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Just an idea that's been rolling around in my head for a while... room for expansion if there's enough demand for it. Please rate and review! They make my day and it literally takes like one second.
Everything would be easier if his father wasn't the Boy Who Lived.
There was a time, or so Albus had been told, when the Potter family hadn't been constantly stopped in the street. Back three generations, in the days of the first James Potter's childhood, they had been a regular family; well-to-do perhaps, and maybe a little snooty because they were purebloods, but perfectly normal besides. That was back when the Riddle name belonged only to a harmless group of Muggles in the village of Little Hangleton, long before the parents of the Boy Who Lived had anything to die for. It was before Harry Potter's lifetime and certainly before Albus's. To him the idea of a life without reporters and press, without the broken-record stories and overbearing expectations, felt like little more than a myth.
Albus Severus Potter was sixteen years old and he had spent his entire life looking out at the world from inside his father's shadow. From the moment he had made the mistake of begging to be put in Gryffindor, his entire life had been a battle of finding his own feet on a path well-worn by those far greater than him. He couldn't do a single thing right without being compared to the infamous Harry Potter, and he couldn't do a single thing wrong without the entire world regarding him in disappointment. Albus, the failure. Albus, second-best. Albus who alone out of all his siblings had inherited his grandmother's eyes.
There was a boy. He was slim and pale, with features drawn in shades of grey and white. The boy was left-handed, and always ate each food on his plate separately, in a specific order, without touching the rest. In class, he would sit by the window with one leg crossed over the other and dig a single nail into his opposite palm when he was having trouble paying attention. His favourite class was Charms. His favourite teacher was Professor Longbottom. His favourite food was strawberries.
His name was Scorpius Malfoy, and Albus was desperately in love with him.
For five years, Albus had watched the boy from across three tables in the Great Hall and wondered dismally how the world could be so unfair. He had stood by as his closest friends, and even his little sister, began to slowly test their feet in relationships. He had kissed girls whose lips were cold and lifeless and whose bodies felt like stone. And he had failed, a million times over, to get Scorpius's stormy grey eyes out of his head.
It could never happen. It would never happen, because of who he was. No- because of who his father was. Harry Potter's deep-rooted animosity towards the Malfoys was no secret. When they met at Hogwarts, Draco and Harry never exchanged more than a cool nod or a short, murmured greeting. They had no real reason to hate each other, not anymore, but Albus knew as well as anyone that Harry was as mistrustful of Draco as he had been when the two of them were seventeen years old. Harry could never understand how or why his son could feel anything different.
Scorpius was nothing like his father. He was quiet and serious, and rarely spoke out of turn. He didn't seem to have many close friends within his house. He was often alone.
Albus was nothing like his father either, despite what the world would like to think. He was a Gryffindor, and loyal to his house with his whole heart, but he also believed that bravery meant more than just heroism and sacrifice. Sometimes bravery was quiet counsel told away from prying eyes. Sometimes it was a deed gone almost completely unnoticed. Sometimes it was honesty, or forethought, or grace. It didn't always have to be right here, right now, demanding attention and laid bare for the world to see. Albus wasn't brave like that. Not like his father always was.
Scorpius arrested him. There was a deliberation to his every thought and action and a quiet solidity that was so different from Albus's Gryffindor friends and family. Albus could count on one hand the amount of times that he had looked Scorpius in the eye, but every instance had tilted his world on its axis and left him breathless and shaking. His eyes! They were distorted reflections, mirroring the same feelings of longing and self-doubt, of resentment and of hope. Whatever Albus was feeling, Scorpius felt it too. But Albus wasn't the only one who was walking in his father's wake; Draco and Harry cast long enough shadows to eclipse them both.
Once, in a dream, Albus had tilted Scorpius's chin upwards and, looking into his eyes, had touched his lips to his. He had run both hands through his fine hair, which grew just past his ears and smelled faintly of lemons. He had stood, naked, and felt his skin jump under Scorpius's touch. Every part of him had been alive, raw, needing. When he woke up, he cried.
When Albus Severus was eleven years old, he had begged the Sorting Hat to put him into Gryffindor. Now, five years later, he knew that he'd made a mistake. Albus was not brave, not in the ways that mattered. He hid; from his father, from the world, from himself. He kissed witches and played Quidditch and lied. He didn't belong in Gryffindor, and maybe he never had. But now it was too late.
All he could do now was wait for the next joint class, the next meeting of eyes, the next supernova. All he could be was Albus, the boy of the Boy-Who-Lived, whose heroic, Gryffindor father could never in a million years understand.