Luck of Nines

78

(An: well I've been putting off editing this one for awhile, which means I haven't written much lately, but here we are. Uh, sorry for the little disappearing act; I am in fact alive and well. I just don't like this chapter. -T.A.L.A.)

      Chipped Fang, having been vexed at being left behind, unceremoniously and without notice, had taken up most of Harry's attention the moment they had returned from the meeting and so Theo had taken that opportunity to slip away for a bit and attempt to get some of the work which he had been neglecting done. In the end, Theo must have been more tired from the mercifully shorter than usual meeting than he had thought given how he'd fallen asleep at his desk not long after sitting down behind his desk.

He had always known there was a chance that the duo would wander the house for a change, Chipped Fang rarely deigned to spend time indoors outside of Harry's recuperating room and so he hadn't expected Harry to end up in that specific room.  Not so soon at least.

With the cat pouting about being left behind without even getting notice, he hadn't expected that Harry would separate from Chipped Fang and decide to wander alone instead. However, the former had been needing less naps lately, going further out, as they became healthier while the latter was still plagued by old age. That it was late and Chipped Fang had spent considerable energy searching for Harry during the meaning made it painfully obvious that Chipped Fang would break to nap but Harry would still be wanting to move after curling and staying still for so long. He should have seen this coming.

A part of him hoped it wasn't already too late.

A part of him hoped it was.

Either way he just wanted to know which it was already. He picked up the pace, almost running the remaining distance to the room.

The door had been left ajar and he paused in the doorway, taking note that the research journal was left untouched, still partially hidden from sight underneath the bed. The room was dusty and ill-cared for, Theo never entered the family wing of the house. Harry was eyeing the bed, still neatly made, still with the large brownish-red dried blood splotch coating the surface, tilting his head one way and then the other as if puzzling the scene together.

Theo held his breath as Harry retook a human form rather than a dire wolfs to speak with him.

"This was your grandfather's room?" Harry asked.

"Yes." Theo wondered if this was how Harry had felt when he'd stared them down after Harry had nearly run off to go on a rampage in the forest.

"Oh."

"Oh?" Theo asked.

"You haven't changed anything, but you were the one who killed him, didn't you?"

Theo froze and had to take a calming breath before he spoke, "What do you mean?"

"The wards here are old, so someone who lives here had to have been the one to do it, you wouldn't have kept them if they had failed, but you said that you both lived here alone since he was worried about spies back in Hogwarts." Harry didn't mention that he had finally pieced together Chippy's clue of what the horrible deed had been. Someone had bled out here, more than they could survive, a faint hint of some herb he couldn't recognize lingered with the blood, and Theo wouldn't have kept things the same had it not been Theo himself who had did it or allowed it.

            Theo finally seemed to snap into motion,
moving from the doorway and picking up the book from where it lay, he felt like he was hundreds of years old with every creaky movement he made. Hesitating for only a moment longer he handed the book to Harry and backed away. All of his worst darkest secrets were in that book; his theories and plannings from when the only thing he could think of was wanting to cause the ones responsible the same amount- no worse- suffering and pain. How to find them and then make them pay.