Chapter Text
They always came back together, somehow.
When Victoire was born, Teddy was only just a year, and the first couple of years of their lives were a bit…tumultuous. Teddy was never cruel, but he enjoyed teasing Victoire. He was paid back once Victoire could walk and talk, and she would run and hide when he wanted to play. Harry and Fleur were worn down by trying to make peace between the toddlers, but Bill and Ginny just laughed. “They’ll laugh too, someday,” Bill predicted. “They’re just being babies.”
But by the time he was four and she was three, they were nigh inseparable. Now bringing them to parties was always risky, because it meant at least an extra hour at the end to explain (for the hundredth time), that Bear and Daddy were tired, and Fairy and Maman would bring them to play again soon, cross their hearts.
They grew out of that clingy stage as more and more kids were added to the family circle, and both Teddy and Victoire found new playmates among the little ones. Still, they were the leaders of the pack, and they usually came up with the ideas.
(That is, until Freddie and Lou and Lily got older and started shaping play time).
When Victoire came to Hogwarts, she was sure she’d go into Hufflepuff with Teddy, and they’d have lots of fun. She cried her eyes out when she was Sorted into Ravenclaw, and she refused to sit at the Ravenclaw table for the first week.
Then she made a friend with her patient roommate Jill, and the two of them found out they liked the same kinds of food, and Teddy had lots of friends. So Victoire spent a lot of time in the Ravenclaw tower and she saw Teddy in the classes they shared, and that was it.
That first Christmas they got stuck at Hogwarts; it was the first year with two train trips, and the train broke down on the way back. Mum and Dad were going to come and get her and Teddy by Floo, but Hogwarts’ Floo connection had gone down.
Later, Victoire and Teddy would find out that it had been caused by a mad attempt to bring down the whole Network by a somewhat brilliant but largely incompetent wizard that Harry yelled at for a solid hour after arresting him.
All they knew then was that they were stuck indefinitely, and Victoire, whose homesickness had never quite abated, became ill with loneliness.
Madam Hannah let Teddy stay with her in the Hospital Wing while they waited for the Floo, and prescribed several rounds of Exploding Snap and some of Uncle Neville’s (who was now off-duty) best stories. Teddy did his best to make her laugh, and it worked. They were inseparable for the next two years.
Then, when Teddy was fourteen and she was thirteen, they started going out.
Maman was concerned that they were too young, and she was right; they were silly about each other in the way children are, and they did little other than hold hands. They went on a date to Hogsmeade together, and then they bought each other necklaces for Christmas; simple imitation gold ones with a small blue stone.
Then they broke up.
When they were older, they tried to puzzle out why, but to be frank it never made sense. They’d gotten along beautifully, but after one month of feeling angry with each other they sort of…gave up.
It made for an awkward summer holiday, with their parents being so careful not to choose sides that they made them both feel alienated, and the younger kids being furious that Vic and Teddy had “spoiled everything!”
Finally, for the sake of the kids, Teddy and Victoire made up. They’d missed each other too, and before Teddy was fifteen he was dating Alex McCall, and Victoire poured herself into music, composing pretty songs without words, finding them only after long nights looking at the stars with a boy named Eric. Eric soon discovered he was closeted, but he gave Victoire a way to put her feelings into words as well as musical notes, and for that she was grateful.
She dated on and off for the next couple of years; so did Teddy. Friends again, they would talk to each other about their relationships, commiserating about bad dates and congratulating about good ones. Teddy was the first person Victoire told about the boy who didn’t hear ‘no’. Her mother was the second at his insistence, and that boy was dealt with quite severely, once other girls had the courage to come forward. Victoire was one of the very few people who knew when Teddy realized that he could shift his whole body into a female form at will (though it was tricky). He only told her and his godparents, reasoning that it wasn’t really anyone’s damn business, and it was rare that he ever went the whole way; crossdressing was usually enough. Victoire understood, and shouted at Monica Johnson, who didn’t.
Then on the day Teddy graduated, and Victoire sat with the rest of their family and cheered, she was horrified to discover two facts. One was that Teddy was really leaving next year, leaving to become an Auror. The second was that she was in love with him; really in love, not a childish crush.
It could have been agony. It could have been hopeless.
But Teddy realized those things too, and was amazed to see that he loved her back.
The next year was tricky, but without being face to face they had to rely on letters. Victoire spent pages sorting out her feelings, being honest in a way she’d never needed to before. Teddy wrote her about all the parts of life he was afraid of, the parts that he didn’t want to discuss with anyone else, not even his Gran or godparents, the parts when he felt like she, and had no name for who she was in those moments. Those letters brought two people who had known each other all their lives together in a way that seventeen years of talking hadn’t. Victoire was the one who came up with a name for Teddy when he felt like a she. “Call yourself Maia[1],” she suggested. “It fits with the family tradition.”
From then on, Victoire would sometimes receive letters signed Maia, including one that asked if Victoire was even attracted to Maia.
You’re gorgeous, Maia. I want you when you’re Maia, and I want you when you’re Teddy.
And when they’d been together three whole years, past graduation and past Victoire getting her first contract to write music and Teddy’s Auror training, Teddy surprised her one night with a little cottage in the middle of the woods, with a beautiful garden full of flowers. There was a magical piano in the living room, and a table by the window overlooking a pond. Victoire recognized the gift for what it was. “I’m not going in,” she said. “I want to wait until the day we get married.”
That day was still three years off, but the little house was content to wait while they sorted through their grown up life. Victoire spent nine of those months pregnant by her own choice, and Teddy didn’t suggest they get married right away. Instead, they waited until their daughter Estelle Fay was almost a year old, old enough to wear a matching dress with her father and walk down the aisle with her mother and grandfather.
[1] One of the Pleiades