The Hope for the Future

The train ride was as boring as his father had promised, though Scorpius had hoped that old age had addled his memory enough that he just forgot something exciting.

"Remember to make friends early," his father had said, "because those ties will last."

Scorpius had ended up sitting with three girls who kept giggling and reading magazines because all of the compartments with first years in them were full by the time he convinced his mother to allow him to board the train. He climbed into a boat with a few other kids, none of whom spared him a second glance, dazzled by the sight of Hogwarts on the other side of the lake.

Scorpius was slightly alarmed by this point - he hadn't made a single friend, and he'd been at it all day - but he just followed the crowd to wait outside the Great Hall for Sorting.

"It'll be over in a flash," his father had told him. "The hat barely touched my head when it put me in Slytherin, same as every other Malfoy."

The implication remained unspoken: Scorpius would be in Slytherin, too. He would make the connections there that would aid him the rest of his life.

They didn't speak of the wars much in his home, but his grandfather had taken him aside one day a few months ago to tell him a bunch of really terrifying things.

"You'll need to know this," Grandfather had said, tapping his cane impatiently on the ground. "Others will, and knowledge is power. Don't be ashamed, no matter what they say, because we aren't. I made mistakes, your father made mistakes, but we were always just trying to do what we thought best."

Scorpius had nodded and tried to understand but his dreams that night were filled with terrible things that he would never, ever share with his father.

Then, they entered the Great Hall, and it was as magnificent as his father had claimed, and there were hundreds of eyes watching them as they lined up to be Sorted. He didn't really listen to the song the hat sang, but instead kept looking around, wondering what the next seven years of his life would be like.

The table filled with green and silver looked scary, Scorpius thought looking at the hard-eyed witches and wizards - all older and intimidating - that lined it. They were scowling, and a few had snarled-up lips as they surveyed their potential housemates. Worried about Muggleborns, probably. Scorpius remembered what his grandfather had explained and shivered just a bit. He'd never met a Muggleborn, but after his recent history lesson he was determined to be nice to them.

One of the paintings in the front hall of their house had told him that people who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and Scorpius had no intention of falling into disgrace. He remembered some of the nastier things that had been said to his father out in public - things he hadn't understood, really, until the entire war had been explained to him - and he never wanted to be the recipient of that sort of hatred.

The names were being called, and Scorpius began to feel nervous for the first time. There were no promises that he would be put into Slytherin like the rest of his family; he might not be made of the same stuff as his father and grandfather.

Then he shook his head, thinking of how different Grandfather and Father were, and thought that the hat would know perfectly well where he belonged.

"Malfoy, Scorpius!" called the professor, and he walked with as much confidence as he could muster up to the spindly stool, and had the hat settled on his head.

"Well, well, a Malfoy," hissed a voice in his ear, and Scorpius held his shoulders even straighter, determined to look confident in front of all the watching students. "It's been a while since I Sorted one of you.... Let's take a look inside, here, see what you're made of."

Scorpius remembered his father saying the hat had yelled, "Slytherin!" before even settling on his head, and made a tiny impatient noise.

"You put up a good front, but you aren't that courageous, are you?" said the hat, its voice low and insidious. Scorpius thought the dirtiest word he knew at the hat. No one had said the thing would insult him. "And you aren't the brightest mind I've come across. You are, however, quite loyal."

Scorpius made a face, and thought, "You can't put me in Hufflepuff. I'm a Malfoy!"

"Oh, but it's all here, how devoted you are to your family, the loyalty in the way you say your name - you'd fit, oh yes."

The hat was evil, that was the only explanation. "I want Slytherin," he hissed in his mind, as ferocious as he could. "And that's where you shall put me!"

He would never be able to write home again if he were put in Hufflepuff.

"See? That lack of courage keeps you from Gryffindor," and the damn hat sounded as though that were a punishment.

"I don't want to be a Gryffindor, I refuse to be a Hufflepuff, now put me in Slytherin where I belong!"

The longer he argued, the more it seemed as though there were no place for him but Slytherin house, even with its scary looking inhabitants.

"Very well," said the hat, and Scorpius breathed a sigh of relief. "Slytherin!"

He jerked off the hat with more force than necessary, resisted the urge to drop it on the floor and stomp on it, and handed it back to Professor Longbottom with a faint look of disgust before striding to the Slytherin table, setting down gracefully.

No one looked impatient, so he thought the entire argument must have taken much less time than he had thought. He scanned his new housemates, and wondered which ones would turn out to be the important ties his father had spoken of.

All his anticipation and worries had faded with the relief of being properly Sorted, instead of being placed in a house his father had only thought to mention with contempt and absent disdain.

Wearing Slytherin green, Scorpius Malfoy was home.