Disclaimer: I don't own... much. Any canonical, spelling, grammar and whateverelseisleft errors you may see in this fic aren't mine either. They belong to the Invisible Error Guy who stands over my shoulder when I write and alters my work when I'm distracted by dust bunnies.
A/N: Erm, despite my best efforts to write a serious Albus/Scorpius fanfic, it still ended up being a rather bizarre mish-mash of out-there characterisations with some fluff and over-dramatical pronouncements mixed in. But correct me if I'm wrong, this is one of the few A/SS (love that name) stories out there in which Scorp and Al aren't kids. So yay. And enjoy. Also, please review if you can, because I haven't written HP stuff in a while, and like any writer I like reviews, praising or otherwise.
If anyone were to see Professor Potter skulking about the corridors at so late an hour, there would most definitely be a backlash of some kind. His night-time appearance would only fuel the numerous rumours spreading like wildfire among the students about their 'frightening snake of a potions professor', or whatever they were calling him these days. As the Great Harry Potter's son, and a Slytherin at that, Albus had never really been away from speculation about everything from his personal motivations to his underwear preferences (never you mind what they were), but that didn't mean he particularly enjoyed bearing the brunt of all these rumours and enquiries into his personal details.
Okay, so his black-as-the-night-sky hair didn't help much, and he had very pale skin in comparison to his siblings. But that wasn't exactly uncommon. And so what if a boy serving detention there had noticed the numerous bottles of garlic repellents filling up the shelves in the potions' master's office? He had an allergy. Perhaps his penchant for blood-flavoured lollipops made a conscious, all-out try at not helping, but he had a feeling what most troubled his young students was the fact that he would only ever drink out of a special hip flask that he alone could fill and empty. This was just cautiousness. It was a good thing to be cautious.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he only liked the taste of blood. Because, of course, he didn't. It actually contained cranberry juice.
Every staff member knew he was not a Vampire; every portrait and every House Elf knew this. Even Peeves knew, though Albus had it on good authority (as in, the poltergeist said so himself) that he regularly spread stories telling the exact opposite of this fact. Come to think of it, that was probably why the rumours hadn't died down already. But Professor Potter still had a very acute reason for skulking around at night. One, he had a secret even more scandalous than his supposed Vampire-ness. And two, he enjoyed it - to a certain extent. Tonight, as on many previous nights, neither students nor teachers could be allowed to catch him.
Damn Scorpius and his blasted meeting places! Does he pick rooms due to their inaccessibility or something? Sometimes, Albus suspected that his lover - he was reluctant to use this term even in his thoughts, but Scorpius was adamant about it just as he was with many things - had some sort of grand scheme against him, because it was never a simple matter of "Your place or mine?" as it used to be, but a battle to remember whether he had to go left at the seventeenth right turn, or whether the statue of Oswald the Original and, Sadly, Only Organiser of the Hogwarts Oscar Wilde Fan Club was in some way significant. Why there was a statue of this man was anyone's guess, but right now the only thing on Albus' mind was how to decode Scorpius' cryptic directions and find a way out of this mess. Not on how he would get the man to make up for all his trouble. Nope. Not on that.
His lover (a strange grimace covered his face at the word) was one of those infuriating people who say less than they actually need to and expect you to understand exactly what they want, resulting in a lack of communication not often seen in conversations with a Headmaster of Hogwarts. Or a Headmaster of anywhere, for that matter. Albus had always had an uncanny ability to work out the will behind Scorpius' words, a skill which he had only honed as they became closer to each other, but others seemed to have no such luck. Some would even become insulted at what they considered to be a brusque attitude, thinking that he was being arrogant and did not deem them "worthy" to speak with him, despite the past actions of his family that worked badly against his favour.
Albus knew it wasn't that though. It was most certainly arrogance, yes, but it was the kind of arrogance that allowed Scorpius to have so much confidence that he began to believe that every word coming from his lips was so perfect that no one could not understand it. Luckily, Al was there to sort things out - usually.
When he came to the other man's rescue, people unaware of their friendship would often give him rather strange looks. Only knowing their family names, it was understandable. The Malfoys and Potters had never been on good terms, not even before the two great wars, and their relations in the public eye since the end of those wars had all but worsened. If it weren't for Albus and Scorpius... Albus shook his head, trying to forget all the strange looks they'd received as students, and even now the ones they were getting as teachers.
But if someone were to think about our first names, he thought with a wry smile, they'd see that we do fit, in a strange way. Albus was the calm to counter Scorpius' venomous effect.
Well, he wished, anyway. The reality was pretty different. If anyone judged their personalities by their names, then they were a prat, plain and simple. If Albus was really that calm, if Scorpius that venomous, then why was his partner the Headmaster, and he a mere potions professor? It still stung, the fact that he'd been denied that position in place of Scorpius, whose only motive for becoming Headmaster was the nice office he received. Yet each and every time that voice of jealousy got louder than the quietest whisper, he would force it back down, no matter how painful that was. He had to be happy for his partner. Besides, it was nowhere near as difficult as it had been to, er, force the feelings he'd been getting about Scorpius ever since paragraph number six right down in order to keep the rating low. And... he thought he might now understand how Scorpius had felt when he'd beaten him to the Slytherin fifth-year Prefect spot. In need of a good cheering up.
As Albus realised he didn't give a damn about the rating and let his thoughts wander again, he managed to skulk (because a potions professor does not sneak, creep or do any other such lowly thing: he skulks, and Albus instinctively knew how to do it with style) right past the sleeping Prefect on duty and finally into the vicinity of his destination. Naturally, to achieve this he had had to disregard every single one of Scorpius' directions (other than the "open your door, walk out..." one), which he probably should have done in the first place.
His watch gave a sudden burst of noise and he stilled, waiting for it to be noticed. But apparently he was one of the few awake tonight. Thank goodness. He looked down at the offending object and sighed. Not at the time, as it was not made for him to see the time - not that it didn't have a very nice digital watch, timer and temperature sensor - but at the message it was giving him. The watch was a means of knowing roughly where staff members were and a bit of what they were doing. It was one of Scorpius' ideas, a way of being able to find one of the teachers quickly if in desperate need (of a gossip, most likely). The hands would point to general options such as 'travelling', or 'in office'. They'd quickly removed the 'doing something suspicious' option, realising after several curious inquiries that this included secret midnight trysts.
Currently, it was pointing to, 'I'm still waiting, idiot', a special feature Scorpius had installed in Albus' watch. He let out a soft groan, knowing now that he could not ditch the blond man and claim, "I got there, but you'd left!" as he'd had to do before. Saying, "I didn't notice" wouldn't work either. Besides, it was their anniversary today, he reminded himself. It had been so many years since they'd first admitted their feelings for each other, got past their shyness to realise that they'd never felt more at ease with each other than when they started dating.
Damn it all. He was late.
Albus paused a moment in his skulking, glancing around him. Wasn't this...?
Where they'd had their first ever adventure at Hogwarts.
"Oi, Al!" Scorpius Malfoy whispered to the boy in the bed next to his, shaking him awake.
"W-what?" Albus yawned, looking around him in confusion. "Where's the fire?" he said irritably.
"Um... well, I thought... that... maybe we could do something...?" the pale boy stuttered awkwardly. They'd begun a hesitant friendship since the start of term, but they weren't quite at the stage where waking each other up in the early hours of the morning was acceptable. Or at least, neither of them had thought so.
" Like what? It's one o'clock in the morning!" Albus rolled over, trying to ignore his roommate.
"Oh, come on! You're curious about all the secret passageways and stuff, aren't you? We can hardly look for them in the day, can we?"
Giving in to the urge to look at his friend, Albus replied, "Are you mad? Do you want to lose points? And we already know where they are, what with the map and all..." James potter, Albus' older brother, had been given their father's invisibility cloak (for now), but Albus had received the Marauder's Map. Not that anyone in Hogwarts but Scorpius knew of it, since he hadn't told anyone else.
"Using that to find them isn't any fun at all. And with the map, we won't get caught, right? Besides, don't you wanna check them out ourselves? We could go to the Room of Requirement!"
"We've already gone there, remember? Last week when Herbology was cancelled?"
"Not when I wanted tea."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"I really want some," Scorpius explained, as if a mere craving could excuse breaking the rules so severely, and dragging a friend along, too!
"Then go get some yourself! Don't wake me up!" the black-haired boy snapped.
At these words, several of their dormmates shifted and murmured sleepily, on the verge of waking up, and the two boys froze guiltily for an instant. It would have been a longer pause if Scorpius hadn't started to drag his friend towards the door, and Albus, knowing they needed to be quiet, was unable to struggle.
"Let go of me!" was all he managed to hiss, but he doubted the young Malfoy even heard.
"Come on, we're going to the Room of Requirement!"
And so their adventure began.
Albus smiled fondly at the memory. They'd been so young then, but thinking about it, not too much had changed. Scorpius wanted to go somewhere, and he found himself following. Surer of his path now, he continued through the corridors of Hogwarts, more memories of that night returning to him as he went.
"Just admit it. We're lost."
"We're not lost!"
"Are too."
"Not."
"Are."
"Not!"
"Are!"
Keeping their voices low even throughout their argument, the two boys did not attract the attention of Mrs Norris, who could smell their scent as she walked by the corridor they had just left. The smell of children out of bed mingled with the other fragrances of the corridors of Hogwarts - some quite pleasing, others less than pleasant - and she could not distinguish it too well.
Their first narrow escape of many.
Thus, the fruitless repetition of "Are!" and "Not!" continued uninterrupted until the two boys reached a statue they were now very familiar with, having walked past it several times that night.
'This is a statue of Oswald the Original and, Sadly, Only Organiser of the Hogwarts Oscar Wilde Fan Club,' the rather pathetic plaque read.
"Okay, we are lost," Scorpius conceded with a sigh. "But none of this would have happened if you'd just brought the map, you know."
Albus glared at his friend-fast-turning-enemy. "Which wouldn't have happened if you hadn't dragged me out of the room so fast!"
"Which wouldn't have happened if you'd accepted the fact that you wanted to look at the passageways as much as I did!"
Did Scorpius always have to be right?
Just as Albus was about to ask that very question, they heard a quiet but steady noise coming their way. Footsteps.
"Come on!" Scorpius mouthed to his friend, before grabbing Albus' arm and dragging him towards the nearest, slightly ajar, door. Squeezing themselves between the crack and wincing as it creaked a little, they stumbled into a disused classroom, with not a table or chair in sight.
Not that either of the two boys would have noticed them if they were present - Albus was staring in awe at the large mirror that dominated the room, and Scorpius was looking down at where his hand loosely held his friend's arm and wondering what that tingling feeling he was experiencing meant.
Removing his hand awkwardly, he looked up to see what Albus was staring so intently at. And he found himself staring just as intently.
The mirror was big. That was the first thing they noticed. After they'd taken that into account, they began to see it in more detail, noticing its extravagant design and its two clawed feet.
"Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi," Albus muttered. At Scorpius' curious look, he pointed to the top of the mirror's ornate gold frame, where the words he had read aloud resided. "This must be the mirror Dad mentioned!" he exclaimed excitedly, though there was a touch of fear in his voice that his companion did not notice.
"What's it do? Is it like some dark artefact or something?"
Albus' father was an Auror, and a very famous one at that. His son hated to be reminded of that, but sometimes it worked to his advantage. Those times were few and far apart, and, sadly, this was not one of them. It wasn't a dark artefact at all, just an enchanted mirror.
"No, it's the Mirror of Erised," he said.
"The Mirror of what?"
"Erised - it shows you your heart's deepest desire."
"Wicked!" Scorpius grinned, and walked closer to the mirror. "Huh? Just my reflection, you sure this is what your dad mentioned?"
"Well, he didn't really tell me much about it. You know how your parents don't tell you much about Hogwarts 'cos they want you to find out things for yourself? He just mentioned it a bit. But I'm pretty sure this is it... Maybe you're not standing in the right place..."
Scorpius shifted on his feet again, before coming to a halt. "Wow!" he said. His eyes had widened and he looked... as if he were in some kind of trance. "You've got to see this, Al!"
But instead of joining in the fun of the moment, Albus felt his heart freeze in fear at the expression on Scorpius' face. What was the other thing his father had told him about the mirror...? Something like, "But if you ever come across this mirror, be careful and remember: men have wasted their entire lives just staring into that mirror. It shows us neither truth nor the future."
He hadn't really understood those words then, but now he did. Scorpius looked enchanted and, despite his invitation to Albus to come look in the mirror, he hadn't moved an inch.
"C'mon, Scorp," the black-haired boy muttered, tugging on his friend's arm. "We should get going."
"What? Oh, yeah, just give me a second..."
A second went by. "Okay, we're going now!" Albus frowned and pulled the protesting Scorpius away.
A few minutes later, as they neared the Slytherin dormitories, the young Malfoy relaxed and seemed to be his normal self again. "That was fun!" he'd laughed as they finally got back to their common room.
"No, it wasn't."
"Yes, it was."
"Wasn't."
"Was."
"Wasn't!"
"Was!"
The same argument had continued until they'd finally collapsed onto their beds, exhausted.
Albus hadn't asked his friend what he'd seen in the mirror, though he'd wanted to. Yet something told him - and he thought Scorpius knew this, too - that even if they'd reached the stage where waking each other up in the middle of the night was acceptable, asking such personal questions was not.
He'd wondered as he drifted off to sleep if it ever would be.
"Oh, you decided to come, then?" Scorpius lifted one inquiring eyebrow at Albus, who had just entered the room where the Mirror of Erised still stood, a silent sentry over an unchanging classroom.
"I always intended to, but I got lost," the potions professor answered, allowing himself to sulk a bit.
"My directions-"
"Were awful! How on earth can you go left at a right turn anyway?"
"I did it," said Scorpius shiftily, adding the word, "once," as an afterthought.
"Didn't you break your nose?" Albus asked triumphantly. Perhaps Scorpius would finally realise how stupid he was being and just tell him exactly where he needed to go, rather than sending him on a wild goose chase looking for a room he knew the location of perfectly.
"I still did it," the other man answered, waving his partner's objections aside. "And my directions aren't that bad. Maybe you're just bad at following them?"
"You have less directional sense than a disoriented blind man in an indecisive maze! If you could just tell me what room you want to go to, or at least let me pick the meeting place for once, this wouldn't happen. Why do we have to do this in secrecy anyway? It's just... it's hard to do it like this..." Albus trailed off towards the end, awkwardly voicing the feelings he'd tried so hard to suppress.
Scorpius moved closer to him. "If anyone finds out, I'll probably be disowned; we might even lose our jobs. It's hard for me, too, but it's the only way." Here, the Headmaster of Hogwarts paused, as if considering his next words carefully. "And don't you have even a little fun? It's like we're back at school, when we'd try and get away with all sorts."
Albus looked up, calmed slightly, and the thoughts of their first year he'd been having earlier returned to the forefront of his mind. "Do you - remember in first year, when we came in here?"
"Vividly. Our first adventure, wasn't it?"
"I always wondered - what did you see in the mirror?"
Scorpius paused again. Eventually he said, "I saw myself... holding a pair of socks. And behind me, there was this pile of socks. Really nice socks."
Albus stared at his lover. And stared some more. "What?" he finally managed. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"
"No, really. When I was younger, people insisted on giving me books for Christmas and birthdays, or things I could never really use. Socks were sort of at the bottom of the list, never got them unless I bothered Mother or Father. They just left it down to the House Elves to get, and House Elves have absolutely no fashion sense whatsoever."
Hogwarts' potions professor stared at its headmaster for a moment, then decided to believe such a strange story, if only to prevent an argument. So that's why he never took off his shoes when people were around? he thought, everything clicking into place.
"You never looked in it, did you?" Scorpius asked. Albus shook his head. "Then why don't you now?"
The potions master walked towards the mirror, feeling like a nervous eleven year-old again. Standing where he thought he should be, he could only see himself. In fact, no matter where he stood, there was just a plain old reflection.
"What do you see?"
"Just... me. There's nothing different. It's just my reflection."
"Maybe you're not standing in the right place?" Scorpius said mockingly.
Albus shook his head. "Wherever I stand, it shows a normal reflection."
Scorpius snorted and came to stand beside him. "Your heart's deepest desire is yourself? How self-centred and narcissistic is that?"
"Oh, shut up," Albus grumbled, and kissed him.
"Happy anniversary," he murmured, and all thoughts of their first year were forgotten.