The tiled floor of the dormitory bathroom was cold beneath Theodore’s socked feet as he sat hunched on the closed lid of the toilet, elbows on his knees, fingers threading restlessly through his hair. His wand lay forgotten on the floor. The little white stick sat between you both like a hexed object—mocking, humming with consequence. Two faint pink lines. Still unforgiving.

He didn’t look at you. He couldn’t.

The silence was suffocating. Not because it was quiet—because it wasn’t. He could hear everything: the distant murmur of boys laughing in the Slytherin common room below, the soft sound of you trying not to cry. That was the worst of it. He’d always hated the sound of you swallowing tears.

Theodore’s heart was racing in a way he wasn’t used to. Not even duels, not even the thought of his father’s name carved into the back of his mind like a curse, made him feel this particular kind of dizzy. This kind of wrong. His jaw was clenched so tightly it ached.

You were sitting cross-legged on the tile in front of the sink, still in your school skirt, though the waistband had been unbuttoned—like breathing had become too complicated. Your jumper was off. Your knees trembled. And the test… Merlin, that thing sat between you like some damning piece of parchment neither of you knew how to read properly. But it was clear enough.

Two lines. Just two tiny lines that had cleaved through the illusion you’d both clung to for years.

You’d began dating when you were barely teenagers—fourteen, still too awkward to kiss without knocking noses, still too shy to say “I love you” without stammering. But somewhere between stolen hours in the library, shared cigarettes behind the greenhouses, and long nights curled up in the Astronomy Tower when the world felt too heavy—you had grown into each other. Slowly. Entirely. And what had started as a crush with shaky hands and blushed cheeks had become something terrifyingly real.

You had grown up inside each other’s arms. And now you two had grown up too fast.

“I didn’t even…” Theo started, voice low and hoarse, but the sentence didn’t survive. His words broke somewhere in the back of his throat and fell into nothing.

He finally looked up at you.

Your eyes met his—wide, glassy, frightened—and something in his chest cracked open. Because you looked at him like you expected him to vanish. Like maybe now that this had happened, he’d become his father. Cold. Absent. Cruel.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said abruptly. It wasn’t a vow. It was a defiance—against the blood in his veins, the father in his bones, and the boy he used to be.

His voice shook, even if his face didn’t. “I’m not going anywhere.”

But he was afraid. He was so fucking afraid. Not of the test, not even of what would happen next—but of letting you down. Of failing you in the one moment you needed him to be stronger than he’d ever been.

Theodore slid down from the seat, knees cracking softly as he moved to sit beside you on the tile, the cold seeping through the fabric of his trousers. He didn’t say anything else. He just reached for your hand—slowly, like it was the only real thing in the room—and held it like it was holding him back from falling apart.

You were both trembling. But you were trembling together.