Zero
"Zero can't be negative or positive. It's just a placeholder, and it's absolutely nothing."
It's this one line of lecture that day in Arithmancy that I can't seem to rid from my mind as I stand, dripping wet, outside of Ted's abandoned house. Zero.
"Poor zero," one of the more compassionate students shouted out.
"No. Zero doesn't have feelings. It's nothing, remember? Nothing at all." It was I who'd said that, all those years ago. It was I who'd been so thoughtless, so callous.
Zero has feelings. Zero is more than just nothing. I hadn't understood, at the time. Of course I hadn't; I'd never been zero, had I? Beautiful, accomplished, famous, talented, smart…I was no zero.
Now? Now something's changed. Back then, I was a fourth year, coming into my own and exploring what being an older-classman felt like. Hearing horror stories about next year, and daydreaming with Si at my side to yell at me for wasting my time.
She was right, in the end. I'd come back to my dorm glowing that late April night. "You were wrong," I told her. "You were wrong. I didn't waste my time."
"What?" She'd been astonished, I remember, but not for the reasons I'd though at the time.
"He's asked me to be his girlfriend."
I was no zero. And yet now he's gone, on his stupid World Tour with his stupid older friends. I was a fifth year when he left! What right had he to desert me?
But he was a normal person. He didn't believe I'd still love him.
"Fuck him," I murmur under my breath. I'm no dramatic heroine, yelling profanities at his apartment and cursing him for never writing, never thinking of me. I'm cursed to murmur things my proper maman would die before saying, nothing important. I'm the margin in a book where real heroes have inscribed their names. I'm the zero.
What right do I have to hold on to him?
I'm just a placeholder; I can't be negative or positive. I can't be anything.
Zero is absolutely nothing.
A/N: Whoa, sorry for the angst overload. This is Victoire. If you read the first chapter of Pieces of Life, you know that Ted left Victoire – for seven years, to be exact. This is a bit more to do with that. Again, Si is Charlie's only daughter, Tori's age and best friend. (See: "Common Room" in PoL for more info.)