Who Rabastan Lestrange & Theodore Nott What Home for the holidays? When Saturday evening Where Nott Estate Rating R?
Making his way home to Nott Estate for the second time since his father died was playing havoc with Theo. His memory, body, everything was trying to prepare for a couple of weeks of belittlement, verbal abuse and torture while his conscious mind kept telling the rest of him that the house was his now, there was no one in there to hate or fear anymore and his bones would remain safe and inside his body for now.
His bad arm was numb to the elbow and trembling by the time he reached the doors and he had to stop shy of the gates to rub at the muscles, trying to ease the phantom ache from a little finger that no longer had any feeling. Another 'gift' from his dad and that just sent him into another tailspin of anger and doubt and fear and anger at his fear. He'd thought things would get better once his father could no longer hurt him, but it seemed as though that had been a laughable pipe dream; his father continued to cast a shadow over him even from the dead and the realisation as he approached his property that his dad was still a ghost in the haunted places of his mind depressed him. He'd been so tired lately, something that sighed up from a soul that he'd begun to doubt having. Being a Slytherin had him halfway guilty in anyone's minds already, nevermind the Pureblood/Death Eater related aspect, plus the fact that he wasn't publically anti-anyone (unless you understood the way Theo's mind worked and read the things he wrote and said with a very open mind that was) - he'd written against bullying in defence of Greg and everyone had applied it to the Purity issue, seeing him as a hypocrite while pretty much exposing themselves as such.
It irritated him that his opinions were assumed to the point where no one asked anymore and that even if they did he wouldn't have been safe to declare them, more that no one understood that and so they thought their assumptions were true through his silence. He'd noticed that members of all Houses, including his own but also the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who were so vocal about equal treatment for all blood types, were just as eager as the next person to pick out and pick on the linguistic shortcomings of both Greg and Vince. He knew that they could be awful at times, the beliefs they held and the things they did to younger, weaker, different students, but it was just that - they should be held accountable for their behaviour, not the fact that they didn't have the same mastery of the english language as everyone else. It was just bullying as far as he could see and it grated on him that it was acceptable because the boys in question could be dicks some of the time, worse, because the bullies were supposed to believe in the opposite of that sort of thing.
Or most of the time. Theo had an undisclosed soft spot for both boys, possibly because he saw in them what he could have been had he let his father break him, had he been comfortable not to challenge, had he not lacked the self-preservation to make things easier for himself.
And now he was back to thinking about his dad. He sighed.
Durmstrang and Beauxbatons and Iceland probably weren't the answers, as much as he'd have liked them to be. He was still hanging in the balance between becoming a Death Eater or a pariah but he was pretty sure that it just seemed so difficult to cope with because he was running on empty. He needed to be home - which was an odd thing to think - he needed some time away from Hogwarts to recharge his batteries and refocus on getting through without losing his ideals or his life.
He made it to the front door, the elves opening it for him as silently and unobtrusively as they did everything else; they were a unpleasant reminder of his father but, like him, they'd served their time and he didn't want to move them on just to save himself some discomfort. Stepping foot into the foyer momentarily disabled him, and he stood still, tense, shutting away pieces of himself to get through the next few weeks with as little harm to his personality as possible until his brain kicked in again and reminded him that he didn't need to do that anymore.
He still didn't like it.
The fingers on his bad arm were trembling just a little, like a caffeine addict in need of a fix, but he didn't notice it. He heard the doors close behind him and, soft as the elves tried to make it, still heard the noise of it shutting echo, bouncing around the high ceilings and now-bare walls and underneath he swore he could hear something, something human only because it was only a sentient being that made that kind of mindless noise when it was under that much torment...
He was losing himself, and he would have fallen further if his searching gaze hadn't landed on a coat on the bannister, jolting him out of madness and the past.
"Sir?" he called out, uncertain even in his own home.