Me. You. Us.

01. Gotta have faith

Four weeks after 'I do'

People say that when you meet your soulmate, the world stops turning.

They say that when you meet 'the one', those lucky few, that time simply stands still. That the hand on the clock stops, birds freeze as they soar overhead and your heart stops mid-beat.

It's something the elderly tell their grandchildren, like some secret code that's passed down from one generation to the next.

"Don't worry. Your time will come," they say proudly, a knowing twinkle in their eye and age creases cracking at the sides of their smiles. "When you meet 'the one', the feeling will be instant. Time will stand still, and you'll just know."

Yeah, people do say that. They say it all the time.

And Theodore Nott knew, from the instant that he saw her, that all that crap was a load of bollocks. Complete and utter horse shit.

Because the world simply didn't stop turning when he met Daphne Greengrass, the most beautiful creature in the whole of fucking creation, everything else completely vanished.

The first time he saw her all those years ago, when he was eleven and climbing off the Hogwarts express for the very first time, time didn't stand still, it ceased to fucking exist.

The sky was bluer. The air smelled cleaner, and all that other cliché bollocks was true, but it was so much more than that.

His life was broken before and he hadn't even realised it. It was like all the pieces of his life were disconnected and jumbled, a mess, and seeing her pulled all the loose threads together and made him whole for the very first time.

Sometimes, he thought that maybe those old fools weren't wrong, just ill informed. He was sure that they loved their significant other dearly, dotted on them, but their clarifications of love simply weren't enough for what he and Daphne had.

Because Theo and Daphne weren't just meant to be together, they weren't just soulmates, they were two halves of the same soul. The same person split right down the middle, neither half whole without the other.

Where Daphne lacked, Theo thrived. And where he wilted, she blossomed.

Theo had always known Daphne was it for him. There was never any doubt. No one would ever compare to her. No one could even come close to the way she made him feel.

Theo knew there would never be anyone else for him, but the moments when it was clearest to him, the moments when he knew he couldn't be without her -even for a day - wasn't when she held and calmed him through panic attacks after missions, or even in those euphoric minutes when his cock was buried inside her.

No, they were moments when they were alone together, when she thought he wasn't watching her. When she was dancing around the kitchen with one of her atrocious 80's records turned up to the highest volume, when she was singing at the top of her voice while she cooked them breakfast and wore nothing but one of his T-shirt that was four sizes too big for her.

Like she did every morning.

Theo kept quiet as he watched from the doorway. He folded his arms across his chest and bit his lip to keep from laughing out loud - although he doubted Daphne could hear him, she was far too busy.

"Oh, but I need some time off from that emotion, time to pick my heart up off the floor" she sung loudly, completely out of pitch and not caring in the slightest. "Oh, when that love comes down without devotion. Well, it takes a strong man, baby, but I'm showin' you the door"

She skidded across the kitchen tiles, waving her wand as she went and using it to crack eggs over the pan and start to fry them.

"Cause I gotta have faith. I gotta have faith," she continued her little dance while she waited for the eggs to boil, shaking her hips in time with the beat and waving her free hand above her head. "Because I got to have faith, faith. I got to have faith, faith, faith."