Author's Note: This story is rated M due to violence/mature themes. The pairing is indeed Rose/Scorpius, but they won't get together for a while, so just bear with me. The other stuff should be interesting. I don't own anyone but Isabella Zabini and anyone who doesn't have the last name of one of J.K. Rowling's characters. Enjoy!

Prologue

Rose Weasley was in a foul temper, not exactly an unusual state of affairs, but much less common this early in the school year. Her red, wavy hair was especially frizzy, her brown eyes dark with ill temper. Her friends and family could not muster up the courage to penetrate the black cloud of wrath surrounding her until dinnertime, at which point her cousin Albus Potter cleared his throat and said, "Er, Rose? Is something wrong? You've been stewing all day."

"We're worried about you," his sister Lily Potter added.

Rose sighed. "Yes, something is wrong." She scowled. "Just because he's the Head Boy—you know how I broke it off with Demetri last year?"

The Potter-Weasley clan nodded. A few winced. Demetri Ivers was the Ravenclaw golden boy, whom Rose had dated for three unstable months before deciding that hearing one's boyfriend talk about himself all the time was not worth said boyfriend's status and good looks, and this year he had been chosen as Head Boy. And then Rose had been chosen as one of the Gryffindor prefects—that alone had been worrying, because no matter what Demetri told his friends, the breakup hadn't been mutual.

"He's decided to take revenge on me," Rose continued, putting her head in her hands. Her cousins, brother and friends huddled closer around her. "He's—" the rest of her sentence was inaudible, drowned by her palms covering her mouth.

"Er… what?" asked Hugo, her brother. "Sorry, I couldn't—"

"He's forcing me to patrol with Scorpius Malfoy. Twice a week! For an hour each time!"

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Lily laughed and said, "That's not so bad. I mean, will you look at him? That boy is sexy." She ignored the looks and eye-rolls from her male relatives.

Rose glared blackly at her. "I have, and that's not the point," she said icily.

Albus looked uncomfortable. After all, Scorpius was one of his best friends. It had mostly been Scorpius who had gotten him to accept that he was a Slytherin, and that that didn't mean he had to be evil or obsessed with pure blood. "Look, Rose—I'll talk to him. He'll be civil for my sake. If you are."

Rose gave him a cynical look. "Thanks, Al, but you won't exactly be there to monitor him. And it'd just scare me to see him being nice to me."

Albus smiled. "Oh, he's not all that mean to you. He does like you, you know."

Rose's eyebrows went to her hairline. "Really?"

The smile grew into a smirk reminiscent of the subject of their conversation. "In an 'isn't-it-fun-to-piss-her-off' kind of way."

"Oh, how charming," Rose said dryly.

"Well, whatever happens, it'll work out somehow," said Hugo. "Cheer up."

Rose smiled at her brother but replied, "I doubt it."

James snorted. "Look, Malfoy can be a git, but you'll be okay. It's not like you have to talk to him. It'll be unpleasant, but you won't die." And with the final word given by the eldest among them, the discussion ended, leaving Rose resigned to her fate but a little cheered nonetheless. She'd get through it. Demetri couldn't stay mad at her forever, right?