Disclaimer: JKR owns HP. CS Lewis owns Narnia.
Note: You may want to read 'A World For Dreamers' before reading this. This is basically an AU of that fic, where the point of divergence is that Lucy was born two years earlier, in the same year as Albus/Rose/Scorpius.
For Mad's (limegreenrocks) member challenge on Next-Gen Fanatics, with the couple Lucy/Scorpius and the prompts 'missing', 'expanse', 'time', and 'rising'.
Also for Becca (Aebbe), who celebrated her birthday on April 6th, and for whom this is way late, but I hope you like it anyway, Becca! Happy birthday!
She disappears in the month of March, in the middle of a rainy, star-studded night, and he's perhaps the only one who knows why.
(Maybe that means something?)
Lucy's never been a rebellious type of girl. In fact, she's always been the perfect one, the pretty, bubbly social butterfly with the world as her oyster and her eyes sparkling bright. She made friends easily in Hogwarts, she attends dances and parties, she goes on dates with nice, polite boys, and in her free time, she paints and laughs and dreams.
About what, Scorpius has a pretty good idea.
"What book are you reading?" he'd asked her once upon entering the Ravenclaw Common Room and finding her curled up in her usual couch by the window reading what looked like a Muggle storybook.
Lucy'd glanced up and smiled. "The Chronicles of Narnia," she answered, holding up the cover of the book for him to examine. "It's an excellent Muggle book stories about four children who accidentally enter the magical land of Narnia and become its kings and queens thanks to a great prophecy, but only after defeating the White Witch."
"Sounds like your type of book," he had grinned. "Tell me about the kids?"
Her blue eyes had lit up with the excitement of explaining her book, her dreams, to him, and over time, she'd let him enter her little world, discover its secrets, explain to him about High King Peter the Magnificent and Queen Susan the Gentle and King Edmund the Just and Queen Lucy the Valiant. She told him about their courage and bravery, about how they ruled the land fairly, how they were remembered as the Kings and Queens of Old when Prince Caspian came along.
"Who's your favorite?" he asked her once, sitting on a bench in a courtyard as she told him about Eustace Scrubb and his annoying lack of belief. "Of the Kings and Queens, I mean."
Lucy had run her finger down the spine of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and shrugged. "Lucy. Or Edmund."
He wishes, now, that he'd thought to ask her why her bright blue eyes seemed so faraway then, lost in dreams of castles and queens.
"Lucy's missing," says Lily, breathless with panic, when she enters the boys' dormitory and shakes him awake. "Scorpius, come on, wake up. We're having a meeting in Uncle Neville's office!"
"You mean Professor Longbottom," he corrects, blinking sleepily at her, when he comprehends the first two words she'd spoken. "What do you mean, Lucy's missing?"
Lily grabs his arm and hauls him to a sitting position with a strength belying her size. "I mean that Lucy's missing," she hisses. "She's gone, disappeared in the night, and we don't know if she just ran away or if she was kidnapped or if – "
"Stop that, you're scaring me," Scorpius grumbles, trying to quash the wave of panic rising in his chest as he fumbles for his shoes. "Let's go, then."
"You might want to put on a jacket; it's raining," she warns him. "Hurry up, Dominique and I are going to be in the Common Room."
He shrugs on the closest jacket he can find that belongs to him and rushes downstairs to meet the two girls, following them out of the Common Room and across the castle to Professor Longbottom's office on the third floor, where the rest of Lucy's family and friends are gathered.
Albus ambushes him first. "You were the last person who saw her, Scorp. Do you have any idea where she could have gone?"
Scorpius thinks back to last night, when he'd last spoken to Lucy. She'd been rereading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, curled up on an armchair by the fireplace, her blue eyes lit with dreams, and he remembers thinking she's so beautiful and so lost in her world of Kings and Queens and Lions.
"She was reading Narnia," he tells Albus, managing to choke the words out through a sudden lump in his throat. "I got sleepy, so I said good night and went to bed. And the next thing I knew, Lily was waking me up and telling me that Lucy had gone missing."
"You have no idea where she could have gone?" demands Audrey, dabbing at her tears with a tissue. "She's been missing for hours. Her hand on the family clock is pointing at nothing. Do you have any clues at all, Scorpius?"
"No," Scorpius murmurs. "I – why don't we send out search parties?"
"Teddy and Victoire and Molly are already out on the grounds of Hogwarts," interjects Professor Longbottom. "Would you like to join them, Mr. Malfoy?"
"Yes." Scorpius nods frantically. "Yes. I want to help."
"Go, then," Professor Longbottom says with a small smile. "Good luck."
Scorpius exhales, nods again, and races off to go save the girl of (his) dreams.
It's not hard to find her, if you know where to look. And somehow, impossibly, amazingly, Scorpius does – or, at least, he has a better idea than her cousins, and manages to make his way to her favorite little clearing near the Forbidden Forest thanks to a good combination of luck and instinct.
He finds her lying on the grass next to a waterfall pool, her blond curls fanned out on the green grass, her eyes closed, her body limp and d – nope, not going there. She's asleep, is all (he hopes).
"Lucy?" he breathes, hardly able to believe it. "Lucy, wake up. Lucy? Lucy!"
As if the sound of her name had called her from sleep, she blinked open her blue eyes, and he's struck by how much brighter they seem, as if they're reflecting the water of the pool or (maybe another world entirely).
"Scorpius?" she murmurs, stretching out a hand towards him. "Is that you?"
He rushes forward and touches her hand, momentarily startled by how warm and dry it is. "Lucy, what are you doing out here? Your family's been going crazy worrying about you!"
"I had a dream," Lucy explains, allowing him to help her to a sitting position and fixing her bright blue eyes on him. "It was about Narnia, Scorpius. It was about – about – "
Her voice fades, a confused look replacing the sparkle in her eyes, and she furrows her brow. Scorpius kneels down besides her, cradling her head in his arms and gently pulling her onto his lap. She looks like a little girl, but when her blueblue eyes lock onto his, she seems so much older, so distant, like the Queen of a faraway land.
"I don't remember," Lucy admits, her voice soft and achingly lonely. "I don't remember. But it was – oh, Scorpius, I was sleepwalking and I ended up here and I fell into the pool and…"
"You were in Narnia," he completes, a wistful smile on his face. "Lucy, you told me once that you believed. That – that Narnia was real."
"Narnia is real," she insists, sitting up, so close to him that her breath ghosts over his face and he can see every star reflected in her blue eyes. "You know that, don't you?"
Scorpius swallows. "I know that." And he does. Because when she's looking at him like that, eyes bright like diamonds melting in a sky, when she smells like fairytale woods and golden crowns, when she touches his chest and the thump-thump-thump of his heart is echoing in her fingers, he does believe.
Lucy bows her head, blond curls spilling across her shoulders, hiding her face. "I saw it, Scorpius. Once. But it felt like forever."
"Saw what?" he prods gently, brushing a loose curl out of her face. "Cair Paravel?"
"Yes," she breathes. "Yes, I saw that. And I saw the Kings and Queens – Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy – and I saw the Lion, I saw Aslan. And I saw the other Friends of Narnia, and – and Lucy came up and she told me I could be a Queen of Narnia."
Scorpius frowns. "So why aren't you?" he asks, a little puzzled – if anybody deeserves to be a Queen of Narnia, it's Lucy, the girl who believes with all her heart, so strongly in this faraway land that she found a portal to Narnia.
Lucy offers him a slight smile. "I said no."
He freezes. "How come?"
"Because," she says softly, "the me who could have been a Queen is another me, from another world. Don't you see, Scorpius? There are all these different worlds out there, of wizards and witches and Kings and Queens, like alternate dimensions. It's like a tapestry interwoven through time and space, weaving new and different paths for everybody."
Scorpius watches the light in her eyes reignite with dawning realization. "You saw that, too?"
Lucy smiles. "I did. I had to go through it to get to Narnia. Oh, Scorpius, it's beautiful, and it's endless. And there's another me, somewhere out there, who lived in Narnia, who fell in love with Narnia, who died and lived again in Narnia. But that's not me, see?"
She points up at the velvety-black expanse of sky above them. "Out there, at the risk of being cheesy, there's a whole new world. But it's not for everybody."
Scorpius shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Luce – I don't quite understand what you're saying."
"I had a choice," she clarifies. "Between this world and the other. And in some other universe, I would have chosen Narnia. But not here. I couldn't."
"Why not?" he inquires, grey eyes catching and holding her blue gaze. "You're as Narnian as they make them here, Luce."
"In that other world," Lucy whispers, "I didn't have you."
"What difference does that make?" Scorpius asks, genuinely curious.
"It's called the butterfly effect," she answers, taking his hand and squeezing. "Love changes things, Scorpius."
Finally, what she's been trying to tell him sinks in to his brain.
She gave up Narnia for him.
"Lucy," he whispers, hardly able to believe it. The realization that he might have lost her to Narnia, that he was dangerously close to doing just that, hits home, and he has to reach out and draw her into his arms for a hug to make sure she's real. "You didn't have to do that."
"Of course I did," she answers immediately. "I'll always have Narnia, because in our world, it exists inside the hearts of believes. But I can't let love go."
The only logical thing to do seems to be to kiss her at that point. Scorpius leans down, cups her cheeks, and kisses her. She tastes like honey mint and Narnian air, and she kisses him back desperately, longingly, as if she's wanted this as long as he has (three years and counting, that is). Maybe she was never meant to be a Queen here, but she's still a beliver, and they still have their dreams and stars and wishes, and –
It occurs to him that maybe, just maybe, that's all they really need.
Author's Notes: Gah. I don't even know what this is. Just…this is what writer's block does to me. =/ Well, I hope you guys liked it! Please review if you read it to tell me what you thought/liked/disliked. I really appreciate hearing your thoughts!
Don't favorite without reviewing, please and thank you :)