Work Text
A dozy Autumn Friday. Umbered leaves drifting from their stems and curling up dead on the ground. A chilly irritation plaguing the air all around them. The sun, discouraged by the impending winter, tucked away behind clumps of silvery billows, which some Ravenclaws observed were of the cumulonimbus variety.
A stack of untarnished papers sitting morosely in the stationery cupboard, waiting with as much dread as a stack of paper has the capacity to feel to be violated by about a hundred students dutifully setting about doing their homework.
Sure enough, at precisely 3:33 — 3:35 for the lucky students kept behind after their last lesson to be given a merit, or else a shameful 3:40 for the naughty ones — a flock of knackered Slytherin students stumble into their common room, the clever ones making a beeline for the stationery cupboard to tear into that aforementioned unfortunate stack of papers, and the rest all collapsing on seats, cushions and anything else that sufficiently breaks their fall — including the house pet, a jaded old tom belonging to the Housemaster, who scratches the gormless boy who tries to sit down on him.
Scorpius is one of the few who go straight for the papers.
No use putting it off, he thinks, justifying the next hour he’ll spend writing an essay not due for another two weeks instead of sitting downstairs in the common room and trying to be sociable. Not that anybody expects him to be, but pretty much every time he retires upstairs he has a strange urge to announce it and properly excuse himself as if he were back at home trying to leave the dinner table. He refrains from doing this now — it just got odd looks and sarcastic ‘alright,
your highness’s last time.
Once he has a quill and ink pot as well as a small handful of papers, he carefully climbs the stairs to the boys’ dormitory where he sets up a miniature office on his bed and gets to work.
Scorpius leans upon one of the books his father spent a fortune on, even though he never ended up using it in class, and places the ink pot on the edge of his bedside table. The peace and quiet of an otherwise empty dorm room is the perfect atmosphere for hard work like this and he’s rather proud of himself for taking the initiative to get started right away.
Then the door swings open and three of the loudest boys in Sixth storm in, shouting their supposedly hilarious ‘banter’ at the top of their lungs, just to make sure everybody hears how incredibly witty they are.
“Ah, mate, you were absolutely CARPARKED!”
“Yeah, man, I was utterly GAZEBOED, man, I was like…you know, like…”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
Scorpius reaches up for his bed curtain and pointedly yanks it across the line so that it conceals the half of the bed he is perched on.
“Do you know if Crest and Brixton got that pint of Firewhisky after all?” the big one named Keith with a low, plummy voice asks, just above a tolerable volume.
The smaller, lankier one named Jason, or ‘JJ’ (despite his initials only having one J) with a high pitched, rather adenoidal whine of a voice replies, “not sure. Probably not, they’re both nonces so they likely pussied out. You know Crest, he’s like a metrosexual jellyfish — got no spine, and he has that stupid bloody bowl cut!”
“Hah!”
There’s nothing wrong with bowl cuts, Scorpius thinks furiously, before hastily shaking the distraction from his mind and refocusing on the page. So far, he has barely finished writing his name.
“Hey, hey,” Keith begins, patting the smaller one on the arm excitedly by the thumping sound that comes after it.
“What?”
“Uh, uh, also, also, he’s like…you know, like…Crest…Crest is like…He wears that…that, that you know, that thing, that poofy thing—"
“Poof-y?” JJ replies, wheezing with laughter at his own ‘joke’.
“Haha, yeah!” chuckles Keith, with several quick, low grunts of amusement. “Yeah, yeah. Like, like that thing looks a bit like, you know…”
“Like Jellyfish stingers! D’you mean a cravat? Yeah, they’re
well
poncey.”
“Yeah! Yeah!” Keith guffaws, finally getting to his own rather long-winded and not spectacularly thought-out ‘joke’.
Scorpius attempts to get back to his work, but the only thing swimming in his mind is an image of his roommate Billy Crest as a foppish jellyfish, waving limply to him as he bobs along.
Yanking the curtain back aggressively, Scorpius assumes the best polite tone he can muster at the moment before firmly saying, “do you two
quite
mind? I’m
trying
to do my homework.”
“Ooh, aren’t you a Fancy Nancy?” JJ drawls, raising a derisive brow. “Doin' your homework on a Friday evening when all the lads—“
“All the lads, except for you two, because none of ‘the lads’ want to hang out with either of you anymore. Because you’re
embarrassing,” Scorpius interjects, challenging JJ with a fierce, glacial glare.
“Huh. Wow. Chill out,
Lady Disdain,” the other boy quips, laughing with an edge of unnerved unsettlement in his tone.
“You shall not quote Dickens in this dormitory, JJ!” Scorpius snaps, maintaining his hostile stare while hoping he at least got the muggle author name right this time. Judging by JJ’s ensuing look of incredulous contempt, he didn’t.
Whatever. Scorpius scowls at the two boys with a threatening furrowing of his brow, and the two laugh derisively before blundering off to go and do whatever they do these days, as the other Slytherin boys have indeed excluded them from their common room activities.
“That little sod really needs to loosen up. So what if we aren’t out with the lads a lot these days? It’s not like he’s ever anywhere but on that bloody bed."
Finally alone again, Scorpius resumes his work, only slightly more uncomfortable than when he started.
He looks back down at his parchment and realises that he idly wrote ‘Scorpius Disdain’ instead of ‘Scorpius Malfoy’ at the top of the page. Irately scribbling this out, he writes his real name on the other top corner and then neatly writes and underlines the title, hoping this will compensate for the mess on the top left corner.
Now, he is finally ready to
truly
begin his essay. He is alone, he is calm, and he knows precisely what to write about. All he has to do is put his quill to the page and—
“Scorpius?” comes a faux-timid voice from behind the just-ajar door.
He sighs, barely refraining from snapping his quill. “What do you want?”
The person — Albus, obviously — laughs and drops the falsely shy tone, slipping into the room.
“I’ve lost my quill.”
“Oh, isn’t that a shame. Go look in the stationery cupboard.”
“Nooo,” Albus moans forlornly. “Those pens are
rubbish.”
“Well, you know, tough tits, Al,” Scorpius replies, attempting to be sympathetic "They work well for me.”
“If your standards for women are same as your standards for quills, you’re going to have a very dull wife.”
Scorpius stops. He inhales sharply, then promptly places his quill back on the page and starts his first sentence, without speaking one himself.
“Now, don’t be stroppy—“
“I’m not stroppy,” Scorpius hisses stroppily. “JJ and Keith were just in here and they pissed me off, alright? Just lay off the teasing for a second so I can get started on this.”
“What is it? Potions?”
“Charms.”
“Pfft.”
“Don’t.”
Albus scoffs again. “Nobody
does their Charms homework, though!”
“I do.”
“Well, it’s pointless! He never checks it. You’re wasting your time. You should come—“
“With you and ‘the lads’ down to the new speakeasy under the Ravenclaw common room?” Scorpius rolls his eyes in exasperation. “I’m no more excited to do that than I am to drill a hole in my head, as I have explicitly stressed a number of times now.”
“It’s not a speakeasy,” Albus replies indignantly. “It’s just a secret bar…thing. It’s cool. It’s not all alcohol and stuff. It’s not like, you know, we’re not getting totally bedknobbed down there.”
“'Bedknobbed'?”
“Y’know, like, hammered. Drunk.”
“Yes,” Scorpius seethes through gritted teeth. “I understand you’re
attempting
to make up terminology for getting drunk like everyone else and their mum, but perhaps ‘bedknobbed’ isn’t the best noun to verbify. It sounds a bit…you know.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Good point, I suppose. I get enough talk about that sort of thing from JJ and Keith, I suppose I shouldn’t encourage it.”
“No.”
“You know what they called me yesterday?"
He continues to write.
“Scor—"
“What?” Scorpius sighs sharply, throwing his paper down in furious exasperation.
“‘The Littlest Homo’.”
“Creative.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I.”
Albus goes silent, apparently trying to figure out the pun.
Scorpius is positively blessed to finally have another moment of quiet, and he tries to write as much as possible before Albus speaks again.
When he does, it is in a rather different tone.
“I’m sorry.”
No reply.
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Okay. That’s fine.”
Another beat.
“I mean, it’s not my fault. But, like. I’m sorry.”
“Alright.”
With nothing else to say, Albus keeps his silence this time.
It isn’t nice to be rejected. Anyone with experience of rejection can agree. It can incite a range of different feelings, though none particularly pleasant. The initial blow is a broad-headed arrow directly through the chest, rendering the victim as paralysed as if their spine truly was severed in such a way. Then comes a wrecking ball to the lower abdomen, encouraging to victim to retch as their breakfast comes up for a reprise. The following week, utter anguish seeps through the body, filling the lungs and skull with a toxic vapour, consuming all thought with reminders of the
assault.
After that, most normal people get over it and find someone else to get off with instead.
Scorpius, however, is neither normal nor anywhere near that rational.
When Rose Granger-Weasley declined his offer of a relaxed, romantic outing to Hogsmeade the ensuing weekend, he fell into something just short of depression but not quite a state of acceptance, rather a sort of perpetually uncomfortable limbo between the two. This means that, while his grades have not changed significantly for the worse, they have not changed for the better either. Any hope of getting a solid O in his looming Charms exam is lost, along with his dignity.
Albus has attempted to be supportive, but for whatever reason he has been acting strange since the beginning of their Sixth year. Not noteworthily different by any means, but his deviance isn’t too helpful when Scorpius is busy feeling sorry for himself. The least Albus could do is join the pity party with him.
Of course, this is not the first time Rose has rejected Scorpius, but this was meant to be the time where she said yes. For a full year, a year, mind you, he kept his mouth firmly shut about relationships and just tried to get platonically close with her. This worked, until recently, when he asked her out again.
He thought, at the time, that not trying to ask her out every other day might help his chances in a sort of counter-intuitive way. She would eventually stop expecting it, she would ease her defences and then Scorpius could go in for the kill — except perhaps holding Rose Granger-Weasley to the same standards as vulnerable prey is a foolish idea.
Nevertheless, her latest rejection was undoubtedly the worst. Rather than the usual scoff and hiss of ‘no, Malfoy’, she exploded at him, infuriated that he dare bring it up again, ‘right as he was starting to seem like not so much of a galavanting twat’.
I’m a fool,
he has been repeating to himself over and over ever since, the urge to jump into the the Great Lake intensifying the more he thinks about the unfortunate skirmish that took place that day.
I am a blithering fool. I might as well be handed over to St. Mungo's for the trainees to test on. At least then I’d be contributing to
something.
“I don’t care about relationships,” Albus declares, stuffing a couple of textbooks into his bag with strangely aggressive force. “I’m too old for that shit now. I’ve got N.E.W.Ts to worry about, right? It’s better that I don’t think about relationships. That’s every teenager’s vice, it seems. Sex and relationships. They can’t get their minds off the two. Well, luckily, I’m much more mature than that lot, and I don’t care about that stuff. All I care about is getting a good job and earning lots of money so I can do whatever I want.”
“Cool.”
Albus sniffs and stands up stiffly, his hand wrapped around the strap of his bag, hesitating. “I’m going to own a car. I know it’s not traditional, but who wants to apparate everywhere, right? I’m not very traditional, anyway.”
“Mmhm.”
He yanks his bag up and around his shoulder, fiddling with his school tie idly. “Come on, then, we’ve got things to do and places to be.”
“As opposed to what?” Scorpius asks, raising an eyebrow. “Everyone’s always got things to do and places to be. That’s a stupid phrase.”
“Right.”
Three more lessons and then the day is over, but as with most things he used to have strong opinions about these days, Scorpius can’t quite figure out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
This time when Scorpius collects his things to do his work, Albus joins him.
“What, no
cheeky shots
with the
lads
today?” asks Scorpius with an inadvertently scathing tone.
Albus shakes his head solemnly. “I don’t mess around with them anymore. I think one of them got caught for selling cough medicine or something. Anyway, I thought I’d study with you. You seem rather glum these days. You need a friend.”
“I need a cigarette,” Scorpius drawls in reply, rubbing his temples. “Or something stronger. Except, I’d rather not weaken my lungs when my Clarinet lessons have been going so pleasantly average recently.”
“Smoking’s bad,” Albus states. “Just as silly as sex, or relationships, like I’ve said before. Anything that takes time away from studying. Except, well, I mean, alcohol doesn’t really count. Firewhisky’s okay. It’s not actually bad for you, the government just says that to control the youth population.”
Scorpius sighs, yet can’t help but feel a feeble suggestion of fondness for his friend’s strange but creative conspiracies. “You’re not to read any more Orwell, understand? It’s getting all sorts into your head.”
“I’m not. I get my information from a reliable source.”
“Who?”
“Uncle Ron.”
They chuckle quietly and then get started on the word list they have been set to compose for Potions homework, perhaps a less taxing task than the one the night before, which, despite being intended to be worked on over the course of two weeks, Scorpius was able to finish within an evening. Needless to say, he’ll be sleeping that one off for a while.
After about an hour of scribbling, flicking through textbooks and small, irregular coughs and sniffs that occasionally break the silence, Albus sets his work to one side and seems suddenly very focused on his hands.
Scorpius clocks the sudden halt in movement, and he looks up.
“You okay, mate?”
Albus’ head whips up briefly, and he gives a small nod before looking back down at his hands.
The corners of his mouth pulling back into an uncomfortable grimace, Scorpius looks back down at his work and tries to ignore this odd behaviour.
After a couple of minutes with no movement still, Scorpius looks up again and sets his own work aside.
“You’re very quiet.”
Albus grunts in agreement.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he begins, his whole face screwing up slightly as he scratches his neck. “Just, you know, havin' a think.”
“What you thinkin' 'bout, then?” Scorpius asks, trying not be too condescending.
“Just… Stuff. Exams.”
“Yeah, I’m dreading them a bit too.”
“It’s really hard.”
“What, revision?”
“No. Just, all of it.”
Scorpius considers this. “The exams themselves aren’t bad.”
“No, all of it,” Albus reiterates, gesturing vaguely around them.
“How d’you mean?”
“Well…” he pauses. “Everyone is so… They’re all — our classmates, the others in our year, that is — they’re all so obsessed with relationships. I dunno. It’s… It's just… I really don’t know.”
“It can get quite annoying, I agree.”
Albus sighs, burying his head in his hands, and he mumbles something only just intelligible. “You and Rose… And all that. You never talk about it aloud… just, that’s all you seem to be thinking about.”
Suddenly, a sharp pang of resentment resonates in Scorpius’ chest, and he frowns. “I can’t help it if it upsets me.”
Sitting up again, Albus takes his head out of his hands and tucks them into the pockets of his robes. “Yeah, that’s fine, I get it, mate. You’re allowed to be pissed off at her, I just don’t — I don’t want it to be a thing, you know? Like, where you get obsessed with this and you never get over it.”
“How, exactly, do you expect me to react?” Scorpius asks incredulously, crossing his arms. “I didn’t ask her out for shits and giggles, I really do like Rose.”
“Here we go again,” Albus groans. “‘I like her’, ‘I fancy him’, it never bloody ends! I know we’re teenagers but we’re not just hormone machines whose only purpose it to find people attractive. Why can’t we just get over ourselves and concentrate on our damn work?"
Then he throws a pillow.
Someone enters the room, is hit by the pillow, and leaves, then Albus yells for some reason.
All around confused and rather upset by this spontaneous criticism of both his simple desire to be liked by a girl as well as the very concept of attraction itself, Scorpius goes to pick up the pillow as he gives Albus an immensely puzzled look.
“You’re not half stressed, Al,” he mutters, laughing nervously. “Look at you, bloody…throwing pillows…”
Albus yells again, quieter this time — more of a loud sigh than a yell. “It’s my pillow, I can do what I like with it. Who are you, the pillow police?”
“'The pillow police’?” Scorpius gags in derision. “Yes, extremely
mature, I don’t how people could mistake you for any younger than, like, six."
“Bugger off.”
Returning the pillow to its proper place, Scorpius resigns to the fact that he likely won’t get much homework done with Albus in this state, so he sits next to him and puts a tentative hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t be a dick,” he says gently.
“I’m sorry,” Albus replies.
They go silent for a moment, probably to the relief of the poor Slytherins downstairs wondering what on earth all the yelling and thumping was about.
Scorpius contemplates the episode that has recently passed and he gives one of his longest, most exasperated sighs yet as he pats Albus consolingly on the back.
“I’ve got an inkling that you’re facing some relationship issues.”
Albus scoffs.
“…Or lack thereof?”
At this, he bridles and shakes Scorpius’ hand off, hunching over slightly and fingering the hem of his robe.
Scorpius raises an eyebrow.
“No.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” he replies in an unnaturally high-pitched voice positively emanating sarcasm and passive aggression. “Since you
clearly
don’t want to talk about it despite that strange little outburst you had just there, I’ll leave you to it.”
Standing up with no intent to actually leave, Scorpius begins to walk over to the door, throwing a brief, expectant glance behind him as he reaches it.
“Fine,” Albus concedes, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I am having a bit of a crisis, yes.”
“Would you like to talk about it, or would you rather wallow in self pity as I’ve been doing recently?”
Albus sniffs amusedly, then tersely responds, “talk.”
“Gah, you’re so predictable sometimes,” Scorpius mutters, tutting and shaking his head as he makes his way back to the bed. “Go on, then. Out with it.”
Albus shifts over to the head of his bed and pulls his legs up into a sideways sitting position against the headboard, Scorpius following suit and sitting cross-legged at the other end.
“Listen,” Albus begins, clasping his hands together and resting his two index fingers against the tip of his chin. “You’re a good mate and all, and I don’t feel like you’re ‘neglectful’ or whatever, but…well, I’ve been feeling a bit — sort of, you know, like.. Lonely?”
“Charming,” Scorpius replies. “I only spend every waking moment with you, and you’re feeling lonely?”
“No, no, as in… you know, like, I don’t just want one friend. Not that you’re a bad friend, you’re great, like I said, but… I don’t know. No, I do, but, like… It’s a bit silly really.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”
“What I’m getting at is — I’d like a proper… like, a romantic relationship with someone. But nobody seems to want that with me.”
“Pfft.” Scorpius rolls his eyes. “Yes they do — you’ve got a flank of female suitors who think you’re
so cool
because you don’t talk to them and pretend you can’t see them. Just go get off with one of them, you’ll be over it in no time.”
“Hm.” Albus glances away at the door, seemingly willing it to open.
“You could ask that Anna Keels girl, the one who does Divination with Byron. She’s probably gagging for it after her breakup with Louis…”
“Well,” Albus begins, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Or Belinda, the one with the crazy hair. Oh, she’s gorgeous.” Scorpius simpers. “If I weren’t so busy with exams and being miserable about Rose, I might go after her.”
“The thing is—“ Albus attempts to interject. “The thing is — Scorpius…”
“No! Wait! I know who’ll take you,” Scorpius begins, grinning with a look of manic comprehension in his eyes. “Georgia. Georgia Carberry — she’s well into you. You ask her out, she’ll be all over you like a swarm of flies on a—“
“Scorp, mate,” intervenes a now rather exasperated Albus. “Listen—“
“Don’t you say a bad word about Georgia, Al,” Scorpius snaps, holding up an accusing finger. “She lent me her revision flash cards for Charms, I will fight
any wizard
who talks shit—“
At a loss for any other tactic to shut Scorpius up, Albus grabs his wrist to catch his attention. "I’m not badmouthing Georgia! I’m just trying to explain that I’m not interested in her."
“Fine,” Scorpius replies, calming down. “As long as you don’t talk shit about her. What about Belinda, then? Or Anna?”
Albus grimaces. “No.”
Scorpius scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean—“ he pauses, inhaling deeply and kicking back into a partially elevated lying position, his head resting against the wall behind the headboard. “—I mean I don’t fancy any of them.”
“Oh, well, fair enough,” Scorpius mutters, raising his eyebrows in concurrence. “But don’t beat around the bush, who are you after, then?”
A single beat. Then Albus breathes again.
“I think…I think I don’t really fancy girls.”
It takes Scorpius a moment to mull this over before he replies, “well, not everyone gets there right away. I mean…isn’t it…isn’t it sixteen that’s the latest it starts happening?”
“What?”
“You know. It’s alright if you’re not quite feeling it yet. We don’t all start fancying people right away. You’ll get there eventually.”
Albus gives him an incredulous look. He sits up. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Look, all I’m saying is that being a late bloomer is nothing to be ashamed of,” Scorpius explains, holding his hands up defensively. “Don’t get me wrong here, it’s fine to have a low sex drive if that’s what this is, but otherwise—“
“No, no, Scorpius, hang on.” Chuckling and shaking his head in disbelief, Albus leans forward and pats his friend’s bent knee to silence him. “That’s — no, that’s, that’s not what I’m getting at.”
Scorpius frowns, sniffing impatiently “Then what is it? I’ve got work to do, Albus, and as much as I enjoy our chats…”
The room goes silent again, and Albus leans back, letting his hunched back straighten up slightly, as if standing to attention.
“You can’t…you’re not to be a dick about this, alright?”
“Albus…” Scorpius moans, looking mournfully at his abandoned homework.
“I’m getting there,” Albus replies, now slightly folding in on himself again and idly wrapping his tie around his hand. “You won’t be, anyway. I know you won’t.”
Once more, they go quiet. Scorpius sighs exasperatedly, shooting Albus an impatient, expectant glare.
“I think….I reckon…” he begins, not quite meeting Scorpius’ eye. “That I might fancy boys.”
With this, an unseen vacuum siphons all air from the room, the absence of even a somewhat tangible ether rendering both of them suspended in time for an indefinite period.
This, of course, was not quite the reaction Albus expected.
A cacophony of silence. The room, usually permeated with a perverse smell of sweat and something viscously alkaline, now void entirely of odour. All sound absent.
Then, without warning, the vacuum is removed, and everything clunks back into place so violently that they both take another minute to regain full consciousness again.
“Well.” Albus swallows with a grimace, assimilating the lacklustre response like one would a bitter black coffee brewed with hemlock.
Scorpius slowly closes his legs together and hugs them to his chest tightly, blowing a small jet of air from his pursed lips as if recovering from a fall. “Well. That’s fine. That’s alright. In this day and age, in… What year is it?”
“2021,” says Albus.
“Yeah.” Scorpius clears his throat. “No reason to get hung up on it, not these days. It’s fine. Cool, even. I mean, it’s okay now, isn’t? It wasn’t always. My dad told me about how they used to treat it back in the 90s. S'not like that anymore. It’s fine now.”
Albus doesn’t reply. Instead, he loosens the knot in his tie and lets it hang limply from his craned neck as he stares at the door, which has slowly creaked ajar without their noticing.
If nothing at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry appeals to oneself, the food definitely will.
7:00 am. The ambrosial perfume of assorted, internationally sourced fruits. A thick waft of herb-spiked hash browns and caramelised onions. Traditional English pork sausages glazed with honey, glistening almost patriotically on their plates — perhaps forgetting the irony of this given their actual location. Market-fresh herbs chopped and peppered across plates piled high with gluttonous goods. French and Belgian pastries seductively stacked onto fine porcelain, sitting regally in their place as if looking in disdain upon their greasy, common peers. Luscious, sinfully rich sauces piped in neat spirals inside of miniature white bowls, teaspoons carefully lanced into their sides. The Great Hall in all her glory — positively saturated in these smells, bringing any student who enters her to life within an instant.
Scorpius sits down at the Slytherin table and elbows all the food before him out of the way, tonging a couple of Pain au Chocolats onto his side plate and sticking them into his face absent-mindedly as he studies a revision guide for Potions that he has set out on the table.
“Mad Boy!”
He grimaces.
Not surprisingly, Scorpius looks up to see a manically excited Georgia Carberry looming over him. “Hi, Carbs.”
‘Mad Boy’ is Georgia’s rather odd nickname for Scorpius, apparently a (bad) play on his surname, as she vehemently insists on giving everyone a nickname, as well as everyone referring to her by her own — ‘Carbs’.
“Did you speak to Allie yet?”
Scorpius glances away. “Yes, I talked to Albus.”
Squealing, Georgia claps her hands and continues, “so, what’d he say then? Did he say he’d go out with me?”
After a moment of thought, he looks back at her nods. “Yeah. He said he’d think about it.”
The sound that then comes out of Georgia’s mouth causes several neighbouring students to cover their ears and stare at her in disgusted horror.
“Oh my days! That, well, that basically means he wants to go out with me! Oh, thank you so so so so much, Mad Boy!”
She leans across the table to hug him, her long braid dipping into the béarnaise sauce, and then she skips away, flicking the stuff here and there as she goes. Nobody touches the sauce after that.
Perhaps it is mainly to do with him being a teenage boy at what is likely the height of his pubescence who is desperately deprived of female affection, or perhaps he’s just got a thing for extroverts, but this brief yet impassioned embrace leaves Scorpius feeling in higher spirits than he has of late, and he takes a lazy bite of his Pain au Chocolat as he watches her leave until another figure obscures his view.
“Bloody Georgia Carberry,” Albus scoffs, arriving at the part of the bench opposite Scorpius. “Bloody Georgia Car— what were you talking to bloody Georgia Carberry about?”
As Albus takes a seat and begins to fill his plate, he notices Scorpius’ blank, unfocused expression, his gaze pointing off into the distance.
“Mm,” Scorpius replies. “Not much.”
Albus begins to spread a piece of toast with cream cheese, anticipating elaboration but not receiving it.
“Scorpius?”
“Yeah?” He shakes his head, shifting back into motion but still not meeting Albus’ eye.
Albus stops mid-spread, his knife hovering above the bread somewhat menacingly. He squints at his friend, frowning. “Why won’t you look at me?
At this, their eyes finally meet, but Scorpius instantly draws his away and laughs nervously.
“I don’t — I’m not, I’m not not looking a you, I’m just, you know. I’m, I’m looking at this, you know, I’m revising, aren’t I?”
“Exams aren’t for a bit.”
Scorpius sighs irately. “Yeah, well, I’m a nerd, it’s nothing new.”
He flips his guide to a random page and feigns immersion, perhaps too eccentrically. Albus drops his voice to a near whisper, leaning across the table cautiously so as not to add his own DNA to the ketchup.
“I’m a nerd too, you div,” he hisses. “You don’t see me pulling this shit at the dinner table. What’s your deal? I thought you said you were alright with it.”
“I am.” Scorpius glares up at Albus sternly, dramatically flicking his fringe out of his eyes. “Who you’d rather get off with and where does not remotely affect my academic pursuits.”
“Rubbish.”
Scorpius bridles, scowling. “Whoever said I cared who you fancy? I don’t need to know every detail of your sex life. You can go and be whatever it is you reckon you are, just don’t…you know, don’t make a big thing of it.”
“How am I making a big thing of it?” Albus demands.
“You know! You’re just… You’re being weird, why can’t I just read a sodding revision guide without you getting all arsey about it?”
“I don’t give a shit about your bloody revision guide — do you honestly think that’s the issue here?"
“You’re making it out like it is!”
Gazing at Scorpius in utterly helpless incredulity, Albus needs to take a second to get a grasp on the absurdity of the conversation. “How the ever-loving buggery fuck am I making it about your revision guide? What — how does your —“ he makes an ‘exploding’ gesture with his hands near his temples, staring around the place in bemusement, as if willing someone to explain the situation to him. “What?!”
“All I’m saying,” Scorpius says calmly. “Is that you didn’t have a problem with me until a trotted out the revision guide.”
Albus shoves his plate to one side and buries his head in his arms on the table in total, exhausted resignation, sighing at a pure loss for words.
At this, Scorpius shifts primly in his place on the bench, sniffing and pursing his lips. “Drama queen."
After several years of boarding at Hogwarts, one becomes accustomed to the long and often chilly nights. Unless one is saturated with existential and/or academia-induced dread.
For Scorpius, some illegally distributed NyQuil usually puts that problem to rest (pardon the pun), but for Albus, ever a traditionalist — until it isn’t convenient for him — never touches the stuff. This evening, he wouldn’t be able to if he tried, since the dealer of these stolen medicines either got caught or simply ran out, as she is nowhere to found as of late.
Due to this, Scorpius is able to share the sensation of slowly creeping nihilistic thoughts of death, the afterlife and inevitably something sexual that most set aside for rainy days, with Albus, who by now somewhat gladly welcomes the omnipresent night.
At some time around very early morning, just after midnight, Albus feels his eyes begin to feel heavy at last and he allows himself to sink to the sheets, blissfully anticipating sleep.
Then Scorpius jumps on him.
“Merlin’s beard, Scorps,” he wheezes, shoving him away to the end of the bed.
“Sorry, couldn’t really judge where you were so I just sort of...leapt in and hoped for the best,” Scorpius replies quietly, crossing his legs and wiggling around so that he is comfortably nested into the mattress. “We need to have a chat.”
“Really?” asks Albus with a withering glare. “Right
now? Chrissake, it’s, like, one in the morning. You’ll wake the others.”
An uncharacteristically mischievous smirk splits across Scorpius’ face, and he holds his wand aloft. “No, they won’t.” He flicks it, closing his eyes and muttering something that sounds an awful lot like ‘muffliato’, and then he opens them again and trains his eyes with complete focus on Albus for the first time since the incident the previous evening.
“Wow, alright, dickhead. Don’t get too pleased with yourself.”
They chuckle despite themselves, and then Scorpius takes a deep, threateningly preparatory breath. “I’m going to admit it — I’ve acted like a bit of a twat.”
“Yeah.”
He pauses in expectant hesitation, raising an eyebrow.
Albus grins, raising his own. “Yeah, no, you’re spot on. I don’t disagree.”
“Oh, bugger off.” Totally in spite of himself, Scorpius gives a breathy, vaguely timorous laugh. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s alright,” a deeply earnest but also immensely tired Albus replies, stifling a loud yawn. His eyes begin to flutter closed again and he searches for the right dismissive words to end the conversation. “Love you, mate.”
“What?” Scorpius’ eyes widen, and he pulls his legs into his chest as he did the day previously. He exhales sharply, possibly in lieu of a real laugh, too uncomfortable or perhaps simply too surprised to manage one.
Giving a small frown, Albus senses an unwelcome tingling of disappointment in the back of his throat, however he isn’t sure what exactly this stems from.
Swallowing both his pride and a small buildup of warm, unpleasant saliva, he gently replies, “you heard me.”
It was nothing short of what he would say to his mother to get her to leave him alone, but there is an undoubtable weight behind this instance, for whatever reason, and he feels somehow newly secure in embracing this.
“Well, it’s rather late,” Scorpius replies, his voice an octave higher than usual. “I’m going to go and zonk out. Night.”
“Night,” responds Albus absently. He takes a shallow breath and pulls his mouth into a thin, straight suggestion of a smile that Scorpius curtly reciprocates before waving his wand once again and removing the enchantment from around the bed. Then he disappears through the bed curtains and less than a minute after that, Albus can hear the deep breaths one takes with sleep drifting from the direction Scorpius’ bed.
He lies back down, not quite as relieved to return to sleeping as he was originally, however as he turns over and nestles his cheek into the pillow, the sound of everyone in the dorm snoring peacefully and the thought that, despite anything else, things are bound to be alright as they always have been — after all, he was able to come back from the dead that one time, so he can’t be that vulnerable — mix together in a sleepy, hazy stew that is much more effective and far less inebriating than NyQuil.