Harry Potter : the next generation

chapter 2

Rose Weasley grabbed the boy by the wrist as she darted out the door. "Come on," she said to him, running full-tilt down the narrow corridor. She had only had time to jinx James, and Fabian, Gideon, and Rommy might come after them at any moment.

She ran, hoping that the prefects would be patrolling the carriages. She wasn't disappointed: she quickly found the prefect she had been looking for, a girl with short hair that ran several shades of the color spectrum, mostly in the deep bluish-purples: from vivid magenta bangs to a deep indigo around the nape of her neck. "Missy," she said.

Artemisia Lupin smiled at her, but the smile faded as she saw how panicked Rose looked. "What is it?" She swallowed. "I – James—Rommy—" Artemisia sighed. "Rommy and James in trouble again? What were they doing this time?"

"They tried to hex him," she said, seeing Missy look from her to the blond-haired boy and back again and knowing that she knew who Rose meant. "I—" She swallowed, worrying about what Artemisia might say. "I stopped them, but I had to jinx James, and now—"

She needn't have worried; Artemisia looked grave, but wasn't angry with her. "Rommy's going to have to watch himself," she said. "If he gets one more disciplinary meeting with the Headmistress—" She sighed. "I'll make sure he doesn't hex you. The compartment two doors down is empty – you can sit there." "Empty?" It was the first time the boy had spoken. "How can that compartment be empty? When I got on the train, there weren't any. I was walking around when—" He turned red and fell silent.

To Rose's surprise, Artemisia turned as red as the boy. "I cleared it out," she confessed. "I was just going to get Drew, and—" She swallowed, speaking the next words in a low, embarrassed voice, the words tumbling over one another so that they seemed to be one very long word. "—IthoughtmaybewecouldhaveanhouralonebeforewegottoHogwarts."

"What?" the boy said, baffled, but Rose shook her head, exasperated. Drew was Drew Boot, a Ravenclaw in his sixth year, the same year as Missy. They had been dating since at least the end of last school year. Drew had even come to the party that the Weasleys held at the Burrow every year to celebrate the anniversary of the Dark Lord's defeat; to accommodate the children who were at Hogwarts, they usually ended up holding it a solid two months late, but they all knew what the party was for.

"Boys," she muttered as she pulled the boy past Missy and into the empty compartment. Teddy and Victoire were already snogging, and now it seemed like Missy wanted to snog Drew Boot. She didn't understand what was wrong with everyone; it was like they got to be in fifth or sixth year and caught some sort of snogging disease.

"Not you," she said belatedly, realizing that the boy might have taken it wrong.

"Um – oh," the boy said. He had flushed red again.

"I'm Rose Weasley," she said, wishing the boy would say something. She thrust her hand at him, hoping to force a response. "I'm sorry about my cousins and Rommy. They're not usually that horrible."

The boy didn't say anything; he just stared at her hand as if she'd proffered a completely alien appendage. "You're Scorpius Malfoy, aren't you?" she asked. Her parents had noticed him from across the platform, and her father's comments about not getting too friendly with him and beating him in every exam remained fresh in her mind.

I can still probably beat him in exams, she thought. As for the friendliness—well, what was I supposed to do? Let James curse him? I couldn't just sit there. She knew her parents didn't like the Malfoys; she had heard her father make disparaging comments about them whenever the name came up. She didn't know if what Fabian and Gideon had said was true, though; her parents had never said anything about Scorpius's father being a Death Eater. They didn't talk much about Death Eaters and the war in front of their children; at least, her dad didn't when her mother was around. Sometimes, he would hint about stories of danger and adventure, but even he didn't often say much.