chapter prompt: first kiss, teddyvictoire

notes: this collection is dedicated to the 'Connect the Weasleys' challenge, in which I am aiming to explode every possible Weasley relationship in the next gen. Can you say challenge?

The title is taken from Fall Out Boy's Young Volcanoes, and this chapter is dedicated to Teddy and Victoire, and is left purposely "open". I hope you enjoy!

"Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down, yeah; we couldn't destroy a single one. And history books forget and the bible didn't mention us, not even once." - Regina Spektor, Samson.

Victoire strokes his hair - black now, no longer covering his eyes. It had been longer, but - well. His forehead is hot, hotter than it should be, but she can't bring herself to take his temperature again. She knows it will be too high.

His hair used to be longer.

"Sweetheart, stop moving," she whispers gently against his cheek as his chest heaves with the effort to sit up. "It's not worth it."

"Worth it," Teddy growls, voice thick and eyes red. He looks... pitiful. Lonely and cold and no longer well enough to stand. "It should be more than worth-"

He breaks off, coughing into his tissue. Victoire sucks in a breath, long and heavy, and she thinks that if she squints enough she can see the muscles moving round the bones of his ribcage, the skin is so thin. The tendons move in tandem and squeak like rusty doors.

Victoire wishes she could help him. A whole medical degree - for what, exactly? She can't even make him comfortable.

Sure, she can plump his pillows and fetch him soup but for god's sake, her mother can do that. Six years and a bit of wand waving and she can't even save him.

Suddenly, fingers curl themselves round hers. They attempt to sew stitches where her heart has torn and seal them with kisses, but love, scars last forever. As does heartbreak. Victoire caresses his cheek and feels him biting down on his tongue, biting back everything he won't say, not to her.

She knows he isn't perfect.

She knows he isn't faithful and maybe he doesn't love her as much as he should, and maybe he doesn't miss his parents because his mother was flighty and his father was a werewolf and they weren't really in love at all.

(He learnt lying from his father.)

And in return, he knows "nights with the girls" are more literal than she first implies.

"I wanted to love you more," Teddy whispered once, when it was late at night and he crawled into her bed, high on pain medication. That was when he could still move. The scissors shined a dull yellow in the candlelight as Victoire cut his hair, blue locks fading to black as they fell.

"As long as you loved me," Victoire said. And that was that.

But for now, their fingertips sing lullabies and cry out profanities as they link. Teddy's eyes shine with old light, light from memories and childhood and dying young.

Victoire wishes she was young.

The family come and go, these last few days, and sink into the chair set up at Teddy's bedside. It creaks in protest with every guest, as does Teddy, because he is just like the upholstery - tired and faded and falling apart with the weight of every broken heart this broken family carries with them on their shoulders.

Harry is the saddest. He doesn't cry like Victoire's aunts or scream curses like her cousins, but he is silent.

He holds his hands together in his lap, his back straight as his eyes focus on the furthest wall. He only perches on the seat, barely leaving an indent. But Uncle Harry is too thin nowadays; Aunt Ginny says it's stress. Aunt Ginny is wrong.

Teddy blinks up at him, eyes shining almost-gold in the lamplight. A silent conversation passes between them but Victoire can't quite pick out the words, can't quite understand-

(It say, do you remember your first kiss, Ted?

Of course, I do Harry, it's not exactly something you forget-

No, I meant your first kiss with Victoire.

I- No, no I don't.

Okay. Okay, Teddy.

It is a conversation they have had before; that's why it passes so easily, like ink leaking off a parchment. They have the lines memorized down to the punctuation marks and where they blink their eyelids. Their answers never change.)

Of course, Victoire remembers their first kiss.

She was a fifth year, Teddy a seventh, and he was screaming down the Gryffindor common room - trying to let free whatever disaster lurked in his head. Sometimes the words sounded like werewolf and lying and why the fuck did he pretend then and if he was so fucking broken, why did he have to break her too?

Sometimes they just sounded like mother.

So Victoire did what she did best and tried to make him forget - his hair was Weasley red and his eyes were amber (like his father's) and his lips were the colour of the sunset. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him until that disaster was sending sparks through her chest.

Maybe she couldn't take away his pain, but she could lift some of the weight off his shoulders.

And that's all they are, it's all they'd ever been. It is Teddy and his fucked-up life and a mind that moves too quickly, and Victoire, too infatuated to do anything but try and fix him.

When Teddy heard the news, he didn't come out of their bedroom for three days. He didn't cry. He just sat, staring at his hands and ignoring any offers of food. "Going to die anyway," he whispered on the third day. "Might as well make it quick."

That was, of course, when she forced him to swallow a bread roll and she swallowed every last drop of poison dripping from his lips.

The poison sounded like cancer.

Teddy builds up walls to keep her out, and instead of knocking them down, Victoire creates columns to keep them up.

"I can help you," she promises, once the family have gone, Harry herding them out and casting Silencing spells around Teddy's bed. "Please, please let me help you."

He looks up at her, all solemn eyes and downturned mouth - his skin is paler than usual, stretched taut around the shadows under his eyes and the heaviness in his smile. He looks broken, like a fucking walking corpse. Who is he to die on her?

"How, Vic?"

She has done everything for him, gives him her time and her heart and here he is, promising last kisses and funeral processions and making her a goddamned fucking widow.

So she stands up abruptly, causing the chair to collapse and fall, shattered. She is seething. "What the fuck do you expect me to do without you, Ted? I bloody trusted you and now you're fucking dying. It isn't fair! And I don't even get to help you?" She chokes out a laugh, breathless and teary-eyed and so fed up with the world. "And you don't even love me."

"Of course I love-"

"You like me. You tolerate me. You enjoy spending time with me and fucking me and making me breakfast in the morning. But that's not love. You - you wouldn't die for me. Not if you had the choice. You wouldn't stay with me," Victoire says, running her fingers through her hair and pulling out strands, making them land on the bed next to frail fingers and a collapsing heart.

There is silence.

They won't be renowned in history books or bibles; Teddy will be Harry Potter's dead godson, nothing more. Victoire is just his niece.

But they don't mind, not really.

Of course, the world thinks that Harry will have the perfect life - the perfect, living family with smiles and laughter and no fucking hospital beds. As usual, the world is wrong. Old light shines from the stars and Victoire feels so, so old.

So she presses her lips to Teddy's cool mouth - as brief and fleeting as the life he will leave behind - and leaves the room, wiping tears that threaten to fall. Teddy watches her go.

It is their last kiss.