Rose froze on the last step if the staircase leading up to the boys' dormitories. Someone was walking past the portrait whole and she would have bet a handful of Galleons that it was Filch.
She wasn't sure if he could get into the Gryffindor common room anyway, but she certainly didn't want him raising the alarm; nocturnal wrongdoers at Hogwarts all dreaded Filch's cry of "Students out of bed!".
Rose stood immobile for a few seconds as the footsteps echoed further down the hall and eventually the common room returned to its eerily silent state. Nimbly, she crept into the boys' dorm and headed straight for James' bed.
She'd asked Lily earlier if she could borrow the Potters' invisibility cloak, but her cousin had told Rose that it was currently in James' possession and wouldn't let even his siblings near it.
Rose needed the cloak to be able to get through the Forest and visit Fawkes safely, as flying wasn't a very practical option with Rose's dubious skills, but she'd been banking on the fact that Lily would be able to get it for her. It had been Lily who had suggested and given Rose permission to 'acquire the cloak by any means possible', and so now here she was, sneaking into the boys' dorm to 'borrow' the cloak - though she'd probably give it to Lily as it seemed that James was hogging it - and she knew that it certainly wasn't what Uncle Harry would have had in mind when he gave the cloak to James.
Rose crept ever so carefully towards James' sleeping figure, and when she reached his bed she knelt down and pointed her wand at his trunk.
"Alohomora!" she whispered, though she didn't think James was so thick as to leave the cloak in an unbewitched trunk - he was in sixth year, after all. So Rose was unsurprised when the trunk failed to open, and so she cast another spell which she had devised herself which had counteracted any bewitchment she had come across so far. She cheered a little in her head when the lock made an almost inaudible click and the lid lifted slowly.
Hardly containing her excitement, Rose lifted the silky cloak out of the trunk, swept it over herself, and resealed the trunk.
She was halfway to the staircase when she heard James whisper incredulously, "Rose?" Again, she stood stock still, her muscles tense and heart pounding. How could he have seen her? She was sure he had been asleep.
"Scorp can't be serious. He's not going anywhere near my cousin, Al." Rose breathed a sigh as she realised that James was, in fact, sleep talking. But what in Merlin's name was he on about? "I mean, come on, Al. Rose and Scorp? Uncle Ron would kill them, and us for good measure!"
Rose's eyes widened as she put the pieces together. If what James was saying was true, Scorpius Malfoy was ... interested in her! Al was good friends with Scorpius, even though Al was in Gryffindor and Malfoy was in Slytherin - though James wasn't quite as friendly because Malfoy was Seeker for the Slytherin quidditch team and had been known to beat the Gryffindors - in which James was Chaser - but James didn't hate Malfoy, not like Rose's dad did.
It was crazy, anyway; she didn't even like Malfoy, James might not even be right, and Malfoy was probably just messing around anyway. Not to mention how her dad would react - but Rose wouldn't let her dad's prejudices stop her from doing what she wanted if that was the case anyway.
Finally, Rose realised that she'd been standing in the doorway for nearly five minutes, and scurried down the staircase. When she reached her own dorm she carefully crawled back into bed and stowed the cloak in a compartment beneath the mattress which Rose had bewitched herself with the strongest enchantments she knew.
Closing her eyes, she banished all thoughts of Malfoy, Albus and James from her mind and settled to visit Fawkes the next day.