house by the sea
..
around the house by the sea
the scent of roses and raspberry leaves
house by the sea, iron & wine
..
She is the sea.
Shining, glittering in the sunlight, rippling from the cool rose-scented breeze. Blue, silver, green, white. Icy and freezing, so cold that the ice will sink into your bones.
And you will drown.
..
Even though she can feel seawater pumping through her veins, Victoire has always been a little bit afraid of the sea. It's vast and it's unpredictable and Roddy Bridges, from the little blue house down the road, had drowned in it eight years ago when he was just three years old. That had been the last time Victoire had cried, at his funeral.
So she tends to avoid getting too close to the water. She prefers to sit inside her bedroom, her ear pressed against the shell-embedded wall, listening to the steady rhythm of the waves. Or she sits in the garden, writing in her journal surrounded by roses and raspberry plants, feeling the cool breeze wash over her and settle into her bones.
The sea is dangerous. But she knows it is in her blood.
..
During Victoire's fifth year at Hogwarts, Andromeda Tonks dies. She was the only family that Teddy had had left.
Victoire's heart is cold and has been frosted over for years. She doesn't like emotion and she doesn't like tears.
But she thinks about her sprawling family, her loving parents and annoying little siblings and hordes of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, and she feels a little twinge in the region that could, possibly, be considered, maybe, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.
So one night in the springtime she sneaks up the boys' staircase and slips into the seventh year dormitory.
Just as she'd expected, Teddy is sitting on his bed, scribbling something at a feverish pace in one of his countless notebooks. He is so engrossed in his writing that he doesn't even notice the intruder.
"Hello," Victoire says softly after a moment. She is used to boys' eyes being drawn to her the second she enters a room. She is used to long, lustful looks, to lips slightly parted with desire, to eyes glued to her neverending legs. But he is different. He hasn't even noticed.
His stormy eyes (stormy, always, these days) flick up and widen almost imperceptibly in surprise when they land on her. He glares. "What are you doing in here?"
She makes her way hesitantly across the messy room to his bed and stands beside it. "I thought…"
Teddy's eyes are hard. "What?"
"Maybe you wanted someone to talk to?" Victoire offers cautiously. "About, you know…"
"About my grandmother," Teddy finishes for her darkly. He turns away from Victoire and stares pointedly out the window. "No. Leave now. Please."
She draws her eyebrows together and glares at him, ice in her cool blue gaze. "Fine." And then she turns and leaves. At least she had tried.
Still. His behavior had been rude and uncalled for. She'd only been trying to be nice. Well, that was the last time she'd try that, that was for sure.
..
"Victoire, I am going to Conjure another bed in your sister's room for you to sleep on," her mother tells her one morning over breakfast.
It is summer. The first week of summer holidays, still. Victoire's family is already wearing on her nerves.
She wrinkles her nose. "What? Why?"
"We are having a guest," her mother continues. "You will share a room with Dominique while he is here so he can have your room."
"Who is it?" Dominique demands, her eyes wide with curiosity.
"Is it Hugo?" Louis asks with excitement. "Please, can it be Hugo? Or Freddie?"
Victoire rolls her eyes. "Oh, Maman, don't tell me that we have to deal with the little cousins again this year." Last summer, Hugo and Freddie had stayed over at Shell Cottage for a week to play with Louis and it had been the worst week of Victoire's life. One rambunctious nine-year-old boy is quite enough for her. She certainly doesn't need her equally wild cousins arriving and turning her house into a bloody madhouse.
"No, it's not Hugo," their mother replies. "It's Teddy Lupin."
Victoire nearly chokes on her eggs. She sets her fork down on her plate quietly and stares at her mother in shock.
Dominique and Louis are eagerly pressing for more answers, talking over each other, but all Victoire can do is sit there in surprise.
"He has nowhere to live, now that his grandmother is dead," their father explains, taking over for his wife. "Teddy was going to stay with your Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry, but they're going to South America for the summer with the Scamanders."
"But why does he have to stay here?" Victoire asks, her mouth curled into a frown.
"Victoire!" her mother exclaims. "That is a horrible thing to say. He is an orphan and he has just lost his grandmother."
Her father, too, is looking at her with disappointment on his face. "We have always taken in anyone who needed a place to stay here at Shell Cottage. I expect all of you," here he looks at his oldest daughter pointedly, "to welcome him with open arms and to treat him as one of the family."
Victoire juts her chin out and meets her father's serious gaze. She stares at him coolly for a moment, and then nods in acquiescence.
She spends the rest of the week covering up her apprehension about Teddy's impending arrival by immersing herself in helping her mother prepare the house, grumbling about having to share a room with Dominique, and shouting at Louis for being a little terror.
..
On the day Teddy is to arrive, Victoire sits in the garden, cataloguing her mixed feelings about his coming to stay in her journal. She has always been aloof, closed-off, and she doesn't like to share her emotions with others. Ice queen, the other students at school whisper about her. Victoire Weasley, that stuck-up bitch. The only place she lets her thoughts out, shares her feelings, is in her journal. It's enchanted, so no one but her will ever read it. I like to think about Future Me, she writes, opening up this journal and reading back over old entries and getting to know, or re-know, again her former self. It's comforting, in a way. Because everyone will grow up and I will probably change and my life will certainly change, but I'll always have these words from the past. They are like ghosts that will never go away.
Soon, she hears voices from inside, and she knows that her father has returned with Teddy.
Victoire shoves her journal in the secret space between the boards of the house, and then she climbs from the garden into her bedroom window, her special escape route. She shoves her journal under the floorboard and stands in the center of her room for a moment.
His room, now, she corrects herself, the hint of a scowl forming on her lips. She knows she is being selfish but she loves her room. She loves the view of the garden, she loves being able to sneak out her window at night and look down at the glistening sea, she loves the seashells embedded into the walls, every one of which she's memorized by now.
He has nowhere else to go, Victoire reminds herself, and then she appraises herself coolly in her mirror. She smooths down her light blue dress and proceeds cautiously out her door.
When she arrives in the kitchen, her family is bustling around the new arrival: her mother hastily shoving all the food she can find on a plate to feed him, her father gathering up his bags, Dominique bragging to him about how long she can hold her breath under water, Louis jumping up and down and talking at lightning speed about his plans to go sailing.
Only Teddy is silent and still. He stands on the kitchen floor, and Victoire stares at him from across the room, this lost and lonely boy with the stormy eyes. He finally notices her.
She gazes at him impassively, her eyes slightly narrowed. She won't be cruel, but he is stealing her room, and he had been awfully rude to her last year.
They both know that it's up to him to make the first move, after he'd rebuffed Victoire's attempts at sympathy so harshly in the spring. "Hello," he finally says reluctantly, staring back at Victoire.
She swallows. "Welcome to Shell Cottage," she tells him finally, before going over to help her mother prepare the food so that she won't have to look at the storms in his eyes any longer.
..
Teddy disturbs the rhythm of Shell Cottage. Victoire is used to the ebb and flow, ebb and flow, ebb and flow. The sea's rhythm has always been steady, the one thing she's been able to count on ever since before she could remember. But Teddy comes in with his violent eyes and his ink-stained hands and his tired sighs and his reluctant smiles and he ruins it.
For the first couple weeks, he locks himself in his room (my room, she thinks, still) every day after breakfast. "What is he doing in there?" her mother hisses to her father, who merely shrugs and tells everyone to be patient with him, he probably just needs some time to adjust, that's all.
But Victoire knows what Teddy's doing. She sees him, when she is hidden among the rose plants in the garden. He is writing, of course, like he always does. He had been like this at Hogwarts, too, scribbling away during meals in the Great Hall, in the library, in the common room.
"You should go and talk to him," her mother prods, shoving Victoire in the direction of the bedroom door. "Try to get him to come out of there. You two are only two years apart. I'm sure he'd like to talk to you."
Victoire scowls darkly at her mother. "Maman," she hisses. "Don't tell me you're trying to set me up with him."
Her mother looks sheepish and tries to act confused at her words, but Victoire knows what's going on. She refuses to play this ridiculous game.
Today I decided something, she writes that evening in her journal, crouched by the raspberry plants in the garden. I hate Teddy Lupin.
..
That summer, Dominique has just finished her third year and she is almost fourteen. It's time you start acting like a lady, their mother always scolds her. Grow up, Dominique, Victoire tells her.
But Dominique is as wild and irrepressible as ever. She's always been the tomboy to Victoire's girly-girl, the rebel to Victoire's ice queen.
Dominique likes to run wild among the sea lavender, to swim out as far as she can until she's almost lost among the waves, to explore the sandy caves at the bottom of the cliff. She must have been too young at the time to remember little Roddy Bridges, who had drowned in the harsh, unrelenting sea, but Victoire is not. She remembers, and she worries for her little sister when she swims out so far that she is almost lost at sea. But of course, no one can stop Dominique from doing what she wants, so all Victoire can do is look down from the cliff and worry.
One afternoon, Victoire is in the garden and she hears, for the first time, voices coming from her old bedroom. She hides behind the roses and peers in her window, and her eyebrows rise when she sees Dominique in there with Teddy. She expects him to look annoyed at the intrusion but he's laughing at something her sister is saying.
Victoire's breath catches in her throat when she sees the way he looks, his head titled back in laughter, his eyes lit up with pure joy. It's like for the first time, the clouds around him have parted.
..
Teddy and Dominique become the best of friends, and eventually Teddy forgets his notebooks and quills, forgoing them to join Dominique on the shore. Victoire watches them from the top of the cliff, frowning, as they dare each other to swim out further and further.
They're terrible influences on each other, both daredevils with little to no regard for safety or rules or responsibilities. Victoire's parents think it's a bit of an odd friendship, at first, with Teddy being over four years older than Dominique, but Victoire understands it perfectly. They're so similar – passionate and daring and everything Victoire is not.
I hate Teddy Lupin, she scratches furiously into her journal, her teeth gritted. The sentence has become a daily ritual for her. It's infuriating – the boy has somehow made every single one of her family members fall in love with him. Her father treats him like he's his own son, her mother wants him to marry Victoire, Louis hero-worships him, and Dominique follows him around like his little shadow. Victoire scowls as she hears the sounds of Teddy and Dominique's laughter, echoing up from the sea below. He's a terrible influence on Dominique, she continues. He makes her even more reckless and irresponsible and unrefined. One of these days he's going to do something stupid and drown in the sea. I hope he does drown.
And then she reads over what she's written and gasps, horrified at herself. She hastily scratches out the last sentence, until the black ink obliterates her words so that it's like they were never there.
..
"Come and swim with us, Vic!" Dominique shouts from the shore.
Victoire stands at the edge of the cliff, her arms crossed in a pose of severe disapproval. "No," she yells down to her sister. "Not a chance. It's about to storm."
"What's the matter, Vic?" Teddy calls up from his spot next to Dominique. "Are you scared?" he taunts.
Victoire feels her hands form fists and her blood start to pump furiously. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, she thinks, a steady rhythm pounding in her veins and her ears. "Of course not!" she yells at him with ice in her voice. "I just happen to be mature enough to not run around half-naked in the water when there's a storm coming. I'm an adult," she adds, with a pointed glare down at Teddy, "unlike some people."
"Ooh," Teddy mocks, "someone's got her knickers in a twist." And then he and Dominique fall all over each other laughing like the immature children they are, before racing each other to the water and diving into the choppy waves.
At least Dominique is still a child, so she has some excuse for her unruly behavior. Teddy is eighteen years old. He's supposed to be grown-up, sophisticated.
Victoire refuses to admit that he is, in fact, grown up, even when she can't seem to unglue her eyes from the way his muscles contract as he runs through the waves, his bare torso gleaming in the evening light.
..
Her parents have gone to visit some friends for the day, so it is just the four of them. Teddy and Dominique get it into their heads that they want to go on a boat ride, and Louis inevitably wants to go along, so of course Victoire, the only one with any modicum of sense, has to come too to make sure no one does anything stupid and wrecks the boat or falls overboard.
"Let's go to that cave we found last week!" Dominique begs Teddy.
He nods. "Sure, I remember where it is. It's just over this way."
They row the boat over to the cave and explore, Dominique leading the way, Teddy pointing out interesting features in the stone, Louis tagging along enthusiastically. Victoire trails behind the others, her mood dark and aggravated.
"Look, here are some ancient runes!" Teddy exclaims, and Louis and Dominique rush over to peer at the rock he is pointing at. "Look, see, this symbol here means pirates, and this one means magic, and this one means battle." He weaves a fantastical tale, of treasure and pirate ships and wizards, and Victoire's siblings hang on his every word, their eyes wide with glee.
Eventually, even Victoire is a little curious, so she gives up her charade of appearing aloof and disinterested and sneaks over to peer at the runes. She rolls her eyes and interrupts Teddy just as he's in the middle of telling of a pirate captain with a thirst for revenge. "Actually," she cuts in, "these aren't runes at all. They're just markings, probably made by an animal or something. They don't mean anything." She'd gotten an O on her Ancient Runes OWL, so she clearly knows what she's talking about.
Louis' and Dominique's faces fall as they look up at Victoire. She shrugs. "Sorry, but that's the truth." Then she turns and makes her way out of the cave, going back to the boat to get out their picnic basket and start preparing the food for dinner.
She kneels down on the sand, laying out a blanket and setting out the sandwiches, and she is startled when she feels a large, warm hand on her shoulder. Her head whips around and her blue eyes widen when she sees that Teddy has followed her.
"Why'd you do that?" he asks in a low voice.
Victoire just stares up at him blankly.
"Don't play dumb," he tells her harshly. "You know what I'm talking about. All right, so I may have pretended that they were runes. But you saw your brother and sister – they loved it."
Victoire rolls her eyes. "So?"
Teddy's eyes flash and she forgets to breathe as she watches the storms swirl around in them. "So why'd you have to ruin it for them? Why do you have to ruin it whenever anyone's having fun?"
His words, aggravatingly, get under her skin. They prick at her and she doesn't want to care about what this reckless, rude boy says to her but she does, she does. "Oh, you'd know all about ruining things, wouldn't you, Teddy?" she shoots back with frost in her gaze. "You came here with your stupid notebooks and your selfish attitude and your rude behavior and you ruined everything!"
Victoire glares at him so fiercely that he looks almost startled. They stare at each other, neither one backing down or looking away, until they are interrupted by Dominique and Louis loud conversation as they come out of the cave and fall upon the food Victoire has set out.
Later that evening, Teddy dares Dominique to jump off a particularly dangerous cliff.
"Absolutely not!" Victoire shouts. "You'll get yourself killed!"
"Loosen up, Vic," Teddy tells her sharply. "Live a little."
Victoire's hands fly to her hips and she shoots daggers at Teddy from her eyes. "I think you've forgotten," she tells him scathingly. "I always have to ruin it whenever anyone's having fun, remember?"
Dominique rolls her eyes. "Merlin, will you two quit fighting, for once?" And with that, she sprints to the edge of the cliff and gracefully launches herself into the water.
"Dominique!" Victoire shouts. She and Teddy both rush to the edge and look down. "See what you've done!" she yells at him.
But then they see Dominique's head bob up from the water, and her skinny arm pokes up to wave at them.
"Look, she's fine," Teddy laughs.
But Victoire rounds on him wrathfully. "She could have died!"
"But she didn't," he argues.
"She could have!" Victoire counters. "But you don't seem to care. You just storm into our lives, making my sister do stupid and reckless things, never stopping to think about how your immaturity is affecting all of us. You're clearly a shit grandson, because you seem to have forgotten all about your grandmother –"
"Don't talk about my grandmother!" Teddy bellows, color rising to his cheeks, his eyes looking like hurricanes.
"Why not?" she snaps. She knows she is treading into dangerous territory, but there's something about the way the air feels between them right now that is making her feel a little crazy and unpredictable and unsteady. It is times like these when she feels the seawater most strongly, rushing through her veins. "Do you feel guilty? That you've already forgotten her?"
"I haven't!" Teddy protests. "I haven't forgotten her!" But he looks panicked and wild and terrified. He advances toward Victoire, and she shivers, whether from fear or anticipation she doesn't know.
But then Louis runs up to them and drags Teddy away to show him something, and Victoire is left standing on the top of the cliff, her heart pounding, her blood and the sea rushing in her ears.
..
After that, Teddy spends more time in his room again. Victoire sees him from the garden. He's started writing again.
The family sees him at mealtimes, mostly, and when they do he's back to looking like he did at the beginning of the summer, when he'd first arrived, dark and troubled and withdrawn.
Dominique and Teddy's friendship ends abruptly. Victoire feels sad for her sister, who had looked up to him so, but she thinks it's better this way, really. They had been terrible influences on each other.
Victoire is the only one who sees much of Teddy, staring at him secretly through her old bedroom window. His eyes are always dark and he writes fervently, sometimes crumbling up papers into little balls and hurling them across the room or tearing up his work. He looks, sometimes, like he is going mad.
Victoire sits frozen among the roses, watching him, and she feels a little twinge in the region that could, possibly, be considered, maybe, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.
Maybe I don't hate Teddy Lupin, she writes.
..
He is a lost and lonely boy. The lost and lonely boy with the stormy eyes.
Her journal is full of him these days.
..
He is a lost and lonely boy. But maybe I am also a lost and lonely girl?
..
"I just don't know what's gotten into him," Victoire's father says. "It seemed like he was starting to really settle in here."
"I miss Teddy," whines Louis. "We were supposed to row out to the island together."
"Maybe Victoire should go and talk to him," their mother suggests, her eyes calculating. "You could try to comfort him."
Victoire rolls her eyes. "Maman. Stop." Her mother still hasn't given up on her absurd plan to get Teddy and Victoire together.
"I think we should just leave him be," their father concludes, his expression troubled. "Hopefully it's just a phase and he'll get back to the old Teddy soon."
Their mother and Louis nod hopefully, but Victoire frowns. Who is the old Teddy? She thinks that the Teddy she sees now through her bedroom window, scribbling furiously in his notebooks, is the old Teddy.
He has storms in his eyes. I have the sea in my veins. I think we are both lost and a little dangerous.
..
One night after everyone else has gone to bed, Victoire is in the garden, writing in her journal and watching Teddy write in his notebook. She hadn't noticed it happening but somehow this has become the new rhythm – the scratch of her quill, the scratch of his. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
And then he looks up from the page and glances out the window, and his eyes catch on hers.
"Oh!" Victoire gasps, her eyes wide, because he's never seen her in the garden watching him before.
She quickly hides her journal and then, for once in her life acting a little impulsively, she climbs in through the bedroom window, ignoring the astonished expression on his face.
"I do this all the time," Victoire explains calmly to a shocked Teddy. "Or I used to, at least, back when this was my room, before you came here and stole it from me."
By now, she has landed on her feet inside the room, and she crosses her arms, staring down at him sitting at her desk.
He scowls at her. "You," he tells her decidedly, "are quite a bitch."
Victoire flinches at his words. He's hardly the first one to say it, but for some reason this is the first time the words have actually had any effect on her. She wants to shout back at him, but the rest of her family is asleep (and maybe she does deserve it a bit).
So she juts her chin and stares bravely back at him. "I used to think I hated you, you know," she tells him defiantly. She hardly knows what has gotten into her, but she can feel the salty water in her blood and it's spurring her on.
At this, Teddy looks interested. He rises from his chair and walks slowly over to where Victoire is standing. "Used to?" he echoes quietly. "What changed?"
She hears their breaths, intermingling in the air of her bedroom. In and out, ebb and flow. "The sea," she breathes. Ebb. And then before he can open his mouth to reply or question what she means by her enigmatic words, she has turned and climbed back out the window. Flow.
..
That night she goes swimming in the sea for the first time in eight years.
..
"Well, Teddy, we're very sorry that you're leaving tomorrow," Victoire's father says at breakfast one morning. "I know we'll all miss you."
Louis smirks. "Well, maybe not Vic," he mutters under his breath.
"Louis!" their father scolds.
"That is certainly not true," their mother adds, looking over at Teddy worriedly. "Victoire will miss you, too. She will miss you very much." Her eyes light up suddenly. "You should write to her at Hogwarts!" she tells Teddy. "Isn't that a nice idea?"
"Maman," Victoire warns. She's getting awfully sick of her mother's matchmaking.
Teddy clears his throat awkwardly. "Well, thank you for having me here, Bill and Fleur. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it."
"It was nothing!" Victoire's mother exclaims. "We loved spending the summer with you."
Dominique says nothing, her eyes downcast. She shovels food into her mouth so rapidly that Victoire worries she will choke on something. Victoire assumes that her little sister is sulking, cross with the fact that Teddy will be moving out tomorrow to start his Auror training and that she will have to go back to school in a few days.
After breakfast, Teddy retreats to his room and Victoire to the garden. What I don't understand, she writes, is why Teddy decided to become an Auror. He loves to write, more than anything, I think. It's his passion. So why the Ministry? Why an Auror?
She can see Teddy writing inside the bedroom, and he's so close that she wonders why she doesn't just ask him herself. So before she can rethink it, she hides her journal in the secret space between the boards of the house and climbs in through her window.
He looks up instantly. She sees his eyes linger on her long, bare legs, endless under her short denim shorts, as she slides down from the windowsill to stand before him.
They stare at each other.
"I guess I can't stop you doing that," he says after a beat. "This is your room, after all."
Victoire is surprised at that, despite herself, and she doesn't like the feeling of being caught off guard. "Well," she says because she doesn't know what to say.
After a minute, he turns around to go back to his writing, but then she speaks up. "Why did you decide to be an Auror?" she blurts out.
He snaps his head around to stare at her. "Why do you ask?"
"Because…" She gestures to the notebooks and papers strewn across the desk in front of him. "All of this… You love to write! Why don't you become a writer? You could work for the Daily Prophet, you could help author textbooks, you could write novels…"
Teddy gazes up at her, his eyes unreadable. He looks at her like he's never looked at her before, and Victoire shifts a little under his intent gaze. After a period of silence, she has no idea how long, he says quietly, "My mother."
She waits for him to go on.
"My mother was an Auror," he continues after a pause. "Before…before she died. And everyone always tells me how much I look like my father, how much he liked books too, how like him I am. I just thought…I needed some part of my mother, to hold onto."
Victoire bites her lip. She sees Teddy's eyes fixed on her mouth.
"Oh," she says softly, finally. "I see."
"Yes," Teddy says, his lips slightly parted.
..
The night before Teddy leaves, the last night, Victoire waits until everyone else is asleep and then sneaks down to the shore, as she has started to do every night, now. She strips down to her bra and underwear and she dives into the water, letting herself float facedown in the waves until she has to come up for air, gasping for breath.
And then she runs back up the cliff toward her house, into the garden, to her bedroom window. She climbs into Teddy's room, still dripping with seawater, her white underwear translucent and clinging to her body, her hair damp and sopping.
Teddy is asleep, but she crawls into his bed (her bed) anyway. He wakes as soon as he feels her wet skin sliding under the blanket next to him. He sleeps without a shirt.
His eyes blink open and he looks at Victoire groggily. "What…" he starts, and then he sits up in shock when he notices that it is her. "Victoire!" he exclaims. "What are you doing?"
"Shh," she hisses, bringing a finger up to his lips. They can't be too loud or they'll wake the others.
He stares at her in wonder. "I guess I can't stop you doing this," he tells her in a whisper. "This is your room, after all."
She rolls her eyes, and he laughs softly at her exasperated expression.
"You're wet," he tells her, his arms going around her, one of his hands beginning to rub lazy circles into her bare back.
"I went swimming," Victoire replies, lying her head down on his pillow and looking up at him with wide blue eyes.
He looks across the pillow at her in surprise. "You? In the sea?" he asks incredulously.
"I am the sea," she whispers, and then his hands are ghosting over her ribs, his lips are pressing, hot and heated, into her neck, his weight is over her and she is gasping for air once again.
And they make a new rhythm, in time with the sea, ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
..
Victoire wakes up the next morning in her bed (his bed), and he is gone.
She gets dressed and goes into the kitchen, where her mother is giving Louis his breakfast. "Where's Teddy?" she asks.
Her mother turns to look at her. "Oh, Victoire. Dominique said you'd slept in. You missed him. He's gone."
And then Victoire has turned and fled the cottage. She runs down to the edge of the water and throws herself into the waves. He's, ebb. Gone, flow. He's gone, he's gone, he's gone.
That is when she lets the seawater in her veins freeze and the cold sink into her bones.
She lets the frost grow back over her heart after that morning.
He's gone, he's gone, he's gone.
..
A/N: Thank you for reading, and please leave a review!
Also, I highly recommend Iron & Wine's "House by the Sea," the song that inspired this story.