Chapter 1: The Hogwarts Express

Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy cast one last look at his parents' faces before disappearing inside the Hogwarts Express. His father was giving him his characteristic smirk of pride while his mother gave him a quick wave. After seeing him off they would probably cast their eyes to the ground and hastily slide through the crowd before apparating back to their manor. The Malfoys had been very subdued since the end of the war, and avoided being out in public as much as possible.

Inside the train, students raced up and down the hallway eager to find which cabin their friends occupied. Scorpius watched as a group of Hufflepuff girls threw open a door and shrieked out excited greetings to its inhabitants. He stepped carefully around them, trying not to draw attention to himself. Passing down into the next car, he made out some familiar faces inside the first cabin he peered into. Opening the door gently, he let himself in and slid down onto a seat in front of two other Slytherins.

"Malfoy," one of them greeted, his voice strong.

"Goyle," he responded, "and Cobsweb." The girl nodded back at him upon hearing her name. There was a short silence.

"How was your summer?" Amus Goyle asked.

"Good," Scorpius responded, "and yours?"

"Good."

Ophelia Cobsweb settled down in her seat, putting her legs up on the empty one beside Scorpius. "Mine was also good," she said with a smile before resting her head back and closing her eyes. Scorpius and Amus both smirked at each other and assumed a similar posture. The three of them had always been together since being sorted their first year, and at this point they never needed to say much to reach and understanding. They had been sending owls back and forth all break and had no news to convey. Comfortable silence was how most of their gatherings went and this trip to Hogwarts was no different.

A few moments later the train shuddered as it started to take off. Families from outside started to shout their final goodbyes to their children, who leaned out of windows, waving excitedly. None of the three bothered to open their eyes to take a final glance outside- all of their parents were hurriedly making their way home before the rest of the crowd began to disperse.

The ride was rather uneventful until roughly halfway into the journey when an thunderous boom shook the car that Scorpius and his friends were sitting in. Students making a mess was common and Scorpius wanted nothing more than to ignore it, so after being shaken awake, he attempted to go back to sleep. He felt a kick on his shin and opened his eyes, just to the height of narrow slits.

"It seems like you already have a job," Ophelia said, leaning forward and tapping the silver and green badge at his breast. Scorpius had somehow been appointed prefect last year, an honor his father had shared with him when he was a student. Though he loathed the extra work, he also had a strange passion for order and took his job quite seriously. Sighing in response to Ophelia's sniggering, he stood up from his half sleep and stumbled out into the hallway.

A thick sheet of white smoke wafted all throughout the train car, and multicolored sparks were flying out of one of the doorways farther down. There was the distinct smell of burnt cinnamon all around him. Gagging on the stench, he quickly made his way towards the commotion. There were a few other curious students gathering outside of the compartment, all of whom he pushed past. The sound of laughter became audible as he came upon the scene. Shielding his front from the sparks with his robes, he pushed his way into the cabin, knocking into something abruptly.

"Ouch!" it cried, falling towards the windows. Scorpius realized he had accidentally bumped into someone.

"What is going on in here?" he managed to get out, stifling a cough. Pulling out his wand, he sputtered out a spell to clear the air. The smoke spun around, bunching up into a ball before dissolving out the window. Now that it was gone he could clearly make out the people inside the cabin. They were, by far, the last group of people he wanted to deal with on his first day back to school.

"Scorpius! We just got a new product from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and thought we might try to test it out before we got to Hogwarts," Albus Severus Potter responded, not missing a beat. He grinned up at him from his seat as something on the floor of the cabin continued to blast out a rainbow of sparks. He was the only other Slytherin in the room, the other three all from Gryffindor. Albus and Scorpius had been partnered together in many classes throughout the years and worked well together. Despite the circumstances, he managed to give him a small nod and smile of greeting in return. It was unfortunate, Scorpius thought, that Albus chose to spend most of his time outside of class with this lot. He had always thought the two of them could be close friends. Looking around at the rest of the faces in the room, Scorpius' smile faded. He was particularly worried about the face directly opposite to him- the one belonging to who he had bumped into upon his entrance.

"What's going on in here is none of your business," the girl cattily threw at him, squaring her shoulders. Rose Weasley had a reputation for not being pushed around on top of being the most mischief making student in the entire school. While she was said to have her mother's cleverness, she did not care about applying it to her studies as much as she did her various elaborate schemes. Each year her tricks became more extreme and each year Scorpius wondered how she got away with it. After all, the entire school was privy to her work, basically worshipping her for it. In fourth year she managed to plant a small forest of mandrakes at the bottom of the Great Lake at the beginning of the year. Near spring exams, she unearthed them, causing all of Slytherin house to be subjected to ungodly screaming in their common room. It was a miracle that the windows weren't shattered in the process.

Looking into her blue, furious eyes, Scorpius wanted nothing more than to turn around, go right back to his cabin, and stay there for the rest of the trip. But he had a title and he had a respect for order, so he straightened his back and folded his arms in front of his chest. He might as well act the part.

"Actually," he tapped his badge, directly over the P, "it is absolutely my business. Are you trying to blow up the train so you don't have to go to school, Weasley?" He spat the last word.

"Actually," she snapped back, "that is just daft." She was practically scoffing at him. How could the Malfoy boy be suggesting something so preposterous? If she hadn't wanted to go to school, she would have come up with a much better plan than that. She was Rose Weasley, after all.

"All right, then what are you doing?" Scorpius asked. His voice was calm even though he was completely exasperated. He was in no mood to fight a battle he knew he couldn't win. Though he was quick witted with words, he was no match for her when it came down to it. While he needed to maintain the order, she had no rules at all. The best he could do was give her detention, but he did not want to cross Weasley so early in the year. Last year he had given her detention for finding her out of bed tinkering with something in one of the fifth floor corridors before winter break. When he went to breakfast the next morning, he was greeted with an anonymous howler in a voice mimicking his mother's about laundering his underthings. Although he could tell the difference, no one else could. He could feel a flush growing on his face just from the memory. All he ever hoped for each year was that it would pass peacefully, and this year was no different.

"Like I said," Albus intervened, "we're testing one of our uncle's new inventions. He likes to let us see how it works before he puts it on the market." Rose huffed and dropped back into her seat. Albus was always the more level headed of her cousins and she was in no mood to fight a battle with someone who didn't know they wouldn't win. It was just her luck that the Slytherin prefect had been in the same train car as her. If it had been Sarah Fortune or Finnick Fletcher they would have probably just laughed and told her to carry on. Finnick might even have cast her a quick wink before sauntering off, even though he was the Head Boy this year. If there was one person she liked to impress, it was Finnick Fletcher.

"...looks like a pack of Bertie Botts, but as soon as you open it, it turns into a pack of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Every Color Wildsparks. It's not supposed to make so much smoke," Albus was explaining animatedly as she snapped back into the conversation. Malfoy was starting to look exasperated, an expression Rose had always thought suited him. She had loathed him since her second year, when he had outed her for trying to implant another new prank device into Professor Vector's bookshelf in the middle of class. Though nearing retirement, their teacher had no qualms about assigning a thick stack of extra arithmancy homework for the next few weeks as punishment. It had taken Rose ages to convince her friends to help her complete it.

"All right, all right," Scorpius said, stopping Albus before he could continue to explain his theory on why the smoke was so thick. Sometimes he thought Albus belonged in Ravenclaw. The small pack spat out two last pink sparks with a dying hiss before disappearing altogether. "I will need to confiscate whatever other of these packages you might have."

He waited as they stared at him. The other two Gryffindor's whose names he could not place hadn't spoken the entire time. They were particularly bad at holding back their grins and kept exchanging conspiratorial looks. The Weasley girl glared at him from her seat. He sighed.

"Of course, if you don't have any others, I will just be on my way then," he muttered. Live to fight another day, he thought, while turning back into the hallway. He noticed that the spectators had begun to disperse as well.

"See you at dinner, Scorpius!" Albus called after him.

"Right," he replied, before stalking back towards his cabin, defeated.

-xXx-

"He has such a stick up his-"

"Oh please Rose, he's really not so bad," Albus interrupted.

"Oh please Albus, he is! I know you are friends with him but I still, for the love of Merlin, don't know why."

"You just have to give him a chance," he prodded carefully. "I wanted to hate him at first too because of… well you know." Everyone knew the story of their parents. While the Weasley and Potter names were hailed as heroes, the Malfoy name was only met with discomfort. However, Albus' father had told him before his first year not to let the past color his opinions. It was only after getting to know his housemates that he'd realized why. Most of them grew up in guarded seclusion, their parents too ashamed of their various attachments to Voldemort's army to go out very much. At first he thought Scorpius took to avoiding people because of some superiority complex, but he later realized that it was because it was all he had ever known. Scorpius was a smart and warm wizard beneath his outer shell, but he kept his feelings closely guarded.

Albus was lucky to have his mother's level head and his father's open heart. Though he had besought the Sorting Hat to be in Gryffindor as his father had mentioned, he had still been sorted into Slytherin. For his first two years he wondered if he had belonged there. However, he soon realized he liked Slytherin house more than he had ever imagined, and was proud to be a part of it. Nevertheless, he had grown up with his cousins and still chose to spend most of his free time with them while at school.

"Right, well, I still hate him," Rose said between a piece of cauldron cake they had purchased from one of the carts earlier. Trying to convince her of anything was like trying to convince a Hungarian Horntail to be your family pet.

"Can't you chew with your mouth closed for once," Franklin Longbottom protested. The girl next to him didn't raise her head from his shoulder but nodded in agreement.

Lily Luna Potter would normally be here with them, but she was off who knows where chasing some fourth year Ravenclaw that she had fallen in love with last year. She had nearly clung by Albus's side for the past few years until she had begun to develop hormones. Hugo Weasley was no doubt following her about so he could laugh at her probable failures later. There was also an empty seat where James Sirius might have sat at some point in the trip if he had not already graduated the year before. He was known to float about the train from cabin to cabin every year, having a sizeable variety of friends.

"Oh shut up, Frankie," Rose muttered, "and honestly Olivia, do you think I can't see you furrowing your brows at me all the time." They both laughed in response causing Rose to smile against her will. Her friends were used to her ridiculous behavior by now. Everyone had thought Rose would be a model student like her mother, but she turned out to be a lot more like her father's side of the family than she had let on as a little girl. In fact, she was even more like Uncle George than the rest of her cousins, a fact that made her unreasonably proud. The first time she had returned from Hogwarts, her father was beside himself in confusion at learning her marks were below the Malfoy boy's. She had merely shrugged and smiled sweetly in response. She could do better, but she had a more important goal to focus on instead: having fun. It was her brother Hugo who was surpassing his classmates in his studies, and she would let him be the star pupil of the family. She was a star for a different reason entirely, her pranks ranging from harmless to annoying to downright stupid, but all admirable nonetheless. Her mother had reprimanded her time and time again but had finally given up after her fourth year. Upon hearing of Rose's underwater mandrake garden, Hermione couldn't even hide the look of amusement on her face. After all, someone had to uphold the Weasley name after Roxanne left Hogwarts, and who was Hermione to get in the way of tradition.

"I haven't seen you all summer, and yet all you can do is complain about Scorpius," Olivia replied, her voice soft and warm. There was a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Rose and Olivia Hawthorne were best friends since third year. They had both had serious crushes on the one year older Finnick Fletcher and had only met when they stumbled over each other trying to catch a glimpse of his new girlfriend after charms class. Heartbroken, they comforted one another and quickly realized they were meant for friendship. Olivia was a responsible and hardworking Gryffindor who had since turned her attention to Longbottom. Rose, unfortunately, had never quite moved past her Fletcher phase.

"I'm sorry Olly, should I ask you for the hundredth time about your mother's new vegetable garden?"

"Well you know, there are a few plants in there that might be of interest to your… hobbies," she replied playfully. Franklin laughed at that. There was not much that Olivia said that he wouldn't laugh at. They had been an item for two years now and Olivia's marks in herbology had questionably gone up ever since.

"How is your mother's vegetable garden, then?" Rose countered.

"Oh it's just fine," she said with a wink.

"What about your new broomstick, Albus? What model is it again?"

"The newest," he responded evenly, trying not to sound too pleased with himself.

"Spoiled brat. Go easy on Gryffindor on the quidditch pitch, will you?"

"I don't know, I'll have to think about it."

They shared another laugh. Their banter continued without interruption for the rest of the journey, the commotion they caused before already forgotten.

On the other side of the train Ophelia and Amus engaged each other in a match of chess before they got so bored that they made sport of flicking the pieces back and forth around Scorpius' sleeping head with their wands. To their disappointment, he fidgeted in his seat but remained unaware.

Scorpius Malfoy was far too gone, trapped between pleasant dreams of a perfect year, spent mostly down in the comfort of the dungeons, and unruly nightmares that involved the angry glower of a girl with long red hair, somewhere outside under a bright sun…