Chapter 18
The Fall from Grace
“Albus.” He could hear one more familiar voice call out to him. “Mr. Potter, are you awake?”
Albus turned to his side. “Professor Longbottom?” He pretended to yawn. “What time is it?”
Once his eyes came into focus, he could clearly see the face of his godfather (and Head of House). As he gained a better view, he could see several forms standing in the entry way, though he still couldn’t quite make out their faces.
“It’s very early, Mr. Potter,” Professor Longbottom said, regaining the focus of Albus’ attention.
“Is something wrong?” Albus asked, though he was almost afraid to hear the answer.
But Professor Longbottom just shook his head. “No. Nothing’s wrong, Albus,” his godfather assured him. “Go back to sleep.”
Albus made a noncommittal sound and turned over onto his side so that he was facing away from his teacher. He kept perfectly still so Professor Longbottom would think he had just gone back to sleep, but the truth was that Albus had probably never been more vigilant in his life. His eyes were squeezed shut, but he probably would have been able to hear if the house-elves were playing tag down in the kitchens.
Professor Longbottom’s voice was the first one that he heard. “Well, Professor Dugan, I think it pretty clear that Mr. Potter hasn’t left his room tonight.”
“I found Rose Weasley still in bed too,” he then heard Professor Patil say. “It took nearly ten minutes to convince her it wasn’t time to go to class.”
“And how many Galleons do you want to bet that if we go down to the Slytherin chambers, we will find Mr. Malfoy in the same condition?”
That was Professor Vhartan, and the wheels in Albus’ head began turning It would have been foolish to think pride would have stopped Maddox from trying to save himself by sharing the blame with the three first-years who had been in the cave, after all. Desperation could lead people to do all sorts of things, Albus had heard his father say on numerous occasions.
And, from the gathering outside the dormitory, it was clear that Maddox really had tried to convince the teacher that they had all been there. Although, from the sounds of things, it hadn’t worked very well.
“Professor Dugan,” Neville said, trying to keep is voice level, “which do you think is the most likely scenario: that a fully-grown manticore was taken down by three first-year students, or that your fourth-year son, enabled with an extremely powerful tool of magic, simply got caught and is trying to pass the blame on to someone else?”
Professor Dugan was there too? Albus hadn’t heard a word spoken yet by his Transfiguration teacher. What was it that could be holding the man’s tongue so effectively? Despite the curiosity building inside of him, Albus continued to remain perfectly still, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter.
“Professor Dugan,” Professor Patil spoke in a voice heavy with emotion, “I’m sorry, but you know that we are going to have to call the authorities here.”
Authorities. Albus gulped as quietly as he could. That would mean the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would be getting involved, and maybe even the Auror office as well. Even if what Maddox said was true, and that the wand in and of itself wasn’t a Dark tool, it was what Maddox had chosen to do with it that would certainly bring down the full force of the Ministry of Magic on the boy’s head.
It was then that Albus heard the door shut softly. Professor Longbottom had not even bothered to say good-bye to him, although this was something Albus considered he should probably be grateful for. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, the mentally and physically exhausted first-year shut his eyes and tried to sleep. But even with his eyes closed, he could still feel just how long of a night it had been in his bones, as the light of the rising sun shone its way through Albus’ closed eyelids.
Giving up on sleep, Albus pushed back his covers and walked towards the dormitory door. He had changed into his pajamas, thrown his filthy school robes under his bed, and returned back to his bed, all without waking up any of his dorm mates. But none of it was doing anything to help him sleep. And, he had decided, if all he was going to do was stare up at the ceiling, he might as well put the early hour to some use and finish his Potions homework. Their final was coming up and, as Scorpius kept lovingly reminding him, he needed serious practice on practicing correct proportions.
The stone floor was extraordinarily cold without socks or slippers, but this still did nothing to persuade Albus to return to his bed. Once he finally got to the common room, however, he discovered he wasn’t alone. Sitting in front of the smoldering fire, was a slumped figure with messy black hair staring intently into the flames. When he moved to rub his eyes, he removed a pair of round glass frames that Albus would recognize anywhere.
“Dad!” he shouted, letting his books and papers drop to the floor.
Albus’ father was slow to look up; he met his son with weary eyes. “Albus,” he remarked in a slow and tired tone. “It’s very, very early.”
Albus didn’t respond to the statement. “Dad, what are you doing here?”
Albus’ exhausted father ran his fingers through his hair and then looked back up at his son. “Albus, why don’t you have a seat? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
As for as anxious as Albus’ father appeared to be about what he was about to tell him, Albus knew it wasn’t necessary. At this point in time, he probably already knew every word of the talk his dad had probably spent hours rehearsing. All the same, Albus walked over to the couch and took a seat beside his father, doing his very best to look as though he had no idea what was going on.
But then came a very loud interruption. “Oh, my Godric! Dad!”
Both Albus and his father looked up to see James standing the entrance of the staircase, his hair a mess, his eyes wide. “Monty told me you were down here, but I didn’t believe him,” James exclaimed loudly as he strode across the common room floor. “What are you doing here?”
“Work,” their father answered simply. “Why don’t you have a seat? We need to talk.”
But instead of instantly obeying his father, James’ eyes went even wider and a panicked look took over his expression. “I have no idea what you’ve heard, but I know my rights! If they don’t have any physical evidence or an eyewitness, there is nothing holding it up. And don’t think I won’t call them on the definition of hearsay, because I know what that means now!”
Albus looked up at his father, who did not react to the outburst. He knew his eldest son so well, that he had probably known how James was going to react before he had even finished the sentence. “James, you’re not in trouble and neither is your brother. But I really do have something very important I need discuss with the both of you.”
Somewhat warily, James made his to the couch and took a seat beside their father on the opposite side of Albus. Any other time, James would have tried to make a joke of sitting on top of Albus and pretending he didn’t know he was there, but he must have sensed the seriousness in his father’s voice as he took his seat on the squishy sofa with any sort of joke or comment.
“You never told me,” James brought up again. “What are you doing here? Is it Ministry business again?”
Their father nodded solemnly, his lips pursed. “Your uncle Ron is here too,” his dad told him. “Professor Patil took him to the Ravenclaw Common room so he could talk to Rose.”
It was at that point that James just seemed to understand the seriousness of what his father was about to tell them. “Okay, Dad, this is starting to get scary. Just what is going on?”
Albus watched his father take a deep breath and place his palms on top of his knees. “This morning, your uncle and I arrested Maddox Dugan.”
Albus was worried his dad might see through his lack of shock, but luckily, James’ reaction was dramatic enough for the both of them. “You have to be kidding! Maddox Dugan? The same Maddox Dugan I know? What could he have possibly done so wrong that he had to be arrested…?”
Before me and Fred, was probably what the true end to the sentence had been, but now that the Ministry apparently was arresting Hogwarts students, James had probably thought it best not to give his father any ideas.
“Get comfortable,” he told his sons. “This is going to be a very long explanation.”
It was with that that Albus’ father began telling the long-winded story that Albus and his friends had been living these past few months, minus a few certain details that Albus wasn’t about to let his father in on: from the swarm of Chizpurfles to the manticore skulking through the Forbidden Forests, and every possible instance in which Hogwarts students could have been killed and hadn’t even known it. By the end of the speech, all the color had completely drained from James’ face and his eyes were almost as wide as Luna’s on an average day. “Are you sure it was him?” he finally managed to ask.
“He was caught in the act,” his father said, turning to face his elder son. “The wand was in his possession and the manticore in the cave was following the bidding of the wand. A charm shows connections to several instances of magical creatures, actually more than even the Ministry was aware of.”
Albus chewed on his bottom lip, hoping that his father wouldn’t notice his twittering fingers and shuffling feet.
“As soon as the wand was removed from Maddox’s control, the manticore appeared to be quite disoriented, as though it had no idea how it had gotten where it was. Luna said that that is typical of creatures that have been recently freed from mind control.”
James then took a turn to speak. “What will happen to the manticore?” Though Albus couldn’t imagine what could bring his brother to think about that with all the other things he could have asked.
“Luna is helping to work between the British and the Greek Departments for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to try and get the creature back to its native habitat. The Greek government has a great deal of experience in working with manticores.” Albus watched his father stair into the fire rather absent mindedly. “Luna was completely against destroying the creature. She said, ‘It’s not fair to punish the creature for something that isn’t even its fault.’ So she’s very hopeful that once it is returned home, the manticore will no longer have any desire to return to Britain.”
Albus decided to take it upon himself to ask something he felt might actually prove useful, since James clearly couldn’t be trusted to do so.
“What about Maddox?” he managed to squeak. “What’s going to happen to him?”
Albus’ father let out a deep sigh. “He has a trial before the Wizengamot set for next week. He will have the opportunity to argue his case, and, of course, Uncle Ron and I will be called to testify. But truthfully, it is looking rather grim for your Housemate.”
A sudden twinge in Albus’ stomach made itself quite present. He couldn’t believe it, but he was actually feeling guilty. Maddox Dugan had put the entire school in danger on several occasions, tried to kill Albus and his friends more than once and had let them know it, and he’d even tried to kill Albus’ father, uncle, and dear family friend. And now that the boy was going to pay for all his crimes, Albus actually felt sorry for him, almost as though the attacks against him had never happened”as if Maddox was just a pitiful victim…even a friend.
But luckily, Albus’ father must have mistaken his son’s expression for shock and disbelief at the news of his Housemate. “Now listen, both of you,” he said to his sons. “Go upstairs and pack a few things. There’s going to be a lot of back draft this arrest, and I don’t want either of you around for it. I’ve gotten permission from the headmaster to let you come home until the worst of it is over. Your cousin, Rose, will be coming home too.”
“Will all our cousins be coming home?” James asked, suddenly looking even more horror-struck than he had been at the news of Maddox. “If Dominique has to miss her O.W.L.s after all the studying she’s done, I’m not sure I can guarantee your safety.”
The father shook his head and made just the bare whisper of a chuckle. “No, it’s just you three. I’m sure it won’t take very long for word to spread that it was your fathers that arrested Maddox Dugan, after all.”
Well, James wasn’t about to argue any further at the possibility of skipping school, so he pushed himself up off the couch, and even took it upon himself to drag Albus along with him, as though not willing to wait even the miniscule amount of time it would have taken Albus to stand up on his own. No one, it seemed, came between James and the possibility of getting out of Potion labs and History of Magic essays.
While Albus and James were brought home, Albus had first believed that they would only be there for a few days at most. But days quickly became a week, and then numerous weeks, and there was less and less evidence that seemed like they were going to return anytime soon, especially from the way their mother seemed to be doing her very best to keep the Daily Prophet from them, one morning going as far as to cast a Combustion Spell while it had been laying on the table when James had reached for it to check Quidditch scores. Her argument being that the current Quidditch season was so horrible that she could not allow her son to see it and still call herself a good mother.
However, James and Albus still found themselves able to get their hands on copies of the Prophet via Mrs. Fleming, the elderly widow who lived next door and longed for any sort of company. So the two brothers would spend the afternoon reading the newspaper on her uncomfortable couch and eating the somehow-dusty biscuits the old woman served them, all the while talking to them about the old days when everything was made of wood and women couldn’t fly brooms. Though once they started reading the news stories, they could understand why their parents wanted to keep them from the boys, and even why their father had wanted to remove them from school.
To look at the latest editions of the Daily Prophet, one would think that the world did not exist outside of what happening with Maddox Dugan. Everyone who could have possibly played a significant role in the boy’s life was being featured in the story, including several Hogwarts students. And the Prophet seemed to take a particular interest in why the children of the arresting Aurors could not be reached for comment.
Just as their father had said, Maddox had his trial in front of the Wizengamot, with every imaginable source of wizarding media waiting outside the door. Just as their father had said, he and Uncle Ron were called in to testify, and also, just as he had said, Maddox was found guilty of a laundry list of crimes. The Wizengamot decided unanimously to send him to Azkaban, making him the youngest inmate in the prison’s history. Just as their father had said, after all, the boy didn’t have a chance.
Of course, the media had a field day with the verdict. It made all the coverage that happened before seem completely insignificant. Albus was now finally beginning to understand his father’s general dislike of newspapers in general and was extremely grateful to be in Godric’s Hollow, where very little happened on any given day.
A lot, though, happened while Albus, James, and Rose were away from home: Albus turned twelve, Luna had her baby; a little girl named Astrid Soleil. According to Luna, the baby had been very pleased when the name had been suggested to her. James received about a dozen ranting letters from Tracy Corner, ranting about how Gryffindor’s Quidditch team was missing its Keeper, and how there was no way in hell she was going to trust the position to any of the reserve players. And, of course, Lily was a constant presence, bombarding her brothers with every insignificant insider’s detail about the story that had been all over the front page of the Daily Prophet, which she, on the other hand, was actually allowed to read.
Rose sent no letters, but, to be fair, Albus didn’t either. He imagined his cousin was also doing her very best to keep the circling headlines out of her head and that the effort was taking up the majority of her time and effort. Albus certainly knew that was the case as far as he was concerned.
Once Easter was over, however, they received a very official-looking letter directly from the letterhead of Professor Flitwick insisting that if the Potter boys missed even one more day of school, he couldn’t promise that they would be able to move on to the next year. By the end of the afternoon, James and Albus found themselves in headmaster’s office with their trunks packed and their cousin, Rose, standing right beside them. Professor Flitwick didn’t offer the three any profound sort of greeting, but simply rushed them down the staircase, slamming the door shut behind them. James soon wandered off in an aimless sort of way, leaving Rose and Albus standing alone in the corridor, completely unsure of what they should do.
Then came an echoing shout. “Albus! Rose!”
The two heads turned simultaneously to see Scorpius Malfoy racing down from the other end of the hallway, as though he had not seen his friends in an eternity” to be fair, though, this was not entirely untrue.
“Scorpius!” Rose shouted back, though her feet remained firmly planted beside her cousin.
The blond boy stopped just inches short of where Rose was standing. Anyone who had been watching the scene and who had no previous knowledge of three first-years might have believed that Scorpius was about to give Rose a hug. However, Scorpius quickly stepped back and held his hands firmly at his sides in order to dispel that illusion.
“Where have you two been?” Scorpius asked rather franticly. “The whole school’s been in a frenzy; Maddox Dugan is all anyone’s been talking about.”
“We got that from the Prophet,” Rose answered, striding past the boy, as though she too wanted to avoid any scenes of impropriety. “And since our dad were the ones ‘responsible’ for it, they thought it best if we stayed out of the limelight for a bit.”
“Probably a good idea,” Scorpius told her. “The school has been a madhouse. Maddox has been dubbed ‘Gryffindor’s First Dark Wizard’.”
“I’m sure that’s just a load of rubbish.” Rose replied. “In a thousand years of Hogwarts history, I doubt Maddox is the first Gryffindor to ever turn to the Dark Arts…if the Wand of MacArt can even be considered Dark magic. Maddox was all about that ‘intent’ nonsense.”
While Rose and Scorpius tittered between one another, Albus pondered to himself. All about whether or not either of them had been feeling any sort of guilt over the hand that they had had in Maddox’s capture, though from the casual tone they were taking towards the subject, it was starting to seem highly unlikely. Then Albus began wondering if he should share what he was feeling with his friends, even though he felt extraordinarily like a girl simply for thinking of that.
Rose and Scorpius were completely enthralled in their own subject of conversation, so Albus decided to keep these thoughts and feelings to himself for the time being.
After the media drama of Maddox and his arrest passed, things slowly began to return to normal for Albus, Rose, and Scorpius. Finals ended with a great feeling of relief, but when the class honors list was published, Rose felt slightly nervous due to the fact that neither she nor Scorpius had made the top ten list, meaning that their names were just published in a group along with everyone else whose grades were in the top half of their class. That meant that no one could be sure if Rose had indeed beaten Scorpius on every exam. The older cousins all tried to assure her that her father had only said it as a joke and had probably forgotten all about the comment by now, but that seemed to do very little to take away the nervously sick expression on Rose’s face….
…Although the effort it took to greatly hate Fairfax Macmillan, who would not stop bragging about making the number one spot on the honors list did seem to help somewhat.
Classes drew to a close, and the students spent every moment of free time they had packing up their trunks with every spare scrap of paper they had to their name.
With the clock running short, the members of the Arcane ScoRA decided to pay one last visit to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom to say good-bye to the ghost-girl who was the unofficial founding member of their organization.
Throughout the entire meeting, Myrtle appeared anxious about the prospect of her new friends leaving for the summer. “You guys will come and visit me again as soon as you come back this autumn, won’t you?”
“Of course! Of course!” Rose assured her, holding her hands up in front of her. “We’ll even write,” she said, although she seemed clearly unsure just how one would go about sending a letter to a ghost, and whether it would be any different from sending a letter to someone else.
While Rose continued to converse and bargain with the transparent girl, Albus and Scorpius leaned against the bathroom wall, Albus sitting on the floor, and Scorpius resting his forehead against the dingy mirror. So far, the both of them had yet to say anything. The two of them seemed much more interested in enjoying the peace of not having to worry about invading beasts or impending attacks; just the facts that they were all friends and that they were all able to be together with no cares or worries…the way Albus’ father had said again and again that things were supposed to be. It was what he had wanted for his son, Albus, and all his other children, and his nieces and nephews.
Not that Albus and his group of…friends had been allowed to do so for any extended period of time up until now.
It was then that a very sudden thought came to Albus. “We should write our names somewhere,” he said, breaking the silence that the two boys had been keeping.
Myrtle turned to look over her shoulder, and Rose peered through the girl’s abdomen. “Albus,” Rose said to her cousin, “didn’t we already have a talk about the definition of ‘secret’ society?”
Albus nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he relented somewhat, “but after all we’ve done, it seems wrong for no one to ever know we existed. That what we did should all just fade into nothing.”
Scorpius brought up a point. “Well, it’s all well and good for us to become some sort of enigma for people to ponder about a hundred years from now, but what if someone finds these names while we’re still here at Hogwarts and can turn us all into the headmaster while he still has power over our lives?”
Albus shifted from one foot to another. “Well, we’ll put them somewhere no one will think to look. Where would we be able to do that?”
Myrtle, who seemed to be enthralled with the idea, offered up help to make it happen. “Here,” she exclaimed, floating over to the stall which she haunted “You can carve them into the lid to the tank. Just make sure you add mine too. I can’t do it myself because….”
While Rose took it upon herself to at least lessen the flood of tears and sobbing that were no doubt coming, Albus and Scorpius began rummaging around in search of something they could carve into metal with.
Scorpius knelt down besides his book bag, which he had brought with him. “All we’ve got is my Potion’s knife,” he said, lifting the tool out from one of the pockets of the bag.
“Trust me, that will work perfectly,” Myrtle told him through the tears. “The porcelain, the metal, everything in the shall has lost much of its structural integrity of the years due to all the floo-DIIIIIINNNNG!”
By this time, Myrtle had burst into a full-fledge crying fit, draping herself over Rose’s shoulder. How exactly she was doing it, and where it was the tears were coming from, was something that remained a subject of confusion. Rose continued to do her best to console the much older girl while Albus and Scorpius snuck into the stall, Scorpius pushing the knife into Albus’ hands and shoving him forward, indicating it would be him who would go first.
“Oh, look, Myrtle!” Rose tried to get the attention of the sobbing girl-ghost. “The boys are both carving their names. It’s our turn now. You want to watch your name get carved into too, don’t you? You don’t want to try your way through such a monumental event.”
Albus wasn’t sure that carving their names into the tank of a toilet could really be considered an ‘event’, let along ‘monumental’, though it did succeed in slowing the rush of tears. Myrtle wiped her nose”though Albus was not even sure how there could be any snot to wipe”and drifted into the bathroom stall with a relieved Rose following behind her.
Kneeling on the toilet seat, feeling his trousers around the knees growing damp, Albus began carving the initials A.S.P. into the darkening porcelain. He wasn’t stupid enough to write his full name, of course! He then handed the knife over to Scorpius, who took his turn at carving S.H.M.
“Rose!” Scorpius called to the girl over the constant sobs. “It’s your turn! Myrtle, you too!”
As though the sentence were some sort of magic charm, Myrtle instantly stopped crying, rushing into the stall with a whoosh of air, Rose trailing not far behind her. As Rose carved R.A.W. into the porcelain, she suddenly turned to the ghost girl and said, “Myrtle, we don’t know your middle name…or your last name, for that matter.”
Myrtle just shrugged her shoulders. “Why not just write ‘Moaning Myrtle’? I’m certainly not going to tell anyone about the Arcane ScoRA. What do the teachers have to threaten me with? I have been in the same stall for eighty years, and I’m not about to be driven out now!”
Rose nodded in a sort of nervous agreement as she carved the very long name. When she was finally done, she took a step back, as though admiring some sort of long-conceived artistic masterpiece. After a time, Scorpius and Albus also regarded the toilet tank with the same sort of awed respect. There had been nothing seemingly spectacular about the toilet before now: it had been the same ancient speckled porcelain that could be seen in every Hogwarts bathroom. But now, thinking about how this was the place where they had all first come together, where they all would now be leaving together, and would probably be returning to next year…there was just something beautiful about it.
Next year….
“Everyone!” Myrtle called out over the crowd, trying to get everyone’s attention.
Albus was sure that everyone was expecting some sort of long-winded speech, but instead what they heard was, “Have any of you bothered to look at the clock recently?”
Rose glanced down at her watch, and the moment she did, her eyes widened and her expression became horror-struck. “We’re going to miss the train!” she shrieked.
Scorpius and Rose nearly knocked Albus to the ground as they rushed to get out of the cramped stall. In fact, Albus was quite certain he had been caught somehow to one of the two of them as he felt himself being dragged across the floor before he finally managed to pull himself to his feet. The three living members of the Arcane ScoRA raced around the bathroom, while Rose and Scopius took turns shouting at each other.
“Do you have everything packed into your trunk?”
“Do you even know where your trunk is?”
“Where were we supposed to leave them so they could be loaded on the train?”
“Were we all supposed to meet in the Great Hall or just go straight to the train station?”
But looking over his shoulder, Albus could see Myrtle floating contently above the bathroom floor, smiling and twirling, looking about as close to ‘giddy’ as the boy was sure anyone had ever seen the girl, dead or alive.
Despite the great rush and panic, the three members of the Arcane ScoRA did make it to the train on time, and even found themselves sitting all alone in their train compartment, just like the circumstances under which they had been quite literally ‘pushed together’. And ironically, they found themselves in the exact same positions in which they had first spoken to one another: Rose was reading one of her old schoolbooks, Scorpius was staring out the window, and Albus having no idea what to say or do. His other two friends seemed so at ease, but Albus could not bring himself to that state of mind.
“What’s going to happen next year?” he finally blurted out.
Rose looked down from her book. “What do you mean?” Scorpius also took his focus off the passing countryside, turning to face Albus.
“I mean, does the Arcane ScoRA still exist and all?” Albus elaborated. “Maddox isn’t around anymore, so we really don’t have anyone we need to stop or anything.”
Rose looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “But we didn’t start the Arcane ScoRA just to stop the doings of Maddox Dugan, did we?”
“We started the Arcane ScoRA so Moaning Myrtle wouldn’t turn us into the teachers that night when the Erkling was chasing us through the corridors,” Scorpius reminded them, hugging his left knee to his chest.
“But the Erkling was still the doing of Maddox Dugan,” Albus argued. “Now that he’s gone, what does the Arcane ScoRA exist for?”
This was a question that none of the members of the organization had taken the time to consider, as was quite apparent. No one had a ready answer for it.
“But we didn’t know Maddox was responsible for it all,” Rose brought up the point. “And if we had never found out, we never would have stopped investigating.”
But then Scorpius brought up, “If we had never found out that Maddox was responsible, then Maddox also wouldn’t be in jail right now.”
More silence followed as more miles passed. “So…what then?” Albus reiterated. “Are we going to spend the rest of our school careers fighting against anything that could possibly be a threat to the Hogwarts student body?”
Rose and Scorpius looked to one another, as though they were each waiting for the other to satisfy Albus’ curiosity.
“What do we do now?” Albus kept on going. “Do we let them know we’re friends, or is that going to just clue them in about the Arcane ScoRA?”
The other two in the compartment continued to stare at one another before Rose finally stared down into her lap, muttering quietly, “I don’t know, Albus. We really have just been playing this whole thing by ear, and I suppose we will probably just keep doing what we have been doing. We just keep watching, waiting for things to happen just like they have been doing all of this year, and if nothing happens…I suppose the Arcane ScoRA really won’t have any reason to exist.”
“Good call!” Scorpius agreed, as though eager to see the conversation come to an end. As though he just wanted his mind to wander as far from the Arcane ScoRA as humanly possible and just go back to being the Scorpius Malfoy he had been before he had boarded the Hogwarts Express for the first time.
And Albus decided, for the sake of the boy he now truly considered to be a true friend, he would let the matter drop for the time being. But there was something else he felt was necessary to discuss as he saw the city of London drawing closer and closer.
“What do we do about our parents?”
Rose set down her book for the final time, letting out an exasperated sigh, finally giving on her reading for good. “What are you talking about now?”
Albus explained his reasoning further. “Well, if they see us walking off the train together and talking to one another, they’ll know we are friends. And…you know the histories that our families have.”
Rose and Scorpius began to squirm in their seats, showing that they had not previously considered this scenario. It only made Albus want to discuss the situation further. “So…what are we supposed to do? Do we let them know that we are friends, or do we not in order to keep the Arcane ScoRA a secret?”
“They don’t even know that the Arcane ScoRA exists,” Scorpius brought up. “What reason do they have to be suspicious?”
“But our parents will wonder how we came to be friends,” Rose reminded him as the train began pulling into Kings Cross. “Is that a story any of you really want to tell them…whether it be to keep the Arcane ScoRA a secret or no?”
As the train began to slow, the three soon-to-be second-years leaned back against their seats so that they could not be seen from the window. When the call came for their compartment to leave, they raced to the door as fast as they could to further this goal. As they made their way to the door in silence, Albus supposed they would be doing just what Rose said they had been doing this whole year: playing the situation by ear.
They stepped out of the train together, walked out in-step together, and met eyes with their parents all together….
But then, almost as though on instinct, Scorpius pulled away from Albus and Rose and rushed towards his waiting parents. They stood together stiff, stately, and elegant. The mother knelt down to hug Scorpius and his father put his hand on his shoulder, but other than that, they did nothing to break their previous demure. Albus could see his parents and his aunt and uncle looking in the Malfoys’ direction, though Scorpius’ parents did not acknowledge them, making their way out of their train station as fast as they possibly could. It all happened so quickly that even Scorpius didn’t have the time to look back towards his friend, unless it was intentional.
After that, Albus and Rose ran up to greet their own parents. It would appear as though their friendship, as well as even the slightest hint of the existence of the Arcane ScoRA would remain a secret…for now.
The Arcane ScoRA and the Wand of MacArt by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Albus and his friends deal with the aftermath of the events of the year, and contemplate how the Arcane ScoRA is going to survive how that their first year is over.
And thank you to Apruva who finally broke the Arcane ScoRA beta curse, ending the story with me!