fear the woods, they'll steal your heart.
Disclaimer: Anything that you recognise does not belong to me.
This was written in response to the Based on Fairytales Competition over at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum. I was given the prompt Little Red Riding Hood.
Once
Once you were young, and the only things that mattered were cloudless days and the glow of peace in a kingdom finally free of war. The coolness of air and the way the sunlight spattered through the leaves of the trees behind your house.
You were seven when Harry sat you down upon his lap, Ginny close at hand and James busying himself with bouncing building blocks in a corner, and told you the first part of your fairytale. He tells you how you are the son of a dreamer and a king who had once ruled a magical castle with his three closest allies. He tells you how you were born of love in a time when some thought there was none, and how the King and his Queen left, not because they didn't want you, but because sometimes, when you love a thing as much as they loved you, the price you pay to keep it safe, does not matter, you will give anything.
You didn't know what to say to that, you were seven after-all, but in the years that come, when you are older and you feel the loneliness like a hand inside your chest, you remember.
You are a Prince. You have always been loved. Don't give up, you will find your fairytale.
there
She comes home one day when you are ten, skin pink and little wisps of hair that glimmer a little like candlelight when the sun catches them through the window where it spills, and because she looks so fragile compared to all the others that have come before, you think to yourself oh, I could protect her, I could be the hero of this story.
was
Being at school is a funny thing. You love it more than anything, and not only because you think quietly to yourself that your father once ruled these halls you walk and this feels like the closest you've ever been to him, to either of your parents.
But being at home, being back at the Potter house with the sound of your family all around you, that is where your heart wants to be. You miss the sound of James running through the house, and the way Albus snorts at him as he goes by. You miss the way Harry never looks at you like you are anything less than Teddy, and how Ginny doesn't care that you are not her son, she kisses your forehead like you are hers. More than any of that though, you miss Lily. You miss the way she is so little and wild and how she traipses around the trees until long past dark, and how when she does return she has twigs in her hair and mud on her cheek and her little coat is always worn with adventure.
During the summer, you often stand watch at the edge of the forest, making sure that should she need you, you are there.
She doesn't fear the woods though, she never has, but you wait nonetheless.
a
Some nights, when you are at school, and the rain pelts again the high tower windows, you wonder who watches her in your place. You wonder who makes sure she isn't tempted from the pathway home.
boy
Then there is Victoire. Victoire who is stunning, all golden smiles and gentle words. You think that if you were ever to find a fairytale princess, it would be her. Especially when it is late in the day and the blurring of daytime and nightfall makes her look unreal.
You hold her close to you whenever you are together and she smiles girlishly, whispers promises and soft words of tomorrow in your ear and you think yes. She could be your happy ending.
(but in the corner of your eye, you are always watching for a flash of red in the trees).
who
The years pass, and you and Victoire grow together, except always there is Lily. Lily who is something of a wild thing, the girl in the woods they call her when the family comes together, because she never leaves them unless she can help it.
thought
You ask her about it one night when you are sitting together on the roof of the Potter house. You are twenty five and she is fifteen, and her eyes are dark in the starlight. She is silent as she mulls over your question, thoughtful, and after a while you give up on an answer, and then it comes.
I'm looking for something she tells you quietly, waiting for something to leave the path.
You look at her properly then, and she is no longer little in your eyes. She is reckless and lovely and her hair tumbles crimson down her back in a way that makes you think you know what her fairytale will be.
She leans a little closer to you in the lull that follows and you think you could make a very fine hero, if only she needed one.
he
Returning to Hogwarts is something you never pictured yourself doing; yet walking the halls again they comfort you now in a way they never managed as a child.
You are older now too you suppose, Victoire behind you in a way a heart should never have to learn, because you loved her, so very much, but she knows you better than you know yourself and a girl like Victoire will be second to none when it comes to matters of love, and it is best left at that.
You would think yourself wiser too, if only your mind didn't cling to fairytales, and if only your pulse didn't blister your skin when she walks past you in the hall, a girl all in black with a swathe of rubies down her back.
was
You ignore her as best you can, even as she sits in your classes, eyes the colour of the forest in the dark, and you think to yourself that you can do this. Except you can't keep yourself from watching her as she walks down the halls one day, walls rising around her like the trees on all sides, and the eyes of the boys she passes following her as she goes, gazes hungry and glittering, because she is Lily and she is beautiful and they would be fools not too.
You watch her as she goes, something sharp curling in the pit of your belly, and you wonder if you are more like your father than you thought.
She is ten years too young for you, but as her hair tumbles scarlet down her back like a cloak, you wonder if you will be the woodcutter or the wolf in this tale.
a
She comes to you one night, bare feet and pale skin, and she looks at home in your office in the same way she does in the woods. You wonder offhandedly if that is because you are there with her, or whether she truly does fear nothing.
You aren't really sure how it comes to pass, but when she kisses you it is the most glorious sin you think you will ever commit.
wolf.
Between soft hair and too much skin between your hearts, you shape the words of girls walking through woods and wolves that chase them in the darkness. She kisses you harder, her back arching into you and nails sharp as she tries to burn herself into your bones.
Her eyes are dark when she looks at you and calls you Red, and they are darker still when she tells you how very long she has been waiting for you to leave the pathway and join her in the forest.
She kisses you again, wild and fierce and you wonder how long she has loved you from the shadows. It is not the fairytale you imagined, but then you have been reading it wrong all this time.
You tangle your fingers in her hair, and she bites your bottom lip, and when she pulls away her smile is a thing of sinful beauty in the spill of moonlight from your window.
"Teddy," she whispers wickedness in her words, "I think you'll find after all this time that I am the wolf in this tale, and now, now you are mine."