Title: Eighteen Hours

Summary: Victoire begrudgingly attends a six person masquerade ball.

Character: Victoire Weasley

LoC: Hard

Prompt: Your character attends a masquerade and makes a drunken confession

Word Count: 1,297

A/N - Written for simplypotterheads's fic endurance challenge.

They had been trapped in the supply closet for five hours already.

Victoire was so beyond ready for someone to come and save them. When she had first taken this job she had been thrilled, but she had had no idea how irritating the faceless summer interns would be. Not literally faceless of course, but you never knew in the magical world. They were just a large group of painfully drab, might-as-well-be-clones, just-in-it-for-the-summer-job, little boys.

This was a serious job for her, and speaking completely honestly and with no bias whatsoever, she was made for this job. She planned events. Mostly she worked for the ministry, sometimes charities or corporations. Right now they were supposed to be planning a masquerade ball for a charity. The Orange Ribbon Society, which was searching for a cure to spattergroit. This would be much easier if she didn't have to babysit some snobby little kids who were just using it for a summer job, that they he hadn't even obtained by their own merit.

"Should we try yelling again?" one of them sighed from across the supply closet. For the first two hours they had been content to sit around with the perfect excuse to not do any work. Now they appeared to be bored of their little circle jerk in the corner.

If Teddy had been in town this never would have been a problem. He always picked her up from work (which should have ended three hours ago if not for Intern 7 kicking the door closed then leaving for the day). It would be very sweet of Teddy to pick her up if he didn't take so much enjoyment in showing up as a completely different guy every day. The interns were starting to bother her about it. She wouldn't have cared what they thought of course had they had the decency to gossip behind her back like any normal person.

Six hours gone.

"I'm sure they're looking everywhere for us. My mom will have noticed we're missing by now, so everyone should be looking. If they value their jobs that is," Intern 3 finished smugly.

They had found an old radio in a box and had put every noise amplification spell on it that they knew so they wouldn't have to keep yelling for help. Too bad they couldn't just magic their way out of the room. It was standard practice to make the storage rooms impervious to unlocking spells after all.

"That's it!" Victoire stated, standing up. "Grab those boxes of fabric from the top shelf. If we're stuck in here anyway, we're at least getting something done," she informed them, hands on her hips.

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," Intern 1 scoffed.

Victoire narrowed her eyes momentarily then smirked. The group all jumped to their seat as Victoire "turned on the old Veela charm" as Uncle Ron would say. Before any of them knew what was happening they had scrambled up the shelves and were pulling down boxes.

"Wonderful!" she said as the boys blinked, trying to figure out what had just happened. They had come to the storage room to see what decorations were already available for the masquerade before going to buy anything new. "There should be some masks already in these boxes as well," Victoire said, gesturing towards the boxes next to her, halfway down the shelves. She heaved one off the shelf and pulled it open.

On top of all the other masks was an intricate rabbit one. Black plastic twirled around itself to form a small mask and then went up into long ears. Victoire picked it up and put it on, seeing whether they were wearable, as she stared thoughtfully at the different boxes of fabric. "Pull the fabric out and hang it on the shelves, I want to see which colours we have," she told the boys as she peeked into more boxes, trying to pull out all the mask boxes.

They frowned and groaned but eventually got to work as Victoire ignored them. Luckily they still seemed to be just a little bit dazed. They came to in a room that suddenly looked much more cramped than it had ten minutes ago thanks to the fabric draped over the shelves. Luckily the room was rather large. They immediately sat back down as Victoire thought out loud to herself. "So the room has red carpet… grey walls… but we want it to have a happy atmosphere so what goes with red…"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the boys start to dig through one of the boxes of masks. "Hey!" Intern 2 yelled as threw the masks out of the box wildly.

"Careful with those!" Victoire snapped.

He just rolled his eyes, "There's alcohol in here!"

"What?" Intern 4 exclaimed, suddenly looking much more attentive than he had all summer.

"Thank god. We can finally make this bearable," Intern 1 added dramatically, unscrewing the top and taking a large mouthful.

"What are they gonna do, fire us?" Intern 3 laughed, joining in. "My mom owns the company!"

Victoire glared, trying to continue ignoring them. "Hmm, it's between these three," Victoire said mostly to herself. "Pack away the other ones," she ordered the boys.

"Damn Ms. Weasley, you need to loosen up!" Intern 1 said, walking up to her and shoving a bottle of firewhiskey into her hand. She just glared in response, but once the boys were too busy cleaning up to notice her she took a large swig. Why hadn't anyone found them yet?

Seven hours and counting.

Victoire had settled back down onto the floor and was intently ignoring the fabric draped over one side of the room. If she looked at it any longer she wouldn't ever be able to see it again without wanting to curse something.

The boys were completely gone; they had put masks on and were singing at the top of their lungs to whatever song had come on the radio. Victoire had long stopped caring if they noticed her drinking and was well on her way to joining them. It was a good song after all. She started to sing under her breath. Not too loudly, she still needed to be able to order them around come Monday.

Eight hours down.

Victoire finished singing, loudly and perfectly on key of course, to that song on the radio that her mother hated. Celestina whatever. The one Grandma Weasley always played to annoy her. Three of the boys were passed out, another had just finished singing along with her. Intern 3, the other conscious one, was staring at her with heavy lidded eyes.

"Y'know, you are… smoking. Lemme take you out."

Victoire snorted.

"What!? You're with different guys like, every day. And you are the most gorgeous person I've ever seen! Let's go out!"

"Not the most gorgeous person I've ever seen."

He pfft'd, "There can't be anyone prettier than you!"

Victoire vaguely wondered whether she had turned the Veela charm on again. Or maybe he was just that drunk. She replied anyway though.

"Yep," (with a pop). Her eyes went glassy, "my boyfriend. He's gorgeous." She suddenly stared intently at nameless intern 3. "If he ever finds out that he's prettier than me I'll never live it down. You are sworn to secrecy." He gulped and nodded. Next to him nameless intern 4 fell asleep, his head hitting the corner of a box as it dropped down. Victoire fell asleep next, only waking when they were found the next morning. Intern 3 did not sleep, instead he stayed up and worried about the frightening seriousness with which Victoire had sworn him to secrecy and vowed to never see her or her boyfriend socially lest something slip out.

A/N - So it's sort of a masquerade, right? I was writing it as a normal masquerade but it wasn't turning out that well, then I was texting my friend different types of AU's and it just seemed like it would work better like this. :P Also I'd just like to point out that almost all the characteristics of a masquerade ball are accounted for! Music, masks, decorations… people! Um… Alcohol!

After I moved it to the supply closet it was Victoire and Scorpius for a while because he's one of the only male next-gen characters that Victoire isn't related to, but he came out as way snobbier than I picture him so I switched it.

So last comment is that I have bad luck picking characters! Lol, I feel like this maybe would've been easier to write with a character that had more of an established personality. I picture Victoire as sort of like her mother but maybe more serious than her mother was as a teenager? Definitely not like the only representation of her I've seen in fic where she was like the snobbiest person to ever live.