Year 7: Meant to Be

Chapter 65: January 2018

Making the decision wasn't easy. Victoire anguished over it all through the Christmas holidays. Her Aunt Gabrielle showed up towards the end of the holidays and talked things through with her, and in the end, she realized that the decision itself was simple. She couldn't imagine a future with Joe. She and Joe had an expiry date, and it was graduation. And it wasn't fair to keep stringing Joe along knowing that they would only be breaking up in a few short months.

But Victoire had never broken up with anyone before. She didn't have a clue what she was doing. When she'd broken up with Nathanial, he'd realized what she was doing and broken up with her instead. And then with Teddy, he'd been the one to rip her heart out. Victoire hated the idea of putting Joe through that kind of pain and misery, but it was better than the alternative. And the longer they stayed together, the harder it was going to be.

"You are not breaking up with him on the train!" Kara cried when Victoire met her in the hallway.

"After the prefect's meeting," Victoire nodded. "It'll be easier that way. A clean break."

"You are not breaking up with him on the train!" Kara repeated. "Promise me."

"Why not?" Victoire demanded. "Why not here? What makes the train a worse place than any?"

"Because he's going to be upset, and he'll have nowhere comforting to go. Just wait until we're back at the castle and he has the warmth of Hufflepuff common room, the security of his bedroom to go and wallow in."

"You think he's going to wallow?" Victoire frowned.

Kara shrugged. "He might need to," she replied. "You've been dating for almost a year, and he liked you way before that. He's going to have emotions for sure."

Victoire sighed. "Fine," she declared. "I'll wait until we're back at the castle. But I won't stall any longer than that."

The prefect's meeting was rather short. It wasn't like the one in September where they had to provide a sort of orientation for the new fifth year prefects. They just had to hand out responsibilities and make sure everybody was on the same page.

After the meeting was over, everybody filtered out, leaving Victoire and Joe alone in the carriage.

"I missed you over the holidays," Joe said, looking at Victoire in a way that made her squirm. She should just tell him, rip off the band-aid. But Kara was right. It would be cruel to do it here where Joe had nowhere to go afterwards.

"Yeah," Victoire nodded, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. "Same here."

"I got you a Christmas present," Joe added. "I wanted to give it to you in person, so I saved it until we got back. Maybe we can meet up in the prefect's lounge tonight before rounds start?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Victoire agreed reluctantly. She wished he hadn't gotten her something. It would only make this so much harder.

"Well, I'd better go do a bit of patrolling," Joe declared, heading for the door. "Maybe you can do a patrol in a couple of hours? There's no need to over patrol, but we don't want any third years blowing us all up."

"Sounds good," Victoire agreed, grateful that Joe was taking the first patrol.

"See you in a bit," Joe said, leaning in for a kiss.

Victoire allowed a quick peck, but then pulled away shamefully. This whole thing was so unfair to Joe. She should have just done it right there, train or no train. But now she'd let things go on too long, and it would be weird to break up with him now.

As Joe exited into the hallway, Victoire sighed loudly. Tonight, she decided. She'd do it tonight, and then everything would be settled.

VvVvVvVvVvV

That night, Victoire met Joe in the prefect's lounge about a half an hour before patrols were scheduled to begin. She'd spent the feast psyching herself up for this conversation and she was ready.

"Joe, good there you are," she said as soon as he entered the lounge. "I have something I need to talk to you about – "

"Not before you open my present," Joe declared with a wide smile. He produced a small package from inside his robe pocket and held it out for Victoire to take.

"No, really, I think I should go first," Victoire insisted.

"Come on," Joe pleaded. "Just open the present. I've been waiting all Christmas to give you this."

Victoire took a deep breath and accepted the present. It was clear that there would be no arguing with Joe on the subject, and she just wanted to get this all over with. She carefully pulled off the wrapping to discover a jewellery box. Victoire's stomach started tying itself up in knots as she opened the box to discover a beautiful delicate silver bracelet.

"Oh, Joe you shouldn't have," Victoire said, trying to hand the bracelet back to him. "It's too much."

"Nonsense," Joe shook his head. "And look, see this charm?"

Victoire looked down to see a small heart-shaped charm hanging from the bracelet. Joe reached over and flipped the heart onto the other side, revealing the letters J and V. "For us," he explained.

Victoire's heart plummeted. She couldn't break up with Joe now. Not after he'd given her this gift. It would be so heartless.

"So, what did you want to tell me?" Joe wondered, even as he took the bracelet and fastened it around Victoire's arm.

"Oh, it was just something silly about my roommates," Victoire shrugged. "Nothing important."

Joe smiled. "Alright," he said.

He leaned in for a kiss, which Victoire returned, breaking away as soon as she could without Joe knowing something was wrong.

"Come on, let's get ready for rounds," Victoire declared, glad that she and Joe were rounding separately that night. She wasn't sure she could do an entire patrol with him at the moment.

VvVvVvVvVvV

"So, you didn't break up with him?" Brianna demanded later that night in the dorm.

"Victoire, why not?" Kara whined. "It was the perfect time."

"Well I wanted to do it on the train, but someone told me not to," Victoire said pointedly. "And I couldn't do it right after he'd gotten me this bracelet."

She held up her hand and shook it angrily. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"Well for one thing, you should take off that bracelet," Brianna declared. "Wearing it is going to send the wrong message."

"Thank you for that," Victoire rolled her eyes. "I meant about Joe."

"You're just going to have to do it first thing tomorrow," Kara decided. "Because you can't go stringing him along much longer."

"I know," Victoire agreed miserably. This whole situation was so stressful. Victoire just wished she'd never started dating Joe in the first place, because then she wouldn't have to go through all of this.

"Don't worry, it'll be fine," Brianna assured her. "Sure, he may be a little upset, but he's a decent guy. He'll be gracious about it."

"Right," Victoire nodded as she climbed into bed. It wouldn't be so bad. She would tell Joe it was over, he would ask why, she would explain, and he would understand. Everything would be fine.

VvVvVvVvVvV

Victoire looked for Joe at breakfast the next morning, but he was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe he's sleeping in," Kara suggested. "Does he have a free period?"

"No!" Victoire cried. "He's got defence first thing."

"Maybe he's just running late," Brianna said.

Victoire sighed. "Well if he's running late, then I'm not going to have time to break up with him before class!"

"Calm down," Kara insisted. "You'll find the time at some point today. Just be patient."

But Victoire was starting to get anxious. The longer she went on dating Joe, the more anxious she felt. She just wanted this over with. Worrying about the break-up was staring to give her a migraine. And she felt deceitful. She'd had opportunities to say something and hadn't taken them. And now, she felt like a fraud. She didn't like it one bit.

"I just need this to all be over," Victoire sighed.

VvVvVvVvVvV

Victoire didn't see Joe until lunch, when she spotted him eating at the Hufflepuff table with some of his friends. She was about to go up to him and take care of things, but Kara stopped her.

"What's wrong now?" Victoire demanded.

"You can't do it in front of everyone," Kara scolded her. "You'll humiliate him. You need to do it somewhere private, where his friends aren't watching."

Victoire sighed. This was getting so complicated. "Well then what do you suggest?"

"Pull him aside," Kara recommended. "Ask him to speak privately and then go into the trophy room or somewhere that nobody else would be."

"Okay," Victoire nodded. "Trophy room. Got it."

She marched over to where Joe was sitting at the Hufflepuff table, ready to say her piece, but Joe spoke first.

"Oh Victoire, there you are!" he exclaimed. "You would not believe what happened to me this morning. My wand alarm didn't go off, and my curtains were pulled so I didn't wake up to the sun, and I missed my first class, and Professor Derlid gave me a zero for the day and said that if I miss another class without a good reason, then he won't clear me to sit my N.E.W.T.s."

"What? He can't do that!" Victoire cried. "You have just as much the right as anyone else in that class to sit your N.E.W.T.s. Missing a class here or there won't change that."

"He said that if I don't think it's important to attend class, then clearly I don't take my education seriously enough to be allowed to write the exam," Joe lamented.

"But that's ridiculous!" Victoire exclaimed. "You slept in once. By accident. It's not that big of a deal. If it had been any other teacher – "

"But it wasn't," Joe pointed out. He sighed. "It's fine. I just won't miss another class. But now I have all this work to catch up on…"

Victoire let out a sigh of her own. She couldn't ask him to talk in the trophy room now. Not after the horrible morning he'd had. She wasn't about to pile crap on top of crap. Their break-up would have to wait.

By that evening, Victoire still hadn't broken up with Joe. They'd spent the whole afternoon studying together in the library, and Victoire had hoped that an opportunity would present itself, but it never did. Every time she tried to bring the subject up, Joe would make another comment about Professor Derlid being unreasonable and how much extra work he had to do now, and Victoire would shut her mouth.

Kara and Brianna, it seemed, had had enough of Victoire's excuses.

"You need to do it and you need to do it tonight," Brianna ordered her.

"It's a little late for that, don't you think?" Victoire demanded. "Curfew's coming, and Joe's already turned in for the night."

"Well then you'd better get going," Brianna declared. "Because as of this moment, you are not allowed in the dormitory until you've broken up with Joe."

"What?" Victoire cried. "That's crazy! Kara, you're not going to go along with this, are you?"

Kara hesitated. "Well… you really should just break up with him," she said. "The longer this goes on, the worse it's going to be on the both of you."

"But he's already inside the Hufflepuff common room," Victoire pointed out. "How am I supposed to break up with him when he's somewhere I can't go?"

"Easy, just find a stray Hufflepuff and have them go inside to get him," Brianna shrugged.

Victoire groaned. "Can't I just break up with him tomorrow?" she pleaded.

"No," Brianna shook her head. "This is for your own good. Now go."

Seeing as she had no choice, Victoire reluctantly got up and headed for the portrait hole. She knew where the Hufflepuff common room was generally speaking but didn't know the exact location. She figured she'd head down to the basement level and hope she ran across someone from Hufflepuff house on her way.

When she arrived in the corridor that also housed the entrance to the kitchens, Victoire still hadn't run across any Hufflepuffs. So close to curfew, she wasn't sure she would. They were likely all inside anyway. Victoire thought about just returning to Gryffindor any saying she'd broken up with Joe to placate Brianna and Kara but decided against it. For one thing, they would know she was lying in a second. And for another, she owed it to Joe to stop putting this off.

Deciding to be proactive, Victoire started randomly knocking on portraits and paintings and bits of wall in the hopes of accidentally stumbling upon the Hufflepuff common room. After about twenty minutes of that, she was about to give up, when a second-year student came hurrying down the stairs behind her.

"Crap!" the student cried upon seeing Victoire. "Look, I promise I meant to be in by curfew, but I took a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the castle. Please don't dock any points."

Victoire smiled. This was perfect.

"Well…" she said, pretending to deliberate. "I guess I'll let you off the hook this time," she said, causing the student to smile in relief. "If you do me a small favor."

"Anything," the student agreed.

"You know Joe Sanders?" she asked. "He's a seventh year."

The second year nodded his head. "He's Head Boy."

"Right," Victoire said. "Well he's inside the Hufflepuff common room and I need to talk to him. Can you find him and let him know I'm waiting for him out here?"

"Sure," the boy agreed. He walked over to a pile of barrels in the far corner and tapped on one of them five times. The entrance to the common room opened, and he disappeared inside.

Victoire didn't have to wait long. Moments later, Joe appeared in the hallway, dressed in his pyjamas.

"Victoire?" he asked, a worried expression on his face. "What's wrong?"

Victoire realized that showing up after curfew in the hall like this probably seemed a little drastic, but she was here now, and she was going to do what she came to do.

"I needed to talk to you," she said. "I've been trying to do this all day, but the timing was never right."

"So what?" Joe asked with a frown.

Victoire took a deep breath. "I want to break up," she said, with no padding and no warning.

For a moment, Joe just looked stunned. Then he regained his ability to speak and his face turned into a puzzled mess.

"Victoire, where is this coming from?" he asked.

Victoire sighed. "I'm sorry to do this to you," she said. "It's not that I don't like you. It's just that… I don't think you're the guy I'm supposed to end up with. And there's no point going on like we have been if we don't have a future."

"It's that other guy, isn't it?" Joe demanded, suddenly angry. "Lupin."

"Teddy has nothing to do with this," Victoire insisted. "This is about you and me."

"I knew you were never over him," Joe said, a mixture of angry and sad. "I knew you still had feelings for him, but I figured they'd go away with time. And when they didn't, I hoped that feelings for me would overpower your feelings for him. But I guess that was never going to happen."

"I'm sorry," Victoire said sadly.

Joe shrugged. "Is there anything I can say? Anything I can do?" he asked hopefully.

Victoire shook her head sadly and Joe nodded in understanding.

"Listen, I should get back," Victoire said. "It's past curfew and even though I'm Head Girl, I shouldn't really be taking advantage of that fact."

Joe nodded. "I guess I'll see you around," he said finally.

"Yeah," Victoire agreed. "See you around."

VvVvVvVvVvV

Victoire felt so much better having finally broken up with Joe. And Kara had been right, he'd been really nice about the whole thing. It was too bad Victoire didn't have stronger feelings for him, because he'd been a really great guy. But he'd been right. Her feelings for Teddy were always and would always be stronger than her feelings for him could have been. In fact, she realized that her feelings for Teddy would always be stronger than her feelings for anyone. She wasn't over him. She pretended to be, but she wasn't. And she wasn't sure she ever could be. Teddy was her soulmate. And now that she realized that, she had to get him back.

VvVvVvVvVvV

Dear Teddy,

I know things have been weird between us recently. After you broke up with me, things were really hard for a while, and once I put myself back together again, I didn't want to put myself back in the position to be hurt like that again. So, when you came to me on the platform back in September, I was harsher than I should have been.

I think we need to talk. I know we talked at Christmas, but there are some things I still hadn't figured out then that I have now, and I don't think I'll be able to move forward until I've said them. I have a Hogsmeade weekend coming up the second Saturday in February. I know it's the weekend before Valentine's Day, but I'd really like it if you could find the time to meet me for a butterbeer.

I'll be waiting for your owl.

Love from,

Victoire