You know the drill, review, follow, favorite.

So many new followers and reviewers and, er, favorit...ers? I'm really happy to know that you guys have been enjoying Witch Slap! I got some really amazing reviews from new readers too, and they really blew my mind!

Apparently I owe y'all an apology. I had been oh-so-good at posting on a weekly basis that I decided "yup, we can schedule posting, I got this"... and then I remembered that I was going on vacation and whoops, I didn't have a chapter buffer built yet. Now that I'm back, with a little bit of luck it won't happen again! :D

I thought I'd post this ASAP (mostly because it's really late), but the schedule will resume next week!

I'd like to thank The Chirpy Bitch once again (we love her, you guys). She is the one keeping this show on the road, whipping this chapter into shape!

December 7th, 2027

It was not the first time that Albus Potter, Coward Extraordinaire had sought refuge at Alastair Yardley's Humble Abode. It was also not the first time - and Scorpius suspected, it wouldn't be the last one either - that Scorp had found himself in the awkward position of having to remove him from the premises.

He usually did so grudgingly and at Yardley's behest.

Now let us be clear about something: Scorpius Malfoy did not consider Alistair Yardley a friend (at least not in the traditional sense). They were friends-in-law. Throughout their Hogwarts years they had shared an affinity based on the common burden of being part of the innermost circle of Al's friends and acquaintances.

After a couple of years, the pair had resigned to the fact that the other wasn't going to magically disappear any time soon.

It had bred a kinship of sorts.

The first of his barrage texts had read: "Come collect your husband, he's starting to get on my nerves."

It had elicited a derisive snort from the blond boy. If Albus wanted to camp out at Yardley's, that was Yardley's problem.

Not his.

Then, a day later, had come: "Your best friend SHAVED in my bathtub. I'm not sure WHAT he shaved. Come get him before I attempt an Unforgivable on myself."

Scorpius had read it in-between practice and his lips had curled upwards right before he had set the Magi-Tech on silencio and gone back to chucking iron at people.

(In fairness, Yardley had always been a drama queen.)

The third and final text was more to the point. "I'll throw in all the butterbeer you can drink if you come get him in the next hour, final offer."

Yardley's wish was Scorp's command. On a regular basis the blond Beater might treat his body as a temple... but in his personal time, free butterbeer was free butterbeer. He wasn't made of money and Yardley wasn't the sort to skimp on quality.

It was therefore against his very beliefs to refuse free beer - just as it was against Yardley's to buy anything worse than Emmerson's Golden.

That explained how he now found himself in front of Yardley's Humble Abode on a Wednesday at 9 o'clock in the evening.

(In his mind, Scorpius always capitalized it because "humble abode" or "Yardley's place" couldn't possibly do it justice.)

(There was absolutely nothing humble about Yardley's Place.)

"I'm here for Alistair Yardley. He's expecting me."

The doorman, Horace, had known him for years and yet he always contrived to look at Scorpius as if he were the unsavoury genetic offspring of gum on the sole of one's shoe and a rodent carrying some distasteful venereal disease.

Lucius Malfoy would have liked him immensely.

Yardley's mum had owned a company that managed magical hazardous waste that still held an outrageous percentage of the market. She had died in an unfortunate accident involving said magical hazardous waste and a firecracker when Yardley was still at Hogwarts.

It had been then that the fourteen year old had come into his… "independence", as he called it.

From what little math Scorp had done over the years, based on his friend's… er… pecuniary habits, Yardley's independence was closer to the gross domestic product of a small African country than to a modest pension.

He stood outside the gilded doors of Yardley's Place until the floppy haired tosser decided to open the doors. "I think I have something of yours," he grinned, tugging his unruly hair with his fingers.

Yardley's hair always looked as if it had survived a hurricane. He suspected Alistair spent quite a lot of time in front of the mirror every morning trying to achieve that particular look.

"Where is the bloody wanker?"

Yardley leaned against the doorframe and spoke loudly, much too loudly for any naturally occurring conversation. "Why Malfoy, what a curious coincidence!"

Scorp couldn't help meeting Yardley's enormous grin. His idiocy was the sort that was eager to breed.

It was contagious.

"I was in the neighbourhood and decided to pop up for a beer."

"I was not expecting you at all!"

"Where is he, Yards?"

"In the kitchen," Yardley whispered in a conspiratorial tone, motioning for him to come in. He then raised his voice and shouted: "It's simply delightful to see you! Oh my, have you been exercising?!" He wrapped an arm around Scorpius' shoulder and continued in a sotto voice, dragging him along: "Making himself at home, the wanker."

Albus was the sort of person who could make himself at home in a bloody minefield. After three days, Scorp would be more surprised if Al weren't wearing Yardley's briefs.

He took a few steps into Yardley's lobby and gave the place a once over. "Did you get robbed or something?" The house looked different from the last time he'd come here to get Al.

Emptier.

"Redecorated," Yardley corrected. "Ex-girlfriend was into minimalism," He waved a dismissive hand around and herded him toward the kitchen. "And rock climbing. Tough couple of months."

Always had been nonchalant about worldly possessions, Yardley. The couch on the lobby probably cost more than the entire furniture in their flat, but to Yardley it was just a thing.

His living room had the square footage of an olympic swimming pool and yet the bloke always hung out in the kitchen. The man had three empty bedrooms and two bathrooms permanently locked shut because they, and he quoted, "made the house feel too big".

"She wanted everything gray and white, it was ridiculous -"

Scorpius' mind tuned out Yardley's droning and treacherously drifted to the Magpie's offer as it had so often in the past three days. He'd carefully folded the paper and stuck it into his wallet. He still wasn't going to take it and yet his brain kept wandering to the number on the paper.

"Super into nature and exercise. Did I mention the rock climbing? It was bloody awful, she insisted I-"

Those zeroes could have been translated into a series of very expensive couches of his own. And brooms. And Rose could have pestered him about saving 10%, even 15%, and it wouldn't have made a significant dent in the ridiculous amount.

"And the food, don't get me started on the food! It was all green-"

But no, he had to have principles.

"- no protein! I got used to the furniture after a while, it's kind of feng shui-"

"Oh, can it, Yardley."

"That's just hurtful, Scorp my boy. I thought we were bonding."

A voice sounded from the kitchen: "Is that Scorpius Malfoy I hear?"

Yardley walked into the kitchen and went straight for the fridge. "In the flesh." There was a sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge smile on his face as he opened the door and turned to ask: "Butterbeer?"

"Sure thing, Yards."

The first of many, one would hope.

"Good to see you Scorp!" Albus straightened himself up, gracing him with a smile that expressed very little guilt for having absconded him in a full body bind. "Did Horace give you the stink eye again?"

"Always," Scorpius sighed in mock dejection. "Horace is very disapproving of me, y'know."

"Took him years to warm up to me," Albus quipped, shaking his head. "He thought Yards and I were in a secret relationship. Which is ridiculous of course, because it was the time when everyone 'knew' we were in a secret relationship."

There had been plenty of rumors at Hogwarts. Surprisingly enough, the idea that they might be gay had only helped their odds with the finer sex.

Girls were weird like that.

"Told 'im you two were an item a few times," Yardley stated, handing Scorpius a beer and taking a seat next to him. "He didn't buy it. I think he thinks you stole Al from me and hasn't gotten over it since then. Very protective of me, Horace is."

Albus raised his partially empty beer bottle and Yardley and Scorpius held out with their own, clinking the three of them together.

"So Al," he started in a casual tone. "It's been five days."

"You know how it is," Yardley quipped, "he came here for a visit and then remembered how superior I am to you in every possible way."

"Sod off, Yardley."

"It's my house, you tosser, I ain't doing anything of-"

"Don't mind him, Yards my boy," Al interrupted, a smile on his face. "He's just peevish because he missed me most dreadfully."

It was true of course, but Scorpius would be damned if he ever admitted it.

Albus collected friends like they were chocolate frog cards, amassing the mismatched bunch without any apparent rhyme or reason.

Scorpius, on the other hand, did not. His friends were few and far between. He liked to call himself 'picky' when the truth was that he was a bona fide snob when it came to the people he chose to associate with.

It wasn't that he was a snob like his father had been, oh no. He just disliked everyone equally.

Mind you, he wasn't friendless, per say. There was Gwen, of course. There was Kate Towler. There was Charles… oh, posh, he had people, alright? It simply meant that whenever Albus was gone he always felt utterly and profoundly lonely.

"If you'd like me to, I can leave you two lovebirds alone." Yardley sniggered.

"Oh, can it Yardley," Albus chimed in, unruffled with the remark.

"I don't know how you two survived all these days," Yardley continued, examining his bottle with a musing look, "what with you being his other brain cell and all."

Both him and Albus expressed a few nasty expletives in a vain effort to explain to Yardley just how much of a fucking tosser he really was.

"It's all loving words with you guys," Yardley protested, in tones of mocked hurt. "You're giving me this uncanny feeling like you guys don't want me here."

"Give the man a prize." Scorp rolled his eyes and took another swig of his beer.

"Unusually sagacious of you, Yards."

"Such a pity this is my home," Yardley replied, getting up from his seat and retrieving three new bottles. "You boys want to take your homoerotic affair elsewhere, it's fine by me, but I'm not leaving my own darned kitchen."

"On a brighter subject… you-" Scorpius took the beer from Yardley and murmured a thanks before turning to Albus and giving him a look that might have freezed over hell. "You, my friend, are in trouble.

"Oooh, I'm shaking," Al returned the look with a hint of teenage defiance that he was yet to overcome.

For someone so brilliant, Albus had always been impossibly childish - even by Scorpius' standards.

"Not from me, you knob," Scorpius retorted, clinking his beer against Yardley's. "Rose was worried stiff about you."

"Shame on you Al," Yardley said, "for making Rose worried stiff."

The pair of them were now attempting to present a united front of adulthood and responsibility.

"Rose, schmose," the childish Object Of Their Reproach retorted, frowning a little, his color rising. "I'll pick her being worried over angry any time of day."

"She was prostrate. Didn't eat or sleep for days." Scorpius said, in a carefully modulated tone before his facade was cracked by a rogue grin. "Of course that may be due to the fact that she's studying again and therefore her brain has forgotten the concepts of 'rest' and 'nourishment' all over again."

"That's nice, you can go home now!" Yardley was looking a bit too pleased. "I'll bet she doesn't even remember your name."

"You guys are assholes, the pair of you!" The Object Of Their Reproach was becoming Weasley flushed at this point. "I thought you liked having me around!"

Albus had never been any good with confrontation. Scorpius almost took pity on him.

Keyword being 'almost'.

"Seriously though, you should answer people's calls," he attacked with renewed vigour. "I tried you a few times and nada. You could have died for all I knew."

That was of course unlikely, but it was Rose's strongest argument to defend her histrionics. Clearly she'd never bunked with him before, or she'd be more familiarized with Al's disappearing act.

"I-I've been busy!"

"Yeah, busy eating my food and drinking my beer!" Yardley retorted, clearly bemused. "Take him away Scorp, I don't know how you tolerate this asshole. He's been wearing my clothes too. He stretched my favorite sweater."

How, Scorpius wouldn't be able to tell. Albus might be the tallest of them but he was also the gangliest.

"As much as it pains me to agree with Yardley, the tosser is right," Scorpius continued. "Come home you asshole. Rose isn't going to tear you a new one. I'm not going to either."

Heaven knew it wouldn't penetrate that thick skull so what was the point, really?

Scorpius ought to have kicked his ass, though. Rose's level of concern had risen from anger to near panic at some point in the first two days. It had been amusing at first, and yet he'd never been more thankful than when she'd been clubbed over the head and rendered comatose by that new essay from hell.

"He'd be running for the hills before you even started." Yardley gave Albus one of the pointed stares he was famous for. "I almost resent the fact that he only visits when other people decide to scold him."

"I do not, Yards, I spent half my time here not even two months ago."

"Because your parents scolded you!"

"Seems 'bout right," Scorp agreed and then quietly laid down his beer in front of him. "I wanted to tell you that I tried out for the Magpies, you wanker."

There it was. Out. In the open.

A few years ago, Yardley's mere presence would have deterred Scorpius from having the mildest of conversations with Albus. Now, however, Yards was like a piece of really annoying furniture that he kept stubbing his pinky toe against.

(In truth, it just meant that Yardley was a friend, not that Scorpius would have even considered that a possibility.)

(Seriously, everyone knew it except him.)

"But you hate the Magpies," Yardley protested in horrified tones, as if he'd just told them that he enjoyed eating newborn babies. "You despise them!"

"How the fuck do you know I hate the Magpies?" Scorpius turned, and glared at Yardley. "I never told you that."

"Because you're not my only friend, you tosser," Albus clarified with an infuriatingly patronizing tone. "I talk to people other th-"

"Oh shut up." Yardley hushed him and put on his best I'm-such-a-great-listener-look-at-how-focused-I-am face. "How did it go?"

"I resent the fact that he's more into this than you," Scorpius protested, glaring at Albus. "Does the name Bell… ring a bell?"

Oh Merlin, kill him now.

He was recycling Gwen's jokes, for Morgana's sake!

"Oh, Merlin, kill me now," Yardley groaned burying his face on his hands. "That was so bad."

Shit.

"Andrew Bell who owns Puddlemere…?" Albus looked slightly confused. "Yeah, I mean, I know of him, never met the man myself..."

This seemed like a poor reenactment of his conversation with Gwen. It was déjà vu of the pathetic kind.

"Brilliant of you, but not that Bell. The name Bell," Scorpius clarified, adding for good measure: "Have your parents ever said anything about a Bell? Not Andrew. From their time at Hogwarts?"

"Well..." Al's face furrowed with the concentration of one who doesn't really listen when his parents drone about the good ol' days, trying to find information within the garbled bits stored in his mind. "Katie Bell was on their Quidditch Team, I think…?"

"Elsie's mum?" Yardley's eyebrow rose with apparent recognition and he nodded. "Yeah, I think she played Quidditch for Gryffindor with your dad. Chaser, I think."

Who the hell was Elsie?

"Yeah, that would be her," Albus said. "I wonder how you know more about this than I do."

"Because I'm an educated sort of fella, whereas you just ain't."

Scorpius cleared his throat. "Elsie...?"

"Elsie Goshawk," Yardley clarified for his benefit. "Ravenclaw, a year younger than us. Dated Fortescue for a while. Amazing rack, a face that looked like she had been trampled on by a hundred angry elephants?"

Scorpius shook his head. The name Elsie Goshawk meant nothing to him. Should it?

"You wouldn't know her," Al reassured him, taking a nonchalant swig off his beer. "She wasn't into Quidditch, so you'd have missed her entirely."

"I think her younger brother is though," Yardley added helpfully, "he's playing for Gryffindor."

Still didn't ring any bells.

"What else do you know about her mum?" Scorp inquired.

Eesh, this was almost as bad as the Gwen conversation. Like pulling teeth.

"Not much," Albus' brow furrowed a little and then he shook his head. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing about my dad?"

"Not that I know of," Al shrugged. "Why, you think Elsie with the face like an unmade bed may be your long lost sister?"

"I can see the family resemblance," Yardley sniggered, "though your rack isn't half as nice as hers."

"Urgh. Why do I even try?"

"Ignore him. What's up?"

"Apparently Andrew Bell has it in for my dad."

Yardley whistled low.

"Plenty of people hate your dad," Al shook his head in confusion. "What's the issue?"

Here was The Point and over there was Albus Potter, missing it entirely.

"Yeah, but Andrew Bell is the only one of them who owns his ass," Yardley explained, patiently. "It's inconvenient."

"Very true," Al replied, still looking unconvinced. "Unless you count the asshole who evaluated our Arithmancy N.E.W.T.s. Why is this a problem though?"

Yardley groaned. "What part of owns his ass don't you get?"

"You're unusually bright today, Yards," Scorpius pointed out concernedly, raising a hand to measure his temperature. "Are you alright?"

"It's the company, I'm rubbing off on him," Al grinned as he watched Yardley swatting away Scorpius' hand. "What can Bell do to you, anyway? You're already on his team, it's not like he can fire you."

"According to Gwen Vane, he's the one keeping me benched."

"I always thought you were benched because you weren't up to snuff," Yardley offered in jest. "That and because two people would need to retire for you to get a shot at the big leagues."

It was technically true.

But it was also true that most teams retired their players when they were growing moldy, like Jordan and Elliot.

"If I talk to my parents I'd like to see how long that lasts." Albus quirked an eyebrow, a look of defiance briefly crossing his face.

Yardley on the other hand was looking rather amused, as if this were all a game and a rather hilarious one at that. "You could do him one worse and tattle to Aunt 'Mione."

"Uncle Ron will be pissed," Al added, visions of raining fire and blood came to mind at the very thought of the Granger-Weasleys being involved. "They'd tear him apart. The bloke would have to flee to Chile or something."

"Chile is really nice, he doesn't deserve Chile," Yardley quipped, grinning. "But yes, Bell won't know what hit him."

"It's just conjecture at this point!" Scorpius protested. "I don't have proof."

"Proof-schmoof," Albus huffed waving a dismissive hand. "Mum and dad have been madly in love with you since that Christmas you made Ever-Burning Amortentia Candles for them. They'd flip their shit if they caught a whiff of this."

"Wouldn't know what hit him." Yardley grinned. "Aunt Gin would turn Andrew Bell into a goddamned pin cushion."

The two of them were so simplistic. It comforted him a little to know there was a solution at the tip of his fingers. However...

"You can't tell them." Scorp shook his head. "Not yet at least."

"Why not?" Yardley looked frankly puzzled. "The more the merrier I say. It'll be a slaughter fest."

"I need to talk to my dad first."

Not that he knew how he was going to broach the subject, really. 'Hey dad, some fucker really hates your guts. I suspect you already knew this and, if so, why didn't you tell me? Also I'm thinking about getting the Golden Trio involved to save the day, how do you feel about that?'

Yeah, those were the grounds for a conversation with his parents going very south, very fast.

"What good will that do?" It was Al's turn to look puzzled.

Ah, Al's notorious dislike for talking to his hero parents was showing again.

"I don't know," Yardley huffed, "because people talk to their parents even though you don't?"

"You never cease to amaze me, Alistair," Scorpius said, throwing him an approving look. "Yup. Because we, unlike you, have outgrown our teenage years of angst and actually trust our parents' judgement."

"I don't talk to my parents because-"

Al's protest was cut short.

"Because they don't understand?" Yardley quipped, snorting.

"Because you're the poster boy for Middle Child Syndrome?" Scorpius offered.

"Because you're a teenage girl?"

"Because-"

"Oh sod off, you fuckers," Al interrupted. "There's nothing weird about not running to one's parents crying whenever shit hits the fan."

It was true, of course. But in Al's case he did it for all the wrong reasons, like a misplaced certainty that he was the least favourite child out of the three and that he somehow needed to prove himself worthy.

Which was ridiculous, since anyone who had been in the same room as him and his parents would have been able to tell with absolute certainty that Albus was their golden child.

Anyone except Albus.

"Whenever shit hits your fanny, we're the ones who need to hear about it," Yardley offered, draping an arm around Al's shoulders and giving him a tap on the forehead. "And we're not equipped to deal with real problems yet."

"Plus," Scorp added, though not unkindly. "You didn't hesitate to bring them into this the second you heard I was in trouble."

For which he was really thankful, mind. It was just sad that Albus couldn't see his parents would move mountains for him if he only asked.

"That's privilege for you," Yardley sniggered, pulling away from Albus and getting up to fetch himself another beer. "Oooh, I'm so independent… until you need something from almighty and powerful mummy and daddy."

Al looked dumbstruck by the notion.

"I fucking am independent, thank you very much," he growled, getting up and testily swiping the beer bottle from Yardley's hands. "And my parents don't have that kind of pull, just Aunt 'Mione does, 'cause of her being, y'know."

The British Minister of Magic.

"Don't have that kind of pull, really?" Yardley groaned, pulling another two beers from the fridge. What was it, their fourth? Fifth? "Your dad so much as farts and the next day there's an article on the Prophet about how his gas cures juvenile cancer."

(This was true. Aunt Gin had found it priceless and she'd had the page framed and hung on the wall.)

(It was a recurring joke in the Potter household to poke fun at The Boy (now Man) Who Lived about how, whenever there was a less pleasant aroma in the air, 'none of them had cancer so if he could kindly stop trying to cure them it'd be swell'.)

"I wonder if it's genetic," Scorpius mused pensively.

"You and I both know it ain't, Malfoy," Yardley replied, patting his shoulder. "We both know it ain't."

"Why the fuck do all of our conversations end up being about my parents' farts?" Albus groaned, burying his face on his hands. "We're better than this!"

"Well, you may be, but it's what us commoners who weren't born of the Golden Trio do to pass the time," Yardley explained, enunciating each word carefully. "What do all of you War Hero spawn do for fun?"

"What were we talking about anyway?" Al's face dropped from his hands and he hit the counter with his forehead. "You guys, please kill me."

Oh yes, the actually relevant topic they had been discussing.

"This started as a conversation about how I'm supposed to deal with my doomed career."

"Ah yes, your doomed career," Al said, lifting his head and meeting his eye. "All this edifying debate made me forget about it."

"That's what happens when you hang out with brilliant conversationalists like Malfoy and myself."

"I sometimes wonder why I give you two the time of day," Albus moaned. "I need new friends, is what it is."

"Because I'm a fucking delight and because you feel sorry for Malfoy."

"You're a wanker, Yardley."

"Takes one to know one, Malfoy."

"You're just jealous that I'm taller than you."

"Are we starting the dick measuring portion of our evening?" Al interrupted, with an exaggerated eye roll. "Because I could do without."

"Al," Yardley asked in a singsong voice, "tell him I'm the handsomer of the two."

"I will do no such thing, Yards. The consensus of the female population elected Scorpius the king of Handsome."

"Even Rose admits it," Scorpius sniggered, remembering the incident when she had accidentally complimented him. "She thinks I'm pretty."

"She does," Albus confirmed. "And what's more, she's essentially blind when it comes to the male population, so it's kind of a triumph."

"Is she out of the closet yet?"

Sometimes Yardley, for all his wit and charm, was a sodding little asswipe.

"Just because she doesn't give you the time of day it doesn't make her a lesbian, Yardley." Albus' eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly. "As far as I know she's straight as an arrow. I just don't think she cares."

"It's kind of demeaning how much she doesn't fucking notice," Scorpius brooded with a dramatic sigh. "I could parade around the house naked and I doubt she'd even acknowledge I was there."

He'd once left the bathroom with only a towel and she'd looked straight through him, lost in her little world. It had been almost insulting. He had to go spend half an hour in front of the mirror just to make sure that his abs hadn't gone missing.

"That's just because it's you parading around the house naked," Yardley snorted derisively, "who in their right mind would want to see that?"

Al laughed heartily at his comment. "You could wrap your dick with a bow and she wouldn't even spare it a glance, Yards," he deadpanned.

"It would have to be a big fucking bow."

Eesh.

"I just remembered why I think you're a prat," Scorpius sighed. "This isn't worth all the butterbeer in the world."