It was a simple summer day when Victoire walked in from the front door. She left her shoes at the door and hung her coat on the rack like always. She had closed the door silently but the wind chimes' clinking gave her arrival away.
I was with Dominique in the kitchen. We hadn't expected Victoire to come back just yet. She had been training really hard to become an Auror. That's why she was almost never home at the time. I dangled my feet under the table, eating biscuits straight from the jar, and I squealed her name when she at last came to the kitchen. She grinned at me the way only a big sister could.
Dominique smiled sweetly as always, the pair of dimples appearing on her faintly freckled cheeks. She poured a cup of tea for Victoire. "You're back early, Vicky," she said easily as our sister sat down. "Did Uncle Harry go easy on you?"
"Not a bit. "Victoire smiled back at her. "Teddy's back in town," she said, adding two pieces of sugar in her cup. "But he's all good. Not a scratch."
Dominique let out a relieved sigh. "That's good to hear."
Just because I was just a child didn't mean I was stupid. I already knew Teddy was Victoire's boyfriend, and I liked him a lot at the time. I really did. I knew Teddy hunted everything grown-ups called 'bad things', like monsters and Death Eaters. Victoire wanted to hunt, too, but it was a dangerous career choice for anyone and, more often than people liked to admit, Aurors died during their missions. But becoming an Auror was some sort of family business.
"What was it this time?" Dominique asked with poorly concealed curiosity. "Not a werewolf, I hope."
I snorted at that. Even I knew it couldn't be a werewolf. The moon was thinning already and there was no way our Teddy would ever hunt down a werewolf.
"Nah," Victoire said absentmindedly, "it was a –"
I remember them exchanging their patented 'should we say anything when Louis in the same room?' look. They used it all the time when I was a kid. I had pouted and stared at them until they gave up. I was already ten. I had my right to know these things. As if Dominique was much older.
Victoire cracked a smile, shrugging apologetically at Dominique. Dominique rolled her eyes but she was the one who had asked. My smile couldn't possibly get any wider when Victoire ruffled my hair and said proudly:
"It was a vampire."
At the time I had no idea how Teddy Lupin's – and in the near future my dear sister Victoire's – actions would ever have anything to do with me. I had just been there, listening to them talking about monsters and creatures of the night, unable to realize how there was two sides in every story.
And how their actions would eventually lead to my side of story.