Thank you everyone who reviewed the last chapter, you guys give me life! :) Thank you The Chirpy Bitch for beta-ing the chapter as usual - which is unusually long so kudos!
As usual follows, favourites and reviews are bae since it's the only way I have of knowing if anyone is actually reading / enjoying this drivel!
December 26th, 2027 - 02h45
The fireplace crackled.
Rose stopped scowling at the indecipherable Pediatrics report her sleep deprived brain had produced before Christmas and found herself looking at the flushed face of Scorpius Malfoy.
Oh, great.
She'd really hoped the blonde boy might prefer to extend his stay at his parents' place. When Al had told her he was going to Yardley's for a Christmas party she'd almost jumped for joy at the unexpected respite.
She felt hollow after spending the holidays at The Burrow. She felt drained and tired and done with the world. Not physically - she'd hardly had a better night's sleep these past few months - just… emotionally.
There were only so many different ways she could try to explain that she had no life to people who refused to accept it.
'But surely you could find time for lunch' and 'Really, Rose, you're being overdramatic'. 'Come on, we could all go out for dinner'.
She wanted to scream at them. She loved them, but everyone needed to take a chill pill and lay off her.
If she never saw another human being again it'd be too soon.
It was fortunate then that Scorpius Malfoy hardly qualified as one.
The blonde tosser was dragging a series of bags behind him, undoubtedly the spoils of his Christmas. He looked like he was here to stay.
He was also wearing the most appalling robes she'd ever laid eyes on.
"You look happy." There was a tinge of sarcasm to Scorp's words as he haphazardly dumped the bags on a nearby chair. "Good Christmas?"
No unreasonable insults, no infantile name-calling, nothing.
It was so odd. Pleasant, but still odd, like there was something missing.
"What in Morgana's name are you wearing?" Rose asked between chuckles as she took in his attire. "What is that?"
Civility be damned, she'd never in her entire life seen such obnoxious party robes as the one Scorp was donning right now. If a lace shop and a bucket of green paint decided to get married and have babies, that robe would be the unfortunate offspring.
"Grandma's gift," he replied, removing the monstrosity and carefully draping it over the bags. "It's unspeakable, isn't it?"
He sat down on the chair closest to her and crossed his arms on top of one of her book piles, looked as tired and done with the world as she felt. The man was apparently immune to the holly-bloody-jolly madness that was affecting everyone else.
It made her want to hug him.
This might not be so bad after all.
"There are no words," Rose replied, a smile growing on her lips. "Grandma Molly sent you a gift. It's somewhere in my bags if you're keen."
She didn't need to tell him what it was, he bloody well knew. The man had been receiving the mandatory Weasley jumper ever since he had showered Grandma's pie with compliments that one time back in Third Year.
Sly of him, yes.
"You're damned right I am. She's the only one who ever gets my size right," Scorp huffed, throwing a disdainful nod at the general direction of his discarded gifts. "I got ten of them and not a single one is a proper fit."
Truth be told, Grandma Molly didn't bother knowing what size people were nowadays. A few years back Al had managed to charm his to be a perfect fit and since then all the Weasley jumpers came magicked that way.
Rose always pretended she didn't know and always made a big fuss about it - Grandma always got a nice flush on her face, she was so pleased.
She wasn't about to let Malfoy in on it. The wanker always got a picture embroidered on his, though by now Grandma Weasley was bound to be out of Quidditch references: she'd done Bludgers, brooms, Puddlemere's logo...
And all Rose ever got was a bloody 'R'.
"What are you frowning about?" One of Scorp's hands lazily reached over, his fingers smoothing over the crease between her eyebrows. "And why aren't you at Yardley's party?"
It was meant to be a nice gesture.
The second he touched her every single one of her Healer instincts kicked into gear at the same time.
"Your hands are freezing." Rose grasped his hand between her own and held it in place for a second.
He was looking rather flushed as he tried to wiggle his hand away from her grasp. She eyed him critically for a few seconds, taking in the too shiny eyes, the flushed countenance.
She would've spotted it the second he walked in had she not been so immersed on those stupid robes.
"I'm bloody fine."
Hopefully, he was right.
"Don't be a baby," Rose scowled, getting up to her feet. "We've had Shivers running rampant this year. Were there any kids at your place?"
She reached out to feel his forehead and he dodged out of the way, like the pest he was.
She hated sick people.
"Stop it woman," he complained, smacking her hand out of the way. "I feel fine."
Rose gritted her teeth. It took every single ounce of self restraint to stop herself from tackling him right there and then.
"Were there kids, Scorp? Yay or nay?"
She.
Hated.
Sick.
People.
"Sure there were. A bunch of sticky fingered brats."
The perfect vessel for Shivers. Kids incubated slower and tended to spread the damned bug all over the place before anyone knew what was happening.
"Goddamnit, Malfoy." Rose planted her hands on his cheeks and held his face. "Stop squirming."
"Back to Malfoy, are we?" He was more flushed now, if that was even possible. "I liked Scorp better."
"Only when you're being a pain," Rose grinned, not so gently slapping a hand onto his forehead. "Which you are."
He was burning up and not in a Pretty-Girl-Is-Touching-My-Face way, no.
Burning. Up.
There went her stupid Pediatrics report. In ten hours they'd both be bedridden like a couple of idiots.
And Rose Weasley was the biggest idiot of all, touching him without inoculating herself like that. She might as well have ordered a vial of infection to go with her morning coffee.
"Come on, we're getting you to St. Mungo's," Rose said, grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet. "We'd better send word to your parents too."
Malfoy Manor was probably an incubator for Shivers right now.
Lovely, just lovely.
"Can't I just take a potion or something?"
Ah, this.
There was no potion that could stop the Shivers, per say. If she were lucky getting it caught this early might spare her some vomiting, but Scorp had a nasty week coming his way.
The thing with Shivers was that you had to ride it out. There was no shortcut.
First you put up with the shaking and the high fever. Then the magical bit of the bug kicked in and you were given the joyful gift of hot flashes and persistent vomiting.
When your body finally managed to fight back, you would just collapse into a coma of sorts, completely unaware of your surroundings and shriek yourself hoarse. Of all the stages it was the least work. There was no vomit to clear, no sweaty sheets to change.
It was also the most emotionally draining.
And then there was the regular sniffles, dripping nose and itchy throat that came with any stupid cold.
"Sorry, I just ran out of Miracle Cures." Irony tinged her words as she helplessly felt her pockets with her hands as if looking for an imaginary vial. "If you'd only gotten here ten minutes earlier-"
"Oh, shut up."
"You shut up, Patient Zero. I'll be out of commission for a bloody week at the very least." She met Scorp's too bright gray eyes and asked, her lips set in a thin line: "Do you feel like you want to hurl?"
Thank Merlin for that stupid party.
At least Al would come out of this unscathed.
"Every time I look at you," he replied, obnoxiously grinning up at her. "Every single day."
Wanker.
Rose couldn't help grinning back at him. For someone about to be whisked away on a midnight stroll to St. Mungo's just a day after Christmas he was behaving rather well. She'd always pictured him as a fussy baby when it came to this, more like Albus and less like… well, her.
"Seriously, though."
She grabbed one of his warmer robes from the coat rack and tossed it at him.
"Not at the moment, no." He picked it up and wrapped it around himself. "Should I?"
"Let's hope you stay that way."
Hopefully she was wrong.
Hopefully he was fine. Maybe he'd caught a spot of cold and was just feverish.
Working at St. Mungo's always had you guessing the worse. It could be just that: a regular, run of the mill, non-magical cold.
Rose picked up her own jacket and pulled one of Al's scarves from the rack. She walked over to Scorpius and decisively draped it around his neck, almost choking him with it.
Again, he didn't complain.
"You're being rather nice about all this," Rose commented, eyeing him warily.
"You're the Healer," he replied, shrugging and pulling the scarf to give himself some breathing room. "Should I kick up a fuss instead?"
"Nah," she replied, taking his freezing hand into her own and picking up her wand from the nearby bowl. "Please don't."
December 26th, 2027 - 04h10
Sometimes she hated being right.
By the time she had managed to track down Choi, Scorp was shaking like a leaf and his forehead was so hot you could have used it to fry an egg.
"You know we can't keep him here."
Yes, Scorp would have needed to be much more far gone to be admitted. She could of course sit with him for another day and come back tomorrow, let him incubate for a while and come back when he really was dying.
Wishful thinking.
Rose's scowl met Choi's.
The man opened up a cabinet and started removing familiar vials from them. There was everything from hydration potions to gastric liners there.
"Ride it out. By now you know the drill but I'm writing it down anyway."
Just in case she was too stupid to remember it tomorrow after the Shivers kicked in, was what he meant.
"Thanks."
"I don't want to see you around for two weeks. I'll talk to Jeffers and the rest and let them know you'll be away."
Great, now she was being banned from her place of employment.
"What about my work?"
"I'll have Alec Sauvage take care of it." He always said the guy's name in that deliberate, unpleasant way that he reserved for the people he really, truly disliked. "Merry Christmas, Miss Weasley."
Maybe Choi did have a sense of humor after all.
"Al, don't come home," Rose told him over the phone as she tried to juggle the bazillion potions Choi had given her. "Malfoy's got the Shivers."
To be frank, the moment he'd touched her forehead there was a 50% chance he'd given them to her. When she'd touched him without inoculating herself, like a bloody amateur, that's when she'd caught it for sure.
Amusing to think she was depending on her immune system to tide her over. The way she'd been going for the past two years, she doubted she even had one anymore.
"Shit, do you want me to come over?"
"No, are you an idiot? Anything but that. It's a bloody mess. Can you stay at Yardley's?"
"Sure. Do you need anything?"
Scorp wordlessly started grabbing potions out of her arms and stuffing them inside his much larger robe pockets.
She threw him a thankful look.
"Just stay the hell away," she told Al. "I might be able to take care of both of us but if I have to Scourgify for three I may kill myself."
"I'll ask Horace to get you guys some chicken soup!"
That had been Yardley, of course. Judging from the slurred way the two of them were talking, they were happily buzzed already.
"Not for a few days. Tell him to send it over around Friday."
"Sure thing, Rosie. Get better!"
Hopefully the two idiots would remember not to come prancing around the next morning.
"Here we go," Rose said, sitting down next to Scorp, a hand brushing a stray strand of hair away from his face. "Come on."
He didn't move, looking over at her with a frown.
"What, now you're going to be difficult?" Her lips pursed and she scowled back at him. "Really?"
There was no way she could drag him by herself if he didn't want to go. She could probably get him to the lobby with the Ant Carrying spell, but she couldn't very well stuff him into the Floo, he'd undoubtedly wind up somewhere weird.
Maybe she should just carry his ass back home by walking. The flat was close by. Maybe-
"I'm sorry."
Her eyebrows shot up. Scorp had been awfully quiet since they'd gotten to St. Mungo's and he chose to break his vow of silence to apologize? For something that wasn't even his fault?
Odd to think this was the same asshole she'd gone to Hogwarts with.
"I know, dear, I know." He looked so miserable it made her heart hurt. She took his shaking hands into her own, pulling him up to his feet. "Let's get you home."
"For what it's worth, you're-"
But she never really knew what she was because Scorp chose that moment to barf all over her.
Just. Lovely.
Luckily, Jesse Boot had been on call and he'd helped her get Scorp home. The pair of them had set out to gather every clean sheet and every clean pair of pajamas in the house, stockpiling them like they were made of gold.
He helped her extend the couch wide and far enough that they managed to fit Scorp's mattress on top of it, creating a makeshift sofa-bed of sorts. The pair gathered towels, tea mugs and other assorted necessities, removed any breakables out of the way and cleared the path to and from the bathroom, preparing the house for the onslaught of sweat and barf that would hit the following day.
"You sure you don't want me to swing by?"
"Don't!" Her tone had come out a little sharper than she intended and she quickly corrected herself: "Thanks so much Jesse. We'll be fine."
If there was anything she hated more than being sick it was having people fussing over her.
And Jesse was a fusser.
She'd seen him worrying himself silly over multiple patients and had vowed never to let him anywhere near her even if she were dying.
Especially if she were dying.
"You sure? I can move here for a couple of days-"
Hell to the bloody no. She'd rather eat dirt.
"No, no, really, you've done more than enough already."
"If you do need me, I'm a call away."
"I know," she said sheepishly, glancing at the earnest face of her co-worker. "Thanks."
"Remember, plenty of fluids. And don't let Malfoy get cold. And make sure you have food for when you guys get better-"
"I know Jess. I know."
Rose sighed with relief as he finally left. The man was exhausting. Great person, but so tiresome. She peered into the fireplace, wondering for a second if she should blacklist him from their Floo, at least while this lasted.
Maybe not. If things got really bad… ah, but she didn't want to go there, did she?
This whole endeavour was entirely based on her delusion that she could hold the fort. If she started mulling over the million things that could go wrong, she might as well give up now.
"You hanging in there?" Rose looked over at Scorp, who was lying on the couch. They'd dragged his duvet from his room and he was practically buried in it. "Want me to get you a cup of tea?"
He'd managed to get into fresh pajamas himself this once but she figured it was only a matter of time before she ended up seeing Scorp naked and vice-versa, which, truth be told, was going to be far more mortifying for him than it would be for her.
At the end of the day, naked people were just that: naked people. She'd seen a million of them, she hardly noticed it anymore.
"Can you make tea?"
Pretty chirpy for someone who'd hurled his Christmas dinner all over her.
"Tea doesn't burn," she pointed out, shaking her head at him and getting up to her feet. "I might just manage."
"Then yeah."
Rose returned a few minutes later to find him asleep. She quietly set down the mug close to him on one of the side tables Jesse had helped move. Scorp stirred in his sleep and she backed away slowly, not wanting to wake him. She sat down at her usual spot, her lips pressed into a thin line as she watched one of the healthiest people she knew shudder and writhe in his sleep.
She'd seen sick people, hell, her life was filled to the brim with them. And yet somehow this was new and different. It made her heart ache.
It was going to be a shitty couple of days.
December 27th, 2027 - 02h20
"Come on, mate, you gotta help me here," she groaned, as she forcefully pulled Scorp onto a sitting position. "Shirt off."
He was drenched in sweat and his body temperature had just taken a nosedive.
The seemingly endless pile of pajamas he owned - seriously, there were like a million of them - was starting to look sparse and it had only been a day. And she was starting to feel a bit… iffy, to say the least.
The corpse of a man complied, his face as pale as the sheets he was lying in. Scorp pulled the shirt over his head and allowed her to cast a drying spell on him before slipping into the new one.
"You're going to need to shower soon. I can help if you want."
She could still help. In a few hours that wouldn't be the case anymore.
"I'd rather drown in my own sweat," he scowled, looking away as if he were incapable of looking her in the eye, "thank you very much."
To his credit, Scorp was pretty much the ideal patient. He'd spent the past twenty hours quietly allowing her to manhandle him, through and through.
Unfortunately it seemed he drew the line at her giving him a shower, which he was in desperate need of.
"It's your call. I still think-"
"Pants," he demanded, holding out a hand to her. "Please."
Ah yes, the other line Scorp refused to cross. Pants.
It was kind of cute in a sickeningly naive sort of way.
What, he thought she'd never seen a naked man before?
"Sure," she replied, handing him the matching pants and throwing him an interrogative look. "Are you-"
Oh great. At this point Scorp's pre-hurling grimace had been carved into her mind.
She wordlessly dropped the pants and handed him a basin instead. A few horrific moments of heaving and a Scourgify later and all was good.
"Better?" Rose picked up a towel and handed it to him. "You've been awfully quiet."
Apart of course from the occasional groans and moans that took her right back to Choi's class.
"Have I mentioned how bloody sorry I am?"
He looked it.
There was absolutely nothing attractive about him at the moment. Between the angry flush, the matted hair pasted to his forehead and the fact that she'd seen every single meal he'd ingested coming out in reverse order, he'd never been more disgusting.
Yet in a way, she had never liked him more.
"Only a million times," Rose said, forcing a smile onto her face and hiding her hands behind her back. "It's fine."
Except of course, it wasn't.
Her hands had started to shake an hour ago.
"It's not," Scorp scoffed, rubbing the towel over his face and tossing it at her. "And don't pretend you're okay, you're so obviously not."
"Sod off." Rose's admittedly shaky hands grasped the towel and she dumped it into the basket along with the sweaty pajamas and the ever growing pile of drenched bedsheets. "You want me to ask your parents to pick you up?"
The horrified look on his face said it all.
She'd asked him about it right off the bat and that same look of dismay had come up. She was sure it resembled hers when he had asked her if she wouldn't rather stay at her parents.
"You're a bloody tyrant," he sputtered, picking up the fresh cup of tea she'd placed next to him and sipping it quietly. "Shouldn't you… I don't know, get in here?"
That had been the plan all along, hadn't it?
Coexisting on the damned couch for a week for the sake of convenience.
Her own room wouldn't allow her to go in.
Al's charm was just a tad too strong. It wouldn't allow a sick person to go in because of the stupid soundproofing. One time she'd gotten a paper cut and it had kicked her out on her ass.
Despite repeated protests, Al had never gotten around to fixing it.
Still, even if it did work, having the two of them in the same room was just more practical. Moreover, she'd be damned if she was going to be cooped up in Scorp's Man Cave for a week, even if it did have an ensuite.
"Not yet," Rose replied, scowling at the pile of clothes. "You don't think you could squeeze out a laundry spell in that state, do you?"
On a good day she was useless with domestic spells. On a bad one, what with her hands shaking the way they were… she might accidentally burn down the house instead.
She could do a Scourgify blindfolded but hand her a dirty dish and she was practically helpless.
"Hand me my wand, will you?"
She did.
Ten minutes later Scorp was dry heaving into the basin again and the pile of sheets and pajamas was freshly laundered and folded on the side table.
December 28th, 2027 - 05h10
It was the forty-eight hour mark and they'd gotten the routine pegged down at this point. Every two hours or so one of them would wake up drenched in their own sweat. Scorp would use his impeccable skills at making beds to swap the sheets and wash them while Rose would drag herself up to pick up the potions and make them a fresh pot of tea.
Then there was the whole pajamas swapping ordeal which implied she needed to dry the pair of them before they swapped into the freshly laundered ones.
It was always a moment of undue tension, grating their already paper thin nerves.
"You can't just bloody take your shirt off like that!" Scorp barked, turning away and flushing furiously. "At least wait until I'm not looking!"
"Yes, I'm sure I'm just oozing sex appeal right now," Rose spat back, slipping on a new top. "However will you control yourself?"
"Don't you have any semblance of shame?"
"You do know people are naked under their clothes, right?"
"Merlin, I hate you!"
"No, you don't."
Fun times.
By the third day, Scorp collapsed. It took every inch of will power she had in her to do alone what the pair of them had been doing together. The well oiled machine had crumpled and Rose wondered, more than once, if she should call Jesse over.
The mere thought made her tap into reserves of strength she didn't know she had in her.
Especially when Scorp started screaming out in the middle of the night.
January 1st, 2028
Rose wiggled her crusty eyes open, shielding them from the light that was coming from the window. There was no sound coming from Scorp's side of the bed, no tossing, no turning.
That might just be because he wasn't there.
She sat upright, her eyes desperately searching for the blonde boy.
Had he fallen? Was he dead?
No, of course not.
He was just sitting there at her usual spot by the fireplace, reading a book and looking rather lively for someone who'd been completely unresponsive a few hours ago.
"You're looking better," Rose groaned, pushing the oily mop that passed for her hair away from her eyes. Her voice was cracked and squawkey and hardly there at all. She cleared her throat only to find that it made no difference. "Are you better?"
If looks were any indication, yes, he was. He'd be the last person in the world you'd imagine having spent the past four days bedridden. At the very least he'd showered and was back up on his feet, which was more than she expected.
"Much," Scorp said, getting up and taking a seat on the couch arm closest to her and placing a hand on her forehead. "How are you?"
She glared at him and he mechanically held a basin out to her.
There wasn't anything to throw up at this point but her body was still rather keen on it.
She could feel his hands gently pulling her hair back and for a second all she wanted to do was cry.
"Peachy." She didn't even have the strength to protest as Scorp took the basin and scourgified whatever little drool she'd managed to produce. "I'm so sorry."
"I think we're over that, love."
Scorp sat back down and handed her a cup of tea which Rose eagerly took. She felt like she hadn't had a drink in days, which was ridiculous because…
Wait a minute.
"What…" Rose hesitated and tried her best to get a look at the Grandfather clock. "What time is it?"
"You've been pretty out of it for about... thirty-six hours. Happy New Year."
Oh great, she'd lost two days. That explained the throat and the fact that her lips were so dry they were practically peeling off.
It was then that she noticed her pajamas were… not… hers. She looked up at him and then down at her pajamas then back at Scorpius.
She certainly didn't remember putting them on.
A single, horrifying notion assaulted her.
"Did you…?"
"Yeah." He looked far less embarrassed than she would have expected. "Shouldn't I have?"
"No, no, you did good." Rose shook her head, trying to sound dismissive. "I mean it. Who'd have dreamed you'd get over your squeamish-"
"It's called shame," Scorp scowled, taking the cup of tea from her hands. "You should get some."
She could feel her cheeks flushing and it had absolutely nothing to do with the Shivers.
"It's nothing you haven't seen a million times."
She was saying it more for her benefit than his.
What now, she was fine with seeing people naked and undressing in front of them but him changing her was cause for awkwardness?!
Really?
"Take a shower," Scorp replied, his lips pursed into a thin line. "You'll feel better."
She realized it wasn't so much the thought of him changing her that bothered her. It was the thought of the man-child who couldn't bear to see an inch of flesh doing it for her.
It made her feel warm and cozy and happy and loved and goddamnit, this was ridiculous.
"Are you? Feeling better, I mean?"
"Have been just fine for about a day-and-a-half," Scorp replied, grabbing her arm and helping her up to her feet. "I woke up and you were dead in the water. I had to call Jesse over. You're right, he's incredibly annoying."
Oh bloody great, he'd invited Jesse in.
"Tell me you told him to bugger off and never come back," Rose groaned, leaning on the couch arm for support. "The man's like a bloody boomerang, he'll just keep coming back if you let him."
"I kicked him out," Scorp replied, grinning back at her. "I don't think he'll like me very much after this."
"Bless you."
"He said…" Scorp hesitated, grabbing hold of her arm and holding her steady. "He said it might take you a while longer to get back on your feet."
Oh, lovely. Just… bloody… lovely.
"I feel fine." Rose gritted her teeth and looked up at the concerned face of her foe turned friend turned partner in sickness. "Jesse's a worry-wart."
She was lying of course.
Scorp was an able bodied person who took care of himself.
She was an insomniac with a penchant for undereating who hadn't exercised since before she'd left Hogwarts.
The math wasn't hard.
"Do you need help?"
She was a grown ass woman and she'd be damned if she was about to let Scorpius Malfoy help her shower.
"No." Rose paused and looked at the arm, the only thing keeping her upright. "But if you could drop me over at the loo I'd be fine with it."
It was all fine and dandy when he was the gross one or when they were both repulsive.
However right now, he was looking fresh as a daisy whereas she… oh, Merlin. Rose looked at the mirror and took in the sunken cheeks, chapped lips and pasty red hair sticking to her head at odd angles. She looked at the discarded oversized pajamas, which were either Al's or Scorp's and the still crusty eyes that she hadn't properly wiped.
She didn't suppose she'd ever looked worse.
She survived the tribulation that was bathing through will-power alone. She wasn't entirely sure how she'd managed to run a bath and throw herself into it without falling flat on her face.
In the end he turned out to be right: she did feel better. She was still shaking but at least she wasn't human garbage anymore.
Rose stepped out of the bathroom and eyed him accusingly.
"Did you drop me in the shower while I was out?!"
"Merlin, no," Scorp replied, lifting his eyes from his book and meeting her gaze. "It was hard enough undressing you with my eyes closed."
"Thanks," Rose said, sitting down on the couch. "I just wasn't half as disgusting as I'd expected."
He'd swapped the sheets while she was gone. She could feel the faint scent of vanilla as she slipped her feet into the clean sheets. If he was bothering with fruity smells he probably was feeling better.
"After a while you stopped sweating. You just…" Scorp was staring at her with a blank look on his face. "Well, you know."
She did.
The symptoms for that particular phase of the Shivers would make every tormented soul in hell take a step back and re-evaluate their performance. It had taken her months to get used to it in St. Mungo's and she was no delicate flower.
Scorp had put up with it for one, almost two days.
He'd even held the fort when Jesse had offered to take over.
Any sane person would have taken the chance to run the hell away.
He hadn't.
"Why didn't you leave?" Rose eyed the boy, who was calmly reading his book as if he hadn't spent the past few days coexisting with a screaming lump of flesh. "You rang the New Year here? By yourself?"
"What are you, crazy?" Scorp snickered disdainfully at her from his seat. "What was I supposed to do, leave you? Alone? Like that?"
"You didn't have to. You could've just called my mum or Jesse or-"
"Merlin, you are thick." Scorp got up to his feet and sat down next to her, giving her shoulders a gentle shove to push her back onto her pillows. He grabbed the duvet and pulled it around her, enclosing her in a warm cocoon. "After you took care of me you just expected me to bail on you?"
"Of course I did. I'd understand."
Truthfully, she would have. It was understandable, he was a bloody Quidditch Player, for crying out loud! He had no business being around sick people. He hadn't sworn an oath. He owed her nothing.
The shocking thing wouldn't be him leaving… it was the fact he'd stayed.
"You just have the lowest opinion of me, don't you?!"
There was something fierce about the way he said it that made her flush to the roots of her hair.
"I just-" Rose stuttered. "I don't. I mean, I did..."
Not anymore she didn't.
"You're my friend. If I can't even stick around when you need me, what good am I?" Scorp picked up the cup of tea she discarded earlier, gave it a small whirl with his wand and handed it back to her. "Now drink your bloody tea before I smack you."
She did just that, quietly sipping the tea that he'd made.
It tasted nothing like the swamp water she'd been making for the past few days.
"Good girl."
"You really need to work on your bedside manner." Her voice came out hoarse and broken. Rose cleared her throat, aware of an uncomfortable lump that had just lodged its way there. "Tyrant."
"Learned it from the worst." His hand reached over to stroke her hair and for a few seconds Rose could've sworn her heart had given up on beating. "Now get some bloody sleep and we'll see if you're up for eating something in a few hours. Horace brought over soup."
Rose rolled over to her other side and pulled the covers close around her, her eyes wide as saucers.
What the hell had just happened?
Her breathing had finally fallen into a slow, steady rhythm.
Scorp scowled at the red haired figure peacefully slumbering on the couch, blissfully unaware of the hell she'd put him through in the past thirty something hours.
He gave himself a mental pat on the back for managing to look her in the eye and wondered, for the millionth time, why anyone in their right mind would choose to do this for a living.
The truth was he had considered leaving.
Not only that, he had been perfectly content to.
He'd woken up from his coma to find one of her bony hands clutching his for dear life. She'd been drenched, the puddle of sweat below her almost spreading to his side.
When he'd tried to wake her up, he had realised he couldn't.
She just wouldn't open her eyes.
No matter how hard he shook her, how many times he cursed, how many names he called her, she was out cold.
It had taken him perhaps a bit longer than it should have to get his senses together and realize that no, she wasn't dead and that yes, she'd wake up… eventually.
And so he did what he knew: picked her up, swapped the sheets, swapped her pajamas (albeit in the dark, closing his eyes shut and dying of absolute embarrassment), stuffed one or two of the yellow vials down her throat and waited.
Riding it out, they said.
He could do that.
He had deceived himself into thinking he had it all under control. He had really thought he'd be ready for the yelling. Rose had warned him over and over again that it would happen. He'd scoffed and dismissed her as being overdramatic.
She wasn't being overdramatic and he certainly hadn't been ready.
The second she'd started screaming like a Banshee, Scorp had showered, put on some real clothes, packed a suitcase and called Yardley begging for asylum. His foot had been halfway out the door, itching to run as far away from this mess as he could.
He'd summoned Jesse Boot, all but ready to hand in the reigns and hit the road, because really, she'd fare best in the future Healer's capable hands, wouldn't she?
Sure, he was annoying and sure, he was fussy but really, between him and Jesse Boot… who was the saner choice? Who would take better care of the writhing, howling mess that was laying on the couch?
Moreover, Jesse wouldn't actually mind taking care of her whereas he'd rather be anywhere but here.
How was he even an option?
Boot hadn't even stepped out of the fireplace before Scorp felt like he'd made a horrible, horrible mistake.
By the time the bespectacled Healer had dropped the armload of multicoloured potions he was carrying, Scorp already knew he wasn't going anywhere.
As he watched the man hovering above the screaming mess that was Rose, with his kind smile and his endless good humour, Scorp had become certain of two things:
One: he'd never disliked anyone as much as he did Jesse Boot.
Two: he'd be damned if he was leaving Rose to this overzealous moron.
For starters, she'd go batty. Jesse Boot might be a Healer, but he was the most insufferable person he'd ever met. He was exhausting. He'd smother her with kindness.
Secondly it was bad enough that he'd seen her naked, he wasn't about to extend the invitation to the perv show to Jesse Fucking Boot. Boot might share Rose's weird Healer openness about how bodies were just bodies and that there was nothing to be embarrassed about… but Scorpius sure as hell didn't.
It was blatant that the saner choice was him after all.
He'd unceremoniously kicked Jesse Boot and his good intentions out.
He'd picked up a pair of fresh pajamas, gathered all the books he'd gotten at Christmas.
He'd locked himself up in her soundproof room (thank you Al), coming out for air every once in a while to see if she'd finally stopped shrieking.
And then he'd waited it the hell out.