White Winter Hymnal || Theo

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White Winter Hymnal || Theo Nov 16, 2013 5:21:43 GMT -8

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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2013 5:21:43 GMT -8

outfit

Vivian had wrapped herself up warmly in a thick jumper and mittens, with lots of layers underneath, before venturing out into the cold of the Hogwarts grounds. They were now into the beginning of December, and it was getting very cold, although it hadn't snowed yet. This wasn't a time of year that Vivian welcomed. December meant that the Christmas holidays were looming, and Vivian hated the holidays. She had he option to stay at school, of course, but if her mother and step-father decided they wanted her at home then she had no choice. They went travelling a lot, but Christmas wasn't an ideal time for that, and her parents had taken more and more to staying in their large London home, throwing extravagant parties which Vivian was expected to attend, dressed in beautiful gowns with her hair and make-up done perfectly, the Wood's showing off one of their prized possessions; money couldn't buy beauty, and John Woods just loved comparing Vivian to the daughters of his contemporaries, often awkward, homely things.

Of course, Woods wasn't her real father, so any pride he took in her appearance stemmed from... well, a different matter altogether. The idea that Vivian could go and stay with her real father was laughable. She had never even met the man. All she knew of him was his name, Jack Blackwell, and his reputation. And that he lived with her half brother, who was also at Hogwarts, in the year above, and who she scorned because he clearly didn't want to know her either.

Despite his being only one year above her, and in the same house (he was even sort of friends with her best friend, though Viv hated the dynamic), Vivian hadn't found out that her half-brother was her half-brother until her fourth year. He, of course, had known all along. From that moment on, Vivian had hardly so much as acknowledged him. Her father had abandoned her totally, and left her to the whims of her sadistic mother and the monster she had married. To find out that he had another child that he had kept in contact with, that even lived with him, who had known he had a sister all this time... that had shocked even Vivian. And she was usually un-shockable.

It was the aforementioned best friend that Vivian was looking for now. Theodore Nott had been Vivian's friend since she arrived at Hogwarts in her first year (another thing that irritated Vivian was that her 'brother' had known Theo first. It felt he'd always have some claim to her friend, because they'd known each other longer, shared a dorm room, were on the Quidditch team together...), and to the rest of the school it seemed that they had been joined at the hip ever since; both Vivian and Theo, however, knew that neither would be inclined to something so co-dependent. Their friendship had hit a few bumps over the years, of course, and none so big as in Vivian's fourth year, when she'd found out that Theo's innocuous friend was her half-brother. Theo had sworn he hadn't known, but Vivian had never been the trusting type, even less so at that particular moment. But eventually she had been satisfied that Theo was telling the truth. If he had lied, she would never have spoken to him again. That had been almost two years ago.

Since it was a Saturday Vivian rose late, never having been much of a morning person, and after not finding Theo at breakfast, in the Slytherin common room, or in the potions rooms, she had reluctantly donned her winter attire and ventured out to the Quidditch pitch to find him. Vivian could fly- everyone from a pureblood family learned young- but the team sport of Quidditch never appealed to her. No team activity did, even less given the current team members. But Theo was mad for it, and a Beater on the house team.

Vivian drew her mitten clad hands up to her mouth and breathed into her cupped palms, her breath escaping as white fogs through the gaps, hoping her breath would warm her hands as she approached the pitch. And sure enough, she could already see a figure flying around, seemingly aimlessly at first, like someone having a fit in mid air, until you got close enough to see the bludger coming at him again and again, as he knocked it back with a bat.

Even from down on the ground, Vivian recognised Theo's messy, curly hair, and his broad build.
"Oi! Nott," she shouted up at him, cupping her hands around her mouth to make her voice carry.

It was another cold December morning, just like Theo liked them. He’d been born in winter and always kind of preferred that to the sticky summer months. He always felt like the heat was oppressive and suffocating. The cold, bitter winter air helped him breathe and think. Maybe that said something about the person he was, maybe that was taking his love of the winter months just a little too seriously. So he preferred winter to summer, it wasn’t really anything to get hung up on. He loved being able to see his breath in the air. And, most importantly, the winter months made practicing Quidditch completely bearable. The chill in the air was just enough to make Theo practice and play all the harder because by the end of the match he wasn’t completely heat exhausted and dehydrated. Winter was perfect. There was just no other way to put it. And because the chill in the air made practicing Quidditch so much more fun and bearable it was exactly where he decided to go when he woke up that morning. He’d been up before most of his housemates and decided that he wasn’t in the mood to mess around with potions, so he headed to the pitch. It was where he spent a lot of his time, particularly when he was thinking about things. Not that he had much to think about anymore, save for the fact that the winter holidays were coming. Great.

He slammed the bludger with his bat as hard as he could at the thought of having to return home for the holidays. Home. Yeah, sure, it had a roof and doors but there was no such thing as love or even tolerance in that house on any of the residents’ parts. His father and brother hated him and he hated them right back and when the three of them were forced together it was bound to end in blood and pain for one or both parties. In his fifth year his father had taken a cheap shot at him as he was casting a spell and broken his nose in the process. If you looked closely you could still see where it had been broken. It had never set quite right after that, but Theo didn’t give a shit. He made sure to stun his father into next week after that and, naturally, his good-for-absolutely-fucking-nothing brother came to his father’s defense. Two against one would never be fair but over the years Theo had turned into quite the force to be reckoned with, no matter how many times the pair of them ganged up on him. They may win the fights but Theo fully intended to win the war.

The only thing his father, his brother, and he agreed on was that mudbloods were scum, but that was rarely brought up when his “family” was so busy bringing up the fact that he was bastard child. You’d think after so many years they’d come up with some new insults. But nope. They always reverted back to the same shouts and different stuns as punishment. He slammed his bat into the bludger again, and this time it didn’t go very far so he slammed it again with more force. It came back and he slammed it again, his heart and mind filling with anger as he thought about what the upcoming holidays would bring. He supposed he should be plotting what kinds of ingredients to bring home to put in the food and drinks. He smirked to himself as he slammed the bludger yet again and flew away to a different part of the pitch. He could work on that later. And that was when he heard a faint voice calling him from below. He slammed the bludger back and looked down to see strands of blonde hair. Vivian. He smirked as his eyes turned back to scan the sky for the bludger. It was making its way back and Theo smirked as he flew towards the ground and, waiting for the bludger to reach him. He held his broom with one hand and prepared his other arm to catch the bludger. The bludger slammed into his chest but he gripped it with one arm and forced it back into its case before he flew over to her and hovered in front of her.

”You rang?” he asked with a smug grin. “What are you doing out here anyway? I figured you’d be holed up in the common room without even thinking about coming outside.”

Theo flew down towards her, and Vivian wrinkled her nose as she saw that the bludger followed, thinking he had better have a plan for dealing with that. Soon after Theo landed, the bludger came hurtling towards him, and Vivian watched unflinching as he caught it, not seeming to mind the hit he took to the gut. She'd seen Theo handle the ball enough not to be worried, and she wasn't the flinching type either way.

“What are you doing out here anyway? I figured you’d be holed up in the common room without even thinking about coming outside.”

Vivian rolled her eyes, her arms crossed in front of her to keep the warmth of her body in. She didn't know if Theo was deliberately trying to tease her by implying she was too prissy to come out in the cold, but either way she decided not to rise to the bait.

"And what, go out of my mind with boredom?" she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "After about five minutes of listening to all that bleating I'd had enough for a lifetime."

Vivian wasn't exactly friends with anyone but Theo. There were other people she talked to, sure, but they existed in her world only to amuse her. She didn't care about them, and didn't particularly enjoy their company, but she enjoyed manipulating them, pulling shit in class and getting everyone into trouble, getting them to throw parties and do things for her... and everyone put up with it, because everyone wanted Vivian to like them. Every guy wanted to keep his chances open, and every girl wanted to be her friend; they'd bitch about her behind her back, and tell themselves that if Vivian treated them like dirt then they'd do the same to her, but at the first sign of being in her favour, they crumbled to her will. Well, the Slytherin girls were like that, at least... girls in other houses just hated her. But Vivian supposed that was due to the Slytherin lust for power. Beauty was power, which Vivian proved again and again, and everyone wanted a piece of that.

But dealing with sycophants got old quick, especially on a weekend afternoon, when there were no parties, nothing of anything to do, really. Everyone just lay around the common room, and it didn't take long before Vivian started to feel the claustrophobic effects of being surrounded by people.

She didn't need to explain to Theo why she had come to find him, rather than just go and do something herself, if she didn't want to be around her classmates. Theo knew Vivian hated to be alone, that she got bored quickly, and to her there was nothing worse.

Vivian opened her mouth to ask Theo if he had loftier ambitions for the day than knocking a ball around an empty pitch, when she heard a voice behind her;

"Hey, Theo!" The voice was light and high pitched, with a slight sing-song quality, but to Vivian it sounded whiny. Her back was to the girl, and she wrinkled her nose at Theo in distaste, before turning around and seeing three Slytherin girls, two in Theo's year and one in Vivian's, scurrying towards them. "We saw you flying!"

Imagine, Vivian thought, since you were obviously stalking him.

The girl in Vivian's year was Lucinka King, a relatively quiet girl with long mousy brown hair and deep chocolate brown eyes, which turned mean only when she was backed up by fellow Slytherins. As she reached Vivian and Theo she smiled at Vivian, looking up since she was several inches shorter. Vivian's own smile was tight lipped, and Lucikina lost her attention quickly. The other two girls Vivian thought were called Phillipa Brown, and Alicia... something. They were both blonde, though their dirty blonde hair falling to their shoulders did nothing to match Vivian's long flaxen waves. All of them looked to Vivian first, smiling but not speaking, and addressed their comments to Theo. That pretty much summed up how things were done in Slytherin house when it came to the two of them; defer to Vivian, engage Theo socially. Something about Vivian just made you feel like she ran the show.

"What are you doing out here alone?" one of them asked, in what Vivian thought was an attempt to be coy. She raised an eyebrow.

"He must have been waiting for you to come and keep him company," Vivian said, her voice light, but never approaching the soprano of the other girls. Vivian's voice was deeper, slightly throaty. She accompanied her comment with a vicious smile, to which the other girls smiled back automatically, somehow still managing to look wary. Vivian had clearly implied that Theo was waiting for her to keep him company (though he was doing no such thing, and she would never expect him to). Vivian and Theo weren't dating, not even close, and merlin knew Theo saw his fair share of girls, but something about the dynamic between the two made it clear that Theo was sort of... well, hers. There was something of the predator in Vivian, and the possessiveness of her only friend clearly echoed that.

Vivian looked up at the stands as she heard a whooping noise, and saw to boys in Theo's year, Finn and Jack, jumping down from the stands and jogging towards their little group.

"Ladies!" Finn said, throwing an arm around Phillipa and Alicia's shoulders, squeezing tightly. "Vivian," he added, nodding to her with a grin.

"Hey, Viv," said Jack, also grinning, and Vivian's eyebrows shot up. Viv, was it? "Looking good." Jack was the cockier of the two. "Hey, Theo," he added, almost as an afterthought, and Finn gave Theo a mock salute with an arm that was still wrapped around Phillipa, squashing her to him in the process and making her squeal.

"So," said Finn, looking around the group, "what's the story, guys? What's happening?" Finn was always looking for the next party. Vivian gave Theo a look that clearly said he had limited time to get rid of them nicely, or else she'd do it... well, not so nicely. It seemed as though nothing Vivian did could hurt her socially, but Theo sometimes got the backlash for her bad behaviour. She knew that annoyed him, so gave him his chance to ditch the losers without offending them.

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White Winter Hymnal || Theo Nov 17, 2013 14:10:01 GMT -8

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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2013 14:10:01 GMT -8

Vivian said she would have been bored within five minutes of dealing with the other people in their house and a small laugh left him. That was a fair enough point. Theo agreed that most of the other people in their house could be grating on the nerves. Those stone walls could only take so many egos in once place before Theo thought the place would burst completely. And if there was one thing that Slytherins had plenty of, it was ego. There was always the occasional exception, of course, but, for the most part, Slytherins walked around like they owned the place because they knew what they were capable of. You weren’t confident as a Slytherin unless you knew you had the skill to back it up. Or, at least that’s how Theo assumed things went. He didn’t pay much attention to his other housemates unless he really had to, or they had something he wanted.

He was brought out of his thoughts when a high-pitched voice greeted him. He turned to look as the three girls came scurrying toward him and he flashed a grin at them before he landed the broom, listening as they spoke about how they saw him flying. He smirked as his eyes flicked to Vivian for a moment and he had to bite back his smirk when they asked what he was doing out here all alone. He would have thought it would be obvious that he was practicing, but Vivan’s comment just made it all the more hilarious. He raised a brow at his best friend before his eyes shifted back to the other girls. “I was just practicing,” he said with a small shrug. He was going to say something else, but a few whoops from the stands caused his head to turn in that direction. Finn and Jack. Wonderful. Let’s just have a party out on the pitch. It wasn’t like he wanted to practice or anything like that. He sighed under his breath as the two boys approached, throwing their arms around both of the women. Theo snorted slightly as Jack said Vivian was ‘looking good,’ and he nodded his head as Jack greeted him as well, like he wasn’t even there. That was probably because, in Jack’s mind, he wasn’t. What did they say about the thrill of the chase? Was that what Jack was getting at?

Theo shifted his broom from one hand to the other and looked over at the Quidditch case, suddenly losing all motivation to practice any further. In his head he began listing all of the ingredients he wanted to snag from the Potions room before the holiday started so he’d be able to deal with his brother and father in the sly, cunning manner he usually did. They often reverted to throwing stunning spells before he did, so over the years he’d taken to less obvious measures, like putting certain ingredients in their dinner and drinks to make them suffer that way. It was much more satisfying for him, but, it didn’t mean that his brother and father took it lying down. They always got their own revenge, and it usually ended in him looking pretty beat up for the holiday. He’d make his excuses, though. Part of him hated that his younger brother often bested him, but dueling was a strong suit when it came to the Nott family, and Theo was no exception, even if he wasn’t technically a Nott. He smirked when Vivian shot him a look and he threw up both of his hands in half-surrender. It wasn’t like he’d invited them. Still, he wasn’t entirely in the mood to entertain flocks of women, not when he was busy working up ways to torture his family.

“No story, just got done practice, and now I’ve got stuff to do, so, forgive me, you’ll have to live without me for the time being,” he winked in Jack’s direction before snickering and picking up his broom from the ground. He looked at Vivian and nodded his head in the direction he was walking, signaling it was okay for her to follow. They could be butt hurt about him not wanting to hang out with them if he wanted, but he had shit to do, shit that they weren’t privileged enough to know about. Hell, Vivian didn’t even know about it, he wasn’t about to share it with people he didn’t talk to or even really like. “I’ve got some shopping to do in Slughorn’s potions room, want to accompany me?” he asked Vivian with a sly grin. He knew that was technically stealing, but, he also knew he was in good standing with Slughorn, so if he asked it wasn’t like Slughorn would have said no. He was just cutting out the middle man. Efficiency was everything, after all.

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White Winter Hymnal || Theo Nov 17, 2013 14:57:06 GMT -8

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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2013 14:57:06 GMT -8

Theo made his excuses less than subtly, and it was all Vivian could do to keep from rolling her eyes. Hadn't she given him the chance to save face in front of people he might care about keeping in his favour? Vivian knew that just because she didn't give a damn about what others thought, that didn't mean everyone felt the same. It had taken her several years to come to know that, but even so. If all Theo was going to do was make their classmates feel unwanted, Vivian could have managed to do it with a lot more flair. But no, instead he made generic excuses and then turned to leave, indicating that Vivian should follow. Viv shrugged and pulled a face, as though to say 'such a shame, but what can you do?' and managed to miss sincere by about a foot, before turning on her heel and following Theo.

Vivian hoped that Theo had a plan for what they were going to do next, and that it didn't involve brooms. More than once Theo had roped her into helping him practice, either by shooting sparks from her wand to work as a target while on her broom, or acting as the target herself. Vivian was a good flier, and quick, so he couldn't hit her often, but after the last time she'd come back from one of their 'training' sessions covered in ugly bruises she'd told him that if he wanted her to play target for him again, it'd better be his dying wish. She didn't care how much Theo insisted it was, being the bullseye was not fun.

But Vivian's eyes lit up when Theo said he had 'shopping' to do in Sluggy's stores. 'Shopping' between her and Theo meant stealing, more often than not, Vivian knew, and that was always fun.
"Sure," she said, in that voice that always made it sound like you were getting more than you bargained for. Vivian didn't know what potions ingredients Theo wanted, but she wouldn't know what to make of them if he told her. Vivian wasn't fantastic in school, and that included potions. She wasn't dumb, she just had... problems. But it meant that she wouldn't know what potion Theo was making until it was done. There was little Vivian could do with the worlds supply of potion ingredients, so it wasn't those that interested her. As usual, Vivian has her own agenda.
"While we're there, I want to look around Slughorns office. He has something of mine I want back." A grin spread across Vivian's face at the anticipation of telling Theo the story of her latest potions class. "Last potions lesson, Toby made something not in the lesson plan," Vivian's smile turned wicked as she explained, walking along side Theo almost excitedly (at least, as excitedly as Vivian ever got). "And I convinced Lucile Bulstrode to drink it."

It had been so easy, with Lucile being so eager to please, so desperate for an in with Vivian and her crowd, as though playing along would buy Vivian's friendship, and the associated status. When Theo wasn't around (he was in the year above her, and so in none of her classes) Toby Nott made an interesting accomplice. Of course, Theo wasn't on good terms with his brother, for reasons Vivian didn't understand and didn't care to pry into, but Vivian figured that unless he wanted to explain what the problem was he could just get used to hearing his brother's name in her stories.

"I didn't know it was going to make her hair fall out." Vivian said with a shrug, as though that absolved her completely, "But it seemed like too good an effect to just let the potion go down the drain. I put some in a flask, but Sluggy confiscated it." That had been her 'punishment'. Slughorn was the head of Slytherin house, and a complete softy when it came to Vivian. She was a member of the 'Slug Club,' the elite (for one reason or another) students that Slughorn favoured. He threw parties that only they were invited to, made connections for them once they left Hogwarts, and never laid down a harsh punishment, lest someone he thought showed promise start to dislike him. Little did he know that Vivian had only disinterest in him on a good day.

"I want to get it back, or at least my flask." Sluggy might have poured Toby's potion down the drain by now, but Vivian would find another use for the flask. Between Theo and Toby she always had interesting potions to save for later, and she'd need it to store alcohol for parties, or particularly boring lessons.

By now they were at the entrance to the castle, and the warmth that hit them when they entered was a welcome relief. Vivian pulled off her gloves and ran a hand through her hair, shaking it back off of her face and down her back and shoulders. The eyes of every male in the entrance hall turned to watch with glazed, mesmerised expressions as she did so. After a moment some seemed to shake themselves and turn away, looking slightly flustered, but most eyes followed Vivian as she walked towards the dungeon steps that lead towards the potions room.

"Ladies first," she said, as she skipped in front of Theo and took the lead down the narrow stone stairs.