Only the Loneliest
Title: Only the Loneliest
Author: spin_deep
Character/Pairing: Lily Luna Potter/Lorcan Scamander
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: about 5,000
Summary: To Lily. We'll always have the Restricted Section.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: This feels heavy, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it now, but I really enjoyed writing it. I love knowing what people think of my writing, so please feel free to comment!
Lily helped Lorcan pack. The process wasn’t sad-boxing up his figurines and duvet and pillows and cutlery and notebooks didn’t mean that he was leaving, it just meant that his stuff was. And given the chocolate smears on his duvet and the tarnish on his forks, Lily thought that was probably a good thing.
He handed her a stack of cardboard and sent her into the second bedroom of his flat, which he’d turned into a library, and only then, when she’d started pulling his books from the shelves, did she realise it was over. Over was a dreadfully final word, but Lorcan’s books were leaving London and he would accompany them. She wondered if he’d stay if she stole his library, snuck it into her bedroom in her parents’ home and cast so many curses over the boxes that he wouldn’t be able to rescue them.
Lily had always loved his library. He kept books there that weren’t supposed to exist-books with dark tendrils of spells leaking from the pages; some stained with greasy potions, others with blackish blood; some had moving diagrams of animals attacking each other and some had full colour photographs of people burning against each other in lust-it was a collection of forbidden texts.
Books like these tied Lily and Lorcan together. In the fall of her first year, Lily had been fascinated by the library’s Restricted Section. She had decided to read all of the books on its shelves by the time she left Hogwarts. She had snuck into the library one night in October, cast a Silencing Charm on the first book on the first shelf of the Restricted Section, flipped to its first page, and dropped it as a scream ripped through the library. She hadn’t been able to hear out of her right ear for three weeks.
Lily had not given up, though. After serving her week of detention she had begun lingering around the Restricted Section, watching older students with signed passes wander among its shelves, looking for specific texts. And then she saw blond and lanky Lorcan Scamander duck behind the first shelf, and she grinned. She knew Lorcan, sort of, because his mum was her godmother.
She’d walked up to him and whispered, “What’re you looking for?”
“A book, Lily Potter.” He hadn’t lifted his eyes from the line of cloth-bound spines.
“About what?” Lily could feel the forbidden books humming-a siren song for the curious.
“Something you shouldn’t know about.”
“Come on, Lorcan. I can handle it.”
He’d raised his eyebrows at her, lifted a book from the shelf, flipped to a page somewhere near the end, and passed it to her. She looked down at a diagram of how to dissect a human body using magic. Lily had barely kept her lips from twisting in disgust. She’d stared at the horrible images on the page until her vision clouded, and then she’d blinked, read through the accompanying descriptive text, and handed the book back to Lorcan entirely composed.
He’d looked impressed. “Maybe you can handle it. What is it you’d like, Potter?”
“I’ve decided to read every book in here by the end of seventh year.”
Lorcan looked around at the shelves. “Is that even possible?”
“It better be. But no one will give me permission until I’m at least a third year. Can you help me?”
“What, like steal books for you? I don’t think that’ll work, Potter.”
“Why not? We could meet once a week and make a trade.” Lorcan had looked at her, grey eyes cautious. “It’d be easy.”
He hadn’t said anything.
“Break a few rules, Lorcan,” Lily had needled, and then he’d nodded.
“All right, yeah. Let’s meet on the Astronomy Tower on Thursday nights. I’ll bring two books a week.”
“Brilliant!” Lily’d stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek before turning and disappearing out the door to the library.
She had read all the books in the Restricted Section before she left. The night she finished, in April of her seventh year, she sent Lorcan an owl and he had Apparated to Hogsmeade, where they’d had a celebratory drink. They’d both gone home sober and happy.
Their friendship hadn’t changed much, in the time between Lily’s first year foray into rule-breaking and the day she packed his library into boxes. Lorcan loved Lily because she was different-her fascination with dirty and unsavoury literature only scratched the surface of her darkly intricate nature-and Lily loved Lorcan because he found her intriguing, rather than strange.
Lorcan came into his library to find Lily sitting on the floor, her legs curled beneath her, a stack of books beside her, and empty boxes all around. “What’s up, Lil? I do need to take my books with me, you know.”
She didn’t look up from the book in her lap, a history of the United Kingdom according to the goblin race.
“Lil?” Lorcan asked, pushing aside a pile of books so he could kneel next to her. “Are you all right?”
“It’s just,” Lily finally looked at him and she was biting her lip, “you’re taking all your books with you.”
Lorcan rolled his eyes. “You could buy your own, you know.”
“I move too often for a library like this.” In the three years since her seventh year she’d lived with Hugo until he moved in with Ris and then Albus until he moved in with Scorpius and then James until he’d kicked her out and then Sebastian Nott until they’d broken up and then Rose until Rose had started bringing blokes home every night and then Lily had tried living with Louis but that hadn’t even lasted a week before she was back in her parents’ house, looking for a flat to let on her salary as a freelance writer. Which meant that she couldn’t afford much more than a cardboard box beneath a bridge.
“True.” Lorcan shrugged. “Well, you can always Floo me to borrow some. It’s not like Scotland is far away.”
Lily’s nails bit into the skin of her right wrist. “Lorcan, you are moving to Eriskay. Eriskay is tiny and an island and barely Scotland.”
“I know where it is, Lily.”
“Then you understand why I’m sad.”
He was silent for a moment, playing with the green and blue string bracelet around his left wrist. Lily had given it to him in second year, and it was beginning to look rather ragged. She wondered if he’d snip it off sometime after he left. Maybe he would want to start his new life over without any reminders of the crazy girl he’d left behind.
“Is it just the books you’re going to miss?” he asked, keeping his eyes down.
“Of course not, you idiot. But at least you can write to me. Your books can’t, and I can’t just hop over and interrupt your research on the Hebridean Blacks whenever I feel like reading a certain passage.”
“You could,” Lorcan told her.
Lily grinned at him. “You’re nice, but you won’t think that once you’re settled with your dragons and Gaelic-speaking friends.”
Lorcan looked like he wanted to hug her, so she hopped up from the floor and dropped the book she’d been holding into the box. “There, I’ve begun. I’ll go get us takeaway for dinner, all right? I’ll help you finish when I get back.”
He didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t stop her, so she went out into London, in search of a takeaway place far enough away for her to compose herself on the walk.
After their dinner of Thai takeaway, they packed Lorcan’s books. Two days later he was gone and Lily was lonelier than she’d been since she was eleven.
Lorcan had hidden a book under her bed, which she didn’t find until six weeks after he’d left, when she was clearing out her bedroom to move into her new flat on the outskirts of London. She would be sharing with a stranger, but it was better than staying in her childhood home until she died.
The book was lying on its cover beneath a tangle of stockings and jumpers. Lily pulled it out from beneath her bed and looked at it for a long moment. A Collection of Creepy Stories. The title stank of a poorly edited children’s book, intended for campfires and slumber parties. But when Lily flipped to the first page she found an ink illustration that would never have appeared in any children’s books, unless the children were hags. It was of a heart, black and throbbing with inky blood.
Lily turned back to the front cover and found an inscription written in Lorcan’s elegant script: To Lily, We’ll always have the Restricted Section.
She wiped her suddenly damp cheeks with the back of her hand and held the book tight to her chest. Trust Lorcan to make her heart hurt after she thought she’d finished missing him.
Some time later she stood and placed the book in a box, picked it up, and walked out into her parents’ living room. They were sitting on the sofa, Ginny curled up against Harry’s side, each reading a section of the paper. Harry looked up when he heard Lily, and he smiled at her.
“All ready for the big move?”
“Just about.” She glanced behind her, at the boxes spread across the floor of her childhood bedroom. “Hopefully this is the last time I’m moving out of here.”
Ginny unfolded herself from the couch and came over, leaning her head against her daughter’s. “You know we love it when you’re home, Lil.”
“Of course. Just it’s better when it’s not an extended stay,” Lily replied, smiling. She moved toward the fire and her mother tossed Floo powder into the flames for her. “See you in a few,” Lily said as she stepped into the fireplace with her box of books.
Her new flat was small and her bedroom consisted of a desk, a twin bed, a window, and about two square feet of floor space, but Lily thought she could grow to love it. Her flatmate was named Pedro, he was a few years older than her, had gone to school on the Continent, and worked for the Ministry. They had a wine-fuelled dinner her first night in the flat, after which he flipped on the radio and took her hands.
“Here are things that I know about you: your name is Lily Potter; you like pasta and red wine; and you laugh a lot.” He told her, when they stood facing each other in the small space between the sofa and the arm chair in the living room. The music wove around them and Lily felt red wine loosening her limbs.
“All true.”
He grinned, inclining his head. “It is your turn. What do you know about me?”
She felt like she was back in first year, playing name games with the other students. “Your name is Pedro Valentino, you play the guitar, and you do not often read.”
He blinked. “How do you know I play guitar?”
Lily flipped his hands over so his palms were facing up. “Calluses. And I know you don’t read a lot because I haven’t seen one book around the flat; although I haven’t been in your bedroom, obviously. You may have a stash there.”
“I don’t.” He shook his head. “I’ve got another on you, then. You’re insightful.”
She let go of his hands. “I’m observant. I think we’ll get along well.”
“Probably.” He stepped back. “Just one rule: cast silencing charms if you have anyone over. I will, too, obviously.”
Lily didn’t tell him that it was unlikely that any bloke would find his way to her bed. “Sure thing.”
He grinned. “We’ll get on famously, then.”
She nodded and turned, disappearing to her bedroom and book, reading disturbing stories until she drifted off into monochrome dreams that did nothing to improve her melancholy mood.
Her days consisted of writing and wandering London and occasionally meeting her cousins for coffee or drinks. By October she had read Creepy Stories seven times and had written twenty letters to Lorcan. She’d received thirteen from him, which was surprising considering that it was Lorcan and he usually sucked at writing letters.
Lily had her book. She had her cousins and Lorcan’s letters and her writing. There was her city, beckoning at three in the morning just as it did at six at night and she liked her flatmate. But she still fell asleep and woke up feeling sad. Sometimes she dreamt of Lorcan-memories of Hogwarts or days spent in London, or strange, overwrought dreams of things that hadn’t happen or could never happen: the two of them flinging each other through the air beneath a striped circus tent; Lorcan running to Lily along the seabed, trailing glittering fish scales behind him; Lily blowing bubbles in a river until Lorcan grew out of them, transparent and glistening and dispersing when she sighed at the sight of him-and she woke up lonely and missing him. Other nights she was alone in her dreams, and didn’t think of him once, and was hit with the force of remembering him when her alarm went off, left with the taste of sorrow in her mouth at the realisation that she could forget him, even if the forgetting was temporary.
She received a letter from him on Halloween. It was still early when the owl alighted at her window, and she untied the letter from his leg and fed him a stale treat before he winged off to the Hebrides. She slit the envelope.
Dear Lily,
Yesterday I hiked up a mountain and I sat on a peak and looked out over the ocean-south, toward you. There were a few wild ponies grazing nearby and one of them had these blue eyes and I think if you were here you would have made him fall in love with you. You probably would have whispered poems about ribs and violets and the line of his spine into his furry ears and then you’d have been galloping off down the other side without one backward glance at me. But even though you’d have left me, I still wish you had been here on the mountain yesterday.
I also saw a Hebridean Black, but that’s expected. I’ve told you about them before, I know, but I wish that I could show one to you. I think you would probably love them, more than you’d love the ponies, even. They’re dangerous and bitter creatures, and their eyes burn harsher than their breaths do, but they’re also fantastically beautiful. One of the girls here found an egg a few years back, and she kept it in her fire until it hatched, and kept it alive long enough for it to go free. She has burn marks all up and down her arms, and sometimes that dragon lands among her cattle and leaves claw marks in the earth, but it never eats her cows. So they have some sort of awareness, if not complete sentience. My book is coming along, although I’ve sent Lysander the first chapter and he tells me it’s too subjective. It must be more scientific, he says. I don’t know, Lil, I think there’s something more to dragons than mere science. I just wish I could get it down on paper.
It’s almost Halloween. Up here we’re drinking whisky and dancing-I hope you go out and have a good time in London. Remember last year, when we all went to the Leaky and got so drunk that you and I ended up taking the tube in the wrong direction and walked home and scared all those Muggle kids running around in costumes? Make this year as good as last, and don’t miss me too much.
I’ll be missing you enough for the both of us.
Lorcan
Lily sighed and set the letter on her desk. She placed her hands flat on the surface and looked down at them, pale against the dark wood. She wanted Lorcan badly. She thought that somewhere in the four months between his leaving and that day she should have been able to adjust, to find a new best friend, to cling to Hugo a little tighter, or Ris. But all Lily wanted was to know what Lorcan saw every day, to know these people he had met and see his wild ponies. She wanted to feel the burn of a Hebridean Black’s fire or its eyes if that meant she was with Lorcan. She wanted to know where he sat when he wrote letters to her, whether the view from his bedroom window consisted of the ocean or the mountains or just trees and a dirt path-what it looked like at dawn and twilight and one in the morning. She wondered whether it rained more there than it did in London and whether she would ever know.
It would have been easy to Floo him. It wasn’t even international travel. But she knew if she saw him again, she might not be able to leave him. It might be harder to come back to London without him than to stay here without him.
She took Lorcan’s advice and went out that night. She and Hugo and Ris and Albus and Scorpius and Georgie Nott all went to a Muggle club, one with flashing lights and turning disco balls and drinks flowing fast. Lily lost herself in quick bursts of alcohol, and soon found her way into a crowd that didn’t know her, her body twisting against men dressed as Frankenstein and pirates and Peter Pan, until a hobo left his hands on her waist for longer than two songs.
“I’m Jeffrey,” he told her over the music.
“Lil,” she shouted back.
“Are you here alone?” Jeffrey had big hands and brown hair, and his nose was a little too long but otherwise he looked nice in the coloured lights running over them, turning his fingers green where they met the skin beneath her silver top and his hair blue where it fell across his forehead.
“I have friends.”
“Of course,” Jeffrey rushed, “I meant, are you here with a guy?”
No guy. No Lorcan. No one for a long time. Lily pushed forward and kissed the stranger. He seemed shocked for barely a second, and then he kissed her back, deepening it effortlessly, so his tongue ran along her mouth and his teeth grazed her lips lightly.
She pressed against him, feeling the length of his body on the length of hers, and with her eyes closed she could imagine that Jeffrey’s lankiness was actually Lorcan’s. The hands pressing against the skin of her back could have been Lorcan’s, although he would never press that deep. The lips bruising hers were chapped like his always were in the winter.
But Lily didn’t really know whether all of these pieces of Jeffrey could have been Lorcan. She didn’t know whether his lips felt soft or hard or somewhere in between when he kissed. If he bit and tugged and nipped like Jeffrey or if he was gentler, slower. If Lorcan’s fingers drifted and skimmed over skin, or if they walked, leaving marks behind them. If his body tensed or relaxed into the touching.
She didn’t know why she was missing Lorcan then, when she had another man on her. She should have been interested in this Jeffrey, should have been running her hands over his back, searching for a way to his skin. But she was thinking too much, and all of those thoughts ran straight to Lorcan.
Not just to him, to the man who was her best friend and his smile and his eyes and his voice when they were arguing over some book or some theory-she was thinking of his body and his tongue and she wanted to be touching him.
Jeffrey’s hands had become too insistent at the waist of her jeans and she jerked away from him. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I can’t.”
Lily weaved her way out of the crowd, to the door, and out onto the street without looking back at him. She stood in the cool mist outside while people passed her in costumes-girls like whores and guys like D-List Muggle film stars.
She wondered how to get to Scotland. Would she splinch herself if she Apparated? Would the Floo let her out into Lorcan’s cottage? Would she make a fool of herself if she made it to him?
Deciding that her cousins would assume she’d gone home with someone, Lily started off in the direction of the nearest tube stop. She could get home and into her fireplace before Pedro returned from his Halloween party.
But the light was on in the living room when she stumbled through the front door. Pedro was stretched out on the sofa, a pillow covering his face.
“Hi, Lil,” he mumbled through the cloth.
She walked past him to the fireplace and grabbed a pinch of Floo Powder from the tin on the mantelpiece. “Bye, Pedro.”
He groaned as the fire whooshed around her and then she heard only flames for what felt like hours-she’d never travelled this far by Floo before-and then she fell out onto a wood floor.
It was colder here. She got to her feet and looked around at the empty kitchen-the counters were pine and the table was cluttered with familiar dishes. It was sort of like she’d imagined it.
She could tell that Lorcan wasn’t there. He was probably out drinking whisky with his mates, like he said he’d be in his letter. She could have gone wandering out into the night to look for him, but she decided it might be wiser to wait for him. After all, he had to come home sooner or later.
The fire burnt out behind her and the house went dark; she ran her hands along the wall until she bumped against a light switch by the window over the sink. She flicked it and followed the illuminated staircase to the small second storey. The first room was a bathroom, the second Lorcan’s bedroom, and the third the library. She left the lights on in all three rooms, lingered over the books in the library for a moment before tugging Fearsome Spells and Wretched Potions from its place on the second shelf and held it tight in shaking hands as she headed into Lorcan’s bedroom.
She slipped her silver heels from her feet and tugged her jeans down over her waist, leaving them tangled on the floor with her shoes. She searched Lorcan’s wardrobe and found an old pair of tartan pyjama bottoms, which she pulled on before crawling beneath his old chocolate-stained duvet. She curled against his pillow, inhaled, and began reading.
Lily fell asleep and when she woke up it was to a voice calling, “Hello?” up the staircase. She stretched and opened her mouth to respond, to tell Lorcan to stop being an idiot and get in here because she had something important to tell him, when he burst through the open doorway with his wand held out like he was going to curse her. He froze with it directed at her heart and after a shocked and silent instant began laughing.
“Lily?” he breathed through the hiccups. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I missed you and I was drunk,” she explained. “Coming here seemed like a good idea.”
He grinned and finished moving across the room to his bed. He collapsed beside her and pulled her into a hug. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and breathed. He smelled like whisky and cold air and sweat and his pillow.
“I missed you, too,” he said against her hair. “But you smell like a distillery.”
“So do you,” she pointed out.
“True.” He pulled away from her and smoothed her hair away from her face, his fingertips light on her skin. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You look like a mountain man,” she told him. He hadn’t shaved in at least a week, and a blond beard scratched against her fingers when she touched his face. “It suits you.”
“Cheers.” He smiled. The book she’d been reading had fallen between them, and was digging into Lorcan’s side. He lifted it and read the cover. “You just came for the books,” he accused.
Lily knew he was joking, but she also wanted him to know that he meant more to her than all the books on the shelves of his library and all the books in the Restricted Section and possibly all the books in the world, although thinking that may have been sacrilege. But he also was all those books to her, they-the two of them-belonged to the books. “Lorcan,” she began. “London isn’t anything without you.”
“Come on, Lil, you’ve always loved the city.” He moved so that he was leaning against his headboard beside her, his arm over her shoulders and his head tilted so it pressed against hers. She leaned into him and sighed.
“You’ve always been there,” she told him. “I don’t like it as much without you.”
“You have Ris and Hugo and Louis and everyone, though. You’re not alone.” He squeezed her shoulders and she dropped her hand to his thigh, her freckled fingers still on his jeans.
“I’m not,” she agreed. Lorcan was. She knew it had been hard for him, in the beginning, before he met people. But he seemed settled now. More settled than she felt, always travelling in lonesome circles. Lonely despite the consistency of her friends, despite the familiarity of her city.
“So you miss me, I miss you, but you’re still home, Lil.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No?”
Her fingers were moving over his jeans. She couldn’t help herself, she just wanted to be as close to him as possible. She wanted him to want her.
“Lily?”
She turned so her lips were centimetres from his cheek. “Please,” she murmured. “Please don’t make me leave you.”
He froze. She didn’t even think he breathed for a few heartbreaking seconds. Then he asked, “What are you doing?”
She lifted her hand from his jeans to his scruffy chin, turning his face so his nose bumped against hers. His lips were parted slightly and they looked chapped and she didn’t hesitate before she kissed him.
He did not kiss her back.
Her cheeks were red with shame before she’d even pulled away completely.
“You just miss me, Lily.” His voice was steady, but she could swear his breathing was faster than normal. “You don’t want me. You just miss me.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe she could nod and they could hug and forget her little overstepping of the boundaries. But she thought about that Muggle’s kiss and his hands and she thought about herself and her loneliness and the way she missed him. She couldn’t accept his reasoning. “No. I don’t just miss you. You are one person, Lorcan. One person, when you’re there. But when you’re gone the space you make-the absence of you-is huge. It covers everything. I’m with Al or Ris or Hugo and I miss you. I’m writing and I miss you. I’m snogging some bloke and I miss you. I’m asleep and my dreams tell me I miss you. I wake up and I ache for you. Everything, Lorcan. Everything in my life is changed with you gone.”
“So you’d give up your whole life, come up and stay here with me in the middle of nowhere? What would you do, Lily? You’re fire and passion and action. You’d be bored in a day, you’d struggle and break promises and leave. It’s better the way it is.”
“Do you really think that little of me?” She moved to sit cross-legged at the foot of his bed.
“No. I think that much of you. You belong somewhere bigger than this. This place and I, we’re not enough to hold you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to be held. I want to be here. I choose to be here. Don’t you see, Lorcan? My life is movable. My career isn’t tied to any place. I’m not tied to any place. I’m only tied to you.” He looked about to argue. “Stop thinking you’re not enough because you are. Stop thinking I’m only about the leaving. I’ve left everyone else but I’ve never even thought about leaving you. When you’re around I only want to stay. I want wild ponies and black dragons with bright eyes and a nowhere place.”
“Lily Potter,” Lorcan said. “You cannot know how boring it gets here.”
“You haven’t said you don’t love me yet.”
He parted his lips. Her heart seized. “I can’t say that.” Her heart burst again. “But,” he began.
“But nothing. If you love me, Lorcan, then I won’t be bored. Because if you love me then you’ll let me kiss you every day. And maybe you’ll let me do more. And sometime I’ll cook dinner and make a mess of the kitchen. And some other time we’ll go skinny dipping in the sea. Tomorrow we’ll go fishing, the next day we’ll ride wild ponies down a mountain. In a week we’ll have a picnic and feed the seagulls and in three days I’ll meet a dragon and you’ll get all its enigmas down in words.” She crawled closer to him. “Please let me have all of that. Please don’t lose me again. Let me stay here and write here and love you here.” She was in his lap, her legs around his waist, her knees pressed against his sides. “Please let me be here.”
“Lil,” he breathed. “I do love you.”
He kissed harder than she’d imagined he would. He didn’t bite the way Jeffrey had, but his lips were rough against hers and he drew her toward him with his mouth. His hands were softer on her waist, though, slipping light and tantalizing over her skin.
“That’s a yes, then?” she asked, when he moved his lips along her jaw line and she’d caught her breath.
“Yes,” he kissed into her neck.
Later Lorcan fell asleep with his arm tight around her waist, his fingers burning against the skin of her hip. Lily drifted and in her dreams she was with him and when she woke up she pressed her lips against his bare collarbone. She kissed up along his neck and over his cheek and curled her lips around his earlobe. His hands refastened on her hips and he told her, “Good morning.”
“Guess what,” she breathed against his ear.
“What?”
She shifted so she was straddling him, and his eyes were everywhere at once. His thumbs rubbed circles against her skin and her fingertips were playing across his chest.
“I’m staying.”
He sat up, his hands flat on her back, his face buried in her red hair, his teeth light on her shoulder. “For good.”
“Forever. For me and for you and for your books.”
He chuckled. “Mostly me, though.”
“Mostly you.” She pushed against his shoulders. “Lie down, Lorcan. We’re not getting up just yet.”
They stayed in the cottage all day, but on the second of November he showed her a dragon and on the fifth he took her to the ocean and on the seventh they sent books to the floor of the library. On the nineteenth she rode a pony down the mountainside but Lily never left Lorcan behind.
Author: spin_deep
Character/Pairing: Lily Luna Potter/Lorcan Scamander
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: about 5,000
Summary: To Lily. We'll always have the Restricted Section.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: This feels heavy, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it now, but I really enjoyed writing it. I love knowing what people think of my writing, so please feel free to comment!
Lily helped Lorcan pack. The process wasn’t sad-boxing up his figurines and duvet and pillows and cutlery and notebooks didn’t mean that he was leaving, it just meant that his stuff was. And given the chocolate smears on his duvet and the tarnish on his forks, Lily thought that was probably a good thing.
He handed her a stack of cardboard and sent her into the second bedroom of his flat, which he’d turned into a library, and only then, when she’d started pulling his books from the shelves, did she realise it was over. Over was a dreadfully final word, but Lorcan’s books were leaving London and he would accompany them. She wondered if he’d stay if she stole his library, snuck it into her bedroom in her parents’ home and cast so many curses over the boxes that he wouldn’t be able to rescue them.
Lily had always loved his library. He kept books there that weren’t supposed to exist-books with dark tendrils of spells leaking from the pages; some stained with greasy potions, others with blackish blood; some had moving diagrams of animals attacking each other and some had full colour photographs of people burning against each other in lust-it was a collection of forbidden texts.
Books like these tied Lily and Lorcan together. In the fall of her first year, Lily had been fascinated by the library’s Restricted Section. She had decided to read all of the books on its shelves by the time she left Hogwarts. She had snuck into the library one night in October, cast a Silencing Charm on the first book on the first shelf of the Restricted Section, flipped to its first page, and dropped it as a scream ripped through the library. She hadn’t been able to hear out of her right ear for three weeks.
Lily had not given up, though. After serving her week of detention she had begun lingering around the Restricted Section, watching older students with signed passes wander among its shelves, looking for specific texts. And then she saw blond and lanky Lorcan Scamander duck behind the first shelf, and she grinned. She knew Lorcan, sort of, because his mum was her godmother.
She’d walked up to him and whispered, “What’re you looking for?”
“A book, Lily Potter.” He hadn’t lifted his eyes from the line of cloth-bound spines.
“About what?” Lily could feel the forbidden books humming-a siren song for the curious.
“Something you shouldn’t know about.”
“Come on, Lorcan. I can handle it.”
He’d raised his eyebrows at her, lifted a book from the shelf, flipped to a page somewhere near the end, and passed it to her. She looked down at a diagram of how to dissect a human body using magic. Lily had barely kept her lips from twisting in disgust. She’d stared at the horrible images on the page until her vision clouded, and then she’d blinked, read through the accompanying descriptive text, and handed the book back to Lorcan entirely composed.
He’d looked impressed. “Maybe you can handle it. What is it you’d like, Potter?”
“I’ve decided to read every book in here by the end of seventh year.”
Lorcan looked around at the shelves. “Is that even possible?”
“It better be. But no one will give me permission until I’m at least a third year. Can you help me?”
“What, like steal books for you? I don’t think that’ll work, Potter.”
“Why not? We could meet once a week and make a trade.” Lorcan had looked at her, grey eyes cautious. “It’d be easy.”
He hadn’t said anything.
“Break a few rules, Lorcan,” Lily had needled, and then he’d nodded.
“All right, yeah. Let’s meet on the Astronomy Tower on Thursday nights. I’ll bring two books a week.”
“Brilliant!” Lily’d stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek before turning and disappearing out the door to the library.
She had read all the books in the Restricted Section before she left. The night she finished, in April of her seventh year, she sent Lorcan an owl and he had Apparated to Hogsmeade, where they’d had a celebratory drink. They’d both gone home sober and happy.
Their friendship hadn’t changed much, in the time between Lily’s first year foray into rule-breaking and the day she packed his library into boxes. Lorcan loved Lily because she was different-her fascination with dirty and unsavoury literature only scratched the surface of her darkly intricate nature-and Lily loved Lorcan because he found her intriguing, rather than strange.
Lorcan came into his library to find Lily sitting on the floor, her legs curled beneath her, a stack of books beside her, and empty boxes all around. “What’s up, Lil? I do need to take my books with me, you know.”
She didn’t look up from the book in her lap, a history of the United Kingdom according to the goblin race.
“Lil?” Lorcan asked, pushing aside a pile of books so he could kneel next to her. “Are you all right?”
“It’s just,” Lily finally looked at him and she was biting her lip, “you’re taking all your books with you.”
Lorcan rolled his eyes. “You could buy your own, you know.”
“I move too often for a library like this.” In the three years since her seventh year she’d lived with Hugo until he moved in with Ris and then Albus until he moved in with Scorpius and then James until he’d kicked her out and then Sebastian Nott until they’d broken up and then Rose until Rose had started bringing blokes home every night and then Lily had tried living with Louis but that hadn’t even lasted a week before she was back in her parents’ house, looking for a flat to let on her salary as a freelance writer. Which meant that she couldn’t afford much more than a cardboard box beneath a bridge.
“True.” Lorcan shrugged. “Well, you can always Floo me to borrow some. It’s not like Scotland is far away.”
Lily’s nails bit into the skin of her right wrist. “Lorcan, you are moving to Eriskay. Eriskay is tiny and an island and barely Scotland.”
“I know where it is, Lily.”
“Then you understand why I’m sad.”
He was silent for a moment, playing with the green and blue string bracelet around his left wrist. Lily had given it to him in second year, and it was beginning to look rather ragged. She wondered if he’d snip it off sometime after he left. Maybe he would want to start his new life over without any reminders of the crazy girl he’d left behind.
“Is it just the books you’re going to miss?” he asked, keeping his eyes down.
“Of course not, you idiot. But at least you can write to me. Your books can’t, and I can’t just hop over and interrupt your research on the Hebridean Blacks whenever I feel like reading a certain passage.”
“You could,” Lorcan told her.
Lily grinned at him. “You’re nice, but you won’t think that once you’re settled with your dragons and Gaelic-speaking friends.”
Lorcan looked like he wanted to hug her, so she hopped up from the floor and dropped the book she’d been holding into the box. “There, I’ve begun. I’ll go get us takeaway for dinner, all right? I’ll help you finish when I get back.”
He didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t stop her, so she went out into London, in search of a takeaway place far enough away for her to compose herself on the walk.
After their dinner of Thai takeaway, they packed Lorcan’s books. Two days later he was gone and Lily was lonelier than she’d been since she was eleven.
Lorcan had hidden a book under her bed, which she didn’t find until six weeks after he’d left, when she was clearing out her bedroom to move into her new flat on the outskirts of London. She would be sharing with a stranger, but it was better than staying in her childhood home until she died.
The book was lying on its cover beneath a tangle of stockings and jumpers. Lily pulled it out from beneath her bed and looked at it for a long moment. A Collection of Creepy Stories. The title stank of a poorly edited children’s book, intended for campfires and slumber parties. But when Lily flipped to the first page she found an ink illustration that would never have appeared in any children’s books, unless the children were hags. It was of a heart, black and throbbing with inky blood.
Lily turned back to the front cover and found an inscription written in Lorcan’s elegant script: To Lily, We’ll always have the Restricted Section.
She wiped her suddenly damp cheeks with the back of her hand and held the book tight to her chest. Trust Lorcan to make her heart hurt after she thought she’d finished missing him.
Some time later she stood and placed the book in a box, picked it up, and walked out into her parents’ living room. They were sitting on the sofa, Ginny curled up against Harry’s side, each reading a section of the paper. Harry looked up when he heard Lily, and he smiled at her.
“All ready for the big move?”
“Just about.” She glanced behind her, at the boxes spread across the floor of her childhood bedroom. “Hopefully this is the last time I’m moving out of here.”
Ginny unfolded herself from the couch and came over, leaning her head against her daughter’s. “You know we love it when you’re home, Lil.”
“Of course. Just it’s better when it’s not an extended stay,” Lily replied, smiling. She moved toward the fire and her mother tossed Floo powder into the flames for her. “See you in a few,” Lily said as she stepped into the fireplace with her box of books.
Her new flat was small and her bedroom consisted of a desk, a twin bed, a window, and about two square feet of floor space, but Lily thought she could grow to love it. Her flatmate was named Pedro, he was a few years older than her, had gone to school on the Continent, and worked for the Ministry. They had a wine-fuelled dinner her first night in the flat, after which he flipped on the radio and took her hands.
“Here are things that I know about you: your name is Lily Potter; you like pasta and red wine; and you laugh a lot.” He told her, when they stood facing each other in the small space between the sofa and the arm chair in the living room. The music wove around them and Lily felt red wine loosening her limbs.
“All true.”
He grinned, inclining his head. “It is your turn. What do you know about me?”
She felt like she was back in first year, playing name games with the other students. “Your name is Pedro Valentino, you play the guitar, and you do not often read.”
He blinked. “How do you know I play guitar?”
Lily flipped his hands over so his palms were facing up. “Calluses. And I know you don’t read a lot because I haven’t seen one book around the flat; although I haven’t been in your bedroom, obviously. You may have a stash there.”
“I don’t.” He shook his head. “I’ve got another on you, then. You’re insightful.”
She let go of his hands. “I’m observant. I think we’ll get along well.”
“Probably.” He stepped back. “Just one rule: cast silencing charms if you have anyone over. I will, too, obviously.”
Lily didn’t tell him that it was unlikely that any bloke would find his way to her bed. “Sure thing.”
He grinned. “We’ll get on famously, then.”
She nodded and turned, disappearing to her bedroom and book, reading disturbing stories until she drifted off into monochrome dreams that did nothing to improve her melancholy mood.
Her days consisted of writing and wandering London and occasionally meeting her cousins for coffee or drinks. By October she had read Creepy Stories seven times and had written twenty letters to Lorcan. She’d received thirteen from him, which was surprising considering that it was Lorcan and he usually sucked at writing letters.
Lily had her book. She had her cousins and Lorcan’s letters and her writing. There was her city, beckoning at three in the morning just as it did at six at night and she liked her flatmate. But she still fell asleep and woke up feeling sad. Sometimes she dreamt of Lorcan-memories of Hogwarts or days spent in London, or strange, overwrought dreams of things that hadn’t happen or could never happen: the two of them flinging each other through the air beneath a striped circus tent; Lorcan running to Lily along the seabed, trailing glittering fish scales behind him; Lily blowing bubbles in a river until Lorcan grew out of them, transparent and glistening and dispersing when she sighed at the sight of him-and she woke up lonely and missing him. Other nights she was alone in her dreams, and didn’t think of him once, and was hit with the force of remembering him when her alarm went off, left with the taste of sorrow in her mouth at the realisation that she could forget him, even if the forgetting was temporary.
She received a letter from him on Halloween. It was still early when the owl alighted at her window, and she untied the letter from his leg and fed him a stale treat before he winged off to the Hebrides. She slit the envelope.
Dear Lily,
Yesterday I hiked up a mountain and I sat on a peak and looked out over the ocean-south, toward you. There were a few wild ponies grazing nearby and one of them had these blue eyes and I think if you were here you would have made him fall in love with you. You probably would have whispered poems about ribs and violets and the line of his spine into his furry ears and then you’d have been galloping off down the other side without one backward glance at me. But even though you’d have left me, I still wish you had been here on the mountain yesterday.
I also saw a Hebridean Black, but that’s expected. I’ve told you about them before, I know, but I wish that I could show one to you. I think you would probably love them, more than you’d love the ponies, even. They’re dangerous and bitter creatures, and their eyes burn harsher than their breaths do, but they’re also fantastically beautiful. One of the girls here found an egg a few years back, and she kept it in her fire until it hatched, and kept it alive long enough for it to go free. She has burn marks all up and down her arms, and sometimes that dragon lands among her cattle and leaves claw marks in the earth, but it never eats her cows. So they have some sort of awareness, if not complete sentience. My book is coming along, although I’ve sent Lysander the first chapter and he tells me it’s too subjective. It must be more scientific, he says. I don’t know, Lil, I think there’s something more to dragons than mere science. I just wish I could get it down on paper.
It’s almost Halloween. Up here we’re drinking whisky and dancing-I hope you go out and have a good time in London. Remember last year, when we all went to the Leaky and got so drunk that you and I ended up taking the tube in the wrong direction and walked home and scared all those Muggle kids running around in costumes? Make this year as good as last, and don’t miss me too much.
I’ll be missing you enough for the both of us.
Lorcan
Lily sighed and set the letter on her desk. She placed her hands flat on the surface and looked down at them, pale against the dark wood. She wanted Lorcan badly. She thought that somewhere in the four months between his leaving and that day she should have been able to adjust, to find a new best friend, to cling to Hugo a little tighter, or Ris. But all Lily wanted was to know what Lorcan saw every day, to know these people he had met and see his wild ponies. She wanted to feel the burn of a Hebridean Black’s fire or its eyes if that meant she was with Lorcan. She wanted to know where he sat when he wrote letters to her, whether the view from his bedroom window consisted of the ocean or the mountains or just trees and a dirt path-what it looked like at dawn and twilight and one in the morning. She wondered whether it rained more there than it did in London and whether she would ever know.
It would have been easy to Floo him. It wasn’t even international travel. But she knew if she saw him again, she might not be able to leave him. It might be harder to come back to London without him than to stay here without him.
She took Lorcan’s advice and went out that night. She and Hugo and Ris and Albus and Scorpius and Georgie Nott all went to a Muggle club, one with flashing lights and turning disco balls and drinks flowing fast. Lily lost herself in quick bursts of alcohol, and soon found her way into a crowd that didn’t know her, her body twisting against men dressed as Frankenstein and pirates and Peter Pan, until a hobo left his hands on her waist for longer than two songs.
“I’m Jeffrey,” he told her over the music.
“Lil,” she shouted back.
“Are you here alone?” Jeffrey had big hands and brown hair, and his nose was a little too long but otherwise he looked nice in the coloured lights running over them, turning his fingers green where they met the skin beneath her silver top and his hair blue where it fell across his forehead.
“I have friends.”
“Of course,” Jeffrey rushed, “I meant, are you here with a guy?”
No guy. No Lorcan. No one for a long time. Lily pushed forward and kissed the stranger. He seemed shocked for barely a second, and then he kissed her back, deepening it effortlessly, so his tongue ran along her mouth and his teeth grazed her lips lightly.
She pressed against him, feeling the length of his body on the length of hers, and with her eyes closed she could imagine that Jeffrey’s lankiness was actually Lorcan’s. The hands pressing against the skin of her back could have been Lorcan’s, although he would never press that deep. The lips bruising hers were chapped like his always were in the winter.
But Lily didn’t really know whether all of these pieces of Jeffrey could have been Lorcan. She didn’t know whether his lips felt soft or hard or somewhere in between when he kissed. If he bit and tugged and nipped like Jeffrey or if he was gentler, slower. If Lorcan’s fingers drifted and skimmed over skin, or if they walked, leaving marks behind them. If his body tensed or relaxed into the touching.
She didn’t know why she was missing Lorcan then, when she had another man on her. She should have been interested in this Jeffrey, should have been running her hands over his back, searching for a way to his skin. But she was thinking too much, and all of those thoughts ran straight to Lorcan.
Not just to him, to the man who was her best friend and his smile and his eyes and his voice when they were arguing over some book or some theory-she was thinking of his body and his tongue and she wanted to be touching him.
Jeffrey’s hands had become too insistent at the waist of her jeans and she jerked away from him. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I can’t.”
Lily weaved her way out of the crowd, to the door, and out onto the street without looking back at him. She stood in the cool mist outside while people passed her in costumes-girls like whores and guys like D-List Muggle film stars.
She wondered how to get to Scotland. Would she splinch herself if she Apparated? Would the Floo let her out into Lorcan’s cottage? Would she make a fool of herself if she made it to him?
Deciding that her cousins would assume she’d gone home with someone, Lily started off in the direction of the nearest tube stop. She could get home and into her fireplace before Pedro returned from his Halloween party.
But the light was on in the living room when she stumbled through the front door. Pedro was stretched out on the sofa, a pillow covering his face.
“Hi, Lil,” he mumbled through the cloth.
She walked past him to the fireplace and grabbed a pinch of Floo Powder from the tin on the mantelpiece. “Bye, Pedro.”
He groaned as the fire whooshed around her and then she heard only flames for what felt like hours-she’d never travelled this far by Floo before-and then she fell out onto a wood floor.
It was colder here. She got to her feet and looked around at the empty kitchen-the counters were pine and the table was cluttered with familiar dishes. It was sort of like she’d imagined it.
She could tell that Lorcan wasn’t there. He was probably out drinking whisky with his mates, like he said he’d be in his letter. She could have gone wandering out into the night to look for him, but she decided it might be wiser to wait for him. After all, he had to come home sooner or later.
The fire burnt out behind her and the house went dark; she ran her hands along the wall until she bumped against a light switch by the window over the sink. She flicked it and followed the illuminated staircase to the small second storey. The first room was a bathroom, the second Lorcan’s bedroom, and the third the library. She left the lights on in all three rooms, lingered over the books in the library for a moment before tugging Fearsome Spells and Wretched Potions from its place on the second shelf and held it tight in shaking hands as she headed into Lorcan’s bedroom.
She slipped her silver heels from her feet and tugged her jeans down over her waist, leaving them tangled on the floor with her shoes. She searched Lorcan’s wardrobe and found an old pair of tartan pyjama bottoms, which she pulled on before crawling beneath his old chocolate-stained duvet. She curled against his pillow, inhaled, and began reading.
Lily fell asleep and when she woke up it was to a voice calling, “Hello?” up the staircase. She stretched and opened her mouth to respond, to tell Lorcan to stop being an idiot and get in here because she had something important to tell him, when he burst through the open doorway with his wand held out like he was going to curse her. He froze with it directed at her heart and after a shocked and silent instant began laughing.
“Lily?” he breathed through the hiccups. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I missed you and I was drunk,” she explained. “Coming here seemed like a good idea.”
He grinned and finished moving across the room to his bed. He collapsed beside her and pulled her into a hug. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and breathed. He smelled like whisky and cold air and sweat and his pillow.
“I missed you, too,” he said against her hair. “But you smell like a distillery.”
“So do you,” she pointed out.
“True.” He pulled away from her and smoothed her hair away from her face, his fingertips light on her skin. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You look like a mountain man,” she told him. He hadn’t shaved in at least a week, and a blond beard scratched against her fingers when she touched his face. “It suits you.”
“Cheers.” He smiled. The book she’d been reading had fallen between them, and was digging into Lorcan’s side. He lifted it and read the cover. “You just came for the books,” he accused.
Lily knew he was joking, but she also wanted him to know that he meant more to her than all the books on the shelves of his library and all the books in the Restricted Section and possibly all the books in the world, although thinking that may have been sacrilege. But he also was all those books to her, they-the two of them-belonged to the books. “Lorcan,” she began. “London isn’t anything without you.”
“Come on, Lil, you’ve always loved the city.” He moved so that he was leaning against his headboard beside her, his arm over her shoulders and his head tilted so it pressed against hers. She leaned into him and sighed.
“You’ve always been there,” she told him. “I don’t like it as much without you.”
“You have Ris and Hugo and Louis and everyone, though. You’re not alone.” He squeezed her shoulders and she dropped her hand to his thigh, her freckled fingers still on his jeans.
“I’m not,” she agreed. Lorcan was. She knew it had been hard for him, in the beginning, before he met people. But he seemed settled now. More settled than she felt, always travelling in lonesome circles. Lonely despite the consistency of her friends, despite the familiarity of her city.
“So you miss me, I miss you, but you’re still home, Lil.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No?”
Her fingers were moving over his jeans. She couldn’t help herself, she just wanted to be as close to him as possible. She wanted him to want her.
“Lily?”
She turned so her lips were centimetres from his cheek. “Please,” she murmured. “Please don’t make me leave you.”
He froze. She didn’t even think he breathed for a few heartbreaking seconds. Then he asked, “What are you doing?”
She lifted her hand from his jeans to his scruffy chin, turning his face so his nose bumped against hers. His lips were parted slightly and they looked chapped and she didn’t hesitate before she kissed him.
He did not kiss her back.
Her cheeks were red with shame before she’d even pulled away completely.
“You just miss me, Lily.” His voice was steady, but she could swear his breathing was faster than normal. “You don’t want me. You just miss me.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe she could nod and they could hug and forget her little overstepping of the boundaries. But she thought about that Muggle’s kiss and his hands and she thought about herself and her loneliness and the way she missed him. She couldn’t accept his reasoning. “No. I don’t just miss you. You are one person, Lorcan. One person, when you’re there. But when you’re gone the space you make-the absence of you-is huge. It covers everything. I’m with Al or Ris or Hugo and I miss you. I’m writing and I miss you. I’m snogging some bloke and I miss you. I’m asleep and my dreams tell me I miss you. I wake up and I ache for you. Everything, Lorcan. Everything in my life is changed with you gone.”
“So you’d give up your whole life, come up and stay here with me in the middle of nowhere? What would you do, Lily? You’re fire and passion and action. You’d be bored in a day, you’d struggle and break promises and leave. It’s better the way it is.”
“Do you really think that little of me?” She moved to sit cross-legged at the foot of his bed.
“No. I think that much of you. You belong somewhere bigger than this. This place and I, we’re not enough to hold you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to be held. I want to be here. I choose to be here. Don’t you see, Lorcan? My life is movable. My career isn’t tied to any place. I’m not tied to any place. I’m only tied to you.” He looked about to argue. “Stop thinking you’re not enough because you are. Stop thinking I’m only about the leaving. I’ve left everyone else but I’ve never even thought about leaving you. When you’re around I only want to stay. I want wild ponies and black dragons with bright eyes and a nowhere place.”
“Lily Potter,” Lorcan said. “You cannot know how boring it gets here.”
“You haven’t said you don’t love me yet.”
He parted his lips. Her heart seized. “I can’t say that.” Her heart burst again. “But,” he began.
“But nothing. If you love me, Lorcan, then I won’t be bored. Because if you love me then you’ll let me kiss you every day. And maybe you’ll let me do more. And sometime I’ll cook dinner and make a mess of the kitchen. And some other time we’ll go skinny dipping in the sea. Tomorrow we’ll go fishing, the next day we’ll ride wild ponies down a mountain. In a week we’ll have a picnic and feed the seagulls and in three days I’ll meet a dragon and you’ll get all its enigmas down in words.” She crawled closer to him. “Please let me have all of that. Please don’t lose me again. Let me stay here and write here and love you here.” She was in his lap, her legs around his waist, her knees pressed against his sides. “Please let me be here.”
“Lil,” he breathed. “I do love you.”
He kissed harder than she’d imagined he would. He didn’t bite the way Jeffrey had, but his lips were rough against hers and he drew her toward him with his mouth. His hands were softer on her waist, though, slipping light and tantalizing over her skin.
“That’s a yes, then?” she asked, when he moved his lips along her jaw line and she’d caught her breath.
“Yes,” he kissed into her neck.
Later Lorcan fell asleep with his arm tight around her waist, his fingers burning against the skin of her hip. Lily drifted and in her dreams she was with him and when she woke up she pressed her lips against his bare collarbone. She kissed up along his neck and over his cheek and curled her lips around his earlobe. His hands refastened on her hips and he told her, “Good morning.”
“Guess what,” she breathed against his ear.
“What?”
She shifted so she was straddling him, and his eyes were everywhere at once. His thumbs rubbed circles against her skin and her fingertips were playing across his chest.
“I’m staying.”
He sat up, his hands flat on her back, his face buried in her red hair, his teeth light on her shoulder. “For good.”
“Forever. For me and for you and for your books.”
He chuckled. “Mostly me, though.”
“Mostly you.” She pushed against his shoulders. “Lie down, Lorcan. We’re not getting up just yet.”
They stayed in the cottage all day, but on the second of November he showed her a dragon and on the fifth he took her to the ocean and on the seventh they sent books to the floor of the library. On the nineteenth she rode a pony down the mountainside but Lily never left Lorcan behind.