A/N: Well, this update took longer than expected (nearly a year, but who's counting?). It seems other things took over, school at the top of that list, but I hope to be updating this fic for more often that I have been. I'm definitely interested in writing more, and hopefully this new summer schedule will allow that (fingers crossed!).
Thanks to kAckRssI, melancholicmermaid, and Fleurdelys21 for reviewing and to notsolimpbizkit for favouriting :)
Right, well here's chapter two!
Disclaimer: JKR & Drowners
She couldn't help the bad thoughts that corrupted her mind. The sight of him, the cocky – obnoxiously so – and reigning opressor of Hogwarts. Getting his way through cruelty and manipulation, and rarely suffering punishment because of his 'troubled past'.
Teddy Lupin did not have a 'troubled past'.
Teddy Lupin had almost everything a boy his age could ask for. Almost. He had several sets of parental figures – Victoire's own parents included among that number – each treating him with as much love and adoration as the last. Sure, he lived with his grandmother most of the time, but it wasn't an uncommon occurance for Victoire to wake up and find him having breakfast with her mother; an annoyingly smug smirk plastered across his face.
She felt a knot of anger tighten in her chest, bunching up and causing her fists to scrunch the piece of parchment that had previously been her Charms homework, and growl in frustration.
"Easy there, tiger." A laugh sounded from next to her; an albeit croaky one.
"Sick people aren't meant to talk, you know?" Victoire rolled her eyes, discarding her ruined assignment.
"I'm not mute, Vic. I'm just temporarily immobile."
"D'you think I could shove my fist down your throat so you could be both?" Victoire brought her hand up, positioning her thumb around her fingers, just like her Uncle Charlie had instructed.
"Honestly what's got your wand in a kn- Oh..." smirked as her eyes landed on the other side of the Hospital Wing. "I see..."
"What is he doing here?" Victoire spat.
"You think I crashed into myself?"
"No. But I suppose Finnigan was put up to it."
"Whatever. Stop staring." Anna rolled her eyes, turning to page seven of the Daily Prophet.
"Am not!"
"Are too. Now, pass me another Drooble."
Victoire complied, all the while glaring daggers at her friend. She placed the box of sweets on the cabinet, leaning over Anna's shoulder to steal a look at the Sports Section; while trying not to let the disgustingly loud laughter that sounded from the other side of the room draw her attention.
When she was younger, there was a certain sound that, for her, was the embodiment of joy. This sound could often be heard darting between sand dunes, hiding in washing baskets, hushed by a tiny hand in a torch-lit blanket fort.
In those moments she had craved that laughter; it used to spur fits of her own admittedly high-pitched giggles, but now all it did was cause her to roll her eyes and try to block out whatever it was Lupin and Finnigan were even on about.
As she had been so fixated on the sick jokes and crude gestures that were being exchanged across from her, she hadn't spotted a certain sauntering figure; crooked grin making his features no less eerie. Before Lupin even had time to cross the halfway point of the Hospital Wing, Victoire pecked Anna on the cheek, darting through the large oak doors and rapidly walking to anywhere that wasn't inhabited by such howling laughter.
For something she had loved so dearly, she never imagined herself hating it so.
Gryffindor common room lay in its usual state of disarray, as the last of the rule-abiding students trickled in ten minutes before curfew. They had made a comfortable spot for themselves on the plush, red and gold sofas and armchairs, chatting amicably about their drama-filled week and all their relationship woes. The Friday night buzz was evident and though the majority of these students would be tucked into their dorm rooms before twelve, they knew very well that they could stay up into the wee hours if they really wanted to, without having a single worry about tardiness to classes the next day.
Eliza Finnigan had an entirely different idea.
The concept of a weekend was either completely lost to her or she saw it as a way to 'get things done, as opposed to putting them off 'til Monday. Which is probably why she sat, books splayed out across her neatly pleated skirt, revising that days Transfiguration notes instead of joining the game of Exploding Snap that had commenced between her friends on the floor.
Victoire squealed, snatching one of Eliza's books to use as a shield against the gloop that came flying towards her. The latter scowled in response, taking it back with nothing less that brute force.
"Vic, it's only slime. No reason to let my book suffer."
"You're right, it's suffered quite enough." Victoire said, the traces of a smile on her face. "Maybe you should give it a break..."
Eliza released a breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding. "But if I get this essay done tonight I won't have to do it tomorrow or the day after. And then I'll have to time watch as you lot struggle through three feet of parchment on the effects of Amortentia versus your run-of-the-mill love potion."
"Always six steps ahead, you are." Sam chimed in, shuffling the cards from his place on the carpet.
"It's a good place to be, Sam. Perhaps you should join me there every once in a while and I won't have you tailing me all day to get the Herbology answers." Eliza said.
"Now, hold on a mi- "
"So, Vic," Sally interrupted, picking a bit of lint off her jumper. "When is Anna getting out?"
"I honestly couldn't tell you."
"So you went to visit your injured friend in the hospital wing and didn't think to ask when said injured friend would be let out?" Sam raised his eyebrows. "Got to admit, Vic, even I'm not that stupid."
"I forgot, that's all."
Immediately, Eliza's attention was drawn to the conversation at hand, sliding from her perch on the couch to land besides her friends at the coffee table. "Well, that's convenient, since I was talking to my dearest brother before dinner and he said- "
"Shut your mighty gob, 'Liza." Not that Eliza had a choice in the matter, considering the fact that Victoire's freezing hands were clamped over her mouth.
She rolled her eyes and clawed at the hands that were blocking her airways and Victoire finally relented. "If you'd have let me finish, I would have told you all that Walt told me he heard that Anna would be let out once her leg injury healed. And based on the extent of her injury and her dosage of that horrid potion, I'd say she'll be let out around lunchtime tomorrow."
"Well, ladies, looks like we've got a future healer in our midst." Sam said, rubbing his hands together and getting to his feet. "Which is more than I can say for you, Weasley." At this point, Victoire may or may not have sneered at her dear friend, but Eliza chose to ignore it anyway.
"BAnd now that we've got that cleared up, I say we be the impatient and outgoing little Gryffindors that we are and bust the lovely Anna out of her sterilised prison before she passes out from boredom and has to spend another two days with Pomfrey." Sam continued, a satisfied and slightly excited grin splitting his face.
"Aren't you forgetting one teeny weeny little detail, Jordan?"
"And what might that be, Smith?" He crossed his arms, a little too smug for Eliza's liking.
"You've got detention with Slughorn in ten minutes, remember?"
Let it never be said that Sally Smith was a troublemaker. She just happened to know because she had been the victim of Sam's exploding cauldron and still had the stains on her jumper to prove it.
"Shit."
"Shit is right, Sam. Best get going before you get another for being tardy." Victoire shooed him along, carding a hand through his bouncy curls. "We'll discuss the escape plan while you suffer the babbling of lovely, old Horace."
Samuel gave the three of them a wicked grin before passing through the portrait hole just as another group came from the opposite direction. He wasn't a stranger to detentions. In actual fact, he had not had a Friday evening free since the beginning of the year, which Eliza knew all too well, due to her being the one to assist him with his unfinished homework at breakfast on Monday mornings. Not that she enjoyed it, but the boy's efforts were pitiful.
She had intended to continue with the remnants of her weekend homework while Sally and Victoire rambled on about Quidditch or other suck thing, but something from across the room had piqued her interest – a group of boys who had only recently entered Gryffindor common room.
"Oi, Vic, are you going to run away again or actually let Lupin get within ten feet of you this time?" Eliza had been holding back before. Her brother had told her exactly what Victoire did when Teddy attempted to approach the part-Veela in the Hospital Wing earlier that day, but she wouldn't hold it over the girl or even bring it up; not unless the opportunity arose.
Victoire's head snapped up, sending a blonde swish of hair in Sally's direction. Her glare was fixed on Eliza for a fraction of a second before cutting it directly to behind the couch, where the seventh year boys had congregated and begun giving a certain Finnigan boy claps on the back.
Even if the eldest Finnigan child was the recently injured and now returned one, there was still someone that stood at the centre, the gravitational pull that kept the group so tight-knit. The gravitational pull that tugged everyone else in too, even knowing that no matter how much they wanted to touch, only looking was an option.
Perhaps Victoire didn't want to touch quite in the same way as most others did. Girls would swoon and boys would admire, thinking that recognition from that one seventh year would be enough, but if Victoire Weasley was ever forced into the presence of the last remaining Lupin, she would either do just as she did this morning and run, or glare for an immeasurable amount of time before giving his face a touch of her fist.
It seemed she opted for the latter – well, the first half of it, anyway. And one Edward Lupin noticed that too, his glance sweeping across the common room before coming to rest on a certain blonde Weasley.
It was near impossible to describe the wickedness of Teddy Lupin's smirk.
But Eliza was never one to give up without a fight.
It was as though he found pleasure in Victoire's irritation, his right cheek rising further and further in its perfect roundness with every second she continued to glare. It made his nose twitch up and perch somewhat crookedly in the middle of his face, dark pink lips parted ever so slightly to reveal a shock of straight teeth, marred by a marginally wonky one on the far right.
In contrast to Victoire's icy facade, Teddy's beyond-mischievous one was almost welcome. Or it would have been, if not for it making Eliza highly uncomfortable. Something Sally could, apparently, relate to.
"It's freaky when he does that." She commented, viewing the goings on from the sidelines, only sharing an amused glance with Eliza when she was certain Victoire wouldn't notice.
"My most sincere apologies, Sally. I could frown if you'd prefer?" If the two of them had been paying better attention, and Victoire hadn't been so hellbent on getting the upperhand, they might have noticed that the subject of their thoughts of previous conversation was standing right in front of them, his hands leaning on the back of the couch the held all of Eliza's curriculum notes.
The entire common room looked on in interest. Eliza's brother shot her a meek wave, to which she replied with a smile.
"No, that's quite alright, Lupin. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we prefer it when you smile." The implications behind Sally's words were risky at best and while they were spoken in such a manner that even Eliza had a hard time not believing her, there was still an underlying bite that remained. Something that Teddy most definitely picked up on.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were flirting with me." His smirk, though not as pronounced as before, was still rather unnerving. "But you being such a loyal friend, I know you'd leave all of the seductry to Victoire here."
The glare that Victoire had been focusing so intently on suddenly dissapated at the mention of her name. Her warm, brown eyes flitted down to her hands as she got to her feet and skirted around the couch, about to make her way up to the sixth year girls' dormitory before she was stopped in her tracks.
"Maybe I'm not worthy of that good ol' Veela charm, hm?"
Eliza didn't pretend to understand that closing comment, nor did she stay long in the common room after Teddy had turned back to his friends and she had mouthed a 'goodnight' to her older brother. Sally helped her carry her books up to the dorm and pile them high on top of her trunk. The two of them readied themselves for bed and flicked off the light. 'Goodnights' were thrown across the room, but the only replies were received from each other as two beds were empty and Victoire didn't seem willing to talk.
It seemed Anna wouldn't be escaping that night, afterall.
A/N: So, yeah. That's that. More Victoire with the potential of some Weasleys next time!
And please review, if you have the time :)