I haven't written any NextGen for a while, but this was a fun opportunity! I received the pairing Louis and Rose with the prompt vacant from two sides one coin's Cousincest Competition. I hope you enjoy it!
Louis knew what others thought of him.
Louis the dreamer, the romantic thinker. The boy with his head in the clouds and a vacant gaze, who couldn't focus, whose thoughts were never within the same century.
He did not care.
Other wrote him off as eccentric (like Aunt Luna) without getting to know him. Even his cousins wrote him off as being "not all there."
Truth be told, Louis knew more than most people ever know in their lifetime because he was not just a dreamer, he was an observer.
His parents thought he did not know he was a drunken mistake. Vic and Teddy thought they were sneaky the summer before they became official. Domi thought she hid her preference for girls. Molly thought no one ever saw her binge and purge cycle. James thought his whole family believed he liked Quidditch. And Roxanne and Fred thought they kept secret which of them really masterminded pranks.
Having discovered all of this within his first year, Louis was good with secrets. He saw them, but he tried not to repeat them. Lucy saw secrets too. Her discovered secrets were never important as the ones Louis knew, although she sure reported them like they were.
By his fourth year, Louis had somehow become the first link on Lucy's chain of how to tattle to.
"Vic and Teddy are fighting again."
"Thanks nice," Louis replied as he wondered yet again how the hat had picked her for a Hufflepuff. "Don't you have anything better to do, Luce?"
She stuck her tongue out and waltzed away, off to Ravenclaw to tell Molly and Rose, he suspected. Half an hour later, she returned, banging the barrels as she entered the common room.
"You don't sound happy," Louis commented, knowing she would snap at him for stating the obvious.
"Don't be daft." Her voice held all the anger Louis had expected and even looked forward to hearing. "No one knows where Rose is."
He perked up at that. "Really? Where did you look?"
"Everywhere!" She collapsed dramatically into the chair next to him, throwing her arms in the air. "She's not in the library, her room, the common room, Gryffindor's common room, or the courtyard."
"Did you ask James to see the map?"
"I—" Lucy flushed, her face turning red at overlooking such a key component to the search. "I'll go ask him now."
"No need," Louis said. "I'll do it."
Lucy pouted, her lip quivering in indignation, but Louis did not care. His focus "only lasted a short time," so he might as well take that time to discover his cousin.
A few girls giggled as he entered the Gryffindor common room. (Knowing the password as soon as the Gryffindors, the four other Weasleys had free access to the tower.) Louis smiled in their direction, hoping it would make them quiet down. Instead, they looked ready to swoon.
"You shouldn't do that," James commented as Louis sat down next to him. "It encourages them."
Louis shrugged. "They aren't in my house. I won't have to deal the effects of some indulgence."
Laughing at his younger cousin, James said, "If you say so. Just don't come crying to me when one of them spikes your pumpkin juice."
"I'll keep that in mind." The blond rolled his eyes and straightened in his chair. "Can I see the map?"
James blinked at the sudden change in conversation, but he relaxed a split-second later. "Step into my office," he said as he stood.
Louis followed him up the stairs. He walked through the dorm door in time to have James toss the map at him. Catching it was easy; Louis would have been an obvious choice for Seeker if not for Alastair Wood, a sixth year like James.
"Put it back in my trunk when you're finished," James commanded light-heartedly as he stepped around his cousin to return to the common room.
As Louis had suspected, Rose was nowhere to be found. He chose each of her friends one by one and found them all.
All except Scorpius.
Louis groaned, knowing the implications. Surely he had just missed one of them in the map's many folds. But another thorough scan revealed the same results. It seemed that the only remaining option was to find out for himself. If his suspicions were right, he potentially could walk in on something he could never unsee.
Louis wandered over to the Room of Requirements anyway. He debated for a moment whether Rose or Scorpius had come first, but the answer seemed fairly obvious since Rose had such a knack for detail.
I need a place to meet with Rose. I need a place to meet with Rose. I need a place to meet with Rose.
The door appeared, just as he had known it would.
Before Louis could talk himself out of it, he threw open the door.
A loud squeak echoed around the room as Rose jumped away from Scorpius, pulling a blanket up to cover her chest.
"Louis!" Her voice took on an unnaturally high pitch. "What are you doing here?"
As awkward as it was to have seen his cousin topless, Louis shrugged and said, "Lucy seems to think you want to know that Victoire and Teddy and fighting again."
Rose's mouth hung open. "Well, I suppose that's nice to know." She hesitated a moment longer before asking, "Are you going to tell her you found us here?"
For the first time, Scorpius looked at Louis, his eyes wide at the thought of Rose's whole family knowing.
"Nah, what would I have to gain?"
She sighed and gave him a huge grin. When she leaned forward, her blanket slipped down, and Louis forced himself to keep his eyes on her face. (He had never seen a girl naked before and figured his cousin should not be the first.)
"Thanks so much, Lou! You're a lifesaver."
He nodded, eyes slipping down just once before moving back to her face. "I know."
She laughed, and Scorpius forced out a chuckle. Knowing the situation would go from odd to unbearable in only a few seconds, Louis left. His attention had waned.
Unlike most people believed, the Weasley-Potter clan did not spend every day together. Most of them hung out the weekends, with smaller groupies depending on who actually hung out together. As far as Louis was concerned, this made them both too close and impossibly far apart. For this reason, he did not learn until nearly three weeks after the fact that their dear little Lily was dating Scorpius Malfoy.
He found Rose as soon as he could afterward, seeking her in the Ravenclaw common room. (As usual, he answered the question correctly.)
"Can we talk?" he asked when he found her.
She smiled weakly, her eyes showing that she knew why he was there. "Of course, let's go for a walk."
They left the common room and walked for about five minutes before Rose pulled him into a random classroom.
She cocked her head to the side. "What do you need, love?"
"Love?" he repeated.
Rose laughed. "It's just an expression. You don't have to take everything so seriously?"
He raised both eyebrows and asked, "When do I ever take things seriously?"
As she propped herself up on a desk, Rose replied, "You know, not everyone thinks you're as airy as you pretend to be."
"And what do you mean by that?" he asked, remaining standing. "I don't pretend to be anything."
"You're right." Rose grinned and leaned forward. "You don't pretend, but you go right along with the assumptions everyone else make about you."
Her words gave Louis a feeling of exposure that he was unused to. "Weren't we here to talk about you?" Changing the subject seemed like the best way to deal with it.
Rose shrugged. "What? You want to talk about Scorpius? I really don't think there's much to say. We slept together, which I'm not proud of in hindsight, but what can I do about it? I told Lily I've heard rumors that he rushes straight to sex, but she blew me off. I can't blame her since Scorpius hardly even dates. Still, she's only thirteen, so I don't think he'll push her. He turns sixteen next month, and that would just get messy."
"How long had you to been…" Louis trailed off, scratching the back of his head as he deliberated how to continue.
"Together?"
He nodded, still standing.
"Not long," she replied, but Louis noted that she would not meet his gaze.
"I'm sorry."
She snorted, an ungraceful noise that was just so Rose and so unlike his other female cousins. "Don't act like it was your fault. You didn't have anything to do with it, so no need to feel like you did."
"But I knew," he argued. "I could have told someone – should have told someone."
"No, you shouldn't have." Rose looked down at the ground before glancing back up through her lashes in a way that disarmed him in a way that it should not have. "Louis, you helped me in a way that I don't think you realize."
"And what way would that be?"
Her mouth twitched as she leaned forward again, her low cut shirt reminding him dangerously of that day in the Room of Requirements. "After you walked in on Scorpius and me, he changed. He grew more frantic about my family finding out while I realized that it shouldn't matter if they did. We don't keep secrets much, do we?"
"I suppose not," he replied, mouth going dry as she shifted, giving him a momentarily glimpse of her bra.
"Anyway, I finally told Scorp that we either go public or not at all. He seemed sad to be breaking up, but he said he couldn't handle our family. I told him that it was unfortunate, but if he ever changed his mind, I wouldn't be available."
Rose leaned back, and Louis began collecting his scattered thoughts, stepping closer as he said, "It seems that he did change his mind."
"Yeah," Rose agreed. "He did, but I don't begrudge Lily. I think she'll be good for him." Tilting her head, she added, "I don't think we were right together anyway. People like me have a slightly different taste than people like him."
"What kind of people do you like then?" Louis asked,
She gave him a look that made him squirm. "Well, physically, I liked him. "Blond." She glanced at Louis's head. "Pale eyes." She met his gaze. "But he was on the loud side for my taste. Everything he ever thought came out of his mouth. It was refreshing, but it got old. I don't mind a little boldness from time to time, but reservation is a key trait to staying on someone's good side."
Without thinking about it, Louis took a step forward, channeling the boldness Rose had just mentioned. "Why, Rose Weasley, I do believe you've just described me. Shame we're related."
He had meant it to come out cheeky, a joke. Instead it sounded serious, full of remorse.
She shook her head ruefully. "I know."
Awkward silence came between them, and Louis realized exactly how close he was standing to her. Her legs were angled on either side of a desk corner, and his right leg was just inches from her left. He was about to step back when she spoke again.
"You know, I'm pretty good at doing what I'm not supposed to. I'm also fairly good at keeping secrets."
"Is that so?" Louis asked, a smile creeping onto his face. "And what would you need to keep secret?"
"This," Rose replied and pulled his head to hers.
It could have come off smooth and movie-like, but since they were Weasley's, it did not work that way.
"Ouch!" Louis jerked back as his nose smacked into hers.
They both rubbed their noses for a moment before Rose began giggling. Although his nasal passages ached, Louis joined it. Moments later, they kissed.
Faces lined up correctly, Rose and Louis began exploring changes in pressure. This continued for what felt to Louis like an eternity before Rose opened her mouth. He hesitantly moved a hand to her throat. She must have been waiting for this kind of signal because her arms moved up to his neck at Louis's touch.
When they finally parted, Rose did not drop her arms. She kept him pulled close to her and rested her forehead against his.
"That was nice," she commented. "Better than I dreamed."
Louis blushed. He almost blurted out, "You dream about me?" but withheld the statement. As he wracked his brain for the perfect comment, he moved a hand to her waist. Finally, a witty enough remark came to mind.
"Here I thought I was the dreamer."
"Only to others," she whispered. "They just don't know you enough."
And she put her lips against his again.