He knows her, of course. She's his little cousin, the one with flaming red hair and the impossible smile. She's the one named for a dead woman, and for a living woman. He's been named after a dead man, and his father for some twisted sense of humour he'll never get.
They talk a little at a time, but she's a little haunted and he's got a few ghosts that are screaming at him from his marrow.
His mother sometimes can't help but flinch when he smiles, seeing a man that doesn't live anymore. His father treats him not as a son, but as a brother.
He gets shipped off to Hogwarts as soon as he reaches that damn magical age, and he doesn't mind. He doesn't bother feeling anxious as the days creep closer, and doesn't bother to cross the dates off his calendar like he knows his cousin James had done (had done for the past two years). Fred just figures this is all.
Second year is the year she starts. She starts with a clipped stride, and a slant to her shoulders. Her hair had darkened since she was younger, and her smile is so false he can finally understand the impossibility of it.
She's sorted into Ravenclaw where she's dissolved into a blur of ink and torn up papers. He eventually forgets about her until it's his fifth year of Hogwarts, and he finally can actually see her.
Her hair is clipped up, and her right ear has three piercings. She's a stranger, lit up in a way no exploding star can dare compete with. "Hello." She greets, lifting her face upwards. She has a stain of ink on her cheek, and her eyes are rimmed with sleepless nights.
"Hello." He offers, words falling dead. Dead man's offering,
She arches a thin brow, tilting her head. "Haven't seen you in a while."
He stares, gazing at her numbly. Suddenly he remembers the figure from the shadows of reunions, the girl who crouched in the corners of photos. The impossible smile that faded away as she began to morph into a figure of existence.
He's been trying to shed this concept of living for so long, he's been detached from family. He's a concern, of course. Depression.
"Lily." He states, falling flat.
She bristles, already defensive.
…
They begin to meet in the stacks.
He brushes his elbow against her own as they scribble out essays, and tries to pretend that blood is thinner. He skips a class, and she skips a class.
They begin to play a dance, one that involves damn misery and damn want. His Uncle would kill him for imagining his daughter like this-pale skinned and wide eyed.
He's damned.
So they pass along books and notes, and she scribbles down dates and places and he finds new things to show her. A flower he nicked from Longbottom's greenhouses; a silver pendant he bought for her. They like pretending. She likes pretending that she isn't dying, and he likes to pretend that he's been living for all this time.
.
It should be a crime, she announces one night in the divination tower, to name your child after someone dead.
She looks so cold saying this, and he pretends that her lips are frosted and she has a heart carved perfectly from ice-not a flaw nor chip to be found. But she isn't. He catches the way she flinches at her words, like there isn't a dead woman peering around her shoulders.
"I know." He tells her quietly, because he does know. He remembers his father talking to mirrors and reflections, trying to capture a long lost response that's dissolved into funeral caskets and roses. He knows every month his Uncle Harry goes off to lay wreaths down on his parent's graves. Every year the Magical History class digs up buried bones and arranges them on a display to remember.
Fred has never seen anyone so tragic looking as Lily Luna Potter.
.
He spends Christmas Eve in her room.
He had snuck out with a broomstick, flying under velvet skies and trying to capture seconds in his hands. He feels so gloriously poetic alone in the night, the world falling and stretching and fading in his shadow.
She leaves her window wide open, and greets him with a silent smile.
Her room is chaotic, with Muggle books scattered everywhere and little notes stuck to walls. She has a copy of The Bell Jar on her nightstand, and he doesn't really know why she is reading about the descent of a girl's madness. But he gets it.
Its midnight when they finally stop pretending that they aren't and finally be. His lips find hers and she grabs his by the wrists and together they climb into one another.
Her glasses end up on the floor and he never does find his socks after that night, but the point is that this is the middle part of their lives, and yet it feels like the beginning and he's terrified that the end is unraveling.
.
"When we were younger, I used to think your hair was on fire." He tells her on Valentine's day as she slowly tears petals of the red rose some admirer had delivered to her. She scattered them onto the floor and slowly grinds them into the ground with her heel.
She grabs his hands. "I used to think you were these shades of cool, you know. One moment you were all indigo smiles, and then you would become dark stares and icy words."
"Shades of cool?" He smirks as he leans his forehead against her own.
"Something like that."
.
When he graduates, he feels numb. Like he's been cut off from the thing he wants the most. Lily.
She had gone to his graduation, kissed him on the cheek the way Rose had. But her lips lingered longer. Her smile was heartbreakingly terrified. She looked like death sitting amongst thousands, contained by nothing more but bone and skin.
.
She writes him novels as letters, and every word is so beautifully written in her messy scrawl. She addresses him as Richard, because someone would get suspicious about a cousin writing three times a day and sending various packages so often.
One cold November day he slipped down into Hogsmead and waited by the outskirts of the Shrieking Shack, waiting for her to appear in a swirl of heavy skies, frosty smiles and grey words.
She had arrived, flinging herself into his arms and trying to curl herself into him. "It's miserable here without you."
(re-I'm miserable here without you.)
He took a knife from his boot and carved their initials into a tree, slashing deep into the bark.
.
Months bled into months and he began scratching days off of his calendar.
He made a home for her in Paris, a city unraveled by lights from his window. He lined the shelves with books and played old music that sounded happy and sad all at the same time, because that's what she would play if she were here.
He painted the walls November grey, and then painted the ceiling gold. He worked as a translator for the Paris branch of Gringotts, ignoring his father's never ending dismay. Lily wanted to write books and so he made her a desk and filled it with thick paper and indigo ink.
He was days away from having her again and yet feeling an eternity stretch between him and her.
.
Dear Richard,
I love you.
Love, Lily.
.
Dear Lily,
I love you.
Love, Richard.
.
She never went to her graduation. She vanished into his arms and slipped off into the velvet night. He remembers stealing flowers from Longbottom's greenhouses and slipping them into her hair at night. He remembered Christmas Eve and losing his socks, and he remembers finding her the first time.
They slipped away into Paris, and slowly vanished away from dead names and ghosts and blood boundaries.
.
It was morning, and her hair fell over her shoulders, as if fire was curling around her neck. She looks content, morning bathing her from the open windows.
"I love you," she informed him quietly into the hush of the early day.
He felt weightless.
.