A/N Ooh, look only the day after. But anyway, Rose and Scorpius actually meet in this one if that's what you wanted. I think I relaxed a bit more in the narrative in this chapter, so that may make for a nicer read. Anyway, this is kind of a filler - the next chapter has the important bits! Thanks to sparkie926 for being the first (and only at the moment, but shhh) follower. I posted this for you!

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Love to. Never will. What a shame. Thanks, JK.

Chapter 2

Finding their family wasn't very hard at all – nobody else dared to try and fit that many people in one compartment. It also helped that they were really loud.

Even though the train had barely left the station, Louis, Molly and Dominique were already engrossed in a rather furious game of Exploding Snap, while James and Fred were whispering to each other in the corner and grinning mischievously every time the other said something. Victoire, being a seventh year prefect, had disappeared to a different compartment. Albus jumped into the game of snap, all his previous worries vanished from his face and apparently forgotten. It was only now that Rosie realised that she had forgotten to go to the toilet before they'd left the Burrow, which, due to the fact that they'd had to travel like Muggles (might as well have been cavemen in Rose's opinion) had been quite a long time ago anyway. She gave the rest of her family a quick wave and mouthed 'loo' before disappearing back into the corridor.

The corridor wasn't nearly as empty as she had expected it to be – in fact it was full of students talking to people in different compartments or just being generally boisterous. Apparently there wasn't enough room to do that in the compartments so they had to be a danger to other people as well as themselves. It was actually quite intimidating, especially when a couple of menacing looking older students pulled their wands out. It was enough to cause her to move backwards a couple of steps, before tripping over a piece of carpet that sent her sprawling into another first year, and they both tumbled to the floor.

She pushed her (rather bushy, she had inherited it from her mother) red hair from her eyes and mumbled an apology as she stood up and brushed herself off. She was about to make a very quick exit when she realised that the other student was still on the floor. Feeling bad about the trouble she'd caused, she offered a hand to help him up, and, as he took it, she realised that it was the blonde-haired boy from the station.

"You're Scorpius Malfoy." She said curiously, cocking her head to one side. He nodded, staring at the floor, as if he was shy or, perhaps, uncomfortable. He looked up as she continued,

"My dad told me I had to beat you in every test." A little light came into his eyes at that – where before he had looked slightly worried, he now looked happy. He also sounded happy as he replied to her,

"That's funny – my dad told me the exact same thing. Only that I had to beat you, of course. Rose Weasley, right?" She nodded dumbly, surprised at his friendliness for some reason. She supposed she had expected him to be overly curt or even hostile – the stories she had heard about the Malfoys were not particularly pleasant. He faltered at her expression before continuing, but speaking slower than he had beforehand,

"Nothing wrong with a bit of friendly competition, right, Rose?"

"Erm, yeah, sure." She muttered, not being deliberately impolite, but she frowned and started to walk away.

Scorpius had opened his mouth to offer to walk her back to her compartment, but thought better of it – why would she want a walk back to her compartment? He supposed he had been tempted because he didn't have a compartment to go to, though he'd never tell anyone that. None of the few friends he had were at Hogwarts, so he was almost entirely alone. The conversation that he'd had with Rose was the closest thing he had to 'friendship' on that train so far.

He wandered in the opposite direction to Rose until he came to a quieter part of the train. Noticing a very nearly empty compartment, with just two other first years in it, he poked his head around the door, and asked very quietly,

"Do you mind?"

"Not at all." One of them replied, all three of them blissfully unaware that the moment was very nearly an exact repeat of a scene that took place 26 years earlier between Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

Seeing that neither of them were talking, and both had their noses buried in a book, Scorpius realised that they were probably in the same situation as him, so he pulled a pack of cards from his pocket, and waved them slightly,

"Either of you fancy a game?"

Rose was back in the Weasley/Potter compartment, having forgotten to go to the toilet after her ordeal with Scorpius Malfoy. Victoire had returned from her prefect duties, and was discussing the new head boy and girl with Molly and Dominique, while the others had moved on from Exploding Snap to Wizard's Chess. Usually, Rose would jump at the chance to beat any of her cousins at chess, being undefeated so far, but, given that the events of the morning so far had overwhelmed her a little, she elected to curl up by the window with a book. At least until Victoire started questioning her.

"Why were you gone so long, Rosie? You haven't got a boyfriend already, have you? Ah, l'amour."

"No, Tori, I couldn't find the toilets. How's Teddy?" Rose was quick for her eleven years, and Victoire's eyebrows shot up immediately. She turned to where James was snickering beside her, and punched him in the arm. His eyes widened in fear, clearly remembering Rose's earlier threat, but Victoire collapsed in a laughing fit at the sight of his face, and once again, there was no tension in the compartment.

Dominique caught Rose's eye and they shared a smirk, and then Rose remembered that she was in dire need of the toilet. She leaned over to her cousin, trying to get heard over the excessively noisy game of chess,

"Dom, when I said I couldn't find the toilets, I meant that I didn't find them at all. And, um, some of the boys are kind of big... and scary. Could you, uh, you know..." She trailed off, and Dominique rolled her eyes jokingly before standing up and making her way towards the door,

"Come on then, Posie, we haven't got all day – just most of it." She winked at her younger cousin as she led the way to the toilets, which were approximately two metres from where Rose had bumped into a certain Malfoy.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake." She muttered angrily under her breath, realising how close she'd been.

"What was that?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Whatever you say, Posie. Do you need help getting back or are you okay by yourself?"

"I'm fine." With those words, Dominique stalked off down the corridor in the opposite direction to their compartment – probably off with some random guy. Some random guy that was more important than Rose, obviously. Well, that was Rose's grumpy thought, at any rate. That day was supposed to be the beginning of the rest of Rose's life, it was supposed to be exciting, and she was supposed to be happy, but everything was just irritating her for no reason, and, though she'd never admit it, it was probably because she'd woken up so early.

The two other first years in Scorpius's compartment took little convincing to join his game. However, the boy, whose name was Connor, was soon convinced that Scorpius was trying to kill him.

They had started a game of exploding snap, but Connor, being muggle-born, hadn't been expecting the cards to explode. He had been about to make a run for it out of the door when the girl, Helena, called out to him,

"Connor! Wait! Scorpius wasn't trying to do any harm! It's called exploding snap because the cards explode, but they're not going to hurt you." Her voice was soft and sweet, and that was all she had to say to convince him to come back and play. While he stared in amazement at the cards, Helena whispered in Scorpius's ear,

"I think we should let somebody else introduce him to Wizard's Chess." He laughed as she pulled away and grinned at him.

"And Quidditch." Scorpius added. Connor snapped out of his trance at that point, frowning in confusion.

"Quidditch?" He asked.

"That's one for another day," Scorpius laughed again, but stopped as he thought he saw a flash of familiar ginger hair passing by. Like Connor, he frowned until someone snapped their fingers in front of his face and he blinked a few times before turning to face the others. For a moment he glanced out the window and saw that the sky was changing colour and, briefly, he wondered where the time had gone, before realising the unimportance of that thought, and addressed Connor and Helena,

"It's getting dark; we should probably change into our robes soon."

Rose hadn't been planning on falling asleep, but the journey on the Hogwarts Express was remarkably long (at least it felt like it was), and she'd already read her book enough that it didn't hold her attention very much, and soon after returning from the toilets she had dropped off, much to the amusement of her cousins.

If it hadn't been for Victoire, Rose probably would have woken up with a tail, as she slept very deeply and didn't notice her mischievous relatives. She also wouldn't have awoken before the train pulled in at Hogsmeade if it hadn't been for Albus gently shaking her awake and whispering,

"Rosie, we're finally here. We're at Hogwarts."

And with that, the train pulled to a stop.