Rose was about to take a deeply disturbing and frightening step into the unknown.
Dating Scorpius had been strange enough, and she still wasn't quite sure how she felt about falling for a Slytherin - though she was sure that how good he was at kissing and how her stomach always seemed to turn over when he smiled at her were strong mediating factors that made it okay.
But this was something different. This was going above and beyond sneaking off to kiss wherever they thought they could get away with it, holding hands in public, and even beyond his meeting her cousins during the October Hogsmeade visit.
"Oh, come on, Rosie," Albus said impatiently. She had frozen in the doorway to the Great Hall, overcome with real panic at what she was about to do. Her cousin grabbed her elbow and pulled her inside.
She made one last-ditch attempt to talk herself out of it. "Albus, don't you think -"
He didn't even let her finish. Instead, he spun around and put both hands firmly on her shoulders. "Rosie."
"Yes."
"Do you like your boyfriend?"
"What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I do, he's brilliant. Otherwise I wouldn't be dating a damn Slytherin."
"Don't you want to make him happy on his birthday?"
"Of course I do, don't be stupid! But I got him a present. Isn't that enough?"
Albus didn't even respond. He just raised his eyebrows in that annoying Albus way, and she sighed. He didn't have to say it - she knew what he was going to say, and he was right.
"Oh, fine. Lead on."
He released her, but just as she was considering fleeing to the safety of the Gryffindor table after all, he grabbed her arm. "You'll survive," he said dryly. "I promise."
She surrendered. She hadn't really wanted to get out of it, but if she hadn't put up a little last minute resistance, she'd never have been able to face James and Roxanne.
When they got to the Slytherin table, Albus - who was still gripping her arm firmly - pulled her up it until they were across from Claire MacDougal. She looked up from her plate, smiling. "Hey, Al - oh my god, you actually got her to do it."
"Good morning to you, too," Rose grumbled, climbing onto the bench and feeling very uncomfortable with this entire thing.
"Sorry," the other girl said. "I mean, mostly. I guess. But when Albus said you'd be joining us for breakfast, I was sure he was delusional." She studied Rose closely. "Wow. You really like Scorpius, don't you?"
Rose stared resolutely down at the empty plate in front of her. "Yes."
Albus, who had started serving himself immediately with none of Rose's reticence - he joined his friends at the Slytherin table on a fairly regular basis - nudged Rose. She looked up, and he jerked his head toward the door. Scorpius and Noah had just walked in.
Rose clenched her hands in her lap. "He'd better appreciate this," she muttered to Albus.
Scorpius started toward the Gryffindor table, and Rose realized with a start that he'd been planning to sit with her rather than his house on his birthday. That made her feel a little guilty, so it was immensely gratifying when Noah said something to make Scorpius look over at their own table.
When he saw Rose, his face broke into a very bright smile, and she felt her heart melt a little.
"All right," she said to Albus. "It's worth it just for that."
"Hey," Noah said when he and Scorpius reached them. He slid in next to Claire.
Scorpius, on the other hand, stopped behind Rose and wrapped his arms around her. "Thank you," he whispered in her ear.
She smiled despite herself. "Happy birthday."
He sat down next to her, which left her between Albus and Scorpius. She breathed a sigh of relief, and Scorpius gave her an amused look - he'd clearly realized that she was worried about actually having to rub elbows with Slytherins she didn't know.
She kissed his cheek, and his smile grew.
"You're both disgusting," Claire told them, but it lacked the bite her remarks about Rose usually had; even she was grinning at her friend's reaction to his girlfriend doing something she'd said on many occasions that she would never, ever do.
When they finished breakfast, most of their classmates headed back to their dormitories to prepare for the Hogsmeade visit. Scorpius, however, caught Rose's hand when she started to follow Albus up the stairs. "Walk with me?" he asked.
Albus glanced back. "I'll catch up with you," she said. He rolled his eyes and hurried to catch up with James and Roxanne.
"We can't go outside," Rose pointed out as Scorpius led her away from the mayhem, waving goodbye to Noah and Claire with his free hand. "We're not dressed for it."
"I know," he said. "Er - are there any secret passages or anything near here?"
Rose let out a loud giggle. "I thought you wanted to walk?"
"Well..." he drew out the word. "Maybe I lied a little." They walked by a nook that looked like it had once held a suit of armor, and he pulled her into it. "Good enough."
Rose glanced up and down the hallway. It was deserted, but she wasn't at all confident it would stay that way. She forgot her concern momentarily, however, when she looked back at him and he leaned in for a kiss. "Thanks," he said. "For sitting with me."
She shrugged. "I guess it wasn't that bad. I mean, I'm not doing it on a regular basis, but it could have been worse." She ran a finger lightly along his neck, and he shuddered. "Anyway, it was worth it just for the look on your face. I think the only time I've seen you smile that wide was right after I first kissed you."
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again. She was pretty sure he'd actually pulled her down the hallway to ask her a question, but he was clearly quickly becoming distracted. She figured he'd remember what he wanted to ask her eventually, however, so she returned the kiss very happily, sliding a hand under his shirt.
When he broke away, he took a few deep breaths to steady himself. "I wanted to ask you something," he said, leaning against the wall opposite her and shoving his hands into his back pockets.
"What?"
He licked his lips. "Um - how much did you really want to visit Hogsmeade today?"
She shrugged. "I still have some Christmas shopping to do, but I guess I don't have to do it today. I just figured you'd like to get out of the castle for your birthday."
"We could," he said slowly. "Or... um..."
"Spit it out, Scorpius."
He met her gaze squarely. "So - I know you just sat at the Slytherin table, but - well - er - it's just that everyone in my dormitory is definitely going to Hogsmeade, so it'll be empty all day, and..."
He hadn't looked away from her, but he was fidgeting quite a lot. She decided to take him off the hook - it was his birthday, after all.
"You want us to stay back from Hogsmeade and sneak me into your dormitory?"
He shrugged. "I just thought if you borrowed the cloak from James..."
She considered the proposition. On one hand, the idea of going into the Slytherin Common Room and dormitories was disconcerting; dating a Slytherin was one thing, but going into the heart of their House was quite another. She didn't think that even Albus had been in the Slytherin Common Room before, though she could be wrong.
But on the other, the promise of spending hours in an empty dormitory - even if it was his Slytherin dormitory - with her boyfriend was very, very tempting.
Temptation quickly won out. Sneaking off to empty classrooms and secret passages for alone time was getting old in a hurry. "Sure, let me go ask him before he leaves."
Scorpius looked a little taken aback. "Wait, was that seriously that easy? I thought I'd have to beg you for at least a few minutes to step foot inside the Slytherin Common Room."
"Well, normally you would. But an empty dormitory is pretty tempting."
His grin was back. "Um - I should probably go pretend to get ready to go to Hogsmeade, so nobody decides to hang back and spoil my birthday because they're jerks."
"And I should go get the cloak from James. Meet you on the steps in twenty minutes?"
"Sounds good." He was looking very, very pleased with himself.
When she got back to Gryffindor tower, Rose headed up the stairs to the boys' dormitories rather than the girls'. When she reached the sixth years' door, she tapped loudly. "James?"
The door swung open. Her cousin was already wearing his hat, scarf, and gloves - she and Scorpius had gotten distracted for longer than she'd thought. "What's up, Rosie?"
"Can I have a word?" she asked. She knew that both Tyler and Julian would tease her mercilessly if they overheard her request.
James stepped into the stairwell and closed the door. "What's going on? Why aren't you getting ready?"
"Er - I don't think I'm going. Can I borrow the cloak?"
He studied her for a minute. A grin quickly began to creep across his face. "Oh, Merlin. You don't have any plans to sneak into another House's dormitories, do you, Rose?" She felt her face get hot, and he grinned. "Have fun. I actually don't have it, Albus does, but sure, go ahead."
Rose managed to mumble a thank you before heading down to the fifth years' dormitory instead. Five minutes and a couple teasing remarks from Albus later, she'd stuffed the cloak into her bag and headed downstairs in her coat and hat. When she met Scorpius, they dawdled long enough to make sure that the other boys in his dormitory left and to allow the stragglers to empty the halls before they headed downstairs.
Not even the sight on the wall opening onto a dimly-lit corridor when Scorpius said "Parseltongue" was enough to dissuade her. Hidden by the cloak, she followed him closely through the Common Room, which was deserted other than a handful of first and second years, and up the spiral staircase that led to the boys' dormitories. Once they'd stepped inside his and he'd closed the door behind her, she pulled off the cloak.
He tapped the doorknob with his wand and muttered something. In response to her inquisitive look, he said, "I'm just locking it - sometimes the first and second years think it's funny to pull pranks during Hogsmeade weekends. We came back once last year to the smell of dungbombs."
She winced in sympathy.
He slipped off his shoes and headed to the bed nearest the thick glass window. "This one's mine," he said, flopping onto it. Once she'd joined him on it, she looked around the room in interest.
In some ways, it really wasn't that different from the Gryffindor dormitories - the beds were the same, though the blankets and hangings were a deep emerald green rather than bright red, and it was about as messy as Albus's dormitory tended to be. However, unlike the Gryffindor dormitories, where the windows opened onto the cool air, the window by Scorpius's bed was clearly never meant to open; through the murky light, she could see fish swimming by. The lack of natural light also gave the room - and the Common Room below - an eerie, haunted feel to it.
She shivered. "How do you sleep like this?" she asked him. "It's so gloomy."
"Pretty easily. It was a little weird at first to not have a real window, but you get used to it. I like it." He stretched out and grinned. "Never thought I'd get you in here, though."
She made a face at him. "Yeah, well. Do you want your present?"
Scorpius considered that for a minute. His hair almost appeared to be tinged green in the ghostly light, and Rose had the sudden urge to run her fingers through it. "Later?" he said finally.
She decided to take that as the invitation it undoubtedly was and shifted up the bed until she was next to him. He let out a very contented sigh when she cuddled up to him, and after a moment, she felt his arm tighten around her shoulders.
This was all very nice, but Rose was not a patient person, and there were other things she wanted to do a lot more than cuddle. After a couple minutes of laying there in silence, Scorpius cleared his throat. "You're not loving this, are you?"
She made a face and pushed herself into a sitting position. "No, I do," she said. "It's nice."
"But?"
Rose began to toy with one of her curls. "I want other things more."
He propped himself up on his elbows, looking intrigued. "Like what?"
"Like kissing." He grinned and reached for her, but she pulled back before he could grab hold of her elbows. "And it would be nice if you weren't wearing a shirt anymore."
That made him laugh. "Rose -"
She leaned forward and tugged at the bottom of his shirt. "Scorpius, I'm serious."
He rolled his eyes and yanked the shirt over his head. "Better?" he asked, tossing it toward the foot of the bed.
"Much." Now she let him pull her back onto the bed with him for a very enjoyable afternoon.
He really was very good as kissing, and she quite liked him without a shirt on.