Rose's third year at Hogwarts started much as the first two had. Hugo was anxious to go with her, and she had to remind him that he only had one more year to wait, and then both he and Lily could be sorted. Her parents hugged her and told her not to get into too much trouble – she had told them some, but not all, of what had happened the previous year – and she promised she'd be careful, though her father did whisper that if she got into any more adventures, she'd have to tell them absolutely everything.
"Our glory days are over," he told her. "Let us live vicariously through you just a little, all right?"
"Okay," Rose said with a laugh, as her mother elbowed him gently in the ribs. "See you at Christmas!" she called as the train blew its whistle, and along with everyone else, she ran to board it and make sure she could find a compartment with her friends.
Ruby had grown still more over summer, and though Rose had outgrown all her clothes from last year, she had the feeling that she wasn't going to be growing much more. Right now her chin reached Ruby's shoulder, and as they hugged in greeting, Ruby gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. Rose had almost forgotten the butterflies in her stomach from the last kiss, and she was sure her grin wasn't just from seeing her old friend again.
"How was your summer?" Ruby asked as she pulled Rose into a compartment where Albus and Scorpius had already joined them. "And don't tell me about James and Lujayn snogging in every spare corner they could find, because Albus already mentioned that. Tell me about what you did."
"Not much," Rose said. "Mom wouldn't let me go out too far because she said I'd been reckless last year."
"You were," Albus butted in, and Scorpius nodded, but Rose silenced them both with a look.
"But I still managed to have some fun. I brushed up on some third year spells, and Mom let me read all her old textbooks." Some of the information was a little out of date, but that was mostly for the Muggle Studies book, and Rose hadn't signed up for that class, even if some of the older students insisted it was more accurate than it used to be. If she was going to learn about the Muggle world, she would learn about it from Ruby. The other books were good, though, and some were even the ones she needed for her other classes.
"And we got to hang out with Uncle Charlie," Albus said. "All the married couples went off on some vacation from kids."
"It's not like we're that bad," Rose said. Of course, her mother did sometimes get a bit frazzled when she had to keep an eye on all of the Potter-Granger-Weasley clan (as they called themselves), but they weren't nearly as bad as they had been when they were younger.
"What about you, Scorpius?" Ruby asked, before Albus and Rose could chatter away through the whole train ride about what their summer had been like. Rose fell silent, knowing full well that, if given the chance, she and Albus might well do just that, and would have even if neither of the others had been there, or if everyone in the compartment had been at the Burrow with them that summer. "What was your summer like?"
"It was all right," Scorpius said, glancing shyly at his hands. He had grown a bit too, though he still looked kind of like a kid. "Kind of quiet, though. I mostly just spent time with my family and got some studying done." He looked up and met Ruby's gaze. "What about you?"
And then, as though she had been waiting for that moment since the train had started, Ruby launched into a story about how she and her family had gone on a tour of the British Isles, from Wales to Scotland to Ireland, spending a month in each different country. "I just wish we could have spent more time up north," Ruby said, once she had rattled off everything she'd seen and done. "There were people there with hair almost as red as Rose's."
The train rolled into the Hogsmeade station that night as it always did, and the three of them poured out, laughing and showing off their signed permission slips to each other. Ruby was the only one who'd had to beg her parents to sign it; the other three had parents with fond memories of the little village, and they had signed without a second thought. They followed the rest of the students to the carriages drawn by Thestrals and got in one with a fourth year Gryffindor who was making little butterflies appear at the tip of his wand. He smiled at them as they entered, and Rose gave him a cheerful grin back.
"You're Watson, right?" she asked.
"Thomas Watson, yeah," he said, nodding at her. "I really don't need to ask who you are, Miss Granger-Weasley."
"It's Rose," she said. "Granger-Weasley's too long and unwieldy. I've already told my brother to pick one name and stick with it so he doesn't have to deal with what I've had to."
"It's distinguished, though," Thomas said. "Granger-Weasley's a name with history now, like…" His gaze flicked over the other three third years in the carriage. "Like Potter, I guess. People know you."
"Or like Malfoy," Scorpius said, but he spoke so quietly that Rose wasn't sure Thomas would be able to hear him, and maybe that was the point. His gaze was fixed on the window, watching the dark landscape roll by, rocking slightly with the movement of the carriage. She set a hand on his shoulder, and he leaned against her a little, but that could have just been the fact that the carriage tilted at just the right moment.
The scent of cinnamon was overwhelming for a moment, and Rose realized that a red-brown butterfly had settled on her shoulder. When she waved it away, it left a stain on her robe, and on touching the stain and furtively licking her finger, she found that it was made up of the spice. "How did you do that?" she asked.
Thomas held a small chain close to his chest, and said, with surprising determination, "Not now. I'll tell you some other time."
"When?" Rose asked. She didn't care how bold and sharp she was being. Anyone who kept secrets from her was annoying, and she wouldn't let Thomas get away with it, even if he was a year older than her. "Tomorrow?"
"Maybe when you don't have the newest star of the Slytherin Quidditch team treating you like a pillow," Thomas said with a grin, and Scorpius's cheeks grew pink.
"Lay off," Rose snapped, and Thomas blinked, taken aback. "He's my friend, got it? If you have a problem with him, then you might as well not bother showing me how you make those butterflies. I bet I can find out just as well on my own. I'm perfectly skilled at using the library."
Thomas's shocked expression faded quickly, and he smiled again. "I didn't mean any offense by it. Sorry, Malfoy. I'd just rather keep our rivalry going, that's all. It's a lot more fun to play Quidditch when it feels like there are stakes." The carriage stopped, and Thomas was the first one out. "See you on the pitch, Malfoy. You too, Potter." With a wave, he headed off to the castle, with the four of them climbing out after.
"I didn't really expect him to notice me," Ruby said, though she sounded a little bitter. "I mean, I know some people care about Quidditch, and I'm just some younger Ravenclaw."
"I'll sort him out in the common room," Rose said. It was about time she had someone to duel, even if it was only a practice for when she would duel Scorpius in their seventh year. Once the thought had struck her, she hadn't given up on it, and now she was more devoted to it than ever. She just had to tell him about it sometime.
"You'd better," Ruby said, but then she ran off to greet some other Ravenclaws, and Rose was left with Scorpius and Albus.
"Did you mean that?" Scorpius asked quietly. "That I'm your friend?"
"Sure," Rose said. "Why wouldn't I?"
"It's just that we're rivals, and I know we got along last year, but that was just because of Albus and Ruby, and if you didn't want to spend more time with me than you have to, I'd understand." His eyes were downcast, and he spoke quickly, as though wanting the words to be gone as quickly as possible. Rose cut him off with a gentle elbow to the ribs, and he looked up, startled.
"You're my friend, okay? I did say that partly to put that jerk in his place, but that wasn't the only reason. So cheer up, and don't forget that we're going to spend time in the library together." She frowned at him. "Last year you were perfectly happy to spend time with me. What happened?"
"I don't know," he said. "I guess it's just the summer. It's a little weird to remember that I've got friends."
"Well, you do." Rose elbowed him again, and this time he smiled. "I'm going to go find some food. See you around!" With a wave, she ran off to the Gryffindor table and made sure to find a spot pointedly far away from Thomas Watson. She'd show him.
The first week was a rush of trying to get used to everything. The professors had been right; this year was very different and much harder than her second year had been. She had her normal classes – Charms, Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, History of Magic, and Defense Against the Dark Arts – but there were also the classes she had signed up to take at the end of her second year. She got into Care of Magical Creatures with Albus, which made a fox-faced Ravenclaw third year incredibly jealous, as she had wound up in Divination. Rose also made it into Arithmancy with Ruby and Scorpius.
As soon as she could, Rose cornered the other three and found out what they had gotten into. Albus, it turned out, was also in Muggle Studies with Ruby, while Scorpius had gone for Ancient Runes. He didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that he would likely be spending hours with books, and Rose even felt a bit envious and decided to nick some of the books for his class, if only for a few hours at a time.
Having eight classes to deal with, along with trying to stay ahead of Scorpius (and everyone else for that matter) and doing her own research with the group was tiring, and more often than not, Rose went to bed completely exhausted. She wasn't sure where Scorpius would find the energy to also go to Quidditch practices, and if it weren't for the fact that that would give her a slight edge, she would have pitied him. As it was, she just felt a bit bad about taking advantage of that edge.
She wasn't so tired that she would sleep deeply, though, and one night in the second week of September, she woke to the sound of someone knocking on the window to her dormitory. The knocking continued even after she rolled onto her other side, and so she got out of bed, wrapped a dressing robe around herself, and yawned as she walked to the window, thinking that whoever was out there would get a good hexing for waking her up.
When she saw that it was Thomas Watson, she only wanted to hex him all the more.
"Hey, Granger-Weasley," he said with a grin as she opened the window. He sat on a broom and held another in his hand. "Care for a ride?"
"Why are you doing this, Watson?" she asked, but it was hard to resist the thought of a late night ride. The cool air had already woken her up, and she clambered onto the windowsill. Thomas held the broom steady for her until she had climbed on, and then they took off together, swooping around the towers of Hogwarts.
It was a beautiful night, with hundreds of stars and a large full moon shining down on the grounds, illuminating them in an eerie, ethereal light. The lake was still and black, with only a few ripples that might have been nocturnal fish or even the giant squid patrolling near the surface.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked again, but then Thomas led her in a dive over the lake, so close that she had to tuck her feet up to keep her toes from skimming the waters. Thomas didn't seem to care about whether he got his feet wet or not, for he ducked them below the surface, and the spray splashed up above his knees. He threw back his head in a laugh before rising, and Rose followed him up, spiraling like two eagles in a reverse mating flight.
They went all the way across the lake and back, then over the Forbidden Forest a ways, and finally over the castle again, to the Quidditch pitch, which they circled twice before perching on top of Gryffindor Tower.
"Now are you going to tell me?" she asked once they had landed. Thomas sat with his legs dangling over the edge, and Rose joined him, though she felt a bit nervous about the thought of falling. Of course, she still had her broom clutched in her hand, so she knew she could catch herself, and she could probably do it before Thomas bothered to try. If he bothered to try. The jerk.
"Tell you what?" he asked, with that insufferable grin.
"Why we're doing this," Rose said, resisting the urge to slap the back of his head, the way she had used to do with James before he got his growth spurt. "Why did you drag me out of my bed in the middle of the night?"
"Would you rather still be asleep?" he asked.
"Maybe." Her bed had been very comfortable, and she had an essay to turn in the next day that had worn her out because she had put it off until the last minute.
"Tell me the truth," Thomas said, and he scooted a bit closer to her. "After everything that you've seen tonight, after flying over the grounds and looking down at the castle and everyone in it as though they were the smallest things on the world, would you rather be asleep?"
Rose leaned forward and looked down. The first things she saw, of course, were her bare feet with her roughly-clipped toenails, and she wiggled her toes before peering further.
They were higher up than she had ever been, and beneath her – all around her, even – was the castle, the place she would call home for the next several weeks, until Christmas started and she was off to the Burrow again. She was perched above it like a lioness surveying her lands, and she grinned, remembering that it was the lionesses who did the hunting while the lions lazed about.
"No," she said. "I'd rather have seen this."
"I can take you further," he said, and before she could say anything, he added, "further from the castle, I mean. I wasn't going to kiss you or anything, unless you want me to. I'm not trying to hit on you or anything. I just think you're interesting and I want to spend time with you. If we can spend time together in the sky, that's even better. I'll show you the butterflies, too, but not tonight. Some other night, probably."
"I'd like that," Rose said.
"Like what? The flying? The butterflies? The… kissing?" He looked so dumbfounded that Rose had to laugh, and on an impulse, she leaned over and kissed his cheek.
"Any of them, really," she said. "But mostly the flying and the butterflies. Can we arrange those sometime?"
"Yeah!" Thomas said with a grin. "Sometime soon, right? There's a river that leads into the lake, and I've never gone all the way down it, but maybe this year we can go together. Would you like that? Maybe we can find out where the lake comes from. Sound like a plan?"
"Count on it, Watson," she said. "You know where to find me." With a wink, she leaned forward and toppled off the tower.
There was a moment when she thought she wouldn't be able to catch herself, and she heard Thomas's shout, but then she had the broom beneath her and was rising, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. When she returned to the level of the tower, Thomas was standing, holding his broom and looking as though he had been about to leap off and rescue her from certain death.
"I do my own rescuing, Watson," she said, "and I'm holding onto the broom, if it's all right with you." With another grin and wink, she circled Gryffindor Tower before flying through the window into her dormitory.
It had been a foolish thing for her to do, but as she closed the window and walked back to her bed on shaking legs, she found herself grinning. That was the most fun she'd had since the pirates left, and she couldn't wait to do it again. No one seemed to have woken, and so she stuck her broom under her bed, dropped her robe onto her trunk to put away in the morning, and nestled into her blankets.
If things went as well as they were going now, then her third year at Hogwarts would be her best year yet.