Work Text:
Dungeons get cold at night and the Slytherin common rooms are no exception. Near to the fire, on the thick rug and among the cushions on the wide, high-backed chairs with their heavily padded leather, it’s cosy, but the further students get from it, the more the chill from the ancient stones creeps into them again. This is an unfortunate side-effect of part of the room being underneath the lake.
Scorpius Malfoy doesn’t mind it though; his mother used to tease him about never feeling the cold. She constantly had to stay wrapped up warm while she was alive due to her illness and she had always joked about him being a hot water bottle.
The lake laps against the roof and it sends a ‘sssshhhh’ through the walls, mimicking his mother shushing him to sleep. The fire adds to the ambient noise with its crackling. It’s comforting and often lulls Scorpius to sleep. It does tonight.
Albus had lost track of how many times he had found Scorpius curled up in one of the chairs, a book still held, albeit loosely, in the hand belonging to the arm flung across the arm of the chair. He always, padding sleepily in his pyjamas into the common room, heard Scorpius’ soft snores echoing out of time with the shushing coming from the lake before he saw him.
Curled up like a cat so tightly, he barely took up half of the huge chair, Scorpius slept. Flickering firelight made the top of his blond head glitter gold in the dim light. The aristocratic yet pensive look he often had when he was awake that made him look like he was carved from marble, softened in the warm light into something gentler. He had a small, sweet smile on his sleeping face that made something in Albus’ chest twinge.
“Hey, wake up, it’s me, Albus,” he whispered shaking the sleeping boy’s shoulder.
Bleary grey eyes fluttered open with a tired grunt, the smile widened before slipping into a frown.
“It’s late, are you okay?”
“It’s very late and don’t worry, I’m just cold.”
Albus had always found the common room too cold, probably because his house is always full of the heat of bodies clattering in, out and around. Although he likes the calmer atmosphere of the common room, he does miss the warmth of his house; that’s why, when he can’t sleep because of the cold, he goes and sits in front of the fire.
Scorpius yawned and ungracefully flopped to the other side of the chair while Albus clambered up beside him, to get closer to the fire.
Slytherin chairs could sit two students, not comfortably but not uncomfortably either. Albus playfully went limp across Scorpius. His friend grunted, shoved him off and then collapsed on him. Wriggling free, Albus hit Scorpius on the shoulder which led to him getting tackled in retaliation.
The boys were quite evenly matched in this game, until Albus tickled Scorpius, who was very ticklish, in the ribs. It was an underhand tactic, and they both knew it. Scorpius squealed, thrashed around like a fish out of water and slid, laughing, onto the floor. He was flushed and shaking his head when he spoke:
“You’re a cheater and an ass, did you know that?”
Albus clapped his hand over his mouth in fake horror.
“Me? The son of the chosen one, an ass? How dare you!”
He pulled the other boy off the floor and they leant against each other giggling in the chair, basking in the rush of joking around together. Albus tried to start it up again by laying down on Scorpius’ chest.
“Oh, so this is how you want to warm up then, hmmm?”
He smirked and waggled his eyebrows suggestively, making Albus huff. He snuggled down, purposefully being fidgety and he ends up between Scorpius and the back of the chair, his head cushioned on Scorpius’ shoulder.
He only meant to do it for a minute, but the fire was so warm from being so close, Scorpius was a furnace beside him and the adrenaline he’d got from play-fighting with him was wearing off, making him even more tired than he was before. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier, Scorpius’ breathing got slower and slower, deeper and deeper until the last thing he remembered was them shifting so his trapped arm was more comfortable.
Scorpius woke him up some time before dawn.
“We’ve spent almost all night on the sofa, tomorrow is going to be hell if we don’t spend at least some of the night in our beds.”
Albus followed him back to their dorm and, for once, he didn’t feel the cold.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scorpius had to go looking for Albus one night because it was getting stupidly late. He found him surrounded by a mountain of parchment and books, studying by the fire. Albus was exactly as he was when he had left him three hours ago.
“Are you still studying?”
He got a grunt in reply and was worried that Albus hadn’t even lifted his head to do it. The quill was not writing on the paper because the hand holding it was twitching.
“Have you even gone outside today?” Scorpius asked incredulously.
The replying grunt, had the grace at least, to be sheepish this time. Scorpius sighed and leant over to pluck the quill out of his hand. Albus gave a shout of disbelief and grabbed for it, so Scorpius leapt backwards.
“Come on. Let’s do something, anything you want.”
Scorpius regretted that statement when it ended up with him holding onto Albus’ waist, sitting on a broomstick, hanging out of a window in the tower. He buried his face into Albus’ neck as they kicked off to stop himself from screaming.
“This is crazy.”
“Look,” Albus sighs, “I wanted to show you something and it has to be at night. You need to calm down, we won’t fall.”
Scorpius kept his eyes screwed tightly shut. The wind was whipping his robes and whistling past his ears.
“You do know, you need to open your eyes to see what I want to show you.”
Albus’ tone was teasing and Scorpius could feel the words vibrating in his chest. The broom felt as if it was gliding now instead of hurtling, so he cracked one eye open a sliver.
Stars were all around them. They were descending on the lake, and the stars above them were reflected so they appeared to be below them as well. Suspended mid-air, Scorpius could feel Albus glowing with pride at rendering him dumbstruck at the sight of near endless stars.
He turned slightly to look at Scorpius and he was smiling smugly, hair a ruffled mess from the wind and his green eyes reflecting the stars like the lake.
“We’re going to stargaze in the lake.”
Albus had leant in close to Scorpius’ to whisper the statement in his ear and Scorpius was too absorbed in this fact to realise they were floating down still until his feet lightly brushed the ground.
“Come on!”
Albus took off towards the lake’s shore, shedding his robe as he went.
“Pardon?”
“To get the best view, we should swim to the middle of the lake.”
He stated this with a roll of his eyes as if it was obvious. Scorpius stared back in disbelief.
“You are… you’re joking, right?”
“Nope,” Albus replied and began wading into the lake. “Hey! Do you think we’ll see the giant squid?”
“If we’re lucky,” Scorpius deadpanned.
Curiosity may have killed the cat but it just encouraged Albus Potter and the legendary Potter recklessness was not something he indulged in often, so when he did, it tended to get out of hand quickly. It was always some crazy scheme that Scorpius knew he should walk away from but he never said no to Albus. He didn’t think he could.
Diving into the starry pool woke him up and he laughed as he came up next to Albus, who was staring skyward.
“Do you see that constellation there? That’s Aries.”
He traced a line of stars with his finger and turned to grin at him. He continued by curling his finger around Perseus, Andromeda and Pegasu (“They’re the ones that are almost all connected together”) before saying it was easier when you were lying down.
They laid there, floating, for what seemed like an eternity, like Albus was trying to name every single star in the sky. He named constellation after constellation and star after star and Scorpius could have listened for forever.
They were both still drunk off the feeling of seeing the stars when they collapsed back in the common room in front of the fire, still dripping.
Albus giggled in a higher and higher pitch as Scorpius rolled around on the rug trying to shush him but collapsing further into laughter. His heart speeds up at the joy in Scorpius’ eyes.
The other boy had always admired how his friend always had the pure joy of a child on Christmas morning in his grey eyes but right now they’re so powerful they’re like floodlights. Softly, he pressed their foreheads together and they sniggered, nose to nose, on the rug.
Eventually, Albus’ forearms shook from the strain of holding himself above Scorpius from where they were lying on the floor, still laughing. He relaxed them and laid his head down on his chest, earning himself a muffled “oof” from Scorpius.
The rumble of laughter in Scorpius’ chest tickled his ears and made his cheeks tingle. He wasn’t whether that was from the vibrations or the blushing. He felt this strangely calm ecstasy come over him as they laid there, still laughing on the rug and into each other’s necks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I hate you”
“Why? You were the one who made us get in the lake.”
“Yes, but normally when I come up with some stupid scheme, you make me see sense.”
Albus punctuated his point with a violent sneeze. Scorpius wondered if he was weird for still thinking Albus sneezes were cute even when they were very loud instead of their normal sleeping kitten volume.
Albus had managed to catch a cold thanks to their starlit trip into the lake. He was currently a burrito of blankets, snuggled into the chair that he had shifted closer to the fire, used tissues and empty pepper-up potion bottles littered around it so the only part of the boy visible was his more untidy than usual bedhead, weepy eyes and pink nose.
“I still don’t see how it’s my fault you’re ill.”
Albus scrunched up his nose, dissatisfied with Scorpius’ rational answer. It made the freckles on his nose crinkle. Even though summer was over, Albus still had many freckles peppering his face. Scorpius was sure he must get that from his mother’s side of the family; Rose had loads too.
It was cute.
Albus gave another miserable groan and Scorpius brushed his hair off his forehead, making what he hoped was a sympathetic and comforting shush noise. Butterflies whirled around in his stomach as Albus leant into the contact and gave a happy sigh.
“Your hand feels cold and it’s helping my headache,” he explained. Scorpius pondered if the flush of pink on his friends deepened then or if it was a trick of the traitorous firelight and his hopeful heart.
He moved his hand up to card his fingers through the messy dark hair and gave out a sigh as he felt the tension seep out of his friend.
“I still feel like crap but this helps, thanks.”
Scorpius crawled up onto the chair to stroke Albus’ hair better and braved, rubbing his back soothingly and murmuring nonsense into his ear. He shifted so that his head was laying in the crook of Scorpius’ neck in response.
“That feels really nice.”
Albus’ lips brushed his neck accidentally as he spoke. Lighting hitting that spot in that moment would not have been, in Scorpius’ opinion, as electrifying. He moved his hand down to rub his knuckles along the knobs of Albus’ spine and his eyes fluttered shut because of the soothing movement.
The fire makes the air so warm that moving feels like moving through syrup. Albus’ breath wheezes slower and slower and his head grows heavier and heavier on Scorpius’ shoulder. He’s a warm and heavy blanket that slowly drags the other boy down into sleep.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warm days came more and more often at the end of winter. Albus made full use of it as an excuse to study outside. He and Scorpius would head to a tree by the lake and study in the shade, away from the other students. Scorpius was the person whose company he preferred above all others and didn’t much like his life when Scorpius wasn’t there.
He didn’t like to look too deeply at the reasons as to why that was. However much he wanted to, he never would because kissing Scorpius had the potential to ruin everything. He had been rather impressed with his own self-control when he was ill especially when they were so close together that the pulse in the other boy’s neck was beating against his lips and his fingers had been shifting through his hair and across his back like Albus was an instrument he was playing.
His other hand had been on his knee. It was torture on how close it was. Mere millimetres away, he could have just reached out and intertwined their fingers because there had been no distance, no gap to bridge; not really.
Distance was the only thing stopping him now, so he kept a healthy one. Always sitting slightly further away but not as far to arouse suspicion.
But, Merlin’s beard, when Scorpius was like this, alight with passion, reading paragraphs from the books, his voice lyrical, it was so hard not to close that distance. Sometimes, he couldn’t quite understand how a gigantic goofball of sunshine had been sorted into Slytherin, but he was glad that Scorpius had.
“You’re thinking too loud; do you know that?”
“Hmm,” Albus shook himself out of his thoughts.
Scorpius flushed under his confused gaze.
“I just meant that you’re thinking too hard, we’re meant to be relaxing as well as studying.”
“Well, what do you mean I’m thinking too loud?”
Horror coursed through him at the thought of Scorpius being able to hear his other thoughts.
“Can you read my thoughts?” Albus blurted out before realising how stupid it sounded.
“Uh no, I just meant that uhh,” the other boy paused, flushed a shade darker before continuing. “I think, that because we’re so close. Such close friends, I mean, obviously, that, uh, I can pick up on your mood and I can feel that you’re getting frustrated because you’re not liking the answers you are getting for what you’re thinking about.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Albus did not want to talk about it.
“I don’t think that talking about it will make it better.”
He concentrates on picking a piece of loose thread from his robes, avoiding Scorpius’ concerned gaze.
“Well. Maybe you could do something about it because sometimes just having someone doing something is all that’s needed.”
Albus didn’t want to do something about it either.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I saw it in a muggle movie.”
Scorpius ducks his head out from under the suspended blanket to grin at Albus.
“However, I found that without magic it is hard to keep up.”
“Well, it is made of blankets and pillows.”
The blanket was floating in front of the fire between two arms of the chairs. Albus had taken pillows from the dormitories and cushions from the common room using them to make soft walls for the blanket to rest on. Scorpius had dragged his duvet from his bed to make a cosy nest. The two of them had the common room to themselves nearly every day now and so they weren’t disturbed.
“Why did you want to do this again?”
Scorpius shrugs.
“I think that we should try to do more fun things together. Like trying new things and not stuff that may get us killed.”
What he deliberately neglects to tell him, is that in the movie, this activity was a date. He’s sort of helping that he can turn this into one.
“I don’t actually think the giant squid would have killed us.”
“I don’t remember you saying that when it grabbed us because you thought going into the lake at the night was a good idea again!”
Albus shuts him up by throwing a pillow into his face. Scorpius grabs it and then uses to lie down and place his feet in Albus’ lap. Albus rolls his eyes and sneers playfully in response. Crossing his arms, he fakes his unimpressed face and refuses to enter the blanket fort. Scorpius softly whispers a spell until the two boys are joined by warm balls of light, flitting across the blanket like fireflies.
Scorpius couldn’t help smiling at having struck Albus speechless. His lips of his fallen open mouth glistened like pink spun sugar in their light and his green eyes were wide open. High spots of colour had risen on his cheeks and Scorpius can feel the heat rise in his own because he knows that he’s been staring too long but he can’t help it.
Albus finally notices that he’s being examined and turns, mouthing “What?”
All Scorpius can hear is his heart quickening and his tongue feels thick and useless. He can barely breathe let alone speak. He felt transparent as if Albus was using his eyes to X-ray him. Albus was looking at him like he was something he couldn’t comprehend like he’s unexplainable. Every cell in his body combusts with suspense as Albus’ eyes widen, mouth slightly open with shock as he realises something.
Scorpius sits there trying to fluster out the words but all that happens is Albus sidles closer and closer on his elbows, looking positively predatory.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Scorpius is so flustered, he has turned pinker than the Pygmy Puff Hagrid had shown him and Albus the other day. Albus still doesn’t want to talk about it but now he thinks it might not end as badly as he originally thought. He kneels between Scorpius’ crossed legs and tilts his head questioningly.
“Uh…you? I mean, um, that I – I like you.”
The blonde boy swallows and steadies his gaze again.
“I mean I really, really like you. I know you already know that I love you but I think, well, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you. And – and it really is okay if you don’t feel the same but -”
Albus swung his arms over his shoulders and fisted his hands in the silky blonde strands at the nape of his neck, pulling himself up so that he and Scorpius were forehead to forehead, nose to nose.
“Is this okay?”
“Uh yeah.”
Albus leaned forward and gently brushed his lips against Scorpius’. They’re soft and warm and trembling. He pulls back and glances from under his eyelashes to watch the grey eyes flicker open.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because. Just because.”
Scorpius let his head fall onto Albus’ shoulder and laughs into the crook of his neck. Tucking his head under his chin, Albus snuggled down into the circle of Scorpius’ arms, who had brought his hands to rest on his hips. He rubs his hands down Scorpius’ back and up over his shoulders. The firm warmth of his back muscles can be felt through his pyjamas. He places his hands underneath his chin, lays his fingers across his jaw and cheeks, then pulls him in to nuzzle their noses together.
Scorpius laughed even harder and leaned in to quickly ghost his lips across Albus’. Tracing the veins in Scorpius’ pale skin, Albus felt himself smile sappily as the arm turned to interlock its hand’s fingers with his and rub his knuckles with its thumb.
They pressed into each other’s sides, nestling into the duvet underneath the floating blanket just watching the fire. Soon their eyelids were heavy, their yawns in unison and Albus wiggled until Scorpius was pinned underneath him.
“So first you try to drown me in the lake, now you’re trying to crush me?”
Albus rubbed at his eyes, his chin on Scorpius’ chest and yawned, already having bedhead from lying down in the blanket fort.
“Shut your stupid face.”
Scorpius carded his fingers through the mop of brown hair, every so often scritching at the nape of his neck until the head on his chest grew heavy with deep sleep and then sleep claimed him as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Don’t you think we up revision ready for O.W.L.S?”
Two freckled noses scrunch with disgust at Scorpius’ suggestion. Rose and Albus are trying to attract the giant squid by messing around at the edge of the lake. Summer is coming and the heat brings more freckles to the two cousins faces.
Scorpius lays in the shade with his textbooks and watches them splash each other. He’s glad that they’re trying to rebuild bridges and that he and Rose are creating friendship. She’s blunt and fierce with razor sharp wit, all of which had attracted him to her to begin with.
He’s concentrating on a difficult paragraph when water drips from above onto the page and a wet face presses into his shoulder where it leaves a kiss.
“Don’t be boring.”
“I’m being responsible Al, there’s a difference.”
Albus rolls his eyes at his boyfriend and sits cross legged beside him.
“Can you believe we’re almost done?”
“I can actually,” Albus replies.
He flings his arm around his shoulder and pulls Albus into his side. The castle and the lake seem to go on for miles all around them. Rose is shrieking to herself as she splashes in the puddles and every so often she waves at them. She comes running over eventually, and Scorpius ends up with Albus using one leg as a pillow and Rose using the other one.
The sun is warm, lessons are almost over for the year and both of his friend’s hair is damp against his legs. They may not be popular, but they’re content with their trio and he’s pretty sure, that it is them against the world. All was well.