On Tuesday I managed to have a break from Scorpius, as Gryffindor and Ravenclaw hadn't been put together for Herbology. However, instead I had to put up with the Slytherins. Even over twenty years after the war, relatives of some of the Death Eaters still had a grudge against me and my family. It was lucky none of us had trouble with defensive magic or we'd have ended up spending most of our time in the hospital wing.
For some reason though, it was usually James who was hit the worst. Although, knowing him, he probably always did something to annoy whoever cursed him before they'd even attempted it. He always had been a trouble maker, and being of age hadn't made the slightest difference to that. I suppose it was a good thing in the long run: at least the option of going into business with Uncle George was open to him.
Al, Dom and I were all working at the same tray to re-pot the Juggendon plants Professor Longbottom had brought back from Latvia when he visited in his holidays. They were vibrant purple plants with poisonous fruit. But, while the grape sized berries would kill you, the leaves of the plant were very useful in curing minor magical maladies, and Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing was looking forward to having them.
"Why won't it just come out?" Al exclaimed for the fifth time, as he gave an almighty tug on the thick, gnarled stalk of the plant.
"Now, now, Mr Potter, not too rough. These Juggendons sometimes need a light hand," Professor Longbottom, one of our family's close friends, said, gently moving Al out of the way and pulling the plant out of the pot with ease. "Now you try."
Al rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut in a thin line before holding the purple plant just above the soil level and trying to pull it out. "Is this okay, Professor?" He asked, looking around, but Professor Longbottom had already moved away to stop the venomous tentacular throttling Luke McClaggen. "Sod this," Al exclaimed, giving up on the tender approach and wrenching the Juggendon free from the tightly compacted soil. Unfortunately, the force of Al's pull sent showers of mud raining down on the three of us as well as the three Slytherin's working at the next pots.
"Al!" Dom shrieked, desperately trying to shake the soil from her hair silvery blonde hair.
"Watch it, Potter," Jack Flint, a Slytherin, warned, glowering at us. His threatening look wasn't all too impressive when you considered the fact that he looked like something had pooped on him.
"You watch it or I'll give you detention," Al retorted, still holding the forgotten plant aloft.
"Is that a threat? Because it's a poor one at that."
Al opened his mouth to answer, but before he could I trod on his foot. "Stop it, Al. You don't want to get in trouble. Forget about him before someone gets hurt."
"That's right. Always interfering in other people's business, aren't you, Weasley? Can't leave anything or anyone alone - it's no wonder Scorpius ran."
"That's it!" Dom hissed sassily, one of her hands on her hips as she stepped in front of my frozen body, even getting past Al who was furiously scrambling to punch Jack. "What are you talking about?" She poked him roughly in the chest. "Rose and Scorpius haven't been together, you idiot! Maybe you should learn some better insults."
Jack shot me an amused glance as he realized that Dom had no idea about what had happened between me and Scorpius. He opened his mouth, and in typical movie style, timed slowed down while my mind yelled, 'No!'
Somehow, without fully intending it, I managed to shove Jack into his two mates, and stand in front of him, smiling tightly at Dom. "Of course I haven't gone out with Scorpius. We hate each other," I told her, my eyes wide and staring.
Luckily before anything else could happen, the end of lesson bell rang and I shooed Dom out of the greenhouse, carrying both her bag and mine.
But Dom wouldn't drop it while we walked back through the light September drizzle to the castle for lunch.
"Are you sure there's not something I don't know?" She asked for the fifth time.
"Look, Dom, if there was we'd know about it," Al reasoned, looking back at her as he walked through the great hall doors in front of us. "Rose is such a big chatterbox that if she ever went on a date with a boy the whole world would know."
I shot him a grateful look before playfully arguing back. "Excuse me, I am not a chatterbox! I may talk a lot, but that's a good thing, right? I mean, who likes silence?"
"Rose just 'cause you hate silence doesn't mean everyone else does too," Fred joked as he sat down next to me at the lunch table.
"I could do with a day of silence," Hugo muttered. Looking up at our crowd of confused faces, he continued, "We just spent an entire double period learning cheering charms - Thomas O'Leary, you know that Hufflepuff kid, overdid his and Ricky Williams spent the entire lesson laughing his head off. His laugh sounds like a monkey being strangled, but ten times louder," he explained when the rest of us continued to stare uncomprehendingly.
Although Dom kept shooting glances at me, I made sure I was never looking in her direction, and thankfully the conversation never turned back to Scorpius. Instead James and Fred entertained us with rubbish jokes.
"Oh! Have you heard the one about the hag and the clown?"
"Yes, James," we all groaned in synchronisation.
"You told it last Christmas and I think we can safely say that no-one wants to throw up again."
Fred interrupted with, "Well what about the magic tractor - did you hear that one? It went right and turned into a field! Get it?"
Standing up, I muttered, "I'm leaving."
"Oh, Merlin, don't leave me alone with them!" Lily cried as James and Fred moved onto their ruder jokes. She jumped to her feet and ran after me, her bag dragging on the floor before she pulled it over her shoulder.
The two of us soon parted as I headed back outdoors for Care of Magical Creatures where Hagrid was watering his pumpkins and pointing what looked like his umbrella at them.
"Hi, Hagrid!" I called when I was still ten metres away from him.
"A'right, Rose," he happily replied, shaking his mane of now grey hair out of his face. "How're yer parents?"
"Good. They're out in Romania at the moment, staying with Uncle Charlie while Mum does a deal with the Ministry out there."
"Tha's good. Glad ter hear they're well." He stood with his hands on his hips looking down at me.
"What are you teaching us today then, Hagrid?" I peered around his bulk trying to see some kind of monster-I mean creature-when he side-stepped in front of me.
"No cheatin', Rose. Where's the rest o' the class?"
I turned to look back up at the castle, where small figures dressed all in black were just coming out of the entrance hall doors and across the courtyard to the bridge.
"They're coming now." Searching for a topic, while Hagrid hummed to himself as he put away his watering can, I said, "Your pumpkins are looking good this year."
"Ah, thanks. Just been doing a bit of tamperin' - givin' 'em a helpin' hand."
Al and Dom with the rest of the Gryffindors crowded around me and Hagrid began speaking to us.
"Welcome back. I've got a few treats for yer this year - some real good creatures lined up." As he spoke the ground began to shake beneath our feet, sending tremors through our bodies. I fell sideways into Al who caught me, as two forest trees were pushed apart, allowing Grawp through.
He was a giant, standing at sixteen feet tall - double Hagrid's size - with a pale face, covered in mud stains, with leaves and sticks stuck in his tangled, shaggy hair. In his hands he clutched several blood soaked pieces of meat, and about his shoulders flew a collection of dark, skeletal flying horses.
I knew what they were instantly. Thestrals. I'd seen them pulling the school carriages on the first day of term every year after my great Aunt Muriel dropped dead one Christmas.
The lesson was interesting, but most of what Hagrid told us, I already knew. I remembered James trying to scare Al and I on our first day at Hogwarts by telling us tall tales about them - it wasn't a surprise really that I had gone to the library as soon as possible to find out if what James had said was true. That was my reaction for everything - except I'd never consulted a book about my Scorpius problem. Perhaps I should've done. Or maybe I'd publish my own book. I could call it 'Understanding Boys and the Weird Things They Do'.
At the end of the lesson Hagrid set us an essay on the attributes of Thestrals and then helped Grawp entice the creatures back into the Forbidden Forest, leaving the class to walk back up to the Great Hall for dinner. Al, Dom and I hung back, waiting for Hagrid to return, and then reminisced about the time Uncle Harry invited him to our New Year's Eve party. Needless to say, Hagrid had soon passed out drunk on Uncle Harry's dining room table where he ended up staying the night.
Hagrid strolled away from us up between the tables to the staff table where Professor McGonagall had reserved a place for him on her left and I squeezed onto our table between Lily and Roxanne in time to grab a roast potato before the main courses disappeared to be replaced by the puddings.
"How was Care of Magical Creatures?" Lily asked, picking up a chocolate éclair and taking a large bite out of it.
"Good," I replied lightly. "Al's robes got a bit ruined though - I suppose that's what you get when you spill gravy down your front at lunch. The Thestrals were bound to eat his jumper. How about divination?"
"Lee is just divine, isn't he, Roxie?"
"So dreamy," Roxanne breathed in agreement.
"Seriously, guys, he's not that great. His subject is utter rubbish too."
"No, Rosie, he predicted that Professor Lofting would give us a test in our first Transfiguration lesson and she did!"
I scoffed loudly. "Lily, teachers do talk to each other in the staff room."
"Scoff all you want, Rose, he said that humans wouldn't believe him - we don't have the eyes to properly observe the world," Roxanne said complacently, staring above my head. I was beginning to worry that her hanging out with Lorcan and Lysander would never do her any good - they were too like their mother, Luna Lovegood. Right now Roxie was probably searching for some mythical creature.
As dinner went on I began to dread it ending. Every second that passed brought me closer to having to do rounds with Scorpius.
Hugo, Louis, Roxanne and Molly left first, heading back to the Common Room to start on their homework. Ginny soon followed, wanting to work with Roxanne to fill in her planet chart for Divination with her classmate, leaving me with Al, James and Fred. All around the hall, students were getting up and going back to the House area. Most of the seventh, sixth and fifth years left first because our homework load was heavier in preparation for our exams. Fred, Al and James were pretty much the only exceptions to this rule. James and Fred were throwing peas at Al while he finished his rhubarb pie. Then they were gone as well, and the hall was empty except for Scorpius and me.
"Guess we'd better start rounds then." He smiled at me hesitantly.
"Yeah," I replied grumpily, standing up and slinging the bag I hadn't had time to drop off in the Common Room over my shoulder.
We started in the entrance hall then made our way out to the viaduct before going around the Slytherin area of the castle there. Conversation between the pair of us was awkward and halting, but even that was better than complete and utter silence.
"I heard about some sort of fight in Herbology this morning..." Scorpius began.
Although I knew exactly what he was talking about, I joked, "Oh you mean Luke McClaggen and the venomous tentacular?" I couldn't stand the thought of our conversation going towards my conflict with Jack Flint or what had happened last year. So far I'd managed to avoid running into Veronica Montague and the other Slytherins who Scorpius had been friends with except for this morning. I was doing my best to pretend that it had never happened, but it was becoming increasingly hard when ten other people knew about it.
"You know that's not what I meant, Rose. I'm sorry if Jack said anything that was...offensive," he murmured, watching me intensely for any kind of reaction.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and shrugged non-committedly. If Scorpius knew what had really been said, he would have been sure to do something to Jack, and that would probably result in the whole school finding out. No. It was best to not tell him the truth. It wasn't lying anyway, so I had nothing to feel guilty about. And if anyone should have been feeling guilty, it was Scorpius Malfoy for deceiving me.
Changing the subject, Scorpius asked, "How much homework have you got yet then?"
"I've got three essays and two sets of notes to complete. How about you?"
"Even worse. Four essays - two for History of Magic - and notes like you for Potions and then I've got all the work from Charms to catch up on too, and that's not forgetting that I've got rounds twice this week and two detentions from Professor Lofting for shouting in the Great Hall," he moaned. "It's a good thing Quidditch doesn't start until next week is all I can say, or I'd never get all my homework done. I think I'm already going to be up until gone midnight every night this week anyway."
"I'd completely forgotten about Quidditch! Actually I'm surprised James hasn't been nagging me about getting out to train early."
"I thought you were going to quit anyway."
I turned and saw Scorpius' eyebrows turned down in a frown, a cute wrinkle in the middle of his forehead between them.
I shrugged again. "I still might."
I had no idea how I would tell James that. Even the rest of my family would blank me for a few days because they would lose their best Chaser.
"You can't!" Scorpius exclaimed.
"And why not? It's my decision," I countered.
"Yeah...but..." Scorpius muttered before breaking off and saying something under his breath. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what he said so I turned away from his handsome face and went into the second floor girl's bathroom to check that there was no-one hiding there when they should have been in their Common Room or Dorm.
Studying my reflection in the cracked mirror, I saw that my cheeks were flushed slightly from just being around him, and felt my heart racing. I really hated my body for betraying me. I didn't want to be attracted to him, I tried to act like I wasn't; but it must surely have been obvious to him that I never looked up from the floor because I couldn't stand to get lost in his warm, stormy grey eyes. The physiological signs of my attraction just wouldn't stop, so in an attempt to cool myself down I threw a handful of cool, refreshing water in my face.
Scorpius turned to face me as the door creaked open on its ancient hinges. He gasped and breathed, "You look so pretty with damp hair."
"What?" I asked sharply, sure that I must have misheard him as he commented on how ugly I looked with wet, curly hair.
"Nothing," Scorpius replied, clearing his throat and looking away. "Come on, we've still got half the castle to cover and it's already nearly eleven o'clock."
I followed him, dawdling in my preoccupation with how disgusted Scorpius must be by me to not be able to look at me. I didn't notice him looking over his shoulder or stop completely, and it took me by surprise when I walked into him. My cheeks blushed at the feel of the contours of his back and the scent of his aftershave which almost drove me mad, and I couldn't stop inhaling it once he grabbed hold of my wrist and began to tow me to make me move quicker. I wasn't able to move out of his personal space because of his tight; but gentle grip on me, not that I wanted to. His aftershave smelt so good that I couldn't imagine ever being without him, though the rational part of my brain was practically kicking me for being weak and forgetting that I was supposed to hate Scorpius.
"Rose, I'd appreciate it if you could use your feet," Scorpius said, glancing down at my feet, "though I do want to make it back to my Common Room before midnight please."
His haughty tone snapped me back to reality and I fought my way from his grip and started walking by myself, easily brushing past him, mumbling as I went by. I practically sped walked around the castle in order to get away from him quicker, leaving him jogging behind me in an attempt to catch up. I decided that perhaps I would do that every time we had rounds together - it would certainly be over quicker and there would be no chance for conversation.
"Rose! Wait up!" He called after me, but I ignored him as if someone had placed an ineffective hearing spell on me. Maybe I should spell myself next time I see him coming...
Finally we arrived back at the Entrance Hall, my feet aching from running the last couple of corridors and stairs when Scorpius picked up the pace, chasing after me.
"Well, it's late, gotta go," I said, breezing past him as he bent of his knees trying to catch his breath.
"Wait, Rose. Don't I get a goodnight?"
I grimaced but turned to face him. "Night." It was short. It was blunt. But it was also a mistake.
The moment I turned around, Scorpius threw himself at me, the pair of us falling to the floor as his lips urgently connected with mine. In shock, my lips parted, and he wasted no time in plunging his tongue in. His hands that had been on my shoulders, slid down my arms and under my cloak sleeves, pushing my jumper up until he was touching my bare skin, bringing up goosebumps as his touch left me. Every inch of my body felt like it was on fire, caught in his web of passion. I didn't notice I was kissing him back until he put his hands in my crazy curly hair. I froze, my hands locked in his tousled, blonde hair.
"Scorpius." He ignored me. "Scorpius, stop," I said more insistently.
He moved his lips from me, his eyes darker than I had ever seen them.
"Rose?"
He didn't get a response unless you counted me slapping him on the cheek as an answer. My hand left a pink, smarting patch and as he rolled off me, gripping his face and moaning in pain, I quickly stood up, grabbing my wand from where it had fallen out of my pocket and ran off, straightening my robes as I went.
Hot, angry tears slid from my eyes despite the fact that I tried my hardest to refrain from crying. I was angry and confused by his actions. After everything that had happened between us, I found it hard to believe that he still acted like he fancied me. By the time I arrived at the Gryffindor Common Room on the Seventh Floor, quickly muttering 'Gum Drops' to get through the Fat Lady's portrait, I was in full on hysterics. I wanted to forget my attraction to him, but it was so hard when he was constantly there ready to make out with me. It was even more difficult when I looked into his handsome face and felt like he'd stolen my heart, plucking it from my chest, so I could never get over him.
I was more than glad that no-one was still up to me in my messy state: my eyes red, my nose running and my robes still covered in dust and dirt from the castle floor. Settling myself in for a long night, I plonked myself in my favorite armchair in front of the fire and pulled my bag off my shoulder, retrieving the homework I needed to do.
The fire began to run low so I cast wingardium leviosa on some logs piled by the fireplace and sent them soaring into the coals, the flames shooting up in seconds, and a ray of heat spreading through the room, causing me to remove my cloak before I became too hot.
For two hours I worked on my Care of Magical Creatures and Charms essays and then moved onto my Herbology notes on the uses of Juggendon plants. My Potions notes, I figured, would have to wait a few days. By the end of my first essay, my usually neat calligraphy had become an untidy scrawl that I was sure none of the teachers would be able to read regardless of whether I completed all my homework. Somewhere along the way I fell asleep in the warmth of the fire, the comfort of the fuchsia cushions I was sat on and the lulling, continuous scratching of my pheasant's feather quill. In the distance, the ancient clock in the Clock Tower boomed, signalling the approach of the third hour of the morning, but I was too deeply asleep to hear it.
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Authors note
Scorpius is a real pig isn't he? Vote, comment and follow me :D