Chapter 1
ACT I, SCENE I. THE PAST.
The Highlands of Scotland. 1998.
The boy will die in this war.
He knew this to be true.
Even as he knew this, he ran.
Somewhere in Britain, 1860.
He crosses the solitary bridge. It graces the black waters.
It has not failed to catch Theodore’s eye that, for 500 years, it has become the subject of decay. From age or lack of maintenance, these are mortal worries that he need not concern himself with.
It has become a daily routine, crossing this bridge into the city, getting drunk at the tavern, and couch surfing.
(He manages to slip away before the person he’s slept with realizes that, hey, I don’t remember this guy’s name, and he’s in my bed, so what the hell.) (When they wake up before that, the outcome is usually disastrous.)
He looks down into the lake from the side. The girl called death laughs, hair damp and tangled.
It is the familiar refrain:
World, forget me.
It is a familiar, painful sort of laughter. He still doesn’t know why he comes back every day, even though he’s had 500 years to reflect on exactly that.
There is comfort, he supposes, in what is familiar, even if what is familiar is, at its core, cruel.
The wind, too, is now laughing, scornful. It passes through his body and sifts through his hair.
—
When he’s had this much to drink, he reflects. He does not, after all, possess worldly relationships. Or unworldly ones, for that matter. Ties between him and others were stretched out during the war, severed completely when he made that oath:
World, forget me.
Reflection is the only thing he has.
On nights like these, he is brought back to 1994—it is flashes of his father, a pureblood and a son of purebloods. Sometimes, it’s the stack of books in the corner. Even less often, it’s Harry Potter, who takes the attention in the end.
He was not quite so envious of Potter as Malfoy had been. At that point, Theodore had already grown quite used to living in the shadows. And he had grown so used to living in the shadows that the stories passed along by Theodore’s peers about The Boy Who Lived were of no consequence at all, unless it directly interfered with his father’s mission.
Anyway, it was easy to forget about Harry Potter the war hero and even easier to forget what it was like to live as a normal person.
—
Theodore Nott is a slow riser. The woman whose bed he’s found himself in, Ivy Alloway, apparently is not. She beat him to it.
Shit. Better luck next time.
“Good morning,” he says pleasantly.
He can see the gears turning behind her eyes, can tell she remembers bringing a stranger to bed but can’t remember, for the life of her, his name. Probably, Theodore guesses, she feels like a class one asshole. Ivy doesn’t seem like the type of girl who kisses-and-doesn’t-have-the-decency-to-remember-who.
It’s not her fault.
“Ah, good morning, um…?” she replies in a sort of daze.
“Theo,” he says calmly. “It’s okay. If you don’t remember.”
There’s no if. It’s just that she doesn’t and couldn’t if she tried.
Her face turns a nasty shade of rose, and she fumbles for an excuse. “It’s not… I’m not… I don’t… really…” Eventually, she settles for, “I’m not usually like this. I just…”
“It’s fine,” he says curtly, growing impatient with her excuses. He should have just left, to begin with. “Most people find that I’m not the most memorable person. I’m hard to know.” Leisurely, he rises, picking his clothes off the floor. He takes his time. He has all of it.
“But I want to know you,” she replies.
“That’s quite alright. Enjoy your day.”
If he’s hurt her feelings in any way, it doesn’t matter.
—
Summer warmth has begun to give way to autumn wind. The leaves reflect this change in season, turning various shades of burgundy, and it’s all beginning to feel quite monotone.
Parkinson used to call this (or will call it, because at this point in linear time she does not exist), the ‘awkward phase’, when the season had not quite transitioned into the next.
—
There is a phantom figure standing at the edge of the abandoned cliff. Theodore is watching. This figure is illuminated only by the harsh glow of the full moon watching above.
A full moon. Interesting.
(All truths are true to those who believe in them.)
Many moments pass in silence. He is still and practiced, careful not to give any sort of indicator that he is watching, not even the quiet rustle of grass.
His hair is jet black, sort of messy. His clothes, out of place for the time period, barely fitting. He is somewhat of an outsider but doesn’t stand out enough to cause Theodore alarm.
A moment later, the figure speaks. Theodore will not, until they meet next, be able to trace exactly from where he recognizes this voice from, only that he does, and it chills him for the first time in infinite life until the day he realizes that this person is no one to feel threatened by at all, only to be embraced.
“This is how you died in my present.”
He throws a rock off the cliff.
Theodore looks behind him for a potential escape.
But when he looks back in the shadow where that phantom-like figure stood, the person has already disappeared.
Just like Theo, he flits through this world and wanders in its breadth.
The first time he catches Harry Potter in 1860, he will not have been expecting it, but it will not be as shocking as it should be. It will feel sort of like a distant memory or a hazy dream.