In a red chair sat Teddy with his beat up vans resting on the armrest of the chair beside him. His hair blended into the chair, but his black clothes complimented it well. Other than that, he looked severely out of place for the library when he wasn't in his Hogwarts uniform.
He sat and made scribbles in a notebook when Victorie approached him tentatively. It was the evening, and the thick warm air traced back to the number of students that had occupied the area throughout the day.
She was carrying a small and mysterious box with a cute bow on it behind her back, but she wasn't sure how to broach the subject of it with her revived acquaintance. Or any subject for that matter.
Their first meeting had gone well enough, but the socially awkward witch had been thrust into it without much choice. Somehow the pressure of being prepared to hang out with Teddy seemed all the more daunting.
Mostly because of how impossible it was to prepare for such an ordeal. She couldn't think of a single subject to make small talk about, and considering the embarrassing amount of time she'd spent trying, she knew she was in trouble. All she had was one question, but she didn't suspect it was going to prove a great conversation starter.
With Jamie she never had to think about these things. He was a chatterbox, and she never needed to contribute much.
Victorie's eyes went wide when Teddy managed to tear his deep focus from the scribbles and finally noticed her out of the corner of his eye.
His feet immediately landed on the floor and he sat up straight. "Sorry Madam!" He ejected. "Oh... it's you."
"Did you just confuse me with Madam Pince?" She asked.
He avoided her eye and reached down for the notebook he had dropped. While he did so Victorie took the opportunity to tuck the little box in her bag quickly. There was something very intimidating about the idea of revealing it to him just yet.
"You kind of dress like a librarian." Teddy mumbled for explanation before his head popped up again from beneath the coffee table, a mysterious smile plastered on his face.
Victorie looked at her emerald green velvet blazer and the dress shirt she sported under it. She had to admit that she did share some semblance with the usually lavish yet smartly dressed witch (except for the red hair).
She sat down on the unclaimed chair. "I see you have a notebook now?"
"Yeah, Jamie gave it to me." He'd gone back to his slumped back position in the chair, with one leg flung over the armrest as if in some silent protest against Madam Pince.
"Great, now you can take notes in class." She suggested.
He waved the notepad and said with feigned regret, "I only got one and I'm putting my syllabus in it."
Victorie let a breath out and decided not to argue why he had wasted his one notepad on this. She had her one question to ask, after all.
With one leg carefully placed on top of the other, she pushed herself forward on the chair and said with the breeziest voice she could muster, "So... How are you?"
"I'm great actually." He was using a fountain pen to scribble what looked like nonsense in the notebook in his lap. The question didn't seem to fully land. His mind was elsewhere. "I've been wondering... How did you manage to figure out how to fix that book?"
Without having to think Victorie replied, "Unfogging the Future, you mean?" She was a little disappointed at the lack of appreciation shown for her taking an interest in his mood, but decided to let the subject be changed. "Delilah told me how to get it back to normal."
Teddy let out a long "Oooh..." of realisation, but he looked fairly satisfied with the outcome of things. "I thought for sure they wouldn't break their promise." He remarked offhandedly.
A small group of students had entered the library. Victorie watched Teddy notice them, and watched as he continued to trace their steps as they found a suitable spot at a round table to sit down at.
They were unpacking their bags, pulling out books of all sizes and placing them on the table while chatting. One of them, a tall boy with long hair, took notice of Teddy. He smiled and waved at him, gesticulating for him to come join them as the others around took notice as well.
Victorie looked at her hands while Teddy smiled and waved politely at the group, yet stayed put in his chair. She suddenly felt a stronger need to say something, to continue conversation and retain his interest.
"It wasn't free however." Victorie stated while adjusting her blazer. "I had to partake in a quiz."
As though per automation Teddy replied, "Oh, the one in Witch Weekly?"
"You're aware of it?" Victorie asked while gaping at the boy in front of her.
"I've been made aware of it." He explained with a roll of his eyes. "Tell me, is your favourite food pumpkin juice or pizza?"
Victorie let out a laugh, which hadn't been that loud but nevertheless caused a few students to look over at them. The way that some of the gazes so curiously lingered on the two of them made her uncomfortable.
On a more satisfactory note, Teddy now seemed engaged in their conversation at least, and hadn't looked at the round table again.
"What song did you put as your favourite?" Teddy asked. Something shifted in his demeanour. He was no longer joking or making an offhand comment. She knew this question meant more to him.
Feeling a little panicked at this realisation, she fumbled for a reply as fast as she could, but it took her a moment to get the full title sounding right in her head. "Uuh... Short... Poem... Boy." It came out posed like a question more than anything.
But Teddy naively seemed to swallow her answer, and he nodded. She let herself relax. It didn't last long however, as she soon realised that he was still eyeing her. Once her answer had fully sunk in, his expression altered into a surprised one. "Really?" He asked.
"Yeah." She confirmed. She'd committed to Short Poem Boy, what else could she say?
He finally took his leg off the armrest and sat up. "That's like... our worst song." He explained, seeming genuinely confused. It seemed like he wanted to believe her. At the same time he was watching her steadily, like searching for cracks in the façade.
"You haven't heard any of our songs, have you?" He finally asked.
Victorie stuttered out a reply before she'd fully composed a sentence, and it came out a big jumble of embarrassing sounds, all of which Teddy ignored.
"Not even Sudden Whale Death?" He asked with what looked like every ounce of sympathy he had left in him, and Victorie knew she had hurt him.
Even though they hadn't been part of each other's lives for a while, he apparently still expected her to care about his band. Even though she didn't fully approve of his feelings, a small part of her understood and felt shameful. She looked down at her hands.
"That's a shame." He said.
She knew she had to do something to divert his attention from the disappointing subject matter. The only thing she could think to do was reach into her bag and grab what felt like leverage bestowed upon her by some lucky chance. The little box felt a lot lighter in her hand this time. She outstretched her hand with it to him, only with slight reluctance.
"It's chocolate pralines from an anonymous admirer." She explained toward Teddy's confused expression.
He put down his pen and grabbed the box with little enthusiasm.
The disappointment lingered.
"I've checked them for love potions. They're fine." She continued, which to her delight earned her a little smile of his.
Even though Victorie was merely a messenger of these recurring gestures, they still had a way of rubbing off positively on their interactions. She didn't always appreciate how it tended to change the dynamic, but this instance was an exception.
"And what about the letter?" He wiggled the opened envelope attached to the bow that enclosed the gift.
"I don't know..." Victorie paused, giving Teddy a moment to send her an expectant look.
"Do your steps ring like a melody?" She finally asked with a facetiously sensitive tone. "Are your features reminiscent of a midsummer's eve?" She added and he rolled his eyes, giving her a pleased feeling that her point had been made successfully.
Teddy validated her efforts by giving her a fully-fledged yet abashed smile. With absent-minded fingers he began to unlace the parcel, and Victorie watched his fingers as they struggled with the knot. He didn't usually open his gifts in front of her.
Isn't there a social rule that prohibits him from doing that? The words almost escaped from her inner monologue. Thankfully she caught them before they were out in the open and probably sounding far too spiteful for what was appropriate.
Still, there was something really wrong about the idea of him eating those chocolates in front of her.
She looked up at the ceiling, watched the intricate patterns that lined the cornice above her and tried to shut out the sound of him cracking the surface of a praline with his teeth.
"Do you want one?" He offered.
She shook her head.
"You don't want chocolate?" He reiterated with an undertone. "Are you sure?"
She decided to look him in the eye. "I'm sure."
"I thought you said you'd checked it for any traces of a love potion?" He said with a mouthful of chocolate and what was beginning to look like a fistful of regret.
Victorie raised her hands to calm him. "I did!"
Teddy relaxed in the chair with the box in his lap. "Well then you better accept!" He said and handed the box to Victorie, who didn't take it.
"Why?" She wondered, and to herself she questioned why he was still insisting.
"Because." Teddy began, starting out strong and then not seeming to fully know in what direction he should take his argument. Victorie crossed her arms and waited sceptically. "It's a good offer and... it's the socially acceptable thing to do."
It was becoming unclear to Victorie if he was being serious still, and his persistence was beginning to put her off. "Okay Teddy, I actually don't know what the hell you mean by that. But I don't plan on being supportive of your argument, so you might as well put the chocolates you're holding down." She looked at the outstretched box in her direction with apparent distaste. "The way it's just hanging in the air is making me tense, okay?"
Teddy retracted his offering and sat up straighter, watching. After her tangent, his presence felt a few degrees less intense, but she could tell that he was thinking.
He then placed the box on top of the table, and she could see a look developing in his eye. This wasn't over.
He remained silent, but she could tell it wasn't going to last. He looked around the room, as if stalling or something. Victorie took this opportunity to smile a little, which around Teddy felt like a mission that had to remain covert. She didn't know why he was acting weird, but when it wasn't getting on her nerves, it was kind of funny.
His eyes flickered back to the box, then to her. She raised her eyebrows. Her small smile was long gone, and she was daring him to bring it up again.
"If you don't actually want them, fair enough." He said with an airy nonchalance. "But if you're trying not to be an inconvenience or to be polite I feel it's my duty as your teacher in social interaction to inform you that you're making a mistake."
The slightest reaction to his musings felt like it might egg him on, so Victorie tried her best to shut him out and watch the surroundings instead.
Teddy put his hands together and leaned forward. "The idea that it's polite to decline kind gestures is the greatest fallacy of human interaction." He went on. "If someone who you know offers you something, and you're sure it's safe, you should aim to accept."
"And what about pressuring people to accept your gestures, how does that rate as a strategy in the game of social interaction?" Victorie snarled.
Teddy hesitated, and she knew she had forced him to have to stop and examine his own behaviour. She raised her brows expectantly, and he sheepishly replied, "Admittedly not that highly, but I'm trying to make a point."
"Oh, I see. This is my lesson, isn't it?" She asked venomously. She didn't intend to indulge him, but she also had a hard time sitting silent and letting all her pent up sarcasm run down the drain.
It didn't help her situation though, and Teddy looked at her with a newfound enthusiasm. He closed his notepad and smiled. "It is now."
"But what if I don't want it?" Victorie asked, pushing every syllable forward breezily.
Teddy paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "Then you should absolutely decline. But you seem to already have that down." His voice took on a sarcastic note when he went on, "...As I have so helpfully allowed you to demonstrate."
Victorie felt less than pleased, feeling that he'd misunderstood what she was referring to, but decided to let him have the conversation from his interpretation.
"If they keep pressuring you then they're the one being dumb and you should definitely not accept." He shook his head vehemently. Victorie couldn't believe how much his sentiment contradicted how he had just acted. "But if you're declining because you don't want to be an inconvenience, then I'd say it's better to enable them to be kind and helpful than to decline. In that way they'll feel like they have value."
"Most of the time people aren't helpful." She replied bitterly.
Teddy plopped a chocolate in his mouth. "That's the sort of attitude you need to abandon." He teased, earning him a smile of hers.
"Basically I need to always be considering what other people will feel about my actions." She huffed. It was meant in a light-hearted manner, but there was a real uneasiness behind the statement. In truth, she had a growing feeling that it was what was expected of her, and she didn't like it at all.
Teddy smiled sympathetically, and she felt comforted. Perhaps he understood.
"Well, not always. But perhaps more than you currently do." He said carefully. "I want to give you the resources to successfully identify what people want from you, however it's up to you whether you give it to them."
"And don't forget that it's an exchange. You can get things out of it too, remember? ...That's why we're here, isn't it?" He outstretched the box to her again, and they shared a look of mutual amusement.
Victorie still refrained from any engagement with the box, so Teddy kept it for himself and said with a mouthful of chocolate, "Good. Don't let me nag you about it."
Victorie felt like it was time to come up from under the magnifying glass. Sadistically she leapt for her bag and brought out A History of Magic from it. "I'm tired of listening to you preach. Are you ready to go through the reading?"
Teddy looked upset when he caught a glimpse of the book. But he only pushed his lips together in defeat and grabbed his own copy that lay on a pile of books beside his chair. With a swept away fringe he turned his sight downward and they both began to read peacefully.
When silence fell between them she was just about to feel relieved that she no longer had to worry about conversation, but only then did it cross her mind that she hadn't even thought about keeping it up until that point. She'd contributed to the conversation without even trying. But it hadn't really felt like contribution and more like... involvement.
And there she was now, book in her lap and her head tilted down, but with eyes peering behind the curtain of her hair at Teddy, and she realised how comfortable she felt in the presence of his silence.
It gave her a feeling of success. The feeling elated her to a point where she decided to reach out and grab one of his chocolates. Teddy lazily tore his bored eyes from the book and watched the action unfold. He smiled at her faintly and she gave him a cocky eyebrow twitch before putting it in her mouth.
"Look at you." He said proudly. "Now, would you like to hang out with some of my friends tomorrow?" The group of students had briefly stolen his attention, and the question caused Victorie's eyes to flicker onto the spot where his eyes had rested as well.
Victorie poked her lip out in thought. "Will you be there?" She asked before her filter had properly kicked in.
He snorted and shook his head amusedly all at one. "Well yeah, of course."
"Okay then." Victorie quickly replied and popped her head back into the book as soon as she could, letting Teddy smile to himself confidently and lean back in his chair.
Feeling like it was probably best to shut the boy out from that point on, she tried to close the curtain of her hair as well as she could without him noticing.
Published: 3 March 2022