Rose jumped and narrowly escaped spilling her bottle of ink all over her charms essay as someone tapped her playfully on the head. She turned around sharply to see Al standing behind her with something that looked suspiciously like a packet of Uncle George's Peruvian instant darkness powder.

"Scorp's outside the portrait hole and says he needs to see you." Al told her before dashing up to his dorm. Rose nearly giggled in excitement - he might have the book!

She swished her wand and her work packed itself up neatly in her satchel, which Rose swung over her shoulder. She'd learnt that useful spell from her mum - who used it at home to much effect, especially when it came to Hugo's bombshell of a room. She found Malfoy outside the entrance to the common room, holding a brown package awkwardly in his hands.

"So, my dad sent this," he held out the package to her, and she took it. "Just be careful, cause the pages are ... disintegrating, I think. Anyway," he stared pointedly at her, "it's a valuable book, and my dad'll kill me if I don't return it perfect condition, so don't wreck it, ok?"

Rose smiled and tapped the wrapping with her wand, which slid off smoothly and then vanished. A dusty red book with curly silver and gold lettering lay in her hands - 'The Many Intricacies of Successful Portrait Painting and the Mastery of Painting Animation' by Karacticus Adspargo.

"I'll take care of it." she promised Malfoy whilst stroking the spine in what she hoped was a discreet manner. He leaned against the wall and pointed at the book.

"So, why are you reading about magical portraits, Weasley? Not even extra credit essays are that weird," he smirked, and this time Rose couldn't help herself from blushing. He couldn't possibly know that the charms essay had been extra credit - something no Hogwarts student in their right mind would volunteer for.

"It's - it's a long story," she said lamely. Malfoy pushed himself upright again and took a step towards Rose, who held the book tightly to her chest.

"Come on, Rose, tell me then." When Rose began to protest, he raised his eyebrows and continued, "besides, you owe me for getting you the book in the first place. I must deserve to know," and Rose had to admit he had a point, little as she wanted to tell him. So as they made their way towards the library, Rose reluctantly told Scorpius about Fawkes and her plan.

For a few minutes there he actually seemed bearable, Rose thought. Until he asked, "So could you take stuff out of the paintings, too? Like whatever the drunk monks are drinking in the painting near your common room?" and Rose stared at his with such distaste that he ducked his head - but smirked when he thought she couldn't see.

They ended up in the library, and Rose sat down to read the book. "You can go now, you know," she told Scorpius. He yawned and settled down in the chair opposite her.

"I know. But Al's at training and I'm tired, so I'm just going to sleep if that's fine with you," and without waiting for a reply Scorpius lay his head on the table and closed his eyes. Rose contemplated shaking him and asking why he thought the library was a good place to catch up on sleep, but decided against it.

He was nicer when he was asleep, Rose noticed, he had this kind of smile on his face that for once wasn't mocking or annoying. So Rose set to work reading 'The Many Intricacies of Successful Portrait Painting and the Mastery of Painting Animation' with Scorpius breathing softly in the background.

It was dark when Rose finally looked up from her book after reading the last page.

"That's it," she whispered. "Now I can do it." She looked out at the setting sun thoughtfully and began making a few calculations in her head.

"So, you solved it? That was quick," Rose was startled yet again that day by Scorpius, who was looking up at her from his vantage point on the table. She couldn't be sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

"I haven't solved it, as such yet. I just know what spell I need to write, now." Scorpius propped his head up on his hands. "Wait - you can write spells?" he looked incredulously at her, and Rose fought to keep the blood from rushing to her cheeks - and ears, for that matter.

Rose had unfortunately inherited the Weasley gene that caused not just her face but also her ears to glow red when she was furious or embarrassed.

"Of course you can write spells! - how else would we have them today? Wizards and witches in the early times had to experiment and write their own spells if they didn't exist."

Scorpius huffed. "I know - but how ... you can just come up with spells like that?" he stared at her incredulously. Rose stroked the fuzzy edges of the book calmingly in an effort to keep her blood vessels under control.

"Well, most spells come from Latin, so I use a translation volume to find the most suitable incantation, and then it's a matter of experimenting with wand movements," she replied, wondering what it was about Scorpius that made her blush more frequently than she was used to.

"Wow," he said, drawing his wand out from his pocket and twirling it through his spindly fingers. "So anyone could make up their own spell?" She could see his mind going into overdrive - most likely formulating a prank which he could pull of with Al, Rose guessed.

"Not necessarily," she flipped the book open to one of the chapters on the animation spell. "You have to actually be able to do the spell. For example, if you try to write a spell that will make things zoom around in circles, but you can't perform the locomotor charm, you probably won't be able to do your spell, even if you've written it right."

Scorpius tapped his yew wand thoughtfully on the table. "So you know a bit of Latin," he said finally. "Yes..." Rose replied warily. Scorpius grinned at her. "What's the Latin word for 'fold'?"

Rose trawled through her memory, and eventually found the word she was looking for.

"I'd probably say 'plico'," she said, trying to guess what he was thinking. Deftly, Scorpius tore a small piece of parchment off the roll that Rose had been using to take notes, and lay it on the desk in front of him. Swallowing once, he made a little flourish with his wand said, "Plico."

The parchment ruffled a bit at the edges, but nothing else happened. "Try a different wand movement," Rose suggested. This time, Scorpius touched his wand tip to the parchment and drew it up, as if he were drawing a thread up from beneath the table.

"Plico!" they watched as the parchment folded itself up neatly from the edges. Up and up it rolled, flipping over every so often, small tears appearing in the grain as tendrils of parchment wove themselves into folds. When it had stopped moving, the parchment settled itself down onto the table between Scorpius and Rose.

"It's - a rose," she marvelled at the paper creation before her. Scorpius shifted in his seat. "It was harder than I thought it would be - you have to concentrate on every little thing," he said, his eyes dancing between Rose and the flower. "So you can imagine what it's going to be like trying to get a whole phoenix into a portrait," Rose grinned shakily.

Why make a flower, a rose? Scorpius could have picked any other spell - why that? He nodded and held her gaze for a second, them glanced out the window into the starry sky. "I'd better get back to my dorm - it's getting late," he pushed himself up from the chair and stretched his tall, lean figure even further up towards the ceiling. Rose closed the book with a snap. "Yeah, I should probably go too," she swept her things off the desk, and noticed that he'd left the parchment rose there.

"Hey, you forgot this," she called to him, holding it out. Scorpius turned around at the door and replied, "You keep it." Then he was gone with a wink goodbye, leaving Rose standing with the flower cupped in her hand.

Lying in bed, she stared at the rose, which was settled on the table next to the window. How could it be that just last week, she'd been sure she could write her own spell, get Fawkes into the painting, and that Scorpius certainly didn't like her in that way?

Yet now she was sure of none of those things - although she'd said to him that she knew which spell she had to write, and what it had to do, Rose had no idea how she'd pull it off. It was a hundred times more complex than anything she'd written before, and if she got it wrong - she shuddered to think what would happen to Fawkes. And he had called her by her first name...

Rose fell asleep staring at the parchment flower.