A/N: Wow. I am so, so sorry for the long wait guys. I am really ashamed of myself. Mostly also because, well. I've forgotten where I'm going with this. I know, I know. You are all throwing rotten tomatoes at me and insisting I should find better forms of organization. Boohoo. So, I'm going to brainstorm, conference with Lily, or, as she's now known, Filledecriture, and hopefully come up with some new and wonderful ideas. So here's a chapter with me totally winging it... a little bit of characterizing, delving into life outside off Hogwarts, etc... wherin we will begin to lose all hope of Em ever forming real plot, and discover that her writing is crap, after all.

Bear with me.

***

Leila Malfoy was growing unbelievably frustrated with her son.

"Mum, I don't want to visit Grandma and Grandpa. I want to stay here with you. It's boring over there and they don't even have a yard I can play Quidditch in." Scorpius whined, and Leila sighed, buttoning up his coat properly, he had missed a button.

"I'm sorry, sweetie, but I need a break. You'll only be staying there for a few days, and when you come back, Daddy will give you a present. I promise." Leila said gently, trying to keep her temper intact.

"Mummy... I want to stay here with you and Daddy..." Scorpius moaned, slumping against his mother, who held him up by the armpits and glared down at him. She knew what was coming.

"Scorpius Lucius Malfoy, stand up and walk out that door or I will take away your broom for one week." Leila said calmly, and Scorpius shook his head.

"I'm not moving until I get to stay," He insisted, and Leila hoisted him up and dragged him out to the car, buckling him in securely. He slumped in the seat so that his arm was twisted at an odd angle and he was slouched beneath the range of the belt.

"Scorpius, sit up this instant or I'll take it away for three weeks." Leila threatened, but Scorpius just stayed there silently, slumped in his seat. Leila got into the car, infuriated, and slammed the door, drawing her wand. She righted Scorpius and cast a body bind curse on him so he could not slump again.

"Scorp, blink twice if you agree to sit up like a normal person and behave maturely when I take this curse off of you." Leila said, and Scorpius blinked twice rapidly. Leila knew it was unfair to play off of the claustrophobic feeling he got whenever placed in a body bind curse, but she knew no other way to make him behave when it got this bad. She was only disappointed she had to deal with it at this point in his life... did all parents have to deal with this level of immaturity at the age of eight? And what did they do about it? She released him from his body bind curse after a moment or two, and he burst into tears, glaring at her.

"Mummy, that's not fair! I hate that spell! It feels so scary!" Scorpius wailed, and he started to kick at the dashboard in frustration.

"Scorpius, it's not fair to make Mummy so angry with you!" Leila argued, knowing her eight year old would never listen to reason.

"I don't care! I don't care about you! I hate you!" Scorpius hollered, and Leila's heart broke into a thousand tiny pieces. She leapt out of the car, tears streaming down her face, and into the wood that surrounded their mansion. She ran for a while, finally running out of breath and settling down on a log. She sat there for a very long time. She wasn't sure how long. All she knew was that dark had settled around her by the time she heard someone crashing through the woods, calling her name.

She didn't respond, and finally, the shadow of a man appeared through a clump of trees about a meter away from her, and he fell onto the ground in front of her, throwing his arms around her gratefully, holding her tightly.

"Leila, dear God, what were you thinking?" Draco asked when he let go of her, and she wiped a tear off of his face. She realized she was shivering.

"I... j-j-just..." Leila was at a loss for words, and Draco studied her for a moment, then scowled.

"Leila... what the fucking hell is wrong with you? I come home at nine o clock to find that our eight year old son is sitting in the dark, alone, bawling his eyes out, terrified, because you ran out on him? What the hell happened, Lay?" Draco said sternly, and Leila began to cry tears she didn't think she could have mustered.

"H-h-he said h-h-h-he h-hated m-m-me..." She stammered, teeth chattering. Draco softened a bit, and he cast a warming charm on his wife, then helped her up and led her back to their house, holding her hand tightly. He took her into their bedroom and shut her in there. She listened as Draco collected Scorpius from downstairs, and she heard him tell their son that his mother was going insane in the most gentle way he could.

"Scorp, Mummy's very sick right now, and it will be easier for her to get better if you go stay with your Grandmum and Grandfather for a while. Mummy still loves you very much, and so do I, but she and I need to talk about a few things, so you're going to go to your Grandparents', and I want you to remember that none of this is your fault, okay?" Draco said gently, and Leila heard Scorpius sniffle and mumble a small 'okay' before she heard the distinct pop of her boys Disapparating.

It was several minutes before she heard Draco Apparate back, and he stumbled into their bedroom.

"Dray, I'm so so--"

"Don't apologize, Leila. It's not your fault." Draco said, and he sat down next to his wife and held her as she cried in earnest. She cried for the eight children she had lost since they had had Scorpius. She cried for the pain Scorpius went through... just because they were trying to prevent him from feeling that pain. She cried because there were some things even magic couldn't fix. She cried for a broken body, a body broken at the hands of her father. She cried for everything she had ever wanted... and everything she could never have.

*****

Runes was hard.

That much Renesmee had figured out since McGonnagal had given her some books to look over before the term officially started. She also had no clue what the runes on her wand said. It turned out that the runes they learned were not just one language- they came from all over the world, and she would be studying in great detail every rune ever made. And she had missed the first semester of the class, which taught the very first thing you needed to know in order to understand a rune- where it was from. She had a book describing it, but she just didn't think she was getting as much out of it as she could. She sighed and closed the book, sipping the hot chocolate that had been deposited at her bedside by an elf.

Her roommates had not arrived back yet, and she was hoping to start off on a clean slate with them. She needed someone to talk to regularly. Almost as soon as she thought of them, they tumbled, giggling, through the door and flopped down across their beds.

"Oh... Renesmee is here already," one of them whispered loudly, indicating the unpacked trunk at the foot of Ren's bed and the drawn curtains. Renesmee was peering through the crack. She drew one sid of the curtains back warily, and smiled in a friendly manner at her roommates.

"Hey guys. Have a nice break?" She asked, and they started giggling.

"She is so American," Someone whispered loudly again, and Ren blushed. She felt this was a little unfair, all though she probably would have been better off using the word holiday...

"Well, I would hope so, as that's where I was born and raised." She retorted, sounding braver than she felt.

"Oh, aren't we Miss Cool now that we've been travelling the globe..." another one of the girls sneered, and Ren shrugged.

"I don't know if I would say that, I mean, it was only Greece..." She replied, again with an excess of bravery.

"You are the single most spoiled person I know." Someone complained, and Renesmee felt the burn of tears behind her eyes, but she puffed up her chest and stayed right where she was.

"I disagree. You don't even know me. You've never even given me a chance. You don't even know what I've been through." She started to get choked up a little at the end, thinking of just what exactly she had been through.

"What, did Mommy not spend enough money on clothes for you? Or did she only let you have one bedroom at the resort in Greece?" Someone mocked, and Renesmee bolted from the room, hoping to find James in the Common Room. There was no trace of him, so she curled up in a corner and cried as hard as she knew how to.

A little while in to her fit, she heard someone behind her, and she looked up to see an extremely attractive seventh year standing over her.

"Hey. What's up?" He asked, and she just shrugged.

"You wouldn't understand." She mumbled.

"Oh yeah? You wanna bet?" He challenged, and she nodded.

"You probably don't know what it's like to be made fun of just because you're different." Ren pointed out, noting his full on British accent... which wasn't so much an accent when they were here.

"Bingo. You lose." He said, sitting down next to her, "I know exactly what that's like. Some people's parents don't even want me hanging out with their kids because of what I am." He explained, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

"What are you?" She asked, and he grinned.

"A werewolf." He said eerily, and Ren glared at him, tears filling her eyes again.

"Shut up. They put you up to this didn't they?" She said angrily, and he looked utterly confused. She didn't quite know how the girls in her dorm would have found out about Jake, but she certainly wasn't happy about it being exploited like this.

"Who put me up to what?" The boy asked, and Ren looked at him. He seemed genuinely confused.

"You are honestly telling me that you're a werewolf?" Ren asked, and the boy nodded.

"Only half. My dad was a werewolf, he got bitten when he was a kid, and now I'm one, too. I don't become a creepy looking beast at the full moon, though, I just become a really friendly dog. It's less painful, too." The boy explained, and Ren relaxed a little.

"Oh, you're not the kind of werewolf I'm thinking of..." She smiled, and he cocked his head.

"There's more than one kind?"

"Yeah. I'm Renesmee, by the way. Renesmee Cullen. Half vampire. Wanna hear my story?" She asked, holding out a hand to him, he took it, and shook.

"Teddy Lupin, at your service," He agreed, and she began to tell him about everything.

******

A/N: Well. Wasn't that lovely? I'll post this now, go to bed, conference with Lily/Filledecriture, and hopefully have another update by Christmas.

Lots of Love, and may your hot cocoa always have a candy cane in it,

Em