Chapter Text
When Albus sees his old Gobstones nemesis for the first time since leaving Hogwarts, Scorpius is holding a pygmy puff while the acrid smell of smoke wafts through the air of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.
It’s fair to say he looks more than a little baffled at the turn of events.
‘Malfoy?’ Albus says cautiously, glancing down at the pygmy puff, a little concerned about the burning smell.
‘Hel – oh, Potter!’ Scorpius looks surprised, then relieved, then panic floods his expression as the pygmy puff squirms in his grip.
‘Hold it in one hand and stroke its head,’ Albus advises. ‘They don’t like feeling constricted.’
Scorpius loosens his grip on the creature, which immediately makes a mockery of Albus’s wisdom and attempts to make a bid for freedom. Albus and Scorpius both scramble to catch it. It somehow ends up on Scorpius’s shoulder, trying to wriggle into the collar of his cloak. Scorpius looks panic-stricken. Albus steps in, extracts the creature, gives it a stern look, then sets it on his own shoulder, where it seems content to curl up and stay still.
‘Thanks,’ Scorpius says.
‘Is it yours?’ Albus asks, amused and bemused in equal measure by whatever is going on here.
‘No. Very much not. I was just –’
‘Ah, there you are,’ comes a voice from behind a stack of fanged frisbees, and Albus’s Uncle Ron emerges, patting a garish orange powder from the front of his robes, his wand stuck behind his ear. He looks at Scorpius and the lack of a pygmy puff, then seems to notice Albus. ‘Hello, nephew of mine.’
‘Everything all right?’ Albus asks reasonably.
‘Small fire,’ Ron says. ‘Completely under control. Don’t tell George. Looks like you’ve got presents for me.’
‘One pygmy puff,’ Albus says, handing it over. ‘And one mystery item that Mum asked me to drop off.’ He hands over the parcel Ginny had given him that morning, after he’d made the mistake of mentioning he was popping to Diagon Alley for some shopping.
‘Sorry for throwing live animals at you,’ Ron says to Scorpius, who still looks bewildered but politely waves away his apologies. ‘You can have twenty percent off, if you buy anything.’
He turns to Albus, preparing to say something, but then a bell chimes from somewhere in the shop, and he makes an apologetic face and disappears amongst the shelves, the pygmy puff swaying on his shoulder as he goes.
Scorpius watches him go, looking slightly dazed. Albus takes the opportunity to stare at Scorpius without making it obvious. He remembers him well enough from their Hogwarts days – it would probably be a stretch to say that they’d been friends, but they’d been in Gobstones club together, so they’d hung out, and they’d both taken Ancient Runes at NEWT, which had been a pretty small class. But mostly Albus had spent time with his fellow Slytherins and Scorpius with the Ravenclaws.
He doesn’t remember Scorpius being so pretty, though.
Okay, maybe pretty is the wrong word. Scorpius is, after all, a comfortable six feet tall with noticeably broad shoulders and a criminally sharp jawline. But there’s something soft about his grey eyes and their long, pale lashes, something delicate about his pink lips, currently curled in a smile. His pale cheeks are flushed, either from the chill of the January air outside or the warmth of the shop, and – goddamn it – it’s adorable.
‘So,’ Albus says, trying to pull himself together and stop staring and start behaving like a normal human being. ‘Um. Fancy seeing you here.’
‘Just buying a present for my cousin,’ Scorpius says. ‘Or, trying to. She’s eight. I don’t know anything about eight-year-olds. I think she likes, er, hippogriffs? And … purple?’
‘If you want to make her parents hate you, there’s a whole section of loud, explosive things over this way,’ Albus suggests.
Scorpius looks rather helpless while Albus gives him a rundown of the surrounding shelves, covered in brightly coloured boxes and a myriad of products children would love and their parents would loathe. It’s very endearing – though Albus is fairly sure he would find anything about Scorpius endearing at this point – so he pulls out his best salesperson spiel and is immensely grateful for all the summer holidays he spent helping out in this place growing up.
‘You’re a lifesaver,’ Scorpius says, holding a screaming yo-yo in one hand and a Bubble Blaster 5000 in the other, weighing up his options.
‘No problem. Happy to be of service.’
They look at each other, and smile awkwardly, and then there’s a pause where neither of them does anything. The pause gives Albus the opportunity to overthink, which his brain seizes with indecent enthusiasm.
It’s not often he bumps into people he hasn’t seen in six years – oh god, that’s how long it’s been, six whole years since he graduated Hogwarts, though that’s an existential crisis for another time – and he knows the contrast between his eighteen-year-old self and his current self isn’t terribly flattering.
He knows he’s put on a bit of weight since Hogwarts. Okay, quite a lot of weight. Enough that the first number on the scale has shuffled comfortably into a two rather than a one these days, enough that his belly pushes over his waistband to sit his lap, enough that his cousins don’t invite him to play Quidditch anymore at family get-togethers.
(Fuck, could he get on a broomstick these days? Maybe? It’s a while since he tried.)
Actually, he’s quite relieved that Scorpius recognised him at all. There’s the weight, and he’s got a few days’ worth of dark stubble on his cheeks, which his teenage self would never have achieved, and he wears glasses now, which sometimes throws people off.
(He’s uncomfortably aware that, under different circumstances, people would probably comment on how much the glasses make him look like his dad. But his dad is a slim guy, so they don’t – they very much don’t.)
And he’s all right with the weight thing, most days. At least, he tries not to focus on it too much. But bumping into an old classmate who has the gall to be even more attractive than he was back then is a sure-fire way to set every one of Albus’s insecurities into overdrive.
He’s so wrapped up in his muddle of self-conscious thoughts that he almost misses Scorpius asking, ‘D’you want to grab a drink, if you’re done here? I could do with something warm. It’d be nice to catch up?’
Holy shit.
‘Er, yeah,’ Albus says quickly. ‘Yeah, sounds good.’
‘Great.’ Scorpius indicates the assortment of items in his arms, including the yo-yo and bubble machine. ‘I’ll just get these.’
‘Don’t let Ron overcharge you,’ Albus says. ‘Remember he promised you a discount for the suffering you endured on his watch.’
Scorpius snorts and heads over to the counter to pay.
Albus hovers by the door, attempting to stay out of sight, because if his uncle sees him leaving with Scorpius Malfoy, it’ll become a whole thing and the entire family will know by dinnertime and Albus will have to painfully explain himself to every Potter-Granger-Weasley he sees in the next two weeks. Not that there’s anything to explain, of course, just two people-who-used-to-know-each-other-a-bit grabbing a drink together.
(Oh god, Albus really wants there to be something to explain.)
When Scorpius has paid up, they have an overly polite discussion of where they should go for said drink, filled with ‘I don’t mind!’s and ‘No, honestly, you pick!’s, before Albus suggests a quirky place down Knockturn Alley, which Scorpius comments is very on-brand for a Slytherin and a Malfoy.
It’s a cute place with eclectic artwork on the walls, a small piano in the corner, and a cat curled up on a stool by the fire. Scorpius orders a butterbeer, and Albus gets a pot of lapsang souchong, and they sit at a table by the window and watch shoppers scurry by.
They’ve both removed their cloaks, hanging them on a peg by the door, which allows Albus to get a better look at Scorpius – and holy hell. He’s wearing a nice pair of robes that do little to disguise his broad shoulders, and Albus’s mind briefly attempts to construct what the rest of him might look like under there – strong arms, flat stomach, narrow waist – before he chastises himself for being an insufferable pervert. He determines to stop objectifying the poor guy who is, after all, just trying to drink his butterbeer and make pleasant conversation and doesn’t deserve to have Albus ogling him across the table.
As for Albus himself, he’s suddenly painfully aware that his jeans are slightly too tight, his t-shirt slightly too small. He’s conscious of where his jeans dig in at his hips, leaving angry red marks, and where his t-shirt stretches over his belly. He wishes he’d worn robes, which – while not slimming, per se – would at least disguise the situation a little more effectively than his current outfit choice does. (Bloody hell, if he’d known he was going to bump into Scorpius Malfoy today, he would’ve put considerably more effort into his appearance this morning.)
‘So.’ Scorpius spreads his hands, smiling his very charming smile. ‘What’ve you been up to since Hogwarts? Are you still terrible at Gobstones?’
Albus blusters in mock outrage. He gives a quick whistle-stop tour of his post-Hogwarts life, explaining that he moved up to York a couple of years ago with his cousin Molly, and trying to make his Ministry job in the Department of Magical Transportation sound slightly more interesting than it is.
For his part, Scorpius is living in London with a couple of his fellow Ravenclaws, Claude Zabini and Grace Fletcher, who Albus remembers from Gobstones club. He’s doing further study in History of Magic, with a focus on wandlore, and working in a coffee shop while writing his thesis. His eyes brighten when he talks about his research, though he’s vague when it comes to his plans for afterwards (‘Ministry? Gringotts? Post-grad study? Advanced cappuccino making? I’m sure my calling will find me eventually.’)
The whole thing is nice. Weirdly, easily nice. Albus is nervous, but that’s more of a personality trait than anything, just amplified by the fact that he isn’t accustomed to drinking tea across from highly attractive former acquaintances. Scorpius seems relaxed and chatty, flashing his charming smile at everything Albus says as though he’s the most interesting conversational partner anyone could hope for. Maybe he does this all the time, is constantly bumping into old classmates in random shops and inviting them out for drinks.
In the middle of reminiscing about their Ancient Runes lessons, Scorpius announces, ‘Fuck it, I’m getting cake.’ He looks expectantly at Albus. ‘Want anything?’
Albus panics. ‘Erm…’
The cakes at the counter look delicious, as he noted when they came in. He’d wanted cake then, and yes, he would absolutely still like some cake now. The question is whether or not he feels too self-conscious eating cake in public and in front of Scorpius. (Before he got fat – properly fat, rather than just his slightly pudgy teenage self – he hadn’t realised there were unspoken rules about eating in public, but there are, there are definitely rules, and he’s hyper aware of them now.)
He’s been indecisive too long, but Scorpius just waves a hand and says, ‘I’ll surprise you.’
He comes back to the table with a slice of carrot cake, sagging under the weight of its cream cheese frosting, and an enormous square of chocolate tiffin. The paranoid part of Albus’s brain wonders if this is some sort of trick. But he chooses the carrot cake, and Scorpius happily tucks into the tiffin, and refuses Albus’s attempts to pay him back for it.
‘You saved me from a pygmy puff, I owe you.’
Albus grins. ‘You probably weren’t in any real danger.’
Scorpius raises an eyebrow at him. ‘Probably. But you solved my shopping woes, too.’
‘Well, when you put it like that.’
‘It pretty much makes you my hero,’ Scorpius tells him seriously, the corners of his mouth twitching, and Albus’s heart just about topples out of his chest.
Well, fuck.
*
Three days later, Albus is halfway through a plate of burnt lasagna when an owl raps on his window.
(It’s moments like this, when twenty-four-year-old Albus has failed to cook a simple pasta dish, that his brain helpfully reminds him that his dad had saved the world multiple times over by the time he was seventeen.)
His eyes almost pop out of his skull when he realises the letter is from Scorpius.
Hi Albus. Are you free on Friday? Grace, Zabini and I are going to a Muggle bar so Zabini can practise his ‘I’m not a wizard’ routine before Grace tries introducing him to her Muggle friends.
Might be fun. Will probably be embarrassing.
Let me know if you fancy it.
Scorpius (Malfoy)
Albus wonders if hanging out in a Muggle bar with Scorpius Malfoy and his friends on Friday night might be the pinnacle of his existence.
This is turning out to be quite a week.