A/N - This is set during the Summer holidays between Rose's fifth and sixth year. Hugo is between his third and fourth years – and way too energetic for a fourteen year old – and Molly has left school and done a muggle degree and is doing a teaching course.

And this is my first ever fanfic.

Disclaimer – I don't own any published fiction, unless you count a fifty word story in a book of other fifty word stories, which I don't, so I don't own Harry Potter.

Life was cruel. Rose Weasley couldn't help the thought as she sat slumped at her desk. Mooching, her mum would call it. Rose had spent half her childhood listening to Hermione telling her not too 'mooch'. But Rose didn't care. She wasn't mooching anyway, just thinking, quiet and alone, but thinking. Sulking then. Rose mentally groaned as the part of her mind that spoke with her mother's voice came up with the other way Mrs Weasley would label her attitude, the more accurate way. Still, Rose didn't care if she was sulking either: when life was this cruel, she told herself, you're allowed to sulk.

Directing her irate glare towards the letters – or in one case lack of letters – before her on the desk, she wondered how life could have the heart to send her such depressing news – or in one case lack of news – on the day she had been so excited about. Shut up she told herself dryly, then let out a small, humourless laugh, knowing that she was telling herself to shut up even though she hadn't spoken all morning. All of the half an hour she'd been awake anyway. 'Life' doesn't have a 'heart'.

She was still eyeing her desk with distaste when her brother exploded into the room – into her bedroom. She groaned again, this time aloud. Rose had thought boys were supposed to have started growing by the end of third year, but in Hugo's case apparently not. He was still tiny and, much to Rose's displeasure, still seemed to have as much energy as he had had when he had been a five-year-old one man demolition squad. These days, his energy was mostly channelled into Quidditch, archery and muggle duelling or whatever it was that he spent his time doing, so it was far less often that he would be using it to impersonate a particularly destructive whirlwind. Today, however, he seemed intent on doing just that.

"Hugo, get out. I could have been getting dressed." Rose tried to force anger into her voice, but it seemed to her like she had spoken in a dull monotone – perhaps slightly exasperated but the anger had failed. She supposed the letters were sweeping sadness through her. Heck, she knew they were making her sad, they were enough to inject depression into just about anyone.

"But you're not," Hugo must have taken her lack of emotion as a sign that she didn't mind him being there because he had flung himself onto her bed and proceeded to fidget so energetically that her sheets flew up in waves around him.

"Come on. I'm not in the mood for this, just..."

He simply shot her an impish grin and kept messing up her bed.

"Look stop it, you're not seven! You can control yourself enough to sit still" Rose finally managed to get anger seeping into her voice. "And why do you have to be so mad anyway? You're not like this at school,"

"Well I'm busy at school aren't I? Quidditch four nights a week as well as homework and all that. Anyway, if I was like this at school, people would think I was weird,"

"You are weird." There was a pause, during which Rose reflected on the fact that Hugo was actually admitting he was crazy at home "You're not like any of the other boys in your year anyway." Hugo seemed ready to argue, but Rose cut him off "Just go away. I do not need an annoying kid brother who's way too young for his age in my bedroom right now." Normally, Hugo would have the sense to leave if he realised there was actually a serious problem. But today, he didn't. He was prepared to carry on making a miniature earthquake on her bed, pull half her books off the shelf just to see what she read and generally snoop around her room in a far too boisterous way until he heard the door opening downstairs and a multitude of voices drifting up to Rose's room, at which point he turned and bounded towards the door. And Rose didn't have the will to force him out any earlier.

"Wait, who is that? And why did you come here anyway?" Rose called as he left.

His head popped back around the door "Oh, mum told me to come and tell you, you have to get up, 'cause, like, half our family's coming today," and he was gone.

"Right. Thanks."

She buried her head in her hands, massaging her eyes. Why would she have to face people today? Of all days. And why were they coming here anyway?

Her brain aching, she tried to pull her thoughts away from the letters for long enough to think about why. But succeeded only in poking herself in the eye, and hastily moving her head safely out of the way of her overactive fingers.

Then it came to her. Of course, how could she have forgotten? Aunt Ginny's birthday was in a few days and they were celebrating it here. Why it was Rose's house and not the Potters' house or the Burrow, she still had no idea. What she did know was that it meant she wouldn't be able to wallow in her own sorrow for days, not until after everyone had gone home. And that she'd have to talk to more people than usual, and sooner than she wanted, just at the time when she wanted to talk to nobody.

As it turned out, she had been too right for her liking. One voice and one set of footsteps broke off from the general chatter that had started downstairs almost immediately. Rose was wondering vaguely who would be coming when somebody knocked on her door – knocked: it couldn't have been Hugo then. Or James. Or Fred or Roxanne. Actually, it seriously limited the possibilities – Rose muttered a grudging "come in" and Molly Weasley entered. Molly Weasly as in uncle Percy's older daughter, not as in Grandma Weasley. She sat on the still-messy bed, her red-brown curls bouncing around her round, glasses-framed face and falling over her slender soulders. Unsurprisingly, she was holding a notebook and a quill, a pot of ink hovering in front of her.

"Hey Rose,"

"Hey," Molly was clearly trying to be nonchalant, but Rose wasn't fooled. She was sure her cousin was here for a reason, probably so she could ask her something and write in her notebook. "You doing a survey or something?"

Molly looked abashed "Um. Yeah. It's just, you know I'm doing that muggle teaching course? On theology?"

"Yeah..." Rose only knew what theology was because of Molly's degree and her teaching course.

"Well, it's to do with that. It's too complicated to explain why, but I'm kind of doing this influenced by that. I need to get loads of opinions-"

"Yeah, well that's generally what you do with a survey," Rose snapped. She liked Molly, but she could be seriously irritating, especially when Rose was already in a bad mood, and today her mood might well have been the worst it had ever been.

"Um, yeah. Well I need to know what three questions you would ask God. If you had the chance."

Three questions to ask God. That seemed utterly pointless. And Rose didn't want to start thinking up questions.

"Look, Molly-"

"Come on Rose, It's just three questions. It won't take long,"

"Molly I can't. I'm sorry. I'm not feeling great right now. I've got too many problems." For a split second silence echoed noisily throughout the room. "Molly, I don't even believe in God!"

"Come on Rose, I need some people to give me questions,"

Rose inwardly screamed. Why couldn't she just be left alone? Molly's insistence was infuriating, and it didn't help that Hugo-the-whirlwind chose that moment to re-enter and plonk himself next to Molly on the bed. In fact, it really got to her.

She's started talking before her mind had realized what she was doing, out of irritation more than anything else, she had decided she would give Molly some questions after all. "OK - How am I going to break it to my parents that I failed my potions O.W.L.? Why is Albus not back when his holiday in France was meant to finish, like, last week? And what the heck are you supposed to do when it turns out your long-term boyfriend is gay? There" She had just blurted out the three things that had been on her mind all morning, and to be honest, they probably were the three questions that, right now, she would most want to ask God. Assuming he even existed. Maybe they'd get people to leave her alone anyway.

"What, you failed potions?" Apparently not. But before she could answer Molly, Hugo had started up too.

"I wouldn't worry about Albus. He's only been gone a few days longer than we expected. Besides, he's with Harry freakin' Potter, he'll be fine." She must have still looked as dubious as she felt because Hugo felt obliged to make himself more clear. "Harry. Freakin'. Potter."

Rose didn't want to explain her problems, just brood on them. And even if she had wanted to talk to people, she wouldn't have known what to say. She was spared the immediate necessity, however, when Hugo and Molly exchanged a sudden look of shock and blurted out – inexplicably in perfect unison – "Wait, Scorpius Malfoy is gay?"

Please review and tell me how rubbish or otherwise you think it is.