A/N: Written for Fire The Canon's "50 Days of Inspiration Competition" over at HPFC.
prompt: Day 7 accuracy
cupid's arrow
Victoire had her looks, Dominique her curiosity. Molly had her sweet, unassuming charisma. Louis had his skill with his hands. Lucy was renowned for her fairness, Roxanne for her ability to make any night into a party. Fred was the prankster, James the Quidditch star. Albus was the charming one, Rose the brightest of the bunch, Hugo the one who knew his way around the greenhouse.
The cousins all had a skill, a talent, a trait – something that set them apart from the rest. For Lily, it was her accuracy – her skill with a bow and arrow.
She'd taken up the hobby – she insisted that that's all it was – at a young age when she was bored with flying. It wasn't that she wasn't good at Quidditch – she even played in her fourth and fifth year for a brief bit. It was that it just wasn't her thing. The Quidditch Pitch was where James belonged, and Fred and Roxanne and Louis and Dom before him.
And Lily, being the smart girl that she was, realized this at the tender age of nine and asked for archery lessons.
Her parents were more than happy to set her up with an instructor. At Hogwarts, Headmistress McGonagall even created a space for Lily to continue her sport – hobby, she insisted. A small archery range was set up not too far from the lake, and there Lily practiced and even gave lessons from time to time, generally with supervision from Hagrid or Professor Longbottom or McGonagall herself.
Often Lily spent time practicing her hobby by herself. It was a warm April day in her sixth year when her hair came loose from its tie, and for a moment she was blinded by wisps of red-black-red. She paused, waited for the wind to cease, eyed her target, and released.
She did not know it, but from across the lake a figure watched her. Tall, broad – though not particularly assuming. He stood with a small frown as he watched the wild-haired girl with her bow and arrow.
It had been just shy of two years since Teddy had seen Lily. She'd grown since then. She was taller, thinner, built like a woman. She dropped her bow now for a moment before bending over and scooping her hair back into an expert, long ponytail. She then picked up the bow and headed to the target to retrieve her arrows.
He was at the target by then, and not by his own accord. Teddy was unsure how he'd wandered there, as entranced as he was by Lily's beauty. He was stricken more and more by her the closer he came to the archery range. She's grown up now, he thought one second, and She's a child, he thought the next.
"Teddy!" she gasped as she looked up from retrieving her last arrow. And though she put them all away, when she embraced him Teddy felt very much like he'd been struck by the weapon she'd just wielded moments before.
There is no way, he thought, that I could be her professor next year.
There is no way, he thought, that I could lose her again.