CHAPTER NINE
Scorpius tries not to fight.
A list of things I like about Al, in no particular order: The way he scrunches his nose when his reading glasses start to slide. The cowlick at the back of his head, where the hair grows the wrong direction. His shrewd green eyes. His crooked fingers. The freckle on his bottom lip…
I recite his details, watching him watch me. Our yellow curtains warm the morning light.
"I love the way you move," he says. "You're all long and… flappy."
"Flappy?" I frown.
"Yeah." He sweeps his arms out wide to imitate my jerky gestures. "You feel with your whole body."
My face flushes with embarrassment and I press my forehead into his shirt.
"And you're more flamboyant than you realize," he says.
I snap my face up. "I am not flamboyant."
"Yes you are!" he laughs. "You're bloody obsessed with beauty. I love that about you."
Nestling closer to his chest I lace my fingers into his, admiring the way our hands look together. My head rises and falls with his every breath.
It's been two days since the first task. Two glorious, relaxed, doom-free days. With the nightmare of the first task behind me and Al and I reunited, I feel happier than I have all term. The press have been contented to discuss my miserable performance, but they've otherwise drifted away from personal attacks and speculation.
Not that I really care. At least not right now. There are more important things.
Al seems oddly disturbed that my father still hasn't written, but I'm not bothered. Draco rarely owled when I was at Hogwarts. When he did, it was only ever to give me a telling off.
No news can only mean he isn't sufficiently cross with me yet.
Al and I sit our morning History and Ethics lesson together, and I'm almost absurdly overjoyed not to be sending furtive glances at the back of his head anymore. Just the feeling of him beside me thrills. Jotting down notes from Professor Beaulieu's lecture, I can't help but wear a goofy sort of grin.
The professor wraps up class five minutes before the bell is set to ring and produces a stack of thick parchment cards.
"We 'ave a very special announcement," she says, delicately flicking her wand so that the cards hover to each of our desks. "As is Tournament tradition, ze Yule Ball will be 'eld Christmas night in ze grand ballroom."
Damn.
The professor continues to explain about the upcoming festivities and I glance down at the invitation card. Of course, formal attire is required. And of course, as Hogwarts champion, I don't have the option of bowing out. Lin, Hervé and I are meant to begin the night's dancing with our dates, which introduces the extra complication of figuring out who to go with.
The students begin to chat excitedly just as soon as the bells ring and Al and I gather our books.
"I completely forgot about the Yule Ball," I moan as we walk to our next class. "I never thought I'd be staying so I didn't bother packing any dress robes."
Then again, that might be for the best. I look like a bloody prat in dress robes.
"You can borrow some of mine." Al shrugs.
My eyes can't help but narrow. "You packed dress robes?"
"I packed everything. Wasn't sure what we'd need during the first week."
Sure. That works.
I don't bother pointing out that Al is quite a bit shorter than me. His robes are likely to leave a lot of ankle exposed.
Deep red leaves blanket the gardens as we cut down a path to the greenhouses, but I'm preoccupied with Al's mood. Something about him seems like it's closing off. Like he's retreated back into himself.
"So," he says in too even a voice. "Who are you planning to take to the ball?"
"Well you know I want to just hang out with you..."
"But I can't be your date, so…"
I scratch the back of my head and pretend not to notice how chilly he's being. "Was thinking Lin? Maybe? She knows, you know, that it'd just be as mates."
"Because you don't like girls."
"Well," I lower my voice. "Yeah."
"But that's not the problem, is it?" Rhetorical question. "You can't go with me because you're dad's a paranoid maniac, not because I'm a boy."
I stop and tug him down an abandoned side path. "Is this… Are we fighting? Is this a fight? Because I really, really don't want to fight with you."
"It's not a fight," he says in that too-cool voice, which means it is most definitely a fight. "I just don't understand why you'd need to go with a girl at all."
"Just…" I bite my lip, thinking hard. "It'd be easier to go with a girl just as mates than with a bloke just as mates. I mean, do you really want me going with another boy anyway?"
Silence. His eyes have that intense, inscrutable thing going on. I decide the best course of action is to snog his face off.
We tumble backwards and bounce off a hedgerow before landing heavy on the grass.
"Wait," he laughs, winded. "We'll be late for Botanical Arts!"
"So?" I say, burying my face in his neck.
"Good point."
Later that day, Al introduces Rosie and I to the Beauxbatons bibliotheque—seven labyrinthine storeys of reading rooms—and we spend the rest of the evening studying in a specially reserved chamber overlooking the valley. Or rather, he and I study while Rosie shreds her star chart into a thousand tiny pieces. That she's meant to be filling out, not destroying it, hasn't seemed to occur to her.
"Eurgh, are you two playing footsie under the table?" She scrunches up her face. "You disgust me."
"We're adorable," I say.
With a flick of her wand, Rosie's confetti-fied homework scatters in the air. I have to admit that the overall effect is rather pretty. By the time a piece of the sagittarius constellation flutters down onto my workbook, she looks bored again.
"Oh yeah!" She grins. "You'll never guess who asked me to the ball today."
"Everyone," Al deadpans, stretching out his arms. "Just… all of them."
"Close." She nods. "Pretty Boy!"
I cock my head to the side. "Who?"
"Pretty Boy." She sounds exasperated. "What's-his-face Devereaux. The Beauxbatons champion."
I can't help but squawk with surprise and Al's jaw drops.
"You're not considering it, are you?"
"'Course not." She waves a hand. "Told him 'maybe' just to mess with him, because it's obvious he actively dislikes me. I reckon it's a publicity stunt."
Makes sense. Rosie's racked up more Daily Prophet mentions than any of the champions so far, including me. And she hasn't even played her emergency Teen Pregnancy card yet. Attending the Yule Ball with Rose Granger Weasley would be the quickest way to a Witch Weekly profile.
I suppose his perspective is justifiable. Hervé must have entered his name in the hopes of glory, so he has every right to feel frustrated. His impeccable performance in the first task has been all but overshadowed by my own absurd inadequacy.
It probably says something about the modern world that the media cares more about ridiculing failure than praising success. Whatever the Tournament was supposed to symbolize has gotten lost in the mire of its own sideshow.
"Anyway," she goes on. "I was thinking I'd take a girl to the ball. Maybe do a whole Coming Out story thing."
Al's eyes flicker up, but he doesn't say anything.
"Who's the lucky lady?" I ask, snatching my own star chart away before she can demolish it.
"Lin, maybe? She seems cool."
"No! I'm asking Lin!"
"You two are the actual worst." Al shakes his head. "Has it occurred to either of you that Elinor might want a real date? She's not just some pawn in your deranged tabloid games."
Ouch. His criticism leave me withered and speechless, if only because he's right. However anxious it might make me, the Yule Ball is meant to be fun. Lin has every right to enjoy it.
The moon rises over the valley and a brook snaking through the forest glitters silver in the light. I feel a fit of inspiration and start rummaging through my ruckie. My problem, after all, is that I tend not to see far enough outside of myself to get the whole picture. Maybe I need a change of perspective.
Rosie and Al watch on curiously as I retrieve the silver horn, raising it to one eye while I close the other.
Well, worth a shot.
"Did that do anything?" she asks.
"Nope," I sigh. "I keep thinking I have an idea, and then I just… don't."
"And you tried dunking it in water?" Al says.
"It came out of the water." I shrug. "But yeah, I gave water a shot."
I've tried drowning it, filtering water through it, using it to blow bubbles, and banging it on various surfaces—though that last tactic was usually just out of frustration. In what sounded like a clever idea at the time, Rosie even tried setting it on fire (theory going that if a dragon's egg needed water, a gargouille's horn needed flame). Nothing came of it outside of a painful blister on my thumb.
With the clue back in our midst, the three of us find it difficult to discuss anything else.
"Just don't leave it until the last minute," he says for the hundredth time.
"Is that another piece of brilliant Harry Potter wisdom?" Rosie rolls her eyes. "Like 'McGonagall's office'?"
Al groans and apologizes again. Apparently he ran into his dad visiting with his professor aunt in the staff room, before he was even meant to know his dad was here, and (correctly) took the weird segue about our headmistress's office as a clue. Indeed, I might not have figured out 'Gargoyle' so quickly if not for that.
Then again, knowing what it was didn't help me any.
Later in the night, I'm sat up in bed scouring a book about the last tournament—Trials and Tragedies by Bethany Braithewaite—and feverishly taking notes in the margins. The more I read, the more I realize I really should have taken Care of Magical Creatures and Defense Against the Dark Arts at the N.E.W.T. level. Maybe Divination as well, in order that I might have seen this disaster coming in advance and planned my academic life accordingly.
In any event, my Outstanding O.W.L. in Muggle Studies isn't likely to do me any favors.
"This is weird," Al gives a final-sounding sigh. "You're reading about my dad, like, inches away from me."
"I'm trying to figure out the clue."
"Sure, but that's not exactly light bedtime reading."
"Neither is your book about teenagers getting addicting to drugs," I point out. Almost every other minute he stops to complain at me about their poor life choices.
"Fair point." He closes his novel with a snap and begins rifling through his nightstand. "Compromise?"
The dust jacket of a muggle mystery novel gleams at me.
"In what universe does 'murder' sound like 'light bedtime reading' to you?"
"It's pulpy." He shrugs.
I just smile and curl into the crook of his arm while he cracks open The Fence Lizard by Robert Galbraith. Al has a habit of moving his lips when he reads so I usually finish a page a little before him. But those seconds before he's ready to flip forward have never bothered me.
A little while after we finish chapter one, my eyelids start to droop. I stop following along and drift to the sound of pages rustling and his heart beating beneath my cheek.
Our bedroom door crashes open and my eyes snap open. Rosie stands framed in the threshold, hair wild from wind and eyes panicked. Late-morning sun blazes behind her making me blink.
"Oh," she says, looking down at us entangled. "Awwww."
"Shut up." Al slides his back up the headboard.
"Sorry." She sounds out of breath. "Emergency."
I have to tug my legs back in a hurry to keep her from breaking them as she jumps onto our bed. Rosie never was fond of the concept of Personal Space. Upending her rucksack, a deluge of assorted rubbish bounces off our blankets. Wallet, cracked tube of lipstick, ball of twine, a kind of mulch from stray bits of parchment… She rifles through the mess, shoving aside battered scrolls of notes and fraying folders, before finding what she's looking for. The glossy cover of Teen Witch strikes an incongruous chord against her other long-abused possessions.
"This came out this morning," she says and presses the magazine into my hands.
Peering down at the cover photo, my blood runs cold. It's Rosie and I, sat at the water's edge, hugging. The way the image is framed, it isn't clear that it's just a hug.
STAR CROSSED LOVERS, the hot pink headline reads.
"Shit," Al breathes.
Frantic, I fan the pages until I find the main article. At least a dozen photos of Rosie and I accompany the piece, each covertly snapped during our walk two weeks ago—our 'moonlit stroll,' as the writer calls it. In picture after picture, the gentle affection between us looks anything but platonic.
Things definitely seem serious between Britain's Golden Daughter and the TriWizard Dark Horse, the article reads. On the eve of the First Task, Scorpius hosted Rose for a sleepover in his quarters. Teen Witch can only guess what she chose to give him as a good luck charm.
Photo: Rosie and I climbing aboard my carriage the night of the feast; then, the pair of us disembarking the following morning.
Bolded Caption: Could a sleepless night have meant a shoddy showing by Malfoy against the gargouille?
"The shite thing..." She bites her lip. "Is that my emergency Teen Pregnancy card is probably off the table now."
"So far off the table," I say.
Just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, the door rattles with a brisk knock. The three of us trade anxious looks.
"Scorpius?" Madley's soft voice calls from the hall. "Are you there? I need a word."
A thousand worries flood my mind and I can practically hear my universe ripping at the seams.
"Go!" Al hisses, waving his hands at Rosie. "The closet."
He and I are still half dressed, beds pressed together.
"Uh, one second!" I shout back.
We scramble, cursing the noise it makes to separate the beds again. The closet is too shallow for Rosie to shut the doors so she curls up under my overcoat. Anyone taking a close enough look would be painfully aware that a person sat huddled beneath. Al tugs a jumper over his bare chest while I twirl a dressing gown around my shoulders.
Pulling the door open a crack, I try not to sound out of breath. "Hi Professor. What's up?"
"Could you come down to my office, please?" She bites her lip. "Your father would like to speak to you."
I glance back at Al on instinct and he looks as stunned as I feel. It's not possible for Draco to have come all the way to France just to tell me off. Not least because he hasn't had a passport since the '90s.
"Please be quick getting ready," Madley says, then lowers her voice. "And Miss Weasley, it might be a good idea to avoid being seen when you leave. Maybe don't make a habit of visiting Scorpius in his room."
"Bollocks," Rosie sighs from under my coat.
My knees tremble and I feel dizzy as I twist the knob to Madley's office five minutes later. Noticing the seam on my shirtsleeve, I realize I put it on wrong-side out.
"Come in," the professor says as I shuffle in the doorway. A velvet shawl drapes over something round-looking on her desk. "You can take a seat."
Madley pulls back the fabric and I jump to see a reflection in the crystal ball beneath. To my surprise, it isn't my reflection at all; it's my father's.
"Scorpius." His voice sounds distant, as if from behind glass, and his face appears weirdly distorted in the orb. "Are we alone?"
I see Madley take a step toward the door but I give an almost indiscernible shake of the head.
"Yes," I lie. "We're alone."
"I haven't wanted to risk writing," he says. "It isn't beyond them to begin intercepting our owls."
Them. He loves talking about them. I'm still not exactly sure who he means, but I'm pretty sure the answer is just everyone.
I stare back at him, unsettled by the way his translucent face hangs where my own ought to be. The rest of the office appears upside-down within the sphere.
"I… I don't know what to say." He shakes his head. "This news about Miss Weasley and yourself… I never would have thought this of you. Although I suppose it explains why you were so keen to join the Hogwarts Delegation."
My mouth feels dry and my head spins. A thousand excuses rise in my throat like sick but not a single one seems good enough. If my father is still suffering from the delusion that I wanted to go to Beauxbatons, how can I possibly explain to him that I'm not dating Rosie?
"I'd like to think that this…" he goes on. "This relationship—putting your name in the goblet—is just some… rebellion, rather than an act of sabotage."
"No!" I cry. "I'm not—I would never—"
"Good," he says, voice firm and urgent. "There is only one option left to you at this point, or I fear that the worst may come to pass. Scorpius, you must tread lightly…"
So that's the way it is. Hearing your son insist someone entered him into a life-threatening Tournament against his will? No big deal. Discovering that he nearly drowned facing off against a bloody dragon of the sea? Child's play. Magazine gossip that he's going out with Rose Weasley? Emergency.
Peeking through the vines climbing the gazebo, I can see the horde of reporters shifting their weight, cameras poised, waiting for the moment when Rosie and I finally emerge. I briefly weigh the pro's and con's of just kipping out here tonight. For the first time, Al is the one acting as cover. It wouldn't be unlike them for the journalists to suggest that she and I are shagging in here.
While I love the girl to death, the passing thought sends a shudder up my spine.
"If it makes you that uncomfortable, then why don't we just go with the 'I'm a lesbian' thing?"
"Come on, Ro." Al shakes his head. "Remember all those articles criticizing Hermione's mothering skills when it came out that you were on the potion? You could maybe convince them that you're bisexual, but that won't stop them thinking you're going out with Scor."
"Well maybe I just hadn't, like, come into it yet, but now I'm a hundred percent for girls."
"Unless this is your twisted way of coming out to us, I really don't understand why you're so obsessed with telling everyone you're gay."
"I guess I'm just curious what they'd do." She shrugs. "Okay, Plan A then."
"This is so not Plan A," I speak up for the first time.
I'm still reeling after the conversation with my father. Having been fully convinced by the story that Rosie and I are 'an item,' his new strategy is that I don't do anything to muck it up. Sitting through his stilted lecture on keeping witches happy might have been our most awkward talk to date, not least because of how superficial it all sounded. Buy her presents. Listen to her talk and try to remember details. If she says she's 'fine,' she's lying; apologize immediately. He sounded like a chapter from Twelve More Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches, and not a single word of his advice suited Rosie at all. Lucky the two of us aren't actually dating.
"Listen," she goes on. "He's mostly worried because he think my parents will, like, retaliate or something if things don't go well. Like, they'll send him to Azkaban if you break my heart or whatever. So if we can just get him to calm down about that…"
If we can get him to calm down about that, then I only have to listen to him worry about my performance as Hogwarts Champion. Twenty minutes I spent nodding and gulping while he passed on his instructions about romance, but he spared only a few seconds going over my upcoming mortal peril in the next task.
"Don't say or do anything to compromise us, and remember that your performance in the tournament is being watched closely." Only when we said our last goodbyes did he add, "and do stay safe."
Thanks Dad.
"There is a bright side here," Al sighs. "A small one, but still. Rosie, where were you the night Scor's name got put in the goblet?"
"How the hell should I know?" She throws up her hands. "That was weeks ago."
My heart leaps as I realize what Al is getting at.
"Think, Rosie," I say. "Is there anyone who would know that you weren't with me 'round midnight? A roommate, or maybe someone you set on fire or something?"
Rosie scratches her chin, considering. "No. No one would have seen me then. I can be your alibi."
I punch the air and nearly whoop with joy.
"Alright," she says. "Let's do this. I'll send the owl as soon as we get back."
Trading solemn nods, the three of us prepare to leave the safety of the gazebo. Rosie and I pull up our hoods, linking arms to make a more compact unit. Al steps out first, clearing the way like some sort of bodyguard.
It's almost liberating, marching through the flashes and urgent questions, now that a story is out there. They have what they want and all we have to do now is control the details. It helps that the story is a lie, so none of this feels real. Our ruse is a pretense of exposure, giving me a hiding place where no one would ever think to look. It was harder when I was just myself, trying not to be seen. Now I can hide in my own shadow.
Rosie taps my arm as we approach the train, indicating something. Turning to her, she surprises me with a kiss. There's one blinding second as the cameras blaze. When the clacking of shutters stops, applause rings out across the crowd. I restrain myself from wiping my lips. Now: smile for the cameras.
With their cover photo secure, they drift away satisfied. Leaving us alone.
I should have figured this out ages ago.