A/N - I probably shouldn't have written this, since I already kind of have three chapter fics going, but it's just a oneshot and I handwrote it when I wasn't near my computer (with all my writing on) at about 12 the other night and I wasn't going to put it up because I was probably half asleep at the time and I wasn't sure if it was any good, but I thought hey, it's fanfiction, I may as well post it and hope for a response. So, sorry if it's boring/badly written/rubbish etc. Don't hate me; my other stories may or may not be better.
Aaaaanyway. Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter, the story, the characters, or anything like that.
It was at a train station, the first time they saw each other, with fleeting glimpses through the mist and smoke. So it seemed only fitting that it should be a train station now. The last time they had seen each other was at a train station too, Rose calling a last, halting farewell and Scorpius raising his hand in a half-hearted attempt at a wave.
The beginning and the end weren't so different, looking back on it: the pair had come back to the same place, but had come to it the long way around, over countless roads, crossing hurdles and through a metaphorical time-warp or two. They had been pushed through so many tiny changes they were almost unrecognisable and, by the end, it was showed.
Two roads, twining gently, but oh-so-forcefully away from that first glimpse to the last footsteps that carried them away with their respective families, through their first proper meeting on the train, through laughs and friendship, back away through tears and regret, had finally parted properly. But they carried them a long way first. She, untidy, collected and excited, welcomed him, the nervous Malfoy trying – through duty rather than choice – to live up to his family name, into her compartment on that first day. And they talked, long and happily. She was proclaimed a proud Ravenclaw, he sent unsure but – inexplicably – relieved to Hufflepuff, but they met in the library, in the grounds, on the quidditch pitch, maybe once or twice in detention; and they talked. And they played and they laughed and they ran and shouted (and they studied). With any of their opposing houses achievements they would cheer each other from separate tables (even as Al and Roxanne offered each other good-natured boos from the other two).
She didn't know what had happened. They stopped playing – they were older now. She didn't run and shout. She cried for no reason and craved the company of girls – so she got to know them. She laughed with them instead, talked and joked – but mainly laughed, or cried. Maybe he didn't understand why – heck, she didn't – but he understood that, somehow, the other Hufflepuffs had accepted him. So he ran and played with the boys. And when that stopped he talked with them, and laughed, and joked and cheered.
And so they drifted. They would still talk in lessons, when they had something to say. But she would leave with the Ravenclaw girls, he with the Hufflepuff boys, then, eventually, she with a Gryffindor boy, then a Slytherin, he with a Hufflepuff girl. Even that stopped when they stopped sitting together, went to different classes for their respective careers. Everything slowly passed until even a brief hello was a rarity.
By the end, back at the train station, after the last – separate – journey home, time and life had beaten them apart. Rose had stopped noticing when she didn't talk to him then, had forgotten it was strange. He was far from her school-forged mind as she, Albus and Roxanne left platform 9¾ for what she could only think of as the last time, as she was swung into her dad's embrace and pulled close to her mum.
But that didn't stop a neater, solemner Rose from turning to see a straighter, happier Scorpius walking away, unusually reserved between a Mr and Mrs Malfoy she barely knew or recognised, didn't stop her from remembering. For a little while, it came back and the lost childhood they had shared hovered, tantalisingly close but always elusive.
He didn't hear the catch in her voice as the shouted after him "Scorpuis! Bye. Have a good one," he was too far away for her to see the glistening in his eyes that accompanied his vague wave. And they turned. And they left. And neither, it seemed, turned back again, for so, so many years.
It was nothing, of course, a simple call and wave. Because it simply hadn't been apparent what a colossal effort it had been, unless you knew them both better than anyone, at the time, did.
So when it came, some time later, back to a train station, it seemed life had brought them back. Only it was a different station now, and a different train, her standing on blackened, country cobbles, him approaching on a rickety thing in the scarlet engines place.
Because it was the same, only it was worlds different, so much that she could barely think about it. His lip, she remembered, had been chewed almost to shreds that first day on the train, but she couldn't think about that either as she bit her own with commendable ferocity. She needed to find him again and she could only hope she would, since her knowledge of him now just about stopped at the fact that he was some kind of freelance potion creator, and that he had been the person she had known. She hoped he still was.
His knowledge of her went further. She had been in the newspapers and he could, he thought, be forgiven for finding the stories about the lives of his old school friends. The photos of her had all been her neatly made-up face, framed by hair tamed and pinned, and had been featured smiling next to equally neat, clipped little articles about job somewhere high up in the ministry. Its pay, he knew, would surpass that of the author of her old ambitions.
They had both had good prospects, he surprisingly so for his unpopular family, where she had been set to do everything expected of the war heroes' daughter. And it was true, they were surviving, presumably living happily. But now she needed... oh, something and her bottom lip was paying the price as she watched, waited.
And he stepped off the train, his bag of samples clinking over his shoulder and she was there, in front of his carriage and at first he thought she must be someone else because she wouldn't be there and her shirt was plaid, her jeans torn. He couldn't see any make-up and her hair escaped petulantly from its pins, bushier again like he remembered. It was then that it slowly dawned on him that she was all like he remembered, not all clipped and precise like in the photos.
Except he wouldn't realise until he got closer; she was wearing make-up, running down her face because she hadn't had time to clean it off after hurrying home from work, so suddenly leaving the pressure, the protocol, the fading dreams and lost freedom. He wouldn't notice the jewellery yet either, that she hadn't bothered to pull off, or the prim heels on her feet whose pain she had long since stopped feeling, but whose better replacements she hadn't been able to find in her hurry to find instead her first and greatest friend.
But then he was there, and he was testing out her name on his tongue again (it tasted unfamiliar and odd). He was staring at her, as if she couldn't be there.
"Scorpius," she realised she was crying and tried again "I – I need you..."
He stopped, cautious and feeling foolish, but needing to clear it up. "I... have a girlfriend now Rose," and it sounded wrong and stupid, and if she had looked she would have seen that it had turned him again almost into that worried boy he had been on the train, those years ago.
"No," she let out a laugh, high and matching his face "I don't want – I'm not asking you to go out with me..." No, this is stupid. I need to go. Turn and run now.
"What are you asking me?" the sobs were coming freely now, and his hand found her shoulder, where years ago he might have been able to judge whether to briefly hug her, or punch her, or both.
"I messed up somewhere. I need to turn back. I just, I wish everything was like it was."
Somehow, he didn't need to ask her when it was, somehow, through the weight of the years, he understood. She thought she could hear the sadness in his voice "We're not eleven anymore though,"
"But I wish we were," a hiccup and more sobs.
She had known his cynical eyebrow before. When she had known him he had still been perfecting it, but now he seemed to have raised it just right, for the split second before he dropped it and looked at her levelly and when he spoke she realised he had stopped feeling cynical, realised she could hear the patience in his voice, the understanding, the agreement. "What do you want though, Rose?"
"I – I lost myself somewhere," he was taller than her now; when she had known him – properly known him – she had always been the taller of the two (and they had laughed about it). But she had to look up to meet his eyes now. "I need you to help me find her."
It sounded stupid. She wished she hadn't said it, wished she had run before she'd had the chance. He was happy in his life, with – whoever his girlfriend was. He would tell her to go away, to find herself alone, that they hadn't even known each other since third year.
But that showed how much she had forgotten about him. She had forgotten what a Hufflepuff he really was. She certainly hadn't expected him to be pulling her into a hug. If she had remembered, it wouldn't have been such a shock when he muttered, "of course," and then again, repeating it, when she saw the glisten of almost-shed tears in his own eyes.
Heck, she'd forgotten even more about herself.
Because they had both looked back, so, so many times. Just most of the time, she hadn't noticed, and she had forgotten.
So, was it rubbish? Virtual cookies if you review