Wow I am so sorry this took so long to update, I've just been having trouble getting articulate sounding words down lately. Hope you enjoy this next instalment.
Disclaimer: Only Cepheus Lupin belongs to me, the rest of these wonderful characters belong to the goddess J.K. Rowling.
Maybe, she thinks one day as Cepheus's familiar mismatched eyes sparkle cruelly up from her copy of the Honest Speaker (she stopped bothering with the Prophet years ago), she shouldn't have encouraged the friendship between Scorpius and her son. To this day she does not think her old school friend was malicious, or that he killed his father on purpose; his instable magic, coupled with an addiction to various illegal concoctions finally won out in the end. Despite this, she still tries to delude herself into thinking that Scorpius singlehandedly moulded her son into the scarred, cruel young man he is today.
As a small child, Cepheus would enjoy visiting "Scorpy" and his "white magic dragons". Lily would often indulge him, revelling in the chance to visit her friend and simultaneously keep her wild son occupied for hours at a time. Scorpius seemed to welcome the distraction from his self-inflicted hell, somehow managing to conjure Patronus after Patronus for Cepheus to chase. Even Draco Malfoy seemed to have a soft spot for little Cepheus and he would charm countless miniature Pterippuses and Thestrals for the boy to ride. Lily often found herself jealous of the Malfoys' easy relationship with her son. Perhaps if she had made more of an effort with Cepheus instead of wallowing in her own petty jealousy she could have bonded with him as the Malfoys had.
By the time he was ten, it seemed only the Malfoys could win a true smile from Cepheus. Lily had long since resigned herself to appreciating his occasional half-attempts at placating her and she found his awkward grimaces better than no reaction at all. And even though it makes her feel guilty even now, Teddy's inability to draw a grin from Cepheus without resorting to using his Metamorphmagus abilities or a complicated charm or two always made her feel somewhat better about herself. Even Lily's dad, a favourite with both James and Albus's children, could barely earn himself a twitch of the mouth or a raised eyebrow from his stoic grandson. The rare moments Lily had (accidentally) witnessed Cepheus displaying something akin to joy, his hair had been a blinding silver-blonde and his eyes shone a mismatched silver and blue.
When Cepheus was thirteen, Scorpius was arrested for the murder of Draco. She remembers the hours she spent holding Cepheus the night she told him of his beloved godfather's imprisonment and the death of his surrogate grandfather. Lily doesn't quite know why she encouraged Scorpius to write to her son, though she thinks it may have been a misguided attempt to bring him the comfort she had failed to give. In hindsight, she really should have known better. Surely with proper support and counselling, Cepheus would have pulled through.
To be fair though, Lily never expected their correspondence to become as important to Cepheus as it did. And she never thought Scorpius would encourage her son's foray into the dark arts. She wonders why she never intercepted their letters over the summer, or why she never thought to read what they wrote to one another. Perhaps then she would have found Scorpius's instructions for the poison he used to kill himself with, the very same poison Cepheus used on dozens of victims. Or maybe she would have found the runes Cepheus used to imprison his targets (and on one occasion Teddy), or the directions to find various illegal and dark artefacts still in the possession of the Malfoy family.
Sometimes Lily is able to convince herself that it wasn't her misjudgement that lead to her son's destruction. If Professor Firenze were still alive he may have said it was simply written in the stars, that Cepheus was bound to tread a path of darkness. Perhaps her loony old Astronomy professor would have said that those born under Mars were destined to a life of chaos. Personally, Lily believes that in the end, there may well have been nothing she could do to stop her supernova son from imploding.
*Author's note: Pterippuses are winged horses.