Chapter 11: Timing is everything.
"Rose…"
MERLIN HELP HER, if he said her goddamn name ONE more time she was going to slap him upside his stupid, beautiful face.
"Rose," he started.
Ok, yeah, that was it. He was getting slapped.
"I like you… a lot," he finished.
Rose restrained her hand. What? Her mouth didn't exactly hang agape, but it came bloody close a ridiculous gawk. She searched his face for the twinkle in his eye, the twitch of a smile, the quirk of an eyebrow, literally anything to tell her that he was joking and that she should punch his arm good-naturedly to cover up her dashed hopes.
Oh, god. No, he was not joking. Scorpius was serious. He liked her.
He liked her?
She finally managed to breathe since he first started saying her name, what felt like an eternity without air. "Scor?" she choked out.
His very serious, very determined expression turned panicky in an instant. "Wait, no, that- that's not what I meant!"
Rose felt her stomach churn and her heart drop into the nauseous pit of her stomach. There. There it was. The take-back. The misunderstanding. She steeled herself, clenching her fists until she was sure the bitten-down nails would puncture her palms.
He looked at the wall just past her head and ran a hand through his hair. Couldn't he even look her in the face when he splattered her heart on the floor? His voice was charged with nervous energy. "It's just- well, it's more than that, isn't it? I- I don't have much experience in all of this, but I think I love you." His last words came out in a breathless rush. He glanced at her face with uncertainty in his eyes.
Oh.
…Oh. Well.
Oh.
She wasn't giving him much to go on. Her face must have been bug-eyed and red as hell. And perhaps just a bit teary. …Yes, alright, those were definitely tears she felt on her lashes.
Scorpius flipped out. "OH, god! Oh, Merlin!" He turned away, hands covering his face, and then back again. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I knew this would happen, shiiiiit!"
Rose shook her head, scrubbing furiously at her face. She might laugh at his reaction if this weren't such a crucial moment. "No- no- don't! Don't you dare!"
His hands fell to his sides. His face… His face was so hopeful, almost imploring. "What? Don't dare what? What're you saying?"
"Because-."
Rose was brutally cut off by the imminent appearance, and un-ignorable yell, of Margaret Gladdery herself, secretary of the Gobstones club that was supposed to be meeting right then. She was trotting down the hall towards them, huffing and puffing between shouts. "Oy! -Oy! Professor Vector wants to- she wants to see you, Scorpius!"
"Not a good time, Margaret!" Rose and Scor shouted simultaneously.
"B-but-! She-! She said to tell you your dad was here! In her office!" She gained their full attention with such an announcement, right as she reached them.
Scorpius blanched visibly. "My father?"
Margaret blinked owlishly, panting. "T-that's what she said, I swear! I'm supposed to fill in for you on patrol!"
He looked almost about to tell her to shove it, but seemed to think better of it. "Alright, I'll leave it to you then." To Rose, he said, with a wry smile, "I guess it'll have to wait. Meet me in the common room- no, the library, when you get done?"
She nodded dumbly. Margaret looked back and forth between them, so very oblivious to the whole situation.
"Right," he said, and took off. "I'll see you then!"
They watched him until he disappeared around the corner far down the hall. Through a gasp, Margaret said, "Fwua! Wonder… wonder what that was all about."
Although she could hazard a guess at why the mysterious Mr. Malfoy might want to speak with his son, she couldn't quite grasp why he would come all the way to the school to do so. How had he even gotten there? He couldn't have apparated. Everyone knew you couldn't apparate into Hogwarts.
"Shall we start on the rounds?" Margaret persisted.
A large part of Rose wanted to scream at the poor girl for interrupting such an obviously private moment between her and Scorpius, but she managed to keep her temper (somehow). "What happened to Gobstones?"
Margaret shrugged and started down the hall. Rose followed reluctantly, somehow attached to that little alcove of a dead end where Scor had… told her he loved her? Had that actually happened? Her mind wasn't playing tricks on her? It still felt so surreal, like something she'd made up in her head.
"The committee meeting got canceled." Oh, Margaret was talking again. Joy. "That's why I was headed over to Vector's office. To let her know I could help with the patrol tonight, but she got to me first, with the news." Alright, perhaps that was a little mean of her. It wasn't Margaret's fault Scorpius's father was there, or that she happened to be the one to tell him, or that she just happened to find them at the most inopportune time. The silly girl had no idea what was going on- how could she?
Still, Rose did have to bite her tongue every time Margaret attempted to make conversation throughout the rest of their patrol (Merlin's saggy-baggies, there were too many damned halls!) to keep back all the nasty retorts. She needed silence to think everything over. Oh, god, there was so much to think over.
He loved her.
He loved her. And she'd almost told him… well, what had she almost told him? Having never previously allowed herself to think on the matter too long, she wasn't quite sure where she stood. It was blaringly and unavoidably clear (at least in her own mind) that she liked him tremendously, but did she love him? Weren't they too young to know what that kind of love was like? They were only sixteen for Merlin's sake!
Come to think of it, Scorpius had said something to the effect that he wasn't sure either. At least she knew he wasn't out of his mind and proposing marriage like they were the new Romeo and Juliet. That wasn't love- that was stupidity and uncontrollable hormones. Her mother had insisted that the apparently famous story was a classic ("essential to anyone who wanted to study Muggle culture", she said), and it was written by a linguistic genius, but, damn, what a pair of idiots those two were. As one of the least stupid people she knew, it really came as no surprise that he wouldn't say something he didn't mean.
Rose felt an only slightly familiar twinge in her… well, everywhere. Shit. Even if he wasn't sure it was love, the mere notion that what he felt for her might very well be love was… fucking mind-blowing.
God, over a million words in the English language, and the only descriptor she could think of was "fucking mind-blowing".
Shakespeare would roll over in his grave.
ooOoo
Scorpius knew the way to Vector's office all too well. He'd spent far more than a few evenings there trying to convince his head of house not to contact his father about the (unfortunately true) substance allegations against him. His legs practically had muscle memory of the many, many stairs he'd had to traverse every time he screwed up noticeably.
He'd never exactly been a fan of old Professor Vector's until the last year, when she'd given him the biggest second chance of his life. He had an inkling that Rose might have had some influence, but he knew that when it had come down to it he could have been removed from his prefectural duties if Vector had so chosen. She hadn't, and he was eternally grateful to her, not only for the unimaginable faith she'd put in his promise to shape up, but also for the mere fact that he hadn't had to give up patrols with Rose. It'd taken a lot of uncomfortably devious finagling to ensure that he would be paired with her on a regular basis, and he hadn't been about to give up that precious time alone with her.
Damn that Margaret. Well, not her, exactly (it wasn't her fault after all), but damn her absolutely awful timing. As he ran up the last flight of stairs to Professor Vector's office, he couldn't help but think that if Margaret had only arrived one minute later (30 seconds even. Was that too much to ask?), Rose might actually have been able to tell him… something. That she liked him as well? That she loved him? He wasn't quite certain what she'd been about to say, but he was sure that it was something important.
He suddenly recalled his whole reason for running up so many lamentably steep stairs just in time to knock on Vector's thick office door. The door swung inwards abruptly, but there was no one attached to the handle on the other side. Both the Gryffindor head of house and his father sat in the comfortable chairs that occupied the space in front of the large, dark mahogany desk on the other end of the room. Scor realized that Vector wasn't sitting in the wing-back velvet chair behind the desk because she wouldn't have been able to see over the monstrous piles of parchment, books, and files that filled it. The two adults had turned to see who had arrived, and now they stood.
Mr. Malfoy looked quite uncomfortable. "Scorpius."
"What's going on?" Scor asked, trying not to sound out of breath. "What's happened?"
Professor Vector coughed and stowed her wand in the folds of her stately robes. "I'll give you two a moment." As she passed him on her way out the door, Scor heard her mutter, "Or several."
The door closed behind her and Scor was forced to enter the chamber properly. It unnerved him that his father hadn't sat down yet. In the few moments that he'd had to gather his thoughts, he'd supposed maybe they'd sit in the comfy chairs and have a nice little chat about something relatively trivial, or perhaps something semi-important, such as Scor's schooling. When the ancient, sand-powered clock on Vector's mantle signaled that a minute had passed and his father still stood before him, it became apparent that this wasn't going to be one of those talks. "What's the matter?" he asked, finding his voice at last. He wasn't sure he liked the studious intensity of Mr. Malfoy's steady gaze.
Draco Malfoy laughed. A short, dry laugh that could have come from Scorpius's own mouth. Again, he was struck at how much of himself he saw in his father- or, rather, how much of his father he saw in himself. "Nothing's the matter, per say. Well, nothing too urgent. You're going to call me a melodramatic old fool, son."
"I won't," Scor asserted swiftly and firmly. "I would never." Is that what he believed his son thought of him?
The smile that lit up his dad's face for a brief second was almost foreign to him, and most certainly indiscernible. "I appreciate that. But," he added quickly. He folded his hand behind his back and then apparently thought better of it. Well, there was the Malfoy awkwardness. No question where he got that. "As pleasant it is to hear you say that, it does not change the purpose of my visit. I'm afraid it's a very selfish, personal reason."
Scor could do nothing but stare, so his father continued. "I understand you took your grandfather's death exceedingly hard, Scorpius. You didn't sleep for two days?"
The younger man flinched. "How did you-?"
"Your mother notices everything," was the simple reply.
Guilt cascaded over Scorpius like the battery of an ocean tide. That meant his mother had probably worried about him ever since he left London- and possibly his father too, once she'd confided in him. "It was nothing, I just-."
Again, his father stopped him. "If that's nothing, then I'm afraid of what something might look like for you." Scor wanted to remind him of that singularly fucked up night when he'd finally come clean to his parents about what he'd gotten into at school, just for reference. Somehow, though, it just didn't seem like the time. "Knowing now that it was so difficult for you, I feel…" His son nearly gaped. Had he just used the 'f' word? "…that perhaps I neglected you during such an emotional time. No, not perhaps." Mr. Malfoy seemed to stand taller, as though gathering his courage. "I wasn't there for you, Scorpius, and I am very sorry. I was so wrapped up in my own grief that I didn't notice what you, or anyone else, were going thr-."
Not happening. "Dad, no, you have no reason to be sorry." Scorpius crossed the space between them in just a few steps. "I promise you, you have absolutely no reason. You weren't neglecting me- you were in pain. You've never neglected me in my entire life." His words felt unoriginal and stupidly simplistic, but they were what he needed to say and nothing was going to stop him now. "Not once during those two days did I feel like you had abandoned me, or forgotten about me. I was more worried about you, and how you were dealing with everything."
The shock in his dad's face encouraged him to forge ahead. "I know your relationship with Lucius wasn't… the best, or the healthiest, and I was worried that maybe you had regrets about that- I mean, no, of course you did- but I thought maybe you thought-," Ugh, words. "-that you were doing the same thing in our relationship. I didn't want you to feel like you were a bad father, because you're not. You are the best dad I could ask for. Our father/son dynamic isn't the most normal, but since when is our family normal? We've got bloody Death Eaters in our family tree- it's impossible. I just don't want you to worry that you were screwing up with me." He paused for breath. Everything was coming out now- not how he wanted, but perhaps how it was needed. "I know I'm not the best son, and I've done some really, really stupid things in the past, but it's never, ever been because of you.
"You are a brilliant dad. I… I wouldn't trade you for anyone else. And I'm sorry I let that go unsaid for so long, because you have to know that. You have to," he repeated, trailing off. His face had somehow become disgustingly sweaty and his collar felt much too tight.
His father didn't cry, or break down, but he hadn't expected him to. That wasn't usually how they expressed themselves (exhaustion-induced train incidents excluded, of course). He did, however, pull Scor into an almost unprecedented embrace (they didn't hug a lot because neither of them really wanted to). It was… large. It was a very large feeling, as though they were stocking up on such a rare form of contact and affection. Although, affection didn't really seem to cover everything that was in that hug. There was so much more.
They broke away and stared at the ground in characteristic awkwardness. "Thank you, Scorpius," his father said quietly. "I don't think I give you enough credit… for your perceptiveness, and even sensitivity."
Scor cleared his throat. "Steady on there, dad. I'm not all that sensitive."
Mr. Malfoy gave an unexpectedly hearty laugh. "Oh, no, of course not. We wouldn't want anyone to think you might be sensitive."
Merlin's beard, his dad was teasing him. Well, what had he expected? It was his dad, after all.
"I'm sorry you had to rush up here like that," his dad gestured towards the closed door. "I suppose I caused a bit of a stir, coming here so suddenly and asking to see you immediately. I think Professor Vector almost shit herself when I turned up."
Scor forced down a snort of a laugh. He'd never heard his father refer to any of his professors so disrespectfully. He regained his composure and shrugged. "S'alright. How'd you get here, anyways? You can't apparate into Hogwarts."
"As convenient as apparating is, the Floo Network is quite handy as well." He gave his son a wink.
Ahhhh, so that was it. "I didn't know we were connected."
"I believe it's only the professors' offices that are connected," Mr. Malfoy explained.
"Learn something new everyday."
"Indeed."
"Well," Scor said. He didn't know how to retreat gracefully. "I, er, I sort of need to-."
Mr. Malfoy waved a hand, indicating it was alright. "Yes, of course. You probably have loads of homework this year. I remember school being particularly difficult in my sixth year."
His son grinned sheepishly. "Er, not exactly. I've actually… Well, I've got to meet someone."
"A girl?" Although he raised an eyebrow, Mr. Malfoy didn't seem all that surprised.
"Yeeaaahhhh…"
His father smiled knowingly. "Rose Weasley?"
Scor nodded, his face traitorously warm.
"Well, then, you really shouldn't keep her waiting." Mr. Malfoy practically pushed him to the door. "If I remember correctly, her mother was exceptionally proficient with hexes, and if she's anything like her, it would be foolish to be late."
"She wouldn't-" he began.
His father opened the door and gave him an all too meaningful look. "Like you could resist anyhow."
"Hey, now-" Scor protested, but was again cut off.
"Go on, you lovesick fool!" And with that, Scorpius was shoved out into the hall, almost falling against Professor Vector.
"Oh, er, hello, professor."
Her arms were crossed and she glanced at him sharply. "Are you and your father quite through with my office, Mr. Malfoy?"
He saluted. She always made him feel like saluting, for some reason. "Quite through, professor. Sorry about taking over your office like that. Er, I've actually got to run now, so if you'll excuse me…" He ducked past her elbow and made a dash for the stairs. Something was shouted at him, but he was far too busy running to hear what it was.
The heightened pace of his heartbeat seemed to match the slap of his steps upon the stone stairs. One after another after another after another- so fast that he feared he might fall forward and break his neck. Wouldn't that be just his luck? Killed by clumsiness before he had a chance to find out what in hell's name Rose had wanted to tell him. Not like he wasn't going to die of anticipation anyways.
Was it possible to die from overexcitement?
Probably.
What was the common term? A heart attack?
He really needed to stop thinking. There would be time enough for thinking and overthinking. Scorpius was glad there was no librarian in the school library. He would have gotten a week's worth of detention for his unruly entrance that involved knocking over a chair, and almost mowing down a poor fourth year, if there had been a teacher on duty.
Scor frantically walked up and down the aisles, worried that he was late, but Rose was nowhere to be found. He disturbed several of the studious students still there by popping his head around the bookcases very suddenly. "Sorry, sorry," he apologized more than once. "Just looking for someone, sorry."
Only after pacing down the same aisle for the fourth time did he remember how long prefect patrols could take. She might not be there for another half hour. He considered waiting for her at a secluded table in the back, but wasn't sure he could wait long enough for her to come find him. That meant a table at the very front, right by the door. It was pathetic and he knew it, but image be damned- whatever she had to say was far more important.
What was she going to say? The few, very different possibilities sent equal amounts of eagerness and fear through him. What if she only thought of him as a brother, and politely rejected his affections? No, she'd told him not to apologize- that alone was enough to allow him to hope. For the first time in three years, he dared to hope that this would work (Oh, Merlin, he hoped this would work out). His unbridled emotions, no longer restrained by the fear of what might happen if he ever told her how much he cared for her (because, been there, done that), were accompanied by a headiness that would have been embarrassing in any other state of mind. In fact, he'd probably cringe later at the wild speculations and flighty ideas that ran rampant through his head. For now, he let them run.
Be free, ridiculous images of Rose with an adorably messy face!
Trumpet on, stupid, cliché love songs that all reminded him of Rose!
They might cause him pain later, but that was later. He was going to enjoy being in love with Rose Weasley, even if it was only until she got off of patrol…
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A/N: Hey, guys! Sorry for the slightly late update (and for the cliffhanger. Wow, I am a jerk) Hope you liked it! Tell me what you thought with a review! I read all of them :)
