Chapter Seventeen

A/N: Thank you to ClaireBear1982 for reviewing the last chapter.

The hubbub from within the Hufflepuff Common Room could be heard from the corridor outside of the door, but once the panel of wood was no longer between the two areas, the din had become so deafeningly loud that Lily was close to clamping her hands over her ears when she entered the room.

There was a large crowd around the notice board, this the young girl noticed immediately, and it seemed that the entire House was stood there, as all other areas of the room seemed to have been vacated in favour of that one spot. 'It'll be something to do with Professor McGonagall's mad idea.' the redhead told herself. 'That's all it is. It can't really be anything else, after all, not if everyone is this interested.'

Having never been a fan of being stood in large crowds, Lily turned to walk in the direction of the dormitories, thinking that perhaps she could write a letter to her mother about what her former Head of House was trying to do. After all, with all the excitement, it was unlikely that Albus had had time to tell her, and James never bothered to write home anyway. But the moment she placed her foot on the first step of the staircase, she found that she could go no further. Instead, she bit the bullet and joined the sea of students stood at the notice board.

There was new notice there, with the crest of Hogwarts at the top of it, and so Lily quickly realised that this was not just the sign-up sheet for Hogsmeade or the lists for the new Quidditch teams, both eagerly anticipated notice board events, both of which would bear either the sigil of the House, or of Hogsmeade town itself. This was important. It would have to be, to bear the crest of the school. Intrigued, Lily fought to get closer.

She was not quite close enough yet to read the words, but she could see them written, reels and reels of words, written in both citrine yellow and emerald green. 'They're the pairings for this new scheme of Professor McGonagall's.' she realised, and her face became a little more pinched, as she discovered what this would mean. 'So, whatever student my name ends up paired with, it's going to be a serpent. That's going to make the next few months fly by, no problem.'

As she pushed further forwards, helped by the thinning crowds, as people had now discovered the learning partners they would have for the remainder of the school year, Lily prayed that she would be paired with her brother, the only Slytherin in the whole school she thought she might possibly get along with. However, she was almost certain that McGonagall was aware of this, and would have put measures in place to prevent this from happening, meaning that whichever of the serpents she ended up stuck with, it would be a pretentious Pureblood idiot with an inflated sense of self-importance.

There was a very thin line of people around the notice board now, and Lily could almost see the details of the sheet. She could see the matches at the top of the alphabet for her year group, no further down than Matthew Davies, as a tall boy was blocking her line of sight, but as she managed to shuffle forwards a few inches, a few more names becoming visible. However, she had still only reached 'N' in the alphabet, not 'P'.

However, the boy, who she had found out to her frustration was actually Matthew Davies himself, read out the name of his partner and stormed off in a huff in the direction of the dormitories. This left her line of sight clear, and Lily pushed her way forward before anyone else could fill the gap and block her view again. She quickly scanned down the list of names, finding her own before long, and suddenly, she paused, open mouthed, with the shock of it.

Her name had been paired with that of a fourth year Slytherin boy, a bad enough thing in itself, as many of the boys from that year knew her brother Albus and disliked him, for one reason or another. However, by fate or fortune, she had been paired with the one boy who did, in fact, like her brother; the one boy that she disliked more than all the others.

Scorpius Malfoy.

Of all the students in all the Houses, of course it would have to be her that ended up paired with the son of her father's old enemy. Scorpius had precisely the same rivalry with James as Draco had had with Harry, and she imagined that this rivalry would extend to her as well. After all, the three Potter children were all cut from the same cloth, and she did not have a serpent sewn into her robes to make him like her any more, as Albus did.

"Malfoy? That's not good." Teddy commented loudly, and Lily jumped slightly at the sound of his voice. She had been so fixated on trying to find out who she was to be paired with that she had forgotten he was stood in the corner of the room with his friends.

"It's going to kill me." she replied melodramatically, gesturing with frustration. "I won't be able to spend a day with Malfoy, let alone a whole term!"

"I thought you got on." he pointed out, abandoning his friends and approaching her. "You said he was alright to you before."

"Yeah, but Al was always there." she explained, becoming a little more worried about the arrangement. "He's his best friend, and he'd never be mean to me in front of him. But Al isn't going to be there. It'll just be me and him."

"You'll be fine, Lily." Teddy sighed, returning to his friends, who were making their way out to the Quidditch stands to watch one of the practice matches taking place. "It's only a Malfoy, and you've seen worse. You're more than a match for him."

Somehow, despite the fact that he had never lied to her in the past, Lily could not believe that her surrogate brother was telling the truth. She was not looking forward to the next few months. Not at all.

A/N: Please review!