While she was overcome by paralyzingly agony, Audette finally stood and swept out of the broom cupboard, quietly shutting the groaning door behind herself until she felt it click in place.
Still transporting her tall high heels she peetered down the dimly lit first floor hallway towards the integral spinal column of moving staircases, wiping at her eyes as she climbed all the way to the fourth floor.
By the time she'd reached the hospital corridor she felt absolutely nauseated by both the trembling terror that she'd be caught and deeply reprimanded for being out of bed past curfew, and from the anticipation of the person she was hoping to find there.
At the end of the hospital corridor the Clock Tower was chiming a metallic melody to indicate that the hour had now stuck one in the morning, but Audette was far from tired.
She tepidly tip toed up to the wooden double doors leading into the semi-ovular infirmary room beyond, and tried her luck on the brassy ancient handle.
It gave to her surprise - surmising that after such a straining day of receiving champions Pomphrey had forgotten to lock the access. She delicately stuck her head in through the crack.
At least twenty trolly beds were aligned in the room in two rows on either side, each overlooked by a linear window that followed protruding, grand stone pillars up two stories to the arched ceiling.
Several of the beds were occupied by dozing champions, all inflicted with varying degrees of injuries. The room was rife with the scent of blood and medicine. Audette swallowed and immediately averted her gaze when she saw what was left of the Erenholl boy who's back had been sickenly broken before being dragged off into a hag's pit.
At the far end of the shadowy room a wand was lit, the brightness reflecting off of angular reading glasses. Theodore.
Yikes, Theodore Nott and Severus stinking Snape.
She quickly panicked and slid down onto the filthy floor on the opposite side of a champions bed, just as the wand was directed at the shutting door.
Snape's cold black eyes soared over every feature in the room with relentless suspicion, before stabbing his wand back into Theodore's face, speaking in a ruthless tone, "Be that as it may, you are...effectively...on the same team. Draco Malfoy is central to this effort and should you impact him in the next challenge, I will find a means to select a gruelling punishment."
Theo crossed his arms stubbornly, his skin tone pale from such a loss of blood earlier, "I happen to have made it farther on his cabinet project then he was capable of in two years, and I'm willing to bet I can take the tournament as well."
Snape's face snapped to the side, glaring at the young boy like a raven, "The tournament is Malfoy's responsibility - continue to focus on your own responsibilities. It is my understanding that Mr. Bellarose has confirmed his daughter's possession to the Malfoy's, ergo, festering over something irreversible is merely as redundant as trying to capitalize a number."
Theodore's mouth dropped open, his voice suddenly breathy, "When did this update happen?"
"What...do you think? Bellarose has grown impatient as of late. The girl is now eighteen, and she has presented him with an alternative selection of high caliber," Audette saw Snape lean back in satisfaction, "Do not make me repeat myself, Mr. Nott. Happy healing..."
As Snape spun to depart Audette struggled to dig herself directly underneath a bed. She laid flat on her back, her eyes bulging when Snape's heel caught sharply at the end of the bed she'd chosen, then gradually he was gone.
She inhaled burning breaths for a moment before clambering back out, and immediately Theo's face shot to the latest invader to his sleep. She nervously approached her foreign lover, guiltily still darning the phosphorescent medal around her neck.
His eyes remained locked to the item which could only have been bequeathed to her by one person, his body rigidly upright over his own kindled wand, pointing it at a massive textbook.
Neither of them said a word as she gracefully dropped into a wooden chair already placed by his bedside. Audette couldn't even bring herself to turn her face to his, instead sliding her high heels to the floor with her chest heaving and petite tear drops scribbling down her cheeks.
Without needing to look, her fifth sense indicated that he was watching her like a gargoyle over a drawbridge, waiting for her to make the first move.
Finally he removed his glasses and dissolved the quietude in a snarky voice, "I suppose the speed in which you are making mistakes has only increased."
In her peripherals she saw him drop his face, then his fingers tactfully ran along the outer limit of the pages to shut the huge book at an elderly pace, "Does Malfoy know where you are, Audette?"
He extinguished his wand for no good reason, and suddenly nothing but the rays of the moon through the windows and the brilliance of the medal against Audette's dress provided illumination in the room.
Audette opened and closed her mouth to respond, but all that came out was a harried gasping for air as though she were drowning in place. She pawed at the salty tears staining her skin, unable to speak as her spine tingled and her throat closed up.
She made a true effort to calm down, her eyes drooping depressively down to Theodore's heavily bandaged and cast left arm, which was forcibly straightened over the thin hospital sheet. He had been dressed into classic white cotton hospital pajamas which were infamously despised amongst the students for being terribly itchy.
Theo leaned forward just slightly so that one of his penetrating eyes could catch an investigative glimpse of her face, "If you've come to caterwaul over my impairments save yourself the energy expenditure."
"I...I thought for a moment tonight that you'd...died," she croaked weakly, tugging at her dress in her lap with both hands.
"Well I did not, and that is no longer for you to concern yourself with. You've confirmed my longevity so you are free to depart," he crossly replied, nearly cutting off her final word in bitter heat.
Somehow, under the immense weight of the electrified air between them, Audette found bravery in the corner of her mind to laboriously rotate her face to his.
Theodore narrowed his gaze at the sight of her obvious despair, his eyes traveling over her watery features, "My intuition informs me that is not the reason you've come. Malfoy has done something to you, hasn't he?"
After four years of dating the boy Audette could decipher his vibes quite well, and the ability clearly was reciprocal.
He continued to present himself with a brassy note in his voice, but the rare and gentle arching of his eyebrows implied both curiosity and pity existed within his guarded demeanour.
Audette's eyelids fluttered as her mouth twisted in a deeply aching frown, more boiling tears brimming and spilling.
His breathing softened, wincing as she fell to pieces in front of him.
"Enough," he raised one arm in a shocking invitation for a hug, those boundless blue eyes glued to her from behind his thick mop of chocolate hair.
Audette didn't need to be asked twice. She lunged into his familiar warm embrace, soaking up his essence of Eucalyptus and Teakwood with her face buried in his neck.
Feelings exploded between them, feelings that had been horrendously and delusionally repressed. Everything that had transpired between them over the year seemed to vanish as he gripped her tightly against him. For the first time since their separation on that wooden bridge his body language was recognizably warm, affectionate and attentive.
Audette recalled the reason she'd come there and all of the puzzle pieces she had discovered over the previous weeks.
"What is Excetra Theo? What has happened to your family? What happened in Monaco?" she dug her nose up under his jaw as he pressed his fingers in swirls against her back, just the way he'd used to do when she required sedative doting.
"It cannot be named, none of it I'm afraid - that information is direly exclusive," Theodore sighed heavily with the weight of obvious dread. He swallowed and she felt the motion against her cheek bone, "Adult obligations have come into play that unfortunately must take precedence over anything else, Audette. You'll soon find that out for yourself."
Audette blinked her eyelashes against his throat in perturbation, "I don't understand, any of this. You act as though the world is coming to an end. Please, if you just explain, if you just try..."
Theodore hung his head back to frown at the ceiling, and Audette craned her neck to stare up the side of his face, "The world is demonstrably changing Audette, waken your deft senses to the current state of wizarding politics and you won't need me to explain anything to you. It's right in front of your nose, even in your own home - it has been for years."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Her heart swelled with reckless inclination, yanking at Theo's neck as he shut his eyes and simultaneously hid himself away behind them. Some sentimental, utterly pathetic version of herself wished they could go back in time to fix it all, when he felt comfortable sharing his universe with her.
Her voice released as tiny a tinker fairy in his arms, "Then...at a minimum tell me this; what happened between you, and Draco? What is this guild?"
Theodore stiffened, tangling his fingers in the back of her hair, "He took advantage of my requirement to join it, but in what fashion is not permitted for me to say either."
She sniffled for a second at the useless response, before a damn broke and a tsunami sized flood ensued.
"He's been unfaithful to me," Audette blurted, quaking in Theodore's arms as the horrible words left her lips, "And now I've got to go through yet another disparaging heartbreak all over again."
A small guttural growl roiled up Theodore's throat, "He will pay for what he's done Audette, to you especially...He claims to love you, but roping you into the center of his demented reality...A lack of celibacy is the mildest of offences I foresaw him ruin you with."
Feeling the knife wound of Draco's betrayal still figuratively lodged in her skeleton, Audette threw caution - and practically all dignity - to the wind. For all she knew he was holed up in his own bed with the Russian champion at that very moment.
Everything was rapidly changing, so rapidly in fact that Audette left her body when they both instinctively turned their faces and nuzzled noses. His soft lips danced on hers, his breath blowing in her face.
Before she knew it she was caught in a teary, tender lip lock with Theodore that emulated the sensation of hot butter dripping down her chest cavity.
He inhaled sharply and yanked her farther across the bed, now flat against his chest with their slamming hearts aligned. His tongue had a slight hint of Skelegrow lingering there from his medication, but even the vile flavour of the potion was not remotely deterring.
He groaned in confusion as she bit his lower lip, pulling back to scrunch up his nose at her, "Your stimulation has become crude."
It was probably true, after spending so much time snogging Draco who's style was hormonal, filled with tongue and left her begging for it even rougher. Regrettably their encounters had rubbed off on her and it must have been a shocker for Theodore, who kept attempting to steady her pace.
He had always been deliberate and fragile in his movements, travelling his hands down between her shoulder blades with the intensity of a feathery drift of his fingertips against her dress.
He planted plush kisses on her lips for a solid minute and Audette had nearly forgotten all about Draco Malfoy and his horrid public cheating, before she felt Nott remove his right hand and tepidly place it on her sternum to guide her backwards.
He broke their long embraces to whisper the most utterly disappointing words, looking straight into her eyes seriously, "No, Audette you must go. You understand - I don't want this."
She paused in place, her jaw dropping open at the excruciating reminder, "You aren't being sincere."
Theo's voice pinched as he skittered his eyes off somewhere out the window, "Audette, you will go at once. And terminate this abomination with Malfoy for your own sake, if it is not too late." His mouth started to curl downwards in a contrasting, mixed message of a frown, compared to his eyes which were quite hard and determined.
She shifted uncomfortably, blinking through the undignified moment, "Alright."
As she slid off his right hand clung to her arm all the way down the sleeve before dropping away, then he proceeded to blankly focus his attention directly into his lap with a sickened pout.
"Goodbye, then," Audette whispered injuriously, damn near speechless that any of it had just occurred. She walked as rapidly as could from the infirmary of brave, wounded individuals with her own oozing laceration deep within her body.
What had she just done? The level of sickness in her stomach was verging on projectile vomiting as she quickly noted she too was just as bad a cheating scumbag now.
Now arraigned with a massive headache from the longest day of her life, Audette arrived back to the first subterranean level just shy of two in the morning and prepared to go straight into a year long coma.
This luxury however was far from on the horizon, and the gruelling day had yet more torture to hand out.
Multiple male voices were bantering in the slimy bowls of the castle just beyond the corner ahead, without a shred of doubt directly in front of the Slytherin common room.
Audette stopped to lean her groggy head around the bend only to whip it back and press herself flat against the wet bricks.
No, no, NO.
She was trapped outside of the safety of her bed by the exact group of men she would rather spend an eternity avoiding from that evening on.
Not only was Blaise, Vincent, and Goyle twirling their wands around before the wall, but they were doing so to entertain Draco who was pacing around furiously in fresh black athletic comfort clothing.
"How am I to fix this, when she has pre-existing notions in her head with regard to my reputation?" she heard him shouting in an anxious pitch.
Audette clapped a hand across her mouth.
"And who's to blame that she's heard so many vile rumours, Malfoy?" Blaise coolly commented, and Audette could just picture the nonchalance exuding from his bored eyes, his already monotone voice now drooping from the late hour.
"Where the fuck is she? I've searched this entire establishment," Draco's voice rose, his shoes slamming off of the freezing slab flooring, "This is absurd, she has no where to go."
"I can think of one place; have you checked the infirmary?" Goyle's gargling voice chimed in with foolishness.
"She wouldn't dare," Draco snarled back hatefully.
Oh but she would.
Audette's eyes crossed to her bare toes when she felt a hot swath of fur brush against her leg, noticing the uninvited company of a big, fat ugly brown rat that had taken a keen interest in her doddling.
She pointed her wand just before it's face to attempt casting a small ball of flame to scare it off, but instead her groggy mind accidentally uttered Ascendare, causing the rat to blast into the air and straight into the adjacent wall.
Right away a cry of enthusiasm indicated that someone had noticed.
Vincent Crabbe guffawed, "You see that? That flying rat?"
Draco thankfully steam rolled right over the observation, "What was in that antidote Zabini? I'm going to be sick."
"You're sure it's the potion and not just nerves, Malfoy?"
Draco snarled, "There is nothing to be nervous about, because I haven't lost her. Just fuck off, the lot of you."
The gravelly screech of the wall sliding open misled Audette entirely, assuming they'd all caved to exhaustion and headed to bed.
With a heavy dumbbell in her chest Audette wisely warned herself to wait there even longer for the common room to totally clear. She swallowed through silent tears against the wall, her lovely hair matting against the messy bricks.
Small scuttles of the rat now ambling down the hall tickled her ear drum. Only they were getting louder and it wasn't the rat.
"Audette? Where the fuck have you been?" Draco's voice rasped in shock as he rounded the corner, quiet as a ninja and just about tripping over her ankles.
Ugh.
Audette continued to lol her head against the wall with a her face twisting in revulsion. The darkness of her eyelids was the only thing she cared to visually perceive, in comparison to his face which would only procure desires to punch his pointy nose down to a pancake.
"Audette?" she heard a very tangible strangle in his normally masculine tone. It was so mortifyingly convincing, the fear in his voice a few feet away, that she was overcome with the impression of a bowling ball dropping from her lungs down into her guts.
"I have nothing to say to you, ever again," she heard the barely audible words escaped her lips, as if she were in a dream world and not responsible for her own body.
Audette opened her eyes to look at him finally, standing there with his hands in his pockets, his eyes red around the edges. The agony on his features only intensified the pain in her chest as she lifted his medal from her neck and held it forward with a few fingers.
He tepidly took it as if it were the most disinteresting object on the planet, his eyebrows knitting in terror as he started to choke on each breath.
He visibly shot from worried to sheer panic, "We can talk about this. You wouldn't dare terminate our relationship over something so trivial."
She held her trembling chin up, unable to prevent her nose from stinging and tears from flooding for the hundredth time that night. Her throat was so tight that her voice squeaked unnaturally, "I am, congratulations you've made a fool out of me Malfoy. It only took you a few months."
Draco started to pant faster and faster, shaking his head in total denial and appearing as if he might faint. He shot his hand to her shoulder, "No. No, listen, I can-"
"I don't believe a word you say! Don't touch me!" Audette shouted angrily, sucking in air through the blinding conditions occurring in her eyesight.
Draco sniffled once, his hand backing off gradually, "I recognize the mistake that was made. I should have reacted quicker."
"Cheating, disgusting womanizer!" Audette launched into uncontrollable madness, stabbing a sharp nail into his shoulder like a tiny sword to prod him backwards in the corridor, "How long has it been going on? As long as with me? Since the beginning of the year?"
"Nothing is going on between myself and anyone, only you. She made her move and I let it happen, once, tonight," he admitted in a tense, breathless tone. His eyebrows had sunken over his eyes in flat ridges, clearly fighting not to cry, "Old habits, I suppose."
"So you have turned out to be the exact person I gave you the benefit of the doubt not to be," Audette had heard enough.
Even if he was being honest, all that could be concluded from the information was that his playboy behaviour would only bring out the worst in her and promote scorching jealousy fits.
She flipped around the corner at lightning speed and barrelled for the common room in determination to escape.
A loud clang of metal on the stone floor, followed by the hum drum of a rotating disc gave away that he'd dropped the valuable medal just to desperately wrap his arms around her in a titan grip from behind.
He buried his bawling face in her hair and Audette was so astounded by Draco Malfoy crying that her own emotions temporarily froze in place.
Small symphonies of breathy cries filled her ear as he practically crushed the air clean out of her lungs, his own chest heaving against hers, "I can't lose you Audette, I won't allow you to walk away from this. I waited...so long...you're the only girl I've ever wanted...Forgive me, I can do better."
She was pinned in place, unsure if he was going to be sick from the well of instability in his wavering voice and hectic breathing. If he was putting on a show, he deserved a bloody Oscar nomination.
The frown on Audette's face was only developing into a teary scowl as it was downright traumatizing, "Draco, I'm once again doubting that we are correct for each other. After tonight..."
He pulled away looking absolutely frantic, dropping down onto one knee to face her in a sobbing, beggary mess. His hands shook her waist pleadingly, and Audette's head jiggled in place loosely and unimpressed, "What can I do to fix this? Name it and it's done. I implore you to at least sleep on your decision."
"You have humiliated me, and I cannot be purchased like a cheap item. There is nothing you can do to fix it, because she now possesses the pleasure of you tarnishing our relationship in public! What part of this mess don't you recognize as being irreversible!" she fumed at him, smoke probably pressurizing out of both ears as tended to be depicted in old cartoons.
He pulled one of her hands forward to kiss her skin with such sorrow in his features Audette's eyes shot to the ceiling in a defensive huff, "Give me time Audette, I will fix it. There is no other option."
She breathed deeply, still refusing to glance at him, "I shall sleep on it, but don't get your hopes up. All I want to do right now is decapitate you with a chainsaw. Better yet, a butter knife."
With a nasty withdraw of her hand she riveted to command the wall open, but his strained voice stopped her just inside, "Then I may assume we haven't broken up yet."
The poison in her pretty face must have been lethal as she turned to glare at him, noticing that all lingering hope drained from his expression, "Not yet. Probably before breakfast I will come to no better conclusion, so do not bank on my forgiveness."
In tatters she was gone, off to bed to die in misery, still without much more answers and now brimming with anxiety that Draco Malfoy truly had scared off Theodore Nott.