Chapter The First
The Calm Before

The lakelight sent a cascade of hazy shivers across his parchment; blues and greens, a tide of aquatic shimmers that cast everything in his particular corner of the common room with slabs of narcotic color. He smoothed his hands across the book, crossing out another notation on his parchment with a terse little flick.

The entire mahogany monstrosity rocked as Danton Zabini slammed into the edge of the desk with a mortar and pestle, scattering an assortments of dried plants that left flecks across Scorpius' notes. His cauldron followed, upended, presumably containing something wriggling between it and the parchment below.

Scorpius didn't look up.

"You were kicked out of the potions classroom again."

Danton snorted, and placed a bottle and two glasses down with more care than the rest of the lot.

"Scotch." It wasn't an offer, and Scorpius didn't accept, but Zabini poured them each a glass anyway. "It's been a bugger of a day, ending with - you guessed it - the final insult in a calamitous week. Yes, Malfoy. My particular breed of mad genius isn't regarded favorably by Professor Baker. It is 'irresponsible and quite possibly dangerous' to create experimental potions on school grounds. As if the glut of people we're expecting tomorrow night care about reading a bloody warning label."

He fell into his chair, his legs splaying under the table.

"She docked me fifty points. It was all I could do to preserve a few drops of the potion I was working on before she threw me out of the lab too." He huffed. Scorpius looked up through his fringe, his quill hovering, expecting further damages to his perfect penmanship.

"Alas, with this the last eve to observe our solemnities, I must prepare," Danton continued. "The work does not end because some fool teacher things that the fumes off my latest concoction are hallucinogenic. 'That's the point!' I told her. Do you think she bloody well cares that my great work is to enable every seventh-year student the possibility of temporary disassociation and euphoria with no ill-effects the day after? Hardly."

"You couldn't just order a crate of Firewhiskey for everyone?"

Danton pinched the bridge of his nose. "I didn't hear that."

"That must be a coincidence. I'm pretending that I didn't hear a word of what you've been rambling about since you waltzed in here."

"Party, Malfoy. Party tomorrow." He drove the reminder home by bumping Scorpius' drink towards him. "It's the end of term. The end of seven years hard toil in these hallowed walls, and now it's time for the best and brightest of our year to venture forth into the world and make something of our family fortunes rather than doing something productive with ourselves."

Scorpius made a noise in agreement, and plucked up his glass. "Right." He lifted it in toast, and added drily, "To inheritance and familial expectation."

Danton threw his head back, barking a laugh that shocked the third years on the opposite side of the common room; they sat in a cluster, studying furiously for their O. . One of them yipped, startled by the sound.

"That's not homework," Danton commented, gesturing with his glass before he drained it. "I've seen that book before. It weighs about eighty kilos and I'm fairly certain that I've seen your name scrawled on the catalogue card at least twice a year for the duration we've been here."

The title on the spine read Great Wizarding Families of Britain: True Origins of the Sacred Twenty Eight.

"You're not going to give up, are you? We have a handful of moments left at this school to be brazenly self-indulgent and you're squandering your time on petty rivalry."

"There must be something," he said, staring at a page he'd read several times over. "Some inconsistency; some loophole that I've missed. The chapter on the Weasleys documents their lineage until the 1930's, then things get a bit wooly. There's an entire annex that refutes the lot of it - claiming there's some muggle blood in the mix, but no birth certificates to verify it." He stretched. "Her mother's muggle born. The Grangers are no help. I checked her astrological charts and went through the family tree anyway."

"Looking for what, exactly?"

He lifted a shoulder. "Leverage? Something to even out the playing field?"

Danton snorted. "Normal people duel, you know. They hex each other until they're blue in the face and they've won back their pride, or the other person ends up dead. Or they shag. They shag a lot, Scorpius." He raised both eyebrows as if accusing him of the contrary. Scorpius ignored the implication.

"Father wouldn't have that. He made some sort of truce when he was a boy and mother swears on her last breath that he'll not tell me the particulars until they're both gone and maybe not even then." He clapped the tome shut with a waft of dust and the hearty sound of pages sucking their secrets back between them. "I think he's afraid that I'll cover their portraits and store them in the cellar. She'd never be able to nag me again."

"You took Muggle Studies," Danton reminded him, aghast. "Wasn't that enough to shut them up?"

He shrugged. "It was interesting. If anything Muggle Studies was encouraging - their legends are fantastic."

"Go on." Danton refilled their glasses.

Scorpius slid the book to the side, tilting the crystal glass so it caught the reflections from the windows and cast rainbows onto the table.

"Every hero in every mythology in Muggle culture has a weakness," he began. "Achilles had a spot in his heel. Hercules couldn't cut his hair. Superman couldn't be near kryptonite -"

Danton rolled his eyes. "But what does this all have to do with Weasley?"

Scorpius took a sip, enjoying the smokey flavor. It was a good drink. "There's no sense parrying with the enemy if you don't understand what makes her tick. You'll lose every time."

Scorpius sat back in his chair, the shadows folding his features into something deeper where the light failed to catch his expression. Still, he smirked broadly enough that Danton caught the smile.

"You've matched her academically. You've drawn in several Quidditch matches against her, and the last duel -" he chuckled, "the last duel is still being written about on the walls of the library carrels. I think there are pictograms of it, in fact."

Zabini set about arranging his mortar and pestle, then stopped, his hands hovering.

"Every hero has a weakness," Scorpius repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"You took Muggle Studies because of her, didn't you?" Zabini demanded.

Scorpius lifted a shoulder, indolent. "What would you do to gain the advantage?"

He scrubbed a hand over his head, loosened his tie, shucked his robes off and yanked his chair forward.

"Lie, cheat, steal, maim," he said matter-of-factly. "Then disapparate."

"Thank Merlin we're not directly related. I'll direct any future letters to your cell in Azkaban, shall I?"

Danton beamed. "Since you've already accepted that my deviance will be my downfall, does that mean you'd like to assist me in the creation of perfection this evening, kind sir? I'm convinced there's a market for it. RSVPs have been flooding in by owl; we'll have a good portion of all the houses down here after the Prefects finish their rounds."

"If you poison anyone with that, they will send the Aurors after you. Maybe even Harry Potter himself." He looked down his nose at the herbs Danton ripped apart - a collection of small portions of foxglove and hyssop and bay laurel. A hint of atropine belladonna - but only a dash. Danton offered him the pestle.

A knock echoed through the common room. Someone either forgot the password, or someone was outside who didn't have it. Scorpius figured the latter.

"As it stands, I have another engagement this evening. He might help you, though." Scorpius stood, eyeing him. "Just promise me you won't make him mix anything with his hands. You laid him up in the hospital wing for a week the last time because bits of opium got under his nails."

"What 'engagement'?" demanded Danton. "Honestly, Malfoy?"

"Further studies of a particular nature," he murmured, brushing aside a first year as he approached the stone door. He trailed his wand against it, peeling away the locking charms, and let the stones slide away to reveal the gloom of the dungeon beyond.

Standing in the alcove, looking mussed and a little out of place in Gryffindor red, but definitely no less comfortable for it, Albus Potter grinned beneath the warm glow of his lighting charms.

"Malfoy." He nodded in greeting, and Scorpius waved him inside.

"Zabini," he called. "Get another glass. Potter's finally here."