Fate can only do so much for a person, the rest is up to them.

.

The night is pitch black, and yet Lily continues through it, her high heels clacking against the chewing gum covered pavement. Central London is no place for a Potter, the Daily Prophet had whispered, but Lily thinks otherwise, knowing that it's the perfect place for a Potter—especially her.

Her dress is short and bright green, showing just how much of a Slytherin she really is. She'd never admit to the fact that she was almost a Gryffindor, she was almost the same as the rest of her family, because she never wants to admit to being the same. Lily prides herself on being different, and so she tries to deviate from her namesake as much as possible, not wanting to end up like Lily Evans, with the perfect house, the perfect grades, the perfect husband, the perfect everything.

Lily Luna Potter is not perfect.

She knows that she never will be.

.

Seamus spends most nights in a Muggle bar, drinking to forget everything that he can. He doesn't want to remember anything. Dean is dead, he's gone. He's been dead for years now, dead since the Battle of Hogwarts, and there's absolutely nothing Seamus can do about that. Not now, at least. He wonders if he could have saved Dean, if he'd been quicker, faster, if he'd jumped in front of the Killing curse. He could have saved Dean, it could have been Dean sitting in the bar, drinking his sorrows away, thinking of his dead best friend.

He realises that he wouldn't want that for Dean. At least Dean isn't in pain now—he doesn't feel anything now. Seamus has never been one for religion, or for believing in any sort of life after death. Dean was gone now, from the earth, from the air.

Only in photographs, did Dean still exist, waving at the camera, grinning, standing next to his best friend.

Seamus takes another sip of his beer—he'll need a good deal more before he can forget everything.

.

She notices the bar, needing a place to sit down and drink—somewhere where she can escape the Wizarding paparazzi. They seem to always follow her around, wanting a headline about the rebel Lily Potter, the one who left her family behind for fame and fortune, and found alcohol and cigarettes along the way.

Putting out her cigarette with the heel of her shoe, she enters the bar, looking around to see if there is anyone who will recognise her, and seeing that there isn't, she finds a seat at the bar, sitting next to a man with weathered hands, and dull eyes. She wonders what his story is, and then she tells herself to forget it. Most likely, she'll have forgotten him by the morning—she always does.

Escaping didn't bring the peace that Lily had expected. She'd wanted to be an actress in the West End, perhaps sign a few autographs, join the Muggle world where she was just another girl, but finding fame for herself, instead of being automatically handed it because of her parentage. It's a little ironic, that she wants to be famous in a separate world to the one she is already famous in, but Lily Luna Potter is the very embodiment of irony, thank you very much.

She decides to strike up a conversation with the man next to her, intrigued by him, and figuring that even if she won't remember their conversation the next day, at least it will entertain her tonight.

"Hey," she murmurs, tapping the man on the shoulder. "I'm Lily."

Her surname is left off, because the Potter is less of a part of her than it's ever been. She's just Lily now, or often Lily Luna. The Potter is insigficant, a superfluous fact that she believes no one need recognise.

He turns around, noticing the redhead sitting next to him, and he sighs, realising that he'll have to either think of a good excuse, or suffer through being sociable for a while.

"Seamus." he tells her, with none of the exuberance he used to have. He hasn't been himself since the Battle of Hogwarts, and it seems cruel that when Dean was ripped away from him, everything else was as well.

"Nice to meet you." she mutters, wishing cigarettes were allowed in the bar, so she could smoke. "What's your story?"

This is how they begin, in a Muggle bar with Lily Luna asking a few too many questions, and both of them having a few too many drinks.

Maybe it was fate that they both met that night in the Muggle bar, maybe it was meant to be. Lily and Seamus were never ones to believe in fate, but more believers in coincidence. After all, fate could only do so much for a person—the rest was up to them.

.

Lily isn't surprised to roll over in bed and see a man lying next to her. This is usually how her days start in London, since the whole being an actress thing didn't work out. She gets wasted, finds a man who doesn't seem too ugly once she's drunk enough, and somehow ends up in bed with them, and wakes up tangled in her bed sheets, next to someone she doesn't even recognise.

Then there are the days that she wakes up alone, knowing that someone was there last night, but they left without a trace. Those are the days she allows herself to cry, knowing that she is just a washed up wannabe actress, and she's never going to be anything more if she doesn't acknowledge the 'Potter' on the end of her name.

She's not going back to the magical world though, even though it is layered underneath and around the Muggle world. She's not going back, she's not using that wand again.

The memories of her life back then are too scarring to remember.

Thinking back to the man next to her, she peers at him closely, trying to determine exactly who this man is, when she realises with a shock exactly who it is, and knowing that she didn't even determine exactly who he was last night.

Seamus Finnegan. The one who is same age as her Father. Oh, no. She realises the gravity of exactly what she's done, and she wants to run far away, and stay away until he gets the fuck out of her flat. She forces herself to stay, because a part of her thinks that she really likes him. Liking him would be futile, her Dad and Uncles have told her the story of Seamus, broken by the death of his best friend, unable to ever love, having the one true friendship in his life torn away.

It means nothing, Lily decides. It was just another meaningless one night stand, just like every other short lived relationship she's had whilst in London.

.

A week later, Lily can't quite decide exactly why Seamus is found in her bed again, and neither can Seamus. It's something that can't quite be contained, they decide. Maybe it's something like fate, but it's probably not. Maybe it's just two lonely people in London, giving up their magic and searching for a better life, even though they know that they'll never find it in a shot glass.

They're both in pain, they've both got guilt, and somehow, they work.

.

She wakes up screaming some nights, and he's there to comfort her, to hold her tight, tell her that he loves her, pretending that he can still love after his heart was torn apart by the Battle, and she lets him hold her, and whispers 'I love you too', even though both of them know she's lying.

It hurts them both that they know they're lying to each other, even lying to themselves, and yet lying is the only way they can cope with the pain that is enmeshed into their lives, or perhaps their very souls.

It's comforting, though, to have someone there for them, someone who will hold them, stop them screaming out in the dead of night. There's not even a hint of perfection in this thing that they call a relationship, but that doesn't matter to them. They both know that they're unfixable, they've both done unthinkable things, and seen them too, and even lying in the other's arms doesn't mend them, but at least it helps the nights seem a little less lonely.

.

One September morning, Seamus thinks that he might be able to love again. It's taken him over twenty years, but maybe he can get there, with Lily by his side. He wonders if she can love again, because when she tells him she loves him, it seems so hollow, so empty, just like Lily's eyes.

She's never told him why she screams in the middle of the night, why tears run down her face, as she shakes uncontrollably, but he won't poke and pry—he understands she'll tell him in her own time.

She whispers the name of someone in her sleep, a name that Seamus can never quite catch, and he won't even admit to himself just how much it hurts him when her body is racked with sobs, and he knows she's thinking about that person. He knows that something terrible must have happened, and he curses that his Gryffindor courage seems to abandon him every time he thinks he should talk to her about it.

Lying in her arms is enough— he doesn't need to know everything.

.

"This is wrong, Seamus." Lily rolls over and tells him, as if she's announcing that the weather will be cloudy with a few drops of rain.

Seamus looks at her, a numb look crossing his face, recognising it only too well as the look he wore for so many years after Dean died. "Lily." he manages to gasp out her name, knowing that she's about to break up with him, and not being able to say anything else.

"You're the same age as my Dad." she tells him. "You're broken, and so am I." she sighs, pausing. "It was never going to work out, neither of us can love. Why did we expect this to work out?"

"Because I love you?" Seamus replies, reaching out to take Lily's hand, but she moves it away, looking at him coldy.

"No. You don't. I'm not in love with you, and you're certainly not in love with me."

She rises from the bed, taking a sheet with her to preserve her modesty, but Seamus' eyes linger on her red hair, and then at the way the sheet wraps around her body.

"I love you." he whispers, but she is already gone.

.

Her screams fill the polluted London air as she falls into the Thames, the water filling up her lungs slowly.

Seamus doesn't hear her— he's too busy crying back at their flat.

Her last thoughts in life are of Seamus, and just how much she really loved him. In those moments she is able to forget the terrible things she has done, and in her hell, she thinks of Seamus, her heaven.

.

Seamus is numb, numb beyond belief as he reads the Daily Prophet headline, not able to read the rest of the article.

HARRY POTTER MOURNS THE DEATH OF HIS ONLY DAUGHTER.

His fingers trace the picture of the area of the Thames they found her in, and he curses himself for not trying to find her, not chasing after her as she left him. He curses himself for being with her in the first place.

Maybe it was fate for them to be together, but in the end, whether it was by fate or coincidence that they met in that Muggle bar, it ended with water flooding Lily's lungs, and Seamus can't think of a worse way to go.

For the One Hour Challenge on HPFC, I was given the pairing LilyiiSeamus and the quote at the top of this fic. It was only meant to be 1k, but I sort of wrote 1k within about half an hour so I continued to 2k. And I was literally too lazy to proof read, and I am running out of time! :P

And I know I didn't go into what Lily did, seeing as I couldn't fit it in, but just make it up yourself what she did. :)

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