Chapter Ten

Directions to Trouble

Disclaimer: I neither own nor make a profit off of anything from the Harry Potter universe.

Status: College ate me. I had a bet going on with my sister that I would pass a certain class or pay her forty dollars. So… yes. I didn't get to write at all. I'm back now, though. Don't shoot me for being gone for so long?

Q&A: Is Fred George's boy?

Yes indeed he is. The little brat is also a fifth year Gryffindor and doused in more freckles than Ron.

Also: I'm still looking for a beta. And I'm in an awesome RP. Want to join? Drop me a line!

Callum stared at the map in amazement for several moments before gingerly beginning to prod it in an attempt to figure out how it worked.

"It took me weeks to figure it out," James declared proudly, looking to Fred for confirmation. The fifth year Weasley grinned lazily and rolled his eyes. "Our Jamesie isn't too bright," he agreed.

James made a face, but offered no further argument. Callum suspected Fred would find something decidedly nasty in his bed one night. The last person to call James an idiot (other than Callum, of course) had woken up to a pail of flobberworm mucus tied above their bed with a thin cord. The first little movement they had made had tipped the entire bucket of muck over their heads. It wasn't dangerous or anything, of course, but the stench as they passed the boy in the halls had been awful.

"So you stole this," Callum continued, shaking his mind free of his earlier thoughts. "That's really big of you, James. I was starting to think you were through trying to figure out how many criminal acts you could manage in only one year. Good job."

"Flattery's not going to get you anywhere," Fred said solemnly, placing a hand over his heart. "As James's loyal lawyer, it's my responsibility to let you know that. Anything and nothing we have against you can one day be used in a prank that might do you harm. Flattery or no flattery, you're a marked man."

Bemused, Callum lifted one eyebrow. "You sound more like my lawyer than you do his, giving me warnings like this…"

"Heeeeey…!" James frowned, shoving Fred's shoulder. "Cally's right – have you gone turncoat on me?"

Fred carefully directed his gaze to the ceiling and rubbed the bridge of nose again. "What's that? I think I hear my dorm mates calling me. Yep, that's them. Bloody hell, they have bad timing, don't they?"

"Nobody's calling you!" James protested, but Fred had already beaten a laughing retreat.

Callum tapped the map pointedly to bring James's attention back to the matter at hand and was rewarded more quickly than usual by his best mate's attention. "What's this for, exactly?"

"Sneaking," was James's oh-so-simple reply.

Frowning, Callum glanced around the room to make sure no one was listening. In the past two years of knowing James he had long since learned the consequences of double-checking for people who were too keen on paying attention to what they were up to. He was still vexed over the detention he had almost gotten from releasing the bludger – Callum was intent on not getting any detentions this year if he could help it.

Of course, reminded the little rational voice in his mind, if you were really serious about that, you'd lock James in a closet.

"And where are we sneaking?" Callum asked cautiously, noting that the only people in the room were a few second years trying to toast marshmallows in the fireplace.

"We aren't sneaking."

Callum felt his eyebrow lift almost of its own accord. "Alright then. Where are you sneaking?" If he were any of James's other friends he would have been hurt at being left out of a prank, but he was Callum.

And Callum was the smart one.

How this had ended him up as James's best mate, Cal would never know.

If it had been on any other boy, Callum would have described the grin on James's face as angelic. The angelic grin soon turned into a devilish smirk, however. "I'm not sneaking either. I can think of a few Slytherin first years that are, though…"

That took a few moments for Callum to process. As he sat close-mouthed, he let his gaze drift over to the fire where the second years had just let out yelps of surprise. The boy – Callum recognized him as being the Creevey boy that Gryffindor had had the misfortune of acquiring last year – quickly jumped onto one of the plush red armchairs and flailed his arms desperately as if he were marooned and trying to summon down help.

"Palmer?" Callum asked cautiously, not quite certain as to whether or not he had the name right. "What… are you doing?"

"A monster!" the blond-headed boy said frantically, squeaking in fear and attempting to balance himself up on the back of the chair now. "It came out of the fire and I thought it was goin' to kill us, right? And it's just there on the floor, all red and flaming and I bet it's a dragon only I didn't know they got so small – do they de-grow somehow? 'Cause I heard they were, like, ginormous and—oh, MERLIL, IT CAN CLIMB!"

Callum looked on, alarmed, but James simply laughed, pulling a heavy glove from his coat pocket and hurrying forward to rescue Palmer from the salamander. "I thought I'd let him play around in the fire a bit before I put him up," he offered in explanation.

The grin James was wearing let Callum know that the boy had planned all along to scare someone with his pet.

That was James Potter in a nutshell. He couldn't have a normal pet like an owl. Oh, no. He had to have a pet as vicious as he was that could be used against a person. James was an evil, horrible boy.

Briefly, while the excitement of a prank wasn't affecting his judgment, Callum felt a moment's remorse for the Slytherins. No one deserved to have James's evil genius bent toward making a fool out of them.

"Come on, then," James said. "Help me trace out a few of these corridors."

o-----o

Saturday morning dawned crisp and cool outside. The grass was coated in a thick layer of frost that crunched underneath the shoes of those students who decided it might be fun to go for a walk around the lake.

Deep in the dungeons, Albus slept soundly on his fairly new four-poster. His mother had Owled up several extra heavy blankets after Al had written her and mentioned that the heater in his dormitory didn't work quite as well as it needed to down in the dungeons. They had helped a lot with the cold, but they had the disadvantage of being too comfortable. Already Al had slept in and missed a few morning classes last week.

Now that Rose was making special efforts to make certain Al felt loved by his family at Hogwarts, he expected to start getting told off for his absences. Rose couldn't be loving and not scold.

Mumbling incoherently, Albus rolled over under the blankets, wondering where a sudden chill was coming from. The blankets should have been keeping him warm, and the hangings should have been helping, too.

Al reached down, feeling for the blankets that he had apparently kicked off in his sleep and… felt nothing.

Blearily, Al opened his eyes, already knowing what he was going to find.

Scorpius smirked from where he was sitting cross-legged at the end of Albus's bed. "Took you long enough."

Albus rolled his eyes ceiling-ward in a plea for the morning to be a dream, then groaned. Scorpius wasn't going to go away now that he was awake. The blond haired boy wouldn't rest until everyone else (or at least the unfortunate Albus) was awake with him.

Al found himself wishing more and more often that Scorpius had continued to follow along after Eric on his nightly jaunts of raiding the kitchens and troubling other students. At least then the pale boy had been too tired to bother messing with Al's sleep schedule.

"D'you have to do this on a Saturday?" Albus muttered irritably.

In reply Scorpius slid from the bed and strutted across the room to where Cameron was still sleeping.

Albus suppressed another groan as Scorpius repeated the process of stealing the blankets to wake the other boy up. He felt a bit better that he wasn't the only one Scorpius was tormenting, but he already knew it wouldn't stay like this.

Fairly soon, it would be back to the normalcy of Scorpius waking up only Albus. Right now he was simply in one of his stages where he suddenly got oddly curious about a person and asked them all sorts of questions that Albus couldn't figure out a purpose for. He had done it with Braden last week, and apparently it was Cameron's turn this week.

If only, Albus found himself wishing fervently as he looped his tie loosely around his neck, Scorpius would just take interest in him that way. And then leave him alone.

They still had that weird sort of half-friendship thing going on. Albus got on better with Braden, but he was always being dragged off to do things by Scorpius.

Sort of like a new puppy, Albus thought with a wry grin.

After they had all gotten dressed, the trio trooped up toward the common room, careful not to wake up Erik. Ever since he had blown up Al's bed, they had all been a little leery of him.

They paused briefly in the commons for Cameron to do a quick search of the leather cushions, and then continued on their way to the Great Hall.

"I'm not really sure what to do with this," Cameron noted absently as they mounted the top of the tight spiral staircase out of the dungeons and found themselves near the grand staircase.

Albus glanced over at the shorter boy to see what he had and was only mildly surprised to see that the boy had some sort of lighter. He flicked it on as Al watched, and the flame lit up green.

"You're going to put it away," Scorpius said suddenly when Al couldn't come up with an answer. The blond's gaze darted to the grand staircase several times before Al finally noticed what he was looking at:

Caretaker Filch was standing partway up the first flight, gently stroking his infuriating cat with one hand, and keeping himself upright with his gnarled cane with his other hand. The cat stared unblinkingly down at the three boys as they crossed to the Great Hall, and Al fancied he could still feel her red-eyed gaze boring into the back of his skull even after they had all sat down at their table.

"Creepy thing, that cat," Cameron mused, idly pouring himself a goblet-full of juice. "I wonder where he keeps her food?"

"Why?" Scorpius asked curiously.

Albus made a face as he stretched to reach the platter of toast and snag himself a piece. "Leave her alone or we're all going to be miserable."

Cameron blinked and fixed Al with a mild stare. "I was just asking, was all."

"There's nothing wrong with asking questions," Scorpius added smoothly, examining the back of his hand as if he wasn't really interested in the conversation.

If Albus had liked Cameron more, he would have warned the small boy what was about to happen.

Scorpius slowly sipped at his own goblet of juice and flicked his gaze in Cameron's direction after glancing briefly to Albus. "So… your mother is in the wizarding prison, correct? My grandfather was there for a few years, you know. My father came close, but they let him off. Which was a real fortune, really. He never did anything wrong – the Ministry was simply going on a crusade after the fall of… you-know-who."

As Albus watched, Scorpius narrowed his eyes to judge Cameron's reaction. The younger boy simply stared back passively, waiting for the Malfoy boy to make his point.

"What'd they get your mother on, anyway? I don't think I've heard," drawled Scorpius, his tone already dropping toward boredom.

Albus frowned. He was starting to think that the bored tone was as fake as Scorpius himself usually was.

Cameron's expression didn't shift in the slightest. "'s because they didn't release the information to the public, I expect. You can ask my mum yourself if you're that bloody nosy."

Al thought for sure that Scorpius was going to take offence to that, but the blond haired boy simply snorted, brushing the comment away

As Scorpius set in on more questions that Cameron steadfastly declined to answer, Albus busied himself with his breakfast. He still hadn't had a run-in with James (unless you counted the incident with the bludger, but he couldn't prove that James had had a hand in that), and he didn't want to tempt his luck by being anywhere where the older boy could find him on a weekend.

If James decided to make his life miserable on a weekend, there wouldn't be any classes that would drag the older boy away from his favorite game of seeing how long it took to get Albus near wanting to go crawl under a rock somewhere.

"Morning, Al. Cold one, isn't it?" Braden grinned slightly to Al as he and Erik took their seats across the table. "Looks like we got here just in time, doesn't it? Mail's here."

Albus glanced up just as well-over a hundred owls swooped down on the House tables, searching out the students who had made it to an early breakfast. A large screech owl glided in a loop over Eric before dropping a small package in the red-head's plate of eggs.

Eric scowled. The bloody owl always did that.

Cameron got two letters, Braden got a small package, and Scorpius received a rather large package that he immediately predicted to be full of sweets.

Albus was just starting to wonder if he was going to get anything at all that morning when he spotted Halliford.

Halliford was a large African Spotted Eagle Owl that he and James shared. Bill and Fleur had bought the owl for them when they went to Africa for some work from Gringotts.

"Finally decided to show up, did you?" Al muttered, reaching for the parchment tired to Halliford's leg. The owl eyed him reproachfully, clicking his beak in annoyance. He did let Albus retrieve the parchment before taking flight again and angling for the Gryffindor table to see if James was up, though.

Albus was rather pleased when Halliford apparently caught no sign of James and flew off again back up towards the rafters.

"What have you got there, Albus?" Scorpius asked as Albus separated the bundle of parchment into three letters.

"You really are nosy," mused Cameron.

"No, he just never shuts up and talks about whatever's in his line of sight," Eric corrected as he fiddled with the strings holding his mail closed.

Scorpius scowled, but said nothing. Perhaps in an effort to prove Eric wrong.

Albus focused on ignoring the exchange as he sorted his mail. There was one letter from his parents with a reminder that James's birthday was coming up on the 31st if he could find it in his ability to try to get along with him. There was another from his Uncle Ron with a clipping from the Prophet that detailed the capture of a wizard he and Harry had taken down. The last one wasn't a letter at all, Al found. It was simply a piece of parchment that had been folded into a tight square.

On the outside, it said: I hope this helps you as much as it helped me in school.

Nothing more. No name or anything.

Mildly curious now, Albus slid a finger under one corner of the parchment and broke the seal on it.

"Looks like a map, Potter," Eric said helpfully, pausing to rub the tip of his slightly upturned nose before leaning across the table and cocking his head to the side for a better look.

Beside Al, Scorpius shook himself from his sulk and peered curiously at the hand-drawn map as well. "That's the infirmary where it starts, isn't it?"

Al frowned, twisting the map this way and that in an attempt to see who it was from. He thought maybe it was Teddy who had sent it, but that would mean he had sent it to Al by mistake. Anything like this usually went straight to James.

"It… looks like it goes to a tunnel," Albus said slowly.

"My Dad said there were secret tunnels all over this school," said Braden, speaking up finally around a large mouthful of eggs. "He reckons there's new ones every year, what with the castle getting bored and changing things around sometimes. He found one down the History of Magic corridor, but it's not there now…"

Albus nodded. "Yeah, my dad told me there were some, too. He didn't tell me where they were. But…"

"But?" Scorpius prodded, lifting the map from Albus's hands and peering intently at the writing off to the side of the supposed secret tunnel.

"But how come I got this?" Al finished, frowning down at his plate of toast.

It didn't make sense unless it was some sort of joke.

And even if it wasn't a joke, what was he supposed to do with it? Al wasn't the kind of kid to be extremely adventurous – that was James's department. A secret tunnel would have to be investigated at night, Al imagined, otherwise a professor might see him and tell him off for being somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.

Another frown flitting across his face, Albus took the map back and turned it over to stare at the writing on the back.

It could be from Teddy. Albus would ask Victoire about it and see if she knew anything.