A/N: Here's the new Teddy/Vic story! Enjoy everyone!
Note: If you read How To Adult, you will realize that this troy occurs a year and three months after the last chapter of that story.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A New Addition
Tuesday, April 16th 2024
1:45 PM
Victoire Weasley reached one of the healing stations in the Dark Arts Reversal ward at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies just as her fellow healer Wesley Hall popped up from behind the counter, his arms full of files and a few books.
Thankfully, Victoire had gotten used to the usual quietness of Wesley's cat-like movements during the past two years that they had worked together, so his sudden appearance in front of her didn't startle her as much as it would have, and probably should have.
"Are all of those for research on one of your patients?" Victoire asked Wesley curiously as she tried to quickly count how many files he had in his arms.
Healer Wesley Hall –tall and even more skinny looking lately than normal since his schedule at the hospital had been so hectic recently– let out a slightly breathless laugh, "Merlin no. I kinda just knocked all of these onto the floor and I need to reorganize them before Healer Seward comes moseying along and realizes what I've accidentally done."
The twenty-three year old rolled her eyes at her colleague but bestowed a small smile on him, "I'd help you but I'm waiting on-"
"Mrs. Stoddard's lab reports?" Wesley finished for her as he glanced through the files in his arms.
"Yes," Victoire answered succinctly.
"They should be here somewhere," Wesley told her as he dropped his armload of files onto the counter of the healing station and began looking at the labels, "They were sent up only five minutes ago."
Victoire flicked her wrist to wandlessly Accio the file to her but nothing moved, "That's weird."
She helped Wesley manually skim through all of the files on the counter, but none of them were the Stoddard file.
"I don't know where it could have gone to," Wesley mused when Victoire gave up checking the files for the third time in favour of pouting and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Did anyone else stop by the station in the last five minutes who might have picked it up by accident?" Victoire asked him with a tired sigh.
Wesley frowned in thought, but then he let out a groan of realization, "Fabius did stop by just before you got here for like a millisecond-"
She didn't need to hear the rest of his statement. Victoire sent Wesley a quick wave good-bye before she strode down the D. A. R. ward's hallway towards the section of the ward that housed the Healers' offices. She stopped in front of a particular office door and rolled her eyes at a shiny brass plate that read 'Healer M. Fabius'. Her friend and fellow healer Cassidy Hopewell had sworn to Victoire that she had caught him obsessively polishing it one evening when they were both stuck in the ward on a particularly dead nightshift, and from that night on Cassidy was convinced that their pompous colleague was shining his name plate at least every other day.
Almost a year and a half ago when Victoire and her fellow healing residents had completed their residencies, the four healers were told that there would be two full-time healer positions opening up in the D. A. R. ward that they were being considered for. Malachi Fabius and Victoire Weasley won the full-time healing positions because they were the best (Victoire was the best healer, and in her opinion Fabius was the best at sucking up) while their fellow colleagues Wesley Hall and Cassidy Hopewell were given part-time healing positions in the D. A. R. ward. Luckily the latter two healers had also received part time offers from other wards in the hospital since they had both chosen to complete dual residency placements (Victoire had foregone choosing a second residency placement in favour of doing a large research project), so both of the healers had more than enough hours to keep them busy at St. Mungo's, even if they didn't have 'full time jobs' in the D. A. R. ward.
Victoire rapped her knuckles on the glossy wood of her least favourite colleague's office door, causing a brisk knocking noise to emanate from where her hand had touched the hard wood. She waited a few seconds for a response, and when she didn't receive one she knocked again, much harder and much more rapidly than she had before.
Her actions received a response this time, in the form of someone within the office clearly calling out the word "Come". She paused in her knocking, let out an agitated huff of air, and then chose to ignore the words in favour for continuing to knock on the door.
A moment later the wood of the door disappeared from under her knuckles as the office door was opened by the grimacing face of her fellow Dark Arts Reversal healer Malachi Fabius. He was only a few inches taller than her five-foot-eight height, but he usually seemed smaller because he always wore his green healing robes at least one size too big. The robes were baggy on him and made him seem like he was being perpetually hit by some sort of shrinking spell just prior to every encounter she had with him.
Fabius openly glared at his blonde colleague, "I said that you could come in."
"Really?" Victoire asked with a faux innocent tone as she stepped around him and into his office, "I didn't hear you. Oh well, it's nice to see you opening the door for me like a gentleman. After all, it's never too late to start treating people with common courtesy."
She walked over to the part of the room that held Fabius's desk and stood in front of it. There were two chairs situated across from the large desk, but she forewent sitting in either of them because she didn't plan to be there long. Fabius shut the door behind her and moved to sit down in the comfortable chair behind his desk.
"What can I do for you Healer Weasley?" Fabius asked her. His tone full of sarcastic faux-graciousness after her quip about him not be polite.
Victoire crossed her arms over her chest, "Mrs. Stoddard's lab results?"
Fabius grabbed a file that was lying on top of the left side of his desk without even looking at it and he tossed it in her direction.
"Here."
She caught it easily –her seeker skills from her Hogwarts quidditch playing days continuing to come in handy even though she hardly ever played anymore– and she opened the file to skim the results of her patient's labs.
"Mrs. Stoddard's blood oxygen levels are back to an acceptable level," Victoire murmured as she read.
Fabius shrugged, picked a quill up from his desk, and began fiddling with it, "Are they? I didn't have time to read the results before you came knocking."
Victoire closed the file, turned her back on Fabius, and started to walk towards the door. She called over her shoulder to her colleague as she went, "Do you want to come with me to give Mrs. Stoddard the good news?"
"I'd love to," Fabius's bland voice replied, "But I'm afraid that I can't. I've already released her."
Victoire spun back around on her heel, causing her long, silvery blond hair to fan out around her head with the quick motion.
"You what?"
Fabius had known Victoire long enough to know that her tone implied that he should be wary of what he might say to her next.
"I ran a discharge examination on my patient at her request and found that she was healthy enough to be allowed to leave," Fabius explained.
She narrowed her ocean-blue eyes at him, "You discharged our patient without my permission? And I am using the word 'our' very loosely here since you've spent a total of half an hour treating her compared to my total of seven hours."
"She'd been here for almost two days already, she wanted to go, she was healthy enough to go, she left," Fabius replied with a shrug.
Victoire clenched her teeth together, "How long ago was this? I did rounds less than an hour ago."
"It was about twenty minutes ago," Her fellow healer admitted.
She scoffed at him, "You knew that her lab results were due within a half hour and you still discharged her twenty minutes ago? If you had made her wait just fifteen more minutes we would have been able to know for sure that her blood oxygen levels were fine and then we could have discharged her with a clear conscience."
"I figured the results would be fine considering all of her other progress," Fabius replied with a careless shrug, "And she really, really wanted to go home. Said something about a dinner with her girlfriends tonight that she'd rather not miss. Mrs. Stoddard promised to come back in if I found something worrying on her test results."
"Even if you're ninety-nine percent sure that there's nothing wrong you can't just discharge a patient while we're still waiting on that kind of lab result, and without the primary healer on the case –a.k.a. me– signing off on her discharge paperwork. I can't believe that you did that," Victoire told him her expression one of disbelief, "I mean I really can't believe it. You're normally suck a stickler for the rules, but this time you decided to break some really important ones. Did you even consider what the hospital-"
Fabius was tired of her lecturing by this point. He thought it absolutely ridiculous that Victoire Weasley of all people was reprimanding him about not following protocol when she had been called in front of St. Mungo's Board of Ethics much more often than he had, "I made a calculated decision, which may just end up being a good thing for the hospital. Mrs. Stoddard was so happy that I discharged her early that she mentioned that she's now thinking about making a sizeable monetary donation to the hospital."
Victoire glowered at him, "You can't just do whatever patients want just because they offer to donate money. You need to treat every patient the same no matter their annual income or position in society, and you need to treat all of the patients properly before discharge-"
Her complaint was cut off by the sound of someone knocking on the office door. It creaked opened slowly a few seconds later and Healer Wesley Hall poked his head into the office.
Wesley looked straight at Victoire, "Vic, I just spotted a medi-witch directing a prospective patient to your office."
Victoire frowned, "My last patient consultation today was this morning at ten, I don't have any more appointments booked."
"It didn't seem like this one was pre-booked," Wesley explained.
She sighed, "Thanks for letting me know Wesley, I'll be there in a-"
"The patient looked like Auror Donaldson," Wesley added when he realized that he hadn't yet told her that vital piece of information.
That captured all of Victoire's attention, "Did she look like she was injured?"
"Not outwardly," Wesley told her.
Victoire left herself feel a bit of relief, but she was still concerned about Auror Donaldson. More concerned than she was about the relatively healthy patient/socialite that Fabius had discharged without discussing with her first. She readjusted her hold on Mrs. Stoddard's file, sent Fabius a parting glare, and then strode out of the office.
She only had to walk a few metres down the hall until she made it to another office door, this one adorned with a less shiny name plate (she didn't have time to waste on polishing it) that read 'Healer V. Weasley'. Her office was slightly smaller than Fabius's –he had taken over Healer Seward's old office when Healer Seward upgraded to Healer Rhee's much larger office upon the latter healer's retirement– but it had a nicer view of the outside which let in more natural light and vitamin D than the fake magical windows that decorated the other offices.
Victoire pushed open the door and found a familiar woman sitting down at one of the chairs across from her desk. She shut the door behind her, the sound causing the woman in the chair to jump in her seat. Auror Donaldson, a close colleague and partner of Teddy's at the Auror Department that both she and her fiancée considered a good friend, quickly got to her feet when she heard the door shut. The medium height woman, who looked like she must have come from work as she was still wearing her dark red auror robes, spun around to face Victoire.
That action set into motion a chain reaction of events.
Auror Jillianna Donaldson opened her mouth to say something to Victoire, but before she could she brought her hand to her forehead and her knees started to wobble like she was about to collapse. Auror Donaldson reached out to steady herself with a hand on the back of the chair she had vacated, while Victoire sprinted to her side and placed one hand on the woman's shoulder and the other on her hip to steady her further. Victoire encouraged Auror Donaldson to sit back down in her chair, and when she was stable in her seat, Victoire leaned back on the edge of her desk in front of Auror Donaldson and eyed the other woman minutely.
"Did you sign in at the front desk already? Usually they give you intake forms to fill out when it doesn't seem like a life-threatening emergency . . ." Victoire babbled as she did a visual examination of the auror. Besides the other woman's face going white a minute ago and looking like she was going to faint, she visibly seemed fine.
Auror Donaldson shook her head slowly, "No, I didn't sign in at the front desk. I'm not–I'm not exactly here as a patient."
"So you haven't been recently injured or cursed?" Victoire asked methodically. She forewent asking questions about the auror that she already knew such as the woman's age, emergency contacts, and medical history.
"No."
Victoire pursed her lips, "Are you quite sure Auror Donaldson? You seemed like you were going to faint a minute ago-"
"No, no," The other woman cut off her concern, "I was just a little lightheaded from my sudden movement. And please Victoire, call me Jilly, this isn't exactly a work official visit."
"Alright Jilly, then what can I do for you?" Victoire asked as she moved off her desk.
She pulled her green healing robes off –they got heavy and very warm after wearing them for a while– and tossed them onto a small loveseat that was off in the corner of the room. She was wearing a pair of navy blue dress trousers and a pretty ruffled beige blouse underneath her robes so she still looked professional after having discarded them. She knew her air of professionalism was more of a matter of habit than anything else, Jilly knew her well enough to know that outside of work she was usually much more casual in her clothing choices.
Jilly paused a moment before she figured out what she wanted to say, "I–this is about my health, but I don't think it's something particularly bad. I just need you to run a test on me."
Victoire sat down in the chair beside the one Jilly was sitting in. She pursed her lips, "What kind of test?"
"I think I may need you to run a pregnancy test on me."
Victoire blinked and it took a full two seconds before her brain finally kicked into 'healer mode', "When was your last menstrual cycle?"
Jilly bit her lip and self-consciously looked at her hands, "It may have been over three months ago."
"Uh," Victoire paused for a minute to absorb this surprising information, "Okay . . . do you normally have a pretty consistent cycle?"
"Sometimes?" Jilly replied apprehensively, "When my eating disorder was at its worst I stopped menstruating for several months in a row until I got healthier and gained more weight. I've been menstruating pretty regularly since then, but I do miss a period here and there. I've never gone more than two months without one though."
Victoire pursed her lips, "Did you see a healer after you missed your second period?"
Jilly shook her head remorsefully, "No I thought that this month was the second time I missed a period, but when I started thinking about it I realized that I didn't get one in February either. The month just went by so fast and it was so busy that I didn't notice it and-"
"Hey, it's fine Jilly," Victoire told her reaching out to give her arm a comforting squeeze, "February does go by quickly. I have a couple more questions for you before I cast a pregnancy test. Okay?"
The other woman nodded her head. Even though she was the one to suggest that she was pregnant, she seemed as though she wanted to wait just a little bit longer until she heard a confirmation of her theory.
"Were you sexually active after your last complete menstrual cycle?"
"Yes."
"Have you been sexually active during the past few months when you haven't been menstruating?"
"Yes."
Victoire took a deep breath before asking her next question, "Have you been actively preventing pregnancy?"
"Yes," Jilly replied with a fast nod of her head.
"What method were you using?"
Jilly blushed, "A contraception potion."
The blonde healer nodded her head, "Contraceptive potions are very effective, but statistically speaking about nine percent of women will become pregnant when using this method." She gave Jilly an encouraging smile, "Ready for the test?"
Jilly took a deep breath. She'd been a kick-arse auror for seven years already, but as she sat in front of Victoire and waited to hear if she was actually pregnant, she felt the most nervous and anxious that she had to date.
Another deep breath was necessary to steady her nerves and then she slowly nodded her head, "Go for it."
Victoire pulled out her wand –she was perfectly capable of casting the spell wandlessly, but she wanted to make sure that the test was as accurate as possible– and began the wrist movements to cast the spell wordlessly.
A line of bright light shot out of the tip of Victoire's wand, and flew toward Jilly. It barely touched Jilly's abdomen before bouncing right back towards Victoire, who waved her wand and absorbed the excess light.
"So?" Jilly asked anxiously before Victoire could tell her the results.
"You're pregnant," Victoire told her in a calm and neutral tone of voice, "If you weren't pregnant the light would have been absorbed by your body. It bounces off when a woman is pregnant."
Jilly looked down at her hands, they were shaking a little, "I–I don't know why I'm so surprised. I haven't had a period in three months. That should have been evidence enough."
"Have you been having any other symptoms of pregnancy? Nausea?"
"No."
"Unusual tiredness?"
"No."
"Breast tenderness?"
"No."
"Dizziness?"
Jilly nodded her head at that one, "Just a little over the past month when I stand up too quickly, but on its own I didn't realize that it was a symptom of pregnancy."
Victoire nodded her head and rolled the wooden handle of her wand around the palm of her hand, "Considering that you've gone so long without menstruating and the fact that your cycle isn't always regular, I think it might be good for me to cast a spell on you to see how far along the pregnancy is. It won't be as exact as a test an obstetric healer will try, but it'll give you a rough idea right now."
"Please," Jilly told her, the word coming out with a heavy exhale of air like a sigh.
Victoire cast another spell, and she pursed her lips when she saw the results, "Jilly, your pregnancy is about twelve weeks along." She did some mental math, "So you probably conceived in mid to late January . . . does that add up?"
She was asking the question because she knew that between Jilly's occupation as an auror and her boyfriend Caleb Cooke's job as a professor at Hogwarts, the couple didn't have as many opportunities to spend time together as most couples did.
"Yeah, that makes sense," Jilly replied with a sigh.
"So," Victoire began before clearing her throat, "You have some decisions to make about how you'd like to go about this."
Jilly took a deep breath.
"I can refer you to a gynecological/obstetric healer to make an appointment as soon as possible and get the ball rolling on a whole bunch of other tests that should be done . . . or I can refer you to another healer," She wasn't sure how she felt about offering the second choice to Jilly because she was in a committed relationship, but she also didn't want to automatically make the assumption that Jilly was going to go through with the pregnancy. She didn't want to not give her another option and then accidently alienate Jilly to her if she decided that she didn't want to become a mother at this point in her life.
"I–I need to tell Caleb about it of course," Jilly replied hesitantly, "But I can't imagine that I won't want i–the baby. A baby . . . Merlin I'm having a baby."
While there was still disbelief in Jilly's voice, it seemed as though the edges of her lips were attempting to twist into a smile. When she saw this, Victoire encouraged Jilly with a soft smile.
"You're having a baby."
Hearing Victoire confirm the words once more –this time in a happier tone of voice– enabled the smile to break free across Jilly's face. She reached up to her face and put her hands on her cheeks. "I'm going to have a baby."
"In six months," Victoire added with a bit of a raised eyebrow as she saw the shocked realization flash across Jilly's face that the baby was going to be coming sooner rather than later, "So everything's going to happen really fast for the next little while."
Victoire went on to explain that she did need to make an appointment with an obstetric healer ASAP since she'd already gone so long in her pregnancy without knowing about it. Jilly said that she would like to have Caleb with her for her first appointment, which meant that she also needed to tell him ASAP. Luckily, she was actually scheduled to have dinner with Caleb that evening –Caleb had had their evening together planned for the past two weeks to make up for not being able to see her on her birthday three weeks ago– so she was going to be able to tell him that night about her pregnancy, and hopefully he could get half of the next day off to go to an appointment with her. Victoire had given Jilly the card of an obstetric healer named Donnie Jarvis, he was a friend of hers from healing school that worked a few floors below her at the hospital. She told Jilly to say that Victoire had referred her to him and that he'd probably try his best to get her an appointment for tomorrow. She then wrote Jilly a prescription for pre-natal vitamins and informed her patient that she needed to get it filled as soon as possible and start taking them the minute she had them in her hands.
Lastly, Victoire discussed with Jilly that she would need to tell her superior aurors at work about her pregnancy as soon as possible as it was no longer safe for her to be involved in field work, and that she'd need to be switched to desk duty until after the baby was born. Healer Jarvis would be able to write her a specific healer's note for her superior aurors that they would require to take her off of field work, but until then Victoire would write her a sick note that should allow her the rest of the afternoon off. She wasn't scheduled to work that night because she already had it booked off for her dinner date, so Victoire made sure to emphasize that she should go back to her flat and rest until then, once she had gotten her pre-natal vitamins of course. Victoire asked Jilly a few questions about whether or not she had been hit by any spells during fieldwork over the past few months, and when Jilly replied that it had been a quiet three months that involved rather easy fieldwork, both women let out a sigh of relief.
Victoire stood up, Jilly copying her action, and she gave the other woman a hug and her sincerest congratulations on her pregnancy. Jilly squeezed her back, and then promised to follow all of Victoire's directions to the letter.
When Jilly left, Victoire barely had time to catch her own breath let along wrap her head around the fact that her and Teddy's friends Jilly Donaldson and Caleb Cooke were going to have a baby in six months, before she received a message asking her to come down to the hospital's potions lab to check on something.
When Victoire got to St. Mungo's potions' lab she scanned the multiple heads bent down working at their brewing stations until she spotted the dark head that had summoned her to the warm and busy room. She came to a stop in front of the potioneer, but with enough distance that she wouldn't be breathing in the fumes of whatever the dark haired woman was brewing.
"What do you need me for?" Victoire asked the woman without preamble or greeting.
"Nice to see you too," Alexandra Weasley replied to Victoire with a sarcastic roll of her dark brown eyes, "I'm fine thanks for asking."
The blonde healer scoffed at her dark haired cousin who was younger than her by a year, "What do you need me for Ally?"
Victoire doubled down on the brusqueness of her tone just to further annoy her favourite cousin. She most definitely would not have spoken to any other potioneer at St. Mungo's that way if they had called her down to see them instead of her. Like Victoire expected, Ally stuck her tongue out at her instead of being insulted, the act making her look much more like her father, George Weasley, in that instance than her mother Angelina, whose facial expressions Ally was usually more likely to take after especially if it was a look of exasperation.
"I missed you at your regularly scheduled lunch break, did you eat at all today?" Ally asked her elder blonde cousin instead of answering the demanding question that had been posed to her.
Victoire scoffed and put her hands on her hips, "Oui Maman, I ate in between rounds."
Ally ignored the sarcasm at being compared to her Aunt Fleur and stirred her cauldron three times counter-clockwise, "I know how you get when you're really busy; between your full time healing job, the last stages of getting yours and Healer McDavid's spell approved, and wedding planning it's going to take an army to make sure that you eat at least two meals a day and sleep at least four hours."
The elder cousin frowned but didn't argue with the younger one. Unfortunately, Victoire had a very bad and unhealthy habit in the past of putting too much on her plate and working so hard and wearing herself so thin that she would end up physically ill.
"I had a full balanced meal . . . I just ate it rather quickly. So why am I down here again?"
Ally nodded her head toward a stack of paper at her workbench, "All of those need your signature."
Victoire moved to the worktable, conjured up a self-inking quill, and then began signing off on all of the forms after a quick summary scan of what she was signing. She made quick work of it –a skill she had acquired since becoming a fully qualified healer was how to sign her signature quickly– and she was down to her last two forms when another sheet of paper was slipped onto the thin stack by a slim, tanned hand. She glanced up and was met with an apologetic glance on a younger woman's face.
"Sorry Healer Weasley, Mr. Dare asked me to get this signed as well," The young woman replied in a distinctly American accent. She was doing an internship for potions school at St. Mungo's, and as she apologized she nodded her head in the direction of another potioneer who was at a work station a few metres away.
Victoire smiled reassuringly at the intern, "No problem Kelly, one more isn't going to give me a hand cramp. Mostly because I already have one." She punctuated the sentence with a glare at Ally's back.
Ally heard her and turned around only long enough to shoot her blonde cousin a smirk and a wink before she went back to her potion.
After signing the last form that Kelly the intern had given her with a flourish, Mr. Dare called Kelly back to his station.
"Green! We're ready for the next step."
Kelly Green happily snatched the signed form from Victoire and skipped back to her supervising potioneer's workstation. From previous interactions with Kelly Green Victoire knew that the young intern was very excited to be in potion's school and to be doing an internship at St. Mungo's. She was originally from America, but she had decided to complete her potions school training in England after hearing her cousin Spencer Green talk about how he loved the country and working at St. Mungo's so much.
"Poor Kelly, stuck being supervised by Mr. Dare," Victoire commented idly to Ally as she watched the intern follow the instructions the supervising potioneer was giving her. Mr. Dare had a perpetual frown on his face, but Kelly seemed oblivious to it as she smiled brightly each time he allowed her to physically participate in the potion they were brewing.
Ally glanced at Victoire, "Mr. Dare's not mean . . . he's just a little rough around the edges. I think he's enjoying having her as an intern though, she's definitely the smartest one we have at the moment."
"It's too bad though that you couldn't be her supervisor," Victoire told Ally.
"I know that Spencer would have preferred that," Ally said as she mentioned Healer Spencer Green who worked in St. Mungo's Magical Bugs and Illness ward. Victoire had met him a few years ago in healing school and he and Victoire had been good friends and colleagues ever since. When Ally started working at St. Mungo's in their potions labs, she had met Spencer was well and had become fast friends with him, "But I didn't want it to seem like nepotism since Spencer and I are friends, and since Spencer works in the ward that my mother is the head of."
Victoire nodded her head, "Fair enough."
"I did tell Kelly that she could help me brew the rest of the wolfsbain potion for this month," Ally added.
"She'll enjoy that," Victoire observed.
"And I'll enjoy the help," The dark haired potioneer remarked.
Victoire shrugged her shoulders, "You've got brewing that potion down to a consistent rhythm already. "
"Yeah but I had to brew so much more of the potion this month," Ally complained as she stopped stirring the potion she was presently working on and let it rest.
Two blonde eyebrows rose up on Victoire's face in surprise, "How so? In the last three and a half months at this hospital there was only one person who was attacked by a werewolf and became lycanthropic."
Victoire knew this specifically because she was usually the healer that would deal with werewolf attacks, or with patients who had been attacked by werewolves in the past. She had only added one name to the St. Mungo's-made wolfsbain potion list since the New Year started.
"I know," Ally replied with a nod, "Most of the new additions to the list are from the Ministry's wolfsbain potion subsidising program."
This information only confused Victoire more, "How many more additions?"
"Thirsty since the beginning of January, and ten new names this month alone," Ally said.
Victoire frowned at this additional info, "The list doesn't usually change that much that quickly, does it?"
The poitoneer shook her head, "No."
"This doesn't sound right then. Everyone in the Ministry's subsidised program needs to have been recommended for it because of their financial situation and have had a full examination by a healer. Not only have that many people not been newly turned into werewolves, but that many people haven't had appointments in the Dark Arts Reversal ward to get their examination and then prescription for the potion," Victoire explained.
"Well a person doesn't necessarily have to have been examined by a D. A. R. healer to get a prescription for it, most healers can write the prescription," Ally reminded with a purse of her lips.
Victoire ran a hand agitatedly through her hair, "That's true, but usually the ministry does call in a D. A. R. healer to make sure that they meet all of the requirements before they're put on the subsidising program. Even if they were using other healers, I don't know where this sheer amount of people are coming from."
"You've got a point, the economy's been good so it's unlikely that it's from people who could afford their own potion before and who had fallen on hard times," Ally mused.
"Where else could they be coming from?"
Ally had a thoughtful expression on her face, "Perhaps there was a large group of people who preferred not to medicate before and who have now decided to start medicating themselves?"
As a Dark Arts Reversal healer and the fiancée of an auror, Victoire knew that there were still groups of people with lycanthropy who preferred to live without medicating themselves on full moons because of their own personal principles. She still thought it unlikely that a 'pack' of these lycanthropes (she shuddered just thinking about the dehumanizing term of 'pack' but knew that that was usually the preferred term for those groups of people) had all of a sudden decided to start taking wolfsbain and went through the entire process of being added to the Ministry's subsidised wolfsbain potion program.
"Maybe . . . but I might just ask Teddy about whether he's heard anything about a group like that at work," Victoire told Ally as she made the decision. A requirement of qualifying for the Ministry's subsidised wolfsbain program also included a full cleared background check, so if a large group of lycanthropes had all had background and criminal reference checks in last few months someone in the Auror Department would have heard about it.
"You do that," Ally replied with a slight sigh, it seemed as though Victoire had found yet another pet project that she didn't have near enough time to be involved in. Hopefully there would be a simple explanation for the rising need of wolfsbain potion. "You and Teddy are still coming to mine and Xavier's for the wedding invitation thing tonight, right?"
Ally and her fiancé Xavier Wood had bought a house together a year ago, and they had invited Teddy and Victoire and a few of their other friends over for that evening to complete some of the items on both Ally and Xavier and Victoire and Teddy's 'Wedding To-Do' lists.
"Yeah, we'll probably be the last ones there but we'll get there eventually."
Ally snorted at that because it was so true, and then Victoire finally left the potions lab to get back to her ward. She still had to deal with Fabius.
6:13 PM
"Kurt did you piss off an evil sorcerous and cause her to jinx us with never ending paperwork?" Auror Hayden Summers asked one of his colleagues and office partners as he scowled at the pile of paperwork on his desk. He thought that he'd made a dent in it over the past hour and a half that he had been working on it, but every time he looked at the stack it looked like it was growing instead of shrinking.
At the desk next to Auror Hayden Summers was Auror Teddy Lupin. They shared a large closed off office space with Auror Kurt Williamson and Auror Jilly Donaldson. The latter two were usually partnered together on missions and assignments while Teddy and Hayden had been partners for over almost three years. However the four had spent a lot of time working together as a group over the years, and one particular assignment from a year ago allowed them to share the office space they were presently in instead of forcing them to work in the open cubicle style offices that most of the youngest aurors were stuck in. Ever since that case they had commandeered the office space and just decided to keep working out of it. Their superior aurors allowed them to do this because it ensured that Hayden and Kurt (both known troublemakers and sometimes office menaces) were no longer out in the open and under more control.
"Again," Auror Teddy Lupin added with a roll of his eyes as he worked through his own stack of paperwork.
Auror Kurt Williamson scowled at the two of them from his desk which was across the room from the other two's desks, "Well if someone's fiancée hadn't given Jilly the rest of the day off then we wouldn't have to worry about doing her portion of the paperwork too."
It was obvious that his comment was directed at Teddy, and the twenty-five year old metamorphmagus scoffed, "Victoire wouldn't have written Jilly a healer's note if she didn't think she needed it."
"Jilly did look a little pale and ill this morning," Hayden added with a worried frown.
"I still can't believe that Auror McKenny let Jilly have the rest of the day off just because Victoire wrote that she needed time to rest because she was having 'womanly problems'," Kurt complained with a pout.
Teddy rolled his eyes again, "She didn't write that Jilly was having 'womanly problems', she wrote that she was suffering from problems caused by her menstrual cycle."
Kurt made a face at the mention of Jilly's menstrual cycle, while Hayden snickered at his colleague's expression, "It's really obvious that you don't have a sister."
"You don't have a sister," Kurt countered snarkily.
"No but I have a lot of female cousins who don't give a damn about manly sensibilities," Hayden retorted.
Kurt then went on to complain that Jilly probably just wanted extra time to get ready for her date with her boyfriend Caleb Cooke that evening, but Teddy and Hayden reminded him that sometimes Jilly only got to see her boyfriend twice a month and he stopped his idle complaining.
Teddy had just gotten to the bottom of his pile of paperwork when a familiar and very welcome face walked into the room.
"Hello Love," Teddy addressed his fiancée Victoire Weasley as she made a beeline over to his desk and leaned towards him to give him a quick peck on the lips.
When they ended their kiss Victoire sent her fiancé's colleagues a rude hand gesture as they had been catcalling the couple as they kissed hello.
"Almost done your paperwork? I want to get to Ally and Xavier's early tonight so that they can stop making fun of us for always being late," Victoire told Teddy with a soft smile.
Teddy put his quill down and stood up from his chair, "I can be done now. The rest can keep for tomorrow."
"That's great," Victoire replied with a big smile, "Why do you have so much paperwork tonight?"
Before Teddy could explain it, Kurt beat him to it.
"Because you gave our partner the afternoon off we now have to split her quarter of the paperwork between us," Kurt replied with a slightly scathing tone.
Victoire rolled her bright blue eyes at him, "Trust me, Jilly was in no condition to come back to work this afternoon."
Worried expressions bloomed across Hayden and Teddy's faces as they heard Victoire's assessment of Jilly's condition.
"Was she feeling that bad?" Teddy asked her worriedly.
"I gave her a prescription that should help her feel better," Victoire said obliquely as she tried to calm their concern but keep her patient's confidentiality a secret.
Hayden sighed tiredly and put down his quill, "Hopefully she's feeling better by now, she and Caleb have their big night tonight."
"Big night?" Victoire repeated with a questioning tone. She was one-hundred percent sure that Jilly hadn't told them about the diagnosis Victoire gave her earlier, so she was wondering what Hayden was referring to when he said 'big night'.
Kurt smirked, "Hayden and I have a bet going on over whether Caleb proses tonight."
Hayden smirked back while Victoire felt her heart-beat start to increase and a new sense of anxiety froze her muscles. She tried to force a real-ish looking smile on her face and somewhat nervously addressed her fiancé, "Do you think Caleb's going to propose to Jilly tonight?"
"Well," Teddy said as he ran his fingers through his hair –a sign that Victoire knew right away meant he was nervous, "Caleb might have contacted me several days ago and asked me my advice on what he should do if he did want to propose to Jilly in the near future-"
Victoire reached her hand out when she heard this, placed it on Teddy's forearm, and then clenched her fingers tightly around his arm, "Yes or no, is he planning to propose?" She really needed a straight answer to help her navigate the whirlwind of thoughts that had started to spin around her mind as soon as the words 'Caleb' and 'proposal' were uttered.
"Yes he is planning on proposing," Teddy replied with a pained face as he glanced down in befuddlement at her tight grasp on his arm and her intense tone.
Thoughts started to whirl even faster around her head, "I assume Caleb asked you if you thought that Jilly would say 'yes' or 'no'?"
"Well it's not exactly a secret that Jilly has a bit of a fear of commitment considering her past relationships," Kurt piped up with an unconcerned shrug as he told Victoire something she had already known.
Before Jilly Donaldson started dated Caleb Cooke, she was in a very unhealthy relationship with a former colleague who ended up being an imposter and a criminal that was the illegitimate son of a wizarding mob boss. The relationship had ended before the shocking revelations about Jilly's ex had come to light, but the relationship had still been awful, and while she was in the relationship it led Jilly to developing an eating disorder that caused her to drop down to a very unhealthy weight, as well as anxiety issues that she was still dealing with seven years later.
Jilly's present boyfriend Caleb Cooke was a handsome, charming, and clever History of Magic professor at Hogwarts who was pretty much the complete opposite personality-wise to her ex. He knew that Jilly had some issues with commitment because of her past relationships, so over the past several years that Jilly had been dating Caleb he had been patient and understanding so that she didn't feel overwhelmed or pressured in their relationship. Under the circumstances that the males were aware of, it was a no brainer to them that Jilly would say 'yes' to Caleb's imminent proposal of marriage since their relationship had been solid for so long. Victoire on the other hand knew something else that could really affect Jilly's decision to accept or decline Caleb's proposal.
If Jilly told Caleb about the pregnancy first and then he proposed to her after hearing her bombshell, she would fall into a well of anxiety thinking that he was only proposing because she told him that she was pregnant.
If Caleb proposed before Jilly could tell him about the baby, she would still be really anxious but she wouldn't be able to question Caleb's motives for proposing.
So Caleb needed to propose before Jilly dropped the bombshell about her pregnancy.
Victoire pulled Teddy's arm, the one that her fingernails were still biting into, and yanked him away from his desk and towards the door of the office, "Do you know where Caleb's going to propose?"
"He said he was going to do it at the restaurant-"
"Do you know what restaurant he's taking her to?"
"Ye-" Teddy was unable to finish the word before Victoire pulled him all the way out of the office. She sent a quick goodbye wave in the direction of Hayden and Kurt's surprised and confused expressions as she took their colleague away from them for the rest of the evening.
Teddy allowed Victoire to pull him through the halls and towards the lifts as he asked, "What are you doing?"
"We need to go to the restaurant Caleb's taking Jilly to."
"Why?" Teddy asked as she pushed the button for the middle lift.
Victoire pulled him through a pair of open elevator doors, "Because we need to ensure that Caleb proposes to Jilly before . . . something else happens."
"I know that you want Jilly and Caleb to be happy, and that getting married will probably make them happy, but it's really none of our business what happens," Teddy told her with a stern look. He loved her more than life itself, but she was a Weasley and she had a habit of putting her nose into other people's business where she didn't belong.
She sighed heavily and finally let go of his arm, "Do you trust me?"
Teddy reached for her left hand, pulled it up to his face, and kissed her knuckles right above her shiny gold engagement ring, "Always."
"Then we need to make a quick stop at Jilly and Caleb's date to make sure that everything is . . . okay, before we go to Ally and Xavier's," She told him stubbornly.
He sighed but knew better than to argue with her at this point, "Okay then."
It didn't take much more convincing to get the name of the very nice and tasty but still casual restaurant that Caleb was taking Jilly to out of Teddy, and it only took them a few minutes to leave the ministry and apparate to the restaurant in a wizarding part of Lancaster.
Teddy had vanished his auror robes off of him when they left the Ministry, and underneath he had on a pair of dark trousers and a thin-stripped dress shirt that was rolled up at his elbows. Victoire was still wearing her navy dress trousers and beige blouse as she had gone to the Auror Department straight from St. Mungo's, so together they were dressed properly for the atmosphere of the restaurant and they wouldn't look out of place as they did their recon mission.
Once inside the restaurant Victoire flirted with the host just slightly and slipped him a few galleons to get them seated quickly and at a table where they could see Jilly and Caleb, but where Jilly and Caleb couldn't really see them. She didn't use her veela charm that she inherited from her mother's side of the family very often, but when she did it was usually so that she could manipulate people in the service industry.
"What's your plan now?" Teddy asked Victoire once they were seated at a table and had ordered some drinks. He came along for the ride but he was going to allow Victoire the reigns for their mission.
Victoire raised a blonde eyebrow at him and then pulled out an extendable ear.
"Where did you get that from?" Teddy asked her in disbelief.
Victoire shrugged and let the extendable ear loose so that the flesh-coloured string could travel over to Jilly and Caleb's table, "You'd be surprised how useful one of these can be in a hospital."
When Victoire got the extendable ear working she started to listen in on the conversation Jilly and Caleb were having. From Victoire's vantage point she could see that Jilly and Caleb had their heads close together which created an air of intimacy around them, and that Jilly had forewent ordering alcohol, not that Caleb seemed to notice the significance of it. Teddy leaned in a little closer so that he could also hear what was coming from the extendable ear, and when he did so Victoire shot him a cheeky raised eyebrow at his action.
From what Victoire could tell, Jilly and Caleb were having a rather benign conversation about their jobs and their days, and it didn't sound as though Caleb was working up to a big proposal yet.
The waitress came by to deliver Teddy's butterbeer and Victoire's pumpkin juice, and she gave the pair an odd look when she saw Victoire suddenly close her hand and set it down as a fist on Teddy's thigh when the waitress walked up to their table. Victoire gave the waitress an overly bright smile to distract from her odd action when she went to hide the extendable ear, and the waitress blinked at the brilliance of her smile before taking their food order and retreating from the table.
With the coast clear, Victoire and Teddy went back to listening to the extendable ear and watching Jilly and Caleb at their table. The conversation had shifted to Caleb asking Jilly about what she did that day, and Jilly suddenly straightened up in her chair and squared her shoulders. Victoire could tell from her new posture that she was building herself up to do something uncomfortable; like telling her boyfriend that she had just found out that she was three months pregnant.
Instead of letting that happen, Victoire needed to give Caleb a chance to propose first. She stood up from her table and strode straight to Jilly and Caleb's table, Teddy jumping off his chair once she was already halfway there and chasing after her before she could do whatever relationship meddling she was about to do.
"Oh hey," Victoire greeted the other couple in a tone of forced cheerful-surprise as she popped up suddenly beside their table, "Fancy running into you here!"
Both Jilly and Caleb seemed understandably shocked to see her and Teddy, who belatedly caught up to Victoire and wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her from nervously jumping up and down, and they were momentarily mute with surprise.
Victoire didn't need them to talk though, she continued to babble on, "I thought that this would be a nice place to go out to tonight-"
Caleb was able to recover enough to shoot Teddy a look, while Teddy mouthed the words 'I'm sorry' at him.
"Teddy didn't originally want to come here," Victoire added as she tried to cover for Teddy so that Caleb didn't get too upset with him for allowing Victoire to crash his proposal dinner, "But he can't say no to me."
Victoire clapped her hands together, "So are we having dinner just because or is there a special occasion?"
"A belated birthday dinner," Caleb replied with a bit of a frown, he then turned back to Jilly, "Although, there is actually something else I'd like to talk about."
Victoire opened her mouth the same time Jilly did, but Teddy squeezed her side and then used his arm around her waist to start pulling her away from the table, muttering something quietly about 'have a good evening' under his breath as he tried to give the other couple their space.
They didn't make it back to their table before they heard Jilly self-consciously say, "I have something I'd like to talk to you about too."
Victoire froze as she heard Caleb say, "Ladies first."
She spun around and she wanted to yell 'no!' at them because Caleb needed to spill his secret first, but before she could get the words out of her mouth Teddy grabbed the back of her head and pushed his mouth against hers in an abrupt kiss. It stopped her from being able to say anything, and he swallowed her attempt to say meddling words with his own mouth and lips.
At the table Caleb saw Teddy pull Victoire into a sudden public display of affection a few feet away from them, but before he could focus enough to say anything about it, Jilly captured his attention again and he found himself gazing back at the woman he loved. He gave her all of his attention.
"What did you want to talk about?" Caleb asked as he reached across the table to hold Jilly's hand.
Jilly took a deep calming breath and squeezed Caleb's hand back, a little harder than necessary, before she found the courage to say the words, "I'm pregnant."
Caleb froze as the words bounced around in his head, and a few metres away Teddy also froze mid kiss as his ears picked up on Jilly's confession.
"I–are you sure?" Caleb asked in a daze.
Jilly bit her lip stressfully and nodded her head, "Yes . . . I actually went to St. Mungo's and had Victoire run a pregnancy spell test on me today."
Teddy pulled his mouth away from Victoire's and sent her an accusatorial look just a second before Caleb's eyes snapped over to Victoire and then back to Jilly.
"Okay . . ." Caleb said with a slow nod, "So . . . we're going to have a baby?"
"Yes," Jilly replied quickly, "Unless–I mean you don't have to if-"
Her nerves and anxiety had officially taken over, however seeing her get flustered and fearful kicked Caleb's concern for her into high-gear and he automatically wanted to make things better for her.
"I love you Jilly," Caleb told her in a strong and sincere tone of voice, "And I want a life and a future with you, so of course I want this baby."
Jilly felt her eyes start to water –definitely because of the stupid pregnancy hormones– and swallowed thickly, "I love you too."
"And I already love this baby," Caleb added with a watery smile of his own, "And we have some time to work everything else out."
They didn't live together, and they both had incredibly busy work schedules, but he was sure that with the new additional encouragement that they'd be able to redefine some of their old relationship boundaries into something new that would work.
"But we have a little less time than you might think," Jilly added with another worried bite of her lip, "I'm already three months pregnant."
Caleb's eyes widened again and his glance shifted to Victoire once more, who had turned to face them so that it was blatantly obvious that she was listening in on their conversation.
"Uh . . ."
"I made an appointment with an obstetric healer that Victoire recommended for tomorrow," Jilly said to make up for his speechlessness.
Caleb nodded and swallowed thickly, his Adam's apple bobbing as he did so, "Yes, of course . . . I guess I'll need to owl McGonagall and tell her that I need some time off tomorrow."
Jilly smiled brightly for the first time that evening. He had unknowingly said the exact right thing. He was willing to make a change to his routine to be at her healing appointment with her, and even though it is what she knew she would get from him all along, it was still something she had been anxious about.
Victoire watched the couple smile softly at each other. They still seemed a tad bewildered, rightly, by the big life change they were now in the process of, but the way that they looked at each other told Victoire that they'd be alright.
That didn't mean that she didn't want to meddle though.
She tried to inch closer to the table so that she could hear more of their conversation, but Teddy snapped into action and physically moved her back to their table.
"Leave them be, this should be time for them," He whispered into her hair as he gently but firmly pushed her back into her chair.
The minute she was sitting down her feet started to tap on the floor, which was her own tell that she was anxious about something. Knowing that she was too keyed up to sit through dinner –their meals had yet to arrive as they had arrived at the restaurant a while after Jilly and Caleb did– Teddy flagged down the waitress and asked her to change their order to take-away.
The waitress came back a few moments later with their meals boxed up and Teddy grabbed his fiancée's hand, "Now that we're done meddling we should probably get to Ally and Xavier's."
Victoire nodded her head and they left the restaurant, Teddy holding her hand with his right and carrying their take-away with her left.
"Healer-patient confidentiality?" Teddy asked Victoire was a raised eyebrow as they began to walk down the street so that they could reach a good apparation point.
She nodded her head slowly, "Yeah."
"Okay, that I get . . . what I'm still having trouble understanding is why we needed to go on this mission to eavesdrop on their date. At first I thought it was because you wanted to hear Caleb's proposal, but now I'm thinking you knew that Jilly was going to tell him about the baby tonight."
Victoire took a deep breath before explaining, "When you and the guys hinted that Caleb was going to propose tonight I just knew that he needed to do it before Jilly told him about the baby. If he did it after that news she was going to get anxious and self-conscious and think-"
"That he was just proposing because she said she was pregnant?" Teddy finished now that he realized where her thought process had been.
"Exactly. And who knows he still might–I should-" She moved to turn back around towards the restaurant but Teddy's firm hold on her hand stopped her.
He pulled her body close to his as they continued to walk away from the restaurant and away from temptation, "At this point you really need to leave this and their relationship up to them."
"But-"
"I know that you care about them," He continued in an affection tone of voice, "And I know that you only want to meddle because you want what is best for them, but right now what is best for them is to allow them to make decisions on their own, and to take responsibility and deal with the repercussions and of those decisions."
She frowned. It was rather annoying when he was so glaringly right about something they disagreed on, "But don't you want things to go as smoothly for Jilly and Caleb as possible? For things to be easier for them?"
He let out a sigh, "Sometimes the easiest path isn't always the best path."
His wise words caused her to frown at him again, "It's maddening when you're right."
"I know."
"And I hate it when I'm wrong."
"I know."
"Can we put it in our wedding vows that you're no longer allowed to be right even when I'm wrong?"
"Do you think that would lead to a healthy marriage?"
"I think it would lead to a happy marriage," Victoire replied.
Teddy raised an eyebrow at her, "For like three days."
"Were you intending for it to last longer?" She retorted with a cheeky smirk.
He rolled his eyes at her but then an adoring expression slipped onto his handsome face, "I was thinking more along the lines of forever . . . but we can start with 'til death do us part."
"That's a rather morbid start to our married lives together don't you think?"
"You said the same thing about my proposal to you."
She nodded her head, "Fair point, and I ended up agreeing to that too, eventually, didn't I?"
Teddy ran his thumb along her engagement ring, "That was my understanding of how the conversation occurred . . . and why we've spent a good chunk of the past year preparing for a wedding we're going to have in less than three months."
"Just over ten weeks," Victoire shot back with a smile and a light blush on her cheeks.
He kissed the top of her hair and whispered, "Seventy-four days."
A chill of desire ran up her spine, and just as they made it to the apparation point Victoire pivoted to face her fiancé. She looked up at Teddy with an expression that was suddenly very serious.
She locked her ocean blue eyes with sapphire blue ones and whispered to him in a tone that held a surprising amount of vulnerability, "I want a baby."
He leaned forward, she closed her eyes, and he pressed a kiss to the bridge of her freckled nose, "Soon Love, very soon."
A/N: Okay everyone PLEASE share your thoughts and let me know what you think of this first chapter!
Welcome back to everyone who is familiar with my stories I can assure you that we will finally address some of the things you've been waiting forever to finally see :)
For those of you who are new to my stories, this is now the fourth one in a Next Gen series focusing in Victoire and Teddy, although my stories do also have lots of other characters from Next Gen and my own OCs. I do recommend that you go back and read the other stories in this series, but if you don't want to I will try my best to sort of recap/describe characters and situations that were introduced in previous stories. The events of The Cursed Child does not occur in my series, and other aspects will seem very much non-canon, but I started writing these stories back before we even knew what cannon really was, so there may be some inconsistencies with what you know about the Harry Potter world (Yes I know that Ally isn't cannon, no I'm not going to get rid of her because that would break Xavier's heart).
This is now my wizarding world, so I hope that you enjoy the ride.
Next Update: I posted this new story because I wanted everyone to have the chance to get a bit of an idea of what this new story will focus on, but I don't have much more than this first chapter finished, and I'd like to get a lot more chapters written before I start trying to pin down a schedule, so there probably won't be an update to this story for at least a month. Hopefully by then I'll have an idea of how long it's going to take me to write these chapters.
Therefore you should add this story to your story alert, or me on your author alert so that you'll know when I do update.
Next Chapter: Vic and Teddy finally make it to Ally and Xavier's to work on wedding invitations, and we get to hear about how some of our other characters have been faring since the last time we saw them.
I hope that you enjoyed this chapter,
Please add this story to your story alerts,
Please leave me a review or PM with your thoughts on this chapter,
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns,
Until next time, DFTBA!