Imperfection: A Scorily/Scorlily Fanfic

Chapter Six: The Letter

  Lily, who is nearly eleven now, stands on the front steps of a huge house with her father, who has one arm protectively around her. It is two weeks before the winter holidays, and Lily will be staying there for four weeks, which means that Scorpius will be there for a week and four days.

Lily feels a little at loss without her other half, Roxy, by her side, but she is looking forward to this stay. She wants to help Draco feel less lonely for Scorpius, and knows she'll have what Roxy would call a "smashing" time.

Harry smiles down at Lily. "Are you ready, Lilyflower?"

She smiles- and her nose crinkles, a recently acquired trait most likely born of constant squinting. Lily, it appears, may need glasses- or a treatment at Saint Mungo's that'll fix her eyesight. Harry is leaning towards the glasses. He thinks Lily would look adorable in them. But Ginny has already put her foot down on that point- Lily isn't very gentle with her belongings. Besides, she doesn't want Lily to be teased.

Lily doesn't care either way. She's never worried much about looks, as Rose does.

She has her Silverstreak 3000 slung over her shoulder, and she's clutching a small suitcase- but other than that, she has no luggage.

"Go on, Daddy. Knock."

Her little voice is so much more mature now that Harry almost feels sad, but instead he grins. "Alright." And, raising one hand, he knocks on the large front doors of Malfoy Manor. There's a pounding of footsteps, and the door opens.

Draco's hair is now decidedly grey, but his eyes are even warmer- as if the warmth and energy of his body have been transferred to his soul. He smiles at Lily and shakes Harry's hand. "Come in?"

"Sorry, I can't," Harry says. "Ginny's got a practise for the Harpies; they're starting training even earlier this year and I promised her I'd be there."

Draco nods. "Alright, then."

Lily turns to hug her father with the hand not clutching her broomstick. "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you too, Lilyflower."

Once he has apparated, Draco puts a hand on the little girl's shoulder. "Come along, Lily. Let me show you the room I've got ready for you."

Lily follows Draco through the halls of Malfoy Manor, looking around at the paintings and chandeliers in typical little-girl awe. They go up flights of stairs and down, through passages and then- finally- up a spiral stone staircase, so high Lily feels that they must have passed the clouds.

And then they clear the last step and find themselves on a little landing. Draco must stoop here, but the ceiling is exactly the right height for someone of Lily's size, and a set of grey-painted, steep wooden steps ascends to a little trapdoor in the ceiling.

"Go on," Draco tells her. "I'll come up after."

Lily begins to climb the steps, and then finally emerges into a perfectly round, lovely little room. There's a canopy bed, a little one just her size, and a beautiful little set of drawers. There's a miniscule fireplace, in which a tiny, cheerful fire is crackling, and on a mantel above the fire are two things: a vase full of lilies and a small box with little cookies in it.

"Oh," Lily breathes. Her eyes grow large with delight.

Draco's head pokes through the trapdoor. "Like it?"

"Can't you come up, Draco?"

He shakes his head. "The room was made for somebody smaller than I am."

Lily frowns. "Who was it made for, Draco?"

Draco's eyes grow pained, and Lily senses that something is wrong.

"Never mind, Draco," she says. Her hazel eyes are concerned.

"It's alright, I'd like for you to know." He sighs. "A while back, my wife was... well, she was going to have a baby, and we got up this room for it." He looks up at Lily suddenly, wondering if she has received what Scorpius calls "the Talk," yet, but her expression is completely unsuspecting, so he continues. "The baby... she was to be a girl... the baby didn't live."

"Oh," Lily breathes, and her eyes fill with pity for her friend. "Draco, I'm so sorry."

He smiles at her, and the momentary pain which has brushed his expression leaves. "I don't mean to frighten you, Lily, with that story. You shan't mind it very much?"

Lily shakes her head vehemently. "I never could, Draco."

---

She spends the next week in such an ecstasy of content that she wonders how it can really have been actually seven days; and yet so much has happened. For one thing, she's run up and down every corridor at least seven times (and the carpets are so springy!). For another thing, she's fallen completely in love with her little room, and feels so safe and happy there that she wonders if heaven is anything like it. And for another, she's gotten to know the Manor inside and out- she has climbed nearly every tree on the grounds, and she's 'adopted' one of the albino peacocks, which she has named Bigbeak. Just why Albus sounds so amused about that name in his letters to her is anyone's guess.

One day, as she is eating breakfast with Draco in the dining room (which she likes to call the Happy Room), she receives a letter which is not from Al, delivered by an owl totally unfamiliar to her.

"That's Scorpius's owl," Draco observes as it flies over the table and drops a thick letter on Lily's plate (and nearly lands another little offering there, but misses and instead hits the tablecloth). 

"Is it?" Lily asks curiously, watching Draco remove the bird's offering with a spell.

"It is," he says, swatting the owl away from him and snatching the other letter it holds. "This one's for me..."

"Then this letter is- is really for me?" Lily asks wonderingly, looking triumphantly at the little parchment envelope. She's never had a letter from someone she isn't related to before, and therefore is quite curious as to what could be inside of this one. 

"It is," Draco tells her, smiling. "Listen- I'm working from home these weeks that you're here, but I haven't done any actual working yet, so-"

Lily smiles. "I'll go to my room. Daddy sometimes tells me I'm very distracting."

"You are," Draco replies. He's smiling wider. "That doesn't mean that you're a bad distraction, though."

Lily gets up, clutching her precious letter, and turns to go, but before she does, she notices something. 

"Your hair isn't all gray anymore, Draco."

"What?"

It's only when she's gone that he goes to the mirror and sees a small streak of his former platinum blonde in the gray. 

I hope you lot liked that! I'll be posting again this Friday, so keep looking for updates!

Love you all, 

Lily

P.S. Why do you think Draco is so old and tired? Let me know in the comments below!