One week before the Hallowe'en feast, Scorpius is inaugurated as the new Slytherin prefect for Fifth Year. Under the guidance of Professor Lee, and his upperclassman in Slytherin, he is taught how to properly conduct himself as an extension of Hogwarts' faculty: guide the younger students, ensure nobody is sneaking around the castle after curfew, cooperate with the professors, and above all, do not abuse the prefect title. All in all, it goes smoother than he first expected.
Al is supportive, as Scorpius expected he would be. Of course, he tries to exploit Scorpius' newfound privileges wherever possible, until Scorpius finds his backbone and insists that no, he won't be protecting Al from detention should he sleep in on Tuesdays.
"Please," Al begs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His uniform is all crumpled, and his hair is as wild as Rose's. "I hate Defense. Can't we just… skip the first half-hour?"
They stand together, forming a circle around their professor with the rest of the class- an eclectic mix of the four houses, instead of the standard two most classes opted for. There were two sessions a fifth year student could be sorted into, depending on ability and personal fortitude, and by some stroke of incredible misfortune, Al and Scorpius had both been allocated into the more rigorous timeslot. Back in their parents' time at Hogwarts, Defense Against the Dark Arts was rumoured to be cursed; every Professor who taught it would suffer some kind of terrible tragedy, be it a great personal tragedy or their own demise. Now, it would be laughable to even entertain such a thought.
Their current instructor is a lady named Professor Kelly. She's short and young - perhaps older than Professor Lee, but still younger than most teaching staff - and some of the older years claim she's a metamorphmagus, not that she's given them any sort of concrete proof. She rattles on a lot about her days as a student, and how she was the school's dueling champion, under the tutelage of the now-retired Professor Flitwick. All things considered, she's a scatterbrained maniac, but she teaches well.
"I can hear you, Mister Potter- you do realise this, yes?" Professor Kelly flicks her wand at him, and tidies up his uniform, magically flattening the creases in his shirt and trousers. "Do take better care of yourself, Slytherin doesn't need to lose any more points due to improper uniforms."
From the other side of the circle, a couple of Gryffindor girls giggle behind their hands, and Rose rolls her eyes, smirking at her giddy friends.
Professor Kelly goes off on a tangent about the importance of wearing the school uniform correctly, and Al lowers his voice to a whisper. "Do you think Rose would introduce me to her friend over there?" He asks, trying to be nonchalant and discreet as he motions to the tall, blonde girl shadowing his cousin. "Amélie Clearwater- she goes to Trelawney's Divination club."
Scorpius twists his face. "I thought you were interested in Alice?" He hisses back, confused at Albus' sudden interest. "You've never mentioned Clearwater before."
"Me and Alice?" Al gawks, shaking his head. "She's practically family, Uncle Neville would kill me. Besides, Amélie's part Veela."
"And?" Scorpius blanches. "I'm part Veela. Your cousins are part Veela. What's that got to do with anything?"
Albus disguises a laugh with fake coughing, hiding his mouth with the back of his hand. "You're like, one-tenth Veela, you prick! That hardly counts! Amélie's at least one-quarter."
Before Scorpius can retort with something snarky, Professor Kelly wraps up her uniform rant and sweeps into the middle of the circle. She claps her hands together, and leans back on the heels of her boots. "But that's enough of that! Today's class will be a very important session, as I'm sure you all know- up until this point, we've done a lot of the boring stuff, reading and note-taking for theory and such, but today is the beginning of the official Fifth Year Interhouse Dueling Club! Or, the FYIDC for short!"
"That's hardly shorter." Scorpius mutters, before taking an elbow to the side from Albus.
"What's with your snark lately, Mr Prefect?" Al chides.
"Now," Professor Kelly continues, oblivious to the mumblings of her students. "The Dueling Club will proceed like this: every other lesson, we will duel and undertake practicals instead of theory. Everyone is to duel at least once, and duels will be allocated between random pairs of students- it's all in good fun, really! You'll remember things better if you enjoy the learning part, or so I always say! So, for our first match up- everybody draw your wands!"
Scorpius would be lying if he said a room full of his peers drawing their wands at once didn't make him nervous- he didn't know how Professor Kelly could stand waltzing around in the middle of their little circle. He was never particularly keen on duelling, and didn't understand how he'd made it into the more advanced OWL class.
"Of the students in this room- who most recently performed a successful accio charm?" Professor Kelly asks the room, but more specifically asks her wand- with a delicate flourish, a small green light emanates from the tip of her wand, pointing directly across the room to Al's wand, which lights up in a similar shade of green. The jovial look on Al's face falls away immediately. "Very good, Mr Potter!" Professor Kelly cheers.
"Do I have to?" Al suddenly looks quite pale.
"And who most recently formed a successful locking charm, I wonder?" Professor Kelly continues performing the same charm as before, but this time her wand zeroes in on Rose's. "Well done, Miss Granger-Weasley! Locking away secrets, are we?"
Rose straightens up, stiff as a board, and her cheeks flush. "Not at all, Professor!" She insists, before marching into the circle and standing opposite Al, waiting for him to do the same. Scorpius takes a step back, alongside the rest of the students, as they clear the room and stand against the wall in anticipation of a friendly familiar duel.
"Do I have to?" Al repeats, reluctant and unmoving. "She's my cousins, she'll kick my arse, I know what she's like-"
"Come on, Potter!" Professor Kelly waves him off. "Dueling is an essential life skill- for self-defense! You can't rely on aurors for everything! Don't tell any of the other Professors I said that, especially not that bloody House Head of yours."
Scorpius pushes away from the wall to nudge Al forwards, and Al reluctantly turns to Rose. They both take their positions opposite one another.
"And now, you bow, then take five paces away from one another- yes, just like that!" Their Professor coaches, having migrated to the far end of the long, rectangular hall, standing behind her desk.
They bow low to one another, and Scorpius counts in his head as they pace away to opposite ends of the room, and then Professor Kelly counts loudly, "one, two, three," and both cousins spin on their heels.
"Vocalmucus!"
"Salvio Hexia!"
Bright sparks burst out of both their wands, with Albus starting strong, attempting his mother's famous Bat-Bogey Hex as an opener whilst Rose expertly defends, anticipating her cousin's first move. Albus pushes forwards, going on the offensive, but Rose stands her ground. She balances her weight perfectly, learning forward on her dominant foot as she deflects his hex. As soon as the hex hits her deflective charm, she thrusts forward and yells "flipendo!", too quick and sure of herself for Al to do much of anything. He's halfway through his own jinx deflection before a wall of wind slams into him, knocking him clear off his feet. He sails back a couple of feet before landing with an audible thud, crumpling into a heap on the hardwood floor.
Rose is moving before Al even hits the ground, babbling "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" as she goes, and Professor Kelly is cackling in the corner. She applauds her students, inciting a cacophony of awkward clapping from the class. "A strong start! Well done, Miss Granger-Weasley! And Mr Potter, that was an incredibly bold opening move!"
Al sits up with Rose's help, hair even messier than before. His glasses sit askew on his nose and he rubs the back of his head. "Thanks, Professor." He mumbles, before turning to his cousin with a smile bright enough to light up the room. "Great job, Rosie! Mum'll be well pleased, you deflected her favourite hex!"
"Don't tell your mum and dad," Rose mutters glumly. "Or my mum and dad. Merlin, dueling isn't half as fun against family."
Al brushes down his jumper and claps Rose on the back, jolting her forward due to their considerable height difference. She leans up on the tips of her toes and ruffles his hair into further disarray, and they fall into stitches of laughter before parting ways, with Al returning to Scorpius' side and Rose going back to her girls. Scorpius gives Al a commiserating pat on the shoulder. "Sorry." He mumbles.
"Don't be," Al shakes his head. "I didn't expect anything less. Rose wants to be an auror after Hogwarts, like our dads, and she loves dueling."
The rest of their class continues with much of the same, but thankfully Scorpius is able to escape without having to duel. Professor Kelly's early morning rant took up a good portion of their class, and so a number of their class is spared the horror of a Tuesday morning duel. Following Defense, Scorpius and Al share Muggle Studies, whilst Rose splinters off for an all-Gryffindor History of Magic class. She bounds up to them before they go their separate ways, with Amélie Clearwater, Alice Longbottom, and Veronica Harvey close at her heels. Alice looks somewhat uncomfortable, but the other two girls are hiding their coy smiles poorly as they giggle to one another.
"I'll see you two at lunch! Sorry again, Al- you're not hurt, are you?" Rose asks, reaching out to hold Al by his shoulder, but he laughs and pulls her into a quick hug.
"Don't be daft!" He smiles, unashamedly showering her in his affection, as is the nature of the Potter-Weasley clan. In their earlier years at Hogwarts, Scorpius used to come back to their shared dormitories on an evening only to listen to Al complaining about classmates giving him grief for being affectionate with relatives, as if it was something to get embarrassed over. Now, no one would make fun of either Albus or Rose, or any of their siblings or cousins for showing public affection, not after James Potter had hexed a seventh year last January.
"See you later Al!" Rose grinned up at her cousin, before releasing him and turning to Scorpius. Before she truly realised what she was doing, she'd already pulled Scorpius close and wrapped her arms around his middle.
Scorpius blanks for approximately three seconds, before his cheeks betray him and his face lights up red, rivalling the trim of Rose's robes. She stiffens as her mind catches up to her, but before she can pull away Scorpius awkwardly curls his arms around her shoulders in an attempt to play it off like this is something normal, something they always do, and not Rose acting on autopilot.
"Goodbye, Rose," Scorpius says, schooling his pitch as much as possible, but his voice definitely cracks at the beginning. Later, he'll blame it on puberty, despite his voice breaking very noticeably and embarrassingly over the summer.
Rose relaxes somewhat. Scorpius is no less nervous, not with Al's scrutinous stare burning holes into the side of his head, and Rose's friends' animated half-whispers. "Bye, Scor!" Rose chirps, before disentangling herself from him, and returning to her friends who immediately bombard her with thinly veiled shrieks before they've even left the classroom.
Al is still staring at Scorpius. "Mate," he starts, slack-jawed and confused, trying to pull the pieces together in his head. "What was that?" He asks, gesturing to the space Rose had once occupied. "What was that? What's this?" He gawks, getting up in his best friend's space, prodding his burning cheek with his wand.
"Nothing- I have no idea what you're on about-" Scorpius scrambles, side-stepping Albus as he lunges for his bag, which lies abandoned at the back of the classroom. "See you in Muggle Studies!" He cries, before absolutely legging it out of the door.
A/N: thanks for all the feedback to the last chapter! i'm feeling better about the whole present-tense thing now!
i hope you're all enjoying this so far! i'm thinking of having this run between 15-20 chapters, with another 3 or so chapters before Christmas? i'm a second-year university student, so please bear with me! lots of deadlines this term :'(
also i hope the dialects used in this story are realistic? i'm british, but i'm northern so emulating sourtherners is somewhat difficult? as my regional dialect is closer to scots than anything, haha!
hope you enjoyed this one, even though it's short :) all reads and reviews are SUPER appreicated! thank u :)
hyperionne
p.s: would anyone be interested in becoming a beta reader for this fic? benefits include previews before chapters go live and getting to read my stuff earlier than usual! if so, pls private message me on here, or on or ao3, or email 3 ! it would help me SO MUCH