Chapter 2 - In which James' sex life is discussed

Despite the fact that the Forbidden Forest was, in fact, forbidden to enter, it had become very common hangout spot for the students of Hogwarts, despite the fact that it was still the home of irritable centaurs, hungry spiders, and some creatures you just wouldn't want to know about. Perhaps it was the students of Hogwarts' way of saying, "The war's been over since before I was born, there's no real danger left in the world, so bite me."

"Hi, Mr. Centaur!" Scorpius called out jubilantly as he fervently waved his hand and smiled.

"Mr. Centaur" raised an eyebrow and then trotted off, looking sufficiently annoyed.

"Buh bye!" Scorpius call out to the centaur.

"I don't think they like us just marching in here and making fun of them," Al said.

"I wasn't making fun of him. As far as you know Mr. Centaur's his real name." Scorpius skipped along the pathway through the forest. "La la la, la la…"

Al shook his head. "It's amazing you didn't get sorted into Hufflepuff."

"Hello, Mr. House Elf!" Scorpius called out.

The House Elf, who was carrying a large pile of wood in her arms, took a moment to stretch out her middle finger in Scorpius' direction.

"Nice to see you, too!" Scorpius' mumbled. He turned to Al. "I really hate House Elves."

"Doesn't your family have some working for them?" Al asked.

"Yeah, but they're all mean ones," Scorpius said. "They're always giving me these mean looks and I think this one keeps trying to poison me."

"Fancy that."

"My mum says that I was dropped on the head as a baby by a House Elf," Scorpius said.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Al said.

Scorpius scratched his head. "Tell me, what was a House Elf doing holding me, anyway? Mum probably brought some old, pedophile House Elf into the house and he probably got a little too excited when he was holding me that he let me go splat right onto the hardwood floor."

Al had no idea what to say to that.

"Seriously, though, I mean, how do we know that we weren't molested as little kids?" Scorpius asked. "I mean, I can't remember anything before I was six. And people tend to block out traumatic experiences. As far as I know old Grandpa Lucius is a regular child molester and…"

"You have no idea how much I don't want to hear about this," Al said.

Scorpius stopped talking and crossed his arms, slightly embarrassed. "Okay, what should we do then?"

"I don't know," Al said. "We could study for our OWLs."

Scorpius thought this over. "Let's dig for buried treasure."

"Scorpius, I am not going to dig for buried treasure," Al said.

Two minute later, the two of them were on their hands and knees, digging up the earth.

James had been fifteen when he'd lost his virginity. It had been to Chitra, the daughter of some Patil and the keeper on the Quiddich team. He'd been her first, too. After they broke up, his next sexual experience had been with Jenny, Seamus Finnegan's Hufflepuff daughter. Then it had been Ellie, the Ravenclaw daughter of some bloke his parents had gone to school with, though James could never remember who.

The was the extent of James Potter's boning career. It was a lot, considering that Hogwarts wasn't exactly a large school and most witches and wizards, it seemed, didn't lose their virginities until they were married; the magical community was surprisingly old fashioned.

At the moment, James was between girlfriends. This meant that James had been jerking off nearly every day all summer. Now that he was back in school again, he'd found very few opportunities to spray his seed. Masturbation was something very difficult to find time to do when you shared a room with four other people and the bathrooms were plagued with ghosts. Once, James had walked in on Pete Finnegan jerking off in their dormitory; both of them had been traumatized for at least a week.

What James could not fathom, however, was that despite being quite a Gryffindor stud when it came to the ladies, he kept finding himself ever so slightly attracted to members of the same sex. It wasn't anyone specific who he was attracted to, or at least not as far as James could tell. James did not dream at night about Pete and Alex and Barry. Actually, this seemed quite repulsive to him, thinking of his closest friends in such a way. But, sometimes, deep in the back of his mind, he would think of what he believed to be imaginary boys. Sometimes, it was a tall, grinning boy with curly black hair and twinkling eyes who made James want to hide. And sometimes it was this fellow who's face he couldn't quite make out, but who he knew he would die for. Sometimes he would picture the boys playing Quiddich and sometimes merely sleeping in bed. Not exactly the most raunchy thoughts, but the way the images made James feel was undeniable. And then James would wake up, deeply troubled by his dreams and unable to go back to sleep.

James didn't imagine himself to be bisexual, and yet the evidence was overwhelming. Besides, if he was, he knew it would be the sort of thing best kept hidden, particularly if he was planning to finally prove his superiority to his brother this year.

Oddly enough, Albus Potter was soon to discover that he had a similar, though distinctly stranger and more difficult, problem at hand.

After digging in the Forbidden Forest for about an hour, Al had given up. He began running his wand over his clothes, fervently trying to clean the dirt off of them. "Come on, let's go. We haven't found anything good."

"Are you kidding?" Scorpius said. "We found two sickles, part of a shovel, and an old thong."

"I can't even tell if you're joking or not," Al muttered. "Besides, you're covered head to toe in dirt and God-knows-what."

Scorpius sniffed. "Come on, just a little while longer. Besides, I found some cool rocks." He thrust his hands forward to Albus. "See?"

Al looked over the rocks. "What's so special about this one?"

"It's pointy!" Scorpius said.

"And this one?" asked Al.

"Well, it's a really pretty shade of black," Scorpius said.

"And this one's… a dirt clod."

"Oh, woops." Scorpius chucked the clump of dirt. "But this one's really neat."

Al looked. Sure enough, the stone was more aesthetically pleasing than the others. "I think it used to be part of a ring," Al said.

"Great! That means that the rest of it's probably around here somewhere!" Scorpius set the rocks aside and began digging again into the earth.

"Let's just go," Al said. He began to stand up.

"What on earth?" Scorpius shrieked.

"What? What?" Al asked. "Did you find something?"

"Er, no. It's just, when you stood up, I saw your socks," Scorpius said.

Al raised an eyebrow. He lifted his pant leg, revealing a bright green and yellow striped sock. "So?

"So… It's awful," Scorpius said. "What? Did your grandma knit them for you?"

"Er, yes, actually," Al said, reddening slightly. "She makes them for everyone. Just be glad I'm not wearing the matching sweater."

"Why are you wearing any of them?" Scorpius asked. "I mean, that's really bloody awful, mate."

Al thought for a moment. "Come to think of it, I don't think anybody else ever wears them except for when we're visiting my grandparents."

"And there's a reason why!" Scorpius exclaimed. "I mean, just look at it."

Still flushed, Al said, "I don't know. I just really like socks for some reason. I mean… they're sort of neat, you know?"

"No!" Scorpius said. "You're crazy. No Slytherin with even an ounce of dignity would go around wearing those ghastly things!"

"No Slytherin with an ounce of dignity would go around rolling in the dirt looking for buried treasure and shouting hello to centaurs," Al responded.

"Touché," Scorpius said. He began to collect his findings. "Hey, the rocks are cool and the sickles are useful, but do you suppose we should keep any of the rest?"

Al gave his friend a look which seemed to say, "No fucking way."

"Alright, alright, let's go," Scorpius mumbled.

On only the second day of school, James was holding Quiddich tryouts. He thought it was best, seeing as the sooner he picked a team the sooner they could begin practicing and then the sooner they would start winning. Some people were going to be easy to pick. James figured he would keep Chitra for keeper, Pete and Lance for beaters, and Barry as a chaser. Oh, and himself for seeker, of course.

Tryouts went just about as he thought they would. A few first years tried out, most of which could barely leave the ground. Then there were a few people who flew into the goalposts; it happened every year. Lily tried out for chaser. She wasn't too bad, actually. Her small size seemed to make it easier for her to slip by people. She was a definite possibility.

Hugo tried out, too. He was the first person to come crashing into a goal post. James decided to tell him that maybe he should try again next year.

A forth year, Odell Brown, did a fairly good job, until the very end when he accidentally bumped into somebody, causing him to jump forward on his broom, sending himself full speed at the goal posts. He was the second person to hit into a goal post. James decided to put him in the maybe pile.

Winning their first game would be a definite step for James in proving to his father that he was better than Al. Still, that wouldn't be enough. He needed to do something big. It was too bad there never seemed to be any dark wizards anymore. If he could find one and defeat him or her, then he just knew that Harry would see how brave and good he was.

"Step one," James thought to himself, "Find a dark wizard." But where was he going to find one? All Death Eaters from the war were either dead or in Azkaban, which only left petty thieves and the hookers who walked down Knockturn Alley. Not exactly what James had in mind.

And James couldn't just create a problem and then fix it. That seemed just a bit too, well, creepy. Witches and wizards had done such a thing in the past: solving some big problem only for it to turn up later that the entire situation had been invented by themselves. And that just really wasn't the sort of thing James was willing to do.

For a Slytherin at this time, being picky about who could and who could not be your friend was not the best idea. It was lucky, really, if you had any friends at all. Perhaps it was because many Slytherins were the children of Death Eaters from the war. Or perhaps it was because, despite the fact that house unity at Hogwarts was significantly better than it had been twenty years ago, many people still viewed the Slytherin house with suspicion. Whatever the reason, many young Slytherins found themselves isolated and friendless.

In Al and Scorpius' year, there were two other Slytherin boys. There was Nott, who just sort of read books all the time and stared at walls and only talked to others if they had to. And then there was Goyle, who did nothing but eat and, well, stare at the walls. In fact, it had amazed Scorpius that he had found just one friend. Of course, when he'd told his parents that he was friends with Harry Potter's second son, they weren't exactly thrilled. His father had just sort of shrugged and his mother had started hissing about how he should put more of an effort into finding more reliable friends.

Sometimes, Scorpius almost agreed with this. Namely when Al started acting like a crazy son of a bitch. Like first year, when he'd found a pile of dozens of socks under Al's bed. Or second year when Al had somehow gotten himself stuck in the Shrieking Shack and nobody had been able to find him for three days. Or the time in their third year when Al had been sleep walking and they found him in the girls bathroom trying to scrub imaginary stains off of his hands or arms or something. Or just last year when Al had tried to throw himself off of the Astronomy tower in the middle of the night. That one had been the worst.

Of course, at this point, nothing Al did really surprised Scorpius anymore. Such as when Al woke him up at two in the morning on their second night at Hogwarts to ask him about his uncle.

"Wah?" Scorpius said.

"Your uncle," Al said, annoyed. "The one you were named after. What side of your family was he on?"

"Um… my mum's…" Scorpius said, trying to fall back asleep.

"What was he like?"

"I dunno… I think he died or something… before I was born," Scorpius mumbled.

"Did your mother ever tell you what he was like?" Al asked.

"Um… I dunno… Apparently he was sort of senile… and kind of a pervert," Scorpius muttered. "Mum says he used to pinch everybody's bottoms when they walked by. And he was always making really crude comments."

"Then why did your parents name you after him?" Al asked.

"How the fuck should I know?" Scorpius said, now completely awake.

"It just seems odd is all," Al said. "Hey. What's your middle name?"

"No."

"Come on. What is it?"

"It's stupid."

"Even worse than Scorpious?"

"Well, no," Scorpious said. "Fine, it's Gellert. You can laugh now."

But Al didn't laugh. "Why that name?"

"I don't know," Scorpius said. "Go to bed, Al."

But after that, Scorpius couldn't get back to sleep, and he knew that Al wasn't sleeping either.