Chapter 11 - In which Mickey contemplates oversized bugs

To say that Lucius Malfoy was mortified to see his grandson prancing down the halls of Hogwarts in a pink "I heart muggles" shirt would be an understatement. He attempted to guide the other Ministry officials away before they spotted the daft boy.

"Grandpa!" Scorpius called, waving furiously. The other two wizards from the Ministry stopped an stared.

"Does that shirt really follow dress code?" the oldest of the wizards asked. "My, times are changing here at Hogwarts."

"Next thing you know students will be wandering around in nothing but speedos," the other wizard clucked.

Lucius Malfoy scowled. "Why don't you both go in and speak with the Headmistress," Lucius drawled. "I'll take care of the dress code issue."

As the two other wizards entered McGonagall's office, Scorpius skipped up to Lucius. "Isn't it just a fabulous day out, Grandfather?"

"Is it possible for you to go five minutes without shaming our family?" Lucius hissed.

"Oh, Grandpa, you're such a kidder!" Scorpius gave Lucius a mighty hug. Lucius attempted to bat Scorpius away, but Scorpius only squeezed tighter. "Oh, Grandfather, you're the best!"

Lucius grabbed Scorpius by his hair and ripped the boy off of him. "Follow me," he growled, dragging Scorpius down the hall.

Every time the grandfather and grandson passed somebody, Scorpius would pipe up, attempting to annoy his grandfather as much as possible. "So, I was having sex with this muggle born the other day -a muggle born boy, just for the record- and you came up in conversation. He said something to the effect of, 'I bet your grandfather could do some marvelous things with that cane of his,' and I just had to tell him about the time when I was thirteen and I used your wand-cane to…"

"Do you ever stop talking?" Lucius hissed. Lucius tried not to hate his grandson, but sometimes he just couldn't help it. To think that Scorpius had had the nerve to wear that god awful shirt again, and then to hear the filth that was spewing from his mouth… Well, let's just say that every ounce of control that Lucius Malfoy had gained during his probation just went out the window when Scorpius was around.

Lucius pulled Scorpius into an empty classroom. He threw the boy against the wall and pinned him there. "Do you want to tell me why you insist on embarrassing our family at every possible moment?" Lucius hissed.

"Yeah, I guess you've tarnished the family name enough on your own," Scorpius said, smirking.

Lucius whapped Scorpius hard in the head with his snake-headed wand-cane. "Don't you dare talk back to me," Lucius whispered. "You know how hard all of us are trying. We do take care to… lessen our talk about muggle borns and half-breeds and such, but old habits die hard. You could attempt to be more understanding."

"Since when have you ever tried to lessen your muggle bashing?" Scorpius asked. "Oh, right, when someone important is listening. You know, Gramps, you're lucky Harry Potter convinced the Ministry not to throw you and the rest of you old Death Eater fucks in Azkaban, or some dementor would be making you his bitch as we speak."

Lucius whipped out his wand and whispered a silencing spell at Scorpius. At first Scorpius assumed that it was just to keep him from continuing on his offensive speech, but quickly he realized that perhaps his grandfather only wanted to keep him from screaming out for help.

"Well, you've really done it now," Scorpius thought to himself. "You and your big fat mouth and your fucking pink shirt."

Scorpius closed his eyes, and he was not the least bit surprised when the cruciates curse hit him. He fell to the ground immediately, writhing in pain.

"Your father was never nearly as foolish as you," Lucius drawled. "I rarely ever had to punish him past the age of ten. But you… So disagreeable. I hope you realize that you've only ever brought this on yourself."

Scorpius flailed around on the ground. The pain of the cruciates curse was unbearable. Imagine having your heart stomped on while having your penis chopped off. Imagine having a rabid dog rip off your face. Imagine drowning and imagine being on fire. Imagine having alcohol being poured on a bloody wound. Imagine having your legs broken and your hair pulled out. Now take all of those feelings and multiply them by ten.

"Don't let him do that to you," a voice inside of Scorpius said. "Fight back."

"I can't fight back," Scorpius responded. "I can't even fucking move on my own."

Scorpius flung himself into a desk, knocking a glass onto the ground. It shattered into a dozen pieces. He rolled over the glass, several of the smaller glass shards imbedding themselves into his skin.

"I wish I could scream," Scorpius thought to himself. "I wish somebody could hear me."

"Nobody's going to come to your rescue," the voice said. "If you can't fight for yourself, don't expect anyone else to do if for you."

A strange sense of strength entered Scorpius. When the spell ended, rather than feeling dead and weakened, he felt stronger than before. He grabbed a large shard of glass from off the ground and, without a moment's hesitation, he leapt up and drove the piece of glass into his grandfather's neck.

It was impossible to tell who was more surprised by this: Lucius or Scorpius.

Lucius let out a scream and blood began pouring down his neck. No serious damage had been done, but the look in Lucius' eyes was unmistakable: fear. He pushed past Scorpius, who by now was shaking terribly and falling onto the ground, and walked out the door.

Had any noise been able to come from Scorpious' mouth, Lucius would have heard his grandson yell, "What now, bitch?"

~*~*~

Mickey Thomas was worried about James. She remembered years earlier, when he had been a carefree boy whose only worries involved what pranks to pull that day and if his jokes were funny enough. Over the years, James had sobered considerably, grown less and less like a mischievous little boy and more into a hot headed and arrogant man. She knew that deep down he had the ability to be the person he had once been, but she didn't know whether or not James wanted to be that silly, impish little boy again.

Few people gave Mickey the credit she deserved. The was intelligent and she could be very kind. But the moment she began one of her rants about Chazzwazzers and god knows what, she completely lost people. Sometimes, she wasn't sure if she really believed in half of the magical creatures she claimed to believe in. But, then again, plenty of muggles didn't believe in unicorns, and she'd seen one just this last summer at a petting zoo in Scotland.

Belief was a strange thing. How could one truly believe anything without proof? Or was a gut feeling good enough? Most of Mickey's beliefs seemed so right in her heart and in her gut, but her head always disagreed. "Shut up, head," she would say.

Mickey believed in fairies. Not the pixies and such that she read about in her text books. Not the ugly, stupid things she'd found destroying her mother's garden. To her, Cornish pixies and Grindelows and such… well, they were hardly even magical creatures. There was nothing exceptional about them, hardly a difference between them and monkeys in a zoo. But fairies, real fairies, were something worth believing in. Mickey swore that she'd seen one once, a winged spirit that really did look more like a miniature human than an overgrown bug. She could tell others about the Snuffmins and all the other creatures whose names nobody was really familiar with, but fairies, true fairies… well, fairies were Mickey's truly guarded secret.

Mickey loved James Potter. Maybe because he was one of the only people at Hogwarts who didn't laugh at her on a daily basis, maybe because he really listened to her, maybe because even when he was brooding he always seemed to care about others. Or maybe it was destiny which dictated her love for him. Whichever way, Mickey knew that she was in love with James, whether or not he would ever return the feeling.

And perhaps it was her love for him which made her decide to put her search for true fairies on hold and approach a worried James outside of the Room of Requirements and say, "Whatever it is you suspect your brother is doing, I'll help you stop him, if you want me to."

And her smile brightened the entire room when he replied, "Yeah, sure, I need all the help I can get."

~*~*~

Lily was walking. After forty years of Immobility, it had only taken her a day to regain enough strength to walk. She couldn't walk far, mind you, but walking at all was enough for her.

"I need to check your pulse," Al said.

"My pulse is fine," Lily said. "I'm not going to just drop dead again."

"Still, you should probably sit down. You don't want to tire yourself out," Al continued.

Lily laughed. "Really now. You sound like my mother." Lily sat down, anyway. "Grandkids. Wow. Tell me, how many do I have again?"

"Three," Al replied. "James is the oldest and Lily is the youngest."

"James! Lily! Ha! That's original," Lily laughed. "It's sweet, though. I'm really touched." She sat back, smiling. "Tell me about Harry again."

"He's fine," Al said. "He has a good life, I think. He's an Auror now, and a good one, too. He has friends, he has a family." A certain twinkle entered Al's eyes; while he normally felt jealous of others' luck, he loved to think that his father had a good life. "He's turning forty this year, you know."

Lily laughed so hard she snorted. "Forty. God. I never even came close to forty. He's not bald, is he?"

"No, he still has his hair," Al said. "My friend Scorpius, his father is completely bald. Had to get hair plugs. But I don't think he's fooling anyone."

"There's something really familiar about you," Lily said. "Maybe it's your eyes. Not just that they look like Harry's and like mine, but the way they look when they're all twinkly, or when they're dark and brooding." She laughed again. "I think you have split personalities."

"Tell me about it," Al said. He sat down across from his grandmother. "Can I ask you a question."

"Ask away."

"Where did you go when you died?"

A shadow passed over Lily's eyes. "Take a guess."

"Um… Heaven?"

"Try purgatory." She looked down, twirling her red hair in her hands.

"You? In purgatory? Next you'll tell me they sent Gandhi to Hell."

"I don't think I deserved Heaven, really," Lily said. "At least purgatory, or whatever it was, gave me time to think. All alone for forty years… It'd be hard not to stop and think."

"What did you think about?"

"My life," Lily said. "All the ways I fucked up. All the things I could have done differently. The things I could have fixed had I not died. Lots of fun, you know?"

"Still, I can't think of why you'd be put in purgatory," Al said.

"Yeah, well, after forty years, I came up with some theories." Lily looked up. "Are you going to bring back James today?"

"We'll see," Al said, icily.

"Do you think I can go out today? To see Harry?" Lily asked.

"If you want to give him a heart attack, then by all means, go ahead," Al replied.

"I can't stay here forever, Albus," Lily said, laughing but with sober eyes.

"I've got to go," Al said. "I'll be back tonight."

"Alright. I'll see you later. Maybe you should bring James and little Lily."

Al gave a tight smile. "We'll see."

After he left, Lily stood up. She felt like peeking outside, just to see how much Hogwarts had changed over the years. Unfortunately, just a few feet away from the door, she felt a tug at one of her arms. She looked down at her wrist, to find a faint glowing line around it. She attempted to leave, but it seemed that the glowing bracelet around her wrist couldn't pass an invisible line several feet in front of the door, keeping her from being able to reach the door knob by a long shot. "A binding spell," Lily thought to herself. "The little bastard locked me in here."