Victoire had just gotten out of the shower the next day when her tablet started to glow. She wrapped the towel tighter around herself and leaned over to read it.
'hearts'
(gdedworth, vic)
4:14pm
gdedworth: gill said she's having her friends over tonight
gdedworth: van said he'd be happy to talk to you
gdedworth: you busy?
vic: give me a sec, let me ask my parents
She threw on a shirt and jeans and rushed downstairs. Her father looked up when she barrelled into the kitchen.
"Somehow I always forget how loud you and your sister manage to be," he said, looking up from his cookbook. "Then you get home, and it all comes rushing back. What's your emergency?"
She grinned at him. "Do you guys mind if I go over to Gallagher's tonight?" Her father opened his mouth, but his reluctant expression spurred her on to add, "I wanted to ask his brother about his department, Goldstein said it could be a good fit for me."
Her father sighed and put the cookbook down. "Which brother?"
"Van. Why?"
He shook his head. "Just wondering. Sure, Vic. Do you need me to apparate you over?"
"No, it's fine - I'll tell him what time now so he can open the floo." She dropped her tablet onto the table and slid into the chair across from her father.
'hearts'
(gdedworth, vic)
4:30pm
vic: yep, my dad says it's fine
vic: what time?
gdedworth: any time after 6:30 or 7?
gdedworth: just give me a couple minutes heads up so I can let you in
vic: sounds good
vic: thank you hearts
gdedworth: anything for you
gdedworth: baby
gdedworth: gotta get my matchmaking fix
She let out a loud snort. When she glanced up, she realized her father was watching her.
"What's that?" he asked curiously.
"Just a thing Fred made. He gave one to all of us - we can just write messages to each other and send them instantly."
"Can I see it?"
She hit a couple buttons on the side, and the exchange with Gallagher was replaced by a conversation with Lexy and Micah about last minute shopping. "Sure," she said, circling around the table and sitting down next to him. "These little buttons control who it goes to - so one click to add or remove someone to a message."
He looked a little taken aback. "So - it's not just one message between you?"
"Oh, no - there are lots of separate ones. So like, I have individual ones with everyone, and there's the whole group, and then there are side conversations - like, G and Lex and I have one to talk about magizoology."
She'd intentionally picked one of the least potentially-incriminating chats. From her father's expression, he wasn't buying the 'study group' excuse, but he didn't challenge her on it. "That's impressive even by Fred's standards," he said instead. "When's he coming by tomorrow?"
"I dunno - I'll ask him."
'it's not technically against the rules'
(fred, vic)
4:42pm
vic: showing my dad the tablet, he says it's really cool
vic: he wants to know when you're coming by tomorrow
fred: hi/thanks, uncle bill
fred: whenever I wake up
vic: so 6pm?
fred: HEY
vic: sorry, 4:30
fred: HEY
vic: 2
fred: … okay, that's too close to accurate for me to get offended
Victoire hit a button on the side, and the screen flickered off. Her father looked even more impressed than he had a few minutes before. "Can anyone turn it on?"
"Nope - it's keyed to whoever unlocks it first. I mean, you can read it if it's on, obviously, but if I left it laying around, you couldn't open it."
Her father glanced at her. "Can I touch it?" She nodded, and he started to run his finger over the smooth metal that had appeared again when she'd blanked the screen out. "Are they all the same?"
She shook her head. "No - Fred's girlfriend has one with just him, and I think he's planning to try to redirect some Muggle thing Micah uses on holidays so he can talk to his sister while we're at school."
"Can he do that?"
She shrugged. "He seemed to think it wouldn't be too difficult."
Her father let out a low whistle. "Can you tell him to bring his tomorrow? I'd love to talk to him more about it."
"Sure."
'it's not technically against the rules'
(fred, vic)
4:50pm
vic: my dad wants you to bring yours tomorrow if you don't mind
vic: he's super curious now
fred: sure
fred: hi again, uncle bill
vic: he says hi
vic: he thinks you're good at magic
fred: yeah well
fred: that's probably because I am
Her father gave a snort of laugher. "I'll stop," he said, pushing his chair back. "I told your mother I'd have dinner ready by the time she got home, and I'm running late. Thanks for humoring me."
When she got back to her room, she realized that she had a difficult needle to thread. On one hand, if Teddy was going to be there, she wanted to look nice - but on the other hand, the very last thing she needed was for her parents to ask questions about why she was so dressed up to go hang out with her friend and talk about her future with his much-older brother.
In the end, she ended up conferring with Fred, who at least had some reasonable perspective on these things, and based on her parents' distinct lack of a reaction when she bounced back down the stairs a couple hours later, it seemed like she'd been at least relatively successful in not inspiring any suspicion.
"He knows you're coming?" her father asked as she yanked open the floo.
"Yep! I dunno when I'll be back, we'll probably - uh -"
Her father rolled his eyes. "Vic, don't say you're going to do schoolwork - I don't want to call you a liar when you've only been home for a day. You wont be going anywhere else?" She shook her head. "Okay - have fun, and please be quiet when you get in."
When she stepped out of the fireplace in the Dedworths' basement, she found Gallagher leaning against the wall. "What's new?" he asked cheerfully. "It's been so long since we caught up."
"I know - so much has happened since yesterday," she shot back. "It's like I'm a whole new person."
He grinned as he locked the floo behind her. "I was having a drink with them upstairs and watching the tablet so I knew when to come open the floo, and I'm pretty sure Teddy's already feeling paranoid."
Victoire felt her face get hot. "Is this - er - am I being mean? Are you just being a Slytherin?"
"Probably." He sounded completely unperturbed by the concept, and she followed him up the two flights of stairs to his kitchen, dropping her tablet in his room on the way.
When they emerged, everyone around the table was looking at them, and the conversation had come to a pause. That did nothing to help alleviate the mixture of anxiety and excitement that was bubbling up inside her, but she forced herself to smile and tucked her hair behind her ears. She'd grown up knowing Teddy and Johanna Greengrass, and the others were hardly new faces, even if she wouldn't have called them friends. Seeing them gathered around the kitchen table was a reminder that they were all proper adults now, though, and it made her feel a little odd and out-of-place.
Just as she was starting to feel actively uncomfortable, Teddy put his bottle down. "Hey, Vic," he said, getting up. She met him halfway across the kitchen, and when she felt his arms around her, her heart started racing for an entirely different reason. "How've you been? I haven't heard from you in a few weeks."
The hug was tight enough that she could feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest, and based on how warm she suddenly felt, she suspected that her face was bright red by the time they pulled apart. "Okay," she managed to say. "Er - I got in a little trouble before the holidays, so I've been stuck in detention."
She heard Gallagher's snort of laughter; thankfully, he kept his commentary to himself.
"Sounds like you," Teddy said. A grin flashed across his face, and she felt her stomach turn over. When she glanced past him, she saw a smirk on Johanna's face, and she felt her face get even hotter - she was apparently even more hopeless at hiding her emotions than she'd realized.
After a few more minutes of chatting, they headed up to the third floor to talk to Gallagher's oldest brother. Once they were out of hearing from the group in the kitchen, though, she sighed.
"What?" Gallagher asked, looking genuinely confused.
"No, just - Johanna. She was smirking at me, she totally noticed how much I was blushing, and -"
He held up his hand before she could really get going. "Vic." She stopped talking. "Jo wasn't smirking at you - she was smirking at him."
"Why?"
Her friend sighed. The very familiar, long-suffering look on his face made her laugh. "Because, Vic, as we keep telling you, he likes you." He nudged her. "Come on, you seriously do need to talk to Van."
Gallagher wasn't wrong - she really did need to talk to Van. Everything he said confirmed what she'd been musing about in the back of her head since her conversation with Goldstein in the beginning of the year, and when they got back to his room almost an hour later, she was feeling giddy with excitement.
They collapsed onto his couch - one benefit of being so much younger than most of his siblings was the fact that he'd been able to claim the second living room as a very large bedroom when there stopped being any need for it - and she grinned at him. "Thanks, G. That was - really interesting."
"You're really mastering the art of the understatement as well as whining," he teased her. She made to kick him, and he caught her foot. "Vic, you're torturing me - remember my foot fetish?"
That was enough to trigger a laughing fit, and he grabbed the bottle out of her hand before she spilled it. When she'd recovered enough to manage just a broad grin, he handed it back and clinked their mostly-empty bottles together. "No, seriously, not a problem. Cheers for enabling your most reckless tendencies."
She finished off what was left in hers and put it on the floor. "No, really. Like, I think that's what I want to do."
Now his grin was matching hers. "Oh, I know. I take both Goldstein classes with you - the writing's on the wall. Why do you think I wanted you to talk to Van?"
"If they take me."
He waved her off and put his empty bottle on the side table next to him. "They'll take you. You're too good for them not to."
"Thanks." She studied him for a moment. "You know, I really did miss you."
He shook his head. "Well, no accounting for taste, but I missed you, too."
Her giddiness hadn't really dissipated, and after a moment of hesitation, she leaned over to kiss him. It took him a a heartbeat to respond - he was clearly surprised - but before she could pull back, she felt his hand on her shoulder, and his tongue brushed against hers.