Chapter 1
“Morgana’s sagging tits, who is that smoking hot piece of meat?” Ginny whispered, poking Hermione’s arm with a very strong, very pointy index. Hermione looked up from her textbook propped against a jug of Pumpkin Juice. Daphne Greengrass was sauntering in the Great Hall with a tall, handsome guy, both sporting their Slytherin patches on their chests. She frowned. He wasn’t in Ginny’s year if she hadn’t recognized him and being with Greengrass could very well mean he was one of her peers, repeating or attending Seventh Year after the war. And yet, she couldn’t place him.
“Uh,” she huffed, tapping a finger on her lips and racking her brain for names of Slytherin boys her age.
He wasn’t Malfoy, of course, with dark wavy locks falling on his forehead and very blue eyes she could make out from a distance. Plus, Malfoy hadn’t even returned after being pardoned by the Wizengamot for helping the Order take down Voldemort in his own way. Hermione had read on the Prophet he was in France, finishing his education in Beauxbatons. She was relieved he hadn’t been condemned for crimes he had been forced to commit, and she was glad he had a chance at making better decisions for his future, somewhere with less history for him to overcome.
The hot guy definitely wasn’t Goyle nor Crabbe, for obvious reasons: one was very much dead and the other was anything but hot.
And he wasn’t the dark skinned Zabini, who wasn’t back at Hogwarts either, having moved to Italy, where his mother had secured husband number whocares. Again.
So that left her only with…
“Nott!” she gasped. A couple of second years jumped and dropped their forks.
Ginny turned around, puzzled. “Not what?”
“He’s Nott,” Hermione explained, lowering her voice.
“Why not? Look at him, he is smoking hot, Hermione. You’re losing your sight with all that reading you do in the library,” Ginny poked her again. She was going to bruise.
“I can see he is hot, Gin. What I am trying to say is that his name is Nott, Theodore Nott,” Hermione said, eyes trailing back to him. He was sitting beside Greengrass, a book opened on the table next to his plate. He bit into a jam toast, his eyes glued to the pages. He had wide shoulders and muscular arms, long fingers with veins and tendons snaking up his wrists and under the sleeves of his shirt. Hermione looked back at his face. He was undoubtably handsome, with high cheekbones and a sharp jawline, and Hermione wondered when the change had happened. She hadn’t paid much attention to the quiet Slytherin that never followed Malfoy in his evil intents, but she would have, if he’d always looked like that, right?
Ginny’s mouth hung open. “He is not!”
Hermione nodded. “Yes, he is Nott.”
The ginger girl shook her head. “We need to stop this not-Nott thing, my head hurts already. Anyways, are you sure? I remember him a lot more…scrawnier than that.”
“I haven’t seen him since sixth year, but I ruled everyone out, he’s the only one left.”
Ginny gave him another once over. “He wasn’t here last year,” she pondered.
“And he wasn’t amongst the Death Eaters, I would have seen him at the trials, or in the dead lists,” Hermione considered, curious now. Nott Senior had been a proud Death Eater and he’d died during the final battle, so it was weird his son hadn’t been forced at Hogwarts or in the ranks of Voldemort’s supporters. That was an interesting puzzle to crack.
“Wherever he was, he worked out,” Ginny said, biting into her scone.
Hermione shrugged and went back to her book. “I guess, and puberty hit him hard in general.”
“Bet he’s super hard under that shirt,” the ginger girl sniggered, poking Hermione again. She turned to her, eyebrows so high on her forehead they almost disappeared in her hairline. Ginny gave her a very innocent look.
“What? I may have a boyfriend, but I’m not blind!”
Hermione smiled and shook her head. Ginny and Harry were finally a couple out in the open and she was so happy for them.
She missed Harry.
Of course, he hadn’t come back. The Chosen One had saved the Wizarding World, and now was living his dream of becoming an Auror in a Ministry that was still recovering and needed a face that people would love and respect. So, sod off getting his NEWTs, right?
“Ginevra Weasley, do I have to send an owl to said boyfriend and make him feel threatened?” Hermione teased.
“Please don’t. You know how jealous he gets, I don’t think he’ll ever forgive Dean for going out with me when he didn’t have the balls to ask me out,” Ginny chuckled, then rammed her elbow into her side. “Besides, I was only bringing him to your very free attention. You definitely have a book obsession in common.”
Hermione laughed and turned a page. “I am not interested in dates, relationships or even one offs at the moment, thank you very much. I just want to have a normal school year where I can study in peace, without Slytherins bothering me.”
“He doesn’t seem the bothering type. I don’t remember him ever teasing anyone, even when Malfoy and his prejudiced ass was around,” Ginny mused, playing with the crumbs of her scone.
She was right. Nott had been a peculiar Slytherin, always in the shadows of the more boisterous Malfoy and Parkinson. Hermione had seen him a lot in the library, now that she thought about it.
“Still, he is a Slytherin, and he won’t want to have anything to do with me,” she cut it, then added, for good measure, “which I really don’t care about, by the way.”
“Because you’re not interested in boys, only books, right?” Ginny asked, with an underlying irony in her tone.
“No boys, yes books,” Hermione confirmed, going back to reading.
“And it is just because you want to study in peace, not because you’re still into Ron, right?” the girl murmured, resting her chin on Hermione’s shoulder. She whipped her head around, almost knocking into her forehead.
“Godric, no, Gin! I’m so over Ron, I’m floating!” Hermione said, horrified.
Ron had been a parenthesis that had lasted even less than the whole summer after the war. The snogging was weird, almost like kissing a brother. The spark wasn’t there. Maybe they’d waited too much, or something had fizzled out at some point, she didn’t know, but they’d agreed pretty soon they were better off as friends. She loved him, of course, but just as she loved Harry. And it was finally okay with them both.
Ginny clutched at her heart and sighed in relief. “Thank Merlin! I was starting to worry you had been hit by some curse a little too hard on the head and your crush on my stupid brother might be resurfacing!”
“He’s not stupid, Gin, and you know it,” Hermione chastised her, a playful smile tugging at her lips nonetheless.
Ginny waved her hands in the air. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s circle back to Theodore Knott. He’s hot, is he not?”
“Yes, he’s Nott,” Hermione teased, and Ginny squeezed her eyes hard.
“We’re doing it again!” she cried in frustration.
Hermione laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth with her hands. People turned to look at them from other tables. When she managed to stifle her giggles, she poked Ginny in the ribs.
“He’s very hot, Gin, but please don’t push it, okay?” Hermione told her gently, then turned to her book.
Ginny sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Alright, alright. But just so you know, he’s staring at you like an idiot.”
Hermione looked up in the Slytherin table’s direction and met a pair of blue eyes trained on her hazel ones. A corner of his lips was lifted in a playful grin.
***********
Hermione scanned the shelf in the dim light of the library, her eyes sliding back and forth over the spines of old tomes, lips pursed in frustration. She had reshelved Uses of dragon blood in brews and concoctions less then an hour earlier, where had it gone?
She perused higher and lower shelves, then looked around the tables. Maybe someone had taken it out and left it lying around? Her gaze landed on a dark-haired student sitting at a table in the corner, his long fingers holding a very familiar book with a rich burgundy cover.
Well, fuck.
She inhaled and marched towards him. She halted on the opposite side of the table and gently cleared her throat. He didn’t look up, nor gave any indication he’d heard her.
“Theodore Nott, right?” she asked, taking another step.
The boy turned a page. “Mmh mmh.”
Hermione crossed her arms over her chest. “I need that book, if it’s not a problem.”
“I’m reading it,” he said, his deep blue eyes moving over the words.
“Can I borrow it for a minute?” she asked, irritation crawling up her chest.
“When I’m finished,” he answered. He had a low voice, caressing and soft.
She hated that she liked it.
“And when would that be?” she pressed.
“When the back cover ends up on top,” he explained, head still bowed on the tome. Hermione glared at him, blood boiling with outrage. Was he playing with her? She huffed and saw the corner of his mouth lift up. He was!
“Very funny. I just need to check a passage I referenced in my essay. It will take a minute and then you can take it to your dorm, for all I care,” she said, barely keeping her temper in check.
He finally decided she deserved to be acknowledged and slowly lifted his eyes from the pages. Hermione had to physically restrain herself from gasping. His eyes were striking up close and the shadows of the library playing on his angular features made things to her stomach.
Theo gave her a cat’s smile and closed the book. “I’ll give you the book now if you let me get a look at your essay,” he proposed. Before Hermione could even think her reply, he lifted a hand in front of him and went on. “I don’t need it to copy, I finished mine yesterday. I’m only curious about your conclusions. I’m afraid my ideas to improve the Wolfsbane potion might be a little too forward.”
Once again, Hermione had to force her body not to react to him. Her mouth wanted desperately to hang open in surprise, but she strongly forbade it. Instead, she pushed her brain to focus and consider.
“We exchange them right here. I read yours while you read mine, and then I take the book,” she countered, eyes narrowed to slits.
Theo smiled wider, white teeth on display, and lifted his hand. “Deal.”
Hermione looked at his lean fingers and swallowed, then shook them. They felt strong and warm, with some small callouses in places. She broke the contact as soon as possible, her heart running a bit too fast.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, walking briskly away to get her stuff from the table she had set camp into. When she was back, Theo had already pulled his scroll of parchment from his bag. Hermione sat to face him and handed him her essay while taking his. They opened the scrolls and started reading.
His eyes flitted up occasionally, observing her concentration ticks: furrowed brows, teeth playing with her lower lip, fingers tucking curls behind her ears. He hid a smile behind the parchment and finished scanning the essay, just seconds before she looked up with an impressed gaze.
“Well, it is forward, for sure. Increasing the dosage of aconite could be lethal, but the idea of using a stabilizer is very interesting,” she mused, rolling back the paper.
“You didn’t go very far from my hypothesis, either. Though dragon blood is much easier to work with, it still is to be handled with care,” he said, pushing the book and the essay towards her on the table. Then he bagged his scroll and stood up.
Hermione sat back a little straighter and looked up at him. “Wait, I’ll be a minute, really! You can finish the book.”
Theo smiled, a dimple appearing on his left cheek, and her insides liquefied. “Don’t worry, Granger. I’ve read it two times already,” he teased, his words low and intimate, then winked at her and walked away.
Her face felt so hot she had to unroll the scroll to fan herself.