A/N I don't know how long this will be. This was just an idea that came to me. I started thinking about the next gen, and especially about Albus Severus, and I wondered about how the wizarding world would have rebuilt after the war.
This fic will be dark and angsty. It's also slash, so you've been warned. Also, beware for cynicism. Feel free to tell me what you think.
Can you, a mortal, register your strength against a God? (Dionysus, The Bacchae)
The Hogwarts Express cut its way through the English countryside, the trees and endless fields drifting by like a rolling wave. Albus Potter leant his head back against the leather seat and willed his eyes to close. He'd been up for the past few nights until the soft, pre-dawn light had trickled into his attic bedroom and the distant, sleepy sounds of a household awakening had reached his ears. The thought of returning to Hogwarts, the place that had been his father's only home, filled him with dread. It was another year of impossible expectations, crushing family ties, and the shadowy, all-encompassing simmering desire for one Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy.
Resisting the urge to groan (whether it be from lust or exhaustion), Albus ran a hand through his straight black hair and exhaled heavily through his nose. Across from him, Rose Granger-Weasley met his gaze and raised a single questioning eyebrow. Albus didn't even have to speak. At his badly-hidden morose expression, Rose tipped her head back even further and regarded him with an exasperated look. She snapped her book shut, one finger marking her page (the dust jacket barely concealing the Muggle title of the novel underneath), and watched him carefully for a few moments.
Albus felt himself heat up under her steady gaze. His cousin, and best friend, knew more about him than he'd care to admit. If situations were different, Albus had no doubt he'd end up marrying her one day; in fact, his uncle Ron rather gave the impression that he'd like nothing more.
"Do you want a sleeping charm, Al?" Rose asked eventually, her tone belying the fact that she understood full well that this was only a small aspect of Albus' discomfort.
Albus allowed himself to sigh heavily. He slumped down in his seat, knocking their knees together. He gave her a tired smile. "I'm alright, Rosie," he murmured, the nickname slipping easily off his tongue. "I'm thinking about school, is all."
Rose gave him another exasperated look, but didn't pursue it. Instead, she twisted a lock of her hair around a finger, the other hand still balancing the book on her lap. Albus watched the cheerful afternoon sunlight slide off the tangled, copper wave of her waist-length hair. She'd inherited her mother's impossibly bushy, curly hair, and it rather gave her the look of a frazzled lion, although her hair was the only messy thing about her. Rose's face was still, like the unbroken surface of a lake, the oval shape a mask upon which any expression could play. Her eyes were blue and cold and calculating, the colour matching the navy piping of her robes and the Ravenclaw insignia on her chest. Rose was a study in observation, a mistress at schooling emotion and taming logic. Her nose was a curved slope, which, along with the translucent, ginger fringe of her eyelashes, was the only indication of her Weasley heritage.
The lapsed into silence for a while, both watching the countryside morph from farmland into desolate Scottish wilderness. Albus fidgeted constantly with the cuffs of his pressed white shirt and the end of his silver and green tie. Eventually he leaned languidly across to fidget with Rose's book, but she snatched it out of his reach, batting away his grabbing hand with a short laugh.
"What does uncle Ron think of your Muggle obsession?" Albus teased, groping at her knee instead.
Rose grinned, the action transforming the smooth planes of her face until she looked like a young child. She shrieked and pinched Albus' hand until he retreated, giggling madly. "Mum's been on a mission to change his mind about Muggle culture," Rose informed him imperiously, clutching the book to her chest, characterising her mother's factual, authoritative tone. Albus laughed: aunt Hermione had seemingly been on a constant crusade to educate her husband for as long as he could remember. He would've thought she'd give up by now.
"And how's that going?"
Rose shrugged, the smile slipping off her face. Albus knew she only found intellectual solace in the company of her mother. Uncle Ron was too deliberately obtuse at times for both their liking. Rose got along with her father, but it was in a superficial, how's-school-going-oh-that's-nice-darling sort of way. "He was a bit surprised when I told him my subject choices for this year," Rose admitted after a pause. She glanced down at her book self-consciously. "He wanted to know why I wasn't doing Defence."
Albus sat up straighter, pulling his knees away from Rose, and tiding his rumpled uniform. "What did you say?"
Rose shrugged again. "Does it even matter?" she answered with swift impatience. "At least mum was pleased."
They lapsed into silence again. Family was sometimes an awkward topic between them… It frequently reared its head at the traditional Sunday night Granger-Weasley-Potter dinners. Somehow or another the conversation would steer around to politics or the Ministry, or remaining post-War efforts, or even Muggle society, and it would inevitable end with Rose and Albus, side by side and huffing in teary-eyed frustration as both sets of parents avoided eye contact and toyed with the cutlery. Conversation was determined to stay light at the dinners, with Albus' parents breaking off into a long-winded spiel about Quidditch, backed up with enthusiasm by uncle Ron and James, interjected at times with a confusing anecdote by Lily and Hugo, both giggling fit to burst and finishing each other's sentences. Indulgence was given to those children who performed their part well, simpering about school or boyfriends and girlfriends with smiling indifference.
A few weeks ago, James had collared Albus after a particularly strained dinner. "Why do you have to be so difficult?" he'd demanded, standing too close to Albus, his mother's blue eyes glittering with Weasley indignation. "Why can't you ever talk about nice things? Why do you always have to be so fucking depressing?"
Albus shook himself out of his reprieve and gave Rose a secret smile. "It's you and I, babe," he drawled, mimicking James' awful attempts at pick-up lines. Rose laughed in delight, and Albus' heart swelled with affection for his best friend.
He could love her, he knew. He could love her, and they could marry, and have 2.5 children and live in a blissful cocoon of books and knowledge and cosy evenings by the fireplace.
Albus knew all this, but he couldn't stop the sense of wrongness the picture conjured up.
"Where's Scorpius, do you know?" Albus asked Rose as they got off the train, the platform swarming with Hogwarts students. The air was crisp with the threat of autumn, the sun having disappeared behind a cloud some time ago. Now it peered out miserably, bashfully allowing biting gusts of wind to rattle the tall pines and bleak Scottish surroundings.
"I think he's coming late again," Rose said over her shoulder, using her bulging book bag to plough their way through the heaving crowd. "He said something in his letter about daddy issues."
Albus tried to ignore the pang of jealousy at her words. He'd tried writing to Scorpius at the beginning of the summer, his words blossoming across pages and pages of parchment every few days or so. At first he'd spoken in delight of the comfort of home and the pleasure of his parent's long-awaited company, until things at home weren't so rosy anymore, and conversations turned impatient and doors started being slammed.
Once upon a time, his father had knelt down before him, on the morning of Albus' first day at Hogwarts, and had sworn that no matter what, it was his choice. He could be a Slytherin or a Gryffindor, and he'd still be loved and loved and loved.
Somewhere along the line things changed, and Albus wasn't the quirky, bright-eyed kid he'd once been.
The carriage ride up to the school went quickly. He and Rose occupied themselves with aimless chatter about new teachers and classes, safe in the knowledge that they were the two brightest seventeen-year-olds in the vicinity.
At the entrance to the Great Hall, Rose threw him a pout and hugged him tight. "Tell Scorpius we'll meet him in the library tomorrow," she instructed Albus, squeezing his hand affectionately. "And try not to bicker too much."
Albus watched her disappear into the crowd of blue and black before turning away to his own house on the far side of the Hall. In the corner of his eye he could see Hugo and Lily huddled at the Gryffindor table, murmuring closely, and James a few seats down, having a loud conversation with some of his Quidditch friends. His brother didn't see him.
The Slytherin house, in comparison to the rest of the school, was dismally small. No one really knew why, but numbers had fallen dramatically following the reinstatement of Hogwarts after the war. Albus guessed it was a sort of mass-imposed superstition by parents and students alike. Slytherin bred badness. Gryffindor bred goodness. White and black, truth and darkness.
"The Manichean bourgeois," Scorpius had declared spitefully back in Third year.
Albus agreed with him.
The boy in question was not visible at the Slytherin table. Albus sat by himself, closest to the end of the Hall as possible. He nodded hello to a few students, although he couldn't be bothered to join in any of their conversation. Even after seven years of education, some Slytherins still regarded Albus with an air of thinly disguised distrust. It was all on the down-low, of course; any supposed traitors were stamped out in the wizarding world with the efficiency of one eliminating a cockroach. But even that threat didn't stop teenagers whispering.
Scorpius didn't appear throughout dinner, nor did he barge into the room he shared with Albus, who stayed awake for several hours, hoping for a glimpse of the rare, endangered Scorpius Malfoy.
The population of Slytherin house was so low, that they were the only house that had only six seventh years. Naturally, numbers had been divided, and rooms allocated neatly. Gryffindor, on the other hand, had spilled to occupy three of the massive towers of Hogwarts, the pillars of red and gold visible from as far away as the Quidditch pitch.
Gloomily, Albus lolled by the fire on the squashy sofa, his new school books scattered around him. He badly wanted Rose's company, but she was far more popular than he, and was probably engaged with some of her other friends. He was betting on her to become Head Girl next year. Albus felt a cruel flicker of cheer that James hadn't been chosen as Head Boy this year. That was the last thing his big-headed brother needed.
Albus watched the fire leap and dance, sending otherworldly shadows to cavort along the cold stone walls and flagstone floor. It was rather Greek, he thought, like the Bacchae. He imagined creatures of the dark melting through the floor, their voidless miasma seeping into one another like ink, a thousand eyes, a carpet of stars, watching him and coaxing him along with their silky voices. Albus closed his eyes, letting his imagination draw him ever further towards sleep.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Rose's and his parent's voices telling him to stop, their mingled tones tiptoeing the edge between pleading and horror. But this secret world of his, the black flashes in the corner of his eyes, his dreams that ended with him tumbling forever in a spiral of velvety blackness – it was his haven. It was a place away from his Gryffindor family, from heroism and Potter exceptionalism. It was a place just for Albus Severus, named after the greatest men his father had ever known.
But every good man has a shadow, Albus thought hazily. He fell asleep.