“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Althea never forgot the thoughts she entertained the night that she gave Scorpius her copy of Great Expectations. At the time they had frightened her, and she had pushed them away to a place where they hid, collecting cobwebs, for nearly three years.
Those three years were the best she could remember. Having a friend, in the realest sense “ having someone who understood, who was unconditional, who could and would do anything for her “ made Althea happier than she could ever remember being. And most days, as far as she could tell, Scorpius felt the same way. In spite of what he had vowed after reading Great Expectations, Scorpius still struggled with his family’s past and his own inheritance of their guilt; there were times when he reverted to his silent, bookish tendencies and his gaze became distant. When that happened, Althea had only one mission: to make Scorpius speak. If she could crack the ice once, she knew, the frostiness would melt away and she would have her Scorpius back.
Her Scorpius. If only that were true in another sense, Althea sometimes caught herself thinking. She was always careful to quash those reveries, however. She liked to think she was being practical; only in the shadowy time before sleep, when the truth tended to leap free of its bounds, did Althea ever recognize her own fear for what it was.
It was the spring of seventh year when Scorpius triumphantly closed the covers of a beaten black leather-bound book and said, “I’m done.”
Althea, who was sitting across the table, looked up from her own book and smiled. No longer considered to be “Malfoy’s domain,” that corner of the library had maintained its reputation for being off-limits; after all, a Malfoy combined with “that anti-social Burbage girl” was just as deterring as Malfoy by himself, if not more so.
“Gulliver’s Travels was the last one, then?”
“Yes. I’ve officially read every Muggle book in the Hogwarts library.”
“Try not to look too pleased with yourself,” Althea laughed, reaching into her bag as she did so. “You know what it’s time for, don’t you?”
Scorpius pretended to sigh discontentedly. “Please, Thea, don’t make me read “” he grimaced ““poetry!”
Althea had thought for some time, considering Wordsworth and Tennyson and Lord Byron, and Shelley and Poe and Rupert Brooke, and Keats and Dickinson and Langston Hughes, and all the poets she liked and hated, before settling on Scorpius’ first dose of poetry.
“Sonnets from the Portuguese,” Althea announced, pushing a beaten softcover copy across the table to Scorpius. He examined the cover intently, then flipped the book open and began to read at an arbitrary page.
“Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace
To look through and behind the mask of me,
(Against which, years have beat thus blanchingly,
With their rains,) and behold me soul’s true face,
The dim and weary witness of life’s race, “
Because thou hast the faith and love to see,
Through that same soul’s distracting legarthy,
The patient angel waiting for a place
In the new Heavens, “ because nor sin nor woe,
Nor God’s infliction, nor death’s neighborhood,
Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,
Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed, “
Nothing repels thee,...Dearest, teach me so
To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!”
Scorpius looked up, his grey eyes misted with thought. Then they focused on Althea. The same meaning they had shared on a morning three years before shot between them, and this time, they both knew exactly what it was.
Althea felt herself fall over the edge. She had been tiptoeing along a cliff for so long, confident in her balance “ and with one poem Scorpius had nudged her off. Or perhaps she had thrown herself; she ought to have known, when she gave him her favorite book of poetry, given him the words that she knew would reach her most deeply, that this would happen. Maybe she had even wanted it.
Althea waited for Scorpius to speak, but he never did. Instead, eyes wide, he bolted.
For three weeks it was as though the past three years had never happened. Scorpius was nowhere to be found. Althea began to wonder whether he was using an invisibility cloak to move between classes; he never once appeared in the Great Hall when she was eating, nor did he return to their table in the library. Althea took to sitting there alone with the table unrepentantly bare, a signal to Scorpius that she meant to cure everything, as she always did, meant to draw him out, make him laugh, return to the status quo.
But he never came.
Even worse, listless sitting has a tendency to ferment daydreaming, and to her horror Althea found that the status quo was now far beyond her reach. There could be no more silent, smothered desire, no more restrained emotion. The rebellion was complete.
Never before had Althea felt so alone. Friendship, Althea reasoned, was the worst curse in human nature’s arsenal “ it had left her dependent upon someone completely beyond her control, and now she was crippled.
“Had a lover’s tiff, have you?” crooned Lilah, speaking through the heavy azure hangings that Althea had pulled around her bed. Lilah never failed to notice the intricacies of Hogwarts social circles, and the fact that Althea had all but dropped Lilah for Scorpius was enough to make her even more snide than usual. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t warn you about Malfoy.”
Althea did not look up from her Arithmancy homework; she thought it best not to answer, considering that the first word out of her mouth was likely to be a jinx, and detention was the last thing on her list of priorities.
And then, like the Ravenclaw she was, Althea had the perfect idea.
“Lilah, have you seen my Potions book?” Althea asked, ripping back the hangings around her bed and snatching up her bag from the floor. Lilah raised her eyebrows as Althea dumped all her school books out onto her sheets.
“You can borrow mine if you like,” Lilah said; Althea grabbed Advanced Potion-Making from her hands the moment it was offered and began riffling through the pages impatiently.
“Ravenclaws,” Lilah muttered.
For all his stealth, Scorpius could not avoid Althea in Potions. There were so few N.E.W.T.-level students that all four houses comprised Slughorn’s seventh-year class, and although Scorpius had taken to partnering with a fellow Slytherin, the dungeons were cramped enough that Althea was sure she could pull off her plan without a hitch. The only problem was going to be ensuring that the blame fell solely on herself and Scorpius, and not on any of the innocent bystanders.
“Lilah, would you mind putting the lacewing flies back in the store cupboard? I’ll bring a flask of this to Slughorn.”
“Yeah, alright.”
When Lilah’s back was turned, Althea surreptitiously slipped a tiny bottle of glowing green liquid out of her pocket and uncorked it with her wand. Then she filled a flask with her potion and made her way toward Slughorn’s desk, deviating in her path only slightly, so that she had to pass just to the left of Scorpius.
It could not have been more perfect. Scorpius, deep in conversation with Uther Macmillan, never saw Althea pour the contents of the tiny bottle into his simmering cauldron. In fact, he didn’t notice Althea at all until her sudden shriek, followed by the sound of shattering glass, made him whip his head around.
Two gooey arms had emerged from the depths of Scorpius’s cauldron and were tearing at Althea’s hair, skin “ anything they could reach.
“What did you do?” Althea managed to shout before one of the green hands began clawing at her mouth. “He “ he meant this for me!” She had turned to look at Slughorn, who, along with the rest of the class, was watching Althea with a look of equal horror and confusion. “He did something to his potion!”
“I didn’t!” But Scorpius already knew no one would believe him. The only explanation he could find was that Althea had done this to herself “ but that made no sense at all.
“Stimorsus!” Althea’s stinging hex sent a flash of pain across Scorpius’s forearm. Suddenly he understood what she meant to do “ and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“Protego!” Scorpius shouted. His shield charm sent Althea’s next spell ricocheting toward Rose Weasley’s cauldron, which promptly exploded. Hot potion flew everywhere; Scorpius could have sworn he saw Althea smile for the merest moment. The next second, she was firing another hex “ it just missed his right ear “ and it was all he could do to maintain his shield.
The dungeon was in chaos; people splashed with potion had begun to blister, and even the unharmed stood aghast at the bizarre duel occurring before their eyes. Not only were Hogwarts’ most inseparable friends fighting (Althea from within the grasp of the green arms), but Hogwarts’ biggest introverts were making a scene. It was more than they could comprehend.
“That. Is. Enough!” Slughorn had finally collected himself sufficiently to enter the fray. With a wave of his wand he severed the gooey green arms from the cauldron; they fell to the dungeon floor, wriggling feebly like beheaded snakes.
“Detention, both of you, this evening at six o’clock. You’ll be scrubbing this floor by hand. I am absolutely shocked at this outburst, shocked!” It was not hard to believe; Slughorn really appeared more flabbergasted than angry.
As the students made their way to the staircase leading out of the dungeons, Scorpius looked around for Althea. But this time, it was her turn to disappear.
So it came to pass that Scorpius found himself secluded in the dungeons with none other than the girl he had been assiduously avoiding for reasons that he refused explain to himself, let alone to her. The only words that occurred to him “ We mustn’t, It isn’t right, I don’t think of you that way “ all rang false in his head. No, the reasons that Scorpius had avoided Althea were a tangled web of raw emotion and loose threads of logic, and nearly a month away from her had made the mess, if anything, even worse.
That was why he hadn’t argued when Slughorn had assigned them both detention, he told himself. He wanted to see whether Althea’s presence would induce some kind of cognitive miracle. He was not here because he needed Althea, because of the blurring in his vision and the rushing in his ears that had bothered him ever since he had begun avoiding her. No, he had not missed her.
“I’ve missed you.” Damn.
Althea looked up from her scrubbing brush; Scorpius had never grown accustomed to the brightness of those blue eyes. It always surprised him how alight they could be, even in the dark.
“We have to talk about this, Scorpius.”
“I “ I can’t.”
“Please, Scorpius.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
They had both stopped scrubbing now. They were kneeling on the cold dungeon floor, knees inches apart.
“Alright then. New plan.”
Althea leaned forward and kissed him.
It lasted just long enough that Scorpius was sure it had happened, and no longer. He had the sense of falling a long way, as though he had stepped off a cliff and into a deep canyon, with a river the color of Althea’s eyes flowing like a silk ribbon at the very bottom. His vision flickered between this image and Althea’s eyes, two noselengths from his own. And then they were much closer. He had kissed her back.
“You were right,” Althea said, after a time. “It was better not to talk.”
They were both sitting now, hands clasped, Scorpius thought, somewhat awkwardly. Neither of them really knew what they were doing, but because of that, because they were both afraid and knew it, a sort of boldness had overtaken them. Anything, it seemed, was possible now.
“This is madness,” Scorpius said weakly, for no particular reason. Althea, knowing this, didn’t disagree.
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Scorpius grinned. “And we’ve come back to Nietzsche.”
“Of course.”
“When did you realize, Thea?”
She pondered for only a moment. “That first day, in the library.”
“That long ago?”
“I didn’t understand until later, but yes. That long ago.”
Scorpius frowned. “You never...”
Althea shook her head. “I was scared. I owed you so much already, and I thought, if I asked anything more of you “”
“You owed me? Althea, do you have any idea how indebted I am to you?”
Althea managed a small smile. “All right, we’re both horribly and forever beholden to each other.”
“I can live with that.”
“Hey Scorpius?”
“Mmm?” Scorpius was transfixed by the sight of his own pale hand grasped in Althea’s. Never had he imagined he would see a sight like that.
“Why did you avoid me for three weeks?”
Scorpius hesistated. “I thought you understood why.”
“Tell me anyway.” Her eyes were testing him.
“It was because...because I guess a part of me isn’t all fixed, Thea. I’m...I’m still a Malfoy, my family is still my family, they’ve still done the things they’ve done, and I “ doesn’t this ever seem just a little crazy to you, Thea? A little like some sick joke of fate’s?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in fate,” Althea said wryly.
“I don’t,” said Scorpius. “Much,” he admitted.
“Scorpius.” Althea’s voice was as soft and firm as thickly packed snow. “How does Nietzche define ‘liberation’?”
“‘No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.’”
Althea nodded, urging him on, but Scorpius dropped his gaze and let her warm arm fall from his hands.
“I don’t know how to be liberated, Thea. Every time I think I’ve escaped, I wake up and find it was only a dream. I’m as much of a prisoner as ever.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and then the lightest of kisses on his creased forehead.
“Then I’ll just have to keep breaking you out.”