Chapter Four – "Faire du Shopping"
The following day, after what had been dubbed "Teddy's Tantrum," Nola decided an impromptu run to Diagon Alley was in order. She still had a few presents for the Potters to buy and needed to stock up on more newt tails for Slughorn's potions class.
Ted had emerged from the confines of his room around a quarter till eleven, bleary-eyed and quiet. With his black hair (that seemed to have remained a constant for the past few weeks), he seemed to fit in perfectly with his godbrothers and –sister.
Nola was at the oven when he came downstairs into the kitchen making a late brunch of cheesey eggs (Lily's favorite) and French toast (requested by both Al and James). Ginny sat at the table reading the Sunday Prophet and Harry was spending the day in the office to catch up on paperwork.
"Good morning," Ginny greeted as he claimed the chair between Lily and James.
"Morning," he mumbled in return, pulling a glass and a pitcher of pumpkin juice towards him from the center of the table.
Nola dropped a bowl of eggs in front of the youngest Potter and turned back to the oven to mind the toast. "You sure you don't want anything, Gin?"
"No, hun, I'm fine. Thank you, though."
"Ted? You want any French toast?"
His gaze on his glass of juice was strong, almost as if he was trying to boil it (in fact, a few bubbles had popped up along the inside edge of the glass). "Uh…yeah, please."
James snatched up the syrup first as Nola set down a plate each before him and his brother.
"James, share," his mother admonished.
After making a plate for herself and one for Ted, she sat at the table next to Albus and across the table from her stony best friend. She slid his plate of French toast-goodness across to him, which he accepted with a gruff "Thanks."
The entire table sat in silence for a few minutes, the stillness only occasionally stirred by the clinking of forks on plates or Ginny ruffling her newspaper.
The quiet, however, was soon broken by Lily. "Hey!" she exclaimed at her eldest brother. "Those are my eggs!"
His fork, which had previously been edging back towards Lily's bowl, stopped in midair, halfway to its target. "Aw, c'mon, Lils," he wheedled. "I'll let you have a bite of mine."
She shook her head emphatically, her mother's defiant attitude shining through. "Mine! Mummy, tell him to stop," she insisted, swatting away his probing fork.
"James, stop," Ginny intoned. It was a familiar phrase for her.
"But Mum—"
Ginny ruffled her Prophet and barely hid a menacing glare behind the paper, effectively ending the feud. Lily learned around Teddy and stuck out her tongue, effectively renewing it. Their godbrother had to separate them as Nola and Al looked on in amusement from across the table.
"Teddy, tell him to stop!" little Lily implored. Ted had always been a sucker for her pout and he promised James a go on his broom if he left his sister alone. The young Potter readily accepted the bribe.
Nola saw that her friend was starting to come out of his funk and extended an invitation to accompany her to Diagon Alley. He hated shopping, but she figured an excursion outside the Potter household would do him good, so she wheedled and begged accordingly and got him to agree with the aggressive assistance of Ginny.
They helped clean the brunch mess in the kitchen, then Floo-ed to the Leaky Cauldron.
Nola stepped out of the emerald flames to see a petite blonde attached to Ted's side.
"Oh, hey, Vic," he was saying, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder.
"Teddy!" she exclaimed, trapping his hand in place with one of her own. "I didn't expect to see you until Chreez-mas day at the Burrow." One could never tell when Victoire, the eldest of the Weasley's grandchildren, was faking her slight accent or whether it was really from the influence of her French-bred mother. Her platinum hair and ice-blue eyes, however, did come honestly from Fleur Delacour Weasley.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, me either." He glanced over his shoulder and spotted Nola, choked up with laughter and leaning on the fireplace's mantle to support herself. He glared and nodded his head at the monkey in periwinkle-blue robes hanging onto the edge of his cloak. He hoped she caught the frantic glint in his eyes that was a silent plea for help.
"Oi, Vicky! How are you doing, blondie?"
Apparently she had seen his panic.
Nola had always handled Victoire oddly. They were friendly enough towards one another – no animosity between the two girls existed as far as she was concerned (in fact, Nola got along better with her than Ted ever had). But Victoire (or Vicky, as she had lovingly been dubbed) was so ostentatiously girly and emotional, and Nola took joy in picking on her.
"Nola, hello!" she exclaimed over Ted's shoulder. She pushed him away and grabbed the other girl's hand, wringing it in sheer delight. "I'm so glad I ran into you today. There's this absolutely dreamy new assistant in Ollivander's shop. I think he'd be perfect for you."
"Oh, um, that's considerate of you and all, Vicky," she replied, wrenching her hand away, "but I'm not really looking right now."
"What, for wands? No, silly, I'm talking about the new assistant, not the wands!"
"No, I know—nevermind."
Teddy looped his arm through his best friend's, gently prying her loose of the blonde's hold. "Good seeing you again, Victoire, even though we see you just about every day at Hogwarts, but Nola and I really need to get some shopping done." They rushed off towards the back room of the Leaky Cauldron, a brief wave goodbye sent over their shoulders.
In Diagon Alley, they started at Flourish and Blotts. They wandered over to the kids section to see if anything stood out for Lily.
"Merlin," breathed Ted, "I thought she was about to lift up her skirt and mark her territory."
Unlike Nola's playful picking on Victoire, Ted had a penchant for being rougher. He had never developed any sense of empathy for other's feelings and emotions and he certainly wasn't about to start now.
"Did you smell that perfume she was drenched in?" he continued, his mug scrunched up in disgust at the smell that was sure to linger on his robes for at least the next few hours. "Ugh, it smelled like that grape cough syrup Danny used to chug at breakfast."
"Aw, leave poor Dan alone. He's prone to getting bad colds." Danny Bunker was a Muggleborn housemate in their year.
"Silly Muggleborns and their Muggle remedies. He'd be better off just going straight to Madame Drewery."
"Ooh, what about this one?" Nola stepped forward and grabbed a thin boxed package off the shelf. It was a how-to kit on how to create little dolls with the supplies necessary included. Upon closer inspection, however, the picture on the front cover looked suspiciously like a voodoo doll. "On second thought…"
Ted laughed, his head thrown back. "Ginny may think very highly of you, but I still don't think giving that to Lily would go over well."
"No," she agreed, "not at all. Lils would have James acting even more of a fool in no time."
They ended up buying a new set of scholarly wizarding encyclopedias for Al ("He'll love these," Nola said. "He's such a weird kid," Ted remarked) and resolved to leave Lily's present until later. They moved onto Weasleys' Wizards Wheezes to look for James.
"Hey, kids!" Ron greeted them when they entered the shop. He was up on the second floor rearranging an old display of Extendable Ears. Teddy started edging towards an open box on the sales counter. "Oi! Step back, Lupin. Don't touch that."
Ted froze in place, hands held aloft in the air in surrender. "What's in the box?"
Ron descended the stairs and pushed the box behind the counter and out of sight with the instep of his foot. "Special ingredient for our new product. George had to order these specifically from Morocco. Anyway, what can I do for you two today? Christmas shopping?"
Nola nodded. "I need something for James that won't make Ginny hex me in my sleep."
"Yeah, she's known for her nasty Bat-Bogey Hexes, my sister is. If you're not looking to get on her bad side, I don't advise our new line of Skiving Snackboxes. Er, let's see…"
Ted moved over to a display in a corner of the shop while Ron eyeballed their shelves of merchandise. "These look good," he said. Nola followed her friend, curious of what had caught his attention.
He was talking about the items that cluttered a small stand, pushed out of the way of the usual joke products. They were a bunch of green ovals that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be miniature-scale Quidditch pitches.
"Should've known that would catch your eye," Ron said to Ted, coming to stand on his other side. "It's not a gag item; I just had them stocked because they looked fun. It comes with all fourteen brooms and a set of balls. Apparently you can play it like chess, one person on each side of the field, but I've been told a lot of captains use them to demonstrate plays and maneuvers."
"Aw, Teddy, we're looking for James, not you."
"James likes Quidditch," he defended, a scowl on his face.
"And I'm sure you weren't planning on borrowing it from him, right?"
He pursed his lips and mumbled a quick "Shut up."
Nola shouldered him out of the way and grabbed up one of the pitches. "We'll take it, Ron." The two moved over to the register as Ted lingered by the display, staring longingly. "Ted?"
"Yeah?" he replied, tearing himself away to stand by her side.
She handed him a few sickles. "Can you run across the street and pick up a new supply of newt tails for me? I need them for Potions. I'll meet you outside."
"Sure."
Nola nodded her thanks and turned back to Ron. Teddy, meanwhile, headed outside across the cobbled, cluttered road and into the apothecary. He met Nola outside only a few minutes later, a small jar of newt tails in the pocket of his robe and a bulky paper bag hanging off her wrist.
"If it's okay with you, we can just say the Quidditch pitch for James and the encyclopedias for Al are from the both of us."
"That's fine," he said.
"Perfect. That way we only have to buy three more presents – one for Lily, Harry, and Ginny."
They ended up purchasing a set of pretty pea green robes with embroidered floral designs for Lily from Madam Malkin's and then headed down the street to a newly-erected wizarding novelty shop to look around for Harry.
The two hadn't been inside the shop for five minutes when Nola tackled Ted, a handful of fabric clutched with both hands to her chest. "Look!" she practically screeched.
He made to grab what she was holding, but she pulled back and grasped it tighter.
"I can't look if you don't hand it over, Finola," he admonished.
She ignored his jibe. "Are you ready for this?" she questioned, unable to contain a grin of pure delight.
"Yes, now give it here!" he demanded, grabbing her shoulder with one hand and yanking the fabric out of her arms with the other. Ted unfurled the material and felt his jaw drop as he looked at what seemed to be some sort of throw blanket. "Is that…?"
"A super-imposed image of Harry's face on a blanket?" Nola supplied. "Yes!"
He pulled her forward into a lung-crushing hug, the throw squished between them. "It's perfect," he whispered in her ear and she shivered as his breath skirted against the side of her face. "He'll be so bleeding embarrassed."
Nola was the first to pull back, the absence of space between them a little unsettling. "I'm glad you, uh, like it." She patted the back of her hair a tad self-consciously. "Now we only have Ginny left and then we can head back and have some lunch."
"Oh, I've got the perfect idea for Gin."
Lunch at the Potter household was a subdued affair. Albus was sealed away in his room reading. James was zonked out on the couch in the living room while re-runs from the past year's Quidditch season blared on the television. Ginny and her youngest were upstairs cleaning Lily's room so she could be on Santa's good list. Harry would be at the office for a few more hours yet.
Ted and Nola, meanwhile, were engaged in a captivating silence contest, each lost in their own thoughts. The former's mind was focused on what to get the latter for Christmas, and the latter was wondering if she should have reheated her Chinese leftovers a few seconds more.
With Christmas only a few days away, Teddy knew he was cutting it rather close.
A few times that day while shopping in Diagon Alley, he had managed to slip away and look around for something she might like, but his efforts had been unsuccessful. Even Victoire, who he had run into while picking up Nola's potion supplies for school, was at a loss.
"She isn't, you know, a normal girl, so you can't just get her a subscription to Witch Weekly or jewelry. And she's only into Quidditch when you're playing, so a broom is a no-go," the blonde had told him, one hand perched on her hip and the other wrapped around a tube of top-quality liquefied owl pellets she was considering buying as a "please pass me" gift for Slughorn. "And she gets decent marks, yeah, but she's not a big reader, so no books."
"You're not really helping," he had deadpanned, already regretting asking her opinion.
Victoire had only shrugged in response. She began walking away. "Just ask yourself what really interests her and go from there. You're her closest friend; I'd hope she'd love your gift whatever it was."
What did interest Nola? Ted asked himself.
As a naïve first year, she had aspired to be the school's best athlete, a roll which she quickly found to be dominated by the upperclassmen. When she had barely made it by at broom lessons, she had scratched that aspiration.
Somewhere around the middle of second year, she had gotten the fancy notion in her head that she could be the first female Headmaster of Hogwarts in a century. She took to shadowing Professor Shacklebolt (who had only recently took up the post himself) until around the middle of third year. (The ex-Auror had been more amused by her shadowing than anything and, after leaving Hogwarts to permanently take up the role of Minister of Magic, made it a point to say hello whenever their paths crossed at Weasley family functions he occasionally attended.)
It was in that same third year at Hogwarts that she started taking Care of Magical Creatures with Profressor Hagrid (who gently admonished her when she called him anything but simply Hagrid). She fell in love with the idea of living a dangerous life, domesticating Demiguise and Erumpents and smacking dragons around. That very aspiration had more or less stuck around since then, though over the years it had narrowed down to working specifically as a dragon-keeper. Hagrid had even gone as far as getting her into contact with Charlie Weasley, an older brother of Ron's (Charlie had since become her favorite source of dinner conversation at Weasley family get-togethers).
Okay, so she thought dragons were nifty, but where to go from there? He couldn't exactly get her one as a pet (Hagrid would be far too jealous). He briefly toyed with the idea of getting her a stuffed toy dragon as a gag gift, but shot that down quickly enough; he knew he could do better than that.
A minute and a quick gasp of air later (Nola jumped in her seat at the noise, but quickly went back to her food upon seeing nothing was wrong) Teddy Remus Lupin had a plan.