Author's note: Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.
Hogwarts: Assignment #5, Wandlore Task #2, Write about someone with a hidden talent.
Warnings: N/A
True Colours
The first time it happened, Fleur assumed that the children were playing one of their games. A strange game, yes, but Teddy and Victoire had many of those.
"Mmmm," Victoire said, licking her lips. She was sitting at the kitchen table, hugging the stuffed rabbit her grandmother had made her weeks ago. "That's like apple pie with lots of cinnamon like Grandma makes it."
"Nice," Teddy said with that toothy grin of his. A few weeks ago, he'd fallen off the swing that Arthur had hung in the Burrow's backyard, and his tooth had been crooked since. Poor dear; that was his only adult tooth as well. His hair was a soft apricot colour, fluffy and tousled and messy even if Fleur knew for a fact that Harry had run a brush through his hair before dropping him off. Then he scrunched up his nose and his hair thickened and darkened to a nice burnt orange colour that Fleur thought he put on to blend in with the Weasleys.
"Urgh," Victoire said, making a face. "No, no, no. That's too much like peanut butter."
"Sorry," Teddy said before shifting his hair. "I know you don't like peanut butter without honey."
Odd, certainly. But Dominique needed to be changed, so she didn't have time to investigate things further.
Fleur ran her hand through Victoire's hair once Bill took Dominique and freed her arms up.
"How's lunch, beautiful?" she asked her daughter.
"Good," Victoire said as she ate spoonfuls of spaghetti that they'd cut into tiny pieces for her. "Not as good as when Teddy makes it."
"Teddy makes spaghetti?" Bill asked as he lowered Dominique into her high chair.
"When he turns his hair yellow, yeah," Victoire said. At first, Fleur thought that she hadn't understood because her daughter was speaking with her mouth full. But when she looked at Bill, she saw that he was just as confused.
He sat at his usual spot around the dinner table and then made eye contact with Victoire who was happily eating away.
"When Teddy's hair is yellow it tastes like spaghetti?" Bill asked. "Do you… eat Teddy's hair?"
Victoire giggled.
"No, papa!" she said. "That would be silly. Yellow just takes like spaghetti."
Fleur sat down at her daughter's side.
"All kinds of yellow?" she asked. "Like… the yellow of Dodo's dress?"
"No, that yellow is different," Victoire said casually. "That yellow's like icing. That's why I picked it at the store."
Bill pondered this. "What about the yellow of the cheese?"
"That's orange," Victoire said.
"It's kind of yellow," Bill said.
"It's more orange," Victoire said. "So it's not like icing or spaghetti. It's just cheese which is good because cheese is delicious."
She made Teddy put on his Hogwarts uniform to show her what he'd look like in it, when she went to visit him after his godfather brought him to Diagon Alley.
"Do you like it?" Teddy asked.
"Yup," Victoire said. She hugged her legs to herself. "I can't wait to go to Hogwarts too."
"Next year," he said. He smoothed down his robes. "Do the robes taste good?"
"Yup," Victoire said. "They're just like chocolate."
"Lucky!" Teddy said. "You're going to have so much fun when you come to Hogwarts, this is all anyone wears."
"I really can't wait," Victoire said.
When he came home for Christmas break, he brought her his Hufflepuff scarf.
"These are my house colours," Teddy said. "They were my mum's house colours too so I like them, but I want to make sure that they're good for you. What do they taste like?"
"Chocolate," Victoire said. "And also strawberries."
"Chocolate and raspberries," Teddy nodded along. "Okay, good. That means you'll be okay if you're a Hufflepuff. I asked my friends to lend me scarves so you could test out all the other house colours, if you want. Come to my room, I'll show you..."
Teddy knocked on Victoire's bedroom door before stepping inside. He still didn't see her though, but he assumed that was because she'd opened her closet doors and used her blankets and desk chair to make a blanket fort.
"Victo? It's me."
"The entry fee is blankets and chocolate. You can't come in unless you have both."
"I do," Teddy promised. He'd suspected this when Fleur had told him that Victoire was taking her time for herself today. She always used all her blankets to make a fort and got cold or needed something to cuddle with. He'd picked up an extra blanket from the linen closet downstairs, and he thought that it looked like something that Grandma Weasley would have made. He made sure to pick a blanket that was a nice soft beige colour—beige had a soft and minty quality to Victoire, it didn't usually bother her.
"Alright," Victoire said.
Teddy crawled in and passed the blanket to Victoire, who was wearing her hair up on top of her head, jean shorts, and a Holyhead Harpies t-shirt. She was curled up on herself and playing solitaire.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," she said.
He turned his hair a charcoal colour that he knew had just enough black and just enough grey in it to taste like caramel chocolate to Victoire.
She smiled at him.
"I was kidding about the chocolate," she said. "You know I like you better with the fun hair that you like."
He shifted his hair to a lime green colour he wore rather often. It wasn't his absolute favourite colour, nor was it Victoire's, but it was fun and bright and it tasted like blackberries—so it hit a comfortable balance between the two of them.
"You okay?" Teddy asked.
"Yup," Victoire said quietly. "Just a little overstimulated because we went to Diagon Alley—there's just… a lot of things to see and process there. Maman's giving me lots of room to breathe, but I'm glad you're here."
"Me too," Teddy said. He picked up the cards and started shuffling them. "Let's play something."
They spent a lot of time walking as close to the Forbidden Forest as they could get without Hagrid or a professor barking at them to get away from the trees. Victoire liked the autumnal colours best, when all the trees were nice and changed.
"Mmm," Victoire said.
"What?" Teddy asked.
"We just hit a patch with really good colours," Victoire explained.
"You know, you never told me what my turquoise hair tastes like," Teddy said. "And I feel like I should know because it's like this all the time."
"I didn't want to pressure you," Victoire said. "It's your favourite colour and I don't want you worrying about how I feel about it."
"Well what if I want to know?" Teddy asked.
Victoire hesitated. She chewed on the corner of her lip and looked him over as if she was evaluating him.
"Fine," he said. "Turquoise is like pancakes."
"Pancakes?" Teddy asked. "That doesn't mean anything, pancakes… pancakes could be anything. There's, like, a thousand ways to make pancakes and eat them, you know?"
"Okay," Victoire laughed. "Fine. It's… more like your grandma's pancakes than the house elves'. And it's definitely pancakes, not crepes like my mother makes. Thick, fluffy pancakes with maple syrup all over them. Buttery, too."
"Buttery," Teddy nodded. "I'll take that."
"I'm not calling you greasy," Victoire laughed, shoving against him. "I'm calling you 'pancakes.' If there's ever been a food that's a compliment, it's pancakes."
It took a lot of convincing, for the other Ravenclaw girls to smuggle Teddy into the girl's dormitory, but they knew that Victo was in a bad way and needed a hand. Besides, it wasn't as if he hadn't been there before. From the Common Room, he made his way down a stone hallway and towards the dormitories—pretty rooms where every student had a bed, a desk, a trunk, and a reading chair. She was sitting on her bed with a colourful quilt thrown over her shoulders and a mug in her hands.
"Hey," Teddy said. "Hey, Ariel Boot let me in, I heard about what happened…"
"It's stupid," Victoire siad. She wiped away at her eyes. "He's stupid."
"Extremely," Teddy agreed. "So, so stupid. I'm sorry, Victo."
"It's fine," Victoire said. She sighed. "He's the one with a problem, not me. I just have to cry it all out and then I can start calling him stupid and it'll all be fine."
"Okay," Teddy nodded. "Okay, good."
"Yup," Victoire said. "You don't have to be here just because a boy was stupid."
"It's in my contract as your best friend," Teddy said.
He ran a hand through his hair and tugged on it before changing it to a violet colour that she liked. She smiled at the colour.
"Chips, right?" Teddy inquired. "With lots of vinegar?"
"So much vinegar," Victoire nodded. She reached out and took his hand.
He pulled her towards him so that she rested against him, and she sighed again and nestled against him.
Gran didn't let him sit at home all day during the summer, so he liked to volunteer at St. Mungo's since he might want to work there one day.
When he walked in, still wearing his very responsible nice jeans and button-down shirt (although he couldn't resist turning his hair raspberry pink), he was surprised to see Victoire in the kitchen. Not to mention the smell. Merlin, the house smelled good.
Gran's kitchen table and countertops were absolutely covered with food. Teddy saw cinnamon buns, chocolate chip cookies, a bowl of bacon, mashed potatoes that smelled like garlic, macaroni and cheese, brussel sprouts, and onion rings.
"Oh my..." Teddy was truly speechless.
Victoire grinned, seeming quite pleased with herself. She was wearing Gran's apron over her usual summer vacation uniform of jean shorts and band shirts. Her hair was braided out of the way and then pinned up.
"What's all this?" he asked. "Did you… did you do all this?"
"I did," Victoire said.
Teddy looked at the delicious spread before him. The eclectic selection before him represented some of Teddy's absolute favourite foods in the world.
"You… how did you do this? You can't cook!" Teddy said.
"Maybe I can," Victoire said.
"I've never seen you cook!"
"And yet here I am," Victoire said, propping a hand on her hip. "Maybe I still have some surprises for you, Teddy Lupin."
He was dumbfounded for a second and wasn't sure what to say until he shook some sense back into himself.
"Wait a minute, why did you cook all of this anyways?" Teddy asked.
"Because I can," Victoire said. "And, more importantly, because I thought it was about time that I showed you that you weren't the only one who could make things taste nicer."
Teddy grinned. "It looks like you spent more time at it than I did, though…"
"You're right," Victoire admitted. "So you should sit down and let me feed you while it's still hot."
Stacked with: MC4A; Hogwarts
Individual Challenge(s): Rainbow Focus; Hufflepuff MC; Summer Vacation; Fall Leaves; Seeds; Brush; Old Shoes; Times to Come; Themes & Things A (Friendship); Themes & Things B (Joy); Themes & Things C (Blanket); Themes & Things D (Chocolate); Themes & Things F (Happy Endings); Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion; True Colours; Real Family; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux
Word Count: 1824