That Summer Chapter IV
Lily opened the door to the overly excited faces of her favourite cousins. They were both seating on the counter in the small kitchen to the left. Dominique had a teasing grin on her fair complexion but wasn't nearly as hyper as Lola, who was practically bouncing in her seat.
Lily let the door close behind her and approached the girls carefully. She threw a little smirk at them and headed to the fridge to get some orange juice. She made her movements deliberately lazy, knowing full well they were dying to question her, as she poured the juice on a mug she took from the overhead cabinet.
"Mornin'." She drawled while leaning against the counter next to the fridge, facing the blondes.
"Morning?" Lola finally lost her composure and screeched. "That's it? You leave the club with some guy and only comes home the next morning, late and with a hickey the size of Africa and all we get is 'morning'?"
Lily was surprised at the mention of the bruise on her neck. She knew there probably would be one, but she had completely forgotten about it. She tried to downplay her surprise.
"Africa, really?" She set the mug on the sink and pushed herself off the counter to make her way to where she left her bag the day before, near Lola's bed.
The girls followed her as she began to strip to put on the change of more appropriate clothes she brought for brunch at her parents.
"That is so not the point, Lily! Tell us every—oh!" Lola gasped in surprise and delight as she saw Lily in only her knickers.
She pointed an accusing finger at Lily, forcing her to look down on herself. The redhead had to fight hard a blush that was persistently making its way to her cheeks. There were finger-shaped bruises on her hips that immediately brought back memories of the previous night.
"So," Dominique jumped on the bed, belly down, and supported her chin with her interlaced fingers, "looks like our little cousin had a fun, fun night."
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." Lola squealed and jumped on the bed beside Dominique.
"Who was it?" The platinum blonde asked curiously as Lily started to get dressed.
"It was someone she new, or she wouldn't have left so quickly." Lola contributed.
"And a wizard because it was definitely an apparition I heard outside." Dominique concluded making Lily sigh as she finished getting ready.
She really didn't want to tell them it was Scorpius Malfoy's flat she'd spent the night. Not because she was ashamed or even scared of Dom telling her family — Lily knew she wouldn't — she just wanted to keep this to herself for a while.
"Who did you do, Potter?" Dominique asked, her curiosity definitely peaked.
"Can we drop this, please?" Lily pleaded as she put on her Adidas sneakers.
"Okay, fine." Lola conceded. "Just tell us how it was." She giggled excitedly.
"Amazing." Lily smirked wickedly at them and turned around to put her clothes from last night into her small leather backpack. "Four times amazing."
She felt her eardrums were about to burst with Lola's squeals and Dom's guffaws.
.
.
.
Lily and Dom decided to take the Knight Bus instead of a muggle one so they wouldn't be so late for brunch. There were a few travellers already on the bus, all of them older wizards and witches, a few of them stared at their decidedly muggle clothes.
Lily could be an Adidas model. She was wearing their classic white sneakers, paired with a cap of the same colour and a light blue shirt that she tied at her waist and rolled up the already short sleeves. The only thing that wasn't from Adidas was her light washed cutouts.
Dominique was wearing a light blue sundress that complimented her eyes perfectly and both had their iPhones out, listening to music and checking their social media.
Muggle culture has been slowly more ingrained into the wizarding world but there were still sideway glances. Lily noted that those looks had been coming only from older witches and wizards.
When they got to Godric's Hollow, Lily fished her wand from her backpack and quickly did a glamour charm to cover the colossal hickey on her neck. She couldn't do it at Lola's because of the Trace, but now that she was home, she could use magic and the Ministry would be none the wiser.
"We're home, family." Announced Lily as she unlocked the front door.
She heard her dad call her through the back door on the kitchen and followed his voice to the garden.
The whole family was already gathered at the Potter's backyard, it seemed. Lily's dad was closer to the door on the griller with Ron and her grandfather while her mum was sitting on the large table in the middle of the yard with her grandmother and the rest of her aunts.
Bill and George were throwing a quaffle between them as Rose, Hugo, Albus, James, Roxy and Fred played an informal game of Quidditch, low in the sky.
Potter brunches didn't have a set date like Sunday lunches at the Burrow, but there were some unspoken rules. One of them — and perhaps the most important of them all — was that the official Quidditch game came after brunch, when everybody had been fed and was ready to give their best.
"Hello, flower." Her grandfather kissed her forehead after Dom and her crossed the threshold.
"Hey, Gramps." She gave a quick smile to Ron and hugged her dad.
"You're late." Harry remarked, his voice carefully neutral, but eyes inquisitive, almost suspicious. Lily fought a sigh.
"Sorry, Uncle Harry, it took me an awfully long time to get my hair to behave this morning." Dominique answered for her. Lily didn't wait to see if the answer would satisfy her dad. She shot an appreciative look at her cousin and headed to the table to greet her mother and grandmother.
"Hey, mum. Nana." She kissed them both on the cheek and gave a general hello to the rest of her family. It was a very tiring experience to say hello and goodbye to all her family members and they all usually just said specific hellos to their grandparents.
"Hi, sweetie. Did you have fun?" Her mum asked before handing her a glass of pumpkin juice.
"Yeah, I really missed Lola." She thanked her mother and took a swig of the ice cold beverage. It was a blessing to her parched throat and overheated body.
Lily sat between her mother and Dominique as brunch was served. Conversation flowed easily around her as usual. She was only drawn into it by her mum, grandmother and aunt Fleur — who was seating across from her — as the rest of the table listened to the Gryffindors go on and on about their school experiences. On any other day she would be annoyed by the topic of conversation on the table, but today Lily found herself not caring at all.
Her thoughts were much more occupied with images of a certain blond haired Slytherin. The way his muscles rippled as her hands trailed over the expanse of his abdomen or how his skin had been covered in a light sheen of sweat. How he felt underneath her, on top of her, inside her.
Lily was suddenly thrown out of her reveries as she felt Dominique's elbow colliding with her ribs. She glared at her in protest.
"Aren't you going to play?" She asked with an annoyingly knowing shine in her bright blue eyes.
Lily turned her attention to the middle of the yard where her family was choosing the teams that would play against each other on their 'friendly' match. She hurried to where they were and made herself noticed by her mum and dad. As this was their house, they got to be team captains and to choose the players.
With the teams chosen, everyone took the time to get their brooms while Lily went upstairs to put her backpack away and to change into some light grey Adidas capris. She tied her hair into a high ponytail and jumped her way down the stairs from her room.
Ginny's team stood in one side of the 'pitch' with her, Angelina and Roxy as chasers, James as a beater, Bill as a keeper and Lily as a seeker while Harry's stood on the other side with him being seeker, Ron the keeper, Fred the beater and Albus, Hugo and Rose as chasers. They usually played with two beaters, but since Charlie wasn't there, Teddy decided to sit on the bench so they didn't have an odd number of players.
The match was brutal, as usual. There was and never had been nothing friendly about Weasley Quidditch. They always went all out, not only do outdo one another but to outdo themselves.
Bill wasn't a good a keeper as Ron so Ginny's team took quite a hit for the first half of the game, but Harry's team had no actual shot against too former professional Quidditch chasers. Ginny and Angelina made such an extraordinary team that for the second half of the game, Albus, Hugo and Rose couldn't even get the quaffle passed the middle of the field.
At the end it was between Harry and Lily. Whoever got to the snitch first would win.
Lily had never won a game against her dad before, but she was confident she could do it this time. Slytherin's training had gone off charts since Emilia took over the team and they practiced nonstop, almost every day of the week. That overwhelming schedule payed off, though, when Slytherin won Quidditch Cup for the first time in years.
Lily watched as Harry circled the pitch a few times. She knew her dad was fast and focused, so her only chance was to be faster and perhaps do something crazy. She was going to get to that snitch first, no matter what.
The sun was beating down on their backs mercilessly, the only relief they had a soft breeze, but still Lily refused to back down. She was close to her father when she saw something glint in the distance. She didn't have time to think, only react. It didn't matter if it was the little ball she was looking for or not, her broom was already speeding towards it.
Lily could see her dad in her peripherals as she confirmed that, indeed, it was the snitch. It was near a tall tree in the outskirts of the yard, barely inside the pitch. It seemed to sense the seekers were in pursue because it suddenly flew in the opposite direction. It didn't loose them, though. Harry and Lily flew flawlessly through the trees, then back to the yard. Their movements were so precise and fast that it looked as if they were water down a stream, constant and fluid.
The snitch suddenly began to rise high above, towards the clouds, and father and daughter continued to fight for it. They were head to head as the little golden ball began its descent, near the tree it had been initially spotted. They were both doing a perfect nose dive and Lily knew that if Harry reached over first, his longer arms would get to it first.
Time seemed to slow down as she looked around and considered her options. The tree is near enough, she reasoned in her head and with only a half formed plan she jumped off her broom.
For a brief, amazingly terrifying second she was free falling. Her body hurled towards the tree as she closed her right fist around the golden ball and reached with her left hand to the highest branch. In her rushed decision, however, she hadn't realised that the branch was too thin to hold her weight after such an impact and with a deafening CRACK it broke in two, leaving her to fall the rest of the way down.
Lily quickly extended her hand to where her broom had fallen and screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Up!"
It zoomed towards her as she hit one branch after the other on her way down. When she finally wrapped herself around the handle, she was already too low to avoid the ground, but managed to pull up so that the impact wasn't what it would have been if she had been free-falling.
Lily rolled around the perfect manicured grass of the Potter residence with the momentum of the fall and came to a stop near the table. She could hear her grandmother screaming for her and all the brooms touching down on the ground, but none of that mattered because she'd won.
She slowly sat up and felt something warm slide down her forehead and into her right eyes, blocking her vision. With her left eye she could see her team members approaching and with a smug grin she raised her right fist in the air to show the tiny pair of wings that came from between her fingers.
"I won."
Nobody said anything for a while, but just before her Nana actually exploded in concerned rage, James whooped loudly and picked her off the ground and set her on his shoulders. The rest of her team cheered alongside him for a while before Lily asked to be put down. The world definitely hadn't been spinning a few moments ago.
Her mum supported her to one of the chairs and her Nana was already using her wand to close the wound on her head.
"That was way too dangerous, Lily." Her father exclaimed as he finally reached them. "What were you thinking?"
"She won, dad!" James exclaimed, his face so excited you'd think that it had been the finals of the Quidditch World Cup. "No one has ever won against you before, but she did!"
"She could have died!" Harry almost shouted, his face red and worried.
"Come on, dad, this is nothing." Lily tried to downplay her wounds, the snitch still fluttering against her palm. "You've done much worse to get a snitch."
"Harry." Her mum interrupted what was sure to be another tirade from her dad and raised her eyebrows at him. "She won."
Harry visibly sighed as he stepped back to let Victoire through. She had been a mediwitch at St. Mungus' for about five years now and was just finishing up her specialisation in neonatal care. She worked quickly and precisely as she did a quick check on Lily. When she asked what hurt, Lily almost blurted out that everything hurt, but she didn't want to alarm her father any more, so she settled for showing her left wrist to her cousin. It was almost black from all the bruising and probably twice its normal size.
"Oh, that's definitely broken." Victoire winced, her voice smooth and unconcerned as she assessed the damage. "There doesn't seem to be anything else too alarming, though."
With a swift 'Episkey!' her bones were set back. Lily cringed at the feeling, but didn't let out any sounds. Victoire used a spell to lessen the swelling and closed the wound on her forehead swiftly. Lily was told to take a shower and go straight to bed while Victoire flooed her and Teddy's flat to get a potion for her minor concussion and the bruising on her wrist.
Lily said a general goodbye to her family as she went into the kitchen, the sounds of her team still cheering behind her. Her mother asked if she needed anything, but she refused help and set up the stairs. She'd had worst bruises, honestly, and she couldn't risk her mother seeing the ones on her hips if she did accept her help.
Lily made her way inside her bedroom and stepped out of her shoes before entering the en suite bathroom.
Taking off her shirt was excruciatingly painful, so she tried to check out her back on the mirror. And there it was. A gigantic bruise on the middle of her back. She sighed and wondered if she asked Victoire to take care of the wound, she would tell her parents about the fingermarks in her hips.
She would have to try her luck, she decided as the scalding water from the shower head helped relax her muscles. The bruising could be something much worse and she couldn't risk it. Besides, Victoire may be the eldest cousin, but she was still a Weasley cousin and they didn't rat on each other. Right?
She wrapped herself in a towel and headed back to her bedroom. Victoire was already there, seated on her desk chair with a potions kit next to her.
"Took you long enough." She remarked, but didn't actually seemed irritated. Lily shrugged apologetically, but had to stop the motion short because of the pain in her back.
"Sorry." Victoire nodded and grabbed two bottles from the kit.
"This one is for you head," she handed Lily a blue vial that smelled absolutely foul, but Lily drank it all the same, "and this one for the pain." A green vial this time, which Lily promptly downed.
"Ugh." She rushed to her nightstand where she'd left a bottle of water before leaving to Lola's yesterday and drank all the contents in one gulp. The water was warm and old but it got the taste of ass out of her mouth so Lily didn't even bother to complain. Victoire chuckled.
"Yeah, it's terrible, I know." She took a small round container and opened it before dipping her fingers in. "This is for the bruising." She motioned for Lily to extend her arm and carefully applied a clear lotion to the skin on her wrist. Lily took a deep breath. It was now or never.
"Hey, Vic?" Good start. Casual, reminding her cousin of their bond by using her nickname. This was fine, maybe she wouldn't even see them.
"Yeah?" Victoire kept massaging the skin with the lotion until it returned to her normal skin tone.
"Could you take a look at my back?" Lily asked, forcing her tone to remain light.
"Sure. Turn around and drop the towel." She twirled a finger in the air and raised an eyebrow at Lily's hesitation. "Come on, little cousin, there's nothing there I haven't seen before."
Lily gulped, but nodded all the same and did as she was told. She could feel Victoire's cool fingers massaging her back and the exact moment when she noticed the fingermarks. She stopped rubbing suddenly and let out a small 'oh' of surprise.
"I guess it's not little cousin anymore." She commented lightly.
And that was it.
No scandalous screaming, or teasing comment, no nothing.
"Are you being careful?" She used the leftover lotion on her hands to massage the bruises on her hips as she kept the light tone in her voice. Lily felt a sudden surge of affection towards her cousin. Here she was, discovering her youngest family member had had sex and all she did was ask if she was doing it safely.
"I take the potion every month without fail." Lily assured her. Victoire stopped her movements and after Lily pulled the towel around herself again and turned around she could see she was nodding.
"Where did you learn it?" She asked seriously now. "Are you sure you're doing it properly?"
"A friend taught me." Lily replied. Victoire nodded once again and looked her straight in the eye.
"Do you think I need to teach you again, or maybe give you a batch?" Lily shook her head.
"I have enough to last the summer and when I get back to Hogwarts I'll make some more with this friend." She explained.
"Are you sure you can trust this friend, Lily?" Victoire frowned and worried her lower lip between her teeth.
"I'm sure, Vic." Lily smirked. "She's a housemate and takes the potion with me."
Alicia Zabini had been fixing her hair in the girl's bath before class when Lily'd rushed to the sink beside hers and groaned at the mirror at the sight of the hickey on her neck. The older girl'd smirked at her.
"Fun night?" Her bright brown eyes had danced in amusement. Lily snorted.
"It was. Until I realised that I had to keep refreshing glamour charms every bloody minute to hide this, that is." She'd pointed her wand at the base of her throat and whispered the incantation. Alicia tutted.
"That's because you're doing it wrong." She'd gently pushed Lily's hand aside and pointed her own wand at the love bite. "Try putting more of a swish to your wrist, like this." She'd performed the spell and leaned back to admire her handiwork.
"It's completely gone!" Exclaimed Lily happily. Alicia chuckled at her.
"This should last about six hours." Lily'd grinned at her in thanks and had been about to leave when Alicia held her back. "Hey, uh. I know this isn't strictly my business, but since we're housemates and, well, we snakes have to stick together, can I ask you something?"
Lily had been pleasantly surprised at the earnest look in the older girl's eyes. She was one of the prettiest girls at school with a mean reputation of being a total bitch to anyone but Scorpius and Felix, and yet here she was. This amazingly cinnamon skinned girl with her perfectly coiffed black hair, stumbling upon her words.
"Yeah." Lily breathed confusedly. The girl seemed even more embarrassed than before.
"It's just that, well…" She cleared her throat. "This seems like the first time you had to deal with a hickey and we all know that Scamander boy isn't exactly a saint virgin so… I just wanted to know if you were being safe." Alicia trailed off, an impossible combination of sheepish and determined.
"I…" Lily faltered. "That's extremely personal." Her eyes were wide, but not exactly accusing. She'd known before Alicia even replied what it was about. In Slytherin everyone was family. Even if you weren't particularly friends with someone, you would always stick by them and help them out. If that didn't compromise you in any way, that is.
"I know, I'm sorry." Alicia didn't sound exactly sorry as she found her confidence. "I just thought I should at least teach you how to make a contraceptive potion. You know, housemate obligation and all…"
"I — sure." Lily answered. Her cheeks had been tinged with pink.
"Good. Meet me here tonight during dinner."
And with that she'd been gone. Lily met with Alicia that night and realised that the girl was actually really nice, despite what other people thought. Their brief encounters after that weren't enough to determine her personality, but she really helped Lily out when she needed a feminine figure in her life, and she would be eternally grateful.
She was brought back to present time as Victoire got up and started to pack her things.
"Yes, well, okay." She handed Lily the container of anti-bruise lotion. "I'm gonna leave this with you, then." Lily nodded.
"Thanks." Victoire made sure to make eye contact with Lily, both of her hands on her shoulders.
"And you'll owl me if you need anything." She completed. Lily grinned at her and nodded appreciatively.
"Yes, I will. Thank you, Vic." She put one hand on top of her cousin's and squeezed. "For not making a big deal out of this."
Victoire nodded at her, seeming at an internal struggle before leaning to kiss Lily on the cheek. She grabbed her kit from the table and headed towards Lily's door. She paused just before she closed it completely after her and turned around to look back at Lily.
"Is he someone special?" She asked curiously, her voice lowered.
"I —" Lily stuttered a bit as she thought of Scorpius Malfoy. He was definitely something special all right. He was top of his class, an amazing Quidditch player and a talented lover. But was he special to her? Lily didn't know so she decided to go with the half truth instead. "He's special."
.
.
.
Hello again! I'm so sorry for the long wait, y'all! Life's been absolutely crazy BUT I can assure you that I'm nowhere finished with this story. I have a lot planned for it and will not stop until it's finished.
Friendly reminder that you can find me on Pinterest under the name Juliette Deschamps and see the board I created with visual aids for this story.
Also, thank you guys sooo much for every review, especially the Annons that I couldn't reply... You guys rock! You absolutely make my day and help me stay motivated.
Sorry there was no ScorLily interaction this chapter, but be prepared for the next one... That's all I'm gonna say.
~Juliette Deschemps