Chapter 9
Fraternity, Loyalty & Loneliness
(Flashback chapter - set just as summer ends...)
The silence of the morning was even thicker than usual. Sev was still wearing his pajama pants and had bed head, and he did not seem to be in any hurry to get dressed. He pushed food around more than ate, and thus said volumes without saying nary a word.
"You do not look very happy about going to Diagon Alley," the professor said to his son. In fact, he had not seen the boy look less happy in weeks.
"I don't know what to say," Sev replied, putting down his fork and ending the painful playing with his breakfast.
"It's not a trick question, nor a difficult one." One fatherly eyebrow arched. Those sorts of statements were always a prelude to something far more than what seemed on the surface when dealing with his son.
"It is, Dad, in a way." It was difficult to him.
What could possibly be so difficult about Diagon Alley? Since the boy wasn't expounding, he ventured a guess. "It means going back to Hogwarts soon, and you never like going back," he began. That part he knew, but he didn't need to look into the boy's mind to know it was more than that. He hoped starting it would drag the rest out. Usually Diagon Alley still managed some sort of anticipation no matter how much his son hated school. There were Quidditch supplies and books in Diagon Alley, his son's two favourite things. Unfortunately, the boy did not continue the tale from his prompt. Whatever it was deeply bothered him. Sev was usually was fairly open with him.
"Why don't you just tell me what's wrong?" he simply asked the boy.
"You're going to think it's foolish, sir."
Oh. He steeled himself, looking at those charcoal grey eyes. He also did not fail to note his son switched to 'sir,' an ominous portent indeed. His aversion to foolishness was clearly well driven home for the boy which was just as well in some ways and probably very obtrusive right now. "Dissecting what might be a foolish thought is probably superior to either living with the potential foolishness in your head or it turning into a foolish action."
"That doesn't help, sir," the boy said, in a voice that had just the ghost of a childish whine.
"Sev," he began, trying to hold back a chuckle. "If you think 100% lack of foolishness is possible at thirteen, you might need to reevaluate. That thought, son, is foolishness already." He let out an amused snort. "As is sitting here pushing your breakfast around."
"Dad!"
He'd torture it out of the boy verbally if he had to. Pushing thirteen year old buttons was quite easy after so much practice and the added value of it being his own blood. "Just get it over with. You know my patience for circumlocution is not much longer than for foolishness, at some point one runs into the other."
There was a rather impertinent eyeroll. "It's just…"
He arched his eyebrows as if that would somehow help draw the words out. It was painful to watch. What could possibly be so bad and potentially foolish?
"I…I feel like I lose my best friend every time we go back to Hogwarts."
"You do," he replied to the boy, his eyes narrowing and a furrow forming on his brow for a moment. "What is so foolish about that?"
"It makes me sad…"
"Which proves you have a heart. And?"
"And mad and lonely…"
"True and true. Not particularly irrational." He failed to see the level of foolishness he was expecting…
"But why should a friend bother me. Why should I need any of that? You don't."
"Are you so sure?" Just because one had to or did do without 'friends,' had nothing to do with need. Despite his tendencies, he was well aware humans and thus also wizards were social animals, herd animals. Unfortunately.
"You don't really even have Mum to talk to anymore…"
"Well I surely never told you to wholly follow my example either way." He tried not to laugh at his son. Sometimes it was the smallest things; with what the boy handled on a daily basis, it was easy to forget that he was just a boy.
"Dad!"
"Okay, but you did not expect to give such a dramatic lead in over this and not have me tease you?"
A grumble was his response.
In a tone of understanding, the professor said, "You think that being sad over losing a companion you've had since birth for over three-quarters of the year makes you foolish and weak, and you are embarrassed of me being disappointed in you for feeling that way?"
The boy looked at him as if he was the most potent seer to walk the Earth.
"How do you do that, Dad?"
"Sometimes I forget you're only thirteen." He sat back and looked down at the boy. "First, you're my son and a great deal like me when I was your age. Second, I've been in your head quite enough to know how you think. Third, I raised you, so I put those values and ideals in you to start with. Need I continue to explain my grand powers of deduction?"
The boy gave him the most scathing look a pipsqueak with long, black, bushy hair escaping from a braid could manage.
He continued, "Feelings aren't foolish. Talk about them if you wish, don't if you don't. What makes them foolish is when you let them control you and your actions. So, perhaps you are slightly foolish if you intend to mope around over Scorpius before term has even started when you could be buttering me up for new supplies or books…"
That cracked a smile from the teenager. "I don't need to 'butter you up,' Dad."
"Yes, I am woefully aware," he pretended, his lips quirking. It took diligence, on both their parts, but his son was a good kid and did what he was asked, so there was little spoiling involved when he didn't refuse the boy much.
"I just wish Scorpius was the same at school as home, it would not be so bad to think about going back then."
Fatherhood had always reminded him of the poignancy of feelings. He saw the differences in Scorpius, but he did not have to feel them. He was the boy's godfather, not his best friend. Scorpius over the summer was far more low-key and like he had been before Astoria had passed. Draco would never put up with the boy's grandiosity or idiocy.
Unfortunately, whacking bludgers at each other, playing wizard's chess, and investigating bizarre books in either family library was not life. He would not ruin it for his son by telling him it likely would only continue to get worse as they got older.
Lucius had always been older than him, but in many ways, there were parallels. He too had lost a close friend in the violence and necessary duplicity life had become.
Scorpius Malfoy over the summer was a fourteen year old boy who was cowed by his father and free from the increasing positive reinforcement of brutality and narcissism. Scorpius Malfoy was not even Scorpius Malfoy at Hogwarts, he was the ridiculous Scorpion King, which was amazingly ludicrous and Scorpius was neither stealthy, nor quick, nor 100x more deadly than his size. The Scorpion King was a budding killer, and there was very little he or Sev could do about it, no matter how strong or loyal their friendship remained.
"It's our second night here, what could you possibly need to read, Snape?" Flint sneered at him. The brown-haired 6th year apparently thought attempting to ridicule him was a good way to get Sev to want to go somewhere.
"Your brain cannot understand that it's not what I need to be doing, it's what I want to be doing. Clearly, your desire for my company is far greater than my desire for yours and a bunch of screaming Mudbloods," Sev said back, not raising his eyes from his book, lounging on a corner of the couch in the common room.
"You're squeamish," the older boy taunted.
"Haven't we done this enough to know what happens?" Scorpius drawled, leaning on the back of the couch next to Sev as he sauntered over.
"One might think," Sev muttered to his friend, drawing Scorpius to chuckle.
"You know he's not squeamish, Flint. At least think of an insult that makes sense before his tongue cuts you into a million pieces," the Malfoy heir said.
Sev said acerbically to Flint, "Will my list of reasons make you leave sooner? It's a waste of my time. I don't need the practice. I prefer to keep my tactics to myself for Dueling Club. The screaming gives me a bloody headache. And how do you think I got so good at my spellwork, Flint?" He held up the book as a clue and shook it at the idiot. "Not to mention my father is a far better teacher than for me to be left with the need to practice in a dungeon corridor on targets stuck to a wall for convenience."
Scorpius chuckled and shook his head at Flint. "Told you. Why do you even pester him?"
"He should have been a bloody Ravenclaw," Flint groused.
"Maybe you should pick up a book sometimes, make sure your brain is still there, Flint," Sev added, not looking up from his book. "It takes no cunning, nor ambition, nor leadership, nor resourcefulness, nor cleverness to make a bunch of dolts on a wall bleed. It's idiotic enough for a Gryffindor."
"Don't!" Scorpius barked, standing suddenly from his reclining position. Predictably, Flint was easy to provoke to wanting to pull out his wand like most Neanderthals. "It won't end well and none of us need Professor Snape's lectures and detention this early in term."
Sev lazily raised his eyes from his book to gauge whether the two might actually use their wands.
Flint growled, "Why do you always stand up for him?"
"So he doesn't hex you stupid. What makes you think it's him that needs standing up for anyway? I just know how this ends, and I do want to make it out of the common room tonight. We all know Sev prefers his books, and we all know he could send you to the hospital wing easily if he wanted to. What does he have to prove to you?"
"He thinks he can just do what he wants because his father is our Head of House!" The 6th year was one of those that was cranky for not getting their way and jealous.
"Because reading a book, at school, is so obviously special favour," Sev drawled.
Scorpius laughed. Sev snorted, shaking his head and enjoying watching Scorpius argue over him; Flint wasn't worth either of their breath, really. He wondered the selfsame thing about Malfoy's company, for the opposite reason.
Scorpius stopped laughing long enough to say, "Stop trying to pass off things that are so obviously shit, Flint. He's the last one of us that has it easy because of Professor Snape, and you know it! He has to do hours of extra stuff every week; it's like having permanent detention."
Sev preferred to think of it as being a good son, but that was beside the point. Whether he minded or not, he surely did not have it easy and definitely not easier than the other Slytherins.
"You should stay out of it, Malfoy. I don't know why you even like him." Flint was not the only Slytherin that asked one of them why they were so loyal to the other when they were just short of opposites. Flint was one of few idiotic enough to make a thing of it like he was doing.
"Bloody hell, we're like family. Professor Snape is my godfather. My father is his godfather. Give over on it already. Let him read, baiting him over not going with us is stupid and pointless. He's not going to come, and even if he did, he wouldn't be any fun at it!"
"Fine, let's go then." Flint stalked off.
"How do you stand being around someone so stupid?" Sev hissed.
"Everyone needs minions."
"He's two years older than you."
"Everyone needs minions," Scorpius reiterated with a lopsided and rather sinister smile.
"Okay, Scorpion King." Sev eyerolled. Scorpius might think he was a fourteen year old puppet master, but he had no idea that his strings were, and would always be, being pulled too.
"I'll see you in the morning to run."
"Always."
Scorpius turned to leave and then turned back for a second, "I didn't mean anything by saying you wouldn't be fun at all."
"I wouldn't be," Sev replied. "It's fine." He knew his best friend had just lied to him. It was nice to know Scorpius cared about his feelings enough to lie. He was not the sort of fun Scorpius enjoyed having at Hogwarts, and he'd already come to terms with that even if it hurt. They still had loyalty and fraternity, that was something.
Other than sarcastic commentary together during meals or classes, this was what their friendship became during the school year: a series of moments of neither of them enjoying most of what the other did with their time, nor the company kept, broken up only by habit and their shared loved of Quidditch.
AN
Thanks to Duj, as always, for the review!
