a/n for bluey [BlueEyes444], because her Christmas present got waylaid in the land of no muse, so I'm hoping this will do instead, because she loves mad pairings =]

for the crossgen competition by the lovely lovisa [lowi] - a daphnealbus with the prompts fling, wary, and terrified.

warning: this fic contains crossgen, strong sexual references, and some light swearing.

Some things are made to fall apart, and some things are meant to be, and they are somewhere in between, balancing between being too much and not enough and not knowing what they'll be in the end.

The office is plain, Daphne notes, the sunlight seen outside the magical window not touching the oak furniture. The lack of light seems to highlight the other woman's appearance and importance, and her own legs remain crossed as she tries to appear as professional as possible.

"I like it," Emily says after a long silence, looking up from the manuscript and tapping her chin with one perfectly manicured magenta fingernail. Her cool green eyes skate over the pages again, a delicate frown creasing her brow.

Daphne shows no sign of nervousness, her thin frame remain composed on the outside, though this could be her breakthrough into writing and away from the short columns packed with gossip that are the bane of her existence. Although her work as a gossip columnist for the Prophet pays fairly well, she's always known she was destined for bigger things, even if she's left it a bit late, and her current job isn't as glamorous as it once seemed to the twenty year old version of herself.

"Yes... I like it a lot. Come in on Monday and we'll discuss the particulars, shall we?" Emily continues, the same razor sharp fingernail raking down the sheaf of parchment in an intimidating manner that is clearly intended to frighten her. The older woman throws down the parchment with a bang and looks at Daphne over the rim of her curved glasses, before flicking her eyes toward the door.

Taking the hint, she rises from her seat, nodding her thanks and acceptance to the blonde editor and then walking over to the exit. Her heels press into the luxurious carpet as she opens the glass door, steps through the doorway, and clicks the door shut behind her.

The room in the far back of the bar is softly lit, the candles lending a glow to the tan and tartan chairs and sofas, an oval wooden table in the centre of it all. A select group of older men and women are seated gracefully around the available space, old friends from their Hogwarts days and their husbands and wives and mistresses, all gathered together as they have done on every Tuesday night for twenty years.

She looks up from the table when Theo stands up, his slim blonde girlfriend rising to stand beside him, and her heart sinks a little as she realises what's about to happen.

"We have an announcement to make," he proclaims, his right arm winding around the woman, who is a few years younger than the majority of the people gathered around. "Leticia has finally agreed to marry me," he adds with a fond smile at his bride to be, and her stomach churns when she remembers how he used to smile at her like that.

"Congratulations. We'll have to celebrate," someone says, and the rest of those present agree, handing out drinks right and left as if they're teenagers again, because they've all waited far too long for Theo to be happy and respectably married again. Daphne just wants to forget how easily he has moved on from her; how his life has changed for the better while she's still stuck in the past.

She smiles slightly as the woman on her left presses a drink into her hand, and takes a tentative sip, not recognising the liquid. She drinks it anyway, because she trusts these people as much as she can trust anyone, and it's not like there are many people to miss her if this drink does knock her out - or worse.

The next few hours pass in a blur, scattered with copious alcohol and short conversations, giving and receiving congratulations from the happy couple, who must have heard from Astoria about her book probably being published. She smiles coldly at them and accepts their words graciously, speaking of their engagement in the polite tone she has been trained to use since birth.

"Hey," a voice says once the couple has moved away, and she turns her frosty gaze to her right to find someone standing in the shadows near her. Evidently, the person belongs to the voice that spoke to her, and as the figure moves forward into the light she realises that the voice belongs to a boy who clearly doesn't belong in this circle of older people. He has the look they all once did; easy confidence and icy gazes, something that many of them have retained though it is many years since they were as youthful as this boy now is. There's something different about him though, something that sets him apart from the Slytherin stereotype that she still belongs to. It is only when she focuses on his eyes that she realises that he's missing the haunted gaze that many of them acquired in their last few years of school - eyes that speak of things that can never be unseen, no matter how much they want to.

She raises an eyebrow at his presence, and he smirks, coming forward and setting down the empty tray on a circular table nearby. Clearly, he was simply delivering more drinks to their gathering, and as he comes closer she does have to admit that he seems familiar.

"Al," he says, and there's something about the name and the face and the eyes currently staring into hers that makes her feel as if she knows this boy, but every time she thinks she knows who he is the answer slips from her grasp.

"Daphne," she replies, and she's a little rusty on the etiquette for introducing oneself to strangers at a bar, and she's not exactly sure whether to hold out her hand or not, so she settles for allowing a brief smile to grace her ruby red lips.

"Well, Daphne, I'm curious – what's a woman like you sitting over here by yourself? Do people incessantly chattering away bore you too?" he asks, his laughing eyes inviting her to join in on the joke, and she finds herself leaning forward to respond. He's younger and reminds her too much of an adolescent Theodore, but it doesn't matter because she's kind of drunk and kind of lonely, and she has no intention of going home with him anyway.

"You must have read my mind," she replies, the smile still in place, and she watches him with knowing eyes as his gaze runs over her skin in a very obvious way.

"There's a little Seer in the family line," he says with a tiny shrug, but his lips are twisted into a mockery of smile, and she knows he's joking.

"Really?" she asks, acting as if she's completely taken in by his words, because he intrigues her and she wants to talk to someone to make coming out tonight worth it. "Tell me my future, then," she encourages slyly, wondering what he'll say in response.

He leans forward and whispers in her ear, and her eyes widen at what she hears, because he's much more confident than she thought he was, if he dares to say such things to her. He smirks, and she smiles, and the rest of the night follows in a haze that she can't remember the next morning, save for a few exchanges that she couldn't forget if she tried.

"I'm going to assume that you aren't taken right now," he breathes into her ear, and somehow his arm has wound up around her waist and he's too close, too close, but anything and everything seems like a good idea right now and she can't bring herself to pull away.

"You could say that," she replies, and she's bitter, she knows it, and the words taste like acid as they leave her lips. She allows her gaze to slide sideways to where the newly engaged duo is snuggled up in the corner, and she's bitter as sin and lonely as hell, and her eyes spark as she turns back to Al and forces his lips onto hers.

"That's good. Not that it would matter if you weren't," he mutters against her lips, and suddenly he's kissing her back and she doesn't have time to wonder what he meant or why he's attracted to someone who is clearly many years his senior, no matter how well she's taken care of herself over the years.

She pulls back and casts her gaze around the room, and somehow no one seems to have noticed that she's snogging the help, but her eyes land on Theo kissing his fiancée sweetly, and the jealousy bubbles up inside her until she can't take it anymore. She stands, untangling herself from Al before clasping his hand and dragging him outside, through the sparsely populated bar and onto the street. She turns, pulling him with her as she Apparates to the street her house is situated on, and they're barely through the front door before he slams her against the wall and starts kissing her again.

She responds eagerly, because it's been a long time since she's done this and the image of her ex-husband and his new love keeps playing through her mind, taunting her with all the things she will never have again, and she certainly isn't one to turn away someone willing to be used by her.

They fumble their way up the marble stairs to her bedroom, and somewhere along the way his shirt has come off, and she only has time to think that he's beautiful before he attacks her lips again. Her skin is on fire and she's forgotten everything she thought she knew as they sink down to the floor in a tangle of limbs and sweat and skin covered by the darkness.

Daphne stirs as a rush of cool air swirls around her exposed feet, chilling her enough that she curls her legs up under the blanket before opening her eyes. For a moment, she can't see anything through the curtain of dark hair covering her face, and can't see much better once she has pushed it aside. Reaching out blindly for her wand, she flicks it wordlessly, blinking rapidly as the sunlight streams in between her recently parted, heavy green curtains. She has always preferred to keep her spells silent, an old habit she picked up from her parents as a child, and used herself as soon as she learnt how.

She glances as if on instinct to the empty space on the other side of the bed they must have moved to at some point, which is unsurprisingly empty. Sighing at her need to even check, she swings her legs around to the floor, her bare toes squishing the pale carpet as they touch. It's time to move on with her day, she decides, because she has a life to run and a gossip column to write – and there's a piece of paper on the table beside her bed that certainly wasn't there before, she realises, and reaches out a hand to pick it up.

Daphne –

Good morning. As much as I would like to be there when you wake up, there are many reasons why I shouldn't be, some of which you know very well.

Your mail is downstairs; I paid the Daily Prophet owl. There's no need to thank me, though I suppose you won't have the chance to.

I wish you well.

-Albus

Reading the letter is bittersweet, because he seems sweet and sensible and she finds herself wishing he had stayed, now that she knows his very familiar sounding full first name. The memories of his features are blurred, reduced to messy hair and pale skin, and a pair of intense green eyes that scorch her own when their gazes lock, but there's something in what she knows that stirs her recollections.

She tosses the letter aside and walks downstairs into her spacious foyer, which she hates. After years of living with Theo, it still feels strange to her that she know lives all alone in her parents' house, having come right back to the beginning with almost nothing to show for it.

As promised, several letters and her edition of the Daily Prophet are stacked neatly in a pile on a low table near the front door, and she walks over and scoops them up on her journey into the equally spacious kitchen, which is void of the two house elves she allows to work here.

"Letter from Astoria... letter from Scorpius... fan mail..." she murmurs aloud, a smile gracing her lips when she reads that Scorpius has married his girlfriend in a very quiet ceremony in eastern France. Putting down her nephew's owl to grab a quill, the main headline of the day's Prophet catches her eye, and she puts down the letter to pick up the newspaper, her eyes scanning it over quickly.

It is the picture accompanying the article that intrigues her the most; a blurry shot of two people clasping hands outside the Leaky Cauldron, and she wonders for a moment if she met the couple while she was there the previous evening. She reads the caption then, bold words pronouncing that the famous Albus Potter (son of the great Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and saviour of wizard-kind) was seen with a petite woman with dark hair and a scarlet dress, and her heart sinks as she looks at the picture again and recognises herself.

She returns to the bar the following day, telling herself that she needs to get out more than just her regular Tuesdays, and she tries to pretend that she's not holding out hope that the mysterious boy will show up to see her. She's not sure why he intrigues her so much, though she suspects that it's because he's the first person to take a proper interest in her after she split up with Theo barely eight months before, and he's strange and cold and so much younger, and she has to admit she gets a thrill out of the illicitness of it all.

The barmaids pass her by and she orders drink after drink in an excuse to hang around just a little bit longer, and however much she tells herself she needs to move on - because it isn't like she's never had a one night stand before - she can't help lingering at the bar in the hopes of seeing him again.

"Looking for me?" someone says behind her, and she turns around to find Albus standing there, one eyebrow cocked arrogantly and his left arm resting casually on the countertop.

"Because that's how I spend my free time," she replies caustically, raising an eyebrow in turn because she certainly isn't going to admit that that's exactly what she was doing.

"I'd be sorry if it wasn't," he says cryptically, and she has to smile, because the only times she's ever spoken with him he's been exactly like this, and it reminds her so much of Theo that it physically hurts.

"You're Albus Potter," she says, and his eyes flash like he's angry she found out, or angry that she mentioned it, she isn't sure which.

"Yes. Does it matter?" he asks, and she tells him that it doesn't, because it doesn't at all, and why should she, of all people, care that his father is the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice? She has long been forced to realise that one's parentage doesn't matter as long as they decide it doesn't matter, because she's nothing like her parents and Theo was nothing like his, and Pansy married a Muggleborn so it's not like blood matters either.

"Why are you here, then, if you aren't looking for me? I suppose you've come here to get drunk again," he adds as if their previous topic of conversation has never occurred as he indicates her glass. It's a statement, not a question, and she's both turned on by his arrogance and annoyed by it.

"I'm not usually the kind to get drunk," she insists, and it's ridiculous because this is twice in a week she's been drunk, and it's twice he's seen her drunk, and that's far more times that she would have thought would happen at the start of this week.

"Sure you aren't," he says, and it's obvious he doesn't believe his own words, but it's okay because she doesn't believe them either. She begins to protest, though, if only to hold onto some shred of her reputation, but he cups her cheek and brushes his thumb over her lips, effectively cutting off any half-formed arguments she might have said. He kisses her then, and it's soft and sweet and the complete opposite of their first kiss, and she knows he's barely of age, but she's slightly drunk and very lonely and Salazar curse it, she wants to take a risk, and it's hard to resist him when he looks at her like that.

And oh, everything falls into place just like the last time, and she wakes up in her bedroom all alone again, but this time the note he leaves promises he'll see her again, and she's not quite sure why it feels like her world revolves around those few words.

It becomes a regular thing for them, meeting up at the same bar and having nearly the same conversation before leaving for her place. She's perfectly with the whole operation until she realises they're leaving the bar later and later, and talking more and more about their lives and themselves, and it's turning into too much like a proper courtship for her liking.

"I really don't understand why we do this," she says abruptly, cutting off his description of his horror of a brother, though she does sympathise. Having Draco as a brother-in-law is no picnic, either.

"Because you're gorgeous, and I'm irresistible, and there's nothing better to do of an evening?" he suggests with a small grin, and she has to roll her eyes at the way he always manages to compliment himself. She does like that he called her gorgeous, though. It's been a while since someone has told her that she's beautiful, even if she does feel as if she's aged well.

"How charming," she replies drolly, circling the rim of her empty glass with her finger, smudging the lipstick mark on the side. "It's lucky you're good in bed, because it's hard to like you when you put everything so bluntly. A woman likes a little romance in her hook ups, you know?" she adds, and she knows he knows she's teasing, because she's said a million times before that she likes knowing what they are without all the complications.

"Oh, I know you like me," he says confidently, leaning forward and pressing his lips to her cheekbone, and though she starts to protest his words, it's easy to remember she's always found arrogance sexy as his cool lips print patterns on her skin.

"Maybe a little," she concedes, and allows him to pull her out the door and onto the street like she did once on the night that started it all, and it's only when they're already in her bedroom that she realises that she never gave him the spell to get into her house. It doesn't matter, really, she decides as she sinks into her pillows, because it seems like they're in this, whatever it is, for a while at least.

And they are, of course they are; she's looking for someone to replace the half she's lost, and he's the mysterious boy who told her she was beautiful and seemed to mean it, and somewhere along the way he stops leaving in the morning and putting notes on the table to say goodbye. He doesn't need to, because he's still there when she wakes up, and every time he is she feels more and more that they've moved past being a simple fling. They're something now, and while she's not sure what they are, exactly, she's almost certain that she likes it, and that's the most dangerous thing of all.

She wakes the next morning to find his deep green eyes watching her, and her lips curve in a smile that he doesn't match, but it's okay because she doesn't expect him to. He crosses the small distance between them and touches her face lightly, and she leans closer as his fingers traipse over the top of her hair.

"I have to ask – why were you serving us, the night we first met?" she asks, and the fingers brushing through her hair stiffen and pull away, and she hates herself for craving his touch so much, because she's almost forty-three and she's acting like she's barely sixteen. But then, isn't that one of the things she likes best about him, that he makes her feel young again? "You aren't the type to like servitude."

"I was trying to impress a girl," he says with a bitter half-laugh, and she recognises his expression as one that she wore the most often in the days after her divorce. She doesn't expect him to continue, as reserved as he often is, but he does and she's glad for it - glad that he can trust her, even with something so seemingly trivial. "Anna. She's one of the barmaids – and my ex. I thought that maybe if I showed her I could be responsible, like she always wanted, then she'd love me again, so I begged Mrs Longbottom to let me work for her a couple of nights a week, even though I don't like asking for anything."

"Did you lo-like her that much?" she whispers, and she hopes fervently that he says no, or says yes, she doesn't know, because she wants him to belong to only her, but their brokenness is what draws them to each other.

"She broke up with me," he pauses, and his eyes burn intensely. "I don't like being broken up with," he adds, and there's something broken in his expression, like there's more to this story of his that he isn't telling her. He kisses her abruptly and she matches his ferocity without knowing the true reason for it, offering the only comfort she knows how to give anymore.

It's been six months since the first night when she wakes up to find the other side of her bed cold, and for the first time in seventeen weeks he hasn't been there in the morning, and she begins to hate how dependant on him she has come to be. She's survived forty three years without him – and yet, she hasn't, because Astoria used to crawl into bed with her when she was younger, and then Tracy and Pansy slept in the same room, and then she was married to Theo for more than twenty years. Not always happily, not always lovingly, but married. She isn't used to being alone, she realises, and pushes the thought aside to read Albus' note.

Daph –

Good morning, beautiful. I've gone to my parents' for Lily's birthday. I'll be back before six, most likely, but if I'm later it means I've gone to catch up with Scorpius and Rose. You know that Castor's sick again? They haven't slept for days, or so they've said. This is why we aren't having children.

The mail's on the table, as usual, and the stack of the gossip tidbits people have sent in are next to that.

Albus

She can't help but smile at the insinuation that they'll be together for a long time, or even having the opportunity to not have children together, because she's found herself falling for him, and she's hoping that he feels the same.

Shaking off her thoughts, she makes her way downstairs, his letter still clutched in her hand. She sees the pile he meant; a small stack of parchment that various witches – and wizards, but usually witches – have owled her over the week, little snapshots of gossip that they hope she'll include in her column.

Sorting through them, she tosses aside the ones that are obviously fabricated ('Parvati Zabini was seen last weekend at a Muggle strip club') or are just completely ridiculous or useless ('Dennis Creevey bought a kitten'), smirking when she comes across one that mentions Albus.

She pulls it aside from the pile to study it better, and her expression dims when she sees it mentions her, because she's really not ready for people to be looking at them too closely.

'Albus Severus Potter was seen last night leaving the Three Broomsticks with a familiar dark-haired girl. Could she be the woman from the pictures in January? There could be a romance on the horizon.'

She reads it again, over and over again until she's convinced herself that no one other than her recognised her from the pictures, and after all, it's not as if this piece of information will be getting to the public, she decides, and puts the slip of parchment in the centre of the table. She'll show it to Albus later, and he'll smile, and she'll smile, and they'll both laugh about getting away with their unorthodox relationship for months under the press' noses.

The rest of the day passes uneventfully, and she greets Albus at the door with a kiss that spirals into something more, and it is late at night before she remembers the piece of paper that had alarmed her before. She summons it upstairs and reads it aloud, and he simply smiles as if it amuses him, but when he thinks she isn't looking he stares at the paper with a frown as if wondering about something serious, an expression on his face that she can't decipher.

She signs the parchment in a looping scrawl reminiscent of her mother's, the first letter of both her names dominating the page. Her heart beats fasts, speeding up with every letter she writes, because every second that passes by is one second closer to achieving her dream.

"Excellent, excellent," Emily says, pulling the parchment from Daphne's grasp and holding out a hand for Daphne to shake. She takes it cautiously, wary of screwing something up in this crucial moment, when she's about to get the one thing she's worked on for years.

"Thank you, thank you so much," she says, shaking the other woman's hand once, and then it's all over and she's about to be an author, a real author with a hardcover book and her name in stark black ink. She leaves the room at Emily's dismissal and pulls a slip of parchment out of her bag, hurrying over to a windowsill to write a note to Albus, though it is only once she's finished that she realises she has no way to send it to him.

She walks away from the window and takes the stairs two at a time, clattering into the foyer barely five minutes later, though she spends the next ten convincing the very male desk clerk to lend her an owl. He does, of course, after much manipulating and tossing of hair, and by the end of it she resolves to buy herself an owl and stop using the service at Diagon Alley as she has done previously.

She calls the owl over to her and ties the letter to his leg with a ribbon from her hair and opens the door for it to fly outside, quickly following it outside. She watches it go until it is a mere speck in the sky, and then turns, Apparating to the street outside her house.

He's there already, of course he is, and she's surprised that she assumed he wouldn't be. He's just that kind of guy, and she smiles as she walks over to his side in front of her door.

"Congratulations," he says, and her permanent smile stretches just a little bit more, because she's making something of her life and he's here to share it with her.

"Thank you," she replies and steps a little closer, dragging a freshly painted scarlet fingernail down his cheek, and she's fairly sure he shivers, which is more of a reaction than those she has managed to elicit before. "Want to celebrate?" she whispers, because she would far prefer this kind of celebration than her getting drunk again, as well as that has turned out the last few times.

He raises his eyebrows in a suggestion that needs no words, and in no time at all she finds herself backed up against the piano in her foyer with her skirt around her hips and her leg hooked around his neck.

She kisses any bit of him that she can reach, leaving sloppy lipstick marks that pepper his pale skin, blood red against pure white, and she can feel his slender hands tangling in her hair that he has somehow pulled loose.

"Upstairs," she murmurs against his neck, and she feels him nod a moment before he pulls her off the piano and into his arms, taking her upstairs in a mockery of a newly wedded bride being carried over the threshold, because she certainly isn't married to him and they definitely aren't doing this for the first time.

He lays her down on the bed and looks down at her, his eyes harbouring the intensity that she loves and hates to love, because she really shouldn't like him like this at all, and it is then that he says the last thing she would expect him to.

"I love you," he says, low and soft and almost sweet, and unlike most other girls, it doesn't matter to her that he's saying it in the heat of the moment, because they've always been about passion and wrong choices, and it feels right to her.

"What about Anna?" she asks somewhat possessively, because she has to know even if it kills her, and it is in that moment that she realises that this boy has come to mean a lot more to her than she ever intended him to.

"Who's Anna?" he murmurs, leaning over her to kiss her, and she smiles, flipping them over with a whispered 'I love you too'.

She's just about to leave the bedroom which has slowly become theirs when she realises it's been an entire year since they've met, and as she looks around the room there are at least as many things of his as there are of hers, and she wonders how they've managed to make it this far without any major complications. It is then, of course, that Albus decides to complicate things.

"We should start telling people, you know," he announces, emerging from the bathroom connected to their bedroom, his hair messy and wild like it always is, his dark eyes intense and staring straight at her, as they always are.

"Why? I like the way we are," she says, because she doesn't want to be in the press and she's kind of terrified that he'll leave her because their judgements are too much, though then again she doubts he would. He isn't like that, she hopes.

"It'll shock everyone," he tells her, his voice caressing her ear in a beguiling way, and she feels herself falling into the trap he has so casually set for her, knowing that she can never say no. She's a true Slytherin at heart, and always loved a little drama. There is a reason, after all, that she's a gossip columnist and a writer, and it isn't because she didn't have any other choice.

"How about this? We'll just stop being so careful about you practically living here, and the fact that we're together," she suggests, trying not to let on how much this matters to her, but his eyes are glinting in a way that tells her he wants this more than she does.

"You sound like you don't want to tell people," he goads her, deliberately sounding sad and insecure when she knows that he's trying to get her to give him a straight out yes. At her look, he continues. "I'm sorry for not wanting to keep my fiancée a secret any longer," he smirks, and she frowns because he's not sorry at all, he's smug and he's manipulative and he's-

"Did you just say fiancée?" she asks, completely taken about at this turn of events, because he hasn't even asked and she's sure he isn't talking about someone else. She had expected them to go on like this until she died, really, because she's certain he wouldn't move on and neither would she.

"Did I forget to mention that?" he grins arrogantly, and he's pulling something from his pocket and he's kneeling and slipping a ring onto a finger before she can even say anything. She doesn't need to, and he knows it, because this might be the most unorthodox way she's ever been proposed to –the only way, really, since the first was a marriage contract – but she still isn't going to say no.

"I guess we're telling people, then," she says simply, and then he's kissing her and kissing her, and she's seventeen again with a heart full of love and a hope that this marriage will turn out all right, and she's sure that this time it will. She kisses back and entwines their figures together, and nothing is heard from the newlyweds-to-be for the rest of the day.

They are something, in the end, the kind of something that confuses everyone else but is more than enough for them, and they've danced along the line of love and lust and come out the other side together. Some things are made to fall apart, and some things are simply meant to be, and they were made to fall in love.

Please review, and please don't favourite without reviewing! I adore critique, and since this is sadly un-beta'd, it would be great if you could tell me anything I screwed up - or anything you loved, of course! =]

A note for my melting stones readers, if they see this - I'm sorry for the delay, but the newest chapter should be up within the week =]

Thank you all for reading, and again, please review!