Under the Willow Tree | Draco Malfoy

chapter 38: with every rise

Lorelei Jones | 4th Year

When Lorelei was four years old, she began to notice little details that had evaded her awareness before.

She started to realize how much her Gran loved it when they made cookies together. She learned that simple rain storms could turn into something louder and brighter called a thunderstorm. She realized butterflies didn't like to be caught but would land on her head if she sat very still in her dad's garden. They especially liked to do this when the sun started to come out and the plants began to flourish.

And, she eventually noticed that her mum and dad weren't very happy after dinner time, but they didn't like her to know.

With time, she started to pick up on a few things on those days. It was always quieter at dinner when her mum and dad weren't happy. They would put her to bed earlier, and their bedtime stories were shorter. Her dad didn't stay up to look at the constellations with her on those nights, and her mum didn't share her stories about beautiful places around the world with the promise that Lorelei would get to come with her one day.

On nights like these, four year old Lorelei did whatever she could to make her parents happy again.

If she heard them disagreeing, she scampered in and offered to play with them. This always made them stop their arguing, so little Lorelei always proudly grinned the entire time they played.

If her mum and dad were quiet at dinner, she just babbled on until they started talking more too.

If they tried to put her to bed earlier, she asked them to cuddle with her.

If they only read her a short story, she asked them to create a new story with her.

She'd do anything she could think of to make them smile, and she always knew things would be okay if her dad took her to the balcony to get lost in the stars and the moon. The nights spent exploring the cosmos never ended sourly for the Jones family, so Lorelei looked upon the night sky with fondness for years to come as a result. It was a sign of peace, of stillness, of the happiness of her parents, and Lorelei never wanted to lose that, but unfortunately, fate had other plans.

When her dad died the next year, Lorelei didn't know how to fix things anymore. Nothing seemed to work after he was gone.

Her mum didn't want to look at the stars.

She didn't want to cuddle.

Her discussions of magical places and mysterious oceans ceased.

Lorelei often ate dinner alone.

Despite her failing efforts to make her mum happy again after the accident, Lorelei kept trying. She never gave up trying to make her mum happy, even after her mum started taking more trips overseas for work to avoid her daughter's big, round eyes and the requests to stare at the stars.

Once Lorelei started at school, her desire to keep everyone around her happy spread to a wider audience. She did whatever she had to do to bring smiles to the sad faces of those around her, and she tried to always act with kindness, no matter the circumstance. Seeing the sparkle return to someone's eyes or hear their delighted laughter at her conflict-diffusing jokes made Lorelei's heart soar more than anything else in her life at the time could.

So, when Lorelei was prancing down the corridors of Hogwarts and noticed Draco arguing with his roommates Crabbe and Goyle, her chest tightened and head spun with the need to fix it. Without being fully conscious of it, her mind began to spin with things she could say or actions she could take to make the three boys stop their fighting.

Most of all, Lorelei hated the way Draco's hands were slightly shivering as his eyebrows were drawn together. His mouth was moving rapidly as he flung his arms around, but his concerns seemed to fall on deaf ears, for Crabbe and Goyle weren't even looking at him. They were staring at the approaching Lorelei with amusement twitching in their otherwise bland expressions.