So Long and Goodnight

written by: albe-chan

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction and I do NOT own Harry Potter or any of the characters mentioned, I am making no money from this, and any similarities with real life are purely coincidental. This work will contain MATURE THEMES, such as coarse language, mature subject matter (scenes containing graphic sex, non-consensual sex and sexual acts, nudity, etc.), and mildly graphic violence. Please, if you are not over the age of 18, or of majority in your country, DO NOT READ THIS! You have been warned!

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Prologue

"I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride."

Lily Luna Potter, now Lily Nott in fact, stared up at her brand new husband, smiling, because she could see the love she felt for the wizard reflected back at her, and she was excited at the prospect of the rest of her life as Mrs. Thaddeus Nott.

Some might've whispered as her husband, grinning as wide as her, leaned down and kissed her, his mouth moving with warm, possessive precision of just how she liked to be snogged over her own, that they were too young. Lily didn't care. Some definitely said they hadn't been together long enough, and while Lily supposed eighteen months didn't seem like very long, they hadn't been the ones in the thick of it. Thaddeus had, by all intents and purposes, swept her entirely off her feet, and in the whirlwind of candlelit dinners and passionate nights of lovemaking, the mornings waking up in bed when they'd laugh and snuggle and all the many bouquets of flowers he'd brought her, Lily fell in love. He was a respectable wizard, if not with a very respectable surname, considering the side they'd been on in the last wizarding war, but the young redhead didn't care. She was in love with a wizard who was just as in love with her.

The redheaded witch knew she was only nineteen, and knew there were plenty of naysayers, but she couldn't wish for a better wizard to stand across the altar and then walk down the aisle after they were married, and he'd pulled back from the hearty snog after the officiant cleared his throat, as man and wife, with her. "I love you," Lily murmured, looking up at her husband, holding his larger hand in her own, heart threatening to burst with joy.

Thaddeus smiled down at her, blue eyes alight, his golden brown hair falling into his gaze as per usual, begging for her to brush the locks aside, and kissed her again, briefly. "I love you," he said, and smiled as they moved out of the church, a half dozen people taking their photographs, and Lily beamed as her husband pulled her against his side. She just knew they'd make it.

Lily had been married just over a year when doubt started to creep in. The first year of marriage, after they'd returned from their honeymoon, and back to real life, was definitely hard. She'd moved into his manor home, living in his wing and commuting via Floo to work as per usual, but instead of having her own little flat, where she could lounge around in sweats, she lived with her new husband and his other immediate family. And the manor house of Nott Hall wasn't precisely the sort of place one felt comfortable getting a snack in the middle of the night without bothering to put pants on. Lily felt, even after a year, like she was somehow not truly home. Sure, all her worldly possessions were there, and she'd quickly learned her way around, but she always seemed to feel as if she was a visitor. Whether because it was so very different than how she remembered her own home, or especially the Burrow, growing up, or because her mother in law was grudgingly polite, at best, to her, Lily didn't know.

She'd tried her damnedest before the wedding, and harder still after, to be nice, and civil, and always impeccably polite to the woman, but somehow, some way, Mrs. Cordelia Nott would always find fault with Lily. And although she tried very hard every damned day she spent among her presence to please the woman, Lily couldn't help but start to wonder if it would ever be enough. She'd loved the woman's son, and simply said yes to sharing the rest of her life with the wizard, but Mrs. Nott Sr. was impossible to placate, as if Lily had done some heinous wrong to her simply by marrying her only son. And Lily knew, the worst part of all of it, the one thing that made her doubt herself, and even her marriage the tiniest bit, was that her husband seemed to almost always agree with his mother.

It could be the most trivial of things. Like the colour of her dress at dinner hadn't been flattering for her skin tone, and her husband would look her up and down, as if she weren't his wife, the woman he claimed he loved, and nod, then agree that she looked kind of pasty. Or if her mother in law commented on the size of her dinner portions and praised her 'youthful' metabolism, Thaddeus would look down, as if contemplating how much she really was eating, and wonder aloud if she should really eat quite that much gravy on her mash. The redhead hated it, hated how small and embarrassed she felt, having tried to look her best and been dismissed so easily, all her hard work on everything else for naught because of one wrong shade of green, or betraying the fact she happened to enjoy eating.

Which wasn't to say she was miserable. Far from it. She still worked, which was a job she adored, at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, working as a part case worker, part counsellor to children who had been bitten and infected by werewolves in the last Wizarding War, and some who'd been attacked after the war, when Fenrir Greyback had been on the loose, terrorizing people with his almost-pack of werewolves. The majority of her current cases, of which she had about fifteen, were for younger children, and the majority weren't true werewolves. They'd been mauled by Greyback, certainly, but he hadn't been fully transformed, nor had it been a full moon. But there were half a dozen that were true werewolves, who shifted at every full moon, from ages nine to thirteen.

And Lily still visited, often, with her own family, pointedly maintaining her tradition of having every Sunday dinner at her parents' house, her husband usually accompanying her. The redhead enjoyed those times, because the stiff, cold, pureblood Thaddeus was around his parents melted away into her Thad. The man she loved and the wizard who smiled easily, and kissed her when she wasn't expecting it, and always, when they finally got home, made love to her like he had their entire honeymoon, with dedication to her pleasure, and soft, gentle touches, and Lily would lose herself to him as they became one.

All in all, she supposed, marriage had been a rollercoaster thus far, but she knew it would steady out, and they would work through their issues, because they were in love. She still loved Thaddeus with her whole heart, and believed him to be the one for her, even though she knew some of her family didn't. She was still in love with him, because he was her husband, for better or for worse, and she was in for the long haul, no matter the arguments that sometimes arose.

It was precisely two weeks after her one year anniversary everything changed. Only ten days after their long weekend getaway to celebrate the occasion, where Thad had taken her to the Caribbean, to some tiny private, Unplottable island his family owned, and they'd made love on the beach and in the ocean, as well as the bed in their lavish beach house. Lily hadn't wanted to leave, personally, but she new real life couldn't be put on hold forever. And they'd had a great time, although she hadn't been able to get much of a sun tan. She had just gotten home from work, and her back was sore, a headache pulling at her temples. She'd had a session with her eldest case, a thirteen year old girl who was a true werewolf, who'd almost shifted when the redhead had prodded the girl to open up more. And now she was stuck with a case where the girl hated her, most likely, with the passion of a scorned, hormonal teenage girl, and the redheaded witch felt guilty for having pushed her, even if she knew it would make the girl feel better to talk about her issues. And all she'd wanted was some peace and quiet, because her meeting with Heather had simply been the cherry on top of her meeting with the Head of Funding for the Department that morning, that had only been better because the old, stingy bastard didn't shout, but pointedly told her no, and refused to listen to reason.

So when Thaddeus came home, obviously in a mood, and started throwing a temper tantrum about his bullshit job as a star reporter for the daily Prophet, because his editorial had been passed over for something better, Lily told him to shut the fuck up. It was rude, and uncalled for, certainly, because she knew he was simply just stressed because he was being forced to do a story on Squibs living in the Muggle world, the mere thought of which, Lily knew, made him uneasy. They were secluded in his private wing of the manor, but Lily was certain she'd never heard it so utterly silent after that moment.

The words hung there in the air, and as much as Lily wanted to take them back, she couldn't deny, the silence was a blessing to her throbbing head. "Excuse me?" Thaddeus said darkly.

Lily gulped. "My head is pounding, and I can't take you shouting and stomping around," the redhead said, trying not to snap, and made to head to the bathroom for some headache potion.

"No," her husband said, and when Lily looked at him, she saw that his face had gone devoid of any emotion, and his eyes, usually so bright and dancing with life, were a flat blue, like a painting of the ocean versus the real thing. "What did you just say to me?" he asked, back straightening, lip curling, and the look of pureblood aristocracy that Lily so loathed crossed his face as his flat, terrifyingly blue eyes glared back at her.

She frowned. "I told you to shut up, because you're making my headache worse. At least let me get a potion or something!" she said. She made to brush past him, into the bathroom off the little sitting room, but her husband caught her arm roughly and turned her back. "Thad, what are you-?"

Lily couldn't finish the sentence, because in the next moment, the back of Thaddeus's hand struck her hard across the face, his signet ring splitting her lip, and he released her as she fell, crumpling into a heap on the floor, shock and anger and outrage and hurt all clamouring through her. "You don't ever tell me what to do, do you understand?" he growled, looming over her. Lily looked up at him, tasting blood in her mouth, shock parting her mouth, hazel eyes glittering with her fury.

"You hit me," she said, looking at him with disgust.

She flinched a little as he crouched down, grasping her face firmly in his hand. "You deserved it," he said with absolute authority, and Lily felt her blood run cold for a moment, something like terror stealing the breath from her chest, because those flat blue eyes bored into her gaze with terrifying intensity and without a speck of emotion or humanity. "Now do I have to repeat the question, Lily?" he asked in a deadly soft voice.

She shook her head slowly. "I understand," she whispered. Her husband released her and stood up, smoothing his robes and trousers as if she'd been an annoyance.

"Good. Clean yourself up and get dressed for dinner." Lily watched her husband, so very different than the man she'd married, and yet still somehow the same wizard, walk away from her and felt her eyes well with tears, even as she felt sick and ashamed, and utterly, completely worthless.

But she got up, went into the bathroom to take her headache potion and carefully Healed her cut lip and the darkening mark across her cheek, unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror. After she finished, Lily firmed her wobbling lower lip, locked her emotions up tight like any proper pureblood had been trained to do since childhood, and got dressed for dinner, taking care to look her best, and forcing a brilliant smile as she headed down to eat a half hour later.

Much later, after she'd gone to bed, Lily felt her husband slide in beside her, and froze completely as he rolled toward her, spooning her ever so gently from behind. "Lily," he murmured, and the redhead tried to keep a lid on her temper. "Lily, honey, look at me," he whispered, sounding tortured, and Lily took pity on the wizard she'd fallen in love with and rolled part way over to look at her husband over a shoulder.

"What?" she asked softly, her voice stiff with mingled embarrassment and anger. She felt violated, and wronged, and emotionally hurt still even if she fixed her face with a spell, because Thaddeus hadn't apologized for his behaviour earlier, and had acted all through dinner as if nothing had even happened.

"Oh, Lily," he sighed, face crumpling, and pulled her close as she rolled over properly to face him. A sigh eased from between her lips, the lower one still smarting a little from where it had been split and Healed, but Lily cradled her husband's head as he buried his face in her chest, seeming utterly repentant as he sobbed softly. "I'm so sorry, honey. Gods, I don't know what came over me. I never meant to...to hurt you. I love you. So much. I'm so bloody sorry, honey, please don't hate me."

She heard another sob escape him and she pulled him closer, arms tightening comfortingly around him, fingers smoothing through his hair soothingly. "It's okay, Thad," she breathed. He shook his head against her bosom.

"I was just so angry," he admitted, voice muffled against her nightgown. She felt him cuddle her closer. "Godric, Lily, please forgive. I'm so sorry, honey."

"I forgive you," the redhead murmured, and looked down into the twinkling, contrite blue eyes that peered up at her beseechingly. "I love you."

He crushed her to him. "Gods, I don't deserve you, Lily," he whispered, then buried his face against her breasts once more. She smoothed her palms lovingly over his neck and shoulders, feeling the depth of his regret, and forgave him.

"You do," she murmured firmly. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to snap at you, and I shouldn't have taken my anger at a bad day out on you."

"I love you, Lily," Thaddeus breathed, and she felt his lips against her pulse point. "Forever."

"Me too, Thad," she said, and when he rolled her over onto her back, moving atop her, she didn't resist as he made love to her, bringing her to a shuddering climax before he lost himself within her.

Her second anniversary was marred by his mother, who Lily knew was only doing so to hurt her son and punish the redhead, having the memorial service for Thaddeus's father, whom Lily had barely ever spoken to, and never outside her husband's company. Theodore Nott had passed away three days before their anniversary, and of course, the family had been devastated, at least when the well-wishers were present, and Cordelia had declared herself 'utterly grief stricken and bereft' so many times Lily wanted to remove those words from existence. But, in true Cordelia fashion, she was perfectly fine the next day, and the one after, even as the redhead started out on the next year of marriage. Thaddeus, after the death of his father, became colder than ever, and Lily, who tried her best to do everything her husband asked or expected of her, seemed to become his favourite source of venting his frustrations. Only when they were in public, or around the redhead's family, was she treated to any level of affection, and although Lily told herself she just had to try harder and be better, she knew grief took many forms and never pushed the issue that her husband had somehow stopped seeing her as worthy of his attentions unless their were observers. She told herself he'd come round, and he might be depressed even, and she could wait for him to become more like his old self as he healed and dealt with the loss of a parent.

By the time her third anniversary rolled around, Lily was no stranger to the act of covering up a few marks here and there, putting on a brave face, and carrying on like nothing was wrong. She knew her husband had a temper and accepted that sometimes, perhaps more often than she thought was warranted, it got away from him, but always, always, Thad had apologized after, and made it up to her. Only months after her third anniversary, the redhead was an expert at downplaying the odd mark she couldn't quite conceal, and found it almost second nature to push her emotions down, deep within herself, smile dazzlingly, and pretend she was ecstatic. And although she tried very hard to live up to her husband's expectations, it seemed she couldn't ever quite make it. And more than once in that third year of marriage, Thaddeus had failed to even feel remorse after the fact when he'd struck her. Lily didn't know what to even think at times, because in the darkest moments, she wondered if perhaps her husband and mother in law were right, and that it was her fault Thaddeus lost his temper and hurt her.

By the time Lily and Thaddeus celebrated their fourth anniversary, Lily knew her marriage, the one thing she'd held such hopes for, the one thing she'd thought everyone had been oh so wrong about, had become a nightmare from which she could not wake. Every day she braced for the one thing she would say, or do, or not say, or not do, that would invoke the ire of her husband. Every waking moment she strove for excellence, never succeeding, and being told frequently of it. That she had let the glorious name of Nott down in the eyes of her mother in law. And, by default, her husband as well. And every night, she either cried herself to sleep, or faked arousal for her husband, because that was all she had left, faking it. Faking her arousal, her completion, and her own happiness with her situation.

She knew he'd taken women on the side of their marriage, but the one time she'd brought it up, she'd paid for it, and Lily had learned not to ask where her husband went, or if he'd spent the night with another woman, even when she knew he had. The cad barely even bothered to cover up all the extra-marital witches he shagged, now. And Lily was left trying to be perfect without a chance in Hell of succeeding, knowing the price of failure by heart after four and a half years. The taunts, the verbal assaults that wore down her self confidence and made her doubt herself as a witch, woman, and human being. And, when she couldn't take it any longer and lashed out, feeling hurt and utterly alone, her husband was there to make her pay for it in the flesh.

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