"Scorpius, I'm telling you!" Al said on the way toward Transfiguration after breakfast. Al had decided not to tell Rose about the other night. She took every small thing and had a habit of blowing it out of proportion. And since the strange happenings from last year and Rose's near death experience, she thought that every odd little thing was a threat on her or Max's life. "I was by the lake, whatever it was, scribbled my name into the sand, then it screamed, then it left a hand print that I scribbled on your essay!" Al waved the traced over writing in from of Scor's face. "And the shadow!"
"Al…" said Scorpius patiently, with a stack of book pressed against his chest, his bag having been torn days ago.
"I'm not crazy!" Al interrupted.
"I'm not saying you are," said Scorpius. "Just, maybe you didn't see what you think you saw."
"But I had to!"
"Have you stopped to think that you may just be inventing this whole thing to make an adventure for yourself?"
Al stopped walking and looked at him. "Why would I do that?"
Scor grabbed Al by the arm and pulled him to continue walking. "I know you were a little disappointed to have missed the whole shebang with Belladonna Drury. I know you would have wanted to go, and you would have jumped in that fire too if I hadn't held you back."
"That's not true!" Al protested, now walking up the stairs.
Scorpius raised an eyebrow at Al. "I was a little disappointed too, but you can't take something small and blow it out of proportion."
"But look at this!" Al thrust the parchment into Scorpius' face again; he would have shown him the real thing if it hadn't been washed away during the night. "Does this not look real? Do you think I made it up?"
"It looks like a duck foot, Al," said Scorpius, pushing the paper down and lowering his voice as they entered the classroom and took their usual seats on the second row. "And I told you, I don't think you're crazy. I believe everything you've said to me; you've never made anything up before. I'll go to the lake with you during lunch, and we can investigate there. But right now," Scor grinned broadly and sat up straight with his wand in hand. "I'm going to learn how to turn a rat into a hat!"
Al laid on his desk and burnt his name into the wood. He would have been interested in the lesson, but his mind was on other things. Al was happy to have a friend like Scor, someone who would listen to you say something utterly bizarre and promises to investigate anyway. Al was just anticipating the end of class, he had History of Magic after this, a chance to get some well-needed sleep, then they can go by the lake in the half hour that was lunch.
Scorpius, as usual, was the first in the class that had mastered the spell and was awarded ten points. With several 'pop's' he was turning the rat into a hat, and back again. He settled with wearing it on his head, waiting for Al to succeed. Unfortunately, Al had never been superb at Transfiguration, much better than Max of course, but still, sitting next to the Transfiguration king himself wasn't making him look any better. Worse for him was that Olivia Merik was watching him with a furry hat in front of her. He didn't know whether she was teasing him with her finished work or trying to make him feel nervous and sweaty. She always threw her shiny black hair behind her and turned around in her seat to watch his progress with her bright blue eyes after she finished; he almost never succeeded when she was watching. Poppy, on the other hand, was having just as much difficulty. Al would watch with glee as she became more and more frustrated and it always prompts him to work harder, swearing to himself that she wasn't going to succeed before he did, and it generally worked.
After dropping the hats, rats, and deformed cap with eyes and whiskers into the floating basket, they were dismissed with a heaping pile of homework to do. Al left the classroom, trying to fix his hair from where the rat had attacked his head half way through class. He felt a soft hand brush against his arm and turned to see Olivia walk pass.
"Good work today, Albus," She smiled at him before hurrying off to walk with her friends.
Al stood still in the hall for a moment, watching her walk away. He blinked out of it as a smacking noise met his ears and turned to see Scorpius making excessive kissing noises.
"Oh, shut up," Al said turning red and pushing him away.
Unfortunately, he pushed his friend into Poppy Parkinson who staggered back and shoved Scorpius into Al again.
"Get off me you rat!" she hissed. "You're lucky I don't pulverize you right now."
"I'd like to see you try," said Al through gritted teeth at the Slytherin girl much larger than he or Scor was.
"You would, would you?" she said, bearing down on them.
"What's stopping you?" said Scorpius standing upright again.
"It seems nothing," she growled, reaching for her wand.
One sharp smack hit each of them on the head. They looked up to see Professor Donima before them, looking sternly from one to the other. "There will be no trouble made in my hall, you understand?"
"Yes, Professor," Al and Scor grunted.
Donima looked down at Poppy. "Yes, Professor," she hissed back.
"Good, now run along." Poppy scowled at the three of them before storming away. Al and Scor stopped to wave at Max and Rose who were just entering the Transfiguration classroom, Rose looking excited, Max looking as though he was dreading what was going to happen next.
History of Magic was as dull as ever. Al, not being able to sleep, occupied himself with staring at Olivia's braid and trying to work out how in the world girls twist those things. Scorpius was taking notes with his new quill in hand and head on his elbow. Professor Binns was the only ghost teacher whose tone never changed and whose class never became more interesting. Everybody left the class, stretching and yawning like they always did and Al grabbed Scorpius by the arm and tried to drag him to the oak front doors toward the lake. Scor dropped the papers that he was trying to shove into his History of Magic book and leaned down to retrieve them. Al bent down too and Poppy made an effort to step on each and every one of the pages with her oversized boots.
"Find a hobby, Parkinson," Olivia huffed before Al could stab his quill into Poppy's shoe. Olivia knelt as well and helped gather the papers before handing them to Al and walking away without a word.
"Al, I'm eating something first," Scor said standing up and taking the stack from Al.
"But we won't have time!" Albus exclaimed.
"Ten minutes! Just ten minutes to eat and then we can spend the next twenty at the lake."
Al couldn't deprive his friend of food, it would be insensitive, especially because his friend was using his free time to follow him to the lake for a ridiculous claim.
"Why are you guys in such a hurry?" asked Rose in surprise as the two boys gobbled up their lunch as fast as possible.
"Yeah," Max chimed in. "You're starting to eat a bit like Rose."
Al glanced at Scorpius and back down at his plate, allowing his friend to take up the challenge of lying, Scor had always been better at it anyway.
"Al left a pair of his shoes by the lake last night," Scor shrugged convincingly.
"How were you able to make it all the way back to the castle without noticing that you weren't wearing any shoes?" asked Max.
"He was scared off by a keppa," said Scor.
"Oh, well we would offer to join you, but we're heading to the hospital wing after this."
"Why? Did Max singe himself again?"
"No." Rose pulled back her hair to show a blue welt on her forehead. "He accidentally turned his rat to stone which freaked him out, and he flung it halfway across the room, half way because my head was there to block it."
"Why don't you go to the hospital wing now?"
"Because History of Magic is next," said Max. "and if we wait until last minute, we'll be in the hospital wing partly through our class."
"Sneaky," smiled Scorpius. "Let me see that." He leaned forward to see Rose's injury and Al took Scorpius' nearly finished sandwich and slid it into his own pocket. Scorpius always took forever to eat anything and maybe Scor might not remember not finishing it.
Al looked up to find Max staring confusedly at him, then at his pocket with his goblet halfway to his mouth, and then he looked back up. Al put his finger to his own mouth, and Max made a gesture to zip his mouth and throw away the key before rolling his eyes amusedly.
"Lunch is over, come on Scor." Al took his friend by the sleeve and pulled him away.
"You could have let me finish eating," Scorpius said, pulling away from Al and smoothing his robe.
"Here." Al handed him his half-eaten sandwich which Scorpius turned his nose up to as he pulled the potion ingredient debris from Al's pocket, off the bread. Scorpius gave it back to Al, uninterested, who slipped it back into his pocket without thinking.
Heading to the lake took a lot longer than they would have thought. After navigating over stumps and stones, the two boys had reached the lake which was completely deserted. Classes were starting soon, and nobody wanted to take the chance of being late. The trash bag and picker-upper were missing, and Al assumed that Flitwick had retrieved it when coming down to check his work.
"Just over here," Al said, hurrying and almost tripping over a root protruding from the ground; Scorpius caught him by his hood; Al was nearly as clumsy as Rose was. They jumped off the bank and took a couple of paces in the sand.
They stopped in front of the area that his name had been written. He stared at something even more peculiar that had replaced it. On the sand in front of the lake was written with twigs the words, Albs Poddr. Besides that, was the same words, except written with stones, then seaweed, then barnacles.
Scorpius knelt to examine the twigs. "And you're not just trying to pull my leg?" he asked.
"Sure, because I have to time to hunt down barnacles just for a laugh," Al retorted.
"You could have been bored during detention," said Scor without looking up from the sand, but Al knew that Scorpius didn't really think that he was playing him. "Give me that tracing," said Scorpius still withholding eye contact.
Al ripped the paper from his bag and thrust it into Scor's outstretched hand. "Does this look the same to you?" he asked, holding the print next to one of the many smudged duck like hand prints that cluttered the ground around where the name was scribbled.
"That's the same print I saw on the window in our dormitory!" said Al excitedly.
"Well, I will admit that it is peculiar, but I don't think that it's a danger as long as we stay away from it," said Scorpius, standing up.
"Stay away?" Al asked incredulously. "Don't you want to find out what this thing is? Or why it's so fascinated by my name?"
"Right now, I want to get to Defense Against the Dark Arts," Scorpius started back up the hill and cursed under his breath as it began to rain.
"Are you crazy?" Al asked, chasing after him. "Didn't you say that you were upset that you didn't get to have an adventure like Rose and Max last year? This is an opportunity and there! Right there, in the sand is proof that this is for real! A mystery, Scor!"
"After lessons, we'll go to the library and check it out, okay? But come on! We're already late!" Scorpius broke into a run, forcing Al to run too, but at a quicker pace; he was noticeably shorter than Scor and therefore had to run to keep up.
Albus Potter was preoccupied in D.A.D.A. He kept trying to figure out what books they would search, and what excuse they would use for searching in completely unrelated books than their school ones later; the four friends always met up and studied in the library together. They would first have to search underwater dwellers, then maybe creatures with the ability to read or write, rather intelligent beasts, or perhaps look for magical occurrences on the water bed.
"Potter!" Al looked up to see Dalbert staring disapprovingly at him and to the side to see Alac Mishpetsie shoving a stunned water demon repeatedly against his arm so that he would take it. "Preoccupied?" Dalbert asked with an eyebrow raised.
"Can water demons spell?" Al asked hurriedly. The class stared at him as if he were mad and Alac Mishpetsie rolled his eyes and leaned on the demon's horns which had large marshmallows to cushion the tips.
"No more than you can," hissed Poppy.
The Ravenclaws that the Slytherins were having class with seemed to ponder the question as they always did to bizarre or unordinary ideas.
"No, no, Parkinson," said Dalbert, staring at Al. "Mr. Potter, I have never asked a water demon if it can spell but according to studies, the creature has a rather small brain and a short memory. I would not say that the beast can read, or write, or spell."
Al bowed his head again, feeling stupid.
"Just a matter of curiosity, what made you ask?"
Al looked up; he didn't feel like trying to explain in front of the whole class something that nobody would believe. "Process of elimination," he replied truthfully.
Dalbert looked at him a moment longer, then opened his mouth to continue about the water demon's venomous horns. "Just," Al interrupted. "Are there any sea beasts that can spell?"
"I suppose the Jirbbies, they have always been fascinated by the study of our markings, but they don't speak our language if that helps at all in your special secret mystery." Dalbert looked at his golden wrist watch. "I think that's enough for the water demon, why don't you all take out your wands and I'll show you how to- Holy Hell, Alac! NO!"
The class jumped and stared at the bulge in Alac's mouth, and the absence of a marshmallow on the water demon's horn. Alac's eyes widened with fear as Dalbert swooped over and dug the sweet from the boy's mouth.
"EW!" Alac exclaimed. "You could have asked me to spit it out!"
"Poison, Mishpetsie! Didn't you hear me explicitly say 'posion'?"
"Yeah, the horns, but I just age the marshmallow."
"That was absorbing the poison that the demon was trying to spit at you all!"
Alac started gagging in fear while Dalbert took him under the arm to lead him out of the class.
"Miss Daniel, you're in charge. Potter, don't let anyone touch the water demon," he called behind him before leaving the door open as he left.
Al looked at the eyes and the stunned beast as they glared at Al, a small stream of liquid flowing from his unguarded horn. The room remained silent for a moment. Unfortunately, the silence was torn by Poppy's voice which quite literally made Al sick to hear it.
"There's no stupid teachers to stop me from pulverizing you now."
Scorpius rolled his eyes. "Why do you want to beat us up so badly? Seriously, we've never made the first move. What are you trying to prove?"
Poppy scowled deeply. "Not as brave as you were in the hall, are you?"
"So you admit that we were brave?" said Scorpius with a smirk.
"Shut up!" Poppy called getting heavily to her feet only to be hit with what looked to be a gust of wind that forced her back into her seat.
Poppy tried again but was blown back down. Al looked around to find Olivia sitting cross-legged on her desk with her wand pointed lazily at Parkinson.
"You little-!" Poppy growled, trying four more times to stand, but with no victory.
"Listen, Poppy," Olivia started. "Nobody likes you; seriously, nobody in this room would care to see you expelled. But nobody in this room has any problem with these two," she gestured toward Al and Scor. "So, if you're thinking about starting a fight, just know that over half the class won't hesitate to join their side." There was a murmur of agreement.
Poppy ceased her attempts of standing and took to scowling with her arms crossed at Olivia.
"You know you've just been added to her list?" Scorpius leaned forward to whisper.
"I was already on her list," she replied. "I've read it."
"Scor, how are we gonna research water beasts in front of Rose without her finding it suspicious?" Al asked as they unpacked their bags in their dormitories after class before heading toward the library.
"Easy, we lie," Scor replied.
"Easy for you," Al said opening all his school books on the ledge by the vast stretch of the underground window so that he would remember to get to them when he comes back up.
"Just let me do the talking," Scorpius said. "We could just make an excuse and study down here."
"We haven't seen them all day," said Al. "They're our friends."
"Except for Rose," Scor said slipping on his blue jacket and heading toward their door.
"What do you mean?" Al asked, following.
"Well she's your cousin, isn't she? Can you really call her your friend when she's family first?"
"Of course I can. Your family can be your best friends."
"I guess I wouldn't understand. All my family is old. Why don't you hang out with James more then? He just seems more like you. Don't get me wrong; I love Rose, but she is a little bossy."
"Just think about where we'd be without her, though," Al said, emerging into their common room.
"We wouldn't get anything done."
Twenty minutes later, Scorpius and Al were sitting at a library table with dozens of books sprawled out in front on them, papers and notes littered the area, and Al was lightly banging his head on page 243 of Natural Water Occurrences. Rose looked up from her tidy workspace.
"Banging your head only causes brain damage." She reminded him. "What are you doing with Barnacles Beyond the Bay anyway?" she asked, picking up the top book from Scorpius' pile and reading the cover with raised eyebrows and a quill in her curly red hair.
"Defense Against the Dark Arts," said Al, now rubbing his aching forehead. "For the water demon summery."
"I thought we only had to describe how the water demon, or Kelpie, devours his prey! See? That's what I wrote down for homework!" she said, shoving her notebook under his nose and jabbing her finger at her neat swirly notes as if frantic.
"Extra credit," said Al, wishing he had left the lying to Scorpius. Scor had his head on his elbow and was watching Al with amusement as he tried for explanations. It's different when you're lying to a teacher, but Rose won't cease until she had all the facts.
"Why didn't he tell us about getting extra credit? What, does he think that we can't handle the work?" she huffed.
Al widened his eyes at Scorpius for help. "The Slytherins aren't as accomplished in Dalbert's class as the Gryffindors are," Scor finally decided to help. "We need extra credit work if we're gonna pass our tests."
Rose seemed content because she smiled and got back to work. If you ever wanted her off your back, you simply need to compliment her, all else before that point will be lost. Max, who had been looking up from his writing during the conversation, rolled his eyes and looked back down.
Al pulled from his pocket the now wrinkled and smudged tracing of the duck hand and began having Scorpius compare it with the prints from the sea tracking extra pull page from the thick book Scor was shuffling through. Al looked up, suddenly aware that Max was staring at them again. He dropped his quill and turned to Rose.
"Rosie, where's the book on waterweeds for potions?" he asked suddenly.
"Max, I told you," she said dropping her book frustrated. "It's in the section clearly labeled 'potions' on the shelve clearly labeled 'weeds.'" She said pointing directly down the aisle labeled 'potions.'
"I looked all up and down that hall, and it's not there right now," he argued.
"Don't be ridiculous, of course, it is." she said looking back down at her book.
"No, it's not," Max huffed.
Rose dropped her book again and stared at him. "Max, it's in alphabetical order, it's not that hard."
"It's not there. Some kid must have grabbed it."
"Do you want me to go look for it?" she breathed.
"You can look all up and down, but you won't find it."
"Don't tell me what I can't do," she said standing up and striding away.
Al and Scor looked back down at their massive stack of study. Albus was hit in the face with small pellets and looked up in surprise to see Max with a handful of rice he was throwing it at him.
"What are you doing?" Al said, swatting them away irritably.
"Where'd you get rice?" Scorpius decided to ask.
Max shrugged, "It was on the table." He wiped his hands free of the grain. "A more pressing question, now that Rose is gone, are you going to tell me what you're really up to? Extra credit? Not a convincing answer."
"Rose bought it," Al shrugged.
"That's because you flattered her, it's easy enough, now I'm not gonna force you to tell me anything but guys… really…"
Al glanced at Scorpius before hurriedly mumbling everything; there wasn't much to tell yet anyway.
"Let me see the print," he said before taking it from Scor. "…It looks like a duck foot."
"At the bottom of the lake?" Al asked with raised eyebrows.
"No," Max thought. "But perhaps the footprints on the sand were, just a thought." Max looked back down at the tracing. "And this is all the evidence you have?" the two boys nodded. "Did you not take a picture of the words from lunch today?"
"We didn't have time," said Al.
"Why can't Rose know about this? It's not anything dangerous at the moment."
"We just don't want her running around with the wrong ideas; you know how she likes to make a mountain out of a molehill," said Al hurriedly.
"He doesn't," said Scor, jabbing his thumb at Al. "I don't mind her knowing." Al glared at Scorpius.
"No, I know what you mean," said Max, thinking. "You don't want her to take control of the situation; you want this to be your mystery."
"No!" Al lied quickly.
"You're a terrible liar," said Max amusedly. "But I think that the circulation on the moon does indeed matter, if not then we would never have- Oh, there you are Rose!" Max smiled, stopping mid-sentence and making Al now understand why he had staged an entirely unrelated conversation.
Rose was stomping overlooking upset and without a book under her arm. "Do you think I'm stupid?" she asked and Al was worried that she had been listening to their whole discussion. "I remember seeing you pull that bloody book off the shelve." She pulled the thick book that Max had his elbow resting on and thrust it into his chest. "To try'n waste my time," she grumbled.
"Oh, will you look at that?" she said, pretending not to have known the whole time. "You did spend a good three minutes searching before you remembered me grabbing it, though."
The two boys packed up, bid their friend's goodnight, and started toward their dormitory. "Do you think it was right to tell Max?" Al asked.
"I don't see why this is so secretive," said Scorpius, ignoring Al's question.
"Because-!" Al started.
"Because Rose will blow it out of proportion, take the whole thing upon herself, Max tells her everything, and they both could do with a nice quiet year at Hogwarts." Scorpius finished in a rehearsed voice. "But, it was Max who shared his entire story and his ransom letter with us last year," he continued. "The least we can do is tell him the truth."
"Yes, but it was him telling us that made us all overreact, hold him back and what made Rose jump into the floo after him. If he would never have told us, then he would have carried out his plan without us as barriers for him. Sure, he probably would have been dead, but Rose wouldn't have gone through what she did."
"Are you saying it wasn't smart of him to tell us?" Scorpius asked. "Ambition," he said the password and the blank stretch of stone wall before him opened allowing them to walk through to the common room.
"It was a good thing to do, not a smart thing. Besides, Max can't lie. He's usually able to come up with a quick deception, but what if Rose asks the wrong questions?"
"You know, I don't think that whatever this thing is, is a problem," said Scor taking the long way across the common room so not to disturb Poppy's poker game. "I mean, it doesn't hurt you, all the thing does is spell in the sand what may or may not be your name."
"It was defiantly my name!" Al interrupted.
Scor looked over at him disbelieving.
"You were just convinced this morning!" Al snapped.
"I'm just trying to be realistic. We looked all through water beast and sand dwellers, none of them would have been able to do that writing. Are you sure there wasn't anyone else with you last night?"
"Only Flitwick!" Al exclaimed, angry that his friend had suddenly decided to change his entire look on an adventure and try to categorize the incident as mundane. "What? You think that Flitwick was hiding in the bushes, humming, screeching, and writing messages in the sand?"
"That's not what I'm saying."
"Then what are you saying?"
"Don't get all huffy with me, Al," Scorpius scorned. "I'm just asking you not to jump to conclusions; this is not a huge mystery. It's probably not even a big deal."
"Then what about the print on the outside of our glass?"
"It was probably just a leaf that smacked against the window."
Al pushed open their dormitory door to find Alac Mishpetsie, Ethan Holac, and Quin Bryan pressed close to the window. Al squinted and pressed closer; he couldn't see well from a distance. As he drew closer, he noticed that the vast stretch of window was covered in writing. Big cat scratch writing with something black and slimy, were the words, Albs Poddr, again and again, backward across the glass until the window was hardly transparent.
Al's other three roommates turned around slowly with a wide eyes expression at him. Al looked over at Scorpius' stunned face and smiled pompously.