Unbreakable Vows [Harry Potter, Next Gen]

chapter ii

The first week back at Hogwarts seemed rather like a blur to Lily. It felt good to be back - like coming home. The big stone walls held some sort of warmth and comfort to her, and it could have been familiarity, but really it was the way that she felt around magic. Lily truly loved being a witch, and not just because she'd grown up with it; when she became aware of it, all her senses worked on overdrive, everything went in slow motion - she could feel it, like it was a dream.

And then she would wake up.

Maybe that was why it was so effortless for Lily to fall back into the easy routine, going from class to study period to homework. She could get lost in the movement of the school, in the students and teachers. But she was excited! She truly was, and nothing - nothing - felt better than being back in the castle.

"Hey, Hugo," Lily slid into the seat next to Hugo on the Hufflepuff table. She, personally, was in Slytherin house, of course, but she always found the Hufflepuffs the most inviting house of them all. House division was, naturally, a thing of the past - and Hufflepuff always had excellent soup on their table at lunchtimes.

"Lily, hey," he grinned widely. Like his mother, he had brown, curly hair and almond skin, but he had an abundance of freckles, just like Ron. And he was always, always smiling. In fact, Lily didn't think she'd ever known somebody more stereotypically Hufflepuff than Hugo Granger-Weasley.

Lily helped herself to a serving of leek and potato soup before Hugo gave her a look of sudden realisation.

"I knew you only wanted the soup."

Lils turned to look at him and stuck her tongue out, before taking a mouthful. "I forget how good it is, every summer." She put on a whimsical, longing voice. "It's like being in a dream."

"Lily, you're a twit," Hugo said deadpan.

"Honestly, Hugo, I'm hurt," she pouted, placing a hand on her heart as if to demonstrate.

"Not as hurt as you're going to be when you find out that James has put me up to making you try out for Quidditch next week."

"I've already told him I'm not going; can we please talk about something else?"

Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea - and Lily wanted to consider it. She'd spent four years so heavily ingrained in her family that she'd barely made friends with the people in her house. Being part of the Weasley family meant she'd never been short of friends – she was just related to them all. On revision, she guessed, this wasn't necessarily good; after all, the entire world wasn't lurking in the corners of Godric's Hollow and the Burrow, waiting to come out. And although she was somewhat extroverted, she'd been hiding in the Hogwarts greenhouses for years. And who ever went down there?

She turned to Hugo, who was silently drinking his own soup. Biting her lip, she sighed.

"Look, Hue, I'll owl James and tell him I'll do it. I don't want him to give us a hard time over it," Lils was defeated. How much could it hurt? Even if she didn't get on the team – she wouldn't, she hated Quidditch – perhaps she'd make a friend.

Hugo grinned broadly. "No need; Al is calling him through the fireplace in the common room later on, I'm sure he'll tell James for you."

Nodding, Lily replied, "Sure," and proceeded to finish that delicious Hufflepuff soup she loved so much.

Across the hall, Amity Fawley watched Lily out of the corner of her eye. Lily was an enigma to her; she seemed to almost float through the halls - and life generally - like she was living on a cloud, and when life rained down on Amity, Lily remained painfully untouched. She was almost invincible. Never bothered, never unlucky. Sometimes Amity felt as though she wasn't even real, felt the urge to reach out and make sure someone like that could really exist.

Amity wished that maybe she could exist in a non-existent sort of way too. She barely knew what that meant but she wanted it. She wanted Lily. Her presence, her good-fortune, her happiness. And, in yearning for all of this, Amity had tried to blank out Lily for years. And now her own sister—

Amity slumped on the table, and glared at her uneaten sandwich.

Next to her, Nemesis Greengrass and Arya Selwyn exchanged a look of mutual concern; things had been getting noticeably worse for Amity. And whilst they cared, genuinely, Nemesis also knew that she didn't want anybody else noticing and getting involved with their lives — not now, not ever. 

She reached over and carefully placed a porcelain hand over Amity's, who tensed and glanced up at her friend.

"I'm fine," she mumbled. "Please don't."

Nemesis' hand gripped Amity's tighter.

"I said I'm fine."

"And I," Nemesis began softly, "am saying that you're not, because, Fawley, I know you. So it's only a matter of time until other people start to know you're not doing well. And do you know what happens then?" She shook her head. "People start asking questions. And we don't want them asking questions, do we?"

Amity didn't answer.

"Do we?" Her voice hardened; "I said—"

"Nemesis, enough," Arya intersected, pushing Nemesis back slightly on the bench.

"Amity, I'm sorry."

Amity didn't answer.

Nemi, who was so sharp in everything from her frosty persona and cutting words to the bridge of her nose and hollow cheekbones, often didn't understand Amity's softness, the way  harsh words stuck with her for days, weeks, sometimes even years. She couldn't just forget anything. She tried, she tried so much, and yet nothing in the world was ever as rosy as her cheeks or as  soft as her blonde hair. Nemesis saw life as them against the outsiders, and Amity saw it as her hopes against her own warped reality, in which nobody was on her side, not even herself.

"I'm going to study," Amity mumbled.

The girls didn't say a word until she'd grabbed her satchel and left the hall; Arya Selwyn was, although seemingly uptight, kind to her friends if no one else, and when one of them crossed a line, she wasn't afraid to tell them. And to her, Nemesis had crossed a line in even suggesting to Amity that she cared more about the group's reputation than that her friends' happiness — Amity, who so blatantly felt alone. It had been difficult this week, adjusting to there only being three of them instead of four; Cymbelline's absence had created a gap of epic proportions. The four of them had been a recipe: each had their part to play and each meant something different to the other. Take one away, and the whole thing would slowly fall apart, especially since what had happened to Cymbelline Fawley had been a mistake the girls dared not think about.

So instead, they had to forget. Rebuild. Reimagine. Reweave the delicate fabric of their lives, red thread by red thread until they had the foundations to build something new.

You'd never have known unless you were there that the idea had originally been Arya's, although as the smartest and most logical of the girls, one might suppose it was fairly obvious, since Nemesis soon took charge of the careful manipulation of Amity's sadness that  was to take place. Without this, though, the recipe for moving on could be made with error, like a failing potion, until the outcome was something ten times worse than the event from which they desperately wanted to move on.

author's note: yikes lads, im sorry its been so long????? a levels are killing me and i should be revising for my tudors exam but instead i finally bust my arse into gear and finished the chapter that's been sat in my documents for months.

so yeah! i'd love to know everyone's thoughts on this so far! what do you think of the girls? what happened to cymbelline? (and aren't lily and hugo the cutest best friends ever!!!!!!)

rhi xxx