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Chapter Twelve:
Scorpius
It was scarcely half past seven, and it looked as if a tornado had blown through Scorpius' bedroom, leaving his clothing scattered around haphazardly. Rose had sent an owl the previous night requesting that the boys be ready to go first thing in the morning.
What did one pack on a mission to a foreign country to unravel a cryptic note left by a former colleague that only you yourself could decipher, and could ultimately change the fate of the Wizarding world?
Scorpius glanced down at the dark emerald dress robes he'd left folded on his bed, wondering what occasion he could possibly need them for. But then again, better to be over-prepared than under, wasn't it? Not to mention, these robes were custom tailored - he wouldn't find such a nice pair as these, should he need dress robes in a pinch. Before he could talk himself out of it again, he stuffed them at the bottom of his magically-expanded rucksack.
"Mate?" Albus said from the other room, "What's the weather like in Virginia?"
It was as if Scorpius' best friend'd had a personality transplant overnight. Where yesterday, he'd been moody and quick to anger, clearly still unable to emotionally cope with the attack on his father, today Al had been like a dog with a bone. He'd been alarmingly bright and chirpy ever since their meeting with Rose. Once he'd come 'round to the idea of going to America, he'd been practically buzzing with the excitement of it all. Scorpius supposed it helped his friend to feel as if they were actively doing something, rather than sitting around moping.
He just hoped this mission turned out the way the cousins wanted. He wasn't an idiot - he knew a huge amount of stress now rested on his shoulders and that indecipherable book of runes. Still, he could feel it all the way to his core - this note from Aubrey meant something. It was a clue.
Scorpius had just tied up his rucksack when the unmistakable sound of floo came from the living room. Figuring Albus was either too busy or lazy to greet their guest, he emerged from his room.
Rose was dusting herself off in his sitting room. It was still odd to see her there - looking pretty in a pair of Muggle jeans and an uncharacteristicly flowery top. Before he could say anything, however, another person stepped out of the grate.
"What are you doing here?" He demanded, wincing afterwards when he realised how rude he'd sounded.
"Relax, she's with me," Rose said, rolling her eyes and planting her hands on her slim hips. "Be nice, Malfoy, she's the one getting us to America."
"I thought you had friends in the Transportation Office?" He narrowed his eyes at her.
"Contacts fell through," Rose waved a hand impatiently at him. "Plus, Ministry portkeys can be tracked - we don't need my father chasing us to the States and bringing us straight back, do we?"
"Witches and Wizards under the legislation of the British Ministry cannot legally travel internationally without an authorised portkey from the Department of Magical Transportation." Scorpius said, as if reciting the Ministerial travel regulations pamphlet by heart, which, to be fair, he probably could do.
"Don't you ever get tired of being a prig?" Rose asked him, good-naturedly, grinning widely when he glared at her in response.
"I think the key word there is legally," Eloise mused in her lightly lilted accent, tapping her manicured finger against her smiling lips. Rose beamed, and Scorpius gaped at the two of them.
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" He asked them warily.
It was that moment that Albus chose to finally emerge from his room. He nodded at his cousin, then stopped dead when he saw who was stood behind her, flushing a spectacular Weasley red.
"Hello," Eloise said, pleasantly.
Albus took a moment to shake off his surprise, but recovered fairly well. He gave a brisk nod and a smile that looked more like a grimace to Scorpius in Eloise's general direction, then turned to his cousin. "Have you got the portkey sorted?" He asked. Scorpius rolled his eyes.
"I've got that covered," Eloise said.
"Right," Al rubbed one hand through his hair, "I was wondering why you'd joined our little party." His tone was as cool and cutting as Scorpius had ever heard it.
There was a beat of silence, then Rose spoke. "Is there going to be a problem, Albus?" She practically snarled at her cousin, raising one eyebrow pointedly with a finesse Scorpius suspected was practiced. "Because I was under the impression that the priority was to help catch the prick who hurt our parents."
Al had the decency to look abashed. "No," he muttered, not meeting his cousin's gaze, "no issue here."
"Good," Rose said, crossing her arms and jutting one hip out as she glared at all of them. She looked so like the bossy Rose she had been at school that Scorpius felt a sudden pang of nostalgia wash over him. Her eyes glanced to him, suddenly, and she smirked, as if she'd had the same thought. He smirked back, and Scorpius felt something flicker between them.
"I can activate the portkey at half eight, sharp," Eloise was saying when the pair finally broke eye contact. "We need to be sure we're ready exactly then, as that's when my colleagues make the changeover from night to day shift and nobody will be watching the illegal Portkey alerts. That's in-" she checked her wristwatch, "approximately forty-five minutes."
"And this will take us to Virginia?" Al asked, folding his hands together to make a steeple in front of his face.
"No," Eloise said, shaking her blonde head so her hair rippled in the dim lamplight. "These are Department of Mysteries prototype spells I've been developing - a sort of luxe comfort portkey, if you will. The idea is that eventually even pregnant witches and the elderly will be able to use them without fear of nausea or dizziness. They have not yet been developed to travel direct the distance that we require. The first will take us to Reykjavik, then to New York, and finally to Virginia."
"And how long will that be?" Rose asked, her arms still folded across her chest.
"Almost a day of traveling," Eloise admitted.
"I'm sorry," Albus interjected, frowning at the French girl. "I thought you said us for a moment."
Eloise trained her icy blue stare into Scorpius' mate, who looked distinctly uncomfortable under her gaze. "Oui, I said us," she clarified. "Or did you want to be stuck in a foreign country with no means of travel back home?"
Albus coughed, and did not answer.
"Right," Scorpius said, clapping his hands together to diffuse the tension, "Is everybody packed, then?"
Various murmurs of assent were heard throughout the room. Al shuffled awkwardly.
"So, forty-five minutes," he said, swinging his arms at his sides. "What do we do in the meantime?"
Scorpius read the same passage in his book for what felt like the fiftieth time, one eye trained on the clock in the corner of the room. Eloise was busy scribbling in a notebook at the dining table, her quill scratching loudly in the otherwise silent room. Albus had retired to his room for a "nap" - really, Scorpius suspected his mate was having trouble controlling his hormones in the same room as a particular blonde girl, which was sure to make for a sufficiently awkward trip. Rose was laying haphazardly on the sofa, leafing through an old copy of Quidditch Journal that Al kept on the coffee to give the flat a more masculine feel. She hadn't turned a page in at least ten minutes, and kept nervously checking her wristwatch.
"Quarter to," she finally announced, jumping up from the couch with an energy he'd struggle to muster this early in the morning. "I'll wake Albus," she said, with an evil grin. Moments later, they heard the sound of bed springs creaking and his mate's muffled cry from where he'd been apparently jumped upon.
When she and Al reappeared, Scorpius cast a quick feather-light charm and a Reducio at his rucksack, so that it fit snugly into his pocket. His companions did the same for their luggage, except for Rose, who carried a curiously beaten-looking beaded bag. They were silent as Eloise ripped a single sheet of parchment from her journal, and put her wand tip to its surface. It began to glow faintly, bathing their faces in blue light in the contrast of the still relatively dark room.
"This portkey will only get us to Reykjavik," Eloise reminded them, still waving her wand over the parchment. The very fibers of the material seemed to be glowing, the strands of light weaving together until the words upon the sheet were all alight, the latin text appearing to sink into the surface of the parchment.
"I've never seen a Portkey created before," Rose breathed, the freckles on her skin stark against her face that was awash in blue light. Scorpius smirked at her obviously reluctant admiration of the other girl.
"It is not an easy task," Eloise said nonchalantly, pushing her hair back behind her ears. "It takes many years of training to be able to create magic that bends the laws of structure and time." She took ahold of one of the corners of the parchment, and indicated that the rest should do the same.
Al smirked. "Looks like we've finally found someone cleverer than you," he said to his cousin, out of the corner of his mouth.
"Oh shut it, would you, Albus?" Scorpius barely heard Rose's indignant retort before he felt a familiar pull behind his navel, anchoring him to the bit of parchment between them. The room twisted and vanished around him, and they were off into the stratosphere, dimly lit by the streetlamps of London.
Scorpius screwed his eyes shut and braced himself for the unpleasant spinning sensation he usually experienced with portkeys, but it never came. Rather, it felt a bit like he was floating through the air, weightlessly. He was alarmed to realise he no longer had ahold of the portkey itself, but he could feel the pull from behind his navel, almost as if an invisible string had tethered him to the object. It was only until he heard a loud Whoop! from Al that he opened his eyes, one at a time, and glanced around in wonder.
The four of them were suspended, swiftly hurtling through the air as floating in a tube of what looked like clouds of pink candy floss, illuminated by the sunrise behind them. Scorpius reached out to experimentally to touch the clouds, his fingers finding tinglingly cool air beside him as the vapour dissolved at his touch. "This is impossible!" he heard himself shout out, a laugh bubbling up in his chest.
"It's a prototype!" Eloise shouted back, from somewhere in front of him, laughing too. "Zut Alors, I'm so glad it worked!"
"You've never tested one before?" Scorpius called back, alarmed. She just laughed.
It was a rather pleasant half hour, in all. Scorpius was rather comfy and just about to fall back asleep, when the journey ended as abruptly as it'd begun. At one moment, they were suspended midair, passing over the Atlantic, glimpsing rippling waves below them through the clouds, and the next, they were dropping out of the sky into a vast farmer's field.
"Oumpfh" Scorpius said, as he had the wind knocked out of him. He stumbled and landed on his arse, putting his hand down hard on a rock to catch his fall. It was a moment before he realized his palm was bleeding, rather profusely, and he pressed down on it to stem the blood flow.
He looked up to see Rose dusting off her jeans, breathing deeply. She offered him a hand to help him up, without a trace of teasing. Scorpius took it with his good hand, glancing at her suspiciously. "I hate flying," she muttered to him quietly.
"You were Gryffindor's star chaser," he said, taken aback.
"Yeah, with a broom," she said, rolling her eyes. "Looking down and seeing nothing but clouds beneath you…" she trailed off, shuddering.
"Sorry, where are we?" Al asked, having trudged over from where he'd landed a few metres away. One of his legs was covered up to the knee in mud, and he shook off excess muck before scowling at it and muttering a quick Scourgify.
Eloise muttered to herself while leafing through her notebook. "We're slightly off-course," she admitted, biting her lip. "Still in Iceland, I would just say slightly North of our destination."
"Point me," Rose murmured, her wand flat in her palm. It spun around to the left, gold sparks shooting out of its tip. They all looked in the direction, to see nothing but several more miles of field.
"Curious spell," Eloise commented.
There was a beat before Rose answered. "My mum invented it."
Scorpius wondered if he'd imagined the tremor in Rose's voice, but had little time to contemplate it before she trudged off through the field in the direction her wand had given, Eloise trailing behind. Albus shrugged at his mate before following the girls. The grass here was an odd yellowy-green that Scorpius had never seen in England, and the frost that covered it was thick and made a rather satisfying crunching sound as they walked. The plains stretched on, but there were several craggy-looking mountains visible on the horizon. They must have gone over a mile before they saw any sort of human-made structure. It was an old wooden building that once may have housed livestock, judging by the smell it gave off, even from its exterior. The four paused in front of it, staring into its depths through the sparse wooden slats. "Homenum Revelio," Albus said, waving his wand in front of him. There was a moment of silence, before Rose went to push the creaking door open.
"I just need a few minutes to recalculate for the next Portkey," Eloise said, once they'd huddled in the shelter of the old barn. "My notes said we should have landed about fifty miles southwest of here - while we've been lucky here in Iceland, I don't want to undershoot New York and end up in the Atlantic." She sat on an overturned bucket, sighing as she retrieved her notes once again.
The remaining three stood awkwardly, Rose rubbing her hands together from the cold. Scorpius conjured up a jar and some bluebell flames, and handed it to her. Rose smiled at him gratefully.
It was cold. He supposed it was to be expected, considering they were in Iceland in late autumn, but the chill of the place hit him all the same. Even the solid-looking barn doors, large and sturdy though they were, couldn't keep out the sting of the wind. Al produced some flames of his own, and wandered off further into the barn, muttering about finding some more things to sit upon.
"Your hand's cut," Rose said, suddenly, staring at where it hung limply at his side. A glance down told him it'd started to bleed again.
"Ah, yeah," he said, bringing it up to his face to inspect it. "Hit it on a rock when we landed," he shrugged.
"Give me it," Rose said, not waiting for him to react and grabbing his arm. She muttered a Tergeo to clean it out, and inspected the cut, frowning. "It's quite deep, why didn't you say anything?" He gave no response. "Do you mind?" She asked, indicating her wand and staring up at him with those big blue eyes. She was very close, now, bent over inspecting his palm. He could see several tendrils of curly red hair struggling to escape from the elastic she'd tied it back with.
"Sure," he said, shrugging again. "I've never been much use at healing charms."
She said nothing in response, but waved her wand over his palm. He watched as the skin seemed to seamlessly stitch itself together in front of his eyes.
"There's not even a scar," he marveled, when she was done. "I can never do it that well."
Rose rolled her eyes, but he could see that she was pleased.
"I think I've got it," Eloise said, coming out of a trance. "My wand movements… I dabbed when I should have jabbed."
"That's an honest mistake, I suppose." Albus was back, seemingly having found nothing to sit upon. Rose rolled her eyes again.
"So can we carry on to New York?" Rose asked, standing upright and tucking her wand back into her wildly curly ponytail.
"I don't see why not," Eloise replied, brightly. She checked over the writing on the paper again, then touched her wand again to the parchment. It glowed ultramarine.
"Well?" She said, looking at all of them. Scorpius shrugged, and grabbed a corner of the parchment.
This journey was not nearly as enjoyable as the last one. They were now bathed in darkness, flying deeper into the night as the Meridian Line grew further and further in distance behind them. About two minutes into the journey, the cool breeze turned icy, the sting of the cold biting Scorpius' cheeks and lips. The cloud tunnel they flew in contained them, never faltering in its stability, but the lightweight feeling of the previous trip was gone, replaced with a muggy haze. He wondered if these clouds were due to rain.
It was a decidedly longer trip than the first one. They must have been up in the air for close to an hour, by his estimation. Just when Scorpius' teeth had begun chattering at a nearly impossible volume, the sky spat them out again, into another field.
"Have we gone off course again?" Rose asked when they'd all dusted themselves off and had a glance around. She'd retrieved a muggle jacket from her small beaded bag, and Scorpius was pleased that she'd brought several spares for the others, as well. He hadn't been prepared for the crippling cold, in his light muggle jumper. He accepted the coat gratefully, though it was several sizes too large for him. There was a crippling moment of fear while he wondered if it belonged to her father, before his thoughts were interrupted.
"No," Eloise said, frowning into the dark, "we should be somewhere in the middle of Central Park."
Scorpius peered into the dark trees to his left, and just glimpsed the top of some buildings beyond them. They'd landed beside a copse of American elms (Al was quick to inform them of the genus), and just through the gaps in the branches could they see the park beyond. It stretched on for what seemed like ages.
"I just need a moment to work out the Portkey to Virginia," Eloise said, after she'd pulled on a jacket Scorpius recognised as belonging to Rose. The idea of travelling in another ice tunnel did not sound particularly appealing to Scorpius just at this moment, and he could tell by the silence of his companions that they felt similarly.
"I've never been to New York," Rose said suddenly, wistfully, a small smile on her face. "My mum and I were supposed to take a trip together when I graduated from Hogwarts, but she got caught up in Ministry business and couldn't go."
They were all silent at that, for a moment.
"Could we take the morning to see the city?" Scorpius finally ventured, looking around at all of them. "If you think about it, we've gained five hours in time difference anyway."
Al shrugged, and Eloise gave him a knowing smile.
"Great," he said, taking his own rucksack out of his pocket and enlarging it back to its usual size. He shrugged it onto his shoulders, as Al did the same. "Shall we find some breakfast, then? I'm starving."
He walked towards the trees for a moment, only stopping when he heard a call from behind him.
"It's this way, genius," Rose said, smirking and leading them all off the opposite way. Listening for a moment, he could hear the distant honk of traffic from the direction she was headed. She skipped merrily ahead, her red hair lit up like a halo by the light guiding from the tip of her wand.
"Fine," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. Hiking his rucksack further up onto his shoulders, he followed the group into the darkness of the park.
A/N: Sorry this is a bit of a filler chapter! It's about to get pretty active in the next few chapters, so hold tight! Thanks, as always, for reading and reviewing! -MD