title: and they start to laugh
pairing: victoire/neville
author: Kat (a walk on the w i l d side)
for: Aimy (lonely hands)
She's fifteen and Teddy's only a year older, and they're as perfect as they'll ever be. She turns up at his flat sometime in the afternoon, a muggle movie tucked under her arm and enough sweets to last a month. He opens the door with a grin, amused at her mussed hair and crinkled clothes.
"What happened to arriving this morning?"
She offers him an apologetic smile and holds out the half-eaten packet of junk food. "I was distracted?"
He rolls his eyes and leads her over to the sofa, summoning a bowl from the cupboard. They sit together on the couch, with her tucked under his arm like they've done so many times before, fitting together like adjoining puzzle pieces. One of those puzzles for young children, the ones that don't require any thought to put together, an effortless match. To Victoire it feels comfortable, almost second nature for them to curl up on the couch together and watch muggle films.
"Teddy?" she questions, playing with the fraying edge of the couch, aiming for something between nonchalance and vague curiosity.
"Victoire." He says, and she can hear the smirk in his voice as he sees through her deception.
"Nothing," she murmurs, struck by the pointlessness of asking a question to which she already knows the answer.
.
She can feel the curiosity in his silence but just shakes her head. He knows her too well to prompt her to speak, and that is answer enough.
A lot of the time, Victoire is certain she loves Teddy. It's not like once she met him the world made sense, because she's known Teddy her whole life. It's more like, she can't imagine him not being there any more than she can imagine herself without an arm or leg.
But there are other times, when Victoire is afraid and alone and almost desperate for something else. It's like a feeling she's heard about but never really had, or an idea she's never been able to entertain, only watch as it passes by her theatre.
.
Her favourite subject had always been herbology, since before she'd even started at Hogwarts. She'd always been the best in her class at it, always getting top marks, but it was more than that. Unlike the other subjects, she didn't like it because it was effortless. It required a certain type of work, you needed patience, but every day it was different. There was something spontaneous in it, a mixture of frustration and pure joy that she had never felt anywhere else. She had tried to explain it to Teddy, but he only shook his head and laughed. She knew the only one who really understood was Professor Longbottom, who would laugh when she recounted her escapades with Fanged Geraniums and Venomous Tentacula, describing in graphic detail it's attempt to take her life. They'd drink coffee and talk and somehow they'd always end up laughing, laughing and laughing and laughing, tears streaming down her face and her stomach in stitches. Then he'd murmur something about a soul of flowers and she didn't know what he meant but she'd smile and then they'd end up laughing and talking and the tears are still streaming down her face.
.
She's sixteen, standing in front of his office and rehearsing a question (just another excuse to see him), and she's arranging her face into a smile and pulling her skirt a little higher and her heart is beating faster than it ever has with Teddy, and she breathes in and laughs, laughs and laughs and laughs, with tears streaming down her face and her stomach in stitches.
He opens the door and she leans forward and when they meet it's as if there's something there, something pretty and indescribable and Merlin, this feels so right. She pulls back and opens her mouth and she's expecting an apology to come out of those lips, but it's not, it's a laugh and then they're both laughing and she's kissing him and somewhere in between he murmurs about a soul of flowers and it's only when her arms are tangled in his hair and his lips are smiling against hers that she realises he might have a point.
.
Victoire has always been selfish, but it's okay because she's Victoire and perfect by default and she is the point the earth revolves around. She's had Neville since she was sixteen and Teddy since she was born, her life a mix of something like turquoise and herbology and muggle movies and coffee.
Neville has always been altruistic, a crooked smile and messy hair and something irrevocably good in Victoire's world. He's the better half, the soul in her supposed 'soul of flowers' and the happiness in her smile.
It's messy and dangerous, what they're doing, but it's not like either of them cares, really. She's selfish and he's altruistic, and they're the better half of each other, and they're not giving up what they've been denying for six years.
.
It's a Saturday afternoon and Victoire is twenty-five when she walks in on them, tangled together in a blur of red hair and pale limbs. She has her head against his bare chest, his arms wrapped around her like a cage, that one gesture amounting to more than what Teddy and Victoire have ever felt in their lives.
"Lily," Teddy murmurs, and Victoire is struck by the protectiveness in his voice, the warmth and happiness in this one sleepy word. Lily's reply is to pull herself closer, muttering incomprehensibly, and it's not meant to be Lily, IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE HER. IT'S MEANT TO BE ME, BECAUSE I'M HIS GIRLFRIEND AND IT'S ONLY SEX AND HE DOESN'T LOVE YOU.
And it's somewhere in between that it becomes screaming, and Victoire is yelling STAY AWAY FROM HIM and Lily's yelling HE DOESN'T LOVE YOU and somehow they end up in the kitchen.
"Don't you dare- I can't believe- how could you?" Victoire finishes, desperately clutching at the composure she's already lost.
"He's not yours, Vic. He never was."
"He doesn't love you, either." She stops herself there, her head spinning at how easily she just admitted that Teddy doesn't love her. "You have no right to- he's mine. I LOVE HIM." Her face is getting hotter, and she's just too angry to think of pulling out her wand.
"No, you don't," Lily leans in, her smile screaming I'm right, you're wrong, and Victoire hates it. "I know about Neville. You'll never love Teddy, and he'll never love you back."
"He loves me. HE LOVES ME." and then Victoire is apparating out of the flat, leaving Lily alone in the empty kitchen.
"He doesn't, Vic. And you don't love him either." She murmurs, blinking back tears.
She arrives at Neville's house, face red and eyes shining, within seconds of leaving Teddy's flat. He opens the door before she has a chance to knock and stares at her, taking in her desperate expression and bleeding fingernail.
"What happened? Did you splinch yourself?" he asks, taking her hand with gentle fingers.
She draws a breath in, the air scraping harshly against her throat, and laughs. It's a cruel sort of laugh, full of anger and malice and everything he foolishly believed she wasn't. "Lily and Teddy and Merlin, I hate her. I hate her I hate her I hate her." The tears come and it's not the sense of betrayal that brings them, rather the realisation that Lily was right. He pulls her into his arms and lets her cry, waiting on the doorstep for her tears to stop and her heart to start putting itself together.
.
It's only later that Victoire admits that her and Teddy weren't matching puzzle pieces. They had simply been pushed and pulled and worn down until they matched, squeezed out of shape until they fit the parts other people had cultivated for them. Teddy was more of a brother, someone like Louis or Dominique, she figured, and the thought felt right. It felt right to think of Teddy as a brother, as one of the family, and in truth, well, he always had been. Just not in the way that everyone had hoped.
Neville watches her over a cup of coffee, his eyebrows pinched together like he's really worried about something. She smiles up at him, a weak smile, but genuine nonetheless. It says I'm sorry, it says I'm okay, it says I love you. He smiles back, the tightness gradually leaving his eyes as they talk, still in the same conversation they've been having for years.
If it's Neville, Victoire thinks, I will never get tired of herbology.
.
She goes back to Teddy's flat the next day to collect her things. She's surprised by how little she's moved in during the four years Teddy's had the flat. It only takes a few minutes to summon and pack her items- a few pictures and some odd items of clothing, a jumper, some socks and a pair of sandals. Now that she's looking she can see the small things that ought to have made her suspicious- a bra that's not hers and perfume she's never worn.
Teddy's out and Victoire makes sure to be gone before he comes home, not wanting to hear his apologies or explanations.
.
She lasts a week alone in her flat before she cracks, not able to face another day stuck between the same four walls, so she apparates over to Neville's small cottage in Oxford. She walks in on Hannah and Neville talking in the living room, but he sees her before she can back out. He invites her inside and asks her to sit down, offering her a cup of tea. She laughs despite herself, waiting for Neville to join in. He doesn't and she stares at him, struck by the blankness of his expression.
"I'd like a coffee, please." She says, her eyes flicking to the steaming cup of tea in front of him. He obliges and busies himself boiling the water, leaving Victoire and Hannah to make incredibly awkward conversation. Their discussion of the weather fades and they sit in silence, waiting for Neville to return. He comes back with a burning cup of coffee and she can only feel relieved that he doesn't ask if she wants sugar with it.
"So, what brings you here, Victoire?" he asks, making her blink with the use of her full name.
"Oh, well I was wondering if you could write up a reference for my resume?" she asks, keeping her tone carefully neutral. She stares at him for a few moments, her eyes burning, willing him to understand. He stares back, his gaze blank and uninviting. She drops her eyes and takes a sip of her coffee, wincing a little at the heat. "But I can see you're busy, so I'll come back later. It was nice to see you, Hannah." The other woman nods awkwardly, her smile faltering a little as she tries to skirt the tension between Victoire and Neville. He stays silent, staring into his cup like he once stared into her eyes, and Victoire can't help but wonder what's going on.
It's only when she gets back to her flat that she realizes she brought her cup with her, full of the milkless coffee Neville knows she hates. She flings the cup at the wall, watching it smash satisfyingly and land in a crumpled heap of horror and debris, and she thinks she sort of likes this feeling. It's burning and hurting and a wonderful sort of pain that one day she will associate with broken coffee cups and herbology lessons.
.
He turns up at her flat the next day with an apologetic smile and roasted coffee beans. They smile and laugh, laugh and laugh and laugh until tears are streaming down her face and her stomach's in stitches. They don't mention Hannah again and she's thankful for the words that eat up the empty space located somewhere in her chest, letting him melt down the fears that had started to build up.
She pretends she doesn't notice how many herbology facts he gets wrong, because there's no point getting worked up over nothing, is there?
.
She's twenty-six and somewhere between perfect and utter wreck, the hurt running through her like the coffee. Her days are still centered around herbology and coffee cups and laughing and laughing and laughing, with tears streaming down her face and her stomach in stitches, but sometimes the tears last a little too long and her stomach hurts a little too much and she feels hyper and full of caffeine and god, this life isn't good for her.
When Neville murmurs "maybe we should stop" sometime in the middle of the night she can only reply with a laugh, winding her fingers through his hair and pulling him back onto her.
.
"Maybe we should stop," he murmurs again, later, his eyes half-closed and his hands tangled in her hair. She pulls away and laughs, laughs and laughs and laughs, her eyes starting to water and then suddenly she's crying and it's not funny SHE'S NOT LAUGHING WHAT ARE YOU DOING IT'S NOT FUNNY and then she's sobbing and he's pushing her away and she can hear something like the word sorry but she doesn't care because suddenly it's made sense and there's only one word that she can hear and it goes something like "Hannah".
.
She doesn't know when it started ending, but it did, and suddenly she's skipping the laughing and going straight to the tears, her stomach a constant ache and her life a caffeinated buzz of little more than tattered dreams.
.
She's twenty-eight and sitting at the back of a church, her eyes tracing the curves of the stone pillars and stain-glass windows. She's sitting next to Teddy, halfway along a wooden pew, surrounded by people she doesn't know and happiness she can't replicate. He's got his hand clasped firmly around hers, not the lie it used to represent, but something real, something she used to wish for in the middle of the night when he was gasping Lily and she was murmuring Neville, each pretending they can't hear the others' words.
Hannah walks down the aisle, looking stunning in white, and Victoire, petty selfish Victoire, can only look at her skin against the dress, thinking something along the lines of I WOULD'VE LOOKED BETTER.
There's a blur at the edge of her vision, something dark and horrible and calling itself the truth, and if she looks a little closer she can see it reads the end of her and Neville, dated long before they even started. It looks like laughter and coffee and herbology lessons, things that today she no longer has time for.
She sighs, her hands twitching towards the base of her ring-finger, pretending she feels a little loop of gold wrapped around it.
She holds it against her chest, the silent thudding echoing through her empty ribcage, and slowly she starts to laugh, laughs and laughs and laughs, the tears streaming down her face and her stomach in stitches.
a/n: please don't favorite/alert without reviewing, thanks.