Curiosity Is Not a Sin

Talking By the Lake

The next morning, Rose happened to reach the portrait hole on her way to breakfast at the same time Albus did. After a moment of awkward silence, they climbed out and began to make their way down to breakfast.

"Hi," she said when he didn't immediately speed away.

He gave her a tight smile. "Hi." He didn't say anything else for a minute, but just as she was about to fill the silence, he sighed. "Look, Rosie, I don't mean to be..." He couldn't seem to find the words for what he was being, and he shrugged. "You know."

She sighed. "Albus, I'm not just messing him around."

Her cousin groaned and ran his hand over the back of his hair. "I know," he said. They walked down the rest of the hall in silence, but when they got to the stairs, he spoke again. "Look, I'll get over it soon. I'm just annoyed. I hate it when you lie—"

"I know," Rose said quickly. "Merlin, Albus. I know."

"Sorry." He spotted a few of their yearmates ahead of them and said softly, "I'll see you later." He sped away, and Rose was left with the sudden urge to curl up in a ball and cry.

She really hated fighting with Albus, and this time, she knew that she'd brought it on herself.

Rose ended up joining James, Roxanne, and Tyler for breakfast. Judging by James's scowl and the way he kept darting glances down the table at Marion, who was sitting with Julian and Bridget, she wasn't the only one who was not at all happy to be starting the day.

After a few minutes of their moping, Roxanne appeared to tire of it. She nudged James, and he looked up from the berries he'd been chasing around his plate with a fork. "Looking forward to finally finishing our detentions?" she asked cheerfully.

He managed a grin. "Yeah, I could use the extra sleep. I still can't believe I didn't get a howler - not that you'd know, your parents don't send howlers."

"Dad couldn't send me a howler over those fireworks. They're products from the shop."

Together, she and Tyler were able to pull James out of his poor mood. Rose, however, continued to brood. Fighting with Albus was terrible, and though part of her felt like kissing Scorpius would have been a welcome distraction from their argument, she wasn't entirely sure that that wouldn't just make matters with Albus worse.

Thankfully, the post offered some distraction from her wallowing. A small owl swooped down, and when she didn't acknowledge it immediately, it nibbled on her finger. When she jerked back, it offered her a letter. To her surprise, the owl stayed put when she relieved it of its burden. It helped itself to the food she'd been pushing around her plate as she opened the letter.

"Oh, it's from Victoire!" she exclaimed. James and Roxanne both looked up with interest. "She says that she'll definitely be able to get the time off for our first Hogsmeade weekend, so she'll be able to celebrate my birthday with us."

She hadn't seen half as much of Victoire that summer as she'd wanted to; she'd both simply been too busy, and unfortunately, part of getting older was not throwing temper tantrums when you didn't get to see your cousins whenever you liked.

Her relationship with Vic – and with Fred, to a lesser extent – had changed a lot of the past year or so. They'd all always been so much older than her that they'd had very little in common growing up; she'd loved them, of course, and loved spending time with them, but they never treated her like a peer.

However, as she gotten older, she'd been noticing a shift in that, little by little, toward them treating her more like an equal, and she'd found that she quite liked it.