Avoidance
After what felt like a long, long five minutes of my fists pounding feverishly against the cold, hard wall I decided to finally stop this maddening behavior. Snape was not coming back, he was probably giggling and kicking his stinky feet in the air after locking Theodore and me inside this room. Theodore. I have to go find him. Great. Not only are we locked here for Merlin knows how long, we also have to clean. And clean what, exactly? This place is an awful mess, there are left-over parchment pieces of old, wrinkled yellow paper scattered everywhere along with what seems like to be a... toilet? Musical instruments such as an antique golden harp, an untuned, rotten piano that for some reason played a false melody of "Moonlight Sonata" by Bethoven – my mother's favorite melody – its strings hammering vehemently against the rusty keyboard. Inharmoniously. To the point of deafening. I grunted audibly, unable to stand the annoying sound any longer, trying my best not to burn it into becoming firelighter for my dorm's fireplace.
What was I even supposed to do at this point? Simply standing where the entrance once was, sharp eyes swiftly scanning the place for any signs of Theodore's existence. How come he didn't appear when Snape pushed me inside? Didn't the commotion startle him, alarmed him? Weird. That boy and his hearing is weird. I looked past the crooked bookshelves filled with decaying books well forgotten, past the broken pieces of vials and a Thestral statue standing still somewhere across the perplexing room that kept changing. Nothing. It was like the room had sunk him inside a labyrinth of uncovered secrets and answers. Should I yell out his name? Would that make me sound desperate? The room was starting to strike all the nerves in my body with its eerie appearance and darkness – a faint chandelier kept flickering in the middle of the room, though noticeable, the brightness was less than dim.
"Theo-"
"Here"
A voice surprised me, coming from my left, where last time I checked no one was there but the bookshelves. Then, he appeared in my sight as my eyes registered to the blackness of the corner, as if nonchalant and accepting of our unfair punishment; he was cleaning. Theodore was sitting against the coldness of the floor with some ugly-looking, torn pages betwixt index and thumb. He had barely casted me any glance, let alone acknowledgement. He seemed too engrossed in cleaning up the mess over the floor, his blue eyes lost over the disorganized objects. I scoffed.
"Didn't you hear me entering?"
"Perfectly."
"Have you been here the entire time?"
"Witnessed your tantum. Quite funny, if you ask me."
Theodore's replies were hinting a note of sarcasm and arrogance, the type of attitude all Slytherins were accustomed to. As if having such traits were a must for one to be considered a Slytherin. My eyes narrowed down at him peering over the corner, making small footsteps to close the distance between us, my strides hesitant and a nearly silent tap over the floor that barely echoed to my ears.
"What exactly are you doing?" I asked him with a twitching lip, a grimace of puzzlement covering my expression, one eyebrow furrowing as my head tilted quizzically. Theodore sighed softly, nodding his head towards the shelves filled with wormy books for me to follow his gaze, his soft dirty blonde curls flapping alongside his subtle movement. His expression remained unyieldingly tranquil, though one could notice the faint hint of exhaustion over his slumped shoulders and tiresome tilt of the corners of his eyes.
"Cleaning out the books. Keep the ones in good shape and throw away the ugly ones."
"All of them look ugly to me."
"Yeah, no shit Sherlock." Theodore groaned with a huffed breath, throwing one particular book far away from us with his hand, making the brown, oxidized pages fly around, landing freely on the floor. My eyebrow rose skeptically at his outburst, though finding it a natural reaction; maybe the toxic chemicals of these rotten books had finally gotten to him.
"... Right. But, come on, honestly, these bookshelves will take us ages to clean up and sort them out. This is bullshit!"
"That's why we have a week of detention, smarty-pants. Stop babbling and help me, my fingers hurt." Theodore naggingly mumbled under his breath; his rough voice barely audible, strangely incoherent. Smarty-pants, really? That's the best he could come up with? How did he even hex someone when he could barely think of a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching insult? This boy has no balls, I can tell.
With a tongue clicking over my teeth, I crouched to the ground across from him, my clothes rustling as I made myself comfortable. And, only now, did I notice how I should have rather taken my robes with me than freeze my bottom over the frosty stones on the ground. I straightened my posture, taking several books from the pile Theodore had sitting next to him. Trying to ignore the chaotic atmosphere surrounding us and the chills all over me.
"So... why are you here, again?" I broke the silent charmed cloud hovering over us in a fatale attempt to ease the tension as we both tossed and held the books over our hands one by one. The pages of the books flying between my fingers as I turned each book open and shut to determine their condition, critically examining them for any signs of mold or worms. Theodore's eyebrows raised, his forehead wrinkling at the motion, his eyes only now making impact on my face. For a moment he remained quiet, maybe a bit too quiet, as he stared blankly at me, his hands unmoving. Asking him a question I obviously knew the answer to, but, again, I wasn't supposed to, meaning I had to keep a 'low profile'.
"None of your business, Knight. Why are you here, anyway. It's not like you to be in and out of detention every other day." Theodore shook his head with a mocking, curt laugh. I rolled my eyes in response, finding his scorning comment more ridiculous rather than endearing or insulting. His sarcasm was almost addictive, almost, and I had to keep up with him one way or another. But I also had to keep him in check, let him know not to abuse his presence around me.
"Seems like you keep a close eye on me, Nott. Stalking much?" I leaned a tiny bit forward to him as I purred at him teasingly, though there was a silent warning hidden somewhere around my words, making his lips curl down in disdain.
"Don't even go there-"
"Don't test my friendliness, Theodore." I cut him off, not giving him the chance to continue the conversation that had took an unexpected brusque end. Theodore, on the other hand, didn't seem too appealed by my sharp gruffness. Instead, he seemed keener to another information I blurted out.
"You know my name?" He asked in a dubious manner, his brows singed and eyes squinting, voice filled with trembling suspicion. I could almost detect the slight twitch and clenching of his jaw, as if I had cursed his entire bloodline. As if his name was an Unforgivable sin coming from my mouth.
"... Yeah? Don't you know my name?"
"Ophelia."
"Ophelia Hazel Knight, actually. Call me Ollie or Haze, I answer to both." I replied with a feathery tone that carried a note of fake sweetness, turning my attention back to the books over the floor. Theodore stared at me like I had committed treason and soiled his noble name, his tongue poking his cheek as if in a desperate attempt to keep his mouth sealed. But he seemed in the mood to chat, surprisingly.
"I hexed a Gryffindor," he breathed carefully, not seeming at all regretful by his actions, if anything, he seemed proud and cocky by the way his chest rose with a puff of pride. My eyebrow rose precariously as I casted a chaste glance at him before resuming the task in my hands, the books passing by my fingers like hasty golden snitches trying to not get caught.
"That prick insulted my mother." He continued after a short echo of a mute moment of silence. His words carried a tremor that truly resonated with his feelings, though discreetly fiercer, there was an unnatural vulnerability shimmering inside his blue iris reassuring his truthful words. All of a sudden, Theodore looked like a lost child that wanted to protect his mother from the evil monsters hiding under his bed. His gaze empty, nostrils slightly flaring with sharp breaths, his long, slender fingers firmly gripping the edges of a torn and tarnished black leather book over his bent legs.
"Reasonable reaction." I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly, throwing a worn-out crimson book with missing, torn pages against the wall behind me over my shoulder, thanking Merlin that no worms or mold had encountered my fingers. The absurd amounts of dust and mold was already enough for my sensitive nose, sending me into a spiral of continuous suppressed coughs, sneezes and sniffing over and over again.
"My mother's dead."
Oh.
Oh.
Theodore's voice came out cold, steady and revealing a sensitive piece of information that not many were supposed to know, let alone someone as much of a stranger I was. I felt my heart stop beating for a second, the world ceasing to exist around us. A loss as impactful as this was not to be messed with. And I knew I was threading in very, very dangerous ground, having to be extremely careful right then and there. A ground that was akin to a desert's moving sand that was ever changing and in motion. That's how the charged tension around us felt like; kinetic, charged with emotions none of us showed.
"... I am sorry for your loss, Theodore. You had every right to defend her name, even if your defense may seem... immoral, to some. You did the right thing." I attempted to be the calm in the given situation, my tone softer and fervent in a way I had never used it before in all my seventeen years of life. The tone of my voice was trembling with unfamiliar kindness, my fingers twitching over the ancient book pile, not knowing how to proceed. As if it was my fault. Unwittingly, I found myself unable to meet his eyes; the same way I did when my mother's nagging voice would reach my ears. Theodore exhaled a long breath he seemed to have been holding inside him for quite some time. He tapped his index finger over the hard cover of an emerald tattered book over his lap, his gaze fixated on – the all of a sudden to both of us – interesting tiles of curved stone on the floor. Then, as if something inside his brain clicked, his eyes met mine, holding me taut with his agitated, dilated orbs nearly covering the blue color of his almond eyes. I gulped hard, feeling captive under his strong stare, as if being interrogated for a crime I had committed.
"You have also...lost your father, correct?" Oh, Merlin, no.
"Does it matter?"
"You would do the same as me, right? If someone cursed out your dead father. Right? It's only logical someone would have reacted the same way I did, yes?" Theodore asked with an indication of uncertainty lingering on his words and crossed brows over his creased forehead. He was asking of my opinion? Since when did my opinion matter to him? This was starting to slowly freak me out. This conversation had taken a turn that I could not keep up with, especially continue.
No. I wouldn't do the same as Theodore.
Partly because my father was a ruthless man that only cared about filthy money that he kept spending on my mother and their luxurious lifestyle. A lifestyle I was not included. Meaning only one thing; I had no relationship with my father, heck, I barely even knew who he truly was, what traits his personality had, what was his favorite color or movie. Did he like action films? Horror, comedy, drama? Mother never spoke about him – apart from cursing him further into hell – and I had no significant memory of him in my head, despite being nine when he killed himself. Normally, children remembered stuff by that age but I couldn't. Maybe it was my brain's defensive mechanism of dealing with trauma. A trauma I was not ready to exploit, converse or speak up about.
That man did not deserve the tittle of father. Nor the defense for his name. He was no father of mine.
I straightened my posture over the floor, taking a deep breath through my nostrils, my expression neutral – the warm kindness fleetingly disappearing.
"Anyone with brains would have done the same–"
"Would you do the same?" Theodore asked again, his tone more persuasive and in need of answers. He tilted his head to the side, his eyes not leaving me alone for even a second. It was as if he could see through my lies and deceptions, let alone defenses. It unsettled me greatly, a shiver going down my spine.
I huffed heavily, snatching a book from the pile lying next to him. "Theodore, I want to go to my dorm. Rather than wasting time, you should focus on finishing this pile of books." I replied with a distant tone that echoed throughout the walls of the room, the bitterness of my voice tasting poisonously over the tip of my tongue, feeling the vibrations of my own voice sending a shiver down my spine – and it was not from the stony, biting floor's temperature.