Scorpius would probably never recover from this humiliation. Even if Harry Potter didn't think he was some evil snot, he'd think Scorpius was an idiot. Of course the man would recognize him, he'd known that, but he'd been panicking from Harry Potter showing up out of nowhere and Rose dragging him from his hiding place, very much against his will. How was he supposed to have not made a fool of himself under those circumstances?

Crestfallen, Scorpius knew he'd botched his one chance at a good first impression. Mr. Potter would talk to everyone else in the school and Albus would get the owl tomorrow morning saying he and Rose couldn't be friends with Scorpius anymore. The thick cloud of dread lay heavy over Scorpius, clogging his throat and dragging at his heart. The rapid anxiety had faded into resignation. Mr. Potter probably had enough pull at Hogwarts that he could even get him kicked out of the dorm room. Where would Scorpius even go? No one else would want him. They already hadn't wanted him there and losing those house points in Professor Thorne's class had made things even worse. Everyone seemed convinced he was trying to sabotage Gryffindor. Maybe there was a closet they could shove him into. At least he'd have his privacy back…

"What are you so gloomy about, Scorp?" Albus questioned casually. Like they weren't technically sneaking up a staircase right now. They weren't trying to hide, exactly, but they were trying to avoid drawing attention.

"Nothing," Scorpius sighed miserably.

Rose rolled her eyes. "That was very convincing." She shook her head then told Albus, "He's obviously spiraling over meeting your dad, Al. Probably thinks Uncle Harry's plotting to cart him off to Azkaban as we speak." Scorpius did not appreciate her amusement. This wasn't funny. Or did she not care if Scorpius was gone?

Albus raised a bewildered eyebrow. "What? Really?"

"I didn't know what to say," Scorpius mumbled. "And I'm sure James and Professor Thorne and everyone else is telling him how awful I am right now."

"Oh please," Albus scoffed. "He already knows James is being mental and Thorne is well, um…" he trailed off as he realized he had nothing encouraging to say. After a few seconds of silent consideration he continued, "Who's to say he'll even talk to Thorne? He has a small army of nieces and nephews to socialize with. And, like, old friends. He doesn't really know Thorne, I think." How reassuring.

"Y'know what really won't help my image with either of them?" Scorpius pointed out. "Breaking into DADA classroom. Why are we doing this?" This was such a bad idea. He was so on edge right now a toad hopping by would be enough to startle his frayed nerves.

"Don't look at me," Rose shrugged. "I think this is dumb."

"We aren't 'breaking in'," Albus objected. "The door's wide open. We're allowed to be in there. If anyone catches us, we'll just say we're looking for my uncle."

"The uncle who is very clearly in the Great Hall at the moment, visible to everyone, including us when we were in there?" Scorpius checked drily. "That uncle?"

"Ugh, it'll be fine," Albus insisted confidently. "I just want to know what's in that trunk dad brought. So I can properly judge how ridiculous he's being." Were they even sure that trunk they'd spotted during class had come from Mr. Potter? Yeah, it hadn't been there before, but it could be one of the professors'.

"Did you try just asking your dad what it is?" Scorpius asked. He didn't understand the secrecy. What did it matter whatever it was? Even if it was nothing and a total lie, they already knew it was just an excuse to scope out Scorpius. Would barely even count as exposure. Really, this just seemed like Albus was miffed at his dad.

"Like I could trust any answer he gives me," Albus sniffed. He peeked around the corner then stepped out, gesturing for them to follow. "C'mon, we'll be in and out."

Scorpius sighed but followed without further complaint. It wasn't that he was opposed to some sneaking. He just preferred his sneaking to have more of a purpose. And for Harry bloody Potter to not be nearby. And to not do the sneaking in the classroom of the professor who absolutely hated him.

They ducked into the DADA classroom unseen. Neither Rose or Albus seemed that worried. Scorpius wasn't sure how; his skin was crawling with anxiety. Then again, they probably weren't worried about being expelled if caught.

"You stand guard, Rosie," Albus ordered. "You're the least suspicious of us."

"Not sure what good a warning will do," Scorpius lamented. "There's only one way out of the room and no good place to hide all three of us. I guess behind the chalkboard might work for a bit if they're distracted, but it isn't great." His invisibility potions were still packed in his trunk. And they lost a lot of their effectiveness in close quarters like this. Not that he'd want to waste an invisibility potion on this, his supply was limited now. He didn't have a way to get more here at Hogwarts.

"Eh, we wouldn't hide," Albus shrugged. "We'd just make sure we're standing innocently away from the trunk. But I doubt anyone will come anyways. Now come on, the faster we go, the faster we leave."

So Rose stood by the door, listening for anyone approaching, while Albus and Scorpius made their way to the front of the classroom.

Huh, Scorpius had never gotten a good look around this room before. Usually, he kept his eyes glued to his books to avoid provocation. He'd never been in here when it was empty. There was a lot of cool stuff in here.

Those golden rods were probity probes, he'd seen those used at Gringotts and at those sort of shady auctions Grandfather sometimes went to. Revealing glass, that was a death light over there. A deconstructed shrieking key, that had probably given someone quite a scare. Deceptive little things, you think it's just a normal key whose owner just accidentally left it out in the open until you touch it. Ooh, a dragon lantern, that was neat, you didn't see a lot of those. The metal lantern decorated with telltale little dragons was shut at the moment but inside it was sustaining flame from a dragon. Good for melting through certain things other types of fires couldn't. A lot of this was curse breaker stuff. Professor Weasley had been a curse breaker for Gringotts so that made sense. There were also some auror tools in here from Professor Thorne. Scorpius would love to play around with all these gadgets but there wasn't time for that.

Albus crouched in front of the trunk, which was tucked away in a corner. Scorpius stood a step behind him, casting nervous glances at the door. Huh, there was a padlock on the trunk. Had that been there the whole time? The teacher's desk had blocked their view of it earlier. Albus scowled and tugged at the lock. "Drat."

Rose was watching them from across the room. "Do you two need help?" she whisper-shouted.

Albus' eyes brightened. "Rose knows the unlocking charm," he told Scorpius.

"Alohomora? I can do that one." Scorpius leaned down to examine the lock closer. "Though in my experience, Alohomora never works for anything really interesting."

Albus cocked his head, bemused. "How much experience do you have with Allohomora?"

"It's 'Alohomora'," Scorpius corrected automatically. "And, er, well," he fumbled for a lie. "I meant general experience, like, not that I was necessarily the one casting it. I'm just saying Alohomora is really more for muggle locks than wizard locks. Anything important is going to have more protections." There were more advanced versions of Alohomora and the locking charm too, but anything super important always had at least one other sort of safeguard. Anything that unlocked with a basic Alohomora was either muggle, a wizard's child lock, or something the person locking it didn't care much about or was just trying to keep from popping open.

"I doubt he bothered with anything fancy," Albus waved off. "Just give it a shot. If it doesn't work, well, maybe we could look around for a key." Irritation flitted over his face. "Otherwise, we'll probably have to bail." To Rose he loudly whispered, "Scorp's got it covered."

Scorpius took out his wand, but hesitated. Looking down at the padlock, a sense of unease crept up his spine. "What if it's locked because it's something dangerous?" he questioned worriedly. "It is for defense against the dark arts." His instincts were usually pretty good on this type of thing and this trunk was giving him a bad vibe. He couldn't quite place it, but something felt off. It could just be nerves from sneaking around Professor Thorne's classroom though. Like, Mr. Potter wouldn't have brought something overly dangerous into a classroom, right? Minorly dangerous, Scorpius wasn't worried about that, he could handle that, but what if this was something for, like, the seventh years and really needed that professor supervision?

"Pfft, my dad wouldn't bring anything dangerous to Hogwarts," Albus assured, completely unconcerned. He studied him for a moment, then frowned. "Can you not actually cast it? Or, like, you're worried that you can't do it every time? It's fine if you can't, we're not expected to know it yet. Rose can do it."

The placation was a stinging slap to the face. He bristled even knowing Albus hadn't meant it as an insult. "I can do it." He still had a bad feeling about this, but logically Albus was right. So long as no one else burst in on them in here, it would be fine. They'd be careful about what they touched inside the trunk. He waved his wand and pointed it at the lock. " Alohomora."

The lock popped open, and Scorpius relaxed. If it had opened that easily, it couldn't be anything that bad.

Albus pulled the lock fully off the trunk. "Great job, Scorp! Blimey, it's going to be useful that both of you know how-"

The lid of the trunk, which Albus had only just started to lift, suddenly and violently slammed open. The three of them startled, Scorpius and Albus jumping away from the trunk while Rose jerked further into the room. The cold was the first thing that Scorpius registered. It was the same piercing cold that came from stepping outside on a snowy day. Their breathe was now puffing out in little clouds. The room got darker too, despite no lights having gone out and the sky outside remaining the same. A white mist spilled from the trunk and from it rose a tall figure in ragged black robes.

Shit.

Panic had his stomach drop to the floor, and his pulse went wild. There was no bloody way- but unbidden echoes of memories flitted through his head. Him sitting in the halls of St. Mungo's while his mom's curse took a particularly bad turn. His father grabbing at his then much smaller arm and scrubbing at it while yelling at him. A wall of teeth lunging at him from the darkness. The sorting hat declaring Gryffindor and no one clapping (no, that wasn't right. Albus and Rose had clapped. After. It was cutting parts out-)

Scorpius gave his head a shake to try to clear it. Why would Mr. Potter bring- wait, hang on.

His alarm morphed into confusion. Was that a faint, ethereal, skull pattern on the robes? Had dementors developed a desire for fashion since leaving Azkaban? No, that wasn't all. Its skin had a slight tinge of green to it. And from what little he could see of the mouth under the hood the creature had long, sharp teeth. That wasn't a dementor. Scorpius had never been close up to a dementor, but he knew what they looked like. Whatever it was, it was clearly pretending to be a dementor and was doing a fair job of it. It didn't seem to know quite how a dementor was supposed to look, but it was replicating the effects with concerning accuracy.

Scorpius stared at the thing, eyebrows furrowing. What else could it be? What else had these abilities? Was it an illusion to protect the trunk? No, that would be insanely complex to get the powers to match too. And who would put all that work in with the cold and the light sucking and the memories, but not get the look right? Maybe it was a chameleon ghoul? No, those disguised themselves as everyday objects to hide, they didn't turn into monsters and jump out at people. Er, Boggart?

It was like Lumos had been cast in his head. Boggart, that was very possible. Albus was closest to it. Was Albus scared of dementors? It had never come up in conversation. If he was, he apparently had never seen a dementor before if this was what the boggart came up with. It seemed a bit odd for your biggest fear to be something you've never actually interacted with, but Scorpius could hardly call a fear of dementors unreasonable.

The maybe-boggart started coming towards them. "What are you two doing?!" Rose shrieked. "Get away from it!" But Albus seemed frozen to the spot, his skin having gone pale. Scorpius was busy trying to puzzle this thing out.

How could he test if it was a boggart? Hm. Scorpius could move forward so he was in front of Albus and if it changed into Scorpius' phobia then they'd know it was a boggart for sure. Though Scorpius didn't know what his biggest fear was, he didn't think he was exceptionally scared of anything in particular. Like, if there was a manticore prowling around Scorpius would avoid it like any sane person (after maybe getting a small peek at it), but he wasn't unreasonably frightened of manticores and wasn't regularly worrying about them. Well, if it changed into anything he had some fear of, they'd know it was a boggart.

But what then? Could boggarts actually hurt someone? Like, physically? Scorpius didn't remember. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard it one way or another. He'd never paid that much attention to boggart stuff; it hadn't seemed relevant to him. There had been far more immediately useful things to learn. He was regretting it now.

Even if he confirmed it was a boggart, he didn't know the defense charm. He'd read the spell before, but he'd never heard it spoken aloud and he wasn't even certain he could spell it correctly it had been so long. He didn't know the wand movement or the technique either besides the vague idea that you were supposed to think of something funny. They could just run out of the room, if it was a boggart, it wouldn't follow them through a closed door. They'd probably have to confess to having released the boggart so someone else could go deal with it and they'd no doubt lose loads of house points, but what else could they do?

Right, so check if it was a boggart (Scorpius was 95% confident that it was at this point) and if it was, it was safe to run for it. And whatever fear Scorpius had, it had to be better than a dementor. He didn't like what this thing was doing to his head in this form.

Several things happened in quick succession. The classroom door burst open and Freddie Weasley and James' blonde friend burst into the room. The two older boys took in the situation with wide eyes, both drawing their wands.

"Bloody hell, what are you lot doing?!" Freddie shouted, dashing forward. "What is that?!"

As the older boys had been rushing in, Scorpius had been moving to step in front of Albus, but he spun around to look back, surprised by the upper classmen's sudden entrance. Which meant he took his eyes off the creature.

When he turned back to the dementor/boggart, it had vanished. The oppressive presence in his brain was gone, the light had come back, and the temperature had returned to normal. But where had this hospital bed come from? Had someone cast a spell without him noticing? Why would-?

The bed wasn't empty.

Scorpius stiffened, eyes tracing up the body covered by the sterile white blanket. A pit opened in his stomach as a sense of dread overtook him. The only part of the body not covered by the blanket was a pale, slender arm limply hanging off the side. But it was when he saw the hair, the so familiar wavy brown hair, spilling out from the cloth covering her head that Scorpius was gripped by a cold far sharper than what the dementor had conjured. She was so still. Why wasn't she moving? Why wasn't she breathing?

Scorpius couldn't breathe.

It wasn't real, he knew it wasn't real…

The world around Scorpius was fuzzy and distant as he struggled to get himself together, to get some desperately needed oxygen into his lungs. He didn't realize everyone else in the room had also frozen.

Kelvin recovered first. The words sounded quiet to Scorpius' ears. "Freddie, it's a boggart."

"Oh, right. On it. You get the trunk."

Someone was gently pushing him aside. Freddie, now standing between Scorpius and the boggart, raised his wand confidently. The hospital bed morphed into a regular bed and promptly burst into flame. " Riddikulus."

In a flash, the bed became a baby dragon, which then inhaled all the fire, inflating its small body like a ballon. Its little wings flapped comically as it wonkily hovered in place. After a couple seconds, it rocketed backwards into the trunk. Kelvin lunged forward, scooping up the lock and snapping in onto the trunk.

There was a moment of stillness.

Freddie slowly turned around and studied Scorpius with an unreadable expression. Scorpius didn't know what to say. 'Thank you' would be appropriate, but his voice didn't seem to be working. He had a massive lump in his throat he couldn't speak past. This was stupid. It hadn't been real. It had just- caught him off guard. If he'd been expecting it, he might have, well, no, but he wouldn't have frozen up like that.

Rose and Albus rushed over to him. Both of them looked terribly concerned. "Scorpius, are you alright?" Rose asked shakily.

Scorpius finally managed to get a word out. "Fine."

Freddie took a deep breath and the three of them went silent. "What," he began evenly, but the underlying anger was inescapable. "in the absolute hell were you three doing in here releasing boggarts?"

"We weren't trying to let it out," Albus defended weakly, shrinking a little under his cousin's harsh gaze. "We didn't even know it was in here."

"Well what were you trying to do?" Freddie demanded; tone clipped.

"I-I just wanted to see what dad had brought," Albus mumbled.

"To defense against the dark arts? And it never occurred to you that it could be dangerous? Bloody hell, Al, you shouldn't even go poking around the herbology greenhouses unless you have some clue about what's in there, much less the defense against the dark arts classroom."

Rose fidgeted guiltily. "We didn't think Uncle Harry would bring something dangerous to Hogwarts."

"Just because something's safe with a professor's supervision doesn't mean it is safe for a bunch of first years that can't even cast Lumos yet!" Freddie reprimanded, left foot tapping anxiously. Scorpius could cast Lumos. Telling him that would not help him here. "It could have been a cursed object for all you knew. Or some other creature. You're lucky it was only a boggart. What if me and Kelvin hadn't been here!" Freddie had been scared; Scorpius realized. He'd walked in on his two younger cousins being attacked by what had very much appeared to be a dementor (he doubted the two older boys had had much time to really get a good look at it). Of course that had scared him.

"Sorry," Scorpius apologized hoarsely.

"No, it was my idea," Albus cut in. "I talked the two of them into it. I- I shouldn't have- it was stupid." The last few words were almost a whisper.

"Really?" Freddie said sarcastically. "You don't say." He let out a short sigh and when he continued, he sounded more tired than mad. "Honestly. I can't believe that none of you had enough sense to- especially you Rose. What could you possibly been hoping to accomplish? There's being nosy and then there's being stupid."

The three of them winced and could all very well be staring at the same floorboard.

"Are you going to tell the professors?" Rose asked, resigned. Scorpius' heart sank even further. He'd surely be the one to take the brunt of the blame for this.

Freddie hesitated. Kelvin took the opportunity to speak, surveying the contrite first years. "I don't see the point." Hope sparked in Scorpius' chest. "I think they've learned their lesson. I don't think a detention and losing a load of house points for Gryffindor will make it sink in any further. They've been punished already really."

"Yeah…" Freddie ran a hand through his dark red hair. "Yeah, okay, we'll keep this between us."

Albus shifted on his feet. "Does that include James?"

Freddie and Kelvin exchanged glances; a silent conversation being had with their eyes. Finally, Freddie relented. "I guess he doesn't need to know." His voice sharpened again. "But you seriously better not pull something like this again."

With that settled, everyone relaxed somewhat.

"Ugh," Freddie groaned. "We should get out of here. Unless we want to end up doing some very tricky explaining." A grin suddenly appeared on his face, and he darted a mischievous look at Kelvin. "Think we could manage to catch Prince out with a boggart?"

Prince? What did they have against Selina? Was it just because she was a Slytherin?

"Eh, he dodged it during class," Kelvin shrugged. "I doubt he'll have changed his mind. We might be able to set something up though…"

Oh, they meant Perseus. That made more sense. Wait…

"Do they make you face boggarts during class?!" Scorpius gasped, horrified. No, absolutely not. He'd fake being sick that day. Or he'd make himself actually sick. Or- or something. What if Thorne forced him into it?!

"Huh? Oh no." Kelvin shook his head. "You have to volunteer to do it in front of the class," he explained sympathetically. "I opted out myself. They'd never force a student into something like that. And you guys won't do boggarts until at least next year."

Scorpius' shoulders sagged with relief. Thank God…

"C'mon, we need to get out of here," Freddie shooed, ushering them out the door. Once they were in the hallway, he checked the nearby clock. "Lunch's almost over. Everyone'll be heading to classes soon. You lot better get a move on. And don't do something stupid like this again."

"We won't," they chorused. Then the two older boys left and the three of them fled the area.

They didn't say anything for a couple minutes.

"I've never seen Freddie so serious in my life," Albus commented somberly.

"Yeah," Rose agreed. "It was kind of freaky." She paused, side eyeing her cousin. "I didn't know you were scared of dementors, Albus."

The boy's face reddened. "Of course I am. If dad's scared of them, they're the most terrifying thing out there." Harry Potter was scared of dementors? Well, who wasn't, really.

"Oh," Rose faltered. Then both her and Albus glanced at Scorpius. He tensed, not liking where their attention was going.

"So when you said your mom was sick," Albus began uncertainly, nervous to tread on the topic. "You meant she was sick sick."

"It's quite severe, yes," Scorpius answered tightly. He didn't want to talk about this. Especially not right after seeing- what he'd just seen. The wound was as fresh as ever right now.

"I'm sorry," Albus said with that awkward sincerity that so many had. "That's awful." Rose nodded in agreement.

"It is what it is," Scorpius stated blankly. And Scorpius had made it worse, of course. He'd overheard the healers say that the pregnancy and childbirth had probably taken a decade off of her already shortened life.

Rose and Albus' pitying gazes were boring into him. He hated it. "I need to go grab my books from the dorm before transfiguration," he declared shortly. "I'll see you two later."

Scorpius was in a miserable mood for the rest of the day.