Victorie had almost reached the transfiguration classroom. Her books and notebooks were stacked and floating next to her as she walked, too heavy and too many of them to carry. She walked with a pace. Not that she was late, just... she liked to be early.
And she would have been early, had some third year not stopped her on the way to take the liberty of using her as an owl.
It had been quite the embarrassing ordeal. A highly sensitive letter was to be delivered to Teddy, and the third year didn't feel up to the task, given the sensitive nature of its contents. Victorie didn't have any doubts that it was sensitive. She trusted the third year's deduction.
Also she'd read through it herself (once the third year was out of sight, naturally).
She was planning to hand the letter to Teddy before class started, but once she got to the classroom he wasn't there. All the other students were seated. She scanned the crowd once more, but her eyes landed on Professor McGonagall instead.
She was standing at the top of the classroom, next to a table of about a dozen miniature jack o' lanterns and was giving her a stern glance. Something about the scene made Victorie think it best to take a seat as quickly as she could, so she sat down next to Ella, a ravenclaw, whom she figured would hold her down the least in the class if it came to having to collaborate.
"I hope you have all refreshed your knowledge of Gamp's Law for this class. Can anyone tell me about it?" McGonagall asked. She looked out at the students from her podium at the front of the class, yet her eyes never once fell on Victorie.
When no one raised their hand, Victorie said dully, "It's an inconclusive theory."
"It's a law." McGonagall interjected. "The law that dictates what transfiguration can and cannot do."
Victorie sat up straighter, arms crossed. "And each rule of it has been disproven to different extents time and time again — It's out-dated." Some of the other students groaned at Victorie's statement.
McGonagall left her podium and ferociously stepped closer to the bench where Victorie was sitting. "Yet it's still on the curriculum." She fired.
The tension broke when the door opened and Teddy entered, making them all look up in surprise. He trudged across the classroom, looking tired. When he passed McGonagall he smiled at her, causing a few students to give him wide-eyed looks. Victorie couldn't help a faint smile herself as she leaned back in her chair, arms still crossed. The boy went to slouch down next to Jamie at the desk in front of Victorie.
"Was there something you'd rather be doing than attend my class, Mr. Lupin?" McGonagall asked. She retrieved her wand and began floating the jack o' lanterns one by one to land in front of each student methodically.
"I was just really tired this morning, Professor McGonagall." Teddy reasoned.
McGonagall raised her eyebrows, and Victorie's smile grew wider. "So by your philosophy, sleep was more important than your education?"
Teddy opened his mouth to reply, but quickly faltered. Instead Victorie spoke up. "Actually, a case can be made for sleep being more important if you consider-"
"That's the second time you've failed to raise your hand in my class today, Miss Weasley." The increasingly angered professor interrupted. "Now, Mr. Lupin and I will further discuss this matter unaccompanied," she shot Victorie a glare, "in detention later today."
Looking shocked, Teddy turned to his desk companion, as if wondering if he could shed some light as to what had just happened. "Hogwarts is mental." He whispered.
McGonagall didn't seem to have heard him. She finished placing the last pumpkin, and waved her hand, lighting up every standing-pillar candle holder in the room. The energy from fire was believed to enable magical ability.
"As Gamp's Law would have it, I want you to enlarge these pumpkins to the best of your ability." The professor continued.
From that point on the whole class, who were usually quite tense during McGonagall's classes, seemed more relaxed. As if feeling that their teacher's bad books were already occupied, and there was little anyone could do to frustrate her further.
Everyone was relaxed, except for Teddy that was. As the class went on, most students had gradually engorged their pumpkins to various degrees, while Teddy's had remained intransigent.
Victorie's pumpkin however could barely fit on her desk.
Jamie tried to help Teddy as best he could, showing him for the eleventh time how he should angle his wand and telling him words of encouragement. Jamie himself had without much difficulty managed to enlarge his pumpkin pretty early on, but not much farther beyond the size of a bludger. Still his performance was one of the best in the class.
Teddy turned to discreetly observe the size of Victorie's ever-growing gourd. "I think there might be something wrong with my pumpkin, it's been eyeing me with a scornful grin this entire time." He proclaimed.
Jamie laughed. "That's kind of the deal with a jack o' lantern, mate." He put a comforting hand on Teddy's sunken shoulder.
Meanwhile, Victorie had gotten bored of enlarging her own (not to mention worried that her desk would break) and had resorted to shrinking it instead. She was sitting back, repeatedly flicking her wand at her pumpkin in a monotone pattern.
When McGonagall walked by she scrunched her nose at the sight of it. "Would you try to be more elegant with your wand waving?"
"Why? The outcome is the same." Victorie shot back. But McGonagall had already moved her attention to the next student.
A sweet but funky smell of pumpkin had floated all the way into the hallway outside the classroom by the time transfiguration was over. Victorie worried that she and her clothes would smell of it for the remainder of the day, and made a plan to have a shower that evening.
She hadn't forgotten about the sensitive letter. It still intruded upon the pocket of her robe. Teddy was chatting enthusiastically to Jamie up ahead as she paced the chilly corridor. Victorie took a deep breath and a few strides until she was level with the two boys.
"Teddy?" She tried.
He abruptly turned, followed by Jamie. "Victorie." He smiled and waited for her to say something, but she remained still, hand clenched around the letter she still held in concealment.
Jamie too smiled at Victorie as best he could. But this proved to be a cautionary tale, as the girl hadn't recently been used to either of these two's attention being directed at her all at once. Not to mention at the same time.
She found herself at a loss for speech, eyes trailing off her target, losing all sight of why she had approached the boys in the first place. Purposelessly she stood there watching the floor — mirroring its immobility.
"Why don't you go ahead Jamie." Teddy suggested. They shared a look, before Jamie silently left the scene.
Once Jamie was out of hearing distance and Teddy had stopped smiling politely at her, Victorie composed herself. She retrieved the letter from her robe with a hand still clenched up.
"Oh." Teddy slipped out softly when he noticed the sweet aesthetics of the letter.
It was most likely not his first letter of the sort Victorie figured when she registered the recognition on his features. Yet he still blushed and began to smile once again.
"There's at least three double negatives in it." Victorie felt the urge to explain after Teddy had finally received the envelope, and was beholding it in between his fingers. "Not to mention split infinitives..."
She cleared her throat and avoided Teddy by looking out the open window next to her as a breeze blew through it. They were high up, and she could see most of the castle towering beneath her. "You can read it, but it won't leave you any wiser." She added.
Teddy didn't seem to mind any of Victorie's critiques however. He was still staring at the letter with a significant blush. Perhaps he wasn't actually used to the letters after all?
Victorie attempted once again to get his attention. "Did I mention the sloppy handwriting? I couldn't make out half of it."
Teddy looked up from the letter then, confused. "What do you mean?"
"As in it's basically unintelligible. I can't believe the third years haven't learned to write yet." She tried to joke and put her hair behind her ear nervously, still not quite meeting his eye.
Looking down at the letter again, Teddy frowned. "Third year?" He repeated.
Another breeze blew through the corridor and Victorie wrapped her robe tighter around her and crossed her arms to tighten it. She discovered that she still had criticisms left to distribute. "It contains pretty much every cliché simile in the book. Apparently your eyes are deep as an ocean."
To Victorie's relief, her scathing feedback had at last made Teddy succumb to the humour of it all and let out a small chuckle.
"In fact I'm not even entirely sure Celestina Warbeck didn't write it herself." She continued, not able to help a smile at her success when Teddy let out a proper laugh this time.
"Wait, so you agreed to deliver a letter for someone, but you read it? Isn't that kind of wrong of you?" Despite what he was accusing her of, he seemed only amused at the situation, and more than willing to play along.
But guilt was the least of Victorie's concerns. After all, the third year had willingly handed the letter to a stranger with whom no commitment preceded. Plus, she enjoyed getting to play the rebel. "On the contrary! I feel it's my duty as messenger to ensure that there's nothing of threatening nature in the letter. I was merely doing my job."
"I don't pay you enough." Teddy joked and placed the letter in his pocket.
"Aren't you going to read it?" Victorie asked with a surprising amount of sincerity falling through the cracks.
"After that review?" He said and began walking again with Victorie joining him. "I think I better hold out for more worthwhile prose."
"How long do you have?" Victorie questioned sardonically as they made their way to the next class.
Roxanne was laying out tarot cards in front of Victorie on a tiny table in a corner of the Gryffindor common room.
It was warm — an effect caused by the amount of people in the room that evening, and the pretty much constantly burning fireplace. The windows were open, but it didn't help much.
Victorie was staring off at Teddy, watching him laugh with Jamie, Maya and Delilah. The group was sprawled out on the couches, chatting about Merlin knows what.
Delilah hadn't stopped smiling and giggling for the past half hour. Jamie and Teddy's amusement also seemed to have no bounds, and they were slapping their legs and folding over as they rejoiced over what was probably some ill conceived and childish gag that got elevated by their sugar high minds. It was the type of humour which Jamie was often the catalyst of.
"Wow, you got dealt some really good cards today!" Roxanne did a small jump in her chair.
Victorie broke away from her prying and scanned the cards before her. "Did you flip them the right way round again, Roxanne?" She asked in an accusatory tone.
Roxanne blinked a few times and beheld the cards. "Was I not supposed to?"
"A reversed card has a different meaning than an upright one." Victorie explained.
Roxanne began flipping the cards haphazardly, trying to recall which ones had originally been reversed. Victorie leaned back in her chair and put her chin in her hand, watching judgmentally as Roxanne struggled.
"I don't think you shuffled the deck enough." Roxanne said.
Victorie rolled her eyes. "This isn't poker." She retorted absentmindedly, as her focus trailed back to the group by the couches.
"Do you miss being with that boy?" Roxanne asked, following Victorie's gaze as she re-shuffled the deck. Victorie decided not to tell her that one doesn't shuffle for someone else's reading.
"Jamie. And we were never together." Victorie replied. She took the deck from Roxanne and began to shuffle it intently to the group's conjoined laughter away by the couches, the cards smacking against each other sounded in tune with it.
In her periphery, Roxanne pushed her palms together in her lap and squeezed them between her thighs. There was an inkling of miss-step reflected in her demeanour. She spoke softly, "I know. I meant do you miss being with him, as a friend?"
Victorie dropped the deck on the floor in between fast paced shuffles and the cards all slid out into a puddle below her. She stood up promptly, but didn't immediately reach down for them.
"Jamie and I were never friends either, apparently." Kneeling down, the tense girl scrambled for her cards carelessly, mind clearly elsewhere.
Roxanne's eyes widened, thinking of Victorie's dearest tarot cards. "I'm sorry I forgot his name."
Having assembled the lot of cards, Victorie stood up again. "Roxanne, I don't expect us to be suddenly close again." She asserted, hoping that assertiveness could rinse off the melancholy nature of the sentiment.
After having said her piece she abandoned the conversation and headed toward her dorm, fists clenched and arms tightly at the sides of her hips. The lights in the room flickered ever so slightly with each step she took until she was gone — with more than one pair of eyes following her departure.
Published: 15 February 2022