Challenge: TrisanaChandler13's Tris's Bookshelf Challenge on HPFC

Characters: Scopius Malfoy, Rose Weasley

Prompt: Alanna: the First Adventure and the song Norwegian Wood, by the Beatles

Word count: 2,631

A/N: Draco/Hermione is my OTP, so I hardly ever acknowledge Scorpius/Rose because it bothers me due to my obsession with their parents as a couple. However, in spite of this, I had heaps of fun writing this, and I might carry on from it in future one-shots. After all, I've never really been a fan of one-sided love.

I once had a girl,
Or should I say,
She once had me?

"Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles

"What d'you think?"

I don't answer right away, because I don't know what to say. The building as a whole is tiny, cream brick crammed between two identical red brick buildings. The one Rose has me standing in front of, staring at, doesn't look any wider than the end of one of the house tables back at Hogwarts. I'm certain that my room back at Malfoy Manor is wider than the entire building, and I know she knows it, but she's thrilled about it anyway. And there are meant to be four apartments inside, too, only one of which is hers!

"It looks like French art deco," I finally manage to say. "Classy architecture."

"Uh-huh," she grins, still beaming as she grabs my wrist, a spark jumping up my arm at the contact as it has since we were 14 and just recognising the rather significant difference between witches and wizards. I still don't know if she senses the spark. Anyway, she drags me inside, all but sprinting for the stairs, and takes me up to the second floor.

Part of me has always wished that I listened to what my fathers' warning said, and stayed far, far away from the Weasley girl. I'm used to it now. It always resurfaces when she's thinking of ways to make me do something I'd never choose to do on my own. Dad changed his mind a long time ago, though, and now he more or less adores Rose Weasley - not that he'll ever admit it.

"Now, it's not huge like your Manor, Scorp, but I love it. It reminds me of a place I stayed at in America. Did you know that there are huge magical communities in the States? Manhattan, in New York City, is full of wizards. Of course they stay hidden, because of the Statute, but I could tell..."

I watch Rose speak while I listen to her rant about New York and her 'gap year'. She told me it's a muggle thing, where they finish school and then take a year off to travel or work before heading off to university. She fully intends to go to university in the autumn, to study creative writing. Watching her, I'm thinking that she isn't confident enough.

"Why're you staring, Scorp?"

I blink and shrug at her, offering a smile. "You look lovely, Rose, and you know I don't like to keep myself from enjoying the experience off looking at beautiful things."

She laughs and elbows me, moving to unlock the door with some keys. Her wand is in her back pocket, and since I'm watching to make sure she doesn't draw it and hex me, which has happened way too many times for me to think her being my friend makes me safe, I have the perfect opportunity to check her out.

Her adventure across the world in the last year has done her well. Her skin has tanned better than usual, since she usually just burns, and I'm sure that, when I find time to count them, I bet I'll find more than the one-hundred and twenty-eight freckles she had three days after graduation. Her bushy red hair has softened into thick, dark red curls, and her blue eyes are bright in her face. She's maybe two centimetres shorter than me in her grey American-Converse-brand sneakers. Combined with her jeans and black t-shirt, sporting the name of some muggle band, Rose looks comfortable and beautiful.

I wish I was comfortable, I grumble to myself, morose. I've been convinced for years that the muggle clothes mother buys me are a size too small. I complain as much to Rose, for the hundredth time, and she covers my eyes with one hand. She's laughing as she claims her wand, and she taps my shoulder and bum with it. I'm grateful, though, because I feel the clothing loosen, and suddenly the grey denims are comfortable, the navy blue Tornadoes jersey flattering.

She steers me inside, both of her hands over my grey eyes now, and she's murmuring some compliment in my ear. I get the vague impression that it's about my hair - I know it looks better now than it did the last time she saw me, since instead of being gelled flat, it's attractively messed up - but I can't focus. All I'm really aware of is her breath, warm on the back of my neck, and how close she is. I decide that I've missed this far too much, and wonder if today is the day I tell her the truth. Regardless, I certainly plan to confund someone so I can get into that muggle university she's going to. I know muggle medicine sounds interesting. I wonder how strong the confundus charm would have to be?

"Ta-da!" she cries with a sudden flourish, removing her hands from my eyes and resting them on by shoulders. I can see the entrance to two separate rooms, a bed and a bath, across the room in front of me. There are boxes literally everywhere, stacked in piles that aren't possible without magic, and I've got no doubt as to what's in every single one of them. I've had Rose Weasley's trunk dropped on my foot more than once back at Hogwarts, and after I asked a dozen times what was in the bloody thing, she told me. Now I know that at least three quarters of these boxes will be half filled with books.

She is an avid book hoarder, and I mean that in the kindest, most endearing sense possible. I like that she collects books - most of the half-bloods I know are obsessed with the magic box that muggles watch, a television. It's in her blood to be unhealthily studious, an insanely motivated reader, because her mother is Hermione Weasley, formerly Granger, of the famous war. But don't misunderstand: Rose's collection makes her mothers' look like a mere boxful. It pales in comparison.

There are an easy fifty boxes in Rose's new apartment, none of them opened yet. If three-quarters are half full, then that's about thirty eight boxes. But Rose's half full doesn't mean there's equal to nineteen boxes full; not at all. I've known her for years, and so I'm well aware of the fact that, before she puts any books away, she shrinks them down to a fifth of their usual size, and then casts a lightness charm on every box so they can actually be lifted. I know this because I helped her pack a year ago when she decided to move out. This decision was spur-of-the-moment, following a loud, vicious, violent fight with her father, Ronald Weasley. She hasn't spoken to either of her parents for a year, hasn't mentioned them to me in any of her letters, but every single one that her mother sent is unopened. I know because I saw the stack of envelopes with the familiar handwriting get dumped on the floor when she pulled me inside.

Rose Weasley got into a massive fight with her parents. She's never actually said what it was about, but I heard her mumble in her sleep when I hid her in my wing of the Manor after the fight, before she worked out what to do. It was about her friendship with me, because I'm a 'prejudiced, pureblooded git'. I'm not, though, and I never have been. Maybe my father is Draco Malfoy, famous ex-Death Eater, but blood hasn't meant anything to him for a long time. He adores Rose, has since my second year when I told him about the Ravenclaw who tried out for the Quidditch team, got offered keeper, and then turned them down because she was just proving a point to me. He always asks about her now, insisting I keep in touch so that I can answer his questions. Even if he didn't approve, if he didn't insist, I'd have done it anyway: Rose is my best friend, and I have no intention of changing that. Even though I might possibly like her in a more-than-friends way.

"So why am I here?" I ask her, taking in the smallness of the flat. She grins, and I feel my heart accelerate.

"Well, you're better at expansion charms than I am, Scorp. And I need some space for my books."

And just like that, I understand, and I grin in relief. "Thank Merlin, Rose. I was afraid you'd lost it."

"Not quite. But I did buy more books while I was away."

I stifle a groan, barely, and run through the scale I made up in our fifth year, after helping her lug a crateful of new books back to the castle from Hogsmeade. I doubt she's ever bought less than two dozen books in one trip to a bookstore. "Crate, Junk Shop, Obscurus, Whizz Hard, Flourish and Blotts, or Library?"

"Whizz hard," she says. I guess that's not so bad, considering she once bought a copy of every book in Flourish and Blotts. On one trip to Diagon Alley.

But I bet she's going to want me to help her sort all of them into alphabetical order, by author. By hand.

I don't even try to smother the groan this time, watching as she bewitches the boxes to move out of the way, and any non-book items to sort themselves.

"Bloody hell, woman, why do you insist on buying a copy of every book that exists?"

"Not every book," she says, giving me a smirk that I'm sure my father taught her at some point. "Just the ones that look good."

Hours later, after I've expanded the main room to allow for her library, we're a little past halfway. We're twenty-four boxes into the thirty-eight that contain books - I was exactly right - and every surface in the room is covered with impossibly tall stacks of books, held up only by magic. We can't shelve them because there's a chance we'll find more A authors chucked in with her R authors, and neither of us wants to go through the traumatic ordeal of moving every single book along to make room for just one more. We've had lunch, dinner and dessert, all cooked by me, since Rose is both a ridiculously bad cook and also incredibly uneducated when it comes to the kitchen, and now it's almost two in the morning. We're both yawning, and I my eyes are going blurry with the strain of reading so many bloody titles and names, not to mention the harshness of muggle electric lighting.

I'm sitting among the 'P' authors, three stacks to the ceiling so far, wondering why this James Patterson fellow has written over two hundred books and why Rose has every single one of them. I'm hoping that I don't have to put them into chronological order, and Rose is starting to describe an Antipodean Opaleye reserve in New Zealand near something called 'Hobbiton'. When I stretch, I do it without thinking.

The thunderous roar of hundreds of books falling from their neat, orderly stacks into chaotic masses on the floor. It looks like an ocean of covers, loose pages and books that are somehow still in one piece, like a flood of Biblical proportions - I don't actually know exactly what that means, but from what Rose says, it basically means that it's huge - and the noise is probably enough to startle even the most controlled of Hogwarts professors. I was so frightened, knowing full well that Rose love her books more than she loves her baby brother, who she once hexed a dozen different people for bullying while she was a Prefect (needless to say, she didn't make Head Girl), and as I stare at the mess around me, I no longer feel like falling asleep. No, now I'm too awake to so much as consider sleeping, let alone breathing.

Rose is completely silent now, and I can see her, gaping at me from behind the surviving stacks. There's one right in front of me, though, one horribly teetering mound of texts, all of varying thickness and weight. I throw my hands over my head just in time to protect it, all too aware of the stack crashing towards me in what I swear is slow motion.

By the time the metaphorical dust has cleared, I'm sitting with my eyes tightly shut behind my badly bruised arms, buried amongst what is probably more books than I've read in my lifetime. Loose pages are fluttering down to the floor around me, and the ringing in my ears seems to be attempting to drill through to my brain.

"Scorpius. Scorpius - Scorp! Look at me!"

I finally lower my hands, surprising myself when I find a thin muggle novel clutched in my hand. Alanna: the First Adventure. I'm dimly aware of the unmoving violet eyes on the cover, but the book doesn't seem interesting at all. I'm too afraid of whatever curse Rose is going to cast on me as I finally convince myself to move, meeting her gaze after minutes of deliberation.

"Oh, Merlin's pants, Scorpius! You had me terrified!"

"What?" I'm completely numb. My ears are still ringing, and Rose is literally centimetres from me. Honestly, I could probably lean forward and kiss her, and then it'll all be done. Finally.

She waves her wand quickly, the books jumping away from me as if burned. "Is anything broken?"

"No. Just the books. I'm not badly hurt," I state warily, because I fully expect her to start screaming at me any second now. It won't be the first time she beats me to a bloody pulp with her fists, or curses me with her wand. Rose is vindictive as hell when she wants to be.

I certainly don't expect her to start laughing, but she does. Her laugh has always been contagious, though, and soon enough, I'm laughing too. By the time we get control of ourselves, it's well past two in the morning, and we're both wiping tears of mirth from our eyes. "Time for bed, I think," she says, still giggling. "We've got heaps of work to do in the morning."

"You do, maybe. I think I'll rest, since I'm in agony and all."

"If you do, Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy, you will be sleeping in the bathtub."

I panic, because Rose has always followed through on her threats. I get to my knees, which is really just the next step on my way to my feet and by no means is me intentionally begging, and grasp both her hands with both of mine. "O beautiful Rose, smartest and prettiest witch to ever grace my line of sight, won't you please have mercy on your humble servant?"

"Promise you'll help me sort in the morning. And fix my books."

I grope behind me, finding the book I'd caught earlier, and hold it out to her as a peace offering. "Alanna: the First Adventure. Good as new. Consider it the first of many."

"Good," she grins at me, and lets me help her to her feet. "But if you aren't careful with the begging, Scorp, people might start to think you're in love with me."

I force a smile, hoping it isn't too nervous as I nod. "You're my best friend, Rose, of course I love you. Now let's go to bed, alright?"

"Right," she agrees, taking my hand again. She drags me to the bedroom, in the same manner in which she dragged me up the stairs, and in the same manner that I'll always let her drag me anywhere she likes. I tell myself that a friendly kind of love is enough for me to be completely happy.

Maybe one day, I'll believe it.