"That wench!" Hermione hissed - which was such a hilarious approximation of a swear that Victoria couldn't help but snort and roll her eyes as she tugged her hand out of Hermione's grip and ran it once more along Sasha's back.
Up until this point she'd managed to keep her new - now fading - scars hidden behind simple enchantments and a spot of concealer she'd borrowed from an older girl. She didn't see a point in needlessly worrying Hermione, who was already worried enough about the overall state of the school, but her due diligence was set to run dry in the form of simple forgetfulness.
"It's nothing," she says, truthfully, and not so tactfully changes the subject, "And anyway, I heard Inspection with Trelawney was a mess."
Hermione sobers even further at her words, drooping into her large book with a groan.
Umbridge had practically taken over the school several months into the new term - teacher inspections were a daily occurrence as she touted her made-up title of High Inquisitor like a badge of Ministry-approved honor, tormenting her students with a barrage of detentions at even the slightest perceived infraction.
"And that Potter made a big fuss again," she continued, watching Hermione rub her temple and slump impossibly further into her seat, "have you considered talking to him about that? He's just making things more difficult for everyone, including himself."
"Ron and I have both tried," she mutters, propping her head in her hand and giving the towering library ceiling a wistful stare, "we're honestly at a loss - not even Sirius or Professor Mcgonagall was able to talk sense into him."
Victoria frowns, but doesn't push it even when her first instinct is to make some kind of remark. She has to keep reminding herself that Potter isn't in his right frame of mind; that his emotions are being influenced, to some extent.
"Well," she says, turning back to her book, "if they can't call him off then no one can."
It's silent for a long moment, and when Victoria peers over hardbound yellow-crinkled paper she sees that Hermione is biting her lip, fingers twisting through Crookshanks tail in a motion that she'd come to learn meant she was nervous about something.
"What?" she sighs after some time, closing her book with a snap to give the older girl her undivided attention.
Hermione's smile at her is small and timid as she tucks a feather-marker between her open pages, pushing the script away.
"I was thinking," she starts haltingly, "if Professor Umbridge isn't going to teach us Defense properly, then - well, it's up to us to teach ourselves right?"
"It's forbidden," Victoria reminds her, uselessly, because she knew exactly where this was going, "you're not thinking of breaking the school rules, are you Hermione?"
She holds up the back of her hand impassively with a quirked brow, just to drive the point home.
Hermione flushes with a scowl and twitters a little, glancing around the empty corner they were tucked away in, fingers poking together before she looks at Victoria with a bashfully muttered, "Yes, actually…"
Victoria sighs and leans back in her chair, waving her hand in a go on motion that has Hermione straightening up to continue in a quiet, subdued tone.
"I was thinking of starting a club and having Harry run it - he's the best in our year at Defense, after all, and he's got the most experience of the lot of us and well-"
She stops here and gives Victoria a look, like she wasn't sure how to continue, but knew that she must.
"I was thinking that you could help him-"
She continues over Victoria's impulsive scoff quickly, hunching forward, "Everyone knows how brilliant you are when it comes to charms - oh, don't deny it, I saw the orchideous you cast the other day and it was lovely-"
Victoria flushes brilliantly here, because she knew exactly what Hermione was talking about and she'd intended for that bit of magic to be a bit private, actually-
" I've even heard that Professor Flitwick has been petitioning the Headmaster to have you advance a grade or two, and, and - well, with you I think we stand a real chance at actually doing something-"
And this is where she starts tuning the other girl out, because Victoria isn't surprised by Hermione's proposition - no, she was more surprised by the delivery if anything, now if only her ears would stop burning - and she tries not to heave a sigh beyond the fluttering whelp in her chest because-
She really doesn't want to show Hermione the Room.
It's a place she'd come to think of as hers; this cut-away corner in a twin-less, Cedric-less world that was a reprieve from a bustling castle where the ghosts whispered about her.
She keeps telling herself she's being selfish and the words follow me will be on the tip of her tongue, but then her stomach cramps up and she doesn't know if she's ready to lose it.
Because the thing is she still has days where she wakes up and she doesn't want to deal with anybody - where the sun is too bright and she's too tired and the after touches of Cedric's memory is intermingling with the wispy remnants of her own; and it takes everything she has not to snap or hide or cower under the weight of it all because she has things to do, people to save -
Days where she wakes up and thinks why and how and she has to drag herself out of bed by the grit of her teeth. And she'll down a potion and give Sasha a scritch behind the ear; she'll count down the reasons she's come this far and tell herself that eventually she'll earn the right to deserve it, but sometimes it all feels too empty to be real.
On those days Hermione will smile at her and offer her space if she needs it, and it makes shame and anger bubble up in her stomach, threatening to pop with an unkind word or a cold shoulder because how can Hermione stand to even look at her with the things that she's done.
That she's let happen.
She masks the guilt behind the fringes of what little remains of her dignity, but sometimes it feels like she's drenched in it - like those around her will look at her and just know, somehow, that she's secretly this cruel and wicked thing hiding behind the facade of a little girl.
She thinks about how she's marked by Death and she wants to hide away from those she could hurt further-
And then Hermione goes and says something like with you I think we stand an actual chance or the spell you cast was lovely and it's like the ghost of Cedric's kindness is bearing heavy upon her shoulders and all she can do is wilt in the face of it and try to be better.
She'd resolved herself to help, in whatever little ways she could - through any means necessary, when given the opportunity. Because she needs to be there, at the end, she needs to see the end of this bloody story through.
She was out of excuses.
So, "Follow me," she says when Hermione's run out of steam and watches her pack her things, touting questions all the while, and leads her into the winding castle halls.
When she arrives, Hermione watches her with raised brows as she paces - one, two, three - and thinks, show me something beautiful, and the Room-
Provides.
Hermione's baffled expression when the door appears is near priceless, but her open-mouthed shock at the boundary that laid beyond was worth the sacrifice of her selfish desires.
"This is the Room of Requirement," she says as they step inside, taking in the pink-lavender splotched horizon that was etched in the distance like the painting of a dream, and the roiling expanse of green foam-marbled waves that were reaching out towards them with purple-hued fingers.
Home, a part of her thinks, and she holds on to it for as long as she can.
A gleaming road of golden sand had overtaken the edges of the Rooms flooring and she gave in to the urge to slip her shoes and socks off quickly, letting her toes sink into the soft expanse while Hermione spluttered next to her.
"Victoria, how did you-" an arm tossed here, accompanied by a disbelieving wheeze, "when did you, what is-?"
"Hogwarts is full of secrets," she shrugs when Hermione eventually defaults to just staring, head whirling from giving her and the distant sun an increasingly blank expression, "but the point is, this room will provide you with whatever you require if you pace three times while focusing on what you need in front of it."
"Oh," Hermione says eventually, voice a meek squeak that hardens with dawned realization, "oh-!"
Victoria watches Hermione slip off some garments and wander to the edges of the waves, sink knee deep into the water and turn toward her with a beaming grin.
"Victoria," she says, "this is brilliant!"
o.O.o
When she slips back into the common room, it's late - like, way too late.
Especially for bushy-haired, no-nonsense, rule-stickler Hermione.
Ron watches her patter through the entrance portrait and she seems distracted; there's a soft smile playing at the corner of her lips and her robe is slung over the crook of her arm, ugly cat sauntering in behind her with its tail held high. He's sprawled out across the lounge settled in front of the fireplace, so it takes her a moment to notice him and when she does she freezes up a bit before beelining her way towards the armchair that sat diagonal to him, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear.
"Hello," she says, laying back in a much more dignified manner, and Crookshanks is quick to take up residence in her lap, circling thrice before curling up with a snuffled merp.
"Where've you been?" he asks, and carefully doesn't add that he's been waiting here for most of the night because he'd kind of made it a habit to make sure she and Gin made it in without trouble because, well - he worried about them, and who could blame him with evil wizards lurking around the corner every year. And, geez, were the circles under Hermione's eyes always that dark, she should really be getting more rest instead of being out who knows where doing who knows what with-
"With Victoria," she says, smiling bright, and Ron suppresses a scowl.
Hermione seems to see it anyway and she frowns at him, eyes skirting away to watch the embers flick and spit against metal grating.
"She's really not that bad," she says after a moment, "I know she can be…intense, but she's just a kid."
Ron huffs, but doesn't reply; this was a horse beat beyond recognition and he knows pushing the issue will only result in the two of them parting in a less than pleasant manner. Intense is putting it mildly - there was something straight up unsettling about Victoria Dodger, with her dark eyes that seemed to see into the very fabric of his soul.
Under the surface of what appeared to be a rather cutting edge was a welt of fire that he didn't want to go near with a fifty meter pole - he'd only seen the full cascade of that emotion a meager handful of times, but each one had been depressing and disturbing in equal measure.
His skin crawls, thinking back on the scream that summoned him last summer, the expression on her face when he'd stumbled upon the tall shape of a man with dark hair leering down on them from the center of a small room, his mom weeping on the floor; he'd been smiling so wide it was twisted into a sneer, bordering on manic, and he'd opened his arms wide, taking a step forward-
Afterwards, when it was all said and done, they'd been taken aside by his mother whose face was closed off near-completely as she told them they were not to bring up what happened with Victoria in any way whatsoever - and the look in her eyes, the tone in her voice, had been so obviously, profoundly non-negotiable they could do little else than obey.
When Harry expressed interest in snooping around to find out more - why was she here, who was that, why did his scar hurt when he looked at her - Hermione had bared down on him with hostile disapproval bordering on rage and Ron couldn't help but agree.
Victoria was unsettling and disturbing and a little bit weird, but he couldn't deny that she was probably just a kid with some issues.
Before Hermione started hanging around her, Victoria hadn't been on his radar in the slightest - he hadn't known she'd existed, and if he had he'd just bump her in along with the stock of other firsties; beyond his periphery, another faceless body in the crowds that ambled through the halls. He hadn't liked her, hadn't liked the way she treated Hermione, and had thought she was just some punk brat Hermione wanted to help because that's just the type Hermione is .
After spending a - carefully filed, measured, and maintained - distanced amount of time with her over the summer, though, he saw a pattern that was hard to ignore; food picking, oversleeping, erratic mood swings, and it all kind of fell into place when he caught her downing a familiar looking potion bottle.
Harry and Hermione hadn't been there for it, but Ginny had it rough after her first year. There were many sleepless nights in the Burrow, often only set at ease with long radio-cocoa sessions, cuddles, and maybe a few tears. Sometimes he saw this distant glint in her eye, like she was somewhere else entirely, and he'd tussle her into tossing a quaffle or hounding the twins until her smile took on that ferocious edge that was practically her trademark.
It was hard not to be sympathetic to someone - a kid, at that - that reminded him so much of the worst parts of his little sister's life.
But the boggart-
"She actually showed me something amazing today," Hermione said, after the silence had stretched out into a comfortable lull, "you know what we've been talking about-?"
His brows raise and he nods along, because these days when they were alone they really only talked about one thing, even if he'd rather be talking about others, and Hermione breathed out a rather exhilarated, "Well, Victoria showed me a hidden room we could use! And-"
She cuts herself off here, fingers twisting through Crookshanks tail, before she continues, eyes sliding away again, "She said she didn't mind teaching, along with Harry."
And Ron tries to stay still, lax and neutral, because that was another thing-
Victoria was good with magic - the kind of good that looked effortless, as natural as breathing, the kind that might as well be an extra limb for how responsive it is. She flicked her wand like she expected the magic to obey her whims regardless of movement, or core-restrictions, or the fact that she was just a second-year student.
The rumors started sometime last year after Flitwick was caught making a fuss about her at every opportunity he'd had, and when Ron started paying more attention it wasn't hard to see why the professor was so enthused.
He'd seen her cast spells so advanced even he struggled with them; last year she'd been a ghost - no, a poltergeist, hard to spot with a great temper manifesting itself in the form of slung hexes, jinxes, and curses at the slightest of provocations.
She got away with it often, too; he'd once watched her hurl one at the unsuspecting back of a third year student that was bearing down on a little firstie girl with a disgusting amount of hostility. Ron had felt compelled to step in when he saw her out of the corner of his eye; a bright curly mop, a sharply snapped hand wave, and the howling cry of a boy suddenly beset by cockroach-vomiting pus-sores that erupted across his flesh in a sickly display of mucus and squirming skittery-legs.
He'd watched the boy go down hard like a tree suddenly axed from its stump, wailing all the while, and had seen the self-satisfied smirk that scrawled across Victoria's face like hard-fought victory before she turned sharp on her heel and vanished into the gathering throng of students.
Something like nausea, admiration, and jealousy had curdled in his stomach as he'd watched her stalk off because what the hell was that before he'd pushed back his shoulders and herded the now baffled and weeping firstie away.
So it's not that he doubts her abilities, but-
"Is it a good idea getting her all mixed up in this?" he asks, and it's a fair question - what they were thinking about doing could ruin their magical careers. Expulsion was the least of their problems with the warpath Fudge and Umbridge were on; a large part of him feared some sort of imprisonment, regardless of the way Hermione rolled her eyes at him when he mentioned it.
Hermione opens her mouth, closes it thinly, and they settle into silence interrupted only by the motor-purrs of Crookshanks and the flames hissing into muted orange-glow as the remaining logs steadily ashed away. It was warm and comfortable and sleep was eagerly nudging along his eyeline; the fire-light was playing off Hermione's olive-skin in twisting shades of red and gold and he could hear the steady tick-tick-tocking of a clock somewhere in the distance.
He could probably nod off like this; lazy, satiated, overfed in cozy warmth and good company, but Hermione's giving him a wry look that means she's about to jostle him into going up to the dorm for proper sleep, so he stretches out before slinking off the couch. He wishes her a good night and when she doesn't make a move to follow he can't help but cast back one last look from the foot of the stairs; she's small, nestled deep in the cushions, and her eyes were glued to the dancing firelight like there were secrets hidden somewhere in their depths, and he can't help but wonder - not for the first time, and most certainly not for the last - what it would be like to capture even a fraction of a glimpse into her mind.
But there's a yawn tugging at his lips and class in the morning so he forcibly shakes it off and dreams, instead, of sea-salt skies.