Scorpius gingerly sits down beside her bed, and as Madame Delsanter walks away, brushes Rose's hair away from her face. Washed of color, pale, she lies underneath the covers, looking more dead than alive. Yet the rise and fall of her chest is enough to keep him going. He lowers her head to her chest, feeling her thin heartbeat echo to him. But as Scorpius picks up her hand and holds it in both of his, what he doesn't know is that she's a thousand miles away, lost and drowning in her own dreams.
Well well well. A Weasley. What have we got here?
Rose feels her chin rise up defiantly, and she crosses her arms.
"So kill me," she challenges, feeling, again, the absence of her own empty heart. It laughs.
"I think you'll turn out useful, Rose Weasley. Interesting. You do know that now you're here, there's no turning back?"
Rose looks directly into the slits of eyes, the skin stretched taunt.
"I know," she says, unwavering. After all, what is there to turn back for? Expectations, high over her head? Parents who love the person they've imagined, and not her? A man who can't seem to love her back – a man who she can't seem to stop loving? She'd throw all that away in an instant – and after all, it's what she's doing now, right?
The voice hisses, and she turns back.
"Scorpius Malfoy. As long as it takes, whatever it takes," it says, her cue to leave. She tells herself to breathe, clearing her mind as she feels it probing through. She wonders, faintly, how it knows exactly the one thing she cannot bear to give up.
But she remembers how he'd handed her heart back to her the previous night, the broken pieces broken even more, and left her to lick her own wounds. And she wonders, faintly, that this may not be so bad after all.