Lily Luna often finds herself wondering just where she and Teddy went wrong with him. She thinks perhaps their first mistake had been in their choice (or rather her choice) of name. Naming him in part for an instituted, schizophrenic killer and the woman her family could no longer keep track of seemed to be, in hindsight, some form of highly ironic foreshadowing.
At the time of her son's arrival Lily had been confused and frightened and just a little bit in denial. Her husband was away on yet another ill-timed case and despite her mother's presence and her cousins' easy reassurances the delivery had been terrifying. And when the squalling, warm little lump was placed on her still swollen belly the wave of affection that overcame her did little to ease her fears. Having such a tangible sense of responsibility for another life was overwhelming, but she swore to do as best she could with Teddy's help.
Her first hurdle in parenting came (rather laughably now that she can reflect on it) in the form of naming the boy. She struggled for a whole week, using pet names and monikers in place of a real name; she was almost driven in desperation to leave the task to her mother. But when the baby's hair had turned from a dark shade of brown to blindingly silver blonde and his odd, mismatched green and brown eyes became that familiar shade of grey as she fed him one night that her choice became both obvious and natural. Cepheus would be for both her love of astronomy and her truest friend and guardian since Hogwarts, Victor for her favourite cousin and Teddy's own confidant.
Teddy had initially scrunched his nose and scoffed at the name when he returned from his mission, but he didn't protest and Lily took that as a good sign.
"He can always be called Seth for short," he conceded and grinned when little Cepheus opened his mismatched eyes to peer up at him, "but Cepheus Victor Lupin does have a certain ring to it."
Lily realises now though, that she could not possibly have known that Victoire would disappear and elope with one of her students. And she certainly could not have predicted that Scorpius would have finally given in to the visions he described to her one stormy night after their graduation, eventually descending into madness and killing his own father.
So Lily comes to the same conclusion each time – it couldn't really be her fault that her son turned out so wrong. A snap decision made in the middle of the night was not the cause of his twisted thoughts, his ability to run and hide or his willingness to associate with mischief and lies personified. But then her son's slow smirk, so eerily reminiscent of her own teenaged cockiness, plays over and over in her mind and in the papers, and suddenly she is no longer so sure of her innocence.
