Broken Frames - Victoire/Fred
Set in September 2012.
Uncle Fred had always been her favourite. Not because she felt that they were alike in any way – they were most definitely not – or because she'd been riveted to the stories they'd all been subjected to – stories about bravery and heroes; stories where the Gryffindors always came out on top. It had a lot to do with the day that he'd died; her birthday.
It was probably pretty morbid, actually, to think like that. Well, she didn't care. Her birthdays had always had an undertone of despair to them – so many had died, people were still mourning. Even fourteen years later. Her family had tried, of course, to make her birthday about her rather than those that were no longer with them, but they'd all lost someone. The main appeal to her Uncle Fred, she supposed, was that he'd died laughing. On her birthday.
She talked to him sometimes. Well, she talked to an old picture that she'd found underneath a wonky floorboard in Uncle Fred and Uncle George's old bedroom in the Burrow. It was the only one she'd ever seen with just one of the twins, but she couldn't really tell them apart. She'd shown her Uncle George as soon as she'd found it. She'd thought it was him, but the sad smile on his face told her otherwise. He'd agreed to let her keep it as soon as she'd asked – he had plenty, he'd told her.
The frame had been replaced several times over the years. When she first started Hogwarts she hadn't thought to wrap it up before shoving it into her trunk and the glass had shattered, coating the contents of her trunk in dangerous shards; that mistake had resulted in a trip to the hospital wing, and one of the older students had bought her a new frame on the first Hogsmeade weekend because she'd cried. She'd never found out who it was, though.
Part way through her first year she'd taken to carrying it around in her bag. She hadn't made any friends since starting school – she hadn't really tried, because Teddy had said that he would be her friend until she got some of her own and she didn't want that to end. When he'd realised what she was doing he'd said he couldn't be her friend any more. But Uncle Fred hadn't ever left her. He was always laughing and smiling and waving at her. And she knew it was just her because she'd left him on her bedside table once and when she'd gone back into her dorm room she'd caught him making rude gestures at some of the other girls in her year – though she'd only found out that they were rude later when she'd repeated them in front of her mother and been sent to bed without any dinner. Her dad had thought it was hilarious. He'd brought her dinner up later.
But once – when he was in her bag – she'd tripped and fallen, everything breakable in her bag doing just that – ink bottles; quills; sweets; Uncle Fred. She'd immediately gone to write a letter to her Uncle George, tears staining the parchment. She wasn't so bothered about the frame – it was easily replaceable, after all – but there was a small tear in the corner of the photograph and she couldn't believe that she'd done that to her Uncle Fred. She didn't stop crying for three days. And then she'd gotten a reply from her Uncle, telling her to take the photo to a teacher or an older student – telling her that they could fix it – and he'd even given her a new frame.
She'd tried to be more careful after that – always ensuring that she knew where Uncle Fred was; that he wasn't anywhere he could get easily broken – but in the end it hadn't really mattered. She'd been sleeping with him on the bed next to her – she'd been having awful nightmares the first summer back from Hogwarts, and she missed being young enough that it was okay to crawl into her parents' bed. Her sister had come in to wake her up – she couldn't remember why, anymore, but it was probably another family gathering – and the first thing she'd seen had been Uncle Fred.
She'd grabbed the photo and laughed, standing on the bed and holding it high above her head – and wasn't it unfair that there was only a year between them and her sister had already been taller than her. And she wasn't even short! But that one year didn't help her in retrieving the photo; instead her sister had started jumping and laughing harder and when Victoire had tackled her she'd dropped the photo and it had gone flying across the room to land with a sickening crack against the opposite wall.
Dom had frozen for half a second – long enough for her to comprehend what had happened – and then run out of the room, not having expected her older sister to start openly sobbing. Her parents had come in soon after her exit, both looking panicked and – presumably – looking for the injury she had sustained to cause such a reaction.
Her dad had figured it out first, spotting the frame lying face down across the room. He'd fixed the photo – another minor tear – but he'd told her that they would need to get a new frame – they wouldn't be able to find all the pieces of glass, he had explained, and he hadn't wanted to use a spell to find them because that would mean fragments of glass flying through the air; and she knew all this, it wasn't the first time that Uncle Fred's frame had been broken. Her dad had taken her to buy a new frame later that day; she got to choose it herself, and pay the lady at the counter with her own pocket money – her dad had said he would pay, but she'd wanted to buy Uncle Fred a new frame herself; it was the best apology she could give him.
After that, she'd taken to wrapping him in the best muggle invention she had ever seen – bubble wrap. The best thing about it was that it kept her Uncle Fred safe, but it was also fun to pop – though she couldn't pop Uncle Fred's bubble wrap because that was his and he needed it.
She stood on the platform, ready to start her second year at Hogwarts, and said good-bye to her parents. Uncle Fred was in her bag, safely covered in his bubble wrap, and she was going to take much better care of him this year.