Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ His Greatest Fear ❯ Chapter 2

Chapter Two

 

Teddy had ordered so many rounds of butterbeers for himself and his friends that the table was cluttered with bottles. Victoire was a little loopy from all the drinks and Rose was positively wasted. Ross was holding her up as they all rose from the table. Rose hiccupped and laughed loudly at nothing. They had been having so much fun, that Teddy had completely forgotten to ask Victoire about that guy she was walking with earlier. He had never come into the pub, so Teddy had just forgotten. As the foursome began making their way up to the school with the remaining stragglers who had not already gone back, Hugo Weasley ran up to them. He started to speak, but his eyes widened.

“Oh, Rose, just you wait until I tell Mom and Dad about this! I'll bet you'll lose broomstick privileges and Hogsmeade trips for the rest of the year!” Hugo was grinning broadly, and Ross looked as if he were about to pummel Hugo into the side of the castle. Teddy jumped in while Rose dangled on Ross's arm, precariously close to falling to the ground at any minute.

“You'll do no such thing, Hugo! It was my fault, and the last thing I need is my best friend's girlfriend getting into trouble. Just run along, and let us take care of it. Besides, you're too young to go to Hogsmeade. What are you doing out here?” Teddy frowned. Hugo was only in his second year.

“Professor McGonagall said I could be her special assistant and help her heard the students back in.”

“You—HIC—got—giggle—detenshun agin din ya?” Rose slurred before slumping a bit against Ross.

“So that makes you even,” Teddy said before Hugo could say anything. “If she doesn't tell your mom about the detention you won't tell your mom about her having one too many butterbeers, will you?”

“I'd say it was more than one!” Hugo exclaimed, but nodded all the same.

***

About an hour later, when Ross had fallen asleep on his bed and Victoire had made sure that Rose was soundly unconscious in her bed, Teddy and Victoire decided to sit alone in the Gryffindor Common Room. They had stayed in Hogsmeade past dinner time, although they had eaten in the pub. Rosmerta's food really was amazing. Each sat in a squashy armchair smiling contentedly into the fire. The common room was otherwise deserted, except for a few first years in the corner studying. Suddenly, the thought of the boy Victoire had been with earlier crossed his mind.

“Vicky, I'm not trying to be nosey or anything—” he began.

“Oh, yes you are, because if you weren't you wouldn't have said that before asking me whatever it is. But go ahead,” she replied, grinning even more broadly than before. She smoothed an errant strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him expectantly.

“Well…I was just wondering…that is to say…” he went off into awkward silence, not knowing how to ask her who the boy was without seeming impertinent. Her eyes brightened, and Teddy began to get worried. He thought maybe he would have gone to far as to ask her and began to think of something else to take the place of the question he was going to ask when she said something that completely blew what he had been about to ask her out of the water.

“You want to know if I'll go out on a date with you, don't you? I don't see how that would be nosey, unless you were going to ensure I didn't have a boyfriend first. Well, rest assured that there is no one. Oh, I'll bet you were worried about Roger. Poor thing, he's a third year, and having a time of it in Professor Longbottom's class. I've been giving him study sessions every evening since term started. I don't understand how someone could be so inept at Herbology—oh, by the way, the answer is yes. I'll go on a date with you. I rather like you, Teddy. I'm going to bed. See you tomorrow? Oh, and can I tell my friends we're an item or no?” She said this all in one rushed breath, and Teddy just stared at her, open-mouthed. He nodded at her. She stretched, yawned, and stood up. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and with a little wave, took off up the stairs to the girls' dormitories.

Teddy sat back in the armchair, still gaping at his awkward success. He wasn't even going to ask her that. He just wanted to know who that boy was, which had turned out to be nothing more than someone she was helping out of her good charity. She really was a sweet girl. Apparently, she had liked him a lot longer than he had known. His mind went back in time to his first real memory of Victoire…

He was five years old, and hanging out with the Weasleys for Christmas. He was sitting outside, all bundled up, just watching the snow fall.

“Hey, Teddy!” a little girl's voice called to him. “Do you want to come and play with me?” Victoire was standing in front of him, her lopsided hat revealing disheveled hair. The four-year-old was covered in snowflakes.

“Sure!” he had agreed readily. “What happened to you?” he asked curiously, as children do.

“Hugo just learned to walk, and Aunt Minee told me to help him through the snow. But we kept falling down, and Hugo thought it was funny. I told Aunt Minee I wasn't going to play with Hugo in the snow anymore because he laughed at me, and Rose could play with him instead. She said he's just a baby, but he really thought it was funny!” Victoire's sweet face had screwed up and turned red with this rush of words, and when she had finished, she had begun to cry. Teddy remembered feeling helpless. He had put his arm around her, but that, too, was embarrassing.

“What did you do to her?” another outraged four-year-old female voice screeched. Rose Weasley had come around the house to see them standing there, Victoire sporting a tear-streaked face.

“It was Hugo!” Teddy had said quickly.

“Hugo isn't even here!” Rose yelled, outraged that her best friend and cousin was crying. “Come on, Vicky. I'll get you away from mean old Teddy.”

The next vivid memory Teddy had of Victoire was the train ride to Hogwarts his second year of school. It was Vicky and Rose's first. Teddy and Ross had already staked out a compartment. They had heard girl's voices outside, and had pressed their ear to the door to hear what they were saying.

“We can sit with Teddy,” the first voice said. “I'm sure he won't mind.”

“I don't know,” the second voice said, sounding uncertain. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am. Come on!” the first voice had said. The boys had tried their best to get back to their seats in time, but the compartment door burst open the Ross fell into Rose and Teddy fell into Victoire. They all toppled out into the corridor right onto the nice lady pushing the trolley. Her cart had fallen over and everyone had been covered with pasties and pumpkin juice.

“Oh, no, now look what we've done!” Victoire had cried.

“Easy enough!” Teddy had said, jumping to his feet. “Scourgify!” The mess had disappeared as quickly as it had begun. The trolley now sat upright, looking as delectable as ever. But the lady that had been pushing it lay on the floor with her eyes closed, unmoving. Curious bystanders had stopped to look, and compartment doors all over the train had begun to open with more curious onlookers peeking out at the raucous.

“Move aside! I'm a Prefect!” a loud male voice sounded through the observers. People jumped back into their compartments, but continued to keep their heads out so that they could see. “What happened here?” a flustered-looking boy named Wallace Baker asked, still pushing students out of the way.

“Well…” Vicky started to speak, but apparently it was too much for her. She burst into tears again.

“It was my fault,” Teddy volunteered. He didn't want Vicky, already emotional enough, to get into trouble. “I was opening the door and I fell out. I didn't know that Vicky and Rose were standing out here and we all fell into the trolley woman.” Wallace nodded.

“That's an understandable accident,” Wallace had replied. “Everyone should go back to their compartments while I notify the driver. He will know what to do. We should have a professor somewhere on board that can help this woman. In the meantime, please stay in your compartments!” He hurried off as students reluctantly retreated to their places.

“Come on. You can sit with us,” Teddy had said before the girls could even ask.

Teddy's mind skipped ahead in time to last Christmas. He had spent Christmas with the Weasley family and had received a most unusual gift from Vicky.

When he arrived at the Burrow, he had been greeted with the general enthusiasm of Christmas. Harry and Ginny had given him warm hugs and told him that he really needed to visit more often, even though he spent part of his summers with them every year. Ron and Hermione had also hugged him, saying they had missed him. Bill and Fleur and shaken his hand and told him to expect a wonderful present when it came time.

Molly had fixed an exceptionally wonderful Christmas dinner and they had all stuffed their faces madly until their stomachs could hold no more. Finally, they had moved to the living area where a giant tree glittering with lights stood. The lights were reflecting in the wrapping that was on all the presents. One present, however, was squirming. It was a tightly bound box with holes in it. It wasn't wrapped. It just had a big blue bow stuck to the top of it.

“I think we should give out the live one first, don't you think, Mum?” Bill asked, winking toward Teddy. Teddy knew that it could only mean that the squirmy thing was for him. He hoped it wasn't a toad. He hated frogs of any kind with a passion. He knew the box was too small to contain an owl. “Vicky,” Bill had continued. “Why don't you do the honors?”

Vicky walked to the tree and picked up the box. She took it to Teddy and gave it to him blushing all the while. He had not thought anything of her reaction to him until now. She had liked him all the way back then too!

He yanked the bow off the top and opened the box. A white kitten with brown paws and a brown nose tumbled out. Even the tip of his little ears and tail were brown. He mewed pitifully and looked up at Teddy with the bluest eyes he had ever seen. But something was different. There was a small brown spot in one of his eyes. Teddy began to laugh, and the mood lightened. Presents were handed out and everyone told each other thank you. Teddy sat out on the stoop watching his new pet play in the newly fallen snow. The door opened behind him and Vicky came out to sit beside him.

“Do you like him? I thought he was so cute with those random brown spots.” She looked at Teddy hopefully.

“Of course I like him,” he replied, laughing at the kitten who had managed to become buried in a mound of snow and was frantically digging its way out.

“What are you going to call him?” Vicky asked, breaking the silence that had ensued.

“I think I'm going to call him Mud, because he looks like he's been playing in the mud just enough to get a little dirty. What do you think, Mud?” Teddy called to the kitten. Mud had run and jumped into his lap for a quick petting and hopped back into the snow leaving little kitten footprints behind.

“Teddy, have you ever kissed a girl?” Victoire had asked. The question had come out of nowhere and taken Teddy by surprise.

“Only once,” came his reply.

“Did you really? Oh, who was it? Besides, I would have figured you would have done it loads of times.”

“Just because I've had loads of girlfriends doesn't mean I go around kissing all of them. The girl has to really mean a lot to me for me to kiss her. And it was Rose. Oh, but don't tell her I told you. She made me swear not to.”

“When did you kiss her?” Vicky asked incredulously.

“I kissed her back in third year when we dated. It was nothing—the kiss, I mean. It was nothing more than a peck. Rose meant a lot to me, and that's why I broke up with her. I didn't want to hurt her.” Victoire frowned at this statement. She had paused, and she looked to be mentally debating something.

Finally, having screwed up her courage, she had asked: “Can I kiss you, Teddy? Just to see how it is, I mean!” she had rushed on. Not waiting for his permission or reply, her lips had touched his briefly. He had been so surprised that he had forgotten to kiss her back. She broke away from him, her face bright red. “Don't ever tell,” she had whispered, and run back into the house.

And he never had.