Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter

Okay so I looked at my schedule for the next month or so and how fast I'm writing so far, and I've decided to bump the update schedule to every Friday instead of every other Friday! I'll update my note on the first chapter to reflect this.

Thanks indeed to MLMarint and SonofWhitebeard (I'm sorry! I typoed your name last chapter by accident T.T) for your reviews again. I've really lucky to have you both as such active readers and I'm happy that you're liking this fic so far!

Enjoy!

Chapter 3: Door Handles and Pumpkin Juice

The fire was roaring quietly.

The fire roared quietly, because there were cries overpowering the crackling whips of flame.

So, it was this dream again.

Scorpius looked away from the fire and over towards the door he knew would be just behind his left shoulder. He was in the sitting room adjoined to his parent's bedroom. The room was dark; it was a cold, sleety day and almost nightfall at that. The windows were wet with dripping condensation.

He felt sick. Blood seemed to well at the back of his mouth. He could taste it like his throat had been slit open. So, the moment had come. They'd all known it was impending but this felt far too soon.

He took a gulp, but his throat was unlubricated by saliva. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were too small. It was so, so noisy. His feet ached when he took a step forwards. He could feel the carpet vividly between his toes. It itched, the way that things that'd been there for three hundred years often did.

The cries were loud, almost deafening. They seemed to come from everywhere - not just through the door. The whole house seemed to be wailing and screaming from the very fabric of the walls and floors. He reached up a hand to the glimmering brass doornob, but he couldn't touch it. He wanted to yell in frustration, but no sound came out. Tears welled in his eyes.

He reached up again and missed. He looked down and was suddenly aware he was just a tiny blip compared with the door. The size of that girl in the sorting ceremony; impossibly short. He reached up again with extra force and felt the cold metal in his clammy hand.

The door swung open.

He was tall again, almost leering over the scene. Now he was floating over it, watching a lonely child and a weeping man and a dead, cold woman on a bed.

Scorpius awoke with a bang.

A Friday morning, chilly and dark. Albus gave a pathetic groan in the bed across from Scorpius, and squinted at him with miserable green eyes. Typical, how in the mornings he'd beg for the weekend, even if it was only the first day of term.

Scorpius had had that dream a hundred times or more. He always went from a child in the sitting room to a mere spectator as soon as the door opened, even in his memories. He gave a shudder which couldn't dislogdge the lethargy that'd settled over his heart. It had been, without question, the worst day of his whole, short, occasionally miserable but mostly enjoyable, life. What do you even do after the brightest light in your life goes out?

You carry on, that's what.

"I'm up!" He yelled, but only got unhappy groans as a reply.

"Shut it, Scor." Came Max's gruff reply - all the harsher for how thick and groggy his voice was this early in the morning.

It was only seven-thirty; Scorpius didn't see the problem.

"Merlin's beard you sound like you went on a bender last night." Scorpius snorted, drawing the curtains from around his bed.

The Slytherin dormitories were pleasant, but ever so slightly chilly. The ceiling, painted silver, was enchanted to appear as though it was far above their heads, and three small silver chandeliers hung on fine chains around the circular room. Each four poster bed was not quite a single, nor a double, but a comfortable size in between. He stretched, stood, slipped his feet into his comfy hippogriff slippers, and padded down to the bathroom, shared between all male students, on the bottom floor with the first year dormitories. Itching his weary eyes, he slowly pulled himself together for the morning, ridding himself of that dream, and finally being somewhat awake and a hell of a lot fresher looking when he got back to their room.

He opened the door to witness a fairly typical scene; Albus and Alfie, now awake enough to be out of bed, were pulling Max out of his bed as Joshua watched with a hint of a smirk, hurriedly pulling his robes on. Even though Max was always the last to get out of bed, Joshua was the last to make it to class.

"Get out of bed you lazy sod!" Albus roared, eyes flashing between laughter and irritation. Let it never be said that Albus wasn't the most patient of people.

"Oh, you absolute lump." Alfie dropped Max's arm so suddenly that the momentum launched him out of bed head first.

Max roared in pain. "You fucking fucker! What'd you do that for!?" He cried, holding his head in his hands and whining like a kicked puppy.

"Oh shit." Alfie gasped, hands clamped over his mouth. "I'm sorry!"

Max threw his head back against his mattress, moaning. "My head! It burns." He groaned, hazel eyes very slightly hazy. But as Albus, the only one amongst them who knew anything at all about healing, had given him a once over and shrugged, Scorpius wasn't too concerned. "Alright." He sighed, placing his hands on the ground either side of him, and taking a deep breath. "I'm up." He pushed himself up to his full height, hands briefly up in surrender before they went to his head and he stumbled slightly. "Now piss off around while I get changed."

Scorpius just laughed and turned back to his own bed, changing into his robes himself. He had no desire to watch Max change, anyway.

"That means you, too!" He heard Max shout, and Alfie replied with annoyed mumbles and a creative string of swear words a moment later.

Only a few moments later the group left their room for breakfast and clambered down all six flights of stairs to the common room.

"Sabrina!" Scorpius called to the small auburn girl hanging around at the foot of the girl's staircase. He'd always had a soft spot for her; Alfie had introduced them all in third year when they'd just become friends, and it'd made getting through Charms a hell of a lot easier. Sure, it wasn't much by most standards of humanity, but Scorpius had always appreciated it. She turned to face him and smiled.

"Scorpius! Alfie, Albus!" Max huffed, and Joshua sucked in a breath between his teeth. "How are you all doing?"

"We're doing pretty well thanks. How was your summer?" It was Alfie who replied and, as he watched the two talk, Scorpius marvelled that exes could get along so well. Albus and Scorpius were, of course, ignored or insulted almost unianimusly no matter who they passed, but Joshua was completely ignored when he walked near a group of girls they knew, and people mumbled things about Max behind his back. Only Alfie had that enviable skill for being able to talk to pretty much whoever he wanted.

No one knew exactly what happened between Alfie and Sabrina. No one ever asked. They'd spent entire days together in Hogsmeade, been spotted looking cosy in the library and apparently, there'd been some drunken hi-jinx at last year's party, too - although, no one believed Mia Clarke, and especially not an utterly hammered Mia who'd just snogged Albus, either. But Alfie hadn't ever spoken about it, so none of them ever asked. They supposed that they got it, understood, and when the two seemed to stop hanging out so much after the party last year, the knowing smirks were hastily extinguished.

Breakfast today smelt just as good as always. Scorpius' stomach rumbled, and he laid a hand over it, smiling at the smell of bacon, and fried eggs, and beautiful friend bread and…

"Scor?" Albus asked, prodding him the back.

Scorpius snapped from his daze. "What?"

"You stopped."

"Oh."

"Weirdo." That voice was not Albus. That voice was so, so much more delightful.

"Morning, Rose."

"Morning, Al." She glanced over at Scorpius, who was beaming at her hopefully. "Malfoy."

"Morning!" He couldn't think of anything else. What else could he say? He was fully aware of how stupid he sounded, but he couldn't seem to do anything about it. Words just tumbled out like verbal diarrhoea. "Um, you look nice today. You know, for the morning. Because it's so early, and…?"

She frowned, looking at him as though he were an exhibit of curiosity in a zoo. "Wow. That was something."

Scorpius was saved from his stupid spluttering and Albus' irritating cackle by James Potter calling him from behind.

"Scorpius! I've got a present for you." He jogged over and slapped a scroll of parchment into his unready hand. See, that was the kind of smoothness he needed to somehow osmose from the universe. "The terms of the Phoenix Ball. Put it up in the common room later, yeah? Oh, and rounds will go up soon, but you're with Grace Hill, I think. Rose, you're with Harry Shaw." He winked at Scorpius, before jogging off again in that effortlessly cool way he knew had a lot of effort put into it.

"I'll see you later, Al!" He called back to his brother, before being waylaid by Poppy Creevey. Scorpius eyed the pair with a hint of morbid fascination as James immediately tried to wriggle free of her arms. Scorpius had doubted for quite a while that they had a happy relationship.

"He looks happy to see her," Scorpius said, halfway between sarcasm and naive optimism. Rose laughed at him - actually laughed! - and turned away from the display.

"Later, Al. Malfoy."

She turned and left with a wave of her hand, and Scorpius had briefly forgotten both breakfast and the fact that Albus had stolen the scroll from his hand.

"Huh, we do have to bring dates. Well." Albus rolled up the scroll and slapped it back in Scorpius' hand, because Merlin knows he hadn't moved in a while. "Shit". He walked off to the Slytherin table to join their friends, thumping Scorpius on the back with a depressive sigh. Scorpius soon after snapped out of his daze and hurried over to join them, scanning the scroll in his hand.

The Phoenix Ball

The date will be 18th December.

Attendance is not compulsory but highly encouraged.

Equally highly encouraged is the invitation of partners to the Ball.

Prefects are released from their duties for the night, although good behaviour is still an unspoken expectation.

The dress code is dress robes, which must be neat and smart.

Short, blunt, and it filled the pit of his stomach with a layer of dread. As if he didn't already have enough to deal with this year. He was interrupted from his moping by Max sliding slip of parchment in front of him from his right-hand side."But Max, I was having such a good morning until now!"

Max let out a dry, unenthusiastic and uninterested laugh in response. Slughorn had, it seemed, continued his yearly tradition of minimal contact with his students. Never personally distributing the timetables, as all the other Head of Houses did, he gave the stack to the nearest and most nervous looking first year. Said first year then gave them to a fifth year after trying and massively failing to figure out who people were, based on sheer luck. That fifth year inevitably then just passed them down the table until they ended up in a messy pile in the middle somewhere. It was a matter of searching for your own and hoping no one else took it as a funny 'joke'. That particular joke had been pulled on Scorpius and Albus for three years in a row which was hilarious, until you realised you were bound to end up missing Professor Henrich's first lesson. Scorpius watched the Transfiguration professor eat stoically at the Professor's table. They met eyes and Scorpius shivered under the icy silver glare.

Creepy.

It was typical Slughorn behaviour, leaving the students to figure it all out for themselves, but not behaviour Scorpius didn't appreciate. The potions master was quite old, after all, and he did seem to have trouble remembering names - although it was Joshua's strong suspicion that he simply didn't care. That was probably because Joshua was also absolutely appalling at potions.

Scorpius looked down at the timetable before him and smiled to himself.

"Please don't tell me you're satisfied with that monstrosity?" Albus asked, incredulously. "I swear, you're either in the wrong house or mental."

Scorpius snorted. "Oh yeah, Mouse Heart here and I were actually bound for Gryffindor. The Sorting Hat's just gone a bit senile in old age."

Joshua choked on his pumpkin juice. "Oi! It's perfectly rational to be scared of the ghosts! More than you and the giant squid!"

Scorpius was about to argue back before Max came back and placed Joshua's timetable before him with a flourish. "Pour vous, monsieur."

"You went to France for a week, mate. You didn't emigrate."

Looking over his timetable again, Scorpius tuned out the two as they bickered backwards and forwards

"Seriously, though, are you actually going to survive this year?" Alfie asked, head slightly tilted in that endearing way he did when he was sincerely trying to look out for you. It's a good job they had him because otherwise they would've all grown up nearly as twisted as Max.

Scorpius only shrugged in response. It wasn't that bad. Although it was normal to take four, or perhaps five N.E. , Scorpius had found himself willing and able to sit six in total. Potions, of course, and History of Magic, along with Charms, Herbology, Transfiguration and Alchemy. Because, hey, there was no better way to prove that you and your father were repenting for the sins of the past than taking History of Magic at N.E.W.T level. That they never even dared to touch the explosive parcel that was the recent past in classes didn't seem to matter when at least three colleagues had softened to his father as the news had spread.

Albus hummed next to him, comparing their timetables. He was taking five N.E. - Defence Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Alchemy, Herbology and Charms. Albus knew he was never going to follow in his father's footsteps with these classes and become the Auror it was obvious James was going to be. But Albus had never really cared, anyway. Dumbledore only knew what Albus wanted to do. Fade into quiet obscurity was probably the best answer.

"Look, triple potions this afternoon." Albus pointed to the row of three hours, stretching from lunch until dinner time, and flipped off Max as he made a wretching sound. "That's better than what-?" He pulled Max' timetable over to himself. "Better than double Care of Magical Creatures. Oh- and twice a week! Wow, I really can't think of any way I'd rather spend my time!"

"Whatever. You're just jealous of the fact that I get all the girls with the unicorn foals."

Albus and Max 'debated' the effects of unicorn foals on girls all the way through breakfast. Scorpius couldn't help but wonder what Rose was taking. If he could get into her classes, he could talk to her more. Because Scorpius may only be able to stand like a limp fish when seeing her on a daily basis, but in the classroom, and in the library, Scorpius was in his element. He was confident; he knew what he was doing. He could talk to her more in the quieter, N.E.W.T-sized classes too. Get to know her - well, it was more her getting to know him - and then he could ask her to go to the ball with him. A thoroughly water-tight plan that couldn't possibly go wrong.

Based on how he imagined Albus' face would look when he said that he had a plan to get with his favourite cousin, he could start to see one or two issues cropping up. He was also basically saying 'I want to fuck your cousin', after all, which tended to have less than positive reactions. Everyone knew it, but given how low the chances seemed right now, Albus didn't care. If it looked more likely, then Merlin knew what his reaction might be. Even now, despite all Scorpius' hopes, he'd never really thought what being with Rose might be like. What the implications might be. Not that he really had a shot anyway, but he didn't want to think about any repercussions, either. He was happy with the fantasy and just a little gust of hope, or maybe idiocy, tickling the back of his mind, let him give in to his wildest dreams.

The food around them vanished; breakfast time was over. It seemed like it just wasn't in the stars for him to actually be able to think about these things just yet.

The first day of Hogwarts was always a washout. Especially when you had three hours of Slughorn, and he only pinned up a notice on the door that told you to go and 'read your books'. What books exactly they were, nobody quite knew. But it did lead to a pleasurable hour for Albus and Scorpius as they lay out in the few remaining rays of summer sun and discussed the second most exciting thing about this year: Apparition.

"My mum told me dad almost threw up the first time he side-along apparated."

Scorpius grimaced. "Yikes. That's a bad reaction. There was only one time when I thought I might throw up, although, I guess I'm just used to it now."

Albus turned to his friend, a frown on his face. "What?"

"I apparate to King's Cross every year now."

"Oh. I forgot about that. I just kinda assumed everyone went in cars."

"Well, not all of us live somewhere close enough to London to drive."

"Wiltshire's an hour away, mate." Albus sniggered.

"It is?"

"I have no idea. Maybe - hey, look," Albus pointed at the sky, "that cloud looks like those ugly books Hagrid made us get in third year."

Scorpius huffed. "Fine. But what about Alfie? Lives in the bloody highlands, doesn't he?"

"And still doesn't sound at all Scottish."

"Careful, he might threaten to cast Rictusempra on you again." Scorpius laughed.

"You laugh, but it's bloody painful. It's Teddy's go to curse."

"A wizard of age, cursing you outside of Hogwarts? Phone child line!" He gasped in mock-horror.

Scorpius spotted a cloud that looked vaguely like a rabbit in the following silence. Although now it drifted further by, maybe it looked more like a squat, fat dragon.

"What's a 'child's line'?"

"No idea. I think Joshua said it once."

"Oh. You know, we really should know more about Muggles, considering."

"Eh?"

Albus didn't get a chance to reply before a huge black shadow fell over them. Scorpius looked up, briefly flashing back to first year and fearing the worst.

"Albus! Scorpius! 'Ow're yeh both doin'?" Scorpius and Albus seemed to bolt upright simultaneously at the booming voice.

"Hagrid!" Albus beamed in delight, rushing to his feet. Whilst Scorpius had truly had nobody but Albus for all of their first year and some of their second, Albus had at least had Hagrid as well. When the two had fought, because of course they'd fought, Albus spent time in Hagrid's hut and Scorpius whiled away the hours alone in the library. Albus was extremely warm with Hagrid; he may as well have been his godfather. Although now he thought about it, he seemed to remember that he was Lily's godfather.

Scorpius gave Hagrid a shy smile and tried not to yelp as Hagrid almost shook his arm off. "Good summer?"

Scorpius shrugged. "You know, the usual. Bit quiet with just the two of us."

Hagrid nodded, and gave a sympathetic smile. "It's tough, innet Scorpius? House seems to get 'bout a thousand times bigger when there's less of yeh. But we'll live.

"Al, a few of yer cousins are coming round next Wednesday, after dinner. You should come along too." He smiled, and Scorpius fought to keep a laugh inside as he remembered all the times Albus had come back to the dorm complaining about Hagrid's inedible rock cakes.

"I don't know how dad ever ate any of them!" He must've said, about a thousand times over.

Hagrid gave them another broad smile and waved at the two as he went back down the hill to his hut.

Scorpius lay back down in the last of the bright afternoon sun, and Albus joined him moments later.

"You know, that cloud looks like a mouse and a chicken stuck together."

Thank you for reading everyone! Please follow for more and review if you've got time (although, y'know, I'd really massively super appreciate it if you did~). Thanks!