"Because everyone else who thinks like you do is dead, and if you keep skipping sleep so will you be! D'you think your bloody lightsaber's going to save you if you accidentally mix muriatic acid and phosphorous chloride in lab and melt your lungs out?"

"I, uh, today's a Saturday? So I have no lab?" Okay even to him that sounded weak as hell. He looks down at his half-eaten breakfast and scratches his cheek. "I'm used to skipping sleep. Every now and then. And, and, and I'm not sure what you want me to do instead," he says, his voice dropping down into almost a whisper by the end of the sentence.

"I want you to behave like a bloody human being," Lex says. "Do you do a single thing that isn't saving people or fucking them?"

(Jermaine has a coughing fit right then, and Scorpius throws him a glare.)

"I also go to class and do homework," he mumbles. The bare minimum of it. "And you're not, I mean, look, every mal I kill is one fewer mal out there and other people have just as much to do with their lives as I do. I'm not great at maths but I think it adds up."

"It doesn't. Every mal you kill is another mal bubbling up from the graduation hall. We've all seen the mural; they're not literally endless, but they might as well be. And call me selfish, but I care about you more than I care about ever-so-slightly thinning their ranks."

"...it's not slight. They're all out, at night. It was dozens of them, not as many as the other day in your room but—" He cuts himself off and rubs a hand against his scalp. "Seven hundred kids. Is how many more kids are alive right now in the school than would be normal for June."

"And when will it be enough? When does stopping for a second not mean killing someone? When - when do you get to rest?"

His silence might be answer enough.

    "But, but you're not—I mean, when you're—" Chloe can't quite say "out of the Scholomance". You just don't say that, not here. It's just not done.

"Look, there's... there's one thing I do well, one thing I, one good thing I can do for everyone. How would I just—stop—"

        "You might need a spell to fix your hearing, brother," says Jermaine, no longer looking very amused. "He said rest, not stop."

Edmund shakes his head. "If you put it down for a second, you're afraid you'll never pick it up again," he says. "That's why you have to punish yourself for it."

"When we graduate, Lake," Lex says casually, "I am going to fly across the Atlantic and challenge your mother to a fucking honor duel."

Chloe gasps aloud when Lex says that, but Scorpius is actually startled into laughter.

"What does Magistra Rhys have to do with it?"

"Yes, I'll bet that Magistra Rhys has nothing to do with her son's psychological issues. Actually, no, sarcasm withdrawn, I'll bet she does at least want nothing to do with them. What was the last thing she said to you, anyway? Remember your responsibilities? Or just I'll have my people talk to yours?"

He covers his mouth and shakes his head. "If anything I'm doing this to spite her. She, she wants me to be her heir. She wanted me to lead the New York kids in here, and to take my place with her when—if I got out." He looks at Edmund, then, chewing on his lower lip. "You asked me about duty, the other day. You're wrong, I'm not... afraid I'll stop. I have a duty—to everyone. Not my enclave," and another gasp from Chloe and a couple of other people listening in, although Jermaine is nodding along with that, "everyone. That's why, okay? Because it's my duty."

"Then - it'll never be enough. You'll never be happy in your life. And anyone with the bad luck to love you will just have to watch you suffer."

"I'm not—suffering, I think that's overstating the—"

    "Brother, did you also feel like you had to make up for the time we fucked?" asks Jermaine, and Chloe nearly falls off her chair with how quickly she swivels to gawk at him. "Yeah, yeah, guess I'm coming out, don't make this about me Rasmussen."

"I, uh, no?" says Scorpius.

    "Didn't think so. And everyone else, yeah? You sleep and eat and go to class and do homework and shag people and you don't make up for any of it. Why is it that when you got two great people in your corner like that you need to make up for that?"

"—I." But he doesn't complete that sentence because he has no idea why.

"...I don't want you to - stop helping people. If that's what you're worried about. I just want you to stop hurting yourself when you're happy."

"You are all so overdramatic."

    "You spent your weight allowance on a lightsaber."

"Point taken." He looks at Edmund. "I. Am not sure what to say or do here. Um." Then he looks at Lex: "I'm sorry. I don't really know how to..."

    "Be a person?" suggests Jermaine.

"I think I liked you better when you were still star struck about me."

    "No you didn't."

"No I didn't."

"Of course you don't know how to be a fucking person, I have to do everything myself."

"Excuse me, I'm working on it too."

"As if you know how to be a person. No, as always it falls to me."

Chloe covers a giggle with her hand, and Scorpius says, "Are you perhaps thinking that we are three drowning fools trying to keep each other afloat?"

    "You will not catch me dead saying that," she replies promptly, and stuffs some food into her face before it gets hopelessly cold.

"Hey! I'm not drowning, I'm in great shape. I am a pillar of the community."

    "Lake is a pillar too and see where that's gotten him," says Jermaine.

"Were you gonna ask me something?" says Scorpius, rolling his eyes.

    "Wha?"

"When you got here you had a look on your face, I'm pretty sure you wanted to ask me something." Yeah see how you like being the center of attention now.

    "Oh. Uh. I mean, it can wait, uh..." Jermaine is too black to properly blush but he sure looks like he wants to.

"Sure it can but if you can dish it you can take it, your turn to be the gossip."

    "I've been gossip all year," he moans.

"Your fault for wanting to get into a love triangle."

Edmund grins. "Did you perhaps have questions about our love triangle."

    Jermaine hides his face behind his hand again. "Maybe! Kinda! Um."

        "—wait are you into Geoff?" asks Chloe.

    "Oh come on I'm not that obvious—wait is this about my coming out earlier, I'm bi not gay—"

"So your little competition with Geoff for Theodosia's affections—uh, Geoff is a boy from Atlanta," Scorpius explains, mostly for Edmund's sake since this is junior year gossip, "and Theodosia is one of our top alchemists this year, she's from Portland, and she has been having a lot of fun not deciding which of the boys she wants to be with—"

    "Yes yes I'm into Geoff too," sighs Jermaine.