The morning didn't arrive so much as it bled in—slow, aching, stretched thin with the weight of what hadn't been said, of what had been felt too loudly in silence, of the gravity of a single shared space and the impossible intimacy of a night spent pretending not to want. It pressed down on him like fog, thick and muffled and inescapable, like the memory of a fever dream clinging to his skin. And yet this wasn't a dream. This was real. This was her room. This was her bed. And he was still in it.
The realization came not all at once, but in waves—first the unfamiliar softness of the sheets beneath him, the subtle floral scent woven into the fabric, the warm imprint on the mattress beside him that told him she had been there for hours, close enough to touch, and he hadn't. Or maybe he had, in sleep. Maybe he had turned toward her, reached for her, maybe his hand had found the dip of her waist, maybe he had buried his face in her hair and inhaled like he was starving. He didn't know. Couldn't remember. And it killed him.
He could feel the remnants of it everywhere, thrumming in his limbs, etched into the slow, languid throb of desire curling low in his spine, tangled in the haze of half-dreamt thoughts that hadn't faded with the rising sun. He should have left. Should have slipped out before she stirred, should have spared himself the humiliation of whatever awkward aftermath was about to unfold. But he didn't. He stayed. He laid there, still and tense, his breath held hostage in his chest, his eyes stubbornly shut against the brightening day and the truth clawing at the edge of his mind.
And then—he heard it.
The soft, barely-there shuffle of bare feet moving across the floorboards. The sound was so quiet, so ordinary, and yet it carved through him like a blade, slicing through the fog of sleep and dragging every nerve in his body into excruciating awareness. He knew what that sound meant. He knew. He felt it before he saw it, felt the air shift, the hush of fabric slipping from skin, the heat of her moving closer to the edge of the bed. His body went completely still. His throat went dry. His heartbeat stuttered once, twice, a warning bell in the silence.
She was undressing.
Right in front of him.
And he—he was not strong enough for this.
He should have looked away. Should have rolled over, buried his head in the pillow, forced his eyes shut and chanted this is fine, this is fine until the moment passed. But he didn't. Of course he didn't. Because he was weak. Because he was desperate. Because he was utterly, absolutely, catastrophically ruined by her.
His eyes cracked open, just barely, just enough to see.
And there she was.
Luna.
Standing in the golden hush of morning light, back turned, the soft glow catching the edges of her hair like a halo, her body bathed in warmth, in shadow, in a kind of unreal stillness that felt too intimate to be witnessed. She didn't move with shame. Didn't rush. Didn't glance over her shoulder to check if he was watching—because she didn't know. Because she didn't need to know. Because she existed in a space entirely separate from the chaos she left behind in him.
His gaze dropped—traitor that he was—and he couldn't stop it, couldn't stop the slow, burning drag of his eyes down the delicate curve of her spine, over the subtle definition of her back muscles as she reached for something unseen, down to where her waist narrowed, and then—fuck—to the perfectly sculpted swell of her arse, the impossible symmetry of it, the skin pale and soft and maddening in the way it made his mouth dry and his cock throb and his brain cease to function altogether.
And then—gods help him—she bent over.
She bent.
Over.
Right there, in front of him, completely unaware of what she was doing to him, or worse—maybe she was aware, maybe this was intentional, maybe this was some twisted karmic punishment designed by the universe to make sure he suffered for every mistake he had ever made in his pathetic, emotionally constipated life.
His jaw clenched. His fists curled. His breath caught somewhere in his throat and didn't move. His body was on fire, every cell burning, every thought short-circuiting, every inch of restraint that he had carefully built around himself over months cracking wide open.
Because oh.
Oh fuck.
Now he understood.
Now he understood exactly what Pansy had been talking about.
That pink cunt.
It was not a joke. It was not an exaggeration. It was a goddamn warning label, and he hadn't taken it seriously, and now here he was, lying in her bed, fully clothed, painfully hard, and rapidly descending into a state of religious awe and psychological ruin.
He squeezed his eyes shut, desperate for mercy, but it was too late.
The image was burned behind his eyelids.
He was never going to recover.
Not in this lifetime.
Not in any lifetime.
And the worst part?
He wanted it. He wanted her. Not just the body, though gods above and below, he wanted that too—but all of it. Every sigh, every breath, every quiet, impossible moment she had given him so freely.
And now he was completely, utterly, fucked.
In every possible way.
The heat didn't rise in him so much as it exploded—sudden, searing, molten, a violent rush of arousal that scorched its way beneath his skin, dragging across every nerve ending with such brutal intensity that it left him breathless, wide-eyed, and already ruined before he even had the chance to fight it. It slammed into his chest like a curse, like a punishment, like a consequence long overdue, something unbearable in its immediacy, something so overwhelming it turned want into something dangerous, something alive, something clawing at his insides with teeth and fire and the singular, undeniable truth that he was already too far gone. His fingers twisted into the sheets with brutal force, his knuckles bone-white as his grip tightened hard enough to tear fabric, his entire body trembling with restraint, with the desperate, frantic effort it took not to move, not to breathe too deeply, not to look again because if he did—if he looked again—he wasn't going to survive it.
He needed to stop.
He had to stop.
He had to shut his eyes, shut his brain off, shut down the part of him that wanted—Gods, needed—to touch, to reach, to fall to his knees in front of something he didn't deserve. But he couldn't. Not really. Because even as he forced his eyes closed—tightly, frantically, with every last scrap of willpower he had left—he knew the damage had already been done. The image was there. Burned into his retinas. Etched into the back of his eyelids like a branded mark. Her. Standing there. Glowing in the gold-touched hush of morning, back bare, curves soft and perfect and his, if only the world were a different place. It was too late. He had seen. And there was no coming back from this. Not now. Not ever.
He hadn't done this in so long.
Not like this.
Not with this kind of mindless desperation, not with this kind of shaking, full-body ache, not with this raw, feral need that made his skin feel too tight, his blood too hot, his breath too ragged to control. He wasn't some teenage boy anymore, some foolish thing waking up hard and helpless with nothing but his imagination. He had restraint. He had discipline. He had control. Or, at least, he used to. But now, with her image seared into him like a holy vision, he found himself cracking open under the weight of it. This wasn't just want. This was ruin.
His hand was already moving before he gave himself permission, already slipping beneath the sheet, already curling around the thick, aching length of him with a grip that was too tight, too desperate, too fucking necessary. The breath left him in a broken, wrecked exhale, his spine bowing slightly as that first stroke dragged up his cock, slow and excruciating and so much worse for the vivid memory of her body flashing behind his eyes—her skin like moonlight, her back arching, her hips shifting, her cunt visible when she bent over, pink and perfect and Gods, fuck, everything. He couldn't stop it. Couldn't shut it out. Couldn't force the vision from his head because it wasn't just a fantasy—it had happened. He had seen her. Had watched the moment unfold in real time, helpless and frozen and unraveling all at once.
His pace quickened instantly, his strokes turning rough, frantic, a rhythm that had no grace, no patience, no elegance—just raw need, just pressure and friction and the desperate ache of wanting something he couldn't have. His other hand fisted the sheets again, pulling them taut, anchoring himself to the bed as his hips bucked upward, chasing the sensation, grinding into his own palm like it would be enough to satisfy the hunger gnawing at him from the inside out. His jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, his breath stuttering as he fought to keep the sounds in, fought to keep himself quiet, fought to pretend this was still something he had control over.
But he didn't.
He was gone.
Completely.
Hopelessly.
Fucked.
The image refused to fade. If anything, it grew sharper, clearer, every detail etched into the corners of his mind with unbearable clarity—her bare back, her delicate spine, the soft dip just above her arse, the round curve of it, the sweet, wet pink between her thighs, the way she had bent over without a care in the world while he lay behind her, hard and helpless and already ruined. It was obscene. It was blasphemy. It was the holiest fucking thing he had ever seen.
He was moaning now—quiet, guttural, broken things caught in the back of his throat, the sounds slipping out despite his best efforts, desperate gasps and ragged exhales that shook through his entire body as he fucked into his hand like he was possessed. His hips jerked faster, sharper, harder, every motion raw with desperation, with the animal urge to chase that edge, to fall over it, to end this. He could feel it building, the heat low and insistent in his belly, the pulse of it tightening with every stroke, every thought, every goddamn second.
And when it hit—when it hit—it wasn't soft.
It wasn't gentle.
It ripped through him like a fucking tidal wave, sharp and brutal and so fucking good it hurt. His whole body arched off the bed, his muscles locking, his mouth parting on a silent, strangled gasp as his climax overtook him, hot and fast and everywhere, spilling across his stomach, his sheets, his shame. It was messy. It was a lot. It was the kind of orgasm that left him boneless, wrecked, undone in every possible way.
He lay there in the aftermath, trembling, panting, ruined.
The guilt arrived swiftly.
Because fuck.
He had just come in her bed.
In her bed.
And if there was anything left of his dignity after that, it disintegrated completely as he reached for his wand with shaking fingers, muttering the cleaning spell under his breath with the kind of quiet shame usually reserved for confessionals and graveyards. The bed cleaned itself. His skin cooled. The evidence disappeared.
But he didn't feel better.
He felt wrecked.
He felt haunted.
And when he looked at the place where she had stood, at the faint warmth still lingering in the space she had left behind, all he could think—all he could feel—was that he was in so, so much trouble.
~~~
Theo made his way down the stairs like a man bracing for a fight he hadn't trained for, every step echoing too loudly against the creaking wood, his muscles tight with leftover tension, his limbs stiff with a kind of unspoken regret he couldn't shake, couldn't name, couldn't stop reliving. The scent of fresh coffee drifted up like a lifeline, warm and bitter and promising something tangible to hold onto, something real in a morning that had already turned into a fucking nightmare. He hadn't even glanced into any of the bedrooms on his way down, hadn't paused to see if anyone else was awake, hadn't bothered to pretend like he was ready for conversation or company or basic human functioning—he had just needed out. Out of that room. Out of his head. Out of the lingering ghosts of heat and guilt and her.
He shoved a hand through his hair as he rounded the corner, jaw clenched, half-prepared to throw back a cup of coffee and retreat to some forgotten corner of the house where no one could look at him too closely, where no one could read the mess etched across his skin. But the second he stepped into the kitchen, all that false resolve shattered, dropped out from beneath him like the floor itself had caved in.
Of course.
Of fucking course it was her.
Because the universe wasn't subtle, wasn't merciful, wasn't ever going to let him breathe easy again.
She was there—of course she was there—curled in one of the mismatched chairs at the kitchen table like some dream-washed goddess of early morning stillness, bathed in golden light spilling through the windows like it had been summoned just to kiss the curve of her cheek. Her hair was still tousled from sleep, half-tangled and soft, falling around her shoulders like moonlight and silk, and her hands were wrapped around a chipped teacup, her fingers slender and bare, her gaze sharp in its quiet knowing, already on him the moment he walked in—as if she had heard his footsteps from the second he left the stairs, as if she had been waiting.
And gods help him—he froze.
Every muscle in his body locked up, his breath caught somewhere between lungs and throat, and just like that, the memory he had been trying so desperately to suppress came screaming back to life behind his eyes. Her back. Her hips. That unholy stretch of skin. That fucking pink cunt.
His pulse jumped violently, thudding against his ribs like it was trying to break free, and his stomach twisted so hard he had to briefly consider turning around and walking straight back up the stairs, maybe into the nearest wall, maybe into oblivion.
Instead, he stood there, frozen in the doorway like a man on trial, his brain a garbled, useless mess of static and fire and need, trying to pull himself together before she noticed.
Except she had noticed.
She always noticed.
She was looking at him now, really looking, her silver-blue eyes unreadable but steady, her expression soft and maddeningly patient, like she could see every single one of his thoughts unraveling in real time and was still somehow willing to wait for him to catch up. He needed to say something. Something normal. Something sane. Something that didn't sound like his brain had just short-circuited and leaked out of his mouth in the form of worship.
And then he opened his mouth and ruined everything.
"Youlookbeautiful."
It came out as one word. No breath, no pause, no dignity.
Just—Youlookbeautiful.
He wanted to die.
The moment the words escaped him, they hovered in the air like a live curse, like a spell that had slipped from his lips without intention and would now haunt this kitchen for the rest of eternity. He froze, eyes wide, every inch of his body going rigid in horror, his soul attempting to eject itself from his skin and flee into the walls.
Because he had not just said that.
He had not just stood in the middle of the kitchen, half-hard from shame and memory, and called her beautiful like some kind of smitten fool who didn't spend every waking moment trying to not feel things.
But he had.
He absolutely had.
And now he was fucked.
Utterly, completely, irreparably fucked.
His breath caught, his face burned, his hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose because Merlin's balls, maybe if he pressed hard enough, he could black out and never have to live through this moment again. He couldn't look at her. He shouldn't look at her. But of course—of course—he did.
She didn't speak.
Didn't laugh. Didn't blink. Didn't react like someone who had just been hit with an accidental confession by a man who had spent the last month doing everything in his power to convince her he didn't care.
She just looked at him.
And then—fuck. She smiled.
Not a grin. Not a smirk. Just the faintest, softest curve of her lips. A smile that held secrets, that knew too much, that meant something.
He nearly groaned aloud.
Because that smile? That little tilt of her mouth? That was it. That was the end of him. That was the thing that cracked him open and poured him out across the floor, all ragged breath and aching want and the deep, gnawing shame of someone who had just betrayed every mask he had worked so hard to keep in place.
"I—" he began, the word barely managing to scrape past his throat before it collapsed under the weight of everything unsaid, everything burning behind his eyes, everything clinging to his ribs like smoke refusing to dissipate. And gods, he regretted it instantly, because there was no plan, no strategy, no thought beyond the low hum of panic clawing at the base of his spine, beyond the aching confusion that had been tearing at his chest since the moment he woke up alone. His fingers raked through his already sleep-ruined hair, dragging hard against his scalp like he could force coherence into his skull, like he could pull some version of sanity to the surface before the words that followed turned this into a complete disaster. His voice was low, cracked at the edges, sharp with something he hadn't named yet, as he forced it out. "You were sleeping with Hermione and Draco."
And the second the sentence left his mouth, the second the words hit the air like some irreversible spell, he knew—he knew—that he had just launched himself off a fucking cliff.
Fucking hell.
That wasn't what he'd meant. That wasn't even remotely what he'd intended to say. It had just come out, raw and unfiltered, soaked in something possessive and biting and absolutely not the point of what he was trying to ask. His stomach twisted violently as his mind screamed at him to take it back, reword it, do something, but it was already too late.
She blinked once, her head tilting just slightly to the side in that maddening, otherworldly way she had, her expression carefully neutral in that way that never actually meant neutrality. Her face was unreadable, serene even—but the glint in her eyes, the slight lift at the corner of her mouth, the way she took another slow, unhurried sip of her tea like this was all so amusing to her—it told him she was enjoying this. She was letting him drown. She was watching him burn. And she was going to make him feel every fucking second of it.
"If you're implying we had sex," she said after a moment, voice soft and feather-light, but laced with that unmistakable, dangerous edge of amusement, like she was only pretending not to enjoy twisting the knife, "we haven't."
And that was when he nearly choked.
Not on air, not on coffee—on nothing. He choked on absolutely nothing except the mortifying weight of his own spiraling imagination, the horror of what had just been said aloud, and the way her voice made it sound even worse than he'd feared. His body snapped taut like a bowstring, his eyes wide, his hands twitching at his sides in some desperate attempt to ground himself.
"No—Jesus—no, that's not what I meant," he stammered, the words bursting from his mouth in a rush, too fast, too panicked, too full of a need to undo what had already been done. "I didn't think that, I don't think that—fuck, that wasn't—" He cut himself off, jaw locking tight, throat working as he forced himself to inhale, to get his shit together before he completely imploded. His skin felt like it was burning, his face flushed in a way he couldn't hide, and the warmth in the kitchen had nothing to do with it. "Forget it," he muttered, low and vicious, more to himself than to her.
But he couldn't forget it. He couldn't let it go. Because she had left. Because she had chosen to sleep somewhere else. Because the space where she should've been had stayed cold all night, and no amount of tossing or turning or pretending not to notice had stopped that fact from settling in his chest like a knife.
So instead of retreating, instead of backing down, instead of letting this spiral into awkward silence, he did the only thing he could do—he pushed. Sharp, reckless, raw.
"Why did you leave me?"
The words came out sharper than he meant them to, laced with accusation, twisted in heat and confusion and vulnerability he hadn't meant to show her, hadn't meant to show anyone. But it was too late to take it back now, too late to soften it, too late to pretend this wasn't what he needed to know. Because he'd been sitting in that bed, lying awake with the ache of her absence like a hand around his throat, replaying the moment she slipped away like it might explain something. And none of it had made sense. Not until now. Not unless she said it.
She didn't answer right away.
She just exhaled—slow, deliberate, composed in that way only she could be, like she was trying to decide if he even deserved the truth, if he could be trusted with it, if she could be trusted to say it. Her fingers traced the rim of her cup, thoughtful and unbothered, but her eyes flicked to him with something beneath the surface, something heavier, something quieter than what she normally showed.
"I didn't leave you," she said finally, her voice still light but no longer teasing, no longer amused. "I wasn't in the mood for your theatrics."
And that—that nearly made him laugh. Theatrics. As if she hadn't completely gutted him by disappearing from his bed without a word. As if he hadn't been lying there, haunted by the absence of her body, by the feel of her warmth missing, by the memory of everything that almost happened, by the wreckage of his own restraint. As if he were the one being melodramatic, not the one suffering the consequences of her walking away.
And just as he was about to fire something back, just as the words built like fire behind his teeth, she spoke again—softer this time, quieter, with something uncertain threading through her tone that made him go still.
"And I just..." She paused, her gaze flickering down, her mouth parting like she might say something else, something deeper, something truer—but then it shifted, slipped into something she couldn't or wouldn't name. "I don't know."
That was it.
That was all she gave him.
And gods, it was almost worse than nothing.
Because he knew. He fucking knew.
Because she had left because of him. Because he was the one who had pulled away. Because he was the one who had started it—started the tension, started the kiss that wasn't a kiss, started the ache that bloomed and festered in every inch of silence that passed between them. Because he had looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered, and then done nothing about it. Because he was the one afraid to call it what it was.
And now?
Now, she was the one leaving. Now, she was the one pulling back. Now, she was the one retreating, and he couldn't blame her. Not really. Not when the truth had been staring him in the face this whole time.
Because something between them had changed.
Because something between them had already happened, and neither of them could pretend otherwise anymore.
Because even if she couldn't say it—he could feel it.
And it was fucking killing him.
~~~
The weight of the day had not simply settled over Theo's shoulders—it had embedded itself into his bones, threaded itself through the hollow places behind his ribs, twisted tight beneath his skin like some invisible parasite feeding on exhaustion, on pain, on everything he had refused to acknowledge for far too long. Every breath felt thick with resistance, each inhale dragging through lungs already worn thin, his chest constricted by a pressure that hadn't left since the moment his eyes had opened that morning to find the space beside him empty. The silence had been suffocating, not the peaceful kind that soothed, but the sort that pressed in from every angle, that curled into the hollows of his throat and made it impossible to speak. His scar ached with a dull, gnawing throb that had only worsened as the hours crawled by, and by the time he climbed the stairs—one slow, reluctant step at a time—he felt less like a man and more like a ghost in borrowed skin.
He didn't even bother with the lights. The second the door clicked shut behind him, sealing the world out and trapping his thoughts in, his fingers moved on autopilot, dragging his shirt over his head in one jerking, clumsy motion. The fabric caught slightly against the half-healed wound carved across his chest, the raw skin pulling tight, sending a jolt of pain down his sternum that made him flinch. He hissed through clenched teeth, jaw locking as his hand hovered briefly over the wound, fingers twitching with frustration, helplessness, the growing need to not feel anything at all.
But it was worse today. So much worse. The pain had been manageable for a while, background noise to the chaos of everything else, but now it had rooted itself deep, twisting with every movement, pulsing beneath the surface like a second heartbeat. His whole body felt wrong—too tight, too full, too fragile—like he'd been shattered and glued back together by someone with shaking hands and no regard for the original design.
His hands, shaking slightly now, reached blindly for the jar she had left for him—the balm that smelled like pine and lavender and something too soft, too gentle, too her. He didn't let himself think about that. Didn't let himself imagine her hands applying it instead of his own. He dipped two fingers into the cool salve, then spread it across his chest with far too much pressure, the sting immediate, biting, grounding in a way that he didn't want but desperately needed. His head tipped forward slightly, eyes squeezed shut, breath catching in his throat—
And then it changed.
The air.
The pressure in the room.
Something shifted.
He froze, instinct overriding everything, muscles locking as a pulse of something sharp curled down his spine, prickling across his skin like static. He wasn't alone. He knew he wasn't alone. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, his breath held, his entire body going still as stone. Slowly, with the kind of dread he hadn't felt since the war, he turned—
And there she was.
Luna.
Standing in the doorway, silent, still, draped in the low flicker of candlelight like something conjured from memory or dream, her silhouette framed by the soft golden glow that made her look impossibly ethereal, made his already burning lungs forget how to work. Her hair was loose, falling around her shoulders in soft waves that caught the light like strands of silk, her dress swaying just slightly as if some unseen breeze had followed her into the room. Her eyes, those strange, beautiful, impossible eyes, locked onto his chest—his scar—his pain—and didn't flinch.
He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly desert-dry, his fingers still tacky with balm, his body wound so tightly he was surprised he hadn't splintered apart. She didn't speak. She didn't ask. She didn't move, not at first.
But then—
"Let me help."
Soft. Steady. Absolute.
It wasn't a question. It wasn't uncertain. It wasn't offered like a favor. It was a fact. Spoken like prophecy. Spoken like inevitability. Spoken like she had always been the one meant to stand here, in this room, in this moment, in front of him while he stood half-naked and unraveling.
And gods—gods, he wanted to say no.
He wanted to back away, to protect what little dignity he had left, to preserve the tiny sliver of distance he had managed to keep between them, to shut the door on this before it became something he couldn't take back. But he couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything except stare as she crossed the room with that maddening quiet grace, her presence flooding the space like warmth, like magic, like mercy.
Her fingers brushed against his wrist, feather-light, a touch so careful it nearly broke him. She took the jar from his hand, and he let her, like he had no will of his own. She dipped her fingers into the balm, and the moment they touched his skin—
He stopped breathing.
She was so close he could feel the whisper of her breath against his collarbone, could see the flutter of her lashes when she blinked, could hear the quiet exhale that ghosted across his shoulder. The balm was cool, but her fingers were warm, impossibly so, and they moved across his chest in small, slow circles, pressing into the scar with a reverence that made him ache. It wasn't just the pain. It was her. It was the way she looked at him. The way she didn't look away. The way her fingers kept moving, steady, soft, completely unbothered by the mess of a man in front of her.
And then, without warning, without preamble, in that impossibly calm voice of hers—
"You have smooth skin."
His brain short-circuited. His lungs forgot how to function. His hands twitched at his sides like they didn't know what to do with themselves, and for the first time in his entire adult life, Theo Nott—trained killer, cold strategist, master of indifference—choked.
Not just a soft sound of surprise. No. A full-body spasm of embarrassment and horror and confusion, a broken, completely undignified hitch of breath that felt like being punched in the throat by adoration.
What. The fuck.
His skin?
His skin?!
She could have said anything. Anything else. Literally any other compliment would have been better. But this—this soft, absentminded, sincerely devastating observation was too much. And it was only getting worse.
"Oh," she added, voice still maddeningly casual, as if this wasn't the worst moment of his entire life. "So you haven't received many compliments?"
He stared at her. He gawked at her. He had no words. Not because he didn't have a response—but because every response he could give would make things so much worse.
And yet.
And yet.
His mouth opened, and something awful came out.
"Thank you," he muttered, broken, hoarse, completely out of his fucking mind. "You... you have gorgeous skin."
Silence.
Silence.
Followed by the sound of his soul leaving his body.
Because what the fuck.
Gorgeous skin? GORGEOUS SKIN?!
Why would he say that? Why would his mouth do that to him? Why was he like this?
He could have stopped. He should have stopped. He should have said literally anything else. But no. He had to compliment her skin like some desperate Victorian poet watching a siren crawl out of the sea.
He was going to die.
He was going to die right here, humiliated beyond repair, his dignity turned to ash at her feet.
But then—
She smiled.
That maddening, gentle, knowing smile. Like she had seen this coming. Like she had expected it. Like she didn't think it was pathetic. Like she liked it.
And somehow, somehow, that was even worse.
Because it meant there was no escaping her now.
Not when she had already seen straight through him.
Not when she had already decided to stay.
~~~
Theo had never considered himself the kind of man who got unlucky. He wasn't reckless, wasn't stupid, didn't take the sort of risks that led to disasters. He didn't tempt fate because fate didn't play fair, and Theo Nott, above all else, liked control. But that illusion had shattered the moment Pansy handed out the morning assignments with a sick little smile and informed him that he'd be heading into the field with her—with Ginevra Molly Fucking Weasley, the embodiment of chaos in human form, the one woman in this entire safehouse more likely to kill him than any Death Eater still lurking in the shadows.
It wasn't just bad luck—it was divine retribution. A curse, some ancient karmic punishment for crimes he didn't remember committing, maybe for the war, maybe for surviving it. But either way, the gods had made it personal.
And now, here they were, trudging through overgrown fields in silence that would've been comfortable if it hadn't been weaponized by sheer hatred and bad history, the grass snapping under their boots like bones, the sky threatening rain, and Theo already fantasizing about just walking into the nearest cursed bog and letting it consume him whole.
They made it thirty seconds before she opened her mouth.
"So..."
Theo inhaled through his nose, a slow, steady drag of air that did absolutely nothing to calm the building dread curling in his gut. "Here we go," he muttered, bracing for impact like a man preparing for a hex to the face.
Ginny grinned like a wolf in sheep's clothing, all teeth and zero survival instinct. "You and Loony done christening every mattress in the house yet, or are we still pretending you're just besties with unresolved sexual tension and enough eye contact to get someone pregnant?"
He tripped. Not on a rock. Not on uneven ground. Just his own feet. Because his brain had shut off in self-defense, rebooted itself, and still couldn't process what the actual fuck had just come out of her mouth.
"Excuse me?" he asked, voice strained, already plotting his exit from this mortal realm.
"Oh, don't act all scandalized," she sing-songed, hands stuffed in her pockets, not even pretending to be innocent. "Everyone knows. You're painfully obvious. Like, Draco-level obvious. And that man once wrote Hermione a twelve-stanza poem about her eyebrows and left it in the fridge."
Theo's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, but no words emerged. Just pure, horrified noise. "That—what? That didn't happen."
"Oh, it happened," she said, deadpan. "She laminated it. We keep it on the mantel."
He stared at her like she'd just confessed to ritual murder. "You people are sick."
"And you're deflecting." She turned to him, full stop, one brow raised in challenge. "So again, have you fucked yet, or are you still mentally edging yourself into an early grave?"
"Ginevra." His tone was all warning, clipped and furious, but Ginny Weasley had never been one to obey caution signs. She crashed straight through them with a smile and a flamethrower.
"You're lucky Luna's weird," she continued, entirely unbothered, "because if she weren't, you'd be screwed in the boring, unaffectionate, unloved way."
He groaned, pressing his fingers to his temples like he could massage her words out of his skull. "You are genuinely the worst person I've ever met."
"Aw, you say the sweetest things," she beamed, before her tone sharpened, cutting clean through his composure. "Everyone sees it. Luna sees it. You're just too much of a coward to do anything about it."
And there it was. The line he'd been trying not to cross. The pressure point she knew exactly how to find and press with the precision of someone who'd grown up tormenting six older brothers.
"Does she really?" he asked before he could stop himself, voice quieter, rougher, filled with something raw and unguarded.
Ginny froze, blinked once, then turned so slow it was deliberate, and Theo regretted it immediately. Because he knew what was coming. He knew.
She brought a hand to her chest like a Victorian ghost about to faint, fluttering her lashes. "Oh, darling," she said, tragic and mocking in equal measure, "if only you knew how frequently she dreams about you. I swear, Blaise thought she was talking about a ghost until she started saying your name."
Theo stumbled again.
"No. Absolutely not. Stop talking."
"But why?" she whined, gleeful. "I'm being supportive. Encouraging. Sex-positive, even."
"Ginevra." His voice was flat now, nearly dead. "I am one second away from hexing your mouth shut."
She cackled like a gremlin and kept walking, then turned back with a glint in her eye that made him preemptively clench his fists. "You want to know what she said once while half-asleep?"
"I don't."
"She said," Ginny continued loudly, ignoring him completely, "'Theo, stop being a fucking coward and just kiss me already.'" She gasped theatrically, clutching her chest again. "And I wept. I actually wept. Beautiful. Tragic. Like a really horny ghost story."
He stopped walking entirely.
"You're lying."
She shrugged. "Maybe. But you'll never know unless you ask her."
He considered throwing himself into the nearby hedge.
"Why does Blaise even like you?" he asked helplessly, genuinely, like a man standing on the edge of the abyss.
Ginny didn't even blink. "Because I'm funny and my vagina is tight enough to crush a man's soul."
Theo's brain blue-screened. Just full system failure. A long, high-pitched noise somewhere in the back of his skull.
"Why would you—why would you say that—"
"Because it's true, and I want you to suffer."
He gagged. Actually gagged. She just smirked.
And then, like something had been waiting underneath all the madness, something soft slipped out of him. Quiet. Small. A confession.
"Something happened to me," he said, barely audible. "And Luna's the only one who understands."
Ginny stopped.
The feral light in her eyes flickered, softened, sobered into something careful, something human.
"What happened?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I think—I think something's following me."
Ginny went quiet.
Then, after a long beat, she gave a slow nod, her voice low, no longer mocking, no longer playful.
"Yeah," she said. "Freddy follows me too. I don't think he ever left."
Theo looked at her then—really looked—and saw it.
The grief buried under the madness.
The ache carved into her bones.
And for the first time, he didn't hate her chaos. He understood it.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, two people haunted in different ways, bound together by something that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with survival.