When they got downstairs, her parents spent about 40 minutes talking to Fred about the tablets. This worked out well both because it gave Fred the opportunity to do some well-deserved bragging and because in the process of showing them his tablet, they'd had seen his brief exchange with Micah about that evening.

"Vic, Fred, it's Christmas Eve - can't you go a couple days without seeing your friends?" her father said. "Especially since you have those - what do you even call them?"

"Tablets. And Dad, half the time we spend most of the party talking to each other, anyway."

"My parents said it was okay as long as I didn't try to duck out tomorrow," Fred added quickly. "We won't be going out or anything."

Her father sighed and look at her mother, who shrugged. She had never really assigned any special significance to holiday gatherings. "I do not see a problem with it," she said. "I am sure Johanna will not be there the entire time, either - Brendan mentioned that she had plans with Teddy. Just do not be home too late - your father is planning to make breakfast tomorrow."

"I promise!" She glanced at the clock. "Oh - I should go get ready. I'll be back down in a few."

As she hurried up the stairs, she heard her parents start to ask Fred about his classes. Given Fred's propensity to turn everything into a much more exciting story than it really had been at the time, she knew it would be awhile before anyone missed her.

That gave her plenty of time to process the potential implications of her mother's off-handed comment about Teddy, which may or may not have been a good thing, especially since Fred was really the only person she could have talked it out with. Sometimes, Victoire wished that she was just a little better with emotions.

In the end, though, she came to two conclusions:

First, that she was absolutely certain that Teddy's potential presence at the party did not change the plans she'd made with Gallagher; and

Second, that while she wasn't entirely sure who she was trying to dress up for, this was a good opportunity to do it in a thoroughly nonsuspicious way and she was sure she wanted to do it for someone.

By the time Victoire clammered down the stairs, her aunt and uncle were there and halfway through their first beers.

"Hey," she said, exchanging hugs with them both before collapsing next to Fred. "How are you?"

Despite her taking what was probably too much time primping for a person or people who knew exactly what she looked like when she was covered in dirt, soot, scratches, and/or bruises, they still had plenty of time to catch up before her mother called up to Dominique, Louis, and Roxanne. As they clambered down the stairs, Victoire realized that if she was anywhere near as loud as her sister, her father definitely had a point about them.

Once they'd gotten to the Greengrass's, her father's friend jerked his head toward the stairs when Fred asked him where Johanna was. They walked past their siblings and Louis's friend Evelyn in the living room, and headed up to the second floor.

Johanna was sitting in a desk chair in the third room on the right, and sure enough, Teddy was sprawled out on the carpet. When she caught sight of them in the doorway, she grinned and gestured them in. "Hey, Fred," she said cheerfully. "Long time no see, Vic." Victoire stuck her tongue out, and Johanna grinned. "I love that skirt - that shade of blue looks great on you. Teddy, don't you like Victoire's skirt?"

Teddy hadn't moved since they'd walked in. "Yeah," he said after a long pause. "It's - er - pretty."

Given where his eyes had been drifting before Johanna had said something, Victoire didn't think that "pretty" was quite the word he was thinking of, and she caught a small smirk on Johanna's face as they collapsed onto the couch.

Teddy shifted uncomfortably, and she saw his eyes glance over her legs once more before he changed the subject. "What's that thing in your hand, Vic? Gallagher had one yesterday, too."

"I made it," Fred said, pulling his out of the inner pocket of his jacket. "I made one for all five of us and one for my girlfriend - we can use them to send messages to each other. So, like, Vic and G and I have a message that Lexy and Micah and Juliet can't see, and they can't see mine with Jules -"

"Thank god for that," Victoire muttered.

"- and I can't see Vic's with G."

Fred's delivery didn't sound suggestive in any way, but she suspected that his examples were deliberate. If Johanna and Teddy noticed, though, they didn't react, and as Fred talked more about how it worked, she glanced down at hers to double check that she hadn't just missed a message from Gallagher.

"Did you bring that because you were afraid we'd bore you?" Teddy teased.

She jumped. "No!" she said, looking back up and toggling it off again. "No, I'm just going to G's later, he's supposed to message me when he gets home."

When she glanced back up, Teddy's smile had faded a little. "So what were you in detention for, anyway?" he asked curiously.

Fred let out a loud snort of laughter, which was a definite step up from his sentiments two weeks before.

"Well, remember the banshee I mentioned?" she asked.

Teddy looked a little wary, but Johanna immediately leaned forward. "I haven't! Tell me, it sounds interesting."

After a quick outline of their initial two encounters (which Fred punctuated with occasional commentary that somehow made them both look simultaneously more competent and more reckless), Victoire glanced down at her tablet again. When she looked back up, both Teddy and Johanna were still looking at her expectantly. "Oh, fine - and I went out there a few more times."

Teddy's eyebrows flew up. "Sorry, what?"

"Yeah. Then Fred caught me when I was heading out there a couple weeks ago, and he made me tell Goldstein, and then Goldstein made me tell him what we talked about -"

"What you talked about?" Johanna cut in. "Wait, so you've been going out into the Forbidden Forest to have regular chats with a banshee that gave you her comb?"

"Kind of, yeah." Victoire pushed her hair behind her ears. "Her mom's comb, technically. I mean - she's perfectly nice, I'm fine, but apparently banshees and veelas are, like, distantly related or something. Goldstein thinks she probably she came up to us in the first place because of my mum's family." The concern on Teddy's face was starting to irritate her. "Anyway, Goldstein thinks that they're kind of the opposite of ghosts and so maybe their touch is just 'incompatible with human life,' which is why Fred got fucked up. But I guess if you're not totally human, it doesn't hurt you - it just kind of… carries on with the non-human parts a bit. Or that's what he thinks, anyway."

Johanna's mouth had dropped open partway through. "Oh, that's so interesting! What would happen for a werewolf, do you think?"

Teddy's mind was clearly elsewhere. "Vic, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she repeated. "I mean, I got a long lecture when I got home about being more careful and I have to talk to Goldstein before I go back out there, but -"

"He's just letting you go back out?" Teddy asked incredulously.

"Well, he knows she'll go anyway," Fred cut in. "So he's probably trying to figure out how to make it safer, because he's a good teacher."

That was not quite the reaction Fred had had when he'd realized that Goldstein was not banning her from the Forest, but she didn't point that out. She wasn't sure how much of his defensiveness was because it was Goldstein and how much of it was the revelation that the banshee hadn't intended to hurt him at all - she'd just overheard and misinterpreted Fred's comments about being "the best cousin ever."

Teddy opened his mouth and closed it again. Before he could say anything, Fred jumped in. "So how's Cursebreaking and Auror training going?"

The tension in the room had defused significantly by the time her tablet glowed. She jerked her head down.

'hearts'
(gdedworth, vic)
8:01pm

gdedworth: hey
gdedworth: i'm home
gdedworth: did you still want to come over?

vic: :)
vic: yes
vic: at the greengrass holiday party, give me a few

gdedworth: sure
gdedworth: i'll go open the floo now
gdedworth: no rush
gdedworth: my inner eye is telling me i'll need to impress someone soon so i'll lift some weights while I wait

Victoire clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her giggle. Fred frowned at her - when she passed him her tablet, he rolled his eyes. "It's not actually funny," he said to Johanna and Teddy, who both looked curious. "Vic's just really easily entertained." He scribbled something quickly on his tablet. "We should get going - Micah's ready, too."

She jumped to her feet and exchanged goodbyes with both Teddy and Johanna. "I'm really fine, Teddy," she said into his ear when he hugged her. "Stop worrying."

He shook his head ruefully. "Take care of yourself, Vic."

She followed Fred out. She was surprised at how much less upset she was at the prospect of leaving Teddy behind than she'd thought she'd be; all of the anxiety and worry spent trying to puzzle out his reactions just didn't quite feel worth it when there was someone else she liked quite a lot sending her very clear messages that he wanted to kiss her.

As they went down the stairs, her cousin murmured, "Are you curious to hear what they're saying now? Because I am." She following him to the corner near the staircase and put the small disc he handed over in her ear.

As soon as it was in, Victoire could hear their voices just as clearly as if she'd been standing right outside Johanna's door.

" - if you want that kind of claim to her time, you need to actually ask her out. I've been telling you that for months - I have absolutely no sympathy left." Johanna's tone was clipped.

She heard Teddy sigh. "It just - it feels weird. I like her - a lot - but I just - she's a sixth year."

"Yes," his friend agreed. "It's not your finest hour."

Fred let out a snort - he'd used the same phrase multiple times over the fall.

"I just wanted to wait until the summer - because, I mean, if she's only got a year left, that's a little less bad, right?"

"Sure, why not. But you can't complain if the girl who befriends fucking banshees because she's bored moves on while you're busy being patient and making rational decisions."

She heard a loud thud. "What do you mean, moves on?"

Johanna Greengrass had never been one to mince words; it seemed that she didn't feel that this was the time to start. "Teddy, if she was really hung up on you, she wouldn't be leaving to go see Gallagher Dedworth."

There was a long silence. "You told me last night that I was being paranoid."

"I changed my mind."

They heard Teddy take a deep breath. "I mean - I can say something next time I see her. It'll just be a little awkward for a bit. It'll be fine."

"With that kind of enthusiasm, I'm shocked that she's hooking up with somebody else."

There was a long pause. "Did you notice the veela thing?"

Johanna sighed. "Yeah, a little, but we're not going to even start down that road. Gallagher's been one very repressed step away from wanting to fuck his hot best friend for years."

For some reason, that comment made Victoire jump; Fred grabbed her elbow before she jostled the nearby plant.

"Seriously?" Teddy asked, momentarily distracted.

"Of course. It wasn't going to take a whole lot to push him over the edge. I know I saw him more than you because we were in the same house, but how the fuck did you not notice it?"

There was a long pause. "I don't know. I just - I do like her a lot."

"Yeah, well, presumably, so does he. Teddy, it's not hard to like her a whole lot - you're not somehow seeing something that no one else is."

When they stepped back into Victoire's kitchen a few minutes later, Fred glanced at her. "Any desire to unpack that?"

She shrugged, and he took the hint. "Have fun with G. Make good choices."