When Scorpius was a small boy, his father gave him a lecture on tradition. "Never forget that you are a Malfoy," he said. "You come from one of the oldest and proudest wizarding families. It is important that you should uphold the Malfoy name, especially when you go to Hogwarts. Recently, there have been a lot of rumours about our family, about what we did or did not do in the War – all of them untrue. Scorpius, you must not listen to people who say that, they are trying to dishonour our family. You should be proud of who you are and where you come from."
It was an impressive lecture, but meant very little to the boy at the time. His world was composed of his family and his parents friends, who were all from equally respectable wizarding backgrounds. The idea of someone disliking him just because of his name seemed remote and slightly ridiculous; surely you disliked someone because of mean things they said or did to you? He supposed it was a special grown-up problem that was too complicated to understand. He tried asking his father what sort of rumours exactly were people saying, but his father was irritatingly vague and in the end Scorpius gave up.
People at Hogwarts can't dislike me before they've actually met me, he reasoned, it wouldn't make any sense. It would just be silly, right?
He was about to get a big wake-up call.
"Oi Rose, wait up!"
"Catch me if you can," laughed Rose as she pushed her trolley through the carriage door. She glanced back at her cousin and giggled again. Albus was walking incredibly slowly so as not to upset the owl cage balanced precariously on his trolley. With each jolt of the train he had to grab on to the cage to stop it from falling.
"I don't know why we couldn't just stay in the last carriage," he moaned.
"Because there were scary Slytherin 6th years in there, obviously. Why don't we go in here," she added, peering through the window of the next carriage. There was only one person in there, the thin boy with blond hair who her dad had pointed out at the station. He didn't look very happy.
"Empty carriage?" came Albus's voice as he finally caught up with her.
"Not quite," she said, pushing the door open. The boy looked up at once.
Albus did an automatic double take at the sight of him, and although he tried to hide it, Rose could tell from the boy's expression that he had noticed.
"Hi," she said, as brightly as she could. "Are you a first year too? I'm Rose and this is my cousin Al."
"I'm Scorpius," said the boy hesitantly. "Scorpius…Malfoy."
"Nice to meet you," said Rose. She wished Albus would help her to fill the silence, but he just stood there unhelpfully. "Come on Al, let's sit down" she said, hoping he wouldn't just refuse and walk off, but to her relief he obeyed.
"Do you like Quidditch?" she asked Scorpius. In actual fact Rose had absolutely no interest in the sport, but she knew Al was a fanatical supporter.
"Oh yeah, definitely!" he said, and for the first time a smile crossed his face. Rose was amazed at how it transformed him. His whole face seemed to light up. "My favourite team is the Chudley Cannons, what's yours?"
"Umm…" Rose hesitated, trying to remember the name of one of the teams. But Al stepped in straightaway.
"Same!" he said eagerly. "I went to all their matches last year, even the one where they got beaten 500-0!"
"Wow!" said Scorpius, "that must have been amazing!"
And they were off, discussing the different teams and debating who would win what. It was incredible, Rose reflected, how boys whose entire families hated each other, could forget all their differences, just because of some stupid game. For Rose was well aware of what her family thought about the Malfoys. Her parents had told her about the war that had happened nineteen years ago, and the part that the Malfoys had played. Although, as her mother had told her, the Malfoys had been punished horribly by Voldemort, there was still no getting away from the fact, as her dad had reminded her, that they had been on the evil side.
But that doesn't mean that Scorpius is on the evil side too, she thought.