Title: A Helping Hand, or A Hogwarts Bathroom Ballad

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter

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

Warnings: slash, slightly non-consensual situations (soooon. Like, almost right now.), original characters (not right now, though)

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Thank you, DemonDragon8331, for favving and following this story! (Also, I noticed that you went and followed Calor Cupiditatis. That's odd, because Calor Cupiditatis is finished and done and story alerts are therefore of no use.) (But I like odd, so... thank you all the same for enjoying the story ^^) (Also, Calor has a part 2, called Ardor Animorum.)

Thanks again to the Weird Guest Reviewer for reviewing! (Funny, my dearest Beta, Nia, has also remarked on how cruelly I'm treating my protagonists. Taking Quidditch away from Scorp in that manner really was sort of harsh. Sorry about that. I'll... uhm. Make it up to him presently.)

Now, where were we? Ah, right. Scorpius had just... pitched up a tent...

~Chapter 10~

He gave a tiny croak and gathered his duvet in his middle to hide what Albus had certainly already seen anyway. Though the other boy was casting a wide shadow across him with his bedside lamp right behind his back, and the duvet was rumpled, making the whole thing a scraggly, dark black and grey landscape with various peaks and valleys in it, he couldn't have missed that.

Hurriedly, he scanned the rest of the room for other vigilant eyes, glancing from one bunk to the next so quickly that it made him dizzy. He thought he could see his dormmates moving as they tossed and turned in their respective beds.

Awake and watching.

"Easy, man. You're- Are you hyperventilating or something?" Albus came a little closer again. "Everything's fine. Calm down. This is- It's normal, don't-"

It was too late at night (or too early in the morning) and Scorpius was still overwhelmed by the sudden change of scenery and the unfiltered, unfettered feelings of shame that coursed through him like hot blood, so he didn't wait for Albus to finish the sentence, and he didn't calm down, because everything was absolutely not fine. Indeed, it was the opposite of fine.

He whipped back the duvet – in the direction of Albus, to shield himself from his view, and as if to swat him away with the back of his hand – and hopped out of bed, grabbing his day robe that hung over the bedpost, bunching it up before his body, and sprinted toward the door as quickly as the littered floor and his sleeping socks allowed. Albus hissed his name after him, but he didn't stop.

The common room was empty, dark and cold, the fire long burnt down to ashes, but that was not enough for him. Some housemate could be up getting a midnight snack, or the Bloody Baron might show up any second, so Scorpius threw on the robe as he crossed it, feeling for the door that led outside.

The dungeon corridor would have been pitch dark of not for a single torch burning around the corner. Scorpius suddenly registered that his wand was still back in the room, and this realization quickly drained his desire to run far, far away. Thus he changed plans and instead ran toward the torchlight, around one more corner, and pushed open the door to the boy's bathroom near the staircase. The lights went on when he entered.

Had he had an ounce of patience, he might have noticed that the room itself was quite nice for a bathroom, with enchanted stained-glass windows that gave the impression of being aboveground, the tiles clean and sparkling, turquoise and green and blue and white, the brass water taps recently polished. But his mind was on a single track, so he went to the stall at the far end of the row, the one that closed on two sides with the wall, and locked himself in.

After the bolt had slid shut, the silence was damning. The blood rushing in his head and the pulsing of his heart seemed to reverberate in it.

Thirty more seconds, and the adrenaline finally ran out, giving way to clearer thoughts.

Thoughts like What the hell am I doing here? and Damn, it's cold.

He properly buttoned up the robe he had on and pulled it close so to cover the bare skin between the top of his socks and the bottom seams of his shorts, put down the toilet seat and sat on it gingerly, and finally put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

I overreacted, didn't I? Went full psycho there for a moment? he asked himself, thankfully not deigning it with an answer. He pulled his hair.

"Damn it. Damn it," he whispered, but since the whole room was so very quiet, it sounded very loud.

Twenty seven days ago he would never have believed how much of his sanity and well-being hinged on his masturbation habits. Especially since he had always believed these habits to be probably somewhat excessive – three to four times a week, five when he was at home... That was a lot, wasn't it? The other boys in the dorm never seemed to be as preoccupied with it as he was. Not that he had ever asked them directly. Some things just were not talked about, especially not if the initiator of this talk was presumably a freak, possibly a pervert, and would be sleeping in that very dorm for another year and five months.

If cornered, he probably would have said that some moderation would be advisable, and that it might make him healthier and more balanced. But moderation and complete abstinence were two vastly different things.

Seventeen days, he thought, then said it out loud. In the cavernous bathroom, the number sounded even larger.

He leaned over and rested his head on the tiles of the wall. His skull was pounding. He was both tired and way too awake and hyper at the same time. Bits of the dream were still floating in his head, enticing him still while they also made his skin crawl, keeping him in a state that certainly made it impossible to return to the dorm. He might encounter someone. Albus might still be awake. The others might, too. He imagined them waiting by the door, lined up as if for running-the-gauntlet-

"Stop it," he grumbled to himself. "You're being overdramatic."

"If you're talking about yourself, I have to say that I concur," a voice rang out from Merlin knew where. The echo in the bathroom made it impossible to tell.

After being startled at first – he hadn't heard the door opening at all -, Scorpius slumped back where he sat. "Go back to sleep, Al," he said, not even really surprised that he had come after him and actually found him. In this huge, big castle. Al tended to have a knack for that.

"If you come along," he replied. "'m not leaving you here."

The main door fell shut with a boom. Then, Al spoke an incantation and the bolt slid into the lock after a series of clicks and screeches. Another incantation, and the room was soundproof.

"What are you doing?" Scorpius asked, curious and confused.

"Two weeks ago, when you talked to me about Rose," - Scorpius rolled his eyes and already opened his mouth for an angry reaction along the lines of This is really not about her, "you used these spells, too, to ensure some privacy. And then you actually talked to me. I guess I'm hoping they'll do the trick again."

While he was explaining, his voice had been coming nearer. At the last words, the door of the stall next to the one Scorpius was hiding in squeaked open, then shut, and lastly the bolt also slid into place.

Silence, except for a soft rushing of wind through the pipes.

"Scor-"

"It's embarrassing." It had come out like a cough, involuntarily and loudly. "I... just don't want to talk about it." He tried not to feel bad about saying that, and failed. It seemed like an ungrateful thing to say to him at this point. "It'll be over in seventeen days. I think."

"You think," Al repeated, voice very neutral.

"I hope," Scorpius amended and slumped a bit further, enveloping his head with his arms and hands.

"The dreams, they are part of this, aren't they?" Al asked quietly when Scorpius didn't continue for a time. Scorpius cringed a little. Dreams, plural. So tonight hadn't been the first time that he'd given the whole dorm a show...? "And your sudden girl paranoia, and even the thing at Quidditch practice... it's all connected somehow, but I don't understand it."

Even though he couldn't see his face, and his voice was intentionally neutral and almost soothingly quiet as if he were talking to a spooked hippogriff, Scorpius could clearly decipher the underlying message: It is something around half past three on a Wednesday morning, we are sitting in a freezing cold, double-locked boy's bathroom and I am talking to you through a goddamned toilet stall wall like I'm some caricature of a priest in a caricature of a confession booth – as you hopefully can fucking see, I am your friend, and I deserve an explanation. Now.

He sighed, and with the sigh, words spilled out reluctantly. Slowly at first, like a trickle. They were mumbled and tiny, forming very short sentences as if he were dictating a telegram.

It was explained much faster than he thought it would, really. Like ripping off a plaster strip – over much quicker than presumed, and more painless than expected.

Then again, one always had to wait and see whether ripping off the strip would re-open the wound. He braced for the shame to deepen by several magnitudes.

"Merlin, Scorp." Albus said with a heavy sigh, then huffed a laugh through his nose. "You could have told me this much sooner. I'd have channelled my inner McDonough, taken up my bat and fought the hordes of girls off with it."

The mental image actually raised a small smile. Scorpius had always thought that he would be the one fighting off the girls with a stick for Albus eventually. After all, he wasn't unhandsome, and he was pretty popular for reasons of being a decent human being and a Potter.

"Man, twenty seven days," Al exhaled. "That's a long, long time to go without wanking." He pondered for a second, then mumbled, "I don't think I've gone so much as forty-eight hours without ever since I discovered that particular feature."

"What?" Scorpius sat up straighter, intrigued and also very keen on grasping for anything that diverted the attention on his personal plight. "Forty eight hours?" This information cast some serious doubts on his perversion theory. Like maybe he wasn't the outlier he thought he was? Then again, perhaps Al was just saying I to make him feel better? When the hell would Al have time for it that often? I've never noticed- Actually, he'd never noticed anything at all, let alone every two days. He frowned to himself. Could his friend possibly be that discreet?

"Yep." That was all he had to say to that.

There was a dull thump that told Scorpius that Al had leaned back against the stall wall.

Silence.

"Well, what are you going to do about practice and the Gryffindor match? That's all going to happen within seventeen days..."

"I don't know," Scorpius said. "Brew a potion, fake an illness?"

"Wear a jockstrap?" Al suggested.

Scorpius shrugged. "That might actually work." Would be unbelievably uncomfortable, though. Then again, it could hardly be worse than without.

Silence.

"And you could get yourself some Dreamless Sleep from Madam Pomfrey. For the nights before exams, at least."

"Yeah, I doubt she'd just hand that stuff over to me." Dreamless Sleep was expensive and addictive, or so they had learned in Potions class.

"Have you looked in a mirror recently?" Al huffed. "She'd give you a family size package, no questions asked."

"Oh." He bit his lip. "That bad?"

"If you look properly," he amended. "Lawless has noticed, I'd bet, but you know her. She wouldn't call you out on it if you started to go full zombie because that would require her to give a damn. The others probably haven't noticed, really."

"That's comforting," Scorpius murmured. The last thing he needed was nosey Shrew and nosier Bagman doing an intervention or something.

Silence again. A little longer this time.

"So, uh. Are you... Are you still-" Albus searched for an apt word but didn't find one.

"It's, uh, pretty much constant, at this point. A constant state." No sense in elaborating sexual frustration and the feeling of blue balls to someone who, allegedly, had never experienced it in his life. "For seventeen more days," he added, hoping to take the edge off the previous statement, and failing, instead making it a bit worse again.

For a long minute, no one said a word.

Then suddenly, Scorpius heard the shuffle of feet – shoes, to be exact, because Albus had not been so stupid as to run off into the cold Hogwarts dungeon in the middle of the night wearing socks like only an idiot would – and the click and slide of the door bolt of the stall next to his, followed by the squeaky whine of the door as it swung open.

"I can't... Scorp, I can't just stand by and watch you any longer," Al told him, his voice travelling from the stall back into the main room.

"That's alright," Scorpius said quickly, and only then the implication actually sank in. What did you expect? a loud voice in his head asked. You know full well that he can't really help you anyway.

And yet, being abandoned in this manner – with an announcement – stung like stupid. His breath hitched. "Go back to bed," he added, trying keep the unreasonable disappointment out of the words. "I'll catch-"

"No," Albus said loudly. "No, I-" He sighed in exasperation. "Scorpius, open the door."

Scorpius looked up as if he could see his friend through the stall walls. He could only see the tips of his shoes, though. He was standing right in front of his stall. "What?"

"I said, open the door."

An uncomfortable tingle started at the base of his spine. It made him get up from his spot on the toilet and want to back up, but he couldn't. "Why? Al, what-"

"Ask me, damn it." Albus was speaking very quickly now. "Open the door, ask me for help, you stubborn, prideful git. Open it, or I'll damn well charm it open."

"Albus-"

"Now!"

There were very few instances that Scorpius could remember in which Albus Severus Potter had ever barked orders. With his dad being Head Auror and Head of the Department of Law Enforcement, barking orders all day for money and out of vocation, his mum being captain of the Holyhead Harpies, barking orders for sport, and his elder brother being Hogwarts prefect, barking orders for fun, Scorpius had always assumed that Al tried to counterbalance all the bossiness running in his family by refraining from ordering people around or even raising his voice. Or maybe the bossy gene had simply skipped him. Scorpius just knew that Al wasn't the type to hector someone around.

But that had been an order. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and his scalp prickle.

He hesitated for another second, contemplated contradicting, remembered Albus telling him about his constant tendency to do the opposite of what he was told. By any right, he should feel the irresistible urge to never unlock that door again and quite possibly starve in this stupid stall.

Before his brain was all done, though, he had reached out with somewhat trembling fingers and flipped the lock switch. His heart started pounding crazily as if the switch had zapped him like an electric fence. What the hell did I just do? he asked himself and received no answer except for some unintelligible stammering inside his head.

Albus slid into the stall which instantly seemed very crowded and small (even though it really wasn't. By Hogwarts standards, this stall was huge. And also, it seemed airless, which was stupid because it was open on either end and the room was also huge) and closed the door behind him again, even locking up once more.

Scorpius looked his friend in the face. There were odd red spots on the top of his cheekbones, standing out against the tired paleness, and his eyes seemed very bright. They didn't meet his.

"Turn," Albus said almost meekly, focussing his gaze on a spot somewhere over his shoulder. "Toward the wall."

Scorpius opened his mouth.

"Do it."

There it was again. Scorpius drew in a sharp breath and turned to his right. He faced the wall, then put his hands up against it as if to brace himself although he didn't know for what. The tiles were cold and a little slippery under his sweaty palms. He looked straight at them and didn't dare to move his head.

For a while, nothing much happened. Albus moved behind him.

"What are you-" he finally managed to cough up, but he didn't get any further.

Albus had stepped closer, right behind him, and his right hand had suddenly slid down across his hip, between two buttons of his robe and into his pants.

/

/TBC (tomorrow)

Oh myyy.