sanalayla | The First Time I...

The First Time I Spoke

The first time….

I spoke in front of Scorpius was at a family dinner during winter break. It was Albus’s second year, and I was aching to go to Hogwarts. There was a calendar on my wall that showed the marking down of dates as I got closer and closer to my eleventh birthday.

Scorpius had come for Christmas dinner, as he had the previous year, and my mother was very different than she had been when he’d first come. He was a shy and quiet child and seemed to have charmed my mother thoroughly, because she made just as much of a fuss over him as she did James and Albie.

The person who couldn’t stand that was Teddy, my father’s godson. He was staying with us for a few days during Winter break and he, along with his grandmother, had been invited for Christmas dinner.

For whatever reason, Teddy kept shooting Scorpius dirty looks, who appeared to be working very hard to ignore Teddy, as well. Albie and James seemed aware of the tension between the two boys, but didn’t do much to help matters. James was a great favorite of Teddy’s and hero-worshiped him. Albie was completely loyal to Scorpius, so – as these things go – tempers began to rise.

Which all led to Teddy calling Scorpius a dirty word.

My mum gasped and said, “THEODORE LUPIN. Apologize this instant!”

Teddy refused. Scorpius paled and stood up to leave.

And my father jumped up to his feet and said, sharply, “What is going on here? Teddy, Scorpius is a guest in our home --.”

“A guest, Harry?” Teddy cried out. Now, he was standing, too, and glaring at my father. “How dare you invite him? After everything his father did? His grandfather? My parents are DEAD because of them!”

The entire table got very quiet. Teddy had never raised his voice with my father. In reality, no one ever raised their voices with my father. The entire world was too scared of him. And, yes, that included my own brothers who weren’t really scared of anyone.

“I don’t see how that’s his fault,” I stated, in what I considered to be my most reasonable tone. Certainly, I felt like I should be reasonable, given that I was pointing out the obvious. “After all, he wasn’t even born then.”

My father and Teddy both went from glaring at each other to looking at me. My mother’s lips twitched, as though she wanted to laugh but really felt she shouldn’t.

“Lily is right.” Andromeda said, unexpectedly. She was a stately woman and I always felt she looked sad all the time. “How Draco and Lucius behaved all those years ago was terrible. They made bad choices. But,” she added, in a firm voice as she looked directly at Scorpius, “You are my blood. You’re my nephew. And Teddy is your cousin.” Casting a sharp look at Teddy, she added, stiffly, “Given that you two have so very few people to call family, perhaps it’s time you began acting like it.”

After that pronouncement, Teddy sat down, muttering the apology his grandmother forced him to make. Scorpius looked down at his own plate the entire time, but accepted the apology when my mother prodded him. As we all went back to eating, I saw Scorpius glance towards me with a speculative look in his grey eyes. With a grin, I held up my bottle of butterbeer, pretended to give him a toast and then downed the whole bottle down in one shot. He laughed and then turned to Albie.

The second time….

I spoke in front of Scorpius Malfoy was at a time when I didn’t want to be speaking to anyone. I was hiding under some stairs, right behind a statue, and I was in the process of trying not to cry.

It was my first year at Hogwarts and, so far, nothing had been going the way I’d always dreamed it would. For starts, I’d been sorted into Ravenclaw, and felt that the Sorting Hat had made an awful mistake. Ravenclaws were supposed to be extremely intelligent, but I barely managed to make it into my common room half the time, because I kept getting the questions wrong. Not to mention that my brother, James, was barely speaking to me, since he’d assumed I’d chosen Ravenclaw just as Albie had chosen Slytherin. He hated that he was the only Potter in Gryffindor, and seemed to be under the mistaken impression that both of his siblings wanted nothing to do with him.

And my cousins – all one hundred of them – kept telling me that they’d been convinced it would be ROSE who would be sorted in Ravenclaw, since she’s so smart, and they were amazed that it had been me. Furthermore, the Ravenclaw house had figured that they had the Quidditch Cup in the bag, since I’d either turn out to be a brilliant Seeker like my father or an amazing Chaser like my mother. Imagine their surprise and horror when I revealed that I didn’t play Quidditch and, in fact, didn’t even enjoy watching it all that much.

All that had led to a pretty brutal Potions class, where two Ravenclaw second years had decided to let me know that they’d gotten the short straw of the Potter bunch as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t help but agree with them.

I was mulling over all those things in the privacy of the darkness under the stairs, and I hadn’t been able to keep the sobs at bay as well as I would have liked. Because the next thing I knew, someone was crawling into the space behind the statue and joining me in the darkness.

“Lumos.”

The darkness banished just enough for me to make out the person holding the wand. I squinted at him.

“Scorpius?” Now, I felt even more terrible. Rubbing the arm of my jumper over my eyes and nose, I tried to dry up my tears and hoped he wouldn’t see all the snot running down. I am fully aware that I’m not a pretty crier. My complexion gets all splotchy and I begin to look like I’ve broken out in hives. That’s one of the reasons I always cry in private.

“Lily?” Scorpius didn’t sound surprised, even though he said my name like a question. “What are you doing down here?”

“I… oh….” There was probably a story I could have made up on the spot. I’m very good at making up stories and am a fairly good writer. But as I looked across at him, I met his gaze and his eyes just looked so incredibly nice and inviting. So, I found myself telling him the truth. “Some second years. They were… teasing me. Because… you know.”

Scorpius looked confused and troubled. “No, I don’t know.”

“I’m Lily Potter.” I gazed down at my trainers and focused on pulling at a loose thread. “So, you know….”

I couldn’t see him, but he sounded a little amused. “No, I still don’t know.”

So, I told him. It took awhile, but I just let it all pour out. And finished with, in shuddering breaths, “And… I… wanted to… come here… so BADLY… and… it’s HORRIBLE.” I was being a baby, but I couldn’t help but say, “I want to go home. I hate it here!”

Scorpius, for his part, didn’t say anything during my entire break-down. But when I was done, he patted my hand lightly and then dug into his robes. He pulled out a handkerchief with the Slytherin emblem on it and handed it to me. Patiently, he waited for me to pull myself together and to dry my tears. When I tried to hand the cloth back to him, he said, wryly, “Ah. You keep it.”

I sniffed and said, “Thanks.”

“Listen, Lily, I know how you feel.” Scorpius shifted his wand hand down, so the light was no longer illuminating his face. I could no longer see him, but I heard his voice clearly. “The first year is the hardest. I wanted to go home every single day. I hated it here.”

“So what did you do?” I asked him, hoping desperately that this worldly third year would have a magic formula to make me happy.

“I found a friend.” There seemed to be a hint of a smile in Scorpius’s voice. “Your brother. So my advice, for what it’s worth, is for you to find your Albus. Go into Ravenclaw and look for that one person who’s willing to see you. YOU. Not your parents, your brothers, or your cousins. Just Lily Potter. Once you make that one friend, everything else will sort itself out. You’ll see.”

Lifting up my own wand, I said, “Lumos.” This time, he couldn’t hide his face from me, since I was holding the light. “What if no one likes me?”

“Ah, Lily,” Scorpius shook his head and smiled. “There is no way no one would like you.”

Before I could respond, he extinguished the light from his wand and slid out of the darkness, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Later on, I did take his advice and I managed to find that one Ravenclaw girl who saw me for who I was. A first year who was there from the States, she was feeling even more lonely and lost than I was. We quickly became the best of friends and, before I knew it, my circle of friends grew in leaps and bounds. Soon enough, my days at Hogwarts were just as I had always imagined them years ago. Happy.

The third time….

I spoke in front of Scorpius Malfoy was at a time when everyone in the room wished I wasn’t there. Including me.

It was my second year at Hogwarts and Scorpius was staying with us for Easter break. My mum had set us all to work as soon as we’d arrived and that meant that James and Albus were off avoiding her. She’d managed to catch me and told me to change the sheets in the guest bedroom, because Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione were coming for Easter dinner and planned to stay the night.

So, I barreled into the guest room, my arms full of linens, and stopped short when I saw Rose and Scorpius sitting on the bed. His arms were wrapped around her, her hands were in his hair, and they were kissing.

I let out a sound of horror and something that sounded akin to, “Good Godric Gryffindor, what the hell are you two doing?”

They both sprang apart at my exclamation. Rose let out a curse and Scorpius looked like he’d just been hit with a Bludger.

Jumping up, Rose ran towards me and started to push me out the door. “Get out, Lily.”

“All right, all right,” I said, as she shoved me out, rather forcefully, and then shut the door in my face. For several moments, I just stood there, dumbstruck, and then had the highly random thought that my mum was going to kill me because I hadn’t changed the sheets.

Later that night, when all the adults had gone to bed, Rose joined me in my room and sat down on the spare bed in my room. She hugged her knees to her and looked at me. “Sorry. About that. Earlier, I mean.”

I’d been avoiding her all day, as well as Scorpius. Although, Scorpius and I never really spoke to each other, so it hadn’t been all that difficult to avoid him.

“I didn’t know you liked him, Rose,” I replied. “You could have told me.”

Rose looked confused. “Why did you think I wanted to come to your place for the Easter holidays? Obviously, it was because I fancied him.”

“Oh?” I raised my brow, feeling rather hurt. “I thought it was because I’m your favorite cousin!”

“You are my favorite cousin,” Rose said, reassuringly, with a laugh. “It’s just that… well… you know that Scorp and I are friends, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered, truthfully. I may have been in Ravenclaw and a few years behind them, but even I knew what a big deal it was that Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy were good friends (since she was in Gryffindor and he was in Slytherin).

“Well, lately, I’ve just been feeling like there’s something more.” Rose stared off into the distance thoughtfully. “And, well, I also thought it’s about time I kissed someone.”

At that, I looked up with interest. “What?”

“I wanted my first kiss to be with someone I cared about,” Rose explained. “And I figured your house would be more romantic of a setting than Hogwarts. So, I decided that Malfoy was the one and Easter break would be the time to go for it.”

At this point, I was laughing so much my sides were starting to hurt. “You mean to tell me that you basically wrote out a plan for your first kiss?” It stood to reason; my cousin was nothing if not pragmatic.

“Well, yes.” Rose looked slightly flabbergasted that I was even questioning it. “How can you leave something that important to chance? What if it had been a mistletoe situation gone awry? Or something equally terrible? I would not want THAT to be the story I told my grandchildren some day.”

I sat up on the bed and looked over at her with a grin. “So, did it live up to your expectations? Was Scorpius story-worthy?”

“Yes.” She hugged her knees tighter and, now, she got a far-a-away look in her eyes. “He was. Very much so.” Then she cast me a sharp look. “Until you barged in.”

“Sorry about that.” Feeling guilty, I offered to make it up to her. “Why don’t you steal away with him for a bit or something, and I’ll cover for you? Tomorrow?”

Looking rather gratified, Rose got off the bed and came over to my side to give me a hug. “Thank you. And another thing – don’t tell your brothers, okay? I don’t want them to give Scorpius a hard time.”

I really didn’t understand why they would; they both seemed to like him enough. Well, my brother James didn’t necessarily LIKE him, but he had no problems with Scorpius, either. But Albie really saw him as a brother, so I could see no reason why Rose should be worried.

But when I told her my thoughts, she just burst out laughing. “Just wait, Lils. The day you go on your first date? You’ll see what I’m talking about.”