The Teddy/Albus fic
Wow, this was fun to write.
Title: Flora and Fauna
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Albus/Teddy
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Albus learns a disturbing secret about his father and flees to Teddy Lupin's remote cottage to avoid the aftermath.
Albus comes home from Hogwarts on a warm Saturday evening and can't shake the feeling that he's been stung by wasps. Or bees. Or maybe by a glumbumble, though his mood is nothing as concrete as the melancholy those things cause. He feels dazed and sore, hopelessly old and unforgivably young. Probably he's just tired from the trip.
"That was a fantastic leaving ceremony," his father says when they arrive at the house. "Really spectacular."
"Was Hermione drunk?" his mother asks. Albus' cousin Rose was in his graduating class, and the leaving ceremony was a regular family reunion, tension and all. Rose graduated without honors and without job prospects. She wants to be an artist. She does wonderful things with dye potions, and makes her own paints with complex textures. Aunt Hermione pretends to be supportive but worries about how she'll make a living. Uncle Ron openly doesn't get it.
"She was just a bit stressed," Harry says. Ginny laughs doubtfully. Albus lingers in the kitchen and watches them retreat to their separate quarters of the house: his mother to her study to listen to the Quidditch recaps, and his father to the master bath in the house's highest turret, where he will sit in the tub and admire the panoramic view of the countryside with sulking determination, sometimes for hours. Albus only knows about this because of Lily's distressed letters on the subject. She visits home during the school year much more frequently than he ever did. He doesn't know what his sister expects him to do about whatever is going on between their parents, but when she comes bounding through the door behind her trunk she gives him a beseeching look.
"What?" Albus says. Lily just stares at him like he's a traitor.
"I hate summer," she grumbles as she follows her trunk up the stairs to her bedroom. Albus groans inwardly and goes to the cupboard for a biscuit. He's ready to plant his face in his pillow and sleep away the first week of summer before his parents start harassing him about finding employment. His classmates were all squawking their gap year plans at him as he left school, but he's been everywhere and isn't interested in traveling, though he wouldn't mind having some sort of adventure before his adulthood truly begins. He'd thought he might have one with his friend Corbin, a suitemate for the past seven years and a damn fine looking bloke, but as their final year at Hogwarts progressed he came to accept the fact that Corbin was probably not down for the sort of adventure he had in mind. Somewhere around the tenth story about shagging a girl in the prefect's bathroom the final nail was driven into the coffin of Albus' sexual fantasy. He's been with other poufs at school -- all three of them -- but he longs for a real challenge. Angst and guilt and sex that transcends gender because it simply must be had, sexual identity be damned.
Put more simply, he wants a passionate fuck with a straight man. Not an uncommon desire, perhaps, but no less profound for it, he feels.
He climbs the stairs to his room and takes a cursory inspection of his things, enjoying their oldness and familiarity. He opens his window to the night air and gazes out at the meadow behind the house for awhile.
"Something will happen to me this summer," he says, quiet and reverent like he's casting a spell. Elsewhere in the house, he can hear the turret's bath filling and the radio mumbling Quidditch scores. Lily is quiet as a mouse. Albus blows out a sigh and slings one leg through the open window.
"Well," he mutters. "I'm waiting."
*
The following evening, James and Teddy come for dinner. James is a prick who works at the Ministry, but he's too benign to be a properly hateable brother. Teddy is a tremendous dork who does herbology research on Foulness Island. He's twenty-six this year, and the gossip about his "reluctance to marry" has just begun. Albus grew up with him, but he's eight years older and never had time for he and Lily, though he would occasionally humor James. There was a big, terrifying to-do during his teenage years when he decided to have a belated fit about his dead parents. Albus still gets a bit nervous around him, though he's much milder now, bespectacled and pale with bad posture. He looks, in other words, like the sort of person who lives alone on Foulness Island. His mum was a Metamorphmagus and his father a werewolf, but Teddy is only a serviceable wizard with a talent for growing and identifying rare plants.
Hermione, Ron, and their children also arrive for the occasion of James and Teddy's visit. James has recently become engaged to a witch named Sandra who is finishing her internship with a prestigious owl breeder in Norway, and the whole family is atwitter with the news. Albus could do with some dinner conversation that doesn't revolve around the subject of wedding planning, so he sits at the end of the table with Hermione and his father, who are both completely disinterested in which newspaper the engagement should be announced in first.
"Did you hear about Margaret Royce?" Hermione asks his father. "She was caught with contraband gong bat ears and fired on Tuesday."
Harry yawns and shrugs. Nothing surprises him. When Lily was five James gave her a peppermint from their uncle George's line that made a unicorn's horn grow from her forehead. Lily adored it, but the thing didn't fade off like it was supposed to and no one could figure out why. Albus' mother railed like hell against his uncle and James and anyone who tried to suggest that this wasn't a travesty, but his father simply insisted that the horn would fall off when Lily got sick of it. She's a powerful witch, and her ability to stubbornly affect reality was plain by the time she was three. Sure enough, when Lily accidentally bumped the horn against the kitchen counter and cried out in pain, it fell off like a discarded toy.
"Margaret always looked a bit dodgy to me," Harry says, and Hermione snorts a laugh in agreement. Down at the other end of the table, Ginny is telling James that he really can't invite the entire Ministry staff to his wedding, even if he feels it would be the proper political thing to do.
"Have you met this Sandra person?" Hermione asks.
"Yes, yes," Harry says. "She's lovely."
"He's just a bit young for marriage," Hermione says quietly. Albus waits for his father to make a joke about how young both he and Hermione were when they married their Weasleys, but he just goes silent and stares at his empty goblet of wine. Hermione's face reddens as if she's afraid she's said the wrong thing, and she beams rather suddenly at Albus.
"Have you got a job lined up yet?" she asks. "An internship for summer?"
"No." He pushes the crust from his pudding around on his plate. He was neither particularly excellent nor horrible at school. He was sorted into Gryffindor, which everyone found boring, perhaps even his parents. He didn't fail or ace Potions or Defense Against the Dark Arts, or even Divination, just managed to get by respectably in everything. He played Quidditch for two years until he was replaced as Seeker by a much more talented first-year. Even when his gayness was generally known about, people looked at him with still-expectant expressions, as if to say, 'that's it?'
"You really ought to start poking about right away," Hermione says. She takes the pitcher of wine from the middle of the table and refills her glass, then his father's. "Get a jump on the competition."
"May I have some wine?" he asks.
"No," Hermione says.
"Yes," his father amends. He hands Albus the pitcher. "You can drink it straight from that."
"Oh, Harry." Hermione swats him, but she's smiling, so Albus does as he said. His father laughs, pitches forward and claps his hands.
"Al, I was joking," he says as Albus grins and wipes at his lips, his fingers coming away purple.
"Harry, what on earth?" Ginny calls down the table. "Is that wine he's drinking?"
"No worries, dear," Hermione says. "He just had one sip, calling his father's bluff."
Ginny gives Albus a watchful look and sighs.
"I don't know what that's supposed to mean," he hears her mutter to Teddy, who is a complete teetotaler, naturally.
"I'm eighteen in two days," Albus announces to no one in particular. "I should be able to drink wine, I think. It's not like it's firewhiskey."
"Right you are, Al," Ron says, toasting him drunkenly. "And I promise to properly introduce you to firewhiskey on your birthday."
"Don't you dare promise him that," Ginny says. "You remember what happened with James."
"Put me off firewhiskey forever," James mumbles while Ron laughs uproariously at the memory. Albus turns back to his father, but he's looking at Hermione. She's staring down the table hatefully, probably in the direction of her husband. Albus has heard his mother and Lily gossiping about their issues. He looks at Rose, but she's sketching on her napkin. Hugo is oblivious as ever, interviewing Teddy about lichen or some similar nonsense. Hugo is top in his class in Herbology, his mother's pride and joy.
"You should come out to Foulness for a weekend this summer," Teddy is telling him. "I've got a spare bedroom, and the summers there are great. There's a whole pasture of spontificus malifactorium blooming behind my cottage."
"Splendid!" Hugo chirps.
Albus excuses himself from the table before he can vomit all over it. He feels like having an old-fashioned tantrum, smashing his plate and screaming I'm sick of the whole lot of you, but he isn't sure why, so he simply his puts plate in the sink, still far too accustomed to being unable to do magic in the house to clean up like a proper wizard, and heads for the staircase.
"Albus, you're leaving us?" James calls, with his usual wounded 'why aren't you on board with this whole Potter family charade, chap?' tone. Albus makes a rabid face while his back is turned, then smiles over his shoulder.
"Yes, James," he says, as sweetly as he can. "I'm just going upstairs to have my evening wank, if that's alright with you."
He enjoys the sound of shocked silence as he climbs the stairs, until Lily's buried laughter finally bursts from her napkin.
*
Albus' birthday is grim and rainy, which satisfies him. He sleeps until noon and drags himself down to the kitchen with his eyes still puffy, cuts a huge slice of the cake his mother made for the evening meal and eats it out of his hand while standing in front of the icebox, the chilling charm waking him a bit more. He wipes chocolate from the corner of his lips and finishes off his morning with half a gallon of milk, straight from the bottle. He sighs with true contentment before replacing it. His parents are at work. Lily left yesterday for a holiday in Mykonos with Trina Longbottom and her family. None of the bloody relatives are due to arrive for his birthday celebration until five. He plans to be drunk by then, even if he has to spend the whole day searching the house for the place his mother has hidden the keg of ale she ordered for the occasion.
"God, Potter," he says to himself when he's standing in front of the bathroom mirror after the long and fulfilling first piss of the morning. "What's wrong with you?" He slaps his face lightly. He should shave. Fuck it, anyway. It's his birthday, he'll do what he wants.
Rose comes over after lunch and tries to rouse him to go down to Diagon Alley for the free sundae the ice cream shop offers on birthdays.
"I'm not even dressed," he says.
"That could be easily corrected."
"We have rather different definitions of 'easily,' I'm afraid."
"Albus, for the love of Christ!" Rose is fond of repeating exclamations of exasperation learned from her Muggle grandparents. Most of them involve Jesus. "You're not going to turn into Harry Potter post-Hogwarts the second, are you?"
Albus grunts in annoyance. His father had a gap year of debilitating depression following his graduation from school, and, more importantly, following the achievement of his heroic destiny. Hermione and Ron saw him through it. He became engaged to Albus' mother the following year. It was a great relief to the community.
"Fuck off, won't you?" he says to Rose. "The weather is shit and I don't feel like going out."
"Fine!" She glowers at him as she backs away. "I've only come because my mother insisted. It's not like I don't have better things to do."
"My sentiments exactly!" Albus slams the door and goes grumbling back into the sitting room, where he was working his way through his mother's antique furniture, searching for the keg.
Several hours later, he gives up. His mother must have used a concealment charm, clever witch that she is. He settles for a few glasses of cooking sherry and a mid-afternoon wank. He happily gets into position in his bed, the door locked and a light rain sliding down the windowpane, and strokes himself as teasingly as he can, wanting to make it last. He runs through his usual fantasies: being fucked against the wall of the dormitory by Corbin, stroked off secretly during class by his Potions partner, tying up that shit who stole his place on the Quidditch team and sucking him off slow, until he's crying and begging to be turned over and nailed in the arse. That's the one that sets him off, finally. It's always a bit hotter when a touch of spite is mixed in.
He rolls over with a groan and begins a well-earned doze, the rain intensifying outside. He's almost asleep when he hears the mousy creak of the front door opening downstairs. Assuming it's his mother, home early to get ready for the party, he doesn't flinch. Then he hears voices, a man and a woman, and the clatter of china in the kitchen. James and Sandra must have come early. Annoyed, he pulls his pillow over his head and tries again to get to sleep, until he hears the unmistakable sound of a woman gasping in ecstasy.
"Fucking hell," he mumbles. He stumbles out of bed in a fog and pulls on a pair of rumpled trousers and the t-shirt he wore to bed the night before. Ready to take the piss out of his brother for having the nerve to shag his girlfriend in the kitchen during his birthday nap, he thunders down the stairs, expecting the sound of his footsteps to disturb them.
They're too embroiled in each other to even notice, James with his pants around his ankles, his lily-white arse peeking out from beneath wrinkled shirttails, and Sandra with her legs wrapped tight around his back. Albus is all the way across the living room, mouth open around a fantastically crass remark, when he realizes that the man with his back to him, fucking the hell out of a woman who is clinging to his shoulders, isn't James at all, just someone who looks extraordinarily like him.
"Harry," the woman breathes, clawing through his hair, and it took her speaking for Albus to recognize his Aunt Hermione.
Albus runs. Just runs. He uses the back door, probably, can't really see straight. Might as well have gone through a window. The rain bounces off of him as if he's used a water-repellent charm; it doesn't register. Nothing soaks in. He walks the countryside with his mind blank and reeling, trudges through muddy ditches until a sense of being uncomfortable finally begins to reach him. He ends up at the train station, like his body knew he was headed there all along.
He hasn't got any money, isn't even wearing underwear. He sneaks onboard without paying and sits in the back of the trolley car. The shade on the window by his seat is half-pulled, and he leaves it that way. He tucks his arms tight to his chest, and as the chilling charm that pumps through the train car wafts about him, he realizes that he's drenched. He shivers and waits to wake up from this nightmare.
Names of Muggle towns he doesn't know and wizarding communities he's visited are broadcast as the train pulls into each stop. He's on the slowest eastbound train, headed nowhere. It's nearly empty, as most wizards don't use the trains unless they're traveling with small children. When the train reaches the end of the line, a stout wizard with faded purple robes comes calling through each car, shouting as loud as he can manage in a squeaky voice:
"END OF THE LINE! ALL PASSENGERS MUST DEPART! END OF THE LINE!"
Albus slinks off before he can be questioned about his lack of a ticket. It's still raining, and he stands under the covered platform and watches the train pull away from the station. The only other passenger who disembarked, a stout man in Muggle clothes with a broom slung over his shoulder, mounts his broom and is gone. Albus' teeth have begun to chatter, and the rain is coming down harder. He looks up at the placard over the platform to find out where he is:
FOULNESS.
"Fucking right," he says to the sign.
He walks into the tiny Foulness rail station. There is an elf asleep in the ticket booth, curled on the counter like a cat. Albus isn't sure if he works here or just needed a dry place to squat. He walks over to a cold fireplace used for Floo travel. There is a coin box beside it asking for fifty sickles per mile traveled. Albus hunts through his trousers but comes up with only lint and a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes wrapper.
"Excuse me," he says to the elf. It doesn't stir. Albus goes to the station's front door and looks out at the swampy disaster that is Foulness. He'll need a boat to get to the island. If that's actually where he's going. It's not like he's got anyplace else.
He walks two miles into the Muggle section of Foulness and asks the bartender of a shady-looking establishment if he can use the phone. She takes pity on him, even asks him if he's okay. He thanks her for the phone and doesn't answer the question.
"Could I have Teddy Lupin on Foulness Island, please?" he asks the operator when he calls the Emergency Hotline that works with Muggle phones as well as Floo exchanges and owls. The Muggle phone connectivity was added only five years ago, to aid Muggle born schoolchildren who don't have access to other forms of communication during the summer. Albus is grateful for it, though his stomach pitches when he remembers that Aunt Hermione was an advocate for the addition.
Teddy answers on the third ring. God love him for having no life.
"I'm at the Eastview pub in town," Albus says. He tries to keep his voice as calm and unaffected as possible, but there's a quaver in the back of his throat that he can't get rid of. "I need you to come get me. Now."
"Albus, what on earth are you talking about? Is everything alright?"
"No. Come get me."
"Can't you Apparate here?"
"I've never been there, you --" He stops himself before he insults his only hope of rescue, and doesn't bother to add that he's in no condition to attempt Apparation. His mind is scrambled hopelessly, and he'd be splinched without a doubt.
"Alright." Teddy sighs, to make certain Albus knows this is a great burden. "I'll be there soon."
Albus goes into the men's and does a drying spell on his clothes, then a warming spell on his skin. He considered both on the train, but wasn't yet in the state of mind to trust himself to do magic. He goes back out to the bar and orders scotch. Teddy will just have to take the charges when he arrives.
"You old enough?" the bartender asks.
"Yes," Albus says, and his voice is so grave that she pours without a second look.
By the time Teddy arrives he's had three. Teddy is wearing a worn raincoat with the hood still pulled up over his hair, and his glasses are fogged. He frowns solemnly at Albus and pays his bill. Albus follows him out of the bar and into an alleyway beside it, fully drenched again within five steps.
"Hold on," Teddy says, and Albus begrudgingly takes his arm. Apparating feels better than usual, like disappearing entirely for just a flash. Soon he's stumbling onto the wooden floorboards of a leaky cottage, landing hard against his palms. He promptly throws up everywhere.
"Oh, perfect!" Teddy says. "Fuck all, Albus, I -- alright, alright." He changes his tune when Albus starts sobbing, leaning down toward the puke. Albus lets Teddy pull him up from the floor, though he would be throwing punches if he had the strength. Smug fucking Teddy. He takes Albus into his dark bedroom, and mercifully leaves the lights off. Albus is absolutely racked with crying, doesn't know how he'll ever stop. His father. Hermione. But no, he won't think of it. Not ever.
"Shh," Teddy says. He pulls Albus' wet shirt off, and undoes his trousers. Albus remembers as they come down that he didn't bother to reinstall his shorts after the wank that now seems to have happened years ago.
"Oh," Teddy mumbles. He hurries to wrap Albus in a blanket. Once he's covered, Teddy whispers a drying spell that works far better than the one Albus managed in the loo at the pub.
"Just lie down," Teddy says, guiding him toward a thin pillow that reeks of saltwater and something to do with sleep, perhaps eye bogies. Teddy leaves, and Albus hears the sounds of tea being put together. Thunder rolls past outside, and rain plinks into puddles in the small patio behind Teddy's bedroom. Albus curls into the blanket and shuts his eyes.
"Here," Teddy says when he returns. Albus pretends to be asleep. He doesn't want to explain, not now or ever. Teddy sighs, and Albus hears a teacup and saucer laid on the bedside table. He almost lets Teddy leave the room, then something occurs to him.
"Wait," he says, his eyes popping open. Teddy turns back.
"Don't Floo my parents. Don't tell anyone I'm here."
"Albus."
"I mean it. Please."
"What's happened?"
"It's to do with them. And I don't want them to know where I am."
"I'll have to tell them you're safe if they try me on the Floo."
"Don't. I'll owl Mum later and tell her I've gone off with friends for my birthday. Don't tell anyone I'm here, Teddy, please."
"Alright, alright." He stares at Albus for awhile, his hand on the door frame. "Is there anything else I can do?"
"No. Just. Thanks."
Teddy nods, and studies him for awhile before leaving. He shuts the door behind him, but not all the way, leaving it open a crack, as if Albus is an infant who must be monitored. Albus can barely muster the energy to resent this. He shuts his eyes and tries to sleep, fails horribly. Teddy is puttering around out in the cottage, and Albus listens for sounds of him speaking to someone, but he's either used a silencing charm or actually respected Albus' wishes.
When it goes completely dark outside, rain still pattering the cottage roof, he sits up in bed. His stomach is growling. Teddy has put a lamp on out in the living area; Albus can see the glow from behind the door. He drags himself out of bed, the blanket still wrapped around him, and shuffles out of of the bedroom like an invalid.
Teddy is in the kitchen, enchanting a wooden spoon to stir something that smells of butter and nutmeg. Albus walks up behind him, the blanket draped luxuriously around him like he's a vampire come to claim a meal.
"Has my Mum called?" His voice is scratchy in a satisfying way, an outward sign of his complete destruction.
"No," Teddy says. "I doubt they suspect you're here."
"Weren't you going to come to my birthday dinner?" Albus asks, wondering if it's begun, or been canceled. It would be rather like his family to carry on without him. Perhaps they'll have James blow the candles out.
"I didn't think I'd be missed," Teddy says.
Albus is embarrassed by the truth in this, though he tells himself he shouldn't be. He walks over to the stove and sniffs snobbishly at the dish that Teddy is preparing.
"Are you going to tell me what all of this is about?" Teddy asks.
"Have you got anything to drink?"
"Milk or plum juice."
Albus groans. "I'll drink from the tap."
"Albus."
"What?"
"I don't mind you being here but I'd like to know why."
Albus didn't expect anything so kind as that. He's always assumed that Teddy thinks of him as a pest, or that he can at least sense Albus' disapproval of his life, cloistered out here among moss and weeds. When Teddy was Albus' age, he was snogging witches and traveling the country, gathering rare specimens instead of just studying them. Albus has often wondered what went wrong.
"Something horrific has happened." Albus didn't realize it until now, but he does actually want to talk about it. He wants the whole bloody world to know what sort of man his father really is. Not to mention his sainted Aunt.
"Sit down," Teddy says gently. He leads Albus over to the table and pulls out a chair. "Would you like some clothes?"
"No, thank you." The blanket is quite comfortable, and it's appropriately fucked up to be telling Teddy what happened whilst naked.
"So." Teddy sits across from him and folds his hands on the table. "What's the matter?"
Albus opens his mouth, ready to recount everything like a gossipy Hufflepuff in the Great Hall, but then he just bursts into tears. He's stunned with himself, terribly irritated, but he can't stop.
"Alright now." Teddy gets up and walks around to his side of the table. Albus puts his head down and tries to get hold of himself, humiliated, but the effort only intensifies his weeping. Teddy puts a hand on his back and pats him like he's a wounded retriever.
"Whatever it is, it will be okay," Teddy says. Albus scoffs wetly into his hands. Teddy sighs and goes to a desk at the far wall, returns with parchment and a quill.
"Go on and write your Mum before she gets the Ministry involved," he says. He rubs Albus' back absently before returning to the kitchen. Albus wipes his face and rolls out the blank parchment out in front of him. He wants to write it all down: Mum, he's a cheater, the worst kind, run for your life. It occurs to him that she might already know. His father, Hermione -- they had the absolute gall to come to his mother's home. Albus thinks of Rose and her offer of a birthday ice cream. She was sent by her mother; Hermione was trying to clear witnesses from the scene of the crime.
He writes his mother a short letter about leaving on an impromptu holiday with a school friend and sends it off with Teddy's damp gray owl. Teddy is setting down plates when he returns to the kitchen.
“It's pumpkin ravioli,” he explains when Albus stands staring. “I grew the pumpkins myself.”
He looks like he's waiting to be congratulated. Albus sits down and lets the blanket settle around his lap, reaches for his the silverware Teddy has set for him.
“Are you that determined not to get dressed?” Teddy asks. Albus glances up from his plate and sees heat spreading in splotches across his cheeks. He smirks. It's drafty enough in the cottage to make his nipples hard, but he's enjoying making Teddy uncomfortable too much to put on a shirt. It's a pleasant distraction from the fact that the world has basically ended.
“Good pumpkins,” he says, with a mouth full of ravioli. Teddy grunts down at his plate, and doesn't look up again for the rest of the meal.
After dinner, Teddy sends the dishes off to wash themselves in the sink, and Albus pulls the blanket back up over his shoulders. He wanders around the cottage, giving himself a tour. There is indeed a spare bedroom, but it is a dust-covered apocalypse of discarded furniture and rusting herbology equipment, books stacked ten high and no space to walk between them, the twin bed in the middle of the room covered with shorter piles of them.
“I can clean this up for you,” Teddy says, coming to stand behind him. Albus can't imagine that the room would be much cozier even without all the junk, and hasn't seen anyplace else in the cottage where all of this might be transferred to. Teddy is clearly a pack rat, every shelf stuffed with junk and every square foot of space utilized to its full capability.
“Can't I have your bed?” Albus asks. Teddy throws out his hands and sighs.
“Anything you ask, your majesty.”
“Well it is my birthday!” Albus protests, feeling childish and near tears again. He wants his own bed in his own room, but he's afraid he'll never be able to go back to that house.
“Yes, of course,” Teddy says. “Go on, it's fine. I'll clean this up and sleep in here.”
“You don't have to,” Albus says. The work it will take to clean the room would last at least until morning. “Your bed's big enough.”
Teddy's blush returns, and Albus wonders if he had big plans with his hand for the evening. It's not as if they haven't shared a bed before. Teddy always came along on family holidays, and when they were visiting particularly remote regions of the world, he, James and Albus often slept together while Lily slept between their parents.
The thought of his parents makes Albus lightheaded, and he walks to the bedroom without an answer from Teddy, climbs into bed. He tucks the blanket in around himself and pulls another up over it, curls his knees nearly to his chest. He'll never sleep, that's certain. He's hoping Teddy will arrive and at least keep him company through what will probably be one of the longest and most mentally torturous nights of his life. To his great relief, Teddy does come, after blowing out the lamps and washing his face in the attached bathroom.
“Are you asleep?” Teddy asks. Albus doesn't answer. He finds himself hoping that Teddy will do something covert while he's pretending to sleep, pet his hair or stroke his back. He would accept such gestures from anyone at the moment, but Teddy, being Teddy, only climbs onto his side of the bed and lets out his breath in a put upon manner. Albus listens to his breathing in the dark, and when it settles into a regular pattern, he finds himself drifting off, surprisingly, into a dreamless sleep.
*
Albus wakes up late to a gray morning, fog so thick he can't see the edge of Teddy's patio. Teddy is gone. Albus considers blundering out of bed with only a blanket wrapped around him, and staging a summer-long nude protest of life in general, but when he sees the trousers, shirt, socks and underwear Teddy has laid for him on a chair across from the bed, he doesn't have the heart not to dress in them.
Teddy is nowhere to be found. Albus assumes he's off mucking through the swamp and eats breakfast alone, a stale piece of pumpkin bread over the sink. He wonders what time it is and goes searching for a clock, but Teddy doesn't seem to own one. Not wanting to be alone with his thoughts, he walks out into the front yard and looks for any sign of where Teddy's gone. He hears a chopping sort of noise coming from a nearby glen, and tromps through the mud until he sees Teddy bent over on the ground, his sample-gathering equipment spread out around him: bottles, sealants, a press and some tongs. He's chopping at a gnarly root he's got laid out on a smooth stone.
Albus sits beside him in the soggy grass. Teddy glances at him but doesn't otherwise acknowledge his existence. He carefully divides the root and reaches for a fat glass bottle. Albus passes it to him and watches him deposit the pieces of root one at at time, using a pair of tweezers. He's wearing thick gloves and rubber boots that reach up to his knees.
"Are those clothes alright?" Teddy asks.
"No," Albus says. "I demand we go to Madam Malkin's straight away for formal dress robes."
"I forgot how funny you are," Teddy says dryly. He finishes loading the root into the bottle and very carefully puts the lid in place, then reaches for his wand and mutters a spell Albus doesn't recognize as he taps it.
"Black curl is a very dangerous plant," he explains, as if Albus asked. "The root can be used in potions, but only with the utmost care and attention."
"Fascinating," Albus says. Teddy grunts in annoyance and begins organizing the samples he's collected.
"If you were looking for entertainment, you came to the wrong place," Teddy says. "Honestly, I don't have the faintest idea what you are looking for, Albus."
"Me either," Albus says. Teddy looks at him with sympathy for a moment, then begins packing up his things.
"Are you done for the day?" Albus asks.
"No. I'm going to have something to eat and spend the remainder of the day analyzing what I've collected."
"Sounds fun."
"Are you quite done?" Teddy snaps, his voice echoing through the fog. "Is it making you feel better to insult me?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, by all means, continue." Teddy spits out a spell that sends all of his things floating back toward the cottage, except for the black curl root, which he picks up and carries himself. Albus stands with a groan and follows him. He's become embarrassingly directionless, and the dripping, dank landscape of Foulness is the only place he can imagine being at the moment. Teddy is just going to have to weather it. He owes Albus, really, for claiming so much of his parents' attention as they grew up. Albus always hated him for that.
Teddy reheats some tomato soup for lunch, and sets a cold bowl in front of Albus, who grudgingly performs his own warming spell. They eat in silence, Teddy flipping through a catalog of berries used in wellness potions. Albus stares at him until he can't take it anymore.
"What do you do for fun?" he asks. Teddy looks up from his catalog, clearly puzzled by the question.
"I see friends," he says, an obvious lie. "I do a little bit of drawing. I'm thinking of putting together an encyclopedia of noxious mosses."
"Wow. Okay. Have you got a girlfriend?"
"Not presently." Teddy keeps his eyes on his soup. Albus watches his ears turn red.
"You're weird," he says, not unkindly, but with a kind of admiration.
"Thanks for noticing."
After lunch, Teddy goes about his analysis as planned, bent over his desk with his specimens spread around on the floor. Albus reclines on the sofa and watches him work, a herbology book he can't focus on open in his lap. His mind is itching against the memory of what happened the day before, but he won't let it return. Every time that gasp of Hermione's pierces through him again he focuses intently on a passage about fairybell flowers or Peruvian slime vines.
"How are you finding that book?" Teddy calls over his shoulder at one point.
"Extremely sexy. All this talk of stamens and receptacles is really getting me off."
Teddy snorts. His ears are red again.
"Are you going to be obsessed with your prick for the rest of your life, or is this just a stage?" he asks.
"As if you weren't obsessed with yours at my age."
Teddy doesn't argue the point, and Albus grins to himself, satisfied.
An owl from his mum comes arrives around dinnertime. Albus is afraid she's worked out where he's located, but she mentions nothing of it in the letter, so he assumes the delivery is due only to the owl's talent for locating a recipient. He reads the letter at the kitchen table and folds it up ten times before stuffing it into his pocket. There is no indication that his mum has learned the real reason for his departure.
"Everything alright?" Teddy asks as he set Albus' plate down.
"The ravioli again?" Albus complains.
"I make a meal on Monday and eat it throughout the week," Teddy says. "If you'd prefer the charity of someone who cooks for you every night, I invite you to try and find him."
"God," Albus moans, but then he doesn't know how to continue. Teddy is sort of right, bugger him. He eats the ravioli and drinks a glass of plum juice. There is no dinner conversation. Albus knows that the absence of a book beside Teddy's place setting is an invitation to talk, but he's not ready yet, especially after receiving that oblivious letter from his mother.
After dinner, Albus takes a hot bath while Teddy composes a long letter to a colleague in Switzerland. He gets out and wraps himself into the blanket he used as clothing the day before. Teddy is still writing, and Albus leans in the bedroom doorway. He does feel like he's waiting to be entertained, though he knows he's really just waiting on himself, for the moment when he'll be able to say it out loud. My father is not who I thought he was.
"What's the worst thing you've ever done to someone?" he calls across the room to Teddy. He turns, startled, and frowns.
"You're back to wearing a blanket?" he asks.
"Go on and tell me, and I'll tell you mine."
"Albus, please. Let me finish this."
It's begun raining again. Albus does a lap around the house, dragging the blanket behind him and allowing it to collect bits of paper and stray flower petals. He sighs melodramatically and returns to the bedroom. After a cursory inspection of Teddy's underwear drawer -- nothing remotely interesting, only shorts and socks -- he falls into bed with the blanket still around him. Teddy walks in shortly thereafter, muttering a warming spell and shutting the door to hold it in. He washes his face and brushes his teeth. Albus cracks his eyelids to watch him put on his pajamas. He's so white that he looks purplish in the moonlight.
"Are you awake?" he asks Albus.
"No. Yes."
"You want to know the worst thing I've ever done?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell me why you're here in exchange?"
"I don't know. Maybe." This is an honest answer. He'll try, at least.
Teddy gets into bed, and Albus rolls onto his back to survey him out of the corner of his eye. He's taken off his glasses. He began requiring them just a few years ago, and Albus had forgotten what his eyes look like without them. They're pale green, so light and noncommittal that they seen to turn blue when he wears that color.
"I lied to a girl," Teddy says.
"About?"
"I told her I loved her."
Albus sits up on an elbow and waits for more. Teddy only stares at the ceiling, his hands folded on his stomach. He turns to Albus.
"Now tell me what's happened," he says. The softness of his voice almost makes Albus lose it, but he's pretty well cried out.
"My father is cheating on my mother." He says it fast so it won't feel real. Teddy rolls toward him and presses his lips together.
"I know," he says. It takes half a minute for Albus to really hear this.
"What do you mean you know?"
Teddy winces and flips onto his stomach. He ducks his head to his pillow and regards Albus with sympathy that feels like a kick in the face.
"A lot of people know, Al."
"Don't call me that!" He bites down on the rest. Only my father calls me Al.
"I'm sorry -- sorry -- but -- well, how did you find out?"
"I saw him fucking Hermione. In my mother's kitchen."
Apparently he was wrong about being cried out. He curls in on himself and brings the blanket up to cover the ugly shape of his mouth.
"Oh, Albus." Teddy puts a hand on top of his head. "I'm so sorry. How awful. How absolutely terrible."
"I hate him," Albus sobs. "And her. God, fuck, and people know?" His breath catches. "Does my mother know?"
One look at Teddy's face tells him that, yes, she does. Albus buries his face against the mattress as his sobs shake out of him, his shoulders bouncing like he's being whipped. Teddy leans up onto an elbow and slides his hand down to his shoulder, squeezes it.
"I don't know why I even fucking care," Albus cries. "I don't, I mean, I don't. It's just so -- humiliating, I don't know." He wipes his face. Teddy is rubbing his thumb back and forth across his shoulder, and it feels good to be with someone who is close enough to have seen him this way and worse and who is simultaneously not a Potter. Albus has seen Teddy break down and throw fits and engage in farting contests with James and more or less everything else that could possibly embarrass him. When he was nine years old he smashed his broomstick to bits after losing a backyard game of Quidditch. He was a horrible player and was always bested by the Potter children, even Lily. For some reason, remembering this breaks through Albus' chest like glass. He grabs Teddy's nightshirt and yanks him close.
"You're alright," Teddy says, an odd little flutter in his voice. He lets Albus press his face to his collar and sniffle pathetically, wraps a cautious arm around him. Albus had quite a few adventures of the physically intimate variety at Hogwarts, but he hasn't been in bed with someone like this since he was a toddler. He always expected Teddy to smell like leaves and dirt up close, and maybe old milk, but he's clean and spicy like nutmeg.
Albus makes a final childish noise of protest and sighs into Teddy's pajama top. Teddy's hand moves to the back of his neck, and he holds it there, warm and just short of pressing.
"No, leave it," Albus says when Teddy takes his hand away. His face gets hot but he doesn't care. He felt stupidly good, safe and peaceful, with Teddy's hand clamped just there. After a moment's hesitation, Teddy puts his hand back in place, his fingers pinching in a bit more.
"Yeah," Albus breathes unintentionally, and they both flush so hard that Teddy's hand begins to sweat, but he leaves it there until Albus falls asleep.
*
Continued
Title: Flora and Fauna
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Albus/Teddy
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Albus learns a disturbing secret about his father and flees to Teddy Lupin's remote cottage to avoid the aftermath.
Albus comes home from Hogwarts on a warm Saturday evening and can't shake the feeling that he's been stung by wasps. Or bees. Or maybe by a glumbumble, though his mood is nothing as concrete as the melancholy those things cause. He feels dazed and sore, hopelessly old and unforgivably young. Probably he's just tired from the trip.
"That was a fantastic leaving ceremony," his father says when they arrive at the house. "Really spectacular."
"Was Hermione drunk?" his mother asks. Albus' cousin Rose was in his graduating class, and the leaving ceremony was a regular family reunion, tension and all. Rose graduated without honors and without job prospects. She wants to be an artist. She does wonderful things with dye potions, and makes her own paints with complex textures. Aunt Hermione pretends to be supportive but worries about how she'll make a living. Uncle Ron openly doesn't get it.
"She was just a bit stressed," Harry says. Ginny laughs doubtfully. Albus lingers in the kitchen and watches them retreat to their separate quarters of the house: his mother to her study to listen to the Quidditch recaps, and his father to the master bath in the house's highest turret, where he will sit in the tub and admire the panoramic view of the countryside with sulking determination, sometimes for hours. Albus only knows about this because of Lily's distressed letters on the subject. She visits home during the school year much more frequently than he ever did. He doesn't know what his sister expects him to do about whatever is going on between their parents, but when she comes bounding through the door behind her trunk she gives him a beseeching look.
"What?" Albus says. Lily just stares at him like he's a traitor.
"I hate summer," she grumbles as she follows her trunk up the stairs to her bedroom. Albus groans inwardly and goes to the cupboard for a biscuit. He's ready to plant his face in his pillow and sleep away the first week of summer before his parents start harassing him about finding employment. His classmates were all squawking their gap year plans at him as he left school, but he's been everywhere and isn't interested in traveling, though he wouldn't mind having some sort of adventure before his adulthood truly begins. He'd thought he might have one with his friend Corbin, a suitemate for the past seven years and a damn fine looking bloke, but as their final year at Hogwarts progressed he came to accept the fact that Corbin was probably not down for the sort of adventure he had in mind. Somewhere around the tenth story about shagging a girl in the prefect's bathroom the final nail was driven into the coffin of Albus' sexual fantasy. He's been with other poufs at school -- all three of them -- but he longs for a real challenge. Angst and guilt and sex that transcends gender because it simply must be had, sexual identity be damned.
Put more simply, he wants a passionate fuck with a straight man. Not an uncommon desire, perhaps, but no less profound for it, he feels.
He climbs the stairs to his room and takes a cursory inspection of his things, enjoying their oldness and familiarity. He opens his window to the night air and gazes out at the meadow behind the house for awhile.
"Something will happen to me this summer," he says, quiet and reverent like he's casting a spell. Elsewhere in the house, he can hear the turret's bath filling and the radio mumbling Quidditch scores. Lily is quiet as a mouse. Albus blows out a sigh and slings one leg through the open window.
"Well," he mutters. "I'm waiting."
*
The following evening, James and Teddy come for dinner. James is a prick who works at the Ministry, but he's too benign to be a properly hateable brother. Teddy is a tremendous dork who does herbology research on Foulness Island. He's twenty-six this year, and the gossip about his "reluctance to marry" has just begun. Albus grew up with him, but he's eight years older and never had time for he and Lily, though he would occasionally humor James. There was a big, terrifying to-do during his teenage years when he decided to have a belated fit about his dead parents. Albus still gets a bit nervous around him, though he's much milder now, bespectacled and pale with bad posture. He looks, in other words, like the sort of person who lives alone on Foulness Island. His mum was a Metamorphmagus and his father a werewolf, but Teddy is only a serviceable wizard with a talent for growing and identifying rare plants.
Hermione, Ron, and their children also arrive for the occasion of James and Teddy's visit. James has recently become engaged to a witch named Sandra who is finishing her internship with a prestigious owl breeder in Norway, and the whole family is atwitter with the news. Albus could do with some dinner conversation that doesn't revolve around the subject of wedding planning, so he sits at the end of the table with Hermione and his father, who are both completely disinterested in which newspaper the engagement should be announced in first.
"Did you hear about Margaret Royce?" Hermione asks his father. "She was caught with contraband gong bat ears and fired on Tuesday."
Harry yawns and shrugs. Nothing surprises him. When Lily was five James gave her a peppermint from their uncle George's line that made a unicorn's horn grow from her forehead. Lily adored it, but the thing didn't fade off like it was supposed to and no one could figure out why. Albus' mother railed like hell against his uncle and James and anyone who tried to suggest that this wasn't a travesty, but his father simply insisted that the horn would fall off when Lily got sick of it. She's a powerful witch, and her ability to stubbornly affect reality was plain by the time she was three. Sure enough, when Lily accidentally bumped the horn against the kitchen counter and cried out in pain, it fell off like a discarded toy.
"Margaret always looked a bit dodgy to me," Harry says, and Hermione snorts a laugh in agreement. Down at the other end of the table, Ginny is telling James that he really can't invite the entire Ministry staff to his wedding, even if he feels it would be the proper political thing to do.
"Have you met this Sandra person?" Hermione asks.
"Yes, yes," Harry says. "She's lovely."
"He's just a bit young for marriage," Hermione says quietly. Albus waits for his father to make a joke about how young both he and Hermione were when they married their Weasleys, but he just goes silent and stares at his empty goblet of wine. Hermione's face reddens as if she's afraid she's said the wrong thing, and she beams rather suddenly at Albus.
"Have you got a job lined up yet?" she asks. "An internship for summer?"
"No." He pushes the crust from his pudding around on his plate. He was neither particularly excellent nor horrible at school. He was sorted into Gryffindor, which everyone found boring, perhaps even his parents. He didn't fail or ace Potions or Defense Against the Dark Arts, or even Divination, just managed to get by respectably in everything. He played Quidditch for two years until he was replaced as Seeker by a much more talented first-year. Even when his gayness was generally known about, people looked at him with still-expectant expressions, as if to say, 'that's it?'
"You really ought to start poking about right away," Hermione says. She takes the pitcher of wine from the middle of the table and refills her glass, then his father's. "Get a jump on the competition."
"May I have some wine?" he asks.
"No," Hermione says.
"Yes," his father amends. He hands Albus the pitcher. "You can drink it straight from that."
"Oh, Harry." Hermione swats him, but she's smiling, so Albus does as he said. His father laughs, pitches forward and claps his hands.
"Al, I was joking," he says as Albus grins and wipes at his lips, his fingers coming away purple.
"Harry, what on earth?" Ginny calls down the table. "Is that wine he's drinking?"
"No worries, dear," Hermione says. "He just had one sip, calling his father's bluff."
Ginny gives Albus a watchful look and sighs.
"I don't know what that's supposed to mean," he hears her mutter to Teddy, who is a complete teetotaler, naturally.
"I'm eighteen in two days," Albus announces to no one in particular. "I should be able to drink wine, I think. It's not like it's firewhiskey."
"Right you are, Al," Ron says, toasting him drunkenly. "And I promise to properly introduce you to firewhiskey on your birthday."
"Don't you dare promise him that," Ginny says. "You remember what happened with James."
"Put me off firewhiskey forever," James mumbles while Ron laughs uproariously at the memory. Albus turns back to his father, but he's looking at Hermione. She's staring down the table hatefully, probably in the direction of her husband. Albus has heard his mother and Lily gossiping about their issues. He looks at Rose, but she's sketching on her napkin. Hugo is oblivious as ever, interviewing Teddy about lichen or some similar nonsense. Hugo is top in his class in Herbology, his mother's pride and joy.
"You should come out to Foulness for a weekend this summer," Teddy is telling him. "I've got a spare bedroom, and the summers there are great. There's a whole pasture of spontificus malifactorium blooming behind my cottage."
"Splendid!" Hugo chirps.
Albus excuses himself from the table before he can vomit all over it. He feels like having an old-fashioned tantrum, smashing his plate and screaming I'm sick of the whole lot of you, but he isn't sure why, so he simply his puts plate in the sink, still far too accustomed to being unable to do magic in the house to clean up like a proper wizard, and heads for the staircase.
"Albus, you're leaving us?" James calls, with his usual wounded 'why aren't you on board with this whole Potter family charade, chap?' tone. Albus makes a rabid face while his back is turned, then smiles over his shoulder.
"Yes, James," he says, as sweetly as he can. "I'm just going upstairs to have my evening wank, if that's alright with you."
He enjoys the sound of shocked silence as he climbs the stairs, until Lily's buried laughter finally bursts from her napkin.
*
Albus' birthday is grim and rainy, which satisfies him. He sleeps until noon and drags himself down to the kitchen with his eyes still puffy, cuts a huge slice of the cake his mother made for the evening meal and eats it out of his hand while standing in front of the icebox, the chilling charm waking him a bit more. He wipes chocolate from the corner of his lips and finishes off his morning with half a gallon of milk, straight from the bottle. He sighs with true contentment before replacing it. His parents are at work. Lily left yesterday for a holiday in Mykonos with Trina Longbottom and her family. None of the bloody relatives are due to arrive for his birthday celebration until five. He plans to be drunk by then, even if he has to spend the whole day searching the house for the place his mother has hidden the keg of ale she ordered for the occasion.
"God, Potter," he says to himself when he's standing in front of the bathroom mirror after the long and fulfilling first piss of the morning. "What's wrong with you?" He slaps his face lightly. He should shave. Fuck it, anyway. It's his birthday, he'll do what he wants.
Rose comes over after lunch and tries to rouse him to go down to Diagon Alley for the free sundae the ice cream shop offers on birthdays.
"I'm not even dressed," he says.
"That could be easily corrected."
"We have rather different definitions of 'easily,' I'm afraid."
"Albus, for the love of Christ!" Rose is fond of repeating exclamations of exasperation learned from her Muggle grandparents. Most of them involve Jesus. "You're not going to turn into Harry Potter post-Hogwarts the second, are you?"
Albus grunts in annoyance. His father had a gap year of debilitating depression following his graduation from school, and, more importantly, following the achievement of his heroic destiny. Hermione and Ron saw him through it. He became engaged to Albus' mother the following year. It was a great relief to the community.
"Fuck off, won't you?" he says to Rose. "The weather is shit and I don't feel like going out."
"Fine!" She glowers at him as she backs away. "I've only come because my mother insisted. It's not like I don't have better things to do."
"My sentiments exactly!" Albus slams the door and goes grumbling back into the sitting room, where he was working his way through his mother's antique furniture, searching for the keg.
Several hours later, he gives up. His mother must have used a concealment charm, clever witch that she is. He settles for a few glasses of cooking sherry and a mid-afternoon wank. He happily gets into position in his bed, the door locked and a light rain sliding down the windowpane, and strokes himself as teasingly as he can, wanting to make it last. He runs through his usual fantasies: being fucked against the wall of the dormitory by Corbin, stroked off secretly during class by his Potions partner, tying up that shit who stole his place on the Quidditch team and sucking him off slow, until he's crying and begging to be turned over and nailed in the arse. That's the one that sets him off, finally. It's always a bit hotter when a touch of spite is mixed in.
He rolls over with a groan and begins a well-earned doze, the rain intensifying outside. He's almost asleep when he hears the mousy creak of the front door opening downstairs. Assuming it's his mother, home early to get ready for the party, he doesn't flinch. Then he hears voices, a man and a woman, and the clatter of china in the kitchen. James and Sandra must have come early. Annoyed, he pulls his pillow over his head and tries again to get to sleep, until he hears the unmistakable sound of a woman gasping in ecstasy.
"Fucking hell," he mumbles. He stumbles out of bed in a fog and pulls on a pair of rumpled trousers and the t-shirt he wore to bed the night before. Ready to take the piss out of his brother for having the nerve to shag his girlfriend in the kitchen during his birthday nap, he thunders down the stairs, expecting the sound of his footsteps to disturb them.
They're too embroiled in each other to even notice, James with his pants around his ankles, his lily-white arse peeking out from beneath wrinkled shirttails, and Sandra with her legs wrapped tight around his back. Albus is all the way across the living room, mouth open around a fantastically crass remark, when he realizes that the man with his back to him, fucking the hell out of a woman who is clinging to his shoulders, isn't James at all, just someone who looks extraordinarily like him.
"Harry," the woman breathes, clawing through his hair, and it took her speaking for Albus to recognize his Aunt Hermione.
Albus runs. Just runs. He uses the back door, probably, can't really see straight. Might as well have gone through a window. The rain bounces off of him as if he's used a water-repellent charm; it doesn't register. Nothing soaks in. He walks the countryside with his mind blank and reeling, trudges through muddy ditches until a sense of being uncomfortable finally begins to reach him. He ends up at the train station, like his body knew he was headed there all along.
He hasn't got any money, isn't even wearing underwear. He sneaks onboard without paying and sits in the back of the trolley car. The shade on the window by his seat is half-pulled, and he leaves it that way. He tucks his arms tight to his chest, and as the chilling charm that pumps through the train car wafts about him, he realizes that he's drenched. He shivers and waits to wake up from this nightmare.
Names of Muggle towns he doesn't know and wizarding communities he's visited are broadcast as the train pulls into each stop. He's on the slowest eastbound train, headed nowhere. It's nearly empty, as most wizards don't use the trains unless they're traveling with small children. When the train reaches the end of the line, a stout wizard with faded purple robes comes calling through each car, shouting as loud as he can manage in a squeaky voice:
"END OF THE LINE! ALL PASSENGERS MUST DEPART! END OF THE LINE!"
Albus slinks off before he can be questioned about his lack of a ticket. It's still raining, and he stands under the covered platform and watches the train pull away from the station. The only other passenger who disembarked, a stout man in Muggle clothes with a broom slung over his shoulder, mounts his broom and is gone. Albus' teeth have begun to chatter, and the rain is coming down harder. He looks up at the placard over the platform to find out where he is:
FOULNESS.
"Fucking right," he says to the sign.
He walks into the tiny Foulness rail station. There is an elf asleep in the ticket booth, curled on the counter like a cat. Albus isn't sure if he works here or just needed a dry place to squat. He walks over to a cold fireplace used for Floo travel. There is a coin box beside it asking for fifty sickles per mile traveled. Albus hunts through his trousers but comes up with only lint and a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes wrapper.
"Excuse me," he says to the elf. It doesn't stir. Albus goes to the station's front door and looks out at the swampy disaster that is Foulness. He'll need a boat to get to the island. If that's actually where he's going. It's not like he's got anyplace else.
He walks two miles into the Muggle section of Foulness and asks the bartender of a shady-looking establishment if he can use the phone. She takes pity on him, even asks him if he's okay. He thanks her for the phone and doesn't answer the question.
"Could I have Teddy Lupin on Foulness Island, please?" he asks the operator when he calls the Emergency Hotline that works with Muggle phones as well as Floo exchanges and owls. The Muggle phone connectivity was added only five years ago, to aid Muggle born schoolchildren who don't have access to other forms of communication during the summer. Albus is grateful for it, though his stomach pitches when he remembers that Aunt Hermione was an advocate for the addition.
Teddy answers on the third ring. God love him for having no life.
"I'm at the Eastview pub in town," Albus says. He tries to keep his voice as calm and unaffected as possible, but there's a quaver in the back of his throat that he can't get rid of. "I need you to come get me. Now."
"Albus, what on earth are you talking about? Is everything alright?"
"No. Come get me."
"Can't you Apparate here?"
"I've never been there, you --" He stops himself before he insults his only hope of rescue, and doesn't bother to add that he's in no condition to attempt Apparation. His mind is scrambled hopelessly, and he'd be splinched without a doubt.
"Alright." Teddy sighs, to make certain Albus knows this is a great burden. "I'll be there soon."
Albus goes into the men's and does a drying spell on his clothes, then a warming spell on his skin. He considered both on the train, but wasn't yet in the state of mind to trust himself to do magic. He goes back out to the bar and orders scotch. Teddy will just have to take the charges when he arrives.
"You old enough?" the bartender asks.
"Yes," Albus says, and his voice is so grave that she pours without a second look.
By the time Teddy arrives he's had three. Teddy is wearing a worn raincoat with the hood still pulled up over his hair, and his glasses are fogged. He frowns solemnly at Albus and pays his bill. Albus follows him out of the bar and into an alleyway beside it, fully drenched again within five steps.
"Hold on," Teddy says, and Albus begrudgingly takes his arm. Apparating feels better than usual, like disappearing entirely for just a flash. Soon he's stumbling onto the wooden floorboards of a leaky cottage, landing hard against his palms. He promptly throws up everywhere.
"Oh, perfect!" Teddy says. "Fuck all, Albus, I -- alright, alright." He changes his tune when Albus starts sobbing, leaning down toward the puke. Albus lets Teddy pull him up from the floor, though he would be throwing punches if he had the strength. Smug fucking Teddy. He takes Albus into his dark bedroom, and mercifully leaves the lights off. Albus is absolutely racked with crying, doesn't know how he'll ever stop. His father. Hermione. But no, he won't think of it. Not ever.
"Shh," Teddy says. He pulls Albus' wet shirt off, and undoes his trousers. Albus remembers as they come down that he didn't bother to reinstall his shorts after the wank that now seems to have happened years ago.
"Oh," Teddy mumbles. He hurries to wrap Albus in a blanket. Once he's covered, Teddy whispers a drying spell that works far better than the one Albus managed in the loo at the pub.
"Just lie down," Teddy says, guiding him toward a thin pillow that reeks of saltwater and something to do with sleep, perhaps eye bogies. Teddy leaves, and Albus hears the sounds of tea being put together. Thunder rolls past outside, and rain plinks into puddles in the small patio behind Teddy's bedroom. Albus curls into the blanket and shuts his eyes.
"Here," Teddy says when he returns. Albus pretends to be asleep. He doesn't want to explain, not now or ever. Teddy sighs, and Albus hears a teacup and saucer laid on the bedside table. He almost lets Teddy leave the room, then something occurs to him.
"Wait," he says, his eyes popping open. Teddy turns back.
"Don't Floo my parents. Don't tell anyone I'm here."
"Albus."
"I mean it. Please."
"What's happened?"
"It's to do with them. And I don't want them to know where I am."
"I'll have to tell them you're safe if they try me on the Floo."
"Don't. I'll owl Mum later and tell her I've gone off with friends for my birthday. Don't tell anyone I'm here, Teddy, please."
"Alright, alright." He stares at Albus for awhile, his hand on the door frame. "Is there anything else I can do?"
"No. Just. Thanks."
Teddy nods, and studies him for awhile before leaving. He shuts the door behind him, but not all the way, leaving it open a crack, as if Albus is an infant who must be monitored. Albus can barely muster the energy to resent this. He shuts his eyes and tries to sleep, fails horribly. Teddy is puttering around out in the cottage, and Albus listens for sounds of him speaking to someone, but he's either used a silencing charm or actually respected Albus' wishes.
When it goes completely dark outside, rain still pattering the cottage roof, he sits up in bed. His stomach is growling. Teddy has put a lamp on out in the living area; Albus can see the glow from behind the door. He drags himself out of bed, the blanket still wrapped around him, and shuffles out of of the bedroom like an invalid.
Teddy is in the kitchen, enchanting a wooden spoon to stir something that smells of butter and nutmeg. Albus walks up behind him, the blanket draped luxuriously around him like he's a vampire come to claim a meal.
"Has my Mum called?" His voice is scratchy in a satisfying way, an outward sign of his complete destruction.
"No," Teddy says. "I doubt they suspect you're here."
"Weren't you going to come to my birthday dinner?" Albus asks, wondering if it's begun, or been canceled. It would be rather like his family to carry on without him. Perhaps they'll have James blow the candles out.
"I didn't think I'd be missed," Teddy says.
Albus is embarrassed by the truth in this, though he tells himself he shouldn't be. He walks over to the stove and sniffs snobbishly at the dish that Teddy is preparing.
"Are you going to tell me what all of this is about?" Teddy asks.
"Have you got anything to drink?"
"Milk or plum juice."
Albus groans. "I'll drink from the tap."
"Albus."
"What?"
"I don't mind you being here but I'd like to know why."
Albus didn't expect anything so kind as that. He's always assumed that Teddy thinks of him as a pest, or that he can at least sense Albus' disapproval of his life, cloistered out here among moss and weeds. When Teddy was Albus' age, he was snogging witches and traveling the country, gathering rare specimens instead of just studying them. Albus has often wondered what went wrong.
"Something horrific has happened." Albus didn't realize it until now, but he does actually want to talk about it. He wants the whole bloody world to know what sort of man his father really is. Not to mention his sainted Aunt.
"Sit down," Teddy says gently. He leads Albus over to the table and pulls out a chair. "Would you like some clothes?"
"No, thank you." The blanket is quite comfortable, and it's appropriately fucked up to be telling Teddy what happened whilst naked.
"So." Teddy sits across from him and folds his hands on the table. "What's the matter?"
Albus opens his mouth, ready to recount everything like a gossipy Hufflepuff in the Great Hall, but then he just bursts into tears. He's stunned with himself, terribly irritated, but he can't stop.
"Alright now." Teddy gets up and walks around to his side of the table. Albus puts his head down and tries to get hold of himself, humiliated, but the effort only intensifies his weeping. Teddy puts a hand on his back and pats him like he's a wounded retriever.
"Whatever it is, it will be okay," Teddy says. Albus scoffs wetly into his hands. Teddy sighs and goes to a desk at the far wall, returns with parchment and a quill.
"Go on and write your Mum before she gets the Ministry involved," he says. He rubs Albus' back absently before returning to the kitchen. Albus wipes his face and rolls out the blank parchment out in front of him. He wants to write it all down: Mum, he's a cheater, the worst kind, run for your life. It occurs to him that she might already know. His father, Hermione -- they had the absolute gall to come to his mother's home. Albus thinks of Rose and her offer of a birthday ice cream. She was sent by her mother; Hermione was trying to clear witnesses from the scene of the crime.
He writes his mother a short letter about leaving on an impromptu holiday with a school friend and sends it off with Teddy's damp gray owl. Teddy is setting down plates when he returns to the kitchen.
“It's pumpkin ravioli,” he explains when Albus stands staring. “I grew the pumpkins myself.”
He looks like he's waiting to be congratulated. Albus sits down and lets the blanket settle around his lap, reaches for his the silverware Teddy has set for him.
“Are you that determined not to get dressed?” Teddy asks. Albus glances up from his plate and sees heat spreading in splotches across his cheeks. He smirks. It's drafty enough in the cottage to make his nipples hard, but he's enjoying making Teddy uncomfortable too much to put on a shirt. It's a pleasant distraction from the fact that the world has basically ended.
“Good pumpkins,” he says, with a mouth full of ravioli. Teddy grunts down at his plate, and doesn't look up again for the rest of the meal.
After dinner, Teddy sends the dishes off to wash themselves in the sink, and Albus pulls the blanket back up over his shoulders. He wanders around the cottage, giving himself a tour. There is indeed a spare bedroom, but it is a dust-covered apocalypse of discarded furniture and rusting herbology equipment, books stacked ten high and no space to walk between them, the twin bed in the middle of the room covered with shorter piles of them.
“I can clean this up for you,” Teddy says, coming to stand behind him. Albus can't imagine that the room would be much cozier even without all the junk, and hasn't seen anyplace else in the cottage where all of this might be transferred to. Teddy is clearly a pack rat, every shelf stuffed with junk and every square foot of space utilized to its full capability.
“Can't I have your bed?” Albus asks. Teddy throws out his hands and sighs.
“Anything you ask, your majesty.”
“Well it is my birthday!” Albus protests, feeling childish and near tears again. He wants his own bed in his own room, but he's afraid he'll never be able to go back to that house.
“Yes, of course,” Teddy says. “Go on, it's fine. I'll clean this up and sleep in here.”
“You don't have to,” Albus says. The work it will take to clean the room would last at least until morning. “Your bed's big enough.”
Teddy's blush returns, and Albus wonders if he had big plans with his hand for the evening. It's not as if they haven't shared a bed before. Teddy always came along on family holidays, and when they were visiting particularly remote regions of the world, he, James and Albus often slept together while Lily slept between their parents.
The thought of his parents makes Albus lightheaded, and he walks to the bedroom without an answer from Teddy, climbs into bed. He tucks the blanket in around himself and pulls another up over it, curls his knees nearly to his chest. He'll never sleep, that's certain. He's hoping Teddy will arrive and at least keep him company through what will probably be one of the longest and most mentally torturous nights of his life. To his great relief, Teddy does come, after blowing out the lamps and washing his face in the attached bathroom.
“Are you asleep?” Teddy asks. Albus doesn't answer. He finds himself hoping that Teddy will do something covert while he's pretending to sleep, pet his hair or stroke his back. He would accept such gestures from anyone at the moment, but Teddy, being Teddy, only climbs onto his side of the bed and lets out his breath in a put upon manner. Albus listens to his breathing in the dark, and when it settles into a regular pattern, he finds himself drifting off, surprisingly, into a dreamless sleep.
*
Albus wakes up late to a gray morning, fog so thick he can't see the edge of Teddy's patio. Teddy is gone. Albus considers blundering out of bed with only a blanket wrapped around him, and staging a summer-long nude protest of life in general, but when he sees the trousers, shirt, socks and underwear Teddy has laid for him on a chair across from the bed, he doesn't have the heart not to dress in them.
Teddy is nowhere to be found. Albus assumes he's off mucking through the swamp and eats breakfast alone, a stale piece of pumpkin bread over the sink. He wonders what time it is and goes searching for a clock, but Teddy doesn't seem to own one. Not wanting to be alone with his thoughts, he walks out into the front yard and looks for any sign of where Teddy's gone. He hears a chopping sort of noise coming from a nearby glen, and tromps through the mud until he sees Teddy bent over on the ground, his sample-gathering equipment spread out around him: bottles, sealants, a press and some tongs. He's chopping at a gnarly root he's got laid out on a smooth stone.
Albus sits beside him in the soggy grass. Teddy glances at him but doesn't otherwise acknowledge his existence. He carefully divides the root and reaches for a fat glass bottle. Albus passes it to him and watches him deposit the pieces of root one at at time, using a pair of tweezers. He's wearing thick gloves and rubber boots that reach up to his knees.
"Are those clothes alright?" Teddy asks.
"No," Albus says. "I demand we go to Madam Malkin's straight away for formal dress robes."
"I forgot how funny you are," Teddy says dryly. He finishes loading the root into the bottle and very carefully puts the lid in place, then reaches for his wand and mutters a spell Albus doesn't recognize as he taps it.
"Black curl is a very dangerous plant," he explains, as if Albus asked. "The root can be used in potions, but only with the utmost care and attention."
"Fascinating," Albus says. Teddy grunts in annoyance and begins organizing the samples he's collected.
"If you were looking for entertainment, you came to the wrong place," Teddy says. "Honestly, I don't have the faintest idea what you are looking for, Albus."
"Me either," Albus says. Teddy looks at him with sympathy for a moment, then begins packing up his things.
"Are you done for the day?" Albus asks.
"No. I'm going to have something to eat and spend the remainder of the day analyzing what I've collected."
"Sounds fun."
"Are you quite done?" Teddy snaps, his voice echoing through the fog. "Is it making you feel better to insult me?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, by all means, continue." Teddy spits out a spell that sends all of his things floating back toward the cottage, except for the black curl root, which he picks up and carries himself. Albus stands with a groan and follows him. He's become embarrassingly directionless, and the dripping, dank landscape of Foulness is the only place he can imagine being at the moment. Teddy is just going to have to weather it. He owes Albus, really, for claiming so much of his parents' attention as they grew up. Albus always hated him for that.
Teddy reheats some tomato soup for lunch, and sets a cold bowl in front of Albus, who grudgingly performs his own warming spell. They eat in silence, Teddy flipping through a catalog of berries used in wellness potions. Albus stares at him until he can't take it anymore.
"What do you do for fun?" he asks. Teddy looks up from his catalog, clearly puzzled by the question.
"I see friends," he says, an obvious lie. "I do a little bit of drawing. I'm thinking of putting together an encyclopedia of noxious mosses."
"Wow. Okay. Have you got a girlfriend?"
"Not presently." Teddy keeps his eyes on his soup. Albus watches his ears turn red.
"You're weird," he says, not unkindly, but with a kind of admiration.
"Thanks for noticing."
After lunch, Teddy goes about his analysis as planned, bent over his desk with his specimens spread around on the floor. Albus reclines on the sofa and watches him work, a herbology book he can't focus on open in his lap. His mind is itching against the memory of what happened the day before, but he won't let it return. Every time that gasp of Hermione's pierces through him again he focuses intently on a passage about fairybell flowers or Peruvian slime vines.
"How are you finding that book?" Teddy calls over his shoulder at one point.
"Extremely sexy. All this talk of stamens and receptacles is really getting me off."
Teddy snorts. His ears are red again.
"Are you going to be obsessed with your prick for the rest of your life, or is this just a stage?" he asks.
"As if you weren't obsessed with yours at my age."
Teddy doesn't argue the point, and Albus grins to himself, satisfied.
An owl from his mum comes arrives around dinnertime. Albus is afraid she's worked out where he's located, but she mentions nothing of it in the letter, so he assumes the delivery is due only to the owl's talent for locating a recipient. He reads the letter at the kitchen table and folds it up ten times before stuffing it into his pocket. There is no indication that his mum has learned the real reason for his departure.
"Everything alright?" Teddy asks as he set Albus' plate down.
"The ravioli again?" Albus complains.
"I make a meal on Monday and eat it throughout the week," Teddy says. "If you'd prefer the charity of someone who cooks for you every night, I invite you to try and find him."
"God," Albus moans, but then he doesn't know how to continue. Teddy is sort of right, bugger him. He eats the ravioli and drinks a glass of plum juice. There is no dinner conversation. Albus knows that the absence of a book beside Teddy's place setting is an invitation to talk, but he's not ready yet, especially after receiving that oblivious letter from his mother.
After dinner, Albus takes a hot bath while Teddy composes a long letter to a colleague in Switzerland. He gets out and wraps himself into the blanket he used as clothing the day before. Teddy is still writing, and Albus leans in the bedroom doorway. He does feel like he's waiting to be entertained, though he knows he's really just waiting on himself, for the moment when he'll be able to say it out loud. My father is not who I thought he was.
"What's the worst thing you've ever done to someone?" he calls across the room to Teddy. He turns, startled, and frowns.
"You're back to wearing a blanket?" he asks.
"Go on and tell me, and I'll tell you mine."
"Albus, please. Let me finish this."
It's begun raining again. Albus does a lap around the house, dragging the blanket behind him and allowing it to collect bits of paper and stray flower petals. He sighs melodramatically and returns to the bedroom. After a cursory inspection of Teddy's underwear drawer -- nothing remotely interesting, only shorts and socks -- he falls into bed with the blanket still around him. Teddy walks in shortly thereafter, muttering a warming spell and shutting the door to hold it in. He washes his face and brushes his teeth. Albus cracks his eyelids to watch him put on his pajamas. He's so white that he looks purplish in the moonlight.
"Are you awake?" he asks Albus.
"No. Yes."
"You want to know the worst thing I've ever done?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell me why you're here in exchange?"
"I don't know. Maybe." This is an honest answer. He'll try, at least.
Teddy gets into bed, and Albus rolls onto his back to survey him out of the corner of his eye. He's taken off his glasses. He began requiring them just a few years ago, and Albus had forgotten what his eyes look like without them. They're pale green, so light and noncommittal that they seen to turn blue when he wears that color.
"I lied to a girl," Teddy says.
"About?"
"I told her I loved her."
Albus sits up on an elbow and waits for more. Teddy only stares at the ceiling, his hands folded on his stomach. He turns to Albus.
"Now tell me what's happened," he says. The softness of his voice almost makes Albus lose it, but he's pretty well cried out.
"My father is cheating on my mother." He says it fast so it won't feel real. Teddy rolls toward him and presses his lips together.
"I know," he says. It takes half a minute for Albus to really hear this.
"What do you mean you know?"
Teddy winces and flips onto his stomach. He ducks his head to his pillow and regards Albus with sympathy that feels like a kick in the face.
"A lot of people know, Al."
"Don't call me that!" He bites down on the rest. Only my father calls me Al.
"I'm sorry -- sorry -- but -- well, how did you find out?"
"I saw him fucking Hermione. In my mother's kitchen."
Apparently he was wrong about being cried out. He curls in on himself and brings the blanket up to cover the ugly shape of his mouth.
"Oh, Albus." Teddy puts a hand on top of his head. "I'm so sorry. How awful. How absolutely terrible."
"I hate him," Albus sobs. "And her. God, fuck, and people know?" His breath catches. "Does my mother know?"
One look at Teddy's face tells him that, yes, she does. Albus buries his face against the mattress as his sobs shake out of him, his shoulders bouncing like he's being whipped. Teddy leans up onto an elbow and slides his hand down to his shoulder, squeezes it.
"I don't know why I even fucking care," Albus cries. "I don't, I mean, I don't. It's just so -- humiliating, I don't know." He wipes his face. Teddy is rubbing his thumb back and forth across his shoulder, and it feels good to be with someone who is close enough to have seen him this way and worse and who is simultaneously not a Potter. Albus has seen Teddy break down and throw fits and engage in farting contests with James and more or less everything else that could possibly embarrass him. When he was nine years old he smashed his broomstick to bits after losing a backyard game of Quidditch. He was a horrible player and was always bested by the Potter children, even Lily. For some reason, remembering this breaks through Albus' chest like glass. He grabs Teddy's nightshirt and yanks him close.
"You're alright," Teddy says, an odd little flutter in his voice. He lets Albus press his face to his collar and sniffle pathetically, wraps a cautious arm around him. Albus had quite a few adventures of the physically intimate variety at Hogwarts, but he hasn't been in bed with someone like this since he was a toddler. He always expected Teddy to smell like leaves and dirt up close, and maybe old milk, but he's clean and spicy like nutmeg.
Albus makes a final childish noise of protest and sighs into Teddy's pajama top. Teddy's hand moves to the back of his neck, and he holds it there, warm and just short of pressing.
"No, leave it," Albus says when Teddy takes his hand away. His face gets hot but he doesn't care. He felt stupidly good, safe and peaceful, with Teddy's hand clamped just there. After a moment's hesitation, Teddy puts his hand back in place, his fingers pinching in a bit more.
"Yeah," Albus breathes unintentionally, and they both flush so hard that Teddy's hand begins to sweat, but he leaves it there until Albus falls asleep.
*
Continued