This is my first foray into non-Glee fanfiction. (For those of you who have me on alert, sorry if you were expecting Klaine, and KURTYA WILL UPDATE SOON, OKAY?) I have no idea when/how often I'll update chapters, only that there will be 10 of them. Yes, I do have a rough plot sketch for the entire fic in my head.

I hope you enjoy. This fic has kind of been my baby for a while.

I. Jealousy

When my father first whispered in my ear, "Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie," indicating Scorpius Malfoy to me, he was probably hoping to instil in me some sort of enmity, or at least a degree of rivalry, toward the white-blonde boy across the platform.

As often as I listened to my father's instruction, those words had no such effect on me. Instead, I found myself just a bit inclined toward the boy, the one whose father I had heard so much about and yet of whom I knew so little personally. I was fascinated, curious, about what there might be to this boy that would make my father manufacture competition between us even while we were both so young. Or did he really base his desire for our rivalry solely on the actions of Malfoy Senior?

Very soon, my cousin James was darting onto the train, the daunting Hogwarts Express that he never failed to enthral me and all our younger cousins with tales of. I had my luggage, and with a tight hug from my dad, a kiss on the forehead from my mum, and some encouraging words from both, I set off as well. Even as I boarded the train, Albus by my side, I kept looking for the Malfoy boy – but it seemed he was nowhere to be found.

We'd settled into a compartment, chatting idly about the bits of summer we'd spent apart, which were few and far between (though cousins, Albus and I were as close as pixies and mischief). He showed me his new barn owl, Noel, who crooned sweetly when Albus ran his fingertips gently down her backside. I was happy for him: I could recognize the difference between a pet and a familiar, and Noel was firmly the latter. Our family did not get me an owl – Pigwidgeon, though elderly, still served us well, and I had no desire to keep a bird (or a cat or toad, for that matter). When we had exhausted topics for discussion, and after the snack trolley had passed (Albus offered me a Chocolate Frog, but I was content with a pumpkin pasty), Albus proposed we explore. I agreed, and we set off.

The first few compartments we encountered seemed to contain students who were at least classmates of James, though probably older, so we kept moving. We saw some students who looked about our age, but who wore house scarves – sure signs that they were at least second-years. We even walked past James' compartment, but, because we were first-years (and moreover, because we were younger relatives), he shooed us away before turning back to a conversation with a blonde Hufflepuff girl who boasted a very full bust and relatively little conversational skill. We eventually found a compartment where only two other children, ones without house scarves, sat alone. Albus rapped thrice on the glass, and they motioned us inside.

They introduced themselves as siblings – twins, in fact, though you wouldn't know it by looking at them – Adonis and Persephone Parkinson-Zabini. Adonis, who insisted that we call him Aiden, had messy, dark brown curls, pale skin, and caramel eyes, while his sister – who wished to go by Penny while at Hogwarts – had skin the colour of her brother's eyes, pin-straight black hair, and eyes that sparkled a bright periwinkle blue. They recognized Albus easily. "What gave me away?" he laughed. "The glasses? The hair?"

I reached over and ruffled his already unruly mop, for which he scowled at me. "It was definitely the hair, Al," I said. "No one has hair as unkempt as yours and Uncle Harry's. It's bloody awful."

"I think your hair is nice," Aiden-not-Adonis said. "It brings out your eyes, and it must be easier to take care of than this mop." He tugged on one of his thick curls to demonstrate, and it promptly snagged two other locks before catching his fingers in a knot.

"I've always argued that his hair is really part Quintaped," Penny/Persephone mock-whispered to me. "I swear that there are fangs in that…thing somewhere," she added while gesturing to the messy tangles that had captured her brother's hand.

Albus reached over and gently untangled Aiden's fingers from his own hair, before cautiously submerging his fingers into the (possibly carnivorous) mop. "Your hair's so lush, and soft," he said quietly as Aiden leaned into his touch. "I don't see what you don't like about it." He gently withdrew his hand, and both were smiling widely by the end of this exchange. I thought their behaviour a bit odd, but Albus had always been rather tactile and it seemed that Aiden, though shy, was of a similar disposition. I noted their actions but made no comment.

I turned back to Penny. "We never did catch your name," she said, "though from your hair, it certainly looks like you're a–"

"Weasley?" I finished for her, laughing a little. "Oh yes. There are hundreds of us, by now. Even he is, technically," I said, nodding over to Albus, "because of his mum. My name's Rose."

"Oh, that makes you Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley's daughter!" Penny exclaimed. "The both of you are famous, a little," she added with a breathless, shy smile.

"Though that may be true, we'd like to avoid that," Albus said crisply, his eyes darkening a bit. "It's bad enough that our parents get harassed by the media, we have no desire to deal with that as well."

"Sorry," Penny said, quickly adding "I didn't mean it like that." After a pause, she said, "But at least your parents are known for their successes and loyalty."

"What do you mean?" I said, unable to disguise my curiosity.

"Our father – Blaise Zabini, you may have heard of him, does a good deal of foreign business – stayed mostly out of the war, thank Merlin, even though he was of a pureblood family that was sympathetic to, well, You-Know-Who." I was surprised to hear her avoid naming Voldemort, though I didn't say anything to that effect. "He just – disengaged, I suppose, and in the end it did him good."

"If there's one thing that you can always count on about dad," Aiden muttered, with venom in the last word, "it's that he'll never give a shit about anything."

"Adonis!" Penny hissed, and he shrunk back. They shared a look, and Aiden turned away as his sister continued. "But our mother – Pansy Parkinson, though Zabini now, I suppose–" and again I was struck by her language, though I said nothing "–took the Dark Mark during the war, was enamoured with most of You-Know-Who's ideas, and, when your father" (she indicated Albus at this point) "was discovered within the walls of Hogwarts during the Final Battle, she was the first to try to turn him in." She hung her head sadly at that point. "She's never really lived it down."

We were silenced for a time by her sobering words, until the object of my fascination came bubbling to the forefront of my mind. "Wait, if your parents are Blaise Zabini and Pansy Parkinson, then the two of you must know–"

"I'm so glad I've found you two," a voice drawled as the door to the compartment flung open. "I got stuck before with some Ravenclaw fourth years, and they embroiled in a philosophical debate about...existentialism, I believe? You two would've loved it, but it just gave me this terrible headache." All four of us were looking up now, to see a tall, skinny, white-blonde boy standing in the open doorway. There was no mistaking who it was.

"Scor!" Penny exclaimed (as it already seemed she often did), getting up to fling her arms around the neck of the Malfoy boy. "We looked for you when we got on – where'd you go?"

"Mum realized I'd left a bit of luggage on the other side, in King's Cross, so we had to go back for it. I barely made it on before the train set off," he said, disengaging himself from her embrace. He looked about the compartment. "Couldn't deal alone without me? Needed to drag in some new meat?" he smirked, looking pointedly at Albus and me.

"No, Scor, we're just so used to your pointless chatter that without you, the quiet suffocates like a Lethifold," she said, smiling sweetly. His smirk grew slightly darker at that, though it did not falter. "But these are Albus Potter and Rose Weasley."

He regarded Albus first. "So, Potter," he drawled in a tone that might've been sarcastic, "I see you've chosen to throw in with this lot. You should know that there are a higher class of people to befriend." I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but his words seemed rather rude.

"Please," Penny snickered, actually snorting in the middle of her laughter. "You're no better than either of us," she said, gesturing to her brother.

"You have to admit that I'm at least better conversation," he said back to her, with an expression that may have been a smile but that might just as easily have been smug. I took it as the latter. "So, what do you say, Potter?" he said, holding his hand out to shake. "Friends?"

Albus regarded the outstretched hand with a degree of disinterest. "Unless you want me calling you 'Malfoy' for as long as we know each other," he said back in the same sarcastic tone, looking into Malfoy's eyes, "I would suggest you call me Albus."

"And you'll call me Scorpius," he stated back firmly. Albus gripped his hand, and they shook. "Splendid!" Malfoy exclaimed, falling into the seat next to the door. The compartment now looked like this: Penny sandwiched between Malfoy and I, then Aiden opposite his sister and Albus opposite Malfoy. The two boys near the door struck up a conversation about Qudditch, and once they'd mentioned the Hollyhead Harpies I heard my mother's name a few times. Penny chatted with her brother, though he drifted in and out of conversation as his head lulled sleepily against Albus' shoulder. I mainly stared out the window at the passing scenery, or, of course, at Malfoy.

My father wasn't always a logical man, but he was good-hearted, and if he meant to oppose me to the Malfoy boy (I sternly insisted that I not allow myself to think of him as Scorpius), I intended to discover why. (I certainly hoped my father was mature enough that he wouldn't set me against Malfoy just because of how abominably his father had acted while at Hogwarts.) The boy had an angular face, and a forehead that might've been high – it was hard to tell, as his pale hair was swept up and away from his face and held firmly atop his head by a thick layer of gel in a way that was wholly unnecessary and rather tactless. He had bright silver-blue eyes that were wide when he spoke expressively – it seemed that he and Albus had moved on to the topic of first brooms. (I'd already chosen mine – a 2015 model from the American company Skysweep called the Windwhip 950. Albus had scoffed at it, but I found that the redwood handle was far more to my liking – and of better balance – than the fir or pine handles typically used by English companies.) High cheekbones, smooth pale skin, long neck – he might be called attractive, to people who looked for something effeminate. He spoke with an air of arrogance, entirely confident that the people he was surrounded by were beneath him.

He certainly was a character. And an easy one to dislike at that.

Before terribly long, the Hogwarts Express pulled to a comfortable stop near Hogwarts. Even within the compartment, I could hear Hagrid's voice booming from the other end of the train, "First years! All first years this way!" I smiled fondly at the sound of his voice, before realized that nearly all the other members of my compartment had already grabbed their luggage and left.

All, in fact, save for Malfoy.

He was leaning against the doorframe, with a look I couldn't place – pensive, perhaps, though just as easily calculating – in his eyes. His luggage was stacked neatly next to him, and his arms were folded across his chest. He'd packed no more than I had, and didn't seem to have any sort of creature with him either. As I made to leave the compartment, he stopped me. "Weasley, was it?"

I gritted my teeth, bringing myself to my full height to meet his grey, piercing eyes. "I do have a name, which, by the way, is Rose," I said a bit harshly, but he was impeding my progress and generally being a complete prat. "Now, was there something you wanted, Malfoy?" I spat out his surname as I continued to address him.

"Well firstly," he said with cool indifference, "to let you know I have a name as well, which happens to be Scorpius. Feel free to address me by it at any time you wish." There he went with the arrogant behaviour again. I was nearly ready to shove him out of my way, or to slap him across his girlish, aristocratic face, but he continued. "And, though I realize we didn't get to speak earlier, it was – er – nice to meet you." And there was a moment when he paused, where he might've actually been courteous to me, where he might have addressed me by my given name and I him by his, and the tension from the past few moments may have faded and I'd have had no idea why my father disliked him so.

That brief glimpse of hope was entirely shattered when, a second later, he added "Weasley," at which point I became thoroughly convinced that he was incapable of being anything more than an arrogant prick.

"Charmed, Malfoy, I'm sure," I hissed icily, barging past him to catch up to the last of the straggling first-years.

Outside, I caught up to Albus again, who had been separated from the twins and was now talking to a sandy-haired, freckled boy who introduced himself as Billy Gingham. Soon, Hagrid made his way over to us. "Albus! Rosie! Look how yeh've grown!" He picked the two of us up in a bone-crushing hug, and I felt his lantern crash against my back as his wide arms engulfed us.

"Hagrid!" I gasped. "Put us down, or we'll be late for the sorting!"

"Yeh're right, sorry!" he half-yelled into our ears (Hagrid was never very quiet when excited, as my father had often told me), before releasing us. I landed on my feet, but Albus, being the generally clumsy oaf that he is, landed flat on his arse.

I tugged him up by the arm. "Come on, you lummox, we've a boat to catch."

He looked at me crossly as he dusted himself off, falling into step with me as we followed Hagrid and the line of first-years toward the water. "You're lucky I love you, Rosie, and that we're related." His eyes grew brighter with a glint of playful malice. "Otherwise, you would've gotten the Bat-Bogey Hex a long time ago for saying things like that."

"Yes, but then I'd never patch you up when you fall on your fat arse, and you'd have to go crying to mummy every time you hurt yourself."

"I'll tell your mother you talk that way."

"I'll tell your father you've somehow inherited my mother's flying skills." We stared at each other a second longer, anger still in our glares, before we burst out laughing. We'd teased each other like this since we could talk, and it was comfortable: he'd mock me for my temper and my occasionally disastrous attempts at higher magic (which were few and far between, as I was largely successful), and I'd verbally abuse him for his absentmindedness and the fact that he could trip over his own two feet. We loved each other, although we had an odd way of showing it.

The boat ride was short, though a bit alluring, and soon, we were being ushered into the magnificent Great Hall. Despite hearing tell of it often, and visiting Hogwarts more than once as a young child with my parents, it seemed grander now that we were the subject of the evening. We were ushered toward the table in the front, from which the Sorting Hat and the stool it sat upon were clearly visible, with Professor Knellhop (the new Transfigurations teacher, since McGonagall had retired) watching over it. Headmaster Princeton Shacklebolt, the younger brother of the Ministry of Magic, gave a warm speech of welcome to all of the students, and then the sorting ceremony began.

One by one, each of us first-years nervously approached the stool, waiting for the Sorting Hat to be placed on each of our heads and call out one word which would define at least the next seven years of our lives. When Billy Gingham went up, the hat slipped down over his eyes (he was a small boy, so it didn't much surprise me), but it called out "HUFFLEPUFF!" before he'd had much of a chance to panic. There was another girl called – Brianna Gosling, I believe her name was, thin-framed with auburn hair and dark eyes – who was sorted into Slytherin, and then Professor Knellhop called me.

"You're very clever, Rose, so much like your mother," the hat drawled in my mind. "And your father's absolute loyalty – and his temper as well. Brilliant but headstrong. Add the fact that you're half-Weasley, and that makes you most certainly…GRYFFINDOR!" it shouted loudly. Professor Knellhop removed the hat from my head, smiling down at me, and I beamed widely as I made my way over to the Gryffindor table, greeted by Prefects, house-mates, and quite a few cousins.

I watched much of the rest of the sorting with idle disinterest. Malfoy was a Slytherin – entirely unsurprising – and both of the twins were sorted into Ravenclaw.

I almost didn't watch Albus' sorting, too certain that he'd soon be seated next to me. I noticed the way his eyes darted back and forth between my own table – and me in particular – and another part of the room. If I'd paid a bit closer attention, I may have noticed that his was diverted between Gryffindor house and the green and silver table across the hall, and particularly a pair of mercurial depths. The latter part was not evident to me, however, as I chatted quietly with another student – Greeley Trenthorpe, a second-year boy with close-cropped ebony hair and an awkward smile but enough knowledge of Wizard's Chess to be of interest – next to me while the prefects tried (uselessly) to hush us.

Of course, once the hat had called out "SLYTHERIN!", the entire hall went dead silent.

It would've been possible to knock me over with a feather. I glanced over at James, who looked as though he'd just witnessed an Unforgivable.

The silence hung heavy and thick for those first few moments, and Albus started to squirm on the stool. It was broken by the sound of a single person, one at the Slytherin table, clapping.

The lonely applause seemed to unfreeze the entire hall. Professor Knellhop quickly – though rather ungracefully – removed the hat from Albus's head, the rest of Slytherin house burst into uproarious applause, and Albus made his way over to the sea of silver and green.

I'd never before been so confused in all of my life. Hadn't Al been frightened of being sorted into Slytherin just a few short hours earlier?

All of my confusions disappeared when I saw Albus grinning widely, nervously, as he slid onto the bench of the Slytherin table in the space next to Malfoy.

If it wasn't Malfoy applauding earlier, I'd eat my own wand. And I suddenly understood what had happened earlier, and whom Albus had been looking at.

And it became incredibly clear to me what decision he'd made up there, while talking to the hat.

He hadn't chosen Slytherin over Gryffindor. No, he'd chosen between me, his cousin and the girl who had been his best friend for longer than either of us could remember, and Malfoy, a boy he'd known all of two hours and of whom he knew so little (other than a particularly sharp tongue and a shared fascination with Quidditch). And he'd chosen Malfoy.

When I looked back on it later (and once I'd talked seriously with Albus about the entire business, which, unfortunately, took me until the end of our third year to bring up), I realized that Albus was trying to differentiate himself as a person from both his father and his mother (something that, living in the shadow of Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, was something I understood all too well), and that, with Scorpius there, he thought that Slytherin might be more of an adventure than would be Gryffindor.

(He may have added, a bit guiltily, that he had found Scorpius rather attractive. I teased him for years about that.)

But at the time, all I could see was red. I was seething.

My father wanted me to compete with Malfoy? To hate him? Well now, I had reason to.

Though all things considered, starting out a rivalry by being intensely jealous certainly does not give you the upper hand. It sets you careening, with poor footing and a sense of imbalance.

I'd really never meant to end up in such a position blind rage, of…powerlessness.

In case anyone's confused about the order of the sorting, Rose goes by a hyphenated last name (Granger-Weasley). Just to clear that up.

So...that's that, then. I'd be ever so honored if you'd leave me a review? (Or, hey, if you like Glee, go check out my other fics?) :D