Victoire glanced out the window of her dormitory as she readied herself for class. The weather had begun warming and the grounds were repairing themselves after a long and harsh winter. Her thought drifted to how in just a little over a month's time, she would be able to enjoy the sunny weather and beautiful beaches of Marseilles. She could go out on her uncle's boat and enjoy his and her Aunt Gabrielle's beautiful seaside home; she could see her young cousins. She smiled as she closed her eyes and thought of swimming and lounging in the sun. The warm weather, the sun, the beach…
"What are you thinking about?" Whit asked as she pulled her robes on over her head, looking ready to head to breakfast.
"Nothing really."
"You're smiling awfully wide for nothing."
She laughed a little. "I was thinking about going to France next month. I'm really excited."
Whit nodded. "Yes, I'm already jealous."
"It'll be nice just to get away from it all," Victoire said as she went to pull her own robes on. "My aunt lives in this huge and beautiful house off of the Mediterranean Sea. She married this man four years ago who was already wealthy and they live this glamorous lifestyle. It's amazing."
"Rub it in, why don't you?" Whit teased, just as the door to their room came flying open without so much as a cursory knock. However, instead of it being one of their other roommates, there stood Dominique—dressed and ready for the school day and staring straight Victoire.
"There you are," she said. "Can I borrow something?"
"Something for your hair, perhaps?" she asked, glancing at Dominique's sloppy ponytail. Several straggly pieces were falling out in random places around her head. On anyone else, Victoire would have known it was an accident, but she had a feeling her sister actually tried to get her hair to look that sloppy.
"No," she said with a slight sneer. "I need to borrow your Potions' notebook from last year."
"Why do you need that?" she asked as she started brushing her hair in her mirror.
"I need to write an essay. I would usually ask Louis to let me see his, but he's annoyed with right now." She smiled at Victoire. "And since I know you save everything and your notes are better than mine—"
"I have Potions this morning." She glanced at Dominique through her mirror. "I need my notes."
"You need your notes from last year ?" she asked. "For today?"
"I keep them all in the same place," she said. "One big notebook. It's easier that way. You should try it."
"Fuck," she muttered under her breath, seemingly disappointed that Victoire dared to be organized. "Alright. Well, do you have Herbology today? Can I borrow those notes?"
Victoire set her hairbrush down and spun around to look at her. "Are you serious? Do you even take notes in class?"
She shrugged in a way that essentially said, "Sort of…" before saying, "I usually go to Louis, but as I said, he's annoyed with me right now—"
"Can't imagine why?" Victoire cut in. "If you're constantly harassing him for all his school work."
"That's between me and him," Dominique quipped. "And he usually doesn't care, just today I…" She trailed off. "Look, your notes are also so easy to read and organized and detailed—" She smiled sweetly at her. "You did get an 'O' in both subjects, so I know I'd be getting help from the best."
Victoire stared at her. If she was actually kissing up to her, she had to have been particularly desperate.
"You also owe me," Dominique said.
"For what?"
"For not telling mum and dad you went out drinking with Reynolds that one night."
Victoire sighed. Bloody hell...She did have a point. She had kept her mouth shut, which was never something easy for her to do.
"I got an 'O' because I knew the material," she said as she reached for her school bag, pulled out a large notebook, and pitched it to her sister. "You can read the notes all you want, but it's not going to help you much unless you actually retain the information."
"Which I will," she said as she caught it and smiled. "Much appreciated, Vic."
"I need it back by tonight," she told her.
Dominique mumbled something along the lines of, "Of course," as she opened the book and turned to leave the room. It was just as she was crossing the threshold that two pieces of parchments fell out onto the floor.
She reached down to pick them up. "These two pages got loose," she said. "I didn't do it. They were already like that."
Victoire stood to see what she was talking about. It was then that she realized that she was seconds away from reading her letters to Ted.
Without a second's hesitation, she darted across the room and managed to grab one of the letters, though the other was just out of reach and Dominique had already grabbed it. She looked to be scanning it over.
"Those aren't..." Victoire said, attempting to grab at it. "You don't need to—"
"It's just looks like a letter to Ted," Dominique said, still examining it.
Victoire found herself crushing up the other letter she had managed to grab in an attempt to wish it away. She still couldn't tell which letter she had grabbed and which one Dominique was looking at, but if Dominique found out that she fancied Ted, she'd never hear the end of it. She would turn it into one big joke.
"Give it back!" Victoire yelled, lunging at her.
"Why is your problem?" she asked, narrowly avoiding her. "Did you say something about me in it?"
"No!" she said as she looked down at her notebook in Dominique's hand and suddenly snatched it back. It caused Dominique to look at her as if she'd suddenly grown another head.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dominique asked, looking back at the letter in her hand. Her curiosity obviously piqued and Victoire knew that nothing about her current behavior was helping to squash that.
"Give me that back," Victoire snapped, "or else you'll never so much as see the covers of my notes, let alone anything inside."
Dominique let her mouth fall open in stunned surprised. Victoire felt her face started to turn red; she could feel her body starting to shake, but she wasn't sure if that was because of anger or fear of her sister finding out about her feelings for Ted.
"You're absolutely ridiculous," she said, throwing the letter at her rather dismissively. "Mental."
Victoire wasted no time grabbing at it now that it was free; she quickly handed over her notebook, hoping Dominique would just take it and leave the room. She thankfully did just that, but not before throwing her a rather contemptuous look.
She waited until Dominique was gone before she looked down at the two letters in her hand. One was considerably more crushed than the other and her eyes trailed to the opposite one; the one Dominique had been holding. She took a breath of relief as she realized it hadn't been the one that revealed her feelings.
"Well then…" Whit said from across the room.
She turned to see that Whit staring at her blankly. All she could think to say as the adrenaline in her body slowly stared to subside was, "I had forgotten that I put them in there."
"I can see that."
"You think I overreacted?"
She grabbed her bag and hoisted it over her shoulder. "You looked as if you were about to pull out your wand and curse her."
"To be fair, I look that way half the time when dealing with my sister." She sighed as she slowly walked over to her trunk and threw the crumpled, incriminating letter inside of it. "She should have just given it back. It was none of her business."
Whit nodded. "She had no right to read it, but you did come at her rather quickly."
"Because I can't let Dominique find out about this," she said as she shut her trunk and reread the letter she had kept, making perfectly sure it was the one she wanted to send.
Whit stared at her. Her expression seemed to ask why, but she didn't dare say it.
"Because she'll tell everyone," she said as if reading her mind. "She'll think it's funny and...she'll tell Ted before I get a chance to."
Whit walked over and pat Victoire on the back before leaning down to hand her school bag. "Come on, I'll walk with you to the owlery so you can send that. Then you can forget all about it."
"Just do me a favor," Victoire asked. "Remind me to burn that other letter later."
Later that day, as Victoire walked into a bustling and noisy common room, she found that all of the chairs and tables were taken. This was typical toward the end of term, but it didn't help her at the moment.
Her eyes scanned the room for familiar faces and noticed her brother, Jack, and Whit sitting near the corner.
"Where have you been?" Whit asked as she approached their table. "I haven't seen you all afternoon."
"Professor Holt asked a few of us if we would help him restock his storage supply."
Louis pulled a face. "You're such a brown-noser in that class."
"That's rich coming from you," she said. "Holt loves you. He brings you up when complimenting me. ' You and your brother do so well in the fine art of Potion making...'"
"He loves me because I do good work." Louis offered. "Not because I kiss his arse. You'd never catch me offering to help him restock his storages."
"I can't help that I'm looking to set myself up for good recommendations one day," Victoire said as she pulled her bag off of her shoulder and placed it on the ground. "Half the reason Ted got his job so quickly was based on Holt's recommendation, you know. He may be a git, but he's well respected."
Louis looked up at her. "Doesn't Ted hate his job?"
"He doesn't hate it," she said, though she wasn't entirely sure if that was true. "He hates the long hours. That's not the point, the point is that it doesn't hurt to get on the right side of people who can make a difference one day. I haven't decided which field I like more—Runes or Potions—and what direction I want to take my career. I do like them both…"
"Correction, you love Potions," Whit said, glancing over at Jack. "So much so, that she smelled the Potions' dungeon in the Amortentia."
Louis looked from Whit to his sister, his expression begging for Victoire to tell him that wasn't true. "You did not..."
"Maybe you smelled Holt?" Jack teased. "And perhaps it's him you're in love with. He smells like potions—"
"And that's the real reason she's helping to stock his storages," Louis joked.
Victoire shook her head her head. "Sorry to disappoint you, but it's certainly not Holt."
"Does Stuart Reynolds smell like potions?" Louis asked.
"No. He doesn't," Victoire said quickly. "And it definitely wasn't him either. Why does it have to be someone? Why can't it just be Potions?"
"Because you'd seem far less pathetic," Louis said.
"Well, I suppose I'm just pathetic then because it's not as if I know anyone who walks around smelling like—"
She stopped suddenly when it hit her. Like a Bludger to the head, it hit her and it hit her hard. She did know someone that tended to smell like a potions lab. Of course…How had she not put that together?
Both Jack and Whit were staring at her, clearly waiting for her to finish her sentence, but she never did. Instead, she suddenly started laughing to herself; completely amused that she hadn't realized this sooner. It wasn't the Potions room at all she had smelled. She'd smelled Ted. It had been Ted. Ted smelled like a walking potions' laboratory. It had been him all along.
Shit. How deep did this really go?
"Well, since you love Potions," Louis said, cutting into her thoughts now as he held out his book toward her. "Here, I'll let you do my Potions' essay for me since you'll actually take pleasure in it. I'd hate to deprive you."
"Alright Nic ," she said, throwing him a lofty look for his attempt to pass his work off on someone else to do.
He immediately pulled a face and shook his head. "No, see, I would never let her do it because I need a decent mark…"
Speaking of her sister, she glanced around the room and noticed that she was sitting with Sarah Kirke at a table near the window. She'd been thinking about how she'd gone a bit mental on her that morning over Ted's note and that she probably should apologize. She really has overreacted.
She turned then, choosing to trek across trekked the room to where Sarah happened to look up and notice her approaching. She smiled and said, "Hey Vicki," which only caused Dominique to look up briefly before immediately looking back down again.
"Hi Sarah," she said, only taking her eyes off Dominique for a moment. "Hey Nic, can we talk?"
"Talk," she said without looking up from what she was writing.
Victoire exchanged looks with Sarah before she reached down and pulled out the chair across from her sister. She sat and reached around into her bag, pulling out her Potions' notebook.
"Here," she said, holding it out towards Dominique. She stared at it briefly before looking at her with a stony expression, prompting Victoire to add, "You know you want it."
"I don't know," she said. "I'd be afraid to open it in case something fell out that would cause you to have another breakdown."
Victoire sighed and lowered the book down onto the table. "I'm sorry. I overreacted."
"You really did."
"You shouldn't have tried to read it, though."
"You should have asked me not to before you came flying at me and yelling that I couldn't," she mumbled as she reached down and picked the notebook up. She opened it and started absently flipping through the pages. "Plus, I didn't see anything besides that it was addressed to Ted. I don't give a shit about what boring rubbish you two have to say to each other."
"You're right," she said. "I was just in a weird place this morning." She looked down at the notebooks. "But as a token of good faith, you can keep that notebook until Monday. I got out of my Potions' assignment, so I don't need it back until then."
"How'd you get out of your work?"
"A few people and I helped Holt restock his storage supplies, so he let us out of it."
Dominique gawked. "I would have helped that crazy old bugger do that if it meant I didn't have to write this." She gestured to what she was working on.
"I didn't just randomly get chosen," she said. "He picked me because of my work in class today."
"You're such a brown-noser," Dominique said.
Victoire rolled her eyes; she was ready for this chat to be over with. "Have you got my Herbology notes?"
Dominique reached over into her bag and handed her back her Herbology notebook. "You have no idea how much more information you write down compared to me."
"Oh no, I think I have a fairly good idea," she said. "Did you finish whatever you needed it for?"
She nodded and had begun to say she had, though at the same moment a figure had approached the opposite end of the table where Sarah was sitting. Both Victoire and Dominique looked at the same time to see that it was Natalie Young.
She looked like a complete wreck. She seemed skinnier than she had been before, if that was possible. She also looked as if she hadn't slept in weeks. She was wearing far too much makeup and it was noticeably caking up on her face, particularly in the large bags under her eyes. She made very brief eye contact with both Victoire and Dominique before focusing on Sarah.
"Hi, Sarah. I did the first part of that Transfiguration assignment Ivanson assigned our group."
"Already?" Sarah asked. "Wow, um, I haven't even started my part." Her face turned curious. "He just assigned it, how did you...?"
"I've had some free time," Natalie offered with a lame shrug. "I've been getting loads of my stuff done for once. I'm not sure it's very good, but it's done."
"Cool," Sarah offered a little lamely, seemingly not knowing what else to say.
It was a strange dynamic to see. The two of them used to be very close friends, but clearly something had shifted lately. Victoire suspected that something was once again tied to Colleen; she had a habit of blowing up friendships. It wasn't any of her business, but it was sad to see how pathetic Natalie looked. It was evident she was trying to get back into Sarah's good graces, but Sarah didn't seem particularly keen. Dominique surely wasn't helping matters given all her current side eyes and judgy stares in Natalie's direction.
"I was wondering," Natalie began, "have you started that Potions essay yet?"
Dominique reached over and pulled Victoire's Potions' notes closer to her for some reason, as if protecting them. Sarah merely shook her head. "We were about to."
"Oh, really?" Natalie asked, her expression suddenly a bit hopeful. "I've been struggling with some of the elements of Befuddlement Draughts. If you were free and wanted to work together—"
"She doesn't," Dominique said, staring directly at Natalie as she spoke. "We're good, thanks. You can go back to your real friends now. Don't let us keep you from them."
Even Victoire had felt the sting in those words. Sarah didn't seem to know what to say; she just averted her eyes down. Natalie looked as if she'd honestly been verbally smacked in the face. She actually looked like she might cry, but she didn't while standing there. She simply nodded her head before turning and walking away.
Victoire watched her go all the way toward the other side of the room where she rejoined Colleen and Penelope at their table. Both girls were giggling about something; upon Natalie's return, Colleen said something that made Penelope laugh and look straight at Natalie. When Natalie didn't react, both girls laughed again, stood, and walked off then toward the dormitory. They'd left Natalie sitting on her own, looking vacant and despondent. When she had been with Louis, she had always seemed so pleasant and friendly, if not a little flighty. Now she looked dead in the eyes.
"You didn't have to be so cruel," Victoire said to her sister. "You nearly made her cry."
Dominique shrugged. "So? After the way she went off on Louis, I don't even have to pretend to like her anymore."
"When did you pretend to like her?" Sarah asked with a raised eyebrow. "Because I've yet to see that in five years."
"I've tolerated her, which is more or less the same thing."
"She's clearly sad," Victoire said, still watching Natalie across the room. "Something's wrong."
Sarah frowned at that, though Dominique again did nothing more than shrug. "I don't see why she should be sad," she said, reaching out to flip open Victoire's notes. "She's got everything she ever wanted in becoming friends with those slags. She filled your place nicely, wouldn't you say?"
Victoire sighed, not feeling particularly interested in biting on Dominique's attempt to goad her. She instead just shook her head sadly. "I know how she feels. Except I knew when to get out. I managed to find other people to—"
"Natalie had other people," Sarah said, her tone surprisingly sharp. "Me and Eleanor. We'd always been there for her, but the second she started carrying on with those girls, suddenly we're yesterday's news."
Dominique was nodding in agreement. "Out with the old, in with the new."
Victoire frowned. It wasn't an excuse—no one should treat their friends that way and expect them not to be sour—but perhaps it was because she'd been inside the eye of that storm that she could sympathize. She knew how isolating Colleen could make you feel; how she somehow convinced you to throw away everyone else in your life—or at least push them to the back burner. She'd done it with Ted—which combined with Celia completely killed their friendship for years.
Sitting here now, she couldn't imagine how she ever would have disregarded Ted like that, but that was just it. It made sense then. It was impossible to explain to an outsider, but then...it probably should be. It was shit behavior. She'd learned that the hard way. She'd thrown away real friends and any potential new ones for popularity and fake friends for years. It was why she'd had no one when she'd come out of the haze.
Natalie really didn't seem to have anyone outside of those girls now that she had alienated all of her other friends and Louis for them. Victoire couldn't help but be reminded of how lonely and depressed she had been at the end of last year when she had been in a similar position. When you all but run off the people who care about you, and the only people left don't give a damn about you, the world becomes a very lonely place.
"I feel sorry for her."
"You would," Dominique said. "She made her own bed, Vic. Now she has to lie it. Hopefully she'll figure it out before Colleen decides she's bored with her and starts some nasty rumor about her giving blowjobs in the library too."
Victoire turned back and looked at her sister. Something in the way she'd said that clicked something on inside of her; an angry and fiery sort of feeling at being reminded of how she'd been treated at the end of her fifth year by most of the school, right before O.W.L.s. How upset she'd been; how alone. Just as Natalie felt now. What she needed was help—not cruel comments from the likes of Colleen and Dominique making her feel like more of an outcast. Victoire could remember that the only thing that had brought her out of her despair last year was when Ted had reached out to her when she'd been at her lowest point. Even though he didn't have to, he had. And it had made all the difference in the world to her.
Victoire reached over and grabbed her Potions' notebook from where Dominique had it propped open in front of her. She could hear her sister say, "Hey, what are you doing?" before she stood and walked it across the room to where Natalie was sitting. She seemed rather startled to see Victoire approaching.
"I was always very good with Befuddlement Draughts," Victoire said, holding out her notes to her. "And I take excellent notes. If you have any questions, let me know."
Natalie took the notebook slowly, almost hesitantly. "Really?"
"Really," Victoire said, flashing a quick smile. "I'll need it back for class on Thursday, but you can borrow it whenever you like. Let me know."
"Thank you," Natalie said, glancing down at the book. "I appreciate that."
Victoire smiled again before turning and walking back over to where her sister was staring at her—for the second time that day—with an expression that clearly felt she'd gone mad.
"What are you doing?"
"You want my notes, you have to play nice with people," Victoire said, grabbing the rest of her things to leave. "Some times people make mistakes. Sometimes they just need a little help."