Memoirs of a Bad Girl
Warnings: Smut, language, violence (pretty much exactly all the fun stuff that a Mature rating implies)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for the facts that come from LAOT.
Author's Note: Welcome! I'm not usually a fan of long Author's notes before the good stuff, but I wouldn't want anyone to give up on the story because they were confused by something.
So firstly, while this story is a follow up to my Marauders' Era fic Love and Other Tragedies, it's not a prerequisite for enjoying it. All themes, original characters, and plot lines that happen to appear will be reintroduced as if they are brand new- because, after all, this story is written in Lily Luna's perspective and it would all be new to her.
If you're not a fan of Jily fanfiction, and not interested in taking the time to read all 200,000+ words of LAOT, I'll give you a quick rundown. The main thing you should know is that it ends completely in Cannon. Everything we know about the Marauders, Snape, and Lily are exactly as they happen in the books. The one difference is that in the beginning of the story Lily and Sirius are dating.
Full Summary: A collision of the past and present in a fight for the future. 17 year old Lily Potter wakes up with no memory of where she's been for the past six months. What she does know is that she is being haunted by the past…literally, and she's the only one who can see those who died to give her the life she has always taken for granted. With a Malfoy for a bodyguard and a forbidden crush acting as her tutor, she must do more than uncover the truth about the past. She must become a girl worth their sacrifice and more than just a bad girl.
Lily Evans, Baker (Harland) Simmons, James Potter, Sirius Black, Fred Weasley, Cedric Diggory, and all those loved ones lost must help her unravel a mystery that dips into a time before her father was the boy-who-lived and spreads across two wars that will put the fate of Hogwarts into the hands of a very bad girl.
Pairings: Cannon, Lily/Scorpius, Lily/Teddy
Cannon compliant, but with the explanations of the Marauders given in Love and Other Tragedies applied.
Prologue
Faster, faster, or they'll catch you.
Those were her only thoughts as she pushed her weak legs to carry her deeper through the thick world of green and brown that she'd been born into only a moment ago. She didn't know why she was running, only that if she stopped it would mean death.
Her hands were synched together at the wrist, leaving festering blisters and oozing sores beneath the unkind manacles. Helplessly she tripped over a fallen log and was without a way to catch her flailing body as her head made contact with a jagged rock on the forest's crowded floor. Blood spilled down her face, staining the vision of her right eye so severely that she was forced to blink rapidly against the onslaught.
It didn't stop her though. Oh, no. Dirt and twigs clung to what wet body as if she'd been rolled in a vat of glue. She ran on and on until fatigue took its hold, and clumsily she bounced off the trees that jumped into her path.
One misplaced foot and she was on the ground.
Get up. Get up. Her brain urged, but her body was a traitor, wrought with rebellious exhaustion. They'll catch you. Faster. You have to move faster.
But she could not move and soon she could not even think. All she could do was accept the darkness that rained down on her.
0000000
Chapter One
"A Lily by Any Other Name…"
With heavy eyelids and a puckered frown, I opened my eyes lying in a hospital bed to a curtain of soft colored crimson locks.
I knew it wasn't mine. I had red hair, but it wasn't Weasley red. The hair color that slumped on my shoulder was not as light as Uncle George's or as ginger as Uncle Ron's, but it was undeniably Weasley- an array of shades that uniquely belonged to Great Britain's most notorious muggle loving family.
"Ginny." The hoarse name came out of my lips as I brushed my face free of her cherry strands.
The movement brought Mum around and her amber eyes went greedily to my face.
"Thank Merlin, Lily. You're awake."
"Lyla, Ginny. My name is Lyla." My voice was an ugly pitch, coming out in choppy gasps.
I expected the commonplace sigh of exasperation not the watery smile full of wistfulness that came instead.
"Maybe when you start calling me Mum again, I'll start calling you Lyla."
A tight burning in my wrist called my attention away from responding, and I groaned wiggling in the papery gown as I brought the bandaged skin up to examine. They were taped and so heavily padded that I couldn't tell what wounds that lay beneath.
"Why am I in St. Mungos? What's going on?"
Ginny's face stilled until it settled into an expression of careful concern and reluctance.
"It's okay. You're okay… I'm just going to go find your father."
Exhaustion clung to the lithe muscles of her athletic figure as she left the private room, leaving me with nothing to do but stare after her. The tacky patterned curtain that had been pulled closed over the door's slight window not only blocked out curious onlookers, but also shut me off from the world beyond.
"'Lily' isn't such a dreadful name is it?" A voice echoed through the room that my gaze had left empty while a tickle ran up my neck and settled in my ears.
My gasp of surprise didn't even register through my damaged vocal chords.
Where only moments before the air had shimmered with nothing more than dust particles, there now stood a slim girl staring at me expectantly. Just like mum and I, she was a redhead, but where ours hung straight hers was an avalanche of curls. She was beautiful, but in a different way than I was.
She cleared her throat and I realized she was still waiting for an answer to her question.
"I suspect it's against nurses' policy to just go popping into patient's rooms unannounced, especially to Harry Potter's daughter." She needed to know who was in charge of this show. I wasn't going to be pushed around, not even to answer a stupid useless question.
Her pink lips quirked to the side allowing the slightest bit of unwilling amusement as she turned towards the rectangular window opposite the door. She ran a lazy finger down the glass, leaving a streak in its wake.
"So it's safe to say that you don't have a problem with the Potter portion of your name. I'm curious what could be so offensive about 'Lily'."
Whoever she was, she was right about one thing. You couldn't have pried my surname out of my cold dead hands. I was a Potter and had no intention of ever giving up the perks that came along with it. I opened my mouth to tell her so when the door opened and Dad came rushing in with Mum at his tail.
He opened his arms wide, but then stopped halfway and gingerly took my hand instead like I was fragile.
"It's so good to see you awake. The Healers assured us it was just a matter of time, but… I needed to see for myself that you were okay."
Ginny's eyes searched the room inquisitively. "Who were you talking to, Lily?"
She was gone. The young redheaded girl had disappeared in a split second. I'd barely noticed the tingle in my ears when mum and dad entered.
Was I losing my mind? Was that why I was here? Because I'd hit my head or gone round the bend. I shook my head- half to clear my mind and half to dismiss Ginny's question.
"Can you tell me the last thing you remember, Lyla?" Harry still had my hand grasped in his. He never called me Lily anymore, unlike Mum.
"Harry," She scolded him looking alarmingly like Grandmum. "Do you have to do that right now?"
"I was packing my trunk the night before holiday- no, that's not right. Maybe I was eating breakfast the next morning…" I ignored her, fighting through fuzzy memories. What was the big deal? "If I fell off the Hogwarts Express or something embarrassing like that I'd just rather not know. I'm sure everyone will take pleasure in recapping my shame once school starts in two weeks."
I wanted to question Ginny's cringe, but Harry gripped my hand tighter forcing my attention back to him. I was startled by the intensity that sparked his infamously green eyes.
"Think very hard… Try to imagine the very last thing you can: what you were doing, what you were thinking, who you were talking to…"
Harry had never been scary to me. I mean, yes, theoretically I knew he was the Head of the Auror Department and had vanquished the most evil wizard to ever live, but he'd always just been Dad to me. He was the weak link on the parenting food chain. Ginny was the one to look out for. She was a master of coming up with the most creatively evil punishments. The worst Harry would do was sentence you to a week with no dessert and then forget halfway through.
The look in his eye scared me now though. It frightened me enough to actually do what he said, which was an occurrence so rare it was nearly extinct.
My mind hadn't felt funny until I started poking around in it, digging through the sand that seemed to fill it up, because that's what it felt like. Like someone had unloaded a beach in my brain hoping the sand would cover up an ocean of memories that were lost to me. The first semi clear thing I could recall was eating breakfast before boarding the Hogwarts Express home for Christmas. My eyes glazed over as I tried to immerse myself into the memory.
"I was eating a muffin with…with Dabney. No, maybe it wasn't her…I was eating alone thinking about-… It was something I didn't want to do. I'd just finished and I was dragging my feet about going to the train. I couldn't stop thinking about-."
I snapped my teeth shut as I finally recalled exactly what it was I hadn't wanted to discuss with my parents.
"Yes, you ate breakfast with Dabney Giles. She left early to retrieve something she'd forgotten from her dorm. You left the Great Hall by yourself and then what?" Harry prompted me with careful words that came so easy to him it was like he'd heard them a million times.
I tried for him- I really did, but every time I scooped at the sand covering my memories the sides would slide in and refill it.
"I don't even remember leaving the table… What's this about anyways? Just spit it out. I'd like to know why the bloody hell I'm in St. Mungos during holiday instead of enjoying my new presents. By the way I expect extra after enduring this trauma."
Ginny stepped forward to take my hand from Dad, but there was so much pity on her face I couldn't stand it. I snatched it back.
"Tell me right now! Quit staring at me like that!"
"After breakfast you left the Great Hall and no one saw you again. Once you didn't arrive at King's Cross we started questioning students, and they all said the same thing. No one remembered seeing you after breakfast. The Aurors organized a task force and the whole Wizarding World was searching for you, but it was like you'd vanished into thin air. We brought in every known or suspected surviving Death Eater not in Azkaban and administered Veritisum Serum, but all our leads came up dry… A week ago you were found near a village in the middle of the woods."
"Faster, faster, or they'll catch you." My mouth moved slowly along the words as I remembered sprinting through the forest in a haze.
"What?" Harry's eyes grew wide like I'd unleashed a clue. "Do you remember something?"
"All I remember is being in the forest and thinking 'faster, faster, or they'll catch you,' but it wasn't like I had come up with the words myself. It was like someone told me that. I just can't remember who or why." I explained.
The forest had felt like a dream, and I shuddered looking down at my cloth wrapped wrists recalling the blood that had oozed beneath my constraints.
"Did I at least miss the first week of school? I feel like I should get something out of this."
"Lyla." Harry prompted gently before Ginny finished for him.
"You missed the whole term."
…
The whole term? The whole term?
They couldn't possibly mean that I'd missed six entire months? That I'd missed Christmas presents, all the Quidditch matches I'd been looking forward to, the Victory Ball that I already had the perfect gown for, and my exams (okay, so that was actually kind of a relief).
For possibly the first time in my entire life I was speechless. I felt a strange bubbling in the bottom of my stomach that welled up like multiplying suds in a bath. The sensation filled me up until it sizzled in my eyes. I was so unaccustomed to whatever this was it paralyzed me in the bed. What was this?
My parents stared at me. Concerned, Ginny reached out but I flinched away from her touch and looked resolutely towards the ceiling.
"Where's Tabatha?" My voice was a screech.
Stung by my rejection, she clammed up, stepping away from the bed, but I felt no remorse. All I could feel was the unfamiliar stinging in my chest.
"She's with the twins and Mia." Harry was between us again. It was a place he'd grown rather familiar with over the past seventeen years.
I clenched my eyes shut, angry. Tabatha would want to be here. They'd kept her away, and I all wanted was to be immersed in her embrace, even if it was something I hadn't allowed from my nanny since I'd turned four and decided I was too old for hugs.
Tabatha had been a constant figure in my life since before I could remember. For a few awkward months back when I'd started basic school, I'd taken to introducing her as my 'other' mum. It had led to some confusion with my teacher and the other workers, especially since Harry had been particularly busy at work that year and Mum and Tabatha were the only ones picking me up and dropping me off.
There had actually been an expose published in the ever reliable Witch Weekly detailing the scandalous secret life of Quidditch Hero Ginny Potter and her lesbian affair behind the Boy-Who-Lived's back. It was my very first run in with the media (I still have it saved somewhere I'm sure. After all, it was bloody hilarious), but it certainly hadn't been my last.
All three of them- Harry, Ginny, and Tabatha- had sat me down for one of their infamous talks. They'd explained that while Tabatha lived with us, took care of me, and took great pleasure in punishing my "sassy" mouth, just like my parents did, she was not in fact my mum. She was our nanny and housekeeper.
I found this to be a great injustice to Tabatha. How was it fair that she had to deal with my fits, tantrums, and outbursts, but got none of the credit? I might have been a difficult child, but I fancied myself a warrior for integrity. In protest I've called Mum and Dad by their first names ever since. Tabatha claimed this was just the "silliest bunch of nonsense she'd ever heard," but I was pretty sure she secretly adored it.
Tabatha was sneaky like that.
"Your siblings and Tabatha will be allowed to come see you, but first it's very important that you try and remember anything about where you were or what happened to you." Harry's emerald eyes still burned with intensity, and immediately I was reminded of the woman who'd appeared and disappeared from the room like a figment of my imagination.
I don't know how I hadn't seen it before. It wasn't like the colors favored in the way that people often have green eyes but in different shades. No, the girl's eyes had been exactly the same as Albus'. The eyes my brother got directly from our father, who had gotten them from Lily Evans. Those eyes were just as synonymous with our family, as the shades of red hair were with the Weasleys.
"If you're worried about the pictures it's okay, Lily." Ginny misinterpreted my reluctant silence, snapping me back to the question that hung in the air unanswered.
Oh, fuck. Of course the pictures had made their stunning debut across the pages of Witch Weekly by now. It had been the very thing that made me dread getting on Hogwarts Express six months ago. I wasn't ashamed of the pictures. They were actually kind of beautiful. I'd given my permission for them to be published after all, but that didn't mean I was looking forward to my parents' reaction.
"You saw them?"
"I'd wager everyone in the Wizarding World and probably a few muggles have seen them, Lily Potter." Ginny's tawny eyes flashed with suppressed annoyance. "They're calling it 'the bum that sold a million copies'."
Harry visibly shuddered, and blinked rapidly as if trying to erase an image from his memories.
An odd sound caught between a cough and a nervous chortle erupted from the back of my throat.
"And you're not going to try and punish me?"
"We thought you were dead, Lily!" Her outburst took me off guard. She shook with some intangible emotion I couldn't identify. Pain brimmed in her welling tears. I'd never seen her cry before, not even the happy kind. "We've been sick with grief. Every Auror in the department have worked themselves into the ground trying to find you. James took off the whole season to help, and your father spends more nights at the office than he does at home… Whatever silly rebellious things that happened in the past don't matter right now. What matters is that you're alive and you're here."
The action she'd been holding back ever since I'd woken up finally overcame her as she took me in her arms. I didn't push her away or try to wiggle from her grasp even when my wrists that were stuffed between us throbbed from the fierceness.
"I told you everything I remember." I told them calmly after she'd released me. "I remember eating breakfast the morning holiday started, and then nothing."
Reclining back into the pillows, I closed my eyes. I felt tired, exhausted from the sand covered memories that weighed down my mind.
Sleep came so swiftly I didn't realize I was dreaming until I was lying on my back in the grass field beside the Burrow.
The sky was vividly blue and the clouds as stark white as the linens Grandmum had hung to dry in the breeze.
A boy with pink hair leaned over me blocking my view.
But I already knew what was going to happen. This wasn't a dream. It was a long forgotten memory. An important one, but one I didn't even know I could still recall in such pristine clarity.
His lean preteen body cast a shadow over mine, and I scowled up at him.
"Move, Teddy."
"I'll move if you tell me what you're doing." He bargained with a grin. Sweat collected along his magenta hairline, making me feel even hotter in the sweltering summer heat.
I didn't want to tell him. This was a private matter. One between me and the sun, but the thing about the sun was that it was always up for another play date tomorrow. Sitting up, the world wobbled as my equilibrium readjusted. Hours had passed since I started my investigation.
"Are you lot still playing Flat Quidditch?"
Flat Quidditch was the solution Teddy had concocted for all the young cousins who weren't old enough to fly brooms yet. It was just like regular Quidditch, except we played it on the ground and Teddy had gotten Aunt Hermione to charm a Snitch so it only flew where we could catch it. Teddy was smart like that, always inventing fun games or solving problems. I'd overheard James saying that it was okay because he wasn't all swotty about it like Uncle Percy.
"Okay, how about a trade then?" Teddy folded his legs and sat beside me on the grass. He'd easily caught my attempt to change the subject.
I wasn't even six yet, and I'd already discovered the advantages of my age. I could make anyone do just about anything I wanted all because they thought I was too young to have ulterior motives. Teddy was infuriatingly adept at treating me as an equal though. I always had to step up my game if I wanted to pull something over on him.
"I'll give you something if you tell me what you were doing?"
He was smart to tempt me with prizes.
"How do I know it's something I want? I already have lots of toys." I pursed my lips as I considered.
"Oh, this is something special. It's something you don't have, and once you have it, it'll be all yours. No one else will have it." He knew he had me. His proud smirk said it all. I was a sucker for having things that others didn't.
I huffed, but leaned back into my previous position and waited for him to join me. Side by side, Teddy and I stared up at the sky. It opened up to us like a canvas as if I could pick up a paintbrush and draw my imagination across the empty blue space.
"I think the sun wants to be my friend." Whispering my deepest secret into the air, I wondered if the sun would hear me and change his mind. He seemed to be a selective bloke- very careful about the company he kept way up there in the sky. "He follows me, you see. And he's always watching. I know he misses me at night because every morning he's right outside my window… I thought maybe if I watched him back he'd know that I might like to be friends with him too."
Teddy was silent, and at first I thought he was stunned because all the evidence was falling into place and he could see what I saw, but the longer the silence stretched on I began to worry.
"It's not silly!" I defended viciously shooting up to glare at the boy with the pink hair. "You better not tell Victoire or the others! I didn't even want to tell you, and now he probably won't even want to be friends anymore."
I felt my resolve crumbling as the childishness of my theory crushed in upon me. I ruined it all. Teddy's disbelief made me see it, and I thought I'd hate him forever for taking the sun from me.
"I was just thinking," Teddy didn't even blink at my fit. He never even removed his examination from above us. "That if the sun would want to be friends with anybody it would be you."
I sighed in relief. I knew he was right, and with Teddy's blessing I forgot I ever doubted it. I thrust my palmed hands at him.
"Now it's your turn. What are you going to give me?"
Chuckling at my impatience, he rearranged himself to sit across from me with his legs sprawled comfortably. His eyes sparkled, and I waited with bated breath.
"What about your very own name?"
At once, I deflated. I'd given up my very best secret for nothing! Irritated, I gritted my teeth.
"I already have a name, Teddy. You're as dim as Hugo if you can't remember it… Lily Luna Potter."
"But don't you see? Those are all other people's names that they gave to you." He was smug as he explained. "It really doesn't belong to you at all."
"It does so!" I gasped out, but I had already begun to see that he was right and it horrified me. How had I never seen it before? I felt deep betrayal that quickly transformed into anger. What if I had never realized and I'd gone my whole life without a name of my own? How could Mum and Dad do this to me?
Enraged with Teddy for his own part in the fiasco, I lashed out swinging a tiny fist at him that he dodged.
"Calm down, you little monster. I told you I would give you one, didn't I?"
"How? Tell me right now!" My attitude changed instantly. Maybe my five year old life really wasn't over. If anyone could salvage it, Teddy could.
He took his time speaking, and I knew he was doing it just to defy me. "Well you see, I'm named after someone else too… Theodore."
"Theodore!?" As serious as this dilemma was I couldn't help the waterfall of giggles that overtook me as I clutched my stomach.
"Hush." He scolded, his eyes flashing with real emotion for the first time. "I was going to tell you how I was clever enough to get my own name, but maybe you don't deserve one…"
"Tell me, please!" I forced my lips to pout sweetly, and I widened my eyes innocently at him. What I really wanted to do was berate him for withholding the information, but I knew Teddy and that wasn't going to get me anywhere with him.
He wasn't afraid of me.
"I know you're faking that." He said, but he was smirking in amusement. "Teddy is short for Theodore so it's the same, but all my own at the same time."
"But you can't make Lily any shorter." I snapped. He'd promised me a name and I was going to hold him to it.
I doubt he'd even heard my comment. His face had taken on the thoughtful look it did when he was coming up with solutions or new rules that made our games better.
"I've got it." His smile broke through after the longest pause of my entire life. "If you take the first and last letter from both Lily and Luna- that's "L" from the beginning and "Y" from the end of LilY, and then "L" from the beginning of your middle name and "A" from the end of LunA- you get LYLA… Perfect! See I told you I could give you your very own name."
"What?" My face wrinkled with confusion. Was that my only option? LIE-lah. "I don't even think that's a real name, Teddy!"
"Exactly!" His face was bright and just as radiant as my other friend, the sun. "That's what makes it you very own!"
The memory slipped away from me, and I woke up painfully aware of the lumpy hospital bed beneath me. Maybe if I kept my eyes shut I could fall back asleep, but an incessant pressure behind my ears deterred me.
"I wouldn't have minded, you know." It wasn't Ginny who spoke, and I clenched my eyelids tighter unwilling to face the reality of my obviously damaged mental state. I knew it was the auburn haired girl from before, the one with Harry's eyes. If I saw her again I didn't think I could pretend I hadn't. "I wasn't exactly using it, and I've been told Lily is a lovely name."
"You're not real." I told her, even though I'd opened my eyes and could see how perfectly real she looked. "Lily Evans is dead."
It would've been easier to convince myself if she didn't look so healthy. Voluminous hair, slender frame, pink cheeks- she didn't look a day older than me. Even if she had lived she would have been old by now.
"Actually, I died Lily Potter." She smiled and even with a mischievous twinkle she still looked sickeningly sweet.
"You're a ghost?" I gasped, pinching my leg over and over again hoping to wake up from the hallucination.
She shook her head, sitting at the bottom corner of the slim bed and made an indention where the mattress gave to her corporeal weight. Ghosts were wispy figures that could float through walls and glide through people. They had no real form in this world.
Still mesmerized by her display, I was caught off guard when she placed a willowy hand on top of mine. Her skin was warm and just as firm as mine.
"To you, I'm just as real as anyone else." Her sweet smile returned.
"Am I crazy? Is that what happened to me the past six months- I lost my mind?" I felt terrified at the possibility. My heart was beating violently, and I let it run wild. I'd rather die of a heart attack than be stuck in St. Mungos for the rest of my life.
"I'm here to help you." Lily told me, tucking her curly hair behind her ear. It was such a normal gesture that I was struck momentarily numb.
"From where- the afterlife, heaven, the great bloody beyond? And don't you think you're a little late to offer assistance? I could have really used you help six months ago when I was kidnapped!" I scoffed. Was it disrespectful to scoff at the dead? I decided I didn't care. If there was someone out there actually keeping count of wrongs then I was already doomed anyways.
"I wish I knew where I came from. I'm as clueless to life after death as you are right now." Her wistful response wasn't what I expected, but honesty read through her eyes so potently I could not doubt her. "I'm only permitted to remember what's important to helping you. I do know that something happened- something changed- in you at some point over the last six months, and that's what allows me to come to you like this… I also know that I'd never be brought here unless it was of great importance."
"Why did you leave earlier when Harry and Ginny walked in?" Information clogged and eroded my mind jostling the sand about. I didn't know where to start or what to ask.
"Because if I had stayed then you would have tried to talk to me in front of them, and they would think your mind was damaged. You're the only one who can see me of course, and it would be rather counterproductive to have you locked up here forever for talking to dead people. We have things to do on the outside… Big things."
"But why? Shouldn't Dad be allowed to see you? He's your son after all."
For the first time, I saw fire in her eyes. Straightening to stand, she crossed her arms and frowned at me unhappily.
"I told you that something happened specifically to you that lets me come to you like this. No, I don't know what that is right now, so don't bother asking. I need you to trust that I'm doing everything in my power and available knowledge to help you."
I stared at her. What choice did I have at this point? I could trust her and hold onto the notion that maybe I really wasn't insane or I could tell the Healers that I was seeing my dead grandmother (who coincidentally looked like a seventeen year old girl). There was no choice. I would accept what she said for the time being, but be prepared to reevaluate the situation when the time came.
"There are people coming." Lily said suddenly looking towards the door even though I couldn't hear anything that would alert me of visitors. "You can't talk to me while they're here. Do you understand? They won't be able to see me."
Frazzled, I looked back and forth between the door and Lily several times before coming to a split second decision.
"Just go. My brain is all fuzzy right now, and I can barely tell what's real and what's not. I might accidentally say something."
"There are still things you need to know-." She shook her head frantically.
I could hear them coming now. It sounded like a stampede was about to burst through my door.
"Just go!" I whispered adamantly as the door opened.
And then she vanished right in front of my eyes as my ears sizzled. The blunt visual of actually seeing her exit left my mind shuddering with disbelief, but I didn't have time to process it as the Potter and Weasley clans came barreling in.
Well Harry and Ginny entered alone, but I caught a glimpse of the circus that waited through the little curtain as it ruffled in the breeze as the door closed behind them.
They both looked loads better and ten years younger without the dark circles under their eyes or same dodgy clothes. A good night's sleep and a shower had made a world of a difference for them.
Worriedly, I lifted a hand to pat my own face, thinking that I could probably use a shower myself. The motion disturbed something hard and thick caked to my face. It started at my chin and covered the space all the way up to my right eye.
"Careful." Ginny tried to take my hand away from my face. "The Healers were very specific about not disturbing your injuries."
"Injuries?" My heart fluttered painfully.
There was no tenderness in my cheek. If I was injured I would be able to feel it, right? It was just numb. The only real pain came from the random throbs in my wrists. I tried to assess my entire body. I was achy and sore, but not worse than after a vigorous workout. Ignoring Ginny's warning I used my hands to trace the rest of my face, down my throat, and then back to my hair.
"Oh, no." Panic seized me, and with shaking fingers I searched for the hair that I'd grown out since I was thirteen. "A mirror… I need a mirror!"
I should have quit seeing the pity on their faces, but I couldn't stop and I yelled at them to help me again. The only mirror was in the attached lavatory though. I tried to go by myself, but my legs were useless and the world spun.
"Can't you see I can't walk?!"
Reluctantly Ginny took me by the arm and offered the support I needed to make it there. Bracing myself on the sink, I looked up terrified into the face of the girl I no longer knew.
I cried out, repelled by my own reflection.
The summer before Albus started Hogwarts, I had developed a fascination with my cousin Victoire. She was older and knew all the best ways to capture a boy's attention. She had the loveliest clothes and the best accessories too.
I'd made Tabatha take me to visit Shell Cottage everyday for an entire week. I'd sit on Victoire's lavender bedspread and watch her at her vanity as she ran careful stroke after stroke through her silver hair. My eyes had not shine with admiration or awe, but instead with the passionate curiosity that struck me often throughout childhood.
"Everyone says you're beautiful." I told her one day after she'd finished her routine, and had turned to begin the daunting task of choosing an outfit for the afternoon.
Her light giggles rang out like Christmas bells filling up the room. She turned away from the full length mirror that she'd just been inspecting, and stared at me with glowing affection.
"The only people who care about being beautiful are the ones who are not."
I'd grown bored with Victoire by the end of the week, but her words struck me hard now like a slap in the face.
I had been beautiful- the most beautiful girl of my year. Everyone said so. It hadn't mattered to me in the least. Why should I worry about beauty when I possessed it so flawlessly? I'd earned it the same way I'd earned my last name- simply by being born.
The girl that stared back at me was not beautiful.
I couldn't breathe. "Take it off!"
"The Healers said-."
"I don't care!" I pulled at the white plaster that covered part of my face. "I have to see. Please, Mum, just take it off for a minute."
She nodded giving into my plea and helping me carefully remove the mask like object from my cheek.
It felt like we were pulling the skin directly off my face, setting a torch to the nerves, but I made her keep going. I realized the only thing that had prevented me from the pain had been whatever potion was swabbed on the inside of the mask. I felt the pain now though, clenching my teeth to keep from crying out.
It was so potent I felt lightheaded.
"If you follow the Healers' directions and with some other magical assistant, they're hopeful eventually it won't be so noticeable." I heard Ginny's words in the back of my mind, but my focus remained on the mirror.
I'd always prided myself on my complexion. It wasn't a normal redheaded skin tone. It was smooth and prone to tanning. I wasn't the blushing type, but if I had been I was positive my lovely skin would keep the secret for me.
Now it was white, nearly translucent, and so pale I was envious of Nearly Headless Nick.
Three vulgar wounds, gaping and oozing, ran up from my chin under the distinct line of my high cheekbone. They were thick, deep, and smudged with black where they did not burn crimson.
I couldn't breathe. "Tell me."
Ginny just stared at me.
"Tell me about all of it. Not just what I can see, but what has already been healed or numbed so much I can't even feel it."
As her face went green with nausea, at least I could say that I looked better than her for a second.
"Other than the cuts on your face, there was a half healed lacerations on your abdomen."
I wanted to look for myself, but I couldn't take my eyes off the face in the mirror. "Why did they heal the cut on my stomach and leave the one of my face?"
"From what the Healers could tell the injury to your abdomen would have been life threatening, while the other is superficial. Whoever healed your stomach either wasn't skilled in healing magic or very careless because there's a scar as well." Ginny continued. Her jaw was clenched with disgust, but she pushed forward with her words. "You had four broken ribs that were healed by the first responding Aurors in the forest. Your wrists were shackled together with what appeared to be cursed manacles. They had to break your hands to get them off, but they were healed immediately after. It appeared you'd been restrained in them for awhile due to the extensive nerve damaged in your wrists. The Healers did what they could, but they don't know how much permanent harm has been done."
I remembered the blood and gore that had oozed from underneath the shackles as I ran. I was thankful for the bandages now. I had no desire to see them again.
"There was some internal bleeding." Ginny choked as her throat filled with emotion, but she swallowed it back for both of our sakes. "There was also some water in your lungs."
"Water?" I had been soaked. I remembered now.
"Yes, the Aurors searched the area for a water source, but they couldn't find anything that would be large enough to submerge your entire body in."
"Tell me the rest." I demanded.
Her face was red and a splotchy rash spread down her neck before exploding across her chest. "Why, Lyla? It'll only cause you pain."
"Tell me!" Gasp after gasp I reached for oxygen even as stars sparkled at the corners of my eyes. I had to get through this. "Just do it."
"You were naked, but they couldn't determine whether a sexual assault had taken place. Your feet had been shredded. They were so raw that it took twice as much potion to regrow any skin than even a severe burn victim. There were countless superficial scratches, burns, and bruises. You were also suffering from a severe concussion. The Healers discovered a broken bone in your leg that had never been treated, but had healed wrong. It had to be re-broken so they could fix it."
"That's it?" It was a fight to get my voice out through the sharp intakes that punished my lungs.
"You were malnourished. The Healers said you wouldn't have made it another week."
I stared at my gaunt face. I'd always been thin, but this was disgusting. The skin was pulled tight, making my eyes protrude and look too wide. The bones of my shoulders looked like hidden knives beneath the gown.
The more air I tried to force into my lungs, the more I craved.
My hair that had once shone in crimson curtains down my back was gone. Where my skin had lightened, my hair had done the opposite until it was almost as black as Dad's. The only red tone came from where the light reflected off it. It was a horrifying contrast to my skin.
"Did you do this?" Despite my gasping breaths I tried to speak, holding up a limp strand that only hung to my shoulder.
"It was like that when we found you." There was apology in her eyes. "It looks like it was sawed off."
Sawed off? Why would someone do that? Why would someone do any of it? I was far from perfect, but did I deserve this? Did anyone deserve this?
My deformed reflection was the last thing I saw before promptly passing out.
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Author's Note: I've outlined this story to the very end- just as long and complicated as Love and Other Tragedies. There will be similarities; both focus on strong female leads, deal with the complicated issues of love, and revolve around a mystery. However Memoirs of a Bad Girl is lighter and more humorous, and while this chapter was solely in first person from Lyla's perspective (and she will continue to be the main narrator), we will get the chance to look through a few other characters' eyes.
That being said if you enjoy the story and want to see me continue to post please speak up. I probably won't bother keeping up with it if there isn't an interest for the story.
The EPILOGUE for "Love and Other Tragedies" will be posted before the next chapter of "Memoirs" goes up.