Rosie ⎮ Tom Riddle

Thirty Nine

Lily

  Ginger and nutmeg had never been Lily's favourite sort of tea. It was the kind she would steer away from, imagining the heat of it would be too much for her. 

  That was before William. 

  Something about that puppy-eyed teenage boy had lured her into the heat, into falling in love over her head and ultimately, due to her own albeit selfish desires to change him, got him killed.

  Now she was here, in the kitchen of the house that they were meant to share, drinking the tea that he was meant to be drinking with her. It was his favourite, after all, not hers. The fresh smell of it filled the air, steamed the windows to the last lights of the day playing with their daughter on the grass of the garden out the back.

  Lily glanced out the window, watching Willow chase a bug in the dirt with her curious mind exploring the wonders of their little world. She felt safe from everything here, alone, but safe.

  She hadn't thought about William in a long time, with enrolling Willow into daycare as well as living her own undercover Muggle job, she had almost forgotten the reason she had joined the Order, why she had joined to avenge the love of her life.

  It was moments like these she remembered, the sudden loneliness and the realisation that Willow would never meet the man who made her, the man who had desperately wanted to be a father to her. She would only ever know his kindness through stories, his good looks through pictures, his laugh through her own. None of it seemed enough, and none of it really seemed fair that the man who had taken all of that away from William, away from her and away from Willow, now had that life of his own.

  She couldn't blame Rosalie for it, not in the slightest. She knew the hooks that love could keep in you to reel you back in time and time again. But still, she had her premonitions about it. She loved Rosalie as much as she loved William. Tom had stolen her back again, and it was unfair, but it was love, real love, uncut and without distortion. He was the example of the lengths a person was willing to go just to find his own personal love.

  Willow's auburn hair glinted in the sunlight as she began to chase a flying butterfly. Lily set down her mug, her heart swelling with love and worry simultaneously as she walked over to the kitchen counter, the letter she had received by the owl this morning lay hesitantly unopened. Its edges were neatly sealed with the unmistakable emblem of Albus Dumbledore. She didn't want to open it, afraid of its contents. But for the sake of that little girl out there, she needed to.

  She hesitated for a moment before picking it up, breaking the seal with a deep breath as she began to read, her eyes skipping lines of the small cursive writing. The initial lines were formal, as Dumbledore's letters often were, but the message quickly shifted to a tone of urgency.

  She read the plan of attack and found herself shivering. She had been waiting on this letter for days, weeks even, but the ugly truth of it was quite real now. It was befitting of justice yet simply poetic to hear that Dumbledore himself would be the one to attempt to kill Tom Riddle, even at the expense of his wife, her best friend.

  Lily read the words and the lines around her eyes folded.

  His pregnant wife.

  Her breath caught in her throat, the cursive words hard to read but easily understandable. It wasn't all that unexpected in the raw realness of things, but she realised just how deep Rosalie had managed to place herself. But she knew one thing, that Dumbledore would never be able to kill Tom if Rosalie was there, if she herself was still a Horcrux. Not that any of that mattered, of course. Pregnant or not, she knew Rosalie would throw herself in the line of fire before letting Tom get injured.