Scorpius was sitting at the foot of his tree in the Forbidden Forest, studying with his papers spread around him in a circle, when he heard snatches of voices in the wind. He immediately tensed. While it was nothing new to hear them coming from the lake, these were much closer. Nobody ever came into this part of the forest; that was the main reason he studied here. After a few moments, his curiosity got the best of him and he listened, soon realizing that they were all first years, same as him. A Ravenclaw boy had lost a bet, and was now required to walk around in the forbidden forest for at least 10 minutes and a Hufflepuff girl had volunteered to go with him, along with two other Gryffindors.

Only they had been out for more than 10 minutes.

If you keep still, you're less likely to be noticed—or at least that's what a book Scorpius had once read said. So he sat still as a stone, save for his chest expanding and shrinking while he waited for the kids to come into view. Once they did, he thought as hard as he could to remember them from the sorting. The Ravenclaw was a big, muscly boy named Ty McLaggen. He was practically trembling, obviously not comfortable with being this deep in the forbidden forest. Scorpius rolled his eyes.

"We're really lost," whispered McLaggen, his voice, though quiet, bounced around the unnaturally still forest. "What do we do? I don't know the way back. I knew I should have told a teacher."

"Relax," a British-Indian Gryffindor boy he remembered was Perri Patil (the alliteration helped) laughed. "This is all good for the species. We are participating in a process called Natural Selection." The other Gryffindor laughed, but the Ravenclaw started crying.

"Hey," the red-haired Hufflepuff snapped at the Gryffindor boys. Rose. That was her name. Rose Weasley. She put her small hand on McLaggen's huge shoulder. "We'll be fine. You're a wizard, one of the clever ones. And you have Perri as your brave Gryffindor minion, my outstanding fabulousness and Albus too, if he's good for anything," she added with a smirk. "We can find our way out of some trees."

McLaggen visibly relaxed, as did a tension previously unnoticed from the rest of the group. Scorpius stared at Rose, in awe of how quickly she could lighten a mood. Scorpius later blamed this stare as the very reason she noticed him that day; she looked around moments after, and practically jumped back in shock at seeing him sitting there on the forest floor.

"Hey," she called, as the other children turned to look at him in a shock not unlike her own.

"Hey," he replied as casually as possible, trying to sound like he had heard nothing and there was really no reason for them to keep interacting with him, but to no avail.

"Do you know how to get back to the castle?" Rose asked politely, as if it were completely normal to be sitting all alone in the Forbidden Forest.

Scorpius quickly and gracelessly gathered his things into his bag and shoved it up next to the tree (for he fully intended to return as soon as he had lead the others out of the forest) before he nodded and wordlessly stood, dusted the dirt off himself and began walking. The others followed, whispering their concerns to each other—all except for Rose, who walked right beside Scorpius.

"It's nice out here, isn't it? Mysterious, quiet. Nice place to think." Scorpius just made a wordless noise of agreement and tried not to look at her.

"There are woods outside my grandparents' house, but not like this. Have you ever seen a forest like this?"

Scorpius had just convinced himself not to go into a full report of all the cool and strange things he'd seen in this forest, and was about to give a terse "no" in response, when Patil piped up from behind that Professor Longbottom once said it contained many powerful and one-of-a-kind plants and that it had a unique ecosystem and even a flying car and Scorpius thought that possibly Patil would have less breath for rambling on if he were, by chance, to be strangled.

Rose commented on how cool she found this information and immediately turned back to Scorpius and asked what his favorite class was.

"Charms," slipped out of his mouth before he could decide not to converse.

"Really?" She smiled like this actually fascinated her. "I'm terrible at charms. Maybe you can tutor me sometime."

Scorpius stared at her. "I do a great memory charm." Seriously, he didn't remember deciding to be friendly.

"My mum says those are hard. She had to do a really big one once, and it took her a whole summer to prepare for it. She never told me what for."

Albus Potter, the small Gryffindor boy he was just now remembering the name of, snuck up behind them to hold Rose's hand. She took it without as much as a falter in step.

"What do you like?" Scorpius spoke thoughtlessly—again.

"I like Defense Against the Dark Arts." Scorpius looked at her in surprise.

"But you're a girl."

"Very well spotted."

Albus made big eyes at him, like he was scared for Scorpius's fate.

"I didn't mean—I guess I just—sorry..." but Rose just laughed.

"It's alright," she said. "I suppose I'll have to get used to that if I want to be an Auror."

"You want to be an Auror?"

"Well I don't wanna be a Blast-Ended Skrewt."

And then it happened. Scorpius smiled. He quickly scowled to make up for the momentary breach.

"I just meant that it doesn't seem—"

And then he had much bigger things to worry about than a smile.

A spider huge as a muggle car appeared hardly 20 feet away from the children. After a split second, Albus shouted "ARANIA EXUMAI!" The spider actually stumbled back a bit—before getting angry and charging.

"ARANIA EXUMAI!" Scorpius and Rose joined in that time, and it flew back about 10 feet into a tree, but quickly got back on its feet.

"ARANIA EXUMAI!" All five children screamed, and the spider shot backwards as if it were tied to a jet until they couldn't see it anymore.

Rose grabbed Scorpius' and Albus' hands, the other two linking themselves to Albus so that they formed a chain as they ran as fast as their legs would carry them back towards the castle. Once they had reached the Quidditch field, they collapsed on the ground, panting like dogs.

"Is everyone okay?" Rose asked in the direction of the sky. Three quiet murmurs of assent answered.

"You?" Something about the way her blue eyes peered into him made Scorpius uncomfortable. He sat up and looked away.

"I'm fine," he said, louder than he intended.

Patil propped himself up. "That was wicked."

"That was terrifying," responded McLaggen as he did the same.

Rose sat up too, dragging Albus with her. "But we're safe. That's what's important. And we just fought off an Acromantula." She giggled. "We're awesome."

Scorpius laughed along with the rest of the group, and Rose smiled approvingly.

"I never caught your name," she said to him.

"Scorpius, Scorpius Malfoy." He held out his hand.

"Oh." Rose looked at him, then his hand, then him again. She tried to smile, but it didn't quite work, and she couldn't bring herself to shake his hand.

Just like that, his good spirits were gone.

He got up and started running back towards the forest.