"They actually accused Scorpius of murdering Professor Lockberry?!"

Talli rolled her eyes at Lily's outburst and threw her copy of The Daily Prophet onto the table. It landed into the bowl of porridge, and a boy from her year yelped out.

"It's been contaminated with ink!"

"It's just porridge, Nelson! Big deal! Practically no one eats it!"

Nelson Harris had thick-framed glasses, and he spoke through his nose most of the time. Sometimes he was even more annoying than Stuart."I happen to like porridge!"

"The Ministry has a record of being terrible at their job," Talli said to Lily, choosing to ignore Nelson's dirty look that was directed at her. "And some people will never forget the ugly history of my dad's family. So yes, I can believe that this garbage exists!"

"There is another bowl up there," Stuart informed Nelson who proceeded to pout.

"And leave my bowl so that you girls can put pepper in it or something? No way! I already learned my lesson once!"

"We don't pay you an ounce of attention half the time."

"Talli's right," Stuart concurred. "You're not worth her time."

"And you think you are?" Nelson spat. "She's only nice to you because you're too much of a ninny to handle rejection! Which by the way, she will never be interested in you. You may want to get used to that fact."

Stuart looked down at his near-empty plate of food. His hands which had been resting on either side of the plate curled up, turning his fingers white. "Stuart doesn't— he doesn't— I'm not—"

"Stuttering doesn't change anything, St-St-Stuey!"

Talli stood up from her seat. "Cut that out! That's not nice!"

"Don't you see, Stuart?" Nelson didn't even look at her. He was too focused on humiliating Stuart. "Girls don't fall for guys who need a female to fight their battles."

Stuart jumped up from the table and ran off.

"Girls also don't fall for little toads who think teasing others is funny," Lily warned him, getting up from the table and shouldering her bag.

"You're going to have a lonely life," Talli added. She also collected her bag to hurry after Lily who had taken off to comfort Stuart.

"Tell that to your father!" Nelson called out after her.

Talli stopped in her steps so quickly, she nearly toppled over. She took a breath to steady herself. Those who had overheard Nelson's retort paused their eating and socializing, interested on how Talli was going to react to this.

She turned around with pursed lips, facing him. "What was that?" she dared him to repeat it.

"Everything worked out okay for him, didn't it? No sense in pretending he was an angel, Talli. Everybody knows what a monster he used to be, and he still got the girl."

Talli clenched her teeth together. Her fists were balled up, and if she hadn't been several feet away from Nelson, she'd had sent one of them to bash into his horrid mouth.

"Well," she started calmly, noticing that their audience was quickly growing. "The difference between my father and yourself is that my dad scored incredibly high in all of his lessons. From what I've seen you do in your studies, you fall quite a bit short. I'm sorry to say this, Nelson, but you're just not smart enough to marry a woman like my mother; you'd bore her to death." She tauntingly flicked her eyebrows up and swung around, marching her way toward the exit. Laughter, and the chorus of "Burn!" could be heard behind her.

Outside the Great Hall, Talli let out a whoosh of air in disbelief. Her mum would have been proud! She hadn't cursed the boy out, and neither had she used physical violence. Oddly enough, it felt good. Sure, a pop to his nose probably would have felt better, but this way she wasn't serving a detention over it. Talli lifted her chin up, smugly grinning at her success. With a giddy giggle, she went off looking for her friends.

"Everything alright, Stu?" Talli asked when she had spotted he and Lily outside the Charms classroom, sitting on a bench. Lily had an arm around his shoulders.

Stuart gave her a nod. "Stuart told you that the other boys didn't like him," he said quietly.

"I hear it takes most boys a couple of years to mature," Talli informed him, taking a seat next to him.

Lily scoffed. "James still hasn't matured!"

"He's alright," Talli said after a thought. "James has been very helpful lately. He's just a silly boy."

"Stuart agrees. He's nice."

Lily groaned. "You don't have to live with him!"

"Well, that's true. My brother is much more easier to be around."

"When do you think Scorpius be back?" Lily asked at his mentioning.

Talli shrugged. Scorpius had a good scare the night before, and neither he nor Simon were ready to return.

It wasn't just the boys who had a bad night though. The thought of someone wanting to kill a school full of students was terrifying. There was even talk of shutting down Hogwarts over it, but the professors were doing everything they could to prevent that from happening. Security had been hired in hopes to make things safer.

But everybody knew that unless the killer was caught, no one would feel one hundred percent safe.

*/*

Scorpius looked up at the white ceiling above him. It was covered in decorative gold specks, and there was crack here and there. He wondered if someone was ever going to repair it. For a wealthy establishment, it seemed quite tacky.

"Scorpius?"

He didn't look away from the ceiling at his name's calling. He didn't want to answer anymore questions. Scorpius just wanted things to go back to normal.

How could that even be a possibility? his mind wondered. Even if the clone was caught, someone still died because of him, and Scorpius was having an issue swallowing that.

"It's not your fault."

He was tired of hearing that. Everyone insisted on telling him that. Simon too. It didn't change how he felt about the situation though. But it wasn't like he'd say anything different to someone else who was in the same boat. It also wasn't his fault that he was feeling this way. He knew it, but nothing made him feel better. Nothing eased his guilt. Nothing eliminated his pain. Nothing took away his feeling of hopelessness.

Scorpius was at a lost. He had no idea how he was going to cope. He was useless without his amulet. He couldn't help anyone anymore, and the Lockberry clone (last known under the disguise of a ruddy scorpion) was out there somewhere, literally getting away with murder.

She (or he…) was going to come back for them too. Until next time she had written. He had overheard someone say that she had murdered the real Lockberry simply to send he and Simon a message which meant: Don't mess with me.

The clone was a dangerous person, and they were the pawns to her chess game. The boys had no chance against her. She'd be back, and there wasn't a thing they could do to stop her. When she came back for them, who else was she going to kill?

*/*

"I cannot get him to speak," Analyzer Jack announced when he stepped out of his office. "Your son might need a special potion. This whole ordeal has done a mess on him."

Hermione swallowed down a lump. She grasped Draco's hand a little too tightly, but he accepted the pain if it would make her feel just a bit better.

"He'll be alright though, right?"

"Oh, sure," the analyzer assured her. "He's just temporary shocked." He handed Draco a piece of paper with the name of the potion he needed. "A week of this here, and he'll be just fine. He should feel okay to start school up again too."

"I've never heard of this," Draco announced after reading the paper.

"It's not widely known here, no, but it's a new African remedy that has had positive effects on those who have experienced emotional trauma."

"It has elephant tusks in it," Hermione informed Draco later after she had researched the potion. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, unhappy about her discovery. "Do you know how many elephants die every year?! All they do is take their tusks, and that's it! Its body rots in the sun, and their elephant family mourns their death! It's terrible!"

"If you want, we can make a donation to any wildlife organization that fights against elephant poachers, but this potion is supposed to help Scorpius, and I think we should use it."

"And support those… those bastards?!" she whispered the last word, as if it was some taboo.

"Hermione, the potion is already made, we may as well buy it. Otherwise, it'll mean that the elephant died for nothing."

She raised up her hand, shaking her head. "Absolutely not! I'll find an alternative!"

"And what are we supposed to do for Scorpius in the many of months for you to find a substitute?!" Her lips pursed, unsure of how to answer that. "Exactly," Draco said softly. "We cure Scorpius first, then we can look for an alternative and do your activist rubbish."

"Rubbish?" Hermione cocked up an eyebrow threateningly.

"Teasing!" he said quickly. "Only teasing!"

She nodded. "Yes, that's what I thought."

*/*

"Hey there."

Scorpius pulled his eyes from the wall that he had been subconsciously staring at. He had not expected to see Uncle Harry standing at the doorway of his room. Mother and Father were trying anything to uplift his spirits though, and it was evidently Uncle Harry's turn to speak with him.

"I'm not talking," Scorpius bluntly warned him, turning back to the wall.

The bed sunk slightly when Uncle Harry took a seat at the end of it. "I know exactly what you're feeling right now." The sound of the man's voice was quiet, distant and packed with heavy emotion.

Scorpius swallowed hard. He was not unaware of all the people Uncle Harry had lost in his youth. So many had died. So many had sacrificed their lives for him; for the defeat of Voldemort; for the betterment of the future.

"How…?" Scorpius trailed off, not knowing how to properly ask his question. He didn't want to offend Uncle Harry in any way.

Uncle Harry sighed, and Scorpius turned his head to see that the elder wizard was rubbing his knees with his palms. He looked over at the bedroom door, his green eyes going out of focus, slightly misting. "It's hard to push forward," Uncle Harry admitted. "It's not easy to accept that someone was murdered strictly because you simply exist. All you can do is ensure that it was not done for nothing."

Scorpius thought on that, and he turned onto his side to face Uncle Harry. "How can I do that?"

"You fight back, whatever way that may be."

"I can't fight a faceless enemy!"

A faint smile spread across Uncle Harry's face. "I thought the same too."

"You had a lot of help with Voldemort."

Uncle Harry tapped the boy's leg. "And don't you believe that you're in this alone," he said firmly. "There are dozens of people who are trying to catch your kidnapper. We'll get her."

"Or him..."

Uncle Harry gave a small nod. "Or him."

The next morning, Scorpius climbed out of bed and got dressed. He shook Simon awake, earning an annoyed groan from the teenager.

"Get up, tough guy!"

Simon uprooted into a sitting position. His curly, black hair was a wreck. He scratched at his head, yawning. "What is it?!"

"I'm going back to Hogwarts," Scorpius announced.

"Really?" Simon was shocked. For the past several days, Scorpius had hardly said a thing, and it was odd that he'd want to return to a place full of people who would positively ask him a continuous run of questions— something that he had gotten annoyed and tired of to the point where he refused to speak.

"It's time to move on. We can't let her think she's won."

"Or he," Simon corrected.

"Or he."

*\*

"You're back!" Talli hugged her brother, happy to see that he had returned to the school. He and Simon both had been out for over a week, recovering from their awful ordeal. "You're feeling okay?"

Scorpius considered her question with a tilt of his head. "I'm not completely healed, but I probably never will be."

Talli frowned thoughtfully. She felt really bad for her brother. He had gone through a dramatic, terrifying event that she wouldn't even wish on her worst enemy. "And how's Simon?"

He looked off toward the direction of the Slytherin table where their friend was at. With a simple nod, he said, "He's putting up a strong front."

"So not good then?"

"He's been through worse, but the thought of someone's life being taken to prove a point that's directed at you…" Scorpius shrugged, looking down at the floor. He inhaled deeply. "It's a hard thing to try and accept," he finished with a cracking voice.

Talli hugged Scorpius again. "I wish I could help you feel better!"

"You are. My wounds will heal over time. I need to move on though. I can't let the murderer control my life."

"Is Dad spending dinner here?" Talli asked suddenly, noticing the man was seated next to Professor Bulstrode. He had been hanging around off and on since the explosives had been discovered, but he had never been seen at the Head table.

"I guess so." Scorpius wasn't too sure either way. "Looks like it."

Professor McGonagall then called for the the room's attention, and the two siblings made way to their tables to sit.

"You're acting like it's the end if the world!" Lily said the next morning on their way to the first class of the day. "It's not really going to be so bad, is it?"

Talli dramatically moaned, tossing back her head. "It's terrible!"

"Why is it a bad thing?" Stuart wondered curiously.

Her eyes widened at the thought of him not understanding her predicament. "He's going to embarrass me!"

"He hasn't before?" Lily questioned.

"It's different now. He's a professor now. At Hogwarts!"

"Well, somebody has to teach us!"

"Stuart hears that he'll be better than our former teacher."

"Our former Potions professor is a murder," Talli reminded him, in all seriousness.

"Well, Stuart means the one she imposed as. Professor Lockberry was terrible at her job."

Talli, who was leading the small group, stopped at the door to the Potions dungeon. She pressed her lips together, highly annoyed. She was not looking forward to this. Not for a minute.

"You can't stand out here all day," Stuart pointed out to her.

"What if he gives me an unnecessary amount of points?"

"How can you at all consider that a bad thing?" Lily asked.

"Some of us like to win things fairly!" Talli retorted indignantly.

Lily shrugged. "You're the best student in our year; an excessive amount of points is quite fair."

Talli rolled her eyes. "He's so going to embarrass me!" she ultimately decided, and pushed the door open, stepping into the room.

"Good morning," her father greeted the group upon their entrance. He looked incredibly uncomfortable, clearing his throat every so few seconds.

"You are his first class," Stuart whispered, speaking about them all. "He is nervous."

That he was. Talli inhaled a breath. "Good morning…" she paused her greeting. Having her father teaching potions was already awkward, and he hadn't even started. "Professor," she added slowly, finding it strange to call him that.

She crossed the room as her two friends echoed her greeting and followed her to their seats.

"Boils and their cure," Talli said after a moment of looking at the blackboard that her dad had set up for the upcoming lesson. "We're starting from square one," she informed regrettably.

"We're behind in the subject?"

"By about two months, it seems. This is what Professor Lockberry—" Talli cut herself off. That woman had not been their professor. "This is the first potion that we should have been studying."

"You have a lot of catching up to do," Stuart summarized.

"Well, not exactly me," Talli said. "I know all sorts of things about Potions, but yes, the entire school is behind by at least two months."

"Because we were tricked into making that dumb Beka-beka potion!" Lily slapped her hand against the table, irritated. She stretched her lips out in guilt when her gesture had grabbed Talli's dad's attention. The man said nothing and returned to shuffling things around his desk.

"Your dad is very quiet," Stuart noted.

"Wait until the lesson starts, I'm sure he's just eager to show me off."

"He does like to brag," Lily agreed.

Talli glared at her dad. It wasn't fair that he was here! He shouldn't be teaching potions! He should be at home, making them!

"Good morning, students," Dad started when the classroom had filled. "Last night, the headmistress announced that I'm to be your temporary Potions professor until someone else takes up the job. I'm sure you have read about me and my family in the Daily Prophet, I assure you, you have nothing to fear."

"Were you really a death eater like they say?" Samantha Deller from Slytherin asked, leaning forward with excitement.

"Course he was!" Nelson spoke out. "And I bet he even killed someone!"

"He did not!" Talli stood up, snapping out at that infuriating boy.

"Maybe not him, but your grandpappy sure did!"

"Excuse me," Dad calmly cut in. "I'm not here for an interview of the things that I did in my past. And you're here to learn about Potions. I know a lot about them, and I can teach you— that is… if you'll let me?"

Talli sat down when the room went quiet. Her classmates were taking their time on whether they were going to accept him or not. Dad waited patiently for a response.

"Professor Malfoy helped my dad," Lily announced. "He could have let Voldemort—" Dad's eyes closed at the mentioning of Voldemort's name. His jawline went taunt. "—know about my dad, but he didn't. They were all so young. It's not fair to judge them during such a horrible time."

"You are lucky," Stuart added. "You don't live in an era where you must choose a side or die a painful death."

There was an incredible, uncomfortable chill across the room as the first years thought on that. Sometimes Stuart had a way with words, hitting the nail right on the head.

"Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy have a love bond," Talli's roommate Penny said. Talli placed her hand to her forehead. Once Penny started in on Talli's parents, it was hard to get her to be quiet about the subject. "And love bonds don't connect themselves to murderers."

Dad looked at the girl, heavily surprised that she would know this. He pointed at her. "That's exactly right!"

Penny beamed with delight. She was a huge fan of Talli's parents, so getting a compliment from him made her day. "Thank you, professor!"

"Oh, how would you even know anything to do with bonds?" Nelson, never missing a moment to be a creep, demanded at Penny.

"She's obsessed with the Malfoy love bond," Lily answered. "It is all she talks about!"

"Indeed, it is!" Talli groaned. Her hand was still set to her forehead, wishing for the topic to finally cease.

"Shall we begin the lesson?" Dad asked the room. "We shouldn't waste anymore time, not if you lot wish to pass the end-of-the-year exams."

"Professor Malfoy is a very good Potions Master, he makes potions for St. Mungo's— did you know that?!"

"Yes, Penny," Talli growled. "We all know, now can we get this bloody lesson over with already?!"

Everything actually went fine for a while. Dad didn't call upon Talli to answer any questions, and he walked the students through each step like he had done when Tall and Scorpius were little. He had always been patient when it came to potions— it was a required skill, one definitely couldn't rush it!

Then Stuart sneezed.

The bowl of snake teeth powder that he had been holding tumbled out of his hands and flopped over on top of the desk, causing a white, dusty cloud. The students near their table began coughing a little from the dust it created.

"Stuart!" Talli howled, brushing off the filth from her robes, annoyed that they had been completely covered in the stuff!

His only response was sneezing. Then he began making a high, strange noise. His mouth was open, but he said no words. Stuart was no longer sneezing. His face was whitening by the second, and tears were forming in his eyes.

"He can't breathe!" Lily shrieked.

"Dad!" Talli cried out in a panic. "Stuart can't breathe!"

"Everybody stand back!" Dad ordered, rushing to the boy. He relocated Stuart to the floor, laying him onto his back and inspected him over with a spell. After another spell, Stuart loudly sucked in one, long, deep breath and then began swallowing in gulps of air, holding a hand to his throat.

"What happened?!" Talli asked, relieved to see that he was breathing again.

"His throat was swelling shut," her dad explained, standing the boy up to his feet. "He's going to need a potion, I think, but best to let the mediwitch have a look."

"I'll take him," Talli instantly offered, wrapping Stuart's arm around her waist, letting the boy lean into her for support.

"Are you sure?" the professor asked worriedly. "It's a long jaunt to the infirmary."

"I can handle it, Professor."

"Alright," he permitted. " Go on then."

It was a whole two floors of climbing up and walking to get to the infirmary. Stuart was still having a little trouble breathing, so he wasn't able to assist much. By the time they had arrived at the hospital wing, Talli was out of breath, and her arms ached with tiredness, but she was happy to see the mediwitch approach them.

"We were in Potions," breathlessly, Talli began explaining. "And he sneezed, then he couldn't breathe! My dad said it was because his throat was swelling shut!"

"He's had an allergic reaction," Madam Abbot informed, guiding Stuart over to a bed."I'll need to strip him of his clothes, whatever is covering his robes is likely the cause."

"Snake teeth," Talli informed her before she was told that she'd have to leave to give the boy privacy.

"Feeling better?" Talli asked Stuart at lunch time when he had seated himself next to her.

"Yeah, thanks for your help, Talli. Madam Abbott believes that Stuart is allergic to very fine powdery substances, and she says that he should take an anti-allergic reaction potion whenever he's going to be around dusty things. She also said Stuart should use a face mask." He held one up, showing she and Lily what he had been given.

"Oh, like what the doctors wear on television!"

"Yeah. But Stuart doesn't like breathing in hot air."

"Do you like breathing though?" Lily asked.

"Stuarts needs to breathe, of course. He will not live if he can't breathe."

"Get used to the hot air then."

*\*

Scorpius stirred awake. He had been tossing and turning nearly the whole night and had finally fallen asleep at two in the morning only to wake up not even thirty minutes later. He tucked his hands behind his back, folding his fingers together. Annoyed, he glared up at the canopy above him.

"You awake?"

"Yes," he whispered back to Simon. He pushed aside his privacy curtain and sat up, grabbing for his shoes so that he could walk down to the common room.

"I dreamt something different tonight," Simon told him once they were seated in front of the fire on a sofa. He sipped from a mug of hot tea that an elf had given him.

"I didn't channel anything."

"It wasn't a nightmare," Simon clarified.

"So it was actually something pleasant?"

Simon shrugged. "I dreamt that we found your amulet."

Scorpius nodded slowly. "Too bad that dream wasn't real," he said. Thinking about his stolen amulet made him depressed.

"Yeah," Simon agreed quietly. "Too bad. Hopefully we'll get it back soon."

Scorpius curled up into the corner of his seat, wrapping his arms around his knees. He gazed at the fire. "She's using it for her serum," he suddenly said without even thinking of it.

"How would she use it on a liquid?"

"I have no idea, but what if… what if something goes wrong with her plan?"

"Like, someone stops her?"

Scorpius narrowed his eyes, intently watching the flames, concentrating on the way they would fall and flare back up. He shook his head. "No," he decided. "What if her serum fails her?"

"She'd be quite angry. She's spent decades on it."

"There's a possibility that it might not work the way she intends it to."

Simon eyebrows creased, confused with what Scorpius was leading up to. "What do you mean?"

"It is the scorpion that forges the path to end all magic," Scorpius said without taking his eyes from the flames. Deep in thought, His vision blurred, eyes becoming out of focus. "I think Picket was talking about my amulet when he made the prophecy."

"Because of its shape?"

"It just makes sense. I can't be for certain, but if she's developing magic, and the prophecy is about the end of magic, couldn't something just…" He looked away from the fire to meet his friend's eyes. "Snap?"

"Are you suggesting that she will unintentionally destroy all magic?"

Scorpius rested his chin to his knee, lifting up his shoulders. "I don't know. It's just a thought."

Simon set his empty cup down onto a stand and leaned back into the sofa with a sigh. "We've got to get that amulet back."

AN: Well, I am nearly done with the next chapter(#22), so I figured I would release this one. Apparently, I don't get to move until spring now, and that's been going on for years, so I'll move when I move, I guess, lol. Good news is I still have internet access to update the story!

Have a great Halloween, folks!

Review Responses:

tmtcltb : Things could start getting ugly :o

cloakedauthor21: Thanks for your thoughts :) More mysteries coming soon, hehe :P

To the Guest: Aww, thanks for the kind words. I'm trying my best to get more writing done. :) Happy to hear you like ti though!