Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: Connie (Bubbles of Colours) asked me to write a retelling of a fairy-tale, with Lily and Teddy as the main characters. It was meant to be a one-shot in it was not in our cards to be forgettable, but it turned into something much more unwieldy. I'm sure that this is not at all what she was hoping for, but I'm afraid this is what happened. At the moment I think it will probably be seven or eight chapters (I know!). I hope you enjoy, despite the strangeness!

This is the story of a sleeping Teddy.

Prologue

Teddy Lupin had had a nice childhood. He knew it was nice—his gran and his godfather were brilliant, they were—but sometimes he found himself thinking about his parents. He knew that his life, the one he loved, resulted from their deaths, and that thought made him wonder whether he could be considered cursed.

Not that there was anything particularly bad about Teddy's life. It was easy, if a little odd. There was the whole metamorphmagus thing, of course, but he loved his colour-changing hair and malleable skin. He had gotten it from his mother, his gran said, and so he had to love it, because he couldn't love her. And his father's life had been cursed, no denying that, but Teddy had inherited his father's smile and bravery and none of his wolfishness.

So he wasn't certain what to make of these thoughts, the ones about curses, the ones that formed a shaky foundation for layers of happy memories. Victoire asked him once, in her second year, his third, why his eyes got dark when he looked at the memorial on the edge of the Hogwarts grounds.

He stared at her. "The war, you know?" He gestured toward the pile of broken stones, held together by a combination of gravity and magic.

Victoire reached out and gripped his wrist. "I know. It was a tragedy. It makes me sad too. But you always look like...I don't know. Like all that sadness is coming from inside of you, rather than from the past. From that." She gestured toward the broken pieces of former castle.

"Well, it's our memories that make it sad," he pointed out.

"Yeah." Victoire dropped it.

Four years later he stepped onto the Hogwarts Express for the last time, and Victoire held his hand tightly. Their mate Graham followed them into an empty compartment and the three of them sat in silence as the train pulled out of Hogsmeade and began its long journey south. Last time, Teddy kept thinking, last, last, last.

There was not such a big space between the past and the present, he thought, running an absentminded pattern over the back of Victoire's hand. She sighed and pressed her head against his shoulder.

Four more heartbeats, and then she said, "Couldn't you both have failed Transfiguration or Potions or something?"

Graham snorted. "I think it was technically impossible for Ted to fail anything."

"Not true," Teddy protested, although it may have been. "But Vic, don't worry. You'll be fine. You have friends in your year."

"Yeah," Vic sighed. "But none of them are like you." She pressed her temple against Teddy's shoulder so hard he worried she was going to get a bruise there. "Either of you," she added after a moment.

Graham ran his hand through his hair. "I'm not shagging you, so I don't expect the same treatment as Lupin. It's rather obvious he's your favourite."

"Piss off," Teddy muttered, as Vic raised a bitten fingernail to flick off their friend.

"See? Clear favouritism going on here." Graham stretched out on his seat and continued, "But seriously Victoire, you'll be fine. Just another year and you'll be free like me and Ted."

"Yeah, speaking of, have you two made any plans yet?"

"London, baby." Graham stretched his arms over his head and rapped a rhythm against the window behind his back.

"Have you gotten jobs?" Vic asked, pulling away from Teddy's shoulder so she could raise her blonde eyebrows at him.

He reached out and twisted his fingers in a few strands of golden hair. "Nope. We'll find something, though. Our plan is to visit every wizarding pub in the city. If none of them want us, then we'll try the Ministry."

"How will you afford a flat?" Vic asked, reaching up and wrapping her fingers around Teddy's wrist. She pulled his hand free of her hair and returned it to his lap.

"Harry's given Teddy his godfather's old place. Didn't he tell you?"

Victoire shook her head and kept her eyes on Teddy; his cheeks flushed and his hair tinged a pale rose colour. "I was embarrassed. You're always saying how Harry's too nice to me."

"Because he is, but that's still big news." Victoire rolled her lower lip between her teeth. "So it's just going to be the two of you there, then?"

"Dependent on both of us getting jobs. Harry says he'll take it back if we're not 'gainfully employed' by September," Teddy explained.

Vic laughed. "So it's an incentive. I take back what I said about Uncle Harry being a pushover."

"Yes, well, don't concern yourself, Victoire, we'll be making money by September." Graham kicked his foot against her jean-covered knee, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

"And then," Teddy drew her head back towards his shoulder, "when you leave Hogwarts next year, you can move in with us, yeah?"

She pressed her hand against his t-shirt, a five-fingered promise. "Yeah, all right." She spoke into his neck.

"Ugh, you're disgusting," Graham groaned. "I'll be kicking both of you out if you don't calm your hormones by then."

Victoire smirked. "It'll be us against you and you'll end up homeless and alone."

"We'll see about that." Graham sounded grumpy, and Victoire tapped a toe against his outstretched foot. He grinned at her. "No, seriously. It'll be great, Vic," he promised. "You, me, and the bear here."

Teddy rolled his eyes, but repeated, "It'll be great."

And it was. That summer Victoire visited and Teddy and Graham spent their time working behind a bar or drinking in front of one and everything was going perfectly. Teddy had a picture of his parents on the mantle in one of the spacious drawing rooms of 12 Grimmauld Place. They were laughing in the photograph, and Teddy began thinking that all of his concern over curses was rather childish.

And then he and Graham began experimenting with potions. It started as a simple thing, after a night out in a club where vials of violet and blue liquid got passed around so frequently that neither boy could resist a taste. And then the world spun around, righted itself, hardened, took on a hazy glow, and burst into a fierce-edged universe of fascinating colours and movements and people. Graham and Teddy woke up on their sofa the next morning, looked at each other, said, "Wicked," and lugged their cauldrons out of storage.

It happened in early December. Teddy and Graham were both in the kitchen, stirring their hallucinatory potions, and Teddy dropped a vial on the stone floor. He knelt to pick up the pieces, throwing in a few "Fuck"s for good measure, and one shard sliced his index finger as he dropped it in the bin. A line of red bloomed against his fingertip, blood running through the grooves of his skin and he muttered, "Fuck," again.

"You all right?" Graham glanced up from his cauldron, which was full of an orange liquid he claimed would allow the user to have some control over his hallucinations.

"Yeah, fine." Teddy wiped his hand on his jeans, staining a streak across the cloth.

Graham shrugged and turned back to his potion, and Teddy stirred his—a bright purple concoction he hoped would make its drinker see in a kaleidoscope of colours—and a few drops of blood fell into the cauldron, hissing as they hit the surface. "Shit." Teddy reached for another vial to try and scoop out as much of the blood as he could before it contaminated the whole potion, and as he dipped the glass into the drink, his fingertip brushed the liquid.

He blinked a few times as the potion sizzled against the open cut, and then everything looked silver for an instant. He collapsed, his heart pumped purple blood, and the world turned black.

:::

When she was eight, Lily's father moved her into her god-brother's old room. The problem, Harry explained as he Levitated her wardrobe up the stairs, was that Teddy's room was in the attic, and Teddy couldn't get up there anymore.

He told her this in such a sad tone that she didn't point out that Teddy didn't look like he could get anywhereanymore, so whether his room was on the ground floor or the top one didn't seem to matter for him. He would just lie there either way. She also didn't point out that putting an eight year-old in the very large, very draughty, many-windowed attic of an eighteenth-century house did not seem the best way to maintain the health of the still-well members of the family. Her silence on that front had nothing to do with her father's sadness, though. She had always loved Teddy's room, and while she was sad that he had somehow entered into what appeared to be an eternal sleep, she didn't particularly mind moving upstairs.

She especially didn't mind when people started visiting her comatose god-brother. They slept in the guest bedroom beside her old room—Teddy's new one—and whenever she ventured downstairs she found them in the kitchen, getting drinks from the fridge, or beside his bed, speaking in hushed voices like he'd wake if they spoke too loudly. Like they didn't want him to wake.

The worst were Victoire and Graham and Teddy's grandmother. Victoire and Graham came separately at first, and once Lily was grabbing a biscuit from the kitchen when Victoire was leaving and Graham was arriving, and they didn't even look at each other as they passed in the hallway. Lily could feel the iciness between them from where she was hovering in the doorway to the kitchen, and she waited there until Graham had disappeared in Teddy's room and Victoire had shut the front door behind her.

But eventually the silence between them stretched so far that it snapped, and they started visiting Teddy together. The voices that filled the first floor sounded almost like they used to when Graham and Victoire and Teddy all came for visits in the summer, except Teddy's deep laugh never joined in with the other two.

Teddy's grandmother had wanted him at her home, but Lily thought it must have been easier for her parents to look after him. Teddy's gran spent a lot of time sitting at his side, holding his nerveless hand. The first few months she only left when Victoire and Graham came to visit. Even Teddy's other friends, the ones who only stopped by for an hour or two, had to sit in there with Teddy and his grandmother.

Lily hated it all. She hated the healer from St. Mungo's who came by nightly to care for him, to check for changes—there were never any changes. She hated the grey shade of Teddy's grandmother's skin, and the way Victoire and Graham held hands when they entered the bedroom, like they needed strength to see their best friend. She hated the way her father wiped his eyes on his sleeve after visiting Teddy every evening, and the way her mum sat with him as she drank her morning coffee, and how her brothers sat in there doing reading in the afternoons. She had only gone into Teddy's room in the beginning, when her father made her, because most of all she hated the way he lay there, with his hands flat on the sheets, ready for somebody to take hold of them and make it look for a moment like he could feel. She hated the brown colour of his hair and the paleness of his skin and the way his lips were chapped and the way his nose never changed. Teddy was dull and empty, and Lily didn't recognize him.

She started using her bedroom window rather than the front door. She dropped down a floor to the balcony outside her father's office and then climbed down the weed-wound trellis to the soft soil of the overgrown garden. It was better than passing the groups of people in Teddy's room, than running into Victoire and Graham and their sadness. And later, as life started getting too busy or too much for everyone who was awake for it—even Teddy's grandmother—when Teddy's room remained empty for what seemed like days on end, sliding down the side of the house was better than the silence on the ground floor and the knowledge that despite the quiet her god-brother still breathed in her old room.

She got used to silence, as first James and then Albus left, and she locked the attic door against all the sorrow in the first two floors of her home. She read and drew and inked designs on her pale skin. She dreamt of escape, and when she finally turned eleven and fled to Hogwarts, she submerged herself in the noise so deeply that even hours spent in the library needed company. From the moment the Sorting Hat shouted, "Slytherin!" to the trip on the Hogwarts Express in June, Lily did not allow herself one moment of silence. Even her dreams were noisy.

But then she got home. She had asked her parents if she could spend summer holidays with Ris Parkinson or Bea Zabini, but they had said that they missed her too much to let her go away for the whole summer. "Maybe next year," her father had said, when she pointed out that Albus was spending the summer at Scorpius's, and that James practically lived with Rose.

Sometime during the second week of holidays, Lily passed by Teddy's room to find that the door had swung open. Someone had left the window unlatched, and a summer breeze ruffled the papers on the desk—her father's, he often did work in there. She hesitated in the doorway, and then stepped across the threshold for the first time in three years. She stopped beside the bed and looked down at the man beneath the sheets.

He was tiny. He had always been such a lively force in her life, such a beautiful, vibrant man. And now he looked skeletal. If she lifted the sheet and the shirt his healer had dressed him in the night before, Lily was certain she'd be able to count his ribs. She dropped her hand to his and felt paper.

"Merlin, you must be lonely," she said softly. And then she snorted. She used to pity the people who talked to Teddy, because he was so clearly gone. She had decided soon after he arrived in her house that if something like this ever happened to her, she'd want someone to kill her. She had even written Albus a note, which she'd hidden inside her copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, asking him to poison her if she ended up like their god-brother.

"If I were a Gryffindor," she told Teddy, "I'd have killed you already." She sighed and perched on the edge of the chair her mother used in the morning. "But I'm not, so you don't need to worry."

She looked around. Her father had painted the room a light blue colour when they had first moved Teddy, and the walls were covered in photographs of his parents and he and Graham and Victoire and a few of Lily's older cousins. Dominique was throwing water at a laughing Teddy in a silver frame on the bedside table. "It's nice in here, I guess," Lily said. "Could be worse, I mean."

"I don't know why I'm talking to you," she said after sitting in silence for a few moments. "It's just that there's no one around, you know?" She shook her head. "And talking to you is slightly less insane than talking to myself." Just barely, she thought.

Lily stopped avoiding Teddy's room, but that first summer she only visited him when her house was empty and Hugo wasn't answering her Floo calls. In subsequent summers she found her way down the stairs late at night when she couldn't sleep, and in the early afternoon when the sun made everything ache with beauty and Teddy was alone. She thought he must have been lonesome, there inside his head.

The summer after her sixth year she sat on the edge of the chair and stared at him. He looked like he always did—thin, pale, small. He could have been a cadaver but for the slow rise and fall of his chest. "Sometimes I think about death," she told him, "and how I used to wish it for you, because you look so sad. But lately I've been thinking," she took his hand, limp like always, "I think I could find you a cure."

Teddy hadn't reacted to anything in eight years, but Lily half-expected that pronouncement to bring disbelieving blue to his hair. It didn't. She continued anyway, "I know, it sounds crazy. Dad's had the most talented healers in the world working on you, and none of them have done a thing. But I'm going to try. Okay? I'll just try, and we'll see where that gets us."

She dropped his hand after a few more minutes, and just as she was about to leave the room she glanced over her shoulder and said, in a rush, "I've done some stupid shit, Teddy, but I think if I could help you none of that would really matter. It'd counterbalance, right? So that's my plan." And then she left, because her plan sounded horribly selfish sitting there unanswered and undisputed in the sleeping man's bedroom.