Caged Conversation || para
@cora-tf
Scorpius had long ago had to come to terms with the fact that his best friends had other friends than just him and between said friends and the enormous sprawling clan of Weasley relations, sometimes he had to share their time and attention with people that he just did not like. Sometimes he even had to share his time and attention with those people, for the sake of maintaining civility and good comradeship all around. For the most part he could do this by keeping his head down and making quiet, snide comments that only Albus and Rose were meant to hear, and making sure his wand was always near at hand -- just in case. (One never knew when a Weasley might get dangerous after all.) But sometimes he found himself on his own in the presence of people whom he had no other reason to associate with, and sometimes that came as a surprise.
He had not expected the train ride to Hogwarts to be one of those times, but the lot of them had barely settled in the compartment that they had secured for themselves when first Albus and then Rose had been called away by something urgent. In Albus’s case it had been a demand from Lily, and Scorpius could hardly fault his friend for that. He understood family loyalty anyway and besides Lily was probably the least objectionable of the whole Weasley clan aside from Albus and Rose themselves, in Scorpius’s estimation. Rose, however, had had a much less justifiable cause to skip-out and leave Scorpius not by his lonesome: she had seen David McHenry walk by and just “had to go have a quick word with him, back in a mo!” and been out the door without so much as a backwards glance. Ordinarily Scorpius had no problem with Rose’s so-obvious-it-was-almost embarrassing crush on the older Slytherin boy, and in fact found her flirtations toward him hilarious, but right now it was not so funny. Right now it meant he was now stuck alone in a train compartment with Cora Thomas-Finnigan who, while not one of his least favorite people at Hogwarts, was definitely not on the list of his favorites, either.
For a moment he entertained the idea of just pulling a book out of his trunk and ignoring Cora until either Rose or Albus (or better yet, both of them) came back but he dismissed the idea almost as quickly; firstly if Rose came back and saw him doing that she’d at least mock if not outright scold him for being anti-social and secondly he knew Cora tended to chatter. Better to try and find some innocuous topic of conversation rather than start to read only to have her interrupt him, which doubtless she would do just when the story got interesting too. Then he’d be cross with her for good reason rather than just being generally annoyed that she existed, and that would be worse, and they had a whole train ride to go and who knew how long Rose and Albus would be occupied...
He sighed and sought for something to say, settling on the obvious (albeit perhaps cowardly) subject of Quidditch, one of the few things he knew they had in common aside from Rose: “So did you get to any good Quidditch matches this summer?” he asked, hoping that the cheer in his voice didn’t sound too artificial. He was trying to be polite and friendly but while he was generally good at being mannerly, friendly was something that didn’t always come across well when he tried. There was something about his voice, or maybe his facial expressions, or maybe just his last name that always seemed to make people think he was mocking or insulting them even when he wasn’t. But he summoned a thin smile and tried his best. “The best one I got to see in person was the Arrows versus the Falcons, that was pretty good. I’d have rather seen Appleby win mind you,” he added, expecting that she’d be surprised by that; for some reason people always seemed to assume that the Falmouth Falcons were one of Scorpius’s favorite teams, despite his oft-repeated insistence that he found their brutal and illegal style of play unattractive, “but the only chance they had against them was the hope that their Reserve Seeker would be pants, and he wasn’t, so...” Scorpius shrugged callously; maybe he’d have liked the Arrows to win, but he was no fool either and the odds had been firmly in Falmouth’s court to begin with -- at least he’d thought so, anyway, and Scorpius wasn’t someone who was inclined to give the opinions of others much weight. Instead he tended to present his own as facts, and argue the point later when anyone disagreed.