Hit the Floor

Disclaimer: I disclaim!

Author's Note: Just a darker side to the Scorpius/Rose romance we all know and love. The style of this one was inspired by CroonerWhore's "The Art of Cruelty". Oh, and as a side note! I recently watched the Covenant (really bad movie, by the way), and in the midst of that, I discovered a little person known as Toby Hemingway. I think he's the perfect Scorpius, for those who always like to search for faces for their characters.

Anyway, bon appetit!

He appears as quick as lightning, and you wonder how he knew exactly where you were and if he had known that this corridor was completely abandoned. But you don't give it much thought because he's storming at you with that look on his pale face. His black robes billow behind him, making him look even more menacing, and then your stomach sinks as he gets closer and you see the fire in his piercing bright blue eyes. And you just know you're done for and in deep shit now, especially since he's holding an issue of the Daily Prophet.

Suddenly you wish you hadn't sold all those secrets about the Malfoy family to your reporter cousin at the DP in a moment of weakness for boxseat tickets to the Magpies versus Falcons match. You contemplate what's in the article; maybe it doesn't talk about the part in which Lucius Malfoy was a Ministry informant in the years before the Second War to keep himself out of Azkaban, or the scheme in which Draco Malfoy was marked as a Death Eater at sixteen and assigned to kill Albus Dumbledore to pay off his father's debt to the Dark Lord. You think, "Maybe it doesn't include those parts," but given Victoire Weasley's reputation as a ruthless candid reporter and the way your boyfriend is storming at you at the moment, that last shred of hope for espace from accusation has just flown out the back window.

You swallow your tongue, and he's nearly within ten feet of your body, but you're rooted to the spot. You couldn't run from him right now even if the whole of Hogwarts were there cheering you on.

The phrase "all is fair in love and war" rings through your head, but you hardly think he'll buy it, especially when he told you his entire family's life story in confidence back when you two used to get along like peas and carrots and you didn't have to pretend you were the "happily married couple" whenever all of Hogwarts was looking. Actually, now that you recall, he told you all about his father and grandfather when he visited the Burrow last summer. You almost smile to yourself because that was the summer you and him made love in your father's old bedroom and you could barely keep your hands off each other, but the look in his eyes at this very moment makes you forget how much you wanted to touch him. In fact, all you feel like doing now is coiling up into a little ball and hiding from him, your boyfriend, the love of your life.

He's right in front of you now, and you're both shaking. You know he's shaking because he's simply pissed off – you fear you'll be burnt by the waves of anger radiating off his body – but you're shaking out of cowardice. You find your voice, you don't really know how, but it's there, escaping past your hoarse throat, off your thick tongue, and through your dry lips. You call his name feebly, hoping that the sound of your voice will clear the strange haze over his cerulean eyes.

"Scorpius-"

But he cuts you off and whips out the paper, holding it well above your head and level with his own. He hisses, "Please tell me your fucking twit cousin used Veritaserum on you."

You blink. You're not sure if you're supposed to answer to this, but you can't anyway because his voice is dripping with what appears to be hatred and you're filled with fear again, which makes you lose your will to speak.

Suddenly he screams one word over and over again in a high, constricted voice that makes him sound hysterical. "Or, or, or, OR!" You flinch. He pauses. "Or maybe you fell and smacked your pretty little head on the pavement?"

Tears spring to your hazel eyes and all you can do is shake your head dumbly. The way he's looking at you makes you feel so small and inadequate. Stupid and helpless. A solitary tear slips and rolls down your freckled cheek. You stare at his cheeks, transfixed and shocked, because you've never seen this much color in anyone's face but your own brother's or father's.

Then, without warning, he lifts his right hand and lays it straight across your face with such force that you swear you can feel every bone in your head breaking. A high pitched ringing forms in your ears as your hand shoots up to your mouth. You land on the floor but before you hit, your other hand sticks out in reflex and acts as a shock absorber so you don't injure your head. A stinging sensation shoots up your right arm and you emit a loud whimper.

Something warm and sticky trickles down the back of your hand and you realize with a horrific wave of nausea that he made your mouth bleed. The ringing continues, but distantly you hear him coldly spit, "My grandfather will hear about this. I want him to know it was you."

You wonder if he knows his father frequently used a line very similar to that. You know this because your dad mentioned it every time he made fun of Draco Malfoy. You guess Lucius Malfoy was and still is the balls of the Malfoy family, and a cold fear sweeps over you because the only time you ever met the man, he seemed to like you, and now your reputation is going to be ruined because you sold out his family honor for Quidditch tickets.

You're bleeding. It's all over your robes and your shiny prefect's badge, that same badge you just polished this morning because you take so much pride in it regardless of how much Al teases you. It isn't shiny anymore. It's smudged with crimson and your fingerprints are smeared through the middle, making the word "prefect" impossible to read. And as you look down at it, tears sting the corners of your eyes and your bottom lip trembles, and you can't believe you're crying over your stupid silver badge right now because that should be the least of your troubles. But you just feel like crying. So you sink back and press your hot cheek to the cold concrete floor, stare at the copy of the paper he's now dropped on the floor, and wonder how you ended up like this. And you sob so hard you're practically screaming.

In between sobs you take deep breaths but that only makes it worse and now you sound like you're having an asthma attack. Humiliated, you glance up at him from your position on the floor. He's so tall, nearly reaching six feet and two inches, and you can barely see his face, but you can see all the muscles in his jaw clenching and now you shed new tears because you think he's going to dump you right here and now, as you lie on the floor, wrapped up in the fetal position. Weak and pathetic.

But he doesn't dump you. He kneels next to you, grabs you by the shoulders, and pulls you roughly up to your feet. He silently wipes the tears off your puffy face, and though you don't feel like you've cried nearly enough, you shut up because you know he doesn't handle tears well, even if he's been exceptionally calm about them just now.

You hold your hand to your mouth, which is still oozing blood, and stare at his throat because you can't gain enough courage to look at his face. You figure looking him in the eyes will probably just make you start to cry again.

He smooths your auburn hair and holds your face in his hands. Slowly and hesitantly you lower your hand from your mouth because his hand was in slight contact with yours, and right now his touch makes your skin feel like a thousand bugs are nesting in it. You hear him sigh, and a rush of air from his chest hits you in the face, and so you close your eyes. Then he mutters in an low, hollow voice that gives you the chills and just creeps you out, "Don't worry about it, princess. Just like your filthy cousin wrote, my family has connections." He pauses, and you can feel his smirk in the air. "It's no damage that can't be fixed."

He leans in and gently licks the blood from the corner of your mouth, then covers your lips with his. You feel his tongue roll over yours until it finds the gash on the inside of your cheek where your tooth cut it open when he hit you, and he licks that too before he pulls away. You open your eyes and see his smirk just as he plants another light kiss on your lips. He lets go of your face and lets his hands drop to your shoulders and trail down your arms to your waist.

"I love you," he says, only this time when you look, there's no smirk or spiteful expression, just a solid, serious face. So you believe him because you know it's true, and by some sort of twisted logic, you almost say it back.

But before you can, he turns on his heel and stalks off down the corridor in the direction he came from, leaving you alone with your bloodied prefect badge and the Malfoys' family portrait staring up at you from the front page of the paper on the floor. You consider abandoning your prefect duties and running to tell someone, anyone, "My boyfriend just pummeled me!" but you don't. You can't. You want to go tell Albus and cry on his supportive shoulder, but Albus is in Slytherin with Scorpius and a feud over you after six years of their strong friendship would make everything between them tense and wrong, and you don't have it in you to do that to your best friend. So you defeatedly decide to go clean up in the girls' lavatory and wash your blood off your badge.

And you do, leaving your dignity behind you, right where you and it hit the floor.

FIN.