OWL INDUSTRY IN DECLINE, MILLENNIAL OBSESSION WITH MUGGLE TECHNOLOGY TO BLAME
"No fucking shit," Freddy says, throwing today's edition of the Daily Prophet on the table. It's more to himself than anything, because his two flatmates are still asleep and therefore can't hear him, but it feels like necessary commentary nonetheless.
Honestly, the fact that owl mail delivery has persisted as long as it has is bad enough, in his opinion. Muggles came up with much more efficient communication methods years ago that didn't involve birds who shit all over your things and nip you when you try to retrieve your goddamn mail from them, and yet somehow, so much of wizarding society has spent so long firmly entrenched in this antiquated (and frankly, quite dumb) communication method.
The owl industry deserves to be in decline. Good riddance.
Almost if the nearest owl could tell that Freddy was thinking ill of it, there's an insistent claw tapping against the window.
Honestly, who the hell is sending him a letter these days? Even his parents, who grew up using owls as their sole form of communication, have purchased magic-resistant cell phones within the past few years.
But despite his internal grumbling, he slides the windowsill open and lets the offending creature in, taking the letter from its outstretched claw.
The name is written in a curly cursive font that he doesn't quite recognise, and… huh, that doesn't really look like it says Freddy - at least, the first letter doesn't look quite right. There's no address or last name on the envelope, which means that this particular sender seemed to have quite a lot of faith in their owl. Very misplaced faith, if you ask him.
Despite all of these red flags, Freddy still flips the letter over and goes to open it. But before he can break the seal, there's a rather aggressive peck made to his hand.
"Ow! Fuck!" he yelps, staring at the offending creature. "What the hell was that for?"
The bird stares back at him, and it becomes rather evident that he's waiting for a treat.
"I don't have any owl treats," Freddy explains to the bird, hoping it will understand him somehow.
But the bird remains resolute, breaking eye contact with Freddy for just a moment to look pointedly at his now-bleeding hand, almost as a warning that he's not afraid to strike again.
"Fine," he relents. "You can have a bite of my toast."
He grabs the toast he's just prepared for breakfast, offering a piece to the bird. But instead of merely taking a bite, the owl wrenches the entire slice out of Freddy's hand with a surprising amount of force, before taking flight and departing through the still-open window.
That damn bird stole his breakfast.
"This is why you're in decline, you know!" he yells out the window, as if the owl will actually hear him or actually care.
"Isn't it a bit early to already be insulting Lorcan?" Freddy jumps at Lysander's unexpected arrival in the kitchen. "I mean, I agree that he's going downhill, but damn, it's not even 10 yet."
"I was yelling at the bird," Freddy explains, before realising just how insane that sounded.
"There's no bird here," his flatmate replies, looking massively entertained by Freddy's evident distress.
"There was." Freddy waves the letter still in his left hand. "Gave me this, made me bleed, then stole my breakfast."
Lysander crinkles his eyebrows. "Who's still sending you letters these days?"
Freddy shrugs. "No idea. There's no return address."
"I feel like you probably shouldn't open it - could be Wartcap powder or something."
Lysander's warning goes entirely unheeded, as Freddy tears open the poorly addressed envelope. There's no poison inside, just a letter - harmless, really. He unfolds it and starts reading.
My dearest Teddy,
So, that's why the first letter looked weird. This would probably be the point that a more straitlaced person would stop reading and deliver the letter to its true recipient, but Freddy's too curious to do the responsible thing. Teddy is a good family friend after all, and Freddy wants to know exactly who's calling him "my dearest."
I've missed you so much. This place isn't the same without you here with me. Everything about these streets reminds me of you - the way we used to hold hands and talk about anything and everything as we tried to avoid getting hit by all the bicyclists that insist on using the sidewalk, the little bakery where you bought us six pain au chocolats and we ate them all in one sitting, and the little alley by the beach where you snogged me senseless until a little old lady came by and yelled at us over 'common decency.'
Keeping things between us a secret is hard. I want nothing more than to share all the sweet things you've done for me with Maman every time she goes off about 'that tête de noeud who broke your heart' - because you're not a dickhead, and you've more than made up for the misunderstanding between us all those years ago. It makes sense to ease back into things given our history and our families, but at the same time, I just want to yell to everyone how in love with you I am? I know you'll tell me we've got all the time in the world for that, but fuck, patience has never really been my strong suit.
At that, Freddy's eyes immediately flash to the bottom of the page, because he now has a sneaking suspicion exactly who wrote this letter - and if his premonition is right, he's just encountered some prime family gossip.
Sure enough, there's a loopy 'Love, Victoire' written at the bottom of the page.
That's a whole other revelation entirely, but he's staving off the shock of his cousin being back together with her ex-boyfriend until he finishes reading the rest of the letter. It's proven far too juicy to stop now.
After a few paragraphs of relatively mundane descriptions of her current vacation in Juan-Les-Pins, Freddy has basically accepted that nothing more exciting is going to come out of snooping through Victoire's letter.
Which means he's entirely caught off guard by the contents of the last paragraph.
We'll see each other again in just one short week, but until then, I'll be thinking of you constantly. Some innocent, some… not so much. You've corrupted my thoughts all over again, you know. I think of you every time I touch myself late at night, pretending it's your tongue making me fall apart instead of my own fingers. But of course, there are some things I just can't replicate on my own, like that time you -
Freddy has to stop reading right then and there, and suppress a very strong urge to gag. Merlin, what does she think she's doing, practically writing softcore porn into a letter?
The responsible voice in Freddy's head reminds him that she thought she was writing to her boyfriend, in which case, it's an entirely acceptable thing to do, but still. He's mentally scarred for life, and it's all her fault.
(It's entirely his own fault for reading the blasted thing, and he knows that deep down, but blaming Vic for everything seems easier right now.)
"You look like you've seen a grim," Lorcan comments, having come into the kitchen at some point while Freddy was reading.
"Worse," Freddy replies flatly.
"Freddy got a mysterious letter, and it seems to have broken him," Lysander provides, as context for his twin.
"Who still sends letters these days?"
"That's what I said," he says. "I also suggested it might've been poison, but I don't think it was? Although given how uncomfortable Freddy looks right now, it might've been even worse than that."
"It was meant for Teddy," Freddy elaborates. "The owl delivering it must've misread the name - our names do rhyme, after all. And it was from… Vic."
"I thought they broke up like two years ago," Lysander comments.
"Yeah, wasn't it some nasty thing?" Lorcan adds. "Like, she kicked him out of her flat and accused him of never really loving her or something like that?"
"They've apparently made amends since then," Freddy replies. "More than amends, it seems. The letter got a little, er, explicit towards the end there."
At that, both the twins' faces light up. "Oh, I want to see!" Lorcan says enthusiastically.
"Absolutely not," Freddy shoots back, sticking the letter back in its envelope.
Yeah, maybe he snooped in mail that wasn't his and accidentally read about his cousin's sex life, but that doesn't mean he's letting anyone else do it.
No, now he's going to be responsible and deliver this letter to its intended recipient.
He may not be able to look said recipient in the eye when he does so, but he's going to turn it over nonetheless.
As fate would have it, Freddy doesn't have much of a chance to see Teddy until a few days later, at which point he's mostly recovered from the shock of accidentally reading his mail. Now, it's just funny more than anything, and he's got a pretty brilliant plan of exactly how he can use this against Vic.
It's just a matter of getting Teddy to go along with it.
He raps on the door to Teddy's office in the Auror department, waiting for a reply before entering.
"Freddy," he grins, as soon as the door opens. "What are you doing here?"
"Did you know Freddy rhymes with Teddy?"
Teddy's eyebrows furrow. "... Yes?"
"It's funny," Freddy replies conversationally. "I never gave it much thought, until an owl turned up at my window with an envelope with a mangled first letter."
At that, Freddy dramatically produces the offending piece of mail. "This is yours, I believe?"
Somehow, Teddy doesn't even need to open the envelope to know exactly what this note contains. "Ah, shit. That was… definitely not meant for you."
"Damn right it wasn't," Freddy agrees. "I've been mentally scarred for life by some of your girlfriend's more, er, descriptive writing."
At the mention of the word 'girlfriend,' Teddy's eyes flash from the letter he's holding up to Freddy. "So you know."
"A bit hard to miss the 'I just want to yell to everyone how in love with you I am' comment in there," he shrugs.
"You're not going to tell anyone, are you?" A look of worry crosses Teddy's features.
Freddy absolutely wouldn't, but he's also got to keep a poker face if he's going to get this situation to work out in his favour. "I don't know, it's awfully interesting family gossip, you know."
"Freddy, please."
He pretends to think about it for a moment. "Alright, I'll keep quiet, on one condition."
"And that condition is?"
"You let me fuck with Vic about this letter the next time I see you both," Freddy replies, unable to hide a smirk.
Teddy snorts. "Done," he answers. "I would've endorsed that idea even if you weren't holding confidential information over me like blackmail."
Freddy's smirk turns into a full-blown grin. "Fucking brilliant."
The Delacour-Weasley return to England is nothing short of a massive fanfare, mostly due to the cooking capacities of Nana Molly.
They've only been gone for a month, which really isn't much longer than they'd all go without a family dinner, so the fact that it somehow warrants its own celebration is a bit of a mystery to Freddy.
But he shows up at the Burrow anyways, because a) this is the perfect moment to follow through with his plan of thoroughly embarrassing his cousin, and b) his mum would probably have his head if he didn't show.
It starts off innocently enough.
When he sees Vic, he makes sure to greet her with an almost theatrical level of enthusiasm.
"How was the south of France?" he asks. "Did you successfully avoid getting hit by any of the bicyclists that insist on using the sidewalk?"
"Huh?" She looks at him, visibly confused by his fixation on that detail. "Why would I -"
Freddy shrugs, acting completely nonchalant. "Dunno, just heard it was a problem down there."
"Oh," she answers, but it's clear that she's still a bit skeptical.
He redirects his attention to his Aunt Fleur, knowing that if he lingers around Vic any longer - or pulls out any more direct quotes from her letter - she'll start figuring things out, and what's the fun in her figuring out his game at the start of the night?
Teddy arrives later, with Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry and their kids - now that Freddy's trained for it, he doesn't miss the slight distasteful look that crosses his Aunt Fleur's features as she surveys the blue-haired boy.
Teddy winks at him.
He'd been so completely on board with this particular prank on his girlfriend; apparently Victoire was the only one of the two with any interest in writing handwritten love letters instead of sending racy text messages the way normal couples do, and while Teddy has gone along with it for Vic's sake, he'd also told Freddy that he's hoping this might dissuade Vic from the idea entirely.
Once they've all had a drink (or more - family dinners have had a tendency to get rather boozy ever since a decent number of the cousins turned of age), Freddy decides it's high time to resume his plan.
They're all sitting in a circle of lawn chairs - him, Vic, Teddy (three seats away from her, so as not to arouse suspicion from the rest of the family who didn't know their secret), James, Dom, and Molly.
"So, Head Boy, huh, James?" Dom says, with a wicked smirk on her face. She'd been known to terrorise James while he was a Prefect, and Freddy's got a very good feeling that the pattern is going to continue this school year.
"Yep. Got the letter on Thursday," James replies casually, and he's either pretending that he doesn't know just how much Dom is planning on messing with him this year, or he's stupidly naïve.
"Oh, I know that," Dom grins. "Trust me, your dad texted mine and within minutes, I was hearing all abouthow there's 'another Head Boy in the family.' "
"Amazing, isn't it?" Freddy comments. "How fast text messages are. I mean, can you imagine - if it was a letter, your dad might never have heard."
And luckily for Freddy, Victoire takes the bait. "I think there's a certain charm to letter-writing. Text messages are too short."
"Clearly you've never gotten a text from Molly then," James retorts. "She writes bloody essays that you literally have to scroll through to read properly."
"I guess Vic might have a point," Freddy concedes, suppressing his shudder as he does so - he's definitely lying through his teeth at that one because Victoire most definitely does not have a point. "I mean, after all, you can't address a text message with loopy script and a bunch of hearts."
"But you can send things with confetti and include heart emojis," Dom replies. "Which is all the same, really."
Freddy's strongly inclined to agree with her - although he's personally never sent a text with confetti attached - but he can't agree with her just yet. Victoire's watching him with a raised eyebrow again, and it's clear that she's still trying to figure him out.
"You know, there's another perk to owls," Freddy adds. "It's so easy to send a text to the wrong person, but have you ever heard of someone sending an owl to the wrong person? I mean, how much would you have to fuck up for that to happen? You'd have to not address the letter properly, forget their full name, and have an owl that can't read."
Teddy is doing miserably at concealing his laughter. Honestly, if he keeps this up, he's going to ruin a plan he's not even a part of; Freddy glares in his direction briefly to remind him of that fact.
"Or just have really illegible handwriting," James chimes in. "I think Al's owl got lost for a few days one time because he writes like a fucking toddler."
Dom laughs. "Speaking of owls, did anyone else see that bullshit article in the Prophet a few weeks ago about how we're supposedly 'destroying the industry'?"
"I didn't bother reading it," Molly replies. "In between us destroying the housing market and wizarding robes, I wasn't quite ready for yet another indictment of how we've supposedly fucked everything up instead of, you know, modernising and getting smarter like normal societies are supposed to do."
"Also, like, damn, if I could afford a house, I would've bought one by now," Teddy chimes in. "It's honestly a fucking miracle I'm able to afford a one-bedroom in the middle of London, given the dollar-Galleon conversion rate."
The conversation shifts to griping about expenses and budgeting - something Dom and James can't contribute much to, given that they're still in school and living with their parents, but a discussion that Teddy, Vic, Molly, and Freddy can all contribute to heartily.
"Lorcan set the oven on fire last week," Freddy contributes. "Do you have any idea how fucking expensive it is to repair an over - even after you've fixed the worst of it with magic? Because I sure fucking didn't."
"Does your complex not pay for that sort of shit?" Vic asks.
"Not when you've lit it on fire because you're trying to magically speed up the rate at which your cookies bake," Freddy replies. "I believe our landlord's exact words were 'not my fault, not my problem.' "
"Tough luck, mate," Teddy sympathises.
Freddy shrugs. "It's all good. Lorcan paid for most of it, and I just handled the lack of cooking apparatuses by buying six pain au chocolats and eating them all in one sitting."
Vic's eyes are firmly trained on him again, but Freddy makes a pointed effort not to look at her. "Freddy..." she starts.
She doesn't get a chance to finish that sentence though, because Nana Molly calls them all over for dinner.
Despite the fact that so many of them are technically considered adults - Teddy is twenty-two, for Merlin's sake - they all end up relegated to a table separate from their parents. It's the 'kids' table' even though it doesn't contain all that many children.
Nana Molly's roast is incredible, as always, and Freddy makes sure to voice his appreciation to the adult table parallel to them more than once.
"I just want to yell to everyone how in love with this roast I am, you know?" Freddy says, as his third or so compliment of his grandma's cooking, and he thoroughly enjoys seeing Vic frown in confusion.
Somehow, the topic switches to Quidditch. Despite all growing up together, the entirety of the Potter/Weasley clan has massively different opinions on Quidditch, frequently resulting in rather heated conversations.
"All I'm saying is, Puddlemere's at the top of the league and the top of their game right now," James contributes. "They're the team to play for and the team to beat."
"And their fanbase is also loaded with bandwagon fans," Al chimes in. "Like you."
"I am not a bandwagon fan!" James retorts. "I'll have you know that Dad has a picture of me in a Puddlemere jersey when I was eight. I've been a lifelong fan."
"And yet, you've also got a picture of you at twelve wearing an Appleby Arrows jersey," Teddy adds. "So from where I see it, you're supporting whichever of your many teams happens to be winning at the time."
"Rude," James retorts, as Al laughs pointedly.
"And Al, here you are talking about bandwagon fans when your team has just as many bandwagon fans as Puddlemere does. Don't act like Portree had some massive fanbase before Specter came along."
"Teddy, you're an arse," Al replies.
"What a tête de noeud, am I right?" Freddy asks, positive that he's butchering the pronunciation of that phrase but not caring much. He's looking directly at Victoire as he speaks. "Your mum must be right about him, after all."
The look on her face is priceless.
But Freddy can't stop now - they're officially far enough into the night that he feels perfectly confident in making the reason for his behavior blatantly obvious. "Such a corrupting influence, really. But we all adore him for his wit - no one else could quite replicate that tongue of his, and - "
Vic stands up abruptly, practically knocking her chair to the floor in the process and garnering the attention of pretty much the entire family. "Freddy. Can we speak alone?"
"Sure," he replies casually, unable to hide the smirk on his face.
That's all the permission Victoire needs to grab him by the hand and practically drag him back inside the Burrow.
As soon as the door shuts behind them, she rounds on him. "What. The. Fuck."
Freddy just stands there in silence, still grinning at her.
"You're - you're quoting a letter of mine, that wasn't sent to you, by the way, back at me," she observes, finally putting the pieces together. "How the fuck did you get your hands on that?"
"Remember when I mentioned just how much screwing up it would do to accidentally send an owl to the wrong person?" Freddy replies. "You checked all of those boxes."
"My owl is not illiterate!" Vic defends immediately.
Honestly, of all the things to take offense from, the fact that she immediately stands up for her stupid bird is a perfect example of the kind of incredible obstinance that the entire family is practically known for.
"He's also incredibly violent," Freddy adds. "I've still got a scar from that, if you want to see."
"He only gets violent when people deserve it," she retorts. "But we're getting off-topic. How the hell did you get my letter?"
"Well, you see," Freddy starts, "it turns out that Teddy, when written in cursive, looks remarkably like Freddy. And so when you only addressed it by his first name, and sent it along with your only slightly literate owl, I was gifted with that lovely piece of writing instead."
"And you read it? Instead of, oh, I don't know, taking it where it was meant to go immediately?"
Freddy shrugs. "I was curious. And might I say, you go into entirely too much detail via written communication. Even your boyfriend doesn't need to read that on paper. Save it for in person - where no one else can have to suffer through that."
"No one forced you to snoop through a letter that wasn't yours," she snaps, before suddenly blanching. "Shit, so you know about Teddy and I then?"
"I quite literally do not think you could have made it any clearer."
Vic flushes at that. "You haven't told anyone, have you?"
"Nope," he replies. "And I'm not going to. I'm enough of a dick to read mail that doesn't belong to me, but not enough to reveal a secret that isn't mine to tell."
"Well, thank you." She looks a little surprised, and honestly, Freddy's a little offended at that. His own family should know that he's not that much of a prick.
"Is everything alright in here?" The door opens, and Teddy walks in.
"Yes?" Freddy replies, although it sounds more like a question.
"He knows about us," Vic tells him. "He got his hands on a letter of mine - I'm not sure if you ever ended up getting it - but he's promised not to tell anyone else."
Teddy just grins. "Oh, I knew all of that."
Vic's mouth falls open. "You… knew? How?"
"Freddy hand-delivered the letter to me last week."
"And you didn't, you know, think to give me a heads up?" Vic asks, turning away from Freddy to face her boyfriend. " 'Oh hey, Vic, just so you know, your cousin got ahold of one of your more explicit love letters, he knows about us, don't freak out too much.' "
"It was a condition of Freddy's," Teddy shrugs. "Plus, I figured it'd be fun to get you worked up over nothing, and who better to do that than Freddy?"
"Teddy Lupin, you - are - an - arse." Each word is accompanied by a finger jab to Teddy's sternum, but she's suppressing a grin, so she's clearly not that mad at him.
"And yet you love me and my arse," Teddy retorts, wrapping his arms around her.
She rolls her eyes. "Apparently."
Freddy starts to feel very acutely like a third wheel in a situation where he honestly doesn't want or need to know any more details about their relationship. "So, if things are all good, we should, er, probably go back to dinner before our family starts asking questions. That's probably the last thing you two want right now, after all."
"You're probably right," Teddy replies, letting go of Vic again.
Freddy walks to the door, but stops before he can turn the handle, spinning around and facing the two of them. "Although, while I've got you two here, can I make a request?"
Both Vic and Teddy look at him curiously.
"Next time, just send a goddamn sext like a normal person."