Monster - fic
This is not a Holiday fic, but material that I wrote in relation to
spidergirl30's fic. I was exploring a path, and it led me to a major detour. The story can be read by itself. This is mainly an experiment. That fic is not my best. Please note that the fic is not beta edited. I still don't know what I'll do with it - rework the story or include it in a larger piece.
Now, I decided to have Victoire calling her parents Papa and Maman, which are the equivalent of Daddy and Mummy in French. I cannot imagine that Fleur would not teach the language to her daughter, in some way or another. After all, JKR has confirmed that Bill and Fleur had children with unmistakable French sounding names.
Read to your own risk! This is the closest to next generation fic that I will ever attempt.
Title: Monster
Rating: PG
Characters: Victoire Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Bill Weasley, Teddy Lupin
Summary: Monsters do not have sparkling and teasing blue eyes.
Monster
+ + +
Papa has long hair, just like a girl’s. “Papa is a GIRL! Papa is a GIRL!” Victoire cries out as she runs towards the trees, her plaits to the wind.
She knows that Papa does not mind with her teasing, unlike her friend Teddy. Papa grins and feigns to take a bite off her. She knows he is attempting to scare her, but she is unafraid. Her father is such a trickster. He enjoys nothing more than to pretend that he is a ferocious creature that has the power to capture her and tickle her until she begs for mercy.
She shrieks with delight when she dashes away from him. She is a gust of wind, slipping through his fingers. But she knows that if her father really, really wanted to, he would catch her. Papa is a wizard, and Maman is a witch.
Victoire is a witch too. If she concentrates enough, her rock collection hovers over her desk for a few seconds, only to spatter on the varnished wood in the most fascinating way.
Papa stands right in front of her, half crouching, his hands clawing the space between them as he pretends to prey on her. “RAWR!”
Her exhilaration explodes into a high pitch scream. “PAPA IS A MONSTER! PAPA IS A MONSTER!”
Papa does not mind being called a monster. He tails her, and his growls are often so silly she giggles until her belly hurts. However, it happens that she gets caught in the game, and she imagines his roars deep and terrifying. They leave her breathless as she scurries away from him as fast as she can.
The illusion disappears when she looks at him over her shoulder. Monsters do not have sparkling and teasing blue eyes.
It is all in good fun. Papa knows that she will jump in his arms, much later, when he decides it is time to go back inside.
+ + +
Papa has a scruffy chin in the morning. She complains about how his unshaven cheeks scrape her soft one.
She forgives him in a snap, because he knows how to awake her gently, not like her mother who calls her invariably from downstairs, with her voice rising commandingly (“Vic-TOIRE!”).
Papa tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear, and presses his face against hers to make her laugh.
He calls her firecracker.
+ + +
Papa has bright red hair that spills on his shoulders late at night when he reads at the kitchen table.
Victoire finds herself a good excuse to escape her bed. She observes him from the door. She chooses a long shadow to hide in, but she does not bother walking on her tiptoes. During those nocturnal explorations she has come to believe that her father knows Everything because he senses her presence before Maman catches her out of her room.
He looks away from the Very Important Papers he is working on. “What are you doing up?”
“I want water, please,” she says, because Maman taught her that asking politely is how good little girls ask for something.
Papa lets her drink from his cup. She takes tiny sips of water with her eyes on him. When he catches her staring at him, he grins. “Are we finished?”
“I was very thirsty, Papa.” He then wipes the droplet of water at the corner of her lips as well as he brushes away the lie.
He welcomes her little trick with a hug, and he turns her away with a pat on the bum. “Up to bed, now. Tomorrow morning will come soon enough.”
+ + +
Papa is one of those people that tower the world.
Victoire swears it to Teddy over her favourite rock, the smooth one with the shiny pink flecks that uncle Charlie sent her in a jute pouch.
The way she needs to stretch her arms to Papa proves without a doubt that she is right. When she pleads him enough, he lifts her sky high, at the length of his arms. Up there, the wood floor seems like murky waters, a dangerous place to be. She shivers with glee, knowing that Papa would never drop her.
Teddy does not believe her. He says that somewhere, deep into dark forests and up the tallest mountains, very tall men rule every creature. “Your dad would be crushed like a snail,” he sneers.
“Papa wouldn’t be crushed. Papa is the best wizard in the world,” she brags, her chin up towards him.
Teddy does not believe that either. He says she owes him her rock because he has proven she lied. She pouts, points a finger at him and declares he is the liar, and she shoves him.
Teddy gets angry with her, and he shoves her back. “Your father’s ugly like a monster! Ugly!” Teddy cries out before her discontent mother witnesses her kicking Teddy in the shins.
Later, when Teddy has left with his grandmother, Victoire buries herself in her bed and weeps, head first into the pillow.
Teddy has decided that her father is ugly. She does not want this to be. Not her papa. She hears the creaking of the floor. Her mother’s hand flows in her hair, on her back, gentle and soft. Victoire sinks under the quilt.
“Chérie?” Maman’s touch is impossible to resist.
Victoire wiggles to let her lie to her side, and after a while, when her throat hurts from sobbing, she whispers her secret, how she just learned from Teddy that Papa is ugly.
Maman keeps silent for a moment. Victoire raises her head from the pillow and presses herself against her mother. “Papa a des cicatrices, chérie.”
“Scars are ugly,” she sniffs, inconsolable.
“Scars do not make people ugly,” Maman insists. “They show how brave, how strong Papa eez. There are many ways to be beautiful.”
But Victoire cannot forget the disgust on Teddy’s face, and tears fall again on her cheeks. “Papa is different. He has a strange face,” she whispers with despair.
Maman clicks her tongue and pushes back her hair from her damp cheeks. “Being different eez not a bad thing, you know. Do you reelly theenk that Papa eez ugly, mon coeur?”
Victoire stares at her mother’s features, perfect and royal, even when she wipes away her tears.
+ + +
“Hullo, firecracker.” Papa has arrived from work early.
Victoire is serving tea and a rock to her doll when she hears him walking into the sitting room. He addresses her with a gentle smile. “I hear you had quite a day.”
How could she be so blind? Her lips tremble. Papa’s smile is not even straight. One of his eyes has the shape of a tear.
He unceremoniously plops himself down to the ground, right in the middle of the wide, warming autumn sun that divides the room between dark and bright. He opens a box of photographs Victoire is not allowed to touch by herself. “Come here.”
He takes out two pictures, and he lays them on the floor next to her. He points to one. “That’s me and Charlie. I was about to leave home for Egypt. We look rather cheery on this one.” He chuckles. “Of course, that was before I realized George had slipped something horrible into our trousers.”
Victoire gingerly touches the picture with the tip of her fingers. A younger version of Uncle Charlie, perhaps with less freckles and leaner muscles, waves at her with a toothy grin. His arm rounds the shoulders of a taller boy. That one has a funny haircut, and he stares at her with genuine excitement.
“That’s you, Papa?” She brings the picture closer to her eyes. Papa’s smile on the picture radiates from happiness, and when she stares at her father, she cannot find the handsome features under this mask of scars.
“Uh uh. Hard to believe that I had short hair once, eh? Granny Molly got carried away that day.” He hands her the second picture. She eyes it with avidity. Papa has a scarf around his neck and a claw at his ear. He holds Maman against him, and they sway to an inaudible music. Maman looks at him with adoration.
Her father was beautiful. Victoire tickles Papa’s underarm on the picture, and he silently laughs with his deep, explosive laughter.
“Why are you ugly now?” she asks quietly, her eyes stubbornly glued to the picture where his father is perfect like her mother.
Her father clears his throat. “Before you were born, there was a war.”
“Beel.” Maman walks into the sitting room, and crouches to his side. “She eez too young to understand what is a war, Beel. Papa eez not ugly, chérie.”
“I’m handling this, Fleur.” Papa brings himself closer to her. “I got the scars then.”
Victoire straightens up. Her father is a strong and powerful wizard. He must have been hurt by something so strong nobody could resist to it. “A big monster attacked you, Papa?”
He nods. His hands frame his face. "We could say it was a monster.”
“Is he dead?” Victoire shivers. Papa’s face is obscured by shadows. She imagines a big creature looming over him, with long fangs and horrible scars and warts. She imagines his breath on his father’s neck.
Maman rubs her back. “She eez afraid,” she whispers to Papa. She caresses her hair. “Ze monster eez dead. There eez no danger for you.”
“He cannot hurt me?” The monster hovers in the shadows behind her father. The creature is growling. It is wondering how to get to her.
“Of course, he cannot hurt you. I wouldn’t let anything or anybody hurt you, Victoire.” Papa’s eyes are fierce, and she trusts him.
Papa holds his promises, whether it is a treat or a punishment.
“Did Teddy’s father hurt you?”
Her parents open up huge eyes as they look at each other. Papa gently rolls the end of her plait between his fingers. “Did someone suggest - who told you that?”
“No one.” She sniffs. Her parents stare at her with accusing eyes, like when they want to know who left a mess in the sitting room. A tear slips from her eye. “Teddy says his father was a werewolf before he died. A werewolf…a werewolf is a monster…is it a monster, Papa?”
Maman hides her mouth behind her hand. Her father tilts her chin up as he forces her to look him in the eye. “Werewolves are very unlucky people. firecraker. Teddy’s daddy would have never attacked me,” he sternly says. “Teddy’s daddy was a good man. Never, ever call him a monster, do you hear me, Victoire?”
“Yes.” Papa has grown so tall now, and she wishes for Teddy to be here right now. He would see what she means when she says that her father would never be crushed by anything. “You’re not a monster, Papa, are you?”
“Of course I’m not!”
She falls into his arms, and rubs her face against his jumper. He smells like tomato soup. “You have scars.”
“I do.” Papa chuckles. “It's very useful when I play the monster chasing little girls.”
Maman has a twisted smile. Victoire follows with her index finger the long scar that goes from her father’s cheekbone to the corner of his lips. “I wanna kiss it better.”
Papa winks. “It won’t get better, but I’d love if you’d give me a kiss.”
Papa has long arms. He knows how to give great hugs.
spidergirl30's fic. I was exploring a path, and it led me to a major detour. The story can be read by itself. This is mainly an experiment. That fic is not my best. Please note that the fic is not beta edited. I still don't know what I'll do with it - rework the story or include it in a larger piece.
Now, I decided to have Victoire calling her parents Papa and Maman, which are the equivalent of Daddy and Mummy in French. I cannot imagine that Fleur would not teach the language to her daughter, in some way or another. After all, JKR has confirmed that Bill and Fleur had children with unmistakable French sounding names.
Read to your own risk! This is the closest to next generation fic that I will ever attempt.
Title: Monster
Rating: PG
Characters: Victoire Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Bill Weasley, Teddy Lupin
Summary: Monsters do not have sparkling and teasing blue eyes.
Monster
+ + +
Papa has long hair, just like a girl’s. “Papa is a GIRL! Papa is a GIRL!” Victoire cries out as she runs towards the trees, her plaits to the wind.
She knows that Papa does not mind with her teasing, unlike her friend Teddy. Papa grins and feigns to take a bite off her. She knows he is attempting to scare her, but she is unafraid. Her father is such a trickster. He enjoys nothing more than to pretend that he is a ferocious creature that has the power to capture her and tickle her until she begs for mercy.
She shrieks with delight when she dashes away from him. She is a gust of wind, slipping through his fingers. But she knows that if her father really, really wanted to, he would catch her. Papa is a wizard, and Maman is a witch.
Victoire is a witch too. If she concentrates enough, her rock collection hovers over her desk for a few seconds, only to spatter on the varnished wood in the most fascinating way.
Papa stands right in front of her, half crouching, his hands clawing the space between them as he pretends to prey on her. “RAWR!”
Her exhilaration explodes into a high pitch scream. “PAPA IS A MONSTER! PAPA IS A MONSTER!”
Papa does not mind being called a monster. He tails her, and his growls are often so silly she giggles until her belly hurts. However, it happens that she gets caught in the game, and she imagines his roars deep and terrifying. They leave her breathless as she scurries away from him as fast as she can.
The illusion disappears when she looks at him over her shoulder. Monsters do not have sparkling and teasing blue eyes.
It is all in good fun. Papa knows that she will jump in his arms, much later, when he decides it is time to go back inside.
+ + +
Papa has a scruffy chin in the morning. She complains about how his unshaven cheeks scrape her soft one.
She forgives him in a snap, because he knows how to awake her gently, not like her mother who calls her invariably from downstairs, with her voice rising commandingly (“Vic-TOIRE!”).
Papa tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear, and presses his face against hers to make her laugh.
He calls her firecracker.
+ + +
Papa has bright red hair that spills on his shoulders late at night when he reads at the kitchen table.
Victoire finds herself a good excuse to escape her bed. She observes him from the door. She chooses a long shadow to hide in, but she does not bother walking on her tiptoes. During those nocturnal explorations she has come to believe that her father knows Everything because he senses her presence before Maman catches her out of her room.
He looks away from the Very Important Papers he is working on. “What are you doing up?”
“I want water, please,” she says, because Maman taught her that asking politely is how good little girls ask for something.
Papa lets her drink from his cup. She takes tiny sips of water with her eyes on him. When he catches her staring at him, he grins. “Are we finished?”
“I was very thirsty, Papa.” He then wipes the droplet of water at the corner of her lips as well as he brushes away the lie.
He welcomes her little trick with a hug, and he turns her away with a pat on the bum. “Up to bed, now. Tomorrow morning will come soon enough.”
+ + +
Papa is one of those people that tower the world.
Victoire swears it to Teddy over her favourite rock, the smooth one with the shiny pink flecks that uncle Charlie sent her in a jute pouch.
The way she needs to stretch her arms to Papa proves without a doubt that she is right. When she pleads him enough, he lifts her sky high, at the length of his arms. Up there, the wood floor seems like murky waters, a dangerous place to be. She shivers with glee, knowing that Papa would never drop her.
Teddy does not believe her. He says that somewhere, deep into dark forests and up the tallest mountains, very tall men rule every creature. “Your dad would be crushed like a snail,” he sneers.
“Papa wouldn’t be crushed. Papa is the best wizard in the world,” she brags, her chin up towards him.
Teddy does not believe that either. He says she owes him her rock because he has proven she lied. She pouts, points a finger at him and declares he is the liar, and she shoves him.
Teddy gets angry with her, and he shoves her back. “Your father’s ugly like a monster! Ugly!” Teddy cries out before her discontent mother witnesses her kicking Teddy in the shins.
Later, when Teddy has left with his grandmother, Victoire buries herself in her bed and weeps, head first into the pillow.
Teddy has decided that her father is ugly. She does not want this to be. Not her papa. She hears the creaking of the floor. Her mother’s hand flows in her hair, on her back, gentle and soft. Victoire sinks under the quilt.
“Chérie?” Maman’s touch is impossible to resist.
Victoire wiggles to let her lie to her side, and after a while, when her throat hurts from sobbing, she whispers her secret, how she just learned from Teddy that Papa is ugly.
Maman keeps silent for a moment. Victoire raises her head from the pillow and presses herself against her mother. “Papa a des cicatrices, chérie.”
“Scars are ugly,” she sniffs, inconsolable.
“Scars do not make people ugly,” Maman insists. “They show how brave, how strong Papa eez. There are many ways to be beautiful.”
But Victoire cannot forget the disgust on Teddy’s face, and tears fall again on her cheeks. “Papa is different. He has a strange face,” she whispers with despair.
Maman clicks her tongue and pushes back her hair from her damp cheeks. “Being different eez not a bad thing, you know. Do you reelly theenk that Papa eez ugly, mon coeur?”
Victoire stares at her mother’s features, perfect and royal, even when she wipes away her tears.
+ + +
“Hullo, firecracker.” Papa has arrived from work early.
Victoire is serving tea and a rock to her doll when she hears him walking into the sitting room. He addresses her with a gentle smile. “I hear you had quite a day.”
How could she be so blind? Her lips tremble. Papa’s smile is not even straight. One of his eyes has the shape of a tear.
He unceremoniously plops himself down to the ground, right in the middle of the wide, warming autumn sun that divides the room between dark and bright. He opens a box of photographs Victoire is not allowed to touch by herself. “Come here.”
He takes out two pictures, and he lays them on the floor next to her. He points to one. “That’s me and Charlie. I was about to leave home for Egypt. We look rather cheery on this one.” He chuckles. “Of course, that was before I realized George had slipped something horrible into our trousers.”
Victoire gingerly touches the picture with the tip of her fingers. A younger version of Uncle Charlie, perhaps with less freckles and leaner muscles, waves at her with a toothy grin. His arm rounds the shoulders of a taller boy. That one has a funny haircut, and he stares at her with genuine excitement.
“That’s you, Papa?” She brings the picture closer to her eyes. Papa’s smile on the picture radiates from happiness, and when she stares at her father, she cannot find the handsome features under this mask of scars.
“Uh uh. Hard to believe that I had short hair once, eh? Granny Molly got carried away that day.” He hands her the second picture. She eyes it with avidity. Papa has a scarf around his neck and a claw at his ear. He holds Maman against him, and they sway to an inaudible music. Maman looks at him with adoration.
Her father was beautiful. Victoire tickles Papa’s underarm on the picture, and he silently laughs with his deep, explosive laughter.
“Why are you ugly now?” she asks quietly, her eyes stubbornly glued to the picture where his father is perfect like her mother.
Her father clears his throat. “Before you were born, there was a war.”
“Beel.” Maman walks into the sitting room, and crouches to his side. “She eez too young to understand what is a war, Beel. Papa eez not ugly, chérie.”
“I’m handling this, Fleur.” Papa brings himself closer to her. “I got the scars then.”
Victoire straightens up. Her father is a strong and powerful wizard. He must have been hurt by something so strong nobody could resist to it. “A big monster attacked you, Papa?”
He nods. His hands frame his face. "We could say it was a monster.”
“Is he dead?” Victoire shivers. Papa’s face is obscured by shadows. She imagines a big creature looming over him, with long fangs and horrible scars and warts. She imagines his breath on his father’s neck.
Maman rubs her back. “She eez afraid,” she whispers to Papa. She caresses her hair. “Ze monster eez dead. There eez no danger for you.”
“He cannot hurt me?” The monster hovers in the shadows behind her father. The creature is growling. It is wondering how to get to her.
“Of course, he cannot hurt you. I wouldn’t let anything or anybody hurt you, Victoire.” Papa’s eyes are fierce, and she trusts him.
Papa holds his promises, whether it is a treat or a punishment.
“Did Teddy’s father hurt you?”
Her parents open up huge eyes as they look at each other. Papa gently rolls the end of her plait between his fingers. “Did someone suggest - who told you that?”
“No one.” She sniffs. Her parents stare at her with accusing eyes, like when they want to know who left a mess in the sitting room. A tear slips from her eye. “Teddy says his father was a werewolf before he died. A werewolf…a werewolf is a monster…is it a monster, Papa?”
Maman hides her mouth behind her hand. Her father tilts her chin up as he forces her to look him in the eye. “Werewolves are very unlucky people. firecraker. Teddy’s daddy would have never attacked me,” he sternly says. “Teddy’s daddy was a good man. Never, ever call him a monster, do you hear me, Victoire?”
“Yes.” Papa has grown so tall now, and she wishes for Teddy to be here right now. He would see what she means when she says that her father would never be crushed by anything. “You’re not a monster, Papa, are you?”
“Of course I’m not!”
She falls into his arms, and rubs her face against his jumper. He smells like tomato soup. “You have scars.”
“I do.” Papa chuckles. “It's very useful when I play the monster chasing little girls.”
Maman has a twisted smile. Victoire follows with her index finger the long scar that goes from her father’s cheekbone to the corner of his lips. “I wanna kiss it better.”
Papa winks. “It won’t get better, but I’d love if you’d give me a kiss.”
Papa has long arms. He knows how to give great hugs.