AN: Thanks so much for your lovely reviews and follows, it's really very motivating! I'm travelling and in a foreign city right now so I really should be exploring but instead I wrote another chapter. It's almost a single scene and pretty angsty, internalised homophobia sucks, Draco has a fair bit to answer for there I feel. Hope you enjoy it!
Albus came to find that it's really hard to ignore someone who shares a room with you. He'd found that while living at home with James, and found that it was the same with Scorpius at Hogwarts. It was, however, easier when Scorpius was doing most of the ignoring. It had gotten into a fairly vicious cycle though, because Scorpius would go hot and cold on him, but Albus wasn't too receptive to the hot after the cold.
He decided that he ought to stop waiting around being miserable while Scorpius was obviously going through something, so he did what every teenager (and almost every adult too) did when their friend had just had their heart broken, he got some alcohol. It honestly hadn't been too hard to convince James to buy him the firewhiskey. James had demanded, among other things, his first born child, but as Albus saw the chances of finding someone willing to reproduce with him as fairly slim, it didn't take him long to sign on the dotted line. He supposed, if push came to shove, that his mother would prevent James calling it in.
Bringing it into the common room and up the stairs unnoticed was not too much of a struggle because most of the members of the house were distracted by some of his uncle's newest products: little brown candies that when swallowed caused temporary levitation capabilities. His ascent to his dormitory was accompanied by the thud of heads against ceiling, an oddly comforting sound, only spoiled by the exclamations of pain that accompanied them. As their room-mates were the source of some of the cries and thuds, it was only he and Scorpius, who was writing an essay for Muggle Studies, in the room.
"Alright Scor, I've got us something" he held the firewhiskey aloft.
"Mmm?" Scorpius mumbled, not looking up from his paper.
"Look, look" Albus insisted.
Scorpius seemed to take forever to finish writing his sentence to look up, irritated "I've gotta get this finished before the weekend, it's due next Friday."
"Dad told me that that's exactly what Aunt Hermione was like when they were at school, and that it was his and Uncle Ron's job to get her out of her shell and make her have some fun" he grinned mischievously. "James got me some firewhiskey! Let's try it. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, don't be a spoilsport"
The look Scorpius gave him was cold "We're not the Golden Trio. There's no sexual tension there like there was with Hermione and Ron, and neither of us are the boy who lived, so we shouldn't judge ourselves by their standards"
Scorpius couldn't ignore his friend's shoulders shaking as Albus put himself to bed early. He could, however, take the firewhiskey and invisibility cloak as soon as Albus fell asleep, and head for the Room of Requirement.
As he wandered through the empty hallways swigging from the bottle every now and then, he had to step aside for two professors and Mrs Norris who was definitely distracted by his smell.
The Room of Requirement was interestingly arranged, with a comfortable looking bed and a view from high up in the castle. Scorpius sat in a green velvet chair in front of the fireplace and nursed the bottle.
Rose had to be wrong. He wasn't gay, he didn't look down at his body when he undressed and get aroused, he didn't speak with a lisp or have a particular fondness for glitter. He even had a deep, unrequited crush on a girl. Well at least he did until she became particularly unpleasant. He was the Scorpion King for God's sake. To be fair, Albus was the only one who called him that, and it was in jest, but his father had actually been the Sex God of Slytherin for a while, he'd heard the stories. While he'd become more brave since the incidents of fourth year, he was still a virgin and that grated on him. He'd prove Rose wrong by finding a girlfriend.
He hadn't noticed anyone much while he'd been pining over Rose, but one of the seventh years had been smiling at him in the common room, so he thought he'd start there. The Room of Requirement had helpfully provided some quills, parchment and for some reason his owl, so he decided he'd waste no time. So, reflexes slower than usual, he penned a short note to Janet Zabini:
"Dear Janet, I think you're hot so let's date, alright? Friday at Hogsmeade, dress sexy – The Scorpion King"
The great thing about owling rather than texting, Scorpius found, was that it was hard to drunk-owl. It required much more effort, which was why he was very irritated that their head of house, Professor Greenspan, kept their phones locked up during the week.
He folded it and attached it to the owl, realising a little too late that he'd both sent an owl at 3am, and signed the letter as The Scorpion King. In his intoxicated state, it didn't seem to matter all that much.
He almost wrote Albus a letter too, but he knew, even through his drunken haze, that that conversation would need to be in person. And at that realisation he began to cry. God, he'd been such a ridiculous arsehole to his best friend. Rose's accusations had made him so uncomfortable that he had lashed out at Albus, thinking that some distance would be best, if everyone thought they were gay. All it had done, however, was make them both unspeakably lonely.
He hadn't made the best decision in taking the firewhiskey, if he was continuing to be honest with himself, and that wasn't only because of the bile he felt trying to rise up his oesophagus. Albus had brought it as something they could do together. Hell, it might have even been an attempt at comfort over what he saw was heartbreak inflicted by Rose.
Aw man, he was just the worst friend. He'd have to make up for it with some serious grovelling. He stood up. That grovelling would have to wait until the room stopped spinning.
The Room of Requirement had helpfully provided a bucket next to the chair, and tears streamed down his face as he made use of it.
"Fuck, I deserved this" He slurred to the empty room.
xxx
As he awoke in the morning, late for class, he suddenly, and luckily came upon a hangover potion under where he'd tossed the invisibility cloak the other night. He came upon this potion through a mixture of falling over at the dizziness and throwing his body away from the bright light streaming through the uncovered windows, which lead to him knocking the table over, slipping on the invisibility cloak and finally opening his eyes to see a small bottle rolling back and forth in front of his eyes.
Thus fortified, he took stock of the room. It was lucky that cleaning wasn't required in the Room of Requirement, as he'd made a right mess of it. The half-empty bottle of firewhiskey wasn't something that he could ignore though, as he'd have to sneak it back under Albus' bed and somehow hide the fact that it had been partially consumed. He thought it was very lucky that Albus had never tried alcohol, as it would be easy to disguise the problem by filling the rest up with water. He fortunately wouldn't know the difference until he tried real firewhiskey one day, but Scorpius supposed that he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.
Making use of the cloak once more, he snuck back to an empty dormitory, all its occupants in class already. Gathering his books and pulling his robe on gingerly (for the potion wasn't one hundred percent effective), he rushed to class as quickly as his brain would let him move.
"Mr Malfoy, so kind of you to join us." Professor Longbottom didn't even look up from the pot he had his hands in "Mr Potter informed me that you were not feeling well this morning, so I'm glad you're feeling better."
His heart soared as he took his seat next to Albus. His friend was still willing to lie for him, which meant all was not lost. Said friend would not look at him as he took his seat though, despite shoulder nudges and a hastily written thank you note. An "I'm trying to listen to the Professor" pushed through gritted teeth was the only response he received.
Scorpius spent the rest of the class with a quiet smile on his face (a muted outward representation of the giant fiesta happening in his chest), barely even concentrating on what Professor Longbottom was talking about.
AN: How will Scorpius fix what he's broken? What will happen with Janet Zabini? Does Albus know about the firewhiskey?
I don't really know the answer to any of those questions, but I hope all of us will by the end of the next chapter.