One morning, Albus and his cousins, Rose and Buddy, were sitting comfortably in a large opening under the bottom floor of the main stairwell. This had become their regular meeting place during the winter as they couldn't meet in the library, due to noise restrictions, in the courtyard, due to the frigid cold, or in their common rooms, as they were closed to members of other houses. The stairwell, however, provided an ideal location for inter-house conferring and the three of them often met there to talk and study together. Admittedly, there wasn't a lot of space. They had to crouch down when walking around the perimeter of the space. The middle of the circular landing, however, seemed to stretch up to the heavens and as the spiral of the staircase got smaller and smaller above them, the echoes of students' voices could be heard bouncing back and forth on the hard stone. The effect often played tricks on their ears. Sometimes, the three of them would start at the sound of a loud voice right behind them, only to realize that its owner was talking to someone else, several floors above. Old crates served as furniture and a lantern charmed with bright blue flames provided ample light and warmth. The only door on that sub-floor was locked and never saw any visitors and Rose reasoned it was probably only used for storage. From time to time, however, their solace would be disrupted by someone who'd dropped something down the stairwell, either on accident or on purpose, and came down to retrieve it . Freddy had discovered their hiding place and often lost his hat or scarf down the middle as an excuse to "see what they were up to".
On this particular morning, the three were engaged in some last minute cramming for their potions theory quiz when they were interrupted by a large purple blob, descending from above, which burst upon impact on the stone floor and splattered the space with a purple, sweet-smelling ink.
"Eugh!" Buddy exclaimed, having received the blunt of the explosion on the back of his robes.
"Sorry!" called Freddy's voice, "I guess I should have checked to see if anyone was down their first!"
"Here, turn around," Rose ordered, and she tried to use the Scourgify charm to clean his robes, to no avail. Suddenly, two more ink bombs came tumbling down, soaking Albus and Rose.
"Freddy!" Rose shrieked.
"Actually, that was me!" answered the gleeful voice of James.
"I know where you sleep!" Buddy threatened.
"Relax, it's disappearing ink!" James called down to them, "It'll be gone in a week or so!"
"So, he's in one of those moods, is he?" grumbled Albus. He could sense an impending prank war.
"Try a drying-off charm," Buddy suggested, "I think it goes as it dries." With a flip of Buddy's wand, Albus felt as if he were in a hair dryrer. He looked down as watched in relief as the purple ink faded away. He didn't want to go to potions class as a purple mess!
When the Slytherin and Gryffindor students arrived in potions class, they were quite surprised to learn that their teacher had taken an unprecedented step toward motivating his students to study their potions technique. It was unusual in that most of his methods of motivation involved shouting and frequent punishments while this one sounded to Albus as though it might be mildly amusing.
"I have initiated a contest for all the second years. The winning house will earn one-hundred points." Schlegel paused here momentarily due to the hushed outburst at the generous reward.
"You will receive a list of ten complex potions that we are going to be studying this term. Each house is to research the needed ingredients, gather them before next Saturday, and prepare a team of four students to make one of those potions from memory."
"How will you decide which potion it will be?" asked one of the Slytherin girls curiously.
"Professor Longbottom will draw a potion from a hat just before the contest begins. The team who manages to make the correct potion first will be declared the winner."
"What are the potions, Professor?" asked another student.
"This list will be given out at lunch today," he explained, "That way no one can say two houses got a head start. Also, any house that is caught seeking help from older students will be disqualified." The Gryffindor students nodded approvingly and excitedly as the Slytherins gazed at Rose Weasley with unsportsmanlike scorn. They knew she was the one who posed the greatest threat to their obtaining the prize. They also knew that if they fell back in house points again, Schlegel would probably revoke their curfew and send them to their rooms at eight o'clock, repossess their dessert at meal times, and allow the older students to make their lives very difficult. Scorpius groaned and whispered to Albus when Schlegel's back was turned.
"This is just a trick so he won't have to teach us those potions himself! Lazy git!" Albus didn't seem to be listening and Scorpius followed his gaze to his cousin, whom he was observing with a perplexed expression. Rose Weasley would normally be bursting at the seams to take advantage of any opportunity to put her brilliant mind to the task of research, but just then she was acting very out-of-character. Her head was tilted forward and she wasn't looking at the teacher, nor taking notes, but staring at the potions book in front of her, which she held unusually close to her face, as though the print was very small. Albus craned his neck to get a better look and as he did, he realized what his cousin was doing. She had placed another book inside the cover of her potions text and was trying to hide the pages so Schlegel wouldn't know that she was ignoring him. Albus watched curiously as Rose sat enthralled in her book. He wondered what was so interesting about it that she was breaking the rules to read it.
After lunch, the second year Slytherins went straight to the library filled with house pride and determination to beat the other houses and be first to work out the potions for Schlegel's contest. They figured they had the advantage as Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were currently in Herbology and they had a full study period to get a head start. To their surprise, there were no Gryffindors present in the library when they sat down at the table and Sonora Grey began digging frantically through the catalogue and delegating other students to different sections of the potions collection.
"Here! Malfoy!" she ordered, "Go and fetch this one!" Scorpius wasn't fond of being told to 'go and fetch' anything, but in the interest of house pride he took the call number and began the tedious search among the dusty tomes. As he tried to navigate the complicated system of colors, letters, numbers, and runes, he found his way into a dark nook where he nearly tripped over Rose Weasley, who was sitting on the floor, engrossed in a large, thin manuscript. She gave a little gasp when she saw him, slammed the book shut, and stuffed it back onto the shelf.
"Are they making you do all the work, Weasley?" Scorpius laughed, "It must be tough at times being the class know-it-all." Rose ruffled a little at his rudeness but tried unsuccessfully to look nonchalant as she insinuated herself between Scorpius and the shelf behind her.
"Hello, Scorpius," she greeted primly, "How are you?"
"I'm doing very well," he drawled through a broad smile, "Anything wrong?" Rose shrugged her shoulders and attempted to pull off an unconcerned attitude.
"No. Nothing at all. You just startled me."
"I can see that," he laughed, "What have you got there?"
"What do you mean?"
"You looked like you were very interested in that book."
"No," she feigned, "I'm just browsing…like I always do."
"Oh," he exclaimed, "I thought perhaps you'd found one of the answers to Schlegel's potion contest back there."
"Oh, that…no. I wasn't even…I was just,"
"Do you mind if I have a look?" he asked, trying to dodge around her and get to the book she'd stashed away.
"Why?" she asked urgently shuffling to the side to block his advance. Scorpius laughed again.
"Well, maybe because I think I might like to read it! I can read you know. Or did you think you were the only one who could do that?"
"Sometimes," she admitted with a coy shrug.
"Well, you're not," Scorpius informed her, "Am I allowed to look at the library books too, or not?"
"Go ahead," Rose invited, trying again to sound unconcerned, "I'm not even sure which one it was." Scorpius ran his finger along the spines of the books.
"I think it's this one," he said as he removed the correct volume, "See, the call number's wrong. Honestly, Weasley, don't you know it's rude not to put the library books back where you found them?" Rose shrugged her shoulders and began to make an escape.
"Hey, this isn't a potions book!" Scorpius exclaimed in disappointment.
"I told you I wasn't looking for that."
"Wizarding Bloodlines Through the Ages," he read aloud, "What d'you want with this?"
"Like I said, I was just browsing."
"What's this?" he pulled a scrap of parchment from between the pages of the book. It appeared to be a clipping from the Daily Prophet.
"Oh, that. I was just using it as a place marker," Rose explained.
"But I thought you weren't reading this book," Scoprius pointed out slyly. He examined the front and back of the paper.
"Pureblood mania may be alive and well in Knockturn Alley. For sometime now, members of an alleged genealogy society have been gathering at various floating locations. The society, headed by Mr. Marius Rath, claims to be a legitimate club for enthusiasts interested in researching their ancestry. Neighbors and critics suspect that the society is a pure-blood elitist group and that many members are known anti-muggle activists and former Deatheater supporters. In response to an inquiry, a spokesperson for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had this statement, "The aurors are aware of the existence and the membership of this club. Thus far, no claim of illegal or suspicious activities have been substantiated in any way. It appears that this society, headed by Mr. Rath does exactly what it claims to do; provide historical lineages to interested witches and wizards…"
"I believe you can read, Malfoy, there's no need to demonstrate it," Rose interrupted irritably.
"Are you trying to research your genealogy?" Scorpius asked.
"Why are you so interested in what I read?" Rose demanded.
"I'm not. I couldn't care less what you read," he retorted, "I'm much more interested in why you're lying about it. That I find fascinating."
"I don't have anything to lie about!" she snapped as she snatched the clipping from him and stomped angrily away.