She's the youngest of the Weasley clan's children, ginger hair, green eyes; the adorable baby that the whole family loves. She's Molly's favourite topic of conversation, Charlie's favourite niece, Ginny's favourite daughter (and that's perfectly fair, Ginny tells herself firmly, after all, she's also her only daughter.)
He's the eldest of the Weasley clan's children, except, he's not really, that title should go to Victoire. Harry and Ginny regard him as their own though, and in the eyes of the rest of the family, that makes him one of them. He changes his hair to ginger and his eyes to brown, and slowly forgets that he doesn't really belong.
His relationship with Victoire doesn't come as a shock to the family, through Victoire he could truly become a part of the family. They all approve wholeheartedly, although Bill pulls him aside for a quiet word about what will happen to him if he breaks Victoire's heart.
It wasn't a surprise, for Ginny and Harry at least, therefore, when their eldest son came running up to them, with all the tact of Ron, shouting about Teddy snogging Victoire.
To one little girl however, it came as a great surprise.
Lily had always seen Teddy as hers, he was her best friend, the one who snuck her a chocolate frog every time he came, the one she whispered all her childish secrets to, ("I'm going to marry Lysander in a big white dress, just like Mummy wore when she married Daddy. But shh, Teddy, don't tell anyone, cross your heart and hope to die.")To suddenly learn that her big cousin had taken him away made her grass green eyes fill with tears.
Her mother was staring too hard after the retreating back of a tall blonde man to see her daughters tears, but when her father noticed she sniffled the tears away and made a big fuss about wanting to go to Hogwarts, but inside she was seething, Teddy, her Teddy, had been stolen away, just like the princesses in the fairytales her Mummy told her every night before she went to bed.
Lily was quiet the whole drive back to number 12 Grimmauld Place. Her parents put it down to missing her brothers, or perhaps her desperate desire to go to Hogwarts already. Lily, however, was plotting. In the stories, the brave knight always rescued the helpless Princess, but Lily could see one gaping hole in this plan. Teddy had not lost a glass slipper, or been asleep for a hundred years and, metamorphmagus or not, there was no way his hair could ever be long enough to reach all the way down a tower.
Lily, unable to find a way to rescue Teddy, became angry. She hated Teddy, she told herself; he had chosen to run away from her, he liked Victoire one hundred times more than he liked Lily. She hated Victoire too, because it was her that had taken him away, it was all Victoire's fault that Teddy had abandoned her.
The next time Teddy called, Lily studiously ignored him, refusing to even come out of her room. At Christmas, no one could understand why all of Victoire's presents had mysteriously disappeared. Although she tried to be brave, and said that at 17 she didn't really need presents, everyone could see how much she was hurting inside.
Soon a year had passed, and Lily was excitedly boarding the train that would take her to the castle she had been longing to visit since her fifth birthday. Ginny smiled at the excitement in her daughter's eyes as she waved her off. She had debated packing a couple of Gryffindor ties in Lily's suitcase, she was so like her paternal grandmother that it seemed impossible that she would be anywhere other than Gryffindor. That's what they had all thought about Rose too, though, and she had ended up in Ravenclaw.
Lily sat on the train, knees jiggling widely with excitement, face wreathed in smiles. She was sitting in the same compartment as Al and his best friend, Scorpius. Her father hadn't been best pleased when Al had come home for his first Christmas holiday, full of stories of all the things he and his best friend Scorpius had been up to, but the family had soon come to realise that Scorpius was nothing like his father had been at his age.
She stood in the line of students waiting to be sorted, stepping up to the stool nervously, hands shaking. The hat was a little big for her, slipping down over her eyes, plunging her into darkness. The rest of the hall could see her lips moving, a silent conversation between hat and girl, but no one knew what she was saying.
The hat screamed out a name, and she skipped off to her house table, face wreathed in smiles.
Six years later, and the girl (or should that be woman now?)carrying gravy in to the dining room for Christmas dinner was unrecognisable from the girl that had skipped happily onto the train. Looks wise she hadn't changed dramatically, her hair was in tamer curls and she was wearing makeup, merely the natural difference between eleven year old child and sixteen year old young adult.
It was the light in her eyes that shined so differently, the innocent light of an eleven year old replaced by the steely determination and anger that comes with hurt turned bitter. Her school tie was looped around her hair, the silver and emerald glinting in the firelight.
The smirk on her face as she slammed the jug down in front of Victoire, splashing her white dress with the brown liquid, would have done Draco Malfoy proud, she then looped her arms around Lysander and kissed the side of his mouth, not missing the flash of anger in Teddy's eyes.
Later on, when her arms were looped around Teddy instead, whispering ultimatums in his ear, ("you can't have us both," "you tell her or I will,") she remembered the first time this happened, last year, the first summer she had spent at home since she was eleven. She had been spending every summer in Romania with Charlie, trying to pretend she wasn't avoiding Teddy, pretending she didn't see Hermione sneaking into the hut every evening and out again every morning.
She became pretty good at pretending.
She came home for the first time in five years, the summer between her fifth and sixth years, and came across him one day, leaning against the kitchen counter, swigging from a bottle of firewhisky.
"Trouble in paradise?" she asked snidely, reaching up to snag a glass from the shelf above his head, filling it up with pumpkin juice.
He mumbled something incomprehensible, the firewhisky burning a trail down his throat, and she smirked, feeling as though she had won one small battle in her undeclared war with Victoire.
She had stood up, stretched, begun to walk away, when one of his arms snaked out and caught her around the waist. He had pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. She smirked, and pushed away from him, telling him he would have to work harder than that.
He didn't even know what he was working for, but if it meant having his Lily back, he was sure as hell going to do it.
She graduated the next summer, getting straight on a plane to Italy to spend the summer with the Zabinis. She sent postcards to her family, letters to Teddy signed only with a lipstick kiss.
She turned up to Teddy and Victoire's first child's christening, pressing a kiss onto Teddy's cheek, giving Victoire only a cursory smile. When she was wrapped in Teddy's arms later that evening, the sheets twisted around them, she couldn't resist the temptation of a simple summoning charm, the temptation of ending all these years of hurt, the temptation of taking back what was hers.
Victoire felt the pull of the summoning charm, following it instinctively, although unsure of who was calling her. The sight that met her didn't come as a surprise, but it caused her heart to shatter anyway, a silent sob wrenching from her throat as she turned around, and left as silently as she had come.
Moving her furniture into Teddy's new flat the next year, Lily felt a small pang of guilt when she heard Scarlett demanding her mother. She shook her head to clear the melancholy thoughts, and reminded herself of that Muggle phrase – all's fair in love and war.
Especially when you win.