Chapter 1: The Indomitable Lightness of Friendships

The very first time anyone made me look at his direction was my dad. Granted, I was a little curious since the day my mum told me Draco Malfoy (the eternal enemy from my parents' childhood) had a boy my age who was starting Hogwarts at the same time. But the very first time I laid eyes on him, I was eleven, and my dad kept pushing me into being the very best and beat him at every subject.

I thought he was dreamy. As dreamy as a snooty 11 year old can be. And yet, I was instantly drawn to him with his grey eyes, and his wicked smile, and that pale blond hair. I spent almost all of first year trying to be close to him, not as friends, but as rivals, as my dad would faint by the mere mention of Scorpius and I being friends. But it turns out, Ravenclaw and Slytherin are not destined to be friends, as he kept shoving me in the hallways and ignoring me in the couple classes we had together.

That's why at the age of 12, I decided it was not worth my time and started hating him from the bottom of my heart.

Albus of course stuck with me since day one, his hatred was the only one that remotely matched mine for Scorpius. He was a Gryffindor without a doubt, but that didn't mean we would get separated. We were best friends and best cousins since we were two. We got into so much trouble every other day that mum and dad and Uncle Harry decided that the best form of punishment was to keep us away from each other for a couple days to calm down. It worked as we grew older, and eventually our meetings for mayhem became meetings to talk about anything. James sometimes came with us to our secret meetings and told us everything there was to know about Hogwarts until we saw it with our own eyes. And then we took Hugo and Lily with us so we could tell them about Hogwarts ourselves.

Even though we have plenty of cousins, Albus and I were always the best friends ever. And as we entered different houses at Hogwarts we were the pioneers in inter house relationships as we would sit down together in class and at meals. Slowly over the years, the houses had been a little more relaxed as to who they befriended and now you can see people from every house sitting together at meals. The only time we actually sit in our respective tables are at the banquets at the beginning and at the end of the year.

And yet, teachers loved to pair Albus with Scorpius as often as could be. I knew for a fact that Albus was grossed out by Scorpius not because his background or his family name, but simply by the mere coincidence that both of them excelled in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and could not bare the other one being as good as he was. Silly, I know. But at 11 that was our biggest concern.

And then it happened. By a miracle in year four, Albus decided he and Scorpius were friends and that was that. Of course it was not at all well seen within the Weasley/ Potter clan, for the exception of Uncle Harry which I suspect wanted this to happen since the very beginning. The story was simple, but it was effective in Albus's heart as he and Scorpius became inseparable since that day:

It all started in a Care for Magical Creatures class in early October, as always, Scorpius and Albus were paired together to work with some Snifflers by Uncle Hagrid. (He later confessed he liked watching Albus and Scorpius trying to get along for the sake of avoiding a detention). But this time detention was not big enough a punishment from preventing what happened. Scorpius let loose the Sniffler as Albus was holding some gold coins Uncle Hagrid had given him to hide away, and the Sniffler almost broke Albus's arm as he threw himself at him. Albus thought at first it had been an accident, but Scorpius started laughing uncontrollably and teasing Albus about being covered in mud. Albus got the Sniffler out of the way and punched Scorpius hard on the lip, he stopped laughing immediately, and kicked Albus on the gut. Uncle Hagrid rushed in as the two teenagers were rolling on the floor one on top of the other throwing punches at each other. He roared "DETENTION!" at the top of his lungs before grabbing them by the shirt collar and lifting them in the air to separate them. They both looked ashamed after that and ignored the other until dinner. I remember Albus telling me that night that the only reason he got so mad was because Malfoy was making such a fuss in Uncle Hagrid's class, his favorite uncle.

Albus went to his detention with Scorpius at 7 that night, and when he came back he was Scorpius's best friend. He told me they were assigned to feed the Therestrals in a clearing of the Forbidden Forest with Uncle Hagrid petting them. But in the middle of it, Uncle Hagrid left them with a very old Fang as he came back to his hut to get the kettle of water for the tea out of the fire. Two minutes of awkwardness had passed of them throwing pieces of raw meat at the nothingness of the Forbidden Forest as they couldn't see the Therestrals, when a noise to Albus's right caught their attention. Fang retreated behind Malfoy's legs and started to whine. They both took out their wands, but as they pointed their lights toward the sound, a terrible image was displayed before their eyes. There, entering the clearing they were standing in, were more than a thousand tiny little spiders making their way towards them. Albus told me he screamed (that was our kind of relationship in which he doesn't hide anything away from me), and dropped his wand in the grass. But as Malfoy's wand was still pointing to the tiny spiders, something horrid stepped in the clearing making them petrified to the spot. A much more larger spider with furry legs and multiple red eyes came running to their direction, moving its pincers in a really menacing way. Albus dropped to the floor, almost too scared to move, but Scorpius kept his grip firmly towards the gigantic spider. And then the spider pounced onto Albus's body in the floor, pinning him there to the grass and leaning its enormous head to his face. Albus looked Scorpius's way to beg for help, but Malfoy was indisposed as he too was pinned to the grass by another monster of a spider. Albus started to scream in horror, realizing his wand was still two feet away from him and out of his reach, Fang started to bark. And then everything was red, standing above him was Scorpius, having stupefied his own spider and then making his way into stupefying Albus's too. And as both teenagers stood in the clearing terrified to the bone, Uncle Hagrid came running in.

Malfoy didn't mock the way Albus reacted to the spiders, and as he told Uncle Hagrid what had happened he made Albus part of the action instead of the victim. And as they returned to the hut shivering, Fang leading the way, Albus told Scorpius he has always been afraid of spiders, and then Scorpius told him he was afraid of Doxys. Both of them smiled and kept walking in silence.

Naturally, everyone in the school had heard the rumor of Scorpius and Albus fighting not one, but two humongous spiders by breakfast and as people starting asking questions, Albus and Scorpius joined forces and exaggerated the story to the point it wasn't even possible anymore, but became the school heroes for two weeks nonetheless. The truth is I was not there when it happened, I got the true version from Albus a couple days later, and the green monster of jealousy started to roam within my guts. It wasn't until I saw them laughing in the hallway a week later that it hit me. I was no longer Albus's best friend, and I had been replaced with a male friend who wouldn't nag him when he didn't study for a test. I started to back away from them both, only nodding in their general direction at the Great Hall, and talking to Albus just when he talked to me first. Our relationship started to deteriorate slowly, until May of that same year when we finally stopped talking at all. I had thought at the time that we would go back home and go back to normal, but it didn't. He went to stay with the Malfoys for the summer, and came back only a week before school for the Potters yearly trip.

Fifth year was the tomb for our friendship, he continued to ignored me, and I became friends with other people. Kevin McMillan entered the picture, or more accurately I came into his and we became boyfriend and girlfriend. The story is quite pathetic, actually, but it turns out everything in Rose Weasley's life is pathetic.

It was almost Christmas break of our fifth year, and the Ravenclaw common room was packed with those annoying mistletoes that the Scamander twins are always setting up. I was there in the huge couch by the fire reading the Quidditch book dad gave me in the summer. He was going to quiz me the minute I got home, I just knew it, so I had a lot of Quidditch reading to catch up with. And then Kevin sat down beside me removing his shoes by the fire. He was a sixth year and what I heard about him was that he was incredibly talented in Charms, but apart from that, I didn't knew him.

"It is best to warm your feet like this, see. After spending so much time out there in the snow at practice, the best way to warm up is to put them up to the fire like this." he said.

I hadn't notice before that he had his Ravenclaw Quidditch uniform on and the other players on the team were starting to sit down by the fire beside him. I felt uncomfortable right away.

"Ehm.." I said, lifting my book a little bit so I could bury my face in it again.

"Is that the Chudley Cannons Trajectory? Don't tell me it's a first edition? I have been trying to persuade my dad to buy it for me since the summer. Are you a huge fan?" he sprouted all those questions to me in an excited ranter.

And before I could answer, some other Quidditch player sat down beside him, making him scoot over to my direction even more. Now our shoulders were touching and I could feel my face go red. He looked at me in a funny way and then he smiled.

"My dad is.." I said, turning to the book again, my voice fading.

I was so shy talking to boys in general, girls were all right, I had girl friends, but boys were the issue. Growing up with so many cousins, many of them male, made worrying about the opposite sex completely out of the question. You don't have to worry about love or sex when all of your male friends happen to be your cousins. But talking to boys that are not related to me, that always made me cringe.

He left me alone. I kept reading right there in the middle of what turned out to be a Quidditch meeting by the fire, and he kept sitting there touching my shoulder. And then without noticing, I started to listen to their conversation, and then without warning somebody tossed a mistletoe to Kevin McMillan.

"For good luck" another guy in the Ravenclaw team said to him.

"It's not gonna happen. Forget about Lauren." another one shouted. Lauren was a Hufflepuff girl my year.

"Lauren is already forgotten. She was a real pain in the ass. She wanted me to take her to Madam Puddifoot's every weekend. She wanted me to pay too, and we were not even going out." Kevin explained.

All the boys started howling muttering their condolences. (As all the Ravenclaw Quidditch team are boys. Why hadn't I notice before?)

"What are you going to do with it, then?" the first boy said.

"Just kiss the prettiest girl in the room with it and run for it, mate. That's what I'll do." the second boy, Jared Williams, I recognised then, said.

Kevin sat there without saying anything for a while, maybe 30 seconds or such, and as the boys were drifting their attention to someplace else, he turned around and faced me.

"Maybe I will" he said. And then leaned in and kissed me. On the lips. With tongue. I had never been kissed before, and I was extremely mad at the time. I heard the boys howling and cheering and I didn't quite understood what had happened until Kevin separated his lips from mine and smirked at me.

My face must have been a mess, as he changed his smirk right the next second with worried eyes, in fact, I hadn't seen a face made with such worry again as Kevin's was. I felt some tears spilled my eyes, and I kept shouting at my brain: Why are you crying, you moron. Slap him, be mad. Don't cry.

But even then, I could tell my tears were not going to stop. I was too embarrassed, too worried, and too mad about my first kiss being stolen by this complete stranger. I just shot my book as hard as I could and stormed out of the room into the girl's dormitories. Jared shouted, "where are you going, baby?" as I stormed out.

The next morning, Kevin was there waiting for me. I ignored him, too embarrassed to even look at him, but he kept following me to the Great Hall to eat breakfast. He sat down beside me at the large table, and then packed his plate with eggs and sausage sipping his pumpkin juice. He was annoying me. I couldn't eat or read the stupid book in peace. But as the meal continued I started to feel more at ease with him there, until by the end of my dish, I realized I didn't hate him or anything, and in fact that was a pretty amazing kiss.

"You shouldn't have kissed me." I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm sorry." he said, leaving his fork down and looking rather sheepishly. "I didn't know your would cry."

"I cried because that...that was.." I felt myself blush, and Kevin smiled at me in a tender manner. "my first kiss."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know" he said. We continued breakfast for a couple minutes, and then he looked up from his plate and said as shy as I was, "But you still look too damn cute when you blush."

And that was it. I was completely enamoured with him from that point onwards. We went to Hogsmeade for two weekends in a row (not to Madam Puddifoot's, even though he suggested it) before he asked me properly to be his girl. He was my first kiss, and he was the first boy to felt me up. But as the months passed, the love started to fade away. And then one day in early May he dumped me. Or more like we dumped each other. I was too busy with my O.W.L.S and he was busy with Quidditch and at the end we didn't actually loved each other. So we said goodbye.

Albus didn't find out I had a boyfriend. In fact, the only one who ever found out of my cousins was James, as he saw us kissed at an empty classroom some time in January. But he didn't say a thing.

My relationship with Albus was as good as dead. I had drifted away from my girl friends when I became Kevin's girl. And then Kevin had broken up with me. So I was pretty much as lonely as a dog could be. It served me perfectly as I had to study for my O.W.L.s. Outstanding in every single one. McGonagall even congratulated me in her Charms class after it, saying the only witch or wizard to have ever done so well was my mother, and that she should be proud.

But O.W.L.s finished and there were two weeks before summer break to live through. I was starting to regret pushing everyone away. And then a Saturday about eight o'clock at night, as I made my way back from the library, some long fingers covered my mouth and shove me into an empty classroom. It was pitch black in the room, and as I thrashed around, I heard somebody whispering my name in front of me.

"Lumos" the voice said, igniting the tip of his wand and revealing Albus Potter inches away from my face. I thrashed a little more, and tried to scream or say something, but that hand kept restraining my mouth and my body.

"Fucking hell, Weasley. Stop moving, you're elbowing me on the ribs" my head snapped to the voice in question, finding Scorpius bloody Malfoy there behind me, restraining me and grabbing my waist.

I elbowed him again as hard as I could and he let go of me, cursing at me and massaging his ribs.

"Don't ever touch me again, you prat!" I shrieked. Albus covered my mouth then, and put his index finger between his lips, motioning me to kept quiet.

"Alright, alright!" I whispered hitting his hand out of the way. "What are you two idiots doing in the middle of the night!" I whispered violently.

I hadn't noticed until that moment that I was mad at Albus. No, I was furious, I wanted to punch him in the gut, I wanted to leg-lock him and leave him in a ditch to rot. I hadn't noticed until that very instant that I was hurt because he had left me to spend all his fucking precious time with Scorpius bloody Malfoy.

"We need your help, Rosie. You are not going to believe this." he said smirking at me. Malfoy smirking as wide as he was.