Scorpius' initial reaction had been to scream, but as Ministry employees swarmed around him, he could do nothing but stare at the Minister's corpse. He hadn't thought to check if Hermione Granger was actually alive when he'd collapsed to the ground just inside the door to her office. He'd already assumed that she was gone.

Nothing out of the ordinary had happened earlier in the day. Despite his personal connection to the Minister, he was nothing but a low-level employee inside the halls of the Ministry. He'd been sent to give her an important document about new legislation that was being considered. Though he'd thought it strange that she hadn't responded to his knock and the door had swung open of its own accord, he hadn't expected to find her dead. Not one of the most powerful witches currently living. It shouldn't have been possible anywhere, let alone inside the Ministry itself.

Other employees jostled him as they tried to get him to move out of the way, but he didn't pay attention to them as he stared at what he could see of Hermione as other employees swarmed around her body, conducting tests to prove that she was dead. Scorpius was still sitting on the floor when Ron Weasley appeared, knocking Scorpius as he hurried past him. His earsplitting scream was the first sound to break through the ringing in Scorpius' ears. He hunched over his wife's form, sobbing, and the crowd in the office disappeared.

There was no way for Scorpius to know how long he stared at the scene until a firm hand clasping his shoulder drew his attention to the face of Harry Potter. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he looked at Scorpius, not his dead best friend or the other one crying over her body.

Harry said something, but Scorpius could only see his lips move as if the words were being mouthed, Ron's screams drowned anything else out.

Sometime later, Albus threw his arms around Scorpius and held him tight. For the first time, Scorpius cried.

A week later, Scorpius found himself staring at the rusted door knocker at the Granger-Weasley home. He wondered idly if he should fix the knocker with a quick spell and coat it in zinc to prevent more rusting. He was just about to do it when the door cracked open and he found himself face to face with Rose.

She didn't glare at him despite finding him lurking outside her house too scared to knock, but the blank look on her face was even more terrifying than any glare could have been.

"Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to come in?" she asked, standing to the side and motioning for him to enter.

Scorpius obeyed, though his ears rang with his anxiety as he entered the space. He'd been in the house before, but it felt different after the previous week's events. Scorpius half expected to see Hermione's ghost even though the body had never been in the house. Scorpius followed Rose to the kitchen where Ron sat at the table with a pair of worn ice skates in front of him. His hands rested in his lap as if he was afraid to touch them. When they entered, he didn't look up to assess who the visitor was.

"What are those for?" Scorpius whispered to Rose.

She glanced at her father before quickly turning her back on him and pulling out the teapot.

"Our family went ice skating every winter," she said. "We were going to go the weekend Mum...you know."

She glanced at Ron as if worried she'd come too close to the word 'died' for him to handle her words.

"Dad doesn't want to go now," she concluded, filling the teapot with water from the tap.

Her back faced the rest of the kitchen as Ron acknowledged their conversation by mumbing, "Always hated skating anyway. Terrible sport. Dangerous."

Scorpius kept his eyes on Rose as she finished with the tea.

Scorpius was in the middle of cooking dinner two weeks later when he heard the Floo in the living room. He paused, waiting for Albus to enter the kitchen, but there were no further sounds. His heart sunk as he ran through the possibilities.

He took the pan off the burner and laid the spatula he'd been using to the side. Once he neared the living room, he could hear Albus crying, prompting him to speed up in his actions to get to him.

Albus looked at him with wide eyes for a moment before he surged forward and wrapped his arms around Scorpius' waist.

"They found him," Albus whispered, the words muffled by Scorpius' robes. "They found Aunt Hermione's murderer. His trial is in a month."

He broke into sobs, unable to keep talking, and Scorpius' own eyes began to sting as he held on tight.

The suspected murderer was a Rosier, a fact which Scorpius only discovered when the trial began and Rosier's name was announced by the Chief Warlock. Somehow, it hadn't occurred to him that he should ask about a name or anything else about the killer before then. He had always assumed that it would be someone he didn't know, but while he didn't know Rosier personally, the man's family was notorious. For the first time, Scorpius realize just how sensationalized the trial would be.

Scorpius sat up against Albus, their fingers intertwined in Scorpius' lap. Around them sat the entire Weasley family in silence, which was as strange a thing to experience as everything else related to the murder had been. His father sat on his other side, showing respect to the family with his silence. Though he didn't say much, his furrowed brow as he watched Rosier hinted at how disturbed even he was by the man's crime.

No one had come forward claiming to have any hints of the plan beforehand. Scorpius was the first to have noticed something wrong, but he'd avoided being called to the stand when they'd accepted his sworn testimony delivered to the Aurors as enough.

A number of people had come forward, however, to describe the kind of man they had known Rosier to be. Over and over again, Scorpius listened to Rosier be described as an odd guy whom others couldn't understand. He was someone whose idiosyncrasies confused others.

Scorpius listened to the repeated characterization with his stomach twisting into more knots each time the word 'odd' was used. He had, after all, been described as odd a number of times in his life, but he had never been tempted to murder anyone, not even someone like Rosier.

It wasn't just that Rosier was odd, though. No, the people who'd known him were eager to share his views on Muggles and Muggleborns, none of which were positive. But, they insisted, many held such views without committing murder. It was clear some of the witnesses held similar views themselves. They'd had no reason to suspect Rosier would be any more violent. They hadn't considered him dangerous, even when—according to one—he'd fantasized about exterminating Muggleborns in Britain in the back of Potions class.

Scorpius felt like vomiting, but he forced himself to stay. Listening to the characterization of Rosier couldn't have been worse to him than it was Ron or Rose or any of the other family members he couldn't bear to look at. He forced himself to stare straight at Rosier, who kept his shoulders straight and head high despite being chained to the chair he sat in.

Finally, he was asked to speak directly, and his voice was cool as he did so.

"I did it," he said, gasps from a few in the crowd who still held hope that he would have remorse. "I killed the Minister, and I don't regret it. My plan was a success. Let me rot in Azkaban, but you must appoint someone new to the job, and it would be difficult for you to do worse than the Mudblood. Don't you see? I've won. I got what I wanted."

He laughed as the whispers throughout the courtroom intensified. The Chief Warlock banged his gavel to calm those gathered, and the noise echoed in Scorpius' ears as Rosier was declared guilty. The pronouncement didn't do a thing to lessen Rosier's confidence. He smirked at the Wizengamot as Aurors collected him and took him out of the courtroom to jeering from the audience.

Scorpius stared at the empty chair, its chains lying useless on the ground. Justice had been served, but he didn't feel like anyone had won anything. Hermione was still dead, and though Rosier was facing the possibility of a life sentence, he had left the room smiling. So, was it a punishment? Scorpius didn't know, and he wasn't sure he would have felt any better if he knew Rosier felt inner turmoil instead. All he felt was hollow.

The image of Hermione sprawled out on her office floor haunted him when he closed his eyes and, at times, when he had them open. He gripped Albus' hand tighter, willing the images to leave him alone.

With the spectacle over, people were filing out of the room, but the Weasleys stayed in place. Scorpius leaned past Albus to look at Ron where he sat farther down the bench, flanked by his children. He looked worse than Scorpius felt. He stared at the chair where Rosier had sat, but his gaze seemed to go much further than that.

Scorpius turned his head to look at Albus and noticed silent tears dripping down his cheek. Wordlessly, he tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at Albus' face. Pulling him close, he squeezed his eyes shut as Albus' head rested in the crook of his neck.

Rosier's words about having succeeded echoed in Scorpius' mind.

Prompts:

HPFC

OTP Boot Camp: Ron/Hermione - earsplitting

Favourite Character Boot Camp: Scorpius - zinc

Hogwarts Challenges and Assignments

Seasonal - Days of the Year: Peculiar People Day - Write about someone considered 'odd'.

Seasonal - Winter Prompts: (object) ice skates

Seasonal - Flowers: hellebore - (theme) death

Word count: 1,646