Chapter Seven

Holiday Horror - Numerous Reported Casualties as Terrorists Strike Again in Muggle London

Once again, magical terrorists have attacked Muggles in a busy London street. Three linked explosions on Muggle Underground trains at Baker Street struck this morning, apparently targeting the large numbers of Muggles en-route to work or starting a day of Christmas shopping. Once again, no members of the Magical Community were hurt in the attack and due to this it is believed the attack was specifically designed to target Muggles, and was likely carried out by a blood purity fanatic, of the sort that supported You-Know-Who during the 20th century.

Ministry representatives arrived on the street moments after the attack, and reported a scene of "carnage and horror". Healers from St Mungo's were also brought in disguise, and have been attempting to aid the wounded despite being restricted by the Statute of Magical Secrecy.

'It's awful,' said Junior Healer Victoire Weasley, eldest daughter of war heroes Bill and Fleur Weasley, nee Delacour. 'So many people were hurt, and at such a terrible time too.'

As many readers will have realised, this attack is particularly vicious as it struck just the day before Christmas Eve, when Muggles and the Wizarding Community alike are preparing to enjoy the holiday festivities. It bears marked similarities to the attack on Piccadilly Circus in November, but it is yet unknown whether this is a second act from the same attacker, or a copycat terrorist. Once again, the perpetrator escaped the scene and has so far evaded capture.

Minister for Magic Granger and Chief Auror Potter have both expressed their 'great sorrow' and 'strongest regret' that such an event has happened, but is that enough? Certainly both have been going through the usual rounds of visiting the site, aiding those working on the scene, and mobilising Ministry workers to attempt to deal with the situation, but still this vicious terrorist is at large. According to inside sources, only ten Aurors have been assigned to specifically search for this terrorist, a number that seems woefully lacking for a criminal of this nature.

As their own niece said, 'it's awful', and so far nothing has been achieved to stop the terrorist individual or group. How long will it take for the Ministry to achieve something meaningful? How many more Muggles have to die? And maybe next time, it won't just be Muggles.

The day-old newspaper sat yellowing on the kitchen cabinet at the Burrow, and Albus wondered why it hadn't been chucked away yet. It had caused enough arguments after all, and now it lay like a grim memento of the past day and a half. Beneath the headline, a large moving photograph of a blown-out train carriage billowing smoke flickered sickeningly. Leaning across, Albus picked it up with one hand and unfolded it, scanning the article that he already knew so well briefly before dropping it back into the same place.

It was Christmas Eve, and the Burrow was steadily filling up with family, although there was a tense and rather more somber atmosphere than usual, despite the vain efforts of some of the uncles to continue the festivities. Albus' father and his Aunt Hermione were both still at work, and had sent messages to say they'd likely be late to dinner and to not wait for them. Victoire had only just finished her shift and was looking almost grey with exhaustion, sat in an armchair while Teddy force-fed her eggnog.

No one had talked much about the incident at Baker Street. There'd been an unspoken agreement amongst the family to not talk about it, but for the moment when the newspaper article had landed on everyone's doorsteps. Albus had been sat, reading through one of his textbooks, when his father had strode into the sitting room with the newspaper in his hand.

'Look at this!'

Albus looked over the top of his book, instantly regretting his decision to read in the sitting room instead of his bedroom. Over in the corner, Lily looked up from her sketchbook and raised her eyebrows.

'Yes, Dad?'

'This article! Look at it! There's a tragedy going on in the Muggle world, and all they can do is put out bile,' said Harry, pushing his hand through his greying hair and making it even messier. 'And what does Victoire think she's doing, speaking to the press? I need to have a talk with her - she's made it look like we're all against each other!'

Albus and Lily both knew that their father had had about three hours sleep since the terrorist attack, and so they weren't quite sure what to say. In the end, they'd let him rant for a while, and then their mother had arrived and diffused the situation. But their father was clearly at the end of his tether, and it wasn't making for a relaxed Christmas. More than ever, Albus was ready to escape to Val d'Isole with his friends.

A few miles away, in Cambridgeshire, Scorpius was stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom, checking that his new dress robes were straight and his hair wasn't out of place. His grandparents were coming for dinner, along with some other family friends, and he knew that he'd be berated for any untidiness in his appearance. As he carefully drew a comb through his hair - thinking all the while how much his friends would laugh if they saw him like this - his mother called him from the floor below.

The house itself was not the original Malfoy Manor - that was in Wiltshire, and the building itself had long since been sold off, sold again to Muggles, bulldozed by those Muggles who complained of feeling like the house was haunted, and rebuilt by them. Scorpius' father had bought the house when he'd married Scorpius' mother, and named it Malfoy Park. Scorpius' grandparents spent most of their time in a sprawling villa near the Pyrenees.

It was quite a large house, and his mother's voice was quite muffled, but his ears picked it up immediately and he hurried out of his bedroom. Nearly seventeen years of living in this house had given him a pinpoint-accurate sense of the layout of the house, and he knew immediately that his parents were in the Library.

Sure enough, they were sat side-by-side in two stiff old armchairs, a small table with a stack of old volumes between them. Neither of them spoke as Scorpius entered the room, and his footsteps were loud on the creaking wooden floor as he went over to sit on the sofa opposite them. His mother, as ever, was looking exceptionally poised. Her dark hair was pinned back off her face and her designer robes were arranged to flow perfectly over her body and drape her legs. His father, sat back in his armchair with his shoulders slightly hunched, still looked rather thin and exhausted after his ordeal in the autumn. He hadn't seemed to have done much since Scorpius had arrived home, spending most of his time in his study or taking the occasional short, slow walk about the grounds with his Crup, Archibald.

'Mother? Father?' Scorpius looked from one to the other. 'Is something wrong?'

'Scorpius, your grandparents will be arriving in about three quarters of an hour,' said his mother, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. 'And we think it would be best if we told you some news before they did. You can't tell anyone what we're about to tell you, though.'

Scorpius stared at them, his heart suddenly beating faster. What was it? Not another mishap with his father's work, he didn't think he could go through another saga of scandal and gossip and trials. As his mind began to frantically imagine horrible scenarios of his father returning to Azkaban, his mother spoke again.

'We've decided to get a divorce, Scorpius.'

Silence. He suddenly realised he'd been wrong. Scandal would be nothing compared to this. He felt as if he was on a ship, the sofa swaying unsteadily beneath him, and he found himself clutching the seat cushions tight as if they'd offer some sort of support. Trying to take deep breaths despite the tightness in his lungs, he looked up at his parents.

'But - but how? After everything that's happened? I thought it brought you two closer together, I thought that we were a proper family, how could you have stuck through everything that's just happened and now want a d-divorce?' he asked, trying not to stammer. His father hated it when he stammered. 'And why now? Why not when everything was going wrong in the autumn?'

'Well, if we'd divorced then it would've looked like it was because of the scandal, and that's just so common and trashy,' said his mother, sounding as if she was discussing nothing more than a difficult tea party. 'The thing is, Scorpius, we've been having trouble for rather a while. I agreed to help your father through his trial, but now that's over we're calling an end to it. I'm staying with my your aunt after Boxing Day, and I move to Paris in January.'

'To - Paris?' Scorpius croaked.

'Yes. I want a new start, and I've always loved Paris.'

Scorpius looked over at his father, who hadn't said a single word. He seemed to be in a world of his own, staring into the middle distance with the hooded gaze he'd developed since his stint in Azkaban. His left arm had a slight tremor, making his hand twitch a little.

'So … where will I live? Am I moving to Paris?' he asked, and he was surprised to find his voice was quite steady. It would be nice to live in France during the holidays. A change from the rural folds of Cambridgeshire.

'No, dear, of course we wouldn't do that to you! You can stay here, with your father.'

A fresh blow seemed to strike inside Scorpius' chest. Did his mother not want him? He loved his father, but ever since the arrest and trial he'd been a much different man, seeming embittered and raw with anger over what had happened. And he'd never been alone with him for longer than a day or two, the idea of it being just the two of them for weeks on end was positively terrifying.

When he thought about it afterwards, Scorpius wasn't quite sure how he made it through the next few days in Malfoy Park. He remembered replying when people asked him questions, eating normally, opening his Christmas presents and showing the correct level of enthusiasm at each expensive gift, but it all felt rather like someone else had been controlling him, pulling strings this way and that, and he'd merely been watching it all happen. He couldn't wait to escape to Val d'Isole, but a part of him also dreaded it. How could he keep his parents' imminent divorce a secret?

His mother left the day before he did. He'd been dreading her departure all through Christmas, wondering how he was supposed to keep his stoic composure as he said goodbye to her. As he lay in bed, pretending he was falling asleep, his mind imagined all the tiny details of what it would be like. She'd wear her blue travelling cloak, the one with the silver fur collar, and her best silver day robes with it - he knew that she'd want to look her best when she arrived at her sister's. It would be difficult enough to arrive with a failed marriage behind her, let alone the humiliation of not looking perfectly beautiful.

They rarely embraced each other, but he thought that just this time she would, placing her arms around him and lightly touching his hair. She always had the same recognisable scent on, one of flowers that he'd probably recognise quite easily if he'd ever been remotely interested in that sort of thing. Now he wished he had found out what the flowers were. It was always in a crystal bottle on her dresser with a gold stopper shaped like a closed bud, and when he was little just the smell of it would calm him down.

As it was, he knew that something was different the moment he opened his eyes that morning. His bedroom was quite the same, of course; the birds that nested in the tree outside his window were singing just like they always did. But in his heart, he knew it was not the same house. Slowly, as if to delay proving what he already felt to be true, he pushed back his coverlet and sat up.

He didn't dress, merely pulled on a sweater to ward off the chill in the draughty house, and padded barefoot out onto the landing. The house felt too quiet, too still. Resting a hand on the banister, he started down the stairs. His mother's suitcases weren't in the hallway, but perhaps they'd been sent on ahead, to make things easier. He padded down the last few steps, and opened the door of the cupboard in the hallway where they kept all their travelling cloaks. His mother's weren't there.

Despite the fact he already knew she wasn't there, he found himself going to every room in the house, opening the doors and standing looking in for a moment, each time with just the tiniest hope and expectation that he'd see her there. She'd be standing at the window or reading a book, and she'd turn and give him a rare smile, and tell him how sorry she was to be leaving him and how she'd miss him more than anything else in the world.

But the rooms were still and empty, and finally he was left with only her dressing room. It was next door to the master bedroom, and he paused for a little longer at the door of this room before turning the doorknob. The blinds were still drawn, giving everything in the room a dim rose-gold hue. His footsteps muffled on the thick carpet, he went over to the vanity table, now cleared of everything but a vase of wilting lilies and carnations, and ran his fingers over the smooth wooden surface. The perfume bottle was gone of course. The room still smelled slightly of that scent, the air heavy with the ghost of his mother's presence.

The wardrobe was empty, the wooden hangers rattling against each other as he opened the doors. The scent was stronger here, her clothes had permeated it into the wood, and without thinking he climbed inside, pulling the doors shut and sitting tight against the back wall. In the darkness, breathing in the heady smell of his mother, he could almost imagine that she'd never left at all, if it wasn't for the gentle rattle of the empty hangers above his head.

Val d'Isole was a charming town, nestled between two sheer sides of the mountain valley, with wooded slopes and broad stretches of thick snow. The houses were built in the usual fashion of the Alps, low and wooden with broad covered balconies stretching right around them. It wasn't a very large village, perhaps a couple dozen houses or so, but at this time of year every window seemed alight and the sound of music and voices drifted onto the street at all hours.

There were heavy drifts of snow all about the town, but the main street had been cleared but for the light dusting that had fallen that day. A few flakes were still drifting down from the heavy grey-white clouds when Albus arrived, settling on the shoulders of his thick travelling cloak and melting into his hair. He pulled his collar close around his neck and set off down the street, his bag held tight in his hand. As he passed one house, the noise of a dinner party became sudden raucous laughter, and then just as quickly faded back to muffled chatter.

The Zabini's chalet was at the further end of the street. It was slightly taller than the other houses, its gable visible with its heavy cloak of snow, and as Albus approached he heard the sound of someone's voice midway through what was clearly supposed to be a very amusing anecdote. He thought it was Fitzroy, from the pitch and intonation.

It was definitely chilly now, and he hurried up the front path and knocked quickly, the muffled thud of his gloved fist echoing inside. A brief pause, and then the door swung open and he saw Zabini, stood with a rare smile on his lips. 'Potter! Come on inside, you look freezing.'

His skin tingled sharply as he stepped into the hallway and warmth washed over him, as sudden as if he'd just opened an oven. Zabini, never one to hang about and fuss over guests, had already returned to the others in the sitting room, and Albus quickly hung up his cloak and gloves and followed him.

Although called the sitting room, that name didn't quite encompass the extent of it. The hallway was quite narrow, filled mainly by the carved wooden staircase, but one stepped through a doorway and the whole ground floor opened out in one gigantic open-plan room. At the far end, there was the kitchen and a dining table placed before a floor-to-ceiling glass window that, during the daytime, gave beautiful views of the surrounding mountain valley. Then there was a pool table and well-equipped bar, and at nearest end, a set of sofas around a fireplace large enough for a grown man to stand in comfortably.

As Albus had suspected, Fitzroy was stood in the centre of the group, a glass of Prosecco in his hand as he exclaimed a story to the others, who were all ranged about the sofas and armchairs. At Albus' entrance, he stopped and hailed him, and the others murmured a chorus of their own greetings.

'Potter, get yourself a drink,' said Vittoria in a rather imperious voice. She was sat close beside a tall, fair-featured blond boy that Albus didn't recognise. He supposed the boy must be another rich resident of Val d'Isole, perhaps a Scandinavian or German who attended Durmstrang. There were a few others that didn't go to Hogwarts - three girls that were almost identical and looked very Italian, a Hispanic boy and girl, and another boy who stared about with an even more disdainful expression than Albus' own friends had. Everyone else - the Zabinis, Fitzroy, Langwith, Adelaide Grey and Scorpius, of course were all friends.

It took Albus a moment to notice Scorpius, and to his great surprise his friend hadn't acknowledged him any more than the slightest nod in his direction. He was sat on the furthest sofa, and his gaze was now firmly fixed on the glowing embers of the fire. Albus fixed himself a Firewhisky on ice, and went to sit down beside him.

'Hi, Albus.' Scorpius' voice was a dull monotone, and he carried on staring at the fireplace, the flames reflected on his grey eyes. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Albus knew that something was very wrong with his friend. He wondered what on earth could be worse than the ordeal Scorpius went through last term.

The evening quickly progressed to more drinking, and then smoking and snorting and drinking, and soon Albus found himself lying in a vague stupor, the taste of whisky on his tongue as his eyes itched and strange, psychedelic thoughts drifted through his mind. He was only brought back to reality by a sudden bang and shout, and a lot of yelling.

Sitting up, one hand on his forehead, he looked over the back of the sofa and saw suddenly quite clearly that Scorpius was stood bent over the pool table, his pale blond hair dishevelled and his face very red. He was holding something down on the table, as everyone else stood about in a clamour, and after a moment Albus realised it was the Spanish boy.

Leaping up despite his nausea, Albus hurried over and grasped Scorpius by the shoulder, wrenching him backwards off the boy who gasped and coughed. Seizing Albus with a frightening force, Scorpius turned on him, one hand on his collar as the other reached into the pocket where he kept his wand. He was quite unrecognisable, his face a twisted mask as his bloodshot eyes glared at Albus.

'Scorpius!' he gasped, grabbing him by the wrist. 'It's me! Stop!'

There was a pause, in which the whole world seemed suspended for a moment, and then Scorpius let out a deep, shuddering breath and let go of Albus, who stumbled back into Zabini. There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the door slamming as Scorpius strode outside and slammed the door.

The others were exchanging looks, but Albus ignored them all and hurried after his friend. The snow was falling heavier now, and for a moment he thought Scorpius had disappeared completely, until he spotted a dark shape striding a few metres away. Forcing his way through the deepening snow, Albus ran to catch up with his friend, who didn't look around as he came up behind him.

'Scorpius. Scorpius! FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SCORPIUS!' roared Albus, as a sudden gust of wind blew snow straight into his face. Scorpius stopped, and allowed Albus to catch up and look him in the face. Shivering uncontrollably now, Albus struggled to get his words out: 'W-What d-d-did we p-promise, at th-the end of l-last t-t-term? We said we'd-d al-always tell each other w-what was wrong. We wouldn't k-keep s-s-secrets.'

Scorpius was staring past him, out into the dark expanse of the mountainside behind. Finally he spoke, and his voice was deadened, emotionless. 'My parents have divorced. My mother left yesterday.'

'Merlin - Scorpius I … I'm…'

'Don't,' snapped Scorpius, turning away now. 'Don't say any of it. Just shut up, alright? There's nothing you can say to make this better, nothing! She's gone. Like it was nothing, like they thought I wouldn't care, they just went and - after everything that's happened - they just - FUCK!'

Quickly, Albus transfigured some snow into a large bat, and Scorpius grasped it and launched himself at a nearby house. There were some thick icicles hanging from the eaves almost to the snow, and he tore at them, sending shards of ice everywhere as he smashed each and every one of them, first with the bat and then with his fists. Finally, the icicles were nothing but a pile of ice, and Scorpius was doubled over, his bleeding hands on his knees as he gasped for breath.

'She didn't even say goodbye, Albus,' he said, and his voice cracked. 'She didn't-.'

Albus stepped forward and grabbed his friend, pulling him into an embrace. They were both cold, and wet, and shivering, but they held each other in the swirling blizzard as Scorpius shook and sobbed and howled on Albus.