Fic: Seven Conversations at the Leaky Cauldron (Teddy/Lily et al.), PG-13
Recipient: severely_lupine
Title: Seven Conversations at the Leaky Cauldron
Pairing(s): Teddy/Lily, Teddy/Victoire, Rose/Scorpius, Dominique/OFC, James II/OFC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Suggestive and Vulgar Language
Summary: Lily’s been in love with Teddy forever. As his wedding looms on the horizon, seven conversations in the Leaky Cauldron reshape their futures.
Word Count: 6730
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author’s notes: Thank you so much to my beta, TS, who helped make this story believable.
September 27, 2026
“So, Hannah hired you finally?” Teddy asks as he sits down at the bar. His hair is a bright shade of violet tonight, and it’s falling into his eyes haphazardly. Lily likes his hair best when it’s like this, all wild and colorful and free. Victoire hates it, a fact she makes known as often as possible. For the most part, Teddy’s taken to wearing his hair short and brown ever since he and Lily’s oldest cousin got back together last year. Lily misses the vibrant colors, but she doesn’t think that’s something she’s supposed to say out loud.
She pulls out a glass from under the counter and fills it, half with Firewhiskey and half with lime juice. It’s been Teddy’s favorite drink since he was sixteen, and she’s been able to make it since she was six. Placing it on the counter in front of her, she leans over the counter and gives her god-brother a kiss. “She had to break eventually. I haven’t stopped pestering her about giving me a job here since I was kid. You know she likes me best.” The last statement is only half a joke. Hannah Longbottom, Professor Longbottom’s wife and one of her parents’ oldest friends, has a soft spot for Lily the size of a Hippogriff. Lily knew that Hannah would give her just about anything she wanted, within reason. So when Lily realized that she could actually get paid to hang around at the Leaky and talk to its strange customers, about the age of ten, she got the idea stuck in her head and has been pursuing it ever since.
He flashes her a smile, downs the drink, and says, “Lily-Lu, I think everybody likes you best.” He’s laughing when he says it, and she has to laugh too, because she knows he’s joking, even if she wishes it were true. For the most part, everyone likes either Victoire best, with her long, strawberries-and-cream tresses and her remnants of Veela charm, or James best, with his wild manner and his easy confidence. If not those two, then Rosie with her off-the-charts intelligence and quick defiance or Lucy with her sugar-sweet countenance and her smile that melts hearts. Lily knows what she’s up against in her family, and she knows that being born second-to-last pretty much made her second-to-last overall.
“Anyway,” he shatters the silence by breaking eye contact a moment before he breathes out the word. That’s been happening a lot, lately, but Lily’s learning to ignore it. It’s not like they mean anything, those stutter-stop moments when she can feel her heart beating in her throat. If they did, Teddy would’ve done something about them by now. “Have you seen Vic? She was supposed to meet me at George’s shop an hour ago and she never showed. I was really hoping she’d be in here and not still shopping. Please tell me I’m not wrong?” He pulls a face like an injured puppy dog and Lily fleetingly wonders if his father’s lycanthropy really wasn’t genetic. She laughs at him, a high pitched screech that her brothers always make fun of her for, and shakes her head.
“Sorry, honey, she hasn’t been here since this morning,” she gathers her red hair up on top of her head as she says this and pulls it into a loose, messy bun. It’s time to clean the bar up from the day time mess and try to make it semi-respectable for the nighttime crowd. For having the job for only two weeks, she’s quite good at what she does. Not that this placates her mother at all. Ginny Weasley has yet to forgive her youngest child for not following in the her hallowed steps and taking the Harpies up on their offer. Lily tries to point her finger at Uncle Charlie every chance she gets, but her mother considers Charlie’s job legitimate, as he’s at least using his flying skills. Lily doesn’t see herself as a barmaid, anyway. She’s a struggling artist, she just doesn’t like the idea of the struggling part.
“Shite,” Teddy curses, his voice low. He watches as Lily begins cleaning the dishes and setting candles out on the various booths around the Leaky. She can feel his eyes on her, which in turn makes her skin heat up and her face turn red. This has happened a million times before, and most of the time she hides in the shadows until she’s able to control herself. Thanking Merlin for the horrible lighting in the bar, she turns to face Teddy and looks at him expectantly. He grins in response, “Have any pieces to show me?” he asks, and she knows he’s only looking for a way to past the time. But he’s always been pretty interested in her work, and she’s going to gander a guess that he really does want to see what she’s been working on during the slow hours behind the bar.
“Sure,” she replies, using her wand to gather a few of her latest pieces from the storage closet. One of them is of him, with wild turquoise hair and eyes the color of lilac. He’s laughing at something out of the frame and running a hand through the sloppy hair. Teddy smiles when he sees it, holding it just a little too long. “Do you like it?” she asks, knowing he’ll be honest.
He looks her golden eyes and smiles widely, just like his picture, “Very much so.”
January 11, 2027
“Lorcan! Lysander! If the two of you do not stop playing with my dish rag I’m going to wring it out over both your heads!” Offering to babysit her godmother’s seven year old twins was probably not the smartest thing Lily could do. Offering to babysit them inside the Leaky Cauldron during the Christmas Season at lunchtime was sheer suicide. She has to, though, because it’s Luna and Rolf’s seventeenth anniversary and she isn’t about to let the day go uncelebrated. She catches both the twins and pulls them into the kitchen by their ears.
“Hey Hannah?” she calls out, looking for the plump, maternal witch. When she spots a round bum and long blonde curls she smiles and brings the boys over to her matron, “Would you mind teaching these buggers how to cook?” Normally, Lily would be afraid to ask her boss to take over babysitting duties, but Hannah loves the boys so much she gathers them up and smiles.
“’Course not, Lily-Lu. Go take care of my customers, I’ll take care of these two sprouts!” Hannah’s always been a very cheery woman, and Lily can’t really wrap her head around the fact that she was tortured close to insanity while at Hogwarts and had to deal with her mother’s death at the tender age of sixteen. Nodding her head, Lily disappears back through the door and walks straight into a customer. Just as she’s about to apologize profusely, she realizes it’s only Teddy and laughs.
“Sorry about that, Ted,” she says, pushing off of his broad shoulders and finding her feet, “I’ve been chasing the twins all morning. It gets a bit tiring.”
Teddy laughs and grabs her arms to steady her, “Just wait until you have a few of your own. You’ll never rest.” He says it like he knows what he’s talking about, and maybe after years of babysitting the Weasley-Potter children he does. For a moment, she contemplates what type of father Teddy would make. The moment ends the moment he pulls away from her and sits down at the stool. She’s jerked back to reality and finds her way behind the counter, pulling out the Firewhiskey and lime juice.
“I hear James and Deanna are getting married,” Teddy begins, conversationally. It’s the biggest news in the Weasley family since Dominique announced she was gay, so naturally it’s all anyone’s been talking about since it happened yesterday afternoon. Personally, Lily’s shocked her brother actually realized he’s supposed to ask Deanna to marry him before planning the entire thing himself. James doesn’t usually ask for permission. She’s happy for him, though, even if she thinks Deanna’s a bit of a prude, and she’s thrilled about hosting the engagement party in a few months at the Burrow. “Any idea how it happened?”
Lily shakes her head, wild red dancing across the bar like a muggle whore and landing haphazardly on her shoulders. Teddy likes her hair best when it’s free, something he’s never told her, and he’s suddenly overcome with a strange desire to touch it. He reaches out, lets his hand linger in the air for a moment as her hair falls over her shoulders, and then pulls back, as if burned, the moment he touches a curl. “He won’t talk about it,” she states, ignoring whatever it is that just passed between them. If there’s anything to ignore, that is. A part of Teddy thinks the entire moment was all in his head.
“Do you think he’s hiding something?” Lily asks, a moment later. Normally, it’s Al who asks questions like this, pushing the envelope just far enough that he can get to the truth without stepping on anybody’s toes. Lily’s a very observant girl, a trait she gets from her godmother, but she isn’t the type of person to dig deeper than necessary. For the most part, she tends to take things as she sees them, she just happens to see them better than most people.
However, James is her brother, and Lily’s been trying to protect him for years. Al and Rosie may be the ones who clean up his messes and try to delay punishment, but Lily’s spent most of her life trying to keep people from getting angry when they realize they’re the butts of her brother’s jokes. “I mean, Deanna’s happy, so it’s not like he forced her into it, or anything. But if it were anything else he’d be bloody insufferable, bragging about it and showing off Dee’s ring like it’s one of Uncle Charlie’s dragons.”
Teddy takes a sip of the drink she’s placed in front of him and looks at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Sometimes, you don’t need to brag about someone being in love with you. Sometimes, the fact that they’re in love with you is enough.” He should be talking about Victoire, but neither one of them is sure that he is.
October 6, 2027
“Hannah, why is it so bright in here?” Lily’s voice is laced with cobwebs and stale wine, but she’s too lazy to brew the hangover potion and she’s not about to insult her potion making skills enough to floo Scorpius and ask for some of his. Dominique will probably bring some over when she wakes up, but that could be hours from now. So Lily decides to do things the muggle way and pours herself some coffee. The coffee maker is always on at the Leaky now days, ever since Hannah accidentally gave a patron muggle coffee instead of the wizarding brew back in 2003 and the man was so in love with the stuff he told all of his friends how much better the muggles are at making coffee. Now, they’re actually able to get away with charging more for muggle coffee than wizarding coffee, which is always a plus.
“It’s not that bright, dearie,” Hannah replies from inside the kitchen. It figures that she’d be wide awake and working already. Lily doesn’t think the poor woman’s ever called out sick, even on the days she gave birth. It’s not like Hannah’s hangover is any weaker than Lily’s, but, then again, she probably keeps vials of hangover potion on hand for events like last night, when the eldest Potter child finally flew the coop.
Last night was interesting, to say the least, and Lily still isn’t sure if everything she thinks happened really did happen, but she doesn’t think she could make it up if she tries. Instead, she holds the memory close and tries to figure out what it means. She remembers Teddy’s lips on the shell of her ear and the skin of her nape, sinking into that spot where her neck meets her collar bone and her freckles give way to pure, milky paleness. She remembers Teddy pulling back the moment her body responded, moving away as if shocked and looking around to make sure no one noticed. He sat there startled while she clumsily pulled away, muttering over and over “You best leave, now, Lily, because…” He breaks off but Lily already knows how the statement ends: because he didn’t know what else to say, most likely, and Teddy’s nothing if not amazing with words.
She keeps playing the scene over and over again in her head, the moment frozen out of context so she can’t remember what happened before or after. It’s not the moment she wants to remember, because it’s making her headache worse as she tries to establish a meaning behind it, but she knows it’s the moment that’s going to stay with her long after James has returned from his honeymoon and Deanna’s figured out that she’s pregnant.
The scene is on replay all day. It’s constantly drowning out the quiet lull of the Leaky on the cold autumn day and the consistent clatter of glasses as people order drinks and finish drinks and throw galleons down as they go on their way. It isn’t until well after three that any of the other Weasleys decide to brave the day and bring her hangover potion. She’s expecting Dominique, but it’s Teddy who shows up. He stands in the doorway of the pub like he’s afraid to come in, rain pouring down behind him and making the whole thing look like the black and white noir movies Aunt Petunia’s so very fond of.
She musters up all the Gryffindor courage she supposedly has and forces a smile at him, even though he’s the last person she wants to see right now. He breathes, visibly, a sigh of relief and she watches as his features go from their natural shaggy, caramel brown hair and gray eyes to a more relaxed shade of turquoise blue and lavender. Teddy’s always been a fan of bright colors, and she can’t remember a happy moment that doesn’t include his wild blue locks falling gracelessly into his eyes while he’s laughing.
“Rough night?” he asks, the humor in his voice obviously forced, as far as she’s concerned. She nods her head and takes the vial he’s holding in his outstretched hand. Downing it without a chaser, which shows just how much she’s been drinking since graduation, she pauses to let the potion sink in and then pulls out the Firewhiskey and lime.
“Lily,” he begins, forgoing the usual nickname and the fake sincerity he’s usually so very good at, “Last night…” he trails off because no matter what he says next he’s going to hurt her, and they both know how much he hates doing that.
Even if he does it every day just by doing nothing.
“Last night my big brother got married to a girl he’s already knocked up and you got a little drunk,” Lily clarifies, her voice surprisingly strong despite the sinking feeling in her stomach and the nausea she knows has nothing to do with her hangover. “That’s it. The End. Don’t worry Theodore Remus, I’ll keep your secrets like I always have. Just promise you aren’t breaking your heart as well as mine.” She tries to keep the bitterness out, but it seeps into her voice anyway. “Why her, Teddy?” She doesn’t want to sound broken, but sine he’s the only one that can fix her she figures he has the right to know.
Teddy pauses, looks at her with something like fear in his eyes, like she’s Dad and he’s just done something stupid. Then he swallows, hard, and tells her, “She loves me. She’s been in love with me since she was eight. And I fell in love with her then, too. It’s supposed to happen like this. Even if I can’t follow the damn script properly, all of this has already played out. I don’t have much of a choice here, Lily-Lu, because I can’t back out now. Just because I don’t know who it is I’m sleeping next to anymore. Everyone keeps saying how we were destined in the stars. Think of all the hearts I’d break if I botched this up. I do love her,” she isn’t sure if he’s affirming this for her or for himself, “She’s just difficult sometimes. You know your cousin is an amazing person. Bright, successful, the first Ravenclaw to come out of the Weasley family in generations…”
Lily doesn’t meet his eyes as she says, “I know you always do what you’re supposed to do, Teddy, but don’t you think you’re taking this too far? What about what you want?” She knows he won’t answer the question long before she asks it, so she isn’t surprised when he leaves without saying another word.
Teddy stands up, leaving his drink untouched, and gives a cut nod of his head. He turns and walks towards the door, never opening his mouth.
By the time the rain reaches his head, his hair has turned brown again.
April 17, 2028
“I don’t think you understand the fact that you’re the last person I want to see right now,” Lily measures out the words precisely, making sure they’ve got the same inflection Dominique used when she wrote them down earlier that day. Lily’s never been very articulate when she’s hurt or angry, so she’s relying on her Slytherin cousin’s scathing remarks to get her out of having to actually have a conversation with Teddy.
Unfortunately, this is Teddy, so obviously, that plan fails. He doesn’t miss a beat after hearing this announcement, and instead of walking away, like Lily is hoping, he sits down on the worn stool and stares expectantly at the drink in her hand. For a moment, Lily honestly considers cracking him over the head with it, but being petulant and childish is not going to help her case much. “You’re supposed to say congratulations,” he tells her, his words slurring. Less than twenty-four hours after asking Victoire to marry him, he’s bloody pissed off his arse and talking to another woman. Lily can’t help but wonder what type of marriage Teddy’s getting himself into, and how much he’s going to end up owing Vic ten years from now in divorce settlements. “You’re supposed to ignore everything and pretend you’re actually happy for me.” He almost sounds angry, and Lily wants to ask why, but the word sticks in her throat and she pours herself a shot to force it back down.
The Firewhiskey burns, and Lily remembers why she hates the stuff. She looks at the man she once considered her brother, the man she hasn’t spoken to in more than six months. It hurts to admit that she’s happy to see him, happy to hear his voice directed at her, regardless as to how bitter or angry it sounds. She almost wants to make him laugh, just to hear the sound and know she caused it. But she smothers the impulse behind the dirty dish rag and places the glass down next to Teddy’s instead of throwing it across the room like she wants to. Trying to keep the edge out of her voice, she finally meets Teddy’s eyes and says, “I’m also supposed to have my Happily Ever After. So let’s us not talk about what’s supposed to happen. It isn’t going to change anything.”
Lily’s only seen Teddy really angry three times in her entire life. The first was when Hugo stole her broom in fifth year in an attempt to sabotage the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The second was when Scorpius’ grandfather called Aunt Hermione a mudblood. The third was the day he broke up with Victoire the first time, when he found out she had been cheating on him for almost half a year. All three times, the following things happened. His hair turned red, his eyes turned orange, and his face took on a bone structure so similar to his Great Aunt Bellatrix’s that Uncle Neville refused to look at him for a week.
Right now, Lily knows that Teddy is really angry.
“What the bloody fuck do you want me to do, Lily?” he asks, his tone simultaneously ironic and mocking. “You tell me I’m breaking your heart and then you don’t talk to me for six bloody months. I’m not a damned mind reader, Lily.” He almost sounds like he regrets it, all of it, and Lily’s forced to take a step back and steady herself, because she feels like she’s just been hit with a Crucio. “You’re twenty years old, for the love of Hufflepuff! I was there the day your parents got married. How the bloody fuck were you expecting this to work?” It’s a real question, but she doesn’t have an answer because she’s been asking herself the same question for four years. There’s a look in his sunset eyes that makes Lily wonder if he’s really been thinking about this, about her, and she has to pull her gaze away before she gets burned alive.
“I don’t know,” she mumbles into her hair, eyes looking beyond him to the wall across the room, where Dominqiue is standing with her girlfriend, Kahleigh and her best friend, Scorpius, obviously having heard everything. She catches Dominique’s eye and they look at each other for a good minute, Dominique blatantly trying to tell her something that Lily just can’t seem to understand, “I just don’t know Teddy. But aren’t we supposed to try to make this work?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore,” he tells her, honestly, as his hair goes copper and his eyes change from fiery orange to the deep brown of charcoaled remains. He throws a galleon down in front of her and doesn’t wait for his change. Instead, he stumbles towards the door, trips through the doorway when he notices Dominique, and makes his way out into the fog, making it impossible for Lily to watch him apparated away.
June 1, 2028
“Lily, please put down the liquor?” Rose sounds concerned, but then, Rose always sounds concerned, so Lily doesn’t see what the big deal is. Dominique’s barely able to stand and Kahleigh has that angry look on her face, which means Lily’s favorite cousin has already been caught chatting up some bird and her girlfriend’s gotten jealous. Scorpius is across the room falling over his feet while he and James try not to look like complete idiots. And Freddy’s in the corner talking to one of Teddy’s old friends from Hogwarts, completely oblivious of the fact that she’s six years older than him-and married. From the looks of it, she’s probably one of the most sober people here.
It’s midnight. Her mother once told her that if anything big is going to happen then it’s going to happen at midnight, just so you can’t remember what day it is. The only thing Lily wants is to wake up from this nightmare and pretend the man she’s in love with isn’t getting married to her oldest cousin. That isn’t going to happen, though, so she’s resigned herself to drinking bad Wizarding vodka until her eyes tear and her taste buds decide to take the night off. So far, it’s working. “Rosie, why don’t you go play nurse with Malfoy. I’m sure he’d be much happier with your interference than I am.” With that, Lily walks away, towards the back room. She’s expecting to find solace, but by the time she reaches the door she realizes there’s none to be had back there.
Albus doesn’t normally shag in public places, but with the way Eden’s dressed tonight Lily really can’t blame him. Lily’s always considered Slytherin girls to be the most alluring, because they’re the ones with the devilish grins and the teasing that could make Merlin sin. Lily finds them intoxicating, too, but that’s probably more the alcohol and the fact that she hasn’t had sex in three years than anything else.
She sees Teddy out of the corner of her eye and walks over to him. Victoire isn’t near him, which is odd, because it is their engagement party, after all. Pulling a page from her godmother’s book, Lily decides to state the obvious while everyone else is too afraid of decorum to ask the right questions. “Where’s Vic?” she asks, using every nerve in her body to keep from slurring the words. He hasn’t answered her owls in two months, hasn’t been over for dinner at the Potters except for when she’s working late, hasn’t so much as sneezed in her direction since April, but none of that matters right now. He shrugs, helpless, and she realizes he isn’t even drunk. It’s a cold realization, because the only time Teddy doesn’t drink at parties is when he realizes something’s going to go wrong.
He’s staring at the back room, and Lily wonders if he’s going to yell at Albus for shagging at his engagement party. Then she hears a moan that is most definitely not Eden’s and her blood runs cold. It all happens in slow motion, Teddy moving forward, Lily moving back, the crowd between them and the back door suddenly splitting in two. She’s never seen Teddy so angry before, hair turning every shade of red until finally settling on something akin to the fire of a burning bridge. “Teddy!” she cries, hoping to distract him, hoping that if he just looks at her again she can wake them both up from this horrible dream and he can go back to deluding himself with Victoire while she goes back to nursing a broken heart.
At least then, one of them can pretend that he’s happy.
“Teddy!” she chants his name, over and over again, like she thinks she can save him. He voice dies when his hand turns the knob and a strangled scream comes from the other side. Teddy had wanted a small gathering, only the Weasleys and Potters, his grandmother, his friends from school, and Victoire’s closest friends from Hogwarts and Paris. The smallness of the group was probably a bad idea, now that everyone can hear exactly what’s going on behind the closed door. Roxi cut the music the moment she realized something was wrong, and Lily desperately wants to tell her to turn it back on, but she’s pretty sure it’s too late in the game to try saving face.
“You fucking prick!” Teddy screams, his voice dangerously wild. Lily sees her father flinch at the same time as Andromeda, and she knows that they’re both thinking of Bellatrix Black, the woman Teddy most takes after in looks and temper. “You’re supposed to be her best friend, not her bloody fuck buddy!” Lily resists the urge to run in there and try to fix things, but James doesn’t-James, who’s always been Teddy’s best friend, even with the six year age difference between them. He’s through the back door before Deanna, heavily pregnant and glowing, can stop him.
Lily doesn’t know what happens next. She’s staring at the doorway, close enough to hear everything, but for some reason the sounds don’t compute. There’s more yelling, Victoire with her loud, faux French voice and Michel with his snooty Parisian accent. It’s funny, really, because Lily always thought he was gay. Maybe he is, Lily’s seen her cousin turn more than one man before. James doesn’t yell, mainly because James never yells, but you can tell he’s angry by the way everything seems to be flying off the shelves. Tomorrow, Lily’s going to have to clean all of that up. She tries to focus on that, but she can’t bring herself to care.
Teddy doesn’t say anything more. He throws Michel out of the room and stares at Victoire expectantly, waiting for her to take his ring off her finger. She does so with as much dignity as she can muster, which isn’t very much considering she’s barely dressed and in the same room as her mother and father. When she’s handed it over to him, Teddy turns on his heel and walks away, maintaining an easy confidence even after he walked in on his fiancé having sex with another man.
Lily wants to run after him, really, but Albus grabs her before she can. “Let him be, Lily-Lu,” her brother warns, rubbing circles on her back as James comes up behind her and wraps her in his arms, “Let him be.” She doesn’t want to, but she knows it’s for the best.
July 12, 2028
Teddy is upset. And whenever Teddy’s upset he goes to the one place where he knows he doesn’t have to talk to anyone: Uncle Charlie’s dragon reservation. He’s gone hours after he ends his relationship with Victoire and he stays gone for over a month. There’s no owls, no Sunday dinners, nothing but a floo-call from Uncle Charlie well past three in the morning informing them that Teddy’s just arrive and he doesn’t look good at all. So Teddy’s upset and runs away and Lily’s left to pick up the pieces.
The first thing she does is talk to Dominique, because this is usually the first thing she does regardless of the situation. Despite the five year age difference, Dominique has always been her favorite cousin. Not Hugo, who’s only three months younger than her, or Louis, who is only a year older, but Dominique, who was a fifth year Slytherin Prefect the day Lily was sorted into Gryffindor. Dominique tells her that Victoire’s a mess, but she thinks the theatrics are just for show. Lily knows she’s probably right, so she floos to Victoire’s flat with a bottle of rum and a box of chocolate and knocks on her door impatiently. The blonde answers and screams and cries and then admits that “I never really loved him, anyway.”
It takes every ounce of willpower for Lily not to slap her.
After Victoire’s taken care of, Lily can go back to fixing herself. She knows Teddy will come back, eventually, but she doubts he’ll be coming back to her. She spends three weeks forcing herself to let him go before she realizes that’s never going to happen. By the time he shows up in the middle of July, she’s trying not to count all the minutes he’s been away. “Hey Lily-Lu,” he greets, walking through the door of the Leaky like he owns the place, like he’s only been gone for one day and not forty-two. He sits down on his favorite stool and watches her create his Firewhiskey Lime with practiced ease. She’s pretty sure she’d be able to make that drink in her sleep, but that doesn’t mean she’s complaining.
“How was Romania?” she asks, like he went there for vacation and not to purge himself of the only woman he’s ever known carnally, the only woman he thought he was supposed to ever love. He looks like he’s rid of her, now, like the ghost of her won’t haunt him. Lily hates thinking about how easily Victoire ensnared him, time and time again. She wants to blame the girl’s beauty, but she knows Teddy isn’t like that. It was most likely his own foolish sense of duty. He always was too much of a Hufflepuff for her to stomach, sometimes.
“It was cold,” he admits, and suddenly the smile becomes fixed and she knows that’s about to come next. “How is she?” For a moment, Lily wants desperately to lie and tell him that Victoire is miserable, heartbroken, unable to function. But Louis says his oldest sister has had a different guy every day this week, and Lily’s not about to tell Teddy something that she can’t prove. Wiping down the counter, and hoping that’ll waste enough time for him to forget he ever thought he loved the blonde Weasley, she shrugs nonchalantly.
“She’s fine,” and she knows that’s all he wants, but even if it isn’t, that’s all he’s going to get. She’s pretty sure enough hearts have been broken over all of this.
“Maybe I should go talk to her,” Teddy muses, aloud, and Lily understands what he and Uncle Charlie were talking about in Romania. They were talking about Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin, Teddy’s mother and the only woman Uncle Charlie ever loved. It’s disgusting, how incestuous everything seems to be now days, but it’s even more disgusting that Teddy thinks he’s going to make Uncle Charlie’s mistakes if he lets the first woman he fell in love with walk away.
“No,” Lily states, her voice so firm that saying that word feels like landing a punch, “You should not go talk to her. In fact, I doubt you should ever talk to her again. She isn’t your redemption ticket, Teddy, and she sure as hell isn’t the woman you want her to be. She’s put you through hell, time and time again. She’s cheated on you, demeaned you, and for a few minutes there I actually thought she was going to tell you Michel is the better shag. Don’t you realize what she’s put you through? Why the bloody fuck should you go through that again?” She doesn’t realize her voice is growing steadily louder until she’s screaming the last word and making every sound in the Leaky besides her voice stop. She has the decency to blush, but she refuses to apologize for being right.
Teddy stares at her for a moment, lost, hurt, confused. “She’s all I’ve ever known,” he fumbles, looking at Lily like he needs someone to show him the way, “What am I supposed to do?”
She doesn’t stutter. She’s expecting to, because this is probably the most important moment of her life and she feels like every ounce of logic in her body has decided that this is the moment to go on holiday. She feels her hands shake and her body tremble as she places her hand on the back of Teddy’s head and pulls him in close enough to taste. “You should do something that’ll make you happy,” she tells him, like it’s scripted, like there’s no possible chance that he’ll pull away.
Teddy hesitates for a moment, and Lily wants to yell at him for not following the script. But this has to be his choice, and she isn’t going to force him to love her, like Victoire tried to. He hesitates, his breath ghosting her lips and a look of want in his turquoise eyes, and then he stops hesitating. For the first time in his entire life, Teddy’s actually making a move. It’s so funny Lily would laugh, if it weren’t for the fact that she can’t register anything other than his lips against hers, his hand on her small of her back, and the awkward way the table is jutting into her hip bone.
Scorpius’ catcalls pull them apart, after which Teddy flips off his cousin and Lily blushes deep red. “Took you two long enough,” the blond comments, “I was beginning to wonder if inability to make a move was genetic in the Weasley family.” Lily swats him in the head as soon as he’s close enough and Scorpius feigns injury. He rubs the back of his head for a moment before looking at his older cousin and smirking. “I was going to suggest lunch, but I’m pretty sure you have better things to do right now. Dinner? At seven? Rosie’s cooking, of course, so you don’t need to bring those anti-poison potions you always mock me with.”
Teddy lets out a laugh, the crazy, barking laugh Andromeda often cries over, and ruffles Scorpius’ hair. “Tell Rosie I’ll bring dessert, okay?” he offers. Scorpius nods and walks out, waving goodbye to Lily as he makes his way to the door.
“Take care of him, yeah?” Scorpius asks, turning back when he reaches the doorway. He stands there, staring at both of them, and Lily doesn’t have any choice but to smile. Because it’s her that’s going to take care of Teddy, now, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been happier.
November 29, 2028
It’s her Uncle Bill’s fifty-eighth birthday party and everyone who is a Weasley or a Potter, is dating a Weasley or a Potter, or so much as knows a Weasley or a Potter is crammed into the overflowing Leaky Cauldron. Lily’s serving drinks and Teddy’s telling a joke and Uncle Charlie’s almost smiling, which is so rare it’s making Lily’s heart break. Victoire’s sitting across from Roxanne, her hand drawing circles on the inner part of her date’s leg and Lily pauses in making the Pumpkin Toxin to wonder if she even knows the man’s last name. It’s not that she thinks poorly of Victoire for her constant string of different lovers, it’s just that she wishes Victoire would find someone that could make her happy. Lily always respected her oldest cousin, because Victoire does what she wants, and damn the rest of the world. But sometimes Lily thinks she’s purposefully cutting herself off from love, even when Teddy was involved, because she doesn’t think she’s capable of the emotion. Or commitment.
“So you finally got him,” Dominique muses, as she walks over to the bar to help carry more drinks over to the table, “Now what?”
“To be honest, I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Lily admits, watching Teddy as Victoire’s date pulls her in for a kiss. She’s expecting a reaction, jealousy or anger or anything to prove to her that Teddy’s simply settling for Lily because he can’t have the better Weasley girl. Instead, the Metamorphagus is talking to James about baby Arthur’s newest toy broom and watching her with tenderness in his eyes. After she sets the glasses down in front of everyone, she walks over to him and kisses his cheek, sweetly. He grabs her around the waist and pulls her into his lap, effectively upsetting the entire table.
“Theodore Lupin!” her Uncle Bill’s voice is unmistakable, even in this crowd, “Take that loose woman you’re with upstairs if you’re going to do things like that!” The laughter in his voice proves that he’s slightly drunk, but it’s nice to know he doesn’t hate Lily, even if she did take away Victoire’s Prince Charming.
Her father pipes up, also inebriated and wanting to join in on the fun. “Are you calling my daughter loose, Bill Weasley?” he asks, with mock indignation. “Just because she’s a redhead doesn’t mean she’s loose.” He looks at Lily’s mother and pauses, as if thinking about it, “Then again, maybe it does.”
Lily’s mum catches the joke and smacks her husband in the back of the head, while all five brothers pretend to give him death glares. Eventually, Uncle Ron can’t hold it in, and they all end up guffawing over their soups and salads. Grandmum and Aunt Hermione both roll their eyes affectionately and Lily smiles at the sight. She’s about to stand up again and start serving the next course when Teddy pulls her tight into his arms and kisses the skin behind her ear. “I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with you, Lily-Lu,” he confesses, “I’m sorry it took so long.”
Lily smiles at him and settles into his arms. “It’s okay,” she assures him, watching as Rosie and Roxanne go to get the next course, “I got what I wanted, in the end.”
“Yeah,” James adds, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. Deanna’s pregnant again, which means no alcohol for either of them, “I always said she should’ve been in Slytherin.”
Lily smirks and Dominique smiles. “She did learn from the best, after all. Remember what I had to do to get you?” she asks Kahleigh, and the other girl just smiles. “It was second year and…” Lily settles onto Teddy’s lap and listens to the story unfold, perfectly willing to get lost in the story of another’s Happily Ever After, now that she finally has one of her own.
Title: Seven Conversations at the Leaky Cauldron
Pairing(s): Teddy/Lily, Teddy/Victoire, Rose/Scorpius, Dominique/OFC, James II/OFC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Suggestive and Vulgar Language
Summary: Lily’s been in love with Teddy forever. As his wedding looms on the horizon, seven conversations in the Leaky Cauldron reshape their futures.
Word Count: 6730
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author’s notes: Thank you so much to my beta, TS, who helped make this story believable.
September 27, 2026
“So, Hannah hired you finally?” Teddy asks as he sits down at the bar. His hair is a bright shade of violet tonight, and it’s falling into his eyes haphazardly. Lily likes his hair best when it’s like this, all wild and colorful and free. Victoire hates it, a fact she makes known as often as possible. For the most part, Teddy’s taken to wearing his hair short and brown ever since he and Lily’s oldest cousin got back together last year. Lily misses the vibrant colors, but she doesn’t think that’s something she’s supposed to say out loud.
She pulls out a glass from under the counter and fills it, half with Firewhiskey and half with lime juice. It’s been Teddy’s favorite drink since he was sixteen, and she’s been able to make it since she was six. Placing it on the counter in front of her, she leans over the counter and gives her god-brother a kiss. “She had to break eventually. I haven’t stopped pestering her about giving me a job here since I was kid. You know she likes me best.” The last statement is only half a joke. Hannah Longbottom, Professor Longbottom’s wife and one of her parents’ oldest friends, has a soft spot for Lily the size of a Hippogriff. Lily knew that Hannah would give her just about anything she wanted, within reason. So when Lily realized that she could actually get paid to hang around at the Leaky and talk to its strange customers, about the age of ten, she got the idea stuck in her head and has been pursuing it ever since.
He flashes her a smile, downs the drink, and says, “Lily-Lu, I think everybody likes you best.” He’s laughing when he says it, and she has to laugh too, because she knows he’s joking, even if she wishes it were true. For the most part, everyone likes either Victoire best, with her long, strawberries-and-cream tresses and her remnants of Veela charm, or James best, with his wild manner and his easy confidence. If not those two, then Rosie with her off-the-charts intelligence and quick defiance or Lucy with her sugar-sweet countenance and her smile that melts hearts. Lily knows what she’s up against in her family, and she knows that being born second-to-last pretty much made her second-to-last overall.
“Anyway,” he shatters the silence by breaking eye contact a moment before he breathes out the word. That’s been happening a lot, lately, but Lily’s learning to ignore it. It’s not like they mean anything, those stutter-stop moments when she can feel her heart beating in her throat. If they did, Teddy would’ve done something about them by now. “Have you seen Vic? She was supposed to meet me at George’s shop an hour ago and she never showed. I was really hoping she’d be in here and not still shopping. Please tell me I’m not wrong?” He pulls a face like an injured puppy dog and Lily fleetingly wonders if his father’s lycanthropy really wasn’t genetic. She laughs at him, a high pitched screech that her brothers always make fun of her for, and shakes her head.
“Sorry, honey, she hasn’t been here since this morning,” she gathers her red hair up on top of her head as she says this and pulls it into a loose, messy bun. It’s time to clean the bar up from the day time mess and try to make it semi-respectable for the nighttime crowd. For having the job for only two weeks, she’s quite good at what she does. Not that this placates her mother at all. Ginny Weasley has yet to forgive her youngest child for not following in the her hallowed steps and taking the Harpies up on their offer. Lily tries to point her finger at Uncle Charlie every chance she gets, but her mother considers Charlie’s job legitimate, as he’s at least using his flying skills. Lily doesn’t see herself as a barmaid, anyway. She’s a struggling artist, she just doesn’t like the idea of the struggling part.
“Shite,” Teddy curses, his voice low. He watches as Lily begins cleaning the dishes and setting candles out on the various booths around the Leaky. She can feel his eyes on her, which in turn makes her skin heat up and her face turn red. This has happened a million times before, and most of the time she hides in the shadows until she’s able to control herself. Thanking Merlin for the horrible lighting in the bar, she turns to face Teddy and looks at him expectantly. He grins in response, “Have any pieces to show me?” he asks, and she knows he’s only looking for a way to past the time. But he’s always been pretty interested in her work, and she’s going to gander a guess that he really does want to see what she’s been working on during the slow hours behind the bar.
“Sure,” she replies, using her wand to gather a few of her latest pieces from the storage closet. One of them is of him, with wild turquoise hair and eyes the color of lilac. He’s laughing at something out of the frame and running a hand through the sloppy hair. Teddy smiles when he sees it, holding it just a little too long. “Do you like it?” she asks, knowing he’ll be honest.
He looks her golden eyes and smiles widely, just like his picture, “Very much so.”
January 11, 2027
“Lorcan! Lysander! If the two of you do not stop playing with my dish rag I’m going to wring it out over both your heads!” Offering to babysit her godmother’s seven year old twins was probably not the smartest thing Lily could do. Offering to babysit them inside the Leaky Cauldron during the Christmas Season at lunchtime was sheer suicide. She has to, though, because it’s Luna and Rolf’s seventeenth anniversary and she isn’t about to let the day go uncelebrated. She catches both the twins and pulls them into the kitchen by their ears.
“Hey Hannah?” she calls out, looking for the plump, maternal witch. When she spots a round bum and long blonde curls she smiles and brings the boys over to her matron, “Would you mind teaching these buggers how to cook?” Normally, Lily would be afraid to ask her boss to take over babysitting duties, but Hannah loves the boys so much she gathers them up and smiles.
“’Course not, Lily-Lu. Go take care of my customers, I’ll take care of these two sprouts!” Hannah’s always been a very cheery woman, and Lily can’t really wrap her head around the fact that she was tortured close to insanity while at Hogwarts and had to deal with her mother’s death at the tender age of sixteen. Nodding her head, Lily disappears back through the door and walks straight into a customer. Just as she’s about to apologize profusely, she realizes it’s only Teddy and laughs.
“Sorry about that, Ted,” she says, pushing off of his broad shoulders and finding her feet, “I’ve been chasing the twins all morning. It gets a bit tiring.”
Teddy laughs and grabs her arms to steady her, “Just wait until you have a few of your own. You’ll never rest.” He says it like he knows what he’s talking about, and maybe after years of babysitting the Weasley-Potter children he does. For a moment, she contemplates what type of father Teddy would make. The moment ends the moment he pulls away from her and sits down at the stool. She’s jerked back to reality and finds her way behind the counter, pulling out the Firewhiskey and lime juice.
“I hear James and Deanna are getting married,” Teddy begins, conversationally. It’s the biggest news in the Weasley family since Dominique announced she was gay, so naturally it’s all anyone’s been talking about since it happened yesterday afternoon. Personally, Lily’s shocked her brother actually realized he’s supposed to ask Deanna to marry him before planning the entire thing himself. James doesn’t usually ask for permission. She’s happy for him, though, even if she thinks Deanna’s a bit of a prude, and she’s thrilled about hosting the engagement party in a few months at the Burrow. “Any idea how it happened?”
Lily shakes her head, wild red dancing across the bar like a muggle whore and landing haphazardly on her shoulders. Teddy likes her hair best when it’s free, something he’s never told her, and he’s suddenly overcome with a strange desire to touch it. He reaches out, lets his hand linger in the air for a moment as her hair falls over her shoulders, and then pulls back, as if burned, the moment he touches a curl. “He won’t talk about it,” she states, ignoring whatever it is that just passed between them. If there’s anything to ignore, that is. A part of Teddy thinks the entire moment was all in his head.
“Do you think he’s hiding something?” Lily asks, a moment later. Normally, it’s Al who asks questions like this, pushing the envelope just far enough that he can get to the truth without stepping on anybody’s toes. Lily’s a very observant girl, a trait she gets from her godmother, but she isn’t the type of person to dig deeper than necessary. For the most part, she tends to take things as she sees them, she just happens to see them better than most people.
However, James is her brother, and Lily’s been trying to protect him for years. Al and Rosie may be the ones who clean up his messes and try to delay punishment, but Lily’s spent most of her life trying to keep people from getting angry when they realize they’re the butts of her brother’s jokes. “I mean, Deanna’s happy, so it’s not like he forced her into it, or anything. But if it were anything else he’d be bloody insufferable, bragging about it and showing off Dee’s ring like it’s one of Uncle Charlie’s dragons.”
Teddy takes a sip of the drink she’s placed in front of him and looks at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Sometimes, you don’t need to brag about someone being in love with you. Sometimes, the fact that they’re in love with you is enough.” He should be talking about Victoire, but neither one of them is sure that he is.
October 6, 2027
“Hannah, why is it so bright in here?” Lily’s voice is laced with cobwebs and stale wine, but she’s too lazy to brew the hangover potion and she’s not about to insult her potion making skills enough to floo Scorpius and ask for some of his. Dominique will probably bring some over when she wakes up, but that could be hours from now. So Lily decides to do things the muggle way and pours herself some coffee. The coffee maker is always on at the Leaky now days, ever since Hannah accidentally gave a patron muggle coffee instead of the wizarding brew back in 2003 and the man was so in love with the stuff he told all of his friends how much better the muggles are at making coffee. Now, they’re actually able to get away with charging more for muggle coffee than wizarding coffee, which is always a plus.
“It’s not that bright, dearie,” Hannah replies from inside the kitchen. It figures that she’d be wide awake and working already. Lily doesn’t think the poor woman’s ever called out sick, even on the days she gave birth. It’s not like Hannah’s hangover is any weaker than Lily’s, but, then again, she probably keeps vials of hangover potion on hand for events like last night, when the eldest Potter child finally flew the coop.
Last night was interesting, to say the least, and Lily still isn’t sure if everything she thinks happened really did happen, but she doesn’t think she could make it up if she tries. Instead, she holds the memory close and tries to figure out what it means. She remembers Teddy’s lips on the shell of her ear and the skin of her nape, sinking into that spot where her neck meets her collar bone and her freckles give way to pure, milky paleness. She remembers Teddy pulling back the moment her body responded, moving away as if shocked and looking around to make sure no one noticed. He sat there startled while she clumsily pulled away, muttering over and over “You best leave, now, Lily, because…” He breaks off but Lily already knows how the statement ends: because he didn’t know what else to say, most likely, and Teddy’s nothing if not amazing with words.
She keeps playing the scene over and over again in her head, the moment frozen out of context so she can’t remember what happened before or after. It’s not the moment she wants to remember, because it’s making her headache worse as she tries to establish a meaning behind it, but she knows it’s the moment that’s going to stay with her long after James has returned from his honeymoon and Deanna’s figured out that she’s pregnant.
The scene is on replay all day. It’s constantly drowning out the quiet lull of the Leaky on the cold autumn day and the consistent clatter of glasses as people order drinks and finish drinks and throw galleons down as they go on their way. It isn’t until well after three that any of the other Weasleys decide to brave the day and bring her hangover potion. She’s expecting Dominique, but it’s Teddy who shows up. He stands in the doorway of the pub like he’s afraid to come in, rain pouring down behind him and making the whole thing look like the black and white noir movies Aunt Petunia’s so very fond of.
She musters up all the Gryffindor courage she supposedly has and forces a smile at him, even though he’s the last person she wants to see right now. He breathes, visibly, a sigh of relief and she watches as his features go from their natural shaggy, caramel brown hair and gray eyes to a more relaxed shade of turquoise blue and lavender. Teddy’s always been a fan of bright colors, and she can’t remember a happy moment that doesn’t include his wild blue locks falling gracelessly into his eyes while he’s laughing.
“Rough night?” he asks, the humor in his voice obviously forced, as far as she’s concerned. She nods her head and takes the vial he’s holding in his outstretched hand. Downing it without a chaser, which shows just how much she’s been drinking since graduation, she pauses to let the potion sink in and then pulls out the Firewhiskey and lime.
“Lily,” he begins, forgoing the usual nickname and the fake sincerity he’s usually so very good at, “Last night…” he trails off because no matter what he says next he’s going to hurt her, and they both know how much he hates doing that.
Even if he does it every day just by doing nothing.
“Last night my big brother got married to a girl he’s already knocked up and you got a little drunk,” Lily clarifies, her voice surprisingly strong despite the sinking feeling in her stomach and the nausea she knows has nothing to do with her hangover. “That’s it. The End. Don’t worry Theodore Remus, I’ll keep your secrets like I always have. Just promise you aren’t breaking your heart as well as mine.” She tries to keep the bitterness out, but it seeps into her voice anyway. “Why her, Teddy?” She doesn’t want to sound broken, but sine he’s the only one that can fix her she figures he has the right to know.
Teddy pauses, looks at her with something like fear in his eyes, like she’s Dad and he’s just done something stupid. Then he swallows, hard, and tells her, “She loves me. She’s been in love with me since she was eight. And I fell in love with her then, too. It’s supposed to happen like this. Even if I can’t follow the damn script properly, all of this has already played out. I don’t have much of a choice here, Lily-Lu, because I can’t back out now. Just because I don’t know who it is I’m sleeping next to anymore. Everyone keeps saying how we were destined in the stars. Think of all the hearts I’d break if I botched this up. I do love her,” she isn’t sure if he’s affirming this for her or for himself, “She’s just difficult sometimes. You know your cousin is an amazing person. Bright, successful, the first Ravenclaw to come out of the Weasley family in generations…”
Lily doesn’t meet his eyes as she says, “I know you always do what you’re supposed to do, Teddy, but don’t you think you’re taking this too far? What about what you want?” She knows he won’t answer the question long before she asks it, so she isn’t surprised when he leaves without saying another word.
Teddy stands up, leaving his drink untouched, and gives a cut nod of his head. He turns and walks towards the door, never opening his mouth.
By the time the rain reaches his head, his hair has turned brown again.
April 17, 2028
“I don’t think you understand the fact that you’re the last person I want to see right now,” Lily measures out the words precisely, making sure they’ve got the same inflection Dominique used when she wrote them down earlier that day. Lily’s never been very articulate when she’s hurt or angry, so she’s relying on her Slytherin cousin’s scathing remarks to get her out of having to actually have a conversation with Teddy.
Unfortunately, this is Teddy, so obviously, that plan fails. He doesn’t miss a beat after hearing this announcement, and instead of walking away, like Lily is hoping, he sits down on the worn stool and stares expectantly at the drink in her hand. For a moment, Lily honestly considers cracking him over the head with it, but being petulant and childish is not going to help her case much. “You’re supposed to say congratulations,” he tells her, his words slurring. Less than twenty-four hours after asking Victoire to marry him, he’s bloody pissed off his arse and talking to another woman. Lily can’t help but wonder what type of marriage Teddy’s getting himself into, and how much he’s going to end up owing Vic ten years from now in divorce settlements. “You’re supposed to ignore everything and pretend you’re actually happy for me.” He almost sounds angry, and Lily wants to ask why, but the word sticks in her throat and she pours herself a shot to force it back down.
The Firewhiskey burns, and Lily remembers why she hates the stuff. She looks at the man she once considered her brother, the man she hasn’t spoken to in more than six months. It hurts to admit that she’s happy to see him, happy to hear his voice directed at her, regardless as to how bitter or angry it sounds. She almost wants to make him laugh, just to hear the sound and know she caused it. But she smothers the impulse behind the dirty dish rag and places the glass down next to Teddy’s instead of throwing it across the room like she wants to. Trying to keep the edge out of her voice, she finally meets Teddy’s eyes and says, “I’m also supposed to have my Happily Ever After. So let’s us not talk about what’s supposed to happen. It isn’t going to change anything.”
Lily’s only seen Teddy really angry three times in her entire life. The first was when Hugo stole her broom in fifth year in an attempt to sabotage the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The second was when Scorpius’ grandfather called Aunt Hermione a mudblood. The third was the day he broke up with Victoire the first time, when he found out she had been cheating on him for almost half a year. All three times, the following things happened. His hair turned red, his eyes turned orange, and his face took on a bone structure so similar to his Great Aunt Bellatrix’s that Uncle Neville refused to look at him for a week.
Right now, Lily knows that Teddy is really angry.
“What the bloody fuck do you want me to do, Lily?” he asks, his tone simultaneously ironic and mocking. “You tell me I’m breaking your heart and then you don’t talk to me for six bloody months. I’m not a damned mind reader, Lily.” He almost sounds like he regrets it, all of it, and Lily’s forced to take a step back and steady herself, because she feels like she’s just been hit with a Crucio. “You’re twenty years old, for the love of Hufflepuff! I was there the day your parents got married. How the bloody fuck were you expecting this to work?” It’s a real question, but she doesn’t have an answer because she’s been asking herself the same question for four years. There’s a look in his sunset eyes that makes Lily wonder if he’s really been thinking about this, about her, and she has to pull her gaze away before she gets burned alive.
“I don’t know,” she mumbles into her hair, eyes looking beyond him to the wall across the room, where Dominqiue is standing with her girlfriend, Kahleigh and her best friend, Scorpius, obviously having heard everything. She catches Dominique’s eye and they look at each other for a good minute, Dominique blatantly trying to tell her something that Lily just can’t seem to understand, “I just don’t know Teddy. But aren’t we supposed to try to make this work?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore,” he tells her, honestly, as his hair goes copper and his eyes change from fiery orange to the deep brown of charcoaled remains. He throws a galleon down in front of her and doesn’t wait for his change. Instead, he stumbles towards the door, trips through the doorway when he notices Dominique, and makes his way out into the fog, making it impossible for Lily to watch him apparated away.
June 1, 2028
“Lily, please put down the liquor?” Rose sounds concerned, but then, Rose always sounds concerned, so Lily doesn’t see what the big deal is. Dominique’s barely able to stand and Kahleigh has that angry look on her face, which means Lily’s favorite cousin has already been caught chatting up some bird and her girlfriend’s gotten jealous. Scorpius is across the room falling over his feet while he and James try not to look like complete idiots. And Freddy’s in the corner talking to one of Teddy’s old friends from Hogwarts, completely oblivious of the fact that she’s six years older than him-and married. From the looks of it, she’s probably one of the most sober people here.
It’s midnight. Her mother once told her that if anything big is going to happen then it’s going to happen at midnight, just so you can’t remember what day it is. The only thing Lily wants is to wake up from this nightmare and pretend the man she’s in love with isn’t getting married to her oldest cousin. That isn’t going to happen, though, so she’s resigned herself to drinking bad Wizarding vodka until her eyes tear and her taste buds decide to take the night off. So far, it’s working. “Rosie, why don’t you go play nurse with Malfoy. I’m sure he’d be much happier with your interference than I am.” With that, Lily walks away, towards the back room. She’s expecting to find solace, but by the time she reaches the door she realizes there’s none to be had back there.
Albus doesn’t normally shag in public places, but with the way Eden’s dressed tonight Lily really can’t blame him. Lily’s always considered Slytherin girls to be the most alluring, because they’re the ones with the devilish grins and the teasing that could make Merlin sin. Lily finds them intoxicating, too, but that’s probably more the alcohol and the fact that she hasn’t had sex in three years than anything else.
She sees Teddy out of the corner of her eye and walks over to him. Victoire isn’t near him, which is odd, because it is their engagement party, after all. Pulling a page from her godmother’s book, Lily decides to state the obvious while everyone else is too afraid of decorum to ask the right questions. “Where’s Vic?” she asks, using every nerve in her body to keep from slurring the words. He hasn’t answered her owls in two months, hasn’t been over for dinner at the Potters except for when she’s working late, hasn’t so much as sneezed in her direction since April, but none of that matters right now. He shrugs, helpless, and she realizes he isn’t even drunk. It’s a cold realization, because the only time Teddy doesn’t drink at parties is when he realizes something’s going to go wrong.
He’s staring at the back room, and Lily wonders if he’s going to yell at Albus for shagging at his engagement party. Then she hears a moan that is most definitely not Eden’s and her blood runs cold. It all happens in slow motion, Teddy moving forward, Lily moving back, the crowd between them and the back door suddenly splitting in two. She’s never seen Teddy so angry before, hair turning every shade of red until finally settling on something akin to the fire of a burning bridge. “Teddy!” she cries, hoping to distract him, hoping that if he just looks at her again she can wake them both up from this horrible dream and he can go back to deluding himself with Victoire while she goes back to nursing a broken heart.
At least then, one of them can pretend that he’s happy.
“Teddy!” she chants his name, over and over again, like she thinks she can save him. He voice dies when his hand turns the knob and a strangled scream comes from the other side. Teddy had wanted a small gathering, only the Weasleys and Potters, his grandmother, his friends from school, and Victoire’s closest friends from Hogwarts and Paris. The smallness of the group was probably a bad idea, now that everyone can hear exactly what’s going on behind the closed door. Roxi cut the music the moment she realized something was wrong, and Lily desperately wants to tell her to turn it back on, but she’s pretty sure it’s too late in the game to try saving face.
“You fucking prick!” Teddy screams, his voice dangerously wild. Lily sees her father flinch at the same time as Andromeda, and she knows that they’re both thinking of Bellatrix Black, the woman Teddy most takes after in looks and temper. “You’re supposed to be her best friend, not her bloody fuck buddy!” Lily resists the urge to run in there and try to fix things, but James doesn’t-James, who’s always been Teddy’s best friend, even with the six year age difference between them. He’s through the back door before Deanna, heavily pregnant and glowing, can stop him.
Lily doesn’t know what happens next. She’s staring at the doorway, close enough to hear everything, but for some reason the sounds don’t compute. There’s more yelling, Victoire with her loud, faux French voice and Michel with his snooty Parisian accent. It’s funny, really, because Lily always thought he was gay. Maybe he is, Lily’s seen her cousin turn more than one man before. James doesn’t yell, mainly because James never yells, but you can tell he’s angry by the way everything seems to be flying off the shelves. Tomorrow, Lily’s going to have to clean all of that up. She tries to focus on that, but she can’t bring herself to care.
Teddy doesn’t say anything more. He throws Michel out of the room and stares at Victoire expectantly, waiting for her to take his ring off her finger. She does so with as much dignity as she can muster, which isn’t very much considering she’s barely dressed and in the same room as her mother and father. When she’s handed it over to him, Teddy turns on his heel and walks away, maintaining an easy confidence even after he walked in on his fiancé having sex with another man.
Lily wants to run after him, really, but Albus grabs her before she can. “Let him be, Lily-Lu,” her brother warns, rubbing circles on her back as James comes up behind her and wraps her in his arms, “Let him be.” She doesn’t want to, but she knows it’s for the best.
July 12, 2028
Teddy is upset. And whenever Teddy’s upset he goes to the one place where he knows he doesn’t have to talk to anyone: Uncle Charlie’s dragon reservation. He’s gone hours after he ends his relationship with Victoire and he stays gone for over a month. There’s no owls, no Sunday dinners, nothing but a floo-call from Uncle Charlie well past three in the morning informing them that Teddy’s just arrive and he doesn’t look good at all. So Teddy’s upset and runs away and Lily’s left to pick up the pieces.
The first thing she does is talk to Dominique, because this is usually the first thing she does regardless of the situation. Despite the five year age difference, Dominique has always been her favorite cousin. Not Hugo, who’s only three months younger than her, or Louis, who is only a year older, but Dominique, who was a fifth year Slytherin Prefect the day Lily was sorted into Gryffindor. Dominique tells her that Victoire’s a mess, but she thinks the theatrics are just for show. Lily knows she’s probably right, so she floos to Victoire’s flat with a bottle of rum and a box of chocolate and knocks on her door impatiently. The blonde answers and screams and cries and then admits that “I never really loved him, anyway.”
It takes every ounce of willpower for Lily not to slap her.
After Victoire’s taken care of, Lily can go back to fixing herself. She knows Teddy will come back, eventually, but she doubts he’ll be coming back to her. She spends three weeks forcing herself to let him go before she realizes that’s never going to happen. By the time he shows up in the middle of July, she’s trying not to count all the minutes he’s been away. “Hey Lily-Lu,” he greets, walking through the door of the Leaky like he owns the place, like he’s only been gone for one day and not forty-two. He sits down on his favorite stool and watches her create his Firewhiskey Lime with practiced ease. She’s pretty sure she’d be able to make that drink in her sleep, but that doesn’t mean she’s complaining.
“How was Romania?” she asks, like he went there for vacation and not to purge himself of the only woman he’s ever known carnally, the only woman he thought he was supposed to ever love. He looks like he’s rid of her, now, like the ghost of her won’t haunt him. Lily hates thinking about how easily Victoire ensnared him, time and time again. She wants to blame the girl’s beauty, but she knows Teddy isn’t like that. It was most likely his own foolish sense of duty. He always was too much of a Hufflepuff for her to stomach, sometimes.
“It was cold,” he admits, and suddenly the smile becomes fixed and she knows that’s about to come next. “How is she?” For a moment, Lily wants desperately to lie and tell him that Victoire is miserable, heartbroken, unable to function. But Louis says his oldest sister has had a different guy every day this week, and Lily’s not about to tell Teddy something that she can’t prove. Wiping down the counter, and hoping that’ll waste enough time for him to forget he ever thought he loved the blonde Weasley, she shrugs nonchalantly.
“She’s fine,” and she knows that’s all he wants, but even if it isn’t, that’s all he’s going to get. She’s pretty sure enough hearts have been broken over all of this.
“Maybe I should go talk to her,” Teddy muses, aloud, and Lily understands what he and Uncle Charlie were talking about in Romania. They were talking about Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin, Teddy’s mother and the only woman Uncle Charlie ever loved. It’s disgusting, how incestuous everything seems to be now days, but it’s even more disgusting that Teddy thinks he’s going to make Uncle Charlie’s mistakes if he lets the first woman he fell in love with walk away.
“No,” Lily states, her voice so firm that saying that word feels like landing a punch, “You should not go talk to her. In fact, I doubt you should ever talk to her again. She isn’t your redemption ticket, Teddy, and she sure as hell isn’t the woman you want her to be. She’s put you through hell, time and time again. She’s cheated on you, demeaned you, and for a few minutes there I actually thought she was going to tell you Michel is the better shag. Don’t you realize what she’s put you through? Why the bloody fuck should you go through that again?” She doesn’t realize her voice is growing steadily louder until she’s screaming the last word and making every sound in the Leaky besides her voice stop. She has the decency to blush, but she refuses to apologize for being right.
Teddy stares at her for a moment, lost, hurt, confused. “She’s all I’ve ever known,” he fumbles, looking at Lily like he needs someone to show him the way, “What am I supposed to do?”
She doesn’t stutter. She’s expecting to, because this is probably the most important moment of her life and she feels like every ounce of logic in her body has decided that this is the moment to go on holiday. She feels her hands shake and her body tremble as she places her hand on the back of Teddy’s head and pulls him in close enough to taste. “You should do something that’ll make you happy,” she tells him, like it’s scripted, like there’s no possible chance that he’ll pull away.
Teddy hesitates for a moment, and Lily wants to yell at him for not following the script. But this has to be his choice, and she isn’t going to force him to love her, like Victoire tried to. He hesitates, his breath ghosting her lips and a look of want in his turquoise eyes, and then he stops hesitating. For the first time in his entire life, Teddy’s actually making a move. It’s so funny Lily would laugh, if it weren’t for the fact that she can’t register anything other than his lips against hers, his hand on her small of her back, and the awkward way the table is jutting into her hip bone.
Scorpius’ catcalls pull them apart, after which Teddy flips off his cousin and Lily blushes deep red. “Took you two long enough,” the blond comments, “I was beginning to wonder if inability to make a move was genetic in the Weasley family.” Lily swats him in the head as soon as he’s close enough and Scorpius feigns injury. He rubs the back of his head for a moment before looking at his older cousin and smirking. “I was going to suggest lunch, but I’m pretty sure you have better things to do right now. Dinner? At seven? Rosie’s cooking, of course, so you don’t need to bring those anti-poison potions you always mock me with.”
Teddy lets out a laugh, the crazy, barking laugh Andromeda often cries over, and ruffles Scorpius’ hair. “Tell Rosie I’ll bring dessert, okay?” he offers. Scorpius nods and walks out, waving goodbye to Lily as he makes his way to the door.
“Take care of him, yeah?” Scorpius asks, turning back when he reaches the doorway. He stands there, staring at both of them, and Lily doesn’t have any choice but to smile. Because it’s her that’s going to take care of Teddy, now, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been happier.
November 29, 2028
It’s her Uncle Bill’s fifty-eighth birthday party and everyone who is a Weasley or a Potter, is dating a Weasley or a Potter, or so much as knows a Weasley or a Potter is crammed into the overflowing Leaky Cauldron. Lily’s serving drinks and Teddy’s telling a joke and Uncle Charlie’s almost smiling, which is so rare it’s making Lily’s heart break. Victoire’s sitting across from Roxanne, her hand drawing circles on the inner part of her date’s leg and Lily pauses in making the Pumpkin Toxin to wonder if she even knows the man’s last name. It’s not that she thinks poorly of Victoire for her constant string of different lovers, it’s just that she wishes Victoire would find someone that could make her happy. Lily always respected her oldest cousin, because Victoire does what she wants, and damn the rest of the world. But sometimes Lily thinks she’s purposefully cutting herself off from love, even when Teddy was involved, because she doesn’t think she’s capable of the emotion. Or commitment.
“So you finally got him,” Dominique muses, as she walks over to the bar to help carry more drinks over to the table, “Now what?”
“To be honest, I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Lily admits, watching Teddy as Victoire’s date pulls her in for a kiss. She’s expecting a reaction, jealousy or anger or anything to prove to her that Teddy’s simply settling for Lily because he can’t have the better Weasley girl. Instead, the Metamorphagus is talking to James about baby Arthur’s newest toy broom and watching her with tenderness in his eyes. After she sets the glasses down in front of everyone, she walks over to him and kisses his cheek, sweetly. He grabs her around the waist and pulls her into his lap, effectively upsetting the entire table.
“Theodore Lupin!” her Uncle Bill’s voice is unmistakable, even in this crowd, “Take that loose woman you’re with upstairs if you’re going to do things like that!” The laughter in his voice proves that he’s slightly drunk, but it’s nice to know he doesn’t hate Lily, even if she did take away Victoire’s Prince Charming.
Her father pipes up, also inebriated and wanting to join in on the fun. “Are you calling my daughter loose, Bill Weasley?” he asks, with mock indignation. “Just because she’s a redhead doesn’t mean she’s loose.” He looks at Lily’s mother and pauses, as if thinking about it, “Then again, maybe it does.”
Lily’s mum catches the joke and smacks her husband in the back of the head, while all five brothers pretend to give him death glares. Eventually, Uncle Ron can’t hold it in, and they all end up guffawing over their soups and salads. Grandmum and Aunt Hermione both roll their eyes affectionately and Lily smiles at the sight. She’s about to stand up again and start serving the next course when Teddy pulls her tight into his arms and kisses the skin behind her ear. “I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with you, Lily-Lu,” he confesses, “I’m sorry it took so long.”
Lily smiles at him and settles into his arms. “It’s okay,” she assures him, watching as Rosie and Roxanne go to get the next course, “I got what I wanted, in the end.”
“Yeah,” James adds, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. Deanna’s pregnant again, which means no alcohol for either of them, “I always said she should’ve been in Slytherin.”
Lily smirks and Dominique smiles. “She did learn from the best, after all. Remember what I had to do to get you?” she asks Kahleigh, and the other girl just smiles. “It was second year and…” Lily settles onto Teddy’s lap and listens to the story unfold, perfectly willing to get lost in the story of another’s Happily Ever After, now that she finally has one of her own.