Not All Bad
Old Fiat
Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K. Rowling. Erik Satie and the Beatles belong to themselves.
Currently listening: "Open Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol, "Stop and Stare" by OneRepublic and "Not All Bad" by Aaron Sprinkle (where the story gets its name, obviously).
Notes: I hope you all enjoy this story. I'd just like to say that, since I seriously cannot work out when Victoire was born (somethings say she's born a year after the seventh book, making her a year younger than Teddy and others say that she's born two years after so it's horribly confusing). I've just made her one year younger because it's easier that way (meaning, I don't feel like going through and changing everything). I hope that's alright with everyone! Please review and tell me what you think. I love me some feedback!
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"You're crazy, Teddy. You know that, right?"
He would laugh along with her, his cheeks flushing a little as her words hit him. But he would ignore them until later—at that moment, he just wanted to see her smile.
She was a strawberry blond. He could remember when he first learned that phrase from his grandmother—strawberry blond. It suited Victoire. It perfectly described not only the reddish tint in her light blond hair, but also her whole person. Strawberry: her saccharine attitude with the slightest sour touches of well-trained sarcasm; her laugh; her eyes; her smile—she had small, round lips, as well, which were always a little pink, as though she really had just been eating strawberries. And Blond: the light that seemed to come from somewhere within her, shining on his face and heating him from someplace deep inside. She freckled in the sun and all-year round, she would have a light sprinkling of them across her high-bridged nose.
She worried about her nose a great deal, saying frequently it was too big. Often times, she would wish that she, like Teddy, were a Metamorphmagus and able to change her appearance at will. She told him once that if she were, she would give herself a nose more like her aunt Ginny's—a bit long, but narrow and turned-up. She fussed over it, always gazing into the mirror with a slightly annoyed expression. Sometimes, he would call her 'Ringo', just to get her aggravated, even though, in reality, he quite liked her nose and thought it perfectly suited her smooth, oval face.
Teddy had, normally, mousy light-brown hair, and a thin, straight nose which turned up at the very end. His grandmother had the same nose and so, apparently, had his mother. His eyes were a light, silvery gray, the complete opposite of his father's from what he could tell from photographs, but his grandmother said they had the same jaw and mouth, though Teddy's jaw was just a bit smaller and his mouth just a bit larger.
He hated his mouth the same way Victoire hated her nose and tried desperately to use his abilities as a Metamorphmagus to make it appear less big, less awkward, but had yet to find a way to do so. His own nose was no better, bony and girlish, but it was easier to fix than his mouth. He hated his pale skin which burned as rapidly as Victoire's freckled and which flushed violently when he was embarrassed, the color usually extending to the roots of his hair and making it turn pink, too.
Victoire seemed to be as graceful as Teddy was awkward. Her hands and fingers were narrow and pointed. Her feet were small, too, but she was tall, thin and elegant. Teddy's hands and feet were large, too large for his body. He too was tall and thin, but gawky also, stumbling awkwardly at something near six-foot four-inches by the time he was sixteen. But he'd always been tall. Victoire was five-foot six and often teased him about his height. He would laugh off these comments, but his hair would turn a vivid fuchsia and he would feel his cheeks burn, red hot.
She was, without a doubt, totally correct when she described him as crazy. Stark-raving was closer to the truth, especially when he found his stomach flipping madly whenever she smiled, whenever her light blue eyes caught his own.
"I'll meet up with you later, alright?"
She said this often, when she wanted to go spend time with her other friends from Gryffindor house, with other students in her same year. Teddy didn't talk to most of his fellow Hufflepuffs and mostly avoided the common room and his classmates in favor of Victoire. It wasn't that he didn't know anyone else in his house—he was okay friends with some of the boys in his dormitory and knew a couple of other students in different houses, but they were different. The situation was different.
Usually when she said she would meet up with him, he would act as though he too had plans to spend time with some of his non-existent other friends, and then go and spend some time in the library, trying to do his homework while listening to the whispered chatter of other students. He tended towards solitude when she was with her friends, whiling away the time studying or perfecting his abilities at wizard chess.
He could always beat her at chess. He understood logic and strategy, whereas she would get distracted by flurries of emotions. She had a literary mind, while he struggled with thick volumes of text, words tangling around each other until he found a lifeboat in the form of an illustration or a diagram. He even had trouble writing from time to time, letters ending up on the page backwards or in the wrong place and him with no idea how they had gotten there. He was a poor speller and she didn't understand most math except geometry, but he would help her and she him, when she had the time.
He hated feeling jealous of her friends. It embarrassed him to be envious of a group of girls who were, in all likelihood, probably extremely nice, but it was impossible to stop. It wasn't as though he needed Victoire all the time, he just liked having her with him and she, whether consciously or unconsciously, never made any effort to incorporate him into her group.
But she was still his best friend.
"When on earth did you learn to play the piano?"
He wasn't really sure how to answer this question. Music came to him fairly naturally and the baby grand in the living room of his house made it fairly easy to pick it up. He saw his grandmother playing it once, her fingers tripping down the keys to form a bright, lively melody and he had understood instantly how the instrument functioned. By now he could play others—guitar, violin, clarinet and oboe, to name a few—but the piano was his favorite, with its smooth black and white keys. He preferred playing classical music, his favorite composer being Satie, but sometimes he would play something more modern, more cheerful, just to keep his grandmother happy because she was so sad a lot of the time.
But music made sense to him the way that written words made sense to Victoire—he had no problems with speaking and, in fact, learned very early on in life that lying came very easy for him. Victoire didn't understand how he did it and claimed that he must have possessed more magic than she would ever know, that it was practically leaking out his ears. And when she would say this he'd laugh and try to make her smile by changing his hair color a couple of times, from acid green to hot pink to purple to bright, sunny yellow.
She had never seen the way he looked naturally with his girly nose, boring, light brown hair and too big mouth, but saw a series of masks and faces, all of them Teddy, but all only half-real.
"He's just so... lovely! I—I don't even know how to describe him, Teddy, but he's just... just a fantastic guy..."
He'd listen to her gush about her boyfriend: Henry Goldstein, the fantastic guy, the Gryffindor quidditch captain. He would tease her a little about having a boyfriend, joking that he would tell her father to practice his dueling skills—'just in case'. She would blush slightly, but the excited shimmer in her eyes would not fade. He would see them around together, hand in hand, walking from class to class, laughing happily together.
Henry Goldstein looked perfect standing next to Victoire, with his tan skin and rich, brown hair. He had a smile which Victoire seemed to find somehow "dazzling" and perfect, straight, white teeth. He was five-foot eleven-inches and, unlike Teddy, appeared completely at ease with his overall physique. His nose had an odd twist to it from taking a bludger to the face which Victoire described as "dashing".
Teddy had thought Henry was alright before, they were in the same year and shared a couple of classes, but he felt a little surge of annoyance whenever he saw him with Victoire. He knew Henry was nice, but he also knew that he had had his eye on the dark-haired Ravenclaw, Alice Bishop since their third year. Victoire was filler, Teddy was certain, but when he saw her smiling up at Henry, her eyes shining, he found that he didn't have the heart. She was so overjoyed that she liked someone and he liked her back—though perhaps not as much as she liked him—that Teddy simply couldn't bring himself to do anything, for better or for worse.
And he let himself and Victoire grow further and further apart.
"Are you okay, Teddy?"
He looked up to see Victoire standing in front of him. He gave a small smile, a slight flush creeping up his cheeks. He had been studying—not because he had any impending tests, but merely because he had finished all his homework and had nothing else to do. He hadn't spoken to Victoire in almost a month, a record for the two of them, except for during the summer. His mouth felt suddenly awkward and he quickly closed the book he had been reading, placing it back on the library table in front of him.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, wondering what type of mouth he should give himself. Victoire didn't seem to notice that it was his own. "You?"
She shrugged and sat down beside him. "I'm alright," she sighed, leaning her head on her small, freckled hands. "Henry's just in quidditch practice right now." She sighed again and looked down at the wooden table top.
A silence. Teddy thought fast.
"Hey, tomorrow's a Hogsmeade visit," he said rapidly. As if she didn't know. Victoire was always up on school events. "Do you want to go together? I mean, just to get a drink at the Three Broomsticks? I've hardly seen you lately..."
She shook her head. "No, me and Henry are going together, but thanks." She smiled at him and some of her light, strawberry blond hair fell softly over her shoulder. Something seemed to burst inside Teddy's skull at the sight. His skin went icy cold, but his insides burned.
That weekend, he would sit at one of the tables next to the high, arching windows in the library and watch as she and Henry walked arm in arm towards the village. He would silently observe the way the wind blew her hair into a soft blond cloud and the way Henry's dark curls would bounce a little as he walked and Teddy would quietly notice how perfect the two of them looked side by side.
"For God's sake, Teddy! It's Christmas! Play something happy... Play—play "Lady Madonna"!"
Teddy rolled his eyes. "You and your Beatles... What is with you, anyway?"
She laughed, her smile lighting up her face. "Come on..." He shook his head but began obligingly pounding out the chords. She beamed and thumped her foot on the floor happily.
The music floated through the air, mixing with the sounds of the Weasley family conversation. His godfather, Harry, was there, along with his wife and three children, and so was Teddy's grandmother, her graying, auburn hair pulled up in a ponytail. Albus rushed over to them, his round, pale face knotted with concern.
"Teddy! James keeps saying that I'm a squib! I'm not, am I?"
Teddy turned from the keys and glanced down at Albus, pretending to study him carefully.
"I think... I think that you have the potential to be the most powerful wizard there's ever been."
Albus' face brightened and he smiled. "Really?"
"Yeah," said Teddy with a small nod before bringing his attention back to the piano. "Seriously. Go ask your dad, too—he'll back me up."
Albus ran back off as Teddy resumed his playing. It was warm inside his Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron's house. A crackling fire burned happily in the fireplace and the tiny electric lights from the Christmas tree—Hermione had an affinity for muggle things due to the fact that her entire family were muggles—lit up Victoire's shining hair as she sat beside him. They illuminated the freckles across her face and her long black eyelashes.
"Teddy! Why are slowing down?"
"Sorry, Mistress!" he joked, feeling his cheeks burn as he moved his hands along the keys a little too rapidly. She laughed and leaned against him, staring off into space.
"Why do you never sing, Ted?" The question was a little startling. His pointer finger landed on the wrong key, but he quickly rectified the mistake.
"Maybe I don't know the words to this song." Sarcasm dripped from each word. "Come off it, Victoire, you know I'm a lousy singer..."
"I don't actually," she said, sitting up and gazing directly into his eyes. "You've never sung for me."
"Well, I'm bad," he answered stiffly. His shoulder tingled where her head had rested just moments before. "You don't want to hear me sing."
"Yes I do. Sing!" she commanded, nudging him with her shoulder. He rolled his eyes.
"No."
"Do it!"
"I really don't know all the words to this song!"
"Well then play a different song." She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Play... um... Play... 'In My Life'!"
He sighed and then placed his hands back on the keyboard. He didn't like his voice, which was that of a low tenor, cracking uncomfortably on the high notes and shaking in his mid-range, but he tried his best.
"There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed..."
He glanced at Victoire. She wasn't looking at him, rather at his hands as he played. He wanted her to look at him, to know what she was thinking. A small smile played around her lips. Was it teasing? Was his voice not as good as she had hoped it would be? Was she thinking about him at all?
"...All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall..." His voice cracked and she looked up at him. Her eyes were clear and her cheeks pink. She smiled and allowed her own silky mezzo-soprano voice to mix with his. "...Some are dead and some are living. In my life..."
Teddy didn't hear the front door open, nor the sudden rise in the other's conversation as they moved from the living room towards the kitchen. Neither did Victoire, until her mother ran in, beaming, her long, silvery-blond hair fanning out behind her.
"You will not guess who has come!" she said, cutting Teddy off mid-verse. "You will not guess who is here!"
Victoire lept up from the piano bench. "Who is it?"
Teddy wished she would sit back down and keep singing with him, but she followed her mother towards the arching doorway leading to the kitchen.
The chance was gone.
Then her father came in, chatting happily with the last person Teddy had wanted to see at that moment.
Victoire squealed with delight as she saw Henry's "dazzling" smile and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her mouth to his. He lifted her up and held her to him, held her as tightly as Teddy so desired to.
As Victoire unwrapped the gift Henry had brought her and gave him her own present for him, Teddy sat on the piano bench, unwilling to continue playing, but also unwilling to get up and join in the rest of the conversation. He felt stupid, awkward, out of place in a room full of people he knew so entirely. He had quickly changed his hair to a dark blue, not wanting Victoire's boyfriend who probably had about thirty more pounds of muscle than Teddy to see the silly green and red stripes he had been sporting.
And Victoire laughed and Victoire smiled and Teddy...
Teddy just watched.
In my life...
"I don't understand..."
Teddy didn't understand. Nobody understood. It was cold and wet and Teddy was alone.
Months had passed. December had become January and January had become February and now it was suddenly April.
He spent his birthday alone. He had expected Victoire to try and give him a present, but she hadn't, though he had seen her kissing Henry Goldstein in the library, her back pressed against the shelves, her normally smooth, perfect hair tangled and confused-looking. Perhaps she had forgotten. She and Teddy had been spending less and less time together. Growing apart again.
He spoke even less to classmates now, avoiding their company and all other's to the solace of the library, surrounded by the towering shelves of books. He would stay, most days, until the elderly librarian came over and told him that it was time for him to return to the dormitories. He spent lots of time in the evening in front of the mirror of his dormitory, figuring out exactly how to create a smaller mouth for himself, one that matched the nose he also used.
Images blurred, time blurred. After only a brief exchange in the corridor, he and Victoire suddenly hadn't spoken for a week straight—two weeks—three...
And the weather stayed cold and wet and lonely...
"Why did he do this?"
Teddy finally found determination on the thirtieth of May. It took a little asking around, but he managed to find out from one of Victoire's friends that she and Henry were out in Hogsmeade. So she was on a date, well... He would work around that.
But he needed to talk to her because he needed Victoire, because Victoire was his best friend and if he had these feelings for her then she needed to know and he would tell her. It was because Victoire was beautiful and he was awkward and sick of feeling jealous and lonely without her. It was because he missed her and he just wanted to talk to her again.
When he finally reached Hogsmeade, he ducked into the Three Broomsticks, Zonko's, that toy shop she liked to go into sometimes when they used to go into the village together. He searched frantically, hardly bothering to greet the shopkeepers and waitresses when he stepped in before leaving once more.
He returned, downhearted, to the Three Broomsticks, figuring that if he couldn't find Victoire, he could at least have a butterbeer when he saw...
In a corner booth sat Henry Goldstein talking happily to a girl that Teddy recognized from his Arithmancy class. Her dark hair swung just above her shoulders and Teddy understood suddenly what had happened.
Alice Bishop. Henry had finally gotten Alice Bishop. Which meant...
Teddy left the bar and walked quickly down the path, for once glad that he had long legs. Victoire wouldn't be inside where people would see her. She would need him and he knew exactly where she would be.
Once when he and Victoire were younger, they managed to worm from Harry the story of Teddy's father, not that Harry knew much. No one knew much about his father and when Teddy was old enough to go into Hogsmeade, he had immediately sought out the old, boarded up structure called The Shrieking Shack. He had stared long and hard at the worn, splintered wood and broken glass and tried to find any evidence of his father's presence from the outside. To Teddy, the house gave off an aura of warmth and light and sometimes he would imagine that the ghosts of his mother and father sat just inside, his father sipping a small cup of Earl Grey and reading a worn, old book and his mother would be sitting cross-legged at his feet, chatting happily and drinking from her larger mug of over-sugared chamomile.
Of course, it was all in his imagination, but he sometimes felt that his parents were there in that house, watching over him in the castle, smiling when he tripped over some of the more uneven stone floors in the dungeon. The following year, when Victoire was allowed into Hogsmeade, Teddy brought her to the house too and they looked at it together. He hadn't told her about his imaginary scenes of his parents but she shared his fascination with the shack. They used to visit it often, both leaning against the fence the separated it from the rest of the village, but he hadn't been there for sometime.
As the building came into view, Teddy felt a light breeze rustle his hair and he stopped walking. The usual area of half-dead grass stretched before the Shrieking Shack. The Forbidden Forest surged in on the other side. Its trees shifted in the wind, their bright green leaves brushing against each other happily. The sun shone and Teddy spotted Victoire curled up at the base of a large oak at the edge of the woods. Her hair hung over her face as she hugged her knees. He approached her silently and sat down beside her.
"Vic?"
She looked up suddenly. Her eyes and cheeks were red with crying and he could see little spots on her jeans from where she had wiped her eyes. Teddy's stomach leaped as he realized that he had done nothing to change his appearance. His nose would be small and feminine, his mouth too large and his hair that horrible boring shade of brown. Victoire didn't seem to notice. It was as though she had always seen him this way, behind all his silly masks. He didn't say anything else—he didn't need to— but just wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, allowing her to sob heavily into his chest.
"Why did he do this?" she asked through deep, gasping breaths, her shoulders heaving. He held her close and said nothing, feeling a pang of guilt for the way his heart pounded against his ribcage as she embraced him.
He said nothing, because he couldn't bring himself to tell her what he had sworn that morning that he would. Because, if she needed him, then he would be there, because he always wanted to be there for her. He would help her pick herself up in time for her to take her OWLs. He would be her best friend until she needed him to be something else for her and then he would become that.
And Teddy would and could be anything for her because he was a Metamorphmagus, a good liar, a horrible speller and her best friend and maybe one day he would be more than that but for now, he was happy with this. He was happy as long as he was with Victoire and she was with him.
And he would be there for her, forever.
In my life, I loved you more...
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