Written For:

Quidditch Fanfiction League Competition: Round 11
Captain - Use Uzumaki — Junji Ito as inspiration (According to an overview, never read it, spirals were a curse. So, this is how it inspired me)

Monthly Challenges For All:
Fill Number: 1
Representation(s): Scorpius/Lily Luna, murder, curses, death
Word Count: 1,231

Warning for death, curses, and angst.

Cursed!

Lily Luna huddled in a ball on the dusty floor. She covered her ears with her arms, doing her best to drown out the sounds of London's busy streets.

With her eyes closed, all she saw were the horrors she had been forced to bear witness to, always there and never able to stop it.

James chasing something off of a cliff.

Something pulling Albus under water.

Her mum clutching an antique knife with an intricate handle and stabbing her father with it.

And then, with empty eyes, her mum taking the same knife and slitting her own throat.

Blood. So much blood pooling around both of their lifeless bodies.

Tears streamed down Lily's cheeks. Her body shook as the images played on a continuous loop in her head, never having a different ending because it was what actually happened.

"Mummy, Daddy, I miss you," Lily whispered, using terms for her parents that she hadn't used since she was nine years. It sounded odd, coming out of an almost eighteen-year-old, but there was no one around to hear it.

There was a thump outside the ramshackle building. Lily jumped, her eyes fearfully going to the door. She held her breath, waiting, sure something was coming after her. Surely the death of her parents and brothers weren't mere coincidences.

She stared. There was no other sound, other than busy London traffic, and her shoulders relaxed. Then another thump came again.

Lily stood up on shaky legs. She grabbed a broken glass shard and held it before her in defense. She readied herself for an oncoming attack. She saw a hand against the glass of the door and a face peered in, looking into the building. She saw nothing but fierce eyes almost hidden beneath a fringe white-blond bangs. Still, she knew who it is and allowed the glass to fall from her hands.

Scorpius opened the door, and Lily flew into his arms. He held her tightly. "They're gone! They're all gone," she muttered, clutching his shirt in tight fists.

Scorpius held her. "I know, I know, I know," he murmured.

After a few minutes of just holding each other, Lily took a step back. "How did you know I was here?"

"I know you, and this is where we used to sneak away to when we still lived with our parents and we wanted some alone time."

Lily stared at her feet. "How did everything get so messed up?"

"Lily," he took her hand and tugged it to get her attention, "I need you to think really hard. Do you remember anything strange about what happened to your family? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Besides them all dying within days of each other, and my mum going psycho and killing my dad."

Scorpius let go of her hand and brushed a stray tear that fell from Lily's eyes. "You know something is not right. Ginny Potter would never hurt her husband. She loved him way too much. And James and Albus' deaths…" He shook his head. "There were freaky. Think. You saw it all happened. You must have noticed something."

"I have been thinking! It's all I can think about! If I noticed something, I'd tell you. Leave me alone!" Lily finished in a scream.

Scorpius pressed a kiss to her quivering lips. "I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't think it was important. Stop looking at the big picture and look at the details. Think about the details."

"I don't know what the point is," she muttered even as she closed her eyes.

She saw James. She saw him running. Chasing something toward the cliff, towards his untimely death. It was some kind of animal. She studied the animal in her mind's eyes. Saw the body of the unfamiliar creature, detailed with a pattern. A pattern of pyramids. That's it! Its whole body was decorated by pyramids.

Then she thought about Albus. Something dragged him underwater. Albus struggled to get to the surface, struggled to find air. His body thrashed as he opened his mouth, breathing in water instead of oxygen. She forced herself to ignore the brother she always felt closest to and instead, focused on what was keeping him anchored to the lake's floor. It was a rock that was attached to a rope. The rope was tied around Albus's ankle and the knot was shaped in the form of a pyramid.

Another pyramid!

She then turned her attention to her father's murder and mother's suicide. Knowing what she would find, Lily turned her focus on the intricate hand of the murder weapon: the knife. And just like she thought it would be, there were pyramids all along the handle. Tiny emeralds outlining the three-dimensional shapes, making such a horrible weapon pretty.

"Pyramids!" she gasped.

Scorpius nodded. "I went to Godric's Hollow. I hadn't heard from you and was worried. There have been other deaths. Muggles and Magical."

Lily stared at the door behind Scorpius as if it would have all of the answers. "Do they all have something to do with a pyramid?"

Scorpius nodded. "Every death involved a pyramid in some way. I think it's a curse."

"Is it only happening in Godric's Hollow?"

"Yes," Scorpius nodded. He continued, a fantastical light shining in his eyes. "If it's a curse, it can be broken. All curses can be broken. We just need to find the center of it."

Scorpius wanted to solve the mystery. He wanted to solve it so no one else got hurt. He wanted to solve it so her family's deaths weren't in vain, and she loved him for it, but she couldn't go back there. She couldn't set foot back in the town that did this to her. "No," she softly said.

Scorpius continued without hearing her. "If we just figure out where the first death was, then we can figure out how to break the curse."

Louder, Lily said, "No."

Scorpius blinked slowly. "What? What do you mean 'no?"

"I mean I'm not going back there. I got away with my life. Everyone I know that lives in Godric's Hollow is gone. I'm not going to tempt fate and go back there. The curse will just come after me. I have no reason to go back."

Scorpius shook his head. "How can you say that? Don't you want to make sure what happened to your family doesn't keep happening? Albus was my best friend; he was your brother. And so was James. And your mum and dad. How can you turn your back on them and not find a way to stop it?"

"I think they'd rather I live," Lily said dispassionately.

"They'd want justice," Scorpius argued.

"I'm not going back."

"Then I'll do it by myself." Scorpius turned to leave and stopped, his hand on the doorknob and his back to her. "I thought you were better than this."

"I guess I'm not as Gryffindor as my parents and James were."

Scorpius looked at her one last time. "That's not a good excuse; I'm a Slytherin." She watched him leave her alone in the broken down room.

That was the last time she ever saw him again, and in the deep, dark recesses of her mind, she knew the curse got him too. But she kept her promise, and she never set foot in Godric's Hollow again.

XX

(word count: 1,231)