Title: A Helping Hand, or A Hogwarts Bathroom Ballad

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter (kind of...)

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: slash, slightly non-consensual situations (later on), original characters (recycled because I like them)

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Hey Swiften and Harry-Potterfan26! Thanks for reading & following :)

Weird Guest Reviewer: As usual, thanks for r&r'ing! It seems I have succeeded, for making people hate Rose was the plan, sort of. Still, everyone is using Scorpius... or are there exceptions...?

Another (slightly less weird...?) Guest: Hey there, welcome! Thank you for reviewing, love! I'm glad you like it and hope there's much chuckling still to come.

... well, maybe not in this chapter. On top of that, it's woefully short. Sorry about that. I'll try harder next time =_= Still, (please) enjoy!

~Chapter 6~

~Roughly 38 days left~

The following few days passed very quickly, as if they were also in a hurry to get away from that day that saw Scorpius unfriended at the greenhouses and then set right by Albus Potter in an extra-smelly bathroom. Scorpius dove head first into Runes and Charms post-Christmas-exams and sat down with Amanda Goldstein to discuss their future cooperation in Herbology, having previously talked to Michael Bowen to make sure he was okay with this.

(He was. A bit too quickly for Scorpius' liking. However, he dismissed the thought as it came with a bunch of jealous baggage, telling himself that Michael was only thrilled because it would certainly mean better grades and easier going in Herbology for him. Rose had a green thumb, and Professor Longbottom clearly liked her.)

Meeting Amanda in the library on Thursday evening, he became suddenly and intensely aware that, ever since Hallowe'en and possibly even before that, he had really, really focussed on Rose Weasley and disregarded all the other girls around him.

Amanda, for example, was really pretty in the soft library light. Her strawberry blonde hair was sleek and shiny, she had a cute little retroussé nose and bright blue eyes. Her eyebrows were a little too bushy, to be fair, and her chin jutted out quite a lot, but all in all, she was far from unattractive.

Amanda's friend and fellow Hufflepuff, Sophie Cattermole, was also not ugly at all. She was a bit on the chubbier side, her face was pleasantly heart-shaped, bubbly cheeks emphasized by her brown bobbed hair, and she had full, pink lips that tended towards a sweet little smile at all times. When she came to pick Amanda up after Scorpius' and her short conversation in the library, she favoured Scorpius with one of these smiles, and he found himself readily smiling back.

Oddly, even Constance Bagman, a fellow Slytherin and the unofficial Karen Smith to Mariella Lawless' Regina George, suddenly caught his eye. Her dark blonde hair, normally pulled to an almost impossibly tight pony tail, was down in loose ringlets that spilled over her shoulders. She stopped wearing that awful toxic green eyeshadow and only said "like" twice in a full five-minute conversation with Scorpius at breakfast the next day – one of the first conversations they had ever had. To that occasion, she sat down next to him, which she had also never done before in six years as far as he recalled. When they got up for Transfiguration lesson, their thighs touched.

In said Transfiguration lesson, he was paired up with Ravenclaw's Kate Macmillan, who had always struck him as too waifish, too lolita-like, as if she were eternally eleven years old, but now he was giving her a second glance, it was really not so bad. Granted, she did look like a fragile little starling, but she also had a pleasant smile and a cute nose that, which he observed while Kate transfigured a toothpick into a matchstick, was dusted with freckles. Also, her teeth were perfect which he had the chance to observe when the transfigure-matchstick actually lit up after she struck it.

"Huh. Isn't the timing a bit... odd?" Albus asked that evening as they got ready for bed and he told him of his various encounters with the feminine side of Hogwarts.

For a second, Scorpius felt hot and prickly in his pyjamas, thinking that Albus was referring to the circumstance that he was being kinda-sorta flirted with when he didn't have the working equipment to do anything about it really – the female attention had, of course, constantly reminded him that something important was missing from him – but then he realised that he still didn't know about that, and that he was talking about Rose. Rose Weasley and her quasi-dumping him just a day before.

Huh. He'd pretty much forgotten about that. How had that happened?

"I don't know," he answered Al's question after a slightly too long pause. "Maybe it's the girls' hive mind at work or something."

Al snorted in response which constituted all he had to say about that. Even though he didn't share the wisdom with him, moments like this always had Scorpius thinking that Albus Potter was secretly the Mr Miyagi of girls and understanding them. Like he just knew how they ticked. It was a kind of superpower, easily ill-used, so it made sense that Al hadn't had a girlfriend since dating Kamya Patil for two months in third year. Scorpius suspected that he was waiting for the ultimate challenge, the unreadable girl, the one that baffled him.

Personally, Scorpius was just glad that he had the opportunity to be his quasi-student. Or, well, to just be near him and perhaps catch some of that wisdom as it radiated off of him.

The fresh impression of beautiful girls swarming all around him lulled Scorpius to sleep. His dreams were populated by said girls, much more beautiful even than in real life and about two hundred times as alluring because they tended to be in a state of undress and in the middle of physically demanding exercise.

He woke up to the thought of Rose Weasley – or maybe just some redhead – kissing Marcy Mills-Foster, and wasn't at all surprised that his blanket formed a tent around his middle. With the better half of his brain still asleep that Friday morning, he slid his hand down his pyjama pants.

He almost instantly regretted his decision.

Albus and Brice Parkinson, whose beds were right next to his on either side, woke up from his muffled yelp, but both of them just grumbled something about 'half an hour, for feck's sake' after a peek at their bedside clocks and went right back to sleep.

This second incident, he figured ten minutes later while in the shower, washing away that horrible sensation, begged another bunch of questions that were now piled on top of those he had already had from the first incident – the Shower Slip-Up – four days ago. He promised himself to go look for answers at the earliest possible convenience.

Strangely, it was difficult to find a moment for himself now in which he could go to the library and inconspicuously browse through books on sexual jinxes. There always seemed to be something to do and someone to talk to – and that someone almost always tended to be female, and oddly attractive or generally pleasant and distracting.

Tami Patil and Gemma Reedy, Slytherin's current Keeper, seventh year, and Chaser, fifth year, respectively, caught him on Saturday as he was on his way to the library, asking him to come to the Room of Requirement with them for some winter break Quidditch practice that required someone who would shoot Bludgers at them. He could not bring himself to say no.

The next day, Constance suddenly popped up behind him in the Slytherin common room asking for some special assistance with her Potions essay in exchange for unspecified favours that were to be done at an also unspecified point in the future. (She said this with a strange and pleasant lilt in her voice and a coy smile that was entirely new to Scorpius.) So he held the private Potions session right there in the common room. Constance sat on the couch next to him and their thighs were touching yet again even though he kept discreetly scooting over.

The same day, at the library just an hour before its closing time, he met Sophie Cattermole in front of the shelf he had also meant to browse, holding a book called 'The Magic in Kama-Sutra'. She blushed furiously, spluttered something about academic interest while she tried and failed twice to put the book back on the shelf, but didn't scamper off when she finally succeeded. Instead, she actually engaged him in a conversation – just small talk – that lasted until Madam Pince threw them out, and then even went on for a bit in the corridor. Only when she asked him whether he wanted to accompany her to the kitchen for a late evening snack did he decline – politely and with actual regret – and part ways with her.

"Seriously, it's like I'm suddenly magnetic," he told Albus when he encountered him in the largely deserted Slytherin common room on his way back. He was writing a letter home and only shortly glanced up with a smirk.

"Must be the irresistible Malfoy charm," he said with a cocked eyebrow, then promptly got back to his letter.

Scorpius flopped down on the armchair across from him. Somehow he didn't want to be brushed off like this, so he said, "Or perhaps it's your uncle's doing."

That made Albus pause mid-word. "My uncle?" he asked, taken aback. "What's he got to do with any of this?"

Now he had his attention, Scorpius didn't know quite what to do with it. He shifted a little in the chair, unwilling to disclose embarrassing facts, but he could hardly just say nothing, either. Huh. So this is what it must have felt like for him three months ago.

Eventually, he settled for, "I told you about, uh, the thing with Rose's pregnancy, right? The fate thing? The oracle and destiny and stuff?"

"Well, you mentioned it. In passing," Al mumbled, sticking his quill into the inkwell, reminding him that he had never cared to properly explain any of it.

"Yeah, well. Her parents totally bought into that palm reading and really didn't want that pregnancy to happen, so they came by the manor and they... well, your uncle put a spell on me."

Albus knitted his eyebrows in supreme confusion. "My uncle put a spell on you to keep you from knocking my cousin up and now you're the... human equivalent of catnip?"

"Yes. Basically. Well. No. I mean-" He exhaled. "It's hard to explain and it really doesn't make much sense, I suppose. I've been meaning to research it, but I kinda haven't got around to it yet."

"I agree, it really doesn't," Al picked up the 'it really doesn't make much sense'-bit with a heavy hint of sarcasm. Then, his expression changed a little. "Should I be worried for you or something?"

"No." He shrugged, then, with awareness of the fact that his recent physical reactions hinted at some sort of spell-miscasting, amended, "I mean, I don't think so."

"Wow. That's comforting," Al groused and turned back to his letter, apparently miffed that Scorpius wasn't willing to say anything more at this point but unwilling to probe into it any further, therefore putting on a show of how little he cared about it. Simple reverse psychology.

For some reason, this bothered Scorpius. He leaned his head against the armchair's back rest and puzzled over it for a bit. Quickly he decided that it was indifference in general coupled with a latent inability to keep secrets from Albus, even if they were mortifying, that bothered him.

Thus satisfied even in an underlying state of dissatisfaction, he got up and walked toward the dorm, mumbling about going to bed.

"Hey, Scorpius," Albus suddenly spoke up.

He stopped in his tracks. His full name out of Al's mouth was always like an omen, a harbinger of meaningfulness.

"Yeah?" he went as he turned his head, as nonchalant as possible.

"Hey, uhm..." He seemed to be searching for the right words for a moment, then said, "You probably know that Tuesday is Rose's birthday. She wants to celebrate at Hogsmeade on Saturday."

Scorpius knew that his heart was supposed to plummet a little. He was supposed to think about the present he'd got her a month ago, calculating that she would be thrilled and eternally grateful for it and that maybe another peck on the cheek – or, ideally, more – would be in it for him. He was supposed to think about all his carefully laid out – if, in practice, really rather vague – plans of asking her out and making it official between them and proceeding from there into a pink-tinged future.

But really, his heart only gave the slightest twinge, and that, he later reasoned while lying in bed with his eyes open, might only have been because he had rather hoped to spend the Hogsmeade trip with Albus and Shrew, and not so much because of Rose.

Thus, he sighed and replied, "Do you have a present yet?"

Apparently, this was not what he had expected in terms of a reaction. "Uh, no." He pursed his lips. "I guess that makes me a shite cousin. I really don't know what she'd like."

He actually looked quite unhappy about it and Scorpius knew that he was thinking about how Rose had given him that neat scarf for his birthday last November. It was self-made, Slytherin-coloured and came with a stitched-on snake that would dance as if charmed when you looked at it and moved your head right.

In fact, it was quite noteworthy that he wasn't wearing it right now, seeing that it was by and far his favourite.

"Actually, I've got something," Scorpius said after a short moment of consideration. "You can give it to her as your present, if you want. It's at home, though. I'll have to ask mum to send it here."

Over the whole drama and the disappointment, he had half-forgotten, half-pushed the boots to the back of his mind, only remembering them when he was already on the Express back to Hogwarts. Ever since Rose's rejection, this lapse had almost been a little lucky coincidence – after all, he would have hated to lug the (sturdy and thus not particularly light) footwear to school only to find that he couldn't even give them to her as a present. Now he would need them after all. I wonder what mum will make of that...

Al made some noises about how that wouldn't be right, but Scorpius insisted. After all, what's the use of a pair of size five-and-a-half woman's Quidditch boots for a sixteen year old boy with size seven feet?

Some minutes of arguing back and forth later, Albus gave in on the matter. As Scorpius, satisfied with winning the argument, started towards the dorm again, he said, "So you don't mind if I, well, go to her party?"

Now it was Scorpius' turn to knit his eyebrows. "What are you talking about? Of course I don't. She's your family, so of course you'll go to her party." He was a little surprised at himself how easily these words came.

"No hard feelings, then?" Al asked one last time.

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "Man, you're too sensitive," he mumbled. Aloud, he said, "No, no hard feelings at all. None whatsoever. You go to her party and have fun. Don't tell her about the present, though. And maybe don't get shitfaced. I need your assistance in the DADA test the Monday after."

Al nodded. "So... Does this mean you're over her?"

This made Scorpius pause. Just a short second, though. "Yeah," he said. "Yes, I think it might be, actually."

As he lay in bed later, he crossed his fingers and hoped and prayed that this wasn't just some freak side-effect of Mr Weasley's spell, or a passing feeling (or passing lack of feeling, as it may be). Al had seemed so relieved, just like he felt. He really didn't want things to go back to awkward and idiotic.

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/TBC (tomorrow)