a/n: ahh sorry it took so long.

Recap: Rose set the Sorting Hat on fire, met with the Headmaster, and he helped sort her into Gryffindor. Rose took a deep breath, smiled and walked through the Great Hall, pretending that she wasn't overwhelmed with paths and arrows and her heart wasn't beating wildly out of her chest.

On occasion, when people make comments others inevitably start believing them.

Out of nowhere, one of Rose's paintings with too many shaky lines and uneven tones beatified in front of her eyes after listening to her dad or mum compliment it. Rose never classified herself as brave or noble, but after the Headmaster repeatedly expressed his views on her courageousness, out of nowhere, confidence slowly settled in. She walked into the hall, not with her head held high, but at least not with it hung low. Walking straight ahead, with the roar of laughter and buzz of conversations around her, it started getting easier. It was slightly less torturous ignoring everyone around her and concentrating on the task at hand—searching for Al and a place to sit.

She looked up, briefly glancing around tables, but still, the paths before her were too much. She slowed her pace, helplessly searching and feeling eyes on her. There was a tap on her back and dreadfully she turned around, prepared for the worst. Quickly she masked her shock when she saw James, looking slightly worried and pushing the boy next to him aside, gesturing for her to sit.

James flashed her smile, "Trying to out-flame everyone else on your first day, Rose? Because if that's what you were going for…well I'm a bit jealous."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I was going for…the power of fire and unpredictability of the flame. You caught me." She smiled weakly at him as she filled up her plate. It felt like ages since she last ate.

"No, but really…Rose…are you…err… you know….alright?"

"James, is that worry in your tone? Aww, I didn't know you cared." It was easier for Rose to pretend, pretend at least for a bit that it didn't matter and fake a nonchalant attitude.

"Rose…please, I'm trying. What did Podmore want with you?

It occurred to her that that she didn't realize what the Headmaster's name was. That was just like her, to blank out on the present and get consumed into the vortex of the future. Rose made patterns in her mashed potatoes as she collected her thoughts. She could feel James growing tense beside her and she knew she couldn't avoid it forever. Before she spoke, Al came out of nowhere and squeezed onto the other side of Rose.

"Rose, Merlin… Rose. Are you alright? Sorry, that's a stupid question, of course you aren't. What happened? I mean, you don't know what happened, obviously. But I mean, what—"

"Al, could you bloody breathe and at least attempt to pass for a sane person. Rose was about to explain what Podmore said before you… interrupted like a fish—"

"James, shut up." Al replied.

Rose felt the first genuine smile escape at their antics. It felt like she hadn't smiled in ages.

"So…Rose?" Al said. There went her smile.

"You two are possibly the most annoying, irritating—" Rose begun.

"Rose, do you have to be so difficult?"

"I was getting there, James. Anyway, Podmore just asked me if I knew what happened and what the Sorting Hat said and then he told me to sort myself and now, I'm apparently a Gryffindor. Not according to the Sorting Hat, because it kind of, you know, doesn't exist…because of me." Her voice cracked toward the end and she could tell that she gave too much away, just by the looks James and Al were giving her.

She saw James's arrows changing, scattering and rearranging themselves to add her name amid his future, creating 'accidental' check-ups and forced fireplace chats with their parents.

"Rose, its okay. No one's going to remember this in a few weeks. And—" Al started saying before James cut him off.

"Rose, you're a Gryffindor! That's great, we're gonna have a blast without this freak studying away in the library with his bloody Ravenclaw friends."

Al shot James a look, but when Rose let out a laugh, the tension between them eased.

"As I was saying, you just set a hat on fire. Things like that happened all the time at Hogwarts…Right, James?" Al continued.

It took a while for James to catch on, "Oh, yeah…definitely. Once this fifth year set her hair on fire and ran through the school until a professor threatened her with detention. I wanted to do it too but couldn't get the bloody spell right without burning my face."

"Thanks, Al, James," Rose said laughing. She would never admit it, but her family always found ways to cheer her up. She felt so much better, like she could breathe easily and the world wasn't completely against her.

Too soon, she left Al and James and followed the older students to her new dormitory. As she shuffled among the other first years, her eyes continued their tradition of meeting with the floor. She heard snippets of conversation all around her, but was too tired to make an effort to join. When the group reached a portrait of a fat lady, they stopped. And when Shelly, the prefect who led them there, explained importance of passwords, Rose realized she should have paid a little more attention to direction—finding her classes would be impossible tomorrow morning.

It was all a blur for Rose, it didn't feel real. Nothing felt real. Her thoughts basically consisted of, "I'm a Gryffindor…too many arrows…head down…when is this day going to end."

Finally, Shelly stopped talking and they were free to go up their rooms.

Rose headed up the staircase, painfully aware of the eyes watching her as she did so. Fastening her pace, she walked into the first year dormitory and collapsed on the bed closest to her. Letting out a deep breath, she closed her eyes hoping childishly that this had all been a bad dream.

What seemed like a few moments later, she felt someone taping her shoulder once again, along with voices around the room. Cautiously, Rose opened her eyes, fearing what else she would have to deal with today.

"Rose, I'm so, so sorry. This is actually my bed, see the bags next to it? They're mine, I'm sure you just didn't see them. I wouldn't have minded sleeping in your bed but you looked pretty uncomfortable too, and well, I thought it would be better if you were comfortable, considering how long this day must have been for you."

"Oh, Christy, I'm sorry I didn't see. I'll get out of your way." Rose gave her a quick smile and looked for the bed with her bags. She didn't see them. Just her luck. Of course, after everything, her bags wouldn't even be in the bloody—oh there they were. She numbly walked to the bed, got under the covers, and drew the curtains.

There goes the nightmare theory, she thought, and drifted to sleep.

The next morning was a sound wave of buzzing and beeping chaos. Rose, always a light sleeper, woke up at the first beeping sound. Surprised at the sound, she opened her curtains and looked for the source. Coming out of a small, lumpy toad next to someone's bed erupted a beep-beep-beep. The girl in the bed didn't seem to wake, not until another sound went off from another bed. Within minutes, the entire dormitory contained beeping toads and croaking flowers and singing fruits but still, no one actually got out of their beds.

Deciding that something needed to be done, but not wanting to make a scene, she grabbed her uniform and a towel from her luggage and exclaimed, "I guess I'll use the bathroom first? Our first class is in an hour right?"

"ughd" was the response she received.

Rose never needed alarms to wake her up, her loud family was enough to wake the entire country up, and her dormitory didn't seem much different. She quickly showered, dressed, and brushed her teeth; Rose would always fasten the pace of everything when nerves got to her.

Finally, everyone else woke up and managed to get dressed in time. Rose was about to walk down to the Great Hall by herself, hoping that miraculously she would somehow manage to find her way there.

"Hey, Rose! Do you wanta go down to breakfast with me? I'm almost done, just give me a sec." Christy asked.

Rose sighed in relief, smiling, she turned around and replied, "Yeah, sure."

Rose was still shocked at Christy's arrows, since she met Al and Rose they barely changed. Slightly disturbed at Al's place in Christy's future, Rose looked away and focused on Christy, who was rummaging through her luggage.

"Did you lose something?" Rose asked, mainly to distract herself from the arrows and her own frantic thoughts. She wondered how horrible lessons would be, if anyone would even want to talk to her after what happened. Well, at least she had Christy, who surprisingly hadn't even mentioned the hat bursting into flames. Rose thought Christy wouldn't be able to stop talking or asking questions about it, but she got it wrong. She liked how unnosy and unWesasley Christy was. That probably wasn't a word, but Al wasn't inside her head to correct her grammar. There wa—

"Yeah, my lucky earrings. I saved them for the first actual school day and I know I packed them, I just have no idea where they are." Christy thankfully cut of Rose's inner monologue. Christy's usual smile wasn't as wide and Rose could tell something about these earrings meant a lot to her.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Rose didn't know what else to say. Hopefully these awkward conversations wouldn't happen so often once she got older and less awkward. Rose focused on Christy's arrows, and surprisingly, the earrings changed her paths. There were two paths, one where she went without the earrings and one where she found them in her luggage. The one without the earrings included Christy getting in trouble, getting lost, and getting into an argument with Al. The one with the earrings included a relatively normal day, with nothing extra-ordinary happening.

"You know what, its fine. We'll both be late to breakfast and class." Christy was standing up and grabbing her books. Normally, Rose would have nodded and followed her, but she wanted things to go right for Christy.

"No, wait. Did you check your smaller luggage bag? It might be in there."

"Oh my gosh, Rose, I completely forgot about the other bag. You're the best!" She quickly searched through the smaller bag, and beamed at Rose as she held up two pearls. "I found them, thank you so much! I wouldn't feel the same without them."

Christy got up and hugged Rose, who masked her surprise and quickly hugged her back. Normally, she wasn't the hugging type, but she wasn't about to push away possibly the only person other than a family member willing to speak to her.

"Yeah, no problem. But we should get going if we don't want to be late." Rose smiled at her and Christy led the way to the Great Hall.

Times like this, Rose didn't mind the paths, times when the future was actually of use to people. Of course, there was the chance that Christy would still have a bad day, would still get into some argument get lost and get in trouble, but at least it was minimized. Maybe, maybe today wouldn't be such a horrible day after all.

Rose sat with Christy during breakfast, and both of them quickly threw some food into their mouths and gulped down milk. They received their schedules from Shelly, who advised them to arrive at breakfast earlier. Both of them apologized to her, but after she left, exploded in a fit of giggles. Rose wasn't sure what had even been so funny, but for the first time since she got here, she wasn't drenched in worry or fearing people's eyes or the future around her.

Their first class was Herbology, which eased Rose's tension further. How intimidating could Neville be?

Christy and Rose, along with three other Gryffindor girls (Rose still didn't know their names), found their way to Herbology. Though they weren't late, as they walked in, more than half the class was seated and glanced back to watch them enter. Self-conscious and unprepared, once again, for the bombardment of the paths thrown in her face, Rose ducked her head and quickly found a stool at the long table. Christy promptly followed and sat next to her. Rose smiled at her, her shock at Christy's seeting choice apparent.

Not that she went out of her way to notice, but Rose saw Scorpius and realized they were with the Slytherins. Hopefully, James exaggerated the nastiness of the Slytherins, much like he exaggerated everything else. Rose couldn't believe people were rude just because of their house, because well, look at her, she wasn't in any position to judge.

Moments later, Neville started the class. Rose took one look at his arrows and groaned. Of course. He would want to embarrass the class on their first day with something like that. Hopefully, she wouldn't be paired up with someone too terrible. She was tempted to look up at everyone's arrows and see who she was with, but there were already around forty people in the room, she didn't want to make her head spin this early.

"First year, first class, first day, I can remember how nerve-racking all of this was to me. So, accordingly, I planned a little activity to start off with. Now, I know some of you will hate me for this, but others, well, you can just thank me later." Neville briefly paused, long enough for Christy to whisper, "This sounds like it's going to be fun," and Rose to weakly smile back. She wasn't liking Neville at the moment.

"Now, instead of role calling, traditionally, I try to do something different on the first day. For all of you, I put your names on a list next to someone from the opposite house. You will find them, briefly converse, and maybe share some interesting information with them. After a couple of minutes, I'll ask everyone to share something to the class, not about themselves, but about their partner. Sounds fun?" Rose could feel Christy's excitement next to her, but most of the class didn't seem too enthusiastic. Neville flicked his wand at the board, where the list of partners appeared and said, "Okay, get started!"

No one moved.

How were they supposed to know who their partner was? Where were they supposed to talk to them? Rose sighed, this wasn't going to fun. She searched for her name on the board, next to it was…Scorpius Malfoy.

Well, now new problems arose.

No one in the class actually stood of from their chair.

No one spoke.

The silence and awkwardness settled down and surrounded everyone. Even Christy didn't speak up, not wanting to be that first person.

Finally, sensing the tensions, Neville spoke, "You won't find your partner next to you, stand up everyone."

Shuffling to her feat, Rose quickly glanced around the room for Malfoy. Easy to spot with that blond hair, she quickly spotted him. Internally, she debated whether she should walk toward him or wait for him to approach her. She tried not looking at his arrows too much, but her interest spiked when she noticed her name. At least for now, they were going to become friends after this activity.

Next to her, she heard Christy exclaim, "Hey, I have Meredith Zabini. Do you want to come over here? I'm Christy. Or I could meet you?"

That prompted everyone to do the same, and finally Malfoy glanced in her direction. Rose took a deep breath, took it as a good sign that his arrows didn't change when he saw her, gave a slight smile, and walked toward him. Merlin, this was going to be, at best, beyond awkward.

He was standing near the edge of the long table, so Rose took a seat at the table, and he followed.

"Hi, it's Rose, right?"

"Yep, Hi."

They both glanced away as they sifted through their minds for something to say.

Rose held back a sigh, she hated this. Hated the pressure the paths put on her. She would know if she messed up this conversation, because she wouldn't be in his future anymore. Not that she would care too much, but still, the pressure of perfection weighed down on her constantly.

And she hated it.

Rose forced herself to look away from the floor and look at him. She couldn't meet his eyes, she always had trouble with eye contact with strangers, so she focused her attention to the side of his face.

She racked her thoughts for something to say, but came up with nothing.

"So, eventful day yesterday, wasn't it?" He said it with a slight smile. Rose wasn't sure whether she detested or liked that he seemed to half-smile as he spoke.

Nevertheless, she surprised herself by chuckling back, "You have no idea. I thought of all the ways my sorting could have gone, and Merlin, the hat bursting into flames wasn't even on my list of worst case scenarios."

"Yeah, it was crazy. One second it was fine, and then out of nowhere the hat matched your hair."

"Hey, watch it, Malfoy," She said but laughed anyway.

"So, Rose, I think you're supposed to tell me something interesting about yourself."

"Well, you and the rest of the school all saw my most embarrassing moment, I think you should tell me something interesting about yourself first. "

"Well, if you insist….my favorite color is purple, " he replied.

"Yeah, well, that's very….boring," Rose told him with a smile, trying to do the smirk thing he did but failing.

"Someone's picky. I like Quiditch. And Quiditch cannot be boring. So there."

"Well—" Rose was cut off by Neville.

"Okay, class, I want you to stay where you are, but we're going to go in a circle and introduce our partners. I'll start with myself."

"Well, I started teaching six years ago and…."

"Rose?" Malfoy whispered.

"Yeah?" Rose glanced at him, taking in his arrows. She usually tried to avoid looking at people's arrows at first if she could help it, but she never could ignore them for a long time. She had been intrigued by his arrows since the beginning. She took it as a good sign that her place didn't change a lot, not that she cared too much.

"I still don't know what to say about you. You didn't tell me anything."

"Umm…my favorite color –" Rose tried to say.

"No, something interesting."

"Well, I don't know. I like to draw. Is that good enough for you?" There was nothing interesting about her aside from the obvious anomaly of her ability to see the future, but she wasn't about to tell that to anyone.

"What do you draw?" He asked. Rose wasn't expecting this whispering conversation to go on for this long. She glanced around the room, making sure no one noticed that they weren't exactly paying attention. Neville had finished speaking and now Lillian, one of her roommates, (Rose just caught her name) spoke about her partner Harry.

"I draw mostly just people, and how I see them, I guess. And I paint general stuff, like flowers and scenery." Rose surprised herself with the words that came out of her mouth. She wasn't sure why she just told him that. Usually, it took her a while to warm up to people, and a long time to tell them anything personal about herself.

"So, you like drawing roses?" He was doing that half smiling thing again.

Rose groaned, "Haha, very original. Roses are actually very boring to draw, there's nothing really special about them."

Malfoy mumbled something back, but she didn't catch what he said.

The conversation ended and both of them started actually listening to the class, some people were funny, most were awkward, some were loud, but most of them quite. Finally, they got to her group.

Malfoy stood up, "This is Rose, she's a Gryffindor, she likes to draw, and her favorite colour is orange." Rose glanced at him with a questioning look, how did he know that, she never even mentioned it. He just smiled in response. Probably just a lucky guess.

Rose stumbled up from her stool, almost knocking it down as she stood, "Umm, this is Scorpius, he's a Slytherin, he likes purple and believes Quiditch is the best thing ever."

Just because she knew he wanted her to ask him about the orange, she pointedly looked away. They didn't speak until Neville told them to go back to their seats.

"So, I'm guessing you don't want to know how I knew your favorite colour?" He said as they walked back to their previous seats.

"Who says I didn't already figure it out?" Rose gave him a quick smile and garbed her seat next to Christy. Actually, she had no idea how he knew. And she wouldn't admit it, but she was actually curious at how confident he was that orange was her favorite colour. She would figure it out eventually.

"Looks like you two got along," Christy told her as she took her seat.

"Yeah….I guess we did. Weird."

a/n: Thanks for reading, and I would love to hear what you thought. :)