Archive of Our Own ^beta

"You are living here?" He asked her, taking the whole place in – dingy, filled with dust and cobwebs and smelling a lot like cat’s piss. "You? Actually living here? Somehow, I can't see that happening."

But Lily shook her head and smiled softly at him, before saying –

"Just wait and see, Teddy. A couple hands of paint, several hours of scrubbing and dusting, and this place will turn out feeling a lot more like a home than that empty flat of yours."

He snorted, not feeling even a little bit shy of showing just how much he doubted that she could pull of that sort of miracle with a rundown place like this. Yes, maybe the place he was currently living in didn't felt a lot like home, but home for him used to mean a crooked little townhouse in Kensington, bursting with his books and Victoire’s coats, or anywhere, really, where Victoire used to be.

Nowadays, he was more of a destitute.

“What are you going to do about the smell? It will be kind of hard turning this place into a home where your senses are constantly being assaulted by the stench of feline urine.”

“Oh, shut up,” she’d said, but there was a hint of amusement in her tone.  “Maybe I’ll just get a cat to match the smell and call it a win.”

And she did.

Two weeks, several body aches, leg cramps, throbbing hands and scratched arms later, Lily’s flat was a lilac-painted haven with pictures of her friends and family scattered everywhere, large, curtainless windows because Wilfred The Cat managed to destroy the white, flowing ones Lily had gotten from grandma Molly as a housewarming gift; as well a unbelievably comfortable second-handed, electric blue sofa.

They had even managed to get rid of the stink, and the house smell was something Lily called “citrusy”.

Even though Teddy had been there every step of the way, what with the sanding hardwood floor, painting walls, carrying mattresses and whatnot, because Lily liked to do most of the things there in the Muggle way, he was still very much surprised by the way the flat had turned out.

But Lily just gave him a key and smiled that knowing smile of hers, before going into the kitchen and brewing them some coffee, a new bland she swore he just had to taste before swearing off the beverage.

It didn't seem to matter to her that he’d never liked coffee.

It didn't seem to matter at all that he had a flat of his own.

Those things were inconsequential to the new and improved Lily, the one that just quit the Healer program just three months shy of completion, the one who just woke up one day and decided she’d had enough of her long hair and cut it all off, the one that stood in front of the guy kneeling in front of her, as well as her whole family, and apologized profusely before claiming she couldn’t say yes and marry him.

This Lily, this new and improved Lily, had a gift for finding things that were lacking in his life and doing her best to make up for the absence of them, even if he didn't really wanted her to do it in the first place.

The new Lily, with short red hair and her long, red lashes, just smiled at him, and he was a goner.

X.x.X.x.X.x

Honestly, Teddy doesn’t even know when this thing between them started.

One day their paths crossed, him going inside Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour with the sole intent of stuffing his face with a Sundae Rainbow Extravaganza, her in the middle of her first week of working there, and that was it. She served him some ice cream; he waited until her shift was over, reading a new novel. Then she walked him home, he invited her inside for tea and she decided they should have coffee instead, so they argued about it until she shoved a cup of java on his hands.

The rest, as the said, was history.

He and Victoire had been separated for six weeks, and it had only been three months since Lily had left behind her job, her boyfriend and her previous life. The two of them beings friends, it didn’t made sense, him quiet, solemn and almost a decade older, her brash, stubborn and so, so young, but somehow they became this unit. She would tell him when he was being a whiny, self-absorbed prat, and he point out when she was being an untitled and impulsive brat. It worked – they worked.

It wasn't normal, or even likely, but it made sense to them. She was twenty-one years old, working odd jobs here and there, writing on Sundays, taking a lot of pictures every day. He was a thirty years-old Potions Master with too much time on his hands, a separation under his belt, and a tendency to overwater his plants.

No, it didn't made sense at all, but they were drowning, and then they started to drift together, until somehow they managed to keep each other afloat. Lily and Teddy had absolutely nothing in common, but she made him laugh with her outlandish ideas about life, and he… He didn't really know what he added to the little arrangement they had going on, but she’d once asked “can I keep you?” and he hadn’t said no. He hadn’t said no, and she seemed to like having him around, so he just kept on stopping by.

Six months into their friendship found him more used to spending time at her place, feeding Wilfred The Cat, concocting new potions on her kitchen and squinting at the colour scheme of her bathroom (gold and red, an eyesore for such a small place). He spent so much time there that the couch on her living room was more commonly known as Ted’s bed. She kept complaining about finding his books stashed everywhere, even behind the small cupboard that she used to keep her film negatives, and it came to point where he was the only one doing the grocery shopping anyway, so Lily didn’t even bothered to pretend she would eventually go out and buy them anymore, just stuck post-it notes in the refrigerator written in her chicken scrawl, things like ‘Milk’ or ‘The Cat’s poop sand thingy’ and in one memorable occasion, ‘Vaseline’.

It was routine, him being around, she pretending to ignore how she would sometimes find his socks in the middle of her delicates whenever she did laundry, that it took him completely by surprise when, one day, she fell silent, looked at him from across the table – he was having porridge, she was pretending to fill the Sunday's Prophet crosswords, but was actually asking him for the answers – and just stared.

"What?" he asked more out of curiosity than anything, but not really paying attention, because Lily was weird like that, and because he was enjoying a really good porridge, crunchy in all the right places, soft in all the wrong ones. He liked the challenge of eating the ones that didn’t turn out quite right. 

"You should move," she said after a couple of minutes of him chewing and her staring like she just had an epiphany of sorts. Which in hindsight, he supposes she had.

"Move where?" he mumbled out, mouth full and preoccupied with not letting anything dribble down his chin while reaching for the Prophet, because he wanted to keep his dignity intact, thank you very much.

"Move here," and her tone held a tiny bit of irritation.    

There was nothing dignified about choking on overcooked porridge, Teddy learned that morning.

"Excuse me?" he managed to force out after a two-minutes coughing fit.

"It's not as if you don't spend every waking minute here anyway," she pointed out, shrugging. "Some of your not-so-awake ones as well. At least, moving in, you would get to sleep on a decent bed every night, and we could split the bills. You’ve no idea how much it costs to keep The Cat looking this plump.”

He just sat there gaping like a fish, half-chewed porridge dribbling down his chin. Lily made a face and gave him a napkin, reaching for the steaming pot of coffee at the same time and pouring them some.

“If I say no, will you dump this scalding cauldron of black, bitter beverage from hell on my lap?”

“If you keep on calling the love of my life a ‘beverage from hell’, I just might,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. She sipped and waited for him to react, but Teddy was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that this was now his life. Coffee he hated but ended up drinking it anyway, a barely legal girl for a best friend, and a cat that had a thing for attacking his toes whenever he was walking around barefoot, which was often.

"Look, you don’t have to say yes,” she was starting to sound defensive, and Teddy felt a stab of guilt when he noticed the protective hunch on her shoulders, and if she was shielding herself for a rejection.

As if he could ever say no to her – he was drinking coffee regularly, for Godric’s sake.

“I just realized you basically live here anyway. We could expand my office with a couple of housekeeping spells, and voilà, it’s a decent nook to store a bed and all your books, so that way I won’t have to find them in the kitchen cabinets. I'm not using the space to work anyway, seeing as I'm serving sinfully delicious ice cream for a living. It doesn’t count as a office when it's mostly used for shoe storage."

Her smile was a dare, but her eyes were guarded, and that’s how Teddy knew that Lily expecting him to shoot her proposition down. He sighed and decided that, really, some of the things she'd said made sense. He already had a toothbrush and a towel there. He rarely freaked out now whenever he stumbled across the scraps of fabric she called undergarments, and he was used to finding cat hair in all of his clothes.

It was a tad idiotic to keep on paying rent on a flat he barely slept in anymore.

But one of them had to be sensible about this.

"And what would we do about your shoes if I move in?"

"I'll just keep them in the oven, I guess," she suggested. "That way they'll be very warm, and I might be able to sit on my couch every once in a while. Once you’ve a bed here, I actually expect you to use it."

So this was how her flat officially turned into theirs, and how he ended up learning that Lily not only liked to shower at odds times during the night, but also sung very, very loudly, while doing it. And maybe her soft singing voice kind of lulled him to sleep sometimes, but he would ever admit to that. Ever.

X.x.X.x.X.x

It was the morning of his and Victoire’s fifth wedding anniversary, and Teddy had just gotten a letter from her. It had been almost a year and half since he’d moved out, miserable and heartbroken, not having anything to show out of a ten-years relationship with the woman he thought he would love his whole life.

She sent him a letter, asking if he could meet up with her somewhere to talk things out.

He still missed her, a constant ache of anger and longing and guilt. 

"Don't do anything stupid," Lily warned him between sips of some Guatemalan coffee, while Wilfred The Cat purred loudly between her legs, demanding her attention.

"I don't do stupid things, Lily."

"Not usually, you don’t. But it’s a different story when it comes to Victoire, Teddy," and the hard, levelling stare she gave him was a little bit scaring, he could admit that. He’d never seen this serious about something, not since the advent of the new-and-improved-Lily. "Just remember that she was the one who wasn't willing to meet you halfway, Teddy. The one that cheated on you with your best friend."

He swallowed hard, and yeah, it's not like he could forget that, ever.

Walking into their house, their crooked little townhouse in Kensington, and seeing Victoire with her legs wrapped around Daniel’s waist, the way she clung to him as if she was holding on for dear life…

It had killed him, walking in on them. It had killed him walking away from her too.

But it was so difficult and tiring to stay angry with someone he’d loved for as long as he had loved Victoire, the one he’d shared so much of firsts, the one who had been there for the biggest parts of his life.

He would never forget how much it hurt, seeing her and Daniel together.

But he could never forget the way she had smiled, with her eyes closed, after they shared their first kiss.

He could never forget the way her body fitted against his, the way she smelled, tasted. He couldn’t forget, didn’t want to, all the nights she’d held him after his grandmother died, while he refused to cry, to grieve.

That terrible night with Daniel, and all the terrible days since, they were all tangled painfully with the good days, the great days, especially the one exactly five years ago, the one when he’d put a ring on her finger.

He didn’t felt like he owned her anything, not after what she’d put him through, but he still agreed to see her, felt as if it was the honourable thing, the smart thing to do.

See her, and move on.

See her, and know, once and for all, that they were in the past.

But he should've known better by now, he should’ve known better to listen to Lily.

X.x.X.x.X.x

"You look good," she said, eyes clouded and a small smile on her face. He was torn between wanting to run away as fast as he could, and tracing the lines of her lips with the tip of his fingers. He sat down instead, and she tentatively reached for his hands from across the table.

The places where their skin touched tingled, and she gave him a sweet smile that he knew very well - a smile that spoke of mornings in beds and lazy kisses late at night. A smile he hadn’t seen in ages, before Daniel, even before the argument that tore them apart.

He shivered and pulled away, because he didn’t trusted that smile, not anymore.

"Don't be like that," she pleaded, and there was something in her voice that weakened his resolve.

"It's just – what is even the point of us meeting, Vic? Today, of all days? You've had months to contact me; over a year, honestly, and you did nothing. Radio silence, for a whole fucking year, and you do this now?"

“What’s wrong with now?” and her expression was startled. “Now that you what?”

“I thought that maybe, if I gave you enough time to cool down, things could go back to normal. I made it very clear that I wanted you back, but you didn’t came home. Instead, you moved in with my Lily.”

“It’s not –” and the words seemed to stick in his throat, he could tell that Victoire noticed he was having trouble finding the right thing to say. Finally, he settled on “we’re not romantic.”

She didn’t looked like she believed him, but she was the one who cheated on him. He didn’t own her any explanations, not anymore.

"I know that I made a mistake, Ted.” He arched his eyebrow, and she sighed. “Many mistakes. But the biggest one of all was letting us go, and I realize that now."

"You should've figured that out before you fucked my best friend," he says, but it comes out with less bite than he intends it to. “You should’ve done a lot of things, but should’ve, could’ve, would’ve never got us anywhere Vic. And I’m tired of wondering. Aren’t you?”

"I’m tired of missing you," and the way she looks at him, god, just turns something that was hard and aching inside of him to mush. She still manages to do this to him, and he still lets her do it. He knows he’s supposed to be angry with her, with himself, but he was not, he was just tired of doing that too. "Come back home, darling. Please. I’m begging you."

And they both know that for his entire life, that's all he's ever wanted – to have a home to come back to.

Teddy was starting to think that maybe his was always supposed to be with Victoire.

X.x.X.x.X.x

"You're making a mistake," Lily tells him for what it feels like the hundredth time since he’d told her he was moving out, and that he and Victoire were trying again. "A foolish, impulsive mistake, and that’s not your thing, Ted, it’s mine. In all the ways I’d hoped to influence you, this wasn’t it.”

“Please, don’t go back to Victoire. She'll only break your heart again, you know this, and I know you do. Once a cheater, always a cheater."

"God, will you just–"

"Just what Teddy? Stop? Stop being your friend? Stop caring about you? Stop whishing you weren’t so damn stubborn and blind when it comes to Victoire?" She sighed and ran a hand through her short, auburn hair, making it stick into every possible direction.

"I swear, it’s like you think she’s your only option, the only one for you out there. Newsflash – she isn’t. There are all kinds of love out there, great ones, small ones, silent ones, and yes, the first ones. Not everyone ends up with their first love, most people don’t, and they still live long, happy lives, because they realized when to let go. But you haven’t.” And he swallows, hard. “I love my cousin, I do, but I can see her clearly in ways that seems impossible for you to do. She's lovely, yes, and she might've loved you a lot, back then, but she loves herself more now. She takes you for granted, and she's so used to getting what she wants, used to you giving her what she wants, that for the first time you didn’t, she went ahead and punished you by sleeping with your best friend. What kind of fucked-up person does that? "

"God, shut up, Lily! Just shut up!” He wasn’t ashamed of his explosion, not yet, that would come later, and he ignored the guilt churning in his stomach once he saw the hurt written clearly on Lily’s eyes. “She's my wife. She's my wife, and I love her; I've loved her for years. This is not about being unable to let go, or giving into her every whim. This is about commitment, and sacrifices, and forgiveness. This is what you do, when you love someone. You commit to them, and you forgive their mistakes when they make one. You don’t give up. But I don't think you can possibly understand what it means, do you? To feel this strongly about someone, to stand by them even when they’re the ones hurting you, to still want them afterwards?"

"Yeah, I possibly couldn't, right?" And she looked so bitter, so defeated, that it gutted him, it physically hurt him to look at her, but he did anyway. "I must have no idea what it means, right, to love someone this much? To let them walk all over me, to put their needs above mine. You’re right, Ted. I possibly couldn’t.”

He looked away. The fierce way she was staring at him, vulnerable and defiant at the same time… He couldn’t take it, couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t even begin to decipher the meaning behind that look.

She sighed, and stepped away from threshold of his door.

“I hope you don't regret this, Teddy, I really do. But most of all, I hope she makes you happy this time around, because if I remember correctly, you sure as hell weren’t before."

She closed the door to what used to be his room and padded quietly down to her bedroom, her retreating footsteps echoing faintly on the wooden floor that he’d sanded and polished himself, almost a year ago.

But her words are etched into his brain, and it doesn't matter how many times he tried to forget the entire conversation, the raw look on her eyes when he'd told she had never loved someone like he loved Victoire, well, that look would never stop haunting him for as long as he lived.

X.x.X.x.X.x

He and Victoire – they were a mess the second time around.

There were good days – days when he made her giggle with his off-kilter comments about one thing or the other, or the days when he slipped his hands underneath her skirt and turned her breathless. There were days when she kissed him breathless once she got home from work, or even the days when she looked at him sleepily from beneath her hair as if she couldn't believe her luck and he had to kissed her yawns away.

But then there were also the days when things were bad. Really, really bad.

Those were days where they yelled at each other from across the room, yelled until their voices were raw and their voices were rasping. Those were days when she ended up crying in the bathroom, where he broken mugs washing them in the sink, his eyes staring at the dark red blood gushing from the wounds, his head empty, a roar in his ears. The days when he looked at her hands and all he could see was the image of them clutching Daniel’s shoulder for dear life; days when looked at her legs and saw them wrapped around Daniel’s hip – those days, he looked into her eyes and knew she was seeing it too, that night all over again.

“Once, Teddy,” she would say. “It was only once.”

But wasn’t once all it took?

There were also days when she ignored him, closed-off inside herself, and the silence hung heavy across the rooms of the Kensington house, a silence reeking of sadness, a sadness so deep that was suffocating her, suffocating him. Those were the days when she didn't wanted to talk, didn’t want to touch, didn’t want to do anything but stare at a wall. Those were the days where she seemed so distant that they might as well be living in different houses, continents, galaxies even.

He had no idea what was happening to her, to them, and how he could begin repairing something that sometimes felt so broken sometimes, so much like a faded memory, tinted tones and half-remembered dreams from a lifetime ago.

Most days Teddy was just left wondering, wondering how could he miss someone so much when they were sleeping by your side on the bed, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Lily had been right - that as much as they had loved each other, they didn't really fit together, not anymore, not as seamlessly and perfectly as they used to before they let so many things tore them apart.

It also didn't help that he missed Lily, her absence an acute ache in his chest. It didn’t help that he missed seeing her from across a kitchen table, missed her cutting wit, her omnipresent camera, or they way she liked to poke her head into his room and just blather on about her day and her ever-changing plans, not taking offense when he wasn’t paying attention, when he was lost in his own head, drafting a new potion.

He missed Wilfred The Cat, missed curling up with him on the electric blue couch, the way he would nip at his toes or plans sneak-attacks on his hair whenever he left the shower. He missed some of the books he was sure she’d stolen and hid somewhere in the confines of their apartment, and that was still the biggest problem, that way that the flat in Camden still felt a lot like theirs instead of hers, that being in the house in Kensington felt a lot more like intruding than living.

Victoire could sense that too, and she made no secrets of how much she resented it. 

And even though he had never thought he would see the day, he kind of missed always having to try out a new flavour of coffee whenever Lily decided that she was getting bored, and that it was time to switch things up.

“Challenging our palates keeps them fresh, Teddy”, she used to say, in her Serious-Business voice, always moving around the kitchen, Wilfred The Cat hot on her heels. “And coffee is of the outmost importance.”

Living with Lily had been challenging at times, but also fun and liberating in ways he'd never gotten to experience before in life. They were barely out of school when things with Victoire turned so serious so fast, and he felt like had never gotten the chance to be just Teddy and not half of a couple, Teddy-and-Victoire, before the time they had spent apart.

He still loved Victoire, but the truth was that he had gotten so good at living without her that sharing another space again was awkward, tentative; even straining sometimes. And the worst part of all was that he didn't even felt like he wanted to put the effort into adjusting anymore.

They had good times, but they were rare, especially after the first weeks. It was hard to hold on those days, to them, when on the bad days it felt like he was living with a ghost, as if they were moving around each other carefully, as if any word would disrupt a fragile ecosystem.

Every day, it felt like they were making a mockery of the couple they used to be.

X.x.X.x.X.x

“I miss you,” he confessed to Lily on the last time they met for coffee. Well, she inhaled her coffee while he sipped his tea, drinking her in, the changes in her – there were dark circles around her eyes, and a stiffness to the way she conducted herself around him, but there was plain affection in her eyes too, and he was humbled by that, after all the things he’d said to her before moving out. “I miss your horrid cooking, the unfortunate singing, and I miss Wilfred The Cat – I even miss the smell of coffee so much sometimes that I brew some, just so that I can feel better.”

She froze and stared at him, her eyes wide, her hands shaking.

“I miss the way you thought you were being sneaky when we were watching the telly and your frozen toes accidentally found my calves,” he continues. “I miss waking up to you banging pots in the kitchen. I miss giving the answers for the Sunday crosswords – it’s not the same, doing them alone.”

“I miss you, Lily. And sometimes I wonder if I maybe made a mistake, moving back in with Victoire. I think,” and he struggled to get this out, because hadn’t he been so certain, so sure before? Hadn’t she warned him that this would happen, that he would grow to regret it? “I think you might have been right. About me not being able to let her go, but needing to do it anyway.”

He squeezed her trembling hand.

“I miss my best friend.”

There was a horrible, long silence, one that seemed to stretch forever. Teddy waited, his heart beating out of his chest, and Lily avoided his eyes, blinking really fast. It felt like they were on the cusp of something monumental, and it felt a little raw too, like he’d just bared his chest and held it open for Lily, waiting for her to reach out and take it.

Then she slowly disentangled her hands from his, got up and said, without glancing back –

“I can’t do this anymore.”

One of them, Teddy isn’t quite sure whom, makes a terrible noise. It might’ve been Lily, and he might’ve seen tears in her eyes while she glanced back, but he can’t be sure. He can’t be sure because it felt like he’d just been dunked underwater, like he was bleeding, like he was grasping for straws and falling, falling, falling, hitting the ground hard, headfirst, face first, whatever hurt the most.

They don’t see each other for a while after that.

X.x.X.x.X.x

He finds an old, faded and positive pregnancy test shoved carefully between a pair of Victoire’s socks while he was collecting some of the items of his that ended up wandering into her drawer.

He held the test in his hands, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

There was anger there, sure. There was sadness too. He couldn’t decide what to do with them.

“Was it mine?” He confronted her when she walked into the room, a rare, small smile in her lips, a smile that faded altogether when she caught sight of what he was cradling in his hands.

“Ted –”

“Was it – was it mine?”

“It –” She took a deep, shuddering breath, and he saw for the first time how much this was costing her. For a brief moment, he wished to take it all back, the question, the quest for socks, but he knew he couldn’t stop, not now. This was a puzzle, and Teddy felt like he was this close to finally figuring it out.

“The baby wasn’t yours. It was – ” and he knew it, when she faltered. The baby was Dan’s. “It was a boy.”

There was so many things he wanted to ask – how’s and whys. But his brain was still catching up with mouth, and the grief in Victoire’s eyes spoke volumes, silenced him, and levelled him too.

“It wasn’t just once. I lied. I was – I was desperate to get you back.” He didn’t wanted to hear it, not anymore, but it seemed that Victoire couldn’t stop talking now that she had started.

“After you left me, Daniel and I, we got together. We were always careful, but somehow I got pregnant. And it wasn’t what I wanted, not even close; you out of all people know that, because it was what destroyed our marriage. Me sleeping with Daniel only sped up the process of you leaving me, that was why I did it in the first place, because I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t deal, with the way you looked at me sometimes. Like I was taking something from you by refusing to have your baby. Like I’d let you down. You were going to leave me anyway, I knew that in my bones, because you might’ve loved me, but you loved the idea of being a Dad so much more. So I – I gave you a reason, Ted. A good reason at that.”

“But the thing is, I fell for Dan. He made me crazy sometimes, because he’s impossible, and childish, and reckless. He was so different from you, and I needed that change. I needed to be with someone who would fight back, who wouldn’t just give into me. He made me feel alive.” He closed his eyes, and let her words wash over him. Victoire had loved somebody else, simply because he was the completely opposite of what Teddy had been, and wasn’t that a kick in the head? “And when I found out I was having his baby, even though I hadn’t wanted one before… there was nothing like it, carrying a person that was half Daniel, half me. A little boy called Marcus. I was going to call him that, Marcus. I was going to be a mum.”

It wasn’t that Victoire didn’t want to have a baby at all. It was that she’d never wanted his.

“Then I lost it – I lost him. He was 8 inches, with little fingers and little toes, and I was starting to feel him move inside me. Then he just stopped. One day, I woke up, and he’d stopped moving,” she was crying now, tears streaming down her face, but a determined look on her eyes. “It was too much, losing Marcus was too much for me, for us. Daniel and I, we drifted apart. I felt like he blamed me, because I blamed myself. I felt that I was being punished for the way I hurt you. And then it dawned on me - that if I could make it right with you, that if I could make you happy, maybe I could make myself feel happy again too.”

“But I… I can’t.” Her whole body shook with sobs, and Teddy was frozen in place. He wanted to hold her, comfort her, to tell her that someday she would, that she would get there eventually, that she just needed time to grieve. “I can’t get Marcus back. Ever. He’s dead, Daniel and I buried him months ago, and I’ve to accept that somehow, to live with it. And I’m sorry, Ted, I’m so sorry. I love you, I still do. Even when I was in love with Daniel, I never stopped loving you. But there was always something missing, when we were together, and it’s worse now, it’s worse because sometimes I look at you and all I can see is the marriage I ruined, and the baby I lost. And I can’t feel like that anymore, I have to let go. I thought being with you would make it right, that it would fix me, but it hasn’t. It only messed me up even more.” 

He was crying too, he suddenly realized it, tasting salt in his tongue. He gave Victoire a twisted, half-smile, and nodded. He was beginning to understand a little bit more about what it meant, letting someone go.

People fall in love, Teddy realized, but they don’t necessarily stay in love.

Once, he and Victoire had been beautiful together.

Once, he and Victoire had been a beautiful story to be told, first love and best friends, everything in between. But for a while now they had been just that, a story to be told, history, and it was more than time that they acknowledged that and moved on. And by doing that, maybe, just maybe they might find the happiness that’s been missing in their lives for a while.

X.x.X.x.X.x

It’s crazy, how whenever he looked at her now, his insides turned cold.

She was still young, and so very beautiful, and there was a certain softness in her eyes that hadn’t always been there. Teddy knew now he wasn’t responsible for putting it there, hated himself for it, hated her.

He looked at her, and his hands shook. His hands shook, and he didn’t knew if it was whether because he wanted to hold her so bad he couldn’t stand it, or because he wanted to shake her so much that he was struggling to keep it together.

Now that he knew her last secret, now that everything had been spelled out, Teddy didn’t know what was next for them. Were they breaking up? Hadn’t they already? He had so many questions, and there was no one he could go for answers, because the only person that came to his mind is Lily, but he couldn’t bring herself to put her in the middle of all of this again, not when she’d made it clear where she stood.

Two weeks after he found her pregnancy test, Teddy and Victoire go out for dinner in the city.

She’s looked lovely, with her hair down and a loose, golden dress, eyes bright for once, lips curling into a smile. He had never dressed this formally before, not even for their wedding, and he knew how they must look together, a powerful, young couple with the world at their feet, with their future ahead of them.

There was no need to think about the fact that they were actually crumbling down.

They ate, and drank wine, and it was almost like the good old days.

They hands touched above the table, and Victoire flirted with the waitress, and it didn’t even annoyed Teddy this time. They had vague plans to go dancing somewhere after the meal, but once they leave the restaurant, it’s pouring down rain.  

It was London. It’s not like it wasn’t expected it.

But there was something different – the whole mood of the night changed. Teddy looked at Victoire, with her blonde hair plastered to her face, her make-up a mess, and all he sees is her standing in the rain, dressed in his best friend’s shirt, yelling, “you stopped looking at me like you loved me”, and it’s such a throwback to that horrid night that it took his breath away. He looked at her and he remembered walking outside their house, furious and reeling, her chasing after him in tears.

He looked at her and knew that she saw it too, the night that changed everything for them.

“Let’s go dancing,” she gently nudged him. “You still owe me a dance.”

X.x.X.x.X.x

They stumbled into bed a couple of hours later, frenzied hands grappling for purchase, greedy lips seeking the other. The way he kissed her was exactly the opposite of the way they were touching each other while they danced for the last time in that club – purposefully, slowly, savouring everything about the way she tasted and moved with him.

Somehow, they both know this was the last time they would ever be doing this. As they stood in the rain outside the restaurant, almost two years to the day he’d found her with Daniel, they had looked at each other and knew without needing to say the words that it was truly and finally over between them.

No more pretending. No more trying to make it work. No more happy endings.

Victoire pressed her hips against him and sobbed out something that could’ve been I love you, but it might as well be I hate you too. Teddy nodded – he knew the feeling – and silenced her with another kiss.

They both recognized what they felt, and what it meant for them to acknowledge it.

There was no more need for words after that.

X.x.X.x.X.x

He moved out of the Kensington house, and he moved into a room above The Leaky Cauldron.

He took his time unpacking, doesn’t do it much of it though, because this place will never truly feel like a home to him. Home, to Teddy, is the place he’d most wanted to go in his whole life. Once upon a time, that had meant his Godparent’s house, filled to the brim with food, children and love. Then it had been Hogwarts and its hallowed halls, the comfort of friends, the ghosts of the fight his parents fought echoing everywhere, the fact that they died so that he could have a better future humbling and encouraging him for the entire seven years he’d been there.

Then there was Teddy-and-Victoire, and they had made a home of their own. But that too had vanished, and he was left floundering until Lily had found him, took him in, gave him a place to stay and a shoulder to lean on. He hadn’t been as grateful as she deserved him to be, not really, but Teddy had every intention of atoning for that as soon as he put himself back together, as soon as he could look at himself in the mirror and meet his eyes, as soon as it didn’t feel like too much, whenever he thought of her.

Lily might not consider him her best friend anymore, but she was still his.

He could win her trust back; he knew that, just like he knew he still had to make a home for himself now, just for him and his books and his cauldrons. It wasn’t that room at The Leaky, but he would get there.

He owed it to himself.  

X.x.X.x.X.x

The second time they gravitated towards each other happens pretty much like the day they met in Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, except that instead of wanting to stuff his face with sorbet, Teddy was looking for some new books to throw himself into and forget a little about how his career was the only thing he had going to for him in his life these days.  

He walked into a Muggle bookshop in downtown London, and there she was – short hair, long lashes, a soft smile just for him. She hugged him like they hadn’t parted ways as they had, as if they hadn’t spoken in six hours instead of six months. She hugged him, and he held her right back, just as hard, startled by the way they still fit after so much time of feeling like he wasn’t able to have that with her anymore.  

They chatted, and it was still a bit strained, but by the second time he visited the bookshop, they had found their groove back, almost like it’d never went away. He asked for some pictures of Wilfred The Cat, and on the next day she showed up by The Leaky with the feline in tow.

“He meowed so much last night. I think it was the way he could tell me how much me hates being the child of divorce,” Lily jokes, without batting an eyelid. “You’ve got custody every other weekend.”

They get coffee, and they don’t talk about Victoire. He never once spends the night on her couch because she doesn’t ask him to, because it feels weird now, stopping by to visit the place he still calls home into his own head. She makes outrageous plans and he goes along, at least until he has to put a stop to them.

She smiles, and it looks real. He looks at her, and something feels different.

There’s a flutter there – a weakness, and a victory, and an anxiousness, all at the same time.

Then she says one day, “I’m seeing someone, he’s an Auror and he’s wonderful,” and Teddy can’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe but he tried to anyway, asked for details but silently begged her to spare him. He nodded along at all the right places, but his skin felt too tight and too warm, suffocating him. When he finally met the bloke, Gregory, please-call-me-Greg, he wanted to put his fist through a wall.

He’s polite, age-appropriate and respectful. He looked at Lily as if she’d just hung the moon on the sky, as if she’s the wonder keeping the stars apart. Teddy recognized that stare because it’s the same one he has for her, the one he pretended not to have because there was so many reasons why he shouldn’t.

But Gregory got to touch; he got to kiss, while Teddy got to stand by feeling envious and bitter and so fucking tired it weighted him down, brought him to his knees.

X.x.X.x.X.x

Lily invited him to the first poetry recital slash exhibition thing she's organized at the Muggle bookshop, and he decided to attend on a whim, even if he had to deal with please-call-me-Greg being there, with his hands all over her, his obnoxious smirk, his eyes never straying too far gone.

Teddy was starved enough for her company to handle that, and to handle the way Gregory looked at him like he knew something Teddy didn’t, that prick.  

Teddy missed Lily enough that he was willing to deal with the way his stomach churns whenever she looked at his direction and smiled, with the way it felt when she looked away from him and towards Gregory. He missed her, as plain and simple as that, so he bundled up, wrote her a note to let her know he was coming to her exhibition, and left the comforting warmth of his room to brave the four inches of snow that had been covering the streets of London for the past week.

He was sure he's made the right decision when Lily positively beamed once she spotted him standing on the sidewalk in front of her workplace, in the middle of a frigid December night, holding a bouquet of halfway-dead lilacs on his hands and his hair morphed purple just for the occasion.

"Hi, stranger," she half-hugged him, half tussled the lilacs out of his hands, before lacing their fingers together like she'd used to do when they lived together. It felt natural, casual, and it was one of the things he loved the most from those days with her, even if her hands were cold like tiny bits of icicles. "I like your hair like this, you know. You should morph it like this more often."

"So purple is my colour.”

"Not really, idiot, but it’s you cute, how ridiculous you look like that," and she rolled her eyes. He promptly blushed because he was indeed ridiculous for this girl, this woman, really, and she looked away before adding, after a tiny moment of awkwardness, "I'm glad you came."

“I’m glad I came too,” he replied. “Where’s the rest of the Potter clan?”

"Al and Lizzie said they might drop by later, but Jamie won’t leave Cecilia's side since she might pop those nieces of mine at any given moment," she added, with a soft, wistful smile on her lips. “And Mum and Dad are having a date-night tonight. Since I’ve no wish to watch them snog like teenagers in the middle of my exhibition, I didn’t insisted on their presence. They would that just to spite me, I’m sure.”

"What about Gregory?”

"I can see you wrinkling your nose, Teddy,” she said, but she didn’t sounded irritated, so Teddy wrinkled his nose a little bit more, extracting a snort from her and a gaining a light punch on his arm. “He – he can’t make it tonight. Something about a fall-out and a lot of paperwork from his last mission.”

"Oh," he said, and he could see her trying but failing to hide that tiny bit of disappointment that always seemed to sneak its way into her voice whenever Gregory claimed to be swamped at her and stood her up, something that kept on happening more often than not.

"Yeah.” She squeezed his hand, and the smile she shot his way told him she appreciated his silence. "But, hey, I’m lucky. You made it, and you’re a very important person to me, mister. Who’s best than my best friend to watch me making a fool of myself in front of a handful of people?"

He nodded, trying to get past the lump on his throat at the word friend, best friend. Wasn’t that what he’d told her he wanted, wasn’t that what he needed form her? So why did it bothered him so much?

"Of course," he finally managed to say, his voice barely cracking. “I’ll always be here."

There was something off about the smile she sent his way, but it was only for a moment, and then it was gone. When they got inside the bookshop, nearly all the chairs they’d put out were filled, but he managed to find a seat on the third row, between a fifty-something executive type and a raven-haired woman carrying a gigantic yellow handbag and absorbed on what Teddy recognized as a mobile phone.

Lily waved him off and left to stand by the stage. Her smile seemed to have a life of its own, never leaving her face, but he knew better. He knew that she was extremely nervous, nearly jumping out of her skin, by the way she kept tucking her hair behind her ears, the way she kept rubbing her hands together.

This was her first show – poems and photographs, intimate parts of herself that she’d yet to share with anyone, even with Teddy. He’d seen some peeks here and there, back when she still left stuff scattered around the flat, but she turned a lot more self-conscious after he officially moved in. Sometimes she would ask him for some input, but she mostly kept her art to herself, dozens of notebooks and portraits locked behind the doors of her revelation room, a place that off-limits even for Wilfred The Cat.

By the time the crowd settled down, she got up the stage and reached for the microphone. It seemed natural, the way the spotlight agreed with her, the way it made her eyes shine, her skin glow, and she let out a panicky little laugh before speaking, and Teddy couldn’t help but chuckle too.

"Hi, I'm Lily. Potter, that is. Lily Potter. Some of you might know me as the girl who keeps pressuring you into to buying some questionable books of obscure poetry, and some of you might know me as the klutz who keeps stubbing her toe on the Romantics section and using some, well, colourful words, and then being reprimanded by my boss, the lovely and terrifying Miss Marina."

There were some enthusiastic clapping, and a forty-something woman with salt and pepper hair, kind face but a lethal smile bowed twice and moved outside the spotlight.

"But what I think that most of you don't know is that I write, occasionally, and that I take a lot of photographs. I mean, a lot of them. And even though I'm not especially good at it, Miss Marina sort of gave me an ultimatum last week. She told me that I could stand here tonight and let people hear my words, look at she calls art, but that I think of more in the terms of awkward portraits, or that I could be demoted to the graveyard shift. So, as you can see, I had no choice. I'm sorry for what I'm about to do, but we all know how Glen feels about working days instead of nights, I swear he’s a vampire, so there we go –"

She cleared her throat and with one last sheepish look on Teddy's direction, her tremulous voice reverberated through the store. Everyone who'd laughed at her words before now fell silent with a sudden hush, enraptured by the fragile look of uncertainty on Lily's heart-shaped face, mismatched by the determination that shone deep within her hazel eyes.

And her words were like vinegar and honey – two things that weren't supposed to get along, but oh, how they did, how they complimented each other and had an addictive quality to it, leaving only a bittersweet aftertaste in its wake, a memory of surrender, a feeling of panic lodged on his chest.

Her words were beautiful, and they spoke of being seen right through, of never getting quite right, of feeling herself slip unnoticed through the cracks, of being shot and bleeding to death and hearing promises that the person had never intended to keep, debt pilling after debt.

Lily spoke all of those words, with her honeyed voice growing more louder and confident by the second while she entranced the audience with her tale about the loudest sound of all, love spoken, and how exhausting it was, loving and not being loved back, being owned but never paid.

She spoke all of those things and her eyes never left his. She said, “I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me ‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth,” and her eyes never strayed. Teddy was at her mercy, hanging to her every word, and he felt dizzy, sick to his stomach, flushed and cold at the same time.

He understood it now, the look in her eyes when he’d told her she couldn’t possibly know what it meant to love and still want someone after they’ve hurt you. He gets it, and he’s so ashamed, so confused.

Had he made her feel this way all along?

Lily finished her poem with a desperate, hollow laugh, tears on her eyes, and the crowd loved it, loved her, their loud claps drowning out the quickening beats of Teddy's heart. He left the bookshop once he could regain enough control of his motor functions to leave without stumbling, once everyone stoop up and clapped, enamoured with Lily’s words, but he knew, he knew that there was no going back for them.

There was no place to hide this knowledge anymore, no ignorance he could claim to have.

She had loved him, and it had killed her.

It was as simple as that.

It was a complicated as it could ever be, because he knew now that he loved her just as well.

X.x.X.x.X.x

She found him shuffling his feet, trying to keeping himself from freezing to death on the same street corner he had been standing a mere hour ago, back when things were comfortable, and he was the stupid (blind, deaf) one who kept refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of his face until she'd slapped him with the truth, awaken him to something he kept refusing to admit.

And yes, some part of him kept telling him to leave without saying goodbye, but he couldn't bring himself to do this to her, not after she'd laid out her heart to him with every word she'd spoken.

“I’m this guy Henry, aren’t I? In your poem?” and it’s not the most eloquent thing he could’ve said, given their situation, but Teddy has to know for sure, because otherwise he won’t be able to live with himself.

"Well, now you know," Lily said, exhaling loudly, as if somehow his reaction was disappointing to her, and he was so tired, so tired of being a disappointment to everyone – to his Grandmother, because he couldn't replace her lost daughter, or even to Victoire, because he couldn’t make her happy.

"Why did you –" but even he had no idea what it was that he wanted to be asking her right now. Why hadn't she told him sooner? Why had she told him now? Why him out of all people, on the first place?

"I honestly don’t know, Teddy,” and she jutted her chin out defiantly. "But you came, you came for me, and I felt like – if I hadn’t told you now, when? I need to put these feelings behind me. Writing them weren’t enough, because I still loved you for a long time, and it still killed me for longer. But I’m with Greg now. I’m with him, and I need to be in it 100%, not halfway, not anymore, not like I was with Lysander. And I can’t do that if I’m still holding on to you, or that I can maybe wait you out, wait you get over Victoire. But you haven’t, and you never will, and I can’t… I told you, that time we met for coffee, that I couldn’t do it anymore, and I meant what I’d said them. I can’t be that girl, the one who pines for her whole life, the one who’s best friends with the boy she’s in love with.”

“I’m sorry,” and he can’t emphasize how truly he is. He took three decisive steps in her direction, invading her personal space. “I’m so sorry for hurting you like I’ve done. You shouldn’t have let me. I’m – ”

"I am going to kiss you in about a minute,” he said, and she swallowed, hard. "This is the first and last time that I'll ever do it, Lily, because I need to know... And if you don't want me to do it, if you don’t want me to kiss you, you have to say it now, Lil. Just say no, and I’ll stop."

"Just say it now."

She stayed silent.

Later, his reasoning behind her silence was that his words had rendered her speechless. But deep down, he knew he was hoping that she was just curious enough to let him do it, that she'd wanted him to kiss her just so that she could've finally know for sure if they fit together like this as well, if there was something there between them, something that made all the waiting around, all the sorrow, worth it.

He cupped his face with her hands, her eyes going a bit wide and her pupils blown out, the tip of her pink tongue reaching out to moist her lips. She had that green scarf he'd gotten for her birthday wrapped tightly around her neck, and she was wearing a blood-red coat that clashed horribly with her scarf, but she still looked mesmerizing to him, brave and vulnerable at the same time. The freckles that were scattered around her pale face stood out the cold, the tips of hair curled from the wind, and Teddy was free falling again.

When their lips touched, nothing really happened.

She was just standing there, letting herself be kissed by him, and he was hesitant, and confused, because when people were in love, wasn’t their first kiss supposed to be magical? Then something shifted, when Lily let out this bone-weary, frustrated sigh and pushed herself closer to him.

She was finally kissing him back, kissing Teddy like she meant it, with everything she had, and it was there, the magic, and his knees sagged with relief, the urgency of the kiss growing exponentially by the second, his hands tangling in her hair, her own clutching his shirt.

When they broke apart, minutes or hours later, Teddy couldn’t really tell, there was a numbness spreading through the parts where his skin wasn't touching hers. Kissing her felt like coming up for air after staying too long underwater, clarity, joy and relief at the same time. It felt like he could breathe again.

He noted faintly that it had started to snow again while they were kissing, but he'd been so consumed by her that he hadn’t even realized, so lost in the kiss, in the way her nose had kind of banged against him in a way that made them both laugh, or how good she smelled, or how his chest felt like it was exploding.

They looked up at the same time, almost as if it was rehearsed, and there were snowflakes clinging to her eyelashes. He wanted to reach out and touch them, see if they would melt at the contact, see if maybe he could kiss her some more.

She looked at the snow and he looked at her, finally understanding why she felt like home, what Victoire meant when she’d said Daniel had made her feel alive, because Lily did the same thing for him.

When she looked at him again, one of his hands was absentmindedly stroking her cheek, while the other had developed a mind of their own, curling possessively around her waist. She stared them, as if she trying to figure out how they’d ended up there on the first place, but couldn’t seem to remember.

Then Lily shot him this saddened half-smile, one that looked like an apology, and moved away.

But he involuntarily clung to her, drew her back in, brought her close to his arms again, and he couldn't help but reach out for her again, he never wanted to stop touching her. There was nothing chaste or shy about the way she moaned against his lips, and he felt himself growing harder at the sound, itching to kiss the creamy skin on her collarbone, to touch her between her legs, to taste her everywhere.

She kissed him back just as fiercely for a couple moments, and then she froze.

“I’m sorry, Teddy.” Her pupils were still blown out, her lips red and bitten raw. “I know you’re confused, and I know it isn’t fair, the way you found out, but I can’t do this to Gregory. He loves me; he has done nothing but being good to me. He’s – it’s the right choice.”

And then she walked away.

X.x.X.x.X.x

He goes on with his life.

Lily – she had been right. They could never work, not when all they did was make each other bleed, not when she had someone else who was younger, someone who was good to her, someone who loved her and had never hurt her, not like Teddy had.

He wants her, he can admit it now, but he’d never expected to have her. She chose Gregory, and he respects her decision. He doesn’t chase her down; and he doesn’t make a spectacle out of himself.

He stays inside his room at The Leaky for two weeks and goes through the motions – making potions, writing dossiers about his progress on Wolfsbane, forcing himself to eat, sleep, to be productive.

He ignores every well-intentioned letter he's receives from his friends as well as every knock on the door of his room form Harry, Ginny, and James, even Albus sometimes.

There’s only one person that he wants to see, really, but she doesn’t want to see him, and that’s that.

Then one night he's standing in front of the mirror, shaving his beard, and he just snaps. He presses the razor so hard against his cheek that it bleeds, but he doesn't feel the pain, nor sting of the blade – he feels nothing. There's nothing but emptiness inside him, and he can only smell the pungent smell of blood.

His eyes flash a stormy shade of greygreygrey before the mirror, half insane and half dead, and he doesn’t even feel afraid, because he’s always been very careful not to morph them like that before. But Teddy’s fed up, has had enough of feeling this pathetic, this listless, so he packs everything’s that important - five changes of clothes, his toothbrush, three of his favourite pieces of literature and his Potions journal.

He makes sure the rest of his things are safely delivered to a storage space once he's gone, and then he leaves right before dawn, a week and a half before Christmas.

The ground is covered in snow, and it reminds of Lily, of her pinks lips, her cold hands, and of the way her body quivered when he'd splayed his fingers on the back of her waist, under her coat and her shirt. She had dimples there, and Teddy remembered aching to press his lips against them, trace them with this tongue.

He crushes the snow with his shoes and walks away from London as fast as he can. He doesn't think, don't look back – just Apparates and watches the sunrise on another part of the world.

It feels good, knowing that he can leave everything behind.

It feels good, knowing that he at least has some semblance of control of his life.

X.x.X.x.X.x

A month goes by, and it doesn't make him feel any less guilty for hurting Lily, angry with how the way things turned with Victoire, or with his life. He only feels tired. Lonely. 

Tired of feeling lonely.

Every couple of weeks, he chooses another city, another country. He learns bits here and there of other languages, sees new faces, some beautiful, other not so much. He gets lost into exploring, so that way he doesn't have to think about them, to remember Victoire’s empty eyes, to relive his kiss with Lily, but it’s pointless, this exercise in oblivion, because the past has a way to catching up to you.

It’s doesn’t take long for it to happen.

X.x.X.x.X.x

The first time it does, he's drinking the best pint of beer he could find in Belgium, sitting at a pub located at the smallest town he'd even been to, counting Ottery St. Catchpole. A dark Owl, drenched in rain, perches quietly in the stool next to his and clicks its beak, drawing his attention. Teddy’s honest enough to admit he wasn’t expecting to be found by anyone, had thought he’d made it quite clear by the four months of silence that he didn’t wish to be contacted, so it’s only natural that he spills the rest of his excellent drink down his new shirt and ruins two of his new favourite things at the same time.

(He has a history of doing this – ruining things. It shouldn’t be this surprising).

Victoire's divorce papers feel every bit as much as a punch in the solar plexus must feel like. It takes his breath away, because on some level he’d expected it, had accepted that there was no possibly to mend their relationship – hell, he hadn’t even wanted to anymore. But he knows he loves her still, doesn't think he'll ever stop loving her in a way people love their first love, their first heartbreak. While his logical side was ready for those papers, there’s a part of him that still struggles with everything that happened between them, all the ways that things went wrong, all the ways they couldn’t make it work.

His hands are shaking, and when he examines the envelope there's a note attached to it, a note that says –

I love you, but I don't think we’ll ever be able to forgive each other. This is for the best.

He signs the papers and Owls them back to her, then he gets so pissed out of his mind that night that he wakes up shirtless and without his shoes in the middle of the town square. It’s not a good look on him.

He laughs, truly and really laughs, for what it feels like the first time in centuries.

Then he packs his bags and leaves for the next city, for the next faces, and he’s not as tired anymore.

X.x.X.x.X.x

The second time it happens, Teddy has just arrived at Rome after not sleeping from nearly 48 hours, fresh from a train from Berlin. He’s squinting at the light as he searches his backpack for his sunglasses, and then he sees it – Lily’s book, displayed proudly at the window of a Muggle bookshop.

Crush, it says on the cover, ink-jet black, the author’s name written in white, a name he doesn’t recognize, but he knows it almost instantly it’s her because of the photograph on the cover of the book. The image is mesmerizing, there’s no other word for it, a close-up of a man wiping his lips with the back of his fingers, a barely-there moustache above his mouth, a flash of teeth. The lips and the thumb of the man are tainted with something, and Teddy knows it is blood, knows because it’s his blood, his lips, his teeth.

He’s in the cover of her book, and he’s in her poems, but she doesn’t want him in her life.

It’s a small, thin book, something you might overlook, but Teddy can still hear her deadly words, the way her voice shook when she’d said “If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand,” and he just stays frozen there, half-crouched, half-standing up in front of the bookshop, his hands no longer searching for his sunglasses, the wound he’d thought he had stitched close was now ripped open again.

Crush, it says on the cover. How appropriate.

X.x.X.x.X.x

Because Teddy is a complete masochist, he buys the book, and carry with him everywhere.

He doesn’t read it – can’t bring himself to read it past the first sentence of the foreword, an essay written by Hermione Granger, a no-one in the Muggle’s world, but the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, seasoned historian, author of Children’s books and Lily’s aunt in the world he belongs to.

“This is a book about panic”, Hermione wrote.  

This is a book about me, Teddy thinks, and puts it down. This is a book about me, and I want nothing to do with it.

But he still carries it around with him everywhere, feels the weight of it in hands, familiarizes himself with every aspect of the cover because he stares too long at it, at his hands stained with blood.

He hates it, hates the book, hates the cover, but he can’t bring himself to throw it away either.

X.x.X.x.X.x

Spring arrives when he's in Istanbul, and with it, a letter from Lily.

"Teddy,

I don't think I have enough inspired words to begin this letter in a way that's less awkward for us. It's ironic, really, because words were the thing the put us in this awful situation in the first place, so one would think that I could've managed just fine, right? But I haven’t, and yes, – I can almost see you rolling your eyes there - maybe I'm deflecting. By now, I think you must’ve figured out that I’m a published author. I’m sure you’ve recognized yourself on the page, on the photograph, as you had recognized yourself in my Henry. I hope you’re not as mad at me as you should be about this, about the way we left things.

This book was something I felt I had to do, Teddy. Please understand this.

Everything I’ve written in there, in case you’ve read it, which I suspect you haven’t – well, I had to work through all of those feelings, those moments. Writing them down, breathing life into them, sharing them with the world, it was my journey to take. It’s yours to embark on it too, if you wish.

But there’s something you need to know, and it’s about time I’ve told you in simple words, unloaded words, so that they don’t turn into a weapon because they’re not meant to hurt.

I love you. I loved you. I’m sorry I never told you, not in the right way, not with the right words.

Yes, you hurt me too sometimes, your oblivion, stubbornness, everything. But it wasn’t always intentional; actually, it was exactly the opposite of intentional most of time, so you can stop okay? Stop holding yourself accountable for my own heartache, stop acting like you were responsible for my misery, because it might’ve been about you sometimes, but it wasn’t about you all the time, not really. I’ve my own demons to slay, and I never needed to be rescued by you, because I’ve rescued myself so many times I can’t count.

It is exactly the same with my book. It is about you, sometimes, but it’s mostly about me. You’re there, sure, but there’s also Lysander, and my parents, and a lot of other things that have nothing to do with us. So don’t hate me for writing them, for sharing them with the world, for hurting you like I think I might’ve done by doing all of those things. Hurting you was never my intention. Just like I know you hadn’t meant to hurt me. Can we just forgive each other and move on? Guilt it’s destructive. Guilt won’t bring you home, it will only send you further away, and I miss you. Wilfred The Cat misses you. We all miss you.

I’m doing okay, in case you’re wondering. Someday are better than others. One day I went outside to buy some of sand thingy for The Cat, and there was this boy inside Flourish and Blotts reading my book.

He was quiet and there was something in his eyes I couldn’t place, so went up to him and asked what he thought about the poems there. He said, and I quote, that reading them was like “getting your heart ripped out of your chest and stomped on”. It’s not a good feeling, he told me, but it was a good book. He had so many questions about the author’s motives, and imagery, and I was floundering.

Teddy, all I could think about was that I’d never been more grateful for choosing to use another name instead of mine. The boy, his name was Colin, he had so many questions, question I still haven’t been able to answer it to myself. He felt a sense of ownership to my words, to my life on paper, and it scared me, because it’s not his. It is mine, just like the bullet inside my chest; it’s mine to keep. But once it was published, it stopped being mine, and I’m still learning to be okay with that. I’m getting there.

Gregory – he wasn’t okay. He read the book, and whatever he glimpsed there, it terrified him. He ran so fast he left a Gregory-shaped hole in my front door. Is it this terrifying, what’s inside of me? I didn’t have the courage and the urge to share with Lysander, and that’s why I left him. I didn’t loved him enough to promise a lifetime, and I didn’t trusted him enough to show him what lurked beneath the image of the Lily Potter everyone used to have. I was selfish and afraid, and that’s why I decided to leave him. I was selfish and afraid, and that’s why I didn’t choose you that night. I guess that’s my reason. I can give others, a list, whatever else you’ll have, but what’s the point?  They are all words, and sometimes even I run out of them.

So I guess that’s all I have to say for now. That, and this: you’re still my best friend. I still want to be yours.

Until you tell me otherwise, I’ll keep on writing you letters. Maybe, when you’re ready, you can write something back.

I’ll be waiting.

Love,
Lily

Ps: the twins are here. They have green eyes and brown hair, and they’re already so mischievous it’s terrifying. I’ve never seen my Mum so happy. She says that James will have no idea what hit him, and that he will know what she felt like when he was growing up. He’s already looking harried. We’re all looking forward to the day they start walking. I think they would love you, and you them.”

X.x.X.x.X.x

He sends her a postcard of the Acropolis.

He spends two days trying to figure out what to write on the back of the damned thing, and it drives up the wall, but Lily had always been the one with all the right words, and he'd always been the one trying to keep up with her. So he struggles with it, first of all because he's not entirely sure what he even wants to tell her, and second of all because he thinks it’s odd and cold to send her a cheap postcard with just his signature in the bottom.

He thinks about Victoire, and it doesn’t hurt him so much anymore. Teddy thinks of Lily, and there’s longing there, but it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. He wants to hear her laugh, to feel her weirdly cold fingers entwined with his. He wants to kiss her again, wants to discover a hundred different ways to make her sigh and fall apart. He wants, and this time he knows he can have. It’s dizzying.

So he puts some actual thought on the postcard, because he doesn't think it's fair to write her all of that – he doesn't think he might be able to make sense out of it on paper, anyway, but when his last day in Athens arrives, the words sort of comes to him –

I’ve read your book. I miss Wilfred The Cat. I miss you. Thank you for waiting for me.

And it might not be enough, it might not be the 'I love you' that’s been lurking in his mind, but it seems to be enough for Lily, because when he knocks on her door three weeks later, she’s holding a mug of coffee that gets promptly shoved into his hands, a soft smile playing on her lips.

They drink coffee, and they argue about what they want to watch on the telly, and she keeps shooting look at his direction whenever she thinks he isn’t looking (but he’s always looking at her). He kisses her when they’re doing the dishes, and one of plates fall from her hands and hit the floor, but they can get that later.

He kisses her, lazy and slow, and she kisses him back.

Wilfred The Cat rubs his tails on his legs, and hisses at them when they close the door, but they don’t mind. He finally gets to put his hands on her, and she’s just as enthusiastic as he is, and they just fit.

Teddy thinks he can do this his whole life, and it doesn’t scare him anymore, the way she makes him feel.

Somehow, along the way, Lily has made a home for himself inside Teddy’s heart. He wants her there. She wants to be there. That’s enough for them. The rest, well, the rest they get to figure out together.

They’ll be okay.