Sad Days, Glad Days
A/N: Written for the Random Characters challenge on HPFC. I got Fred and Victoire, with my choice of which Fred. I picked next-gen Fred. In this oneshot, Fred is a year younger than Victoire.
About my chapter fics, I am extremely busy with school and a marching band competition coming up. So I am finishing up my oneshot challenges before I turn my attention again to my chaptered fics. Don't lose hope- the new chapter of Golden Crescendo is coming in a matter of weeks, I promise!
Fred and Victoire were good friends.
But they couldn't understand why their parents were so sad on Victoire's birthday.
Fred's parents would wake up and not say a single word to him the entire day. Instead, they would walk around the house like ghosts, with weary, haunted expressions on their faces.
Victoire's parents would wake up and not say a single word to her the entire day. Instead they would sit and stare at old photographs and cry. They never gave her her presents on her actual birthday, but the day after.
They didn't really know why, but they thought it had something to do with Uncle Fred, who Fred had been named for. He had died on Victoire's birthday years ago, a year before she was born. And so had Teddy's mum and dad.
Victoire would have had an exceedingly lonely birthday if it weren't for Fred, who was a year younger than her. They went outside and played far away from the dark houses and weeping adults.
Fred was always really scared on that day- his dad's twin was the one who had died, and the empty look in his dad's eyes on that day frightened him like nothing else.
So Victoire, since she was older, felt it was her duty to keep him busy on that day. She didn't mind, even though most little girls would have resented their brithdays being a day of extreme mourning and pain. She liked coming up with new games for her and Fred to play. Sometimes, they went over to their Auntie Luna's house, where she fed them exotic pastries and told them fantastical stories of wildly colored animals. Even when they had kids of their own, they still half-believed in the mystical creatures Luna Scamander (she had gotten married around the time they were leaving Hogwarts) told stories of.
It was a sad day, but they never really felt it. They hadn't been alive when it happened. And once the younger ones came along, Fred and Victoire entertained and occupied them on this worldwide day of grief.
That's what family was for, after all.