Chapter 2
Contrary to popular belief, Thoros Nott did not beat his wife to death—he didn’t beat his wife at all. Thoros could admit that he had always been a reserved person, even with his family, but he loved them more than anything. The day that his wife, Isabel, died, he was sorely tempted to follow her through the veil; he would have, were it not for his son.
Theodore was Thoros’ pride and joy and the last of his living family. After his wife’s passing, he pulled away from his son even more than before. Wracked with despair from Isabel’s death and consumed by guilt from leaving his son to grieve mostly by himself, Thoros disappeared from society, and for several weeks, the only eyes that saw him were those of his head house elf, Dinky.
After a few weeks, and after he’d begun to finally accept his wife’s death, he slowly started to emerge from his wing of Nott Manor. He began sneaking into his son’s rooms occasionally at night to watch Theo sleep, needing reassurance that he was still alive and wouldn’t suddenly die like Isabel had.
Being a widower at 30 years old with a toddler to raise with only the help of house elves brought a whole new fear Thoros has never experienced before: the fear of failure. He didn’t want to fail his son any more than he already had. He had already failed to prevent his wife’s death. Isabel had always had a weak heart, so he was surprised, proud, and thankful of how long she stayed with them after they lost their other child.
Theodore and Olive Nott were born on September 19, 1979. Isabel and Thoros were overjoyed at having two children; it was rare for pureblood families to have more than one child that made it to term fully, so they thanked all the gods for the blessing that were the new Nott twins.
A year later, and some discussion and creating the compromise that Olive would be able to break the contract in the future should she so desire to, Thoros and his closest friend, Lucius Malfoy, and their wives drew up a contract, betrothing Olive and the Malfoy’s new son, Draco. The Nott twins and the new Malfoy heir already spent a significant amount of time together, so the Malfoys became the twins’ godparents, and it was in the four parents’ hopes that the two would be a love match in the future. Both couples had been love matches and wished that for their children too.
Thoros had been raised to only want a boy, an heir, but his mother had taught him differently. His mother had instilled in Thoros that to have any child was a miracle, and that love for your progeny should always outweigh duty to continue the family line.
Thoros’ mother’s teaching created the man that Isabel Grenier fell in love with. They treated each other with respect, as equals. Thoros thought Isabel put the stars in the sky and the flowers on Earth. Throughout their short courtship, Thoros and Isabel talked about everything under the sun, sharing opinions about anything and everything.
They didn’t always agree with each other, and fought often. Before they were married, they had more than one fight that resulted in one of them walking a short distance away and shutting their mouth. After their first fight—a fight about blood purity—they sat down and had a conversation about how to handle fights in the future.
“I will never abandon you,” Thoros had told Isabel. “I will never walk so far away from you that you will feel as if you can no longer come to me when you need to. I will never run away from you.”
Isabel had nodded in agreement. “I will never speak against you when I angry in the possibility that something is said that I come to regret later. I will not run away from our fights until they are resolved or we have mutually agreed to revisit it at a later date.”
They held that promise all through the rest of their courtship and their marriage, repeating their promises in their marriage vows.
A year after their marriage, Isabel had revealed that she was pregnant. Thoros was overjoyed and immediately took his wife to their chambers to worship her body and the life she was creating inside of her. When it was revealed a few months later that she was carrying twins, he repeated the ritual, carrying his laughing wife to their chambers, making love to her, and whispering promises in her ear that he would protect her and their children for all their days.
Two years later, he broke those promises.
In his final years of schooling at Hogwarts, he had become involved with a man who yearned for power. At 18 years old, Thoros was tempted to follow the man…and so he did. He became a Death Eater and started advocating—not always in peaceful means—for keeping the blood lines of the wizarding world pure.
His wife was a French pureblooded witch with flowing brown curls, expressive brown eyes, and a presence that demanded attention when she walked into a room. Whenever he boasted about his wife, Isabel would shine, brighten up the room with her smile. But whenever part of that boasting included how she was ‘pure,’ she always gave her husband a disapproving look, telling him that “my blood status is not an indicator of my worth, and you would do good to remember that, Thoros Antwan Nott.”
Thoros spent a few years gallivanting around with the Dark Lord and the rest of his followers, enjoying his freedom his youth and departure from Hogwarts granted him. He climbed his way into the Dark Lord’s inner circle. After he got married to Isabel, she started to have more arguments with Thoros about his ‘hobbies.’ Thoros respected Isabel’s opinions, and listened to what she said, but he was high on the prospect of power. As a Nott, a member of a House in the Sacred 28, and a man with vast wealth, he was already powerful; but the possibility of gaining more—of having that ever-present voice in the back of his mind that sounded like his father telling him that nothing is more important than power and maintaining that power—blinded him to other things. He still loved his wife and was devoted to her, but he began to pull away more.
One night, he and Isabel had their worst fight since they’d met. Isabel claimed that Thoros was losing sight of what the two of them had agreed would be the way they’d build their life. That was the first and only fight they’d had where it had ended with Isabel in tears. The conclusion of their fight took place in their chambers.
That was the night the twins were conceived.
Thoros still believed in blood purity, but he rededicated his time to his family and partook in fewer Death Eater outings. When the twins were born, he doubled down on his vow to do anything and everything to protect them.
Shortly before the twins’ second birthday, however, tragedy struck.
Thoros and Isabel had never met the Potters personally, and Thoros never liked the idea of pureblood James Potter marrying and having a child with mudblood Lily Evans, but the events that took place that night caused a shift in beliefs and priorities for Thoros.
Isabel had been inconsolable about the news that the Dark Lord, the ‘master’ that Thoros followed, had tried to kill a baby. She had looked at Thoros with tears in her eyes, grabbed Olive and Theodore, and ran into the wing that would become Theodore’s in the future, telling Thoros that “Until you think long and hard about if you are going to continue to support a megalomaniac that goes around killing innocent babies, then you will not be allowed to see your son and daughter.”
Thoros was heartbroken and tried to reason with Isabel, but nothing could dissuade and overcome Isabel’s maternal instincts to protect her children, even if it meant potentially from their own father. Thoros had never laid a hand on his wife or babies, so he felt betrayed that his wife would think him capable of such an act.
He spent the next week coming to terms with the fact that his master had, in fact, tried to kill an infant based solely on a prophecy that Severus Snape had brought to him. He put his family in place of the Potters. Imagining him dying to try to protect his wife and his children, then his wife dying and leaving the twins orphans, made him choke on a sob and cover his mouth in shame. Isabel was right, and he had a lot to atone for.
Thoros called to Isabel and tried to get her to talk to him, but she had ignored him. He could sense the countless wards that she had erected at the entrance to the wing she and the twins resided in, but he didn’t try to dismantle them, both out of respect for her privacy and because he knew that it would just make the situation worse.
So he sent her a letter.
He wrote the longest letter of his life, writing non-stop for half an hour, then had his owl deliver it. A few hours later, he received a reply, telling him to meet her in the main drawing room that evening. He met up with her and poured his heart out. He allowed her to thoroughly chastise him, knowing he deserved it. After a couple hours, and a round or two of tears, they made up. He promised that he would find a way to somehow leave the Dark Lord’s ranks.
A week later, the Notts made a day trip to Diagon Alley. It was the twins’ first trip there, and they spent the whole trip holding hands, eyes wide and sparkling with smiles outshining the sun.
At one point during their outing, Olive had pulled Theodore to Flourish and Blotts. It didn’t matter that the Nott library was huge, Olive always insisted it could be bigger, and Theodore agreed. Shaking their heads with small smiles on their faces, Thoros and Isabel followed their children to the bookstore.
Isabel followed the twins to some part of the bookstore while Thoros went to the front counter to pick up an order. One of the books he had ordered had just came out that day, with the shipment just arriving, and Thoros was made to wait while the clerk went to the stock room to get him a copy.
While he waited, he became aware of an increasingly frantic voice—a voice that he recognized. Thoros felt his stomach constrict, a bad feeling slowly making its way into his veins, and followed the voice of his wife. When he found her, Theo was clinging to her hand, chin wobbling slightly while looking up at his mother. Thoros had automatically swept his son up into his arms to comfort.
“She’s gone!” Isabel had wailed. “Theo and Olive were looking at books and Olive went around the corner to the next aisle, and when I pulled Theo to follow after, she was gone. She wasn’t there! Thoros where is our daughter?!”
Thoros pulled his wife toward him and held her close, kissing her forehead. “We’ll find her.”
“I called for her, and she always comes when I call her, but she didn’t!” Isabel continued to wail.
“Come, let’s go to the aurors.”
Arm around her shoulder and his other arm holding his son, the three Notts made their way to the aurors office. The next couple weeks, the aurors searched for Olive Nott, but while it was part of their job to look for kidnapped children, Thoros could tell that the were not properly motivated. He knew it was because he was a former Death Eater, that because the Dark Lord had fallen only a few weeks prior, people were still focused on celebrating that and gossiping about the Potters. Thoros threw money at the department, hoping it would reinvigorate the aurors; Isabel screamed at the head auror, throwing every plea and threat that a mother could throw at him to try to get them to find their daughter.
After a few more weeks, the aurors gave up the search, declaring that it was more likely than not that Olive Nott was dead at that point.
Young Theo knew something was wrong, and asked his parents and his personal house elf, Zara, and his sister’s elf, Baya, where his sister was. He couldn’t understand why she hadn’t come out from playing hide and seek yet, but knew that something was deeply wrong when his mother burst into tears the first time he asked; he never asked again, just stayed quiet and listened to what was happening around him from his parents and whoever visited the manor.
By the time the end of the year was upon them, Isabel Nott nee Grenier passed away due to a broken heart.
One night, as Thoros checked on his son shortly before the twins’ 5th birthday, he finally accepted that he would never see his daughter again. He had held onto hope that she would turn up eventually, but after four years, he knew it was time to accept that she was never coming back.
After the Dark Lord summoned him after he rose again using the Potter boy’s blood, he continued to operate on autopilot. He did whatever his master ordered him to do, all the while making sure Theo was unaware of his actions, lest his son be disappointed in him, and all the while drowning in his guilt over what his wife would think were she still alive.
His pain from the loss of his wife and the acknowledgment that his daughter will never return to him stayed with him for ten years.
When he was in the Department of Mysteries on his master’s orders, he was still running on autopilot when he could have sworn he saw a ghost. One of the teenagers he and his fellow Death Eaters were fighting looked similar to Isabel, with dark curls, similar stature and complexion, and a ruthless approach on dueling. At some point she and Thoros made eye contact and he knew right then that she was his long-lost daughter. He would know those eyes anywhere; he stared into them when he was delivering his vows on his wedding day, and saw them whenever he had a face-to-face discussion with his son.
He was frozen. The girl raised her wand toward him, but before she could cast a spell anything, a purple flame barreled into her, slicing across her chest. Her mouth fell open in an ‘O’ and she looked down at her chest. After a moment that felt suspended in time, she crumpled to the ground.
“NO!”
Thoros looked around at the Potter boy. The two of them had screamed at the same time.
Thoros rushed toward the fallen girl, but Potter, seeing him running toward his friend, stunned him. The last thing Thoros remembered before everything going dark was that he would find her, then find whoever took her and kill them, even if it was the last thing he did.