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Chapter Text

Scorpius Malfoy took a first, hesitant step towards the stool where the Sorting Hat stood. All eyes in the Great Hall were on him. Scorpius searched the tables for a friendly face, but the only one he could find was that of his aunt, Sagitta Malfoy, seated at the Slytherin table. Everyone else looked either on their guard or outright hostile. Scorpius suddenly understood why his parents tried to avoid crowds as much as possible. He felt a blush creep up on his pale cheeks, but he stuck his chin out and refused to look down. He had promised his mother that he wouldn’t let himself feel bad for things his father and his grandparents had done many years before he was born.

He took the last few steps to the stool quickly, staring fixedly at a point on the wall on the other side of the hall. He sat down on the stool and lifted the Hat up to his head. Just as he was about to let it fall down over his eyes he looked at Sagitta again. She gave him a little wave and thumbs up. Then everything was velvety darkness.

“Ah, a Malfoy,” a soft voice said in Scorpius’ ear. “Most of you are easy to place, and yes, I see here in this head of yours that you believe that I’ll put you in Slytherin… but I’m not so sure. There are points speaking for it, absolutely – you have a willingness to disregard the rules that you don’t like which is very Slytherin, or even Gryffindor, for that matter.”

“I don’t think I’d like being in Gryffindor,” Scorpius replied, a little confused.

“No, no, definitely not!” the Hat said with what sounded oddly like a chuckle. “It’s just the one trait. Not much else speaks for Gryffindor, indeed not; you’re group oriented in both work and play, with a wish for a strong community. That’s much more Slytherin than Gryffindor, but… Well. You also have loads of determination which could be seen as Slytherin ambition, but also as a willingness to work hard. Can you guess where I consider putting you?”

“…Hufflepuff.” Somewhere deep inside Scorpius had always suspected that the Hat might want to put him in the house of black and yellow.

“Indeed. And you don’t seem too opposed to the idea, even though you seemed to be pretty sure that I’d put you in Slytherin.”

“Well, no, but… aren’t Hufflepuff and Slytherin, like, opposites?”

“Not at all. I’ve Sorted many younglings who could easily have been Slytherin/Hufflepuff Hatstalls, but they’re usually dead set against one of the houses, even when the other would be a huge opportunity for them… You have an admirably open mind for someone who isn’t Muggleborn.”

“Er… thanks?”

“You’re welcome. And now that I think about it, having an open mind seems more Hufflepuff than Slytherin, doesn’t it?”

“Uh, I guess.” This conversation was making Scorpius’ head spin.

“Quite, quite," the Hat said, as if it and Scorpius were in perfect agreement about something. “Well, that’s settled then. I’m going to go with HUFFLEPUFF!”

Scorpius put the Sorting Hat back on its stool in a daze. The Great Hall was almost completely silent. There had been a few claps just after the Hat made its verdict, but they had echoed hollowly and quickly died out. Scorpius suspected they’d come from newly sorted muggleborns who didn’t know better. Half involuntarily he looked for Sagitta again. She was pale with shock under her dark hair, and he looked away before he had to see the shock turn to disappointment.

Scorpius wondered if he would be the first student ever to be sorted without applause afterwards. Then the clapping started again, slowly but more determinedly this time. In the end almost all of Hufflepuff had joined in, but as Scorpius walked towards the table he could see that there were some who pointedly kept their hands in their lap or their arms crossed. He ignored them and sat down beside a boy he remembered was called Kevin Allen. Kevin had been the first of the first years to be sorted into Hufflepuff. Now he was clapping enthusiastically, looking a little confused about the belated applause. Scorpius supposed that he must be one of the muggleborns, and that he hadn’t read his new History of Magic text books very closely. Otherwise Kevin would have known that, to the wizarding world at large, the name ‘Malfoy’ meant villainy, cowardice and hatred of people like himself.

“Hi, I’m Kevin!” Kevin offered unnecessarily.

“Scorpius,” Scorpius replied.

“Cool name!”

Scorpius’ thanks drowned in the applause from the Ravenclaw table as ‘McCormack, Norma’ was sorted there.

Once the Sorting was over, it got easier to keep up a conversation. Most of the other Hufflepuffs seemed hesitant to talk to Scorpius, though. At least they smiled at him from time to time. Scorpius decided to keep a low profile and only talk to Kevin – or listen, rather. Scorpius learned that Kevin was indeed muggleborn, that his mother was a teacher and his father something called a ‘plumber’, that his Hawk Owl was named Hawkeye after a muggle comic character, and that he thought his favourite subject would be Charms. Kevin, on the other hand, only really learned that Scorpius liked lamb chops a lot.

When everybody had finished eating, Headmaster Flitwick gave a speech about studying hard and following the rules, but not forgetting to have fun. Then the whole Great Hall bellowed out the school song in a dreadful disharmony:

Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts, 
Teach us something please, 
Whether we be old and bald 
Or young with scabby knees, 
Our heads could do with filling 
With some interesting stuff, 
For now they’re bare and full of air, 
Dead flies and bits of fluff, 
So teach us things worth knowing, 
Bring back what we’ve forgot, 
Just do your best, we’ll do the rest, 
And learn until our brains all rot.

When at long last the last person – a Gryffindor boy – had finished singing, Scorpius heard someone say,

“Hello, new little Puffies!”

He turned towards the voice, and saw an older girl with curly brown hair and an air of importance.

“My name is Louisa Boivin, and I’m one of the Hufflepuff prefects,” the girl went on. “Now, little Puffies, did you know that Meredith Prattle, who wrote our lovely school song, was a Hufflepuff?”

Scorpius thought about the sickly sweet lyrics about ‘doing one’s best’ and whatnot, and without thinking he blurted,

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised…”

So much for keeping a low profile. The girl looked aghast, but Scorpius heard a snorting laugh from few seats further down the table and caught the astonishingly turquoise eyes of a girl with short, unevenly cut red hair. She waved to him before she turned away.

Chapter Text

Scorpius had imagined being in a Hogwarts common room what felt like a thousand times, but the room he’d tried to create in his mind’s eye had been an underwater dungeon alight with a greenish sheen. Now he and the other ‘little Puffies’ had instead been led by Louisa Boivin and another Prefect to a round, warm, and earthy underground basement. Before they had entered Louisa had demonstrated (several times) how to make the entrance in a stack of barrels open, and warned ominously them that “If you get it wrong, you’re in for a nasty surprise.” (Scorpius couldn’t see how anyone could get it wrong after Louisa’s agonisingly slow demonstrations, except perhaps out of pure spite.)

As he looked around his new home at Hogwarts, Scorpius couldn’t help finding the room a little tacky. There was yellow and burnished copper wherever he turned, and the room had a somewhat overdone circle motif; the room was round, the doors were round, the bright yellow pillows of the bulky sofa he was quickly being led towards were round. Even the portrait of Helga Hufflepuff that hung above the fireplace was round. Then, as Scorpius looked at the portrait, Helga smiled and winked at him, and he thought that maybe the room wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps he was just disappointed because he’d been looking forward to living under the lake, instead of just underground.

A tray of cookies filled with Wideye Potion were going around the room, to make sure the first years would stay awake for whatever was about to happen. With his stomach filled with lamb chops and other delicacies, Scorpius already felt as overstuffed as the pillow he was now sitting on, but he forced down a cookie and immediately felt a surge of alertness rush through his body. All around him eyes flew open and backs straightened out.

“And now, my dear little Puffies,” Louisa said, smiling at the first years’ transformation, “it’s time for the oldest Hufflepuff tradition there is: the ‘Settling In’! We’ll start with a couple of questions, which will help us assign a fitting mentor for each of you from among the older students. First: how many of you expected to end up in another House?”

Scorpius raised his hand. If no one had known who he was he might have lied to go unnoticed, but as it was he realised that he would likely have attracted more attention by keeping his hand down. Out of the eighteen new Hufflepuffs, six others also raised their hands. Scorpius noticed that the male Prefect who had helped Louisa take them to the common room was taking notes.

“How many of you hoped to be sorted differently?” Louisa asked next.

At this a few hands went down, while others shot up. All in all there were more hands in the air now than it had been before. Seeing the honesty around him, Scorpius kept his hand up too.

“And, lastly, who of you already knew that Hufflepuff is the best House of them all?” Louisa asked triumphantly.

Most of the remaining first years pumped their hands in the air, hooting. Three students, among them Kevin the muggleborn, hadn’t put their hands up at either question. Scorpius supposed they had entered the sorting with an open mind, like the Hat had said one should.

The rest of the ‘Settling In’ consisted of the first years talking about their expectations and hopes. Scorpius said as little as possible. Then the Prefects regaled them with stories about famous Hufflepuffs (such as Bridget Wenlock, who discovered the magical properties of the number seven), trivia about badgers (for example, that badgers would share their burrows with rabbits and foxes) and tales from the history of the House (like how the members of the House helped the house-elves hide wounded goblin refugees in the kitchens during the Goblin Rebellion of 1612). At one point their Head of House, Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Hestia Jones, poked her head into the room to say hello.

The ritual was finished off by them all singing the Badger Song together:

We are badgers and like badgers we protect
Badger, badger, badgery badgers
Our strength and tenacity nobody will suspect
Badger, badger, badgery badgers
We treat everybody who deserves it with respect
Badger, badger, badgery badgers
But if somebody acts unfairly, then we all object
Badger, badger, badgery badgers
With good cheer and friendship we everyone infect
Badger, badger, badgery badgers
If you think we’re amazing, then you are correct
BADGERS!

Scorpius couldn’t help wondering if this song too had been written by the very same Meredith Prattle who’d written the school song, but he kept this suspicion to himself. The Badger Song at least had a set melody. Scorpius just hoped that he wouldn’t be expected to sing it in public, at Quidditch games and suchlike.

“Now, this was just the first step in welcoming you all to this friendliest, most decent and most tenacious house of the whole school,” Louisa Boivin said, teary-eyed with pride. “To help you ‘Settle In’ even more, each of you will be assigned a mentor to help you with schoolwork, finding your way to classes, and other things like that. You can ask your mentor anything, and if they don’t know the answer they’ll bring the question on to a prefect or teacher. The mentoring programme is also a great way to make friends! We will have you matched up by tomorrow morning.”

As Louisa spoke these closing words, a new tray of cookies had started to make its way through the room.

“These cookies are filled with the Draught of Peaceful Sleep,” Louisa explained. “It’s a modified Sleeping Draught, invented by Hufflepuff potioneer Morgan Meade for the very purpose of taking it after the Settling In. It’ll make every hour you sleep count as two. Now run off to bed, little Puffies, and sleep tight.”

Together with the other first year boys Scorpius stumbled tiredly through small tunnel and then through a (round!) door to the boy’s dormitories. There was even more copper in there, but at least his bed was a normal four-poster, and not some sort of circular monstrosity. When Scorpius burrowed down beneath his patchwork quilt he felt warm and safe, and he was soon fast asleep.

Chapter Text

As promised by the cookie, Scorpius slept well in his new bed. Well, and long. When he woke up he was alone in the dormitory, and he realised he’d have to hurry to have time for breakfast before his very first class. A little anxious, but mostly curious, he made his way to the common room. As soon as he entered, someone came rushing to meet him, short red hair flying behind her and a wide grin on her face.

“Hullo Scorpius!” she half-shouted, as she skidded to a stop in front of him. “I’m Luce Weasley! I’m your new mentor!”

It was the girl with the bad haircut and the turquoise eyes, the one who had laughed at his ill-advised ‘joke’ at the feast last night. A Weasley, apparently, as Scorpius might have guessed. He had imagined that finding a mentor for him would be quite hard, but her exclamatory manner of speaking made her seem genuinely stoked to have gotten the position. He wondered if she had volunteered to be his mentor, and if so, why a Weasley of all people would want to mentor a Malfoy like him. Before Scorpius had time to say anything, Luce had grabbed his arm and started to drag him across the room.

“Come, let’s get breakfast!” she exclaimed.

“Uh, sure,” Scorpius replied, somewhat more solemnly.

They exited the common room together, and immediately came face to face with Sagitta Malfoy. She stood leaning on the stacks of barrels, obviously waiting for Scorpius to appear. Some Hufflepuffs walking by threw her a suspicious glance, but she paid them no mind. When she saw Scorpius’ surprised face she made her typical half scowl, half smile at him.

“Did you think you could get away from me just by getting into another house?” she demanded, a teasing twinkle in her eye. “I promised your parents I would look after you, and I will, so help me Merlin. Have you written to them yet?”

Scorpius shook his head. He hadn’t had time to write yet, but he wasn’t really looking forward to it. It wasn’t that he thought they’d be angry or disappointed that he’d been sorted into Hufflepuff, not at all; it was that he didn’t know what to write so they’d know he didn’t expect them to be angry or disappointed. If he tried to put it like it was no big deal, it’d be weird, but if he made a huge thing of it it’d be, well, a huge thing. Which it sort of maybe was, but he didn’t want his parents to worry about him. And he knew everybody in his family had expected him to be sorted into Slytherin. Actually, looking at Sagitta he realised that someone would have to tell her parents – Scorpius’ grandparents – too, though, and that thought tied his stomach into a knot.

“Nah, but I will,” he said. “But, er… could you tell Lucius and Narcissa for me?”

“Sure thing!” Sagitta said, punching him gently on the shoulder. “Want me to show you around, by the way?”

“Actually…” Scorpius began.

“…that’s my job! I’m his mentor!” Luce finished, putting it less diplomatically than Scorpius had intended to.

“Oh, I thought you were another first year,” Sagitta replied nonchalantly. “Oh well, then. See you around, Scor!”

And with that, she sauntered off down the corridor, to the apparent relief of the other Hufflepuffs.

“Who was that?” Luce asked, as soon as she was out of sight.

“That’s Sagitta. She’s my aunt… but she’s really more like a cousin, I guess. She’s a lot younger than my dad, obviously.”

“Yeah, she’s obviously family,” Luce replied, emphasising the last word with a visciousness that surprised Scorpius. “She couldn’t even leave you alone for one little day, could she?”

“Huh? She was just being nice.”

“Yeah, sure – do you want her to babysit you, follow you around everywhere?”

Scorpius thought that was a rather odd question to come from Luce, as she had just basically claimed that as ‘her job’.

“She’s just looking out for me. I mean, we’re family!”

“You don’t have to like someone just because they’re family!” Luce answered, her voice rising.

“Don’t you like your family?” Scorpius blurted out, surprised.

“I didn’t say that!” Luce snapped back.

By this time the two of them were at the end of the Hufflepuff corridor. Before Scorpius had time to reply, a heavy-set, black boy with a grin that looked a lot like Luce’s caught up with them.

“Fighting with our new mentee already, are we, Luce?” he asked, a little out of breath after jogging to catch up with them.

Luce swirled around, looking ready to jinx him. To stop a duel from breaking out, Scorpius stepped between them, explaining that there had just been a small misunderstanding on his side, and introducing himself.

“How d’ye do?” the boy said good-naturedly, pumping Scorpius’ hand up and down. “I’m Fred Weasley.”

“Ah, so you’re a relative of Luce’s then?” Scorpius asked, in what he hoped was an inconspicuous tone of voice.

“Yeah, that’s right. We’re cousins.”

“Do you like her?”

“Well, yeah,” Fred replied, seeming a little surprised by the question. “Of course I do. She’s family!”

At that, Scorpius triumphantly caught Luce’s eye. She made a valiant effort not to laugh, but finally let out a little ‘snerk’.

“So, uh, time to get to know each other better!” she announced. “How did you end up in Hufflepuff, Scorpius?”

Scorpius decided to let the change of subject slide.

“Well, the hat considered putting me in Slytherin, no surprises there,” he said, a little self-consciously. “But then it went on about how Slytherin and Hufflepuff are a lot alike, and before I really realised what was happening it had put me in Hufflepuff. It seemed to think we had agreed on it or something. And maybe we had, really… It said something about a ‘huge opportunity’, which reminded me of something my dad said once…” Scorpius’ voice trailed off.

Luce nudged him with her elbow.

”What did your dad say?”

“Oh, er… I overheard him talking to my mother. I think he might have been drinking…” Scorpius’ voiced trailed off again.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” said Fred. “Luce is as curious as a kneazle, but I’m sure she can live without knowing absolutely everything about you right after you’ve met.”

“No, no, it’s no problem,” Scorpius assured him. “Well… You know, of course, that my dad was a Death Eater, and did a lot of bad stuff during the war. Mum always says that what’s in the past is in the past, but I don’t think he sees it that way. And there was this time when they were talking about Harry Potter, and he said ‘I actually tried to befriend him, at first. For all the wrong reasons, of course, but still… I wish I’d succeeded. I knew already back then that it was a huge opportunity, but I didn’t realise it was an opportunity to be a better person.’ …actually, maybe the hat knew about that memory and used it to make me think Hufflepuff wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

“Of course it wasn’t!” Luce told him. “Hufflepuff is the best house! And I’m happy you’re here even if your aunt isn’t!” She made the word ‘aunt’ sound like she was talking about a dusty old frump whose approval you’d only care about if you were a real bore.

Scorpius didn’t think that was fair, but he didn’t protest. And to her credit, Luce hadn’t mentioned how much Sagitta, with her shiny black hair and droopy eyelids, resembled Sagitta’s own aunt, the Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange.

When they arrived in the Great Hall Fred left them to track down his own mentee. Luce and Scorpius sat with Luce’s friend Nahid Shahidi and her mentee, who turned out to be Kevin the muggleborn. (During their conversation Scorpius learned that Nahid was muggleborn as well, which strengthened his theory that the mentors could choose who they wanted as their mentee.) The breakfast was delicious, and Scorpius actually had a lot of fun talking to Luce, Nahid and Kevin. Hufflepuff clearly had its merits; Scorpius wasn’t sure he would have talked to anyone for the first month if it hadn’t been for the mentoring system, but now he was already getting to know a bunch of new people.

Chapter Text

After breakfast, Scorpius got Luce to take him to the school library. She was going to try for the position of Beater in the Hufflepuff Quidditch team (“Though I’m totally an ace Keeper – but the Captain is the Keeper now so I won’t get that, haha!”), and today was the first day of tryouts, so she went down to the Quidditch field instead of following him in. As he entered the home of tens of thousands of books, Scorpius heard himself make a really embarrassing little happy sigh. He was suddenly glad that Luce had left, so she didn’t hear it.

As classes hadn’t started yet, there were only four other students in the room. One of them was the Weasley girl in his year that had been sorted into Gryffindor. She had the same hair colour as Luce, but her hair was long and extremely frizzy instead of short and sleek. Scorpius didn’t recognize any of the other students. The fifth person in the room was an old black man with a short grey beard and kind eyes. He sat at a desk and stroked the spine of a book with his wand. In the silence of the library Scorpius could hear the spine creak softly as it bent back into its correct shape. When Scorpius went up to the desk a little brass sign started to wobble politely but insistently. It read “Mister Thales Merrywind, School Librarian” followed by the Hogwarts crest.

“Excuse me, Mr Merrywind,” said Scorpius.

“Yes, child?”

“Well, the thing is that I’ve read through all my text books, and classes don’t start until Monday, so I was wondering if you had any suggestion for something I can read until then.”

Mr Merrywind looked at Scorpius, who withstood an impulse to shuffle his feet under the scrutinising eyes of the librarian. Finally he said “I’ll see what I can do,” and rose from his desk.

To Scorpius’ surprise, Mr Merrywind led him to a section labelled “Fiction”.

“When one has finished all one’s text books what one need most is some flights of fancy,” the librarian said, walking along the bookshelves. “Books that help you learn magic is all well and good, but Hogwarts is not all about classes. No, what I think you need is a book that might help you with something that is just as important at this school as learning magic – making friends! And speaking of that, remember to not spend all your time reading!”

With that, Mr Merrywind handed Scorpius a book called The Melodious Spell of Friendship and walked off, waving his hands as if conducting a silent symphony.

Chapter Text

At lunch, Scorpius and Luce sat with Fred, Fred’s mentee Gerald and Gerald’s older sister Catherine. Catherine and Gerald was telling the others about how they’d accidentally turned their cat green when they were kids, when a girl who looked to be in her fifth or sixth year stormed up to them from the Ravenclaw table. Her long hair was a brownish red, and she was so covered in freckles that there only were just enough clear skin for it to show that the freckles weren’t her actual skin tone or a sun tan. When Fred saw her he whispered “Oh no!” under his breath. When Luce saw her, her face went white, and then gradually redder and redder as the older girl spoke.

“Lucy Weasley! I just overheard Professor Longbottom and Professor Sinistra talking about student conduct in their respective classrooms. Imagine my mortification when your name came up as an example of someone who talks too much and distracts others from their work.”

Then followed a rapid rant that Scorpius wasn’t able to keep up with, but which contained phrases like “You go to the best magic school in the world,” “Our parents fought for us to have this opportunity,” and “You’re being inexcusably ungrateful,” with numerous repetitions of “Lucy Weasley!” spliced in.

Scorpius looked at the others’ reactions. Gerald looked alarmed, Catherine seemed to be suppressing a bout of giggles, and Fred sighed and put his face in the palm of his hand. Luce, for her part, looked fit to explode from a mixture of embarrassment and rage, with fists clenched so tight they were shaking. Scorpius decided to interrupt.

“Miss Weasley, I assume?” he said, in his most polite grown up-voice. “I can assure you that you don’t have to worry like this. I am perfectly sure Professor Sinistra will take this up with Luce if and when she sees fit. And we have after all not had any lessons yet this term, so Luce haven’t yet had a chance to change her conduct – if indeed it needs changing.”

The girl flicked her head to stare down at Scorpius with a look that said “And who are you!?” but she didn’t actually say anything. She just looked at him angrily for a few moments, blushed between the freckles, and then stormed off back to the Ravenclaw table again. Scorpius turned to Luce.

“I’m guessing that’s a sister of yours,” he said. He was pretty sure he now knew why Luce had overreacted about Sagitta earlier that morning.

“Yep,” Luce half-shouted. “She’s named ‘Molly’ after our grandmother. I’m named ‘Lucy’ because it goes well with ‘Molly’! She thinks she’s so great. It’s not like her to just run off like that once she gets going, though. She was at me for, like, half an hour for cutting my own hair.”

“She probably couldn’t stand being out-polited by a Malfoy,” Fred observed.

“I thought siblings always were in the same House,” said Gerald, who still didn’t seem quite recovered.

“Well, thank Merlin we’re not!” Luce snarled back.

“Her family is actually all over the place,” Fred said in a pacifying tone. “Her father was in Gryffindor and her mother in Slytherin.”

Luce sounded like she’d forcefully calmed herself down when she said “Yeah, I thought I’d be a Gryffindor like dad, but I think I could be happy in any House she isn’t in... But what about that green cat?”

Chapter Text

Late that night Scorpius lay in bed, but he didn’t sleep; he was completely immersed in The Melodious Spell of Friendship. He had never read fiction before. His mother had often told him (and at times his father too) stories of a varying degree of made up-ness, but the books he read were always books of fact.

With the genre created after the implementation of the Statue of Secrecy, novels had never been a hit in the wizarding world. Witches and wizards still preferred to write plays or poems, and the attempts by muggleborns to introduce the genre to the general public always fell flat. This was not helped by the Enchanted Encounters series by Fifi LaFolle, a series of novels with a reputation of only being read by the same witches who loved Celestina Warbeck and listened to Witching Hour on the Wizard Wireless.

Because of all this Scorpius was completely unprepared for the treat that was The Melodious Spell of Friendship. It was now many hours into the night and he read by wandlight so as to not disturb the other boys in the dormitory. Just when the evil warlock Leroy was about to make Eulalia choose between saving her best friend Petronela or her oldest friend Jack, a scrap of parchment fell out of the book.

At first it seemed like an unfinished letter to someone’s parents, what with it beginning with “Dear mum and dad” and all, so Scorpius put it down beside his pillow and forgot about it. But as he read on about how Eulalia pretended to go for Petronela so that Leroy would focus all his guarding efforts on her, making it easier to save Jack, and then together with Jack saved Petronela as well, his nose slowly started to detect a faint smell of lemon.

One of the more true stories Asteria Malfoy had told her son was the story about how she and her Slytherin friends had sent secret messages to each other, written with the juice of a lemon. As the invisible ink thus made was completely nonmagical it was impossible to find with a magic detecting spell. But Scorpius knew how to make it appear, and he held the parchment close to the warm tip of his wand as he finished the last few pages of his book, and then looked at the parchment again.

The message that had then appeared read as follows:

I’ll put it in classroom 301 just before curfew on Sunday.

Scorpius wondered what “it” was, and why someone had gone to such lengths to keep the whereabouts of it a secret, but he was too emotionally exhausted by The Melodious Spell of Friendship to stay awake for long, mystery or no mystery.

Chapter Text

After breakfast the next day Luce was down at the Quidditch field again, for the second round of tryouts. Scorpius was sitting in the common room, in an armchair of a yellow colour deep enough to be tolerable. He, Kevin-the-muggleborn and a girl named Jessica took turns at trying to get a down feather (taken from one of the sofas) to fly. It was going poorly. Suddenly a little badger figurine standing on a pedestal by the entrance started screaming hoarsely. Prefect Louisa Boivin immediately got to her feet. She ordered everybody else to “Stay here!” tapped the badger figurine on the head (which made it shut up), and went through the barrel. When she came back, she was smiling a smile that was way nastier than Scorpius would have thought her capable of. She went straight up to Scorpius.

“Miss Malfoy wants to talk to you. She says it’s urgent but my guess is that she’s just annoyed,” she said.

Scorpius found Sagitta right outside the common room, drenched in vinegar and looking about as happy as you’d expect someone drenched in vinegar to look. She nodded at him to follow her, which sent droplets flying in all directions. When they had gotten out of sight from the common room she stopped and turned to Scorpius. He had followed some steps behind, and now he reluctantly stepped closer to her. She reeked.

“I think you may have gotten some vinegar on you,” he pointed out.

“You don’t say!? Excuse me for not knowing that knocking on your pile of buckets would get me doused! It has some sort of sticking hex on it too, I can’t magic it away. Maybe I should try Bundimun Pomade… But never mind that, I have to tell you something. I heard… someone… talking about you. Have you found a letter recently?”

“Yeah…” Scorpius said hesitantly.

“Okay, so, whoever sent that knows that you found it. And they’re not happy about it. You’ve stumbled over something you can’t handle. It would be best if you just forgot about it.”

Something about the wording made Scorpius suspicious. “Are you involved in whatever-it-is?”

“No! I’m not! I just worry about you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Who would hurt me?”

Now it was Sagitta’s turn to hesitate. “…I can’t tell you,” she finally said.

“So a Slytherin, then.”

Sagitta frowned silently at him. A small droplet of vinegar was running down her cheek, which made it look like she was crying a yellowish tear. Then she said “Just don’t do anything rash, all right?” and left. As Scorpius looked after her she wrung out her dark hair, and then smelled her hands and cursed.

Now Scorpius knew that the letter writer or its intended recipient knew that Scorpius knew about them, so he’d have to be careful. He decided to let Luce in on the plan. She definitely didn’t seem the type to tell on him to a teacher or prefect, and while the conspirators might have their eyes on him, they wouldn’t suspect her.

Chapter Text

At 9 o’clock Sunday evening, Luce and Scorpius were hiding in a cupboard a few doors away from classroom 301.

“All right, so you have a plan,” said Luce, sounding more sceptical than she probably meant to.

Scorpius knew he’d prove that scepticism wrong. With an overblown gesture, he took out the two items needed for the plan. The little gasp she let out told him that she was now sufficiently impressed.

The first item was a small, ornamented box. It contained Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. The pitch black, glittering powder wasn’t a common possession among eleven year olds; Scorpius had gotten it from his parents. Scorpius had technically gotten the other object from his parents as well, but without their knowledge. He had sneaked down into the cellar to pack it into his trunk the night before he left for Hogwarts. It was a shrivelled up hand holding a black wax candle. Luce’s eyes were locked on it with a mixture of fascination and disgust.

“That looks Dark,” she said.

“Yeah… it is,” replied Scorpius, but he spared her the details of how the Hand of Glory was made from a hand cut off from a hanged muggle thief, which was then put in a rather unsavoury potion consisting of, among other things, human urine and cat gall. “It’s very useful, though.”

Some minutes later Scorpius, alone, approached classroom 301. The door was unlocked and on a desk in the middle of the room stood a small crystal phial filled with a clear liquid. It was the first thing he saw upon entering the room, and Scorpius was almost convinced that he would have realised it was a trap even without Sagitta’s warning.

Nothing happened when Scorpius entered the room, so he warily walked up to the desk with the bottle on it. He kept one hand in the pocket with the ornamented box in it and the other one on his wand. He reached the desk too without any trap going off, but the instant he touched the phial it became very clear what the trap was. The little bottle glued itself to his hand, which then started to rise by itself towards his mouth. Just as the opening of the vial touched his lips, Scorpius threw a pinch of Darkness Powder into the air.

In the total darkness, with the clear liquid running down his throat, everything started to feel really good. Scorpius didn’t know what he’d been so worried about up until now. When he heard someone open the door, he shouted “Luce, is that you? I found this little bottle of something and drank it. Isn’t that great?”

Chapter Text

The voice that answered wasn’t Luce’s, but seemed to belong to an older girl.

“Are you Scorpius Malfoy?” it said.

Well, Scorpius was Scorpius Malfoy after all, so he answered, “Yes”.

“And who’s ‘Luce’?” asked the voice, and then it said “Aouch!” together with the sound of a body walking into a desk.

“Lucy Weasley. She’s my mentor. Did you know that Hufflepuff has a mentoring programme? It’s awesome! But you’re in Slytherin, right? Who are you, by the way?”

The voice didn’t answer, which Scorpius found rather ill-mannered. He had told it who he was, after all.

“How much do you now about us?” it asked instead.

“I only know that the letter said someone would leave something here for someone else to pick up,” said Scorpius. “Maybe you could explain some more,” he added hopefully.

At that moment he felt someone grab his arm, and Luce whispered “Run!” in his ear. Holding the Hand of Glory she had been able to manoeuvre easily between the desks.

“How did you find the letter?” said the voice.

As they ran through the classroom door, Scorpius screamed back “By accident! It was in the book I was reading! …er, good bye!”

Luce put her hand into Scorpius’ pocket and grabbed the ornamented box, to use a pinch of darkness powder in the corridor they were now running through. Scorpius felt a little put off. Why was everybody acting so impolitely today? “You could have asked,” he said conversationally. Luce’s only answer was to snort and run faster.

Louisa Boivin was standing next to the Hufflepuff barrel stack when they came running around the corner. Scorpius was happy to see her. She was always so very nice, so she probably wouldn’t be as uncivil as everyone else.

“It’s past curfew!” she said. “What were you doing?”

“Nothing,” said Luce.

“We tried to uncover a conspiracy,” said Scorpius.

Louisa Boivin raised her eyebrows. Luce stepped on Scorpius’ foot.

“Well, you two better come inside and explain yourselves.”

Scorpius gladly answered all Louisa Boivin’s questions, happy that someone finally was talking courteously to him. After a while Luce stopped trying to make him shut up. He explained how he’d found the letter, told about Sagitta’s warning and finished off with their run through the pitch black corridors. When the prefect had no more questions, Luce asked “What’s happened to him? What did he drink?”

”A truth serum. Most likely Veritaserum, as he doesn’t seem to be fighting back at all. Don’t worry; we have the antidote in our collection. Let me go fetch it.”

The Veritaserum had been virtually tasteless, but the antidote was not. It was a brown, tarlike potion that smelled like a mix of spoiled milk, bad eggs and rotten fruit, and tasted worse.  Scorpius would have preferred to stay under the influence of the truth serum, especially as Louisa started scolding him and Luce as soon as he recovered.

”What were you thinking!? You could have been jinxed, or even cursed! Veritaserum is nothing to what could have happened to you! I’ve never heard of a more reckless plan. And from two Hufflepuffs! This is not how we do things in this House! Sneaking off by yourselves in the middle of the night! You I can understand,” she said, pointing at Scorpius, “but you, Luce! You’ve been a Hufflepuff for more than a year now, you should now better than to do something like that! Oh, I get all worried just thinking about it, even though you’re both safe and sound now. You both will promise me to never do something like that again, you’ll have detention for a week, and I want you to come up with a more Hufflepuff-ly plan of action as soon as possible.”

Scorpius and Luce looked at each other. Did that mean they’d still get to help solve the mystery?

Chapter Text

At breakfast about three weeks later, the students were surprised by Professor Flitwick rising to give a speech. In fact, a speech on a regular Wednesday morning was so unexpected that it took almost ten minutes before all of the Great Hall had realised that the Headmaster had stood up in his chair. This was partly, of course, because his short stature made the change of position quite hard to notice. As the hum of morning conversations finally died down, Professor Flitwick began.

“My dear students! I have news! Like all news they are either good or bad, depending on your viewpoint. As many of you know, the school has for some time now been plagued by a gang of students distributing forbidden, dangerous and in many cases even illegal potions. This gang has now been caught.”

There was a brief round of rather underwhelmed applause.

“Professor Jethani will be happy to know that his potion ingredient supply will be safe…er, and Professor Jones will be happy to know that her House has earned two hundred points.”

Scorpius put his hands over his ears to shut out the cacophony of cheers, disbelieving exclamations and wild protests that followed. He might have imagined it, but Scorpius thought he could hear the roaring of two hundred yellow topazes rattling down through an hour glass out in the Entrance Hall even through the deafening sounds of the Great Hall. There was no wonder about the uproar; this early into the term none of the Houses had collected more than a few dozen points, and giving Hufflepuff two hundred points would give them an advantage that would be almost impossible to catch up to. Scorpius knew they’d be singing the Badger Song when they got back to the common room.

Professor Flitwick once again waited for the talking to die down before he continued.

“After a Hufflepuff student accidentally found a secret message sent from a member of the gang in a library book, the House came together to prove that it deserves to be known as the House of the dedicated, hardworking, and patient, who stand up to people who play dirty.”

Scorpius was glad that the Headmaster had glossed over the Hufflepuff student’s first disastrous attempt at solving the mystery of the secret message, which hadn’t really proven him any of those great things.

“Day and night,” continued Professor Flitwick, “there was at least one Hufflepuff to be found in the library, discreetly looking through book after book for another hidden letter. Every single Hufflepuff pitched in whenever they could. And remember that there are more than sixty thousand books in that library. And finding the next letter took them less than two weeks. It’s a truly remarkable feat. Even I don’t know exactly who found the letter, because they wanted the work of all of them to count, and not just the luck of a single member. And when they found the letter, they took it to their Head of House. And then they helped to actually catch the gang through the sheer number of them. Everywhere the gang members ran to hide, there was a Hufflepuff waiting for them. So I think we can all agree that those points were more than well deserved!”

Gryffindor was the first table to start clapping, but Ravenclaw and Slytherin soon joined in. This was a real applause, nothing like the feeble one at the beginning of the speech. Goose bumps rising on his arms, Scorpius toasted any and all Hufflepuffs that he caught the eyes of. Next to him Luce was screaming with joy. But just as the uproar had died down before, the applause had to come to an end.

“Now, on to the sadder parts of these news. Most of the members of the gang have only received a warning, and to protect their privacy I will not tell you who they are. The two leaders, however, have been expelled. They are Eva Selaria from Slytherin…”

Scorpius looked for Sagitta among the Slytherin table. When he found her she made two thumbs up to him, to show that she wasn’t angry with him for getting one of her Housemates expelled.

“…and Francis Fairchild from Ravenclaw.”

“That’s Molly’s fellow prefect!” whispered Luce, and together they looked over at the Ravenclaw table. Molly Weasley did indeed look completely crestfallen; even her freckles looked paler than usual.

“Wow, I almost feel bad for her,” said Luce, but Scorpius could tell there wasn’t really any “almost” about it. He hoped this could lead to a constructive conversation between the sisters.

Then Scorpius felt someone patting his back, and turned to see ten or more fellow Hufflepuffs ready to drag him and Luce into a giant group hug. After the group hug Scorpius and Luce got a bear hug each from Louisa Boivin. Scorpius gave a little sigh of happiness. He surely was Settled In now, all right.

When Scorpius looked back up at the staff table, Mr Merrywind, the librarian, caught his eye and gave him a slight nod. Surprised, and with a seed of suspicion striking root in him, Scorpius nodded back.