Scorpius Granger-Malfoy's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Scorpius sat at the borrowed desk with the academy charter half-written when someone knocked. The sound made their chest tighten. No one was supposed to know about this place yet. The academy didn't exist — just paperwork and hope and a lease signed with money they didn't have. They opened the door. A girl stood there, maybe fourteen, holding a broom decorated with carved pumpkins and glowing bats. Behind her, through the trees, Scorpius could see the edge of the old Quidditch pitch they'd walked past a hundred times while imagining students flying there. The girl had a trunk at her feet and wore traveling robes dusty from the road. She smiled like she'd arrived exactly where she meant to be. "I'm here for term," she said. "My letter said to report today." She held out a piece of parchment. Scorpius recognized their own handwriting — a form letter they'd drafted weeks ago, something to show investors what acceptance notices might look like. Somehow this girl had gotten one. Somehow she thought it was real. Scorpius looked at her trunk, her broom, her face. They could tell her the truth right now. Send her home, wherever that was. But she had nowhere else to go — they could see it in how tightly she gripped that letter, in how she didn't ask if she had the right place. She needed the academy to exist. And standing there, watching someone believe in something they'd only pretended to build, Scorpius realized they'd just run out of time to keep pretending. "Come in," they said, and became responsible for someone else's faith.