ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅʀᴀᴛᴛᴇᴅ ʟɪʟᴀ ʜᴏʟᴍᴇꜱ || ᴅʀᴀᴄᴏ ᴍᴀʟꜰᴏʏ x ᴏᴄ || ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ 1-3

odd summer

August, 1993

I felt a strange sense of betrayal as I waited for my father to get off the phone. He held a cup of coffee in a mug and was periodically taking sips from it. It was very early in the morning.

"I miss you too," he was saying sweetly. There was a pause.

"Tomorrow night?" He asked. Another pause.

"Sure." He replied with a too-wide grin.

"I can't wait," he said, with enough eagerness to make me ill. "Alright, I'll see you then!"

He hung up, turning around with the biggest smile on his face. Then he caught sight of me lurking in the doorway and jumped, spilling his coffee on the floor.

"Lila!" He exclaimed. "What are you— how much did you hear?"

"Enough," I grimaced accusingly at him. "You didn't tell me you were seeing anybody."

"I'm not!" He said defensively. I raised an eyebrow. He faltered, turning to get a towel and mop off his coffee. "Alright, I am."

"But why?" I asked, following him. "If you need help paying I could easily get a summer job—"

He laughed. "It's not that at all, Lila," he told me, seeming amused. "I just like her a lot."

"Does she know about me?" I asked. He nodded.

"Of course, and she can't wait to meet you—"

"About me being a witch," I clarified. He blanched.

"Well, no, I haven't told her that yet," he admitted.

"How long have you been meeting?" I asked him. He'd been acting very strangely ever since I'd gotten back from Hogwarts. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night to an empty house, or he'd disappear for hours to the "grocery." I'd assumed that he'd been meeting with someone, but I hadn't had it in me to confront him about it until today.

"We met in May," he said. "I was on my way to a business meeting and we meet in a café."

"Now isn't that cliché," I rolled my eyes. "What's she like? Does she have a job?"

"She's an retired actress going into business," he replied, and I tried to fight down my grimace at his fondness. "She wants to start her own cosmetics company. She's, a people-person, and always prepared. She's a really hard worker, you know."

"Have you slept together?" I asked bluntly. My father choked on his coffee mid sip.

"Lila!" He exclaimed, aghast. "That is a very personal question—"

"Just wondering," I interrupted. I didn't really want to know the answer to that anyway. I turned to pick at the chipping paint on the wall beside me. "What's respectable about being an actress? You get paid to smile, stay skinny, and look pretty."

"There's a lot of pressure," my father defended. "It's very impressive that she made it so far in her career. It paid well enough for her to start her own makeup brand."

"Adam," I said. I rarely ever used my fathers first name unless I was really upset with him. "You're going to replace mom with a woman who owns a makeup brand?"

His face softened. "I could never replace your mother, dear. She will always have a very special place in my heart. But I think she'd want me to move on and let myself be happy, now, wouldn't she?"

I was silent. He did have a point. I picked a piece of paint from the wall and flicked it off of my fingers.

"Will you at least tell me her name, then?" I asked.