Running into Scorpius Malfoy in the hall that spanned between the Hufflepuff common room and the Slytherin dungeons was another of those inexplicable moments that Albus always wondered if he would regret later. He had been looking at the walls as he walked, examining all the portraits and wondering who some of them were. Most of them were extremely old even as paintings and were napping, which reminded him of how sleepy he was for some strange reason. He had slept fine the night before, hadn’t woken up too early, and hadn’t had any turkey. Teddy had taught him that a chemical present in most foods was present in an abundance in turkey, and it tended to make one’s body feel weak and bloated and to make one’s brain slow towards the levels that would allow it to fall asleep. So, nothing he had done should indicate a need for sleep right now. When he ran into Scorpius Malfoy, however, he felt an eerie sense of kinship when he saw the dark circles under his eyes that stood out bluish black against his smooth, fair skin which was unblemished elsewhere.
“What are you doing?” had been his reflex question as they both toppled to the floor, thrown by the force of their bodies colliding. He knew that it wasn’t any of his business what Scorpius had been doing, and he also noted that the Malfoy boy hadn’t asked him anything about where he was going, facing the wall and not the direction he was walking. Of course, Scorpius couldn’t have been facing forwards either as he hadn’t seen Albus coming. Unless he had been planning on the collision, which honestly didn’t make enough sense on any level to be considered.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Scorpius muttered as he sat up, brushing his hair away from his eyes, but when he saw whose body his own was tangled with, he blushed and began apologizing even faster, mentioning among other things that he had not been paying attention, that it was his own fault, and that he would just go now before he caused any more problems.
“No, don’t worry about that,” Albus said, not believing what he was about to do. “Let’s take a walk together. If we’re walking side by side, we can’t have a massive head on collision, now can we?” He smiled as charmingly as he could and cocked his head to the side to punctuate the question.
Scorpius looked hesitant, and paused for such a long moment that Albus began to feel a little awkward, but then he nodded and began to climb to his feet, straightening his robes as he want. Albus could see that the small footprints and bits of dust that usually didn’t show up on wizarding garments were marked plainly across his robes, and he decided to file that away for a later questioning. For now, he began to gather himself up as well, pulling a spare bit of parchment that had somehow wound up in his hair out and discarding it onto the floor. A portrait glanced sternly at him and he picked it back up again and smiled in an ingratiating way, tucking it away into a pocket out of which he was sure it would just fall again. That was fine, though, as long as he wasn’t in the presence of Cogitus Nigellus, who was apparently the cousin of Phineas Nigellus, a previous headmaster of Hogwarts (or at least that’s what the small plaque under his portrait said).
Scorpius finished arranging his hair and raised his eyebrows expectantly, obviously guessing that Albus would be leading the way to wherever they were going. Albus hadn’t planned for that, but on a whim he decided that they would go out to the grounds. He hadn’t gotten a chance to walk around outside in the sunshine and grass. Perhaps a trip outside where the daylight could probably strike at him with its rays would keep him awake and stop the frightening cycle of his mind from triggering again. He took a few steps and Scorpius fell into step beside him, easily matching his stride as he was much taller and had legs that were at least a few inches longer.
