Lucy could have blamed the tears on hormones, but if she was honest, she probably would have cried even if she wasn’t pregnant. The discovery that her fiancée had kept every letter and note she had ever written him was like something from a fairytale. Lorcan had never given her the slighted hint that he had saved them. Then again, she never talked about the similar box hidden under her own bed.
Struggling to keep her breathing even, Lucy ran her fingers across the edges of the parchment. There were all kinds of paper: coloured, torn scraps, the backs of crumpled essays and crisp letterheads. Their crinkling filled the quiet room as her fingers moved through them, the rustling sound reminiscent of libraries.
Lucy bent her head closer and sniffed. It smelled of a vague mix of old books and new stationery fresh from the store. When she inhaled deeper, she could even get a hint of the perfume she used to spritz her stationary with, in the French fashion, when living in France. Her tears fell faster as the realisation struck her. Her whole life, her whole being, had been filed and lovingly tucked away into a box to be kept. Her soul, in a box.
With trembling fingers she delicately pulled out the first letter and wiped away her tears so that she could read it. The letter was a very formal note, thanking Lorcan for his Christmas gift of a scarf. Lucy remembered her mother forcing her to write such thank you notes for every present she got when she was little. She must have been nine or so when this one was written. Looking back, she doubted Lorcan had anything to do with choosing presents. After all, that year’s scarf did have a very Luna-ish fashion, with its pattern of knitted Cornish pixies.
Setting aside the thank you note, Lucy laughed. She felt a small answering flutter from her stomach.
–Well, hello there, baby.†A second flutter rippled through Lucy’s stomach. –Oh, you want to listen, do you? All right, let Mama read to you.â€
According to the Healers, Lucy and Lorcan should talk to their unborn baby as much as possible because, somehow, it could recognise their voices. Lucy usually felt quite silly talking to her stomach, nattering on about her day or whatever her cousins were currently gossiping about. At least the letters would put some words in her mouth.
The next letter Lucy gently pulled from the box had been written a few months later, around Easter when Lucy was nine, according to the date at the top.
–Oh look, baby. This one was when Daddy started writing back! I remember getting a reply to this one. Anyway, let’s see what Mama wrote.
–Dear Lorcan -- Well, that’s definitely the doing of my mother, your Grand-mama Weasley, she always made me write politely. Yes, see: My mother tells me I must wish you a Happy Easter. Happy Easter. I might have done as I was told but I didn’t have to like it! Aunt Luna -- not that she was ever really an aunt -- says you’re not coming here for Easter. Why not? I want you to be here. It’s so boring now. Only Lily and Hugo are left. Everyone’s at Hogwarts or gone and Lily and Hugo won’t play with me they’re so boring and they’ll only play with each other and won’t even talk to me. You’re still little and all but at least you play with me. Please come home and play with me, Lorcan. Pretty please with one of Gramma Weasley’s cupcakes? Love from Lucy. Oh dear, baby. You’d think after nine years of my parents I might have some idea about proper grammar.â€
Lucy traced the familiar letters of her name, her handwriting rather childish and round compared to her current style. She sounded so young in that letter, complaining about being ignored and left behind. Double checking the date at the top -- there at her mother’s insistence, no doubt -- she saw that she had definitely been nine. If she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed the writer of the letter to be six or seven. Lucy knew Lorcan had written something in reply. She Summoned the box she kept hidden under her bed just to check.
Lifting the lid, she shook her head. Where Lorcan’s box had been neat, with each letter in chronological order by the looks of it, Lucy’s was messy, with paper crammed in every which way. Still, it didn’t take long to find the letter she was looking for; it was the oldest and most worn, with the words almost rubbed away from the amount of times she had read it and traced over the letters with her fingers.
Gazing at the ragged scrap of parchment, Lucy was struck by a new thought. If she had been nine, Lorcan must have been about five when he wrote that first reply. Yet the handwriting, while large and wobbly, was still readable; the spelling was creative at times but understandable, and the few simple, short sentences said as much as the pages and pages Lorcan would later write. Lucy had accepted the reply without question when it had arrived, but now she marvelled at what he had managed to do at just five years old; she certainly could not write like that when she was five.
A stronger prod inside her stomach recalled Lucy from her thoughts.
–All right, baby, Mama will read you what Daddy wrote back: Dear Lucy. Happy Easter. Mum says we can’t come home. I can’t play with you. I can’t eat the cupcake. I could play with you in a letter? Don’t be sad. Tag! You’re it! Love Lorcan. You know, baby, I asked him later, and Daddy said he learned to write by copying Luna’s field notes and when she found out, she let him take notes for her, even though he was very slow and she couldn’t always read them. But, seriously, baby, this letter made me so happy. Whenever I felt lonely I’d write to your Daddy and end it with, ‘Tag! You’re it!’â€
Turning back to Lorcan’s box, Lucy pulled out a wad of letters. Slowly getting longer, they covered the time until she was eleven, just before she went to Hogwarts. Skimming through them now, she read some sections aloud; half-forgotten memories of childhood hurts and indignities reawakened by the familiarity in her own handwriting.
Lucy shuffled through, seeing the same phrases, the same complaints, the same longing and loneliness. She wrote of being ignored and lost within her huge family, of always getting left behind with the grown-ups, of how nothing changed regardless of whether most of her cousins where at Hogwarts or home for the holidays.
In her writing, she saw the jealousy she used to have for nearly all of her cousins just because they all had someone else close to them, whether a sibling or cousin close in age. She’d had no-one special. Lily and Hugo had been closest in age, but out of the entire family, they’d always had the closest friendship, they still did, with no space for anyone else. Her sister Molly was nearly five years older, the largest gap between any of the Weasley siblings, and they’d had little in common until they were much older.
–Want to hear about what I thought of Auntie Molly, baby?†Lucy asked. Scanning now for mentions of her sister, she found only a few.
–Here she is. Molly’s come home for Christmas holidays for once, but it hardly seems it. Your Auntie Molly almost always stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas, just coming for Christmas Day at the Burrow. This time was just before she turned sixteen. She had a secret boyfriend then. Here, see: She’s never actually around, either shut up in her room writing letters or going out to see her friends. She’s so secretive and weird now. She never talks to me, not that that’s strange but she avoids our parents too. It’s as though she doesn’t even live here anymore. Gosh, baby, you should have heard the row when my parents found out all the ‘friends’ she’d been visiting were actually that Christopher boy.â€
At the time, Lucy had been thoroughly disgusted at the concept of a boyfriend. She smiled now at the letter, so lacking in understanding. It wasn’t surprising that she and Molly had never really got on well; Molly was already growing up when Lucy was still a little girl.
–I suppose, baby, that I always wished my parents hadn’t waited four years to have me. Actually, I’m pretty sure I told them I hated them for it when I was about fourteen and accused them of having me as an afterthought and that I was never really a proper part of the family. I probably wrote to Lorcan about that -- let me see if I can find it...â€
Passing through the rest letters in Lorcan’s box, Lucy noticed a gap in the dates. She had written pages and pages of letter in the first years she was at Hogwarts, including that letter about her ‘afterthought’ birth, but then nothing in fourth year, and only a few small notes until almost seventh year. Slightly confused, Lucy lifted out all the letters dated between all seven years and laid them out in order across the floor, pushing the previously read and discarded letters into a rough stack to make space.
–What’s going on here, baby? I thought we were constantly writing,†Lucy murmured, gently rubbing her stomach as she struggled to remember.
Lucy flipped through the letters from her first year. She clearly remembered these. Filled with excitement about finally getting to Hogwarts after hearing so much from all her older cousins, she had wanted to share everything. To everyone else in her family, of course, it was nothing new; they’d already done it all before. Lorcan, however, was still new to the wonder of Hogwarts, and Lucy had written pages and pages to him.
Rereading now, though, there was always a tone of superiority in the writing. Lucy had bragging about earning points and pointedly mentioned learning secrets, but then stating Lorcan would have to wait to discover them for himself.
–If any of the cousins had written letters like that to me, I would have told them to shove it and stop rubbing it in, but Lorcan wrote back to every letter, I remember. We used to talk about his family’s expeditions. †She read closer, looking for proof. –I knew it: The Amazon sounds interesting, but how can you stand the weather? Such heat and dampness everywhere, ugh! But then, you’ve been to plenty more uncomfortable places, haven’t you? I’m not surprised Rolf found his frog before Luna found her fish-thing -- she’s always chasing dreams. If she does manage to find it, bring me back some scales or something? But that’s it for the whole five pages; I went right on to moaning about homework.â€
Nearly every letter from those years had some kind of complaint, or worry, or hurt. Looking back, Lucy saw that she had used her letters to Lorcan to dump all her problems on someone else but then paraded any small victory. The person from those letters was so shallow and self-absorbed; Lucy was horrified.
Roughly gathering the letters from her first few years at Hogwarts into a stack, she put them on top of the ones already discarded, not caring that they were out of order or that she creased and crumpled the corners. Hopefully, Lucy turned to the next letters; surely she had been a more generous correspondent as she had grown up.
Those years, though, were the missing ones, where there were almost no letters at all. One memory, long banished to the very back crevices of Lucy’s mind, began to push its way forward.
–I wonder, baby. Did I actually do what I think I might have?†asked Lucy. She took the flutter in her stomach as encouragement, and shakily picked up a letter written at the beginning of her fourth year.
The terseness made Lucy reel. She felt as though she had been slapped around the face. How must Lorcan have felt when she sent it to him? Lucy sighed. Shame rushed through her as she silently re-read her harsh rejection, not wanting to share what she had written, even if her audience couldn’t really understand.
Lorcan, now we are both at Hogwarts, I don’t think we should send letters anymore. People send letters home; nobody writes to people in the castle. And please, don’t follow me around. I know, you’re still getting used to it all, but I have my own work -- I can’t spend my whole time looking after you. Make some friends in your own year. Lucy.
She had just brushed him off completely. The high and mighty fourth year would have nothing to do with a lowly first year. No wonder Lucy had forced herself to forget it; such a cruel act, when Lorcan had been nothing but friendly and kind, just excited to experience the things she had described for three years. It was unforgivable rude and insulting. And he had still kept it!
She had obviously gone through with it, too: there were no more letters until her sixth year, when Lorcan had been a third year.
That letter, which had restarted their communication, was very short; full of crossings-out and ink splatters.
–I remember this! Lorcan had seen me kissing Francis Parkinson in Hogsmeade. I was so worried, baby. Every other boyfriend I’d had, my cousins had found out and news flies fast in my family. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of Francis, but I’d thought I was safe since finally I was the only Weasley left. Just the thought of the Howler I’d get if Lorcan wrote to anyone made me hysterical.
–He met with me, you know, and said he was never going to tell anyone anyway, that whoever I kissed was my own business, even if Parkinson was a jerk. So I’d panicked for nothing. I even chucked Francis a week later when I caught him snogging that Valerie girl! Oh well, baby, at least it got us writing again.â€
Lucy laughed. That encounter soon became habitual, with Lucy writing to Lorcan about her problems with boys and receiving surprisingly sensible advice in return considering it came from a thirteen year old boy. From her mid-teens, she had been quite obsessed with finding ‘the one’ the perfect prince charming. The rest of the letters from her Hogwarts years documented this, and also her growing dissatisfaction as her search proved fruitless. With a sudden sense of guilt, Lucy realised that Lorcan had patiently written back with advice, good advice, time and time again but she had never repaid the favour.
She had been so certain back then that dating the right man would fix all her problems, and that he must be waiting for her outside school but things had only got worse once she finished at Hogwarts. Curious, she set aside all of the Hogwarts letters and pulled the half-emptied box back towards her. Lucy had gone through a few minor disasters in her love life outside Hogwarts. Surely she had written to Lorcan about them.
The letters from the first year she was out of Hogwarts were written on notepaper decorated with a variety of motifs: flowers, stylised fairies and the like. The paper represented Lucy’s enjoyment of her newfound freedom; no longer required to keep stacks of utilitarian parchment for essays, she had taken the chance to but the most garish and girly stationary she could find. Her newfound independence affected the contents of the letters too, with descriptions of the relief she found moving out into her own flat and the extra opportunities it provided for dating. There were many sections of the letters that made Lucy blush, and quickly tuck them away.
So many times had she written to Lorcan about whichever new man she was chasing, gushing praise for his looks or his humour or his courtesy. Just how long had she been chasing the wrong types of men, running into heartbreak?
Just weeks, or even days it would seem, after each new man appeared in the letters, a letter stained with tears or torn by angry quill-strokes had been sent off to Lorcan. Looking at them now, Lucy was ashamed. She had still been so naive; taken in by the facades presented to her and then thoroughly crushed once her dates had relaxed their guard to show their true personalities, or had simply got what they were in for.
Almost the entirety of each letter was full of those misguided ‘romances’. Lucy searched, but she found only a few short messages of support for Lorcan’s OWL studies. Every conversation was about her; what she was doing, who she was seeing, the problems in her life. Lucy couldn’t believe that Lorcan had put up with her whinging for so many years.
It was the same through the last two years that Lorcan had been at Hogwarts. The only change was that Lucy’s complaints moved onto her parents’ nagging to find her job, the realisation she was broke and actually needed that job, her failures to find a job, and finally, onto how much she hated the menial, low-paying jobs she did manage to get. Lucy could understand why, as a child, she had been such a selfish letter-writer, but she had no excuse for it continuing. She knew better, she knew how friendship worked; equality, with each side caring about, and helping out, the other.
Many minutes had passed since Lucy had last spoken aloud, but this time there was no prodding flutter in her stomach to remind her to read on. It was almost as though the baby knew that Lucy was facing a rather sobering realisation about her own character, and needed calm to deal with it.
Tears returned to Lucy’s eyes once more as she pulled the box of letters into her lap once more. Not for happiness now, but for knowing that she really could not like the person she was. She had been so self centred that she hadn’t even realised how selfish she had been. She wanted desperately to shove all the incriminating words back into the box, to push herself back into the box, and forget it, but she knew she couldn’t. At the very least, Lucy needed to get through the rest of letters. Perhaps, in just one letter, one page, one sentence, one word even, she would find something redeeming about herself, a reason why Lorcan had stuck by her forever.
So Lucy read on. Page after page, letter after letter; every one tossed aside to surround her like a papery moat around a castle.
Her crying began again. New tear spots joined old ones on post-breakup letters, and marred the joy in the hopeful beginnings with the next ‘one’. The events laid out in endless lines of her familiar handwriting were recent enough that the memories should have been clear, but Lucy wasn’t always able to match the names to faces; she had flown from man to man so fast in her search for perfection that their faces, names and personalities blended into one man, his one distinguishing feature his inadequacy.
Around the time Lorcan left Hogwarts, she had begun to suspect why none of the men she dated were good enough, to realise which ideal they all failed to measure up against. Lucy’s letters became delicately probing, asking what Lorcan liked in a girl, if he was dating anyone. Barely conscious of her efforts, she had been testing the waters. In one letter, Lucy found the offer she had made of sharing flat-space, to share costs. Now, Lucy recognised that offer for what it was; a quiet invitation to further their relationship. Not bold, like her usual propositioning, because this time it had mattered, more than she admitted.
Around the time Lorcan left Hogwarts, she had fallen in love with him, or, rather, realised that she had been in love with him -- quietly, in her own fashion -- for years. He stood by her, supported her, encouraged her. He was her perfect man. Lucy, despite feeling so alienated within her family, had given in to the Weasley cliché of falling in love with her best friend and taking years to realise.
That idea had been formed tentatively -- too tentatively it would seem, for nothing had come of her offer. Lorcan had finished at Hogwarts and immediately left the country on his longest expedition ever, travelling the length of South America with his brother, Lysander.
Their letters had trailed off somewhat after that. It was a long and difficult journey for even the strongest of owls. And Lucy had been hurt too; for the first time in her life, Lorcan had let her down.
The memories of this period, not so long ago, haunted Lucy. No writing was needed to be re-read to remember. She had felt lost without the comfort of a regular chance to pour out her heart, and also wished that she didn’t desperately want to. Her family had quickly realised something was wrong, but their solicitous concerns crowded Lucy. Forever lost among their numbers, her family had never been a source of reassurance and now their worry smothered her. So she had run away, to France, where her Aunt Gabrielle offered her a room. The letters continued to dwindle until they were only polite notes with birthday greetings and the like.
In France she had fully set herself free. She had learned French habits, gone out to cafes and clubs, remade herself completely. It should have been the best time of her life, but of course she had quickly been dragged into-- but there was no point going over that, what happened had happened.
One solitary letter remained in the box. Childhood, Hogwarts, newfound independence, polite notes drenched in French perfume. All cast aside.
This last letter she refused to read. Lucy knew enough of what it contained, even though she couldn’t exactly remember what words she had scrawled through a haze of shock and adrenaline and drugs. This letter represented the very worst of her, the ugliness she had got involved in, the misery she had brought upon herself in France.
This letter, more than any of the others, summed up who she was: a screw-up, selfish and needy. She understood why she loved Lorcan, but now, knowing who she was, knowing the person kept in the box of letter, she couldn’t understand why Lorcan loved her, why he had replied to every single whiny letter, why he stood by her, why he came to her rescue in France when at last she hit rock bottom and begged.
Lucy sat with a hand on her swelling stomach, surrounded by crumpled parchment with a nearly empty box on her lap, and wondered if she was doing the wrong thing moving in with Lorcan, having a baby, getting married. Trapping him forever in her selfishness.
Lucy cried.
Then, she wrote a letter. She wrote of discovering her soul in a box. She wrote of how she was ashamed of how she had behaved her whole life. She wrote of how she hated herself for her selfishness. She wrote to say he was free to go, that he had no obligations, that she was done mistreating him and taking him for granted. She wrote to say that he should do what he wanted and do it for himself, not for her.
She posted the letter. An hour later she got a reply. She read though it once, and then again.
The third time she read it to her stomach.
–My dearest Lucy, you may have found your soul in the box but you forgot to look for mine. You read my first reply, but none of the rest did you? You forgot all about that box.
–I needed your letters every bit as much as you needed to write to me. You might have been lonely among your tribe of a family, but I was just as lost. I never had a home, travelling from country to country and only coming back to our house to bring back specimens and artefacts. It’s my parents dream lifestyle, and Sander’s too. Not mine. I need a home, an anchor. I was so lost, I was afraid I would just drift off forever, forgotten.
–You were my home, Lucy. Your letters have been the only constant thing in my crazy, chaotic life. I loved hearing about your problems because they were normal things, not the worry of the best place to pitch the tent or what disease the local mosquitoes carried. Your letters were the only thing that kept me sane.
–My biggest regret was when I ran away from you. That’s what I did you know. I had the chance to have what I really wanted, a home, but I ran away because I was scared. I’d spent my whole life dislocated from everything and when it came down to choice, I stuck with what I knew. When you wrote that letter to me from France I knew I’d made the worst choice. So I came back to fix it.
–Lucy, your letters were never whinging or complaining to me. You opened your heart to me, your deepest hopes and fears; everything you couldn’t tell to your family, to anyone. I am so, so honoured that I was that person for you. If you are selfish for sharing that most private part of yourself with me, then I am selfish for wanting it, for holding on to it and using it as an anchor, to use you to keep me sane. I need you just as much as you need me. So don’t ever think that I’m here for any reason other than I love you, and I need you, and I want you. If you leave me, truly leave, then I know that I will be lost.
–You may be disappointed with the soul you found in my box, but doesn’t everyone have insecurities and worries hidden deep in their soul? Your heart is also in that box, and it is beautiful, all the more so because you gave it to me. And that is why I love you.â€
Everything was alright again in Lucy’s world, with just that one letter. Receiving advice in Lorcan’s letters was an integral part of her life. She did not doubt his words; his letters had never once contained lies. Still, she would take this awakening as a new beginning. Lucy was determined to be a better person, to love Lorcan the way he deserved. She could be better, less self-absorbed, she knew it.
Shaking her head ruefully, Lucy smiled. Of course it was Lorcan who had enabled her to make her discovery and then brought her to her senses when it nearly broke her.
It was always Lorcan.
A Box for Your Soul by Free_Elf
Chapter Notes: The title was inspired by the following, despite being concerned with letters rather than poetry: –A poem was a box for your soul.†― Andrea Ashworth
Also, many thanks to Sarah/Sapphire at Dawn for her beta work.