"This kind of gravity is like falling through a cloud, forgetting it all, and then being told about it later. . . It must be true. If it were not, then when did these strands of silver netting attach to my hair?
The problem was finding that you were real and not just a dream of clouds."

- love letter (clouds), sarah manguso

It's almost dark – a sweeping eyelid is shutting over top of the buildings, and Lily wants to get back inside the hotel before the night wakes up and splashes light over the streets. But it's also her second night in the city, and – per tradition – her first night out with the boots, her first night with the dust and gum wrappers and all of the precious litter the city is built on.

It must be because she's been thinking of him so much, but Lily recognizes the bright spark of laughter winging its way over the semicircles of the streetlamps even before she sees his face.

Her head shoots up, half disbelieving, but – there – a thatch of bright green hair (still?) caught in the streetlight next to a lit doorway. She feels a sudden leaping recognition when he turns and his profile is exactly the same as it was a decade-and-a-half ago – handsome, notes a part of her that was missing when she was ten – but every part that wasn't missing fifteen years ago wants to charge across the streets and fling herself at his knees, screaming what she's done that day and waiting for him to rub her hair and look down and call her 'Carrot.'

Her grin is so wide she can feel it pushing at her ears, and "Teddy!" she's calling out, suddenly, "Teddy!"

His head pops up in an eerie imitation of her own, and he looks around wildly until he catches sight of her waving arm. Even from a distance, she can see the stunned shock on his face, and the slowly dawning disbelief it is turning into as they move towards one another.

"Lily," he says, once they are close enough, "Lily Potter."

And then, looking just as overwhelmed as Lily feels, he envelops her in a hug, beaming. He steps back after a moment, shaking his head.

"Merlin, you – you look just like your mum from far away – for a minute, I actually thought Ginny'd time-traveled or something –" he breaks off with a laugh, and shakes his head again, looking her up and down incredulously.

From close-up, Lily realizes that he doesn't look exactly like her Teddy either – there are a few spiderwebby crow's feet at the corner of his eyes, and a pair of laugh lines are etched firmly at the corner of his mouth – quotation marks framing his every word.

Lily has no doubt that Teddy's very quotable indeed.

"What are you doing here?" he manages at last, and Lily shrugs, helplessly, still beaming up at him.

"I'm – I'm traveling –" she gets out, and then, "Where've you been? What are you doing here?" she asks, and it's half Lily Luna, twenty-four-year-old-on-vacation, and half Lily-Billy, six-year-old wedding planner with a mission.

"I - The usual – Cursebreaking millennia-old curses, killing re-animated grave guardians –" he lets out another half-laugh, "I even saw a manticore – it was nearly dead, poor thing – you were always asking if you could have one back when –"

"Really? I did?" Lily says, with a frown. She had barely gotten through her Care of Magical Creatures classes awake – when had she liked manticores?

Teddy shrugs, and laughs a little nervously – and this she remembers perfectly, a laugh of little bells, shown off to best advantage around pretty girls who whispered cheeky comments about his hair –

"You… well, you wouldn't remember, that's – wow." He chokes out another "Merlin," on a laugh, before he looks back at her for a slow moment.

"You're so tall," he says at last, disbelievingly.

She is – she's 5' 9", and Teddy noticing it is somehow the thing that pushes her closest to crying that night.

"Are you free? Do you want to get a drink?" she asks instead, scrubbing at her face to push the specter of tears away. "There's a -" she turns to point.

"Yeah, okay," he says, glancing away, back again, voice a little scratchy. "Yeah."

There's so much to talk about, and at the same time, nothing at all – so many things they've shared, a hundred different paths they've forgotten they walked together, a hundred more that they've walked apart. They talk about as many as they can – and in between there are the gaps they fill in for one another – marriages, promotions, the childhood memories that predicted them and all of the ones that didn't.

Teddy says a little, very little about leaving England and Lily tells him just as little about her job at the Prophet, and how she loves it, really, but sometimes you have to leave and come back to things, find a way to make them mean something despite the distance.

Awkwardly, not awkwardly, she asks if Ted is dating, has gotten married yet – it comes out strangely, she knows, because him being old enough to have children is terrifying to her in some way that Rose or James or Molly being that old isn't. He shoots her a look that suggests he's been asked too often, then smiles and shakes his head.

"No, not yet. Though I did just meet a lovely woman recently," he adds, waggling his eyebrows.

"Oh?" Lily says, trying to seem more interested than amused.

"Mmhmm. Didn't speak the same language, but judging from the hexes she threw at me, I made quite an impression."

She blinks in confusion. "Er. What?"

He pauses and shoots her a sheepish grin, "…And that would be my cue to mention she was a spirit haunting a crypt in Java." When she starts to laugh, he shoots her another rueful smile. "I'm usually funnier, I promise. And my dates go better, too."

Lily shrugs philosophically, "Well, it's not the worst date I've heard." She launches into one of her best stories – involving a mistaken shag, a naked roommate, a sheep and four pairs of pants, before realizing that far from laughing along, Ted is looking at her, slightly horrified.

"…What?" Lily says, puzzled.

"It's nothing- It's just… you've grown up, haven't you?" he says with a short laugh.

A short laugh – a disapproving one? – and Lily feels her fists clench beneath the table.

She has been forced to have this conversation so many times – in so many ways – and she is almost, almost ready to have it again. Almost. She settles for eyeing him sharply and whacking at his arm.

"Well, people grow up, you old bat," she says.

He shrugs and bumps over a seat to plop down next to her, "Yeah, well, look at me – I've managed to avoid the ravages of time, haven't I?" He says the last bit with a dramatic lilt to his voice, and Lily hits him again on principle.

"Oi!"

"Just because you're a desperate old man-"

"Hey!"

"-who can't let go of his youth-"

"Feelings!"

"-doesn't mean you've actually gotten away from growing up."

"You are awful." He pretends to pout at her, making his eyes wide and dewy, before he tugs at his ear. "Is it the earring, though? Does it make me look like I'm trying too hard?"

Lily nods, making her eyes as serious and innocent as possible, though she can't actually change them the way Teddy did, and he sighs and crumples against the chair.

"Oh, woe is me," he wails, throwing a hand up against his forehead as Lily begins to snicker, "I am undone, it seems, by my desire to impress hordes of younger, sexier women – Alas, alack –"

A pair of tourists walk by and one points at Teddy going, "Shakespeare?" and Lily's snicker devolves into full-blown laughter, which sets Teddy off, until they both conclude that next time they meet, theatre is absolutely not allowed as a conversational topic.