author's note: this basically sucks and is incoherent and has caps and run on sentences (on purpose) and italics; i wrote it when i was bored and in africa and wanted to write depressing fics, so yeah. and it's for Vicky (blurs of red and blonde) because she's perfect and it's her birthday.

but anyway, this fic is a mess and i was a mess and it's nonlinear because i wasn't thinking straight when i wrote it, so don't read it.

disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter; nor do I own the title or the song by Coldplay, thankyou.

if you could read my mind
(what a tale my thoughts could tell)
victoire + teddy + oc

-;

when she was just a girl
she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
and the bullets catch in her teeth

-—coldplay / paradise

-;

i.

She likes to forget her name.

The name Victoire Weasley used to give her pride, back when she was a vainglorious little girl who expected everyone to fall at her feet and bow down because she was the daughter of the good-looking, but oh so tragically scarred eldest Weasley, and the beautiful quarter-Veela who was in the Triwizard Tournament. Oh, and the small—insignificant—fact that she's Harry Potter's oldest niece.

OKAY SO MAYBE IT'S NOT INSIGNIFICANT; MAYBE I'M INSIGNFICANT —

She used to greet the crowds with an adoring smile and blow kisses at them, twirl her golden curls and bat her butterfly lashes.

She used to be on top.

Now Victoire Weasley—the blonde with dancing azure eyes and pouty lips—is going, going, gone. She's been replaced by a screaming girl in a shiny white room.

And it's all because of him.

ii.

She's known him all her life—literally.

From the moment she was brought home from the hospital and Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny brought their godson to meet 'Toire, it's been Teddy&Victoire, Victoire&Teddy—they were a part of each other.

"Where's Victoire?" her mother would sigh in exasperation.

"Ask Teddy," someone would reply.

They were best friends from childhood through the—turbulent, she may add—teenage years, and even during the Two Years In Hell, as she dubbed her sixth and seventh year of school—the years after Teddy graduated.

She presses another kiss to his forehead, it becomes more and more feverish – STAY WITH ME THIS TIME, JUST STAY, PLEASE DON'T GO BACK TO HER – but she doesn't say anything, and she wakes up alone, as usual.

I can't stay, 'Toire, he pleads. You know that. I have a son on the way – and I love Elise, please, just listen to me—

Get out, she screams at him, I hate you. The words blend together—IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou—until that's all she hears. Get out! He grabs his clothes and is out the door in a minute.

He'll be back tomorrow, she knows. And she'll let him in, she knows this as well.

iii.

Once upon a time, Elise Marie Larson was her friend. Her best friend, of course. Except for Teddy—but everything in life came second to Teddy, didn't it?

Once upon a time they used to have slumber parties, they used to talk about their futures – about their dreams. "I want to marry someone who travels," Elise says one time, absently picking a bit of fluff off Victoire's perfect pink duvet.

"I just want to be in love," Victoire admits – she doesn't say to whom, but she sees blue hair and clumsiness and Victoire Isabelle Lupin in her future.

She was too naïve, wasn't she?

"Come on!" she'd cajole that night at Lily Collin's party. "Dance with Teddy." What she meant to say was – dance with Teddy so that he doesn't … wander.

But she comes back five minutes later to see her best friends locked in a kiss that could melt steel – WHAT, WHAT, WHAT? NO, NO, NO! THIS ISN'T WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN – but of course they don't hear her heart breaking.

Thanks for setting me up with Teddy, Vic, Elise says, sitting across from Victoire in the coffee booth. I don't know where I'd be without him – he makes me so happy. She looks so perfect—not Victoire's kind of perfect, but her kind—that Victoire wants to just break her bubble.

WELL GUESS WHAT, EL? YOUR HUSBAND'S BEEN FUCKING ME FOR THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF – LONGER THAN YOU'VE BEEN MARRIED, she yells, screams, inside her head but she can't say it—mostly because there's a chance that Teddy will leave her for good and Teddy is her drug and she'd rather be his dirty little secret than lose him for good.

iv.

"Teddy, please don't marry her – please, I love you."

I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, ILOVEYOU, ILOVEYOU, ILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOU, she's shouting but he can't seem to hear her.

"She's you best friend, 'Toire, and you can't run away with the groom the night before the wedding."

"But – you said you loved me last week," she pleads. She knows she looks pathetic with snot running down her face, smeared mascara, and hair like a bird's nest – her mother would faint – but she can't bring herself to care right now.

"Victoire—I love Elise," Teddy says, and it's like he's breaking her all over again. "Goodbye."

(He's at her apartment a week after the honeymoon. She lets him in.)

v.

This is the last time, she tells him. Me or her.

Victoire, he pleads, don't do this—

No! I'm tired of taking backseat to Elise while you play perfect families, while you're still fucking me on the side, even though you have a child on the way – she screams this at him, MAKE UP YOUR MIND, TEDDY.

He's quiet for too long.

She looks at him then – with his hair, now a subdued brown, eyes the same color, skin the color of a sick person's, and yells – YOU'RE NOT EVEN TEDDY. NOT THE TEDDY THAT I FELL IN LOVE WITH.

But then she looks at herself—dirty blonde – not dirty-blonde – unkempt hair, eyes the color of broken glass, sans sparkle. LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME, she screams, LOOK AT WHAT I'VE BECOME—AT WHAT WE'VE BECOME!

She shoves him out the door, apparates to the nearest Muggle bar and fucks the first man who says hello to her.

vi.

Sometimes she really hates Molly Weasley (The Second). Most people would agree with her, but that was because of her superior attitude or cutting remarks or all-around bitchiness. Victoire just hates her because she is right. "You love him," she had said when she saw the new Golden Couple—Teddy&Elise—being just so damn cute that everyone forgot about the (now distant) Teddy&Victoire.

"He's my best friend," she offers.

"But you love him," Molly presses. "You love him so much that it hurts."

"Fuck off!" Victoire yells because Molly was right and that was a little bit too close to home for her.

"I know," Molly says simply. "Lysander."

"What did you do?" Victoire marvels at Molly's strength because everyone knows about the Molly&Lysander&Lucy debacle. As if to prove her point, the happy couple in question runs by.

"Nothing," Molly shrugs. "It just hurt."

"I know," she says, "I know."

IT HURTS SO MUCH, OH GOD –

vii.

She runs.

Victoire Weasley packs her bags and runs—where? No one, with the exception of Molly who won't say a word, just that she's happy now – with a dirty look in Teddy's direction – knows.

People expect her to go to France, of course. After all, she's Victoire Isabelle Weasley and she's nothing but predictable—she's not wild and fiery like Roxanne, and she's nowhere near as rebellious as Lily, so there's no way she'd go anywhere.

IF THEY COULD SEE ME NOW, she thinks savagely, as she chops of her long Rapunzel curls. PRETTY PRINCESS VICTOIRE IS TIRED OF EVERYTHING. She dyes her hair brown – not too light, not too dark – and steps on the plane that will take her somewhere … anywhere that wasn't with Teddy and Mrs. Lupin and Baby Lupin.

They think she's a coward for running away, but she's never been braver.

viii.

He misses her.

He misses her like the moon misses the sun as they playfully dance away from each other in the sky, as much as Cleopatra and Marc Antony and all other star-crossed lovers had loved each other, and more.

So, Elise says one night, three months after Victoire disappeared, what should we name our daughter?

I don't know, he says miserably while he thinks of her.

What about Victoria? Elise suggests innocently – too innocently.

He spills his wine on the crème carpet. Uh – no thanks. How 'bout Alexandra?

No, I like Vic, she starts – he can't, he can't let her say the name again because it's too close for comfort so he silences her with his lips. Wait – Teddy, seriously, we have to— but he places hurried kiss after hurried kiss on her lips and she gives in.

It's perfect – except for the fact that he's imagining brown eyes as blue and brown hair as golden and pale skin as Shea butter and—"Oh, Victoire!"

What? Elise says, her voice like cool poison.

Teddy knows he's screwed.

ix.

She still gets the Daily Prophet delivered.

Every day, an owl swoops into her kitchen with the view of the Pacific, and drops off the paper, before flying off again. Every day, she reads the article about the missing eldest Weasley. Each day, the claims get more ridiculous than the last.

She and Molly, the only family member that she still talks to with any regularity—or at all, joke about how ludicrous the ideas that she "joined a brothel"; "became part of a secret society for resurrecting Voldemort"; and even "wasn't a Weasley at all but the product of an affair with Draco Malfoy".

Every day, after reading the paper, she promises to cancel her subscription. But the next day, she still gets her paper.

Today, however, the paper is different – 'DIVORCE BETWEEN ELISE LARSON—son of famous wrocker, Paul Larson—AND TEDDY LUPIN—godson of even-more famous wizard, Harry Potter'. And her heart starts pounding so loudly that she can hear it blocking out all noise—Ba-Bump, Ba-Bump, BABUMP—because no matter how many times she says it: Really, Moll, I'm over him. He makes her heart pound.

She wonders why – after all, she and Teddy were in love and hopes that Teddy finally manned up and told her the truth.

ix. (and a half)

"Victoire?"

"What?"

"I'm marrying Elise."

"I thought you loved me."

Silence.

-;

"Victoire?"

"What?"

"Teddy proposed."

"Oh…great. I'm – very – happy for you."

"Great! I just have one favour."

Sigh. "What?"

"Can you be my Maid of Honour – you know, best friends and all."

Eye twitch. "Sure…best friends."

"Cool! Love you!"

-;

"Moll."

Chewing bubble gum. "What?"

"Teddy proposed to her."

"Oh God!" Sympathetic glance.

"And I'm the Maid of Honour."

"What are you going to do?" Wary look.

"…Nothing."

x.

Elise, please – listen, and he's pleading even if he knows that this—all of this marriage to Elise is a sham, he's Teddy Lupin and he's nothing if not persistent.

How long? she shoots at him and he wonders how to answer.

Almost two years, he replies, but I gave her – that – up for you.

You shouldn't have to give anything up for me because you shouldn't have been with her in the first place! Get out!

Ellie –

Don't you dare use that name with me! Get out!

He leaves in a swirl of hurt words and passion – and as he leaves, rain falls—which is unsurprising because it's England, and he thinks of movies he's watched with Victoire where people walk towards their loves in the rain, not away from them—but maybe he is walking towards his love, his real one.

And he Apparates, not even knowing the destination, but it's in the wind – Victoire.

He's going home.

xi.

There's a knock on her door, and she opens it, expecting the pizza delivery guy.

She wasn't expecting a blue-haired, clumsy, dancing eyed, half-werewolf with a cheerful (and heartfelt) apology and flowers.

She slams the door – she's done this time. She takes a step away from the door and t's like trying to walk through wet tar—but then she takes another, and another and soon she's at the opposite end of her apartment, and, oh, she can hear him calling, Victoire, Victoire, please talk to me! I'm sorry.

I LOVE YOU, she wants to say—but she doesn't, she doesn't.

The pounding of the door is incessant, and finally it stops. It's over.

All of it: Teddy&Victoire, Teddy&Elsie, Elsie&Victoire.

And all she wants to do is fling open the door and run after him, screaming, I LOVE YOU, TEDDY. PLEASE, COME BACK. But she knows that Teddy Remus Lupin is nothing but trouble and she loves him. She loves him so much that she lets him walk away from her and never look back—(but he does look back, he does)—and she's done.

xii.

She likes to pretend that she's over him.

Really, I am, Moll. He's hurt me too much, she says.

We both know you aren't, Vic, Molly replies.

I know, I know.

She hears him at night—calling her name in a whisper of longing—and he's the reason she can't sleep. In her dreams, reality blurs with fantasy, shapes and colours change, but Teddy is always Teddy and she is always Victoire, and nothing ever gets between them.

There are no other magical people near her, she supposes, so she can't get a Dreamless Draught, or get ingredients for it. She could ask Molly for it, she reasons, but then Molly would ask why, and the why part is the part she hopes to avoid.

I'd like these, she says to a Pharmacist. The strongest you have.

These small pills are her salvation—her only saviour from the nights of endless torment and soon she takes eight a day.

They make me feel good, she says to her reflection. She takes another, two more.

The room starts spinning.

xiii.

You overdosed, the men in white tell her, you could have died!

REHAB, she reads, BUT I DON'T NEED IT. REALLY, I'M SANE. REALLY – BUT IF I DON'T TAKE EIGHT OR MORE, HIS VOICE WILL WHISPER TO ME.

But they don't listen, they don't and she's taken away to a white room in a white Muggle hospital—and everything is sterile and clean.

xiv.

He visits her, Victoire, what have you become?

Shut up, she yells at him. IT'S YOUR FAULT I HEAR THE VOICES, THEODORE, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!

Vic – he starts to say, but she screams and men in white jump out of what is almost nowhere.

I'm sorry, sir, but you have to leave.

He walks away from her.

I love you, he says one last time.

I loved you, she replies, and it's true.

There was a time when she used to think that Victoire Weasley was the most beautiful name.

Now she knows that it's Victoire Lupin, not Patient No 1284.

But that fairytale is over.

Or is it?

xv.

You ruined me, she says.

I know, he twirls a strand of her hair around his finger.

I used to be sane, she reminds him.

I know, he says, and he kisses her one last time. I love you.

I know, she says. But it's not enough.

-;

fin

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