There Ain't No Moonlight, After Midnight

Vicki was strolling around the campsite confidently, water bottle in hand as she took sips in the sun. She was almost regretting her decision to not swap the jeans she was wearing for a trademark skirt before she left, but was glad she chose to bring some water.

People watching was one of Vicki’s favourite things to do. Muggles, magic folk, it was always interesting to her. Roger wasn’t as fascinated in Vicki’s hobby as she was so he rarely joined her, but Vicki loved seeing people of all different walks of life, smiling when something was positive and jumping to judgmental conclusions in her head about negative things she witnessed.

Therefore walking through a camp full of people with different backgrounds, nationalities, socio-economic status and many other categories made for a fun time for Vicki. Some people made her smile, others made her scowl but everyone was making her finally enjoy her time away from everything, she was definitely enjoying her time with the masses more than with Roger and his Quiddich friends.

It was while she was waiting at the tap to refill her water bottle that she saw a familiar face. She had seen a few fellow Hogwarts student and smiled and waved to anyone she was able to recognise. But this student was one that was in her direct circle of friends. Cedric Diggory wasn’t a close friend to Victoria, but they had shared many conversations over the years albeit usually shallow and quick ones. She still felt confident enough to at least stop and say hello to him. He was a year older than her but he was also a fellow Prefect, so every now and again their Prefect duties bought them together, even though they were in different houses.

“C’mere, let me carry one of those for you.” Vicki said as she approached Cedric, grabbing one of the three heavy buckets he had full of water, as she saw him struggling to carry the third one.

“Oh, no Vicki. I couldn’t ask you to do that. It’s very nice to see you though.” Cedric grinned as he tried to feebly put up a fight, losing to Vicki as he didn’t have the hands to attempt to grab the bucket back.

“Well it’s a pleasure seeing you too, Cedric. How are you enjoying your summer holidays?” Vicki beamed.

Due to the heavy buckets the two had a slower pace than usual, and managed to make light conversation the whole time. They mostly shared anecdotes about their summer, Cedric had spent it with his family and friends, whilst Vicki had spent almost every waking second with her boyfriend in a typical teenage romance fashion.

“So, who are you here with anyway?” Vicki asked Cedric, as his tent came into view.

“My father. But we travelled with the Weasley’s through a portkey.” Cedric grinned slightly as they both waddled towards a well set up tent.

“Oh god, I feel for you. I think I endured enough of Percy Weasley last year for a lifetime. Thank god he only had the chance to be Head Boy once, would have handed my badge in otherwise.” Vicki winced.

All Hogwarts Prefects were under the control of the Head Boy and Head Girl for that year. For the previous school year that had been Percy Weasley and his girlfriend, Penelope Clearwater. Vicki hadn’t minded Penelope. She was a fellow Ravenclaw. A little boring, but she was harmless. Percy on the other hand was a ball breaker. He was harsh on his Prefects and always held them to an impossible standard.

Once Percy ordered Vicki to give up her weekends for a month to spend all her free time patrolling the grounds. Roger initially got out of it as he spent most weekend afternoons training the Ravenclaw Quidditch team (As Oliver Wood from Gryffindor always booked the pitch every early morning) but he ended up volunteering to accompany Vicki in her patrols and they spend their entire shift snogging. After shouting at them for a substantial amount of time Percy tried to dob them into their head of house, Professor Flitwick. Professor Flitwick assured Percy it would be dealt with ‘appropriately’ but only winked and allowed the young couple to leave his office once Percy was out of sight. Professor Flitwick was very soft on all students, but he had a very soft spot for his two fifth year Prefects who had found love.

After that Vicki got her weekends back, but Percy remained just as tough on her. Not just Vicki though, he was unreasonable towards all of the Prefects under him. They all spoke nastily about Percy behind his back. Well, all but Cedric. He was too much of a good guy to speak about someone if they weren’t around to defend themselves.

“Nah, our old Head Boy wasn’t making the portkey trip. I assume he’ll be apparating. As will I next week, got my test booked on my seventeenth birthday.” Cedric proudly stated, trying to move the topic away from negativity.

“Well congratulations, have fun being an adult and stuff.” Vicki teased.

Cedric was about to retort in a jovial manner but they had then reached the tent. Cedric’s father was sitting outside on a chair that had been set up, quietly reading the Daily Prophet amongst all the craziness surrounding the tent due to the World Cup.

He looked up as he saw his son approach, but wore a huge smile as he saw the company Cedric was with.

“Well hello, Victoria. What a nice surprise. I actually just bumped into your father just a couple of days ago. Please, take a seat. Tell me all about your summer.” Amos gushed, and without being prompted Cedric pulled out a seat for Vicki.

***

Vicki ended up having two quick cups of tea with Amos and Cedric. She had only met Amos a few times, but found him quite pleasant. Usually she found parents spoke to her in an accidental condescending tone, asking condescending questions. Amos spoke to Vicki as an equal, asking interesting questions.

Vicki assumed it intertwined with Cedric’s intelligence. She came to the conclusion that either Amos spoke to Cedric and his friends with substance because Cedric was intelligent, or Cedric was intelligent because Amos spoke with substance. Vicki didn’t mind which one it was, she just appreciated the great conversation and had a nice time speaking with the two. She certainly enjoyed it a lot more than Roger’s Quiddich talks with his friends crashing their tent.

She bid them both farewell and promised to catch up with Cedric on the train ride to school, even if it was just for a quick hello, and continued walking around the campsite.

Not too long after she noticed a family with flaming red hair sitting outside two tents, attempting to cook food and running commentary about the pass byers.

“That was Cuthbert Mockridge, Head of the Goblin Liason Office…” the family patriarch was explaining out loud.

Vicki knew very little of the Weasley family, but knew of them. She knew presently there were only four members left at Hogwarts. The twins were in her year level, whilst the youngest brother and only sister were a few year levels below her. The only member she’d really had anything to do with was Percy through her Prefect duties. She shared a lot of classes with the twins but had very little interactions with them.

They were popular like Vicki, but in different ways. The twins were jokers who bought joy to people’s lives. They were well liked by everyone (Well, except the Slytherins) and thus were ‘popular’. Vicki on the other hand was an ‘it’ girl. Pretty and polite, she was popular through association and not through her actions. Therefore although they were all popular, the twins ran in different social circles to Vicki and therefore little interactions between them were to be had.

“…and there is Victoria Hartwell, Hogwarts Heartbreaker, undercover nerd, society girl…” She heard one of the twins say as she walked past, mocking their father’s commentary of the adults walking by.
Vicki stopped like a deer in headlights and didn’t know how to respond. On one hand she was flattered that someone who didn’t know her well would refer to her using those words. On the other she still held some modesty and didn’t want to answer to that line.

“Fred! That’s incredibly rude!” The youngest girl present, the only female daughter of the Weasley clan shouted, reprimanding her older brother. Ginny really looked up to the twins and sometimes felt they were her favourite brothers, but she looked up to the favoured Vicki Hartwell even more, sometimes fantasising that one day they’d become friends and she could be popular as well.

“Hello, Victoria is it? I’m Arthur Weasley. I hope my son didn’t just cause you grief.” Arthur cheerfully greeted Vicki, offering his hand.

Vicki looked between the twins and their father, before taking his hand enthusiastically.

“Your two boys, never. Not since my first week at Hogwarts anyway…” Vicki grinned, deciding to play along a bit to get the boys in a bit of hot water with their father.

“Take a seat, we’d love to hear about all of this.” Ron, the youngest brother said as he pulled up a spare seat for the girl. He secretly loved it when the twins got in trouble, as funny as he found their pranks, he sometimes got pleasure out of it for all the times they turned their pranks onto him.
Vicki awkwardly shifted her weight between her legs and bit her lip. She had the perfect amount of charisma and people skills to do well when thrust into awkward social situations, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it. She had no problem with the Weasley family, especially considering Percy wasn’t present. However she still didn’t know any of the family members well, and didn’t know how she would trudge through a social situation with them.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude on what you were doing…” Vicki hesitated, taking a step back from the chair pulled out.

“It’s nothing formal. We’re just watching the people as they come through the camp.” Arthur explained.

Vicki didn’t even bother responding as she immediately sunk down into the seat that Ron pulled out for her. If a group of people were doing one of her favourite activities for entertainment, they were a group of people worth spending time with.

“So, please do tell me about the time my two trouble making sons caused you problems.” Arthur addressed Vicki, and she could see he didn’t know whether to be jovial or stern about his son’s behaviour.

Fred watched the newcomer intently, and smirked at her as she flashed him a smile. This was one of their very few interactions since the anecdote that Vicki was about to launch into, which happened right at the start of their time at Hogwarts.

“Well, apparently it was an accident, but I was an easy target back then. I used to be real awkward and unfortunate looking on the other side of puberty. Anyway, it was one of our first potion lessons, and Snape was being a total git as always,” Vicki started to explain. All of the current Hogwarts students amongst them let out a laugh except for Hermione who didn’t look too impressed at a teacher being insulted “he set this really hard task for first years, we had to draft up this potion that would turn anything the colour of the house that the drafter was associated with that the potion touched. I was one of the very few in the lesson that successfully changed many objects to blue and bronze by submerging them into my cauldron.”

Vicki paused for a moment, making sure that she still had everyone’s attention. Receiving a round of ‘uh huhs’ she continued.

“So we hand a sample to the front of the room for Snape to assess. He makes some comment that mine was the only ‘acceptable’ one or something like that. Next thing I know I fall head over heels and my hair falls into my cauldron. I know for a fact I did not slip, and those two behind me were laughing.” Vicki recalled, shooting a mock glare at the two twins who were laughing and shaking their heads at the memory.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Arthur who reprimanded the boys, it was Harry and Ron’s best friend, Hermione.

“I can’t believe you two would push someone into a cauldron! That’s so dangerous, it’s not funny, stop laughing!” Hermione growled at the twins.

“Tell that to Hartwell, she’s laughing too!” George heartily chuckled as he pointed to Vicki, using her surname was they were hardly on first name basis.

It was true. Vicki was doubled over in laughter herself. Fred couldn’t take his eyes off her as he laughed. Being in different houses he rarely saw her in her natural element, and he couldn’t recall a time he saw her laugh properly. He had seen her smile, chuckle and giggle with her group of friends, but not a hearty laugh, and he did watch her a lot. It made him wonder if she laughed that much in the Ravenclaw common room.

“Yep, I got myself up and my hair shone blue and bronze. It was kind of cool actually, Professor Flitwick really liked it. Unfortunately it was Professor McGonagall who forced me to go to Madam Pomfrey to get it back to back to my natural colour. As unfortunate looking as I was back then, my positive reaction to the twins prank made me a lousy and boring target, so they never bothered me again.” Vicki explained.

The twins only sent an innocent shrug to the rest of the group before the topic was changed. Gilbert Wimple passed by their tent and Arthur Weasley explained to everyone (mostly Harry, Hermione and now Vicki) about how he was on the Committee of Experimental Charms.

Fred kept his eye on Vicki the whole time but tried to not make it obvious, finding an almost rare blush creep up on his face which he managed to quickly stop when Vicki caught him watching her and sent him a wink.

Victoria Hartwell was on Fred Weasley’s radar a long time before she was on anyone else’s. She definitely wasn’t a romantic interest back then, but he respected her jovial reaction to one of their first Hogwarts pranks. Of course the romantic interest came to Fred by the time she was on everyone else’s radar, after she got together with Roger, just before she began to rule the school.

He could pinpoint the exact moment she went from being the nice girl in his year who he knew could take a joke, into developing a huge crush on her. It was the end of the previous summer on board the Hogwarts Express. George, Lee Jordan and himself were hanging around the Prefects carriage with the plan of setting off dungbombs to greet Hogwarts new student leaders. The first to step out was Victoria, but it wasn’t the Victoria Hartwell he had remembered from the previous year. Her oily hair which was usually pinned back was sleek and shiny sprawling halfway down her back. She had used make-up to highlight her facial features, her uniform had also been altered to show her figure rather than hide it and make her frumpy, and most importantly her confidence had changed. She usually had a neutral facial expression, but she had a huge smile on her face and was glowing. It was known for Vicki to self-bash her “before” self before her self-makeover, but not many people honestly seemed to remember Vicki before she was popular, but Fred did.

George and Lee were so shocked at Vicki’s change in appearance themselves they paused to stare, forgetting their mission of throwing dungbombs at the new Prefects. Vicki passed them safely but by the time Roger emerged from the carriage he was hit with the brunt of the dungbombs. It was only until later on when they got to the castle that Fred saw Vicki and Roger snogging that he realised they were a couple, and found himself glad it was Roger that was hit with the brunt of the dungbombs.
For the rest of the year he mostly watched her from a distance, but he watched her often. Gryffindor had Potions, Transfiguration and History of Magic with the Ravenclaws in fifth year. She surprisingly always seemed so busy and interested in History of Magic and was always furiously taking notes, which was fine by him as the class was so boring he always found his eyes wandering onto her. They were also assigned to work together once in Potions when Snape switched George and Roger as punishment for a prank the twins pulled involving a false cauldron bottom and a bitchy Ravenclaw girl who at breakfast that day screeched loudly that Fred and George were “unfunny troublemakers”. Fred enjoyed having Vicki as his potions partner, she did most of the work whilst he said a few funny things that made her smile. By the next lesson he had his twin back and Vicki was with her boyfriend again.

They barely had any interactions until right this moment. She respected him enough to give him a smile when they passed each other, but that was it. She had no idea of his big crush on her, and how much she entered his thoughts, more than she should for a girl with a boyfriend and who he barely spoke to.

“Would you fancy some eggs and sausages, Victoria?” Arthur asked Vicki, as the fire started cackling and he threw some food on the fire.

Vicki was about to politely decline, but then she saw a few more figures approaching: Bill, Charlie and Percy Weasley. She knew it was time to be leaving. She never really spoke with Bill and Charlie during their time at Hogwarts as they were much older than her, but she did not fancy getting stuck into conversation with Percy.

“Why hello Miss Hartwell, it’s lovely seeing you again. Davies not around then? You ought to not let boys distract you now, your sixth year is your last chance to prove yourself to be a Head Boy or Girl, trust me on this.” Percy said, taking a seat and squeezing next to Vicki.

“Hello Percy,” Vicki said, putting on a sickly fake voice that only Fred noticed as she stood up “What a shame, I need to go. Nice seeing you again though, hope you’re well.”

Vicki was about to back off and was about to bid farewell to all of the Weasley’s when she was cut off before she could even say bye.

“Aha!” cried Mr Weasley “The man of the moment! Ludo!”

Vicki smirked as Ludo Bagman approached them. Something her and father always liked to watch unfold was ex-Quiddich players getting fat after their sports career ended. Ludo seemed like a good example of this, his physique was definitely a lot more round than Vicki remembered from when she was a kid.

Ludo Bagman and Arthur exchanged pleasantries and Percy rushed over with his hand outstretched. Bagman however ignored Percy, taking a few steps forward as his eyes landed on the girl who had just vacated her seat and was about to leave.

“And what’s your name missy?” Bagman asked Vicki exclusively.

“Um…Victoria. I was just leaving though. Nice meeting the ones I haven’t met, the ones I have, see you all soon.” Vicki muttered as she turned around to leave, but Bagman grabbed her wrist preventing her from leaving.

“Where are you sitting to watch the cup?” Bagman asked her curiously.

Vicki raised an eyebrow. Surely this retired sportsman wasn’t flirting with her? If she were at school and it was a fellow student she would have no doubt it was a guy trying to win her affections. But considering it was a D-grade celebrity twice her age she wasn’t sure what he was playing at, maybe it was just him being a boisterous man. She decided the best course of action was to just be polite and go with it.

“Um…well…I got pretty good seats,” Vicki mumbled, feeling uncomfortable with the whole situation and quickly added on “with my boyfriend.”

“I see. Well if you’re unhappy with your seats, or your boyfriend, come to the Top Box and ask for me. I’ll give you the best seat in the house.” Ludo winked at Vicki.

“Thanks.” Victoria said meekly, before giving a wave to everyone else and wandering off.

Fred’s eyes bore into the back of Vicki’s figure walking away. He had to look at her, or else he’d be shooting daggers at Bagman, even though he knew he had no real reason to. Vicki was not his to defend. But he had not seen Vicki that meek or unconfident since before she existed to the Hogwarts student body. He knew that was no longer her. He didn’t like it.

It wasn’t even only Fred who noticed Bagman’s advances on Vicki. George nudged Fred’s side as soon as Vicki’s back was turned. George noticed it too.