Theodore isn’t quite sure how he ended up here.

No—that’s a lie, and he knows it. Knows it with the bitter clarity that always comes in the aftermath of raised voices and slammed doors. Knows it with the dull throb still blooming across his cheek, the imprint of his father’s fury etched into his skin like a brand. The kind of sting that isn’t just physical but ancestral, inherited like a curse.

He had apparated without thinking, driven by a cocktail of panic and instinct. One breath he had been standing in the ruins of his father’s disappointment, and in the next—your doorstep, your presence, your quiet kind of safety.

Now, he is curled in your lap, small in a way he resents but cannot undo, his body folding into itself as though trying to disappear into your arms. He trembles—not with cold, but with something deeper, more bone-deep. Something that feels like being ten years old again and realizing that no one was coming to save him. Only this time, someone had.

He hums under his breath, fractured melodies spilling from cracked lips. Words fall too, disjointed and half-formed, whispered nonsense meant for no ears but his own. His knuckles are torn—split open in a rash moment of impact, perhaps against a wall, or maybe his own fury—and the thin sheen of blood glistens like ink in candlelight. It stings, and that sting is grounding. Something to hold onto.

His eyes are glassy, rimmed in a shine he refuses to acknowledge. If you asked, he would say he isn’t crying. Of course not. He doesn’t do that. Not Theodore. Not the boy who learned long ago that tears earn nothing but disdain.

But you’re holding him.

You’re holding him like he matters, like he isn’t too much or too broken to touch. Your hands are gentle, reverent almost, as if cradling something sacred. And that—that—is what undoes him more than anything. Not the bruises, not the blood, not even the echo of his father’s voice still reverberating through his ribs.

It’s this. You.

You, with your quiet patience and unflinching kindness, are the one thing he cannot armor himself against. He feels weak—so unbearably weak—for seeking you out. For crawling to you like a child chasing the memory of a lullaby. He loathes himself for it. Loathes the way his body surrenders to your touch as if it’s the only truth it’s ever known.

And yet—he does not move. He does not pull away.

Because, God help him, he doesn’t want you to stop.

He hates that more than anything—the way he clings to you in silence, as if your arms are the last warm place left in the world. And maybe they are. Maybe, in this moment, you are the closest thing to peace he will ever know. And the cruelty of it—the unbearable sweetness—is that for the first time in what feels like forever, he believes he could let go. Just for a while. Just long enough to be held.

And so he stays.

Small and shaking and silent, Theodore stays.

And in the quiet space between heartbeats, he begins—slowly, tentatively—to let himself be human.