A/N - I just want to thank everyone for their wonderful reviews for this story. I'm glad people are enjoying these little snippets. This is the longest snippet in the set, and one of my favourite ones. I hope people enjoy, and thanks again for the reviews.
Double Trouble.
Draco was in his study at home on a Friday afternoon when his wife entered carrying a letter in her hand and looking annoyed. The kids had been back at school about a month and Draco was hoping to finish his work early so he could whisk Hermione away for the weekend, but judging from the expression on his wife's face something had happened that was about to derail his plans.
"What's wrong?" Draco asked.
"It's your son," Hermione replied, handing Draco the letter she was carrying. "He's in trouble. Again."
Draco knew the second Hermione referred to Scorpius as his son, that their oldest child had gotten himself into another situation at school. Whenever Scorpius displayed his mischievous Slytherin side, Hermione always referred to him as Draco's son. Of course Draco always argued that Scorpius had inherited a fair bit of his rebellious nature from Hermione herself. Even though his wife had been a Gryffindor in school, she hadn't been opposed to getting into trouble with her two best friends. In fact Draco reckoned the Gryffindor trio had gotten into far more trouble than he and his friends had ever done.
"McGonagall doesn't say what he's done," Draco remarked, quickly reading the letter from the Headmistress of Hogwarts.
"No, but she wants to see us today so it must be something big," Hermione replied with a sigh. "I swear, if he gets himself expelled I'm going to kill him."
"I'm sure that's not going to happen," Draco reassured his wife. "Whatever he's done, it can't be that bad."
"Let's hope not," Hermione muttered as she turned and stalked out of her husband's study.
Draco sighed as his plans for a peaceful weekend with his wife vanished before his eyes. No matter what Scorpius had done, Draco was going to kill him for messing up his weekend. Now he would have to spend the weekend dealing with an irate wife, instead of spending it with a happy and contented one.
Quickly tidying away in his study, Draco headed to the bedroom and quickly changed before joining his wife in the front room. At the appropriate time the couple activated the floo network and one by one they flooed to the Headmistresses office at Hogwarts.
When the Malfoys arrived at Hogwarts the Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, was waiting to greet them. Also present in the Headmistresses office was the deputy head and Draco's godfather, Severus Snape. Neither Draco nor Hermione were that surprised to see Severus as he still served as head of Slytherin house, which of course was where Scorpius had been sorted upon his arrival at school.
"I hope we're not dealing with anything too serious," Hermione said as McGonagall ushered them into seats.
"Before we discuss anything, I think we should wait for the other set of parents to arrive," McGonagall said. "Then we can call the boys in and discuss this."
"Let's guess, we're waiting for Blaise and Daphne," Draco said. It made perfect sense that his son had gotten into trouble with his best friend, Alex, as together the pair were very capable of causing mayhem.
"Of course," Severus answered.
Within a few minutes Blaise and Daphne stepped from the fireplace and sheepishly took seats next to Hermione and Draco. With all the parents present and McGonagall sitting sternly behind her desk, Severus walked over to the door and ushered in the two sixth years the meeting was about. Scorpius and Alex entered the room looking confident, but one look at their gathered parents had them gulping and sharing worried looks.
"Sit down boys." McGonagall ordered the pair. She waited for the two students to take their seats, before she spoke again. "Would either of you care to tell your parents what you've been up to?"
To no-one's surprise, Scorpius and Alex both shook their heads. The two boys rarely confessed to their misdeeds, it was usually left to someone else to explain what the pair had been up to.
"Severus, would you care to explain?" McGonagall asked her deputy.
"Scorpius and Alex have been caught using polyjuice potion," Severus told the two couples. "It turns out all term they've been posing as each other to deal with certain situations."
"What situations?" Hermione asked.
"Last week Scorpius had detention with Professor Longbottom," Severus answered. "He also happened to have a previous engagement with a girl on the same night. Alex took some polyjuice potion and served the detention posing as Scorpius, while he was on his date."
"If that happened a week ago, why are we only being informed now?" Daphne questioned.
"They actually got away with that," McGonagall answered. "Unfortunately they were caught earlier today, and they confessed everything to Professor Snape."
"And what were they up to today?" Draco asked his godfather. Even though Scorpius and Severus were close, he doubted Scorpius would have willingly confessed all their past misdemeanours, meaning his godfather had probably used underhand tactics to earn a confession.
"I caught Scorpius coming out of a broom cupboard with a girl," Severus answered. "As I was giving him a lecture on inappropriate use of school equipment, he began to change into Alex."
"I told you that Ravenclaw was bad news," Scorpius hissed to his best friend. "If you hadn't gotten distracted by her, you would have been back in the dorms before the potion wore off."
"Sorry but she was hot," Alex smirked wickedly. "She's never shown any interest in me, she's got a thing for blonds and I just couldn't resist."
"Well Mr Zabini, you should learn to control your urges," McGonagall said sternly. "And you and Mr Malfoy should also know not to mess with polyjuice potion."
"Sorry Professor," Scorpius said quietly, doing his best to look contrite.
"Sorry isn't good enough," McGonagall retorted. "The pair of you will serve detention with me until Christmas, and I want to know where you got the potion from. Did you make it, or did you steal it?"
"We brewed it over the holidays," Alex admitted.
"Planning ahead, how sneaky," Severus remarked. Even though he tried to hide his admiration everyone in the room knew he was actually quite impressed by the deviousness of the two sixth years.
"There'll be no more of this," McGonagall announced. "If I catch either of you using polyjuice potion again, there will be serious consequences. In fact if either of you get into any more trouble this side of Christmas, you will regret it."
"But that's not fair," Alex protested. "What if we get into trouble and it's not our fault?"
"As if that's ever going to happen," Draco snorted. "More likely the pair of you will drag some innocent person into your trouble making schemes."
"Alex, Scorpius, you can return to your class now," McGonagall announced as Scorpius shot his father an unimpressed glare at his crack about them being the cause of any trouble.
"We're so sorry, Minerva," Hermione said apologetically once the two boys had left the office. "I promise nothing like this will ever happen again."
"I'm sure it won't." McGonagall smiled at her former student. "Normally, I wouldn't have called you four to see me, but using polyjuice potion in school is not acceptable. Luckily it appears their exploits extends to doing detentions for one another and helping each other out with girls, but I can't take the risk that things take an academic turn. We both know Scorpius and Alex are bright boys, and they could make a fortune charging lesser students for help in exams or vital lessons."
"We completely understand, and I assure you Scorpius will be severely punished when he comes home at Christmas," Draco vowed.
"As will Alex," Blaise added.
"Hopefully seeing you're involved and are fully aware of the situation will be enough to deter them from ever doing anything like this again," McGonagall said. "I would hate to have to suspend the boys, but sometimes they just take things a bit too far."
The four parents agreed fully with McGonagall and after apologising one final time they prepared to head home. Before they left Draco invited Blaise and Daphne to return to their house so everyone flooed back to the Malfoys. The two couples arrived back in Hermione and Draco's front room, and no sooner had both Draco and Blaise alighted from the fire than they took one look at each other and burst into laughter.
"What is so funny?" Hermione asked. With the two men still laughing she got no joy so she turned to Daphne, who seemed just as bewildered as she was.
"I have no idea," Daphne said to Hermione.
"Did you tell them?" Blaise asked Draco, through his laughter.
"No." Draco shook his head as he started to calm down. "I assumed you told them."
"Told who what?" Hermione demanded, looking between her husband and his best friend.
"That trick with the polyjuice potion," Blaise answered. "Draco and I used to do the same thing in school. The second I heard what had happened, I thought Draco had told Scorpius which was where the idea had come from."
"I thought the same thing," Draco said. "I thought Blaise had been telling Alex about our exploits in school."
"You two used to do the same thing," Daphne said, before her face contorted into horror as she realised the implications behind the revelation. She and Blaise had gotten together in seventh year, like Draco and Hermione had done, and she wouldn't be impressed to find some of her dates had been with Draco. Nor did she think Hermione would appreciate it if Blaise had been posing as Draco with her. "You better not have ever used that trick on me." She warned her husband.
"Of course not," Blaise reassured his wife. "The couple of times I was stupid enough to land a detention when I had plans with you, Draco would cover for me in detention. We never did anything with girls when we were posing as each other."
"Actually, I once told Hermione she looked sexy," Draco confessed. "It wasn't until she looked at me strange that I remembered I still looked like you."
"I remember that," Hermione said. "I was just exiting the library when you approached me. I was totally baffled by the fact my boyfriend's best friend had just called me sexy and slapped me on my bum."
"Is that why you ignored me for a week?" Blaise asked with a pout. He could vividly remember Hermione not speaking to him for days, and at the time he'd been totally miffed as he'd always thought he'd gotten along great with Hermione.
"Yeah." Hermione nodded. "I was so shocked you would do that to Daphne and Draco that I refused to speak to you. I actually thought that your claims that you didn't know what you'd done wrong was just a pretence."
"So why did you start speaking to him again?" Daphne asked.
"Actually, that was down to Draco," Hermione answered. "He asked me to get over whatever was bothering me about Blaise. I felt bad for snubbing his best friend, so I decided to pretend the entire incident had never happened. And since Blaise never mentioned it, I assumed he was doing the same thing."
"When really Draco was just covering his own backside," Blaise remarked, glaring at his friend. "You knew all along why Hermione wasn't speaking to me."
"I had a fair idea," Draco admitted. "But without confessing the entire thing, it took time to fix. I had to get the pair of you to forget things and move on without ever talking about it, which was actually quite hard to do."
"I cannot believe the pair of you did that," Daphne tutted. "No wonder Alex and Scorpius have such wild ideas. Let's hope they don't follow in your footsteps anymore and that they keep their noses clean for the rest of term."
"I'm sure they'll be fine," Blaise said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
For once Blaise was right and the boys didn't get into any more trouble before Christmas break. However that didn't stop Scorpius and Alex from getting up to mischief, they were just a lot more careful about getting caught out.