Draco and Lily spent their afternoons like this: one day making potions, another making love. After that first time Draco had been doing a lot of philosophizing and banging himself against the wall. He hadn't had a regular sexual partner for so many years that he forgot to use the contraceptive potion.
Ohhh sacrilege, he had been stupid, he had completely forgotten. The last five years of Astoria's agony he spent in the purest celibacy and before that, she, who had already had Scorpius but couldn't bear another pregnancy decided to get sterilized so he never had to worry about it again. After her death, Draco had been with very few women, most of them were muggles, because they were the only ones who didn't run away when they saw his dark mark and with whom he never had anything serious, they were a one-night thing and had to pass about 6 months passed between night and night and since they were muggles he used muggle condoms.
Then he realized that he had screwed up badly, he had had relations with her. A Potter with Weasley blood, one of the most fertile bloody families in Europe, he wanted to decapitate himself. What if she was pregnant? Being a nervous wreck, he faced her and Lily laughed at him.
"I'm taking birth control pills, Draco. No need to worry." Draco deflated into the chair next to the redhead and glanced at her.
"Sorry, I'm supposed to be the one to take those precautions."
" Women are used to taking care of our bodies, men don't usually think when they are horny and they forget."
"Anyway, I think it's better if we use muggle methods."
"You mean condoms?"
" Yes, I don't like spells, potions, or pills, in the long run they can affect your body, if you abuse them you could have problems having children in the future."
She looked at him with a strange expression on her face.
" What?"
" I don't know, it's weird, I had never thought about having babies."
" Yeah, I guess you think more about how to rule the world."
She laughed.
" I know you're joking, but when I was a child I did want to rule the world."
"How?"
" I don't know, I was nine years old, I only dreamed of myself after having conquered it. You know, living in a huge tower, seeing everything from a window, having servants bring me pizza to eat, and a huge army dressed in pink...I quite liked fairies."
"Wow..." He looked at her as if that was the strangest thing he had ever heard from her.
" And you? What did you dream of doing when you were a child? You know, before Hogwarts." He looked straight ahead and put on a thoughtful expression.
" I...mmm, well I wanted to take care of mom's orchards. Growing, composting and harvesting, especially fruit trees, apple trees are my favorite. Mom and I love doing it even though Dad says it's homework for elves."
She laughed a lot.
"Merlin... And you were supposed to be a Death Eater?"
" Just so you know, Death Eaters have many guilty pleasures, my father, for example, is reading YA novels written by Muggles. And Snape used to wash, iron and starch his robes. Mom is a great pastry chef."
"Isn't that normal?"
"No, that's for elves."
They both looked serious and then couldn't help but smile. They liked this.
He would never have revealed that about his parents if he hadn't trusted her and the only two women (besides his mother) he had trusted before Lily had been Astoria and Pansy.
On Monday, after that conversation, they prepared a revitalizing potion for adolescent mandrakes. When they got acne, their mood dropped a lot.
On Wednesday they made love in the torture chair that changed its name to the paradise chair using a lubricant made by Draco, but it wasn't that she needed it, it was a matter of dimensions, not arousal, she was always wet for him. On Friday they made a simple potion and then love again, but in Draco's room, where there was no danger of being discovered because that corridor was for his exclusive use. And of course, with muggle condoms.
" Somehow I don't want December to come." Said the redhead under him, the blond had wanted to get up when they finished but she didn't let him. She liked to feel covered by him, so he put only half of his body on top of her so as not to crush her, which was not very difficult because of how small she was.
" Why?"
"I want to continue, you can't expect me to be happy that you give me heaven and just because we celebrate a muggle tradition I have to wait two weeks to make love to you."
" You speak like my father, I like Christmas but I liked it better when Scorpius was little, it was great to see him play with enchanted snowmen."
" Enchanted snowmen?"
" You shouldn't know what that is, I don't think your family uses them, it's a derivation of locomotive spells, you spell snowmen so they can play with the children, it's a very common spell among families like mine that have very few heirs. Dad didn't use it much because his friends all had an only child so Gregory, Blaise, Theo and Pansy have been my friends forever...so has Vincent."
" Theo Nott...he got out of prison shortly after being arrested by my father for the time turner...do you still see each other?"
" Of course." He smiled. "He had the best defender on the market and more than half the wizegamot bought, plus he really didn't want to hurt anyone."
" He hurt my father in that fight."
" If he had wanted to kill him, he would have, Theo is of few words but he is good at fighting and his specialty is wandless magic." Lily pondered what Draco was saying, the wandless magic thing was the least important thing for her.
" Half of the Wizegamot bought? The Nott family don't have that much money, not anymore."
" No, but my father does." She looked into his eyes. "Lily, he is almost my brother, and you should know that justice is not the same for the poor and the rich."
o-o-o-o-o
Lily's friends were starting to get worried.
Lily began to get very distracted during classes and although she spent as much time with them as before there were times when she would disappear and she would not return until late at night. Luckily she had the marauder's map and hadn't been caught but she seemed like she wanted to challenge her father's luck to gamble in the corridors at night.
Marleene and Nelly no longer knew what to do. Lily used to be nice all the time but when questioned about her nights out she snapped back and just said it was none of their business. They both felt terrible when one morning while they were in the showers they saw that she had several bruises on her back and some extremely reddish areas. When they asked her, she felt cornered and left without explaining, the next morning she no longer had them, as if they had been cured.
So Lily was dating a guy, an anonymous guy that was hitting her. What could they do? Who could they talk to?
o-o-o-o-o
" I'm sorry, I was a beast." Draco said as he dabbed a transparent greenish potion onto Lily's pale, battered back, the bruises fading to yellow and then disappearing completely. They were in the potions lab and she wasn't wearing her uniform top as the blonde had offered to heal her.
She smiled blushing.
" Shut up, I liked it a lot."
"Yeah, you're... naughty."
"Just a little."
o-o-o-o-o
" Your friends are weird. " Said Scorpius who sat next to her with three pairs of sandwiches leaving them on his knees, they were facing the lake.
"Why?" Lilly asked.
" I don't know, they feel conspiratorial." At that moment her brother, who was carrying a two-liter thermal bottle with hot chocolate also sat down, right in front of Scorpius.
" It's a good day," Albus said with some kind of irony. It was cold enough to freeze you but there was sun and that was something very strange.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
" We eat here every Saturday for seven years. What are you doing here?" Her brother asked as he received the sandwiches from Scorpius's hand.
" She is hiding from her friends," Scorpius said.
"I don't hide from them."
"Why is she hiding from them?" Albus ignored her to ask Scorpius. The blonde shrugged.
"That's why I tell her that her friends are weird, they have a conspiratorial vibe."
"Ahhh yeah, like...since the night of the ball, right?"
"Yes... Did you know that Gina left Adalbert that night?"
" What?" Both siblings were surprised.
" Can they do that?" asked the redhead. Ginos Quebec was the captain of the Slytherin team and Adalbert Nietz was a beater along with Alex Torres, they were engaged and were a fairly stable couple.
"Why would they break up?" Albus asked, who was on good terms with the captain.
" She wants to go to the Auror academy."
" What's the problem with that?" Lily asked, it was very stupid to leave a person for being an auror, besides the Nietz were a family with relatively small businesses, well not small, but by Malfoy standards small, they weren't that elitist and let their wives be free to work whatever they wanted.
" He wants to be Auror Guard."
" Oh... Well, that's where things change." Albus said sadly.
"But why? She...she could die or worse..." Lily felt sorry.
"That's why he left her. I don't blame him, you have to have pretty big balls to want that job." Albus stuffed his mouth with sandwiches.
"Or not be afraid of death," Scorpius muttered, opening the thermos with the chocolate.
The Order of Guardian Aurors was founded shortly after the Second Wizarding War to protect Kingsley Shacklebolt during the search and capture of the surviving Death Eaters, they were already fully regimented by the time his father left the auror academy.
There were 32 elite warriors, eight for each Hogwarts house, who were dedicated solely and exclusively to being at the service of the Minister of Magic and the Head of Aurors on duty, thus dividing into two groups of 16 and these in turn divided into 4 groups of four to do 4 6-hour shifts on duty. They acted as bodyguards, hence their name, their job was to keep the minister and the Head of Aurors alive even if they had to use their own bodies as a shield.
When Lily saw one for the first time, it was when at the ministry event where her father took over as head of the magical law enforcement department, as soon as he was sworn in as Chief, the 16 aurors in charge swore an oath to him, they were required by law to retire after 10 years of service because they had to be in top shape and the only two ways they had to leave the Guardian Order before the statutory 10 years were to be dead or with their bodies so shattered as to be unable to fight no more
In these peaceful times one could not imagine that being an Auror was a dangerous job, or so the Potters believed until at an international event five years ago, Aunt Hermione saw one of her Hufflepuff Guard Auror die after deflecting a curse that made him explode from within. It was not a normal explosion, the man seemed to have a green light inside and then it ripped him apart.
Another case was one of his father's Guardian Aurors, his name is Otto Pyke and his black dragon skin uniform was decorated in silver with feathers that denoted belonging to the house of eagles (The uniforms were all the same, you only knew the Auror's house by the silver motifs with which they were decorated, in the case of the Ravenclaws, the feathers were at neck height, in the Gryffindor the chest had a roaring lion, in the Hufflepuff's, the silver made little trails of hair, and in the Slytherins, they simulated scales, on the other hand their face was hidden with thick black shadows at the level of the eyes that went from one side of the head to the other, as a mask) Otto was about to die of a curse on one of his father's missions three years ago, he amputated his arm with magic and closed the wound with fire and then continued fighting. Otto was currently in the last year of his service, more precisely in his last four months and his options after being Auror Guard were to be an office auror, a professor at the academy and retire whenever he wanted or to retire immediately and receive a substantial pension from the day he was discharged until the day he died, plus his name on the heroes' monument (which was not the same as the war memorial, which was what they called Voldemor's war memorial).
Scorpius, who had met Pyke on one of his visits to the Potters', didn't think the Auror was looking forward to his retirement. He loved his work even though he had lost a hand. The blond also thought about poor Gina, Andros, her twin, was furious with her and although he was already talking to her, Andros still did not support her decision. Their parents were worried, of course, but the Quebecs saw in her the opportunity to clean up their last name, since Sandro and Pavlos Quebec, the twins' grandfather and uncle respectively, were in life in Azkavan for murdering thirty-five Muggles during Voldemort's regime and their last name on the monument to heroes would not hurt them.
There was honor in the title and honor in dying holding it, but also there were tragedies like Evan McKlain's death, so young and with so much future ahead, the reason Albus still had nightmares.
Lily looked at her brother that day, it was repellent at times but seeing how he melted for Scorpius and vice versa was truly sweet. Watching them play on the grass after eating and then watching them sleep in the deepest peace while the tips of their little fingers touched was something people had to pay to watch.
o-o-o-o-o
That night as Draco stroked her hair she was thankful that he wasn't one to play the hero and put self-preservation before everything else like pride and honor. He might not have been a brave man by Gryffindor's standards, but she, like Adalbert, preferred her mate alive to brave.
o-o-o-o-o
It was the end of November when her friends gave her an ultimatum. Either she'd tell them what was going on or they'd let her deal alone with whatever shit she was up to. If she was going to leave them behind, they would leave her behind. With this they hoped to intimidate her, make her react and boy did she do it, but not in the expected way. She told them to fuck off very loudly and took off from there. She spent quite a bit of time crying on Thomas's shoulder, who tried to look out for her now that she was alone.
o-o-o-o-o
December 22, 2024
Lily had already told her brother that she was leaving with them in the carriage. Draco was talking to the headmistress about ingredients that had run out so the redhead decided to sit in a flower box and watch as the carriages arrived to take them to Hogsmeade station. Her brother walked next to Scorpius, tilting his head from time to time to say something in his ear, after this two things happened, they both laughed or Scorpius hit Albus' shoulder making a disgusted or offended face causing his brother to laugh quite pleasantly. She narrowed his eyes.
Those two could say whatever and Scorpius could be Michelle's boyfriend for a decade, but those two were in love with each other.
Draco brushed off her and stayed with her.
"They look happy, don't they?"
" Yes, I envy them. They go to all classes together, they sleep in the same room. Ours is something sad, I can never sleep with you and they can't see us very together either."
Draco swayed a bit.
"Maybe...we could see each other on vacation. In London, your friends live there, you could ask permission and we would meet."
He smiled looking down, his face very red.
"Okay..." she said, laughing like a little bird imagining the things they could do if they stayed all night together.
When they took the carriage Scorpius and Albus started talking about a Florence and the Machine concert that would be given the next day, they hadn't planned it because they didn't find out until that day at Hogsmeade station buying a muggle music magazine. Albus hadn't even asked for permission but of course he was going, even if he had to flee the house on a broom. The concert started at ten at night in London and he had money.
Draco offered his house for him to sleep over and Albus said thanks.
The four of them accompanied each other on the train, this time talking about a saga of books called Maze Runner but neither of them (Albus and Scorpius) had liked the first book, seriously considering not continuing it even though they liked to finish what they started, then they talked about the "Godfather" movies that Albus liked so much and several more movies, this time by Robert De Niro. They talked and talked and talked about Panic! or Metallica (whose music Scorpius could only hear covered by Apocalyptica), not realizing that they, Draco and Lily, were stiffer than Bellatrix Lastrange's wand, because they didn't want to look at each other even knowing that if they did they would give in to the urge to love each other. And they couldn't, at least not in front of Albus and Scorpius.
When everyone got off the train they waited a bit, claiming that she was going to look for her friends and he was fooling around with his luggage. When all people got down from the wagon Draco went under the blinds as he had once done in the sixth year to beat up Harry Potter but this time he did it to kiss Lily as if his life depended on it.
They didn't have time, in less than a minute they were ready to go down, they couldn't arouse suspicion, but before crossing the door he whispered "Wait for my owl."
