James crushed the letter in his hands and angrily tossed it away. He could not believe this! What were his parents thinking?!
Unable to stay still, he hopped off his bed and began pacing. His dormmates, who were lounging on their own beds, exchanged concerned glances.
"Don't tell me your parents are siding with the Malfoy," Noah concluded, bewildered. Noah Allen, a muggle-born, and one of James' best friends since their first year. The raven-haired boy was both athletic and quick witted, indispensable from the friend group. Master at talking his way out of trouble, a beater for the Gryffindor quidditch team, brilliant at potions, and always on the pulse of the latest Hogwarts gossip.
"Apparently, 'it's fine'," James quoted irately. "Give the kid a chance. Your grandfather also made unconventional friends.'"
"Unconventional friends?" Noah repeated, the absolute disbelief on his face vindicating James further. "Bloody hell, have they gone mad?!" Yes, yes they had. Had fwoopers invaded their house in the day he'd been away? Had they been cursed? Was the letter even real? It did sound like dad even if it made no sense.
"The kid did get Gryffindor," Freddie pointed out, but he didn't sound convinced. Fred Weasley, James' cousin and best friend since birth really. Tanned, freckled skin, umber red hair, heartthrob smile, and brown eyes that constantly sparkled with mischief. Legendary prankster with access to his dad's line of joke products, sometimes before they even hit the shelves. Freddie was hunched over one of those joke items now, a box of some kind. Still hadn't told the rest of them what it was.
"Oh please," Noah scoffed. "You think if Godric Gryffindor was here today, he'd let him in? Malfoys shouldn't be a Hogwarts at all. The whole lot should be rotting in Azkaban!"
Freddie nodded, glancing up from his tinkering. "It's mental they all got off scot free. They were all high ranking Death Eaters."
"It's really not so surprising your dad isn't all that upset," Kelvin spoke up quietly, the blue eye not hidden by his honey blonde hair following James' pacing. "He's one of the biggest reasons the Malfoys aren't in Azkaban." Kelvin Rivers, a half blood, James' final roommate and another best friend. Kelvin was the most academic of their group. He got broody a lot, mainly due to his unfortunate family situation, and was definitely the least rambunctious of their group, but could still be prodded into having fun. The boy could cast charms and jinxes better than some seventh years. He was the one they turned to when they needed knowledge from the educational fields. Kelvin also often kept the rest of them from going too crazy.
"What?" James gasped, snapping to stare disbelievingly at Kelvin and his ludicrous accusation. "What makes you think that?"
"I read it in some old papers," Kelvin shrugged. "Harry Potter himself vouched for the Malfoys, claimed they switched sides at the end. Then Lucius sold out all his Death Eater friends, which I'm sure earned him a lot of points. In the end, they snapped Lucius' wand and banned him from doing magic ever again, but to my knowledge his wife and son weren't really punished in any way." James was stunned. Dad had never mentioned sticking up for the Malfoys. Why would he do that? James would say the papers had been lying, but that was the type of outrageous lie not even a journalist could get away with and he knew Kelvin would have read multiple papers to bring it up.
"I knew he'd turned on the other Death Eaters to save his own skin." James spat. "But they didn't 'switch sides'. They lost, and then did whatever they needed to stay out of prison. The Malfoys are a bunch of spineless cowards. There's just no dark lord for them to cling to now. If some new powerful dark wizard rose to power tomorrow, they'd go running to serve him. The Malfoys are the same as ever." Albus knew that. So why was he letting one even be near him?
"There's that wizard in America," Kelvin pipped up. "You think they'd go to him?"
"Who?" Freddie asked, fully looking up, eyebrows furrowed. It took James a few seconds to guess who Kelvin was talking about.
"You mean Nile Travers?" James checked.
"Yeah," Kelvin nodded, fiddling with his quill nervously. "Lots of impressive stories about him."
James rolled his eyes. "I'm surprised you've even heard of him, Kel. Only reason I know who he is because dad's an auror and they talk about that kind of stuff. And the Malfoys would never join him, he's not a blood supremist, he lets muggle-borns join him."
Nile Travers was a pureblood wizard whose parents had sided with Voldemort during the second war. His dad had been killed and his mum had fled to America with a three-year-old Nile and her newborn daughter after the Death Eaters lost. The mum had died soon after arriving, James didn't know how, and the two children had ended up with the absolute worst, filth of the earth, sort of muggles. Wizard haters, foul and unfathomably cruel. After more than a decade of abuse, the muggles had beaten thirteen-year-old Avina Travers to death and Nile had snapped. A tragedy. The Americans hadn't even realized the Travers kids were in the country, their mum had snuck through the border. No one had known to look. If only Nile or his sister had shown signs of magic sooner, the American wizard authorities could have saved them. But supposedly Nile's first use of magic was the killing of his sister's murderers. And frankly if Nile had stopped the killing there, James would have been on his side. If some group of deranged muggles had murdered Lily… Nile hadn't stopped there though. He'd grown a deep-seated hatred for muggles and the bad wizards had found him before the American aurors did. It wouldn't have been a respectable introduction to the magical world. Now the guy was twenty-one years old with a long list of muggle deaths and some wizard deaths credited to him. He led an insurgent group of dark wizards called The Children of Salem dedicated to 'magical liberation'. Their mascot was a phoenix, which really rubbed James' dad the wrong way. Nile's followers were called Scorchers, burning the world to be born anew. Load of rubbish in James' opinion, all of it. And he was quite certain the group's 'accomplishments' were greatly exaggerated. Hopefully the whole thing was shut down quickly.
"There was an article in the Prophet," Kelvin explained. "He is British really after all, and he's doing a lot of crazy stuff. I'm surprised we don't get more stories about him over here."
"Don't believe everything you read," James shrugged. "No way he's actually doing all the stuff they're claiming he is." Never lost a duel, brushing off the killing curse, creating new dark creatures, etc. "He was raised by muggles who gaslit him into believing magic didn't even exist until he was, like, sixteen. He's never even been to a magic school. You don't suddenly become a super powerful master of the dark arts overnight. Just a bunch of rumors and propaganda. He's just a very charismatic leader. Now that they're getting a lot more bold, he'll be behind bars by the end of the year."
"I don't know what you two are talking about," Noah interjected. "But speaking of rumors, a lot are going around about Scorpius."
"Really?" James asked with sharp interest. Hopefully it was something awful. Something that would make Albus stay away. "Like what?"
"Well," Noah began, leaning forward. "To start, the theory of him being Voldemort's kid has gone away entirely now that he's gotten Gryffindor, and everyone's seen he looks just like his dad."
"That rumor was always stupid," Freddie ridiculed flippantly. "He's way too young for one. And even though he didn't get out of the house much, a bit of a recluse until now, plenty of people still saw he was a Draco mini. There isn't even any evidence Voldemort had a kid besides Bellatrix Lestrange seemingly disappearing for a few months and more rumors. Not exactly compelling. Tons of people saw her after that, and she never looked even a little pregnant."
"There are ways of hiding that," Noah shrugged. "Potions and illusions and such. Trickier stuff, but a witch like her could have managed it. But like I said, no one believes that anymore anyways. Now they're saying Scorpius' mum is actually a muggle."
"What?" James frowned, thrown off by the out of the blue accusation. "Astoria Malfoy isn't a muggle. There's no doubt about that. She's a Greengrass. She was a Slytherin herself." Another bloody pureblood.
"No, not her," Noah corrected. "Y'see, Astoria is sick, old family curse. The healers thought she would be barren. Yet they somehow managed to have a child. The rumor is that Draco was so desperate for an heir, he slept with a muggle woman then claimed the baby was Astoria's."
"There are plenty of half bloods in Slytherin," Kelvin pointed out immediately, always quick to identify logical flaws.
"Yeah," James agreed, feeling very much let down. This wouldn't help him convince Albus at all. "And why do it with a muggle? That defeats the whole purpose in their eyes, they disown you for that sort of thing. If he did sleep with another woman to get a kid, he would've done it with a witch."
Noah shrugged. "Yeah, I don't really buy it either. The muggle part at least. I wouldn't put being unfaithful to his wife past a Malfoy, but there's no real evidence for it."
"Didn't you hear anything useful?" James begged. "Something that would convince Albus or my parents?"
"Er." Noah shifted on his sheets. "Not really. That's the big thing right now. I assume the Slytherins are the only ones who might have met the kid before and I haven't overhead them say anything. The only other thing people are talking about is how weird it is to see a Malfoy walking around with a Weasley and a Potter." James ground his teeth together.
"Why do they want to hang around Scorpius?" Kelvin wondered. "Albus has always bashed the Malfoys with the rest of us."
"He's just trying to be contrary," James huffed, flopping back onto his bed. He put on a mocking tone. "Oh, you like quidditch, then I hate quidditch. You hate that book, then I love that book." He shook his head angrily. "I don't know how Malfoy managed to lure him in, but now that Albus has decided to be buddies with the little rat it's going to be hard to pull him out of it. Al's ridiculously stubborn." How long would it take for the Malfoy to convince Albus that not all dark magic was so bad? James wouldn't have believed Albus could be persuaded into such a thing before but now he had to face the truth that his little brother could be swayed if the person was manipulative enough.
This was so dumb. It wasn't supposed to go like this. He'd been looking forward to having his little brother at school with him. To think he'd missed the traitorous git while at Hogwarts. James had imagined himself showing Albus around, helping him with his schoolwork, bringing him in on their pranks, hanging out with him in their free time, but noooo. Albus had decided to turn around the second he stepped foot on school grounds and ignore James to go sit next to some pureblood prat he'd known less than a day. Not like James had been his brother his whole life or anything, and a good brother too. Much above average. But no, Albus chose the Malfoy.
"Must have been an incredible first impression," Freddie noted skeptically. "Not sure what Malfoy would get out of the act though. And Rose is going along with it too…"
"Everyone's confused," Noah snorted. "Ran into Prince on the way here and he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be mocking us for. He started to make fun of Gryffindor for getting an obvious Slytherin, but it slipped into him snickering about Albus being friends with a Death Eater and how James had failed as a brother." James' eyes narrowed dangerously, but he also felt a twinge of guilt. There was some truth to Prince's words. He'd run it all through his head many times now, considering many what-if scenarios, but it was too late to change anything. "Snide the whole way through."
Ugh, Perseus Prince. The mere mention of his name was enough to make James' lips curl with disgust. Prince was the worst of the Slytherins, the shining example of everything that made Slytherin awful, and James' mortal enemy. Conniving, nasty, stuck up, always going on about the benefits of dark magic, obsessed with blood status. Never mind that the Princes hadn't been considered purebloods until like two seconds ago. But with the 'sacred twenty-eight' no longer being twenty-eight and shrinking fast, the purebloods were feeling the walls closing in. 'Oh, wait, you were actually purebloods this whole time. Our mistake. We aren't desperate for more blood obsessed purebloods or anything. This pureblood thing isn't arbitrary nonsense, we swear.' Honestly, it was amusing to watch them scramble. Suddenly they weren't being quite as thorough checking family trees. Since all the current Princes apparently (according to them) had no trace of muggle blood (because they'd thrown out and erased anyone that did), they were now purebloods. Strange that there was no measurable way to prove their blood status when purebloods were supposedly so much more naturally powerful than everyone else. The Princes felt they had a lot to prove now, being officially 'pure', and they went about it by being the absolute sleaziest, most self-important, blustering arsemongers around.
"We'll have to keep a close eye on Prince," James declared. "He'll see Rose and Albus as easier targets. He's a coward like that."
"Oh," Freddie grinned widely, the box in front of him shaking a little, a fizzling sound coming from within. "I've got loads of plans for Prince this year."
"I don't think you need to worry about Albus too much James," Kelvin assured, petting his ferret which had climbed onto his bed. "He's a pretty smart kid. If Malfoy is no good, I think he'll realize pretty fast."
"It's already a hit to his reputation," James complained tensely. "Who is going to want to be friends with him after this?" He'd already seen people's glares slide from Malfoy to Albus as they walked around the grounds.
"Your reputation is good enough to salvage his," Noah shrugged. "Not to mention your dad's. People will forgive him for making a mistake. They know who the real bad guy is."
"I hope so," James muttered darkly.