A/N: Enjoy and please review!
When Lily arrived at Platform 9 and 3 quarters to board the Hogwarts Express for her fourth year, she saw Poppy standing at the far end waving enthusiastically at her. The blond haired girl stood with a very pompous looking man in an expensive tweed suit who Lily assumed must be her father, the Duke Sir Emil Balfour.
'You've made a new friend besides Lysander?' Ginny asked, looking pleasantly surprised.
'No' Lily retorted glumly, rolling her eyes and declining to wave back.
Lily was already in a bad mood because her family had been stared at all morning as they made their way to the station. And the longer her father stood on the platform, the louder the whispers around them seemed to become. Lily thought Bertie Brocklehurst might actually be trying to make himself heard as he gushed loudly about Harry's new promotion to Head of the Auror office.
'You didn't have to come dad…' Lily muttered moodily. 'I'm fourteen now'
Albus and James had already sprinted off to find their friends the moment they had gotten through the barrier with their trollies, but as Harry was carrying one of Lily's bags for her she had been unable to do the same.
'And how would you get here then?' Harry said ruffling her hair and handing her the bag.
'I don't think muggles let fourteen year olds drive Lils' He said with a sad little smile.
'Don't need a muggle license to fly a car to school though do you dad?' Lily retorted, dashing away before her mother could scold her.
Harry let out an involuntary chuckle, shaking his head as he watched her go. Things had been somewhat tense between him and Lily since their altercation at the Ministry. She had remained tight lipped about how she had procured the locket during the remainder of the holidays and Harry, after worrying it was putting a strain on their relationship, had given up asking.
On the surface, not a lot had changed since last year. Lily rode the train with Lysander in his dark potions cupboard as always and she enjoyed listening to his accounts of observing wild Billywigs in Australia with his family over the summer.
Poppy still annoyed Lily to no end- only now she also followed her around everywhere. It was truthfully very exhausting in the beginning as Lily struggled to keep her temper down during classes with her new companion. It didn't help that Professor Montespan seemed to find the situation terribly amusing and kept sending smirks her way. But after a while, Lily slowly got used to Poppy's uppity tone and insensitive jabs and even found herself wondering why she had let the girl get under her skin so much in the first place.
Scorpius kept his distance from her during school hours as usual. He had grown several inches taller over the summer and Lily now found that she had to strain her neck a little to look up at him. But the four would often meet up in the Shrieking shack of an afternoon and do their homework together or else just chat until it was time to get back to the castle before lights out. Lily was rather surprised at how well Poppy and Lysander appeared to get along. Generally, most people got quite frustrated with Poppy's snarky comments after a while, but Lysander didn't appear to notice any ill intention behind them at all. Similarly, where most people would find Lysander quite odd and lacking in a regular sense of social cues, Poppy never batted an eyelid when he filled his pockets with food or went about foraging in the grass for beetles.
Despite Hazel and Alanna's surprise to see the two sworn enemies constantly in each others company (albeit reluctantly, in Lily's case), to a general outsiders eyes everything seemed very normal with Lily Luna Potter.
And yet, underneath it all, Lily's feelings towards her life at Hogwarts had changed dramatically. She no longer had a grand plan to stop Noirmorter or Professor Raleigh. And, after having them dismissed by her father once again, she was even beginning to doubt whether her suspicions of her Professor were indeed correct. She had been so sure that Alasdair had had good intentions when he had encouraged her and the others to form the blood bond. Yet that had been proven disastrously wrong, so how could she ever be sure of her instincts again?
That was another thing that definitely had changed; Lily never saw Alasdair. Though it sounded silly when she reflected upon it, she hadn't realized before how easy it was for a ghost to just make themselves disappear when they wanted to. She had been so used to seeing Alasdair all around the castle, popping in to see her in class or at the Shrieking Shack or even in her dormitory. But now he truly was just a phantom- sometimes she thought she felt his presence and yet he was never anywhere to be seen. He was even absent at the annual Halloween feast, which usually attracted the entire ghost population of Hogwarts.
November came around and it was time for the first Quidditch match of the season. Hazel, Maria and Elizabeth were in a frenzy over the news that James's best friend, Johnathan Adderley, had resigned from the team in order to focus on studying for his N.E.W.T.s. James and John had both completed their O.W.L.s last year and whilst the former did not have the grades for it (and didn't seem terribly bothered by that fact), Johnathan had a chance of making it into the Auror Office if he did just as well in his seventh year exams. Lily had never known about John's ambitions to become an Auror, he was certainly a lot less vocal about it than Albus was, and so it came as somewhat as a surprise to her. Summer holidays had been kind to Johnathan; he was more muscled and tanned than he had been at the end of the previous year and so the fourth year girls were more than just a little taken by the blue-eyed, chestnut haired boy. Even Alanna blushed a little when Hazel suggested that Jonathan had chivalrously quit the team in part to ensure a place for her on it.
With Johnathan retired, James assigned Lily's tough cousin Roxanne Weasley in the position of Keeper, thus allowing Alanna to stay on as Chaser now that Albus's quidditch ban had officially ended. The combination of Lily, Poppy and Alanna as the team's Chasers- three girls who had never once properly seen eye to eye on anything- turned out to be a surprising recipe for success. Their lead against Hufflepuff of 160 points made Albus's snitch catch woefully anti-climactic.
With one successful match under her belt and a new team for the year, Lily threw herself into quidditch training with more enthusiasm than she ever had before. And yet she still felt a niggling sense of purposelessness that tormented her for months right up until the Christmas break.
It was the last day before Christmas holidays and the majority of students were holed up in their dormitories packing their trunks. Lysander, however, took the opportunity to invite Lily, Poppy and Scorpius out for one last search for some snow faeries he had sworn he had seen dancing outside the Shrieking Shack. Poppy, whose father was apparently being granted the extra title of Earl of Erroll at a luxurious ceremony over the holidays ('Your father isn't the only one getting a promotion Potter!'), declined the invitation in favor of staying back to pack up all her good dress robes and jewellery.
Lily thus headed off to Hogsmeade alone, wearing about six different layers, a thick knitted scarf her grandmother Molly had made her and some white fluffy mittens. She despised the cold, but was happy to be meeting her two friends somewhere outside of the confines of the Shrieking Shack for once.
It had snowed heavily the night before. The untouched snow was piled up almost as high as Lily's knees and she had to stop a few times to empty out her gumboots. Even so she arrived before the two boys and leant against the old wooden fence that surrounded the shack to stare off into the distance and wait.
She wondered what Alasdair had been doing the past few months. Lily found she couldn't help thinking about him from time to time. He had been such an integral part of her first few years at Hogwarts and was one of the first friends she had made. And truth be told, against her better judgement she was worried about him. If she had truly been his last hope for attaining rest in the afterlife, then by denying him her trust and friendship she was effectively sentencing him to a life on earth forever.
Lily shook her head roughly. She couldn't think about it; it was too painful. And anyway, she reasoned, Alasdair had gotten himself into the mess he now found himself in. He was the one who had followed Corvinus Gaunt's orders. He had opened the Chamber of Secrets. And he had lied to them all about the dangers of the blood oath.
Suddenly, Lily felt a dull thud against the back of her skull as something cold came into contact with it. Icy water dripped down into the back of her collar and along her spine. She whipped around only to find Scorpius standing a few meters behind her with his arm raised and a cheeky smirk on his face.
Lily's mouth flew open in outrage but she couldn't stop the corners of her mouth from twitching upwards or the chuckle that escaped her throat.
'What a bully you are Malfoy' She cried with mock indignation.
'I thought you were a champion dueler Potter, but you seem to be off your guard' Scorpius sneered back.
Lily couldn't let his challenging tone go unanswered. She raised both hands and sent a barrage of snow flying up off of the ground towards him. It hit him from all sides and he was left spluttering as it filled his mouth and eyes.
Lily fell into a fit of giggles so lively it was as though she had just downed a barrel of giggle-water.
Scorpius took the opportunity to bend down and scoop up another handful of snow before charging forward with it. Lily let out a joyous scream and tried to back out of his reach but he grabbed ahold of one of her sleeves and with the other he held up the snowball threateningly.
They shuffled about in the thick snow in an clumsy sort of waltz as Lily tried her best to avoid letting him pelt the thing squarely at her.
But then Lily felt her heel slip sharply on some compacted snow beneath her. Scorpius, seeing her jerk backwards, leaned forward in an attempt to grab hold of her and steady her. Simultaneously, Lily's outstretched hand instinctively grabbed a fistful of the font of his knitted jumper and pulled to the effect that they both fell tumbling together down onto the snow.
Lily yelled out in surprise as the back of her head collided with the soft, powdery surface below. Scorpius fell flat on top of her, pinning her down with his snow-ball wielding arm still held high above his head. Lily, thinking for certain that he would use her vulnerable state to hit her right in the face with the thing, shut her eyes tightly and waited anxiously for the cold sting of collision.
Instead, something very soft and warm lightly brushed her lips, sending little shockwaves throughout her entire body.
Lily's eyes flew open. Scorpius's face was less than an inch from hers, his eyelashes brushing against her skin. Then suddenly he pulled away from her and his eyes widened. Lily could feel that her face was frozen in shock but she doubted it looked anywhere near as petrified as Scorpius's. He rolled off of her and scrambled to his feet.
She slowly propped herself up on her arms in a sitting position and stared at him in wonder. It had been so soft and so brief that Lily was almost able to convince herself that it hadn't happened, except for the fact that Scorpius was staring back at her with a face so white that it made the snow look positively gray.
He lifted up a trembling hand to absentmindedly touch his forehead. Then he looked around as though in a daze, before setting his alarmed eyes back on her blank face.
'I-' he began in a quivering voice.
'Lubotubily!' Lysander's excited voice sounded from behind them. He was running frantically through the snow with a huge grin on his face, his snowflake-covered curls bouncing as he did.
'I found them!'
Lysander helped Lily to her feet, seemingly unperturbed to find her lying in the snow, before grabbing onto a still shell-shocked Scorpius's arm and dragging them both past the gates closer towards the Shrieking Shack.
He let them go once they had reached a mound of snow to the side of the entrance way. Then Lysander got down on all fours and instructed them to follow suit.
The pair did so, taking up a position at either side of Lysander and peering into a small hollow in the snow.
Inside two silver faeries dressed in pure white, with delicate, sparkling wings were locked in an embrace, their lips pressed up against each others.
Lily felt her ears go red. She didn't dare sneak a look towards Scorpius but he remained stoney silent and it felt as though heat was radiating off of him.
'Beautiful aren't they?' Lysander cooed serenely.
