A nice little bit off holiday Scorpius/Lily fluff. Just an idea I had, really. This is my Christmas gift to all other Scorily shippers out there, who always love to read something new. Happy Christmas and enjoy!
Disclaimer: Don't own HP!
Lily pouted when she woke up the first day of her last Christmas hols, to find that a storm had blown through in the late hours of the night, covering Fox Corner and all of Godric's Hollow in a thick, white blanket of snow. She'd been planning an escape, down into the village proper, away from overbearing brothers and their guest, but a groan escaped her lips at the thought of digging through her closet for her snow boots and trudging through a mile of icy slush. Her brothers were obnoxious and omnipresent, their guest distracting, but at least it was warm and dry in the house, and she thought maybe she had seen cocoa in the cupboard while helping her mum make dinner the previous evening. With a sigh, she resigned herself to her fate, pulled her jumper on, and padded her way down to the large kitchen.
The Potter's had lived at Fox Corner in Godric's Hollow since before Albus was born. It was a lovely, old-fashioned country home with a large, overgrown garden, and a little orchard in the back where everyone liked to go play Quidditch in the summer. However, within the numerous rooms there always seemed to be lurking a Potter, or miscellaneous Weasley, or other house guests which her parents were so fond of having. (House guests with rippling muscles and unsettling gray gazes, house guests with beautiful, ice-blond hair.) She loved her family dearly, but Lily enjoyed being the last at Hogwarts. Since Albus and Rose had graduated, that only left herself and Hugo as the last pillars of the bombastic Weasley clan, at least for a little while. (Lily sometimes mused that if she and her brothers all had children, and her cousins all had children, that Hogwarts would someday be populated solely by their descendants- a frightening prospect, to be certain.) It was hard to be noticed- as a redhead in a sea of red hair, as a Quidditch player in a league's worth of them- so she had been rather enjoying her seventh year, despite N.E.W.T.s and associated pressures. She found she didn't mind being a Potter so much, when she was the only one.
When she entered the kitchen, she was pleased to find her brothers and their friends nowhere to be found, and her mother messily frying an egg and sipping a cup of tea.
"There you are, sweetheart! Thought you were going to sleep the whole morning away, but I thought you deserved a bit of a lie-in," she said, with a small smile, "My 7th year was hell, course, there was a lot going on.. At least I had 'Mione to help me through."
"Oh, I don't know. It's not so bad, I guess. At least I can get peace at school," she grumbled, pouring herself a bowl of Cheeri-Owls. "It's far too quiet in here, and I haven't gotten so used to it as to not be suspicious. Where are the boys at then?"
She looked around quickly, as if Jamie could be hiding in the broom cupboard.
Her mum just laughed.
"They all popped off to Diagon Alley first thing, said they had to finish up their shopping. Yea right- start is more like, if I know my own sons."
"They're probably meeting girls," Lily said scathingly, digging into her cereal with abandon. It was a small comfort, but she was relieved to know they'd be out for a little while longer.
Ginny just snorted: "I would be utterly surprised if James didn't ask Saoirse to marry him at Christmas dinner, and quite frankly, disappointed. He is so like your father, Lily… waiting for "just the right moment" or what have you. And Al- lord, help us all."
"I always thought you said daddy's proposal was perfect," she frowned.
"Oh, it was," she conceded with a wave, "But had I had my way, we would've married when I was 17."
"Well, that's a bit silly, isn't it? Merlin, mum, I'll be 18 in a week- can you imagine me married?"
"Oh, heavens no, sweetheart! That would be silly. You haven't even got a boyfriend."
She blushed lightly, but brushed it off. It was only her mum, after all. She would understand. It wasn't that she didn't want a boyfriend, or that boys didn't ask. It was that the one that caught her eye was older, charming, attractive, and hopelessly off-limits. Lily teetered on the edge of confession, the words caught behind her teeth. Would it feel better to finally say it out loud? To share her private tragedy?
"She better not," Harry chimed in affably, the smell of cooking breakfast apparently having lured him away from his morning paper and favorite chair. "Because then we should have to invite him to Christmas, and I have enough to worry about at the moment, without having to make murder charges disappear."
"Ha ha, daddy. You wouldn't actually try to kill my boyfriend."
"You're right, I wouldn't. But your brothers might."
Commotion sounded throughout the house, and Lily swore under her breath. Great.
"Whose boyfriend is being killed?" Albus called from the hall.
"Not Lily's," Ginny called back in explanation.
The whole lot of them walked into the kitchen, still in sopping coats and icy boots, looking red-faced and jolly: Jamie, Al, their cousin Freddie, and Albus's best friend. Scorpius Malfoy.
Sigh.
"Lily's got a boyfriend?" Scorpius asked politely, eying her curiously. She averted her gaze and pretended she was far away. London, maybe. Or Hogwarts, or anywhere else than where she was, and certainly not in the room with her brothers, and definitely not anywhere- ever- alone with Scorpius Malfoy, perhaps in his strong, athletic arms, running her hand through his wind-tousled hair...
"Nah, she'd have to find one first, and no bloke is stupid enough to try that," James snickered, grinning cheekily at his younger sister across the table.
She glared and felt a horrible heat creep up her neck and cheeks.
"No, not while you're in the same bloody time zone, thanks," she seethed.
"Lily, language!" Their mum interjected, otherwise content to let them bicker.
"Oh, cheer up, Lils, you'll always have us!" Al consoled her, throwing his arms around her neck and offering her a frosty kiss on the cheek. She pushed him away in disgust and got up to put her bowl in the sink.
She was conscious of eyes on her back as she turned on the tap and washed up the muggle way. She'd been of-age for nearly a year, but she didn't mind the muggle way, particularly when it meant she could hide her face for a moment. It got deathly quiet as she washed up, and she thought she could feel the heat of those gray eyes burning into her from behind. They were all waiting for her to retort- this was sport for them- but she only chewed her tongue thoughtfully.
"Don't be like that, Lils, they're only joking," Freddie said uncertainly.
(They all knew a quiet Lily was the most dangerous sort.)
"I'm not," James said proudly. "I'd chase off any prat dumb enough to date my baby sister."
"I'm nearly 18, Jamie, for Merlin's sake- I'm not a baby!" Lily glowered, rounding on him. "How would you feel if Saoirse had brothers who acted like this?"
"But Saoirse's not got any brothers," he said with a smug grin.
The rest of the boys bursted out laughing, and Lily pulled her wand from her jumper.
She stormed out of the room, and noted with satisfaction, the mingled cries of bested brothers, and bats.
"Just like her mum," she heard her dad say.
You have no idea, she thought.
"Just like her mum," Harry said cheerfully over all the squawking, helping himself to some bacon.
"Fred and George used to hate that," Ginny replied wistfully. "I remember this one time, they were teasing me- oh, Freddie, ask your dad! It was magnificent."
They carried on as normal while their sons righted their bogeys. Ginny sometimes thought that raising boys had been like having brothers all over again, and unlike her own mother, she had always been content to let them sort things out amongst themselves. She felt for Lily, but by the time her daughter had turned seven, Ginny knew beyond all doubt that she was more than capable of duking it out with the boys.
"She's going to really get it this time," Al whined as he blew his nose.
"We are going to get her so good!" James agreed.
"You're both barmy," Scorpius laughed. "After how she just did you? I wish you luck. You're barking. There'll be blood to pay."
"S'long as it's not on the carpets," Ginny replied blithely.
"Since when are you taking her side?" Albus squinted his eyes at his best mate. "Have you gone soft for my sister? That'd be a match."
He snorted at his own joke.
"Traitor," James muttered, "No loyalty, not an ounce. Some Gryffindor you are, Malfoy."
Scorpius fixed a steady gaze at the piece of toast in his hand.
"I just know a losing battle when I see it."
"Uh huh, we shall see, ye of little faith. Maybe we'll get you, too."
Scorpius smirked: "I'd like to see you try."
James and Albus had left her alone the rest of the week, which was just fine by Lily, thank you very much. She was able to catch up on her homework and shoot Scorpius furtive, sidelong glances without their constant teasing and prodding. It should have made her more suspicious, but mostly she was glad for the detente. Maybe the bogeys had finally flapped some sense into them.
Christmas Eve was suddenly upon them and, just like that, Fox Corner was full-to-bursting with all manner of people. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends other various relations, and acquaintances had descended upon the house mid-afternoon, and Lily felt like she could hardly move for the crush of people. (She was being dramatic, of course, but it still felt rather claustrophobic.)
A few of her classmates were there with their parents, and so she made polite conversation with them. Alfie Thomas was nice enough, but he kept trying to chat her up, and that was just weird, considering her mum had dated his dad. And Megan Creevey tailed her around the house, asking an endless stream of questions- mostly involving Albus's current relationship status- and she found it to all be a bit too much.
Having finally given Megan and Alfie the slip near the punch bowl, Lily stalked off in the general direction of quiet.
Scorpius was talking to Rose, and Saoirse's younger sister, Teagan, who had been in his year at Hogwarts. Not that she'd noticed, or cared. It was just that the one boy who had ever made her feel like her heart would jump into her throat was having a conversation with two very pretty girls who weren't his best friend's younger sister.
She couldn't even tell you when her crush started, if it could be called that. Lily thought besotted or enamoured were better words, for she didn't feel that "crush" could entirely encompass the way she felt about him.
"Crush" didn't capture the afternoon they had spent when he was 14 and she was 12- which is when she supposed her infatuation began- before either of them had made the Quidditch team, hiding in the stands and enchanting rocks and crab apples to hit Albus in the back of the head as he flew around the pitch. "Crush" couldn't begin to enumerate all the comfortable evenings they'd caught each other long after the world was still, at Hogwarts or Fox Corner, and talked late into the night about books and Quidditch and just everything. Such a word could not describe the burning feeling in her chest, after years of comfortable friendship, when she realized she'd like to find out how his fingertips felt trailing across the skin on the small of her back, and if someone's touch could really make you feel like you were on fire.
No: she was utterly, hopelessly, secretly in love with her brother's best friend. She wouldn't call it a crush.
The party was growing rowdy around her, and she leaned against the arch at the bottom of the stairs, needing just a moment to breath and collect her feelings. James was looking quite green around the gills, but cheerful. Good, she thought: he'd been dating Saoirse Finnegan since they were practically kids, and it was about damn time he made an honest woman out of her. Albus was looking mischievous, never a good sign, but she trusted he wouldn't try anything too touched with Gran in the house.
And maybe she had looked a little too long at Scorpius, or her glances weren't as furtive as she thought, because he caught her eye and made his way over to wear she leaned against the wall, his smile indiscernible and inviting.
"Not enjoying the party?" he asked her quietly, once he'd joined her there.
She wrinkled her nose.
"It's not that. I'll just be glad when it's only just us."
"If you wanted to be alone with me, all you had to do was ask," he teased.
Blush raced up her face like a wildfire: "Oh, Merlin. That's not what I bloody- Malfoy- you know what I meant-"
He laughed lightly as she sputtered, eyes dancing in the low lantern light of the hall. Eyes that looked up and lit with amusement.
"Mistletoe," he said, directing her attention to above.
Sure enough, a tiny sprig of mistletoe, tied in a cheery red ribbon, hung from the arch there.
"OH, erm… I'll just…"
Lily made to flee, but she felt his hand close around her wrist.
"It's bad luck, you know… to not kiss under the mistletoe," he informed her, his voice thick.
Her head went foggy. Had they moved closer?
"I mean, erm, I mean…"
"We wouldn't want to have bad luck, would we?"
"I suppose not…"
She stared for an endless moment at his soft red lips.
Then he kissed her, and she felt herself fill up with beautiful, searing heat. She put her whole self in that kiss, and it didn't matter that a whole room of people could see them or that he was her brother's mate, because it was the kind of kiss that could vanquish foes and breath life into the dead. Kisses so perfect don't allow you to regret them.
James and Albus's face were a study in juxtaposition: James eyed his sister and Scorpius with mirth, and Albus with horrified confusion.
"It worked!" James chuckled, "Enchanted mistletoe! That'll show 'em! Stroke of genius, that was.. One of your better ideas, I'd say. They're both going to be honking when they're done."
Albus looked a bit like a fish, opening and closing his mouth wordlessly as he watched his sister and best mate snog.
"What's the matter with you? Oi, this was your idea!"
"But I put it under the arch going into the kitchen... " he said lamely.
Both brothers whipped around to face the kitchen, where Alfie Thomas and Megan Creevey were making quite a spectacle underneath the enchanted mistletoe. They whipped back around to where Malfoy still stood, his arms tangled around their sister.
Both swore.
Ginny watched her children with amusement. Well, she was always watching, but that night had been particularly intriguing. She'd been wondering for a while when Lily and Scorpius would stop skirting around the thing and realize they liked each other, and it was always so lovely when things came together at Christmas.
If she helped it along with some good old-fashioned- real- mistletoe, charmed to appear where they stood together, well- whoever had to know?
Harry found her and slipped an arm around her waist.
"Malfoy is kissing our daughter," he whispered into her ear.
"Mm hmm," she agreed serenely.
"Our daughter is kissing her brother's best mate."
"Yeah," she confirmed.
Harry kissed her cheek and rolled his eyes.
"Just like her mum," he sighed.