My thanks to youcunt, peacock33 and The Chirpy Bitch for their reviews. They were much appreciated!
Sixth Year
The note arrives as she is trying to stuff the last of her winter clothing into her trunk. She is pushing ineffectually at the lid when an owl tapping at the window causes her to jump back in fright. The contents of her trunk spring out like a jack-in-the-box, the result of a poorly performed packing charm. She curses and rather ungraciously yanks open the window to receive her letter. McGonagall has requested that she see her before the final assembly.
Scorpius catches sight of Rose rushing into the Great Hall just on time and waves her toward them. Her face radiates excitement and as she slots in between himself and Al he feels an unusual tension in her. Her foot shakes beneath them and her fingers drum on the edge of the table right the way through the leaving speech. When they are at last dismissed he turns to her and must raise his voice to be heard over excitable underclassmen.
"What's up with you?" Al's ears perk up and he turns to join in on the conversation.
"It's nothing… necessarily. I had a meeting with McGonagall and… can we maybe talk about it on the train? I can barely hear myself think in here."
Something about the way Rose's eyes slide away from his towards the end of that explanation causes tension to coil in his stomach. Al shrugs and begins a high decibel conversation about the Weasley four-a-side holiday Quidditch league. Al is a captain this year and negotiations for players will take place after the annual start of summer family gathering. He is so busy expounding on the relative merits of Louis and Lucy as keepers that the unusual silence between Rose and Scorpius goes completely over his head. Scorpius takes Rose's hand and finds some comfort in the way she squeezes his in return and rolls her eyes conspiratorially towards Albus.
It's only when they are settled alone together in a compartment on the train that she comes out with it. She twines her fingers through his and stares at them.
"I've been invited to do an exchange year at Durmstrang."
"What?"
"Remember at Christmas when they called for applications?"
"From third years…"
"McGonagall came to me and said that although it wasn't customary for fifth years to apply, she felt that I was an exceptional case and I would benefit from the exchange. She offered to write a recommendation for me if I wanted to apply."
"And you did."
"I thought it was a long shot, you know? She warned me that they may not be prepared to take on senior students. We weren't together. And you know I've always wanted to travel so I thought… you know, there was no harm in applying."
"And you got in." His voice is flat. He feels like he's dreaming or watching the world go by from under water.
"I got in." She whispers.
They sit in silence, clutching one another's hands like a life line. Rose lets her head fall onto Scorpius's shoulder and stares at the seat opposite them, allowing the movement of the train to soothe her. At last Scorpius speaks again.
"What are you going to do?" He already knows the answer.
"I'm going to go."
"I'm not going to see you for a year."
"I wish you could come with."
"It's okay, it's only a year.
"Only a year." She repeats quietly.
A year, as it turns out, is not an only. At first everything is alright. There are letters and Hannah Longbottom allows Scorpius to floo Rose from Hogsmeade. But her letters become more and more infrequent. They are filled with names he does not recognise, places he has never been and outings he has taken no part in. His end of conversations becomes boring and mundane, just another week at Hogwarts. The lessons may be slightly more difficult, the names paired together in gossip may be slightly mixed up, the house on top of the Quidditch log may be different this year, but things remain fundamentally the same. Their relationship does not. The thread that ties them together seems to stretch and stretch until eventually it must snap.
It happens in January. The ground is frozen beneath his feet as he trudges from the castle towards Hogsmeade to floo Rose for the first time since Christmas. It's taken them weeks to settle on a day and time. He inwardly prepares himself for all her gaiety, for the onslaught of new names, for the lack of interest in Hogwarts. His temper boils beneath the surface as he thinks of her last letter.
Scorpius,
No time to write, there is a beautiful winter carnival on a few towns over and I am missing out on reindeer and the world's most heavenly hot chocolate even as I scribble! Tuesday should be fine but it'll have to be at around two your time because we have a portkey to go skiing with the Martinov's.
Love Rose
It isn't even a letter. It's a note. A note that doesn't bother to ask how he is. A note so hastily scribbled it's barely legible… a note that forces him, once again, to rearrange his life so he can have a conversation that's entirely about her life. His fingers clench so tightly in his gloves that when he takes them off in the Longbottom's hall the wool has left bumpy imprints across his hands.
Hannah greets him with her ever present smile, offers him tea, which he declines, and ushers him into the sitting room. Little Alice is chasing after an escaped chocolate frog. By the time Hannah has captured both the chocolate and her daughter it is two on the dot. He throws the floo powder onto the fire, kneels down in the fire place and calls out the address. He squeezes his eyes shut as his head spins independent of his body. When the spinning is over he opens his eyes to an empty room. His waves of nausea turn swiftly to ire.
"Hello?" He calls. The door is open but he can't hear anything that indicates that the house is occupied.
"Hello?" This time he calls louder and at last hears footsteps in response. He waits until the grandmother of Rose's current host family appears. She sees him and immediately begins rattling off rapid Bulgarian phrases. He hears the word 'Rosa' multiple times. He nods uncomprehendingly.
"Yes, Rosa, can you please fetch Rosa." There is more Bulgarian, slower this time, and a lot of gesturing to the door.
"I don't speak Bulgarian." He replies in despair.
"Rosa not here. She…" The woman makes a gesture with her arms that may be skiing. "You wait." Then she hurries from the room.
Scorpius does wait. He waits for 15 minutes, until the floo powder begins to run out and his ears get uncomfortably warm. Then he pulls himself back through the swirling fireplace to the Longbottom's sitting room. He knees ache against the stone. He stands up, wipes the soot from his face with a handkerchief and then collapses into the settee. Hannah pokes her head into the room.
"Did you have a good chat?"
"She wasn't there." Hannah's eyes soften and Scorpius can barely stand the sympathy he sees in them. His pride rebels.
"I'm sure she just lost track of the time, why don't I fetch you a warm butterbeer and you can wait a few more minutes in case she floos back?" He doesn't have the heart to refuse her.
"Thank you."
He sits on the couch and wonders what he is still doing. Why is he still subjecting himself to the pity of Mrs Longbottom? Why does he send letters in response to notes. They aren't working. They are just another failed long distance relationship. Dominique had said, 'Everyone thinks their relationship will be different, but none of them last. Can you name one that has lasted?' And she was right. He stares into the fire and sips at his butterbeer and knows that he cannot come back to this living room.
And then Rose's flushed, smiling face appears in the fire.
"I'm sorry! It took us forever to find the portkey to get back, all six of us were digging around in the snow for half an hour!" She is laughing and breathless and beautiful and in that moment he wants nothing more than to wipe the smile off her face. At last his silence is perceived and her expression changes. "What's wrong, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be late…"
"I can't do this anymore."
"What?"
"I can't keep doing this with you Rose."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm tired of rescheduling study groups and swapping prefects duties and leaving my assignments undone so that I can sit in the Longbottom's house waiting for you…" She stares at him in cold silence. "And you know what else? I'm tired of having a girlfriend who is so wrapped up in her grand foreign adventure that she doesn't give a shit about my life. I'm tired of being in a relationship that does not add quality to my life. It's all joyless work and I don't want to do it anymore."
"So what, I'm supposed to apologise for having fun? For enjoying my life? Just because you're miserable doesn't mean I have to be!"
"I am not miserable. I have a life too. You may not have any interest in it, but I'd like to get back to it. I'd like to maybe be dating someone whom I can have minimal amounts of contact with without embarrassing myself in front of Professors wives and trying to speak Bulgarian to women I've never met."
"Fine."
"Fine." He grinds out at her disappearing head.
AN: I'm so sorry that this has taken so long to update. I tend to dread writing the unhappy bits. Please review if you'd like me to continue, I really need the encouragement when I'm staring down a blank page! Thank you for reading.