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.
After breakfast, most of her fellow Gryffindors beat a quick retreat to the Common Room; most people weren't studious enough to do schoolwork on a Saturday morning. Rose, however, decided not to join them. She couldn't stand the idea of sitting through an awkward morning with Albus pointedly not looking at her. The day was pleasant enough that the lake ended up winning out over the library, especially since she thought it was cool enough to dissuade other people who might have had the same idea.
Scorpius, however, had other plans.
"Hey," she heard him say behind her shortly after she'd sat down.
The breeze had been making her eyes tear up, so she brushed a sleeve across her face before looking up; she didn't want him to think that she'd been crying. "Hey."
He crossed his arms. "Alex Finnigan tried to ask you out again."
"Yes, this time I noticed."
"You said no." His eyes were narrowed.
"Yes, I noticed that, too." The sunlight was hitting him from behind, which made looking at him both difficult and uncomfortable. "Sit down, will you?"
He sat. "Why did you say no?"
Rose studied him closely, but he didn't seem to be teasing her. "What do you mean, why? I told you, I'm not interested in Alex."
Scorpius pulled his knees up to his chest and looked out over the lake. "But is it just that you aren't interested in him? Would it be different if it was someone else, I mean?"
"Huh?"
He sighed. "Is it not liking him, or is it that you like me?"
Now she thought she understood what he was trying to say, and thankfully, she did have an answer to this question. Talking to Colleen about him had confirmed her suspicions - she really had come to genuinely like Scorpius Malfoy, bizarre as it still felt.
"Of course I like you. I've been snogging you all over the place, haven't I?"
Scorpius smiled despite himself, though he still didn't look at her. "You have, and I've enjoyed it. But... Rose, where are we?"
"By the lake."
"I'm serious."
"So am I." He finally gave her a pointed look, and she sighed. "You mean, like, as an us?" He nodded. "Scorpius, I have no idea. Where do you want us to be?"
He swallowed audibly. "I..." He looked up at the sky. "I want you to be my girlfriend," he said very quickly, and Rose felt her stomach turn over.
"Sorry?" she asked, sure that she must have misheard him.
"I want you to be my girlfriend." This time he got the words out slower, though judging from the way he was clenching his shirt, this was not a conversation he was finding easy to have. "I've never not gotten along with Alex, but I've spent the last couple days kind of hating him. I know that's not fair, and I'll get over it, but - well, if I'm going to feel that strongly about some decent enough guy asking you out, I figure I should probably beat all the rest of them to it."
Rose let herself fall backward so she was laying on the grass. "Scorpius, I really don't get it. Until this year, you hated me."
He laughed and looked down at her. His hair still looked a little ridiculous, but his eyes were as striking as ever, and not focusing on his lips took concentrated effort - she had a feeling that if she did, they'd start kissing again, and this was a conversation that probably needed to happen. "No, I didn't, and you know it."
She shrugged and turned her focus away to the clouds drifting across the sky. He was right - she did know it. She really hadn't known it before this year, but between the eavesdropping and her conversations with Noah, James, Albus, and Scorpius himself, she did know it now.
But she still didn't get it.
"Okay, yes, I do, but I still don't get it," she said plainly. "And don't tell me you explained it before, because you didn't. Until about a couple weeks ago, the best we'd ever gotten along was over the summer, because I was too bored to acknowledge you and you were too busy looking at my legs and my chest to antagonize me."
"And your hair."
"Yes, and I'm sure my arse, too." She glanced over at him and found him studying the pebbles by his hand very closely. "I thought so."
Scorpius groaned without looking up. "Yes, your arse, too. What, you think I should have corrected your cousin when he asked about it? You'll notice that I didn't bring up your chest, either - I thought he was going to smack me when I mentioned cold showers, so I had the sense to back way off."
She made a face. "Yeah, the overprotective streak from him is getting old really fast."
Scorpius shook his head, though he still wouldn't look at her. "I don't think he's being overprotective. I think it's just genuinely a really uncomfortable conversation for him to have. You're his cousin. He's said that you matter as much to him as his brother and sister do. It's just... weird."
"He doesn't seem as tense about me thinking about you that way."
"Yeah, well, I think part of that is probably that we've talked enough about girls that he knows what I'm thinking about. I bet you haven't gone into quite the same - er - detail with him that I have." She shook her head. "Didn't think so. And I'm sure that now he's thinking back to all those conversations and wondering which ones were really about you without him knowing, and that's got to be pretty weird, too."
"How many?"
He finally met her eyes. "A fair number," he admitted. "And he's not that oblivious - he's going to figure it out, if he hasn't already. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be off the hook long before I am - you've been lying to him for a week. I've been lying to him for a year."
"A year?"
He looked away from her again and buried his head in his knees. "Sort of," he said, his voice a little muffled. "Look, Rose - you're really pretty, you've got a great figure, and I even like the way you move. Though don't get me wrong," he added. "You're also a royal pain in the arse and have a tendency to really piss me off. I just - yeah, I've been torn between hating you and liking you for awhile."
"Oh, so you're saying that I really am what you think about when you're all alone at night?" she asked without thinking, remembering what James had said.
That surprised him enough that he picked his head up. "What? Oh my god, on second thought, no, don't repeat that. You said it, I didn't."
"Oh, come on." She nudged him. "Don't lie. You'd love to see me with all my clothes off."
Now he fell back onto the grass, too and rubbed his face in consternation. "Sometimes I really do hate you, you know that?" he said when he'd collected himself enough to speak. "This has always been my problem with you. You just... needle at people, and I don't think you get that it genuinely bothers them. So yes, I would love to see you with all your clothes off. Yes, I think about you with all your clothes off. Unless you're volunteering to take all your clothes off, please, for the love of God, stop teasing me about it. It's really, really embarrassing, and honestly, Rose, it's also just mean, especially since I just asked you out and I'm still waiting for an answer."
It took Rose a moment to gather her wits enough to respond. "Sorry," she said, her voice barely audible. "I - I didn't mean to embarrass you."
"I know." He closed his eyes. "But you still did, so don't do it next time."
"Okay." She thought about what he'd said for a minute. "Look - there isn't anyone but you, so you don't have to worry about me saying yes to someone else, even if they did ask me out. I really like kissing you, I even kind of like talking to you, and I've - um - well - I've also had thoughts and dreams about you that were - well, less than pure and - um - you definitely weren't fully clothed in them."
That had been harder to get out than she'd expected. When she looked over at him, he had a wicked grin on his face. "Is that so? How much was I wearing in these dreams of yours, then?"
"Not a whole lot," Rose managed to force out. "Merlin, I can see what you mean about embarrassing." He let out a snort of laughter. Her stammered confession seemed to have relaxed him significantly. "But - I mean, until very recently, we really, really didn't like each other. Jumping to boyfriend when for all we know, this could just be a physical thing that's over next week - no."
He started to protest but stopped himself. "I guess you're right." They sat in silence for a few minutes before Scorpius spoke again. "Were you in the library last week? Just after you got out of the Hospital Wing?"
Rose stiffened involuntarily, and he sighed.
"You were, weren't you." It wasn't a question this time. She didn't respond and after a moment, he groaned. "You are so difficult sometimes."
"Sorry," she said, not feeling very sorry at all.
"Sure you are. Stop doing that, Rose. I don't like you eavesdropping on me." After a moment, he inched his hand over and tentatively took a hold of hers. She gave him a small smile, and was rewarded by one in return. "So, does figuring out whether we really like each other after all involve more kissing?"
Rose felt a smile begin to spread across her lips. "That seems like a good idea to me." She rolled onto her stomach and propped herself up onto her elbows.
Before she could kiss him, he said, "But this isn't just physical for me, you know. I already know that. If it was, I'd just be thinking about you late at night when I'm all alone, not courting my best friend's wrath and sneaking off to kiss you every time I see the opportunity."
Rose very much doubted that it was just physical for her, either, at this point, but the physical part was a very, very nice bonus.