Leave Out All The Rest

Boy Interrupted

Chapter Twelve: Boy Interrupted

POV: Scorpius

"Tracked?" I stopped abruptly when Zabini's rambling finally entered my eardrums, distracting me from thoughts of the hearty, elf-made breakfast that awaited us at the Great Hall before our first lesson. He pulled down the morning edition of the Daily Prophet he was reading, narrowing his eyes at my sudden interest. "What do you mean tracked?"

"As in followed," he said impatiently, "monitored, charted, spied on—that's what I mean."

Ignoring his tone, I snatched the newspaper out of his hands. "There's no way they wrote that in the Prophet. They are notorious for covering up anything of—oh. It says tracked here."

Zabini rolled his eyes at me, taking back his newspaper. He smacked me over the head with it. "The Prophet is writing it as a reminder to the public that ex Death Eaters are given routine evaluations every few years, but Dad sent me a letter last night about it.  Apparently what the media is neglecting to say is that the Ministry is demanding those of the Sacred Twenty-Eight to come in every two weeks for Legilimency."

I scowled, crossing my arms over my chest. 

Most others would have interpreted my body language as that of being annoyed or upset, but Lucas Zabini had five years of being one of my best mates; because of that, he knew I was confused.

He sighed before explaining that, "The Sacred Twenty-Eight are the twenty-eight British families who are truly pureblood. The Malfoys are one of those twenty-eight. As are the Greengrasses."

"Your dad isn't British," I pointed out. 

Usually, Zabini was not one to be without a smile on his face. He was always upbeat about something or the other. He had his moments of dramatics that provided Potter and me with laughs, but he was still a charming, smarmy bastard through and through. To see him now with no ounce of amusement, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed...well, I knew this was bad.

"He isn't," he agreed, "but he has three deceased stepfathers on the list. Not to mention he took the mark and comes from the equivalent of the Sacred Twenty-Eight in Italy." He paused for a moment, letting two Ravenclaw girls pass us by, giggling and waving at us before turning into the main corridor. He sighed, this time as if he were exhausted. "I'm not ashamed of my dad, Scorpius," he said, "but I've had it with people being ashamed for me."

I looked away from him, my shoes suddenly the only thing I could look at. It was not uncommon knowledge that I've been fighting for years to be something other than Draco Malfoy's son. He was a great man, an even greater father, but he would never be anything else but the teenage boy who disarmed Albus Dumbledore at the top of the Astronomy Tower. He was never going to be anyone else but a member of the most despised, supremacist family in Britain. That was a suffocating shadow to be under, especially when I'm trying to pave my own way in the world.  

Sometimes I lose myself in the whispers of people, of the people who glare at me, who blame me for things that happened years before I was born. I let them inside my head. I let them skew the truth that I know: my father is an honorable, trustworthy, loving man who made mistakes he repents for. 

"What is the Ministry hoping to find?" I asked Zabini, looking up at him again.

This time there was a smile on his face. "Dunno," he laughed, "but Dad said he's going to be thinking extra hard about the time he caught Hagrid and Madame Maxime snogging his Fourth Year."

I laughed, too, following him as he turned the corridor and the road to delicious breakfast was taken again. 

"If they think Death Eaters are out to get muggles and half-bloods again, well they can forget about Dad being a part of that mess," he said in afterthought.