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More than Meets the Eye	By : Desmoulins Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Albus Severus/Scorpius Views: 1062 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I own no part of Harry Potter, nor do I make any money from this...

Chapter List
- 1-More than Meets the Eye
- 2-Chpt. 2
- 1
- 2
Busy with the events of the first day of term, Headmistress McGonagall was exhausted as the new students proceeded to the front of the Great Hall to be sorted. The children barely had the energy to be nervous as they stood in line, watching the others be sorted into their various houses. In the nineteen years since the war, Slytherin house had undergone rapid re-growth, as students began to disassociate Slytherin from the horrors of Voldemort’s reign of terror. As the new students were apportioned among the houses, Headmaster McGonagall noted with some small satisfaction that there were more Slytherins now than in any year since the war. Perhaps, she mused, they were reaching a time when the houses could be freed from the pattern of recrimination and reparation ongoing outside the school. As the next name was called, a ripple of recognition went through the student body, and one of Hogwarts most notorious students walked forward.

“Scorpius Malfoy...Slytherin!” announced the hat, and McGonagall sighed as she saw the look of distrust among many students staring at the young blonde boy. Holding his chin high, with the look of characteristic Malfoy pride, Scorpius walked to the end of the Slytherin table, and McGonagall could not help but admire the boy’s steel as he barely betrayed any hint of discomfort under the heat of so many stares. His name, which had once garnered instant respect and fear, was now dirt. Despite the masterful arranging of his affairs which allowed Lucius Malfoy to retain his enormous estate and huge wealth, his trial for war crimes had largely eroded his family’s standing. While wealth could in large part cushion the Malfoys from feeling the effects of such a fall from grace, the taint which was associated with Voldemort’s followers had destroyed their position of influence immeasurably. Scorpius, the offspring of one of the most universally hated men in the wizarding world, was also in the unfortunate position of being the first child of a known Death Eater to attend Hogwarts since the war had ended. McGonagall, for all her dislike of Draco Malfoy and personal hatred of the Death Eaters, could not help but feel for the boy, who was surely to suffer in the years ahead.

“Albus Potter...Gryffindor!” the hat was if anything triumphant. McGonagall watched the newest Potter to have arrived, and was struck at once by his likeness to his father. While she knew the Potter family quite well, it was James who ordinarily attracted ones attention, and little Albus had largely remained an unknown quantity for her. The shift in interest among the other students away from Scorpius to Albus was inevitable; Harry Potter’s children alone could command an interest greater than that of the Malfoy boy. The wizarding preoccupation with Harry Potter had remained undiminished as the years went by, and great things were foreseen for his children. James had quickly found himself a leader among the Gryffindors, and was immensely popular across all the houses. McGonagall herself was less sure of him; a good judge of character, she was struck by an edge of desperation in James’s need to please. His constant attempts to entertain, reminiscent of his uncles the twins, implied to her a deep seated need for validation. The much quieter Albus, who appeared to have acquired a tendency toward introspection, was suddenly of far greater interest to McGonagall. Perhaps, under his shy nature was the strength of character she feared the brittle James lacked. As the sorting hat called its last student, the newest Weasley to join the school, McGonagall reflected that it would be a memorable year, if any of these children proved to be deserving of their contemporaries interest.

“Rose Weasley...Ravenclaw!” As Albus, James and Professor Percy looked on in dismay, Rose made her way to the Ravenclaw table, a look of fierce defiance on her face. McGonagall watched her with unexpected interest, and saw in her face a petulant look which closely resembled her mother. Rose Weasley had clearly inherited her mother’s love of a challenge. The first Weasley with the intellect to join Ravenclaw, Rose would still no doubt face endless disapproval from the rest of her family, Gryffindors through and through. A memorable year, indeed McGonagall mused to herself, as she rose from her seat and addressed the expectant students.

“In this, my final year at Hogwarts...” she began, confirming what had been rumour for the past year – McGonagall was finally to retire. The rest of the evening passed in a relative haze for the headmistress, as she politely turned aside questions as to her intentions. She had stayed long enough to dispel her obligations to Dumbledore – the rebuilding of the school, and the shielding of Dumbledore’s students from the trauma of the war, had been her gargantuan tasks for the last two decades. With the arrival at last of a new generation, removed from the immediacy of the war, she felt she could finally lay aside her burdensome task, and enter the final phase of her life, at rest. For one last year, she would strive to ease the tensions within the school, and particularly to protect young Malfoy from the miseries he would no doubt experience, before freeing herself from the onerous duty under which she had laboured for the past nineteen years. One, more, year, she thought to herself, as she began the wearisome job of feigning interest in the small-talk of her staff.

******************

The spacious chamber in which Scorpius found himself was dominated by an oppressive shade of green, which seemed to deepen the darkness that surrounded them. Six curtained beds, carved in dark wood, were arranged around the room, each with an accompanying trunk and desk. Scorpius soon saw that the dim glow of light which emitted from the torches placed at intervals across the walls was the only possible source of light – there were no windows in this area of the castle. While many Slytherins, including their eponymous founder Salazar, had clearly favoured dark places, Scorpius found the unrelenting gloom somewhat demoralising.

For Scorpius, the idea even of sharing a room was disquieting. As the only child in a house of adults, he was by default a solitary and private individual. Thus, the first night at Hogwarts presented him with a little anticipated discomfort – that of being surrounded by other children at all times. The slight awe in which they held him, both on account of his name and of the gravity which immediately distinguished him from other children, was disheartening to one who had hoped to pass largely unnoticed. The surreptitious glances afforded him as the six boys changed for bed, however, left him in no doubt as to the chances of his remaining an unknown.

The faint stirrings of fear began again in the pit of his stomach as he regarded each boy. He had spent the summer worrying over the reaction of other students to him. Having been schooled by a tutor since his earliest years, Scorpius had ever lacked experience in socialising with other children. The additional consciousness that many wizarding families would have warned their children against him further contributed to his growing panic at the prospect of school. His father had spared no pains in imparting to him the likelihood of rejection and stigmatisation which he would face at Hogwarts, and as he looked into the faces of each of his housemates, he again felt the twisting of fear inside him. As Slytherins, many would have been raised in families sympathetic to the Death Eaters cause, but the political climate which followed the war ensured that to express support for blood purity or the dark arts was dangerous. Those families who were not explicitly involved were careful to eschew any connection to those who had faced trial. Thus, while several of the young boys before Scorpius had been raised among death eater families, none had fallen so far as Lucius and the Malfoys. These children had been raised in families desperate to avoid the taint of Voldemort’s followers, families who would have more to fear from association with a Malfoy than most. Scorpius, despite his youth, was familiar with the idea that fear could provoke people to hatred. Among most Slytherins, his father had warned him, his greatest defence would be in distancing himself from them, so that the fear of association would never occur. For a small boy away from home for the first time, this harsh warning seemed almost a death sentence. To have been instructed to take no comfort in the presence of others, for fear of making friends who would turn on him, was to condemn him to six years of isolation and alienation. At the age of eleven, Scorpius for the first time felt despair, and longed for the familial warmth to which he was accustomed.
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More than Meets the Eye