Author's note: Happy 50th chapter! Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading and reviewing, this story is one of my all-time favourites and I appreciate everyone indulging in the joy with me. It took me some time to figure out what I should write for a 50th chapter, and ultimately I decided that this chapter should be messy and it should be about love and it should be hopeful. Also, shoutout to Mumford & Sons for writing After the Storm, which includes the very good line "there will come a time you'll see… where love will not break your heart." Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Content Warnings: Alcohol discussed

The Right Kind of Mess

"Teddy?" Dora asked, blinking sleep out of her eyes as she opened the front door. She'd fallen asleep on the couch, like the old lady that she was, listening to the radio after dinner—which had been cereal, since Remus was off at Hogwarts and she was largely unsupervised. Still, her eyes unhazed and her focus sharpened when she saw her boy standing in the doorway, shoulders slumped and eyes filled with tears that were going to drop any minute.

"Teddy, baby, what's wrong… come here" she asked, pulling him inside. Then her heart skipped a beat. "Is Margo okay? Is the baby—"

"Margo's okay," Teddy nodded. "I gave her mushy pears and then she fell asleep with Victo when they were watching TV."

"O… okay," Dora said, easing the door shut behind him. "What's going on, then, love?"

"I…" Teddy choked on his words and buried his face in his hands. "I messed up, Mum."

"Now, now," she said, putting a hand on Teddy's arm again to guide him further into the apartment, nevermind his muddy shoes. She sat him down on the couch and sat next to him and let him cry for a minute before it was time to extract an answer whether he wanted to give one or not—like a sore tooth.

"What's going on?" she asked, pushing a strand of lilac hair behind Teddy's ear. "Why do you think you messed up?"

Teddy sniffled and tried to pull himself together.

"When I—when I did the dishes and cleaned up the mushy pear that had gotten everywhere and I looked into the living room and I saw—I mean, I saw Victoire sitting on the couch and she'd fallen asleep in this big soft pullover that's her favourite, and Margo was asleep on her chest and she was just so small even if she's gotten so big, and so beautiful… and Victoire had her hand on the baby's back and she was holding her and I… I love them, Mum. And I'm also in love with Victoire."

"Oh," Dora said softly. She tightened her arm around Teddy's shoulders and squeezed as he drew in a sharp breath. He put his head between his knees like he'd just gotten off a rollercoaster and might puke. She rubbed circles against his back.

"I mean, obviously we didn't expect Margo, we were just friends. And we said we were going to keep being friends and make it work for the baby and because we were friends, but now…"

Teddy took a deep breath.

"At first I thought I was just confused," he said. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes—chocolate brown. They tended to be just like Remus's when Teddy wasn't paying attention to his eye colour. It was the feature of his that drifted the most often, which was something she'd noticed early on when he'd been born and was just this small, squishy creature she'd made. "You know, we had this baby and we love her to bits."

"Of course," Dora said—since she too loved her grandbaby to bits.

"But it's not just that and it's not like and I'm not confused," Teddy said. "I'm in love with Victoire. When I look at her, I… I want to look at her forever and I know I could so, so easily. For, like, the rest of my life."

"Oh, Teddy," Dora said, squeezing his shoulder.

"What am I going to do?" Teddy asked. "She didn't… she didn't sign up for that, she didn't sign up for me. And Margo comes first, I mean… there's just no way she doesn't, I can't… I can't fuck that up."

He rubbed at his eyes some more.

"How did you do it?" Teddy asked her.

"What do you mean, baby?" Dora asked.

"How did you keep it together when you were in love with Dad and he wouldn't have it?" Teddy asked.

"Hmm," she said.

"He's always been really honest with me," Teddy said. "He told me, you know, about the back-and-forth and the pining and infiltrating Greyback's colony and him panicking when you were pregnant."

"I know he has," she said softly. She chewed on her lip. She and Remus had been married for so long now, over twenty years even if she supposed that wasn't so long in the grand scheme of things, that it was hard to go back that far in her memory. It was hard, too, because it brought her back to the time where Voldemort was running amuck, where they were losing people seemingly every week… It was all tangled up, it always had been. That had been why it had been so hard.

"I didn't really keep it together when your father and I split," Dora said. "I was a mess, Teddy. My morphing was off, I was working overtime because I didn't know what to do with myself, I was terrible company... I know that's not very helpful."

"It's fine," Teddy said. He wiped at his eyes. "This is my own mess."

"Love's always someone's mess," Dora said. "I guess you just have to decide, at some point, whether you're making a mess for the right person and whether it'll be worth it. I'm not going to lie; at first I took your father back because I loved you and wanted you to have that man in your life, even if he was too stubborn and afraid to see why I did. Then I remembered I loved him, he remembered he loved me, and he finally realized that I needed and wanted his love whether or not he thought he deserved it. My hands were already dirty and I didn't care. And when you were born, you were love incarnate. Something snapped in him and he realized how good the mess we were in was. We loved you and we loved each other, and we never really stopped. Sometimes that's enough."

She chewed on her lip.

"I know that's not helpful," Dora admitted. "But the truth is, everyone is so different that every mess is different. But if you think you can make Victoire happy by loving her, you should tell her. That way she knows and that way she can be part of deciding what happens too. Because the one thing that's always the same, the thing that never changes, is that you can't hide love so big that you turn up on your mother's door in tears because it's breaking your heart. Believe me, I've tried. And I failed so badly, I got you out of it."

Teddy grinned and then leaned against her shoulder, even if he was huge and lanky and bigger than her.

She put an arm around him and kissed the top of his head.

"And I've seen Victoire with that little girl in her arms, too," Dora said. "She's got that Weasley family Mama Bear streak in her. Nothing will ever change how much you two love Margo. Neither of you will ever do anything that'll hurt her—no matter what happens between the two of you."

"She's so good with Margo," Teddy said. "It brings out all the softest, all the most brilliant and kind and lively parts of her, as if they're not already so..."

"She is," Dora admitted. "And so are you. And you're good to Victoire, too. You always have been."

"Yeah," Teddy said. "She's my best friend. I think that's why it… why it all snuck up on me. Why it hit me so hard."

"That's a good thing," Dora said. "It's lucky to be in love with your best friend."

"I know, it's just so scary because who am I supposed to talk to about this stuff if not my best friend?" Teddy asked. "And if it doesn't work out, who do I go to if I can't go to my best friend?"

"Your mum," Dora said simply. "I know that's not the cool answer, but it's the real one."

Teddy snuggled into her shoulder, even if he didn't say anything.

"And how do you get over having your heart broken?" Teddy asked. "You know, if it all goes wrong?"

"I personally went for gin."

"Mum."

"It's gin and time and patience," Dora said. "With the world or yourself, depending."

"It might be even less cool to get drunk with your mum," Teddy said.

"But I'd do it," Dora said. "Hell, I can go get the liquor now if you want."

"I'm okay," Teddy promised. "I just… I just needed to talk to you. I needed you to talk me down, and just... "

She craned her neck to kiss his forehead.

"Well, if you don't want gin I can't speed up time for you either, but I can spend some with you," Dora suggested.

"Yeah," Teddy agreed. It was quiet for a moment, except for the static from the radio, so soft it barely registered, and the neighbour's footsteps upstairs.

"Mum did you have cereal for supper again?"

"Shh," she said. "The quiet was nice."