A/N: Hello :) Here's chapter 3, hopefully you'll enjoy it! I'm sorry if it all seems a little fast (and... mushy), it all just needed to happen.
That night was torture for Scorpius. No matter how hard he tried to fall asleep, he kept seeing Lucy and he couldn't stop thinking about her. He was in pain; this feeling was unlike anything else he had ever experienced. Was this what love felt like, then? If it was, he was very happy that he had never had to experience this before. Pure torture.
The following morning, Scorpius had trouble getting out of bed. He was dead tired, but that was not the reason. He just realised that he wouldn't be seeing Lucy at all today. Now, he hadn't seen her for a couple of years before yesterday and it had never bothered him, but he could no longer imagine himself not seeing her for longer than a day without going completely crazy.
In St Mungo's, where Scorpius worked as a trainee-Healer, people cast him odd glances all day. Several people asked him if he was alright, to which he just nodded. No matter what he did, Lucy kept popping back into his mind. She was everywhere; Scorpius even almost confused one of the patients for her. He was slowly (or quickly, he didn't know) going mad.
"Scorpius, are you sure you're alright?" his supervisor, Zelda Ericson, asked him during the lunch break. "You don't look good."
"I'm fine," Scorpius replied dully. Truth was, he missed Lucy. He missed her terribly. His heart was aching and he was almost bursting to see her.
"You don't look it," Zelda repeated. "Perhaps you should take some time off, you know? You've been working rather hard lately. Yes, you should do that. Take this week off – and if you don't feel better then, that's okay. Take off as long as you want, alright?"
Scorpius got the distinct feeling that she wanted to get rid of him. She had never urged him to take a holiday before. As a matter of fact, it had been her who kept refusing to give Scorpius some time off. But he didn't care. All he cared for, after all, was Lucy. But how to get close to her?
A couple of days later, Scorpius was feeling down again. Or still. He didn't know anymore by now. He only knew that just seeing Lucy when she entered or exited the Ministry (where he'd lay in hiding) wasn't enough. He needed to speak to her, but he didn't know how to do that. She couldn't know what had happened. That was much too embarrassing.
In the end, Scorpius decided to write her a letter. Just a short one, to tell her about his feelings. To his utter surprise, she wrote back. He couldn't stop reading the short note over and over again. To think her hands had touched this same parchment… that thought was more than enough to drive him crazy.
Over the next few days, Scorpius kept on writing; as soon as she responded, he was already writing a new letter. He didn't want to miss a single chance to hear from her. There was some initial awkwardness, since Lucy didn't know who he was and he wouldn't tell her, however much she asked about it. She never carried out her threat to stop writing him though, fortunately. Soon, however, Scorpius knew a whole variety of things about Lucy, and she knew a lot about him (except, naturally, the vital information that might result in him being found out).
She liked the colour purple, she had managed to fall down three flights of stairs once, she had always wanted a pet zebra when she was younger – to Scorpius, this only made her seem more perfect, however weird some of the stuff actually was.
After almost two weeks of writing (Scorpius hadn't returned to work yet, and nobody had owled him or come for a visit, asking him how long it would take before he'd be back), Lucy put her foot down and told him that he could pick. Either they were going to meet each other, or this would be the end of their already non-existent relationship.
Another restless night followed for Scorpius; he hadn't slept well these past weeks, but this made it even worse. On one hand, he couldn't wait to tell her who he was and start dating her, but what if she didn't want to date a Malfoy? What if she would laugh at him? What if this was only a pity date? She probably didn't even really like him. In the end, his need to (really) see her won. So he wrote her back, saying that he would love to take her out some time, but that the situation (which he had told her about, for some reason) was almost too embarrassing for him to deal with.
He thanked Merlin when she wrote back that she would come blindfolded if that made him feel better. Although that did mean that he wouldn't be able to see her eyes, he wouldn't be recognised either.
Two days later, Scorpius was incredibly nervous. Sure, Lucy wouldn't be able to see him, but he still wanted to look good. They had decided to just go to a park, instead of having dinner, because in a restaurant, they would surely attract attention to themselves.
As they strolled around, Scorpius had to make sure that Lucy didn't bump into anything, blindfolded as she was. "Hey," she said suddenly, "why are you so nervous anyway? I mean, I already know what's going on – you accidentally drank some love potion and then saw me somewhere – so why can't I just know who you are?"
"It's embarrassing," Scorpius said, steering her around a group of trees.
"Well, maybe," she admitted, "but why are you so afraid? I mean, if I thought you were a creep, I would not have written back, right?"
There she had a point. "It's especially embarrassing for me," he replied. Now that he was with her, here, he felt happier than he had been in ages. It suddenly occurred to him that, while he had dated girls before, he had never felt like this. He got the jitters just because she was near, and having to guide her through the park was almost surreal. He could only blame the love potion.
"Why?" she wanted to know.
"I shouldn't… feel this way about you," he said softly. "We're not – compatible, if you will."
"Why not?" she asked. "We've been writing constantly these past two weeks, and I feel like I know you fairly well – apart from, of course, the whole I-won't-tell-you-my-name-thing. We seem to have a lot in common."
Which was true. Neither of them liked Mexican food, both had highly enjoyed Muggle Studies at Hogwarts (Scorpius' father had nearly killed him when he found out his son was taking that class, though), and both wanted to travel the world at some point in their lives.
"It wouldn't be easy to tell people that. We – never mind." He wanted to tell her that neither of them would get many, if any, positive reactions from their families if they would ever get together. Scorpius remembered the treatment Lucy's cousins had given him at Hogwarts. Most of them had pretended that he didn't exist, but Rose Weasley had been a complete bitch every time they came across each other, James Potter hadn't been able to stop cursing him from across the hallway, and Potter's younger brother had glared at Scorpius every opportunity he got. "Besides, once this potion stops working, you'll be freed from me."
"Is that what you're planning?" she asked sharply, and Scorpius winced at the tone of her voice. "Is that what you're playing at? Make me like you first, acting like a lovesick puppy, and ditch me once the potion stops working?"
"That would be better for both of us," Scorpius said softly. "Trust me."
Lucy scoffed at this, and she didn't say anything for a while, leaving Scorpius to his thoughts. He hadn't even thought about that, but actually, he was using her to satisfy his own needs now. He didn't think for one moment that she could attach herself to him too.
"Lucy," he started, but she didn't look his way. Not that that mattered, because she couldn't see him either way, but still. "I'm sorry. Of course I'm not going to ditch you. I just thought that that was what you wanted."
She snorted. "Perhaps that's what would be best, yes. It's good that you just said that. At least now I know not to get too attached to you." She paused for a while. "Could you leave? I think we're done for today."
Well, that didn't go too well. When Scorpius entered his flat, he cursed himself for being so stupid. And then his heart started aching again. Lovely.
He wrote five letters full of apologies before Lucy bothered to write back. It was almost as if she enjoyed seeing him in pain. Except for the 'seeing' part, of course.
When she replied, her letter was rather short and angry. It took Scorpius another five letters before her letters started getting a nicer tone. Ten more letters, and he knew he simply had to see her again. When he told Lucy this, she flat out refused.
Apparently, she didn't feel like getting ditched as soon as the potion stopped working. Three letters later, Scorpius had managed to assure her that they could surely hang out together once the potion's effects subdued. If she still wanted to, that was.
In the end, Lucy agreed to meet him again. Fortunately. Scorpius felt as though it shouldn't have taken her any longer, or else he would've felt like he was dying. She had only one condition: she wasn't wearing the blindfold again. Scorpius was, however, allowed to put some sort of spell on her that caused her to go temporarily blind. There was virtually no difference between the two options, but Scorpius decided not to question her reasoning behind that decision.
The day before their 'date', Scorpius used the spell on himself. It was horrible, and it was annoying, and it was… a bit scary. He didn't see anything for three hours. At least he now knew how long the spell would last.
After meeting each other in the park a couple of times, Lucy wanted something else, so she dragged Scorpius off to a Muggle bar for a drink (or two). Her reasoning behind this was that nobody knew them there anyway, so it didn't matter much if she came off as a blind girl.
"It's so unfair, you know," she told him after they talked about many other things that kept them busy, ranging from work to books and the weather. It was nice, talking to her, Scorpius found. And he didn't just think that because of the love potion.
"What's unfair?" he asked her, raising his eyebrows, although she wouldn't be able to see that gesture.
"This situation," she said. "You're able to see me, but I still have no idea who you are. For all I know you could be a fourteen-year-old. Or a forty-year-old. I can only hear you."
Scorpius laughed uneasily. "Well, Lucy, I can assure you… I'm neither fourteen nor forty. We're much closer in age than that."
Now she raised her eyebrows. "Okay, if you say so. But, once I find out who you are, I'm going to hex you and take you on a blind date."
Scorpius rolled his eyes, but laughed nevertheless. "Oh, very funny, Lucy. Sure, if that'll make you feel better. Who says you're even going to find out who I am? And who says you still want to take me on a date – " Here, his breath hitched. A date? She saw this as a date? He could practically dance and sing from happiness now. Except that he couldn't sing at all, and he could hardly dance. " – once you know who I am," he hastily finished the sentence.
She shrugged. "We'll just have to wait and see to find out, then. But it's still unfair that you can see me and inwardly laugh at my horrendous appearance, and I wouldn't even know where you were if I didn't hear your voice."
"Lucy, Lucy, Lucy," Scorpius said softly, "you do not look horrendous at all. You're beautiful." Lucy just snorted at this. "I mean it!" Scorpius protested. "Really! You always look beautiful!"
"Sure, sure," she said, waving his compliments away. "Could you get me home?" She looked a little down now, Scorpius was sad to see. After paying the bill (luckily, they both had some Muggle money left from when they'd studied it in Muggle Studies), Scorpius apparated to Lucy's flat with her.
"What's wrong?" he asked concernedly, noticing that Lucy still didn't look too happy.
"Nothing," she replied. "It's just that I have no idea who you are, and yet we're spending so much time together that I feel like you know me better than anyone else does."
"Lucy," Scorpius said softly, "trust me, you know me better than anyone else as well." She smiled a bit, but then her expression became sad again.
"But I don't even know you," she almost cried out. "We know each other so well and I'm really starting to like you, but I don't know you at all. You keep being so secretive about your identity – it's not fair, you know?"
"I'm sorry, Lucy," Scorpius whispered. "But it's for the best. Trust me."
"Oh, I trust you." Lucy sounded close to hysterical now. "If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't let you blind me every time we meet. It's just that you don't trust me enough to tell me who you are." Her despair made Scorpius' heart break in a thousand, perhaps even more, pieces. She was right, in a way. But he knew that he just couldn't tell her who he was. They were too different, despite all their similarities.
"Ssh, Lucy, it's going to be okay," he said soothingly, rubbing her shoulders, and she sniffled a little. Before Scorpius knew what he was doing, he was kissing her. He didn't know what possessed him so suddenly, but he kissed her, trying to let her know that it would all be alright. It would be just fine. Now if only she would listen to him. And she did. After a few (long) seconds, she kissed him back, albeit hesitantly. Until, of course, she pushed him away without warning.
"I've got to go," she said in a barely audible voice. Scorpius nodded, without realising that she couldn't see him. She opened the door magically and walked in, leaving him on her doorstep, wondering what just happened, and whether it was a good or a bad thing.
A/N: So, what do you think? Let me know, please review! :)