Hello everybody! No, this isn't the sequel to Help Me, Please, but that will be coming as soon as I get this up.

Basically, the brilliant tiiinam gave me the background to this idea, and some pointers for the plot, and asked if I'd be interested in writing it. I was a great idea, and I'd been planning a "Scorpius comes back from Durmstrang" type fic, so I loved this (I might still write that as a one-shot or something, as it would be different to this, but it wouldn't be coming soon or anything). Anyways, this is not Help Me, Please. In fact, it's pretty different from anything I've written really. Firstly because Scorpius is... well, he's a bit of a jerk, and there's more mature themes in this, more swearing, etc (but not enough for me to bump it up from T - I'm pretty sure nothing in this fic will shock a modern teen).

Anyways, a huge thank you to tiiinam, who this fic is dedicated to, and I hope you guys stick read, review, and stick around for the rest. It'll be around 10 chapters, not too long. :D

Thank you!

"And I'm telling you now, Al, if that bloody Notch asks me one more time why I take Muggle Studies, I swear I'm going to shove-"

"Can I tell you something?"

From our positions laying flat on the soft grass by the pond in my back garden at Malfoy Manor, I hadn't noticed my best mate, Al Potter, hadn't been listening to me as I rambled on.

Tearing my eyes away from the clouds, I sat up, turning to glance at him warily. "You're not going to hug me after this, are you?"

Suddenly his eyes snapped to mine, focusing. "Never."

"Thank Merlin," I sighed as he sat up, reaching forwards to grab a Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean and throw it into the pond a metre and a half from where we were lounging.

Even though it was late afternoon, bordering early evening, we were both shirtless, and wearing shorts. It was the last day of summer, just before we returned to Hogwarts for our Sixth Year, and August always seemed to want to mock us by adopting a heat wave just when we were faced with returning to school.

It wasn't that I didn't like school - it was more my home than the Manor was - I just didn't want to go back to the work. I was clever, clever and apparently courageous enough to be put in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin despite my family's tradition, but I didn't find the academics at Hogwarts all that challenging. Being first in almost every test got boring after a while. Especially when people began to look at you like a freakishly smart kid.

And that meant unpopularity. So I'd toned it down pretty quickly in my first year, hiding my grades, largely ignoring markings on papers until I'd got back to my dorm in the evening.

Al and I were popular. Hogwarts always had social cliques, and it probably always would, like every school. Luckily Al and I had come out somewhere near the top.

To this day, I still don't know how we managed it.

Well, Al being Albus Severus Potter, son of The Boy Who Lived (twice, if you believe the tales) and The Chosen One? I sort of guessed why people were drawn to him to begin with.

But it was more than that.

Al was just one of those people that you couldn't help but like. He had a friendly manner, could joke easily, and put people at ease with a simple sentence. Plus, he was good-looking, and people liked a pretty face.

Probably why they liked me too.

It seems kind of crazy that a Malfoy and a Potter were mates, let alone best mates. It wasn't like we planned it or anything. We didn't meet each other on the Platform on the first day of our first year at Hogwarts and go: "Hey, you know what'll piss off our parents?"

No, it just happened. Al and his cousin came and sat in my compartment. People were avoiding me because I was a Malfoy - yeah, the Pariah-like status had almost completely gone by then (apart from to my grandfather Lucius, but we don't talk about him), but on that day I was the first Malfoy to attend Hogwarts since the Great War. People were a little wary, even if they didn't want to be.

So when Al and her came and sat in my compartment, I think I almost died of shock when I looked up and saw that knobbly-kneed, dark haired eleven year old open the door and wander in as if I was any old kid with any old family history.

She didn't like me. I could tell from that one glance up from the window - Al was completely unfazed, probably didn't even think it was odd that we were talking, but she obviously did.

She didn't want to sit in the compartment to begin with: she complained and sulked and tutted a lot. Al rolled his eyes and ignored her. So that gangly, frizzy haired, know-it-all red head sulked the whole way to Hogwarts, whilst Al and I became friends.

I remember clearly thinking: Fine. Suit yourself.

It's not as if I cared what she thought. She was a train wreck to look at. Too harsh? Okay, we were all awkward pre-pubescent kids, but her limbs were too long for her to balance herself properly, her hair was ridiculously untameable, her front teeth stuck out like she was permanently ready to bite into something, and her skin was too pale.

Okay, so her dislike of me may have slightly biased my feelings towards her.

But whatever. She started it.

The one thing I could never criticise, could never even bring myself to think a bad thought about, were her eyes. She was fiery, determined, and this was reflected in them. I knew then that however she looked when she grew up, she'd always have that spirit, and those beautiful flecks of brown swirling in the deep navy blue. Eyes so fiery, so warm, but yet cold.

Cold towards me, anyway.

I quickly came to that conclusion.

Definitely cold.

She argued with me constantly after that train ride. It didn't help that we were put in the same house, Gryffindor, and Al wasn't enough of a buffer, of a peacekeeper. It was like I was scum, never worth her time, every time she peered down at me.

That's another thing I hated right from the beginning - the way she could literally look down upon me.

I suppose from her point of view I could understand it a little: I was a Malfoy, and I was 'stealing' her best mate from her. Al and her had been inseparable since they were born, and even used to have a double pram because they were together so much. They went to playschool together, and were home schooled together before attending Hogwarts. Their family used to call them Double Trouble, because that's what they were.

But hey, it wasn't my fault Al wanted a guy friend as well. Someone who he could grow up with, be stupid with, rate girls with (and hope one of them would notice us).When Al soon decided he wanted to be my partner in the classes we had together… well, I knew it wasn't going to go down well with her. I hadn't done anything directly, just found a friend, but it had caused her to lose one. Which made his cousin all that more mad. She was furious. Yelling at first, saying how she was the best qualified to be his partner because her mother had taught her some things that could help Al (because, let's face it, he wasn't - and still isn't - the brightest light bulb in the shed).Then, after the yelling, it became sadness. Tears brimming in her eyes, asking why she wasn't good enough for Al but I was. Al just told her that he wanted to find new friends and he wanted to do it as soon as possible before all the good friends were gone. From his point of view he honestly didn't want to hurt her, he just wanted some independence.

I don't blame him. With the amount of cousins he had already attending Hogwarts, it was easy for him to fall into their friendship circle and never leave, never make his own best mates, never actually gain independence outside his family. And he desperately wanted to. He didn't want to depend on them and never have to man up and do things for himself.

He told her since they were cousins and best mates they would need to find other friends as well, because he didn't want to be friends with just her. That would be 'lame' (as he put it), if he was only friends with his girl cousin.

She soon came to terms with this, and decided to make some friends of her own. Last I remember she started getting on well with a couple of girls, Maddie and Bea. Her and Al were still best mates, but they didn't hang around each other as much. Thank Merlin for that, otherwise I would have had to put up with the annoying thing all the time.

By the end of First Year, we'd agreed to hang out at mine for the last two weeks of the summer. Initially his family had invited me to his for the first two weeks, but I'd declined. As a twelve year old, the whole gaggle of the Weasley Clan was just too much for me to handle, plus the pressure of meeting Harry Potter, who I used to dress up and pretend to be as a kid (not that I ever told Al that), and the fact that his cousin and I hated each other? Well, hanging out with Al's family didn't seem like a good idea.

I see them now, frequently in the holidays, but never for long. Al and I don't spend much time inside. We're usually outside playing Quidditch, or at the beach trying to chat up girls. His family are nice though - they've always been accepting of me, I guess as soon as they realised Al and I were friends, they decided to let every thing from the past go. Completely.

Everybody but Rose, I guess. Because the first day back on the Hogwarts Express for our Second Year, I noticed something was off. It was quiet and peaceful when we found our compartment, and nobody came to yell at me during the ride, or on the I finally realised it was because his cousin wasn't on the train, I became suspicious. So I asked Al where the annoying know-it-all Milky was (a nickname dubbed for her extremely pale skin, which she particularly hated, and so which I of course loved even more).

He shot me a look before telling me that she had transferred schools to Beauxbatons. I was so shocked, I remember dropping my Pumpkin Pasty.

Kids rarely transferred. But she had. I realised Al was actually quite upset by it - I knew him, so I knew part of him blamed himself for 'making' her leave. In actuality, she'd always been close to her cousin Dominique, and when her mother asked if she wanted to transfer with her to the same school in France, she'd accepted.

Dom was a year older, and she'd found it hard making friends at the French school. Sure, her sister Victoire had gone there for a couple of years before transferring to Hogwarts in her Fourth Year because she missed her family, but Dom liked it there. She just found the extreme change from her family life back in England a little unnerving.

And she'd always been one of those girly girls (I knew that from family photos I'd seen). So couple her princess obsession as a child with Fleur's emphasis on manners, and being ladylike, and Dom couldn't wait to go to a school for young ladies, which taught etiquette, and dancing, along with the usual subjects.

So Rose transferred. And I… don't think I'd seen her since. Actually, now I think about it, I don't think I've seen her at all since our first year. I'd never really thought about it, but she only came back to the country for the holidays, and I was always at my house during that time, or out spending time with Al.

Weird, I kind of wondered how she was getting on now that I thought about her.

Not that I cared. I just… wondered.

I don't think I'd even thought about her since first year, so it was odd when this one time that I did think about her, Al brought her up."Rose is coming back to Hogwarts this year."

I groaned and rolled my eyes, unable not to do so, "Are you serious?" I complained. "Why?"

"Don't get too excited, mate," he joked, tossing another Bean into the pond. "She's coming because of loads of reasons: for one she decided there are far too many blond bimbos who don't give her much of a challenge in school, since she's ranked number one academically."

I snorted. Of course his know it all of a cousin was number one, she hated being in second place.

Al continued as if I hadn't snorted, probably trying to subtly tell me to let the animosity between us go. Fat chance of that Al, she probably still hates my guts. No amount of fancy French society could change that. "Secondly, she misses playing Quidditch-"

That caught me off guard.

Rose? Playing Quidditch? I couldn't imagine that uncoordinated, stuck up girl even sitting on a broomstick. She'd probably sit on it side-saddle or something.

"-because they don't have that at Beauxbatons, and she can only play during the holidays with our family. And, of course, she misses me far too much."

Raising one eyebrow, I glanced at my smirking mate.

"Might want to rethink that last one," I muttered darkly. Then I lobbed three Beans into the pond in a sudden burst of annoyance. "Of course she would be the smartest one at school - she is a know it all. And I'm pretty sure she must be awful at Quidditch, since they teach dancing and lame girl stuff at that French school."

Al snorted. "You should see her and Dominique when they come home for the holidays - sometimes they forget they're not being drilled into being ladylike 24/7, and they beg pardon to leave the room or something. It's hilarious."

I rolled my eyes at him. "So is Dominique coming back then?"

Al shook his head. "No, she's finishing her last year at Beauxbatons - it's too close to the end of her studies not to. Besides, she loves it there, whereas Rose is getting bored of all the restrictions, I think."

I sighed, then got to my feet. "I would have thought little Milky would have loved all the rules they had there?" I joked.

Surprisingly, Al shot me a glare as he got to his feet also. "Don't call her that," he sighed.

"Why not?"

"Because it's her first day back tomorrow, Scor," he pleaded. "Just… be nice, for once, yeah?"

I scoffed. "Me? She's the demon."

Al slapped me round the back of the head. "That's the type of thing I mean! Seriously, Scor, the past is the past, why can't you two let it go?"

"Hey," I held up my hands in defeat as we trudge back towards my house, shirts in hands because it was still too damn hot to put them on. "I'm all for making love, not war."

Al grimaced. "Okay, don't go that far," He warned. "Just… promise me you'll be nice?"

"I'll try," I mumbled. "But if she starts it…"

Al sighed wearily as he stopped walking, evidently preparing to apparate. "I guess that's the best I can hope for, right?"

I nodded, but then, just before he had the chance to apparate, I grabbed his arm, and grinned, "Tell Milky I said hi."

Al rolled his eyes, then disappeared.

Now that I was alone, I sighed.

Rose Weasley was just about the worst person I could imagine spending my last two years of Hogwarts with, but, being in the same house, and best friends with her cousin… something told me we'd be spending a lot of time together.

Well, one thing's for sure - school was going to be a nightmare this year.

Thank you for reading. This is the 'setting the scene' chapter, I hope you like it, and please take the time to leave me a review, it would be much appreciated. :D x