A/N: …Well, this update did not go up as quickly as I had planned it to, as Real Life got in the way (as it always seems to do). Once again, the chapter is shorter than what I would've liked it to be, but my Muse seems to be hiding from me. This chapter is going up mainly because of the response I received for the last one in the form of lovely reviews—you all are wonderful! Thank you so much for your support and praise; I run on it like a car runs on gasoline :) Anyway, enough with the cheesy similes—on with the chapter!

(Oh, and the disclaimer: these are not my characters, though I would love to own them. Sadly, I am just playing with them. Hopefully I am doing these wonderful characters justice.)

Guilt was a feeling that Scorpius was well acquainted with. It had followed him wherever he went ever since he learned how the terms "death eater" and "Malfoy" were related, like a heavy storm cloud that refused to let the sun shine through.

He was not, however, used to waking up with it pressing down on his shoulders. The boy could almost feel the weight of it, pushing hard on his collarbone and chest, as if the world depended on it's—

Wait. Hold on.

Guilt normally didn't usually move suddenly from a person's collarbone to their face.

Scorpius made some sort of uncomfortable noise, and the pressure moved off of his nose and left eye to the edge of his bed, by his stomach. "Sorry," was whispered in the dark.

Of course. It was his temporary roommate.

"It's all right," Scorpius sighed, sitting up, though part of him did wonder what Rose was trying to achieve by groping his face in the middle of the night. Even though the guilt wasn't actually a physical presence, he could still feel it sitting like a stone in the pit of his stomach. "What were you trying to accomplish, exactly?"

"Um." The room was still dark, but he could practically see her blushing tomato red to the tips of her ears. It was somehow funny and adorable and attractive all at the same, which was weird, especially for someone like him to be thinking. "I was… y'know, practicing. But I fell. On top of you. Again, sorry."

The Slytherin smiled tiredly. "Better on me than on the floor." He raked a hand through his hair and shook his head slightly, making it stick up just a bit less. "Want any help?"

Rose smiled, relieved that her friend seemed willing to put what had happened the night before between them. "Sure."

They both got up, the redhead doing so a bit shakily, and Scorpius right behind her. He cupped her elbows from behind—which was a bit different from the way that they had practiced the night before—and told her that he was ready then she was.

The girl started forward. She was still unstable and a bit weak, but Scorpius could tell that she was improving. He would say that Rose getting back on her feet that quickly was a miracle, if he believed in them.

After only twenty minutes, the lights turned on, signaling the end of the night and the beginning of a new day. They both yelped and squinted as they did, shielding their eyes with a hand. However, when Scorpius let go of his friend, she stumbled and would have hit the floor if her roommate had not lunged for her and got a good grip around her waist.

"How about we migrate to the bed?" Rose proposed after a few moments of awkward silence, and with a nod, Scorpius went along with her suggestion. They both sat on his bed (well, it was more leaning than sitting) until Rose decided that she was tired of the awkwardness and flopped down onto the sheets, clamping a hand on Scorpius's shoulder so he would come down with her. After they were situated, she began to speak.

"Look, Scorpius, I understand I crossed a line last night, and I'm sorry," the girl began, playing with her orange locks as she did so and refusing to meet her friend's eyes. "I truly am. You have to know that I'm just worried about you. Even back at Hogwarts, when we barely knew each other except for a rivalry that I dreamed up, I was worried— you had no friends, you were bullied relentlessly, you never spoke. I always wanted to say something to you, but I'm not really a Gryffindor; I'm only in there because I begged the Sorting Hat. I was never brave enough to befriend you, and I regret it now, because sweet Merlin, Scorpius, no one should even think about doing… doing that, let alone try. No one should ever have to feel that horrible. And now I'm just lying here rambling because I really have no idea what to say to you to make you understand that I'm so glad that you're not dead, because if you were, I'd still be lying dejected in a hospital bed with no hope for my future—"

"Rose—"

"No, let me finish whatever the hell I'm trying to say. I'm only just getting to know you, but you've helped me so much, and I have no clue how I'm supposed to repay you. It's not that I think you're only helping me to get something in return, but you deserve something for putting up with my bullshit legs that have to relearn how to do their job. So I'm just going to shut up now, because even though I've been talking now for a few minutes, I really haven't said anything. But I want you to know, Scorpius, that I want you to stay. It's a better world with you in it. It's an incredibly cheesy thing to say, but it's true."

Silence reigned. The blonde boy was struck absolutely speechless, and even if he wanted to say something, he doubted he could get words past the lump that decided to stick itself in his throat without his permission. Even if Rose felt as if she had said nothing, Scorpius knew that she had said everything.

So instead of speaking, he reached out and grabbed her hand, intertwining his long fingers with hers. Their hands fit well together, some part of his subconscious realized, and he hoped that he wasn't cutting off her circulation with the amount of strength he was gripping her with.

She didn't complain, so the Slytherin figured that she could deal with it. So they just laid there for what seemed like hours, staring at the ceiling and listening to the hustle and bustle of the hospital right outside of their door.

Any second, the Weasleys would be arriving, so Scorpius knew that he had to say something before they did. Taking a deep breath, he finally spoke. "I'll stay."

The line hadn't come out as strongly as he had anticipated, but it was a thank you and an I'm sorry and an as long as you stay with me, too all wrapped into one. Rose understood the whole meaning, and squeezed his hand once before they both had to get up and face the day ahead of them.

Hours later, when Rose was chatting with Albus and her mother and Scorpius was reading Rose's copy of Quidditch Through the Ages, someone whose presence Scorpius had been dreading arrived.

The boy's mother rushed over to his bed, fresh off the floo network. She'd returned to Malfoy Manor less than an hour before, and immediately had changed and dragged Draco to the hospital to see their son. Astoria was obviously a bit frazzled, her chocolate brown hair pulled back from her face in a haphazard braid and pale face void of makeup. She ignored the Weasley clan and strode straight to her son and hugged him tightly.

Scorpius returned the embrace tentatively, feeling a bit awkward doing so. "I'm so sorry I couldn't get back sooner," she apologized, tightening her grip on him for a moment before releasing him and taking him by the shoulders instead. "Is everything going alright? You father said that there was a bit of trouble, but you're getting past it, aren't you? Was it his fault? That man is always so irksome that I don't even know that I want to listen to him when he speaks—"

"Mother, everything is fine," Scorpius cut her off, maneuvering out of her grip and standing gracefully. "Shall we step outside?"

They both left the room, leaving behind some Weasleys who were expecting a show. Rose just huffed and rolled her eyes at her family before starting a conversation about something that had absolutely nothing to do with anything important.

At the same time, Astoria and her son met up with Draco, who had been waiting just outside the door. He seemed tense, as if he was regretting the harsh words he had said in the hall a couple of days before. Scorpius felt no sympathy for him.

They walked in silence to the courtyard, where they sat on a bench in a secluded corner of the area. Before anyone could get a word in, Draco sent his son a look, telling him that if he didn't start a fight, then they wouldn't be at odds today.

Scorpius hoped his face conveyed that if Draco said anything to make the boy angry, the yelling would be justified.

"So mother, how was Romania?" Scorpius asked politely, as if he was talking to one of his father's clients and not his own mother.

"Dull," she responded. "It doesn't matter. I want to hear about you." Her voice cracked at the end of the sentence, and her bottom lip wobbled. The woman's hands, encased in soft black gloves, twisted nervously in her lap. "Why… Why would you do something like this, Scorpius?"

Before anyone could move, Astoria was a sobbing mess, curling into her husband's chest. Draco's arms went around her automatically, and over her shoulder, the man sent his son a look that said Look what you did!

Scorpius tried to communicate that he didn't really care; his mother was a crier, and she'd probably be bawling even if he hadn't split his blood all over the bathroom floor in an attempt to say goodbye to the good ol' universe.

Draco just rolled his eyes and patted his wife's back, more than used to this sort of scenario. After a moment, Astoria decided that she didn't want her husband right then and latched onto her son instead.

"I love you, Scorpius," she declared, clutching him so tightly that he wondered if she was lying and wanted to finish his job for him. "I don't understand why you wanted to do such a thing!"

The boy opened his mouth to explain why he did what he did, and found that he couldn't. Guilt nearly overwhelmed him, and he found himself hating that stupid emotion once again; it seemed no matter what he did, he couldn't get away from it. "I'm sorry, mum," he said, hugging her just a bit tighter. "I don't think I know why either."

They stayed like that for a while: Astoria in her son's arms, Draco sitting next to them awkwardly and stroking his wife's back, trying to offer what little comfort he could. This sort of thing rarely happened in the Malfoy family: they were a reserved bunch, except for Astoria's random emotional outbursts. But then again, it wasn't every day that a part of the family tried to kill themself. As morbid as it was, maybe it would turn out to be a good thing; maybe it could be the one thing that tied the broken bunch together.

The family that had crumbled so fast and so hard had hit rock bottom. They hadn't completely realized it when Voldemort fell neither the first time nor when Harry Potter defeated him a second, but there was farther a family could fall. And it nearly took a suicide to get them to see that.

On that day, in that moment, all three of them knew that slowly but surely, the Malfoys would catalogue their scars, cut their losses, and build themselves back up again.