A/N I don't own the world, or the characters.
This is a Rose/Scorpius fanfic, which I started a few years back. I'm currently in the process of editing the first two chapters to make them flow a little more.
Most days during the summer holidays, Rose wants to kill her younger brother, someone who doesn't quite understand that she doesn't want to explain her every action, or analyse her viewpoint on something to the extreme that she no longer supports her original opinion. He does it on purpose, she's certain, and sometimes she's almost thankful; it means that she isn't getting rusty in the holidays, after all, so that when she gets back to school she's ready to fire insults at Scorpius Malfoy the second they get on the train.
Most of the time, however, it's downright annoying. And that's just what happens on the morning that Rose discovers perhaps the biggest piece of news in her entire time at Hogwarts.
"So, why do you think that it's right to ban thin-bottomed cauldrons?" Hugo questions her, sounding more like a five year old than a boy nearly sixteen years of age to Rose's ears.
"Hugo, dear, maybe you should leave it until after breakfast," their mother butts in quickly, keen to avoid another row at breakfast. Every day this week, Rose and Hugo have butted horns, arguing about everything, from Muggle television programmes to whether or not it's worthwhile to get insurance on a broom that's fifty seven years old—Rose's opinion is that it is; Hugo thinks that it's pointless as you can't ride more than about ten miles an hour.
"No, she should be able to back up her opinions," Hugo replies, buttering a piece of toast as he looks back at Rose. "So, Rosie, tell me your answer."
Hermione rolls her eyes at her children, flicking her wrist to take the kettle off the stove to prevent it overheating. "Don't argue, please," she requests, causing Rose to sigh internally. She keeps getting blamed for the arguments when, in fact, it's all Hugo's fault. "If you could keep it until after the post arrives, that would be much appreciated—at least by then the neighbours should be up."
"I'm waiting for an answer…" Hugo says, half singing his words. "Or perhaps you don't have anything to back up your viewpoint and that's why you're refusing to answer."
"Firstly, I'm drinking tea and eating breakfast—it's not like I'm exactly sitting here staring into space to avoid answering your question," Rose snaps, unable to avoid confronting her brother. "Secondly, have you been taking lessons from the Malfoy prick in how to irritate me, because you're doing it just as well as he does—if not better?" She frowns slightly, drinking the last dregs of her tea as she realises something.
It's almost midway through August, which means that the booklists will be arriving soon. They always arrive somewhere between the twelfth and the fifteenth without fail, and today's the thirteenth of August.
Hugo's babbling on about something—probably something to do with her immediately jumping to Scorpius Malfoy and how this is an indication of her deep-rooted love for him—but Rose interrupts him. "Mum, can you do a tracker on the owl and see when it's going to get here?"
"Why do you want to know when the post's getting here?" Hugo asks, a smile appearing on his lips, and a feeling of horror suddenly runs through Rose. He's going to link this to Malfoy, she's sure of it—"Are you expecting a love letter from Malfoy or something?"
Shutting her eyes, Rose counts slowly from one to ten before reopening them to see a smug look on her brother's face; she shuts them once more, repeating the process just for the result to be the same. Too late, she realises that her mother has already left for work – she must have really spaced out.
"Why are you so smug?" she asks, certain that it can't be anything to do with what he just said. There's no post, and anyway, why would there be a note from Malfoy? The only time he's ever written to her in the holidays was last summer, when he got absolutely blathered with Georgia Zabini (rumours of pregnancy abounded, not at all spread by Rose), and that was to insult everything about her. And unless he's gotten himself into a complete state again, Rose doubts there'll be a letter from him.
"Oh, no reason," Hugo replies, his voice taking on the strange quality it always does when he lies. "Just, you know, there is the fact that the post arrived when you were doing your best to block me out, and I've got your Hogwarts letter."
It takes Rose a full ten seconds to process what he's said before she responds. "What! Give me it now, Hugo; I need it!" She doesn't want to admit it, but there's a large part of her that's certain she's been appointed Head Girl. This letter will make or break this suspicion – and she's desperate to know.
Hugo makes a noise that sounds scarily like the one Lily makes on a relatively regular basis, and jumps up from his seat to run across to the other side of the kitchen. He then proceeds to climb onto the freshly cleaned work surface, just to make sure that vertically challenged Rose can't reach the letter in his grasp.
"Read me the letter or I'll tell Mum just where your feet are," Rose says, smiling as sweetly as a girl who feels as though she's about to burst can manage. "Don't forget, little Hugo, I can perform magic outside of school now – don't think I won't Side-Long Apparate you to her office."
"Hold your horses, I'm opening the letter now—it's very thick, I'm guessing they're giving you a list of the fines the library's issued you over the last six years," Hugo jokes, but Rose has absolutely no patience for him. "Right…right…very interesting, very interesting indeed—your booklist contains something by a Professor Bumblybee, which I'm sure was a nickname for some dragon-blood addict down in Knockturn Alley, but other than that it's—"
Rose cuts him off. "The actual letter, Hugo, if you don't mind?"
Rolling his eyes as well as his mother did before him, Hugo unfolds the letter within the envelope and clears his throat dramatically. "Dear Rose Weasley, blahblahblah, I am pleased to inform you that you have been appointed Head Girl of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—not that that's a particular surprise, though Mum's going to be unbearable—as well as to give you the name of your Head Boy, who is Scorpius Malfoy." Hugo takes a pause, allowing Rose to process what he's just said. "In addition to this, I would like to add that as part of the privileges of being in such a position of authority, the pair of you are invited to share the Heads' Quarters on the fifth floor of the castle, which will permit you extra opportunity to interact."
Rose freezes. She can just about cope with sharing the Headship with Scorpius – it isn't anywhere near her top hundred choices for her ideal final year, but she sort of expected he would get the position – but to live with him? This is her worst nightmare, being forced to not only share the position with Scorpius, but to share accommodation with him too! It's her last year of schooling and she wanted it to be fun, not filled with constant insults and jibes. Whilst she enjoys her arguments with Scorpius, the feud doesn't rear its head every day – allowing her to actually create memories which he doesn't feature in. However, if this is true…final year will be an entirely different story.
"Are you serious?" she erupts suddenly, once the shock of the moment has passed. "I have to share quarters with that prat, that arrogant arsehole, that full-of-dragon-dung prick who doesn't know his arse from his mouth?"
With just one look at Hugo's expression, Rose can tell that she's been played. "No," he replies, bursting into laughter. "I just wanted to see your face—it was priceless!"
"Get out," Rose snaps at her brother, regretting leaving her wand upstairs because if she had it, Hugo would no longer be a human being. He'd be a toad, just like she accidentally (though perhaps on purpose) turned Scorpius in fifth year, when they were practising human Transfiguration. Well, she was; the class were practising turning their cushions into toads…she just got a bit carried away and attempted to make an Animagus. "If I see you again today, Hugo Weasley, you'll regret it – get out!"
"With pleasure," Hugo says hurriedly, realising that Rose is no longer to be messed with. "Here you go, sis, your shiny badge and letter—don't lose it, or maybe Scorpius'll take both positions!" Hugo cackles as he leaves the room, and Rose knows that the knowledge that Rose and Scorpius are the Head Girl and Boy for the year is something that Hugo will spread as fast as he can.
All that's left is the fact that she's Head Girl—but that she has to work with Scorpius Malfoy for the rest of the year in a civil manner, and neither of them can kill the other.
"Why?" she cries out, burying her head in her hands. "Why did it have to be him?"
Nobody answers.
~x~
The following day, Rose meets up with her friends in Diagon Alley, fearing what they'll say from the moment she arrives. Ever since Rose and Scorpius became their House's Prefects, he friends have said that the two of them will become Head Boy and Girl—or, as Rose likes to say, Head Girl and Boy, because she's better than Scorpius—and that by the end of the year, 'they'll either be dead or snogging the face off of one another'. Rose has been adamant since this became the predicted future that neither of these options will happen, but if one does, it'll be the former.
"Rosie!" Lindsay, one of her friends, shouts from the direction of the ice cream parlour on the other side of the street, causing Rose to head over there. "How are you now you have proof that you get to spend the next year working closely with the sexy Malfoy?" she squeals, and Rose sighs. Lindsay's always been the more romantic one of the four of them, all of their actions focused on the likelihood of a relationship (and inherently, intimate relations) rather than the actual thing itself. Being roommates with Rose, she's also had many more opportunities to share with Rose her dreams about Rose and Scorpius. Rose is pretty certain that Professor Trelawney is paying Lindsay to share these fantasies, and that it probably has something to do with the legacy of Rose's own mother, and her fraught relationship with the Divination professor.
"About the same as I was before I found out: irritated that Malfoy exists, and happy that I get to boss about my kid brother for a year," she replies, slipping into the seat next to Lindsay. "Where are Al and Poppy?"
Lindsay shrugs, picking up what Rose presumes to be a nutty delight milkshake—it's all Lindsay ever orders. "Al's off buying my birthday present, but he's not exactly kept it well hidden because he went into the shop that only sells candles, and Poppy told me that she needed to get new stocks of Puking Pastilles about half an hour ago, and she still hasn't come back. Personally, I think she's off having a quick snog with Wood, but you never know, her standards might have slipped back to McLaggen."
Spluttering, Rose begins to ask questions about Poppy's mishap with McLaggen, determined to keep the focus from her own news and her fellow Head, but Lindsay sees right through her.
"You're only getting away with this because neither Al nor Poppy are back to help scream about this news," Lindsay says.
Rose stares at her. "The last time Al screamed, he was seven and it was because Uncle George thought it was a good idea to cover his bed in slugs."
"Alright, Al can grunt like that time last year when he tried to sound like a bodybuilder, whilst me and Poppy freak out," Lindsay concedes. "Anyway, you have to admit, he has a nice body."
"Who has a nice body?"
Rose looks up to see Al standing to their right, Poppy by his side, and shakes her head. "Well, it's not you if you keep on eating all that chocolate," she retorts, pointing to the bars bulging out of his pockets. Al has always had the sweet tooth in the Potter-Weasley clan; indeed, Honeydukes was almost bought out when it was his seventeenth birthday.
"She was talking about Scorpius!" Lindsay bursts out, unable to contain herself.
"No I wasn't!" Rose insists, her voice increasingly high-pitched. "That was Lindsay, not me, I don't think the blond, arrogant, stupid toad has a nice body."
There's a silence that Rose doesn't quite understand, until the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end: there's someone behind her. It takes another second or two to realise who, but when she does, her entire body turns ice cold. Scorpius Malfoy just heard her discussing his body—whilst she was saying it wasn't nice, she was still discussing it.
"Well, well," Scorpius says in his arrogant drawl. "If it isn't Weasley talking about my body, I always knew that you liked it really, and that you were just pretending. You're so dense, Weasley."
Rose immediately bites back the most scathing of her insults, deciding to save it for some time during the new school year. "Actually, we were discussing the effects of your latest bout of chlamydia on your body and how it's probably inflated your ego even more because you're getting some," she shoots back, instantly regretting making any reference to his sex life. "And I was about to relay the story of when you became a toad again, but that seems a little hashed out now, so if you want to give us a breakdown of how your life's changed, we're all ears." She turns to face him and smiles sweetly, noting the almost murderous expression on his face. Rose has always been able to get to him; it's a particular skill that she wishes she could write on her resume.
Then deliberately, in a way that always infuriates Rose, Scorpius brushes it off. "Talking about me only makes me more famous; all advertising is positive in some way or another," he replies, shrugging it off. "You might want to start being nicer to me, Rosie-Posie, given that we're working together next year. Otherwise, someone may happen to find a ferret in their underwear drawer."
A blush rises in Rose's cheeks, and she fights to keep it under control. "Firstly, don't call me that, it's not my name. Secondly, I think it was your father who turned into the ferret, so that threat is probably worked best on you, and thirdly, why the hell do you think you're getting any sort of access to my underwear drawer? You're an ignorant prat who is more likely to get access to McGonagall's bedroom than to mine!"
Scorpius, once again, shrugs, infuriating Rose further. "Whatever, I don't really care that much; I just came over to make sure I wasn't getting rusty—and I'm not. You are, though; you used the ignorant prat again, and that was your favourite in fifth year. We need to do some work on your comebacks, Rosie-Posie. But for now, if you'll excuse me, I have some shopping to do." Before he disappears, however, he leans in against Rose's cheek and whispers into her ear, "I need to get something for that chlamydia."
He's gone by the time she whips her head around, and by the time she looks back at her friends—Al looking rather uncomfortable, given his quasi-friendship with Scorpius—she gets the feeling that this is going down in the records as a step towards the getting together of Rose and Scorpius.
"You know, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to increase the odds in the 'Will Rose and Scorpius Get Together?' sweepstake I've been running," Al says to nobody in particular. "We're now at eight Sickles to four Knuts that they'll be together by the end of the year…any takers?"
"Nah, I'm going for Christmas," Lindsay replies, draining the last of her milkshake.
"I'm taking Easter," Poppy half yells, causing other customers at the parlour to turn their way.
"Looks like I'm the only one taking the long term approach," Al says, still smiling. "There we have it, ladies and gentlemen! The bets are in as to when the warring pair will get together…do you, Rose Weasley, have any comments on who is the favourite?"
Unable to resist a smile, Rose shakes her head. "No, because I can tell you all that you're just wasting your time. There is no way on this planet that I'm going to get with Scorpius Malfoy, none whatsoever!"
Her three friends turn to look at one another with smug smiles that remind her far too much of Hugo's, but it's Lindsay who replies for the three of them. "Sure you won't, Rosie, we believe you."
Rose sighs again. It's quite obvious to her already that this year is going to be the longest one so far—and it hasn't even started yet.
I appreciate any and all reviews and opinions about any element of the story.