Chapter Three

Scorpius

Someone turned the light back on

But didn't tell me nothing would have changed in the meantime.

Sometimes it the really early morning – and I mean really early morning – I hear that satisfying burn when I light my smoke. It's like the crinkling of plastic or the burning of leaves. When I hear that sound, that's what I live for. There is nothing more satisfying than my morning ciggie.

Or my morning piss.

I left the dorm and no one noticed. No one has noticed for the last three weeks, not even Al had noticed but nothing can disturb that guy at four in the morning, not even McKinnon if she came up to our dorm in nothing but Slytherin colours strategically placed on her body. Al was a heavy sleeper and there was nothing more to it than that.

It turns out that not even teachers are around at this time of the morning. The saying is early bird gets the worm though dad always said I was up earlier than that – I was up with the first light of the Phoenix. Some things never changed.

Some things never ever change. Some things you want to change so badly but they never will. Like you want a certain red head to stop being so stubborn but some things never change.

The lake was frosted over yet they say we're just out of summer. Summer felt like it came and went and there was no in between. No autumn, no spring. Summer lingers as much as it can, the sun comes out for a while but we will get winter back sooner than we thought because Merlin doesn't pay refuge to the needy.

The satisfying sound of my wand burning the tip of the ciggies I had stolen from my sister makes me smile to myself and I must remember that no matter how much my sister fucks me off this term, I must pay her back.

Or someone's rather large mouth might go narking to dad.

Huh, even though I am alone out here I still snigger to myself out loud and shake my head. Dad.

Dad?

The idiot who was found dick-deep in Vera Wilkes a fellow Healer.

I run a hand through my hair and I feel like pulling. Lesath can try her damn hardest to ignore what was going on at home but I couldn't forget our mum crying at the kitchen table or the way dad moves so quietly around the house it's like he's not even there. But I've seen the way he looks at Lee and I and he isn't there.

The great Draco Malfoy, the anti-hero, great Healer of St. Mungos, Head of Severely Altered Minds Unit. Father of two. Cheater of one.

It almost makes me feel like a dunce that I had always looked up to my dad. Maybe people have been right all along; maybe he has always been a spineless prick.

I watch the smoke form patterns in the air. I spent one half of my summer watching the smoke escape my mouth. I spent the other half having Zoe Fortescue occupy that very same mouth, so all in all, a successful summer.

Hah, Rose had always told me that Gryffindor's had to watch what came out of their mouths. Zoe didn't have anything remotely worth discussing over tea when she opened hers but she sure knew how to use it.

Shit.

Rose.

I physically shake my head. How many times did my thoughts have to betray me or relate everything back to her?

Everyone in my life is a traitorous bastard right from my best friend to my father. I couldn't trust anyone. Merlin, before I know it Al will have turned on me. No one would be here for old Scorpius Malfoy.

It had been a long seven months of not talking to her but what was there to talk about anymore? Hey Rose, my father cheated on my mother, by the way, how are Ron and Hermione? Still living in domestic bliss no doubt?

Maybe she would talk back; she would tell me all about her Minister of Magic mother and her father who has the coolest job in the world at a joke shop. Maybe she would find the effort to remove her hip from Dion Wood's side and forgive me for fashioning him a new nose.

Better yet, she will dump the idiot and find someone new.

Hell, it was just easier not to talk these days. No one wants to hear the story about how Dion Wood deserved a thrashing and I was neck deep in family worries, after all, no one cares about the Malfoys.

Or how if I don't actually do anything worthwhile this year in OWLs I won't be that Healer I want to be following after my perfect father's footsteps.

"Not exactly sure what you're doing, Malfoy but I don't think you should be doing it..."

I pull myself up off the tree and look over to the voice. That blonde hair I would recognise anywhere and the vacant expression on his face. Fuck, the last thing I needed this early in the morning was to deal with a Scamander-Longbottom.

"You want one?" I ask Lorcan as he approaches me, offering him a smoke. The look on his face tells me that he is considering it.

So very Slytherin of me to be the one to corrupt a Scamander-Longbottom.

Lorcan reaches out for one and eyes it carefully, slowly putting into his mouth and I can practically hear his gagging and coughing now. I hold back a smirk. This will be great.

Lorcan eyes me suspiciously and places the stick between his lips; "Let me light it," I say to him and I place my wand against the smoke.

That satisfying crackling sounds again and just as I suspected, he chokes. "Shit!" he says.

"You'll get used to it."

I watch him puff away and eye his ciggie like it is some sort of amazing contraption. "What you doing out here, Malfoy?" he asks. "You enjoy watching the sunrise too?"

I raise my eyebrows and have to keep myself from saying anything that might offend the guy. "The sunrise was like an hour ago."

Lorcan shrugs. "Mum says that's not the true sunrise..."

Mum seems a bit crazy.

"And what were you doing out here at this time?"

Lorcan steps on the smoke he threw on the ground and stares at it a bit like maybe it would come back to burn him. "Dad," he says simply.

"Don't tell me he has some weird flower or root that's going to take a limb off us this afternoon because if he does and you're encouraging it, I will never forgive you."

Lorcan starts laughing and shakes his head as if to say that I was being dramatic but he does know that it is fairly common for Neville Longbottom to do something like this, right?

"So, Zoe yeah?" Lorcan says offhandedly.

I nod and look at him sideways; "Yeah..."

He nods in reply. "Only saying because, Lysander really wanted to get with a Gryffindor this year."

"And this involves me how?" I ask.

Could this kid get any weirder? I knew there was a reason why I avoided him.

"Just saying," he says with a shrug.

We stand in silence again and Lorcan decides to speak much to displeasure. "You still hang out with Rose?" he asks.

"Do you see me with her anymore?"

He laughs quietly. "No, I guess not."

I shove my smokes back in my pocket and turn to Lorcan. "I'll see you in class," I say simply.

I couldn't stay around him any longer, especially when everywhere I turn just directs itself back to Rose when I had tried so damn hard to forget over the summer.

Zoe had been waiting by the main entrance for me for fifteen minutes and the look on her face told me she wasn't used to waiting. Her face didn't look like the type of face people made wait but I was too busy in Charms to rush out.

The way she frowned was sort of cute, her arms folded and her ponytail bobbed up and down as she sighed, shit, it was like she was preparing for a lecture.

Zoe was fun and Zoe also had a way of distracting me over the summer. Her hazel eyes were framed thickly with her dark eye lashes. And well, she had a body that kept me busy all through the summer... she didn't help with the heat.

"Where have you been?" she asks wrapping her arms around my waist.

I lean down to give her a kiss on the lips and she frowns at me. "What? I was catching up with Al down on the pitch and then I had a few things to finish in Charms."

Zoe sighs; "Is that really guys do? Waste time down at the Quidditch pitch? Between you two and Dion..."

I almost choke when she asks me because does she really think I am as dim witted as Dion Wood? "No unlike Dion I actually have more important things to do to occupy my time."

Zoe takes this as a hint towards something else and she smiles at me, all bright eyes and coy. I did like Zoe, she was always excited to try new things and she wasn't shy which made things easier for me. "So these more important things..." she says trailing off.

"I guess anything is more important than anything Wood might have in store."

"Between you and Rose it feels like I'm the one that has to deal with Dion!" she says with a groan.

I shrug and pull her closer to me; the sooner we stopped talking about the idiot, the better. "Who cares anyways," I say with a shrug. "It's not like Rose is going to stop being stubborn any time soon."

"You sound just like her," she replies. "God forbid either of you admit you're wrong."

Well, God wasn't the idiot that deserved a punch to the face now was he?

"Now I understand why you would prefer to lie in here all day, my bed is terrible," Zoe says quietly.

I traced patterns on her skin slowly. I always envied the way girls would fall over themselves at Aleksander's feet or how sometimes you'd walk down to the common room late at night to head to the toilets and he was in there on the couch with a hot girl, one in particular was Dominique Weasley and Merlin, she knew how to work that Veela blood. Dominique Weasley had a way with words and a particularly morbid outlook on life – quite like Rose really – but she was beautiful and made most guys go a little crazy...

Here I was lying in my bed with the curtains drawn and it was almost like something had instantly changed when we became Fifth years. Fred Weasley always forewarned that Fifth year was the year Champions were born and Rose used to always remind me that when we entered our Fifth year, we would be the Champions.

I know what it feels like to be a Champion now. I had one of the hottest girls in the year right here crowning me a champion.

I looked at my watch and shrugged Zoe off my shoulder who sat up to straighten her bra. "Woah, what's happening?" she asks.

I needed to sleep, I needed a smoke, no matter how many things I tried to occupy my mind with I couldn't. Maybe I could go and see my sister but I doubt she would be as happy to see me as I would be to see her. I missed my mum. I missed Rose.

"Time to go," I say instead. "It's almost midnight."

Before Zoe has a chance to reply my curtains fling back and Al is standing there in nothing but his boxer shorts. "You will never believe what just happened!" he almost yells.

"Albus!" Zoe says as though shocked to see him here. In our Slytherin boys dorm. In his pyjamas. As if this was not a normal occurrence.

Al looks just as shocked as Zoe to be seeing her in the room. "Were you two, you know..."

I roll my eyes. Typical of Al to be like this. "I know...?"

Al moves his head as if to prompt me to keep going. "Having sex?"

Zoe opens her mouth as if she had never had been so insulted in her life. "What?" she practically spits. "Of course not!"

She snatches her jersey off the bed and spins on her heels to stare at Al. "One step at a time," she says. "But I guess you wouldn't know since you already want to marry Belle."

With that she slinks out of the dorm.

I lie back on my bed and put my hands behind my back to stare at the ceiling but Al jumps onto the end of my bed and watches me. "Well, that didn't go too well did it?"

"Speak for yourself" I say.

"Scorp, can I ask you something?" he says spreading his legs out on the bed.

I move over to accommodate my mate and laugh at the fact we have always sat like this and now, five years on these beds don't seem so big anymore.

"Yeah."

"What if there was a person you liked who you thought would never like you back but then she catches you chatting up some other girl and well, her face tells me she is fucked off."

I snort, knowing exactly who he was talking about. "Al, leave her alone."

"What?" he nervously laughs, "No, I'm not talking about anyone in particular," he says looking at me seriously and then bursting out laughing.

"Yeah. Sure, whatever you say mate."

Al shrugs and kicks my leg. "Come on, you'll know what I mean when you fall in love."

"And what makes you think that I'm not in love?" I say.

Al sniggers. "The great Scorpius Malfoy in love with Zoe Fortescue? I think not."

I keep staring at the ceiling. Was it really that hard to believe that one day I would perhaps find that one person who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and maybe even buy a pet or two with them – maybe a dog or a few cats and settle down? My own best friend couldn't believe it and he knows me the best.

"Who were you chatting up?" I ask trying to divert the conversation.

"Anastasia Parkinson-Krum."

"Good choice," I admit.

"So you love her, do you?" Al asks about Zoe.

I shrug to myself. "I don't know."

"Well you should know. You get the butterflies and the heart racing and the smiles. You know what I mean?"

I did know what he meant. I knew exactly what he meant. "Yeah, and the buzzing in the pit of your stomach..."

Al laughs and slaps me on the leg. "See!" he says loudly. "We know all about it. People should pay us to give relationship advice!"

"Yeah, two fifteen year olds, one with some girl he spent time with over the holidays and the other a Prefect with no girlfriend, I think we may be overqualified in fact," I say rolling my eyes to myself.

Al sighs and goes to jump off the bed. "I think we lost our balls a long time ago, Scorp."

"Mate, doesn't Belle fly for the other team?"

Al's eyes widen. "No one has ever seen her with a girl, either way, I can win her over."

"Good luck."

Al turns to leave again but stops. "You'll tell me if you have sex, right?"

I shake my head. "No why the fuck would I do that?"

Al shrugs. "We're mates, we need to know these things. Also it's like a coming of age, you don't need to be embarrassed... I'd be like a proud father."

"Good night Al!"

He says goodnight and I shut my curtain trying to block out any sign of life around me. Because if I wasn't careful, it would be all to obvious that the butterflies, the heart racing and the buzzing in my stomach that I had tried so hard to get rid of over the summer, would be back when I headed to Potions in the morning.

The rest of the week went by uneventfully. I couldn't get my mum and dad off my mind and the harder I worked in class the more stares I earned. It seems that Rose still wasn't over anything and tried her very best to sit away from me in classes. Sometimes it worked and other times she was forced to sit by me in which she would use this time to gawk at my school work.

"You don't belong in here," I hear my sister snap in the common room.

"Make me leave then?" James says with an amused look on his face.

The common room was empty bar the bickering weirdos sitting on the couch and the sun had actually managed to come out on a Saturday so everyone in the whole of Hogwarts was out in what people were calling the sun. I walk in and shake my head to myself because in true Scorpius fashion, I have walked into a war zone if these two were involved.

James and Lesath didn't have a normal relationship. Was it a Malfoy thing? The more I think about it the more it looks like maybe Malfoy's are as crazy as people tell me we are. Lesath and James loved to hate each other, they loved to throw insults at each other and I bet that if you locked the two of them in a room with one wand they would snap it in half trying to kill each other with it first.

I walk through the common room and James pipes up; "What you doing Scorp?"

"I could say the same about a Gryffindor in the Slytherin dungeons," I say stiffly.

Lee just smirks. "James knows this House better than his own," she says raising an eyebrow.

James laughs back at her. "Not nearly as well as you know the Gryffindor boys dorm."

James gets up to leave but Lee and him just stare at each other for a while. The look on Lee's face is that she expects him to do a little more than just stare at her but he ends up smiling. "See you later blondey, if you don't get lost of course."

Lee sighs and waves out. "Have a good date today, James."

James had been dating Leah Thomas for almost two years now and yet he always seems to find his way back to my sister, grovelling at her feet.

Lee stood up and stretched out to give me a hug. I had missed my sister so much, sometimes I wish I was as tough as her and that I didn't care about the small stuff. But that's why people didn't like her. Lesath Malfoy was the biggest bitch if ever there was one.

Lee's hair was long and platinum blonde hair and she and I had the same grey eyes. She was tall but not quite as tall as me and slim just like mum. She knew that every guy fell over their feet for her and she worked it that way. Yet there was always that one guy...

"Shouldn't you be outside, you know, flying your little brooms and playing with your little friends?" she asks when she lets go of me.

"Yeah, hello to you too."

She waves a hand at me and sits down on the couch. "People see a slither of sun and decide to get out there and sunbathe. And yet here we are, sitting in here by ourselves."

I sit down next to her and grab a biscuit from the plate she has by her parchment. "Lee, are you studying?" I ask. My sister never studies.

She shrugs and grabs a biscuit too and puts in in her mouth. "NEWTs, Scor. As in the year that will decide if I am going to be able to live off my own money or dad's."

I shudder at the mention of our dad. "Don't mention that guy ever again."

Lee sighs and folds her arms. "Ok, so we just don't have a dad anymore?"

"You know what I mean," I say a little too snappily for my sister. She gives me the look like she is about to let loose on me.

"People make mistakes, Scor. He is our dad and he and mum are working on it."

"It's ok for you to say." I snap. "You weren't there at the end of the holidays you were too busy fuck-"

"You don't know where I was," she says quickly.

I sit back and fold my arms too, knowing if I say one more thing she would probably try and poke me in the eye with her wand like she always does. "I just..." I don't even continue.

"Don't worry about it Scor, they will sort it out!" she grabs a hold of my shoulder and shakes. "They're adults and we're the kids. Don't let this ruin your days at school these are supposed to be the best years of your life! And James always says that Fifth year is the -" I cut her off.

"The year Champions are made?"

She nods. "Yeah. So chill out and stop thinking about those two and Jesus Christ, drink a little, find a girl, fall in love!"

"Just like you?" I challenge.

She scoffs. "Love? Yeah right, we Malfoy's don't bother with such feelings," she says with a wink.

"Yeah." I say in a not-so-convincing voice.

"Don't worry Scor, what did I tell you? Uggh."

"What are you moaning about now?"

"I am not cut out for this sort of heart-to-heart stuff, why don't you go and bitch to your friends?"

Friends? Al has better things to worry about me being a priss and Rose? Well...

"I don't know," I mumble.

Lee glares at me. "You don't have any friends because you always punch their boyfriends in the nose."

"What about Al?" I argue back.

"He's too busy chasing every girl around the school."

"Lorcan and Lysander?"

She nods. "Yeah, I guess they're ok if they keep their mouths shut and have those abs out on display."

"I feel we are talking about different things now..."

She laughs and puts her arm around me. "Maybe you wouldn't be such a sad-sap if you spent more time with your girlfriend, or you know, made up with your best friend?"

But Rose wouldn't bother with me anymore because it had dragged on so long now; I almost forgot what it was like to even talk to her.

"Feelings," I mumble. "Who needs them?"

Lee nods in agreement. "Don't let those feelings get you down, baby bro."

I had been working on smothering those feelings all summer.

I left my sister lying in the common room and making the most of her study time which I find highly amusing. I go and lie in the dorm while no one is here and thank Merlin for the relative peace I have at the moment.

"Al! Please, swap rounds so I don't have to go with Maree, I am begging you!" she says as she slams the dorm door against the wall.

Just as always, she spun around to face me and the look on her face tells that she didn't expect me to be down here. In the Slytherin Dungeons. Where I live for a majority of the year, yes, leave it to Rose Granger-Weasley to glare at me like she thought I wouldn't be down here.

"Wha-What?" she says turning red as she sees me sitting on the desk next to my bed. I decide talking to her, why would I? She hasn't spoken to me in months, she's still with that idiot that I managed to not hurt enough. "Do you have an eye problem?" she spits.

She frowns at me and puts her hands on her hips, my fucking God. "What?" I spit back, "You know I used to have a actual eye problem so great come back, Rosie!"

"I was going to ask what you were doing here..." she says quietly.

I refrain from rolling my eyes. "You know, just hanging out. In my bedroom. Where I sleep and you don't."

She purses her lips, not impressed by my reply. "You're always so damn sour!"

"Yeah, hello to you too," I manage.

She scoffs. "Hello? A hello would have been nice over the holidays, sorry to hear your owl died. Tell Al I stopped by."

My owl? "What do you mean about my owl!" I shout after she steps out of the room.

I watch her walk away from me, just like she always does, leaving me missing her even more.

Author's Note: Hello all! I hope you enjoyed Scorpius' rather drab outlook on life! If you're reading this, please review! I would really love the motivation to continue to write.

Preview: "Because," he says as if I am too stupid to comprehend what he is saying. "it was your boyfriend who provoked me and you know it. You just have some weird protective-ness over him. Wait," he says grabbing my arm. "Are you under the Imperius? Because that would explain why you think I am the one who needs to apologise to you."