"Er... you... okay there?"

Alex looked up, tears freezing on her face. She sniffled. "I'm fine."

The tall boy nodded. "Right. Okay then." He turned to walk away when she threw out an arm to stop him.

"Wait!" she cried. "I-I need your help. I-look, my boyfriend took me here to show me his hometown, only last night was a full moon and he-well, he ran away, but now I'm all alone and it's snowing, and I'm lost in England and I don't know what to do!"

"Oh." He detached her fingers from the front of his shirt. "Well. Uh. Have you tried ringing him?"

"Haha, ringing. You really mean calling but you say that 'cause you're British," Alex twirled a lock of her hair around her finger. "But I can't. 'Cause... he's a... I mean, he doesn't have his phone."

"Well, er, listen. Let me get you to someone who can help you. I'm not really..."

"Good at helping people?" Alex supplied. "Yeah. Me neither, usually. But thanks for trying, I guess."

"Yeah." He ran a hand through his white hair. "Sure. Listen. Have you tried calling the police or whatever?"

"Well-it's a little more complicated than that. 'Cause he's not exactly a missing person or anything. So I can't report him as a-is that a wand?"

"What?" he hastily shoved his wand back into his pocket.

"Oh my gosh it is! So you must be-oh my gosh, you're a wizard!"

He gaped at her. "Er... well, yes. Am I to assume that you're-"

"Yeah, I'm magic too, oh my gosh! Well this is great! So I can totally tell you that I can't ring my boyfriend because he's a werewolf and he got away from me last night and that's why I'm lost in England! And also I sort of lost my wand."

"That's a right mess you've got yourself in, eh?"

Alex jerked her head in a little nod. "Yeah, I'm usually pretty good at getting myself into messes but they usually get fixed! I mean I guess my brother usually helps me but he's still in New York and-see, this is why I'm going to-what did you say your name was?"

"Er. Scorpius. Scorpius Malfoy."

Alex snorted. "Chhyeah, Scorpius. That's cute. So like, are you foreign or something?"

"It's a family name," said Scorpius through gritted teeth. "And what kind of a witch are you, anyways? You can't keep track of your puppy, you can't keep track of your wand... you must be a-"

"Well you're not very nice!" Alex exclaimed. "And here I thought you were going to help me."

"Help yourself," Scorpius mumbled. No one makes fun of my name, he thought. "I've got better things to do than-"

"No-wait, okay, I'm sorry, I just... Whenever I get myself into these kinds of situations, I sort of default into insult-mode to cover up how scared I actually am."

There was a pause while Scorpius scrutinized her. "Fine. I'll help. Can you apparate?"

"Uh, what? No no no, okay, I just need to find Mason and get out of England."

"Oh, come on, you've got to be about seventeen, surely you know how to apparate-"

"See, this is why I was never going to win the family powers-"

"-I mean, seriously, it's not like it takes actual skill, I've seen Aunt Daphne do it-"

"-not that I even could anyways ever since I exposed wizardry-"

"-you can't possibly-wait, what?"

"Well, I sort of exposed wizardry to a bunch of fake reporters so now there's no way I'm going to be able to keep my powers."

Scorpius cocked his head and raised a single, slender blond eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because! It's a secret, you can't just tell people you're a wizard!" Alex crossed her arms and set her hips.

"Why not?" Scorpius asked, legitimately confused. "I mean, just saying it? Why on earth would they believe you?"

"Because it's a secret that you can't tell anybody because it's secret! And also I sort of turned his microphone into a snake."

Scorpius raised his eyebrows. "You did magic in front of Muggles?"

"Mug-who's?" Alex asked, attitude staining her voice.

"Muggles...?"

"Yeah. Right. Whatever. So I did magic in front of the Mugwumps, but as it turns out, they weren't even really there at all. They were just created by my headmaster to test me and my brothers to see if we could handle being wizards."

"So why would you lose your magic, then?"

"Because I failed, obviously. Jeez, Scorpitron, keep up. I failed his little test or whatever, so he demoted me and now I won't even get to keep my powers."

"But you didn't actually reveal magic to Muggles."

"No," Alex agreed.

"He just now thinks you would expose wizardry if you had the chance," Scorpius checked.

"Right," Alex verified.

"That's not even exposery! That's like, attempted exposery. That's bollocks, what's this bloke playing at?"

Alex stared at him. "So, I don't speak British, could you-?" She gestured a bit with her hands.

Scorpius just raised his eyebrows. "So he's somehow revoking your magic... because you might have exposed wizardry if you had the chance," he said.

"Exactly," Alex confirmed.

Scorpius paused. Then he laughed. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Totally. Oh my gosh look, it's Mason!"

"Alex!" shouted a rumpled-looking boy from across the street. The pair ran for each other.

"Aw, you've got five o'clock shadow!"

"That's just left over from the transformation, love..."

And so Scorpius Malfoy went on his way, pondering the depths to which human intellect could actually sink.

A/N: I finally watched all this "Wizards Exposed" business, and I couldn't help but think to myself, What Would Someone In The Potter Universe Think Of This Rubbish? So I wrote it. I was originally going to have it be Draco but Draco's not nice enough to ask a random girl on the street if she's okay. I have full confidence, however, that Scorpius is nicer than Daddy D.

I also know that some timing on this is pretty wonky because Alex is about seventeen in 2010 and Scorpius would have been about five or six, but we're pretending he's older than her in whatever year this is actually taking place. So. Ha. That's why it's fanfiction, yeah?

Thanks for reading :D