A.N: Prompts: Sugar We're Going Down Swinging by Fall Out Boy for the Title Challenge, and the prompt: Cinna for the Hunger Games Challenge: Write about Misplaced Trust.
i
I had loved Scorpius since we had started at Hogwarts together. He was quiet back then, maybe even a little bit shy. He didn't make friends easily at first – I guess it was because of the discrimination the Malfoys had faced since the last war ended. I'd heard Dad going on about the 'stuck up bastard' whenever Scorpius' father came into conversation.
I was instantly attracted to him when he stumbled into our compartment on the Hogwarts Express, that first year, and asked if he could sit with us. James had rolled his eyes and looked out of the window – he knew all about the Malfoy-Potter lifelong disagreement, from listening to Uncle Harry talk about it. However, Uncle Harry wasn't as unfair as my dad was – Dad had told me and Hugo we were absolutely not to speak to the Malfoy brat at all.
Mum had told me not to listen to him.
So I didn't.
We became friends for a while, Scorpius and I. But as he got older, he started to get a little bit more…unkind. That's the only word I could think of. He suddenly had all these friends in Slytherin that seemed to look up to him, like they worshipped him. He walked through the corridors with an entourage, smirking and getting into arguments with people. No matter how much my cousins and friends went on about how much of a jerk he was, I was still mercilessly attracted to him.
Of course, I wouldn't tell anyone that.
ii
We were fifteen when he finally asked me out. I'd been primping and preening his way for what seemed like months, no – years. My shirt buttons got lower and lower, exposing as much cleavage until I was sure my bellybutton would be on show. My hair got bigger and thicker until Hugo made a snide comment about the size and width of it. I started using make-up – initially a mistake, but eventually I managed to develop some kind of tasteful design with it.
I had sidled up next to him when we had to find partner's in Potions. I remembered how he scanned me with those cold eyes; they seemed to change from the iciest lake to the warmest depth of the ocean in a matter of seconds. We barely got to the end of the lesson on Love Potions before Scorpius was murmuring something about going on the Valentine's Day Hogsmeade visit together.
I knew his confidence was probably influenced by the fumes from the Love Potion, but I didn't care.
I felt as radiant and glowing as the sun.
iii
Scorpius remained my childhood sweetheart throughout Hogwarts, and we moved in together when we finally graduated. Our parents weren't really impressed, and Scorpius still had all of his jerky friends hanging around our flat for most of the time, but I still told myself I was happy.
The truth was, I'd started to notice there was something amiss. Scorpius was ravishingly good looking, and we generally got a lot of looks and stares from other girls in the street, on just a steady walk to town. I say we, it usually started with Scorpius, and then when I glowed with anger, I would grab his hand to make a show of being in a relationship with him – then the girls would look at me; irritated and jealous.
At first, Scorpius would just laugh it off. But then I noticed his wandering eye. Then I heard him laughing and joking with his friends in the flat when they had a guy's night, and I was sat in our bedroom, reading a book. He was saying something about how he wished he hadn't started dating so early, because he'd only ever been with one girl, and all of his friends got the pick of the litter.
I felt my heart breaking in two; if that's how he really felt, then why did he stay with me?
iv
It was Lily who came to me first.
My cousin, little Lily, who was fresh out of Hogwarts. Seventeen, with long, shiny hair and thick eyelashes; she was small and dainty, with the spindly limbs of a ballerina. I had always been jealous of my little cousin's pretty looks.
She had been crying when she came to me; I knew, because there were still tears glittering on her eyelashes and in her tear ducts, and her cheeks were flushed and patched with colour. Her hair looked like she had been raking her fingers through it thoroughly, and she had been biting her nails down to the quick – they were as red and sore as her puffy eyes.
It seemed to take her ages to tell me. She was stammering, tripping over her words, starting with some other irrelevant story before finally getting onto the real subject. She mentioned names, girls from my year at school, from the year above me – some older than me – one was Victoire.
Then she said her own name.
She told me she had slept with Scorpius, and I melted into the floor.
v
I was mortified. I was horrified. I gave that boy my entire trust and he betrayed me to hell. Scorpius had taken heaps of girls to our bed, even the ones related to me.
Scorpius was my life. I had loved him since I first laid eyes on him – but clearly it was one-sided. I was just another notch in Scorpius' bedpost; he had never felt any love for me.
He denied this, of course – he begged and pleaded and apologised. He sobbed tears and poured his heart out to me. But they were wolf-tears, and it was a fake love. "Rosie," he pleaded. "Rosie, please don't leave me."
I didn't leave him. I made him leave me. I charmed his clothes and they slung out of the window and onto the open pathway. I threatened to hex him into oblivion when he sniffed and edged towards me, his hands outstretched. I promised to curse him every day until he died, if he even dared lay a finger on me again.
When he left, I was alone.
I couldn't talk to him again. I couldn't trust anyone, not ever again. I never spoke to Lily, or Victoire – and whenever Lily looked at me with hopeful eyes when we met at family gatherings, I was sent skyrocketing back to that palace of betrayal.
Boys would be boys, my mother always said. It's a pity I couldn't learn the mantra beforehand.