Hahahahahahahahaha do you remember this show? I got a Hulu subscription purely to see Selfie again, and I remembered there was a half-finished neighbor AU fic that I wrote aaaaages ago but was too heartbroken/writer-blocked to finish. But after rereading my draft, I thought that Eliza and Henry didn't deserve another unfinished story to exist in the world. I don't know if anyone will read this. Doesn't matter, I did it for them.

Henry refuses to admit he has a hot neighbor. Henry refuses to even acknowledge he has a neighbor. Her penny red, softly curly hair, easily forgettable. Her smooth, high-pitched laugh, a mere voice in the wind. The cute pink flamingoes lining the sidewalk to her white antique front door with a frosted blue diamond window, a tiny blot in the corner of his eye. The droves of dark-haired men practically scrambling over her hedges to get to her spray-painted welcome mat, no more than an occasional scuffling sound from a few squirrels. The time she washed her car in her driveway and accidentally sprayed herself, making her suddenly see-through T-shirt cling to her body as she stretched for a towel and revealed the top of her thong, a total nonevent. It was like living in a remote rural area for all the excitement he got from next door.

Until of course she came to his front step.

His house was unique in that it had a wall made of glass, which she had the nerve to knock on during a comfortable and quiet Saturday morning. He was in the middle of breathing in a long draught of chamomile tea as preparation for the stack of work he had ready on his table. It was nothing pressing. Frankly he didn't need to do it this weekend at all, but it never hurt anyone to concrastinate rather than procrastinate. Yeah, he came up with that word himself. When he heard her knuckles rap on the door, Henry looked up with a scowl as he wondered who it was. His scowl froze, then melted when he recognized her. He set down his teacup with an embarrassing tremble of his hands and stood up to open the door.

Before he even had a chance to speak, she thrust her hand forward with an oversized smile and said, "I'm Eliza. How are youuu?"

She drawled the last word strangely, causing Henry to stare at her with raised eyebrows. She decided to continue without a response from him, breezing past him and circling around his counter with a suspicious eye on his tea.

"Anyways, sorry to bother you, but I just took my cat to the vet."

His neighbor paused and looked at him as if she expected him to know what happened at the vet and why that was significant for him. Henry's scowl started to return. She pulled at one of her curls and plunged further.

"We're neighbors who don't really talk but your cat might have gotten my cat pregnant? We must raise this little kitty family together."

Henry blinked. "What?"

"Your cat. My cat. Doing the dirty deed. You know? And now we have to deal with the consequences. Unless you want me to take this to my lawyer."

Henry straightened his shoulders and crossed his arms. "Your lawyer?"

Eliza rolled her eyes affectionately. "It was a joke. Are you the kind of person who takes everything seriously?"

"No."

Henry frowned deeper without realizing it, and Eliza put her hand on her hip.

"Okay then, will you help me and my cat?" she demanded.

"How are you so certain it was my cat that impregnated yours?" he accused.

Eliza scoffed. "Please, have you not seen them eying each other across the lawns? When two creatures look at each other like that, there's no way they can resist the temptation." Her eyes lingered on Henry, and then she continued. "So, unless you want to be #anal about it and have a cat paternity test, let's just agree to handle the situation together. Deal?"

"You are not much of a people person, are you?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Scrooge."

"It's Henry."

"Henry. I'll remember that."

Eliza smiled, with something much more terrifying than mere friendliness. Henry didn't remember the last time a woman looked at him like that. His ex-girlfriend Julia hadn't exactly been a woman of passionate eye sex, if you catch his drift. He coughed.

"Okay, so let me know what expenses need to be paid and I'll split it with you," he said.

"What about the kittens?" she inquired

"I don't want them. George is enough for me. You should do whatever you think is best."

"Are you sure? Kittens are pretty cute..."

"I could think of a lot of things…" Henry looked away and cleared his throat. "You know what, never mind."

Eliza propped her elbows on the counter and cupped her chin with her hands, while Henry took his cup back in his hands and gulped his tea.

"You know," she said, "if you ditch the frown you would be pretty cute."

Henry choked on his tea, which manage to burn every square inch of his mouth and throat. As he continued to hack and pound his chest, he felt Eliza pressing a towel to his cheek.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Henry still couldn't think of a response to her previous comment, so he pretended to keep coughing for at least another thirty seconds before he collapsed on a stool, panting.

"Looks like we've gotten off to a great start," she said with a nervous laugh. "First your doorbell doesn't work, so then I have to tramp though your backyard to knock on your other door, and then you give me the stink eye for telling you that your cat's gonna be a dad, and then I almost cause you to choke to death on your green tea."

"It's chamomile, actually," Henry replied, idiotically.

Eliza smiled - mirthful and puckish, the same element he'd seen in her face a minute ago when she called him… what she called him. He noticed for the first time that her red hair, which she had cut to shoulder-length a few days ago, looked uneven, like she had cut it herself without checking the mirror. When he'd seen the new hairstyle at a distance one morning when they both fetched the mail, he wondered what brought on the change.

"O-M-Gosling, you work at KinderKare?" Eliza cried, grabbing the vitamin jar on his paperwork. "Huge coincidence, I'm besties with Charmonique."

"Charmonique? My Charmonique?"

"What, you guys are an item and so she's your Charmonique? I think she would have told me if she was dating her frosty co-worker."

"N-no, I just meant… I didn't expect you guys to know each other. And for the record, I'm not frosty."

Eliza squinted. "Really? And you weren't just now thinking of a way to politely kick me out of your house?"

Henry had planned to tell her he had an overseas business conference call in fifteen minutes, but now he had to squash the impulse to ask: "Are you a mind-reader? Am I talking to Professor X?!" Instead, Henry adjusted his weekend bowtie (a louder red color than the more subdued hues of his weekday bowties) and said, "On the contrary, I was going to ask if you would like a beverage."

"Yes, please," said Eliza. "Preferably caffeinated."

Henry assumed that meant coffee, so he started brewing a small pot. Eliza opened the jar of vitamins that Henry had planted on his stack of his papers like a paperweight and popped an orange vitamin into her red mouth.

"I am in love with your guys's vitamins. The little animals are so cute."

"Well sadly you will have to say goodbye to the elephant vitamins that gave us our big break."

Eliza drew out a horrified gasp as she scrunched her nose and whipped her hands in the air; Henry couldn't tell if her reaction was genuine or if she was making fun of him. Then, she smacked the counter with both her palms, and he saw the fire in her eyes and realized she wasn't kidding.

"What monster would get rid of an adorable endangered animal?" she said.

"Freddy," Henry answered, with a subtle growl.

"Freddy," Eliza repeated, with an obvious growl. "Sounds like a dick."

"I would not use such coarse language, but he is one of my most difficult co-workers. He contradicts everything I say, and he constantly makes cracks about my age. His latest stunt is turning our vitamins into gummy candy because he thinks our current vitamins are outdated."

Eliza gasped again. "He is a dick."

Fighting a smile, Henry screwed the cap back onto the vitamin jar. "Now I'm trying to figure out a way to re-brand our original vitamins so that our boss doesn't cut them out."

"Okay, I was low-key judging you for working on the weekend, but this is a true emergency," said Eliza, who pulled out her phone and pointed the camera at the jar.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to see what my Twitter followers think."

"No!" Henry cried, snatching the jar back. "I want to figure this out myself. Besides, how many followers do you have anyway?"

"500K, but no bigs, I can let you do your deal."

Henry frowned. "What do you do for a living?"

"Freelance social media manager," she chirped, tapping on her phone. "You should follow me."

"I can add you on LinkedIn."

Eliza stopped. "Oh, you deprived child."

She patted Henry's hand, then resumed typing. Shaking his head, Henry poured Eliza's coffee in the #1 Employee mug that Saperstein had given him for his first work anniversary at KinderKare. Then he poured some for himself in a dark blue Ravenclaw mug.

Eliza snorted. "Gryffindor is gonna kick your ass at tomorrow's Quidditch game."

Henry raised his eyebrows. From a dusty, cobwebby corner of his brain, he summoned his British accent from a theatre class in college and said: "That so, Ms. Weasley? Well, I hope you don't get hit by a Bludger for your arrogance. It'd be a shame for Potter to lose his girlfriend in such a horrid fashion."

From her cheesy grin and lit up eyes, Eliza was relishing the accent. She giggled.

"Harry and I broke up, actually," she said. "He doesn't have the brains like some of you Ravenclaws."

"I appreciate the compliment, but my team is still going to send your Cleansweeps into a tailspin."

"Oh, go shove your Nimbus 2000 up your arse," she said in a thick Scottish accent that made Henry bark with laughter.

"Since when is Ginny Scottish?" Henry said, dropping his accent.

"Since when does red hair automatically make me Ginny Weasley?"

"You have to admit it's an obvious choice."

Eliza was tempted to say something along the lines of "Boy, you're cute," but he practically had an aneurysm the last time she used that word to describe him, so she changed the subject.

"Would you like to go to PetSmart with me?" Eliza asked.

Henry blinked.

"For our cat family?" she prompted.

Henry had already forgotten why she barged into his home, caught up as he was in a ridiculous joust of banter with her, and it hadn't even been half an hour. And where had the British accent come from? He didn't even know he could still do that.

"We'll only buy reasonable, practical items that fall under Henry's Approved Wish List for Cats."

"I don't have an approved wish list for cats."

"Then you can make one today."

Eliza swept past him in a flurry of bubblegum perfume and placed one French manicured hand on his front door knob and dangled his car keys in her other hand. How she'd gotten those keys when they were in his back pocket was anyone's guess.

"Limited time offer, Henry Potter," she teased.

Henry shifted his weight from one foot to another. Sit in his living room alone with a Philip Roth book, or go on an adventure doing God-knows-what with his wild child neighbor? Eliza jingled the keys.

"Oh, what the hell?" Henry said.

"YAS!" cried Eliza. "Ride or die, bitches!"

"Bitches?" echoed Henry. "It's just me, one bitch!"

Eliza's laughter, erupting just as Henry shut the door, was the last thing that would be heard in the glass house until early the next morning.

If someone managed to get to the end of this chapter, let me encourage you to rewatch Selfie. It's as good as you remember.