Standard disclaimer applies.

It's 7am on 1 September 2021, the first day of your fifth year at Hogwarts, and you are excited. You've missed your friends, and you can't wait to learn more magic. You tumble out of bed, bounce downstairs in your pajamas, and start to make a batch of chocolate chip pancakes they're Hugo s favorite, and he detests the first day.

By 8 you have the pancakes ready, but Hugo is still nowhere to be found. Despite the fact that you are still underage, you cast a simple freshness charm on the stack. You figure, Mum and Daddy are just in the next room eating their pancakes, and wander back up the stairs to get dressed.

Around 9:30 Hugo finally stumbles downstairs, bleary eyed and grumpy, his Weasley-red hair a mess. He throws himself into a seat and glares at the steaming stack of pancakes, Nutella, whipped cream and butterscotch chips. You laugh as Hugo wolfs down half the stack in an instant, brightens considerably, and slows down to slather on the sugar and condiments you prepared for him.

You leave for King's Cross shortly after 10am, and arrive 40 minutes later, walking a little unsteadily from your dad's questionable parking skills. You recover enough to jog through the barrier and immediately start looking for your friends and cousins. You hear your name called, and turn to see Alice Longbottom waving at you from the train. In the next 20 minutes, all your cousins drop by, so that when the train leaves, you, Alice, and Dominique Weasley, your best friends, your cousin Albus and his best mate Milanjot (Milan) Patil are sitting together chatting away. After a couple minutes Al and Milan wander off with James and Fred, so you spend the next couple hours with Alice and Dom, talking, gossiping, catching up, eating too many snacks from the trolley. As the three of you change into your Hogwarts uniforms, Alice and Dom gush about the prefect's badge pinned to your robes.

You arrive at Hogsmeade, take the horseless carriages up to the castle, sit patiently through the Sorting and applaud whenever Gryffindor gains a new member. After overindulging at the feast and listening to Headmistress McGonagall s start-of-term speech, you guide the new first years up to the portrait of the Fat Lady, say, "Panthera leo," and direct boys and girls up their respective towers.

As you stand in the common room watching the last of the munchkins wandering up the stairs and fondly remembering your own first year, Alice and Dom jump on you from behind, scaring the bejesus out of you. They ignore your protests as they haul you up the stairs to your traditional first-night-back girls' night with the other girls in your year.

Classes start. You have the same course load as last year, but this year is harder. Quidditch practice starts. You play Keeper for Gryffindor. You settle into a rhythm: you spend weekday afternoons on the Quidditch pitch or in the library, and weekends at Hogsmeade with friends.

The library has always been your sanctuary, and you've always preferred it for studying over the common room, which is much too noisy, but still is Alice and Dom's preferred spot. In your corner of the library, it s always been just you, your textbooks, and magic. But because O.W.L.s are coming up at the end of this year, and the magic has gotten more complicated, and the homework assignments are longer, even you, Rose Weasley, top of your class, are having trouble.

Late one night, you lay awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about finding a study partner, but you don't know who. Alice and Dom would distract you, anyone else would irritate you by essentially asking you to do their homework. (You have experience with this; your boyfriend last year used you to do his homework.) Well, there s always the 2nd in your year... you push this thought from your head. Your father said to beat him in every subject, and you've always followed your Daddy's instructions. Studying together would not be conducive to following those instructions. But what if you start to fall behind? That would be worse. You sigh and make up your mind to go talk to Scorpius Malfoy the next time you see him in the library. Daddy also said not to get too close to Malfoy, but you figure that studying with the guy doesn't mean that you have to marry him. He doesn't seem that bad. He runs with Slytherins, is a Chaser for the Slytherin Quidditch team, but never plays dirty, unlike his teammates. And he's fairly popular with the ladies, what with his Quidditch-toned body, perfectly-proportioned face and his immaculate platinum-blond hair; not that you've ever spent any significant amount of time staring at him. Nope. You just hear things from other girls gushing about him.

He generally studies alone, and on a couple of occasions you have looked up from your work to find him staring at you from several tables away, only for him to quickly look away, making you think that you'd imagined it. Other times you see him sitting with his quill down, hand tangled in his hair glaring at the textbook, as if willing it to give up the answers. It is this image that gives you the courage to approach him after dinner next Thursday.

You stop by his table and hide the shaking in your hands by folding them in front of you. He looks up at you, says, "Weasley."

He is wearing a flat expression, not antagonistic, but somehow with a touch of... pleading? His usually-perfect hair is messed up; it looks like it s been another frustrating evening.

You return his greeting: "Malfoy."

"What do you want?" Again, his tone is not antagonistic, but rather curious and almost a bit hopeful.

You decide to stretch the truth to soften him up: "I was having problems with the Transfiguration essay-" that's the one he s working on right now- "and I was wondering if maybe the second in our year could help me out a bit." You make sure to emphasize second in our year; you have to protect your ego somehow.

He smirks. "Little Miss Perfect, brightest student in our year, needs help?"

You didn't come here to be teased, and you inherited your father's quick temper. "So I take it you're not willing to help? Okay." So you turn on your heel and feel Malfoy's hand catch your wrist. You turn to face him and he lets go quickly.

"You can dish it but you can t take it, eh?" You glare at him and don't say anything, so he sighs and says, "I was having trouble too. Let's talk about it together and see if we can make some sense out of it."

After another two hours poring over assorted, random, potentially relevant transfiguration books, discussing, writing, you sit back, rubbing your eyes, tired but satisfied.

"Thank you, Malfoy. That helped a lot."

He grins you notice how it reaches his eyes, and you understand now why he's so popular if he can do that and says, "I was about to say the same to you, Weasley. Let's do this again, sometime, yeah? It really was very helpful."

You smile; that's just what you wanted. "Sounds good. But I have to warn you, my study times are highly irregular."

"Okay, see you whenever, then."

When Professor Hargraves hands back your class' essays, he pauses by you and comments, "Very well-written essay, Miss Weasley. I was particularly impressed by your explanations of the esoteric uses of the spell."

You smile at him, saying, "Thank you, professor."

A/N: So what do you think of the second-person point of view? I decided to try it, and it feels a bit weird, unnatural. Maybe if I write a bit more I'll get better at projecting my own emotions onto you, dear reader?