Prologue
Rose Weasley walked into the Great Hall on December 23 and sat down in her usual seat at the Gryffindor table. As if on cue, dozens upon dozens of owls began streaming into the room from the enormous window above the head table, dropping mail in front of students from each of the four houses.
She gazed longingly at the snowy, barn, and brown owls as they flew around the hall. She'd been begging her parents for an owl since first year, but they always came up with some excuse as to why she couldn't have one.
"It's too much to handle," her mum would say. "You already have so much going on at school this year. You're a prefect with Kevin Thomas, you're captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and need I mention the nine N.E.W.T. level classes you're taking?"
Rose tried to explain that she was perfectly capable of handling all of that and more, but that didn't even matter, because her mum simply would not listen. Not even when Rose told her that the owls lived in the Owlery and that it wouldn't take much for Rose to take care of one did her mother's opinion sway.
Her dad was even worse. He would just side with his wife and tell Rose that she could just borrow James or Dom's owl. Not that there was anything wrong with using Dom's owl, but it would be so much nicer to have her own, and her parents wouldn't even consider the idea!
Rose was pulled out of her thoughts when a large grey owl zoomed down into her breakfast plate, splattering maple syrup from her pancakes onto her robes and hair. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased.
"James." She spoke softly, her voice wavering with anger. "would you please explain to me why, after almost seven years," she was yelling now, "you still haven't found the time to teach your damn owl how to fly?" Her voice dripped with contempt.
Now, if there was one this that scared James Potter, it was an angry Rose Weasley. "Er, listen Rose, I'm really sorry. Aeolus isn't the best at landing, you know that. He's not the best at flying, either. Or navigation. And he doesn't always come back…. But come on Rose, this isn't my fault!" The younger girl glared at him.
Fred called from where he and Al were sitting with their buddies a few seats down from her. "Come on, Rosie-posie, lighten up!"
If looks could kill, Fred would have been hit with killing curse, then had so many strange muggle weapons used on him that nobody would be able to tell if he was even a human being. Rose wasn't fond of her childhood nickname, but Fred, Al, Louis, Hugo, and James would seemingly never stop calling her that, if only because it annoyed her so much.
Rose looked down at her robes and sighed. She couldn't walk around in these all day! Once, just once, Rose would have liked to be able to sit down and enjoy breakfast just like everyone else did. Evidently, today was not that day.
She looked up and down the table, wishing to find any one of her friends to come back upstairs with her so she could change. Rose watched Lily and her best friend, Daisy Longbottom, as they debated whether Professor Dorian, their Transfiguration teacher, and Professor O'Riley, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, would ever be able to have a civil conversation.
"Daisy, come on, everyone knows that they hated each other in school. Why would they get along now?" Lily tried to explain.
"Oh, really?" Daisy questioned. "Because, if I recall, Rose and Scorpius couldn't stand each other for most of the time we've all been in school, and they're friends now."
Scorp jumped in, smiling. "A bit more than friends, I'd say."
It was true. Last April, Scorp and Rose had kissed at Hogsmeade, totally out of the blue, and they'd been going out ever since. Nobody had known about them until Halloween, but it became a bit obvious to all of the Weasley and Potter cousins that the two were dating when they came to the Halloween Ball together. Daisy and Lily, along with Rose's friends Alina Wood and Pammie Finnegan, claimed to have known long before the ball, but everyone knew they hadn't.
The ball had become an annual tradition about ten years ago, when Teddy and Victoire were still in school. The goal was, as always, to promote house unity. Of course, some good it did. The only people who'd been "united" by the ball were James and another Hufflepuff girl he'd been crushing on since third year, Amanda Finch-Fletchley. Professor Dorian had found them in the potions storeroom having a bit more than just a snog and gave them each a month of detention. Separately.
That had been a bit of a blow for James, and he hadn't been acting quite like himself lately. Rose thought he was just embarrassed about being caught with Amanda, because every time Rose and her friends were close by, he clammed up and became very awkward.
Of course, Hugo, James, Al, Louis, and Fred weren't too happy with Rose and Scorp's little announcement. Al had actually hit Scorp so hard in the head he was out of class for almost a week!
It had been hard to keep their relationship a secret from their parents, but they were finally going to tell them over Christmas, since Scorpius was coming to the Burrow anyway. After all, he was best friends with Fred and Al.
Rose was worried about how her parents would react over the next two weeks, while they were home. She knew they loved Scorpius, but her father's temper was not something she would enjoy having to deal with on Christmas.
Looking up the table in the other direction, Rose saw her roommates Alina and Pammie sitting with Dom and her friends from seventh year, eating low-fat yogurt and fruit. She groaned at their girly-ness and grabbed an enormous banana chocolate chip muffin, which she estimated would be around nine hundred calories before walking over to her girlfriends. Rose had a perfect body no matter how much she ate, so she didn't understand the concept of trying to eat well to lose weight.
"Hey," she greeted everyone, taking a bite out of her muffin. "Can one of you please, please, please come upstairs with me? James's owl –"
"Yeah, we saw," Pammie called, not even letting Rose finish her sentence.
"Oh, Pammie," Rose muttered to herself. "Always one to be frank."
Alina giggled. Apparently she'd heard her friend's little remark. "I'll come with you." She grabbed an extra strawberry yogurt and started walking out of the hall with Rose. Before they could make it very far, Roxie called out to them from where the fifth years were sitting.
"Rose! You forgot your letter!"
Of course! The whole syrup situation with the owl had made Rose totally forget about the letter that Aeolus had been trying to deliver! She ran over to her seat to make sure no one else got to the letter before she did. If that envelope contained what she thought it did, she wanted everything to be a surprise. That meant Scorpius couldn't know, Alina and Pammie couldn't know, even Al and Dom, her favorite cousins still in school, couldn't find out. Or, at least not yet. They'd find out tomorrow when everyone arrived at the Burrow.
"Rose!" Alina was still waiting for her by the door out of the Great Hall. "Let's go. We have Herbology first and Neville will flip if we're late."
Rose caught up with her, and they left the Great Hall, beginning to make their way up to Gryffindor tower. She smiled. "What happened to calling him Professor Longbottom while we are at school?"
"Who cares? I take that as a suggestion. It's more like, 'call him Professor Longbottom while you're at school, but only if your parents, another teacher, or someone who doesn't know him on a first name basis is the person you are talking to. And only during the school year.'"
"Wouldn't it be easier to just call him Professor all the time at school? Even Daisy does that!"
"Oh, Rose, it's the principle of the thing! It's annoying to call him Professor, so I don't. At home, I call Pastor Fredrickson by his first name, just not to his face. My mum does, too."
Deciding it would be better to just let it go than attempt to win an argument with Alina, Rose walked in silence the rest of the way up to Gryffindor Tower.
"Password," the Fat Lady grumbled, angry for being interrupted during her conversation with her best friend, Violet.
"It's, uhhh…. Oh, that would be…maybe not, is it? No, the password is…. No, that's not right." Alina stammered to herself.
Emma Creevey pushed both girls aside. "Jingle Bells," she said, and the painting swung off to the side. Rose and Alina got up and dusted themselves off.
"It's amazing how much of a bitch she is when Dennis is so nice to everyone!" Rose growled.
Alina snickered. "It's not that hard to believe when Romilda Vane is her mother!" The two girls giggled.
"Achem," the Fat Lady cleared her throat. "Will you two be going inside, or do I have to wait here, open, when a student from another house could slip in at any moment?" she yelled.
"Sorry!" They cried, and ran inside so Rose could change her robes. She ran over to the staircase on the left and started climbing up. Alina went up the staircase on the right, and didn't even notice her friend go up the other side.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Rose slid down the stairs as they changed into a slide and the Wailing Klaxon started screaming.
Alina walked back down the stairs and met her friend, crumpled up into a ball, at the bottom of the transfigured staircase. "Went up the boy's side again?"
Rose got up and began walking up the correct staircase. "It's instinct."
"Really? Because that's a bit pathetic. It's more instinct for you to go up to the guy's dorms than to go to your own? And besides, you should be used to that happening by now. It's been a year and a half."
"I don't get why they left the jinx on the staircase! Why did they do it in here anyway? She was a Slytherin, and she graduated last year!"
On the first night of Rose's fifth year, after everyone had gone back to their rooms but before they had fallen asleep, a certain Slytherin seventh year came into the seventh year boys' dorm and was harassing them, to say the least. By morning, the same jinx that kept boys off of the girls' staircase in each house had been added to each boys' staircase. And it was all because of Nancy Zabini.
Well, technically no one knew why, but Scorpius and Nancy were family friends, and he'd known her since he was a kid. Apparently Nancy's mum, Pansy, had been almost as bad as Nancy when she was in school. "Like mother, like daughter," he'd told Rose.
"Rose, are you done yet? We only have five minutes to make it down to Herbology!" Alina called from where she was lying on her bed.
"Yeah, just once more second!" Rose yelled back.
"Rose!" she growled. "Hurry up!"
Rose stood in front of Alina's bed, dressed in a new set of robes. "I'm ready. Let's go, yeah?"
"Okay." She stood up. She gasped. "Oh, no, I left my bag in the Great Hall!"
Crossing her arms, Rose said, "Really? After you spent all that time when we were down there telling me to hurry up?" She smiled. "Come on."
Alina and Rose ran down the spiral staircase, through the portrait hole, and down seven flights of stairs to the Great Hall. Everyone had already left for their first class, and the hall was eerily quiet. Eerily empty as well.
Rose shifted from foot to foot. "Alina, can you just find your bag? It's creepy being in here all alone."
"Got it!" her friend shouted from under the Gryffindor table.
"Well then let's go! We're late already and Neville's going to have our hides!"
"Alright, then, go!"
A/N: Hi everyone! I'm really proud of this chapter, so I hoped you all liked it! The next chapter will be Christmas Eve, the next Christmas, and so on. Well, kind of. You'll see! Anyways, if you have any ideas for what Rose, or Scorpius, or anyone should get for Christmas, PM me, or leave it in a review!
Please review. Whether you flame, leave ideas, or just let me know you're enjoying the story, it means a lot.