Albus Potter sat on the black leather couch of the Slytherin common room uncomfortable at how worn the couch felt. He spun a Rubik's cube, wandering how in the world muggles found this fun. Al chucked the cube across the room where his best friend had to duck to avoid it colliding with his skull.
"What's got you in such a sour mood?" Scorpius asked with a quill between his teeth, placing a large stack of books on the coffee table in front of them.
"Detention." Al grunted.
"Yeah? What'd you have to do?"
"Clean up the lake shore." He replied, leaning over to read Scorpius' nearly finished potions essay.
"That's not too bad." Said Scor. "I just wish we would have punched Stewart in the face together, that way we could take a night swim."
"The teachers would never put us in detention together, they know we'd never get any work done."
"I've got good news though." Scor said excitedly. He held out a long white feather. "Free quill! The owl was fighting me so badly when I was trying to strap my letter to its leg, that I accidentally pulled out a tail feather… it didn't like that." He said holding up a bandaged hand, then he leaned over and popped one of his spare calligraphy tips to the end of the stem. "But check it out! These things run a three sickles a piece down in Diagon Alley!"
"Good for you, really, but I wouldn't be waving that in front of Max, he wouldn't take kindly for the precious wild life to lose a tail feather. Sorry to rain on your parade bud, but this information is all wrong." He said handing the essay back to his friend. "I think you were getting it confused with Transfiguration half way through."
Scorpius groaned and dipped his new quill in a bottle of ink and began scribbling on the parchment that was his essay.
"It's probably best just to start over." Said Al, looking at the large black clock above the mantel piece. "I've gotta go." He sighed, standing up and stretching; he had already changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.
"Do you want me to wait up?" Scor asked, fitting his reading glasses to his nose.
"I want you to go to sleep as soon as you finish that essay, find your wand and pack for tomorrows lessons."
"Yes, mum." Scor taunted.
Al walked through the darkened passages. It was all very frightening. He had snuck out after dark before, multiple times, but he was normally always with Scorpius. He had ignored Flitwick's request and had brought her wand anyway. He had no intention of using it for his detention, but it did come in handy as a light to navigate his way through the dark dungeons. Cobwebs littered the ceiling and corners above and around him.
"Shut that light out! We're trying to sleep!" called one of the many portraits that hung on the walls. These paintings were always rather grumpy, Al supposed he would be too if his owner decided to hand him on a narrow dungeon wall to be hustled and scuffed up by many Slytherin shoulders going to and from every day.
"Excuse me not wanting to trip and break my neck." Al argued, lowering his wand.
"You watch your tongue young man!" it called after him.
"I'm a Slytherin, what do you expect? Kisses?" Al retorted. That's one of the things he enjoyed about being in Slytherin, he could get away with saying or doing the darndest things because it's not out of a Slytherins character.
Al jumped away to avoid a spider scuttling across the floor and by his feet. He was often surprised by Hogwarts logic. Of course, the house whose color is green, whose mascot is a serpent, and whose sleeping place is in the dungeons, is going to become more edgy than those who have the luxury of sleeping in a tower with the view of the sunset. What do they have? The murky green of the lake and only torch light. Of course, many of his house is going to act like trolls when they're kept under the ground for seven years.
"Good evening Professor Snape." Al mumbled to one of the many portraits of this greasy haired, hooked nose, professor around the castle that never seemed to sleep.
"Evening, Severus Potter." He replied tonelessly.
"It's Albus." He corrected for the millionth time, continuing to walk.
"I like Servers better." Snape replied with his nose in the air.
Al rolled his eyes and continued, finally emerging from the underground and seeing the welcoming sign of moonlight shining through the windows. He had long since been at a lack of breath after the climb from Slytherin common room to the level ground and no longer emerged clutching a stich in his chest and heaving.
He tried to silence his stomping footsteps against the stone floor. He was startled by a loud screeching meow, and faced his wand into the face of Nixson, one of Filtch's (the grumpy old caretaker) cats. The thing hissed at him and circled his legs as Al tried to ignore it.
"Get away from me." He growled at it. The cat continued to circle his legs causing Al to stumble over it. "I said get away or I swear I'll kick you." He warned again. The cat didn't leave, it continued to hiss. Al gave it a sharp jab in the side with his foot, causing it to leap aside and hiss before scurrying off, no doubt to tattletale to Filtch.
"Ah, there you are Potter." Flitwick's voice ushered him over. "You have everything you need?"
"Yes, Professor." He said.
"You didn't bring your wand?"
Al hid the recently snuffed out wand behind his back. "No sir." He lied.
"Then come along."
Flitwick stopped and turned to see Filtch waddle up, red faced, with Nixon in arm.
"Yes, Filtch, can I help you?" asked Flitwick looking annoyed.
"This boy kicked my cat!" he exclaimed in his trademark wheezy voice.
"What? Do you speak cat or something?" Al asked angrily.
"So you admit it!" Filtch shouted, baring his yellow cracked teeth. "He admits it Professor!"
"Filtch, nobody likes your cats, I, myself, am guilty for kicking a couple of them. Now come along Potter." Flitwick grabbed Al by the elbow and directed him to the oak front doors, leaving a furious and disappointed Filtch behind.
There wasn't much to go on, Flitwick just said to clean up any trash or debris on the shore and collect it in the garbage bags. He'll come check on his work in a few hours. The tiny professor walked away and Al was left standing there with a trash bag in one hand, a trash grabber in the other and felt like the inmates in the muggle prisons on the television that his dad had showed him. He continued his work. These students were slobs, probably Gryffindors too, no offense to Rose and Max, but really, those guys are party animals. Butterbeer cans, abandoned quills, broken glass, hair ties, papers, shoes, and slime littered the area. Al got distracted and began reading abandoned homework papers, sitting cross legged in the grass.
"The Scuttle tongue was discovered to be a valuable potions ingredient in 1763, you idiot, not 1492, that's when Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue… I think." He mumbled to the invisible person wo had once written this essay.
Al scribbled out the wrong answers and misspelled words with one of the abandoned quills and looked at the tide to see how much time he had left. More than two hours. He flipped the soggy, ripped parchment over to read the name scribbled on the back. Albus Potter. Al was shocked and embarrassed that he was responsible for writing this horrible excuse for an essay and tried to remember if he had lost a half-finished paper last year.
"What were you thinking young Albus Potter?" he asked himself, looking at the misspelled words.
Suddenly, a small splash was heard from the lake surface. Al spun around, he knew that there lived a giant squid in this lake, but it rarely comes that close to shore and the splash was much too small to be made my such a large creature. Al turned back around slowly, deciding that it was probably nothing to interest him. He stood up and began the dull work that was picking cat turds from the grass.
"Whose there!" Al said suddenly, turning around after dropping his garbage back and pointing his wand's illuminated tip toward the source of the sound. He could have sworn that he heard music coming from the lake, a faint humming. He crept closer toward the sand by the edge of the lake. Al tilted his head to read peculiar markings in the sand. They must have been made very recently because they were right by the tide that hadn't washed them away yet. He spun to make out to markings from right-side up and he shone his wand light on what he now knew, were letters. Al squinted and drew closer to the ground until he was crouched to see the sloppy letters. His eyes widened as he made out what they said, horribly misspelled, but undoubtedly read, Albs Poddr.
Abls Poddr? Albus Potter! Al shot his wand to face the lake's surface when a sudden and terrifying screech type scream issued from the weeds that he was crouched beside. Al jumped out of his skin and bolted from the lake as fast as his feet could carry him, trying to catch his breath and lower his gasping. He didn't stop running until he burst into the Slytherin common room many floors below and collapsed onto the carpet. Al jumped over the couch to peer through the murky green lake behind the large stretch of window.
What the Heck was that?
He snuffed out the light on his wand and tried to relive what had just happened. He was by the lake when he heard a faint humming, then a bad version of his name was fingered into the sand, then a terrible war cry from directly beside him sounded. What? He thought that this shouldn't have scared him as much as it had, after all, this was a magical castle with magical grounds and magical beasts. But maybe that's was he was afraid of, what if it was a magical beast? Professor Dalbert had done well in making every student who took his class terrified of them.
Al sat cross legged by the dying embers of the fire which was enchanted to burn, surprise, surprise, green. There was little light, most of the green glass bobbles that hung by chains from the giant dome ceiling to give light to the room had gone out after ten, and the balcony that stretched all the way around the common room glowed no more. Al decided to tell Scorpius. He grabbed one of his friend's forgotten school books and rushed down the stairs to his room. The lights had already been turned out, all except for a small glowing ball of light on his bedside table that Al knew Scor had left for him. He walked over the marble floors and around the stone fountain that was infamous for breaking toes, and sat on his bed before removing his shoes and used the incantation 'Nightliento' to summon moonlight from his wand before placing his wand against his potted umple shrub to feed it for a couple minutes.
"Scor!" Al whispered, shaking his friend who was sprawled out, shirtless on his many homework papers, fast asleep. "Scorpius, wake up!"
"Wh-?" Scor shifted and tried to open his tired eyes.
"Scor! Something truly freaky just happened!" Al said.
"Are we in danger?" he asked.
"What? No."
"Then tell me in the morning." Scorpius rolled back over on his four-poster bed and curled up under his emerald green sheets.
Al reached out again to shake him back awake, but changed his mind, realizing that it wasn't really that big of a deal and that it was be insensitive to wake Scorpius up.
Al laid at the bottom of his bed, using his wand to emit bubbles that never popped when hitting the cold marble floor and was trying to see how tall be can make his bubble tower when a shadow glided across the floor over his bubbles. Al sat up abruptly and peered around the room, but nothing was there. With a hesitant glance toward the wall length window, he laid back down on his stomach and continued not being able to sleep. Albs Poddr he wrote on the floor with his wand. The shadow swept by again, thin and flexible, it twirled and a slap was heard from the window. Al dropped his wand and rushed over to it, not having to go far because his bed was the closest to the window anyway. Al examined the glass. He could see nothing from outside except the sand, weeds and stone of the lake ground, and the roots that grow beneath. He sighed and looked up before catching his breath. He ran over and pressed his nose to the glass to see what looked like a muddy handprint on the other side. But it didn't look like his hand, besides being smaller, it looked more like a duck foot… Al hurried over to find the closest pen and paper around before the print was washed away. He hurried over and ignoring the writing that was already on the parchment, held the paper to the window and traced the design, thanking Merlin that he wasn't such a poor artist.
Al spent the rest of the night re-writing Scorpius' potions essay that he had unknowingly used to trace the print from the window. It was better this way, he was able to correct most of Scor's work, leaving a few breaks in sentences and wrong answers so that the Professors didn't find it suspicious. Then he laid on his bed and slipped under his green blankets to stare up at the drawings and cheat sheets for school that he had plastered to the ceiling above his bed. He tried to figure out what the source of the noise was. It was most likely something that lived in the lake considering the less than human hand print, but it wasn't the giant squid, it couldn't have been a merperson because they aren't familiar with the English alphabet and can't spell, not to mention they can't understand human speech so she wouldn't have been able to hear him say his own name by the lake which he had concluded was how the thing had known to write it in the first place. Al closed his eyes, he would investigate more in the morning.