Take Time (a Harry Potter fan fiction)

6: Wounds Better Closed

Chapter Six:

Wounds Better Closed

[Al]

For the second time, Albus Severus Potter was starting his fifth year.

Al inwardly sighed as he climbed into a horseless stagecoach, not really paying any attention to with whom he was sitting with.

“Oh,” said a familiar voice, “you were with Harry in that compartment, right?”

Al blinked and realized that Ayumi Haibara’s much younger mother was talking to him from his left, flanked by two other girls. She was, like her daughter, rather nice-looking, but it didn’t make Al interested in her. Al had only ever seen her twice- on a Hogsmeade weekend, in front of the Three Broomsticks and drinking Gillywater with Ayumi, and in the Ministry, talking politely about the weather to Harry.

“Sorry?” he asked as politely as he could muster. “You’re”- he racked his brains for her name- “Cho Chang, aren’t you?”

“I’m glad you noticed,” said Cho Chang, as the girls at the leftmost part of the coach began giggling. “This is Marietta Edgecombe and Tallulah Twigg.” She had, Al noted with some surprise, a Ravenclaw’s prefect badge. He had assumed she would be a Hufflepuff like her daughter. “You seemed pretty distracted in that compartment.”

Merlin knows how much Al had been distracted by his thoughts. He had only even looked up when Neville Longbottom, his Herbology professor, had coated them all with some kind of reeking, dark green slime, and when Draco Malfoy had entered the compartment.

To be frank, after that encounter, Al had no idea how Scorpius had ever made friends with Rose. Draco clearly harboured resentment towards ‘Mudbloods’. Al had never heard that word before, but it was obviously insulting towards people of Hermione’s birth. He supposed it was one of the things about the past that hadn’t survived to reach his time.

“Hello?” said Cho Chang loudly. Marietta Edgecombe and Tallulah Twigg giggled again. Al blinked. “Your name’s Alexander Prentice, right?”

“No, it’s-” Al cut himself off before he could spill, coughing. Your name’s Alexander Charlus West Prentice, remember that. “I mean, call me Al.”

“All right, Al then,” said Cho. “When did you meet Harry?”

“Just this summer,” said Al as he watched Draco Malfoy frighten a meek-looking boy to line up at the Black Lake with the other first years.

Cho looked somewhat disappointed. “Oh,” she said, before adding in a hopeful tone, “Do you know if he likes coffee?”

Marietta Edgecombe and Tallulah Twigg smiled meaningfully at each other.

Al immediately saw where this was going. “No,” he said at once. When Cho cocked her sculpted black eyebrows, he elaborated, “You are not going to go out with him.”

Cho’s face went cold. “So what if I would?” said Cho, challenging.

“It’ll never work out,” Al said promptly and certainly.

“Well, for your information, Harry asked me out to the Yule Ball,” said Cho heatedly, “and he admires my Quidditch skills!”

“What Yule Ball?” asked Al, nonplussed.

“Oh, right,” said Cho, narrowing her already slit-like eyes at Al, “you weren’t able to watch the most important competition of the century- the Triwizard Tournament!”