It was late at night and Victorie was making her way through the tall corridors. This part of the castle, high up, was always well lit and well used by its inhabitants.
Even though it was night, Victorie was actually on her way to class this time. This class she would never skip out on. She and the rest of the housemates in her year were on their way to Astronomy, along with the Slytherins too.
Being allowed in the corridors around midnight always caused a lot of giddy excitement among the students. Some Slytherin boys were currently running around throwing Bertie Bott's beans at Delilah and Maya in a flirtatious spat, while the girls giggled.
Victorie tried to stay as far away from it as possible, walking slowly and intentionally falling behind, half worrying that a teacher would walk by and spot the commotion — and half wishing that they would.
Victorie tried her best to ignore it, and was looking through the tinted windows of deserted classrooms as she walked, when something small hit her in the head from behind. Before looking around to see the culprit, she spotted what had hit her skipping around on the floor in front of her: a bright red Bertie Bott's bean.
"Late again?" Victorie asked before she'd even turned to look at who had thrown the bean.
"No one is on time! You're all loitering in the corridor." Teddy defended.
His hair was bright red and dishevelled. He seemed to have forgotten to bring both his robe and pullover this time, which were both mandatory. Instead he was only wearing the mandatory white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up and the trousers to accompany the dress code.
Victorie studied the outfit with a critical eye.
"What?" He asked, and began ruffling his hair up, maintaining the dishevelled look.
"Yeah, but you're late to the late party." Victorie quickly stopped eyeing Teddy, worried it might look like she was admiring him. But that was an activity she hadn't engaged with in a long time.
Correction: never.
She walked on and he followed. He began levitating the several discarded beans that lay scattered on the floor and motioned with his wand until one landed in his hand. "Do you want one?" He offered.
Victorie didn't so much as look at the bean in his hand. "No, they're horrible." She said, looking straight ahead at Delilah.
"Yeah, they're pretty shit." Teddy agreed, but brushed it off and put it in his mouth regardless.
The Slytherin boys were still attempting to get Delilah's attention, but she was looking backward, studying the young witch and wizard as they walked. She didn't even bother to try and dodge Peeves, who had joined the scene not long ago. He was now the one throwing the beans at the students.
Teddy slapped his forehead. "Oh no! Not Peeves. He really doesn't like me."
Even though Teddy was new at the school, he'd come to learn quickly about Peeves. Most people had the misfortune of learning of him before little else on the curriculum.
It hadn't slipped Victorie's notice that Peeves had taken a particular interest in Teddy, and it wasn't a mystery as to why. Peeves liked to play pranks on people, give them a hard time, but Teddy had not been given a very hard time so far, despite being new, so the irksome poltergeist had taken a keen interest in him, in an attempt to compensate.
And sure enough, as soon as Peeves spotted Teddy, he shot forward over to where they were walking and began furiously throwing beans at him, while Teddy covered himself with his arms weakly. "WHY ME?" He shouted.
One of the beans accidentally landed on Victorie and Peeves stopped in his tracks and stared at her blankly with a hand in the air, locked and loaded yet still rigid.
Victorie flinched at being subject to the attack, then stared back at Peeves, raising her brows. Something unspoken lingered in the subtext of the exchange. Peeves retracted his bean-throwing arm and floated away into a wall and disappeared.
Teddy huffed irately and corrected his shirt. He looked between Victorie and where Peeves had disappeared, then said breathlessly, "What gives?"
Crossing her arms and strutting away with Teddy close by her heel, she said unassumingly, "I don't know why he hates you so much…"
She tried to catch up to the rest of the students, who had almost reached the classroom. She didn't mind being late, but she didn't want to be later than the rest.
"Because he's evil."
Victorie turned on her heel and faced Teddy head on. "You would be too if you'd been mistreated your whole life!"
For the first time since being reunited with Teddy he gave her an expression which she hadn't seen in a very long time, one she had forgotten about. It was one of dissatisfaction with her. She was reminded of how it made her feel too. It was a feeling she didn't enjoy recycling.
"It's a poltergeist, Victorie. Its evil isn't a reflection of how it's been treated." He reasoned.
Victorie's chest elated at how cleverly he'd put it, but her footsteps got heavier. "He's not evil."
Teddy didn't seem to agree, but instead of voicing his opinion he changed the subject. "You're really fond of the un-alive, aren't you?"
For some reason his lack of eloquence elated her chest as well. Odd, she thought.
Suddenly she found herself aware of her body; the way she was holding her books; the way her hair rested around her face and her wobbly steps.
She found herself considering too carefully what to say next, and struggling to find something that was good or smart enough to suffice. "I find ghosts and spirits interesting, okay?" She ended up with.
Before she could downgrade into a pit of pushing back smiles or the likes of it at whatever he was about to say next, Victorie's heavy footsteps altered into a jog, landing her at the end of the blob of students slowly seeping into the classroom.
Once Teddy had caught up to her, he had a different air about him. "I do too." He declared. "I've had thrilling conversations with Baron the Bloody for example."
"The Bloody Baron." Victorie corrected with a roll of her eyes. "Sure you have."
Teddy sunk down into a chair next to a telescope as Victorie sunk down next to him. To her dismay she also sank into a pit of pushing back smiles. Damn it.
Professor Sinistra, not caring that all the students were late to her class, asked them all to open their star charts. She spoke loudly over the strong winds hitting the walls of the high tower.
Victorie seized her chart carefully from her bag and placed it eagerly on the stand in front of her. She quickly came to notice that Teddy wasn't taking the professor's instructions. He was looking tensely around the classroom at the other students who were getting their star charts from their bags.
It didn't take long before Professor Sinistra noticed the one student who wasn't doing as instructed. "Is anything wrong Mr. Lupin?"
"Apologies Professor, I seem to have forgotten my star chart." He replied.
Professor Sinistra studied Teddy for a while. "Well…" She began, as if pondering whether to get upset or not. "…Don't apologise to me, it's your education that goes amiss." She continued sharply.
Her eyes landed on a Slytherin girl sitting to his left. "You'll be sharing with Miss Stevens today."
The Slytherin girl covered her star chart, and Victorie just managed to get a glimpse of the letters she'd been doodling on it: 'T.L.' they read.
Teddy himself immediately turned to Victorie and raised his brows cockily. She rolled her eyes back at him. She wasn't about to grant him the satisfaction of seeming impressed at him having yet another fan.
"I don't want to share." The girl piped and scribbled over the initials quickly.
Professor Sinistra sighed loudly, not expecting to start her class with all these setbacks. "Well then…" The Professor looked out at all the students with a sheepish reluctance. But nevertheless, she readied her wand. With her other arm stretched out in concentration, she whispered the incantation, "Geminio".
Teddy tensed when the wand was pointed in Miss Stevens' direction, but the only thing affected by Sinistra's spell casting was the star chart under the seclusion of the embarrassed girl's arms. The item effortlessly duplicated and was subsequently levitated over to Teddy's grateful hands.
Professor Sinistra waved the whole ordeal off and returned to her podium. "Magic solves what tardiness forgets." She shot Teddy a meaningful look. "But if we rely on it too much we forget to be responsible human beings, which is a precarious practice."
She turned toward the grand window, and gazed doe eyed at the stars. "Moreover, there are things magic can't do for us, things it can't tell us. Those things we might turn to the stars and the planets for." Tearing herself from her beloved stars, she looked out at the students again. "I want you all to turn to the sky, and conclude as much from it as possible."
Sinistra shut up mysteriously, and turned her back to them, returning to her own papers at her desk.
There was a unifying shuffle of everyone fetching their parchment and star charts. Chatter immediately erupted amongst the students. Victorie registered a subtle but noticeable excitement between everyone.
Except Teddy, who was looking at his star chart like it was a blank piece of parchment. He leaned closer to the Slytherin girl next to him and asked her name.
"Allison." She smiled a smile that spoke of more than expected politeness.
"Alright Allison, could you shed some light as to what we're supposed to be doing now?" He gestured toward the preoccupied Professor at her desk.
Allison smiled wider and blushed for no apparent reason. Victorie watched the scene unfold from the corner of her own chart, thinking that Teddy should have asked her for help rather than this stranger, before ultimately realising that she would probably just have responded in a judgemental and snarky way.
"Homework for this lesson was to fill in our star charts so they're up to date. You should have an easy time reading yours, as I did a really thorough job of filling it in yesterday." She puffed her chest out and smiled, yet again.
Teddy was staring at Allison while leaning back slowly in his chair. He was trying to comprehend how any of this was meant to explain what he still had not come to grips with.
Feeling obligated to intervene, Victorie spoke, "We're supposed to do our own horoscopes, basically." She explained, louder than intended and she ended up catching the attention of more people than what was desired. She looked down at the floor. "It's not that hard to explain…" She muttered.
Everyone got to work, even Teddy, although not without a lot of unhelpful advice from Allison, and a butting-in Delilah.
"What does Pisces look like again?" He asked.
"It's right there." Allison said and pointed.
"That's Capricorn." Delilah interjected from behind them. "Pisces is next to Jupiter."
"Right… and what does that mean for me?"
"Uuh… It's hard to say."
This back and forth went on for longer than what Victorie could realistically take. It went on until all the foolishness in the room went to her head and beyond.
She sat tensely in her seat, seething at the incorrectness and at how confidently the two of them relayed all of the inaccuracy. She opened and closed her mouth about five times within the same minute.
Teddy squinted meticulously at the cartoonish depiction of the galaxy in front of him. "There's going to be a full moon on Thursday, what does that mean for me?"
"Well it obviously depends on where your constellation is in relation to it." Everyone turned to Victorie, but she refused to let the pressure of attention get to her. She focused on Teddy as she spoke. "You're an aries right? From the perspective of the aries, Thursday will not be a full moon, but a waning crescent."
She pressed her lips together and stroked her arm absentmindedly while waiting for a response from Teddy. But his lips were pursed and he focused on her expectantly, as if needing more somehow.
"Like, a dark moon." Victorie explained. Teddy looked at Allison and Delilah, but they were studying their own star charts with a newfound focus. "As in the last visible crescent of the moon before it becomes invisible to us." She continued, desperate for something to click for Teddy.
"Oh." He said. "So… what does that mean for me?" He readied his pen and parchment.
Victorie paused for a second, collecting her thoughts. Her eyes wandered toward the large window and out at the stars. "It means that you'll be in the dark."
Teddy looked between the stars and Victorie. "I'll make sure to bring a flashlight."
Delilah giggled and Allison smiled, but Victorie made a point of not indulging Teddy, who was looking around the group to see who was laughing.
"But soon after the moon has gone completely dark, a new cycle begins." The redhead continued.
"Here's the thing about astrology, it's very intricate, and there's a lot to consider." She stared deadpan at Teddy, making sure to catch his attention. She wanted him to take this seriously, for him to see the importance of it.
"For example, as the week progresses, Jupiter will retrograde into Cancer, and you'll be in the sixth house of rest. You probably shouldn't enter any duels then, because you'll probably lose. But you should also consider Mercury's position in conjunction with Libra, as that might set you out of balance… You should beware of taking on too much."
Victorie studied her star chart closely. "And then, next week, you'll move through Scorpio, entering the eleventh house of closure. You might make a new discovery then, and as the moon waxes throughout the month, you'll have some new experiences."
"You see how there's a lot to consider?" Victorie tilted her head, wondering if Teddy was following.
But before he could respond, Victorie was onto the next thing. "Oh! And as your Venus eases into Virgo here..."
She pointed to a specific place on the map, but Teddy barely had a chance to look before she took it back. Allison and Delilah even leaned in curiously.
"You might discover a new passion for something." Victorie finished excitedly, forgetting in her own passion to seem as aloof as she usually preferred.
She settled down, and found herself looking at Allison and Delilah to gauge their reactions. To her surprise, they seemed as excited as Victorie had seemed just a moment ago.
"Cool!" Delilah said.
"Do mine next!" Allison begged, jumping in her chair.
Victorie stroked her arm again. "I should probably get going on my own paper if I'm going to get anywhere." She turned back to her own original position, facing away from them.
Before she turned, she caught a glance of Teddy's expression. It reminded her of the same displeased one he'd worn in the corridor before class had started.
Why should he care whether I help them or not? She thought indignantly. I'm allowed my own study time.
Published: 17 February 2022