Hello, living organisms with access to the Internet! How are you today? I'm doing great, thanks for asking.

Thanks to Triple Insanity for reviewing the last chapter!

Here's the next chapter!

It was pretty amazing how Scorp bounced back after everything. We quickly became the best of friends, and I even managed to get most of the student body to stop antagonizing him so much. The only people who gave him crap were the Slytherins and James. I figure they're lost causes.

Two months after Scorpius left the Hospital Wing, I was sitting with Rose. We were talking about our Defense teacher, Professor Thomas. He's a good friend of Mum and Dad's, and the other students always ask him for stories about Rose's and my parents. He was very hands on, and he got special permission from the School Board to show us the Unforgivables on a fly. Dad wasn't too happy about that. He wrote in his last letter that he'd had a crazy Defense teacher his fourth year who'd given a similar lesson. He didn't think that it was such a good idea, but he'd been outvoted.

"I think it's going to be really cool, but I don't know if I really want to watch Professor Thomas torture the poor bug." Rose was always a bleeding heart like that. There was a lull in the conversation. I never knew how to respond to comments like that.

"I've been thinking Rosie. What's Scorpius going to do during Christmas? He can't go back to his father, can he?"

"He could come to our Christmas. Grandma Molly would love to have a new kid to coddle." I chuckled at that.

"Do you think he'd want to? I mean, our family is kind of weird, and James would be there and…" She cut me off with a hand.

"I think he'd love it." The question was, would we be allowed to bring him home?

I went to the Hospital Wing, thinking about how much things had changed. Until this year, I had tried as hard as I could to stay away from where my Mum worked. I never wanted to see her at school, and I was always really embarrased when I had to. After everything that happened with Scorpius, I started spending a lot of my free time there. I guess after everything I'd seen, I learned to appreciate having my Mum around, even when she embarrassed me. But this time, my visit wasn't just to say hello.

"Hey, Al. How are you?" Mum rushed over to me as soon as I walked in and pulled me into a hug.

"I'm great, Mum. How are you?" I decided that I should get on her good side before I asked anything big.

"What do you want, Albus? You're never that polite to me." I rolled my eyes. Of course Mum would see through everything.

"I was just wondering…" I paused, thinking about how to word my question, "Could Scorpius possibly spend Christmas with us? I mean he shouldn't have to go back to his father's house. It's not safe for him there."

"I think that's a wonderful idea, honey. You should talk to James and Lily about it first, though. Okay?" That could be a problem. James still hates Scorpius' guts.

"Okay Mum. I will." Wish me luck.

I found James and Lily in the common room. They were playing Exploding Snap, and Lily, as usual, was dominating the game.

"Hey, I have a question to ask both of you." They both looked up with matching expressions that read "This better be important."

"What is it?" Lily asked politely, but she clearly just wanted to get back to her game.

"Would it be okay with you two if Scorpius came over for Christmas? 'Cause I'm going to ask him tomorrow." The reactions I got were extremely different. James' face went from disgusted to amused.

"So what? You're going to bring your Death-Eater boyfriend into our house? What would Mum and Dad think?" Lily's eyes grew wide at the word boyfriend, as if she'd been caught.

"They're fine with it Jamesy," I retorted.

"Well, I think it's a great idea," Lily announced, her face as red as her hair. I would have to ask her about it later, but it occurred to me that she'd been going red like that lately when Scorpius came up in conversation. She caught me staring at her and ran off. I knew I'd embarrassed her, but I had the right to do that to my little sister, right?

"So, Al, what are you gonna do to your little boyfriend? Or is he going to Mark you?"

"Don't even joke about that, James. It's really not funny." James didn't seem to understand that it wasn't okay for the son of Harry Potter to make jokes about the Wizarding Wars. Maybe other kids could once in a while, but we were sort of the poster children for how good everything got after the war, and we couldn't afford to be intolerant like that.

"You only think that because it's true." I wanted to hex James into next week, but I kept my cool.

"James, it's really not okay to call Scorpius a Death Eater. He's proven that he's not like his family. He's a Ravenclaw for Merlin's sake! If that's not proof that he isn't a regular Malfoy, I don't know what is."

I stormed off to my dormitory, trying to figure out how to invite Scorpius over without seeming overly concerned. He's been trying to get over it, and in his words, "I don't need you and your Mum treating me like I'm about to break." I hoped that he would say yes. I really needed an ally at Christmastime, especially with James acting the way he had been.