Stars in Her Eyes {Wolfstar's Daughter}

Chapter 75: Lucas

A/N: im working 9-5:30 tomorrow so feel free to go crazy with comments for me to read when I get home, I live for them lmao

Shortly after they left, Nell heard the whoosh of a patronus downstairs, and James and Lily leaving after them. She found herself back in her room, sat on the floor and leaning against her bed frame as the world crashed down around her.

Now that everything was out in open she didn't feel an inch of relief, she just wanted to claw it all back into that hole at the pit of stomach where no one could interfere. Where no one could put their lives on the line for her, where no one could die.

She could see it in their eyes that her parents would sacrifice everything for her, and in turn so would the Potters, so would Harry, and so did Cedric.

And there that boy stood, ever frozen in the ink of newspaper cut outs. The boy who from the day he died, would always stay with her. She found herself opening a scarcely touched drawer in her room at grimmauld place, a drawer dowsed with dust and the pain of neglected nostalgia.

There wasn't much inside, a few old books that belonged to the house, a charmed flower from the meadow back home, ever colourful in its bloom and forever smelling like better times. But what she found her fingers tracing over was something else all together, something, someone far more painful of a memory.

She pulled out a photograph, cut out of a newspaper article long ago by her own shaky hands, many tears since being shed over it. And there stood Cedric Diggory smiling back at her, a painful memory of all she had lost and yet such a happy look cresting his face. He had no idea what was to come. She was in the picture too, just as contentedly oblivious. As far as she could remember it was from the article about them supposedly dating. They were stood in the courtyard, Cedric leaning against a pillar as they laughed about something. She couldn't remember what, but she supposed it didn't matter anymore.

It was no more than black and grey, but to her it was the closest it ever got to him being in the room again.

She remembered what a big deal it had seemed, that rumour getting out, now she barely remembered enough of it to call it a memory. What she would give to go back to simpler times.

"What's that?"

Nell nearly jumped out of her skin when someone spoke out from the doorway. She had been so focused on the picture in the hand she hadn't even heard them open the door. But sure enough, when she turned around, Lucas was stood in the door, wide-eyed with that childlike curiously so few had left in this day and age.

"A picture of an old friend." She smiled at her own words. 'old friend', as if they just hadn't spoken in a while. "Come here" she gestured him over, pulling the boy into a hug after not seeing him for so long.

"How's my little guy then? Anything exciting happen whilst I was away?"

He shrugged, thinking for a moment before breaking out into a toothy grin.

"I lost another tooth, this one" he brought his finger up to a new gap on the top row. He then wiggled another back and forth, "And this one is wobbly too"

"You'll have none left by Christmas at this rate" she left, unable to stop a smile creeping up on her.

"No because- they grow back, see?" He pointed to a third tooth, just growing in.

It amazed her how fast the nine year old was becoming so much like his brother and father.
They sat down the edge of her bed together, as she took one last look at the picture in her hand.

"Is he the one who died?" He asked, with such sensitivity and care uncommon in a child of his age, a tone gentle enough to make her feel as if she could break down into tears again.