Running from the castle and across the grass barefoot and holding hands, the couple stop for a second to catch their breath. It is then that the redheaded girl looks up at the night sky and, sighing to herself at the beauty of the stars above her. She immediately lies down on her back to look up at the clear sky. The blonde haired boy sees what she's doing and grins to himself, this isn't the first time she has been sidetracked by the beautiful. He lies on the grass beside her, close enough that if both reached across, they could be holding hands. They don't, though, and that is the key thing. Both know that if they are to hold hands in this relative calm, so different from the usual chaos both happily fling themselves into, that it will come to mean something more than their usual hand holding for necessity, for running away and for playing and for nothing deeper than that. And so the two of them lie a little way away from each other, drinking in the starlight, both trying really really hard not to gaze at the other. Hesitantly, the boy turns his head just slightly so that he's facing her profile:
"We are made of stardust, you know? I learnt that once in Muggle Studies, when they were giving us Muggle Science lessons. We are made of stardust and so is basically everything in the world. I know that stars really are just balls of gas slowly burning themselves out, but I can't seem to help romanticising stars..." he tells her, trailing off and waiting for her to fill in the gaps in his words, waiting for her hear all the unsaid things and to respond with still more of those words that cannot be verbalised. She does just this and he smiles as he listens to her speak:
"I know what you mean, there's just something about them, something so wordlessly beautiful about them, about the way the universe stretches out forever, about the galaxies and galaxies of these beautiful, sparkling lights. And something about the way what we're doing right now is so cliche and so overdone and yet so beautiful that I don't think I will ever find the words to sum this moment up." And the two exchange a small smile because they both know exactly the words she claims to be looking for and both know exactly why she isn't saying them. He takes a risk in his reply to this, knowing that to both compliment and challenge her at the same time can sometimes be like leaping blindly into a pool of water and hoping that it is neither too deep nor too shallow:
"I'm sure you will, Rosie, your words are as perfect and endless as the stars." In spite of herself, she smiles upon hearing him say this, because even Rose Weasley needs to hear nice things about herself sometimes, and it's even nicer to hear those words fall from the lips of the boy who means more to her than she will ever allow herself to say.
"They're far from perfect, Scorp. Anyway, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that sometimes heart-stoppingly beautiful moments happen and sometimes even the writer can't find the words, so they're far from endless too." And she isn't really talking about speechlessness, or about writer's block, and he knows this. Both know that the words are there, that they could so easily use them, that they could ever so easily fall into them and hide within them, blanketing themselves in their proclamations and their final honesty.
It would be final, though, and that is why neither is prepared to use the words both know the other is thinking almost all the time when they are together and apart. Neither can bear to take the risk that once the words are said, there will be no words left at all. At seventeen years old, she wrote stories and he was a poet and neither can bear the thought of running out of words. At seventeen years old, Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy are desperately in love and yet too afraid to say it.
