I don't believe in true love

I believe in great stories

- From my diary

Chapter 7: Venegance/Aftermath

Victoire sunk down on the floor beside the door, several times an auror tried to get her to move but she refused, she watched them take away Anthony's body. She felt sick into her very being, but that was overshadowed by the fact that Teddy was on the other side of the wall behind her, being questioned by Harry, Ron and the aurors.

A million questions flew through her head, why was Teddy out in the forest? He was taking his wolfsbane, there was no way he could have turned. But if it wasn't him? Then who?

Suddenly the door creaked and she lifted her head to see Ron coming through with a grim face, he held the door open for Teddy, tightly followed by Harry who had a tight grip around Teddy's arm.

"Teddy!" She shot up immidiately, the blood rushed from her head and she swayed unsteadily. Teddy, Harry and Ron all turned around to look at her. She ignored her two uncles, but unfortunately, Teddy seemed like he wanted to ignore her. He quickly averted his eyes, but she caught the dark look in his comletely black eyes before he did.

"Whats going on?" She said, her voice only quivered at the end.

"Look Victoire there's no reason for you to get involved in this-" Ron started, moving towards her as if to lead her away. Victoire easily sidestepped him, reaching Teddy in a few long strides.

"Teddy? What is going on?"

"Ron's right Vicky, for once you should try and stay out of this. For your own good", he said silently, still not meeting her eyes. Victoire turned to Harry, he just shook his head.

"Look there's a lot going on here and we've got to take Teddy back to the ministry for the time being-"

"Why? He's already told you all he knows right? Why would you-" Victoire fell silent, staring at her uncles, and then back to Teddy. "You think Teddy killed Anthony?"

Her words were barely above a whisper, but still it seemed like they echoed off the walls in the hallway.

"We dont think anything but due to the circumstanses we've got to take him to custody-" Harry said with a pained face, starting to move out the door. Teddy kept his eyes down, not even trying to fight back.

"I can't believe you would to that, he's your godson, he's Teddy, we all know him!" She exclaimed, following them up the staircase. She knew they were heading for the headmistress office, to floo out of Hogwarts and back to the ministry. She felt like if they did, everything was over.

"Victoire please go away." Teddy muttered.

"No I'm not, I know you didn't do anything-"

"Vicky they know!" Teddy suddenly stopped, yanking a surprised Harry back a step too. "I've told them, everyone knows I'm a werewolf."

"That still doesn't mean...", her words died away as she saw the look on Ron's face. A look of terror mingled with sadness and regret. He thought Teddy did it, that he'd turned and he'd killed Anthony.

"I know it looks dark Vicky, but we're going to do eveything we can to fix this. Okay?" Harry said bravely, but it just sounded fake and forced. Teddy scowled loudly to everyone's surprise.

"Could you please just stop? Stop trying to defend me! I turned, I found Corner in the woods. There was clawmarks on his body for merlins sake, it had to be a werewolf. It had to be me"

"But you take wolfsbane-" Victoire stuttered, that ill feeling in her stomach growing stronger.

"I don't know what happened, I have no memories after going to bed, I took the wolfsbane but I woke up in the forrest. Something must have gone wrong and I turned anyway." Teddy said into the floor, Harry's hand went to clutch his shoulder reassuringly.

"We'll get to the bottom of this Teddy. Now Vicky you better get back to your classmates, theres going to be an investigation going on and we're leaving some aurors here to take care of it. If you knew the victim they'll probably want to talk to you too.

"And what will happen to you?" Victoire asked silently, it was diected to Teddy but Ron answered.

"He'll be held in custody at the ministry at the moment, until we sort this out."

"Until we sort this out..." She repeated, suddenly frozen on the staircase steps. She wanted to reach out and touch Teddy, but something stopped her, every muscle in her body refused to move.

She didn't run after them as they dissapeared up the stairs, and Teddy never turned around to look back at her.

She didn't realize until afterwards that the reason she coudn't move was because she was afraid, for the first time in her life she was scared of Teddy Lupin.

...

Victoire had been guided to a chair by a healer, and thats where Dominique and Rose found her after the game, still staring wide eyed at the wall in front of her. The school was in chaos, Anthony's body had been whisked away but the rumours about his death spread like wildfire among the students. The students were in chock, a few ravenclaw girls had started crying, Victoire had just caught a glimpse of a red eyed Britney as she'd started snapping out of her trance. Dom and Rose sat down beside her, Rose gripping her hand and Dom patting her back. They didn't say anything.

It wasn't until the rumours about Teddy started that they realized he wasn't there. Rose's jaw dropped when one of her fellow gryffindors told her he'd been taken to the ministry for questioning. The only suspect in the murder of Anthony Corner.

Victoire watched the whole thing in something like slow motion, Rose's terrified look, Dom turning around wide eyed toward Victoire, her mouth moving, questions. Victoire knew she should answer her sister, but coudn't even hear the words, she was in her own world.

"Vicky!" Everything came slamming back at once, the almost deffening shatter of voices is the hallway, Dom was trying to catch her attention as Victoire realized they where moving, ushered into the great hall. Suddenly everything was loud and noisy and she didn'y protest as Rose dragged her away to the gryffindow table, forcing her down with the rest of the family. The cousins all looked at her, she knew by the look on their faces they'd all heard.

"Vicky do you think-" Louis started, but Dom quickly put an arm around his shoulders, and Victoire pretended not to see the look that Rose gave the rest of them to shut up.

"We all know Teddy, we all know there's been a mistake." Rose said forcefully, just as Headmistress Mcgonagall stepped onto the podium.

The voices died away, replaced by an even worse silence. Victoire didn't think the great hall had ever been this silent before.

McGonagall swallowed, fiddling with her robe for a short second, Victoire needed more than a second, she didn't want to hear this.

"There's been a crime here at Hogwarts... as you've all probably heard by now, Anthony Corner passed away this morning. He was-" McGonagall swallowed again "He was murdered."

The students all started shouting questions at the same time, Proffesor Longbottom stepped out, trying to get them to calm down. McGonagall regained her posture.

"This is a great loss to all of us, he was a good person, friend and student. We will get to the bottom of this, and for your own safety, the school will be adding extra security measures. All students who knew or have been in contact with Mr. Corner will be questioned by the aurors. The person who did this will not get away." Mcgonagall finished sternly, stepping down from the podium swiftly.

A voice from the slytherin table rung out across the hall, "We already know who did it, it was Lupin!"

Further up the table one of Teddy's friends shot up from his chair, looking like he was ready to attack, his friends held him back, Rose was keeping James and Fred in check, and Victoire was watching the whole thing unfold before her, frozen in her seat. The hall filled again, words like elitists, mudblood and unpure was thrown around. This time McGonagall could barely get the hall to become silent.

"Mr. Lupin has been taken to the ministry because he was the one that found Corner out on the grounds, that is everthing. Now the best we can do is to try and return to out normal routine, and help the aurors in any way we can to catch the killer." McGonagall swept off the stage, quickly in a hurried discussion with one of the aurors that had waited by her side. Victoire followed them with her eyes as they swept out of the room.

One thing was for sure, Hogwarts was not going back to it's normal routine anytime soon.

...

It took the aurors several hours to get to her, she knew they had some kind of list, they'd started with Anthony's closest friends, and then worked their way from there with the interrogations.

It had alread begun to grow dark, and the cold november air made the floor freezing in the dormroom. Victoire had escaped the first moment she could, finding to her relief that the room was empty. When she'd snuck away the school seemed to be coming out of the shock, and the blaming had begun.

She coudn't deal with it, Teddy's darkest secret's out in the open, and like this.

But mostly, she coudn't deal with it because no matter how much she turned it over in her mind, she always came to the same conclusion.

Anthony's death was her fault. She didn't know if she believed Teddy somehow did it while a werewolf, the thought made her so scared she kept ignoring it. But the situation was the same, Teddy and Anthony had been fighting because of her.

Victoire desperately wanted to blame this on her curse, her veela blood. But maybe it was time to realize that it was her, her thoughts and actions and damn recklessness with other people's feelings that had led to this.

It was a third year girl who knocked on the door and told Victoire that it was her turn to meet the aurors. Victoire moved slowly out of her bed where'd she'd spent the last hours in a fetal positon.

She was stopped several times on her way to the headmistress office, people wanted to know what she knew. If Teddy had killed Anthony because of her, did this have anything to do with the fight in the yard before?

When she stepped into the golden eagle elevator she'd started asking herself those questions. Teddy did have all the motives, and they did have a fight, and he did find Anthony, and he did have claw marks.

But then- she thought as the doors opened to the headmistress office. So did Lestrange.

"Welcome Miss Weasley, please take a seat." She recognized the auror talking from before in the hall, it was him, another auror, Mcgonagall and Longbottom in the room. She barely aknowledgded their existance, suddenly her foggy state had cleared and she could think properly.

Unfortunately this wasn't the time to be unraveling Anthony's murder. Because everybody in the room were watching her like a hawk. The auror who'd spoken was sitting beside McGonagall at the desk.

"Did you know Mr. Corner well Victoire? May I call you Victoire?" He asked, his words were civil and kind, but there was coldness to them.

"No."

"No you didn't know him well?"

"No you may not call me Victoire",she said defiantly, and McGonagall gave her a warning look.

"Be serious Miss is an extremely difficult situation we're in and if we're to prove Mr. Lupin innocent-"

"Hrm, we're not here to prove anyone innocent or guily, we just want to ask a few questions." The auror interrupted the headmistress, and Victoire stared at him.

"You already think he did it don't you? It wont matter what I say." She said, watching him closely as he glanced at his auror companion.

"Look Victoire-"

"Miss Weasley."

"Miss Weasley, we know you're Harry's niece and all but we've got to look at this from a serious point of view. Mr. Lupin was at the crime scene, with blood on his hands, Corner's blood. And from what we've heard they did have a history." He gave her a meaningful look, and she took a sharp breath.

She hadn't known about the blood, but it didn't matter.

"I know Teddy, he would never do this, he's taking wolfsbane. He didn't choose this."

"We know he didn't, but in his werewolf form he woudn't have been able to control himself- especially if he had motive-"

"But why would he change, why woudn't the wolfsbane work? Huh? Haven't you thought about that? Isn't this all just a little bit too easy? Isn't Teddy just a little bit too easy to blame?" Victoire's voice rose high, voicing the words that had hit her in the elevator. She knew she coudn't start throwing around names, they'd never believe her, but if she could just make them doubt just for a second...

"Did you or did you not know Mr. Corner?" The auror asked after a long pause, deciding to ignore her outburst. She did however, think she saw McGonagall and Longbottom exchange a look.

"I did," she sighed.

"Intimately?"

"I don't think that's of any importance-" McGonagall started but the auror waved his hand, his eyes on Victoire. She took a deep breath.

"Depends on your definition. We went outa few times, it wasn't serious."

"Sounded like it was serious from what his friends told us."

"I can only speak from my side of the story," she said codly. Her previous guilt had been overshadowed by anger towards the person she knew somehow was behind this. And she didn't need all these questions pointing out all her bad choices.

"He was in love with you Miss Weasley"

"I don't think you have the right to tell me what he felt or did not feel." She growled.

"Okay then, what's your relationship with Mr. Lupin?"

"He's my best friend."

"And where you aware that he was a werewolf?"

"Not until resently no."

"And how did you find out?"

She paused. If she told them Anthony told her, she'd only fuel their conviction that Teddy had done it.

"He told me himself." She lied.

"Was that before or after your recent falling out?" The auror pressed, and she cursed inwardly. Did everbody know eveyrything at this school?

"We reconnected. Thats what friends do."

"Just friends?"

"Yes, now do you have any relevant questions or am I free to leave? Or maybe you want to lock me up too? You already seem to think it's my fault."

"You're free to go for now, but we'll be in touch."

"And Teddy?" She stood up.

"What about him?"

"Whats going to happen to him?"

"He's with you'r uncle."

"I know thats not what I asked," she said through gritted teeth. Proffesor Longbottom ended the discussion by ushering her away towards the elevator.

"Get some sleep." He said, just as the doors closed around her. "And send in the next student on your way out."

Victoire leaned back agaisnt the wall for a second, closing her eyes. She had to fix this.

The doors opened and Victoire found herself eye to eye with a disheveled looking blonde with unusually unperfect makeup.

Britney quickly wiped some smudgy mascara away when she recognized Victoire, and gave her a glare so cold it could freeze fire. Victoire didn't have time for this, and tried to silently slip past Britney and out into the hallway. She failed.

"You know I know you did this right?"

"I didn't do anything-"

"You're the little slut who played both Anthony and Lupin, making him kill Anthony." Britney spat out, and behind the venom in her words Victoire realized that Britney was heartbroken. She coudn't even bring herself to retailiate as Britney knocked into her shoulder on her way into the elevator.

"I'm sorry," Victoire said silently, glancing back.

"You should be," Britney said evenly as the doors started closing. "I'm going to make you pay."

Victoire froze for a second, even if it seemed so clear to her that Teddy hadn't done it, to everybody else she was probably just as guilty as he was. She took a deep breath, calculating her next move. It all depended on how she handled this, direct approach or sneak attack?

Somewhere along the way she realized she'd already made that decision, and found herself already walking in a fast phase towards the dungeons. She counted three aurors walking through the halls on her way there, McGonagall hadn't been kidding, they did take this seriously.

Reaching the entrance to the Slytherin common room, she caught a little first year on it's way in, and made him grudgingly deliver a message for her.

Then she waited, she waited almost 20 minutes before he stepped through the doors.

"Well hello Weasley, I wasn't expecting to hear from you." Lestrange grinned slyly, the quickly healing scar on his face wrinkling.

"Yes you did." Victoire was tired of playing around, and her anger and desperation was pushing away her fear of Lestrange. She boldly took a step forward. "Nice scar you got there, what happened?"

"Oh this?" Lestrange lightly touched it with his index finger, raising his eyebrow. "Accident at quidditch training, Elijah didn't aim very well."

"Bet he didn't", she said through gritted teeth. The scar had faded more that she'd thought, and it was almost impossible to say if it had been a claw mark or not anymore.

"Did you want something or did you just came by to chat?" Lestrange had come closer, eliminating the little space still between them, his hand reaching up to gently trace the line of her jaw. She shuddered, feeling the cold water in her nightmares crashing down around her. She tried to swat his hand away, but he caught her, his fingers coiling around her wrist in an iron grip.

"Don't."

Somehow Victoire knew he meant to tell her more than to just stop resisting, he was giving her one last warning.

But the thing was, she was tired of being played around, tired of being scared.

"How did you do it?" She asked icily, leaning forward. The action made him momentarily confused, he'd expected her to run. His smirk returned in a second, as sneakish as ever.

"I didn't do anything Weasley, your boyfriend did." He whispered in her ear, sending chills down her spine. "And we both know, he did it because of you."

"Stop-" Victoire tried to wrench away, but he grasped her shoulders, digging his fingers in hard.

"You know it too don't you? Boys will do anything for you, it woudn't have been hard for Lupin to loose his control as a werewolf and go after the guy he knew was sleeping with the girl he's in love with. Right?"

"He didn't do it!" She wheezed, finally breaking free. "I don't know how you did this, but I know it was you!"

"Careful now," Lestrange's voice went dangerously low, as if he was trying to calm an hysterical animal. Victoire did feel pretty hysterical though.

"It's the only thing that makes sense, you framed Teddy." Victoire was almost shouting, but Lestrange had gone completely still. "You killed Anthony."

The silence that followed was only broken by her breathing, heart hammering in her chest. Suddenly he broke into a smile, and then a laugh.

"Who's going to believe you?"

A stone lifted from Victoire's chest, and she too, grinned. "Nobody."

"Then why are you smiling?" Lestrange narrowed his eyes, probably thinking she was going crazy. But she'd actually gotten exactly what she came for, confirmation. Nobody else would believe her until she'd gotten proof, but at least now she knew it for sure.

Lestrange had been the one to tell Anthony about Teddy being a werewolf, effectively straining the enmity already between the two and sending them into a fight. Making Teddy the perfect scapegoat for Anthony's murder.

"Just tell me one thing", she said, ignoring his question. "Why did you do it? Anthony was of no threath to you. Why did you bring him into this?"

"I didn't, you did." Lestrange winked, and she had to conceal how much his words effected her. She swallowed, she had to deal with the guilt later, now she had to prove Teddy innocent.

"Just tell me, nobody's going to believe me anyway, like you said."

"Oh dear," He rolled his eyes, "So naive, I actually thought you had something behind that pretty face, but I guess not. Look, the best thing you can do is forget about this, your boyfriend's a rampaging murderer and he'll probably get locked up in azkaban for eternity, but hey, life goes on right?" Lestrange grinned, turning to head back into the common room.

"I'm not afraid of you anymore." Victoire said after a moments hesitation, it was a lie of course, she was terrified, but also furious. "I'm going to take you down."

Lestrange paused, slowly turning back around. "Sure baby."

Victoire turned and stalked away down the corridor, she didn't have to turn around to know that he was watching her. She'd said the words in pure anger, but she'd meant them. Lestrange had been in control for too long, it was time for someone to take him down. And since she was the only one who knew the truth, or at least a fraction of the truth. It had to be her.

And she'd thought this would be an easy year.

AN: Found this chapter that I never updated and edited it slightly. Never really been able to let go of this story. Will try to piece together the rest of the plot and finish it. Think Teddy deserves the truth right?

Anyone still on fanfiction from when this story started? Just out of curiosity^^