Disclaimer: I still don't own Harry Potter.

x. don't just forget it all
(December, 2021)

The night before the start of Christmas hols, Lucy climbed into the Gryffindor common room again. This time Lorcan was sure she was there for him, but she continued past the corner where he sat playing chess with Devon. She collapsed on the floor beside James and Rose, who were playing Exploding Snap and cursing at each other loud enough for the Slytherins to hear them.

Lorcan strained to hear as Lucy said, "James, did you decide whether or not you're going home for Christmas?"

"Yes. I am," James responded.

"And you are too, Rose?" Lucy asked.

"Yeah." Rose didn't sound happy about it. "Lily and Hugo somehow managed to convince Mum and Dad and Uncle Harry to let them stay, and I have no idea how. Because I tried everything. I told them I needed to study and then I told them I needed to stay to make sure Lily and Hugo were okay and Mum and Dad bit my head off at every turn."

"Same," James snorted. "Lily probably came up with some elaborate reason that Mum and Dad were too tired to sort out, so they just gave in." He began shuffling the cards, sending off sparks as he folded them against each other. "It just sucks that they didn't include us in their plans."

"Seriously," Lucy said. "Well, I think I'm staying here." She pulled a stack of wrapped parcels from the bag over her shoulder and set them on the table beside Rose. "Could you give these to everyone for me, please?"

"Why?" James asked, suspicious.

"I've got some stuff I need to sort out, and Molly's spending Christmas with her boyfriend, and Mum and Dad are staying in the States."

"But we're family, too," Rose pointed out. "Don't you want to spend it with us?"

Lucy sighed. Lorcan could feel her frustration from across the room. "I love you guys, and I love spending time with you, and stuff, but I really just need to spend a few days with no classes and no obligations, so I can just, you know, sort out my future, and stuff."

James looked as if he was about to say something else, but Rose kicked him and Lucy stood, brushing her small hands on her jeans. "Okay? So I love you guys, and wish everyone a happy Christmas for me." She kissed Rose's hair and then James's, and waved to Lorcan as she made her way out the portrait hole.

"Hey, Scamander." The tone of Devon's voice told Lorcan that this was not the first time that his friend had called his name. "It's your move."

Lorcan jumped and turned his attention back to the board, directing his knight on a suicide mission.

"So," Devon said, a sneaky grin on his face, "Lucy Weasley, huh? Gotta say, I didn't see that one coming."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Lorcan's knight met a fatal end on the chess board. "I was just thinking."

He didn't run into Lucy until Christmas Eve, when she sat at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall at lunchtime. "Hey," she said, like they hadn't spent two weeks without speaking. They'd barely even nodded to each other in the corridors since that night with the flying.

"Hi," he said, and if it sounded like a question, well, it sort of was one.

"So I wasn't lying when I told Rose and James that I wanted to stay here and get stuff done, but I'm really tired of being productive. Do you want to do something tonight?"

"Sure." Lorcan took a bite of his steak and ale pie and Lucy waited for him to swallow. "What d'you want to do?"

"Well, I was thinking..." she hesitated. "You remember when you gave me this?" She pulled out the coffee-stained note, the one from the beginning, the one that quoted The Smiths and said: We can go wherever we please.

"Of course," he said.

"You know, Hogsmeade is a pretty lame place to go. I mean, here you've basically promised me the entire fucking universe, and I take us to the Three Broomsticks? At least I didn't take us to North Tower. That would have been pathetic. But still, Hogsmeade isn't much better."

"Please say you don't want to go to the moon. I don't think we can breathe up there, Luce."

"If I said I did, would you try to build me a space shuttle?"

"A what?" he asked.

"Never mind, never mind. I wasn't thinking the moon, you idiot. I was thinking London."

"That's just as impossible."

"It's not." She leaned forward. "We have three options: one, you Apparate and take me on side-along; two, we take the train out of Hogsmeade; or three, we fly."

"No to one." He glanced over his shoulder at the professors at the head table and lowered his voice. "London is at least two hours' flight away from here, Luce. You've only been on a broomstick once. No offence, but I don't think you're going to be able to handle that."

She smirked. "There's where you're wrong. I've been flying every night since you first taught me. I nicked Lily's broom, because she hates flying more than I used to."

He blinked in surprise. "Okay, fine. But still, two hours there, and then we need to leave our brooms somewhere, and then two hours back. I don't know, Lucy..."

"Come on," Lucy begged. "I've never done anything like this before, Lorcan. It'll be fun. It'll be different, and we'll be..." her eyes glowed and all thoughts of saying no disappeared from his mind, "we'll be in London when it turns into Christmas. It'll be so pretty and so alive and just imagine the lights, Lorcan. All the pretty Christmas lights, and all the Muggles getting drunk and singing Christmas carols and all the Christmas trees in the flat windows." She looked at him. "Merlin, Lorcan, it's necessary. It is essential that we have Christmas in London."

"Okay, okay. We'll do it."

"Brilliant!" She stood, most of the food on her plate still uneaten, and grinned down at him. "Meet you on the Quidditch pitch at six?"

"Where're you going?"

"To get ready, obviously. I need to find out which trains go to London, so we can follow the right tracks, and then I need to get a map of London so we know where to go when we get there, and then I need to get dressed." She was at the doors to the Hall when she turned and called, "Dress warmly, Lorcan!"

He waved his glass of pumpkin juice at her and she disappeared. She was insane. He had never expected her to be insane when he first slipped those notes into every single Muggle book on the shelves. But he wasn't sorry that she was insane. London at Christmas—well, who wouldn't want to see it?

They met at the Quidditch pitch, both of them wearing about seventy layers of clothing. They were so puffy that Lorcan was actually surprised both their broomsticks didn't plummet to the ground as soon as they got off the ground. But they didn't, and they were soon shooting through the frost-laden air, their breaths blowing behind them as Lucy led them along the train tracks to London.

There was little chance of them being seen that night, but Lorcan jerked behind cloud cover frequently, whenever he saw the glow from windows or the flash of lights below them. The flight became uncomfortable after the first thirty minutes, and Lorcan paid attention to how he was feeling and to how Lucy looked, whether she was about to wobble from the broomstick or fly too close to the moon; if she showed the barest sign of weakness he would have them back inside the warmth of Hogwarts before she could even protest.

But somehow buildings began appearing below them, and then motorways, and then Lorcan could see the ring of lights that was the London Eye and Lucy sped up, dipping low past Leicester Square, landing on the roof of the shabby Leaky Cauldron, and muttering "Alohomora" as she tapped her wand against the attic window. She climbed inside and then held her hand out to Lorcan so he could slide through behind her.

"Do you think anyone saw us?" Lucy asked. They peered down at the masses of Muggles wandering down on Charing Cross Road; none of them looked as if they had just seen two teenagers on broomsticks fly between two buildings and disappear. "Brill," Lucy said. She took her broom and led Lorcan to the stairs, which she hurried down and pressed her ear to the door at their base. She nodded and opened it, and then they were out in the upper hallway of the pub.

The bartender, an astonishingly ugly man named Jim, who had taken over for the former bartender sometime around the time that Tom fell asleep while serving the Minister of Magic a bowl of soup, accepted their broomsticks with a grunt. "I'll keep 'em for you, but make sure you come back for 'em, all right?"

"Of course." Lucy smiled at him.

Lorcan shrugged out of his two top layers—his puffiest jacket and his down vest—and held them out. "Any chance you can keep these as well?"

"Mine too?" Lucy was holding out a pile of scarves and hats and coats, and Lorcan was surprised that she'd managed to fit all of that on without losing all mobility.

"Might as well just buy a room," Jim grumbled, but he stored their clothes with the broomsticks and Lorcan and Lucy stepped through the crowded pub and out into the rush of Muggle London.

"Have you ever been?" Lucy asked, starting to walk down the pavement toward somewhere. He wasn't sure, but he was positive that she had a destination in mind. This was, after all, a journey.

"To London? Just once, and only for a few days." He dodged a Muggle woman wearing a dress that barely covered her arse and heels that could have put a hole through his heart, if she had chosen to direct a kick there. "And when we take the train from Kings Cross, of course."

"Same," Lucy muttered, her eyes following the Muggle woman for a split second before she turned to Lorcan and made a face. "Merlin, that looks uncomfortable. She must be freezing."

"But sexy," Lorcan pointed out, quite validly, he thought, but Lucy responded with a fierce punch to his bicep. If he hadn't still been wearing a heavy jacket, it might have hurt.

"Hey," he rubbed his arm. "What the fuck, Weasley?"

"Rule number one of hanging out with me in public: Do not comment on other girls' 'sexiness'."

"Oh, Weasley, are you jealous?"

"Nope. I just don't like misogynistic pigs."

"Ouch." He was fairly sure that she was joking, but he wasn't positive, so he didn't speak again until she stopped, at the edge of a multi-levelled square, with a wide fountain at the centre and a few statues looming from pillars. There was a gigantic ship-in-a-bottle across the square and as he looked around he felt as if he ought to recognise where they were. But it was Muggle London, and Lorcan had never claimed to know anything about the Muggle world.

"Trafalgar Square," Lucy told him. "And that," she nodded toward the building at the end, with its pillars and dome, "is the National Gallery. We're going there."

"Um, Lucy. I think it's closed."

"We're wizards, Lorcan," she murmured. "Well, you are, and I am a witch. Locks and alarms won't stop us."

"This is illegal, Lucy," he protested, following as she dodged tourists taking pictures and lining up outside of restaurants and pubs. She turned to him in the shadow of the boat-in-the-bottle and tapped her wand against his forehead. He felt the liquid chill of a Disillusionment Charm and, still mumbling protests, Disillusioned her as well.

"Brill," she said. "Okay, let's do this."

"Lucy, what happens if we're arrested?"

She rolled her eyes. "We won't be."

"But what if we are?"

"Then we Apparate out of there as quickly as possible, leave the Muggle coppers shaking their heads, return to Hogwarts, and stay out of the Muggle world for a while. Easy." She tapped her wand against the front doors to the gallery, and then cast several charms in a very quick succession, charms which Lorcan had never heard before and doubted that he would ever hear again. Unless, of course, Lucy decided to drag him on another of these outrageous journeys.

But when she pushed the door open and pulled him inside the marble and red-carpet-lined entryway, no alarms went off. Lucy let out a sigh of relief as she shut the door behind them, and Lorcan smirked. "You weren't all that confident, were you?"

"Well, I didn't want you to wimp out." She carefully undid his Disillusionment charm and gestured that he should do the same for her before creeping through the glass doors and looking around at the cavernous emptiness of the dark entrance hall. "Merlin, Lorcan, do you know how lucky we are? Right now, we are surrounded by completely priceless paintings, and we are the only people here."

"You're actually not."

A man stood on the stairs, and as he flicked on his torch Lorcan hissed, "Fuck."

"Oh," Lucy blinked in surprise. "Of course, you Muggles always have night guards, don't you?"

"Us Londoners do." The man stepped down the stairs, his hand drifting toward the silver handcuffs jangling at his side. "Now, don't give me no trouble, and you'll be all right."

"How many of you are there?" Lucy asked.

"Just me and Dill tonight, it being Christmas Eve." The man was actually carrying on a conversation with Lucy, but he was still getting closer to her. Lorcan had quite possibly never been in a stranger situation. Not even when his parents broke into a session of Parliament in Edinburgh, convinced that the nargles were in the chamber.

"Oh, that's too bad you had to work tonight." Lucy smiled guilelessly at him, and only then did Lorcan notice that she had her wand out. He wanted to warn her, to tell her that she was about to do something horribly horribly wrong, but before he could think up a way of reprimanding her without the guard catching on, she muttered, "Stupefy," and sent the man to a crumpled mess on the floor.

"So this might not have been my best plan ever," Lucy confessed, reaching forward to carefully rearrange the man so he wouldn't be uncomfortable when he woke up. "We should probably get out of here before Dill comes looking for his mate."

"Yeah, maybe." Lorcan rolled his eyes and followed Lucy back out the door.

"So that's the National Gallery," Lucy said and Lorcan snorted.

"And we didn't even get to see any artwork."

"The whole building's artwork, Scamander, stop being such a downer."

"Okay, okay." They were across Trafalgar Square, and the streets before them led to the Thames. "Want to wander?" he asked. He didn't want her to break into Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London.

"Yeah. Let's wander." She reached for his hand and even though they were wearing gloves he felt closer to her than he had to anyone in a long time, and he wondered whether life could be measured in moments of closeness; whether friendships could be put into overdrive through illegal adventures; whether Stupefying Muggle guards on Christmas Eve was something the Minister of Magic might make inquires about. But he decided that last one didn't matter, because he and Lucy were holding hands (holding gloves, whatever) and walking along the Thames near midnight on Christmas Eve, and the city lights were riding multicoloured on the current, and Big Ben was lit up and the London Eye was still but it was glowing, too, and everything felt very alive, just as Lucy had said it would.

Big Ben chimed just as they were passing over Millennium Bridge, and Lucy stopped at the exact centre and pressed her hands against the metal railing. Lorcan did the same, because he wasn't sure what to do with his right hand when it wasn't holding her left.

"Just look out there, Lorcan." Lucy murmured, her voice nearly reverent beneath the chiming of the clock.

"I am," he told her.

"It's magnificent, isn't it? Positively the most amazing thing ever."

Lorcan asked, "Lucy, why do you read so much?"

She was silent for a moment. "That doesn't have much to do with London or Christmas or the Thames."

"It sort of does. Because here we are, in London, and we just broke into the National Gallery, which, okay, didn't work out perfectly, but still, and it's all been you, Lucy. You're the one who's made us do all of this. And so I don't understand why you spend so much time reading, when you could spend your time doing."

"I love books, though." She was still looking at the water, but he was looking at her, and her eyes were vivid with London lights and her hands were curled over the metal and her freckles were barely visible and she was beautiful and she was honest. "I love doing stuff like this, but I love books. They're sort of separate—the doing and the reading. It's just," and then she looked up at him and then she looked away, "I've never really had anyone I wanted to do all this stuff with, before you."

"Oh." He wanted to say something else, but he didn't know quite what to say, so he just looked back at the water and they stood in silence for a moment before Lucy turned and started walking again. He caught up to her and took her hand, and they stepped down the stairs to the other bank in silence, but then Lorcan pushed her beneath the bridge, back against the railing over the Thames, and he looked at her and looked at her until she closed her eyes.

And then he kissed her because he couldn't think of what he wanted to tell her, but he knew he wanted to tell her something. And so he pressed his lips against hers.

She didn't respond at first. She was still and her lips did not move and when he pulled back she was staring at him, her eyes wide.

He'd never felt so rejected in his life. He started to turn, but then she breathed, "No," and she reached out and took his chin in her gloved hand and she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. And it was by no means the best kiss of his life and they were both wearing far too many layers so it felt like they were teddy bears below the neck, but their lips were touching and then their tongues were touching and it was Christmas and they were in London and he was holding—he was kissing—Lucy Weasley, so none of that mattered, not really, not at all.

They got back to Hogwarts when the sun was just on the verge of coming up over the hills, and they were silent as they climbed the empty steps to the front doors and crept inside and headed up the stairs.

"See you," Lucy said as she turned to go to Ravenclaw.

Lorcan grabbed at her hand and squeezed it lightly before he responded, "Tomorrow."

She nodded and hurried to her dormitory, and he continued to his, where he collapsed on his bed and fell asleep before he could toe off his boots.

He woke up when the light falling through the dormitory window was dim with the heaviness of the late afternoon, and he sat up just long enough to strip off several layers of clothing and curl up beneath his duvet. He slept all night and into the next morning, and finally felt alive enough to move when the clock read nine.

Lucy wasn't in the Great Hall when he got to breakfast, but there was a slip of paper at every seat at the Gryffindor table, and Lorcan leaned down to read one, seeing Lucy's neat cursive handwriting and reading, Under the iron bridge we kissed.

And it didn't matter that the other three Gryffindors who were spending Christmas there kept glancing at the notes in confusion, and it didn't matter that Lily and Hugo had their heads together at the Slytherin table. Lorcan took one of the slips of paper and went to find Lucy, so they could kiss on her bed and in the corridor and by the Lake. So they could kiss in places never even imagined in songs.

xi. can't we just be us
(January, 2022)

They didn't act that differently around each other. Okay, so sometimes they found themselves in broom cupboards, or on the Quidditch pitch, or even in the tunnel to Hogsmeade, and then suddenly they were kissing again, and learning each other, and it seemed to Lucy that she'd never really felt quite as good as she did when she had her hands on Lorcan's back or her lips on Lorcan's lips or her legs tangled with Lorcan's legs.

When everyone returned to school at the beginning of January Lorcan ran into Lucy just after lunch, and he said, "Walk with me?" over the noise of the crowds around them.

Lucy shook her head and stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. "Later, Lorcan," she muttered, hurrying after a group of Ravenclaws.

It wasn't that she wasn't happy with him; quite the opposite. She just didn't want to start rumours or to have her family wondering about them and thinking about them and questioning her about them. She wanted there to be a them, but she didn't want anyone else to know.

Lucy found Lorcan in the library that night, and she sat down across from him at his table. He glanced up from his book and then looked back down at it; one of the three times she had seen him actually reading in the library.

"What're you doing?" Lucy asked.

"Revising," he muttered. Like he wanted her to go away.

"Can we talk?"

"I'd rather not."

"Lorcan," she sighed. "Lorcan. I don't want my family to know about us. You know how they are."

"They care about you, Lucy. Merlin, why're you so against them caring?"

"Because they care too much. I wish they wouldn't think anything of me; I wish they would let me live the way I want to, without any sort of preconceived notions of how I'm supposed to live."

"So, what, you'll just hide everything from them until it's too late to hide it all?"

"That's a plan. It's not ideal, obviously, but I'd really like to be us without them, Lorcan. It was working so well."

"I just don't get it, though, Luce. I don't get why you don't want them to know."

"Because they'll try to interfere. And I've been happy without them being involved."

He finally looked up at her. He closed his book and nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

She grinned at him. "Brilliant. Fancy going to Hogsmeade?"

He shook his head. "Not tonight. Tonight," he tapped a finger against his book, "tonight I need to read about the potions I was supposed to learn last term."

"Okay." Lucy stood. "I'll go then, so I don't distract you."

"Hogsmeade tomorrow night, though?" Lorcan asked, just before she left.

"Yeah, that sounds good."

They went to Hogsmeade three nights in a row, and by then even Lucy was getting tired of Butterbeer. She suggested North Tower to Lorcan the next night, and he laughed and nodded, because it was required of all Hogwarts students to sneak off to North Tower at some point.

But when she got there at midnight, Lorcan wasn't there. There was a note Spellotaped to the wall, by the window that overlooked the Forest. She tugged it down and read: I hope you see that I / Would love to love you.

She sighed. He was insufferable, always asking for something more. What they had was working perfectly. Perfectly. He didn't need to complicate it by adding four letter words to the equation.

She heard footsteps on the stairs and tucked the note in her pocket, smiling as she turned to face him. Lorcan didn't ask her about the note; that had never been their way. When he kissed her lightly she said, "It's getting better since you've been mine." And that was the only response he would get—he had to know that. Had to understand, because otherwise they'd never work.

He kissed her and murmured, "Same, Luce, same."

They could ignore his desire to love for a little while, she decided.

xii. we've gone and we're going
(February 2022)

Lorcan was tired of Hogsmeade and broom cupboards and North Tower—especially North Tower, because sometimes they happened upon other people there. He wanted to hold Lucy's hand in public again, to kiss her against a brick wall on a city street, to see her in the day and be able to run a hand through the sunlit strands of her hair. He wanted London again.

But London was far away and classes were in session; someone would notice if they flew off to England. Lorcan spent a few afternoons in the library, with atlases and guidebooks spread on a table and a list of slowly decreasing places beside his elbow. It took him three days, but he finally found somewhere.

He scribbled out a frantic note to Lucy at seven in the morning on the second Friday in February: Ease your feet off in the sea. He floated the note into her bag at breakfast, and waited for her response.

She didn't get back to him until lunch, when she sat beside James at the Gryffindor table and tossed a crumpled piece of paper at him. You've got sand all over your feet. And then, The beach? Where? When?

He dropped his response on her plate. Tomorrow? 10 a.m. 30 minutes east of here.

She didn't send him another note, but he knew that she'd meet him on the Quidditch pitch the next morning. Nothing would keep Lucy from adventuring.

She arrived a little after ten, though, and Lorcan had started to worry that she'd decided that she didn't want to risk the cold to go with him. But then she was sprinting across the grounds, Lily's broom held in one hand and the other trying to tie a scarf around her neck.

"Sorry, Lorcan, sorry!" she said in a rush of breath. "I forgot to grab my jacket before I came out so I had to go back for it."

"No worries." He grinned. "Ready?"

"Let's go see the ocean." Her smile was almost painful to see, it was so brilliant. He had never thought he'd be able to make anyone that happy, let alone Lucy Weasley.

She followed him this time, up through the air and straight east from the castle. It wasn't quite as cold as Christmas Eve had been, and the flight was much shorter than the flight to London, so they were much less sore when they landed in a crop of trees beside the rocky shore. The town they'd landed in was small, but Lorcan had seen an abandoned shed when they flew over it, and he led Lucy there. They hid their brooms and extra layers inside the dilapidated building before magically locking the partially rotten door and winding their way past fish and chips shops and cottages, until they saw the ocean.

The waves were low and the air was still, and Lucy grabbed onto Lorcan's hand and inhaled deeply. He followed her example and grinned when she said, "Merlin, it smells like heaven."

They walked onto the rocks, careful to keep their balance as they climbed over the boulders and stones and knelt to examine furls of seaweed caught in the cracks, left there from the latest high tide. "This is perfect," Lucy finally said. "Where did you find this place?"

"I've been doing some research. The library has a shocking number of travel guides."

"Of course they do." Lucy shook her head. "Thank you," she said suddenly, turning to look at him. She was standing on a rock a little lower than the one Lorcan sat on, and her hair was swept away from her face by a sudden sea breeze. Her eyes met his and she looked free.

"I'm just glad you like it here," he told her, although it was a lie. Or maybe stretching the truth because he was not "just" anything; he was happy that she had come here with him and that she was smiling at him and that she looked free and he also thought he was probably in love with her and he might have been able to tell her that, in that moment, but then she leapt from her perch and landed beside the waves, her arms outstretched to catch at all the particles of salt in the air, her voice a bright star in the daylight as she cried something to the waves, something Lorcan couldn't hear.

And then she turned around again and called to him, "Come on, Lorcan, you can't just stand there and watch the water and watch the sky; you've got to experience it!"

He only hesitated a moment before he toed off his sneakers and his socks and made his way across the rocks to join her at the point where the water met the land. Their toes were purple, but they had come to the ocean and they had the water beneath their feet, lapping at their ankles, and they needed nothing but the waves and the salt in the air and each other. Lorcan wrapped an arm around Lucy's shoulders, and she leaned her blonde head back against him. They stood together and watched as the water iced their veins.

"Lucy," Lorcan murmured, sending strands of her hair up into the sky with the word.

"Lorcan." She'd tucked her hand in his back pocket and he could feel her tense.

"Can I tell you something?"

She had to know what was coming, so he was almost surprised when she said, after a moment, "Please."

"I've never done this before," and it was sad that, for all the girls he'd been with, he'd never even thought it, "so I don't know whether there's a right way to do it, but I want you to know that I love you."

She didn't pull away from him. "You came with me to London and you took me to the ocean and you like Muggle music." He wasn't entirely sure if this was going where he wanted it to but he let her go on. "And you taught me how to fly. I think you might be a miracle worker, Lorcan Scamander. And yeah, I love you, too."

"Yeah?"

She pulled away from him then, but only so that she could kiss him. They broke apart when the waves reached the ends of their rolled-up jeans. "Want some fish and chips?" Lorcan asked, after they'd slipped their socks back on over their numb feet.

"And hot chocolate." Lucy led the way from the shore, and Lorcan walked a little behind her, admiring how strong she looked and how little she was and thinking about how he'd never really thought he'd ever fall in love.

xiii. this time we've loved
(March 2022)

They were sitting next to each other in the library while spring rains washed the windows and Lorcan tried to study for NEWTS. It wasn't working particularly well, because Lucy's foot was rubbing against his shin.

She had her head down on her forearm while she read, although she hadn't turned the page in several minutes and Lorcan was staring straight ahead, so she didn't think either of them was getting any sort of work done.

She slipped a sheet of paper over to him. It was empty except for one line at the top: I'll do anything to be happy.

It was just a quote from a song. She was biting her lower lip, and she nervously returned his gaze when he turned to look at her. He clearly had no idea what she'd meant by that quote, and tapped his quill against his chin before he wrote: I gave myself to sin / And I've been there and back again beneath her neater handwriting.

She took the paper back from him and nodded, like what he'd written made perfect sense. And then she scribbled: Tonight's the kind of night where everything could change.

Lucy heard the catch in Lorcan's breath when he read that. He glanced at her and when she nodded slightly he pressed his quill against the paper and very, very slowly, wrote: I'd like to see your underwear.

She grinned at him and added: My celibate days are over to the page. And then she stood and he didn't hesitate before closing his book, snatching the incriminating paper from the table and following her from the library.

She led him to Ravenclaw, and they passed Hugo and Lily in the common room but Lucy didn't even wave to them. Her dormitory was empty when they reached it, and she locked the door as soon as they were inside, and then pressed herself up to kiss Lorcan back against her bed.

"Hey." Lorcan gripped her arms and pushed her away, so he could look down into her blue eyes and try to read her. "You don't want to do it like this."

"What do you mean? Of course I do." She was fighting hard to keep her face impassive.

"But...I mean..." his face was suddenly red and Lucy fought a smile at his discomfort, "aren't you a virgin?"

"And trying very hard to change it, at the moment," she ground out.

"But, don't you want your first time to be, like, in a bed of roses or there to be chocolate or champagne or...or something?" He trailed off because Lucy had started laughing.

"Lorcan, it is just sex. Merlin."

"But it's...sort of...I don't know, significant, isn't it?"

"It's inevitable." She shrugged. "Maybe it is significant, but at the moment I'm mostly concerned about it happening. And I want to happen right now, with you, and please no roses or champagne or chocolate. I just want you, Lorcan, okay?"

He opened his mouth to say something; maybe to argue again, and she cut in. "And will you please stop making this even more awkward than it already is?"

He smirked at her. "Fine, Lucy Weasley, I'll have sex with you. You don't have to beg."

"Apparently, I do." But he cut off her complaint with a kiss. He kept his hands on her waist as they stumbled their way back to her bed, and his fingers were light against the button on her jeans and the clasp on her bra and hers fumbled at the hem of his shirt and moved more adroitly against the zipper of his jeans.

It was just skin and just them, and actually a lot more awkward at first than their conversation, and Lorcan kissed the skin along the angle of her neck and she dug her nails into his back because fuck, this hurt, he was hurting her—and then, somehow, the pain was pleasure or maybe the pleasure was pain or maybe she really needed to stop thinking because Lorcan was there and their skin was close close closer and oh, she never wanted to lose him, not ever, not ever.

xiv. there ought to be some hellos
(April, 2022)

Lucy stood in the Great Hall, waiting for the carriages arrive to take her to Hogsmeade Station so she, and half the other students in the school, could catch the train to King's Cross for Easter hols. Lorcan had her hand in his, but he was watching the door.

"I'll miss you," he told her.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be back in a week."

"But that's so long," he whined. "Can't you just stay here?"

"Mum and Dad want me to come home, and...I miss it there, Lorcan."

"I know, I know." The headmaster appeared in the doorway and ushered the students nearest out to the entranceway. "Fine. But I'll see you in a week?"

"Seven days," Lucy promised, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. "Start the countdown," she added, as she turned away, gripping her rucksack and crossing the Great Hall. James met her at the doors to the Castle; he was the only other of her cousins to be going home during the hols; Rose, Roxy, and Al were all too busy studying for OWLS to even consider it, and Lily had laughed outright when she received a note from her father asking that she think about going home in April. Hugo, of course, stayed because Lily was staying.

It was the first time Lucy wanted to stay, but her parents had practically begged her to come home. So she was spending one night at the Burrow, and Flooing from there to her childhood home in Massachusetts. James was spending the night at the Burrow, as well, before he went to his parents' house.

Lucy and James sat in nearly complete silence on the train, until she finally asked, "So why are you even coming home, James?"

He shrugged. "I needed to talk to Molly, and I figured going home was the easiest way to do it."

Lucy raised her eyebrows. "You couldn't have just sent her an owl? Or Flooed her? How do you even know you'll see her?"

"She's coming tonight. I thought you knew."

"No," Lucy looked out the window. Buildings were appearing beyond the smeared glass; they were almost in London. "I didn't know that."

She should have guessed, though. Of course her grandmother would plan some extravagant family meal, when did she miss the opportunity to bring everyone together? It wasn't that Lucy didn't want to see her sister, and whichever of her older cousins her grandmother managed to attract with the promise of good food, it was just that she wasn't sure how to broach the whole Lorcan topic. Maybe she wouldn't bring it up.

But that night, after a loud and overwhelming family dinner, after Lucy had disappeared to her bedroom, Molly knocked at the door. She was alone, and Lucy sat up in bed, crossing her legs to make room for her older sister.

Molly sat down at the end of her bed and picked at a loose thread on the cuff of her cardigan.

"How's work, Moll?" Lucy asked. Her sister was working at a pub while trying to find work as a reporter; none of the newspapers were hiring, not even girls with red hair and famous last names.

"All right." Molly bit her lip. "I need to talk to you about something."

"Is everything okay?" Her sister looked like she might have some dangerous secret. Molly had always been the one to get in trouble, but Lucy had never been the one to get her out of it, and she wondered why they were even talking. .

"I hope so." Molly inhaled and then said in a rush, "Look, James just told me that you and Lorcan Scamander are dating and that he thinks it's getting serious and I want to know—is it?"

Lucy stiffened. Why had James never learned to keep his fucking mouth shut? "I guess." She moved away from Molly and reached to clutch her pillow to her stomach. Molly still wasn't looking at her.

"And this is Lorcan, right? The Gryffindor one? James wasn't just being an imbecile and mistaking Lysander for Lorcan?"

"Merlin, yeah. It's Lorcan."

"When did it start?" And then Molly looked at her, and her eyes threatened a fight.

"In the fall sometime, I don't remember. What's going on, Molly? Why do you care?"

"He's an arse, Lucy, and I don't want you to get hurt."

Lucy straightened, her fingers gripping the fabric of her pillowcase in fists. "You don't even know him." Her voice was so low it almost broke and Molly blinked at her. She'd never fought back before.

"I do, though. I was at Hogwarts with him for six years, Lucy, and he's an arse. We were in the same house, and, Merlin, the number of times I wanted to curse him. The number of times I did curse him."

"But that was a year ago," Lucy pointed out, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Just a year ago. He can't have changed who he is in a year."

"I know him, Molly. I know him. He is not any more of an arse than we are. Would you just...would you please just go?"

Molly stood, but she hesitated by Lucy's desk, near the door. "Look, I know you think you know him. Maybe you know part of him, or something. But will you just...will you watch this?" She placed a glass vial on the desk. It was full of swirling silver gaseous liquid: a memory. Lucy recognised it from a Defence class where Professor Lupin had shown them some old duels at Hogwarts back in the mid-nineteenth-century, so they could examine how duelling had changed in the seventy or so years since. She stared at it.

"Dad has a Pensieve. It's in his office. Don't look at his memories," Molly shook slightly, "but you can use it to watch this one." She brushed some hair out of her eyes. "Just please watch it."

For some reason, Lucy didn't break the vial and let the memory float off into the ether. Later she wished she had. Instead, she bundled it in a blue scarf and stuffed it in her rucksack. She hadn't decided whether she was going to watch it or not, but she'd have the option, she decided. She'd keep the option.

She stepped out of the fireplace in her childhood living room to find her mom waiting for her with a glass of iced tea and an uncomfortably long hug.

"Hey, Mum." Lucy pushed from her mom's arms and took the iced tea, sipping it so she had a moment not to speak.

Audrey took the silence and ran with it. "So, your father is home today but he'll be going to work tomorrow and Saturday to make up for it so I thought we'd all have a nice dinner tonight—I've made reservations at the Olive Garden, is that okay?—and then I thought maybe tomorrow you and I could go shopping? I haven't been able to buy you any new clothes in a while, and then—oh, do you need a haircut? Because I'm getting one tomorrow and I'm sure Jan could squeeze you in if you need one and—"

"Breathe, Mum," Lucy interrupted. "I'm here for a week, we don't need to do everything in one day."

"You're right, you're right. And you need to get settled. I'm sorry, it's just so nice to have you home again."

"And it's nice to be home again. Olive Garden sounds wonderful for dinner tonight, and I don't need a haircut but I'll come with you tomorrow. I don't need any new clothes, though."

Audrey smiled and took her daughter's rucksack, leading the way to her bedroom. "Just let me treat you this once, Luce."

Her first two days at home, Lucy didn't spend more than five minutes out of her mother's company (except, of course, when she was sleeping, and she woke up on Monday morning to find her mother dusting the shelves in her room, like that was normal).

Monday evening, though, her mother's best friend invited her out for dinner, and Lucy declined the invitation, pleading exhaustion and jetlag. But she wasn't really all that tired. She sat in her room, trying to read, but found herself glancing repeatedly toward the rucksack she'd tucked beneath her desk. The vial with Molly's memory still sat in it, and she slid from her bed and inched across the room, approaching her bag like it was a snake, liable to bite.

She pulled the vial from the pocket on the side and tipped it so the haze of silver pressed against one side and then the other. "It's not like it'll change anything," she told herself. This would have been a fine argument, really, if she hadn't still felt her pulse rush at the thought of seeing it. Of seeing Lorcan the way other people saw him.

She snuck down the hall, even though she knew her house was empty, and carefully undid the Charms on her father's study door. The Pensieve was in the cupboard, the one that had always been kept carefully locked during her childhood, and Lucy searched for the key for a few minutes before she found it tucked beneath the cushion in the armchair in the corner. And then she hesitated before unlocking the cupboard and before lifting the stone basin from the cupboard. But she didn't hesitate before pouring Molly's memory and filling the pool with silver. She didn't hesitate before lowering her face until her nose brushed the surface and she fell back to Hogwarts, two years before.

She landed behind a row of red heads. Her cousins stood clustered in the corridor just outside of Gryffindor and—fuck. There, just beyond the Fat Lady, Dominique had Lorcan against the wall. Maybe that was the wrong way of putting it, actually. The two of them were so entangled that it would have been a challenge to say who had whom.

Lucy's cousins and sister had frozen in the corridor and Molly nudged Fred, who shook his head and muttered, "No way in hell am I breaking that up."

And then James, because it always had to be James, said, "Dominique!" From Lucy's angle he didn't sound upset, but the way his right hand was gripping his left wrist behind her back made her wonder how well he kept his emotions hidden.

And then she turned her attention back to Lorcan, to Lorcan's face when the others explained that she, Lucy, was missing, to Lorcan's face when Dominique pulled away from him, to his face when Dominique ordered him to get Louis. She didn't see Lorcan, though. She saw a guy who wanted to shag her cousin.

She landed back in her father's study, nearly two years later, and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

It was stupid to be upset. Lorcan had been somebody before he knew Lucy—he had been a personality, someone who was a feature of everyone's story at some point. She thought back to that list she had written out when he slipped the first note in Her Fearful Symmetry. She had called him a man-whore, hadn't she? So why the fuck did it bother her so much to see him and Dom forever ago?

She returned Molly's memory to the bottle and the Pensieve to the cupboard and locked the doors behind her, and then she went downstairs, scribbled a note to her parents, and grabbed her raincoat before leaving her house and wandering down the gloomy street.

She kept trying to argue herself back to a rational place. But jealousy felt irrational and she was horribly jealous of the way Lorcan had been touching Dom, horribly hurt by the way he didn't even seem to care that Lucy had gone missing again, even though she'd always thought her cousins' and sister's reactions to be utterly unnecessary.

If she were being honest, though, Lucy admitted that the problem, the real problem, lay more with her own past than with Lorcan's.

He had had so many girls. Dominique and others. And she had just had him. He had been every single one of her firsts, and she had been none of his. And that made her feel inexperienced and stupid and different, and she hated it.

She had reached the Ice Cream Shack, a small building on the corner of High Street and Main Street, with two sliding glass windows spotted with rainwater and an outdated list of flavours stapled to the wood-siding. She stood staring at the scribbled words, her eyes flicking between Strawberry and Moose Tracks, without really seeing them.

"Hey? You ready to order?"

The girl behind the glass had a scoop in her hand, dripping water onto the counter, and Lucy glanced one last time at the list before saying, "Um, yeah, just a cone of...um...Mint Chip?"

"Sugar?"

"Sorry?" Lucy stuck her hand in her jeans pocket and tugged out a few rumpled bills—Muggle American money always threw her.

"Sugar cone?"

"Oh, yeah."

She exchanged two bills for the already-dripping cone and then wandered down the street a little, catching at the runny green ice cream with her tongue before it landed on her hand.

Footsteps pounded on the pavement behind her, and she stepped to the side, expecting some fanatical high school cross country star to continue past her on his path to athleticism, but instead the noise stopped in a rapid two-three step right beside her and she peeked around the edge of her hood to see a semi-familiar face peering out of his own raincoat.

"Lucy?" The semi-familiar lips moved, crinkling semi-familiar lines into this semi-familiar guy's forehead. "Lucy Weasley?"

She got there. "Seth? Oh, Mer—God. Seth!"

"Lucy! Hi!" And then he reached out for what would undoubtedly have been the most awkward hug of both of their lives, but Lucy held up her dripping cone, by way of both an explanation and a shield, and grinned up at him.

"Hi," she stepped back, so she was standing on the bank of grass and looking down at him. "How are you?"

"I'm good, I'm good." He shook his head. "My God, I can't believe it's you. What're you doing here?"

"It's Easter holidays at my school, and my parents wanted me to come home. So here I am." She shrugged. "What have you been up to?"

"For the past six years? You know, sadly, not all that much."

She laughed. He had grown up. His hair, which she remembered buzzed so close to his scalp that it could have blond or it could have been black, no one would have been able to tell, hung drenched and dark around his face, long enough to leak rainwater into his brown eyes. His lips were chapped and thinner than Lorcan's and he had the beginnings of a beard around his sharp chin and he was shockingly attractive, considering that the last time she had seen him he had had chocolate smeared on his cheeks and had given her a broken mood ring.

"How about you?"

"Oh, you know, just school and stuff."

He looked at her and she felt suddenly uncomfortable. "You certainly stayed pretty, Lucy Weasley."

She could feel her cheeks heat with a blush, but she managed to say, "You certainly turned pretty, Seth Chambers."

"Oh, stop!" His hands fluttered girlishly to his cheeks and he winked at her when he dropped them a second later. "So what've you been up to since you got back to town?"

"My mother has not let me out of her sight," Lucy confessed. "I only escaped tonight because she got invited out by someone else."

"God, that must be fun."

"It was at first. Now I'm about ready to run away."

They'd started moving at some point, and Lucy felt his eyes on her as she walked beside him. "Hey," he said, "My parents are out of town for the night, and I'm having a party at my place. Any chance you want to come?"

She looked up at him. His gaze was serious. He had called her pretty and Lorcan had had Dom. So Lucy said, "Yeah, that'd be great. I'll come by around eleven?"

"Sounds good," he grinned at her and took a right where his street hit High Street. Lucy waved after him and continued home, where she tossed the rest of her melted, soggy cone in the sink and ditched her jacket by the stairs. She went up to her room and opened the door to her closet, and then she stood there and stared at her clothes.

She hated parties. She hated sweating and she hated human heat and she hated booze and she really hated the way drunk people fell over themselves and over her. She hadn't gone to many, although Lorcan had brought her to enough for her judgements to be justified. And here she was, voluntarily attending a Muggle party. Something must have been seriously wrong with her.

After deciding that she had absolutely nothing to wear, Lucy searched through Molly's closet until she found a suitably sparkly and low-cut black top and ripped skinny jeans. She slipped her feet into spangled flats and crawled into bed, setting her alarm for 10:30 and trying not to think about Lorcan or Seth or anything but her pillow and sleep.

That didn't work, of course, and her thoughts circled between Lorcan and Seth until her alarm chimed and she rolled out of bed, straightened her hair, and crept down the stairs and out the front door. It had stopped raining, and by the time she got to Seth's the music was playing loud enough to hear down the street and the lights were glowing out fierce into the darkness. She wondered how soon it would be before the neighbours called the cops, and then mounted the steps and pushed the door open.

"Lucy!" Seth grabbed her wrist immediately and led her through the crowd, shouting out her name to the few people who weren't drunk enough to think that they knew her. He eventually left her in the kitchen, by the fridge, where she sipped at a lukewarm Keystone Light and tried to look inconspicuous.

"Hi!" A brown-haired girl threw one arm around Lucy's shoulder and hugged her. "Oh, my God, Seth told me you were back but I didn't believe it. Oh, my God! Hi!"

Lucy searched her memory. Maddie. Maddie, the girl who had believed in the man on the moon. "Hi, Maddie!" Lucy had to shout over the music, but Maddie was so drunk that it wouldn't have mattered if she'd kept silent. The other girl kept talking.

"Lucy, you were always my favourite, you know? I was so sad when you left to go away to school. I thought that it just wasn't fair that you got to go off to Scotland or wherever while the rest of us were stuck here without you! How've you been?" But she didn't pause for Lucy to answer. "God it's so boring here, you don't even know. I'm so jealous of you, you must have had some really great adventures and—oh, my God, I love this song, come on!" And then she grabbed Lucy's hand and practically hauled her into the mass of high schoolers.

Lucy's agony didn't last long, though. She managed to slip away from Maddie and through the bodies until she reached the side door, which she shoved open with her hip and breathed in the heavy scent of springtime mixed with the sweeter smoke of marijuana.

Whoever was smoking pot must have been on the back porch, though, because the side one was empty, and Lucy crossed the small deck, tapping her mostly full beer can against the railing as she watched the fireflies glow in spurts and fizzles.

The door creaked behind her after a few minutes, but she didn't turn around.

"Hey." Seth leaned against the railing next to her. "You okay?"

She turned to smile up at him. "Yeah, of course."

"Not a big partier?"

"Not particularly." Lucy tilted her beer can so a little dribbled out and spilled onto the puff-ball dandelions that grew below the deck. "Surprised?"

He laughed. "Not particularly." And then, out of nowhere, he reached out and took her right hand in his. He held it up to the dim porch light and squinted at the ring on her index finger. "Hey, is that the one I gave you?"

She was silent a moment. Then, "Yeah."

"God, I can't believe you kept that. I can't believe you still wear it. Does it still work?"

She laughed. "No. It never actually did. Apparently I'm emotionless."

"I've always thought you were just too complex for mood rings. A real person, you know?"

She didn't, because that sounded like utter gibberish but she nodded anyway. "Thanks, I think."

"Oh, it's definitely a compliment. You are real, Lucy Weasley. Remember how when we were six and we were in kindergarten and we had that wedding beside the swings at recess?"

"Yes. You gave me the plastic ring off an orange juice container and I gave you a weed tied in a knot so it was almost like a ring and Maddie was our minister and I used a Kleenex as a veil."

"Yes, that wedding." He was looking at her, now, just looking at her, and she could feel nerves building in her veins, pressing into her chest and accelerating her heart rate. She shouldn't have been doing this. This whole conversation, this party, this boy—it was all wrong. But she stayed and looked back at him. "I've always been sort of sad about it."

"Why's that?"

"Because at the end, when Maddie pronounced us husband and wife, you turned and got on a swing and started swinging, and Charlie gave me a cootie shot because I'd been so close to you, and that was the end of it."

"It was." Lucy grinned. "I didn't even keep the ring."

"But I always wanted to kiss you." He said it in a rush, and Lucy froze. She should have told him. She could have just said, "I have a boyfriend." She could have said, "I'm in love with someone else." She could have said, "But you don't even know me. You never even knew me."

She didn't say any of those things. Instead, she asked, her voice soft, "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

And then she said, "Well, I think we might be a little better at it now."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

And he kissed her. His mouth was unfamiliar and his tongue felt heavy and out-of-place and he was scratchy and he was too hesitant and too tall and he was not Lorcan.

She pulled away. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

"Lucy?" He backed up a step, his eyes shadowed and hurt. "I'm sorry, was that—?"

"No, Merlin, I'm such an idiot."

"Merlin? I'm not—," he stepped even further away from her.

"I'm so sorry, Seth. I'm so sorry. I have a boyfriend and I'm just...oh, God, I'm such a bitch. I'm sorry." She didn't look at him and she didn't say anything else before she pushed back through the door and the crowd until she reached the front door, where she jumped the three steps from the front porch to the ground and started running.

She got to her house and she took the stairs two at a time, and then she was in her bathroom and fumbling through her drawer until she found her toothbrush and toothpaste. She brushed her teeth until she spat blood, and then she gargled with stinging mouthwash and climbed into the bathtub, running burning hot water over her jeans, feeling no heat but feeling stupid and dirty and wrong. She had hot tears on her cheeks and she fumbled at her index finger until the ugly broken mood ring was off and she chucked it at the faucet. It fell into the water and spun multicoloured in the heat of the water and Lucy couldn't see through her tears anymore.

She peeled off her soaking clothes and fell asleep in the bathtub with the water still running steaming down the drain. She woke up and shut off the faucet when the water ran cold and then again the next morning to a knock on the bathroom door.

"Lucy? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Her voice sounded strange.

"Are you going to come down for breakfast?"

"Yeah." One syllable words seemed to be all she could manage. She climbed out of the tub and scrubbed at her stiff legs with the towel, and then pulled on leggings and a sweatshirt before dumping her still-wet clothes from the night before in the hamper and heading downstairs.

Both of her parents sat at the table, reading half of the Boston Globe each, and Lucy poured herself a mug of coffee before she managed to force herself to speak.

"Can I go back to Hogwarts early?"

Her parents dropped their papers and stared at her. "What?" her father asked.

"Can I go back to Hogwarts early?" she repeated. "I just...I'd really like to get some more work done, and I realised that a lot of books I need are in the library and I'd...I'd just really like to go back."

Her parents glanced at each other. "We miss you around here, Lucy."

"I know, Mom, I do. But I really think I need to be at school right now. Please?"

They looked at each other again. "Okay," her mom sighed. "You can probably just Floo through to your grandparents', and then send an owl to the headmaster and then you can head up there when he gets back to you."

"Thank you!" Lucy dropped a kiss on each of her parent's heads and then ran upstairs and repacked her rucksack, before running back to the fireplace, tossing on some Floo powder, and disappearing before her parents could change their minds.

She hadn't Flooed to her grandparents' the way her parents had told her to; she had taken the fire straight to Honeydukes, and she earned a few strange glances when she fell out into the crowd in the shop. She waited until the customers had forgotten about her, and then slipped down into the cellar and through the trapdoor and through the dark tunnel to Hogwarts.

Lily caught sight of her when she was hurrying past the suit of armour on the second floor and called, "Hey, Luce, I thought you were at home."

"I was, I came back."

Lily shrugged and was about to continue when Lucy asked, "Hey, do you happen to know Gryffindor's password?"

"Of course. It's 'Drink Responsibly'. I think the Fat Lady had a bit of an off weekend."

"Cheers." Lucy hurried on.

She found Lorcan in his dormitory, lying on his bed listening to his iPod.

"Lucy?" He jerked the earphones out of his ears. "What's wrong? What're you doing here?"

"I fucked up. I...I really fucked up, Lorcan. I kissed somebody."

He froze, half-sitting on his bed, and then said, "Sorry?"

"I'm so so sorry Lorcan. I'm so sorry."

He stuck his headphones back in and pressed play; the light on the iPod glowed bright for a moment and he closed his eyes, breathing slowly. She could see his lips moving; he was counting to ten.

Then he said, along with the music, "No more apologies / I'm too tired, I'm so very tired / and I'm feeling very sick and ill today / but I'm still fond of you." He took the headphones out again and tossed his iPod to the side, slipping from the bed and standing four feet away from her, looking exhausted. "The Smiths have got it right."

"They're just words, Lorcan."

"No, they're not. They're emotions, feelings. They're real."

She stared at him in silence for a moment. "Fine. Then they're borrowed emotions. They might be real, but they're not yours."

He shook his head. "Merlin, what the fuck do you want? Do you want to sit down and have a talk about feelings? Is that what you want?"

"Yes, okay? Yes. Let's sit down and talk about feelings. Or we can stand here and continue shouting at each other; whichever. But can we please just say things, can we please just stop fucking quoting?"

"You won't like what I have to say," Lorcan told her, and she shrugged.

"At least you'll be saying something."

"Fine." They were still standing in the middle of the Gryffindor seventh year boys' dormitory, and Lucy had her hand fisted in the material of her sweatshirt, where it hung loose around her hips. Lorcan leaned against his bedpost and crossed his arms. They were standing and shouting, but no one would come in on them—they were alone, for now.

Lucy waited. She had confessed; it was his turn.

He finally said, "I am so fucking pissed at you." He looked it—his lips thin and his arms tight. "And I don't understand. Because you come here and you tell me that you kissed some other bloke and I do not understand why you did it and I also have no idea why you've told me or what you want to happen now." He inhaled, exhaled, inhaled. "Do you want to break up?"

"Please, no." Lucy barely kept her tone from begging.

"Then what the fuck do you want, Lucy?" He leaned away from the post for a moment, toward her, and she could see that he wasn't just pissed: he was hurt and he was jealous and he was lonely and she just felt horribly, horribly guilty. "See, because ever since we started doing...whatever...I haven't even—well, no, that's a lie. I've looked at other girls. But every time I've looked, every time I've thought, 'Oh, her lips look soft' or 'She looks fit,' I always think, 'But Lucy's lips are softer,' 'But Lucy's sexier.' I've never ever wanted to touch anyone else. Every time I've noticed any other girl, I always think that I'd rather you. I'd always rather have you. So you wanted someone else? So you had some other bloke, over there in the States?" He shook his head, leaned it back against the post so his neck stretched pale from his jumper. "How the fuck do you expect me to react?"

Lucy's hands had started shaking somewhere in the middle of all that, and she tucked them into her pockets so he wouldn't notice. But he already knew she was weak. "I expected you to get angry. I just don't want us to end, Lor. And it wasn't about wanting him—I didn't want him."

"Well, what, then? Explain it to me." Even though the words sounded conciliatory, Lorcan's expression, his tone of voice, told her that he was not ready to forgive her. Not at all. Not that she'd expect him to be.

"I...It's only been you, Lorcan. You can't know what that's like. Only. Not always; I haven't loved you since I was little. Just these past seven months, just this year, it's been you. I've had you. But I've never had anything with anyone else. And I got jealous, and Seth was there, and I was upset and...you don't know..."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It was stupid." She covered her face with her hands. He couldn't look at her because what she was saying was dumb and hurtful and petty. "But I just kept seeing you with Dom, over and over again, and I know it was a long time ago but Merlin, you had that, you know? You wanted Dom and you wanted Viv and you wanted Celie and you wanted a lot of others. And you got a lot. And so I just kept seeing you with Dom in my head, you and her against the wall, and I tried to remember if you had ever looked at me like that—with so much wanting—and I couldn't remember, and I started imagining you with every other girl I'd ever heard that you'd fucked or snogged or looked at and I was going crazy. I kept thinking about it because I'd had no one else. Because before you I had books and I had a Muggle life and I had music, and that was it. And it hurt a lot that you might have been always comparing me, always thinking that I didn't kiss as well as my cousin, as any other girl, and I wanted more experience and I didn't want you to be my only anymore because it felt pathetic. And so I kissed Seth." She lifted her head and Lorcan was staring at her, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide. "And it was different and I didn't like it and I left and I came home to you, because there was nowhere else I wanted to go."

"But...how did you even know about Dom?"

"No one likes you," Lucy told him. "Molly hates you. And that's funny, because I was the one who fucked this up, not you, not you at all, but Molly gave me her memory of that night, when you were snogging Dom and they all came because I'd gone missing again. And for some stupid, stupid reason, I put it in my dad's Pensieve and I entered it and it was ages ago and so it shouldn't have bothered me but Merlin, it did."

Lorcan punched the wall. Lucy didn't see it coming. One second he was staring at her, the next he was by the wall, his fist pounding a rapid rhythm against the stones. "Fucking fucking fucking Molly."

"Lorcan," Lucy began, but Lorcan kept going. "Lorcan," she said again. She crossed the space between them and gripped onto his forearm, and then he stopped. Not because she was particularly strong, but because he didn't want to pull her against the stones too. "Lorcan," Lucy said. "It was my fault. Molly was just looking out for me. I knew what was in it; I shouldn't have looked."

He turned to face her and she let go of his arm. His eyes focused on hers and they looked at each other for a silent minute. "Lucy," he said. "Luce. Do you think that when I kiss you, when I touch you, when I'm with you, do you think that I'm ever thinking of anyone else?"

"How can you not?" Lucy asked. "Merlin, Lorcan, how could you resist comparing me to everyone else? I know I'm not the prettiest or the most experienced or the smartest and honestly, I don't get why you're with me a lot of the time."

"How do you have such a low opinion of yourself?" He shook his head. "There is only one thing I would ever, ever change about you, Lucy Weasley. Just the one. I wish that you could believe in yourself. You have a right to be confident; you have so many reasons to be confident. I have never once compared you to anyone else." He shook his head. "There's just you. You and your smile and your thoughts and your stupidly small hands and your freakishly large feet and...you, our first conversation, there's been no one else."

"Oh." She glanced down at her feet. "Freakishly large feet?"

"Merlin, it's not a bad thing. Come on, Luce. I don't get it." He shook his head. "I just...I just...I still don't see how you could kiss him."

She shook her head. "It was horrible and awful and it didn't even last a full three seconds but...I did." Her eyes were bright with tears and maybe there was no way out of it but she didn't want to cry in front of him. "Can you still love me?"

He gripped the back of his neck with one hand and stuck the other in his pocket. "I can't not love you." That didn't really answer her question, though, so she just stared at him. "I can't not love you, but I want time. I need time."

She nodded. This breaking, this shattering of her heart and the sick feeling to her stomach and the twist of fibres, of veins and nerves in her airway, it was all her doing. So she had to take it and she had to let Lorcan take what he needed.

And if all he asked for was time, then she might be lucky.

"Okay." She turned to leave the dormitory, and just before she left she murmured to the space in the corridor before her, "I'm so sorry, Lorcan."

"I know."

xv. if we're apart at the end, I promise I'll miss you
(May, 2022)

Lorcan didn't wait very long to go find Molly after Lucy left his room. He went up to the headmaster's office and begged to use his fireplace to Floo, and the headmaster hadn't really had a reason to keep him there; Lorcan was of age and it was technically Easter hols, after all.

He Flooed to Molly's flat, which he only knew about because Lucy had complained about Molly's boyfriend sometime over Christmas, and he landed in his girlfriend(?)'s sister's kitchen feeling a horrible mixture of anger and defeat.

Molly stood by the stove, her hand frozen on the steaming tea kettle, but other than her unnatural stillness she didn't let on that he'd surprised her. "Hello, Scamander."

"Weasley," he snarled, and she nodded to the table.

"You're Lorcan, then. That makes slightly more sense than Lysander showing up in my kitchen. Take a seat?"

"Thanks, but no." She shrugged and poured the hot water over the tea bag in her mug.

"So, I'm assuming this is about Lucy?"

"Actually, it is about you. What right did you have to give her that memory? You could have told her, okay? You could have told her that I was a man-whore and that you hated me and that you didn't think that she should date me. But you had no right to show her."

"Did she break up with you?" Molly looked almost pleased with herself, and Lorcan was suddenly very grateful that he'd left his wand on his bed. Otherwise, he might have murdered the bitch.

"No," he snapped. "But she did cheat on me."

Molly blinked. "Lucy doesn't cheat," she said.

"There's where you're wrong. Because by giving her that memory, you made Lucy feel like shit. You didn't make her mad at me, which is what I know you wanted; you made her disgusted with herself. You really fucked up, Weasley."

"But...Merlin, Lorcan, don't you see that you're wrong for her?"

He shook his head. "You can't judge me. You don't even know me. I might not be perfect for her, but I love her, and that had been enough. Before you got involved."

"What do you want me to say, that I'm sorry? I'm not. You'd have hurt her eventually, I'm just speeding up the inevitable."

"But you hurt her to do it. I thought you did this because you cared about her; I thought you all suffocate her because you love her. Fuck, you're just a bunch of selfish arseholes, aren't you?"

He didn't wait for her to respond. He stepped back through the fire to Hogwarts, and he brushed past the headmaster with a muttered, "Thank you," and he returned to his dormitory and stuffed his head under his pillow and tried to sleep away all his fucking feelings.

He avoided the library and the Great Hall, and he went an entire week without seeing Lucy. Once classes began again, he was supposed to focus on NEWTs, and he was almost able to forget about the way she'd looked when she'd crashed into his bedroom and told him everything. But sometimes he'd catch sight of her in the halls, of her blonde head ducked as she turned a corner or of her walking quickly away from James, and he'd feel all that sadness and all that longing and all that anger again.

Lorcan was not the angsty type; he tended to get over girls as quickly as he got under them. But he'd never loved before Lucy and he couldn't argue himself out of loving her—he'd tried everything, from imagining her kissing that Muggle bloke to thinking about her feet and the way she always disappeared. But everyone made mistakes and her feet were endearing and she'd disappeared with him, hadn't she?

He took the time she'd given him and he argued with himself, and then he decided that none of it was doing him much good, so he went looking for her.

She wasn't in the library and she wasn't at Hogsmeade and she wasn't in the empty classroom in the dungeons. He was passing back up through the dungeons when he saw Lily hurrying along the corridor ahead of him. "Hey, Potter!"

She whirled. "Scamander," she said slowly. "What d'you need?"

"Your cousin."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm guessing you mean Lucy, but I do have quite a few cousins."

"Yeah, Luce. Do you know where she is?"

"I was actually just looking for her. James hasn't seen her in a couple of days, which isn't unusual because she is avoiding him after the whole catastrophe with you—I'm sorry, by the way, I always liked you—and Hugo told me she hasn't been in Ravenclaw in at least two nights. I was hoping you two had gotten back together, but I guess not."

"Fuck." Lorcan began walking up the stairs beside Lily. "Wait, do you have your broomstick?"

"I don't know. I keep it in the shed. You don't think she might have taken it, do you?"

"If she did, I know where she is."

"Come on, then." Lily started running toward the front doors, and Lorcan caught up to her and passed her. They reached the broom shed to find that Lily's was not where she had left it.

"Good," Lorcan said. He grabbed his broom from its rack and headed outside. "I'll go get her. Tell the others to stand down."

"When you come back, will you be with her again?"

"That's the plan, Potter."

"Good luck, then." Lily waved him off.

He flew east, and he flew into the rain. Water blew cold against his face and leaked through his lips, but he didn't stop, didn't try to change course. He could have told her he'd forgiven her any day in the last two weeks, and he'd had to wait until the most fucking inconvenient time, ever. But as long as he found her, it didn't matter.

The rain was falling softly on the rocks when he landed by the ocean, and at first he didn't see her. And then he passed the largest boulder on the shore, and there she was, her hair plastered to her head and her chin resting on her knees. She must have seen him come down from the sky, but she was still staring out at the water.

"You scared me," he said when he sat on the slippery wet rocks beside her.

"Sorry," she said. "I wanted some time alone, and this seemed like a good place. There's an inn over there," she nodded her head back at the village, "and you know, they don't even ask for identification. They just want money."

"And you had money?"

She shrugged. "I know some people."

He chose to ignore that and asked, "How's it been, being alone?"

"Not as peaceful as I thought it would be. Turns out I miss you, Lorcan."

"Yeah. I've missed you, too."

"How'd your time treat you?"

"I thought it would help me sort everything out. It didn't really." He moved closer to her and wrapped an arm around her. "I just know that I love you madly."

He was quoting again, but she didn't mind. "I love you, too."

"So, no more Muggle blokes for you, and no more rehashing my past. Sound fair?"

"Perfectly."

They were silent together for a while, as the rain soaked them and the waves brushed closer.

"I've got a question," Lorcan said.

"Shoot."

"Why don't we do it in the road?"

Lucy laughed. "How long have you been waiting to ask me that?"

"Since Lily gave me The Beatles. But seriously, though, why don't we?"

"We might be hit by an automobile, or we might be seen."

"Those are your only reasons?"

"Also, it sounds horribly uncomfortable."

"Fine." He looked at the water again. "Do you have another night at the inn?"

She nodded against his shoulder.

"Want to go there?"

"Let's stay out here a little longer. I'll miss the water when we go back to Hogwarts."

He kissed her. "We have forever to find new places," he reminded her.

"Nowhere as lovely as this." And she smiled at him and then pressed her lips to his ear, "I could see doing it on the beach."

He laughed and pressed her back onto the stones, and it was uncomfortable but it was right and the rain sent rivers across their skin, mingling as they pressed close, and freezing, burning, flying, as they burst the space between them.

A/N: I hope you all liked that. I appreciate reviews!
Also, Ela, I'm sorry there was not more sex. I hope you liked it anyway.