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“I have to say,” Scorpius says as they depart the very Muggle train from Leipzig (two weeks of music and cultural history for him, two weeks of beer and student clubs for Albus) in the underground level of Berlin’s central station. “I can’t believe the year’s nearly over.”
The flat they’re going to now, after all, is the very same one where Scorpius will live for the next three years during his apprenticeship. It’s where he’ll stay when Albus inevitably goes back to England, but he’s trying his very best not to think of that. It’s not properly in Berlin; it’s in a neighbouring city where his apprenticeship is located, but that hardly matters now.
“Nor can I,” says Albus, looking sullen. Someone knocks into him, and says a quick, “’Tschuldigung”, though Albus looks about ready to duel them.
It was Scorpius who’d insisted on the Muggle transport throughout the trip. They’ve been staying mostly in Wizarding quarters — most major cities have them — but Muggle culture and technology is so foreign and interesting. Besides, it’s been Scorpius’s chance to put his N.E.W.T. in Muggle Studies (his grandparents were furious, but he rather thinks his dad was quite proud) to use.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing Albus by the hand and leading him up the metal moving stairs which are, apparently, fully Muggle. Upstairs, things are even more chaotic, and Scorpius is glad that Albus had the foresight to send Kreacher ahead.
Scorpius rather quickly finds himself distracted by a bookshop. Not that he hasn’t just spent a considerable amount in the large bookshop in the Leipzig central station, but perhaps these are different books.
Albus knows the look on his face too well, and drags him ahead. “Later. I want to put all of this shit down and relax for a bit.” He leans in close to whisper, “Can’t you just Apparate us there?”
“No,” Scorpius says. “I’ve not been there before. Don’t want to get splinched; I’ve managed this long without it, and I think it’d be proper depressing if this were the time I splinched myself, don’t you agree? It’s really not far,” he adds. “We could walk, but I thought with our things, we might take connecting regional transport?”
“Muggle transport?” Albus asks.
“Yes,” Scorpius says. “It’s been quite interesting thus far, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Albus agrees. “It has.” He looks like he’s about to say something else, so Scorpius waits, but nothing seems to be forthcoming. After a moment, Albus says, “So how do we get there?”
“Oh!” Scorpius says. “That’s quite simple.” He explains the process in detail and leads the way to the S-Bahn that will take them where they need to go. He’s been doing a lot of the leading on this trip; it sort of feels like that’s changed something in their dynamic, but he knows better than to ruminate too much on what that means.
They arrive at the flat. Like all the others in their trip, it is comfortable, large, and steeped in history.
Scorpius’s first thought shouldn’t be of how lonely it’ll be when Albus leaves, but he can’t help it. Albus looks right at home in the flat, and the sunlight streaming through the windows makes his light brown skin look like it’s glowing, and it’s really all Scorpius can do to swallow all of it down and talk about the parquet.
He doesn’t care about the parquet, and clearly, neither does Albus, but it’s better than telling Albus how unjustly beautiful he is, how much he loves him.
“Isn’t there a Wizarding quarter in Berlin proper?” Albus asks, peering out the windows.
“Yes,” Scorpius says. “Actually, there are a few of them, because Berlin — sort of like London — was formed from several smaller towns and cities. But Potsdam, for several reasons, was never incorporated into Berlin.”
“Let’s go to a pub,” Albus says.
It’s most of what he’s wanted to do since he got into the swing of things on the Tour, and Scorpius’s plans for the day were just to relax, so he doesn’t object. “All right,” he says. “Muggle, or Wizarding?”
“Either,” Albus says.
Which is how they find themselves at a student pub located off one of the main streets, drinking green peppermint liqueur and pilsner.
It’s all in good fun, and when Albus hears that the bar across the street has billiards, he all but drags Scorpius over there for a match. Neither of them can play billiards, of course (Scorpius rather thinks he might manage sober, if given the opportunity to practise, but he is quite drunk), and neither of them can tell who wins, but they have fun.
Someone tells them about the student club located on campus, and Albus immediately wants to go, but when Scorpius learns how far it is, he convinces him to wait until the next night.
That night, they go home, sleep in separate beds, and wake up with mild hangovers that are easily treated with a potion Scorpius keeps on hand.
The following day, they take a tour of a few of the palaces in the city. This is no Muggle tour; Scorpius’s dad organised it before they’d even left England. Scorpius, who has read several volumes on continental Wizarding history, still manages to be surprised by some of the facts the tour guide provides.
In the evening, they have dinner on the high street at a Vietnamese restaurant, which is something rather new for both of them.
Albus doesn’t complain once about going to a proper Wizarding restaurant, but after dinner, he does drag Scorpius home, demand he put on his most fashionable Muggle clothes, and tell him they’re going to go to the student club that night.
Scoprius doesn’t object, not quite, but he does wonder why a student club means he needs to wear his most fashionable Muggle clothes.
He dresses quickly, and waits in the sitting room for Albus. And waits. And waits.
When Albus finally deigns to grace Scorpius with his presence, Scorpius turns to say something witty and biting and clever, but he’s struck dumb.
Because, well, Albus is gorgeous.
He’s wearing black jeans and a tight dark green t-shirt. It should be a completely unremarkable outfit, but on Albus, it’s spectacular. Scorpius feels his throat tighten and wills himself to think of something else — anything else — so that he doesn’t embarrass himself.
“Do I look all right?” Albus asks.
Scorpius clears his throat. “Erm, yeah,” he says. “You look great!”
“Thanks,” Albus says — and is Scorpius imagining it, or are his cheeks a little red? No; he’s obviously imagining it. “Er, shall we?”
“Yeah,” Scorpius agrees.
They leave the Wizarding quarter and decide to take Muggle transit to the student club rather than walk. If someone told Scorpius when he’d left for the continent nearly a year ago that he’d become comfortable with Muggle transit, he wouldn’t have believed them, and yet here he was, feeling mostly at ease on a Muggle bus.
They get off near campus with most everyone else, and follow them to the club. When Scorpius sees where it’s located (one of the former adjunct buildings to a palace they’d toured just that morning), he can’t help but geek out.
“Albus,” he says while they wait in line. “This is one of the former adjunct buildings to the palace.”
Albus looks slightly amused. “Caught onto that, actually.”
“I wonder what it’s like inside,” he says. “If they’ve gutted the whole thing, or if they’ve kept some of the original fixtures. Obviously, I don’t expect it to be completely original, because we’re going to a student club, but if they haven’t gutted the whole thing, I’m sure there will be something really interesting.”
Albus slings an arm around his shoulder. “Just remember to get a drink with me first.”
They get inside. The club is pretty crowded, but Albus manages to elbow his way up to the bar to order, “zwei Shots, bitte” (which is nearly the sum of his German, and it’s something he learned during their trip).
Scorpius wants to ask what the liquid is — it’s red, this time, and opaque — but Albus shoots his back, so Scorpius does the same. It’s spicy and unpleasant, and he tells Albus that he didn’t like it, so Albus, being Albus, orders two shots of something else.
This time, it’s mercifully only vodka, which Scorpius can stomach.
Between examining the interior and losing Albus in the club several times, the night passes in a blur. By the time they leave, stumbling slightly up the path to the green, Scorpius is quite drunk.
Albus veers him away from the bus stop, and instead toward the palace.
“Albus,” Scorpius whispers — well, he tries to — “we are not breaking into a palace.”
“Of course not,” Albus says, lacing his fingers through Scorpius’s and dragging him along. Scorpius tries not to think about how perfectly their hands fit together. “We’re going to walk home. Through the park.”
It’s not Albus’s worst idea, but that’s not saying much. The park is closed, and while Scorpius isn’t particularly worried about getting caught (Albus hasn’t managed to steal Jamie’s invisibility cloak for this trip, but they’re both adequate Wizards without the cloak), he’s not sure that drunkenly stumbling through a former royal park at three in the morning is the best idea.
“Come on,” Albus pleads. “I want to walk home, and think about how much we can see without hundreds of other people in the gardens.”
Scorpius sometimes hates how well Albus knows him, because he agrees easily enough.
“All right,” he says. “But if we get caught — I’m not explaining this to our parents.”
“We won’t get caught,” Albus says. “We’re Slytherins, for Merlin’s sake.”
They have a horrible track record of getting caught, but Scorpius doesn’t say that. He lets Albus lead him around the side of the palace, where there’s no gate, and into the park. It’s pitch black here, so Scorpius lights his wand.
Albus doesn’t let go of his hand, and for a while, the only sound, besides crickets, is their own breathing and their footsteps on the dirt path.
They’re in front of Schloss Sanssouci when Albus stops at the fountain, which has been turned off, but is still full of water.
“Hey, Scorpius?” Albus is looking at the palace, which is dark grey in the night, rather than the friendly yellow it was that afternoon.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to go back to England.”
Oh. Isn’t this just what Scorpius has been wishing for the whole time? “Why not?” he asks, instead of saying that Albus can stay with him.
“You’ll be here — becoming a historian — and what, I’ve got some boring Ministry job lined up that I only got because my dad’s Harry fucking Potter? You know my N.E.W.T.s were shit. I barely got anything. I certainly don’t deserve that job on my own merit, and… maybe if you were there, I’d be able to stand it, but… I don’t think I can do it alone.”
“Oh,” Scorpius says. He looks at the palace rather than Albus, because that’s easier.
“Yeah,” Albus says.
It’s silent for a few moments, but Scorpius has never met a silence he couldn’t break. “Did you know Frederick the Great was most likely gay?”
“What?” Albus asks. “Scorpius, what’s that got to do with—?”
“He didn’t like women being in Sanssouci at all, either. His wife resided somewhere completely different. This was his place to be among men. Which is sort of really sexist, but when you take the historical context into consideration — as well as his letters with Voltaire — it’s quite clear that he was gay. And sexist.”
“Scorpius,” Albus says softly.
“It’s such a shame that, historically, some people see those two elements are mutually inclusive, but, really, Frederick the Great probably still would have been a misogynist even if he’d been completely heterosexual. There’s certainly loads of evidence for that — men being misogynistic regardless of sexuality — and yet there’s a certain brand of homophobe that likes to pretend that it’s something unique amongst gay men — or that lesbians hate men. I mean, Rose doesn’t hate men. She doesn’t seem to like me very much, but that’s mostly because I’m annoying, and not really at all because I’m a —”
Before Scorpius can fully process what’s happening, Albus is kissing him.
Properly kissing him. This isn’t just a peck on the lips (not that Scorpius would know what that’s like); no, Albus’s tongue is in his mouth, and the whole thing is sort of overwhelming, and Scorpius doesn’t really know quite what to do, but he tries his best to kiss him back. He sort of mostly ends up slobbering all over him, but he thinks he might be able to chalk that up to being drunk (because he is) and not so much to being bad at kissing (which he suspects is also true).
He expects Albus to pull away, but instead, Albus pulls him closer, pressing their bodies together.
It’s sort of ridiculous. They’re drunk, dressed like Muggles, and snogging at half past three in the morning in front of the palace Frederick the Great built to get away from his wife and (probably) have sex with men without absolutely everyone finding out.
They’re drunk.
What if Albus is only doing this because he’s drunk?
Without fully realising what he’s doing, Scorpius pulls away (which is easier said than done).
Neither of them say anything.
They just look at each other.
Every part of Scorpius’s brain is screaming at him to say something, but it seems as if this is the one time he can’t break the silence.
All he can think about is how much he’d much rather be kissing Albus.
Albus swallows hard and licks his lips. “Listen,” he says, and Scorpius has the sudden, terrible thought that he’s about to have his heart broken.
“Yeah?” Scorpius manages.
“I, er,” Albus says.
Scorpius isn’t sure that he can trust himself to talk.
“You know I’m gay, right?” Albus says. Which sort of throws Scorpius for a loop. He’s been well aware that Albus isn’t straight for years, but they’ve never really talked about it.
“I… well, not in so many words,” Scorpius says.
“Well,” Albus says. “I am. Gay. Really gay.”
“Oh,” Scorpius says.
“And you’re bi.”
“Yeah,” Scorpius says, because he is, and he’s told Albus that much.
And then Albus is kissing him again, with much more fervour this time. What can Scorpius do but kiss him back? After all, he loves him. He’s in love with him. And even if this is just some drunken snog that Albus will pretend never happened, Scorpius isn’t about to let the chance slip through his fingers. He wasn’t sorted into Slytherin for nothing.
He never really thought that he’d get to kiss Albus, nor that it would feel this good. He can feel Albus hard against him, which has to mean something, right? (Even though he knows as well as anyone that it’s very possibly a purely physical reaction that has nothing to do with Scorpius himself). He kisses Albus like the world depends upon it.
Albus’s hands find his arse, and Merlin and Morgana, Scorpius wishes they were alone in the flat together right now. He doesn’t want this to end.
Albus pulls away only to start trailing kisses — which are probably a bit too wet and sloppy to mean Albus is any good at kissing, himself, but Scorpius doesn’t mind one bit — down Scorpius’s neck.
Scorpius doesn’t try to bite back his gasps and moans as Albus finds spots that make him go weak in the knees. He doesn’t have to worry about staying upright, because Albus has him. He feels one of Albus’s hands find its way between them, fiddling with his belt, and Scorpius has to pull away.
“What are you doing?”
In the wandlight, Scorpius can see that Albus looks hurt. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he snaps. “You know, Scorpius, if this is all just a game to you —”
“It’s not,” Scorpius says quickly. “But we haven’t got any idea if there are Muggle guards wandering about, and I don’t — I don’t want my first… well, whatever. I don’t want it where anyone could just walk in and spoil it.”
He doesn’t say that it’s moving fast (because it is), because he doesn’t quite care too much about all that. It’s Albus. But, well, he really doesn’t want someone to walk in and spoil it.
“Oh,” Albus says. “W-well, er, in that case — d’you wanna go home?”
He has to say it. He has to know. He can’t really go any further than this without knowing.
“Albus,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Does this — does this mean anything to you?”
Albus looks hurt again, and worries at his lower lip. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Scorpius says. “We’ve been drinking.”
“Scorpius,” Albus says. “I’ve just told you that I don’t want to go back to England because you won’t be there, and then I kissed you — multiple times — and I think I’ve made it quite clear that I’d like to have sex with you — knowing that you’re my best friend — my only friend — in the whole world, and that something like that could spoil all of it. Do you really think I’d do all of that just because I’ve been drinking?”
“Of course not,” Scorpius says softly. “But I need to know — I need to hear you say it.”
“Is this just because you’ve been drinking?” Albus says, suddenly hostile.
“That’s not fair,” Scorpius says.
“Is it?”
“You know it’s not because I’ve been drinking,” Scorpius says. “I’ve hardly been subtle. Besides, you’ve seen me drunk enough times now to know that I usually just start talking without stopping.”
“So neither of us are doing this just because we’ve been drinking,” Albus says.
The idea is terrifying. “That… seems to be the case.”
“All right,” Albus says. “Scorpius, listen… maybe this isn’t the best time, or place, or whatever, but… I want to stay here with you. If that’s all right.”
“Stay here with me how?” Scorpius asks. “Flatmates? Friends?”
He suspects Albus is blushing, but the wandlight is too low to tell. Albus’s blushes aren’t nearly as obvious as Scorpius’s own.
“I… sort of thought… maybe as your boyfriend?” Albus whispers.
“Oh,” Scorpius says. Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Albus wanted to be his boyfriend.
“I-if you don’t want to,” Albus says, “that’s fine. I’ll be fine. We can forget this ever happened.”
“But you want to,” Scorpius says, trying to wrap his mind around it.
“Yeah,” Albus says.
“Oh,” Scorpius says. It’s all he can say. He never thought he’d be in this position; he’s been fully prepared to meet a nice wizard or witch whilst in his apprenticeship. Not that he’s really ever thought that something like that would be long-term, but perhaps serious enough to wipe all of these silly fantasies about Albus from his mind.
And now…
“So,” Albus says. “Do you want me to stay?”
In the end, it’s telling their parents that’s the hardest part.
Scorpius’s father comes for a visit (his secret boyfriend still presumably in England), and makes it clear that, while he really just wants Scorpius to be happy, Scorpius should be careful to still take his apprenticeship seriously (which he does, of course). His dad even, unexpectedly, pulls a few strings at the German Ministry and gets Albus a job.
It’s nothing extravagant, and it’s one of the few that doesn’t require German fluency, but Albus seems happy with it.
Albus puts off telling his own parents until Rosh Hashanah. He begs Scorpius to come home with him (which he does), and brings him along to dinner after services. This is really almost normal — Scorpius has come by for dinner with the Potters on Rosh Hashanah for several years now (excluding the last, when they were in France).
It seems as if it’s somehow got louder in the past few years. Albus’s dad — who Scorpius remembers suddenly is the Harry Potter — greets them both with a hug, and though Albus squirms out of his grip, Scorpius enjoys it.
Really, it’s Albus’s dad who’s Jewish, as well as his Aunt Hermione, so Scorpius is a bit surprised to see Albus’s mum and step-mum at first (but then he realises, belatedly, that they must have missed him, even though they’ve come to visit). Rose is there, with her girlfriend, and she greets Scorpius politely — and Scorpius manages not to talk too much.
Scorpius has always been a bit jealous of Albus’s huge family, and how much they all love each other (because while he knows his dad loves him, and he’s certain his mother loved him, that’s not the same as all this), but now, it sort of feels like he’s part of it.
It’s a Friday night, which means it’s also Shabbos, which Albus never observes (not since Rose stopped dragging him to services at Hogwarts, anyway), so Scorpius sort of hangs around in the back with Rose’s girlfriend as the Potter-Weasley-Granger clan sings their prayers and lights their candles.
He sits next to Albus, who waits until his sister asks him about Berlin to blurt out, “Scorpius and I are dating. Boyfriends, or whatever.”
And, no, Scorpius was wrong: the hardest part is how no one can even convincingly feign surprise when they find out. As if this were always inevitable (and, hey, maybe it was).
“Listen,” Albus’s Uncle Ron says, breaking the silence, “as long as neither of my kids is dating a Malfoy, I’m happy for you.”
“Dad, shut up,” Rose says.
And then, just like that, everything is back to normal. He feels Albus lace their fingers together under the table, and Albus is blushing as he leans in to whisper, “Do you want to spend the night? I’m sure my dad will drag me back to shul in the morning, but… I’d like you to spend the night.”
“I’d like that, too,” Scorpius says. “You’re sure your dad won’t mind?”
Albus looks at his dad, who’s laughing with Ron and Hermione. “I’m sure.” Then, he leans in and kisses him, and everything is so much better than any other Potter-Weasley-Granger family dinner he’d ever been to in his life.