Moonlight

Chapter Nine

Touch of the Veela

Ted had been reading for a while, and realized with slight panic that he'd lost track of the time. His panic increased marginally when he checked the time and saw that he'd already missed half of lunch.

He marked his spot in the 1976 journal, stuck it back in the ANSWERS box, and transfigured that back into a gold Gobstone then stuck the Gobstone in his trouser pocket. He emerged into the Great Hall, looking around the Gryffindor table for Victoire. But he did not see her, and figured she had already eaten and gone to sign out of the castle to go to Hogsmeade, like she said she would, for whatever reason that might be.

Rodger had already eaten as well, but he was still sitting at the Gryffindor table, leafing through a book.

Ted sat down across from him and helped himself to some beef stew, not taking very much as he continued to be nervous about the upcoming events of the afternoon with Victoire in Hogsmeade.

"Nice to see you've crawled out of your cave," said Rodger, not looking up from his reading.

"Nice to see you're none the worse for wear after your rendezvous this morning," Ted replied lightly. "How did that go, by the way?"

A bashful smile crept up on Rodger's face, though he kept his eyes on his book. "It was alright," he said quietly.

Now Ted knew for a fact that Cecilia Bell was having a different effect on Rodger than most girls did. Normally Rodger was one to "kiss and tell", not sparing Ted of a single detail. This time however Rodger's post-date report was meek and mild, and Ted felt a ray of hope that maybe Rodger had at last discovered that there was more to girls than looks.

Although looks weren't a bad thing, he added to himself as he thought again of his own rendezvous with Victoire. The elation was short-lived however, and was soon replaced with the fluttery butterflies in his stomach once more. His hand trembled as he brought his spoonful of stew to his mouth. Chewing and swallowing, he hoped to distract his thoughts from his anxiety by taking a peek at what Rodger was reading.

From what he could see (the text appeared upside down to him, of course) it was a long list of things, but the print wasn't large enough for him to see what the list might contain from where he was sitting across from Rodger. Finally he decided to simply ask, "What're you reading?"

Rodger raised his eyes from the book at last and looked at him. "Er...I borrowed that book you got from the library," he said, closing the book and showing Ted the cover: Sourcebook on Rare and Common Inborn Abilities by Michael Corner.

"You mean you nicked it," said Ted.

"I've a good reason," said Rodger.

Ted grinned. "And what might that be?" he asked, taking another bite of stew.

"I was trying to work out what makes your nose prickle. Hang on--" He flipped back through some previous pages in the book. "I've got a few questions to ask you while I've got you here." He stopped at the beginning of the list and said, "Right. Okay. We'll start with substances. Does it prickle around poison?"

"I dunno."

Rodger withdrew a labeled glass phial from within his bag and waved it mere inches in front of Ted's nose. He came very close to hitting him with it. "Anything?"

Ted shook his head. "I told you," he said as Rodger stowed the phial away and crossed something off a scrap of parchment with his quill. "It's something living that I can sense. A person."

"This person," said Rodger, and his tone suggested that he remained skeptical about the theory, "could have been carrying poison."

"If it was poison on her that I was sensing, and I'd been able to sense it all the way from the dormitory, then I think my nose would've started prickling the moment I stepped into the Great Hall from the poison in your bag," Ted pointed out. "What was that stuff anyway?"

"Arsenic," said Rodger, digging around in his bag and pulling out another labeled glass phial.

"Where'd you get it?"

"Nicked it from Professor Zabini's private stores," said Rodger, checking the phial's label. "How about this?" He waved it in Ted's face.

"No," said Ted jadedly.

"Okay, not Veritaserum, either," said Rodger, scratching the parchment with his quill.

"Rodge, I'm telling you, it's not a substance." He checked his watch and bolted down the rest of his stew. "I've got to go meet Victoire now," he said.

"Oh, very well," Rodger sighed. And then he smiled a rather devilish smile. "Have fun. And er...I believe the French say bon chance?"

"Thanks," said Ted, blushing furiously as he left the Great Hall. On the way out, he stopped in a bathroom to check his reflection in the mirror. As he bent over a sink, he ran his fingers through his brown hair a couple of times, and considered changing it to blonde. Did Victoire fancy blondes? He also wondered if he should tune up the color of his eyes. Brown was such a dull color all around. After a moment, he reached a decision, screwed up his eyes as if he were trying really hard to remember something, and changed his brown eyes that were so like his father's to a deep shade of sapphire, and his brown hair so like his father's (but without the gray) to an acid green.

He liked it, but he wondered if he ought to change his outfit a little to go along with it.

He made a pit-stop to his dormitory upstairs. He stepped out of it a few minutes later in dark blue jeans, dragon skin boots, a suede jacket whose color he could change at will (the color he had it set to now was acid green, like his hair) and a Weird Sisters tee shirt underneath. Evidently he'd inherited his mother's taste in music and bands.

As he stepped outside after checking out of the castle, and walked into the afternoon sunlight, he pulled out the new enchanted sunglasses that Albus Potter had given him for his birthday. The lenses were black now, but when he slid them on, Ted selected the same shade of sapphire as his eyes for them, and they promptly changed color accordingly.

~

He was to meet her outside the post office. On the way, he bought a large bar of Honeydukes' best chocolate.

As he approached the post office, he saw her there.

Standing there.

Waiting.

For him.

And he thought of his father, and how from what he'd read so far in his journal, he had apparently had a huge crush on Lily, the girl who grew up to be his godfather's mother. Although the way things were going, that possibility didn't seem possible at all....

His foot caught on the wheel of a cart, and he fell to his hands and knees in the middle of the street. "I'm alright, I'm good," he said as he rose to his feet and brushed himself off, wishing that Victoire's giggling didn't make him blush even harder than he already was. Flusteredly he examined the chocolate, and was pleased to see that it was unharmed by his accident.

"Hello, Ted," said Victoire, amusement dancing in her eyes. The sound of her voice in his ears was like tasting dark chocolate on his tongue.

"Hi," he replied sheepishly, massaging the back of his neck. There it was again: that feeling that he was suddenly somehow in the middle of doing something stupid!

She looked absolutely wonderful today in a forest green corduroy cap and jacket, over a brown spaghetti-strap and frilly brown skirt that reached down to her knees. Her brown, stiletto boots reached halfway up her shins, and around her neck she had tied a long green-striped scarf. In her hands she clutched the handle of a brown handbag. The skirt and the scarf fluttered fluidly in the spring breezes that blew through today. He noticed there was writing on her spaghetti-strap, and only hesitated reading it because it meant looking at her breasts. But then he figured she would understand. He was only reading her shirt, after all.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that it bore the legend, "The Weird Sisters" in fake rhinestones, just as his tee shirt did (although not in rhinestones).

Apparently Victoire had read Ted's shirt while he'd read hers, because the very next thing that happened was they both looked up at each other and said at the exact same time: "You like Weird Sisters, too? That's awesome!"

They paused, realizing what had just happened.

Then Victoire laughed her magnificently mellifluous laugh, lightly covering her mouth with her elegant fingers.

No amount of metamorphosing could hide the rising, recurring shade of scarlet in Ted's cheeks. "Erm...chocolate?" he offered meekly, showing her the big unopened bar of Honeydukes' best chocolate that he had just bought.

"Ooh, yes, please!" said Victoire excitedly. "We can walk and talk and eat it all at the same time!"

"Where are we going?" Ted asked, his mouth going dry as he unwrapped the chocolate bar with his long, tremulous fingers.

"I thought we might take a walk up to the Shrieking Shack," said Victoire, sweeping a few strands of her hair out of her face.

Ted stopped walking, his whole body inexplicably paralyzed.

Victoire noticed he had stopped and stopped too. She turned to face him, her fine brow slightly creased. "That alright with you?" she asked rather tentatively.

Ted stared at her. A disbelieving half-smile tugged upward at one side of his mouth. "What's--er--What's the attraction?"

Victoire gazed thoughtfully at him a moment.

Ted gazed back, trying to read her thoughts through her eyes. But doing that only seemed to lead to the beauty of her blue-gray eyes distracting him.

Then a smile crept up on her face. It was a dreamy sort of smile. It amused Ted, and he listened as she finally replied softly, "I don't know...I just...had this strange...feeling you'd want to go."

Ted wondered if she knew...if her father, Bill, had ever told her that his father had been a werewolf. He might have mentioned it while explaining to her the scars that etched his otherwise handsome face...perhaps when she'd been small and had asked about them....

His thoughts started to drift back to when Victoire had been small. He had first met her when he was six and she was four. They had only seen each other a couple of times then, and Ted hadn't thought much of her then. Back then she had just been the four-year old second child of four redheaded sisters.

"If you don't want to go--" she began, pulling him out of his reverie.

"No, no!" he said quickly. "I.... I do want to go." He laughed softly. "You could say you read my mind."

She smiled and Ted glowed inside.

He had to admit to himself that he much preferred a quiet walk away from the hustle and bustle of Hogsmeade. "Er...shall we go, then?" he said with a broad yet nervous smile, unconsciously touching her arm to steer her in the direction of the Shrieking Shack. When he realized he was touching her he took his hand away, cleared his throat, and went back to unwrapping the chocolate bar.

Victoire, however, seemed unperturbed by Ted's action. Either that or she hadn't noticed. "Well...I just thought it'd be something nice and different anyway," she was saying of her idea to go to the Shrieking Shack. "I mean why just go to the lake to escape? Or worse: where everyone else goes?"

"Where's that?" Ted asked, peeling the wrapper apart and breaking off a chunk to offer Victoire.

"Oh you know," she said as she accepted the chocolate offering. "The tea shop." She popped the chocolate in her mouth.

Ted laughed. "You're referring to Madam Puddifoot's?"

"Yes," said Victoire, laughing too.

"Oh, and by the way: Happy birthday," said Ted, suddenly remembering that today was Victoire's fifteenth birthday.

Victoire grinned rather mischeivously. "Thank you, Ted. I was wondering if you'd remember."

There was a silence during which Ted broke off a piece of chocolate for himself and ate it. However, as they made their way side by side up the main street of Hogsmeade, he found that the silence was not awkward, as he'd first thought it must be. It was very relaxing. Very comfortable. And for the first time, Ted realized, with a rush of exhilaration to his brain, he was actually comfortable and entirely at ease with himself in Victoire's presence. He wondered if Victoire felt the same in his presence. He genuinely hoped so, as they continued in their pleasant silence, sharing the bar of chocolate between them. The feeling remained all during their quiet trek through the town, all the way to the outskirts and up the narrow path through the thicket.

Victoire took a deep breath of fresh air as they emerged from the other side of the trees into the open air. Here the breezes whipped more quickly and fervently. Ted watched the breezes play with her blazing, rippling, shoulder-length red hair. And he felt a melancholy wash over him, wishing desperately that he could be the wind instead of himself, free to play uninhibited with Victoire's lovely hair...even touch her cheek....

"How did you know I was a choco-phile?" she asked, reaching over and breaking off another small bit of chocolate from the bar in Ted's hand.

Ted swallowed his own bit. "A choco-what?"

"Choco-phile," Victoire repeated, flashing him a grin. "I made it up, but it means 'chocolate-lover'. You know, like ailurophile means, 'cat-lover'."

"Oh, yeah. Clever. Er...I didn't know actually. I just er...happen to be a choco-phile myself."

"Really? That's smashing. Right, so we've got that in common, and the Weird Sisters.... So far so good, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

They reached the crest of the hill upon which the Shrieking Shack sat. At the sight of it Ted could not take another step. He could only stand there and stare at it in awe. He thought he saw Victoire stop ahead of him again and turn to look at him...he thought he heard her say something to him--his name, maybe--but he didn't hear her...really....

There it was....

Many full moons his father had spent there...transforming...fighting it until giving up in the end...as he had always been forced to do....

Were the scratches and tears on the walls still there...? Or the broken chairs, tables, mirrors, sofas, and wardrobes...? The trapdoor in the floor...and the tunnel below...?

His feet found the ability to move once more and carried him towards the fence surrounding the house. When he reached it he peered through the wire at the house. An urge was growing deep inside of him: an urge to enter the Shack, everything within probably thick with the dust of time.

An odd wave of nostalgia arose in him.

"Ted?" he heard Victoire say gently. He felt her touch his shoulder, and he shivered pleasurably at the sensation.

He continued to stare wistfully at the house. "My father was a werewolf," he said quietly. He expected her hand to leave his shoulder at this, to recoil.

But she did not however, and this emboldened him, so he turned at last to look at her, and asked, "Did you know?"

Victoire was looking up at him with concern. She lowered her gaze. "I think my dad told me when I was little. He was telling me about the scars on his face."

Ted was agog. "Even you knew?"

Her eyes snapped up to meet his widened ones. "You didn't?"

Ted turned away and scratched the side of his face with his free hand (his other still held the chocolate). "Not until recently. Harry--my godfather--he gave me a box of some of my dad's old things, and...that's where I learned it.... My grandmum...she never wanted me to know much about my dad... I guess, because he was a werewolf. Or maybe partly because of that. Anyway, so, Harry had to give me that stuff in secret. And I learned that--that while he was at school, every full moon, to keep him and others safe, Dumbledore had him transform in the Shrieking Shack--that's why people called it that: they'd hear him screaming in pain from the transformation--it's very painful to turn into one, see--and so...they'd hear the screaming and think the screams were from violent spirits." He plunged into an explanation of the process his father went through for the full moons during his first four years at Hogwarts. He decided not to bring up what happened once Remus' friends had figured out how to become Animagi.

"Oh," she said when he'd finished his anecdote. She took her hand away from his shoulder and stood beside him at the fence, gazing at the Shrieking Shack.

Ted returned to contemplating it as well, and he still felt the pull to enter inside of it. In his mind he thought he could hear the howls of pain his father had made inside those walls all those years ago....

His musings were disrupted when his nose started prickling. "Not now," he muttered irritably, rubbing his nose with his free hand.

"'Not now' what?" Victoire asked, peering curiously over at him.

"Nothing...er...my nose, it.... Well, it prickles sometimes, and my mate Rodger and I are trying to figure out why but, we haven't got anything yet." Normally he would have been too nervous to share something like this with her. He'd have been too afraid that she'd think he was really weird. But now that he'd blurted out, "My father was a werewolf" he figured that at this point he could tell her anything without fear of ridicule or embarrassment. He found the feeling this realization evoked in him to be a very liberating one.

"Hmmm," said Victoire thoughtfully. "What've you figured out so far? Anything?"

"Well, the best theory so far is that it's an inborn alarm system. However, for what, exactly, remains a mystery."

"It isn't because of me, is it?"

Ted was amused to hear the teasing in her voice. "No," he laughed. "Of course not. Although if it were, that would mean you wouldn't be able to sneak up on me."

"And that'd make things a lot less fun."

"Oh. Planning something, are we?" Ted raised his eyebrows.

"Possibly. Maybe I'll tell you after I've had some more chocolate." She broke off a particularly large piece, and then tore off smaller pieces and popped them one by one in her mouth.

The bar was nearly gone now. They began to walk around the fence surround the Shrieking Shack, and as they did, they continued talking and teasing each other good-naturedly as they leisurely made their way. They finished the rest of the chocolate off as they did so. Then Ted stuck the empty wrapper in the pocket of his acid green suede jacket. At this point he hardly cared that his nose was prickling incessantly, he was enjoying himself and Victoire's company so much.

They stopped at the fence's front gate. They stood there, side by side, facing the house in tranquil silence, hearing only the breeze and the leaves as they shook in the trees nearby and the creaks and moans that they caused the Shrieking Shack to make. These were sounds that Ted found pleasantly peaceful. He and Victoire stood so close together that he could feel his knuckles just barely touching hers. He discovered the sensation filled him with tension, but the tension was a good kind of tension--suspenseful, like the moment between seeing the bludger come after you and taking a swing at it with all of your might, hoping you hear the satisfying sound of the bat colliding with the ball, sending it far away in the opposite direction.

And then Victoire began to sing, and Ted turned his head and watched her, transfixed:

"Pas de tendresse
Et pas de joie
Loin d'ici
Loin de toi
Rien de plus triste
Que mes soupirs
Lorsque vient le jour
Où il me faut partir

Chanson d'enfance
Tu vis toujours dans mon cœur
Toi le plus douce
Toi le plus tendre"

Delight filled Ted so much that there was hardly any room left to allow air for him to breathe. "That was.... That was.... I can't say what that was, but I loved it...." Her voice in song was something ethereal and transcendent, such as he had never heard before in his life. Although she did not turn her face towards him, he continued to watch her, his eyes tracing every gentle curve and line in the shape of the face he found so attractive, committing each one to memory. As he did so he subconsciously turned the rest of his body towards her.

"Maman sang it to me when I was little," Victoire whispered as she continued to gaze upon the Shrieking Shack that still groaned faintly in the breezes. "It's from a Muggle musical, but she liked the tune very much." She paused. "It's a love song...." At last she turned fully and faced him.

Ted's heart began thudding wildly like the fist of a beast raging to be released from its cage.

She was peering up at his acid green hair. She reached up and lightly brushed a few acid green bangs out of his face. Tiny sparks erupted wherever her fingertips made a light touch to his forehead. "I notice you changed your hair again from the last time I saw you."

"You like it?" Ted asked, wondering why he was whispering too, when they were all alone with not a soul to hear them....

"I do."

Oddly enough, these two words evoked in Ted's mind the fleeting image of her saying those same two words to him, except in a silvery white dress with a delicate, transparent veil over her face....

"I did my eyes too." He became slightly fearful when he saw her frown at this.

"You changed your eyes too?"

"Er...yes."

"Let me see."

Slowly, Ted reached up and removed his sunglasses. He looked down at them as he held them in his hands, before raising his eyes to meet Victoire's.

Victoire frowned still as she scanned the new deep sapphire hue of his irises.

Ted's fear increased. "What's wrong?" he asked, his mouth starting to go dry again.

"I like your eyes the way they always are. That brown, you know? They're so...endearing."

"Endearing?"

"And charming. Let's not forget charming."

"Oh...of course not."

Victoire tilted her head slightly, her eyes still penetrating his as much as his were penetrating hers...that lovely shade of brown...like the tops of two cups of hot chocolate with a black marshmallow floating on end in the middle.

Chocolate.

How he loved it.

Brown wasn't really such a dull color.... It was, after all, chocolate's best known color....

"Would you change them back?" she breathed. "Please?"

Ted obeyed at once. He screwed up his eyes, and returned them to their original brown, their original umber softness. He met them with Victoire's again to see her reaction.

Her reaction was not disappointing.

She smiled.

She closed her eyes.

She stepped toward him.

He stepped toward her....

And closed his eyes....

Vaguely, he heard a dangling, teetering shutter on the Shrieking Shack break off and fall, scaring a flock of birds in the field beside them into taking flight....

~

They had done nothing with their hands. It had all been in their mouths, which had opened up immediately to each other mere seconds after making contact. They had stood there as if the universe had stopped, as if they had all the time in the world. As if it was the contact that their lips had made that had caused the flock of birds to take flight, rather than the shutter breaking off and falling off of the Shrieking Shack.

In reality the kiss had lasted only five minutes. But five minutes is long for a kiss. And a French kiss at that.

Actually, it hadn't started out as a French kiss, however, that's how it certainly ended up.

They returned to Gryffindor tower holding hands.

"I have to go meet Rodger in the library," he said as they stood before the portrait hole, her hands clasped in his. He was glad the Fat Lady was asleep in her portrait.

"See you at dinner, then?"

"Of course." He kissed her farewell on the cheek, and then left for the library, aware of an ecstatic new spring in his step.

"How'd it go?" Rodger asked him sleepily as he sat down across from him at a table in the library. He glanced up from the big herbology textbook and the note-filled parchment he was going over in time to see Ted smile bashfully, as Rodger had done earlier that day at lunch when Ted had asked him about his brief excursion with Cecilia Bell.

"It was alright," he said quietly.

~

The candlelight vigil to honor this wondrous day on which Harry Potter had thwarted Lord Voldemort once and for all seventeen years ago was held that evening outside as always. The students, teachers, and staff all stood around the castle in a ring, facing it, each other them holding a lit candle in silence for a length of five minutes. The Slytherins were still a little iffy about this, even after seventeen years, but they participated like everyone else.

Ted held his candle in a slightly sweaty hand. He stared up at the stars, and the pulchritude of the celestial bodies brought a smile to his face as they glittered like diamonds against the dark violet backdrop of the late evening-early night sky. He thought of his parents, as he always on this day, and as always, he thought he could see their faces in the pattern of the silvery rhinestones that sparkled elegantly overhead.

Beside him, Victoire slipped her free hand in his and gently squeezed.

Ted looked quickly at her, and she at him. They held each other's gazes, and smiled. Then they looked together back up at the star-studded heavens. A distinct sting welled up behind Ted's eyes, and there was a triumphant sort of pounding in his heart.

Like tonight, it seemed that May 2nd was always a breathtakingly beautiful night.

~

The dark dormitory was pierced with a single point of light from the tip of Ted's wand. He was the sole one awake, and presently he was engrossed in Remus Lupin's personal account of 1976.