Chapter 2
"You've been around a lot this summer," Aunt Ginny said in a quiet aside to Teddy as the chaos of dinner at the Potter house raged around her. Tonight, they were joined by Aunt Bill and Uncle Fleur and their three children. By way of showing off, James had tried to ride his toy broom downstairs to dinner, and Lily had showed up in a lime green tutu, insisting that she was going to sit on her chair like it was a lily pad and use her tongue instead of a fork.
"I . . . er . . . I'm sorry?" Teddy hazarded. It was sometimes kind of hard to tell if Aunt Ginny was upset with him, or if she had a Preemptively Angry face on just in case James or Al lit something on fire. Again.
Now she looked a little offended.
"There's nothing to be sorry about. You know you're welcome anytime, Teddy."
"Thanks, Aunt Ginny," Teddy said, with some relief.
"The munchkins are better behaved when you're around," Ginny said matter-of-factly.
"Er . . ." said Teddy again, looking around dubiously.
"Believe me," Ginny said, "Nothing is on fire and nothing is on the walls. This is a wild success."
"Right," said Teddy, privately agreeing that she had a point. He looked around. This was chaos, but it was controlled chaos, although with Louis and James in the same room, it was not likely to stay that way.
"But," Ginny continued, still quietly, to Teddy – although Teddy could practically hear Uncle Harry's efforts to eavesdrop – "I just wonder. You're not usually with us quite so much. Is everything ok with Andro- with your grandma?" Teddy belatedly realized that the look on her face was concern.
"Oh, no, Grandma's fine! Oh goodness, wow. No, she's fine. Please don't worry," Teddy realized he was babbling. "I just like being here with you is all," he finished lamely.
"Right," Aunt Ginny said with half a smile.
Teddy fervently hoped that she believed him, because of course, he was lying. From across the table, Victoire caught his eye and gave him a questioning glance. Teddy tried to shrug without drawing attention to himself, which was pretty easy, because that was the moment Dominique (who had now decided that she would hex you if you didn't call her Dom) chose to announce that she'd been accepted for a yearlong exchange program at Beauxbatons, and that she fully intended to take her fifth year in France rather than Scotland.
"You WHAT?" roared Uncle Bill, who sometimes had a bit of a volume problem.
And that was the end of any quiet side conversation Teddy might have had with Aunt Ginny. Which, all right, he was ultimately pleased with. He had a feeling she had not, in fact, believed his flimsy excuse of enjoying the collected company of the Potters and the Weasleys, particularly since he had been round this summer easily twice as often as he had been in previous summers.
The reason, of course, was Victoire. Victoire and Teddy had shared A Moment at the end of the last year at Hogwarts that had led to them sharing several more Moments since that very eventful game of strip poker.
Teddy quite enjoyed their stolen moments – in the library, in a deserted corridor, on the Hogwarts Express – but then the summer came, and suddenly Teddy realized it was a lot harder to steal moments with someone when you lived in different houses in different towns, and your family members didn't generally think of you as being friends.
That was, as Victoire had been rather severe about explaining, entirely Teddy's fault. Teddy had always thought of himself as something of an outsider in the Potter-Weasley clan, being neither, in fact, a Potter nor a Weasley. Sure, when he was home he would come round to Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny's once a week or so, and sure, he was always invited to big family events (every single Weasley wedding, for example, and always Christmas at the Burrow), and sure, he had spent a lot of his childhood turning his hair red to fit in better – but he wasn't really family.
Victoire assured him that she was well aware they were not related in any meaningful sense. It was, in fact, important that they were not related in any meaningful sense. But, Teddy had been informed, he had been the one holding himself on the outside of the family. Everyone else considered him essential to the unique alchemical mixture of personalities, hair colors, and noises that made up the Weasley-Potter gang. And while Teddy had never really thought of Victoire as a friend (although he had thought of her in other ways many, many times), he was chuffed to find out that she had always thought they had a connection. She thought he was someone worth looking up to. He did not point out that she could only think that if she didn't know him very well; he was a bit too pleased with her shy blush to ruin the moment.
"Are you saying," Teddy said slowly, "That . . . we could have been doing this for a while now?" They were having one of their Moments – this time in a deserted classroom.
"I'm saying, Theodore Lupin, that I have had a crush on you since I was thirteen years old and you were so busy being angsty that you never even noticed."
"I . . . you . . . what?"
Victoire just looked at him.
"But you were dating that guy . . . er . . . Marco? Marvin?"
"Marius, oui. So you did notice."
"Of course I noticed, Victoire. I . . . er. I notice a lot of things about you, y'see."
"I know," she said with a cheeky smile.
"Wait. You know? You knew what?"
"I knew you watched me," Victoire said, putting her hand very purposefully on Teddy's leg. "I knew you didn't want me to notice," she whispered as she leaned in. "I knew you didn't know I was watching you too . . ." And that was really the last thing she said for a while. Partly because Teddy couldn't stand to hear how much of an idiot he'd been, and partially because he really, really, really wanted to be kissing her instead of talking.
But fond reminiscing of how easy this had been at Hogwarts did not solve the material issue, which was that it was much harder to find time together during the summer. Obviously he and Victoire could talk to each other (Merlin knew the Wizarding world would never adopt something as technological as cellphones, especially when they tended to go all wonky around any sort of Protection Charms, but Teddy had a two-way mirror from Uncle Harry for as long as he could remember, and he'd had the idea before summer hols to get Professor Flitwick to show him how to Charm another pair). But seeing each other was a different matter. Especially as they had decided to keep their . . . "themness" . . . a secret.
Fortunately, this was something they had agreed upon without too much discussion.
"Victoire," Teddy had said, pulling his lips away from her neck, where they seemed to be spending a lot of time of late. She groaned and ran her hands through his hair, drawing his mouth back down and . . . "No, wait, Victoire!" He pulled away in earnest this time, so hard that he nearly fell off his seat and onto the floor of the Hogwarts Express. Definitely not the suave image he wanted Victoire to have of him.
She glared at him. "What," she huffed, tucking her hair behind her ears, "Is so important that it could not wait until we were done?" He'd never be done kissing her, that Teddy was pretty sure of, but that's not what he needed to say right then.
Nothing for it but to say it. "We uh . . . we can't tell the family about this, can we?" There was no doubt which family he meant.
"Mon dieu, non!"
"It's just – it feels too soon."
"It is too soon."
"Ok."
"Ok."
The silence stretched.
"But can I –" Teddy was about to ask if he could kiss her again anyways, but she preempted him. Quite energetically.
And that had been that. Teddy had given her one of the two-way mirrors, and they had been using them more than regularly. And perhaps Victoire had been mentioning more often to her parents how nice it would be to have dinner with the Potters and how much she appreciated Aunt Ginny's guidance as the only other adult Weasley woman to be born in generations. And perhaps Teddy had happened to drop by for dinner more often this summer than usual, and perhaps these visits happened to coincide with Victoire and Dom and Louis and Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur coming over for dinner.
And perhaps they had been finding quiet and convenient corners during their time at the Potter house for some stolen moments.
Now that Aunt Ginny had noticed something, did that mean they had to stop? Was it wrong to be sneaking around like this? Teddy did feel a touch guilty about all the sneaking.
He looked across the table at Victoire, who was talking animatedly with Dom – something about handling French boys that he certainly did not want to hear. He watched the way her hands moved, the way she gestured. He wished he could catch her hand in his own and hold it. He watched her shrug her bare shoulder – she was wearing some sort of (completely marvelous) strappy sundress thing – and wished he could run his hand down the pale column of her neck. He wanted to kiss her collarbone. He settled for finding her foot under the table with his own, rubbing up and down her ankle. Teddy watched her cheeks color slightly and fought the urge to jump across the table.
No, he did not want to stop.
And there was no reason to, he thought. They were being careful. They just wouldn't get caught, is all.
Later that night, after Lily had been put to bed, green tutu and all, and after James and Louis had briefly convinced Al that the end-of-year exams for seventh-years at Hogwarts required besting a giant fire-breathing snake, so he may as well find a garden snake in the yard to practice on now . . . sometime after the poor garden snake had been expelled from the living room, Victoire decided she needed some of Aunt Ginny's fancy tea. The kind she kept in the back cupboard, instead of the front. Shortly after, Teddy found he rather urgently needed to use the loo.
Conveniently, the door to the back cupboard was near one of the loos. Teddy listened outside for a moment without hearing anything, then opened the door and slid in silently. The light was on overhead, and Victoire leaned against one of the shelves, waiting for him. He was across the small pantry in a heartbeat, leaning over her.
He touched her shoulder, ran his finger under the strap of her dress, up the side of her neck, and tangled his hand in her hair. Her hands were around the back of his neck and he leaned in, in, until his forehead was against hers and he could feel her breath coming in little puffs of air against his cheek.
"I can't believe I get to do this," he whispered. He closed the last inch of space between them and her lips were against his and moving and whatever she was doing with her tongue was amazing and he hoped the French boys never got to experience that particular thing she had just done with her teeth to his lip . . . he groaned and pushed her against the shelf, against boxes of pasta and bags of rice and something fell but he didn't care. He pulled himself flush against her, pushing his hips into hers and his leg between hers and his hands moved to the straps of her dress as he pushed them down her shoulders so he could kiss his way down her neck. Victoire moaned – just a little, just quietly, just enough to let him know that he was doing this right – and he almost couldn't take it.
It was right about then that the door to the pantry opened.
Teddy metaphorically broke the sound barrier, he jumped away from Victoire so quickly (he did, literally, break open a canister of flour, which leaked slowly and sadly onto the floor) – but there could be no doubt about what they had been doing. Victoire edged the straps of her dress back up to her shoulders.
"Er," said Uncle Harry, somewhat urgently. "I've just been sent for biscuits." He gestured to a shelf behind Victoire. She was, Teddy was somewhat relieved to see, bright red but unrepentant. She moved closer to Teddy as Uncle Harry grabbed his biscuits and turned to leave.
"Uncle . . . um . . . Harry?" Teddy found himself saying. He wasn't sure where to go from there. 'My intentions with regards to your niece are completely honorable' seemed flagrantly false, given that they had just been caught snogging in a cupboard. 'I promise not to defile your niece' sounded archaic, and moreover Teddy had every intention of defiling Victoire if that was what she wanted. 'Please don't tell' sounded asinine and childish.
Uncle Harry didn't even turn around. "I saw nothing," he said. He walked a few more paces. "I assume if I need to be told something, I will?" he asked, glancing back at them. Teddy nodded fervently. Uncle Harry really was the world's best godfather. He let the door to the pantry swing shut again and breathed, trying to calm his racing heart, but that was just not in the cards.
"I think that probably buys us a couple of minutes, no?" Victoire said quietly. She laced her arms around his neck and jumped so that her legs were around his waist. "So where were we?" Teddy's poor heart never stood a chance.
. . .
When Bill and Fleur had left with Louis, Dom, and Victoire (who had gone to "fetch tea" for about 45 minutes), and when Teddy had finished awkwardly pretending that he wanted to hang out alone with his godparents and had left for the night, Ginny found herself curled contentedly in bed. Her wonderful husband had gone off to tuck a worn-out James and Al into bed, and she got a full fifteen minutes to herself. She had tea and an article to edit and blessed, blessed quiet.
Harry padded back into the room and, in the way of married couples everywhere, Ginny completely ignored him. She heard him wash up and brush his teeth. She heard some drawers opening and closing. She heard him come and stand at his side of the bed. And stand. And stand. And not get into bed.
She looked up at him. He looked like he had that time he had to tell her that he had accidentally let James into her Quidditch gear, and now her dragonskin gloves were dragonskin bracelets.
"Harry?"
He just stood there awkwardly.
"Out with it, Harry, dear," Ginny said, putting down her article.
Harry let out a big puff of breath. "I walked in on Teddy and Victoire in the cupboard earlier," he said all at once. "They were . . ."
"Snogging," Ginny finished for him. "Yes, I'll just bet they were." She picked her article back up.
"You knew?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Of course I knew," Ginny said, flicking a page. "He's been moony over her for ages – pardon the pun – and haven't you noticed he's round for dinner every time Bill and Fleur are? Where do you think they both keep disappearing to?"
"I," Harry began, putting a hand to his head, "I hadn't even noticed they were disappearing."
"That," Ginny said in mock sternness, sipping some tea, "Is because you never apply your discerning Auror's eye to matters on the home front. Fleur and I, on the other hand – "
"Fleur knows too?"
"Of course Fleur knows. She's French and a Weasley and a woman."
"What about Bill?"
"Bill's as clueless as you are, dear."
"Should we tell him?" Harry had always, for some reason, been just slightly afraid of Bill, and Ginny thought it was adorable that his voice still went just a little higher than usual at the thought of having to tell her older brother that his godson was . . . well, whatever Teddy and Victoire were doing.
Ginny pretended to think about it just to see Harry sweat a little. "Of course not," she said finally, watching Harry's shoulders sag just a little in relief, "He'll either find out from Fleur, or he'll find out the same way you did."
"Or maybe Teddy and Victoire will wise up, stop sneaking around, and Teddy will ask Bill's permission to date his daughter before they get caught again?"
"Not bloody likely, Mr. Potter," said Ginny.
And she was right.
Author's Note: Who knows, if inspiration suddenly strikes like lightning again at . . . let's see . . . 12:37am on a weeknight, there might be another chapter someday. Also there might not. This is just a lovely little fluff that I like thinking about from time to time.