{{ disclaimer: i do not actually know what being stung by killer bees feels like, and therefore much of this chapter is subject to poetic license.}}
Sleep was fitful that night. The panes of window glass shook in their stone surrounds, the flags whipped at the slates on the sloping rooves. The cracking sound of fabric on slate woke Scorpius up. He opened bleary eyes to see candle light already spilling from Albus's bed, but he wasn't quite awake enough to try and understand why. His head was heavy, his eyelids were heavy, his arms were empty, and he drifted back to sleep. His dreams were filled with dark eyes and lashes, but a light, light laugh that he recognised but could not place.
"Alright team, listen up!"
Various timbres of groan ran through the team. Weasley's bright tone contrasted horribly with the filthy black skies and the still-damp kit that they'd forced themselves into. Scorp exchanged a disgruntled glance with Ronan Finnegan who stood at his shoulder; The Finnegan twins were stocky. They moved with the ease of not really giving a shit about what anybody else thought, which made for terrifying beaters and hilarious drinking companions.
"Yeah, yeah." Weasley said, narrowing her eyes. "We've all had it up to here with the weather. But we're British, get your heads out of your asses. These are the facts, this is what we're dealing with." She turned her back on the pitch and focused firmly on the team, who were all standing a little straighter. "Why are we doing this? You're all on this team for a reason – I'm asking you to remember what that reason is."
There was a ripple throughout the team, and numb hands clutched their brooms tighter. Scorp's lips quirked. "I've got a bet with Hanks from Ravenclaw." He offered. "Gryffindor's dignity is at stake, lads."
"I promised me Dad that we'd win the cup this year."
"We promised Dad that."
"It's Ravenclaw."
"I just fucking love quidditch."
"I've got a bet with that Finnegan." Amy Fletcher, one of their chasers, said ruefully, gesturing. The stocky lad gave her a thumbs up.
Rose raised her eyebrows appreciatively at her team. "That's why we're doing this. We're doing this to be the best we can be, and to make our folks proud."
"And fifty galleons."
"Please shut up, Scorp."
"Yes, Boss."
"Kit up. I want to see if we could get that Holyhead formation pulled together, and Malfoy – get that double eight sharp. Ravenlaw's chasers are good, sure, but ours are better. Who are we?"
"GRYFFINDOR!" The shout ran around the team, and they headed for the pitch. Kicking off in intervals, Rose watched them take for the sky. She frowned at the wind speeds, throwing her leg over her broom as the gale tried to take her off of her feet. Red and gold capes whipped around and the enchanted bludgers were desperately fighting the conditions.
"Please make it out of this alive." She muttered, giving the ground a solid kick and pushing off.
In the air, things weren't much better. Her broom shuddered as another gust came across the countryside and hit them head on. The Finnegan twins were smashing bludgers into the wind only for them to come flying back on the breeze which, Rose supposed, was good practice. Malfoy was skidding around the goal posts, spiralling and flipping. Objectively, she knew that the team was working like clockwork. But as she dove down to join the chasers, she felt that same niggle. It was the niggle that had kept her up for the past three nights, and that wasn't becoming any clearer, no matter how many times she and Fletcher hashed it out. Scorp had tried to help, but his solution to her foreboding mood was for the guys to go into it shirtless ("It would reduce chaffing and act as a distraction!"), which was as good as useless.
"Fletch, on your left!" She yelled, and the quaffle flew towards her, hard and fast on the wind. She caught it in the crook of her arm before hurling it down the pitch towards Spinnet. For a while, everything seemed to settle down.
Circling the goals, Scorpius was fighting the urge to nap. He had been up most of the night, and everything was going fine out here. His turns were nicely tight; Flat against the broom, G-forces tugging at his core muscles and trying to tug him off, spinning so fast that his muscles burned. Yelling abuse at his team had amused him for the most part, but his focus was slipping away. Weasley had noticed, he knew. The quaffle wasn't coming his way anywhere near as often, and he saw the three chasers tossing it between them impossibly quickly, moving up and down the pitch. His eyes glazed over as he watched, and he couldn't really be bothered to refocus them.
The sound of a wooden bat against bludger tore Scorp back to reality. The first thing he registered was the feel of his cold hands on the broom's slick black handle, and – the bludger. Who had hit the bludger?
The bludger.
There was a split second.
Not even that.
When Scorp realised that he should move.
Move.
Move.
And then,
agony.
And then -
Falling.
Rose turned to see that bludger get smashed by a gust and then, a heartbeat later, he was tumbling through the air. A puppet with cut strings.
A heartbeat later, a scream was torn from her wind-ravaged lungs. Rose was a streak of crimson as she tore towards the boy, who was plummeting towards the ground.
She didn't stand a chance.
Later, McGonagall put a hand on her shoulder, and said that she was sorry.
Later, she woke in the chair next to his bed with a start. Madam Pomfrey was bent over her, eyes warm and concerned. "You should change, Miss Weasley. Sleep in an actual bed."
Rose had shaken her head mutely. Her quidditch robes were stiff with mud and Scorpius's blood. Her leather gauntlets were scarred from where she'd used her teeth to unlace them.
Later, Mr Malfoy had wordlessly joined her silent vigil by his son's bedside. He didn't ask what Rose was doing there, and she appreciated it. She wouldn't have been able to give an answer.
Ten hours after the accident, Rose was woken again by a hand on her shoulder. The room was dark, and the disorientation left her with déjà vu. "Scorp?" Rose mumbled, words slurred and heavy with exhaustion.
"Not quite."
Rose straightened her spine and tried to wake up. Although the voice had been eerily similar to Scorpius's, she saw that the speaker was slighter in stature, shorter – and that the younger Malfoy's body was still prone in the starch white infirmary bed.
"Sorry, Mr Malfoy."
"Don't be." Draco Malfoy paused, "You were crying.
Reflexively, Rose put a hand to her cheeks and her fingers came away damp. "I – I don't remember." Liar. She remembered it all, in stops and starts. Rose remembered the way that Scorp had lain like a broken bird, limbs at completely the wrong angles. It was the first time in eight years that Rose had ever seen his giant body look small, and entirely too human. She remembered it all.
Rose could feel Mr Malfoy's eyes on her in the half-light of the muted infirmary lamps. "It's probably for the best."
Rose wondered what dreams Mr Malfoy had wilfully forgotten, for him to speak with such understanding.
"I'm sorry." Rose said again. "I should have-"
"Don't." Mr Malfoy held up a hand, "Don't do that to yourself. You did everything that you could have, and as a result of that, he'll be fine. You need to sleep somewhere… sensible." Malfoy's lip curled as he looked at the infirmary chair, clearly far from his liking. "Scorpius will be here and well tomorrow, I assure you."
Rose looked at the man that her father spoke of rarely, in passing, with distaste colouring his tone, and knew that she could trust him. Her very friendship with this man's son was a betrayal to her father, so why not add a little more fuel to the flames?
"If he wakes up-"
"I'll tell him you were here."
"No," Rose said hurriedly. "I mean, no thank you. Just tell him that - " that she was worried out of her mind, that he should not get any ridiculous ideas about dying on her watch, that the image of him plummeting to Earth played on repeat every time she let her mind drift – "that he doesn't get out of training because of this."
Mr Malfoy looked at her for a moment, light grey eyes unreadable, before his lips lifted into the smirk that he'd bequeathed to Scorpius. He nodded slowly, and Rose turned to go.
"Thank you for my son, Miss Weasley." was said to her back with finality.
Rose stilled for a moment, stunned, and then kept walking.
In her own bed, Rose tossed and turned. Amy had woken once, disturbed by the noise of Rose coming in. She had smiled a brittle smile at her, and Rose had remembered the way that Amy had retched at the sight of Scorpius, bleeding from a blackened broken collarbone. Amy was younger than Rose, and as Rose had peeled off her quidditch kit and crawled under the covers, she thought that no-one should ever have to see something like that. And then she remembered Mr Malfoy's tone, and remembered that her parents and Amy's parents and that entire generation of their world had seen demonic acts normalised. They would, Rose realised, be fine.
Including Scorpius.
Albus wasn't happy.
It had started when he'd come back at about ten after an evening of helping Professor Longbottom distil deadly nightshade. He had found the Finnegan twins huddled together with Amy Fletcher and Harriet Spinnet. Barely a word was being said, and they all upped at once to leave for their respective dorms. Albus watched them go, consternation marring his features. Fletcher being subdued was not noteworthy; The Finnegan twins being subdued was cause for national panic. The four had sat with their backs against the rest of the room, and Albus had seen the hip-flask of firewhiskey being passed discreetly between them.
Albus had spent the next two hours riddled with this feeling of wrongness. It gnawed at the back of his mind, and wasn't helped by the continued absence of Rose and Scorpius. Scorpius he could understand – the taller boy had a habit of disappearing to the Ravenclaw tower. But Rose had a cat. And that cat was stalking around the common room looking desolate. Hugo had spent a good twenty minutes lying on his stomach trying to coax the black creature out from underneath the sofa before he went to bed, eventually giving up. Albus was about to do the same, the clock having struck midnight, when his cousin had stepped, stumbled, into the common room.
"Rose!" Albus had exclaimed, horrified. "What happened to you?!" There was blood. All over Rose's arms. The neckline of her robes had turned from the gaudy crimson to a rusty brown. It was on her face. A smear of it. Right across her temple. It had dried into her hair.
"It's not mine." She had said dully, wearily. Albus had relaxed for just a moment, until she had gone "It's Scorpius's."
And suddenly Albus had been a lot less happy.
And that unhappiness had not waned as Rose had taken his arm as he went to rush down to the hospital wing and told him that, no, they wouldn't let him in. Visitors were of course encouraged, but not when the patient in question is unconscious and re-growing two dozen bones past midnight.
"How many?!"
"And she had to do something to his spinal cord. Reattach it." This was all delivered heavily, as if the words had been physically weighing the bearer down. Which would have been fair - Rose looked dead on her feet. Albus didn't want to think about how Scorpius must have looked. Probably even more dead. On his back.
That unhappiness had not gone anywhere as he wrapped his cousin into a hug. That unhappiness had settled down comfortably when Rose had told him "His Dad's watching over him."
That unhappiness had started helping itself to the tv and mini-bar whilst watching Rose limp up the stairs to the her dormitory, and Albus was left alone with bad news and no idea what to do with it.
So he went to bed.
Remarkably, the world span on. Had Scorpius been more aware and less doped up on Skele-Gro, he would have been offended by this. The last time that he had ended up in the hospital wing, a national holiday had been called. Granted, that had been a bank holiday anyway but still.
Waking up and finding his father there, head in a book, had been a surprise. He'd blinked slowly and owlishly, before trying to say "Dad?" His tongue was apparently far too large in his mouth. Scorp frowned and stuck it out, trying to peer at it down his nose. Seemed pretty normal. Maybe his mouth had shrunk?
Of course, it was at this point that his father looked up. Of course it was. Really.
"Oh good," Mr Malfoy said dryly, closing the book and standing. "Nice to see that you're looking better, son."
Sitting up turned out to be a mistake – Scorpius was used to aching. He was not used to the feeling of a million angry bees stinging him at once. Scorp's face twisted and he dropped back against the pillows with a groan. "Oh my fuck."
"Scorpius Hyperion." Draco snapped reflexively, whilst brushing the hair out of his son's eyes.
Scorp blinked up at him, eyes huge in his pale face. "Dad, tell me – do I still have my legs?"
Draco Malfoy snorted. "Just about. You have two bottles of Skele-Grow in your system, and Pomfrey was working on you for a good two hours just to make sure your internal organs stayed internal."
"Will I ever play the violin again?"
"You couldn't play before."
Scorpius allowed for that with a stiff nod, back molars grinding together as another wave of pain hit him. He clenched his eyes shut, because his hands wouldn't curl into fists as his instincts demanded.
Dimly, he heard his father stand. Draco Malfoy carefully picked a rose coloured bottle off of the nightstand, and raised it to his son's lips. "Come on now, easy." Scorpius heard his father mutter, "Take this, son. Come on."
Scorp loosened his jaw and let the glass of the bottle clink against his teeth. This, this tenderness of his father's reminded him of when he was ten, and the dog had accidentally clawed the side of his neck.
It had been Scorpius's fault. At ten years old, he knew that. Ursa was an enormous Labrador, and usually such a gentle giant. Twice the size of the scrap of child, the 40 kilo dog let him jump on his back, roll around underneath him, drag him through the grounds. But it had been raining for days on end, and both dog and child were fractious. Scorpius was a good natured child, but without the chance to get the energy out of his system he had taken to pouting, and then running around the house madly, hyped up on confinement. On one such occasion, he had crashed into the dog. Ursa had not been in the mood for brawling. The dog had wanted to sleep next to the fire, to lounge around as befitted the weather.
But Scorpius had been incessant. He poked, fondled, scruffed ears, and finally - yes! Ursa joined in, and played dead and rolled over and tousled with the freckled, pale haired boy. But then Scorpius had leapt at him, and Ursa had caught him across the neck with one great paw. It was an accident, and Draco Malfoy had born witness to the fact from his office doorway.
But still, there had been blood running down Scoprius's shirt and how he had howled. Just for an instant. And then he went very, very quiet and put his hands to the seeping wound, staining his fingers crimson. As his father had rushed towards him, Scorpius had bowed his head before the enormous dog.
"Sorry, Ursa."
Draco had gathered him into his arms, yelling for Asteria, for their house elf Hooper.
And all the while he had been promising to look after Scorpius, and all the while Scoprius had known it to be true.
Now, as Scorp felt the silken potion slide down his throat, he realised that this was his father. That it took blood and tears to break down the veneer that was so artfully and delicately placed around the older man's vulnerability. Scorp understood. He did. He was just grateful to live inside the barricade.
Draco settled himself back down into the chair by Scorpius's head. Scorp wasn't going to try sitting up again, so all he could really see was his father crossing his legs, and then dusting off the slightly rumpled material of his trousers with a deft flick of his fingers. They shared those fingers, Scorpius knew. His mother had turned her son's hand over on several occasions and told him that he had pianist's fingers. So he had taken up piano, with varying degrees of success.
"The Weasley girl was here." Draco said, opening up the paper that was always on his person. Scorp twisted his head around to gape at his father, and felt the angle of his head give him an extra two chins or so.
"What?"
"Indeed. She asked me to tell you that this," Draco gestured at the mess of semi-repaired humanity in the bed, "would not be getting you out of training."
Scorpius snorted, smile turning his mouth up. "I bet she did." Pause. "Actually, Dad, when did she?"
"Last night." His father turned a page, flicking it out so that it lay crisply against the last.
"Last night when?" Scorpius had a feeling. An itch. And there was a possibility that it was from the cast around his shoulder, but-
"Shortly before she left."
"Father."
Draco raised an unimpressed eyebrow, gazing sardonically at his son over the newspaper. Father was eradicated in the household. Scorpius had gone from Daddy to Dad with nothing in between. Father was not a part of their lives.
"Shortly before midnight, I would imagine." Pause, again. "But she brought you in. So she really must care."
"Quidditch does mean a lot to her." Scorp said thoughtfully, adjusting himself on his pillow. Less chins equalled less things to worry about.
His father scoffed, standing and flicking the newspaper closed. "Ah, yes. Quidditch certainly seems to. Now, I'm going to owl your mother, tell her that you're awake. Pomfrey will be around shortly, I assume. You will try not to injure yourself further, won't you? Just until then?"
Scorp would have waved a nonchalant hand, but his arms were still filled with killer bees. He managed to flop one of them on top of the covers instead, and his father clearly took that as a reassurance. "Excellent."
Scorpius watched him leave with a bemused expression and the feeling that they had just had two entirely different conversations.
