-Friedrich Nietzsche
Scorpius had pored over Great Expectations all night and all morning. It was a long, thick volume with comments written neatly in the margins of the gilded pages, all of which he had read. Reading them had been like having Althea sitting beside him, sharing her opinions about the words and prompting him to see their deeper meanings. He found that it made the story significantly more enjoyable, especially because ordinarily Scorpius could never tell what Althea thought or felt about anything. That was something both frustrating and intriguing about her; he had always been able to read people before.
Fain as he was to admit it, Scorpius had only asked for Great Expectations because he had seen Althea reading it over a year ago. Of course, Scorpius maintained to himself that he had wanted it for reasons completely separate from the book’s lender; but in the secret places of his heart, of which he had only recently become aware, he knew better.
Now the book lay before him, completed, but open to a page in the middle of chapter fourteen, on which there was a single underlined passage that Scorpius could not forget:
“It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.”
Scorpius set the book down on the table and closed his eyes. He loved his family, and he knew it unhesitatingly. His father, old before his time, had always been determined to do anything and everything for his wife and son, despite the limitations imposed by a society that had not forgotten the war. His mother, beautiful and unafraid, was very similar to Althea in her daring and perceptiveness, and also in that way she had of knowing how to comfort, and to sting, with a single word. His Greengrass grandparents were doting and kind, and spoiled him rotten. His Malfoy grandparents “
Well, his Malfoy grandparents were a different story, a story that he wanted nothing to do with, and which, thus far, he had avoided out of what he had called disinterest, but what he now recognized as fear.
It was not that he was scared of Lucius or Narcissa Malfoy. Both were aged and weak, and would not have wanted to harm Scorpius in any case. It was rather, as Dickens’ words had revealed to him, that he was ashamed “ ashamed by his family’s black past, by the name he bore and could not escape from, by the looks he received when he met new people or went new places. All he wanted was to be free of it all; all he had done was allow it to shackle him.
Scorpius knew that now “ perhaps had known for longer than he realized. The shame he felt, had that been locked up in that unexplored corner of his heart as well?
He couldn’t stop thinking of what Althea had offered the night before. Would you turn down a friend? she had asked. His reply had been another question; he had never really answered, even though, even then, he had understood.
There was so much in that corner of his mind that it frightened him.
He had been paralyzed by his own guilt “ he knew that now. He had refused to acknowledge something that was so irrevocably part of him that it had turned malignant and choked him from within. He had placed himself in shadows and then wondered at his frozen existence. He had caused all of his own pain. And by being ashamed he had deserved it, as Dickens said. But the punishment would last only as long as the crime. The realization both shocked and satisfied him; he had made a terrible mistake, but it was one he could start to repair.
He had Althea to help him. Everything was going to come right.
Tucking Great Expectations into his bag, Scorpius practically leapt from the table and sped out of the library towards the Great Hall. From the entranceway he scanned the heads at the Ravenclaw table, where a late Saturday morning breakfast was in high swing. He paused for only a moment, then strode across the hall and halfway down the table to tap on the shoulder of a girl with long bright hair and very blue eyes.
“Scorpius.”
“Althea, I’ve just realized....are you busy right now?”
“No, but let’s not talk here.”
Scorpius glanced around at the other people in the Great Hall for the first time. His presence at the Ravenclaw table, it seemed, had not gone without notice; about half of the breakfasters were staring at him, and the girl sitting beside Althea was practically falling out of her seat in her eagerness to eavesdrop.
“Right. Let’s go.”
Althea stood up, and, walking side by side with Scorpius, left the whispering, wondering Great Hall behind.
There was no need to ask where they were going, no need for one to lead and the other to follow. Together they entered the library and made for Scorpius’ table, where they sat down, facing each other, each waiting for the other to speak first.
“I finished the book,” said Scorpius, just as Althea asked, “Did you finish it?” which made them both laugh with mild awkwardness. There was a strangeness to their meeting in the library in daylight, with other students nearby to see. Then again, they had already been seen.
“That book helped me figure out...what you were trying to tell me before. When you said I was loathsome, but not for the reasons I thought “”
“Don’t repeat that!” Althea interrupted. “I shouldn’t have said it. You were just, I don’t know, confused. And it wasn’t your fault.”
“It was, though,” said Scorpius firmly. “I know it, and you know it. I cut myself off from other people, I wouldn’t look back or ahead. I was ashamed of my family and what we” “ he broke off “ “what they had done. But I’m done with that now. I’ve realized...I’ve wasted so much time already....”
“You’ve figured it out.”
“You figured it out, actually,” said Scorpius.
Althea shook her head. “All I did was insult you, and give you a book,” she said airily, trying hard to conceal her embarrassment and knowing that she was doing a poor job, since her face refused to pale.
Scorpius smiled his slowest smile, and quoted:
“‘Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.’”
“Hey!”
“Oh, Rousseau was a dolt anyway, I’ve always thought so. I say, ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.’”
“That’s from Mansfield Park!” Althea exclaimed, before she remembered that she was in the library, and ought not to yell. “You never said you’d read that one!” she finished in a whisper.
“I haven’t. You wrote it in the margins of Great Expectations, near the end, when you were getting sick of all the ‘guilt and misery’ talk.”
“Oh right...I’d forgotten.”
They fell into silence. Althea admired the play of the sunlight on the surface of the table, which came from a window high above; she had never been able to see it before, because she had never sat here during the day. It was an uncommonly beautiful thing.
“Do you want to go for a walk on the grounds?” Scorpius asked suddenly. Althea looked at him with eyes turned piercing by the light.
“What, you mean, leave the library?” Althea smiled teasingly. “If we leave the castle won’t you, I don’t know, spontaneously combust?”
“If you’d rather we stay here “” Scorpius began.
“No! Let’s go out,” said Althea. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” she said, smirking.
Out on the grounds it was sunny, but the air was crisp and autumnal. Most students had chosen to stay inside, and Althea and Scorpius found that they had the whole of the lakeside to themselves. It was peaceful, and somehow it felt very new.
The conversation was effortless, flitting over books and lessons and thoughtless observations. Scorpius found that he was laughing and wondered at it.
“Bit chilly out here, isn’t it, though?” said Althea, rubbing her arms to rid herself of the shivers. Before she knew it, Scorpius had removed his coat and placed it around her shoulders.
“You don’t have to do that,” said Althea. “Now you’ll be cold.”
“I do too have to. That’s what my dad always does for my mum.”
“Well, we’re not married.”r32;
“We’re friends,” Scorpius argued; the words seemed to surprise him.
“Friends,” Althea echoed. She wondered why her voice sounded so strange.
Beneath the shadow of a beech tree, Scorpius stopped walking and put a hand on Althea’s shoulder to stop her.
“We are friends, aren’t we?” Scorpius said, looking straight at Althea, who was looking at the lake again. “We must be friends. Why else would I have wanted to come out here with you? I never come out here. Why else would I have wanted you to have my coat? You’re right, I am cold now “ but I don’t even care. Everything that happened before, with our families and our pasts, doesn’t it matter anymore. Why doesn’t it matter?”
Althea closed her eyes.
“Scorpius, don’t you understand?”
“No,” said Scorpius, bewildered. “I really don’t. Do you?”
Althea looked out a the lake, calm in the face of his anxiety. “Yes, I think so.”
She gave him one of those looks that he hadn’t yet learned to read, and then went back to staring at the reflection of the mountains in the water. She seemed to be thinking of exactly how to explain what she knew, and Scorpius waited, wanting to understand.
“It’s like at the end of Great Expectations,” said Althea finally, “when Pip and Estella meet one last time. They’ve both changed, is all. They’ve been bent and broken, but into better shapes. And all there’s left to do is say, ‘we’re friends,’ and then it can all end.”
Scorpius said nothing. It seemed like Althea was right, except about one thing.
“But this isn’t an ending.”
Althea smiled.
“Well, no book can last forever.”
Scorpius nodded. Althea always knew what was going on, and he loved that he never needed to explain. He just wished that he could read her the way she seemed to read him; at times like these, when she stared at nothing and did not speak, his desire to know her thoughts was overpowering. And he couldn’t help but wonder what ‘better shape’ Althea had been bent into by the past few weeks. Knowing that she’d never tell, Scorpius chose another question.
“Shall we go in, or keep walking?” Scorpius asked, hoping that he knew the answer. Awaking from her daydreams, Althea seemed to hear his words from far away.
“We’ll walk,” said said, smiling, and she pulled him out of the tree’s shadow and into the sunlight.