Disclaimer: I've forgotten to disclaim recently, and I don't really know how necessary it is (who actually reads these?) but anyway: for this chapter, and any others I forgot, none of this world, and very few of the characters, belong to me...
A/N: This is a shortish one, but I thought Ihadn't updated for a while, and you'd rather have a short one than nothing at all. I'm not sure you'll find this one very satisfying though...
Anyway, thanks to anavihs, ms wolf (whose name fanfic will never let me put the dot in) and Lily Ann Rose for leaving reviews and letting me know that I still have readers for this story. Anyone else still out there?
He didn't know how long he'd been there. He didn't know where else to go. He could not go to the closest thing he had to family, because they were Victoire's family. He could not go to the place where he had grown up, because there was no way he could tell his grandmother about this. It would break her heart, and it had already been broken several times in her life before. The thought that he, Teddy, her pride and joy, might be the cause of more pain for her was unbearable.
So he stayed where he was.
At some point, it started to rain, but he didn't register it until it soaked through his jacket, and by then, he wasn't sure how long ago it had started.
It was cold, but it hardly seemed to matter. All that mattered was Victoire, and his mind was filled with the memories of her; her scent, her laugh, her touch, her kiss, the feel of her hair. And the white, broken face and agonised eyes that had ordered him to leave.
He put his head in his hands, and the rain dripped down the back of his collar.
Time passed, and it could have been minutes or hours.
Then a voice said, "Teddy," and it was a familiar voice.
His head felt strangely heavy, and it was an effort to lift it, but after a moment, he managed it, and saw first a pair of feet in shoes unsuitable for the weather, and a pair of trousered legs. He looked a bit further up, and found his godfather standing in front of him, holding an umbrella that was trying to blow away in the wind, rain drops flecking his glasses and his hair untidy.
"Teddy," said Harry again, and his voice was so kind that Teddy almost lost it; didn't his godfather know what he had done?
"Teddy, come on. Come home."
They had found him, and brought him back. That was a relief anyway, but the expression she had seen on his face in the brief glimpse she had had, had not reassured her at all.
She refused to believe it. There had to be a mistake. Teddy, her Teddy, would not do a thing like that. Why wasn't he telling them? Why wasn't he protesting his innocence?
She hung around in the hallway, disregarded, as frantic conversations went on, from which she was excluded. There was shouting, mostly from Uncle Bill, and more reasonable tones from her parents. Odd words and phrases came through closed doors… "Zoë Lester"… "Victoire"…"the baby"… "When…?" … "How…?"… and her father's voice, raised slightly in frustration and confusion, "What were you thinking, Teddy?"
But of Teddy's voice, she heard nothing at all.
A little later, James Potter clattered into the hall and slammed the front door behind him. There were voices coming from the living room, and he made for the door, but his mother emerged from the kitchen before he reached it.
"Don't go in there, Jamie."
"Why not?" he stopped, staring at her.
"Your dad's talking to Teddy in there. And they don't need you rushing in."
James frowned.
"What's happened?"
"Nothing you need to know about," Ginny told him firmly, "Go and change your clothes, you're soaked. Didn't you have a coat with you? No, don't even answer that; you obviously didn't. Go and change, and tell Lily that dinner's almost ready. She's upstairs. Al's eating at the Llewellyns' tonight."
"Shall I tell Dad and Teddy too?" James asked hopefully.
"No, I'll tell them myself, but I shouldn't think they'll eat with us. And take your shoes off before you go upstairs; they're covered in mud."
He went upstairs, burning with curiosity, and more than a little annoyed. James disliked secrets unless they were his own. And it wasn't as if he was a little kid any more. You'd have thought they would be able to tell him, even if they wouldn't tell Lily. But maybe, having been in the house all afternoon, his little sister would know something anyway.
"Hey, Lil!" he called, paused in the doorway of his own room.
There was no reply. He turned and made his way down the hall to her door, leaving wet footprints along the carpet; his shoes had not been waterproof, and his socks were waterlogged.
He banged on the door with a fist.
"Hey, Lily!"
There was still no reply, so he opened the door. The room was empty. He stood and looked at it for a moment. His mother had definitely said that his sister was upstairs.
He padded back down the hall, and tried the bathroom door. It was unlocked, and there was nobody inside. There was no reason at all for her to be in his parents' room, or in Albus', but he checked anyway, and then, just to be sure, in the spare room.
Lily was not upstairs.
And she couldn't be downstairs either, unless she was in the study, because the only other two options were the kitchen, where his mother was, and the living room, where his father was. And she couldn't be outside, because Lily hated the rain.
"Mum!" he yelled over the banister, "She's not here!"
Zoë Lester. She knew it wouldn't be hard to find her, because she had heard Uncle Bill say she lived off Diagon Alley. The area immediately surrounding Diagon Alley was, unlike Barnstaple, where the Potters lived, an exclusively Wizarding area. That meant that all the people who lived and worked there tended to know each other.
She knew how to get there, too. Her parents had always told her, "If you ever find yourself stuck somewhere, stick your wand arm into the road. The Knight Bus'll take you anywhere you want to go…"
Lily was pretty sure that this wasn't the sort of situation they had had in mind, but it got her to Diagon Alley all right.
She slipped through the Leaky Cauldron with her hood up, keeping people between her and the bar, because Aunt Hannah was there, and would be certain to stop her, and want to know why she was there without her parents.
It was starting to get dark, and it was very cold and wet, and for a moment, as she emerged into Diagon Alley, she hesitated, wondering whether she was doing the right thing. But then she thought of the expression on Teddy's face as he came in with her father, and of her cousin Victoire, crying on Aunt Fleur's shoulder, and she gritted her teeth, and set off along the street.
"Just down the road from George and Angelina," Uncle Bill had said, so Lily turned down the road on which her uncle and aunt lived. The lights were on in their house, which was comforting. She could always go and knock at the door. Not that she intended to do that, because they would only send her home.
Feeling increasingly wet (the rain had faded to a persistent drizzle, but it still made you wet, she thought miserably, as a gust of wind blew it into her face), she wandered down the road. It had seemed like a simple idea; she would just ask someone where Zoë Lester lived. But the shops were closed (this wasn't a shopping street, anyway), and it was a foul night, and there was hardly anyone about. She had no gloves on, and her fingers were wet and freezing, and her hair was escaping from its pigtails and from under her hood, and was blowing everywhere.
Finally, to her relief, an elderly woman appeared round the corner. She stepped up to her, summoning her most winning smile.
"Excuse me. Could you tell me where Zoë Lester lives?"
The woman frowned at the pretty red-haired child.
"Yes, she's at Number 84. Are you all right, dear?"
"Yes, I'm fine," Lily tried to smile in as grown-up way as possible, "Thank you very much."
And the woman continued on her way, with a puzzled glance over her shoulder. But the child was not looking at her; she was walking resolutely up to Number 84.
Her resolution failed as she approached the door. It was on the other side of the road, and she hesitated. The old woman had disappeared, and the lights from Uncle George's house were far away, at the other end of the street. They would probably be having dinner there, and Lily suddenly realised that she was hungry. All she would have to do would be go back up the road, knock at the door, and she would be back in the warm, and they would probably be asking her to stay for dinner, and she could be laughing and talking with Fred and Roxy. Because now that she was here, she realised she didn't know what she had come to do.
She could just ring the doorbell. But then what? Zoë Lester was years older than her; how did you begin to ask the questions she wanted to ask? What were the questions she wanted to ask?
In the end, she did not ring the doorbell.
As she dithered on the other side of the road, the door of Number 84 opened, and a young woman emerged. The light in the hall went out, leaving the house in darkness, and the young woman came down the steps and into the light of the street lamp at the bottom of them.
It was Zoë Lester. It had to be. She had shortish brown hair, and a pretty, friendly face and freckles, and the bag she carried bore the logo of the Dragon Protection Society.
And she was pregnant.
Not heavily so, but the bulge was obvious, for she was otherwise very thin.
It was true. There was no mistake. Zoë Lester was pregnant with Teddy's baby.
Lily had expected to be happy and excited when Teddy Lupin had children; he was almost like her brother, so they would be practically her nephews and nieces. She had not expected it to be like this. Teddy was one of the rocks in Lily's world, and it felt suddenly as though the rock had been taken away, and she was drowning. Her head was spinning, and she could feel the tears starting.
Teddy. How could he have done it? It wasn't possible, and yet she had just seen the evidence. It was true; it must be. Teddy had betrayed Victoire, and a part of Lily's world had crumpled.
And Zoë Lester walked on up the street, and out of sight, never seeing the small girl in the grey coat standing on the opposite pavement.