Enjoy chapter 14 and please review!
...I don't love her. But I have to be with her...
...She is not everything desirable. She is not... She is not you.
...If I don't oblige him, I'll lose everything. My family, my name, my inheritance. I was coming to explain to you, but-but then I found you...with... him...
Lily remained silent. Her mind far away, replaying her lost memory over and over again. She knew it'd been there all the time, deep down, trapped by a strong compulsion. Now truth was finally out. She regretted her misguided anger. And yet she was angry. Merlin! A barely legal memory spell. A clueless victim. Hit when her defenses where at he lowest. She kind of guessed his reasons but couldn't forgive him...
"… Lily?" she emerged from her troubled reverie and looked at Scorpius.
" Why did you wipe my memory?" it was the question setting her every brain cell on fire.
" I... I didn't want to hurt you further. I needed to tell you the the truth but I thought that if you'd stayed oblivious of my reasons you would have found easier to hate me and stay away from me. It would have hurt less... In the end it was useless, because I was the one who came back. I'm too weak when it comes to you, Lily Potter. You are my greatest weakness."
" When are you going to marry?" she asked in a stunned haze. The jealousy was killing her. Rosalie would spend her whole life with him and she'd just watch at the show. A fake reality show whose script was already set and in motion.
" I have no idea. Probably some time after the NEWTs... I am of age now." he replied, his voice close to cracking.
" Right..." she whispered. His face gave finally away some emotion. He took her in his arms, crushing her body to his. She clinged to him, sobbing silently to hide her distress. Soon his shirt was soaked with her tears. He pulled slightly away. " It's late, you should go and get some rest." His words were tinged with sadness. Regret.
She did need to go. She needed a way out. In her dreams, in her sour sweet dreams they belonged together. In real life she now knew this was pitiful, wishful thinking. Dreams were so much easier than life...
OoO
Lily slowly started to realize how time passed without her noticing. She realized that when Scorpius was in her life, she'd live every single second of those days. Instead, the moment he stepped out, she just saw time go by in front of her eyes, as if she were a stranger and not part of it. Whole months passed, leaving her indifferent.
The bright colours of autumn had been replaced by the dull ones of winter. She was home now. If the burrow could be considered such. She opened the door and the first thing she noticed was the acrid smell of smoke. The fireplace was on. Her brother was sitting right in front of it, wand at hand. His eyes fixed on a scorched lump enveloped by the flames. As she got close, she saw what was burning... Tom Riddle's diary.
" Al, what are you doing? Why are you burning it?" she got no answer. He kept on looking in front of him, his green eyes mirroring the raging flames " Al! Please, answer me!" She was worried. She hit his head and he finally reacted.
" Go away, Lily! I want to be alone right now, if you don't mind..."
" What. Are. You. Doing?"
" Do you really need me to spell it for you?"
" I don't. The question is: why?"
" Because it was time. I had to stop."
" Stop what? Talk to me..."
" Lily, I'm not sure you want to know..." he sighed, "Remember how I was really scared of being sorted into Slytherin in my first year? Deep down I knew that if I got sorted into Gryffindor maybe I would have been able to gain a better control over my dark side. But in Slytherin... Quite a long record there, uh?" he grimaced.
" You mean... Tom already paid you visits before Hogwarts?"
" What? How... how do you know that?" he searched her eyes to make sense of her question.
" I know because I've been seeing him too." she admitted
" You? But... How? You never mentioned and..." Her yeah, let's talk about trust between siblings look stopped him mid sentence. He cleared his voice.
"Anyway, yes I used to have them already."
" Al, we all have dark sides. The thing I don't get is why Tom comes back every now and then and how..."
" You've already answered yourself. Our dark side is Tom. What we see is merely our head sending us messages. Or the rotten part of it, so to say. He is part of our soul as he was part of our parents'..."
" You mean, that I'm frightened of myself when I see him?"
" Of course. It's your dark side... but yours is not as strong as mine. When I took the diary, I started making plans, I started researching dark arts. Tom made everything seem possible. He was the projection of my deepest, darkest desires."
" But... why?" she frowned.
" Because this is what I want, Lily! I hate just being plain Albus Bloody Potter. I want more. I want greatness. And darkness is a great more to me."
" Well, then why burning the diary?"
" Because if I'd kept walking on this path, I would have ended up hurting the people I love, Lils." He looked at her, eyes almost scary with their unreadable depths.
" See? Then your dark side is not as strong as you thought..." She said trying to cheer him up.
" Trust me, it is. It's tearing me apart... But you know what I have? Something Tom Riddle couldn't even understand: love. This is what's stopping me. But my life... I don't know what to do with it now. There's such a void..."
" Al, don't say this... You are the best wizard of your age. You can do anything. You can be anything!"
" But the things I want to do and be, I can't do and be..." It looked like Lily wasn't the only Potter who didn't know what to do with her future. Only, she had Oswald, Albus was alone in this.
OoO
Lily sat by the lake with Hugo. These days, she was rarely alone. The mornings, she'd be busy with her OWLs, the afternoons, she'd go somewhere with Hugo to study or practice spells. Seventh years students stayed nearly all day inside classrooms to take their NEWTs and she rarely saw Oswald.
" Lils, did the examiners ask you to produce a Patronus charm today?"
" Yeah, sure."
" Well, it isn't fair, is it? I mean, we can do it because our parents taught us, but what about the other students?"
" I guess my father set a bad example. You know, one of the examiners had actually tested dad during his exams..."
" Yeah, I know... he had tested my father too. In fact when he recognized the name he frowned and told me he hoped I wasn't as bad as him..." he grimaced.
" Really?" Lily giggled. " Well, I hope you proved him wrong... you're good!"
" Of course I did! He was speechless at the end..." he grinned.
" OWLs are not as I expected them to be. You have so many chances to prove yourself. You have a sort of freedom of choice."
" Probably even more with NEWTs... Apart from the fact that the written exams are longer... Anyway, have you seen Os these days?"
" No, not much... he's been busy with studying and all. I just saw him yesterday evening and he told me his NEWTs were going brilliantly. As for the rest..."
" Well they are over tomorrow so we'll have some time for ourselves," Lily smiled at the idea. "And after dinner, 5th, 6th and 7th years can wander about the castle for as long as they want! It's going to be fun... no curfew, right?"
" Bloody right! I hope I can find some romantic place for me and Lilith," he winked.
" I'm sure you will!" she laughed. Contentment finally setting on her torn soul.