Chapter Four: Growing Up
When Bill went off to his third year at Hogwarts, he was joined by Charlie for his first year. Victoria was three turning four, stronger, more mobile and showing intelligence beyond her years. She was already reading at the same level as Percy, who was in turn advanced for his own age.
This meant the day before they were meant to leave, she didn't cling to Bill like she had done for the last two years whenever he left for Hogwarts. She was able to control herself enough, that she only wanted contacted with either Bill or Charlie. And she only started panicking and dragging the brother she had had with her if one of them left the room for more than five minutes. However, by about five o'clock that night, her restraint had broken and she grabbed both of the brothers, forcing them onto the sofa. She then proceeded to sit on Bill, holding his shirt tightly with one hand while holding Charlie's arm captive with her other arm, her legs across his lap.
Molly, as she always did, tried to convince Victoria to let her brothers go so that she could go to bed on time, but Victoria refused to leave them. Bill and Charlie also tried to sooth their mother, explaining that they didn't mind. Eventually, Arthur – who had gone to read his other children a bed time story – returned and was able to convince Molly to leave them alone.
When they went to bed, Bill and Charlie had to awkwardly climb the stairs together since Victoria still refused to let them go. They were able to convince her to let them go long enough to visit the bathroom and change – one at a time – but they had to sleep in Bills bed that night.
The morning of September first, Victoria cried silently when she said goodbye to her brothers – making them promise to write. When they left with their father, Victoria gathered Percy, Fred, George, Ron and Ginny together in the living room to play a game because she didn't want to be separated from them right now.
And so the years passed. Victoria continued to grow and started helping their mother around the house. Because she showed a maturity and responsibility that was unusual for her age, Molly was willing to let Percy take her down into the village when she was six. They would spend around two hours at the library in the village. The library was split into muggle and wizarding. Percy spent the majority of his time in the wizarding section, preparing for his first year at Hogwarts since he wanted to make a good impression when he joined. However, Victoria split her time between the wizarding and muggle section. Three days a week she would be in the wizarding section reading about magical theory, history, runes (which she took to reading about because Bill talked about them a lot in his letters following his third year), magical creatures (which she wanted to learn about because of Charlie and because it was something that had always caught her interest in her old life), politics, law, etiquette and government (which had a dual purpose of being something Percy was greatly interested in as well as likely to be very useful when she finally got to Hogwarts with Harry). The other three days a week – the library was closed on Sundays – she spent reading how-to books (the notes of which she copied into a second note book with pictures for her father), maths, story books, history, politics and laws from the muggle side of the library.
When she turned seven, Victoria noticed that the financial strain the family was under was getting worse. She knew that it wasn't cheap sending two children off to Hogwarts, and preparing to send the next one off, as well as all the food and such that the family needed. It took a bit of thought and quite a lot of research, but Victoria came up with a solution. She used her pocket money to buy seeds and clippings of plants that she couldn't get from the wild, and took over a part of the garden. She also (with her father's help) secured an area for four bee hives and moved some young fruit baring trees from the local forest.
With the plants, the beeswax, access to wood, and access to water, an old cauldron and fire Victoria had everything she needed. Using her research, she made soaps which could be used on both the hair and body and were safe for the environment. She also made shampoos which had different care properties for the hair such as ones that helped nourish dry hair or reduce oils in greasy hair. She made a personalised batch for each member of the family, then with Percy's help she had a stool set up in the little village for four hours every Sunday. Once this proved an effective way of getting money, she also expanded from soap into candles. She didn't stick to normal, safe scents since they wouldn't sell as well and she also took personalised requests (which cost some more money to buy since she couldn't batch make them).
Her parents refused to accept the money she wanted to give them at first, but when Bill and Charlie came home for the summer holidays she had the backup of the three oldest children (since Percy was extremely proud of her little enterprise and willingly helped her carry her products into market each week, and also helped 'teach' her about money). Eventually, they were able to convince them to take half of the money that she was making and put it towards the household funds, the other half went into a bank vault that was under her name. She knew dad didn't touch the money she gave them, letting it build up in the vaults and keeping a log of it, but she knew that he would most likely use it at some point to help the children.
When Percy headed off to Hogwarts, when she was eight, she was allowed to head down to the village on her own since she knew the path so well. Sometimes, during her market day, she would bring Ginny with her to get her out of the house so that she wasn't directly under Molly's eye all the time. It was at the market stall that Ginny and Victoria met and befriended Luna Lovegood and her mother Selina Lovegood. At first, the friendship was mostly over letters since they regularly brought her products, but after a while Victoria would walk Ginny to the 'Rook' which was an hour away from the Burrow.
When she was nine, Ginny gave Victoria the suggestion to expand from care products into beauty products. It took weeks of research, a little bit of help from Selina who was a Potion and Arithmancy Mistress, and quite a few failed experiments but she eventually had a natural lips stick, eye liner and eye shadow. The colours that she could produce were limited, but were of decent quality and the colours that were more likely to be used in the wizarding world. That same year, she entered into an agreement with Witch Weekly and The Quibbler who allowed her to advertise her products and include an owl order option in their catalogue for only two galleons a months.
It wasn't until she was ten that Victoria realised that Luna lost her mother when she was seven – the same year that Victoria met her. Apparently, following her conversation with Selina about her set up in the shed and the safety runes she had carved (with Bill's approval and supervision over Christmas) and kept charged by her father, Selina had decided to increase the safety procedures she had in her own lab. When the experiment she was working on exploded, she was injured by the blow back but not killed.
When Victoria's products started getting popular, her father helped her get her products patented so that she was the only one allowed to make her recipes. The contract she signed magically protected her produce and secrets. Until the patent was up no would be able to break down her products, and she had signed a patent that would only end with her signing another contract.
In preparation for when she went off to Hogwarts, she began stocking up her products and ingredients, which was made easier since Bill had gifted her with preservation boxes that he had made using his rune knowledge. She would be taking her shop to Hogwarts, but she would send Ginny a selection of her products once a week with her letters to take down to the village while she would sell the rest of the products using owl orders. Ginny was more than happy to help her with this since Victoria would give her the average 15% of the profit from sales. She agreed that such a percentage was fair when she was giving 50% to their parents.
The twins began at Hogwarts the year after Bill graduated. Victoria was twitchy the first few days of September, even more so than when Percy had headed off too Hogwarts. When he headed off, she still had four siblings at home, but with the twins at Hogwarts she only had three and Bill was spending the majority of his time working for his runes mastery through Gringotts, completing the tests and proving to the goblins that he was able to do work in the field instead of just behind a desk like he had been doing since he graduated. Victoria was dreading the following year because she had no doubt that he would begin working at one of the warding sites out of country which would leave her missing five siblings one of them with minimal contact.
In order to distract her, Bill set her the task of making home made quills and ink since this was one of their more expensive purchases for school outside of the books and robes (which they could buy second hand and so reduced the cost, unlike stationary equipment). Victoria went digging through the non-magical library until she found what she was looking for. Fortunately, two of the trees in their backyards was walnut trees, which her mother used for cooking. When Victoria picked the walnuts, she took the husks and took it back to her shed in order to gentle boil them for eight hours.
Once she had boiled the husks, she allowed them to sit for the rest of the day to make sure that the most amount of colour and water was pulled form the husk. Once that had happened, she drained and squeezed the husk in order to leave behind the dark brown, almost black, liquid. Since the water that remain was to runny to be a good ink, she had to boil it away slightly to leave a thicker residue which also darkened the colour so it was closer to black. Eight walnuts produced enough ink to last Percy a year at school (she'd sent him her first batch a month into the school term in order to test this). Harvesting one Walnut tree, produced an average of fifty walnuts which she could use to make the ink, which meant she had more than enough ink to supply her entire family without problems.
Getting what she needed for quills was harder, until she figured out how to produce decent quality quills using duck feathers. The ducks that called their pond home, would ignore her when she went through the edges of the pond to collect their feathers, and when mum killed a duck for diner, she took all the feathers. Once she'd dried and cleaned the feathers, it was a matter of chilling them so as to increase the strength of the spine before she cut and hollowed them out before adding the 'well'. Percy informed her that one quill lasted him a week before he needed to sharpen them, and he only got one sharpening out of each. This meant one quill only lasted two weeks, nearly three weeks less then the shop brought quills but she made enough to make up for the difference, and it only cost her time to make them.
The distraction of making the ink and quills only distracted her a little bit, she was still easier to distract and a little more jittery them was normal for her because so many siblings were not with her and her father spent so many hours a day at work.
She found it relatively easy to cope with minimal contact with the extended family, such as her grandparents, aunts and uncles. She was closer to Fabian and Gideon out of the extended family, and she began feeling the pull if they were injured/in danger or if they didn't visit once a month. They sent the family letters once a week, which helped during the months they weren't able to visit due to assignment. However, with her close family she felt the pull the moment they got a certain distance away or if they stayed away for more than twelve hours. She felt the pull with her father at work, but she had gotten so used to it that she only felt uncomfortable when he had to work over time. With her siblings at Hogwarts, she could suppress the panic and the pain enough that she only lost control of her emotions (and sometimes magic) if they didn't contact her on time or they were in danger. Percy had ended up coming up with a system of staggering the letters so that Charlie wrote to her on Tuesdays, Percy on Thursday and the Twins on Saturdays (the day that Bill used to write her).
Since she didn't have any friends outside of Luna who was closer to Ginny, Victoria didn't know how this connection of hers would respond if she ever did end up making friends, but she was hoping that the connection would be the same as it was with her extended family. She could feel them, she knew if they were ill or hurt, but the pull wasn't over whelming. It didn't feel like someone was squeezing at her heart and stopping her from breathing.