Stretching the Boundaries
Chapter One
Sometimes an older woman's hands are more desired than a girl one's own age.
That is not to say that Scorpius set out to fall in love with Lily's aunt. It just sort of happened.
The Malfoys had been invited to a wedding on Boxing Day It was the marriage of Daphne Greengrass and Dennis Creevy. Draco had not wanted to go because he knew that the Potters and the Weasleys were friends of Dennis Creevy and did not want to see them. Also, he did not want to show support of a marriage between a pureblood and a Muggle-born.
But Astoria appealed to her husband, saying, "I think you'll be surprised at the way the event will turn out."
And since Draco did want Scorpius to keep the affections of Lily Potter, being at an event where she was likely to be was probably a wise move.
At the wedding, Scorpius sat between his two sisters. They wedged their chairs very close to his and sat as near him as possible so that he could not escape their clutches. Actually, they almost seemed to sit more on his chair than on their own.
The priest went through the usual riffraff about honoring and obeying and how matrimony would be so blissful yada yada yada, and their might be pitfalls but yada yada yada. Then came the big question. "If there are no objections?"
Scorpius' mother had risen up. "I oppose this marriage between my sister and this Muggle-born wizard."
"Astoria, I'm finally getting married. You should be happy for me."
"You are going to die an old maid if I have to make an Unbreakable Vow to ensure it happens."
Scorpius' own sisters controlled his life too. But Astoria was younger than Daphne, and Charybdis and Scylla were both older than Scorpius. He didn't know how a younger sibling could have so much control over an older one.
Daphne backed away from Dennis, saying, "I can't marry you."
At the reception that wasn't, Hermione had bent down to pick up a pin that had fallen to the ground. Scorpius saw the curvature of her butt and wondered what it would be like to put his hand on it. Unfortunately her lanky husband did just that a moment later, and Scorpius wished he knew a good hex and weren't likely to be reported if he cast one.
Maybe his father would sue if someone tried to report Scorpius for underage magic. Surely, he would.
Scorpius pulled out his wand with precautionary care so as no one would suspect what he was doing. He muttered, "Furnunculus," in a low voice, hoping no one would hear it.
Ron pulled his hand away from Hermione's rear at once, yelping in pain. He then thrust his fist in the punch bowl.
Scorpius was ready to glory in his triumph when to his horror he saw Hermione struggling to keep her poise because she had been hit by the spell, Then she couldn't hold it any longer and started dancing around, calling for someone to bring her essence of murtlap.
This time he brought his wand out into full view and said, "Accio Murtlap Essence!" Then he carried over the tray of it to her. "Here you are, Mrs. Weasley."
Her hand brushed his as she took it. She was shaking too much to see who had given it to her, but she did say, "Thank you." Then she grabbed Ron, who still had his hand in the punch bowl, and they Disapparated, presumably to a private place where they could apply the essence of murtlap.
Scorpius had stared at his hand. It felt as though it had been singed with Fiend Fyre and would burn off or decay.
And then Lily had appeared, looking over her shoulder before pulling him away from all the hubbub. She could not allow her father to see her with Scorpius. His father winked at him as he passed with Lily, for Draco wanted his son to win Lily's heart and to marry her one day. And Scorpius' sisters were there to ensure that he held true to this whim of his father's.
That night, Scorpius dreamed that Hermione allowed him to apply essence of murtlap to her rear end, saying, "I'd rather have your youthful hands than those of my old husband's."
He woke up in a frenzy, for the dream had been so lifelike other than the fact that Hermione would never, ever say anything like that. Would she?
Then Lily and Scorpius had a fight. It was over something silly. Scorpius hadn't invited her to Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop for Valentine's Day, and she was upset.
"I doubt you have any plans for Valentine's Day at all," she said, when he told her he had not made a booth reservation.
"I'll go make one now," Scorpius said.
"It's too late," she said. "Every booth is reserved for that date. It seems there's going to be a kissing frenzy this year."
"Next Hogsmeade visit, then."
"I want it to be on Valentine's Day. It is my birthday too, you know."
"Of course I know that, and I've got a big birthday surprise planned for you."
"You'd better," Lily said, "or you'll have to kiss me good-bye."
Scorpius brought Lily out to Hogsmeade, a blindfold preventing her from seeing where he was taking her. He took it off right outside the Shrieking Shack and she gazed around. "Where's the big surprise?" she asked.
He nodded at the ground, and she turned her gaze upon that spot.
Lily was not amused when she saw the miniature circus Scorpius had cooked up, with a hot-air balloon blasting off and "sky-writing" seven feet in the air, "For My Lily."
The circus involved toy sea lions shooting a beach ball with a three-centimeters diameter into the air and doing a sort of volleyball game with it, and a clown battling a Pygmy Puff and a tiny Blast-Ended Skrewt at the same time. It was bewitched to operate all controls at once, only the Pygmy Puff being an actual, living creature.
Lily had her arms folded during the entire display.
"This is the kind of stuff you do for little witches," she said. "I'm thirteen and I expected something grander."
"Isn't it the thought that counts?"
"Not if you love me. Seriously, is this the kind of thing that you do for a girl whom you have been dating for eight months now?"
"I thought you'd like it."
"Well, you thought wrong," she said, glaring at him.
She stared in the opposite direction for a few minutes, then turned around. "I said you would have to kiss me good-bye. So let's kiss, and then part."
Scorpius didn't want it to end like this. He tried to protest but she put her finger to his lips.
"We kiss, and then we part. There is nothing else to it," she said.
So they kissed. And Lily went away, down the stairs to the Hufflepuff Basement.
She would not speak to him in the corridors, ignored the messages he sent her by way of third-years, and when he tried to sit at the Hufflepuff table in the Great Hall, she would get up and leave her meal untouched.
Scorpius would have been really upset about this if he hadn't had Hermione to think about. But someone had given him the password to the prefect's bathroom, and since he had heard that Hermione had been a prefect, he decided to go in there and find anything that she may have left behind, all those years ago.
He imagined being in a hammock with Hermione. Her forty-year-old hands grazing his sixteen-year-old thigh. If their genders were switched, she would be sent to Azkaban for being found in a hammock with a young girl. But her being a woman and him being a boy, there shouldn't be as stringent measures against her. Draco might try something, and Scorpius' sisters could punish him, but other than them, he and her would have nothing to worry about.
Scorpius went into the prefects' bathroom one night, using the password given to him. He took a look at the tub and the various faucets. It might be fun to try them out, but he was after something more important. Clues to Hermione's past.
Searching the bathroom, he was ready to give up. There were various objects that could have belonged to Hermione, like a toothbrush and a purse, but there was no way of verifying this. And the purse most likely belonged to one of the current prefects or the Head Girl, Altaria Yokuss.
Then Scorpius looked at a portrait on the wall, which showed a beautiful mermaid. She was waving her fin about and clapping. He thought her expression said, I know what you seek.
"Where? Where is it?" he asked.
She pointed to the side. He peered in that direction, but did not see anything there but a plastic chair. He went over there and examined the chair. There was nothing there.
"Did this chair belong to Hermione?" he asked the mermaid.
She shook her head and continued to point to the left.
"I don't know what you're trying to tell me!" Scorpius said.
The mermaid did a beckoning motion with her hand.
"What is it you want?" Scorpius demanded. He clasped both sides of the portrait and pulled.
The portrait swung open. There was a cavity in there and Scorpius reached inside to discover a jewelry box.
He started to lift the lid but hearing sounds from the portrait, he deduced that the mermaid wanted to be witness to his discovery.
Shutting her portrait, he returned to opening the jewelry box. The mermaid's squeals of delight were fairly loud, and he hoped no one would hear it through the prefects' bathroom door. He turned his gaze upon the door but thinking his fears might be groundless, he gave his attention back to the jewelry box.
A photo fell out of it. He picked it up to discover that it was Hermione's portrait from her time at school here.
She looked stunning. In the photo she was seventeen. She waved at him under a brimming smile. It looked like a party of some sort.
"She did not enjoy that party," a voice behind him said.
He turned around in fright. A ghost he had never seen before, a little girl with a rather morose face, was floating in midair.
"There's no need to look at me like that, Draco. I know it's been so long since you've visited, but you've got to remember your old pal, Moaning Myrtle."
She had him mistaken for his father. Though, if she knew Draco, she couldn't be all that dangerous.
"I'm his son," he said.
"Oh, well that's a different matter," she said. "Pleased to meet you, then. I'm Myrtle. Your father and I go way back. He used to spill his troubles to me. I'm sure he talks about me all the time with his family."
Scorpius didn't have the heart to tell her that Draco never mentioned a ghost girl he had known at Hogwarts at all. She might take it hard.
"You say Hermione didn't like the party she attended in which this photo was taken?"
"Yes. That was Slughorn's party, that was. She went with some big Quidditch wannabe or some such. She told me about it afterwards, coming in here to soak her troubles away in a bubble bath."
"Then why is she smiling in the photo?"
"It is courtesy to smile when one says 'Smile' and then snaps a picture. "
"I suppose it is," Scorpius said. He was absorbed by the picture of Hermione at an age closer to his own. He rather liked the way Hermione looked then, but he preferred her now. He wouldn't use a time-traveling device that had less complications than the Time Turners if someone offered it to him, because Hermione was desirable in her present state to him more than in her past one. He did keep the picture, however, for safe-keeping. So long as Rose or Lily or any of the Weasley cousins didn't catch it in his possession.
"How'd this picture get in the jewelry box?" Scorpius asked.
"She put it there. It was her jewelry box and after taking the bubble bath and telling me all about her troubles, she poked her head outside the bathroom door and said, 'Accio jewelry box!' It came, and she stored the photo in it. Then she did a spell on the portrait of the mermaid to open it up and place the jewelry box inside. I think she also performed a spell to create a hole to store the jewelry box in, too."
"May I keep the picture?"
"It is not up to me to say. You'd best ask Hermione."
"I think I'll take it anyway and assume permission has been given," Scorpius said.
"Be careful you don't make her angry," Myrtle said. "Hermione is not fun to be around when she's angry."
"I'll remember that," Scorpius said, heading for the door, the jewelry box in his hand. He took one last look at Moaning Myrtle, and then his eyes fell upon the portrait. The mermaid was winking at him.
He left the prefect's bathroom, so glad to have in his possession something Hermione had actually touched and owned and which contained her image within. Maybe not the image of her he had become crazy about, but still an image. It would be a treasure knowing that he had this of Hermione's, at least.
"What was it like being slapped by Hermione Weasley?" Scorpius asked his father when he went home that Easter.
"Where'd you hear about that?"
"Cilene Nott said her father told her."
"Well, the Nott family can go choke on Floo powder for all I care."
"Dad, I just want to know about Hermione Weasley."
"She wasn't married to that brat then," Draco said. "Her name was Granger."
"Were you soft on her? Is that why she slapped you?"
"Soft on her? No. We hated each other. Pansy hated her more than I, and usually it was Hermione retaliating against me for things I did or said to her friends, not anything against her. Well, I did call her "Mudblood" once or twice, but she couldn't have been upset about that. Mudbloods know how pure-bloods feel about them, so it shouldn't have bothered her to be called such."
Scorpius still didn't know what he wanted, what it was like to be slapped by Hermione. It had to be a blissful thing. He had heard a Muggle-born Ravenclaw tell her boyfriend about a movie called Gone with the Wind, in which slapping is made to seem romantic. Scorpius didn't know much about movies (wizards didn't have them; as he had heard one wizard say, "We can make magic. We don't need to watch it on a screen like the Muggles do."), but he was certain that having Hermione touch him at all, even in a hateful gesture such as a slap, would make him feel elated.
Having received no useful information from his father, he concluded that he would have to approach Rose Weasley, daughter of Hermione. She probably knew more about Hermione than any other girl he could talk to.
"Rose," he said.
"Scorpius."
"Is your mother fond of mints?"
She stared at him, eyes narrowed. "Why would you wish to know that?"
"Because I have a box of mints here from my auntie, and as I don't want them I thought you might pass them along to your mother, if she likes them."
"Mum doesn't like mints," Rose said. "Her parents are dentists, you know. But I have a soft spot for them. I don't mind taking them if you're offering."
"I just remembered. Pietre Glake's cat eats mints to regain its health, and its very ill right now so maybe I'd better give them to him."
"All right," Rose said, sighing. "Keep your bloody mints. See if I care."
She stormed off.
Scorpius' two sisters cornered him in the Slytherin common room that evening. Charybdis, who was in her seventh and final year at Hogwarts, and Scylla in her sixth.
"Our sources tell us that you've been inquiring about an older woman," Scylla said.
"So what if I have?"
"Your partner in life is Lily Potter," Charybdis said. "You cannot change that."
"I wasn't trying to. What I feel now is just a fling. It'll pass."
"It'd better," said Charybdis, putting her finger under Scorpius' chin and raising his face to meet her eye level. "Because you're not marrying anyone but Lily, and that's that."
"Lily might not want to marry me," Scorpius said.
Charybdis released her hold on him. "After you two have been so cozy together? I don't believe it."
"It's true!"
"She'll come around," Scylla said, giving him the usual kick in the shins that she delivered whenever she gave him an uplifting statement.
"Yeah, she will. She's only thirteen, after all," Charybdis said, punching him in the stomach once with each of her fists and making him feel like he had just had an internal flip-over. "So stop asking about older women, if you know what's good for you."
Scorpius saw the Headmistress in the hallway. He approached her. "Professor McGonagell, could you tell me about Hermione Weasley nee Granger's time at Hogwarts? Only, I'm doing a report for History of Magic on former Hogwarts students, and I need some direction about where to look for information."
"I'm not sure Professor Binns would approve of you choosing so recent students for your report, Mr. Malfoy. But the best place to seek out information is the library."
"Would there be mention of her in any of the books there?"
"You'd be hard-pressed to find a respectable library that does not include information on Hermione Weasley, as she was with Harry Potter through most of his adventures, and Harry Potter is the most written about living wizard."
"Well, that's certainly what I needed to know. Thanks a lot, Professor!"
As he went down the hallway, she called after him, "And she would certainly approve of you doing research on her in the library, as that was her favorite venue while she was a student here at Hogwarts."
Scorpius hoped that by this statement, she did not mean to suggest that she knew what he was really after. Or at least that the Headmistress wouldn't put a stop to it if she did know.
He sprinted to the library. The idea that he could read about his darling had never occurred to him before.