She meant it as a joke. To get back at him. Over something stupid. And now he was going to be the death of her and it was all George's fault.
Well, to be fair, it started with her mother on the platform in September. Merlin, she was sixteen already. She didn't need to be coddled. And while she was still Daddy's little girl, that didn't mean she hadn't had it up to here with nicknames. 'Rosie' is what you call a child. Her name was just 'Rose'.
So when her mother told her, "Rosie dearest, please remember to write," (Okay, so maybe that bit was her fault for ignoring her mother's letters during her OWLs. And the months leading up to them. And basically anything after Christmas) yes, she was a little miffed. Perhaps she could have hid her disdain for the nickname a little bit.
But she didn't. She didn't account for Scorpius watching her while his father made light conversation with the Potters. It wasn't out of the normal. And she definitely did not consider that the look on his face was anything but a result of whatever Uncle Harry had just said. And he didn't say anything at first. Not as he sat in her compartment, squeezed in between her family members. Not when the two headed to the Prefect's meeting, chatting the entire walk through the train. And not even at the Welcome Feast, although there had been ample opportunity.
No. He had to wait until breakfast, minutes before she planned to head to her first class of the year. She was having a grand time, laughing with Lily about - she can't even remember what - when he's in her ear.
"Rosie dearest, your cousin wants to talk to you before you head off," he whispered.
"You'll have to be more specific, Malfoy, I have several —" She felt a chill pass through her spine and turned around. She lowered her voice to a whisper and scowled. "Wait. What did you call me?" He looked at her with those stupid eyes and feigned ignorance.
"Nothing Rose. Your dearest cousin, Albus, would like a word with you."
She relaxed. Looking back, that was probably the nail in her coffin. She could only imagine what was running through his head. She had given away too much, played into his game, and now? Now he knew how to annoy the living hell out of her and that was too much power. She dismissed it as her mind tricking her. She blamed it on not getting enough sleep after spending most of the night unpacking. That was until it happened again a few weeks later.
They were sitting in Potions class, preparing a Draught of the Living Death, each table praying they'd at least get close. She was walking through the desks to grab her sopophorus beans already when she heard him to her right, this time louder and clearer than before.
"Rosie dearest, would you mind grabbing us some more powdered root of asphodel? Albus —" He said it almost without thinking about it, no hesitation, no hint of malice. Nothing until she stopped, marched forcefully, her shoes tapping against the floor with a dull echo, leaned in and spoke through gritted teeth.
"Excuse me?" His smile morphed into the slightest smirk, and she suddenly wanted to rip his head off.
"Sorry, would you please grab Albus and I some powdered asphodel?"
She narrowed her eyes and stared at him carefully. His smirk only grew.
She turned, and this time, she pretended she heard him wrong. He was trying to get a rise out of her, she knew it. So she grabbed the boys a bottle and dropped it in Scorpius's hands with a forced smile and walked back to her seat with her beans.
But, damn him, she was dazed and confused and disturbed the rest of the class. And she screwed up the number of stirs. Twice. Meanwhile, he stirred carefully, one hand on the handle and the other still on the bottle of asphodel. He began tapping the cork top with his thumb to a rhythm she probably shouldn't have tried to identify. And still she tried. She had about as much success as she did trying to salvage her potion before class ended.
It didn't stop there.
She ran into him in the hallway a few days later: "Careful, Rosie dearest. You've got to watch where you're going." Then he was out of sight before she could tell him off.
And when he wasn't mocking her with a "Rosie dearest", it was still "Rosie" this and "Rosie" that. And what's worse was her cousins were starting to catch on. And now she couldn't escape it. When he wasn't around it was Lily or Dominique or Albus, driving her mad with nicknames. Nicknames, she thought, that weren't even shorter. What good are long nicknames? Didn't that defeat the entire point?
Ro would work, she resolved, but she was pretty sure if anyone started calling her that, she'd hate it too. But for now, she was stuck with her entire damn family calling her Rosie any chance they got, as if she was the seven-year-old at a Weasley family dinner. It was patronizing and downright irritating.
She wanted to make a plan to end it, but had no idea how to go about it. That was until Scorpius sat next to her at dinner one night when she was feeling particularly annoyed and wanted to be alone. She brought an essay she'd been polishing with her to dinner and was scribbling furiously until he nudged her.
"Are you finally writing a letter home? I'm sure your parents are dying to hear from their Rosie dearest." He said it without any anger or resentment. In fact his tone sounded almost like genuine curiosity and observation. Still, it made her blood boil.
"My name," she said, "is Rose. And if you plan on keeping all of your fingers, I'd suggest you address me as such." She shoved her plate away and stormed off to the Owlery to send her mother her strongly-worded thoughts on the matter. Halfway up the west Tower, however, she came to her senses and decided perhaps scolding her own mother was not her brightest solution. And so, on the next Hogshead trip, she made her way to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes to talk with an adult she knew would take her seriously.
And now, she was rushing through the corridors on her patrols, her shins throbbing and aching, desperately trying to get ahead of her partner. Because, Merlin forbid, she couldn't catch a break. Seriously, whose idea was it to pair her with Scorpius this month of all months? The moment she knew, she was going to hex them into next Sunday. And then she was going to go hunt down Uncle George, because it was really all his fault. Not hers. Of course.
It had been a joke. Just a joke. She only wanted to let him make a fool of himself and maybe get some equally offensive pet name to bother him with.
She had gone to George with her problem and he responded in kind with his latest concoction. Not a love potion, per say. More of an infatuation potion. That'd show him to call her Rosie dearest. Once she was done with him, he would wish he'd never overheard the nickname. Once today was over, he'd be as confused as he had made her.
She slipped it in a glass of pumpkin juice Sunday morning, after visiting her Uncle. When he walked down the aisle to meet Albus at the Slytherin table, Rose grabbed her plate and the goblet of pumpkin juice and followed him. She squeezed herself next to her cousin and leaned across the table to offer Scorpius the drink. He eyed it skeptically, but took it from her.
"It's a peace offering. Pumpkin juice. You drink it." Her heart began beating rapidly until he brought the goblet to his lips and drank it quickly. When he was finished, he set the cup down and smiled. Only then did her heartbeat even out.
She had to hold back a grin and pretend she wasn't paying attention when he made a face as if he'd just drank a particularly nasty batch of Skele-Gro and shook off an internal chill. His eyes were wide and dilated and she knew her work was done. She spent the next few minutes invested in Albus's ongoing story about some girl he was into while she finished up her breakfast with the boys. Scorpius was unnervingly quiet, his eyes fixed on Rose the entire time.
When she finished eating, she bounced up and made her goodbyes. She gave Albus a quick pat on the shoulders. "Well, that was fun, but I must be off." She leaned across the table to ruffle Scorpius's hair, running her fingers back through it and moving his neatly groomed locks so it resembled his best friend's. She felt something strange in the pit of her stomach when she watched a few strands fall in front of his eyes, still wide, still trained on her. "Don't miss me too much." Then she turned and walked away as quickly as she could.
"Scorpius are you okay? You've been really quiet and it's worrying me," she heard Albus say as she walked down the hall.
"I'm fine." Scorpius replied. She could almost picture him trying to smooth his hair into place again. She let out that grin she'd been holding.
The rest of the day did not go according to plan. First of all, George had promised Scorpius would be infatuated with her. That is not what she'd call this. In fact he seemed quite the opposite. She had been hoping he would make some poor decisions, declare his affection for her in front of everyone at lunch. Honestly she felt certain he would be trailing her side like a puppy for most of the day.
Instead, she found him actively avoiding her. He left the library when she came in to study. He made an excuse to leave when she visited Al in their common room. And he didn't even look at her when she joined him and Albus for lunch and dinner. He was cold and distant and hadn't spoken more than five words to her all day, so before curfew she ran off to the Owlery to give Uncle George a piece of her mind. Had she known how Monday would go, she might have relished in his Sunday silence.
Monday morning, she sat with the boys again for breakfast. Scorpius for the most part was back to his normal self. Or at least he seemed so. He hadn't run away from her yet. Albus hadn't noticed any strange behavior from him the day before and so life carried on as if Sunday had never happened.
That was until Scorpius poured himself a goblet full of pumpkin juice. Halfway through drinking it, he choked, catching his breath by coughing up any liquid that had gone down the wrong pipe. His eyes widened again, and he stared down into his cup.
"Albus, does this taste off to you?" he asked, extending the drink to his friend. Albus took a swig, made a pondering face, then another gulp.
"Nope. Tastes same as yesterday, same as it always does." Scorpius paled. "Are you alright, Scorp?"
"Yeah. Just fine. I - err - I forgot something in the dorms, I'll meet up with you before class, okay?" Scorpius excused himself from the table.
"Alright mate. I'll wait for you outside our classroom." Scorpius looked away from Albus to look at Rose briefly. There was something in his eyes she couldn't quite place. As soon as she noticed that something else was going on, he was gone.
The first half of the day had been uneventful - that was up until she had Transfiguration with Scorpius and Al. The first red flag should have been the fact that Scorpius sat next to her. He passed it off by telling her Albus wanted to sit with her partner, but Albus looked just as confused as she was. But then there were the looks, and she felt like she was going to catch on fire any moment with how intently he was looking at her. And any time he had a question for her or a comment to make or a suggestion to offer, he'd touch her lightly. On the shoulder, the back, the knee. She was starting to feel like he was doing on purpose by the time class was over. It was driving her mad. When he called out to her in the hall as she practically ran out of class, shouting about wanting to talk with her, looking a little foolish, it hit her.
That bloody potion. It was working. A little late, but it was working.
But then it didn't stop working. The entire week he'd been putting her on edge with little comments and stares she could feel cutting through her when she wasn't looking and he kept touching her in front of her family. Like playing with her hair and running his fingers up and down her neck or grazing her thigh or any other number of beyond innocent touches. In. Front. Of. Everyone. She had never expected him to be so bold. And maybe the worst part was that she'd been taking it, letting it slide for four full days and her family was already miles past suspicious. And it kept happening, but she wasn't always expecting it, so most times she jumped at the sudden contact. Which only serves to draw her family's attention right back to Scorpius and those hands he couldn't keep to himself.
And to make matters worse, the "Rosie dearest"s weren't stopping either. In fact, he was getting brash about it. He stopped calling her Rose at all. It was always Rosie dearest… this or that. He'd sneak up behind her and whisper it in her ear just as easily as he would - and did - shout it full volume down a crowded corridor. Almost like he was just trying to embarrass her. Well, it was damn well working and she was just about done.
Her "just about done" became "completely done" on Friday. That is to say today. As in now, as she sprints down corridors, trying to get her work done but stay out of sight of her partner. Honestly, she hadn't thought it through much. She just wanted to get back at him for the stupid nickname, but now she was going to hex whoever thought pairing them would be a good idea. After she hexed Scorpius enough to get him to leave her alone.
She stopped, breathless, once she was done with this wing of the dungeons. And George, she thought, I might just kill him for whatever he gave me. Or let Dad kill him for subjecting his little girl to this.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the nearest wall. Her ears were ringing and she could actually hear her heartbeat against her eardrums. She couldn't hear anything else. She could hardly bring herself to think of moving. Her shins were burning and these were not the right trainers for running and -
"Rosie, dear, you must slow down, really. You've been doing some shabby work." Her eyes snapped open, and there he was, standing in front of her. She felt a shot of adrenaline, kicking in her flight instincts, replaced almost immediately by frustration and anger at his comment.
"Excuse me? Shabby?" Rose stepped forward off of the wall, prepared for a fight.
"You missed two couples snogging in this wing."
"TWO? Where?"
"One behind the tapestry around the corner," he said pointing back to their last turn, "and one right over here."
Suddenly Rose found herself right back against the wall, with Scorpius holding tight to her waist. She spent too many moments wondering how his hands got there or how she got in this position in the first place, that she didn't notice how close he was getting until he was the only thing in her line of sight.
"What are you doing?" Rose asked, pushing her hands against his chest, trying to keep him as far from her as she could. He grabbed her hands, intertwining them with his, and holding her with only the slightest force against the wall. He moved closer until they were pressed together so that each inhale pushed one into the other.
"Rosie, dearest," she flinched at the words, mostly, although it might have also been his breath against her eyelashes. "This is what happens when you spike someone's pumpkin juice."
"What?"
"Something devious like that? You should've been in Slytherin."
"You knew?"
"Not until it wore off, but I figured it out the next day. After that I just played along." He backed away enough that she could breathe easily, but he did not let go of her hands, still rooting her to the wall. "I mean what kind of love potion was that? It was awful. Just abso-bloody-lutely unpleasant."
"It was not a love potion," Rose said defiantly, "It was an…infatuation potion." Scorpius gave her a look, raising one eyebrow and scrunching his nose. The smirk that resided near permanently below made her wish he'd let her hands go, just so she could smack it off of him. "It's a new product I was testing out. On you."
"Why would you pick me for such a terrible experiment. I could have died or something and then how would you feel about using me as your guinea pig?" Rose could only roll her eyes at his melodrama.
"You were fine. No need to be ridiculous. At worst, you'd make a fool of yourself. That is what I was hoping for."
"Oi! The hell would you do that for?"
"You kept teasing me and making a fool of me in front of my family. Using that blasted nickname—"
"Rosie de—"
"Don't you dare." He laughed. "The point is, it had to stop or I had to get something equally awful to tease you with."
"Well, have I made enough a fool of myself for your satisfaction?"
"Enough? The potion didn't work!"
"Maybe not how you wanted, but, Merlin, was that sickening. I haven't been this anxious since we took our OWLs. I can't even begin to explain." He looked up, away from Rose, trying to come up with the words he was looking for.
"But it was supposed to — I don't know. It didn't do what it was supposed to do." Rose was coming up at a loss too.
"Well, that's an easy thing to explain." He was looking at her again. With that gaze he'd had trained on her all week. But there was something else there too.
"Go ahead." Rose said, although she was growing impatient. Scorpius hesitated, then spoke, half sure of himself and half doubtful.
"It's hard to make someone infatuated with you, when they —"
"— hate you?" He smiled, and Rose felt certain she was right. Still, he pulled one of his hands from hers to touch her lightly on the shoulder. It was a motion so gentle that she forgot she'd been waiting for him to let go so she could escape. Or hit him. Whichever felt better.
"Are already in love with you." Her blood chilled. Or maybe it stopped altogether. Maybe her heart just gave out. Maybe she was dying. He was watching her carefully. Yep. She was dying. Definitely dying.
"You—" she managed to force out before her voice cracked and she couldn't form a coherent sentence. Her free hand fell to her side.
"Yes."
"Oh." She didn't say anything else while she was processing. She just stood where she was, against the wall, scared that if she moved at all, every bone in her body would fail her and she'd fall into a puddle on the ground. Or something equally ridiculous. Because she didn't know what to do with something like that. Then she remembered, she had one hand free. She could escape. Or hit him. She had options, so she did what felt right.
He hadn't moved to leave, hanging on her hesitation, so she tugged his tie and pulled him back into her. As she pressed her lips to his, she prayed to whatever gods were listening that he didn't just pull away. Which he didn't. Instead, his hands were everywhere at once - her waist, her neck, her hair, anywhere that he could hold that might cut the infinitesimal space between them. She, meanwhile, forgot her hands existed for a moment. Between the rush of kissing him and her concern that he would stop, she pulled her arms around his neck, trying to bring him closer. She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to take control, but as he deepened the kiss, she lost herself in it.
"Rose," he whispered when he finally pulled back.
"Hmm?"
"You and I—we have to talk about this." Part of her wanted to whine and pull him back to her, but she decided not to fight. She let her hands fall from his neck to his chest and waited as patiently as she could.
"What about this?"
"I thought I had us figured out. And I had this plan. And now—" Her head was still spinning, and she tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
"Wait a plan?" He looked flustered. Merlin, he looked cute when he was flustered. Rose tried to snap herself out of it.
"Yes. And now we are off schedule."
"What the hell was your plan?"
"Well I wasn't about to do anything this year. I was going to start hinting at how I felt around Halloween and wait to make my move before the holidays, but you went and made that next to impossible." She felt something shake from her stomach, and there she was, breathless. She grinned madly as his words set in.
"You're an idiot." Rose said, and kissed him again.
The kiss did not last nearly as long as she wanted. He wouldn't let it. Instead he broke it, set himself at an arm's distance, and decided to be responsible.
"We still have to finish our rounds." Now she actually did whine, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough to bring his stupid smirk back. "Come on. If we hurry now, we can clear out the best hiding places for ourselves." He winked as he took her hand, and she could feel the insinuation start to affect her, a blush creeping its way from her ears to spread across her whole face.
They walked that way for a minute, turning the corner and moving slowly to remain unheard, until they found the tapestry he had mentioned. Funny, she thought, it seemed so much further when I was running. She stepped back and gave Scorpius the pleasure of pulling the tapestry back.
The girl on the other side actually squeaked when she and her boyfriend were discovered, hiding behind him and neatening herself as best she could. Rose looked over her own clothes and smoothed back her hair, wondering if she looked as much a mess as this girl. She was so consumed in that thought that she didn't notice as Scorpius let the two off with a warning and sent them back off to their dorms.
"Rose? Are you alright?" Scorpius was looking at her again, and she caught back up to the present moment. Which had her alone with Scorpius - who was still confusing the hell out of her and making her feel a little light-headed.
And he called her Rose. Twice.
She'd been trying for weeks to get him to call her Rose. Or Weasley. Anything else, really, except for 'Rosie dearest'. Had she known all she had to do to make him stop was kiss him she — Well, honestly she probably would have panicked and not kiss him and had to go through this torture all over again. He seemed to be done teasing her, and now she kind of missed it. She sighed, and Scorpius looked more confused than he did earlier.
"I know I'm going to regret this," she smiled as she spoke, "but maybe, just maybe, I think I almost prefer you calling me Rosie. Maybe?"
He looked at her with scrutiny then, feeling assured, began to laugh to himself from behind his own smile.
"But if you call me 'Rosie dearest' in public I will not hesitate to hex you."
"And in private?" Bloody hell, there was that terrible blush again.
"You are going to make me regret this, aren't you?" There was a hunger in his eye as he cornered her, moving the two of them into the passageway behind the tapestry. He spoke as he leaned in to kiss her.
"Every damn day."