Knock knock knock...
"Who's that?" Eleanor Malfoy called from behind the door of her home. When she opened it, she saw that it was us and widened her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Elle..." Sarah Beth muttered. Scorpius Malfoy crept out from behind her, red-faced and teary-eyed.
"Oh no." Elle sighed. "I shouldn't have- I swear if that little creep hurt him, I'll transfigure him into a... pig, or- or something! Scorpy! Are you hurt, baby? Come here..."
Scorpius looked at his mother from behind his hair and shook his head "no."
"No? Then what happened to make Scorpius cry?!"
"I broke him!" Scorpius wailed. "I broke Ben!"
Eleanor was puzzled, and she looked at Sarah Beth. Sarah Beth, in turn, turned to me. I stammered a bit and began.
"Okay, Elle, so... er, there was... No. The... we went to Jeff's, okay?"
Eleanor nodded, still clutching Scorpius.
"Okay. And... we, th- there was Ben, and he... was... still mad at Scorpius. From the last time... time, yes. Yeah... But, ermmmm..."
"Uh..."
"Uh......."
"We-"
Sarah Beth stopped me. "You're impossible, Ashley! I'll tell her!"
I coughed and let the girl speak, which she did tremendously quickly:"
"Ben was really, really, really mad at Scorpy because of the last time where he got in trouble with Jeff, and he wanted to get back at him.
"Jeff said no.
"I said no.
"Ashley was all 'ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh.' And I looked at him all 'Are you serious?!' Because, I mean, we're talking about Scorpius here, and I just don't want him hurt...
"But then Ben called me something that was less than stellar in the nice department. Something that included the word 'fat' and a cute little word that started with a B...
"And Jeff's mouth dropped open, and so did Ashley's, and so did mine."
I stepped in again, saying "Then," but I was once again interrupted by Sarah Beth.
"I got this, dear. Um, where was I? Oh yes! Then, Scorpius looked right at him and said something equally not nice about Ben, which he then apologized about. And so Ben laughed at him, and then... er, well..."
Sarah Beth and I sighed audibly and said:
"Scorpius punched him." Okay, I said "clocked him," but exact quotations are not important right now.
"He went down, Ben did." I said. "Crying. With a... black eye. And then Scorpius felt bad, and here we are."
Eleanor's mouth was agape, and her eyes bore into ours, moving back and forth. She put her mouth to Scorpius's ear and whispered:
"Mummy is very, very, very, very, very, very proud of you, dear."
"But... why? I was mean..." Scorpius stopped sobbing for a moment.
"No no no no no. You were very brave. And you stood up for Sarah Beth because you are very loyal and loving to her. Ben is mean because he uses power to hurt because he can. You have power, but you only fight because you have to."
"I don't like fighting, Mummy..."
"I know. I don't like fighting either, but... but there are times in our lives when we are going to have to stand up for ourselves or for the people we love."
