Two weeks later, he passed us in the hall and spun around to join our direction, shoving forward to walk in between us.
"Vivian, right?" He was a good head taller than both of us.
She nodded, and I clutched my heart behind his back. She glared, then ran a hand through her hair.
"And Victoire…" He flashed me a quick smiled. "I have a question."
He whispered something into her ear and spun away through the halls.
She told me that night, alone in our dorm.
"We need to steal Pr. Sotheby's Defence book for him. He can't do it because the professors are watching him."
"What? And what, may I ask, do we do if we get caught?"
She shrugged, "figure it out. How can we say no?"
I groaned, but she was already a lost case.
A week later, I was fifty feet up in the air, suspended by her charm. I swiveled around to look at her and she gave me a thumbs up. I air-swam towards Sotheby's study, and pushed in through the window. There was the Defence book, green and small on his desk. I grabbed it and waited for Teddy's accomplice Clay's signal. A moment later it came, and, my heart pounding, I pushed open the door and ran across the hallway to a hidden tapestry. Sweeping it aside, I hid for five minutes, my heart dying repeatedly as footsteps echoed down the corridor. Finally, Teddy pulled the tapestry back and helped me out.
"Thank you, Victoire." He took the book and headed in the other direction.
I breathed out a sigh of relief and turned into Vivian, who had been coming up behind me. "God, that was breathtaking." She grinned and wiped the sweat from my upper lip.
"Yeah, really fun." I muttered.
Keeping away from Teddy from then on was my main intent, as stealing a book was as far as I would go for a friend. But Vivian was involved with several more of his schemes, as I found out one night when she emerged from the common room one night at three in the morning.
"What have you been doing?" I asked, pulling the covers up to my chin as a cold draft came up the stairs. She was soaking wet. I dropped the covers and hurried to help her out of her coat. "Are you okay?"
She nodded. "We were in the forbidden forest. Teddy... he… centaurs…" She started to laugh.
I sighed and straightened my nightdress, "you're crazy. So crazy."
She giggled hysterically as I pushed her into her sleep clothes and then into bed. She was asleep as her head hit the pillow. Sighing, I went about mopping up the water from the melted snow and shoving her clothes into a load of laundry. When I turned around, I saw an owl at the window and let it in.
The letter was addressed to me. I tore it open.
Victoire,
I hope Vivian is okay, she got pretty snowy. Sorry for stealing her, but we don't need her anymore. She's good now. We don't need her to get in trouble. Wish her the best from us.
Tell her the Raven said goodbye. She'll understand. Sorry for the haziness. Maybe she can explain.
Teddy.
The next day I stayed in the common room with Vivian as she cried and wiped her eyes on her covers. She cursed him many times, but when we emerged for dinner, she was over it. Within a week she was back to the old Vivian. And we were both glad to have her back.