Stories by the lola

'His thoughts are chaotic, buzzing, fighting one another to be heard. Eyes flit over to the space of wall next to the bathroom door that bears a head-sized hole, and he slams his fist on the counter. No. The man starts to pace as he tries to bring his thoughts into line. He made a mistake. He needs Neville, and to admit this to himself almost makes his soul shake.'

The 5th of October, a chapter for this day over ten years and what Dramione are doing. Starting off with a sexual encounter where nothing is certain, and chance meeting after chance meeting, as well as throwing Blaise Zabini in the mix, is time really enough for them?

'And it hits him straight in the gut. Of course he knew. She may be Slytherin, but she's too light for the Death Eater black - too moral, too people-loving, too inherently good, and all of this is breaking her before it's even started. Of course he knew.' Blaise and Daphne - their journey through the war and beyond.

Severus and Luna, drawn together in many circumstances, in different worlds and different timelines; lightness and darkness are drawn to one another. 'Loving her is not his job. Crushing her is his job, and he fails.' / 'Still, she knows a lost soul when she sees one. Merlin knows, she is one.' / 'Everyone has a coping mechanism and maybe they have become each other's.'

'He hadn't been able to take his eyes off of her - she was with James, laughing - a choir falling from her mouth, her hair shining a million brilliant shades in the sun and her smile so vibrant, ready to infect anybody she came into contact with. He was so fixated on her that he almost forgot James.'

'They kiss and they kiss and all that he feels is complete - this boy is everything. He is a mess and a masterpiece all in one human. As pathetic as he knows it is, his chest swells with the thought that he could take /this/ for the rest of his life.'

'"Just stop thinking," Sirius says one night. /No, you start thinking/, Remus thinks, but never says.'

'What a mistake. Broken people are broken people, and he is a lot of shards of one big broken mess that she can't fix - that he doesn't even want her to fix. She stares at her front door, willing him to knock despite even the thought of his name making her throat feel thick with poison.'

Voldemort and Bellatrix and his seven deadly sins. 'He throws her down onto the bed, determined to take her. She stares up, wide eyed, and he sees the danger in those obsidian eyes - darkly twinkling with love. He clamps his eyes shut, determined to empty his mind. He does not care. He does not care. He does not care. He wants one thing.'

'Maybe so many left because she was too much for them. Too jagged, too soft, too many paradoxes to be confined to one person. He can see that she is difficult to love, but not for him. To love Lily Potter is easier than breathing, than sleeping, than anything.'

'It was never as though it was perfect, but she didn't quite know it was what it was. His toxicity is lightning on a summers evening. Entranced her and she forgot the danger.'

'Icy claws of panic crawl through her body and eventually grip her by the lungs. She gasps heavily and constantly, attempting to draw some air into her lungs. All she can think is that she just wants to hear his voice - his voice and his voice only, and she isn't going to be able to think straight or breathe properly until she does.' Voldemort has died, and Bellatrix is broken.

'He enters Grimmauld Place, shaking like a leaf but attempting to stand strong. Ginny Weasley leads him into the kitchen, he is met with judgemental or skeptical looks. There is just one welcoming face, and that is the face of Longbottom.'

'But this is his life, he tells himself then and he tells himself again when he meets her properly for the first time. She is beautiful - he's always known that much, but her olive eyes are so empty. His heart twinges for the first time in years when she shakes his hand, out of guilt or fear or something else, he does not know.'

'He doesn't know whether it's the allure of her seemingly unattainable nature, or if there is actually something about her. He shrugs - there's never been something about anyone. Never feeling or wanting, just a Death Eater puppet drowning in a patchwork marriage.'

One: Daphne/Blaise: 'Hollow shells, they cling to each other's every fiber. Barely living, barely breathing, except for one another.' Two: Ginny/Draco: 'She is as much unbearable as she is the blood in his veins. At some point her flames harnessed him, and he's been paying for it ever since.'

'And when he feels her crawling into his bed he knows he should turn her out, should ask her what she's doing, should stop this somehow, but he does not.'

'She is always there to catch his tears. It is always messy. Hestia is never afraid to tell the truth, she is never afraid of him like everybody else. Somehow she loves him despite the shadows that live inside of him, and loving her is easier than breathing for him.'

'From the time that Lily told him that she thought he slept around to help him ignore his actual loneliness, to when she grabbed him and told him to just kiss her already because it was clearly what he wanted to do. He'd known that she takes no crap, says exactly as she thinks. And that she expects the same from him.'

Daily advent notes from Blaise to Daphne on the lead up to Christmas.

Our life may be but a jigsaw, or we may seem perpetually in a labyrinth. Everyone experiences trials and tribulations, everything is some form of a puzzle or maze, nothing comes easy, nothing is simple, and love, above all, is the biggest mystery. Six: If you can't treat somebody right, someone else will. He can't promise her anything, James can promise her the world.

'But something draws her to him, and at some point they just fall together. She thinks his light seems like the answer to all of her darkness.'

Daphne writes letters to Blaise as she tries to rebuild her life after losing her memories. 'Today, I don't know you. I don't even know me. I don't know anything, and I'm scared. But I believed the look on your face, the tears in your eyes and your sternly set jaw. I believe that you know me, and I believe that you love me. Today, you are the only thing I believe in.'

'She's such a breath of fresh air, considering his controlling parents and their restrictive pureblood lifestyle, Astoria the perfect-turned-obsessive ex-girlfriend. All he wants is to feel like he can breathe again, and Ginny pushes the air back into his lungs.'

The story of Draco & Hermione's strange/loving/happy/sad/angsty/rocky and sometimes unusual relationship. Includes Ginny/Harry, Blaise/Daphne, Theodore/Luna, Ron, and how they fit into the couples lives... it isn't always easy.

'Because once you start, you can't stop. It's addicting. It's worse than any drug, any alcohol, any feeling. And no one would understand.'

The minutes that everything spins out of control. The seconds that make you understand. The single moment that changes your life. That was Lily, it was always and forever Lily. - It's awful – she knows it's all awful, but there are just these moments that she lives for. And so she'll pretend because he's willing to pretend, just until there's nothing left pumping through his veins.

'It's so hard to resist. You love him. You hate yourself for it, but you do. Love is supposed to be wonderful, but it isn't – it never was and never will be, and fairytales do not exist.'

'Gradually, she was backed into a corner she cannot get out of. The world is not large anymore – to her, it barely reaches the edges of Malfoy Manor's grounds. There is no hope, as hope was crushed when her feet first found themselves against that black marble floor.' Narcissa mourns the loss of herself as she contemplates the life she aspired to have.

'She's not a good person, no, but neither are you. You're not going to look yourself straight in the eye and pretend that this is or ever were a fairy-tale – it isn't and it never was. It's as cracked as the mirror in front of you.' Marcus and Millicent are breathing and existing, but not really living and they don't know how.

Everything is breaking apart for Scorpius, time seems to be rushing so fast that he can't be still. 'So it turns out that Scorpius isn't just claustrophobic – coming here is the one time that he doesn't have to be lonely. Because Lysander is lonely too, and they can be lonely together.'

So many things go on in one day - births, deaths, anniversaries, confessions, revelations, milestones. People cross paths, people fall in love, people fall out of love, people develop hate or lust, and someone's world can be ripped from underneath their feet in just one sentence. 100 chapters, 100 pairings. 15 - AstoriaCormac / Blinding

'It's like she sews him together without even trying. Maybe it's selfish of him, to pull her into his hole of depression and alcohol induced haze, but she's just everything he's wanted but everything he's scared of.' Sirius wants to be drunk with Marlene forever.

'So it goes from the moments of utter darkness to the moments of the brightest pleasure, and he just can't bring himself to care that they're never going to be because right now they are. To him, they are everything yet he knows they are nothing at the exact same time.' Albus considers his relationship with Gellert, and the type of person he is with and without him.

'And Scorpius Malfoy cannot handle love. He breaks his own heart, watching her as she watches him as he pushes and pushes, and eventually the ground between them starts to crack because he's pushed so far.'

'She sounds different – her voice isn't the endearing and warm as honey pleasure it used to be, it's cold and calculating and it's ice. He can hear the cut in her voice, with its artificially sugared edges as her low tones encourage people to come closer to hear her speak – to hang off her every word, to allow themselves to be bewildered and allured by her almost inaudible speech'

Lily is fading into the background of life, and she likes it that way. She's cloaked by darkness now, and she doesn't miss her light. But everybody is leaving her, and she can't bear the thought of Teddy leaving too, but she hates how he sees straight through her. The question between both of them begs 'what is happening here'

'Pulling her lips into her perfectly practiced smile, she doesn't falter for the five seconds she counts in her head. The fact it doesn't quite reach her dead green eyes that used to twinkle like stars should be the giveaway to her encased darkness – the abyss that is herself. But then again, she supposes, people are naïve. They believe what they want to believe.'

Everything fits together in its own weird and wonderful way - there's two sides to every story, there's sadness in the most unexpected of places. There's a fine line between love and hate and sometimes, that line will blur. We will love and not be loved in return. We will always want more from life. Things will change. SEVEN: HARRY/GINNY

'Never has she felt the elation that she feels when she sees him again. It's only been two weeks, but two weeks too many and she hasn't coped at all on her own. She throws her dainty arms around him in embrace, but he soon pulls back, worry etched into his features because he knows… he knows she's slipped again.' - sad, beautiful, and tragic are Narcissa Yaxley.

Slytherin and Gryffindor, Snake and Lion, Cunning and Bravery, Astoria and Cormac, Boy and Girl, Soul and Soul... everything simplifies the further it's broken down. 'You're Astoria Greengrass – you're independent and you don't want nor need a saviour. It's not because you're weak (as he says, people who can't cry are weak) it's because you're stronger than him.'

'She's never enough, she says, but he can't imagine how she could possibly not be enough - she's more than enough, always has been, always shining brighter, moving bigger, laughing louder than anyone else.' Sometimes there's a blurred line between friendship and more, sometimes it starts as clarity and ends as obscureness. Maybe, it's never clear but maybe, it doesn't matter.

"Blacks do not marry for love." "I know." "Okay?" "Okay." Practice, rehearsal, dress rehearsal, preparation, finale and encore - ladies and gentlemen, please, come on in.

'You can't keep stringing me and him, and half of the male population along just because you're trying to feel something.' A choice is to be made - New or old? Friend or best friend? Affection or passion? Danger or danger? Scorpius/Lily/Lorcan.

"I hope you know this isn't going to be easy… addictions are monsters, sewn under your skin, manifested inside you. It isn't just going to go away." - Blaise has his demons, but there's nothing that he loves more than Daphne, it's only and always Daphne... and sometimes, even after all this time, he can still surprise her.

There's a story to tell behind every image. Some things fit together, some things don't. All fractures mend, all puzzles fit together somehow. People break, people fix. Life is a cycle. ELEVEN: DRACO/LUNA

"This is wrong," Scorpius finally speaks, three little words, the words that have been boxed in his mind since this all started. His mouth is so close to Lysander's as he speaks that their lips brush. - Nothing in Scorpius' world is right, except one little thing which is still so wrong.

"It's the sort of feeling that can lift you to the top of the world, and crush you underneath the ground. There's nothing logical about love, there's too many questions with no answers, and that is what she hates the most." Hermione has written a letter, and she's not sure if it will ever reach him.

"And she hates herself for thinking it, but she's dying, so what's the point in censoring her own thoughts now?" Daphne's end is near, and all that she can think of is Blaise.

"The thing is, today you may feel completely at loss and heartbroken. But there's always another day, things will be what they will be, and the world will keep moving without you, so you may as well keep up."

'Being ever the delicate woman, she takes her scissors and cuts - seeing as she can't cut anything else, her hair or herself, and three pretty lilac flowers settle in her hand.' Everything is wrong in her mind, nothing will ever be right and she doesn't know why.

'The capsules are right there in front of her, shiny white, enticing her with promises of nothing… of peace, of finality. Thirty two of them and she's finished – gone forever.' It isn't as if Daphne has never considered her end, Astoria just pushed her to make that final decision.

In the face of heartbreak, time is often our only hope. Love is like war… easy to start, difficult to finish, and impossible to forget.

A collection of unrelated Scorpius/various pairing drabbles. "He never thought he'd care and he saw it coming but it doesn't make it hurt any less and it's made him turn to this - to him. What does it make him? Crazy, just crazy." R&R!

"As his doll giggles softly, his jaw involuntarily clenches. He narrows his eyes and admires her long brown locks, her glittering jade eyes, her alabaster skin… she's far too pretty to speak, to move, to breathe. She's a doll and dolls are still." Warning: Incest, implied rape, implied murder.

There's a story to tell from every image - even the perfect image of Astoria Greengrass on a walk in the rain. "Fractured memories of long days spent in old book shops swirl around her sore mind. Hours of whispering, debates, and hunts for those rare books haunt her, giving her a reason to smile but a reason to cry too."

Lily knows she shouldn't play with fire - those who play with fire always get burned.

'she's a stones throw away from insanity now and she can finally feel the black threads fall away along with the memories of everything.'

Daphne/Blaise one shots and drabbles. Sad, happy, cute, angsty. Enjoy!

"How are you feeling today?" The voice crawls into her ears once more and she shakes her head again and again, so violently that it should cause her agony, but it doesn't. - Depictions of a stress disorder.

Hermione is engaged to Ron, but Draco isn't quite ready to let that wedding go ahead. 'Grey eyes scan her frame, blinking slowly and deliberately… stretching out the emptiness, like always – like ghosts do. "I know you better than you know yourself."'

Bellatrix can not, and will not face the truth that her Lord is gone.

Scorpius doesn't like the feeling of pretending... Lysander thinks it's okay to pretend sometimes.

"She needed him to be whole because without love she was empty. She needed to show someone the beauty in life that only she seemed to be able to find. She was haunted, and only he could make her feel otherwise." Bad summary but give it a go!

"And although she saw the best, the beauty and reason in what Blaise had done, it didn't make it seem any better to her. He was throwing his life away for her – there was no telling how many years this could last for."

"She might have tried to fix herself, but not anymore. She always ends up in that same place, and she's just not fixable anymore." Warning: Depictions of an eating disorder.

"Now there's no utterance and no agony but now there's no breathing either and finally, she finds that she's just a silhouette."

Twelve pairings; five hundred words; the day before the final battle, the final battle, and the day after the final battle. PAIRING TWELVE : GINNY/HARRY

Blaise reflects back on his life and how his mother, aunt and Daphne fit into it.

"He broke her heart so she's breaking herself."

"One day- he doesn't know exactly when, but she realizes that her pretty little smiles are all that she needs to get by and make people see her as a happy person." Blaise sees right through that pretty little smile.

The war is continuing, and Voldemort is winning. Draco is one of the orders only links to the world outside Grimmauld Place, and Hermione can't trust him, but he fascinates her. Diary entries by Hermione.

"He hates her. Those knowing little eyes that peel him apart layer by layer and hold them up to the light so he has to confront his flaws are in his dreams- his nightmares."

"She blinks rapidly, pretending he's not there, pretending she doesn't have to face this, pretending she hasn't committed the ultimate betrayal." Narcissa doesn't want to face the painful truth that she loves two men at once, so she isn't going to.

"She can't decide whether this gnawing suspicious feeling at the back of her mind is something she should be worried about. Maybe today is the day she should put together the pieces of this jumbled, shattered puzzle."

She teetered on the edge of the bridge, her heart thumping so strongly against her chest that it caused bullets of pain to rip through her body. It seemed to as eager to jump into the icy water as she was. Implied attempted suicide and other things, dark.

"But she is a puppet. She is a pawn." warning: depictions of self harm. "and it disgusts her, for she is like them." "They will respect her the most, not love, no, for Blacks' don't have hearts." 14, 16 and 18 year old Narcissa, Andromeda and Bellatrix.

"And he watches her, his heart and his soul and his body and his mind all longing and screeching out to her, attacking him from the inside and demanding him to love this girl."

Astoria always played Draco's heart strings. - "It's passionate and it's rocky but it's her so it's okay that things aren't ever perfect."

Hermiones sanity is suffering at the hands of the war. She tells Draco her account of their relationship through the war so far - the stories of her scars. Drabbles.

"His conscience knew he was a monster.He often ignored his conscience." Drabble series, a collaboration with RecessFanatic2011.

"You hate the person in the mirror. For being so weak. For not being able to do the one thing than could save her."

'Like she knew that he knew she was in pain because no amount of sequins, paperclips, hearts, enchanted stars, ribbons and smiles would hide it from him.' Blaise can't seem to get Daphne off of his mind, even though she never seems to acknowledge him.

"Four days Pans, I haven't eaten for four days." Then she turns to look at me. "Shame you cant say the same, you just can't stop yourself." This is what she does, this is what she always does, she's afraid of doing this alone. :EDITED.

He watched her break apart little by little everyday, until all traces of the old her were gone from her features. That was the day she shattered his heart. Prequel to Black Ice.

Daphne's internal battle. Trying to keep hold of her sanity while cheating on Blaise, and being abused by Lucius. She wants to disappear. / Blaise is trying to hold on to Daphne as she slips away into insanity. 2 shot.

Blaise reflects on his unrequited love for Ginny.

Ginny hates Valentines Day. Things get a little more exciting for her when her keys go missing, and she has to follow the clues to get them back, leading her straight to her admirer! Fluff!

The first betrayal, Pansy didn't feel anything. The second betrayal stung her heart. The third betrayal broke her heart in two, and the fourth shattered it.

It's Hermione and Draco's anniversary, and Draco says that one year doesn't count. Hermione isn't happy. Little bit of fluff!

He is her Dark Lord, she is his Ice Queen. She is the ice in his heart, he is the darkness in her mind. Just started a prequel, first chapter is up!

Ginny and Neville can't decide on their one week old childs name. One shot. Written for The Birth Of A Name Challenge.