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She startled when a hand grabbed her, pulling her into a darkened alcove that had just been covered with a tapestry. Her hand had already begun reaching for her wand before she recognized the body next to her.
Letting out a breath of relief she relaxed, and turned to face Theo. “You know that someday I’m not going to realize it’s you, and you’re going to get hexed, yes?” She asked, smiling up at him.
He smiled back, lowering his hand from her wrist until it was grasping her palm, and entwining their fingers. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he responded, his lip twitching at the corner like he wanted to laugh.
But despite his seemingly happy disposition, she could tell there was something darker lurking at the edges of his eyes, and in the way his entire body seemed to be sagging, exhausted.
“What happened?”
“Not now,” he said, eyes darting behind her to the tapestry. The only thing keeping them from being discovered, and it didn’t offer much protection.
She nodded, knowing that it would be easier for them to be discovered and overheard. “Tonight?” She asked.
He agreed, and asked what time.
“One?” She offered. It was late, and they’d be exhausted in the morning. Unfortunately, it was necessary. “I think Hermione’s getting suspicious, she caught me coming back last time and kept asking where I’d gone.”
“You didn’t lie?” He asked.
“I did, I just don’t think she believed me.”
He nodded. “One is fine. The same spot as usual?”
She gave her assent, and he pressed a kiss to the top of head before letting go of her hand and walking so close to the tapestry he could breathe and it would move. He pulled it aside just enough for a sliver of the hallway to become visible, and when he saw there was no one around he left.
She waited several minutes before doing the same, already thrumming with anticipation.
She’d arrived in the forest just minutes before she heard the muffled sounds of feet trampling fallen sticks and branched beneath them, and Theo came into view. He smiled at her, and pulled her into his arms.
It might be one of her favorite things about him; the way he cradled her like she was something precious he never wanted to let go of.
But something was troubling him, and so she pulled back until she could see his face. “What happened?” She repeated her question from earlier.
“My father sent me a letter. He wants me home over Yule.”
Harriet shuddered, her hands closing tighter around the fistfuls of his cloak she was holding. It was like ice was rushing through her, although she knew it was just the knowledge of what Theodred Nott had planned for his son.
“What are we going to do?” She asked. They’d discussed it before, in passing. Never seriously enough, not like they should have. But it was easier, when their time was spent in their own world, where no one existed but them, and the only problem they had was figuring out a way to stay with the other longer.
Theo swallowed, and for the first time in a while she thought that he looked quite young.
He was older than she was by many months, but what did that matter when they were both children thrust into a war they’d never asked for?
“We can leave.”
“Leave?” She echoed, not fully processing what he’d said. “How?”
“My mother retained little of what she brought when she married my father, but what she did she left to me. Not even he knows what it includes. There’s a house in France, and some money. Not much, but enough to live on for a while.”
She stared at him. “You want to move to France?”
He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “For a few weeks, at least. We should sell it as soon as we can, though. France is far too close to England, and we should go somewhere farther, somewhere we can slip into the background.
“Such as?” She prompted.
“Russia.”
She snorted. “Surely you’re joking.”
But he shook his head, and looked as serious as she’d ever seen him. “Despite Kakaroff, who is an outlier, post Grindelwald most of Eastern Europe took a staunch stance against darklords. You remember Krumb’s reaction to Lovegood’s necklace, don’t you?”
And she did; it was hard to forget the way his jaw had clenched at the sight of the circle, triangle, and line symbol, his eyes darkening as he’d pointedly asked Luna, in broken English, if she was a supporter of Grindewald.
“Besides, the country is enormous, it would be hard to find anyone there.”
“And you speak Russian,” she added.
“And I speak Russian. And they don't extradite to the United Kingdom.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “I suppose that is a point in their favor. You don’t think your father will think to look for us there?” She asked, shivering slightly as a heavy gust of wind rushed past them.
He pulled her closer to him, and rubbed his hands up and down her arms, muttering a warming charm to chase away the cold. “No. I know French and Italian as well. And since mother was French, I suspect he’d look there.”
“What about everyone else, Theo?” She asked. “What about Ron and Hermione? How can I just abandon them?”
He sighed, and looked away from her. It took a moment before he was able to meet her eyes. “If I stay here, he’ll mark me. If you stay here, then in the best scenario they make you fight him, and in the worst he kills you.”
“I can’t lose you, Harriet. Please, please, for once in your life, be selfish.”
She stared at him, searching his face, his eyes, as her mind ran over his words.
In the end, it was an easy choice. She was used to being selfless, to doing dangerous things for everyone else. For playing the martyr. For the second time in her life (and it hurt, to think about Sirius. How she wished she’d left with him when she had the chance; just taken her godfather and fled) someone was telling her to be selfish, allowing her the chance to be selfish. And so she took it.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” He repeated, looking like he wasn’t sure that he’d heard her correctly.
She nodded. “Okay.”
He laughed, and grabbed her around the waist before spinning her in a circle. When he set her down he cradled her face in his hands, and pressed his lips to hers. “You won’t regret it, Harriet,” he told her. “I promise. You and I, we will be all we need.”
She smiled back at him, nodding. “When do we leave?”
Together they hatched a plan – one they hoped would buy them enough time to disappear.
Theo would leave first, needing to gain access to the money his mother had left him and the keys and address to the cottage. Their next trip to Hogsmeade was two days away, and while there he would first go to Gringotts to collect what they needed, before setting off an explosion, destroying a building his friends had just seen him walk into.
Unbeknownst to them, he would be in possession of Harriet’s invisibility cloak, and would sneak out before the damage happened.
Due to the nature of the spell he planned to use, it wouldn’t seem abnormal for there to be no remains discovered. It would be a tragic, abhorrent mystery – one that would never be solved.
Harriet would wait another two weeks, then on the first day of Yule break she would disappear from the castle with nothing more than a note. They didn’t need to play her off as dead; her running would seem plausible enough to most who didn’t know her.
Those who did would find it near unbelievable, but what could they do?
Theo would be waiting for her in Hogsmeade under the cloak, and together they’d make their way to muggle Scotland, and from there they’d travel the muggle way (with the help of the cloak, and pendants charmed with notice-me-nots) until they reached France. There they’d stay until they felt safe to move.
Theo had brought up the idea that Dumbledore might sound the alarm and make her “missing” status known across neighboring countries, but they both hoped that if he did those in France wouldn’t care too much. She doubted that they would.
In the end, the plan was flawlessly executed and went on without a hitch.
Theo, for his part, did a superb job faking his death. Half the school was still grieving (or pretending to, she imagined, giving he’d never even mentioned in passing ¾ of the people who’d sobbed when they heard the news) when she vanished at the start of Yule.
It was even easier to leave than she’d hoped, and using the Marauder's map she’d gone through one secret passageway after another until she ended up in Hogsmeade. He was waiting for her in front of a closed and dark “Madame Puddifoots,” and together they left Hogsmeade for muggle Scotland.
It wasn’t the easiest, going about with both of them under the cloak, but they made it work.
There were no buses running at the hour of night when they reached the first town, but there was a pub filled with drunken men and women. It was all too easy to take the car keys of one, although rather less easy to drive.
Harriet, for whatever reason, had assumed that her broom flying skills would transfer over to driving, and was sorely disappointed to find out that they did not. It was a good thing that the roads were mostly empty.
They drove for an hour before reaching Edinburgh, where they left the car in a well-to-do looking neighborhood, and made their way to the train station. Once there it was a rather simple matter of hopping on the correct train (although they did have to wait three hours for one heading to London to depart).
Once in London, and still under the invisibility cloak, they boarded a train to Paris.
From Paris there were a number of different subways and buses they used to arrive in the small, coastal town of L'Épine. After entering the house the two promptly fell asleep atop the unmade bed in the main room.
Harriet was groggy when she woke up, and slightly cold. She pushed herself up on the bed and was grateful to see the un-shrunken chest at the foot of the bed. She flinched as her bare feet hit the cold, wood floors.
Opening the chest she pulled out the first jumper she saw, and pulled it over her head. It was Theo’s, and she was drowning in it, but after just seconds she’d already begun to feel warmer. Next she pulled on a thick pair of socks, and wiggled her toes as she smiled at the silly pattern on them.
Theo hadn’t been in the room when she’d woken up, so she left and went to look for him.
She stopped in the kitchen, noticing some fruit on the counter that hadn’t been there when they’d arrived. Grabbing an apple she took a bite and looked around the room.
It was obviously a wizarding residence – as the distinct lack of does covering everything made abundantly clear. But there were also charms covered in runes that hung from the kitchen window, and a moving picture of a dark haired woman that bore strong resemblance to Theo hugging a blonde.
When she found him, Theo was standing on the front porch staring out across the water. The sun was low in the sky, and a burnt orange color so stark it sent a shiver down her spine when she first saw it.
She stepped up behind him, wrapping her arms around his torso and leaning into him. “How do you feel?” She asked.
“Free.” He said, as one of his hands came to rest atop her, his thumb rubbing up and down in a soothing pattern. “And yourself?”
“Free,” she echoed, smiling against his back. “It’s beautiful here,” she said.
He nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen water so clear, or so blue.”
She voiced her agreement, and neither of them needed to say anything else.