Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
liars love best
she takes her clothes off and she says
'is it all right, if I stay the night, is it all right?'
thriving ivory : unhappy
Lorcan spent History of Magic classes staring at her red ponytail, trying to dissect his attraction. Molly Weasley was the sort of girl people overlooked. If she had been an obvious seductress, like her cousin Dominique, it would have been easily explainable. If she had been conniving and stunning, like her cousin Lily, everyone would have pitied him for getting caught in her web. But Molly wore her bronze and blue Ravenclaw skirt an inch longer than the regulation length. She kept her top buttoned all the way up and never loosened her tie. He'd only ever seen her without her blazer after his rough fingers had pushed it from her shoulders. Her skin wasn't fantastic and she never wore makeup. She didn't give a damn what everyone said about her, and Lorcan had never seen her try to live up to anyone's expectations, let alone set expectations of her own.
A few weeks into their fifth year she had snatched his hand and pulled him into an alcove, kissed him and waited for him to respond or reject her. For some reason he kissed her back.
He asked her later, nearly breathless as her lips left marks down his neck and across his collarbone, "Why're we doing this?"
She bit at his pale skin and he flinched. "I want to. I don't know why you're here." She pulled back and looked up at him, her brown eyes shining guileless from her flushed face. "Leave, if you want to."
He had taken one small step away from her, and his fingers had drifted toward his shirt. He had been about to fumble the buttons back through the buttonholes, but her teeth had caught at her swollen lower lip and suddenly he wanted her in a horribly fierce, painful way. Instead of resting on his pearly plastic buttons, his fingers moved to push the red frizz back from her face, and he muttered, "I don't want to."
She had smiled at him. It was the first smile she'd ever given him, and during those times when he tried to sort out their relationship, he often decided that it was her smile that made him want her. When she smiled she could have stolen any boy from Dominique's fingertips, could have drawn the eyes of the whole school away from Lily's shining scarlet hair.
He liked that she didn't often smile. He didn't want any competition.
:::
Lucy smiled a lot. Lorcan sometimes thought she smiled too much. But he had never told her what he thought because she was too sensitive. Lorcan had once made her cry by suggesting that her hair was too blonde after she had cast a glamour charm on it and he had vowed never to upset her like that again. She was, after all, his best friend.
That was one of the reasons that he had never told her about Molly. Lorcan and Molly were in the same year, and Lucy was the year below them, so she ought to have expected that they'd have interacted at least a little. But she had followed Lorcan gleefully into Gryffindor, and the one time she saw them talking in the corridor her lower lip had jutted out in a pout and her eyes had pierced him from down the hall, accused him of abandoning her for her older sister. He hated the way she made him feel guilty. He couldn't imagine the expression on her usually cheerful face if she found out what Molly and he did in private. He couldn't bring himself to find out. Besides, Molly didn't care. She was even more secretive than he was.
At the end of fifth year he had asked Molly to Hogsmeade. She had looked at him. "As a date?"
"Obviously."
"We're not dating, Lorcan." She had slipped her skirt back up her pale thighs, revealing the perfectly shined Oxford shoes that she hadn't bothered to remove for their quick meeting in the broom cupboard. "You don't need to pretend like we are."
"But don't you want to?" He hadn't missed a beat, hoping his utter nonchalance would impress her the way hers had impressed him. "Go out and hold hands and have me buy you a drink or sweets?"
"We're not dating, Lorcan," she had repeated. "If you want to hold hands with somebody and spend money on drinks for two, feel free to ask someone else. I've never said I wanted anything more than this."
"Okay." Lorcan may have been a Gryffindor, but he had never been transparent. "Just thought I'd ask."
"Thanks for the thought, or whatever," Molly had shrugged her blazer back over her shoulders and stood on tiptoe to press a kiss to his scruffy chin. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Sure," he had said, although they'd actually see each other again in fifteen minutes, in Defence Against the Dark Arts. But for Molly, seeing him meant snogging him. And he'd come to terms with that early on.
If Molly had her way, no one would have known that the two of them ever had ever had a conversation about anything beyond coursework. And after she rejected his attempt at dating, he decided he was okay with that. Especially whenever he thought of Lucy's expression, that one time she saw them talking.
:::
Lorcan believed that he knew more about Lucy than he knew about Molly. He knew that Lucy was not a natural blonde; her natural hair colour was somewhere between deep earthy brown and black, like her mother's. Lucy hated it, and she had gotten Lorcan to help her dye it the summer after his first year at Hogwarts. Her parents had grounded her for the rest of the summer, but they hadn't made her change it back.
He also knew that she was self-conscious about her last name, and that she did not do as well in courses as she pretended she did. The whole school believed that she received top marks on every assignment, but Lorcan knew that she was lucky if she landed somewhere in the middle. She laughed whenever she felt nervous, and she got quiet whenever she was particularly happy.
Lorcan also noticed that Lucy, unlike Molly, had learned from Dominique. At the beginning of her fifth year she began undoing the buttons on her blouse and looping her tie around her head like a jaunty red and gold headband, nearly lost among the fake golden curls. She smiled even more than usual, and Lorcan caught her lowering her lashes while talking with any number of guys in her year and the years above her. He never mentioned it to Molly, but he was worried about her. He wanted to ask Molly if she was, too, but whenever their conversations touched on Lucy they usually got into a war about who knew her better.
But one day she brought it up. They were down in the Dungeons after Potions, and Molly had summoned him with a hard look to one of the abandoned classrooms. She didn't go toward him immediately, though, and he leaned back against one of the dusty tables, crossing his long legs at his ankles and staring as she paced, her hands twisting nervously. He wanted to approach her and take her hands to calm her down, but they didn't touch unless they were on their way to fucking and the way she was looking at the floor made him think that if he reached for her now they'd be over.
"Have you noticed the way Lucy's been acting?"
"Yeah."
"Why do you think she's doing it?"
"She wants more attention," he answered. That question was always easy to answer when it came to the Potters and the Weasleys. Aside from Molly, they were always looking for more attention.
"But why?" Molly stamped her foot and Lorcan raised his eyes to look at her. She'd never seemed overly concerned with how Lucy behaved before. "Everyone's already in love with her. Why does she need more?"
"She hasn't talked to me about it," Lorcan told her. "I've been trying to act like nothing's changed, so maybe she'll go back to normal, eventually."
"It's not working, though," Molly said. He shrugged. It wasn't, but he wasn't sure what else to do. She sighed. "Maybe I'll talk to her." She smiled at him and held out a hand. He hesitated before he took it, but then she pulled him close and said, "Fancy working on Charms homework here?"
He grinned, because for once she wasn't speaking in innuendoes. "Yeah, sounds good."
Maybe they could turn this mess of hormones into something normal.
:::
Molly, Lorcan soon discovered, was a Ravenclaw to her bones. They had begun doing homework together in abandoned classrooms, and Lorcan's scores, to his utter astonishment, slowly rose out of the pit that his apathy had pushed them into. Molly told him, in a voice that carried hints of egoism, "See, I told you you just needed to focus, Scamander."
He laughed. "I just needed your help, you mean."
Molly shrugged. "If that's what it takes." And then she dropped her quill and her lips were on his in an instant, and they both gave up on homework for the rest of the night.
:::
Lucy should not have been allowed into the boys' dormitories, but Hogwarts wasn't omniscient, and couldn't have known that she was less trustworthy than all the boys in Gryffindor put together. So the steps to the seventh year boys' dormitory didn't send her sliding back into the common room when she climbed them at midnight.
She tugged at the curtains to Lorcan's bed and climbed inside, sitting cross legged at the foot and nudging his legs aside as she cast a silencing charm around the four-poster. She could just make out the fan of his pale hair against the white of his pillow in the dim light from her lumos charm.
"Lorcan," she whispered, even though no one would have been able to hear through the curtains and her spell.
He awoke slowly. He always had, even when they were little and taking naps side by side on the floor of her grandmother's living room. He blinked light blue eyes at her, and she knew they were blue, even though that night they looked closer to grey.
"Lucy?" He sat up. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said. "Nothing."
She pushed her curly hair back over her freckled shoulder and straightened the strap of her nightgown and Lorcan wondered who in their right mind had sold her that scandalous silky scrap because couldn't they see that she was far too young for anything that didn't cover her collarbones and her elbows and her knees? For anything nearly that transparent?
"What are you doing here, Lucy?" He drew his knees up so his bedclothes made a triangular tent and shoved his back against his headboard. He was as far away from her as he could get and still be in his bed. He thought he probably should have run out to the common room the minute he recognised her. Because yes, she was his best friend. But she was also dangerous.
"I have a question for you." She must have seen what was going through his head, but she didn't look hurt. She should have looked hurt.
"Couldn't it wait until tomorrow?"
"I couldn't sleep." He thought he saw something like fear in the slowness of her smile, but then it was the normal curve along the lower half of her face and he couldn't read anything more than confidence in it. "Will you go to Hogsmeade with me?"
"Like a date?" His heart clenched. He had not been expecting this.
"Obviously."
Her lip caught between her teeth and she looked shockingly fragile. That was all he knew. Lucy was fragile and Molly was...not.
He hated himself, hated himself, as he said, "All right. Saturday night?"
Hadn't Molly given him permission to see somebody else, way back in fifth year? Hadn't she?
:::
It was Wednesday, so he found Molly in an empty Transfiguration classroom. She was reading a textbook with her pale legs stretched out on the desk in front of her and he wanted to go sit next to her, lay his head in her lap and beg her to forgive him.
But she had never been the forgiving type.
"Molly," he began, and she turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. She couldn't know, because if she had, he would have already been eviscerated.
"Lorcan," she replied gravely, her mouth twisting into a smile.
"This needs to stop."
Her eyes widened. "This...?"
"We can't be together anymore." His hand drifted to his pocket and settled on his wand, even though she didn't look like she was about to curse him.
"Why not?"
"I've got a date on Saturday."
She exhaled, a relieved breath in the otherwise silent classroom. "So? We never said 'this' was exclusive."
His stomach twisted. "It's with Lucy."
Her eyes narrowed. He felt trapped. They stared at each other for a few silent minutes. He wondered if she could see his reluctance. He wondered whether she was judging him.
"This does need to stop," she finally conceded, and he turned and left her alone, for the last time.
:::
Lucy laughed a lot. When they studied in the library she'd dip her index finger in ink and draw designs over the back of his hand, where it lay flat on the table. She kissed him when she met him in the common room in the morning and ruffled his hair when she passed him at the Gryffindor table and whenever she caught him in the corridors she grabbed onto his hand and pressed her lips to his cheek.
A month after they started dating, Lucy had him pressed against the wall in an empty classroom.
Lucy's hands were warm against the skin beneath his tee, whereas Molly's had always been freezing. Her lips were soft, whereas Molly's had always been chapped. Her teeth were tender, whereas Molly's had always been deadly. And he wished he could stop comparing them, but his brain wouldn't turn off, the way it had whenever Molly had him in an identical position against this same wall.
Lucy stopped kissing him. "Lorcan," she began, her voice breathy. "Lorcan, can we...?"
He looked down at her and forced a reassuring smile. "What, Luce?"
"Can we...will you...willyousleepwithme?" The words burst and he took her hands from his waist and held them in both of his.
"You've never...?" He trailed off, because he wasn't sure if she'd be offended, but he had assumed – apparently stupidly assumed – that she had had sex with at least some of the guys she had flirted with during her transformation.
"You have?" She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise.
"Well, just...just once." He lied.
Lucy tugged her hands from his and took a step back. "I'm your best friend, Lorcan," she informed him. "I thought you would have told me."
"It didn't seem important. It still doesn't." He wondered if he was supposed to be worried that she'd break up with him because of it. He wasn't.
"Who was it?" Lucy didn't take losing well, and she'd never allowed herself to be outclassed.
"No one you'd know," he said. "No, I promise, Luce, I met her when Lysander and I went on holiday in Croatia. Remember, last summer?"
She relaxed a little, but her face was still set. "If I asked Lysander about it, would he tell me?"
Lorcan wished that Lysander had known about Molly. He wished that his brother were there for him, ready to spin glorious lies about the blonde Croatian girl who reminded him a lot of Lucy, actually, and clearly Lorcan's moment of indiscretion was just him pining after Lucy while they were away from her. But he couldn't ask his brother to do that, because his brother would not have supplied the lies without the reason.
"No. I went out a few nights without Lysander," well, he had, "and I met her only once. Look, Lucy, it was not a big deal, or anything. It didn't mean anything."
She shrugged. "I don't know why I thought that you were still a virgin, too. It was stupid."
Lorcan shook his head. "It wasn't." He straightened his tie and pushed away from the wall, but Lucy raised her eyes to his and he saw that they were still bright with a fierce competitive glow.
"Where are you going?" she asked. His hopes that she would forget about him, or at least forget that she wanted to sleep with him, disappeared. "Just because you're not a virgin doesn't mean that I don't want you anymore." She moved toward him, her fingers at the buttons on her top, "In fact, it probably means this will be a thousand times better than it would have been."
But he knew it would hurt them both. It would hurt them both a lot.
Still, he replaced her fingers with his.
:::
Lorcan thought he might talk to Lucy about taking a break after he left Hogwarts. He thought that she might get lonely, without him there. He thought that she might begin the conversation with a, "Hey, Lorcan, it's been fun, but..."
No such conversation came. Instead, when he got a flat in Edinburgh and a job writing for the newspaper the Scot-Wizard, she asked him for a key. When he hedged, saying that he'd be home when she visited anyway, she stuck her lower lip out in the pout that had successfully guilted him three years before and he gave in and handed her a key. They still weren't over.
Lorcan avoided mentioning Molly, but one night in early September he and Lucy had finished a dinner of takeaway Chinese and Lucy mumbled, "I wonder if Molly misses Chinese" around the crunch of a fortune cookie.
"Why would Molly miss Chinese?" He busied himself with clearing up the containers and chopsticks, unwilling to face her, in case she noticed the longing in his eyes.
"Don't you know?" She chucked a balled-up napkin at the bin. When he didn't respond she continued, "She's moved to South Africa. She's working as a correspondent down there for The Daily Prophet. You really didn't know?"
"No," he snapped. Why would he have known? As far as Lucy knew, the two of them had barely interacted.
"I just thought that your mum might have told you, or Lysander, or someone."
"Why would they've known?" He poured his leftover beer down the sink. For some reason, it no longer looked appealing.
"Well, your mum because she's always over at the Burrow, and Lysander because he's Molly's friend."
Just friend? Lorcan wondered suddenly. What if Molly hadn't just been fucking him, all those years? What if she had snatched both Scamander brothers from the corridor and snogged them both? What if this whole thing was only half the drama?
"They're not dating, are they?" he asked, and he was surprised that his voice didn't sound too bitter.
"Lysander and Molly?" Lucy laughed. "Merlin, no. Lysander's your twin, Lorcan, don't you think you'd know if he were dating my sister?"
"You never know." Because she never had.
:::
Lucy's parents refused to let her spend all of Christmas holidays at Lorcan's flat, and Lorcan was silently grateful. He could never have told Lucy that, of course, but he was happy that he didn't need to worry about spending two whole weeks almost entirely in her company, about leaving her alone in his flat when he left for work in the morning.
He promised her that he'd get to her grandmother's early on Christmas day, to make up for it. And he woke up early enough to get there. He rolled out of bed and he put on his jeans and grabbed a jumper as he went to the kitchen to make coffee. But just as he began to measure out a scoop into the filter someone leaned against the buzzer to his flat. He crossed the room and tugged the door open, one hand still holding a scoop of coffee grounds, the other tugging the waistband to his jeans up above his Gryffindor lion decorated boxer shorts.
Maybe he should have expected her. Then again, they hadn't spoken in nearly a year and a half, not even a cursory "Hi" in the corridor.
She looked cold. Her hair was shorter than he'd ever seen it; it hung in waves to brush her shoulders. Her lips were blue and her skin was pale. She wore only a tank-top and jean shorts, and her toes were purple in flip-flops. She smiled sheepishly at him. "I apparated straight here. It was stupid."
He stepped back from the door so she could come in, and he wanted to say something witty or something charming or maybe something apologetic, but his tongue was stuck to his teeth and he really just wanted her to cover herself up, because her milky skin hurt him and because if she didn't he was going to need to touch her.
He tossed her the jumper he'd discarded on his kitchen counter and he tried to finish making coffee, ignoring how his hands were shaking. She didn't say anything, but when turned turns back around she'd pulled his sweater on, her arms wrapped around her waist and her eyes caught on his.
"Merlin, Moll," was all he could say, finally. "Merlin. What are you even doing here?"
"It's Christmas," she said. "I had to come home for the family thing. And I didn't want the first time I saw you to be when everyone's around. I thought that might have been awkward."
Like this wasn't awkward. Like this didn't hurt.
"Oh," he said. Silence hung between them.
"I just wanted to see you." She bit her lip and he remembered how she had looked, that first time they'd kissed. "I wanted to see if you'd changed."
"Have I?" He hated himself for keeping this on the surface, but at the same time he couldn't imagine letting it fall anywhere beneath it. He couldn't imagine telling her that he was sorry. He couldn't think of the words "I miss you" or the promises that he wished they had made way back in the beginning.
"No." She sounded disappointed.
He turned to look at her. "Why is that a bad thing?"
"God, Lorcan." She covered her face with her pale hands. "God. I just. I wanted to stop wanting you."
He had hoped for the same thing.
She looked at him and he looked at her. For a moment they froze, Lorcan's pale chest rising and falling while her hands balled into fists on the table. And then they gave up.
He had her shoulders in his hands in under a second, and she stood so quickly that their noses bumped before their lips did. After some awkward fumbling they found themselves back to the way they'd been a little over a year before, comfortably fitting together. Her arms wrapped around his back and his hands slid beneath the jumper he'd forced on her, as their lips learned each other again.
They had never bothered with beds. They'd always felt need in a quick and restless way, and they'd worked out how to get at each other as quickly as possible back in hidden corners and classrooms at Hogwarts. Lorcan's kitchen felt just the same; this was just as hurried and illicit.
Molly cast the cleaning charm when they'd finished, and Lorcan stepped away from her as she tugged her clothes back on, straightening her tank top and smoothing her hair. He leaned his forehead against a cupboard and cursed internally for a good five minutes before he finally felt calm enough to speak.
"This is bad, Molly."
She didn't say anything. He couldn't bring himself to look at her.
"I'm with Lucy now." He wished he wasn't. He wished he could tell her that he wished he wasn't.
"Don't you think I know that?" she exploded. Her lips blurred as her tongue burnt with pent-up, year-old emotions. "I know that. I've tried to forget that you're with Lucy. I've tried so bloody hard, you bastard. I wish that I could believe that we just grew out of each other. But no, no, no. Every day I wake up and I remember. And just when I'm about to forget, just when I'm about to let it go, my little sister sends me a letter full of news of you. And I wish, I wish that I could hate her for it. But I can't. So I just hate you and I just hate myself and it makes it so goddamned hard to be happy." She crossed the room to stand behind him and she placed her hands on his bare shoulders, her thumbs pressing into his shoulder-blades. He turned, but he kept his eyes locked on her pale jutting collarbone.
"And you know what the worst part is?" she continued, her voice softer now that she was closer to him, but still blistering with rage. "You're not happy, either. If you wanted her any more than you wanted me, it would be so much easier to accept." She shook her head. "Why're you even with her, Lorcan?"
If someone had asked him why he had just cheated on Lucy, he'd have been able to give them so many reasons, beginning with Molly's smile and ending with the fact that she cried when she read strangers' obituaries. But when Molly asked him why he was with Lucy, he couldn't give her an answer. He'd never tried to sort out their relationship. It had happened, sort of the way volcanoes erupted and fault lines shifted – inevitable and disastrous.
"Why?" she repeated, softer still.
"Because," he managed, before rolling his lips between his teeth.
She pressed her palms against his chest and pushed him back against the cupboards. He glanced down at her for a moment before staring somewhere above her head. She looked desperate. "Please, Lorcan, just tell me what you were thinking. What you are thinking. Please."
He gripped the edge of the counter to keep himself from placing his hands on her waist again. It had never been such an effort not to touch someone before. "Lucy was my best friend," he told her, "before you and I ever had anything. I knew her first and I knew her best and back then it seemed like you and I were just using each other."
"I never –" Molly began, but he shook his head. Now that he was finally talking, he just wanted to get it all out.
"That may not have been what we were doing, but it felt like it. At first, it really felt like it. And then Lucy came at me and Molly, you were always stronger than her. I didn't think that I could hurt her." He shook his head. "And God, that was stupid."
"You got with her so you wouldn't hurt her?" Molly let go of him and stepped back. He still didn't look at her.
"I thought that it would hurt you less if I stopped seeing you than it would hurt Lucy if I rejected her. But now...she hasn't left me yet," he tried to keep himself from sounding astonished, but he couldn't.
"Why would you ever have thought that she'd leave you? She's loved you since she was four years old, Lorcan. Four."
"She...Molly, she can't still love me. I'm never really there for her. I try. I tried a lot more in the beginning, but I still try, sometimes, and it just doesn't work."
"What do you mean?" Molly wrapped her arms around herself and Lorcan wondered what his life would have been like if he had told Lucy no way back in the beginning.
"What do you think? She needs someone who loves her, and I barely even tolerate her. And that's horrible, Molly. God, it's the worst."
"And she doesn't know?"
"I guess not." He laughed, but it wasn't funny. "If she did, don't you think she'd have broken up with me?"
"God, Lorcan." Molly's voice was bitter. "Why don't you break up with her? You can't still be worried about hurting her, since you're obviously hurting her now, anyway."
"But then what?" he asked. "Then I've lost my best friend, I've lost my family, and I've already lost you. Who will I have?"
"Maybe then you'll finally begin to figure things out," she answered. She pulled his jumper off again and dropped it on the ground. "But you're wrong about me. Somehow, you haven't managed to lose me yet."
"Molly," he began, but she shook her head.
"I shouldn't have come here. I'll see you at Gran's."
She disapparated before he could say anything else.
She didn't see him at her grandmother's, though. He tried to apparate there four times. He squeezed his eyes shut, gripped his wand, and turned, but no magic buzzed around him. He tried to use the Floo, but his hand shook so much whenever he reached into the powder that it spilled back into the Tupperware container before he could get enough into his fireplace. He even tried calling a Muggle taxi, but his mobile phone disconnected just after he got through to the car company.
He decided to go to a Muggle pub. It was a better idea than spending the day alone with a bottle of Firewhiskey and a worse idea than spending the day alone in bed.
He found his way back to his flat sometime later than late that night, but he wasn't surprised to find Lucy standing in his kitchen, her eyes on the jumper still on the floor. She looked up when he stumbled in. She had been crying.
"You told me you'd meet us for Christmas. Everyone was sad you weren't there." She didn't sound like she'd been crying, but her eyes were red-rimmed.
"I can't do this anymore, Luce."
"Do what?" she asked. She didn't have the common sense to look scared. Or maybe she was stronger than he'd always thought she was. Maybe she had seen this coming.
"I can't be with you anymore."
"Why?" Her voice trembled this time.
"I don't love you," and maybe that was a bit harsh. But, God, was he tired of lying to her.
Tears filled her eyes, and he could see how hard she was fighting them. Her cheeks flushed and her fingers flew to her hair, threading through the blonde ringlets like she could use them to turn back time. "But you've always said you did."
He could lie now, couldn't he? Tell her he had loved her and he'd grown out of it. He had to. But his mouth wouldn't cooperate, and maybe he had had a bit too much to drink. "I was telling you what you wanted to hear. I never loved you like I was supposed to, Lucy."
"Why?" she asked again. The word choked on its way up.
He sighed. "It's stupid, but I thought that if I kept saying yes to you, if I kept pretending, I could stop myself from hurting you." She stared at him, her cheeks bright red on an otherwise pale face. "And I've obviously hurt you more than I would have if I had said no straightaway."
"You think, you bastard?" Lucy stood and raised her wand. He stood still, waiting for the curse. But she breathed a frustrated sigh and lowered it. "It's not even worth it." She shook her head. "I'm going home."
He didn't try to stop her. She may have been hoping that he would, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything else.
Two hours later, Molly reappeared in his kitchen. He was sitting at the table, with his head pressed against the plastic surface, a glass of water by his right hand. He didn't look up. Of course she was the one to come.
"Lucy asked me to get her things. In the bedroom, I assume?"
"And the bathroom," he told his table. He heard Molly go down the hall, and the rustle of a plastic bag as she collected her sister's clothes and bristly toothbrush and floss and other things.
He didn't look up when she came back in.
"You could have handled that better," she told him.
"I know."
"She's crying. Mum and Dad are both ready to kill you."
"I figured."
"I'm glad you did it," she said.
He looked up then. "I am too."
She clutched the plastic bag to her chest and held her wand loosely in her left hand. "I'll see you around?"
"Molly," he pressed his palms into the table, "swear you won't give up on me?"
"I promise." She left him alone.
:::
Lysander came to see Lorcan after New Years. The two brothers had never been particularly close, but Lysander had seen Lucy, and he thought that if his brother was in even moderately better shape then he'd need someone. But when he got to Lorcan's flat, the place was spotless, and his brother was scribbling notes for an article out on a parchment, whistling as he wrote.
"Are you all right?"
"Fine," Lorcan told him. "Why?"
"You and Lucy were together for a while," Lysander reminded him.
"Look, Lysander," Lorcan glanced up at his brother, "thank you for coming over here, but I'm fine. Really. I know that Lucy doesn't realise it yet, but it'll be better for her. And it's better for me."
"But –" Lysander began, and when Lorcan shook his head, Lysander said, "Want to go out for a drink?"
"That, I'll do."
Lorcan didn't tell Lysander that while he wasn't particularly missing Lucy – although he did miss the Lucy from his childhood, the Lucy he used to see daily in the summertime – he missed Molly so much that he ached.
:::
He passed Lucy in Princes Street Gardens in May. He hadn't expected to see her, and his eyes slid right over her – just another blonde British girl in tights and shorts and an orange jumper – and then he realised that he knew her and he whirled around. She was laughing, her head thrown back and her hair spilling down her back. The man with her looked familiar. Lorcan couldn't quite place him, but he was pretty sure he had been in Lucy's year at Hogwarts, and she looked happy. He considered going over to her, saying hi, but he wanted to remember her as happy rather than angry, and he thought distance was the best way to achieve that.
:::
It had been six months since he'd seen Molly. He hadn't been counting, or anything, but sometimes he flipped open the calendar on his desk and ticked back the months. Sometimes he even went down to weeks or days, just to make himself feel lonelier, just to make himself more depressed. Lorcan still wanted her. He still thought about Hogwarts and her smile. He still wondered at the way they'd started and the way they'd shattered. Every day he felt stupider for the way he'd handled it all.
He decided six months was long enough. Lorcan stuck his head in the fire and called out the address he'd gotten from the Hogwarts headmaster, under the ruse of needing some sort of information for an article, never mind that they were working for rival newspapers.
It wasn't Molly who answered the Floo call, though. The girl who knelt in front of the fire had blonde hair and she blinked hazel eyes when she recognised his face in the flames. "Lorcan?" She didn't sound angry, but she didn't sound particularly thrilled, either.
"Hi, Lucy." He swallowed. He could say he'd had the wrong address. He could say he was looking for her mother or one of her cousins. He could keep lying. "Is Molly around?"
"Why do you want Molly?" She asked, and he bit back the nervous laugh that bubbled dangerously close to his lips at that question. She wouldn't have liked his answer.
"I haven't talked to her in a while," he said.
"You've never talked to her," Lucy pointed out. "You didn't even know she lived here until I told you."
"We used to be friends," he said. She looked sceptical.
"I didn't know that. You never told me."
"Is she there?" he asked again, because he hadn't built up all of this energy to talk to Lucy. He had already decimated their friendship; he had no hope to get that back.
"No. She's out. I can tell her you called though." He nodded, but she continued, "If you tell me why you never told me you were friends with her."
"Lucy," he sighed, "it doesn't really matter."
"Lorcan," she mimicked, "it does to me."
He pulled his head out of the fire and leaned back on his heels while he waited for the dizziness to dissipate. And then he tossed more Floo powder into the flames and stepped through to South Africa.
Lucy had clearly not expected him to appear on her carpet. She hadn't moved, and he ended up half in her lap and half on the hearth.
"This is not awkward at all," she muttered, pulling herself out from under him as quickly as she could manage. "You could have told me you were coming through."
"I could have, but you wouldn't have let me." He stood up. "I'll just wait here for Molly, thanks."
"Merlin, Lorcan, you don't need to act like we're strangers," she told him. She drew herself up and stared at him, "I've moved on, you know. I'm seeing someone else, now."
"I'm happy for you," and he was, he was, but he wasn't here to see her.
"Thank you." She sighed. "What're you doing here, Lorcan?"
"I told you, I just want to see Molly."
Lucy rolled her eyes. "I've figured that out, thanks. Why did I never see you two together, if you were such close friends?"
"So," he turned away from the door and locked his eyes on hers, "who're you dating, now? Anyone I know?"
"Lucas Smith. You might know him; he was in my year." Lorcan nodded. He remembered the blond vaguely. "We're happy."
"Are you just visiting Molly? Or have you gotten a job down here?" He sat down on the edge of the couch and Lucy perched on the arm of a chair, kicking her bare heel against the green fabric.
"Just visiting. She hasn't been writing home as often, and so Mum and Dad sent me down to see if she's okay."
"Is she?"
Lucy's eyes pinned him to the couch. "Were you 'friends' or enemies or something else?" she asked.
He didn't respond. Not because he wanted to keep her in the dark anymore; God, he wished he could just come out with all of it, but because he heard the creak of the front door to the house, and hurried footsteps in the hall off the living room, the slap of sandals against a tile floor.
"I'm home, Luce."
"Someone's here to see you, Moll," Lucy called, glancing at Lorcan again. He had tensed on the couch, his hands still on his thighs.
"Oh?" Molly stepped into the room, carrying a canvas bag over her shoulder and wearing an orange and red patterned dress that brushed her ankles and clashed horribly with her hair. She stopped when she saw him.
He stood and, ignoring Lucy, ignoring secrecy and damning history, wrapped his arms around her waist. She didn't respond, leaving her arms against her sides and her forehead against his shoulder, where he'd pulled her.
"I miss you," he told her.
"Lorcan," she said. "Lorcan, what are you doing?"
"Yes, Lorcan," Lucy's voice sounded a hell of a lot calmer than he'd expected it to, "What are you doing?"
He let go of Molly and, still ignoring Lucy, looked down at her. "I miss you," he repeated. "I'm tired of pretending like I don't. I'm tired of pretending like I don't know you. Will you let me take you out to dinner? Please let me date you, this time."
"This time?" Lucy repeated.
Molly's eyes jerked from his face to her sister's. "Luce," she began.
Lucy stepped forward, so she was facing both of them. Her eyes didn't leave Lorcan's face. "Were you cheating on me?"
Molly answered. "We were together before you started dating, Lucy. Lorcan ended it. We ended it for you."
"But why? Why did you even ever date me?" she asked Lorcan and God, he wished he had come up with a thousand plausible excuses to drop at her feet.
"I thought it would be easiest."
"It wasn't," Lucy informed him. As if he didn't already know.
"Lucy," Molly said, but her sister turned away from them.
"I'm going home. You clearly don't need me anymore, Molly, now that you've got your fuck buddy back."
"Lucy," Lorcan pleaded, but she had already turned the fire green and stepped back to Britain.
He waited for Molly to explode at him. Instead she sighed and dropped the bag she had been carrying to the floor. "We probably could have handled that better."
"Probably."
"I'll still go out with you, though."
"Yeah?" He didn't bother trying not to smile.
"I've got a bit of a thing for idiots." She didn't bother, either.
Molly reached for Lorcan, and this time, for the first time, they went slowly.
:::
Lucy came back. She landed gracefully in the living room and kicked at one of her sister's dresses that was lying crumpled by the hearth. She had given them a week.
"Look," she walked into the kitchen and tried to ignore the fact that Lorcan was cooking without a shirt on and that Molly was still in pyjamas, even though it was two in the afternoon, "I'm still pissed at you both, okay?"
"Understandably," Molly said. Lorcan didn't say anything; he was too surprised to speak.
"But," Lucy continued, "I miss you Molly and, Lorcan, I think we really fucked up when we started dating, and I think sometime I'll be able to look at you without wanting to curse you, so sometime I'll stop being mad at you."
"Fair enough," Molly told her, even though Lorcan was sort of wondering what curses she was planning on using on them, so he could be prepared.
"Okay." Lucy nodded. "So, that's all, I guess. I'll be seeing you."
Lorcan turned to watch her go. She looked older than she ever had when he was dating her, and suddenly he was glad that they'd all grown up so quickly.
"Maybe," he told Molly, "We won't need to hide out here forever."
She smiled. "A few more weeks couldn't hurt, though."
He remembered to turn off the stove before he kissed her.
A/N: This was going to be less than 3,000 words. It was going to be part of the new project I'm working on. Then it got long.
I don't know where it came from but dude, these teenagers are horny.
I appreciate reviews!