Hey Strangers. Miss me?

Don't freak out. Or, you know, freak out... I won't presume to tell you what to do with your emoting...

The prologue has been shaved down from the original five chapters... I would recommend reading it (given the fact that it's been a year and the NSA only knows what you've been doing with your life during that time...).

Content: ANGST

Disclaimer: Contrary to popular belief, I am not Queen Rowling and therefore do not own Harry Potter. If I had a soul this would make me cry at night.

September 1982

Thoros swept out the ebony front doors the moment he felt the wards tingle with her return. He froze three steps later at the sight of his gore-spattered wife. She had an equally gory toddler screaming and thrashing in her arms.

"Good evening, mo ghràdh [Scottish Gaelic for my love]." He brushed his customary kiss against her cheekbone. He had to dodge a flailing fist, but he did not permit himself any outward signs of noticing. "How was your shopping trip?"

"Unexpectedly fruitful!" Calladora replied. Her eyes shone despite the chunks of blood clogged hair that kept encroaching on her face. He allowed a flicked glance at the toddler, whose volume, impossibly, had increased. "I was on my way to the apparation point when I heard this little one crying…"

"And your solution was to kidnap-"

"Let me finish, Thoros." He refused to allow his lips to indulge in a smile. Whatever her appearance, much less the presence of a child, her sass was some point of comforting normality.
"I heard her crying, and when I looked toward the little hovel, I saw a woman collapse across the doorstep." He allowed his eyes to narrow. She ignored him. "The woman was covered in blood and cuts, but she still had the strength to grab me and demand I save her daughter." Thoros' head throbbed. The screaming child wasn't helping matters. "When I ran upstairs, this awful muggle man was looming over her with a knife! I didn't know what to do of course, but her hair was sparking, and she was screaming, and I just used that curse you taught me and destroyed him!" Her excited smile twisted, and she glanced down at herself, seeming to notice the state of her appearance for the first time.

Thoros inhaled for five seconds then exhaled for seven. "Let me see if I have this straight, Calladora…" He flicked a cleaning charm at her and the girl. "You went into a muggle home; a home you knew to be dangerous…"

"It was a muggle with a knife, Thoros. I was hardly in any danger," she scoffed.

"You then kidnapped a muggle child…"

"She's not a muggle! Touch her!" She shoved the kicking toddler toward him, and he pulled away in revulsion. She huffed and glowered. "She isn't. Her hair was shooting green sparks when I arrived in her nursery. Besides! I can feel her aura."

"So you kidnapped a mudblooded child…"

"Her name is Hermione Caledonia Melanthe Trastamara i Nott," Calla growled. "She's mine. Her mother said I must take her and by Coatlicue y mis hermanas haré [Spanish for I will]." She glared at him for a few panting breaths and forcibly drew herself to her full, if still inferior, height. "Even if her adoption means protecting her from you, Thoros Nott."

~*TNT*~

October 1982

"So she is yours," Lucius said. The bluntness, over tea no less, immediately put Thoros on the defensive. The blond man was practically thirty years his junior, yet he didn't have the decency to be delicate with an implied attack on the House of Nott? No. There were lines.

Thoros didn't usually put much stock in society's dictates, but this was ridiculous.

"Calladora struggled to bring Hermione into the world," he declared, edging his voice in steel and ice. "For months we thought we'd lose her, so we decided not to introduce her to society. However, as her health improves, Theodore improves as well."

"So you've just sequestered her away for three years?" Lucius demanded.

"I find there's little I wouldn't do for my child's health," he replied. It was true. He didn't particularly care for the mudblood, but he would do anything for his heir.

Lucius opened his mouth to reply, but he was cut short by the arrival of three muddy, squealing toddlers.

Before either man could sputter an objection, they found themselves juggling wriggling bodies each trying to show off their treasures. Calladora and Narcissa entered last, every hair in place and hems slightly dampened, looking entirely too pleased with themselves.

Thoros wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but he suddenly found himself face to muddy face with Calladora's little girl and the toad she clutched.

His reality shattered at the feel of her magic, raw yet familiar, mingling tentatively with his own.

He barely registered his wife ushering their guests toward the receiving room as his mind scrambled to reconcile the impossible.

He should not be able to feel her this strongly. He could feel Calladora and Theodore's auras when he touched them of course. Sometimes when they were upset enough he didn't even have to touch them. The girl shared no bond with him, though. Not to mention she was three and raw neutral magic was supposed to be undetectable until the child became aware of and capable of controlling their magic.

"It's like you were made for us," he whispered, his hand coming up to stroke her hair without his permission. "Like you're somehow my…" He broke off, riveted by the little girl standing shyly on his knees. She offered so much power… potential… If he bound her to his family… the opportunities for-

"Don't you dare treat my daughter like a pawn, Thoros Octavian," Calla threatened. He glanced up. She stood framed in the door to the parlor, her hair wild and seeming to float like flames around her head. "She's a little girl, not a resource."

He felt a flicker of fear under his fingers and snapped his eyes back to the mud- Hermione.

She knew something important was happening, and she was cautiously hopeful. The hope scared her and confused her. She was three and didn't know her mind, but he was fifty-one and had spent his life knowing his and others' minds.

She wanted, was desperate for, his love and acceptance.

"Dirby," he murmured. A crack heralded the arrival of the senior male house elf. "Please bring me the necessaries for a blood ritual. It seems I'm about to have a daughter."

~*TNT*~

February 1983

Calladora had taken to acting as though she hadn't been in and out of a sick bed "resting" since Yule, and Thoros was tired of catering to her. She argued with him daily over whether or not she should be running after toddlers given her obvious and increasing pallor; she adopted and abandoned projects on practically a semi-daily basis; and she wouldn't hear of anyone else caring for Theodore and Hermione.

"Beloved," he said from the nursery doorway. She froze with her hands still submerged in a pile of fabric scraps and ribbon. "I hope you didn't think you could avoid me forever." Her reaction brought him up short.

She didn't fall, but if it were possible for a human to utterly collapse while still remaining upright, Thoros would have sworn that was what she did.

"You can't tell anyone," she whispered.

"Tell anyone what," he growled, taking a step forward.

She winced. "Shade Blight."

Silence.

She turned, squaring her shoulders. "I have shade blight, Thoros."

"Ridiculous. All diseases affecting magical power and ability to reproduce would have been documented in matrimonial negotiations."

A corner of her mouth quirked up. "I didn't want to believe it either, but I haven't been able to perform even simple spells in weeks."

Just like that, all order in the universe imploded.

"I won't lose you. I won't let you waste away to nothing."

"You can't always have what you want, Cariño," she whispered, stepping closer and running the tips of her fingers over his jaw.

"What would you have me do, then?" he demanded, clenching his fists to keep from grabbing her arms. "Name it and I'll do it."

"As you know, Shade Blight is hereditary." He grit his teeth until his jaw ached. "The mamas and hermanas never discuss it… I had to practically drag it out of Catalina… It's supposed to attack the old, but given that Theo still hasn't shown any accidental magic, and his aura isn't strengthening at the rate it's supposed to… I think he-"

"Stop." He refused to think of his son's magical core slowly deteriorating at the hands of the blight.

"I'm so sorry, my love. So, so very sorry," she whispered, cuddling into his chest.

"So this is how I'm to lose you and my son?"

She jerked upright and away, her eyes blazing. "NO! Never. It may be too late for me, but I will be damned if I can't save my son. No. I have a plan. When I found Hermione, simply being near the strength of her magic assuaged the blight. If we were to tie Theodore's magical core to hers… Just until he comes of age…"

"A twin bond," Thoros breathed.

~*TNT*~

March, the Vernal Equinox, 1983

He watched Hermione finish the contents of the crystal bowl, his heart in his throat. Once she let go, the ancient vessel, used for centuries of Nott blood rituals, floated sedately back into the grass. No one moved as the magic dissipated around them.

Theo's aura had strengthened palpably when he'd released the bowl, but the undercurrents were different. It wasn't until Hermione released it, her own aura flashing in acceptance of the change, that the Nott patriarch was able to breathe.

His two children's auras were identical, pulsating with strength.

For the first time in centuries, the Notts had twins.

~*TNT*~

March, the Vernal Equinox, 1983

"Arrorró mis niños [Hush-a-bye my babies]." The ritual had been too much. "Arrorró mi sol [Hush-a-bye my sun]." Thoros stared down at his wife, her now white hair laying wispy against sunken cheeks. "Arrorró pedazo [Hush-a-bye oh piece]," she sang, running her wasted fingers through Hermione's curls. They had achieved the same shade of almost black as Theodore's. "De mi corazon [of my heart]." The song dwindled for a few moments. "Are you angry with me?" It took him several heartbeats to process her quiet question.

"Would you have me be so?" Her dark eyes flashed to his. He closed his eyes and breathed. They didn't have time for evasion. "When you first told me, yes, I was angry. Extremely angry, in fact. But right now…" He'd promised himself that he wouldn't give in to excessive and futile displays of emotion. His fingernails dug into his palms. "My feelings aren't important right now. They won't change anything. They won't help you… No. I'm not angry, now. Just… resigned, I believe."

"You're skipping steps in the grieving process, you cheater."

That tricked a laugh out of him. Well, technically it tricked a bemused exhalation and a tiny smirk, but her answering smile was brilliant.

"Rules are for lesser men. Not for Notts."

"Who am I to question brilliance," she teased.

He stole her hand from Hermione's hair. "Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility, my love," he murmured into her skin.

"My greatest flaw has always been that I have far too much fun being myself. You know that," she whispered.

"You have no flaws," he whispered back.

~*TNT*~

March 1983

Narcissa quietly approached Thoros after Calladora's funeral. The older man didn't react when she laid her slim hand on his shoulder, but she removed it after a brief time all the same. She stood respectfully behind him and just to his left before the mausoleum, though, knowing Calla wouldn't have wanted him left completely alone at such a time.

"I loved her, you know," Thoros murmured. Narcissa's eyes widened without her permission, taken aback by the artlessness of the statement.

"She was… an exceptional woman."

Silence reigned as they both stared at the black marble edifice.

"... Papa?" came a tiny voice behind them.

Thoros spun and strode to the little girl draped in black velvet. Her frizzed, black hair had been braided into a prim little bun. Kneeling before the girl, ignoring their audience, he asked, "What's wrong, Hermione?" He brushed a kiss against her forehead and tucked the flyaway strands framing her face behind her ears.

"I miss Mama…" she whimpered, glancing nervously at the statuesque blonde.

"I do too, mo ghràdh [Scotts Gaelic for 'my love']. I do too."

I mean... I know you're probably super interested in seeing what I did to the First Year... but... There's a review box for a reason... I'm just saying...