When Scorpius Malfoy came across Rose Weasley for the second time, it was in the Hogwarts library. She was bent over a massive tome, her red hair falling in a frizzy curtain around her freckled face.

Scorpius did not like the girl in the slightest, but saw no reason to be unduly cruel to someone with whom his new friend was obviously so close, and so he approached her and said, in an off-hand sort of way, "good book?"

Rose looked up, startled. She clearly had not expected any sort of interruption, and when it did occur, she most certainly did not expect it to be Scorpius Malfoy who was intruding on her reading. She eyed him sarcastically.

"No. It's terrible, in fact. I make it a point to read really terrible books all the time."

Scorpius frowned. He didn't understand her unnecessary hostility. True, they had not met very well, but that was a few days ago, and he'd certainly done nothing to her in the interim.

"Well, how would I know?" he snapped back. "After all, to hear some people speak, anything that anyone in your family would read wold have to be completely and thoroughly immoral." Scorpius shrugged, attempting a self-confident response.

If possible his response seemed to amuse her, rather than insult.

"There is no such thing as an immoral book."

"You believe that?" Scorpius asked incredulously.

"I do. Books are either well-written or badly written. That is all."

"You're quoting someone." Scorpius cocked his head to the side. He recognized the tone that people used when reciting something that they held dear.

"I am," Rose nodded. "Oscar Wilde."

"Who?" Scorpius had never heard that name before, and he was certainly a well-read wizard.

"That's not surprising. What's sad is that you and your disappearing echelon of society might be the only people left who are truly in an situation to appreciate him."

"Yes," Scorpius shrugged, frustrated at feeling as though he had been vaguely insulted but not knowing how, "but missed literary opportunities aside, you can't be suggesting that knowledge is neutral." His mind couldn't help turning to a myriad of books that his father had forbade Scorpius to read. To Scorpius, knowledge seemed anything but neutral.

"I'm saying that nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," Rose quipped. The reverent tone had returned, and Scorpius knew, once again, that she wasn't using her own words. She answered his unasked question: "William Shakespeare. Yet another name that I doubt you've heard, and yet one that I have no doubt you'd enjoy, if you're half so clever as Albus seems to think you are."

"I have no reason to think that I'm not," Scorpius offered lamely, wondering what on Earth she could mean by that. "And to be perfectly honest, neither have you."

"Perhaps." She shrugged lackadaisically. "Perhaps not."

Albus entered the library, then and walked directly up to Scorpius.

"All right, Scor?" he asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

"Albus?" Rose asked, already returning to her book, "mind your little friend, if you please. I'm trying to read and he insists on bothering me."

"All I did was say hello to her!" Scorpius protested, indignant. "I was trying to be civil. She's your cousin, after all, and I thought it might be nice."

"Don't bother." Albus shook his head. "Once Rosie's made her mind up, there's no changing it. You'd be better off trying to reason with a Hippogriff."

Scopius shuddered lightly. He'd heard enough about the dangers of that particular animal to last a lifetime.

He followed Albus out of the library, turning once to look back at Rose. He wondered what he'd done to make the girl so hostile. He hoped that she'd become at least civil eventually. The last thing he wanted to do was to tax the only friendship he'd really managed to forge, and being at continual odds with Albus's cousin would, he was sure, do just that.

Sadly, their next Potions lesson made it abundantly clear that this was not to be the case.