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Chapter 20:

Precipitation

"Ted?"

Cass stood at the front door of her above-garage apartment, standing in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a camisole with her bangs pulled back in a clasp. She was clearly not going anywhere.

Teddy walked in past her without a word. He knew she wouldn't mind, as she'd barged into Harry and Ginny's house many a time—as well as his and Joaquin's apartment. Besides, he wasn't thinking properly… nothing seemed to make very much sense.

"Ted, you've got me worried, what's the matter?" Cass asked concernedly, setting a hand on his shoulder. Teddy jumped at her touch, and she immediately pulled her hand back, starting at him inquiringly. "Teddy, what's wrong?"

He didn't speak for a few minutes. He just paced around Cass's flat, as she stood by the still-open door know better than to interrupt him at this moment.

Something strange had happened after watching those memories of his parents. Before it had been so easy not to think of them. Before they had been nothing more than two people in a picture frame with him. Now it was undeniable. He had seen them; they had been close enough to touch.

It wasn't fair, Teddy thought. It wasn't fair that they were so real, yet not quite. It wasn't fair that he had been within inches of them, but in reality they had never really been there at all. He had wanted to reach out, to touch them, and make them know he was there, but the truth was, if he had, they wouldn't have known the difference.

It was like walking through a museum. You could look—hell, if you didn't mind getting in trouble, you could even touch. But in effect, look was all you could do. Because if you did touch, what difference would it make? The moments were gone. Even physically touching them couldn't really put you in the moments. You could not go back and experience the past, or the people who existed only there. Teddy could not go back, because he was in the present—his present—and his parents were in the past, and neither could cross the barrier between the two.

"Where's… uh…" Teddy said, wondering why it was so deathly quiet in the apartment.

"Everyone's out," she said, never getting distracted from his shaken state. "They went to Diagon Alley." She paused for a second. "What's wrong?"

"Harry…" Teddy said. "Harry showed me these memories of my parents…"

"He what?" Cass asked, half alarmed and half surprised.

"He had saved memories of my Mum and Dad," he explained as he sat down on her couch. "He put them in his pensieve and he showed them to me."

"What did he show you?" she asked gently, sitting down beside him.

"Nothing particularly special," he responded, shrugging. "It was just seeing them, there right in front of me. They were real. Only they weren't."

Teddy said nothing for a few more moments. Cass remained silent as well, until it became clear Teddy was going to say no more.

"I'm sorry, Ted," she said softly. "I know how it feels."

"No," Ted responded, shaking his head, but not making eye contact. "No you don't."

"What the bloody hell do you mean, I don't know what it feels like?" Cass retorted, looking highly offended. "I'm sorry, Ted, but have you just discovered that my parents are actually alive?" Teddy didn't respond. "Oh, I suppose not, eh?"

"You got seven years with your parents!" Teddy shot back at her, standing up and backing away from her. "I got about three months, none of which I remember on my own! Don't act like it's the same thing!"

"You know that shocked, deadened, empty feeling you get when you think about the memories of your parents?!" Cass shouted at him. "That's what my entire life is like! We've both been living with this emptiness for a long time, Ted! The only difference is you didn't know what you were missing, and I did!"

"It sucks, Ted," she said, speaking loud although it could not be considered shouting. "It really sucks, remembering them as more than a picture in a frame. It reminds you that they aren't here with you like you want them to be. It reminds you that you'll never get another chance to be with them. I get it." She sighed. "I don't know which is worse: wanting something that you've never had or wishing you still had something you lost. But either way, I understand what it's like to be without your parents."

Teddy wanted to respond. He wanted to apologize for mitigating her pain, and discrediting her feelings. He felt like a right prat for even saying that, and an even bigger one now that Cass was being nice about it. He plopped down on the couch.

"If it makes you feel less like a baby," Cass said, going to the hobo sack on the coffee table and extracting from it her pair of signature headphones, "I carry these around everywhere I go." Teddy was a proverbial millimeter away from stupidly asking what in the bloody hell the headphones had to do with this, but thought better of it.

"You've seen me in these a million times, I'm sure," Cass started off, looking down at the headphones in her hands. And it was true: the very first time Teddy had met Cass she had been wearing those headphones, and that had proven to be only the first time of many. "They play any song with the proper spell, but I've only ever learned one song."

"What song is that?" Teddy asked softly.

"You probably don't know it," she responded, never taking her eyes off the headphones in her hands. "It was… it was a song my dad wrote for my mum, before they got married. They were about our age now when he wrote it for her, and he performed it with his band." She was not near tears, but she seemed a bit shaken. "I listen to it whenever I wish they were there with me."

"Like on the train," Teddy remembered. "Like the first day on the train."

Cass nodded with a slight smile.

"Like the first day on the train," she repeated. "It makes me feel like if I needed them, they'd be right there."

Teddy just nodded, his smile fading.

"What are you feeling?" she asked, sitting down beside him on the couch and carefully setting a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know," he said truthfully. "I thought this would make everything makes sense, I thought seeing them, hearing them would make everything fall into place…" He shook his head. "But I'm more confused than I was before. And I'm angry, and I don't know why."

"Who are you mad at?" she urged him.

"My dad," he started off. "Harry. Iz. Vic. Elle."

"Why?"

"My dad, because he nearly ditched my mum and I before I was born, just because he was a bloody werewolf!" he shouted, not mad at Cass but at the people he had named. "And for making me wonder if there's something bloody wrong with me because I'm one too!"

"Ted, there's nothing—"

"And Harry, because he hadn't shown this to me before tonight!" he continued, cutting her off. "And Iz, for fucking coming in when everything was fine and dandy and making me doubt everything in my life! And Vic, because I really had felt something for her and she makes me fucking angry with myself for hurting her! And Elle, for bloody spilling the beans about you and me to Vic without any thought of the consequences!"

"Ted…" she said, trying to calm him down. "You don't know that it was Elle…."

"Oh, I beg to differ," he shot back. "This has Elle written all over it. Elle thinks that just because she's a fucking genius she can go around, messing with people's lives because she thinks that we couldn't possibly know what we're doing without her!"

"Have you talked to her about this?" Cass asked.

"No, but I know it was her," he insisted, shaking his head. "I just know it."

"Ted…" she started off tentatively, "it wasn't Elle who told Vic about you and I."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, not believing her. She sighed, closing her eyes.

"I told Vic about us."

Teddy said nothing for a moment. Truth be told, he didn't know what there was to say to that.

He stood, his eyes still fixed on her, wide with horror.

"You told Vic?" he asked slowly, standing up. "Why?!"

"Why?!" Cass repeated spitefully, standing up as well. "Why?! Because you're not the only one between us allowed to feel guilty about this! And don't fucking lie and say that you're not! I saw you whenever you'd see Vic! It ate you up, Ted! And it ate me up too! Vic is a nice person! A decent person! She didn't deserve us sneaking around behind her back during your week-long breaks from commitment!"

"Then why didn't you stop it!" he shot back, enraged. "Huh?! Why didn't you end it!"

"Because I love you!" she screamed at him.

For a moment, Teddy didn't respond. He couldn't think…

"Because you're my best friend, and I love you!" she explained rather loudly. Teddy relaxed a bit, though he wasn't sure if it was from relief or disappointment. She had not meant love how he had thought. "Because you needed me, and you're my best friend, and I'm supposed to be there when you need me! I'm supposed to be your plan B!"

Remembering that phrase hit Teddy like a bucket of ice cold water. That night, at the restaurant, in the bathroom, before he had gone to Victoire… I'll always be here. I'll be your plan B.

"You know what, just go," she said nastily, going to the door.

Just then, Teddy heard a clicking sound.

"Hey, Cass," Teddy said, squinting in confusion at the window, where a striking Barn Owl was barely visible against the black night sky.

"Go blow it out your ass, Ted," she said spitefully, going to open the door for him.

"Delilah's at the window."

"Delilah?" she asked, apparently entirely forgetting that she was mad at Teddy. She closed the door and went to the window, pulling up the shutter to let her in. She hooted, gliding over to the coffee table and landing in a flurry of feathers. "What are you doing here, Love? You're about ten hours early."

Cass had bought Delilah second year—after becoming immensely jealous of Teddy's Great Horned Owl, Samson. Having known Delilah that long, he was fully aware that her night schedule was like clockwork: Cass would let her out at seven PM every evening, and she would spend the entire night hunting and return promptly at six AM. That was why Cass was so surprised to see her here right now.

"Got something for me, have you?" Cass asked Delilah gently, and the owl promptly stuck out her leg, a note tied around it. She undid the tie and unfurled the note.

"Who's it from?" Teddy asked tentatively, worried that at any moment she would remember that she was supposed to be mad at him.

She didn't respond. Her eyes were fixed on the paper in her hand.

"Cass?" he asked again. No reply. He raised his voice just a bit. "Cass?"

She jumped at his voice, dropping the note. After that she simply stood there for a few more moments, her hands still out in front of her as if she were still holding the note but her eyes darting around the room.

Suddenly, she dropped her hands and grabbed her bag off the couch where she had dropped it after extracting the headphones from it. She bustled around the apartment, tossing in a few essentials.

"Cass, what happened?" Teddy asked her.

"Um…" she said, glancing around the apartment frantically, running a hand through her hair. "Gemma… something, something's wrong with Gemma…"

"What?" Teddy asked, alarmed.

"I don't know…" she said, looking like a lost little kid in a busy mall—unsure and panicking. "Elijah said that she collapsed during dinner… and they're, um… they're all at St. Mungo's."

"Okay, I'll go with you," Teddy said calmly, putting his arm around Cass and steering her towards the door.

---

"Gemma Devereaux!" Cass barked at the receptionist, who had asked Cass to repeat Gemma's name a second time. "Merlin, you should not be a receptionist at St. Mungo's if you can't even take down a bloody name!"

"Cass, patience is a virtue," he said, pulling her away from the startled receptionist.

"Take your patience and shove it up your ass, Ted!" she snapped. "Find Gemma!"

"Marie," Teddy said calmly, going back to the reception desk, "can you page Healer Vega?"

"Sure," she said, still a bit shell-shocked from Cass's outburst as she dialed his page number. Sure enough, about thirty seconds later, Joaquin apparated just to the left of the reception desk.

"Hey, Teddy, what's going on?" he asked, his hands in his pockets.

"Cass's younger sister is in here somewhere," Teddy said quickly as Cass stood back, pacing and biting her thumbnail. "She's about 5'7" with curly brown hair. Her name is Gemma."

"You're not gonna believe it, but she's actually my patient right now," Joaquin responded. "Follow me."

"Cass, Joaquin is treating Gemma," Teddy said, snapping Cass out of her pacing, nail-biting reverie. "C'mon."

She said nothing, but nodded and followed him and Joaquin down the hallway.

After a couple minutes of navigating, they turned a corner and found EB, Thatch, Ava, Lulu and Josie all standing outside of a room, apparently waiting for Cass.

"What happened?" Cass asked, coming upon them. Ava and Lulu scurried over and gave her a hug around the waist.

"We were just eating, and then all of a sudden she looked short of breath," Thatch explained, looking worried. "She said she needed air, but before she made it out of the restaurant, she just… fell."

"Joaquin," Cass said, turning to him, "what's wrong on with her? Why did she collapse?"

"At the moment, it's unclear," he explained very methodically. "We're still running tests, and we should know in a couple hours."

"A couple hours?!" Cass yelped, staring at him in shock. "So what are you doing in the meantime?"

"We're keeping an eye on her, to make sure the situation doesn't get worse," Joaquin explained.

"And what if it does?!" she asked frantically. "You don't know what's causing it! What are you going to do if it gets worse?!"

Joaquin didn't answer. Teddy knew that if it got worse, there were only a few options to tide her over until they figured out what was wrong, and chances were they might not work.

"God," she sighed, realizing what he meant without him having to explain. She stepped back. "Can I at least see her?"

"At the moment, we don't know what's causing the reaction," Joaquin said tentatively. "So we can't allow anyone in that doesn't absolutely have to be in there."

Cass nodded, looking down at the floor.

"You can see her through the window, if you like," Joaquin offered weakly, knowing it was not the same, but figuring that it was better than nothing.

She nodded again, stepping in front of the window. Teddy followed, watching Gemma—who was the very definition of vivacity—lay still amongst the bed sheets.

"Teddy, can I talk to you?" EB asked, rising from his chair.

"Er, sure…" Teddy said, following EB around the corner.

"Can I ask you a favor?" EB asked quietly once they were out of earshot.

"Sure, anything," Teddy insisted.

"Staying here isn't doing any of us any good," he started off. "I'm going to take Lulu, Ava and Thatch home, because Lulu and Ava are tired and Thatch is worried sick, and staying here is just making it harder for them."

"Right, what do you need me to do?" Teddy asked obediently, ready to help with anything they needed.

"Have Cass stay over with you," he explained. "She needs you right now. If she comes home with us, she'll lock herself up in the apartment and stew all night. Just try and take her mind off it."

"Alright," Teddy nodded. EB nodded in thanks, then looked down. "By the way, mate."

"Yeah?" EB asked, looking very stressed out.

"It wasn't your fault," he told him. "It was just an accident. You couldn't have seen it coming."

"Thanks," EB responded, offering a weak smile.

The two walked back together.

"Cass," Teddy said, setting a hand on her shoulder as EB rounded up everyone and proceeded to leave. "Let's go back to my place, yeah?"

"I can't," she said insistently, shaking her head and never letting her eyes leave Gemma. "I can't…"

"They'll owl us if something changes," he assured her. "C'mon, Gemma's gonna be fine. They'll find out what's wrong. You need to rest."

"Ted," she said, trying to protest.

"Just trust me," he said soothingly.

She tore her eyes away from Gemma, looking at him as though she was trying to decide if she should.

"Alright," she sighed, hitching up her bag on her shoulder. "Let's go."

Please enjoy! My parents are chewing me out for being on the comp, so please reward my updating by reviewing a ton!

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