author's note:
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of it's characters. I only own this plot line and Lynette. I don't even own her last name.
Disclaimer: the song in the middle was one English version of Brahms' Lullaby, which I also do not own.
Trigger Warning: for the deaths of family members, and also brief mentions of self-harm.
*this story has gone under drastic edits including main character changes.
Well I have brittle bones it seems
I bite my tongue and torch my dreams
Have a little voice to speak with
And a mind of thoughts and secrecy
-Daughter, "Candles"
"Lynette! Lynette! LYNETTE!" A voice calls for her in the masses, but she will never answer. She can't answer, even if it has been two years.
She pushes her way through the crowd of crying first years—she was one of them once. She used to miss home: the old fading floral wallpaper and the secret hiding spaces under the floorboards for her prized knick-knacks and the woods in the backyard where she used to lay for hours and hours on end, doing nothing but staring at the clouds or the stars between the tree tops. Now she just misses the people who used to reside in it, her mother's light and airy perfume and her brothers' loud and boisterous voices that could fill any room.
"You know, she's never going to give up," a voice says from behind her. "Molly is a persistent girl." Lynette just glares up at the tall boy, who is clad in jeans and one of the t-shirts they made when they were eleven and about to embark on a new journey called Hogwarts, before silently walking away and finding a compartment. The t-shirt is tie-dyed with blue handprints and black lettering that says forever. Freddie. He's just as persistent as Molly will always be, but while Molly blatantly screams Lynette's name and alerts the blonde of her presence, Freddie just shows up behind her and steals her air, like a thief in the night. And this t-shirt is just his little reminder to Lynette of all the promises she has shattered.
They will never understand, so she will always leave them with the wind, disappearing from their sights like the ghost of a flame that she is.
She's never going back.
.
Since the start of third year, the first day of classes for every year has been the hardest. Two years later is no different. It took a long time for Lynette to get used to the sorrowful looks on her professor's faces whenever they called her name. A short sigh, a mournful curve of their lips. The way their eyes search for her face to make sure she is okay, every single fucking day.
It took even longer to get used to the ones her Herbology professor throws her every single time he sees her. Neville Longbottom's kind eyes grow sad whenever he sees her. She thinks it might be because she looks just like her mother, wispy blonde hair and pale skin. Lanky arms and knobby knees and wide, blue saucers for eyes.
She understands this look, though. She understands exactly what he's thinking because she sees the same look and thinks the same things whenever she looks in the mirror.
.
Meals are by far the worst of everyday, though. Surrounded by the people she used to play with as a child, Lynette forces herself to only look at her plate, to focus on downing the little amounts of food she places on it. Freddie and Molly watch her like hawks from the Gryffindor table, two pairs of eyes connecting with her pale ones whenever she slips, whenever she loses her will power. Their stares will always make her feel uneasy. Freddie's hard, unwavering stare and Molly's sad, disappointed one.
An owl drops an envelope onto her lap. It's the first time she's gotten a letter from the post in two years.
dear lynette,
we miss you, even dommy and her stingy attitude. we all know life must be so hard, but that didn't mean you had to pull away from us, we could've helped, still can. we love you with all of our hearts, and even without shared blood, you are our family. and family never gives up on each other. nettie, we just want you back. but more than anything, we want you to be okay.
forever,
molly
p.s. freddie hasn't been the same without you.
There's that word again, forever. Lynette doesn't believe in forever, not anymore.
She can feel eyes on her back as she leaves breakfast early. She drops a dirty napkin on the edge of the Gryffindor table, right next to Albus because she knows Albus is the quiet watcher, always on duty, never faltering. She loses her will power as she gets to the doors, taking one swift glance over her bony shoulder to see Freddie and Molly's dark eyes staring at her with an intensity she has never seen there before. They aren't happy about what that dirty napkin says.
no.
.
"Let me fix you," a voice says out of nowhere. She probably would have desperately tried to hide her lit Muggle cigarette, but she immediately recognizes the voice. The one that sneaks up on her when she's least expecting it, so she's stopped trying to expect. A voice that, no matter what, will follow her forever.
forever.
She cackles at his childish words, puts out her fag with her worn-out, once white, canvas sneaker, and walks away.
.
Molly's voice is different. Usually, it's loud and boisterous and everyone knows the moment she walks into a room, but when she wants it to, which is rarely, she can be oh so quiet. Her quiet voice whispers childhood memories into Lynette's ears as she's falling asleep at night, eyes falling slowly shut, then opening, then shutting a little bit more, then opening a little less. Molly's voice is the perfect lullaby. And her voice will follow along with Freddie's, forever.
forever.
She's getting sick of that word.
.
She remembers two official looking men in nice dress robes on her doorstep. Sullen-eyed but blanked-faced. Their trying-to-hard-to-be-monotone voices as they told her and her father the most terrible, oh so terrible, news that they would ever hear in their lives.
She remembers the hours, the weeks, the months lost to weeping without the tight embrace of her mother's loving arms. Weeping over the loss of those loving arms.
She still feels the obvious loss of three loved souls. Her mother. Her brothers.
.
Freddie is showing up more and more, and Lynette finds herself welcoming the company.
she hates herself for it.
He doesn't try talking anymore, just sits next to her, always close enough for their shoulders to graze one another's. Sometimes, when she carelessly drops a cigarette without putting it out, he'll get up and rub the butt into the soft earth with his sneaker. His deep brown eyes don't sparkle like they used to, when they were younger and smaller and much, much more excited for life. She even overheard two girls in her common room gossiping about how he rarely gets detentions anymore. They say he's running out of pranks.
Lynette did that to him. She never knew she could do that to a person.
.
"You're fucking killing them," Lily Luna says one day in passing, her eyes as fiery as her hair. She was always the spitfire of the family, never losing her spirit no matter what or who tried to get her down.
Lynette just spits on her shoes.
.
Professor Longbottom is giving her that sad fucking look again, so she gets up and leaves. Wanders the castle until dark, losing house points and not caring, making sure to get back to her dormitory after her roommates are fast asleep. She smokes a cigarette out the window, and when one of the girls wakes up to the smell of smoke, Lynette has the half-misfortune of it being Lucy.
"Those things will kill you," is all she says, before laying back down. No telling her to put it out. No giving her a long-winded speech. Just those five words, said with such a dull delivery, Lynnette knows Lucy is far past caring.
"Not quick enough," Lynette mumbles, but she knows Lucy heard because the other girl shuts her curtains quicker than usual.
So maybe she does still care.
.
lullaby, and good night, in the skies stars are bright
may the moon, silvery beams, bring you with dreams
close you eyes, now and rest, may these hours be blessed
till the sky's bright with dawn, when you wake with a yawn
lullaby, and good night, you are mother's delight
i'll protect you from harm, and you'll wake in my arms
sleepyhead, close your eyes, for I'm right beside you
guardian angels are near, so sleep without fear
lullaby, and good night, with roses bedight
lilies o'er head, lay thee down in thy bed
lullaby, and good night, you are mother's delight
i'll protect you from harm, and you'll wake in my arms
lullaby, and sleep tight, my darling sleeping
on sheets white as cream, with the head full of dreams
sleepyhead, close your eyes, i'm right beside you
lay thee down now and rest, may you slumble the best
go to sleep, little one, think of puppies and kittens.
go to sleep, little one, think of butterflies in spring.
go to sleep, little one, think of sunny bright mornings.
hush, darling one, sleep through the night
sleep through the night
sleep through the night
.
She's smoking in her funeral dress because it's that time of year again when a different boy sits next to her. He's got the same color eyes as her, but his hair is darker. He is a constant reminder of two little boys who didn't deserve to die.
"Scorpius." She nods. He's really the only person she talks to because he speaks in short curt sentences, and she lives like that.
"Lynette." Neither ever took to calling others by their surnames. He pulls out of cigarette of his own, and steals her lighter.
"How's fucking around on Rose Weasley?" Everybody knows Scorpius used to fuck around, but now everyone thinks he's gone soft dating Rosie-Posey. They should tell that to Naomi, the girl who found her father hanging from a ceiling fan and has 'cat-scratches' on her forearms.
"How's fucking with some Weasleys' head?" Ouch.
"Touche."
.
That night, she sneaks down into the dungeons and into the potions classroom. She brings her cauldron along in her shoulder bag, and drops to her knees in the potions closet to make the potion that kept her alive when she was thirteen and in the tailwind of the heaviest loss of anyone she has ever known. Amortentia.
Tonight, it starts to kill her. She doesn't smell her mother's flowery perfume or the gel her brothers used in their hair or the familiar scent of asparagus, her mother's favorite vegetable to cook. Tonight, she smells Freddie's mixture of cologne and sweat when they're boiling out in the sun but he refuses to walk away. She smells Molly's detergent and hairspray from when the girl manages to get close enough for a few seconds. She smells drying paint on t-shirts and wet grass from the late August night going on five years ago. Tonight, she realizes how dumbly in love with two beautiful, unrelenting souls she is. And it kills her just a little bit more.
.
"Why won't you let me fix you?"
"You fix noses and bones, inanimate objects, not entire beings. I'm not some fucking mechanical toy," she spits. She looks him right in the eyes, holding his gaze for longer than she has in two years. His brown eyes are surprised, but they don't falter.
"People can break, too, it's just different. Physically, there are no wounds, but if you were able to look at their souls, there would a lot of cracks," he kicks at some grass, wipes his palms on his knees
"My soul isn't cracked, Freddie. It's just got a lot of jagged edges that can't ever be smoothed."
.
She ends up staring at him throughout meals, with him staring back. She could stare at him like this, so reciprocated but still somehow unsettling, forever.
forever. oh, there is that word again.
Molly sits next to Freddie, her eyes flickering between the two. If Lynette looked at her, she would have seen the worst kind of hurt in her old best friend's eyes, and a question. One that didn't have an answer, but also had a million.
why him?
.
Molly doesn't realize that Lynette didn't choose Freddie; Freddie chose Lynette. He got to Lynette when she wasn't expecting him to. He knows how to get under her skin. Molly is just too damn loud and always makes everyone aware of her presence.
Lynette loves both of them so much, too much. She wishes Molly could sneak up on her and sit next to her in silence and maybe even smoke a fag, too. But Molly talks too much.
.
How pathetic, she has butterflies.
.
A week after the amortentia, she kisses Freddie on a hot April afternoon. She can smell that familiar scent of cologne and sweat, and Merlin she can't help herself. She kisses him fiercely, as if her life depends on it. When in reality, kissing him in the first place just kills her more. His lips are soft and gentle, and it isn't until he moves his hands to cup her face that she pulls away.
"No."
"Lynette."
"No!"
.
She kisses Molly a day later, when Lynette walks into the library because she's trying to go somewhere Freddie has never found her. She gets to a secluded corner and there the pale brunette is, balled up and crying in a chair. Lynette knows this is because of herself. Because she can't become the unbroken girl she used to be.
And Lynette really can't think of anything to do but kiss Molly's pain away, so she tries not to alert the crying girl of her presence until she is right in front of her. Molly lifts her face up, and Lynette just stares into Molly's watery hazel eyes for a moment. Lynette really does love her so, so much.
She remembers Freddie cupping her face twenty-four hours before, remembers how safe it made her feel before she snapped out of her trance. So she does the same for Molly, cups her face and leans in slowly before placing a gentle kiss on Molly's lips.
Molly kisses back the way Lynette kissed the day before, fiercely and undeniably needy. Molly's lips are chapped and rough, but when Lynette moves her hands to Molly's arms, she finds the skin to smooth and lovely. After a while, Lynette pulls away and runs as fast as she can.
.
"You smell of dirt and smoke," Freddie says one day. She takes a drag off her cigarette, and blows the smoke in his face. She won't let him or Molly love her back. She can't do that to them, make them worry for her sanity, worry for her self-image, just generally worry for her. She both loves them and hates herself too much to ever let herself be happy by loving them. By having them love her back. And she knows it's childish, blowing smoke in his face to make the boy go away. Being mean when you actually have a crush. And she knows that running after kissing Molly has done irreversible damage, and though she isn't happy about it, this is simply what she has to do in order to survive.
Misery doesn't always love company.
He gets up and walks away. He tries less and less and less, and by the end of the year, she only sees him and Molly in passing, and she guesses their eyes still search for her, and every once in a while, she searches back. Hers and Freddie's eyes will meet, and he will try to hold it there, though to no avail. Her eyes always flicker away much too quickly that sometimes he wonders if he ever held her gaze in the first place.
.
On the last day of seventh year before departure, she goes for a swim in the black lake; her black t-shirt clings to her bony flesh. She sits around without her pants as she dries off, and her fingers lightly ghost over a circular burn on her left thigh from falling asleep mid-smoke at the beginning of the year. There was a lot of cursing and tears, but Lucy, who was apparently in the bathroom, came to her rescue. There's a deep cut on her right thigh from when she thought self-mutilation was the answer. There are a lot scars on her knees from picked-scabs when she was still happy-go-lucky and down-to-Earth and reminded herself of a nymph or a fairy or something from her mother's stories.
"Why?" And there he is, sneaking up behind her again, but this time she knows it's only a one time thing. A last go-around before summer. Molly is with him this time, and her eyes are sad and hazel and beautiful and Lynette thinks that if she could just be better, she could let them love her with all their might.
why did you shut us out? why did it take so long to let us back in? why did you let us back in? why did you push us back out again?
There are so many answers. because i can't stand to look at you all smile. because i hate reminders of the past. because i can't stand to be happy when my mother and brothers don't even get to be alive. because your faces do something to me that i will never be able to explain. because both of your eyes are the perfect shade of brown: dark coffee, and light hazel. because you were always the only ones who got me. because you want to fucking fix me and i can't let you.
"Because I can't ruin you." So simple, so true. And now they understand.
They leave her behind with the wind, and as they back away from her, walking backwards to keep their eyes on her as long as they can, she disappears from their sight like the ghost of a flame that she always will be, from now unto forever.
forever.
They know she's never coming back.
.
Lynette Scamander used to live off of butterflies.