AN: Eh. Idk about this. Please review.
(Two Steps Forward)
Perfection, she thinks, is overrated. She looks at her parents, her constantly bickering parents, and easily sees that they're everything but perfect. But somehow, they're whole, they're alive, and they're in love.
Love, he decides, is overrated. His parents love him. He loves them—of course, no matter what he knows his dad has done. He doesn't think they love each other—at least, not in the way her parents love each other—with every fiery fiber of their being. Love, is not all he needs, he decides as he listens to his sixties Muggle music that his father absolutely abhors.
She has never spoken one word to him for the six years they've shared the same House, but she bores holes into the back of his head during Potions, and sneaks peeks at his grades as she studies furiously to beat him.
He pretends he doesn't notice. He pretends that he doesn't notice that little redhead girl staring at him. He wants her to see the Outstanding he received on his essay, but he won't go out of his way and show her, because well, it's best to keep this rivalry unspoken and unacknowledged. He knows she's find out anyway. He studies equally as hard to beat her, so yeah, they sort of have a thing. He doesn't exactly know why he tries so hard to beat her—she should be nothing to him. A nonentity, really. It's not like they've ever spoken.
For some reason, in sixth year, he fuels their unspoken but well established rivalry.
When he's gotten a rather spectacular comment on his Charms essay, he angles his essay in her direction, and relishes in the red that floods his cheeks and the angry glitter in her ocean blue eyes. A flame, he likes to her. She storms off angrily, surely off to the library.
He doesn't know why but he loves her when she's angry, because he shouldn't think of her at all.
She's everything he's not.
She can tell. She can tell that he's baiting her by making damn well sure she sees the glowing comments he's received on her essay.
She's confused.
She's confused as hell.
She's never even spoken to that bloke, so why is he finally acknowledging their unspoken rivalry? They have a thing, she realizes, and for some reason, she doesn't want to ruin it.
"What was that for?" she asks when they're both in the Common Room. It's the first words any of them have spoken to each other, so yeah, something has changed.
Later, she'll look back, and realize that this is when everything changed.
He pretends that he isn't absolutely shocked that she's finally said something to him after six years.
"What was what for?" he replies smoothly.
"You wanted me to see your essay."
"I did," he acknowledges without missing a beat.
"Why?" she demands loudly.
He can see it—the fire in her eyes.
"I thought I'd spare you the trouble of having to find out for yourself."
"You ruined everything, y'know?" she says shaking her head.
Is she disappointed? He hopes she is.
He looks at her questioningly.
"You weren't supposed to acknowledge our thing. You've changed everything," she says as she stalks off, and doesn't look back.
He says the wrong thing far too often.
He realizes, yeah, she's right. What was once easy, like breathing, really, has become a muddled mess of confusion. He doesn't know whether he should try and sneak a glance at the grade on her Transfiguration essay (what if she catches him?). And suddenly—he's tired.
Tired of fighting.
He realizes that, maybe, he could've been her friend. Maybe he even wanted to be her friend. And maybe that's all he ever really wanted.
Since everything's changed anyway—
He slips her a note.
Sorry. But since everything's changed anyway—fancy a drink at in the Three Broomsticks tomorrow? 3PM, corner booth?
He doesn't like her that way. He doesn't even really like her as a person.
He doesn't even know her, really.
She's loud. Vivacious. The kind of person that commands everyone's attention. It's the hair, isn't it, he muses.
But he's realized that, yeah, he'd really like to know her.
He's realized that she's sort of an enigma, really. He doesn't get her (and maybe, yeah, he resents her a little for that). People are not difficult, at least for him to figure out. She, however—she's different. Difficult. Really difficult. She's the loudest Ravenclaw he's ever met (just why wasn't she a Gryffindor?). She rarely if ever shows up for dinner. She drinks coffee instead of tea. She loves History of Magic for some reason, and hates Transfiguration, even though everyone knows that it's her best subject. The most unsettling thing of all—she loves. She really loves. She loves freely and wears her heart on her sleeve, and that's what's most difficult for him to comprehend. She's had her heart broken maybe a dozen times, but she still loves.
Maybe he doesn't understand because he's a Malfoy.
She makes no bloody sense at all.
(Life in a Glass House)
She doesn't plan on showing up. The already very fragile thing she had with Malfoy has already been broken. They were never friends—just strangers with a thing and far too much history, embedded before they had even lain eyes on each other.
It's not just his last name that unsettles her.
He, in general, unsettles her.
He always has some girl hanging off his arm. He never loved—or even really liked any of those girls. And she won't be one of them in the future.
He constantly wears a smirk on his face that immediately makes her not trust him one bit.
He's not nice, not really at least. She overhears his snarky comments and sarcastic wit, and yes, it unsettles her a little. Sure, he's never cruel. But he's just not a nice bloke.
She curses him to hell and back as she thinks of how he ruined everything.
(Their thing was far more important to her than she ever gave it credit)
She doesn't know why she's here. From what she's gathered so far, it's a big bloody mistake.
"Have a seat."
He doesn't seem surprised that she came.
"I wasn't going to come, you know," she says, tentatively sitting.
Merlin, she knows how this looks, she thinks as inquisitive classmates stare at her.
I didn't know they even talked!
Malfoy and...Weasley?
I've never seen them together before!
Oh my god, were they in a secret relationship?
Is that why she dumped O'Connor?
Actually, she dumped him because he was really bloody annoying.
"You care what they think," he says, with a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.
"How did you—what?—how could," she sputters. "Don't you?"
"You always pretend that you're above that sort of thing. Caring what other people think."
"Well, I'm not," she says, gritting her teeth.
She could tell.
She could tell that he was trying to not scare her off.
"Why am I here?"
"Don't you think it's really weird that we've been competing against each other for years, and we don't know the first thing about each other?"
He doesn't get it, she realizes.
He doesn't get it at all, she sighs in disappointment.
Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy only coexist in a really delicate balance. Their balance was their unspoken fierce rivalry.
This was throwing their whole thing off balance.
She tells him that.
"You're a real loon, Weasley," he says, laughing.
He doesn't laugh very often—so she joins him.
She thinks that maybe...
"We could do it, you know. Screw everyone else. We could be friends."
"Friends?"
The word 'friends' sounds so foreign on her tongue. She doesn't know if it's a good or bad thing.
"Yeah," he drawls easily. "Do you want to be friends?"
She ignores everything.
Contra mundum.
She ignores her parent's probable confusion, her cousins' likely objections, and her brain screaming that he was bad news.
"Okay."
(Friends)
"So what did you get on that Arithmancy essay?"
"An E," she grumbles.
"Another E? I believe you're losing your touch," he smirks.
A year ago, she would've hit him. Hexed him, maybe.
But now, she laughs.
Because they're friends.
"Oh and what did you get on that Transfiguration essay?"
He mumbles something that she can't decipher.
"What was that?" she asks loudly.
"An A, alright? Now, don't take the mick."
"Oh, but that's what makes this so fun!"
He shoves her.
Playfully.
Her mother was understanding.
Her father wasn't so much.
His mother thought it was wonderful.
His father—not so much.
She wonders how she could let that stupid rivalry and her prejudices cloud her vision for so long.
He wonders why he never spoke to her before.
He finds himself eternally grateful for her father, that day on Platform 9 and 3/4s.
(Crash Into You)
He doesn't like to drink. Actually he doesn't mind drinking—much—he just minds being drunk. Being drunk makes people do stupid things. He's seen Al Potter propose to a seventh year Gryffindor with a boyfriend that he'd never spoken to a day in his life before. He's seen absolutely awful behavior, and he's determined not to be one of those stupid, stupid, kids.
Rose doesn't like to drink. She sort of likes being drunk, though. She likes the buzzed feeling and the adrenaline rush. She doesn't do stupid things when drunk, though.
Not usually, at least.
"Rose Weasley. Drunk and disorderly," he drawls when his friend stumbles up to him, clutching two firewhiskeys.
"Scorpius Malfoy. Sober and stodgy," she replies. "You can't go to a party and not drink! C'mon, take one so I don't look like a raging alcoholic," she says, shoving one into his hands.
He rolls his eyes.
He'll take one to make her happy, but he won't drink.
He supposes that his thirst for control is rooted into that megalomaniac gene that seemed to pass through the Malfoy line.
He only wishes he could be like her.
"Your shirt's not buttoned up right," he breathes.
He takes a look in her eyes—something's not right. Not at all.
"Oh, all right, stop looking at me like that," she says crossly. "McLaggen may have had a go at me."
He rolls his sleeves up dramatically, gearing up for battle.
(He's probably watched a few too many Muggle films)
"Stop. I'm a big girl, alright?" she said easily, but he can see that there's nothing but unease in her eyes.
"I'd kill him, y'know, if you would let me," he says and that's the first time, despite his Death Eater family, that she's ever seen him as dangerous.
She doesn't like him, at least not like that, but she kisses him.
He doesn't like her, (he thinks), but he kisses her back.
It's partly the alcohol, and loneliness, and want, need, and desire, but it isn't love or even romantic like. Not yet, at least.
He shoves her against a wall, pressing his body as close as humanly close to hers. His hands skim the curve of her waist as he kisses her furiously.
She doesn't push him off when his hands wander down to cup her arse. She lets him. She works her hands through his hair, as his lips wander down her throat.
He doesn't know what he's doing, because that's his best friend.
She moans as she feels him scrape his teeth against her throat.
She knows that she's going to have a bruise there, but she doesn't care at all.
He suddenly feels like it's eight hundred degrees hotter.
She knows that this is going to change everything, but that's neither here nor there, but it's Scorpius and he's kissing her furiously, and God, she feels like she's going to melt from the way he's touching her.
(The Great Unknown)
She wakes up first.
When reality comes crashing down on her—she runs.
There a reason she wasn't sorted into Gryffindor, you know. Despite what people think and the mistakes it's made, the Sorting Hat usually knows best.
Too bad he knows her better than that. He knows that she likes to read in a secluded spot by the lake.
He's answered many questions about her since they become friends—she's brave, but she's smarter than she is brave. She eats in the kitchen with the House Elves because she wants them to have companion other than other House Elves. She simply prefers the bitterness of coffee, and she just happens to like goblin rebellions, but most of all, she likes the uncensored stories of her family.
What he hasn't figured out, is why she loves so freely.
He feels a dull ache, stabbing at his heart.
He doesn't love her.
He doesn't.
He can't...he doesn't even fucking know what love is.
If this is heartbreak—
He doesn't understand why she sets herself up for it.
He sees her, clutching a worn out paperback, reading intently, and suddenly he doesn't much want to talk to her. It's not like she'd mind putting her book down for a second, it's he who doesn't want to.
Instead of sitting down next to her, he turns around, and heads back to the dormitory, and wishes he was at home with his Beatles albums.
He's always liked the Beatles, to the befuddlement of his father.
She doesn't speak to him for days, going out of her way to avoid him. She even joins Lucy on a harebrained scheme because she knows that Scorpius and Lucy won't be hanging out. She's rewarded with a detention.
Because she's never really had a lick of trouble before, she's let off with an easy detention, while Lucy is stuck with a grueling punishment.
She doesn't mind—really.
Her parents of all people can't complain about her getting detention.
There's nothing surprising about detention-except for who joins her.
"Set off a dungbomb in the dungeons," Filch sneers as he drags him into the room. "Make yourself useful, you imbecile."
"You've been avoiding me," he states.
She doesn't say anything. The silence speaks for itself.
"Why?"
"Because it's bloody awkward," she cries, getting a little red in the face. "I don't really do things like that—one night stands!" she continues.
Something flickers in his eyes.
Hurt, maybe?
But just like that, the look is gone.
"Of course," he says coldly.
He leaves detention without saying another word to her.
AN: For some inexplicable reason, I made Scorpius a Beatles fan. Idk. Stay tuned for Part 2.