**Disclaimer: All characters, locations, etc. belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended with the posting of this story.**

"Rose, what are you wearing?"

She looked up, rolling her ocean-blue eyes at me. "A shirt."

I dropped my shoulders and put on my 'lame face.' "No way, really?"

She looked away, and my heart dropped a little.

Al looked up at me and smirked, and I wanted to kill him.

It's not easy having your best friends be cousins. Not only do they know absolutely everything about each other, but between the two of them, they know everything about you as well.

Al, for example, was completely of aware of the fact that I've liked Rose for years. He takes every possible opportunity to rub it in my face. It's nothing short of a miracle that Rose hasn't figured it out yet. I'm not entirely sure that I could stand it if she knew.

It's bad enough that my father hasn't talked to me – and I mean really talked to me, obviously he still speaks to me – in years. Ever since I somehow landed myself in Ravenclaw, he's been growing more and more distant. Mum, of course, was pleased as punch that I got placed in her house. She also thought it would help get rid of some of the animosity that I was sure to feel from everyone if I'd been placed in Slytherin.

Since the end of the Wizard War in 1998, my family had been outcast. Their old, pureblood society had crumbled. The remaining Death Eaters were sent to Azkaban; only my father was pardoned. He and my grandmother were given a personal pardon from the Auror department by Harry Potter himself. Whenever I asked my father why, he refused to tell me.

Despite the pardon from Harry Potter, Dad was never quite welcome in the wizarding world after that. He kept mostly to himself, only going out in public if absolutely necessary. On one of those rare jaunts outside, he happened to meet Mum and they got married a few months later. When I was born, I was destined to be a hermit. All of my dad's friends were either dead or in prison; my mum had been popular but hadn't left the grounds in years. I was the product of a society that had crumbled, and I had no place in the world that had sprouted to replace it.

At least, I didn't have any place until I was sorted into Ravenclaw. Being there gave me a new reputation, something else to be known for. It was a new source of life for me, and with it came my two best friends.

It was ironic enough that on the second day of school I had become best friends with Albus Potter. As any lone first year student would be, I was running late to my first class. I was sprinting along the Charms corridor, desperately looking for the Transfiguration room. Let it be noted that I was on the completely wrong side of the castle, yet somehow I ran, literally, headlong into another first year.

After I had picked myself up off the ground, I found myself looking into an incredibly familiar face that I was positive I had never seen before. Extremely messy black hair and green eyes that I knew I had seen before stared back at me, as if suffering from the same problem. We both figured it out at the same time.

"Potter?"

"Malfoy?"

Once the looks of confusion changed to looks of indecision, we had even less of an idea what to do. It was expected that we would be enemies. Our fathers had hated each other at school, even though they had been civil in later years. Finally, Al broke the silence.

"We'd better go," he said, motioning down the hall. "We're horribly late for Transfiguration, and McGonagall already hates me because James blew up something in her classroom at the end of last term."

What he'd said wasn't funny in the least, but for some reason I burst out laughing. Some people are instant friends, but Al and my friendship grew slowly. A constant string of moments like that developed, and we eventually just stopped having time in between them. A long string of awkward silences grew into a friendship, and after a few months we were hanging out all the time.

I hadn't had any friends to fill my time in between moments with Al, but he had more than enough people to fill his time. Not the least of these was his beautiful cousin/best friend, Rose, of course.

Al was extremely protective of Rose, and though she was in my House, I didn't talk to her until the beginning of Third Year. Al always found a way to split his time between us, but when we ended up being the only three Ravenclaws in Ancient Runes, Rose and I were practically forced to interact.

It didn't take me long to figure out that she absolutely amazing. I'd known for years that she was beautiful, and she was obviously smart; she was in Ravenclaw. But she also had an amazing sense of humor and when she wasn't yelling, she was actually very kind.

It also didn't take Al long to figure out that I fancied Rose. He got it within about a week and had thoroughly enjoyed spending the last three years dangling it in front of me. Rose and I had become close and we'd become something of a trio of friends, but we were strictly platonic, at least on her side.

"Yes," I commended. "It's a shirt. But whose shirt is it?"

"What?" Rose asked, draping her legs over the arm of the couch and leaning back against my shoulder. My heart picked itself up from my stomach and started doing sprints in my chest.

"That's not your shirt," I commented. "It's a bloke's shirt."

"Huh," she said, turning another page of her book, telling me clearly that she wasn't paying a speck of attention to me.

"Rose!" I demanded, snapping my fingers in front of her eyes.

She shook her head and put down her book, rolling her head backward to look up at me. "What? Did you say something?"

I rolled my eyes. I was tempted to reach and rumple her hair, but though my hand made the involuntary movement toward her head, my mind would not let it go.

"Whose shirt is that?"

She looked down at her chest and thought for a moment. Finally she shrugged. "James', I think?"

I recoiled slightly and listened to Al's chortle behind me. "You don't know?"

"Nope," she said, popping her lips on the p and returning to her book. "It doesn't really matter to me."

She was always doing that. It seems that she wore clothing that belonged to half of the castle. Her cousins' shirts, Quidditch jerseys, shoes, everything. I could never quite tell what was actually hers and what she had taken from a family member. Even later that night, she was wearing something different.

As we sat down at the Ravenclaw table, Rose leaned back and propped her feet up on the bench, resting an elbow on the table.

"Ah," she said, reached down to rub the arch of her foot. She was wearing a pair of sandals that I didn't think I'd ever seen before. Al looked at them suspiciously.

"Rose," he said tentatively, "Are those Lily's?"

"Hmm?" she responded, still rubbing her feet.

"Those shoes," he said, nodding his head at them. "Are they Lily's?"

She shrugged again and nodded. "Yeah, I guess." After a short pause, she spoke again. "Wait, how did you know?"

Al grimaced and blinked quickly. "I bought them for her," he said, in a poor attempt at a lie.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. How did you know?"

"Okay, okay," Al conceded. "James and I may have jinx- ah, stolen… them last summer. It's really not a big deal."

I held back a chuckle as Rose narrowed her eyes. "You jinxed your own little sister's shoes?"

Al grimaced. "No. We stole them. And hid them. Big difference, Rosie."

"Oh yeah," she said, turning back to her dinner. "Sure you did."

The next day, Lily Potter had the shoes back and Al had a bruise on his shoulder.

She was babbling. I wasn't particularly paying attention; I was enraptured in watching her speak. The way her lips brushed against each other as she talked was nothing short of fascinating.

The story continued, but suddenly a phrase stood out to me. "And then he pointed out that I was wearing Al's shirt and…" her voice faded back out, but suddenly I was back in reality.

It drives me bloody mad that she does that, I thought, shaking my head to clear it. Then the reality of the situation came crashing down. Rose was not babbling; she was crying. Tears streaked down her face, leaving little streaks of eyeliner in their wake. Her hands shook as she tried to make some sort of gesture, but she wasn't talking anymore. She seemed at loss for words and a heavy sob shook her chest.

"Hey," I said, scrambling up to my feet to stand in front of her. "Rose, calm down. It's okay." I grabbed her hands and pulled her up to her feet. "It'll be okay," I repeated, wrapping my arms around her back.

I'd hugged Rose before, obviously, but never while she was upset, never while she was crying. It was a totally different feeling, and I wasn't necessarily comfortable with it. We were getting too close, close to the point where I would lose control, but I couldn't back out now.

She leaned into me for a second before pulling away. "No it won't, Scorpius." Rose wiped a tear from her eye and pulled away from my embrace entirely. "Merlin, were you even listening to me?"

I opened my mouth to speak, and then closed it. For minutes I stood there looking like some sort of demented fish before Rose just stomped away, leaving me drowning in air.

It took me almost a week to figure out what had been going on with Rose. It was Lily Potter – the same little Lily Potter who had had her shoes jinxed – who finally told me.

"Her boyfriend broke up with her," Lily said from across the table in the library. She wasn't even looking at me as she said it. "How could you not know that?"

I was still stuck in the She had a boyfriend? moment and couldn't find the strength to respond. After getting the cold shoulder from Rose since that day, I'd sought out almost every member of her immediate family, begging them to tell me what had happen. They all refused, though I was positive that they all knew. Lily, who I knew would tell me, had eluded me until I finally cornered her in the library.

"Scorpius, are you still alive?" Lily asked. I shook my head back into the moment and found Lily looking at me like I was crazy. "Seriously," she said. "Do you want to go to the hospital wing or something? You look dizzy."

"No, no," I said, shaking my head again. "But just," I took a seat across from the Fourth Year, "what happened?"

She shrugged. "He broke up with her. All for the best, I say. She shouldn't have gone out with him in the first place."

"But…" I struggled around, wondering which question to even ask first. "Who? Why?"

Lily's eyes widened. "WHO?" she asked in a whisper-shout. "Good grief, Scorpius, don't you know her at all?"

I didn't respond to that, just went with a simple, "Who?"

Lily tossed her long red hair over her shoulder and looked down at her notebook. "Milo Davies," she said, like it was no big deal.

"Milo Davies?"

"Shh!" she reprimanded. "Do you want to get kicked out?"

"Why in hell was she going out with Milo Davies?" I said a little more quietly.

"Like I said," Lily sounded frustrated, "she shouldn't have been."

"And he just broke up with her?"

Lily rolled her eyes and gave me a "why won't you just go away?" look. "He dumped her because of something stupid. But he was cruel about it. Accused her of incest in front of the entire Entrance Hall."

"WHAT?" Something moved behind the bookshelves to my left, and Lily and I looked over, hoping that it wasn't Madame Pince. Finally, the person walked out the end, revealing a lost little first year whom neither of us had the energy to help.

We turned away from the poor sap and immediately picked the conversation back up.

"He did what?"

"He accused her of incest," she repeated, "because she's always wearing our cousins' shirts. She was wearing Al's that day. Said it was something you only did with your boyfriend."

I stared at Lily open-mouthed for a long moment, then sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. "Hot damn."

Lily nodded, but clearly wasn't finished with me yet. "As for you," she continued, "she's mad at you were apparently too busy staring at Glenna Brown behind her to care about what happened."

My mind felt like an outdated magic carpet trying to keep up with Al's Firebolt 500. Glenna Brown? Who in hell cared about Glenna Brown? What did she have to do with anything?

Lily tensed her neck and shook her head in at me. "Well?" she demanded. "Aren't you going to say something? Defend yourself, perhaps?"

"Glenna Brown?" I managed to spit out. "I wasn't… I barely even know her!"

"Well, Rose thought you were staring at something," Lily gave me a look that clearly said, 'boys!'

"I was staring at her!" I blurted out before I even had a chance to think about it. I shoved my hands over my mouth. "Oh no," I whispered, "Oh no, I actually said that out loud, didn't I?"

Lily smirked. "Yeah. But it didn't mean anything until you acted."

"Oh no," I said. "You will not tell her. No way in hell."

"I don't know, Scorpius," she trailed off with a devilish smile, "this might be exactly what she needs to hear."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Lily – who had obviously been packing up her books while I was scrambling to keep up with the conversation – picked up her bag and left before I could say another word.

Somehow after that, Rose wasn't mad at me anymore.

Hey there beloved readers! Just a couple of things...

1) This twoshot does not stand alone. It is part of a writing project entitled Project PULL, started by yours truly. For more information/updates, visit my profile.

2) I appreciate reviews that tell me why you liked it/didn't like it/wish I would go die in a hole. But we've had this discussion before.

3) There is no number three. Lists just look a lot more official if they have three points instead of two.

Over and out,
-Bookaholic711