Hollow
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Written for Smile Life Away's Kissing in the Rain challenge.
Drop everything now
Meet me in the pouring rain
Kiss me on the sidewalk
Take away the pain
'Cause I see sparks fly
Whenever you smile
~Sparks Fly – Taylor Swift
He just doesn't care. Lily stands, walks past his table once, twice, three times, and still nothing. Because he doesn't care. He's too busy with her now.
He used to care. Maybe not in the way she wants him to, but they used to be friends, at least. She used to be the one he could talk to when life just became too much. Like that time Blake Macmillan called him a Death Eater in his fourth year and even though he hadn't shown any emotion at the time, when they were alone in the Room of Requirement later she could have sworn there were tears in his eyes. The Room of Requirement was their sole refuge from prying eyes, even though it hadn't worked properly since the Fiendfyre incident during the War and remained frozen as hard stone walls and a cool floor.
It was empty.
Hollow.
Like them.
Lily had made that point the first time they met there, in her first year (his third). Each of them would always hold a certain hollow quality. Scorpius because of his name, his family, and his need to remain strong and emotionless in front of others. And Lily because she was left that way, the first Potter ever to become a Slytherin, the first to be abandoned by her older brothers (both in Gryffindor, courtesy of a sorting hat that actually kept its mouth shut long enough for them to get a word in edgewise), the first to have her soul utterly ripped out from her.
But he changed it. He had a smirk that could put that of his own father to shame, but his true smiles were few and far between and they made her come to life again. And so she learned to smile, too, to understand his sarcasm for what it was and learn the magic of a whispered conversation at midnight.
And then he decided to start chasing around Rose. Rose, her perfect cousin, who has never received anything less than an O and never doubted that she would become Head Girl and never dealt with a sorting hat placing her in Slytherin and never had any fun and most of all has never been hollow.
But Rose is pretty (understatement) and smart (obviously) and evidently the combination of those two things is enough to draw Scorpius in, and so he sits with her in the library and probably flirts with her during class and when he wins in Quidditch, he sometimes grins over at the red-and-gold side of the stadium, looking for her.
And Lily will never be enough, because her family has given up on her, and he knew her when she was hollow, and she doesn't mean anything to him anymore. But Rose is a challenge, is interesting, is everything. Lily is nothing.
As the thought hits her and traitorous tears prick at the corners of her eyes – even though Lily Luna Potter does not cry – she bolts from the library and goes to the one place she knows no one will find her, because the only other person who ever saw anything worthwhile in the cold, dark, hollow space is too busy hanging around with a Weasley.
Lily leans against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees, like when she was eleven and needed somewhere to be where she didn't have to look at the green-and-silver of her common room. And she lets the tears fall, really crying for the first time in years, because everything is always about Rose, and why can't someone just care about her for once in her life, because it is perfectly acceptable to be proud of achieving mostly E's, and even if she isn't a prefect, she still behaves, and it's not her damn fault if Rose is prettier, or smarter, or not hollow…
She doesn't realize that she's spoken aloud until she feels strong arms wrapping around her, bringing her to her feet, and a voice whispering that everything's okay, and suddenly she's looking up at his clear grey eyes and she has to look away because she just can't face him right now.
"Lily," he says, his voice deep and masculine and soft all at the same time, "Lily. I didn't… I never… Rose and I… we aren't like that."
And there it is. Rose and I. Rose and I and I and Rose and the collective we.
She tries to pull away but he's holding her too goddamn tightly.
"Go away," she mutters.
"No," he protests. "Listen to me. She's helping me prepare for my NEWTs. That's it, I swear. That's why I've been spending so much time with her in the library. And besides," he says, a smirk appearing on his face, "Why would I ever waste my time with someone so predictable and boring when I could be with my favorite girl in the world?"
She can't react. She's frozen, unbelieving, watching him pull a small box out of his pocket and hold it out to her.
"I meant to save it for next month," he says. "For your birthday. But… just open it now."
And so she does, carefully, her hands shaking a little.
It's a necklace. With a pendant. A flower.
A lily.
And then suddenly his lips are on hers and she can't help but think that the only thing that can make this any more cliché is rain, and then she can't think because he's really bloody good at rendering her incapable of coherent thought with his kisses.
So she barely notices when the first drops start to fall, but somewhere in the back of her mind it registers.
The Room of Requirement is performing its duty once again.
Because even things that are hollow can be repaired.