A/N:
Here are the content warnings for this story:
- Swearing
- Sensual make-out depictions, but nothing explicitly sexual
- Distortion of the human body in a later chapter
- Magical forces taking hold of the human body in a later chapter
Darkness enclosed Victorie as she sat cross-legged in front of the softly clicking fireplace. Everyone had gone to bed long ago, leaving the Gryffindor common room desolate and undisturbed.
A tired old vinyl record was playing in the background, albeit she was currently questioning why she had even bothered putting it on. It was one of those out of date records Hogwarts supplied their common rooms with. It had been a feeble attempt at creating some kind of mood, but she might as well have put on Witching Hour, given how stale the music was. She decided to leave the music on however, as her task at hand could have no interruptions.
She focused all her thoughts on her past as she shuffled the deck in her hand, feeling every individual card that graced her fingertips.
When the moment felt right, she flipped the topmost card over, placed it on the floor in front of her with conviction and read in a whisper, "The Lovers, reversed."
Her voice faltered at the end, and she pushed away the well of thoughts of Jamie that came over her. She pushed them out of her mind, closed her eyes and felt the deck once again, but this time focused her thoughts on her present and flipped the next card.
"The Devil, reversed." The flames from the fireplace reflected on the glossy card, making the figure on it appear to be moving.
She turned her attention back to the deck and focused finally on her future. She flipped the next card and placed it too on the floor in front of her. It was difficult to read and she had to squint with her eyes to fight the darkness. "The Fool, upright."
In that moment, a stern voice came from behind her. "What's this?"
Victorie swivelled around in a flurry to meet her intruder. It was McGonagall, of course, looking at her critically with her head tilted forwards, peering over her glasses. "You're supposed to be asleep in your dorm. Is this how you suspect to succeed in your studies, by staying up late and partaking in inane leisurely pastimes?"
If the Professor's intent is to make sure students remain in bed, perhaps she should keep her voice down, Victorie wanted to reply. But she supposed it was not the time for talking back to McGonagall. That inane leisurely pastime of hers was to be reserved for class.
So she scrambled for her tarot cards and stood up. With a wave of her wand she had the fire put out, causing a reluctant second of unease at being in total darkness along with McGonagall, before she illuminated her wand, giving herself enough vision to finally notice that, to her surprise, Professor McGonagall was not alone.
Next to her stood a young boy who looked like he could be a seventh-year student, like her. Upon noticing him, the boy looked taken aback. He used one of his hands, previously nonchalantly placed in his pocket, to discreetly fix his hair and sweep his long dark fringe out of his eyes.
So she isn't here to keep me in check after all, Victorie thought to herself.
She returned her gaze confidently back to McGonagall, refusing to seem crestfallen at being caught up at night.
As if reading her mind, McGonagall stated, "Contrary to your belief, I'm actually here to show our new student Mr. Lupin to his dorm, nothing more ominous than that. Now, it's far too late in the night for either of you to remain here, off to bed with the both of you!"
Victorie refrained from replying, and simply did as the professor said. Replying seemed futile at this point. She had no defence for being awake when she knew she shouldn't have been.
The new student and Victorie both began to ascend the small stairwells that lead up to their separate dorms on opposite sides of the common room.
McGonagall turned the music off on the phonograph and made her exit after hesitantly watching the teenagers for an extra second, not quite ready to trust that they would obey her, before finally closing the portrait door.
The young students were almost at the top of the staircases when Victorie's cognitive process had finally surpassed being caught up at night, and moved onto the mysterious new student, and she realised something. She stopped with one foot creaking on the next step and grabbed hold of the wooden rail in revelation.
Mr. Lupin, she recalled McGonagall saying.
His taken aback expression from before in the dark resurfaced in her mind. It was like dusting off and opening an old book.
"...Teddy!" She suddenly exclaimed before catching herself and covering her mouth, hoping that the creaking of the stairs had masked her embarrassing outcry.
The voice of Teddy Lupin, whose silhouette she could barely distinguish on the other side of the room casually said, "Thank Merlin McGonagall turned off that terrible music that was playing."
Victorie quickly regained her composure, like nothing had just happened, put her hand on the latch to her dorm room and said, "Terrible? I thought it was exceptional."
And in she went, finding her dorm mates fast asleep. It gave her a thrill knowing that she was one of the few people in this castle still awake. There was a mystical sense of adventure about it.
But she forced herself to end the adventure there. She closed the door soundlessly and squeezed herself into the tiny bathroom and shut the door.
In the mirror she found a tired looking teen. Her makeup had expired from the many hours ago when she had applied it. The heavy pink rouge she always applied right on top of her freckles had been replaced with actual redness from sitting in front of an open fire for too long. Her mascara had gone crusty, and fallen down under her eyes. Her curly ginger bob had gone extra puffy.
That last part she actually liked, but she wasn't sure how she felt about how her bangs had twisted after putting her hand through them a few too many times.
No wonder McGonagall had looked so irate.
Victorie liked make-up. McGonagall did not however. But she insisted on wearing it anyway. Somewhere along the way, the professor had stopped letting it be a point of contention, or more correctly, everything else Victorie did which she disapproved of had taken the forefront of their disagreements instead. A bit of glitter to highlight her cheekbones wasn't so bad in comparison.
But for now the make-up was coming off. Victorie rubbed her face under the warm water until every last bit of glitter had vanished, before sneaking back to her bed as stealthily as she could.
Only she was tripped up briefly along the way by the fault of a small black figure scurrying across the floor right in front of her.
"Damn you, Walpurgis."
Eventually she managed to roll onto her bed, and tucked herself under the covers, not forgetting to pull all the drapes carefully shut on her four-poster.
She looked out briefly at her dorm mates' sleeping faces before shutting them completely, shielding herself off from the world.
Before she could totally let her head relax against the pillow, there was a ruffle of the drapes on one side. The predicament from before, in the shape of a small black cat, jumped up onto the bed. He walked ravenously across the bed and up to Victorie's side to lie down.
"You refuse to be shielded off, don't you Walpurgis?" She asked. Then she closed her eyes and drifted off into a hopeful slumber, thinking of the Fool, upright.
The common room was empty the next morning when Victorie got out of bed. The cat scurried between her legs when she tried to manoeuvre her way down the stairs and she cursed at it.
She had to squint as her eyes adjusted to the dark room. The sun had yet to rise properly, and the room was lit only by two sconces adorning the wall on each side of the exit.
She made her way over there slowly, but out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something. She turned and froze in her place. The dim flames of light cast on the wall made for an eerie scene where slowly, and with a captivating stillness, a shape emerged from the wall. The shape that emerged looked paralysed as it broke further through the rigid wall, but Victorie could still identify who it was.
Once he'd emerged in full, the ghost asked, "Don't you want to hurry up a little?"
He said it with that concerned and slightly anxious expression he often wore when addressing her. It was the ghost whom she was friendliest with (mostly because of how worried he always seemed to be for her) — Sir Nicholas.
She slipped her oxfords on patiently and looked at herself in the common room mirror one last time, ensuring that her garments were perfectly aligned and that her ginger locks looked puffy enough.
"Why?"
Nicholas not so subtly hesitated. "You might miss breakfast." He mustered.
Victorie decided that she would play dumb, for the convenience of not having to start an argument. "Breakfast is on until 9 a.m. I'd have to walk two laps around the castle not to make it." She said and excited the portrait hole with him by her side.
"Sure, but then you might have to eat alone." Nicholas trailed off and looked anywhere but at the person he was addressing, knowing already that he was in the queue to get a scowl from her.
But instead Victorie played dumb once more as she was not in the mood to have to defend her life choices on this Monday morning (albeit at the great cost of sounding less clever).
"I'll eat with you."
Nicholas sighed with a lack of actual oxygen, and said with what looked to be at a great cost to him (although not without a smidge of self pity and smug morality) "I'm just an imprint of a departed soul left upon the earth, you should eat with someone living, and your own age... Like Jamie perhaps?"
They both fell silent, listening only to the heels of Victorie's shoes meeting with the stone floors over and over as the two made their way forward.
"What do you know about whom I should eat with? You're just an imprint of a departed soul, left upon the earth." She recited with a smile, but regretted it immediately when his whole demeanour sunk together in melancholy.
He had said it despite reluctance because he knew that it was in her best interest, but this seemed to be an it's-okay-only-when-I-say-it situation.
The rest of the walk to the Great Hall was pretty quiet after that.
But only until they actually entered the Great Hall, where there seemed to be a lot more commotion than usual. Particularly at the Gryffindor table, where a large crowd had gathered.
Even more unusually there seemed to not just be Gryffindors having gathered there, but a whole colour palette of contrarily robed students.
The hall had been thoroughly decorated for the season. Decorative pumpkins had been lined up along the four tables, colourful maple leaves were dangling from the ceiling and vanishing again just before reaching the students and bouquets of sunflowers had been placed in various locations.
The room looked inviting, yet Victorie hesitated at the entrance, heart sinking at the sight of all the students.
It appeared she wasn't going to miss breakfast with her array of housemates after all. The unease that had been in the peaceful corridor they had just escaped seemed now like a welcoming embrace.
Nevertheless she entered the Great Hall bravely, enveloped herself in the vastness of it. The sea of students and the tall ceilings made her into a speck of dust.
It would have been a calming feeling, had she not known she would have to face the crowd.
Victorie delved into it headfirst, and when she got to the other side of it, she could clearly get a sight of whom they were gathered around.
His hair was still short with a dark colour like it had been yesterday, and he looked sweetly through his overgrown fringe at some girls sitting next to him as he explained, "We don't have a record label, we're a punk band, it's DIY."
The first two buttons on his shirt were undone, but he had at least bothered to put his robe on. One part of it was covered in lapel pins with different band logos and such.
There was a surge in her stomach at the sight of him, but she pushed it aside and when stepping up to the table corrected piercingly, "A pop-punk band, you mean."
Jamie, who happened to top the list of people in this group whom Victorie didn't feel like seeing, wrongly decided to take on the educator role. "Victorie, do you see who this is?"
She could tell that, even though Jamie had recently been avoiding addressing her directly, his question came served on a platter of consideration for her, with the intent of preventing any embarrassment on Victorie's part.
Still, she decided to completely ignore him and his amazement at the new student.
Teddy's attention diverted from the girls and landed on Victorie. It was the first time they had actually seen each other in daylight, and he took her in fully with a sense of wonder.
"An alternative pop-punk band." He said with a hint of a satisfied smile. "You always were hard to impress."
Teddy began to make room next to him, but stopped himself as soon as he'd started when Victorie ignored him and sat down on the opposite side of the table. Far away enough to not have to engage with him and the crowd.
Jamie gestured between the two of them. "Do you two know each other?"
For a brief moment they all looked at Victorie, wondering how come she'd never mentioned this detail to them before. Almost as though not doing so was categorised as lying.
"Yes." Teddy said.
"Not really." Victorie chorused, and Teddy's brows sunk together briefly.
Delilah, one of the girls Victorie shared a dorm with, was clearly uninterested in what the actual answer was and changed the subject.
Victorie mentally thanked her for taking the attention off her, and began serving herself some porridge in silence.
Once she had herself a portion she could no longer help herself but to discreetly steal one more glance at the new boy before her. Her discreetness failed her instantly though, as Teddy was still taking her in. They both watched each other as the crowd continued chatting, silently reminiscing about the other's features.
Teddy ignored the conversation that was going on around them. "You're all grown up." He said, managing to sound embarrassingly like he was some older relative of hers.
Victorie felt almost flustered at how he was eyeing her, but she understood the feeling. It was weird not having seen each other after so long. He looked so different. Taller. Jawline more defined. Not to mention the new (or new to her) edgier look.
But she was used to changes in his appearance. He wasn't used to seeing them in her. By the way he was studying her, she could only assume that the years they'd spent apart had done a number on her.
"We're the same age, you know?" She pointed out as she buttered a slice of toast, having given up on her bowl of porridge.
"Yeah well, I've grown up too." Teddy replied.
Victorie finished buttering her toast and perkily stood up to leave the noisy crowd, plaid skirt bouncing with her movements. "You sure? Because by all rights you should be a first year at this school." She said in a silky but spiteful tone.
Before Victorie and her toast could get too far down the aisle, Teddy made sure to call after her, "There is such a thing as home schooling!"
But when she didn't turn, he settled on watching her as she walked away, feeling suddenly more alert than he had been before she'd shown up.
"That must have been such a drag while on tour..." Jamie suggested behind him.
He turned back to the people around him who were trying their best to get his attention. "What was?" He asked, mind elsewhere and with a smile now tugging at his lips.
7 February 2022