The Fool, Upright - Teddy Lupin/Victorie Weasley

Chapter 21: Detention Again

The next morning Victorie was being inundated with questions on her way to breakfast.

Despite having stayed up much later than Victorie, her two dorm mates had somehow mustered up enough perkiness to press her on the matter of where she had been last night, and why she had come back so late.

"It can't have been one of your usual secret outings." Delilah reasoned. "Whatever it was obviously took its toll on Teddy. He was not his usual self yesterday." She looked past the redhead, over at Maya on the other side, for confirmation.

"And when she came back they were in a huge row." Maya recalled. Victorie couldn't help but feel like she was exaggerating a fair bit, but let it slide. "It must have been something different... something really bad." She tugged at the girl's sleeve. "What on earth were you doing, Victorie?"

In an effort to prevent the girls from spinning some extreme lie, she decided to just be honest. As well as the fact that she was now finding herself in a friendly relationship with the girls, and she would prefer to keep it that way.

She opened her mouth to speak, the girls held their breaths in anticipation, and then Victoire proceeded to go through the events of the night before. She went through everything; Ethan and her plan; the encounter with the tentacula plant; the spell; the professor reprimanding them and sending them back to their common rooms overseen by the Screechsnap.

Maya looked as if she had sniffed something bad. "I can't believe you two!"

Delilah reflected a mix of awe and distaste. "Yeah, I mean what were you thinking? Did you really suppose you wouldn't get caught?"

"And to steal from the Greenhouses of all places! Professor Longbottom is such a nice teacher, he does not deserve that." Maya said.

"Guys!" Victorie interrupted and put a hand on each of their shoulders. "Remember who came up with the idea? Ethan. Take up your grievances with him."

The girls looked at each other, and she could see the cogs begin to spin in another direction. It wasn't exactly fair. Victorie was as much of a culprit as him, but she still didn't feel like she should be the lone target of all of their judgement.

"I didn't know Ethan had such a wicked streak inside him." Maya said.

"He's always had a weird moral compass, to be fair. But stealing?" Delilah pulled the door to the Great Hall open and the three girls stepped inside. "And dragging you into it too?" She shook her head in disappointment.

To Victorie's surprise, the two of them squeezed her into a hug at once. After the initial shock had settled on her face, she smiled bashfully.

She felt pleased. If there was one good thing to come out of this, it was that she had a feeling she wouldn't see Delilah playing cupid between Ethan and her again anytime soon.

Then Maya's voice quieted into a whisper as they got closer to where a blue-haired boy was sitting at the Gryffindor table. "But so, why were you and Teddy so upset with each other yesterday? It took him ages to come out of our dorm after he went in there with you. And when he did, he went straight to bed. What were you arguing about?"

Victorie didn't answer, but a little chuckle escaped her. She sat down next to Teddy and Jamie without another word. As she did so, Delilah and Maya shared an unnerved look between them, but she didn't care. She let the girls think that she was in a vicious dispute with the boy. It was better than them knowing the truth of what had happened between them and having to try and understand it well enough to explain it.