After All

After All

And Rose, honey remember, I'm always here for you, no matter what you choose to do in your life or who you choose to spend it with.

Love Mum xx

You reread the last line; the breath catches in your throat, feeling the flush in your cheeks you wonder if she knows. Of course she does, you answer yourself, she's mum.

Peering out from behind the mess of red curls your eyes take in the assembled students eating breakfast in the Great Hall and you wonder now if anyone else knows. If they've somehow seen the signs you both have tried so hard to disguise. The brush of hands as you work together in potions, the prefect duties that sometimes go on till the early hours of the morning, the afternoons spent by the lake, just you and him. Surely they can't have missed the change in your relationship, the heightened awareness of each other, the way he looks at you or the charge that has surrounded the both of you since that fateful night in January.

And yet, somehow you have done it, kept it secret, and protected this new burgeoning part of yourselves from their prodding eyes. Not even your family knows. Well, almost.

Albus knows.

You told him together. The first and only person you have disclosed it too. He just looked at the both of you. And for one heart-stopping moment you thought he didn't approve. That he wouldn't support you. That he'd tell.

Of course those thoughts were utter nonsense. He was Al, after all. And the two of you were his best friends. You're his favourite cousin and Al thinks of him as a brother. So, in typical Al fashion, he just smiled at you, kissed you on the cheek, promising with his eyes that it would be kept secret and went off in search of Hugo.

It's been over six weeks since then.

Six wonderful weeks full of laughing, quidditch practice, fights, studying, teasing, multiple games of wizards chess and most enjoyably, several hours spent behind the tapestry on the fourth floor when you should have been patrolling. But then as he had said, infuriatingly smug as usual, it was a much better occupier of their time. Which is, in your mind, much too short.

The grasped moments are not enough. You long to kiss him in the corridor after he has walked you class, to hold his hand, to go to Hogsmeade together, on a real, official date. And it's not just the lack of open togetherness that causes you to hate your secrecy; it's the fact that you are keeping it secret. From your friends, but most importantly from your family, who used to know everything about you. You long to dissect every part of your first, real relationship with Dom, to squeal with Lily over him, to be teased by Hugo, you even wouldn't mind suffering through James and Fred's big brother act. You just want them to know.

You reasoned that it was better to keep it secret until you were sure. About him, about you, about the concept of "us". But now. Now that you know, now that you're sure. You don't want to wait anymore. You can't wait anymore. You're tired of hiding it. Tired of sneaking around. Tired of lying.

Your eyes finally find their way over to the Slytherin table, Albus is laughing at a comment the blond you seek has just made. He looks up, then, suddenly, as if he felt you're gaze and brown eyes meet blue. Scorpius grins at you, causing the release of the now all too familiar butterflies that moved into your stomach sometime during 5th year. Herebology he mouths at you, you understand and nod once, before slipping your mother's letter into your bag. You think Herebology will be the perfect time to have this conversation. You're working with the more boisterous plants today, and your classmates will be far to distracted to pay you any attention.

You are resolved now. It's time you told everyone, mum included. You're in love with him, after all.