This was written for Angie's Next Gen competition, my prompt was Back when you were good-The Hours with Hugo and Lily as characters.
Thanks a lot to Persephone's Flower who helped me with the story and beta-read it. She did a wonderful work!
wherever you are: come back to us
...
They've never been close. It's a well known fact among the Potter-Weasley clan that there's Lily, Roxanne and Fred on one side, and there's Hugo, Louis and Lucy on the other. Molly is the free electron, torn between her twin sister and her Slytherin buddy, Lily.
The kids -it's what their other cousins call them, even if they aren't that much older- aren't rivals or anything, but they just don't share the same interests. That's why Hugo and Lily aren't friends. Since they were small, they were in different groups and their paths rarely met. Except for Christmas and pranks, but those are other stories.
It started in the garden of the burrows, went through Hogwarts, and even now, though they are young adults, it continues. They follow different roads.
He often meets with Lucy and works with Louis, but he rarely sees Lily. Today is different though, she lost her best friend, Joan, because of a stupid Quidditch accident. And it's driving her crazy.
It's unfair, you're not supposed to die at the age of twenty, "but life never has been fair, Lily," he tells her.
"You heard about what our parents lived through, do you think it was fair? Yes, it's horrible what happened to Joan, but you can't do a thing about it. I'm sorry Lily, I truly am."
She doesn't talk to him.
She never talks to anyone anymore. She hides herself in her own little world, she ignores the others, and even Fred's and Roxy's jokes don't cheer her up. She is changing, she has changed.
When she comes to the dinners at the Burrow, she's only a shadow of herself. The annoying, cunning and conceited Lily she liked to play just to bother them goes missing. She's focused on her (stupid) work, avoids Quidditch like the plague and doesn't laugh any more. But everyone is fooled, and two months after the accident, they think she has recovered. Only Hugo knows she has not. Hugo is the observant one. But mostly, Hugo is not afraid of the truth like her parents and grandparents are.
He knows Lily's biggest dream is not to be a columnist at the Daily. Yet, on one afternoon, a colleague of hers tells him she refused the editorship promotion. He wants to confront her about it, but she refuses to talk, again. So the Gryffindor becomes a Slytherin and he avoids the subject, but still, he makes an effort to speak with her, all the same. He talks about chess and he talks about the upcoming wedding of his sister, Rose. And slowly, he discovers his cousin while his first motives are still being held somewhere in the back of his head. Remembered, not forgotten. He wants to win her trust, win her friendship. A friendship he should have built when they were kids, back when it would've been easy.
The subjects are light and funny, and he does see her laugh, but it's just not the same. So, one night, when they are at his apartment, he finally confronts her.
She denies, of course, she denies everything: because it's easier. But Hugo is strong and stubborn, and when he has an idea in the head, he won't abandon it. He yells at her, he hurts her with his acid words, and she breaks. She finally breaks.
Crying. Admitting everything.
It turned out Joan was supposed to be the editorship. They only proposed to her because Joan was dead. And it hurts twice. It hurts her pride to know Joan was better than her, and it hurts her heart to know she had that thought in the first place. She's crying, and the only thing Hugo can do is hold her. He holds her until dawn, when she dries her tears.
A new day is rising, and a new friendship is born, but he can't help but wish he had known her back then, when she was good, when she was fiery, bubbling and herself. Because now, the only thing he can do is hope she'll be back on tracks. That her, once contagious smile, will infect them all again and that she'll be okay. He just wishes that she will return from wherever she has gone, because they're waiting for her, resolutely.