#lifelines

Tommy’s sister dies and he is given custody of her 6 month old daughter | rating: G | Total word count: 3,407 | Chapter 4/? |

[Read on Ao3 here]

Tommy finds that time passes regardless of his feelings about it. He starts to build back up. The grief starts to mould into a pressure under his rib cage. Not as suffocating as it used to be, but still there, throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

The months pass, he watches Ava grow. She starts to pull herself up on his old coffee table, wobble her way around it with a little crease of concentration in her brow. She starts to eat solid food. Watches as she goes from banging blocks together to building careful towers.

He takes up Howie's offers of walks, explores the city with fresh eyes, finds out where all the good play areas are. Jee sits with Ava in the sand, carefully explaining how to make mud cakes. Ava watches, clumsily scoops sand in the general direction of the bucket Jee is holding out to her, they laugh together.

The grief throbs.

[Read on Ao3 here]

I don't write because I have something to say I write because the silence starts saying it for me

Because my thoughts don't walk they spiral loose threads in a storm drain tangled in what-ifs and almosts and things I should've said ten years ago to someone who wouldn't have listened anyway

So I write

I write to pin them down like butterflies I don't even want to keep just to prove they were real that I left something sharp enough to leave a mark

Each word is a small rebellion against forgetting

Each line a fragile little bridge over a place I almost fell through

Sometimes it's ugly ink like a confession dragged through gravel sentences that limp metaphors that break under their own weight

But they hold god, they hold

And on the nights when everything feels like it's slipping names, faces, reasons I can trace myself back through the pages

Here I was angry

Here I was in love

Here I survived something I still don't have a name for

These are my lifelines not clean, not straight but stubborn

Bon Soir 💙🎸💔🆕️

First ever post here we goooo hope you like it <33

Jily with a sprinkle of regulus but :((

Word count: 753

The Great Hall was warm and quiet in the morning hues, and Lily Evans sat alongside Mary, her Divination textbook open and her palm stretched out like it held a death sentence.

“I 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸 I shouldn’t have taken this stupid class,” she muttered, voice sharp with panic. “Why would anyone want to know how they’re going to die? That’s deranged.”

Mary looked up from her notes, unimpressed. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“No, look!” Lily shoved her palm toward her. “That’s tiny. That’s not a life line—that’s a hiccup. I haven’t even done anything yet. I’m going to drop dead before O.W.L.s.”

“Evans.”

She stiffened. Of course. That voice.

James Potter leaned against the bench behind her, arms crossed, his ever-messy hair looking like it had been personally attacked by Cornish pixies. He was smirking, like he always was, like everything was a joke just for him.

“Come to gloat?” Lily snapped. “Or do you just enjoy watching people have a full-on existential crisis?”

He blinked. “Came to say Divination’s nonsense.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Right. Of course 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘥 say that.”

James shrugged. “Even my mum thinks Trelawney’s a fraud.”

Lily didn’t respond. She just stared at her palm like it might start shrinking further under the firelight.

With a sigh, James slid onto the bench beside her—too close—and thrust out his hand.

“Here. Look at mine.”

Lily recoiled. “What?”

He held it steady. “Go on. Compare.”

“I’m not 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 your hand, Potter.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t survive it,” he said dryly. “Just look. You don’t have to touch me.”

She glanced. Just a glance.

His life line was... the same. Same weird, short arc running below the thumb.

“See?” he said, and for once, his voice lacked all its usual cockiness. “If you’re dying young, then so am I. And I plan to stick around long enough to get hexed by you at least a hundred more times.”

She snorted before she could stop herself.

“Don’t read too much into lines on skin, Evans,” he added, quieter now. “They don’t know you.”

Lily didn’t answer, but she didn’t look at her palm again either.

And later that night, she realized—annoyingly—that her heart wasn’t racing anymore.

Regulus Black, age eleven

It was early—too early for most students—but Regulus always woke with the sun. It was quieter that way. No noise. No one asking why he looked so tired all the time. No older Slytherins measuring how much of a Black he really was.

He wasn’t eavesdropping.

He was just... there. Quiet as always, curled in the shadows along the edge of the Great Hall where the tall windows bled in pale gold. His toast sat untouched. His book lay open but unread.

He wasn’t supposed to be watching.

But he couldn’t look away.

Evans was speaking in hushed, frantic tones. Her hands flailed a little more than usual. Regulus caught flashes of her palm as she waved it at her friend.

“…look at it, it’s so short. That’s not a life line, it’s a death sentence—”

Life line?

She was panicking.

Potter strolled over a moment later, all crooked smiles and carelessness, his tie loose, robes half-buttoned. Regulus expected a joke. A smirk. A lazy jab.

But Potter only sat beside her and held out his hand.

“Look. Mine’s the same. And I’m not going anywhere.”

His voice wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t teasing either. It was quiet. Certain.

Evans glared at him like she always did, but she still looked. Her eyes flicked to his palm, then her own. And her shoulders—tight and trembling a moment ago—seemed to finally fall.

Regulus watched.

He wasn’t sure why it stuck.

Maybe it was the way Lily Evans sat so rigidly on that bench, hair glowing like embers, voice taut and scared. Maybe it was the way Potter stayed close anyway, holding out his hand like it meant something.

“If you’re going, then I am too.”

Evans didn’t believe him—not really—but she still looked. And something in Regulus twisted.

It was stupid, wasn’t it? All of it. Lines on palms. Gryffindor dramatics.

But there was something unbearably soft in the way Potter spoke. Not loud. Not smug. Just… kind. Like he cared what happened to her.

And for a moment, Regulus envied him.

Not the charm. Not the laugh. Not the mess of dark hair.

He envied the ease. The way James Potter could say things out loud and have people believe him.

Regulus looked down at his own hand.

His life line was short too.