Unnoticed; unrecognised; unrequited.

You treated him badly from the very start of your acquaintanceship; that much you openly admit to. You regret it immensely. Had you treated him better, maybe you wouldn't have found yourself in this predicament - this over-used, clichéd predicament of unrequited love. Or would it be more appropriate to call it unrequited like? After all, you're only seventeen - much too young to fully understand love in all its intricacies, never mind claim to be in it.

He's your favourite cousin's best friend, and has been since they first met. He was always kind to you, always tried to include you, and never treated you badly. Yet you treated him like shit from the get-go. It could have been out of jealousy – he had after all, unwittingly taken your life-long best friend away from you. Perhaps it was due to the trials and tribulations of adolescence. Or maybe he just rubbed you up the wrong way – you don't really know. No matter the reason, it disgusts you when you think about it. You weren't so juvenile as to look down on him due to his house or anything as puerile as that, thank Godric. While you took after your father in many ways, your mother's beliefs had been ingrained in you early on in life. Inter-house unity was to be promoted, not hindered by hurtful house stereotypes. However, you never treated him with the kindness and respect he deserved either.

Any attempts at friendly conversation were promptly rebuffed, and any attempts at kindness brushed aside as if they were nothing. Yet, when you did make the effort to get along with him (which occurred only sporadically), you got along like a house on fire! You shared the same interests, had similar book tastes, watched the same shows on the Muggle television, and more! Honestly the fact that he even owned a Muggle device, let alone used it more than shocked you when you found out. But when you thought about it, all it did was prove to you once and for all just how hypocritical and juvenile it was to judge someone by their family name – something your mum has been trying to get across to your dad for years, but to no avail.

Interestingly, you were both avid supporters of the Falmouth Falcons, and were able to sprout off facts dating as far back as 1998! To put it bluntly, you were both nerds, neither of you ashamed of the fact. This, along with your common interests, should have propelled you together, but instead you chose to push him away.

While you were both very similar, clear differences could be seen. You were of the more socially awkward students, whereas he was bursting of charisma – never short of friends or someone to talk to. Maybe this was what fueled your dislike of him, maybe you resented him for his easy-going attitude and how effortlessly he could interact with others. You've always found it difficult to adjust to change, and never more so than as a socially awkward eleven-year-old thrust into the vast expanse that is Hogwarts, especially without your lifelong best friend to lean upon (not that you can blame Albus for that – he was only eleven after all, and what eleven-year-old makes the best decisions?).

However one part of your shared history stands out clearly as the most likely reason for your horrible treatment of him – the rumour your friends started in your third year, that he, Scorpius Malfoy, fancied you. Being one of the more socially awkward girls of your age group at the time, you had absolutely no idea how to act around someone who allegedly fancied you.

It all came to a head when your small group of friends started mingling with his – being but adolescents eager to be noticed by the opposite sex. Being opposed to change as you were, you tried your best to stop it, to get things back to how they were. Consequently, you began to treat him increasingly more horribly in an attempt to do just that. Could they not see that this just wouldn't work? That this wasn't meant to work? But your friends wouldn't take it, asking you how you could be like that towards him, especially when he so blatantly fancied you!

You refuted their claims of course, not believing that anyone could fancy you, especially not Scorpius Malfoy – the thought was ridiculous! But the seed had been planted and the idea stuck. You became increasingly awkward around him as a result, distancing yourself further, ignoring his attempts to talk to you, unable to act even somewhat normally around him anymore.

Nevertheless, your friends and his became closer and closer, and by the end of fourth year were a tight-knit group. Unable to ignore him any longer, you finally decided to befriend this ever-expanding group of people that had formed – many of whom you had known before Hogwarts. Slowly but surely, you and Scorpius Malfoy grew closer and closer, eventually coming to the stage where he was no longer 'Malfoy', but instead 'Scorpius' (the first few times you called him by his name he visibly paused, uncertain and shocked all at once – you did the same when he returned the favour).

By the time fifth year came around, you were almost completely at ease around him. Slowly, he became one of your closest friends, and he began to confide in you about his problems at home (his grandfather featuring in the majority of these stories). You'd always known such problems existed (after all, who didn't?) but the fact that he'd let you in enough to tell you himself made you feel special. Worse, it made you begin to wonder if maybe your friends had been right all those years ago, that maybe he had in fact liked you. But then you remembered his girlfriend (a lovely fourth year Hufflepuff, and a good friend of yours), and brushed those thoughts aside. It wasn't as if you liked him that way anyway.

Eventually, you became such close friends that it wasn't unusual for him, along with the rest of your friends, to spend time in your house over the holidays. Surprisingly, despite your worries, your father had no issues with this. You supposed it was to do with Albus and Scorpius' close friendship over the years – out of the whole family, Albus always had been (and always would be) the best judge of a person's character. It was then that you began to wonder how you hadn't realised what your own father had sooner – that Scorpius Malfoy was in fact a decent bloke.

It was in your sixth year that the time finally came for you to start to accept the possibility that you may have developed feelings for Scorpius. Being still the socially awkward person you are, you did absolutely nothing about it except to try to insert yourself into his company more and more. You foolishly began to believe that he might like you back, seeing the increased amount of physical contact between you two (hugs, nudges, etc.), and the increasing amount of time you spent around each other as evidence that this could be the case. Only to be crushed upon finding out that we was going out (albeit unofficially) with a mutual friend.

Thus is your predicament. Made only worse by the fact that he treats you exactly as he did before, highlighting what you should really have seen earlier – that he only considers you to be his friend. You, Rose Weasley are but a very close friend to Scorpius Malfoy, nothing more, nothing less. No matter how much you would like it to be otherwise.

Such is how you come to blame your younger self's treatment of him. Had you treated him differently – with more kindness, more respect, more friendliness; you might be in a completely different situation entirely.

But then, your feelings could still be as they are now – unnoticed; unrecognised; unrequited. And you don't know which would be worse.