and we all fall down
teddy/lily
notes: This is for Astronomy in the School Subjects Competition over on HPFC, and August 19th on the Song of the Day thread at the NGFs. Lily is only five years younger than Teddy. It's not canon. I know. I hope this is okay, because it's given me a headache for the three weeks it's taken to write!
prompts: pop, colour, glitter
words: 2653
warning: This contains some profane language and dark themes.
disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Charlie Brown. The last line of this is inspired by the Fratellis' song Baby Doll.
and my scarecrow dreams
when they smashed my heart into smithereens
"Isn't it beautiful?" he asks, looking up at the sky.
"Yes," you murmur, but you aren't looking at the fireworks. You're looking at the shadows they create; the smoke behind the whizz, bang, pop. The patterns that look like amoebas, brain cells, the entire universe in one swirl of gas.
It glitters above your head, raining colour and fluorescence and light, but your eyes stay fixed on the smoke.
-:-
Technically, you're nothing, you and him. But too often, the barriers go down and you become something and it's too much, it's too much – you can't do this any more, you shouldn't.
(But you always do.)
Because you're Lily and you're a princess, you honestly are. You're Harry Potter's only daughter, so obviously you'd be gorgeous. Red hair and green eyes and privileges, so many of them – you're a spoilt little girl, but your daddy darling saved the world, so nobody minds. But you're also the Slytherin princess of the family, icy-cold heart and eyes and you probably don't even have a soul, because you're so horrible – and in any case, you're ginger.
And Teddy… Teddy, Teddy, Teddy. He just falls straight in, doesn't he?
He's so oblivious to everyone's expectations, which you think must be a pleasant existence, but it's the way he is and he doesn't realise whatsoever. It's sort of a given that he'll end up with Victoire – but he's twenty-three now, and there's no sign of it yet.
Instead, he goes for the ridiculously obscure idea (and the slightly clichéd one, the best-friends-turned-lovers and age-difference combined) of you. Doesn't he? You aren't sure, some days.
Because why? Why would this perfectly-behaved, nice Hufflepuff guy who's all set for a suburban, married-with-two-kids-and-a-dog life choose a princess like you? It just isn't him. Which makes a sort of twisted sense, because you know him inside-out and therefore, you know that you aren't for him.
He might be for you, though.
(and it doesn't hurt it doesn't hurt you swear it doesn't hurt because you're princess lily luna potter and you're untouchable—)
-:-
"Do you ever think about how we're all going to die?" he asks, one day. You're sitting on the riverside, eating chips and throwing gone-off bread at ducks.
"No, I don't," you say, aloofly.
Teddy looks at you. It's his gaze – his eyes boring into yours, the way that you just can't resist, that you always gives into. But more, it's the way he looks like he feels sorry for you. Like it's better to live the way he does; caring so damn much about everything, so fucking Hufflepuff. (But maybe it is better than your sad and sorry life.)
"All the time," you say.
You have these conversations (interactions?) all the time, bouncing serious, philosophical questions at each other as though you're talking about the weather. It's just the way you are, Teddy and Lily; you've always been together, and you've always been able to confide in each other, but you don't and you won't. You're close, but you don't want to tell each other secrets; you don't need to tell each other secrets.
Another time, you're lying on the beach at Shell Cottage long after dark and you know that you should be Victoire, she should be lying with Teddy in the cold.
"Morsmordre," you whisper, and the pattern consumes your mind in one swirl of gas.
Teddy just looks at you – that sad expression again, pity in his eyes.
"Why, Lily?"
He sounds like there are tears in his eyes. There are. You can see them, welling up. It doesn't occur to you how insensitive you are; casting a spell that haunts Teddy's nightmares, the mark of a man – no – a creature who killed his parents before he could even know them.
"How can you not be fascinated by it, Teddy?" you ask, simply, your voice still a whisper. You look at him with eyes on fire and repeat, "How can you not be fascinated by it?"
"You are inhuman," he says. His voice is hoarse, strained. Trying not to cry. "Your father spent his life trying to get rid of this sort of magic. In fact, screw that – so did your mother, and practically everyone you know, everyone who loves you. Don't you realise that they did this for the good of you, and everyone in both worlds?"
You don't reply. You are looking at the ocean, and the reflection of what you've become. You aren't sorry whatsoever.
"Lily?"
Teddy – Teddy is a shame, but he's so fucking naïve. He has a childish belief that now that the Dark Lord is gone, so is all dark magic and badness from the world. How doesn't he understand? (You thought he'd understand.) How doesn't he understand you? How you're so broken and scared and crazy, so crazily fucked up. How you're placing everything in the hands of this man – this boy – who doesn't know how the world works.
You don't have Hogwarts any more. Half of you is laughing, because you're free, but also because you're eighteen and how on earth is that mature? How can you be your own, independent person at eighteen? And the other half – the other half doesn't exist, you tell yourself, but it does, it does – the other half is screaming, because you're not just scared, you're fucking terrified. You're being asked to be self-supporting and self-sustaining and alone, and you don't just think, you know that you cannot do this.
You stand up and walk away.
-:-
Dawn is breaking. You can tell because your damned curtains are thin as anything. You are thinking about the night on the beach, with Teddy. He doesn't understand, you know now. You had thought he would, but he doesn't, and he didn't, and he probably never will. He doesn't understand how you can be so consumed by the Dark Arts, and you don't understand how he can be so not. You think it's the most interesting you've ever come across, and Slytherin cunning combined with Potter privileges make it really fucking easy to get knee-deep in it before you can even blink.
You aren't exceptionally good at empathy, but you try and put yourself in Teddy's shoes.
Maybe you told him too suddenly, you concede, but if you'd eased him in more slowly, you're convinced you could have made him okay with it. It occurs to you that he might tell somebody – and what if he does? your head asks, you should be proud – but you dismiss the idea immediately. This was why you told Teddy in the first place, not somebody else. Well, there is the fact that he's Teddy, but also, he'd never do that. Not only is he furiously loyal (Hufflepuff again), he's also furiously in love with you. You don't reciprocate, of course, but it sure comes in handy. (How are you so casual about this?)
But no – no, you're getting off track. Teddy doesn't want you and you don't want him. End of. Full stop.
-:-
You wake up screaming and your family are around you ("Are you okay? Lily? Lily, answer us, are you okay?") but he isn't and it just makes it approximately fourteen billion times worse.
-:-
You've never been one for exaggeration, really, but you miss him a lot more than you'd thought you would.
He's always been a constant in your life, and you've never really noticed until now.
-:-
Perhaps your fixation with the darker side to life came when you were thirteen and you saw the accident. You were walking to the shops and everything was fine until – you don't want to think about this oh my God no please no you really don't want to think about this – at the big crossing, someone didn't wait for the green man and with a short, sharp squeal of tyres your life changed.
Your mind immediately went into action. You might not have been a Gryffindor, but your Dad's an Auror and you aren't stupid. You pulled out your Muggle mobile phone and dialled the emergency number your mum had drilled into you.
"Hello, emergency services," said a voice. It was too calm. Why wasn't it panicking? A horrible thing had just happened. Why wasn't everybody panicking? "How can I help you?"
"I need an ambulance," you said. Your voice was suitably shaky. "At the big Bridge Street crossing between Asda and John Lewis. Somebody's been run over."
"Are you okay?" the voice asked.
"Yeah, I wasn't involved, I just saw it happen a second ago," you said. Your hands were still shaking, your heart racing. "I don't think the person who got hit is, though." State the obvious, Lily.
When you'd finished talking to the police, you rang your parents. They rushed to the scene – with Teddy, of course, his hair the deep black it only went on really serious occasions – and held you as you shook.
(You feel like it should be a blur in your memory, but it isn't whatsoever. The whole event is far too vivid for your liking, a spectrum in an otherwise black and white mind.)
The police interviewed you on what happened. You were probably useful as shit, you think, retrospectively: you didn't want to pin the blame on anybody – you were such a sweet little girl, constantly thinking about the person behind the wheel of the car; the person lying in the ambulance – so you probably didn't say anything helpful at all. At least you didn't run off, though. You did the right thing; you stayed and did what was most sensible.
The next day, you saw in the local newspaper that the victim had died and the driver was probably going to be prosecuted, and you realised that you hadn't helped in the slightest, just an insignificant blot on the accident report forms.
-:-
Two weeks later, you picked up your first book on the Dark Arts.
-:-
On reflection, you think as you lie in bed, you were so surprised at being Sorted into Slytherin that you can't really remember your first year's feast. You were an adorably innocent young girl. You were sympathetic and brave and clever and sweet and that one thing – you think that probably changed everything.
You're not sure if you mind.
The Sorting Hat is never wrong, though. You knew that, so you weren't upset about your Sorting, because it was right. The Sorting Hat had seen who you were going to become, you know now, and proceeded to choose accordingly. It's funny, though, because you expected to be a Gryffindor and right now, you feel so cowardly that your whole body pulses with it, feeds off it, the malice and weakness running through your veins.
You wonder.
You wonder if your parents know. They know something's wrong, that you aren't the same, not really. But do they know the truth? You want to say that they'd probably kick you out, but that's not true and you know it. They wouldn't be happy, though. No, you'd know about it if your parents found out.
You wonder if Teddy will ever see you the same way again. You remember the hurt expression in his eyes, the hoarse, "Why, Lily?" as his parents' deaths reflected in the pain on his face. You still find it hard to find an apology within yourself.
You wonder about the fact that you're a disgusting person. It's sort of easy to comprehend. You're used to it, albeit a more diluted version of it, from the past when simply being the school whore got you the reputation of a homewrecking bitch. Which you were, but still. So overdramatic, teenagers. (Said the eighteen-year-old.) You understood, understood the whole time that there was more to the way you lived then – that you should devote yourself to what you cared about. But you dressed in skimpy clothes and undressed to reveal a skinny body and slept with other girls' boyfriends and plastered a makeup smile on your face, because it was fun. And in any case, nobody at Hogwarts nowadays could've handled anything worse than that.
-:-
You watch. You watch as he falls for a pretty girl his own age. You try desperately not to intervene when she breaks his heart. You're breaking, you're breaking, you're breaking, but it's for the best.
You watch a two-month disastrous relationship between Teddy and Victoire, and cry for them when they break up because you'd hoped that perhaps if they'd worked out you could've stopped feeling this way, this fucking vulnerability that's so unlike you.
You watch, but you don't let on you care, keeping the emotionless Lily at the forefront of your personality. You watch, but you don't let him see you, because no matter what you look like to everyone else, he'll always see through it. You watch, but you don't let yourself notice that you're going to rack and ruin, a shadow of even unfeeling little Princess Lily.
-:-
Lorcan Scamander asks you to marry him and you realise just how screwed up this whole situation has become. You didn't see before, how you were playing him – they weren't dates, just drinks and dinners and kissing because you needed someone to hold onto as you fell apart. You didn't see before, how much you miss Teddy. You do see, though, now, how much you hate who you are.
You breathe in and out. The gas you release must be more than carbon dioxide; more poisonous and more suited to somebody who's fixated with the most evil man in human history. Maybe it's the smoke behind the fireworks.
"No."
-:-
Teddy joins you on the roof, as you always knew he would. You wish that you could be more spontaneous, more ridiculous, more like somebody in a Muggle film. You quite fancy being Holly Golightly.
"Your parents wanted you to marry him," Teddy says, nonchalantly.
You don't reply.
"I didn't," he says.
"I know," you say. Your voice is cold, harsh in the wind; whipping away as though you'd never said a word.
For a few minutes, and what seems like eternity, you sit in silence. His mere presence is comforting, which makes you feel weaker than you've ever felt before. For the first time, you start to doubt your allegiances. But there's no turning back; not now. You're getting the brand that will scar your flesh forever, tonight your arm will be marred with a wound that will never heal. You don't know how to not be who you are.
Finally, Teddy speaks.
"How can you do this to yourself?" he says. Of course he knows. You aren't surprised in the least. "You're disgusting."
The cold lashes at your eyes and you feel them start to sting. He's right. He's always been right about everything. You learnt to accept that a long time ago, but it's not any easier today.
It would be a lot more romantic if it was nighttime, if stars lit the skies and rained down on you. But it's stark daylight, and you're sitting on the roof of the Daily Prophet building with a cigarette and shaking, calloused hands on the edge.
You could jump.
You're not going to. You're a coward, remember?
He looks at you one last time. You think he might say something, but he doesn't. He just stands up and walks away, the same as everybody else who's supposed to love you. You're a wreck. You're a princess, but you're so damn destructive that nobody wants to live under you. It's understandable. You'd hoped he might be different, though.
-:-
You accept your fate with predetermined helplessness. You pretend it's what you want, to be forever changed at the strike of midnight. It was what you wanted, until he came along and changed everything. (But wasn't he always there?)
You're ready to beg and to steal for your sins.
so we soar luminous and wired
we'll be glowing in the dark