Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Also, as a warning: This chapter includes brief conversations which brush upon the topic of suicide/assisted suicide.

Chapter Eight

Lily's parents led her to the kitchen. Her father pulled out a chair, nodded her toward it. She sat, closed her shaking hands between her knees.

Albus came through, heading toward the stairs looking a little red around the nose. Ginny held out her hand, palm out. Lily felt the combined magic of her family shiver in the air, tense and static.

"Albus, wait. We're not done with you." Ginny tilted her head toward the chair beside Lily. Albus slumped in it, hiding his face in his hands.

Harry and Ginny exchanged a look and evidently decided that Ginny was in charge of this discussion, because she began, "What made you read that letter so loudly, Al? Why didn't you confront Lily about it in private? Or you could have brought it to us."

Albus didn't say anything.

Harry continued, "Because we understand—Merlin, do we—that it upset you. It upsets me and your mother, as well. But making it so public, especially considering how it involves Teddy—that was unconscionable."

"I wasn't thinking," Al spoke into his wrists, voice muffled, "especially not about Teddy."

"Okay," Harry leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. "That's not exactly an excuse, but you were obviously surprised."

Albus nodded and moved to push away from the table but Ginny said, "No, you're staying. This is our family. It involves you as much as it does Lily. And," she glanced at the doorway, her eyes sad, "Teddy."

"Lil," Harry turned to her, "will you please explain your eight year-old-self to us?"

Lily pressed her fingernails into her palm and counted to fifteen. Then she said, "I was very confused about how Teddy could be alive but seem so dead. I didn't understand how people were mourning him—or weren't mourning him, depending—and I hated the way people kept flocking to his side, like their presence made a difference. I didn't think I would like that—being half-dead, having other people see me like that, have you all mourn me while I was still sort of alive—I thought that was terrible. I thought it would have been better to die." She inhaled a shaky breath. "I thought it would have been better for Teddy if he had died."

Harry shut his eyes. Ginny stared at her. Lily refused to look at Al, but she noticed that he stopped breathing for a moment. "But you must have gotten that much from the letter. It's all I was thinking, when I wrote it. How sad we all were, and how a sudden quick sadness would be better than a prolonged one."

"But to hear you say it, so confidently," Ginny trailed off.

"Here is my problem." Al sounded angry still. "You thinking that when you were eight is sad and understandable. You writing that letter is a little bit crazy, but still reasonable—you were young. But you found it on Christmas, I guess, when I made you get the Tales of Beedle the Bard?" Lily nodded. "And you kept it? Why didn't you just throw it out?"

"I meant to," Lily said, as she had before he'd read it.

"But you didn't. So here is my question, here is why I am so bloody upset with you: Would you still prefer that? If something happened to you now, would you expect that letter you wrote a decade ago to still stand? Would you still want me to kill you?"

Lily knew the correct answer. She knew she could lie convincingly enough to get it past her parents, but not Al. Never Al, who had once told her she lied like a Hufflepuff—he was the only one who knew her well enough to see through it all.

She could feel her parents staring at her. She imagined Teddy, lying in his bed, hating himself and not letting her near him. She thought of ten long years, and how the world changed, and how it felt to be lost. "I would want to die." She looked at Al. "I would. But I wouldn't want you to kill me—that was selfish."

He squeezed his eyes shut. "You're—Lily, you're mad."

"But Teddy woke up," Harry said, sounding shattered. Lily didn't look away from Al. "You woke him up. So if something similar happened to you, why wouldn't you have hope? Why wouldn't you let us have hope?"

"This is dumb," Lily snapped, finally, her insides feeling cold, icy like they had that day she fought with Hugo in the middle of the Great Hall. "We're dealing in hypotheticals. Supposing this happened, supposing that didn't—there's no way to know. All I know is that sleeping for ten years is not a life I would choose for myself—all I know is that I would choose death. And I'm sorry if that is selfish too. But it doesn't matter, because this isn't happening."

"But, Lily."

"But nothing," Ginny cut in. She crossed the room and dropped a hand to Lily's shoulder. It felt warm, breaking through Lily's fragile coldness. "She's right. Sort of. You, Lily, have always seen things differently than the rest of us. And thinking about these, spinning out these scenarios, it's utter bullshit. It's like looking backwards, wondering what would have happened if Teddy had gotten a job at the Ministry straight after Hogwarts. And if we go there, we might as well go all the way back, rewrite everything that's happened in our whole lives." Harry was looking over Lily's head, and his gaze was softer, less heartbroken, than it had been when he looked at Lily. "And you know, Harry, how addicting and how devastating that can be. What happened happened, what hasn't happened hasn't, and if there is any sort of luck in this world, Lily will never be in a situation where she would rather be dead. Thinking about it now isn't going to do any good." Ginny leaned down and kissed the top of Lily's head. "I'm sorry."

Harry looked at them, and then crossed the kitchen and knelt beside Lily's chair, on the other side from Al, who still hadn't said anything. "Please come to us first, Lily. Before you ever do anything drastic, please remember to trust us."

Lily nodded and pressed her face into her father's shoulder for a moment, remembering how that used to comfort her. That night it made her feel closed-in, nervous, but it calmed him down. She pulled away and Harry rocked to his feet. "I'm going to go talk to Teddy."

Ginny nodded, brushed her hand from Lily's head to Albus's, and said, "I'm going to bed. We'll see you both in the morning."

And then Lily and her silent brother were alone in the kitchen. Albus looked at her with hard green eyes, and then dug in the pocket of his jeans and held out a flesh coloured string. An Extendable Ear, by way of apology. Lily gripped the bud between the two of them, and they leaned close as the other end crept down the hall.

"I am so sorry," Teddy was saying. "For what I've done to your family."

Harry let out a dry laugh. "There are so many things wrong with that statement, I barely know where to begin. First, you are a part of my family, if you'll have us. We're a bit dysfunctional, but we're nice, and we chose you a long time ago. As you know, Teddy, you know this. And second, nothing that has happened was your fault. Aside from your stupidity in dealing with brewing illegal potions—and I believe you have learned your lesson there—you have not done a thing."

"But—" Teddy protested, "But Lily."

"But Lily nothing. Lily is fine. She is a good kid. She has always been different from her brothers, different from me and her mother, but that is not a bad thing. She is not...I don't know what you're thinking, Teddy, but she isn't broken. She's just Lily. And there is nothing wrong with her. Not a thing."

"But she's..."

Albus's head had gotten closer to Lily's, and she glanced at him as Teddy trailed off. His eyes were right near hers, curious and seeing too much.

"Not eight anymore. I know she's told you this, Teddy. Maybe you being in our house did affect her. But it didn't ruin her, or whatever you are thinking. Lily is the only person responsible for who she is today, and I happen to think that she has grown into a very good person, and perhaps I'm biased, but I honestly think that you blaming yourself for who my daughter has grown into is the dumbest thing you have done since waking up."

"I wasn't saying that, not really," Teddy said after a long pause.

"No, but you weren't not saying it, either." Harry sighed, the sound whispering up through the Extendable Ear. "Teddy, we love you. Your life isn't what you expected, but there's no reason to spend your time regretting that, feeling bad about it—you're never going to be okay again, if you keep that up." Lily and Albus glanced at each other. Al's face was twisted in guilt, and Lily nudged him.

"It's all right," she whispered. "I'm sorry too."

"And if you want the truth," Harry's voice prevented Al from responding, "as I'm sure you do, I think that you have helped Lily more in the last few years, and especially in the last few months, than anyone else has done. It may be a bit morbid, a little sad, that you helped her when you were asleep, but you did, Teddy, and you're helping her even more now. So please don't block her out. I know she needs you, and I'm fairly certain you need her, as well."

"What does that mean, though, needing someone?" Teddy sounded small. Lily felt a flush inching up her neck, and she was glad that Albus wasn't looking at her.

Harry said, sad. "Oh, Teddy. It just means you're friends. It just means you trust each other. That's all, although I guess that's everything. It's a good thing, to need someone. It's like your dad and Sirius or me and Ron and Hermione or you and Graham and Victoire, when you were all at Hogwarts."

"But not now," Teddy sounded like he was mourning something. "Not me and Graham and Victoire, now."

"They want that back, Ted. But do you?"

"I don't know. Is it okay, to not know?"

"Of course it is."

Then the sound of Harry moving, stacking plates and cutlery from the table, came through the Extendable Ear and Albus tugged it so it snapped back to them. He handed it to Lily, ruffled her hair, and said, "We're okay, too, aren't we?"

Lily nodded and he continued up the stairs, and she stuffed the Ear in her pocket, staring at the tabletop for a few minutes, until Harry came back into the kitchen Levitating all of the dinner preparations in front of him. Lily stood to help him put everything back where it belonged, and Harry said, "Give him a few days, Lil, and I think everything will be back to normal. He's just dealing with—well, you know."

Lily nodded. "I know."

Harry said goodnight, warned her not to stay up too late, and moved up the stairs. Lily waited a few minutes, and then tiptoed up the stairs behind him. She knelt near the top, hesitated for just a moment, and then released the Extendable Ear towards her parents' room. She fit the bud in her own ear just as Harry was saying, "Do you think that Teddy will ever forgive Graham and Victoire for moving on, and Lily for not?"

"Do you think he hasn't?" Ginny sounded tired, but not as if Harry had woken her up when he came in.

"I get that impression, yeah. He's trying so hard, I've never seen anyone try so hard, but yeah, I don't think he's forgiven them."

"Might need to forgive himself, first?"

"Probably." Harry spoke softer, as if aware of the way sound carried in their house. "It's just that sometimes I see Remus in him—so much of Remus—and he was a great man, but he allowed his past to affect his present and future to such an incredible extent...I am terrified that Teddy will do the same."

"We'll just need to work on him, Harry. He's young. He still has time."

"But I worry he's not young enough."

Lily jerked the Ear back toward her as Harry's shadow moved across the strip of light at the bottom of his door, and she slipped up to her own bedroom after waiting a tense minute.

She thought that when her mother had said, "We'll just need to work on him," she had really meant that Lily would need to. Teddy was her responsibility, her friend. Even if it did take him a few days to admit it.

:::

Lily lingered outside of Teddy's room for two days, but she still felt the pressure of his magic, so she didn't try to go inside. His healer and his physical therapist came and went, they told her he was doing fine, but she felt devastatingly outside of his life.

The sixth day, she Flooed Connor in the evening and begged him to go out with her. She was going mad with no one to talk to but her parents, especially now that Albus had returned to Scotland, and she thought that Connor would understand what had happened—would understand her—better than the others. Besides, there was always the chance that he wouldn't want to talk.

Lily Apparated to London to meet Connor in a pub. It was low-end enough that he had been able to order a drink for her, and they settled into their pints directly.

Lily told Connor about what had been happening since Teddy woke up, and then she told him about the letter and how Teddy had shut her out after. He listened quietly, only occasionally nodding his head. He interrupted to ask about how Al had responded to the letter, and he looked concerned when she said, "Not well, but he's over it," and he sighed when she finished, a long, hopsy sigh that left Lily feeling a little sad.

"So Teddy isn't speaking to you?" He pressed his palms against his eyes. "This is going to sound whiny and I'm aware of that, but have you noticed what a terrible friendship of convenience we have here? You only ever call me when you're bored or lonely, Lily." And then he laughed. "Or if you need me to draw blood out of your fucking half-dead god-brother."

Lily blinked and drew back a little. "Connor," she began, unsure of what she was going to say next.

"Stop for a moment," he said in the heavy pause following his name, "I know you can talk your way out of anything. You can make me love you again just by apologising, with no explanation whatsoever. But I need you to know, Lily, that it hurts like hell when you remind me that I am last on your list, or whatever. And I never feel like you give a damn about me."

"Of course I give a damn about you." Lily reached across the table and grabbed his hand, clung to it. "I give a fuck-tonne of damns about you. Merlin, I don't know where I would be right now if it weren't for you. And not just because Teddy needed you." He raised his eyebrows. "Because I needed you. And not because I needed someone, and you were there, but because I needed you. I'm sorry I don't act like it, sometimes. Or ever. But I do, Connor. Fuck, I had no idea. I'm sorry."

"And there you go, it's all forgiven." Connor snorted. "You're dangerous, Lily Potter. The most dangerous girl I know. Let's just have a good time tonight, all right?"

"All right. And I swear I won't mention Teddy or Ris or Bea or Hugo again."

He laughed. "We'll see if we have anything to talk about, then." But he was still smiling, so Lily just smiled back.

Later that night, Connor tripped on the pavement, and Lily caught him, her hands slipping on his t-shirt, and he steadied himself with his forehead to her shoulder, his laugh warm against the stretch of her collarbone. She could feel the looseness of the alcohol in her, and she leaned her head against the side of his, waiting for him to steady.

"Lily?" he asked, pulling her closer.

"Connor?"

He pulled his face away from her, and then angled it a bit, leaned in, kissed her sloppily. She returned the kiss, feeling the mess and the possible end of their friendship in every movement of their lips and tongues, and not caring, much.

She pulled away, finally, her breathing sharp and fast. "Connor," she said. "What are we doing?"

"Having fun," he promised. "That's it."

She leaned in and kissed him quickly, then stepped back and stuck her hand in her pocket, searching for her wand.

"I need to go home," she told him. "I really badly do."

He laughed. "'You really badly do?' What even is that?"

"It's proper." She found her wand and tugged it out. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Don't freak out, Potter," he told her, as she Disapparated, and for some reason those words sounded crueller than any of the others he'd said all night.

She Apparated straight into her bedroom, and crawled into bed with her wand, casting a half-drunken spell to keep a Beatles song looping endless from her walls. She fell asleep like that, curled up in her tank top and skinny jeans, while "Blackbird" played softly and she still tasted of alcohol.

She dreamt that she was being suffocated, that someone held her, kissed her with beer-tainted lips, held her nose closed with a sticky hand; she dreamt that she couldn't breathe through the kiss and the hand and the softness of her pillows behind her.

She woke up gasping, air hurting as it rushed through her lips. She rolled and screamed into her pillow, a fragmented noise drawn straight from the nightmare.

Normally she would have gone to tell Teddy about all of this, but Teddy was conscious and not speaking to her, not even seeing her, so she couldn't. And even if he had been speaking to her, if there wasn't that ring of magical pressure around his bedroom, she didn't know if she'd have been able to tell him about this. And what was this, anyway? Just a kiss, a single kiss. A nothing, really.

What would she have said, if Teddy were still asleep?

She practised it on her ceiling: "I went out with my friend Connor tonight and we drank beers and whisky and he kissed me, and I kissed him back, and I don't think it was the alcohol really. I think it was real for him and for me it was loneliness, I'm pretty sure, just years and years of loneliness. And now I'm having nightmares about it, nightmares where I can't breathe because I feel bad and guilty because Connor might want something more—Connor always takes me so seriously—and I don't want him but I want someone but I don't want to fuck everything up again."

Asleep Teddy would have stayed still, comforting and sad in his sameness, and she would have felt better just for getting it out. Her ceiling stayed the same, but it lacked the angle of Teddy's nose and the paleness of his skin and the general comforting sound of his breathing.

Lily didn't know how awake Teddy would have responded. He probably would have told her not to lead Connor on. Probably, but who knows. Maybe he would have asked her if she liked Connor enough, whatever enough meant. Maybe he would have stayed silent and still, like his sleeping self, because the thought of eight year-old Lily kissing boys broke his brain.

She probably shouldn't have kissed Connor. Admitting that, even just to herself, led to a feeling of shame growing along with the odd taste of stale beer and the itchy feeling of city smells settled on her skin. She rolled out of bed and crept down the stairs, to the bathroom she shared with her brothers when they were all in the house. She took a shower, scrubbed at her skin until it was red, and brushed her teeth until her gums bled. She dressed in an old t-shirt of Albus's that he had left in the bathroom ages ago, and left the room along with a wash of steam, feeling a little better. Cleaner, anyway.

As she was about to return to her bedroom, she heard a strange sound like torn sobs from downstairs. She made it to the kitchen and then she hesitated; Teddy didn't want her near him, but he was alone, and waking up alone from a nightmare—that was a sad thing, a feeling that ached.

So Lily hesitated by the kitchen table, but then she continued, into the hall and to the air that had pressurized around her for the last several days; that night it felt normal, though, clear air that she had no trouble walking through. She interpreted that as an invitation and pushed the door all the way open.

Teddy was in his bed, of course, hands fisted in his sheets, breaths coming in rasps. Lily moved forward, pressed one soft hand against his shoulder. "Ted," she murmured. "Hey. Teddy."

His eyes shot open and they were grey, normal grey, but they didn't focus on her for the longest moment; they were vague and indecipherable. His breathing didn't slow and Lily thought he might not have been awake at all, and then his hand released his sheets and grabbed her wrist, his fingers searched for her pulse-point, and she felt an odd feeling of dislocation. Teddy was counting her heartbeats; she'd always been the one to count his.

"I remember things sometimes," he said, voice unsteady, "from being asleep. They're like nightmares or dreams. Only some things. Only sometimes. It's making all this a bit more real."

He still had his fingers on the pattern of her heart. "What do you remember?" She tried not to move. She tried to calm her pulse.

"It's all vague. But my gran, sobbing over me. Victoire and Graham fighting—they fought a lot in the early years, didn't they?—and then their breathing, with no noise at all. And I remember your touch, you touching me like this. And I have this bare memory, this outline, of your voice."

"What was I saying?" Lily had said a lot of shit to Teddy over the years. There was a good chance he was remembering something unsavoury.

He sighed. His fingers pressed down a bit harder. "I only started remembering after Al found that stupid letter, and then everything started coming—it was because of that letter, because it sounded like something from a dream. Because in my head I have this loop of you saying, 'If I were a Gryffindor, I'd have killed you already'. And it's been in my nightmares ever since I woke up—you sad and disappointed and sort of threatening—and I thought I was making it up, or my damnable head was, but then Al read that letter and I thought it must have been a memory, not a nightmare." He was pressing so hard she thought she might have bruises there in the daylight. "Was it? Was it real, Lily?"

"Yeah, I said that." His touch relaxed. "I did, and I'm sorry."

"If you hadn't woken me up, I think I would have preferred that. Death, I mean. So don't apologise. But I am glad—mostly—that you were too Slytherin to kill me."

"In the end," Lily spoke more honestly than she had in ages, "I don't think I was. I just gave myself two choices: Either I healed you or I killed you. I didn't see there being much chance of anything else."

"Well, thank you for coming up with another option, anyway." He let go of her wrist. Her skin where he had been touching her was warm and then cold, an abruptly felt sense of loss.

"You're welcome. Are you all right—was your nightmare really bad?"

"It was bad enough. I haven't taken any sleeping potion since I made you leave." He sounded rueful. "My way of punishing myself, I guess."

"That's dumb, Ted."

"I know. I have to fall asleep naturally sometime, though. I figured I might as well start sooner than later. And if it's a way of atoning for things..."

Lily couldn't tell him off for that—after all, she had done the same, in some ways, when she gave up everything for him, but really for herself. "Teddy, about that letter..."

"Look, it's fine." He patted the place beside him on the mattress, Lily's usual place, and she sat in it, grateful. "It really is. I mean, I understand where you were coming from when you wrote that—and I'm still bloody pissed at myself for making you go through that—that whole thought process—especially at fucking eight years old, but I fully understand you. And I am sorry, you can't stop me from saying it, but I'm also sorry for the last week, because that wasn't fair to you, either. I didn't know what to do, so I just blocked you out."

"I'm glad you're letting me back in, now. It was getting to the point where I was about to start stalking your physical therapist for information."

He laughed. "You can ask me about it, now, if you want to."

"How's walking coming, then?"

"I've managed a few more steps with the walker." He looked excited, his teeth bright flashes in the darkness. "Which isn't really a big deal but Ryan says it's probably going to all click together soon and then I'll be practically back to normal."

"It is a big deal, though, Teddy. That's a very big deal." She clapped her hands together and then leaned forward, brushing away any remaining distance between them, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "I'm so thrilled for you."

He snaked an arm around her back and pulled her into a hug—awkward because of the angle, but not uncomfortable. She settled against his shoulder and stretched her legs out beside his, but above his sheets.

"But now I need to know what I'm going to do once my legs start working, once I can function on my own again. I'll need to move out, of course," Lily tried to stop her grip on his waist from tightening at that, "And I'll need to get a job. I can't see myself bartending anymore. And I don't want to move back to Grimmauld Place." He glanced down at Lily's face, his lips an inch from her forehead. "Your dad won't be upset about that, will he?"

"I don't think so. The house is a big responsibility, and you don't have the best memories there. He'll understand."

"I hope so," Teddy sighed. "Hey, I'm sorry. It's really late. I didn't mean to wake you—did I wake you? Was I that loud?—and now I'm keeping you up, fuck, I suck."

Lily laughed. "You didn't wake me, I was downstairs and I heard you, and it's fine. I'd rather not be alone right now, anyway."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, or everything, but really nothing." Lily shook her head against his shoulder. "Sorry, it's just nothing you'd be interested in, or nothing you should worry about, or nothing all that important, anyway."

"That's a lot of nothings." He reached for her wrist again. It was strange, how comforting that gesture was. "And you're really only succeeding in making me more curious, you understand."

"It's just a boy thing," she explained, "You really don't want to know."

"Oh." Teddy went quiet and tense all against her. "You have a boyfriend?"

"That is the question of the evening. I don't think so. Maybe."

"D'you," Teddy sounded uncomfortable, "Do you like him?"

"Not as much as he likes me," Lily said, with certainty. "But I take a long time to warm up to people."

"You didn't take that long to warm up to me," Teddy pointed out.

"Are you kidding? It took me ten years of you not talking for me to like you well enough to deal with you for the month and a half you have been talking."

Teddy let out a dissatisfied sound, along the lines of a discordant hum. "You really know how to win people over, don't you?"

"Oh, Teddy, I was just kidding. You are my...I don't know? My constant. You must know that." She hesitated to say favourite, thinking the declarative term might scare him.

"Not really, considering I haven't exactly been here for you for the past ten years—"

Lily cut him off. "Don't be ridiculous. Haven't I told you? You were there for me—involuntarily, for the most part—but you were."

"Not involuntary anymore," he said, and it sounded like a promise.

"Well, good." Lily pressed her face into his shoulder and he tightened his arm around her waist. They fell asleep like that, waking up with Lily still on top of Teddy's sheets and Teddy still beneath them when the sun rose and a bird tapped against the window.

Lily rolled sleepily from Teddy's bed and opened the window, wiping matter from her eyes as she detached the note from Quentin. Of course it was Quentin.

Connor had written: Come out on a real date with me tomorrow? I promise I won't keep you out too late.

Lily sighed and patted Quentin on the head. Teddy blinked, bleary, up at her. "Problem?"

"Do I take a chance?" she asked him.

"I don't know. What are the stakes?"

"One: I lose a friend. Two: I lose a friend and gain a boyfriend. Three: I lose a friend and a boyfriend, at some date in the probably near future."

"Ah," Teddy said. "That, I'm afraid, is entirely out of my depth."

Lily wanted, really wanted, to go back to the night before and end the evening after the first pub, before the kiss. That seemed to indicate that "No," was the proper response—but then she'd lose Connor. He had put up with a lot of shit from her, and if she told him no, she knew, that would be the end of it.

"I don't want to lose Connor. He's been there for me—you can't tell anyone, but he helped me with you—and he's never asked for anything, not really."

"But you don't want to date him." Teddy sounded exhausted.

"No, I guess not."

"Well, then. Tell him that."

"Let's be 'just friends'? Connor wouldn't go for that."

"Then," Teddy yawned, "may I say that he's not really worth your time?"

Quentin hooted and cuffed Teddy on the head with a wing. "Quentin," Lily snapped. "But, Ted, he's a good guy."

"I'm sure," Teddy sighed. "Lily, I told you, I can't help you here. But I would say, don't do anything that you really don't want to do." He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he bit his lip and refused to continue, even when Lily prodded him.

"Fine," she said. She leaned over Teddy's desk, wrote a response to Connor, and gave it to Quentin, who swooped low over Teddy before flying out the window.

"Done?" Teddy asked.

"Finished," Lily replied. "Do you want toast for breakfast?" She went to get it without waiting for an answer.