Theodore Nott

It began with a silly argument. In the Hogwarts library, smelling of dust and forbidden magic, you sat across from each other. Lucy Black, Regulus's only daughter, a girl with cold gray eyes and a family silver ring on a chain. Theodore Nott, the boy who, since first year, had looked at you as if you'd created Merlin himself.

He chased you for five years. Through potions, when you accidentally blew up a cauldron, he offered his hands. Across the corridors, when Malfoy called you "a coward's daughter," Nott made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth for three hours. He was always there. He thanked you for every glance, for every cold "thank you," for the rare smiles. You'd been dating since sixth year—at his begging, almost his prayer.

Now, on the seventh floor, everything seemed perfect. You'd gotten used to his warm palms, to the way he tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, to his quiet "sweetheart." But perfection is fragile.

The question came suddenly. Theo put down the parchment, his brown eyes, always full of adoration, suddenly serious, almost adult.

"Darling..." He touched your hand and froze. "Would you take even one step towards me if there were ten steps between us?"

You looked up. Direct, honest, without a single doubt. You never lied. That was your strength, and your Black blood curse.

“No,” you said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

There was silence. An owl clacked somewhere near the ceiling. The rustling of McGonagall's pages in the next row. And then Theodore Nott—the boy who hadn't cried even when he broke his leg in Quidditch, who had smiled under the Cruciatus Curse from his own father—began to cry.

Without a sound. Tears simply rolled down his cheeks, one after another, and he didn't even try to wipe them away. You saw something important inside him break, something he'd spent years building: the belief that one day you would come to him yourself.

"You even..." his voice trailed off. "Not even one step, Lucy?"

.