albus and james are two years older than their canon years in this - albus is 15, james is 17. (#artisticlicense)
prompts at the bottom
1281 words, by google docs
When Ginny and Harry sit their children down to talk to them, it doesn't go as expected. It takes quite a while for James to stop texting on his phone—Ginny knew it was a bad idea to let him get one—and by the time they have his attention, they've lost Lily's; she goes off to dance around the house. Only Albus remains sitting on the couch, waiting for whatever news Ginny and Harry have to tell them.
When everyone is finally paying attention, Ginny looks at Harry and takes a deep breath.
"Your father and I are getting a divorce."
…
"What the fuck?"
James can feel blood rushing to his head and, although he'd never admit it, his hands are shaking.
This isn't real. His parents are playing some type of really bad joke on them.
James' parents are the definition of in love. His father kisses his mother, hard every single day. They can't be splitting up.
"James, language," his father snaps at him, using his 'fatherly' voice. "There's children here." He nods directly at Lily, who pouts immediately.
"I'm not a child," she protests. "I'm old enough to get into Hogwarts."
"Yeah?" James says, turning to her and feeling hostile. The anger inside of him, that maybe has always been inside of him, is bubbling up. "Then where's your fucking letter then? You fucking squib."
"James!" his mother shouts, speaking over his words. There are tears in Lily's eyes.
Good, James thinks, wanting her to hurt. He wants everyone to hurt, right now.
"What the fuck, Mum?" he asks, turning to his parents. "This is a fucking joke, right?"
He gets up before his parents answer; he can see their response written on their face.
"No, fuck this shit." James doesn't want an explanation, even though he knows that they have one. The anger festering in him is too much. So, he leaves, walking into his room and slamming the door, telling the rest of his family that he doesn't want to be talked to.
…
Lily's about to cry. She has tears in her eyes. She doesn't want to, of course; James would probably find out about it and tease her about it, because James is a jerk, sometimes.
Still, Lily's world is crashing down.
Her parents are supposed to be married. She can't fathom something like a divorce. That's not how her family's supposed to be.
Lily looks at her parents. Her mother is watching the direction James left in, an anguished look on her face. Her father is looking at the ground.
Lily stand up, gives her parents a long look, before turning around and going to her room, the tears flowing out.
…
Albus is biting his tongue. Really hard. He wants to cry, like Lily, or curse out his parents, like James.
But he doesn't.
He's Albus, the middle child, the perfect one, the peaceful one.
So he stays sitting on the couch, nearly biting a hole in his tongue. His parents look the way he feels: pained. Really pained. He bites harder.
Him and his parents sit there, quietly and awkwardly. Does Albus get up and leave?
"Why?" Albus asks, making an effort to open his mouth.
"Some things," his mother starts, "just can't last. It's been coming for a long time."
Albus bites his tongue again. He's not an idiot. He knows there's more than that. "If it's been coming on for a long time, why are you only just telling us?" he asks, instead of asking them to elaborate.
"You don't have to know everything immediately, Al," his father says, looking straight at him. His green eyes look really tired. Exhausted. Albus nods and stands up. He turns around stiffly, towards his room. He's considering whether to say something, but he doesn't know what to say. He just walks away from his parents, to his bedroom. The panic is rising up in him.
He needs to write to Scorpius.
…
James hates both his father and his mother. Given the choice, he'd rather live with someone like his Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione.
Yet, he doesn't get the choice, and now he's living with his mother half the time, in a small apartment in London, and his father the other half of the time, in a house in Godric's Hollow. Their divorce isn't finalised, yet, but James can tell how much his parents annoy each other. James supposes that their childhood romance finally wore off. Why didn't he fucking notice it before?
He hates them both, all the time, no matter who he's with.
Which is why he shuts himself up in his room, ignoring whichever parent he's with, along with both of his siblings—which is perfectly easy to do, even when he's with his mother's and has to share a room with Albus; Albus has spent most of his own time at Scorpius' house.
He snaps at his parents and Lily more, even more than he did before their parents split up; she's an easy target, and vulnerable. It makes him feel slightly better.
So, does James care that he snaps at Lily so often that he makes her cry sometimes? Does he care whenever he sees tears in her eyes?
No.
He doesn't care.
Not anymore.
…
Lily feels like she spends most of her time crying. She just wants her family back together, and on top of that, she keeps on letting James' words get to her—the possibility that she could be a squib. Her letter still hasn't arrived, no matter how obsessively she checks the mailboxes at both of her homes.
She wishes she didn't have two homes. Maybe the owl with her letter got confused and didn't know where to go, so it didn't go anywhere.
She wishes she could have one home, with her brothers at home, playing with her, and her parents happy together.
She wishes that she could've seen what was happening earlier.
…
Albus would consider himself an expert at kissing. Of course, he hasn't actually kissed anyone until this summer, but now that he's started, he never wants to stop.
It's a sort of escape for him. For just an hour or two, he gets to escape the actual world and just think about Scorpius, not his family.
He loves the taste of Scorpius' lips on his and he actually pouts when Scorpius pushes him away.
They're sitting on Scorpius' bed, their bodies pressed together.
"Whoa, whoa, wait," Scorpius says, out of breath. His hair is slightly messy and Albus can't help but appreciate the exact way his lips are; slightly open, but not quite a gape.
"What?" Albus says, his chest also heaving.
"I—" Scorpius gives Albus a weird look, like confusion mixed with pity. He moves slightly farther away from Albus. "Where'd this come from?" he asks, after a moment of hesitation.
"What do you mean?" Albus asks, moving closer.
"I mean," Scorpius says, sitting up, "this isn't you. This isn't like you. What happened?"
"Nothing," Albus says, also sitting up. He gives Scorpius a look of annoyance; why'd they have to stop?
"Bull, Al," he says simply. "You've never acted like this before. Why?"
Albus bites his tongue. He doesn't really want to talk about it, but at the same time, it's Scorpius.
"My parents are getting a divorce," he admits, frowning. He doesn't like the way his voice cracks. He doesn't like the look of pity Scorpius gives him, either.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Scorpius asks, moving closer to Albus. Albus leans into him.
"I guess it just hit me now," he says, and it's true—he's just realising that he's losing his family.
Holy crap.
for:
assignment 3 [women's history, task 1 - dealing with a divorce]