The Many Musings of Albus Potter

xxvi. augureys

xxvi. augureys

For Albus, as it turns out, avoiding Roscoe Sterling is far more difficult than suppressing his attraction to him.

It is by some mercy that Albus can slip through most of his day without catching a glimpse of the other boy. He's a final-year student, after all, and even Roscoe might understand why he needs to spend so much of his free time in the library. March has quickly slipped into April and in just over a month, Albus will be doing his NEWT exams. Surely Roscoe would not begrudge him his revision time?

It's all total and utter bullshit, of course.

He buries himself in his footlong parchments, studiously gathers his books and moves to obscure and undiscovered corners of the library, ducks his head under the table when he thinks he hears a familiar voice. Albus feels like an utter prick for doing it. He wants nothing more than to abandon the pretence that he didn't actually enjoy kissing Roscoe Sterling. That there is nothing more he would like to do than to go back to that night at the Viaduct courtyard and do it all over again.

But where would the principle be in that?

Albus reasons with himself that he hasn't betrayed Scorpius. How can one betray a person they haven't seen in almost a year? Who's to say he will ever see him again? The Ministry has ramped up its hunt for underground exiles and Albus can only allow himself a few minutes of thought to imagine a scenario where Scorpius is found. What would they do to him? Is he even alive?

No.

There is no time — he can't let himself slip down that dark abyss again. Albus' magic has never felt more cooled than it is now. It still comes and goes in waves of course but nothing like what it was just a few weeks ago. It hasn't since he kissed Roscoe...and dad is going to keep Scorpius safe.

Albus groans loudly, face-down, into his History of Muggle Warfare book. Some Ravenclaw girl sitting across from him scowls disapprovingly in his direction but he ignores her and picks it up. Whoever wrote this book has made it their mission to make it as exceedingly dull to get through as possible. He turns it over and sighs. Figures. Hermione Granger-Weasley.

"Sun Tzu's philosophy has shaped entire international laws on Muggle warfare. Indeed — and perhaps this may raise the ire of some Magical Traditionalists — it may even be said that the invention and use of defense and attack spells were directly or indirectly influenced by the sheer cultural dissemination of Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War'. One need look no further than Lord Voldemort's pattern of wand-work to highlight the influence of Muggle warfare strategists even on the most bigoted of wizards; it follows like so..."

He studies well into the evening when the blue, listless days turn into a dusky orange and spill in through the high-ceiling windows. When Madame Pince finally chases him out of there at curfew, he ambles around the castle corridors until one of the Prefects catches him and threatens him with detention. When Albus finally gathers the courage to creep back into the Slytherin common-room, he's relieved to find it filled only with other final years.

The usual coupling has been replaced with a scattered set of seventh years — though there are few of them left now — poring over the exact ingriedients required to make Felix Felicis, feverishly memorising the exact pattern of the runes for the Magical Egyptology exams. Katie Birdshaw silently weeps as she roves over her incoherent notes on the evolution of Muggle plumbing. Albus' eyes scan around the room and he ignores his own disappointment at not seeing Roscoe anywhere. He slips past everyone and up to his dormitory.