rainbow promises (are made to be broken)
note: this concept is based off a tumblr poem / quote that i saw on twitter.
prologue:
In a little girl's world of black and white, colours are hard to describe; at least, this is what Ginny Potter finds. Her daughter is seven and her hair is a rich, rich red but no words will convince the stubborn girl that it has ever been anything other than grey – lighter than daddy's black, she says, but darker than grandpa's white.
Ginny blames Harry, of course, because that stubborn tilt of the chin is definitely a Potter trait. But Weasleys have never known when to quit, either.
"You know," she begins, brushing Lily's lovely hair before bedtime, "I used to see the world in only black and white too, once."
Lily's eyes blink and widen in the mirror. "Really, mama?" she gasps.
Ginny sets the hairbrush on the dresser, pulls Lily's long hair to one side of her neck, leans in, whispers in her ear the words her own mother told her long ago: "It's a curse, from a Dark Lady long since passed. Only those who have found true, honest, reciprocated love can see the world for what it really is, colours and all."
"Like – like soulmates?" Her voice is full of wonder.
"Yeah baby, exactly like soulmates."
Lily's little fingers reach for the neatly brushed hair, and twirl strands through them; her hazel eyes lower, like she's sleepy. "Mama, will I ever have a soulmate?" she asks.
And Ginny Potter smiles, and kisses her daughter on the cheek. "Of course you will, baby," she says.
the beginning:
Lily is fifteen and this world of grey is all she has ever known, all most people she knows have known; it doesn't really bother her that there isn't anything more. People call her parents lucky, to be able to see colours, like it's some sort of gift that makes them better than the rest, as if Harry and Ginny Potter ever needed more public favour. To her, it just seems like one of those things that would obviously happen to the hero and his wife, and Lily has never been a hero, so she won't get it.
Simple.
It doesn't stop her from hoping, though.
:.
It's all Al's fault, really. The party is his idea, and he invites all his stupid friends over because mum and dad are away for the night and James is at work and he doesn't care what an inconvenience it is to Lily. She stays in her room and fumes by herself and tries to study Charms.
Bombarda is the incantation of the charm used to provoke- her head snaps towards the door handle. It's moving, like someone's trying to get in. One of Al's friends is trying to get into her room. One of Al's friends is probably trying to get into her room to have sex.
Murmured voices sound from outside the door, half-drowned out by the song playing on the Wireless. "Alohomora!" the person trying to open the door hisses. It clicks open. Lily groans in annoyance.
Two bodies fall into the room, too wrapped up in each other to notice her sat at the desk. Lily doesn't know who it is at first, only really noticing that one is male and the other female. It's only when they part for air, faces pulled apart, that she realises that the girl is her cousin.
"Rose?" she exclaims.
Rose and the boy she's kissing jump away from each other, like they've been electrocuted, pivoting to face her in shock. As if they're surprised that Lily is actually inside her own room during the school holidays.
"What the hell?" Lily yells, outraged. "Were you planning on fucking in my room? That's so wrong!"
The mental image she gets is very wrong too, but she tries to forget it by figuring out who the boy is. He's unfamiliar, with sharp and aristocratic features and pale hair – very good looking, she notices, far too handsome for a stumpy girl like Rose Weasley. His half-smirk, as if the situation is funny and not embarrassing as hell, makes butterflies flutter in her stomach in a way that's new and exciting.
"Who's this?" she asks, cutting off the mumbled excuse that Rose is spouting.
The smirk widens. It's beautiful. "I'm Scorpius Malfoy," he says. "Pleased to meet you."
He offers his hand to shake. The fingers are long and bony; pianist's fingers, she thinks, dexterous fingers. She imagines them on her skin and shivers, offering her own hand.
"Lily Potter," she announces. "Likewise."
And then they shake.
:.
For the few seconds that their hands touch, Lily's world changes. The world ignites into colour: the bleach blonde of his hair, the mercury silver of his eyes, the pink of his lips, smirking, against his pale skin. And the contrast of their skin, her own fair skin freckled next to his own pale shade, the red of her hair in her peripheral vision – her mother was right about its colour, she realises – the blue of the wall framing him.
It's the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. It's the best moment of her life. Tears well in her eyes at this blessing, at this man who is her soulmate.
But then the moment ends, and the grey returns.
the middle:
Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter had always known they were soulmates. There had always been some sign, some feeling, that pulled them together despite whatever was thrown their way. When they kissed for the first time, their world became colourful and stayed that way; it was true, honest, reciprocated love. Of course Ginny Weasley waited for Harry Potter the year that it took him to kill the Dark Lord Voldemort – the colours showed them there was no other. It sounds awfully romantic.
Lily's parents have always been a tough act to follow.
:.
Rose grabs Scorpius' hand after it shakes Lily's and asks, "So are any of the other rooms free?" in that snotty little tone of hers.
If Lily wasn't distracted, wasn't trying to cope with the loss of a whole new world, wasn't trying to comprehend that she had just met her soulmate, it would have been a great excuse for slapping Rose, who is annoying on the best of days. But all Lily can think about are the silver tones of Scorpius' eyes and how he should be holding her hand and not Rose's.
"Lily?" Rose repeats. "Lily? Wake up!" Rose pushes her shoulder harshly. There is no love lost between them.
And Lily is furious. This girl is taking her soulmate to another room, is going to fuck her soulmate in Lily's own house. "No," she snarls. "They are not fucking free, you whore!"
The magic that banishes Rose from the room is wild and unplanned, because accidental magic doesn't happen after wizards start practising wand magic, but it's hugely satisfying to watch.
Watching Scorpius run after her isn't satisfying at all, however.
:.
It's weeks before she sees him again, and even then, it's from a distance. The Gryffindor table is ridiculously far from the Slytherin table, unfairly so, but she somehow finds a seat where he is in her line of sight. The Welcoming Feast is spent contemplating how to tell him about their being soulmates in between bites of mashed potato. She decides to just say it, Gryffindor style.
But it's hard to get him on his own. She actually ends up telling him while he's leaving the common room after seeing Rose and Al a few days after the first day of the school year. The corridor is empty, it's late, and her heart is beating too fast.
"Hey Lily," Scorpius greets as he passes her.
"Oh, Scorpius! I actually wanted to talk to you about something," she says, and she hopes it doesn't sound like she's been practising it, even though she has.
He cocks an eyebrow. "Oh?"
She gulps. Now or never. "Do you… do you remember when we first met and we shook hands?" He nods, intrigued. "Did- did you, like, see anything different? Like colours?" She's near whispering at the end.
Scorpius frowns and leans against the wall next to the Fat Lady, crossing his arms. "Is this a joke? Did Al put you up to this?" He sounds angry. His white cheeks turn a darker grey, flushed. This is not the way it's supposed to go. She just wants declarations of love, she just wants colour.
"No! I'm serious," her heart is in her eyes, pleading because what if he didn't see the colours? It's too awful to think of. "Please,"
Now he looks embarrassed, averting his eyes from hers. She can still remember how silver they were, not grey, and it's burned into her memory forever. She wants to see that silver again.
"I- erm- blimey, this is awkward," he rubs the back of his neck with his hand, but Lily is waiting, muscles coiled like a snake ready to strike. "I'm sorry, but no. It was just a handshake. You must be mistaken, Lily."
She's not. She knows it's not a mistake. It's impossible to imagine colours you don't even know exist. He's the one who is mistaken, because moments like that can't be ignored. It happened, it was real.
Tears gather in her eyes, not like the tears that came when she saw colour, but tears of heartbreak. "I'm not," she whispers, feeling them spill over. "Please just touch me – you'll see it!"
Scropius has this look in his eyes that's strikingly close to pity. It doesn't even bother her; desperation claws at her, because he has to see, he has to understand. He offers his hand again, those pianist fingers, and she grabs it and she looks into those silver eyes as colour spreads into her world. It's real, it's real, it's real. She knows he can't deny it.
But he's still looking at her with pity, not wonder, not love. He lets go of her hand gently, as if she will break. She just might.
"I'm sorry," he says, and walks away.
the end:
It's said that it is better to have loved and lost than to never love at all. But it's not really true, at least for Lily, who just seems to always lose. She didn't mind as much when she lost out on being the smartest and the prettiest and the sportiest; but when love, when colour, was in her grasp, she never wanted to lose it. Having glimpsed a world so much greater than her own, to be shuttled back into grey monotone is devastating, and she constantly questions whether her memories of colours are wrong, distorted. Whether she is wrong and distorted.
Only when it is late at night and she is crying herself to sleep, as if tears could fill the gaping void in her chest, does she remember that her mother never promised she would find a soulmate who wanted her back.
:.
Lily avoids Scorpius after he rejects her, and she thinks he avoids her to. Weasleys don't know when to quit, but she is a Potter, and she isn't one to chase after impossibilities. She doesn't think he tells anyone either, which is good of him, although it would've been nice to commiserate with someone in the know, and she can't bring herself to say what happened. Not many people ever find the person who makes them see colour, and it's just her luck that when she does find that rare person, he doesn't have the same connection.
Her fifth year is spent in a daze of numbness. That void in her chest doesn't get any smaller, but she gets better at ignoring it. The memories of colours blur around the edges, and she studies almost religiously to forget them completely. It doesn't work well, but she survives, in the end.
And Scorpius graduates. It's much easier not to think of him when he's not there, she finds. But he continues to date Rose, and it's just another thing to hate her for. They don't speak anymore and it's a relief.
The two of them get married at the end of Lily's seventh year. It's a dull ceremony; colourless, as always, with flowers that look half-wilted in the bride's hands, and torrential rain that feels ominous. Lily wouldn't have gone if her mother hadn't forced her, and she sits next to the other cousins in a simple dress, watching the future that she wanted stolen before her eyes. She feels strangely empty during it, like she's back in her fifth year, like Scorpius has just broken her heart again.
And poor, broken Lily Potter has just one question for the groom.
Once again, it takes her some time to speak to him on his own, but he is one of the stars of the show today, so it's unsurprising. When she does catch him on his own, probably on his way to the loo or something, she grabs his arm – not his skin, but the robe sleeve that covers his arm, because some things are best left forgotten – and hauls him off to a dark corner of the room.
When they stop, he looks down at her with that half-smirk, just like he did when they first met in her room. It just makes her heart clench now. "Lily Potter," he drawls.
"I just have one question," she says, and perhaps her voice is desperate. "And I'd like you to answer it honestly." He nods, bemused. "Do you see the colours with her, with Rose?"
That smirk tightens into a frown. He looks pensive for a second, and then he answers simply: "No."
Lily is not sure whether she is relieved or sad.
:.
Later that day and Lily is sat out in the rain, just wanting to be away from the horde of drunken family members and the married couple, who she last saw slow dancing to some sappy Celestine Warbeck song that Rose loves and Lily hates. It's cold, despite being July, and her dress is soaked through. She can't find it in herself to care.
"Hey," a voice calls. Lily barely hears it over the wind.
It's Lysander Scamander, who she has known intermittently all her life through visits between all the Scamander family's travels. His mother is her godmother, too.
"Hey Lysander," she greets. He slumps next to her on the muddy grass and stares in the same direction as her, looking but not seeing. Neither of them talks, and the silence that settles around them is comfortable. Lily thinks it's just what she needs.
It's getting dark when Lysander finally talks. His pale grey hair is darkened by the rain, falling into his eyes; his hand fiddles with it while he speaks, almost absently: "I saw the colours this year."
"Me too," she tells him quietly. She doesn't look at him. "I don't see them anymore."
He snorts bitterly. "Me neither."
It shouldn't really be possible, but it feels like her patchwork heart breaks over again, just for him.
:.
It isn't easy and maybe it's the worst decision she's ever made, but Lily and Lysander understand each other in a way that others don't, and never will. It makes sense that they should date, because like calls to like, and broken people will always be the champions at the art of settling for second best.
Their kisses are ravenous, all teeth and regrets and grey, and it's really more about making each other feel something than expressing any sort of love. They don't make love, they fuck, and it's all bruised hips and bloody scratches down each other's backs as the bed thumps against the wall. Because people in love, who make love – true, honest, reciprocated love – see colour and all they have is black and white and so many shades of grey.
Maybe it's self-destructive, and maybe when they elope, it makes Lily's mother cry, but they're doing their best and maybe, just maybe, it's enough to forget.