I was late uploading this chapter, I wanted it to be done within a week after chapter three. For some reason it took me much longer to write this one than the others.
I'm halfway through chapter five and hope to upload it sometime this week.
Please let me know if you are enjoying this story so far.
Thanks a lot for all the follows and favourites by the way they make me so happy!
Two weeks had gone by since that dreadful Herbology lesson and Lyra couldn't shake the feeling she had started something she desperately didn't want to be a part of.
James Potter was acting strange.
As if the the last four years had never happened, as if they were nothing more than classmates that would occasionally pass each other in the hallways nod their heads toward each other or smiled somewhat awkwardly, the kind of smile you gave someone when you weren't quite sure what was an appropriate greeting for a person you weren't friends with but were by no means on unfriendly terms either.
The first time James had tilted his head in Lyras direction the day after Herbology and gave this sort of crooked half smile that looked like something between a grimace and a grin Lyra thought he must have been having some kind of stroke.
She had been on her way to the library but stopped short at the sight of him coming towards her. She had braced herself ready for the onslaught of vicious insults, curses and jinxes he was bound to throw her way.
It was the perfect opportunity, she was alone. Theo had decided to go back to the common room with Hadrian and Anthony to play a round of 'friendly' wizards chess. If there was ever a time to strike back against her after the incident in Herbology it would be now. He had a month of detention starting on October first all because of Lyras actions.
She couldn't imagine he was all too happy about giving up all his evenings to polish trophies or organise books with the person he hated above all others for a month.
Now that Lyra had actually done something to incur his wrath she dreaded the inevitable, humiliating retaliation he had in store for her. So when he had passed her without even shooting a sneer in her direction or bragging about how wonderful her demise was going to be to watch Lyra had just stared stupid at him completely dumbfounded. She stayed there for a few moments not exactly sure what had just happened, she must have looked absolutely hilarious standing there with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.
She concluded that someone must have recently confunded him, he must have still been suffering from the effects of the spell when he had passed her and confused her with someone else, yes that was the only logical conclusion that could explain his odd behaviour.
When he did it again and again each time they crossed paths Lyra was sure it was all part of some long winded plan to drive her to madness and it was working.
She was sure he was up to something, he had to be.
James Potter had never been Cordial or pleasant in any of their time at hogwarts, at least not towards her. He had to be planning something, something big, he was just biding his time and trying to make her go insane in the process.
Mind games.
Potter had resorted to using mind games against her, how Slytherin of him. The thought almost made Lyra want to laugh. James Potter would be absolutely disgusted at the idea of him having anything in common with any Slytherin even though there was a certain Slytherin whom he shared approximately fifty percent of his DNA with.
Lyra wished she had just sat down beside him in Herbology that day, Lyra wished she had not made such a fuss over it, Lyra wished that she could of just put aside her stupid pride.
Pride, was a ridiculous, pointless emotion that often landed people in situations they could of avoided if they had just kept their stupid fat mouths shut. Wars had been fought over pride, love had been lost over it, dreams had been forgotten over it and friendships ruined because of it. It was a Gryffindor emotion completely wasted on her, she shouldn't have given into it.
She should have let it go and not argued with Professor Longbottom, it was exactly what James had done in their first year when he had humiliated her to the point of tears.
No she reprimanded herself, she couldn't think like that. Lyra Yaxley and James Potter were absolutely nothing alike. He was an ignorant dunderhead that enjoyed humiliating and degrading others. Lyra wasn't a saint by any means she was bitter, resentful, abrupt and bitchy but she wasn't a bully. She didn't smile while others cried, she didn't enjoy hurting people sometimes she just couldn't help it. She was too sharp too silent too stoic to ever be considered comforting or kind by anyone that wasn't her family or Theo.
Lyra had come to the realisation that people didn't generally like her long ago.
She found it hard to talk to people, didn't understand how most people seemed to find mindless conversation so easy.
It was hard for her to establish relationships and even harder to keep them. When she was forced to be in the company of her cousin's or Theo's friends she usually remained silent, not offering up anything towards the conversation.
People often thought it was because Lyra was in a mood or simply didn't like them but it wasn't the case. It was just who Lyra was, if she didn't have anything to say then she wouldn't try and string together meaningless words until they made a sentence to appease others, to make them feel more comfortable.
She hated talking to people she didn't know, it made her hands sweat and her brain scramble to think of how to carry on a conversation she never wanted to be a part of in the first place.
She couldn't pretend with people, couldn't pretend to care about people she barely knew. Couldn't pretend to want to talk to people trying made her nervous.
She'd much rather be in her own head, it was an exciting place to be, imagination was full of wonder and the possibilities for adventure within the realm of it were endless.
She wanted to write something someday like the stories she had read growing up. She wanted to bring her thoughts to life, give them colour and transparency. In her imagination she found interaction with others easy and always knew exactly what to say.
If she tried to engage in conversation she would probably mess up and blurt out something stupid because she was anxious.
Or even worse she'd tell them what she was thinking and it would either be weird and make them uncomfortable or abrupt and make them uncomfortable.
It was much better to make people uncomfortable with her silence then with her conversational skills , they couldn't use anything against her if she was silent.
Everyone knew she didn't really talk, not exactly worthy gossip but if she said something idiotic it would definitely be used against her in some way, she was sure of it.
Most people didn't want to hear about how she tried to learn to speak cat when she was eight in order to communicate with the kitten she had gotten for her birthday. They definitely didn't want to hear that she would sometimes still look at Wilbur and meow hoping he would understand it.
She would never figure out what to say to people, they didn't really want to hear what she thought. They wanted a lie, an easy response that they could follow along with and Lyra wasn't good at it.
People didn't want the truth, they wanted to play pretend. People rarely really knew who they were talking to, most people put up a front, a character.
The outward display people showed the world was often very different to who they were inside their own head. To who they were when no one was watching.
No people definitely didn't want truth, they wanted a character, a story, someone interesting.
Like James Potter, people wanted to be close to him, get near him they clung to that kind of charisma desperately hoping some of it would rub off on them knowing it most likely never would.
It was all fake though, Lyra knew what he was really like. Not many people saw the bitter side of him, the hateful side and when they did they laughed it off exclaiming that he was such a great prankster and that his "jokes" were so funny.
Lyra knew they were much more than "jokes" she had been on the receiving end of many of them.
Lyra saw the Slytherin in him, Lyra saw more than anyone realised because well nobody watched her, everybody watched him though, she didn't know how he could stand it.
Then again he was used to it, the wizarding world had been watching him from the moment he was born. He seemed to relish it but Lyra thought there must have been a time at least once in his life where he wanted to be someone else, someone invisible even just out of curiosity to see how the other side lived.
There had to be a little complexity to him no matter how fleeting, even a troll had more then one brain cell.
God she hated him.
He was boastful, arrogant, rude, ungrateful, loud and completely unworthy of everything he had.
Harry Potter the almighty chosen one, the boy who lived should have raised his son better.
More like the boy who failed at parenting Lyra thought bitterly as she walked briskly up to the great hall for dinner.
She was absolutely starving, she skipped lunch in order to get ahead on her transfiguration essay. Even though it had only been three weeks since the start of the school year Lyra already had a whole mountain of essays, projects and extra assignments to complete. This was her owl year and it was already proving to be brutal.
The results she received at the end of this year would be the first steps towards her future. She was determined to not just do good, she wanted to be the best. She wanted brilliantly outstanding scores, she wanted to excel at every possible angle of her life.
She felt like she had something to prove, she had a rich thirst to prove herself, to show everyone that had ever doubted her that they were wrong.
To show him that-
That he had made a mistake.
When he had abandoned her.
She wanted to make him see that he was wrong, make him regret his choice.
To show him that just because she was a halfblood didn't mean that she was unworthy of anything, let alone a stupid name or a stupid father.
Lyra sat down at the very edge of the Slytherin table not paying any attention to her surroundings. She began piling food onto her plate, potatoes, beef, carrots, peas, parsnips and broccoli.
She didn't stop until her plate was piled so high with food that the peas started rolling down from the top of the food made mountain.
She very nearly moaned at the sight of it all in front of her she was so hungry, she was never skipping another meal again.
She shoved a big spoonful of beef into her eager mouth and couldn't help but groan out load this time at the rich, juicy taste that reached her taste buds.
She kept shoving food down her throat at an alarming rate. Desperate to fill her insatiable hunger as quickly as possible. She must have looked like some sort of caveman savage but she didn't give a damn being full was much more important than appearances right now.
A cough sounded from directly across her and Lyra looked up to see none other Albus Potter, Scorpius Malfoy and to her surprise Fred Weasley. She had never seen Fred at the Slytherin table, it was a disturbing sight to say the least.
Just because she had never seen Fred at the Slytherin table before didn't mean he had never sat there before of course. Lyra had only started paying attention to Scorpius and his friends in the past year and now that she did notice him she made it her mission to keep as much distance between them as she could. It was entirely possible Fred had sat at the Slytherin table before without Lyra noticing.
She found it strange though, that he would willingly come here. She figured if the cousins wanted to sit together then Albus would go over to the Gryffindor table. Most of his family was in Gryffindor so it made much more sense for him to sit there as she had seen him do many times before.
She realised that she had been staring at them with a strange look on her face. Her nose was scrunched up, eyes slightly drawn together, lips pressed close and pushed forwards, eyes narrowed and looking downwards slightly.
It was her thinking face.
It usually made people uncomfortable when she looked at them like that because it wasn't exactly a friendly expression. People usually thought she was sneering at them but in reality she was just lost in her own thoughts and struggling to understand the social situation at hand.
She never apologised for her behaviour or corrected their assumptions. Let people think of her as hostile and unapproachable she really couldn't care less, it usually ensured that people would leave her alone.
They were all staring at each other now and it was getting a bit awkward.
Lyra truly had no idea what to say, she was extremely uncomfortable in their presence. In order to break the weird silence she forced out the first word that came to mind.
"What?" It came out a bit sharper then she had intended.
They continued to stare at her in silence their mouths hanging open.
Lyra was becoming stressed as they looked at her, she hated their attention especially Scorpius's.
She reached in front of her and they jumped back slightly but relaxed once they saw that she was reaching for the goblet of water in front of her.
Lyra didn't know what they were expecting her to do? Reach across the table and stab one of them in the eye while strangling the other?
It was Albus who finally spoke up.
"Hi Lyra how are you this fine September evening? Where's Theo, isn't he usually with you?."
Lyra hated small talk, she really didn't want to participate in this conversation she had reluctantly somehow started.
"Why should I know? I'm not his owner, I don't have him microchipped" she said sarcastically then went back to her food.
The three boys were extremely confused, having grown up solely in the magical world they were not as familiar with muggle terms as Lyra was despite two of them being halfbloods.
"Um what is a microchip?" Scorpius asked hesitantly to the shock of everyone even himself.
He rarely spoke directly to Lyra as he knew she had some sort of problem with him probably due to the gossip that went on about his father and his deatheater status during the war. He knew she was a halfblood, everyone in Slytherin knew about the Yaxleys and how they had lost their blood purity. His father had been a known deatheater part of a group that despised people like the Yaxleys.
His father was different than them though Scorpius knew that he regretted taking the mark every day since it was branded into his skin. It was always kept covered up, he was so ashamed of it, he never wanted to be one of them, never believed in killing people.
Draco Malfoy was a good man and as long as Scorpius knew that then it didn't matter what everyone else thought his father had told him as such.
Scorpius wouldn't say that Lyra was a warm or bubbly person by any means but she wasn't outwardly cruel or mean to people either Scorpius just seemed to bring out the worst in her.
When she looked towards him and when their eyes connected he had to hold back a gasp. Their eyes were exactly the same shade of grey, cool like steal.
It was like looking at his own eyes reflected back at him, he had never really noticed how similar her eyes were to his they were practically identical. He never took the time to really look before now, he actually spent most of his time around her avoiding looking at her directly so she wouldn't have a reason to snap or yell at him.
He wondered if maybe the Malfoys and the Yaxleys shared a common ancestor in recent history, it was highly likely. The Yaxleys were purebloods for centuries until recently.
He kept on looking at Lyra not wanting to break eye contact and seem frightened of her. She looked very annoyed at him for it but he wouldn't relent, his didn't deserve her distain.
He had never done anything to her.
The least she could do was respond to his question.
After staring him down for a few more moments she finally snapped.
"I don't have time to explain the muggle world to you Malfoy that's what muggle studies is for."
"I was only curious, there's no need to snap. What exactly is your problem with me anyway Yaxley?"
Lyra pretended as if Scorpius hadn't spoken and continued talking.
"Ah right of course you don't take muggle studies your bastard deatheater father would never allow that."
Scorpius started to argue he could feel his blood boiling. His father was a good man! He was frightened and forced into taking the mark to this day he hated himself for it. How dare she talk about him like that, she had no right! She knew absolutely nothing about his father.
Before he could get all of the words he had just thought out into the air she turned to Albus her grey eyes shining angrily.
Scorpius had awakened a rage in her that had been bursting to be set free. More hateful words were pouring out of her, it was like she couldn't stop herself from spilling her thoughts now that the dam had broken.
"How does it feel to know your best friends dad would rather yours have died when he was a baby like he was supposed to, I honestly don't even know how you can look at him. You know what they say like father like son, he must be desperate to get the mark just like daddy, just waiting for an opportunity to prove that he's just as vile and murderous as he is. He's probably planning a way to bring good old Voldemort back to restore his family's name to its former deatheater glory. If I were you I'd get rid of him now while you still can, before he pulls a Peter Petigrew on you."
The three boys just watched in shock and anger as she threw her cutlery down on the table, launched herself out of her seat and walked away from them.
Scorpius went to follow her and demand to know what the hell her problem was. He was absolutely raging, how dare she say those things about him and his father. He was absolutely nothing like Peter Petigrew, he would rather die than betray Albus.
He was almost out of his seat when Albus pulled him back down shaking his head furiously.
Scorpius tried to shake his arm off. He had to have it out with her this had gone on too long.
He wanted to hex her, insult her like she had insulted him.
Albus grabbed his arm again and jerked him roughly back to his seat again.
"You can't go after her! She's already looking for any excuse to kick you off the quidditch team. You go over there and she gets exactly what she wants."
Scorpius shook his head still burning with fury but the truth in Albus's words were starting to sink in.
"You love quidditch, don't let Lyra Yaxley take it away from you." He said her name with a venom he had never heard Albus use before, for anyone.
Scorpius deflated at the words. He was right, Albus was always bloody right about everything. It irritated him so much sometimes, why couldn't he just let him explode and damn the consequences.
It was silent for a few moments until Fred led out a long exasperated whistle.
"Wooooooow, James was bloody right about that one, she really is a vile bitch."
Both Scorpius and Albus nodded their agreement.
Later that night Scorpius couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned replaying what happened in the great hall over and over again in his head. Turning over the conversation and trying to figure out what it was he had said that had made Lyra so cruel, so vile.
It was a general rule that Slytherins stuck together, they needed to they were the least liked house and it was hard to withstand the other houses jibes and scrutiny alone.
They had to be a united front.
Scorpius had seen Lyra stand up for the younger years, had seen the angry look in her eyes when someone insulted Slytherin or the people in it for no other reason than it's reputation.
He knew she was victim to the prejudice, he had seen James Potter constantly bothering and berating her, him and Albus both had front row seats to it in the past.
Not be choice of course, they just happened to be there when James decided he wanted to annoy Lyra.
Albus would just shake his head and roll his eyes at his brother when he behaved that way but it had always annoyed Scorpius.
Albus had never tried to defend her against James, but then again neither had he. He felt a rush of guilt, maybe that was why she hated him so much.
Albus was James brother, he had an excuse. He was obviously going to be more Loyal to James than some random Slytherin girl in the year above him, Lyra probably understood that.
Scorpius had no attachment to James Potter, not really. He should have said something, should have helped her.
He doubted she would ever accept his help but he should of tried anyway, the way James treated her wasn't right.
Now that he came to think about it no one really stood up for her except Theo and her Cousins.
Everyone had always watched and said nothing. Slytherins were supposed to stay together, defend each other.
It was true that there had always been a rift between Lyra and the other Slytherins except for of course Theo and her younger cousin Atticus whom she obviously adored.
He rolled over onto his side and tucked his hand under his pillow hugging it slightly.
Sleep was coming over him, his head was still swimming with thoughts but they weren't keeping him awake anymore.
His last thought before he finally succumbed to sleep was that he wondered what it was about himself that brought the monster out in Lyra Yaxley.
You guys will get more of an in-depth understanding of why Lyra reacts this way with Scorpius. He is everything she was rejected for not having. She's bitter and jealous but also very sad when she's reminded of him and what his existence means, that she wasn't good enough.
Lyra isn't a perfect person and that's why I love her so much. She's angry, resentful, too care, too cautious, too insecure.
It makes her lash out at him because she can't lash out at Draco he's not there to be angry at so Scorpius gets all her resentment for now at least.
Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter.