Chapter One:

Snapshots Through the Years


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

The first time Lobelia Potter ever met Ronald Weasley on the Hogwarts express; he spoke for a good twenty minutes before he understood something was different with the frowning girl sitting opposite him.

And frown Lobelia did. In puzzlement. In concentration. In rapt amazement.

Ronald Weasley was a boy who spoke rapidly, his teeth as quick as a stallions hooves as it galloped, spitting through his words, and, worst of all, he spoke while he was eating with his mouth full. Over the years Lobelia had gotten better at lip-reading, but even then the finest of the crop could only ever pick up between thirty to forty percent of what was said under the best of conditions.

From there it was pretty much a guessing game with very, very little context.

Ronald Weasley chitchatting over scraps of his chewed-up ham sandwich was not the best of conditions.

Had he said Mom or Pom? Bom? What was a Bom?

Bomb?!

Dammit, she was never any good at telling P's, B's, and M's apart. They all looked the same.

Sadly, it had taken Hermione Granger tumbling into their cart, searching for Neville Longbottom's toad of all things, for the other children to put two and two together when Lobelia hopelessly kept pointing to her ears and shaking her head.

"Oh, she's hearing impaired!"

Hermione had said, just as Lobelia had finally fished her note pad out her suitcase, a mistake she wouldn't make again, and scribbled on the first clean page she could find.

Deaf.

She had answered back.

Not hearing impaired. Deaf.

It was good to set boundaries early on, her otorhinolaryngologist had told her at their last meeting, an otorhinolaryngologist who had turned out to be a Muggleborn who had taken a shine to the little red-haired witch. Boundaries meant other children would know what she was and wasn't comfortable with.

Most of the time, children and adults ignored those boundaries, but it was worth a try all the same.

This, however, wasn't a boundary Lobelia would let slip to the side. She had hated that term, hearing impaired, since she first understood what it meant. The dismissal it was from those who could hear, the 'never mind her' it implied, the careless flap of a hand, the tacit and implicit broken it truly meant on most people's tongues.

Hearing impaired meant someone in need of being fixed.

Cured.

Lobelia Potter was not broken. She did not need to be fixed. She did not need some miracle cure to make her like everyone else.

She was deaf, and that was okay.

Hermione had taken the pad from her then, her handwriting so much neater under Lobelia's chicken scrawl.

How do you say hello?

Lobelia had smiled for the first time since being jostled onto the busy train after being dumped by Petunia and Vernon on the platform, shoulder bumped and pushed out of the way by rushing children and parents alike until Molly Weasley had found her, and simply waved her hand.

Hermione and Ron waved back, and it was the start of a beautiful friendship.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

The thing Lobelia had learned quickly about abruptly being surrounded by people capable of hearing was their idea that, as someone who couldn't, they expected Lobelia to be apologetic about it.

As if she needed to be sorry for not quite being the same as everyone else. As if her lack of a sense could somehow impact their own.

As if by mere existence, she made them tired.

They expected her to be unsocial, isolated in her difference, jumpy, pitiful.

She was meant to say sorry repeatedly if she wanted someone to repeat what they said, when she wrote asking them to look directly at her, to not cover their mouths as they spoke, she was meant to simply accept when people turned their backs on her while speaking, which was incredibly rude to a deaf person, and sit in the back of the class almost forgotten along with the brickwork.

Funnily enough, they thought, subconsciously or not, deaf people weren't meant to be heard.

Lobelia was having none of it, even at the tender age of eleven.

The first time Malfoy was running his mouth and turned away, clearly mocking her by the way he flapped his hands in a poor mimicry of Sign language, as if he thought she couldn't see either, she threw a punch at the back of his ferrety-face, knocking him down where he bashed his nose on the Grand hall steps.

Her hands were good for more than one thing. He never turned his back on her again.

That had been her first detention, and Lobelia had taken it proudly.

She made fast friends with Hermione and Ron, Fred and George, and taught Seamus all the signs for swears she knew. She waved to other children, and raised her hand in class, and she refused from the very first day to sit in the back.

Lobelia might not speak, she had a voice box of course, but could never quite wrap her own tongue around words she had never heard herself, but she had a voice.

She would be heard.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Lobelia did not have heightened senses, despite the common myth. She felt, saw, smelled, and tasted just as well as everyone else.

Life wasn't a fairy tale.

Nevertheless, due to being deaf she was incredibly observant. She had to be if she didn't want to get run over crossing a road, or miss the flashing of her alarm spell to wake her up in the morning for classes.

Lobelia was perceptive, and she was a damned good Seeker for it, earning a place on the Gryffindor Quidditch team in her first year, the youngest to do so in over a century. Malfoy had nearly popped a blood vessel the day he learned of it, turning a startling pink Lobelia had spent the rest of the evening chuckling over.

It must have stung the third-year try-outs too, those who had gone for the Seeker position, by the way they grumbled and glared down the dining table.

The deaf girl as Seeker? It had seemed almost outlandish to them. Impossible. To Lobelia, it had seemed outlandish to think she couldn't do it.

What would she need to hear for while chasing a golden ball through the sky?

Lobelia was observant, and she was fast, and she could read the score board just as well as any body else.

They won the House cup that year.

She caught the Snitch in nearly every match.

Lobelia had given a hand sign over the hall as the banners of Gryffindor fell in red and gold, straight to a glowering Malfoy, one she was sure even he could understand.

The middle finger.

Fred and George had joined her.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Despite being a Gryffindor, it was Professor Sprout who helped Lobelia the most at the very beginning of her Wizarding career. By the end of her first year, the Herbologist had gotten the young girl a charmed quill she had made herself, one that would take down Lobelia's notes in class, word for word, so she did not miss what the Professors said.

It was thoughtful.

It was kind.

It was the Hufflepuff Head of House, and that seemed explanation enough, and Lobelia had loved her for it, taking the quill wherever she went, it's yellow and black feather glimmering as it moved across parchment faster than she could ever hope to write.

Malfoy had complained it gave her an unfair advantage, despite him being capable of hearing everything the teachers said. Professor Sprout had given him detention in return, mucking out the Devil Snare fertiliser. For a whole week he reeked of Centaur shit.

It was glorious.

Additionally, now Snape could get off her arse and stop docking Lobelia points for not paying enough attention. How he expected her to lip-read, write down the notes on the board and what he said simultainoulsy, while finishing a potion was beyond her.

Maybe he didn't.

Maybe that was the point.

As much as Lobelia came to love Professor Sprout, she equally came to detest the Potions Master.

Snape always turned his back to her, no matter how many times she asked that he didn't. He set himself in profile while speaking, obscuring his mouth with his hair, and moved around the room in a dramatic flair of black robes, and the lighting in the dungeons was terrible, and-

And he was a prick.

A right greasy prick.

The way he made her feel so small, so useless, so… insignificant for something she could not help Lobelia would never forget.

And she would never forgive it, either.

Lobelia had struggled in potions for the entire year. Struggled and laboured, and Snape had simply smirked at her failure after failure as if he got some sort of sick enjoyment from watching an eleven year old child struggle to keep up with the rest.

That was her first taste of discrimination. Salty, and bitter, and hard to swallow.

Snape wanted her to fail. He thought her slow, and dumb, and useless.

She would have plenty more of it in the Wizarding world.

Nevertheless, for every Snape, she had a Hermione, Ron, and Sprout, and, truly, Lobelia thought that was all that mattered.

Every Tuesday evening she went down to the greenhouses to help the Professor repot the Mandrakes, she didn't need the earmuffs, and when, thanks to Professor Sprouts enchanted quill, Lobelia made a perfect Sleeping Drought at the end of the year, watching Snape's sallow face somehow, impossibly, get even more pallid as he was forced to give her a passing grade, Lobelia had rushed over to the portly teacher, bright eyed and grinning wildly, gave her a flower in thanks.

A lobelia.

The Professor kept it on her desk in a little plot for the remaining years of Lobelia's life at Hogwarts, and for many years after that.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Magic was intent. That was what Professor McGonagall wrote to her on the board at their private meeting on the first day of her second year in the transfiguration classroom.

Magic was intent, not pronunciation. For a spell, any spell, to work, the Witch or Wizard in question needed to visualize the spell utterly. Saying the name of that spell helped Lobelia's other classmates, as it had helped Witches and Wizards throughout time.

Not so much Lobelia.

She could speak, she had a voice box and lungs, as she could laugh, and cry, and scream.

She could make noise.

Words, however, were harder for the young girl, trying to mimic the roll and dip and bounce of vowels and consonants she had never heard before, only seen dropped from a lip, and had made her first year extremely difficult.

Difficult, and slightly uninspiring.

She hadn't learned a single spell, and none of the other teachers seemed willing to do much of anything about it.

Apart from Sprout.

Apart from McGonagall.

Magic was intent, McGonagall told her in their first private tutoring lesson, and Hand Signs, according to the research the Gryffindor Head of House had been toiling over during summer break, could be just as powerful.

And so that is what they did every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon, she and the older Gryffindor. They sat in the stuffy and warm transfiguration classroom by the bay window, and they slowly, but surely, work they way through last years and this years syllabus.

They make Hand Signs for the spells. A curled fist that shoots up becomes wingardium leviosa. Three fingers crossed through the air in a slice develops into Lobelia's slicing hex. Two fingers pinched and spun sharply to the left turns out to be her unlocking spell.

It was slow work, but work it did. Most of the time, even without her wand.

The feather floats. The candlestick fissures in two. The chest of draws pops open.

Magic was intent, and Lobelia had plenty of that to go around.

She had only needed to know how to let it out.

She had only needed someone to show her how.

Lobelia knew then. Professor McGonagall had not been ignoring her. Dusting her hands off from a hopeless student as some of her primary school teachers had, stashing the deaf child in the corner so they could concentrate on the class at whole.

As if her sitting there was simply enough to deal with.

McGonagall had been doing this, working on a method to meet the child halfway.

Much older, after the war to come, Lobelia would realize just how lucky she had been to have Professor McGonagall, and Professor Sprout. Without them, she wouldn't have survived Malfoy, let alone Tom Riddle.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Lobelia was twelve when she faced her biggest fear.

The Basilisk.

Ginny was missing, and there was a diary that spoke back, and her friends were in danger, Hagrid had been fired, Dumbledore had stepped back, and-

And obviously Lobelia went running into danger headfirst when, upon finding a sliver of shed skin, the children had managed to whittle down exactly what was prowling along Hogwarts's shadows. She only realised her mistake when Tom Riddle, Voldemort once again back from the dead, had released the Basilisk into the Chamber.

Lobelia couldn't look at it. Not dead on, not side-eyed, not even by a reflection.

Lobelia couldn't see.

To a deaf girl, that was terrifying. She was visual on instinct, ocular on intuition, and the thought that she was suddenly stripped away from her greatest sense was horrifying and chilling and her worst nightmare.

She had nothing else to fall back on.

She was two senses down against a madman and his beast that could kill on glance.

She couldn't see it, she couldn't hear it, she was-

She cowered in the tunnels for a long while, panicking. Her breath sharp and hot in her lungs, tiny daggers embedding in fright.

How was she supposed to fight it?

How was she supposed to save Ginny?

Lobelia couldn't hear Tom Riddle laughing, neither could she see it as she shrank in the dark, dank waters like a flower with no sunlight, wilting, eyes pressed shut in case the Basilisk slithered by, but she felt it bounce off the tiles at her back-

She felt his loud mocking laughter.

Hastily, Lobelia had kicked off her shoes, her socks, her cloak, and she pressed a small hand against the cold, unforgiving stone, wiggling her toes against the cobbles beneath.

A rumble grew stronger, vibrating up her legs.

The Basilisk was slithering through the pipes, getting closer, and Lobelia could feel it moving the closer.

The big bruiser that it was.

She grinned then, and picked up her sword.

It was time to put Tom back where he belonged.

In that bloody diary.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Magic was, fundamentally, a transmutation medium. It could make stationary objects fly. It could make blue glitter to purple. It could make a man short or tall or covered in spots. It was wonderous, and thrilling, and delightful and hideous, and all the things in between.

What Magic could not do was create something out of nothing. That was why a Witch or Wizard could not spell food out of thin air.

It was impossible.

There needed to be, at the very beginning, something to work with.

Lobelia Potter was fully deaf, and had been all her life, no matter how short that life had been thus far, with no frame of reference of sound or noise.

It was this that caused her first, and biggest, falling out with her best friend, Hermione Granger.

Naturally, deaf Wizards and Witches were born, but hearing loss was a spectrum in both the Wizarding and Muggle worlds. Some only heard certain frequencies, low or high or middling, others could hear muffled words, and a few had only a slight dampening of sound.

Those could be looked over by Healers.

A jolly little spell here, and merry little charm there, and all was well.

Those like Lobelia, however, couldn't, as, in the Muggle word, hearing aids did not help the completely deaf. Even with Magic something could not be drawn from nothing.

Lobelia was not sorry for the way she was, even at this delicate age, as she didn't begrudge people, deaf and not, doing what they wished to with their own lives.

It was a choice.

What she could resent was Hermione, her friend, thinking she was doing a favour to the red-head for the Yule Holidays, going behind her back to Madame Pomphrey to see if there was some sort of Magic to fix her. What she could resent was being pulled aside by Madam Pomphrey at dinner, pity hot and heady in the elder Witches eye, telling her there was nothing they could do.

She had never asked them to do anything.

Hermione meant well; Lobelia knew. As most people did, they thought deaf people, clearly, never wanted to be deaf, and given the chance would choose not to be. To Hermione, and others, losing their hearing was a nightmare wrought flesh. Something to weep over. Something utterly dreadful.

A life half lived.

Oh, Lobelia understood the reasoning very well, she had lived with people like that for twelves years, the oh I could never live without music, the immediate, almost anguished, I'm sorry when they learned she was deaf, the can you read and write?

It comes from a place of curiosity. Most of the time it was harmless. Sometimes it was novelty.

It still stung.

It supposed they thought she was lesser. Weaker. Reduced.

They couldn't understand Lobelia's shoes because they had never walked in them. They thought it meant she wanted theirs.

She didn't.

It took her three months to talk to Hermione again, and only after the girl promised never to do it again.

She knew Hermione had meant well.

It still hurt.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

She was thirteen when the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, a recently hired Professor Lupin, realised just how capable Lobelia could be in duelling.

Her spellcasting was nonverbal on instinct, coded in her Hand Signs, Hand Signs the opposing dueller wouldn't understand. Her lip-reading granted her hindsight, sometimes, on the spell zipping her way in technicolour wonder before it was shot off. She wasn't so easily distracted from the target when the other children cheered or jeered. She was used to picking up on non-verbal cues, the tensing of posture, the twist a mouth took before it spoke.

Given training, Lobelia could be quite lethal in the sparring ring.

Training Professor Lupin offered her, and which she took up.

Despite what the Daily Prophet kept saying, regardless of what Dumbledore kept telling her over parchment and quill and lemon drops, Voldemort had come back from the dead twice now.

He'd come back again.

He always did.

Next time, Lobelia would be prepared.

Only, that year, it wasn't Voldemort who came back. A man called Sirius escaped from Azkaban, her parents once-upon-a-time friend, the-

The man who sold them out.

So Lobelia trained. She practiced. She fought.

And when Sirius Black turned out to be innocent, when she and Hermione went tumbling through time on the spin of a necklace, as they raced through the night on the back of a Griffin, it was Lobelia's silent Expecto Patronum that had been strong enough to ward off nearly eighty Dementors.

She had imagined her mother laughing, cast the spell with an open palm over her heart for the Sign.

It was the one and the only time Lobelia had ever wished she could hear.

Her mother's laughter...

She imagined it sounded like how morning dew felt on her toes.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

No one had asked Lobelia to the Yule Ball dance during her fourth year. She supposed they thought, as the deaf girl, that she would have no place surrounded by dancing and music.

Everyone she asked had turned her down too, wincing, grimacing, some even rudely just turning away.

No one wanted to be seen enveloped by song on the arm of the girl who couldn't hear it.

The sad truth was Lobelia loved music. She enjoyed it as much as the next person. Undeniably, she might have enjoyed it differently, but she enjoyed it all the same.

She liked having her shoes off, feeling the bass in her feet. She enjoyed putting her hand on the speaker, feeling the thrum through her fingertips. She liked watching people move, and feeling the pulse of the room, the bouncing bodies.

Nevertheless, as Hogwarts champion it was her duty to go to the ball.

As Lobelia Potter, it was her job to prove everyone wrong just because she could.

Before the first note was struck, she had kicked off her shoes, and she had danced by herself. Wildly, madly, outrageously.

The only way Lobelia ever lived her life.

Were her movements disjointed? Possibly. Did she lack rhythm? Maybe. Did her spins and kicks mismatch the beat of the song? Undoubtedly. Did she have a good time?

Certainly.

Sometimes, Lobelia had thought, life was about dancing by yourself to music you couldn't hear.

And, sometimes, that was what made it special.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Snape had great difficulty with their occlumency lessons. Oh, he could pilfer through her memories, rifle through her dreams, peek underneath at Lobelia's recollections, but he could not understand the words, her thoughts, the voices in her head.

Because she didn't have one, not in the way everyone else seemed to have one.

Lobelia thought in Hand Signs, BSL, the only language she had ever known. In her memories and dreams, that was how everyone talked, that was how every thought flowed, that was how life was.

And it came fast, hard, abbreviated in parts, short jolts of movement.

Snape had never bothered to learn any Sign Language, Wizarding or British, despite being her Professor for nearly five bloody years.

Served the bat right.

It frustrated him; Lobelia knew. Pissed him right off that, in spite of his outstanding skill in the art of mind-magic, skill Lobelia could never hope to hold her own against, her mind was still closed off partially because, at the end of the day, Snape had never tried to meet her halfway.

Her mind was safe from him.

It wouldn't be for Tom, and Lobelia would pay the price for that.

Victories, no matter how sweet, were only ever short lived for her.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

When Dobby died in her arms, Lobelia did not hear his last breath.

She felt it underneath her palm, pressed against his breast, holding on desperately as the little chest quaked and stilled and the thump, thump, thumping beneath her fingers stopped.

That was death to Lobelia.

Not a death rattle. Not a holler or a howl or a shriek. It was the feeling of a heart stopping beneath her fingers tips.

Lobelia sobbed on the beach.

Noisily.

Wetly.

She screamed unheard until she felt her throat constrict, torn to aching shreds.

She could not hear any of it, but she felt it.

Merlin, she felt it.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

When Lobelia died alone in a forest, surrounded by the ghosts of her loved ones, facing a sneering Voldemort with his jeering Death Eaters at his back, she does not hear the Killing Curse shouted across the clearing.

She did not see it either.

She closed her eyes and she held still.

It was the colours she was going to miss most, she thought.

The flush of Hermione's cheeks when Lobelia finally gave her a Sign name, hands cupped at forehead with a weaving trail down to shoulder. She had spelled the movement to give a wisp of Caramel scent, as she had spelled Ron's, two fingers drawn across the nose from left to right, to make his freckles glimmer gold for a flash.

She would miss the green of the Herbology classroom and the grey clouds of a rainy afternoon. The taupe of a beach. She'd miss the feeling of sand between her toes, and the warmth of Molly Weasley's hugs. She'd miss Neville's lopsided smile, and Ginny's wink, and the way George would wrap one arm around her shoulders and jostle her good naturedly.

Lobelia was going to die, and she would miss so much, the taste of whip cream and banana milkshake, the way when she sat close to a speaker and Metallica came on, how the bass would shake her bones, she'd miss the feeling of fresh cotton sheets on bare legs, and a hot shower after Quidditch practice.

Not once does she think, between the time of wand tip raising to rancid green spell hurtling her way, that she missed hearing.

She'd lived a short life, all trembling, desperate, sixteen years of it, but by Merlin, it had been full.

She had friends and foes, good times and bad times, times where she had wanted to pull her hair out and times she had laughed so hard her sides had felt as if they were splitting open, and…

And she had done that all herself.

She had never needed to hear to understand her life had love it in.

The Killing Curse hit, and Lobelia did not hear it. She only felt a sudden, sharp, drop, and-

Nothing.

Sleep.

Sirius had been right.

It felt like falling asleep.

When she came bobbing back to life from the white place, breathless and wide-eyed in the middle of Hogwarts's ruined courtyard, it was for all those things, Hermione's hair and Ron's freckles, Neville's smile and Molly's hugs, the smell of caramel and the glint of gold and the taste of whipped cream, that Lobelia fought for.

And it was because she loved it all that she had won.

She might have been deaf, but it was Tom Riddle who had been blind.

Love always wins in the end.


PRESENT DAY:

4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging

Surrey, England


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Lobelia was clearing out the old house as best as she could. Which was to say in moments of feeling brave enough to tackle the trauma's of her childhood.

The Dursley's weren't coming back here.

Lobelia couldn't truly blame them, given the option, she wouldn't had either.

The war was over, and the only thing to be found in this little square house was memories best left forgotten. By her and them.

She understood her childhood more now in a regrettable way, understood what it must have been like, living under the same roof as a Horcrux for that first tender decade, how exposure to one could twist and turn even the boldest of men.

The Dursleys had never been bold. They had never stood a chance.

Lobelia understood, but it was not justification. Her childhood had been agony and anguish due to Vernon and Dudley, Petunia too, for matters that were out of her control.

She had never chosen to be deaf. She had never chosen to be a Horcrux. She had not chosen to be a lonely orphan who had only ever wanted family and love. Just one hug. Just one kiss. Just one bedtime story.

And although Lobelia could, in part, forgive, she could not truly forget.

Some days she went back on the forgiveness altogether, and cursed that family black and blue and something dark.

But the Dursley's weren't coming back. They were gone, away, living life somewhere Lobelia didn't want to know. It felt better that way. Safer, almost. And she wanted to do the same. She wanted to go out into the big, wild world and see and live and laugh.

She wanted to travel, and meet new people, and-

Live.

She wanted to live.

Putting things to rest back home seemed to be the first step on that long journey. Or so Hermione told her.

For once her life was now her own. No Dursleys. No Voldemort. No Dumbledore or destiny.

Hers.

And Lobelia was planning on living it to the fullest-

As soon as she cleared this house left deserted on a street filled with houses just like it, and got out of Little Whinging for the final time.

She was nearing the end when Lobelia stumbled across the bank statements. Petunia kept them all in a plastic folder covered in a tacky flower print in her bedroom closet, and the only reason Lobelia had gone through them was on the off chance the older woman had put the deed to the house inside.

Hermione, who had come to help clear the house, tackling the under stair cupboard for, even now, Lobelia couldn't stand the sight of it, came stumbling into the room when Lobelia was already midway through the folder, papers strewn on the carpet in perilous piles, ginger curls popping free from a hastily wrangled bun.

Hermione strode in gradually, deliberately, making sure Lobelia had a clear shot of sight between the two.

"What's wrong?"

Lobelia had glanced up before Hermione spoke, read the word wrong on Hermione's lips, spotted the concerned frown pulling brows down low over eyes.

Lobelia did not sign back, simply waving her friend closer where, upon Hermione reaching her sprawled tableau, she shoved a statement in Hermione's direction. The Muggleborn Witch took it carefully, glanced down, and must have seen what Lobelia first had as her eyes pop, lips pursing.

She was whistling, Lobelia knew, as Hermione, what felt like a lifetime ago, had said that was what those edges to lips meant in first year.

"Sixty Thousand?"

Hermione signed as she talked, pinkie out on right hand moving to curl into an O shape. Thumb out on a coiled fist, and ran sideways.

Lobelia nodded, handing another statement, any, truly, from the pile surrounded them. It wouldn't matter which one.

It was everywhere.

Hermione's frown turned dark at the list on the statement.

"Two months in a row… That's strange-"

Lobelia handed over another statement.

And another.

And another.

Hermione spied what she had.

Every month, as far back as these bank statements went, sixty-thousand pounds was deposited in Petunia's bank account on the thirty-first of each month, or the last day should the month be shorter.

Lobelia's birthday.

Lobelia sat amongst the papers, in an old house, swimming in older memories, gazing at her friend with green, green eyes, hand rising, fluttering, scoring through her signs.

What is LuthorCorp?

Helplessly, Hermione shrugged, peering down to the name on the statement next to the big, fat deposit.

"I have no idea... But we should check it out."


Woo or Boo?


A.N: We're a Professor Sprout and Professor McGonagall stan house here. They deserve more love.

THANK YOU all for the followers, favourites and the lovely reviews! I hope you all liked this chapter, and if you have a spare moment or two, please drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon!