Archive of Our Own ^beta

i.

Uncle Percy’s old room smells of fresh laundry, Dusting Charms, and book mould, when James drops his duffel bag onto the bed. He’s not spent much time here, usually forced to share with Al in Uncle Ron’s old room as children or, as he got older, tending to take the short Floo back home instead of staying over at The Burrow. It’s small, with a desk against the only window, a narrow twin bed, a closet stuffed with what looks to be the entirety of his Nan’s Christmas decorations, and a bookshelf in the corner overflowing with tomes.

"Now those sheets are clean," Nan says, ruffling up pillows between her hands, "So don't you worry about them."

"Thanks, Nan."

"Oh no no," she continues, and now she's come over to put her hands on either side of his face. He can feel his ears go red. "Thank you . You are a godsend, Jem. We can't be more thrilled that you're here."

It's all he's been hearing for the past month.

"Very good of you, Jem," Dad said two Thursdays ago over the Potter family dinner. "Helping out your grandparents like this."

"Better you than me," Mum said, through a mouthful of sprouts.

James kept his head down for the most part, watching Al pitch carrots off his own plate and onto Lily's while she wasn't looking, and not paying any attention at all to the conspicuously empty chair to his left.

"Now," Nan says, tutting and patting his cheek some more even as she had to reach to do it. "How about a spot of tea?"

Dad and Mum come round after tea, ostensibly to see how things are coming on but James knows Mum just likes to spy and Dad likes to have a square of Nan's blueberry crumble. They round the hearth, Dad with his pie, while James finishes up with Grandad in the mudroom off the kitchen.

"Deep breath in." He watches as Grandad's chest moves with the motion, eyes on his face to see if anything hurts. "And out."

"Heard about the boy," Grandad says, looking up at James all guileless. "His loss, Jem."

"Mm. Roll your sleeve up for me."

"Never liked that Trevor."

"Tamir."

"Hm?"

"Tamir, Grandad. You met him at Vic's – er – at the Christmas party. Remember?"

Grandad looks out the big windows of the mudroom into the dusk of the day. At both their feet are mismatched pairs of Wellingtons, overturned plant pots, and watering cans. James can hardly think of family without this room, without Christmases spent stripping off mittens with his cousins, summer nights watching fireflies with Victoire on the old wicker couch.

"No," he says and then: "Still never liked him."

James can't help his laugh as he hauls Grandad up and back through the kitchen to the den, where the fire is still crackling, and Nan is talking about her last trip to Diagon Alley and the bloody prices back when I was a girl the Caramel Knut treats were only a Knut .  

Dad takes him over to the kitchen alone before they go to leave.

"This is a very good thing you're doing, James."

James swallows, nods. There's a part of him that, despite himself, will always thrive off making his father proud. "I'm happy to help."

"The whole family appreciates it," Dad says and then, smile gone wry. "Hermione was worried she would have to come over to convince them to get an at-home Healer, once your mum and I couldn't get through to them."

There are certain open secrets in every family. For the Weasleys it was simple: Dad was Nan's favourite in-law and Aunt Hermione was her least favourite.

"She asked me personally to thank you."

"I was free anyways," James says, grinning himself now. "Besides, it's worth living here just for Nan's cooking. I'll be a stone heavier next time I see you."

Dad laughs. James shares Dad's hair, his hands, his tendency for brash outbursts that no one asked for, and enough melanin to allow him and Al to stand out from the rest of their family of sunburners.

Then, because he's Dad, he puts his hand on James' neck and says: "I'm proud of you, Jem." His big green Savior of the Wizarding World eyes are earnest. Dad loves telling all of them how proud he is all the time. Dad treats one of them offering to help Nan clean up after tea the same as how he did the day James graduated from the Academy.

"Alright, alright," James says, wrenching out of his grip. "Enough of that."

His parents disappear with a whirl of green flame. Nan is fluttering around the kitchen, wrapping the last of the loaf in a tea towel, her long skirt brushing the floor. Grandad has fallen asleep in his chair, his mouth agape. When they were kids, Louis and he spent an afternoon pulling weeds from the vegetable garden after they were caught throwing Cockroach Clusters across the room into Grandad's mouth.

"Can I help clean up?"

"Nonsense! Another slice of crumble, dear?"

James grins, sitting himself at the barn table. "If you insist."

As his Nan drops a slice of crumble off, complete with a healthy dollop of whipped cream sliding off the top to pool around the plate, she puts her arms around his shoulders from behind. She smells of the roast they had for tea, of blueberries and cinnamon, of dirt and vegetables. Her face presses into his hair: "I can't thank you enough, Jem."

Another secret: While his Nan would go to her grave swearing up and down that she loved all her grandchildren equally, everyone knew that James was her favourite. 

It makes sense, James thinks later that night watching the moon play tricks with shadows on the ceiling of Percy's old room, that everyone would think it was a noble thing to do. He can imagine his aunts discussing it over tea –

"Did you hear our Jem has offered to help Grandad –"

"A generous soul!"

"Just like his father!"

"Keeping Grandad out of the hospital, such a relief to Nan-"

"Oh, she's thrilled."

- assuming he couldn't have any reason to kick it at his grandparents for a few months, that his only reasons could be self-sacrificing. And sure, yes, a part of James is taken by the nobility of it. A part of James glowed with pride, with a certain joy, that he could solve the family's unsolvable problem. Grandad needs a Healer to administer his daily medication and nurse him back to health after the accident? Look no further!

But a different part, larger or smaller depending on the day, whispers to him the truth. They remind him of that night at his Nan's eightieth birthday and how the punch and the stars and the boy next to him made him say very stupid things. They remind him that when you do something bad, you must do something good to make up for it.

James suspects he will be doing good for a very long time before the guilt in his stomach melts away.

The best part about living with Nan and Grandad is the food. While James never exactly grew up starving, neither Mum or Dad are known for their culinary excellence. But Nan, Merlin, every day he wakes to the smell of bacon and fresh buttery scones. She packs him lunches with Cooling Charms on them, fresh salads and thick cut ham on sandwiches. Her dinners always include at least two courses and a dessert, Merlin, the desserts. James would happily spend the rest of his life living out of a duffel bag in Percy's old room just to have his Nan's raspberry and almond trifle thrice a week.

That being said, the worst thing about living with Nan and Grandad is that the rest of his family knows about Nan's cooking and drops in all the bloody time.

"Hey James," Hugo says one morning from the sitting room when James is still damp from the shower and searching for his textbook on substance abuse. He stops short.

"Hi," he says slowly. "Did you stay over last night?"

"Nah," Hugo says, waving a hand. "Dad finished off the last of the Spider-Os before he left for work. Nan's making me an omelette."

"That's nice of her."

And then there was little Fred and Roxy, who James comes home to find in the garden one afternoon after a shift at the clinic. They have a full picnic spread, by the look of things, and are arguing about Thestrals. Grandad is sitting in one of the kitchen chairs next to them, reading the Daily Prophet .

"James!" Roxy shouts, running for him. She grabs onto his hand, pulling and swinging in that way that all children seem to be predisposed to. "Freddie told me that Thestrals eat humans. Is that true?"

"Yes," James says, "Especially little girls."

"Woah," Roxy says, eyes wide and then: "That's so cool ."

Al stops by every Tuesday night for Nan's baked ziti. He brings Muggle coolers for Grandad and James, and they all sit on the back porch to drink them.

"Heard from Ted?" Al asks, after Grandad has long since passed out. James performs a Vitals Charm every few minutes to keep an eye on him.

Carefully: "He's sent me a few letters."

"No one's seen him," Al says, pulling a sip from his White Claw. "'Cept Dad, but he has godfather privilege."

James hums. He focuses on his own can of White Claw, and not on Al's words or the concept of Teddy Lupin.

"Bloody idiot though." James looks over and Al's grinning. "Merlin. Imagine pissing off Uncle Bill that hard. I'd go into hiding too, if it were me." His grin fades. "Weird though. Thought they were all in love and shit. Did he say anything to you?"

James has never been able to lie, can't stomach it, can't keep a secret to save his life – every year he blew Christmas presents, unable to handle another moment wherein Lily didn't know about her incoming Wacky Witch doll.

He treads carefully, "There were definitely other things going on."

"No shit."

They get Grandad into bed together. Nan wakes up to help them and then plies a tipsy Al with more cakes and pies than one man needs.

It's not just the grandkids though, shameless as they are. It takes living at Nan's three weeks before he finds the house completely silent and empty; the grandparents at St. Mungo's for Grandad's full checkup and James finally doesn't have class or clinic to keep him occupied. He sits in the den with one of his textbooks and –

Crack .

"Hello?" Uncle Ron says from the mudroom. "Anyone in?"

James sighs, closes his book, and goes to put the kettle on.

"So," Uncle Ron says, later, after they've discussed the Chudley Cannons, Grandad's health, and How's Harry Doing Then; he's lounging, his feet up in a chair and a plate of Nan's Bakewell tarts next to him. He takes a big slurp of his tea. "How's the boy?"

"Huh?"

"Tamir, right? Tamal? One of those."

"Tamir – uh. Um. We broke up." James takes a sip of his tea. "Two months ago."

Ron blinks twice and then: "Fuck, sorry Jem. There's so many of you and you all have your own lives and your partner's lives, and I try to keep track. Hermione has this map mind thing in the kitchen where she's drawn out the entire Weasley clan but I could have sworn I saw 'Dumped' – I mean, er, 'No Longer Together' – next to Al's name."

James clears his throat. Aunt Hermione's impressively specific questions at holidays suddenly make a lot of sense. "That's okay."

"His loss," Ron says, loyally, and James grins.

"Thanks."

"Must be something in the water, eh? You and Tamir, and that bloody tosser Rose was seeing seems to have finally taken leave. And that's not even mentioning Teddy and Victoire. Whew. Bad season for romance."

James tries a laugh, changes the subject: "I forgot to ask, Uncle Ron. What did you need Nan for? I can pass on a message for her."

"Oh!" Ron brings his foot down from the chair. His face reminds James of the toys he grew up with, expressive. "I stopped by for you, actually. I wanted to ask your opinion about something."

"Sure."

Ron hunkers down, one leg on either side of his chair, and looks James square in the eye: "Do you think your Aunt has anxiety?"

"I-" James' desire to agree, vehemently, is only stopped by the manners that Mum shoved down his throat his entire life. "Um. Which one?"

Exasperated: "Jem."

"If I'm being honest," James says, slowly, "I think you, Aunt Hermione, and my dad should all talk to someone. You know. A professional someone. About how you all lived in a tent when you were eighteen and defeated Voldemort and those sorts of things."

Ron waves his hand around, dismissively. "Nevermind our collective trauma. Rose says you're taking Muggle classes about brains and stuff. Hermione says she knows how to handle her own stress levels, but I'm going to be honest. I'm not so sure she should have to."

James would really love to get back to the part about how half his family are poster children for post-traumatic stress disorder but fry one fish at a time: "There are a few different routes you can do to help manage general anxiety," James says. "Potions or Muggle medication. Or therapy, specifically this type called CBT- do you want me to write this down?"

Ron looks a little overwhelmed. "I hate acronyms. I find them harder to remember."

James laughs and goes to respond when –

Crack .

They both look over their respective shoulders, Ron into the living room – "Is that Mum and Dad back already?" - James through the window over the sink where he sees a tall figure crossing the field, donned in a leather jacket and grey joggers tapered at the ankle.

"Shit," James says, pushing away from the table and backing away from the window.

"Oh," Ron says, peering around James. "Wonder what he's doing here."

Teddy hasn't seen him yet, right? He can't have. James looks around for an escape. He wouldn't make it up the stairs in time but –

"Jem," Ron says, slowly. "Why are you hiding in the pantry?"

"Don't tell him I'm here. Please."

James closes the door to the pantry, holding his breath. He hears the creak of the back stairs next, followed by the gentle whistle of the back door being pushed open. He closes his eyes to be able to hear better, his nose overtaken with the smell of the drying herbs tied to the ceiling.

Teddy wasn't supposed to be able to follow him here.

"Alright Ted?"

"Hey Uncle Ron," Teddy says. It's been over a month since James heard him speak last, at Nan's birthday, when Teddy had – I'll get us back inside, I'll keep you safe, Jem – "I'm okay. How are you?"

"Oh you know. Kids, work, taxes." There's a shuffle outside the pantry door. "What brings you around? Looking for Nan?"

"No," Teddy says, a laugh in his throat. "No, I can't imagine I'm high on her list of people to see right now."

It's quiet. James slips a knuckle in between his teeth, bites down. After another second Ron says, "I'm told time heals all wounds. Sounds like codswallop to me, but. Worth a shot."

Teddy laughs, quiet, says: "I'm looking for Jem, actually. I've been trying to track him down the last couple of weeks. He's a hard one to catch."

"Oh," Ron says. James prays to Dumbledore and all his other Chocolate Frog Card Characters that Ron is not doing his obvious tell where his ears go red and he starts pointing a lot. "Jem? Oh he's – out. Went with his grandparents to St. Mungo's, I think. Haven't seen him."

Teddy is quiet for a second. "So you're having tea by yourself?"

"Yep."

"Two mugs of tea, all by yourself?"

"…yep."

That night, the last night James saw Teddy, the night when he said all those terrible things that made everything fall apart, Teddy had looked at him a long time. Everything was dark and silver in the moonlight and he stared at James. James, impatient and dumb, not knowing how he was going to ruin everything in only a few more minutes, wouldn't let the moment linger:

What?

Your eyes.

What about them, weirdo?

They're so dark. They're reflecting the moonlight.

James swallows, now. He listens, careful, as Teddy says: "If you see him, will you let him know I'm looking for him?"

"Of course."

A few minutes pass before Ron knocks on the pantry door twice, a jaunty tune. James exits feeling rosy around his ears; he keeps his eyes down. Ron gives him a few moments to collect himself.

"Are we going to talk about that?"

"No thanks."

"Okay." Ron sits back down in his seat. "Magpies versus Tornados this weekend. Who do you got your money on?"

"Montrose, obviously," James says, grateful, his heart pounding heavy and steady with the dark, sticky guilt in his stomach.

Ron leaves before they get back from Mungo's. It's a good thing because Grandad is exhausted. He hardly touches his dinner and retreats to the den to nap by the fire once they let him. Nan and James stay at the kitchen table, a shout away, to look over the check-up report.

"Hopefully you can make heads and tails with it, Jem," Nan says, her hands clasped in front of her untouched bowl of strawberries and cream. "It's like a foreign language to me. Merlin, I hate the hospital."

"Me too."

He flips through the notes that have been left by a few Healers, recognizing one as the Head of Potions. It was his least favourite department to work as a resident, due in part to Healer Prewett. He squints to read her scrawl.

"Seems like Grandad's pain potions are being neutralized by the potion for his kidneys. They've decided to decrease his pain potion significantly in order to navigate this." James swallows, tight. "I'll keep notes for them, so we can keep track of how Grandad is feeling day-to-day."

Nan is pale. "I hate the idea of him in pain."

"I do too. Hopefully they won't need to keep him on the medication for his kidneys too much longer. It's more a preventative, to make sure there isn't any infection from the accident, that's all."

Grandad is keeping mum on what happened. All James knows is that Nan came home from looking after little Molly to find Grandad lying on the ground of his shed, bleeding from his stomach, barely alive.

"I don't want him to have to go back there, Jem," Nan says, shaking herself.

"Okay," James says. He doesn't know how to keep his promise, just knows that he's going to. "I'll make sure of it."

Weasley family brunch is the first Sunday of every month.

During James' childhood he remembers Flooing to the Burrow, letting Dad brush ash off him for approximately half a second before bolting away to play in the garden with his cousins. They would get tracked down eventually, as the sun was inching closer and closer to the centre of the sky, and Mum would fill plates for them. James still remembers the first time he got to go through the buffet line himself and pick what breakfast he wanted to eat (mostly a pile of bacon and sausages) before wandering off to sit by Teddy on the floor of the den.

"The worst Sundays," Dad frequently reminisces around the fireplace at holidays, "were the ones when it would rain."

It's one of those days today, as James drives a tuttering Nan and a sleeping Grandad through southern Devon and into Dorset where Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey live. Sunday brunch has long since become a travelling affair, what with Nan and Grandad's health and age, as well as the general diaspora of the Weasleys. Grandad hasn't been able to Floo for a few months now so it's a good thing Dad made them all get Muggle licenses at sixteen. 

James drives with a heavy set of organs. His heart, lungs, stomach, and diaphragm are all terrified that Victoire is going to show up and murder him with nothing but her fingers around his throat. His spleen has deluded itself into thinking Teddy's going to show, which he categorically is not stupid enough to do, and is doing a merry little jig in his ribcage.

"Apparently Louis has a new beau," Nan says. "Hopefully this one is less interested in petty theft than the last one."

James grins despite himself. Louis' dates have become the highlights of these brunches in recent years.

He helps his Nan and Grandad out of the car once they arrive at Uncle Percy's respectable two storey cottage in the Muggle town he resides in outside Dorchester. It has a little wicker couch on the porch and a Muggle post-box next to the door. Dad has three different wards on their family home. You can't see another house for miles around. James is pretty sure it's unmappable, like Hogwarts. Different strokes and everything.

"Yes, come in," Uncle Percy says when they ring the electric box near the door that is either called a doorring or a doorbell, James is never sure. Percy looks like he has had better mornings, no doubt spent without his family. "Everyone's in the conservatory."

James holds his breath while he checks every room for a flash of silver hair. He has a heart attack when he pokes his nose in the kitchen but it's just Dom chatting with Lucy, their hair in two neat braids to their waist.

"Jem!" Dom rolls their sleeve up and shows him a rash. "Can you take a look at this for me? What caused it then?"

No one told him when he graduated from the Healer Academy that he had unofficially become his family's personal medical expert. "How should I know? You allergic to anything?"

"Hazelnuts, maybe."

"Have you had any hazelnuts?"

Dom shrugs. "Don't think so."

"If it doesn't go away in a few days, owl me," James says, reaching for some of the blueberries that Lucy's been snacking on. "Have you seen your brother? Or mine?"

"Lou's new guy is a Ministry man," Lucy says in an undertone. "He's wearing dress robes ."

"Merlin."

James follows the chaos further inward. Most everyone is indeed mingling around the conservatory, standing in little circles talking while Molly, Roxy, and Freddie zoom between peoples' legs. Dad is, inevitably, the only one too polite to avoid Aunt Audrey and so he's standing with her and nodding. He catches James' eye and makes a fuss about having to get over to him.

"My son, sorry," Dad is saying loudly as he crosses the short distance between them and comes to a stop in front of James. "Hi. You've saved my life."

"Glad to hear it. You seen Al?"

"I think he followed Louis and whatsit outside," Dad says, nodding his head to Percy's fenced-in yard. "Have you seen Ron and Hermione?" At the shaking of James' head, Dad sighs, "Please don't make me go back to Audrey. She was just telling me that Gringotts not offering tax-free savings accounts is criminal and I have no idea what it all means."

"Dom has a weird rash in the kitchen? Maybe you could be needed there."

"Sounds good," Dad says, patting James' on the shoulder and passing by him to the kitchen.

James snorts and pushes his way outside.

Al and Louis are indeed outside, smoking under Percy's patio umbrella with a handsome man in navy dress robes. Louis nods when he sees James, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth before saying, "Mate."

"Bloody freezing out here," James says, wishing he hadn't shed his coat in the guest bedroom off Percy's foyer. He turns to the new guy and, figuring if he waited for an introduction he'd be waiting a long time, says, "Hi, I'm James, Louis' cousin."

"Louis has a lot of those," the guy says. On closer inspection he is not necessarily handsome but quite clean. All his features are in the right order and proportion. "It's nice to meet you. The name's Eoghan."

Louis keeps his eye on his cigarette. James can't imagine that Eoghan is going to last much longer than the Floo ride back to his place, but in the spirit of being polite: "How did you two meet anyways?"

"I work in the Office of Marriage Licences and Divorce Filings," Eoghan says, straightening his shoulders. "Louis was there with his sister."

The bottom falls out of James' stomach and guilt spills everywhere, red hot, licking up his lungs and squeezing his ribcage. Unaffected, Al says: "Merlin, that was fast." He stomps out the last of his cigarette and gets to work siphoning the smell from his clothes before Mum throws a fit. "I thought divorces took ages to process?"

"I don't know," Louis says, shrugging. "No one tells me much." Then – "Vic's barely left the house."

"That-" James has to clear his throat. His mouth is so dry, and he can't feel his fingertips anymore. "That's understandable."

Louis looks furtively around him, like a Muggle cartoon character, before saying: "I'm not supposed to tell you guys, but he's giving her everything. She got the house and all their stuff; I think he just took his clothes."

Their "stuff" includes, James knows, the two-storey, 18th century cottage in Cambridge and a three-bedroom flat in Chelsea. James helped them look for places before they got married, measuring room sizes with Teddy while Victoire asked their real estate agent about neighbourhoods.

"Fucking hell," Al says, hushed, then wry: "He must have really wanted out." James thinks he might just die of guilt, right here right now.

"Oi!" They turn to the voice; Uncle Bill is half out of the door, protecting himself from the rain. He's holding a plate of food. "Breakfast is up."

"Coming!"

"That better not be a cigarette, Louis."

"Course not," Louis says, stomping it under his foot nonchalantly. Al and he Vanish their squashed cigarettes so Percy doesn't have a fit and make them all sit through a lecture about littering in other people's backyard. Again.

They file in, Eoghan behind Louis, Al and James bringing up the rear. Bill stops James with a hand to his shoulder as he goes to pass and James' heart stops.

"Jem," he says, "Has Dom showed you their rash? I don't like the look of it."

Oh thank god. "Yeah, it's a bit odd. I told them to keep an eye on it, but I can give them a salve for now. I just have it at home, I'll Floo it over later."

"You're a good kid, Jem," Bill says and excellent, marvellous, James missed the swirling, swelling mess of guilt in his stomach for a second.

All things considered, James gets away with avoiding Victoire for longer than he thought he would.

His work schedule is, in a word, strange – Fucking confusing as fuck , Al had memorably said at the beginning of the term – since he took on part time studies at the Muggle university in town. Classes mean he's part time at the clinic, which means he's in and out of the house at odd hours, which means he's more likely to enter the kitchen and find a relative weeping at the kitchen table on a Tuesday afternoon than he would otherwise be.

"Oh," he says, stupidly.

Victoire straightens up, wiping at her eyes. "Nan's just getting more jarred tomatoes from the cold cellar."

"Sure."

It's odd, standing in his clinic robes, desperate for a shower, while Victoire sits at their grandmother's kitchen table in one of the jumpers Rose made for all of them when she was fifteen. Victoire's is lumpy stripes of peach and baby blue.

"My dad told me you're living here now," Victoire says, looking away, pulling at her hair. "How's Grandad doing?"

"Well," James says over the lump in his throat, the pebble of guilt. "He's well, yeah. They put me up in Uncle Percy's old room."

"Cool."

If Teddy was away, it was James and Victoire who were given leadership responsibility for the younger cousins when they were kids. It almost always ended in a battle and often in tears, Victoire storming off with her baby sister while James stormed off with his.

He hasn't seen her since Nan's birthday.

"There we are," Nan says, stomping into the kitchen with a trail of floating tin cans behind her. "Jem, lovely, I was just going to get lunch started."

"No worries, Nan, I'll leave you two –"

"Nonsense, dear. You'll be tired after your shift."

James sits. Victoire looks worse from up close: swollen eyes and pale skin. Even when they had cousin sleepovers as kids or later, when he would go drinking with her and Teddy, she never had a hair out of place. It makes the pebble in James' throat swell to the size of an apricot.

"Did I hear you were at school again, Jem?" she asks as Nan waves her wand about to start lunch. "Never pegged you for being the academic of the Potters."

"Just a few classes," James says, accepting the basket of bread as Nan passes it to him. "Oh, thank you. My work, the um, the clinic is letting me do part time so I can take courses at the university."

"Our Jem is quite busy," Nan says, taking her seat back up. The knitting bag at her feet appears to be starting a fresh sweater for Christmas. By the colour, a deep maroon, it's Uncle Ron's.  "Always rushing in and out of the house. Wouldn't know where he's headed but for his clothes!"

At Victoire's look he clarifies: "The courses are at the Muggle university. They tend to have a more comprehensive approach to mental health than we do."

"Cool," she says again, indifferent in the way only Aunt Fleur's kids ever managed to pull off. James has long suspected that his and Victoire's rows when they were younger were due in large part to her only reaction to his yelling being an eyeroll. 

"I should probably go check on Grandad," James says, then, grabbing another slice of bread. But Merlin, he's hungry. "I'll pop down for leftovers after, alright Nan?"

He escapes narrowly, a chunk of cheese pressed into his hands along with another slice of bread. James turns the corner to the den and then – pauses. He just. If they're talking about it, he needs to know. He needs to know what Victoire is saying about everything.

"Sorry about that, dear. Have another scone."

"Thanks, Nan. I'm just – I still can't believe this is happening."

"I know, I know."

"I'm so worried I'll bump into him. I can't see him right now."

"Of course not, darling."

"I thought –" her voice breaks then and oh. The apricot pushes against the muscles of James' throat and pushpushpush as it swells to become a Bludger, heavy and metal and unmoving. "I thought we were happy . I thought everything was fine. And then he comes into the kitchen one morning and says it, just says that he – that he wanted –"

"Here, darling."

James didn't hear about the divorce until later. He was at a pub with Al and Hugo, still in his Healer robes, still exhausted from the day and the day before that and his Nan's birthday party the weekend before. Louis arrived halfway through his second pint.

"Sorry lads."

"Late one pays," Al said, grinning, "You know the rules."

"The house is a fucking mess right now," Louis said, dragging a hand through his hair. "I was begging to get out of it, but Maman needed me to set the kettle on and get the spare sheets from the cellar."

"Visitor?"

"You didn't hear?" And it's Hugo who asked then. James darted his eyes to Al and saw the same confusion he felt on his face. "I heard Mum and Dad talking about it last night. They were trying to be quiet so we wouldn't hear, as if we didn't have Uncle George's Ears all over the house."

"For fuck's sake, what?" Al wasn't known for his patience.

"Teddy and Victoire," Louis said, hushed.

James straightened up in his chair. "What about them?"

"They're getting a divorce."

Now, James swallows with difficulty around the Bludger as he hears Victoire say, "I don't know what to do. I hate him. I hate him."

James thinks about the stack of letters he has upstairs that he hasn't replied to. Some are long and some - like the one he received when he got back to the house with Al, drunk and tired and hurt and guilty - are short. All with Teddy's careful handwriting, the same handwriting that he copied as a kid learning his letters, stealing Teddy's G because he liked the way it looked.

He thinks about the one he got that night – I'm at home. Come over. I have to tell you something – and shakes himself, head to toe, before pushing it firmly from his mind. He takes the stairs two at a time to his grandfather's room. 

ii.

Teddy tracks him down at school.

James is sat next to a woman named Marjorie - his usual seat mate because she was nice and took her notes by hand rather than on notebooks like the rest of his classmates, which made James' eyes hurt to look at – when a noise from the back draws the room's attention, a head on a swivel. It's Teddy, tall and expensive looking in a long wool coat. James turns back around, heart in his throat.

"Sorry," Teddy says to Professor Sumner at the front of the room. She dismisses him with a hand, glancing at her watch before turning back to the diagram on the board.

James feels his shoulders go tight as - step step step - Teddy makes his way down the wide, stone stairs toward him. With a soft noise Teddy drops into the open seat to James' right.

"Hey," he says, low.

"Hi."

"Been looking for you."

"Found me."

Teddy sighs, quiet. When James sneaks a glance, he's looking down at James' scrawled handwriting. "I need to speak with you."

"The lecture will be over at quarter past," James whispers, looking back to his notes. Sumner speaks fast and it already takes his brain half a second to convert non-magical vocabulary. "We can talk then, okay?"

Their eyes catch. They're light to James' dark, friendly and familiar.

People stare, later, when Sumner calls it for the afternoon, and they pack their things. Even disgruntled in a lecture hall at Edinburgh University trying to track down someone who's been avoiding him, Teddy is still a knockout. Marjorie keeps sending furtive looks to him, sprawled next to James, chewing on one of James' pencils.

"I thought you broke up with your boyfriend," Marjorie says, in an undertone. She doesn't know Teddy has the best ears in the family and is nosy enough to use them.

"That's my cousin-in-law," James says, matching her tone.

Teddy follows James out. It's raining, natch, so James pulls Teddy into one of the long corridors off his lecture hall. It has high ceilings, high windows, and wicked drafts that seem to find the spaces between James' clothes. It reminds him of Hogwarts.

"So."

Between the classroom and this corridor, James' ability to look at Teddy has not changed. He's still so much – too handsome by half, all strong jaw and sharp cheekbones. Teddy says: "I'm not."

"Not what?"

"Your in-law."

James looks at their shoes next to each other; the old wellies James grabbed before he left the Burrow after breakfast and the polished Chelsea boots Teddy began wearing after he started winning awards for acting. It is easier to tell the shoes, and not Teddy's gorgeous face, what he wants to say, which is:

"That was fast."

"Jem," Teddy says, quick and quiet like it's important. "If you just let me explain."

James raises his chin. He's spent his whole life looking at Teddy, just like this, eyes ever upward. Apparently, he used to say that one day he would be the tall one but it never came true; Teddy can make himself any height he likes and he's always, always , picked just that much taller than James.

"How did you find me anyways? Did Dad tell you?"

"No, look – it doesn't matter."

"Al? I bet it was Al."

"Come home with me," Teddy says and the bottom drops out of James' stomach.

"No," he says, slow, then again fast: "No, Ted, I'm not going to do that."

"Jem –"

"Where are you even living anyway? I heard she got the house and the flat in Chelsea."

"It's – don't worry about it," Teddy says, shaking his head quickly and moving his hand like it was little details, like it was nothing, like the division of his assets from his ex-wife, from James' older cousin, from fucking Icky Vicky , is nothing. "I'm renting a place in Hampstead, Jem, just come over. I'll order food and we can talk about what happened at Nan's – at your grandmother's birthday."

"That would be a very bad idea," James says, stepping away.

Teddy steps forward, "You can't tell me what you told me and then just disappear from my fucking life, James, that's not how it works."

"I didn't disappear," James says, irrational, proud and stupid and all the other fucking Gryffindor qualities his parents passed on solely to him, leaving his siblings to grow up marginally less unhinged. "You've known exactly where I've been the last month."

Teddy wasn't always a good actor. He tended to let his magic speak for him, his hair going red when they were kids and James dropped his Gobstone set into the pond at the back of the house, eyes going green like Dad's when he would sit by the fire and tell the good war stories.

Now, James can't read him when he says, "You want to do it out here, fine. You can avoid me, Jem, but that doesn't change the fact that I left my wife for you."

Shame is a strange thing.

Sometimes it’s a burn, a bubbling, bursting heat in the belly while McGonagall scolds you and your friends for being an asshole to a bunch of Slytherins who didn't deserve it. Sometimes it's a terrible ache, open and sore like the gash across Al's face when he was just twelve and you were supposed to be watching him. Shame isn't the moment, it’s the after moments, the lingering gutting feeling that made James apologize to kids he used to make fun of. It's deciding at fourteen that he would become a Healer, would make up for not knowing what to do but shake and hold Al.

When you do something bad, you must do something good to make up for it. Easy.

This shame is cold. Cold like the river behind Rose and Hugo's, black water turned silver by the moon, Teddy's grin next to him as they pressed their toes into the shallow banks. Shame is freezing inside James like the water and his lungs when Teddy came closer. Shame chattering his teeth, stumbling, unable to get his thoughts out clearly –

I want to kiss you

No no no we can't because you're married

Jem –

If you got – if you were divorced you could kiss me. Then you could kiss me like I've been wanting you to.

- until he stops shivering, stops shaking, and he's unmoving.

"I have to go," James says, turning already, but Teddy has always been fastertallerstronger so he catches the back of James' coat, the camel one he saved up to buy when he was still at the Academy before his placement.

"James-"

"Grandad needs his potions every four hours," James says, glancing at his watch. Teddy doesn't need to know it's only been three. "I have to leave."

"When can I see you?" Teddy is holding tight onto James' wrist. James can feel the beaded bracelet Roxanne made him for Christmas this year digging into his skin. "I'm not tracking you down again."

"I – I don't know."

" Jem ."

"Are you still coming to Al's birthday dinner?" James asks, shaking his wrist from Teddy's grip. Tradition was dinner with the Potters plus Teddy at Al's favourite Muggle restaurant from childhood, some hellish robotic mistake in London called The Rainforest Café. The only thing that's changed since James was a tyke is that now, once dessert is over and Al's opened all his presents, he fucks off to get pissed with his friends.

"Of course, I am."

"Don't say of course," James says, looking at the open collar of Teddy's coat. "You've been missing family things lately."

"I'm the last person the cousins or, Merlin, your grandparents want to see," Teddy says. "But you know that."

James feels the tips of his ears go red. His strategy of hiding out with the one person ex-spouses of family should fear the most, Molly Weasley, has not gone unnoticed. "We can talk after the dinner, okay? We can go to yours and talk. Now, I really do have to go."

Teddy's eyes search his face.

"I'm not lying."

"I know, Jem," Teddy says, soft, and it's like a hole in James' chest, having him this close for the first time since they were in the water. "Okay. We can talk then."

"Okay," James says but he lingers, stupid. He's still got to go through the rain to get to the Apparation point on campus he uses. Teddy is still looking at him.

"You look really – good," Teddy says and –

James turns, walks fast, turns the corner away from Teddy fast and keeps going, the sound of his heartbeat into his ears, hard and loud, so he can't think about Teddy's eyes going liquid around the edges while he looked at James, while he looked at James and liked what he saw. 

Dad is over when James gets back to Nan's. Mum is a shit cook and also, as far as James knows from the shared calendar Hermione made everyone for Christmas that details the entire extended family's whereabouts at any time, in Swansea.

"Hey kid," he says, happily, from his place by the hearth. He's got the Daily Prophet's crossword opened at his knee. Dad's rubbish at the crossword but always tries anyways, half-finished puzzles under mugs on the kitchen table.

"Where's Nan?"

"The note says at the market," Dad says, folding the newspaper over. James sits on the floor, against the couch just across from them, dropping his coursework next to him. "Arthur is in the backyard with his lawn mower."

James laughs.

"Good day in class?"

"Fine." James runs a hand through his hair. After a second, he says, careful: "I saw Teddy."

"Oh right," Dad says, chill, like James' life isn't falling apart at the goddamn seams. "We had lunch and he mentioned he was looking for you. Hope that was okay," and Dad's voice changed at the end there.

"Of course." Teddy, as evident from years of telling his Gran no Jem and I had nothing to do with the bookshelf blowing up Gran, it must have been a Cornish Pixie or summat , has absolutely no problem lying to peoples' faces. Wanker.

"Because he doesn't have many people to turn to, Jem. We can't cut him out."

"I wasn't. Just busy, that's all."

"He's having a rough go." Dad has a very very difficult time talking about feelings that are not pride and joy and family. The irony of James growing up to be a Mind Healer is not lost on any of the family, particularly Mum. "It's important that we make sure he knows he's welcome at our table anytime."

"He says he's going to the Rainforest Café."

"Good. He can suffer along with us." James smiles. It fades when Dad continues, "Saw a kid that looked just like Teddy at work today. Was like going back in time."

Dad spent most of James' childhood coming home at weird hours, exhausted with dark circles. James was ten when Dad spent a week at the hospital and subsequently hung up his Auror robes for good. He's been at the orphanage ever since.

He says it's because he needs to help people and that when people don't get enough love and support they can grow up to spread hate. James knows it is possible to tell the truth and hide a part of what you mean, the selfish parts of why Dad spends his days with orphans.

"Dad," James says, slow, "you know you can, erm, you can talk to me. If you ever need to."

Tilting his head to the side, Dad says, "We are talking right now, Jem."

"I mean I could put my Healer robes on, and we could go to an office at my work and we could talk, properly, about things. Anything."

"Ah," Dad says, no longer looking at James and going all wooden around the shoulders like he gets when people recognize him on the streets. "My trauma."

This may not be the first time James has brought this up. "It doesn't have to be me," he clarifies, quick, "I have a lot of co-workers who have great backgrounds or, I mean, you could always go to a Muggle psychiatrist, or –"

"I appreciate the concern."

"We don't have to talk about it anymore," James says. "We can leave this on the back burner. We'll just think about it, okay?"

Dad nods, slow. He looks at James, grins, says, "Heard your Grandad say he wanted to give the mower the ability to shoot fireballs at weeds."

"What the fuck are we doing in here?" James asks and he follows Dad, who's laughing, out the back door.

Grandad has a growth on his knee.

"How long has this been here?" James asks, when he sees it. It's only the second time he's been able to get a complete physical since he moved in, because Grandad is cagey and plays dirty.

"Oh, well," Grandad says, and then: "You know what I found in the back garden? One of those Ruby Cube whatsits. Must be from one of you kids."

"You have to tell me about these growths," James says, stern. Grandad smiles serenely. He mostly does this when he can understand perfectly what you're saying and has decided he would rather pretend he cannot. "I'll tell Nan you've been withholding information."

"Now, Jem," he says, grumpy, "You were always a nice boy, no need for that."

James laughs, despite himself. He checks the growth again; it's indigo in colour, which is common for magical growths. It's hard to know from just looking if it's malign or not; he'll have to sever a piece and send it off to St. Mungo's…

"Never you mind about that now," Grandad says, reading his mind. He begins rolling down his pant leg over his knee. "You have a birthday party to get to."

"You're more important than a party."

"Nonsense. They're expecting you."

"No one will miss me." Lie. "Al won't even notice." Bigger lie.

Grandad starts humming, loud. James sighs.

Twenty minutes later James is stumbling toward the Rainforest Café from the supply closet at Piccadilly Circus. Al's present is wrapped under his arm, Grandad's present for Al under his other arm, and the boxed cakes Nan made him in his hands.

Maybe Teddy won't be there. Sure, he said he would, but Teddy was famous for forgetting things or arriving an hour late to birthday parties. Besides, since Teddy started appearing in Muggle theatre, strange girls come up to their table all breathy and excited, holding up their smartphones to take photos with him. Surely Teddy wouldn't be interested in enduring all of that just for Al. Just for James.

He meets Mum at the server's stand. She catches his eye and says, "Oh good, I was worried I was the only late one. Work's been a nightmare."

"I hate this place."

"I'm fairly certain that's why your brother has picked it all these years," Mum says and then, as the hostess arrives, "Hi, Radinsky party of six."

No point in panicking, James thinks as he follows Mum and the hostess through the mess of tables and fake jungle. Six didn't mean he would show. He says, "Radinsky? Dad's still a paranoid nutter, eh?"

"You know your father."

They turn the corner and there they are: Al holding court in the middle of the booth, Dad next to him with a margarita the size of his head, Lily on her phone under the table, no doubt texting the Muggle boyfriend she thinks they don't know about that they definitely all know about. No Teddy.

"I hope you've ordered me one as well," James says, taking the spot next to Dad. Mum scoots in next to Lil, grabbing for Dad's margarita. He snatches it before she can get it.

"Oi!" he says, "If you're going to get here late, you're going to have to wait for drinks."

James leans over the drinks, the little caddy of A1 sauce and ketchup, and the plasticky paper dessert menu, to give Al a clap on the shoulder. "Another year older, eh?"

"Still younger than you, grandad," Al says, grinning, flipping him the bird.

James opens his mouth to respond when – "Oh sorry, Ted, have I taken your spot?"

He's here. Of course he fucking is and he looks gorgeous, of course, because nothing in James' life is fair. He's wearing a sweater he must have stolen from a production because James remembers it, soft merino and maroon, curly hair floppy and dark brown. And then, because Dumbledore and Merlin have a sick sense of humour, Teddy says:

"I'll sit over by Jem, Aunt Ginny, no problem."

His thigh is warm next to James' thigh. Teddy rubs his hands over his jeans twice and James looks, can't help it, and – no wedding ring. Obviously, obviously , but –

"I see the whole crew is here," the bubbly waiter says as he hits their table. He has a little notebook flipped over in half, "What can I get everyone started with?"

It's a good thing it's Al's birthday and he's the biggest lush James knows, because no one notices when James orders the largest mojito the waiter will let him get. It comes with twelve mini umbrellas and a sparkler.

Teddy leans over, "All you're missing is a Hawaiian shirt."

He smells like himself which means good. Victoire worked on a Muggle campaign ages ago and that year at Christmas they all got cologne and perfume from this bloke named Tom Ford. Teddy smells like if the lot of them had worn it right instead of bathing in it daily (Hugo), leaving it to collect dust on his dresser (Dad), or cooking with it (Nan).

"Shame, I have one at home," James says. He glances over at the empty glasses on the other side of the table. "Al needs it more than me though."

"Typical."

"Bloody drunk."

Teddy laughs and leans in, closer to James' ear. His heart pounds.

"Thunderstorm!" Al shouts, cackling like a witch in a Muggle movie. The gorilla behind him begins pounding his mechanic fists against his mechanic chest. The restaurant goes dark, lights flash like lightning, and the sound of heavy rain comes from overhead.

"This is worse than dying," Dad says, loud. "And I've done that twice."

The food is overpriced but Dad and Mum are paying so Al gets three appetizers, two entrees, and enough drinks to fill a tureen. James keeps his focus solely on his drunk family instead of Teddy next to him, who's sipping a pina colada steadily and keeps knocking their elbows together.

"Lil," he says, reaching over to snag a chip and guac from the smorgasbord in front of Al. "How's being Aunt Hermione's assistant?"

"Ughh," Lily says and she's off. Lily is a Ravenclaw down to her bones, content to spend her days reading loads of useless information and follow passing fancies down to the core. She fucked around at Robards University in Wizarding Oxford for a year and six majors, before Mum forced her to come home and get a job. "I spend all my day filing. Filing! It's like everything Auntie doesn't want to do, she makes me do."

"Yes," Dad says, "That's how it works."

"Well it sucks ," Lily says, blowing air upwards out her mouth to disrupt her fringe. It's a new look; James hasn't gotten used to it yet. "I'm going to move away to the mountains and become a shepherd."

"Lovely," Mum says with a mozzarella stick in her mouth, "Let us know when you arrive."

Al orders the big chocolate volcano and Dad must have said something to the waiter because when he comes back with it, he's brought a bunch of his waiter friends to stand in a semi-circle and clap along to a birthday song. Al, whose level of sloshed is on par with the time his fifth-year girlfriend broke up with him and they drank at the top of the Astronomy Tower until the sun came up, gets misty eyed at the serenade.

He misses most of the birthday candles when he tries to blow them out. James loves him like an organ, unthinking.

"How's the show, Ted?" Dad asks, rumpled and drunk, his brown skin flushed with delight. Dad loves all birthdays except his own.

"Good," Teddy says. He's been quiet most of the night but fidgety, brushing up against James every time he manages to forget about him. "Another two weeks of rehearsal. We open after that."

"Is this the play with Renata Jones?" Al asks, loud. At Teddy's nod, he asks, "Is she as hot in real life?"

Teddy laughs. "Yes."

"Brilliant. Can you give her my Floo?"

"You mean our Floo, Albus?" Mum asks, arching one eyebrow. She's been trying to make a house out of the sugar packets that came with her coffee for the last ten minutes. One of them cast a Muffliato a while ago but it must be starting to wane, judging by the faces of families around them.

"Semantics, woman," Al says. "Do you get to snog anyone in the show, Teddy?"

"Um," Teddy says and if he looks at James, James wouldn't know because he is drinking water from the pitcher that no one ordered but the waiter brought anyhow. He is not, will not, be looking up anytime soon. "I mean, I wouldn't call it a snog, but-"

"Remember that time you had to pretend to fuck that girl on stage?" Al asks, "I thought Mum was going to die . Lily was like eight ."

"I was not!"

"Al-"

"Fine, nine . We saw your bare ass , Teddy-"

"I was like fourteen," Lily says, prim, her Weasley skin all rosy. "And it was about the only interesting part of the whole play. No offence, Teddy."

"Perhaps we should take that as our cue," Teddy says, and when James looks up Teddy is glancing his way, all flushed skin, and oh Merlin -

"Are you two heading out then?" Dad asks, all pleased around the eyes.

"Not if you need us," James says, quick, "I'm happy to help get you drunkards home if-"

"Psh," Mum says, flapping her hand around. "We're perfectly capable of Apparating."

"I took the Healer Oath, Mum. I cannot, in good faith, let you magic home."

"We'll take the Knight Bus," Dad says, standing and then immediately falling down because there's a table in the way. "Oh, dear," he says, bemused, and then, "Right, move, I want to get a photo of everyone."

James ends up sandwiched between Al and Mum, Al's arm dangling around his shoulder. He somehow managed to Transfigure a fork into a crown while none of the Muggles were watching and it's crooked on his head. His eyes are all glassy and pleased.

"It's my birthday," Al tells him.

"Yes."

"Say Happy Birthday, Jem."

"Happy Birthday, Jem."

Al hums happily. Dad ropes a waitress into taking a photo of them with the ancient camera he bought for their family trip to Pakistan. She takes a step back to get them all: Lily and Dad giggling at one end, Al drunk off his rocket, Mum with the last of her margarita in one hand. James thinks he's lost Teddy but just before the flash goes, he feels a hand on his back, warm, and all his nerves go tight.

"Underground?" James asks Teddy, once they've carefully stowed their pissed family members onto the bus. He is not looking at Teddy. He thinks this whole conversation will go much easier if he does not look at him the entire time.

Teddy grabs his elbow and James looks and is immediately in a crisis – he's wearing a boiled wool coat flipped up at the collar to show off the edge of his jaw. It looks absurdly good on him. "Sure."

James' head is starting to pound. "You better have potions at yours. I was matching Al for drinks."

"I'll take care of you," Teddy says. James feels himself twitch.

They take the Northern line up. Teddy prefers Muggle transit to Wizarding; Gran and he still drive to James' parents' place for Christmas every year. When he and Vic got their cottage in Cambridge, Teddy made sure it was a ten-minute walk to the train station.

The traincar is busy. A few shows must have gotten out at the same time because as they pass through Camden a horde of young people push in, drunk and joyous. James, claustrophobic since he accidentally got locked in Uncle Ron's broom closet for three hours as a child, finds himself pressed into Teddy.

"You're good," Teddy says, low, holding his elbow with a broad hand. "Only a few more stops."

Guilt rising up from his stomach, heavy in his throat, on his tongue, as he nudges his face into Teddy's neck like he used to when he was a toddler, according to photos. He smells even better here, like the cologne and sweat and the lemon shrimp dish he had for dinner.

"Oh my god," comes a voice behind James and he turns to see a strange girl. She's beaming, her hair in long braids around her heart shaped face. "Are you Teddy Lupin?"

"Yeah, hi," Teddy says. His hand doesn't leave James' elbow.

"I'm, like, obsessed with Elm Grove , you were so good in it. Are you coming back to the show? Can I get a selfie?"

"Sure," Teddy says, leaning forward so she can take a photo with her phone.

Still grinning, her eyes sweep over to James. He looks away.

It's still strange, getting used to Teddy having a public life. James' has seen it with Dad and Mum growing up, with his extended family, but it's odd with Teddy. Acting seemed like a natural thing for Teddy who was perfect for small festival casts, able to transform at will into different characters. But more and more the request became for him, not for his characters, for the faces and shapes he would do for James and his siblings growing up.

"Thanks," the girl says, and James can tell that she's still looking at him, looking at Teddy's hand at him. She pushes away to a different part of the train and James' breathes out.

"Sorry about that."

"I didn't know you were in a Muggle show," James says, eyes darting up. Teddy's looking down at him and James swallows. "Is it like, um, like a serial show? Like the radio shows Rose listens to?"

"Kind of," Teddy says. The train makes a turn and his hand slides to the back of James' arm, pulling him in close enough that their coats brush against each other. "I played an English teacher that has an affair with one of the students."

"A teacher ?" James asks, face scrunching up. "Like Slughorn? Did they have you in a smoking jacket and a little hat?"

Teddy laughs, open, his face grinning down at James. That guiltguiltguilt is still there, in James' throat. It only expands when he says, "I missed you, Jem."

"Sorry," James says, quiet. "Been busy and. You know. Other excuses."

"What's this from?" Teddy asks, changing the subject quickly. He's known for doing that. The fingers that were previously curled around the steel bar go to James' face, gentle, nudging it to the side so he can stroke a finger down the white scar near James' left ear.

James clears his throat, says, "Who else? Al."

"Play fighting under your Nan's table again?"

" No ." The train shifts once more and Teddy braces his shoulders against the door behind him, both of his hands moving to James' waist to keep him steady. Guiltguiltguilt . "We were blighted, trying to get inside the house after drinking all night. He tripped over a gnome, pushed me into the chicken coop on the way down –"

"Fuck, Jem."

"Faces bleed a lot."

"Is that the first thing they taught you at the Academy?"

"Fuck you, I woke up hungover surrounded by my own blood. Fucking terrifying."

Teddy opens his mouth to say something when – This station is Belsize Park. The train terminates at Edgware – he's hustling them off the train, his hands still at James' waist.

James has been in the Tube loads of times before, mostly with Teddy, but that was when he and Vic used to live in Brixton; he got familiar with Clapham North, following Teddy, his arm around Vic, his mouth pressed close to her ear, James' stomach twisted in knots.

He keeps close. Teddy pulls him up the moving stairs and through the turnstile. It's not until they're out in the cool London night that Teddy asks:

"What was the occasion?"

"Hm?" Teddy leads him down a wide street, where Muggle and magical bars cast inviting lights.

"Why were you getting so blighted with Al that you fell into the chicken coop?"

"Oh." James stares ahead, at where the streetlights have made puddles shine gold on the pavement. "Tamir and I had just broken up, um, so. Al took me to the pub in Warslow and we drank until they kicked us out."

When James looks over Teddy has his head down. He's got these shiny leather boots that probably cost three of James' paycheques. "Ah. So, it's a recent scar."

"Remembered the spell, just not the Dittany. I'm a lousy Healer when I'm drunk."

They walk a bit further in silence.

"It's just this right," Teddy says, pulling James along. It's a quieter street, with old, brick houses lining the road on either side.

"How did you find this place anyhow?"

"A friend is working in Prague," Teddy says, dismissive, like everyone has fabulous actor friends who fuck off to the continent for a few months. "She's letting me stay until I find somewhere more permanent."

"That's nice of her."

"What happened there, anyway?" Teddy asks and he's still not looking at James. "With the boy?"

"Oh," James says. He was hoping, foolishly, that Teddy wouldn't be interested in talking about anything that made James' tummy go all swoopy. "Just. Different expectations."

"How do you mean?"

"He wants to get married, I don't. He doesn't want kids, I do. That sort of thing."

Teddy stops on the pavement. James stops too. His face is covered in shadows from the streetlights when he asks, "You don't want to get married?"

"Nope."

It seems like for a second he's about to lecture James about the sanctity and beauty of marriage before he remembers that Witch Weekly has been covering the breakdown of his own marriage for a month now and seemed unlikely to ever stop.

"I'm cold," James says, after a second of watching Teddy's face contort. "And the alcohol's wearing off. Are we almost there?"

Teddy chokes out a laugh, surprised, then, "Yes, you brat." And it's normal, it's them, until his arm comes around James' shoulders, bringing him close, and then guiltguiltguilt .

They end up in the kitchen. It's a garden apartment, one with big, gorgeous glass doors that face a dark yard in back. Teddy disappears upstairs and comes back with a jumper for James to pull over his dress shirt, and a vial from the Apothecary in Hogsmeade. It makes the ache from James' head soothe. The jumper says EDINBURGH FRINGE FEST – ARTIST across the chest. This does nothing to soothe James. It un-soothes him.

"So," Teddy says, once he's brewed tea and come to sit next to James at the high table. It faces out, the table, though Teddy turns his stool to the side so he can look at James.

James keeps himself forward, hands around the mug. "So."

Teddy clears his throat. "I think you're gorgeous and smart and that we fit together. That we could have something. How does that – what do you think about that?"

"Terrified," James says.

Silence. Slowly, Teddy says, "Because of Vic?"

"Yes."

A longer silence. "Is that the only reason?"

"No."

A stretch, a pause. "Then-"

"I can't bring you to Christmas, Teddy," James says, matter of fact. "I can't hold your hand at Easter. You were married to my cousin. You're no longer married to my cousin. That's – you're off limits."

"Fuck that."

"Teddy –"

"Fuck it, it's bullshit."

"It isn't," James says, turning to meet his eye now. Teddy's hair, carefully styled for the family dinner and, maybe, for James too, is coming undone around the edges. "A month after you and Vic get divorced, I tell everyone we're dating? Are you mad ? They'd never speak to either of us, ever again."

"Jem-"

"Not to mention if my dad, if he," James shakes his head as if he's just come up from water. This is the poshest flat he's ever been in, textured wallpaper and impractical furniture. "If my dad ever knew that I was the reason you got divorced I'd – it would kill him. Him and Mum."

Teddy turns his head, chews his cheek. Low, he says, "You're not the only reason."

"That's not what you said the other day."

"Fine, fuck," Teddy runs a hand through his hair, "Yes, okay. Yes. Yes, you're – I was unhappy and I was stuck and I would have kept being stuck for the rest of my life if you hadn't. Fuck, Jem, do you have any idea? I can't get it out of my head, what you looked like that night. What you said."

James has always seen Teddy how Teddy would like himself to be seen: polished or goofy or the cool older brother figure. He's never seen Teddy like this, coming apart at the seams.

"Like it was nothing, you just – you just look at me with those fucking eyes of yours and tell me you've been in love with me your whole life. What the fuck else was I supposed to do with that?"

"I-" James can feel his heart in his throat, his ears burning.

"And then you tell me if I want to kiss you, I just have to get a fucking divorce, as if I hadn't been thinking about it for months, for a year -"

"I didn't mean to say that," James says and he can feel his eyes going hot, itchy and tight at the corners. Speaking past the beating boulder in his esophagus of guiltguiltguilt he says, "I regret it. I regret it every single day, okay? I shouldn't have said any of that to you."

"I don't."

"You should . You – I helped you cheat on your wife. I helped you cheat on my cousin, how fucked up is that?"

Teddy turns to look back out the window. He doesn't say any of the arguments that James has been having with himself for the last month: how cheating was a physical action, not an emotion, so technically Teddy didn't do anything wrong, technically James shouldn't feel bad because they never kissed and that's all that matters.

"I wouldn't have left her, if you hadn't said something," Teddy says, slow and quiet, confirming all of James' terrible, awful thoughts. "But I still would have wanted to. And I would have, eventually. We would have ended, Jem, regardless. My heart wasn't in it."

James spreads his fingers out on the table. "I don't know what to say to that."

"That's okay."

There's a special kind of silence, when two people know how the other feels about them down to their core. James thinks about the things Teddy said, thinks about gorgeoussmartwefittogether until there's a buzzing in the bottom of his stomach.

"So, you just –" James says before he tries again. "Since that night, then? At Gran's party? That's how long you've – liked me?"

A smile breaks out across Teddy's face. It's only small but. "No. No, I've – do you remember when I got hurt during one of my rehearsals and you were still a resident at St. Mungo's?"

"That…" James has to think back. "Teddy, that was two years ago."

He shrugs. "It wasn't like that. I just noticed you. I hadn't ever before, and I did that day and I didn't stop. That's all."

Two years. Two years ago, James was living in his flat with Tamir in Edinburgh, eating takeaway every night and sure to his fucking socks that Teddy would never, ever feel anything for him.

It was at the end of his shift when he saw Teddy's name on the register for the Ground floor. He remembers giving his most charming grin to Healer McDonald, the Healer-in-Charge, before he was allowed to read through Teddy's chart.

He was the only one around when Teddy woke, before Victoire or Teddy's Gran or Dad were allowed into the ward. Just the two of them, James searching for the right pain potion for Ted's concussion and Teddy, blinking against the harsh lights.

"Hey," James remembers saying when Teddy's eyes opened, one at a time. "You're at Mungo's but I'm here, alright? I'll get you out in no time, Teddy, you're in good hands."

Now, watching Teddy stare back at him in the dark kitchen, he wants to ask a million questions, wants to know what Teddy noticed, what he's noticed since then.

Instead, he says: "Do you have any biscuits?"

Teddy laughs, pauses, then laughs again.

They migrate upstairs because Teddy says there's a great view from the master. James isn't an idiot and Teddy's not the first bloke to feed him lines.

"A great view ? Has that ever worked for you?"

Teddy laughs, "There is!"

James follows anyway. There's a window seat in the master with enough space for both if they overlap limbs. James bends one knee and turns his face to look into the garden, the trees behind the tall wooden fence that must be the Heath. When he glances back at Teddy, he finds he's being watched.

"I realize I haven't done this much," Teddy says and at James' look: "Dated. I've been with one person basically my whole life."

James has a think about it. "You've pretended to date a lot of people."

"Don't know if that counts, babe."

It's like a Heating Charm; James' whole body feels aflame. He's thankful for the bad lighting – just a lamp at the bedside table – and his brown skin. It's no hiding against Teddy though, who laughs.

"Is that okay?" he asks.

Taking a deep breath, James says, "I don't know. I don't know what the rules are when – well, in this particular circumstance."

Teddy makes a low noise and twists his mouth. He starts, slow, "Well, I was listening to Ask Asterope the other day on WRN."

"Fuck off, you weren't."

"And this chap, er, Chris in Cheshire, he asks for advice. Chris, great bloke, he wants to know how soon is too soon, when you want to date this guy who means the world to you, but things are complicated."

"Oh sure," James says, "How convenient."

"Anyways, Asterope tells Chris that he should give this guy a cup of tea, some biscuits, and then invite him to stay over so he can make him breakfast tomorrow."

"You can't cook."

"Technicality," Teddy says, shrugging. "There's a café at the end of the street. We could take croissants up the Heath."

James looks down at his hands, "I have to be back at the Burrow when Grandad wakes."

"Okay."

He should say no. There's still guiltguiltguilt in his throat. It's shrunk though; not gone, never gone, just cowering under the notion of being seen. Being alone, with Teddy, makes everything fuzzy.

"Do they have chocolate croissants at this cafe?"

"You know, I think they do."

They amble to bed, slow. The toothbrush Teddy Transfigures from a polo mint is pink and it makes something in James' stomach go warm.

It's familiar to lie next to each other; years of sleepovers at the house, cozy in sleeping bags beside one another in a tent outside Nan's house, on either ends of Teddy's Gran's couch passing out halfway through a Quidditch Floo game. James lies on his back, breathing, before he shifts to his side to face Teddy.

"Hey."

"Hi."

Teddy's fingers come to his chin, around the curve of his jaw. His fingers are long, Teddy's, but it still makes James' startle when he feels a thumb brush over his bottom lip. He knows what Teddy's going to ask before he does but somehow it still makes his heart pound –

"Can I kiss you?"

"No," James says, fast, surprising himself. "No, I don't want it to – I don't want to remember our first kiss with all these complicated feelings." Teddy doesn't say anything. "Okay?"

"Okay."

Fingers skirt around his face to the back of his neck, his hair. Teddy pulls him in, and James is about to protest – wasn't he listening? – but he's pulled down as Teddy squirms up on his pillow. Teddy kisses his forehead, then his nose, keeping James close.

"This alright?"

"Yes." James puts his nose into the dip of Teddy's throat. It's easy, too easy, for this to feel right when he's hidden in Teddy, surrounded by him, unknown to anyone else, in this stranger's house. James presses his hand to Teddy's stomach. "Yes, this is okay."

The sun is still coming over the Heath when they hike up with their croissants and coffees. James asked to borrow another jumper from Teddy and was rewarded with a Weasley classic, charcoal grey with a white T.

"Is it up to your standards?" Teddy asks, gesturing to the chocolate croissant in James' hands. They're sitting on this bench with the trees around them just starting to turn for autumn and god , he looks good. He looks like someone James wants to say yes to.

"Yes," James says. The sun turns the trees on the east of the park golden. It's cool out and James drags the sleeves of Teddy's sweater over his hands.

"Jem," Teddy says, his fingers playing with the little plastic lid that Muggles put on hot beverages instead of using a stabilizing charm. "I can't have you avoiding me again."

"No," James says, sucking pastry crumbs off his fingers. "No, I wouldn't like that either."

They walk down through the open field to get to the clearing in the trees that Teddy says he's Apparated from before. The feelings in James' stomach seem to be stacked like the Muggle game Jenga that Uncle Dudley taught them to play as children; guilt joy guilt adoration guilt happiness guilt guilt guilt. He imagines picking the joy block and having the whole thing collapse.

"So," Teddy says, when they've reached the clearing.

"So. Busy day?"

"Got rehearsal at ten," Teddy says, "You?"

"Yes," James says, thinking hard, joyjoyjoy . He has been in love with Teddy for so long. He steps closer to him.

Teddy has three inches on James, the tip of James' nose coming to the fleshy part of Teddy's chin. They fit anyhow, James leaning up, Teddy leaning down, his warm hands broad and safe on James' back as James presses their mouths together.

It's over in a breath, James rocking back onto his heels. He can just see Teddy's breath in the cold morning air.

"Thank you," Teddy says, quiet, before his cheeks go pink.

James laughs, "Did you just say thank you - ?"

Their second kiss is sweeter, impossibly, Teddy's hand deep within his hair. James curls his fingers in the boiled wool of Teddy's coat, his toes curling in his boots, something giddy in his chest. He laughs again, right into Teddy's mouth, and is met with a laugh back. Teddy's fingers grasp until their faces are next to each other, flushed.

"Thank you, sweetheart," Teddy whispers, right up against James' cheek.

It's difficult to pull away. As James leaves the circle of Teddy's arms he feels the rush of the world come back: everything he promised he wouldn't do, all the guilt bubbling inside him, stagnant now, heavy like iron. He pushes it down for another second.

"Owl me, okay?" James says, eyes searching Teddy's movie star face. "We'll – talk."

Teddy nods. When he came back from the bathroom this morning, early before the sun was up, his hair was the most delicate lilac. It looks almost white in the sunlight, now, as James leans in for one more kiss before he Disapparates back to the Burrow.

He keeps his coat shut over Teddy's sweater as he passes Nan in the kitchen but feels it, warm over his heart, as he escapes to his room to change.

iii.

Tamir was the first one to know about Teddy.

It was the last stop of Teddy's bachelor party pub crawl, a dingy place off the main drag in Edinburgh's Old Town. They were all toasted, Teddy the crowned king of the entourage, his hair dancing merrily between colours.

"I'm getting married," he told James, matter of fact, for the eighth time that weekend.

"Sure are."

"She's the fittest girl in the country," Teddy said, "no, the continent. She's the fittest girl in the whole universe."

"Oi oiiiiiii!" came the dulcet tones of Arsh Tomson-Patil, Teddy's best mate from Hogwarts and his best man. "Lucky bloke, Teddy Lupin."

"Why don't I get you some water?" James asked, putting a hand to Teddy's shoulder.

"Boooooo," cried Teddy and his groomsmen.

"I don't want to have to go into work on my night off because you have alcohol poisoning," James said.

"You need to drink more," Arsh said, taking James under one arm. "You are harshing everyone's mellow, bud."

James did not want to drink more. James did not want to let himself get drunk for many good reasons. Well, mainly one reason. Although he generally didn't much like the taste of most alcohol and would rather juice just be juice, the main reason he didn't want to drink much is that he had loose lips when he was sober and adding tequila to the mix was simply a recipe for disaster. Adding tequila and Teddy, who he may or may not have spent most of his life in love with, was catastrophic in scope.

"I'm good, thanks."

The boys ordered another round of pints. James escaped to the bar to get himself another tonic water. He leant back on it to watch them, Teddy and his messy mates. Most of them were Teddy's newish posh friends from London, but there are a few that James knows; Cal Thomas for example, who was in Ravenclaw with Teddy, and who snogged James at Teddy's housewarming party last year.

He was thinking about that snog, and wondering if perhaps Cal would be down for another take, when he heard from next to him: "James Potter?"

Warily, he turned. Being the child of a war hero was exhausting. "Who's asking?"

The bloke next to him had dark skin and thick black hair that curled around his shoulders. His eyes were the colour of trees when their bark had been stripped away. He was familiar in the way that James knew he must be from school.

"Tamir Khani," the man introduced himself, putting his hand out for James to shake. "I think you were a few years below me at Hogwarts. Gryffindor, right?"

"Yeah, hi." They shook hands. Tamir's palms were dry and soft. "Slytherin?"

"Yeah," Tamir said, grinning, and then: "You can blame that on my being forward – can I buy you a drink?"

The idea of a shitty snog with Cal Thomas while trying not to think about the fact that Teddy would be legally married to his cousin by week's end mercifully melted away. James grinned back, "Sure."

They did the usual thing, asking about each other's jobs and lives since Hogwarts. Tamir had taken up his family business and restored furniture in town, which was the coolest fucking thing James had ever heard. Tamir seemed to be impressed right back, that James had just graduated from the Healer Academy and was a resident at St. Mungo's.

"But I don't want to stay, not really," James told him, "It's too big and busy there. Besides, I want to go into Mind Healing. The Wizarding World is really fucked up when it comes to mental health. Hogwarts doesn't even have counselling which is just fucking mindboggling."

Tamir raised an eyebrow, taking a sip of his pint with one hand.

"What?" James asked. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Do you want to come home with me?"

Ears flaming now, "I –"

"Oi, Jem!" Teddy slammed into him, knocking his hip into the side of the bar. "I am going out for a smoke and then we're going to find some Scottish pizza and go back to the London flat. You coming?"

James blinked. A lot of things were happening at once but, importantly, "What's Scottish pizza?"

"S'got thistles on it, of course." Teddy patted the side of James' face and then seemed to notice Tamir. "Oh. Hi. I'm getting married."

"Cool," Tamir said back.

"We're going to watch that Muggle movie," Teddy said, turning back to James. His eyes were glimmering with different colours, flashing as he moved his hands around. "The one with the pirates and that handsome Orlando Blooming fellow. Also, I think Cal fancies you, Jem. He said you have a very symmetrical face."

"Oh," James said faintly, "how nice."

"He's right," Tamir chimed in. "It is very symmetrical. Would look even more symmetrical in my bedroom."

"Oh," Teddy said, confused, and then. " Oh ."

"Yes, oh," James said, nudging him away. "Go out for your smoke, I'll see you at the rehearsal dinner."

"I feel as if I should have a speech," Teddy said, "about how you're not supposed to hurt sweet Jem. But I'm quite drunk, I think."

James pushed Teddy toward the front door while Tamir laughed.

"Bachelor party?"

"Yeah."

"Hm. You can join them if you want."

"I don't," James said, downing the last of his tonic. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood from his stool. "Let me just grab my coat, yeah?"

"So this wedding," Tamir asked, later, much later, when they're sitting up in his bed, his arms all wrapped around James from behind, the lamp low next to them. "Why aren't you excited about it?"

James kept his eyes on the look of their fingers together, Tamir's skin several shades darker than James'. It was fun to kiss him. It was fun to push his clothes out of the way and go down on him. "How do you know I'm not excited?"

Tamir's other hand, which had been having a fun time under James' shirt, reached for skin and fat to pinch.

"Fine. It's my cousin's wedding."

"The bloke from the pub?"

"No," James said. He kept his eyes low, dragging a fingertip over the blunt edge of Tamir's thumbnail. "My cousin, Victoire. She's at her bachelorette party. My sister had to go; they had matching t-shirts. I think they went to a spa in Brighton."

"You don't like her?"

"We've always had this weird relationship. We're the closest in age of any of the cousins and it's like – she was good at Quidditch, yeah? And I'm terrible at it. But I got better grades? It's complicated. Oh - and everyone thinks she's better looking."

"Now that I have a hard time believing," Tamir says, half laugh, leering. "Sounds like kid drama."

James laughed. "It was. But I think it's something we both couldn't shake when we were adults, you know?"

Tamir hummed. James turned his head to look at him, at the cut of his absurd jaw, at his long black hair, the way his eyes were lighter than James' own. James thinks, again, about him at Hogwarts. They never interacted, he's certain, but he always clocked other people of colour without thinking.

"I'm Nan's favourite," James said. At Tamir's laugh he said, "No, no, stop laughing! I'm – my family likes me more, because of my dad and. And other complicated stuff. It's dumb shit like that, you know. Things that shouldn't matter but do because we're – because we've always been compared our whole lives. It's just how it is."

"So, what does she have over you then? "

James swallowed. It would be very easy to kiss him, push him back into the pillows and climb into his lap, slip his hand down Tamir's pants. But James can't lie, not to save his life.

He said: "She has Teddy."

"Ahh," Tamir said and then laughed, tipping his head back. "The bloke at the bar. Of course, of course. Old lover?"

"Merlin, no." James cleared his throat, unsure how to sum up his life with Teddy, his life , his whole fucking life with Teddy in the background. He thinks about shouting at Dad sometimes: What did you think? You raise this brilliant, beautiful boy under the same roof as me and I'm not supposed to fall in love with him? "He's my godbrother. Been in love with him forever."

"Hm. And now you're a groomsman?"

"Yeah."

"Classic," Tamir said, laughing. James put his face in Tamir's neck, to smell his sweat and hide the burning flush over his ears. "It's not funny. I'm sorry, James."

He nodded. Tamir's fingers tangled in the hair at the back of his neck and pulled, James' face tipped up and back, happy to accept a kiss.

"God but you are sweet," Tamir said, nose brushing against James' nose. It was big, Tamir's nose, and James liked it. "I don't remember you being so sweet."

"No?"

"I remember you running around school with a crew of Gryffindors, all bravado and bad cologne."

"Stoppppp," James whined, grinning. It's strange; most people in James' life have been there long before he was born, have known every iteration of him. Tamir had this image of him as an annoying fifteen-year-old and then sad, drinking at a bar at a bachelor party and finally, this picture, rumpled in his sheets, soft and exhausted and, god James felt flushed down to his toes, sweet .

"A Gryffindor in my bed," Tamir said, wry, "My mates are going to die laughing."

James wanted to kiss him again so he did, mouths hot and desperate. He had never told anyone about Teddy. It made everything in him squirm, too warm and itchy, his fingers scrambling for the soft skin around Tamir's collarbones.

"James," Tamir said, quiet, and James pulled away before he continued, "James, James, James."

"It's weird to hear you say that," he said, unthinking, and watched Tamir's brow crease. "Not you , sorry, just. Everyone's always called me Jem. I only get James when I've done something I shouldn't have."

Tamir brushed his thumb over James' left eyebrow. "I'll call you whatever you want me to, love."

And it's out before James can stop himself: "Do you want to come to this wedding with me?"

iv.

It's mercifully still light out when James gets out of class two days after Al's birthday, the long Scottish winters not yet taking afternoons. He's walking with Marjorie, who has to pick her son up from daycare, thinking about dinner, when she stops him short.

"Isn't that your cousin?"

James' heart goes clunk in his chest before he sees Teddy's long figure up against a window down the hall, his smile sly. The last time James saw Teddy, he kissed him. The last time he saw Teddy, Teddy called him gorgeous and then, quiet, sweetheart .

"Hi," James says, having shook off Marjorie.

Teddy doesn't say anything. His smile has grown wider. He reaches out with a few fingers to grab James' hand. There's a zero percent chance that a Weasley is around to document this. Still, James' heart beats too loud in his chest.

"Grab lunch with me."

"I have to be home before five."

"Okay," Teddy says, then: "Grab lunch with me."

They go to an old favourite of James', a place just west of campus that serves brunch until 4. It's crowded inside, students and tourists, and their waitress seats them in a corner at the back near the entrance to the toilets. Her eyes stutter over Teddy as she passes them their menus, either recognizing him or just finding him fit.

Teddy takes a sip of the ice water at the table. "What's good here?"

They end up with two full Englishes, though Teddy opts for the vegetarian option because he's gone proper London now.

"God, you're so Southern," James says, tongue in cheek. "Next you'll be ordering the avocado smoothie and telling me I have to try your Pilates class."

"Fuck you," Teddy says, grinning. He ordered an Americano with oat milk. James can't believe he fancies him as much as he does. "I've been in London for over a decade now, it can't be helped. I've lost all of the Northern sensibility you Potters pummeled into me."

James laughs, drinking his tea. If he doesn't think too hard, this is easy. If he doesn't press his fingers to his stomach and feel the great weight of guilt, it's the easiest thing in the world to flirt with Teddy over a late brunch, to let his eyes wander over Teddy's neatly pressed jumper, his straight boiled wool coat, the way his eyes turn golden in the scattered tea lights around the restaurant. If James doesn't breathe, he can picture himself smug and coy, playing with Teddy's fingers while the rest of the city get themselves jealous.

He takes a breath, keeps his hands around the big, white mug of tea their server dropped off.

"What's the class you're taking?"

James looks up, startled. Teddy is staring at his mouth, but his eyes shift to meet James'. "Oh, it's about substance abuse and addiction. Today's lecture was about stigma." Teddy's head tilts to the side. "Like – like how no one talks about addiction, really. Or it's seen as something to be afraid of or demonized. We were talking about that."

"That's pretty fucking cool."

"Yeah," James says, then laughs. "Yeah, it is. I love the class. I love this city."

"You can take the boy out of Scotland," Teddy says, grinning.

"Shut it. I don't know. I like it here. I'll probably end up here, again, eventually." Teddy's wearing his old pewter rings that he used to when he first left Hogwarts, thick around his pinky, his thumb. "What about you? How's the show?"

"Good," Teddy says. He's hunched forward in his chair, curls falling into his face like he planned it. Probably did, the tosser. "We open soon."

"Do you really get to snog Renata Jones in it?" It's not often that Al is right, but Renata Jones is a goddamn fox.

A grin, sly, "Come opening night and find out."

"Alright." James has a shoebox full of playbills from almost all of Teddy's shows; his dedication to Teddy's career is matched only by Dad who gets each of them signed (by a bemused and embarrassed Teddy), then hangs them up in his office at the orphanage. "I've probably left it too late though. Are there still tickets left?"

Teddy leans back without breaking eye contact and pulls a ticket out of his inner coat pocket. "For you, yeah." He hands it to James: Front row orchestra.

"Oh."

"Sorry I could only get one," Teddy says, looking away. The tip of his nose has gone pink, one of his only tells these days. "I gave the other to Gran."

James nods. He's feeling very tender, like a small gust of wind might set him over. It's a good time for their waitress to re-emerge with plates teaming high with food. Teddy moves mugs for her as she sets them down.

"So," Teddy says, stabbing a piece of James' black pudding with his fork and popping it into his mouth. "You must have some pretty good gossip, being at the Burrow now."

James uses a piece of toast to scoop up where his egg yolk has run into his brown beans. Through his mouthful he says, "I don't know what you could mean."

"Oh, come on," Teddy says, grinning, "If I had a Knut for every time I came across one of you lot crying at the kitchen table, I'd be a rich man."

James' traitorous brain jumps to the crack in Victoire's voice when she said I thought we were happy . He pushes it far away and then, for good measure, further.

"Besides," Teddy continues, shoveling potatoes into his mouth. "Everyone's always gone to you for advice, Jem. Now you're just in a central location."

"That's not true."

"Is."

"Hardly," James says. "They come to me for medical advice and even that is sparing."

"Nah," Teddy says, dismissive. He steals another piece of black pudding, ignoring James' Oi! , and continues, "you're the rock, Jem. You keep everyone stable."

James closes his mouth and stews on that for a second. "Well," he says, slowly, "I don't know about that. But if you want gossip – Hugo told me that his next door neighbour invited him to what he's convinced is an orgy."

Teddy chokes on his coffee.

"I know," James says, grinning, "And the worst part is, he just wanted my advice on what to wear."

They take advantage of the mild weather and walk through Dean Village. It is, unbelievably, Teddy's first time and he stops often to take photos with his fancy smartphone. He looks unbearably handsome against the backdrop of 19th century architecture and James has half a mind to tell him so.

Teddy finds a bench and so they sit while he lights a cigarette, his hands cupped around the flickering match. James watches him. "Thought you quit."

"I did," Teddy says, before taking a long drag. "And then I got divorced. Was a bit stressful."

James has a million questions he wants to ask about the divorce and about Victoire, about the cottage they used to live in together in Cambridge and the flat in London. He wants to ask how they could go from married to divorced so quickly.

He doesn't ask any of those things, of course. Instead, he fingers the ticket in his pocket and says, "Thank you, for the opening night ticket. I'm excited."

Teddy grins, "You don't have to say that."

"I'm not! I love watching you on stage."

"I'm glad." Teddy turns his chin to blow the smoke away from James. "Speaking of the show, there's an afterparty thing. It usually starts at a restaurant and ends up in a karaoke bar in Hackney at 4am. Want to come with?"

James breathes in, deep. He says, slowly, "That kind of sounds like a date."

Teddy is not looking at him, but rather out across the Water of Leith. He says, evenly, "It would be a date. Just like this is a date, Jem."

A group of starlings fly from one rooftop to another. James bites his lip.

"Okay," he says, "okay, the thing is that my family will never forgive me if I date you right after everything but also – also you are my family, and you've always been my family and. And I've had feelings for you for approximately one million years. So, I'm having a hard time dealing with that."

Teddy's cigarette burns orange. "That makes sense."

"But then there's the fact that you were married, Teddy. You stood up on a stage and vowed to love Victoire until you were old and hideous and-"

"I don't remember saying hideous."

"-and I stood with you! I was in a stuffy suit on a summer's day, standing three blokes away from you while you promised yourself to someone else forever."

Teddy's quiet for a while. "They were stuffy suits, weren't they?"

It is the last thing James expected him to say and, impossibly, perfect. He finds himself laughing, saying, "Yes, you prat. You wanted us in wool in July. I've never been so jealous of Al that he wasn't in the wedding party."

"I remember having to pick the colour of the napkins that went over the serving spoons," Teddy says, incredulously. "How in the flying fuck could anyone have an opinion about that?"

James laughs again, short. "It was a beautiful wedding."

It was. Victoire looked like she stepped out of a bridal magazine, no doubt because she frequently does get booked for those, and Teddy was even more of a knockout than he usually is. They had the wedding at this massive Wizarding cathedral in Wales and then went back to Uncle Bill's cottage for the reception.

"Yeah," Teddy says. He's looking down again. "Suppose it was."

"It was mine and Tamir's first date. I don't know if you knew that."

"I was a bit distracted."

"Understandable," James says and then, because he's a goddamn idiot Gryffindor and an awful liar: "It was really awkward to bring a first date to a wedding with my entire extended family, but the alternative was watching someone I've loved my whole life get married to somebody else alone so. Less bad option, I guess."

Teddy's eyes are a very light hazel when they meet James'.

James looks away, clears his throat. "The salmon was good though."

"The salmon was good," Teddy agrees, a few seconds later.

They sit, watch some tourists take photos of the picturesque scene. James hasn't been here in ages, not since Lily was visiting he and Tamir's flat for the first time and he showed her around the city. They went up Arthur's Seat and Lily made biscuits for them to enjoy at the top.

"It's strange," Teddy says, flicking ash with his finger. James turns to look at him. "That when a marriage ends you get this stamp: divorced. I don't become Teddy again, I become Divorced." He smiles ruefully. "I thought the whole point of signing all those papers was so my life wouldn't be defined by Victoire anymore."

"I'm –" James closes his mouth and starts again, "I'm sorry. It's not fair."

Teddy shrugs. He says, slow, "Listen, I'm just picking up cues, you know? You stayed over at mine. You kissed me the next morning. You didn't seem to hate going for lunch with me. I – I don't know. Kind of thought maybe you would want to go on a date."

"That makes sense," James says, faintly. "Excellent deduction."

"I haven't dated anyone in a long time, though. I'm out of practice." His eyes are clear in the dying light. "If you want me to bugger off, just tell me and I will."

"I don't. I really really don't." James wants to add that's the point . He wants to yell the problem is I liked kissing you and I liked having breakfast with you and I never ever want you to stop looking at me. The problem is that all those things are true and I'm the worst person in the entire world because I don't care.

Teddy's left hand is cold. James holds it anyways.

"I will say though," James says, looking at the way Teddy's long, pale fingers look in his own. "I don't date people who smoke."

In a flash of orange, the cigarette is on the ground. The heel of Teddy's boot rubs it into the concrete. He grins. "Anything else?"

"I like to sleep on the side of the bed facing the window."

"Cool."

"And I don't like it when people steal my black pudding."

Teddy sighs and says, "Well, it was fun while it lasted."

"If you wanted some you should have gotten your own!"

"Selfish, Jem," Teddy says, standing, and James follows him up with his hand, which Teddy is still holding like something delicate.

"You're the one who had to pretend to be all healthy and -"

Teddy tastes like smoke which makes James' nose wrinkle, but his hand on James' face is sweet despite the cold. Teddy's arm goes around his waist and Merlin, there's probably people trying to get by them, but James doesn't care. He hooks his elbows around Teddy's neck and holds on.

On Thursday, James leaves the Burrow before tea to head to Mum and Dad's.

"I can stay," he tells his Nan, honest. "I don't mind, really."

"Nonsense," she says, shooing him toward the Floo in the sitting room. "I've got Rose to keep me company and I've practiced that spell you taught me about a hundred times. No need to worry, Jem."

With Grandad still on medication to prevent infection in his kidneys, James has been performing low level pain spells every few hours. They aren't tricky but if they're not done correctly it can lead to horrible consequences.

"I'll stay here," James says, "No one will miss me -"

"I'll hex you. Don't try me, James Sirius."

When James was a kid, Dad would tell them stories from the war. He said that Nan killed Voldemort's right-hand woman with a single curse. James has never thought to cross her, since hearing that story. "Alright," he says, holding his hands up. "But I'll check in, okay?"

"It's you we should be worried about," Rose says, sticking her face out of the kitchen. She's got a streak of flour on her sweater from the pot pie he is so upset to be missing. "You have to eat Aunt Ginny's cooking."

Nan laughs when James groans. "Don't remind me."

It's apparent, however, when he steps out of the Floo of his parent's home that they've done right by their children and gotten takeaway from a Moroccan restaurant.

"Did you get Allou's?" James asks, stripping his jumper off as he wanders through the sitting room. It looks the same as the last time he was here, of course, but somehow different. "You better have ordered extra of the bissara or they'll be hell to – oh. Teddy."

"Hey," Teddy says.

"Teddy's here," Al says, helpfully.

James swallows and looks around Teddy's shoulder at where Al and Mum are sitting around the breakfast nook. He looks back up and Teddy. "Hi."

It's been literal years since James has seen Teddy in anything but his posh clothes. Tonight, he's wearing a jumper James' knows once belonged to his dad that reads Quidditch World Cup, Ireland, 1974 . The jumper is ratty, with holes around the cuffs and stains from overuse.

"I got the food before leaving London," Teddy says, giving James a wry smile. "So, it's not Allou's, sorry. But I did order you extra bissara, I've not got a death wish."

James forces a laugh before a commotion has him turning around-

"'Scuse me," Dad says, squeezing in between Teddy and he where they're still standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "Nice to see you, Jem. Why are you two stood in the doorway?"

Shaking his head, James follows them both in through the kitchen. Just because Teddy was looking soft and like the version of himself that stupid little kid James had fallen in love with approximately one million years ago, did not mean he has to stand around gawking all day. He slides into the seat next to Al and says, "Where's Lily?"

"Hermione's got her working tonight," Mum says, her eyes on where Dad has enlisted Teddy in helping him bring plates and utensils to the table. "It's the Minister's Gala so Lily's running around on fire, if you believed her talk at breakfast this morning."

"I remember those," Al says, chin in hand and reminiscent like he often gets after a couple beers or a joint. Judging by the red rim around his eyes, it was the latter tonight. "I remember that one year Dad talked to Mr. Malfoy about the shrimp appetizers and the Prophet put a photo of it on the front page."

"I'm still not convinced those galas weren't the sole reason behind you leaving the Aurors, Harry," Ted says, grinning. He takes the spot next to James and James must swallow his smile, knee pressed against Teddy under the table.

"Now when I go it's to beg people for money," Dad says, setting down the last of the takeaway containers. Mum is immediately in for some harissa chicken. "And you know, the shrimp appetizers are still the best part."

"I saw them the other day, actually," Teddy says, taking a forkful of couscous off James' plate even though the main container is right in front of him. "Not the shrimp – Draco and Scorpius. Gran had us all over for dinner."

"Scorpius Malfoy is a fox," Al says through a mouthful of bread. They were in the same year at Hogwarts but Al, the wry, sarcastic Slytherin and Scorpius, the strange, starry eyed Ravenclaw, were never close. "A super weird fox, but a fox nonetheless."

James isn't sure why, but he chimes in: "We snogged once."

All eyes go to him. "Shut up," Al says, "no you didn't."

"Did so."

"No way. When?"

"Hogsmeade weekend, seventh year."

"No, no, there's no way. Scorpius Malfoy did not do anything so uncouth as go on Hogsmeade dates, don't be ridiculous."

"We did ," James says, laughing now at the look on Dad's face. "It was in the garden behind Hog's Head. We snogged and then I leant him my scarf on the walk back up to the castle and he never gave it back, the bastard."

"This is unbearable," Al says, head in his hands. "I am sinking in Muggle quicksand. You have Muggle quicksanded me."

"So, Teddy , how are the Malfoys then?" Dad asks, over Mum's laughter.

"They're well," Teddy says. James chances a glance at him; his eyes are all shiny with joy, like a proper Potter siblings shouting match was what he needed. "Apparently Scorpius is thinking about moving to Paris, so Draco spent most of the meal ranting about the French. It was highly entertaining."

"Malfoy's son wants to leave home?" Mum asks. "Do you mind asking him how he's managed to do that? Ours won't bloody go, no matter how unsubtle we are."

"You would miss me," Al says, waving her off, "It would be so embarrassing for you, how much you would miss me. I'll save you the shame."

Teddy pulls him outside after they're eaten their weight in tagine, under the pretense of stargazing. Teddy got top marks in Astronomy and used to spend hours reciting the constellations to James when he was young.

"So," Teddy says, leaning back on his arms in the wet grass. "Scorpius Malfoy, huh?"

"Shut up, it was just the once." James laughs. "He really did steal my scarf."

"No judgement," Teddy says, turning to James, "I'll just modify to look more your type, it's no problem-"

"Stoppp-"

But it's too late: Teddy's eyes go wide and grey, his chin pointed. His long curls retract into his head and are replaced with white blonde hair, falling in a long fringe across his face. His grin, though, is still Teddy's, even coming from Scorpius Malfoy's face.

"Hm," James says, pretending to have a think about it. "Actually, you know what, this is better."

"Get fucked," Teddy says, laughing, his face coming back in pieces: first his eyes, hazel and round, then his strong jawline, his small ears, his long, pointed nose, dark eyebrows, and curls that turn to – lilac, not his usual chestnut. Lilac, like that morning on the Heath.

It looks nice on him. James decides to tell him, "I don't want you to get an even bigger head than you have, but you look very nice tonight."

Teddy blinks and then blushes.

"Did you just-" James tries to reach over and poke the red blossoming across Teddy's face but Teddy ducks out of the way. His long fingers wrap around James' wrists. "You're blushing. I've hardly seen you blush, ever."

"I don't often have things to blush about," Teddy says which is so fucking false-

"You get approached on the street by strangers who want to get photos with you," James says. "I've seen a girl cry when she met you. She literally burst into tears, Ted, she said you changed her life or summat. There are articles in Witch Weekly about how everyone wants to date you, Teddy."

"And?"

"And," James says and then falters. "Well."

"That's noise," Teddy says. "Besides, I don't fancy the girls on the tube who ask me for Muggle phone pictures. But I, er." At James' widening grin, he rolls his eyes. "Nevermind."

"You what?" James says. "You what , Teddy?"

Teddy shakes his head, rolling his eyes. He lets go of James' wrists, smiling. 

"You fancy me so hard, Teddy Lupin."

Sighing, he reaches an arm around James' shoulders. "I was wondering when you would start being a brat again."

James protests but he knows what Teddy means, feels himself more relaxed than he's been around Teddy since this whole thing started. It's easier, somehow, being in his childhood home. He's spent summers with Teddy in this garden and the fields behind; Teddy had a knack for naming everything, would make families out of the forest that ran alongside the creek in the back. It's easier to feel himself, to feel right under Teddy's arm.

"Any nosy Potters at the window?" Teddy asks, eyes on James' mouth.

"Mm," James hums, looking back. Only the kitchen window faces this way back and it's empty but for a jar full of dried lavender. "Think you're in the clear."

Teddy tastes warm, like spiced lamb and the apple cinnamon babka they had for dessert, the one Dad gets from the bakery in Buxton that he likes to drive to while the sun is rising. James slides his hands into lilac curls and they are soft, abundant; it feels like something is flying around in James' chest, being allowed to do this.

"I wanted to tell you," Teddy says, when they break apart, noses still close to each other. "I haven't been crushing on you since you were a teenager or something. It's only been in the last couple years that I've – that you've been on my radar."

James thinks it is a little silly for Teddy to state that he was not sexualizing James when he was a teenager, if only because James as a teenager was very much sexualizing Teddy, several times a day. He has half a mind to tell him but decides that Teddy's already heard quite a lot about how handsome he is tonight. It's important that he can still fit in the fireplace to Floo home.

Teddy kisses him again. It is very pleasant until James' watch vibrates on his wrist and, "I have to go," he says, into Teddy's mouth. "Grandad."

"Okay," Teddy says, and then, "When can I see you again? Like," he laughs, "I haven't dated anyone in so long. I don't remember how you schedule and plan dates, Merlin ."

He looks all out of sorts, hair in a disarray, the collar of his ancient crewneck pulled out at the front. James would like to take a picture of him with Dad's big, clunky camera. Teddy gets photos taken all the time, of him on stage or in Muggle films or sometimes just when he's leaving his apartment. This photo would be just for James though, so he can remember this moment and all the moments before, even the ones that made him feel worse than he's ever felt, for when everything falls apart.

"That explains why you just keep dropping in on me unannounced," James says, wry, turning his eyes from Teddy's red mouth. "Send me an owl, you heathen, and we can figure something out for this weekend."

The weekend comes quickly, with James' Friday dominated by back-to-back lectures in the Old Medical School. He stumbles home to the Burrow to check on Grandad before Apparating back to Edinburgh to work in the library for a few hours, hunched over tomes and writing until his hand cramps. By the time he stumbles home for tea, his eyes are swimming in the readings from class and there's a throbbing behind each of his ears.

Nan sweeps him up, gives him soup and a slice of fresh bread.

"Jem," Grandad says, as James checks him over. "You look dead on your feet."

"I'm alright," James says, smiling. He knows his eyes have grey circles under them, the weight of his classes, work, Grandad, and now, Teddy. Being around Teddy is like having all his favourite holidays and birthday come at once but after, when Teddy's gone, he can hardly sleep with guilt over being so happy. He's never lied about seeing someone to his family, ever.

"Hmph," Grandad says.

He's been restricted to his bed for the last little while. He only has two more doses of his kidney potion left and then they should be fine to start administering pain potion again. Until that point, James has given Grandad strict bedrest instructions so as not to aggravate himself.

He is less than thrilled.

"Listen," James says, "I know this is frustrating for you. But last night before I came home, I stopped by a Muggle shop and," from his rucksack he pulls out the collection of stuff he picked up from the little shop on the corner of Treviot, "I got you a Muggle lighter, some chewing gum, four fridge magnets, a mousetrap, and the newest edition of Gear and Gadgets ."

Grandad looks over his new pile of treasure. When he looks up, he's grinning.

James desperately wants to sleep in the next morning but rudding Saturday means a shift at the clinic, 7am – 3pm. Nan's a bloody saint so she fries him two eggs and crafts him the world's best bacon butty before he has to walk out in the cool air, pass the edge of the Burrow's fields, and can Apparate back to sodding Edinburgh.

The clinic is quiet, mercifully. James much prefers its sleepy hallways to the anxiety-inducing chaos of St. Mungo's. He checks in with Rosie at the front desk who is reading one of her centaur romances. She hands him the day's itinerary without looking up at him, one finger skimming along as she reads.

"Easy morning?" he asks, with just enough cheek that Rosie won't give him a stink eye, as she's been known to do.

"Mm," she says, scanning. "Florence is on rotation and Dean is counselling. You're on admissions and general correspondence."

James sighs, grateful.

He spends most of the morning at the triaging desk near the front doors, answering owls to inquiries of the clinic. They're still relatively unknown, having been opened several years after the war by Healer Thomas to help counsel individuals experiencing PTSD. It expanded over the years to where it is now: a clinic and counselling hospital with ten overnight beds and on-going research into how to better address mental health.

Admissions and triaging are slow today, mainly family and friends of overnight clients who come in to visit. At eleven o'clock Healer Kim is leading a counselling session for youth with anxiety, and James helps orient several of them as they arrive, including:

"Scorpius?"

"Hullo Jem Potter," says Scorpius, eyes bright and pointed behind delicate, silver wired glasses. He's dressed like one of Teddy's posh London friends, all lines of grey and black. He stares at James.

Never one to deal with long silences, James says, "We were just talking about you at dinner the other night."

"Oh." Scorpius isn't one for follow-up questions. James offers answers anyway:

"Teddy Lupin was over and mentioned he saw you. He says you're moving to Paris."

"Perhaps," Scorpius says. He has a peculiar way of being, one that mainly consists of staring and speaking infrequently. James would have thought it was a Ravenclaw thing, but he knows Teddy and like - Teddy often sprouts off random poetry and is known to put his ears next to trees and listen to their thoughts or whatever. But Teddy could also hold a conversation.

"Al was asking after you," James says after another long period of silence

Scorpius blinks. "Al Potter? He was asking about me?" He blinks again. "Why?"

James shrugs. He tries to think of the best way to rephrase 'a super weird fox' into a sentence that was slightly less Al . "Um, you know. Said he always wished he got, er, to get to know you better at school and stuff."

"Oh. Huh."

A chime goes on above their heads. James shakes himself, says, "Anyways, the session will be starting any minute. Healer Kim is really excellent, I think you'll appreciate it."

"Hm," Scorpius says, "Thank you." He turns to go in and James exhales, but then – "Oh wait. Teddy mentioned that you work here when I saw him at Auntie's house, so I brought this for you."

From the pocket of his long coat, Scorpius pulls out – "Oh," James goes red, head to toe. "You can keep that."

"I didn't mean to take it," Scorpius says and even he has a flush on the pale skin over his cheekbones. "It was an accident. But then I couldn't find my scarf and it gets quite cold in Northern Scotland."

"Sure."

"And then, you know." Scorpius says, sighing. "The passage of time."

"You can – really, you can keep it."

"It clashes with my skin tone," Scorpius says but then, "Okay. If you're sure." He puts it back in his pocket. He starts walking toward the door that leads into one of the counselling rooms before turning around and saying, "Are you joking about Al asking for me?"

"Why would I joke about that?"

Scorpius opens his mouth and then closes it. He grins, suddenly, and James remembers exactly why he is known, the country over, as a weird but hot, very very hot, little duck.

James naps for three hours when he gets back to the Burrow after his shift. He wakes slow, eyes crusty and feeling like something crawled into his mouth and died. But he can smell roast dinner and that's enough to get him up, groaning as he goes. When he stumbles downstairs it's to find a cousin sprawled over the couch in the sitting room.

"Hey," Louis says.

"Hi," James says, slowly. It's possible he hasn't quite woken up yet. "Not that I don't love you and stuff, but why are you in the sitting room?"

"Third Saturday of the month," Louis says like duh .

James is halfway through saying "What?" when Dom and Victoire walk through from the kitchen, both of their silvery hair pulled back into long braids. The bottom drops out of James' stomach. Third Saturday of the month must be code for Day That James Must See Cousin of Whom He Was Planning to Avoid for Eternity, Thanks.

"Jem!" Dom says, their smile wide. "The rash went away."

"Oh. Good."

"You look awful," Victoire says, grinning at him like it's a joke. She has Uncle Bill's smile and his unbearable charm and Aunt Fleur's everything else.

"Thanks," James says, feeling awful. He's awake now. He's very much awake and he very much kissed his cousin's ex-husband two days ago. Oh god, he's going to puke. He's going to – "I saw Scorpius Malfoy today."

As far as distractions go, it's a good one.

"Scorpius Malfoy is a fucking fox ," Louis says. It's possible he's spending far too much time with Al.

Nan comes to collect them all around the barn table in the kitchen – ignoring James' protests that he doesn't need to join, no really Nan, no he can eat upstairs, no Nan, really, he won't feel left out, he promises - where Aunt Fleur has set a gorgeous table. Aunt Fleur is an event planner. Every event she throws looks very beautiful and she always, without fail, makes sure that the catering serves treacle tart for dessert if Dad is coming. Aunt Fleur is, categorically, the best.

"Jem," she says, warm, leaning over the roast to kiss him on both cheeks. "Working too 'ard?"

"No, no, just tired," he says. He would like to melt into a puddle right now, please.

James keeps his head down during the meal. The potions for Grandad's kidneys have finally run out, so he's back on medication for his pain. It's good to see him at the table, even if he does fall asleep in his mashed potatoes twice. Everyone talks about how good it is to see him at the table. Everyone talks about that, and the weather, and Louis' boring Ministry man ex-boyfriend, and Louis' new less boring Quidditch playing boyfriend. They do not mention the fact that Victoire hasn't been without a date to family functions since she was sixteen.

It's such a lively chatter of not-mentioning that James almost forgets to feel a deep, horrific amount of shame. That is, until Uncle Bill passes James the trifle bowl with a "I don't know if Lou spoke to you, Jem, but we do a pickup game of football on Sunday mornings at the house. You're always welcome to join in."

James, who has always liked Muggle sports far more than bloody Quidditch, opens his mouth to say he'd love to play, when he remembers the letter he received Thursday night after he finished checking Grandad's vitals.

Jem –

I have rehearsal all SAT & SUN but it doesn't start until noon SUN. It would make my life approximately 4 billion times better if I could see your face Sunday before I'm destined for more costume fittings. Please please be free to wander around the Heath with me. I will provide chocolate croissants

Teddy

"I can't," James says and it's like he's hearing himself speak underwater. "I have a – a study group for school. Sorry about that."

James doesn't like lies. They grow so big and round, like when they were children and used to make snowmen in the yard. Lies start out small but soon they grow and grow until every inch of his life is entrenched in it and he can't see a way out. But it will come out. Everything always comes out, eventually.

Louis waves him off. "It was late notice, don't worry."

They won't ever talk to him again, James thinks, once they know.

v.

Teddy does bring chocolate croissants.

"It's not that I don't love everyone in the cast," Teddy is saying, lying back on the blanket he brought so they wouldn't get damp from the morning dew on the grass. "It's just that actors are such actors sometimes."

"Teddy," James says, lying next to him, eyes closed against the weak sun. "You're an actor."

He groans. James peaks one eye open to see him, the lines of his grumpy face. "Not like this. I'm not . My Gran would kill me if I was as expectant as some of my castmates. You know Wilmot Windgard has his own lighting team? Like there's the team of lighting designers for the show and then there's just Wilmot's designers and everyone has to work around them because he's the sodding lead."

"I don't know, Ted, kind of sounds like you should get your own lighting team too," James says, pragmatic, closing his eyes once more. "And make sure they have their own lighting team."  

Teddy's laugh is loud and it echoes through James' chest. He feels Teddy's long, thin fingers curling around his own. "Fine. Your turn."

"Hm?"

"To bitch about one of your colleagues," Teddy says. When James looks over it is a devastating sight: chestnut curls, hazel eyes, and a smattering of golden, morning freckles over Teddy's nose. "Or classmates, I guess."

"Oversharing Brian," James says without thinking. "He sits front row in my lecture on mental health for vulnerable populations and he won't shut up for anything. He thinks he's God's gift to medicine. It's like - if I wanted a straight white dude's perspective on something, I would ask one of my uncles, you know?"

Teddy laughs and then he's coming closer, his free hand cupping the back of James' head. Teddy kisses him, twice, with the morning sun coming down on them. When he pulls back it's to say, "I fancy you like mad."

Spluttering, his ears going red, James crows, "You can't just keep saying things like that, Teddy Lupin!" before he's pulled back into another kiss, then another, until everything bleeds together and they spend the morning like that, happy, kiss drunk on stolen time.

When James gets home, the Burrow is quiet. Nan is asleep on the sofa in the living room. A large quilt, which James knows will be a Christmas present for his Mum and Dad, is sewing itself as it keeps her warm. Grandad is asleep in the rocking chair by the front window, one of his favourite editions of The Daily Telegraph in his lap.

James takes the stairs quietly. His lips are still buzzing from Teddy; they feel too prominent on his face, red and swollen like anyone could look at him and know what and who he had been up to.

The mirror on the second-floor bathroom does not help: "Someone's been shagging," it tells him, coy, and he doesn't bother to correct it. He tries to flatten his hair at the back to no avail. His cheeks and the tip of his nose gone pink from the wind that swept across the Heath as they climbed down.

The eyes he inherited from his great-grandfather look back at him. In all the photos James has seen of Fleamont Potter, most from history books and the community records they came across when the family travelled to Pakistan, he is beaming from ear to ear, his dark brown eyes sparkling. James' eyes, as he takes careful stock of who he's become in the last couple months, go downcast.

He doesn't quite know how a body can contain so much joy and shame in the same ribcage.

When he gets to Uncle Percy's old room, Pig The Fourth, Ron's owl, is waiting for him with a letter.

Dear Jem,

Wanted to thank you for the list of cogniti cognitivity CBT practices that you recommended for your Aunt. She was very very hesitant at first!! But her Muggle brain expert is named Chelsea and is very well-spoken according to Hermione. I really think this will do a lot of good for her.

Come round for a pint next time you're free, we'll hit the local. Hugo says you haven't been by for a drink with the boys for too long.

-Ron

James reads it once, then twice. When he puts it down, to his own astonishment, he's crying.  

As is the case with these Tuesday night dinners, Al and James migrate to the porch with Grandad and Muggle booze once the kitchen's cleaned up, Nan saying she'll get to bed early but is no doubt turning on the soap she likes in the living room and sitting with her feet up. Al brings them hard seltzer in pink grapefruit flavour, which makes James' mouth pucker but Grandad loves it.

"Delicious!" he says, eight minutes before he falls asleep sitting up.

"Okay, now that he's asleep I can tell you. I have," Al says, loftily, "Wonderful news."

"Oh yeah? Did you finally ask your boss for a new desk chair?"

"What? No, shut up," Al says, dismissive. His desk chair had been the main topic of conversation last Tuesday, so sue James for thinking it still mattered to him. "Yesterday, I had a pint with Stuart Coolridge who I believe you will remember well…" Al wiggles his eyebrows.

"We went on one Hogsmeade date, Al. When we were fourteen. We didn't even snog."

"Semantics. Anyways! You will never guess who we saw at Dragon Fly." Al puts his seltzer down so he can drum his hands on his knees. James makes sure to look as unimpressed as possible. "Marta Ortiz. And," Al says, gleefully. "She was snogging some random guy."

"Oh, Al," James says, "I'm sorry, buddy."

"Why are you sorry? There is nothing to be sorry about! This is the greatest news that could have reached me."

James is, in a word, confused. "But you fancy Marta Ortiz. You've fancied Marta Ortiz since you first saw her in the Great Hall and her hair was all golden in the candlelight." The Tale of Marta Ortiz is one of Al's most told stories. "Why are you happy to see her with some other person?"

"You remember when Marta Ortiz broke up with her boyfriend?"

"Yes." James had gotten a letter that said LIFE IS GOOD AND JUST!!!!!!! It was delivered to him at work. Al wrote URGENT on the outside of the envelope. James thought someone had died. "Yes, I remember when Marta Ortiz broke up with her boyfriend."

"It has now been four months," Al says. "She is…back on the market."

"With someone else."

"Everyone needs a rebound, Jem," Al says, as if it's James that's missing something. "People do not go from one serious relationship to a different serious relationship. That is not healthy. You need someone in the middle. This other dude is that someone."

James knows he should say something. It's just that his mouth has gone dry without him realizing. "Oh. That makes sense."

"Of course it does, Jem. I'm a genius." He finishes off his seltzer with a sigh that sounds an awful lot like when Aunt Hermione says something at Christmas that no one else gets.

Navigating around the very peculiar frog in his stomach, James says, "You know, I ran into Scorpius the other day."

"Did you snog him? God, I can't believe you never told me that. I'm still devastated."

"No, I didn't snog him," James says. He can't stop shivering, sort of, like his skin is shaking off a bad feeling. "He seemed interested in the fact that you're still, you know, around."

Al stills. He very carefully sets his seltzer down. "Are you telling me," Al starts, slowly, "that Marta Ortiz is going to be single and ready to mingle in T minus a week or so and Scorpius Malfoy, dreamboat, is aware of my existence."

James nods, minutely. He's still sort of hung up on the word rebound if he's being totally honest.

"This is," Al says, as Grandad lets out a particularly loud snore, "the greatest day of my life."

James thinks and thinks. He thinks when Al and he take Grandad up to bed. He thinks while he hugs Al goodbye. He thinks while brushing his teeth and taking off his jeans and climbing into bed. He thinks so loud he can hardly fall asleep, frowning as he is at the ceiling.

"Bugger," he says, before tracking down his jeans again and Disapparating.

Teddy's bedroom is empty, which throws James for a second before he remembers that most young adults don't go to bed at 10 p.m after two seltzers with their grandfather. He hears voices downstairs and tinkering glass. James checks himself in the stand-up mirror and realizes he has a bit of schmutz near his collar.

On inspection, Teddy's closet is larger than Uncle Percy's room. James, who owns maybe eight shirts, grabs the first thing recognizable to him: Teddy's signed Montrose Magpies hoodie from when they won the Cup in '21.

He pads down the stairs, quietly. The noise gives way as he comes into the main sitting room, where Teddy, a black man with long pink dreadlocks, and a white woman are sitting around the dining room table. They look over at his entrance. Teddy grins: "Jem?"

"Sorry to interrupt," James says but he's already standing, coming over.

"Hey," Teddy says, towering over James in a deeply appealing way, his hand coming to the side of James' neck. "This is a nice surprise. I thought tonight was baked ziti."

"It is," James says, "Sorry, I didn't realize you had company."

"It's not a problem." Teddy leans in to kiss the side of James' face, then again where his eye crinkles as he smiles. "I like you in my stuff," he says, tugging on the drawstrings of the hoodie. "Here, I'll introduce you."

Teddy's hot friend with the dreadlocks is named Mesh and, "You can call me Ophelia or O," says the white woman. Teddy pulls up a chair for James and goes off to get him a wine glass from the kitchen.

"Did I hear Ted call you Jem?" Ophelia asks, over a sip of her wine.

"Yeah, family nickname," James says. Both her and Mesh are dressed like Teddy, impossibly cool in different shades of monochrome. He feels distinctly out of place. He's pretty sure they're both Muggles and is glad he left his wand upstairs. "You can call me James. Are you actors like Teddy?"

"They're wash ups," Teddy says, returning with the wine glass for James and a glass of water. When Teddy takes his seat, he slings his arm over the back of James' chair.

"We're writers," Mesh says. He has a deep, soothing voice, and a disarming smile. "Although it's not Ted's fault he can only recite words, not write them himself."

"Oi!"

"What about you, James?" Ophelia asks. She has piercing grey eyes behind her large, round eyeglasses. "What do you do for a living?"

"Jem's a doctor."

"Oh shit, Lupin," Mesh says, laughing, "Punching way above your weight class."

"Fuck off," Teddy says, wolfish grin on his face, and James just knows the tips of his own ears must be burning. It's not helped by the casual way Teddy keeps touching him, his thumb running along the back of James' neck and up into his hair.

Ophelia's looking at him, unreadable. She says, "Maybe you can help us, James. We're trying to convince Ted to join our cast."

"What cast?" James asks as Teddy groans.

"Don't listen to them," he says, waving a hand. "I'd be rubbish in it. You should go with the bloke from auditions."

"We don't want him," Mesh says. He gives James a look, like they're sharing in Teddy's known stubbornness. "O and I have got a contract with Channel 4 for a 6-episode series and we're looking for a lead. Brooding type, gorgeous and tall. Have you seen anyone matching that description around?"

James watches the tip of Teddy's nose go pink. "Sounds pretty fitting."

"Oh Jesus, not you too," Teddy says, dragging a hand through his hair. "I'll think about it, alright?"

Mesh and Ophelia head out not long after. James leans against the kitchen counters while Teddy rinses the wine glasses one by one and leaves them to dry in the rack next to the sink.

"Why don't you want to do the show?" he asks. The house feels much quieter now with just the two of them, soft light emitted by the lamps scattered across the room and low music coming from a speaker in the lounge.

"It would mean a lot more attention," Teddy says, eyes down. His thumb scrapes residue left from Ophelia's lipstick off her glass. "And more hours. Filming is in Cardiff, I think, which would be further out from Gran."

"It's too bad you don't have a magic stick that can transport you anywhere in the blink of an eye."

He gets a soapy hand in the face for that.

"Anyways," Teddy says and now he's in James' space, pushing at his hips until James is halfway sitting on the counter, his legs splayed, Teddy between them. Teddy keeps his thumbs on James' hip bones as he presses them close together and asks, "I forgot to ask why you stopped by. Which – I mean you always can. I like when you stop by."

James reaches out to run his fingers over the crisp edge of Teddy's collar. He stares at it, not Teddy, when he says, "Al said some stuff to me at dinner tonight."

"Always dangerous."

James smiles but doesn't raise his eyes. Now that he's here, he doesn't know how to phrase it. He can't imagine that asking Teddy, point blank, am I a rebound for you? will get him anything but quick denial. "You said, before, that you've fancied me for a while."

Teddy nudges their noses together. "Yeah."

"Did that –" James bites at his lip before continuing, "Was that before you started being unhappy with Victoire? Or after?"

Teddy's thumbs, which have been making lovely circles on James' hip bones for the last minute, stop. He says, slowly, "I'm not sure I know what you're asking."

"Marta Ortiz was snogging some other guy," James blurts out and then, horrified, covers his face with his hands.

"What?" Teddy says and then: "Wait, Marta? Isn't that the bird Al has been trying to wheel for a century?"

"Yes," James says from the hand cave from which he will never return.

"What does Marta Ortiz have to do with me fancying you?"

"Al reckons Marta Ortiz is – rebounding. From her ex-boyfriend. And that once this guy is out of the picture, she'll be ready to ask out because. Because she'll have gotten this rebound out of the way." James peeks through his fingers.

"Ah." Teddy's eyes are downcast as he winds a finger around the drawstring of his hoodie. "Al's an idiot," he says, quiet.

"I mean, yes, usually, but-" James looks down as well, at Teddy's fingers so close to him. "Doesn't mean he can't occasionally have a point."

"You're not a rebound, Jem."

"I appreciate you saying that," James says, "but also. I mean, of course you're going to say that."

"The difference between me and you, and Marta Ortiz and her bloke, is that you're one of the most important people in my life," Teddy says, looking up now, his eyes darker in the low light. "Regardless of if we're dating or not."

James nods, eyes searching Teddy's face.

"Also," he says with a wry smile, "I think if I were looking for a quick shag to get over my broken marriage, I would pick someone a bit less complicated to do it with, darling."

It pushes a laugh out of James' throat. "That's valid."

"C'mere."

His hands are huge on James' hips when they pull him closer, every part of him touching every part of Teddy. James can feel Teddy's heartbeat against his own, loud. He hooks a leg around Teddy's hip and Teddy moans into his mouth.

"Wait –" James pulls away. His mouth feels red and used and, since Teddy can't seem to take his eyes off it, must be quite the picture. "We don't have to be forever. Obviously. But I just want to know if this is a casual thing or a serious thing or. I don't know."

"Jem," Teddy says, in his most obnoxious Ravenclaw voice, "You think I left my wife for you so we could mess around for a few weeks?"

"Well, when you put it like that-"

Teddy's hands are everywhere, one slinking up James' jumper at the back and making every bump in his spine shiver, the other pressed to his jaw. His mouth is sinful, his tongue clever, and James can feel himself coming undone. The music seems to have switched itself off and all he can hear are his own breaths and Teddy's sweet mutterings, the way he drops sweetheart into James' mouth when James slips a hand into his shirt.

James hops down or maybe Teddy pulls him, he doesn't know, he just knows that they stop kissing long enough to get up the stairs and drop into Teddy's bed. The sheets are different from last time, softer, flannel maybe for the colder months. James is pressed into them as Teddy clammers over him, one elbow on either side of James' head, his hips snug against James' between his legs.

Clever fingers tug James' knee up, until it's wrapped around Teddy's ribcage. He feels like a horny teenager in his bunk at Hogwarts and tells Teddy so.

"Who were you snogging like this at Hogwarts?" Teddy asks, in between kisses down James' throat.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

Teddy grins, pushes up to kiss again. James can barely feel his lips, can barely feel anything but alight, everything so warm and brilliant like a burst of sunlight on a cloudy day. Then Teddy's hips press down against his and oh .

James pulls away and says, "I don't know if we should have sex."

Teddy's hair has gone lilac again; James doesn't remember seeing it change. "Okay," Teddy says, out of breath, before diving back in.

His hips lift off James' minutely, his hands sliding away from where they were rucking up James' jumper to hang out in his hair instead. James lets this go on, drifting for a minute, before -

"It's not that I don't want to," he says, pushing Teddy up and away once more. "I just think it wouldn't be the best idea. Given the circumstances."

Teddy sits back onto his haunches between James' spread legs. He looks utterly, perfectly dishevelled from James' hands. The buttons of his shirt have come undone to his belly button revealing a red flush over smooth skin, evidence of James' hands everywhere.

"Whatever you want," Teddy says and then clears his throat. "I'll just, erm, have a - quick shower before bed."

"Yes," James says, "Yes, I think I might as well."

"Are you staying over?"

"I can," James says, sitting up so their faces are closer to each other.

"I would really like you to," and oh hell-

James hooks his fingers in Teddy's shirt at the button, at his belly button, and pulls him in until they're kissing. Teddy's hands go back to his hair, sliding through the mess of it, but James lets his fingers wander down, down, until he's thumbing open the button of Teddy's jeans.

"Wait," Teddy whispers, "didn't you literally just-"

"Do you want me to stop?" James asks.

"Fuck no."

Teddy's cock is hard and red between them. James looks down at it between their bodies and then up at Teddy's closed eyes. He ghosts his fingertips across the head and Teddy keens, harsh gasps against James' cheek. It makes him feel powerful, like he could take Teddy under with just a sweet touch. James strokes his fingers down the length, then up to thumb the head and Teddy's coming, his hand going tight in James' hair.

"Holy shit," he says into James' shoulder. "You've fucking ruined me, Jem."

"Sorry," James says back, not feeling very sorry at all.

"Can I get you off?" Teddy asks, quiet, still hidden against James' shoulder. "I've been thinking about it for so long."

James holds his breath for a second, two seconds, then: "Yes."

He lasts longer than Teddy but not by much. He's pushed until he's on his back once more, Teddy between his legs, Teddy mouthing the skin above his jeans, kissing across the rise of his stomach, Teddy's fingers sliding through his open fly. It's so gentle, unhurried and good. James tips his head back and closes his eyes, thinks about the way Teddy had begged for this. He hears his own breathing pitch up before he's coming in his jeans.

"You're so fucking hot," Teddy says, mouth still pressed up against James' stomach. "So fucking hot, darling."

They shower separately, Teddy then James. During James' turn, Teddy brushes his teeth with a towel wrapped around his waist, grinning at James through the very transparent glass. It's awful and horrible and makes James smile until he can't feel his face anymore.

The bed smells like sex when they climb back into it.

"I feel like I should send Al a gift basket," Teddy says. They're facing each other, Teddy's hand resting in the dip of James' waist. "For indirectly sending you over tonight."

"Al deserves no such thing."

"Mm. Agree to disagree."

James closes his eyes. He has two midterms next week and over twenty hours of work at the clinic. In between that he has the weekly Potter dinner, Teddy's opening night, and then big family brunch on Sunday. Exhaustion hits him heavy.

"I was going to say this earlier," Teddy murmurs in his ear. "And then thought maybe you wouldn't want to hear it. And now I think I should say it again, at the risk of being too honest."

It's a hell of a way to introduce something. James opens one eye. "What is it?"

"I've technically had a rebound already," Teddy says and.

James opens both eyes. "Oh."

"It was when you were still ignoring me," Teddy says, thumb still brushing back and forth over James' ribcage. "I had just signed the divorce papers and was fucking miserable, so the boys took me to a bar and I ended up bringing a girl back to the hotel room I was staying in."

James doesn't really know what to say.

"She was wearing a shirt from the Grindylows tour last year which reminded me of you and then I couldn't stop thinking of you and. Anyway, she left afterwards. I haven't seen her since."

"Well," James says, primly, "I'm happy for you."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He closes his eyes. Teddy says, "Now what about you?"

He opens his eyes. "Huh?"

"You were with Tamir for three years," Teddy says, running his thumb across James' cheek. "How do I know I'm not just a rebound from him?"

"That's –" James narrows his eyes. "You think you're so clever." Teddy grins. "Fine. Fine! If you must know, yes . His name is Etienne and we went on three dates last month."

"And where is dear Etienne now?"

"How should I know?" James says, in a huff. He closes his eyes again, feels Teddy's fingers smoothing over the lines of his face. "Now if you don't mind, I'm quite tired. Some of us have work in the morning, you know."

"I know, Jem."

He opens his eyes just a little. Teddy's looking at him like he's a very cute baby crup. "Good night," he says before pressing his lips against Teddy's.

Arms come around him, bringing him closer into warmth and Teddy. James can already feel himself starting to drift before Teddy's murmuring to him, kissing his forehead and gentling him around the ears.

The Patronus wakes him up before the sun has risen. Dad's voice speaks from the stag:

It's your Grandad. Come quickly .

He stumbles into his jeans in the dark. His fingers are shaking too much to do up the fly, so he stops trying, looks around for a shirt to wear. The first one he comes across is Teddy's, long sleeve and white, and he pulls it over himself. It is too big in the shoulders. It is very difficult to get oxygen into his lungs.

Warm hands cup his face. "Jem. Jem, breathe."

"I have to get to the Burrow," he says, shaking. He feels Teddy's fingers button his jeans for him. "I have to – Dad's already there."

"I'll Apparate you, okay? Give me a second."

James watches, numb, as Teddy slips on a jumper and a pair of joggers. Hands come back to either side of his cheek, soothing. James says, "You can't come in with me. They'll know what we've – what we are."

Teddy sucks in a breath but says, "Okay, Jem. I'll drop you off, okay? I'll drop you off and come back here, sweetheart, okay?"

And he does. James barely feels the squeeze of Apparation, doesn't notice that he forgot to put shoes on as his feet touch wet grass in the meadow just past the boundary line of the Burrow. Teddy grabs his hand before he goes.

"Breathe, Jem," he says, all silver in the dawn just starting to turn dark blue to gold. "You're no good to them panicking."

The guilt and fear slink off him at Teddy's words. By the time he bursts into his grandparent's room, right off the first-floor landing, he's back in the right state of mind. This is just another emergency, just another body to fix. This is what he's good at.

"Jem," Nan says and she's crying before she's thrown her arms around him. "Oh thank Merlin, Jem. You're here."

Dad is standing over Grandad, who is wet with sweat and grey in complexion. There's a basin next to him, splashed with bile and blood. James pulls his wand from behind his ear and goes to stand next to Dad.

"What have you cast?"

"Stabilizing spells," Dad says. He has worry tight around his eyes, like when James caught dragon pox as a kid or when Al was in the hospital with pneumonia a couple years ago. "I tried to do an anti-Nausea Charm, but it's been ages since I've cast it."

"Has he had anything to eat or drink since dinner?"

"No, no," Nan says through tears. His Healer bag, last used when Al and he took Grandad up to bed after the seltzers, is still open by the windowsill. He Summons it to him and searches for the charmed bracelet he keeps for child patients to help with nausea; he slips it over Grandad's wrist.

He presses a hand to Grandad's cheek. It's cold. Dread fills James. "Nan," he says, as calm as he can keep his voice, "I need you to Floocall St. Mungo's. Ask for Healer Walsh or Greenlake in the Potions department. Once you have them, shout for me. Okay?"

Nan nods and rushes from the room.

James rolls the sleeves of the shirt he stole from Teddy's bedroom floor. He shoves away everything else in his head and focuses on this, on keeping Grandad alive, only.

Several hours later and Grandad is resting. The sun forgot to come out this morning and it is grey and wet as James has his second coffee at the kitchen table with Dad. Nan is still upstairs, refusing to leave Grandad's side, though he's stable.

He'll be fine. James takes another sip.

"Thank you for sending your Patronus for me," James says, hoarse. Dad looks about as rough as he feels, with dark grey under his eyes. Dad isn't a coffee drinker, hated drinking it while he was an Auror, and he's waiting as his tea steeps in front of him.

"Molly called ours, thinking you followed Al home and stayed over," Dad says, rubbing under his glasses to get at the sleep in his eyes. "I figured Prongs would find you faster than anything else."

James nods. He looks into his mug and sees a shadowy version of himself look back. Dad hasn't asked him where he was in the early hours of the day. He won't, James knows, because he doesn't like to pry. James tells him anyway: "I was at Teddy's."

Dad blinks. "Oh."

And just that, just a single noise, an oh , and James wants to tell him everything. He wants to start at the beginning, tell Dad all about how he tried not to have crazy, stupid feelings for Teddy growing up, but it wouldn't work. He wants to tell him how being Teddy's groomsman had given him multiple anxiety attacks in dressing rooms and wedding venues. He wants to say that he didn't mean to tell Teddy to get divorced, but he doesn't regret it, can't regret it and that's why he doesn't seem to sleep anymore.

But then Dad is standing, saying, "I'll make your grandmother some breakfast. She'll spend the whole day up there."

James drops his eyes. His fingers, long around the handle of his coffee mug, had touched Teddy only a few hours ago. "Yeah," he says, roughly, his throat bleeding. "You're right."

Dad leaves after breakfast. Now, as the clocks around the house chime for ten, Nan is finally resting, laid out in Uncle Bill's old room with a stack of quilts. James takes her spot by Grandad's bed while she is gone.

Granddad pulls him close for a hug. "Thank you, Jem."

"Of course."

When he was young, Grandad used to put him on his knees and tell him stories about his Uncle George and Fred and the mischief they got up to. He told stories about Uncle Ron and James' dad, about nose-biting teacups at work, and Teddy's parents. It seemed the safest place in the world, his grandfather's knee.

"I know I'm not well," Grandad says, slow.

James swallows. "You're fine." He isn't.

"No, I'm not," Grandad says, definitively. "I know I've not got long."

"You have," James says, another half-truth. He's never liked playing guessing games with peoples' lives and time. "We don't know how long it will be. It could be years yet."

"It won't be. But I appreciate you telling your Nan otherwise."

James looks down. He knows that this is not how it works but he wishes, just for a moment, that he could take the joy he's been feeling these last few weeks and transfigure it into more time. He wishes, more than anything, to be back on Grandad's knee, hearing stories about Uncle Charlie and his dragons.

"St. Mungo's has this on file," Grandad says. "But I don't know if you saw it, so I'll tell you. Because I don't want to die there, Jem. I can't."

"You're not going to-"

"If something happens," Grandad continues, "I don't want to be woken up, okay? I want to die peacefully. I want my family around me. I don't want to be strapped to some magical contraption to keep my heart going a few weeks longer. Do you understand?"

James swallows for nought. His throat is dry.

"James. Do you understand?"

"Yes Grandad," he says. He closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted. "I understand."

He's scheduled to work at noon.

Last night, when he and Teddy fell into bed together, he imagined a very different meander to work. He planned to wake up, Apparate to the Burrow to check on Grandad, and then back into Hampstead to be with Teddy. Teddy, who had to be at rehearsal by ten thirty, would wine and dine him with coffee and croissants until he had to go. James was going to stay in his fancy king sized bed and do readings until his shift.

Instead, as he stumbles into the clinic at two minutes to 12pm, he's chugging a mug of diluted Pepper-Up potion. His ear steam as he passes Rosie at reception.

"Not looking great, Potter," she calls out.

He's on-call counsellor this afternoon, which is mainly a sit around and wait task, so he helps Healer Bhatnagar with rotation. Most of their overnight beds are for emergency patients, but some have been here for a few weeks now. James brings lunch over to Johnny at the far end of patient ward 2. He's doing the Prophet's crossword.

"Harpie's keeper in their golden year," Johnny reads aloud as James putters around, setting his tray over his knees. "6 letters."

James, who is useless for Quidditch clues, has got this one. "Does ARTAUD fit?"

Johnny hums happily, filling it in. Mum was in her twilight on the team when they won their last Championship. James spent the evening curled under arms, from Uncle Charlie to Dad to Teddy at the end of the night, the both of them hoarse from shouting. Artaud was sharp as a whip when James met her, covered in dirt, and snogging her wife enthusiastically. Hard to forget someone like that.

"How are we feeling this morning?" James asks Johnny, once he's convinced him away from his paper.

"Fine," Johnny says, then, "Not good. Still not excited for the weekend. It's going to be bad, Potter."

"It won't."

This weekend is supposed to be when Johnny is formally discharged back to his family and fiancé. "Will."

Johnny was bitten by a werewolf at full moon three weeks before. He was in Mungo's recovering until Dean, James' boss, sent in a request to have him transferred to them. He argued, as James would have, that there was a far longer and more intrusive mental battle with lycanthropy than physical.

"Lynn wanted kids," Johnny says, poking his crisps around the plate. "I can't give her that."

"You can. Teddy Lupin's dad was a werewolf."

"Oh," Johnny says. He blinks, as if trying to place him. "He's that fit one off that show about the rogue Aurors, right?"

It's as good a description as any, if not dated. "Yes. His dad was a werewolf and there's absolutely nothing wrong with him. He's perfectly normal of a full moon." Mostly, James summarizes for himself, just sad.

Johnny nods. "He's fit too."

"Yes," James says, regretting the direction of this conversation, "Yes, he's very fit."

He gets a page from Rosie sometime after, leaving Johnny poring over the Arts and Leisure section of the Daily Prophet where he seems to be burning a hole through Teddy's fit face. It's for a walk-in counselling session which isn't uncommon. James goes to meet the patient out front and stops short.

"Dad?" he asks. Dad is doing that humming thing he always does when he's out around Wizarding Britain alone and someone, this time Rosie, is staring openly at him. "Is Grandad okay?"

"Yes," Dad says quickly, "I was just stopping for a quick chat."

"Okay," James says, his heart returning to its normal rhythm. "Well, my lunch break is in about an hour, but I can maybe ask to swap it, if now is the only time you have."

"What? No, no, like –" Dad has turned the colour of boiled beets. He looks up at the ceiling and says, "I'm here to talk ."

James blinks. "Oh. Oh! Oh, yes yes, come in."

It's strange but not unwelcome, seeing Dad is the cushy armchair they have for clients. He crosses his legs, still not making eye contact. James sits across from him with a little clipboard and quill and waits.

"Ron told me about what you did for Aunt Hermione," Dad says, always happier to talk about someone else than himself.

"I didn't do anything," James says, honest. "Aunt Hermione is helping herself. I just pointed them in the right direction."

"Right, well. I thought about going to her therapist too, but I don't think I could go the Muggle route. It's too hard to explain the whole, well." Dad gestures to his face. James used to go as Dad for Halloween as a child, holding still in the bathroom while Mum drew the massive white lightning scar across his forehead and over his left eye, just like Dad.

"I'm sure if you talked to Dean, he would be happy to take you on as a client," James says.

"Nah. Nah, it's." Dad clears his throat. "If you're comfortable, I'd. I'd rather it's someone I trust completely, you know."

There's a glow in James' chest at that followed, too quick, by a souring around the edges.

"When I was fifteen, I saw a snake bite Arthur," Dad says and then, modifies, "Well no. That's not true. I had a vision where I was a snake, Voldemort's snake – I don't know how much I've told you about the less fun war stories."

"Nothing, Dad," James says. "You've told us absolutely nothing."

"Well," Dad says, clearing his throat again. "Just a bit - weird to talk about. Anyways, Voldemort had a snake. And I had a vision where I was the snake and I attacked Arthur. Grandad. And he almost died, he would have if I hadn't had that vision. And afterwards, we all stood around his hospital bed at Christmas, and I felt like it was all my fault."

"You were fifteen," James says. He's trying to remember the things he's been taught to say, but they're much easier to recite when his Dad isn't across from him looking like he's been trying to not think about this incident for the last thirty or so years. "None of it was your fault."

"See that's what your Mum tells me," Dad says, eyes still on the ground between them, smiling faintly. "She says that my actions didn't kill Sirius, even though they did. She says I had no hand in Remus' death, but I just. I have a hard time believing that myself."

James has seen pictures of Dad from the war; he's too skinny by half and looks like Al did at fifteen but different, exhausted and angry where Al has always been joy. There's a photo on the Potter mantle of the whole crew of them, the Order of the Phoenix, where Dad is smiling too bright from under Teddy's dad's arm.

It is a very specific weight, James knows, to grow up in the echo of heroes.

"Why don't we go back to the beginning," James says, gentle. "Maybe we should start with how you grew up and why, um. Why Nan and Grandad were so important to you."

Dad sighs. He catches James' eye and smiles wry. "You've only met Uncle Dudley as your normal Muggle uncle, you know," he says. "And that's all I ever want you to know him as. But that house-" Dad's eyes drop off, look to his own hands. "Children shouldn't be treated like that. Like how – like I was treated, in that house."

James can't look away from Dad's bent head. He's – he's heard rumours and stories, passing comments from Uncle Ron and George at Christmas, but never. Dad never talked about the fact that his first Hogwarts letter was addressed to a cupboard and that it was ripped into shreds.

"I know you kids call me sentimental," Dad says, his voice brighter now. "I know you make fun of how many photos I took at your graduation, Jem, but just know it's. Children need to know what love is. That's all."

James nods, his throat stuck.

"And Teddy, god," Dad continues. James feels himself look up too fast, heart suddenly in his throat. "Orphaned from the war and different, god, I gave him everything I had. Andromeda used to have to send me home, I wouldn't leave his side. He'd get sick from all the ice cream I bought him, because I couldn't say no to him."

James breathes, deep, says, "So you're to blame for his lactose intolerance."

Dad laughs. "I think we can blame that on London, myself. Merlin. I'll never forget the look on Gin's face when Teddy asked for oat milk in his tea."

Laughing feels good, after all the heaviness.

"I'm glad you've been seeing Teddy more," Dad says. "I don't agree with the sort of conditional family shit that the Weasleys often exercise but," he shrugs. "I understand that they're upset."

James wants to tell him, suddenly. In this room, this safe room with its large window spelled to look out over the Scottish Highlands instead of the back alley, in a familiar room with Dad, he wants to tell him everything. "Dad, I-"

"Are you going to the opening night of his show?" Dad asks, leaning back now, more comfortable. It's not until he does that James realizes how hunched he had been, before. "I don't know if you would be able to get tickets."

"I – yeah." James feels the breath leave his lungs. He can't tell. Can't ever. "Yeah, Teddy got some for me. I'll be right up at the front."

"Wicked," Dad says, grinning. James has long suspected he uses his Boy Who Lived shtick solely to get opening night tickets to Teddy's shows. "I love that boy, but sometimes I have no bloody idea what his shows are about. Last one I went to, none of the characters spoke to each other and the whole thing was lit green, I could hardly see anything. It's nice to have someone to be confused with during intermission."

The weight in James' chest, comfortable in its corners since Gran's eightieth and ever expanding or contracting depending on circumstance, shifts at Dad's words. It's new edges poke at his ribcage, everything uncomfortable, as he says, "I'm looking forward to it."

Thursday arrives, grey and cold. James reads over his lecture notes at the kitchen table before anyone else wakes, half asleep and practically shaking with it. He couldn't sleep again last night despite the exhaustion in his bones, kept waking up every hour with dreadful dreams. His skin feels knit with guilt, his head throbbing with lack of sleep and his father's words, someone I can trust completely he's having a rough go I'm glad you're seeing Teddy more .

His headache doesn't subside while he's writing his exam. It's ever there, constant, as he carefully recounts the ethics associated with psychiatric practice and substance abuse. He has to read through the case study about opioid abuse in remote areas of Canada twice before it sinks in and he can write out his responses to the questions.

Nan has fresh bread and steaming onion soup for him when he arrives back at the Burrow and falls onto the sofa.

"You're dead on your feet," she says, cupping his cheek and checking his forehead with the back of her hand.

"'M fine," James says, too tired to feel chastised for lying to his grandmother. When he closes his eyes, they feel hot and too heavy, like he couldn't possibly open them again. "My shift starts in an hour I can –" he breaks off to yawn, "I'll sleep until then."

"You'll do no such thing," Nan says, stern. "I will send a note to that Dean Thomas myself. You're much too tired to go in."

"Nan-"

"Don't you move," she says. With a wave of her wand a stack of blankets falls neatly over James. It feels like heaven, then, the familiar smell of his grandparent's living room, of scratchy blankets at his chin, a small fire in the hearth. James finds himself not complaining.

He wakes several hours later, disorientated and unaware. There's a cold bowl of soup next to him on the coffee table. From the kitchen he can hear clattering and voices:

"He's running himself into the ground, that one." His Nan.

"He inherited Harry's need to help people," Mum then, voice wry, "and also all of Harry's lack of self preservation."

"I can hear you," he calls, sleepily. He closes his eyes again.

A few moments later, a different hand on his cheek. It is unmistakably his mother, smelling of parchment and the honey hand soap she started making herself after she finally convinced Dad to let her keep bees. Her thumb goes across his cheekbone and over his eyebrow, before her fingers are pushing back his hair.

"You've got your old mum worried about you, Jem."

He opens his eyes. Mum's face is as much an open book as his own. "Sorry," he whispers.

It was her, of course, the first one to call him Gemstone when he was just a baby. Dad liked names with honour and remembrance, but Mum thought that some names were too heavy for children to carry. He became Jem, happy and brave and brash and foolish Jem, with a heart too big for his chest.

"Don't say sorry," she says, a mantra from when they were kids. "Just don't do it again. Okay?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Good." Her eyes are the same as Lily's, clear brown and never, ever fucking around. "Do you still want to come to dinner or would you rather stay here and sleep?"

"Are you cooking?"

Her eyes narrow. "No."

"I'd love to come to dinner," he says and then yelps as she pelts him with one of Nan's decorative pillows, " Ow! Mum you're not supposed to hit me, I'm your precious firstborn! I'm feeling unwell! Nan!"

"Ginevra!" James grins as Mum's face goes pale and her fingers drop the pillow. "What are you doing? He's sick ."

Stuffed full with aloo gobi and chicken tikka, James cups his chin with one hand to watch Al and Lil hash it out. He doesn't like to toot his own horn too much (except when he does), but he thinks the mild sibling unity they had when he was still living here was due in part to him knocking Al one when he was committing a little too hard to the role of Emo Middle Child.

"I was Sorted into Slytherin ," Al is saying, loudly, a glass of rose in one hand. "I am the biggest disappointment."

"I dropped out of college!" Lily yells, flapping her hands around for good measure. "And no one even cares about the Slytherin thing anymore."

Dad, who had protested loudly at the beginning of this conversation that he saw none of his children as disappointments until he realized they were competing to see who was the bigger one, takes another sip of his whiskey.

"I work for our Uncle's joke shop," says Al. "I have no prospects! I've never brought home a significant other!"

"Aunt Hermione took me into her office this morning and said my shoes were 'erring on the side of unprofessional,'" Lily says, sneering. "I am totally going to get fired. Mum and Dad will die of shame."

"Don't worry," Mum says, "We're already dead."

James snorts into his pudding. They start in on Quidditch next:

"I never played once for the house team! I ruined our parents' legacy."

"Oh please, Jem is bad at Quidditch too and he's the fucking golden child."

"A goddamn Healer . What a prick!"

"I would appreciate it if I were left out of this narrative," James says. From next to him, Dad laughs, quietly. Al takes a large slurp of his rose, eyes narrowed over the top of it at Lily. Lily glares right back.

It's late, the grey skies long since replaced by thick black clouds. Despite the exhaustion still heavy behind his eyes, James feels happier than he has in a while. It swells, this happiness, when he hears the Floo in the other room.

"Dress rehearsal ran late," Teddy says as he ducks into the kitchen. He's holding a white box in his hands. "Hi. Sorry." His curly hair is squashed a little from the rain. James would like to devour him, like a pastry, or maybe just hold hands for an hour or so.

Teddy is Potter-fussed into the nook next to James while Mum goes to warm up some takeaway for him and Dad goes to get him a glass of wine. The box, which is revealed to contain twelve cannelloni, is immediately snatched by Al.

"If I ate all these," he says, loud, "That would definitely be impolite. And then Mum and Dad would be terribly embarrassed by me."

"Al, don't you fucking dare -"

"What?" Teddy mutters in James' ear.

"Don't worry about it," he says and then: "Hi."

Teddy grins wide. His eyes search around James' face for a second before he looks at the table, where a steaming bowl of saag aloo slides in front of him. "Cheers, Ginny, thanks."

James grabs a cannelloni before Al can make good on his promise. It's hard to keep his eyes off Teddy; the last time he saw him he was Apparating away in the dead of night while James ran into the Burrow. Now, he's clearly tired, grey under his eyes and a slight slump of his shoulders. His white shirt has been pulled at the collar a little and James can see himself in the skin around Teddy's neck, a little pink bruise where his neck meets his shoulder.

When he looks away, Al is staring at him.

James blinks. Al looks at Teddy, back at James, and then blinks as well.

Like one of those Muggle balloons, happiness in his chest deflates with a pop . It's harder to breathe, now, knowing that Al knows, he must, he has to know. James keeps his eyes down, drinks from his glass of water. Teddy is telling Lily about the show now, about the lead Wilmot and his lighting team, and James feels the corners of his vision going dark.

Fuck. Fuck, someone knows. Al knows.

Teddy manages to get them alone once the food is gone and everyone is retreating to the sitting room. His fingers are wet around James' wrist from rinsing his plate in the sink.

"Hey," he says, "You okay?"

James looks at his eyes, his long nose, the bite that James left behind when they fooled around together two days ago. Teddy's already gotten the Grandad update – a piece of ripped parchment scrawled with he's okay. thank you. J – but he hasn't gotten the James update.

"Yeah," James says, maybe moderately convincing.

"The exam went alright?"

"Yeah, just. Fucking knackered."

Maybe James is getting better at lying or maybe Teddy is still learning him, still figuring out the difference between James his pal and James his. Something else.

"You don't have to come tomorrow," Teddy says, quickly and quietly, his eyes glancing to where James' entire family is no doubt thrown over various furniture. "I know this week is a lot for you."

"I'll be there," James says, matching Teddy's tone. "I've been looking forward to it all week." 

It's hard to hear himself with the rushing in his ears, the bile in his throat, every part of him spun tight like a spool. He thinks that maybe he can only feel this now, every inch of the weight of this sticky guilt uncovered, because of this competing joy, because of the way Teddy's eyes go all warm when they look at James.

"See, if I was a Quidditch player I'd say something about how I'll catch the Snitch for you," Teddy says, "but I don't know an equivalent metaphor for this situation."

"Neither do I," James says and he's pretty sure his voice is steady as he does.

It's after, after Teddy begs off for an early night, after Lily sneaks away to go text her boyfriend, after after after that Al grabs James' arm and pulls him out of the room saying, "Come for a smoke with me, Jem."

Rain is still coming down. They stand by the back door, where the roof hangs over enough to keep dry, and look out at the chicken coop and the fields beyond.

"Were you guys fucking while he was still married?" Al asks, not looking at James.

"No," James says hollow. He keeps his eyes on his own feet, his old trainers. They need replacing but he's just making enough to cover tuition right now. He tries to say I wouldn't but he doesn't know if that's true anymore.

"When did it start?"

Al's voice is cool, carefully distant. James watches him take a drag in of smoke and says, "After your birthday."

"Jem, did – did he leave her for you?"

Biting his lip so hard he tastes blood, James closes his eyes. He says, "Yes," and it's relief. Relief in waves, huge, over his head so that he can't see the sky for the sheet of water. Someone knows.

"Fuck, Jem."

"I know." James leans his head back against the back door. He thinks about Teddy's curly, lilac hair under his fingers and about Grandad grey in bed and Victoire, crying, not knowing what she did wrong. "I couldn't say no, Al. I've been in love with him since I could fucking walk."

Al's eyes, when they meet his, are filled with pity. "This is bad, Jem."

"Yeah."

"Fuck." Al takes a heavy drag in, lets it out as he continues, "This is fucked, James. I'm not going to tell a fucking soul," Al is the best of them all at keeping secrets, "but fuck , this is bad."

"It's my fault," James whispers. He might be crying but he can't feel his own skin.

Al's voice is sharp: "It's not. He's the one who was fucking married."

"I told him to break it off," James says, meeting Al's eye again. "I – it was me. It was all fucking me."

It's hard to remember. They were both drunk, drunker than James usually allowed himself to be around Teddy for fear of saying something they would both regret. He was a month out of the first real heart ache of his life and he was feeling reckless and stupid.

He remembers the dark sky, the dark water, Teddy's arm around his shoulder. They were on the bank and James was shivering and Teddy was staring at him.

What?

Your eyes.

What about them, weirdo?

They're so dark. They're reflecting the moonlight.

James doesn't know what happened in between, can't remember if it was stretching silence or something else, picking at the sticks below their feet, tossing rocks into the river. All he remembers is telling the water –

I've been in love with you for as long as I can remember. My whole life.

And then –

I want to kiss you. Please, Jem.

Wait. Wait wait - no no no we can't because you're married. You're married, Teddy.

Jem –

If you got – if you were divorced you could kiss me. Then you could kiss me like I've been wanting you to. Like I've been thinking about my entire life.

James. Sweetheart. You don't lie, James.

No.

Everything you're saying, James -  

You should. You should do that, you should – you should get divorced. Because I want to kiss you so bad, Teddy. It would be good, Teddy, we would. We would be so fucking good together, I know it. I don't lie. It would be so fucking good.

Okay.

We would be so happy.

They got inside. James stumbled upstairs to share the attic with Al and Louis, the two of them passed out on cots side by side. Teddy stumbled the other way, to the pull-out couch in the sitting room where he would be sleeping next to his wife.

Al stomps on his cigarette with the toe of his sandal. He leans against the door next to James, staring out with him.

"Fuck," James says. His face is wet.

Slowly and carefully, Al's arm comes around him, pulling their heads in close to one another.

vi.

True to form, Dad comes over at intermission to discuss the show. He leans up against the stage, where a rich blue curtain covers the set, and taps his Playbill against one knee.

"Now Teddy's obviously hiding something from the father actor," he says, "That's obvious. But I don't understand the motivation of the grandmother! Why did she hide the key in Teddy's girlfriend's purse?"

"I don't know, Dad," James says. He can't believe some people call the man before him a Saviour. "I'm quite happy to wait until they tell me how it all works out in the end."

"Hmph," Dad says. "Wish we could have gotten seats next to each other. The woman next to me brought in a bag of sweets and didn't offer once to share."

Dad is the worst person to sit next to at one of Teddy's plays or at Muggle movie theatres or at Quidditch games. He is one of the least observant people James has ever met and is always leaning over to pester James with questions about what he missed.

"Have you seen Andromeda?" James asks, instead of lying. "Teddy said he gave his other ticket to her."

"Yes," Dad says, "she's over on the other side. But her seatmate likes to share snacks. They're still talking."

James laughs.

Seeing Teddy on stage is completely the same and drastically different, all at the same time. James feels a tremendous amount of pride watching him, hearing the hush of the audience around him captivated by his delivery. He remembers being a fourteen year old and going to Teddy's first shows, feeling this unbridled delight that he knew Teddy, that everyone else could spend the night with him but James got to sit next to him on the sofa afterwards, got to regale Teddy with his favourite bits over ice cream around the hearth.

There's still that. But now it feels delicate, thin and breakable around the edges. The Teddy on stage is no more James' than he was before. Now, he can't help but watch Teddy on-stage snog Renata Jones – suck it, Al – and think about the afterparty and after the afterparty.

It runs through his head the whole second act; James gives up on trying to figure out the plot of the family drama on stage to think about how Teddy will introduce him to his cast mates. Will he be Jem the Healer, like at dinner with Teddy's writer friends? Will he have a different title, something that will make everyone's eyebrows go up? Is that what he wants?

Teddy meets his eye at curtain call, just the once. He looks happy up there, wide grin, his hair shifting from the sandy blonde of his character to a vibrant blue. From behind James, he hears a wolf-whistle that could only be Dad.

"Wonderful," Andromeda says, afterwards. They're waiting around in the lobby until Teddy comes out to say hi. "He was brilliant."

"Completely," Dad says, nodding vigorously, his programme cupped between his hands. "And what a show! Had me positively captivated!"

Dad came over to him as the house lights came on and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had no fucking idea what the ending meant. James, who had been half-dreaming-half-nightmaring about the word boyfriend , could not help him out.

"Oh absolutely," says Andromeda, her voice high and aloof. James would bet his life savings that she fell asleep at some point in the show. "Very engaging."

Teddy comes out quite a bit later; the stage makeup has been wiped clean from his face leaving only pale skin and flushed, happy cheeks. His eyes are sparkling behind the glasses that James only knows him to wear when he's too tired to put in his contacts. His hair, no longer blue, is – James' breath catches – lilac; tumbling curls of lilac held back by a topknot.

Andromeda gets to him first, then Dad who is tearing up as he asks Teddy for his autograph, please, he's a big fan. Teddy laughs and James realizes with a start that he hasn't seen him this happy in months. Maybe longer than that.

"Congratulations," James tells him, when it's finally his turn. Teddy's arms are warm and huge, and the hug is one they've shared a hundred times, all-encompassing. James closes his eyes, tight, before he steps away. "You absolutely smashed it."

Teddy is looking at him like he doesn't want to stop. "Yeah?"

"Brilliant," James says, grinning. As he watches, Andromeda is fiddling with the t-shirt that Teddy is wearing, pulling it at the shoulders and collar so it fits right over his skin. Dad is almost definitely still crying. "Fucking brilliant."

Renata Jones is even hotter up close.

It's the second bar and James feels drunk. It is hard to stop himself when Teddy hasn't taken his hand out of the back pocket of James' jeans all night, when he keeps nudging James' chin up so he can kiss him. It's impossible to stop, not when –

Teddy brought James backstage so he could collect his wallet before the afterparty. They bumped into two women immediately, one with a contagious smile, who were quick to kiss Teddy's cheek and congratulate him.

"Hi," James said, shaking both their hands. "It's nice to meet you."

"Jem, this is our director Mia, and her wife Danielle. Mia, Danny, this is Jem, my date."

James' ears went red. Teddy winked at him.

And again and again, the same introduction for every new person. By the second bar James has only had three drinks but he's high on Teddy's touch, on his grin, on the way he hasn't left James' side all night. It feels dangerous and safe in one, too close. There's no way James can leave this night unscathed.

"My brother is a huge fan of yours," James tells Renata Jones. She is so outrageously cool in a leather jacket, mulberry lipstick, and long, dangling earrings that change shapes as she talks. James is so jealous of Teddy for getting to make out with her. "Can you sign this for him? He'll die."

Renate Jones laughs and signs the napkin. She says, "Where did you get him, Teddy, and is there another? He's adorable."

"M'fraid not," Teddy says. He is drunker than James and not on love and affection either, just expensive tequila and enabling coworkers. His arms are sneaky vines when they wrap around James' ribcage from behind. "All mine."

"Oi!" James shouts, laughing, when Teddy's fingers tickle the soft bit of James where his rib cage ends and he is all skin and tissue. "Hands where I can see them, mister."

Teddy laughs against his neck. His hair is still lilac and, when James puts his fingers through it, only a little greasy at the roots. He moves a few of Teddy's curls away from where they're in danger of getting into James' mouth. When he looks up, Renata Jones is smiling at him.

"Careful with that one," she says, pointing with her chin at Ted. "When he talks about you, his eyes go all starry like a kid in love." She leaves then, taking her pint of lager with her.

James swallows, feeling uprooted. He folds the napkin carefully and slides it into the pocket of his jeans for safekeeping. Teddy is still holding onto him like a limpet.

"Did I tell you what I did for Al?" he asks, sleepily, into James' neck.

"Yes," James says, quietly. "It was very sweet."

Teddy's been taking their faces since they were kids, borrowing James' expression to mock or play a joke. Then Dad made a rule that Teddy wasn't allowed to mimic family members anymore, so he would only do it in secret after that, stealing James' face to give Al a good spook or two.

James doesn't think Dad will mind what's done now though: a photo, signed by Renata Jones, of her and Al Potter. Or, rather, someone doing an awful good visual impression of Al Potter.

"He's a good kid," Teddy says. He kisses James' neck. "I am not a good kid. I would like to leave this party and be alone with you."

With one hand, James cuts Teddy's fingers on their way down his stomach. "Ted."

Teddy bites his neck.

" Edward ." James says. It takes some maneuvering, but he gets himself spun around in Teddy's arms, his head tipped back to meet his eye. "Go sit with your castmates and talk about the show."

"Come with me."

"I have to pee."

Teddy's eyebrows wrinkle, like this is a particularly complex puzzle. "Well do that first then," he says, eventually, and James has to hold back his grin. "And then come sit with us, okay? You don't know anyone here."

The toilet is too bright, fluorescent. There's writing everywhere on the walls, which James tilts his head to read. Most of it is indistinguishable or flat out offensive but one scrawl – Professor Longbottom can raw me – makes James laugh out loud.

James looks at himself in the mirror once he's finished washing his hands. There's a smudge of glitter on both of his cheeks, a gift from the make-up department before they left the theatre. Other than that, two sparkling leftovers like a comet's tail, he looks just like himself: Dad's hair, his mother's nose, his great-grandfather's dark eyes. Same old Jem Potter. 

You wouldn't know it, from the way Teddy greeted him as soon as they left Andromeda and Dad. He was over James like a rash, his hands up in James' hair, his mouth insistent. "My jumper, Jem, really?" He breathed, harsh, into James' collar. He slid one hand free to trace the T over James' chest.

James grinned, said: "You like that, Lupin?"

Now, he heads to the bar for water when he leaves the toilet. Teddy is easy to spot; he's right in the middle of a group of his cast and crew, his head back as he laughs. He's so tall but he still manages to wrap James up and cling to him like a koala.

When James would let himself daydream about Teddy, about being with Teddy, he didn't imagine this. It's so much more than he could imagine. His daydream of Teddy and the real Teddy blurring together and becoming one thing, one jaw dropping entity that James wants to hang out with until he dies. 

Fingers tap on his shoulder. He turns to see Ophelia, the writer from that night in Teddy's dining room.

"Hi," he cries, probably too loud. It's nice to see a familiar face, even one as unknown to him as Ophelia. She looks lovely tonight, her hair done up and a silvery, slinky dress over ripped black tights. James says, "Were you at the show?"

"I want you to know that Victoire is my friend," Ophelia says and James feels the smile drip off his face like ice-cream onto a pavement. "And I know for a fact that she has no idea he's with someone new. And I think that's really fucking shitty."

James opens his mouth to say something. Nothing comes out.

"And I don't know what he's told you but – but three months ago she was standing right where you're standing and that's – that sucks ."

Victoire's silver hair loose around her elbows, her dress simple and perfect, every eye on her as she sauntered over to Teddy. She wouldn't wear a ratty Weasley jumper to a club.

"Tell Teddy that – that if he doesn't say something to her, I will," Ophelia says. Her arms are shaking at her sides. She is, James realizes, far braver than he will ever be. "I'll tell her he's seeing some doctor named James and he never bothered to tell her."

The pop of his ears sounds too loud as he swallows. She doesn't know. She thinks he's just some person Teddy picked up who doesn't owe Victoire anything. "Okay," he says. He can't hear himself.

"Good," she says. Her cheeks are flushed. "Well. Bye then."

James doesn't know how long he stands there. He feels the press of bodies on either side of him as he leans against the bar, his vision blurred. Everything is too fast and too loud. His hands come up to his ears without his permission and press down until it is all muffled.

This is how Teddy finds him.

Fingers pry at his wrists until his ears are free. James looks through wet lashes to see Teddy's face right by his own. He's saying something, but James can't keep focus long enough to know what it is. The bass of the song running through the bar sends vibrations up his spine.

Then, a voice in his ear: "James, baby, I think you're having a panic attack."

Arms circle him and they're moving. James tries to breathe but it's impossible with his chest feeling this tight, with the heavy air around him. His skin is hot and then cool, cold, and it is at the very back of James' mind now, that they are outside now.

James is something of an expert, despite his current state, so he notices when Teddy skips steps while calming him down. His long fingers curl into the wool covering James' heart as they breathe together, as Teddy presses James' own hand to his chest. His eyes, hazel and gorgeous in the rainy streetlights, bear down into James' as he counts out their breaths.

Not perfect, but effective. An E if James ever saw one.

"Baby," Teddy is saying and James latches onto it. He's never called him that before tonight. James likes it. He likes it so much. "Baby, what happened?"

Fingers are brushing away the tears under his eyes. James read somewhere that all the cells in your body are reborn every seven years. He wonders if it is possible that they can all change within the span of two months, and if this is why the lie falls easily from his lips: "The crowd. I just got really claustrophobic."

Teddy's face from the lobby keeps crossing through his mind. He cannot destroy that joy. 

"Oh, sweetheart," Teddy says, running his hands all over James' face, his sides. He lays the back of his hand on James' forehead, a move from his grandmother. "I'm sorry I left you alone. I'm sorry you didn't feel safe."

"Can we go back to yours?" James asks. He watches, as if from a different body, as his fingers curl into the front of Teddy's coat.

"Of course."

"And – and can I stay over?"

"Yes," Teddy says, pressing his nose to James, too close and not nearly close enough. "Yes, sweetheart, you can do whatever you want. I'll give you anything you want, baby."

"I want," he says, and then closes his eyes. "I want to shower together and then I want you to fuck me, please. That's what I want."

Teddy's hands stop moving. After a long moment, he says, "Are you okay to Apparate?" He sounds like he's been at Mungo's drinking Skele-Gro all night.

"Yes."

When he took the lessons at sixteen, James was told that you must think of your destination with perfect clarity or else risk splinching yourself. It's freeing, in a way, to think solely of Teddy's friend's apartment, to think of the posh wallpaper and wooden floors, the tall bookshelves filled with coffee table fashion books. This temporary home for their temporary love affair.

James thinks about the destination and not Teddy, his arms still warm and clutching, and how the ending came as James always knew it would.

He steals pockets of sleep between restless hours in the grey half-light of the room. Teddy sleeps soundly next to him, lying on his stomach with one hand under James' pillow. James is so tired, his body begging his mind. It hardly works.

The sun rises over the Heath and in through the gauzy, white curtains. He closes his eyes when he hears Teddy start to shuffle, keeps them shut as Teddy heads to the toilet. His eyelids are hot, red hot like his cheeks last night when Ophelia's words slapped him across the face.  

Teddy doesn't go back to sleep, when he comes back to bed; he shuffles into a sitting position, clearly trying not to jostle James. James is an early riser through necessity; twelve-hour trainee shifts at Mungo's pummeled into him the ability to wake before it was light, stumble into green robes, and Floo into work. Teddy, though, has always been an early riser.

"What are you reading?" James says, giving himself away. His throat is rather croaky and his mouth tastes sour with drinks, fucking, and attempts at sleep.

"Script for that Channel 4 show," Teddy says, and he puts it down. "Hi."

They kiss. It draws James' attention to all the parts of him that burned last night: his throat, his thighs, the ache between his legs. When Teddy pulls away, James traces the pink lines on his shoulders from his fingernails.

"You should stay over every day," Teddy whispers, his hand gentle at the back of James' neck.

He was sweet last night, even though James kept telling him he didn't have to be. They were still damp from the shower, Teddy flushed after James got on his knees for him as they were drying off. When they fell into bed, Teddy played with him for ages, stretching him until James could barely remember his own name, drowsy with sex and the dark, with Teddy's mouth on his thighs.

Teddy's curls are squashed from sleeping on wet hair. They're still lilac.

"I like this colour," James says, brushing curls up off Teddy's forehead.

Lips on his and then, "I'm glad."

James knows Teddy doesn't like to think too much about his abilities. He still remembers the year that Teddy lived with them and James walked in on him in the bathroom; he was holding a photo of himself, trying to recreate it in the mirror.

His voice was wry when he said, "Lost myself for a minute there," but James, even young as he was, knew it wasn't really funny. He knew, as he does now, that Teddy modelled his nose after photos he has of his father, because he'll never know if he inherited it.

James can look at every one of his features and trace it back. Teddy works the other way around.

"I can't help but notice," James says, slowly, "that this particular shade seems to follow me around."

Teddy rolls his eyes, ruffled and sleepy, grinning. "You know as well as I do that I can't pick who gets what colour. Just happens."

"Mm." James draws a finger down Teddy's nose. He's going to miss this. "How's the script?"

Sliding his hand from James' hair, Teddy pulls back. He sighs, maneuvering, until they're both propped up by pillows. He hands the thick script to James and slings his arm around James' shoulders.

"It's good," he says, ruefully. "Well-written, funny. The character they want me for is a bit of a prick, but the episode ends with a good cliff-hanger. It seems," he stops and then says, "It would be a good fit for me. I think."

James grins at him but, when it isn't returned, he lets it fade. "So, what's the issue, Ted?"

"Cardiff," he says, "is really bloody far."

Unable to stop himself from rolling his eyes, James says, "I know you don't love Apparating, Teddy, but –"

"I'd be around Muggles, Jem," Teddy says, his voice serious like it was when James came out to him at thirteen, steady and strong with no room for argument. "Muggles who would find it a bit strange that I have time to pop up to Edinburgh four times a week."

James bites his lip, "This is a huge opportunity, Teddy. And you're young, you're – there's nothing to tie you down. This should be a no-brainer."

"I'm trying really hard to have something to tie me down, though," Teddy says, his eyes on where James' cheek dimples. "But this bloke I know won't let me."

When they were younger, Teddy used to let James ride around on his shoulders through the meadows behind the Potter's cottage. James felt like a small prince up there, shouting and laughing while Teddy led them through forests and over babbling brooks.

At night, when Teddy would go back to his grandmother's house before James' bedtime, he would lean over and ask, "More adventures tomorrow?"  

James wants to echo those words now but stops himself. Instead, with a heavy heart, he turns to the script and taps it twice with his knuckles. He says, "I have to go in a bit, but we should read this together before I do."

When James was small, Bill and Fleur lived in a small cottage on the coastline. He barely remembers it but has seen photos of himself there, he and Victoire standing side by side with fishing poles next to Uncle Bill.

The place they've had since James was about six is, in a word, big. Too big , Nan often mutters under her breath when family events are at theirs. James can't help but agree with her as he stands before the massive front door and wills himself to knock.

Louis answers the door, "Hey mate! Did we have plans today?"

"No, actually," James says and god, he's getting good at it now, the lie falling easily from his lips: "Here to talk to Vic actually. She sent me an owl about a, er, medical thing and I figured it would be easier to come over."

"Ooooh, true," Louis says. "Come on in."

He leads James through their foyer, with its high ceilings, to the main staircase. James, who grew up in an old cottage and slept in the attic with its sloping roof, always feels small in Bill and Fleur's place. "She's in her room," Louis says, nodding up the stairs. At James' look – he's never been in Victoire's room – he continues: "Take a left at the top of the stairs. It's the last door, at the end of the hallway."

Shame is a strange thing. As James climbs the staircase, Louis' footsteps echoing away, he feels it coat his insides, head to toe. It's suffocating, like he's surrounded on all sides by water. As a child he would hold his breath in the bath and hide under the bubbles to scare Mum.

It's not cold anymore, the water. He feels numb.

He knocks twice on Victoire's door and waits for her voice before he steps in.

It's a large room, twice the size of his attic room at the cottage. The large open windows face out to the back, where the property backs onto a glittering lake. There's a massive white bed on the far side of the room with a swooping white canopy. The signed poster of Jason and the Dragon Slayers that Victoire lorded over everyone at Christmas near a decade ago is framed above her desk.

She's sitting at the window, silver hair pulled back. She looks like she does at Christmas, comfortable and at home, in pajama pants and jumper.

"Jem?" she asks, surprised. They don't exactly hang out. "Is everything okay?"

It's hard to hear underwater. He closes the door to her bedroom and leans against it, hands behind his back. Sunlight comes in through the window behind Victoire, putting patterns on the floor between them.

"I've been seeing Teddy for the last couple weeks."

It doesn't feel like relief, like when he answered Al's questions in the rain. It feels like he's carved out his chest and is spilling out onto Victoire's white carpet, dirtying her in the process. It feels like nothing will be clean after this.

Her eyes are clear as they look at him. The room is still but for the light and shadows playing between them.

He is expecting her to ask what Al did, when . He's expecting her to shout, how , and demand he lay out the details of his betrayal. If it were him, he knows, he would ask why . Why would he do something like this?

But she doesn't. Instead, quietly, she says, "Who knows?"

"Al," James hears himself say. He closes his eyes and continues, "And everyone at the party last night."

She stands, then. James presses against the door expecting something but – Victoire sits at her desk. She pulls a sheaf of paper toward her and starts writing.

"What," he starts, mouth dry. He can feel himself shaking like a child in the rain without a coat. "What are you doing?"

"Sending an owl to my publicist," Victoire says. Her voice is vacant, her posture impeccable. She does not turn to look at him as her quill scratches across the paper. "Were there any photos taken?"

"I –" it's hard to breathe underwater. He can hear himself gasping. "I don't know."

"So, it's safe to assume yes," she says, writing something else down. She still won't look at him.

"Vic. Vic, I'm so sorry."

"No, you're not," she says, turning then. Her eyes are cold, a perfect mask. They freeze James in place. "I've seen you looking at him for the last twenty years, James. You've just been waiting for the moment you could take him, and now you have. If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it. If you were sorry, you wouldn't be sleeping with my husband."

The urge to defend himself melts away. James cannot feel his fingers. The semantics, all the little arguments he had with himself, disappear from his lungs. They are empty, not light, when he breathes in.

"You're not sorry, James," she says, "but you will be. Because once everyone's done laughing at me for getting dumped for my cousin, they're going to be looking at you. And they're all going to realize what a liar you are, James."

He feels himself nod. His eyelashes are wet.

"He's going to dump you," Victoire says, her voice wavering. Her eyelashes are wet too, James realizes through the water. "And then you'll realize he wasn't worth losing your family over. But by then it will be too fucking late, you fucking asshole."

The silence, after, stretches between them like the light.

She turns back to her letter before saying: "You can leave now."

vii.

The hatch to the attic door opens. James doesn't turn his eyes to see who it is, recognizing Al's steps as he makes his way back. Al toes off his shoes before he sits back down next to James' form in bed, tucking his feet in cross legged.

"Grandad's had his potion," he says, pushing the pillows back into position for himself. "And Nan says she hopes you're feeling better soon."

James tries to swallow around the rock in his throat. "Thanks."

Al shuffles; he's a terrible bedmate, too antsy and impatient. He used to be the worst for moving around in the night, James waking up with Al's hair in his mouth on family vacations. Now, James doesn't mind much. He keeps his eyes on the windowsill, where cobwebs sway in the cool air coming through the cracks.

"It was a good thing," Al says, careful. "To tell her. I mean –" he clears his throat. "Even if it went poorly."

On his second cigarette that night in the rain, Al responded to James' broken – I have to tell Vic – with a: "Are you mad? Who is that helping? Nope, fuck that. There's no salvaging this, bud, you have to move to America and start a new life."

Now, he continues, "Everyone will be mad for a while, Jem, but. They'll move on. I really don't think Charlie will give a shit, so that's one. And Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron will probably side with Dad when push comes to shove, so you have them, that's three. And me and Lil, obviously. I can try and get to Uncle George before anyone else does –"

"Nan won't speak to me again," James says.

"Well. Okay, so she will definitely be tricky."

"Or Louis or Dom."

"I'm not saying it'll be easy -"

"This isn't a contest over who likes me more than Vic," James says, looking from the cobwebs to stare up at Al. "It doesn't matter who, who fucking sides with me. It's that everyone knows now that I'm a liar. That I broke up a marriage. That I'm someone who's capable of that." He tries to clear the rock from his throat but it only lodges worse.

It's a few moments later, when Al says, quietly, "You fucked up, Jem. It's not evil. It's – you're in love with someone and you fucked up. That's it."

James wants to argue but finds himself too tired. He was hoping that dripping blood onto Victoire's floors would help him sleep. His eyes, heavy, keep watching the cobwebs.

"Are you-" Al starts and then stops himself. "Are we in a problem solving mood or a silent sadness mood or do you want me to distract you with information about my personal life?"

James shrugs one shoulder. 

"Okay. We can talk about me then," he takes a deep breath and says, "Scorpius Malfoy owled me." When James glances over he's playing with the cuffs of his jumper. "Said he always thought I was good for a laugh and have 'enchanting' eyes." Al looks over. "What do you reckon?"

"Sounds like you're in, mate."

Al nods. James watches him look around the room, at the mess of photographs and trinkets on the walls. At the bedside table is a frame with all of them at the Brighton Pier, Teddy giving Lily a piggyback ride.

"Let me know when you're feeling a bit more peppy," Al says, "And we can talk about what I'll wear to the first date."

Then, later; James can't sleep but Al could and did, passed out sitting up. He leaves, reluctant, when Mum and Dad call them both down for dinner. James rolls into the space Al left, warm from his skin. 

If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it , she said. They're going to be looking at you . He wonders what they'll see; he can't seem to focus on his own skin, on the way his fingers look against the sheets. His vision keeps blurring until it is easy to pretend he is not here, that he does not take space in this realm. 

It's through a hot, fever dream, that he hears the knocking. James can hardly hear over the pounding in his head. "Jem?" Dad is saying. 

"I'm not hungry," James says, holding back bile as he does. If he could just sleep, he could think. If he could just sleep, everything would figure itself out. 

The hatch door opens. "Dad, really, I'm not-"

Dad climbs up and out. He has to stoop, just like Al and Teddy, anytime he's come into the attic. His hair is a mess, natch, and he's in the matching sweatpants that Lily bought for everyone for Christmas. It's his face, though, that is. Oh god. 

James sits up. His head throbs, everything too heavy, everything hard. "Oh," He says, quietly. "Did - did Uncle Bill talk to you?" 

Dad sighs. He comes over and sits next to James' legs on the bed, dropping the Evening Prophet on his lap. The front page is a picture of the new pitch for the Tornadoes with an accompanying headline about the ghoul that is delaying the final stages of development. Along the top are teasers for the sections within and under Arts and Leisure it says OPENING NIGHT FOR 'THE WHISTLE AND THE WIND.' PAGE 12.

James turns to page 12, hands shaking.

'THE WHISTLE AND THE WIND' OPENS TO RAVE REVIEWS

The cast of the production were in fine form last night. The play, headed by Two-Time OWSA Winner Wilmot Windgard, follows the story of a wizard at the end of his life while his son - played by Prewett Festival Breakout Star 2026 and OWSA nominated Teddy Lupin - struggles with the slow decline of his father. Runs Tuesday through Sunday until January 2029. 

James' eyes don't continue on to read the rest of the review. In the bottom right of the page there's a small inlet, where a tight black font reads TEDDY LUPIN IS "VERY HAPPY" AFTER FINDING LOVE POST-DIVORCE.

Teddy Lupin, Prewett Festival Breakout Star 2026 and OWSA nominated, who is recently divorced from model Victoire Weasley-Delacour, 29, was seen with a new partner at the show's afterparty (see below). The actor - who is the godson of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Order of Merlin First Class - was seen getting very cozy with Potter's eldest, James, the son of Ginny Weasley, former Captain of the Holyhead Harpies, at several venues across London. Sources close to Lupin, 31, say he seems "very happy" with Potter, 24, a Healer in Edinburgh.

The photo of them is small and clearly taken outside at the first bar, when everyone was standing around trying to decide where they were heading next. Teddy, bored by indecisiveness, pushed James up against the wall and snogged him. James' fingers in the photo are curled around the collar of Teddy's coat as he breaks away to laugh. 

He closes the paper. The silence is thick like water, like the water that filled James' lungs in Victoire's bedroom. 

"Jem," Dad says. "How long has this been going on?"

James opens his mouth to respond, to defend himself, but the words get shoved aside as a sob pushes through his mouth. He tries to hold it in, both hands over his mouth, but it keeps pushing , shoves everything out of its way, until his hands are wet and sore and his jaw is heaving. There's snot running down his nose, mixing with tears, and he can't stop shaking. 

Dad moves for him, instinctual; James backs away, shakes his head. "No, no, please. Please."

Kindness, James thinks, would kill him just now. And then another thought, clear as the sunlight through the Heath on that first morning: everyone knows. People that James hasn't talked to in a decade will be able to read that he, James Potter, a Healer in Edinburgh, was snogging his cousin's ex-husband hardly two months after their divorce. 

"He left her for me," James chokes out, half crazed with everything he's wanted to tell Dad for months, "Because I asked him to."

Dad clears his throat. James looks up through wet eyelashes to see him wooden around the shoulders, unsure. He hasn't said anything yet, about how James is a horrible person, how he's selfish and cruel, unthinking about Victoire, about his family. 

"Jem," he says, even quieter. "Were you with Teddy while he was still married?"

After a single, shaking breath, James shakes his head. Dad's shoulders lower a fraction. 

"I'll go collect your things from your grandmother's house," Dad says. He's a problem solver, Dad, never content to talk back and forth. "So you can stay here. Is that okay?"

"What about -"

"I'll check on your grandfather."

James looks carefully up to the sloping ceiling. He shouldn't be in here. He shouldn't be hiding and crying and lying around like he's the one who's been hurt. Everyone knows, he thinks, and it's almost giddy now. A laugh bubbles up in his throat before he smothers it. 

Then - long arms, familiar, wrap around his back. Dad is warm and smells like fire in the hearth. Dad's hugs have punctuated every moment in his life and now they will document this, this self-inflicted heartache, doomed to end before it began. 

"Everyone knows," he whispers into Dad's shoulder and Dad's hand is smoothing the back of his hair. 

"Well," Dad says. "We'll just have to stay like this then."

James can feel the corners of his mouth pulling up at that. It's fleeting but the hug isn't, Dad holding on like he's not going to let go until James does. James closes his eyes. 

The crack of Apparation startles James from where he hasn't been sleeping in his bed, his head heavy and sore against the pillows. He checks the clock on his bedside – 4:17AM – before he peers through the curtains, foolish. There are, after all, few people who have clearance to enter the wards on the Potter's cottage and Uncle Ron isn't exactly one for early morning chats.

Through the dark, James can just see grey joggers and a long, wool coat. Teddy is looking up at his window.

Bones protesting, James ambles his way downstairs.

"Good morning," Teddy says, when James pushes open the back door in the kitchen. He's leaning up against the wall, playing with an unlit cigarette in his fingers. His long legs are crossed at the ankle.

James aches to see him. He says, trying for casual, "You gonna smoke that?"

"Depends," Teddy says, soft. He twirls it once more in his long fingers before sliding it back into the inside pocket of his jacket. With one hand he pushes off the wall and comes to loom over James, his hands cold when they rest on either side of James' neck. "When's the last time you slept, Jem?"

He shrugs. It would be nice to feel Teddy's hands everywhere, he thinks. His eyes are looking at James with worry, like Al and Dad have been. It feels wrong to be worried about, but somehow nice all the same.

Teddy's thumbnail traces the cartilage in James' ear and he shivers, the cold and Teddy's hands. Teddy makes a noise, concerned.

"Let's go in," James says, reaching up for hands so he can link their fingers together.

James left his wand upstairs so Teddy starts the fire for them. Hand still held, James goes where Teddy leads him, which is between his sprawled knees, back against his front, Teddy's arms around him. James slides down and back until his head is up against Teddy's chest and, if he just turns his face, he can feel his heartbeat. It is a good reminder. The world ended, briefly, and James is a liar, and will be forever, but Teddy's heart is still thumping away.

"So," Teddy says. He sighs and it's wry when he continues, "Good weekend?"

James closes his eyes and laughs. "I've had better."

The fire crackles merrily. Dad refused for ages to buy Ever-Burning Wood from Howie's Home Hardwares in Diagon Alley like everyone else, instead choosing to drag the lot of them out (uncles and aunts, cousins alike) to the woods behind their cottage every season to chop trees into firewood. Someone, no doubt the combined efforts of Uncle Ron and George, eventually got through to him.

"Jem," Teddy says, slowly. One of his hands is still with James' while the other spins slow circles on James' stomach. "Did you know you were going to tell Victoire about everything when you left my place?"

It's like rebirth, when he says, "Yes. Yes, I did."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You would have said not to go," James says. "You would have said it was your responsibility, not mine."

Teddy sighs. Some days it is difficult to remember that James has known almost every iteration of Teddy: he's known Teddy before he left for Hogwarts, bright eyed and terrified and holding Dad's hand on the Platform; he's known him when he was fifteen and listening to awful music, always turning his hair black; he's known him as a semi-starving artist who was at theirs every night for dinner, as a successful actor people lined up to meet, as a married man, and now – this.

Divorced and still clutching James' hand like he has no intention of dropping it.

"It should have been me," Teddy says, quietly.

"It's possible," he says, eyes still closed to the warm light in the sitting room, to the look of Teddy's knees on either side of him, his socked toes curled up. "That we both fucked up quite royally."

James tilts his head back, opens his eyes. From this angle he can see the straight line of Teddy's nose, his left eye looking into the fire, and the loose, dark brown curls falling around his ear.

"Did she come see you?" James asks, watching the shadow spider web of Teddy's eyelashes and the fire.

Teddy smiles, ruefully. His hand presses closer to James' stomach, his fingers curling around James' hip. "She was waiting for me after the show tonight."

"What did she say?"

"Mostly she just slapped me," Teddy says. "Which I can't say I didn't deserve. Had a few choice words, as well." He turns his head to look at James, but the angle is weird. James rolls his neck, awkward, so he's less on Teddy's chest and more in the crook of his shoulder. "What I'm wondering," he says, "is what she said to you."

James bites at his lip, says, "Nothing I didn't deserve."

"Jem, that's –" Teddy looks away, his jaw sharp. "You don't deserve any of it. Not the – the fight with my ex-wife or the fucking Prophet using you to sell newspapers."

"I should have told her." He slips his eyes shut, again. Everyone knows. Everything's fucked. But Teddy smells like himself, like old green rooms and cinnamon chewing gum. "I should have gone to her before we talked after Al's birthday."

"No."

James sits up, turns halfway to meet his eye, "Ted-"

"You shouldn't have," Teddy says, defiant. His eyes amber in the fire light. "If you had gone to talk with her that day, you would never have let me in. You wouldn't have stayed over and you sure as hell wouldn't have kissed me."

"You don't know that," James whispers, having to look away. "I've been pretty selfish lately. And – " he clears his throat. "Besides. Maybe it would have been better if I didn't stay over or kiss you. Maybe we'd both be better off."

Teddy's eyes drop. He lets go of James' hand to slide it over James' neck instead, fingers brushing into his hair, the tip of his thumb tucked under his ear. Slowly, eyes still low, he says, "Jem, being with you makes me happier than I think I've ever been. I'm fucking blindsided by it, by you."

His lungs, still full of water, struggle with the air he shakily takes in. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh . When you smile at me it's like being hit by a train. All of this is worth it. But -" Teddy stops, eyes up now, looking over James' face. "I've already lost everything. I knew that when I ended things, everything would change. I wasn't going to be invited to the family brunches anymore, I – I don't get owls from Louis for pub nights or get sent sweets from your Nan. And that fear, the fear of losing those things," Teddy lets out a sigh, loud, "that kept me in for a long time. It may have – I loved Victoire, I did. But I didn't realize that I entered an ultimatum at seventeen; stay with her forever or lose everything."

His thumb, then, rubs across the side of James' cheek, just under his eye. "Well," he continues, "except you. And Al and Lily and Gin and Harry. The ones that matter."

James thinks about Dad, ready to go to war for James. He thinks even if he had answered Dad's question with a yes , Dad still would have pulled him into that hug.

"It's not too late," Teddy says and when James looks up, questioning, he smiles, half bitten. "You could tell them I poisoned you, seduced you. You could say you've come to your senses. They'd take you back, Jem."

The fire throws dances across Teddy's face. James misses the sound of his heartbeat, so he places his hand there, on Teddy's chest, to feel it under his fingertips.

"When I think about the guilt," James says, looking at his hand and not at Teddy, "It feels like I've drowned. Like my lungs are full of water and it's gotten everywhere and I'm too heavy to pull myself back up. But –"

He needs to be closer. He pitches forward, too fast, startling-Teddy fast, and rests his face in Teddy's sternum. Teddy's hand cradles the back of his head.

"But when I'm with you, I don't notice," James says, pressing his forehead against Teddy and speaking as clear as he can. "I don't notice because I feel so safe and warm and happy. Like I'm eleven and getting my Hogwarts letter all over again. Like that and my birthday and every holiday rolled into one."

James ran through the house and into the garden, laughing, telling everyone and thing he could find: I'm going to Hogwarts! I'm going to Hogwarts! Teddy laughed at him from the doorway into the kitchen and told him I'll show you all the best parts of the castle, I promise .

"Okay," Teddy says and James can hear a smile.

"So," James says, unnecessary at this point, surely, "I don't want them to take me back if. If I have to lose you to do that."

Arms, strong and warm, around him. James fights the losing battle with his eyelids. He wiggles himself down until he's comfortable, presses himself into Teddy until they're lying mostly horizontal, Teddy's head on the armrest, his legs bent at the knee around James' ribs.

"I was going to break it off with you," James says, into Teddy's chest. "Before talking to Vic, I was going to tell you we couldn't anymore. But then you –" he cuts himself off.

"Sweetheart."

"You said you'd be going to Edinburgh four times a week," James says. He can feel himself, finally, can see himself. Finally, the wet in his lungs giving way. Teddy won't let him drown. Teddy's tall and strong, he'll keep them above water. "To see me."

"Of course, I would." And then, quieter, "Will, I guess. I accepted the role today."

James grins, presses it into Teddy's jumper so he can feel. "Good."

"Yeah?"

"Mm."

"Jem," Teddy says. His hand is in James' hair, the other at his shoulder, rubbing small circles. "We should go upstairs, love."

"They all know," James mutters, "Everyone knows, Teddy. No one to hide it from anymore. No one to lie to."

Teddy says something, maybe something important. James doesn't know. For the first time in months, properly, for the first time in so long, he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

Voices wake him. James doesn't open his heavy eyes.

"I'm sorry for not telling you. I guess I didn't know how to."

"It's not ideal, how we found out but - I understand."

"When you keep quiet about something for so long, you forget how to speak about it after a while."

Teddy's chest is warm, his arms soft and safe. James doesn't know what time it is. He doesn't know if he should be embarrassed about this, about being strewn over Teddy on the sitting room sofa, safe between his sprawled knees.

"Mm." That's Dad, no doubt in the joggers he likes to wear to the bakery early in the morning before anyone else is awake. "I'm sure I've told you before but – I used to be like that with Gin. Back at school, before Ron knew."

"It's the worst," Teddy says, his fingers so light in James' hair. "To look at the person you love and feel guilty."

James' heart thuds, loud, at that. It never occurred to James that this guilt could be something to share. He's been drowning for so long he never thought that Teddy was too.

"Be careful with him," Dad says.

"I will, Harry."

"He'll have this lecture later, don't worry." It's quiet before Dad laughs. "God. Everything suddenly makes sense now. He wouldn't leave his room for a week when you left for Hogwarts."

"I know." Teddy's hands smooth over the back of James' head, where the hair stands up straight. "He wrote me about eight letters before I had gotten off the train. They all arrived at once during breakfast the next morning." Teddy hums and it's pleasant, the way it runs through James' body too. "I've still got them somewhere, I think. I'll check Gran's."

"Oh god, I've just had a thought," Dad says, suddenly, "My favourite part when one of you kids brings someone home is telling all their most embarrassing stories but you already know his. Oh, this is terrible."

"I'm sorry we're ruining your fun."

"Hm. I'm sure I still have some baby photos in the pantry he hasn't been able to incinerate."

"Don't you dare," James croaks out.

Dad laughs, then Teddy, his chest shaking under James' ear. He pokes open one eye: Dad is sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, his legs sprawled out in front of him. He is in full Dad mode this morning in his ratty joggers, an old Weasley jumper with a Snitch on it, and a mug of Lily's that says RAVENFLAWLESS .

"Are you going to the bakery?" James asks, blinking the blurred edges out of his vision. "Can you get those spinach and feta pastries again?"

"Sure," Dad says and then his eyes get a little shifty. "I'm going to, er, pop into your grandparents first."

Heavy, James sits up, his elbows on Teddy's chest, ignoring the oof it gets him. All the bile he's been holding down since seeing Teddy through the window, starts rising in his stomach. "Have you spoken to Nan?"

Dad nods.

"Did she say anything?"

"She was quiet," Dad says and James flumps back down into Teddy's chest, ignoring the oi it gets him.

Nan is her most dangerous while quiet. Once, when they were kids and Mum still travelled with the Harpies, they were sent to Nan's for the weekend. James and Al were playing Aurors and Death Eaters but they didn't look much like Death Eaters, so they found Grandad's quill and ink to draw the Dark Mark on Al's arm. Nan was so furious she couldn't speak when she found them, just sent them to opposite ends of the kitchen to stare at the walls in silence.

"Did she ask to get a different Healer?" James asks, hating how small his voice has become.

"No." Dad gets up, carefully, letting out one of his old man huffs as his knees crack. "Listen. Why don't we give her some time, okay? I'll try talking to her when it's less fresh." At James' nod, Dad smiles, claps him on the back. He grabs a handful of Floo powder from the mantle but, before standing in the hearth, turns back to say, "You two ought to get moving, before the others come down. You'll scare your mother out of her skin."

With a whoosh of the fire, he disappears. James looks down at the boy below him.

Teddy is sleep rumpled. There is a bit of yellow goop in the corner of his eye which, as he watches, Teddy scratches away. The curls on top of his head, squashed from sleep and crunchy at the end from hairspray before the show, are lilac.

James brushes his hand through them. Lilacs grow in the meadows behind the Potter's cottage, on the edge of the shore to the river where Teddy taught James to fish as children. He can't believe he's only just remembering that now.

"He didn't seem too upset."

"Nah," Teddy says. His eyes are warm. "Woke me up by flicking me in the nose. He told me I was too old to be sleeping on couches and that you had a perfectly good bed upstairs. Anyways," Teddy sighs, looking all over James' face. "Told you the ones who matter don't care." 

James hums. "What time is it?"

"Half past seven," Teddy says. His hands are at James waist, holding him steady. "You should go back to sleep. Harry mentioned he sent a note off to Dean Thomas to excuse you for the next couple of days."

"I should," James says. He traces Teddy's mouth with his thumb. "Come with me?"

Teddy smiles. He leans forward to press their mouths together, just gentle, and says, "Oh love, if I went with you, no sleeping would occur." He grins when James' flushes. "Unfortunately, I can't. Mesh and O invited me for an early breakfast in London. I have to shower and dress before I go."

And oh right – "Shit, yeah, you signed the contract! That's so wicked, Ted. You're going to be brilliant."

Their mouths meet again, sour in the early morning but warm. Teddy's hands are broad across James' back, as they pull him closer and closer until James is in his lap proper. It's easy to get lost in this, the dying fire next to them, the morning sunlight coming through the moors behind them and in through the sitting room windows. James slips his fingers under Teddy's jumper, remembering how it felt the time they fucked, his fingernails blunt across Teddy's shoulder blades.

There are footsteps on the stairs then and before they can pull away –

"Oh god ," Al says. When James turns away from Teddy to look, he has his hands in front of his eyes. "I thought you cried yourself to sleep, Jem. I was going to make you breakfast in bed because I felt bad , you absolute fucker."

"Al-"

"Mate, c'mon-"

"And here you are shagging Teddy on the sofa, fucking hell," Al says. He takes two steps toward the kitchen, still covering his eyes, before he continues, "And that's another sexual experience you have over me, god, I have to start writing these down."

He stumbles off into the kitchen like a weird little cyclops. James smiles fondly at his retreating back and the hippogriff pajama pants he got for Christmas when he turned seventeen.

"Should we resume shagging on the sofa?" James asks, looking back at Teddy's warm face.

"As fun as that sounds," Teddy says, pressing a kiss onto James' mouth. His hands are pressed into the dimples at the base of James' spine. "I have to get back to London. But," he punctuates this with another kiss. "What are you doing Wednesday around lunch time?"

"Um, eating lunch?"

"Come to Gran's with me," Teddy says, with a shrug like he's trying for casual.

Teddy and his grandmother have had lunch together every Wednesday since Teddy left Hogwarts. Even during his weird lost years, when he spent a lot of time sleeping on a bean bag chair transfigured into a bed in Dad's office, he still made time for the hour every week.

"I –" James can't hold back the wide grin threatening to cover his face. "I've met your grandmother. Many, many times. In fact, I saw her two days ago."

"She's heard me whine about you for weeks now," Teddy says, and his nose goes pink. James puts his fingertips on the blush, like he can keep it there forever. "She even sent me an owl to say that you looked very handsome on opening night. She wants to meet you as my, you know." He waves his hand around. "Fella."

"Your fella ?"

Teddy has his wand out in a flash, pointed at James. "Don't think I won't hex you, James Potter."

"Okay, okay," James says, laughing. "I would love to have lunch with you and your grandmother."

"Well good," Teddy says. He drops his wand back onto the coffee table. "Because I have a sneaking suspicion there's going to be a Howler waiting for me at home. Gran never explicitly said she doesn't want to see photos of me snogging in the paper, but it's definitely been implied."

"It's a good rule."

Teddy's eyes dance upward, to where James is sure his hair is a right mess. One of his big hands comes up to smooth it off his forehead, push it back where it belongs. It stays there as he says, "Promise me you'll get some sleep once I go."

"I'll try."

"I know for a fact Harry keeps Sleeping Draught in his office. Pinch some, okay?" Teddy uses his hand to bring James in closer, so he can stage-whisper: "I'm starting to understand that you like to take care of other people instead of yourself."

Ears red, James tucks his face into Teddy's neck, ignoring his laughter. "How dare you," James says, into Teddy's skin. "There's only space for one psychoanalyst in this family, I'll have you know."

"Too bad he's on sick leave," Teddy says, before sitting up fully, bringing James along with him. 

He does a bit more mother henning, rubbing his fingertips under James' eyes and tutting. He continues his inspection even as Al comes back into the sitting room, making retching noises because he is the worst and James has never liked him. "I think I was so busy being supportive I forgot what the two of you dating would do to my psyche," he says, rubbing his eye with one fist like a child. "S'weird."

"It's not weird," James says, annoyed now, "piss off."

Teddy laughs, his hand still on James' face. He's looking between them. "I missed you two bickering like hens."

"I made eggs if anyone cares," Al says, "They're scrambled and dry which you can blame on Mum and Dad for not giving me proper life skills."

"On that note -"

James descends Teddy's lap undignified, though the knowledge that it makes his little brother grimace cheers him up a bit. Teddy bumps into him as he stands and they do a little two step shuffle, Teddy's hands on his waist. 

"I hate this," Al says, leaving for the kitchen, "This is death."

James laughs and it feels like it cuts his throat on the way out. Joy, he supposes, will feel sharp for a little while. Maybe a long while.

"Oi," Teddy says, tugging on James' earlobe, "What are you up to tomorrow? Show doesn't run Monday and there's a new roti place on my street I want to try."

James forgot, for a second maybe, how dead nice it is to fancy someone who fancies you back and spend time with them. His heart gives a little throb at being asked on a date, a proper date. Everyone knows, he thinks and for the first time it is without dread. No more hiding. 

"Yes," James says and then rethinks the questions, "Wait, sorry - I'm not doing anything tomorrow night. I want to get food with you, that sounds nice. What are you - stop laughing at me!"

"Sorry," Teddy says, his hands pulling James in, grinning, "You're cute."

Blushing: "See if I show up now."

"Come over whenever," Teddy says, taking a step backward toward the Floo. "I know you've got that exam on Tuesday so you can study at mine if you want. I have to fill out paperwork for the Muggle Liaison office anyways."

"Sounds good."

"Good." Teddy steps into the fireplace with a handful of Floo powder. "Now. I've planted spies throughout this house and they have been instructed to knock you out with a club if you don't get some sleep today."

"Bye Teddy," James says, loudly. 

"Love you too," he says, grinning, before he disappears in flames. 

viii.

James dreams of the Burrow. 

He's surrounded by white sheets but they're not on a bed; instead he's small, maybe three, and Nan is wrapping him up in laundry. They're still warm from her drying charms and they smell like family. He can feel himself laughing, happy, as she picks him up in her arms, his head coming through the sheets to giggle in her face and say I'm a ghost Nana!

Then - his grandfather is in the sitting room wearing a paper crown on his head. The couches have been transfigured into chairs and tables by Uncle Bill, everyone crammed together. Al is next to James, loudly complaining that he hates pees Dad yuck while Rose's feet rhythmically kick James in the shins. 

Teddy is on his other side, his hair a festive silver. James is trying to get his attention but he can't move, can't tug at Teddy's sleeve or speak. Teddy isn't looking at him, is grinning at Victoire across the table, Victoire who has already been scouted by modelling agencies at fifteen. 

Then it's summer and the fireflies are still fluttering around. James is fourteen and full from tea, telling Rose about Kit Fleming, the handsome, sixth year Ravenclaw that owled him to ask if James wanted to visit him over break. 

"No chance, kid," Dad is saying and James is turning red in the dream, watching as everyone laughs at him. Teddy is still next to him and still hasn't noticed him, eyes on Victoire. James tries to protest but it's the same song and dance - no one can hear him and he can't move. 

Uncle Ron across the table says, "Oh Jem, you'll break my mother's heart. No one will ever be good enough for you in her eyes, mark my words," and the scene changes again - 

James is twenty-one and clutching Tamir's hand at Teddy's wedding. His mouth won't move as Tamir shakes hands with Dad and Mum, as he puts up with Al's cajoling. When Tamir goes to the toilet, the whole family descends on him - 

"Handsome enough lad, Jem-"

"He seems well-read-"

"About time you settled down, Jem, your father and I are wanting grandchildren-"

Nan doesn't say anything but he knows Tamir isn't good enough, not for her Jem - your mother and father were still young when they had you and we would spend afternoons together, Jem, just you and I - her baby's baby. 

And then, Tamir gets taller and his eyes go hazel and it's Teddy, thank Merlin it's Teddy, next to James at the Christmas table. James can finally move again, can finally speak, and laughs with it until he notices the silence.

Everyone is still, silent, as they look at James. He can say whatever he likes and he finally has everyone's attention and he doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what to do. 

"Jem."

He fights it. He just wants to be able to introduce everyone to Teddy, to have them think that this handsome, smart, brilliant bloke is good enough for him. He wants to watch Uncle Ron talk shop with him, for Dad to quiz him on questions related to James' safety and well-being. 

"James."

Through water, James stirs. It's dark in his room. Dad is standing over him. 

"It's your grandfather."

ix.

Half of the Weasleys have already arrived by the time James stumbles out of the Floo with Dad. He hardly registers them as he strides through to the hallway and takes the stairs two at a time. His grandparents' room is the first one off the landing. 

Nan is inside with Uncle Bill. 

"When's the last time he was conscious?" James asks, sprinting to the side of Grandad's bed. He's grey again, eyes closed. When James leans in to listen, his breaths are rattling through his chest. His skin, when James' presses a hand to it, is dry. 

"This morning," someone says and fuck.

James pulls back the blankets over Grandad's body and says, "Cover your eyes, Nan." He doesn't wait to cast, " Perspicious ."

It's a slow spell; layers of skin and tissue, muscle and fat, become translucent. As James watches, a bean shaped area at the end of Grandad's ribcage reveals two kidneys, one swollen and surrounded by masses of indigo. 

"Oh," James says and unconsciously steps back, bumping into Dad as he does. He can't stop looking at the mess of purple inside Grandad, lost in it, and his lack of concentration ends the spell. Grandad's torso turns to skin once more. 

"We have to get him to Mungo's," someone says. Uncle Bill.

"No," James says. He can't look away from the spot. Grandad wouldn't allow them to cast Perspicio at the hospital when they took him in for checkups. If he had, they never would have let him leave, not if he looked like this.

"I'll call for the MediWizards," Dad says, his hand on James' shoulder. "They'll be able to stabilize him for the trip."

"No."

Everyone is looking at him, he knows. He doesn't meet their eyes, keeps staring at the proof of Grandad's pain, at the masses of magic and cells that are killing him, that are about to end his life. 

"Jem-"

"I can't let you," James says, hoarse. 

" Let us?" Bill asks, and James looks over at his tone. He's looking at James like - well, like he expected. Like he used to think James was a good person and has since learned the truth. "He can't get better if he's lying in this bed-"

"He can't get better at all," James says. He swallows and it hurts, god it hurts. When he blinks everything is blurry. "It's too far gone."

The noise Nan makes at that sends shivers down James' spine. He's spent years as a Healer having to deliver news to families. This is something he's capable of, something he's good at doing. He has to stop crying.

"He -" James clears his throat. "He wants to die surrounded by family at home. That's what he told me."

It feels an eternity in this small room, his wailing grandmother, furious uncle, Dad, and a dying man between them. James can feel tremors through him, shaking him apart. He knew better than anyone that this day would come sooner rather than later but he - he isn't ready. 

"I'll grab Al," Dad says, into the quiet. "We'll round up the rest of everyone."

Dad's eyes, when James meets them, are too bright with tears. It makes something in James harden as he nods. He looks down at Grandad, at his cold and dry hand in Nan's hand. Bill is huge in James' peripheral but he's not looking. He's not thinking about drowning, not anymore. 

The room populates around him. It's a blur to James, who is thinking, thinking, even as he casts cooling and warming charms, cushioning charms and pain spells. 

Grandad used to walk them down to the river behind the Burrow with little jars to collect minnows in. He would sit on a rock transfigured into an armchair on the shore and read the paper while they frolicked in the water. He was brilliant for picking leeches off legs and one time even expanded one with his wand while James and Al gasped.

A hand touches James on the shoulder. He turns to see Al next to him, pale, his eyes glassy with tears. It occurs to James, then, that he's crying too, cheeks wet with it. 

Everyone's here. All the cousins but other people too, Nan's sister who lives in France and James' Great-Great Aunt Muriel. Aunt Fleur has her sister, James' Aunt Gabrielle, under her arm, and Gabrielle's wife is here too with their kids. The walls of the room pulsate with magic and when James looks over, Dad is next to Uncle Ron with his wand out, Teddy next to him. 

James looks away from Teddy quickly. Despite the full room, it is near silent, only Nan's crying and little Lucy whispering to Uncle Percy. 

"How much longer does he have?" 

It's Hugo who asks. When James looks over, he's looking down at Grandad, his arm around Rose.

"Not long," James says, hoarse. He tries to swallow. "He was hiding the worst of it from me. I - I'm sorry." Al's hand tightens on his shoulder. He looks more like the photo of Dad from the war than himself. It makes something in James ache. 

"I wish I could have said goodbye to him," Dom says, quietly, their voice shaking with honesty. James looks over and sees them next to Louis and Victoire; their hands are all linked together, their faces wet with tears. "The last time I saw him I didn't even say goodbye and now I never will have." Aunt Fleur's hand comes around Dom's head as her lips press their forehead.

James watches and - stops.

"Wait," he mutters and pushes Al's hand off his shoulder, reaching for his Healer bag. 

"Jem -"

But he's hardly listening, not to any of the scours of relatives around him. He kneels to rifle through it, moving aside his nausea bracelets and breathing devices. He pulls out the journal he's had since his first day at the Academy; it's taped together with Spellotape, pages stuffed into it from various surfaces. 

In second year at the Healer Academy, students have to submit a research paper of 100 feet to be defended in front of a panel of established Healers. James, the son of someone who cheated death not once but twice, wrote about charms and potions that extended life, if only for a little. 

That's when he came across Mortem Minuta , a spell developed by 14th century wizards in Constantinople.

James stands, his journal open in his palm. He's never practiced the spell, never needed to, but he knows the incantation, the wand movement. He could do it.

"You want to say goodbye?" he asks Dom. 

They look over at him, expression faltering for a second. James knows he was one of the first people they ever spoke to about being non-binary, tracking him down in the Owlery one day after classes and asking him for advice in coming out to their travelling circus of a family. For a second, it seems like Dom remembers that moment and all the other moments they've had. 

"Yes," they say. 

James rolls his sleeves up. Grandad's breaths are steady. He still has time. 

"It won't work." He looks over and it's Aunt Hermione, her eyes on James' open journal. "I know what you want to cast," she says, her eyes wide and worried. "And it won't work. No one's attempted it in a hundred years."

James looks around the room: Charlie with his arm around a crying Uncle Percy, Hugo and Rose, Lucy, Molly, and little Freddie shaking, Victoire looking determinedly at Grandad, her perfect mask in pieces around her, Mum, her arms around Lily, face streaked with tears. 

"Maybe," James says, tasting salt on his mouth as he does. "I guess we'll see."

He says the words like he's done it a million times, Mortus minuta , and then - pain. 

Everywhere, everything hurts, hurt like he's never felt before. It feels as if a hundred knives are stabbing his chest, his head cracked in two. He feels his knees bend with it and then there's yelling, someone - Al - holding him up. It's hard to hear, hard to pay attention, but there it is - over the throbbing ache in his bones:

"Oh," Grandad says, his voice hoarse. "What are you lot doing here?"

It works like this: when you do something bad, you must do something good to make up for it. 

It works like this: when James was nineteen he tucked away an ancient spell developed by plague wizards. It was a spell developed by mourning people, people who were watching everyone around them succumbing to death. All they wanted, these wizards, was a way to hear their loved one's voice one last time. 

It works like this: for a few minutes James takes Grandad's pain and gives him his energy. For a few minutes, Grandad can hold hands and say goodbye, while James endures. Because he has to endure; the second he stops feeling pain, even for a second, is the second Grandad dies and - because there's a catch, always a catch - James dies with him. He cannot try and cheat for more time than has been given; if he does, he will pay the price.

And really, it works like this: mourning and life and death and pain all mixed together. James has worked in healing long enough to know that the gaps between life and death are minimal, that everything exists on top of everything else. He knows too, that his life has been relatively untouched by death in a way that is foreign to people he loves, like Dad and Teddy. Their lives, he knows, are defined by who survived and who died. 

Before this moment, the worst thing that ever happened to James was telling someone that he loved them and them loving him back. 

Now, though, it is this pain and knowing that when the pain ends, his grandfather will be dead. 

The ache lessens and lessens, until it's only just there. James opens his eyes and maybe it's a dream. It feels like a dream, when Grandad says, "Thank you, Jem."

He breaks the spell. 

It's quiet. Grandad's eyes are still open though his chest is still. James reaches forward to close them. His head throbs. His skin prickles. There's still one more thing though, something he's had to do dozens of times now at St. Mungo's. Hands shaking, he raises his wand. 

To the death certificate, he recites: "Arthur Septimus Weasley. Time of death -" he looks at his watch and finds it hard to see. He blinks, desperate, and-

"Nine twenty-seven p.m.," Dad says, his voice even. His hand on James' shoulder is strong, grounding, and it is only then that James lets himself break.

x.

Dad takes him outside. They sit on a bench in the garden and look out, even though there's nothing to see. The sky has been heavy all day, no stars anywhere, and it's dark. James feels like his heart is gone, his chest empty.

"I'm not going to ask you what that spell was."

James breathes. It feels different, breathing. 

"Well," Dad says, "Not right now. I probably will later. I've never seen that kind of magic. But for now, I wanted to tell you a story," he says, "about when I was fifteen and I had to go to a hearing at the Ministry so they wouldn't kick me out of school."

" What ? Why?"

"Dementors attacked Uncle Dudley and I," Dad says, waving a hand, "Anyways, it's not important. The reason I brought it up-"

"You were attacked by Dementors at fifteen and that's not the important part of the story?"

"Jem, honestly, doesn't even make the top ten of my worst moments," Dad says. "The reason I brought it up is because your Grandfather took me to the hearing that day. We took the train into London and went in through the public entrance for the Ministry. He let me hang around in his office all morning and calmed my nerves. It was just one kindness out of a hundred that I will  never forget."

James smiles, despite himself. "He took us on the Underground to the zoo once when we were kids. We got lost so many times." Grandad bought them all ice lollies at the zoo. He held Al's hand when he got startled by the big elephants. James feels the back of his eyes burn. 

"He's a special man. Was a special man." Dad clears his throat. He looks like he does when they go to the annual Memorial for the War, his hand on Teddy's shoulder. "I just thought you might like to hear that story, that's all."

"Thank you, Dad."

No one hugs like Dad. James puts his face in his shoulder and tries to stop himself from crying but can't.

Time feels different in this new world, this world where James no longer has a grandfather. Dad leaves his side and before it has been too long there is a different body, tall with gentle hands that pulls him in.

"I'm so sorry Jem," Teddy whispers. 

James breathes in Teddy and breathes out, shakily. He tucks his face into the meat of Teddy's shoulder. Grandad is dead. James didn't do enough and now Grandad is dead. His body aches, still, with the pain of keeping Grandad alive and awake long enough to say goodbye. 

"Jem," Teddy says, quiet, just for him. "What was that spell doing to you?"

The instinct to lie and save Teddy's heart from aching is pushed aside; James is sick of lying and guilt. He pulls back from the hug enough to look Teddy in the eye and say, "It was causing me an excruciating amount of pain. But I'm okay now." Teddy's hand is soft on James' face, rubbing his knuckles under James' eye. "Did you get to say anything to him?"

Teddy smiles, gentle. "He called me Remus."

"Oh."

"So that -" Teddy blinks fast, sighing. "I don't know how to feel about that yet. It makes me feel about a million things." The counsellor in James wants to sit him down and hear about those one million things. Instead, he reaches behind his back for Teddy's other hand and holds on. 

"Thank you."

James looks up, "What?"

"Thank you," Teddy repeats. "For doing that. For casting that spell and letting everyone see him at his best, one last time. It meant a lot to everyone."

James thinks about telling Teddy that there was a very brief moment where it could have killed him, that spell. He decides, instead, to press his mouth against Teddy's throat and says, into his skin, "I don't like the thought of living in a world without him."

The hand at his cheek slides slowly into his hair. "I don't know if this is comforting," Teddy says softly, "but sometimes I remember that I am my parent's legacy. That my joy and success and failures are theirs too. And the same will be true of you and your grandfather."

James closes his eyes. He thinks of Grandad going to Muggle garage sales and coming home with a wheelbarrow full of things to tinker with. A smile stretches across his face, unthinking. 

The back door opens, then. Teddy takes a half step back from him, but it's only Al. The rest of the Weasley clan is still just through the back windows though. As James looks, he catches Hugo's eye before he looks away. 

"A bunch of us are staying over tonight, so Nan isn't alone," Al says. He's got Lily's coat over his shoulders and is holding it closed at the front. "You two staying?"

Teddy smiles, wry, "I shouldn't push my luck with this lot."

"Maybe not," Al says. He's fidgety, James can see, and doesn't seem to know where to look. "I think Uncle Bill and them are heading out, though. Not enough rooms and. Well. The on-going drama of it all."

"Get over here, you prat," James says.

Al joins their hug. He's got too-long arms, Al, and has a tendency to cling like a limpet. James knocks their heads together, just gentle. Three sons of a hero, of heroes, aching. Al's face looks wrong in grief and James wishes he could take his pain like he took Grandad's, hold it in his heart until it disappears. 

"Y'alright?" Al is asking Teddy. "I hated pulling you out of a show like that but -"

"Oh right," James says, eyes going wide. "You had a show tonight."

Teddy waves them both off. "I have an understudy for a reason. I'm glad you thought to come and get me, Al. It meant a lot."

"Of course," he says, eyes green and gleaming even in the dark. "He was your grandfather too."

A loud noise from the house breaks them apart. From what James can see, Rose dropped something and is crying while Dad helps her clean it up with a wave of his wand. Teddy sighs next to him. 

"I'll take that as my cue," he says and James is reaching out to grab his hand. 

"Hey," he says, "are we still on for tomorrow?"

Teddy's eyes, warm like honey on freshly toasted bread, fly up to his. "If you're up to it, yeah. We'll get roti and maybe -" Teddy leans in then, smile on his face, "- you can help me look at flats in Cardiff."

Something warm starts in James' belly. He thinks, for a second, to be guilty about it. Then he remembers my joy is his joy . "Yes. Yes, we should do that."

"I can't help but feel I don't need to be here for this," Al says, cheerily. 

"Well," Teddy says, grinning wolfish. "If you're thinking that now , I can't help but feel you'll be furious in a second."

"Why would I be - oi!"

Teddy's mouth is warm. He only gives James a few seconds of it, just chaste. Just a press of mouths, a thank you , an I love you , an I'll see you tomorrow , an I'm sorry and this is going to keep hurting but ring me, yeah, and we'll get a takeaway . 

"Bye," Teddy whispers into James' mouth. He flicks Al's ear, grins, and then Disapparates with a crack . 

"You okay?" Al asks. 

James looks at the space where Teddy disappeared, and then back to the open window of the Burrow. He can see more than a few nosy Weasleys eyeing him before looking away. He swallows. 

"Time heals all wounds, right?" he asks, feeling small. 

"That's the rumour on the street," Al says. He throws his arm around James' shoulder and starts walking the two of them back into the kitchen. "Can I stay in Uncle Percy's old room with you? Hugo was trying to make eye contact with me when Uncle Ron said we had to pick roommates but you know him, he farts in his sleep."

The division of rooms does seem to be causing a bit of a fuss, when they get back inside. When James looks around, he sees Nan swallowed by one of Uncle Bill's all-encompassing hugs. The rest of the Delacours are around them, in their coats like they're ready to leave. James' stomach flip flops. 

"I might go home," James says to Al, feeling anxiety pool in his stomach.

"No, no," Uncle Percy says and James turns to him, startled. "Molly has been saying all night that she wants to have a sleepover with her cousin Jem." Molly, who is presently asleep in Percy's arms, is unceremoniously passed over to James. 

"Oh," James says, over the bundle of six year old in his arms. She is heavier than she looks. "Well."

On his way to the stairs to get Molly's teeth brushed, Louis pulls at his arm. He's dressed in his coat and looks a wreck, his blonde hair pulled at. His voice, when he speaks, is missing its quintessential Louis cadence, the friendly twist he puts on words: "Hey. So, I don't know if Al mentioned, but we want to do something for Grandad. We were thinking of going to a Muggle bar next weekend and playing darts and going bowling or summat. Something he would have loved, you know? You up for it?"

James opens his mouth, closes it. He says, "You're not mad at me?"

"Oh, I'm furious at you," Louis says, primly. "You in?"

"Yes," James says. He hikes Molly up in his arms. "Yes, I'm in."

"Good," Louis says. From the sitting room comes Aunt Fleur's voice - Louis, viens ici - and he turns away from James. Over one shoulder, he says, "I'll owl with the details, yeah?"

James wakes sometime in the night. There's something soft against his face and, when he turns to look, it is one of the dozen or so stuffies that Molly demanded to bring into bed with her. She's as horizontal as she can be, between James and Al, her head tucked into the crook of Al's elbow as he sleeps, open mouthed. 

For a second, he struggles to remember why he is here, in this bed. And then he remembers - the bed, the room, the pain - and he is flattened by it. He twists his neck to look out the window behind the bed; the stars still haven't come out tonight. It feels fitting that there couldn't be stars in a universe without Arthur Weasley. 

James slides out of bed carefully, watching as Molly absorbs his spot. He takes the stairs two at a time, desperate for water perhaps but really just wanting to sit and stare at the dying fire for a little while. He wants to sit on Grandad's armchair before his smell, Muggle notepaper and oil and Yorkshire tea, dissipates forever. 

However, someone's beaten him to it. 

Nan is sitting quietly, staring into the orange embers of the hearth. She has a photograph in her hands. 

"Hi," he says, quietly. 

She doesn't startle, her eyes never leaving the hearth and she says, just as hushed, "You should be in bed, Jem."

He walks over to her. As he looks, he can see it's a photo from their wedding, the two of them beaming and young and so, so happy. He passes her to sit carefully on the floor in front of the armchair, where he spent many a Christmas Eve with his cousins, listening to Grandad's stories. 

"I'm sorry," he says. 

Her eyes flicker to his, blue and warm and brimming with tears. "What ever would you be sorry about, dear?"

"I didn't save him," James says and now he can feel it, burning along his eyelids. "And I disappointed you."

"Don't be ridiculous," she says, her voice cracking around the edges. She's strong though, the strongest person James knows. "Of course you saved him. He would have died weeks ago if he stayed at that hospital. You gave him the chance to say goodbye."

He feels a few tears drop down his face. He looks down at his hands. "I also disappointed you. I -" he almost smiles, with the absurdity of it, "- I got caught snogging Teddy in the Prophet , Nan." 

"Yes," she says, eyes back on the hearth. "Yes, you did."

He watches her face for a sign of something, anything. Yesterday, this was the biggest deal in the world. Now, well. Now, James feels like he would give anything to be back crying about guilt and Teddy and his own fucked sense of nobility, if only for this night not to happen.

"Twenty five years with no big mistakes," Nan says, after a few moments of silence. "About time you did something reckless." James watches her as she looks down at the photograph. "You know," she says, her brow creasing, "Percy didn't speak to us for two years during the war. And Charlie was once in the hospital with fourth degree burns and didn't tell me for weeks. And Ron ran away to hunt You-Know-Who with your father, barely left a card ."

"Nan-"

"So," she continues, looking back up at the hearth. "I suppose I'll take some snogging in the Prophet from you, Jem."

James is, suddenly, laughing. He's laughing and crying. He feels his heart, his lungs, this exhalation of grief and joy and fear, as he says, "I miss him so much. I can't imagine ever not missing him."

"You learn to live with it," Nan says, looking at him now. "But yes. Yes, I will miss him too. I hate to think of a morning without him."

He moves, without thinking, until he's on his knees in front of her and he can reach his arms around her. She hugs him back immediately, warm and heavy with sorrow, her face turning to cry against his shoulder as he is to hers. He thinks about her wrapping him up in that sheet as a child, thinks about them sitting up to watch Grandad sleep a couple weeks ago. 

"We'll be alright, yet, Jem."

"Yes," he says, pulling back to look her in the eye. "Nan, can I - can I stay with you, still? In Uncle Percy's old room?"

Her eyes fill with more tears, then, and James worries he's said the wrong thing. She pulls him in again, arms tight around his back, rocking him like she used to when he was small. 

"Of course," she says, squeezing him tight. "This is your home. You stay as long as you like."

James squeezes back, eyes shut tight.