Recent Posts

She still didn't fully understand why it was that she had decided to accompany him to the bakery. Vic hadn't set foot in the building since before her attack, and once she had woken to discover the horrible turn of events that took her husband away from her, she hadn't been able to bring herself to return. Not even the madness she felt by being chained to a desk upon her return to work had propelled her to come anywhere near the building. Life over the last several months had been an absolute nightmare. But Alain's sudden return at Christmas had done little to make her feel better.

Victoria didn't want to believe that her husband was capable of such violence. He had been so timid as a boy, and she had never known him to be anything but kind to those around him as he got older. Yet they had found his wand after her attacker had been viciously attacked in kind. His wand had been tested and discovered to be responsible.

He'd been shipped off to Azkaban while she was motionless in a hospital bed.

Waking up to find that he wasn't there had been hard enough. Learning that he was in prison for attacking someone else had sent her into a wave of hysteria that required a Healer to come in and sedate her. For the next several weeks her parents had worried about her health, both physically and mentally. She would never be able to work in the field as an Auror again. Her career was over and her husband was a criminal. She was, for all intents and purposes, completely alone.

Perhaps she ought to have stayed back at the house, she thought to herself as the shop came into view. It had been so long since she had been anywhere near here, and things with Alain were still so strained that she didn't know what to do. It would have been so much easier if her feelings for him had simply disappeared when she had woken up. But they hadn't. And that had only made things infinitely more complicated when he had knocked on the door of her parents' home in the middle of a blizzard, frozen to the bone and near ready to catch his death. That night was the first time that she had dared to set foot in their home since discovering his release from Azkaban on Christmas Eve.

Victoria stood silently behind him as he turned the key in the door, looking at the front windows. Even from here she could already tell that there was damage to the building, damage that would need to be tended to if he truly wished to re-open the shop. How well it would do, she had no idea. Unfortunately, his reputation would likely be the talk of Hogsmeade for a long while.

She carefully folded her arms over her chest, avoiding eye contact as she followed him inside and looked about. Cobwebs everywhere...more damage to the inside from the Aurors...it was going to take a miracle to get this place back up to code again.

"Where else would you like me to go?" she asked her husband quietly, stepping toward the display counter where they used to store all of the cupcakes and other pastries that were available for the cafe patrons. "I don't-...I don't have anywhere else to go..."

WORD COUNT: 572
TAGGED: ALAIN GREYSON
NOTES: --