Curiosity Is Not a Sin

Conversations with the Potter Boys

She'd nearly managed to forget the conversation she'd overheard by the time she entered History of Magic almost two hours later, but seeing Scorpius with his bright red hair and Albus sitting in the back of the room playing hangman brought it back. She could feel her ears go red.

Scorpius looked up and called, "Hey, Red! When's our next family reunion?"

Several people laughed. Rose shot him a glare and sat down in the front row. 'Was it that obvious?' ran through her head again, and she felt her face getting warm. She was very glad that class was starting and that Professor Binns was clearly too detached from the world to notice.

Very soon, she was too detached to feel much of anything. Nothing could make this class anything but dull, and especially when she had it at the end of the day like this, Binns had a talent for making her want to go to sleep. Today even goblin rebellions seemed dull, and she could usually manage to pay some attention to them. Rose made a mental note to ask Lucy for her old notes.

When class had finally ended, she waited for Albus at the door. "I should get some work done before dinner and practice. Want to join me?"

Albus looked at Scorpius. "We're actually -"

Scorpius cut him off. "We're heading toward the library right now, actually. If you want to join us, I'll try really hard to behave myself."

An invitation from Scorpius was so unexpected that it took Rose a moment to process what he'd said. "Next time?"

Albus shrugged. "Sure. I'll talk to you at dinner." They headed off, and Rose returned to the Gryffindor Common Room. Her head was starting to hurt, which was never a good sign, particularly when she had so much work to do.

After half an hour of staring at her Care of Magical Creatures Assignment and managing two poorly crafted sentences that she knew she'd just have to redo, she thrust the paper away and let her head fall onto the table. Scorpius Malfoy was the worst.

"Hey." James sat down across from her.

She glanced up and let her head fall back onto the table with a thud. Her red hair pooled around her. "Hi."

"Rose, what's wrong?" He sounded genuinely concerned, and after a moment, she felt his hand on her elbow. "What happened?"

"I overheard something today that - that maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I shouldn't talk about it. I don't know."

She glanced up at him. Now he looked downright alarmed. "Rosie, the Common Room is going to start filling up soon. Do you want to go upstairs? You look a little..." He trailed off.

"I guess. Yeah. Will anyone be up there?"

He shrugged. "Don't think so. If they are, I'll kick them out." He got up and steered her toward the stairs to the boys' dormitory. Thankfully, there was no one in the room he shared with the other sixth year boys, and Rose collapsed onto James's bed. He sat cross-legged next to her and squeezed her shoulder. "What happened?"

"So I'm pretty sure Scorpius Malfoy wants to sleep with me."

It sounded so ludicrous once she'd said it out loud.

James was quiet for a long moment. She turned her head to look at him. She didn't think she'd ever seen him look so taken aback. "He wants to do what?"

"I heard him talking to Albus today. Remember how I told you that we'd mostly ignored each other this summer, while you were off in France with Roxanne and Dominique?" He nodded. "Well, apparently he wasn't really ignoring me. He wasn't fighting with me because he was so distracted with staring at me that he wasn't even processing what Albus said half the time. And - er - apparently he was taking a lot of cold showers. His words." She buried her head in James's pillow again.