A/N Hello, Miyako here! This story is preceded by the short one-shot "Gryffindor Boy", but you don't need to read that one to understand this story. All you need to know is at one point earlier, Scorpius meets Lily Luna Potter and rescues her from the clutches of Tobias Smith. This story will be written in seasons, so this is Fall.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling and I am simply borrowing her characters for my own use.


1. In Which Scorpius Attempts to Remove Someone's Eyebrows and only Partially Succeeds

Scorpius hung out the window of the Hogwarts Express waving enthusiastically to his mother and father down on the platform. His mother favoured him with a slight upturning of the corners of her mouth. But he knew she was actually happy for him, because she smiled with her eyes. His father was watching him with worry reflecting in his grey orbs. His father was always worried it seemed, and while Scorpius appreciated the concern he didn't understand it. It wasn't as if he ever got in trouble or anything!

As the train pulled away from the station and his parents faded into the distance he finally closed the window, even though he thought it would be interesting to have his head out the window of a moving vehicle. He only knew that if his father had been there, he would be extra worried.

The compartment door slid open behind him and he spun on the spot to find himself staring at a mini-replica of Harry Potter. He immediately grinned at the other boy and Potter returned the smile, albeit shyly.

"I'm Scorpius Malfoy!" he held out his hand toward the messy-haired boy.

"Albus Potter," he replied as he shook it, smiling a bit more. "I know you, you're that boy that Lily is always talking about."

"Lily!" Scorpius exclaimed. "I remember her! That butt-stain Smith was pushing her around, so I stopped him."

"I saw him earlier…" Albus frowned. "I really want to get him back for hurting my sister, but I don't know how."

"I know a spell that removes eyebrows!" Scorpius suddenly remembered excitedly. "My mom used it on my dad once!"

"Oh, okay!" now that Albus realized Scorpius wasn't a bad sort of guy, he was becoming less introverted. "Do you think it'll work?"

"Probably," Scorpius said decisively. "Let's go find him!"

Albus agreed, and as they walked down the corridor of the train, the blond remarked, "I've always wondered what it would be like to walk on top of the train."

"Always?" Albus cocked an eyebrow.

"Well, since I saw the Hogwarts Express," admitted Scorpius.

"I once saw a muggle action movie where there were people on top of trains. It looked fun," Albus announced.

"Want to try it?" asked Scorpius.

"Yeah! We should go try find a way up!" Albus grinned.

"We have to go get Smith first," the blond boy reminded him.

"Oh, yeah," Albus thought for a moment, then said, "How about this: we go get Smith and remove his eyebrows and then we go find a way up?"

"Deal," Scorpius smirked as they set out to look for a certain, soon-to-be-eyebrowless Smith.

The two of them weren't much farther along when a voice called down the train, "Albus! Wait for me!"

The two stopped and turned to see a short girl with vibrant red and bushy hair walk briskly towards them. She halted in front of them and looked Scorpius up and down considerately. Inspection complete and apparently satisfactory, she turned to Albus.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Nothing Rose! Me and Scorpius are just going to see if we can find Tobias Smith," Albus held up his hands disarmingly with an innocent smile.

"Oh, I just saw him down this way," she told them. "Although why you would want to talk to that odious cretin is beyond my ability to comprehend."

"What's a 'odious cretin?'" whispered Scorpius in his friend's ear.

"I dunno, but if Rose says that he is one, then he probably is," replied Albus.

"Well, whatever else he is, he's definitely a bleeding tosser," Scorpius announced.

Rose turned to glare at him and hissed, "Language!"

"English," Scorpius responded helpfully.

Trying to ignore the blond, Rose turned to her cousin and said in an imperious voice, "He's right over there, leaning on the door of that compartment, talking to his little cronies. Go on then!"

Scorpius rolled up the sleeves to his robes and took out his wand.

"What are you doing?" Rose asked curiously, because she didn't realize the boy knew any spells.

"Amoveo capillus!" Scorpius whispered as he pointed it at Smith's face.

"You only got half of one on them," reported Albus. "See! Here let me try."

As Albus let fly with another spell, Scorpius groaned, "You only took off a corner of the other one!"

Rose, by this point, had figured out what they were trying to do and whipped out her own wand and said bossily, "Here, I'll show you how it's supposed to work!"

Unfortunately, Smith had finally realized someone was shooting spells at him and ducked when the girl's spell shot towards him. Not fast enough, because it removed a swath of hair right down the middle of his skull. The older boy screeched as his hands flew to his head, and feeling that he was missing a lot of his dark locks fixed the three first-years with a death glare of doom.

"My father can glare way better than you!" taunted Scorpius.

"I'm going to kill you, you little runts!" Smith screamed, reaching for his own wand and brandishing it at them.

"I think we had better leave," Rose recommended calmly.

"Right," Albus squeaked and he grabbed Scorpius' hand to drag him off behind him. "Let's go!"

"But there's only seven of them! We can take 'em!" Scorpius struggled to get away from Albus' tight grip.

"What do you mean by that?" Rose turned her head to glance over her shoulder.

Seven angry second years, all from Hufflepuff, were running down the hall towards them, the odious Smith in the lead.

"Run!" she yelped, and the three of them took off down the hall.

It was extremely lucky that all of them were so skinny and flexible, because they could slip through the people that stood in the way of their escape route.

"Trolley-lady at 12 'o clock!" screamed Scorpius as he flattened himself against the wall to get by.

Albus and Rose copied the motion and the three of them sped on down the length of the train. Behind them they heard several screams and a tremendous crash. Chancing a look behind them they saw the trolley goods scattered everywhere and the woman who had been pushing it berating Smith and his gang.

"Excellent!" Scorpius grinned. "That was brilliant!"

"Now all we have to do is find a way on top of the train," Albus beamed in return.

Rose blinked at them a few times, then asked, "Are you, by any chance, completely mad, dear cousin?"

"It's quite possible," he remarked happily. "Come on Scor, let's go!"

Scorpius pondered on the suddenly abbreviated name his friend had given him, decided he didn't mind and then smiled as he followed the messy-haired boy.

"Wait, where are you going?" Rose demanded as she marched along beside the pair, eyes never straying from their faces.

"The caboose!" Albus announced. "Every train has one, I think, so maybe there's a way up!"

The three of them made their way there, Rose keeping an eye out for the no-doubt vengeful Smith. At the very end of the train, there was a closed door that wouldn't open when Scorpius turned the handle.

"Alohomora!" Rose whispered, and with a soft click, the door unlocked.

The boys eased it open and marveled at the passing trees and the track behind the train. Rose snorted behind them, grumbling about how their newest scheme was a very bad idea. Scorpius responded that she shouldn't have opened the door if she thought so, and while the pair was squabbling, Albus found the ladder. It was attached to the back of the train next to the door, so Albus reached out a hand to grasp a rung. Carefully, he swung his body out so that he was fully on the ladder, causing his new friend and his cousin to gasp in surprise. Scorpius peeked his head out the door, and when he saw where Albus was, quickly followed him gleefully.

"Boys! Get back here!" she scolded them.

"Hey! What are you doing! Get away from there!" a prefect had stepped out of his compartment and noticed her standing there.

With a tiny yelp she would later deny, Rose scrambled out of the door and up the ladder after them, quickly disappearing before the prefect could stop her. The shouting below her was whipped away by the wind as the bushy-headed girl climbed on top of the carriage.

"This isn't so bad after all," she remarked. "It's nice out!"

The boys both grinned at her, and Albus said, "I told you it was a good idea!"

The trio set off on a trek across the train, leaving the caboose and the angry prefect behind them. It was a sunny day, so Scorpius took off his outer robe and carried it over his arm, and Rose and Albus who were still in their muggle clothes struggled out of pull-overs. The steady breeze kept them from getting too hot, and the view was much more extraordinary from the top of the train than inside it.

Sadly, all good things come to an end, and when Rose announced she was thirsty and hungry about two hours later, the boys agreed to begin the journey back to the caboose. Upon entering the train again, they were immediately confronted by two angry people. One was Victoire Weasley, the Head Girl, so they could only assume that the other was the Head Boy. After a thorough scolding, they were escorted to a compartment and warned to stay put.

There were several people already inside; some were Gryffindor second years, including Albus' brother James.

"Hey there little brother, what you been up to?" James asked, looking up from the game of Exploding Snap he'd been playing.

The deck of cards chose that moment to detonate, so Albus waited for James to stop cursing before saying, "We shaved off Smith's eyebrows!"

"Only bits of them," Scorpius mumbled beside him. Then he perked up as he remembered, "But Rose took a strip of hair out the middle of his head!"

Everyone in the compartment turned to stare at Rose, and then James exclaimed, "Way to go Rosie!"

As everyone else joined in, she turned a pit pink from embarrassment, but looked pleased with herself.

"Wait a moment, who are you?" James looked back at the blond.

"Er… Scorpius Malfoy," he looked down at his feet and shuffled them around nervously at the attention now on himself. "I…"

"Oh, Lily's guardian angel," James waved a hand in dismissal. "Okay, I dunno what you lot did to make Victoire so angry…"

"We climbed on top of the train!" announced Albus proudly as Scorpius looked disgruntled at being called an 'angel'.

"Oh, cool. Tell us about it?" James asked, and everyone else looked at them curiously.

The rest of the ride was spent telling about their adventure and eventual capture, playing more Exploding Snap and eating Chocolate Frogs and Cauldron Cakes from the trolley.

When the three of them eventually departed the train, it was dark out and a tad misty and damp as September evenings sometimes are. Albus was glad that he had remembered to change into his robes earlier.

"This way," Rose told them, dragging them off by their elbows.

"It's Hagrid!" Albus said excitedly and broke into a run as Scorpius followed, leaving Rose to yell after them.

"Into the boats now," the half-giant was instructing everyone. "No more than four to a boat. That's right, in ye get!"

"Hey Hagrid!" Albus beamed up at him.

"Oh, hello Al. Come to my cabin on Friday after you finish classes. We can talk then. Now you and Rosie and – who's this, get in a boat, go on!" Hagrid waved them to an empty boat.

The boats set out across the lake, and Scorpius leaned over the side and trailed his hand in the water. It was cool on his fingers and sort of relaxing, that is, until he felt the brush of something against them. He whipped his hand back and leaned over farther, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was.

"What is it?" Albus asked, leaning over as well.

"I dunno, something touched me and I want to know what it is," he responded, still trying to see if he could find it.

"I hear that there is a giant squid in this lake!" Rose announced suddenly.

"Really? Cool!" both boys looked in earnest now.

As Rose moved over beside them to reluctantly look as well, they all realized something very important about the laws of physics. Three people could not lean over one side of a boat without it tipping over. Unfortunately, they were too late in this realization to prevent the inevitable, and they all made a tremendous splash as they ended up in the cold, dark water of the lake. The three of them struggled to the surface; all the while their wet robes were weighing them down.

"Where's the boat?" gasped Scorpius through a mouthful of water.

"Over there!" Rose motioned quickly.

Amazingly, the boat was upright, and Scorpius assumed that there was magic on it to right it in the case of a catastrophe like this one. The three of them forced their way over to the side of it, and just as the blond was about to try and climb into the boat, something large and very strong pushed him up and into the boat, where he tumbled to the bottom in a wet, shivering heap. A moment later, Albus landed on top of him, and Rose after that.

"What just happened?" Albus blinked a few times, black hair sticking to his forehead.

"I think we were just pushed back into the boat by… something big," replied Scorpius from his place at the bottom of the pile. "Now get off me!"

The other two extracted themselves from the mess of limbs and they noticed that the boat was moving again and that they were lagging far behind the other boats.

"Now we're going to miss the Sorting!" Rose looked upset. "And I did want to get Sorted, even if it does mean fighting a troll."

"What???" the boys stared at her. "What about fighting a troll?"

"My dad said that we'd have to fight a mountain troll in order to get properly sorted. I figured that if you fight it you're a Gryffindor, if you try and negotiate then you're a Ravenclaw, if you try and befriend it you're a Hufflepuff and if you run away then you're a Slytherin," Rose told them knowingly.

"Oh," the two boys considered this carefully, and then, because it made perfect sense when it was put like that, they accepted it as fact.

"I wonder if they'll let us fight it together," Albus though aloud.

"Maybe," Rose conceded.

The rest of their time in the boat was spent thinking up tactics that one could use while fighting a troll, so when the boat eventually came to a stop, they were all very surprised to notice that they'd missed their first view of the castle. Not only that, but there was a familiar figure standing there waiting for them.

"Neville!" Rose and Albus cried happily.

"Er, we mean, Professor," Rose added quickly.

The round-faced man shook his head. "My my, you two, already in trouble. What were you thinking, climbing on top of the Hogwarts Express? I must say that since you have no Houses yet we can't deduct points, but you will all three serve detention with Mr. Filch tomorrow night."

"Oh, dear," Scorpius said mournfully. "Father will not be pleased."

As it turned out, when they joined their fellow first years, still sopping wet and a tad cold, there was no troll and apparently never had been. Instead, there was a rather rumpled old hat in the middle of the hall, and even as they entered, it began to sing.

"Where's the troll?" Scorpius asked, actually seemingly disappointed that they didn't get to fight one after all.

"I dunno," Albus answered. "What's with the hat? And why is everyone staring at it like that?"

"Beats me," Scorpius shrugged.

Neville (Professor) stood up and called a name, "Abbott, Christine!"

A girl with curly brown hair went up to the hat and sat on the stool, placing the hat on her head. A moment later, the hat actually spoke, announcing that the girl was a Hufflepuff.

"Oh," the boys sighed in unison.

"So that's how it works," muttered Scorpius dully. "How boring."

"I know," grumbled Albus. "No trolls! Oh well, it could be worse."

Finally, Neville said, "Malfoy, Scorpius!"

Scorpius went up to the hat and looked at it suspiciously before sitting down and putting it on his head, where it settled around his ears.

"Oh, another Malfoy," it said gleefully. "You are definitely different though."

"You're boring," Scorpius thought back at it defiantly. "I wanted a troll!"

"Is that so," the Hat said. "Where shall I put you?"

"Well," Scorpius started. "My father would probably want me to be a Slytherin, but I want to be wherever Albus ends up. Except that Albus is behind me… I suppose someone is trying to avert Chaos from descending on the school, but just so they know, it's not going to work!"

"I know just where to put you… GRYFFINDOR!"

The hall was deafeningly silent when Scorpius took off the Hat and everyone watched him in shock as he ignored them and wandered towards the correct table. Albus' brother James grinned at him and offered him a seat. As the blond boy sat, everyone started talking at once, that is, until Neville cleared his throat.

"Potter, Albus!" he read off the list.

Scorpius leaned forward and prayed to the God or Goddess or whoever of Chaos and Confusion that Albus would be put in Gryffindor. A moment later it was answered, and he and everyone else cheered as the raven-haired boy took his place at the table. Albus sat by him and asked, "Did you really tell the hat you wanted to be wherever I went?"

"Yeah, of course," Scorpius rolled his eyes as if the answer was obvious.

Albus turned to watch the rest of the students get Sorted. "Now we just have to wait and see if Rose ends up here as well."

She did, thankfully. When the Feast ended without them paying attention to the speech given by Headmaster Yates and they trotted up behind Victoire up to Gryffindor Tower, they discussed all the things they would do at Hogwarts now that they were finally there.

Scorpius got out a quill and parchment so that he could send a letter with one of the school owls. He himself didn't have one yet because his father told him he'd get one for Christmas if he did well in his first semester.

Father,

I'm in Gryffindor. Just thought you should know right from the start. I know you are worried, but I will be fine, I promise. I already met some friends, and I've decided that my best friend is Albus Potter. We met on the train, and we shaved off Smith's eyebrows! Well, bits of them, but it's the thought that counts, right? And Rose even gave him an odd sort of reverse-mohawk. Oh, and Neville, I mean Professor Longbottom gave us detention, but that was because we went on top of the train. I mean, there was no rule saying we couldn't, so it's not really fair. Also, we fell in the lake, and Rose thinks that the Giant Squid pushed us out again. So far everything is fine. Albus is in Gryffindor too, along with Derek Wood, Ryan Fletching and Patrick O'Neal. We're going to play Gobstones, so I'll write you again tomorrow. Give mother my love.

Scorpius


That was interesting. So, tell me, what do you think?