Title: glass wings were only meant to fall

Summary: Albus, Scorpius, and learning that glass wings don't always hold you up. / for ella & hpfc.

Notes: This was written for Allie's fantastic Big Sis, Lil Sis Competition over at HPFC, where I play the role of Big Sis, and Ella - inkteardrops - is my Lil Sis. Her story, glass hearts were only meant to break, is stunning. For now, I hope you enjoy!

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." - John Green.

The thing about Icarus was that he really believed he could fly.

He jumped off of that ledge and he trusted, with every wax feather and every beat of his glass heart that he would fly and escape.

But then he flew too close to the sun, and whatever they told you, the wax didn't melt. He didn't fall. He burnt. It wasn't graceful and it wasn't quiet, it was all flailing limbs and breaking hearts and screams, because Icarus didn't just fall, he crashed. He crashed and he burned and the same will happen to them.

Albus and Scorpius; they weren't angels, darling, they never would be. They were human and they were flawed, the mud men who thought themselves so much better than the gods.

But gods don't fall.

Scorpius sighed as he watched out of the stained glass window, at the dusky, Cornwall shores and fading sun. It was spring. Albus tapped a rhythm from behind him, lost to the patter of rainfall. Scorpius has always loved symbolism.

The rain trailed on the window like a caress, like a handprint; marking the glass and marring it.

"What am I supposed to say, Scor?"

Albus had stood up, resting a hand on the stone wall and leaning forward until his head rested between Scorpius' shoulder blades - the empty space where his wings were supposed to be.

"You're supposed to trust me," Scorpius bit out, stepping away from the window. The church laughed at him, mocked him with creaking walls and a figure of Christ smirking down at him from high over the altar. "That's all I asked for, Al, you know that. I didn't ask for anything else."

The black-haired boy laughed, loud and echoing and cruel.

"Didn't you?"

Scorpius thought back to those first quiet days, the tentative hands held next to the lake, the frantic letters and the half-true glares across Potions classrooms. They were golden days, glass days; days that broke as soon as they threw them into the wall and stomped on them and healed them with their fists.

They had been so young, then, so wrapped up in following in their father's footsteps that they hadn't thought to put out the spark.

This world, sometimes, was born to be on fire.

They were angry; he knew that.

They were so angry it took his breath away; anngry with the world and everyone in it, with all the expectations heaped onto their fragile shoulders that couldn't even taken the weight of a few feathers.

Because Albus was not a miniature Harry Potter, because he smoked behind the greenhouses and had the whole of Slytherin house wrapped around his finger. He could probably take apart everything the wizarding world believed with a smirk and a few handshakes.

He was Albus fucking Potter and he wasn't going to let you forget it.

And Scorpius; well. Scorpius was just a mini-Death Eater and just a Draco-Malfoy-in-training, except. Except he preferred the company of books and was a little too genius and a little too arrogant. He was quiet and he rested his elbows on the dinner table and he was never one to rebel against majority, authority, because who was he to read a revolution?

(But every now and then he took a drag of Potter's cigarette and ran away to Cornwall for a night.)

"Let's go home, Scor. Just home," Albus whispered against his neck.

Home, home like Hogwarts and brick walls and the Black Lake and a chamber, his chamber -

But no. It wasn't his. Not anymore.

Scorpius shook his head and suddenly there was a flicker, there; a flicker of little genius Albus who wrote love notes and stared at Scorpius when he thought he wasn't looking. But that Albus had burnt out long ago, smoking under streetlights and hiding under Quidditch stands.

Maybe he could forgive that.

"Alright," he said. It sounded like I love you.

Albus had always been handsome, with his eyes of jaded ice and silver tongue and heart of glass.

After all, he was Harry Potter's son; and however much of a hero he might've been, he was stubborn and he was proud and there's a line, Potter dear. Always a line.

And how could Scorpius have resisted? He had walked so long in his father's footsteps that he shied away from the light; his wings tucked close to his back so that they wouldn't be burnt. And Albus Potter was so unpredictable and so fragile and so wrong.

He'd never done anything wrong in his life, and Scorpius knew it was in his blood to try and fly. Even if he fell.

The Astronomy tower was dark, now, and hidden from the springtime moonlight; an outline stood near the edge, smoke rising above its head and escaping. Albus' shoulders were slumped against the skyline and his feet moved restlessly.

His toes were hooked over the edge.

"Al? Are you alright?"

The answering laugh was too dark, even at midnight. Scorpius shivered.

"This is where we were always going to end up, wasn't it? Reliving our father's dreams. We were enemies, do you remember? Two sides. Apart from - apart from I was a Slytherin. I couldn't even get that right. What use was I, right, in reacting the great Potter-Malfoy scandal? What use is an actor who's forgotten his lines?"

Scorpius took a cautious step forward and Albus took another drag of his cigarette.

"I was innocent, back then, wasn't I? Just a kid. So in love." He spat the word like a curse and flicked his cigarette, letting the ashes fall like feathers.

"Love isn't a bad thing," Scorpius told him carefully, and briefly laid a hand on his shoulder. It was batted away with a careless movement o a pale wrist and he cursed, Albus' cigarette already leaving a burn on his skin. It shone red and angry, like the set of Albus' jaw and the tip of his fag. "We-"

"Come off it," Albus interrupted with a sardonic grin. "Our fate was written for us and when the hell do people like us love?"

"We're not our fathers."

Albus stepped away from him and threw his hands in the air, his ice eyes flashing in a way that took Scorpius' breath away. "Not everything is about our fucking fathers, Scor!"

Scorpius stared at him in confusion. "Then what's it about?"

His boyfriend flicked his cigarette over the side with a smirk, and took in a deep breath. "What do you think it would be like?" He stepped closer to the creeping darkness and looked behind him. "To jump?" He laughed humourlessly. "It's a little tempting, don't you think?"

"Stop it."

"But you see, Scor, my dear, you have to have a little faith!" Albus looked over the edge curiously, like a cat who's caught a mouse and isn't sure what to do with it. "Falling's just like flying, after all."

Scorpius seethed under his Gryffindor school robe and dug his nails into Albus' palm to drag him away from the edge, back to reality. "I said, stop it!" He shouted through gritted teeth.

"Have a little faith," Albus whispered again, mockingly, big green eyes blinking up at him - too familiar and yet too different, they should have been brown, they should have been -

He looked back at him and sighed as he wrapped his arms around the broken boy's shoulders. "Of course. But faith in what?"

If you think about it, glass hearts were only meant to break.

"I don't know what to do," Scorpius muttered to himself, over and over and his hands reached up and pulled his blonde hair tight. "I don't know what to do."

Albus had long since locked himself in the bathroom with a promise of danger and a lingering threat of something much worse. Scorpius sat in the unfamiliar, green-tinged room with a sense of resentment; his bedroom had been decorated just the same, the same hues and the same shades and even the same fucking mahogany bed posts.

He had been raised a Slytherin, after all.

He crept closer to the door and put his lips to the wood. "Please come out, Albus," he said, his voice soft and soothing, persuasive in the way his father was when his mother threatened to leave - again. Please come home, Astroria. Scorpius needs you. I need you. Let me in, Tori. All you have to do is let me in.

"Piss off," a muffled voice replied, thick and fragile, like the stained glass window Albus had punched in Cornwall, like the silhouette leaning over the side and grinning.

"Your friends need you. I need you."

There was silence at the other side of the door, and Scorpius sighed. In another life he thought of leaning against a different door and whispering the same words of comfort, the same silky, enchanting words to make people fall to their knees and fly at the exact same time.

In another life...

"Let me in, Al. All you have to do is let me in," he murmured. He twisted the doorknob slightly and smiled when it turned under his fingertips.

As soon as is foot fell onto the bathroom tiles, there was a scream.

Albus had leant forward and smashed his fist into the mirror, cracking it in every place possible and tearing the glass apart with the blood on his knuckles. The pieces fell like rain and shimmered like poison in his ink-black hair.

"Why?" Scorpius asked plainly.

"Because we were too fucking happy there." Albus turned and he looked Scorpius in the eyes, and he whispered, "We're not us, are we? I don't think I can take another goodbye."

"We don't have to say goodbye," Scorpius promised, and he thought of Icarus grinning at his father and jumping off that ledge, trusting his father and trusting his wings and every flawed human who had ever fell and expected the ground to catch them.

"But we did!" Albus screamed, and he crashed his palms on the shards of glass, writing promises in blood like his father used to do. "Don't you understand?"

In another life -

"You don't have to leave, Salazar," Godric begged, brown eyes wide, and he tugged on Salazar's sleeve, ripping the fabric, letting go and allowing his friend to fall. "Please. Please don't leave me." But sweetheart, don't you remember; the gods don't fall. They are all still falling.

- the heart burnt long before the wax.

"We're not them, Al," Scorpius promised. "We're not. We don't have to be." He pressed a kiss to Albus' temple. "Please don't leave me."

And suddenly the whole world was watching them, the people they had been and the people they had yet to become, the fathers they weren't and the founders they were, and they all held their breaths as a quiet little boy remembered love letters and cigarette smoke.

"I won't. Just... forgive me."

"I do."

Albus took his hand and Scorpius felt his glass wings beat against his back. He wondered whether there had ever been (would ever be again) two naive, foolish, genius boys with silver smiles and glass hearts that walked that same path.

He wondered if they had said goodbye. And he hoped they found each other again.