Scorpius

"You're certain your dad's okay with this?" Carter asked me again as we stepped off the train.

All five of us were walking together. I think they were all interested to meet my father and thought that if they all did it together it would be better. Oh well, guess this is what's happening.

I spotted Father. It wasn't very hard. There wasn't anyone else on the station with the same platinum blonde hair as us, unfortunately. I lead my friends over to him. Oh the joys.

"Scorpius." Father greeted me.

"Father." I responded. "My friends all wanted to meet you."

I watched Father look over my friends. It was interesting. I couldn't read his expression. After a moment of silence I began the introductions.

"So, this is Carter Smythe." I said motioning to Carter.

I thought it best to introduce him first as he was the one who was going to be living with us.

"This is Milla Dursley." I said motioning to Milla next.

She wasn't so much of a problem. Father didn't really care about blood status so much anymore so her being a muggleborn didn't matter to him. Grandma was going to be another story.

I was a little nervous for the last two introductions even though I knew that Father already knew who they were. I didn't know how would actually reach to be being friends with them. Sure I'd mentioned them in a passing comment every so often but now he was actually meeting them.

"This is Rose Granger-Weasley." I said in a much softer voice than the other two indicating towards Rose.

I didn't notice any reaction out of Father at her name. Although he could be awfully good at hiding his emotions when he wanted to.

"And this is Albus Potter." I said motioning to Albus.

Again, no reaction.

"It's very nice to meet you all." Father said to them. "You'll all have to come to the manor at some point. I think you might find spending time on the grounds rather enjoyable."

I was surprised. I don't think that anyone would have thought they would ever see Draco Malfoy inviting the children of the kids he use to bully into his house.

I watched them all smile at Father before Milla, Albus and Rose all said their goodbyes and headed off.

"I don't see why you haven't brought your friends over before Scorpius." Father said to me.

"I was worried you wouldn't like them." I muttered looking down at my feet.

"I put all my old beliefs to bed." He explained. "Any grudges I held at school were due to those beliefs. It was no use holding on to them anymore."

"Yes, sorry Father." I said.

"Now grab hold." He putting out his arm. "You too Carter."

Both Carter and I took hold of his arm and we apparated back to the manor.

When we reached the entrance I saw Grandma waiting for us. She smiled warmly at me and pulled me into a hug.

"Who's your friend Scorpius?" She asked me.

"This is Carter Smythe." I told her. "He's going to be living with us now. Carter, this is my grandmother, Narcissa Malfoy."

"It's nice to meet you, Mrs Malfoy." Carter said.

"There'll be none of that Mrs Malfoy business." Grandma said, pulling him into a hug. "It's Narcissa."

Carter just smiled at her. I think he mentioned something about not knowing his grandparents. Well this was going to be an interesting change.

"How's mother?" I asked.

Father just shook his head and lead both Carter and I upstairs to the room that he and her shared. It was absolutely dreadful to see her. She was so thin and sick looking. It was awful.

"Mother?" I asked.

I noticed her turn her head slightly and look at me. She smiled over at me. Carter was still by my side not knowing where else to stand.

"This is my friend Carter." I said to her softly.

I knew she had always wanted to meet my friends. She'd never really been strong enough since the day they first dropped me at the station. She hadn't been able to come to meet them. So Carter coming here was probably a good thing. She got to meet one of my friends without going anywhere.

"It's nice to meet you Mrs Malfoy." Carter said to her.

"Call me Astoria." She said to him. "It's lovely to meet you too Carter. I've always wanted to meet Scorpius' friends. He just worries about you all treating him differently if you found out."

"It would be no worse than they treat me." He said. "I lost both my parents and my aunt and uncle told me they didn't want me or my sister."

"Carter's going to stay with us during the breaks Mother." I explained.

"Be good to him Draco." Mother told Father.

"Scorp maybe think this through a bit more." Carter told me.

I didn't want to hear it. If I wanted to dye my hair brown then I would dye my hair brown.

Okay, so maybe I wasn't coping as well with the death of my mother as Carter had coped with his parents deaths. But at least I wasn't pulling a Gwen and completely shutting myself off from everything and everyone.

"What does Draco say about this?" Carter asked me.

We had managed to get out of the manor without Father noticing. Although that wasn't too difficult at the moment. He wasn't really leaving the library. We'd see him at meals then he'd disappear back into the library. Thankfully Grandma was living with us. If she wasn't I don't know how Carter and I would be fairing. Sure there were the house elves. But still, we needed to interact with a human adult.

"He doesn't know." I said.

We had taken the floo to the Leaky Cauldron and were now walking through muggle London.

"I still don't think this is the best idea." He said. "Surely there are other ways to make yourself different from your father."

Honestly I couldn't think of anything else right now. People always saw me as a miniature version of my father and I hated it. At least I didn't go into a strange depression every time someone made a comment. Not making fun of anyone, Albus Severus Potter.

"Let's just see how it goes." I said.

"Well, this is the store." Carter said.

We had arrived at the chemist. I wanted to do this the muggle way because Carter said he knew how and he didn't think that it would be the normal stupid blonde in such a quick time.

We went inside and started looking through the shelves. There were all sorts of weird muggle things all over the store. There were all these brightly coloured boxes lining the shelves. They had images of all sorts of areas of the body.

"What in the name of Merlin are these for?" I asked Carter.

"Pain relief." He muttered.

"Why are there so many?" I asked.

"Different types of medicine for different types of pain." He explained. "They target different areas in the body and take different amounts of time to act."

I was so confused. None of this made sense. Why couldn't there be one type that just worked for everything.

"Here we are." Carter said eventually.

In front of us was an entire shelf of boxes. Some were red, some were white, there were a few that were blue and some that were black. The one thing that most of them had in common were that there was a picture of a woman on the front.

"The colour of the hair on the box is the colour that it's marketing it as." Carter explained. "It will probably look different on your hair. There is never anyway to tell exactly what it will look like on someone's hair."

I looked over the boxes. There were so many options.

"What do you think?" I asked Carter completely overwhelmed with the amount of choices.

"Well there's this." He said picking up one that had a woman with light brown hair on the front. "It doesn't cost too much, remember we're using my muggle money, and I think I read somewhere that you shouldn't put anything too dark onto blonde hair because it won't come out the way you expect."

"So you're saying if I put a black dye on my hair it won't be black?" I asked.

Muggle products made no sense. How were you supposed to get the colour you wanted if it wasn't going to be like the box?

"No, it probably won't." Carter told me. "We can try a darker brown if you want but I don't know how well it will work."

Carter picked up a second box. It was a slightly different colour.

"You pick." He said showing me the two boxes. "Natural brown." He waved the box in his right hand. "Or medium brown." He waved the box in his left hand.

"Let's just do the darker one." I said grabbing the box from his left hand.

Carter placed the other box back on the shelf and we headed to the front of the store. He took the box from my hand and went to pay for it.

The woman who was in the store held some weird red light up against the black and white bar section on the box. She gave both Carter and I a strange look.

"It's for my sister." Carter said quickly.

The woman just nodded. She said a whole bunch of stuff to Carter that I didn't understand. Wow, I really knew nothing about muggles. After the woman had handed the box, which was now in a bag, back to Carter we headed out of the store.

"That was weird." I said as we walked back along the street to the Leaky Cauldron so we could floo back to the manor.

"It's not very common for boys to by hair dye." Carter explained.

I just shrugged.

Once we were back at the manor we dropped the box in my room before heading down to eat lunch with both Grandma and Father. Well, if Father left the library long enough.

Lunch was quiet. It had been since Mother died. No one really talked that much. We didn't want to. There wasn't anything to say.

Our other friends had been owling asking if they would still be able to come to the manor. I had said maybe next summer. I hadn't told them what happened. I didn't want to. I didn't want their pity.

After we'd eaten we headed up to the bathroom, stopping to grab the box on the way. Carter opened the box once we were in the bathroom and opened up a piece of paper that had a whole lot of instructions on it.

"It says to wear old clothes you don't mind ruining." He said.

We looked at one another before dashing out of the bathroom and into our own rooms. Once we were both changed we met back up in the bathroom.

"Okay, it says to empty the colour crème into the developer bottle and shake well." He read out.

I looked through the other things in the box. There was a small bottle. I placed that on the bench. That must be the developer. Then there was a small metal tube. It said Colour Crème on it. I opened both the tube and the bottle and began to squeeze the tube into the bottle.

"If you do it like that you're going to waste some of it." Carter said pulling the tube from my hand and running two fingers down it pinching it to get all the stuff out.

"How do you know how to do this?" I asked him.

"My mum rarely used her magic." He explained. "I know how to live as a muggle if I need to."

I just nodded and picked up the bottle once Carter had put the lid back on. I began to shake it.

"Do you think it's all mixed together?" I asked after shaking the bottle for a while.

Carter looked up from the piece of paper with the instructions.

"Looks like it." He said. "Now it says to put the gloves on and start to pour it onto your hair. So do you want to do it or do you want me to?"

"You do it." I responded. "I'll miss spots and there'll be little blonde sections."

I pictured it in my head. Oh it was bad. I started laughing. So did Carter. He must have also pictured it.

Carter pulled a tiny bag out of the box and then pulled some gloves from the bag. He put them on. They looked ridiculous.

"Those gloves are awful." I said trying to stop my laughter.

"At lease my hands won't turn brown." He said as he balled his hands into a fist and released it making the strangest sound.

He took the bottle from me and began pouring it on my head. It smelt awful.

"Is it supposed to smell this bad?" I asked.

"It's all chemicals." Carter said. "So yes."

It took a while but eventually Carter had covered my entire hair in the foul smelling stuff. I think at this point both of our eyes were watering from the smell.

"Now it says to leave it in for thirty to forty-five minutes." Carter said looking at the instruction paper again.

"So what do we do?" I asked him.

"Talk, read?" He suggested. "As long as your head doesn't touch anything it doesn't matter."

For the next half an hour we sat and talked about what we thought might happen next year. It was odd. We didn't know what to expect. Second year had been chaotic enough. Who knew what third year would be like.

After the time was up we Carter looked at the instruction paper again.

"It says to just rinse it off until the water is clear." He explained. "Well you have fun. I'm gonna go read a book."

He left the bathroom and I sighed. I undressed and hoped in the shower. I began to rinse through my hair. It was weird seeing the water be a brown colour as it ran down the drain. Who knows how long I stood rinsing my hair but eventually it ran clear. I stepped out of the shower and looked at the instruction paper again.

Now I had to use the conditioner from the box. I rolled my eyes as I opened the packet and spread it through my hair. I don't think it matters how well this is in my hair. Looking down at the paper it said I had to leave it in a three minutes.

I waited around for a little before stepping back into the shower and rinse my hair again. When I stepped out this time I scrunched up that stupid paper. There were no more steps. What else could this stupid muggle box make me do?

I got dressed again and went to find Carter. As I walked down the hall towards his room I passed Grandma who stopped when she saw me.

"Scorpius what did you do?" She asked me.

"Oh, just dyed my hair brown." I said with a smile.

I have no idea what she was thinking because she just turned and walked off. I continued to Carter's room. When I reached the room he was staying in I knocked on the door. Carter opened it and looked at me.

"You look ridiculous." He said. "You're going to completely blend in with everyone."

"Perfect." I responded.