Soldiers and Serpents //Scorbus

61 Forgiveness ⚠️

Scorpius held up his smoke in his fingers as an answer. "What are you holding?" He wonders. Raven pulls a glass bottle from behind her. "Wine? It's a bit early, isn't it?" He asks with a joke on his tongue. She shrugs.

"It's wine, not vodka." Raven offers, like that made it any better. "And it's old." She reads the label. "Probably as old as this house."

"I highly doubt that." Scorpius looked back out over the street, pulling his cig to his lips.

"Are you okay?" She asks.

"I don't know." He gives her a straight answer. "Are you?" He met her gaze, and she sets the unopened bottle down before walking over, and sitting a bit away from him, looking over the edge of the balcony.

"I'm Raven Malfoy." She replies. "Of course I'm okay." He stifles a laugh, shaking his head. Then a thought occurs to him.

"I'm sorry." He was more sincere than he'd ever been with an apology. Raven gave him a quizzical look. "I know this is all my fault." Scorpius acknowledges, readjusting to be a bit more comfortable.

"I know you aren't in control of it. I don't blame you." Raven tries to find the words. "I know that it seems that way. But really I'm just upset at everything. Everyone. Even father. Especially father." Her eyebrows come together. "And there's nothing I can do. I can't yell at him. I can't yell at Cypress." She looks at Scorpius. "It's his fault too. And Daniel. Selwyn just took advantage of a situation. I can hardly blame him for anything except killing Marius." She softens. "He's depressed, you know?"

"Orion?" Scorpius clarifies. She nods curtly. "How do you figure?"

"Watch him." Raven coaxes. "When he's not looking at you, or me. When he's not flirting or trying to break the ice." She leans against the railing, trusting it more than Scorpius would. But she didn't feel like there would be any danger, her brother was in reaching distance. He'd catch her. Like he always had. "That light inside of him has gone."

"He's never had to cope with death before. Not like this." Scorpius tries to consider Orion's actions. How he was awake this morning in the drawing room, going through that cell phone. "It's impossible to tell if someone is depressed. They'll know themselves before we would." He takes a puff of his cigarette.

"I know you are." Raven deadpans. Scorpius rolled his eyes. "I'm mourning, but I know I'll recover. Do you?" Her eyes looked especially grey with the cloudy sky. He considered her question, knowing it wasn't rhetorical.

"You've always been stronger than me." He says instead. "But we're Malfoy's. We always hold our heads high. Even on the hard days, we can pretend."

"You always see it as a mask." Raven explains. "When we slip into our roles. The gossipy and innocent girl, the arrogant bad boy." She gave a little smile at him. "But pretending is where our strength comes from. The strength to tell Harry Potter he should've died." Scorpius didn't know if he should be upset that Orion told her that or not. "The strength to give our opinion. Regardless of the consequences. To plunge into battle and face death."

I want to stare Death in the face with you. Albus's words all those months ago rang around in his memory as Raven talked.

"We're both strong. Strong enough to make people fear us, or love us. Or both." Raven pulls out her phone as it alerts for a text message. "Ashton just got here."

"You told him where we were?" Scorpius wonders.

"He read the Daily Prophet. I had no choice. The ruins of the manor are all over the front page." Raven must've seen the one from today. "They're calling you Salazar Riddle."