Nine
It was December and everyone had gone home. Fueling on my rage for my father, I stayed at Hogwarts that year, telling my mother that I needed to study. I did study, as I had said, but I was distracted by something else for a good portion of the time…or someone else. Avery had stayed that vacation, telling her own family that she would be taking special lessons from Slughorn. And she did just that, learning tricks of the mind with her Elf talents. He had, like in most years when he found one student fascinating, found her talents exceptionally mesmerizing.
I recall sitting on the edge of my bed reading a biography of a wizard from Russia who had done nothing all that exciting but set off an avalanche with the flick of his wand. It could have been done by anyone, I thought, and they would have had a book written about them. I was smoking a cigarette at the time, trying my hardest to keep my eyes open and not succumb to the throbbing of loneliness by falling asleep.
It had been weeks, maybe even months, since Avery had last talked to me. She was becoming fairly serious with one of Al's friends, Jacobi Summers. He was tall, built like a Muggle athlete, and had the personality to go along with it. He didn't really care about Avery; he just wanted her for the time being. When he realized she wasn't going to give it up to him, he would leave her, just like all the others.
We had gotten into an argument in front of the whole house in the common room after a loss against Hufflepuff. I blamed it on her of course, saying that she was too soft on the other players, Summers being one of them. She fought back, telling me I was being illogical and jealous.
"Jealous! Jealous of him? What man would want to have you for a girlfriend? You're the biggest prat in the school, think you're better than everyone else because you're a Potter and because you're an-"
"STOP!" Avery roared, fearing that I would reveal her secret. I would have, had she not looked so sad with me at the moment.
"Don't talk to me anymore, Avery. Ever. Again. It's obvious you're better off."
I groaned and dropped the book at my feet. It had been a long time since the company of a girl had visited me in my dorm. I had come to the point where I compared every girl to Avery and found her unworthy of my time. I had to have her, have Avery. In so many realms of life, it was unthinkable that a Malfoy could ever get with a Potter, and if that day had ever come, perhaps the world would break in two.
I yawned, rubbed the palms of my hands in my eyes. It was so late; the dawn had to be near. I had stayed up all that time of vacation, trying to get through many books and had succeeded when morning came. Many didn't know, didn't care to know, that I was in love with words, and if I could have had it my way, I would have been born into a Muggle family and attend Muggle University to get a degree in that of Literature or maybe even Philosophy to analyze books and find the deepest meaning in them.
"There's no smoking in the castle." I heard a light and tired voice. My head, as if it were on a swivel, snapped around to look at the entrance of the dorms. There she stood, in her pajamas, looking quite irritated by the fact that I was smoking. I was holding a grudge against her, though, and was unable to put out the cigarette.
"Go back to bed," I muttered. She sighed and looked around the messy, torn apart dorm. None of my fellow roommates had cared to put anything back in their trunks once they had taken most of their things out to pack away for the holiday. In an instant, things shifted in the room, clothes lifting off the ground and folding in midair, beds making themselves, and all contents of the trunks being put back in and the trunks being shut until their owners came back to open them and cause another mess.
"You don't have to act like you don't know me, Scorpius."
"Do I know you?" I questioned as she took a few steps into the center of the dorm. She was hurt by this.
"Yes, we used to know each other quite well until you grew green-" I shot a glare at her and she stopped herself. "Right. You didn't grow green, you became a monster." She turned and went down the stairs, back to her own part of the dormitory.
A day had passed and I had planted myself in one of the sofas of the common room. I was indulging in a new book that night, one my mother had sent me. It was a Muggle book, Astoria having the knowledge that I enjoyed those more than the ones the Wizarding world produced. It was called The Great Gatsby and I was struck by it in so many different ways.
But I was thrown off when Avery came in with a letter in her hand, her face swollen with grief. She rushed up to her dorm. I forced myself to sit up and watch her as she hurried up the stairs. I could hear her soft sobs and for once did not feel like staying up late.
In the daytime when she was gone, I snuck up to her miraculously clean dorm and found her bed, the letter on the windowsill nearest. It was crumpled but still intact. I took it and unfolded it quickly.
Avery,
I hope your holiday is going well. Your gift was lovely. I'm sorry I haven't been able to get back to you…I've had a lot of time to think about things. I'm not ready for this and I'm sorry to be having to tell you this in letterform. You are an underestimated girl, ready to take on the world, and I am not. We will talk more when I return from Lincolnshire.
-Jacobi
Disgusted with the letter I tore it and threw it out her window. She wouldn't miss it. She didn't need to.
She came back from a late night with Slughorn looking particularly weathered. I was three quarters of the way through my book, trying to interpret something. She managed to get herself up the stairs and I could hear her cough gently. It was my moment of truth to her, the only way to get it through her head that I wasn't going to screw her over.
I set my book down on the coffee table and went upstairs to her side of the dorm. She had undressed out of her jeans and button up shirt, now standing in nothing but her underwear. It was impossible to ignore, the feeling that was overcoming me. It was the only way to get over the grudge I had against her, to let her know how I felt about her.
In my mind, time had been wasting away since the day I had met her. It was obvious to me that we would end up together down the road. Why was it so necessary that we wait until the day when everyone stopped caring?
"Scorpius!" She cried, turning around, covering up her bare chest. I put a finger to her lips and gently pushed her up against the wall. Her cheeks had flooded with embarrassment, but she had no need to be embarrassed in front of me. I found every bit of her beautiful.
I swallowed tensely and held her neck in my hands. Around this time, her hair had been shorter, cleaner, and edgier. I preferred when her hair was grown out, but she was stunning either way. I felt her collarbone against the side of my hands and I ached to lower them, to kiss her there.
I felt my nose against hers and looked into her river stone green eyes. She gasped quietly and then bit her lip as she looked down. She let her arms and hands free from her chest and grabbed a hold of the collar of my shirt, becoming needier by the second. My hands drifted down to the dips of her waist, touching her soft skin.
"If you've got something to say…" She trailed off, touching my jaw with just the tips of her fingers. She blinked and looked up, licking her lips. We weren't kissing, but my adrenaline was rushing, waiting for the perfect second to do so.
"I'd be good to you." I whispered to her. "I'd wait for years if that's what you wanted." And she knew what I meant; she knew that I would wait for her to give her most valued part of herself to me, unlike Jacobi, or any other guy in the school. Her eyes filled with want, they were sorry and big.
She grew more comfortable and I could feel the palms of her hands against my cheeks. I pressed my fingertips into her body and losing control, I picked her up, grabbing her by the thighs and she moaned at once, wrapping her strong calves around my waist. Again I pressed her up against the wall, and this time I kissed her collarbone, her hands tousling my hair.
"Wait," She stopped me and I looked up at her. "What about our families? This will never work."
"Why are you worrying so much about it?" I asked her. I let her down, feeling defeated by her question. I let go of her and backed away, blinking. She was blinking as well and now looked upset. "I only want you, Avery. I don't want any of…this." I threw my hands up in the air, gesturing about Hogwarts.
"I know but-"
"If you're worried about all the rest of it maybe we should just wait." I said to her. I turned around, feeling my heart breaking all over again. I needed a cigarette.
"Scorpius…" I heard her say; she was pleading with me, asking me not to be so sensitive about things. I couldn't help it.
I then felt her hand grab me by the wrist and turn me around. I couldn't feel tall around her; I couldn't look down at her the way a man should be able to look down at his woman. Our eyes met each other by general view, not by habit. She was my equal in life, this was certain.
She kissed me for the first time, putting her hand on the back of my neck and pulling me in forcefully. It was the first time I had experienced the feeling of kissing an Elf, so serene, so cool and objected. I wondered at that point if the other boys she had kissed had felt the same way, as if their life was coming to one intervening moment where everything else didn't make sense, but this one thing…this one thing that made complete sense, washing over me like some serum of new life. Everything in my body was invigorated and my veins felt thick and pulsing, like ice was flowing through them, melting slowly, and giving me an intoxicating chill.
The hurricane had been set into motion.
