Disclaimer: Neither Lily Luna Potter nor Lorcan Scamander nor anyone else mentioned belong to me.

Lorcan traces the inscription with his hand, a smile on his face, his silvery-blue eyes gazing at the painting framed in gold directly above it. Depicted within the gold are six children, all of varying faces and forms and colors, all with their wands out and the determination to stay alive burning in their eyes.

"That's my mother," he says softly, freeing his hand to touch the tip of Luna Lovegood's wand. For a second, it seems like she smiles at him, and he feels his heart warm. "You're amazing, Lily."

Lily bites into her peppermint candy so she can answer without being muffled. "Thanks," she beams, her smile obvious in her bright hazel eyes. "I'm glad you think so."

"How could I not?" Lorcan laughs, pushing away from the wall to send himself crashing onto a blue beanbag chair in one corner of Lily's tree house. "I don't understand why you're not doing this professionally."

Lily makes a face. "You know why, silly. Because it's my art and I don't want random strangers to have it!"

Lorcan grabs her wrist and tugs her down onto his lap so he can tickle her until she's gasping through her giggles. "You are overly possesive sometimes, you know that?"

Lily forces his hands away, sticking her tongue out at him once she's regained her composure and stopped laughing. "And you are utterly ridiculous all the time, you know that?"

He flashes her a grin. "I know it, and you love it. Don't pretend you don't."

Lily puts her hands on her hips, looking every inch as fiery as her namesake. "You wish," she retorts, dancing away from him before he can grab her again. "Don't you dare, Scamander."

"It's not my fault you're so ticklish," Lorcan smirks, standing up and crossing the carpeted floor of the tree house until he standing in front of bookshelf. "Where's your dad's biography?"

She waves a hand at the top shelf, fiddling with the buttons on her bright pink telescope. "It's somewhere on top. Thick red book, velvet cover, golden letters—you know what it looks like, Lorcan!"

He runs his fingers across the spines of the many books about mythology she's collected over the years until he finds Harry Potter's biography. "I know what it looks like, but your books are in a different position every time I come here!"

Lily flashes him a smile before popping another peppermint into her mouth. "It's magic, silly."

Lorcan rolls his eyes, an affectionate smile on his face, as he begins thumbing through the book. "How long did Victoire work on this? It's really long."

Lily leans down to peer into her telescope, despite the fact that it was the middle of the afternoon. "Roughly a year, I think. She refused to start planning her wedding until she finished it, so we had to deal with Grandmum Molly's complaining about how she wanted to plan another wedding already because it's been way too long since the last one in the family—or something like that."

"What did Teddy think?" Lorcan asks absently, turning to the chapter about his godfather's fifth year at Hogwarts.

Lily giggles. "Well, he was hiding from his own grandmother because he supported Vicka's decision, but I'm going to assume he was rather fond of it. He did end up marrying her, after all."

She tilts the telescope up at the sun after sweeping the star-studded curtains out of the way to expose an open, strawberry-shaped window, and the conversation dies a peaceful death as the two best friends lose themselves in their activities.

Lorcan gazes at the photo of his mother, with her silvery-blue eyes, the same as his, bright with love and adventure and the joy of friendship, before looking over at Lily's painting of her.

This one, hanging directly above the white shelf where Lily keeps her favorite fruits and vegetables, is framed in pale blue instead of gold. He notices a couple of mangoberries and a dirigible plum before focusing on the smile-for-smile, radish-for-radish replica of his mother smiling down at him.

He sighs, looking over at Lily. "Hey, Lils?"

"Hm?" she asks absentmindedly, looking over at him with her brightest smile on her face. "What's up, Lorc?"

Lorcan waves a hand at the painting of his mother. "How do you do it?" he asks, some curious mixture of amazement and affection in his voice. "How do you manage to paint so much emotion into your work? I've never seen paintings like this before, paintings of heroes that actually mean something."

Lily sighs lightly and walks over to touch his arm, sending a jolt of butterflies straight to his stomach. "Because heroes never die," she quotes her own words. "That's what Daddy always told me. It's easy because they never die. Because all that courage and strength and love is still out there, just waiting to be used by us. Can't you see it? Your mother could. My parents could. Everyone can."

Hazel eyes bright, she leans closer as if sharing a secret of immense importance with him, and he has to battle down the urge to kiss her. "All you have to do is believe, silly."

And she's told him this a thousand times, he knows. Everytime he asks her about her paintings, she always tells him to believe—in magic, in love, in heroes, in dreams, or whatever she comes up with at the moment.

He's never done it before.

But here, standing inside her crazy glass dome of a tree house, her hazel eyes glittering with laughter, and her peppermint breath mingling with her citrus smell, he finally believes. In what? He's not exactly sure. Magic, love, heroes, dreams, or maybe even her.

Or maybe he finally believes that he's actually in love with her.

"You're amazing, Lils," he tells her, overcome with a rush of adoration for his best friend. "Truly."

She giggles, pulling back a little, and bats her eyelashes at him. "Oh, I know."

He grins, his hands darting forward to tickle her waist. "You're also a narcissistic little brat," he adds as she squeals with laughter.

Lily flashes him a warm smile, squirming out of his reach. "You love me, anyway," she challenges.

Lorcan laughs, a little more softly than usual, and cups her cheek with one hand, brushing away a stray strawberry curl. "Of course I do."

Because heroes never die and she's eating peppermints and suddenly, all he wants to do is just lean down and kiss her like he's never kissed anyone before.

"Oh," Lily breathes right before his lips crash down onto hers. She tastes like peppermints and paint and mangoberries and every dream he's ever had, and he has to wonder why he's never done this before.

Because this, them in a glass dome sitting in the branches of a maple oak tree with the fragrance of summer in the air, this is the sort of thing that will never, ever die.

Author's Notes: So, I got bored and decided to write one of the pairings I passively support and found that I really, really like Lorcan/Lily :P Go figure, huh? They're just really, really wonderfully fun to write, and I hope you all thought so as well!

If you favorite, please don't do so without reviewing! Thanks in advance!