For the Captaining The Next-Gen Armada challenge on ngf, where the challenge is to be the first to write all of the possible nextgen, het, non-cousincest pairings, along with OC pairings for the five Weasley/Potter guys. There are 33 pairings, and the aim is to try and write them all.
disclaimer: i don't own harry potter.
dedication: this chapter is dedicated to the wonderful isha for being so flawless 24/7.
i. lilylorcan
I often wonder if things could have turned out differently. If I could turn back the clock and re-do it all, I know there are things that I would change. Really, if I had the chance, I would change almost everything. I don't know if I could change the time I had with Lorcan. I loved him. I love him. Maybe I'm selfish, but I wouldn't change the time we had together for anything. He knows that, I'm sure that he knows how I feel, but when did what I feel ever change anything? Maybe we were never meant to be, but I wanted us to be together. Why wasn't that enough?
Maybe I am insignificant. I've thought that for a while, now. All that matters is my dammed last name. I'm the girl who was never the girl she was supposed to be. Really, that's where it all went wrong.
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The problem with myself is that I just can't seem to let things go. Maybe I never did learn to forgive and forget. My Ravenclaw status seems invalid, really, from all the mistakes I've made, although I'm told that I sound like a Ravenclaw.
The Houses of Hogwarts are just a tool to keep us all apart, really. I've never liked that you can be judged on what house you're in, that an enchanted hat, for crying out loud, can determine your whole Hogwarts career. Stereotypes and labels have never been what I've liked, and, really, it all just seems like a way to cause even more divides in an already flawed school system. Then again, I've always over-analysed things.
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I was sixteen years old when I finally realised that there is nothing logical about love. I suppose that's why Ravenclaws tend to stick to books and ancient scrolls, to being Unspeakables, Aurors, Professors. Love cannot be predicted and, for me, that's the hardest thing of all. I couldn't measure the love anyone had for me—hell, I couldn't even measure the love I had for them!
If something can't be defined by logic, then, really, what can it be defined by? Maybe love is something that cannot be specified, cannot be tied down by a simple label. Then again, nobody is. We're all just atoms put together to form something human, but at the end of the day, we're so much more than that, we're something that can have millions of labels attached to, and yet always be so much more.
When even a Ravenclaw cannot wrap their head around something, it's a sign that it's complicated.
I tend to go off on a tangent when I'm avoiding talking about something more important. People would call it a Ravenclaw trait, but I disagree. It's my trait, that I happen to share with some people in my House.
Things tend to aggravate me. I presume that's the reason that I don't have many friends.
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As I was saying, I was sixteen years old when I found out that love isn't logical. Or, I could say that I was sixteen years old when I fell in love with one Lorcan Scamander. He was a cocky Gryffindor, and I was the nerdy Ravenclaw who spoke too much and was generally avoided. To this day, I still don't know why he fell in love with me. Hell, I don't know why I fell in love with him.
I learnt that love isn't logical because in a logical world, I would have fallen in love with Thomas Goldstein or Ryan Boot, or some other Ravenclaw of my age, and Lorcan would have fallen for a Gryffindor like him. But love isn't logical, and it isn't held down by any definition.
But somehow, that's the point, somehow I fell in love with Lorcan Scamander, and he fell in love with me. How it happened is beside the point, because I doubt anyone could ever explain. Sayings like opposites attract are used, but I can't understand, I don't understand. I don't think I ever will understand. Trying to turn love into logic is like trying to catch smoke—you can try all you like, but all the answers, or the smoke, will just keep slipping through your fingers.
I fell in love with Lorcan Scamander, and I fell for him hard. I won't recount the starry nights, the letters he sent me, even though I was only one table across from him. I won't regale you with stories of the times he made me laugh so hard I cried, or how it felt when he kissed me. I'm not going to recount the times we followed people around the castle, just for the hell of it, and I'm not going to tell you that he was the most romantic man I've ever met. I won't tell you all of the things we had because they were ours, and ours alone, and the memories are all I have now. I'm not sacrificing that.
The story I can tell you is the story of we fell apart, because it's a story I have to voice aloud to confirm that it is real in my mind. That's the problem with being me—I have to face up to reality. I can't shy away from what really happened, because if I can't accept the events that have made me who I am, then I can't accept the person that I am, and I am that person, and I know that, and maybe I hate the person I've become, but hating yourself does nothing but turn you bitter.
It always hurts when I try to over-analyse things. Maybe I should stop.
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We began to fall apart on a Wednesday afternoon in June. The sun was still out, but it wasn't beating down like expected. Weather is unpredictable too, and though it can sometimes be harnessed and predicted, more often than not, it does things that are out of place for the time. We were sitting on a ledge of an archway, perched precariously on an edge, but I didn't care. The likelihood of us falling was slim, and if we kept our balance right, then it was practically impossible. I was in Seventh year, and Lorcan was in sixth, and the question we'd both been thinking about came out. It had to, sooner or later. I suppose I'd just been hoping that it'd be later.
"What are you doing after Hogwarts?" Lorcan asked me, and I closed my eyes for a second, almost as if I could freeze the picture and go somewhere else, only to return when I felt able to answer such a question, to enter into a conversation that was going somewhere I didn't want to go.
"I don't know." I'd replied, and it hurt. Me, Lily Luna Potter, top of the class for almost everything, Ravenclaw, so sure of everything, and yet I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life.
Lorcan paused, and I could see all of his Gryffindor exterior just melt away, and do you know what? He looked defenseless. He looked like he was in pain. The worst thing is that I knew that I was the one who had done that to him. I was the one who had hurt him, and all I did was fall in love with a guy a year younger than me. A year isn't even that long, but, spent apart, it is. It fell apart because the foundations just melted away, leaving nothing but bits and pieces of what used to be something magical, something wonderful, and it was all my fault.
I can deal with complicated spells. I can brew the most complicated Potions. I can work out what someone is suffering from and think of a way to cure them. But the one thing I cannot do is stay with someone, knowing that I am causing them pain. Coping with somebody's emotions is hard, and even worse knowing that you have caused them.
I am a coward. That has always been clear to me, and although I'm certainly not proud, it's who I am, and who am I to reject the things that make me me?
Running away solves no problems, but sometimes it can help to numb the pain. I am tired of being numb, tired of being so lonely yet never alone. I have run away more times than I can count, run away from people, from problems, from duties, from the demons in my mind.
.
That was not the last time that I saw Lorcan Scamander. Fate is a funny thing, something that perhaps I shouldn't believe in, but when logic is abandoned, the only thing that can really take over is fate. Could logic bring Lorcan Scamander back to me? I don't know. I hate it when I don't know.
It seems that everything significant between Lorcan and I happened on a Wednesday, and so I saw Lorcan again on a Wednesday morning, walking through the ministry. If there is such a thing as fate, then it is cruel. The wind was blowing outside, causing the Autumn leaves to be picked up and fly around for a while, before falling to the ground again, waiting for the next time they could be picked up.
A single glance passed between us that day, one that was red hot and yet ice cold at the same time, filled with love, passion, hate and longing. Filled with everything that wasn't ours and everything that maybe could become ours. In that moment, I had believed, and then before I knew it, he was gone.
Then, I was naïve. I thought that maybe things that once were could come to be again, and maybe even work out. I was wrong.
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I have told myself time and time again that I will not dwell on the past, and yet, in a person's life, how can they not? How can they not think of all that they were, all that they have come to be, when it is all that they are?
So how can I not think of Lorcan? Of the events which made us become lovers once more? How can I not recall those days where the sunlight would stream in through the window and light up his body.
Maybe some things just aren't meant to be. Except that we were, until we were not.
I love Lorcan Scamander. That fact has always been clear to me.
Now, he will never love me again. Why does that fact have to be the clearest of them all?
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One day, I see him pass me by in the Ministry halls. I see his hair, I see his beautiful blue eyes, and in one shared glance, all of our history is recalled, taking me back to those days where I didn't worry about heartbreak. He tears his eyes away from mine, and in that moment, I know that whatever we had is gone.
It is gone.
I know it will not come back.
Probably a MollyTeddy or ScorpiusVictoire up next. Feel free to request pairings for me to do next, although my muse is stupid, so I can't guarantee anything. ;)
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