Hogwarts: A Future

Chapter Seven: Paths of Many Ways

The next few weeks of the first term were too full for the new friends to spend much time dwelling on Cathy, or even the older Slytherins. Neither Scorpius nor Al heard if Professor Longbottom had spoken to Aello and her cronies, but none of them had done more than shoot filthy looks at the first years since their first Herbology class. Scorpius had told Al, with great relief that Aello was leaving him alone in the Slytherin Common Room. The food fight, entirely accidentally initiated by Al (as he was often forced to repeat when James began re-living the event with much hyperbole), had earned Al a truly enormous box of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes from Uncle George and Uncle Ron, and a firm letter from his parents. However, he had to laugh when opening that particular letter from home and discovering two additional sealed notes within the envelope, one from each of his parents, each congratulating him at achieving what was quite possibly the Weasley dream. 'Your father and I caught each other trying to send you similar notes,' his mother had written, 'so we agreed to send the reprimand with these notes within.' Al had grinned quietly to himself before slipping the notes into his pocket.

Lesson after lesson rolled by, causing homework to pile up on the first years like a snowdrift. When they weren't struggling to work out the basic ingredients to a Soothing Potion, or making notes on Transfiguring matchsticks into needles, there were the various school clubs to try out; provided, of course, that they could find them!

Hogwarts was as vast to Scorpius, Petra, Edwin, Al and Iapetus as it had been to every first year since its completion. Al found, even with numerous Weasley cousins, that he was still as likely to get lost as any of the others.

'I think I've worked it out,' Scorpius said one lunchtime as the five of them enjoyed a brief spell of October sunshine in a quiet courtyard. He looked up from the piece of parchment he had been scribbling on. Scorpius' left fingertips were, as usual, covered with ink as he held up the parchment with a flourish.

'What is it?' asked Edwin, trying to catch a clear view of it as the parchment began to curl without Scorpius' other hand to retain it.

'It's a sort of chart of where all our classes are, and the rooms that the clubs will be held in, and the shortcuts we've found!' Scorpius beamed excitedly. Al grabbed the parchment out of his hand to save the scribbles Scorpius had laboured over from vanishing beneath his inky fingerprints.

'So, a map?' said Al, straightening out the parchment.

'Nope!' Scorpius grinned even more, a flush of success heightening in his pale cheeks. 'It's better than a map. On a map you still have to find where you are and how to get to where you want to go, right?'

'Seems plausible,' said Petra now craning her neck with interest over Al's shoulder at Scorpius' work.

'Now this,' Scorpius gestured to the parchment, splattering ink on Edwin's face as he did so, 'should, if I get the spell right, know where you are because you see, you tell the chart where you are and where you want to go, and it'll come up with instructions on how to get there!'

The other four looked at each other, impressed.

'Okay. That's pretty cool,' Iapetus patted Scorpius on the shoulder, 'show us how you did it?'

'Um, that's the only snag,' Scorpius screwed his face up with annoyance, 'I don't know how to do the spell that'll make it work. At the moment the parchment is just a bunch of written directions that I've noted down. The spell is sort of a directional spell, and I think it'll work on the parchment because I used the kind of ink that they use to colour wizarding photographs.'

'What we need is either an older student who knows how to do the spell,' began Petra.

'Or, find out how to do it ourselves,' finished Al.