Chapter 11
A/N: I am free of the essays! I don't think I've slept properly in weeks, but I'm done. Now I just have to worry about exams. In celebration, here's another chapter! We're approaching the end of the story very rapidly...
Thanks to all of the wonderful people who reviewed and to thestarlitrose and irianaceleste for betaing.
~Frosty
The entire team - save for Scorpius - was waiting on the pitch when Rose arrived. Scarlet and Vermilion shot her scathing looks, but Rose just turned her face away, rolling her eyes at the immaturity of the younger girls. They somehow managed to play together as an effective team, but their hatred of Rose was still alive and strong.
Trying to ignore the twin glares aimed in her direction, Rose stood off to the side, staring at the castle as she waited for Scorpius.
If she really squinted, she could see the Scamander twins sliding around on the ice over on the lake. How they expected to find jellyfish through the thick frozen layer was beyond her.
She was having difficulty wrapping her mind around the fact that Lysander had never considered her his girlfriend. All the guilt that she'd been carrying over her kisses with Scorpius had been unnecessary because her "boyfriend" had only seen her as a friend all along.
It was nice to be freed from some of her guilt, but she couldn't help wondering why he let her continue to believe they were an item when they weren't – hadn't ever been. Perhaps he wasn't as unaffected by her inability to care for him as he'd claimed. He was only human, and no one was without selfishness.
Rose knew all about selfishness; she hadn't been above letting him think there was a chance for a relationship between them when there wasn't one.
"Do you know what's keeping the captain?" Brody Thomas asked, sidling over to stand next to Rose.
She shot him a surprised look. "Why would I know where he is?"
There was a little too much startled squeak in her voice for her words to be entirely believable. Brody certainly didn't look convinced.
"I share a dormitory with him, remember? I saw you climbing out of his bed this morning."
The bottom of her stomach dropped out and she had to make a conscious effort not to flinch. There was a clear assumption behind his statement. An assumption she needed to remedy.
"It's not what you think," she started, but was distracted by a blond figure slipping out of the castle doors and jogging over to the pitch.
It took a conscious effort not to nervously wring her hands like a second year with her first crush. Rose mentally berated herself for being stupid and forced her eyes to stop avoiding her friend like she'd done something shameful with him.
"What are you lot waiting for? Get on your brooms!" Scorpius ordered the moment he was within shouting range.
Brody shot her a knowing look before grabbing his beater's bat and mounting his broom. Trying to ignore that look and everything it implied, Rose grabbed her own broom.
Immediately, Scarlet threw the Quaffle and the chasers started their drills. Rose suspected that Scarlet had been hoping to throw her off of her seat before she'd had time to properly gain her balance, but Rose had to let that anger go in order to deal with the irritating girl. She reminded herself that she needed to work with the irritating chit for Scorpius and for the team.
"Vermilion, you're favouring your left side!" Scorpius called from where he was hovering up by the stands and surveying the practice. He wasn't flying high over them all like a Seeker normally would because he needed to get a good look at how everyone else was playing. Rose knew he frequently stayed long after practice finished in order to perfect his own skills. He felt he had to do this because he spent so much of his own practice time not practicing. While he may have trouble getting up in the morning and being on time, Scorpius was actually a very good captain.
When Scorpius called for the end of practice a few hours later, Rose was sweaty despite the cold weather, as was the rest of the team.
Once she was no longer moving, the sweat rapidly cooled, making her shiver. If she didn't warm up quickly, she was going to catch a chill. Rose wasn't the only one who was cold; the entire team was rubbing their gloved hands together or tucking them under their arms for added warmth. Some of them were dragging their palms along their legs, trying to get some feeling back in their cold flesh.
Brody's partner, the new beater to the team, absently batted a Bludger away from him before dropping the bat and joining the rest of the team in trying to restore some warmth to their numb limbs. Rose had to question the advantages of making the whole team sick in an effort to improve their game. The school really needed to invest in an indoor stadium or something if they were going to let the Quidditch season run so late into the winter.
"Go take showers before you get sick," Scorpius ordered his team. Everyone turned around to head towards the changing rooms, but Rose walked over to Scorpius so she could help him catch the Bludgers and put them back in their box. He needed to get warm just as much as everyone else, and she was going to help him so the both of them could get to their showers faster.
Separate showers. Just the idea of sharing a shower with her friend distracted her for a moment. It wasn't until she realized that she'd been undressing him with her eyes that she shook off the fantasy and moved forward to help him. She was thankful that he hadn't noticed her gaze; it would only serve to inflate his ego and give him a reason to tease her mercilessly.
As Scorpius bent over the box to get place the Quaffle inside, Rose heard a strange cracking sound. Idly, she glanced towards the source of the noise, not really concerned with it.
The Bludger that had been so casually batted away only moments before had collided with a support beam on one of the spectator towers close by. As Rose watched, frozen with horror, a chunk of the stands fell, heading right towards Scorpius.
"LOOK OUT!" she screamed, but the warning came too late. It was over before she could do anything to stop the piece of wood hurtling towards Scorpius.
With a thud that would forever be branded in her memory, the wood fell right on top of her friend, knocking him to the ground.
Rushing over, Rose saw a scene that was eerily familiar. She hadn't remembered exactly what she'd seen in her dream until the strange sense of déjà vu had washed over her, but now she knew for sure; her dream had come true.
A piece of wood went right through Scorpius' back and came out the front, exactly where she had seen in her dream.
Hands shaking so badly she had trouble moving them where she wanted, she touched his wrist. There was a pulse, but judging from the looks of him, he'd be lucky if it stayed there for long.
"Someone go and get Madam Pomfrey!" she ordered the team. Her voice was high and panicked; she barely recognised it as her own. If her heart hadn't been beating so loudly she could barely hear anything over the rushing of blood, she may have been disturbed by how distraught she sounded. Never in her life had she had reason to be teetering on the edge of hysteria as she was.
The team had heard the commotion and rushed over, but once there they had gathered in a circle and stood around gaping like cattle, unsure what it was that they should do.
Scarlet and Vermilion were both pale and crying, clinging to each other. The beater who had hit the Bludger looked completely stricken.
Really helpful, the lot of them.
Luckily, two of them had enough presence of mind to grab their brooms and race off towards the castle. Maybe not all of them were useless.
Rose ignored the team and levitated the bulk of the wood off of the blond. Vaguely, she remembered something about not removing big objects that pierce the skin for fear that the victim would bleed out before medical attention could arrive, but she couldn't exactly put it back.
By the time Madam Pomfrey got to the field, Rose had perched herself beside her friend, holding his hand tightly in hers. She had cast a warming charm over him, afraid he'd succumb to shock before the Mediwitch could even arrive. So focused on him was she, that she'd forgotten to extend that warming charm to cover herself as well and was shivering almost violently when the Mediwitch stopped beside her.
"Move away Miss Weasley, I need to take a look at him," the old woman said, not unkindly.
Feeling numb, Rose stepped away and allowed the Healer to do her work. She watched as Scorpius was carried away in a stretcher, the Mediwitch bustling along beside him.
If what she was feeling was anything like what Scorpius had experienced when she had been hit with a Bludger, then she didn't blame him for coming into the Hospital Wing and yelling at her. She felt a little like yelling at someone herself. Bludgers were a bloody menace and should be replaced by something fluffy... or soft. Why couldn't they bat around some Pygmy Puffs instead?
"Weasley, aren't you going to the Hospital Wing?" Vermilion asked through her tears. Her twin was nodding her agreement.
Rose stared at her vacantly for a moment which the girl seemed to take to mean that she needed to elaborate.
"I may hate you for it, but I know that Scorpius will want you there when he wakes up," She gave Rose a push in the direction of the school.
That was all she needed to snap her out of her shock. Rose ran towards the school, not stopping until she was in the Hospital wing. A few people gave her strange looks as she passed them, but the majority of the school had seen the stretcher only moments before and understood her hurry.
The Mediwitch hadn't noticed Rose enter; she was too focused on fixing Scorpius. His shirt had been removed to show the gaping wound Rose had dreamt.
Rose watched as Madam Pomfrey poured a steaming purple liquid over the hole and the edges gradually started to knit themselves back together. The redhead breathed a slight sigh of relief; at least the gaping hole was starting to close.
A few spells to prevent infection were the final touches before Madam Pomfrey placed a piece of gauze over the wound. It was only then that the Mediwitch turned around to notice Rose staring at the scene, still white as a sheet and shivering. Her grey eyebrows drew together. "Miss Weasley, you need to warm up," she said, bustling over to the redhead and summoning a blanket to place around the girl's shoulders.
Rose perched on the edge of the bed beside Scorpius' and shivered despite the blanket until Madam Pomfrey noticed and cast a warming charm over her.
"Is he going to be okay?" Rose asked in a small voice, terrified for her friend. She almost hadn't asked the question for fear of the answer, but she had to know.
"He's going to be fine, dear. Miraculously, that piece of wood missed hitting anything that we can't fully heal with magic. I'll be able to release him in a few days, good as new." Comfortingly, she patted Rose's shoulder and handed her a Pepper Up potion.
After the steam had cleared from her ears, Rose scooted her bed closer to Scorpius' and held his hand. Normally, Scorpius had very warm hands, but now they were cold. She clutched his fingers tighter and rubbed them slightly, hoping to restore some of the familiar warmth to those seemingly lifeless digits.
She stayed like that until late into the night. Albus found her that way when he finally heard what had happened and came looking for his friends.
"How is he?" Albus asked, sitting beside his cousin and putting his arm around her shoulders. Despite the blanket she was wearing and numerous warning charms from the Mediwitch, Rose was still shivering. It wasn't really a physical lack of heat that was her problem but more of a chilling of her very soul.
"He's going to be fine, but he won't wake up," Rose said, not taking her eyes from the still face of the blond boy in the bed. Until his silver eyes actually blinked open and he informed her himself that he was fine, a part of her wasn't going to believe the reassurances of the Mediwitch.
"Rose, go take a shower," her cousin said, catching a whiff of her. "If Scorpius wakes up with you smelling like that, he'll probably pass out again."
"I can't, I have to be here in case he wakes up."
Albus stood up and put himself between Rose and Scorpius, putting a calming hand on his cousin's shoulder. "You sat with him all day. He wouldn't want you looking like a zombie when he wakes up. Go take a shower, get some rest. I'll sit with him tonight."
It took some more convincing, but Rose eventually shuffled from the room.
Now that Albus had mentioned it, she noticed that she did smell rather unpleasant. She'd been quite sweaty after her Quidditch practice and then she'd sat in the hospital wing all day in those sweaty clothes. It really wasn't surprising that she was a little ripe.
Stiffly, she trudged out of the Hospital Win in search of a shower.
The hot water helped relieve tension she hadn't even been aware that she was carrying. Rose couldn't help wondering if Scorpius had been injured because of her dream. If she hadn't kept him up until such a ridiculous hour, then he wouldn't have been late for practice and he wouldn't have felt like he had to stay behind to put away the more dangerous balls, probably in anticipation of his own practice with the Snitch. Would the accident have still happened without her interference, or had she caused the whole thing by seeing it in the first place?
What she needed to do was get back to the Quidditch pitch and take a good look at the evidence of what had happened out there. Unsurprisingly, she hadn't been paying much attention to the surroundings while Scorpius had been bleeding. She probably wouldn't be able to tell anything from whatever had been left behind after that horrible accident, but she needed to do something. Sleep was out of the question and she was going insane waiting for Scorpius to wake up.
Decision made, Rose stepped from the shower, cast a drying spell on her hair, and slipped into a pair of comfy clothes. She passed a few people in the corridors and tried to avoid their eyes as they gave her sympathetic looks. Their looks only reminded her that Scorpius was lying still in the Hospital Wing, and she was trying not to think too hard about that.
Outside, it had warmed up a bit since their early morning practice, but it was still cold out there. Rose squinted against the sunlight reflecting off all the snow and made her way across the grounds. Every footstep crunched as she walked in the crisp snow.
Since she had been small, Rose had never really liked snow. Maybe she'd somehow known even then that she would spend entirely too much time sitting in it and holding Scorpius while he suffered, rapidly losing blood.
As she approached the pitch, she tried to avoid looking at the disturbed snow and the red patch that surrounded it. Instead, she focused on the chunk that had been taken out of the stands. There really should have been some sort of spells in place to hold them up, what with the violence and danger that usually surrounded Quidditch.
Merlin, did she ever hate Quidditch.
Nothing good ever came from the sport. Even with the magical healing options available, there were still occasionally deaths. It was a sport; people weren't supposed to die during a sport. She really doubted the death toll of badminton was anywhere near the number of lives Quidditch had claimed.
When every child was walking around with a stick of wood that could kill after only a few words, she really didn't think magical folk needed the added thrill of near-death experiences in sporting events. But then again, she'd always been her mum's daughter. Dad always said that his wife thought with "Muggle logic," and that couldn't possibly apply to the magical world.
Rose forced herself to look at the spot where Scorpius' blood stained the snow in a crimson slash against all the pure white. If he hadn't been leaning over in that exact spot, if he'd been just a few metres to the left, he would have been fine. She had been fine and she'd only been a scant distance behind him.
She sunk down and sat in the snow, once again avoiding the red smear. After only moments, her butt started to lose feeling from the cold and the melting snow was soaking into her robes. She ignored her discomfort; sitting comfortably in her room hardly seemed fair when Scorpius was broken in a hospital bed.
Crunching footsteps approached from behind her, but she didn't turn to look, assuming it was Albus or one of her other cousins come to scold her for staying out in the cold. It was nice they cared and all, but sometimes she just wanted some alone time, and that was something hard to get with a family her size.
"I thought I'd find you here."
That was not Albus! She stood up and whipped around, heart all aflutter in that irritating rhythm it seemed to acquire only when he was around.
Scorpius was leaning against one of the wooden supports for the spectator stands. He looked a little pale and seemed to be leaning too heavily on the wood, but otherwise he appeared to be fine. He even had that annoying look on his face that she hated; the one that said she was being an idiot and should know better. It was almost like he hadn't nearly died in this very spot only hours ago.
Rose ran over, but stopped just as she was about to throw her arms around him. She wasn't sure how healed he was and didn't want to injure him further with her careless actions.
"Shouldn't you be in the Hospital Wing?" she asked instead, jerking to an awkward stop in front of him.
Scorpius, knowing what she wanted to do and why she'd stopped herself, reached out and hugged her, pulling her tight against his chest. He'd been forced to release his grip on the support pole that had been holding most of his weight, but he needed to hold her. Though she was small, she was stronger than she looked, so he knew she'd be able to support some of his weight.
Stiffly, still in pain, Scorpius bent down to whisper in her ear. "Can you keep a secret?"
Rose was surprised by the teasing note in his voice. He'd nearly died and she was fighting off tears for what felt like the hundredth time that day, but he was teasing her.
"Scorpius..." she said, pulling back to look up into his eyes. There was no teasing in his at all in the mercurial depths, a very intense emotion was shining out at her. She couldn't place it.
"I snuck out and then came to find you," he answered her earlier question without breaking eye contact.
"How'd you know I'd be here?"
The blond smirked at her. "Your insatiable curiosity and Gryffindor habit of assuming everything's your fault. Bit arrogant really. I'm assuming you must have picked it up from your parents, because it's certainly not a Ravenclaw flaw."
She buried her face against his chest, careful not to jostle the place where he'd been injured. "What if it is my fault?" Her voice was barely a whisper against the fabric.
Frowning, Scorpius put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked down right into her eyes. "Just because you had a vision in your dream doesn't mean any of this is your fault. If anything, you tried to warn me."
Completely shocked, she stumbled a few steps away from him, her eyes wide. He'd known?
