Chapter Eight...
Rose
Scorpius has always believed in miracles.
He's living one right now.
Because he's holding hands with the girl he loves as they walk down the street, heading, through the dancing snowflakes, towards her home. Her real home. The one she hasn't seen in oh-so long. And the family there, the ones she's avoided for oh-so long. Because going back means returning, to that night. To the truth.
And she's terrified, he can tell, her skin translucent as the snow that touches it.
So he squeezes her fingers because she'll understand that it means everything he can't say. The three words that have risen to his tongue, so many times, are swallowed down again because if she runs now, and she will run, he'll have lost everything.
So he squeezes her fingers and hopes, one day, he'll be able to say he loves her.
And that maybe she'll say it back.
...
Rose's nails were bitten down to the quick, the skin torn back in places. In short; a mess. Just like she was. Her fingertips a physical manifestation of the terror that was swirling about inside her that, even as she tried to force it down, rose up, up¸ threatening to smother her.
It was foolish, she knew, to be this afraid. But rejection is a powerful word, and an even more powerful weapon, and Rose feared that, after all she's done, all that's happened, they won't want her any more.
She knew she ought to trust them. But trust is hard to keep, and even harder to build, and look what happened last time? Last time she trusted her soul to someone other than herself.
She could never let someone hurt her like that again.
Scorpius seemed to understand her hesitation because his long fingers wrapped themselves more tightly around her own, hideous and broken though they were. He reached forward and knocked on the door.
Hermione Weasley stared at Rose, her wayward daughter, her lost child, and suddenly all those months of pain, of worry, these last two years of seeing her face only in print, were fading away.
And as Hermione Weasley gathered her daughter into her arms, holding her so tightly she thought she might fracture her in two, Rose Weasley looked past her mother's cheeks, where the tears stood out from her skin like pearls, and over to the clock above the fireplace; the clock that didn't tell the time, but instead had four hands, one each for each part of Rose's heart.
And as she looked, the hand, her hand - the intricate pattern of a rose carved into the wood - began to move, travelling from Lost.
All the way to Home.
...
Lily
Lily was watching her outline in the shadows of the window panes as she lay beside Nathan. Watery droplets of snow were plunking against the windowpane, distorting her reflection and-
plunk
plunk
plunk
-the shape of her thin body wavered, becoming globular, then concave, and then, just for a heartbeat, whole again. It was in these minutes, these moments, that Lily usually felt so content.
But for some reason she didn't now.
Now, all she felt was empty. Nathan used to be her anchor, the rock she could cling to in the stormiest of weather.
But now, nothing.
A hollow, aching emptiness.
So Lily let herself think - treacherous, dangerous thoughts - think what she had become. What she had let herself become.
As a small child everyone had said Lily shone bright, a drop of golden sunshine, her mother had always said. Yet now she felt more like a shadow, an echo. Is this what she had let herself become? Her features, dripping down the windowpane and-
plunk
plunk
plunk
-suddenly, painfully- so painfully it seemed the oxygen had been forced from her lungs- she felt herself begin to rise, her face breaking the smothering water and she understood everything. It was as though the scales had been struck from her eyes, falling away, shattered into dust.
Was this what she wanted?
To be punished for daring to speak her mind? To be forced into a twisted life of secrecy and deceit?
But then, the question remained, was she brave enough?
And there it was, the most shameful secret of all.
...
Nathan likes to believe in miracles; wishes that could bring back the magic he had once believed in. That heady, wonderful feeling that everything could be okay again.
But miracles don't happen, do they little boy?
It's strange, the way he still tries to believe. In the dark of his bedroom, surrounded by all those memories. It's a child's room, painted blue with crudely carved furniture and the glazed glass eyes of broken toys set high up on shelves that he wasn't allowed to touch.
He wonders why he even bothered coming home for Christmas today.
In the early years, when he was stupid (oh-so stupid) and he thought the black marks on his mother's face were part of her, something integrally stained into her skin. And then he found them in the kitchen. He thought (foolish, naive) that they were dancing and ran to tug on his mother's skirt. And when he saw the blood he (selfish, Selfish, SELFISH) cried out in fear as though it was he and not his mother who was hurt.
She had tried to comfort him, him! And all the time the man sat at the table, pouring amber fire from a bottle, draining it down as though he thought it would burn him up, turn him to smoke.
Oh you foolish child. Why didn't you understand?
With those toys he bought (bribes) you, and when you learn to walk on carpets where the rust coloured stains never truly leave. You sleep in a room full of gifts that buy your silence and hold your tongue when he twists your arms up behind your back, nails biting, tearing.
So Nathan sits in his room and stares, unseeingly, around the watching (condemning) eyes of the cost of silence. A bribe (stupid child, you knew that was what they were, even then).
Look what it's cost you.
(Your mother)
(Your belief in miracles)
(Everything?)
And then he thinks of Lily and the way she looks into his soul.
He can't lose her as well.
