an- this is for jenn (WIZARDOLOGY) for her birthday because she is wonderful and magnificent. i'm sorry it's late, but i literally wrote this about seven times before finding the right plot. also, it's pretty depressing, which sucks for a birthday, but i promise it gets better. i love you, jenny.
also, it has been a ridiculously long time since i posted anything. for that i am sorry, i didn't mean it to happen. oh, and the lack of speech marks is intentional, i hope it's not too confusing :)
save me
rose/scorpius, for jenn
can't you see,
i'm breaking apart.
help me,
i can't feel my heart.
She was the one to find her brother, broken and bleeding, the bathwater red.
It was so Hugo to do it the muggle way, she told him. She smiled like it was a joke, but he could see the fractured pieces her skin held together.
She blames herself. Hugo was her little brother. She should have protected him, saved him from the demons in his brain.
She knows her parents blame themselves, too, but the looks she sees them give her sometimes that they blame her a little as well.
They would be wrong not to.
It is her fault.
You don't have siblings, so you can't understand, she repeats over and over. It's my fault, she says.
It's not her fault.
It's the fault of the demons (and it is his own fault, too).
Scorpius tries to tell her this, for he has felt the bite of the demons himself, but she doesn't believe him.
But she is wrong not to.
It is not Rose's fault.
It is his.
Sometimes she will sit in Hugo's apartment, listening to his flatmate in the other rooms trying to fill his time. She will sit on his bed for a very long time before finally curling under the covers and falling asleep.
When she wakes up, Scorpius is always there. He will stroke her hair, just like her father used to, and then he will take her home and hold her tight as she fights back tears.
Then he will sleep on the sofa as she will spend a sleepless night in bed, and he will go home the next day.
They are always separate.
Hugo came to him in the last days.
I don't know what to do, he told him, and Scorpius didn't have an answer.
He could only feed him tea and digestives, and pretend to be ignorant of the demons. He has spent so much time burying them, he can't let them out now.
He gave Hugo stupid advice. He told him to get a new job, to make a new life.
He should have told Hugo to fling his head back and taste the rain. He should have told him to dance with a girl in a supermarket. He should have told him to apparate far, far away and lie in the grass and smell the air and just be.
But he didn't.
Some days she will go to work and pretend to be coping, but they whisper about her in the muggle fiction section and give her pitying looks that make her want to throw the books she's stacking at their heads.
She doesn't.
She just closes her eyes and whisper, very, very quietly, I'm not real I'm not real I'm not real, over and over, as if by repetition it might become truth.
It doesn't, but it does one thing.
It calls out to the demons and tells them to feed off her thoughts.
Maybe, just maybe, she needs rescuing now.
He watches her grow thinner and sadder, and he tries to stop her, he does.
He talks to her, brings her presents, tells her jokes.
But she is fading away.
He can't let her go the same way as Hugo.
He failed once, and he can't again.
She hasn't talked to her parents in her month, nor her friends. Twice Lily comes around, but Rose is in no mood to see her. The only person she talks to is Scorpius, and only because he is persistent.
Sometimes she wonders why. She doesn't matter.
She can't help but think that maybe he cares.
That helps a little.
Her parents tell him they haven't seen her in a month, then it becomes two. Her colleagues tell him that at the shop she is friendly and helpful with customers, but as soon as they leave she returns to shadowland. Lily floos him and begs him to do something, which he knows costs her a lot, for she has hated him forever.
So he does something.
When they were eleven and beginning a tentative friendship that rested on not being who they were supposed to be, they made a list of things they would do that no one would have expected them to.
He turns up at her door and tells her to come with him.
Scorpius has taken it upon himself to become the Doctor from her favourite muggle program, taking her to places weird and wonderful just to see her smile. He is the Doctor and she is Rose and they will save each other.
Rose finds she doesn't mind him taking her away. She even enjoys it. Scorpius is funny and wonderful.
Maybe Hugo would have wanted her to smile.
Hugo loved your smile, he tells her one evening, after a day at Disneyland, pretending to be muggles. Hugo had been with them the whole day, his presence felt by both of them. He loved all muggle culture.
She bows her head, and for a moment he is terrified that he has made her withdraw, called out to the demons to take her away. But she when looks back up at him her eyes are clear.
I love my smile, too, she tells him shyly, and he grins so wide he thinks it might fall off his face. She kisses his cheek and grins back.
His thoughts linger on her grin long after they have gone to their separate hotel beds.
He cares about Rose Weasley more than he thought was possible.
Living by a list of wonderful places and ideas and journeys, it's kind of hard for Rose not to fall for Scorpius a little bit.
She tries not to at first, because she has seen how love always loses, how Scorpius' own parents' marriage crumbled, how Hugo's break-up with Sarah only ruined him further.
But she trusts Scorpius and she can't quite believe that she would do that to her. He dropped his life and his friends and his family to make her happy. She doesn't think he will leave easily.
She lets herself love him, because she can't stop anyway.
It's in New Zealand that they first kiss.
He is swimming and she is sitting on the beach of the lake, reading a book and reading him the funny bits when he surfaces.
He paddles to the edge of the pool and, throwing her book a safe distance away, he pulls her in with him, dress and all. She shrieks and laughs, struggling against his ensnaring arms.
She turns her head to face him, and suddenly they both realise how very close they are. People have mistaken them for a couple many times, but they've never once spoken about it.
Scorpius can see the water clinging to her eyes lashes. He could probably count every eyebrow hair, every fleck of green in her seawater eyes.
He can feel her breath on his mouth, warm and fast.
It's not clear who leans in first but they kiss.
When they remember they have to paddle they release each other, giggling, splashing as they try to regain their balance in the liquid. They pull themselves to the beach, and there they quietly learn more about each other's lips than they ever thought they could.
It's a sad moment when they reach the last bullet point on their list. They are in New York, taking part in a flashmob, revelling in the cliché their eleven-year-old minds gave them when Rose realises.
It's all going to end.
She stumbles in the middle of her dance move and Scorpius is by her side almost at once. She can sense his worry, but it is not the demons.
I don't want this to end, she tells him later that day, becoming a little girl again, afraid of the dark.
It's time to go back, he replies, and she knows he is right. They need to return to their lives.
They visit Hugo's grave first.
Scorpius watches Rose rest three sunflowers before the headstone. His favourite, she told him earlier.
She steps back. Scorpius puts an arm around her waist and she leans against him.
I love you, Hugo, Rose says softly.
They leave the cemetery without apparating, feeling like to leave so quickly would be a gross copy of what all the people around them had to do.
Lily is the first to see them. She runs out and hugs them both, Rose first, then Scorpius. She hugs him fiercely, surprising him. Thank you, she whispers in his ear.
It's a long day, reuniting with all Rose's family. They decide to make it a party, and Grandma Molly makes a quantity of food that is too large even for them.
Ron and Hermione thank him quietly late in the evening, when Rose is dancing with Albus and Scorpius is watching peacefully. Thank you for saving her, they tell him.
He simply nods in return. He hasn't forgiven them for not being the ones to save her.
The most shocking moment is when his father arrives. Draco looks out of place, white-blond hair and tailored robes against the red-haired easiness of the Weasleys. He introduces Rose to his father as his girlfriend, daring the older man to criticise.
Draco doesn't criticise at all, which takes Scorpius by surprise a little.
Draco looks at her appraisingly and for a while Rose is afraid he disapproves. However, he pulls her aside later and tells her quietly to look after his son. She tells him she will, and she can see that he believes her.
She was afraid of returning, but being with her family once again has a certain peace to it that gives her strength.
She is happy now, and it is because of Scorpius.
They leave the party late, returning to Scorpius' flat, which is cold and dusty after being left empty for so long. Scorpius warms up the space with magic, and they crawl into bed, into the same bed, finally.
I love you, Rose tells him, quietly, and he can feel it's true in the way the words reverberate in his heart.
I love you too, Rose, he replies.