CRUEL SUMMER ⌗theo nott [SLOW UPDATES]

eighteen

09 July, 1997 (6:41a.m, Monday)

Theodore and Theo Nott were dressed in black and standing next to a closed casket in a small church. A picture of a brunette woman with green eyes who looked just like Theo was propped up on an easel next to them.

Theo was staring down at the floor, people kept coming up to them to talk and tell stories of Christy and all Theo could do was nod. How could they have such lovely stories of his mother when he has none?

Speaking of stories, Nott Sr. had come up with a fabricated story of what had happened to his wife. No one could know that it was the Death Eaters doing. So when he OWL'ed his wife's mother to let her know, he told her that she'd gotten into a car crash while in Italy.

It was believable because the Cartwright's were different then most of the Wizarding Pureblood families. They had a home in Muggle London, Elliot and Madelyn Cartwright had lived their whole lives as normal people and went it came time to send their children to Hogwarts, they told friends that their kids were going to a boarding school in Scotland.

It was Madelyn's wishes for Christy to have a normal funeral in a Muggle church because she wanted to invite their close friends and extended family to come mourn with her and she couldn't do that if they'd have had a funeral in the wizarding world. Theodore was outraged by this idea but allowed it because he knew Christy would be happy that he agreed to her mother's request.

No one there knew much about the two Nott men, other than the wizards there. Madelyn had always told everyone that Theo went to the same boarding school that his mother went to and that Theodore traveled for work.

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When the funeral began, the Nott men took a seat on the front row next to Madelyn. Behind them was Lucius, Narcissa, Scarlett, and Draco. The row behind the Malfoy's contained the Greengrass family and the Parkinson family. That was the extent of the wizarding families that showed up. No other family within the twenty eight did.

On the other pews sat rows of people that were friends of Madelyn and her late husband.

When the preacher finally finished his prayer, Theo was sent up to give a eulogy. Theodore had asked him to do it because Theo and Christy were closer.

He stood up at the podium and read from a piece of paper that he had written the night before.

"Most of you don't know me, my name is Theo, Christy was my mother. She was a great mum, she was dearly loved by my father and I. I was asked to share a few memories, but truthfully I don't have many. I spend most of the year off at a boarding school away from her and my father but the memories I do have, I'll hold close to me forever.

Last year my mother had gotten sick, it happened fast and over the summer so I was home with her for the majority of it. Every Monday, she'd send me to go get a local magazine that she had liked and we would sit together and I'd read it to her and she'd stop me every few sentences to tell me the real story behind what was being published, she'd talk about her friends that were being written about, she'd discuss fashion and girl things that made no sense to me.

But I listened to everything she had to say. We would laugh and drink coffee and when we were done with the paper, she'd take a nap. The doctors said she'd only live for a few months, but she ended up making a full recovery and quickly got back to traveling the world, which was one of her favorite things to do.