title: here's to your post-script, your final act
summary: He's a result, she's a memorial; the war is over but they fight their own battles. – Teddy/Victoire
He remembers her as a toddler; a small, odd little thing sitting on Uncle Harry's lap, reaching a tiny hand out towards him. Teddy stands close, puts his face next to hers, watches her wrap her small fingers around a lock of his hair (which is a dark shade of green, for some reason) and tug.
He yells. Her mother gasps, while Harry just laughs and hands the girl to Auntie Hermione, saying something about Weasley women and their spirit.
"It's alright, Teddy, you don't have to like her right away."
The little girl just giggles, lolls her head on Hermione's shoulder and blows a spit bubble in his direction. Teddy rubs his head ruefully, glaring down at her while the adults chatter on and on.
"I don't like you at all," he says to her then and there. "I really don't."
Her name means victory, she tells him, ten years old with her hands on her hips and her hair falling over her eyes. Not Victoria, Victoire.
"It's French," she spits, the very image of her mother, bright blue eyes and sunshiny golden hair. But Teddy knows better than to judge her by that, because she spent way too much time with Aunt Ginny growing up and knows too many ways to hex boys who get close for someone who hasn't even received her Hogwarts letter or wand yet. "Victoria's stupid, it's like an old lady. I'm Victoire."
The rest of her cousins are scattered throughout the garden, scouring the grass for stray gnomes. He snorts, twirls his wand between his fingers, watching sparks fly in a graceful arc before her envious eyes. "Whatever you say, Victoria."
"Victoire! Why are you so stupid?"
"Why are you so stupid?"
She narrows her eyes at him, sticks her tongue out. "I'm named after the war, you uncultured swine! You know, the one our parents fought in? Victory! Victoire!"
And he thinks he kinda hates her then, standing there so proud, with her beautiful mother and her battle-scarred father, who are sitting only a few feet away instead of six feet in the ground. He hates the cake that her grandmother is going to bring out a in a bit, he hates that they're going to blow out candles and celebrate another year gone by. He hates the way she wears her name and date as a badge of honor instead of the obelisk it should be.
(He once asked Harry why he no longer goes to speak at Hogwarts on this day, if that day no longer matters, if everyone would rather just forget.
His godfather did not answer for a long time. Until he said, "No. No one's trying to forget. We'd just rather remember in different ways.")
Now it's Teddy's turn to spit out the words, enjoying the way they taste around his mouth. "It wasn't a Victoire for everyone, you know."
Her face falls, and for a second, he almost feels guilty. But that feeling disappears the moment she turns away, and he's back to hating her and all her sunshine again.
When she kisses him for the first time, she is thirteen and he is fifteen and they're in some Hogsmeade alley he's never been down before. But it doesn't matter, because her lips are warm and only slightly chapped and her fingers are tangled in his hair.
They break away for a moment only to breathe, and she bites her lip to stifle the grin that threatens to spread across her face. "I like your hair like that."
"What?" Teddy looks up for a moment. "Blue?"
"Yeah. It suits you." She brushes some snow off the top of his head, giggles as it falls onto the shoulders of his coat. "You should keep it like that more often. Make it your default colour."
"Harry told me my mum liked pink."
"What, like hot pink?"
"No, bubble-gum."
"Oh."
They stand there in awkward silence for a minute more. His heart is still pounding as voices from the main road drift towards them, students enjoying a holiday from exams, local witches and wizards doing their daily shopping. But Victoire is staring at him, her head tilted slightly and her eyes full of some emotion he can't quite describe.
He swallows tightly for a moment (she kissed me)."Are you all right?"
"I wish I could have met your mum. She sounds like she'd be cool."
"Oh."
There is that silence again, only broken when he leans down to kiss her this time, if only to stop himself from saying that he wishes he could have met his mum too.
Bill tells Harry during the World Cup finals that if he catches Teddy Lupin snogging his daughter somewhere in a dark corner one more time he will castrate first and ask questions later.
Harry goes home laughing so hard that Ginny asks him if James has slipped something into his butterbeer again and should the boy be grounded or not.
Teddy Lupin continues to snog Bill Weasley's daughter in dark corners. Victoire smiles against his lips and tells him that he'd better learn to sing.
"You'll be fine."
"No, I won't."
"Come on, you know Uncle George only got, like, three O.W.L.'s and he did just fine."
"It doesn't matter, you know. Dad was Head Boy, and Maman's been perfect her entire life, and – oh! I can't do this!"
"You need to take a break, c'mon."
"Don't you have your own N.E.W.T.'s to study for? And why aren't you in your own common room, if a prefect catches you –"
"You worry too much, Victoire. If you don't watch out, your hair's gonna turn all white and fall out."
"Va te faire foutre, Teddy."
"Yikes, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"Do you?"
The paperweight he'd been Charming to fly across the room hits the carpet with a dull thud.
"..."
"I'm so sorry, Teddy, please…"
"I'm going to bed."
"It slipped out, I'm sorry, I'm really tired, I'm so, so sorry."
"It's fine, I'm just gonna head to my dormitory."
"Teddy –"
"It's all right. Good night."
Her Maman was a Triwizard champion and Daddy was a war hero.
"With a lineage like that," she tells him one late Christmas afternoon. "I wonder how I grew up to be such a coward."
They sit on opposite ends of the sofa in the Burrow, watching Rose and Albus draping popcorn and cranberry garlands on the tree. She has drawn her knees together, ankles crossed, hands folded neatly in her lap like the lady her mother raised her to be.
He doesn't know what to say to that, really. What do you say to that? Teddy glances over at her - she's balancing baby Louis on her knee and staring at the angel at the top of the tree (which Teddy is pretty sure is just a gnome that Fred and Roxanne Stunned and then stuffed into a tutu). She hasn't spoken to him for a good quarter of the hour.
Finally, he says, "You're not a coward."
Sometimes he thinks it's unfair, really, it is. He's heard the whispers that follow Victoire in the halls of Hogwarts glared at boys who stare at her and remark how they might want to try something part-veela. He knows James revels in being the "son of the Boy-Who-Lived", but Roxanne just wants to keep her nose down and get good marks. And does Fred see the way his father flinches, every single time someone says his name, and who decided this was a good idea, to make memorials out of children?
A long time ago, Teddy was afraid of people forgetting, but now he wishes it was something he could put behind him. Now he wishes he didn't have to hear Fleur and Bill whispering in the kitchen about what a "troubled young man he might be turning into" and how they "weesh zat Remus and Tonks could be 'ere".
Their war medals sparkle so brightly on the shelves of Shell Cottage. They stare down at Victoire every single day she's home. They rattle in the back of her mind for every failed grade, every letter sent home. They sneer at her the same way the boys who play with her hair do when she pushes them away. They scream at her when she whispers into Louis's soft baby hair that she has no idea what she's supposed to be doing, Victoire and all her sunshine and no war to win.
So no. He tells her that she's the bravest person he knows.
"You know, if I marry you, I'll really become a Weasley and part of the family then."
"No, I'd be a Lupin, and you're part of the family, don't be stupid."
"I guess. Hey, Victoria-"
"Victoire, you spectacularly ignorant rosbif."
"Alright, Victory - hey, do you ever think maybe you want your own name?"
"What do you mean?"
"Something not so heavy, I guess. Something lighter."
"I guess. Maybe. But."
She sighs and leans her head on his shoulder, the sweet end-of-summer smell of her hair slowly fogging his brain, and he closes his eyes against the weight of sleep and everything else expected of them.
But, he thinks, in a moment of resignation and maybe acceptance too long in coming, there are worse things to carry.
After he tells James to bugger off and watches the younger boy run away(presumably to tell Hugo and Rose and Albus and anyone else he can find) he turns back to see her laughing so hard tears are streaming down her cheeks.
"Did you - did you see – his face?" She chokes, fanning her face with her hand. "He looked like – like…"
"Pretty shocked, yeah," Teddy grins back, running a hand through his hair. "Probably told half of the platform by now, too. He could work for Rita Skeeter, at this rate."
"Oh, the price of fame is so very, very high," she rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at him like she's seven years younger. "If you didn't like being talked about so much, you could find a way around it."
"Yeah, but it's so much of a hassle." He settles into the seat next to her, crossing one leg over his knee and grinning back at her. "Besides, getting caught's half the fun."
Victoire laughs at that and turns in her seat so that her head lies on his thigh, staring up at him with those bright blue eyes that see so much more than people would think. She reaches a hand up, traces the line of his jaw with her finger, brushes up against his lips as though memorizing his face just by touch.
Finally she reaches for a lock of his hair, bright blue like cotton candy now, and gives it a gentle tug, the tiniest smile gracing her lips. And he thinks he hates her a little bit and he loves her a little bit, because he is a result and she is a memorial and they are just learning to navigate this world that kids like them built with shaky hands.
He leans down to kiss her, thinking that this is probably what his parents won the war for, wondering if they, too, were content to die with the taste of victory on their lips.
fin
Originally written for a fluff war with a friend that slowly turned into something kinda angsty about kids after the war. I don't really know.
Sometimes I just feel really bad for the Next Gen.
Thank you for reading!
Mischief Managed!
-Leila