He looks at his dad, who looks back with a frown.
I’ve done bad things, you’ve done worse. What have we become, Dad?
DRACO: We haven’t become anything — we simply are as we are.
SCORPIUS: The Malfoys. The family you can always rely on to make the world a murkier place.
This hits home with DRACO. He looks carefully at SCORPIUS.
DRACO: This business at the school — what’s inspired it?
SCORPIUS: I don’t want to be who I am.
DRACO: And what’s brought that on?
SCORPIUS desperately thinks for a way of describing his story.
SCORPIUS: I’ve seen myself in a different way.
DRACO: You know what I loved most about your mother? She could always help me find light in the darkness. She made the world — my world, anyway — less — what was the word you used — “murky.”
SCORPIUS: Did she?
DRACO studies his son.
DRACO: There’s more of her in there than I thought.
Beat. He looks at SCORPIUS carefully.
Whatever you’re doing — do it safely. I can’t lose you too.
SCORPIUS: Yes. Sir.
DRACO looks at his son one last time — trying to understand his head.
DRACO: For Voldemort and Valor.
SCORPIUS looks at him and backs out of the room.
SCORPIUS: For Voldemort and Valor.
ACT THREE, SCENE FOUR
HOGWARTS, LIBRARY
SCORPIUS enters the library and starts desperately to look through books. He finds a history book.
SCORPIUS: How did Cedric become a Death Eater? What have I missed? Find me some — light in the darkness. Tell me your secrets. What have I missed?
CRAIG BOWKER JR.: Why are you here?
SCORPIUS turns to look at a rather desperate-looking CRAIG, his clothes tattered and worn.
SCORPIUS: Why can’t I be here?
CRAIG BOWKER JR.: It’s not ready yet. I’m working as fast as I can. But Professor Snape sets so much of it, and writing the essay in two different ways. I mean, I’m not complaining . . . Sorry.
SCORPIUS: Start again. From the beginning. What’s not ready?
CRAIG BOWKER JR.: Your Potions homework. And I’m happy to do it — grateful even — and I know you hate homework and books and I never let you down, you know that.
SCORPIUS: I hate homework?
CRAIG BOWKER JR.: You’re the Scorpion King. Of course you hate homework. What are you doing with A History of Magic? I could do that assignment too?
Pause. SCORPIUS looks at CRAIG a moment and then walks away. CRAIG exits.
After a moment SCORPIUS returns with a frown.
SCORPIUS: Did he say Snape?
ACT THREE, SCENE FIVE
HOGWARTS, POTIONS CLASSROOM
SCORPIUS runs into the Potions classroom, slamming back the door. SEVERUS SNAPE looks up at him.
SNAPE: Did no one teach you to knock, boy?
SCORPIUS looks up at SNAPE, slightly breathless, slightly unsure, slightly exultant.
SCORPIUS: Severus Snape. This is an honor.
SNAPE: Professor Snape will do fine. You may behave like a king at this school, Malfoy, but that doesn’t make us all your subjects.
SCORPIUS: But you’re the answer . . .
SNAPE: How very pleasant for me. If you’ve got something to say, boy, then please say it . . . If not, close the door on your way out.
SCORPIUS: I need your help.
SNAPE: I exist to serve.
SCORPIUS: I just don’t know what help I — need. Are you still undercover now? Are you still working secretly for Dumbledore?
SNAPE: Dumbledore? Dumbledore’s dead. And my work for him was public — I taught in his school.
SCORPIUS: No. That’s not all you did. You watched the Death Eaters for him. You advised him. Everyone thought you’d murdered him — but it turned out you’d been supporting him. You saved the world.
SNAPE: These are very dangerous allegations, boy. And don’t think the Malfoy name will prevent me inflicting punishment.
SCORPIUS: What if I was to tell you there was another world — another world in which Voldemort was defeated at the Battle of Hogwarts, in which Harry Potter and Dumbledore’s Army won, how would you feel then . . .
SNAPE: I’d say that the rumors of Hogwarts’s beloved Scorpion King losing his mind are well-founded.
SCORPIUS: There was a stolen Time-Turner. I stole a Time-Turner. With Albus. We tried to bring Cedric Diggory back from the dead, when he was dead. We tried to stop him winning the Triwizard Tournament. But by doing so we turned him into an almost different person entirely.
SNAPE: Harry Potter won that Triwizard Tournament.
SCORPIUS: He wasn’t supposed to do it alone. Cedric was supposed to win it with him. But we humiliated him out of the tournament. And as a result of that humiliation he became a Death Eater. I can’t work out what he did in the Battle of Hogwarts — whether he killed someone or — but he did something and it changed everything.