Chapter Two—

"All Seventh Years with free periods are to remain outside the grounds and away from the classrooms."

Inside a giant ancient castle, one that has been around longer than the Seven Wonders of the muggle world, the sharp voice of a woman bounced off its marbled walls of the main corridor to instruct the set of students. Her pointed black hat so characteristically slanted on her gray hair and half-moon spectacles on the tip of her nose as she read the terms off a scroll of parchment, Minerva McGonagall was the epitome of the woman in charge.

"Sixth Years, it is recommended that you take an extra lesson for those who failed to pass certain O.W.L's."

And there, turning the corner from one of the many halls that spread out and led into the main corridor of the castle, a tall, blonde student marched his way in. Every step carefully graceful by talent and natural instinct. It looked as simple as the air that circled the spaces all around, but it was so extraordinary that if one were to be without it they would choke.

He walked with a hint of a strut, a smirk on his face like if he'd been born with it and a smug gaze burning in his silver eyes. His robes were open wide, exposing his white button-up shirt and emerald tie hanging loosely down his neck; a look so messy that could be considered a lack of manners, but on that particular student it just appeared to be an own unique style. His ragged blonde hair, slightly wavy in some places, was tousled around his head. It almost touched his eyes in that disheveled manner most boys try to achieve, looking luminous as the sunlight highlighted every blonde strand.

"…Hi," as soft as a whisper, a witch passing through murmured shyly to the glorious boy with a pink blush on her face.

"Mister Malfoy—" Smirking even more as he aimed one of his genetic grins at the girl, the sharp voice commanding everyone around called his attention; interrupting the moment shared between that hyperventilating witch and the blonde student. "Attending lessons today, I assume?"

"Of course, Headmistress," Scorpius Malfoy replied, throwing his black-leather schoolbag over his shoulder casually, the same grin on his pale face as the old woman narrowed her eyes at him. "First day of term, can't explain how excited I am."

With a slight raise of her barely-there eyebrow, Minerva McGonagall kept her patience controlled and cool. "With brains like yours, Mister Malfoy, I don't doubt that is true. But then again, both your parents had a fancy for rule-breaking as well."

"I make my mummy proud," Scorpius said, his composed exterior still as strong as always. "And as for the rule-breaking, Headmistress, I am offended you think of me as a brat. I assure you I earn my house points."

"Attend your lessons, Scorpius," Professor McGonagall replied with a sigh, wondering how Hermione Granger's child came out with a knack of haughty disobedience. "I will not tolerate any misbehavior from your part this year, understood?"

Saluting the elder witch, Scorpius said, "yes, ma'am," and then proceeded to spread his grin back to his original smirk and continue down his path.

"'I will not tolerate any misbehavior from your part this year'." With a mimicking voice, hushed as a whisper just in case the woman's sensitive cat-hearing decided to kick in, an arm nudged towards Scorpius' right side. "She says that every year."

"And yet she doesn't give it up," Scorpius laughed, reaching over to the slightly shorter, dark-haired boy; ruffling his naturally disordered hair. "Ready for a new year, Al?"

"Hogsmeade this term, mate, how can I not be looking forward to this year?" Albus Potter spoke with feigned enthusiasm. "Because, come on, going to a bloody village should make this year better than my previous ones. I'm practically peeing my trousers with excitement."

Scorpius smirked tauntingly.

"—That's the spirit, Potter." Arriving on the blonde boy's left side, another dark-haired student appeared. This one looked quite filled with the same swagger as Scorpius had, but with a hint of difference that set the two apart. His aloof tone was filled with a bit of accent, an extra umph to his already alluring essence. "Embrace the change; breathe the freedom. Pluck up the courage and finally ask that witch you've been sighing about all damn summer out, and snog her passionately in the Three Broomsticks!"

Waving his arms in the air, his emerald eyes opening wide at the newly-arrived bloke's comment, Al was oblivious as Scorpius noticed his attempts of signals to silence the other boy.

"What girl? You like someone, little Al?"

"No," Al snorted, his walking increasing in pace. "Zabini's off his rocker, like always." He stopped for a millisecond, aiming a punch at the boy behind Scorpius's back.

Angelo Zabini frowned, but mouthed a 'sorry' to the boy.

"—Good morning, lads. Glad to see all three of you are up and ruining my day so early." And as the good-looking trio of boys turned the corner, they were met with a curvy redhead joining their strut down another corridor inside the Hogwarts castle. "Not to worry though, I'm in an excellent mood today." Dominique Weasley, Seventh Year Gryffindor raised her palm at the three, stopping them from their awkward glances and sneaky efforts to walk away from her. "Despite what you did to me yesterday on the train."

"We honestly don't know what you're on about, Dom—"

"I think you do, Angelo," Dominique snapped at Zabini, silencing his sentence before he could get it fully out. "And, once again for the hundredth time, I'm not interested. So next time I find Instant Peruvian Powder sparkling in the air and my friend is attacked and I'm left alone in my compartment with an unconscious body, I am murdering all of you."

Al scoffed, finding to be the only one out of the three boys who wasn't threatened by the fiery redhead. "Does Uncle Bill know you snog all of your friends? Because if he did, I seriously think he won't let that bloke over at Shell Cottage anymore."

"You've been warned," Dominique replied, ignoring her cousin's comment. "Pass the message to Louis, Al. If I find that my brother has been providing you idiots with supplies from Uncle George, I will leave my parents without their only son."

Watching with bright eyes as the redhead pushed passed them, heading out of the castle to enjoy her free period, Angelo Zabini said, "she so wants me," with a smug chuckle. "I can tell," he added, turning back to his friends.

"You're fourteen, Zabini," Scorpius replied, shaking his head at the interaction and began walking again. "What could a Seventh Year want with a Fourth Year?"

"Dunno," Zabini laughed, "but I do know what a Fourth Year wants with a Seventh Year."

"—Did she take the bait?" Before Al could aim another punch at Zabini, three boys appeared from inside one of the classrooms Malfoy, Potter and Zabini were passing. "I saw her stomping her way towards you blokes, I had to hide inside old McGonagall's classroom."

"You owe me a galleon, Weasley," Scorpius said seriously to a blonde boy across from him. "Your sister is lethal, and I swore she almost hexed us right there and then."

"Price to pay, mate, for your sister being a bit loose," James Potter, proud Gryffindor Fifth Year, said with a leer.

Louis glared. "She's not loose! She's just...dating that—"

"Slytherin?" Scorpius finished Louis Weasley's sentence, watching with a sneer as the rest of the audience chuckled. "Don't feel so ashamed, Weasley. Be thankful that Dominique is breaking all the barriers between house rivalry."

"Then again," Fred Weasley II chirped in from the left side of his cousin James, "she will cause all the rivalry to start again with her constantly switching blokes in every house every other day."

"She's not loose!" Louis hissed once more. He aimed a dirty look at Malfoy, completely filled with venom, and proceeded past the three boys with emerald ties. "James!"

"Coming, darling!" The eldest of the Potter brothers called teasingly, motioning Fred with him as they walked towards the fuming blonde. "See you in Divination, Malfoy."

"Try not to get stomped on, cousin," Fred added, grinning at Albus as he followed the footsteps of his best friends/cousins. "Later, mates!"

Al grunted, this time being the one that began the march. (Honestly, how big was this castle? He didn't know whether he was out of shape and about to have a heart attack or his rapid heartbeat was cause of the thickheaded relatives in his family.)

"Bless them. My Third Year is looking promising." Sarcasm poured and the two elder boys snickered behind him as they headed towards their destinations without further interruptions.

X

"Twenty points will be taken away from you, you brat."

Looking at the balding man in front of him with bored eyes, Scorpius Malfoy sighed with his eyebrow raised a centimeter off of his glorious forehead. "You do know, Mister Filch, that you're not given the right to deduct points from us, right?"

Narrowing his beady eyes, the caretaker of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry breathed in heavily as his blood began to boil. "Look here, you arrogant skrewt, I am the caretaker of this castle and I am given every right to discipline those students who get out of line and think they own this place! Don't think once because the Headmistress has some sort of soft-spot for you that you can get away for your crime!"

With a smile tugging at the right side of his mouth, Scorpius added a soft gleam to his mocking face. "So the Headmistress does like me? Well, I'll be sure to send her a special gift for her preference. Not that there is much to choose from around this place, mind you. Have you taken a good look around? There's Weasleys at every sodding corner; it's like a zoo around here."

"You will be punished!" Filch shouted at the blonde student, not letting his side-tracking comment steer him away from his anger. "Detention in the Forest until you learn—"

"Evanesco." With a simple wave of his wand, with that handsome bored expression, Malfoy made the packaging of a chocolate frog disappear from the exit of his Potions classroom; making it swirl and vanish from the floor and their sights "Well, no need to be upset, Mister Filch, it's all gone now. Surely you could've done just that—wave of the wrist, a few words sprinkled with magic, and tada! Five minutes of my life that I'm never getting back."

Filch stood silent, his fury burning red in his wrinkled cheeks as the student laughed and patted him on the arm before walking past him and the hissing red-eyed cat standing loyally next to him.

"Not to worry, though. I'll be sure to tell the professor that I can be excused from my tardiness." Oh, he was surely his father's son. No one knew how to swagger like that better than a Malfoy. "Have a good day, Mister Caretaker."

It can already be guessed what your thinking—Scorpius Malfoy is a rude boy and he should be spanked with a beaters bat, right? Well, yes, it's true. (In both parts at that, but, seriously, a beaters bat? That's a bit cruel, no? Any takers to punish the boy by natural hand-use?)

It was in his conventional manner to walk with his chin raised his, his pale, gorgeous face always serious or mocking, those almost-red lips tugged into a sneer, silver eyes shining with cockiness as all other eyes were on him.

It was his natural instinct just to build a facade to repel anyone who could even try to break through his front. He was assumed to be the cruelest boy in school—and he let that follow after him. There was always a sense that he was unreachable, untouchable. (Or as rumors have it, his heart was as cold as his eyes were a liquidized metal.) He would sneer, mock, laugh, scowl, glare, frown, proving all those right. But—but—you had to be really high up in his Christmas list to ever get to see the teenager behind the mask. To get to see how caring he was, how protective he could be, and how sometimes that sneer was actually a truthful smile and that it could stretch from his lips to his eyes; making his face glow and eyes sparkle.

And the only ones who could prove that he was actually human are Al Potter and Angelo Zabini, his best friends. And even then, their conformation would be proven a lie because Scorpius allows a glimpse of his warmth. Because no one could ever guess that Draco and Hermione Malfoy's son had a great fear. That there was something that penetrated his head every night before he drifted off to sleep, something that would keep his eyes open for another freezing minute, mocking him. A fragment of a thought that could destroy everything; that could destroy him. It was the thickest of ideas, the most unthinkable of imagination, but that could happen at any given second. That the old chill of told history would surge again and all that he has had for the fifteen past years would disappear from his grasp. That idea that said Scorpius Malfoy would be left in the dark forever, with the chance of never coming back into the light.

"You owe me a sickle, Zabini! Look! I win!"

Leaning up against a wall of an empty corridor, Angelo Zabini placed a leer on his dark face as a sandy-haired bloke pointed a finger at a student turning the corner of the corridor— entering a place that was far from where he should have been. Where all of them shouldn't be.

"Lost your way, kid? Three sickles per map to find it again. It's even got the secret passages marked and the spells to conjure them open."

"Why don't you just stop being stingy, Zabini, and pay Finnegan before he wets himself." With that characterized smirk, Scorpius Malfoy rolled his eyes at the Slytherin and Gryffindor he stumbled upon.

"Shouldn't you be in Divination, Malfoy?" Angelo asked with a frown, handing the Gryffindor his sickle of the week after he breathed a 'My mummy gave me this!' and he crossed his arms over his chest.

Malfoy shrugged, looking at Dash Finnegan pocket his earned money. "Should be, but then again Mum's given me her disbelief of that rubbish subject. I rather take life as it comes, even if death is around the corner."

"With your brilliant luck, it's probably in Russia playing Chinese checkers with a muggle boy," Finnegan chuckled to himself.

Choosing to ignore Finnegan, Scorpius asked, "shouldn't you two be in Herbology? Or have I rubbed off terribly on you that I'll be receiving howlers from Aunt Cho and Aunt Lavender about their precious babies failing their Fourth Year?"

"Please," Zabini scoffed, his back pressed even more tightly on the marbled wall. "Mum's going to be ticked off at Dad for a good while before she starts noticing anything else. You know how it is, mate. Dad, Harry, Ron and Draco all gather together a day before our departure to Hogwarts and drink until they black-out and have no idea how they got home." Angelo gave it a second, thinking back to the memory of his father being tossed out to the street again. "Oh, how I love that man."

Finnegan and Malfoy shared a look, both rolling their eyes at the dark-skinned Slytherin.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" Appearing undetected by the three boys, a witch came to view; her caramel-colored hair shining by the light the corridor was giving. Highlighting those pieces of blonde in her waves as she crossed her arms over her chest and stepped forward to frown at them. "Perfect, holy, and God-like Scorpius not attending his lesson? On the first day of school? My, won't his daddy and mummy be so disappointed in him."

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Ariana," the blonde wizard huffed, returning the frown his sister was throwing at him. "Please refrain yourself from making a fool of yourself. Not that it's important to me or that I care, mind you, but we share the same last name. I beg you, don't bring me more shame for being related to you than what I already get."

"Do not worry, brother," Ariana snapped, her arms dropping from her chest and exposing her ruby-red and gold tie as her heart began to thump from the anger of those grey eyes that matched hers. "As far as anyone in Hogwarts knows, Mrs. Malfoy picked me off the corner of Diagon Alley and nursed me back to health when the Hippogriff lost its way and just dropped me off at the first corner it saw. Because, believe me, Mister Malfoy," the girl gave a low bow, increasing her glare as she poked the right nerve of her brother's fury, "there's more shame for me being related to you that I rather be the pathetic girl her parents gave away."

"You're so lovely in the afternoons, Beast," breathing in, trying not to let Ariana get the best of him, Scorpius decided to go back to the territory he knew perfectly well—sarcasm. "Have you already fed among the Thestrals? Next time, though, I suggest you don't go for raw meat, sister. It makes your face all blotchy."

"—Ana, I do believe Care of Magical Creatures is not that far from Herbology." Turning the corner, conjuring a clear bubble around Scorpius' figure to protect him from the fist his sister had made and was extremely ready to aim at his face, a redheaded girl with bright brown eyes stepped forward with her wand raised high; followed by a close companion. "Angelo, Dash, walk the girl to her lesson."

"But—"

"Now," the redheaded girl ordered, her friend laughing in the background at the terrified faces of the Slytherin and Gryffindor.

"Move on, move on, Angelo." The girl next to the redhead, with glowing tanned-skin color and emerald eyes, smirked at Zabini. "You better hurry and see what you can get from your Herbology lesson or you'll be receiving a very angry letter from Mum once Neville tells her you didn't care to show up."

Angelo snorted. "And what are you exactly doing, Savanna?" He retorted quickly, grabbing Ariana's arm as her anger didn't dare budge at the arrival of the new girls. "Monitoring the halls for poltergeist?"

"I was actually called to the Headmistress' office, brother. Apparently I've been moved up to a more advance class of Potions, seeing as I'm quite the genius." Savanna smiled, batting her eyelashes teasingly sweet at her older brother. "Mum will be proud, don't you think? I already wrote to Daddy and I expect he'll be sending me loads of wicked stuff that the owl will probably be made to rest for a month."

Feeling a strong mix of pride and annoyance, Zabini settled on rolling his eyes and said, "congratulations, Savanna," a little halfheartedly. And while his sister threw him a great smile, Angelo pulled the Gryffindor witch with him; passing his sister as he flicked her navy-blue tie with his finger. "Come on, Ana, how'd you fancy some fresh air?"

"I'd fancy chopping that idiot into pieces, burning his remains, and flushing him down Moaning Myrtle's toilet with hysterical laughter bouncing off the walls of the lavatory," Ariana hissed, attempting to aim her fist to the clear bubble just for a useless try; letting herself be pulled away by Angelo and Dash in a second. (Curse the sodding flobberworm, he had too much of good luck for her liking. But one day…one day—insert her fist shaking threateningly here. )

"Lovely, isn't she?" Scorpius began as soon as the bubble of protection was lifted from him. "I reckon Mum had a lot of Butterbeer when she was pregnant with her. That could only explain her insanity, but you have to put up with it, don't you?"

Scowling, the redheaded witch walked closer to the blonde; stepping into the candlelight that illuminated the path outside of the dungeons. "You're just a walking body stuffed with bile, eh, Malfoy?"

Narrowing his silvery eyes at the pale face glaring at him, trying to ignore the way the light would highlight her flushed rosy cheeks and fiery strands of wavy hair, and even her bright hazel eyes—a perfect mixture of green and brown—Scorpius decided to mock her. "Charming as always. I knew my year wouldn't be complete if Rose Weasley didn't take it upon herself to criticize my every move."

"I wouldn't have the need to, Scorpius, if you stopped parading yourself around the castle like you were just baptized by Merlin," Rose hissed, crossing her arms over her chest as her mother's inherited fury started rising in her insides. (Well, not like Pansy Parkinson was the sweetest witch alive, right? She was cold-hearted and ruthless in years past. Just because she got married and became a Weasley does not mean she won't invade your personal space and beat you silly.) "How about some sensitivity towards Ana? She is your sister after all."

"Not by choice, I assure you, Rosie." Malfoy leered, stretching his pale finger forward; letting it trace the soft skin of the redhead's cheek. "I was about two when my mummy told me about the beast breeding inside of her. I tried countless of times to sell her to a few passing muggles, but not even they wanted her." His mocking grin became more pronounced as Rose looked at his caressing gesture with controlled wide-eyes, trying her hardest not to react to his touch. "And, I don't parade myself, Weasley. The world just seems to give me the attention."

Rose narrowed her brown eyes dangerously at the blonde; annoyance quickly sweeping past her little moment of shock by his touch.

"Not to be jealous, though. I'm sure one day you'll grow into your nose and you'll catch the eye of a few." Flicking her button-like nose, with a false accusation as her ears turned beet red, Malfoy turned to the girl opposite of Rose Weasley. "May I escort you to your lesson, Miss Zabini?"

Staring at Scorpius with a raised eyebrow, trying not to punch his head as he bowed to her, Savanna sighed. "You're a foul git, Malfoy."

Scorpius laughed, lacing his arm with the Third Year Ravenclaw and leaving behind the redheaded Gryffindor. "Oh, she loves it."

Counting five Hippogriffs as she tried so hard to settle her breaths, Rose Weasley let out a high-pitched scream when the Slytherin and the Ravenclaw had turned the corridor.

Scorpius Malfoy was going to be the end of her—and then she'd come back to murder him for the wrecking havoc he causes underneath her skin.

(That bloody idiot.)

AN:

Two things you need to know.

1) Every other chapter will be about Hermione/Draco and then of the kids. Get it?

2) Do you guys need some sort of listing of who is who? I know I didn't really get into detail of who they were, what house they were sorted in, and what year but I PROMISE I left that for their next chapter. (Trust, there's more kids to come, Lol.)

:)