A Stitch in Time

Chapter 15

Scorpius headed down towards the Great Hall for lunch, where, to his disgust, Pansy and his father were smiling and sitting next to one another.

Pansy didn't even look at Scorpius as he passed by, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that she did appear quite disgusted with him for ridiculing her. As he took his seat at the Slytherin table, the usual group of girls settled themselves near Scorpius.

He ignored their giggling, and turned to look at Rose, who turned away as soon as she felt his gaze. Scorpius looked at her back in confusion. Why Rose was intent on ignoring him, he had no idea. He gave his head a shake and pulled out his schedule. Oh, I have Care of Magical Creatures with Gryffindor. He thought. He glanced over at Albus, who smiled back at him.

To his surprise, his mother walked over and sat down next to him. "Oh, hey Astoria." He said. Astoria nodded at him, put her book bag down, then glared at Pansy and Draco. "I can't believe he's going out with her. Why would he go out with her after he saw how she really is? It doesn't make any sense to me!"

Scorpius shrugged. "I think his entire plan all a long was to break me up with Pansy, not ridicule Pansy." He said.

Astoria scowled. "I should have known. He was actually plotting against you!"

Scorpius raised his eyebrows as if to pretend this was news to him. "Oh, really?"

Astoria looked ashamed. "Yeah, and I actually helped him. That's the worst part. I'm sorry."

"Nah, its okay. If you hadn't helped him with the plan, I would have never known how Pansy was, and I would've kept dating her."

Astoria brightened up. "Well at least someone knows how she really is..."

After eating lunch, Albus and Neville walked to Hagrid's lesson together. They made their way down to the hut, where some other students were gathered. Albus saw Hagrid talking with Harry, Ron, and Hermione behind the hut and was shaking his head to something that they were telling him.

Hagrid then straightened up and walked over to the waiting students, a wide smile on his face.

"All righ', everyone!" he boomed with his deep voice, "I've go' a treat for ya today. Follow me, please!"

He led the class down a path in the woods (not the Forbidden Forest, though) and stopped at a large, wooden gate. Albus's eyes widened at what he saw.

Big, magnificent creatures grazing around the clearing, each a different shade of grey, white, black, or bronze. Their front half was that of a bird's, but their rear end were a horse's rump, legs and tail.

"Look, he's teaching us about Hippogriffs!" Neville said, pointing to one of the creatures, which were apparently called hippogriffs.

Albus looked at the grey hippogriff, who was arrogantly watching the students mill around the fence with narrowed, yellow eyes.

Scorpius arrived soon behind Albus and Neville, and behind him were Draco and Pansy, the latter cooing at Draco.

Hagrid clapped his hands loudly and the students became silent.

"Alrigh' now. Settle it down. As yeh can see, today's lesson is Hippogriffs. Yeh may want ter come closer ter them to get a better look at 'em."

The students looked around at each other as if Hagrid had gone crazy. Albus noticed his father, his aunt and uncle approached them carefully though. Neville looked at Albus with wide eyes, clearly not wanting to go near the half-bird-half-horse things.

"Hippogriffs are very proud creatures, so don' insult one 'cause it won't be good for yeh."

Albus noticed that Draco was being very rude to Hagrid during all this, he wasn't paying any attention and was talking to some of his friends and Pansy. Scorpius was also glaring at them too, since him and Albus were always friendly to Hagrid.