Chapter 19: Birthday Cake

It was the day of Rose's birthday and Louis would get around to talking to her, he would, but he didn't feel any urgency in regards to doing so. Maybe, if she ever bothered to care about him, then he could find it in him to care more about her.

There was only one thing — person? no, thing — Louis cared about right now. He'd spent a long time not allowing himself to care, but at some point the flood gates had opened and he didn't think there was much chance of shoving them back closed. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating.

And so, in a way, was Louis. He could be something. He could be someone. He was sick of letting life push him around. In this one area, he was going to fight. He was going to let himself be all of it. He was not going to hold himself back. They were going to crash and burn no matter what; he could make sure it was something worth losing.

Scorpius had started with the upper hand. He'd first harassed Louis, then kissed him, then ignored him. This time, Louis was going after him. This time, he wouldn't be the one made to squirm.

Everyone was pretending. Everyone was liking someone they shouldn't and pretending to like someone they didn't. Louis was too. But he was sick of it, sick of his fake girlfriend and his supposed family, about how they were all meant to care about each other but were mostly only preoccupied with themselves. Louis was as bad as the rest of them. He didn't know if this time he was just pretending ever harder, or if this was the real time. He wasn't sure he cared.

"When," he said, seemingly suddenly, his fist clenched around his tie, pulling the knot too tight against his throat. They were sitting in the edges of the forest, just down from the lake, far enough to be out of eyesight but not far enough.

Scorpius, who'd been filing his nails with the edge of a rock — the sound had been making Louis squirm for minutes — paused, his eyes meeting Louis's, flint grey, and not one word, not one smart-arse comment, leaving his lips. They'd been sitting down here for five minutes and Louis was doing everything he could not to believe that Scorpius, now that Louis had given in to him, wasn't interested in something he could have. But Louis had tried to leave, and Scorpius had grabbed his wrist, pulled him down on top of him and they'd kissed, quickly but thoroughly, and Louis was so sure it was a plea that Scorpius couldn't bear to word. Louis stayed. He stayed, and now he asked this question, with dread twisting in his stomach.

Scorpius looked away. Scorpius looked away, and was that shame flickering in his eyes? Louis nearly gave up then. Not just on the question, on this, whatever this was. On everything. Get back on the train, get out of the Wizarding World, move to Bristol, get a job in a bar. Never talk to anyone again.

Instead, Louis said, "When did you decide you wanted me?"

If they'd been anyone was the question would have been When did you know you liked me? And it nearly had been, when it had first come to mind. Well, not first, but for the first time this day. But Louis had very quickly dropped that, dropped it like he needed to drop any expectations, any hope this could be a real conversation. He still remembered his cousin Al's words of warning, from what seemed like so long ago, and he knew. It wasn't a relationship, not to Scorpius. It was a game. But that didn't mean Louis couldn't make a play.

He would insist that Scorpius wanted him, and so it would be true.

"From the moment I saw you," Scorpius sneered.

Louis didn't even blink. Scorpius always sneered. What did it actually mean? Sometimes, like now, Louis thought Scorpius was only scared. But that was a dangerous way to think. All warning signs screamed thinking like that was the way of weakness, the way to a broken heart. Louis couldn't afford to think the best of Scorpius, who was at best a pleasant distraction and at worst a hurricane, disaster waiting to strike. If Louis wanted to play with snakes he had best steel his armour.

So he repeated to himself that there was every chance Scorpius was just mean.

After all, here he was now, leaning into Louis, running a finger a long his parted lips. Louis resisted the urge to bite down. What if Scorpius, like he'd once teased, was into that? Louis didn't know how far he wanted to push this. How close to the flames he was willing to get.

Louis made the mistake of looking into Scorpius's eyes; his pupils were big enough to swallow him. Louis imaged being sucked in. Imagined losing himself.

But it was a daydream, a disease. How could anyone lose themselves staring into another's eyes? There was his reflection staring right back. He was so silver and bright. A light he couldn't put out. And Scorpius looked at him hungrily. And Louis wanted to be sick.

"You're so fucking beautiful, you know?"

It was the worst thing Scorpius could have said.

Louis came back to his room many hours later. He'd taken a broom out, one of the old Cleansweeps belonging to the school, and he'd hung on for dear life as he'd catapulted through the skies, the cold air, the speed, the altitude, all of it — and then some more — bringing tears to his eyes, making him forget anything else, making him remember; despite all, he hung on to save himself. Despite all, he was living, and he wanted that. When his feet finally hit solid ground his legs buckled and his stomach heaved. He threw up there on the perfectly-manicured Quidditch pitch. His head and heart pounded; his mouth tasted of sick; his fingertips were numb. Alive but thoroughly shaken.

Good.

It was dark out. He didn't know what time it was, or if he'd be let back inside. He didn't know he didn't know he didn't know, he didn't know anything.

He left it there. The sick. The broom. He stumbled through the darkness back towards the castle, and he'd left it all there but still carried the feeling with him. The screaming. The yearning.

The yearning for what?

He could ask himself the question but he wouldn't answer it.

How naive he'd been, to think he could be bold. To think he could take control. To think he could just be, like no one else had to struggle to be.

He ran — almost literally — into Teddy, not far from Hagrid's hut. "Will you let me in?"

Teddy stood up from the garden patch. His hands were covered in dirt. His eyes and hair were the same colour as it, and Louis was suddenly asking himself how he knew it was Teddy. "In where?" Teddy asked, noticeably unnerved. "Louis, are you alright? You look like death."

"Terrible?" Louis asked.

Teddy nodded. The whites of his eyes were whiter than white. His teeth, strangely enough, looked as they always had. Slightly yellow, uneven, his canines more pronounced than almost any other person Louis had seen. Maybe that was how he recognised him.

"If I had your power, Teddy, I'd look like that all the time. Will you let me into the castle?"

"It's not yet curfew," Teddy said. His skin was cycling, changing through shades like a spinning wheel, his nails, where they resisted on the handle of a shovel, grew and retracted, grew and retracted. "Look, mate, I ask this as your friend, not the groundskeeper… Are you on something?"

Louis forced himself to smile; to be right where he was; to remember to keep the crazy inside. Teddy had either stopped unknowing transforming himself or never had been. "High on life," Louis said, with his best impersonation of Scorpius's grin.

If you can't beat them, be them, Louis thought to himself. He'd protect himself by not being himself.

Teddy insisted on walking Louis back to the castle, curfew or no, and on parting, Louis said something that made his stomach turn. "Look, mate," — that word was so forced out of his lips — "I'm going through some things right now, and I'd really appreciate you didn't tell anyone about this. Not my sisters, or anyone. Between friends, yeah?"

Manipulation was manipulation, whether you were comfortable with it not, and Louis wasn't, but he was okay with that. Probably.

Besides, it was enough like the truth that he could pretend he really was confiding.

Teddy looked like he was going to object, but swallowed it. He nodded. "Try to be alright, yeah?" he said by way of good night.

Louis nearly laughed, but knew Teddy wouldn't be amused. "I don't try otherwise," he joked instead, but that was less funny than the first. What difference did trying make?

"I'll see you tonight."

"Uh, yeah, sure."

Each step climbed towards the Ravenclaw Tower made Louis feel more of a person. He could move through these halls with confidence. He knew what steps to avoid, which portraits to say greet and which ones to avoid, and the shortcut that let him skip three stairways for one. He wasn't an utter wreck, only a little broken. And it's not like Scorpius-fucking-Malfoy was a perfect diamond. He'd melt under the right amount of pressure.

And Louis knew how to burn. He'd be strong enough to play Scorpius's game, even if it killed him.

Louis counted off his fellow sixth year boys, and seeing almost all of them he knew his chances were good of having their room to himself. When he got up there, all the beds were empty, but the room didn't feel that way.

On his pillow was a tawny feather and a folded letter. Printed on it was Louis's name, the script razor sharp, almost bleeding ink.

Was it with dread or excitement that Louis opened the letter, his hands shaking to hold it? His first thought was it wasn't so much a letter but a note. But what had he expected, a soliloquy? Whatever it was, he didn't get it.

I can't close my eyes without thinking of you. Day or night. You're a living dream and a waking nightmare.

Please, Louis, Be Mine.

It wasn't signed but it didn't need to be.

It was nearly midnight before he remembered Rose, remembered her birthday, remembered Teddy.

"See you tonight," he'd said.

Maybe he hadn't misspoken. Maybe they were all together right now, with butterbeer and birthday cake. Birthdays were big in the Potter-Weasley family. Louis had never missed one. When he'd been too sick to attend his own tenth birthday party, his family had brought the party to him. An expanding spell had been cast on his bedroom so they'd all fit in there, and though they hadn't stayed very long, for the good of his own health, it had been long enough to make a permanent home in his memory, a warm, sunshine-tinged memory that would always make him smile, remind him that he loved was loved. Now, the memory crumbled to ash.

Was he forgotten or simply not wanted? Louis knew he was a letdown, a black sheep, but he'd mostly thought it didn't matter. Not to them. He thought he could count on family to be there no matter what. He thought there was a group of people to whom he'd always matter, even when he couldn't stand the sight of himself — which these days was more often than not.

He thought very hard about responding to Scorpius's note. He thought about it all night.