Victoire stood on the pavement of a quiet suburban street staring between two houses, wondering which door was the one she was looking for. She had only been to Whit's house once before and she hadn't realized how similar all the houses in this neighborhood all looked. In fact, the only thing that indicated that one of these two homes was Whit's was that Victoire recognized two strange plants that sat on either side of one of the houses. She had remembered looking at the same plants before, but she couldn't remember whether or not the plants had belonged to Whit's family or her neighbor.

She wiped the sweat off her brow and took several steps toward the house on the left. She hoped she was choosing the right one. The last thing she wanted to do was explain to someone why a distraught looking teenage girl was turning up on their doorstep at this time of the evening.

She knocked on the red front door and waited as she noticed bodies moving around through a nearby window. She shook a little, her adrenaline starting to wane, as she heard the door click and open.

"Victoire?" said Whit once she appeared on the other side of the door. "What are you…?" She looked her up and down and suddenly looked concerned. "Are you alright?"

She sniffled. "I've been better. I'm not disturbing you, am I?"

"Not really, no," she said as she stepped aside and gestured for her to enter. Once she did, one quick glance into the sitting room revealed Jack sitting on the sofa, clearly wondering what was going on.

"Who is it?" said a woman's voice from some other part of the house.

"It's Victoire, Mum," Whit called back. She was still staring at Victoire.

"I didn't mean to interrupt," Victoire said, pointing towards Jack.

"It's fine. What's wrong?"

She took a deep breath. "He read the letter."

"Who read what letter?"

"Ted read the letter I wrote back around his birthday," she said. "The one telling him how I felt."

Whit's eyes went wide as she turned away and looked at the wall. "How did he find—?"

"He was over at the house," she continued. "I was cleaning out my trunk because I was packing and I had just thrown all of my things on the floor. I forgot it was in there."

Whit's eyes traveled toward the entrance of the sitting room, where Jack had just appeared. He smiled politely at both of them. Victoire was suddenly concerned he had heard something—something he could tell Louis.

"Everything alright?"

Whit nodded. "Go ahead and keep watching, I just need to talk to her for a few minutes."

"You sure?" he asked as he carefully glanced at Victoire.

"Yeah, go ahead," she said with a smile as she turned back to Victoire. "Do you want something to drink? Some juice or some water?"

Victoire nodded as Whit led her towards the kitchen. It was a bright room, almost startlingly white. Victoire found herself recoiling from light since her eyes were already sensitive from the tears.

"Tell me again what happened," Whit said as she went about pouring a glass of orange juice for Victoire.

She took a deep breath before she recounted the events that had just occurred; stopping only once to take a sip of her juice.

"And he didn't say anything?" Whit asked as they both sat at the kitchen table.

She shook her head.

"Louis was standing right there, though," she said. "What could he have said with your brother standing there?"

"Anything!" she said, gulping the rest of her juice down. "He just stared at me."

"He was probably shocked," she said with a sweet kind of reassurance. "He probably didn't even have enough time to digest what he had read since you left so quickly."

"I've never been so embarrassed in my entire life," she said before putting her head down on the table.

"I'm sure everything is fine," Whit said. She reached over and grabbed Victoire's hand. "Honestly. You could probably go and talk to him right now—"

"No…" Her head shot up. "No chance. I wouldn't even be able to look at him."

"Are you just going to avoid him forever, then?"

"I can't do it forever," she mumbled, "but I sure enough can avoid him before I leave for France tomorrow."

Whit's made a face. She apparently was not a fan of that idea. "You're going to sit on this for an entire month while you're in France?"

Victoire didn't look at her. That was exactly what she planned to do. That seemed like a fantastic idea as far as she was concerned.

"That's only going to make you insane," Whit said just as Jack suddenly appeared in the kitchen with an empty glass.

"I'm just grabbing something to drink," he said, as if trying to indicate he wasn't there to listen in. "Don't mind me."

"You can't sit on this for a month," Whit said.

"I can't see him right now, either," Victoire countered. "I just can't do it."

Whit watched her with a rather unsure sort of expression. She seemed to know better than to tell her otherwise since she knew Victoire was too stubborn to listen, but it was written all over her face that she felt all of this was no a great idea. She finally offered, "Well, you're welcome to hang out here as long as you'd like. We're watching a film." She looked at Jack. "He's mad about them, but you're more than welcome to join us."

Victoire looked from Jack to Whit. "What's a film?"

Jack suddenly laughed and Whit smiled. "It's a Muggle thing. Come on, I'll show."

Victoire never thought it would actually help, but she was surprised to see how much sitting around with Whit and Jack and watching some madman with an axe chop up various drunk and dumb teenagers did actually take her mind off of the embarrassment of her night. She had never seen anything like it; while at first she had been disturbed that someone would even make a film about such a horrible topic, she soon found herself enjoying the random scares. She particularly found it funny to watch Jack's reaction every time she and Whit were too scared to watch the screen.

"There are four sequels to this," Jack said as Whit currently buried her face into his shoulder after the brutal final scene, where the killer was decapitated by the man he had been hunting.

"What?" Victoire asked as she pulled off two throw pillows from her head that she had buried herself under.

"I said there are four sequels to this." He looked down at Whit, who had only just peeked her head up.

"But he's dead," Victoire said, pointing at the TV. "How can there be a sequel if he's dead? They killed him!"

"Yeah, that's the thing about horror films," he said with a cheeky smile as he pulled his arm out from around Whit and stood up.

"Can we do something not so gory next time?" Whit asked.

"We've got to see the next four," he said.

"No, we don't."

"If you do, let me know," Victoire said as she glanced over to a nearby clock. "I'd like to see the other ones."

"What time is it?" Whit asked.

"Eleven-thirty," Victoire said as she also stood up. "I should probably go. My Portkey to France leaves at seven."

"What if...?" Whit asked as she stood as well and started following Victoire toward the door, "you get home and—"

Victoire sighed. She had already thought about Ted still being there, but she couldn't risk being late and getting in trouble. Her parents were already weary with her after what had happened at school with Colleen. She wasn't going to push them further by staying out late the night before she was supposed to leave for a foreign country. "I'll work it out."

Whit grinned. "Have fun in France. Write to me if you can. Bring me back something nice."

Victoire suddenly thought of Ted asking her the same thing, which made her want to frown—though she forced a smile. "I will."

"Particularly write to me if anything happens with him."

Victoire nodded and turned to offer Jack a quick hug. "Sorry for crashing your date. Thanks for tonight. Really."

She turned to open the front door. "We'll do it again," he said, leaning against the wall behind Whit. "We've got to finish the 'Axeslayer' series."

Whit groaned, though Victoire laughed. She stepped out onto the front step and disappeared moments later with a pop.

It only took a few moments before she found herself in front of her house. It was raining now and she glanced up toward the first floor of her house. It was mostly dark except for the light in her room, which she assumed no one had turned off once she had left. She took a deep breath and made a mad dash to avoid getting any wetter.

As she opened and shut the door behind her, she noticed her mother and brother first. Her mother came charging from the sitting room toward her, not looking particularly happy. Her father and sister were still on the sofa watching what was going on. There was no sign of Ted.

"Where have you been!?" her mother asked. "I was worried sick!"

"I went to Whit's house," Victoire said with a glance at Louis. He was staring at her apprehensively.

"That's what I thought," Dominique said from the sitting room, "but no one knew where she lived, so we couldn't check."

"You couldn't have owled, Vic?" her father said from the sofa. "You just stormed out and no one knew why. Then you disappeared—"

"She doesn't have an owl," Victoire said, staring around at her family. "And I'm seventeen, I'm an adult."

"No difference," her mother said, her face hard. "You still live under our roof and there are rules."

Victoire made a tutting noise under her breath that she knew she shouldn't have done the second she did it. Her mother suddenly looked as if she could have it out right there, but her father interjected before she could yell.

"How are we supposed to trust you to run around France if we can't even trust you to tell us where you're going when you're at home?"

"You don't trust me?" she asked.

"Vic, stop," Louis said.

" You ," she began, now glaring at him, "are the last person to tell anyone to stop doing anything."

"I'm sorry I held you back from trying to kill Ted, or whatever you were trying to do—"

Victoire didn't want to hear it. She looked at her mother. "I'm fine. I went over to my friend's house and I'm still home before what my usual curfew is. I'm seventeen, not seven."

"Then act like it!" my mother yelled.

"She's had a rough night," Dominique said quietly.

Victoire looked at her. She was surprised to hear support coming from the one person who usually relished in her getting scolded.

"How did she have a rough night?" her mother asked. "All I've heard was that Ted read something that made you upset, but even he said it wasn't anything worth getting upset over."

"Well, if he said it…" Victoire mumbled.

"Victoire Isabelle Weasley!" her mother snapped. "You will not take that tone!"

She stood back and timidly avoided her mother's gaze. "Can I just go to bed, then? I just want to go to sleep and end this night."

"Go straight to bed," her mother said, "and you had better be completely packed. In the morning, your attitude also better be gone or else you can spend the next month helping me down at the bank."

Victoire didn't hesitate for a moment; immediately she turned up the stairs. She wished her legs could carry her faster as she reached her room and just managed to stop herself from slamming the door.

She looked around at the mess in her room and, as a matter of stress relief, began pointing her wand at various items in an attempt to clean up. She pushed the papers and books into the corner of her room; her school robes and other accessories all went straight in the wardrobe. She was putting her letter bundles into her drawers when someone knocked on the door.

"Go away," she said before she flipped her wand around on the door and locked it without looking. Whoever it had been, they didn't knock again. However, that didn't stop her from standing there waiting to see if they would. She went to her dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of pajamas before she changed and laid down on her bed. She was just about to turn the light out when someone knocked once more.

"Go away."

"It's me," said Dominique. "Can we talk?"

"I'm really not in the mood."

"I won't bother you for long."

She stared up at the ceiling at the black spot. She rotated her wand around in her hand absently before she pointed it at the door and mumbled, "Alohomora." The door's lock turned; Dominique let herself in.

"Everything alright?" she asked as she entered slowly.

Victoire shrugged without looking at her. Dominique edged her way towards the bed and sat tentatively on the edge. She stared at her. "So. He found the letter."

"Louis found it," Victoire said, still staring up at the ceiling. "Ted just read it."

"I didn't know you had kept it."

"I'd forgotten about it."

Dominique nodded. "Louis has no idea what it said. Neither do Mum and Dad."

Victoire shrugged again.

"Ted just acted as though he didn't know why you got upset when Mum and Dad asked," she continued. "But...obviously he did."

"Obviously."

"Vic, he waited here for two hours for you to come back. I've never seen him so preoccupied." She pulled a face." He was barely paying attention to anyone. Barely paying attention to the Wasps match that was on and you know he loves the Wasps."

Victoire said nothing, though the fact that Dominique still managed to find a way to tie Quidditch into this was almost a gift.

"He wanted to talk to you."

"I didn't want to talk to him," Victoire said. "I've never been so humiliated."

Dominique sighed and looked away. "I told Louis off for being a prat. He feels like shit, though he's not sure why he does because he has no idea what's happening."

Victoire grinned a little, but said nothing.

"Ted only left because it started to get late," she said. "I think he felt that he was imposing on mum and dad. He probably would have stayed all night under different circumstances."

She rolled her eyes. "Right…"

"Wouldn't you if you had just found out your best friend was in love with you? You'd want to talk to them—"

Victoire cringed at the way she'd said it. If you had just found out your best friend was in love with you. It sounded so pathetic.

"Sorry," she said, realizing that this probably wasn't the right time to throw all this back in her face. It was quiet for a long moment until Dominique finally spoke again.

"You do still…?" She hesitated. "You still fancy him, right?"

Victoire kept her eyes shut and nodded. "Do you really think this would be this embarrassing if I didn't?"

Dominique nodded again. "Right. Well, everything will work itself out. And if it doesn't, we'll be in Marseilles tomorrow and you can at least avoid things for a while."

Victoire nodded. "The timing couldn't have been better."

"Are you really not going to talk to him before we leave?"

She looked at Dominique for the first time. "Between now and seven o'clock in the morning?"

"I doubt he'd care if you woke him up. I doubt he's sleeping."

"Well, I'm not," she said, still terrified at the idea of even seeing his face right now. "I can't see him right now. I can't bring myself to..."

"Alright," she said before she stood up. "Well, I'll let you get some rest. We've got to be up early." She walked towards the door and turned once more to look back at Victoire. "Night."

Dominique shut the door behind her, which prompted Victoire to sigh again and stare up at the ceiling once more. Her mind was swimming with what Ted could possibly be currently thinking? His face had been so expressionless, so confused. It was certainly not how she had pictured that moment happening.

She groaned as she flipped over onto her stomach and pushed her face into her pillow. Because she was stubborn, she wouldn't have peace on this matter for at least a month, and even then…then what? What would happen next?

She propped herself onto her elbow, pointed her wand at her lamp, and quickly extinguished the light in the room. She plopped back down and tucked her arms under her pillow, hoping that she would somehow find a way to fall asleep with all of this weighing on her—

Her thoughts suddenly stopped as she quickly sat up in her bed. As she stared into the darkness, she realized there was something under her pillow. She fumbled for her wand and pointed it at her lamp once more, where underneath her pillow, she pulled out a small piece of ripped parchment. On it was one sentence written in Ted's all too familiar script:

Have fun in France.

She read it twice and even flipped it over to see if anything was written on the other side. That was all he had written. One sentence. One sentence that he had made a point of writing and tucking under her pillow. But why? She stared at it once more before she reached out and set it on her bedside table.

It was going to be a long month.