The next morning, I wake up to silence. There's no snoring and barely any breathing, which must mean most of the Slytherins are awake by now. Mumbling, with my eyes still closed, I roll over onto my back, and slowly open my eyes, only to find two large light grey eyes staring down at me.
"Hello."
"Ah!" I cry as I tumble backwards, landing bottom first on the floor. I groan, only slightly embarrassed, shock still dominant. As I lie there on the ground, I hear footsteps moving towards me, and a shadow falls upon me. Slowly, I look up.
"I don't think we've been properly introduced," the boy says, extending a hand towards me while he smirks. "My name is Scorpius Malfoy." Not that he actually had to introduce himself. Scorpius looks like every other Malfoy before him, complete with pale skin, pale hair, pale eyes... You tend to see a pattern after the first few Malfoys you run across. But none the less, my dad told me to make friends, whether he'll keep to what he said once he finds out what house I've been landed in or not, still I extend my hand to the son of my family's ex-enemy.
"Albus Potter," I introduce myself, as I get up from where I'd fallen. When I turn towards Scorpius, though, recognition is strong and immediate.
"Potter?" He asks, tilting his head to the side. "Father told me about your family. Apparently your father and mine had quite a rivalry in their time in Hogwarts," he says with a smirk. I smile back before grimacing a little as his words and their meaning sink in. The last thing I need is one more enemy to add to the ever growing list.
"Yeah... Dad told me all about the time when he and your father were enemies. How is your dad anyway?" I have to ask, since even though our dads were once enemies, dad told me that they dropped the rivalry after the Battle of Hogwarts.
"Oh, he's fine... and yours?"
"Yeah, he's alright." We stand there awkwardly after that, after all, what can you say to the son of the very guy who attempted to get your dad killed, which both our fathers had attempted to do over the seven years of Hogwarts, if you could count the seventh one a year at Hogwarts...
"Breakfast should be being served by now," Scorpius says at last to break the silence that had fallen between us, as well as my thoughts. "Would you like to come down?" I shrug in response.
"Yeah, don't see why not," and with that, we walk down the hall and down the stairs to the Slytherin common room, where Rus had obviously been patiently waiting, as he runs up to me the second I set foot into the room.
"Albus! You're awake now! I was starting to wonder whether I should wake you up myself or not..." Rus trails off as he finally sets eyes on the boy standing beside me. Scorpius smirks at Rus' reaction.
"You must be Cancerius Crabbe," Scorpius says, earning a questioning frown from me. "My father and his were... friends. As in Crabbe protected my father and received help with class work in return." I nod slowly at this. Smart guy, I think, wondering why I hadn't thought of it before, but then again there's an easy answer to that: I thought I would be in Gryffindor.
"Makes sense," I comment out loud before turning to Rus. "Would you like to come down to breakfast with us?" I ask, Rus looks at Scorpius cautiously, before nodding shakily. Hm. I won't lie, I don't really understand Rus' reaction to Scorpius, if anything I should be the one staring at him with mistrust, with all things considered, so this makes no sense, especially since their fathers had been "friends," but then again, I guess it was dark times back in the days of our parents...
Meanwhile, as I get lost further into my thoughts of doom and despair and rivalries between families, we try to navigate our way around the labyrinth to try and get to the Great Hall. I am only woken from my thoughts of You-Know-Who wearing a dress (Yeah, I know, but my thoughts get easily distracted), when Scorpius finally comes to a sudden halt. He looks around, at the bare walls and the stone which seem to be older and of a different sort to the stone around the common room. I can see him debating on whether to declare the obvious, and I must say, no matter how obvious it may be, I find myself secretly begging him to just keep his thoughts to himself...
"I think, as much as I hate to admit it, that we may just slightly be..." -Don't you dare finish that sentence- "Lost."
Rus whimpers beside me, and I huff in frustration. Damn labyrinth.
For what feels like hours afterwards, we attempt to retrace our steps. We return to the portrait of the knight and the basilisk, we walk past the statue of the umpteenth headmaster (most probably some unpopular Slytherin considering his statue's location,) and we walk past the crack in the floor that looks like a banana.
"We've walked past that crack at least four times now," I point out, glaring at that banana shaped crack. Scorpius growls in frustration.
"I don't care! I just wanted to get out of that blasted room and eat!" He fumes, spinning round to glare at us. As if it's our fault, I silently huff. "Why did our common room have to be located in such an infuriating place?! For once I would have preferred a tower, because at least I would be able to find my bloody way around!" His growling and scowling and stomping continues on, his complaints growing more and more creative as time ticks by.
"And now we're missing our timetables and missed our food, and we'll die all alone down here, and nobody would ever know the difference!" Scorpius continues, as Rus begins whimpering like a frightened puppy beside me.
"Oh, right, yes, of course! You are very much right, Cancerius! We've got Albus with us! So at least someone will know some thing's up. So I suppose as long as we are together, the worst that could happen is finding out that this castle truly is bigger than first anticipated, and we'll slowly die of dehydration before the first teacher pokes their long skinny nose around the corner first, but... actually that's only the best case scenario, the worst-"
"Malfoy!" I shout at him. Rus' tremblings and cries are really starting to concern me. Slowly I sit Rus down on the floor, leaning him against the wall. "Don't worry, Rus," I sooth him as his cheeks begin to stain with tears, "someone will find us. I promise." I smile encouraging at him, which seems to cheer him up a little. Scorpius merely huffs beside me.
"One thing I will never understand is why Salazar chose to torture his first years so," Scorpius sighs melodramatically.
We sat there until Rus started to feel well enough to walk. He seemed like he had been on the verge of a panic attack, it took quite a while to finally make him see that we are not going to die down here, and that everything Scorpius was saying was him being, well, a Malfoy. Scorpius hadn't been too happy about me saying that, "What do you mean 'being a Malfoy?!' But the bright side is that we are on the move again. Thank goodness.
"Albus," Rus says, his voice downcast, much like his eyes which refuse to look ahead.
"Yeah?" I reply softly.
"We've passed that statue seven times now."
I look at the statue of the headmaster. Yes, we have passed it that many times. You'd think we'd have at least gotten lost in a different part of the castle by now with all the different corridors we've deliberately been going through, but no. We're still here... Hang on a second.
"Erm... guys..." I say to the other two, frowning as a thought crosses my mind. I turn and walk back to the headmaster's statue and stare at in thoughtfully.
Salazar Slytherin, Hogwarts Founder, Di- the rest has faded out by time.
"Guys," I repeat, looking down the corridor we've been walking along for the past however long. Scorpius and Rus turn to me questioningly. "I think we might not be all that lost, at least it's not our fault."
"Well of course it is!" Scorpius says, annoyed. "Who else's fault could it have been? The castle's?"
"No," I reply as I examine the statue closer. "Magic." There had been three things we have come across consistently: a crack, a portrait and a statue. The crack and the portrait may or may not have been coincidental, but the way that statue seems to look at me... I crouch down and read the statue's inscription out loud.
"We as one call for true friends, they as two demolish our loves, us as three poison their hearts, they will never slither again." Rus, who's standing behind me, jumps back and squeaks in fear. I turn to stare at him.
"A-A-Albus. H-How did y-you d-d-do that?" He stutters, I stare at him, only this time in more confusion.
"Do what?" I ask. Rus shakes his head like as if I just pleasantly asked him to resurrect Lord Voldemort. I turn to Scorpius, hoping that he'd be able to tell me what I'd done. Scorpius only gets the chance to open his mouth, however, when the statue suddenly springs to life.
"State your name and businesss," the statue says, almost hissing the words out.
"Albus Potter. I-I'm lost," the statue looks to my other friends.
"State your names and businesss."
Rus and Scorpius only look at the statue in fear and confusion. I clear my throat, deciding to tell the statue in their stead since they're obviously too scared to answer for themselves.
"Scorpius Malfoy and Cancerius Crabbe," I inform the statue, which turns to look at me. "They are lost also."
"You have no business to be here, intrudersss. However, I see you do not lie when you say you are lossst. I shall direct you to the common roomsss, and then begone, Albusss Potter, and only return when needed..." And with that, the statue starts leading us in the right direction, I gesture Scorpius and Rus to follow.
"Don't worry, he's leading us back." They obviously don't believe me, but still, they follow along with me as the statue leads us to where we came from.
"Thanks," I say to the statue when I finally see the dead end of the common room, but the statue doesn't even acknowledge me, before it vanishes, most probably back to where it previously stood guard.
"So..." I begin as we walk into the common room, relieved to be out of that horrible situation, but still troubled by something... "What did I do that was so shocking?" I ask, as Rus immediately starts shaking his head yet again. Scorpius rolls his eyes.
"You spoke parseltongue, Albus," he explains, which surprised me. surely I didn't...
"You had a whole conversation in it," Scorpius continues as I try to wrap my head around it. "Tell me, what exactly were you two saying to each other?" I frown, trying to remember the conversation.
"Well, I read out the inscription, he came to life, he asked our names and business, I told him our names and said that we were lost. He believed that we were lost and offered to take us back as long as we didn't come back 'until we were needed.'" I shrug. Not really much to be worried about...
After a glance at the common room's clock, Scorpius informs us that we had been wondering around for four and a half hours. Rus and I groan at the injustice of it.
"Well, at least we had an adventure..." I offer, Scorpius snorts in response.
"Yes, and at least we found out that Rus is a wimp," Scorpius says with a smirk on his face, which causes Rus to blush slightly in embarrassment.
"Don't worry, Rus, I sure others might have panicked when lost, especially in a place like this," I reassure him, which seems to work, until Malfoy laughs.
"Yes, of course," he says sarcastically. Remember what dad said, Albus. Make. Friends. I smile sarcastically.
"Of course," I narrow my eyes, not liking having my friend bullied simply because he's a little... sensitive...
After a while of staring wars, however, Rus comes up with the brilliant idea of napping for an hour or so, having already had enough adventure to last the day, so we travel up the stairs and through the doors to our room, only to find on our three beds letters sitting and waiting to be opened.
"Our timetables!" Rus exclaims in excitement, as I grin in joy. Well, at least I wouldn't have to guess my classes...
