Title: A Helping Hand, or A Hogwarts Bathroom Ballad

Author: AristideCauquemaire

Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter (kind of...)

Rating: M for grown-up language and sexual situations and themes.

Warnings: slash, slightly non-consensual situations (later on), original characters (recycled because I like them).

/

Weird Guest: Heh, Scorpius would totally deny that. (For now...) What tipped you off ^^? And how about vice versa, Albus having interest in Scorp? Thanks for reading, darling.

Be ye warned, this chapter is nice and wordy and also veers off toward silly. A little. Okay, a lot. In certain places. I had too much fun writing it, is what I'm saying.

~Chapter 7~

~33 days left~

Draco Lucius Malfoy had taught Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy a great deal of things. Eating with a knife and fork, convincingly crying on command, walking, talking, and flying on a broom were among these things, and Scorpius was grateful for all those, but right now he valued, more than anything, a certain spell his dad had taught him when he was twelve or thirteen.

This spell, easy to cast, foolproof, and always effective, was used to manipulate the cover pictures and titles of any type of printed media.

For example, if one thirteen year old Scorpius Malfoy had borrowed a Muggle porn magazine from Brice Parkinson – and this was purely hypothetical – and brought it home, then had proceeded to – hypothetically – hide it rather badly in a moment of carelessness so his mother would find it next time she entered the room, this spell would transform the busty, spread-eagled and pretty much naked blonde pin-up into the Russian Quidditch pro Yaroslav Yaroslavich, and the "10 Ways to Make Her Scream" into "The 10 Most Promising Newcomers of the Season". It was a very basic glamour, easily penetrated, and wore off rather quickly, but it was enough to save Scorpius Malfoy a shitload of trouble from his rather conservative mum. Hypothetically speaking.

Right now – on Monday evening, two hours before library closing time – Scorpius Malfoy was non-hypothetically appreciating this same spell as he heaped another tome formerly titled "Sex Magic & Sex Curses" (or something similar that, in any case, featured the s-word very frequently and in conspicuously big letters, hinting clearly at the fact that the author was compensating for something) onto a smallish pile on his work table. There were four other books already, now ostensibly dealing with herbs, more herbs, potions, and trains – model trains, to be exact – so that Scorpius would have a mighty hard time explaining his highly eclectic research to anyone who might ask about it, but it was still easier to explain than tomes titled "Magic Down Under – Magical Genital Afflictions, Curses, Cures" or something.

As he flipped open the topmost book, he wondered why the hell none of these were in the restricted section to begin with. Or at least had a PARENTAL ADVISORY - EXPLICIT CONTENT sticker on them.

Fifteen minutes later, he understood why no one thought to lock these away, or why the Hogwarts staff wasn't afraid that students might misuse them, or why no Hogwarts student had glanced into any of them in years.

It was because they were boring.

They were research products from a strictly scholarly point of view, they came without any sort of picture or illustration, there was nothing even close to sexy in them, and by Merlin, they were dull. Leave it to scholars to make books about sex boring.

It took him almost one hour of languidly flipping through pages and pages of small, tightly printed text until he actually hit something that sounded relevant to his situation. He sat up from where he had slouched in his chair and read.

"Tactus Torporis" - the touch of anaesthesia, or the numbing touch – "was first created in anno Domini 1278 and has widely been used by authorities in combating and punishing sexual offences since the early 14th century."

He hmm'ed to himself. This would actually fit. Auror Weasley was one of these authorities, after all, and his wife had mentioned that it had been part of his training.

The text went on explaining how this spell was created (Trial and error. Lots and lots of horrible error described in great detail. Scorpius shuddered.) and how, in 1329, it officially replaced a spell that had the word "Castratus" in it which made Scorpius immensely glad that he was born after 1329.

"This change was made when the magical constitution was amended, anchoring every person's fundamental and unalienable right to the potential realisation of their sexual satisfaction in England's Basic Wizarding Law (BaWL). Said law was originally mainly established to make both genital mutilation and mechanical means of sexual denial, such as chastity belts and paroxysm-inhibiting penile devices that had come into fashion around the 11th century (for details, see chapter 16, subchapter 4), illegal. However, it also criminalised the previous custom of punishing sexual offenders through castration."

Scorpius had never heard of any of this and suddenly got somewhat pissed off at Professor Binns for not teaching this. It was so much more interesting than the various quarrels of other species. Then again, if his penis were working properly, he probably would have found this topic rather too crass and faux-sensational for subject material. It was only through this unfortunate circumstance that this concerned him. He sighed a sigh that would have made his father proud and read on.

In the following part, the political debate about obligatory castration was laid out at length, referencing several other laws and regulations that were also affected and had to be amended in a chain reaction of reforms. Scorpius skipped most of that.

The next part finally expounded the nature and functionality of Tactus Torporis. Gnawing on the tip of his thumb, Scorpius read that this spell brought "energy lines and nerve endings within the cursed person's body into conflict", thus making it impossible for this person to "bring about sexual delight through digital or other intentional bodily stimulation, and, indeed, betimes causing physical and psychological discomfort that is anathema to carnal pleasure", which was pretty much on point if somewhat understating exactly how awful it felt. At the same time, this nifty spell "never obstructed blood vessels, erectile tissue and so forth, thus never doing permanent damage to the neural system".

Scorpius darkly mumbled "Golly, what a relief" to himself, then read the last bit.

"Hence, the lawfully required potential realisation of sexual satisfaction remains, at least theoretically, intact. The entirely reversible nature of the spell furthermore offers a much greater potential for full restitution in case of false accusations than its predecessors," the entry closed rather smugly.

A footnote went into how many sexual crimes had been punished, and possibly prevented, with this curse. Interestingly, another footnote remarked that at least 43 cases of commitment to mental hospitals had been linked to this very spell. An absolute causal relationship had never been proven, which was why the spell was still in use today ("today" being 1977, the year of publication of the book, but Scorpius didn't doubt that nothing had changed in the four decades since then).

He set out to find more on Tactus Torporis, namely, whether there was a counter-spell at all, or how exactly the lifting of this curse would go about, or if it was even possible to put it on a time limit, or if Rose's parents might have deceived him and his parents in pre-crime revenge, which was likely if Mrs Granger and Mr Weasley thought of him as a sexual criminal. Sadly, none of the other tomes he had already pulled from the shelf helped. Two of them didn't even mention it, the other two only repeated what he already knew without adding anything. So he went hunting for others.

He had just made a find and was reading the new discovery leaning against the shelf – he gnawed his lip when he learnt that the only person who could lift the curse was the original caster, which had brought about several lawsuits in the past because in the 14th to 17th century ministerial enforcers tended to die abrupt, violent and premature deaths that left their victims in a right pickle, especially if they had been wrongfully accused and cursed as a mere precautionary measure – when a voice rang out next to him.

"So studious. It's as if you're living here."

Sophie Cattermole was wearing a sweet perfume and a little rouge on her plump cheeks. Those were the first two things Scorpius noticed.

"Um. Not really," Scorpius replied, suddenly very conscious about the glamour on the binding of the book he was currently holding, and that it was very temporary, and that it covered up 'Crimes, Spells, Magic: The history of Sex and Erotics in English Wizarding Law'. Written by a woman named Fanny Dickson because of course it bloody would be.

"What are you reading?" She leaned in to read from the side.

"Oh, nothing interesting," he said and closed the book rather forcefully.

His dad's book cover glamour used the material it was given, and it could only bend the truth so much. Thus, the cover said '101 easy Spells to find Love: Friends, Flirting, Friction' by a Chinese dude called Wang Long.

"Just, uh, skimming it, actually," he said, thinking 'Breathe. Just breathe'. "It's useless drivel, really." He slipped it back into the gap he had taken it from.

"Really? You seemed pretty absorbed to me," Sophie tilted her head and smiled. "And it's not that useless to learn a little about... you know, love and such." Her curved eyebrow said 'After all, I was reading that Kama-Sutra book last time even though I totally pretended not to.'

"I did? I wasn't, really. Um. How long have you been watching?"

"A short while," she replied enigmatically. "Say, you didn't happen to... have someone specific in mind while reading, did you?"

"Uh-no." He shook his head. Why am I so nervous? Something about this situation made him very uncomfortable.

"Not Rose Weasley, then?" Sophie asked sweetly.

The directness surprised him so much that it took Scorpius a long moment before he could answer.

"Nope," he said. "Definitely not her." In a hurry, he added, "No one in general, really. As I said, I was just skimming. It wasn't the book I was searching for."

"Then what are you searching for, Scorpius Malfoy?" Sophie asked. In time with the emphasized 'are', she stepped so close to him that her bosom touched his upper arm.

His entire body froze mid-movement and got busy breaking sweat out of every available pore. His middle region gave an interested twitch.

Meanwhile, his head gave a high-pitched squeal, followed by a string of 'Oh Merlin, what the hell is going on here? I'm not ready for this! Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!'

He suddenly remembered something about fate and fatherhood and destiny being disinclined to change her course and Mrs Granger mentioning 'poor other girls'; and then he recalled his mum giving him a short lecture on how girls liked it when the boy was a little shy and hard to get, how they liked a "capital C Challenge" (This had been to the occasion of his first crush; Odile had been at Hogwarts for an exchange from Beauxbatons. They had written letters for three whole weeks. Her English had been as awful as his French); and then Albus Potter said "Must be the irresistible Malfoy charm"... and all of this gathered up into a katamari of unbelievably inconvenient timing.

Somewhere, Destiny herself was having a giggle.

There was a predatory glint in Sophie Cattermole's eyes that, at any other opportunity, he would have loved to see, but right now, it – and the pillowy touch of boobs against his arm – only made him laugh nervously and recoil.

"Hey, um, Sophie. I'm sorry, but I really have to go. I just remembered that I have some, uh... stuff to do." He extracted himself, snatched up his book bag from the floor and took the long way around her toward the exit. "See you around, I guess!"

She followed him with piercing eyes and one of her tiny smiles.

He positively fled the library, hoping against hope that he didn't look like the gazelle fleeing the lioness on the Discovery Channel.

Unfortunately, in the fleeing gazelle clip on Discovery Channel, another lioness was hiding in the tall grass, lying in wait for the prey to be chased toward her and leaping up quite gracefully, catching the fleeing beast by the throat mid-jump and ripping out its larynx in a beautiful cartwheel of death.

Accordingly, he actually barrelled into Kate Macmillan in the corridor just outside the library. She yelped and staggered backwards. Her books, which she had apparently meant to bring back to Madam Pince just before closing time, landed smack down on or went skittering across the floor.

"Shit! Sorry!" He reeled for a bit, then caught himself. "Are you okay?"

"It's... it's okay. It's all right. You startled me!" Kate pressed a hand to her chest as if to still her heart. Her voice, already a soprano normally, was so squeaky that she sounded as if she had inhaled a balloon full of helium.

On this occasion, Scorpius noticed that, although she was really petite, Kate Macmillan did have breasts.

Bloody hell. The katamari rolled on, gathering steam.

Scorpius kept apologising as he bent down to collect the scattered books, very intent to not look at Kate bloody Macmillans breasts and get away from everyone and everything quickly and especially get away from everyone with a double X chromosome... and breasts.

He handed the books to her. When she took them back, her fingers touched the backs of his hands.

Another jolt went through his body, the warmth pooling particularly in the middle again.

"Thank you, Scorpius," she said. It was as if she were singing it. She still hadn't taken the books properly. Rather, her hands cupped his, palms pressing warmly, tenderly against the backs of his hands and his knuckles. "How can I repay?"

Scorpius stammered something about 'It was my fault to begin with' and 'Don't mention it', before saying, much more articulately, "If you wanted to return these to Madam Pince, you might want to hurry."

The mention of the irritable librarian seemed to startle Kate out of her – trance or whatever it was, long enough for Scorpius to finally deposit the books in her hands and quickly move along.

In six years of attending Hogwarts, he had never made the way from the library to the Slytherin dungeons in under ten minutes. That day, it was four minutes fifty seven seconds. Also, he had never thought of the boys' dorm – protected by charms against female entry (rumour had it that Slytherin was the only house where such charms were in place, the other three houses only had the girl's dorms warded against boys) – as a sanctuary before, but today he almost cried with relief when he fell into bed, burying himself underneath his blanket.

Shrew and Albus looked at him, then at each other, and shrugged.

/

~32 to 24 days left~

Even though it was on his list of films he needed to see sometime, Scorpius had never seen Groundhog Day. If he had, he would have seen glaring parallels between it and his own life.

Every morning began with vivid dreams. Moving shapes, sometimes abstract, sometimes very concrete. Pleasant, very pleasant thoughts.

Followed by the natural bodily reaction.

Followed by a natural response.

Followed by a groan of distress when the natural response made skin contact with the bodily reaction.

Followed by a shower. Cold, just for good measure.

Followed by a day full of girls. Big girls, thin girls, small girls, tall girls, brunettes, blondes, gingers, brown-eyed, doe-eyed, baby blue-eyed, green-eyed, most of them pale, few of them ebony, some of them cappuccino-and-cream, some flawless, most dusted with freckles- and they all looked so fine.

And they all were so frightening. He spent most of the day walking at increased pace, eyes to the floor so as to not make eye contact. Every time a girl spoke to him, he had to keep himself from hysterically blurting out 'I don't want to be your baby daddy!' and running off.

In Transfiguration class on Wednesday of the following week, he leaned toward Albus who was sitting to his left and whisper-mumbled out of the left corner of his mouth, so that Professor McGonagall wouldn't hear, "Hey, Al."

"Hm?" Al leaned towards him a little so their conversation wouldn't attract the headmistress' attention.

"Is it just me or is Briony sitting really close?" he whispered.

Albus frowned, then glowered, then leaned forward and dipped his head just a bit to look past him.

Briony Parkinson had settled herself down on his other side today for unspecified and inexplicable reasons, wedging herself between Shrew and him. Her Ravenclaw-BFF, Isabella Pritchard, had tried to snatch the spot immediately to his left, but Al had thwarted her plans – something that Al would later deny had happened because he hadn't paid any attention to the whole process and just plonked himself down in his usual spot.

Leaning back again, Al's glower got a shade darker, and he slowly shook his head in negation and disapproval.

Ever since Scorpius had mentioned his uncle and the spell (and then spectacularly failed to actually explain himself, or to dispel Albus' lingering worry), Scorpius' constant insinuations and growing hysterics annoyed him. Therefore, he tried to offset them with utter stoicism (which was perceived by Scorpius as stubborn denialism), blocking every one of Scorpius' attempts to start a conversation about this girl giving him the eye or that girl wearing much sexier clothes all of a sudden or those girls generally closing in on him like a group of Neanderthal hunters surrounding a mammoth. A motherless, helpless baby mammoth. Al just could not bear to encourage thoughts like that.

Or maybe he's right and it really is all in my head? Scorpius tried to breathe evenly.

Am I just sex-starved? Scorpius wondered whether such a thing as a sex-starved virgin even existed. Could one – logically speaking – be starved for something one had never had? You couldn't miss someone you never met, so, logically...?

"By the way," Al suddenly whispered, pulling him out of his deeply philosophical conundrum. "Rose really liked the boots."

Scorpius just smiled tightly and nodded in response.

Al hadn't talked about the birthday party four days before at all. Scorpius hadn't decided yet whether this was because of lingering awkwardness – by now entirely imagined by Al, for Scorpius was way too preoccupied with virtually all the other females of Hogwarts to even think about Rose Weasley any more – or because the idiot couldn't actually remember much of it. He had come back to the castle quite a lot later than normal, then slept until 2 p.m. the Sunday after and had looked rotten enough to give everyone who stood too closely to him a hangover out of sympathy, which strengthened Scorpius' resolve to never let Al near Firewhiskey again. Dude just couldn't hold his drink.

To be fair, he needn't have said anything at all. Scorpius had noticed the boots on Rose's feet the day before in Herbology class. (He had been working on the table next to hers and Michael Bowen's, a bit off and to the side, so he could see her in full view. He had looked, occasionally, but was, frankly, too distracted by Amanda and too occupied with trying to evade her. There was way too much casual/pseudo-accidental touching going on.) Apparently, the boots were so comfortable and their thick profile offered so much traction on the still frozen Hogwarts grounds that she hadn't wanted to wait until Quidditch season. Even if Quidditch season – or at least training – would start again next week, under the protective dome of a spell that would keep the pitch and the flying area warm(ish). Or maybe she was wearing them in? Hard to say, and not terribly relevant to Scorpius, if he was honest.

Thinking of Quidditch, he felt his fingertips itch and it made him fiddle with the corners of his parchment. Sports. Physical exertion. Just what he desperately needed to take his mind off... everything. He could hardly wait.

Briony clumsily dropped her quill and, instead of just asking Mariella – who was sitting right in front of them and under whose bench the quill had landed – crawled under the table to retrieve it. Crawling about, her backside was on rather prominent display, as Scorpius noticed just before he decided that the ceiling was very interesting to look at.

When she came back up and got seated again, she suddenly sat so close that her left thigh was touching his right one.

Scorpius froze as the contact zapped him and then scooted over three centimetres to the left to break the contact. And then three centimetres more, for good measure. Safety clearance.

"Another inch and you're sitting on my bloody lap, Malfoy," Albus grumble-whispered at him. "Give me some elbow room, will you?"

Right about now, Scorpius was fully prepared to spend the rest of the lesson sitting on Albus' lap, even if McGonagall would probably not find it very edifying and would deduct a shitload of points from Slytherin and/or hand out detentions - anything, as long as this would get him away from Briony Parkinson.

He did spend the rest of the lesson pressed up against Albus' right side, keeping a mantra of 'Only twenty four days, only twenty four days' in his head and desperately ignoring the nagging possibility that maybe the spell wouldn't wear off at all, and the additional thought that there really was no guarantee at all that this nightmare would end when (if!) the spell wore off because maybe destiny wasn't on a bloody schedule. I'm going to have to move to some remote island where there are no females within a radius of five hundred kilometres...

With both hands he held on to the hope that everything would be alright when he could masturbate again – and, really, that's a notion that keeps sixteen year old boys worldwide alive and sane on a daily basis.

/

/TBC (tomorrow)