PTSD WARNING. Please skip to second half of chapter (Kiara's POV) if needed.

-o-o-o-

"What is this?"

Scorpius bolts upright in his bed. He had fallen asleep atop the duvet—his boots still tied—catching up on sleep that he'd lost because his thoughts could not be bothered to leave him alone the last few days. His grandfather Lucius has awoken him from a deep slumber. It takes him a moment to process where he is, or how much time has passed.

His grandfather stands beside him at his full height, a completely calm expression on his face. Only in his late sixties, he looks as spry as a young man—if he has it his way, Lucius will look mortality in the eye and dare it to end him. There's the folded up newspaper from London in his grandfather's white-knuckled fist. The Muggle girl's number is clearly displayed, and as realization sinks in Scorpius feels his face drain of color. His lips, cold, press together tightly.

Slowly and calculating, Lucius begins to furl the newspaper into a tight roll. Scorpius holds his breath, watching his grandfather closely and considering the fact that he should run. But he's frozen to the spot. Shame and dread itches the blood in his veins.

"What is it!"

Lucius smacks Scorpius hard across the face with the rolled newspaper. He scrambles from his bed, holding his cheek and feeling the stinging heat warm his palm. He's too shocked to say a word, or even make a sound.

"Do not make me ask you again."

"It was just some girl," he says, a tremble in his voice.

"What?"

Scorpius clenches his jaw and lowers his hand. He musters up courage and repeats clearly, "I said, it was just some girl."

His grandfather pursues him deeper into his bedroom, and he finds that he retreats. This humiliates him. Yet, he can't help but think he's nine, ten, eleven years old again . . . Hiding from Lucius's words. Hiding from his fist. Hiding from his belt. When his back presses up against a wall, he cowers and turns his face. A wallop falls heavily on the side of his head and knocks him off his feet. Scorpius starts to drag himself across the floor, trying to get his bearings. He's determined to keep moving, and eventually, like always, this will pass. His hearing is muffled and a loud ringing bounces around in his head. Lucius has ruptured an eardrum.

"Stop!" he cries out, hiding his head in the crook of his elbow as he sees Lucius's blurry shoes advancing toward him at an alarming rate. He desperately searches the room, bleary-eyed, for his wand, but he doesn't know where it is. Perhaps still in his father's car, forgotten in the glove compartment.

He can barely hear his grandfather when he yells, "Your father told you not to speak to those types of people!"

Pain explodes across his abdomen. He's not sure if he's been kicked or cursed with a spell. His eyes fly open but he's met with black spots that dance across his vision, like inverted twinkling stars. Even in the dungeons; even under the lake; even in total darkness, Scorpius has never felt further from the sky as he does now.

He forces himself to move. As he pulls himself up to his feet, dizzy and disoriented, he's knocked back once more. Lucius and his heavy wedding band strikes across his cheek. He doesn't know where it's coming from, but the sharp taste of iron coats Scorpius's mouth fast and makes his tongue as slippery as his thoughts.

It fills vigor within him. He squares his shoulders and lifts his eyes with great effort.

"I knew you were a coward the moment you were born," his grandfather scorns him. "You cried as you came into this world. And you'll be crying on your way out."

Scorpius spits blood onto Lucius's face.

Time slows down.

He sees it again: That vision of the melting grandfather clock, towering over him. Scorpius sees this when he doesn't know what to do or say anymore. He sees it when his mind goes blank and his body stops responding to what's around him.

Lucius's shadow overcomes him. All light is blocked out. He has a strange, reserved look in his eyes that makes Scorpius want to scream, but it's trapped as a ball in his throat. The features that make up Lucius appear to peel off his face as he slams Scorpius against the wall by his neck. Scorpius's blood that he had spat almost looks like acid across his grandfather's crazed expression, like it is devouring his skin. The boy is losing his grip on reality; he is falling into a state of unconsciousness, and then there will be no chance for him.

The edges of his vision start to turn black.

Scorpius, faded, looks through his pale lashes at Lucius—but he looks different, now. There is no man in front of him. There is only a monster. No . . . It's a pathetic, miserable creature that feeds upon sadism just as Dementors feed upon souls.

"I advise you beg for your life," it says coolly.

"My father would never forgive you."

It presses harder against his windpipe and cocks its slimy head. "You're no blood of mine."

"No. I'm not," Scorpius agrees, his words now coming out bravely in wheezed spurts. "You—will die alone—and . . . afraid."

There's no more oxygen. He's wasted the last of it on defying this creature with all the spirit he has left in his being. His eyes begin to roll into the back of his head, yet he sees a bright white light more lovely than anything he's ever witnessed before. He welcomes it, as it chases away the darkness. It's fluorescent and intoxicating, and he's vaguely struck with a sense of honor that this light has existed behind his eyes the whole time—he had just never looked into his brain until this moment, to see such beauty.

Suddenly his feet hit the ground and he falls to his knees.

His reflexive instincts take over and he begins gasping. He sucks in such deep breaths through chapped lips that he feels he's drowning in air, yet he still can't get enough of it. His fingers grasp at his neck, willing his lungs to tear open just to accept everything it can.

At last, some time later, he looks up from his hands that clawed the floor desperately and are now bloody around the fingernails. His father, Draco, is standing there with his wand drawn. The creature has its hands in the air, feigning innocence.

"Your son attacked me!" it screeches, with Scorpius's blood still running down its face. "He's gone insane over a Muggle girl!"

Scorpius watches his father hesitate. He realizes right then, in an overwhelming wave of understanding, that his father's entire life has been hell. It suddenly dawns on him that his father was not born with all those scars on his body—they were put there. As a child, he was a pawn for his own family. He was an instrument for Lord Voldemort. Draco Malfoy never had a childhood, though he gave Scorpius the best one he could be capable of.

Scorpius sees a life that was never his own. He feels a dozen full-blown panic attacks that he never had. Not once did he ever consider that death has knocked on his father's door more than a few times, just as it has knocked on Scorpius's. The rigid posture of the frightened man before him is forced—he is trying desperately to protect something . . . but it comes with a terrible sacrifice. Scorpius pictures his father's father, and his father before him, and his father, too.

All at once, he finds himself wishing he could help Draco carry all the pain he's held deep inside.

"Scorpius," his father whispers, his voice catching. Tears threaten to spill over his wide, terrified eyes as he stares down his wand at the snarling, narcissistic psychopath that raised and manipulated him for his entire waking life. He clears his throat and says, slowly but more steadily, "Go back to Hogwarts, my son."

"Father, I—"

"GO!"

He has never raised his voice once in Scorpius's life and it brings time back up to speed. Scorpius is alive. Bleeding, blanched, and bewildered, the wandless boy pictures his destination and Disapparates.

-o-o-o-

Kiara studies Albus closely as he talks to her Ravenclaw friend, Callie Jones. Callie has one Muggle parent, and Kiara thought, at the beginning, that it meant they had something to bond over. Instead, Callie has proven that she's only ever interested in talking about love and sex.

The majority of students have left the Great Hall and already made their way back to their dormitories. It's getting late, and the remaining students and staff members have about ten minutes until they need to leave so the tables can be cleaned up by the house-elves. In their current group is just herself, Albus and Callie, and Rose speaking to Hugo. Professor Longbottom and his wife, Nurse Abbott, laugh cheerily at the staff table. About twenty other students are still picking at the food.

Callie has been flirting with Albus the entire meal, and it's been very curious.

Every time she touches Albus with fluttering fingers along his biceps, or resting her hand across his thigh, he—subtly, of course, as to not hurt the girl's feelings—angles his body so there's distance. It's easy for him to disguise this, as he's not one to sit still for long as is. His fingers drum against the table; then he reaches for seconds; then he rubs the back of his neck. She knows he's embarrassed because his cheeks are the slightest shade of pink.

At last, he turns kindly to Callie and very quietly asks, "May I have a little more space, my dear?" Kiara only hears him because she was listening very closely.

Callie could have silently agreed and no one else would have really noticed a thing, but rather, she huffs a loud, "Oh, my god. You like Kiara, don't you?"

Before anyone can even react, there's a loud crack like a few dozen whips that ricochets off the walls of the Great Hall and thunders across the tall ceiling. Many jump to their feet, but Kiara's eyes follow the echoes calmly. For a moment, the stars vanish—as though startled—before they begin to pop back into place. Initially they come forward slowly, then multiply quickly, handfuls at a time, then hundreds, until the void is saturated with light once more.

At the heart of the sound stumbles a boy, or maybe a pale, pale ghost, bleeding from the face. He slips off the table he landed upon and hits the floor hard on his back, then rolls on his side and vomits. Gasps fill the room. The boy's skin glistens with sweat, and bright red blood splatters onto the stone.

"He's been splinched!" someone screams.

Nurse Abbott surges forward from her seat with the surprise of the moment passing. Kiara stands with everyone else to get a good look at the visitor—but she already knows, and so does Albus and Rose. Scorpius has returned to Hogwarts in an unconventional manner.

"Cory's going to get expelled for Apparating without a license," Emmalee says from another table, and when Kiara turns her head she sees a hint of a smile on the cruel girl's lips. "What a shame."

"Give it a rest, Emma," Finley snaps at her. "He's obviously hurt."

"He deserves it."

While Albus and Rose rush to Scorpius's side, Kiara holds her breath, waiting for Finley to respond. He looks down his nose at Emmalee. But then he simply shakes his head, and walks away from her, toward Scorpius who is struggling to climb to his feet. Kiara follows after him. By the time she reaches all her friends, Scorpius is leaning his palms heavy against the back of a chair and taking long, deep breaths.

They make eye contact for only a second, but he looks away and at the floor.

Nurse Abbott stands a few inches off, her eyes filled with concern as she takes in the injuries. She, and everyone else, can tell the blood isn't from splinching. But no one dares to speculate aloud. A hush has fallen over the lingering spectators. Everyone is waiting for him to speak.

But he doesn't. Instead, Scorpius wipes his mouth clean with the back of his sleeve, then leaves the Great Hall silently. All the students part for him like he's cursed. Rose moves to follow, but Albus wraps his arms around her small frame to stop her.

"Give him some time to get his head on straight, Rosie."

She tucks her hair behind both ears. The charms on her silver hoops tremor and tinkle together softly, and Kiara realizes that she is shivering. Kiara takes her freezing hand and squeezes it gently. She isn't sure that it's the right thing to do, but then Rose looks upon her with bright, watery eyes and lets out a long breath until color returns to her face.

"Let me walk you back to your dorm," Kiara offers. She doesn't let go of Rose's hand. "You will lay down and let your dinner settle."

"Thank you," Albus whispers, just for her, as they leave.