Dedicated to Melissa, because she wanted a Rose/Scorpius fic.
So, I don't really like this. And I also totally didn't mean it to be this long. It just kept on coming.
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine. It's J.K.R's. Oh, and 10 points to whoever can guess where I got the whole dazzling thing from? ;)
She hated the summers.
Well, maybe hate was too strong a word. Because she liked rolling out of bed at whatever time of day she wanted. She liked reading underneath her grandmum's tree, she liked being with her cousins. She liked her grandma Weasley's cooking, and listening to her grandma Granger talk about muggles. She loved her school, but everyone needs a break.
No, Rose Weasley didn't hate summer. Because who really hates summer? But there was something summer couldn't give her, something only school had. Something that made her almost dread the final days of school, made her regret the train ride home, made her nearly hate those months in between.
Summer didn't have him.
Him, with his blonde hair, his grey eyes, his pointed chin. With his tall form, his good grades, his almost frightening good looks. With his cool, silky voice, enough to make her melt. Summer had a lot of things, but it didn't have Scorpius Malfoy.
Now, occasionally Albus invited him down, or Albus went up there. But how awkward would that be, for Rose to be hanging around? No, she couldn't do that.
So instead, she went without him. And it wasn't hard. Yes, she liked him- but not enough that she couldn't live without him for a few months. So what if she couldn't see him everyday- it wasn't exactly like they talked. So she couldn't stare at him- that was a bad habit anyway. So she lived through the summers, and that was okay, because a whole new school year loomed ahead.
But this was different. This wasn't just one summer. This was the end. This was graduation. This was the end of her school career. It was like one big summer, stretching out, and she couldn't see the end.
This was terrible. This was the end. Because after this night, she would never see him again. She could never look into his grey eyes. Never hear his laugh again, his silky voice. Never accidently brush past him in the hallway. Never again would she be able to be late for class because she completely altered her route to pass him in the halls.
She didn't hate summer. But she hated graduation.
The party was in the Room of Requirement, and you could only get in if you were graduating. On the way there, armed with her two friends Rachel Boot and Jessica Joyce, Rose hoped that it wouldn't let them in, that this whole graduation thing was just a dream. No such luck.
It was already in full swing when they entered. Rose's eyes raked the room for a familiar face (well, okay, one particular face), but she didn't see him. She sighed. This was going to be a long night.
"Rosie!" Turning around at her name, Rose suddenly found herself face to face with him. Well, face to chest. He was pretty tall. But it hadn't been him who had called her name...
"Rose?" Albus peeked out from behind Scorpius' back, but Rose was frozen. Literally frozen. She couldn't move- not that she wanted to. Scorpius' hands were clenched around her arms in an effort to keep her from falling, and hers were pressed against his sculpted chest. He was breathing into her hair, and her heart was going a mile a minute.
And then someone called his name, and he jerked away from her like she was a piece of hot coal.
Rose looked up to see Albus' green eyes focused on her. Worrying. She was confused.
Until she turned around.
Then, she saw Katie Finnegan hanging off oh his arm. Touching him. Laughing with him. Smiling up at him.
And... kissing him!?
Oh. My. God.
She saw pity in Albus' eyes, and immediately regretted ever telling him how she felt about Scorpius. He stepped towards her, but she turned the other way and... there was the happy couple. She turned to the right, stepping into the throng, letting the crowd push her around until she stepped out and saw the firewhiskey.
Rose didn't normally drink- she had a problem with letting go of all self control. But the sight of Katie Finnegan hanging off of Scorpius was still fresh in her brain, and she would do anything to get rid of it. Even get rip roaring drunk.
By the time she had gotten to her third glass, it didn't burn going down her throat anymore. At her fifth glass, her vision was blurred. By her sixth glass, she was completely disoriented.
Her eighth glass, she was up on a table (one that had magically appeared) and was dancing. Very wildly, very sexily, very badly. But she didn't care, because she was loose. She was having fun. And she didn't even care that she could no longer see Scorpius and Katie. Why should she care, with the eyes of every other male in her class staring at her?
After her dance, she got down off of the table, fell on her ass, got up and laughed very loudly. She then got another glass, only to have it snatched out of her hand.
"Oh no, Rose."
"Albus!"
"I'm cutting you off."
"You can't cut me off! I'm fine!" She slurred, even as Albus doubled, tripled, in front of her eyes.
"Rosie-"
And then she threw up.
"Albus! I'm sorry! I'm so so so sorry, you don't... I'm so... Albus?"
He was gone, of course, gone to clean up the vomit that stained his shirt. Rose forgot about it in a matter of seconds and went and got another glass of firewhiskey.
She didn't know how many glasses she had had before she passed out. All she knew was that one minute, she was dancing, and the next, everything was black.
The first thing she noticed when she woke up was that her head hurt. Intensely. It hurt so much that when she opened her eyes and the light shone through the curtains, she almost screamed, before rummaging her head under the covers once again.
Then she realised that she didn't recognize where she was. What was the last thing that happened? Rose searched her memory, but the last thing she could remember was Scorpius and... oh. Yes. The alcohol. How could she forget?
Bracing herself, she lifted the blankets off of her head. The room was dimly lit, but to Rose it seemed as if a million florescent lights were glaring down at her. She looked around. It was a dormitory, but it wasn't hers. So where was she? And then she clued in.
Everything was green.
What the hell?
"Ah, so you're awake."
And that's when her world fell through, and any shred of self dignity she still had (which was very low after the table dancing) disappeared completely.
Scorpius was leaning against the door frame, an apple in one hand, chewing and looking beautiful, despite the fact that his hair was messy and his eyes were red rimmed. Rose could only imagine what she looked like.
She must have looked confused, because he smiled and walked over to her.
"Do you not remember anything about last night?"
She couldn't answer, though. Of course she couldn't. Because she was in a room with him. She was talking to him, interacting to him. She was... Oh God.
She was sleeping in his bed.
"Rose? Are you alright?"
Snap out of it Rose!
"Yeah, I'm fine. Uh... what happened last night?"
Did she really want to know?
From the look on his face, she could tell she probably didn't.
Scorpius sighed and sat down on the bed at her feet. It took her several minutes to remember how to breathe.
"Other then that you drank your weight in firewhiskey?" She smiled half-heartedly. "What do you remember up to?"
She didn't dare say it. She couldn't bring her mouth to form the words 'kissing' 'you' and 'Katie Finnegan' all in one sentence. She thought hard.
"I was dancing on a table."
He smiled wide. He had a beautiful smile. Very dazzling.
"Ah yes. Well that was quite a show," he said, while rubbing his neck. Rose died, right there, of embarrassment. She actually died. Like, she literally was not breathing anymore.
She was dead.
"Well, after that, I'm not too sure what happened. I think you might have-"
"I threw up on Albus," she said, blushing furiously.
"Oh yes. Well, after that Albus went off to clean up, and then you drank some more. You drank a lot," he said, giving her a look mixed between disbelief, amusement, and awe. "And then you started dancing again, and everyone thought you were going to get up on a table again. But then you kinda... stopped. And then you looked like you were going to hurl again, but then you walked a little, wavered, and just... fell.
"Nobody really noticed, to be honest. But then Katie was dragging me over to somewhere, and then I looked down and you were just lying there, and I called your name and you didn't answer, and then I called your brother over but he had gone off with your friend Rachel, so I revived you and then brought you here."
A whole mess of feelings were going off inside of Rose. She was embarrassed, touched, and ashamed. But that wasn't the end.
"And then... well then I was trying to get you in here, because I didn't know the password to the Head Room or Gryffindor, and Albus was no where to be found... well, then you yelled at me."
Her head snapped up and the colour drained from her cheeks completely.
"What?" She managed to croak. Scorpius smiled dryly, uncomfortably.
"You uh... well you told me I was a twit, and that I had hurt you... and you called Katie a few names I won't mention... and then you kinda raised your arm, like you wanted to hit me, but then you passed out again."
Rose couldn't describe her mortification. She couldn't describe how she felt, sitting there listening to this. Listening to his beautiful voice, speaking those terrible words. After today, she would never see him again. The train left in a few hours. The sun had just come up, after all. She would never see him again, and she had blown it completely.
Before she knew it, she was up and out the door. Luckily it was early enough that nobody was up, and she made her way through the Slytherin Common Room only bumping into one arm chair. However, Scorpius had the advantage of not being ridiculously hung over, nor was he naturally clumsy, and he knew his way around. So he, of course, caught up to her.
"Rose, where are you going?"
"My room," she whispered, determined not to face him.
"Why?"
She turned around, ready to spit out a lie, but looking into his eyes she couldn't think of anything but the truth.
"Because I'm so embarrassed I want to sink into the floor."
He smiled at that, big, and Rose was distracted by his white teeth.
"Rose..."
Someone grunted from the couch, and he glanced over.
"Let's go outside."
Did she really have any other choice but to do what he said?
"Why are you embarrassed?" He asked, and she was confused. Was it not obvious?
"Because of everything you just told me!"
He looked confused, and she imagined confused looked a lot better on him then it did on her.
Every instinct in her body told her to run the other way, but for once in her life she decided not to run away. Because it was the last day- when he rejected her, when was she going to see him again? It was worth a lot, at least to know that she had fought until the end.
"Because you are brilliant. And beautiful. And amazing. And I am awkward, and clumsy, and not beautiful at all. And the only reason I even drank in the first place is because of you, and Katie Finnegan, and the fact that I've been in love with you since like, the first day. And I find it ironic that the reason I feel like crap, the reason I can't look into the light without cringing is you, and yet somehow you're also the good guy. The superhero. Which just makes you that much more unattainable. And it's because you're perfect and unattainable that I like you so much. And this whole speech doesn't make any sense, but that's your fault. You dazzle me. And now I kind of want to die. Or at least go into hiding."
She was switching to topic to topic, and her inspirational speech, the one she had imagined would go down into history, was terrible. Absolutely terrible.
"But it's the last day, ever. Not of the school year. Of school. And I'm never going to see you again. So I figure I might as well tell you this now, if only so in 20 years from now, I'm not going to wonder about what would have happened."
Scorpius took a large breath. Rose braced herself.
"Rose?"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry but... what was the main point from that? Because you were jumping and stammering and trying to follow just did not work out for me. I'm sorry. Could you maybe... paraphrase?"
If her life had of been a movie, Rose would have kissed him. You know, to get her point across. But, since her life wasn't a movie, since it was her life, she didn't kiss him.
She ran.
By the time she stopped running, she was outside by the lake. It was mostly deserted, as it was still relatively early. Rose went and sat beneath a tree, burying her head in her hands and trying not to cry.
Because it hadn't worked. Her not so brilliant, not very eloquent, mess of a speech. It hadn't worked, and in a few hours she would be boarding the Hogwarts Express for the last time, and she would never see him again. Not that that would be a problem, what with that embarrassing spectacle she had made of herself back there. But still- she would never see him again.
When she looked up again he was standing by the edge of the lake, looking for her.
Moving like a ninja, Rose rolled and slammed her legs on the trunk of the tree. Silently cursing herself, she crawled behind the tree instead.
"Rose?"
Dammit. It hadn't worked. Her less then graceful display had alerted him quicker, if anything.
"Rose?"
Rose pressed herself against the tree, wishing, praying, hoping she would disappear.
"Rose." He sounded exasperated, almost. Which was weird- if she was causing him so much trouble, why did he come after her? She could hear him walking, and braced herself. But he stopped on the other side of the tree.
"I know you're there, alright? I saw you roll."
Was it possible to turn any redder? It was if she was permanently blushing.
"Here me out. Deal?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
"I mulled over your speech in my head. And I think I've got it mostly figured out. For one, I'm not any of those things you said I was, Rose. You were exaggerating, slightly, I think."
"Was not," she muttered under her breath. She couldn't see him smile.
"And as for the matter of Katie Finnegan, well... all those names you called her? They were pretty accurate. Not that you can probably remember what it was exactly you called her, but I think your imagination should be sufficient in that matter.
"I'm not a super hero, Rose. Nor am I the good guy.
"But what bugs me the most about your speech, Rose, is the way you make yourself out to be. The way it's so obvious that you think you're ugly, stupid, worthless. If you see yourself in that light, Rose, everyone is going to see you that way. And that would be a real shame, because it's not true."
When Rose opened her eyes, he was kneeling down in front of her. She hadn't heard him move (and deep down, where she wasn't so mortified, and yet so confused, she felt a little jealous that he could move so silently).
"You're brilliant Rose- you're the top of every class, and you can't argue with that. And you mean something. To a lot of people. To your friends, to your family. To Albus, who almost never stops talking about you. To me."
Her eyes widened, but he wasn't done.
"And you're beautiful. So beautiful some people probably hate you for it. But the funny thing is you don't even know that. You don't know how beautiful you are, which makes you even more beautiful."
He reached out a hand and tucked a piece of red hair behind her ear. Her skin burned where he touched her.
"And you might not believe it, but thinking that this was the last time I would ever see you, that killed me."
Wait, that wasn't right!
"No," she said, and Scorpius looked confused. "No, that's not right. Because you don't know me. You only know I exist because of Albus. You don't know me. Not enough to miss me."
Scorpius laughed at that. A beautiful, musical sound, that made Rose want to laugh. But now was really not the time to laugh.
"I thought you were smart, Rose?" And then he smiled, and did the most amazing thing. Ever.
He leaned over, placed both hands on either sides of her face, resting on the tree trunk, and kissed her.
It was an amazing kiss, filled with passion, and yet tenderness, and Rose was in her glory.
Except Rose couldn't kiss back.
It wasn't like she didn't want to- she did. She would have superglued him to her lips, if she could have. But she was frozen. Literally frozen, so that she couldn't move, she could only sit there while he worked his magic. When he finally pulled away (she was torn between upset and grateful- she hadn't breathed in at least a minute) she didn't know what to do. The only thing she could think of was, "wait, you like me?" To which Scorpius laughed and kissed her again.
And she kissed back this time.
She doesn't hate the summers so much anymore. Because even though she doesn't have school to look forward to, the summers are better. Because she isn't stealing glances at him at dinner; she's openly staring at him while he strokes her face, wondering why he's still with her. She isn't altering her schedule to pass him in the halls- she's altering her schedule to go out with him, to spend time with him. And when she's staring at him, he's staring back.
School had a lot of things. But it didn't have Scorpius Malfoy. Not like this.