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Making it to the Room of Requirement was going to be difficult enough with Albus's weakness, and Peeves sudden appearance certainly didn't make things any easier. Scorpius bit back a sigh the moment he saw him flit into his peripheral vision, and Peeves wasted no time making his arrival known. Peeves' sudden shriek made Scorpius and the Potter trio give nearly identical groans.
“Attention!! Mopey Malfoy doesn’t look mopeeeeeeeeeeey! Potty has returned-- and with his own gold toilet handle!!”
"It's a cane," Albus refuted hotly. Scorpius couldn't help but feel his heart swell with love at how defensive Albus sounded about his golden cane, a gift from Scorpius's father.
"POTTY'S GOT A HANDLE! POTTY'S GOT A HANDLE! LEMME FLUSH YOU, POTTY--"
“Bollocks atop bollocks—go away, Peeves!” Lily shouted.
Scorpius and Albus glanced at each other automatically. Scorpius arched an eyebrow. Bollocks atop bollocks? he mouthed. They both fell into peals of laughter.
Lily had turned around to glare spectacularly at the poltergeist; he responded by swooping low and giving her long hair a tug.
“Potty the Lass with her nasty, nasty sass—oooh but look! One, two, three Potties!”
Scorpius jumped as Peeves swooped low, worming his way between Scorpius and Albus before Lily could continue fruitlessly whacking at his head. Scorpius’s instinct was to jump to the side and away from Peeves, but his heart was to remain in place. He wrapped his arm around Albus’s waist to hold him upright and met Peeves’ maniacal grin head-on.
“Albus Pottery Potter! The boooooy who—” Peeves put his mouth against Albus’s ear— “BLED!”
Lily gave a war cry and dropped her bag to the floor. Scorpius was too busy supporting Albus’s weight to try and rein her in. Peeves cackled madly as Lily chased after him, trying her hardest to inflict damage in some form.
“You are the worst ghost! Ghost! Ghost, ghost, ghost!” Lily cried.
Peeves stopped spinning in circles. He scowled. His face transformed to something distinctly terrifying as he did. He flew down, got millimeters from Lily’s face, and screamed:
“POLTERGEIST!”
Lily crossed her arms and smirked.
“Cute little ghosty.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Peeves the Ghosty and his tiny, little—”
“ARG!” Peeves sped through a classroom door. There was the sound of cracking and breaking. He flew back out and began lobbing books at Lily’s head; James stepped into the path of fire at once.
“Peeves!” James admonished, after deflecting multiple volumes with his wand. “She’s only trying to get a rise out of you; she’s doing exactly what you do! Stop!”
Scorpius felt Albus slipping down. He looked down at him as James and Peeves argued. His face was pale and he was gripping the cane so tightly that his knuckles were white. Scorpius’s heart sank.
“Albus?” he whispered.
Albus looked up at him. “Really tired. I want to sit.”
Scorpius was surprised he’d made it as far as he had. They were nearly to the seventh floor already. Scorpius tightened his grip on Albus’s waist and pulled up, trying to remove some of the pressure from Albus’s weak legs. He looked nervously to James, prepared to search for a moment to intercede in the argument so he could urge them forward, but he was shocked to find the argument had already been resolved. James was smiling. And Peeves…Peeves was grinning.
“Good. And I’ll meet up with you by the one-eyed witch statue tomorrow after I speak with McGonagall,” James said to Peeves.
Peeves cackled again. “Potty Weasel, a man of his word, a rare bird!”
James saluted. Peeves saluted back. Lily called Peeves something creatively vulgar as he flew off.
“James,” Albus said immediately. “I need to sit.”
“Oh,” James said, turning around. He frowned. “Right. Your legs don’t work. Sorry. I forgot.”
“Lucky you,” Albus snapped. His weight was becoming cumbersome. Scorpius had no choice but to half-drag him over to the stairs. Albus shakily fell down to sit. The gold cane Scorpius’s dad had made clattered to the floor. Albus shut his eyes and drew in quick, exhausted breaths as Scorpius sat down on his right side. He set his palm on Albus’s warm back; he felt the rapid, irregular thudding his heart beneath his palm. He wanted to curl around Albus, to rest his cheek over that rhythm, to say we can just rest here. But they had one more floor to go before they could rest.
“How’d you get Peeves to piss off?” Albus asked, once he’d caught his breath.
“Oh, I told him I’d talk to McGonagall to see if she’d allow him to finally attend the Halloween Feast,” James said.
“He thinks you’ve got the power to sway her?”
“I think he’s just surprised that somebody’s offering to vouch for him.”
“Why are you offering to do that? He’s awful and obnoxious and all he’s going to do is pour pumpkin juice on students,” Lily grumbled. She reached up and gathered her long hair in her hands. “It’ll take me ages to wash it out…”
“Well, he should at least get a chance, right? He hasn’t been allowed at a Halloween Feast in decades.”
Lily blinked. “Did you miss the part about pumpkin juice in hair? Probably my hair? Ages to wash out?”
“It’s not all about you, Lily,” James sighed.
“My life is all about me,” Lily said matter-of-factly. She walked over and stood in front of Albus. She offered him her hands, palms up. “C’mon, we’re almost there. Put your back into it!”
James and Scorpius half-carried Albus the rest of the way to the Room of Requirement. The first thing he did upon entering was collapse down onto the nearest sofa, indifferent to the three seventh years already sprawled on it. Scorpius propped his cane against the back of the sofa while Nora Thomas and Ben Wood crushed Albus to them in tight hugs. Albus grimaced.
“Welcome back!” Ben grinned.
It looked like the entirety of the Sevens were playing some mixture between Exploding Snap and muggle Poker. They were all grouped around a small coffee table groaning beneath singed cards and galleons, a few were holding cups of what smelled suspiciously like firewhiskey, and a few more looked a bit too giggly. Nora jumped up from the sofa and hurried over to James; Scorpius looked away as she kissed him full on the mouth. Evvie Wilson leaned over Ben’s lap and set a light hand on Albus’s arm.
“How are you feeling?” Evvie asked.
Albus shrugged. “Honestly, everything feels great in comparison to the way I felt before.”
She met Scorpius’s eyes suddenly. “And you?”
Scorpius hesitated. “Me? Oh. Erm. Great! I wasn’t—you know. I didn’t have my insides peeled or grated.”
“No, I know. I just—Stone said—”
She stopped speaking. Judging by the slight flush to her face, she’d had a bit of firewhiskey as well. Scorpius was so shocked by that revelation that he didn’t even give her words the proper consideration, until:
“What happened in DADA, I meant,” she finally completed.
Oh. Scorpius felt heat span across the back of his neck. Albus turned and looked at him in concern.
“What happened in DADA?” he asked immediately.
“Oh—shit, sorry,” Evvie hissed. “I thought…I thought you would’ve told him…”
“Good job, Ev,” Ben sniggered. He regarded her with fond eyes as he lifted the rim of his glass back to his lips. His expression didn’t even falter when she pulled his glass from his hands.
“C’mon, Chase,” she said, after stealing a sip. “We’re supposed to—patrol.”
“Patrol? No, it’s James and Roxanne tonight,” said a seventh year Hufflepuff.
“What?” Nora said sharply. She and James had curled up on another sofa; he was lying between her legs, a book held open in front of him. She appeared to be massaging his shoulders, but at those words, her hands dropped. James craned his head back and peered up at her. “No,” she continued. “You’re not patrolling or doing McGonagall lessons! You’ve literally been going nonstop all day long.”
“I’m fine,” James assured her. “I’m not too tired. That was the plan and we should stick to it.”
“Evvie and I can take tonight’s patrol,” Ben said hurriedly, eagerly backing up Nora’s objections. “We love patrolling.”
“We tolerate patrolling,” Evvie corrected flatly.
“We love patrolling together.”
“We tolerate patrolling together.”
“I tolerate you from now until my last breath, Evvie,” Ben cooed. He was met with a spectacularly dry look.
Albus waited until Evvie and Ben were gone, and then he took Albus’s hand and pulled him over to the other side of the Room of Requirement. They climbed carefully into the same hammock, and once curled up together, Albus asked again. As Scorpius knew he would.
“What happened in DADA?”
Scorpius adverted his eyes. “Oh, the usual. Saul said something stupid and disrespectful, your dad tried not to rise to his bait— but did anyway— I listened intently and modeled appropriate classroom behavior for our peers—”
Albus’s fingers danced across his cheek. Scorpius felt a tingle of heat race across his cheekbone.
“Scorpius. I’m not stupid. I’ve still got enough blood in me to have a functioning brain.”
That comment only made Scorpius think of what he’d seen in that classroom, and that made his eyes burn. It had been horrific. It was horrific. It might always be. Scorpius imagined, if he were lucky enough to get to spend his entire life with Albus, that he would always be traumatized over what they’d seen. He would always wake in the night with thoughts of Albus lying in that pool of blood, with thoughts of what he had very nearly lost.
“We banished boggarts.”
It was enough. Albus’s face opened with realization, and soon, it softened. He tightened his hold on Scorpius.
“You saw…me.” He seemed certain of it, but at the same time, almost embarrassed to say it, as if he felt foolish to imagine someone cared for him so much that his death was their deepest fear.
Yet it was true. It was so true Scorpius felt blown away by the intensity of it sometimes. Albus was his best friend, and the depth of that truth went to the very core of him. He was his best everything. He had no interest in a life without him. What would it even look like? Darkness, he thought. Like that dark time after his mother passed, when time crawled beneath the weight of never-ending misery and loneliness. But this time, it would be eternal.
“Yes,” Scorpius affirmed. His voice sounded thicker than it should. “I saw you.”
“Well, see me now,” Albus urged, his voice remarkably gentle and tender. “I’m here. I’m fine.”
“I know you are,” Scorpius assured him. “It’s just…Albus…” he stopped.
“Scorp?”
Scorpius met his eyes. The love and concern churning in Albus’s green ones burned with an intensity that made him think of the green flames of the Floo. He takes me places, too, Scorpius thought then. Like the Floo. All I have to do is get alone with Albus, and I’m somewhere new. Somewhere different. Somewhere special.
“I don’t want to ever be without you,” he whispered.
Albus’s eyes widened a bit. He was afraid that Albus would respond with you won’t ever have to, or some other lie. Because that would be a lie. Scorpius’s mother had promised she would never, ever leave him, and she had. No one could promise that— that they’d be around forever. Death took and takes and always will— Scorpius couldn’t control that any better than Albus could. He didn’t want to hear a false assurance so far-removed from truth.
Yet Albus must have known that.
“If I can help it, you won’t ever have to be. We won’t ever have to be.”
If I can help it. It was such a small addendum, but it meant loads to Scorpius. This was Albus respecting and acknowledging the uncertainty of life while also assuring Scorpius that, as much as he possibly could, he would never willingly leave him. And Albus could control a lot when he put his mind to it. He could help a lot. He always had. He had taken a lonely boy and made him into a friend, and through that friendship, they’d built something beautiful— something Scorpius never imagined he’d have, much less live within. Love that felt like a home. Love that was a home. And he’d protect that home as fiercely as Scorpius would.
He couldn’t stop himself from saying it again.
“I love you,” he whispered. It felt so good to say. He had to whisper it again. “I love you, Albus.”
Albus leaned in and pressed his lips to Scorpius’s. Their kiss felt as soft and comforting as crawling between freshly-washed sheets after a long, tiring day. Home.
“I love you, too.”
It wasn’t enough to stop death. But it was enough to make the fear of losing him worth it. He would gladly shoulder that vulnerability in exchange for such great love.