I stared like always at the back of his head.

It would never be less beautiful. Golden blond, some ashy streaks, some white-blond.

iIf I could just get a lock of that hair/i, I thought lazily, my eyes drooping, ithen I could.../i

Could what? What would adding a lock of hair to a sleeping draught do?

I suddenly perked up. What iwould it do?/i

I looked around, suddenly suspicious that someone had noticed my inspiration. Also, I worried that someday, someone would notice the way I stared. I looked to look for prying eyes as I took my wand from the pocket in my robes. I raised it in the air and with a quick flick of my wrist, cut a lock of hair from his head. "iAccio lockofhair,/i" I whispered, placing my wand under my desk, pointed at him. The hair flew to me quickly, soaring through the room at about half of the height of the tables, and I was surprised that no one noticed. I held out my hand, crouched down in my seat to catch it. It fluttered into place in the cup of my palm. It was soft. Silky. I rubbed it with the pad of my thumb. iThis is the first and only time I will feel his hair,/i I thought.

I straightened up quickly, my eyes popping out of their sockets. I craned my neck around Albus's head, to see the back of the golden fleece. Well not fleece. More like corn silk.

I cupped a hand to my mouth. There was a large, noticeable chunk gone from the back of his hair. Well, I couldn't be expected to perfect the spell in a couple of seconds, silently on top of that, could I? Actually, maybe that's what the spell was supposed to do. I guess there's some uncertainty about making up spells on the spot and performing them silently. Uncertainty pertaining to the amount of hair lopped off.

I looked up quickly to see if Old Professor Slughorn was looking in my direction. Usually it was a positive thing that he could tell when something was going wrong; he'd show up at your elbow just as you measured out the powdered scarab wings and stop you at the precise moment you were about to tip them in, or he'd grab your hand and help you stir in the right direction. But I didn't want him to show up and grab the chunk of hair out of my hand, did I? He'd have so many questions.

iHow did you get this chunk of hair, Rose?/i

Well, I sort of just...you know...swish, lop, accio...

iWhy did you want this chunk of hair, Rose?/i

Well, you know...?

iNo, I don't know, Rose./i

(That's unfortunate.) Here, have some crystallized pineapple. (I would proffer him a tray I procured out of thin air [I know, I know, not possible] and shake it around in front of his mustache, and he would delightedly drop the chunk of hair as he reached for his favourite candy. I would stoop and snatch up the hair before anyone else could notice it.)

But he wasn't looking. I felt small beads of perspiration quivering on my nose. I hastily wiped them off with my arm and while doing so discreetly dropped in the chunk of hair.

The potion, which should have been the "hue of ripe juniper berries" seemed to flare up in the middle, creating a small mountain range, and I could almost see a small road winding through all of the peaks-but before I could look very closely, the mountains collapsed with a iblurp!/i and the potion turned a very deep, cerulean blue. I thought this was convenient, since if anyone happened to look over, they might think I'd just done a step wrong in the process. It's not like it was bright pink or anything, like Trevor's over there.

Everyone else's cauldron seemed to be emitting a sort of steam that smelled like vanilla beans and made people's eyes droop, a sort of less potent version of their potions. Mine did not smell of vanilla, but something a little spicier, and didn't make me feel sleepy. The room was full of sleepy people, which I thought was sort of dangerous as this was a very complicated potion to brew, and you had to add in the exact amount to strokes and ingredients after the right amount of strokes to the left and to the right...Or maybe it was just like every other potion and it was complicated mainly because everyone was so sleepy while they were doing it? That's why it was so hard to brew it correctly, since no one could really-

"Rose?" Professor Slughorn's voice queried from over my shoulder. I jumped, splashing a small droplet of the potion out of my cauldron. It sailed down to the wooden table top, and both Professor Slughorn and I bent down to watch it. When it hit the surface, it bounced back up in the shape of a wave, and then proceeded to break and flow, before it disappeared.

I bit my lip, looking out of the corner of my eye at Professor Slughorn. His eyes were pressed closed.

"Erm..." I said, at a loss.

"I don't really want to know," he said. He was actually quite used to this sort of thing; I could rarely do a potion twice without doing something differently the second time. I saw his eyes flicker up to the back of Scorpius's head. He sighed. "The thing about you is, while everyone else simply wonders what would happen, you actually want to iknow/i." He grinned suddenly, and I felt a wave of relief sweep over my midsection, which had been caught up in knots. "I was going to ask to use a flask of yours for the demonstration, since I have my doubts that anyone else has managed the draught correctly...but, well, I'll try Molly's, then, won't I?" And he shuffled over to the other side of the table, where my best friend Molly sat, slumped onto the table, her auburn curls splayed over her face.

I looked down at my potion while Professor Slughorn shook Molly awake and took a sample from her potion, which looked as if she'd made it right, but had probably added some peppermint, from what I could smell. Molly didn't like to do things by the book, either, not after the first time we made a potion.

Professor Slughorn waddled away from the table, muttering under his breath. "Shouldn't ask them to do a potion they did once in fifth year, should I? No more repeats...new textbooks..."

Molly was no longer snoring. She had straightened up and was adjusting her robes, wiping a small bit of drool off of her cheek. She looked at me and grinned mischievously. "Did you smell that when he walked by?"

"Peppermint?"

She nodded, her light brown eyes bright. "And something else..."

I felt my brow knit together. I hadn't smelled anything else...Unless-

"Apple?" I asked nervously, looking up at Slughorn as he stirred the contents of the flask. Apple was undetectable in smell and sight, but sometimes had interesting effects on the drinker. Last time she added it, it had produced a cycle of near-invincibility in Trevor Longbottom, who had been the victim of a testing of a healing potion last spring. We usually found that when we added certain ingredients, they would take on their symbolic effect. Rose petals created a period of luck in romance, or romantic feeling. Apples, however, were so widely interpreted that they seemed to enhance the effects of the potion's intended ones.

iSo I wonder/i, I thought briefly, iwhat hair will do in a sleeping draught?/i

Professor Slughorn seemed to smell the peppermint in the potion after a few suspicious stirs, and vanished the flask, announcing to the class that there was no real need to test it out, since he could tell from the vapors that they were constructed properly, "more or less."

I suddenly leapt up in my chair, conjuring a jug from the storage pantry and pouring the whole of the cauldron's contents into it. If it was bad, I'd toss the lot out, as well as if it turned out to be a regular sleeping draught. But if it had good qualities, I wouldn't want to have thrown it out, would I?

The bell rang and we all shoved our cauldrons and ingredients into the cupboards under our desks before streaming out the door. I ended up somewhere close to Scorpius, who was scratching the back of his head. I swallowed guiltily, trying to inch further away from him as his fingers traced the blunt end of hair where the chunk was missing. His face looked confused. I burst out of the door and ran up the corridor, where Molly caught up with me, gasping for breath. She was small and it took more out of her to navigate through the crowd.

"What was that for?" She demanded, tucking a curl behind her ear.

"Nothing, I just hate being stuck in crowds."

She squinted at me-we were actually about the same height, I was only a couple inches taller-and I shrugged, trying to look innocent. She rolled her eyes, giving up. I smiled widely, unable to help myself. By this point in our friendship, she'd seemed to have realised that there were just some things I didn't tell anyone.

iNot that I'm secretive/i, I thought as I hiked my bag higher up on my shoulder. It was heavy with the jug of mystery potion.

Molly and I headed up to the Gryffindor tower to spend our break period roasting things on the fire. We happened to be the only ones, besides Albus, who had this period free. I sometimes wished that Scorpius did. Maybe we'd had been friends, even if we had only been in school for a couple weeks. I was pretty shy, but after a while I would have cracked under the pressure of his deep blue gaze. Right?

But what makes you think he would want to be friends with you? What makes you think that he wouldn't spend his brake periods in the library, studying, like you should be? What makes you think he wouldn't go up to his dormitory and catch up on sleep? What makes you think he'd befriend a Weasley?

Well he's decent friends with Albus, isn't he? I mean, if he shouldn't want to be friends with someone, it should be with a Potter, right?

No, but Dad did seem to hate his dad more than Uncle Harry, didn't he? Ugh. I mean, I've always imagined us as star-crossed lovers, and that he knew that too, and that's why he's never said anything to me, he knows it's hopeless (I won't ever admit to myself that he just doesn't want to be friends), so he hasn't wanted to get his hopes up but that's all I've ever done, I've only ever hoped that those glances meant he wanted to be friends and he was just too shy but he has his own friends and his own smiles and nothing about them has anything to do with me while I find myself smiling while I'm thinking about his own and I love his laugh and his innocent face-

You know it's been an infuriating journey hasn't it I mean all this waiting and then thinking oh it'll happen this time he'll ask me to this ball (completely bonkers you are, Rose! you just don't know each other!) this time he'll introduce himself I mean isn't five years enough time to be shy? and now we're in sixth year. There is no war. There are no Dark wizards to worry about. The only thing to worry about is who I will meet, and who I can decide to love.

Love? Isn't that a strong word? Haven't you promised yourself never to use it in regards to boys you don't know? Haven't you promised yourself to be absolutely sure that you mean it before you say it? It's a heavy word, Rose, don't throw it lightly. Get a hold of yourself. It's not really fair to Scorpius, is it, when you idolise him this way? What if you do meet him, Rose, ihm/i, what then? You only let yourself think this way, really, because you think you won't ever meet him because what if you do and he's different than you thought he would be, and he's perfect in his own way but you're expecting something different? Would he be good enough then? Would he be good enough for you?

Of course! I just want to be friends with him, that's all. Just friends. I want to know him. I want to be able to, for the first time in my life, look past his deep blue eyes and bright blond hair and see who he is really. Not just in my head. Not just in my imagination. I want to know who he is! Is that really a lot to ask?

No, it's not. But then why do you expect him to always introduce himself? Why can't you suck it up and hold out your hand?

Because he might not take it. He might look at me, and the thing I'm afraid might happen is that I will see utter surprise in his eyes. Surprise will turn to apprehension. Which will slowly sink into disgust. Which will-

"Rose!" Molly shakes me, used to my frequent internal dialogues. "C'mon, okay? I brought up some marshmallows from Honeydukes!"

"When were you in Honeydukes?" I asked, quizzical, but not reproving. My mum called Molly and I the "Fred and George" of this Hogwarts' generation. I knew Uncle George was a firecracker, and he always told me stories about him and his brother, Fred, and what they used to do in their "spare" time. I personally thought that I was much more shy than either of them had been. But that was the only reason I could give to my mum that we were essentially different, other than the fact that I still received perfect marks. I was lucky, and I knew it, to have inherited her brains.

Dad said I'd inherited more, since I didn't feel the need to study all of the time.

"I couldn't fall asleep last night, so I stocked up," Molly said, her eyes shining, her freckled face crinkled in a smile. I felt my face crack into a wide grin.

"Hey Rose, Molly," Albus's voice echoed to us through the portrait hole. "What do you have today? I went down to the kitchen for some treacle tarts," he said, holding out a nicely wrapped box. Molly squealed as she took the box, and I thanked Albus as we split and went up to drop our stuff in our dormitory.

"D'you know who Scorpius Malfoy is?" Molly asked me distractedly as she unlaced her shoes.

I nearly choked on the treacle tart I had been chewing. I was suddenly glad for the drawn curtains on my four-poster, as I hid behind them, trying to clear my throat and cool down my face.

"Uhm, I've seen him around yeah, he's in our year, so I've seen him and we have classes with him." I rolled my eyes at myself. It was clear that I was nervous. I decided to spend some extra time behind the curtains, and reached into my bag to attempt to dislodge the ceramic jug of potion. Speaking of Scorpius...

"Oh, yeah, I figured you would know who he was. I was just noticing him today, that's all."

"Why?" I asked, a little too loudly. It was more of a yell. iWHY!/i My face was hot, and I could feel my pulse in my cheeks.

"Well he was sitting kind of close to us in potions, and so I happened to look back at him this one time, and he was looking back at our table, and then he saw me looking so he turned around real quick, and I noticed that he had this ichunk of hair/i missing from the back of his head. I mean, he usually has some layers but this was a ichunk/i."

"Oh, really? Maybe he tried to cut his own hair." I looked around the curtains nervously, still attempting to extract the jug from my bag. Her back was to me. She was still trying to unload all of the Honeyduke's stuff from her own bag.

"Yeah, maybe..." she said, easily becoming distracted by sorting all of the chocolate into piles by kind.

We often had small conversations like this, but not about Scorpius. This, really, was only the second or third time we'd ever talked about him, and it had never before been by name. It had been hard work, keeping it secret from Molly for nearly five years, that I thought I fancied Scorpius. I wasn't about to ruin all that now, was I?

I wrote about him. Secretly. I never wrote his name, ever. I had perpetual ink stains on my fingers and the palm of my left hand from writing excessively in my free time each day. When I was home for the summer, I used a computer, which was much easier, but since Muggle artifacts didn't function inside of Hogwarts, I wrote in what I thought was the "old-fashioned" way but what was the usual for all wizard families besides my own-with quill and ink.

"D'you know what parchment is made out of?" I mused at Molly and Albus as we sat on our poufs by the fire, roasting pieces of marshmallows.

"Uhm, I think they used to make it out of goatskin," Albus said. Molly stuck her tongue out. "But now they make it like papyrus for the wizarding world, since we use it in bulk."

"So out of scratch paper and stuff?" I asked, tickling the top of Albus's head with the feather-tip of the quill. His hand automatically reached up to swat it. It's a game we play. More like, it's a game I play, since he can't seem to help swatting it.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Rose, why do you do that?" Molly asked suddenly, her head tilted up at me. (I was seated on a slightly-higher pouf, more like a chair.)

"Do what?"

"Tickle Albus's head. It's something you've always done."

"It's because when I do it he ialways/i swats it away. He can't help it. I like to torture him," I said and attempted an evil laugh.

"It's a good thing we're cousins and we have to like each other," Albus declared as he popped a marshmallow into his mouth. "Or I would have taken to avoiding you when you had a quill in your hand years ago."

"Rose ialways/i has a quill in her hand," Molly sighed, rolling her eyes. "It would be hard to avoid her at those times if that time was all the time." She frowned, trying to unravel what she had just said.

"Are you working on your Defense essay?" Albus asked me.

"No, I'm journaling," I said, holding out my journal in front of his face.

"What are you writing?" he asked, interested as always. "Can you share it today?"

I had made it clear to them that I couldn't always read to them what I had written, but on some days, when it wasn't embarrassing or something I preferred to keep to myself, I would read it to them. They were both enthralled by my writing, which I didn't understand. At least I didn't until I figured out that besides text books, they never read anything at all. My writing probably sounded extra fresh and exciting compared to instructions on how to decapitate a grindylow.

"Er-" I started, then changed tracks, rapidly improvising a plan. I had been writing about Scorpius, and what I thought the potion might do, but I could tell him that, obviously. "It's poetry, are you still interested?"

Albus crossed his eyes. It's his torn look. He thought that he couldn't convey that he's torn without doing this. I didn't understand any part of it. Why, for example he needed to show to us all that he's torn, and why he chose to cross his eyes to symbolise this. It's beyond me.

"Well, I hardly ever understand it. I might as well save you the trouble," he said, perking up as Molly brought out a large slab of chocolate from her bag and began unwrapping it.

"Oh go on, Rose," Molly said. She liked my poetry. "You hardly ever share, we might as well listen to it while we can, eh?"

Great, I thought. Now I have to write a poem.

"Just give me a second, I haven't even read it twice!" I said, clearly scrambling. Molly pretended like she doesn't notice, handing an over-large chunk of chocolate to Albus, who used his wand to siphon off ribbons. iNow what's the use of that spell?/i I thought. But we're hardly the ones to create practical spells, are we?

I scribbled rapidly for a moment, spewing my face and robes with ink. After about a quarter of an hour I announced that I was through with editing. Molly looked up at my face and, as usual, pointed her wand at it, muttering i"tergeo."/i

I wiped a hand over my newly ink-free forehead and then gestured out of the window. There was snow gently falling in the air, and already about three inches high on the ground far below. It was snowing early this year, but I didn't mind, as it gave me something to write about.

I handed my journal to Molly first, as it usually happened. She read it over once, looked up at me with her eyebrows raised, and then cleared her throat.

"you whistle

in the night

like diamonds

calling for

an eye

what else

in this world

reminds us

of such intense

fragility while

renders senses

of such false

strength?"

Albus was quiet for a while after, as usual. He tried very hard to understand where I was coming from when I wrote poetry. But this would be hard for him, naturally, seeing as I didn't even always know. He much preferred it when I read out loud my inner musings at the day's going-ons and the fiascos I usually managed to create in Charms, where he sat across the room from me.

He perked up suddenly, and I thought, my god, did he actually understand something? but he just looked up at me and said, "See, what I'm confused about is, how you wrote a poem about night in the day?"

Molly let out a small laugh as I punched his shoulder.

"C'mon Rose, let's get to the greenhouse early today," Albus yelled from the bottom of the spiral staircase up into the girls' tower. He had tried to come up it once during first year, completely innocent, to talk to me, and had learned his lesson quick enough.

"Alright," I yelled back, not convinced he could hear me. I flipped the lid back onto the pot of ink and put my quill aside, stashing my journal away. All the girls knew well enough to keep away from it, so I never needed to set it with a lock. I grabbed my hat and mittens and flew down the staircase, where Molly and Albus were waiting for me, chatting about the conditions of the weather and how this would effect the first Quidditch match that was coming up soon.

I wasn't that interested in Quidditch, though my dad counted that as a felony. I supposed that I liked to write about it. It was sometimes vaguely poetic. I was a pretty good flier, coming from a family full of flame-headed ones, but I never felt like trying out for the team. Molly and Albus, on the other hand, both made the team in their third year, as soon as spots started to open up. Albus, naturally, became seeker and Molly took up the spot of Chaser. They iloved/i to talk about it.

"So are you putting a wager in?" Albus asked me as we exited the portrait hole.

"Are you joking, Al?" Molly asked him, one eyebrow cocked. "Rosie doesn't bet, and she couldn't hardly care less about the outcome of the match."

"Well, I care that Gryffindor wins, that's all," I said a little defensively as we trooped down a moving staircase. We hopped the third step from the bottom automatically, and found ourselves, quite magically, on the ground floor.

"'Atta girl," Albus said, grinning and patting me on the back.

We walked leisurely across the marble tile, having time to spare. Albus and Molly chatted about Quidditch and the Hogsmeade trip coming up, while I stared off into space and grinned every once in a while. When we reached the Great Oak doors we pulled on our Khaki-coloured Herbology coats and our knitted hats and mittens (courtesy of Grandma Weasley, who had finally given up on jumpers), and crunched out into the softly-falling snow towards the greenhouses.

"Oi, Trevor!" Albus yelled, waving to a tall and lanky boy who was trekking through the slightly thicker snow near the bottom of the hill. Trevor looked up, and lifted his cap to us, gladly slowing down.

"So which greenhouse today, d'you think?" Trevor huffed out between labored steps. The wind was picking up. What sort of November weather is this?

"Wouldn't you know, Trevor?" Molly asked. "Your dad's the professor."

"Yeah," Albus agreed. "Don't you guys ever talk or anything?"

"Are you kidding?" Trevor guffawed. I rolled my eyes.

"Where's the rest of the class, Trevor?" Molly asked, frowning and looking around. The landscape was quickly becoming whiter, and we were leaving a trail of smattered footprints. They looked lonely, a little rut in the white desert of snow, compared to what we usually saw when we looked back; a sort of mangled moonscape.

"I dunno," Trevor said, shrugging. "Divination was a laugh today, as usual. I dunno why so many of us stuck with it. We sit and stare into the crystal balls, and then interpret each other our reflections. At least, on Old Trewlaney's days. Firenze's classes are much more interesting." He frowned, as if to say, but not iquite/i interesting enough.

"It's not too late to drop," Albus said as we came to a halt outside of greenhouse 4 (just to be safe). His eyes lit up. "We've been doing this little relaxation session in the common room during those free periods, instead of studying like we should-like the other people do." He gestured to the rest of the class who was tromping noisily down the hill to the greenhouses. Those iothers./i

Scorpius was one of those others (!).

"I would, but dad wants me to make up for what I can't take by taking the things I can scrape through, y'know? Since I dropped Muggle Studies, I needed another class, and Divination beats Ancient Runes or Arithmancy. No offense, Rosie."

"None taken."

I sighed. Things were getting so competitive in school these days. . . Mum said it was becoming more and more like the Muggle world, since we didn't have much besides what we'd study when we were out of Hogwarts to worry over.

Professor Longbottom emerged from greenhouse three with the ends of his hair singed and smoking. I looked over to my right where Trevor stood, plucking at his collar. He looked extraordinarily like his father, tall and lanky with protuberant greyish brown eyes and hair that stuck up almost as messy as Albus's. It was hard to believe that he had been pudgy and stocky when we first met, nearly twelve years ago, and that he had been even when we started Hogwarts.

"Professor," a girl's voice quipped. I looked back to see it came from Aednat. "You didn't get your hair like that from wrestling a iplant, did you?"/i

"No, Miss O'Shea," Professor Longbottom smiled, a bit wearily. "Third years are a handful, aren't they?"

We all giggled a little, nervous despite his reassurance. Albus elbowed me in the ribs, and whispered into my ear, "That's just what he says to lure us in, so we'll do all the dirty work, the wrestling with bubotubers and all that."

"Al, you can't wrestle ibubotubers/i," I hissed back as Professor Longbottom began his speech about greenhouse 5 (eek!). "You iknow/i the puss would get all over you!"

"Yes, undiluted bubotuber puss isn't flattering for the skin. You'll break out in this weird lizard-skin rash, all scaly, like a hide glove or something, only all over whatever skin the puss touched-" Molly whispered before being interrupted by the gradual shove of twenty bodies pushing her along into the greenhouse, which separated her from Albus and me.

Classy, people!

"Luckily dad uses a seating chart," Trevor said into my ear as we were herded along. I nodded my head, preferring to keep a tight clamp on my mouth, thinking that at least I'd be able to sit with Molly and Albus.

I should have easily seen what was coming. Of course, Professor Longbottom told us we'd earned free seating privileges until further notice, and the class, most of which hadn't been fortunate enough to have been seated close to their best friends, scrambled to sit at a table with their mates, meanwhile making a mess of the seating chart and separating Albus from me. I clenched my teeth, trying very hard not to roll my eyes, thinking it would maximise sighting ability as I searched for a table with Molly and Albus amidst the hullaballoo.

"Rose!" I heard Molly's voice from over my left shoulder and immediately turned and blindly took a step forward.

I smacked a tall, soft wall, which immediately sprouted arms and hands, which grabbed my upper arms to steady me on my feet and keep me from falling. I looked up, dazed, trying to get my eyes to focus after I bumped my head. It looked like a halo surrounding a tanned face. iDamn,/i I thought as I realised it was a person.

"Sorry," I mumbled, cupping my forehead in my palm, sidestepping out of the way. My hat slumped down to the bridge of my nose. I tried to walk away, and I began to rearrange my hat, but a strong hand grabbed my left arm and held me still.

"Are you alright, then?" a voice asked, one I didn't recognize immediately.

iDamn./i

"Oh, yes, fine, ilovely/i, thank you," I mumbled, my voice raising an octave. Oh Scorpius, why are you so chivalrous? Why couldn't you walk away like a normal boy?

"Your hat's over your eyes," he said, and I felt him tugging it up to sit on my hair. "And your hand." I grinned sheepishly, looking up at him. His blue eyes were twinkling, and his hair was spilling over his forehead.

"Thanks," I peeped. He smiled and we walked past each other. I folded my arms over my chest very tightly, maybe thinking I could stop my heart from aching if I pressed it hard enough. Would mum have called him a heart-throb? Hell, I would.

"Rose!" Molly called again, and I looked up to see her pink mitten waving at me over heads. I walked quickly to snatch up the last seat at the table. Albus and Molly sat on the side opposite me, and Trevor sat on my right. My cheeks were smarting. I hoped I didn't look unusually flushed. I also hoped no one had noticed my exchange with Scorpius in the midst of all the chaos. Especially Albus or Molly, since they wouldn't let me go without pestering the ihell/i out of me.

"Today," Professor Longbottom said dramatically-I looked at Trevor, who rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Today we will be working with Snargaluffs. I know for a fact that you've all worked with these before in greenhouse three, so I'm expecting a turn out of at least a hundred pods, shelled for the seeds. I've placed large bowls in the middle of your tables-" he held a large plastic bowl up in the air so we could clearly see what he was talking about, in case we had any doubts that the large clear bowl in the middle of each of our tables was really the one he meant. "And you are to try to fill them. If each table fills their bowl halfway with seeds, I'll know we're at a hundred pods and I'll let you hike up to the castle early..."

Professor Longbottom trailed off as a dull murmur overtook the class. Anything to return to the castle early, Professor!

"As it's a double period today, you've got plenty of time. Alright, go ahead." He swished his wand and small daggers appeared in the middle of the tables as well as a couple of smaller bowls, which we knew were for keeping the fresh pods until someone had time to pop them.

My job was always ipopping/i them.

The thing was, though I was awkwardly thin and looked actually very scrawny, in comparison to say, Molly, who wasn't oversized, and who was actually petite, but looked substantial, I had this weird strength when it came to keeping a hold of Snargaluff pods and squeezing them into submission so I could pop them and release the cositas verdes-little green things-inside.

"Ready, Molly?" Albus asked, rolling up his sleeves. Trevor pushed down his goggles, loosening his shoulders. The truth was, I thought, they really love doing this. Wrestling with plants...every boy's dream.

"Ready, Al." Molly was determined. She had pulled back her golden-brown locks with a piece of spare string that she probably found on the ground, and had removed her hat and pushed up the sleeves of her coat. It was Molly's job to reach into the weird stump until it produced a pod, and then she would snatch it before it could wrestle free of the boys' grip.

"This is like a more physically violent version of a muggle drama," I mused aloud. The other three looked at me blankly. I sighed. "Never mind, go on!"

"On the count of three, Trevor," Albus said intently, glaring at the Snargaluff, which seemed to growl in response. Nasty little prick, aren't you?

Albus counted down, as usual, and there was a sudden frenzy of crazed movement. We caught pods in record speed, about one every minute or so.

Albus and Trevor each grabbed two handfuls of branches, capturing every last one, and Molly bravely plunged her arm up to the elbow (which looked too far) into the gaping maw in the center of the stump. I waited anxiously, casting puffs of smoke into the air with my wand to "let off steam." After about thirty long seconds of probing and twisted faces, all the while her eyes squeezed closed behind her goggles, Molly triumphantly extracted her arm with a ipop!/i from the bowels and held up a bright green, wiggling pod.

She passed it off to me, ready to reach in again. I took it, easily engulfed in my task. I held it down to the table with both hands, on my knees in the stool to employ extra pressure. I grinned sheepishly, for a moment imagining how silly I must have looked, but the self-consciousness easily was lost among the roaring and yelling and shouting and sound of flailing limbs hitting stray objects. Finally the pod settled into a mild purr and stopped squirming, so I grabbed the dagger and slit it gently along the outside, whitish edge of the pod, and it split open as I shook it out over the bowl in the middle of the table.

I discarded the slimy shell into one of the smaller bowls and then looked up to Molly, who was handing me another pod just as I reached out to her. I grabbed it and proceeded in the same process, slitting it open and emptying it over the bowl. I was about to toss the shell when I heard a squeal and a large roar very close to my right ear.

I looked up to see a Snargaluff hurling through the air at my head. I quickly ducked and blocked my face with a strong thrust of my hands. The Snargaluff went flying. I didn't watch it, in a daze as Molly threw her arms around my neck, apologising profusely.

"Rosie!" I heard Albus yell, his voice strained. My neck snapped as I looked up, my eyes feeling as though they'd pop out of my head.

There was a racket so loud I thought it couldn't be real. Things throughout most of the greenhouse were going on as usual, in a kind of surreal state, but two tables down from ours, Albus was standing, waving his arms to get my attention, by the seat of Scorpius Malfoy, who, of course, had his arm stuck up to the shoulder in our runaway Snargaluff, which seemed to be trying to eat the limb.

I was paralysed. The blood rushed from my head.

Then we ran.

"Aw ihell/i," I heard Molly whisper as we took off sprinting. We reached his table in two or three long strides at the same time as at least five other kids, Aednat among them, swearing like a sailor as branches cut through her coat. I looked at Scorpius's face, which was wracked with both panic but also amusement.

I realised I was standing, feet away, staring at his face with my head tilted like a slobbering fool.

"iImpedimenta!/i" I shouted, shooting a fiery golden ball of a spell at the rabid Snargaluff, which instantly fell motionless as the spell engulfed it.

There was a sudden moment of complete silence and stillness. Everyone seemed to be looking at me, as I stood with my wand still in position, aimed at the motionless Snargaluff. I realised I was breathing loudly. I tried to stop.

Scorpius broke the silence by emitting a small sigh out of his nose as he extracted his arm from the stump. Heads snapped to his arm, which was coated all the way to the shoulder of his robe in an electric green slime. I grimaced in time with the others.

"Eugh," Trevor exclaimed softly, and I noticed for the first time he was standing next to me. I made a face, mostly for his benefit, since all the blood had rushed to my heart and my stomach and had made making faces extremely difficult and somewhat painful.

"I'm alright," Scorpius announced quietly, smiling. He has this sort of half-smile, almost a smirk but innocent and genuinely amused. It was that smile.

"Well...I think we've collected enough seeds, Professor," Albus yelled as Scorpius gave the Snargaluff a beat against the table and they began to ooze out, without the shells.

My forehead made its way to my left palm.