I warn you: this is very angsty. The first 1000 words or so is pure angst from Scorpius, and most of the chapter is basically Scorpius angsting, so be prepared. Enjoy!
Numbness came first. He sat there, staring after her for a moment, before he picked up his book and his wand from where they'd fallen to the floor, and returned to his studies. And the numbness was a good thing. He kept it there as long as possible, didn't think about what he'd heard, kept himself from digesting any of it, because he knew that the moment he did his world would crash down around him.
The next morning he awoke and proceeded calmly to breakfast, his mind only on his exams. He ate with his head in his book, and then left the hall when he was bidden as the house tables were vanished away and desks were conjured. He sat his written exam and felt it went rather well, and then ate lunch with Albus, going over every question he could possibly remember. And still he was numb, unthinking. He had his practical examination that afternoon, and performed brilliantly. He then returned to the Slytherin common room and began studying for the next day: Charms. The numbness continued. Most of the time he was able to forget about it, but a small portion of his brain, small enough that it wasn't missed but large enough for the task, was keeping thoughts at bay until his exams were over. Self-preservation was still a strong instinct.
He went through all of his exams that way. There were only six of them, so he was done in less than a week, and through all of that time he kept thoughts of Rose, of the bet, of everything, at bay. However, after he left his last practical, Defense Against the Dark Arts, the flood gates opened.
And suddenly he was furious. He was furious, and hurt, and guilty, and confused. He wasn't sure what to feel or who to blame or what to expect anymore, and he had the overwhelming urge, as he stood in the Entrance Hall and let the tide of students leaving and entering the Great Hall ebb and flow around him, to scream, to yell, to run.
And run he did. He took off and, before he knew it, found himself by the lake. Not where students normally sat under the beech trees, but further away from the castle and from the droves of students who were taking refuge outside after their examinations. Here there were no trees, nothing but grass, and water, and sky. The castle was a far enough distance from him that he couldn't hear the students, who were undoubtedly screaming and yelling and laughing, encased in a bubble of their own joy. He didn't want to be a part of it, he didn't want to hear it. He had so many emotions, too many, all equally painful and difficult to think about.
Firstly, he was angry. He was angry at Rose for attempting to use him and he was angry at himself for using her and for letting her use him. He was angry at Al, who must've known that James had a bet going with Rose as well, but who had let Scorpius get involved, had encouraged Scorpius, had told Scorpius that Rose surely cared for him. What kind of a friend does that? But, most of all, he was angry at James. James, who he'd always considered a decent bloke, fun to be around, game for a prank, but a good guy at heart. Now he saw the kind of guy James really was. He'd single-handedly fabricated a scheme that had dismantled Scorpius' and Rose's lives, all for his own sick enjoyment. Scorpius was so furious just thinking about it that his hands clenched into fists.
Beyond the anger, he was hurt. He'd trusted Rose, trusted in her honesty, her truthfulness, her benevolence, her kindness of spirit. He'd trusted her, and she'd been using him. She'd been playing him, it'd all been a game to her. He felt like a classic fool. And what was worse, she didn't even pity him. She'd said it when she'd told him about the bet, she'd said that she had to tell him the truth because only then could they be done with each other. She wanted to be done with him. That hurt the most. He realized that she must've felt something for him because she'd been furious and hurt when he'd told her he was playing her, but it couldn't have been love because if it had been, she wouldn't be so ready to drop him, even if it was what he deserved.
Lastly, he felt guilty, though this emotion, at least, wasn't totally knew, only intensified. He could be angry at Rose all he wanted, but the fact remained that he'd done the exact same thing she'd done, only he hadn't even been completely honest about why he'd done it, while she had been. They'd both taken the stupid bet, so however much she was accountable he was equally so. And he'd hurt her. He'd seen it the night he'd confessed and again the night that she had. Even though she was ready to be done with him, he'd left a lasting impression on her. The mark he'd made on her life had been a cruel one, and he regretted that more than anything else. He'd gladly suffer through all of this angst and pain and anger if only she hadn't been hurting. But she was, whether she wanted to admit it or not, whether she showed it or not, he knew she was hurting. He knew because he knew her better than he'd known anyone before. He knew her weaknesses, her fears, her hopes, her dreams. He'd had the power to make her happy, and instead he'd crushed her spirit. As lively as she'd been, she was a shell of her former self, and he'd reduced her to that, and for that he'd never forgive himself.
Scorpius sat by the lake, unmoving, for hours, and it wasn't until he heard someone call out to him that he realized just how long he'd been there.
"Scorpius!"
He turned his head and saw Albus heading towards him at a trot, his brow furrowed. Seeing Albus brought anger to the forefront of Scorpius' mind.
"What're you doing here?" Albus asked, panting slightly as he reached Scorpius. He plopped down in the grass next to him, waiting for an answer.
"Thinking," Scorpius replied, his eyes still on the water.
"About?"
"Rose told me the truth." Al's eye's widened, making it clear that he knew exactly what 'the truth' was referring to.
"How can you live with yourself?" Scorpius asked, turning to look at Albus, seething. Despite maintaining his numbness throughout his exams, anger had been stewing in the back of his mind for the entire time, and now it was coming out in full force. "How have you been living with yourself all year when you knew what was going on? You knew she was playing me, and yet you still tried to convince me that she was in love with me, worse still you tried to convince me that I was in love with her. Didn't you care? Didn't you care that this was going to hurt me, that it was going to hurt her? Don't we matter to you at all? You and that excuse for a human being that you call a brother watched us self-destruct for sport. You didn't do one damn thing about it when you saw me getting too emotionally involved, not one damn thing! You let us both carry on when you knew that it was all a lie! How do you sleep at night? I really want to know. How can you live with this? I'm dying to understand. Even for a Slytherin, this is base treachery. We're supposed to be best mates."
"We are," Al muttered feebly. He was beginning to feel ashamed.
"No," Scorpius' words cut through Al like a knife. "We were. Thanks to your efforts we're nothing but a broken heart and a jackass. Are you happy? Is this how it was all supposed to end? Did you even think about the consequences? Are you so thick that you didn't think about them, or did you simply not care? Was it a gamble, was it worth the risk to see if your little experiment would turn out? We're not a science experiment, we're people. Two of your closest friends, and her your blood relative, and you've treated us like trick ponies! Oh, let's see if we can make my two best mates, who happen to hate each other, fall in love! Never mind that it will emotionally destroy them both and there's no possibility of it ending well, it sounds like it'll be a good bit of fun, doesn't it?" The sarcasm in his voice ran thick.
Scorpius had reached a level of indignation, anger, and pain that was too high to allow him the ability to continue speaking.
Al seized his chance. "Don't you turn this all on me! What about you? You took the stupid bet in the first place, and so did she. Whatever happened afterward, you started this, not me. And once you were in it I tried my best to help you because what else could I do? You have no right to judge me, none. I thought this would all work out, I had the best of intentions, but what were your intentions, hm? To make Rose fall in love with you to win a stupid bet? If you want to talk about ignoble intentions, take a better look at yourself and lay off me."
Scorpius was seething. He didn't want to hear the truths Al was shouting at him. He didn't want to face his own guilt because that hurt too much. It hurt less to storm and rage at Al, to blame Albus and James for everything, but he knew he couldn't really do that.
"Would you just go?" he muttered.
"You've got to come in, mate. Curfew-
"Just go!" he snarled, "I don't give a damn about curfew. School ends in less than a week, they're not gonna give a damn about where I am, if they even notice that I'm gone."
"Fine," Albus said, getting up and striding away. He turned back after a moment and said, "You can't wallow forever, Scorpius. She's not gonna wait forever."
And with that Albus left Scorpius to his thoughts once more.
Rose, unlike Scorpius, had completely rallied by the time that she took her last N.E.W.T. Of course, she was still hurt, she was still angry, she was still guilty, and she still missed him, but she was able to push it all aside and be productive. Rose Weasley never let anything get in the way of her future, not even Scorpius Malfoy.
Clarice, true to her word, had not mentioned his name once, for which Rose was grateful. She got through exams without thinking much about him, as she hardly ever saw him and had so many other things to think about. Once exams ended, Rose wasted no time finding something else to occupy her mind, which is why she was packing, almost a week early, the night after their last N.E.W.T.
She had methodically emptied her trunk, sorted her things, folded her cloths, threw away the trash, and was in the process of putting everything back into the trunk when Clarice came in looking for her, as she had missed dinner.
"You're seriously packing? We don't leave for a week!" Clarice said incredulously.
Rose shrugged. "This way I'll have plenty of time the night before to say my goodbyes to the castle and everybody. And," she smirked, "I can laugh at you and all the rest as you guys run around your dormitory at midnight trying to find your things."
Clarice rolled her eyes. "Of course, this gives you plenty of free time to talk to certain people..."
"I thought you agreed never to bring him up again?"
"No, I agreed never to say his name again. And I haven't. All I'm saying is that you really should talk to him before we leave."
"No," Rose said, shaking her head. "I told him the truth and I walked away, and now I can be done with him, which is exactly what I need. Now I may even have the chance to meet a devilishly handsome trainee healer."
"Be as cavalier as you want, but you and I both know that you need more closure than you got."
"How do you know I didn't get closure? I haven't told you what he said."
"Which leads me to believe that you didn't give him the chance to say anything."
"If he wanted to talk to me he would've by now."
"You're being horribly immature," Clarice muttered, walking over to her bedside table and rooting through her things.
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
Rose accented her last word by throwing a rolled up pair of socks at Clarice, who turned around, putting on a great show of indignation while barely concealing a grin.
"You're going to regret that," she smirked, reaching for her pillow.
The last week of term, their last week at Hogwarts, passed in a blur of goodbyes to teachers, classmates, favorite haunts, and the castle in general. Scorpius was no longer speaking to Albus, or much of anyone else, though the former was due to his anger while the latter was simply due to his moroseness. He had resolved to speak to Rose one last time, and tell her about his bet with James. He told himself it was because he wanted her to be angry at them too, and to punish them, and to a certain extent that was the reason, but, as was always the case with Rose, there was more beneath the surface. He wasn't ready to be 'done with her,' and he planned on telling her that. He needed more closure than he'd gotten because Rose had inexplicably become the center of his universe over the course of the year. Of course, she'd always occupied a certain amount of his time, but this year things had changed. He supposed it had to do with the line between love and hate. Before, he'd thought it was a canyon at the very least, if not an ocean, but now he realized it was simply a line, and a thin one at that. When you're indifferent to someone they occupy none of your time, you don't think about them, you don't have an opinion of them, you don't care about them. When you hate someone, you have to care enough to hate, know enough to hate. They occupy your thoughts almost as if you loved them, and somewhere during this mess of a year his feelings for Rose had crossed that line. He wouldn't say that he loved her because he didn't. After everything they'd been through, after the way that she'd hurt him, he couldn't possibly love her, but he knew now that he could someday, and that he still cared about her. He also knew that if they ever gave a real relationship any type of chance that he would love with her. The idea had scared him before, but after her betrayal it didn't because he knew what it would be like to lose her because he'd already lost her. He knew the pain he'd have to endure if they tried to be a couple and things didn't work out, and he knew without a doubt that it would be worth it.
However, just because he wasn't afraid of being in love with her didn't mean he wasn't afraid of actually taking the first step, which is why he waited. And waited. And waited.
The last day of term arrived, and still he had not acted. Hogwarts didn't have a graduation ceremony of any kind, although boarding the Hogwarts Express for the last time was ceremony enough. He'd bidden farewell to his favorite professors, visited his favorite spots, and was taking his last look at the castle as he boarded the train, his trunk in one hand and his owl's cage in the other.
He was debating where to look for a compartment when someone tapped his shoulder. He turned around and was face to face with Al, who was grinning.
"We rode together on our first ride on the train, remember? It'd be a shame not to ride together one last time." Albus extended a hand, which Scorpius took, and knowing look passed between them. So many unsaid things were made known in that look, and Scorpius knew that, despite everything, Al was his best mate, and would be for the rest of his adult life. In that look Albus was apologizing, Scorpius was apologizing, Albus was accepting, and Scorpius was accepting, and as they looked for their compartment a comfortable silence overtook them, the unsaid things still occupying their minds.
They got a compartment to themselves, but something was missing. On their first ride on the Hogwarts express two others had been with them, Clarice Longbottom, and Rose Weasley. It was the first and only time that she and Scorpius had ridden together on the train, the beginning of his friendship with Al and her's with Clarice, and the beginning of their rivalry, their all-consuming hatred, their...love?
Almost as if Al had read his mind, he said, "If only Clarice and Rose were here. We'd have come full circle, wouldn't we?"
"Yeah," muttered Scorpius, glancing out of the window at the castle in the distance. Students were still on the platform, piling into the train, and somewhere in the crowd he spotted bright red curls that he recognized instantly. His stomach dropped. He'd run out of chances.
To his great surprise, however, it seemed as if he had not. For Clarice pulled Rose into their compartment not two minutes later, saying "It's how we came to Hogwarts, this is how we have to leave!"
Neither Scorpius nor Rose missed the knowing look that Clarice and Al exchanged, and Scorpius realized angrily exactly why Al had been so keen to make up with him at that particular moment. Rose, however, who knew nothing of Al's involvement with Scorpius' betrayal, was simply seething at being forced to sit in the same compartment with him.
She knew that Clarice was right, that she did want more closure than she'd gotten. She wanted to know what he thought of her confession, whether he felt as hurt and betrayed as she had, but she didn't know how to ask.
It was sure to be a long train ride.
I'm really pleased with this chapter (despite the large amount of angst). Originally I'd intended to continue the chapter and include the entire ride on the train, but it would've been much too long (as it is this is one of the longest chapters yet), so I'm stopping here, but I'm still feeling inspired, so the next update shouldn't be too far behind. Reviews, as always, are much appreciated and loved.
XOXO
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