Curiosity Is Not a Sin

The Hogwarts Express

Rose shook her head. "I meant to do it during the Hogsmeade visit a couple weeks ago, but - er - well, you know."

"That you snuck into the Slytherin dormitories to spend the afternoon kissing your boyfriend instead?"

Noah glanced up from his book again. Rose got the distinct impression that he wasn't actually reading it - he was just using it as an excuse to not get drawn into an extended conversation about Rose and Scorpius's relationship, which he'd told her a week earlier that he'd grown quite bored of hearing about. "Not that I'm not happy for you both, of course," he'd hastened to add. "It's just that the incessant 'Rose Weasley this' and 'Rose that' and 'I'm meeting Rose here' and 'Rose's hair looked so pretty today, don't you think?' has started to get really old, especially since he never says anything new."

"I can't blame them, Al," he said now, referring to Rose's trip into his dormitory. "I wouldn't want to take all my clothes off in some random passage."

Rose felt her face get red, and all laziness in Albus's face immediately vanished. He shot up. "You did what?"

Thankfully, this question seemed to be directed at Scorpius rather than Rose. Whatever her boyfriend said about Albus's feelings about their relationship, Rose continued to feel like there was a little unnecessary protectiveness over her mixed in with everything else. That usually annoyed her, but she didn't want to get into that particular fight today.

When she glanced across the compartment at Noah, his dark eyes were glittering with amusement. She rolled her eyes at him, and he winked back.

"Er -" Her boyfriend suddenly bore a marked resemblance to a trapped rabbit. Rose sat back to watch whether he'd come at Albus with a denial or a demand for privacy.

"Yes?"

Scorpius split the difference. "Not that it's your business," he told her cousin pointedly, "but Noah's exaggerating. We did not take all our clothes off."

Rose winced. The emphasis her boyfriend had put on the word 'all' was both almost certain to be unhelpful and not actually necessary - they really had both remained mostly clothed. It was also her experience that the more you said in your defense, the less effective it was. She wasn't quite sure why it worked that way, but somehow, it did.

Albus, predictably, was not at all pacified. "Great," he said. "Just great. Scorpius, can you at least try to keep your hands off my cousin? For a few hours?"

Scorpius regarded his best friend for a few moments before turning back to Rose. Apparently, he'd decided to switch tactics and start treating the question as though it were simply below him. "So, are you looking forward to meeting my parents?"

Rose felt her face get hot. "Er - yes. Actually."

"Better hope no one mentions it to Jo," Noah told Scorpius, whose smile evaporated and was immediately replaced with a look of horror.

"I thought you liked your cousin Johanna," Albus said. "And I think she's nice."

"I do like her," Scorpius said. "But one of her 'little baby cousin's' first real girlfriend'? And her boss's daughter on top of it? She'll be a complete nightmare."

"She sounds interesting," Rose put in. "I wouldn't mind meeting her at all."

"You wouldn't," he muttered. "It's not you she'd be embarrassing."

That prospect sobered him enough that he stopped kissing Rose incessantly for at least an hour. Albus and Noah seemed to welcome the respite, though Rose was less enthusiastic about it. He seemed to feel better after Evelyn stopped in and he managed to extract a promise from her that she'd try to dissuade her sister from dropping by Scorpius's while Rose was visiting, but just as he was putting his arm around her again, the door slid open again and a dark-haired boy with very messy hair stopped in.