It was Tuesday evening. Jamie and Victorie were on their way home from the Witches Poetry Society. She was thankful to have the boy back in her life. Even though she had tried not to lean on him as much as she used to, he had definitely made it easier to attend the meeting and to see Ciaran again.
Ciaran had been his usual polite self, but the two had definitely avoided each other throughout the night, and she had certainly not received a greeting at the door like last time.
The common room was dark when they entered. They looked at each other. Something was different. There were barely any people from their year to be found. The fireplace, which would usually cast a warm light on the walls, wasn't lit.
Her eyes fell on the staircase leading up to her dorm, but to her horror she saw not their usual wooden staircase. Instead the staircase was covered in bright green vines growing all around it, curving their way up toward the entry.
Several students were sitting on the vine-covered steps and were chatting amongst themselves. And they were snacking on crisps! On her staircase.
She marched up to them with her fists clenched mere centimetres away from where her wand burned in her pocket, waiting for the slightest provocation.
As it turned out, the few students occupying the staircase she had been about to climb into solace proved to be provocation enough, and Victorie whipped out the wand and pointed it at the strangers with all her might.
The kids flinched, thinking that they were about to be hexed. One of them flinched so hard that it rocked the bag of crisps violently, sending crumbs flying all over the adorned staircase in the process.
Victorie clicked her tongue in annoyance. Now there were strange students and crumbs all over her space.
Jamie caught up with her and with much force managed to push her wand-waving arm down.
But he didn't need to worry for long, Victorie's mind was now elsewhere as the door to her dormitory had now opened, and another hellish nightmare seemed to await inside.
Light was coming from inside, followed by music and laughter and a gushing Delilah stumbling out of the door and onto the plateau at the top of the stairs.
Soon after the door opened, a startled Walpurgis bolted out of the room, dove off the plateau and onto the common room floors, then disappeared under a chair.
"Yeah, yeah." Delilah said to the cat.
A second later her eyes landed on Victorie, who looked like glowing flames might start spitting out of her nose at any second.
Delilah froze in her place. "Shit." She croaked and stumbled back inside, leaving the door ajar.
With heavy breath Victorie jumped onto the vines and made her way up with Jamie at her heel. The group of kids all hunched away from her as she passed them.
She stomped inside the dorm. Her hand involuntarily clasped around her mouth at what she saw.
People. Strangers. In her dorm.
Once the initial shock at seeing other people than her dorm mates and herself mingling about inside settled she lowered her hand and managed to take in her surroundings.
Her mouth fell open and she stared dumbstruck at the unrecognisable room. She felt a vague connection to every individual piece of furniture, but couldn't quite place them.
Velvet curtains and tulle had been hung around the room to create ambiance, along with floating candles hovering by the ceiling. Their four-posters were being used as lounging beds for people to sit in and chat while drinking. Her nightstand was being used as a makeshift drinks table. Her cauldron was filled to the brim with crisps. People were huddled inside her bathroom, doing Merlin knows what.
Then she saw it — her spell casting altar, stripped clean and repurposed... as a snacks table.
Jamie bounced over to the cauldron of crisps, but Victorie didn't care about carnal delights. She was fuming. Throwing her bag on the floor and flinging her robe off, she scanned the room for the culprit.
After dissecting every last guest, she found Delilah cowering behind a tall bloke with one hand on either side of him, peeking at Victorie who stormed up to her with all her fury.
Once she got closer, Delilah yelped and rushed off, but Victorie was close behind her.
"Out of my way, out of my way, out of my way!" The girl cried as a furious redhead chased her around the room.
Delilah ended up being chased in a circle, and soon enough she was back diving behind the same boy as before, grabbing hold of his arms and shielding Victorie off. But this time she was cornered. Victorie gripped Delilah's wrists to keep her from escaping, by default also capturing the boy between them.
"Too far!" Victorie grunted beneath her breath, trying to get a glance of Delilah behind the boy.
"It's just a small party, enjoy it!" Delilah gushed out between breaths.
Victorie tightened her grip around the girl's wrists. "I'm getting real tired of these parties!" She hissed. "...And on a school night of all days!" The girl found herself saying.
On second thought, she wasn't sure how much she cared about the latter part. But it only seemed fitting she should mention it. It was free ammo after all.
"And to top it all off, you've now enchanted the staircase for about the 100th time, and no one has yet to let me in on how the hell anyone did it?"
"I could tell you." Someone said. But it wasn't Delilah this time.
In a flurry to find whomever the voice belonged to Victorie finally came to acknowledge who was standing in between her and Delilah. Her eyes trailed up the tall boy until...
"Look, it's Ethan!" Delilah exclaimed and pushed the boy into Victorie, who stumbled back aghast.
"You even invited Ravenclaws?" She blurted while said Ravenclaw tried to stabilise her, and Delilah disappeared without a trace.
She was about to run after her, but Ethan's hands were still holding onto her arms.
He looked at her searchingly, trying to gain her attention. "Are you okay?" He asked.
When her eyes finally found his she came to really regret that school-night comment.
"I'm fine." She said with blatantly false conviction. While looking around her she saw only destruction of her space, and there wasn't much she could do to stop it. At a loss for what to do she went for the simplest option.
She shook Ethan's hands off her and abandoned him. Then went straight up to her bed where a few of her classmates were perched. She looked at each one of them individually, their faces clad with apprehension.
A moment later, Victorie grabbed the edges of her bed sheet and pulled it up forcefully, sending the lot of them tumbling off to one side of the bed and onto the floor.
She proceeded to jump into the bed herself, shutting the drapes around her ferociously. Once inside and alone, she crossed every single body part she knew how, and shut her eyes.
Not a second later, her robe curiously got thrown inside by a floating hand reaching in between the curtain, followed by her bag.
Victorie decided to pay it no mind and squeezed her eyes closed again, determined to shut the world out.
Then a non-inanimate presence sunk down on her bed beside her.
She squeezed her lids tighter together. A strong whiff of wonderfully fragranced cologne gifted her nostrils, and she immediately recognised whom the scent belonged to. The muscles in her face relaxed. Having deemed him a worthy presence from the outside world, she opened her eyes for him.
"Why are you here?" She asked.
"I don't know." Teddy muttered.
She gave him a once over. He was wearing a black and red gingham shirt, and she was surprised to find that he didn't seem any more pleased to be there than she was.
"What should I do?!" She begged, desperate for him to give her some of his ancient wisdom on these matters.
Teddy shrugged. He looked tired. "Enjoy the party I guess." He sighed and added, "Apparently it's been set up for your benefit." voice drenched with sardonicism.
Victorie pieced together her conversation with Maya and Delilah the other day during truth or dare and this party, which seemed to have been choked up from nothing and oddly enough had her lured into Ethan's arms almost immediately.
Was this intrusion on her personal space in fact an insidious ploy to get her and Ethan in the same room together for one night?
"For a party in my benefit, there seems to be a surprising amount of people here whom I don't know." She commented.
Teddy let out a hollow laugh. "I think their plan only depends on you knowing one person here." His voice turned shrill toward the end of the sentence. It was enough to let her know that he had the full scope of the situation. "I told them not to do this, just so you know." He added. This statement with a little more tenderness.
"I told them I didn't want to go on a date with him. We don't all get what we wish for."
As she spoke, Teddy made a face. She'd barely finished before he interjected, "Yeah, I mean, you and Ethan? That just seems wrong." He laughed at the prospect.
Victorie squirmed. "It's more the idea of another date that scares me." She admitted, staring at her lap.
Teddy instantly switched his stance. "Yeah, perhaps dating just isn't for you."
Then Delilah unexpectedly dove in through the curtain. She landed on Victorie's lap, who moved backward to let her in. "What the hell?"
"Sorry!" Delilah managed. She crawled into a sitting position, and they all shuffled to give each other space on the small bed. "Why don't you guys come party with the rest of us?" She suggested, looking between them.
Teddy turned to Victorie, allowing her to answer.
"What? So that I'll hit it off with Ethan?" She spat, hoping that Ethan wouldn't by some devilish misfortune be standing on the other side of the curtain.
"Not at all!" Delilah argued. "We saw how upset you were last weekend, and thought we would surprise you with the party, as a nice gesture."
Victorie studied Delilah with utter incomprehension. "Okay. Next time take care to remember that I prefer gestures to not be in the form of large social events." She informed her with fake pleasantry.
"Oh please! There are a few people from our year out there, that's it!" She pointed in an animated manner at the curtain behind her. "...Most of whom you'd realise that you already know if you only cared to pay attention."
"Who then?" Victorie demanded. "Who do I know here besides you, Maya, Jamie and Teddy?"
Delilah was about to answer, but fell silent at the last second. She didn't need to say it however. Victorie knew what name was at the tip of her tongue.
She couldn't quite understand why she cared so much to push her together with Ethan, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let her have her way, at least not on her terms.
Instead of answering Delilah took a different route. "We were just about to start up a game of spin the bottle, why don't you guys join us?" She suggested.
Victorie snorted. "Are you kidding? Under no circumstance will you get me to play spin the bottle with the likes of you and your incessant scheming."
She'd had enough, and the realisation dawned on her that she didn't necessarily need to stay in the dorm. Although less than ideal, she could spend the rest of her night in the common room with a book.
She shot one last glare at Delilah, then slipped past Teddy and out of her four-poster. The two of them followed her, and watched her reach into her bag for The Lavender Waltz. She tucked the book at her side and began making her way toward the door.
"Come on Teddy, they're just about to start." Victorie heard Delilah say behind her. The two of them headed for the circle of people having now gathered on the floor.
The words made something change in Victorie, and she slowed down significantly in her stride toward the exit. A vision of Teddy spinning bottle after bottle and kissing every last person in that circle flashed before her eyes.
She stopped with her hand on the handle, forcing herself not to look back. But as it turned out there was a stronger opposing force, causing her eyes to glue themselves on the circle despite herself. She watched Teddy wedge himself between two people who made room for him. She couldn't look away from the scene.
Before she knew it her book lay abandoned on her bed and she was wedging herself into the circle as well.
Using the summoning charm, a bottle of pumpkin fizz flew into her hand and she caught it, taking a large swig of the liquid. As it sizzled down her throat the rush of sugar kicked her alive.
She stared in awe at the giggles and laughter that surrounded her. The circle spun like a disc along with the bottle, and the people floated toward each other as though by magnetism, capturing each other in the middle. All until it was her turn. The disc scratched and was forced to an abrupt halt.
"Victorie! The girl of the evening." Maya announced. She handed her the empty bottle, the sword for her to wield.
She placed one hand in front of her on the floor and leaned forward. With her other hand she let the bottle meet the floor and spun it with a false sense of conviction. The bottle wheeled around, pointing at all her potential suitors.
Why had she agreed to this?
Feeling heat trace up her cheeks she looked around the circle, scared to meet anyone's eyes but unable to stop herself from looking.
Teddy's eyes were fitting between Delilah and her, as though perceiving something there that she couldn't. He landed on Victorie. She tried to read his expression, but found that she couldn't. At a loss for an explanation, she turned to Delilah.
She found the girl staring intently at the bottle as it was slowing down. It almost looked like she was willing it to. Even as the bottle slowed almost to a halt, Delilah's gaze didn't falter. When it had only a few ticks left in it Victorie realised what she was doing.
Hell no.
Victorie focused with all her might on the bottle as it neared up on none other than Ethan himself. She fixated all her magical ability on making that bottle move just one step further, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise as she did so.
Just one step further... Just one step, so that Delilah won't get the satisfaction...
And then the bottle finally settled, only barely having passed Ethan. Victorie wiped tears of vigour away from her eyes and breathed out in relief.
Once she had regained her full vision she shot Delilah a triumphant smirk. The girl looked mortified, but it only served her right. Then Victorie followed the direction that the bottle was pointing in. Her blurry vision met Teddy Lupin's person.
She blinked away some more wetness from her eyes and looked at him properly. He was leaning his elbows on his kneecaps, eyebrows raised and staring at the bottle on the floor. Then he lifted his gaze to her. Neither of them had any time to linger however. The people next to them simultaneously pushed them toward each other. Victorie stumbled out into the circle on all fours, swatting away the hands on her back.
A moment later she was face to face with Teddy. Their wide eyes locked in on each other. He looked as terrified as she felt.
Despite the terror in his eyes, he still found it in himself to venturously examine her features. She wished he would refrain from it, but a second later found herself doing the same.
The action wiped away the fear in him, replaced with a competitive spark in his eyes. With the confidence of a boy who knew himself to be admired by many, a portion of whom were currently in the room with him, examining every move he made, he closed the distance between them.
He kissed her softly at first, lips touching only lightly. Then he fell into the kiss, deepening it. She let her mouth fall open, and felt a calculated hand trailing into her hair, coming around her neck and pulling her closer.
Victorie didn't mind the overtness of it. All she could think about was the heat that radiated off him, his soft lips and intoxicating breath. A few people began oohing around them, and they took that as their cue to pull apart.
"Let someone else play!" Delilah let out before Teddy and Victorie had even had a chance to sit back down. She launched for the bottle and claimed it for herself.
As the two sat back the bottle began to spin again. It spun past everyone in the circle, pointing at each individual face, but there was only one Victorie paid any attention to. His cheeks were heating up, no longer captured by a rush of courage. He dragged a hand through his tousled light-blue hair, looking anywhere but at the girl he had just kissed.
Such an intimidating exterior, yet so vulnerable inside.
When she managed to tear her eyes off Teddy, the false sense of security she felt now that it was no longer her turn spinning the bottle was shattered. For now that she was no longer wielding the sword, she instead found herself with the tip of it digging into her own throat as the bottle came to a halt, pointing at herself.
Delilah and Victorie's eyes met instantaneously. Now that Delilah had evidently stopped intervening with the path of the bottle, the universe seemed to be punishing her for past actions. Victorie would have laughed had she not been the person having to deal with the consequences of her dorm mate's bad karma.
When Delilah didn't make a move, Victorie began making her way toward her to the sound of the group's cheers. Her expression was dripping with derision as she shot the cowering girl a warm smile, daring her to complete the transaction.
The cowering girl eventually made her way forward. The two stared at each other. Tension buzzed between them.
Fuelled by a feeling of triumphing over the girl who continuously tweaked the levers to get her way, Victorie smacked her lips against Delilah's.
Once their lips met, Victorie couldn't keep it together any longer. All her animosity seemed to disappear in an instant, and she was left feeling wildly amused by the predicament they found themselves in. A loud snort left Victorie before she could stop it.
Shit.
Delilah leaned away from the kiss. Victorie was frozen. They held each other's gazes for a second, until they both simultaneously burst into laughter.
"What's going on?" Said Jamie, confused.
But none of the girls could answer. The laughter had turned into a fit. They fell down on the floor, Delilah gasping for breath and Victorie clasping at her stomach.
Spin the bottle seemed to lose its charm after that. Most people ended up leaving the circle except for Victorie and Delilah, still hitching with laughter.
Maya looked at them with a dumbfounded expression. "What happened?" She questioned underneath her breath.
Delilah managed to push herself into an upright position. She stood and reached a hand out for Victorie to grab. She helped her up. They looked at each other awkwardly for a second, before Maya intervened...
"You know what you guys need?" She asked with a superior expression. She backed up to where the volume knob that controlled the music was and tweaked it promiscuously, making the pop song that was playing boom into their ears. "Music!" She shouted.
The girls let out some leftover giggles. Energy still exuded between them, making it easy to follow in Maya's lead. They all began jumping to the music, grinning and bobbing their heads to the beat until they were a flurry of whipping hair and moving limbs.
As the night went on Victorie stuck by Maya and Delilah.
Or did they stick with her? She wasn't sure. But the notion of having a group to navigate the get-together with made it so much simpler, and much more enjoyable.
One of them had the genius idea that taking all three of their Hogwarts trunks and lining them up could make for a perfect makeshift Butterbeer Quidditch table. After that strike of genius, they ended up devoting a large portion of the night to playing just that.
And every time a song played that Maya loved (and Victorie inevitably had never heard of) she would drag them over to the dance floor again.
Eventually Victorie got quite tired from dancing, and she began to wonder about the whereabouts of other people. Namely her usual crutches. She hadn't seen any of the boys since spin the bottle and found that the more she thought about it, the less she could let it go. Not because she needed a crutch, but because one particular crutch of hers she quite enjoyed having around as of late, enough to long for it when it went missing.
But every time Victorie would try to leave, Maya would pull her back, shouting the lyrics of the song at her.
Victorie's legs were in agony, and she looked around for any potential course of escape. As luck would have it she spotted another girl about her same height not far from where they were dancing. It was slightly evil, but it was sure as hell going to work.
When the girls weren't looking, she raised her wand toward the ceiling and sent a cloud of glitter out of it. As the sparkles settled around them, they made it impossible to see. Victorie took a few steps forward and tapped the other girl on the shoulder. When the girl turned, she nudged her into the cloud of glitter as a replacement that Delilah and Maya wouldn't notice until the cloud settled.
She escaped the cloud of glitter, brushed some of it off her hair and began making her way around the dorm, looking around at the people milling about. Nowhere did she find Teddy.
When she passed her four-poster, she saw a group about to sit down on it. Victorie pointed the wand that was conveniently already in her hand at the bed, spelling it to send anyone who attempted to sit on it bouncing right back the way they'd come from. She laughed as one of the kids bounced into another's arms. While eyeing the kid Victorie didn't look too carefully at where she was going, and managed to walk right into Jamie.
She stepped back and cleared her throat. "Hi Jamie." She said distractedly, looking around to see if Teddy was close behind him.
"You've managed to fend for yourself pretty successfully tonight." He remarked.
Victorie stopped looking around for a moment. "That's right, I did..." She realised, causing Jamie to let out a laugh.
"With no one's help but your own." He added.
As it turned out, he could read her pretty well. He took note of her fleeting attention, the way her eyes would dance around the room instead of staying settled on him. He let out another laugh and pointed her toward the door. "He's out there."
"Right." Victorie awkwardly reciprocated his smile and bolted toward the door before the cloud of glitter would settle behind her.
As she passed through the door, she found Teddy sitting on the 'staircase' (currently tightly growing vines vaguely resembling the work that it was based on).
He was situated atop where the vines arched, chatting to a sixth year girl and drinking pumpkin fizz. Victorie retrieved ever so slightly when she saw them, eyes plastered on the interaction.
"When are you guys going on tour next?" The sixth year asked.
He was about to answer when he caught a glance of Victorie, peering at them from above. "Uuh..." He rubbed the back of his neck, losing track of his speech and unable to ignore Victorie, who raised her eyebrows in response to his sudden self-awareness.
Her lips spread into a smile and her eyes urged him to go on, knowing full well that he wouldn't be able to in his temporary inertia.
Suddenly Teddy managed to find his words again. "Would you excuse us?" He asked the girl and motioned at Victorie.
The girl took one look at Victorie and smiled politely. "Sure." She said and stood up to leave them.
Victorie passed the girl and made her way down toward Teddy. "You didn't have to do that." She informed him as soon as the girl was out of sight.
"Whatever had you temporarily distracted from Butterbeer Quidditch must be important." He said with a dose of sarcasm.
Victorie reached for the first topic she could think of to discuss. "I just couldn't rest easy not knowing." She began, slumping down onto a step. "You have to tell me how they did it... how did they enchant the staircase?"
Teddy chuckled and sunk down from his position on top of the arch so that he was sitting next to her. A "Wow." slipped out of him when he got a closer look at her.
She looked at him searchingly, curious as to what had stumped him.
"You're sparkling." He commented, with a blush creeping into his cheeks.
Victorie attempted to brush some more of the glitter off her hair and face. The substance whirled around them as they beheld each other, briefly reminded of their intimate moment earlier in the dorm.
Then, after clearing his throat, he snapped back into his laid back demeanour. "I don't know. I only know how I did it." He explained.
"Then point me in the direction of who taught you." She reasoned.
"No one taught me. I taught myself." He placed his lips on the bottle in his hand and took a swig of the carbonated liquid.
She was yet again briefly pulled back into that feeling she'd had when his lips were on hers.
"Admittedly the house elves helped me the first two times. But recently I used a confundus charm. Nothing extravagant." He continued and tapped a rhythm on the bottle, now in his lap.
"This however..." he slapped the thick vine underneath them, "...seems to be something else entirely."
She shook herself back to the present. "Hold on, but... that spell would have had you tearing out your hair not one month ago!" Looking at the boy in front of her, she was struck with the realisation that he was in fact improving his spell-work, much faster than she could even keep track of.
Victorie was left to ponder while Teddy changed the subject. "I was thinking about this dating business. I don't think it's such a bad idea." He said.
She crossed her eyebrows. "You don't? You think I should have said yes?"
"No!" He scoffed, looking at her like she'd gone barmy. He straightened and said pragmatically, "I just think you need more practice. Perhaps we should meet up tomorrow? ...To practise."
"Practice ...dating?" She summarised while attempting to string the idea together in her head. When she looked at Teddy, she expected him to look abashed, but he met her eyes with an unprecedented conviction, almost forced. Like betting on himself not to break eye contact.
"Makes perfect sense to me." He remarked unapologetically. His sheer confidence took her off guard. There was a fire behind his eyes. It fuelled the all too calculated easiness he exuded. Looking at her from behind two eyebrows, he asked innocently, "That isn't weird for you, right?"
That caused her consciousness to begin flicking through a series of images. Images of Teddy, in various band t-shirts. Teddy with his pierced ears. Teddy with his chipped black nail polish. Holding a guitar in his hands, Teddy. Black jeans, Teddy. Gingham shirt. Teddy. On a date... with her...
"No." She forced herself to say. Something fluttered in her stomach at the prospect. "It's not confusing." She lied.
He smiled crookedly. "You mean, it's not weird." He corrected.
"Yeah." She didn't know why he seemed so smug.
"So you agree to do it?" He asked slowly, making sure she caught every word.
Victorie found a little loose thread on her school uniform shirt to toy with. She hadn't changed before going off to the poetry society meet-up, and hadn't had the ability to do so since getting back.
As she tugged at the thread, she considered his question. She'd sworn off the social lessons already. She was finished. But despite being finished, her dealings with Teddy seemed sorely unfinished. Would agreeing to it out of sheer curiosity border on abusing the ethos of the lessons, just as the kiss in the forest had? Did she care?
"Yes." She heard herself saying, resolving that she didn't care. Caring so little in fact that her mind was already running through scenarios in her head of how she could tweak their predicament into her own advantage, into getting what she wanted.
But most of all she buzzed at the prospect of what Teddy was going to cook up for them.
A/N:
Thanks to anyone who's reading.
And a special thank you to Hydro for your
continuing support and your very kind words:
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Thank you ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
Published: 5 April 2022