A/N: For the Last Ship Sailing Competition Round 1. I entered with Teddy/Victoire.
Prompts: circus!AU (CAN I JUST SAY HOW EXCITED I WAS ABOUT CIRCUS!AU?), ricochet, candlelight, knitting needles, navy.
Bonus prompts: yellow and lazy
The first thing Teddy thinks is that she looks familiar. If he didn't know better he'd say she's part Veela. Her hair shimmers in the flashing lights illuminating the main circus tent, and all the while during his act of his very first show, his gaze is drawn to where she stands just inside the entrance.
Her light blue eyes never look away from the stage, thoughtful and amused. The rest of her person drowns in a flowing silk gown that reaches down to the floor, and just as he sets his doves loose to soar over the mystified crowd, she floats out of the tent and away.
He shakes his head at himself, concentrates hard as his hair darkens from turquoise to cerulean until eventually it becomes a deep navy blue by the time the crowd turns its attention back to him. They all gasp in amazement as he reaches out a hand for the dove to alight upon it and they notice the change and he takes this opportunity to slowly turn his hair back eliciting more applause.
This is the real magic. The doves and top hats and the boxes of mirrors ricocheting reflections are just a pretense, luring unsuspecting patrons into watching more than just some sleight of hand or misdirection. It's ridiculously mundane magic, too easy for someone with actual skill, but it will do for now. He figures it's easy money and a safe place to hide from everyone and everything he's known.
A fresh start.
"That's what they all say," she tells him.
He'd found her tent mere minutes after his show was over. He'd seen her peering out at it him from a dim corner near a cheap painted sign that simply read Fortune Teller.
He'd entered her little sanctuary and sat down across from her, disappointed to find that she was a fortune teller. Divination is for fools, after all. Gran had always said so.
But this one…
She sits smirking at him, hands folded, crystal ball swirling in the dim yellow light of the many candles illuminating her tent. She's already gotten him to tell her more than he'd ever intended to. She is practiced and calculating and inexplicably seductive. Her blue eyes penetrate his in a way that is unsettling and yet addictive. It reminds him of someone. Someone he can't quite place.
"They all want a fresh start," the woman continues and her voice is honeyed and thick with a French accent. "They think the circus will be an adventure. A change of scenery. An escape. You'll soon see it's not so glamorous."
"I don't need glamour," Teddy says. "Or to be conned by a fraud."
He goes to get up, but she pulls him back in with her words.
"I am no fraud, Edward."
He perks up at the sound of his given name. It's been years since he heard it. He's never felt that it belongs to him. Not really.
"No one calls me Edward," he tells her.
"I piece things together," she explains. "Little details. Like putting a puzzle together without knowing the big picture."
He rolls his eyes but she continues on unperturbed. She pulls the crystal ball closer to her, looking intently with a knowing grin.
"An orphan," she says.
He waves his hand dismissively. "You've heard the rumors. It's not exactly a secret."
"Grandmother raised you but then she died."
"Lucky guess."
"I see a large family. A large extended family. A lot of red hair."
"That's the best you've got?"
"But I know what else you are."
"And what pray tell is that?" he asks, becoming irritated. He is already preparing to get up and walk out of her tent when she stops him with a few more choice words.
"You're like me."
He meets her eyes that have a silvery tint to them now, almost iridescent. She is an eerie being, he thinks, surrounded by silk and soft candlelight and incense, beautiful but dangerous. She seems to understand his thoughts and smiles. Then she glances down at her wrist turned palm up, the sleeve of her gown sliding toward the crook of her arm to reveal…
"A wand," Teddy says in amazement. "You carry a wand."
Indeed, she keeps it strapped to her arm in a holster, easily concealed. She sits back in her chair, much more casually than she would around anyone else. From somewhere else on her person she pulls out a cigarette and lights it.
"I'm not so skilled at wandless magic as you are, Edward," she says and her accent is gone. Her mysterious façade has lifted slightly and her natural speaking voice comes through, much higher and unexpectedly melodic. "But don't say I'm a fraud. The persona is what keeps them coming back, you see. They don't come in here to be told the truth."
"So what do you tell them?" Teddy asks. He finds that he's leaning forward now, entranced by her even more now that she's dropped said persona, now that he knows her for what she is. And she's right. They are alike after all - two real magicians in a sea of fakes, hidden effortlessly in a world of make believe.
She is just as mesmerizingly beautiful lounging back with a cigarette between her fingers as she is hovered over a crystal ball. She leans back and flicks the ashes into a tray on a shelf behind her and then she shrugs.
"Whatever they want to hear. Reading people is a different kind of magic than what they taught us, but it has its uses. But if I were… you know… to tell the truth, do you know what I'd say?"
"What?"
She smirks, rising from her chair to saunter over to his side of the little table. Her hair shimmers in the candlelight, cascading over one shoulder. He wants to touch it, but he restrains himself. She comes closer, so close that she almost hovers over him, and she puts a single finger beneath his chin so that he meets her gaze.
"I'd say that fortune favors the bold," she says and her accent and the honeyed tone in her voice has returned. Her hand moves from beneath his chin to curiously inspect the turquoise hue of his hair. "Wouldn't you agree, Edward?"
"Yes," he says breathlessly. He stands up and she does not back away, but he notices the rise and fall of her chest and the way she steadies herself against the table. He leans closer, closer than he thought he'd ever dare when first entering her tent. But he knows his allotted time is coming to a close, and he's been bold enough already and he hardly knows her, yet it feels like they've known each other for centuries. She certainly knows him well enough, though she is still an oddly familiar mystery to him. She planned it that way. She was right about that too. It's what will keep him coming back.
He gives in to the urge to touch her hair. It's soft, silky like everything else about her, like how he imagines her skin to feel against his. Her breath ghosts his cheek…
A drunken shout from outside of the tent, brings him back to the moment and he meets her eyes once more.
"Call me Teddy," he whispers, and then retreats, slowly stumbling through the flap of her tent out into the open. He needs some air.
It's much later that he realizes he never asked her name.
He comes to her tent every night as they dim the lights for the final act. She pours him red wine and tells him about himself, looking into her crystal ball while lazily propping her bare feet up on her little table. She practices her wandwork while she talks, charming her knitting needles to work on their own. He likes to point out every time she drops a stitch which earns him a dirty look.
Sometimes she reads the Tarot for him and somehow it all comes back to the two of them, their fates intertwined in some way or another. He believes none of it, though secretly he would like to. She doesn't care either way.
He still doesn't know her name. He always asks and she gives him a snide reply that's never entirely truthful. He asks around the circus, but none of the others seem to know either. They all refer to her as simply Mademoiselle.
"You still don't know who I am," she muses one night, that irritating smirk playing about her mouth. She lounges in her seat across the table from him. "Do they not speak of me then?"
"Who is 'they'?" Teddy asks.
"My family. The extended family I Saw the day I met you. With red hair. None of them speak of Victoire? Little Victoire who ran away?"
Teddy's eyes grow wide. He should have realized the moment he saw her. He'd been right to think she was part Veela. He searches her face more carefully, looking for traces of Bill and Fleur. She looks most like her mother certainly, but he can see Bill in her smile. Why hadn't he seen it before?
"You ran away?" he asks, furrowing his brow. "I thought you went to live with your Aunt. I was only five. Maybe six. Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur went to live in Paris for a few years and came home without you."
"Oh, yes. I stayed with Aunt Gabby for a while. They all wanted me to go to Beauxbatons, you see, but one night the summer before I was meant to go I snuck into the circus. This circus." She gestures around the tent. "I secured a place, young as I was, and they haven't been back to Paris since."
"I didn't know," Teddy says, horrified. He looks back on all of it and just as she told him the first night, he begins to put pieces of the puzzle together. Small details that create a larger picture. He sees visions of Aunt Fleur crying and Uncle Bill pausing to choose his words and Grandma Weasley saying something to upset them but Teddy was never sure what it was.
"I'm sure it was a disgrace," Victoire says with a hint of bitterness, but then her face softens when she looks up at him again. "I remembered your hair. Turquoise still suits you."
"Thank you." He watches her place a hand on top of her deck of cards. "Is that what you were trying to tell me then? With all of those readings about the two of us? Perhaps our paths were meant to cross again."
"Have I made a believer of you?" she jokes.
"No," he says defensively.
"Then you won't mind me reading for you again."
"Go ahead."
He folds his arms across his chest as she turns a card over and her blue eyes flash silver with emotion. His curiosity is piqued and he looks over at it then scoffs as he reads the faded lettering at the bottom. The Lovers.
"You did that on purpose," he accuses her.
"I swear I didn't."
Teddy gets up out of his seat, leaning forward over the table. His face is inches from hers, and he cannot bring himself to care that she is wearing a satisfied smirk on her face or that everything she does is on purpose or that she's been toying with him like a cat with a mouse for weeks.
"Victoire." He reaches out to brush a loose tendril of hair away from her face. It's just as soft as he remembers it.
And her lips are even softer as he finally leans in to kiss her gently. Her fingers reach up to thread through his hair, pulling him closer so he has to steady himself on the arm of her chair. It's a few moments more before he pulls away.
Outside they can hear the crowd cheering as the last act of the night comes to a close. The candles flicker in the breeze that makes its way through the flap of her tent. His eyes search hers, wondering what it is they should do now.
She traces his bottom lip with her finger. "Remember what I said about fortune, Teddy?" she asks.
He nods his head. "Yes."
She gets up, practically falling into his embrace, guiding them away from the entrance toward a space kept hidden behind a curtain. Her hands are already roaming beneath his shirt.
"Are you feeling bold, Teddy?"
He does not saying anything more. His lips find hers again, desperate and impatient. She pulls him in further still, stumbling behind the curtain and into her private space. They tangle themselves up in silk and discarded clothes, chests heaving and fingers exploring soft skin. The candles have burned out long ago by the time they finally fall asleep.
Teddy wakes up to the warmth of her. Her lips gently pull at the skin of his neck, and her hands glide over his torso. He senses that it's early. Too early for his liking.
He groans and shifts to gaze down upon her and she stretches out like a cat, enjoying the attention.
And he can hardly believe he's here in her bed. In Victoire Weasley's bed. Of all people, he could never have dreamed he'd find her when he wasn't even looking. It seems that no one had been looking when they probably should have.
He's never believed in fate, and he's not so sure she does either. All either of them had wanted was a fresh start, but he cannot seem to get away from the shadow of his former life. Yet, she is no shadow, but a radiant light, offering him a chance at freedom if only he decides he's bold enough.
And as he kisses her again he decides that he is.