A/N: This was written for Kaye, (what stars are). I hope you'll like this! It was also written for a challenge in the HPFC forum, where I got the prompt gingerbread.

Also, many thanks to mew-tsubaki for betareading!

That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles

When he had left, the only thing she could think of was how he had crashed their gingerbread house, lifted it up and thrown it at the wall so that it had shattered into a million pieces, crumbs falling all over her, everywhere, breaking so easily.

(Maybe it was a sign of how vulnerable the two of them were, maybe the house was a metaphor for the little world they had created together…that now was lying on the floor, unable to be mended.)

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The funny thing was, she remember the exact day it had started going downhill.

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It was a sunny day, and everyone's eyes were glittering as much as the snow and everyone's cheeks were as red as the scarf Albus had around his neck and "everyone" was Dominique, Scorpius, Rose, Albus, and Lorcan.

And any other day, it would have been the picture-perfect: sledding, drinking hot chocolate, being old enough to dare being young again. But any other day, Dominique would not feel like this.

"Scor, I need to talk to you."

"Sure," he answered, but he didn't rise from the ground where he and Rose had crashed after going down the hill together—and did he really need to keep his hands on her waist now that they were on firm ground, safe from the so terribly high hill that had made Rose squeal "Hold me tighter, Scor!"?

"Alone," Dominique finished, and she turned away from them, not knowing if she was only making it up that Rose had giggled and Scorpius had rolled his eyes at his overly possessive girlfriend or if it really had happened.

"What is it?" he asked; his hands were shoved deep into his pockets and he would probably never pull them out again, if he was to decide.

"'What is it?'" she imitated. "What is it with you and Rose, if I may ask?"

He scrunched up his face and stared at her. "Nothing's up with us—what are you talking about?"

She did not know if he was good at acting, or if she just wanted to believe him, but either way she gave him a smile and laughed it all away….it was soon Christmas and she could not stand the thought of losing him now.

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But it still was one of the moments that set it all off.

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"What are you guys doing?" Dominique leaned against the doorframe to the small balcony in James' apartment, which he apparently used more as a dump than anything else.

"We?" Scorpius looked up, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his eyes were glimmering. He put his beer can away on a little table and beamed at Dominique. James looked up, too, and grinned. "We're just going to see if these will work," Scorpius explained, blowing his fringe out of his eyes and motioning to a firework in his hands.

"You know it's ages until New Year's Eve," Dominique laughed, and James waggled his finger at her, using one that didn't hold his Muggle lighter.

"Now, now, dearest cousin, it's not 'ages' until New Year, only a couple of weeks. We just want to be prepared, don't we?" he finished, looking at Scorpius, who nodded.

"Yeah, yeah. Light it already, now." Dominique couldn't help but laugh at how excited the two of them were.

"Okay, one, two…" James began and Scorpius mouthed at Dominique, "Shut your ears." The firework went off with a loud boom and it coloured the sky; James and Scorpius high-fived each other and Dominique smiled so brightly everything felt good.

Then, of course, everything had to be destroyed. Because out came a red haired whirlwind, screaming at Scorpius and hitting at his arm. "You complete arse, you have no idea much you scared me by that!" But she wasn't angry, and Scorpius just laughed and laughed and took another sip of his beer, and Dominique wondered if she was a part of the wall, wondered why no one saw her.

Because then Rose threw her arms around Scorpius and laughed, and Dominique wondered why she couldn't laugh like that, so sparkly and shiny and dripping. Then Scorpius let her have his cigarette and they shared it, passed it between them, and every time their fingers brushed against each other, it made Dominique shudder. She went back in, because what else could she possibly do?

But walking back in and discovering her older brother making out with (their cousin) Hugo was not what one wants to see, so she walked out there again, and then they were sitting on the ground, passing the beer between them instead. James stood looking down at the ground, either throwing up or having dropped something.

Dominique didn't want to confront him, not here and not again—and not now—so she simply said, "Scor, I'm going home."

The two of them turned their heads at her and she wished she hadn't said it, but the... then Scorpius rose from the floor and grabbed her hand. "Sure, let's go home."

Dominique was so happy in that moment that she decided that she had only hallucinated when Scorpius had used Rose's thigh to lean on for getting up and let his fingertips brush against it for a little too long. Because no matter how dim Scorpius' eyes were, he still followed her and did not abandon her.

:::

She would soon find out that she was only holding on to something long gone.

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Dominique really did not know why she was feeling like this. Crying over a burned cookie—what was wrong with her? She did not even know how she had ended up in her current position; sitting on the floor, clutching a washing cloth, watching the black, smoking cookie, and sobbing as if it was her life that had been burned out along with the cookie.

It was embarrassing, really. But these latest days, she had been all itchy and emotional, so perhaps she should have suspected a breakdown. Probably.

"Hey, babe, what's the matter?" Scorpius suddenly poked his head in, and Dominique flew up from the floor.

"Nothing, nothing!" she hurried to say, noticing the harshness of her voice and coughing madly.

Scorpius narrowed his eyebrows and took a few steps into the kitchen. "Babe, you're crying. Something is wrong, tell me." He put his thumb on her chin, and looked into her eyes. She could not stand it, the way his eyes were so cloudy, as if bursting with rain, so she began crying again.

"…I don't…Scor…my…the cookie…" She sniffled, and she did not care how her nose was dripping, that her eyes were bound to be completely swollen and red; she couldn't care.

Scorpius laughed a bit and chuckled softly while pulling her into his chest and holding her there, tightly. "It's just a cookie, Dom, it's all right."

"No…" she mumbled into his shirt, and she felt so embarrassed…though she didn't want to admit he was right.

"It is," he nodded. They stood like that for a while, he slowly breathing, and she slowly calming down, and the smell of burned cookie slowly drifting away, dispersing so much that it soon was not there anymore.

Then he took her around her shoulders and pushed her in front of him. "You okay?" he asked, and he continued when she nodded," Okay, I got to go for a while, babe, but I'll be home soon."

And Dominique did not know how to pronounce the words "Stay here, please, I don't want to be left alone," so she just nodded again.

He grinned and kissed her forehead before rushing out through the door, leaving Dominique to the eerie silence and the pounding screams of her heart.

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It ended in a gigantic crash.

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Dominique stood staring at the shreds of the gingerbread house, suddenly scared of him and his eyes that pierced her with their darkness.

"You can't expect me to…" he began, but he hesitated, breathing heavily. "You don't even know what you're talking about, Dominique!"

"Don't I?" she asked quietly, and in his eyes she could see that she'd been right. He had blushed when answering because she had been right, he had pushed the gingerbread house down onto the floor because she had been right, and now he was pale as a sheet because she had been right. She had been right when she had asked it aloud, just like that: "Are you seeing Rose?"

"Dom, I never wanted this to…" Once more he didn't finish his sentence, and Dominique wanted to force him to do it. She wanted him to speak, to ask her for forgiveness, to say that she actually had been wrong, and prove it to her.

But he didn't even try to defend himself.

Dominique didn't know what to do. She sat down on the floor and began to pick up the pieces of the gingerbread house and put them in a pile. She didn't dare looking up, but she knew that Scorpius hadn't left, because he was still breathing so very heavily.

"Dom, please." Now he knelt next to her, and he grabbed her wrist so abruptly that she dropped the crumbs she had been holding. Though she noticed some of them stuck on her sticky palm, pressed into her skin, mixed with tears and sweat.

She didn't know what to say, and she still didn't dare to look at him.

"Say something," he said in a voice thin as paper. "Please, just say something. Yell at me. Hit me. Do something."

But she couldn't. Her hair was hanging down in front of her face, and she stared at his fingers that hadn't released her wrist.

She knew those fingers so well, and yet, now it felt as though she had never seen them before.

"Come on, speak to me, Dom!"

"Go." Her voice was smaller than the smallest sound ever, but he shivered against her skin when she said it. She hadn't thought he could hurt her more, but then he rose, and left her in the too-big space, too-quiet air, too-empty herself.

And that hurt.

And the gingerbread house wasn't anymore. They weren't anymore. Nothing was anymore, anything that had meant something.

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Sometimes she woke up at night and cursed herself, blamed herself. And other times she woke up at night and cursed him. But most nights she just watched the pillow next to her and couldn't fall asleep.

(And sometimes she wondered why she had even thought of Dominique&Scorpius.)