Scorpius Malfoy is not his father or grandfather. This is the first thing you need to know about him. If you're lucky, you'll learn more about him, but most people aren't that lucky. Scorpius is an extremely private person. Most people take one look at his aristocratic features, or simply hear his last name, and think of him as the son of a Death Eater, a snob, a blood purist, a this or that, and never bother to dig deeper. To be honest, all these things are partly true, but these masses of judgments usually fail to notice that there is much more to him than that. Scorpius is an introvert, his emotions are extremely controlled, they explode and fade so deep inside him that they never show themselves on the outside unless he wants them to. His words are rehearsed, analyzed for consequences, and double-checked for accuracy and sting before they leave his mouth. Everything about how it interacts with the outside world is controlled to allow it to come across a certain way. He is an observer, more likely to stand back and judge the air in a room or the tone of a conversation before inserting himself into it with an uncanny perspicacity and the unspoken implication that he knows more than he will actually say. He is a politician through and through, the master of vague answers, of thinking one thing and doing another, of smiling in a room full of enemies as if he were in a room full of friends. The language he speaks best is that of the body and he can understand from the slightest twitch of a muscle or movement of a hand whether all the people in a room are really getting along with each other or whether they are simply staging a farce. On the other hand, his body language always tends to be ambiguous, unless he has a set goal: middle of paper, sometimes playing on the grass, expert at fighting dirty but staying clean, shaking hands with a partner against whom he is secretly plotting and without so much as a flick of the brow to alert the other person to his dark intentions. Scorpius doesn't think there's anything he can't get if he wants it bad enough. He is an opportunist and a survivor for whom altruism or stupid mistakes are as unjustifiable and incomprehensible as showing up to class naked. And just because it's being overlooked at the moment doesn't mean Scorpius hasn't stopped trying; after all, real power rests with those who have respect, whether or not recognition was bestowed along with it. Scorpius may follow authority that is not his own, but he rarely finds himself respecting anyone but himself. And one way or another, Scorpius Malfoy will rule this city.