Disclaimer: I do not own and have never claimed to own the series of books called Harry Potter, written entirely by JK Rowling.
This is an AU fic in which Victoire has a disorder called Fregoli delusion (she thinks that multiple people are the same person in disguise) written for The Baa Baa Black Sheep Competition on the Harry Potter FanFiction Challenges forum, the link to which is on my profile. :)
They locked her up in St. Mungo's by the time she was nineteen. She went in kicking and screaming but it didn't do a damn thing. They didn't listen to what she had to say. They thought she was a liar, that she was crazy.
Victoire knew better than them all. She could see things they couldn't, notice things no one else did. Her parents tried to convince her she was wrong; tell her that she was just hallucinating. Victoire wouldn't have it.
They were all the same. The doctors would ask her who, and all she could muster was everyone. Everyone was someone else. It got confusing, even to her. The nurses would all come in at separate times, never the same. They walked the same, talked the same.
It all made sense: they were the same. They were one witch, coming in again and again just to spite her. The two doctors were the same, too. Once, they came in at the same time and tried to prove they were different.
Victoire got very angry when they tried to trick her this way. The grey-haired doctor looked nothing like he usually did! The original had probably hired some actor to play the part. She began to scream, spit, even tried to swing her fists at the imposter.
How dare he take the form of someone else! How dare the original man feign two identities! God knew how many people he really was.
They never tried that shit again, which was good for them because if they had then Victoire would have really gone insane.
They were all going to hell for what they did, for locking her up just because she knew the truth and everybody else was just too damn afraid to admit reality…
Even her parents, whom she loved so dearly, were lying to her. She was well aware that Bill doubled as Kingsley Shacklebolt…she'd never once seem them in the same room, and that was no coincidence. She was curious as to how her father was able to get the make-up on– or perhaps off? –so quickly…on the other hand, he could be in cohorts with someone else.
A deep shiver of fear ran down her spine, though this was nothing compared to her reaction when she finally realized that Teddy Lupin, the man she had loved so dearly and for so long, was a fraud as well. She had trusted him and, in the end, he had betrayed her so deeply she would never be able to recover.
Teddy Lupin was not…that person. He was someone who was supposed to be in Azkaban…Fenrir Greyback. Teddy was a werewolf – a werewolf who had killed so many people – and an old one at that. A pervert was what he was. She was disgusted with herself for falling into Greyback's trap. She tried to get away from him, but he continued to play dumb.
When she started to attack him (if she didn't, surely he would have bitten her!), he fell back, Stupified her, and signaled for St. Mungo's immediately. She woke up just as they were taking her. 'Teddy' was crying, saying he didn't know who she was, why she would do this…he told her she needed help, and he would try to be there for her.
She didn't want an imposter to be there for her, for God's sake! There was nothing worse than a murderer, and that was what Greyback was…what he was. She had kissed and loved and even made love with a freaking murdering werewolf. She wanted to throw up, and she did, many times.
The ward she was kept in was locked up and hushed away, not talked about or visited often. All the residents were the shame of their families, including Victoire. She felt very alone most of the time.
Her 'violent tendencies' (as the doctor had so affectionately dubbed them) were smothered by a mouthful of medication she was forced to take every day. She didn't trust those imposters, not one bit, but it was either swallow them or have them injected while she was strapped to a table.
Her therapy sessions led to absolutely nothing. She knew that he was really her Uncle Ron, and she wasn't going to tell Ron something so he could run back to her parents. He tried to convince, constantly, that he wasn't Ron.
That was what they all said.
Victoire hated her life. She imagined a missile flying, soaring through the air…and then destroying everything in sight. She wouldn't be alive to know all of the liars, and where she would end up…only truth could go there.
Sometimes, she thought that she could be the only one up there… the only one that wasn't a phony.
That angered her. She was alone enough in life…she didn't want to be alone up there, too.
She tried to convince everyone she knew to stop pretending to be other people, but they would only claim they were never another person in the first place. She became desperate, begging, sobbing even dropping to her knees as she tried to convey her plea.
The only person she could ever mildly trust was Louis. Sweet, sweet Louis…he was the baby of her family and only eleven years old. She loved him so dearly she found it unbelievable at times. He promised her he'd never ever be someone else and she knew he wouldn't. They were best friends. They knew each other, they loved each other.
Time passed slowly for Victoire, but pass it did. She hardly noticed herself aging…rather, she noticed the people around her aging. She saw Louis grow into a man, still being just him and no one else. She continued to inhabit St. Mungo's because she had random spasms of energy where she would try and take the make-up or rip the disguise off of people…this was deemed violent, she guessed.
Her visitors varied. Teddy would visit her every so often and update her on his life. He got married, even had children. The schoolgirl part of her that loved him had died long ago, so she just nodded and coolly told him that he was lucky his wife didn't know he was really Greyback. Teddy would look so sad after that, which always confused Victoire. He should've been angry that he had been caught.
Her parents visited every week, and she tried to cause them as little pain as possible. Fake as they were, they were still her parents and she loved them very much. After her father died suddenly, she wasn't the same. Her condition got worse, and she even began to be suspicious of Louis…she had always trusted him, always respected him most of all.
Victoire got very sick near the end. Very sick. She asked, again and again, for the people to reveal who they truly were. It was her dying wish, she plead. She needed them to come clean.
The doctors, new ones that had replaced the old ones long ago, admitted they were the same…finally.
She knew the truth. She died thinking that someone had finally developed a heart, rather than them simply wanting her to pass on in a bit less misery.
Her funeral was attended by few people. In Victoire's eyes, it would have been even less than what it was, for many of them…were one and the same.