Chapter 5 - In which Scorpius gets punched in the face

James Potter was having the strangest dream. He was in a room with his dad, only his father seemed much younger. And he felt very sure of himself and very afraid for some reason. And he knew that the pride was because he knew he was able and that he could do anything he wanted. And the fear was because he was very afraid for his father, like some source of hidden danger was around. And the he was flying, flying through the doorway, flying oh so far.

He woke up, still groggy. He brushed his teeth and changed into his school clothes. Classes didn't start for another hour, so he decided to head to the Room of Requirement to get a little practice in before school started.

After walking around for a while, thinking "I need room to practice in," though he couldn't shake how tired he was from his brain. Finally, the door appeared for James. There was the normal blank floor, and the normal mirrors on the walls and oh! A bed! James hadn't realized how tired he still was. Perhaps he should have just slept in and waited until later to practice. He walked up to the bed. Just a few minutes of sleep couldn't hurt…

"Holy shit!" James jumped back; there was somebody in the bed already.

The person gave a shriek and then fell out of the bed, the blanket covering him. He struggled to get the blanket off and then yelled, "What the fuck?!"

"Oh, it's just you," James said to the very confused and irritable looking Scorpius Malfoy.

"What're you doing in here?" Scorpius yelled.

"What're you doing in here?" James asked.

"Well, I was sleeping," Scorpius sniffed. "Besides, I asked you first."

"Why aren't you sleeping in your dormitory?" James asked.

"Because your psychotic brother…" Scorpius paused. "…Locked me out."

"Why? What'd you do?" asked James, suspicious.

"Um, I think he was made at me, because…" Scorpius thought quickly. He knew he'd have to come up with something believable. But what? "Because I kept bothering Lily."

SMACK!

James fist met Scorpius' nose with an excellent precision. "Ow! Shit!" Scorpius yelled, putting his hand over his nose. "What'd you do that for?"

"What the fuck did you do to my sister?" James yelled.

"What? Nothing," Scorpius said.

"Don't lie, you asshole!" James yelled. "You must've done something. You just admitted it."

"Alright, alright, I, um…" Think, Scorpius, think. "Swatted her on the ass and told her she'd been a naughty girl?"

James didn't believe him, but gave Scorpius another punch in the face just in case.

And with that, James strode out, knowing that he couldn't get back to sleep and wondering what he'd do with an extra fifty minutes on his hands.

~*~*~

The library was completely deserted by the time Al entered it. He walked through the aisles. He didn't know quite what he was looking for. Perhaps he just wanted to be somewhere where he wouldn't bump into anyone he knew.

So, of course, he did bump into somebody he knew.

Lily entered the library and returned a hefty book. Al noticed her through a space in the shelves and watched her turn and walk right towards him. "Don't let her come over here," Al thought to himself, wishing to keep to himself for the rest of the day. So, naturally, she came right over to him.

"Oh, hello," she said. "I saw you standing here and thought I'd say hi."

"You saw me through that space in the book shelf?" Al asked.

"Well, no, I saw you outside and I followed you in," Lily said. "I had a book to return, anyway."

"What do you want then?" Al asked.

"I want to talk to you," Lily said. "Dear Uncle Scorpius seems to think that you're going a bit mental."

Lily wasn't sure, but it looked like Al blushed just a tiny bit. "When did he talk to you?" he asked.

"A couple of days ago," she replied.

"Oh, okay," Al said. "So, what did he tell you?"

"Well, he told me that you tried throwing yourself off of the Astronomy Tower last year," Lily said. "After he said that, I started to take his word for it that you were going a bit psychotic."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," Al said. "I wasn't really going to throw myself off. I was just checking something."

"Checking something?" Lily raised an eyebrow. "Checking something in the middle of the night by pretending to throw yourself off of a tower?"

Al's face whitened. "Lily… Do you ever worry that maybe somebody else is living in you?"

"Well, no," Lily said. "Not exactly. I mean, I don't hear little voices talking to me."

"No, I mean, like do you ever have the urge to do anything very out of character?" Al said. "And do you ever remember things that… never happened?"

"Oh, bugger," thought Lily. She looked up and met Al's eyes.

Al bent down and kissed her softly. This one lasted longer than the first. After a moment, he lifted his head. "Sorry. I just needed to test something out."

"Did you figure out what you needed to know?" Lily asked.

"I think so," Al said, before sweeping away out of the library.

~*~*~

James Potter was the man. Captain of the Gryffindor Quiddich team, now vice-president of the Hogwarts Dueling Club, and soon to be the defeater of four evil wizards (or witches), James felt confident in himself.

The first day of the dueling club had gone, well, about like what James had expected. There were lots of failed curses, a few bloody noses, and a couple of crying first years. "Um, good job everybody. Hope to see you all next week," James said. A few boys cheered; they'd been consistently cheering over the last hour every time somebody got hurt.

"That wasn't too good, was it?" Mickey asked.

"No, that was really… really… Well, there's a lot of potential," James said, walking out of the main hall.

"It must be difficult for you," Mickey said, "Being Harry Potter's son."

James stopped. "That was out of nowhere," he thought to himself. He turned around. "How so?"

"Well, I just mean that he defeated the most dangerous and terrible wizard of all time, and you spent today defeating… Hugo." Mickey shrugged. "I just imagine that it must be difficult for you at times."

"Well, you really hit the nail right on the head," James muttered. More loudly, he said, "Yeah, I suppose so. It wouldn't be so bad except…"

"Except what?" Mickey asked.

"Well, it's one thing that I'm apparently incapable of making my father proud, but it's another that for some reason he thinks that Al is the greatest thing since sliced bread," James said. "That's what really gets to me."

"Maybe he just has more of a connection with Al," Mickey suggested.

"Why? I'm the one who's actually like my dad. I play Quiddich like him, I'm a Gryffindor like him, I have friends like his, I even have glasses like his! And yet for some reason he likes brooding, sniveling, sarcastic Al. What's up with that?" Wow. James had never even come close to saying all that to anyone before.

"Maybe that's just it. Maybe he like Al because he doesn't act like him."

"…That's stupid."

"Well, think about it. You have Harry Potter, the triumphant hero who can do no wrong," Mickey began, "And outwardly he has to go around and act perfect, suppressing his darker side. So, he has two sons, one of them who acts like he does outwardly, and the other who embodies all his secret inclinations. He then decides to live vicariously through his younger son, because he's incapable of acting out that part of himself on his own."

James eyes were as wide as saucers. "Mickey, that may just be the smartest thing I've ever heard you say. I don't know what it means, but it was really smart."

"Thanks," Mickey said. "Mother says I was blessed by a Swafholmer as a baby."

"Um, yes." With the word "Swafholmer," James' respect for Mickey's intelligence had quickly diminished.

One thing James was able to take from Mickey's speech, however, was that maybe it was okay if he did bad things once in a while, because nobody could or perhaps should be truly noble all the time.

James smirked. He had an idea.

~*~*~

Al was uncertain about the specifics, but he definitely had a plan cooking up. He searched through his dormitory before he finally found the rocks Scorpius had found on their first day at Hogwarts this year in the Forbidden Forest. They were in a box with all the other little things Scorpius had randomly found throughout the last few weeks. But the one Al wanted was right on top, shining up at him and begging him to take it.

Al inspected the stone. He ran his finger along the crack in it. His father had told him once about a stone that could bring back the dead. Well, not bring them back entirely, but close. Somehow, Al knew that this was it. Actually, Al knew how he knew. A part if him -and he didn't know how large this part was- had seen it before.

"What am I going to do?" Al thought to himself, looking for a quill and parchment. Once he found them, he made a list. "The stone," it began. He made a check mark next to it. "The cloak," he wrote next. It wouldn't be hard to get. "The wand," he added. That would be more difficult, but not impossible. "A body," he then wrote. Or at least part of a body. And finally, "A name." Check.

Al was shaking. He sat down on his bed, looking at the list. He didn't know how he knew exactly what he would need to do in order to obtain his goal, but he imagined that the part of him that had recognized the stone to begin with knew exactly what it was that he needed to do.

No, the name part he'd come up with on his own. That was the key to it, really.

Now, don't let all this confuse you. If you must know, Al was planning to create a supposedly impossible spell. At fifteen years old, he had stumbled upon the secret to an incredible idea, not through study, but through a piece of him that had always known it.

Albus Severus Potter was going to raise the dead.