6A/N: For glitterblizzard, as an early birthday present. I hope you have a lovely birthday, and you enjoy this! All the best. :)
Saudade
They don't call it a crush for nothing, sweetheart.
It's a verb just as much as it is a noun, and you'd know, because it's happening to your heart and to your mind and to your very being. There's nothing tragically alluring about this kind of pain. It just aches. Endlessly. Ceaselessly. Relentlessly. Frustratingly. Mercilessly.
It began on the platform where everything begins, when you were ten years old and not quite old enough for Hogwarts. Your brother came rushing over, excitedly crowing that Teddy – "our Teddy Lupin!" – was kissing your cousin Victoire.
On the outside, you clasped your hands together and hoped with fervent delight that they might marry and make Teddy an official part of the family. On the inside, you were weighed down by a leaden disappointment that your little girl's mind could make no sense of.
It all went downhill for you after that.
First year saw you Sorted into Slytherin, and you wore your silver and green robes with pride, wrapping your neck in your silver and green scarf and flaunting your boldness and your difference for the world to see.
Maybe you thought that living loudly and keeping everything in the open was the best way to hide in plain sight, and maybe you were right. While everyone saw that grades you struggled to maintain and the ambition you pretended to possess, no one noticed the tears that trailed down your cheeks to stain and blotch your parchment, or the countless inexplicably bitter letters you'd write to Teddy but never send, watching them burn to blackened ash in the fireplace instead.
There's a swirling storm inside you and you breathe it out on paper, through inky, angry words and prayers that receive no answer. You think you're breathing too, when you purge the words that press on your throat and your stomach and your fingertips and your toes, demanding some kind of expression.
In reality, you're not expanding or releasing the complexity of your emotions, you're diminishing them, because that's what words and people do. The intricacies and delicacies of existence cannot be boiled down to a few squiggly lines, and a concept like love can in no way be contained in four little letters, nor understood.
People tell you there's no reason for you to feel so broken, and you fall into the trap of believing them. You confuse truth for lies so often that you start to forget the difference between them, and you start to wonder why it even matters.
Christmas is your favourite season, and when you learn to stop asking "why?" and settle for "why not?" you enjoy it all the more. The presents aren't what draw you to it, though you enjoy receiving gifts as much as you do giving them. For you, the season is a gift in itself.
And you see Teddy every Christmas.
The butterflies in your stomach, dormant when he's not around, return in full force, fluttering madly and leaving you a blushing and frustrated shell of your former self. Teddy doesn't seem to notice, and if he does, he never says anything.
He sits next to you at the table during lunch and what inevitably turns into dinner, just as he's always done. The seating arrangement started when you were little and you refused to eat unless Teddy sat next to you. He did so happily, and he's done so ever since. For the last few years, Victoire has been on his other side, the only blight on what would otherwise be your definition of a perfect day.
You slip away some point before it gets dark, tugging on your beanie and your winter gloves. The air holds a chill that might have been bitingly icy, if you hadn't welcomed its cold caress against your skin. It wakes you up, enriches and replenishes you, restores the energy that had been worn away by the exhaustion of spending so long with people who tried so hard to understand you and inevitably failed, despite their best efforts.
"Preparing for your reign as the ice queen, are we?" Teddy asks, having followed you out.
"Hardly," you reply. "The ice queen is inside, and with your hair, you could rule by her side as the ice king."
Rather than matching your cynicism with a joke as you'd hoped he would, he turns serious. "Hey, there's no need to get snarky with me. I was worried about you is all. Neville said your grades have been slipping a bit. You haven't been replying to my letters and now you've come out here all by yourself… Forgive me for being concerned."
"I'm a Slytherin. We like to be alone," you say shortly. To say anything else would be reckless, it would mean you'd risk revealing how you truly felt, and if you've ever learnt anything, it's that not all feelings are allowed to be revealed.
"Suit yourself," he says, and goes back inside. You remain, sitting on a tree stump and staring at the stars you can barely discern behind the steady curtain of snow drifting through the air.
Snowflakes rain down on you like falling stars, and they sparkle against your skin, reminiscent of all you once dreamt you could be. It hurts you to remember those dreams, darling, and you'll lose yourself if you forget.
If life is but a dream like that Muggle song Rose used to adore, then why is your heart so heavy?
Why are you a mess of madness and mistakes? You count each flaw like you count the freckles on your nose, keeping a tally that mounts with every stab of shame and guilt, every tiny, human error.
Where has your childhood gone, that belief that impossible was nothing and the world held the potential for everything? Where has your happiness gone, and why has apathy so often taken its place?
They are the questions that plague you, and there are no greater ones than these:
If life is one big nightmare, then why are there moments and miracles you can't explain?
Why does Teddy take your hand when no one else is looking and call you beautiful in a tone so tender it chafes against the inadequacy that thrums through your veins with every heartbeat? It doesn't make sense that the words he says carry a thousand times more weight than any you've ever heard. How is it that his very presence warms your frozen soul and makes you smile so much your face might crack and carry your wordless joy to every corner of the world?
He plays your heart like it's a game, and he's the only winner. You're not sure if he's conscious of what he does to you, and that obliviousness stings the most. The way that he hurts you and heals you and doesn't even know it.
Why, when you summon up the courage of a Gryffindor to strike up a conversation with some of the students in your year, does your heart feel gloriously lighter? Why, when they invite you to Hogsmeade (probably out of politeness or pity) do you feel a spring in your step and the urge to inform every person you pass?
Sometimes, it hurts to survive, and that's what you've always missed. The "sometimes." There is an always to be found, too.
It always gets better. And you'll spend your whole life longing and clinging and hoping for the possibility of always.
Written for:
The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition – Harpies, Chaser 1 (Prompts: truth, flaw, nightmare)
The Hugs and Happiness Challenge: glitterblizzard
25 Days of Christmas Competition: snowflakes
A Jury of Your Peers Competition: Non-canon
Monthly One-shot Competition: green
Unrequited Love Challenge
Flower Language Challenge: Rose-bud
Florence + the Machine Challenge: Hardest of Hearts
The Sherlock Competition: Part 2, Prompt 6