Amortentia

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A Scorose Fanfiction by Goldensnitch18

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Rated M for Scenes of a Sexual Nature & Language

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Summary: In their sixth year, rivals Rose and Scorpius

have a moment of terrifying clarity when they

both inhale the sweet smell of Amortentia.

One year later, Rose is finally single and Scorpius is

determined to snog the crazy out of her.

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Disclaimer: I am not profiting from this story.

Anything you recognize belongs to the great and mighty JKR.

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Beta Magic: Many thanks to harpersbizarre and dragonjess

for their time and work on this story.

Chapter Nineteen

After her father had shown up at Scorpius' flat, Rose didn't have much of an option but to go home with him. She supposed she could have argued, but really that wouldn't have helped the situation at all. It seemed that her father was willing to give Scorpius a chance. This was so unexpected that she didn't want to ruin this turn of events by insisting that she be able to stay the night away from her mother. Instead, she had gone back to Scorpius' bedroom, well, stomped off really, and grabbed her dress from the funeral. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she was pulling it on, worried about how Scorpius would handle the day and happy that she would finally be able to hold him. Everything had still been such a secret then. Now, hours later, they were out. There was no point in secrecy when their parents knew. They were finally going to find out what it would be like to have a real relationship, and she was scared that they weren't ready.

She had returned to the living room to find Scorpius and her father waiting for her, both standing in the same spots. She'd walked over to Scorpius, laced her fingers in his, and kissed him softly on the lips. Her father had turned away towards the door at this, and she had taken the chance to deepen her kiss for a few short moments. "I'll miss you," she whispered.

"I'll miss you, too," he assured her.

"Let me know if I can do anything."

"I will. Goodnight, Rose."

"Goodnight." She walked past her father and out the door of the flat. She was still annoyed with him after all. Honestly, the two of them were absolutely ridiculous. Somehow, in the moments that Rose had left them alone, they had found each other's mutual dislike for Rowan Wood and decided to start shouting about it like idiots.

A few moments later, quick, heavy footsteps had followed her, and Rose knew her father was behind her. They made their way into the stairwell, and, after a quick check for any Muggles, Apparated home.

Rose had smelled the cookies at once. "Mum's been baking."

"So were you," he reminded her gently. She shrugged as if it wasn't the same thing at all, even though it very much was exactly the same thing. She'd learned to bake from her mother, especially when the older witch was anxious. They walked through the back of their home and into the kitchen. Hugo was sitting at the counter with Albus. "Where's Mum?" Ron asked Hugo, and the boy pointed up to the ceiling.

"Her office," he replied. Ron nodded and left the room, headed towards the stairs.

"How's Scor?" Al asked, his face anxious.

"He's okay. He went back to the funeral. He'd just gotten back when Dad showed up. We didn't talk much actually."

"And, Uncle Ron didn't kill him?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "They ended up ranting at each other about Rowan."

Albus and Hugo both burst into laughter at this, and Rose threw a disgruntled expression their way before following her father. She would have to face her mother anyway. She might as well get it over with.

Rose stopped outside the door of her mother's office and tried to collect herself. She felt a rush of emotion flow through at just the thought of walking into the room. Her throat was suddenly dry, and her chest felt heavy. She could hear her parents talking softly, but she didn't want to know what they were saying. After taking a minute to collect herself, Rose pushed the door open and stepped inside. Her mother was sitting in her desk chair, and her father was leaning back against the desk next to her. They both looked up as Rose came through the door. Her mother's face was blotchy and red from crying.

Rose took a seat in the small armchair her mother kept in the room for reading. So many afternoons before this Rose had sat in that armchair working or reading while her mother did the same at her desk. She looked around the room, avoiding her parent's eyes. Nothing had changed. It was the same. For some reason, she felt like something should be different.

"Rose," her mother began softly, "I'm so sorry."

Rose stared down at her hands. Sorry. It didn't even cover what she needed. "I can't … I don't trust you anymore."

"Rose." Her father now, his voice stern.

"Ron." Her mother, her hand on his.

"Rose, I know I didn't tell you about this and it hurt you, but you hurt me, too." Rose clenched her eyes shut at those words from her mother and the truth she wanted to ignore. "You've been lying to us for months." Rose felt her eyes fill with tears. They trembled on the edge of her eyelids until she looked up at her mother, and then they began to fall.

"I know," she choked out past the lump in her throat.

"I wish you would have trusted us more. We love you so much, Rose. I can't even … there is nothing you could do that would change that." Her mother's voice was shaking as she tried to control it.

Rose wiped tears from her face as they fell quickly down her cheeks. "I know, but … I just …"

"I'm not going to lie to you, Rose," her father said. "I wouldn't have picked him for you. This isn't going to be easy for the two of you."

"I know."

"Do you know what his family believes? How he's been raised?"

"He's not been raised to believe any of that terrible stuff! You know that."

"That's not what I'm talking about. Do you know what Pureblood marriages are usually like? Do you know what it means that you … you …" Her father's face was turning pink.

"That you slept with him," her mum finished the sentence her dad couldn't.

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"I … he mentioned it, yeah." Rose blushed at the memory of Astoria walking in on them and of their conversation the next time she has seen him.

"Rose, it's always been taken very seriously in their family. I don't know if they will come out and say it, but his parents are going to expect …"

"Me to marry him," Rose finished.

"Is that what you want?" Hermione asked softly. Ron clenched her hand a little tighter.

"Scorpius doesn't believe in any of that," Rose said, avoiding the question.

"I find that unlikely," Hermione told her as gently as she could manage. "Scorpius loves his family very much. He is incredibly loyal to them and has always participated in their traditions before this."

"Well, he isn't going to force me to marry him. We're eighteen years old," Rose said, as if this was the end of the matter.

"Draco was eighteen years old when he was betrothed to a woman he barely knew," Hermione reminded her.

"They wouldn't do that to him."

"No, but they will expect him to, at least publically, live their traditions out. He is a Malfoy, and as much as the people in this room want to believe that doesn't mean anything, it does. They abide by a different set of rules than the rest of us."

"I don't … he won't."

"Rose, maybe you're right, but I've been listening to Draco talk about Scorpius his entire life. He and Astoria will expect the two of you to be seriously considering marriage, and probably soon."

"I don't even know if they are okay with me," Rose told her, feeling her stomach clenching wildly at the thought of being forced to marry Scorpius.

"They will be," Hermione said, her voice confident.

"How do you know?"

"You're our daughter." She had expected her mother to answer, but it was her father.

Hermione looked at him with pursed lips and nodded. "Draco and Astoria love Scorpius, and would likely not care because of that, but even Lucius would be hard pressed to deny that marrying into our family comes with a certain appeal."

"What do you mean?" Rose asked, unable to determine what exactly it was that her parents were saying.

"Your father and I …" Hermione gazed at Ron and went on. "We carry a lot of weight still after all these years. People listen to us. They respect us. I'm … I just got word that I'll be promoted to Head of the Department by the end of the year. I'm seriously considering Kingsley's requests to let him endorse me as his replacement in a couple years. "

"Mum, that's … amazing."

"We have a considerable amount of status. It isn't something we usually talk about or that really affects your day to day, but it's something your mother decided twenty-five years ago that she was going to use to get ahead and make a difference," Ron told her.

"Depending on what you decide to do after you leave Hogwarts, you will have a similar pull, Rose. Perhaps not quite as influential, but people will listen to you when you speak. There will be those who will support you because of who you are and not because of what you believe."

"Oh," Rose flushed. It was in that moment that she remembered something terrible. She was still lying to her parents. She was still keeping something from them. "About that …"

"What?"

"Have you submitted applications?" her mother asked her. The excitement in her voice made the queasy feeling in Rose's stomach all that much worse.

"I've accepted a job." Rose picked at the skin on the sides of her thumbnail.

"Rose!"

"Wow! Where?"

"Uh … " She looked at her father's face. He had a wide grin spread across it. "With Uncle Harry." His face fell, morphing into confusion, then disappointment, and settling onto something Rose couldn't really identify. Her mother gripped the arm of her chair. Her knuckles turned white.

"What?" Her voice was low, nearly a whisper.

"I applied to the Auror Office. I interviewed with Uncle Harry and his team over Christmas."

"I'm going to throttle him, Hermione."

"You know he can't tell us," her mother said sadly.

"She's just a kid."

"You were just a kid."

"And I left for a good reason!"

"I know that, Ronald."

"What were you thinking?" Her father suddenly turned on her, his voice growing louder.

For a single moment, the brilliant idea of being honest and telling them that it had been Scorpius who had suggested the job to her occurred to Rose. She quickly decided that her father would probably shift his anger from her Uncle to her boyfriend if she let that fact slip out. "I'm well suited for the job," she said instead.

"Rose, you are still so young," her mother insisted.

"So? You've just told Dad he was the same age as me!" Rose couldn't believe her mother. A moment ago she had been arguing with her husband!

"It's different, your father had already …. We had been through so much." Hermione shook her head as she spoke.

"So, because I didn't help Uncle Harry kill Voldemort, I can't possibly be good enough to be an Auror?" What bollocks. Plenty of Aurors, most actually, had nothing to do with Voldemort or his defeat. It was ridiculous for them to insist that she wasn't capable because of this.

"It's not that."

"Of course not."

"They would be lucky to have you."

"We just know what that life is like, Rose."

"You don't think I can handle it?" That was it. They had sheltered her as well as they could her entire life. They only told her about the war when she asked. They kept long friendships from her. They left jobs they considered too risky. It was as if they had lived all of their adventures in those first years of their lives, and now they wanted to keep her from having any.

"Of course, you can."

"It's just … so …"

"What about Quidditch? Ginny has so many connections, and you're brilliant."

"I could put out some feelers in my department, dear. We could certainly use someone as talented as you." Hermione bit her lip, as if she was already selecting the perfect spot for Rose in her department. A desk job, no doubt.

"Are you both serious?" They stared at her. They were serious. "I'm not taking some hand out job! I want to do this. I applied for it. I interviewed for it. I worked my bloody arse off for it. I'm taking the job."

"Are you trying to kill us?" her father asked, his face still red.

"No, I'm just living my life!"

"You and Scorpius are both going to be so busy, Rose. Are you sure that's what you want?" Her mother seemed to be attempting to shift gears now.

"How do you know Scorpius is going to be busy?" Rose retorted, though she was sure she knew the answer.

"His father told me last September about his job offer."

"Of course, he did." Rose tried to keep the distaste out of her tone, but it was impossible.

"How does Scorpius feel about this job?"

"He supports me," Rose told them firmly.

"Of course, he ruddy does," Ron fumed.

"Apparently, he's the only one," she snapped.

"Astoria doesn't work," Hermione reminded her.

"And?"

"Well, what if you do marry Scorpius. Would you have children? Who would be taking care of them?"

"Mum! I'm not going to have any kids right now."

"Have you talked about it?"

"No, of course not, that's ridiculous." Rose rolled her eyes and huffed, exasperated.

"Really? Is it?" Hermione raised her brow as she spoke.

"Yes!" She threw her arms up and let them fall back to her thighs with a clap.

"Then why are you having sex with him?" Her mother held her gaze as she asked, refusing to look away.

"What?!" Rose gaped.

"Hermione, do we have to …" Ron's red faded to pink, and his voice lowered.

"Yes, we do," Hermione snapped. "She thinks it's appropriate to be having sex with this boy, and she doesn't seem to realize the repercussions of that choice."

"We're using the charm," Rose mumbled embarrassed. She couldn't believe they had come to this place. Her parents had known about Rowan, and they never had to do this. Why in the world was it necessary now?

"You should be on a potion made by a reliable potion master. That charm…" Hermione shook her head. "It's not a decent option."

"How about you shouldn't be having sex with him at all?" Ron grimaced at them both.

"Have you told Hannah that you are …"

"No!" Rose cut her mother off mid-thought. There was no way she going to see her best friend's mother about this.

"Well, you should be seeing a Healer, Rose. You clearly aren't being very adult about this, so I believe you can understand my reservations about it occurring."

"It's not … that's not …"

"You aren't talking about the future. You haven't talked about what would happen if you got pregnant. You don't seem to even be willing to face the fact that his family is going to want you to be married within the next year, if they have anything to say about it. You aren't taking a potion. You're not taking care of your body. You…" Hermione's cheeks were turning pink now, and her arms were moving through the air as she spoke, ticking off fingers.

"Okay! When you say it like that … of course it sounds terrible." Rose argued.

"How am I supposed to say it?"

"I love him," Rose said. It sounded lame even to her ears. Her father actually rolled his eyes.

"That's nice. Love isn't enough," Hermione said harshly.

"What do you mean?"

"Real relationships are about so much more than love and your hormones," her father interjected.

"You need to trust one another and communicate. You should have somewhat similar goals when it comes to the big things. You have to be willing to make sacrifices for him to get what he wants, and he should do the same for you. You should be his biggest supporter. If you're serious enough to be sleeping together, you should have some sort of plan for what your life together is going to be like, where it's going."

"Mum …"

"No," her father cut in. "What your mother is saying is nothing compared to what the Malfoy's will expect. Their questions will be far more invasive than ours."

"How is that possible?"

"Believe me," Hermione said, "it is."

"I don't … I don't know about any of those things," Rose told them desperately, trying to make them understand. "I just want to work and be with Scorpius. I want to get a flat with my friends and just be me for a while! I mean, I was just … last year at this time, I thought I was going to marry Rowan! I had an entirely different set of plans and priorities. I can't just jump into this thing like that!" Her parents were both silent, watching her. She buried her head in her hands and began to sob into them.

After several long minutes, she felt her mother's arms around her. "That is exactly why I'm asking you these questions," Hermione said softly near her ear. "You need to be honest with yourself and with Scorpius. I-I love Draco. I do. He's one of my dearest friends, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you that, but you are my daughter. What you need and want is always more important to me than what he needs and wants. You need to make sure that you aren't letting their expectations dictate your life."

Rose wiped at her cheeks, moving to sit up. She wrapped her arms around her mother, tears still falling down her face. She felt her mother's body shake against hers and knew that she was crying or trying not to. "I just don't want you to lose yourself," she whispered against Rose's hair.

"I won't," Rose promised. "I love you, Mum."

"I love you, too"

XXX

Four days later, Rose was standing in a small, empty bedroom with Alice.

"Are we really going to do this?" Alice asked her softly, and Rose smiled.

"Yeah, we are." She walked over to the window and peered out. It was nothing to owl home about, but it would do. The flat had two small bedrooms, but the girls were used to sharing anyway. They didn't mind that. The common rooms were small as well, but the rent was the cheapest they had found in an area their parents would actually let them live.

Alice had filled out and mailed in her Healer training application the afternoon she had run into James. Her heart and her head had battled the entire way through the process, but in the end, she decided that it was the right thing to do. It would be a terrible decision to not apply just because of James. This was the only career she had seen herself following, and she wasn't about to let their mistakes take something else away from her. She had fought herself on this also, the moving in with Rose thing. She and Rose had remained close after the break up with Al, but something had changed. It was something neither of them wanted to look to close at, or talk about, but it was there in the room with them whenever they were alone. She hoped that they would someday be able to put that behind them as well.

"We'll both fit in here," Rose said looking around. "Our books might not" - Alice grinned at this - "but, we will."

"Our books will definitely not be fitting in here," Alice agreed.

"Who needs books?!" Poppy asked with a broad smile as she walked into their room and spun into the center. "We're going to be of age and living alone, and it's going to be amazing!" Poppy had been applying to all of the wizarding publications she could think of. She wanted to write. She had an interview with The Quibbler and Witch Weekly but hadn't heard back from The Daily Prophet.

"What's Aaron doing?" Tamsyn asked as she followed Poppy into the bedroom.

"He's moving in with his brother. He'll have his own room." She winked at her friends and giggled, causing them all to laugh at her.

"So, Tamsyn is going to be alone a lot," Rose said.

"Because, you aren't going to be sleeping at Scorpius' every night?" Poppy teased her.

Rose felt her cheeks tinge pink. "Well … not every night." She couldn't think about Scorpius without thinking about the conversation she had had with her parents four nights ago. She loved him. That was undeniable, but she was scared of the way her mother seemed to think his family was going to react to them. She wasn't ready to get married, or be engaged, or even promise that she wanted to marry Scorpius. Right now, she saw them staying together. She saw them moving in together eventually and then maybe more, but when she thought about it, she was always seeing them down the road, years having passed. She knew that she and Scorpius needed to talk more about what their future looked like. She needed to do more than say she wasn't ready for more yet, and he needed to be honest about what he really wanted instead of just going along with what she said. It wasn't going to be fun.

At her parent's insistence, Rose had also scheduled an appointment with a Healer. She had gone already and taken her mother. When she had told the Healer that she had only been regularly having sex for about a month and a half her mum had visibly relieved tension. Apparently, it wasn't as bad as her mother had thought. Granted, she had started having sex with Scorpius at Christmas, but then they had taken a two-month break, so she wasn't going to count that. After many awkward questions and an examination, she had been given a clean bill of health and a potion to take instead of the charm she had been using.

She hadn't been able to stop thinking about children either since her talk with her parents. Did she want them? Rose knew that right now she definitely didn't want a baby. She wouldn't want a baby for the next three years for sure because she would be going through her Auror training. After that, if she and Scorpius were together, would she want to have a baby?

In their small bedroom, the one that Poppy was teasing her about never using, Alice was staring at the trim, her cheeks pink. Rose imagined she was probably thinking about Albus being at Scorpius' or something else to do with the boy. In reality, Alice had turned pink at the awful thoughts that had surfaced about James when Poppy had suggested that Rose wouldn't be staying in their room very often. She really needed to get that under control.

"Well, ladies," Tamsyn waved her hands around the room and towards the rest of the flat. "Are we in?" Tamsyn had told them she was pretty sure she wanted to go into something at the Ministry of Magic. She had started poking around in different departments while on break and looking for vacancies that might be a good place for her to start. Rose had no doubt that with her last name she would have a job within days of graduating, if not sooner. Several department heads would scoop her up hoping to earn favor with her father. Unfortunately for them, Rose doubted that would work.

"I'm so in," Poppy answered loudly, her smile broad across her face. Rose knew that her other option was going home to her Muggle parents in her Muggle neighborhood. It wasn't that Poppy didn't love her parents, but she loved magic more. There was no way she would go back there to live, unless she had to. Rose couldn't really imagine a life without magic. It had always been there, a part of everything, so she understood Poppy's desire not to have to hide it in her own home.

"Yes," Rose told them. "My parents are … I can't stay there." She shook her head and tried to smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. All three of her friends smiled sadly at her. She had told them over lunch two hours previously about the funeral, her mother's lies, her father's visit with Scorpius, and her own conversation with her parents. She wasn't really angry anymore, but she knew that she needed space. Now more than ever, she needed this plan to work out. She didn't want to think about the things her mother had questioned or the lies she had fed Rose over the years.

"Well you know I'm in," Tamsyn told them all happily. Her mother had been the one to find the place and walk through it with Tamsyn before she had told the rest of them about it. The three of them looked over at Alice. She was biting her lip and standing in front of the closet now, her arms crossed.

"What do you think, Alice?" Rose asked. She took the two steps towards her friend that were required to place a hand gently on her back. Alice looked over at Rose.

"Do you think we can do this?" she asked softly. In that moment, Alice was talking about so much more than their room arrangements, and Rose knew this.

"Yeah." Rose moved around her friend and pulled her in tightly. Alice stretched her arms around Rose's back and squeezed her. Rose felt her body shake slightly and knew that her friend was doing her best not to cry.

"Okay," Alice mumbled into Rose' shoulder. "I'm in."

XXX

James stood outside of his father's office in their home, his back leaned up against the wall next to the door.

"You know, you could just go in," his mother said softly as she moved around the corner.

"Yeah." He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to look like he hadn't been standing there for fifteen minutes debating whether or not to go inside and talk to his father.

"He won't bite." Ginny leaned back against the wall opposite him and crossed her arms.

"He might."

"He loves you. Whatever you have to say won't change that."

"You don't know."

"I do know. He might be disappointed, or angry, but he would never stop loving you, Jamie." They both stood there, James staring at her shoes, Ginny watching him with sad eyes. "Does this have to do with why your brother is staying at Ron's?"

"Uh …" James turned his head to the side as if he was hoping someone would break into the conversation. Albus wasn't there, and Lily had gone to a friend's house. He was alone with his parents. "Maybe."

Ginny closed the space between them. She took her son's cheeks in her hand and leaned up to kiss his forehead. "Go on. Tell him." She moved her hands to his shoulders and pushed him slightly towards the closed door. James held up a fist and looked back at her. She nodded, and he shook his head as he knocked. His shoulders fell under the weight of the conversation he was about to have.

"Come in," his father called from the other side of the door.

"I love you," his mother told him softly as he pushed it open. He tried to smile, but he grimaced instead. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him.

"Hey, what's going on?" Harry asked from behind his desk. Parchment was spread across the surface, quills and ink scattered amongst the mess. Organization was definitely not one of his father's strongest qualities.

"Uh, well, I was hoping you might have some time to talk."

"Sure. Can't be worse than this rubbish. You'd think the wizarding world would come with less paperwork than the Muggle one." His father took off his glasses and waved at the chairs in front of his desk. He scratched at his nose and put the glasses back. James watched as Harry moved his hand to rub at his forehead, a habit that he carried from a time before James had been born when the lightning bolt scar there had burned.

James took a seat in front of his dad, shifting several times. He tried unsuccessfully to get comfortable. "I need to talk to you about Al."

"Okay." Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

"I did something pretty rubbish things the last couple of years, and they really … Albus ended up getting hurt over it." James forced himself to look into his father's eyes as he talked. There wasn't a man alive that he loved and respected more than the one standing in front of him. He knew that in ten lifetimes, he would never be able to do a fraction of the good his father had done by the time he was his age. It wasn't an easy act to follow. Harry had always told them that none of that mattered, but James felt it. He felt the stares, and the whispers, and the hope that the entire wizarding community placed on them.

Albus reacted by doing well in school and being a decent kid. Lily had gone a bit more of their mother's way of not caring what anyone outside of her family thought of her and being a bit of a fireball. James, well, he was the oldest. He spent so long trying to pretend like he was above it all and that none of it mattered, that he had recently started to realize his life wasn't going to matter. He was so scared of not being good enough for Alice, that he had pushed her away from him. He'd been too selfish to just say no, or stay away from her. Instead, he had needed her to be the one to say enough was enough and leave him in the dust. She deserved so much better than him.

"Yeah, I wondered if that was the case." Harry held his hands together, lacing his fingers. He leaned forward in his chair. "Does this have anything to do with Alice?"

James felt his mouth drop open. He pulled it back up quickly, his heart racing as his mind searched for words. There were none.

"I thought so." Harry nodded and sat back, reclined again. "What happened."

"I …" James stroked his chin, feeling the stubble of a few days growth there. It felt rough against his hand. It distracted and calmed him. "Alice and I were, well, I don't know what we were, but it was something, and it was nothing."

"And, what happened?" His father didn't ask about the other girls he'd been with, even though James knew that he knew about them. How could he not with his siblings and cousins always giving him a hard time about them?

"We … I slept with her." James had to look down at his hand at this. He was too ashamed to keep his father's gaze. He had slept with her. It had been the most perfect moment in his life. They had gone to the Room of Requirement, and he had hardly been able to keep his hands off her long enough for her to pace the hallway to get the door to open. He hadn't touched another girl in nearly three months. He was pretty sure she hadn't realized, or maybe she had but hadn't said anything. He was crazy about her. She had invaded his every thought and made her way deep down into a place in him that he didn't know existed.

When she had grabbed his hand and led him into the room, he couldn't believe his eyes. It was his bedroom, and that Bulgaria game, the one that had been playing the first time he'd kissed her, was on the wall. He'd turned to say something, but she had smiled a devious little smile and shoved him down onto the bed. The backs of his knees hit first, and he had let his body fall, using his elbows to move back towards the pillows.

She had climbed onto the bed and moved to straddle him, pulling her shirt up over her head as she moved. James had moaned and reached out to grab her arse, one of his many favorite parts of her body, and pulled her down against his hips. She had rubbed against him, teasing the mound still constrained by his trousers. "Alice," he had whispered her name and pulled her down on top of him. He hadn't been able to to stop telling her how beautiful she was or that she was his.

After, when she was gone, and he was alone in his four poster in his real Hogwarts bedroom, he had remembered that she couldn't be his. Alice was perfection, and he was nothing near good enough for her. There was no way she could ever feel the way about him that he felt about her. There was no way she could settle for him. He was terrified of the way he had felt when he had slid inside of her for the first time, her body tensing around his. He wasn't sure what it was, but he knew that it was bad. He had been acting like he was in a relationship with Alice for months now, and that wasn't the truth. She had never given him any indication that she wanted anything more from him than these moments hidden away from the rest of the school. She knew that she was the only girl he ever went back to, and yet she seemed to be fine with him finding his way into closets with other girls, as long as he found his way back to her.

Part of him wished that she would tell him that she wanted him to be with just her or that these moments meant more to her than just the enjoyment of their bodies against one another, but mostly he was sure that he would destroy her if this ever happened. He wasn't capable of doing anything that boyfriends were supposed to do. He was awful at small talk. He wasn't romantic. He didn't like ties or stuffy restaurants. He hated the idea of everyone knowing their business. He couldn't imagine holding her hand down the hallway and watching people stare. He didn't want to know what people would say about her for being with him once he graduated and did nothing with his N.E.W.T.s so that he could play music. He was pretty sure he would be shit at budgeting or remembering anniversaries or being a decent person. He wouldn't clean, and he didn't know how to cook, and he was bloody awful at listening.

These realizations had driven him into a stupid and sad situation that had ended with him snogging Julia. When Alice had confronted him, he had been amazed, and glad, and terrified. She had finally realized that he was an arsehole, and she could do better. She had finally told him that it wasn't okay for him to be the way he was. Even so, she also told him that she loved him, an admission that James hadn't been willing to admit he had known for a long time before that. A feeling he wasn't able to admit he reciprocated for an even longer time after. He'd let her get angry, let her leave, thinking that it would be better this way. He would keep doing loose and casual, and she would find a bloke that could really be what she needed. He'd never expected that bloke to be Al.

"James." His father was looking at him, a peculiar look spread across his face.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"I asked what happened after that."

"Oh, I … I snogged someone else, we weren't..." He shook his head and let out a long breath. "She never told me, and I never told her how we felt. I was so bloody stupid." His father looked sad when he was finally able to meet his eyes again. "She finally told me then that she loved me, and I just let her go, thought she was better off without me. I never imagined, not in a million years, but Al was apparently persistent."

"He never has known when to quit. Something I think he gets from me, unfortunately." His father pursed his lips and then continued, "You saw Alice at Christmas at the Burrow."

"Yeah. I couldn't handle them together. I couldn't. I know it was selfish, but I still love her, and I couldn't." His father nodded at him, not revealing any of his thoughts or feelings on this situation. "I told her anyone but him. I told her that I loved her. I know I'm a shit brother. I know that I destroyed Al, but she's still in love with me too, and I couldn't watch that."

"Did she tell you that she was still in love with you?"

"Yes," James said. He remembered her resisting, trying to persuade him not to ask, but he had needed to know.

"And, now?" his father asked.

"Now … I don't know."

"Is this why you got a job?"

"Yeah, I guess. Not all of it, but yeah."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know. Wait to stop feeling this way about Alice. Keep going to work." He knew there was very little chance of the stop feeling this way about Alice part working. It had been almost three years since that summer day that she had sat next to him during that Bulgaria match. He had kissed her, and something inside of him had lit on fire and kept burning. He couldn't imagine a day when that fire would go out. He was sure he wouldn't want to know what that even felt like.

"What about your brother? Have you tried to talk to him?"

"I don't think he wants to talk to me." He was sure Albus didn't want to talk to him. If he wanted to talk, he would be home, not at Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione's.

"You need to try. He's your brother."

"What do I even say?" James had tried to figure out how that conversation would go in his head, but nothing ever sounded right. Nothing was good enough.

"Tell him the truth."

"I don't know, Dad. I fucked up."

"Yeah, you did, but you're his brother, and he loves you." James shook his head. He couldn't imagine Albus ever forgiving him. Alice was too perfect, and he had stolen her away from Albus without really even trying.

"Yeah, maybe," he replied, feeling defeated.

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear what you think of this chapter!

XOXO

Meg