DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters used, blah blah blah, they belong to J.K. Rowling. I borrow them and make them do things they would never do. Please don't sue, I make no money from this.
A/N: DH+Epilogue compliant. Warning, sugary, fluffy sweetness ahead. Don't say I didn't warn you. Surprising cheerful, considering what I normally write.
Rose Weasley hated the color red. Her hair was red, which was bad enough. She was glad she didn't have blasted freckles on her face like her brother. Red was the color of blood, which made her feel faint. She had entertained dreams of being a Medi-witch until her mum informed her she would most likely see blood. Red was also the color of her house, Gryffindor, along with yellow, and she hated being in Gryffindor. She preferred Ravenclaw. The ugly sweaters her grandmother would send her at Christmas were always red and they looked horrible with her hair.
No, Rose Weasley did not like the color red.
The week after Christmas, Rose was shoveling food in her mouth at an incredibly rapid pace. Albus grinned at her. "Hey, slow down. It will still be there, I promise."
She rolled her eyes, ignoring him as usual. "You don't understand. I'm supposed to meet Scorpius. We're going to the library."
Albus wrinkled his nose. "Again? Merlin, Rose. You live there. You need to lighten up a bit. Anyways, your boy seems a bit distracted at the moment."
She looked in the direction he was pointing at. The Slytherin table was rowdy as usual, there was a impromptu food fight as usual, and Scorpius had his arm around a girl as usu- Wait. What? She narrowed her eyes at him. She recognized the girl, Antigone Parkinson. But what in Merlin's name was Scorpius doing, sitting there with his arm around her and feeding her salad?
Albus was waving his hand in her face. "Rose...Rose!"
She scowled at him. "What?"
"I was going to ask if you were going to the Quidditch match this weekend."
She smiled at him sadly. "I can't, Scorpius and I are going to begin studying for the NEWTs."
He stared at her incredulously. "Rose, those aren't until next year!"
She shrugged. "My mum says you can never start too early. And Mr. Malfoy agrees, I guess."
"Blimey, Rose, you're insane," Albus exclaimed. "Come on, surely you can drag your face out of a book long enough to watch your favorite seeker? Your mum and dad are gonna be there."
Now Scorpius was laughing at something she said. Rose was surprisingly annoyed, considering that Scorpius was her best friend and surely could date any girl he wanted to. She was only worried that maybe his female relationships would begin to take place of their studying, she thought. And really...she already had to deal with Albus, rambling about the various girls he'd dated. She didn't need to hear about her best friend's love life either.
"She's not even pretty," she complained to Albus, whose eyebrows disappeared beneath his unruly black hair. "I mean, look at her! She thinks she's sooo special, with her black hair. She has a bloody PUG nose, for Merlin's sake!"
"Why do you care?"
She rolled her eyes at him, annoyed. "Because Scorpius is one of my best mates and she's like a leech. I bet she's been through all of the Slytherins. And probably most of the Ravenclaws!"
"I thought I was your best friend," Albus pouted at her.
"You are. But you are also my cousin, which means you and I are forced to be friends. Scorpius is my best, non-related, friend. He likes studying and hates Quidditch, unlike you."
"Yeah, but that didn't stop him from being a chaser, did it?"
"Only because his dad threatened to cancel our plans this summer!"
Albus raised his eyebrows again. "What plans?"
Rose sighed. "I've been telling you about them for months, Al. Scorpius invited me over for the summer. Mum and dad already agreed. Well...mum agreed. Dad fainted. But that's besides the point. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go collect my study mate."
Albus waved at her. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
What was that supposed to mean?
At first, walking over to the Slytherin table made her nervous. It surprised the hell out of the staff and most of the students but over the years, they had gotten used to it. No one gave her any trouble, not since Thomas Nott had mocked her and Scorpius hexed him. Nott had coughed out slugs for an entire day. She still felt jittery when she had to wander in that direction but the dazzling smile Scorpius would bestow on her somehow made the whole damn trip worth the trouble.
She cleared her throat. Loudly. Jumping up, Scorpius extracted his arm from Antigone, who gave Rose an extremely dirty look. "Rose! You must be psychic," he said, beaming at her and making her feel all queer inside. "I was just going to meander in your direction. Did you get the workbooks?"
Antigone stood up and grabbed his face, kissing him square on the mouth. In front of everyone. Rose was suddenly furious. "See you at dinner?"
Scorpius shrugged, looking back at Rose. "I don't know, Antigone. It depends on how long we plan on studying for."
"But Scorpius," she whined, "you always study. Surely you need to eat?" She batted her eyelashes at him. Rose silently counted to ten.
"Actually," she said, interrupting the silence, "we're going to be studying for a long time."
Grabbing a fist full of his robes, she dragged the blond boy out of the Great Hall. "We do need to eat," he said, removing her hand from his robes and making sure the silver 'P' was still in plain sight.
She grinned mischievously at him. "I learned how to reach the kitchens from Uncle George."
Madam Pince sniffed at them when they entered, whispering excitedly. She'd had it out for them ever since she caught Rose doodling absentmindedly on a library book while Scorpius slept.
Scorpius was walking quickly to their corner, Rose jogging after him. He was much taller than her and he always beat her. He was already seated, smirking at her when she finally rounded the last corner, feeling rather out of breath.
"Muffliato."
He sighed loudly, propping his long legs on the table and loosening his green and silver tie. "Thank Merlin."
"What?"
"You saved me from that awful Parkinson girl," he grinned at her, the grin fading as he took in her angry expression.
"You certainly didn't look like you minded."
"Look, I had to. You know I don't fancy any girls around here and some of the guys were joking around about me being gay. Which I'm not," he finished hastily.
She pulled out a roll of parchment and several textbooks and dug around for her quill, deciding that, for the present, she would ignore him. "Here."
So much for ignoring him. "Thanks," she mumbled, reaching for the expensive Eagle quill he held out to her.
"Have you finished that damnable essay for Defense? I only have ten paragraphs and we're supposed to have an entire scroll."
She silently pushed her own completed essay towards him and turned her attention back to her textbook, watching him through her eyelashes as he chewed the tip of his quill and scanned her parchment.
They had met on the train; she was sitting by herself when he had asked if she minded him sitting with her. They had both hoped to be in Ravenclaw together but ended up gazing at each other from complete opposite ends of the room. He was the only person she ever studied with, mostly because he was clever and a quick study. They competed in every class and to her consternation, he was better in a fair amount of them.
They managed to remain friends over the years and were really close. He shared his fears about leaving school and trying to get a job; his last name made many people scoff in his face. She told him about how annoying it was to have all these preconceived notions about her, based on who her mum was. He got along alright with Albus, which was also nice.
When they were Second Years, they swore to do everything together. She knew it was silly to honestly believe that, but up until Fifth Year, they had. They were both Prefects, they always studied together, and they were pretty much inseparable. But then he'd joined the Slytherin Quidditch team and was suddenly popular. It was hard to realize that your best friend, who had started out being a peaky, nervous little thing had grown up to be, as Marcia Lovegood had announced loudly, the best looking bloke in school.
She was fairly popular herself, of course. She knew there were a handful of boys who asked her out. But between Hugo being the defensive younger brother and Scorpius threatening to hex anyone who hurt her, the boys had begun to keep their distance. The last boy she had been seeing on a fairly regular basis was a Hufflepuff, Nathaniel Smith. They broke it off when he demanded she spend more time with him and less time with a bastard like Scorpius.
There hadn't been any tears over the loss of that relationship.
"Scorp, do you think I'm boring?"
He jumped at the sound of her voice, knocking over his ink pot in the process. "Damn," he swore, pointing his wand at the spreading black pool and muttering, "Tergeo."
Sighing in relief at his newly cleaned essay, he finally turned his gray eyes towards Rose, who felt her stomach churn. Albus was right, as usual. Clearly eating too fast had strange effects on her stomach. She suddenly found herself hoping that Scorpius would be reassuring.
"No," he stated plainly, "you're not boring at all, Rose. Not to me, at least." His pale cheeks flushed slightly.
"Albus thinks I am. He doesn't tell me but I can see it in his eyes."
"Albus Potter is a git then. Did someone imply you're boring? I'll jinx them for you."
She shook her head. "No, it's fine."
"No," Scorpius snapped, gray eyes flashing. "It's not fine. People can't just insult my best friend and hurt her feelings."
She felt a rush of pleasure trickle through her spine. She liked it when Scorpius defended her. Albus would usually just tease her.
"DoyouwannagoQuidditchmatchwithme?" She groaned inwardly. She sounded like an idiot.
"This Saturday?"
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak again.
"Weell..." he trailed off, toying with his collar. He was silent for enough time that she came up with twenty different responses to twenty different scenarios then, in a mad panic, promptly forgot them all and found his fingers vastly more interesting. He had long fingers.
"...supposed to go with Antigone but yeah, sure. I can go with...Rose? Rose!"
She frowned. "I thought we had plans to study that day anyway."
"My mum and dad decided to come. I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you and I was trying to think of a nice way to tell you."
She waved away his concern. "So you want to go?"
He grinned at her. "Hell yeah. But I'm not cheering for Gryffindor."
Saturday morning came too quickly. Rose had been awake for two hours before her dorm mates, ate breakfast, finished another essay, and had excitedly informed Albus she was going to the Quidditch match. When she told him she would be sitting with Scorpius, he had just laughed and given her a knowing look before falling back asleep.
Tracey Thomas was yawning when Rose finally burst back into their dorms.
"Can I use some of your make-up?"
Tracey looked at her in shock. "Oh Rose! Yeah, sure! Who's it for?"
"Um...my mum and dad are coming and I want to look nice," she lied.
One hour later, four different hairstyles, and ten different excuses to ten different people as to why she was wearing make-up and actually did something with her hair, Rose Weasley was waiting nervously in the Great Hall.
She tried telling herself it was because she wanted to look nice for her parents. She tried telling herself that she was a girl and that it was totally normal to look nice. She even tried convincing herself that she was trying to make Nate jealous.
But then Scorpius was standing next to her, dressed casually in jeans and a green t-shirt that made his gray eyes even brighter, and telling her quickly that she looked very pretty. And she had felt both thrilled and crushed at the same time. Thrilled because her best friend was speechless for three whole minutes until she'd jammed her elbow into his ribcage and crushed because, well, he was her best friend. She shouldn't like her best friend like that. It was weird.
So she told herself firmly that she was dressing up for him, but only so he wouldn't be so embarrassed about being seen with a Gryffindor AGAIN.
But then he was holding her hand and walking out confidently towards the pitch, not caring that people were murmuring about him. It certainly wasn't new. They had held hands many times before. But the butterflies fluttering around in her stomach were new. And the blush that seemed to be permanently painted on her face, ever since he'd stuttered about how nice she looked was new as well.
Her mum and dad were already seated in the stands, alongside Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry. Her dad's eyes bulged out when he noticed who his darling daughter was holding hands with but he seemed to be the only one phased. Scorpius had already met her mum last year so she quickly introduced him to her other family.
He was, first and foremost, a Malfoy, which meant he was polite. She saw him swallow nervously as he shook hands with her father and squeezed his fingers reassuringly.
"Scorpius."
She watched him look up at his name and grin happily. "Rose," he said excitedly, "it's my dad."
They looked alike. Besides the fact that his father was in his early 40's and seemed to have a thinning hairline. They had the same fine bones, the same gray eyes, even the same white blond hair.
"Where's mum?"
"Your mother couldn't make it," his father said. He noticed Rose standing there and his eyebrows raised. "And who is this young lady."
Scorpius flashed a quicksilver smile at her that made her stomach decide to flop about uselessly. "This is Rose Weasley, dad. Remember, I asked you and mum if she could stay this summer?"
Mr. Malfoy nodded slowly. "I suppose your mother and father are here?"
"Yes, sir. They're further down."
"Well, I'll leave you two alone," he said, winking at his son.
"Bye, dad!" Scorpius waved.
Rose watched as he made his way over to her mum and dad. Her mum stood up and hugged him. Scorpius looked at her wide-eyed. "I didn't know your mum knew my dad."
"They went to school together."
"Oh. Well they look rather chummy."
Rose shrugged and began to head towards the Slytherin stands but Scorpius pulled her towards the Gryffindor ones. Catching her gaze, he said teasingly, "Don't you want to support your team?"
She rolled her eyes but followed him there anyways. It wasn't like she really concentrated on the game normally but it was worse with Scorpius there. Not only did he keep up a running commentary but he was resting his arm on her shoulders and it was making the feeling in the pit of her stomach worse.
She vaguely noticed envious looks from the girls nearby but valiantly ignored them, focusing instead on the red blur that was her cousin, Albus.
"I wish I were in Gryffindor," she heard Scorpius say.
"No you don't."
He was looking at her now, gray eyes intent on her own blue ones. "Yeah, I do. You guys get away with so much more. I like the color red. Green is so...boring. Red is vibrant."
"You wouldn't like it if you had to see it all the time."
He leaned back in his seat and she was distracted by the sunshine glimmering in his hair. Turning to face her, he whispered, "I don't think I'd mind seeing red everyday."
"I prefer green, myself," she informed him, noticing that his cheeks were flushed again.
Then she was hauling him out of his seat screaming happily as Albus finally caught the snitch. "Yes! Albus!"
After his teammates had all gone to take a shower and Scorpius said good-bye to his father, they waited with her family for him to appear. Her dad kept glancing at Scorpius and shaking his head in disbelief and she could plainly hear her mum arguing with him.
And then Albus was standing triumphantly in front of them and Scorpius was congratulating him cheerfully and her family closed in.
Two weeks later Rose was in the library alone. She was glowering at a scrap of parchment that she had written up over a week ago. She still didn't know what to do about it but her mum had always said "Lists help you organize your mind; whenever you're in doubt about anything, Rosie dear, just make a list and it will sort you out."
On one side she had written Pros underlined. Underneath the pros side, she'd wrote: knows everything about me that's important, likes reading, is good at studying, is funny, and finally, written really small in case someone was reading over her shoulder, is very good looking.
The other side was for the Cons which included: is my best friend (complicate friendship?), all the girls would hate me forever, Albus and Hugo, dad, and probably doesn't even like me in that way (possible embarrassment).
She was mulling over her list again when she heard his voice. "Rose, are you okay?"
Shoving the scrap back into her book bag hastily, she arranged her face into a smile and said disarmingly, "Yes, why?"
Scorpius was standing there, robes perfectly pressed, blond hair smooth and silky looking, with a worried look on his face. "Well...you missed both Potions and Arithmancy. I got your homework, of course, and I told the teachers you hadn't been feeling well and were probably sleeping."
She jumped up, alarmed. "Oh no!"
He sat down, pushing a stack of parchment across the table towards her. "Here, it's my notes for both classes."
He was so thoughtful. "Thanks!"
He smiled, pleased. "I was hoping I'd see you at lunch for moral support."
"Why, what happened at lunch?"
"Oh," he was picking at an imaginary loose thread on his impeccable robes. "I broke things off with Parkinson. I told her there was someone else."
Rose felt crushed. "Oh," she managed, smiling weakly at him.
"Don't feel bad. She hates the color red. We got into an argument. She told me Gryffindors were pretty stupid."
Trying to sound as casual as possible, she asked, "Who's the lucky lady?"
Now Scorpius was staring intently at the wall. "Weeell...she doesn't know I exist. I mean, she does, but not in a romantic sense."
"Well I'm sure she'll realize soon enough," she said softly, trying to hide the hurt.
"Yeah, I hope." He was gazing directly at her now. "Rose, I..."
She blinked at him. She hadn't seen Scorpius this nervous since Fourth Year when he had to give a speech in Charms about the history of the Color Changing Charm. He was in full Nervous Scorpius Mode, complete with yanking at his collar and wringing his hands. He even looked as though he was sweating slightly, although she supposed he could have come from Quidditch practice.
"You have pretty hair. You should wear it down more often," he blurted. She peered at him, narrowing her eyes. Maybe he had gotten hit with some kind of hex?
"You must be blind. My hair is boring and drab. And it's too red."
She heard him mutter, "Sod this," under his breath. Watched him stride towards her, pull her up gently by her shoulders, and then he was kissing her.
It was too short, she thought, breathing heavily. His face was redder than she'd ever seen and he was looking everywhere but her face. "Rose," he mumbled, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have."
Think about the list! her mind pleaded. You haven't gone over every detail! Ignoring her mind for the first time ever, she gazed at him boldly. "Scorpius. I don't mind."
She decided to throw the list into the fire that very night. She was scared now, scared that he would suddenly come to his senses or that it was some kind of prank or dare or that he really was under some kind of odd jinx. For a moment, her mind went into panic mode again, coming up with several witty responses, several serious ones, and several responses that were completely insane, including shoving him against the wall and snogging him senseless.
He was flashing that brilliant smile at her now and all thought fled from her mind.
"Really?"
She allowed herself to reach up, to brush a strand of blond hair out of his eyes, allowed her hands to grab him by his robes and drag him closer.
He was holding her hand as Madam Pince chased them from the library, screaming something about defiling a sacred haven with their indecency and something about the poor, poor books. Collapsing against a wall far away from the library and the insane librarian, she fought to catch her breath, gasping, "Where were we?"
He was twisting a lock of flaming red hair between his long fingers, smiling at nothing, looking positively silly. But then she realized she was smiling too. "I love your hair," he whispered, looking at her. "It's such a pretty shade of red."
And then he was pressing her against the wall, kissing her again. The last coherent thought that flickered through her mind was that maybe she didn't hate the color red anymore.