A/N: This story was written for the Toyboy Challenge on HPFC.
Straight from Hogwarts, Scorpius used his father's bizarre friendship with Ginny Potter to get a job. It wasn't a great job, nor was it a glamorous one, but it did have one amazing perk that made all of the demeaning gopher work worth doing. He didn't get paid well, but the job gave him work experience that his father insisted was a worthwhile attribute to any resume. All he had to do was be an assistant to the journalists who wrote Quidditch correspondence for the Daily Prophet. And therein lay the job perk. Although the friendship that she had with his father was strange and unexpected, Scorpius had to admit that he was envious of it. Though she was much older than him, married with children, and entirely out of his league, Scorpius had nothing but appreciation for Ginny Potter, and he was extremely attracted to her.
If nothing else, she was a very pretty woman. It had been years since she had played Quidditch, but her body was still as lithe and toned as it had been when she had been in her professional years. Her eyes were bright and beautiful, and her hair made her stand out. She was always polite to him and treated him like an equal rather than a subordinate, even though she had the right to. After all, he did spend all day fetching her coffee and sending memos to other departments for her since she didn't like to overwork the owls.
He always made sure he arrived at work early so that he could straighten up her desk, refill her inkpots, and make sure her quills were decent and sharpened. He also checked to see that she had enough parchments and put her letters from the morning's owl post in plain view. Afterwards, he would wait in her office with a cup of hot coffee for her when she would enter her office at precisely 8 o'clock, a smile on her face. For Scorpius, this day was no different. For Ginny, however, it was.
Scorpius knew something was off when Ginny didn't arrive until half eight. Tardiness was completely out of her character. The fact that she did not even notice that he was there, holding her coffee like always, was also another bad sign. She looked disheveled, her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and her shirt was buttoned wrong. It was obvious that she had got dressed in a hurry and was visibly upset about something.
The young boy cleared his throat loudly. "Er – Mrs. Potter?" he asked feebly. "I have your coffee."
At the sound of his voice, the redheaded witch jumped. "Oh," she replied weakly. "I'm sorry, Scorp. I didn't see you there. I – er – well, I had a bit of a morning, so I am afraid I'm not really myself today."
This was his chance, his opportunity to get to know her better. He took a few steps in her direction, approaching her cautiously. "Mrs. Potter?" he asked again. "May I ask what's wrong? You look like you've been crying."
Her cheeks turned pink and she bit her lip. "I'm all right, dear, but thank you for asking." She turned back around, thumbing through her post and signaling heavily that his presence was not really welcome in her office any longer. Ginny was far too polite to say such things outright.
But either Scorpius did not get the hint, or he ignored what she had insinuated with her body language. He stood beside her and watched her a moment as she sorted through her mail. Gently, he pulled the envelopes from her hand and set them back down. "Ginny, I know that I'm quite a bit younger than you, and I know that you've got a son who is older than I am, but I promise you that I'm good for talking to." He paused as she turned to him. "I don't want you to think of me as your friend's son."
Ginny bit her lip. She looked somewhat amused and somewhat annoyed. "What should I think of you as then? A colleague and friend?"
"Yes, precisely."
"Scorpius, I've known you since you were in nappies. Hell, I used to change your nappies. It's hard for me to think of you as anything other than Draco's son."
The boy felt disappointed, but he still felt that he should persist. "You and my father are good friends then? Have been for years?"
"Seems strange, doesn't it?" She perched herself on the edge of her desk. "We were enemies while at Hogwarts; I even hexed him once when I was in my fourth year. But when I started to play Quidditch, he and I became friends. Even though the Falcons were his favorite team, he still supported the Harpies because it was the only all-girls team. He donated a lot of money over the years and I used to see him all the time at our charity events."
"Sounds like you two were close."
She didn't miss the insinuation. "We never dated each other, Scorpius, if that's what you're thinking."
"Why didn't you?" he asked pointedly. "Sounds like you two had a lot in common, or at least more than he had in common with my mother," he added bitterly.
The redhead looked down. "I heard about the divorce. I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he snapped. "They're better off apart. I know that."
"I didn't mean to imply that you didn't understand the circumstances surrounding they're separation, Scorpius. I know that you're a bright boy."
"But I'm only a child, right?"
Ginny stared intently while looking uncharacteristically hurt. "I never said you were a child. I said that I'll always think of you as Draco's son." She nibbled at her bottom lip for several minutes. "I would have thought that you'd think of me only as your father's friend, or Albus's mum, or even Harry Potter's wife."
"I don't think of you as any of those things, to be honest. To me, you're just Mrs. Potter – someone who was nice enough to get me a job here and take me on as an assistant." Scorpius took several deliberate steps towards her. "But if you'd like, we could learn to see each other in an entirely different light."
Her chest heaved at the insinuation and her eyes grew slightly wider, but she otherwise maintained composure. They were close together and in a somewhat compromised position, and if anyone walked in at that moment, their proximity to one another would certainly raise a few eyebrows. She eyed his lips for a moment before raising her eyes to match his. She whispered, "Harry is leaving me. He told me last night. That – that's why I was crying when I came in."
He could feel her breath against his lips. "Did something happen?"
"We just grew apart, I think."
He touched her hand. "Do you want to talk about it?"
She bit her lip again and tugged on his hand, pulling him in closer to her and placing him between her parted thighs. "At the moment, no." With a gentle hand, she touched his cheek. "This is so wrong, Scorpius. You know that, don't you?"
Scorpius shook his head slowly. "No. It's just right."