no one else. // Theodore Nott

forty-five.

Narrators pov.

And so they walked. They had no specific destination. They were just... walking.

Their minds both raced with what they wanted to say or ways to say it. Theo didn't know how to ask about the little girl. She could've been his, but he also didn't know what Sadie had been doing the past eight years. Sadie just didn't know how to rip off the bandaid.

Ripping off the bandaid was something she's done a million times for Lorelei, but she couldn't do it now.

So for ten minutes, they walked. Two ex-lovers, walked with nowhere to go but so much to say.

How could Sadie do this to him? Keep Lorelei from him for so long. How could she live with herself now?

Theo thought the same thing. But he couldn't think of anything too bad... after all, he's still madly in love with her and he didn't know if the girl was his or not.

"My mum was a drug addict and my father left. My mother passed the week that I moved overseas. My father was back in my life and we all stay in America together. I came back here, to London, to help my, somewhat, adopted father with his coffee shop. He's not doing the best health-wise and his wife is just... older. She can't take care of the place alone. And I grew up there; worked there my entire life." Sadie spat out, deciding to say anything and everything. After all, Theo did need an explanation... and that's what she was giving him now.

"After my dad left, about a year before I went to Hogwarts, my mum got into drugs. She'd always had problems and stopped when I was born... but they just got worse because my father leaving triggered her." She took a deep breath.

This was a pity speech. She didn't want it to be a pity speech.

"And I don't want you to take pity on me, I just want you to know that I had abandonment issues. I didn't want you to see the real me, the me that worked over summer and winter breaks to pay for rent and my schooling stuff... I didn't want you, a high-class Pureblood, to leave me, a fucked up broke Pureblood. In general, I just didn't want you to leave."

Theo wasn't saying anything. He was just listening and putting the pieces together.

The time that she just laid in her bed and cried and didn't want to do anything... it made sense now. Her mum was dying and she didn't know how to cope.

"Then my father showed up at the school with his new family." Sadie chuckled out of slight anger. "No letter, no call. Nothing. And then he shows up and I knew then that my secret would get out. I knew then that everyone would see who I was. And in all honesty... that's not who I was, or who I am. But society has its standards and-"

"Sadie..." Theo said, stopping and grabbing her hand. She looked at him with little tears in her eyes. She couldn't cry. She put him through hell and wasn't allowed to cry. "You could've told me..."

Sadie sucked in a breath, "I know, I know. But in my mind, I thought you'd leave. I thought my dad left because I wasn't good enough, and I thought you'd leave for the same reason once you saw what my life was."

Theo felt terrible. He wished that he would've pushed her harder to tell him and he wished that he put it all together. He wished for so many things.

Sadie wiped a tear that had fallen, "And I can't cry. I'm not allowed to. I kept secrets from you, lied to you, and even kept your daughter away from you. And I didn't do it on purpose, I just... I didn't know how to talk to you after I left because of the way that I had done it. And I'm so sorry. Nothing can fix that, I know... But-"

Theo grabbed her hand instinctively as more tears left her eyes. He didn't care about the secrets she had kept; didn't care about anything that she had kept from him. All that he cared about was that she was back and standing right in front of him. She wasn't a drunken hallucination now. She was real.