Disclaimer: JKR should probably sue me.

I.

Rose Weasley didn't drink.

In the middle of fifth year when she caught her drunken boyfriend snogging a scantily clad Ravenclaw at a Quidditch victory party, she chucked her glass of firewhiskey at his head. Several days later, when her tears had dried up and she'd hexed his hair blinding fuchsia, she decided that the Hogwarts party scene was too bourgeoisie and mainstream for her anyway.

She opted instead for barefoot evenings spent outdoors, where the acoustics were awful but the sky was as pretty as the cute, curly-haired Hufflepuff boy playing guitar by the lake. She sipped herbal dragonfruit tea with likeminded, cultured individuals, and choked on French cigarettes—the thin, slim ones that she rolled herself and slipped between her reddened lips but never lit out of fear that the wrath of the entire Potter-Weasley clan would descend upon her.

She dyed her hair blonde and it looked horrid, dyed it brown and felt as if she wasn't getting enough attention, and spent twenty galleons at a salon returning it to its natural color.

She was a freckled, loud-mouthed jumble with a verbose vocabulary, but she fervently hoped that when you stepped back and took it all in, the view was rather different.

Scorpius Malfoy lived to drink.

He slammed down shots of Ogden's finest while his mates cheered him on, and choked on homegrown sophorous hemp that he smoked through the elegant, snake-shaped pipe he had procured at Borgin and Burke's. He liked racing brooms, wagering, and girls, in that order. He was running through life too brashly, too impulsively, and some days he woke up and wondered if it was all going too quickly, or if the next time he toked up would inadvertently be the last.

Hogwarts was a political incubator for Malfoy men, and he had vague, hazy plans to be someone some day, but as it was he figured that if he got through school with mediocre marks, he could bum off his substantial family fortune until he decided to make something of himself. The Malfoy name had been dragged through the mud, but due to the buying power at the family's disposal, their political sway remained unscathed.

Rose Weasley liked metaphors almost as much as she liked quoting philosophers that she didn't entirely understand, and she thought there was something to be said for falling hopelessly in love with the son of your father's ridiculously-attractive-yet-tortured-and-sometimes-evil schoolyard enemy.

There was a time when she'd liked to think of the arc of fate curving neatly into a circle, tying her and Scorpius together.

Scorpius Malfoy didn't know what metaphors were.

He didn't want to fall in love. He liked to think of the future as being endless and unplotted; he reveled in the notion that this was the youngest he'd ever be and that this very moment was the only moment there was. It scared him that he had decades ahead of him, and that one day his hairline would recede like his father's, and wrinkles would crease his skin. In the back of his mind, there lurked the even scarier thought that he never truly planned on being that old.

He did his best not to notice the daughter of his father's awkwardly-attractive-yet-heroic-and-sometimes-tolerable schoolyard enemy.

Rose was a self-proclaimed artist and part-time activist. She protested the mistreatment of house elves, wrote largely ignored treatises on the inequity of the wizarding economy, and volunteered at St. Mungo's. She wanted to be an artist, or a writer, "or something like that."

Mostly she imagined herself as an adult, sitting in a cozy flat while rain pelted at the windows as she sipped tea and smoked cigarettes and wrote pages and pages. And if she imagined her future self as being perhaps a bit skinnier with nicer skin and hair that'd been tamed, she didn't bother to correct herself.

Rose came from a family of war heroes.

Scorpius was, first and foremost, a Malfoy, a member of a family that was considered a traitor to both sides.

Sometimes he worried that that was all he was.

Rose was happy. There were paint stains on her hands and colorful pins in her hair, and she took pride in the fact that her socks never matched.

Scorpius was tired. He'd never met a girl like Rose Weasley, and it was very likely that he never would have were it not for the unexpected events of August the 15th, when the trajectory of his life and the shapeless decades stretching before him were irrevocably altered by a chance encounter—but more on that later.

Rose Weasley woke up with a throbbing headache a few weeks into the summer before her final year at Hogwarts. She was up until three the night before attempting to perfect the impressionist piece she'd been working on for a fund-raising auction hosted by SPEW. In typical Rose style, she complained loudly and theatrically until her exasperated mother permitted her to ease the pain with magic.

It was when her magic didn't work that she realized that perhaps, something was wrong.

It happened that quickly.

At seventeen, Rose exited a healing clinic alone, pink-kneed and ashen-faced. There were orphaned thoughts in her mind and crumpled papers in her fist. She walked aimlessly for several blocks, entered a drugstore and bought a pack of nondescript, muggle cigs. She lit one and smoked it.

And then another, and another, until the pale, blonde boy that'd been eyeing her spoke up and asked her why in Merlin's name she was lighting cigarettes with her wand in the middle of London. Rose responded by kicking him in the shin.

And that, incidentally, is where our story begins.

II.

For them, though, the Rose-and-Scorpius story began long before that, before they'd even met one another—it began during the sorting ceremony of their first year attending Hogwarts, when the new crop of first years stood huddled in the Great Hall, awaiting their placement. This particular year, the Headmistress herself had deigned to overlook the sorting.

"Malfoy, Scorpius!"

Dominique Weasley poked her cousin.

"Look," she hissed. "It's Malfoy's son."

Rose watched curiously as eleven year old Scorpius walked stiffly to the front of the hall. His robes were pressed and his hair slicked back. He looked ridiculous, Rose decided, and mentally downgraded his academic threat level on the basis that someone who put in that much effort to make their hair shiny probably didn't have time to read books.

Albus was standing to her left doing his best not to look nervous. This, apparently, involved muttering under his breath and hopping up and down anxiously.

Rose elbowed him in the ribs.

"Merlin's beard!" he yelped.

She elbowed him again. "Don't be so loud, Al," she scolded. "And stop prancing."

He pushed his dark fringe out of his emerald eyes and did his best to level her with a disdainful glare, the result being that he appeared to be cross-eyed.

Rose was contemplating elbowing him again when Headmistress McGonagall's voice carried through the hall:

"Potter, Albus!"

"Bugger," he muttered as he disappeared into the crowd of first years ahead of them. Rose felt of twinge of nervousness on his behalf—but not much—if he was sorted into Slytherin, she and Dom had made plans to tease him mercilessly.

Dominique went minutes later, and then it was Rose's turn to take the centuries old walk to the front and wear the hat. She grinned shakily, awaiting its judgment.

Ah, another Weasley!

Why yes, hello! Rose thought brightly.

Well, well, well, said the hat a bit more ominously than an article of casual headwear had any right to, as it sifted through her mind.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the sorting ceremony that year was that despite the speculative whispers among the students, everything went as expected: Scorpius Malfoy was sorted to Slytherin, Albus Potter and Rose Weasley to Gryffindor, and Dominique Weasley to Ravenclaw.

Rose thought it was best to sit with other first years so they could make friends, and so she dragged Al with her and they seated themselves next to the other students in their year. Her plan had failed miserably when James Potter and Fred Weasley came over moments later and squashed two unsuspecting first years in their eagerness to be seated next to Rose and Al.

James slapped his brother on the back when the feast began. Twice, for good measure.

"Welcome to the club, old boy," he said, smirking attractively (or so he thought—there was chocolate sauce on his chin and his hair was refusing to acknowledge gravity's pull).

Rose, having resigned herself to James and Fred's presence, decided to pitch in and assist them. She slapped Albus, too, causing him to choke on his pudding.

"Yeah, welcome, old boy!" she exclaimed.

Albus spluttered nonsensically at her with a betrayed look on his face. James, on the other hand, reached down and ruffled Rose's ginger curls with a teary-eyed look of pride.

"This is going to be a wonderful year," he sighed.

"This is what we've been waiting for," Fred added.

"Precisely what we've been waiting for," James said.

"What do you mean?" asked Albus warily.

"Look over there," James said, nudging Al hard enough that he got a face full of pudding.

Seeing as Albus was preoccupied with trying to wipe his face clean and simultaneously curse out his brother while armed with only the vocabulary of an eleven-year old ("You smell, James. I hate you for all time."), Rose looked to where James was pointing instead.

"Ew," she said, wrinkling her nose. "You mean Malfoy's son? Why is he going to make this the best year ever?"

"Because now we have an enemy," Fred explained, grinning manically. Rose edged away from him.

"Er, what?"

"You see," said James wisely, "last year we had no one to prank. We didn't have an arch-nemesis. Where's the fun in pranking and mischief if you don't have a target?"

Rose opened her mouth to speak.

"Exactly," James said, cutting her off. "There is none."

Fred nodded reverently.

"But now there's a Malfoy at Hogwarts," James finished, as if this explained everything.

Rose frowned. "I'm not going to let you bully him," she said, perhaps a bit too fiercely.

It was a well-intentioned comment; toying with Al was one thing, and she heartily approved of it, but going out of one's way to harass someone that wasn't a member of the Potter-Weasley clan was entirely different. It was mean.

"You're not defending him, are you?" James asked, aghast.

"He hasn't even done anything—what would I be defending him for?" Rose asked, rolling her eyes.

Fred's mouth had dropped open, and he was looking back and forth between Rose and the Slytherin table. "Wait a moment," he said, "I'm having a revelation here. You like him."

James threw up his hands in feigned shock and knocked Albus's glasses into a bowl of cabbage soup.

"What?" Rose gaped, but it was too late; the damage was done. A flurry of whispers started up among the girls at the Gryffindor table.

"Merlin—wouldn't it be so bloody cute—"

"A Weasley and a Malfoy? Bollocks—"

"It's like, poetic justice! It just, like, makes so much sense."

And perhaps, the most eloquent of them all: "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god."

Rose blinked in surprise. The pale, blonde boy that was sitting by himself and stabbing at the food on his plate held exactly zero appeal to her. Well, maybe it did look like he could use a friend, and a hug or two, and perhaps some advice on how to style his hair better—but for Merlin's sake, she didn't even know him.

She opened her mouth to say just that. "Don't be stupid," she said, shaking her head dismissively, "I don't even know—"

But it didn't matter, because it seemed that Albus had finally lost it and punched James, and no one was paying attention to her anymore.

As her two moronic cousins grappled with one another and rolled off the bench, Rose eyed the boy at the Slytherin table. He was rather cute, she decided. And there definitely was something rather poetic about a Malfoy and a Weasley living happily ever after together. Sure, according to her entire family, Malfoy men were generally massive gits, but they probably had secret soft sides, because according to muggle television, all gits did, right?

She made up her mind.

Maybe she had watched a few too many soap operas with Grandpa Weasley, but when her plate had been cleared and the first year Gryffindors were being herded off, eleven-year-old Rose looked over her shoulder, let her gaze linger on the somber-looking Scorpius Malfoy, and mentally commanded:

You will be mine.

III.

What the hell was she doing?

He'd been watching her as the August sun beat down on him for what felt like ages now. To be fair, Scorpius wasn't entirely sure why he was still here when his father was likely expecting him at the box, but at least he wasn't waving his wand around in one of London's many parks for all to see.

She clearly wasn't much of a smoker. It was a bit pathetic the way she'd nearly lit the wrong end, and then coughed for a full minute after she'd finally managed to get the right side in her mouth.

The oddest part of this whole situation was that she hadn't noticed him yet. They were sitting on the same bloody bench, for Dumbledore's sake, but she hadn't bothered to look up since she'd thrown herself down and extracted a pack of cigs from her pocket. Of course he'd noticed her the moment she'd entered his field of vision; it was impossible not to notice the Weasleys—they were so damned loud and ginger.

But this one was surprisingly subdued, especially considering it was her.

Scorpius didn't have a least favorite Weasley. Actually, strike that, he did. Fred Weasley was easily at the bottom of the list, but considering he'd graduated this June, Rose had replaced him. He scarcely knew her, despite having had classes with her for the past six years…but that was his own doing. They'd been good friends, long ago; then in third year they'd simply started to drift. They argued over petty things, and it seemed that they had nothing in common.

Then he'd heard all the bloody idiotic, sentimental rumors about how he and the Weasley girl were madly in love, and in around fourth year when he'd discovered that arguing with her only gave the rumors more traction, he'd settled for ignoring her. It was challenging since she was so bloody infuriating most of the time, but it was still better than arguing because that involved actually speaking to her, and that might have entailed getting to know her.

He knew he was being a bit unfair. Most people seemed to get along with her just fine, and Scorpius even got on famously well with her cousin, Albus. It was just that blasted gossip that he didn't like. If wind of it ever got back to his father, he'd likely be disowned (okay, maybe that was a small exaggeration, but still, his father would be mad). It had occurred to him in the past that Rose Weasley was just as much a victim of the gossips of Hogwarts in this situation as he was, but he'd always dismissed the thought quickly because it left him feeling uncomfortably aware that if that were true, the way he'd behaved towards her for several years now was inexcusable.

What it really came down to at this moment, though, was the fact that he'd been sitting at this particular bench first, so it wasn't his job to alert her to his presence. She was supposed to realize he was here and leave. Only she didn't, and when she pulled out a fourth cigarette and brandished her wand in plain sight of a group of children running past the park bench they were seated at, Scorpius began to wonder if something was wrong.

He cleared his throat meaningfully.

She didn't even look up.

"Put that away," he hissed.

Rose glanced up, then did a double-take, her eyes widening in disbelief as she recognized him.

"You!" she said, lurching to her feet.

He rolled his eyes at her theatrics. "Yes, it's me. Now put your bloody wand away," he repeated, lowering his voice to a whisper. "If you're so eager to be a chain smoker, use this." He dug into his pocket and pulled out the lighter he always had on him.

She pushed it away, but continued glaring down at him. "What are you doing here?"

He snorted. "I've been here all along, love. You're the one that came and decided to invade my personal space."

Rose's cheeks flushed with anger. "Oh? So you're speaking to me now?"

He shrugged. "What are you doing here?" he asked, looking her up and down with undisguised curiosity.

Her frizzy curls were pulled back in a braid, and she wore a green dress. Her face was blotchy, though, and her skin sickly pale. There were bags beneath her eyes.

"You look like shit," he observed dryly, upon realizing she had no plans to answer his question.

Her mouth tightened about the corners, and Scorpius couldn't help thinking that despite it all, she looked cute. That thought lasted about a quarter second before her foot connected painfully with his shin, and Scorpius found himself on his knees. Shit, fuck, shit. That hurt.

"What the fuck is your problem, Weasley?" he spat, blinking up at her as the sun blinded him. He was too stunned by this rapid turn of events to even go for his wand. To her credit, she seemed horrified by her impulsiveness as well. She reached down and grabbed his hand, unceremoniously dragging him to his feet. He staggered back, and resumed sitting.

"I'm so terribly sorry. I genuinely don't know where that spurt of violence arose from," Rose said worriedly, wringing her hands and looking as if she were on the verge of tears.

Sweet Merlin, what had he done to deserve the company of an emotionally unstable Weasley? Scorpius brushed imaginary dirt off his jeans, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He'd forgotten that she often talked like a particularly uptight dictionary.

"It's…whatever," he said, hoping she would leave rather than stick around and embarrass herself further. She didn't. "Off you go," he said, helpfully making shooing motions with his hand, but she just frowned at him crossly.

She sat down again. Scorpius buried his face in his hands. He had no problem being a prick to her at school when there was an audience—that was normal. But here in the middle of London, surrounded by muggles, turning up the Malfoy arrogance and being an arse to her didn't feel like a sound option.

Both of them sat in silence until Rose spoke up.

"So what are you doing here?"

Scorpius chuckled wryly. Apparently she was here to stay. To hell with it. I'll humor her. "My parents are at the theater about a block away. I snuck out during the intermission and I don't plan on heading back."

"The show's that awful?"

He shook his head. "Worse."

"Hm," she said, kicking her heels against the underside of the bench. "I was at the healing clinic a few blocks away."

Scorpius simply nodded. He wasn't entirely sure why she'd suddenly been struck by the urge to talk to him, but he did have a vague idea. There was obviously something on her mind, if the chain smoking and random mood swings were anything to judge off of. He was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time: Rose Weasley needed someone to talk to, and he was the only one present. It seemed as if it was something fairly serious, too—something that transcended their schoolyard bickering.

He looked up. Rose was peering at him meaningfully, clearly expecting some sort of response. Shit. What was he supposed to say? He scarcely knew her—they had practically nothing in common. On any given night at Hogwarts he'd either be with his friends or out on the Quidditch pitch, and she'd be…what, reading poetry? Painting? Being weird in general?

The only reason people even recognized her was because of her family.

"Er, do you want me to go and fetch Albus?" Scorpius asked hopefully. That'd be better for all concerned parties. He'd be free to go, and Albus, being a family member, would be obligated to deal with his distraught cousin.

"Whatever for?" Her tone was distinctly accusatory.

"No reason," he muttered, not bothering to conceal the fact that he'd rather be anywhere but here.

"My visit to the clinic went wonderfully, thank you for asking," Rose said, a good minute later.

"Oh yeah?" Scorpius asked, a note of amusement in his voice. She resumed staring down at her feet in silence. Bugger this. He stood up. "S'pose I should be heading back now. My father'll be expecting me."

"Farewell, then," Rose said, not even bothering to lift her head. He almost felt a bit worried as he walked away. But then, she had her gigantic cult of Weasleys and Potters and Lovegoods to look after her.

She'd be fine.

IV.

What the fuck is your problem, Weasley?

Rose was not a woman of few words. On any other day she would've listed a litany of complaints before he had a chance to get a word in edgewise. She didn't have one problem; she had several. Her nail polish was chipping, she'd forgotten to change Sir Theodore's litter, she'd lost the prompt for her Potions summer assignment, her favorite muggle band had cancelled its tour, and she'd discovered quite recently (that morning, in fact) that the healers thought she was ill, and that she would receive her diagnostic results tomorrow.

She watched Scorpius walk away and tried very hard not to ogle his shoulder muscles or the fit of his jeans. There was really nothing likable about him, if one discounted the fact that he had startling eyes, was obscenely wealthy, and upsettingly good looking.

Rose sighed. That thought had started much better than it had ended. She'd much preferred him when he'd been shy and sweet and they'd been friends. She didn't like the new, cynical version of him. For a moment there she'd been so bloody angry when he'd insulted her. You look like shit.

She hadn't been offended. It simply wasn't right for a man to comment on a lady's appearance like that—but even then, she'd simply felt robbed. Her friend from years ago was gone just when she needed a friend the most. Her visit to the clinic had been disconcerting. The cool linoleum floors and white walls, the scent of illness and the arsenal of medications used to treat it had all shaken her. She'd come alone because there was something singularly embarrassing about her magic not working. She didn't want to confess and tell anyone something that was so intimately humiliating.

The medi-witches had been kind, though, and Rose had felt compelled to tell them the entire story. She got headaches frequently, but never as badly as the one she'd woken up with today. They'd questioned her endlessly, asking her about her stress-level, her family life, her sexual activity, until she confessed that the headaches weren't the sole cause for her presence at the clinic. The medi-witches had almost seemed relieved that she hadn't been wasting their time by coming there.

Headaches were treatable. You could take a potion to ease the pain. Rose knew that. But there weren't many potions that could restore someone's magic. When she'd told them about how laboriously she'd had to work to try and dull the throbbing ache in her head, about how she'd been left gasping for breath by the time she'd been able to cast a simple spell, their relief had disappeared. Their smiles had slipped.

She'd been led away for a battery of tests. Rose really wasn't that fond of needles, so that had been a rather unpleasant experience.

She was seventeen, and so they hadn't alerted her parents when she'd shown up unannounced, but when the bill for the tests was owled to her, she didn't have the faintest idea where she'd get the money to pay for it. And if it turned out that she was ill—well, she didn't want to dwell on that just yet.

Now there was nothing to do but wait. She'd been angry at first. She'd always made healthy choices; she didn't drink, didn't smoke, ate organic food—for Merlin's sake, she had her own vegetable garden—and despite that, she was faced with this. She'd lit her first cigarette with her wand as a sign of rebellion to prove that she still had control over her magic, and had thought nothing of lighting another, and when she'd looked up and seen him in the middle of London, it had seemed like fate, like a new chance—a new beginning.

Rose knew how these things worked. She'd read enough romance novels to recognize that she was currently a damsel in distress, and Scorpius's sudden appearance clearly indicated that he was going to be her knight.

But she'd been mistaken. He hadn't even wanted to talk to her.

It was quite some time later when Rose returned to her room at the Burrow. She stripped her dress from her sweaty skin and stepped into the shower, letting the cool water wash over her, and resolved to forget all about their chance encounter. Rose Weasley may have been optimistic enough to root for the Cannons every year, but she wasn't truly foolish.

She'd learned from experience that it wasn't a good idea to pin one's hopes on Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy.

But she knew she hadn't give up on him yet.

A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Review if you'd like! :)