Work Text:
Every so often, the others vanish to the common room and skip dinner. Theodore supposes they're playing games or scheming on how to get the Gryffindors next. Content to be left to his own devices, he remains at the Slytherin table in peace, in the middle of a sizeable gap in the bench.
Daphne interrupts his idle stirring of spaghetti, sitting right up next to him. He stares at her. She doesn't take any notice at all, peering into his bowl.
"Yes?" he prompts.
"It looks like... muggle food," she says derisively.
With a frown, he looks at the bowl. "Have you never had spaghetti bolognese before?" he asks, surprised. It perhaps is muggle food, or at least food created by muggles, but he takes no issue in stealing muggle delights for himself. "It's Italian. This is tagliatelle, it's pasta." He points out the strips of pasta.
Daphne sniffs. "I thought you were interested in magic. Not food."
Blinking, Theodore scoops up another forkful. "I am. That doesn't mean I can't read about anything I please, does it?" She doesn't answer, staring at him. "It doesn't. See?" She's still staring at him even as he eats, and he manages to ignore her.
At least for another thirty seconds.
"Where are the others?" she inquires.
"Common room." He stifles a sigh. "As they usually are."
"Sometimes they're in the potions classroom," she disagrees.
"Not when Snape is in the great hall." He nods up to the teachers' table, where their Head of House has taken his usual place by Quirrell. "Perhaps it would help if you bothered to look around you every once in a while."
Daphne tilts her head to the side. It makes her the plait across the top of her head look like an abnormal growth, or perhaps it's flobberworm mucus. By dinnertime, it always seems to come quite undone. There's a spell to fix hair in place, but he isn't willing to share that with her. "You're not very nice, are you?"
"Am I meant to be?"
"We're both Slytherins. You're friends with Draco. So am I."
Theodore shrugs. "That doesn't mean I should be nice. He's my friend. None of the rest of you are." All of Draco's little gang - he's the ringleader, the one who brings them together. Half of them his stooges, his own little fans. Of them, Theodore determines that he's apart. Friendships are for power, and he is no follower of Draco Malfoy, no matter how big a head his childhood friend has.
"Still. Loyalty to one's house." She's looking at his bowl again. He feels protective enough over it to nudge it towards him, away from her.
"House loyalty means little as soon as we graduate," he disputes. "I would make a fine Ravenclaw, but I wouldn't change myself at all, and you'd expect them to be nicer, wouldn't you?"
"What are you loyal to?"
He has to think about that. "My family," he decides, "but only my father." He's the only one who matters. They're the last Notts. He has cousins, of course, but none of them are Notts - there are the Mulcibers, one first cousin in Azkaban and the other he sees more as an aunt; the Lestrange brothers, both in Azkaban; and then there's James Potter. The less said of the Potters, the better. He can only be thankful that he isn't related to Longbottom.
"All of your family?"
"I don't think a distant relation at least four generations back counts either of us much as family," he sighs. "Can you leave me to eat now? Bother Parkinson. Or Macmillan - the Hufflepuffs won't mind you there." She isn't the daughter of any caught Death Eaters, after all. Neither is he, of course, but he has no interest in socialising. Especially with Macmillan's massive ego.
Daphne reaches over, taking a fork from the silver serviettes, and dips it into his bowl. She doesn't even ask before experimentally twirling her fork around.
"Excuse me." Theodore blinks at her actions. How... insolent. "Get your own."
"There isn't any more," she answers innocently.
"Look down the table." His words are clipped, short and brisk, dragging the bowl away from her. "Or at least ask."
She sighs as though that's beyond the effort she wants to put in. "May I, Nott?"
He dislikes it, but he's long since learned that small victories over self-indulgent behaviour from the others is the easiest route to keeping boundaries. Not walls, of course, like he'd prefer, but he'll accept that she did ask as he requested. "You may."
They eat in silence; she in tentative twirls, he in gentle scoops and corkscrews. He's glad for it, even if she is pressed up against his side with no regard for personal space. Really, he can't see why there's so much issue in leaving him be. Even Draco can handle that much. Mostly.
The strand of tagliatelle in his mouth gets shorter and taut. It confuses him, at first, because he's certain it slipped from his fork already. Until it becomes tighter, pulling to his side - and her face is far too close. He bites to let it drop, but her face is even closer and her lips touch his.
"What are you doing?" he demands, tugging back. The bowl remains in front of her as he pulls his leg over the bench, backing up to his feet.
Daphne is too innocent to realise what she's even done. Or perhaps too dense. "What?"
"You kissed me." And the idea is more disgusting than how it felt, he realises. Because he is not going to marry a Greengrass.
She twists up some more pasta. "Oh. Well, I didn't mean to."
Theodore narrows his eyes at her. "You can have the rest. I'm going to the library."
"Do you ever take a break from that place?" She seems content to have the bowl to herself though, judging by the way she slides the bowl closer to her.
He shrugs it off, walking away without another word - his usual exit. The walk to the library gives him time to think through this. Rationalising it. First of all, he's twelve, and secondly, his father is hardly likely to marry him off to a Greengrass. Third - liking a kiss does not necessarily mean he likes her. Then, his fourth point, it probably doesn't even count as a kiss. By definition, it wasn't a sign of love, or desire, or greeting. It was simply an accident.
When he returns to the common room for curfew, Daphne is sat with the others. She giggles the moment she spots him, and the smirks of the others tells him, quite clearly, that she's been gossiping about him. Draco drawls something, but he isn't listening.
It's going to be a very long week, he decides.
"Are you alright, Nott?" she prompts, once the chatter has died down and nobody else is looking at him. When he shrugs, she presses, "I didn't mean to. Honest."
Theodore nods, "I know." He sits down on the sofa, and she moves to be next to him again. "What now?" His frustration doesn't put her off at all.
"I really didn't mean to," she insists. "Are we still friends?"
We never were, he aches to say, but that's not quite true either. She's an acquaintance, really. By force, but all the same. "I suppose."
She lets out a gleeful squeal, and immediately turns back to join the others' conversation.
Small victories.