Disclaimer: I don't own Rose, Scorpius, or any of the various JK Rowling characters mentioned in this story.

Rating: K+

The First Secret

Rose threw herself into the empty classroom, eyes red and watering. The tears she'd stubbornly kept at bay now came bursting out, as weeks of misery bubbled to the surface.

She hated Hogwarts.

All her life, she'd been looking forward to coming here. Finally getting the opportunity to prove her worth and learn magic. Playing chess and Quidditch with people other than her family. Making friends that would last her a lifetime. All the adults said it would be the best seven years of her life.

Well, so far it had been the worst seven weeks of her life. The train ride had been exciting, as had seeing the castle for the first time, but everything went to hell shortly afterward. First, Al was sorted into Slytherin. Then, the Sorting Hat had the gall to laugh at her when she furiously demanded that it re-sort her cousin. That Hat had clearly made a mistake, because – in spite of all James's teasing – quiet, kind Al did not belong in mean, nasty Slytherin. But it refused to correct its error, which left Rose all alone in Gryffindor, without her best friend.

And it was awful. Her roommates, Sara and Elise, picked each other to be best friends almost at first sight. That left Rose and her boring cousin Dominique, who was nice enough, but didn't like any of the same things she did. Quite frankly she'd always found she could relate better to boys than girls, but all the boys in her year hadn't seemed to have accepted that girls could make just as good of friends as boys. She'd tried to make herself seem as approachable as possible, but none of them seemed interested in pursuing a friendship with her, and she didn't want to be annoying like her mum was at first to her dad and Uncle Harry. So she stayed at the edges of conversations, away from any sort of attention.

What was even worse were the classes. Rose had been raised to always question anything she found strange or unlikely. At first her teachers had been thrilled to have such a passionate student in their class, but their excitement quickly died down as they realized many of her questions were driven by a lack of trust in their correctness rather than by innocent curiosity. She didn't want to be a know-it-all (she'd heard enough tales about her mum's days in school to know that wasn't a role she was willing to take on), she just knew that teachers could get it wrong sometimes. Back at the Muggle primary school she'd attended, their teacher had asked on a homework assignment what the mass of an electron was. She hadn't known, so she'd looked it up and found that it was approximately 9.1 x 10 ^ (-31) kilograms. The teacher marked that answer as incorrect, because in class the teacher had claimed the mass of an electron was zero. Rose had been furious at this injustice and tracked down the information to show her teacher she had been right. Her parents had completely supported her little show of rebellion and encouraged her to carry that with her through Hogwarts and the rest of her life. However, her teachers definitely weren't so enthused, and the other students were beginning to grow irritated.

She never knew where to sit at mealtimes. Sometimes Roxy would be there with her fun and sporty third year friends. Other times Victoire would call her over in a show of pity. Usually she sat with Dominique, Sara and Elise, picking at her food quietly while Sara and Elise talked at each other. She'd given up trying to make them listen to her weeks ago. But more often than not, she'd come down alone to find nobody she felt comfortable enough to sit with, and would eat alone. All the other first years besides Dominique had little groups they came down in. Nobody just walked down the Great Hall and found a place to sit: you walked down with your friends.

Rose didn't have any friends.

It was the first time she'd allowed herself that thought, and she bawled harder, sinking to the ground and clutching the leg of a chair. In spite of her best efforts, she'd become her mum. She was alone, crying her eyes out while nobody cared, except there was no troll to magically give her friends. She had never known this sort of loneliness before: she found herself missing her mum, her dad, Hugo, her dog Scout, Uncle Harry, Aunt Ginny, Al…Everybody who made Rose Rose wasn't here and she didn't know who she was without them.

Just a sad little girl crying in an empty Transfiguration classroom. Pathetic, Rose thought, which only made her cry even harder.

Voices were echoing down the corridor and she pressed further into the chair behind her. Nobody could see her like this. It would get back to her cousins and they would all laugh about it. Perfect little Rosie couldn't crack it at Hogwarts and was found sniveling in a classroom, was what they'd say. Then it would make it all the way back to her parents and her mum how her daughter could end up making the exact same mistakes she'd made, and her dad wouldn't look at her in the face when she came home for Christmas, he'd be so embarrassed-

The door opened and Rose looked up. Her heart sank. It was the boy her dad had pointed out on the station, the Malfoy kid. She'd seen him hanging out with the largest group of first year Slytherins that never seemed to include Al. After Fred, he was the last person she wanted to see her like this.

Malfoy stood frozen in the doorway for several moments, his eyes taking in her disheveled appearance. She noticed offhandedly that they were an unexpectedly warm dark brown, completely clashing with his pale hair. He continued staring at her, then turned and shut the door quickly.

Rose jumped to her feet, all sense of misery gone. Now there was only humiliation and the adrenaline that went along with it. If he was going to get his friends so that they could come and taunt her, she wasn't going to be wallowing on the ground. No, she decided as she marched toward the door, if they tried to tease her she was going to fight back. Her fingers curled into fists and she felt the desire to let some of her frustration out, as her mum's voice screamed, No Rose! Use your words, not your fists! She relaxed her hands slightly, but only so she could grab the knob and turn it, cracking the door slightly to hear what was going on outside.

"What's the matter?" Another boy was asking Malfoy. "Isn't it empty?"

"No," Malfoy replied, without looking back. "There's a bunch of Seventh years practicing spells. They sent me away. Come on, we can find somewhere else to hang out."

"Merlin, I feel like we've been trampling all over this castle, let's just go back to the Common Room…" Their voices trailed away as they walked down the corridor.

Rose stood frozen, her hand still on the doorknob. He'd lied for her. The Malfoy kid had seen her curled up in a little ball with her ugly blotchy face, hadn't said a word, and had led his friends away. That certainly did not sound like the Malfoy her parents had gone to: that Malfoy would have called in his friends immediately and taken advantage of the opportunity to say mean and hurtful things.

That's when it finally hit Rose. Her Hogwarts was not going to be her parents' Hogwarts. The school had changed, the people were different, and nothing they said could prepare her for the experience. She couldn't base her expectations on what they'd told her: she had to adapt, mold her life to fit her current surroundings. She wanted to play Exploding Snap with the boys? Well then, damnit, she was going to march up to Gryffindor Tower and tell them to deal her in. After all, she only had seven years of this, and she was going to make sure to enjoy it.

It was only later, when she went to bed with several singed fingers and a feeling of immense satisfaction, that Rose remembered Malfoy's surprising show of kindness to her. Somehow it didn't seem right to call him by the same name her parents had called his much crueler father.

He was a Slytherin, so she didn't expect they'd become friends, but the least she could do was learn his first name. After all, he had kept her secret.

A/N: I was going to make this part of my "In Other Words" series, along with all the other stories about the secrets Rose and Scorpius keep for each other (which Pawn Chapter 3 made mention of), then I decided it made much more sense to put them together. So this is a collection of moments about the secrets that brought Rose and Scorpius together as friends.

I may end up publishing nearly all of them before Pawn is finished, but the very last one cannot be published until I've at least started Queen. (Or maybe once I've just finished Knight. We'll see...)

I hope you enjoy! And this one is not incomplete, so look forward to updates from this story!

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