Curiosity Is Not a Sin

Prying Fathers

Rose had hoped that the initial letter from her parents would be the end of her having to talk to them about Scorpius, at least until the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately, that hope ended up being entirely in vain; the letter she received from them Tuesday morning was horribly embarrassing, and she was forced to revise her earlier impression that the less her father knew, the happier he'd be. That was clearly turning out not to be the case.

Scorpius - who had used a snackbox to get out of Muggle Studies again, a pattern which Rose was quite sure would lead to several more detentions - found the follow-up letter very funny. Even Rose's pointing out sourly that he was courting another detention didn't deter him.

"Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "Let me see it again."

Rose handed it over. He ignored her scowl and began to peruse her father's messy writing again. Rose herself didn't need to read it again: she remembered what it said only all too well:

Rose,

We've been hearing some troubling things about you and this Scorpius Malfoy boy, and we're worried that you might be rushing into things with him.

(Rose suspected that 'we' meant 'I,' in this case - she couldn't see her mother getting quite so fixated on it.)

You haven't really answered our last letter yet. Your mother wants to know a lot more than you've told her. If half of what we're hearing is true, you need to slow down. You've disliked this boy for four years for a reason. Don't let your impulses cloud your judgment. It won't end well.

"Damn Roxanne," Rose muttered. She was quite sure that Roxanne was where most of these 'troubling things' her father referenced were coming from - she couldn't imagine Albus writing things that would cause such concern in her parents - or, rather, her father. Rose's mother was perfectly capable of writing herself if she was really that worried, so Rose suspected that she probably wasn't.

Scorpius handed the letter back, the broad grin still plastered across his face. "They're been hearing troubling things, Red," he teased, throwing his legs over one arm on his exceedingly comfortable plushy green chair and leaning his back against the other; they were in the Room of Requirement, and while Rose did have some reservations about spending time with Scorpius when he was supposed to be in class again, she liked his company too much to properly object.

"That's what it says," Rose agreed. "I don't know what he could be talking about, though - there can't be much that's really that troubling."

He considered that. "I don't know about that," he said slowly. "Your cousins have caught us in some pretty compromising positions. Haven't James and Roxanne walked in on you trying to rip my shirt off?"

She threw the empty chocolate frog box on the table next to her at him. "Stop exaggerating."

He caught it and tossed it to the floor. "Well, Albus caught me with my hand up your shirt that once, didn't he?" She winced. "Oh, and James and Roxanne definitely did catch us with my hand on your arse in an empty but well-traveled corridor that once."

Rose winced. She'd managed to forget that they'd had witnesses to about half of those incidents. Thankfully, they'd developed some self-control since then.

"We're just lucky nobody caught us when my hand was up your skirt the other day," the blond boy continued. He looked entirely too pleased with himself. "I mean, we know I was just touching your leg, but someone else might have jumped to a different conclusion."

She'd almost forgotten about that, too. She didn't think anyone had seen them then, but she wasn't sure - they really did need to stop getting quite so carried away by the lake. Plenty of other students liked to congregate there, even when it was chilly out.