Teddy looks down at the picture album on his lap, it's all neat and organized and in chronological order thanks to his Grandmother. It was his twenty-eight birthday present and even though that was only a few months ago it already looks a bit worn, coverings rubbed nearly away as if he'd rubbed his thumb over the picture many many times.
There are pictures of his mum as a kid, as a teenager and as a young adult. The ones he likes best are the ones where his father is standing beside her and Teddy can see the love between them. There are a couple pictures with Teddy held between his parents and every time he sees those pictures he feels a pang of longing.
He turns the page and grins, picture after picture of red hair, him in the middle with a shock of blue hair. Then slowly more and more heads of red are added as babies are born. Then there's him at eleven, all awkward angles and the potential to look good. In his arms is the newest baby, the last baby, the only girl Potter. Her hair is redder than the others, a deep scarlet as opposed to the carroty-red that most Weasleys and the two other Potter kids have. At the moment she's calm, only a few weeks old and already giving her parents hell. The kid seemingly doesn't need air, her screams can rip through the house at a moments notice and so far she looks happiest when being held Teddy. Even then he is already Lily's Teddy and Victoire is already starting to resent the newest member of the family.
Teddy turns more pages and in every single one that has him in it Lily is also there. Teddy never thinks it's odd that his best friend is eleven years younger. Through the pictures he can easily track her growth from wobbly little toddler to happy, daring child who does anything for a laugh. She always has grass stains on her knees, her hair is always that untamable, wild, fun mass of waves that even now he wishes he could touch.
And suddenly she's a teenager, he doesn't see where it happens but in a blink of an eye it's out with the grass stained jeans and in with the too short (much too short in his opinion) skirts and he wonders when her legs started going on, and on, and on. Her shirts get lower and the girl who has always loved to drive her mum crazy finds new ways of doing so.
Teddy smiles, while Lily was putting on the show for her family (yes, he knew it was only a show to play the rebel and get some attention for being Lily Luna Potter and not being Harry Potter's youngest) he has pictures of her with the dreamy look in her eyes ink smudged on her cheeks, dreaming of flying off to live with her uncle Charlie and study dragons.
He has always loved Lily, maybe not always in the same way but since the second he held her and she stopped shrieking he has loved her. He knew that was why right now he was sitting alone in his apartment with Victoire's engagement ring on the table and plates shattered on the ground. To be honest yes, it hurts that Vic has left him but at the same time he has always known she was the safer choice, the choice that they all expected him to make. He hadn't chosen to fall in love with the fiery, passionate scarlet haired girl whose moods are as mercurial as Harry said Sirius Black's were...he just had. He alone could weather the angry tirades, the lows that had her refusing to leave her room and the highs that had her laughing and joking and loving.
He smiles slightly, he knows that he will have to deal with the fallout of breaking up with Victoire but he knows also that Lily will be there threatening to disembowel her cousin if Victoire has hurt him in anyway.
Just as he flips the page he hears a knock on the door, well actually it sounds like many knocks stung together to make the rhythm of what ever song she has in her head at the moment. He can always tell it is Lily simply by that, Vic always knocked twice and then if he didn't answer immediately she would knock twice more and at the moment if it were anyone else they wouldn't bother with knocking, they would have stormed in and given him hell for upsetting Victoire…Lily loves to knock rhythms out on doors.
"Teddy Lupin, open this door! If you don't then I'm leaving to go kill my idiot cousin!" Her voice, so familiar, shouts from the hallway.
Teddy smiles and shakes his head slightly before putting down the album, "coming Lils, don't break the door down."
He takes one last look at the album, the page he had it on has been lost and it's open to the last page. A childish heart is drawn on it with the letters TL + LP inside it. The writing is messy and very young and it's something he found at the age of sixteen when he was in Lily's room.
He knows she has feelings for him but eleven years is too much…she deserves someone younger.
"Teddy! I will blast this door down in five seconds!" She shouts, and he rushes to the door because he knows that she can and will break down the door.
"Hey Lily," he says smiling down at the shorter girl with the fiery red hair. She grins up at him and hits him in the arm.
"You're getting old Teddy, it took you forever to open the door," she tells him as she walks inside.
Yeah, he is getting old and she'll always be younger but she's Lily Potter and so maybe one day when she's older also he might tell her how he feels. Right now though she's only seventeen and much to young.
If you like this I'd love it if you reviewed, I'd love it even more if you offered constructive criticism. I have another Teddy/Lily story that you can read and review also.