"Scorpius! Come on!" Lily hissed from behind a large gargoyle.
"Lily, where are you?" the blond replied, confused as he looked around the seemingly empty hallway. His friend's hand emerged from behind the gargoyle to his right, waving frantically at him to join her in her hiding spot. Laughing quietly, he quickly shuffled behind the gargoyle, pressed tightly against Lily Luna who had a rather large smile pasted across her face.
"Ready?" she asked, looking up at him with large, revealing eyes. Nodding, he smiled as she explained the things that she'd set up last night. Pulling out a sketched map of the school, she showed him which statues she'd hidden a jar of spiders, a large plant, and a bag of marbles behind. Grinning madly, she explained the signals she would give him that would indicate when he should cast the charms to activate her pranks.
"Lily, are you sure about this?" Scorpius asked, feeling bad about helping his friend land herself in detention once again.
"Are you getting cold feet, Scorp?" she teased with a smirk, "I'm still game," she reassured him, smiling even wider as people began to filter out of their classes into the hallway.
"No," he assured her, shaking his head as people began to spill into the corridor. Lily's face lit up in anticipation to the mischief she was about to cause. For a moment, she walked in the opposite direction of most of the crowds, her eyes searching the throngs of people for an easy target. With a smirk, she spotted Magenta Brown, whom virtually everyone knew had a deathly fear of spiders.
Glancing briefly towards Scorpius who was well hidden behind the large gargoyle, Lily walked quietly behind Magenta. As they passed the statue where the jar of spiders was hidden, Lily coughed loudly. Hearing the signal, Scorpius whispered a charm to unscrew the cap and set the spiders free. Seeing the tiny arachnids crawl out from behind the statue and straight towards Magenta, Lily struggled to contain a giggle and upon hearing Magenta's shrieks of terror, Scorpius chuckled quietly from his hiding place behind the stone gargoyle.
"What exactly is going on here?" an authoritative, resonating voice asked.
"Professor!" Magenta squealed in disgust, "These- these spiders just crawled out of nowhere and came at me!"
"Who, exactly, is responsible for this…prank, shall we say?" Professor McGonagall asked, looking about the corridor. Looking over the heads of dozens of Hogwarts students, a certain auburn-haired Ravenclaw caught her eye. "Ah, Ms. Potter," McGonagall said smoothly, "And where, pray tell, is Mr. Malfoy this time?"
"Wh-what? I-I don't know where he is," she stuttered, willing herself to not glance towards the gargoyle behind her. Sighing, Scorpius smiled and stepped into the corridor, unwilling to let Lily take the fall by herself.
"Hello professor," he nodded respectfully with a sheepish grin on his face.
"Ah," McGonagall nodded unable to keep a smirk from gracing her lips, "I thought I'd find you somewhere close. Please come with me," she demanded calmly, already gliding towards her Transfiguration classroom. Glancing at each other with small smiles on their faces, Lily and Scorpius tried not to laugh at Magenta's look of sheer horror as the small spiders continued to crawl around her feet.
"And you would do well to uncharm those spiders," the wise Transfiguration professor recommended, not even turning around. Pulling a face, Lily turned around and quickly muttered the counter-charm, rendering the prank spiders motionless. Trying their best to avoid a livid Magenta Brown, Scorpius and Lily shuffled quietly after Professor McGonagall, ready to burst out laughing at any moment.
…
"You know what I think?" Rose sniffed after finding out that Lily had landed herself another detention with Scorpius.
"What?" Lily asked, deciding to humor her cousin.
"I think that ever since you and Scorpius became friends, your detentions have grown more and more frequent," Rose announced to anyone willing to listen, "I'm beginning to think that maybe you do it on purpose just so you can spend more time with him," she concluded confidently.
"Maybe," Lily shrugged, irking her cousin even more than she normally was.
"Lily!" Rose sighed exasperatedly, "Whatever," she finally relented, returning to her Charms essay that was due in two weeks.
"What's up, Rosey-Posey-Poo?" Albus asked, sitting down next to the pair in the Great Hall.
"Albus, don't call me that," Rose requested calmly, barely looking up from her essay and thus not noticing that Scorpius had come with Albus to join them. Soon Hugo had found the group as well and everyone, even Rose, was caught up in a heated Quidditch debate.
"I still think the Chudley Cannons are the best," Scorpius asserted, earning himself a poisonous glare from Rose.
"Do you say that just because the Holyhead Harpies are an all-female team?" Rose challenged, always eager to pick a fight with said Slytherin.
"No, I say that because of their game record and the fact that they're my mum's favourite," Scorpius shrugged and Lily smiled up at him, having already known that. Backing down a bit, Rose looked at the pair with an amused interested before picking the argument back up with Hugo as Lily's eyes roved around the Great Hall.
"Scorpius, I think we should leave now," she said, standing from the table. Looking up, the blond nodded, remembering their scheduled detention with the resident Transfiguration master. Smiling and talking quietly, the pair walked out of the Great Hall and for the first time since the year started, Rose refrained from making a snide comment about detention or Scorpius.
…
"I think your cousin hates me," Scorpius confided, shaking his head slightly as they walked through a near-empty corridor.
"Who? Rose?" Lily asked, turning her head to see him nod. "No! Don't think that," she exclaimed, "Rose is like that to everyone. There aren't really very many people that she actually does like where it shows."
"I feel like she disapproves that we're friends," Scorpius confided, suddenly sounding very unsure of himself."
"Well, we're bomas so she can dislike you all she wants, but I'll still be your friend," Lily insisted earnestly.
"Bomas?" Scorpius asked, unfamiliar with the term.
"Best of mates always," his companion replied perkily before she skipped through the door to the Transfiguration classroom.
"Bomas," Scorpius mouth to himself a few times. "Bomas," he finally nodded and entered the room to see a smiling Lily and a thin-lipped McGonagall.