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The Lonely Ones by redherring

Format: One-shot
Chapters: 1
Word Count: 1,006

Rating: 15+

Genres: Romance, Angst
Characters: Scorpius, Rose
Pairings: Rose/Scorpius

First Published: 07/26/2011
Last Chapter: 07/26/2011
Last Updated: 07/26/2011

Banner by petite.amie at TDA!

When you’re young, it’s so easy to think you’re in love.

At twenty-one, Rose Weasley is full of regrets.

Winner of charlottetrips' Second Person challenge!
Part II in the ScoRose Three Ways trilogy

Chapter 1: Youth and the Young
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Disclaimer: Oddly enough, I am not JK Rowling, and so do not own Harry Potter. Also, I got the title of this from the Titled Inspiration thread on the forums, so credit for that goes to gingersnape. I hope you enjoy! :D

He walks in, door slamming closed, shoes brushed on the mat. His cloak is hung on its peg, his keys cast on the table. You’re waiting for him, as you always are. As you have been for the last three years.

Three years. That’s thirty-six months, one hundred and fifty-six weeks. One thousand and ninety-two days. It sounds hideous, put like that.

He walks in and even after three years, or thirty-six months, or whatever, it’s like you don’t know him. You get a muttered greeting, a peck on the cheek, and you would rather he gave you nothing. He asks about dinner and you stare at his cloak on its hook, the keys on the table. You wonder when your life began to look like this.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said to you yesterday.

“What for?”

“I’m sorry I embarrass you, ok?”

You regret what you’d said to him now. You’d said that you were sorry too.

You remember the days when you did know him. When he wasn’t just a man who walked through your door each evening, a stranger in your bed every night. Those Hogwarts days were your happiest, you suppose, when life wasn’t real and decisions didn’t matter. Summer days wasted away by the lake, the sun beating down and exams ever looming around the corner, the pair of you pretending to revise but really just desperate for some time alone. In winter there were those endless evenings in the common room, curled up in the old armchairs, hours dancing by as the fire crackled and voices murmured somewhere in the distance, when all you could feel was his heartbeat beneath your cheek, his hand gently stroking your hair.

That’s when it started, of course. That was when it ended.

You were eighteen; of course you went along with it. By the lake again, exams finally over, the sun smiling down on you and the birds singing, bees humming, everything telling you he was right. His whispered promises, honest lies. Fluttering kisses on your neck, hands on your waist, that look in his eyes that you trusted above all else. The look that brushed aside your concerns that you were both far too young, that your parents would disapprove, that you had no house, no money, nothing and no one.

“I love you,” he’d said, and he did, and that had been all that mattered.

“And I love you.”

“So marry me.”

And his lips on yours had drowned out the pleas for good sense that your brain was hammering through, the beating of your heart arguing that age was just a number, that love would be enough, that you had to live in the moment, carpe diem, seize the day...

You’ve learnt, since then, that there are no secret messages of the heart. It’s a muscle like any other. The pulsing and pounding you feel beneath your skin has nothing to do with love or with him and it never did. It is simply what keeps you alive, what keeps you going.

Sometimes you think that that it is all that is keeping you going now. The knowledge of blood flowing through you, red and hot and strong, the fact that your body is still working as ever it did, proof that you are really here, that you do still exist, is all that you have left to hang onto.

You’ve learnt that you should never listen to your heart; it has nothing at all worth saying.

You have learnt too that all your arguments were wrong. Your parents were right to disapprove; he was never right for you. You do need money and food and a home in order to live: love is not enough.

When you’re young, it’s so easy to fall into someone’s arms and think that that’s all there is. It’s so easy to think that some things don’t matter when they do, that you can forget what should never be forgotten, forgive what cannot be forgiven.

When you were young, love had been all you needed. Now, you’re embarrassed.

So now he walks through the door each night and it’s like you don’t know him. He slams it behind him, brushes his feet, hangs up his cloak, discards his keys. He asks you how your day has been as though he really cares, says your name with that same mouth, lips, mind, and the sound has not changed. Nothing has changed and yet everything is different.

Today you kiss him as the door slams shut, just to prove that you want to. The ring burns cold on your finger, weighing you down, tying you to him as a prisoner in shackles, a ship that can’t sail free of the shore.

“Something the matter, love?” he asks you.

“No,” you tell him. “Nothing at all.”

A/N: Having spent the last year or so refusing point-blank to write anything even remotely connected with Rose/Scorpius (we all fall out with our OTP at one time or another, don't we?) I'm now writing a whole trilogy of one-shots about them. Each of them is a different take on the pairing - the first one, 'rip the earth in two', shows them getting together out of political motives; this one here was meant to show the foolishness of teenage love; and the last one is going to be a parody, which I've never attempted before but am quite excited about.

Right, shameless self-advertising over. Sorry xD Anyway, thank you so much for reading! I enjoyed writing it (gotta love a bit of angst) so I hope you enjoyed reading it too :)