THE FURIES ▸ Draco Malfoy

Chapter Twelve: PHTHONUS

"Wonder why?" she said sarcastically. "Uncle Eldrice was a joy."

Theodore stopped suddenly, just a few feet away from the entrance. He gave a hesitant glance at the portraits that hung along the wall, all of them asleep or muttering to one another about the traitors in their family like it was a conversation about chess. Mia halted a few seconds after, turning around in confusion. The look on Theo's face was distant from her, his eyes wandering around the hall before they finally settled on his raised palm, playing with the lines like they would have in Divination class last year.

"Is it wrong not to miss him?" he asked quietly, his words barely making it past his lips before he was wincing in regret. He looked up at her. "The others―Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle―they look every day in the paper for some word of their fathers and what may be happening to them in there...but I don't. Does that make me a horrible son, to not fear what happens to him in prison? I expected to feel something...but not this. Not indifference. Not apathy."

The shiver of protection that ran through her body made Andromeda want to murder her own uncle then. Eldrice Nott was never meant to be a father, and she had known that as well as everyone else in her family a long time ago. Mia never liked the man, even as a child she only tolerated her uncle because of her love for her aunt. He was a good husband, once, to Aunt Athella, but from the moment that Theodore was born, he blamed his wife's growing ailment on his son. He fought too heavily alongside Tom Riddle when he knew him all those years ago, and it left its mark. A mark that was much deeper and costly than her own father's. He took that out on Theodore, and that was something Mia would never find forgiveness in him for.

"He was never really your father though, was he?" she asked softly, talking a few steps so that they were near the side of the wall. Theodore's pained expression hurt her even more. "You and I have lived sixteen years without our fathers, Theo...we have lived half of that with no one but each other. Eldrice only gave you one thing, and that was his last name, and you wear it with more honor than he ever will, all right? You are not a horrible son for not feeling upset that he was tried for his crimes. He may have been one of them, but his greatest crime was always how he treated you after Aunt Athella passed. That is the one most unspeakable."

Theo nodded slowly, but the small crease in the place between his brows showed that he was in more strife over the situation than he wanted to be. The unnerving sense of this happening before struck her, except she was the one in pain over her father and he was the one comforting her. Mia took the two steps between them to pull apart his hands and wrap her arms around him. He tensed, just as she knew he would. Their family had never been one for affection, not unless it was the number of times they hugged themselves. His shoulders finally relaxed, and he was letting out a breathe of relief before pulling his cousin closer to him. The thumping of his heartbeat shattered her ear as she held him tightly, wanting to take all of his pain away.

"I miss you," he muttered into her ear.

Mia's eyes watered, and she was having to press her tongue to the top of her mouth in order to keep them away. She missed herself too, and it was becoming very clear to her just how different she had become in the last few months. There was an anger, a darkness, within her that terrified her to no end. It was the sharp inhale through her nose that alerted Theo of her reaction, and rather than pulling away, he only pressed a kiss to the side of her head. She was too busy recollecting herself, staring intently at the ground, to realize that her cousin had been rubbing absently at her left arm. Her forearm.

He cleared his throat. "We should go inside. I told Vaisey I would meet him before practice tonight so we can go over a few more tactics the Gryffindors use during matches."