Disclaimer: Characters are JKR's. Quote is…I dunno, but I heard it in Cinderella first.
Happy birthday, Ellie! :D This fic is dedicated to Ellie (s i l v e r a u r o r a), because she's awesome and funny and a brilliant writer. Oh, and it's her birthday! ;) Hope you have/had (I don't do well with time zones, but it's your birthday today where I am :P) a terrific day!
And thanks to Jenny (inescapable scars) for the prompts: translucent, elucidate, callous, unfounded, forgo, finagle
A dream is a wish your heart makes
-:-
And when he dreams, he dreams of her; her and the fire glowing in her hair, the secrets swirling in her eyes, and the way her touch feels a little like heaven and a little like hell.
-:-
She sparkles in the city lights of Paris, and it's a little ironic, because you'd expect Victoire to be the Paris girl, right? Except she's Lily, and she's never been one for following expectations (but always one for taking what's Victoire's), and when she stands beneath the Eiffel Tower at his engagement party, he thinks she's never looked more beautiful.
"Lily," he calls, her name star-bright on his tongue, and she turns, looks at him, breathes, and suddenly he's filled with the desire to kiss her.
(Which is kind of problematic because she's here to celebrate his engagement to her cousin, but Teddy's always forgetting things like that around her.)
"Teddy," she answers, practically drawling his name in a way that makes him want to ask if she hasn't been spending too much time with Scorpius Malfoy, except the mere idea of that sends a pang of jealousy through him, and he's not sure he could handle the answer.
"Are you –" Teddy coughs, running a hand through his dark green hair, "– um, enjoying yourself?"
Lily tilts her head, and he has to try not to follow the shine of the city lights in her curls of fire. "Of course," she says, but her voice is anything but light or happy or casual. There's always a fire simmering beneath the surface with her; always something sparking inside her.
(He wonders if maybe that's the reason he loves her so much.)
"I…" His voice trails off, words dying in his throat, and he has to swallow to regain his composure. "I'm glad you could make it, Lils – Lily."
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Stop that."
This time, the words explode out of him before he can control himself, flying in the face of her ridiculous calm and actually surprising her for once. He takes a deep breath, looking away from her bright eyes and up at the stars that stud the night sky and the misty grey clouds wafting over Paris – anything to distract him from the way her gaze makes him feel.
"Stop what, Teddy?" she demands, and there's her old fire in the question, bursting to the surface and blazing in her eyes.
"Lying," he mutters. "Stop lying to me."
A humorless laugh escapes her. "Because you've always done the same for me, right?"
"I've never lied to you!" he protests indignantly, reaching for her hands, wanting to feel her warmth and her fire against his bare skin.
To his surprise, she doesn't pull away.
"Oh, yeah?" she challenges, using his grasp on her to draw herself closer to him until they're chest-to-chest and she's looking directly up at him. "You told me you loved me."
Teddy gulps. "That'll never be a lie, Lily."
Her eyes soften, just a little. "And when you told me you loved Victoire?"
He has no answer.
-:-
"Beautiful party," she compliments after people start slowly trickling back to England, "I loved visiting Paris," and she places her hand over Victoire's, over the bright, sparkling diamond ring on her finger, and if he squints, her smile almost looks genuine.
"Thanks, Lils," beams Victoire, drawing her in for a hug. Lily catches his eye over her shoulder, and if there was a way for flames to burst out of those haunting hazel-green eyes, he's pretty sure they would.
(She's always been about fire, Lily has.)
"Yeah," Teddy mutters from behind Victoire, caught in her gaze, torn between praying she'll look away and wishing she never will. "Thanks for coming, Lily."
"Of course," Lily smiles sweetly, pulling away, and he's Teddy, so maybe he's the only one that can see from a mile away that her smile is the fakest thing this side of Roxanne's hair color. "I'll see you guys tomorrow?"
Teddy winces.
Victoire's eyes widen."Oh, Lily…did nobody tell you?" she asks softly, and immediately, Lily stiffens up. Teddy watches the set of her shoulders, the shadows in her eyes, and wonders just when his little Lily-flower grew up enough to hurt so much.
"Tell me what?" she whispers, and her voice is quiet but her words are anything but gentle. "Vic? Teddy?" And his name is so sweet, so sinful on her rose-glossed lips, even when her gaze is working daggers into his heart.
"We're…moving to Paris," Victoire tells her slowly, absently reaching behind her to grasp Teddy's hand, twining their fingers together. He doesn't miss the way Lily's eyes follow their interlinked hands, the way her pretty face clouds over, or the way his heart starts beating frantically in his chest. "Permanently."
"Permanently," Lily repeats flatly, her words ringing in the clear evening air. "You're leaving England? Leaving us?"
Leaving me?
Teddy swallows and squeezes Victoire's hand tighter, trying not to think of how smooth and soft her hand is versus Lily's tiny, nimble fingers, calloused from days spent at playgrounds and on broomsticks and why, oh, why is he thinking about this right now?
(He doesn't really have an answer this time, either.)
"You can visit anytime, Lily, you know that," says Victoire, attempting a smile. She lifts her free hand, reaching out towards her baby cousin, but without another word, Lily whirls around and storms away from them, from him, and it hurts more than it should, but everything about them is more than it should be, anyway.
She still shines, in the city lights of Paris.
-:-
When he next sees her, it's on the balcony of his two-story house with Victoire on the outskirts of Paris, and it's raining all over the city and she's soaked, but she's there and she's standing in front of him, and she looks so excruciatingly beautiful, it's hard for him to remember his fiancée sleeping peacefully in the room behind him.
"Lily," he hisses, but her name feels so warm and familiar on his tongue, it's hard for him to remember that he should be mad at her instead of marveling over how translucent her white dress has become in the rainwater. "What are you doing here?"
She sighs, tangling her hands in her long red curls and wringing them out. "I…I don't know. I had to see you. You're getting married in two months and Scorpius just broke up with me and I had to see you, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Before he knows quite what's happening, she's in his arms and he's pretty sure he's the one who's moved. But she fits so nicely, small and supple against him, her breaths coming in gasps into his bare chest, and her hands warm and electric, sparking fires everywhere she touches.
"Don't be sorry," he whispers into her curls, inhaling the scent of fresh pineapple and cucumbers and Lily. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
Lily smiles, and he can't see it, but he's pretty sure it's not a happy smile. "Sure I do. I have lots to be sorry for. I charmed all of Scorpius's pants invisible. I tie-dyed Dominique's favorite blouses in hideous colors. And I dumped a jug of lemonade all over Lorcan when he tried to talk to me."
Teddy raises an eyebrow, attempting to elucidate the words muffled in his chest.
Scorpius broke up with her – for Dominique, he assumes? And Lorcan, who's always been one of Lily's best friends, tried to talk to her and she snapped. And then she hopped on the broom she's abandoned somewhere on his balcony floor and flew from England to France in one night, forgoing anything sensible like Flooing or portkeying over.
"Lily," he begins slowly, running his hand through her water-dark hair, "what speed did you fly at?"
There's a moment of silence where she's breathing and he's not and the moon is shining through the storm clouds and the rain is slowing to a drizzle, just lightly pouring onto them like something out of a picturesque spring day (even though it's winter) and maybe all his fears are unfounded.
Then Lily laughs and (don't tell anyone, but it makes his heart skip a beat).
"Really?" she giggles, lifting her head to look up at him. "That's what you're concerned about? Not the fact that I'm standing here on your balcony in nothing but a see-through dress attempting to tell you I love you and that you shouldn't marry my cousin?"
Teddy takes a moment to process this.
"Wait, you're not wearing anything under that dress?"
The next thing he knows, she's kissing him, kissing him, like there's no tomorrow, her hands draped around his neck and her lips all sin and fire and strawberry on his. Without thinking, he responds, because he's waited for this for so long, almost as long as she has, and his arms find their way around her waist and he's got her backed up against the railing and he's kissing her back because she's Lily.
Maybe that's enough to justify this.
-:-
"I can't marry you," he blurts out over breakfast, chewing on blueberry pancakes (his favorite, and Victoire makes amazing blueberry pancakes) and guilt. "I – Vic, I'm…I'm sorry."
Her eyes, so blue in contrast to Lily's hazel-green, lock onto his, catching and holding and piercing. She's as good as Lily at throwing daggers into his heart.
"Are you going to give me a reason?" she asks after a minute of silence where he can't even eat or breathe or think and she's just sitting there, twisting her ring around. "Or do I not deserve an explanation for why you're dumping me two months before our wedding?"
"No," he says desperately, reaching for her, but she draws away before he can touch her. "It's – I – I'm in love with someone else." The admission hangs in the air, twisting and churning, until it's practically choking him with the truth, and all he can do is look at her, look at the girl who was once his best friend and once the love of his life (once, but once rarely lasts).
It takes another blueberry pancake before she manages to finagle the whole truth out of him, and when she does, she doesn't say a word, just sits there and stares and lets him squirm in his seat because she's Victoire and she's gorgeous and she's perfect, but he's not in love with her, and it hurts.
"Lily," she says, and her name rings loudly in the silence, as if she's still there, still lingering in the nooks and crannies, and he can still feel her touch blazing on his skin and her lips sweet and sinful on his and her hair, fire-bright and hopelessly tangled in his hands and –
"Here," Victoire interrupts his musings, and he realizes she's standing, she's moving, she's pressing something cold into his hand, and she's leaving.
Teddy stares at the diamond ring as the door closes quietly behind her. It sparkles, glints in the chandelier light, and in it, he imagines he can see blue eyes blurring into hazel-green.
Maybe it's symbolic. Or maybe he's hallucinating.
-:-
At the first Potter-Weasley brunch he attends since his break-up, two years after the wedding-that-never-was, he finds her in the crowd, suddenly and painfully nineteen and all grown up.
"Lily," he breathes, and before he knows it, she's warm in his arms in a way he's dreamed of for the past two years, bright and happy and oh-so-Lily. "You're here," he mumbles, not so eloquently, into her strawberry-red curls, "You're here."
"So are you," she replies, drawing back and smiling, and it's real, it's genuine, and it makes his heart soar and his stomach fill with butterflies. "Why'd you decide to come?"
Teddy shrugs, still holding her and ignoring all the looks and whispers they're getting. "Because…I got tired of running. I got tired of pretending I had nothing to do with this family – with you. And I got tired of dreaming about you and not having the chance to touch you or feel you or kiss you in reality."
And it really shouldn't be this easy, but Lily smiles and stands on her tip-toes and whispers against the side of his mouth, "Well, here's your reality," before kissing him in ways he's dreamed of since that night, right in front of her flabbergasted family without a thought to her parents or brothers or cousins watching.
When he dreams of her that night, he dreams of her sweet kisses and the way her hand slides easily into his and how silky even the worst tangles in her hair feel in his hands; dreams of the way she looks at him and the way she makes him feel when she kisses him and how easily it all works.
And when he wakes up, he wakes up to Lily by his side and it's kind of the best morning after of his life.
A/N: Please do leave me a review if you read this far; it'd make my day :)
And don't favorite without reviewing, please and thank you.