Warning: I feel like I should put a warning on this chapter because it gets a bit dark. I don't want to say explicitly. Nothing too bad. No one dies or is being abused or anything, but read with caution, alright?

Lagan: anything sunk in the sea, but attached to a buoy or the like so that it may be recovered.

December 17, 2024

"Hey, what the ruddy hell are ya doin' out here?"

Lucy Weasley made no reply. She didn't turn to look at Howard Garfield as he blasted his way through the drifting snow with his wand, settled down beside her with some difficulty in all his coats and furs. She just huddled in the pool of her blue coat and stared out across the lake.

"Lucy, it's freezing," he said. "Come on, can't we go in and then do this you-don't-want-to-talk-but-I-can't-leave-you-alone business?"

Nothing. She might have been a statue, frozen solid in the wind. Merlin knew how long she'd been out here. It was lucky her cousins seemed to have an unlimited supply of cool things to solve every problem. Howard didn't understand that map Lily had pulled out to find her, but it had shown Lucy exactly where she was: on the far side of the frozen lake.

"Lucy, come on. What's wrong?"

In her bare fingers, raw pink from cold, Lucy clutched a jar of bluebell blames, curling her body around it, but they couldn't have given off much heat. Howard suddenly noticed her cheeks glistening, tears tracks that had frozen on her icy skin.

"Luce?"

He reached out a tentative hand, feeling awkward as he always did when broke the personal space rule people lived by. But he took her shoulders and turned her to face him. Something in her expression made his stomach churn with a different kind of chill.

"Lucy, you have to talk to me. I'm not leaving until you do, even if that means we both freeze to death out here and they have to dig out our iced-over bodies in the morning. Tell me what's wrong."

He shook her a little on the last word. Maybe he shouldn't have, maybe that was crossing a line because he was bigger and stronger than she was, but there was something stuck behind those big blue eyes of hers, and he was afraid of what might happen if he didn't unstick it.

It seemed to work. Lucy opened and closed her mouth like she was pumping words up from a rusted well. But then she pressed her lips together and her eyes filled with tears again. Howard had never believed girls and boys could really break each other's hearts, and certainly not his, but he felt it crack in that moment.

"Lucy!" he begged. "What's wrong? Is it Bridwell? Did she fail you on that quiz? Is some bloke being a piss-off? Is it… is it your dad? Tell me!"

"You don't want to know!" Lucy cried suddenly, ripping herself out of Howard's grip. "I don't want to tell you what's in my head because it's so completely horrible that if you don't have me committed and run the other way, this black vortex is just going to suck you in and spit you out!"

Howard felt winded. Sweet little Lucy Weasley did not say things like that.

"Well, now you have to tell me," he said.

Lucy let the bluebell jar roll out of her lap, curling up and hiding her face in her knees. Her shoulders shook and Howard realized she'd started sobbing. Merlin's – he shouldn't have come out here because he didn't know what to do about this in the slightest. He was about ready to go get Lily or Roxanne or Professor Longbottom or maybe even Madame Pomfrey, but something stopped him. He was afraid that if he left, he would never find her again, even with Lily's map. This was Lucy. He couldn't give up on Lucy.

"Please," he was surprised to find his voice cracking. "I need to know, Lucy. Someone needs… needs to know, even if it's not me, because… because otherwise you're going to be all alone in this. I promise, no judgments."

"You can't promise that," Lucy whispered, turning her face toward him.

"I just did, didn't I?"

"Howard," she whispered, reaching out a small hand to find him in the dark. He took it clumsily in his thick gloves. "I have a good life, don't I? I've got a mum and a dad and a sister who love me and a huge family, too. We're not filthy rich, but we've always had plenty. I've never messed up so bad I couldn't find my way out of it. Dad may spend all his time raving about Molly, but – but it doesn't mean he doesn't care, you know? Just that he forgets because she's everything he wished he'd been and I'm not. And there's nothing wrong with that.

"So why… why, on the night before my eighteenth birthday, do I just want to throw myself into the water and never come up? To just end it now, while I'm ready. Why don't I care how much that would kill our family? That it would leave you all alone? You know what Lucy means? It means light. But I'm just blundering around in the dark, and I don't know what to do once school's over or now even, and it would just be so much easier to… to…. Thinking about it is the only thing that comforts me. How twisted is that?"

Howard Garfield had never been good with words. He'd never been good with anything, really, especially not girls at all, much less the inconsolably sobbing type. But somehow he had come to be good with Lucy Weasley, and so he did the only thing he could think of. He pulled her into his arms and held on as hard as he could in the hopes that he could bring her back to the surface.

A/N: Sorry for the whiplash moods going on here. I'm on an idea jag, so maybe that means more updates soon. Do you remember Howard and Lucy? I only did one other chapter with them, but I rather like them. I was never into next gen soap operas that didn't deal with Harry and his family, but Lucy is… a special case.

Anyway, I'd like to thank Oneofthosepeopleonthestreet who reviewed over and over again to push me over the 1,000 mark with a week to spare. It was a very nice Christmas gift :) although I do feel like it's cheating a bit and Oneofthosepeopleonthestreet's given me permission to delete a few of the random reviews, but I can't seem to find how to do it anymore. Can we still delete reviews?

But it was pretty great to finally break the 1,000 mark, and I'm so very grateful to everyone who helped me out. I'm going to stop begging for reviews because it's annoying and pathetic, but do keep in mind that I still love hearing from you guys, your opinions and ideas and suggestions for improvement, even if I don't get back to you as often as I should. Love you all!