Fic: All Grown Up, Chapter 2 (Harry Potter, Scorpius Malfoy / James Potter)

[finnishsphinx]

Title: All Grown Up, Chapter 2
Author: Finnishsphinx
Pairing: James Potter / Scorpius Malfoy
Rating: PG (for this chapter)
Summary: James is coming home after spending four years abroad. His little brother has grown up, but so has his brother’s best friend.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be mine, etc.
Warnings: None

Notes: My first HP story. I’ve read the books in my own language (and a lot of the phrases and some names had been translated), and now writing in English, so I’m trying to check them while writing. If I mess up with them, go ahead and tell me, I appreciate it.

More Notes: For the sake of this fic, I stretched the age gap between James and Albus to five years.

Chapter 1

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It took about two minutes of staring at the ceiling, before James realised where he was. He rolled over to his side and stretched his limbs, making the most of that final moment of leisurely warmth in the morning, before kicking off the blanket and getting up.

His old room was just the way he had left it. He knew his mother had kept all of the rooms the way they had been, even  through the past years, when Albus and Lily had only come home for Christmas and Summer vacations. James got up carefully, trying not to aggravate his throbbing head, and briefly wondered if his mother had a stash of hang-over potion somewhere. Knowing the answer to that question would most likely be no, he started to pull on the same clothes he had worn the day before. His luggage had arrived after they had come home, but he was in no mood to start rummaging through them all to find clean clothes. He stepped into a pair of slacks, pulled on an undershirt and took a quick peek at himself in the mirror.

The sight was not very pleasant.

James stepped into the hallway and listened carefully. He could hear faint voices from the first floor and followed them down the stairs and into the kitchen. He slumped down on his regular seat, resting his head against the table.

“Any coffee?”

“Sure. Just get up and get some.” Albus`s voice answered. James could almost hear the grin in his voice, but he was still feeling too sleepy to look up.
“Come on, I just got home…”
“Remember what you said about my drinking yesterday?”
“Please, don’t start…”
“And how did that turn out? I wasn’t the one with my head down the toilet.”
“It was uncle Charlie… He brought some local stuff from Romania…”
“I know, and you were the only one who couldn’t keep it down.” Al`s hand appeared into James’s field of vision, holding a steaming cup of coffee. “Smell that.”
“Gimme…”
“Nope.” The hand pulled away before James could latch onto it. “Get your own.”

“At least gimme a sip…” James moaned and pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the table.

“Okay.” Al agreed and shoved another mug next to his brother’s head. “Just because you remembered to put your pants on before coming down.”
“Who cares…” James brought the mug closer and took a slow sip, testing to see if his stomach would co-operate.
“I care, when we got company.”

James almost choked on his mouthful of coffee. Al laughed and this time he was joined by another voice. James forced his head up and coughed to clear his throat.

“This brings back memories.” Scorpius stated calmly and grinned into his own coffee. “But last time you weren’t hung-over, you had spent the night with couple of your buddies in Bristol, and your mother spent the whole night worrying about you.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Chudley Cannons versus Bristol`s Brightest. Cannons lost that one. You came down those stairs in the morning looking like… like…” He thought about the right word for a while, then gave up and asked Albus. “Those things in that muggle movie, what were they called?”

“Zombies.” Al reminded.
“Right. They shouldn’t be allowed to make movies like that. What do muggles know about re-awakening corpses?”

“When did you get here?” James interrupted. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the young man standing next to his little brother. Scorpius`s hair captured the bright sunlight flooding thought the window, and seemed to form a glowing halo around him. Considering the mental images the Malfoy name normally brought along, the contrast with real life was startling. For a child who wasn’t allowed to wear muggle clothes until he was in his teens, Scorpius looked surprisingly comfortable in well-worn jeans and a tidy dress shirt.

“Almost an hour ago.”
“You remember what we’ve done every summer ever since we started Hogwarts?” Al said. He waited for James to get the hint, but then continued. “Scorpius stays two weeks with us and then I’ll spend two weeks at his place. We’ve done this so long, you should have figured it out by now!”

“You’re still doing that? Aren’t you a little old for slumber parties and-” His brain caught up with his mouth. “Two weeks?”

“Maybe we should get back to this later. If we’re lucky, he might actually be awake when we come back.” Al pointed at the pile of trunks laying on the floor. “You can make yourself useful and haul those upstairs to the guest room.”

James looked at the mountain of luggage, then blinked and looked again.
“That’s all for two weeks? I had less luggage and I spent four years away.”

“I didn’t bring them like that, I just resized them back to their normal size before you came down.”
“Yeah, but how much stuff do you need?”
“I got some of my Healing textbooks there, I was hoping to get a head start with them.” Scorpius said pointing at one heavy looking trunk. “And my mom would kill me if the word got out that a Malfoy attended both lunch and dinner in the same clothes.” He received a playful little shove from Al, and giggled. “Just kidding.”

“We better get going, if we’re gonna get there before the rush hour.” Al tossed James a dishrag to wipe away the coffee stains from the table. “Mom knows we’re not coming home for lunch, so you’ll get some mother-son time.”

“Where are you going?”
“Diagon Alley. Uncle George wanted to show off that new space he got for his new shop and testing area.”
“I didn’t know that, where is it?”
“Right next to the old one. They’re just going to knock off the wall in between.” Al shrugged. “He was so hyped up about it I said we would check it out. We’ll probably get some free samples, so it’s a win-win situation.”

“Why didn’t he tell me about it?”
“He did. Last night, remember? Around the same time you threw up the first time. After the second encore dad and uncle Ron helped you to your bed.” Al placed his own mug into the sink. “There’s more coffee in the pot, try to recover.”

“Thanks, squirt.” James stole a quick glance at Scorpius, who was busy emptying his coffee mug and listening to the exchange between the brothers. “I could go with you.”

“You want to come with us?” Al repeated with a clear tone of disbelief. “Why?”
“I got some… stuff to do. And you need some looking after.”
“Remind me again, who needed a sick bucket next to his bed-”
“Gimme a minute, I’ll get dressed.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why not?”
“Last time you wanted to go somewhere with me, we were still kids and mom told you to take me with you or you wouldn’t go at all.”
“Yeah, but we’re past that, right?” James flashed his best smile. “Two minutes?”

“Fine, but hurry up.”
“Yeah, yeah.” James turned and dragged himself up the stairs. He tried not to look too eager, but the role reversal would take a while to get used to. When they had been kids, Albus had always been the one who wanted to tag along for whatever his big brother and his friends were doing.

Now he was quickly pulling on his shoes and coat, just so he could ogle his baby brother’s best friend.

He tried to to ignore the irony and failed.

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“Ahhhhh….” Albus moaned deeply and continued rubbing his ice cream against his face.

“Does it help?” Scorpius asked. He looked slightly shaken up, and his own ice cream was quickly melting in his hand.
“Yeah… I don’t feel like cutting off my whole face anymore…”
“It’s been…” Scorpius pulled out a small pocket watch.  “…half an hour. Your uncle said it would go away in three hours.”
“If I haven’t done something desperate by then…” Al spread a new coat of cold ice cream on his boil covered face. The nosy witch in the next table turned away quickly when she realised she had been spotted, and Al glared at her with as much vigour as he could. “What are you looking at?”

“Ignore them.” Scorpius finally remembered his own ice cream and licked off the trail dribbling down the cone and onto his hand. “Are you going to tell your mother?”

“No. She would just say that I should have seen it coming. And I should have, I can’t believe I fell for it.” He took a napkin, poured what was left of his dessert onto it and rubbed it against his face. “I need to use the little wizard’s room.” He got up and ignored the weird looks he was getting. “Order me another one.”

James waited till his boil-faced brother was out of sight and used the opportunity to observe Scorpius. The young man was absentmindedly licking his melting ice cream, but a little dose of worry was still visible on his face.

“Look at the positive side: You got some good practise for your healer training.”

Scorpius looked at him and smiled a bit.
“There’s nothing a healer could do to that. You can just wait for them to go away.”
“Same thing with all uncle George’s stuff, it doesn’t sell if people have to live with their boils for the rest of their lives.” James chuckled, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Have you been to Italy?”
“I went there one summer with my parents. Why do you ask?”
“There was a great ice cream place right next to Via Veneto.”
“Do you miss Rome?”
“Not really. I mean the weather was nicer, but I can do without the freckles.”

Scorpios leaned over the small table, looking at him carefully.
“You only got a few.”
“Me and Al both look more like our dad, we can actually hold a tan without burning like a crisp. But poor Lily…”

“Looks just like your mother.” Scorpius finished for him with a grin on his lips. “Speaking of families, are you really going to stay in England?”

“What do you mean?”
“When you left, Al talked a lot about how hard it was for your mother. Loosing the only baby she could see outside the school holidays.”
“I think it’s that house. I don’t know why she wanted to keep it after she and dad broke up.”

“Memories? Anyway, it’s far away from empty now that both you and Albus are there.”
“I am going to look for a place of my own-”
“And Albus is thinking about moving into your father’s apartment, because it’s closer to the Auror`s headquarters.”
“He is?”
“He hasn’t told your mother yet. His trainee position doesn’t start until after the summer, so he`s in no hurry to tell her.”
“I had no idea.”
“You just got back yesterday. It takes a while to catch up.”

“Maybe I should just ask you.” James joked, but it didn’t exactly feel like a joke. “You seem to know more about my family than I do.”

“I’ve spent a lot of summers at your mother’s house.” Scorpius reminded. “And of course Albus spent an equal amount of time at my parent’s house.”
“I wasn’t trying to imply that you-”
“I know. Maybe this is the last summer, this time next year we may have our own plans.”
“I remember when I came home from school, it was the best part of the summer.”

“Yes…” Scorpius sighed and waved for the waitress. “It feels different this time. Like some sort of a last summer before we’re really adults. Last piece of youth.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you sound older than you are?”
“More times than I can remember.” Scorpius gave a quick smile at the waitress. “One vanilla, one double chocolate with chocolate sauce and chocolate chips.” He turned to James. “You want another one?”
“No, I think one was enough. But I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.”

The waitress nodded and left to fill their order.

“I don’t remember you being so mad about chocolate.” James blocked the mental images the mention of chocolate sauce had brought up. “Is that a new discovery?”

“No, I always loved it.” Scorpius laughed, leaning back in his chair. He paused for a minute, to chew the last piece of the waffle-cone and then continued. “But I was always told it wasn’t polite to act all greedy when you’re a guest in the house.”
“Well, are you greedy?”
“When it comes to chocolate? Yes.”

James wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn the boy was flirting with him. He also had to reconsider his earlier estimate about Scorpius`s voice. It sounded the same as it had been four years ago, but the topic of greedy desires had brought out a new layer of huskiness, as if the mere thought of a sweet treat had taken the boy’s thoughts into a very naughty palace. Combined with the silvery hair and an innocent face, the combination was making James’s stomach flip. He almost didn’t notice when Albus slumped down next to him.

“Are they any smaller?” Al turned his head from side to side. “They don’t itch so much anymore.”

“I think they’re going down.” Scorpius observed and accepted the new ice cream  from the waitress, who had parked herself next to their table. “We ordered you another vanilla.”

“I shouldn’t…” Albus took the ice cream, but didn’t start eating it. His face was turning green under the shrinking boils. He shoved his ice cream to James’s hand and rushed up again. He practically run across the café, to the direction of the bathrooms.

“I think those trick mints may have some side effects.” James commented. He pondered for a moment what to do with the ice cream, then started to eat it, alternating between the cold treat and the steaming coffee.

“Hopefully they’ll do more testing before putting those things on the market.” Scorpius stated seriously and licked away some of the excess chocolate sauce from his bottom lip.

Chapter 3