The first two weeks went by in a kind of magical haze for Albus. There was something new around every corner, every hour brought something exciting, every closed door held wonders. He had never had such a good time in his life.
The lessons weren’t getting any easier, but he found that he was actually quite good, especially in Charms, where he mastered the Sneezing Spell in fifteen minutes, a feat which earned him twenty points for Gryffindor.
Care of Magical Creatures was a bit of a let-down. Knowing Hagrid, Albus had expected manticores or trolls at the very least. Instead, they were studying the physiology of the Crup, which was not particularly interesting.
Defense Against the Dark Arts continued to be a bit of a joke. Dawlish seemed mystified by his own magic and in one especially memorable class had set fire to a desk while trying to demonstrate a Freezing Charm.
Getting to class was fraught with peril; Peeves the Poltergeist was just as bad as he had been described by Albus’s parents and Vladimir, the caretaker, was notoriously quick to dole out detentions for backfiring charms or loitering students.
Albus saw rather less of James than he had expected; as they had no classes together he only saw him at meals and in the evenings and he was then usually hanging out with his Quidditch team (he had, of course, made Seeker).
Of Scorpius, he saw too much. His hair was still jet-black like Albus’s despite Professor Artemis’s best efforts. The charm had clearly been badly worded and the fatal loophole had yet to be discovered.
Scorpius spent most of his time moping around the common room. Rose had once taken pity on him and invited him to a game of Gobstones, but he wouldn’t respond and she gave him up as a lost cause.
There was just so much to see around Hogwarts! The ghosts, the feasts, the walking suits of armor. Albus felt that he’d never get used to seeing so much casual magic.
But he was getting used to it. The huge castle, at first so alien and strange, already felt like a home. He sometimes wondered if he was in a dream and would wake up soon.
One glance at his pile of homework and these musings would usually disappear with alacrity.
“So when’s your next Quidditch practice?” Albus asked James at breakfast one day in mid-September. The sky above them was grey and rainy, mirroring the glum weather outside.
“Tonight,” said James with a groan. “I think it’s going to be so rainy we won’t even be able to fly.”
“Maybe it’ll be cancelled,” suggested Albus, helping himself to kippers. This was unlikely; the Captain of the team was Jessica Hurley, who was not the sort to let a little rain ruin her practice.
James snorted. “Maybe. What’s on the agenda for classes?”
Rose leaned over. “We’ve got Defense and Charms before lunch and double Potions afterwards.
“Ugh,” said Dominique, who was seated next to Rose. “I hate Potions.”
The Potions Master, Alfred Grimpen was not the sort of teacher that Dominique liked. He tended to sit back and let his class do their work, occasionally grading papers while a class was going on.
“Oh, Grimpen’s not a bad bloke,” said James. “He gave me an E once.”
No one seemed very impressed. James’s schoolwork was quite a way behind his Quidditch skills.
When breakfast was done, the first-years trooped upstairs for Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Hufflepuffs.
“Hope he doesn’t try to teach us dueling today,” said Fred. “He hinted he might and I don’t fancy going to the hospital with boils on my eyelids.”
“He really isn’t a very good teacher, is he?” asked Rose, looking around nervously as though the man himself might be hiding behind a pillar.
“Nope,” said Albus as they turned a corner. Vladimir was seated on a folding chair reading a thick book next to a large pile of what looked like animal dung.
“Nice to see that he’s keeping up on his reading,” snickered Fred when they were out of earshot.
Dawlish wasn’t in the room when the class entered. Noisy bangs were issuing from underneath the door of his office. Rose and Albus exchanged looks of gloomy anticipation.
The door opened and Dawlish entered carrying an armful of spongy mats. “Hello class,” he said, his voice muffled by the high pile of mats. “Please form a line at the front of the room.”
Whispering, the class did so. Dawlish threw the pile of mats on the ground and pointed his wand at the desks and chairs.
They all flew into a heap at the back of the classroom, several of them breaking off legs or backs in the rush.
“Damn,” said Dawlish under his breath. Aloud, he said: “Please pick partners. Each set take a mat and spread it out.
Fred and Albus took a mat and smoothed it out on the stone floor in the empty space where the desks had been. Everyone else did the same. Scorpius was left without a partner.
“No matter, Mr. Malfoy, you can practice with me,” said Dawlish. A look of horror appeared on Scorpius’s pale face, which Dawlish either didn’t see or misinterpreted.“Now today we’re going to be practicing the most basic dueling spell there is. It’s quite complex for your ages, though, so don’t expect results immediately. It’s called the Knockback Jinx. It does exactly what it says it does. It will knock your opponent on his back.”
Dawlish elaborated for another half-hour on properly performing the jinx and its incantation. Albus tapped his wand against his leg, impatient to begin.
Finally Dawlish said: “The incantation is Flipendo. Miss Weasley and Miss Weasley, why don’t you start us off?”
Rose and Dominique looked at each other nervously. Both raised their wands.
“Flipendo!” said Rose. Nothing happened.
Dominique tried as well, but again there were no results.
Dawlish went through the pairs, but nothing happened. No one was able to master the spell, which, Albus was beginning to suspect, was too advanced.
“I will show you all how its done with Mr. Malfoy,” said Dawlish exasperatedly. “Watch what I do closely.”
“Flipendo!” he yelled, pointing his wand at Scorpius.
Instead of being knocked on his back, Scorpius flew across the room and into the pile of desks and chairs with a sickening crash. Everyone winced.
Dawlish ran across the room and extricated Scorpius from the wreckage. Aside from a small cut on his forehead he appeared more dazed than harmed.
“Dreadfully sorry, Mr. Malfoy,” spluttered Dawlish, wiping the trickle of blood with the hem of his robe. “Slight miscalculation there; I’m a little toogood, I suppose.”
“I’m okay,” said Scorpius, his expression dazed.
The lesson ended ten minutes after without a single student, including Rose, performing the Knockback Jinx. Albus bemoaned the four-page essay on the Jinx, which he had never even performed.
Fred thought that Scorpius hitting the pile of desks was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. “That old git,” he said, wiping tears of suppressed laughter from his eyes. “Can’t even do a first-year spell properly!”
Rose was very put out by her inability to perform the Jinx. “I mean I understood the theory,” she said as they hurried to Charms, “but I just pointed my wand and nothing happened.”
Scorpius stalked behind the main knot of Gryffindors, his face downturned. Albus could just see the glistening of blood on his head.
“Do you think he’s all right?” whispered Dominique.
“Who cares?” said Fred, who looked positively jolly. “The little prig needed it. You know I haven’t heard him say a single word to anyone outside of class.”
Charms was, in Albus’s opinion, a bit of a bore. Professor Artemis had given each student a cup of water and they were instructed to use the Boiling Charm (which had been discussed, but not taught) to make it boil.
Albus had his water boiling within ten minutes, a feat that only Rose and two or three other students had managed. Fred’s sole achievement was to make his water come up in a mini-wave that soaked him and Dominique, who was sitting with him.
After Charms was lunch. Everyone from first-year was talking about the disastrous Defense lesson and Rose had gotten out a spellbook and was trying to figure out why she had failed.
James laughed loudly when the story was told and he, like Fred, thought that both Dawlish and Scorpius had gotten what they deserved.
After a full meal of roasted chicken, Albus and the other first-years headed down to the dungeons for Potions. Albus had done fairly well in the class so far and wasn’t too worried about today.
Professor Grimpen was calmly writing at his desk when the class entered. A portly, mellow-faced man, he looked up when the door banged open and gave his class a half-wave.
“Hello children,” he said. “Please take your seats.”
The Ravenclaws were already there, several of them clandestinely putting ingredients into their cauldrons.
Albus, Rose, Dominique and Fred all sat at a table together. When everyone was seated, Professor Grimpen gave a short speech on the Wart-Eliminating Elixir, which was what the class would be making.
The instructions didn’t look too difficult. Albus set to chopping his Gurdyroots and adding Fwooper claws to the bubbling mixture.
For about an hour everyone was very busy. Rose’s potion was the ideal deep blue, while Albus’s stubbornly remained purple, but he thought it was a pretty fair effort, despite his accidental omission of Doxie venom.
When his potion was more or less complete, Albus looked around the dungeon to see how the others were faring. Most of the potions were pink or purple with very few blues. Fred’s was the color and consistency of butterbeer.
Just as Albus was turning his attention back to his own potion, there was a tremendous bang.
The contents of a Ravenclaw’s potion (which looked quite a lot like tar) had somehow sprayed into the air, drenching Scorpius. He screamed as dozens of enormous warts erupted all over his face and arms.
Grimpen jumped to his feet and waved his wand. The spilled potion disappeared, though the ugly warts (which were a nasty carrot color) remained. Scorpius was whimpering.
“I’ll take you to the hospital wing, lad,” said Grimpen. “Ten points from Ravenclaw, Miss Fawcett! What were you thinking? Never stick your wand in a potion unless the instructions say so. Class dismissed.”
He bustled out with Scorpius and the class began bottling samples of their elixirs, all talking about what had happened.
“How much can happen to one person?” asked Fred incredulously. “First he gets his hair colored black. Then he gets thrown into a pile of desks. Now this.”
Scorpius re-appeared at dinner, boil-free and scowling. Albus couldn’t blame him; he’d had a hard day.
Fred filled James in between mouthfuls of roast beef. James thought it was the greatest joke he’d ever heard and laughed so loudly that he sprayed a third-year Hufflepuff with food.
“Unbelievable,” he said. “Of course that’ll look like nothing when the entire Quidditch team gets hit by lightning in practice tonight.”
An icy stare from Jessica Hurley made James suddenly very interested in his chips.
The very thought of the homework he had made Albus want to curl up and go to sleep. But the essay on the Knockback Jinx was due in two days and he needed it to be over with.
Albus started in on his essay while James and Fred played a very loud game of wizard’s chess, which incited gambling from onlookers. The noise and the crowd made it very difficult to concentrate.
Robert, the curly-haired boy, was also working on his essay, as, of course, was Rose. Almost everyone else was otherwise occupied.
Albus wrote a sentence and realized that it was utter nonsense. The next thing he knew he was in the dark and the common room was empty.
He was laying with his face in his essay; he had ink all over his cheeks and in his hair. He swore and looked at his watch. It read 1:22.
He’d fallen asleep and ruined his essay. Growling, Albus threw the ruined parchment in the still-smoldering fire.
Albus was so tired that he contemplated falling asleep again (he was comfortably lying at full length on a sofa), but decided to get up to the dormitory. He would worry about his essay in the morning.
Just as he got off the couch he heard a noise on the boys’ staircase. He looked up in surprise.
Scorpius, fully dressed and wearing a backpack, was tiptoeing down the staircase, wand in one hand. Albus thought that he could see tear tracks on his face in the dim firelight.
“What are you doing?” whispered Albus when Scorpius reached the bottom.
Scorpius jumped and pointed his wand at Albus. “I’m leaving,” he hissed. “I hate this place. Don’t try to stop me.”
He ran to the portrait-hole and flung it open before Albus could move. It slammed shut behind him.
Albus followed, not really sure what he was planning to do. He opened the portrait-hole and climbed out into the dark corridor.
“Scorpius?”
He saw a flash of movement down the corridor. Scorpius was creeping along.
Albus gave up. He wasn’t going to get detention just because Scorpius Malfoy had decided to run off. He turned to the portrait.
The Fat Lady was gone, probably visiting her friend Violet. Albus was trapped.
Albus swore under his breath and chased after Scorpius, hoping that his trainer-clad feet were fairly quiet on the stone.
He turned a corner and just saw the edge of Scorpius’s cloak whip around a suit of armor.
“Scorpius,” he hissed.
There was no response.
Should he follow him, shake some sense into him? Probably. Albus was sure that the punishment for running away was severe and he had to feel sorry for Scorpius, despite his status as an enemy.
Albus rounded the next corridor and crept down the next flight of stairs, which was surely where Scorpius had gone, since he was presumably heading to the main entrance hall.
It was a very stupid plan in Albus’s opinion. There were sure to be defensive spells, locked doors and probably Vladimir between Scorpius and his goal.
Despite his annoyance, Albus felt a little jolt of excitement. It was very strange lurking around the castle at night, but it felt somehow right. He was finally at Hogwarts having adventures.
Hogwarts, which seemed enormous during the day, was even larger in the dark. It was only Albus’s good sense of direction that kept him going, since all the staircases and corridors looked more or less the same to him.
Scorpius had gotten a head start and was not in sight; luckily, neither was anyone else. Twice, Albus thought he heard a teacher moving around, but he didn’t see anyone. The only living thing he saw was a far-off ghost (which hardly counted as a living thing, anyway).
After about fifteen minutes, Albus found his way to the main entrance hall, which seemed absolutely cavernous in the dark. Scorpius was standing at the huge doors, apparently stumped by a lock or spell.
“Scorpius!” whispered Albus, running over. Scorpius pointed his wand at Albus’s face.
“You’ve gotta see sense; you’ll never get away. Let’s just get back to the common room before we get caught!”
“No,” snarled Scorpius. “I hate it here! I won’t stay!”
Albus heard a sound coming from the first floor and turned his head toward it. Probably nothing, but someone would come soon. He had to act fast.
“Alohomora!”
Albus turned around and was buffeted in the face by the heavy wooden doors, which were silently swinging inward. He fell to the hard stone and Scorpius bolted.
Someone was coming. Albus could hear footsteps. He jumped up and dashed out into the night, after Scorpius.
His first sensation was that of cold. He was wearing his school uniform, but it wasn’t made to protect him from mid-September Scotland.
He could just see the dim figure of Scorpius racing across the grounds. What could he be thinking? He couldn’t Apparate or magically leave the school at all.
Albus tripped on a stone step and realized that he was halfway to the Forbidden Forest already. Voices were coming from the castle, but they were subdued. It was possible that they hadn’t been discovered.
He chased after Scorpius, hoping Hagrid would see them and help them back into the dormitory. This seemed unlikely, for Hagrid’s hut was quite a way from where they were.
“Scorpius!”
Scorpius had just plunged into the first line of trees and was lost from sight, hidden by their thick branches.
Going into the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night was a stupid thing to do, but if Scorpius kept blundering around in there he would get himself killed.
Albus took a deep breath and followed him into the Forest.
It was pitch-black. Albus could barely see his own hands. He remembered a spell that his father occasionally used.
“Lumos,” he whispered.
To his delight, a pencil-thin beam of light emanated from the end of his wand, illuminating the dark forest like a Muggle flashlight.
He could now see the bottoms of the huge trees and a few ferns, but no sign of Scorpius.
Albus reluctantly moved forward, shining his light and hoping to see a small dark-robed figure.
He didn’t think he’d ever been more frightened in his life, but he couldn’t help thinking of what a story he’d have to tell Fred and Rose and Dominique when he made it back. If he made it back.
After about ten minutes of searching, Albus had not found Scorpius and wasn’t entirely sure where he himself was. He started to think of all the things that lived in the Forbidden Forest.
His hand began to shake a little and his wand fell to the ground. The light went out.
Albus scrabbled on the ground in a panic, scratching his knuckles against tree roots and digging frantically in the dirt. He felt great relief when his fingers clutched a piece of wood that he thought was his wand.
“You’ve come.”
The voice was so unexpected that Albus almost screamed out loud. He lay on the ground, praying that the cover of darkness hid him.
“Of course. I got your owl. Everything well, I trust?”
Both voices were male and Albus thought he might have recognized the second speaker, but he couldn’t tell from where.
He carefully lifted his head an infinitesimal amount and dimly saw the outlines of two cloaked men standing just a few yards away. A large tree root hid him from their view.
The first man snorted. “Loki’s got everyone in order, but he wants a report about your”mission.”
“I’m working on it, okay? I’m keeping tabs on our little friend and I’m working as hard as I can on the object. It’s difficult, though. Loki better be prepared to wait.”
“Oh, he is,” said the first man. His voice was rough and low. “He wants this to go perfectly and he will wait years if he has to.”
The second man chuckled a little. “I said it was hard, not impossible. The protective spells”well, in any case, it’ll be done in a few months.”
“See that it is,” said the first speaker shortly. “If there’s nothing further to report?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Goodnight then,” said the rough-voiced man. Albus heard two pairs of feet, neither moving in his direction. Eventually he could hear nothing but his own quiet breathing.
He did not know how long he lay there, terrified that one of the men might return. He played the conversation over and over in his head, but he was tired and frightened and didn’t get any real significance out of it.
Just as he felt he might be recovered enough to stand, he heard a thin cry. It sounded like Scorpius.
Albus jumped up and ran towards the sound of the cry, praying that Scorpius was not in the hands of one of the men he had heard earlier.
He was not. Albus came upon a deep ditch just a couple hundred yards from where he had been hidden. At the bottom was Scorpius, who had, evidently, fallen into it.
“It’s me,” hissed Albus, wishing that Scorpius would keep his voice down. “Are you hurt?”
“There was something in the forest, something big,” Scorpius said, panicked. “It”it swatted at me and I ran and it was huge and I fell””
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” said Scorpius. “But I can’t get out.”
Albus got down on his stomach and reached his hands as far down into the ditch as far as he could. Scorpius grabbed his hands and started to climb up the sheer dirt wall.
It was a painstaking process and Albus dropped Scorpius several times. Finally, he climbed over the lip of the ditch and the two boys flopped down on the forest floor, exhausted.
“Hagrid said he set some traps for the Bugbears,” said Albus, panting. “That must have been one of them.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Scorpius whispered randomly. “I hate it here. I wrote to my dad, but he said I couldn’t come home and I thought if I went through the Forest I could find a town or something””
“Scorpius,” said Albus, struggling to keep his voice level. “You have to go back. You’ll get killed if you blunder off into the Forest like this, not to mention those who might try to rescue you! Let’s just get back to the common room””
“I don’t have any friends,” whispered Scorpius, apparently oblivious to Albus. “Everyone laughs at me. Everyone hates me.”
This was desperate. “Look, I can be your friend if you just come back to the common room with me right now,” said Albus. “Come on.”
He got up and Scorpius followed suit without another word, something Albus was sincerely thankful for.
“Do you know which way to go?” asked Scorpius, baffled by the dark. Albus reignited his wand-tip and the beam of light lit up Scorpius’s tear-streaked face. Albus pointed in a northerly direction. “That way, I think.”
It took a surprisingly brief walk to find the edge of the forest again. Albus saw no sign of either the mystery men or the creature that Scorpius had described.
They crept up to the castle under the dim moon. Hagrid’s hut was dark. That was a good sign. Hopefully, no one had noticed the open door.
Apparently no one had, for they found the huge double doors exactly as they had left them. Albus debated trying to reclose them magically, but thought that the noise might wake someone up.
The two boys snuck through the maze of hallways and staircases. It took a long time to reach the common room because Albus was too tired to remember the circuitous route he had taken on the way out.
Albus didn’t think he’d ever seen anything as beautiful as the Fat Lady sitting in her portrait, gently snoozing.
“Merlin,” said Albus.
The portrait swung open without its occupant waking up and Albus walked into the wonderfully warm common room.
The two boys went up the staircase without saying anything. Albus was just too tired.
A soft, warm bed was just what Albus needed. He sleepily changed into his pajamas (putting his muddy clothes in the hamper) and slid under the covers. Scorpius did the same.
Just as he fell asleep, Albus wondered who had been meeting in the Forest and why? Who was the “little friend?” What was the second man”the one who sounded a little familiar”building?
He would think about it in the morning.