Leprous Daylight [Theo]

[mathilde manon poole]

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May 7th, 2029

The shenanigans that unfolded at Flobberworm and Lettuce had gotten back to the right people in power, because the hammer of justice (detention) was brought down Tilly and Theo. She had only been in detention a few times in her five years of schooling, mostly from pocketing potions ingredients for later dissection. This detention was due to being a public nuisance and causing a rather messy cleanup after several patrons of the pub tossed their cookies after she flashed her picture around while making a run for it. Tilly was, obviously, now going around and telling every she could that they were throwing her into lockup over the little prank. Unfortunately for the two of them, Professor Weasley didn’t back them up on it being for his class, as they weren’t sixth years yet. The twinkle in his eye did tell her that he’d probably give them the bonus points once they did though. Assuming detention didn’t kill her and Theo first.

It was in the library, of all places. A side room that Tilly hadn’t even known existed until the shriveled-up librarian waved her wand and a door swung open where a bookshelf had always been. Stunned, the two of them were ushered into it, and were told that this was where they’d be spending the entire detention. Organizing old manuscripts and putting them in order by date. It stunk to high heavens inside the small room, a tinge of decaying paper, stale air, and definitely doxy dung. There was very little rhyme or reason to why papers were placed in here, and trying to figure out the proper way to place them together was almost impossible. Even going by century would be difficult.

”There really should be a window in here, you know,” Tilly said loudly and as dramatic as possible as she picked up a scroll and something dark and dusty rolled out from the inner layers. About thirty minutes had already passed, and she and Theo were quietly doing their ‘job’. She really couldn’t stand the librarian’s shushing normally, and for once, had opted to keep her trap shut. Only now, when she broke her silent vigil, did she notice that the old woman was face down on her desk. ”Holy fuck. I think she croaked!” Tilly declared, without any other evidence to back her claim up.

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 391

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[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

FOREHEAD RESTING AGAINST THE GRAINY wooden table he was parked at, Theo tried to remember why he'd thought it was a good idea to piss off the bar manager at the Flobberworm & Lettuce. His arms hung at his sides, and he intermittently lifted his head and knocked it back against the wood, bored out of his skull. The back room in the M.A.G.I.C library was familiar to Theo, he spent ever so much of his time there attending various detentions. Evidentially, Tilly did not as she was busy being intrigued by the ancient architecture.

"Hm?" Theo hummed in answer, lifting his head up to squint at where Tilly sat across the room. They hadn't been permitted to sit next to each other as 'it was surely a recipe for disaster'. They were supposed to be cataloguing - Theo's least favourite punishment. All the parchment was dusty, it made his skin itch like the parlour in his aunts house, and he was bored. Theo had taken a handful, placed them on his 'allowed' desk and promptly started trying to knock his brain loose against the desk. "Oh- yeah, it's like a fart dungeon in here." He mumbled, rubbing at his eyes and flicking a precious scroll of parchment off his desk for the fun of it.

"What-?!" Theo's head spun so quickly at Tilly's exclamation that he felt a crick in his neck. He was halfway out of his seat in a moments notice, before he caught sight of the old Professor and paused. "Oh, wait..." He waved Tilly off, sounding almost disappointed as his excitement ebbed away. "Sometimes she takes a Calming Draught before a session." Theo had never been lucky enough to attend such a session, but he'd heard from Scottie once that if she 'liked' the punishment enough, she'd drift right off for the whole 2 hours.

"Which means..." Theo turned his head to look at Tilly, a terrible glint in his eye. "She'll probably be out for the count for at least an hour." Theo quirked his brows and edged up and away from his desk. "Care to test that theory, Miss Poole?" He swept a grand arm out in front of him, motioning toward the face-down Professor. 

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If the librarian had indeed died at the desk in the front of the room, that accounted for some of the smell currently swirling around. Postmortem farts were said to be vile, and she and Theo were lucky to maybe be experiencing them live. Tilly had skipped her way up to where the librarian had faceplanted, open book agape under her face. One hand hung loosely to the side of her. Theo had joined her after her declaration, running to her side before explaining that apparently the geezer took Calming Draughts frequently. And was prone to passing out like this. ”Sounds like an addiction. If she can’t even get through a day of dealing with students without taking one, that isn’t good.” Tilly wasn’t convinced that the woman was alive though. There were no signs. If her breathing was this shallow, surely that wasn’t healthy either?

Theo theorized that they’d have maybe an hour before she woke, and Tilly stared down at the near-dead woman. ”Sure,” she said as she walked around the table and lifted the dangling arm up as high as possible, before letting it drop limply back to the librarian’s side. ”Merlin, that has to be a strong as hell Calming Draught…” Returning back to Theo’s side, she fished around in her pockets. She sometimes had a permanent marker on her person, not for vandalization, but because she never knew when someone would potentially ask for an autograph. It hadn’t happened yet, of course, but one day it would. And she wanted to be ready for it.

”How many more detentions do you think we’d get for drawing on her face?” Tilly asked as her fingers found the sharpie and pulled it out for Theo to see. They could always magic it away after snapping a few photos of their artwork. ”We can take turns holding her head up,” she suggested, holding out the pen to Theo so he could go first.

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 325

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[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

SNORTING AT TILLY'S MATTER-OF-FACT HONESTY, Theo stared at the librarian like she might propel back into a sitting position like a creepy little puppet. He had very little concern about any assumed addiction, careless in his lack of attention as he thought of everything they could do while being utterly unsupervised for the chunk of time. He thought about paper planes from book pages, and turning all the furniture upside down before Tilly pulled his attention back to her.

She had crossed the room in four purposeful strides, and tested how dead their overseer was by lifting her thick arm. It thudded so loudly that Theo flinched instinctively, before huffing a laugh and crossing the room to stand beside her. He leaned down, poked a cheek experimentally and felt the flesh give way in a disgusting, fleshy kind of way. She was out for the count, breath huffing intermittently in a deep, peaceful kind of sleep. 

They both crossed back to the other side of the room, for supposed conspiring as they bent their heads together expectantly. Theo hummed quietly, as Tilly rifled around in her pockets and pulled out a decidedly muggle 'pen' with the words 'Sharpie' written across the grey casing. He took it from her hand and rolled it between his fingers for inspection, pulling off the cap and sniffing the end with a flinch as the searing scent gave him a bit of a head rush. "What kind of ink is that..." He muttered under his breath, recapping the pen and turning his attention back to Tilly and the librarian.

"I think..." Theo smirked, twirling the pen between his fingers confidently. "She'd have to explain to Headmistress how we managed to draw on her face in the first place." His smirk was a cutting, misbehaving thing that vibrated with the potential for disaster. He handed the pen back to Tilly and moved back towards the front of the room.

"I'll hold her head first, but you better draw a moustache." He told her pointedly, edging around the desk and looking around the librarian for the right angle to grab her face without the risk of potentially being bitten. "That is, of course, if you can get around the one she already has." He snickered meanly, pressing one hand against her forehead and the other against her chin and lifting very, very gently. 

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She often times forgot that those fully integrated in the magical world had no clue what a standard, run of the mill, permanent marker may look like. ”Like, permanent? It isn’t really, but it takes a long time to scrub it off sometimes,” she explained as she drew on the palm of her hand, leaving a singular black line there. Tilly rubbed it with her robes, showing that nothing happened to it, before spitting on her palm and doing it again. It still remained. ”See? But if you use a simple cleaning charm like this…” she pulled her wand out and zapped her hand with the appropriate spell, ”…it goes away!”

For some reason, Tilly hadn’t thought about the part where the librarian would have to admit she had fallen asleep with the assistance of a potion during their detention. It was brilliant. ”This is why I keep you around,” she said as the pen was handed back to her again. Theo moved behind the librarian, and carefully lifted the old woman’s head up into a position that was easy to draw on. Tilly had to do a weird stretch over the front of the desk, almost the entirety of her body now sprawled on it. Her feet dangled at the edge, and she playfully kicked them back and forth as she un-capped the marker and observed her empty slate for a moment.

Theo suggested drawing a moustache, and she snorted. ”I suppose I could fill in the gaps,” she said as she started to scribble. Gently at first, unsure of how the ink would take to the skin, and then harder once she was sure of herself. After a few times back and forth across the upper lip, she stopped and leaned back again to take it all in. ”Might add a bit more on the edges. Make it one of those curly ones, you know?” she decided before doing just that.

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 323

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[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

TILLY'S EXPLANATION OF HER 'SHARPIE' QUILL did not solve Theo's confusion. Permanent, but not? He was once again baffled by the strange wonders of muggle ingenuity. Plus, the smell alone nearly watered his eyes. It would do, though, if the scent didn't rouse the librarian. He watched with rapt attention as she demonstrated, blinking down at the line on her pen as it remained, even when she spit on it. He wrinkled his nose, but agreed as she zapped it away that it was an adequate instrument.

"I thought you kept me around for my dashing good looks?" Theo blinked owlishly, but collapsed into a grin as quickly as he offered it. They were quick to business, and Theo was careful with the holding of the head as he was afraid if he let it slip he'd whack her head on the desk. That would be an awful wake-up call, plus a hard one to talk their way out of. He operated a wide stance behind the librarians desk, and bent carefully over her as Tilly got to work on her improved moustache.

"A handlebar!" Theo hissed, turning his head to laugh into the arm of his t-shirt. Tilly looked ridiculous, her expression almost too concentrated as she carefully scrawled her masterpiece across the sleeping librarians face. It was a good thing the detention was a one-man job, as Theo thought they must look a little bit nutty manhandling a senior staff member with a muggle pen. "My turn!" Theo whispered after she'd perfected her new moustache, carefully laying her head back down and tip-toeing around the desk to meet Tilly.

"Give me the sharp, please?" He smiled innocently, wiggling his fingers before bending down to admire Tilly's handiwork. He'd laid her head back down at an angle, so her cheek rested comfortably on the wood. It gave Theo a great look at one side of her new 'tache, which curled comically, the ink bleeding into the deep crevices of her face. "Absolutely stellar job, Poole." He said with a lofty voice, hands tucked behind his back. As if they were two art critics admiring a gallery piece. "Shall I pair it with a lovely monobrow?" He asked, straightening back up and pouting out his bottom lip. "Perhaps a few extra warts to add to the overall picture of... mountain troll." 

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”Uh-huh. That too,” Tilly responded. She wasn’t paying full attention to what he was saying, as all of her concentration was on filling out the moustache. In terms of the other boys in their year, she definitely rated Theo above the rest. At least he seemed to understand and enjoy her weirdness instead of treating her like she only existed when it came time to play Quidditch. Maybe that was blowing it out of a proportion a bit, but she saw how her definition of normal interactions did not match with what her other classmates thought of them as. Most didn’t care about vivianite crystals or how she already had a written will and end of life plan in case she accidentally snapped her neck on the pitch. That was common sense to her, really. One never knew when a rogue bludger might come zooming in and smack her in the head the wrong way. Lights out, game over. As long as it was quick, she was cool with it.

”Sharpie,” Tilly corrected him as she made her way around the desk and exchanged the marker for the librarian’s head. The lifelessness in it as she found her hands amongst the dry, wrinkled skin was exhilarating. ”She needs to moisturize more often,” Tilly wrinkled her nose. Especially at the ripe old age of two hundred, or whatever this ancient beast was. All she knew was that the stories had preceded themselves, and Tilly had been well aware of the librarian before she had even started at Hogwarts. Edward was old as hell too, and he hadn’t been in school in close to a decade. So that had to mean the librarian was at least ten times that. Maybe more.

Tilly stood proudly next to the sleeping librarian, smug expression on her face as she was complimented for her artistic rendition of the handlebar moustache. Carefully collecting both ends of the head in the same manner Theo had, as she didn’t actually want to cause any harm to the woman despite their past disagreements on noise within the library, Tilly leaned in front of her face to give it another look. ”I think she might already have one. Can’t hurt to highlight it, could it?”

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 374

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

TILLY HAD SUCH A VACANT EXPRESSION OF PURE concentration on her face that Theo was certain she wasn't listening to him. So he continued, "And my sparkling, stimulating conversational skills." He drawled, watching her concentrating face with his tongue in his cheek. "And obviously my superior Quidditch skills." He added, watching her expression for a sign that she was listening while simultaneously admiring her artwork.

"'Sharpie'," Theo mocked her crisp pronunciation of the muggle pen and took a moment to sniff the nib one more time before he gave Tilly's handiwork a proper once over. The handlebar moustache creased into the sagging skin of the librarians cheeks, a bit crooked but a solid effort. "Hm, I think you're right." Theo muttered, tilting his head and tapping the Sharpie against his bottom lip as he considered his options.

Eventually, he bent at the waist and highlighted a few comically large moles on her chin, with little black spikes for hairs. Finishing up by scrawling two words across the wide expanse of her forehead. He leaned back to admire it and snickered, the words 'Sleeping 'Beauty'' marked from one temple to the other, the quotation marks around 'beauty' speaking for itself. After all, he didn't want a hit out on his name when she woke and realised what they had done.

"Come see!" He whispered excitedly, jumping around the desk to take hold of the head and gently display it for Tilly's final thoughts. "I think we've vastly improved upon her appearance." He declared, gently placing her head back onto the desk and flinching visibly when she grunted in her sleep. His hands held up in surrender as he froze in place while staring at the back of her head. After a moment, she snuffled in her sleep and went quiet and Theo's heart stopped rattling in his chest.

"Oh, that was close." He pressed a hand against his heart and crept around the desk to grab Tilly's shoulder and pull them away from the scene of the crime. "What should we do now?" He asked her curiously, surveying the space and humming thoughtfully. "Shall we have a snog now," Theo quirked his brows daringly. "Or shall I read you something from the A-to-Zed Horticultural Manuscript?" He smirked down at her, leaning one arm against her shoulder casually. 

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"One of those definitely gets me going and you can figure out which," Tilly said as she came back to reality. It was definitely Quidditch, but Theo's topics for talk had never bored her. If anything, they only made her feel more sane than she actually was. With more than one weirdo around, she was bound to look normal to their classmates. Right?

Theo's progression through his artistic rendition was impressive. Making moles gigantic and pop out more with near three-dimensional hairs elongating from them. She could see the ones closest to her, but from her angle, not what he started scribbling onto her forehead. Once she was given a chance to switch out, she giddily hopped around the desk to look. "No way!" Tilly practically screamed in a whisper. The sudden jerk of the librarian's head as grunted happily in her sleep like a fattened pig in muck made her almost jump out of her skin. Erasing everything would be easy if she was asleep. Knocking her back out to do so would not work at all, though Tilly wasn't inherently against committing a crime to fix a different one.

"That's beautiful," she finally said after giving a pause for the librarian to continue her snooze. She was absolutely a Sleeping 'Beauty' today. Tilly pulled her phone out to snap a quick photo, and gave Theo a thumbs up before also retrieving her wand. "As much as I'd love for others to see her out in the library looking like this, I'd hate to keep missing practice because of detentions," she admitted before scrubbing away the mustache and words with a cleaning charm. She did leave a few of the highlighted moles though. They were too good to get rid of completely. Anything obvious was wiped clean.

Theo provided some options for the remainder of their detention, at least while their guardian snoozed, and she wrinkled her nose at him. "I didn't take you for an exhibitionist Theo Flint. Wonder what your sisters will think of that if I tell them..." she said as she jabbed him in the side with her hand. "But I'll think about it. Maybe as a birthday gift..."

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 343

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

THEO GAVE HER HINT A VERY BRIEF AND KEEN thought before he snorted and shook his head, "Quidditch junkie." He drawled, partly in appreciation and a little bit in awe of Tilly's versatility. She played like a demon, but often appeared almost careless about how good she was at the sport. It sent her fan club into a bit of a frenzy, thinking she was cool and fit, but Theo felt that maybe she cared just a little more than she appeared to.

They admired their handiwork like two master artists. Theo with his hands on his hips, a smug little smirk on his face as Tilly crowed her appreciation for his additional calligraphy. He was quite proud of himself, but Tilly was a far more practical individual. Theo dropped his arms at his side loosely, watching like a kicked cruppie as she erased 99% of their handiwork. Preserving it only by snapping a quick picture on her magimobile. She was right, of course. They shouldn't make an enemy out of the librarian. She was a formidable figure, when she wasn't passed out on Calming Draughts.

"You know," Theo sighed, puppy-eyed. "Sometimes you're so rational it hurts my feelings." Theo poked the side meat of her waist and stepped back, pulling himself up onto one of the hardy wooden desks and letting his legs swing as he tilted his head to admire the few lingering 'Sharpie' moles Tilly had the good grace to leave for their viewing pleasure. "Who knew you cared so much about Quidditch," Theo kicked his leg out and hooked a foot around Tilly's calf, bending his knee gently to either trip her or pull her into his orbit.

"I mean, do we really have a captive audience." He said daringly, slipping off the desk to close the lingering space between them. There was a challenging glint in his eye and their noses almost brushed when he paused to share breath with Tilly Poole for a fraction of a second. "My sister's don't want to know who I'm snogging," He teased, shifting his chin forward slightly so their noses bumped before he swerved around Tilly and strolled back towards the row of shelves at the back of the room. "Horticultural read-along it is!" He declared with a gusty sigh, running his finger along the dusty spines, before he pulled the chunky tome forth and turned to smack it onto the nearest table. 

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Tilly shrugged. At this point, being called anything regarding her time on the pitch was a compliment. She’d heard things from some of the more disgruntled players on the other house teams and merely shrugged them off. Jealousy made people ugly, they just didn’t realize it yet. ”I have to be addicted to something,” she said simply as her wand continued to erase everything but the few moles she’d decided to leave over. ”Like, if I wanted to see dead bodies and blood and stuff, obviously going to medical school to become a trauma surgeon would be the move. But I still get to see broken noses, missing teeth, and blood if I play Quidditch. And its free.” If she went professional, she’d even get paid to see it all. How marvelous!

”Can’t be weird all the time, you know,” Tilly admitted. Theo wasn’t wrong though; this was an incredibly rational decision on her part. Almost scarily so. Her side involuntarily moved as she felt his finger make contact. They were always jabbing at one another, the more unsuspecting the better the reaction. The worst was when he tried to get her in Potions. Nothing beat accidentally spilling too many frog guts into a cauldron because she jumped from being shocked in the side. The professor wasn’t a fan of that at all. She thought it had been hilarious. Except for the part where the sleeves of her robes smelled like spoiled, acrid frog innards for the rest of the day. Even she had a limit.

Feeling her calf caught by an unreasonably shiny and polished shoe, Tilly hopped on the other leg to try and escape Theo’s clutches. She only managed to spin around in time for him to be face to face with her. ”So they wouldn’t care?” she asked. Tilly didn’t know either of them, having only heard stories from Theo. The one apparently had a shop in Horizont Alley, and he ran away to there all the time. His words, not hers. With his nose brushing hers for a nanosecond, Tilly didn’t react as Theo scooted around her and ran off to his Horticulture section finally. Sucking her cheeks in at his brazenness, she followed.

He had already managed to haul a dusty text off of the shelf and slammed it down onto an open space on a table. The mushroom cloud that erupted around it was a sight to behold, and a poor timing of an inhale sent her coughing. ”You trying to…to join the family business?” Tilly wheezed halfway through her sentence. She pounded on the center of her chest a few times, as if that was actually going to help with removing the dust she’d just sucked in. ”Hopefully that wasn’t the last librarian’s ashes…” she hacked again.

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 465

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[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

THOUGH THEO COULDN'T PRETEND TO FULLY understand Tilly, he certainly understood the desire to want something. Even if it was Quidditch, which he enjoyed just the normal amount. He supposed, if he were as 'good' at it as Tilly was presumed to be, then maybe he'd change his mind. Instead, he shrugged his acquiescence without much protest. "And you want to?" Theo asked with a curious tilt to his head. "See dead bodies and stuff?" The questions bubbled on his lips, but he pressed them tightly and decided he'd better ask something like that when he wasn't juggling a sleeping head.

The ink was more or less gone, and Theo had to make his peace with the fact that Tilly might just be a smidgen smarter than him. He'd been perfectly prepared to take the hit, allowing the librarian to see the mess they had made before attempting to maintain their innocence. Tilly, instead, thought well ahead. It was a secret for their own personal enjoyment only. He was only a little bit disappointed, the photographic evidence certainly helped. Perhaps Theo was a little too used to being dressed down by authority figures.

Shaking his head slowly, Theo was certain his siblings wouldn't be much interested in his snogging habits. If only, perhaps, to rib him accordingly for being a normal wizarding boy, with a typical crush. Tilly appeared unconvinced, but he was too busy teasing her anyway. Swerving away from her mouth just as their noses touched, it took an astronomical amount of self-control to not close the space between them, but the bit was worth it.

He slammed the book down on to the desk, and sighed heavily, waving his hand across the front of his face to stave off the dust cloud that enveloped them both. "They don't want me." Theo croaked, thinking about his summers spent behind the till, trying his best not to kill the plants just by being in their general vicinity. Plus, he had an aversion to getting his hands dirty. Wiping the residual dust from his hands, Theo slumped down into his chair and threw the first page of the tome open, the spine creaking audibly. "You'd like that, I fear." Theo teased, looking up at where Tilly stood, a beat of silence stretching between them before he asked. "Why do you like dead bodies and stuff so much?" An honest curiosity in his eyes. 

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Tilly shrugged at Theo’s question about seeing a dead body. ”Yeah, sort of. It’s more of a curiosity of what it’s like more than wanting to like, get in there and see the insides.” She honestly didn’t even know how to think of it. Seeing someone lying on a morgue table, lifeless and cold...it sounded kind of cool to her. She hadn’t seen one fully yet always thwarted by her sister whenever she tried to sneak into St. Mungo’s. That more had to do with the fact that she used Terry’s name to get in, and then the snitches at the front desk always paged her over the intercom. ”But I wouldn’t complain if they let me see all of that too,” she added quickly. She really wanted to compare it to the muggle movies she watched all the time. The fake stuff wasn’t cutting it for her anymore.

She scrunched her nose at his comment about his siblings not wanting him. From what she had heard, being around them was better than that aunt he was always subjected to. The moaning he put up about having to go back to her every time a break was around the corner was annoying. Usually he came back after and said he snuck off, so Tilly really didn’t understand why he whined in the first place.

”I would, except I inhaled a bunch of it,” she coughed again. Theo had drifted back to her peculiar interests, finally asking the big question. Luckily for him, she had a response prepped and ready to go. ”Well, when your pet and friends get incinerated in a fire and you almost die too, it gets you thinking, right? Like what happens next, if anything? Or maybe this is all we get and once this chance is over its done and gone. My parents have always talked pretty candidly about medical related things so that sort of helped with it too, I guess.” That didn’t really answer why she wanted to see a body though. Tilly knew that answer was a little more complicated, and while she was sure that Theo would be more than willing to hear it, it would also give up her own insecurity about how she was terrified of death.

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[Theodore Marcus Flint]

a fine young galahad.

THINKING SO HARD TILLY COULD LIKELY HEAR him, Theo squinted at her as he considered what she meant. Her explanation was strange, but that wasn't entirely uncommon. "Right..." He drawled, licking his lips and pursing them slightly as he thought some more. "Wonder what... dying is like?" He asked her faintly, but his head tilted, his eyes alight with that strange curiosity. Theo wasn't interested in the dead, when the living were like Tilly Poole.

Laughing under his breath, Theo watched as Tilly coughed into a closed fist, her face going a lovely shade of red as she did. "Maybe they'll possess your body." He wiggled his fingers and pursed his mouth into an 'o' as he made a 'wooing' sound, like a cartoon ghost. "You'll be as good as Peeves!" He said in a warbled voice, before he dropped his hands and laughed at the ridiculousness of it. Librarian ashes among the stacks of old books about plants. More chance of an acromantula bite.

"I mean, I was there too." Theo muttered, his thinking face back in place as he leaned back against his seat and sprawled out his legs, he hadn't thought about the fires in a very long time. "I guess I didn't think about that at the time." He added, staring at the slumped librarian and wondering if her back was moving with breath. He held his own breath as he waited, and only sighed when she snuffled and let out a grumbling snore. His heart jumped in his chest. "I guess I try not to think about death at all." He turned his head to look at Tilly, blinking slowly as he ran a vacant hand over the dusty book's pages. "I prefer it here, with you, I think." 

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Tilly didn’t want to die. There was too much finality in that. She had been lucky enough to see the pearly gates start to creak open for her during the fire, and quite frankly had zero interest in going back to it just yet. Death was her greatest fear. And why she spent so much of her time trying to understand it. In her mind, if she came to whatever conclusion she was looking for by her expiration date, then that would make the transition so much easier for her. Assuming she was allowed a death that wasn’t quick and painless. That would be the most optimal of ways to kick the proverbial bucket. ”Mmmm…more like seeing the peacefulness of it. I want to be able to experience it all without actually, you know,” she rolled her eyes back and stuck her tongue out to imitate being dead. ”If I were a muggle, my parents would have me seeing a dozen different shrinks right about now.” Of course, these sorts of curiosities would have never developed if she didn’t have magic. Being a muggle was probably healthier for her anyways.

Apparently, Theo found her inhaling dust - the ex-librarian’s potential ashes – funny. It only made her hack more as she tried to catch her breath. ”Merlin, please no. Only I get to mess up my body.” And whomever she managed to crash into whilst playing Quidditch. Because if she was good at one thing, it was taking out opponents with all of her might. Imagining a ghost taking control of her felt icky. ”I’d rather not be felt up by a ghost. Their hands have to be freezing, right?” Somehow, Tilly had never had the honors of one of the school ghosts passing through her. For her largest obsession, the ghosts had been relatively off the radar for her. Which, now that she thought about it more, was a huge miscalculation on her part. They would easily be the most knowledgeable on death (and ‘life’ thereafter).

Coming to the realization that not all of the students that were caught up in the fire had turned out similarly to her had been a tough hurdle to get over. Tilly had always thought that she was good at pushing those sorts of things to the side. And she was, at least outwardly. Theo only knew now because she had told him. Most of their classmates probably thought she was callous in her obsessions, having them only pop up after a bunch of people burned to a crisp. But it wasn’t their fault that they didn’t know what she was thinking or how she felt. ”Still trying to butter me up for a kiss?” Tilly changed direction. That’s what she was best at, after all. Then again, she did find herself thinking about it all a little less when around Theo. He did have a point there.

Theodore Marcus Flint ● 484

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