Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

winter

Ris finds Lily in the library early on the second Saturday in December. She has books stacked all around her, but her head is down, her hands are spread flat on the desk. She looks rather pathetic and Ris almost feels bad for what she's about to say. Almost.

She places the letter on the table in front of Lily. Her friend doesn't lift her head. Ris coughs. Lily doesn't move.

"I got an interesting note this morning," Ris finally says.

Lily mumbles something. It may have been, "Fuck off."

"Sorry, can't hear you, darling. The table's in the way." Ris pulls out a chair and sits, bringing her knees up to her chin and tapping her short fingernail against the parchment. "This letter, though. It's rather interesting." Lily's face is still bonding with the tabletop. "Do you want to know who it's from?" Ris unfolds the letter and flattens it against the wood. "I'll take your silence as a: 'Yes, Ris, I'm dying of curiosity, Ris.'" Nothing. Somebody should probably start spiking Lily's drinks with happy potions; otherwise she might never move again.

"It's from Adam. You remember Adam?"

Lily sits up then. Her eyes are shadowed and her teeth have left marks on her lower lip. "What about Adam?" Her voice is dry.

"You broke up with him," Ris informs her, "four weeks ago."

"I did."

"That's like a month. A whole month, Lily, and you didn't even tell me or Hugo. We thought you and Adam were fine."

"I don't love him."

"Is that what you told him?" Ris waves the letter in the air. "Because in this he sounds pretty confused. He wanted me to find out what was going on. Please tell me, what is going on?"

"I don't love him," Lily repeats.

"Okay, okay, you don't love him. But why the secrecy?"

Lily shrugs. "I didn't think you needed to know. It's not like you even know Adam, really."

"But Lily, I know you. I want to know what's going on in your life."

"Sorry. I'll tell you next time I ditch somebody."

"Thank you." Ris folds the letter and slips it in her pocket. "I'm going to tell Adam that you've moved on and I'm sorry for his loss, but that he will find someone better in no time. He was also wondering," Ris hesitates. "Well...I'm wondering, too...are you planning on going back to the Reserve over Christmas?"

Lily stands and waves her wand, sending books flying back to their shelves. A second year Hufflepuff narrowly avoids getting hit in the face by a thick The History of Defence and the Auror Department.

"No, I don't think so," she tells Ris, once the desk and the floor are clear.

Ris stares after Lily as she swings her bag over her shoulder and disappears among the shelves. Ris thinks she may have gone insane somewhere in the last moment, maybe hallucinating Lily's reply, maybe even the letter in her pocket.

But no, the letter is still there, and Lily's answer—her unexpected answer—still rings harsh in Ris's ears.

"Wait!" Ris hurries after Lily, catching at her friend's hand just as Lily turns the corner outside the library. Lily's hand is cold and she jerks it away, shaking it as if Ris has infected her.

"What?" Lily's not annoyed, not really, but Ris can see little lines of worry between her eyebrows and she wonders how much she's missed in the last few weeks—months?

"You're done with dragons? Just like that?"

"Not 'just like that', but yeah, I think I am." When Ris stares at her Lily sighs. "Look, I've been going to the Reserve for years and I used to love it. But after last summer...and especially last Christmas...I don't know. Something felt wrong. Like I was bored with it." Lily laughs as Ris shakes her head. "I know, I know. Bored of fucking dragons. No one would believe me. But I am. And if I think of my future, of moving to Romania after we leave school and tending to dragons every single day for the rest of my life...I start feeling ill. At the thought of it, Ris. I can't do that to myself."

"But this started a year ago?" Ris bites her lip. "Why didn't you tell any of us?"

"Because I wasn't sure until this summer. And then after...how should I have told you? Like: 'Hey, guys, I have no idea what I want to do next year, but I know I don't want to move to Romania?' Would that have worked?" They're still in the corridor and it's mostly quiet around them, but Lily's voice has gotten louder and Ris glances down the side corridor. She sees Professor Lupin frozen there, and she grabs at Lily's wrist again.

"Come on." She tugs her friend down corridor away from Lupin and pushes her into an empty classroom before answering her probably hypothetical question. "Yes, that would have worked. Anything would have worked, if you had just told us."

"I haven't told anyone yet. I haven't even told Charlie, and I felt like he should be the first to know." She shrugs. "I should do that."

"Merlin." Ris shakes her head. "It's weird, to think that you're in the same boat as Hugo and me again. I mean," she hurries to explain, because Lily's looking mutinous, "like, you have no idea what you're doing in June, and neither do we."

"Ah, yes, the same exact boat." Lily laughs and nods toward the door. "Are you planning on cursing me or can we go back outside?"

"I just didn't want Lupin to give us detentions for making a scene in the corridors," Ris explains as she opens the door and waves Lily through. "We don't need him hating us."

"No," Lily says softly, "no, we don't."

:::

The week before the start of Christmas hols Lily, Ris, and Hugo arrive early to breakfast. They're supposed to be studying for a Defence exam, but they've decided to spend the day in Hogsmeade, and Ris and Hugo want to get out of the castle before everyone else is awake. They're sitting at the Slytherin table, and Ris and Hugo are arguing about their plans for Christmas—Ris wants Hugo to spend Christmas with her and her mum in Morocco, and Hugo is begging Ris to come to Lily's—and Ris finally explodes, "I cannot spend another holiday sleeping in the guest bedroom at Lil's when I could be sleeping with you!"

Lily snorts into her pumpkin juice and her raises her eyes to the professor's table. Teddy's the only one sitting there and he's looking at her. His eyes catch hers for a moment and she reads something there, lighter than the anger that has suffused them every time he looks at her in class or passes her in the corridor. His lips twitch into a half smile and she returns it tentatively. He may be forgiving her.

But then he turns his head and it occurs to Lily that he may actually be forgetting. And that terrifies her. If he moves on, where is she?

Hugo is saying something to her, and Lily turns her attention away from Teddy. "Sorry, what?"

He sighs. "I said, can't you convince her, Lil?"

"Honestly Hugo, I think you should go to Morocco. When else will you be able to go there?"

"Sometime that isn't Christmas. Mum'll never let me go."

Lily shakes her head. "If you explain it as some sort of great learning experience she'll have no choice. Let me do the talking." She stands. "Come on, guys, we should get going."

:::

Twenty seconds after Lily has successfully convinced her aunt Hermione to let Hugo spend Christmas with Ris, the fireplace in her family's living room flares green again and her uncle Charlie appears, his eyes a match for the ferocity of the flames. "Lily Potter. How could you tell us that you're not coming back in a letter?"

Her parents fled the room during her conversation with Hermione, but Lily glances around anyway, hoping for some escape from this conversation. Seeing none, she kneels in front of the fireplace and says, "I'm sorry, Uncle Charlie, I didn't know how else to tell you."

"You could have Flooed!" He shakes his head. "I get that it will be weird for you, now that you've split with Adam." He hesitates and then plunges, "which is something I don't understand but it is your life and sometimes things happen so I won't give you a hard time about it, but I thought you loved it here."

"I did. I did. But like I said in my letter, I don't think I can work there forever."

"It doesn't have to be forever," her uncle reasons. "Just for a little while, until you find somewhere else."

"I'll get stuck, Charlie. I need to find something new, now."

He looks at her for a long moment and sighs, his breath fanning flames out toward her. "We'll miss you. I know we were all looking forward to having you here for good at the end of the school year."

Lily nods. She can't promise she'll come visit and she can't tell him she's sad. "I'll miss you, too."

"Of course you will." He nods. "Okay, then, if you're sure."

"I'm sure."

"I'll see you...sometime, then."

"See you." She falls back onto her heels and stands and he disappears, back to Romania.

Her parents are waiting for her in the kitchen, and they don't say anything at first. Ginny hands her a mug of coffee and Harry ruffles her hair the way he used to when she was four. Her father finally asks, "Do you know what you want to do?"

Lily holds her coffee in her mouth for a moment, stalling, but her parents appear willing to wait her out. When she finally swallows, her dad raises an eyebrow. "So?"

"I don't know," she lies.

Ginny nods and turns back to the fridge, but Harry is still looking at her. "Are you sure?"

"Yup. I don't have a clue. I'm going to go up and settle in." She grabs her rucksack from the ground beside her, adding, "Thanks for the coffee," as she disappears up the stairs.

Her bedroom is the first one on the second storey, tucked beside James's long-ago abandoned cave and across the hall from Albus's still-disastrous teenage warzone. She kicks the door open and sighs at the sight.

For the last seven or eight years she's spent less time in her childhood bedroom than she has at Hogwarts or Romania or in any of the various villas and condos listed under Ris's mother's name across the world, and her room still reeks of poor childhood decor decisions. There are crayon drawings of unicorns plastered to the violet wall behind her lace-canopied bed, and signed photographs of Lily and her brothers and cousins with various famous witches and wizards Spello-taped to the space in front of her desk, which is cluttered with magic markers and glitter pens. The two low bookshelves beneath her window are full of thin paperbacks—stories of naive girls falling in love with their best friends and getting happily ever afters at age fifteen.

She kicks her door closed behind her and reaches over her bed to tear down the most offensive of the unicorn pictures: one that Victoire had drawn for her when she was five or six, and that Lily had coloured with a horrible shade of orange crayon.

She crumples the paper and tosses it toward the rubbish bin by her door just as her mother appears, carrying a plate with a sandwich and crisps on it. "I thought you might be hungry." Ginny glances at the wad of paper at her feet and raises an eyebrow. "Unless you're too busy dismantling your bedroom?"

"Oh, thanks." Lily takes the plate from her mother's hand and sets it on her desk, sending a few broken crayons rolling. "I just thought it might be time to get rid of some of those," she nods her head back at the drawings. "They're a little dated."

Ginny's gaze softens as she takes in her daughter's room. "It doesn't really fit you anymore, you're right." She crosses to the bed and leans in to examine a drawing of a purple unicorn that Lily had tacked to the wall. "This one's name is 'Amethyst Angel.' You certainly were...creative."

Lily shakes her head. "Idiotic, more like."

"You were a child," Ginny points out. "Well, if you're going to take all these down, at least try to get them in the bin, won't you?"

"Gee, thanks for the advice, Mum. Like I was aiming for the floor."

"Oh, Lily." Ginny shakes her head. "It is nice to have you home." And then she tugs the drawing of "Amethyst Angel" from the wall and crumples it, sending it into the bin with barely a glance. "But you've never been an athlete."

Lily smiles and shrugs. "The family didn't need another one."

"That's true." Ginny smiles. "I'll leave you to it, then."

"Thanks, Mum."

Ginny leaves the door open when she leaves, and Lily turns back to the array of embarrassing drawings on the wall. It takes her nearly an hour to clear her room of her childhood, and once she's finished she looks at the overflowing bin and the bags of old books and discarded notebooks and papers and she wonders how seventeen years (or ten) could fit so easily into such a small space.

She lugs the bags downstairs and her mum calls her into the kitchen after she's stuffed them into the bin outside. "You up for dinner at the Burrow tonight? Your gran wants to entertain sometime, since we're having Christmas here, and she thought tonight would be as good as any."

Lily scrubs her hand over face before nodding. "Sure, that sounds good. I'll just go up and shower and I'll be ready."

The evening at the Burrow is uneventful, although Roxy does put something foul in Lily's wine glass, so she retaliates with a layer of wax at the bottom of her cousin's slice of cake. She and her parents get back before midnight, and Lily crawls into the bed in her empty room and closes her eyes, expecting sleep to come the way it does at school: quickly and with no warning.

But the darkness of her bedroom suddenly seems suffocating, and the emptiness of the walls around her seems lonely and she wishes for the stuffed unicorn she tossed unceremoniously with her drawings earlier that day. She lies awake for hours, counting the seconds until they turn to minutes, and staring up into the darkness, imagining shapes in the lace above her.

She doesn't fall asleep until the sky is grey with light and wakes up to pounding at her door barely two hours later. "Yo, Lil, get your lazy arse out of bed. It's time to go find a Christmas tree!"

At that moment, Lily wishes that Albus had stayed with the Cannons for Christmas. She doesn't respond, just pulls her pillow over her head and buries her face beneath her sheets.

That doesn't work, of course. She hears Al mutter, "Alohomora" outside her door and then he's beside her head, shaking her shoulder so hard she almost slides off the other side of bed. "Come on, Lily. Get up, get up! Don't you want a good tree?"

"I don't give a damn about the tree. I just want to sleep." Lily's speaking into her sheets so Al can't make everything out, but he senses the lack of Christmas spirit.

"That is unacceptable." He moves to the foot of her bed and flips the duvet up so her feet lie uncovered and he grips her ankles, tugging her abruptly off her bed and onto the floor. "Now," he tells her, opening her wardrobe and flipping a jumper from a hanger on top of her, "get dressed and meet me downstairs. I'll make coffee."

"You suck, Albus," she calls after him, but she sits up and reaches for the jumper he picked out for her anyway. It's not horrendous.

Tree-shopping with Albus is always miserable. He is a perfectionist when it comes to all things Christmas, and by the end of the three hour ordeal Lily is ready to Avada Kedavra him and throw herself onto a pile of pillows. But after tree-selections come tree-decoration, and Albus's reign of Christmas-related terror continues well past setting the tree alight with fairies and conjuring a star for the top.

"And now it's time for hot chocolate and Twas the Night Before Christmas!" he crows at ten. Lily stares at him.

"Merlin, Albus, when're you going to grow up?"

His eyes narrow and he glances over his shoulder toward the kitchen, where his parents are searching for the chocolate leftover from the year before. "What's eating you? You've been so...Grinch-like...today."

"Nothing. I'm fine," Lily stands and brushes pine needles from her jeans onto the floor. "I'm just tired."

Albus doesn't look away. "I thought you liked Christmas."

"Of course I like Christmas. Who doesn't? I'm just tired, Al."

He shakes his head. "This isn't tired-Lily. This is depressed-Lily."

"Let it go," Lily begs. "I'm going to bed."

He watches her leave, but he doesn't say anything else.

Even though her eyes fall closed while she's still undressing, Lily can't fall asleep again. She rolls over at one and tosses her pillow against the wall, but even that doesn't help.

At two she gets out of bed and walks to her window. She presses her cheek against the cold glass and watches as her breath mists on the windowpane, obscuring the view of the skeletal shapes of leafless trees lining the side yard.

She grabs her pillow and her duvet and slips out of her bedroom, turning down to the curving staircase at the end of the hall. It leads up to the tower at the corner of their house—the odd result of Victorian-era architecture and the room Lily's parents expanded for Teddy before James was even born.

The door creaks when she opens it; no one's been here in a very long time. She fumbles for the light switch and the small circular room glows so bright that she squeezes her eyes shut for a few moments before she feels brave enough to risk her eyesight.

He'd visited here for at least a month each year up until he left Hogwarts, and the room is a throwback to seventeen-year-old-Teddy. There are posters of bands and Quidditch players (mostly girls) on the walls, and a stack of textbooks coated in dust on the desk. A couple of pairs of ratty trainers have tumbled out of the wardrobe, and he's left a few jumpers rumpled on the floor by the window closest to the door. She's surprised to see that his bed is still made up with blue flannel sheets, and that there's a framed photograph on his bedside table. She drops her duvet and pillow on the floor and picks up the picture, wiping the glass clear of dust. A teenage Teddy waves at her, while the images of Graham and Victoire snog at the far corner. She smiles and replaces the photo.

Lily sits down on the bed and looks around her. Teddy's room doesn't really look like him, but it feels like him, and it feels more like home than hers does, so she turns off the lights and crawls beneath his duvet.

She lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling. He'd stuck glow-in-the-dark stars there at some point, and they emit a faint green light. They're scattered randomly; Teddy had never been good at Astronomy.

She closes her eyes and falls asleep.

:::

By Christmas day, Lily hasn't touched her own bed in over a week. She sneaks into Teddy's old room as soon as Albus's light goes out, and she gets up just after dawn, beating her parents and brother to the kitchen and, more importantly, the coffeepot. It's almost as if she's having an illicit relationship with Teddy's room, and she flinches whenever someone goes too near the staircase, like they'll find out her secret by proximity. She's starting to feel more anxious about sleeping in Teddy's room than she ever did about sleeping withTeddy, and she realises there's probably something psychologically the matter with her. Sleeping in his room, though, it's like she's trespassing on a life that she wasn't even a part of. As a teenager, Teddy wasn't even visible in her periphery. And now she's taking herself to his adolescent sanctuary every night, curling up beneath his duvet and pressing her nose into his pillow, pretending she can find shapes in the glowing stars on the ceiling, dreaming of him. She thinks it's sort of sick, actually.

But she can sleep there, in his room, so she keeps going back. And on Christmas Eve, when her parents and brothers are arguing over where best to have the Christmas meal—the dining room, kitchen, or the living area (even though the answer seems perfectly obvious to Lily)—and she can't take how mundane it all is, she excuses herself and climbs the two flights of stairs to Teddy's room, and she lies down on the floor and closes her eyes. Christmas was easier surrounded by dragons. But then, she had been happier. She hadn't had a long list of mistakes trailing behind her, clinging to her skin like scummy tattoos, marking her as bad and bitchy and selfish.

She stays there on Christmas Eve until James shouts, "Lily, get down here! It's time to eat!" from the kitchen and then she returns a few hours later, crawling beneath his covers and wishing she could stay there until the world turns happy again.

There are too many metaphors to describe the innumerable Weasleys' descent on the Potter's home on Christmas day, but Lily thinks that none of them truly describe the chaos inherent in those moments of arrival. She stands by the door, continually taking coats and accepting kisses and hugs, for what feels like hours.

Dom grabs her almost as soon as she arrives, her hand small but tight around Lily's. "Come here," she commands, dragging her younger cousin to the couch by the tree and raising her wand to send the pile of coats hurtling down the hall to join their companions on Lily's parents' bed. "You need to tell me everything."

"Everything about what?" Lily shifts so she's not half-sitting on Dom's lap and pulls her knees to her chest, resting her cheek on her jeans and watching as Dom exerts more energy sitting than Lily does in any typical day. Dom grips her blonde braid in one hand, tugging at it as she flutters her other fingers against the back of the couch, one leg pulled to her chest and her other pressing a hurried rhythm against the wood floor with staccato taps of her heel.

"Come on!" She begs. "Charlie told me about the boy you were dating over in Romania and how you broke up with him and how you're not going back there ever again and I want to know why."

Lily has always loved Dom's directness, but at the moment she wishes that her cousin would get drawn off into some other corner of the family's overload of drama and forget all about Lily and her dragons—or lack of dragons. But Dom's sea-glass eyes are locked on hers, and so Lily has no choice but to tell her something.

"I grew apart from Adam," she tells her, "and the whole dragon thing—I loved it, you know? But then I started thinking about doing it forever and I felt trapped. That's all. It's really not all that interesting." She brushes an owl feather from her jeans and glances up to see that Dom's still staring at her.

"But you've always been in love with dragons," Dom says. "What'll you do now?"

Lily shrugs. "I have some ideas. We'll see if any of them go anywhere."

"Merlin," Dom sighs, "you and Teddy are just alike."

Lily blinks. The topics seem horribly unconnected, unless Dom knows something, or suspects something.

"When he first applied for the job at Hogwarts," Dom elaborates, "he wouldn't say a thing. He waited until he had accepted it to tell us. And here you are, keeping secrets." She shakes her head. "How is he, by the way?"

"I don't know," Lily hurries, "I only ever see him in class."

"I know that, idiot." Dom laughs. "Where else would you see him? I mean, how is he as a professor?"

"Oh!" Lily hasn't felt this relieved in months. "He's really really good, actually. Best professor I've ever had."

"You're joking." Dom leans in closer, her eyes scanning Lily's face for some sign of a lie. "You're not? I honestly can't picture Teddy as a professor at all."

"You'd be surprised." Lily unfolds herself from the couch and stands. "But I've got to go help Mum and Dad with the food. I'll see you later."

Dom doesn't respond; she's noticed Albus in the corner and she pins him to the wall with a question about Scorpius. Lily smiles as she hurries away. It's comforting how Dom stays the same.

Lily's leaning against the wall later, near where Graham and Victoire are talking to her parents, and she overhears Teddy's name. She inches closer despite herself.

"Do you know if Teddy's coming?" Vic asks.

"We haven't seen him in weeks," Graham adds.

"I sent him an owl last week," Harry answers. "He told me he'd probably stop by at some point. He knows we're starting dinner around four, so hopefully he'll come by sometime before then."

"Dom tells me he's been acting weird lately," Ginny says, "have you noticed that, too?"

"Like Graham said, we haven't seen him in a while," Vic says. "So yeah, I'd say he's been acting weird."

Lily drifts away, finding James standing by the table where she's set the prawn cocktail. He starts asking her about her plans for next year, too, and she keeps glancing over to the door, waiting for Teddy to appear. Guilt and anxiety are gnawing at her stomach. Tired of her evasive responses, James finally bursts, "But what do you want to do, Lily?" and she turns her full attention on him.

"I'll let you know when I find out," she snaps. "Excuse me," and then she can't keep herself there anymore, beside her brother and among her family, watching for the man whose life she nearly ruined to come through the door.

She's upstairs and in his room in less than two minutes, and as she locks the door behind her she exhales, feeling peaceful for the first time in forever. Lily sits cross-legged on the bed she made that morning and pulls a stack of books from the bedside table, nearly knocking the photograph of Teddy and Graham and Victoire to the floor.

The books are all about defence and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and they're full of information that she could get from asking her father a few questions. But she doesn't want him—or anyone—to know that she's interested in the Auror department. Him, because he'll try to dissuade her from following him into that career. Everyone else, because they'll assume she's planning on using her father's position and his reputation to secure a job.

The truth is, Lily's been thinking about becoming an Auror and nothing else since last summer. And now all of her feeble excuses against the career decision have fallen to pieces. She wants to be an Auror, and if she has to sell her soul and piss off her father and suffer the judgement of the entire wizarding world, well, then, bring it on.

But not quite yet, she thinks, as she flips open the cover to the first book in the pile, a thick list of Defence spells that have been restricted to use in DMLE. She's not quite ready for all hell to break loose yet.

She gets lost in the information, and doesn't even notice how late it's gotten until she hears voices on the floor below her. She blinks up from the page—it's dark out, she's been reading from the light of her wand for at least an hour—and glances at the locked door to Teddy's room.

James and Dom are on the floor below. "I haven't seen her in ages. I had just asked her what she was planning on doing after Hogwarts and she got pissed and left. I thought she went to the kitchen, but apparently not."

"James, you prat, you should've known better than to talk to her about that." Like Dom had, Lily shakes her head. Her cousin raises her voice and Lily can hear the sound of her fist tapping against the door to her own bedroom, "Lily? Are you in there? It's time to eat. James promises he won't mention anything about Hogwarts or careers or anything else all evening! Will you please come join us?"

Lily looks at the door. She can't go out now, can't reveal her sanctuary to James and Dom. There'll be questions, especially from her cousin, and she can't answer them. Dom pounds at her door again and James says, "I'm really sorry, Lil. I know that must get really annoying. I wasn't thinking."

When they're met with silence, their voices fade; they must've gone into her bedroom. She hears them in the hall again a few minutes later. "She didn't go outside, did she?" Dom asks, her voice getting softer as she and James move toward the stairs down to the family room.

"I hope not. It's fucking freezing out there."

Once she's sure they're gone, Lily sets her books aside and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, like she's about to leave Teddy's room and return to the party. But as she stands and moves toward the door, she wants to resist. She hears people downstairs and outside, calling her name, and she feels guilty—again, still—but she doesn't want to leave.

There are more footsteps in the hall below, and then they're coming up the stairs to Teddy's door and she wants to hide, to roll beneath his bed or scurry into the wardrobe, but there's a wand tapping at the lock and the door swings open before she can act on either of those impulses.

And of course he's standing there; he's the only one who would think to look for her here. He stands in the doorway a moment, his cold brown eyes taking in the way she's standing, like a thief waiting for a verdict, and the stack of books on the bed and his rumpled duvet. He raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms, but he doesn't say anything. He swallows, and her eyes fall on his neck and stay there. She wants to kiss him.

"I—," she begins, falters, falls silent.

"Everyone's looking for you," Teddy tells her.

She nods. "Yeah."

"Are you going to come down?"

"I should."

He turns and starts back down the stairs, his broad shoulders tense beneath his red jumper. Lily doesn't move.

He pauses, turns his head to look at her. "You coming?"

"I'm sorry."

He blinks. "Now is not the best time. Let's go."

"But I want to talk to you," and she suddenly does. She wants to sit on the floor with him and tell him what she's thinking, why she's fucked things up between them, that she loves him and she's scared because feeling this way doesn't come naturally to her. It's a fight, every emotion is a fight, and she wants him to know.

Lily really wants Teddy to believe her. He won't, though; she sees it in the stiff set of his lips and the emptiness to his eyes.

"Now is not the time," he repeats, and Merlin, she wishes she hadn't told him about Adam. She could have ended that without him finding out, probably. If dishonesty could have saved her the sight of that expression on his face, she'd have lied forever.

"I'm sorry," she says again. He's turned around and continued down the stairs, not looking back this time. She follows, anyway, shutting the door behind her.

Teddy spends the night, because he's been invited out to a pub that night and to a Quidditch match with Al and James the next day and her parents convince him that there's no point in going back to Hogwarts. She's not sure how they managed to convince him, because when they first make the suggestion, after gifts, he replies, "No," so adamantly that Dom stops bothering Louis to turn and stare open-mouthed at him.

But somehow they do, and Teddy disappears into town with her brothers while Lily is still washing up. She crawls beneath the covers in her own room for the first time in over a week, but she doesn't even bother closing her eyes. She knows she'll be spending a sleepless night.

So she sits in the empty silence of her bedroom and waits for morning.

Lily thinks that she hears her brothers and Teddy leave before six, and she escapes from her bedroom to the kitchen still in her nightshirt and begins boiling water for coffee. While she's standing at the stove, the side door swings open and all three of them stumble inside, their faces red from the cold and snow lining the creases in their jackets.

"Morning, Lily," Al mutters, collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table. James steadies himself on the counter as he unties his snow boots and Teddy stands stiffly by the door. She can feel his eyes on her. Or maybe she's only imagining them.

"Hi." She hesitates. "I thought you all had a Quidditch match to get to?"

"Cancelled," James explains. "Can you believe it? They don't cancel Quidditch, ever, but apparently both teams got food poisoning at a Christmas dinner they had at some restaurant yesterday, and none of them can stop hurling long enough to get on their brooms."

"Pleasant," Lily says. "Do you all want coffee, then?"

"Please," Al begs. "We got up so early."

James has finished removing his boots and he comes closer to Lily. "Speaking of, what're you doing up? Are you going somewhere today?"

Lily shakes her head, lifting the steaming kettle from the hob and turning her face away from James. "No."

Albus is on her other side, suddenly, and he reaches out and tilts her chin up. "You look exhausted. Did you not sleep well?"

Lily tries to bite back the sardonic snort that rises at that, but she can't, and Albus raises his eyebrows. "I take that as a no. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she says. "I must've had too much caffeine yesterday or something."

"Caffeine doesn't affect you," James informs her. "You were pretty much born immune."

"Well, whatever, I just couldn't sleep last night. I'm fine."

"I think you're lying," Al tells her. "What's wrong?"

"You can tell us," James says as he takes the kettle from her. Al grips her shoulders and directs her to a chair at the table. "We're your brothers. And Teddy. Who's basically a brother." She feels nauseous. "We're here for you."

She doesn't look at Teddy. "I am fine. Stop pestering me."

"Come on, Lily, we know you better than that." James sits down across from her and shoves a coffee cup across the table at her. She can feel Teddy behind her, still standing in the doorway. She knows he must be dying to flee, to hop in the fire and go back to Hogwarts, but that he's torn between leaving without saying goodbye to her parents and escaping before she says something to get them in trouble. Or explodes, sending waves of uncontrollable magic looping around the house.

She doesn't respond to James and Albus taps her on the head, tugs at her messy ponytail, and says, "We won't judge you, we promise."

She drops her head to the table and mumbles, "I really fucked up."

Teddy pulls out a chair at the table beside her, she sees the legs scrape against the tile floor and his snow-damp jeans take their place on the seat. He taps one hand against his thigh as soon as he sits down. Merlin, is he nervous. But he's not leaving. Maybe that means something.

Maybe she's being stupid, again.

"How'd you fuck up?" Albus asks, concern deepening his voice.

How can she put it into words, with Teddy sitting there, hating her? "I cheated on Adam."

"Adam, the boy you just broke up with?" James clarifies. She nods against the tabletop. "That's not a huge deal, Lil. Merlin knows I've done that often enough."

"But by the end," she says, ignoring him. The prat. "By the end I didn't even like him anymore. I stopped liking him last year, but I just stayed with him because I didn't know what I'd do if I hurt him. And then," and she wishes she were talking to Teddy, just to Teddy, that she weren't using her brothers as a shield, "and then..." It would be so much easier if she were telling him. She lifts her head and turns to look at him. He's examining the whorls in the wood table, and he doesn't lift his gaze to hers even as she says, "And then I fell in love with someone else."

"Who?" James bursts. Albus elbows him.

"Oh?" he prompts, expecting Lily to expand.

She does. She looks away from Teddy—he's ignoring her still and it hurts too much—and turns to Albus. "But I still didn't break up with Adam. And then when I realised that I was seriously fucking all of us over, I told him about Adam. And..." everything had ended.

"He didn't take it well," James supplies.

"Not very."

"And then you broke up with Adam?" Albus asks, his voice hard.

"Yeah, but I didn't tell him why. I couldn't hurt someone...like that...again." I'm sorry, she thinks.

"I bet," James says, "I bet the guy you told, the one you fell in love with, or whatever," his voice is a little derisive but he's the jaded one, so it's okay, "I bet he's happy that you were finally honest with him."

"What do you think, Teddy?" Albus's voice is sharp, and Lily glances at him. Teddy has finally looked up from the table and Al's green eyes are locked on Teddy's brown ones. Al's expression is accusatory. He can't know, but oh, Al. What if he does?

Teddy clears his throat. "I think James is right." The words seem to have cost him a lot, his shoulders drop and he jerks his eyes away from Albus's. But Al doesn't stop looking at him.

"And that's it?" Al asks. "That's all you have to say."

"What...?" James asked, looking from his brother to his friend and back again, and then suddenly his expression darkens. "This girl," he begins, "this girl you were talking about at the pub last night, it's Lily?"

Oh, Merlin. Oh, fuck. Oh oh oh. Lily's heart pounds loudly in her ears and oh, she feels like the worst kind of idiot.

Her brothers aren't looking at her. "You know that's illegal, right, Lupin?" James asks.

"Also, seriously sick." Albus adds.

They both push away from the table and come around it, their steps like something out of a textbook on duelling. They reach Teddy at the same time and stand over him. He's still sitting beside her, his hands on the table, his face unreadable. But his eyes are dark and miserable and she wishes she had kept her stupid mouth shut.

Her mind scrambles to come up with something—anything—to make this better. But she feels empty.

"I didn't mean to start anything." Teddy's voice shakes.

"Oh, good, so you just had sex with our little sister for no reason?" Albus shoves Teddy's chair back and it falls back into the wall, rattling the dishes in their cabinets. He stands, finally, and Lily pushes back and crosses the kitchen, waiting for her brain to start coming up with words again.

"It wasn't—." Albus doesn't seem to care what he's about to say. His fist connects with Teddy's jaw before the older man can even finish his thought. Teddy reels backwards into the table and sends their coffee mugs shattering to the floor, pooling black liquid beneath the table, running beneath the cabinets.

Lily hears noises the hall. "Guys," she begs. "Stop, please, stop. This was my fault, it was all me."

She steps forward, grabbing Albus's forearm, gripping it so tightly that he turns to look at her, his eyes cold. "I came onto him," she confesses. "I didn't leave him alone. I went to him. Teddy just...Teddy just..." she glances at him and what can she say but, "He just fell in love with me."

"Oh, so that makes it better?" James steps around Albus and shoves Teddy, who's righted himself, against the wall just as Ginny and Harry burst into the kitchen, their wands raised.

Everyone freezes. Ginny and Harry take in the scene: Al glaring at Teddy; Lily with her hand on Albus's arm, gripping tight enough to make his skin white around her fingers; James with his hands on Teddy's shoulder, tendons showing how hard he's pressing his god-brother into the wall; the table moved two feet to the left and a lake of coffee on a floor scattered with the sharp-edged remains of four coffee mugs.

"What the hell is going on?" Harry's voice is enough to make Lily's heart stop. Her level of fucked has just risen exponentially.

"Teddy, here," James begins, but Albus cuts him off.

"It's nothing," he says, twisting his arm out of Lily's grip and tugging at the back of James's shirt, pulling him away from Teddy. "It's really nothing," he says again, when his parents don't lower their wands.

"Sorry if I don't believe you," Ginny says. "Sit down, all of you."

The four of them look at each other, and Lily can't keep the burn of guilt from working its way up her throat to behind her eyes. Her vision clouds and she blinks, tugging her wand from the waistband of her pyjama bottoms and clearing the mess of coffee from the floor, banishing the mugs to the bin. "We had too many anyway," she informs her parents, like they care.

"Sit, now," her father instructs, and they move slowly, slowly, to the chairs. Teddy rights the one he had been sitting in and Lily takes James's and Albus and James sit stiffly on either side of their god-brother.

Her parents stand in front of the table, looking from son to godson to son to daughter, their expressions impossible to read.

"So." Harry places his palms on the table and leans forward, his eyes resting on each of them for a long moment before moving on. "What the hell was that about?"

They're all thinking. Lily can feel unfeasible lies pile up in her mind, a rushing crash of too many unbelievable scenarios.

"Lily and I," Teddy pauses to clear his throat and all three of the others rush to fill the space with something other than the truth. But they stumble over the words and it comes out an incomprehensible mess.

"Lily and you," Ginny repeats, her voice wavering. "Please, Teddy, please don't say—"

"I was stupid," he says. He's speaking to the table again and oh, this could not get any worse.

"You haven't," Harry's voice is dangerous. Oh. "You have not been seeing my daughter—your student. You. Have. Not."

Teddy raises his eyes to his godfather's and nods slowly. If it weren't for Ginny sending a shield charm between her husband and Teddy, Lily's positive he would have been dead in the space between her heartbeats. As it is, Harry tosses aside his wand and leans across the table, his voice hissing low as his hands grip grip grip tighter on Teddy's shoulders. "Get. Out."

Teddy nods and James says, "Dad," and Albus continues, "You can't tell Hogwarts."

Harry breathes as Teddy pushes back from the table and silently and stiffly approaches the fire. "I won't, if he resigns." He faces his godson. "If you don't, though...I'll have no choice. You are not to go near my daughter again."

"Dad," Lily pleads. "Dad." She can't get anything else out, but it doesn't matter. Her father ignores her.

Teddy looks at Harry and says, his voice tired, "I know this doesn't make it any better, but I do love her."

He steps into the flames and Lily can't hold the tears anymore. They tumble down her face.

Her father looks at her, shakes his head, and leaves the kitchen. Ginny follows.

Albus and James don't leave her, though. They move to sit on either side of her and they wait out her tears. When she finally sniffs and wipes a finger under each eye and hiccups, "Oh, Merlin, I've been so stupid," they don't say anything, but they each place a hand on her shoulder and squeeze gently.

"We're sorry," Albus mutters. "We should have taken that outside."

Lily shakes her head. "None of that should've happened."

Her brothers don't respond. There's really nothing else to say.

fall

Teddy has decided that he likes this research gig. He gets to read books on Defence spells and try them out and write about them, and then people eventually read things he's written. That's pretty awesome.

Of course, it's lonely. He sometimes thinks back to the months at Hogwarts and wishes he could take back that horrible morning. He doesn't want to give up his memories of Lily—sometimes those are the only things that keep him going—but he wishes that Harry had never found out. His godfather hasn't spoken to him since that morning, and his only contact with the family is through Dom and Vic and Graham, all of whom have spent a fair amount of time pestering him about the reasons for the fallout.

He hasn't told any of them. Teddy doesn't want to see Harry's horrified, disappointed, livid expression on Graham's familiar face, in Vic's lovely eyes; he can't bear the thought of caustic, accusatory words spilling from Dom's perfect lips.

He gets notes from Albus sometimes, too. It's nice of him, but he knows that Albus still hasn't forgiven him. He knows he probably never will. It's the sort of thing, he's realised, that many people never forgive. And he understands, he does, but oh, he still misses Lily.

The Prophet and Witch Weekly and Wizard's Independent have been full of her lately. Teddy receives his papers in the morning and finds himself staring down at yet another moving photograph of Lily, her red hair pulled up into a bun, wearing jeans and a DMLE tee-shirt as she arrives at or leaves the Ministry's Auror training grounds just outside of London.

The world is surprised. Teddy isn't. Lily as Auror makes perfect sense. It fits her.

She's in London every Thursday, the paper informs him, with the rest of the trainees, attending lectures at the Ministry. He refuses to leave his flat on Thursdays. If he runs into her on the streets, he's not sure what he'd do, but he's certain Harry would murder him for it. Of course, Harry would murder him just for looking.

His buzzer goes off as he's reading the latest article on Lily's exploits a few weeks into September and he presses the button to let whoever it is into the building. Dealing with them at his door is easier than trying to sort out who they are over the crackly intercom. Besides, there's a ninety-nine percent chance it's Dom, and she always makes up faux-personas over the intercom to piss him off.

When the knock comes at his door he shoves aside his notebooks and papers and crosses from his living room to the door. He tugs it open, says, "Honestly, Dominique, you were just here last night," and then stops breathing.

Dom isn't alone. She's got her arm wrapped around Lily's shoulders and she's looking pleased with herself.

"I am a genius," she says, ignoring Teddy's silence and brushing by him, pulling Lily along beside her. "Go on, tell me I'm a genius, Ted."

He can't say anything. He turns slowly and leans back against the door, steadying himself as it carries him backwards and clicks shut.

"Okay, I guess you don't see it yet. I'll explain." She grins at him. "See, you've been moping for months, since Christmas, and you had that whole abruptly-leaving-your-job thing and the whole Harry-suddenly-hates-you thing and obviously I was confused about it. I put quite a lot of time into thinking about it, and first I thought that maybe you had, like, stolen something, but that's really out of character so clearly that wasn't it. And then I thought you may have talked to Snape's portrait about Harry, which is a big no-no." Dom snorts, "Mostly because Snape hates Harry still—he's quite a fun painting to talk to, actually—but then I realised when I did that I didn't get excommunicated." She glances at Lily, who is staring at the floor. "And then Lily's been quiet and sad lately, too, even though she's doing something she likes." Dom tilts her head and grins at Teddy. "So I put you and her together and it all made sense. See?" She points at herself. "Genius."

"You're not upset?" Teddy asks because his brain is running too quickly to come up with anything else.

"Can't help who you love, man." Dom shrugs. "Anyway, I just stopped by to inform you that you should finally recognise my genius status. Oh, and to drop Lily off." She smirks and lets go of her cousin, passing between them to reach the door again. "Let me worry about Harry. And Ginny. Everyone else will be fine, I promise. After all, this whole fucking family is founded on that stupid nonsense of 'true love' or some shit. Besides, it's not illegal anymore, you idiot." And when she leaves they hear her mutter, "Like it would have killed them to wait a fucking year, honestly."

Teddy looks at Lily, who's still staring at the floor. She opens her mouth, looks up, says, "Merlin, I am so so sorry."

"For what?" he asks, suddenly terrified that she's moved on, that Dom's dragged her here and now she's going to disappear like some ephemeral fantasy.

"For Christmas, for cheating, for lying." She shakes her head. "I made such a mess of things and then I couldn't even fix it."

"Maybe," he shrugs, "maybe now everything will be okay."

"You think so?" Her eyes challenge him.

"No, not really. But do you want to try, anyway?"

"When I said I fell in love with you I meant it."

"I believed you," he tells her. And then they render the space between them nonexistent, and the layers of cloth between skin irrelevant, and those long months apart become forgettable.

A/N: I really liked this story until this chapter. And I liked this chapter when I was writing it, but now I don't so much. I hope you all enjoyed it anyway.
I appreciate reviews!