Two
Sam Finnigan lay out on the edge of the woods for ten days after having swum and passed out. He had slices up and down his body due to having flown through a mass amount of branches. Pneumonia had taken a hold of him right away and he had been strong enough to hold on to his life. Al had found him and carried him back to the school.
No one had spoken a word of the duel, of me stepping in. But everyone had spoken of my reasoning behind stepping in. They wondered if I had done it solely because Avery was the head girl or because she was just watching the duel. Many, however, speculated that we really had been seeing each other during out sixth year. It should have been obvious to them when we were seeing each other; we were always studying in the library together, we turned down every offer for a date that was presented, and for the simple fact that she sat next to me during every lunch.
Avery had explained to me that we needed to be kept a secret because of her family. I agreed, fearing my father at the time. By the end of the relationship, anger and bitterness had swollen in my veins because she insisted on keeping us a secret. I was over my father's reign and I was ready at any moment to kill him, to rid the world of him.
I sat in my dorm after hearing the news of Sam Finnigan. Rumor had it that he wasn't saying anything about what had happened to him. I knew he would come back with a vengeance.
Avery stepped in the dorm and stopped at the door. She blinked and looked around the room. I looked at her.
"What the fuck are you doing?" She asked in awe. I looked around as well. The plates we had been given to feed ourselves were in the air spinning, whirring in such a haunting song. I looked back at her.
"The sound gets rid of my headaches." I summoned the plates back to their place in the cabinet near our small kitchen area. She stared at me.
"How often do you do that?" She asked.
"Every day. I come up here for lunch and listen to them."
"You don't take your medication anymore?"
"It makes the pain in my back worse."
"I wish you would have told me."
"About what?"
"Your back."
"I hadn't had a chance to tell you. We had been back to school for one day and you hadn't visited the dorm yet."
"I was meeting with the Ministry the night everybody arrived."
"For what?"
"Department of Mysteries."
"Did you get the job in Prophecies then?"
"I didn't want the job in the first place," She said sounding exhausted. She walked towards the bookshelf and took out her Runes book. "They haven't had an Elf in a century or so and they heard the rumor that I have some Elf in my blood."
"So are you taking the job or not?"
"Until something better comes along, yes." She sat down and opened up the book.
"And what does Harry think of it?"
"He thinks it's good." I stared at her as she began reading. I slid off the couch, onto my knees and slid over to her. I took the book from her hands and set it down next to the chair she sat in.
"If you ever put a name to the man who took your virginity, I will kill him." She said nothing. I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
She put her hands to my face and I sighed, closing my eyes. The pain in my back and in my head faded. I could hear her light and gentle voice singing to me in my mind.
Scorpius… She spoke through her fingertips and I was blinded even with my eyes closed.
I laced my fingers with hers, my chest feeling as if it were going to cave in. She sat up and I opened my eyes, and then put a hand around the back of her neck. I pulled her in and kissed her hungrily. There was nothing comparable to kissing an Elvin woman. They purified your blood and crystallized any dream you thought could be heaven.
Avery Romanox's grandparents had been the last known full Elves. They lived in the mountains, very isolated from the rest of the world. Out of wedlock, Avery's mother had her and passed on the Elvin gene to her. Avery's mother had then made the choice to live a life of mortality with Avery's father. Avery's father left her when she was still very young and her mother had died a few years after she had chose mortality, her age catching up with her.
Her grandparents took her in until she was old enough to be sent off to Beauxbatons. She spent three years there until she started displaying forms of power the girls at the academy were turned off by. Harry Potter had been hearing of her story for years and when the opportunity came, he ordered the Ministry to find Miss Romanox and bring her the UK. He questioned her for hours, made her perform every spell she knew. He then observed her as she did things any witch could not. She made seedlings grow into trees within a day's time, healed a man with a broken neck just by touching him, and foresaw anything in the future. He also caught view of her darker tendencies, what it was to set a car on fire by just looking at it, to flood any room she pleased, and to taint any land with death.
He ignored the dark side of Avery and asked her to join his family. He changed her last name to Potter-Romanox and gave her a room of her own, new clothes, even a new broom. Avery had the life every child dreamed of.
I saw her walk up to the front of the Great Hall in my fourth year at Hogwarts. I was immediately stricken by her matured beauty. She was tall, thin, with a mane of long, dark hair. And she had been sorted into Slytherin.
We went down to dinner together, the meal we were required to go to since we were one pair out of four head boy and girl pairs. They had increased the number just because of the decline and put a pair at each point in the school. We were the only two living together who had been in the same house.
Everyone watched as Sam Finnigan walked into the Great Hall with a fire burning in his eyes. He looked up at the table of Administration where I sat. Avery looked at me as I stared right back at Sam.
"Don't go out tonight, Scorpius." She said to me.
"I wasn't planning on it." I turned my attention to her.
We were ordered to wait until every last student had left the great hall and of course Sam Finnigan was the last one to exit. I stood up tall and brave, Avery at my side. We walked down the aisles between the tables and I took a step ahead of her when we reached the doors. I knew he would be waiting for the two of us somewhere, I just didn't know if his choice would be wise. Had he stayed in the foyer to wait for us he would have been caught right away. He wasn't there, though. We ascended the stairs and went towards our tower. We passed one of the oldest and darkest abandoned classrooms and for some reason, my gut told me he was waiting there. I put my hand on Avery's lower back and pushed her forward. I heard the click of the door handle and turned, taking my wand out.
Sam Finnigan stepped out of the classroom, pointing his wand. Green sparks shot out his wand, flying at Avery's head. I reached back and pushed her to the wall.
"You love her, Malfoy?"
"Does it matter?" I asked him. He laughed.
"For you, maybe. What happens when I tell Al and James?"
"Go ahead-"
"Fuck off, Sam." Avery said.
"I do like those firecrackers, don't you Malfoy? But they're no good once they've been fucked." I clenched my jaw and began to walk towards him. Avery grabbed me by the arm. One would think that she wouldn't be able to hold a man of my size back, but it went back to her origins. "Looks like the pussy's out of the bag." Avery raised her wand for only a second before Sam's clothes were shredded and his body was cut up even more.
We watched as he touched his wounds and stared at the blood on his hands. For the second time, I watched him fall to his knees, but this time he planted his face into the floor. I grabbed Avery's hand and walked as fast as I could back to our dorm. I locked the door and looked at the cabinet full of plates. My head felt as if it were going to explode.
The cabinet doors opened and the plates flew out with an uncontrollable force, all hitting the wall next to me. My eyes grew hazy at the sound and a lump formed in my throat. I felt my knees grow weak, and my back hit the corner of the room, next to the door. Avery turned around.
"Scorpius!" I felt her hands on my face before everything went black, even sound.
My father stands over me in the white room. Avery is there, sitting in the chair. And Astoria is out in the hall, on her phone.
"My son…" Draco says to me. He puts his cold hand against my head. I shudder. I looked around the room and discover by the certificates on the wall that I'm at St. Mungo's.
"Why am I here?" I ask Avery.
"The nurses at the school couldn't revive you." Draco says to me. I look up at him. "Which leads me to my own question; what were you doing to cause you to have such an episode?" I glanced at Avery. "Miss. Potter-Romanox says she found you in the dorm with all the plates smashed on the ground." I blinked and shook my head as if I didn't know.
"My head hurt, that's all I remember." Astoria comes in the room and Draco catches a look at her, unsure of what to make of my response.
"I see." He hesitates as my mother stands next to him.
"We've got news for you." Astoria says.
"Maybe next time, dear." She glares at Draco.
"What is it?" I ask, eyeing my mother. She's so pretty, yet so oblivious to all the hell my father has caused.
"I can leave." Avery says and stands up. I look at her.
"No stay." I beg.
"Your mother is with child." I look back at Draco, shock erupting inside of me. "Another son."
"How far along?" I ask.
"Three months." She replies. "We were planning on taking you out to dinner sometime this week to tell you, but this happened…" She looks down and I can tell that she's troubled by the thought of having another one of my father's sons. "You'll stay here overnight. We'll take you out to breakfast and then back to school. That sound good to you, sweetheart?" Her eyes meet mine. I grab her wrist.
"Don't leave me here tonight, Mum." She squeezes my hand.
"We're not allowed to bring you home. Avery has said she'll stay with you until you fall asleep."
"You'll be alright, son." Draco says.
"We'll be here in the morning after they run some tests, Scorpius. We have to leave, though; it's incredibly late." My mother wants to stay with me but Draco can't stand the thought of being sober any longer. Astoria leans in and kisses my forehead. My father does the same and they leave shortly after.
"He's not so bad when he's abstemious." I look at Avery.
"I'm surprised he hasn't tried to kill my mother yet."
"Maybe he's surprised she hasn't tried to kill him." I study Avery. She's in her Quidditch sweatpants and a black zip-up coat I recognize as mine. Her hair is back in a ponytail and I can see the point of her ear, something she hates about herself.
"You are incredibly beautiful." I tell her. Her somber expression doesn't change; it hardly ever does. Her eyes are as hard as a rock, her lips pursed almost all the time. She steps toward me with a sigh, her hands in her pockets.
"Sam Finnigan left the nurse's wing twenty minutes after he got there. He claimed to have run into a tree while he was playing Quidditch. He's got it out for you now."
"You know better than to tell me that."
"Why, because you're not scared of anyone? Or the fact that you like causing trouble?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of not being scared of him but now that you mention it…" She rolls her eyes.
"Don't start anything with him, Scorpius."
"I'm not going to. But if he brings it upon himself then don't hold me back." She shook her head a little and then opened her lips to say something then paused, questioning if I really wanted to hear it or not.
"Your father was telling me about the Prophecies; he says there's a new one."
"There are thousands of them, why would it matter to you what he has to say?"
"It involves our school. An uprising."
"And who's the new dark lord."
"That's the important part. There's not one, but twelve." I narrowed my eyes. "One for every month of the year, your father says."
"A Zodiac Alliance. I've heard of that before."
"I think Sam Finnigan might have something to do with it and if you don't watch your back-"
"Don't start that with me, Avery. I've got you for a friend, don't I? Would you honestly sit back if Sam Finnigan and eleven others all had their wands to my throat?" She said nothing and I knew I was right.
"I should leave. They haven't exempted me from classes tomorrow." She says.
"I'm sorry about the plates." I tell her and she's caught off-guard.
"Don't…worry about it. I can replace them. I'll see you tomorrow." She turns to leave but I grab her by the wrist, as tightly as I can. She looks back. I pull her in and kiss her gently. She lingers for a second before putting her hand on the back of my neck. She kisses me back and then puts her other hand on my chest. I pull her closer to me by the small of her back. She pulls away quickly.
"We're in a hospital." She reminds us both. I smirk. "I'll see you tomorrow." I let her leave this time.