note(s): this is dedicated to the lovely louise (DOWNSTAGE), whom i consider to be one of my very best friends. it's a birthday present that I started working on back in August, and it's very, very late, but still, I really hope she enjoys it. I love you, Louise! You're amazing and beautiful, and I hope you enjoy this. xoxo

all the world's clichés
look what you've started here,
no i just can't take it anymore
look what you've started now
sleeping with sirens; tally it up, settle the score

"Hogwarts starts back next week," Albus tells her, his voice not harsh, but not sweet and lovely dovey either. She wants to tell him to shut the fuck up, that she doesn't care that Lysander has graduated and won't be there with her this year to protect her from mean girls and handsy-guys. She wants to, but she doesn't.

"I know," Lucy says, and takes a long drag of the fag in her hand. Smoke slips out from in between her lips, and she watches Albus watch as it floats up into the air and then disappears.

"You remind me of smoke," he says to her. Albus doesn't explain and she doesn't ask him to. Lucy only shrugs and watches him as he pulls a flask out from his pants pockets. "Want some?" He only offers the flask to her after he's downed half of it.

She takes it from his hands anyway. Their fingers brush, and as their eyes meet, Lucy thinks, "what a fucking cliché."

His lips are on hers before she has time to care about all of the world's clichés.

They roll around in the cold grass, with the night sky filled to the brim with stars shining above them, and the whole world is silent, they're silent - except the sound of their lips moving against each other.

"This isn't a fucking fairytale," Lucy whispers after they've pulled apart, both with grass stains in places they'll never be able to form the words to explain. She's not saying it to Albus, she's saying it to herself.

She's always been the girl with the tendency to dream.

Albus answers her anyway, "I know," and then his lips are on hers once again.

Albus drags her into an abandoned classroom one day, and all of her friends assumes he's mad at Lucy, and Lucy assumes he's mad at Lucy, and maybe he is, but she never finds out because his lips are on hers roughly and her back is against the cold stone of the walls before she can even blink.

He only pulls away long enough to mutter a charm in the direction of the door. Lucy hears a lock click, but she pays that no mind, because once again his lips are on hers. She can already feel bruises forming, but she doesn't dare pull away.

Instead, she lets her tongue trace his bottom lip, begging for entrance, which he allows her as his hands wander down her body, over her breasts, along her stomach, down to her thighs, were they stop. His grip is tight and it hurts so good.

She presses her lower body against his, and he lets his hand slip underneath her dress.

And that's how they begin - with his hands underneath her dress and her tongue tangled in his.

"It suits us," Lucy thinks.

It starts out as just sex. Just sex, she reminds herself on several occasions, as his lips trail along her collar, making her moan and groan and feel things she's never before in her life felt.

But by late November it gets to the point where she spends the entire time he's fucking her, screaming at herself inside of her head "JUST SEX, LUCILLE WEASLEY, JUST SEX."

But then he cums and she cums, and then he pulls clothes on and leaves and she thinks, "it's not just sex. It's not."

"Not to me." She whispers the last three words out loud.

They get caught naked together in bed, in the middle of December. Her mum cries and her father beats the shit out of Albus, and Lucy screams and screams and screams, and she gets a sick sense of pleasure because it feels good to scream. Up until now, her lips have been glued together but now they're ripped apart and she can breathe and there isn't a heavy weight of a box labeled "secrets" on her chest and she just screams.

"I LOVE HIM!"

Everyone freezes. Up until now, it had been labeled inside of her head as JUST SEX. And maybe that's what it is to Albus, but not to Lucy. Because Lucy isn't the type of girl who can easily separate lust from love, and somehow they both got tangled together and now they're like two thin chains she cannot separate.

Percy lets Albus go with one last shove, and he turns his head, as if he can't even stand to look at her, and she thinks that she can understand because she can't really look at herself right now, either.

Albus runs out, and her father stares at the wall opposite of him for a few moments, before he too leaves, without a second glance. Audrey lingers for a moment, looking torn, but then she too turns and walks away, and Lucy is left alone. She doesn't cry, she just sits and stares at the wall silently.

After everything that's happened, Lucy refuses to leave her room and her parents don't seem to mind. They don't speak at all for the rest of the month, and Lucy finds her meals outside of her door at exactly 9AM, 1PM, and 6PM, every single day that month.

Lucy spends Christmas in her room, curled up in her bed, with the muggle radio beside her serenading her old fashion muggle Christmas carols. Her bedroom is dark, the only light source the Christmas lights her father helped her hang up back after dinner on the last day of November.

Anger surges through her veins and she stands and screams and charges for the Christmas lights, and she rips them down and screams some more.

It's only when she trips, and somehow ends up tangled up in twinkling Christmas lights in the dark of that room, that she actually allows herself to cry. She cries, shoulder wracking, heart wrenching sobs and just listening to her cry is all you need to feel the pain she feels.

On New Years she finally leaves her room. The only people who know what happened that cold December day are Lucy's parents, Albus' parents, and Albus and Lucy. Everyone else is clueless and she fakes a smile at the Burrow and tells everyone, "I just had a really bad cold, is all." She lies through her teeth and everyone believes it.

She sips on cider and observes the room from the living room corner. Albus' parents glare at her, and her parents still can't look her in the eye, and Lucy sinks against the wall and sighs.

"I'm going to go, I think," she yells over the music to Lily, the cousin aside from Albus that she's closest to. In her bag, she has a bottle of stolen firewhiskey and a pack of fags. Just what she needs for an escape to the roof.

"What?" Lily frowns, "but didn't you just get here?" It was true, Lucy had only just gotten there maybe fifteen minutes before, but she couldn't take being surrounded by the entire family like this. Not to mention the fact that her eyes kept glancing around, searching for Albus, but never finding him.

"I just," Lucy wiggled her hands helplessly. She wanted nothing more than to tell her Slytherin counterpart about everything that had happened this year, but she couldn't. She couldn't drag Lily into her mess. "I just promised Lysander I'd meet him," she tells Lily, because she knows it's the only thing Lily will believe.

And believe, Lily does. She grins mischievously and reaches into the bra of her very tight black dress with the hand that isn't holding a glass of spiked cola. Lucy's eyes widen slightly when she produces a neon coloured condom. "Green is his favourite," Lily tells Lucy, eyes twinkling, and somehow she thinks maybe Lily knows this from experience.

Lucy nods and decides not to tell Lily that she's not going off to fuck Lysander, that the only person she truly wants to be with physically is Albus. "I'll see you later," she says to Lily, and reaches out to give the girl a hug.

Lily hugs her back. "Have fun getting laid," she teases and Lucy laughs, but it's half-hearted.

Lucy manages to sneak up to the third floor of the Burrow without anyone noticing, and heads into her Aunt Ginny's old bedroom. She easily slips the window open and climbs out onto the roof.

Breathing in the frigid December air, Lucy feels a bit more relaxed than she has in years. She sits up their silently for a moment, before she starts digging around in her bag, her fingers brushing the bottle of firewhiskey she stole from the kitchen only seven minutes prior. Lucy quickly uncaps it without a thought and downs several long gulps. The liquid warms her insides and makes her sigh a little just as she can faintly hear everyone inside start counting down to the new year - "TEN, NINE, EIGHT."

She starts to take another gulp, but then she thinks she hears something below, so she pauses and glances down. And there on the porch, illuminated by the light flooding out from the kitchen, is Albus with a girl.

"SEVEN, SIX."

Lucy bends forward slightly, and realizes it's Emily Longbottom. She frowns a little. What is Albus doing on the porch with Emily?

"FIVE, FOUR, THREE."

She can hear them faintly talking.

"You look really pretty tonight," Albus says to Emily, who seems to flush under the compliment. Lucy rolls her eyes. It's just a compliment, and not even a good one at that.

"Thanks," she murmurs, and Lucy can barely hear her. Lucy leans forward a little more to see better. The two seem to be stepping closer and closer, and oh no. Oh, please, Merlin no.

"TWO."

Their faces are inches apart, and Lucy can feel her heart being ripped from her chest.

"ONE! HAPPY NEW YEARS!"

Albus and Emily kiss and Lucy considers throwing herself off the roof, but instead she slinks back and accepts her happily-ever-after was just all made up inside her head, and that she really didn't mean anything to Albus. She drinks and smokes and tries to not think about all the world's fucking clichés.

It hurts too much.

note(s): hope you enjoyed it! xx