wine & confessions

freckles

'mmm this is exactly what I needed' Albus smiled as he sipped on his starbucks, too in love with the sicky sweet coffee to be able to even make fun of the muggle trend.

'I never took you for a gingerbread-latte kind of guy.'

'what can I say? I'm full of surprises.'

'disagreed,' Rose shook her head, 'unless we're talking about surprising yourself.'

'how could I possibly surprise myself.'

'Trust me, I ask myself the same question.'

The dark haired boy just shook his head because if he's learned over these past few Rose-filled days, it's to not question her on these remarks, he couldn't count on a straight answer anyway and he was more than happy to not go into yet another conversation. Silence can be good; Something that the shorter, dark haired girl, agreed with him on, unlike some people. Like a certain blond Slytherin.

Thing was - Scorpius Rambling is the only kind of non-stop talk he could listen to. If his brother talked for longer than 4 minutes about the same thing, which he often did nonetheless, he'd hex his mouth shut. However, when Scorpius gets excited and starts rambling, it's the closest thing to a talking optimistic sunshine. He'd babble on and on about his love for cardamom on grilled cheese. Albus once blackmailed James into lending him his invisibility cloak with a certain screenshot Albus made sure to save after his brother got his A contacts mixed up and sent this photo to Albus instead of Agatha. So from now on, the cloak is Albus' at request. But even though he has unlimited access to the cloak, he still decided it was the biggest waste of the object after he was hunched over the rubbish bin for 20 minutes with Scorpius trying his best to look concerned, patting him on the back, and not completely thrilled, as he rocked back and forth on his knees from laughter, upon realising Albus was allergic to the seasoning. The house elfs loved Albus for whatever reason - he can't keep up with his dad's victories - so they let them both in without any fuss. Albus can remember a very vivid thought mid-puke, thinking that a few years back, his dad was probably sneaking off into secret hideouts to learn unforgivable curses in order to save the wizarding world, while he sneaked off to throw up grilled cheese in the school kitchen.

The celebration of the accidental tradition of Christmas-Eve-Christmas-shopping had been continued on this year, for one reason really. Albus was forgetful and lazy and Rose wasn't any better. After three consecutive years of Albus rushing into Rose's room to start panicking about all the presents he'd forgotten and got a 'fuck fuck fuck me too' in reply as she'd throw her jeans on and run around looking for shoes. She just woke up this year and instantly got changed before Albus even ran into her room with a simple, 'let's go'.

Rose breathed into her cupped hands and rubbed them together as they walked through the busy streets of London. They decided to visit both muggle and wizard shops but so far had been pretty unlucky in the muggle shopping centers whose organisation and motivational skills were just about as high as Albus' which resulted in crowded shops. Albus cursed the underage wizarding law outside of school for preventing him to use his wand and (probably Rose's) knowledge to speed up the process.

'I love muggle shops. Everyone looks so out of place and uncomfortable, avoiding other humans at all costs. It's heart-warming.' Rose grinned, making her freckled dimples look an estimated depth of at least 6 feet if Albus' calculations were correct.

Albus was incredibly envious of the freckles she got from the Weasley genes. Her face was pretty much littered with them. Whereas his mum passed hers onto Lily, this however is a pretty new feeling, since before two year ago, he wished he could scratch the muddy brown from his face every summer when a few freckles would pay his face a visit in the fairly warm British sun.

Both him and Scorpius however, remember very clearly third year of Hogwarts when the sun came out, before school ended and therefor early enough for Scorpius to stare at the speckles of brown, scattered over Albus' light bronze nose pretty much any time he was physically able to. Both boys remember it differently though. Albus tried brushing it off because sure, his best friend had never seen them before and needed time to get used to them. However, Albus started wondering how long Scorpius time really did need, because after a week of having them, he still had to clap Scorpius back into focus, mid conversation, something that definitely didn't go unnoticed by Rose in their shared classes.

Scorpius however was so transfixed, half of the time he was fully aware of what he was doing but was physically unable to look away, thinking about how badly he just wanted to touch them, whereas at other times, he'd zone out looking at them without even realising. Albus eventually started feeling pretty insecure by the end of the week since his best friend's eyes were pretty much glued to them. That was of course before the night the two boys sat on the grey, furry pillows surrounding the fire place. After a few incredibly tired and unsuccessful games of exploding snap, Albus' eyes were closed as he spoke lazy, incoherent sentences, while his head got progressively heavier on Scorpius' shoulder until his curly hair ended up sliding onto the blond haired boys thigh. Scorpius shifted so his best friend's head could comfortably lay on both of his thighs. Scorpius was in such awe that Albus' lightly closed eyes were enough confirmation that his friend was asleep before he sucked in his breath and started lightly tracing the tiny blobs of darker brown above his nose, unevenly spreading out underneath his left eye. Scorpius lost track of time or his surroundings completely. Circling, tracing, counting and making shapes from the freckles under his soft fingertips. Two things should be mentioned about his tiny incident. 1, Albus hadn't been asleep at all and was trying his best to keep his breathing even and his body from moving so Scorpius would never stop. And 2 being the fact that not once did Albus ever hate his freckles again after and prayed they'd come back every year.

'That girl,' he pointed through a Primark window to a girl talking to an employee, 'looks like she's trying her best to merge into the sweater racks to cry.' He smirked as he threw his empty cup into the trash can they were walking past.

'Give the muggle a break! She's been interacting with another human for more than 2 minutes! That's overwhelming!' Rose chuckled, tone heavy with amused sarcasm, and linked her arm through Albus', unintentionally stuffing her tightly curled hair into hisface, steering him away from the busy street and panicked parents looking for last minute gifts, 'come on, I'm done with muggles for today.'