Chapter 5
The Arcane ScoRA
“How did you know that would work, Rose?” Albus asked later as they walked back down the stairs, after everyone had had a chance to calm down.
“Scorpius, are you sure that you landed the broom back near the others?” she asked, ignoring Albus’ question.
The tone between the three students was a lot more relaxed, now that their lives were no longer in mortal danger. After all, like Albus’ own father had learned as a first-year, people didn’t wrestle themselves from the jaws of death and not come out of it with a deepened sense of closeness among them.
“Rose, there is a dead student-eater spattered across the school yard!” Scorpius reminded her, jumping the last three steps to the common room floor, the carpet cushioning the noise. “I don’t think anyone is going to be looking at the brooms! Now, how did you know?”
Rose sighed and shook her head, as though this question had the world’s simplest answer. “There are about five N.E.W.T. students in Ravenclaw taking Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures class,” Rose explained. “They’re studying trolls, ogres, and Erklings right now. All they ever talk about in this House is school work!”
“Well, then you must fit right in!” Scorpius told her, running his hand along the top ridge of one of the sofas.
Rose bit her lip and somewhat violently opened the door to the corridor staircase, as though she really wanted to be taking her feelings out on Scorpius.
“But don’t you see, Rose?” Albus began explaining to his cousin before a meltdown could start, also being the first to start back down the stairs. “The Sorting Hat was right; you do belong in Ravenclaw. If you weren’t in there, you wouldn’t have known what to do just now.”
The faintest wisp of a smile appeared on Rose’s lips. It was the happiest Albus had seen his cousin ever since they arrived at Hogwarts.
In fact, Albus himself was feeling ecstatic as well. All his life, he had been regaled by his father’s adventures at Hogwarts; from the time he and Uncle Ron defeated a full grown mountain troll, to the time he and Aunt Hermione traveled back in time, saved a hippogriff from execution and helped a his godfather escape from custody, and even when he led the Hogwarts resistance against the Ministry. Now Albus could understand that look that his dad got on his face whenever he talked about his glory days: what just happened with the Erkling was nothing short of amazing! Sure, at the time, he was too distracted by the fear of certain death, but now he nearly felt like he was floating.
However, at the bottom of the staircase, when his gaze shifted to Scorpius, he noticed a very different expression: a mixture of fear, panic, and nausea.
“What’s wrong, Scorpius?” Rose asked him before Albus could.
“Oh, Merlin,” Scorpius gasped, staying silent for moment so the others could hear the footsteps closing in on them. “That’s Professor Vhartan! She’s on duty to patrol the halls tonight! If she catches us, she’ll take away every point our Houses have earned, and drag us to Flitwick’s office by our eyelids!”
At those words, Albus was certain that his expression was now near identical to Scorpius’. Professor Vhartan was nothing less than a pure sadist when it came to the smallest of classroom infractions. He didn’t even want to think about what she would do to students that she caught out of bed.
“You two better get out of here now!” Rose told them in a hushed tone.
“But she’s coming from the direction of our Houses!” Albus told her, his breath catching as the feeling of pure terror began to pierce into his very soul. “We don’t have anywhere to run to!”
The footsteps clicked loudly and sharply against the stone floor; and even though he never thought it was possible to tell a person’s mood from their feet, he seemed certain that Professor Vhartan was not in a sunny mood right now.
“We are as good as dead,” Scorpius said grimly. “Have you two even been dragged anywhere by your eyelids before? I don’t imagine that it’s very pleasant!”
But Rose, clearly not quite ready to surrender, jumped to the floor and ran out ahead of the boys.
“Follow me!” Rose whispered, as she jumped from the steps and started down the hallway. “I know a place to hide!”
Trying to run as quickly and lightly as possible, Albus and Scorpius followed after Rose. Through doorways, stairways and corridors, black robes followed a pink one, the sound of heeled boots trailing behind them.
Suddenly, Rose skidded to a stop, causing Scorpius to crash into her, and Albus to crash into Scorpius before the both of them fell flat on their backs. Rose spun around to point to the doorway, kicking it opened with one of her slipper-covered feet.
“In here!” she whispered, keeping her eyes on the end of the hallway, watching for Professor Vhartan.
“This a girls’ bathroom!” Scorpius hissed at Rose. “We’re trying to stop getting into trouble tonight!”
“Who’s down there?” came the familiar hissing voice that they normally only had to endure through Potions.
“Eyelids,” she reminded him as she held the door open.
Scorpius didn’t need any more prompting as he raced through the open door. Albus, who was still on the floor, crawled into the bathroom, and Rose followed behind, remembering to close the door behind them.
The bathroom was utterly dark, save for the faint moonlight that beamed into the room. What struck Albus first and foremost was that everything in the bathroom was in perfect order. Whenever he had gone into the boys’ bathroom, sinks were left running, puddles and wet towels were scattered across the floor, along with the occasional smells that he choose not to dwell on. He knew as a law of physics that girls were much neater than boys were, but this bathroom looked as though it had not even been used for decades.
“Back here,” Rose instructed them as she led them to a tiny alcove behind the last bathroom stall.
Together, the three students scrambled to the opposite end of the bathroom, huddling against the wall, listening for any sound that might signal the end of their days at Hogwarts.
A leaky pipe dripped rhythmically into the sinks, but other than that and the hushed sounds of their breathing, the room was completely silent. As they heard Professor Vhartan’s boots becoming quieter before completely vanishing. It didn’t even sound as though she had opened the door to look for anyone. After a long wait in the silence, Rose got up from the floor, still somewhat hunched, as her ears perked, listening for Professor Vhartan in case she decided to double back.
“Alright,” she finally breathed with a sigh of relief, “I think we’re safe now. But we should probably wait a few more minutes before we try to go back to the dormitories anyway.”
But Albus and Scorpius remained on the floor, their backs to the wall, like prisoners waiting for the firing squad.
“How do you know no one will find us in here?” Scorpius asked as he hugged his knees to his chest. “Someone could come in here to use the bathroom, or Vhartan might have heard us run in here-”
“No one is going to use this bathroom,” Rose interrupted, not even bothering to whisper. “And Professor Vhartan is not going to care if there’s noise coming from this bathroom.”
Rose seemed so sure of herself. Rose, who wouldn’t leave the house before checking three times that her shoes were tied, looked thoroughly convinced that this bathroom was some sort of impervious shield that would keep them from being found.
“Why?” Albus asked.
Just then, Albus’ question was answered for him in the form of an ear-splitting shriek. Three sets of hands rushed to cover three sets of ears to block out the noise that Albus was convinced would shatter a mirror.
“That’s why,” Rose told him, still holding her hands to her ears.
Albus looked up to get a better look at what his cousin was talking about. Floating above them was a ghost, but not any of the ghosts that flouted around the great rooms, among their houses. This ghost was that of a girl, a Hogwarts student. Her hair was lank, pimples were dotted across her face like freckles, and her glasses were so thick, Albus wondered how anyone could be able to see through them.
“Who”” Scorpius began, “what is that?”
“This is Moaning Myrtle,” Rose explained to the boys, “She haunts the bathroom.”
“She haunts a bathroom?” Scorpius asked skeptically, one eyebrow raised.
“Not the whole bathroom,” Rose clarified, “Just one of the toilets.”
“Well, that makes a lot more sense,” Scorpius drawled sarcastically.
Moaning Myrtle, on the other hand, did not seem so amused. She glared down at the three panting students, a look of frustration and anger in her listless eyes, which shown even through the coke-bottle glasses.
“What are you two doing is here?” Myrtle pointed towards Albus and Scorpius. “You two aren’t girls! You don’t belong in here!”
“I know that, Myrtle,” Rose tried to appease the ghost girl, and above all, keep her quiet. “But we’ve had a very rough night; rougher than you can even imagine. Please, please, please””
“I’m going to go tell one of the teachers that you’re in here!”
With those words, Myrtle shot off like a rocket and made her way for the bathroom door, taking a large breath, as though she were getting to scream for anyone who could hear her.
“No, you can’t tell!” Albus shouted, trying to stop her.
Albus didn’t why he thought that would, but it must simply been his lucky night. Myrtle stopped in her…tracks, and shot back towards Albus, floating right in front of his face, their noses almost touching.
“Why?” she barked, as though daring him to give her an actual answer.
Albus was about to explain to Myrtle that if she did, they would all be expelled, but Scorpius beat him to the punch by offering a better reason.
“Because if you do, you’ll be breaking the rules.”
After those words were spoken, the entire room fell silent. Even the pipes seemed to stop droning from the shock of the random statement.
“What rules?” Myrtle asked, still angry, but looking genuinely curious.
Rose chewed on her bottom lip as she waited for Scorpius to continue. But Scorpius seemed so shocked that Myrtle was actually listening to him, that he seemed at a loss for words. However, as Myrtle waited for Scorpius to give her an explanation, Albus watched the wheels begin to turn in Rose’s head, coming up with an answer for him.
“The rules…” Rose started, “of our secret society!”
Albus turned back towards his friends and wrinkled his nose. What secret society were they talking about. Had there been some owl that he had simply not gotten?”
“What secret society?”
However, when Albus study the two expressions before him more closely, it finally dawned on him. There was no secret society. Scorpius had merely been winging it when he stopped Myrtle, and Rose was winging off that statement, and Scorpius continued to embellish off her statement again.
“The one…that the three of us belong to,” Scorpius went along with Rose. “And if you tell the teachers, it won’t be a secret society anymore.”
Myrtle’s brow furrowed, as though she couldn’t quiet decided whether or not Scorpius was telling the truth. For once in his life, Albus was beginning to see the benefits of being friends with such a skilled liar.
“What’s your society called?” Myrtle finally asked after a moment of silence.
Two blank stares met Albus’ gaze. They didn’t have an answer for that question.
“The…Arcane…,” Rose tried, scanning her brain for words, trying to think of a name off the top of her head. “The Arcane….”
“Yes?” Myrtle crossed her arms.
Now, Albus realized it was his turn to help move this little white lie along. But if Rose was having trouble thinking of good word, then what chance did he have. He turned towards Scorpius, who didn’t seem to have anything to contribute either.
Scorpius, Rose, Albus….
“…ScoRA.” Albus finished for Rose.
Rose’s blank expression became one of confusion, but Scorpius decided to run with it.
“Yes!” Scorpius agreed quickly. “The Arcane ScoRA. That’s us!”
Myrtle nodded, but didn’t look like she believed the story one hundred percent.
“Well, what does the Arcane ScoRA do?”
“All kinds of things,” Albus told her, turning back around. “But for the most part, what we do is keep the school safe…from monsters…like we did tonight.”
“And the very first, and most important rule we have is,” Scorpius said, as though reading Albus’ mind, “DON’T GET CAUGHT!”
Upon hearing Scorpius’ rule, Myrtle snorted and laughed. She shook her head and looked down at the three first-years, gracing them with a look Albus had often seen coming from the prefects, the older, Quidditch players, and pretty much anyone else in the school that was at least two years older than they were.
“If there is a secret society that has been charged with protecting the school, why wouldn’t you want anyone to know that you just saved the school?” Myrtle inquired as she glided over the bathroom stalls. “You, with the dark hair; you’re a Potter, are you not? Your father is the famous Harry Potter?”
Myrtle finished the sentence with a slight giggle and dreamy looking smile on her face. Albus decided not to wonder what this meant as he nodded yes.
“Well, did he not tell you how famous he was as a student here? How he was the Tri-Wizard Champion, the Chosen One, and how his friends all had the pleasure of riding on his coattails? Who wouldn’t want that?”
For once tonight, Albus had an answer already prepared for Myrtle. It was one that his dad had said himself on many occasions: the downside of having a famous youth, somewhat tweaked to apply to this conversation.
“And look at how much it hindered him,” Albus explained in calm, level tone. “Professors watching every step he took, appearing in the Daily Prophet every time he so much as sneezed. Everything he ever did was made a thousand times harder simply because he was seen as a hero.”
“That’s why it’s so important for the…Arcane ScoRA to be kept a secret,” Rose embellished, she herself having heard this answer before too. “There is no way we would be able to continue to keep the school safe with our every move being watched. It’s better for everyone if nobody ever finds out who we are.”
“Everyone?” Myrtle wondered aloud with a heavy tone of skepticism, implying that she wondered what would be in it for her for keeping her mouth shut about all she had seen tonight.
“Why do you think we chose to hide in here?” came an answer from Scorpius, putting an end to his bout of silence.
Turning his gaze back once again, Albus observed a cunning sort of smile appear on Scorpius’ face. Even though he himself was still unsure of how he felt about this growing lie, Scorpius was beginning to look as though he were having fun with this story. Then again, the opportunity to test their skills of manipulation on a complete stranger; wasn’t that the sort of thing all Slytherins dreamed of?
“What we need,” Scorpius continued on in that familiar, somewhat arrogant drawl of his, “is someone who can be our eyes and ears around the school. As mere humans, we have limits. We cannot pass through physical barriers: we can be stopped in our tracks by professors and prefects without them even needing to lift their wands: and a group of first-years sneaking around the school is certain to draw attention, no matter how skilled they are.”
Myrtle nodded to this with a growing smile on her face. Scorpius hadn’t exactly complemented her, but still, he was managing to heavily flatter her, getting her ready to say yes to whatever he said next.
“Myrtle, I would like to make you an offer,” he drawled on. “We need you, clearly a lot more than you need us, but we need you all the same. The only way for the Arcane ScoRA to thrive is if we have someone outside our immediate circle to inform us to the goings on in this school. And I’d, we’d, like you to be that person.”
Myrtle let loose a squeal of delight before she was able to regain her composure, floating back down to the ground do she could be at eye-level with the three of them.
“Why would I have any interest in doing that?” Myrtle asked, even though the wide smile on her face told them she had already said yes, at least in her mind.
“You admire Harry Potter,” Scorpius went on. “I can hear it in your voice. I can see it in your eyes. If you had the chance to do what he did, you would jump at it. Simple as that; and we both know it.”
This time, Myrtle did nothing to conceal her true feelings as she answered.
“I’ll do it!”
Certain that their safety as Hogwarts students was secure, Albus breathed a sigh of relief. Sure, eventually they were going to have to find a way to explained to Myrtle how the ‘Arcane ScoRA’ disbanded as quickly as it had formed, but that was one of the great things about being eleven years old. None of them had to think that far into the future. All that mattered now was that no one was being expelled. At least not tonight.
“To the Arcane ScoRA!” Albus shouted, just to leave their cover on a convincing note.
“To the Arcane ScoRA!” they all then cheered together, including Moaning Myrtle.
Scorpius seemed to share the same sense of relief that Albus felt, but one look into Rose’s eyes told him all the what if’s that were running through her head. What if Myrtle learned they were lying, what if one of the other Ravenclaws had seen them lead the Erkling up to the Astronomy tower, what if Professor Vhartan wasn’t the only professor patrolling the halls that night, and on and on and on…
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Rose asked through clenched teeth, her smile able to mask the fearful hiss.
“I have no idea,” Albus answered, also through clenched teeth as Moaning Myrtle did loop-de-loops through the air.
Any hopes of keeping the incident a secret were a lost cause. Like Scorpius had said the night before, a dead student-eater splatter across the courtyard was not the kind of thing you can keep secret for very long. Being that keeping it from the teachers who saw it on an early morning walk across the school grounds, or the nosy students that came running at the first sound of the teacher’s screams.
After that, to say that news of the Erkling was spreading around the school by the next week was certainly an understatement. It was all anyone could talk about every second of every day from the moment the Ravenclaw Quidditch team first found the remains on the way to an early morning practice. And for nearly a week afterwards, many of the younger students actually refused to leave their dormitories for fear that the Erkling had friends that might be coming back for them any day now. It wasn’t just the younger students who were afraid either. Prefects on their rounds of the halls would jump at the smallest of noises and teachers watched their students just a few moments longer after they left their classrooms.
It was only after Headmaster Flitwick held a school-wide assembly in which each of the professors demonstrated their skills in combat against Erkling-sized targets did things begin to calm down. Only three certain first-years seemed unable to forget the events that had transpired that night.
For long after the school’s panic had faded, Albus, Rose, and even Scorpius found themselves unsure of how to behave or even whether or not they should speak to one another. Sure, after they had survived that ordeal together, they could certainly nearly be friends, but brothers in a secret society? What these three together couldn’t exactly be called friendship. It was a strange combination of fear, awe, and mutual admiration that was shared among the members of the Arcane ScoRA. If the Arcane ScoRA even existed still, because none of them so much as breathed its name.
The underlying sense of panic felt among the society’s members didn’t do anything to ease the tension among them. For days afterwards, they would jump whenever a teacher called on them in class, shake in their shoes whenever they were stopped in the halls by their house prefects, and feel the constant queasiness in their stomachs as though they were filled with leaping toads. Albus almost began to wonder whether it would have been easier to just let Professor Vhartan catch them and simply take their punishment. No matter what she would have been able to think of in terms of their detention, at least it would be over and done with.
Nevertheless, the days went by, and the days eventually turned into weeks. They still hadn’t been caught, or so much as asked to stay after class. Eventually, even if they took longer that the rest of their classmates had, Albus’, Rose’s, and Scorpius’ routines began to return to normal, save the fact that Rose was no longer a moping mess. Although she still had yet to become friendly with any of the other Ravenclaw girls, a renewed glow about her went with being happy for the first time in ages. Everyone in the family of Gryffindors noticed it, but not one of them dared question it, for fear of jinxing the mood.
“Albus,” Rose ran from behind shouting one day, just before Transfiguration. “Albus, wait for me!”
Albus watched as his cousin pushed her way through a crowd of not-so-pleased fifth-year girls and doubled forward to gasp for breath when she finally reached him.
“You do know that we’re going to be seeing each other five minutes from now, don’t you?” he asked, even though he could already tell by Rose’s expression that whatever she had to say couldn’t wait.
“We have a problem,” Rose told him as she began to move forward toward the classroom, this time dragging Albus behind her.
“What is it?” Albus asked as he struggled to break the hold that Rose had on his robes.
“I had to walk past the bathroom last night,” Rose told him. “Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom! She asked me when we were going to have our next meeting.”
“Meeting?”
For a moment, Albus didn’t know what his cousin was talking about. At least he didn’t until Rose spun around and glared him straight in the eyes.
“Oh,” Albus suddenly remembered, “a ‘meeting’!”
“Yes, Albus! And I didn’t know what to tell her,” Rose went on. “I told her we were still trying to find a time when no one would notice we were gone, but that’s only going to appease her for so long!”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know! Something,” Rose shook her head, “If Moaning Myrtle finds out we were lying to her, she might go tell a teacher about that night, and we’ll be in worse trouble than we were to begin with!”
That possibility hadn’t even crossed Albus’ mind. The night of the Erkling, he was far too worried about being caught by Professor Vhartan to think too distantly into the future.
“So what do we do now?” he asked Rose, who seemed to be the only one who had thought this all through.
“Tonight,” she whispered, just a few steps away from the door to the Transfiguration classroom, “the two of us will go down to the Slytherin dormitories and talk to Scorpius. Until then, just try to see if you can keep up with today’s discussion on Switching Spells.”
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Albus asked Rose as he followed her down the stairs. “Why would anyone want to live all the way down here?”
The dungeon level of the castle was creepy enough during the day. Albus couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be down here at night, much less sleep down here. As he and Rose made their way down the staircase, Albus found himself aware of even the faintest echoes and every flicker in the candlelight. His heart pounded beneath his school robes, and his eyes flicked in every direction like a reflex.
“Albus, you see the Slytherins come from the dungeons every morning,” Rose argued, exasperated. “I think you’re just looking for excuses not to be down here!”
Albus ground his teeth. Deep down in his psyche, Albus knew that Rose was probably right. He had been afraid of the dungeons ever since the first day he had been down there, and for good reason. When James came home for Christmas his first year at Hogwarts, he celebrated his first night home by waiting until their parents were asleep, and regaling him and Lily with what may have been the scariest story Albus had ever heard.
As they jump down the last few steps and crept further into the dungeons, Albus began to remember the entire story in vivid detail. Back during the Second War, when Voldemort controlled Hogwarts and everything else in Britain, the students suffered horribly. The Carrows thrived on the suffering of others, and would torture even the youngest students for the smallest of infractions. Dumbledore’s Army tried to hold up their resistance and the teachers and even Headmaster Snape did everything they could to spare those around them from suffering, but they could not be everywhere at once.
James would go on to tell them about how when so many people suffer together for so long, something horrible happens. All that pain, all those screams, all that suffering, it turns into something ugly, something horrible. It becomes something as real as anything else that lives and breathes; and to make matters worse, it feeds in order to stay alive. It searches through people’s minds, finding what made them truly afraid. When Albus asked if this was how Dementors were created, James shook his head solemnly. These were so much worse than Dementors, he told them. A Dementor could be destroyed, but there was no spell or charm that could wipe away a living manifestation of a memory. So as long as it could continue to feed, that manifestation would drift through the halls of Hogwarts, in the darkest corners, in the deepest dungeons: waiting, hungering.
Albus kept these thoughts to himself as Rose began pushing on various points of one of the damp stone walls, sometimes even pressing her ear to the wall like a safe cracker.
“The entrance to the Slytherin common room is supposed to behind one of these stone,” she explained. “I’m not quite sure where, but if it’s behind the walls, we should be able to her something. A hollow, voices from the common room, anything.”
Albus nodded, allowing his cousin to go back to her search while he stood silent and off to the side. Eventually, his gaze settled on one of the flickering candles that lined the damp hallway. How did a manifestation feed? He had heard his dad once talk about all the horrible things you would remember if you ever came near a Dementor. Even if this thing couldn’t be destroyed the way a Dementor could, did it at least feed the same way? What would a manifestation of a tortured memory look like anyway? Was it the kind of thing you could even see? Would there be a shriek or at least a chill in the air to warn them it was coming?
“Can we help you with something?”
Albus and Rose jumped simultaneously and turned around to be greeted with four dead-looking eyes, their two faces showed no signs of recognizable emotion. Other than a few blinks of quiet observation, there were no clues that they even registered the forms of those in front of them. Yet Albus felt his heart rate go back to normal. Whatever a tortured manifestation did look like, he was certain it didn’t look like the set of identical twins in front of him.
The two girls stood side by side, identical as bookends. They were alike in every aspect, from the creases in their school robes to their polished black shoes. Their dark hair tied back with lacy white ribbons, making their large, almost blank eyes even more noticeable. The Slytherin crests on their robes alone let anyone know that they belonged down there; and all the more obvious that Albus and Rose did not.
“Can I help you with something, ladies?” a drawling voice came from further down the corridor.
Coming from just behind the twins, was Scorpius Malfoy, his heavy book bag slung over his shoulder, loaded down with at least a dozen library books, all on the subject of Herbology. Albus could only guess that they were for the twelve-inch composition that was due three days from now.
“Hello, Scorpius,” the two girls greeted him in monotone unison, soft smiles on each of their faces.
“Claudia, Cecilia,” Scorpius greeted them dryly before shifting his gaze behind them to where Albus and Rose were waiting.
“Albus, Rose,” Scorpius greeted them in that same tone, but almost sounding as though he had been expecting them to be there. “How nice to see you.”
“Do you know these two, Scorpius?” the girl on the left asked Scorpius in a disgusted tone, referring to Albus and Rose in the same way a person may refer to a squished cockroach.
“I don’t see how that’s any concern of yours, Claudia.”
Claudia wrinkled her nose and flashed Scorpius with an irritated stare. It was the first time in the whole conversation that the two girls weren’t identical. Even the other girl, Cecilia, seemed shocked.
“Why are they here then?” Cecilia tried.
“Again, none of your concern, ladies,” Scorpius repeated himself.
So much for inter-house loyalties.
“Why don’t you two go into the common room,” Scorpius suggested to the two girls. “Albus and Rose did not come here to talk to you.”
This time, the girls’ faces held matching looks of annoyance. They didn’t move from their spot, but Scorpius continued to stare them down, his eyes growing more intense with every moment he was made to wait. Even Albus felt himself begin to waver, even though Scorpius wasn’t even looking at him. Eventually, the two girls did cave under the pressure of the stare-down , and made the way together toward a certain stone, a good three feet away from where Rose had been looking for it.
“Severus,” the twins said simultaneously, and the wall opened up to allow them into the Common Room.
Even after the Pucey girls were gone, there was a long moment of silence in the dungeon corridor. Albus squirmed where he stood, grinding his teeth and scratching at the sleeves of his robes, while Rose seemed to be treating the scene more or less like that of an academic observer, quietly watching the whole scene unfold with quiet cautiousness. Scorpius, however, was the only one of them who stood completely at ease. In fact, he even seemed annoyed, regarding the two visitors as uninvited company.
“Merlin, those Pucey girls give me the creeps!” Scorpius muttered, more to himself than to his company. “Is this important?” Scorpius turned to Albus and Rose and asked in a flat tone, as though he couldn’t have cared whether or not the two of them were there, yet couldn’t wait for them to leave either.
There was a certain level of unease among the three students. It certainly didn’t seem like the kind of way that friends should behave around one another. But were they even friends? That still seemed to be unclear at the moment.
“Myrtle wants to have a meeting!” Albus blurted out before he knew what he was saying. He still couldn’t help but feel somewhat intimidated by the early exchange between Scorpius and the Pucey twins.
Yet still, Scorpius refused to show any signs of stress or worry. “So what? We all want things. I want a new racing broom for Christmas, and I also want pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. Excuse me if I’m not in that much of a hurry to””
“She could go to a professor,” Rose explained, as though Scorpius should have been able to figure this out for himself, “and then we’ll be in trouble for being out of bed at night and for lying about it.”
Now Scorpius was frightened. His face lost what little pale coloring it had and he began shaking where he stood. One hand reached up to grab at his own hair while the other hand’s fingers tapped against his arms. His eyes held a deep look of panicked concentration, as though his mind were racing to come up with an idea; any idea.
“The Halloween Feast,” Scorpius said finally, appearing to calm down as he spoke more and more. “It’s going to happen this Friday. The entire school will be there, students and teachers both. That means that no one will be out in the corridors, and, moreover, no one to go looking for us.”
“But what are we going to talk about?” Rose interjected. “She wants a meeting; we have to talk about something!”
“We started this whole ScoRA thing without even trying,” Scorpius argued back. “Don’t you think we could run our way through one little meeting if we put our minds to it? We have this one little meeting, we bide our time until we have decided that the school doesn’t need us anymore, and we ‘disbar’; get it?”
Rose seemed to pout at Scorpius answer gave her, as though the very sound of his reasoning annoyed her to no end; but Albus seemed to feel merely relieved at the materialization of Scorpius’ plan. He had been worried about this whole ‘secret society’ ever sense it had been accidentally formed; how they would keep any of their classmates from finding out, how they would keep Myrtle from going to the professors, and how they would be able to keep this thing together when the three of them were barely acquaintances. He would be glad to see it finally end.
“Well,” Scorpius finally spoke up after yet another moment of awkward silence, “you two know how we’re going to solve this. You can leave now; I have a composition I need to finish before the night is over.”
Despite the relief that Albus felt from Scorpius’ plan, he couldn’t help feeling slightly confused over his behavior. The night of the Erkling, after nearly all being killed together, it almost seemed like they had regarded each other as friends. Yet here, talking in the corridors weeks after the incident, Scorpius seemed to be acknowledging them with even less warmth than he had that first day on the train. It was almost as though he were trying to forget what they had been through together.
“Um, Scorpius,” Albus spoke up before he and Rose made their way towards the stairs, “Rose and I are just going to dinner. Do you want to come eat with us?”
“I don’t think so,” Scorpius answered without making eye contact, his gazed fixed on the stone that opened to the Slytherin common room. “Severus.”
Once again, the stone wall shifted open, and Scorpius disappeared down into the Slytherin dormitories, leaving Albus and Rose to contemplate his behavior and their so-called friendship.
Black and orange banners, balloons, and candle-lit, floating pumpkins decorated the Great Hall the night of the Halloween Feast. A band made up of Hogwarts fifth-years played songs that no one knew the words to, and eventually became ignored. It was one of the biggest festivities of the year, and every student was there.
But at the Gryffindor, Albus Potter alternated between looking over his shoulder at the Slytherin table and peeking over heads to the Ravenclaw table. Scorpius sat as close to the door as the first-years were allowed, watching for anyone about to turn the corner into the Great Hall. Rose kept her eyes on the party as a whole, waiting for the first opportunity they had to sneak out. Albus, in the middle, acted as the messenger between the two of them; and a type of lookout himself….
James and Fred stared innocently down at their plates, every now and then glancing at each other and Roxanne a few seats down. They were staring to get anxious; it wouldn’t be much longer now.
On a family trip to the United States, James and Fred learned that many teenagers celebrated the holiday by engaging in random acts of vandalism. A tradition that they celebrated to the fullest extent every year since they had been admitted to Hogwarts, and that Roxanne was now a full participant in. What also made the tradition something to be feared was that the planned prank was held under the strictest of confidence, so there was never any clue as to what it was going to be. At least not until the owl came from the headmaster.
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!
One by one, the balloons in the Great Hall burst; the orange balloons splattering anyone near with pumpkin juice and the black ones splattering ink.
POP! POP! POP! POP!
Screams echoed through the Great Hall as the students and staff became stained and soaked. In a not so orderly fashion, every student pushed and shoved as they tried to the fight their way towards the door while the professor shouted futile orders for single files. This was the moment that Albus and the others had been waiting for; with every student the school running in a hundred different directions, no one would notice three first-years slip off to the girls’ bathroom.
While the prefects ran in every direction searching for the scattered Gryffindors, Albus used the opportunity to sneak up the stairs, hidden among a group of Ravenclaw boys. The didn’t notice him as he hid alongside them, and didn’t even noticed when he bolted off in the opposite direction.
On he finally reached the bathroom door, his hand rested briefly on the door handle as he took a deep, reassuring breath, trying to suppress his growing anxieties about the upcoming meeting. What exactly it was that he was afraid of, he had no idea. It all just seemed to be too easy, how they were going to put an end to this whole mess. When he finally felt somewhat relaxed, he shut his eyes and pushed the door open
“It’s about time you showed up!” a sharp voice shrieked from behind him, causing him to nearly jump out of his robes.
Scorpius and rose were already waiting for them, Rose pacing across the stone floor. Floating just above the bathroom stalls was Moaning Myrtle, who seemed to be the most impatient one in the room.
“Sorry,” Albus apologized; trying to remember the façade they had created that night before. “Let the first meeting of the Arcane ScoRA come to order!”
The Arcane ScoRA and the Wand of MacArt by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Albus, Rose, and Scorpius survive the encounter with the Erkling only to face threats from something much worse: Moaning Myrtle. And through a series of lies to keep from being told on to the teachers, the Arcane ScoRA is born.
Thanks go out to th_poet14 and Pondering!