Theodore Nott was six years old again.
He stood in the garage of his childhood home. Mountains of boxes and yard equipment covered in impenetrable layers of solid dust surrounded him and the small workspace he had created for himself. Tools and scrap metal littered the floor and piled high on the table before him, pushed aside into mounds of chaos. In his hands was a small music box.
He remembered this day. Leaving before the sun rose and returning with a broken piece of discarded trash. The deep tug in his chest that begged him to return it to its former glory. It was not trash. Theodore would make sure no one would ever throw it out again.
He'd spent the whole day fixing the box. He cleaned up the chipped corners and replaced old nuts and screws. He sanded the wood till the mould melted away, leaving pristine oak beneath the water damage. All that was left was to turn the crank.
Turn the crank and prove it wasn't trash.
Turn it.
He did.
Nothing happened.
And suddenly he's no longer six years old in the garage of his childhood home, staring down at a music box and praying it would work. Now Theodore was three again, watching his mother flit from cabinet to cabinet with a bowl and spoon in hand.
She was right there. Within arm's reach was his mother, face covered in flour and glowing. Theodore could even feel her braid disturbing the still hair as she turned and spun around the kitchen, humming to herself and signing in quiet Spanish. He missed hearing her voice, the way she sang to him every night, the sound of Spanish in an otherwise too English neighbourhood. But there she was, singing and spinning and breathing and okay, she was okay...
He reached out to her. "Mamá-"
His hand hit a barrier.
She was on one side, him on the other.
He couldn't reach her.
Theodore Nott woke with a start. He wasn't six in the garage of his childhood home, nor was he three watching his mother make dinner on a late summer night. He was twelve, sitting alone in his dark dorm room at Hogwarts, surrounded in blankets soaked with his sweat.
His stomach lurched.
He turned and grabbed the glass of water at his bedside. It was just a dream, he knew it was just a dream...
But it seemed so real. His mother had looked so healthy, so alive.
His mind went back to the mirror he had seen with Isobel. Looking into the mirror and seeing his mother behind him had plagued his thoughts ever since, but returning seemed irrational. Stupid, really. It was a horrible idea to sneak through the darkened halls in the first place, especially after such a close call as before, but returning was a worse idea.
But he needed to see it again. He needed to see her again, even if being unable to reach her broke him to pieces.
Theodore snuck from his bed and slipped his shoes on, making a quiet exit from the Slytherin dorm room. The door groaned and the stairs creaked, but there was no sign his departure had been detected until he was long gone.