Working Through the Rest

Time Spent

I don't mention the incident with Zack when I get back to the Common Room and Scorpius doesn't ask if anything happened. He doesn't need to know. He's hurting too much to cope with this as well.

That night, for the time in months, he doesn't sit working by the fireplace. He goes to bed at a reasonable time and I watch him fall asleep. Part of me expects him to struggle but he's out cold, long before anyone else comes into the dormitory. I don't want to question the apparent peace in his mind. Merlin knows he needs it.

The days begin to pass again and sometimes, if I shut my mind tightly enough, it feels as if nothing has happened. That is, of course, rare, because things have changed. It's only too obvious how much things have changed.

Scorpius is quieter, increasingly more withdrawn, and I suppose I should have expected that. But his silence when we're alone, his quietness in potions, it scares me. I need him. Whether or not he knows, I don't know, but I need him. And yet, with every passing day he gets more and more distant.

We both go home over Christmas, and it's quiet. I don't leave my room much, spending most of my time trying to read. Occasionally someone comes into my room and I don't stop them. Lily spends a lot of time with me, not trying to talk. We just sit, reading, on my bed.

Those moments are some of the better moments.

When we go back to school, Scorpius doesn't talk much. For most of the journey back, he just sits silently, looking as if he's buried, at a glance, in a book. It is obvious, quite quickly, that he isn't actually reading, because he keeps forgetting to turn the page.

I try to make conversation a few times, but he just ignores me. I don't press him. I know he struggles with the ever-present reminders of his mum over the holidays. And, given his muttering when he's asleep, the ever-present reminders of his time in the other world. I can't even bring myself to use names. I don't know what those reminders are. He doesn't talk about them.

During dinner, he barely touches the food on his plate, sitting in an eerie silence, staring down at the table. I try to get him to eat something, but he just ignores me.

And then we begin to settle into a routine. A new routine. Of silence and fear and nothing. I keep trying to talk to him, but he ignores me, visiting the library without me, moving when I sit near him.

It hurts. I don't say how much it hurts because I don't want to guilt-trip him into doing something he doesn't want to. But it hurts so much. Because I need him.

I thought, after the months where dad kept us apart, we would make an effort not to fall apart again. I thought we'd make an effort to be there for each other and to not let each other fall. And here we are, further apart than I'd have ever imagined.

At least before, I'd known Scorpius had hated it too, had wanted to see me, talk to me. He doesn't seem to want that anymore. And I'm scared. I don't want to lose him.

Not again.