Authors' Note: Hello, Al and Scor here. Some of you may know us as Snakequeen-in-Norway and Artyna/Arty-the-Puppeteer. (Cue our individual accounts' readers railing at us for starting yet another fic when we already doesn't update our existing ones fast enough) Through PMs which originated from reviews and review replies, we have now formed a partnership, of which this story is a product. We hope you enjoy it.

-Al & Scor

Disclaimer: Though we may claim to be Al and Scor, we do not claim to own them. (Try to figure that one out *smirk*)

Chapter One: Sorry to Break Your Illusion…

Albus Severus Potter sat with his fingers buried in his even-messier-than-usual black hair, glaring morosely at the textbook on the desk in front of him. He would never understand Potions, not if he lived to be a million years old. Cutting up and measuring roots and claws and all manner of other confusing things, how was this stuff even magic? He didn't even get to use his wand!

A platinum blonde, slender-built boy, suddenly came through the entrance to the Snakes' common room. He seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, because he did not look anywhere but directly in front of him, nor did he seem to register Albus's presence. Scorpius Malfoy headed for the fourth year dormitory, his robes in unusual disarray.

Letting out a sound of great frustration, Albus slammed his textbook closed so forcefully that it went shooting across the table and onto the floor. Hot, angry tears blossomed in his eyes and he buried his head in his arms. It was hopeless. He was going to fail potions and get kicked off the Quidditch team and then his life would be over! Albus let out a sob.

Albus's textbook, which had skidded clear across the table and off the other side, landed with a thump near Scorpius's feet, right in his path, nearly tripping the less-than-agile bookworm. Albus continued to sob in frustration. He couldn't understand why he was so hopeless at Potions!

The blonde wasn't known for his balance, but he managed to not fall, thank Merlin. It didn't take him too long to locate the source of this almost accident.

"Potter..." The somewhat taller boy bit his bottom lip, hesitating, and then walked over to his black haired house-mate. "Is... is something wrong?" he asked.

Albus looked up, his tear-stained face going crimson as he realized that he wasn't the only person in the room. Though if someone had to walk in on him sobbing in the middle of the Slytherin common room, Scorpius Malfoy was higher on his preference list than most other people in his house. The quiet, bookish, socially awkward boy wasn't the type to laugh at him or hold the incident over his head.

"I...er..." he stammered. "I'm just having a little trouble with my homework." He gestured to the Potions textbook at Scorpius's feet.

Scorpius followed the other boy's finger with his gaze.

"Oh." He didn't look at Albus, and it almost looked as though he was deliberately hiding his left eye from view with his shoulder-length blonde hair. He bent down and picked the book up from the carpet with his slim fingers.

"Potions?" he read on the cover. "I... If you need any help... I guess I could help you..." He suggested a bit slowly, as if he wasn't sure where or not this was such a good idea. On the other hand, Albus didn't treat him so badly, compared to the other members of the Slytherin Quidditch team.

Albus blinked and remembered that Scorpius was in fact the top of their year in Potions. Actually, he was the top of their year in most subjects. Well, him and Albus's cousin Rose, but Albus would rather swallow a bucket full of flobberworms than ask her for help. Rose was a good friend, but she tended to be a bit overbearing when it came to school work. Plus she was a Gryffindor. It just wasn't done.

Albus realized that Scorpius was still standing in front of him, waiting for his answer. "You could try..." he said dubiously. "I'll warn you though, I'm pretty hopeless." He sighed and felt tears prick his eyes again. How humiliating; Scorpius must think he was such a wuss, crying over a bit of difficult school work. But, Quidditch...

Scorpius came over, somewhat slowly, still clearly hiding his left eye.

"Well, once you get the basics it is not so hard," he said, trying to give his voice a touch of confidence which he in truth did not have.

He sat down in the chair beside Albus. "This potion is not too hard," he said after reading the recipe, "you just need to be very accurate with what you do it..."

"That's easy for you to say. You're the top of the class. I'm rubbish at Potions." Albus rubbed his reddened eyes. "Sorry, I'm complaining. It's really nice of you to offer to help me." He leaned over the textbook, sharing the space with Scorpius so that they were almost touching. "Thanks. Do you think you could explain what this means here?" he said, pointing at a passage near the middle of the page.

Scorpius nodded slowly, reading the line in question. "Well, basically it says that the valerian root shall be cut into small parts and added once the liquid is boiling, not that hard..." The blond leaned away; he didn't seem to be used to be talking so much, unless it was to gain House points in classes of course.

"Really? That's all it's saying? Why didn't it say so? !" Albus looked up at Scorpius and grinned. "Thanks, Malfoy, that makes so much more—Hold up, what happened to your eye?"

The blonde boy seemed taken aback. "I... nothing... it—it is nothing..." he said, trying to get away from the subject to the point that it almost seemed forced, which of course it was.

"It isn't nothing," said Albus indignantly. "How dense do you think I am? It almost looks like someone..." he reached out and pushed Scorpius's white-blonde hair out of his face to get a better look, "...punched you," he finished slowly, his eyes narrowing.

Scorpius was about to protest, but it was too late. Around his left eye was a mark, blue-ish with some yellow. A clear, fresh bruise.

"P...punched me? Don't be ridiculous. I... I tripped over, well, you know how…how clumsy I am..." There wasn't much effort put into the lie. Maybe because the Malfoy boy didn't have much skill as a liar.

Albus didn't have to be a Legilimens to know that this was a bunch of BS. Someone had punched the other boy. Hard enough to leave a rather nasty bruise. That had to hurt. Albus didn't know the Malfoy boy that well—James had rather highly discouraged any overt association between the two when Albus had first arrived at school—but he knew enough to know that his fellow fourth year was not the kind of person to willingly get into fist fights with other students. He would have been a bloody fool if he was, Ablus reflected considering that what with his slight build and lack of athletic skills, he would get his ass handed to him faster than you could say Quidditch.

"Malfoy, someone hit you. And don't tell me you provoked them, because you couldn't provoke a fly. Who was it?" He wasn't sure why it bothered him so much, except that he didn't like the idea of someone using the boy who had just kept him from failing Potions and quite possibly from getting kicked off the Quidditch team as a human punching bag.

Scorpius looked away. He wasn't scared, he tried to convince himself. With a weak sigh he turned to face Albus.

"You know, that one Beater on our team sure has big fists..." As long as he didn't say any names, then it was fine, wasn't it?

Albus opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. "Garret? Garret Bole hit you?" He knew that most of the Slytherin Quidditch team wasn't exactly fond of Malfoy. In fact, he had seen them giving the other boy a hard time on several occasions. He hadn't joined in on the teasing—he kind of liked the quiet, bookish blonde, even if he was a bit odd, and had almost no social skills—but he hadn't stopped it either. It hadn't seemed like that big of a deal. But if they were actually physically assaulting him... "Are you sure?"

Malfoy sighed weakly and nodded. "Yes, of course." he said, as though he wish he wasn't. "I have seen his face up close enough times to know if it's him or not." The blonde hesitated. This was his problem, not Albus's, and for some reason he didn't want to give Albus any trouble. And why was that? Because... No, stupid, forget about it. But still… he thought.

Albus looked at the stammering boy in front of him and was filled with a profound annoyance. Sure, he was strange, almost laughable sometimes, especially considering who his family was and how unlike the stereotypical pureblood he was, but that didn't excuse getting physical with him. He'd have to talk to his teammates, or perhaps get his captain to, tell them to lay off. The last thing the team needed was to have any of their players suspended for violence. Then something else the blonde had said registered in Albus's mind. "Wait...you mean he's done this before?"

Scorpius swallowed and nodded. "If I said no, I would be a liar and, well, let's face it, I am not a good liar. Yes... it has happened before. They would have beaten me even more often if the marks didn't need time to heal; people would have noticed otherwise..." He shrugged. "You get used to it though, after a while…" He gave the black haired boy a weak smile. He looked like an angel, a broken angel.

Albus had sudden overwhelming urge to hug the other boy, but reined it in, not wanting to scare Malfoy, whom he really didn't know nearly well enough to be spontaneously hugging.

"That's awful!" he said, his obvious distress showing on his face. "Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital wing? Why haven't you told anyone!" A horrible thought struck him. "You said 'they'. You don't mean...it's not the whole team, is it?" He couldn't believe it. His team could a bit rough sometimes, and they weren't exactly the epitome of 'love your fellow man,' but surely they didn't go around beating people up as a form of amusement. Did they?

The blonde gave another weak smile. "I am...fine...Albus," he said, using the other boy's first name. "And...I haven't told anyone...because they said if I did...they'd..." The boy broke off the sentence. He sighed. "Yes the whole team, and some others as well." Scorpius looked up at him, his lovely platinum-blonde hair covering his pale features. "Face it, we can't all be The Golden Boy."

A myriad of different emotions played across Albus's face; fear, anger, disgust, disbelief, offence, guilt... This had been going on right in front of him and he hadn't even had an inkling... No, that wasn't true. He had known that the other boys liked to pick on Malfoy, but he hadn't thought it was such a big deal. They were Slytherins after all, and teenage athletes to boot, some things of that nature were only to be expected…

"I'm not—I-I didn't know," he said finally. "Malfoy, I didn't know that what they were doing...that it had gotten that bad..." He swallowed. "How long?"

Malfoy thought about it. "Since second year, after the Quidditch try-outs... That is when they began actually hurting me, before that it was just insulting my family name and...you know..." The boy lowered his grey eyes.

"Since—but Malfoy, that's two years!"

"Yes, it is..." nodded the blonde, and he sighed deeply. "I haven't told my father either; he thinks I have such a great time here, he doesn't even know I failed to get the Seeker position. If he knew..." The boy let out another sigh and shook his head. Scorpius slowly raised a hand and let it touch the blue mark around his eye. "And, now that you know... what…what would you do about it?"

"Oh, Malfoy..." Albus bit his lip, wondering what he could do to help the Malfoy boy without alienating himself from his team; they were another reason he had never gotten closer to Malfoy. "You can't be Seeker, because I'm Seeker and, er, it doesn't seem like sports are really your thing... You're really great in all our classes though," he added hurriedly. "Have you told your friends? Maybe if you stuck together with them..." he trailed off hopefully.

Scorpius let out a weak snort. "What friends?" he asked, looking at Albus with his silver-grey eyes. "I am mostly alone, after all. One half of the school totally ignores me and the other makes my life a living hell, I am not sure which one I prefer..." The blonde leaned back in his chair, eyes roaming the celling. "Bole, Zabini, Nott... All the sons my Father's friends ARE the one giving me a hard time..."

"Not really, no..." admitted Scorpius. "Well unless a pet counts of course," he added with a slight hesitation. The blonde ran a slender hand through his long hair. "Sorry to break your illusion, Potter, but the world isn't perfect... And, anyway, who'd want to be friends with a Malfoy...?"

Albus gaped at him, completely unable to comprehend a life without friends. "I would," he blurted.

"Y...you would? After all the fuss with our fathers? And, well, your uncle hates me, another one to the list..." the boy sighed, smiling without feeling. Still Scorpius felt strangely happy; Albus Potter would want to be his friend? Really?

Albus hesitated. Truth be told, he hadn't meant to say anything of the kind. But now that he thought about it...and Malfoy was looking at him with such hope in his eyes...

"Sure," he said, smiling. "Why not? We're not our fathers. You're nothing like your father, if anything I've heard about him is true. No offense," he added hurriedly.

"Potter, you don't have to be nice to me just because my life is so crappy, you know.." the blonde said. "I've been alone for four years, I'm sure I can...handle a few more..." Another obvious lie. A shadow had fallen over his eyes; he really was miserable wasn't he? Totally, no wonder really...he thought.

Albus shivered as though struck by a sudden chill, though the common room was just as warm as it ever was.

"No, that's not..." He shook his head. "Malfoy—Scorpius, you shouldn't have to. And, well," Albus shifted in his seat, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. "I've always kind of liked you. As a friend," he hastened to clarify, realizing how that might sound. "I thought you were kind of, well, interesting. The only reason I didn't try harder to be your friend was James. And the rest of the Slytherin Quidditch team." At the thought of his older brother, who was a Gryffindor prefect and the newly appointed captain of their Quidditch team, Albus felt a horrible sinking feeling in his gut. "James...James doesn't...?" Surely not. James hated Scorpius, everyone knew that, but surely he was far too Gryffindor to take part in something like that, if for no other reason than because Slytherins were doing it.

Scorpius bit his bottom lip. "Once," he said, "or twice..." The blonde avoided Albus' eyes. "I still have a faint scar though, but, Pot—Albus, don't think about it, no one ever has before..."

Albus felt like he was going to be sick. He couldn't believe this kind of stuff happened. At Hogwarts! A flare of righteous anger welled inside of him. He was going to put a stop to this! "Come on, Scorpius," he said, standing up. "We're going to the Headmistress."

"N—No…" Scorpius looked even paler than usual. "I…I can't… They'd know and…" The boy shivered. "Albus, I am not worth it…" The blonde got up from his chair. "I'm going to bed now, glad I could help with the Potion thing…" He gave Albus a weak smile, and went to the stairs.

"Scorpius, wait!" Albus ran up behind the other boy and grabbed his arm, pulling him around so that they were nose-to-nose. The silver-grey eyes that were suddenly so close to his own filled with fear and Albus immediately released Scorpius's arm.

"Sorry," he said breathlessly. "I didn't mean to scare you." The blonde still had an expression on his face like that of a cornered animal. "Hey, it's ok, breathe." He took a step back and offered Scorpius a reassuring smile. "We don't have to go to the Headmistress," he said, feeling somewhat relieved; he didn't exactly relish the idea of reporting his older brother to Professor McGonagall. "Just...let me come up with you, yeah? I've got something that might help your eye. I use it after particularly brutal Quidditch practices."

Scorpius drew a few long breaths. "Fine, I guess that won't hurt…" the blonde nodded. He hadn't minded Albus being that close, really… And if he had…he tried to convince himself that it wasn't because of…those reasons.

Albus smiled lopsidedly at his new friend. "Great! Hey, I'll race you to the top! Kidding," he added when he saw the look of panic in Scorpius's eyes, "I'm kidding."

AN: And there you have chapter one of Underneath the Surface :) If you enjoyed it (or even if you didn't, really, we're not picky) tell us in a review. Reviews=happy Al & Scor=faster updates ;)

Until next time!

-Al & Scor