Chapter 7 – Girl No. 5


Annabel was his last.

Up until then, they'd all been drastically different in appearance to Rose—the nameless brunette Slytherin, Lyra with her dark skin and hair, Harriet the blonde, Xiomara the short tanned girl with the pixie cut—and Scorpius was starting to think that hadn't been a coincidence. He was starting to realise he had, subconsciously, done everything he could to move on with a girl who decidedly wasn't Rose Weasley—not in the slightest.

And that was the problem.

Because clearly, he had a type, right? Clearly, the only sort of girl he was really, deeply attracted to was one who looked like Rose. He had been trying to be something he wasn't. And trying to go after something he didn't really want.

But Scorpius, though he'd decided several times to give up on his pointless pursuit, felt a rush at the thought of one last experiment. And if this didn't work then he knew he was doomed. He would be doomed forever to love a girl who would never again love him back and live out his life in misery and heartbreak.

But if it worked…

A few weeks into September, the start of his sixth year, Scorpius was on the hunt for one last girl. One last kiss. And this time he wanted someone who looked as close to Rose Weasley as possible. Why not? If he couldn't have her, why not have the next best thing? Someone who looked like her.

It was vain beyond belief, and really quite arrogant, but Scorpius felt desperate, and he was so assured this might just work.

But he encountered a huge problem very early into his mission. It wasn't that he couldn't find girls who looked like Rose, it was just that they were all related to her. Lily Potter, perhaps, was the most similar. Her hair was shorter and lighter in colour, and the freckles that adorned her face weren't as abundant, nor were her eyes the same colour as Rose's, but beneath all that, they were one and the same.

Sort of.

But Scorpius didn't want to kiss Lily. He already had, after all. He knew Lily too well, and she was his little sister's best friend for crying out loud! And he just… wasn't attracted to her. Sure, the similarities were there but he was already too close to her.

And that was a problem. Because the girls who looked closest to Rose were—well—her cousins, and that wasn't a line he wanted to cross. Selfish though he might have been in his recent behaviour, Scorpius thought that really would be the ultimate knife in the back to Rose. If there was ever going to be a future for them, and he so desperately hoped there might be, he was not going to help himself by involving himself romantically with any of her relatives. That would be a tough one to explain.

But the answer came to him in a quick and pleasant way soon after he'd decided to embark on this particular mission.

Prefect meetings had become particularly uncomfortable for Scorpius since ending things with Rose the previous year. Truth be told, he hadn't ever really desired the role, simply because he thought he'd never even be considered. But he had been pleasantly surprised when he'd been sent the badge a summer ago, and even more so when he discovered Ebony would be his Slytherin counterpart. It had provided a strange dynamic between him and Rose though, with her losing out on the role everybody (including herself) had expected her to assume. Maybe things would have been different had him and Rose been Prefects together. Maybe that extra time together would have strengthened their relationship. Maybe Rose's presence at Prefect meetings would have prevented him from getting so close to Ebony.

But Scorpius could not dwell on the 'what might have been.' Because it hadn't happened. Rose had not been made a Prefect. But he and Ebony had, and they had gotten closer because of it, and he had strayed from Rose and betrayed her in the cruellest way.

But since starting Sixth Year, Scorpius had not even considered the discomfort Prefect meetings would now provide. Things were still not completely easy between him and Ebony. They had barely spent any time together over the summer, and since their brief 'relationship' and quick breakup, it was difficult to say where they stood. Scorpius also knew he couldn't pretend he was thrilled by the idea of whatever kind of relationship Ebony shared with James Potter. Did she not recall what a vicious idiot Potter was? Attractive he may be, and skilled on a broom, but had she forgotten that time he had repetitively hurled Stunning Hexes at Scorpius when he was disarmed, and in a very public setting?

The unease of that memory drew Scorpius' eyes to another boy, sat across the circle from him. It was only a week into the new school year, and this was the first meeting Bobbin had called. Scorpius wasn't even listening to her as she introduced the new fifth-year Prefects, but was instead distracted by the presence of one Samuel Tyler.

Scorpius was displeased that Sam seemed to play such a prominent role in his life. It was bad enough that he'd been a close friend of Rose's and had such an intense crush on her that it frequently challenged and compromised Scorpius' own relationship with Rose, but then he'd found out he'd been made Gryffindor Prefect, and then, just to really piss Scorpius off, joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He had never liked the boy, and now he seemed incapable, even after Rose had left his life, to shake him off too. Sam and Scorpius, though they had never been friends, and never even truly made peace so much as simply tolerated each other in Rose's presence, had not even spoken to each other since Scorpius had snidely told Sam that Rose was 'all his' the morning he'd broken up with her.

Scorpius only hoped that Rose had had the sense not to be romantically involved with Sam, despite what Scorpius had told the boy. He did not think he could bear the pain. The thought of Rose with anyone sickened him. But Rose with Sam? Scorpius felt for sure he'd have to leave Hogwarts if that ever happened, as self-centred as his thought process was.

"We've decided to, ah, not repeat last year's trial of a 'Prefect's Ball' to start off the new year," Bobbin was announcing to the circle of Prefects. Scorpius could have sworn she glanced towards himself and Ebony with an uncomfortable look about her, and Scorpius didn't need to look at Ebony to know they were both red in the face.

It had been at Bobbin's ball last year—an innocent trial of an event in which to introduce the new Prefects to the rest of the school—that Scorpius and Ebony had shared their first kiss. In front of Rose. Whilst Scorpius had still been in a relationship with her.

Scorpius tried to brush it off. He could not blame the ball alone. Had he and Ebony not kissed then, he was sure they would have done so in a different situation. He and Rose would have ended things one way or another; it had been inevitable. But still, Scorpius was grateful any such ball would not be repeated. The memories would be too strong, too painful.

But Merlin's beard, had it really been almost a year? A whole year since the fateful ball that had led to the end of his relationship, and Scorpius still wasn't over Rose? He almost felt embarrassed, but it wasn't like anybody besides himself knew the truth.

Scorpius looked up at that point to notice not one but two angry faces glaring at him. Sam was to be expected, but Scorpius had almost forgotten his irritating blonde counterpart. Janey. She was like a Gryffindor replica of Jinx and yet somehow more annoying. Again, it wasn't like they'd really been friends before all the drama, more such people who just tolerated each other's company for the sake of their respective relationship with Rose. But since that was over, so were any such pleasant pretences that might have existed between them. Janey very much openly loathed Scorpius.

Which was why he had not particularly enjoyed Prefect meetings over the last year. Things with Ebony were uncomfortable, and Sam and Janey both despised him without any qualms. Why would he want to be in such an uncomfortable situation every other week? And it wasn't like he particularly enjoyed the company of the other Prefects.

Scorpius looked around the circle, glancing at each one of them in turn, completely ignoring whatever Bobbin was talking about. The Ravenclaws were pleasant enough. A brother and sister who were a little uptight, but nice enough people. The boy, Henry, was a good Quidditch player, so Scorpius appreciated him for that, and the girl, Isabella, was very pretty, if not a little high-maintenance. It was one of the reasons he'd not pursued her as a romantic interest. Isabella, though pleasant on the eyes, seemed like she'd be a lot of work. Unlike Scorpius, she took her Prefect responsibilities incredibly seriously. And she looked a little like Ebony. With her long raven hair and midnight blue eyes, Isabella Fontayne was like a watered-down version of what Scorpius considered to be one of the prettiest girls Hogwarts had to offer.

But what didn't go amiss to Scorpius was the way in which Sam was eyeing her up. Eyeing her up in a way he'd used to look at Rose. Scorpius' attention was hooked, and he couldn't resist a slight smirk. Was there something there? Was something happening between Isabella and Sam, or was he merely just getting moon-eyed over another girl who was out of his league? It was almost enough for Scorpius to suddenly want to pursue Isabella—simply to spite Sam.

Why not?

Scorpius had taken Rose when Sam had wanted her. He'd taken Ebony in the same way. And if Sam was now growing fond of Isabella, wouldn't it be fun to snatch her away from him too?

But Scorpius knew that was unnecessarily vindictive. What did he prove to gain from competing with and belittling Sam? And all the while potentially hurting Isabella in the process? Scorpius suddenly felt sick. Ashamed of who he had seemingly become. Just a boy who competed with other boys and messed around with girls' affection for kicks. The epitome of what all the other houses believed the Slytherins to be.

Another thought flickered into Scorpius' mind. Sam had always proven to be his main competition when it came to Rose. He was the only one who had been as hopelessly and obsessively besotted with her as Scorpius himself had been. And if he could get over Rose—have his affections drawn to another girl—then maybe, just maybe Scorpius could achieve the same. Whether or not Sam and Isabella's relationship would progress to anything other than fellow Prefects, perhaps it really was possible to get over Rose Weasley.

It was at that point that Annabel walked in. And Scorpius suddenly found himself sitting up, his attention piqued.

Annabel, whose surname Scorpius had never seemed to learn, gushed her apologies to Professor Bobbin for her lateness before settling into the empty seat beside Hufflepuff counterpart Tom. Like the Ravenclaw Prefects, Scorpius found the Hufflepuffs, Annabel and Tom, pleasant enough people, but he'd never dwelled on them much or considered them friends. He'd never really gelled with Hufflepuffs that much. They were kind, sure, but they lacked drive. They lacked integrity. Nobody was that nice, surely.

But then again, Scorpius considered, maybe that was just his Slytherin prejudice.

But he was looking at Annabel now. Really looking at her. He was looking at the dark red hair that fell in front of her shoulders, so long it nearly touched her waist, thick and beautiful. He was looking at the few freckles smattered across her nose. He was looking at the intense blue of her eyes.

He was looking, he thought wickedly, at his next snog. His final solution to the problem that had plagued him for almost a year. He was looking at the girl he was going to finally, finally get over Rose Weasley with.

And maybe if Scorpius had been paying more attention to what Bobbin was saying, and less to pondering whether or not there was the possibility that Annabel and Rose were related (they were both redheads, after all, and he couldn't be sure—had he ever really met a redhead who wasn't a Weasley?), he would have been aware of her announcing who the new Head Girl and Boy were and not almost fallen off his chair when James Potter sauntered into the room, late of course.

Scorpius did not know what alarmed him more: the fact that James Potter was Head Boy, the fact that Professor Bobbin had willingly chosen James Potter to be Head Boy, or the loving and delighted way in which Ebony was staring at the Gryffindor boy.

Either way, he was pissed. If Scorpius had thought being a Prefect had granted him any kind of authority or respect within the school, James Potter now being Head Boy compromised that all. Could he not escape this family? All he wanted was distance from Rose, and that included her annoying friends and her idiot cousin. But maybe it was punishment, Scorpius thought, for how cruelly he had treated Rose. Maybe he deserved a constant reminder of what a lousy boyfriend—what a lousy human—he had been.

But the meeting drew to a close, and, keen to avoid Potter, Scorpius hurried from the room. He was startled to have crashed into someone just outside the door, and then even more startled to discover it was the redheaded Hufflepuff he'd been so desiring earlier.

"Annabel," Scorpius blurted out, immediately losing any charm he thought he might have possessed.

Had he gotten cocky?—he feared. Had he been arrogant to assume he could have any girl he so desired? Because in that moment, Scorpius was at a total loss for words. What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to say in order to charm her into an innocent kiss? Maybe he needn't say anything at all. Maybe he just needed to lean down and go for it…

"Scorpius? Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, err, sorry about that," Scorpius said sheepishly, coming to his senses.

You couldn't just kiss people with no reason. But he was so desperate. So desperate to see if his redhead theory would work. Annabel and Rose were almost exactly the same height, he realised.

"Do you want to go somewhere?"

"Me?" Annabel asked in alarm. "And you?"

"Sure," Scorpius said, deeply unsure of his tactics. "I, err, I could walk you back to your common room?"

Annabel stared at Scorpius as though he'd just declared he'd like to drop out of Hogwarts and become a ballerina. But Scorpius was nervously glancing at the door to the room he'd just barrelled from. He didn't want Bobbin, Sam, Janey, James, Ebony, anybody watching him as he attempted to flirt with this girl. The sooner he whisked her away, the better. But where Scorpius had mistaken Annabel for a sweet, polite wallflower-type-girl, he'd been sorely mistaken. She was clearly just as stubborn and feisty as Rose had always been.

Must be a redhead thing.

"Or, you know, just a walk around the castle? The grounds?" Scorpius was getting anxious now. He could hear voices near the door. Even him just talking to Annabel alone would raise suspicion. He didn't want James to goad him, or Ebony to be offended that he was chatting up girls right in front of her. And what if Sam or Janey told Rose?

"I'm alright, thanks," Annabel said drily, folding her arms.

Scorpius was further alarmed. Was she really not taking the bait at all? Not even a little?

"But—"

"Look, I'm waiting for—"

But the voices had gotten louder, and Scorpius panicked, and every sense seemed to shut down completely, every vague ounce of wisdom gone from his being, as he leant down without thought and kissed the girl with her arms still folded straight on the lips as though it was wanted or even expected.

But, as Scorpius quickly learnt, hands tangling into hair that felt as familiar as Rose's, mouth against a mouth that, although sweet enough, tasted nothing like Rose's, it was decidedly not expected and even more so not wanted.

Because the instant his lips had collided with hers, before he could even gauge whether or not this kiss was enough to cure him of his heartbreak over Rose, Scorpius was pushed away with great vigour, a vicious hand slapped across his face.

He was quite simply startled. And he wondered whether he looked more or less startled than Annabel herself did. Or the crowd of people who had just exited the room behind him and witnessed the whole ordeal.

But Annabel's pretty face, initially startled, quickly morphed into one of fury, and with a tongue as vicious as her slap had been, she completed the sentence Scorpius had not allowed her to finish.

"—my boyfriend."

Scorpius' head turned. Tom, the kindly Hufflepuff Prefect, who Scorpius had only just remembered was dating Annabel, and had been for some time, looked startled rather than angry. But he did not wish to hang around to find out how long that lasted.

Ebony was looking at Scorpius like she didn't know who he was anymore, and it was that, rather than the amused look on James Potter's face, or the concerned look on Bobbin's, or the furious look on Sam's, that made Scorpius realise he might have gone too far. He might have finally crossed a line so beyond desperate, so beyond unacceptable, that he had to re-evaluate his whole sorry situation. And maybe that would be the best for everybody involved.

"Scorpius, I think we should talk."

Scorpius almost would have been embarrassed by Ebony talking to him like he was a disobedient child in front of so many people whose opinion of him he unwittingly valued if he hadn't completely agreed with her. "I, err—"

But Ebony was marching him away before he could figure out just what he might say to explain any part of the situation he'd just gotten himself into. She walked swiftly, purposefully, marching him down the corridor in a way so eerily reminiscent of Professor Bobbin that Scorpius had to do a double-take to ensure it wasn't actually the headmistress. Once they were safely in a deserted corridor, she spun him around.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Look, you caught me at an awkward moment, but me and Annabel had great chemistry and I clearly just misread the situation—"

"Scorpius, don't be an idiot," Ebony snapped. "You've barely spoken to Annabel the whole past year we've been Prefects together, you've never looked at her twice, never shown the slightest bit of interest in her—you don't even know her second name!"

"But I—"

"And you know she's been dating Tom for over a year. What on earth could have possessed you to kiss her?"

"I forgot about Tom, okay? It was an innocent mistake—he doesn't say a lot!"

Ebony just continued to glare, unconvinced in the slightest. "Scorpius, I am your oldest and closest friend," she reminded him in a fierce whisper. "And I know I haven't been around for you as much as I should have since, well…" She trailed off, blushing faintly.

"Since we attempted and failed to have a relationship?" Scorpius finished for her, raising his eyebrows sarcastically.

Ebony just rolled her eyes. "I know I should have supported you more, I should have been the kind of friend I always have been. But I was—"

"Distracted," Scorpius went on ruthlessly, thinking he might finally call her out on whatever ridiculous relationship she and James shared.

"Call it what you want," she said through gritted teeth, "but at least I've been happy."

Scorpius was stunned. He wasn't sure how to process what Ebony had said. Was she been cruel? Vindictive? Or just honest?

"And I don't think, for a second," she continued, her tone softening, her eyes watching him with sadness, "that you have been."

"Since we broke up?" Scorpius asked in confusion. He thought he and Ebony had had a silent kind of understanding—that their relationship hadn't been real, that their feelings hadn't ever been genuine.

And then she spoke the words that cut through him like a knife. "Since you broke up with Rose."

Silence fell between them. Scorpius suddenly felt desperately alone in that corridor. Even with Ebony right there. Even in a school full of a thousand students. He just felt desperately alone.

"Scorpius, I might not have been as present in your life as I should have been, but I've been around enough to see that you're miserable. And don't think I haven't noticed all the girls. The girl at your party, that random Hufflepuff girl, Lyra of all people—"

"Why shouldn't I kiss Lyra?" Scorpius cut in, suddenly angry. Who was Ebony to shame him for kissing all those girls? He wasn't hurting anyone, he wasn't betraying anyone. So why shouldn't he?

Ebony didn't falter. "Well, for starters, she's a lesbian." She paused to give Scorpius a condemning glare. He said nothing, unsure of what to say. "And secondly, you hate her!"

"I don't hate her."

"Oh, yes, you do, Scorpius!" Ebony laughed. "We all do. And Lyra aside, since when have you gone for Hufflepuffs? That girl in the library—"

"Harriet."

"—and now Annabel?"

"It's not a… Hufflepuff thing," Scorpius insisted, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other."

"Then what, Scorpius?" Ebony asked desperately. "You've never been the type to just randomly snog girls. And that's four, and Merlin knows how many others, since we ended things last year."

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't be kissing girls," Scorpius challenged, angry now at Ebony's intervention. "I'm not in a relationship and, ah, discounting the incident just now, they haven't been either. And look, I didn't know that Lyra was, err—"

"Oh, Scorpius, it's not about that," Ebony cried. "It's not about the girls, it's about you."

"About me, how?" Scorpius asked, feeling uneasy. Could he bear to hear Ebony speak the truth, plain and straight to him? He had avoided it for so long. On the outside at least.

"You have been miserable since you broke up with Rose! And I know why, okay? I know why you ended it, I know why you needed what you and I had for that brief moment, and I can't condemn you for that because ultimately it was what we all needed." She took a shaky breath. "But this isn't going to help you. I know you can't be with Rose in the way that you want. Not right now. But snogging your way around the entire school isn't going to make any of this any easier."

"Ebony, that's not why—"

"It is why!" she furiously interrupted. "And maybe you can't admit that to me, but at least admit it to yourself! If you want to kiss random girls—and they actually want to kiss you in return," she added with narrowed eyes, both of them thinking of the mishap no less than five minutes ago, "then that's fine, okay? That's good. But only if you're doing it for the right reasons. And, at the moment, I don't think you are. I think you're doing it to try and forget. To try and numb the pain of what you've lost, of what you can't have."

Scorpius had nothing to say. Because what else could he say? Ebony had said it all. She had laid him open and read him like a book. And he knew, deep down, that she was right. That all those pitiful experiences had been with one goal in mind, all of which had been unsuccessful. Nothing could numb the pain. No girl could kiss away the memory of Rose Weasley.

When Scorpius next spoke it was in a weak, lost, desperate voice. "Ebony, I don't know what to do." And he thought he might cry right there and then. In front of her. The cardinal sin of any Slytherin. To reveal oneself in their weakest, most vulnerable state.

But Ebony had pulled him close before the tears could spill. And it felt like coming home. It felt like something he hadn't felt in a long time. And it was amazing, Scorpius thought, that something as simple as an embrace could make one feel so warm, so safe.

"You need this," Ebony said softly, giving him one final squeeze before releasing him.

Scorpius hadn't stared into those mossy green eyes that close for quite some time. He missed the kindness that shone from within them. "But," he said in confusion, "we didn't work. Not like that."

"I didn't mean like that," Ebony snorted, half amusement, half alarm. "I meant friendship," she clarified. "With me, and Albireo, and Jinx, and Albus. You just need to belong, Scorpius. To be wanted, to be loved. And," she hesitated, kind eyes suddenly full of sorrow, "I've been failing you in that sense."

It was amazing, Scorpius thought, that he had always considered himself to be the strong one in their friendship. He was the rock, he was the hero, and it was he who comforted Ebony when she was feeling vulnerable or emotional. And yet, that wasn't the case at all. He needed her just as much as she needed him. Sometimes he needed to be the vulnerable one, and maybe that was okay. Maybe it was okay to ask for help when he needed it.

Scorpius, for so long now, had been looking for another girl to replace Rose. Which was stupid, really, because Rose was irreplaceable, and because of that, he had set himself an impossible task from the off, of which failure was inevitable and imminent. It was not romance he should have been pursuing. He had needed love to heal him, but it had not been in the form of a new companion, but rather his old companions. His true companions. His friends.

He had lost a lot of himself when he'd lost Rose, which was unsurprising given how intense their relationship had been. And he had been looking to recover that in all the wrong places.

And true, Scorpius was not giving up on romance. He would love again, he knew it. And if he was lucky, it would be true. But Ebony was right. His string of girls might have been a lifestyle another boy would have happily embraced, but it wasn't him. Scorpius couldn't lie and say he hadn't enjoyed kissing so many girls. They had all, in some way, meant something to him, and maybe he'd needed such dismal failure to come to his senses and realise this really wasn't going to help him overcome the only girl he was sure he'd loved.

His cheek still stinging from the excellent slap Annabel had given him, Scorpius and Ebony headed down the corridor to return to the Slytherin Common Room. Only one other girl had slapped him. Rose. And he had deserved that one too.

Scorpius smiled at the memory. For the first time since their breakup, he found himself smiling at a memory of him and Rose. It wasn't much, but it was enough. It was a start.

Scorpius barely overlapped with his five girls again.

He never had known who the mysterious brunette Slytherin he'd snogged at his sixteenth birthday party was.

He saw Lyra frequently, but they barely even looked at each other, let alone spoke. He once thought he saw her smile at him. And maybe he returned it.

Harriet, being in Hufflepuff and being in the year below, overlapped with Scorpius incredibly little. But when she did, whether they were just passing in the corridor or sat across from each other in the library, he made sure to smile. She almost always shyly returned it.

Scorpius never returned to work at Dervish and Banges. In fact, he tried to avoid the shop at all costs. He always sent his father instead.

And Annabel? Well, given that they were Prefects together, she was more difficult to avoid. But Tom was a good sport, and Annabel, despite having a mean slap, was an incredibly kind girl. Scorpius never mocked Hufflepuffs for their empathy again. And he and Annabel never spoke of the incident again—the inadvertent kiss and sequential slap. They merely acted as though it had never happened. Annabel told no one, and neither did Scorpius. Not even a year later when Annabel and Tom had gone their separate ways and she entered into a relationship with Albus Potter. In Scorpius' case, especially then.

And Scorpius did not dwell. He had tried, in vain, to achieve the impossible—to get over Rose Weasley. But there was no getting over Rose Weasley, and he was okay with that. Five girls were quite enough, and to be honest, all the kissing had been exhausting. (Or so he tried to convince himself).

Scorpius had come to realise one painful but undeniable truth. And that was that there was only one girl he could possibly get over Rose Weasley with. And that was not the five girls who weren't her.

There was only one. There had only ever been one.

And that was Rose Weasley.