15 Things about Lily Luna Potter:
1. She'd gone through a period in her teens when she wanted to rebel. Not much, but she was always supposed to be the elegant, mature Lily Luna Potter who looked and acted like her beautiful namesake. She didn't want to fail classes or get a bad reputation, but she wanted something, anything to change. When Molly gave her a box set of Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger musicals for the muggle TV and DVD player their grandfather had, she fell in love with the clothes and the makeup. She wanted to die her hair blonde, but no one would hear of it. So she wore red lipstick anyway, even when they told her it clashed with her hair.
Teddy wasn't the only man to stare at her bright red lips.
2. Lily has always been more like Granny M than mom or what people tell her Grandma Potter was like. She loves going to the Burrow, loves to help cook big dinners and learn new recipes. She even loves to help make the Weasley sweaters. She never told her mom that she made the sweater she hated the Christmas when Lily was thirteen. She's gotten better than then, but Albus is still the only one that knows about the knitting, that horrible pink sweater in particular. Granny M dotes on her the same way she doted on her dad.
Lily wonders if that's why she's not closer to her mom.
3. With two older brothers, Harry Potter for a father, and a mother who had played professional quidditch, she was expected to be a rough and tumble tomboy. When she was little, everyone would speculate what position she would play: chaser like her mother or seeker like her father and James? Albus would laugh and tell everyone she would be a beater just like him. Truthfully, Lily was terrified of heights and never liked to fly. She hardly liked to attend the games to cheer her family on. What she really loved was hosting parties and designing clothes. Even now, what she loves most is to cook, just like Granny M. Sometimes though, she thinks her mother might be a little bit disappointed in her, so she keeps track of the quidditch scores even though she's not really interested.
If she had played quidditch though, she likes to think she would have been a beater.
4. She decided when she was fourteen that she was irrevocably in love with Teddy Lupin. He'd come to Christmas dinner after a mission in Romania and, even though he brought every single Weasley and Potter gifts, hers was—at least in her opinion, the best. It was a mother of pearl sided jewelry box with small gold flowers and vines down each corner and around the top, with roses on the top. When she opened it, it tinkled out a song by the Romanian composer Vladimir Cosma.
Nights when he's not there, she opens it to hear the music before she goes to sleep.
5. She loves standup comedy. She's often dragged Teddy or one of her brothers to a muggle comedy club to listen to the jokes. James is only one that loves it as much as she does. It wasn't a surprise to her then, when he brought home a muggle girl to meet the family. Sandra was pretty and funny and intelligent. They almost got married, she knows, she helped James pick out the engagement ring, helped him decide what to say. He never got the chance.
She wasn't the only one who cried when Sandra died in a car accident.
6. Teddy was the first man she ever kissed, but he wasn't the only. Frankie Wood and her shared one brief peck after their second date at Hogsmeade. It wasn't the same and she knew it when he wasn't as rough as Teddy. Teddy's name may recall the softness of a childhood toy, but he wasn't half-werewolf for nothing. He didn't mean to be rough, but they all made sure to watch him carefully around kids and small animals. He was strong and he didn't realize the extent of it.
When Frankie kissed her reverently, she knew it'd never hurt good enough.
7. When her Aunt Hermione gave her the same advice she'd given Lily's mother when they were girls, to date other people until she moved on or Teddy realized what he was missing out on, she really did try to follow it. She went on the two dates with Frankie, even let him kiss her. That's when she realized why her and her mother would never see eye to eye. Ginny could be Ginny just fine, happy and content, without Harry. She loved him because they were better together than apart, but she could have lived a happy and successful life without him. Lily couldn't be happy without Teddy. She needed him in a way Ginny had never needed anyone. She wasn't as strong as her mother. It was a realization that hurt.
Now she knows she has a different kind of strength.
8. She wanted to save her virginity for her wedding night, but the night Teddy asked her to marry him, six months after he kissed her at her dad's retirement ceremony, she couldn't wait. He'd been surprised when she snuck into his room, but he was the one who surprised her at the end of it. She'd expected him to be rough, like he always was, but he treated her more reverently than Frankie had. She thought she'd miss the roughness when he first touched her. Her Teddy was rough and strong and hurt and that was part of why she loved him, but he was as careful with her as if she'd been made of glass.
Somehow, she didn't mind at all.
9. Louis wasn't always her favorite cousin. When she was young, he was indifferent to her and could even be unknowingly cruel. When she was sixteen, after Teddy had ravished her mouth and then left without another word, she had locked herself in her room. She was miserable, crying and alone, when Louis had found her. He hadn't been entirely sympathetic, but he had made her laugh and that had been more than enough.
She bought him oil paints that Christmas and sent them to his flat in Mumbai.
10. The dumbest fight her and Teddy ever had was over her fingernail polish. It was two days before the wedding and she'd gotten a French manicure. Teddy had grabbed her hands, more angry than she'd ever seen him. "Why aren't they red?" he'd question. She'd shrugged and they'd bickered back and forth, threatening to call off the wedding in turn, until she'd realized that there was no one else in the world she'd be willing to fight over nail polish with. She'd promised to paint them red in the morning.
Sometimes she gets tired of red, but Teddy never does.
11. When Louis divorced his first wife, an exotically beautiful fashion model, she wasn't surprised. A woman as vain as Shelia couldn't stand to be with a man better looking than she was. When he divorced his second wife, she wasn't surprised either. Kelly was smart, but she wasn't pretty like Shelia was, and no homely woman could keep faith in a man as beautiful as Louis. When he divorced his third wife, she wasn't surprised. Nicolette had no interest in being a mother; a veela was too beautiful for that.
She wasn't surprised when he got full custody of Genevieve, Madeleine, and Jean-Luc either.
12. Her mother didn't approve of her relationship with Teddy. She liked Teddy immensely, of course, but she worried that Lily, who was never as plucky or independent as Ginny, would be stuck at home regretting her choice when Teddy was off for weeks at a time doing something dangerous. She never understood that all Lily wanted was the comfort of a white picket fence around her own version of the Burrow. Her mother only ever wanted her to be happy, she knows, but the things that made Ginny happy didn't make Lily the same.
Sometimes she wishes she wasn't a disappointment to her mother.
13. Red isn't her favorite color, like everyone thinks it is. They give her red silk scarves, red sweaters, red heels as gifts. She wears red because Teddy loves her in it. He loves her in anything, loves her in nothing, but bright red is his favorite color. Sometimes, she feels like a matador. Teddy can be bullheaded and he's goes through life clumsy as a bull in a china shop, but she loves her big bumbling man anyway.
That's why her favorite color is the same turquoise his hair was in his baby pictures.
14. Some days she doesn't know what's missing. She'll walk around a little lost, wondering what's itching at the back of her mind. When Teddy reminds her that she's not wearing her bangles, she knows it's because he loves the sound almost more than she does. She always kisses him for reminding her. She doesn't tell him that she knows it's because he thinks of it as the sound of home. She thinks the same.
They don't have to tell each other everything to know what's important.
15. Teddy only showed her his true face purposefully once. He wanted her to know that she was marrying a man who looked like his great-aunt Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who her grandmother had killed. She didn't tell him that when he was with her, sleeping deeply after a night making love, he reverted back to it anyway. She'd already seen what he really looked like. She told him he was beautiful. She meant it.
Teddy is the most beautiful person she's ever known.