when the future’s architectured

Theo spends most of Seventh Year waiting. He’s not, at all points, completely sure what for. Waiting for his father to tell him it’s over. Waiting for his mother to come home. Waiting for the war to end. Waiting for something, anything to happen. Waiting for the worst or preparing for the best.

If you ask the Gryffindors, Seventh Year is a warzone. Hogwarts a battlefield. The House tables, lines drawn in the mud. Every student in a green tie, an enemy. Every day a new loss or an inch of triumph.

If you ask Theo, Seventh Year is quicksand and each day he sinks a little further in. He keeps waiting and waiting for the final freefall, for the uneasy depths of it to swallow him up. Writes letters to his mother knowing she won’t answer. Knocks shoulders with Neville Longbottom in the hallways and feels the burning rage simmering under the other boy’s skin. Drags himself to meetings where Draco looks hollow and Pansy looks ferocious and Blaise looks bored and Daphne… well, Daphne rarely even shows up.

“She’s the smartest of us all,” Millicent grumbles once.

Pansy shoots her a dark look. They’re halfway through Seventh Year and none of them are where they thought they’d be. Not even Draco, cold and pale and itching his left arm in the corner of the room.

“Daphne will not be rewarded for this behavior when the Dark Lord comes and—”

“Oh, fuck off, he’s not coming,” groans Tracey Davis. All of them are sick of Pansy, and all of them are tired of everything else. “Potter’s not here. Do you think the Dark Lord gives a shit about how many little Gryffindors you hex in the hallways, Pansy?”

Pansy puffs herself up into a ball of fury, and this is Theo’s cue to slip out.

Truthfully, he goes to their little meetings because it’s routine. Because it gives his mind something to do besides wait and wait and wait. Because he takes Pansy’s certainty and Draco’s fear and Millicent’s disgust and churns their emotions inside himself until he’s left with a Molotov cocktail of something that could be a feeling, any feeling at all. Anything besides waiting. Anything’s better than that.

He bumps into Ginny Weasley outside in the hallway after one of their meetings, which isn’t completely unusual. The only students who are out this late at night are the seventh year Slytherins, who know they can get away with it, and the Gryffindors who cause trouble because they can’t get away with it.

And Ginny Weasley is the Gryffindor who causes trouble.

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