Title: Ardor Animorum

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter

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

Warnings: original characters; slash, non-consensual situations

Whoo, thanks to TheEternalForever for following me! (That is such a weird thing to say/write, but I like it ^^. If only James were that chill about being followed, we... probably wouldn't have this story and I wouldn't have anything to write about... Oh well.)

Now please enjoy chapter 3 in which we learn that there's no happy end without some despair...

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Chapter 3

/

Bagman noticed his raised hand and audibly muttered, "What the-?" which made everyone turn around.

"Are you insane, Malfoy? Put your hand down, for Mordred's sake," Bagman and Lawless both hissed at him. Bagman, sitting beside him on the double bench, actually looked like she was about to lunge for his arm, like a presidential bodyguard throwing himself onto the politician who was about to be assassinated.

But he didn't put it down.

You will obey me.

"Mr Malfoy, you are aware that this arrangement is considered to be binding?" Professor Smith asked, sounding oddly annoyed that someone had actually volunteered. As if he had been looking forward to delivering the actual I told you so speech, or had made a bet with his apprentice and was about to lose, or was just plain jealous because he himself hadn't had a helper during his own apprentice days.

"Yes, Professor," Scorpius said with as much conviction as he could.

"For the next eight months at least. Maybe for the whole year."

"Yes, Professor," he repeated.

"And you have understood the details of it?" No feasible gain, great spans of lost time, no special treatment.

"Yes, Professor," he said for the third time. He glanced at Professor Smith to confirm.

Then at Potter, and quickly away.

Potter nodded at Professor Smith, his expression indecipherable, and retired through the side door near the teacher's desk, leaving the professor to begin his lesson. "Well, then," Smith said with a solemn nod of his own. Then, "Is there a problem, Miss Lawless? Mr Prince? No?", and finally ordered them to open the books at page 493.

The lesson, an exercise in tedium with an underlying current of unbearable tension of which he was the epicentre, crawled by. When, after hours – or maybe days? - the professor finally ended the lesson, Scorpius fled the scene.

Mariella, having run after him with long and angry strides and caught up in under a minute, just barely refrained from strangling him right there in the corridor. "The apprentice's menial, Malfoy, really!?" she all but screamed at him. "What on earth were you thinking?"

He couldn't answer, and not for the fact that there were other people all around. Well, not directly around, since he had dashed out of the classroom, successfully outrunning everyone except Ella, but her voice probably carried through the entire dungeon corridor and up to the main staircase, involving half the Hogwarts student body into this conversation.

Even if they had been entirely alone, in an empty, silent, spell-warded room, he couldn't have explained it to her. Not even with all the dictionaries Madam Pince's library had to offer.

"I'm going to drop Runes and Care, and maybe Arithmancy," he mumbled in a vague response. "It'll all fit in my schedule just fine."

"That'd almost be good to hear, if you had come to that decision by the way of cold logic and common sense. Instead, you apparently reached it via a serious detour through Batshitville, Malfoy." It was quite remarkable how she managed to rage and spit at great volume while keeping up with him. Scorpius was almost running.

"You know, we agreed on study plans, like, three days ago-"

"-and I'm going to fulfil them exactly as planned," Scorpius retorted, annoyed that she doubted him already before anything at all had happened, even though he had been just about the most reliable pupil of house Slytherin for six years when it came to study groups and helping his schoolmates out.

To be fair, he had gone those six years – or five years and roughly ten months anyway – without James Potter in his head.

"No, you're not. You're going to spend the nights trying to catch up with the current syllabus and homework yourself because you're going to spend hours upon hours with him," she snorted angrily.

The way she emphasized 'him' made him shoot her a venomous look. "Watch your mouth, Lawless," he said quietly, after they had passed a group of fifth years that was coming their way.

"Watch your brain, Malfoy," she hissed back. "Do you think I don't see what this is about? You and your twisted obsession with that guy-"

"Mariella!" He stopped, whirled around and grabbed her by the arm.

"It's unhealthy, Malfoy!" she snapped and jerked her arm out of his grip right away. "You think you're in love with him or something which is sick enough by itself. But now you just throw yourself at him and agree to become his bloody slave." Scorpius flinched at that word. "Have some self-respect, for Mordred's sake. He won't reciprocate your feelings just because you fawn on him."

"That's not-" He fell silent as another group of fifth years headed to the classroom passed them. They were giving him side glances. "I'm not doing it because of that," he finished quietly.

"Then why?" Mariella crossed her arms before her chest. "What on earth were you thinking, if not that? Eh? Is it because of the exceptional brewing experience?"

He couldn't explain because he couldn't tell her. About what had happened in the trophy room.

Yesterday's meeting was still nightmarishly clear in his brain, replaying over and over before his mind's eye. He hadn't slept since then, so there was merely a deep tiredness to take the edge off the recollection now instead of a night of sleep that might have dulled the pain.

He remembered vividly the tension that had mounted and mounted until it became excitement, then arousal. He remembered the feathery touch of his hand against the side and back of his neck, and the way he had grabbed his hair. The way he had whispered into his ear, his hot breath tickling his earlobe. He remembered the wonderful feeling of slowly being undressed.

James Potter had touched him. Or that's what it had felt like.

"You will obey me," his voice echoed huskily through his skull.

Scorpius had nodded, tingling from head to toe with lust, thoughts swirling madly, anticipating more of his touch, more of his voice, wishing he would come back and press his body against his own again, now, harder, and then stay there until the stars burnt out.

"Good," he heard him say. The gravelly undertone made Scorpius swallow hard.

Potter's dark shape came closer again. He leaned down to speak into his ear, and said, "Because if you don't, I promise I will ruin you."

Immediately, all the heat turned clammy.

"What?" Scorpius croaked thinly.

His own thoughts. His own words, echoing through time, rising out of a distant past when he was still convinced that his greatest desire was to see Potter gutted, to drag him from his pedestal.

Words from a time when he had been wrong about... everything.

"You heard me," Potter said airily. He turned away. A reading lamp he had placed on a middle shelf lit up when he yanked the switch, illuminating the room with warm orange light that was still garish in Scorpius' eyes after the darkness. "I don't think I need to explain the concept of blackmail to you, do I?"

Then, he started explaining in precise words and an almost detached tone of voice. He explained that he wouldn't have been able to do this last year because he hadn't known the real perpetrator then, and because he had been seventh year student, up to his ears in work for classes and fighting for the opportunity to become the Potions Master's apprentice. That his own life and future were now secure while Scorpius' were fragile things which could be devastated with a word – all the easier now that he, too, was legally of age. That he now had the power to keep the story contained even should he choose to report him, so that there was no threat to his integrity any more.

That the tables had turned.

Scorpius couldn't really listen. There was a high, shrill beep in his head as if from electrical feedback. Clumsily, he got his clothes in order again, failing at the zip four times because he couldn't properly grasp the tab. His fingers didn't cooperate.

"What a mess you are, Malfoy. Look at you," he heard someone say in the voice of James Potter. "Pathetic." And, "How on earth did you ever think I might go for something like that?"

Scorpius didn't reply. He couldn't help shaking like a leaf. The clasp of his belt buckle jingled.

Potter sighed, presumably at the miserable sight. "I told Smith I want someone to do the stupid work for me in order to fulfil my apprentice's schedule," he said. "Tomorrow, the Professor will graciously ask your class for a volunteer ready to pledge themselves non-stop through my entire apprentice's year here. No sane person would do that thankless job, of course, but fortunately you will volunteer nonetheless."

He had considered contradicting him. He had thought about trying to plead with him on behalf of his already overflowing work-, tutoring-, study group- and Quidditch training schedule, and his slipping Transfiguration mark, and the ever-growing distance between his classmates and himself, and even on behalf of the pain in his chest that was about the size of a clenched fist, a sharp ache that grew explosively at the prospect of having to spend time near him. But when he had looked up and seen his eyes, hard and cold like two pieces of flint, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

To crown it all, a voice that sounded both like Mariella's and his own had rung out in his head, telling him that he'd had it coming all along and that this was justice and karma, that he deserved this. Sadly, because he wasn't stupid, he knew that this voice was completely right.

That didn't change the fact that he was hurting. Intimately, like he never had and didn't know how to bear. For a moment, something deep inside had bonded with James Potter. James Potter had been touching him. That feeling had twirled and woven and wrapped itself around his ribs like a vine, binding him to James and James to him and it had been so delicious and perfect. But then James had stepped back again, said those words and now those new, delicate fibres were being stretched and broken, fraying like ropes and tearing with a silent snap. He felt like he was bleeding. Absent-mindedly, he had felt for his chest, then checked whether his palm came back red.

"If you don't raise your hand tomorrow, I'm going to give you hell, understood?"

Scorpius hadn't understood anything but nodded nonetheless.

James had huffed and then gone away, taking the lamp with him. Scorpius had been left behind in the darkness for he didn't know how long.

Standing in the corridor now, with Mariella glaring at him expectantly, indignantly, impatiently, he pressed his lips together. He couldn't tell her. It was still happening, inside. He was still bleeding.

Once upon a time, Mariella had told him that "where there's smoke, there's fire – or at least some sort of a smoking charm." Turned out that what he'd had with Sarah Halberman had been a smoking charm, a cheap, fleeting thing that had been carried away by the breeze. But James Potter – he was fire. He'd set himself alight with him, and for a desperately beautiful moment James had seemed to be stoking the flames.

But then the fire had turned against him and started biting and devouring him, leaving soot, ashes, ugly burn scars and feelings so chaotic and hurt that he couldn't even manage to talk about them, or even sort them out in his head. And soon, Potter would be raking and picking those ashes with every little owl summoning him to his side and every minute that he had to spend in his company. That was ironic, bittersweet and crueller than he could ever hope to make Mariella understand with mere words.

He shook his head at his friend and walked away.

Mariella supposedly watched him go. She didn't come after him this time.

/

/

Several long days passed. Scorpius handed control over to routines, going through the motions as inconspicuously as he could.

For a short moment one evening before falling asleep, he was almost hurt that none of his friends seemed to really notice, or to mind, that he wasn't himself, really. The autopilot could not keep up with the snark and the social exchanges that had made life and studying at Hogwarts bearable once. But after Bagman's protesting in that first Potion's lesson and Mariella confronting him in the hallway afterwards, no one seemed to give a shit. No one asked. No one made any mention of his now frequent silences, the lack of witty ripostes, the absence of interest in the new patterns of social interaction forming due to the new pupils, the monosyllabic responses, or of his falling asleep on his desk in History lesson. Not even his Quidditch team, fully staffed again after an exhausting try-out weekend, seemed to notice or mind his latent lack of anything that could be described as 'passion', or 'interest'.

In a dormitory full of boys he considered good friends and surrounded daily by people he had known, liked and trusted since they had been eleven years old, he felt lonely.

He turned around on his too-soft mattress and decided to brave it out. Brice Parkinson had done it in fifth grade – granted, not like that, not at all, but anyway – so he could do it, too.

Or at least that's what he thought until the Potions lesson that followed right after that night. Professor Smith began the lesson with the words, "Mr Malfoy, you are required this evening. Six thirty sharp."

Smith didn't mind that Scorpius didn't reply or show that he had heard in any way. His classmates glanced at him, one and all, with varying degrees of sceptical interest, pity and disgust.

He just hoped they weren't able to hear his heart all but galloping out of his chest.

James Potter had been invisible for the last two weeks. He hadn't been to any Potions lesson, hadn't been in the Great Hall during mealtimes, or in the library – where Scorpius liked to spend time by himself, invariably looking at that spot in aisle four he'd twice been sitting in to see if he was there – and wasn't seen in the corridors or on the Quidditch pitch, either. There had been moments during the previous fourteen days in which Scorpius had wondered whether he had just been a very elaborate hallucination and he was going mad.

But then, Friday evening came.

In defiance of Mariella, he had spend the two hours between his last class of the day – Charms – and six thirty sharp in the library, furiously working on finishing his homework. By himself.

It hadn't been enough. His Transfiguration essay was too short yet – when had that happened before? - and he hadn't managed to figure out the History assignment. His Potions homework was done but sloppier than he would have preferred and he desperately wanted to go over it again. He was in a bad mood.

And he was late.

And he was sweating in his robe, not just because he had been jogging all the way down to the dungeon, with a book bag weighing seven kilos under his arm.

Having arrived outside the potions classroom door, he gave himself a minute to collect himself, catch his breath and get his hair in order before finally knocking.

Professor Smith's muffled voice called him in. "Mr Malfoy. You're tardy," he said without looking up from an arrangement of slim test tubes on the teacher's desk. He appeared to be taking notes on every single one.

"My apolo-," Scorpius started, but was interrupted by Potter coming in through the side door.

"Save it," James said gruffly, then, to the Professor, "May I, Professor?"

"I would recommend this one," Professor Smith nodded toward a tube on the left, filled with a liquid a shade darker than the rest. Potter plucked it gently from the rack, then vanished the same way he had come. In a hurry.

Scorpius stared. He knew he wasn't supposed to be more out of breath again now than just before knocking.

"Whatever are you waiting for, Mr Malfoy?" Smith glanced at him. "Should I tell my apprentice that you changed your mind last minute?" It sounded very much like he expected it.

"No," Scorpius replied, a little too quickly, and added, "Professor."

"Then you should get to work," he said after a little pause and focussed on the test tubes again, all but forgetting about Scorpius.

With a silent sigh, he followed Potter through the side door.

As a normal student, he had never been in the bowels of the dungeons before. As should have been expected, the classroom itself was merely the antechamber, with a network of bigger and smaller rooms – some of them functional as private quarters featuring a normal kitchen smelling of coffee, some used as specialized libraries and filled from floor to ceiling with books, some wide and empty with no obvious function – stretched behind it. Scorpius could see several of these rooms through slightly-open doors that branched out from the low-ceilinged hallway he was stepping through. On mere instinct, he followed it all the way to the end.

The room he found Potter in was small, cramped even, although the only piece of furniture in it was a low, rickety-looking desk with a medium-sized copper cauldron on top. All around him and the desk, potion-making equipment was strewn about in a vaguely organised chaos – Erlenmeyer flasks to one side, stirring spoons to the other, jars with ingredients to this, buckets with coals to that, weighing scale made of brass, thimble measure, pipettes, water level, astrolabes, balls of multicoloured wool, two pairs of silver compasses, a sack of green potatoes, an oversized alarm clock that went backwards, heaps of books, parchment, two inkwells and various other clutter, some of whose purposes Scorpius could only guess, grouped together by type and size all around the room. A narrow, clear path lead through the chaos to the door. The walls were painted dark, which made the room feel even smaller than it was. Upon further inspection, Scorpius noticed scribblings on them, made with white chalk. There was only a small, rectangular window that almost touched the ceiling – more of a vent through which smoke could escape.

"Get me another one of the tubes," Potter suddenly said. Scorpius flinched. He hadn't thought that James had noticed him coming in.

"Another tube, Malfoy. Now!" he demanded, stirring whatever was inside the cauldron urgently. The kettle belched a cloud of dark grey smoke – never a good sign.

Scorpius let his book bag slide from his shoulder and onto the floor, then hurried and fetched Potter another test tube full of dark blue liquid from Professor Smith's desk. Potter almost ripped it from his hand and threw it – glass and all – into the cauldron. Another cloud of smoke, but white this time and smelling strongly of cinnamon. Not necessarily a better sign but at least nothing exploded.

Potter didn't stop to thank him. Indeed he didn't say a single word for hours and just... worked.

Thus began Scorpius' serfdom. It consisted of long periods of waiting and watching Potter's back – not in the figurative but the literal sense – and trying his hardest not to be in the way because it was obvious that delays and mistakes would potentially have dire consequences.

Mostly, James seemed to ignore him or simply forget that he was there, until he suddenly remembered him and barked an order or two which Scorpius then hurried to follow. Fetch this. Dispose of that. Peel this. Hand me that.

There was no talking. Scorpius felt like a piece of the scattered equipment, used in a hurry and put on hold, used again and put on hold again, yet somehow... invisible and never looked at the entire time. Standing there, his feet and calves starting to hurt after two hours, and silently regarding James Potter's bent back, he wondered whether he was just imagining things or if there really was some sort of irony in that, some cosmic, fateful symmetry, history repeating itself with delicate touch of gleefulness. Small room, low ceiling, him serving Potter, Potter not looking at him... He had the strong feeling that some shrewd deity was currently laughing their ass off at his expense.

For two weeks, Professor Smith let him know every second day that he was "required", either in Potions class or via owl. He showed up – five minutes earlier than agreed every time, on principle, even if no one remarked on it -, went through into the brewing chamber, took Potter's orders for two or three hours, and was dismissed with a backhanded wave when he asked.

Against all odds, an almost comfortable routine developed.

Watching Potter work was strangely not-boring. Potter was like a professional piano player whilst Scorpius was merely an amateur himself – the incredible elegance and efficiency of his work was obvious, its beauty striking, whereas the larger portion of his activities remained shrouded in mystery to him. As good as Scorpius was in Potions, what Potter was doing was way, way out of his league. A whole week into watching him, he still had only a very faint idea exactly what the effect of the potion he was brewing might be. Something psychoactive, judging by the amount of moondew he was adding, but what exactly – he had no clue.

Of course he never dared to break his concentration with stupid questions. So he contented himself with standing there, near the door, quietly as a butler, looking at either the scribblings on the walls – Potter's calculations, but not a clue how they worked, way too many abbreviations and symbols – or at Potter's back.

Seeing Potter, even if only from behind, brought him a sort of mild, yet undeniable satisfaction. His back was strong and wide. It was- It was good to look at. Nice, even. It started to feature in Scorpius' dreams which were long and deep and immediately forgotten, making for very restful sleep and giving Scorpius the feeling that, finally, things were sorted out, that the wound was scabbing and starting to fade.

That he had his life back in order. For good.

/TBC

...and also, unfortunately, that despair doesn't necessarily lead to happy ends, or to anything at all.

Be kind, write me a review, no matter how short :)