Hi everybody. Firstly, I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. Secondly, I hope you guys enjoy this story. Please let me know what you think of it and thanks for reading.

How long can you hide in plain sight? In the end, no matter how well you are camouflaged, someone with keen eyes is always going to find you out. No matter how hard people close their eyes and refuse to see, there will always be one inquisitive soul to shatter the illusion. For the magical community, their unveiling came in the form of a young witch.

She had been caught doing magic by some muggles. It violated magical law but there was nothing particularly unusual about her actions. She just needed to wait for the magical clean-up crew to patch things up and then life would go on. The magical community could go on ignoring the muggle community and the muggles could live on in their blissful ignorance. That is the way that it should have happened. Instead, things became a little bit messy.

The muggles had trussed her up and taken her away. Several days and fanatic phone calls and a few forced demonstrations later, she had been moved to a high-tech government facility. In the height of barbarity parading as discovery, she had been forced to tell everything she knew. They did experiments on her, gathered proof of their findings and then they spilled what they had discovered to the media.

It was a disaster and yet, it still should not have happened the way it had. Had the magical community simply allowed the dust to settle, they would probably have retained their anonymity. The wild theories flying around could have been dismissed by most people as craziness and attention grabbing, the same way most people simply dismissed stories of alien encounters. Witches and wizards were creatures of fantasy and if things had gone slightly differently, they would have stayed that way.

Unfortunately, when news got out about the witch, when she returned, broken and beaten, to her family, tempers grew. She was all over the magical news and outrage was felt throughout the entire community. No one failed to be horrified by what had happened. Despite the urgings of the Minister for Magic, in spite of the more reasonable voice of the majority, small groups of individuals had decided to take matters into their own hands. It was perfectly understandable but rash and stupid all the same. They waged small wars on the muggles, destroying facilities like the one that the witch had been taken to and they did it with magic. The secret was out.

The story could not be contained by magical means, it had progressed past that. The tale had spread like wild fire and the internet and other forms of modern communication had fanned the flames. You could not charm the entire world into forgetting. No, the information was out there and the damage was done.

In the seven years since these events, the world had changed. Scorpius had been ten when it had happened and he could still recall the simmering anger that every witch and wizard had shared, that he had felt even though he was too young to have much of a political opinion. As soon as they had been revealed to the world, there had been riots. The muggles had rioted and the wizards had formed angry mobs of their own. People on both sides had been slaughtered and sensible people cowered behind locked doors, praying that their houses would remain closed to the outside world through the violence.

Even after this had settled, things were far from calm. The muggles started shouting about things like equal rights and discrimination, subterfuge and lies. They wanted to be treated the same and with all the same rights as the magical community had. This had sparked a lot of resentment in the wizards, as in an attempt to patch things up, the Minister for Magic had passed this motion. Muggles now wandered through the streets of places like Hogsmeade, tripping over their startled feet at what they found there and all the while they scorned it all, hated and resented wizards for what they had.

Schools were a problem. The separation of magical students and muggles was a controversial issue. Some people argued heatedly that all children should receive the same education, regardless of magical talent or the lack of it. Other people just wanted their kids the hell away from children of the opposite caste.

There was a lot of bad blood between wizards and muggles now; they hated each other quite openly and rarely interacted. They had muggle streets, wizard streets. The two hated to live near each other. There were shops that muggles frequented that magical people scarcely visited and the opposite was true as well. When the two groups did interact, it was very rarely pleasant. Muggles who had known about the magical community before their unveiling were outcast as turncoats and anyone who had married someone of opposite magical status was ostracised. Muggles who gave birth to magical children were treated the same way that their children were in the magical world. Personally, Scorpius was just glad that he could get away from it all for most of the year, while he was at Hogwarts.

Rather unfortunately, he was not at Hogwarts now. It was the summer holidays, the only time of year that he couldn't stay at school. It was probably saying something, given the current global atmosphere, that it was more pleasant to walk through all of the hatred and disdain outside than it was to sit in the same at home. Inside his house's walls, those feelings were had been allowed to stagnate; at least out in the real world, the unpleasantness was delivered in a more dilute form.

Scorpius thought of home and wished again that he was back at school. His father was home at the moment and when the old bastard wasn't drowning disappointment at his son in drink, he was telling Scorpius what a failure he was in person. Whenever his father, who had been in Azkaban for most of Scorpius's young life – stupid deatheater – started one of his rages, Scorpius couldn't help but react in kind. Shouting matches like this were a common occurrence in the Malfoy household but they always ended the same way. Scorpius would be reduced to nothing, stripped by cruel words until he felt so hollow that he had his own echo. Then he would be sent to his room, which he would promptly sneak out of in the only form of rebellion he had left. When he eventually came home, things would naturally become even worse.

Scorpius defied his father at every opportunity. The man was a criminal and a hypocrite as well as a terminal idiot; Scorpius would not be like him. Unfortunately, any child that Draco Malfoy didn't see as a perfect model of his traitorous self was a failure, a disgrace. So Scorpius took on his label whole-heartedly and endeavoured to be the best disgrace that he possibly could be. He had dyed his blond hair black a couple of years back and gelled it into little spikes. He didn't actually like it that way; he looked like a prat. Still, it upset his dad so much that it was worth it. The biggest kick in the teeth that he had delivered to his father was his choice in friends; since his first day at Hogwarts, he and Albus Potter had been inseparable.

Scorpius closed his eyes and tried to banish the images of his father. The old geezer was not going to follow him out here, even in spirit. He thought about Hogwarts instead, so violently that it banished all other thought. He thought about Albus and the other Potters, the Weasleys, who seemed to like him in spite of his name and his house. He thought of Quidditch, of how he would win the cup for Slytherin this year whether Albus his father's talent at Seeking or not. He− someone let out a high-pitched yelp. Scorpius blinked. He had just walked straight into someone and knocked them over. Nice one, Scorpius. Really smooth.

"Sorry," he muttered and held out his hand to the unfortunate girl.

She took it and pulled herself up.

"You seem preoccupied. Maybe it's too much for you to walk and think at the same time as you breathe. I suggest you stop one of them,"

Scorpius quirked a smile, despite the mild insult. God, she was a pretty girl. Her hair was raven-black and glossy, her skin the colour of marble and her eyes sparkled like crystals of jade. She was also unmistakably a muggle. Wizards had taken to wearing their robes in public now, just like they always had in the magical world. Her plain clothes marked her for what she was just as much as his own robes marked him. He saw her eyes flicker across him, an appraising glance and nothing more.

"You're a wizard," it wasn't a question.

He shrugged, "Learning to be, anyway," he held out a hand, "I'm Scorpius,"

She seemed a little bit stunned but she took his hand and shook it uncertainly, "Anise,"

Scorpius laughed, "It's the name that's putting you off, isn't it? You can thank my dad for that one; you can also call me Larry, everyone else does,"

Her eyebrows rose, "Why Larry?"

"Because it sounds less dicky than Scorpius and Scorpius doesn't shorten to anything good,"

Her mouth twitched as though it wanted to smile. He still couldn't get over how nice to look at she was and the spark of wry humour that lit the depths of her eyes intrigued him. It would be nice, in another world, to get to know her better. As it was, muggles and wizards couldn't coexist pleasantly. He didn't have a chance in hell with this girl.

"Do you wanna go get lunch?" he blurted.

Ah, there he went, making an idiot out of himself. Oh well, it had been worth a shot. Her eyes widened almost comically and she looked at him, more startled than if he had stared yodelling and then punched her in the face. He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Look, I understand…"

"No," she said suddenly.

Damn it, he had known that was coming but it still smarted. He shouldn't have set himself up for that. She saw his expression and started to talk very quickly.

"Oh! You thought…? I meant no, you've got me wrong. As in yes, I'd love to get lunch. Let's go,"

She took a few steps before his brain caught up with what had just happened. Then he grinned widely and jogged to catch up with her. Not only was he headed to lunch with a girl who may very well be some kind of Greek goddess but this would make his father rupture a vessel.