Make it Green, Make it Red!
Hermione and Theo Floo’ed right into Hogwarts through Minerva’s office fireplace—to which Hermione still had special permissions. Of course, after tonight, while drinking champagne from a bottle, Hermione suspected future privileges might be revoked.
A swimming matter of minutes later, the two stood panting before the Fat Lady.
“Were we always this out of shape?” Hermione complained.
“If the Fat Lady isn’t going to let you in, can I go sleep in my old room?” Theo swayed into a wall.
“What? No! This isn’t your family’s mausoleum! Your old bed is some new Slytherin’s now!”
“What a horrible thought, you are just full of terrible news.” Theo swayed before the Fat Lady who began to scream bloody murder when he gripped her picture frame.
“Shhhh, no, no, shhhh, I have the password!” Hermione flapped one arm dragging Theo back, her other hand sweaty and tight around the neck of her Champagne.
The painting quieted but eyed Theo narrowly. “Well then? Password,” The fat lady asked regally.
Hermione had the sense to look back at the rhyme for clues. “Ummm,“ the fireplace had been needlessly mentioned twice in the poem.
Theo may have napped against the wall for a while when he heard Hermione shout triumphantly. He thought a Nargal really might have climbed in his ears and bit his eardrums.
“Cozy Chimney,” Hermione declared again with a hiccup. Somewhere between Theo’s last three blinks, Hermione had finished half her bottle of Champagne. Theo hugged his bottles suspiciously, finding both of them had been opened and sipped from.
“Very well,” The Fat Lady sighed and opened the door with a scowl waving them inside.
“How in the Muggle hell did you guess Cozy Chimney?”
“The fireplace in the clue—it’s cozy?” Hermione slurred and moved her hands about as if that illustrated something. In truth, she had made enough guesses the Fat Lady had begun to look over her shoulders impatient to be back in her bed.
Theo scowled at them both and slurred a non-slurring spell over them both.
“What did you do?” Hermione asked crisply, if slowly.
“Sneaky Selma stacks sparkly silver spoons silently!” Theo swayed against Hermione.
“Oh. Clever,” Hermione patted his wrist and stumbled into her old House.
Once they entered the empty Gryffindor Common Room, Theo immediately lay down on the plush red couch before the fireplace. His shiny shoes propped up on the armrest, a bottle under each elbow.
“Here we go, here we are, yes, somewhere,” Hermione muttered dragging a hand across the mantle in search of parchment.
“It’s been sticky charmed to the wall above your hands, Mione,” Theo commented after a good long while of Hermione faffing about the fireplace half blind from the double glow of fire and Champagne.
Scowling Hermione dizzily tipped her chin up and glared at the parchment half curling from both ends and stuck to the wall.
With deliberate slowness, she undid the charm and dragged the parchment up to her nose.
“Well, where to next?”
“Give me a minute,” Hermione swayed.
“A minute? Or a sobering potion?” Theo chuckled leveraging himself upright. He caught Hermione between his feet. And drew her back onto the couch till they were side by side, heads pressed together over the parchment.
“I don’t want a sobering potion. I like the way I feel just fine, thank you. Between us, we don’t need half a brain to figure out these clues.”
“No but we might need one eye that’s not blurry,” Theo waved his hand before their faces.
Hermione groaned, closing her eyes. Then sat up and looked around scowling.
“Why is the couch green?” she screeched.
“Red clashes with my robes,” Theo brought the parchment near then far, but it remained blurry.
“Make it red,” Hermione huffed and waved her wand.
The couch shivered beneath them, and Theo slashed his wand.
Hermione shrieked horribly again. And guiltily, Theo looked up to see her jumper, skirt, and stalkings were now a hideous shade of orange-green.
“Now, Mione,” Theo held up the parchment like a shield. “You know I didn’t mean that to hit you. And these are my best robes. Whereas your outfit—”
Hermione slashed her wand at him, wordless and furious.
“Protego!” Theo yelped.
Red slashed back over Hermione and the couch. She huffed blinking down at her ruby red jumper and skirt.
“Are you going to behave now?” Theo asked calmly. He was swaying a little drunkenly. And Hermione looked terrifying, all her edges fuzzy, and her hair twice as puffed up.
Hermione sniffed and snatched the parchment away from him, “I’m not the one trying to Slytherin everything up.”
“Apologies.”
“Apology accepted.”
They sat for another moment, silently sipping. The flames crackled pleasantly, and, had everything just been a bit less golden and red and loud, Theo might have let them stay like this all night. But instead, a familiar creeping guilt coiled in his gut as Hermione snuggled her head on his shoulder so comfortably at ease, her amazing hair half consuming his face.
His seventh/eighth year had started out a disaster. The Slytherin name so low they barely got any first-years. Blaise slithered out of Prefect, and Slughorn came after Theo next. He begged off—and Draco got the job—which he should have from the beginning—but Draco took the position about as seriously as Hermione took Divination. So of course, Theo ended up doing all the work without the glory. The only contribution Malfoy made was stalking corridors like a bloody Death Eater, and napping through his detention duties—which of course endeared him to all the miscreants of Hogwarts. Detention practically became a club.
Slytherin was becoming synonymous with losers. Every House point Theo earned was lost within the week. Theo had needed to do something desperate. Something re-branding. Something Gryffindor. And not just any Gryffindor. He needed the best.
So Theo did what he’d always done. He found a weakness and tore right in. Hermione Granger needed more time to get her eight Outstanding N.E.W.T.s.
Sifting through the remaining artifacts and ancient texts of Nott Manor, Theo found a groundhog artifact. A dark artifact. It wasn’t ideal of course. Completely illegal. But Granger leaped on it. And had to come to him to use it.
This, of course, didn’t accomplish his goal. Only Hermione’s. Who set about studying her classes one day, reversed time, and then spent the same day all over by attending her insane independent class schedule. None of the notes or encounters she made on the first day lasted or were remembered by anyone but her—and Theo.
This of course began to stretch the school year out intolerably for Theo. And tempted him to do all sorts of wicked things on the day he knew would not exist come morning. Except instead, he spent the next day trying to ward off any conflicts he’d heard about between Slytherin’s and the other Houses. It was exhausting.
So he set about making a Time-Turner. A real one. He didn’t actually need to finish it. He just needed enough bones of the project to interest Hermione. To make her think it could be done.
He entrapped her slowly. Setting out his research, and his pretty, forbidden family volumes every time she came to ask to use the dark artifact. Which she found morally conflicting.
It was too easy.
He had her researching with him inside a week.
Of course, he had not expected the project to work. Nor for the trap to backfire and catch him in it. But soon the witch had gotten him invested. Theo shuddered. He hated caring about things. He actually began wanting to succeed.
And slowly, Slytherin’s reputation became ambiguously less deplorable. Hermione was always with a Slytherin, and she was so busy she didn’t have time or energy to care about all the Ravenclaw’s warnings, and Gryffindor grouching about the danger of snakes.
If anything, for every fool that tried to talk her out of being seen with Death Eater spawn, Hermione became more and more outraged for Theo. And just as Theo had planned, by Christmas Hermione had started a re-integration crusade for his House. Something Draco sneered at, and Blaise blinked owlishly baffled by, and Pansy scoffed over. Theo should be crowing.
Instead, every time Luna Lovegood gave him a long, thoughtful glance, he felt the snake in his blood wither to a pathetic Flobberworm.
His blood hissed, so what if he was using Granger? It’s not as though she didn’t know what he was about. So what if he was still using Granger? Getting his foot into the Department of Mysteries. She knew that too. He wouldn’t feel guilty for using Pansy or Daphne this way. It was only different because Granger was so naively earnest about everything and everyone.
A spark crackled in the hearth rousing Theo. Without thinking he turned, pressed his mouth to her forehead. The first time he’d done so had been deliberate. A calculated affection. But like all plans with Granger, the calculation warped and softened, so that now the gesture was filled with real affection.
“I’ve been a terrible influence on you, haven’t I?” Theo muttered. “How many times have I gotten you drunk?”
“Just because you get drunk, doesn’t mean I do. How do you think you always got back to your dungeon every night? I never get drunk,” Hermione replied primly, but then swayed and slouched against him heavily. “I admit, I may have overindulged tonight. It needed to happen at some point.”
“Perhaps for empirical evidence, I should let you live through the hangover you’ll have in the morning,” Theo snorted. “Give over or we’ll be in this horrible place all night. I refuse to wake up in a Gryffindor’s common rooms.”
“Fine, you read it,” Hermione relinquished the scroll and slouched into the couch, tilting her head back.
Theo smoothed the parchment across his lap and blinked at the swimming words, slowly stuttering them out loud.
“Whomping. Weeping,
to a forest. Secret keeping.
A spectral tea,
Whose treats should not be eaten.”
“To the Forbidden Forest!” Hermione shouted.
“I don’t like ghosts,” Theo groaned.
“But you do like tea parties.”
“Only when I can spike the tea.”
By the time the two made it down all those stairs again, Theo had enough of walking.
“Come along,” he ordered.
Hermione sighed. Slytherins were so bossy. She followed willingly enough as Theo led her outside and only began to frown when she found herself shivering at the Quidditch pitch. Theo disappeared into the storage shed and returned with a bushy stick.
“No!” Hermione gasped in horror.
“I’m not traipsing to and through the Forbidden Forest all night, Mione. And neither should you!” Theo brandished the student broom. Its handle scratched and dented. Its twiggy bristles thin at the tip and brittle looking.
“Come on,” Theo straddled the broom.
“Theo,” Hermione said reasonably, ”I don’t like brooms. And if you force me on that thing, I will likely be sick all over those expensive robes you keep mentioning.” Then she sat down in the damp grass, meaning to stay there.
“Hermione,” Theo responded just as reasonably. “I’m far too drunk to share a broom with you. Get your own.” He returned to the shed and dropped the horrible stick in her lap.
“Theo,” Hermione whined.
“Are you a Gryffindor or aren’t you?”
“I’m going to be sick,” Hermione clamored onto the broom.
