DISLAIMER: I have neither the intellectual nor legal (nor any other applicable) rights to the universe of Harry Potter.
"Teddy's back there," he said breathlessly, pointing back over his shoulder into the billowing clouds of steam. "Just seen him! And guess what he's doing? Snogging Victoire!"
--Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, by J.K. RowlingLate Afternoon on the Thirty First Day of December
In Wizarding London, the normal laws of physics—or rather, Sir Isaac Newton's laws—do not generally apply. Therefore, when Victoire arrived at her house through the back door, she had walked from the Ministry of Magic Designated Apparation Point in Covent Garden, and it made perfect sense to walk to Oxford University by leaving through a different door.
In the interim between entering and departing, Victoire Weasley ran into her parents' Georgian townhouse, flinging three large shopping bags onto a large cappuccino colored leather armchair and stepping out of polka dotted canvas slings, losing about three inches in height as she put her bare feet on the black and white harlequin floor. She had recently arrived from the University in Brazil, where she had been visiting her pen friend over the scarce days between Boxing Day and New Years' Eve, during the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry's Christmas Holiday. She was unprepared for the cold, and shuddered at the temperature as her feet hit the chilled stone floor.
Since nobody else was in the house, she stripped off her not-too-short, maternally approved—although, as Fleur Weasley was her mother, it was rather shorter than most mothers would consider appropriate—denim skirt and lacey pink camisole as she hurried up the wide stairs, and when she got to her room, threw them on her bed and rifled through an armoire for appropriate London attire. Mismatching socks, one bright turquoise and the other olive and purple polka dots, were located, and a pair of boots—directly from a shoebox, so they should have matched although Victoire didn't bother to check that they did—were donned to cover the socks. What no one saw, no one could mock. A sweater and jeans were dredged up from the top of the laundry basket, wrinkled yet presentable.
Victoire sniffed hesitantly, decided that her clothes did not smell, and told herself firmly that she was going on a highly informal visit anyway. And she, at least, was perfectly clean, although her hair could benefit from a trim.
She paused at her desk to write on her hand with a pen. She scribbled madly with one, and then threw it down because it would not work and picked up a second. With that, she neatly printed on the back of her hand, Be home by five thirty to take shower.
She ran down the stairs and through the front door, which opened onto a street so near to Oxford University that, for all practical intents and purposes, the house was a part of the campus. She sashayed to the Divinity School's dormitories, and knocked briskly on the door of room Seventeen. Teddy Lupin, Hogwarts graduate, was studying at Oxford for a degree in Muggle Studies, and was taking a course by means of cultural immersion.
A Muggle's head peered out into the hallway. He cracked open the door to assess the threat she presented, and appeared to conclude that it was minimal. The short brown hair, wide brown eyes, and tan skin, that were gradually revealed as the door opened, were very nondescript. He wasn't plump, but that didn't mean he was at all muscular, and he was neither tall nor short. He was a very medium person, and when he introduced himself as John Smith, Victoire hastily muffled a giggle.
She didn't quite manage to hide the accompanying smile, and when the boy saw it, he grinned back ruefully.
"Dunno what Mum was thinking," he said dryly, "but my middle name is Xavier, if that's any better."
"Xavier is nice," she commented agreeably. "I'm Victoire Weasley, by the way."
"Pleasure to meet you," he said, with traces of inbred formality, "And if I've been listening to Teddy this past term, he's who you're here to see."
Victoire confirmed that this was so.
"Well," said John Xavier Smith slowly, "He's not here now, and I don't know when he'll be back."
"Oh. Yeah, I just got back from Brazil, and figured I'd come see him… I probably should have called." Victoire stumbled over her own words, mangling the pronunciation and warping the tone beyond intelligible English. The Muggle boy seemed to perceive her nervous embarrassment, however, and promptly extended his assistance.
"I'll tell him you came by," John offered helpfully.
"No, no," Victoire babbled on. "I think I'll see him at a party tonight; I just wanted a word with him beforehand."
"Sure," he agreed, looking at Victoire with a vaguely solemn expression; too many emotions blurred together, too complex for Victoire to understand.
"It's ten past five now, so he should--"
"Ten past five?" Victoire interrupted, feeling harried and rushed and decidedly unenthusiastic about the night's festivities. She looked at her hand, as if to check a wrist watch, although as a witch she had never seen anyone she knew wearing a watch. Despite this inattentiveness to time, the imperative sentence on her hand vehemently reminded her to take a shower at half past five. It was twenty minutes until her self-imposed curfew. "I've got to go then, anyway. Mention I came by, would you please?" she pleaded. John Xavier Smith might have wondered at the last plea, as Victoire had just requested that Teddy not be informed of her visit. This, however, cannot be verified, because without waiting for John's reply, she scurried out of the hall, and back to her own house.
She had walked in through the front door and had clattered her way up the stairs when her mother apprehended her.
"Victoire," sang Fleur Weasley. "You shall come into my room, and I will help you get ready."
Victoire considered correcting her mother's grammar—being a native French speaker, her mother didn't always comprehend that shall was only to be used with a first person subjective pronoun, such as I or we—but decided that there were more relevant issues at hand.
Specifically, the Saint Mungo's Annual New Year's Ball, where Victoire would see Teddy Lupin on their first formal date. And Victoire didn't know how well the color of her dress would suit her after a week lounging on Brazilian beaches. And how was it possible to apply holiday make up over a tan?
"I'd like that, Mama," Victoire replied, hoping that her mother's expertise would suffice in matters of beauty. "Merci."
After Nightfall on the Thirty First Day of December
An expanse of white marble lay across the floor like new-fallen snow: pure, untouched, cold, white, deserted. Seventeen grooved columns stood sentry in an isometric ring, and between the first and the seventeenth a grand stair case descended, pooling onto the dance floor like yards upon yards of charmeuse silk.
Hundreds of witches and wizards in gowns and dress robes promenaded down; the masses of people were multiplied exponentially by the mirrors which wrapped around the ball room and dancers, interrupted only by the columns.
The ballroom was open to the sky, disdaining to have a roof. The full moon was yellow and haggard above, but its sulk could not dampen the night. Clouds veiled its jealous face, and werewolves sipped freely of champagne, unaffected by the lunar cycle.
Victoire Weasley was pleased by the fortuitous weather, because her father and date were two of them. Werewolves, to be explicit, although Victoire preferred to allude to the fact rather than to confirm it unequivocally.
Her date wasn't nearby, but through the mirrors Victoire glimpsed several perspectives of him. Her mind synthesized the information which her eyes perceived. The distorted images from the mirrors were rationalized into realistic proportions. Angles were compared to distances, and the results were cross referenced to the views in other mirrors. In the coarse, mechanical mind of a computer, the process would have been called triangulation. For Victoire, locating her boyfriend was realized by innate knowledge, as much a part of her as the ability to levitate a feather with her wand.
He was about fifty yards away, talking with the Minister of Magic. If Victoire were to venture a guess, she would have opined that the heated discussion concerned the violation of the International Statute of Secrecy by Aurors after the war had ended. This, Victoire thought with fond sarcasm, was oh so relevant mere hours before the New Year began.
The date, December 31, widely known by the moniker New Year's Eve, was pertinent. This was mainly because, in that spare moment between the old year and the new one, when time was suspended between the two, the tradition was that all couples shared a good luck kiss. The burden of arranging this single, unbelievably significant mark of affection fell onto Victoire's shoulders. Knowing Teddy, he might not even be aware that a kiss was anticipated.
Thusly, Victoire's skin was tingling. She felt that at any moment, she would explode. Several hours ago, she had taken an absentminded nibble on a fingernail, and had been surprised to taste the salty flavor of blood. Subsequently, she had a lock of hair in her teeth, and was gnawing impatiently on it.
Her mother shot her a look across the parquet dance floor, through layers of adults dancing, teenagers flirting shamelessly, and exuberant children skidding across the floor, having gotten well and truly out of hand. The meaning of the pointed glance was clear. Victoire spat the hair out, even as she cast an annoyed glare in the general direction of her mother.
Victoire smoothed her hair out, silky blonde strands snagging on her ragged fingernails, and shifted her weight from one perilously high stiletto heel to the other. Looking straight into the masses of people at the Saint Mungo's Annual New Years' Ball, she sighed lightly, yet theatrically. This was the cue for some thing interesting to happen.
Victoire paused, waiting. Long moments passed anonymously, each undistinguished from its precedent. After a few minutes of standing around pointlessly, Victoire was forced to concede that the universe was intending to ignore her wishes, and so she resignedly sat herself down on a nearby sofa at the edges of the festivities, feeling terribly alone amongst the hundreds of dancers.
She curled up onto the dainty loveseat, catching a three-and-one-half inch heel on the soft dragon skin upholstery. She heard the soft scritch of heel on leather, and looked anxiously down to see if the furniture was damaged. She didn't especially like dragon skin as a decorating component, but Grandmere Delacour had taught her long ago that damaging one's host's furniture did not make a positive impression.
She noted that the leather was, thank goodness, unscathed. Neatly, she placed her feet back on the floor, and crossed her ankles. And then, she sat. With utmost patience, she waited for her date to appear.
It was eleven o clock when he finally did. At that divine hour, Teddy Lupin appeared in a tuxedo, bearing champagne. She tasted it eagerly; the first sip she had ever been permitted.
She smiled up at him, her eyes glittering with inadequately hidden tension and excitement. Victoire felt her skin prickle more intensely, like at any moment her emotions might overwhelm her body. She knew that she should calm down; should restrain the unintentional, unnatural seduction that the Veela portion of her nature exerted.
The taste of sweet, bubbly wine lingered on her cherry blossom pink lips, spilling smoothly onto her tongue, not daring to mar her lipstick. Long fingers curled possessively over a thin clutch, and her hands, incapable of lying still in her lap for the shortest time, toyed with the platinum snap.
Teddy looked at her with mild amusement. Victoire, fully aware that in a different venue he would have laughed outright, ducked her head and stared fixedly at the parquet, although her fingers did not cease to play with the latch.
She felt the sofa sink as Teddy sat down, although she refused to look up and confirm this. She heard him whisper in her ear, though she would not acknowledge that he had spoken.
"Are you having that awful a time?" he asked. "I can take you home, if you are."
"It's fine," Victoire said firmly.
She stood up in her painfully high heeled shoes as if they were sheepskin slippers, and shook her hair out over bared shoulders.
"I take it you'd like to dance?" Teddy asked, and Victoire smiled even more brilliantly at him. Teddy hated to dance.
She shook her head quickly at him, and muttered something incomprehensible under her breath. She held his hand tightly, leading him discreetly from the ball. They clung to the edges of the dancing, only a thin margin between them and their reflections in the daunting mirrors.
"Where in Merlin's name are we going?" Teddy hissed as they slipped through the crowds unobtrusively. Victoire wouldn't say.
At the edge of the Muggle-Repelling Charm he hesitated. Victoire squeezed his hand gently, and continued.
At last, in Muggle London, she stopped.
"There's the London Eye," she whispered, although he knew the landmark Ferris Wheel as well as Victoire did. "And there are the fire works."
Less glamorous than any of the explosions that Fillibuster had contrived, and far messier, the deafening pyrotechnic display had a gritty simplicity.
"I like them more than Wizarding fireworks," commented Teddy as silver lights melded with glittery multicolor stars to a soundtrack of the latest in a series of loud noises.
Otherwise, both were silent. Victoire leaned against Teddy, and he held her against his chest. They stood still together until, with a flurry of sparklers released in a rush of giddiness, the show ended.
Victoire relaxed in his arms for a moment after it was over. Disentangling herself, she caught his eye with her own.
"Happy New Years," she said.
"Happy New Year," Teddy agreed, and leaned down to softly press his lips against hers. After a moment's chaste kiss, he broke the gentle contact.
Victoire smiled at him, knowing what he would say before he spoke.
"I would hate to mess up your lip gloss," he said seriously.
"It's lipstick," Victoire reassured him. 'It won't come off."
Teddy shrugged, as if to say, 'in that case,' and wrapped his arms around her waist, hugging her closely as he kissed her once more.