we washed up on messy beaches

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There's a suitcase on the floor, and this isn't like him.

Teddy Lupin is organized and Teddy Lupin wrote to his grandmother once a week until he was seventeen and she died and Teddy Lupin got a good job without using his Potter connection and Teddy Lupin decorated his office in the Department of Magical Transportation – and if he actually wanted to teach, that wasn't so big a deal, he could teach later when he was old and wrinkled and had already lived and Lily Potter had long since graduated – with pictures of family and old maps and Teddy Lupin had dated the girl his grandmother always wanted him to date for all of six years, remembering anniversaries and buying her jewelry and cleverly avoiding the idea of marriage and children and little girls with red hair and bright eyes.

Teddy Lupin got O's and E's in all his classes and Teddy Lupin does his own dishes and Teddy Lupin decorated his apartment with the furniture that came with it and a few perfectly straight picture frames and Teddy Lupin has never done anything out of the ordinary except for having his hair and eyes and nose change color when he gets upset and can't control it anymore.

He is not, for instance, James Potter who graduated two years ago and ran away to Germany to play for the Heidelberg Harriers and he is not Rose Weasley who chased after him and he is not Louis Weasley who got a fancy job at the Daily Prophet and quit to start his own business and he is not even Albus Potter, who came out to his family and got sorted into Ravenclaw and seems to enjoy kissing Draco Malfoy's son.

He is most definitely not Lily Potter, who is all Slytherin and skinny and absolutely terrifying.

But maybe he's trying to be, so he packs too many things in a too small suitcase and decides to head out.

Because remote islands were always a good idea and maybe he'd even get a tan.

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Lily Potter gets the letter from her father at breakfast a week later.

Lily doesn't write her parents weekly and doesn't bother to date who her grandmother likes – people like Aaron Longbottom who is so nice and normal and sweet that she gets cavities just by being around him – has used magic to clean her room since she turned eight.

She rips open the letter, rolling her eyes as Octavian feeds her owl a piece of toast. Red used to be James's, but he couldn't take him to training camp in Germany, and she doesn't think he ever quite forgave her for not being a little girl with too-red hair instead of James Sirius Potter. She hates him for that, a little bit – the owl and James.

Dear Lily is how the letter starts, just like every other letter her father has ever written. He's consistent like that, even if the actual timing of the letters is more sporadic than anything else.

She skims the parts about her mother on vacation, without her father because that's always a surprise, and something about the neighbors having a new daughter, even though she's pretty sure they've got about five already, and then he tells her to ask whether or not Albus and Scorpius are going to visit. She doesn't know why he seems to think that she writes to them – Scorpius is the Falcon's reserve chaser and Albus is working at a shop for some reason that doesn't quite make sense but probably has something to do with love – and because she knows he's probably writing Al right after he finishes hers. And it's not because he's a bad father or doesn't love her or anything, but just because he's Harry Potter and a little bit clueless about life and he knows that she thinks letters that are only a half page are one of the saddest things in the world.

It's signed Love, Dad and she's smiling about it while she sips her milk.

Then she gets to the p.s. and she drops the glass, milk splattering over Avery's soft green sweater and Octavian's breakfast and Red.

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Teddy doesn't actually tell people where he's going, but two days before he tells Victoire something like "I do love you, but this isn't what we both want" and she hadn't cried, but he'd gone home and drank himself into oblivion and handed in his resignation notice.

He'd visited his grandma's grave again. He'd written to Harry, just a quick letter about nothing at all and mentioning that he was going to be going away for a while.

Maybe Harry will think that this is about Victoire. Mrs. Weasley – the eldest one – probably will. Molly was rooting for him and Vic just like his own grandmother was, and the thought makes him feel a little bit sick to his stomach. Maybe everyone will think that and no one will realize that he's just having some kind of early midlife crisis.

He goes to Hawaii and gets a job as a bartender because –

Oh, fuck. Because maybe alcoholism runs in the family or maybe he just likes listening to other people's whiny drunk problems – not being in love with their husbands, their pregnant daughters, their affairs – or maybe he has nothing better to do.

The owner of the bar is tall and skinny with a gap between her two front teeth. She's got dark hair in a messy bun that she tucks her wand into and a brilliant tan and this no nonsense way of doing everything that he finds slightly, stunningly attractive.

Even though actually, he finds everything here slightly, stunningly attractive. The beaches are beautiful and he likes laughing with the other locals (because for some reason they consider him one, even if he has an accent and pasty skin that still won't get a tan and he still has issues pronouncing their spells, the ones with Hawaiian words that sound like music) at the muggles and visiting wizards trying to surf and he's starting to like the way everything smells like pineapple.

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The thing is, Lily's known Teddy since she was born and been (probably-definitely-maybe) in love with him since she was six and she had a nightmare and he gave her this stupid, ratty old green blanket that used to belong to his mother.

And she turns seventeen is a week, which is about eleven years of being in love with someone and that's got to be the second longest relationship of her life (because the first is her ongoing love affair with the grindylow in the pond behind her house – not in a creepy way though, just in that way that if it was a human she thinks they'd be best friends.)

The other thing is Teddy has been dating Victoire for six years. Victoire who is blonde and perfect and had been a Gryffindor, whose hair didn't clash with the sweaters that their grandmother knit for them, who was a Healer at Mungo's – and really it wasn't any surprise that she'd grown up with such an inferiority complex.

But Lily remembers this one time when she had just turned 12 and James was still mad at her for being a Slytherin because James was James and had never really learned forgiveness and Teddy had found out and sat with her while she fumed and cried and made her laugh by counting her freckles and then left when she was asleep and Lily didn't even know what he'd done, but the next day James had taken her out for ice cream and promised her that he'd always love her.

Lily doesn't reply back to her father. Instead she goes to class and doodles airplanes and broomsticks and fish in the margins of her notes and tries to act normal, even though really all she's thinking about is that in a month she is going to go home for Christmas and Teddy isn't going to be there.

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He keeps his hair black and loose around his ears, like the surfer he met his first day here. It doesn't change so much here. Maybe because he's not really feeling so much.

But he likes it.

It's not quite – it's not… Something is different here. Maybe it's because he isn't surrounded by people he knows or because the sea is filled with surfers and colorful fish and the menehunes – reminding him horribly of the gnomes in the Burrow's garden – living in the rock pools or because he's really starting to like the way the sand manages to get stuck in everything he owns. It's not like London with the crowd of Weasley's and grindylows and rain.

But it's nice. He might miss things like the way Narcissa met him for tea every other month and they talked about things like life and her past and interior decorating and the London's New Year Parade and snow.

There was a girl on vacation from Edinburgh once. The accent isn't quite right, but she's got these ice blue eyes and freckles and dusty brown hair that reminds him of his room back at Harry's house with the black and white pictures tacked to the wall and the lavender candles Vic kept around their shared apartment.

They have a few (eleven for her, one for him) drinks until she's laughing and he's laughing into her neck with her hair – it smells like rain and homesickness and the fancy shampoo that comes in miniature bottles – tickling his nose.

They wind up tangled together in his sheets, her bare legs wrapped around his waist and his hands skimming her hips, but when the sun starts to rise and light breaks through his curtains she's gone – she doesn't leave him a note but there's a lipstick stain on his forehead.

He leaves the girl to run away from her ghosts, because he already has so many of his own.

From then on, it's still girls. Girls with blonde hair and brown hair and red hair – he doesn't specify – all the tourists with their wide-eyed looks or jaded smiles because some of them are running and some of them just want to soak up the sun and then there are the locals, who all know how to surf and stay in bed the next morning, but most of them don't expect much more than a pineapple smoothie.

He supposes it could be about the breaking up thing. But maybe he could just do this for the rest of his life – be that overgrown bachelor cliché who eats breakfast at the same table and flirts with the waitress and who everyone smiles and laughs with, but who no one really knows.

If he only the woman who owned the bar didn't have a little three year old with hair like Al's when he was that age or if it didn't rain or if he never smelled lavender or if people here weren't so obsessed with this idea of ohana, if only he didn't miss his damn family so much.

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She goes home for Christmas, because Octavian has family to visit and the Zabini's are taking a vacation in Monaco, but her house smells like pine trees and burned cinnamon from her mother's failed attempts at cooking and Al is spending Christmas with the Malfoy's and James isn't back from Germany until tomorrow, so the house is horribly empty.

She thinks about going to the Burrow, just so she can sit still and watch her grandmother and Fred cook or listen to all her family's chatter – Uncle Percy and Aunt Fleur will have arguments about foreign policy because he's the only one who will disagree with her to her face and Uncle George and Uncle Charlie and Aunt Angelina will all get horrible drunk and start reminiscing about their days at Hogwarts and her grandfather and grandmother will dance to these awful old songs – so that she can feel like she's not alone.

But Teddy still won't be there. Teddy hasn't sent anyone letters, not Vic – who's dating another Healer at Mungo's already – and not Narcissa Malfoy and not even Harry. She doesn't know where he is, and that's scary. Because he's Teddy and he's supposed to be there for her and run off. Teddy is that one stupidly constant thing in her life, and she misses him like something that's been cut out of her chest (near the heart, probably.)

She settles down into this tattered armchair that's been there for almost as long as she has and writes a letter.

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It's Christmas and not snowing when an owl finds him.

He's sitting alone at his bar – well, not alone, because there are two surfers and this girl wearing nothing but a bikini, and he might hit on her except it's Christmas and she's sucked down two vodka tonics. He thinks it's the newspaper, or something.

Then he recognizes the owl – this ruddy red barn owl type thing, glaring angrily at the world. James's – except then he rips open the letter and instead of scratchy scribble it's loopy, little girl handwriting and Lily, Lily is writing to him, Lily with her narrowed hazel eyes and bright red hair and he remembers getting fake married in the Potter's backyard with her, ruining Harry's best dress robes in the process.

The letter starts out Teddy, and then it talks about her day. How everyone is gone from the house right now and Harry is at work and

then it says things like i'm not going to ask where you are because i don't think you'd tell me but i miss you and i don't want to go to christmas without you and sit around the tree without you and listen to shit music without you so I'd like it if you told me but that's okay if you don't i understand. maybe you're in the tropics or maybe your wrapped up in blankets in alaska or maybe you're still in London and we've all just missed you but that boy i thought i saw in kings cross was you and that'd be the best, i think and then other things like do you remember when our rooms were next to each other and we used to have that secret knock like bangbang bang babang and that meant i was lonely and you would bring me cake? you said you were always gonna be there and i'm sorry because i promised i wasn't going to make you feel guilty because you deserve to run away you really do i promise you and Vic broke up and you're 28 in a month and if this is what you want then that's okay and then things like i don't even know if you'll get this, really, because red hates me and i hate him back so this will probably just end up somewhere in the atlantic and really i don't even know if i want you to get this but, ted, maybe i do and red likes you because James likes you so maybe he'll find you he's a good owl when he's not being an ass and there's more like i miss you and daddy misses you and mum misses you, probably, but she won't ever talk about it and James and rose probably don't even know you're gone yet but when they show up tomorrow i bet they'll miss you and al misses you even though he's not here and mostly i miss you.

She ends it with her signature – love always, Lily – and he sits there for a really long time, this little scrap of a letter in his hand and her love and Lily and he's behind a bar in Hawaii and there are three people here but he's never felt lonelier.

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Three days after Christmas, she's sitting in the kitchen with Rose – she's making coffee in James's favorite mug – and it can't be past six so everyone else is still sleeping but she never went to bed.

Then there's an awful owl and he's got a letter and it's from Teddy and it goes like this:

lily-kins,

i'm in hawaii. running a bar, ruining people's expectations and everything. i miss you too, sweetheart.

teddy

And about a second later, she's apparated to some beach on the island of Lanai and goes into the first bar she finds.

Of course, it takes her six until she finds him.

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He's mixing up a screaming orgasm for some drunk divorcee and then there's little Lily Luna sitting on a barstool.

He drops the shaker and vodka and Bailey's and Kahlua is all over the floor. He decides it doesn't really matter.

She's sort of beautiful, her red hair done up in a messy ponytail and her discarded sweater clenched in her hand. If he didn't know who she was – Harry Potter's daughter, James Potter's sister, little Lily-pad – he might think – and he didn't know who he was – the son of a dead man and a dead woman he tried to love and Teddy Lupin – then he might think – things.

Then he remembers that here, he's not that, he'd just that kid who works the bar and whose hair might have been magenta last week. And here, she's just a pretty girl in a black tanktop.

She says something like get me something with pineapple in it, I hear that's good and all he's doing is nodding.

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They end up on a beach, him with a beer and her with this thing called a bahama mama and there are waves crashing and it's like something in a story she read once.

She's saying things like i've always loved you, you know, ever since we were kids and you were with Victoire and you used to count my freckles.

He says i never got past 100 and she kisses him.

It's not quite like kissing Scorpius in second year – because he'd pushed her away and blushed and she'd known he'd been in love with someone else but that had been a pattern with her, hadn't it – and it's not like all those other boys. But that's because Teddy's never been an other boy and he's kissing her back, which is something, she thinks.

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Lily tastes like pineapple and decisions that don't matter and his hand is touching her shoulder and then her hip and she's leaning up and smiling into him and into this kiss and he doesn't think about anything but her and this isn't like him, but it's okay.

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please don't favorite without reviewing

(writing another story about people running away. always. sigh.)