Scorpius felt like he was floating, his body up in clouds. His eyes were closed, but it felt as if there was no ground under his feet. As he floated, the back of his head floated down to rest on something soft. He opened his eyes and realized he was lying on a white bed, covered by a pure white sheet and surrounded by countless other beds with the same color scheme. He sat up and looked around, turning his head to observe the room: the Hospitality Wing. As his head turned, a sharp pain struck in the back of his head. Scorpius gripped his head and the pain lowered to a dull throbbing at the base of his skull.
Why am I here? What happened? Scorpius wondered to himself. As he thought this, the matron left her office and walked outside to check on her patients. She instantly noticed Scorpius awake and nodded to him as she checked the other patients. When she came around the room to Scorpius, he had already seen most of the other patients in the room. A seventh year girl who had antlers. A third year with a broken leg. A sixth year girl who looked as if she'd been attacked by explosive makeup containers, no joke she was covered in the stuff. And a red head who was about as old as the younger teachers.
"How are you feeling?" Madame Abott asked Scorpius, holding a checklist in hand as she did so. "Any pains, discomforts, or questions you wanted to ask?"
"Why am I here?"
Madame Abott set down the clipboard. "You received trauma to the back of your head. You were dropped off earlier by a few other students who were near you when you were knocked out by the trauma. You've been in the Hospitality Wing for around five hours, you would've had been here longer if not for a trick that my old teacher taught to me."
She checked Scorpius' head for bruising, "You've got a large bruise on the back of your head, but that should go away with one rub of this." Madame Abott pulled out a cream that had a label saying 'Weasley Wizard Wheezes Entirely Serious Bruise Remover'. She popped the cap off and dragged her finger through it to place a dollop of the cream on Scorpius' neck. After rubbing it in, she invited Scorpius to touch and move his neck, he did so without any pain.
"Thank you Madame Abott."
"You aren't leaving just yet, Mister Malfoy. It's required by school regulations, and my own personal regulations, that you stay here for at least two hours after regaining consciousness."
Scorpius looked at Madame Abott pleadingly, but it did no good. She moved on to the next bed and dealt with another patient, another first year boy who had bandages wrapping tightly around his torso. Scorpius merely sat in his bed, nothing to do, just watching the other patients be dealt with by Madame Abott or her student matrons. Every now and then another patient would wake up for a short amount of time and talk to Scorpius for a bit, but they always went back to sleep from boredom.
Then the red-headed guy woke up.
He was lying on his bed haphazardly with one arm hanging over the edge, snoring, and his arm swung in sleep to accidentally punch the edge of his bed. The red-head snorted and lifted his head, looking at his hand to see what happened. After investigating the mysterious feeling in his fist, he tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't. No matter how many times he fluffed his pillow or rolled over, the snores never restarted.
"Hard time sleeping?" Scorpius asked the red-head from across the room. The red-head looked up and Scorpius recognized Mister Potter's helper: Ron Weasley, Rose's dad.
"Yeah," Ron said, "It's tough... I don't remember the beds being this hard when I was in school." Another pillow fluff, another rotation in bed. "Hey," Ron also recognized the blond he was talking to, "Weren't you the student who is trying out for the dueling club?"
Scorpius nodded and Ron continued, "Well, you might want to recover before the next club's meeting. I don't think you could actually duel from this bed."
"Well, I'm going to be out today. So that takes care of that."
"Good."
Ron rolled over again and snores ensued from that general direction of the Hospitality Wing. Scorpius smiled, Practice didn't go end so well, perhaps we won't be able to duel to our finest ability. No, Scorpius reconciled his previous thought, We've got just as much skill as I saw the other duelists with when I watched them through the keyhole. Perhaps we've got a chance. He looked around the Hospitality Wing, I'm not leaving here any time soon, maybe I should make use of this time.
The two hours passed quickly after that, Scorpius using this time to think of new ways to practice dueling. Things that, he decided, would be very useful for when Rose, Emma, Albus, and I are training.
"You're free to go." One of the student Matrons told him. He looked up into the eyes of a fifth year girl and thanked her. "You're welcome. Stay safe." Scorpius promised her that he would and left quickly, eager to find his friends.
Scorpius wandered the Great Staircase, making his way up to the Griffindor Common Room. There were students sprawled everywhere on the couches and around the fire. Out the window, there was darkness falling, curfew must have been on its way as even more of the Griffindors kept arriving. Scorpius took up to his room, nobody there, and then went right back down to relax in front of the fire. His friends would be here soon enough.
James Potter walked through the portrait and saw Scorpius. He walked right to him and sat down in one of the armchairs that surrounded the fire.
"Are you okay?" He asked, sounding concerned. "I had heard that you were taken up to the Hospitality Wing. Al told me you passed out. Don't tell me," James mentioned somberly, interrupting Scorpius as Scorpius opened his mouth, "Al broke wind. I'm surprised you didn't die from that, I've had to use the bubble head charm for days on end because of him."
Scorpius closed his mouth... the absurdity of it getting to him. He paused for a moment, then broke out in laughter.
"Are you sure you're okay?" James said, "That joke wasn't even that good. Maybe you've got some brain damage." James kept Scorpius amused for around thirty minutes until the portrait door opened and in walked Rose, Al, and Emma. Al noticed Scorpius and James instantly and even jogged to where his friend was.
"Are you okay?" He echoed his older brother.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Scorpius told him, "I got some rest in the Hospitality Wing and left once I could. I came in here to wait for you guys and your older brother found me." Scorpius gathered a tone reminiscent of James', "He told me some interesting stories about your *ahem* bowels. Did you really clear out your sixth birthday party with one well placed..." He stopped as Albus' face turned instantly pink. Rose and Emma both turned to look at Albus and giggled at seeing his now magenta skin coloring.
"I'm was just teasing ya, little bro. It's my job to embarrass you with your friends. " James said, placing an arm around Al's shoulders. "We all know that it was me who cleared that out with a dung bomb."
"Yeah... I remember that too well." Rose told Emma, "We were in the middle of a quidditch game when his whole family runs out of the house holding their noses, followed by all Al's friends and their families. Since then, they've always confiscated James' stock before throwing a party, but I still think that it was my dad who was providing the dung bombs."
"And who's your dad?"
"Ron Weasley, co-owner of Weasley Wizard Wheezes."
It turned out that Emma had never heard of the joke stores, and that conversation took the two girls well into the night while the boys were joking around at James' past pranks. After a funny story about making the house snow, James retired for the night, leaving Albus and Scorpius to talk with Emma and Rose. Scorpius found this the right time to introduce the ideas he came up with while in the Hospitality Wing.
The ideas were well received and the others built on them to refine the ideas into something actually do-able.
The next day was still the weekend, but Rose told them all that they would most likely need to get their homework done before the weekend was over. Al, unfortunately, had to agree with her. So instead of practicing dueling, they studied the first Vampire Treaty. In the library Emma kept mostly silent, keen to let the others do the talking.
"She's still really shy." Albus whispered to Scorpius as Emma was distracted by Rose telling her about a certain book she had picked up a few days ago.
"Yes, but she's made a lot of progress in one day. All she really needed was some people who would held her out, give her a chance. I think that she believes us to be her friends."
"Well, I'm in no hurry to correct her. She's nice."
"Yeah."
They studied the whole day. Spending it all in the library. A waste if you asked Al or Scorpius, but to Rose it was paradise. She felt like that was what school was all about.
Throughout the whole week they worked hard, getting in practice whenever they could. Scorpius was a key part in this, guiding his friends with practice and new spells every day. He even talked to the teachers to get their advice on it.
Flitwick told him that he should never underestimate the power of charms when messing with opponent's surroundings or their confidence. That day they practiced using the surroundings to interrupt someone's spells or their cover. Albus particularly liked using Wingardium Leviosa to raise a person's cover into the air then smack them with impedimenta.
Professor Longbottom mentioned keeping some sort of hidden extra up your sleeve, something nobody would expect. He suggested some sort of spell would do it.
Eventually the day came around that they knew they'd need to finally put what they'd been learning into practice. The sun was early, Scorpius was earlier. He was up before the sun had risen pacing the common room remembering spells that they'd learned out of books and from teacher's suggestions. Al opened his own eyes from sleep's grasp and looked at Scorpius' bed.
"Hey man, are you ready fo- oh." The bed was without its occupant. Al hurriedly got on his clothes and thundered down the stairs to see Scorpius in the common room. "Are you ready, Scorpius?"
"Huh- oh yeah," Scorpius said, placing his wand away in his robes. "Are you?"
Albus shrugged, "Ready as I'll ever be. Only problem is all the classes that're in the way of the dueling club tonight. Geez, I can't take one more day of boring old Professor Binns and his vampires."
"Just survive... just survive."
They went down to breakfast, and partway through was joined by Rose. She sat down rubbing sleep from her eyes and buttering up some toast. Some butter got on her finger but she was too tired to wipe it off, merely rubbed her hand halfheartedly against the table. Scorpius and Al watched her with muted interest.
"Rose," Scorpius asked, "Are you okay? You seem tired."
"Didn't... sleep. Reading... too late. Trying... for... new spells... don't... judge... me."
"Too late."
"Where's... Emma... didn't... go to bed... last night." Rose then let her head drop onto the table and light breathing came from her. Al looked at Scorpius, "Emma? I remember her going back to the common room last night."
"Me too."
"This might not be good. I don't want to go into the dueling club without her tonight. Want to look for her?"
"Yeah. Where to first?"
Al and Scorpius got up from the table, leaving Rose sleeping in her toast. They agreed on splitting up to look, Scorpius going back to the common room and Al checking the grounds.
Al walked right out, the time limit before classes begin all too present in his mind. He walked the whole grounds, checking anywhere that could be possible. Though when he got all the way around the castle he saw two people walking back, one in front of the other walking quickly. The one in front had Emma's dusty blond hair. Al listened in as he ran to get closer.
"GET AWAY EDWARD!"
Al sighed, Emma had Edward literally chasing after her. And Al ran after her.
A/N: I'm sorry it's a day late, I was very busy these past few days with Smash Brothers Tournaments. I love Project M! As usual: Leave a comment with your suggestions on how I could do better or how you think the story is going. I love hearing from you guys so please do so! Have A Great Day!