Warning - mild sex.
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On an unrelated note, I don't know where to end this story. (Currently taking suggestions)
Chapter Thirty-Seven – Like Puzzle Pieces
(Victoire)
Hearts on Fire was in England until August 29th. I went to every single show after the conversation Teddy and I had, and may very possibly have ended up pissing off their manager. I met him just once before when Kate and Nika and I had to argue our way into the greenroom to see them after their first tour. Then he was annoyed with us because he thought we were standard groupies. The next time we met, Teddy and I had snuck away after their set to a currently unused dressing room in the theatre they were performing at. As had become custom by that point (August fifth), I hadn't worn knickers to the show and Teddy had his trousers around his ankles when Nathan walked in on us.
He screeched inhumanly and I was very thankful my skirt covered the exact mechanics of what we were doing, especially my arse. Teddy started protesting at the same time Nathan started shouting.
"I've said no more groupies, haven't I Lupin?" Nathan demanded. "Leave that to the other one!"
"She's not a groupie!" Teddy insisted. We both seemed to agree it was better for our pride if I just stayed exactly where I was, rather than leaving him half naked in front of his manager.
"Then why are you shagging in some suspect corner?" Nathan shouted.
"She's the girl I dedicate all the songs to!" Teddy replied.
Nathan fell silent and narrowed his eyes at both of us.
"Are you?" he asked. "Are you really?"
"Yes," I agreed, doing my best not to blush furiously. It didn't work.
Nathan glared, gave Teddy a warning look, and stalked out of the room.
"Well that was deeply unpleasant," Teddy said, staring over my shoulder at the spot where Nathan had disappeared. "I guess that's the problem with being on a Muggle tour. Can't magically lock the doors."
I was the first one to start giggling.
I stopped laughing when they left for the States. And then my mother got me a job at Madam Malkin's and suddenly I had a proper life. Mackavis wanted to rent a house on the Channel in a small mixed community, and they invited me to join them. Then life sort of started falling into a standard pattern and I wasn't sure I liked it very much.
OOooOOooOOooOO
"Do these robes make me look fat?"
Yes, actually, the annoying little voice in my head said. They make you look relatively like an overstuffed panda bear, but there's no good way to tell you that without getting fired –
"You look lovely," I assured her. "But it's entirely up to you. If you're comfortable with that fit, then that's the set you should get. If you're uncomfortable, you should go for the next size up."
The customer nodded and ducked back into the changing rooms. I groaned to myself and made desperate eyes at my co-worker, Harmony. The months since finishing Hogwarts had been a blur and I hadn't been able to properly protest my mother getting me a job. And now here I was, the Head Girl, selling over-priced robes to the unsuspecting patrons of Diagon Alley. The only thing that wasn't a blur was Teddy. Because now we were…together? Sort of? Except that he was still on tour, and now that it was September, they were off to the United States and Canada. And I was in London with my days, and a charming village on the channel with my nights, where I shared a rented house with Mackavis.
My job only made me want to curse myself a little bit.
I hadn't heard from Michael or Olive since we finished school, but I heard through the grapevine that was Hannah via David they were still together and out at Michael's family's house. Of course, I only heard that the last time I talked to Hannah, which had been a while ago. HannahandDavid had all but disappeared off the face of the planet, or at least, that's what we all thought until Travis ran into Hannah's father in Diagon Alley in August. Theoretically, they'd eloped and run off to the States without any sort of warning to the rest of us. That news made Mackavis and me very uncomfortable, all together, since they were just eighteen and already married. They'd got married before Rian and Logan.
"D'you feel like this place is slowly stealing your soul?" Harmony asked me an hour later as we took our lunch break at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. It had apparently closed at some time during the war, but had reopened with Florean's son.
"The ice cream has the tendency to do that," I replied, scooping a piece of cookie dough out of my otherwise vanilla ice cream.
"I meant Madam Malkin's but good to know," Harmony said, staring off into space and smiling serenely. "Don't you just love the sun?"
I considered. "Mostly I like sitting in my room writing, but I have to pay rent," I replied.
Harmony was precisely unlike every friend I'd had at Hogwarts. I would never once presume to call her stupid, but she was a bit of an airhead and carried the cardinal Hufflepuff virtues of being unafraid of hard work, and also being a generally decent person. She told me that her mum was from China and her father from Spain and they now hated each other. Partially, this was because her father was extremely Catholic and decided to return to Spain when Harmony was in fourth year (she was the year ahead of me). This was also partially because her mother was very traditionally Chinese and, as Harmony put it, "liked to throw powdered pieces of innocent animals at every problem."
Harmony, on the other hand, was an artist. She'd shown me some of her artwork and it was absolutely stunning. She had this way of manipulating the inks and paints she used to make the colours look like they bled into each other and it was beautiful. We actually got along surprisingly well. She was the one bright spot in my job.
Mack and Travis both had jobs at the Ministry. Mack was in the Fantastical Beasts department where he belonged, seeing as he was part unicorn as far as I could tell, and Travis was in the Department of Law and Order or whatever it was called. He got twitchy whenever he heard my surname nowadays.
"Oh, you mean your uncle the Deputy Minister for Magic?" he asked. "Or your uncle the head of the Auror Department? Or your other uncle, major auror in the Auror Department? Or your aunt, the head of the Department of Law Enforcement? Or you grandfather, the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Department?"
Whenever he started rambling, I would do my best to keep him from flying off the handle. It wasn't easy. Generally, he started to hyperventilate and Mack had to take him away for "therapy."
This was all good and fine and life was actually going alright for once.
"Oh my God, they're so attractive," Harmony sighed one day while we were on break. It was the end of September and she had a copy of Witch Weekly in hand. On the front was a picture of Tom. I raised my eyebrow at it and then peered over her shoulder. The whole main article was devoted to Hearts on Fire.
"They were only a year ahead of me at Hogwarts," Harmony said. We both paused for a moment to drool over a full page picture of Teddy holding his guitar and singing. "God, the money I would pay to have that man between my thighs."
I couldn't help it and started giggling uncontrollably.
"What?" Harmony asked, looking concerned for my wellbeing.
"Nothing," I insisted, continuing to giggle.
"I wonder if his hair's as soft as it looks," she said, deciding to leave me to my fit of hysterics. "And how he gets it precisely that shade of turquoise."
"He's a metamorphmagus," I explained, finally overcoming my giggling spell.
"Ooh, really?" she asked. "Wow, I'm a massive Hearts on Fire fan, but even I didn't know that. Why do you?"
She sounded genuinely curious instead of accusatory, which is what I liked about Harmony.
"Erm, well…" I said, figuring out the best way to phrase it. "You know their song Champagne's For Celebrating I'll Have a Martini?"
"Teddy wrote that one," Harmony supplied.
"Right," I agreed. "And also Calling All Skeletons, and Love, Love, Kiss, Kiss, and Remembering Sunday, and Forget About It?"
"What about them?" she asked, now looking very curious.
"Teddy wrote those about me," I said. "Actually, my name's in the credits for Love, Love, Kiss, Kiss because I scribbled additional lyrics on his rough draft over Christmas the year he wrote it…"
Harmony's jaw was somewhere near her navel and I could see the internal side of her lip piercing.
"Oh my God you know them?" she practically squealed.
I winced at the pitch of her exclamation, but nodded. "Also…I might possibly be Rian's maid of honour."
She kept staring at me with wide eyes. "I'm not going to ask you to introduce me because that would be rude, but in the event that there's an occasion where I could possibly meet them that you just happened to notice if I could meet them-"
I laughed. "I'll see what I can do."
OOooOOooOOooOO
"I'm going to go crazy," Travis groaned, falling face first onto our sofa and burying his head under a pillow.
"Why?" Mack asked from where he was stationed in the kitchen attempting to cook things. The boys were both terrible cooks and I was too busy writing the moment I got off work to actually cook myself. Eventually, we would get takeaway as happened every night, but Mack had yet to admit defeat.
"Because y'know, Muggles talk about being barristers or whatever, and then Wizards? No, no no. We get stupid Wizengamot trials where all these imposing people stare down at you over their Orders of Merlin and Harry Fucking Potter is the arresting office and provides evidence," Travis rambled. "Why did I think this was the right career choice? I'm just a fucking court scribe right now and it's fraying my nerves."
Mack abandoned the kitchen in order to sit on the sofa next to Travis's head and calmly stroke his hair. When burning smells started emanating from the kitchen, I left my writing on the table and ran in before Mack could accidentally set fire to the house through neglect. I was still stirring the almost burnt pasta (how the fuck did he burn pasta? Seriously? There was water involved…) when the doorbell rang. Since we lived in a mostly Wizarding community, it was rare to actually have a doorbell. Nevertheless, we did, but most wizards didn't ring it.
After it became apparent neither Mack nor Travis was going to get up and answer the doorbell, I glared at both of them, turned off the stove, and unlocked the front door. A man was standing there with a pizza box.
He had dark eyes and Logan and Tom's "I've been broken several times" nose and dark hair kept under his uniform cap.
"I've got a pizza delivery for Victoire Weasley?" he said, his voice oddly familiar.
"I didn't order pizza," I replied.
"Oh," he said, glancing down at the pizza box. When he looked back up his eyes were grey. I frowned. "See, I was just in Chicago, and they gave me a whole free pizza and also a four day break, so…"
His nose shifted to long and straight.
"So I caught a Portkey and figured I'd share my pizza with you," he finished, the rest of his face turning back into Teddy's standard chiselled jawline and cocky grin. When he pulled off the cap and shook out his hair, it turned turquoise.
"You are absolutely ridiculous," I informed him, taking the pizza out of his hands and handing it to Mackavis.
"Where are you going?" Travis asked, without pulling his head out from under the pillow. "And why is there pizza?"
"I'm going to go shag the pizza man," I replied cheerily, pulling Teddy into the house and steering him to my bedroom.
"Porn doesn't happen in real life!" Travis shouted after us. I heard Mack explain that it was actually Teddy and Travis calmed down.
"Ooh, can porn happen in real life?" Teddy asked, wrapping his hands around my waist and pulling me backwards so my back was pressed against his chest. He kissed my neck and unbuttoned my jeans.
"You did turn up as the pizza man," I replied, squeaking as one of his hands slid under my jeans and into my knickers.
"That's an acceptable thing to do right? When I'm trying to surprise you?" he asked, his teeth grazing the junction of my neck and shoulder.
We stumbled into my bedroom and slammed the door shut, quickly silencing it. Teddy spun me around and snogged me, desperately pulling my shirt over my head. I moaned as he kissed down my chest and undid my bra.
"Why are you entirely clothed while I'm half naked?" I asked, flicking my wand and sending his pizza delivery uniform flying in all directions. He blinked in shock and then tugged my jeans off in retaliation. It took us approximately ten seconds to find ourselves on the bed as he slid inside me.
He made a very breathless, encouraging noise when I dragged my nails down his back. I figured we were both a little desperate and horny because it did not take very long for either of us to come and we lay there on the bed, panting.
"I kind of missed you," he mumbled, kissing me softly. I could actually feel the emotion in his kiss and it made me squirm. It didn't matter how much I liked him. It still made me skittish.
"I kind of missed you too," I said, running my fingers up and down his arms.
"This is the last break I have until Christmas," he said, looking depressed about it.
"You do get Christmas off?" I asked.
"Yeah, about three days," he said. "Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day."
"Well that's good," I replied, kissing him again. "We can spend Christmas together if nothing else."
"Yeah," he agreed. "And then it's only two months until I'm done with the tour and I get to come home. To my crap flat and melancholy song writing while Rian and Logan plan their wedding."
I laughed. "Did he figure out which one of you is to be best man?" I asked.
He grinned. "Well, see, there's this tradition that the maid of honour shags the best man, so I threatened to have Tom murdered if he was best man. Apparently, he's to be best man at my wedding in the event I get married, and Logan's to be best man at Tom's. Logan's thrilled about this since supposedly, he won't have to ever write a best man speech."
"Maybe someday Tom will fall in love again," I said, pressing my lips to Teddy's shoulder. He laughed and rocked his hips experimentally. When I gasped incoherently, he grinned and did it again. He grabbed one of my ankles and brought it up to his shoulder. I wasn't too flexible, but it was kind of fantastic.
I couldn't help but roll my eyes in annoyance at the noises coming from my mouth though. I pressed my lips together as hard as I could, but they kept reverberating through anyways.
"What are you doing?" Teddy asked, using the pad of his thumb to pull my bottom lip out from between my teeth.
I blushed, which was sort of stupid since he was inside me and we'd had a lot of sex, but it couldn't be helped.
"I just make such stupid sounds," I mumbled, moaning helplessly when he pressed his thumb against my clit.
"They're not stupid," he said, kissing me and running one hand down the leg on his shoulder.
"Yes they are," I replied. I wanted to pout except it was sort of difficult to do while he was fucking me.
"They're sexy as hell," he said, kissing me again.
"Really?" I asked, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.
"Seriously?" he replied. "It's well established fact that I'm kind of an asshole. If they were annoying, don't you think I would've said something by now in the past year we've been shagging?"
"Yeah, but-" I protested.
"But nothing," he replied. "Everything about you is sexy as hell, including the noises you make."
I kept blushing, and kept thinking he was crazy, but I also stopped trying to stifle the noises.
Teddy spent all four days of his break with us. Despite the fact we were just friends with benefits who liked each other, it was really pleasant to have him there. It was very nice to have him leaning over my shoulder at the stove with his hands on my waist while I cooked. It was a little unsettling to have him sit there staring at me while I edited my book. It was more unsettling when he looked at me with hurt eyes and asked why it had to end the way it did.
"Well, how else would it have ended?" I asked.
"I dunno," he said. "They could've lived happily together forever?"
"Right though?" Mack insisted from the living room. I ignored him.
"But what if they lived past that and never saw each other again?" I asked. "And spent the next sixty, seventy years searching for each other and never finding each other. Wouldn't that be worse than dying?"
"You're depressing!" Mack informed me.
Teddy was smiling softly at me from the end of the table where he had his chin rested on his folded hands. "You're a completely hopeless romantic."
I blushed. "Maybe," I admitted.
He had to leave on Monday and I had to go back to work. I ended up spending our lunch break telling Harmony about Teddy. She said she completely understood why I hadn't invited her over to meet him that weekend. After all, she said, if he's on tour so often I should take every opportunity to spend alone time with my boyfriend. For a really brief moment, I started to correct her and tell her that Teddy wasn't my boyfriend, but then I stopped, and I let it go.
OOooOOooOOooOO
"Your first Christmas out of Hogwarts," Dad said as he drove the whole family from Shell Cottage to the Burrow. It was the most annoying tradition we'd started. Harry and Ginny I understood with the driving since they had to bring their dogs and dogs vigorously hated the Floo network, but my father liked to corral all of us in the family house and then force us to sit in the car for the three hour drive.
"Yep," I agreed. "Nika, how's Quidditch?"
"Great," Nika replied. "James and Fred and Bertie are fantastic, Scor is fantastic, Liam and I are fantastic, and our Seeker's crap, but we make up for it. But in two years when Liam finishes school, Roxie's going to take over for him and then Lily will be our Seeker and everything will go as planned."
"You make it sound so ominous," Louis replied.
"It is ominous," Nika and I said in unison. Louis laughed.
"So how's third year going?" I asked, ruffling his hair.
"Eurgh," he replied. "I spend all my time in the library, meanwhile James has his third girlfriend – he 'really loves' this one – Freddie's flirting with some Hufflepuff girl who rooms with Lucy, Lucy and Frank keep trying to get in fights over stupid things, and this really creepy girl from Slytherin has spent the entire year sending me strange love notes."
"Never did make friends in your house?" I asked.
"Merlin no," he replied. "And then there are these two second years who are always in the common room fucking with the-"
"Louis," Mum interrupted with a scolding tone.
"Sorry," he said. "These two second years who are always in the common room violating the laws of magic."
"What second years?" I asked, frowning at him over Nika's head. I was taller than her, to my delight. So was Louis, to her chagrin.
"I dunno what they're actually called," Louis said with a shrug. "McGeek and Whateverthefuckhisnameis."
"Louis!" Mum exclaimed.
"What? It's his name!" Louis replied. "Merlin alone knows why-"
He cut off when I started laughing. "I think that might've been my doing. Nika, how's Scor holding up?"
Nika sighed. "Poorly," she replied. "James and Freddie and Frank, in addition to dating girls and flirting with girls and getting in fights with Lucy, are a pretty good honour guard, but sometimes the Slytherins slip through."
"Who is this kid?" Dad asked from the driver's seat.
"Our Keeper," Nika replied. "Scorpius Malfoy's his name. He got sorted into Gryffindor, which was apparently some sort of horror, and now he gets the shit kicked out of him by the Slytherins on a regular basis."
"Dominique," Mum said.
"Sorry," Nika replied. "But he does. They're downright cruel. Vicky looked out for him last year but now she's gone."
I cringed. I liked Scorpius a lot and yeah, he was a bit weird, but he was a good kid. Plus, he was related to Teddy.
"He's Teddy's cousin," I explained.
"Oooooh," Dad said with a knowing look in the rear-view mirror in my direction.
"So Nika how's Liam?" I asked before Dad could ask me about Teddy.
"He's…Liam," she replied, sounding annoyed. "He's absolutely obsessed with Quidditch, which is to be expected since his dad's Oliver Wood and his mum's Katie Bell, so y'know, Quidditch blood, but-"
"I played Quidditch with Oliver Wood when I was at Hogwarts," Dad piped up. "I hear he was absolutely obsessive as a captain."
"So's his son," Nika and I said.
"And it would be one thing if he was that obsessed with Quidditch if he was also a good lay, but he's not," Nika complained.
Dad choked on his own spit, Louis snickered, and Mum reached into her purse, pulled out a condom, and handed it to Nika without a word. Scribbled on it were contraception spell instructions.
"Victoire, do you need any contraception?" Mum asked. Dad was turning steadily more and more beet red and Louis kept snickering.
At that moment I really, really loved my mother.
"Erm, no we've got the spells down pretty well by this point," I replied. "Louis might need it though."
"Oi!" Louis exclaimed.
"Y'know," Nika said. "For the creepy Slytherin bird."
"Oh piss off," Louis said, huffing and curling into the corner.
"Is she at least pretty?" I asked.
Louis shrugged noncommittally.
"Well?" Mum asked. Dad had apparently decided he wanted no part of the conversation ever.
"Yes, she's pretty," Nika said.
"How do you know?" Louis asked.
"Because I've seen her hitting on you," Nika replied. "She's the one with light brown hair, blue eyes?"
"Criminal past?" Louis finished.
"Well that's fun," I said. "What's her name?"
Louis grumbled. "Rachel. Her name's Rachel McFarlane."
"McFarlane?" Dad asked. He was frowning. "Her father an Auror called Davan?"
"I dunno, do I?" Louis replied. "It's not like I talk to her. She just talks to me."
"There's nothing inherently wrong with Slytherins," I pointed out. "Maybe you should talk to her."
Louis rolled his eyes. "What do you mean there's nothing inherently wrong with Slytherins?"
I realised as he spoke that he didn't actually know Logan outside of his turning up for Christmas celebrations.
"Logan McEwan," I replied. "Is one of the nicest people I know. Slytherin."
Louis shrugged and then Dad parked the car next to the shed of the Burrow. We carried all our things inside, were greeted by Granny and Granddad Weasley and then Nika and I were commandeered to help make the shepherd's pies for dinner.
I was standing at the kitchen sink peeling potatoes when four apparation cracks sounded at the end of the drive. I could recognise Teddy's blue hair from a mile away, so I dropped my potato peeler and ran out the kitchen door.
"Oi!" Nika called after me. "Don't leave me here with these!"
I ignored her and sprinted down the snowy front walk, realising as I did that I was only in my socks. I started shivering when I reached them, throwing my arms around Teddy's shoulders and kissing him hard enough that I knocked us both over. He was laughing when we landed in the snow.
"Miss me?" he asked, tucking my hair behind my ear and pushing my glasses back up my nose.
"Shut up," I replied, kissing him again.
"Where are your shoes?" Tom asked in concern.
"I forgot them," I said. Before I could say anything else, Tom had scooped me up and thrown me over his shoulder. Logan reached down a hand to pull Teddy to his feet. He was flushed and his hair was full of snow and he was still laughing.
"I missed you too," he said, allowing Tom to keep me on his shoulder. I kissed Rian on the cheek on my way by and the five of us returned to the kitchen.
"Oh my gods hi!" Nika exclaimed, abandoning the peeling and hugging Rian and Logan and Teddy and then Tom after he'd set me down.
"Hey Dom," Tom and Logan and Teddy said in unison.
"We have to plan things!" Rian insisted, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me into the den.
"What sorts of things?" Granny Weasley asked, looking suspicious.
"Erm, we're getting married in May," Logan explained, scratching the back of his head awkwardly and barely managing to supress a giant smile.
Granny Weasley exclaimed in excitement and let Rian drag me off as soon as she'd explained I was the maid of honour. Everyone was thrilled about it the whole weekend. They were also thrilled that Hearts on Fire were back for the holiday and depressed that they were leaving so soon.
Teddy and I snuck back to my house on Christmas night and spent the next day doing nothing but lying in bed.
"I hate spending so much time on tour," he said on Sunday morning. He had one hand folded under his head and the other resting on my waist. The sheet had fallen down so it was barely covering his junk.
"What would you do instead?" I asked.
"Play local shows? Write music," he said. "Lay in your bed shagging you."
I started to smile and ducked my face against his side before he could see. He started laughing and pulled my head up so he could see me smiling, which led to him kissing me, which led to sex as it always did. It was the best Christmas yet.
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