Broken Promises
You don't know why it bothers you so much but it does. There's not much you understand. Like how you could love someone who hurt you or how you pray that owl has a letter signed with the name you won't let yourself say…you'll never understand.
Basically this is just a sad Victoire and Teddy one-shot because I'm so upset that their scene wasn't even one of the deleted scenes on the DVD. If I owned any rights Teddy would've been mentioned more than briefly in the movies (I bet some people didn't even catch that little side comment) and the epilogue would've been closer to the book. I wrote this over the summer based and haven't really touched it much since. I tried to re-read it before uploading it but I'm sure there are mistakes I've missed. This is just the beginning of my Teddy/Victoire uploads. I hope you enjoy this even though it's a bit sad.
You're sitting in your room very aware of the fact you are breaking a promise-hyper aware of it in fact you are so aware of it that you can barely breathe. It's his birthday and you promised to be there. But you aren't. You haven't even talked to him in weeks, maybe even months-you've lost track. No. That's a lie…you know the countdown right to the day…six months and thirteen days since he last touched you…five months and three days since he last talked to you…three months twenty-seven days since you last saw him and all he did was turn the other way.
But it's ok. He broke plenty of promises too. Some are just harder to get over. The ones that made you start to believe that maybe just maybe you could be good enough for someone, you don't know if you'll ever be really truly over watching those shatter into a million tiny pieces no matter how much you tell everyone you're ok. Some-most-most promises he made were broken too quickly. Like that one where he swore he would never make you cry ever again. That one went out the window less than a year after it was made. Funny how the only ones that mattered-the ones sworn on his parents' graves-were the first to be broken. He never should've sworn to love you forever if he didn't mean it.
You on the other hand have kept every promise you made him. You sat with him at his parents' graves when he ran away despite the fact it was raining (and your birthday). You applied to the medi-witch training school in London so you could both be in the same town (let alone country…Maman wanted you to study in France). You got the accepted letter the week before you last saw him. Even the little things like calling him the second you got home from vacation and making those cupcakes he loved so much (even if your hands still had green food coloring on them the next day at school) were promises you kept. He can't say the same thing.
This time a year ago you were telling each other you loved the other and laughing at inside jokes. This time a year ago everyone thought there was something up. This time a year ago you had your chance to show him how much you loved him but you were too busy trying to hide it. You missed the opportunity to go to his house when all his other friends couldn't because you were stuck in France visiting Maman's family. He wanted you there and you couldn't go to him. You missed the chance of one-on-one time that could've started something. You are still kicking yourself over it because it's another one of those awful 'what if's that haunt you daily. Because by the time you ran into his arms it was too late and the chance was gone. He had moved on.
You decide the best way to deal with it is to get your mind off it, so you start going through some boxes trying to decide what to toss and what to keep and what to take with you when you leave. The first few boxes are normal things…most of which just get shoved back into the boxes and back under the bed. Then you get to the newer boxes that you didn't want to deal with. You found the notes the two of you used to pass in class, where you were his Pretty Princess and only the two of you could understand what was so funny about what was inked into a special piece of parchment before it transformed into pure gibberish. Now the only thing on your mind is how hard you're trying to not cry.
You don't understand why you still care but you know. It burns and stings and you can feel the need to throw up building and pushing its way up your throat. With that awful feeling comes the stinging sensation in your eyes. You bat them repeatedly, hoping to push the tears away but a few seconds later and you can already feel the wetness rolling down your cheeks. You continue to cry silently for a few minutes but slowly it turns into hysterical sobs and you're doing everything in your power to keep your body controlled. The shaking of your shoulders fans out to your fingers and you are on the edge of a meltdown. You wrap your arms around your slim body hoping that if you hold yourself tightly enough you can quiet the shaking.
You try to laugh at the ironic cliché of it all. You're curled up in a ball with tears rolling down your face while all hell breaks loose outside. Normally you would sit on your window seat and watch the lightning and torrential downpours take control of the sea but today you want nothing more than to sit with your back to the window wearing that old school sweater you kinda sorta technically stole from him.
You wonder if it will be like this at Christmas, or your birthday, or a year from now. You tell yourself you will be over him and you want to believe it but you can't. It hurts too bad. You had finally found someone who not only didn't make you feel like you had to be perfect but actually said "you know I would still love you even if you weren't so perfect all the time". You've told everyone else you're fine too but you've probably said it so much that they're starting to doubt it. You've never been ok with it and you never will be. It's like you are made of glass sitting on a shelf-that perfect porcelain doll everyone thinks you are-and you've been pushed off and shattered into a million pieces. Exactly how do you even go about fixing something so broken?
It's terrible that you can't tell your best friend any of this because he is still your best friend and your other best friend is now dating him. But you think she might have picked up on it because she doesn't talk about him around you but also doesn't let you around him. You have this tiny ounce of hope that maybe it's because she's afraid you might actually have a chance with him.
The worst part of it all is that you have difficulty conjuring a patronus because yours was the exact same as his. You still have those charmed trinkets you probably shouldn't keep. You remember that it's his birthday (without a reminder from anything or anyone). And the worst of the worst is that for some reason far beyond you, you still would do anything for him without a second thought. You still want to be friends. You still care. For some strange and stupid reason you still love him with all of your broken heart.
You lock up the remaining shards and tell yourself that no one will ever be able to hurt you again. Then you wipe away the tears and fix the little bit of makeup you had on. You pull yourself together and mask away all emotions until you are nothing more than the cold, heartless creature that your Veela blood turns you into when you've been hurt. Finally you force the smile back to its place and pretend like you didn't just spend all day crying over him.
But you weren't crying over him really, you were crying over all the broken promises.