The Heiress of Slytherin

A Turn For the Better

If she could use one word to sum up the rest of the day, Ivy would have simply said it was quiet. The only thing that seemed to change as the sun moved through the sky was the positions of the three Slytherins. Ivy would occasionally join Theo and Blaise on the couch, or sit on the floor leaning against it, and they all rotated slightly in the ways they were facing, or the way their legs were oriented. If it wasn't for these simple movements, anyone passing might have thought they were statues.

Blaise never let go of Theos hand, and the two of them never moved from their spots next to each other. Ivy and Blaise sat with their friend, hugging him and taking turns rubbing his back or tracing lines up his arms, but none of them said a word. There wasn't anything to say that would help, or make anything better, so they didn't try.

They stayed like that for so long that when Blaise broke the silence at eleven at night, Ivy frowned and felt as though she was a balloon that was suddenly being pulled sharply to the ground. Once she cleared her mind and zoned back in, she realized that he was talking softly.

"We should go to bed. Sleeping on this couch again won't do you any favours." He was talking as though with just one loud or misplaced word Theo might crumble, and looking at her friend's sunken grey face, she couldn't blame him. She turned and looked at Blaise. His eyes were full of concern but it didn't escape her notice that they were also bloodshot and framed by dark bags.

Ivy knew that they both had to go to sleep, so she shifted into a kneeling position in front of Theo and smiled softly at him, brushing the hair out of his face. He looked back at her, and she felt her heart break a little at the sight. She'd never seen somebody look so angry, disappointed, hurt, regretful and hollow in one gaze. She cupped his face in her hands and brushed her thumbs over his cheekbones.

In a voice as soft as a whisper, she agreed with Blaise. "You should lie in your own bed, Theo, you need the rest." He had no fight in his body, so he just nodded once, so slightly that they might've missed it, and allowed them to help him stand.

With a glance, Blaise nodded understandingly at Ivy and walked with his arm firmly around Theo's waist up to the boy's dormitories, and Ivy let her muscles relax with an exhale. Turning slightly, she allowed a fond smile take over her face as she saw Pansy, Draco and Selina sitting at another seating area a little ways off, surveying the scene carefully.

Walking over to them, Ivy threw herself on Selina and Pansy's lap dramatically. After a minute she reopened her eyes and smiled at each of them in turn, emitting a gentle, "Hi," which they echoed back. Sighing deeply, Ivy moved into a sitting position. They deserved to know what was going on.

"There's not really an easy way to say this, so I guess I'll just put it bluntly. Theo's mum died; his dad informed him in a letter, but the details are, to put it lightly, scarce." Draco sat back with his eyes wide, and Ivy nodded at him. He knew Theo very well, and he, like Blaise, immediately understood the vast, layered implications of that statement. Ivy left him to start sifting through them on his own, turning to her girl-friends instead.

"There's a lot of complicated things surrounding that, but it's not my place to explain them." Selina's eyes had been brimming with concern while Ivy had been talking, and she waved her hand in the air as if brushing away her friend's concerns. She didn't have to know the details, and she wouldn't be offended not to. Ivy smiled at her and Pansy gratefully as the latter nodded her head in vigorous agreement.

"Blaise and I are with him for now, I hope you understand, I just don't want him to feel crowded-" More vigorous nodding followed this statement and she smiled, relief flooding her body. She turned back to Draco, who had his brows furrowed and his lips pursed. He knew how bad this situation really was. Theo's mum may not have been herself for a long time, but her son still loved her deeply, and in a way, so did his father. Just her existence had shielded Theo from large amounts of his father's rage, but now? Now that protection was gone.