Chapter 67 – Breakfast the morning after

The next morning, Scorpius felt torn between sitting down alone to bear his grudge and make Albus understand that it had been important to him, which meant he would be getting even more strange looks from his housemates,and his longing to talk to his best friend and find out what had driven him to abuse Scorpius' trust like that.

Scorpius fiddled with his tie and looked around for another place to sit, should he decide to spend his breakfast alone. The hall was still mostly empty because he and Albus liked to be up way earlier than their housemates. It was a way to avoid running into trouble early in the morning: the downside when even your own house didn't like you.

He was still hesitant when the owls came in and he saw Albus' face darken. A large black raven dropped a letter on the empty plate in front of Albus, and Scorpius hurried over to know what the blue-white monster had to say. There was only one person they knew that used ravens instead of owls. It made him forget his hurt for a moment and when he remembered that he was mad his ass was already on the seat next to Albus.

The boys looked at each other and his friend smiled when he noticed him. He wiggled his eyebrows and showed the short letter to Scorpius.

"Good we used that excuse or we would have been dead meat by now." The joke fell flat, and they both grimaced. Delphi had been rather blunt in her threat this time, if you knew what you were looking at. She wrote about their nightly meeting, as if they were useless tools that couldn't even get the easiest tasks done. What made Scorpius gulp was the way she added small details, that let them know that they were watched, no matter where they were. For an outsider, it might have looked like a normal letter, but both of the boys understood what she told them between the lines.

"How did she do that?" Scorpius fretted and looked around in paranoia. "There was no one but us and Miss Granger. Hogwarts should be protected from invading magic to spy on others!" It was just a whisper, as if that could keep Delphi from hearing what they were talking about.

"I'll need a spyglass!"

"Yes. I can totally see that working out for you." Albus drawled and rolled his eyes. "Every time we pass a Gryffindor or enter our Common Room the device will alter you and you will jump out of your skin in fright. If it ever stopped giving up an alarm in between these moments."

Scorpius glared at the black haired boy next to him. He made him sound like a pussy, but he knew Albus was just as scared even if he hid it behind an awful attitude. Albus' hands were clenched and he looked around to watch the different people close to them. His brows were furrowed and his jokes even worse than normal, in his attempt to lighten the mood. Scorpius knew Albus didn't say the words to hurt him, but for the last few weeks he wished his friend was just a little more thoughtful sometimes. It was in those moments that he thought it would be great if Rose's new love were his biggest trouble beside school stuff.

"Who knows, maybe she even uses her raven to spy on us? Doesn't need to be a human after all." Scorpius told Albus, who narrowed his eyes and watched the raven that still sat at their table. The bird inclined it's head and starred back at the boy. Neither blinked and Albus gritted his teeth before looking back at Scorpius.

"That thought is creepy. I once heard a story from Aunt Hermione about a bug spying on them in their 4th year. She had caught it in an unbreakable jar. Turned out the reporter was an unregistered animagus and she had blackmailed the woman into doing her job the way my aunt wanted it to be done."

"Your Aunt is scary." Scorpius announced, but had to admit that he had known for quite some time. "But the bird is too big to be caught in a jar. Something that big would attract unwanted attention."

"With our luck someone will tell Professor Dunkel and we will have detention with Hagrid until the year is over for imprisoning a pet." They both shuddered when they thought about their Head of House. Scorpius' thoughts went back to the woman that gave him the idea.

"Think she really will keep quiet about our nightly visit? Suddenly I don't feel so confident about setting her up with my father."

"I don't care." Albus shrugged. "She will always be my aunt, even after her divorce. She is kind of strange and even more scary since she, let's say, lost her memories, but she would never go against her word. If your dad hooks up with her, we are family and can see each other over the holiday without my dad complaining. Win-win to me. Anyway, we need a new plan to get the time-turner back from her."

Scorpius looked at his friend in horror and let his head fall onto the table. Albus would never give up this stupid idea and now wasn't the time to remind him that Scorpius hadn't said he would help no longer out of bitterness. He had enough and it was time to end this mess, before either of them ended up hurt, or worse, dead. Scorpius wanted his old problems back, and deep down, his mother. A hug from her had always made him forget about his worries, but with her death she had left him to deal with it all alone.

In the back of his mind he started to assemble his own plan, while they dropped the subject because more students were arriving for breakfast.

Scorpius would get Miss Hermione to help them, he just had to make sure Delphi watched Albus and not him. Maybe a spyglass wasn't the stupid plan Albus had made it out to be.