A/N: Hello!

I've been out for a while but I will finish this story no matter what!

Please give it a try!

Bromance alert by the way…

Enjoy!

Chapter 10: Planning to see

Rose was back at the forest, cursing Malfoy and her bad luck for having been stuck at the same team with him.

Yet she was back.

Again she was led to him by the noise and spells flying around. Thankfully he was still standing. He had a newly acquired scratch on his cheek, his hair was wet and his clothes torn apart at places but other than that in perfect condition.

"I see your brains are still intact." She commented before joining in the fight.

"No way." He shouted and she would swear he sounded almost amused.

"Shut up." She muttered.

"This doesn't make me a damsel in distress. You came on your own." He cleared up.

"Shut up!" She repeated not without a smile playing on her lips.

"We can't," he paused to duck and avoid a big, hairy hand, "beat them on our own, especially if we don't strike to kill."

She scanned her whereabouts quickly.

"I have an idea." She finally said. "You keep them busy."

Malfoy obliged.

While he was trying to avoid the trolls Rose had cut off the roots from a few trees nearby.

"Malfoy when I say run, you run." She said and then almost instantly. "Now, run!"

The blonde seemed to have barely registered the order but with a few second delay he backed up and started running in the direction of the portkey.

Meanwhile Rose pushed the cut off trees right in front of the outraged trolls. She moved around practically throwing trees at them when she saw the Ice Prince, whom she had clearly freed from his post mimicking her moves.

As she moved to the left she had a chance to see her work with her own eyes. Trolls struggling to free themselves from the branches and trunks and making things even worse in the process. She laughed heartily.

"Your idea of animal protection is quite interesting." A drawling voice said from behind her.

"No need to thank me, Malfoy." She laughed some more, satisfied with herself.

"I'm not." He said effortlessly. "You owed me one."

"Judging from that smirk you've got plastered on your face all day long the whole world must owe you one." She joked but he didn't even bother looking her way. He just stared ahead at the mess they'd created and sighed.

"It's because I like it." He breathed out in a way that seemed almost aimless.

"What? Smirking?"

"No! Being an Auror." He sighed again. "You kept asking annoyingly for an explanation but I don't have one. I just like it. The excitement… and the satisfaction of doing something good, I thought I'd try it out. And turns out I like it. That's why I'm here. And I'm not giving up either. So stop asking me." He avoided her eyes and turned away. If he started talking there really was no way to stop him, Rose thought and smiled to herself.

Then she heard those heavy steps again.

"Crap!" She cursed. "More are coming."

That, apparently, was enough for Malfoy to stop pouring his heart out and start running as they should have been doing long ago.

"We won't make it to the portkey. Let's hide." She suggested as the ground began trembling under her feet.

The spot she had found was a good one, altogether, just not quite comfortable. Ok, maybe not comfortable at all…

It looked ok for her alone, but with Malfoy there it became a little hard to fit inside a hollow trunk, regardless of how big said trunk was.

Both his and her one shoulder could not get in and they had to keep their hands over their heads to manage and get in there. They were stuck so close that she could feel not only his breath but the majority of his body parts as well. The fact that they were both sweating like crazy didn't help one bit.

"Nice spot." He commented dryly and tried to move his chin from her ear. She flinched instinctively as it dawned on her that there was in fact one thing more awkward that a girl and a guy stuck in a small place and that was a guy and a girl dressed as a guy stuck in a small place.

If close contact made Rose in her original appearance blush the worse Malfoy could do would be laugh at her expense. However if the person Scorpius thought was a guy blushed and fretted because of him then she would have a lot more explaining to do…

"Potter." Malfoy said slowly, causing her to look up and almost bump her head with his.

"Yes?" She said holding her breath.

"There's something moving… down there." She followed his glance which rested on his nether regions. And thus the plan to not blush failed.

After the first, few seconds that her head was plagued by horror only, her mind started working again.

"Oh! The Glumbumbles!" She almost screamed at his face.

As expected he didn't understand.

"I caught some while I was away." She explained with more ease now.

"You did? Why didn't you say a thing?" Malfoy kept looking down there with a sense of wonder that'd make anyone misunderstand them.

"Oh, sorry I didn't stop to show you the glumbumbles while we were being chased by trolls." Sarcasm made her relax a little.

"Point taken." He agreed.

"So…" He tried to free his hand that was scrambled behind her head. "Are they big?"

Rose gave him an incredulous look. He was looking down at her cousin's –ehem- you know what and asking whether they were big. The joke was a little too much for her to handle.

And he just stood there, like a person who'd lived his entire life under a rock, not understanding her embarrassment.

"Stop staring at my crotch and asking weird stuff, man." She forced herself to feign indifference and annoyance.

He glared and looked away in an instant. "You're the weirdo, imagining things." He countered not without a hint of shame.

"Ok, fine. Whatever you say. Now, let's get out of here and go back before the time's up." Rose muttered and tried to get out of their hiding place.

He had the same idea apparently, because they both launched forward and got even more tangled up, made an unearthly sound and fell head first on the ground.

"Ouch!" She massaged her hurt arm. He cursed and rubbed his back.

"Let's just go to the portkey. I hate this forest." He stood up cautiously.

They both ran their feet barely touching the trembling ground while the trolls followed them in an angry fit. Rose, or rather Albus, got hold of an old book thrown carelessly next to an old oak tree and at the same time grabbed Malfoy by the collar.

Within seconds they were back to Headquarters.

The first thing they saw was a worried and worn out Morgan being forced down by Alderton. The second was McFusty and his team manifesting their smashed and turned into a jelly glumbumbles as if they were the Goblet of fire.

Maybe it was the disgusting sight or the fact that they had finished second; either way Rose's face made a scary grimace. On the other hand Malfoy who was lying motionless on the floor next to her was trying hard to contain his laughter.

If anyone happened to enter their dorm that night would have been turned into stone by surprise. Because the same guy who had been nicknamed by his class as 'Ice Prince' was in fact laughing his heart out.

"D-did you see his face? Parading his jellified bugs like they were diamonds. Pffft…" he started laughing again. "I dropped a forest on bloody mountain trolls and he was demonstrating his bug collection to me!"

Morgan joined in soon enough, having regained his energy rather fast after being praised by everyone for his full-protection spell.

Rose stared at them both from her bed and sniggered.

"It was my idea, man…" She bickered amicably.

"Never said it wasn't. But the truth is we wreaked havoc out there." Rose nodded unable to move an inch from her spot.

"I preferred you when you were a bitchy loner Malfoy." A chuckle came out of her mouth as she saw him scoffing in disbelief. And he was most probably right. Whatever she might say, Rose felt rather relieved at the unpredictable turn the 'Malfoy issue' had taken recently.

This adventurous, outspoken blonde with the steely and strangely warm laugh was not half bad, a definite improvement to the old, insufferable and sulky version.

Somehow, now her theory about beating Malfoy at any cost was starting to fade in the background.

She sneaked out for a moment, despite being exhausted, to check up on Albus.

She took out the communication mirror and called his name.

"Oi!" He greeted with a half-annoyed, half-content expression. "Why haven't you contacted me for so long? I wanted to call you out but I was afraid someone else might hear me."

She nodded apologetically. "Sorry, Al. It's just that a lot happened lately."

"Update me." He encouraged and Rose hurried to oblige, letting him know about the hexing accident Malfoy had gotten blamed for and the forest adventures .

"No way!" His jaw was on the floor and he kept shaking his head in denial.

"You went to St. Mungus? And you kicked some serious troll arse! Are you ok? You're not kidding me right?" He blabbered excitedly.

"It would be a bit hard to come up with such a story." She argued and her cousin had to agree.

"Besides, the reason I wanted to talk to you was because I need some pep talk." Rose changed the subject.

"About what?" He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Please remind me why I should hate Malfoy." She blurted out hurriedly her green eyes looking everywhere except for Albus.

"Actually, there is no reason to-"

"No!" She interrupted him. "That's not what I wanted to hear. Just remind me all those reasons I've been reciting to you all this time."

Her rather perceptive cousin looked at her more closely.

"Why don't you just tell me what the real problem is?" He crossed his hands and spoke like one would speak to a little kid.

Rose messed her black and already quite messy hair, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. She cleared her throat but nothing came out.

After a few failed attempts to pour her heart out to her cousin she finally made some progress.

"Well… is it possible," She began slowly, "that I have been coming face to face with Malfoy for all this time and yet…" She lost her courage for a moment.

"And yet, I have not been seeing him at all?" She finished awkwardly.

Albus smiled knowingly.

"Maybe you didn't want to see." He put forward and she glared at him.

"That's a ridiculous idea! Is there a person on this earth who wants to be unaware of things? Do you think I knew Malfoy could be decent and chose to think of him as a jerk and get into fights with him?" Words slipped her mouth quickly as she felt her blood pressure rising.

"That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that to understand someone you must invest in them even a little bit." He tried to explain and earned an even more confused look from his cousin.

"I mean, you have been looking at Malfoy too casually up till now. You had an idea of what he was and never bothered to pay more attention to him until he had you falling to the ground. Quite literally." He smirked at his little joke and Rose pouted at the same time.

She obviously could not handle so much truth, so she decided to drop the issue. The next half hour was spent listening to Albus' incessant blabber about his muggle girlfriend and how amazing she was.

As she walked back to the dorm Rose felt somewhat calmer and ready to go to bed only to open the door and come up with two lively and excited teammates, planning what didn't sound like a good night's sleep.

"Scorpius is banned from going out this weekend so we're going to steal some firewhiskey and get hammered tonight!" Morgan announced their mastermind plan.

"Do you even know how many kinds of wrong this is?" She shrieked.

"Calm down Potter, we used to do it often in the Slytherin dorms, remember?" In fact Rose did not remember, probably because she'd never been in the Slytherin dorms and she could not believe that the stuck up, coward Malfoy used to get drunk against the rules. Then again according to her cousin James everything can happen in the Slytherin dorms.

She shook her head to get back on track.

"I remember." She lied. "But that's not the same. This is serious. We could get kicked out."

"Relax Al! Most people have left for the weekend." Morgan tried to assure her.

"And how exactly are you going to find the firewhiskey?" She sat heavy on her bed, her eyes roaming from one to the other.

"Well, since you're in the best condition out of the three of us, Morgan thought you could grab a broom and sneak out the window…" Malfoy smirked, either because of the Slytherin-ness of the plan or because she'd be the one to do all the dirty work.

"I-I…" She stammered at the new problem.

Grab a broom… and fly…

That was something she couldn't do even if she did not object to the plan.

Rose had forgotten why she had to pretend to be her cousin to get into Auror training. All this time she was so engrossed in what was happening that she hadn't paid any attention to the real problem; which was that she could not, for the love of Merlin, fly on a broom.

Even at the sight of Morgan's broom she felt cold sweat running down her forehead.

"I can't…" She bit her lower lip. "No. I won't. That's against the rules. I will not participate."

Morgan gave her a serious look. "Is your injury not healed yet?" He asked solemnly.

She was ready to agree with Morgan, glad that he had provided a perfect excuse for her when Malfoy intervened.

"That's impossible." He said. "I was there when you got injured, that sort of wound should have healed in less than a month." He blurted out without giving it much thought.

He was right too. However, at that time he was giving Rose a real headache.

"And how would you know? Are you a Healer now?" She tried to defend herself.

The brown-haired friend of hers smiled a small smile and patted her back.

"Let's not fight." He said calmly. "I'm in perfect shape since I've been resting for three hours. I'll go get the drinks."

And with that he grabbed the broom and jumped out of the window.

Malfoy who thankfully had not been ticked off by her provocative tone continued to stare at her, or in fact her cousin Albus, for a while.

His gray eyes were brighter, not with joy but with interest. Something like an idea was burning inside of them.

"I see..." The blonde finally spoke.

"You've been acting weird all this time and now I see why." He declared.

A/N: Ok, ok, what do you think?

Since you bothered to read now you need to review to tell me what you think?

Sorry for the little cliffie.

Kisses,

Sarah