Chapter Text
I. The Legend and the Problem
Albus Severus Potter had been in isolation for three hours and forty-seven minutes, which was a long time to maintain a rash.
It had started as blotches. Sensible blotches. A bit of colour at the throat, a faint speckling across the wrists, nothing so ambitious that Madam Pomfrey would be forced to fetch a textbook. Then she had asked him whether the marks itched, and Albus, idiot that he was, had hesitated for half a second too long.
Now he was in the private isolation room off the hospital wing with a curtain drawn across the glass panel in the door, a charm humming over the lintel, and a notice pinned outside that read OBSERVATION ONLY in Madam Pomfrey’s very worst handwriting.
At present, it was describing a slow spiral over his left forearm in shades of mauve and green. Every so often one of the spots flared silver, as if trying to be useful. Albus had no idea what disease it was meant to resemble anymore. He had lost control of the concept somewhere around half nine.
On the bedside table were three books he was supposed to be reading: Advanced Defensive Theory, Keeping the Dragon Keep, and a battered copy of Advanced Care of Magical Creatures, Year Six, which he had brought along because carrying a schoolbook made any lie look more academic. He had opened each one twice. He had read the same sentence in Defensive Theory nine times and had not retained a word of it.
There was a narrow window high in the wall. It showed a flat wedge of grey sky and the tops of the greenhouses below, slick with last night’s rain. Beyond the curtain, he could hear Madam Pomfrey moving about in the outer ward: the clink of bottles, the shuffle of slippers, the occasional hard little sigh she reserved for students who had done something stupid and then expected medicine to make it less stupid.
Albus lay very still beneath the blankets and tried to breathe like a person with a serious but not life-threatening condition.
That was the first rule. Never overdo the breathing.
The second rule was to keep the eyes wide, but not pitiful. Pitiful made adults suspicious. Wide made them protective. Albus had discovered this in his second year, refined it in his third, and by his fifth year, had a look that could get him out of most detentions and at least one practical exam. It was not crying. It was not even close to crying. It was simply the suggestion that tears might be considered for a special appearance by the appropriate committee if circumstances worsened.
It worked on professors. It worked on prefects. It had once worked on the Bloody Baron, which Albus still considered an underappreciated achievement.
It did not work on his father.
That was the main problem with the day.
Not the fact that Madam Pomfrey had, to Albus’s private horror, called his symptoms "very concerning" and then ordered him to remain exactly where he was until she was satisfied he was not a danger to the wider school population. He had overshot. Fine. That happened. Scorpius would probably call it commitment to the form.
The main problem was that Harry Potter was on the staff.
Not permanently, as if it made any difference. Professor Potter was only covering Defence for a term while Professor Grimsby recovered from whatever private catastrophe had befallen him over Christmas. Temporary appointment. Short-term solution. Nothing to get excited about.
Everyone had got excited about it.
The younger years stared at him in corridors. The older years pretended not to and failed. Half the school believed he had been brought in because NEWT Defence needed "real Auror experience", and the other half believed Headmistress McGonagall had finally decided that if students were going to break rules, she might as well hire someone who had broken better ones.
Albus knew better. His father was not there to catch students.
His father was there to catch him.
This was not a rational thought—Howarts was down one DADA professor, after all—but Albus had never found rationality much use when it came to fathers. Harry had spent six years catching him at things no one else even noticed. The unfinished essay tucked under a textbook. The borrowed cloak. The sweets hidden behind the Charms notes. The false innocence deployed a beat too early.
Harry saw through it every time.
James had not had to deal with that. James, two years earlier, had completed his Sixth-Year Skip Day under normal conditions: portraits, ghosts, prefects, Filch, Peeves, the standard castle hazards. He had not had Professor Potter on the chessboard. He had not had his father coming out of the staffroom with a mug of tea and fifteen years of Auror habits baked into his spine.
James had got away with it.
James always got away with it.
Albus was not James.
The Sixth-Year Skip Day was not, technically, a school tradition. It wasn't sanctioned, wasn't mentioned in the student handbook, and wasn't something any professor would acknowledge if asked directly. But it existed the way all the best Hogwarts legends existed—in contradictory whispers, in the meaningful looks that sixth-years exchanged across the Great Hall, in the particular silence that fell whenever someone mentioned Teddy Lupin's name in the context of a Tuesday in March.
Teddy had started it. Nobody remembered the details. Nobody asked. Just one day, Sixth-Year Skip Day.
Then there was James.
Depending on whom you asked, James had either spent his Skip in Paris; broken into the Ministry archives; or attended a Weird Sisters rehearsal, disguised as the new guitarist for the band, performing live with them at a sold-out concert at the o2, having delivered an epic and emotional guitar solo that would be studied for decades.
Ridiculous. James could barely tie his shoelaces, let alone string a guitar.
"I heard," one second-year had said, "that James had broken into the Department of Mysteries, secured a time-turner—no! three time-turners!—and redid his pre-NEWTs exams and that's why he looks a bit older in his sixth-year photos."
Also ridiculous.
But the details—no matter how convoluted—no longer mattered. The story had hardened into legend. Teddy Lupin had started the tradition. James Potter had perfected it.
And now Scorpius had decided it was their turn.
Albus had decided nothing. Albus had objected. Repeatedly. With supporting evidence.
After all, James never had to contend with Harry Potter as a supply professor.
II. The Inspection
The door creaked open. Albus didn't move. He kept his gaze fixed upward, his breathing shallow and labored, projecting a "death rattle" cough he’d been practicing since dawn.
Of course a death rattle wouldn't stop his father.
Harry Potter knocked once, twice, called out a soft, "Alby?"—bloody hell, but he hated that nickname. Why give him that ghastly name if he was just going to shorten it and make it worse? Skip the middleman next time—and walked straight to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. The weight of him sent a jolt through Albus that nearly shattered his composure.
Albus immediately rearranged his face into brave suffering.
Harry Potter stepped into the isolation room carrying two paper cups of tea, a folded newspaper under one arm, and the expression of a man who had already been told not to come in and had come in anyway.
He looked exactly the same in teaching robes as he did at home in a jumper, which was unfair. Other people changed when they became professors. Professor Creevey told fewer jokes, except when around Colin's ghost. Professor Longbottom only opened up when the plant-to-student ratio was astronomical. People acquired distance when they became professors. Not Harry. His father just looked like... his father. Except now his father could take points.
Albus sat up too quickly. The rash on his forearm, startled, flashed turquoise.
"You’re not supposed to be here," he said.
Harry nudged the door shut with his elbow. "Good morning to you too."
"Madam Pomfrey said observation only."
"I'm observing."
"That means from outside."
"Does it?" Harry set one of the cups on the bedside table, moving Keeping the Dragon's Keep without asking, and sat in the chair beside the bed. "Okay, temperature first."
Harry pressed the back of his hand to Albus’s forehead, then followed it with a precise flick of his wand. A series of glowing blue numbers hummed in the air.
"Madam Pomfrey will have a fit that you're in here, you know?"
"Then she'll have a fit," Harry said. "When did the symptoms start? Was it sudden, or did it build through the night?"
"You’re a Defence professor, not a Healer."
"I’m also your dad." Harry handed him the tea. "Drink that. You look terrible."
Albus took the cup because, sick or no, he hadn't the strength to argue with his father. And arguing would only have made him look healthy. "Thanks. You know, you could read Madame Pomfrey's diagnosis—"
"I'd rather hear from my son."
Albus pivoted into his wide, watery-eyed routine, calibrating his voice to sound exhausted but managing. "Just... after dinner. I thought it was just the pie, but then my chest started feeling... tight. And Madam Pomfrey said it was serious."
"She said it was strange," Harry corrected, leaning back in the chair. He didn't need to interrogate; he could just sit there and let silence do the heavy lifting.
"I really do feel awful."
"Where?"
"Oh, here in Hogwarts," Albus said. "Sometimes at Hogsmeade—"
"Where do you feel awful, Albus? On your person? Specifically."
"My... joints," Albus lied. He'd used chest already, and chest was dangerous because Pomfrey owned instruments. Head was too easy. Stomach invited vile potions. "Mostly all of them. It moves. It’s magical joint pain. That’s why I’m in here and not, I don’t know, a Muggle garage."
"A garage?" Harry’s mouth twitched.
"I couldn’t think of a Muggle hospital."
"I can tell."
Albus lowered the cup. "Madam Pomfrey will be mad that you’re here."
"Right," Harry said eventually. He reached down and straightened the blanket over Albus’s legs with the automatic, restless movement of a man whose hands needed a task. "You are a bit clammy, but that's nothing unusual."
"Brilliant," Albus said.
"I just mean..." Harry recalibrated. "You have pre-NEWTS in two weeks."
"I know." The words came out faster than Albus intended. "I've been studying."
"I didn't say you hadn't."
"Uh, sounded like you did."
"Just stating a fact."
"Just stating a fact at me."
Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. He had the look of a man who had just watched himself walk into a room he'd promised not to enter—aware of it, not quite able to stop. A beat passed. Then another.
"I’ll check in again at lunch," Harry said, standing. "If you aren’t improved by the afternoon, I'm taking you to St Mungo's. No arguments. Get some rest."
He paused at the door. For one agonizing second, Albus was certain his father had seen a tell in his voice, or heard a hesitation a beat too long—something that had tripped the wire of fifteen years of Auror instinct. He braced for his father to whip around, wand at the ready, shouting some variation of Expecto Get-to-Class-o! to end the ruse on the spot. Harry was, after all, only ever good at catching Albus.
But the moment came and went. The door clicked shut, and he was gone.
Albus let out a long, ragged breath and sank back into the pillows.
Then he saw them. On the blanket, right near his knee where there had been absolutely nothing a moment ago, sat two Chocolate Frogs.
When had those gotten there?
III. The Malfoy Manifest
In the ancestral quiet of Malfoy Manor, Scorpius Malfoy was lying in bed looking so convincingly unwell that he almost felt sorry about it.
Almost.
His skin was artfully pale—though that part required no effort—and his breathing had taken on the slightly laboured quality he'd been practising since he was nine. He'd found, over the years, that the key wasn't dramatic suffering. Dramatic suffering invited scrutiny. The key was quiet suffering. The kind that made adults feel they were intruding.
A soft knock at the door, and a pause before: "Scorpius?"
Good. This was one time Scorpius would rather deal with his father over his mother. Easier to convince.
Draco Malfoy never loomed in the doorway. Today was no exception. He came in quietly, standing by the bed with that same expression Scorpius had spent years trying to decode, as though his father was trying to remember a book he had deliberately set down and wasn't going to pick back up without a very good reason.
"You look better."
"Do I?"
"Still feeling under the weather?"
"A bit." Scorpius let his voice land somewhere between tired and apologetic. "I think it's the change in seasons."
Draco was quiet for a moment. He didn't sit on the edge of the bed, or press the back of his hand to Scorpius's forehead, or do any of the things Scorpius had catalogued other fathers doing. He just... stared.
"You didn't eat much at dinner last night," Draco said finally. Not an accusation. Just a fact he happened to know.
"Not very hungry."
Draco nodded slowly. Scorpius stopped counting the breaths before his father spoke again. Instead, he broke the silence himself: "I could go back to Madam Pomfrey. In case, you know, you needed proof or—"
"Proof?" Draco straightened at the word, his shoulders squaring under his impeccably tailored robes. "Why would I need proof?"
Why indeed.
"You say you're not feeling well. I believe you." He turned and straightened his cloak. "I'll have the elves bring up tea. And the toast you like—the sourdough bread, not the wheat. Get some sleep." He paused at the door, one hand on the frame, and looked back once. "Your mother will check on you shortly."
The latch clicked shut.
Scorpius waited. His father's footsteps always took a minute to get going. But the moment the sound faded down the long corridor, Scorpius was out of bed.
The binder came out from under the mattress. It was, objectively, excessive—three weeks of work compressed into colour-coded sections, each one cross-referenced with the others. Patrol rotations for every ghost and portrait between the hospital wing and the main gate, timed against the castle's known rhythms. The Polyjuice schedule, broken into stages and highlighted in green with contingency columns. Lily's instructions were written out in full on three inches of parchment that left no room for interpretation or negotiation.
He fished a small, rectangular silver compact from his bedside drawer and tapped the glass twice with his wand. The silver surface rippled, dissolving the reflection of his own bedroom and replacing it with the dark, curtained enclosure of the Hogwarts isolation room.
IV. The Ask
"You look like you're about to be sick."
"Well, my dad was just here," Albus muttered back, bracing the mirror against his knees as he sat up against the headboard. "So that tracks."
"Perfect timing then! Morning check-in is handled, yeah? Madam Pomfrey has you locked down tightly?"
"No one in or out," Albus confirmed, gesturing vaguely at the tiny isolation room around him. "She thinks I'm a biohazard. I have silver sparks shooting out of my wrist. But what about Lily?"
"She's been... acquired?"
"I still don't understand how you did—"
"Never you mind that," Scorpius said.
On the other side of the glass, Scorpius ducked his head, his eyes darting to something just off-frame. Albus could hear the distinct, crisp rustle of thick parchment.
"Security's active," Scorpius said smoothly, his face reappearing in the silver frame. "I've put a proximity ward on your corridor. If someone with a... specific magical signature gets close, her mirror will ping."
Albus didn't ask whose signature. He assumed Scorpius meant the Headmistress, or Filch, or perhaps the general category of authority figures with enough magic to register on a ward. It didn't occur to him to ask more specifically.
"It'll give her enough time," Scorpius added.
"Warning to do what?"
"You'll see. We have the routes, we have the Polyjuice, and we have a legend to top," Scorpius said, leaning so close his nose nearly filled the frame.
Is that what this was about? Topping a legend? James was Albus's brother to top... No, that didn't sound right. Great. Now he was thinking about topping his brother. He shook the thought out of his head, irritated with his own brain. Scorpius's reflection in the glass remained infuriatingly composed.
"But if this is going to be the skip that actually means something," Scorpius continued, "the one people are still talking about in twenty years, we need to do something that nobody else would dare."
Albus felt the knot in his stomach tighten. "Such as?"
Scorpius leaned back. His voice dropped the way it did when he was being deliberately theatrical, which Albus usually just found annoying but currently found alarming.
"You need to steal your father's broom."