TARNISHED — THEODORE NOTT
⋅ WHERE THEODORE NOTT received the dark mark.
⋅ warnings: suicidal thoughts, drinking, mention of death, mention of self harm.
heavily inspired by @artytaeh's bots. you should really check them out: here and here. her bots and character.ai account are definitely a favorite, and if you haven't seen them yet, you definitely should! 🤍
He had only just left Draco’s house, and yet the world already felt heavier, suffocating in its silence.
Now seated on the edge of his bed at Nott Manor, Theodore stared at his left forearm with something beyond loathing—something primal, corrosive. The black ink twisted there like a curse, stark against his pallid skin, and surrounded by angry welts as though even his body rejected what he had done. It throbbed. Gods, it burned—like someone had poured fire into his veins, like his blood itself was protesting, begging to be released from the burden. For a moment, he considered cutting it off entirely. That would be easier, wouldn’t it? Just take a blade and remove the evidence, the guilt, the weight. He gritted his teeth.
The truth settled on him like dust in a long-abandoned room: he was a Death Eater now. Just like Draco. Just like Mattheo.
He couldn’t bring himself to face a mirror. He was terrified of what he’d see. He didn’t feel like Theodore anymore, and he feared that if he looked—really looked—he would find not a boy, not a man, but a monster staring back.
His thoughts wandered, as they so often did, to his mother.
Phoena. He remembered her voice through half-closed doors, whispering urgently into the flames of the Floo, her words intended for Ariadne Zabini, but overheard by her curious son. He remembered the fear in her blue eyes, soft and sharp at once, as she murmured of the Dark Lord’s rising power, of a gathering storm with no date, no time, only inevitability. Back then, Theodore hadn’t understood. He’d been seven. He hadn’t known what “war” really meant. He hadn’t known who Harry Potter was, let alone what he represented. He certainly hadn’t imagined that he would be caught in the undertow of a war he couldn’t name—and suffer because of it. He’d stopped listening and gone to play in his mother’s enchanted garden, among topiaries that danced and flowers that sang.
But now? Now he understood everything.
The war had arrived, and the wizarding world was unraveling thread by thread. The Ministry had been hollowed out, overtaken by Death Eaters in Slytherin green and black. Hogsmeade, once charming, now wore the expression of a ghost town. Shops shuttered. Signs smeared in red and black bled hatred: Blood Traitor. Dirty-blooded Filth. Those who resisted were made examples. Those who survived fell silent.
And Theodore had witnessed it firsthand—with you.
He had taken your hand on what had begun as an ordinary day, only to find the streets turned cold and cruel. He saw the signs, the symbols, the fear. And worst of all, he saw what might happen to you. That thought was enough to twist his stomach, to choke him. So he pulled you away.
He missed you. You had been gone all summer, traveling abroad with your parents. He hadn’t seen you, hadn’t held you, hadn’t breathed you in. And now… now he dreaded the moment your eyes would meet his. Would you pull away? Leave him? Would you be afraid? The mere possibility that you might look at him with revulsion—fear—kept him awake at night. The thought of you hating him devoured him from the inside out. And truthfully? He wouldn’t stop you. He hated himself. He was a Death Eater now. A threat. A danger. And yet, Merlin help him, he would sooner die than harm even a strand of your hair.
His mind wavered between thoughts of you and the ghost of his mother. He could almost hear her voice, soft but sure, the way it had sounded when she told him—not once, but again and again—that blood meant nothing, that no name was enough to make someone better than another. It had taken him time, but her words had taken root. Even now, they were the heartbeat behind his thoughts. And now? He had betrayed all of them. Her. You.
How could he possibly honor Phoena Nott when he had joined the very cause she had feared most? When he bore, on his own skin, the mark of the monsters she’d tried to keep him from becoming?
It shattered something inside him. The thought that his mother might look down on him with disgust was a cruelty too sharp to name. It was the kind of pain that made him wonder—truly wonder—if it would be better to follow her into the stars than remain here and be forced to carry out orders that turned his stomach. It wasn’t the first time he had thought about it. Since her death, the darkness inside him had only grown. It spread quietly, like ink in water, staining everything. She was probably watching him now. With those same eyes. Sad. Heavy. Perhaps even grateful she wasn’t alive to witness what her son had become.
And with each passing day, it got worse.
He ignored all your letters, your owls, your calls. He was terrified you would know. You always knew. It drove him mad sometimes, the way you could read him in a sentence, in a silence. If you heard his voice, you’d know, and if you knew—you’d come. You’d apparate straight to the manor and see the wreck he had become. That image alone was enough to send ice through his chest. So he ran from you, the only way he knew how.
But summer didn't last forever.
The train to Hogwarts arrived like a slow, cruel inevitability. He saw you on the platform. His heart screamed. He wanted nothing more than to fall into your arms and cry like the boy he still felt he was. To tell you everything. To let your warmth pull him back from the edge. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. So he kissed you, quick and careful, as if the taste of you might ground him. Then he turned and entered the compartment, with you just behind him. Of course, you noticed. You always did. Your eyes searched his face, but he only said he was tired. He sank into the seat by the window and pulled you into his side with the arm not marked. The other he kept hidden—buried, shamed, burning. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. Because that, at least, was something he still knew how to do.
The silence stretched for seven long, aching days.
You noticed it in the way he smoked—cigarette after cigarette, like he was trying to fill his lungs with anything but truth. In the way he drifted through the halls like a ghost, always a few steps ahead, always out of reach. In the way he touched you like he was afraid he’d shatter—quick, hollow kisses that held no warmth, no weight. When you asked him what was wrong, he offered that same tired smile and murmured, “Nothing. Just adjusting to the rhythm of Hogwarts again.”
You thought, perhaps, there was someone else.
Three months apart—how easy it must have been. Somewhere far away, he had met someone prettier, someone with sharper magic, with a purer name. Someone who made more sense under the legacy of Christian Nott. Someone easier to love than you. What else could explain the silence, the coldness, the absence where once there had been fire?
But it was none of that. And you only found out after nights spent unraveling.
It was Friday when Blaise threw his welcome-back party in the Slytherin common room—an open invitation to all houses. You hadn’t wanted to go. Joy felt like a foreign language your body had forgotten how to speak. But your friends insisted, and so you dressed up and crossed the threshold like a stranger in your own skin.
You saw him, but you didn’t speak. The ache inside you was too raw, too swollen. So you kept your distance, until the night twisted into something else entirely. Until you found him on the floor of the boys’ bathroom, slumped against the wall like a broken thing, eyes red, lips trembling, drunk and crying. The image knocked the breath from your lungs.
Theodore drank, sometimes. But he didn’t cry—not like this. Not in public. Not in pieces. And in that moment, every suspicion you’d ever had sharpened into clarity—something was deeply, dangerously wrong.
Mattheo helped you—oddly composed, steady beneath the chaos—and together you carried Theodore back to your dormitory. His weight sagged between you, his steps uneven, his words slurred and soft. Once there, you became caretaker and quiet savior: cleaned him up, cradled his head, pressed cool cloths to the feverish pulse at his neck.
“You’re going to be okay,” you whispered, again and again, not knowing if he could hear you, or if you even believed it yourself.
He resisted. He wouldn’t let you touch his shirt, wouldn’t meet your eyes. But he was too far gone to hold you off, and his hands fell limp as you peeled the soaked fabric from his body. And that’s when you saw it.
Swollen and red and monstrous, crawling across his forearm like a wound that refused to heal.
You stared. Time collapsed around you.
It all made sense—the silence, the distance, the way he couldn’t bring himself to touch you. He wasn’t unfaithful. He was in agony. He hadn’t betrayed you—he had been broken, carved into something he never wanted to be. You felt the shame bloom hot across your chest for ever doubting him.
Theodore followed your gaze. His lips quivered, and then the sobs returned—louder, messier, uncontainable. He wept like a child, and you reached for him without thinking, pulling him against you beneath the pounding water. The sound of it filled the room—rain without mercy, mixing with his cries and your own, salt and sorrow flooding every seam. “I’m sorry,” he gasped against your chest. His voice cracked, and his body trembled. “I didn’t want to—I swear I didn’t—I was forced—”
But the sentence fractured in his throat, and you didn’t make him finish.
The rest of the night blurred like a dream unraveling: the two of you curled together, drenched in grief, hearts bleeding quietly in the dark. Eventually, the alcohol stole him away—his body went limp in your arms, breath soft and shallow as he collapsed into his bed. You didn’t sleep. You watched him, every rise and fall of his chest a quiet ache, wondering how this moment would ripple into the rest of his life.
How it would ripple into yours.
When morning broke, you hadn’t so much as drifted. Sleep had eluded you entirely, slipping through your fingers like mist. You’d exchanged your own clothes for one of Theo’s hoodies, soft and clean, carrying the faint scent of him. He lay naked beneath the blankets, his back pressed to your chest, your arms wound around him in a quiet desperation to keep him together—to keep yourself together.
Your mind wouldn’t still. Thoughts circled like vultures. You wondered how this would change him—how he’d be forced into things that stained the soul, things that bent the spine and broke the heart. He, who hated the path they now demanded he walk.
But of one thing you were sure: this would never change the two of you. Your love for Theodore ran deeper than blood, more certain than fate, untouched by any mark. No darkness etched into his skin could ever unravel the thread that tied you to him. Now, more than ever, he needed gentleness. He needed to be held, loved, cared for—needed someone to shelter him the way no one had since Phoena.
And when he stirred awake, you didn’t let him speak. You didn’t let the doubt take root. You only held him tighter, as if your body alone could shield him, and whispered what he needed to hear: that you loved him. That nothing had changed. That you were here, and you weren’t leaving.
That was when he cried harder.
Sober now, the world had returned in sharp edges. And in a single, reckless lapse, he had let you see the most monstrous part of him—the one he kept buried beneath layers of silence and steel. He was certain it would drive you away. But you didn’t recoil. You weren’t afraid. You held him. You soothed him. You whispered sweetness where he expected silence or scorn. If you had been disgusted by him—by his touch—you wouldn’t be there, wrapped around him like he was still worth something. Right?
So he unraveled in your arms. Between broken sobs, he gave you everything—told you how the branding had happened, how his father hadn’t even looked at him after, how he’d feared your reaction more than anything. How he felt he had failed his mother. How he was sick with himself, hollowed out, unfamiliar. How he wanted it all to stop. Just stop.
And you cried with him. You held his grief as tightly as you held him, and whispered into the ruin that he was still loved. That it was okay. That Phoena would never—could never—be disappointed in him. That you loved him beyond measure, beyond reason, beyond repair. And somehow, though the ache still burned, your voice made it bearable.
“I’m sorry for avoiding you,” he murmured once the sobs had finally quieted. His gray eyes were swollen and rimmed red, but they found you—really saw you—for the first time in days. “I was so scared, bella. So scared you’d leave. And the worst part is… I wouldn’t even have tried to bring you back.” He brushed a kiss to your cheek, reverent. “You deserve better than that. But now, i just can't let you go.” His lips wandered from your cheek to your jaw, your neck, your chin—and finally, your mouth. The kiss began slow, a tentative question, but grew hungrier with every second. He caught your lower lip between his teeth with a tenderness that trembled, asking permission, and when you opened to him, he wasted no time. His tongue moved with need, like he was trying to memorize your taste, like your mouth was the only place in the world that still made sense.
You kissed him back with everything you had.
Soon, your bodies were entangled in the most intimate, wordless conversation known to man—one of skin and sighs, of release and return. And after, when the storm of touch had passed, you lay there breathless, limbs heavy, hearts still stuttering.
For a moment, he forgot the world. Forgot the mark. Forgot the weight. There was only you. And in that stillness, he realized something had shifted—not the pain, not the truth, but something quieter. Lighter. Because you were there. Because you stayed.
Even with the wreckage still smoldering inside him, even with the ground so fragile beneath his feet, he knew now—if he fell, you would catch him.
And maybe—just maybe—a fragile thread of hope stirred inside him, trembling and pale, that in the end, somehow, it might all be okay.
