Victorie didn't forget about Teddy's offer the next day. But as it turns out there was a big divergence for her between remembering an offer — and taking someone up on it.

Therefore she had spent her whole Sunday as far from the common room as she could. Specifically in a toilet cubicle in the girls' lavatory where she had sat and read. After all, no specific arrangements had been made as to when and where she was to meet Teddy and his friends.

If she was being totally honest (something which she had failed to be when Sir Nicholas the ghost had told her to simply ask Teddy for the specifics, and she'd told him that she had the situation under control) she wasn't sure how seriously she was supposed to have taken the offer, and didn't want to test her luck by asking him about it.

So she had avoided the whole ordeal altogether, secretly hoping that he would forget about it. That's how that stuff usually worked, wasn't it? People make vague arrangements out of mere pleasantry, but when neither party punctuates them, they flow out into the sand.

That is until you have one member of the party who is unable to focus on her book...

Because what if he had meant it? And the plans, instead of flowing into the sand, feel more like they are marked with big red letters in her mental calendar.

It wasn't the only thing making it hard to focus. The water level in the bathroom was reaching a point where it started seeping into her converse, so she had to uncomfortably pull her feet up on the toilet.

The girls' lavatory was an apt place for reading most of the time, with its large towering windows letting a lot of light in, along with its tendency to be deserted. But Myrtle was in a bad mood that day it seemed.

Perhaps because a student had been occupying one of her cubicles all day, and she was growing annoyed. Victorie wasn't sure. She hadn't been listening to the dead girl's periodic woes.

So, having been partly chased out of the bathroom by Myrtle, Victorie was on her way back to the common room. Her wet shoes made a sucking sound as she walked determinedly. She was hoping with every nerve in her body that his friends wouldn't be there, but admittedly also wishing with every fibre of her being that he hadn't forgotten.

She pushed the heavy portrait out of her way and put one wet shoe inside the common room before she spotted him sitting with a group of people. Delilah, Maya and Jamie were all there along with three others in the immediate circle. Then there were a few others scattered around, but she registered that these students were slightly younger and merely onlookers to the show that was Teddy in the midst of his mundane daily life.

Walk straight to your dorm, she instinctively ordered herself, looking doe eyed at the group of people sitting by the fire.

Almost immediately Teddy looked her way. Their eyes met but she turned away and began walking toward her dormitory while constructing a thought that she needed to feed Walpurgis as soon as she got inside.

Teddy followed her with his eyes as she walked, and Victorie looked only halfway in his direction, too afraid to confront him fully.

"Hey Victorie." He said calmly once she was midway up the first step of the stairs, causing the rest of the crowd to notice her.

She paused on the first step, allowing herself a small breath of air and one last longing glance at the door to her bedroom before turning.

Teddy's two raised brows told her that he had definitely not forgotten about his offer — a thought that might serve to comfort her at a later date. For now though, all her feelings tended to settle on anxiety as she stood amplified on that very first step, wishing that she could skip past all the coming steps and be at the top right away.

"Are you coming to join us?" He asked.

She wished he could have smiled as he said it, but he merely looked at her with those raised eyebrows. His hair was longer again, slightly overgrown and black. Any hint of amusement on his features was only conjecture of hers and too deeply buried by him to be proven in a court of law.

She moved closer to the group. As she did so she even detected a challenging note in his demeanour. It annoyed her enough to spark the confidence required to pass by him on the couch and acknowledge the other people in their various seating arrangements.

Luckily for her, there was an available ottoman for her to sit on, almost as though purposefully reserved. As she sat down her wet shoes once again made that sucking sound and she felt her moisture filled sock clutch to her foot uncomfortably.

This isn't awkward at all, she thought to herself and closed her eyes in a futile attempt at some inner peace. Behind her closed eyelids, she imagined every face that was currently staring at her.

I really need to feed my cat as soon as possible, she reiterated in her head.

"Are your shoes wet?" Teddy tried curiously, and she opened her eyes.

They immediately fell on his ripped black jeans and she latched onto the first thing she could, asking him venomously, "Are your jeans broken?" before immediately regretting it. Her eyes fell shut again.

What am I? His grandpa?

To her surprise Teddy burst into a laugh. It was short lived, but she believed it confirmed her earlier conjecture, which was a small relief. Subsequently Delilah joined in with a snort. But the rest of the company still weren't amused, and seemed confused as to why Victorie was even there in the first place.

The looks she was given made her feel like the space between her arms and the people next to her was far too tight.

Sensing Victorie's severe discomfort Teddy looked at her sympathetically and said to the group encouragingly, "This is Victorie."

"We know." Whispered Maya, mostly aimed at Delilah next to her.

"Yeah, we know Victorie." Said a boy who stood out as one of the few in the company wearing blue and bronze. He was examining Victorie, but turned toward Teddy and continued, "The real question is why is she suddenly allowing you within ten feet of her?" He joked and jabbed Teddy playfully in the side, who looked slightly abashed, looking down at his lap.

This caused a large portion of the boys in the group to unanimously turn their attention toward Teddy, relieving Victorie of her troubles.

They seemed to enjoy teasing Teddy about this, she noted. She honestly wasn't against it, only a tad surprised that her hesitance to accept (or even engage) the boy since he had started Hogwarts had come off this strong. But she suspected it had something to do with how greatly it contrasted everyone else's approach.

Another one, apparently wanting to join in on the joke, turned to Victorie. "Yeah, 'thought you had a restraining order against him?" He asked as the others rejoiced in the hilarity.

Not that attention usually bothered Teddy, but this kind had evidently stirred him the wrong way and he rolled his eyes. "You guys are talking shit."

"Then why does she ignore you every time you try and get her attention?" One of them asked.

"She doesn't!" Teddy let out.

"She literally tried to ignore you just now and escape into her dorm."

"And every time you try and say hi to her in the corridors she acts like she doesn't notice." Another guy added while trying to ruffle the boy's hair.

Teddy swatted the hand away. "We're good friends. We've known each other since forever." He scratched the back of his neck self-consciously before eyeing Victorie, awaiting her agreement.

Unfortunately Victorie could only say what she truly felt. She'd been cursed with the condition her whole life. "I'm not sure I would agree." She said.

The circle broke into a loud laughter, slapping Teddy on the shoulder and going, "Mate." almost one by one, Jamie included. Teddy let the repeated contact move his hardened posterior, tensely waiting for it all to die down.

Victorie shifted in her seat and went for a more agreeable approach this time. "We used to know each other." She offered.

Teddy wasn't backing down though. He sat up straighter, ready to defend his stance on the matter.

But before he could, the Ravenclaw boy came to (contrary to his own belief) no one's rescue. He addressed Teddy by tugging at his Gryffindor pullover, leaning in and saying without so much as an attempt at a whisper, "Don't worry, she does this to everyone."

His hand then travelled past Teddy to Jamie sitting on the other side of him and landed on his knee, squeezing it reassuringly.

Teddy's face scrunched up in confusion, head retracting and everything. He peered curiously at Jamie, who had shut only one eye, looking as though he had stared into the sun a few seconds too long.

The Ravenclaw boy sat back in his seat, eyeing the two boys with a surprised but smug expression, blissfully delighted at the unintentional contretemps he'd created.

"You don't know what you're talking about." Delilah shot at him.

"I don't?" The boy threw back. His tone gave Victorie an uneasy feeling, which told her that making several people uncomfortable at once wasn't going to be his only trick. "What's my name then?"

Victorie watched Delilah, wondering why she wasn't answering. Did she really not know the name of her friend?

Only then did she realise that the boy hadn't even been addressing Delilah, he was looking straight at herself. Slowly her attention made its way back to the Ravenclaw boy. All her muscles relaxed, as if giving up.

This was the first time she'd hung out with Jamie's friend group, perhaps ever — the people he always tried to introduce her to and the people she always avoided.

Why did he need her to tell him his name though? It was definitely another trick. She just didn't understand it yet.

Looking around at Jamie's friends, she said, "I don't know." and felt like she was in the eerie moment which preceded embarrassment. All she could feel for now though was curiosity. "What is your name?" She inquired.

The group fell silent. "Classic Victorie." Muttered a foreign voice behind her. She didn't want to look; didn't want to know which strange onlooker had learned her name and enough about her personality to deem her behaviour as 'classical'.

"I'm Ethan, you know." The Ravenclaw who Victorie now knew to be called Ethan said. "Nice to meet you. We have several classes together every year." He continued passive aggressively.

"This is what I'm talking about." He said to Delilah.

Then he turned to Jamie, who had now pushed his head so far back into the couch's backrest that he might as well be part of it at this point. He was staring at his lap, possibly counting the seconds before he could escape.

The pieces were assembling in Victorie's head, but any embarrassment she might have felt was deluded by anger as she watched Jamie cower in his spot.

"Jamie can also testify." Ethan finished, all tricks revealed.

"Jamie needs some karmic cleansing." Victorie puffed out as she stood.

She looked down at her damp shoes as she spoke next, tone taking a softer turn, "I'm sorry I didn't know your name Ethan. I didn't think we were friends." Then she added, "Now I know for sure we aren't."

Victorie rushed up to her dorm, taking the stairs two steps at a time until she was at the top and could shut the door behind her.

She had refused herself any last glances at Teddy, which she regretted as she sat down on her bed in the dark room, letting herself feel the humiliation that had finally set in. She didn't want to see anything, so she unlaced her shoes in the dark, dragging off each wet sock and slipping into some big and fluffy ones after scavenging for them in the mess on the floor by her bed.

While scavenging she came across the bag of cat food she stored under the bed, so she filled Walpurgis' bowl before finally laying down.

She wondered if Teddy felt disappointed in her now that she had so obviously failed her first major social event since he'd begun tutoring her. Or worse, did he feel embarrassed for her?

The next few days were a frequent recurrence of avoiding acknowledging Teddy whenever his attention drifted away from whatever social setting she found him in to follow her steps as she passed him in the corridors. In fact she ignored looking at him all together. Failure was unbeknownst to her, and she didn't want to see hers from a few days ago reflected in his expressions.

Jamie on the other hand had now resorted to literally turning on his heel as soon as he saw her, to escape in the opposite direction.

The only positive outcome, and it was a precarious one at best, was that she had learned a lot of her classmates' names during the course of only a few days. Reason being that many of them kept introducing themselves to her.

She knew that she was meant to find this humiliating or mean spirited or something like it, but oddly enough she enjoyed feeling included for the first time in a long time. Like she was part of a social circle, even if it was at her own expense.

The only feeling of humiliation she couldn't kick was Teddy seeing her screw up so badly when he had believed in her enough to invite her along.

The only people with whom everything was normal was Maya and Delilah, since she had barely spoken to the two of them since the incident. But funnily enough she had a growing feeling that things weren't supposed to feel like usual between them. As before all of this happened, she had begun to hope for a new usual, one where they could actually interact with each other.

Despite Victorie's wishes, as she opened the door to her dormitory one night carrying an armful of disorganised parchment, she couldn't help but also hope that she wasn't actually hearing their voices coming from inside the room.

But when she stepped inside her dorm that night, she found not only both of her dorm mates, but in the company of none other than Teddy Lupin.

He was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room with Delilah and Maya as audience on their beds, one of them looking greatly satisfied with the situation, and the other quite struck by the whole ordeal.

Victorie was in the second category, and it caused her grip on the multiple pieces of parchment to slip, sending one of her drawings sailing down and hitting the floor, slitting the tense air in the process.

How on earth did he get past the staircase?

She stood gaping at the boy, who abandoned his stick-like position to bend down and pick up the drawing that had landed in front of his feet. Without so much as a hint of subtlety, he resorted to blankly examining the drawing right in front of her.

"Excuse me?" She snapped. But before getting an answer she went on, "First of all that's not yours to look at. Second of all this is the second time you've made your way in here uninvited."

Teddy let the drawing fall to his side, but Victorie had already forgotten about it, now paying more attention to her messy bed instead.

"I never actually set my foot in here the last time." Teddy corrected as Victorie rushed over to her bed to shut the curtains, kicking whatever items lay scattered around it underneath and out of sight instead. She also set the pile of parchment down and shut the draws that had been left ajar.

She turned around and crossed her arms, finding Teddy holding her sketch behind his back now and carrying an expression of amusement mixed with a hint of regard.

"And those two let me in this time." He gestured with the parchment in his hand toward the two girls watching the scene from their beds. "I wasn't uninvited."

"Yeah, well, don't you think some sort of vote should have taken place before any such invites were sent out?" She suggested to the girls and with an angry huff she stomped up to Teddy and righteously ripped her drawing from his hands.

"It did." Maya said and counted herself and Delilah with her finger. "Two." Lastly her finger landed on Victorie. "Against one."

Victorie's breath vibrated through her body as she fought to not cause a larger tantrum than she already had.

Was it unfair that they had let a boy into their dorm without consulting with her first? — Yes. And it was against the school's code of conduct. Did it matter in the grand scheme of things? — No.

So she chose to let it go. Presently she went and placed the drawing on her nightstand. She let her head hang as she watched the blue evening light from the window reflect on it.

"A skull." Teddy remarked from behind her.

Silence was in the queue. A small cough was heard from Delilah and Victorie could hear Teddy shuffling closer. She imagined him with his hands in his pockets and shoulders upstretched.

"I shall hope you're not here to hex any more of my books." Victorie quipped with a twist in his direction. When she turned she was surprised to see that he had inched even closer to her side of the room.

He glanced at Delilah and Maya. The pair had their eyes plastered on Teddy, still not quite believing his presence in their dorm. When caught, they immediately sunk their noses separately into a book and a box of Bertie Bott's beans, but realistically fooled no one.

"I'm here to talk about what happened the other day." He whispered.

Victorie's eyes momentarily dotted around the room to wherever people weren't. She stretched her back, composing herself.

"Actually, it's a reminder of mortality." She swayed as she clicked the disregarded sketch behind her with her index finger a few times.

Although expression-wise Teddy seemed unimpressed with her artistic allegories, he still engaged her.

"Why would you want to be reminded of that?" He asked, sparing one quick glance at the item that her finger graced.

But Victorie was no longer reachable. She was ogling one specific dot on the floor.

He leant forward and waved in an attempt to make contact. But his question seemed to need thoughtful consideration before answering. So he let his concern falter and watched as she suddenly snapped back to life.

"You know, you shouldn't have made me come to that thing!" Her fists punched at her hips. She began to erratically pace back and forth, ginger locks swaying with her movements. "I wasn't ready."

Initially Teddy crossed his arms. "I didn't make you do anything."

Maya winced at a particularly gruesome bean in the background and Victorie stopped her pacing especially for the chance to glare at Teddy. While his statement was technically true, she couldn't help but feel that if he had never offered her the chance to be made a fool of, perhaps she wouldn't have been. He had essentially enabled the fool manufacturing to happen.

Eventually, after a few long seconds of being the target of a stone cold glare, Teddy softened a little. Although not without a minor eye-roll.

"I shouldn't have put you in that position, I wasn't aware that Ethan had a grudge." He admitted.

The irritable witch deemed it sufficient, and she unclenched her two firsts in response.

Teddy continued, "It's partly why I'm here..."

The boy paused and cautiously seized her up, like testing his path for traps, before stepping to the side and unveiling the thick maroon curtain that sealed her bed off from the world.

Once the action was revealed Victorie fed herself a gulp of air and pleaded at Delilah and Maya, mentally begging for them to get her out of whatever was about to happen. But the two looked as stupefied as she.

Teddy sat down on the bed, triggering another set of glances to be exchanged between the three girls, ones that seemed to go unnoticed by him.

"Even though I did find it odd that you don't know some of your classmates' names... I hate that I invited you into an altercation." He explained, and beckoned for her to sit.

After one last silent exchange with the girls, Victorie went to sit down next to him, and the girls went back to their simulation.

Once seated, and preceded by a couple of deep breaths, she found that she quickly grew accustomed to the predicament.

"And what's the other part of why you're here?" She fired in an attempt at masking her discomfort and hopefully gaining some leverage on the conversation.

Her strategy seemed to work a little too well, and Victorie watched curiously as a blush slowly crept onto his cheeks. Still he only broke eye contact for a moment before powering through, explaining to her in simple words, "I thought you might need some comfort."

It was Teddy's time to watch as she broke eye contact. Her eyes escaped to the window by her bed. Yet a small smile still sealed itself in as she watched the rain instead of him, easing its way down the glass in tiny little streams.

She didn't feel like answering him this time either, and she thought herself too good for a segue anyway, so instead she went on about her drawing again, "Reminding ourselves of our mortality makes other things seem... less important." Her faint smile eased its way into a melancholy one. "A way to get perspective on your life."

Teddy sighed and tucked his legs under him so that he was fully facing her on the bed, sitting cross-legged.

"I'm sure your coping methods are very sane, and just as effective." He assured her in what felt like an empty statement. Victorie let him continue however, only with some heavier inspection. "Some extra support couldn't hurt though, and another reason why I'm here is that I wanted to suggest we take our classes one step further."

"If only you had this much interest in your regular classes..." She interjected while, without much thought, placing herself so as to mirror his position on the bed.

But Teddy ignored her and continued with more volume, "...And I suggest a meeting tomorrow after school in preparation for the Halloween party on Saturday."

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Delilah and Maya's ears perk up a notch. Victorie felt the opposite of perky though. "I'm going to that?" She questioned.

"Great!" Teddy chimed, once again fundamentally misinterpreting her. He clapped his hands together. "Then we will need to revise, do you accept to meet me in the library tomorrow?"

Victorie stared blankly at him, mentally buzzing to try and catch up with what conversation Teddy was having.

"For the purpose of what?"

Once again, she felt herself questioning what the true intent of the social lessons was. She didn't want to find herself in an arrangement she had unwittingly agreed to. "So that I can be friends with Ethan?" She quipped sharply.

Teddy sighed once more, but her salty stare didn't deter him, he went on in a whisper, "So that you can get better at making friends."

He leaned toward her. She was about to react before realising that he was on his way to her nightstand. He leaned past her and reached for the sketch, finding himself in close proximity to her. Victorie tried her best not to breathe and stared at the ceiling while he sat back again.

"And you can be friends with whomever you want." He mumbled, now staring at the drawing safely in his lap.

They were both silent for a moment while she watched him look at her art. She felt enclosed with him on the bed, the four pillars encapsulating them from the rest of the world. It was comfortable and nerve wracking at the same time.

"It's pretty good." He commented while his eyes traced everything on the page up until every edge. Finally finished, the boy looked at her and smiled reassuringly. She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Do you accept?" He asked.

"Fine. I'll meet you in the library." She answered, feeling relieved to be done with the conversation.

Teddy gave her a big goofy smile then, and she couldn't help but smile similarly at him. Only then did she accept that he had in fact been there to comfort her. Not only that, but his attempt had actually worked.

Published: 7 March 2022