PROLOGUE.
Winter was not kind to Edinburgh. The snow had fallen down in thick drifts. The streets were nearly vacant, save for last-minute shoppers and bold patrons of local pubs. Wind carried with it vile threats. It spoke of blazing fireplaces and bellies warmed with whiskey, plush blankets to warm their toes as he breathed her in while she read aloud from old favorite books that now gathered dust on his shelves, but beneath it lay threats of get home soon or she will be gone.
There would always be those that never listened hard enough. They would complain as they shuffled through the snow.
And then there was him. Consciously aware of what would come but making a choice to pretend it would not. It had always been this way. Even now.
In his wool coat. A scarf draped loosely about his neck. Snowflakes dusting thick lashes and cheeks bright from bitter wind. Finding a reason to smile to himself as he watched her, because simply seeing her was reason enough.
As if everything she did was new and enthralling.
As if he had never seen her nose crinkle in the cold as she sniffled, pink in its defiance.
As if he had never seen her smile that way when she knew she was being wholly perceived by him.
Or, as if he had, and he knew it would never happen again.
Eventually his teasing had fallen into some comfortable quiet. He carried her shopping bags. She carried his heart. A fair trade for something else. A soft thing that didn’t need to be talked about. A thing they shared. A thing that was just for them as they continued their slow journey down shoveled pathways.
The store fronts were frosted from the exchange of cold air passing through warm and tempered glass. It took a while, in the snow and in their silence, but soon their window shopping brought them to a beautiful display. Wreaths and twinkling lights decorated a baby grand, an Austrian variety and in too fine of shape to be poked and prodded by passersby.
“Do you still play?” she asked.
“No,” he lied. “I don't.” The only lie he could bring himself to tell her was small and white, harmless to her but for him, it was anything but.
He had not realized that his feet had stopped moving. Or that he had squeezed her hand when his body went still.
Their favorite cafe was open, and blue eyes had drifted away from the blush of her cheeks and the clarity of her smile to peer through the glass.
Without another word, she tugged him through the door. They were greeted with warmth. A shared hum of relief that left them shrugging out their coats.
It had been years, it had felt like, but the comfort the little shop brought him was the same as ever. He had not been back here in some time, and he wouldn’t. Not without her.
Soon she was smiling into a mug of hot chocolate, and he was swiping sweet foam from the tip of her nose in between sips of wine.
It was too sweet. She was too sweet.
Her eyes danced along to the rhythm of her laughter and it was only then that he could feel it. The dread of separation and the impending pit of loss that would accompany her absence by his side. He was not ready.
Something pulled at his vision, over her shoulder lay the polished finish of another familiar comfort. Ivory keys and the melodies that begged to be played could bring a moment of peace, but he knew he wouldn’t seek it out.
Not while she was still here.
Not at all with her here.
She noticed; he had not been quick to pull his attention back to her. You disappear sometimes, she had told him once. It had been enough for him to not do it again.
But not now. It had been too long.
“Theodore,” she said. She had set her mug down and reached a hand across the table. The touch of her fingers against his was a revelation, an uncovering of something that had been buried long ago and almost forgotten. When his eyes found hers again, the weight of tears biting at his vision was almost sweet. An acknowledgement that he could still feel, afterall.
“Where did you go?” Her smile was soft, and the way it coincided with the worry in her voice left nothing but the salt of his own culpability to sour the taste of decadent wine on his tongue.
He knew he couldn’t lie to her. Not now. Not ever again. So he didn’t.
“Just an old version of home.”
“In that case,” She understood, and it took her only a moment to slip her hand in his. He could not stay here. He would. For her. But he knew she wouldn’t make him stay. It would have been cruel, and Hermione Granger was not cruel. Not to him. “Let’s take a walk.”
She led him away from the comfort of watching her indulge in something that was now too sweet for his liking. His resistance was futile, and his insistence on staying, for her, was ignored. There was no point in telling her he was grateful to leave because she knew. She had always known. Soon enough the snow had covered their tracks and the empty streets left him no other option than to follow her.
He kicked snow playfully at her heels and dodged poorly timed throws of compacted snow in cold hands and let her win, if only to hear that laugh and the freedom that came with it. She lacked the inhibitions that had weighed her down the last time they had met. The air that danced around her was light and gentle like the swirl of snow drifting on the wind. She had changed.
Seeing her this way, with so much time in between them was the only confirmation that he needed. Everything was as it should be, but even still, he couldn’t help the weight that sank into his chest when he had pulled her close in the middle of an abandoned street. It came bearing down on him all at once, amidst her laughter and his teasing and the chill that came with a handful of snow that was smacked against the back of his neck.
A hand cupped her neck, only to fall away as his fingers grazed over the tattoo on the curve of it. Along the dark lines He did not put it there. It was not his to acknowledge, to worry about. He would, but not in front of her.
“It’s alright,” she said, lifting his hand to replace it where it had lingered, as if she wanted it there. As if she wanted him to feel it, to feel for himself that it did not mean what he thought it did. His fingers were marred with cold, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was so warm. Everything about her was just so…warm.
The snow was falling harder now. A soft and constant sound, something so soft and delicate in smaller doses, drowned out the sound of anything that wasn’t her voice. Or the sound of her heart crashing in her chest. Or the sound of his breaking, all over again.
“Hermione.” Saying her name felt like a sin, coated in rust.
She smiled.
God.
Something in her eyes begged. Her hand tightened around his and there was a devastating lag in his breathing. The air was cold and thin but she was cloaked in warmth and fuck, he didn’t deserve this.
He didn’t deserve the time that she had given him, with her, here.
After all that he had done.
After all that happened.
He was not worthy of a second more with her. He could not give her what she wanted. She could find it somewhere else. She would.
“You’re going to be late.” That was not what he wanted to say. He wanted to say something else. Apologize. Beg her for forgiveness. Shame was a sharp thing, and it pinned itself into his eyes as he watched her smile falter and crack into something smaller and less bright.
She leaned into his hand. The other rested on his chest, slipping beneath his coat to settle into the warmth his body gave her. “I have time.”
No, you don’t. Not nearly enough.
His lips pursed into a stark smile. The kind of smile allowed at a funeral for a friend.
Her eyes broke away, settling on her fingers as they toyed with a silver chain. There was no crucifix to weigh it down. That had been long gone. There was something else. A black stone. Tumbled and polished. It was black, wrapped in thin tines of silver wire.
“What’s this?” Her eyes lifted, drenched in curiosity, a moment to stall this out, just a little bit longer.
Theodore found her hand and pulled it away, the disconnect of her fingers around the stone blanketed in an excuse to hold it in his own.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s never nothing, Theodore.” She gave him a look that said I know you better than that but he returned it with one of his own: No, sweet girl. You don’t.
“It’s not for you to know.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t a lie; to her, it would be nothing. It would remain nothing. She didn’t need to know. The weight on that chain was not hers to bear. She had debts of her own to pay.
The silence told her not to pry, so she didn’t.
“Are you happy? Is he…?” Theodore asked, finally breaking the silence with something. Anything for an extra second, like this. Holding her close in the snow as she pushed her hands beneath his coat and wrapped her arms around him.
“Almost,” Another smile breached into her eyes, curving her lips in some gentle suggestion that she was. And he was not. “But it’s not the same.”
This was punishment. The bloom of something warm in his chest when she smiled like that was punishment. Theodore was punished by love, and he relinquished himself to its venomous sting. Mortal longing was his penance. As long as time and the laws of Heaven bound him to this city, a piece of him would belong to her.
An infernal echo pierced through his ears. I paid that debt in full. And you paid yours. A reminder. The weight of that stone and chain around his neck was heavy, but he welcomed it now. He welcomed the softness of that echo and the penetrant suggestion of why he was here. His debt had not been paid. Not yet.
Even still, Theodore’s breath shook from his lungs, sodden with the residue of his past. Their past, that he was forced to relive in her presence should she pass through this little town that kept their secrets safe and buried low.
And she often did.
And each time she did, something changed. She had changed.
And he had not been able to bring himself to indemnify that debt.
And now, he had no choice.
“It was not meant to be the same, Hermione,” He pulled in a deeper breath, filling his lungs with air that was sharp and cold and full of the scent of her. His exhale was pushed against her forehead, and his hands found their way into her hair. Just once more. “Keep going and it will be better; change looks so beautiful on you.”
“I can stay here,” Her hands found their way to his chest again, her fingers clung into wool. “I can stay.”
He wanted to say yes. To take her home. To find ways to let these moments together linger on, in the reverence that came with the mortality they have been given. Even just for a night. To see one another in a new light. But he couldn’t allow it.
Her love was not meant for him.
It never had been.
“You can’t stay, sweet girl.” Her image was skewed behind a soft wall of tears that threatened to freeze against his eyes. He didn’t want to blink. It would be real if he blinked. He didn’t want her to see him cry. He didn’t want to be stuck in that space in between what stood before him and the dark expanse of nothing at all. “You’re going to miss your train.”
“I’ll come back,” Her smile softened to reassure him. “Soon. For Christmas.”
Theodore Nott was no stranger to grief. He knew the weight of loss so well that it had nearly transformed into a familiar embrace.
But this was different.
This was death, faultless and novel.
“For Christmas. Of course, my love. Now,” So he smiled, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and blinked. It would hurt them both less to just forget. “Go catch your train.”
Obliviate duplici.