Okay, so I understand some of you are going to ask where I've been. To be honest, I don't really feel like telling you the full story, we'll just leave it as a family event. Anyway, moral of the story is, I didn't feel much like writing for a few weeks, but now I'm back and better than ever... hopefully. As always, please read and review!
It was dark, it was cold, and everything was developing a thin layer of moisture because the evening dew. Broom handles were slippery, robes were cold and damp, and Scorpius was loving every minute of it. The proper Quidditch equipment had been produced, and brooms had been discarded for the time being.
Several members of Slytherin house, mostly male, obviously felt that they had done enough to retain their pride, but weren't going to risk actually being selected. They soon were trudging up the muddy hill to the bright lights of the castle, honour supposedly intact. Those who either had too much pride, or were actually enjoying themselves, were standing around on the ground in a kind of circuit style workout, where each student had a few minutes of playing each position.
The beaters were using the bats to smack unbewitched bludgers from the Quidditch storeroom, seekers were leaping around trying to snatch golf balls that were doubling as snitches, and the chasers and keepers were throwing the quaffle amongst themselves. All in all, it looked like a complete shambles, as Flynn Thomas wandered around, making notes on a clipboard he had brought along.
Next, brooms were added, for increased difficulty, and Scropius found himself in the group of chasers, who were attempting to score past potential keepers. Not much could be said for the flying skills of the potential keepers, in Scorpius' limited experience with the sport, given that they let every single one of his shots through.
"Why did we do that?" asked Dominique, wrapping her red and gold scarf tightly around her neck.
"Do what?" asked Rose absentmindedly, as they trudged up the hill to the school.
"You know, go and watch Slytherin's quidditch trials. It's much to groupie-esqe for my liking. You guys can't honestly be that interested in Scorpius Malfoy, he's simply not that interesting."
"We went for Albu..." Rose began to reply, but Dominique cut her off.
"That's bullshit Rose. You and I both know Albus is an insufferable little berk. Since when did we do what he told us to? We could have spent an evening in front of the fire doing our nails, anything rather than this!" she moaned bitterly.
"I'm surprised Rose even agreed to be further than a minute away from her textbooks. I thought she sprouted an extra limb she has her book bag over her shoulder so much," Lauren smiled, as Rose gave her a cold glare. "I'm not that bad. Come on, forget this, let's get inside and get warm."
It was awkward. Even by Scorpius' unusually lofty standards of awkwardness when it came to forcedly civil social interaction, it was bad. Scorpius had managed to time his arrival on the fourth floor from the Entrance Hall at exactly the same time Rose Weasley had arrived back from the Gryffindor Common Room.
They had performed an excruciating two-step around one another without their eyes ever meeting, and in the flickering torchlight, they silently settled on Rose leading the charge with Scorpius trailing behind her. Rose muttered the password, and stepped through the portrait hole, as Scorpius scrambled to make sure it didn't shut in his face.
There were no words exchanged as they went their separate ways, but if Scorpius had looked back, he would have seen his opposite, in every sense of the word, turn back with a puzzled expression on her face, as if she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to make of something.
A week to the day later, Scorpius was standing in the dungeons, feeling cold and slightly apprehensive. It wasn't the potions part of the equation that was bothering him either, it was the Gryffindor part. If he had to have a class with them, why could it not be Arithmancy, something harmless? After Albus Potter had put a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Wildfire Whiz-Bang into his Hair Raising Potion in second year, potions had become somewhat of a terrifying prospect when it involved Gryffindors.
The previous week, as with all his classes, had been an introductory session, a 'welcome to you NEWT year' which had addressed expectations and an initial piece of assessment, reviewing the previous year's course. This week, however, it was time to begin class for real, with proper assessed NEWT coursework, and his heart was fluttering slightly.
This was either the beginning of the best or the worst year of his life. There was nothing in between. Professor Slughorn moved into view in a motion most comparable to that of a walrus, he vast bulk giving him a slug like quality which once Scorpius had first noticed, he'd found extremely hard to shake.
For some reason, as he passed, Professor Slughorn gave Scorpius a dark look, before continuing through the small group of students to the door of his dungeon classroom. Scorpius quickly forgot about this however, as Albus and his Gryffindor cronies arrived, late as per usual. They were of course loud and obnoxious, and Scorpius backed away further into the shadows, making sure he got into the classroom before Albus realised he would be there.
He found his usual seat, and slipped his cloak over the chair, taking out his books from underneath his arm and placing them on the table. He was the only student in the class without his own cauldron of any kind, so he quickly and quietly made his way to the cupboard in the hopes of borrowing one without anyone noticing, as he had always done.
Rose removed her books and her collapsible cauldron from her bag, and placed them on the table in the front row, as the rest of the class settled around her. With her mother as the head of a ministry division and her father a leading Auror, the Weasley's were no longer short of a galleon.
In fact, it was quite the opposite, they had gone from one of the poorest pureblood families to one of the richest mixed-blood families, and Ron and Hermione bought only the best for their beloved children.
Rose's collapsible gold cauldron was nearly as good as money could buy, better even than the one Professor Slughorn had sitting on his desk. Rose had deliberately selected a burnished gold, trying to avoid standing out too much, but cousin Albus had no such qualms. He had selected a bright gold cauldron, collapsible naturally, with silver edging and an adaptive self-stirring charm.
As wealthy as Ron and Hermione had become, they could never hope to compare to 'The Choosen One'. Not many in the wizarding world could, and Albus Potter's cauldron was a reflection of that. Professor Slughorn's eyes had been as big as saucers when he'd first seen it, and much time was spent extolling the particular virtues of Albus' model of cauldron with a wistful expression.
"Mr. Malfoy!" exclaimed the man in question, and suddenly the ambient noise of the classroom died, as Professor Slughorn addressed the boy who was standing at the ingredient cupboard.
Rose glanced up and found herself confronted with a very peculiar sight; Scorpius Malfoy was in the process of removing a cauldron from the bottom shelf of the ingredient cupboard, one of the standard pewter, school-issue cauldrons. Her confusion was momentarily suppressed as Professor Slughorn continued to address the schools resident leper.
"Mr. Malfoy, I have been meaning to speak with you."
Scorpius simply turned, his cheeks reddening as he was caught in the embarrassing predicament, but his professor showed no signs of releasing him.
"Flynn Thomas, your Quidditch captain, came and spoke to me, informing me that you had missed two training sessions in succession, the first two of the season!"
The tone of outrage and accusation had lost its usual jovial edge, and now Rose watched a look of complete confusion crossed Malfoy's features.
He clearly had no idea what was going on, despite it being pretty self-explanatory, in Rose's opinion.
"Quidditch sir?" Malfoy repeated.
"Yes Quidditch Malfoy. You were supposed to be at practice and you weren't. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"I'm in the Quidditch team?" Malfoy asked slowly.
"Yes, of course you're in the Quidditch team, why else would I be asking about it? You aren't going to try and claim that you were unaware of it are you? The notice has been in the Slytherin Common Room since last week, with training times clearly marked. If you can't make it, you should have spoken to your team captain!"
"I didn't see the notice," Malfoy answered quietly, but Slughorn was having none of it.
"That is unacceptable Malfoy, completely unacceptable, especially from the Head Boy. You will serve detention with me tonight and tomorrow night, and in the meantime, you will speak to Thomas, and find out what you can do to make up for it. I will not have you abandoning your house! Now return to your seat."
Scorpius Malfoy trudged slowly back to his place, borrowed cauldron in hand. The heading on the board was "Healing Potions – NEWT level" and underneath it were the instructions for the fiendishly tricky Blood Replenishing potion. As with all healing potions, there was no leeway with the proportions or method; everything had to be chopped to the millimetre, and stirred no half turns more or less than the exact directions.
"A challenge, ladies and gentlemen," Professor Slughorn began in a manner Rose assumed he thought to be grandiose, "to begin your final years tuition. If you can master this potion, you will be in excellent shape for your end of year exams, and, I daresay, have a career as a Healer readymade! So, what are you waiting for? Begin!"
Rose was almost frantic in her approach to the potion. There was no way anyone other than her was getting the top grade for this potion, she was born to brew, as her father had so elegantly put it. The incentive of being named a Healer in the making held no small attraction either.
She glanced around, after her cousins bright gold cauldron give off a piercing whistle and then a pop, while shaking itself uncontrollably until it collapsed off the side of the desk. Professor Slughorn, naturally, muttered under his breath about expensive cauldrons being placed in the wrong hands.
She wasn't about to reinforce that view however, as she chopped the root as finely as her silver knife would allow her, and tapped her bewitched ladle with the instructions of four counter-clockwise turn followed by one and a half clockwise ones.
Glancing up, she spied Scorpius Malfoy also slaving away behind his cauldron, and she paused to watch for a second. He was a couple of steps behind her, but looking at the surface of the substance he had brewed so far, his was the only other in the class that she could say was recognizably the correct colour and consistency.
He was, however, a couple of steps behind where she was, she noted with some glee, but he was being forced to stir his potion by hand as his school-issue cauldron had none of the complicated control spells for magical stirring that Rose's had come with.
"Aaaaaaand... Time's up!" cried Professor Slughorn, as Scorpius through his ladle to the table, and wiped the accumulated sweat from his brow.
The combination of the oppressive heat of the magical flame underneath his cauldron compared with the freezing outside temperature of the dungeon had drawn significant perspiration from Scorpius, and he was already dreaming a having a long shower, something he had grown uncharacteristically used to.
Professor Slughorn paced up and down the rows of seats, stopping at each cauldron and peering in hopefully, only to extract his nose rapidly to save it further pain and suffering. Albus Potter, in particular, had outdone himself, managing to melt his wooden desk into his spilt potion to produce a particularly noxious brown sludge that appeared to be bubbling on the stone floor.
Slughorn banished it the minute he lay eyes upon it. It was only once he got to Scorpius' cauldron that he nodded, and even risked the second sniff. On further investigation, he exclaimed with some glee.
"Look here class! Mr. Malfoy has done it! He has produced a very passable Blood Replenishing potion by clearly following the instructions to the letter. Well done Mr. Malfoy, consider your detentions more than compensated for!"
Scorpius couldn't help but to smile, as the Professor moved on. He couldn't even muster up a little annoyance when the potions professor virtually collapsed at Rose Weasley's feet, worshipping the very ground she stood on, declaring her potion to be better than any St. Mungo's Healer could have dreamed of.
She naturally feigned embarrassment, but Scorpius was unconcerned with the gleefulness of the Weasley's at that moment. He had avoided a detention, he grinned to no one in particular, as he filed out of the dungeon. Not just one either, but two of them! That never happened to him.
Well, normally he didn't receive detentions at all, but it certainly meant something to him. That kind of stuff happened to Albus, not to him usually, and it felt good to be on the receiving end of some good fortune.
His smile lasted all the way to the top of the dungeon stairs, where he found a displeased Flynn Thomas standing, his arms folded and a pointed look on his face.
Can I be honest? I love Quidditch, so despite any protests of it being formulaic, it's being included. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, please leave me your thoughts and opinions, and if they're good (I'm sure they will be) you might even be able to spot your influence in subsequent chapters!