Luck of Nines

85

Theo's knees hit the ground the second he reached Harry's fallen body. He was still. Too still. For once in his life, Theo couldn't think. He couldn't reason. He couldn't even breathe.

All he could focus on was the warm body in front of him, his trembling hands could feel that as they pushed at the fur, trying to feel a breath, a pulse, anything.

       Anything.

       ANYTHING.

     There was nothing.

     Theo breathed. It came out more as a sigh. A pitiful sound something between a whine and a whimper that sent his whole body into a fresh state of panic.

      "Harry...?" He asked weakly, he shook more than he managed to tug at Harry, trying to get them to move. "Harry?"

      "Scared?" Theo's dark eyes met those of his killer. "I may not know what sort of magic you used to leech off Potter's strength,"

      It was no longer weakness which Theo trembled with.

     "but I know what you ar-"

      They had been too close to even get any warning. Trampled under foot, again and again, even though the speaker had been dead long before the first large, tough foot of the Rwenzori hippopotamus his the ground- his body crushed flat, fluids and the more intact chunks flying out all around, between it and the stone, but he himself had been dead from the moment that foot had connected breaking his neck and crushing, lungs, heart, ribs, diaphragm, and even as far as the intestines with its wrathful fury.

Theo's logical knowledge of this certain end was long gone with his rage. The floor beneath him was ground to dust, the corpses of the other intruders flung and stomped with little care. Walls buckled and caved, the scant furniture was shattered, and pictures were flung and brushed aside in his vengeful path.

He knew Harry was strong. Possibly than him even, despite his years of training and learning which Harry had missed out on in prison, if it came down to a straight fight. But he'd forgotten, or maybe he had just gotten careless having seen Harry notice the spell; in a skirmish, everybody was vulnerable to a stray spell.

And Harry must have not known it was an unforgivable, he was sure Harry had spent enough time in the Alleys to know to dodge the Slytherin green spells. Even if there was a shield up. He hadn't dodged since he trusted that shield. Theo's shield.

In their very last moments, after all those promises, when it really counted; Theo had let Harry down. And Harry must have died knowing that.

His roars could reach and shake the heavens, wake the dead, and pull even the greatest of the Earthly slumbered from their rest.

Theo would tear the cursed mansion down which had haunted his steps for all his life.

He'd recognized the man. The great grandchild of a male Nott who had married into another pureblood family. They must have done the ritual to reclaim full status after drinking potions to hide it from him, the head of the family, and a specialized polyjuice potion to ensure the family magics believed him to be his ancestor.

Theo had been careless. As the only remaining Nott he hadn't bothered with the time consuming and magically taxing task of warding the mansion he rarely used when not scrying and hated from all past, present, and future Notts aside from himself.

The newest wing which had had built held its own wards, the family wing restricted all but the immediate family of the head of house which no one alive besides himself could currently even impersonate well enough, and the entry to the new wing was guarded by his greatest falsified life creation, and that had been enough for him.