finally saw her father. But it hadn’t. She felt no less hollow or tired or cold than she had yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that.

Part of her wanted to tell her father, but something held her back. Not fear, precisely; she knew Dad would never be upset with her. But she didn’t want to disappoint him. She didn’t want him to think that she was weak, that she couldn’t cope with a simple Dementor. No one else at school seemed to be affected by them the way she was, except perhaps Potter. But then, Potter was always having funny turns. The Dark Lord’s curse had addled his brains, or so Mr. Malfoy had once said.

Still, even Potter’s fainting spells occurred only when he was physically near the Dementors. Theo didn’t have to be near them; their chill seemed to follow her throughout the castle like some miasma of despair, leaving her breathless and sleepless, empty and cold. Even here, safe in her bedroom with Hal beside her, it was hard for her to feel anything but a bone-deep sense of exhaustion.

Eventually she roused herself, fetching her flannel pajamas from beneath her pillow and changing into them. Not long after that, there was a knock on her door, and her father called, “Theo, are you decent?”

“Yes,” she said, sliding off the bed and walking across the carpet to the door. Her father entered, still dressed from dinner, and for a brief moment it struck Theo how old he was — grey and stooped, his round face wrinkled and his knuckles swollen with arthritis. He was old, and someday he would die. He would die, and he would go in the ground with her mother, and then Theo would be alone.

Abruptly, she burst into tears.

“My girl,” she heard her father say, “my girl, what’s wrong?” But she simply shook her head and fell into his arms, crying harder than she’d cried in ages.

She didn’t know how long they stood there, her father holding her tightly as she sobbed into the folds of his robe, Hal padding over to sit beside her, grounding her with his warm weight as he leaned against her leg. It was only when her tears had receded to hiccoughs that her father spoke again.

“Come here,” he said, guiding her out into the hall. “Come with me.” He led her to his own room, Hal following, and shepherded her onto the loveseat in the corner. Then he pulled out one of her mother’s knitted afghans and wrapped it around her before sitting down beside her.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he asked softly.

That set off another flood of tears, and it was some time before Theo calmed down enough to speak. “I don’t feel right,” she managed to choke out, wiping her streaming eyes on the corner of the afghan. “I don’t— I don’t—”

She dissolved once more into sobs. Between gasped breaths, she told her father everything — about the Dementors, about that horrible boggart, about her falling grades, her sleepless nights and, most of all, about the hollow, echoing despair that seemed to have settled into her very bones.

“I’m so tired,” she hiccuped, once her torrential confession had subsided, “always, all the time, but I can never sleep — I don’t even know when I last slept. If I could just freeze the world somehow and really sleep for a few months—”

“Shh,” her father said, holding her close. “It’s all right, Theo.” He brushed a strand of hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. “You’re having a melancholy fit. I had hoped you would escape them, since they passed over me, but I’m afraid they do run in the family.”

”Is there a way to make it stop?” she asked, sniffling a little.

”There’s no cure,” he said, and his blue eyes were sad as he looked at her. “But there is a special tea that I can teach you to make. I’m afraid it’s not like Pepper-Up; you won’t feel better right away. But if you drink it every morning, it will help.”

A wave of relief seemed to be washing over Theo, and she leaned sideways to rest her head against her father’s shoulder. He knew. He knew what this was, and he knew how to fix it, and he didn’t seem disappointed in her at all. He just seemed concerned.

”I think, right now, we should start by getting you a good night’s rest,” he said. “I’ll give you a sleeping draught, and we can tackle the bigger problems in the morning.”

She nodded and then asked, softly, “Can I stay here tonight?” She would feel safer with her father near than she would alone in her own room.

“Of course.” With a wave of his wand, her father conjured up a pillow and placed it in Theo’s lap. As he went to fetch the sleeping draught, Theo settled herself on the cushions, burrowing under the afghan and then whistling Hal up beside her. The dog bounded onto the loveseat, his golden tail wagging, and curled up by her feet.

”Here you are,” her father said a moment later, returning with a glass of purple potion.

Obediently, Theo drank the lot before laying her head down on the pillow and closing her eyes.

”Sleep,” she heard her father say, just before she drifted into slumber. “Hal’s here. I’m here. We’ll take care of you.”

[tnott]

Draco: My father is a noble man.

Hermione: Your dad is a dick.

Draco: But-

Hermione: Your dad is a dick.

Theodore: He really is.

Hermione: Your dad is a dick too Theo.

[mr-nott]

skull ring with blue topaz by kipkalinka

[tnott]

6 July 1995

Dear Mum,

I know what Dad is. I know what happened at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, and I know what Dad is, and I know what he does when he goes out at night. He doesn’t think I know, but I do.

Did you know? You have to have known; you were married to him. If he hasn’t managed to hide it from me, then there’s not a chance that he kept it hidden from you. Maybe you even went out at night with him. I don’t know, and I don’t want to ask.

If I don’t ask, then Dad doesn’t have to tell me anything, and if he doesn’t tell me anything, then I can’t betray him if he’s caught. And I know he’s careful, but I’m scared that he will be caught this time. The Ministry would send him to Azkaban, and then you’d both be gone. I’ve already lost you. I can’t lose Dad, too.

I miss you, Mum. I don’t know if you can see us, wherever you’ve gone, but if you can, if there’s anything you can do – please, keep Dad safe.

Love you always,

Theo

[tnott]

Talk about Papa Nott

@candere || send talk about + a name || accepting

I don’t know how I feel about my father anymore. I’m very angry at him. He betrayed me. I know he doesn’t see it that way, but that’s how I see it. From the time I was small, he always taught me that family loyalty was the most important value one could have -- that you should place your family before all else. And I believed him. I internalized that. Dad was my only family after Mum died, the most important person in the world to me, so when the Dark Lord returned and Dad started following him again, I kept it secret. I knew Dad was doing horrible things, but I kept my mouth shut, because I didn’t want to be separated from him. I lied for him, even though I thought some of what he was doing was wrong, because didn’t want to see him in Azkaban.

But in the end, when push came to shove, he picked loyalty to the Dark Lord over loyalty to me. Instead of doing what he needed to do to keep our family intact, he followed the Dark Lord all the way to the end. Now he’s rotting in Azkaban, and I’m alone.

But as angry at him as I am, I can’t fully hate him. He’s my dad. He was always there for me when I was small, and always took good care of me. He loved me, cherished me, comforted me when I had nightmares, told me stories, taught me how to read and how to play chess. He taught me my first spells. He was so proud of me, and I always knew I meant the world to him. It’s hard to hate him when I remember how deeply he loved me and how good he was to me. I was lucky. Not all of my friends had such caring parents. Up until the Second War, I couldn’t have asked for a better father. But then the Dark Lord returned, and I guess from that moment on, my family was doomed, even if I didn’t realize it until later.

[tnott]

What are Theo's thoughts on Death Eaters in general?

headcanon questions || always accepting

For the most part, they frighten her. Her father is the main exception, as well as Draco Malfoy, whom Theo doesn’t consider to be a “real” Death Eater.

The Death Eater she’s had the closest contact with, aside from her father, is her maternal uncle, Iago Selwyn. She was sent to live with him, his wife Calantha (also a Death Eater), and his sister Gwendolen Rosier (not a Death Eater, but sympathetic to the cause) when her father was imprisoned after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. Iago is an awful person even by Death Eater standards, and he scares the crap out of Theo.

She’s also had a fair amount of contact with Lucius Malfoy, due to spending so much time with Draco as a child. She wasn’t certain that he was a Death Eater until he was arrested at the Department of Mysteries, but she had strongly suspected it for about a year by then, and was unnerved by the idea. She tried to sound @mayhemxmugglesxmagic‘s Draco out on the matter during the summer between their 4th and 5th years, because she had figured out that the Dark Lord had returned, but it was clear from his response that Draco had no idea what was going on.

(Lucius Malfoy was much better at keeping secrets from his child than Leontius Nott was.)

And, of course, there’s also Severus Snape. Theo respects Snape. He may not be kind, but he’s well-versed in his subject and he’s squarely on the side of his Slytherins when it comes to inter-House conflicts. He’s the only staff member whom she trusts not to be biased against her because of her house.

After she learns that he’s a Death Eater – she has no idea that he’s actually a double agent – she becomes more cautious around him, because she’s afraid that if he sees any signs of disloyalty in her, it’ll be reported to the Dark Lord and will rebound on her father. That’s her greatest fear during her 7th year at Hogwarts – that if she messes up, it’ll be used against her dad, since he’s already on Voldemort’s shit list due to the disaster at the Department of Mysteries. So she’s cautious around Snape. But he doesn’t frighten her the way most of the others do.

[tnott]

For the headcanon meme. What was Theo's life before Hogwarts? Her daily life with her father, etc? And what kind of hypothetical crimes would her father speak of? Like would he go into deep detail of said hypothetical crimes that involved poison?

@betterdcyz || ask me headcanon questions || always accepting

Apart from her foreign language lessons and her music lessons, both of which were done formally, Theo’s father largely followed an unschooling philosophy. Theo was allowed to pursue whatever subject interested her, whether that was history, potions, natural philosophy, mathematics, art, or something else entirely. If she wanted to catch and dissect a frog to see how its body worked, she was allowed to. If she wanted to read Bathilda Bagshot’s entire oeuvre, she was allowed to. If she wanted to practice basic spells, she was allowed to, and to hell with the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. Leontius Nott was opposed to that law even before he had a child.

This particular method of education obviously might not work for everyone, but Theo has always been highly curious and self-motivated, as well as quite gifted, so this gave her the opportunity to study advanced subjects in-depth in a way that she likely would not have gotten in a school (or at least not a Muggle school like the one the mun went to!).

Her father encouraged her love of reading, and he made sure that she always had access to a wide range of books -- and many books about witches specifically, not just wizards. She was allowed to read anything, and by anything, I mean literally anything, no matter what the subject might be. Her father didn’t have any truck with the idea of “age-appropriateness”, and the Nott family library definitely contains some books that would be placed in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts.

(Death Eaters do not always make responsible parenting decisions.)

If Theo didn’t recognize a word, she would look it up. If she didn’t understand a concept, she would ask her father to explain it. If she had a question, she would read further to discover the answer. She’s never been satisfied with surface-level explanations.

Her father absolutely doted on her, so a typical day would involve eating meals together, him making himself available to help her with any questions or experiments or other activities, a game of chess or two, piano practice, and cooking dinner together. Sometime she would go to see her friends -- Draco and Pansy and Vincent, though she found Vincent rather boring, as well as a handful of other pureblood children who were around her age. Sometimes her friends came over to her house, which she preferred because she’s a homebody at heart.

And then, of course, there were the Dark Arts lessons. Those didn’t start formally until she was ten, and she was absolutely sworn to secrecy about them, but even before that, there were “games” he would play with her that were, essentially, Dark Arts education.

(As I said earlier, Death Eaters do not always make responsible parenting decisions.)

The poison games were probably Theo’s favorite, though at the time she really had no idea how sinister they were, nor did she realize that her father was subtly giving her tips on how to murder people without getting caught. He was already teaching her about potions by brewing them and showing her how to identify them by sight and smell, so it wasn’t hard for him to incorporate brewing poisons into those lessons as well. He would teach her how to recognize them, tell her what effects they had on the human body and what could be done to counter them, and then quiz her by giving her details of a crime (mostly hypothetical, but sometimes something that had actually happened) and asking her to look at the evidence and figure out how the victim had been murdered.

It’s fun when she’s eight. It’s not so fun when she’s eighteen and her father is in Azkaban and she’s looking back on how he raised her.

[tnott]

How do you feel about your father?

“How do you feel about ______?” || accepting

He betrayed me.

Dad was everything to me when I was growing up. He was my only family, my best friend, the center of my world. He always told me that he loved me more than anything else in the whole world. And he taught me that family should always, always come first. That’s the Nott motto: Familia supra omnia. We’re supposed to be loyal to our family above all else. I was taught that family loyalty was the highest virtue. So when he swore me to secrecy about things, like the lessons in Dark magic or his involvement with the Dark Lord, I kept those secrets. I stayed silent to protect him. I lied to protect him. Because he was my dad, and he was all the family I had, and we Notts protect each other.

But he didn’t protect me. In the end, when push came to shove, he chose to stay loyal to the Dark Lord rather than to keep our family intact. He broke the code that he had taught me. I kept my mouth shut for him, and I lied for him, and I went against my own conscience for him, but then he abandoned me.

[tnott]

// For Leontius: Looking back, is there anything you wish you'd done differently when it came to raising your daughter? //

@avisisms || ask the parents || accepting

“I would have home-schooled her. Hogwarts’ curriculum was appalling in some areas, and all that time spent mixing with those mudbloods and half-bloods put too many funny ideas in her head.”

[tnott]

Theo does not hold any kind of funeral for her father, nor does she tell anyone about his death. She collects his body from Azkaban, buries him next to her mother, and tries to go about her business as usual. She does this because she doesn’t expect anyone else to mourn him or to offer any sympathy -- her father was a Death Eater and a murderer -- and because her feelings towards him are still too conflicted and too raw for her to want to talk about them.

[tnott]

Since Theo does have such a tense relationship with her aunt, it’s probably worth me taking a moment to point out that Theo’s view of Gwendolen’s feelings and motivations is not objective, and sometimes even flat-out wrong.

Gwendolen does care about her niece. She would have been devastated if she’d known how much Theo was suffering during her Sixth Year, and how Gwendolen’s own behavior had contributed to that. The problem is that she just hasn’t found a way to let go of all the emotional baggage left from her conflict with Leontius Nott.

She blames Leontius for taking away the last piece of her sister left -- not only because he cut off contact with her after Cordelia’s death, but also because, in raising Theo alone, he had a great impact on the person Theo became. There were traits that Theo shared with Cordelia as a child that she no longer has as a teenager, when Gwendolen finally sees her again.

Leontius didn’t set out to erase all traces of Cordelia from their daughter, and in fact would be very insulted by the implication that he had done so even inadvertently. He sees quite a lot of Cordelia in Theo. But being her only parent does mean that he influenced almost every facet of who she is -- her hobbies, her sense of humor, her interests, her taste in books, her mannerisms, her habits, everything.

After Leontius was arrested at the Department of Mysteries, Gwendolen got handed an extremely angry, depressed, and hurt teenage girl whom she neither knew nor understood. She saw far more echoes of Leontius in Theo than she did echoes of Cordelia, and instead of giving the situation some thought and approaching things carefully, she reacted emotionally, which led to her making a lot of mistakes, losing her temper, and doing and saying some things that really upset Theo.

She never approved of Iago hitting Theo, and did rip into him about it behind closed doors. Her mistake there was that she never talked directly to Theo about what had happened, so Theo ended up assuming that Gwendolen didn’t actually have any problem with her uncle’s violence. And unfortunately, that incident ended up setting the tone for their relationship.

Gwendolen does want Theo to be happy. She does want Theo to have a good life. But she and Theo don’t share all the same values, or all the same ideas of what “a good life” entails. She also fucked up big time when Theo first came to live with her, and she hasn’t ever managed to regain Theo’s trust.

[tnott]

4. what seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character?

@kerrotko || character development questions || accepting

Most of Theo’s memories of her mother have become hazy as she’s grown older, and the sharpest one that remains is a moment that, even at the time, would probably have been considered small and unimportant. Theo was around five years old, and she has a very clear memory of sitting on the sofa and watching as her parents danced together around the room to an old jazz record. She can still hum the piece that was playing, and she can clearly see their expressions in her mind – her mother laughing, her eyes sparkling, as Leontius twirled Cordelia across the carpet, and the soft, tender look on her father’s face as he gazed at his wife.

It wasn’t any kind of notable or earth-shattering moment, but Theo treasures her memory of it.

[tnott]

@aninternalwildfire || angsty words meme || accepting

Prompt: Misunderstanding

[18 December 1993]

“So,” Theo’s father said, “what would you like to do for your birthday next week?”

He had picked her up from the Hogwarts Express earlier that day, and now the two of them were sitting across from each other at the small table in the kitchen, partway through a meal of fried cod and spiced red lentils. Normally Theo would have been enjoying the food — it was one of her favorite dishes — but she hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, and so far she’d only managed to swallow a few mouthfuls.

She answered her father’s question with a shrug, pushing the lentils around her plate with her fork. She’d be turning fourteen on the coming Wednesday, but she hadn’t given the occasion much thought; she’d spent the past few weeks simply focusing on the fact that she would soon be home, home with her dad and her dog, and away from those horrible Dementors. Just riding past them in the thestral-drawn carriage had nearly made her sick, and she’d felt clammy and chilled for the entire train ride back to London.

“We could go to a museum,” her father suggested. “Or a concert, perhaps. A trip to the city would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

With her attention fixed on her plate, she couldn’t see the look in Leontius Nott’s eyes as he gazed at his daughter — weighing, assessing, and more than a little worried.

“You’re not eating,” he said gently. “Are you feeling well, Theo?”

Once more, she shrugged. “I’m not really hungry,” she said. “I think I’ll go to bed early.” She didn’t wait for permission, but got to her feet, pushed in her chair, and placed her half-full plate on the counter beside the sink. Nell, the house elf, would take care of it. Then she kissed her father on the cheek.

“Goodnight, Dad,” she said.

He squeezed her around the shoulders and said, “I’ll come tuck you in once you’ve changed, all right, my girl?”

She nodded, once more missing the look of concern on her father’s lined face, and then left the kitchen. Hal padded along behind her, his collar jingling as they climbed the stairs; the dog followed her nearly everywhere when she was home, keeping her company as she read or played, and spending his nights sleeping at the foot of her bed.

When she reached her room, she closed the door behind her and sank onto the mattress, staring up at the familiar blue ceiling with its smattering of silver stars. She didn’t change right away, but simply lay there, feeling too listless to move. She’d thought she would be all right here, safe at home, far from the looming Dementors and the dark castle and her beastly classmates. She’d expected the leaden weight that had settled in her chest to fall away when she finally saw her father. But it hadn’t. She felt no less hollow or tired or cold than she had yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that.

Part of her wanted to tell her father, but something held her back. Not fear, precisely; she knew Dad would never be upset with her. But she didn’t want to disappoint him. She didn’t want him to think that she was weak, that she couldn’t cope with a simple Dementor. No one else at school seemed to be affected by them the way she was, except perhaps Potter. But then, Potter was always having funny turns. The Dark Lord’s curse had addled his brains, or so Mr. Malfoy had once said.

Still, even Potter’s fainting spells occurred only when he was physically near the Dementors. Theo didn’t have to be near them; their chill seemed to follow her throughout the castle like some miasma of despair, leaving her breathless and sleepless, empty and cold. Even here, safe in her bedroom with Hal beside her, it was hard for her to feel anything but a bone-deep sense of exhaustion.

Eventually she roused herself, fetching her flannel pyjamas from beneath her pillow and changing into them. Not long after that, there was a knock on her door, and her father called, “Theo, are you decent?”

“Yes,” she said, sliding off the bed and walking across the carpet to the door. Her father entered, still dressed from dinner, and for a brief moment it struck Theo how old he was — grey and stooped, his round face wrinkled and his knuckles swollen with arthritis. He was old, and someday he would die. He would die, and he would go in the ground with her mother, and then Theo would be alone.

Abruptly, she burst into tears.

“My girl,” she heard her father say, “my girl, what’s wrong?” But she simply shook her head and fell into his arms, crying harder than she’d cried in ages.

She didn’t know how long they stood there, her father holding her tightly as she sobbed into the folds of his robe, Hal padding over to sit beside her, grounding her with his warm weight as he leaned against her leg. It was only when her tears had receded to hiccoughs that her father spoke again.

“Come here,” he said, guiding her out into the hall. “Come with me.” He led her to his own room, Hal following, and shepherded her onto the loveseat in the corner. Then he pulled out one of her mother’s knitted afghans and wrapped it around her before sitting down beside her.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he asked softly.

That set off another flood of tears, and it was some time before Theo calmed down enough to speak. “I don’t feel right,” she managed to choke out, wiping her streaming eyes on the corner of the afghan. “I don’t— I don’t—”

She dissolved once more into sobs. Between gasped breaths, she told her father everything — about the Dementors, about that horrible boggart, about her falling grades, her sleepless nights and, most of all, about the hollow, echoing despair that seemed to have settled into her very bones.

“I’m so tired,” she hiccoughed, once her torrential confession had subsided, “always, all the time, but I can never sleep — I don’t even know when I last slept. If I could just freeze the world somehow and really sleep for a few months—”

“Shh,” her father said, holding her close. “It’s all right, Theo.” He brushed a strand of hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. “You’re having a melancholy fit. I had hoped you would escape them, since they passed over me, but I’m afraid they do run in the family.”

”Is there a way to make it stop?” she asked, sniffling a little.

”There’s no cure,” he said, and his blue eyes were sad as he looked at her. “But there is a special tea that I can teach you to make. I’m afraid it’s not like Pepper-Up; you won’t feel better right away. But if you drink it every morning, it will help.”

A wave of relief seemed to be washing over Theo, and she leaned sideways to rest her head against her father’s shoulder. He knew. He knew what this was, and he knew how to fix it, and he didn’t seem disappointed in her at all. He just seemed concerned.

”I think, right now, we should start by getting you a good night’s rest,” he said. “I’ll give you a sleeping draught, and we can tackle the bigger problems in the morning.”

She nodded and then asked, softly, “Can I stay here tonight?” She would feel safer with her father near than she would alone in her own room.

“Of course.” With a wave of his wand, her father conjured up a pillow and placed it in Theo’s lap. As he went to fetch the sleeping draught, Theo settled herself on the cushions, burrowing under the afghan and then whistling Hal up beside her. The dog bounded onto the loveseat, his golden tail wagging, and curled up by her feet.

”Here you are,” her father said a moment later, returning with a glass of purple potion.

Obediently, Theo drank the lot before laying her head down on the pillow and closing her eyes.

”Sleep,” she heard her father say, just before she drifted into slumber. “Hal’s here. I’m here. We’ll take care of you.”

[tnott]

22 July 1995

Theo woke up.

She didn’t know why at first, with her head still muzzy from sleep, and she blinked at the clock with bleary eyes. It was late, close to 3 in the morning. Peering over the side of her bed, she saw that Hal had also woken and was watching the bedroom door intently, his head raised and his ears pricked up.

Soon there was a scuffing tread on the front steps, barely audible, and the sound of the door creaking open. Hal’s tail began to wag. That meant only one thing - Dad was home.

“Stay,” she whispered to Hal, pushing back the covers and stepping softly onto the cold floor. She crept barefoot to the stairs and peeked over the banister, taking care to keep her movements silent. She had always been a light sleeper, and ever since the Dark Lord’s return this had become a routine: waking when her father returned from his long nights out and watching, unseen, as he came home to see that he was safe and sound.

So far he always had been - until tonight.

He had pulled the door shut and stood sagged against the wall with his eyes closed. His breathing was visibly laboured, and even in the dim light Theo could see the ashen cast of his face.

Fear propelled her down the stairs and to his side. “Dad,” she said, her voice hushed but urgent. “Dad, what happened?”

“Theo?” he said. He sounded exhausted. “What are you doing down here? You should be in bed.” He started to straighten up, but his face was still pallid and his breathing rough, and all too soon he was leaning against the wall once more.

“I heard you come in,” she said, tugging absently at the sleeve of her shirt. “You need to sit, Dad.”

He was worryingly clammy and trembling slightly. Fear and anxiety had congealed into a knot somewhere between her chest and stomach, and she lifted one of his arms over her shoulders before walking him to a chair in the parlour, letting him lean against her.

He didn’t sit so much as collapse, and she hovered beside him, biting her lower lip when he grimaced in pain.

“I’ll be fine, Theo,” he said, patting her hand weakly.

She shook her head emphatically. “I’m getting you some water,” she insisted.

A jingling noise announced Hal’s arrival as she left the room, and she breathed a little easier knowing he was there. Padding to the kitchen, she filled a tall glass with water and went to the potion cupboard, where she scanned the shelves until she spotted a bottle of Anodyne Potion.

Her father was leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed when she returned, absently stroking Hal’s ears. She set the cup and bottle on the table next to him and then sat on the carpet at Hal’s other side, curling her legs beneath her and burying her fingers in his long, soft fur.

“What happened?” she asked softly.

He added three drops of the potion to his water and took a long drink before saying, “Nothing you need to worry about, my girl.”

She lifted her chin and said, “I think my father walking through the door at 3am and nearly passing out is something I need to worry about.” More quietly, she added, “I’m not stupid, Dad. I do know why you go out at night.”

He took another long drink of water and reached over Hal to stroke her hair. “The Dark Lord,” he finally said, “values discipline and accuracy. I erred in a task I was given, and I was justly reprimanded. That is all you need to know, Theo.”

It wasn’t a difficult set of dots to connect. He was tortured, she thought, feeling sick. Tortured by our side.

She reached up to grasp his hand, and he squeezed hers in response. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “You’ll see - I’ll be back on my feet by morning. Now go back to sleep, my girl. You need your rest as well.”

[tnott]

☮ ▼ ♦ ★

☮ - Friendship headcanon

Theo’s definition of friendship is very narrow, and it doesn’t cover very many people. A classmate which whom she gets along might consider her a friend, without realizing that she only considers them a casual acquaintance.

▼ - Childhood headcanon

The Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery had only been in effect for a decade when Cantankerus Nott was born. Theo’s grandparents were strongly opposed to the law and, knowing that the Ministry wouldn’t be able to detect underage magic performed in their household, they basically ignored it while raising Cantankerus and Leontius. Leontius has similar views, and he began teaching Theo simple spells as soon as she had gained some basic control over her magic.

♦ - Emotional headcanon

When Theo is very, very stressed, she cries. This never helps things, because she hates crying, so it only makes her feel even worse.

★ - Education headcanon

Like most pureblood children, Theo was homeschooled before Hogwarts. She was taught using the classical trivium and quadrivium, and also received a generous helping of the Dark Arts. (After all, thought Leontius, she won’t learn that at school. If I don’t teach her, who will?)

[tnott]

20 December 1991

"Have I ever told you about your great-great-great-great aunt Locusta?" Leontius asked.

Theo shook her head as she measured out the gingerbread spices. She'd missed this, at school - winter days spent in the warm kitchen, reading or playing chess, listening to her father's stories and teasing out the advice hidden inside. Hogwarts had no quiet, cozy spaces. Hogwarts had no one like her father.

"She used these very cakes to poison her husband. Amyntas Abbott, his name was," Leontius said, waving his wand over the mixing bowl. "A fine match, or so everyone thought at the time. But they hadn't been married even a full year before Locusta learned that he'd taken some Mudblood whore as his mistress.

"Naturally, she couldn't take such an insult lying down. So that Christmas, she added a glaze when she made these. Cinnamon and almond. Perfectly harmless, except on the one cake that she gave to Amyntas to taste. That one had--"

"Cyanide?" Theo said.

"Very good," Leontius said. "Why cyanide?"

Theo set down the measuring spoon and tapped her fingers on the countertop. "Well," she said, "the almond oil would have disguised the taste, for one. And it is a rather potent poison, so she wouldn't have needed to use a large amount. If the dose were concentrated enough and any bezoars in the house were well boxed-up and a few rooms away, he'd have been dead before any standers-by could get one into his mouth.

"And a great-great-great-great aunt... this would have been sometime in the 17th Century," she continued. "Bezoars weren't exactly a sickle for seven, nor were poison-detecting techniques particularly sophisticated. Considering the circumstances, it should have been a nearly undetectable murder."

"Well done," Leontius said with a proud smile. "1674, to be exact. You've been brushing up on your poisons."

Theo grinned, pleased by her success. "Was she caught?" she asked.

Leontius shook his head. "No. It was a dreadful situation, of course; poor Locusta widowed at such a tender age, and Amyntas' potential so suddenly cut short - such a tragedy! She remarried after the proper mourning period - a man from the Black family, Torcularis, he invented the Hurling Hex - and lived a long, successful life. No one would ever have known, had she not confessed to her son on her deathbed.

"You remember Locusta, my girl, as you go out into the world." He kissed the top of Theo's head, and then bent to look her in the eyes. "Don't wait for any sort of saviour. When you have a problem, you solve it, and you solve it so it stays solved."