Just My Imagination

‘The Yule Ball will be this year, don't you think it's mesmerising?’ Scorpius had told him long ago at the Start-of-Term Feast.
‘Do you think Rose will agree to go with me?’

Since the train ride at the end of their fourth year, Scorpius hadn't been able to put a stop to his blabbering about Rose Granger-Weasly. He didn't even avoid expressing his compliments and Albus was reduced to biting his lower lip and asking for sweets like there was no tomorrow.

His chocolate frog's escape and the nasty taste of the Acid Pops were much more soothing than his friend's honeyed words, but they did everything but dull the bitter taste in his throat.

He had described it as a side effect of so many lollipops, but when he got home and told his father about it, he looked at him with a sparkle of amusement dancing in his jade eyes and it was only consolidated by giving him insistent patting on his shoulder, as if wanting to indicate something that he had just noticed and found it rather fascinating.

Albus did not took long to realize something that left him completely still and without wanting to discern it. Everything that happened oozed out in inconsequential, obsolete feelings, predilections to vanish quickly.

Yet every time that Malfoy smiled, or gave him a look, or a touch, a laugh, a tickle... the sensation seemed to reform itself and create a much more unbreakable crust, settling around his chest.

"You already have a partner, I assume." He heard Scorpius in the distance, electric as always, hesitating as he walked through the corridors.

Albus watched him to admire how he tossed his head back, his throbbing throat exposing quirkily beautiful features, being cheeky in displaying the occasional smile that produced a few blue sparkles. "Actually I haven't found a match yet," Albus murmured, letting other words disappear into thin air, forcing his companion to sharpen his ears to decipher his babbling.

Scorpius scratched the back of his neck and a tinge of relief crept over his face, a tight-lipped smile appearing momentarily that seemed to give him away to the possible ghosts that roam the walls of Hogwarts. That stirred him up a bit, countering it by securing the garter's grip by holding onto its half-up half-down ponytail.

Back in the springtime, Scorpius had made the decision to let his hair fall to his shoulders. He found Albus's charm towards an unusual fashion of contemporary times embarrassing.

He had exclaimed before Albus's incessant expressions: ' "Then try it." Al had shaken his head to then counter something to the remark previously made by Scorpius. "You let it grow, Scorp," he joked "I suppose it would suit you well enough." He had raised with some nervousness'.

Those words reverberated and managed to reserve Scorpius’s minds for days. Soon acquiring a decisive attitude towards the derisory comment.

But Scorpius had no reason not to do it, and too many to do it, for his bad luck.

Albus cocked his head and flickered a half smile as he noticed the shiny hair garter his friend was wearing, and the way it was adjusted.

He was insecure and played around incessantly with his surroundings, making him impatient. Like when he talks about Rose.

"I'm not going,, anyway.”

The words appeared without warning, for both boys the consequence of the rumbling between their ears and the silence of obsolete discomfort was like a trip back in time to return defective.

Scorpius had stopped his pacing and his brow had danced in a curious way.

‘I'm not going,, anyway.’

«Why?», «Why are you even considering not showing up at the event? Haven't I mentioned that I want you to be there? I need your support. Only that.» Scorpius signed the sentence and cleared his throat at his decision; he often took it when Albus crossed a sharp line about his requests.

He closed his eyes and hurried off, choosing to stay away. "Now what happened?" asked a dismayed Albus almost camouflaged, almost excited and speculating.

He heard the platinum boy chuckle wryly as he gracefully made his way through some loose shoes. The young Potter hurried and turned among the crowded group of people.

His tunic danced and his tie seemed to fly momentarily between hair and shoulders, between eyes and parted lips.

His pupils constricted on exposure to the unblemished light and his glasses fell off with a clunk that left Albus in mid-course and smoky.

Scorpius felt the flames brush his cheeks and whisper against his fingers something that distorted his face, filling him with hallucinations.

Albus Severus Potter looked so exposed and green. Revealing standards and shaking appearances.

He looked so free and charming. His eyes widened and he suddenly looked confused. Scorpius, still distant, moved in sync to try to lift the glasses off the ground. He laughed and that seemed to take off his partner's vision.

Albus had leaked out and a stiff sense of shame made him duck.

“Don't act crazy, Albus.” he warned in a sweet tone, seeming to irritate the named before the flutter that his mention caused in his stomach, as if he were sick, trembling and crying “I'm not crazy, you're the crazy one. Out of nowhere you start running.” he punctuates, and that erases Scorp's smile, who quickly shakes his head “Yeah! Don't lie.” Albus noticed how agitated he sounded and glanced around his surroundings.

The corridors were desolate and the door of the library was open. Where were they going?

Since the unintended events of unforeseen time travel, Albus and Scorpius have lived uneasily in the castle, hoping that remaining cautious will be enough to prevent another inadvertent madness.

“Forget it, okay?” he snapped in surprise, unconsciously looking at his nails as he approached Scorpius, softening his puzzled expression from earlier.
Scorp was the first to look down, finding himself with the untied rows of his unruly friend, and a bit of sadness painted his face.

He sighed before speaking: "’Forget it’? Are you serious? You're the one who out of nowhere doesn't want to attend something that happens once in years. I thought we were going to go together.”

Albus puts on his glasses and shakes weakly at his friend's lingering gaze, who generates a feeling of absent attention even as his entire being seems to rest on him.

He exhales irritated and looks into Scorp’s eyes for the first time in the entire walk. "I thought you were going with Rose."

Scorpius's gaze softened and he patted his own tie before settling down in front of Albus. Somewhat stricken, Scorp was ready to keep keeping secrets. Indeed, to act like he wasn't keeping them at all.

Scorpius used to be like that, a dignified Malfoy with his Pandora's box, hoping not to be discovered but to be opened by the right person. A sophisticated person who caresses his excited hypothalamus and host to misunderstood emotions.

His own pupils dilated, Scorpius could feel it, so he perpetuates a sequence of nervous blinks. "She actually said yes to me: she said yes to my proposal. We will go together as a couple to the ball.” He raised his voice, echoing off the copper-clad walls.

The redundancy in his friend's words twisted the insides of Albus, who slipped words in his saliva and cleared his throat excruciatingly.

It was at the edge of his lips and at the end of his throat, poking at his larynx; the words he longed to exclaim to Scorpius once and for the latter to be merciful enough to gently reject him.

Albus squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to smile. "Ha!" I don't believe you. You must be bombastic, then."

The platinum-haired man nodded, limiting his breaths and changing his body position.

Scorpius wouldn't say he was bombastic. In his dreams he had imagined he felt that way, but in reality it was just a filler. His heart could be filled with just one tear and still he wouldn't be satisfied.

"It's good that it is so, Scorp. So you can stop fucking with me. I will not go. End of matter.”

A small, mighty blizzard tipped Scorpius's locks to one side, stranding him with his chest frozen and eyes blinking. His lips subtly parted and the echo of his reckless thoughts throbbed at his fingertips, pumping to his brain.

A musky scent gave way to sadness that persuaded Scorpius to shiver as he inhaled. Albus had dulled his green eyes by mouthing cruel words, though, there was sympathy on his shoulders leaning forward and the skin on his lips was wrinkled from being pulled by his teeth. The young Malfoy could sense it. Speechless.

The frigid air lifted their robes and the dim moonlight seemed to detest the growing tension. Like the small crescents moons in Albus's palms.

“Good.” Scorpius replied, evoking his ivory temper.

The thought of the possibility of finding themselves together again and alone, just the two of them, landed on Albus's discomfort, who knew he would lose his temper by not knowing how to control the avalanche of atypical emotions.

He could visualize, momentarily, the instant in which Scorpius would look him square in the eye, demanding answers to questions not even Albus knew existed in the atmosphere of their confused act of friendship.

Al would only succumb to opening his mouth and leaving it open in vain, resigning himself to getting a word out for fear of making a mistake in his choice of organization to put together a coherent and irrefutable sentence.

That was his burden, because no matter how many times Scorpius revealed actions to reiterate his affection for him, the only thing that made him talk about feelings was Rose.

No matter how many times Scorpius mentioned that he could tell him whatever he wanted, he knew he was going to look at him with an ambiguous look, almost alien to everything that the two of them were like a melding of personalities.

He guessed that at some point in their history, they changed from being Albus and Scorpius, to Albus and Scorpius.

They were not separate individuals, rather they were a duo, an inseparable combination that generates combustion, combustion that seems impossible to extinguish.

At the same time, something more than a strong friendship would not be synonymous with reciprocal romantic feelings.

Never.

Albus saw it as far away, and if so, he would see it as even more impossible, his fantasies bordering on the absurd.

In these last minutes his true figurations came to light in his relentless contributions to the 'conversation'.

What might happen if he pushed himself to the limit was uncertain. Albus didn't know how much more he could take around the world by putting a mask on his real intentions.

It was just his imagination, after all.