Some remarkable things happened after Halloween.
Victorie had begun making a habit out of asking people questions every now and again. No major things, just general pleasantries. But it worked surprisingly like a charm. Who would've thought?
It came with many benefits — people liking her more being one of them.
She became closer with some of Teddy's friends as the first week of November went by. Her new persona seemed to send shock waves farther than she anticipated, and she'd even received a box of chocolates.
Roxanne had felt the need to explain to her that boxes of chocolate from admirers wasn't exactly a common trade off after having exchanged a few pleasantries, and not something she should expect to happen every time.
But never mind the chocolates, the biggest change of all was that she realised how much she was missing out on for not having taken an interest before now.
Maya, she found out, wanted to be a musician. Her mother had gotten her into music from a young age, and she was now in the Hogwarts orchestra where she played drums.
Victorie always knew that Maya was in the orchestra, but she'd never paid much attention to it. Listening to her now though, how passionately she spoke about music and drumming, made Victorie like her more somehow.
Teddy explained it as being a result of complexity in the viewing of a person, and how it prompts more compassion toward them. Victorie was not prepared to agree with that sentiment just yet however.
She'd also learned that Delilah was failing Astronomy, and had received a succession of poor marks on her homework. This revelation was less sweet, although it had led Victorie to help Delilah with her next assignment, which made her slightly more popular with the girls.
But her success did not come without making some blunders here and there. Like when she ran into Roxanne on one of the moving staircases...
Roxanne had begun rummaging around in her backpack, then shoved the Tower Tarot triumphantly into Victorie's hand and explained, "You dropped this that time you tried to teach me tarotmancy."
Victorie stared cluelessly at the reversed tarot in her hand and the girl continued, "I kept forgetting to give it back to you."
Victorie nodded, mind clouded by the vision of The Tower, she absentmindedly attempted conversation. "What are you up to?"
As soon as the words left her mouth, the staircase started moving. Victorie grabbed onto the rail and lamented over the fact that they had lingered for too long.
Roxanne stared at her as they regrettably moved further and further away from the designated path. "I swear I forgot I even had it. If I'd remembered I would have given it back." She relayed anxiously.
Victorie grabbed the railing tighter and refused to look down the sheer drop that awaited whoever fell off.
Once she had put it out of her mind, she backtracked to Roxanne's reaction. "No! I meant where are you on your way to?" She tried to smile reassuringly. "I wasn't being suspicious of you, Roxanne. Just making conversation."
"Oh." The staircase lined up with another staircase and stilled. The two got off onto the other one as soon as they could. "Well I was on my way to choir practice, but I guess I'm taking a detour now." She sighed.
"Gosh!" Victorie lit up like a flame on a dry day. "You've joined the Frog Choir, that's wonderful!" She clapped Roxanne on the shoulder cheerfully.
Roxanne laughed. "I joined in my first year." She'd told an embarrassed Victorie.
Other than that, Victorie's attempts at playing the social game had been pretty successful. It was like she'd had a sip of that magic potion she'd desired so desperately a few weeks back. She felt kind of unstoppable.
Unstoppable was definitely what she was feeling when she marched through the first floor corridor leading to the History of Magic classroom, passing by smashed pumpkins that were leftover on the floor from the Halloween season.
Her right hand was clenched together, carrying a secret inside and resting on the layer of her fingerless glove. The castle didn't have nearly enough heating functions to keep the bitter November air out, and to be without layers this time of year was to be without a doubt unhappy.
She walked with hope in her heart that she could secure the seat next to Teddy. Usually it was reserved for Jamie, but since the Halloween party the two had not sat together once. Naturally during the classes that followed the seat next to Mr Lupin had not gone unoccupied, and many desired being the occupant.
Now, Victorie was not usually one to have an interest, but since her recent escape from the social cocoon she had a specific desire for where she wanted to spread her wings, and Teddy was going to help her with it.
When she arrived at the classroom she found him sitting alone with his face in a book. The only person there besides him was Professor Binns, monotonously making a hovering chalk stick write significant dates on the blackboard.
She smiled to herself. What few but she knew was that in Teddy's journey to becoming half of a somewhat dutiful student, he had taken it upon himself to arrive early for his classes.
For Victorie (being a loner and all) arriving early for class wasn't something new, and seeing Teddy sitting by himself again and again upon her arrival, the only logical reaction for her was to ignore her newfound companion of sorts and sit down as far away as possible, letting Teddy focus on his course literature.
Except for today. The girl let her short trim bounce as she made her way over. Teddy noticed her with the attitude of someone acutely aware of his surroundings and aware of who was expected to enter them on that Wednesday morning. Still he seemed undoubtedly whelmed by her appearing before him with all her might.
Despite clearly already having caught his attention, she slammed her hand down on his desk. She had after-all conjured a vision in her head already of how this was going to go down. As it turns out her vision was intransigent enough to outlive all counteractions.
The table shook and Teddy gazed at her. Binns didn't take any note of them. She released her hand, revealing what lay underneath, but Teddy was still taking in her appearance. Her burgundy beret, her school vest that she wore oversized with the appropriate dress shirt under. He followed her attire all the way down to where she was motioning with her eyes for him to look. Under her hand, she had revealed a little enamel pin.
"Why are you giving me your badge?" Teddy took the pin in between his fingers, studied it like it was a diamond and he was a certified gemologist. "This is that thing Jamie told me about... W.P.S." He read the initialism out loud only to be silenced with an aggressive hush.
Victorie scanned the blatantly empty room for alive spirits. When she found none she relaxed and sat down at the seat next to him.
He smiled smugly. "Sitting next to me today are we?"
Victorie took no note of him. "It stands for Witches Poetry Society." She whispered as some students began to enter the classroom. Teddy had still not managed to shake his smile. "I need your help to go back there." She stifled a gulp, regarding the pin between his fingers like it was a relic from a war zone.
He looked between her and the pin. "I don't know the way." He tried.
"I know the way, silly." Victorie huffed.
She picked up the small box of chocolates she'd been given out of the front pocket of her bag. Binns would never notice, and she needed something with which to soothe herself.
She wasn't sure why, but the air changed when she put the box on the table in front of her.
Teddy's voice went into a mumble, and he couldn't quite take his eyes off the box. "Then why do you need me?" He asked.
"I need moral support." She clarified.
"Like what I did for you at the party?" The corners of his lips twitched, but his eyes were still on the box.
Victorie had a flashback to the angst of having to manoeuvre that social event, and she winced. "I just can't go there alone, I need someone to come with me." She leapt with her hand for the comfort food in front of her.
But before she could get far, Teddy reacted by grabbing her wrist, stopping her mid air.
"Is it like a dance?" He asked — surprisingly casual despite the grip on her wrist.
Victorie looked at him with appalled confusion, feeling the need to answer his query before addressing his reaction. "No! It's a poetry reading... Why are you grabbing my wrist?" She smacked him away and he retrieved.
Some more students walked by on the way to their seats. They weren't the first to eye the pair as they passed. Teddy and Victorie both assumed less conspicuous poses at the attention.
"Where did you get the chocolates?" He asked sternly.
She looked at the glossy pink box adorned with a ribbon — it was not telling any lies, and she concluded that she would have to take the route of truth, as embarrassing as it was. "I was given them."
Teddy looked like he'd ingested something bad. "By whom?" He blurted in a voice somewhere between shock and confusion.
Victorie took back her enamel pin and attached it back on her vest. She tried to seem as unashamed as possible when she replied. "By Ciaran." Unfortunately her tone landed oddly on the exact same octave as Teddy's outburst, revealing a little more than she wished.
He took a moment to compose himself. The rest of the class had now sat themselves down and the class was about to begin. "Ciaran Winter? He's a Slytherin." He said quietly.
She narrowed her eyes. I see someone has been indoctrinated.
Knowing very well the answer, she asked venomously, "What are you suggesting?"
The chocolates suddenly looked twice as tempting, and she reached out for the box once more. But Teddy swatted her hand away.
"Let me indulge!" She cried out.
The class had begun and a few heads turned. Binns' head was thankfully not one of them.
"I'm suggesting you think twice before blindly accepting something from a stranger!" He whispered heatedly.
The two stared at each other contemptuously before realising that they were being watched.
A Ravenclaw sitting close by was staring at them, evidently wanting their attention. When he was granted it, he said scornfully, "I know you guys have beef, but can you at least keep it in during class? I'm trying to learn."
Teddy discreetly leaned over his desk. "We don't have 'beef', Thomas. We're friends." He argued in a hushed voice and sat back down.
There was a pleasant jolt inside her when he dropped the friend-word, yet she still felt an urge to argue.
Thomas replied with a sarcastic "Sure." and faced the teacher again.
Teddy's features, which were now facing Victorie, turned into a scowl. He leaned back over the desk again, ready for round two.
"I get it, you want us to be quiet — we'll try and keep it down. But I'm telling you, we're friends, how is that so hard to believe?"
Thomas didn't acknowledge Teddy, he was instead just facing the teacher, but his lips crooked a little at his words.
Despite Teddy having all the fans that he had, for some reason people still found the idea of even someone as him being friends with Victorie to be hilariously preposterous. It was peculiar, although Teddy only seemed to find it frustrating.
Once given up on any further indulgence from Thomas, Teddy turned back and took one deep breath.
Victorie could stay silent no longer and seized this moment to let a few things off her chest. "You said that it's good to accept other people's kind gestures, that it makes them feel validated."
"Not when it's a total stranger and the thing you're accepting could be poisoned or in other ways meddled with! I told you this!"
"Ciaran is not a stranger!" She felt annoyed at his lack of reliability. He was making it out as though she had made some kind of mistake even though she had just been following his advice.
"He's a Slytherin." Teddy muttered, as though it was the same thing.
Victorie wasn't going to engage his house rivalry. "There are too many contradictions in the things you teach me."
"Every rule has a few exceptions." He muttered with a clenched jaw and angled his head back toward a still smiling Thomas.
"The rate of exceptions to your rules are too high." She confirmed.
"I'm no expert, I'm just doing my best." He waved it off and reached into his own bag (after looking around to make sure that Binns still wasn't taking note of them).
"I probably shouldn't give you this then, but..." He slid out an envelope and handed it to her. "Someone, who wishes to remain anonymous, asked me to give you this."
She took the letter in her hand and examined it carefully as she opened it.
During the course of the past two months she had become well versed in hand delivered postage. Despite the aspect of this letter being vastly different than prior ones she'd handled, her experience in the matter meant that she had a higher alertness when it came to identifying one.
Much to her assumptions (even though this letter was more discreet in nature with its elegant eggshell white and cold press paper) when she carved the envelope open and spotted a tasteful embossed heart on the card inside there was no mistaking the nature of the delivery — a love letter.
Victorie smiled to herself, mostly out of delight at how the tables had turned.
"Perhaps in our next lesson I should teach you how to turn people down..." Teddy wondered aloud to himself.
She pinched the card with both her hands, staring at the heart. "Did you read? What's your verdict?"
"I don't know, I didn't read it." He shrugged. "As your friend it's not my place."
Again Victorie took note of his use of the word 'friend' and stifled another urge.
She opened the card and read silently with a smile on her face. If it was because this letter was more well-written than the others she had read, or if it was the mere fact that it was directed at her, she wasn't sure, but she found that she liked it a lot more than she did Teddy's fan mail.
...And every syllable of yours is like a harp string beckoning my erstwhile longing forward...
She looked over at Teddy with a shy blush on her face. For the first time during that class he seemed to be focusing on what the professor was saying.
"So, it's in fact not a bomb or a death threat. You can rest easy." She joked.
"Good."
"Do you want to read?" She asked.
He was still looking straight at Professor Binns, arms crossed over his chest.
"No."
Victorie stared. Sure it was just a silly romance thing, but it boggled her that he was so completely disinterested in it. "Why not?" She asked.
Teddy shifted and glanced briefly at the card in her hand. "I'm just... not interested in what it says."
"Okay." She put the card back in its envelope and stuffed it in her bag.
Somehow the happiness she felt from reading the letter was evened out by Teddy's indifference. The offence he'd caused her lingered in the air. She would have to get back at him with whatever ammunition she had at her disposal, and there was one thing in particular that came to mind.
"But then you can't say that we're friends."
That got his attention. He finally looked her way and asked, "Why is that?"
"Because..." She began, racking her brain. "Friends are supposed to care about this sort of stuff. And your refusal to pay attention to it tells me that you're not ready for the responsibility."
"I didn't realise that being your friend was such a great undertaking." He snapped back.
And in that reign their dispute went on. It continued for the remainder of the class and transpired all the way into the hallway after the lesson had ended. The two found themselves stuck on the same dilemma.
"The fact that I don't want to read some silly love poem doesn't take away from the fact that we are friends, Victorie." He reasoned as they walked a few steps behind the rest of the group.
She groaned loudly. "What's your obsession with that word today anyway?"
He walked with his back forward, hands in his pockets. "Why are you so against that word today?"
"Because I wanted to be your friend!" The words slipped out of her mouth and echoed through the corridor.
A few of their classmates turned their heads to look back at the heated couple. Her steps had quickened, and she now spoke between heavy breaths.
"All those times you'd come visit us back home and I tried to talk to you, get to know you. But you were so shy!" Victorie's voice was growing gradually louder and Teddy noticed more people paying attention, so he grabbed the arm she was using to tightly hug her books and dragged her mid-speech to the nearest room he could find. All the while she was still going on,
"...Instead you chose to befriend me in the night, letting yourself listen in on my conversations, but never trading any of yourself."
He rushed her inside ahead of him, taking one look behind him to make sure no one saw. But when he shut the door behind him and turned, he found himself pressed together with Victorie inside a small and cluttered broom closet.
"Oh." He stepped back as far as he could, pressing his back against the door and planting his foot in a bucket in the process.
Victorie raised her wand. "Lumos." She said and the cupboard lit up along with her eyes that were currently shooting daggers at him. She went on as though uninterrupted, "...And then when we were ready to start school together your band got successful and you didn't come with me."
Almost all the air she had in her lungs had left and Victorie let her shoulders fall. "We weren't ever friends." She said with the last of her breath before taking in a new one. "It would have been nice to have someone then, you know."
He kicked the bucket off his foot. "Don't tell me you're salty that I took that opportunity? It was an amazing opportunity!"
"I'm not!" She argued. "Trust me — I'm not. Just don't expect me to pretend that we have this deep rooted history when you never once made any effort to ensure that while it was actually unfolding."
Victorie blurted everything out, or she thought she had. Teddy was staring jaw-struck at her and she wanted to hold his stare with all her might, watch him crumble under her every venomous word. But there was something more behind her issue with the word, something less venomous. She couldn't put her finger on it.
"Alright." Teddy sighed. He laid his hand on the door handle as if to say that he was ready to drop it and leave, then looked to her for confirmation.
But Victorie was still working through her emotions, trying to connect the dots.
She didn't think he had any right to barge into this school with a new persona and pretend like they were old friends when he had never made any effort in the past.
Then there was the other part of her, which acknowledged that they had grown closer over the autumn term. Especially now (while in a broom closet with the boy) she realised just how close she felt to him.
Close enough to see the speckles of his irises; dark enough to not feel self-conscious about herself; quiet enough that she could hear his slow breathing.
It was definite — him calling her a friend was definitely something she took issue with.
She inched closer to his irises, but in that moment they darted away. He pushed down on the handle and the door opened a crack.
"Regardless of your feelings, you can trust me to always be a friend to you now." Teddy remarked.
The newfound light source had Victorie suddenly become more aware of herself and she tried to take a step back, but ended up stepping right into the clutter. She lost her balance and stumbled forward. Teddy tried to stabilise her, but the door opened behind him revealing a fuming Mr Filch looking straight at them as everything tumbled out of the closet, broomsticks, buckets, rakes and all, crashing to the floor. Teddy and Victorie looked on as everything fell around them.
Students were staring at the scene as they walked past. The Ravenclaw boy among them wore the same expression he'd had earlier in the classroom when he'd reprimanded them for disturbing the lesson.
But front and centre was Mr Filch in his shabby coat and crazy eyes, towering above them. "Detention!" He called out, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Teddy glared at the man but Victorie just held her head down and took it, knowing defiance served no point.
"Detention!" He called out once again with a twisted glee in his eyes. "Detention! Detention!"
Later when Victorie left the scene having been served, along with Teddy, the details of when and where their punishment was going to take place she was trying to repress remnants of the high she'd felt in the cupboard. Her heart was beating fast as she pranced toward the Gryffindor common room.
'You can trust me to always be a friend to you' he'd said. Looking back it was clear to see that he wasn't just trying to be nice — he was trying to make a point. Mark a line he didn't want crossed.
Message received.
The weekend arrived all too shortly after the humiliating broom-closet incident and crowds of buzzing students all gathered down at the pitch for an anticipated game of Quidditch.
Hufflepuff was meeting Ravenclaw in what Victorie expected to be a moderately thrilling match, hence why she had brought her journal along with her. It wasn't her house pride on the line, after all.
She sat on the bleachers in one of the spectating towers, huddling under her large coat and practising her cursive as it got more and more crowded around her.
"If it isn't my favourite outlaw!" Delilah chimed as she and the rest of the gang fought their way forward in the tight space to sit down next to her. She'd taken to calling her that after getting word of her upcoming detention.
Victorie saw Teddy at the backline of their troop. Jamie was also among them but keeping his distance. He sat down above her. Delilah and Maya sat down at the bench in front of Victorie and the two swivelled around to look at her.
Madam Hooch's voice began to boom out of the loudspeakers and across the stadium as she began introducing the teams and the players.
Ethan appeared out of the huddle of students in a Ravenclaw scarf wrapped in several hoops tightly around his neck and sat himself down next to Victorie. She smiled in greeting, and the boy turned her way and rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
Someone's excited... she thought.
A moment went by and Victorie attempted to focus on Madam Hooch's announcement, but soon realised that she was being watched. She looked around herself, and noticed that quite a few people around her were beholding her. From her dorm mates to Ethan and Allison and Jamie, even a few other people in their circle who she'd never spoken to.
Her writing hand went limp. She sat there holding her breath, waiting for someone to let her in on what was going on until eventually she had to ask, "What?"
Everyone immediately straightened again, but Jamie wasn't up for being coy. "They're all wondering what's going on with you and Teddy." He drowsily remarked from behind her.
As the words left his mouth, Madam Hooch released the snitch and the players began zooming through the air. Once the truth was out in the open, people around her leaned in again without inhibitions.
Victorie's cheeks heated up and she twisted around to glare at Jamie, successfully avoiding having to meet anyone else's eye.
Teddy rolled his eyes where he was sitting a few rows up from her, having placed himself as far away from the centre as possible.
"It's becoming evident that you're not exactly friends, are you?" Ethan pondered with raised brows.
Teddy caught Victorie's eye and they shared a look of terror as Ethan's words rang in their minds.
She knew that Teddy dragging her into a closet must have looked suspicious, and she was about to protest any romantic entanglement when Allison leaned in to whisper, "He must have done something really bad to make you hate his guts so much. Tell us."
One of the Hufflepuff chasers zoomed past their tower giving Victorie a cooling breeze.
'Not exactly friends' — as in enemies.
Unaware of the course his friends had taken, Teddy decided to speak up. "I can assure you that there is nothing romantic going on between Victorie and I. We are just friends."
One of the teams scored but everyone turned the opposite way to gaze up at Teddy instead.
"Well yeah, no news there." Ethan laughed. "What we're wondering is why you guys were arguing loudly in the corridor the other day? You can't seem to get along."
"We get along fine." Teddy ensured him. "We're not in a row, and we're not in love. You guys can relax."
Everyone looked at him like he'd grown two heads. "No one suggested that you're in love." Delilah argued with a little more heat than necessary.
Teddy paused. "I'm just saying that to the spectator's eye it might have seemed like something was going on between us. That's all I'm saying." He sat back and crossed his arms.
"I really don't think you need to worry about it coming across that way." Maya said. She looked like she was about to break into a laugh.
"Why? I mean for all you know something could be going on!" Teddy retorted.
"Not likely." A voice right next to Teddy said.
Victorie, who had up until then made her best attempt at not engaging herself in the conversation, looked up to see the Ravenclaw boy who Teddy had argued with in History of Magic class a few days earlier. He was waving a Ravenclaw flag mechanically while looking less than enthused at what was unfolding around him.
"I know you guys don't give a rat's ass about Quidditch unless Gryffindor is playing. But some of us actually came here to watch the game, so can you quit your gossip please?" He asked in a steady voice, his flag-waving arm not once wavering.
His was the final words to end the debate, and the tower was pretty much silent after that, with the exception of a few cheers here and there.
Victorie returned to her journal. But out of her earshot, Teddy was still not quite ready to let the subject go. He turned to Thomas with all his desperation.
"I'm not saying that there is something going on, I just don't get why everyone is so quick to dismiss the possibility... Something could be going on, you know."
Thomas, not once taking his eye off the field, explained in that same steady voice, "But anyone half perceptive who's been at this school during the last few months knows that she has some issue with you. I mean for one, you both arrive early for every class, but you never sit next to each other."
"During History of Magic we did." Teddy interjected.
"And look how that ended." Thomas winced at a particularly gruesome tackle by one of the Hufflepuff players.
"I don't get why though. Everyone else seems quite taken with me." Teddy pondered.
Thomas studied the redheaded girl sitting below him with her head buried in her writing. He then gave Teddy a quick once-over as well. "I don't know her personally. But I've been around here long enough that you should trust me when I say: if you want to get Victorie to like you, you might have to rely on wits outside of... being in a famous band."
Teddy narrowed his eyes at him, but decided not to focus on the fact that this guy thought so little of him. Instead he focused on another aspect of what he'd said. "I'm not trying to get her to like me!" He argued with his jaw clenched.
"Then why are we having this conversation?" Thomas asked him simply — his final blow.
Ravenclaw scored, and he shot up from his seat to cheer on. While Thomas busied himself with the game, Teddy took his chance to slip away from the bleaches and leave. He wasn't feeling like answering the question anyway.
Published: 19 March 2022