two

pairing: Lucy/Lysander

dedication: Pearl, for winning the Forum Competition II on the NGF

title: they say that love is forever

summary: In which Lysander sweats enough to quench the thirst of a herd of flobberworms, and can't quite get up the courage to ask Lucy out.

notes: lysander is awkward, rambliness due to character traits, literal name drop of a few gay characters with the tiniest hint of slash ever - if you can pick up on it, I will love you forever and possibly dedicate a chapter to you :)

For the Canon vs Fanon Competition, Favourite Era Bootcamp (bravado - 33), and Pairing Diversity Bootcamp (nerves - 22)


i can't imagine being anywhere else
i can't imagine being anywhere else but here
i fell in love from the moment we kissed
since then we've been history

- Scene One, Sleeping With Sirens


"Hey, Lucy," he greets, striding up to her with a (hopefully) confident expression on his face, because he intends to ask her out today and he has to do this right. He hopes that she won't see the purple markings under his eyes from staying up all night testing out different ways to start the whole go-on-a-date-with-me-please conversation, much to his bored roommate's annoyance and inability to understand why he would go through much effort for a girl. But then, he reconsiders, Justin is gay and seems to have something against Lucy anyway, though he has no idea why.

"Are you alright, Lysander?" she asks in her dreamy voice, one that never fails to catch his attention, and he realises with a distressed twitch of his eye that he's stopped dead in the middle of a busy corridor, and has been staring off into space instead of staring at her.

"'M fine, Luce," he mumbles, forcing his lips into an embarrassed smile. She responds in turn, and it's kind of pathetic that his palms start sweating the moment she smiles at him, and he tries to smile even wider, because maybe if he practically sends his lips to opposite sides of the country, Lucy won't pick up the fact that his bravado is very, very false. It's unlikely, though, since she's the most perceptive person he knows.

"Do you want to have a conversation with me?" she queries, sounding somewhat distracted, but after literal years of friendship he's kind of used to it. She doesn't mean to sound uninterested, he knows - it's just that she thinks so many things. He remembers sitting in the Astronomy Tower with her leaning on him, tiredness exuding from every pore, though she still had enough energy to talk without him having any input, changing the subject every three minutes whenever she thought of something new. Before that night, he hadn't thought it was possible for someone to think that much.

"Yes!" he says in an overly loud voice that manages to catch the attention of Hugo's best friend, who immediately looks interested when she sees how nervous he looks. He groans internally; Ella is possibly the most gossipy person ever, and being best friends with a Weasley means that she's privy to the worst parts of most scandals. He can only hope that Roxanne manages to come out to the school in the next hour or so before the rumours start spreading, since the last time Ella didn't know the whole story on something, the entirety of Gryffindor house thought that Dominique was pregnant with James' baby.

At least he sounds more confident than a minute ago.

"I'll, uh, walk you to class. If that's okay?" he asks, his hands sweating more when he catches a glimpse of the distinctly confused look on her face. Of course she's confused, you always walk her to class, he reminds himself, resisting the urge to hit himself across the face, because she might be even more concerned for his sanity if he did that.

"Hold this, please," she requests, holding out a pencil decorated with tiny depictions of birds engraved in silver. He takes it gingerly, not wanting to risk accidently losing something of his potential girlfriend, though he isn't sure why she even has a pencil with her when all they use around here are quills, and sometimes charcoal.

"It's my good luck charm," she responds in answer to his unasked question, but they've been friends for so long that he is no longer shocked at her ability to read his mind. He watches as she twists her long blonde hair into a round-shaped blob of hair - he thinks Lily calls it a bun, but she's probably wrong - and holds her hand out for the pencil.

That's when he starts to panic, because her admittedly very pretty pencil has been in his hand for a whole minute and a half, and it's more than likely that it'll be damp from his sweat. He could probably quench the thirst of a herd of dying flobberworms by this point, and those things dry out more quickly than his father consumes lemon cakes at Christmas, and he's been known to eat an entire batch before Lorcan has even started the next one.

"Erm," he starts, and then stops, because any excuse he could come up with to discreetly wipe down the pencil would just sound ridiculous, and he figures he's been strange enough today to get away with turning away and rubbing the pencil on his robes. So he does.

"Here you go," he adds with a cheerful smile, placing the pencil into the centre of her outstretched palm and curling her fingers around it. "I'll see you later." He has to get away from her before he does something he shouldn't, like kiss her. Asking her out is one thing, but kissing her is something he's barely dared to dream about.

"Later," he hears her echo as he walks away, down the corridor and up the stairs. He's almost reached his classroom when he runs into Justin, who is talking frantically to Irene about their Charms homework. It is overhearing his complaint about being up all night because of Lysander that makes him stop. All his palm sweating and practising and fretting over Lucy would have been for nothing if he doesn't just ask her.

That settles it.

"Lucy!" he yelps, dashing down the staircase for the second time that day and completely ruining his hair. He is near breathless when he comes to a stop in front of her, his tie askew and his cheeks flushing in a way that they hadn't been a minute before.

"Yes, Lysander?"

"Willyoubemygirlfriend?" he blurts, all the words running together in his haste to get them out without stuttering or making an even greater fool of himself.

"Of course," she says. "I was waiting for you to ask, so I could say yes," she adds, her hand coming up to tuck a stray bit of hair behind her ear, wedging it behind the pencil.

"Oh," he responds, still breathing hard, though thankfully his hands have stopped sweating quite so much. "Cool, then."

"Was there anything else?" she asks, her eyes glittering in a way that makes him think that she's laughing at him on the inside, but it's Lucy and she would never do that. Would she?

"No - no, I think that's it," he says with a wide grin, still not quite over the fact that Lucy Weasley, the most gorgeous person ever to bless the world with her presence, has agreed to be his girlfriend. His girlfriend!

"I'll see you later, then," she says, her gaze already drifting away from his face and towards something he can't see from where he's standing.

"Right, cool," he replies, still slightly stunned. It's this fact that he'll use to excuse his lack of response when telling the story to a slightly stone-faced Justin, as she leans so close to him that he can see every individual blonde eyelash clinging to her eyelid.

"Is this okay?" she asks, and he nods as quickly as possible without the risk of his head falling off. He's extraordinarily glad when she takes his hand gently and places it on her waist, because he has no idea what to do when a girl is this close, before leaning even closer and pressing their lips together. It only lasts fourteen seconds - he counts every moment - but it's Lucy, so it feels like perfection. It also doesn't hurt that that's his first kiss and it could've been with the aforementioned flobberworms and he wouldn't have complained too much, but still.

"Right, cool," he repeats as he watches her walk away, a smile etched permanently onto his face that he thinks will never leave, though it's starting to hurt by this point.

"I'm awesome," he whispers to himself, right hand clenching into a jubilant fist, because maybe he's a romantic at heart and he falls in love too easily, but this might be the greatest day of his life. Lucy Weasley agreed to go out with him, and as he starts towards his own classroom, he doesn't know how life could get any better than this.


a/nII please review!