Waterlogged

by squeakyswings

She missed him the way she missed the briny scent of seawater or the scummy smell of her duck pond or even the chemical haze of chlorinated pool water—she missed him like that, but worse. — Lily/Teddy

Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me.

I. Bullfrog Cottage

(when the past intervenes)

When Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley first saw the house, located at a dead end on a Muggle street, they thought it would never work. First of all, there were only three bedrooms: the master, which would be just big enough for the hawthorn framed bed Ginny had in mind and Harry's preferred wardrobe; one room that might be better labeled a closet, with mauve walls and a streak on the hardwood floor that reminded Ginny of the Bloody Baron's silver stains; and another room that was slightly larger with two dust-smeared windows set in brick-colored walls – nowhere near large enough for them and the children they envisioned for themselves some day, a long time away. And they would always need a room for Teddy to stay in, Ginny reminded Harry softly as the realtor began popping her p's about how the cottage was "Positively Perfect" for such a young couple.

And then there was the problem of the pond. It graced much of the back lawn, encircled by waving reeds and spotted with lily pads that glowed green under the noonday sun, glistening with droplets of murky water and hulking shapes of bullfrogs, gulping out their croaks into the shocking bright sky. Both Harry and Ginny felt that quick shiver of premonition that someday parents experience when they see something that could potentially harm a child. Already, Harry imagined desperate splashing in the pond's deep-black center, and Ginny tightened her arm across her waist, as if she could stop the possibility of drowning before the baby even existed.

So it was too small and dangerous and there was a strange smell on the back porch, as if the damp earth beneath it was creeping up through the chipped wooden slats, and they told the realtor that they thought they'd rather look at another house. Maybe one a little bigger, with a nicer backyard and a garden instead of a pond?

If Ginny hadn't noticed the carving on the railing that enclosed the front porch, they never would have bought the house. They would have gone off to Essex or Suffolk or somewhere and found a perfectly respectable house with five bedrooms, a rectangular garden with ninety-degree plots all mapped out and a spacious kitchen with an oven that didn't fill the house with the smell of charred marshmallows no matter that you were cooking a lasagna and detested marshmallows.

But Ginny saw the carving. She had been examining the railing, making sure it was stable, and she saw the spot of white, so she went closer and realized that a white bird had been carved into the wood grain. Of course she thought of Hedwig, and of course Harry did as well, when he saw what she was looking at. And it turns out that forceful memories of old friends outweigh dreadful possibilities inherent in ponds and too-small houses. And although neither of them really believed in omens, they both secretly took the image of the white bird as a good one.

So they married and spent the first weekend of their honeymoon – in between frenzied and leisurely lovemaking – fixing up their home. Over the months that followed they would sometimes arrive home late at night and grab a bottle of merlot and turkey sandwiches and work at sanding down the floors or painting the walls or scrubbing at the windows, until they didn't even remember having any doubts about buying it. They began calling the small cottage home and were pleased to invite family over for meals, proud to bring guests into the bright little room with the light blue walls and the new unstained hardwood floor and the name plaque on the door that read "Teddy" and they always showed off the nursery they had already set up with mint colored paint and soft white carpeting and a border of broomsticks and snitches, never mind that both Ginny and Harry didn't want children for a long, long while.

James came first, followed one year later by Albus, and two years after that by Lily; three children in a house with only one available bedroom. They couldn't take Teddy's room away from him, for although the boy only visited for a month during summer holidays and a week at Christmas, he felt very possessive of his place at the Potters, and neither Harry nor Ginny wanted to give him the impression that he was less important to them than their own children. But it was clear that something needed to be done, for Al and James were constantly bickering, fighting aloud in the midst of their dreams, and they kept Lily up at night with their sleep-driven arguments. Even as an infant Lily had deep purple bags under her green eyes and had begun gumming at her nail-beds, as if the boys' fiery midnight discussions offended her in some deeply stressful way.

The idea came to Ginny one night late in July, when she sat on the back porch inhaling the scent of the wild rosebushes that had sprung up alongside the house and watching bats dip in the inky blue sky of late twilight. The bats didn't jerk away from the roof of their house, instead disappearing somewhere inside. Ginny immediately recognized the danger – after all, bats were one of the five creatures most likely to carry rabies – so come morning she climbed up to the rafters armed with her wand and shooed the bats out, sealing up the holes in the roof as she went along. It was surprisingly cool beneath the roof, and Ginny could almost stand up under its peak. The rafters were dangerous, this she admitted, and her and Harry's school trunks took up one corner, overflowing with old Gryffindor attire and textbooks that they had never thought to get rid of. But it might do, with a little magical construction, discreet enough that their Muggle neighbors, the Allens and the Rogers, would never notice. It might do very well.

Ginny proposed the idea to Harry that night, while they lay on their bed, her red hair spread across his stomach as he read through a report for work and she imagined the possibility of placing her boys above them, so Lily and she and Harry wouldn't be kept awake by their strained voices.

Harry thought that she and he would do very well at fixing the attic up, after all, hadn't they done the rest of the house, and so he and Ginny spent the next weekend with their wands and paint cans in the rafters of their home, leaving the children with Hermione and Ron and Hugo and Rose.

They raised the roof slightly and placed hardwood flooring in and painted the walls a light lime green color. Harry had the brilliant idea of carving three skylights into the roof, and although he just about toppled the house when he cut through one of the more structurally important sections, Ginny saved it all with a well-timed charm that she had become quite practiced in when she was a child and her bedroom wall tended to cave in. All in all, the attic room turned out quite well, and Ginny was almost tempted to move her and Harry's things up there, except that it would never have fit their wardrobe.

At first, James and Al loved the room. They thought it was great fun to have to climb up the ladder to get to it, and they loved the skylights (and the fact that they could get out to the roof easily on summer nights and catch all the bugs they wanted without their parents knowing). But the roof also provided a thinner barrier to the outdoors than the ceiling of their old room downstairs, the room that Lily Luna had stolen from them with her silent complaints, and at night they could hear the water lapping in the pond and bullfrogs' persistent croaks and the buzzing of dragonflies lighting for the night on the lily pads. They woke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, their dreams full of floods and thunderstorms and giant bullfrogs and dragonflies intent on doing them harm. So when Lily turned four and was deemed old enough to climb the ladder, Harry and Ginny helped her move up to the attic room and moved the boys back downstairs, and learned to mostly ignore their nighttime arguments.

Lily heard the pond's noises at night, too, but her dreams were full of friendly bullfrogs' serenades and magical fireflies sparking on the end of her nose, and water dripping coolly down her neck and kissing her cheeks. She also found the escape through the skylights, and spent many evenings charting out the constellations before falling asleep, sometimes on the roof, waking up only when dew fell and slicked her skin and she would crawl back inside, dampening her sheets but perfectly content.

II. Duck Pond

(strands of fire and wings of grass)

Lily grabbed at the doorknob to Teddy's room and tugged, expecting to be let in immediately, but his door was unusually locked. She pounded her fist against its surface and called, "Teddy, it's me. Let me in!"

Silence lasted for about ten seconds, then Teddy's voice resounded through the door, sounding unbelievably disgruntled, "Go away, Lily."

Lily stared at the nametag still hanging on the door, twelve years after Harry and Ginny had placed it there, "What?"

"Please, Lily. Just wait an hour, and I'll play with you." She heard another voice, a girl's voice, whisper softly after his promise, but she couldn't make out the words.

"I didn't want to play, Teddy. I just wanted to talk." Lily tossed one last spiteful glare at the door, intended for Teddy and that silly Victoire, and stomped down the hallway, her red hair swinging behind her in two tangled braids. Her brothers stood in the kitchen, arguing about the merit of their mother's replacement on the Holyhead Harpies.

"I just think Mum was probably the best Chaser they'd ever had." Al removed a bowl of fruit from the table and climbed on top of it, reaching to grab hold of a paper airplane that had gotten stuck in the chandelier.

"Honestly, Al." Eight year old James glanced up from his own masterpiece in parchment to chastise his brother. "You're just saying that cause it's Mum. It's like how we say Dad's the best auror ever, even though he's not head of the department, or anything. I think their new chaser…Wood?...will probably play better than Mum did."

"Dad is the best auror ever," Lily said from the doorway.

"Oh, go on, Lily Luna. You don't know a thing." Al finally snatched his plane from the chandelier and jumped to the floor triumphantly, sparing a glance for his younger sister.

"I know a lot." Lily retorted before stomping out the back door of the kitchen and onto the porch, soon disappearing from the boys' sight, not that they watched her go.

Teddy and Victoire emerged from his room two hours later, looking too neat and put together. Ginny bit back a smile when they wandered into the kitchen, where she and Harry were involved in an all-out battle with the temperamental oven.

Harry glanced up from the open oven door, which issued heat and the sickly sweet smell of charred marshmallows over the lesser scent of a roast. "Will you go find the boys and Lily, Teddy? And Vic, will you please set the table?"

"Sure." Victoire pulled a stack of silverware from the drawer as Teddy walked to the front of the house, calling out the front door, "Chow's on, come and get it!"

The boys bounded in, dropping their shoes in a pile that leaked mud across the mat. Teddy grinned and followed them in, listening for the creak of the ladder as Lily climbed down from her room. But nothing came.

"Hey, Al, do you know where Lily is?"

Harry and Ginny glanced over at Teddy. "She's not upstairs?"

"Doesn't sound like it." Vic responded, glancing at the ceiling. Usually Lily had her radio on, blasting her mom's retro collection of the Weird Sisters loud enough for the whole house to hear.

"Last time I saw her she was heading out back," James spoke around a mouthful of bread snatched from the basket on the table, "But that was hours ago."

Harry and Ginny glanced at each other with panic deepening the lines across their faces, and rushed to the back door, barely pausing to take the stairs off the porch. Teddy didn't bother with the stairs – he flew from the railing and landed at a run, his eyes intent on the gently beckoning reeds surrounding the pond.

Harry and Ginny reached the pond just as Teddy jerked his wand out of his pocket and cast a Bubblehead charm on himself. He dove past the shallow area and into darker center, his eyes squinting through the murk and muck to catch sight of anything, anything, Lily-like. Please, please, please, just let her be okay - the voice in his head was torn between desperate prayers and fiery shouting about how this was all his stupid fault. His stupid fault for choosing hooking up with Victoire over talking to Lily. His bloody fucking hormones.

And there, there, deep at the bottom of the pond, he caught sight of something red. Something shiny and red, and more importantly, something moving inexplicably against the current. He gave one final kick and reached the scummy bottom of the pond, his breath catching in sharp relief as Lily smiled at him through the sheen of her own Bubblehead charm. She sat cross legged on a rock, one hand clutching at its base to keep her stable and the other waving a stick around in the water, watching as swirls of murk and glinting flecks of mica followed in its current. Her skirt spread around her legs, floating ghost-like in the water, and she looked perfectly cheerful. Teddy wanted to strangle her.

Instead, he jerked his finger toward the surface, and she nodded in understanding, letting go of the rock and pushing off with her dirty bare feet, kicking as if she had been swimming for all five years of her life, rather than just today. Teddy followed after to make sure she got to air safely, but she didn't need him.

When they both broke the surface, Teddy muttered the counter-charm for his Bubblehead and watched as Lily closed her eyes for a fraction of a second and wandlessly, incredibly, removed hers. "Look," she cried, when her head was free and she was kicking back to shore, "I can do magic. And," She grinned proudly at her parents, brothers, and Victoire, who all stood among the reeds, their faces pale and lips thin with anxiety, "I can swim."

III. Ladon

(duck before it hits you hard, honey)

The stars were bright the night before Teddy left for his seventh year at Hogwarts, but he didn't notice. He sat out by the pond beside a pouting Lily, and all his attention was on her. "But when you're done this year, you won't come home again, will you? You'll go off and leave me and marry Vic and have a whole litter of kids and a real job and an actual life."

Teddy took her small hand in his, squeezing it and meeting her worried green eyes with his now-blue ones. "One: I will never leave you, Waterbug. I will be here forever, as long as you need me. I told you that six years ago, when you were a bald baby and wouldn't stop screaming, and I told you that three years ago when James told you that you would never be a witch and I told you that last year when you pulled that stupid stunt and made me think that you had drowned." Lily's pout lessened a little, "Two: I will not be marrying Vic. Not any time soon, anyway. And three: the chances of me getting a job are like zero. I don't know what I want to do, so I'll probably be coming back here and living with your mum and dad forever and ever. You won't be getting rid of me this year."

"Really and truly, you promise?" Lily asked, crawling into his lap and pressing her nose against his. "Like, honest promise? Not like when you told me that my goldfish went to heaven, but like when you told me that I'd be a witch."

"Honest promise. But I still say that Scaley went to heaven."

Lily rolled her eyes, "He didn't, Teddy. But good." She smacked her lips against his cheek and hopped out of his lap, into the shallow water, her feet sinking inches into the mud.

"Hey, I remember Harry telling you no more swimming for today." Teddy got to his feet, brushing dirt from his shorts.

"I'm not going swimming. I'm wading. Come wade with me." She held out her hand and Teddy sighed, taking it and following her into the edge of the pond.

It was one of those nights when the moon and the stars made everything look silver, and even Lily's hair glowed with a grayish tint in their light. Teddy followed her along the perimeter of the pond, through the waterweeds and grass, and into the shade from the big tree on the bank. "You know, I'm surprised you've never gotten leeches, the amount of time you spend in this pond."

"There're no leeches in this pond, silly. I would know, if there were."

"Oh, okay. Of course you'd know. You know everything," Teddy stopped abruptly. "What's that?"

"What?" Lily glanced up at him, then fell silent. A soft quacking met her ears, though it was really more of a pathetic mewing than a quack. "A duck?"

"Sounds like a baby." He crouched down and stared through the reeds, brushing them aside as he examined the ground for the source of the noise. He caught sight of the gleam of a black eye, "There."

Lily knelt beside him as he reached through the reeds and cupped his hands around the tiny, quaking, brown body of a duckling. The animal stopped its noise as Teddy's hands closed around him, but it flapped one wing in protest. The other it held close to its body, clearly in pain.

"Oh, the poor thing." Lily murmured, placing one finger tenderly on its head. "But you'll fix him, Teddy."
"Not me, but Harry might be able to. And if he can't, then I can take him to Hagrid, at school."

Teddy led the way into the kitchen, where Harry sat at the table with a mug of coffee and a report from work. He placed the duck on the table and Harry glanced up at him and at his daughter before tugging his wand out and waving it over the animal.

"It's not too bad, I think it just has a bruise. Did you see its mother out there?"

"No," Teddy shook his head. "It was all alone."

"Now that you've touched it…" Harry trailed off, lost in concentration on the animal's injury.

'Now that we've touched it?" Lily prompted, moving closer to the table so she could watch her father's healing charms.

"Its mother wouldn't want it if she did come back. Can you take it with you to school, Ted?"

Teddy laughed, "I don't think so. My roommates would not appreciate a quacking duck as a pet."

"What about me, Daddy, can't I keep it? I'll take good care of it, and make sure it stays alive and can fly and swim and…please?"

Harry smiled at his only daughter, then cast one last spell, "All right, Lily. But you need to be responsible for it, okay? That means feeding it and training it and cleaning up after it."

"Okay! Thank you!" She dropped a kiss on her father's cheek and cupped her duck in her hands, hurrying into the linen closet to find a box for it.

Teddy watched her go. "Guess she won't be missing me so much, now."

Harry chuckled, "She'll remember you tomorrow, Ted. Don't worry. I don't think a duck could replace you."

Lily called from the hall, "I'm going to name him Ladon!"

"Then again…" Harry muttered as Teddy let out a laugh and hurried into the hall to help Lily with her pet.

IV. Fly Steady

(oh, go, throw away your legacy.)

For James's seventh birthday, Harry and Ginny bought him a Firebolt Deluxe, and they began teaching him how to fly. James was a natural in the air, just as his father had been, and the smile on his face when he accelerated past the trees never failed to thrill his mother.

For Albus's seventh birthday, Harry and Ginny bought him a LightningStrike Two, and if Al wasn't quite as good as James, he was still passable. But he took to flying the way birds do, flailing around a bit at first but eventually having one of those moments when everything just clicked into perfection. After that moment, even James couldn't beat him, and neither Ginny nor Harry wanted to try. The whole family placed bets on what position he would take when he got to Hogwarts (George won.)

Lily expected a LightningStrike Accelerate for her seventh birthday, but she hoped for a pair of flippers and a trip to the ocean so she could see what it felt like to really swim. Her expectation was filled. Her hopes weren't.

She carefully sliced the paper from the thin broom and ran a hand gently down its smooth handle, smiling at the gold engraving: "To Lily Luna Potter on her seventh birthday. Love Mum and Dad" and biting back the pout that threatened to pull her face downward. She didn't want to fly. But how could she tell her parents that?

The boys ran outside to get their brooms from the shed as Ginny began lecturing Lily on the safety of flying. "Now, if at any point you're scared, just remember that we're down on the ground to catch you, and you'll be fine."

"She won't be scared, Gin," Harry smiled at Lily, "She's brave. She'll be brilliant."

Lily had a secret. She wasn't brave. Not the way the rest of her family was. She wasn't an insta-Gryffindor, and she certainly did not think that she could fly the way James and Al could, with such expressions of joy on their faces. She couldn't do that. But she could try, maybe.

She swallowed, "Let's go fly, then."

Al and James were already zooming around the backyard as Harry laid Lily's broom on the ground and positioned her above it. He didn't catch the faintly nauseous glare that she sent toward the broomstick as she muttered the word "Up" at it. He did notice the way the broom jerked up, not neatly the way it had for both his sons, but as if gravity was pulling it back toward the ground even as the magic forced it up.

Lily's palm was sticky as she closed it around the broom. Harry showed her how to get on the broom and directed her toward her brothers. She muttered "I really hate this," under her breath, but he didn't catch that either.

Her broom took off, and Lily squeezed her eyes shut, feeling no thrill, no joy, only nausea.

"Watch out, Lily-kins!" James shouted, shooting his broom toward her and swerving to miss at just the right moment. But Lily didn't see him. All she saw was the glow of sunlight through her shut eyes and all she felt was terror.

"Lily, try flying in a circle," Harry called from the ground. She didn't hear. She heard the rush of air in her ears and the rapid beat of her heart pumping fear-tainted blood through her veins and she felt the billowing of air around her as she let go of her broom and fell.

Lily opened her eyes when she felt the ground meet her back softly, following a slowing-charm sent by either her mother or father. "Daddy," she met his terrified eyes with her own, "I don't want to fly."

"Of course you do, sweetie. You're just scared, that's all. You'll get used to it. You'll see how fun it is." He helped her to her feet and brushed the grass from her back.

"No." She shook her head. "No. I do not want to fly. I want to swim. Can I swim, please?"

"Harry," Ginny stepped forward, "Stop a moment. Think."

The boys landed beside Lily's fallen broomstick and hurried over. "What happened? Lily, are you okay?"

"I don't like flying," Lily told them, blinking her eyes rapidly to clear them of the sudden fearful tears that sprung up.

"She's a scaredy-cat," Al mocked softly. "Just a silly little scaredy-cat."

"She's no Gryffindor," James teased, "she'll be sorted into creepy Slytherin."

"Boys," Ginny sighed, "Leave your sister alone. She doesn't like flying, and that's okay."

Albus snorted, "What kind of Potter doesn't like flying? I told you you were adopted, Lily-kins."

Lily leaped at him, her eyes finally releasing the tears in a fit of burning anger that scared her more than the flying had. She grabbed at his hair, which fell to his chin in curls, and knocked him to the ground with the full force of her weight.

"Lily!" Harry wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up, "Stop. Lily, stop." She fell against his shoulder, her tears marked his shirt and sobs heaved her body.

"I'm sorry Daddy. I'm s-s-so sorry I'm s-such a disappointment!"

"Oh, Lily." Harry carried his daughter into the house, as Ginny began lecturing the boys and sat down on the couch, carefully rocking her still-sobbing body back and forth. "You're not a disappointment, you hear me. You could never disappoint me, or your mother. We're proud of you, and we'll be more proud of you when you're winning swim-races than if you were winning Quidditch matches. Because if that's what you want to do, that's what you will do. Do you understand?" Lily nodded against his shoulder, and he kissed her head lightly. "It'll be wonderful, Lily, doll. We'll take you down to the village tomorrow and get you signed up for swim training, all right?"

Two weeks later, Lily scribbled a letter in her little girl handwriting.

Dear Teddy,

Did Dad tell you? He and Mum have gotten me lessons at the swimming pool in town. They're teaching me all sorts of strokes (that's what they're called, strokes). Like the crawl and the butterfly and the backstroke – my favorite is the butterfly, though. They say I'm one of the most promising swimmers they've seen in years. The only thing is, I have to be careful not to let my magic take control of me. I have to be careful to breathe when I'm supposed to so I don't accidently put the Bubblehead on me. Because if I do that I'll be in deep deep trouble with the Ministry of Magic. Because, you know, it's a Muggle swim club, so they don't know about magic.

It's weird, being around people who don't know about magic, and who don't know me. It's kind of nice though. (But don't tell anyone in the family I said that, all right?)

Are you coming round soon? I want to show you my butterfly! And I miss you. Victoire has stolen you away from us, and I'm not happy about that. Tell her to let you come over, all right, Teddy?

Love you much,

Lily

P.S. The boys are being jerky. They think I'm a coward. I'm not. Am I?

She sealed the letter and tied it to Ladon's leg, kissed the mallard on his silky green head and sent him off through the window. And while she didn't envy the bird's ability to fly, she did wish that she could go straight to Teddy, like he was.

V. Silver and Green

(just find a new way.)

Lily was excited for Hogwarts. She had been excited ever since she was three and realized that Teddy disappeared there every year. She couldn't wait to go, and even though she got more and more attached to her swimming teammates and to her career as a swimmer, she never considered home schooling. Her parents did, in whispered conversations late at night, when they thought she wouldn't hear them. One morning, when she was ten, she got up early and climbed into their bed and told them, "I love to swim and I love to compete, but I will still be able to swim at school. I want to go to school. I don't want to give that up for something that might not last forever, anyway." And her parents were secretly relieved, because Lily was a handful and homeschooling her would have been like trying to tame a wildfire.

So when she got the letter, signed by Minerva McGonagall and cosigned by Filius Flitwick, they took her to Diagon Alley and helped her pick out her school books and pointed hat and potions cauldron, and they watched as she flicked through wands as if they were pieces of candy, finally illuminating the spotless shop with a hawthorn wand containing a single unicorn tail hair.

Unlike most first year students, Lily was looking forward to her sorting. She found an empty compartment on the train, away from her family and their constant teasing about how she and Hugo might not get sorted into Gryffindor. Like that was the worst thing that could ever happen.

Lily Potter had a secret. She didn't want to get sorted into Gryffindor. She didn't care what house she got sorted into, as long as it wasn't Gryffindor. Although, she did like the Slytherin colors – the silver and green reminded her of her pond, at home. Her pond at midnight, when the moon reflected across the water and dyed it silver and the weeds waving around the edges were dark green. Green like Ladon's head or her eyes or Teddy's hair when he slept. He didn't know it turned the color of her eyes and Ladon's head and Slytherin House when he was sleeping, but it did.

The compartment door slid open and two figures entered. "Is it all right if she sits here?" the boy, who looked to be Albus's age, asked, gesturing toward a tiny girl with black hair and gray eyes and a sneer for lips.

"Sure," Lily waved her hand at the empty seats around her.

"Thanks," the boy pivoted to leave, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. "Hey, aren't you Al's little sister? Rose's cousin? Lily, right?"

Lily raised an eyebrow, "What's it to you?"

"I'm Scorpius Malfoy. Al and Rose's mate. Why aren't you with them in the Potter-Weasley compartment?"

"Because I didn't want to be with them." Lily shrugged. "You're not in Gryffindor, are you?"

"Nah, Ravenclaw." He grinned, "But your brother swallows his pride to hang out with me every once in a while. Are you sure you don't want to come up to the compartment? They stop acting like they own the place eventually, if that's what's bothering you. And it'll keep your mind off the sorting."

"Scorp," the girl, who had sat across from Lily and spent the conversation staring out the window. "Why didn't you invite me up to the famous Potter-Weasley fest?"

"Because you, Ris, will be sorted into Slytherin, no question. And while they accept Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, the Potter-Weasley bunch are still bigots about Slytherin."

"I don't want to come. Thanks for the offer." Scorpius left with one last look at the youngest, and probably the oddest, Potter as she turned to the girl. "I'm Lily."

"I got that," she responded, extending her hand. "A famous Potter. I'm Ris Parkinson." "Parkinson…that name sounds familiar. Did your father know mine?" Lily asked, choosing to ignore the "famous" bit.

"I don't know who my father is. I've got my mother's last name. She was a Slytherin, so if your dad knew her, I bet he didn't like her." Ris shifted, "Scorp seems to think your family hates Slytherins. Why are you talking to me?"

"I'm not like the rest of my family," Lily grinned, "For one thing, I hate flying."

"Yeah, from what I've heard, that's not very Potter-like," Ris laughed, "You'll have to do something totally radical not to get grouped with your family immediately at school, though."

"I've got a plan," Lily promised. Ris didn't push, and Lily decided that she liked this Parkinson girl.

Potter was way too far back in the alphabet, Lily realized as she watched Ris walk across the stone floor of the Great Hall. The Sorting Hat didn't even brush her hair before it shouted out Slytherin, and the table to the left cheered as Ris skipped across the floor, looking surprisingly relieved for someone who had been almost guaranteed a spot in the house. Lily saw James booing Ris and shot him a glare that he, unfortunately, didn't notice. When her name was called, the entire hall quieted as people craned their necks to get a look at the youngest child of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.

But she was focused on the Hat. Ah, another Potter. You'll be the last one, then. The voice hissed in her ear, and she replied softly, "Yes."

You know, I've wanted to put one of you Potters in a house other than Gryffindor for years, but you are all just too steadfast. 'Family loyalty, and all that' is how your brother Albus phrased it, I believe. But you, you're different.

"I'm steadfast," Lily told it, but the Hat snorted. Actually snorted!

Like seaweed in the ocean. I think I'll put you in SLYTHERIN.

The Hall erupted. Albus and James leapt from the Gryffindor Table and met Lily at the stool as she replaced the Hat, despite Professor Flitwick's attempts to return them to their seats.

"Lily, it's all right, there's been some mistake." Al said.

"We'll talk to Professor McGonagall, we'll tell her that you belong in Gryffindor."

Lily turned to face her brothers, and the Hall fell silent, as every individual in the Hall, as well as the ghosts, strained to hear how the littlest Potter would respond to her clearly unethical sorting. "It's not a mistake. I am not worried. I'm in Slytherin. Stop being idiots and get back to your table." Her voice was cool, and a sixth year Ravenclaw made the first step in separating Lily from her family. He would call her the Ice Queen until that nickname caught on and even the Slytherins adopted it; although, the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs thought it was an insult and the Slytherins saw it as an asset. But that's where the differences lay.

VI. Those In-Between Years

(grow up pretty, doll.)

The thing about family is that they'll always forgive, even if they don't ever forget. So they all forgave Lily, even if they took their time doing it. Hugo was first, but he wasn't really angry, so Lily never counted him. She was placed in Slytherin minutes before Hugo himself broke from family ties and requested Ravenclaw, so he was grateful to her. Also, she introduced him to Ris Parkinson, who, from the moment she first smiled at him, he knew he was going to marry. And if she refused marriage, which she might, since she was a Slytherin and they were all a little bit crazy, he'd live in sin with her, damn what his parents said. So, Hugo was never really angry with Lily. She was his best friend, after all.

Rose forgave her next, probably because of Scorpius, who was fascinated by the youngest Potter, and therefore invited her everywhere with him. Lily was more interested in getting to know her own housemates, rather than those in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor (Merlin knew that basically the entirety of Gryffindor was related to her), so she rarely took Scorpius up on his offers. But Rose did forgive her second. Or first, if you never counted Hugo. Of course, Rose got pissed at her later, supposedly for "wasting" her first kiss (and second, and third, and many after that) on Scorpius. Lily knew why Rose was really upset with her, but she didn't stop kissing Scorpius until Rose admitted that she had wanted to spend her first kiss on the white-haired Malfoy. Then Lily broke Scorpius's heart, or he thought she did, because he was a stupid boy and believed that his heart and his penis were the same. They weren't, and he got over it when Rose finally told him that she was in love with him, like real love. So Rose forgave Lily second, and she forgave her twice.

Fred offered Lily peace in the form of a prank pulled on Albus and James, which involved tying black and red lacy undergarments to their owls (gifts from Teddy when they left for Hogwarts) and sending them into the Great Hall at breakfast time. The prank went brilliantly, and while it may have prolonged Al and James's anger at her, Lily considered it well worth it.

Roxanne and Lucy came next, because if one of those two did something, then the other followed. It was probably Lucy's idea, since she liked justice and she didn't think it was fair to punish Lily for being sorted into Slytherin. It's not like it was her fault, after all.

Molly and Louis held out for about a month before they gave in to peer pressure and decided that having Lily in Slytherin might give them advantages in inter-house competitions.

So Lily's brothers, unsurprisingly, were the last to cave. What was surprising, shocking, really, was that it took them until the end of her first year. From the moment Lily sat down at the Slytherin table they ignored her and her friends, and when she hung out with Scorpius and Rose Albus left quickly, without speaking to her.

They finally acknowledged her when the Hogwarts Express arrived at Platform 9 ¾ at the end of the year. She left the compartment with her friends, but they all parted ways when they hit the platform. Lily caught sight of James's head sticking above the crowd, and she worked her way toward him, trying to keep her nerves under control. She had never been so nervous about summer before in her life, but she was not looking forward to two months spent locked in this silent argument with her brothers. She had tried to convince her parents to let her go to Ris's home in the north of Spain for the holidays, but her mother told her in no uncertain terms that she had to spend the summer with her family. Lily thought that her father's dislike and distrust of Pansy probably played a role in her summer imprisonment.

She had made it a point not to complain to anyone outside of Hogwarts about how her brothers were treating her, and when she caught sight of blue hair beside James's, she realized her mistake. Because her parents were often unobservant, but Teddy would never miss something as obvious as their silence and her brothers' clear and continuous disgust.

She reached the trio and threw her arms around Teddy's waist, "Teddy, I didn't know you were coming to get us!"

Teddy hugged Lily back and grinned down at her as Al leaned close to James and muttered, unintentionally loud enough for Teddy to hear, "Looks like Ice Queen has some emotion, after all."

"What was that, Albus?" Teddy released Lily and turned his full attention to her still-smirking brother.

"Nothing, Ted." James stepped in, "It's just a joke."

"A joke? You just called your little sister the Ice Queen. How is that funny?"

"It's fine, Teddy," Teddy's hair was turning his angry vivid orange, "Really. Everyone calls me that, it's not an insult."

"Sure sounded like an insult, coming from him." Teddy raised an eyebrow as Lily bit her lip. "Would one of you like to explain what's going on? Last I heard, you were all getting along well."

James snorted, "Lily's a traitor."

Lily rolled her eyes, "Teddy, it's no big deal, can we please just go home?"

"No. How is Lily a traitor, James?"

"She got sorted into Slytherin," Albus said, as if this explained everything.

"And," James added, when he saw that Teddy was unimpressed, "She's best friends with Ris Parkinson. Whose mother is pretty much the devil."

"Isn't Al's best friend is Harry's nemesis's son?" Teddy raised his eyebrows, "Why are you both still on about all this? It happened almost a year ago, and Lily's still your sister. I'd say blood trumps house."

"Scorpius is different than his father," Al said, "He's in Ravenclaw. Ris got sorted into Slytherin before the Hat even touched her hair."

"Slytherins are not all evil, you bastards," Lily couldn't keep her anger and hurt under control any longer.

"Lily, language!" Teddy reprimanded, "But she's right. Have you been treating her like crap all year?"

Lily laughed, "That would require talking to me. Acknowledging my existence. I'm surprised they haven't told me I'm not allowed to use our last name anymore."

"Tattletale," James hissed. "Little Slytherin coward tattletale, that's what you are!"

"James!" Teddy's hair was now so orange that it hurt to look at him, "That is untrue and cruel. Come on, I'm taking you home, and when we get there, you are both going to have a long, long, talk with your parents about how real life works, because you're both too petty to understand it."

Lily never told Teddy, but she was pretty sure that he saved her from going insane when he made her brothers forgive her.

Of course, Lily got other people pissed at her, over the years. The worst, by far, was Victoire's anger, which lasted years and which Lily didn't think she deserved. She came home for winter break in fifth year to find that Victoire no longer spoke to her. In fact, the gorgeous blonde refused to be in the same room as Lily. All that Lily knew was that Victoire's anger with her coincided with Teddy's departure and their breakup.

What Lily didn't know was that Teddy had moaned her name during sex. Victoire had not afforded him the opportunity to explain, and she knew that rationally she couldn't blame Lily. But the first time she saw Lily after the split, all she saw were her long pale legs wrapped around Teddy's waist, her head leaning back to give him access to her neck (his favorite spot) and her deep red hair spilling down her back. She couldn't handle those images, not then, and not six months or a year later. But the worst – the absolute worst – was when she met Lily's confused green gaze and she realized that Teddy's hair turned the exact color of Lily fucking Potter's eyes when he slept. Of course she irrationally blamed her cousin for their supermassive breakup. Of course she did. After all, Victoire was only human, she was only a woman in love with a man who fantasized about someone eleven years his junior. Who fantasized about her cousin, for Merlin's sake! Because, honestly, the eleven year age difference didn't bother her that much, if Teddy loved Lily. What bothered Victoire was that Teddy had tried to deny it.

Because Vic had asked him many times if he ever thought of Lily like that, if he ever saw her as anything other than a sister, a best friend, and Teddy had lied to her. Had lied and lied and lied until that night, when he betrayed himself, calling out that bitch's name when he came.

And for the record, lily flowers stink like scum. And red and green are the ugliest colors, swimmers lack class and all Slytherins are bastards. Except for Lorcan Scamander, because he introduced Vic to his brother Lysander (never mind that Lily had originally introduced Lorcan and Victoire). Lysander smiled and Vic's heart quickened the way it hadn't since Teddy, since the early days of their relationship. And it didn't matter that he was four years younger than her, because what's four years to the eleven separating Teddy and Lily?

But Teddy hated himself. He should have ended it with Victoire the first time he felt anything other than affection for Lily. The first time she hugged him and he pulled away feeling as if he could have stayed in her arms, inhaling her scent, forever. Or at least, he should have broken up with Victoire the second time, when Lily kissed his cheek and his mind went much much farther. At the very, very least, he should have told her that he didn't love her the way she claimed to love him. And he never, never, should have called out Lily's name during sex.

He hated himself because he hurt Victoire, not because it was over. Because for him, it really ended after the first time Lily hugged him and he pulled away wanting (needing) more.

VII. Deep Freeze, Slow Thaw

(keep those emotions hidden)

Lily's least favorite day of the year was always, unchangeably, the first of December. For the first six years of her time at Hogwarts, the lake froze so deeply on the first of December that no matter how many warming charms she cast on herself or on it, she could not get through the surface. December first marked the end of her swimming season until at least March, and it marked the beginning of winter, a beginning that wouldn't bother her if it didn't signify the beginning of the end of each year at Hogwarts – another month gone, another term ended, another day closer to that scary world beyond Hogwarts' walls.

But Lily's least favorite day changed her seventh year. It arrived too soon, and even though she tried not to read the frozen surface as a metaphor for her life, she couldn't help herself. Lily stood before the wide expanse of deep blue ice early on the morning of November fifteenth and squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden unexpected barrage of tears. The need to sob ripped through her veins, carried on a current of sorrow and endings and nostalgia. She stepped out onto the ice, half-hoping that it would crack into a million billion pieces and let her back home, back into the lake that she belonged to. It didn't. For the next five months, Lily was imprisoned in the world above the surface.

A world where she was alone. Everyone, it seemed, had moved on. They all had lives. James had floundered around in Auror Academy for exactly six months before finally, finally figuring out that he didn't need to follow in his father's footsteps – that it was better if he didn't – and flying to America and taking some type of high-level position on their International Magical Liaisons Council. He was (apparently – Lily hadn't spoken to him in ages) doing extraordinarily well and dating a woman named Ashlyn who Ginny claimed was gorgeous and perfect for him. And Al, silly Al with his long messy hair and charming smile and womanizing ways, had gone straight from school into professional Quidditch, and after his perfectly aimed bludger helped the Cannons win the Cup, no one (or barely anyone, he wasn't that lucky) said he had gotten the job just because of who is parents were. Even Teddy was doing something useful, something good, (something brilliant). In the middle of Lily's fifth year, when Teddy and Victoire split, he went off to Australia (then New Zealand, then Brazil, then Morocco, then he stopped writing to Lily and Lily stopped writing to him) searching for new medical potions ingredients. So Teddy became a miracle worker and Lily missed him. After two years of absence and one and a half years of silence, still she missed him, like the way she missed the feeling of ice cold water wrapping liquid tendrils around her face and legs and arms during the winter. She missed him the way she missed the smell of water – whether it was the briny scent of seawater or the scummy smell of her duck pond or the giant squid tasting water of the lake or, even, the chemical haze of chlorinated pool water – she missed him like that, but worse.

And now she was seventeen and he was twenty-eight and gone and she had to get her life in order, somehow, but it was such a mess and she didn't know how. And so she stood at the exact center of the lake on November fifteenth of her seventh year and sobbed.

Hugo found her twenty minutes later. She made a striking figure against the blue ice – her red hair swirled around in the wind and her black jacket contrasted sharply with the solid lake.

"Lily, are you okay?" Hugo rested a red mittened hand on her shoulder and squeezed, and she turned to look at him. He bit back a curse at the sight of her purple lips, bloodshot eyes, and pale, ice-streaked cheeks.

She didn't even try to lie. She shook her head and her cousin pulled her into a hug. "Oh, Lily, what's the matter?"

"Everything. Nothing. Oh, Merlin, I don't know," she spoke into his shoulder, and he rubbed small circles on her back.

"Come inside, and get cleaned up, and tell me and Ris about everything, nothing, or whatever over a Butter Beer at the Three Broomsticks, all right?"

"Is it a Hogsmeade weekend?" Her voice sounded a bit stronger, and she scrubbed at her cheeks with purple-tinged fingers.

"You've really been out of it lately, Lil." Hugo led her back to the castle and sent her down to her room. She showered and redid her makeup and dried her hair and smiled at herself in the mirror, but it all felt very surface. No emotion, because her emotions were still out of place. But she was Lily Luna Potter, dammit, the girl the entire school knew as the Ice Queen, and she wouldn't let her emotions get the better of her now. Maybe that meant she was out of it a lot of the time, and she freely admitted that it did, but at least she wasn't weak. At least she wasn't a bloody girly slave to her feelings, the way Rose and Lucy and Victoire all were.

"You ready, Lil?" Ris stood in the doorway to their room, her eyes scanning her best friend's face critically. "Hugo said you had a…what was it…an 'un-Lily-like breakdown.' Are you better now? Because you know I'm no good at the whole sympathy thing."

Lily laughed, "Hugo's exaggerating. You know the way Ravenclaws can be. I'm ready. You?"
Ris's eyes narrowed, but she didn't push for the truth. If Lily wanted to isolate herself, if she felt like lying, it wasn't Ris's job to pull the truth out of her. Merlin knew Lily had respected Ris's lies more times than Ris could count.

Ris led the way up the hall and met Hugo with a quick kiss, beckoning to Lily to hurry up as they left the building. But when they reached Hogsmeade, Lily turned down the road toward the Shrieking Shack, away from the Three Broomsticks. "You guys have fun, I don't want to be a third wheel today."

"Lily," Hugo called after her, but she just waved a hand back at him and kept walking.

Truth be told, Hugo and Ris were glad to have a day to themselves; lately they'd felt as if they were on Lily suicide-watch. And maybe she didn't recognize her own depression, but her friends saw it in her listless expressions and continuous sighs and dangerous, stupid choices. Just three nights before she had snuck out of the room and came back smelling like Muggle bourbon and sex – Ris had never followed her friend, but she'd have bet her wand that Lily had gotten outside the boundaries of the castle and apparated to London that night. And that that hadn't been the first time. She and Hugo felt guilty that they let her go off on her own in Hogsmeade, but they also felt they were owed a few hours of peace.

There wasn't any snow yet – it was too bloody cold for snow – so the walk to the Shrieking Shack was easy, and Lily climbed over the fence when she got there, walked to the front door and sat on the rotting front step, alone. She tapped her green painted fingernail against the falling down railing and tilted her head to look at the house. This place had witnessed horrible, terrifying nights: long years of full moons when Teddy's father had torn it apart in his isolated pain; dangerous but thrilling months when her grandfather and Sirius and that bastard Peter had saved their best mate from insanity, and tragedy arriving in the form of Voldemort's useless murder of Severus Snape. Her life, her family's life, was tied inextricably to this falling-down wreck of a building.

Lily pulled her wand from her pocket and waved it in a complicated movement, conjuring bubbles from its tip and watching as they billowed about in the frostbiting air, weaving glistening paths away from the house and toward Hogsmeade. She used to love to make those bubbles; whenever Teddy was around she'd send them after him, chasing him down and bopping against his face and his neck and his chest with their malleable, unbreakable shells. It drove him crazy. Lily bit back a sad smile at the memory, and sent more bubbles from her wand.

At first she thought she heard his usual humming because she had been thinking about him, that maybe she had gone around the bend and was now hallucinating. But then she saw a bright green head come up the path, and she stopped breathing. Because while she could accept, maybe welcome, auditory hallucinations, visual ones were much worse, and meant much worse things, and therefore she couldn't be hallucinating. He had to actually be there.

She watched silently as he continued up the path, not noticing the few translucent bubbles that still passed him and certainly not noticing the teenage girl tracking his ascent. He looked gloriously the same as he had two years before, with green hair that flickered to a melancholy blue when he saw the shape of the house over the rise and freckled skin and a perfect, kissable mouth and oh, so deliciously broad shoulders and such a long stride and Lily thought that she might never have seen anything more perfect than him before in her life.

He didn't see her until he had hopped the fence, and he blinked, his hair betraying him by shifting to a shocking yellow – his immediate reaction to anything that surprised him. Lily knew she looked a mess; she had tried this morning to fix herself, but it hadn't worked. She wore a ratty pair of black skinny jeans with tears in the thighs and the knees, tucked into clunky old work boots that she had stolen from a Muggle's apartment the morning after she had somehow lost her heels somewhere along the way from the bar to his home. Her green sweater was stretched and hung on her maybe (definitely) too-thin body like a muumuu and the silver scarf that she had wrapped around her neck had a dragon blood stain on it from her NEWT Potions class. Her skin was so pale that the violet bags under her eyes glowed, her chapped lips leaked small slivers of blood, and her hair hung in dull tangles around her face. She was a wreck of a girl, and she had not wanted Teddy to see her like this.

"Lily?" Teddy's voice was the same as always, even coated in astonishment, even bursting out in a breath of cold mist, even after two painful years.

"Hi Teddy. Want to join me?" Lily scooted over a little, making space for him beside her on the step.

"Lily. What are you doing here?" He didn't move away from the fence, and he certainly didn't move toward her. She tried, and failed, not to feel self-conscious, tugging uneasily at the hem of her sweater and running the hand clutching her wand through her tangled hair.

"Hogsmeade weekend. What about you? Last I heard, you were somewhere in Africa."

He took a step back, toward the fence. "I did notice a lot of students in the village…why aren't you down there, with all your friends?"

She shrugged, "I felt like paying a visit to this old place. Why are you here?" She repeated, but he didn't respond. He turned his back to her and gripped the fence with white-knuckled hands. Lily longed to get up, to walk over to him and wrap her arms around him and tell him that she had missed him, exactly the way she would have in her childhood. But something had shifted in the last two years, something silent and unknown between them that removed hugs from their list of interactions. It may have destroyed anything normal between them.

Teddy didn't move, and Lily shifted uncomfortably. She knew that he wasn't going to break his silence, but she didn't know what to say to break hers. She fell on honesty. "I've missed you, Ted, but what are you doing back?"

He laughed sharply. "You've missed me? You stopped writing a year and a half ago, Lily. Life get too busy for you to take five minutes to respond to my letters? Lorcan Scamander too consuming for you to let me know you were alive?"

Lily strangled her voice, which suddenly wanted to yell, down to a near-growl. "You stopped writing, Ted. I thought that meant that you didn't want to hear anymore about what was going on at Hogwarts. And I don't know who you've been talking to, but Lorcan and I were never more than friends." All right, that was kind of, sort of, a lie. But fuck-buddies does not a relationship make.

"That's not what James says. I was just in America, and I spent a few weeks with him. He's doing well, not that you care. He says you haven't written to him since he left, either, but that your mum and Al told him you're all wrapped up and in love with Scamander."

"Bullshit. I haven't even seen Lorcan in months; he went off chasing a story on the continent ages ago. And why would I write to James? He's never written to me."

"Does that matter?" Teddy whirled, finally, to face Lily, but she half-wished he hadn't. His eyes burned black with anger and his lips were curled into a scowl. "Don't you care about anyone other than yourself, Potter? Do you care at all?"

She met his fiery gaze with cool silence, her green eyes pools of icy indifference. At first. But he kept glaring, and her façade, already weakened by her breakdown that morning, fell away. She dropped her head into her hands and gripped at her hair, silently ordering Teddy away. Away, before she started crying, or worse, spilling her truths.

But from the silence that echoed around the yard, he hadn't moved a fraction. Hadn't even shifted a centimeter. He was waiting for her to say something, she knew. To yell, scream, tear him apart, the way she would have two years ago if he had spoken to her like that. He had no idea what had happened in the two years between his departure and this day. So why wouldn't he expect her to react the way she was supposed to?

She couldn't pull up the courage to yell at him. She stood and brushed her hands on her jeans, the wand in her left hand releasing a spray of sparks as it caught at the hole in the fabric. She walked past Teddy without saying anything, but he reached out a hand and gripped her right arm. "You don't, do you?" His voice was softer, sadder. "You don't care."

She pressed the tip of her wand against the back of his hand and muttered, keeping her eyes straight ahead, "Let go of me."

"Answer me."

She thought the Stinging Hex without looking at him, and he jerked back, "Fuck, Potter."

She didn't speak, but disapparated on the spot.

That night she stumbled back into her bedroom, stinking of bad wine and poor choices, and pulled a piece of parchment from her trunk and scribbled I care. so deeply that the quill nearly tore the surface. She added the parchment to a pile at the very bottom of her trunk and fell into bed, dropping tears onto her pillow and praying for change.

She woke up with a wicked hangover, and rolled over to find a glass of water and a bottle of acid green potion sitting on her bedside table, accompanied by a note in Ris's script: We need to talk. Meet me and Hugo by the lake when you get up.

Lily groaned and tossed back the glass of water and the potion, then rolled out of bed and into the shower, where she tried to collect her thoughts as the hot water erased all physical marks of the night before. But when she arrived on the banks of the frozen lake twenty minutes later, her mind was still a mess, and she could almost feel herself coming undone.

"I don't do confrontations and I don't do interventions," Ris began when she saw Lily approaching, "so you know this is serious."

"You've never tattled before, Kristina, why start now?"

It was a credit to Ris that she didn't attack Lily then and there. No one used her given name, no one dared. Even Lily hadn't dared, before that day. "She didn't tattle, Lily. I can tell something's off, but I don't know exactly what."

"What's off is that I'm sleeping around with Muggles and drinking so much that Ris is having flashbacks to her childhood." Lily twirled her wand around in her hand nervously.

"And that you're being an utter bitch," Ris muttered, softly enough that Lily wouldn't have caught it if the lake hadn't been frozen into silence.

"Ris, we don't want to attack her," Hugo reminded her, as if they had planned out the whole conversation ahead of time.

"Look, guys, I appreciate what you're trying to do. I understand that I'm worrying you and that you care," she caught her breath, "which is nice. Really. But I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You. Are. Not. Fine." Hugo gripped her chin in his fingers and pulled her to face him, "I'm about two seconds away from calling your parents in here, Lily. Give us something to go on, something that we can help you with."

Lily pulled away, "If it worries you both this much I'll stop sneaking out at night. I'll stop sleeping around. I'll stop drinking. Can we just leave it at that, please?"

"But, Lily, that won't fix whatever's going on," Hugo pointed out, as Lily turned to leave.

"But it'll fix the symptoms," Lily muttered, hurrying back to the castle and continuing up the stairs to an empty Charms classroom. She locked the door and sat down at a seat in the back, before pulling a blank parchment out of her bag and staring at it. She tapped her quill against the sheet and thought.

Dear James, she began, as if the thoughts would come easier after she got the addressee's name down. They didn't. She wrote slowly, stiltedly, and as she completed the short letter she realized that she really had isolated herself too much; she couldn't even think of things to tell her older brother. Her last words almost hurt her to write, the concept had become so foreign to her in the last two years: Just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. Love, Lily.

VIII. Confess

(honesty at its boiling point)

Lily had plans for Ladon, who swam in a Charmed pond in a far corner of the owlery, a pond that she had made her first year. She collected him and hurried down to her room, which was blessedly empty. She tugged the pile of parchment from her trunk and tied them together with a ribbon without reading them, without even looking through them. She scribbled an explanatory note, shrunk it all so that Ladon could carry it, and sent him winging toward London.

Teddy had just come down the Leaky Cauldron's dark staircase when the duck flew through the open doorway and landed clumsily on the bar. Tom moved to collect the paper attached to his leg, but the animal had caught sight of Teddy and hopped down the length of the bar toward him.

Teddy sighed and ran a hand over the mallard's green head as he removed the shrunken letters. He had been planning on eating an early breakfast downstairs and going into Diagon Alley to continue his search for an apartment, but curiosity got the better of him. He asked that his breakfast be sent to his room and returned upstairs, cradling Ladon in one arm and clutching the parchment close to his body with his other.

He leaned against the side of his bed, on the floor of his room, and enlarged the pile. He skimmed his eyes over Lily's still too-familiar handwriting and sighed as he began reading.

Dear Teddy,

At the end of fifth year, I wrote you two letters. Two letters without getting a response. At first, I figured you were just busy, that you'd get back to me eventually. So I continued to write letters to you, planning to send them once you had time to respond to me. (You knew me, Teddy. You knew I didn't like to waste anyone's time). After three months without a letter, I figured out that you weren't going to write to me anymore, and that meant that you weren't interested in what was happening in my life. So I stopped planning to send you letters, but I couldn't stop writing them (and believe me, I tried). When I saw you the other day, I got the impression that you did care, even if you didn't write to me, so I've attached all of the letters that I wrote but never sent. Don't feel like you need to read them. I just thought I'd give you the chance.

Sincerely,
Lily

Teddy closed his eyes for an instant, just a second, remembering the days when Lily's letters would be signed with love and rows of x's and o's, and water spattered across them because her hair would have been dripping wet over the page, because it always was – he used to find pondweed strung through the red strands, dirt marks from the water on her cheeks.

He flipped to the next page and smiled – this one looked like the Lily letters he remembered. But as he turned through them, they got more and more formal, until he hit the sixth letter.

Dear Teddy,

I don't know why I'm even addressing this to you, it's not like I'm ever going to send it. That's what I've decided, you know. I don't want to bother you with news of my life when you're obviously not interested. But I can't stop thinking about you. So this'll keep me connected to you, I hope. And if you ever read it, which you won't, but if you do, I've stopped censoring myself. So here's where I spill my secrets. To paper, and an imaginary Ted. My imaginary Teddy, he judges me, all the time. But that doesn't stop me.

I slept with Lorcan Scamander last night. I was drunk, you know; there was a Slytherin party 'cause we totally tanked at Quidditch against bloody Gryffindor and we all wanted to forget the embarrassment of it. Lorcan and Lysander Scamander were visiting, Lysander spent the night in Ravenclaw, but Lor came down to Slytherin, obviously, since we're awesome. (And we had booze.)

But yeah, we were both drinking too much, stupidly too much. So it happened. And I'm just reallyreallyreally glad that I was drunk when it did.

It won't happen again, though. I promise. I know that it's not like me, to be so idiotic. I know that. I'm sure this shocks you, Ted. Merlin knows it shocked me, this morning. They're right, you know. The morning after – it's no fun. Maybe it is, if you love the guy. Was it for you, when you were with - ? I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't bring her up. That's probably a sore topic, although we all wonder what happened…

I'm going now, I need to beg Ris for some of her hangover potion.

Love,
Lily

Teddy clenched his jaw as he read. "Oh, Lil," he dropped the letter to the floor and tilted his head back, "What have you done to yourself?"

After a few deep breaths he flipped the sheet over and reached for the next one. It was written two weeks after the previous one, and was just one line: I lied. I did it again. Does it make it better that I've still only slept with one man?

"Oh, Lil," Teddy repeated.

He flipped through the next several letters – they were full of inconsequential things, things that happened a long time ago and no longer really mattered: an examination in Transfiguration, a complicated potion that she brewed perfectly, Rose and Scorpius dating, Albus having a girlfriend who lasted more than a week…He read them all voraciously – regardless of their aged content, they were all in Lily's voice. They made him feel like she was sitting beside him, the way she had when she was just fourteen and him twenty-five and she would just talk and talk about nothing and everything.

But then he reached another letter, one that made him stop, like the ones with Lorcan had, one that made him remember that he wasn't with Lily, and that she wasn't the same girl who had sat by him for beautiful endless hours.

Teddy –

Christmas sucks.

I thought she'd be over it (whatever it is) by now. It's been a year since it started and she's still not speaking to me. Oh, shit, I forgot I hadn't told you about this, because I thought that someday I might send these to you and then you'd be hurt because Victoire was your girlfriend for, like, seven years. But I'm starting to get the feeling you're never going to read these, so I'll explain, I guess.

You and Vic split up on Boxing Day of fifth year (or that's what I've gathered, anyway, since no one's really talked to me about it) and you left a week after that. But Vic came over two nights before we left for Hogwarts for spring term, and she wouldn't talk to me. Every time I walked into a room, she'd get up and walk out of it, even if she was in the middle of a sentence. Everyone noticed. And everyone assumed I did something to piss her off. Everyone in the family must have cornered me at least once that night. Louis and Dom got all over-protective sibling-like and Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur glared at me the entire evening.

The thing is, I just can't figure out what I could have done. I've thought about everything, you know? Anything I could have said to her or done to her to piss her off, but I keep coming up blank. But everyone knows that I did do something. Even I know that. Because Vic is perfect, and she'd never get pissed about nothing. And it must have been pretty horrible, because it's been a year, and she's still avoiding me.

I just came upstairs to write this letter because I don't want to deprive everyone of Vic's company just by being there. But I don't really feel like spending the day alone in my room. If you were here, Ted, you'd be up here with me and I would be happy. (Although maybe you'd side with Vic too. James just came up here and I thought he'd be asking me if everything was okay, but instead he threatened to dose me with Veritaserum to get me to tell everyone what I did to Victoire. And Hugo, who I definitely thought would give me the benefit of the doubt, claims to be "Switzerland". But I can tell he's wondering what I did wrong too.)

Am I really that bad of a person, Teddy?

Oh, who the hell am I even writing to? Clearly, I am a bad person, if my best friend doesn't even want to write to me.

Happy Christmas, to me.

-Lily

"Oh, fuck." Teddy groaned the words as he dropped his head into shaking hands and gripped his twilight colored hair tightly. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." He hadn't expected Victoire to get over him quickly, but he also hadn't expected her to take out her anger at him on Lily. True, he had done the unthinkable. But it had been his mistake, his stupidity. Lily herself, the beautiful, cheerful, willful, unbreakable girl that he had known his whole life, she had done absolutely nothing wrong. And what the hell was wrong with her family, siding with Victoire? Couldn't they see the damage they had done to her? With every word he read, every letter he put aside, it became more and more obvious that his unbreakable redhead had broken.

After Christmas, Teddy got the impression that Lily had begun treating the letters to her "imaginary Teddy" as confessions to a secular priest. Each one broke Teddy's heart a little more, until depression gave way to absolute, consuming anger. Her February letter was the last one that even used complete sentences, the last one that told a story:

Ted –

I've decided that it doesn't really matter why Vic is pissed at me. Honestly, she'll get over it eventually, and clearly there's nothing I can do to make it better. (I tried talking to her before I left home, but she wouldn't listen to me – walked out of every room I walked into. Still.)

Last night I did something stupid. I seem to do stupid things a lot, lately.

Actually, I seem to do one stupid thing over and over and over again.

Last night Ris, Hugo and our friend Seb wanted to go into Hogsmeade, so we all snuck out of the castle and into the village. And it was fun, until Ris and Hugo went off somewhere and Seb hooked up with some thirty year old witch (no lie, Ted) that he met in the middle of the dance floor. So I was left with tumblers of firewhisky for company…which always makes me do stupid, stupid, things.

I caught sight of Lorcan Scamander on the dance floor, looking like sex with his wavy blond hair and tan and heavy blue eyes and steaming skin, so of course I went up to him. I was drunk, and we're friends, so it's actually not all that awful. Except the guy wasn't Lor, it was his twin, Lysander, who I've only talked to maybe a total of five times.

Except now I've slept with him.

Does it count if the second guy I've ever slept with is the identical twin of the first?

Oh, Merlin. I'm a horrible person.

Starting in March, her letters became lists of what she clearly viewed as her sins, or fragmented explanations of her thought processes, if there were any. Teddy finally arrived at the second-to-last letter, an explanation that left him struggling to align this Lily with the little girl who had once spent an entire afternoon sitting on the bottom of a pond just watching the way the water moved beneath the surface.

Ris says I'm lucky I haven't gotten pregnant yet. She says I'm being stupid, like I don't know that already. It's just so simple, though. To get out of Hogwarts and apparate to London and pick up the first Muggle guy I meet after I've taken a few shots of Tequila (it's a devil, Ted, don't ever try it).

In Hogsmeade or at Hogwarts, all the guys know who I am. To them, it's a status thing. A thing to whisper to their friends about, or to shout to the entire school, if they're asshole Gryffindors – "Dude, I hooked up with Harry Potter's daughter last night." They're either in awe of me or terrified of my father, and most of them do it for a dare. It's not like I've ever wanted a relationship with any of them, but it would be nice to know they're at least attracted to me as me. Even if the only me they're seeing is the physical one: my red hair and green eyes and clumsiness on the dance floor.

So that's what Muggles do. They have no idea who Harry Potter is, and they have no idea…about so much. It's so easy, Ted. And right now, easy is all I want.

That's why I've been getting drunk and having sex with Muggles. Ris wonders, and Hugo worries, and my parents and brothers probably think that I'm with Lorcan Scamander, since I invited him over once in the summer holidays, but I am just looking for easy.

You were easy. Did you know that? We were so, so easy.

And then the last letter, clearly written after she had met him in Hogsmeade, written so deeply in the parchment that the words looked engraved: I care.

Teddy sat in silence, wondering how to help make this better. Wondering if he could make this better. She hadn't seen that different, when he saw her at the Shrieking Shack. She had been withdrawn and distant, but so had he. She had at least tried to talk to him, tried to get things back to the way they used to be. She hadn't attacked him immediately. Lily had been making an effort, and after reading these letters Teddy could imagine how much of an effort it must have been for her. And she had sent the letters to him, letters which she had never intended him to see. She wanted him back.

Teddy didn't really have a choice to make. He had known, the moment he decided to return to the UK, that he would be seeing Lily eventually, and that he would need to talk to her when he did. He hadn't wanted their first meeting in two years to go the way it had, but he hadn't exactly been happy while traveling the world, either, and seeing Lily there, when he had been planning on spending some quality time just thinking, away from everything…well, he hadn't reacted well.

Teddy had not originally booked a room in Diagon Alley in order to visit Hogwarts – Hogsmeade would clearly have been the better choice – but then he received an owl from Professor McGonagall, who somehow found out he was back in the country before anyone else did, and he decided to at least meet with her. Lily's belated letters gave him more of a reason to visit the old school (or more of one to stay away, but Teddy was through with fear.)

He arrived at the familiar front gate and inhaled the fresh, cool scent of Hogwarts, although his rushing blood and rapidly beating heart told him he had finally returned home. He walked slowly up to the castle, still feeling that old awe at the sight of it, still feeling as if he were just eleven, crossing the lake behind Hagrid in a wobbly, waterlogged boat. Before going down to the dungeons and the Slytherin dormitory, he went upstairs, past more familiar hallways and paintings and gargoyles, to the Headmistress's office.

"Oh, Teddy, come in, come in." Professor McGonagall stood at the open window in her circular office, and her eyes continued scanning the Forest, as if she was searching for something lost among the bare treetops.

"Good morning, Professor. How are you?" Teddy took both her hands in his and met her tired eyes with his own. Professor McGonagall didn't like to pick favorites, but in all honesty, Teddy Lupin was hers.

"I'm well, Teddy. It's good to see you again. You look as if Africa agreed with you." She crossed the office and sat at her desk. "Have a seat." She gestured to one of the chairs across from her, and Teddy fell into one gratefully. "Two years ago, just before you left, you came to ask me if I foresaw a position opening up here in the near future. I told you that I did, but you left before I could make the offer formally."

"I apologize, Professor. I should have informed you of my plans, but they were very last minute. I hope you understand," Teddy had acted irresponsibly. But then, he had been irresponsible.

"It's all right, Ted. I understand that sometimes things don't work out quite as we expect them to. However, I managed to convince our Potions master to stay on until I could find a suitable replacement." One of McGonagall's rare smiles curved her lips, and Teddy felt a bit more hopeful, "I, of course, attempted to find one. I interviewed many, many candidates, but none fit the position well enough. Our Potions master recently gave me an ultimatum. She ordered me to find someone by next year, or else she will leave me with no one. So I owled you. I supposed that you might be ready to stop adventuring. I was surprised, however, to find that you already had."

Teddy smiled, a brilliant grin that lit up his whole face. "I would love to fill the position of Potions master, Professor. And as to my return, you were the first to learn of it. I had started missing home."

"Excellent. I will let Professor Stelling know that she can stop worrying." Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows at Teddy, "No one knows that you're home, yet?"

"Well," Teddy examined his hands for a moment, "Lily does. I ran into her in Hogsmeade the other day."

Professor McGonagall didn't respond immediately, and Teddy looked up to see that she was considering him, her eyes assessing his expression. She looked slightly anxious. "Lily Potter."

"Yes," Teddy nodded. "Is something wrong?"

"Not wrong, exactly." Professor McGonagall fell into silence again. Then she appeared to make a decision, "I'm worried about her, though. When she first arrived at Hogwarts, and when she was sorted into Slytherin, I was impressed. She handled the derision of the other students so well, and she eventually gained their respect. Most don't consider Slytherins universally evil any longer, and Lily has a lot to do with the disintegration of that stereotype. I had planned on naming her Head Girl from the moment that she put the Sorting Hat on her head. And she didn't disappoint me. But in the middle of her fifth year, or at the beginning of her sixth, she stopped caring. She still does extraordinarily well on her schoolwork, but outside of that…with other students…she's distant. Her prefect duties have slipped so much that if she weren't Harry's daughter, I would have revoked the title. At first, I thought that she just found something more interesting outside of Hogwarts, but lately I've been worrying. I've received several owls from St. Mungo's and departments within the Ministry regarding her, as they've heard about her skills with Charms and Transfiguration, but Lily will not respond to them. Did you talk to her, when you saw her in Hogsmeade?"

Teddy had tensed as Professor McGonagall spoke, and he shook his head guiltily. "No, but I was hoping to see her today. I don't suppose you'd give me the password to the Slytherin dormitory?"

Professor McGonagall sighed, "I could, but I doubt Miss Potter will be there. I saw her at breakfast early this morning."

"No idea where she might be, then?"

Professor McGonagall shook her head, "Three years ago, I could have told you to look for the biggest gathering of students in the castle, and she would have been in the center of it. Now, I'd suggest looking in the library or by the lake – somewhere people go to be alone."

Teddy sighed, "I think that I'll go look for her. Thank you, Professor. Really."

"No, thank you, Teddy. I will be in touch about your job, but be prepared to move in here by June, all right?"

Teddy nodded and shook her hand before leaving, hurrying down the curved staircase and out into the hallway. He had initially thought of looking for Lily by the lake, but it was bitingly cold outside, and although he knew that Lily's love of water often trumped discomfort, he couldn't imagine that frozen water would have that same power. By some chance, he collided with Hugo in the hallway outside the entrance to the Ravenclaw dormitory.

"Teddy?" Hugo blinked in surprise. "Teddy!"

Teddy laughed, "Hey Hugo." He wanted to ruffle the boy's curly red hair, like he would have two years ago, but instead he reached out to shake Hugo's hand. But the Ravenclaw didn't move.

"What are you doing here?" His voice was cool, distant.

"I just got back into the country, and I had to meet with Professor McGonagall about something."

"Her office is that way," Hugo jerked his head in the opposite direction. "Now what are you doing?"
"Hugo," Teddy stepped back, "What's going on?"

"Do you want to see Lily?" Hugo asked, "Is that why you're wandering the halls?"

"I was looking for her, yeah. Do you know where she is?"

Hugo shook his head, "I don't know if she's a mess because you left, or if her problems have something to do with Victoire not speaking to her, but either way, I don't really want you going around her."

"I'm not going to hurt her, Hugo."

Hugo shook his head angrily, "But you will. She's a wreck, Teddy. An absolute wreck, and Ris and I couldn't handle her if she got any worse."

"Look," Teddy closed his eyes briefly, "I know I've fucked up in the past, I know I didn't treat her the way she deserved. I know that she's a mess, and I also know that I can help her."

"How?" Hugo challenged.

"By being there. She doesn't think that anyone, other than you and Ris, actually care about her. She needs people to make it clear that they do. And I do, Hugo."

Hugo nodded slowly. "I might regret this, but she's in North Tower." Teddy turned to leave, and Hugo called after him, "If she gets any worse, Ted, you will be the one who suffers." Like he wouldn't have suffered already, if he hurt her again.

Lily sat in the window of North Tower, looking out at the Forest and wondering, again, about what the future held for her. She had options, this was true. But none of the letters that McGonagall had pressed into Lily's hands with unbearable hope shining in her face interested Lily. And they all should have, and they might have if it had seemed real. But none of it did.

At that moment, it was easier to think about the future than the past, and the letters that she had sent off to Teddy. They probably incriminated her in all sorts of ways, and Teddy was likely on his way to her parents' house, to get her hauled into therapy. If he had even received the letters yet; she loved Ladon, but he was often a slow flier, and she had learned to waterproof any package she entrusted him with since he often stopped off for a dip in a pond on the way to his intended destination.

She heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, but didn't turn from her absentminded perusal of the Forest. "When I said I wanted to be alone, Hugo, I didn't mean that I wanted you to follow me up here."

To her surprise, it wasn't Hugo who replied, "I missed you too, Lily. I should have told you that the other day."

Lily froze. She hadn't expected Teddy to come find her after reading the letters. She hadn't prepared herself for that. She kept her eyes focused out the window, and clenched her hands into fists against her sides.

He didn't come any nearer. She heard him move, but he slid down the wall to sit on the floor across the tower from her. They remained in complete silence for a time, before Teddy realized that this time it was his responsibility to fix this. "I feel like I owe you a million explanations, and I don't know where to begin." He scrubbed a hand angrily through his natural brown hair, "I didn't respond to the last two letters that you wrote me because I never received them. Maybe I left just before they arrived, and maybe Ladon dropped them somewhere along the way, I don't know. But I do know that I didn't get anything from you after the last letter I sent. And I should have tried harder, I should have written another letter to you, rather than just assume that you stopped caring. I'm sorry about that." Lily could feel his eyes examining her stiff back, but she didn't turn, she couldn't look at him, although internally she was cursing herself for not using a bird more reliable than Ladon for her and Teddy's cross-continental communication.

After two more minutes of silence, during which Teddy prayed for Lily to respond in some way, he gave in and continued talking, "But I'm more sorry about Victoire. Oh, Merlin, Lil, you have no idea how horrible I felt, when I read how she's been treating you. And how your family reacted." He shook his head, biting back the harsh words that he wanted to spit at them all. "You haven't done anything to deserve Vic's anger. I promise you."

"Why then?" Lily whirled to face him, anger and pain apparent in the scowl on her face and her biting tone, "Why is she treating me like this? Why does my family side with her, if I didn't do anything to her?"

He closed his eyes for a moment. The cowardly part of him, the stupid part of him, had been hoping that she would just believe him without needing an explanation for her ruined relationship with the family. He knew better, of course, Lily would never have dismissed two years of confused anger for such a non-explanation.

"I did something to her, Lil." Teddy dropped his head in his hands.

"Why is she still taking it out on me, then?" Lily prompted.

He rubbed his now-burning face with calloused hands. "It's embarrassing and stupid."

"Great," she reached for her wand, a kneejerk reaction whenever she felt this angry, "So I've been trying to get Vic to forgive me over the last two years for something 'embarrassing and stupid.' Thanks, Teddy."

"No, Lil, that's not what I meant." He shook his head, "Not at all. It's embarrassing and stupid for me, and it hurt Victoire so, so much. And I ran away, rather than deal with the consequences, and I left you to deal with the full force of her anger."

"Over what? Just spit it out, Teddy. It's not as if I'll judge you. I don't have the right to judge anyone."

"I guarantee you've never done to anyone what I did to Victoire."

"You make it sound as if you killed her brother. Louis is still very much alive and very much a prat, so what the hell did you do?"

"I – Merlin, Lil, I've never told this to anyone." He shook his head, "It makes me sound like such a pedophile."

"Honestly, Ted, did you cheat on her with a ten year-old, or something?"

He bit back a self-deprecating laugh, "Vic and I, after we left Hogwarts, had a very simple relationship. We acted more like an old married couple than horny twenty year-olds." It felt weird to be talking to Lily about this. "We didn't really have sex all that often, and I stayed with her because she was safe. Vic was my friend, and I honestly believed that our friendship would make our relationship work." He scrubbed his hands through his hair again, "But she loved me, and I didn't love her, not the way she needed me to." He fell silent. If only he could leave it at that.

"So you broke up with her? Why'd she get pissed at me, then?" Lily had turned around again, to shield her face from Teddy's view. She couldn't control her emotions, and with every word Teddy spoke she could feel hope blooming more and more fiercely in her heart – a heart she had long considered solid, un-melting ice – and spreading across her uncooperative face.

"Vic wanted to change things between us. She wanted to make us more…exciting, or something, so she started…Merlin, Lil, I can't talk to you about this."

"You guys started having a lot of sex." She supplied, her voice cool and controlled, like that didn't bother her at all.

"Right." He wished suddenly that she was still innocent of all this, that the world hadn't intruded so completely. "And it was fine. I mean…well, you know. Too much sex wasn't the issue. But I wasn't interested in Vic like that at all, anymore. I had already given up on our relationship. And I should have split with her the second I realized that. But I was stupid and scared, so I didn't." He closed his eyes, shame flooding his pores, "She had this intimate evening planned for Christmas night, that year. I had had a little too much to drink at the party before we got back to our flat, so I was a little freer than I usually was…and I…I called out someone else's name."

"Oh, Merlin." Lily scowled at the Forest. "I bet Vic didn't like that."

"No, no," Teddy chuckled, "She really didn't."

"But what –?" Lily began. "Teddy, you didn't…"

Confession was supposed to make him feel better, wasn't it? "That's the sick part of it all, and that's why everything got so unbelievably fucked up. You were fifteen, Lily, and I was twenty-six, and you were Vic's cousin, but I wanted you." He closed his eyes, in case she turned to look at him. He didn't want to see disgust on her face. "And Victoire didn't give me the chance to explain, even if I could have. She kicked me out and I left the country. I'm sorry that I left you to deal with her alone, and that I didn't explain to you what had happened. I never thought she'd think that you and I had actually had something, Lily. I never even imagined that she'd blame you."

Teddy fell silent. He couldn't explain himself anymore. He needed her to respond, to say something. To tell him he was disgusting, or to just ignore it, or something. She spoke after a few seconds spent trying to train her voice back into its indifferent tone, but when she spoke, it still relayed some of the hope that burned at her heart. "I get it. She blames me because I exist, and she can't forget about how it ended with me around all the time."

"It still doesn't make it right."

"No," Lily shook her head, "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I understand." She shrugged, "It's weird that she's still taking it out on me, though. She's dating Lysander, did you know?"

Teddy stared at the back of her head. Was she really not going say anything about the real issue? The problem of his obsession with her? "No, I didn't know." The irony there hit him, "Does she know…?"

"About me and Lys?" Lily laughed, "If she does, that might explain why she still hates me. But it's not like we ever had anything, really. I don't think that anyone except us even knows that we had sex."

Teddy wished that she would turn around. He wanted to see her face, he wanted to know what she was thinking. "About that, Lily…are you okay?"

She shook her head, and finally turned to face him. Her green eyes were crystal glazed, tears threatening to tumble from between black lashes. "I'm embarrassed. And lonely. And stupid."

He stood, finally, and crossed the tower to pull her into a hug, feeling as if something had gone right. As if the world might make sense again, sometime in the near future.

"I went crazy too," he whispered into her hair. "It's not something you need to be embarrassed about."

She pressed her face into his warm shoulder and inhaled his familiar scent of shaved cedar, coffee, and blistering wind, "I'm not an idiot, but I've acted like one. And I knew that I was, when it was happening."

"That's the definition of human, Waterbug." She tensed at the nickname, but didn't pull away. "I'm glad you're still human." He closed his eyes, "I've made a lot of mistakes, over the past two years. The biggest one was leaving you. I promised you so many times that I never would, and then I did when you needed me most. I'm so sorry."

She pulled away, and looked him in the eyes, "Never do again, all right?"
He smiled, "All right."

IX. Love Like Fire(works)

(love him right, love her deep)

The lake melted on May fifth, and Lily dove into the frigid water without even bothering to cast a warming charm on herself. She didn't care about ice particles clinging to her arms or numb tingling in her feet, she just needed the water around her the way other people needed alcohol or oxygen or coffee.

She swam across the lake beneath the surface, familiarizing herself with the changes in its geography that occurred over the winter. A large bolder that had once marked the entrance to the merpeople's home now lay at the direct center of the lake, and the weedy grindylow hideout grew along a much larger portion of the bottom than it had before the freeze. Lily pulled herself out of the water on the far shore and lay out across the sun-warmed rocks, feeling like cold-blooded serpent or a perfectly content cat.

She didn't open her eyes when he arrived, but she knew he was there before he spoke.

"Hey Ted."

"Hey Waterbug. The water as cold as it looks?"

"Colder. But it was too hard to resist."

"For you," he laughed and sat down on the rock beside her. He took her chilly hands in his and rubbed the warmth back into them. "Why did you want to meet out here?"

She opened one eye against the glare of the sun, "I wanted to talk to you without everyone around."

Teddy blinked. Over the last six months, he and Lily had slowly learned to trust each other again. They had become close friends, if not quite as close as they had been before her fifth year, and Lily had started to heal. She had learned how to be interested in things again. The problem with Victoire was still not fully solved, but at least she remained in a room if Lily was there, now. All in all, things had seemed better. But Lily's tone made Teddy worry. She sounded far too serious.

"Don't look like that, Ted. It's nothing life-threatening, I swear." She shut her eye again and he released her hands to lean back on his own rock.

He watched the rings around the sun until his eyes hurt, then said, "All right. What's up?"

"Do you remember, back in November when you first came home, and you told me what had happened between you and Vic?"

He had hoped to never, ever, talk about this with her. Ever. "Not life-threatening, my ass. You know I don't want to talk about that, Lil."

"But we need to," Lily sat up and turned to look at him. He shut his eyes against the stubborn expression on her face. "I need to know, Ted." Her voice was barely a whisper, and he took a deep breath, steadying himself for the undoubtedly painful discussion.

"Okay. What do you want to know?"

"When you said that you wanted me, when I was fifteen," she broke off, uncertain of how to continue.

"Yes?"

"What did you mean by that, exactly?"

He bit his lip. How could he explain those emotions? "I meant…that you were worth more to me than anyone else in this world. That your smile made me feel like I could do anything, and your laugh made me certain that I was a good person. Whenever you were around, I was at my happiest, even if something horrible was happening. If you were there, I was certain that everything was going to be all right."

Lily was silent for a few heart-stopping moments, "So you didn't just want to sleep with me?"

He opened his eyes and sat up abruptly, gripping her chin in warm fingers, "Lily, love, I wanted you in every feasible way. Of course I wanted to sleep with you, but I also wanted to hold your hand and to wake up next to you and to sing stupid songs for no reason whatsoever and to dance with you under the full moon. I wanted everything you could possibly have given me, and more."

Lily raised her green eyes to his blue ones and stared into them, trying to figure out how to comprehend all that and voice the next, more important, part of her question. "And all this," she faltered, "All this wanting, you're over it?"

He froze for a second that felt endless to Lily. Then he let go of her chin and took both her hands in his. "I'm well past it." Her face fell against her will, she had been determined not to show any emotions, and she moved to pull away. But he tightened his grip, rubbing small circles over the back of her hands with familiar thumbs. "I don't want anymore. I just need, Lily."

"Me?" She asked him, hope relaxing her features.

"You." He informed her, a second before his lips hit hers and melted, and her tongue moved to map and taste him.

When they pulled away with bruised lips and racing pulses, Teddy moved to Lily's rock, wrapping his tan, brown-sprinkled arms around her and leaning his chin on the top of her familiarly damp red hair.

"The first time I kissed Scorpius Malfoy I knew that it was a waste," she told him as she played with his fingers. "I knew I wouldn't know what it really felt like to kiss someone until I kissed you."

Teddy smiled, "But you kept kissing Malfoy?"

"Well, he was there." Lily laughed, "That's really my past, isn't it? They were all just there."

"I hope I'm not one of those who was just here," Teddy said, half-teasing, but half-praying that she wouldn't turn around and tell him that this was some huge joke.

Lily was silent for a moment, "I don't know how you could ever even think that. You, Teddy, are different. You're the man that I've wanted to be with since I was thirteen, when that didn't even seem possible because you were almost twice my age and apparently in love with my perfect cousin. You're everything, Ted. When you're around, it's like I'm swimming in contentment, joy. I shouldn't need to tell you this, but I love you."

Teddy smiled, "I love you too."

Lily applied to be a healer at St. Mungo's, because, as she had informed her boss during the interview, "I fix things, it's what I do. I love to wave my wand and think a Charm and see skin come back together, or brew a potion and watch as bones set themselves. And if I get to help people feel better, well, there's nothing better in this world." She was Lily Potter, and she would have gotten hired even if she hadn't impressed the St. Mungo's staff with her wand-work and bedside manner. But she could have applied under the name of Lily Lupin and they would have hired her after they saw her flawless nonverbal healing Charms.

She got hired for her first job, and that night she had another first. Teddy arrived at the door to her flat with a bottle of champagne and a box of congratulatory sugar-frosted cupcakes, but they both lay forgotten on the kitchen table after Teddy hugged Lily and she wrapped her legs around his waist, directing him to the candle-lit bedroom. And all the others didn't matter, for either of them, because for him, it was his first time with fiery, passionate love, and every feeling was fiercely real. And for her, well, sobriety and Teddy and the conviction that this was finally right made it absolutely perfect. But for both of them, it was the sun that woke them in each other's arms the morning after that mattered the most.

A/N: I always appreciate reviews!