This is the sequal to "Asp". You should probably read that one first if you want to know what the argument was about. I guess it's not a necessity, but it would probably make you a lot less confused. xD

The writing style's a bit different, but this is in Scorp's POV rather than Al's so it presents the differences in their personalities, etcetera. My little Asp is much more the poet than Scorp, so therefore this writing style is a bit more to the point.

Warning: Major, major angst. More angst than in Asp, if at all possible. Enjoy. D

Scorpion

"Can I talk to you please?"

"Sure," he answered, eyes flashing with anger that was still there after weeks and his mouth turning up into a cold smirk. I knew that possibly, just possibly, I had pushed him too far. And maybe I was being insensitive to Al's need for acceptance, and that having our relationship be anything but would really tear him up inside. Perhaps. But surely he knew…surely he had to know…

"Can I please talk to you alone?" I rephrased.

"Anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of my friends, Malfoy," he returned. Goddamn it, Al. I could feel my temper flare, as was the curse of many-a-Malfoy.

"Yeah," Avery Wood spat at me. I kept my eyes on Albus, not bothering to meet Avery's eyes that were surely filled with the hatred that all Gryffindork-I mean Gryffindors felt for Slytherins.

Albus merely lifted his chin and stared at me in defiance. I took a step closer to him, pretending not to notice when his 'bodyguards' began to press themselves up against me. Well, I later thought as I recalled this memory, it was nice to know that Albus was so well protected.

"Bugger off, Malfoy," Leo Longbottom chimed in.

"Please, Albus," I whispered, so softly that I barely knew the words had passed my lips.

"So what were you going to say, Slytherin?" he asked, not hearing me.

I felt my nose begin to burn and a lump grow in my throat. I blinked back surprised tears. I had gone over this conversation what seemed to be a million times since our angry argument, and I had always imagined it ending with him agreeing to hear me out and us agreeing we had been foolish and maybe even…but I had never thought that he wouldn't listen to my apologies.

I clenched my teeth and replied brokenly, "Never mind, asp." I spun around and walked away angrily towards the dungeons. Hot tears ran down my cheeks, and I ducked into an abandoned alcove.

Sobbing, I cursed the day I'd ever met Albus Severus Potter. "Damn it all, Albus," I moaned as I sank down the back of the wall into a crouching position.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it," I accentuated each word with a slam of my head against the wall.

"Oh please," I murmured, cradling my head in my hands.

"Please, please, Al."

I stayed there for hours. In the back of my mind, I was vaguely aware that there was somewhere else I needed to be, but I just didn't care.

I floated in between reverie and reality as I nodded into a sleepy haze, my head hanging down upon my chest and hair falling over my darkened eyes. I faintly heard someone say, "Merlin, Malfoy," before I felt that someone shake my shoulders.

I gazed up at that person, who happened to be Les Flint. He pulled me up and grinned at me. "Merlin," he repeated, "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

I felt my heart stop. How could he possibly know about Albus? Was Albus telling everyone? Was he twisting it so that I had seduced him? Or that I had hurt him or something? I looked at Les through hooded eyes and knew that I really didn't care anymore.

"Mate, you skipped the Quidditch match," Les informed me, openly chortling, "You're going to get your face beat in. Gryffindor won, because we had to forfeit. Because you didn't show."

"You don't seem to be too angry," I observed soberly.

He shrugged. "Gryffindor was going to win if we played or not; that's the way I see it. Besides, am I really going to hold it against a brother?" He threw his arm around my shoulder and escorted me down to the common room.

He was right. The rest of the evening the team alternated between bashing my face with their fists and slamming my body into the wall. Talk about tough love.

Apparently, they had waited fifteen minutes for me while I was wallowing in my misery. Then the Gryffindorks whooped and hollered their way off of the field to go and party in their tower. Not before choice words were said about Slytherin's integrity. We were used to hearing it, but it didn't hurt any less than the first time we heard it.

We'd lost the cup as well. As we didn't have a reserve Keeper, and the school had a strict no show, no win rule…it just wasn't meant to be, I supposed as I nursed a black face and broken arm. Even if we had been able to play, I was in no condition to.

I heard the gossip. I knew that everyone blamed the beating for my withdrawing from everyone. I did my homework well, gave presentations when required, answered when called upon. Some of the guys on the team apologized, saying that maybe they were too hard on me and that there was no way that Goyle could have caught the snitch against Longbottom anyway.

Like I actually cared about Quidditch anymore.

I wallowed.

When we graduated, I took my diploma and ran as far away from England as I could. Finally settling in San Francisco, in sunny California that was such a contrast to the cold England I was used to, I started to live again. I got a job as an intern to a prominent American wizarding newspaper (nothing like the trash put out by The Daily Prophet) and I slowly regained my happiness.

I met a wonderful man by the name of Carter Dawson (a muggle! Imagine what Father would say) and allowed myself to fall in love with him. He was a reporter of a local, muggle newspaper, with a sharp wit and a knack for tracking down the truth. So it was just a matter of time as to when he'd find out that I was a wizard.

It only took him a few months. When he approached me about it, I was expecting hysteria and a break-up, but was presented with a box and a proposal.

He said that I intrigued him and that he didn't care what I was as long as I was his.

We were married almost immediately. It was a simple ceremony, only two witnesses and a few words spoken. We honeymooned in South America, as it doubled as an investigation for a story Carter was hot on the trail of. "Don't worry, Scorpion," he reassured me, using his pet name for me, "I won't let work come before any play," while wriggling his eyebrows.

It, of course, ended too soon, and we went back to San Francisco. Carter had to fly to Maine for work, and I settled back into the normal routine of life.

That is, until one evening when I answered the door to find a police man with a grim expression on his face. Carter had been involved in a car accident when he was taking the taxi back to our flat from the airport. He had died in the ambulance while being taken to the hospital.

Needless to say, I was distraught.

Carter, my perfect husband who didn't care about what flaws I had or that I could be a royal pain in the ass sometimes (or as he would have jokingly said, most of the time), was dead. He had finally gone somewhere that I couldn't follow him to.

I quit my job and went back to England, back to my Father, back to admit that he was right. I couldn't live in some place where my reputation didn't precede me, no matter how good it had felt to be my own person. I let him install me in Malfoy Enterprises, and I moved back into Malfoy Manor. I didn't tell him, or Mother, about Carter or anything else that had happened in the States. Why should I bother when I knew that no compassion would come from the two of them?

It's wintertime now. It's been three years since I've graduated from Hogwarts, three years and two and a half months since I broke up with Albus, two and a half years since Carter died. He and Albus tore out two huge chunks in my heart when they left, in very different ways. Now and only now do I finally feel that I'm beginning to repair myself.

Because now, as I sit here in Diagon Alley, leaning back against the side of a shop, watching Albus Potter walk arm in arm with a ginger haired fellow that I recognized as a boy that was four years younger than us in Hogwarts, I know that he really is happier without me.

Which really makes everything come full circle.

Albus sees me looking at him, a shocked looked coming over his face and worry flooding his pretty green eyes. He quickly glances over at his boyfriend, who has gone into Flourish and Blotts, and begins to walk over to me. I just shake my head and wink at him before walking away, no doubt leaving a confused Albus behind.

Although it may have been interesting to talk to Albus again after these years, but wouldn't it have made a better story for our grandchildren to say that we never spoke again?

Much rougher and much less pretty than Asp. Oh well. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Review please!