Chapter three
Rose
Rose was bumping her way down the stairs, occasionally grabbing at the handrail to help herself traverse the more difficult areas, when she saw Jonathon and immediately thought she was going to puke.
He recognised her, she knew that from the slight flicker in his eyes, but then he was passing by, not even saying a word. Not that Rose would have listened, even if he had. What was she to Jonathon anymore? He already taken everything she had; her pride, her dignity. Her anonymous life. He was the one who had created the monster she had become.
Rose found Scorpius in the living room, sat on a sofa with two girls sprawled over him and a mostly empty bottle of some clear liquid in his lap. It was clear that this was not the moment to interrupt. So she found a shot glass and a bottle of firewhiskey and went and plonked herself on the window seat in a deserted bedroom, staring out into the dark street. The party behind her was loud, and insistent booming of the music and the bubbles of chatter, so she drew the curtain across behind her, shutting it all out.
Scorpius found her there, almost an hour later, still staring out into the night. He pulled the sweaty bottle from her grip and sat down next to her. It was always this way, she so drunk that the memories faded away like the dripping of watercolours, becoming murkier and murkier, all colour fading.
In was in these moments when being best friends never seemed enough, and so Rose reached out for him, drawing his head down until their lips met
...
Lily
They had been friends once, she and Frank. Back when she's been freckly and so small people used to stare unseeingly over her head; when he's been chubby, with a cheerful face and large brown eyes and while Lily and Hugo had been close, they'd been closer. But that had been before Nathan.
Lily sometimes wondered how she'd come to be this person she barely recognised anymore. A few bad decisions, a night, her first night, filled with alcohol and lust, and now...
"Budge up." Nathan squeezed into the space next to Lily on the bench and began to load his plate with casserole, then wrapped an arm around her waist. Lily laid her head on his shoulder as he began to eat with one hand.
"Are we still on for tonight?" Lily asked, absently dusting crumbs from the table and dumping them on her plate. She paused, waiting for his answer.
"Of course," Nathan looked down at her with his strange half smile. "Everyone knows you'd fail History of Magic without me."
It was true, Lily would fail her class without him because Nathan was clever, very clever, when it came to people. It was a game they played - she, asking some obscure question and, somehow, him knowing the answer. She wasn't that clever, but he was and he used that genius to help her.
It was moments like these that Lily loved; his touch, so gentle, and his laugh, so low, not really more than a rumble in his chest.
That evening, hidden away in some forgotten corner of the castle, they sat together, and she loved him so much in those moments that it was almost a physical ache somewhere deep in her chest. Their conversation and their looks and their movements, all of it, to Lily didn't want anything else. All that she loved, all that she cared about, was there, rocking back on his chair, his next laugh about to escape.
"When were the Unforgivable Curses first considered unforgivable?" She asked, and he half turned towards her, rolling his eyes.
"Too easy."
"When was it?"
"Come on, give me a challenge Flower."
"You don't know, do you!" Lily poked him in the side and he grabbed her hand, pulling her in towards him. "Admit it!"
"1717," he mumbled into her neck.
"No," Lily tried to push him away, but he only pulled her closer, sliding his hands up her stomach, under the white of her shirt. "Not now, I've got homework..."
He pulled away, eyes slightly narrowed. "You always say that."
"Oh don't be such a baby," Lily teased, "You're just a big-"
It was the sound always, that Lily remembered afterwards. The gunshot crack as the heel of his hand, or his open palm met her skin. The searing, burning pain always faded, but the sound reverberated around her head, loud, dominating her thoughts. The floor was hard and cold beneath her palms and knees, and her ears was ringing, loud, insistent; impossible to ignore.
"Why do you have to say that?" he asked and his voice was so low, so beautiful, haunting her dreams and nightmares. "Why do you have to say that?"
But Lily had learned her lesson and kept her mouth closed, closed so no more treacherous, rebellious words could slip out on a kamikaze mission that could only end one way.
"You still love me don't you? You won't stop loving me ever?" And again Lily was seeing life from the end of a tunnel, herself kneeling on the ground and him, leaning over her, and she found herself going back, all the way to the beginning.