A/N: So, lots of unsolicited drama in this chapter, for which I apologise. Also, more than a few Muggle references, because I currently live in my tiny basement hellhole of an apartment with nothing to do but lurk on the geeky parts of the internet. Kudos to anyone who noticed the Doctor Who reference in the previous chapter. Anyway, this is one of the last chapters. At most, there might be ten chapters, but that would be stretching it. There might only be nine. Nine's a good number. I'll go for that. Much love to anyone still reading.
Chapter title is from the Bob Dylan song, and bears absolutely no relevance to the story. Well, maybe metaphorically.
Chapter Seven - Tangled Up in Blue
We discovered to our collective annoyance that Professor Longbottom liked to whistle and hum to himself while he graded essays. Em tried to remedy the problem by turning on the wireless, but then he only sang along under his breath.
"A right joy you must've been when you were in school," Al muttered under his breath, pruning the venomous tentacula. It was vehemently opposed to this action and took every opportunity to wallop Al in the head.
"Your father never had any problem with it," Professor Longbottom retorted without missing a beat.
The rest of us exchanged looks.
"That sounded much worse than it was intended to," Professor Longbottom said. "What I meant was we all shared a dormitory in school. Rose's father as well."
The lot of us kept staring at him in equal parts repulsion and amusement.
"Oh for Merlin's sake, Al, I'm your godfather," Professor Longbottom insisted. "You knew what I meant."
"Yeah, and Jake Gyllenhaal was the godfather to Heath Ledger's kid and we all know how that one went," Dylan piped up.
"Who are you talking about?" I asked.
Dylan looked scandalised that I didn't know and turned to Al as though he was going to ask for his support in whatever it was. Al looked very much like he wanted to give that support, but remembered at the last moment that he was not on genial terms with Dylan and went back to pruning the plant.
"They're Muggle actors," Dylan explained.
"Okay, so what?" Rose asked.
"They were in a film together where they played gay lovers and after the film was over one of them named the other the godfather to his kid," Dylan explained.
"Naturally," Em said.
"So you're implying that by virtue of the fact that Professor Longbottom is Al's godfather, he got kinky with the Chosen One back in the day?" Will summarised.
"Yeah," Dylan agreed.
"You lot do realise I'm sitting right here, don't you?" Professor Longbottom asked.
"What are you going to do?" Will asked. "We're already in detention."
Professor Longbottom opened his mouth to argue and then realised he didn't have a good comeback.
"James's godfather is my uncle Ron," Al said. "So what would that mean in your world interpretation?"
The three of us who had grown up in the Wizarding world (who didn't happen to be Weasleys) exchanged amused looks.
"Seriously?" I asked. "The Wizarding community has been speculating on that shit for years."
"I'm sorry, what?" Rose demanded.
"Yeah, I mean Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger disappeared for almost a full calendar year except for when they popped up to rob Gringotts, who's to say they weren't having some earth-shattering paragon sex the whole time?" Em asked.
Rose looked honestly scandalised by this information.
"Is that really what people think about our parents?" Al asked, blinking at the three of us.
Will, Em, and I nodded apologetically.
"Also that they saved the world, so they're willing to turn a blind eye to whatever else they may or may not have done," I said.
"Or who," Will piped up.
"Although, keep in mind, it is our families saying this," Em added.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Rose asked, still looking embarrassed for her parents' reputations. I thought it was surprisingly human of her.
"Well, our parents sort of loathe yours," I said, gesturing at Em and myself.
"And mine both dated Al's," Will replied. "They're a bit biased towards bad opinions."
Rose and Al seemed to accept this as logical and went back to their gardening. Somehow, I had got stuck filling out requisition forms for certain plants.
"Professor, why are you ordering more bulbs for Carroll's Flower?" I asked, giving him a sketchy look.
"Which one is Carroll's Flower?" Will asked, taking issue with the fanged geranium he was supposed to be watering.
"Jabberwocky Juice," Sam and I replied in bitter unison.
"I'm ordering more, Mr Malfoy, because it is a lovely flower when one does not stab it with a stick and ingest its sap," Professor Longbottom said.
"Does Jabberwocky Juice fetch a good price on the black market?" Em asked.
The rest of us stared at her.
"Why?" Professor Longbottom asked. He sounded concerned.
"Just curious," Em said, shrugging innocently.
"It goes for a fair price," Professor Longbottom said. "Or so I've been told by my miscreant son."
"Ah, has he actually turned to drug trafficking then?" Al asked.
"Of course not," Professor Longbottom insisted.
We waited while he turned progressively redder.
"He just…grows them. Oh for the love of Merlin, go away the lot of you," he said, shooing us from the greenhouse. "Consider your detention served until you lot find Hufflepuff's tomb and have to do it again. Just go away. Please."
"Yes sir," we chorused, running from the greenhouse before he could change his mind.
We reached the entryway of the castle and promptly lost Em to the Slytherin dormitories. The rest of us continued up the stairs, even Dylan, who should have been on his way to the Hufflepuff dormitories. Will and Sam bid us goodnight at the fifth floor and the four of us carried on to the portrait hole.
"What are you still doing here?" Al demanded when we were within view of the Gryffindor dormitories.
"I just-" Dylan stammered, staring at Al imploringly.
"You just what?" Al asked, crossing his arms and glaring at his ex-boyfriend. Rose and I edged away as quietly as we could.
"I just wanted to say I was sorry," Dylan said, looking like he severely regretted his decision to do so.
"No you're not," Al replied. "And this would be a lot easier if we both stopped pretending there was any universe where you might want me back."
Dylan stared at him for a long moment. "Fine," he said in a strangled tone. "Fine. See you all tomorrow."
He turned and ran down the stairs as fast as he could and disappeared into the dark bowels of the castle.
Rose and I exchanged worried looks while Al stomped up to the portrait hole and growled the password. He didn't say goodnight to Rose (or to me, but I lived with him so I wasn't particularly bothered) and continued up to our room.
"I've got it," I said before Rose could offer to comfort him.
"Right then," she replied. "G'night, Blondie."
I nodded once in recognition and walked into the seventh year boys' dormitory. Al was lying face down on his bed looking very much like he was trying to smother himself with his pillow.
"Scorpius, may I please have a drink?" he asked.
"No," I said, shoving his feet sideways and sitting at the foot of his bed. He groaned and sat up, looking depressed.
"What's going to happen to us after we finish school?" he asked. "We've only got two months left. What happens then?"
"Using all my psychic abilities?" I asked, trying to be less of an acerbic bastard than normal. I had grown accustomed to having friends over the past two years, but I was still painfully aware of what it felt like to not have them.
"Sure," he said. "According to the great seer Scorpius Malfoy, where will we all be in five years?"
I thought about it. "Well, clearly, Will and Sam will have managed some fantastical charm/transfiguration knowledge that will grant them excess sums of money and they'll never have to work again. Em and Will are going to be married and probably accidentally parents. Erm…you'll be a healer for St Mungo's, Rose'll have her own night club, and I'll be a journalist for the Prophet."
Al nodded slowly. "What about Dylan?"
He didn't wince when he said Dylan's name, so I took that to be a good sign.
"Erm…he'll be a photographer for the Prophet," I said.
Al considered my predictions for a moment. "And if you throw reality into that whole situation?"
"Oh, we'll all be running a pygmy puff breeding facility," I said. He snorted a laugh, which had been my intention.
"You don't really have to do anything to get them to breed though," Al pointed out while a small fleet of splendidly navy puffs rolled through the room squeaking. Our roommates threw pillows in their direction sleepily and then fell back to sleep immediately.
"Well, really, we'd just be providing them with chocolate buttons," I amended.
At the mention of chocolate buttons, the pygmy puffs stopped dead in the middle of the room and squeaked at me. I jumped off Al's bed and dug through my bedside table for the ungodly amount of chocolate buttons I kept in supply at all times and offered them a handful. They took them, momentarily swarmed my feet in a sign of affection, and then disappeared through a crack in the wall.
"Scorpius Malfoy, the pygmy puff whisperer," Al announced dramatically. I raised my eyebrow at him. "Or fetishist. I can't decide."
"Oh piss off," I said, putting the buttons back in my drawer and getting ready for bed.
"Never," Al replied, drawing the curtains around his bed.
I rolled my eyes and went to sleep.
OOooOOooOOooOO
"Because nothing says fun like tromping through the Forbidden Forest on a Saturday looking for a dead person's tomb," Al grumbled.
"You're just bitter because we're looking for Hufflepuff's instead of Gryffindor's," Dylan snapped, shining his torch through the underbrush. It was midday and almost pitch black.
"I suppose this is why they call it the Black Forest then," Em guessed, shining her own torch around.
"How are we even supposed to find it?" Will asked.
"Badger senses," Rose replied, smiling sweetly at Dylan who grumbled in response.
"Badger senses?" Sam asked, seeming to think she was serious.
"Because he's a Hufflepuff," I explained, kicking at a shrub.
"Oh," Sam said slowly as though suddenly Enlightened. "This is stupid."
He waved his wand and a ball of light shot out of it. It floated above our heads and illuminated the forest around us. Sheepishly, we extinguished our torches and put them back in our various bags. Even Rose had deigned to wear reasonable clothing instead of a short skirt or short dress. Granted, her jeans were skin tight and she might have needed to charm herself into them, but they did cover all her skin.
"Alright, so say you're Helga Hufflepuff and you decide that your house sigil is going to be a badger," Will prompted. "Where do you bury yourself?"
"In a badger's den," Sam replied. "Clearly. Except we're about to be very lost in a very large forest that our Marauder friends never thought to map."
I dug the Marauder's Map out of my rucksack and tapped it with my wand. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," I muttered.
A spider's web of lines spread across the ancient parchment. Where it said Forbidden Forest, there was only a mass of trees.
"That's really unhelpful," I said.
Al was frowning at the map. "But it shouldn't be," he said.
"What do you mean?" Dylan asked.
"My granddad Potter, the one who made the map, the lot of the Marauders tended to morph into various creatures and rampage around this forest once a month," Al explained. "They would've known the forest better than most."
Sam snatched the map out of my hands and waved his wand over it. A confused look crossed his face.
"I think there's more to the map than we can see. At least in the forest part," he said.
"And if any of us were Animagi, that would actually be helpful information," Rose replied, looking annoyed.
I glanced at Will. There had been rumours at one point, but it had never been explicitly confirmed. However, I was about 98% sure that Will was an Animagus.
"Erm…" Will scratched the back of his neck looking awkward and then suddenly he was a large, dark brown Labrador retriever.
"What the fuck?" Rose demanded, looking caught between scandalised and impressed.
Will the dog shrugged one doggy shoulder and then his nose started twitching. He sniffed the Marauder's Map and then the air around us and then took off running through the underbrush. The floating ball of light followed him and the rest of us had to sprint to keep up. It was easy for Will on four paws to navigate the death trap of roots and vines and shrubbery and small, irritated forest creatures, but the rest of us kept stumbling.
Finally, Will let out a bark and stopped dead in front of a cave. It went straight into the side of a small hillock.
"Oh goody, we're in the Shire," Dylan muttered.
"The what?" Rose, Al, Em, and I chorused.
"I know that one!" Sam exclaimed, looking excited. "I actually understand that reference!"
"You are Muggleborn," Dylan reminded him with a shrug. "I'd be a bit concerned if you didn't."
"I'm pretty sure this is the right place," Will said, turning back into a human. "That map is scent coded, by the way. They must've had a dog in their pack of Marauders."
"Sirius Black," Al said. "And technically Remus Lupin was a wolf."
When the rest of us gave him blank stares, he sighed.
"Padfoot and Moony on the map," he explained.
"Oh," we said, looking back at the cave.
"So I suppose there's nothing else for it," Dylan said, taking a step forward. Al grabbed his arm before he could. "What?"
"You have no idea what's in there," Al said. He realised he was holding Dylan's arm and let go like his hands were burned.
"Then let's find out," Dylan suggested, ducking into the cave. With trepidation, the rest of us followed him.
Inside, it was humid and smelled like one of Professor Longbottom's greenhouses.
"Well that's nice and gross then," Em said, taking only shallow breaths.
"You knew Will was an Animagus, didn't you?" I asked. The tunnel we were in sloped downwards and wound its way farther into the earth.
"I did," Em agreed.
"I'm the first Animagus under the age of thirty five since the blokes who wrote our map," Will announced proudly.
"Aren't you a special little cupcake?" Rose asked.
Will didn't answer.
As Rose and I rounded the bend in the tunnel, Will was gone. The tunnel kept going straight ahead and Will was nowhere to be seen.
"Will?" I asked.
Behind us, there was a stifled gasp that sounded like Em. I whirled around, but she was nowhere to be seen either.
"Guys, down here!" Dylan called from far ahead of us.
Rose and I glanced at each other and in the process, noticed the absence of Sam. She grabbed my hand and dragged me forward. I saw the back of Al's head, and then a vine grabbed me around the ankle, wrapped itself quickly around my legs, and bound me firmly to Rose before it pulled the two of us up into the ceiling. I tried to call out and maybe get Al to free us, but a vine found its way into my mouth and seemed to have no intention of moving.
While the vines dragged the two of us away from Hufflepuff's grave, it forced our limbs into awkward shapes and tucked my arms in between the two of us. I glared non-specifically at whichever vengeful deity was responsible for my current predicament, and we were pulled into what felt like a badger hole.
"Blondie, your hands are on my tits," Rose informed me.
Mercifully, the vine that had been gagging me disappeared.
"I realise that, thanks," I said. "Given the option, they would never be anywhere near your tits."
Rose raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow at me. "You could be less excited about it."
To my utter chagrin, I turned red. I could only hope she couldn't really see it in the dim wandlight that illuminated our badger tunnel.
"Trust me, it's not personal," I grumbled, wishing the vines would untangle us so I could do something besides grope Rose against my free will.
We let the vines drag us through in silence, giving up on attempting to break free, and then suddenly, they deposited us in the forest.
The moment the vines were off us, I scrambled away from her and did my best to maintain what dignity I could.
"Why don't you like me?" Rose asked, dusting herself off. We were both completely covered in dirt.
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "You don't like me."
She looked honestly confused by my statement. "We're friends, aren't we?"
"Well, sure," I said. "But-"
"What about the fact we're friends makes you think I don't like you?" she demanded. "Do you know how few people I actually consider to be my friend?"
"Roughly six?" I guessed.
"Roughly," she agreed. She bristled. "And for whatever stupid reason, you rank slightly higher than McGeek and Whateverthefuckhisnameis."
"Speaking of Sam and Will, do you suppose they're okay?" I asked, mildly unnerved by Rose's sudden profession of honest friendship. I had been under the impression we were friends by virtue of the fact we shared all our mutual friends, not because she actually liked me as a person.
"We're fine," Em called from around the next copse of trees. The three of them stumbled into view just as covered in dirt as we were. "I take it the vines dragged you two out as well?"
"Yeah," Rose agreed. "Anyone seen Al or Dylan?"
"No," Will said, looking annoyed by the vine-burrow circumstance.
"Why do you suppose it hasn't chucked them out?" I asked.
"Well, Hufflepuff is all about acceptance, right?" Sam replied. "And the five of us all have some sort of prejudices we hold very close to ourselves and can't let go of. Maybe Al doesn't, and maybe she has to let Dylan approach because he's, well, a Hufflepuff."
"I don't have some prejudice I hold close," Em said, looking uncomfortable.
Sam cocked his head sideways, much like a dog. "Even though you're part of them, you can't stand any of the Slytherin house. Will and Scorpius both hold anyone who's worse at something than they are in utter contempt-"
"I do not!" Will and I insisted in perfect unison.
Sam ignored us. "Rose would willingly murder anyone who did something passive-aggressive at her, and I can't stand liars, so…"
"You're saying we're not worthy to find Hufflepuff's grave?" I asked, refusing to admit that he had been right about my worse nature.
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Together, we're cunning enough to find Slytherin's grave, and we're all smart enough to find Ravenclaw's, but my guess is we have to be honestly good people to find Hufflepuff's, and let's be honest, we're not."
We shuffled our feet awkwardly and stared at our dirt covered selves in minor shame.
"You know, Sam?" Will asked after a long moment.
"What?" Sam asked, looking innocent. The only reason none of us had shouted at him and accused him of slander was because it was Sam. He didn't know how to lie, had rather poor filters, and tended to be a genuine human being who wouldn't say anything unless it was absolutely true.
"I think I liked you better when we didn't have other friends," Will said.
"When you didn't have other friends, you weren't getting laid with regularity," Rose pointed out. "So I'm going to guess that's bullshit."
Will considered for a moment. "Fair enough. Does it occur to anyone else that we managed to leave Al and Dylan alone together down there?"
Review!
Also, totally irrelevantly, I happened across the totally random internet pairing of Princess Merida from Brave and Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon and have come to the conclusion that this is the most adorable thing ever. That is all.