a/n: for xAccioPencil, a great reviewer who requested a ScorpiusRoxanne with the prompt music. I hope you like it!
Again, thank you for all the reviews, guys, they mean the world to me. I hope you all had lovely Christmases!
Now, I'm going to shamelessly pimp my friend Mesteria's new Next-Gen Harry Potter RPG. It needs more members and it's great fun. She's put a lot of hard work into it and I want it to be busier! The link is on my profile if you're interested – everyone from OCs to canon characters are accepted! So go, my lovely readers, go join!
pairing: ScorpiusRoxanne
words: 1143
the unexpected sort of relationship
touch me 'cause i can't move
i can barely breathe
- Fifteen Minutes Old, Snow Patrol
Roxanne has a secret.
It's not a world-ending or life-threatening one or anything. It's just a little bizarre and she has quite enough bizarre in her life without adding to it, thank you very much.
The secret involves the piece of Muggle technology stashed beneath her bed in her dormitory with the earphones and the Jurassic-era CD compartment. Another part of the secret involves the stack of Muggle CDs hidden next to the piece of technology; and then the final part of the secret is that she pulls out both other parts when she has time alone and she plugs herself in and she listens and listens and listens and doesn't stop until she is disturbed.
And, okay, it's just music – but it's all about the Wrock these days and if people knew you were completely fangirling over some Muggle band you'd be considered at the very least desperate.
So Roxanne keeps her music tastes to herself and uses the few opportunities that she is granted, being best friends with Lily and Dominique and Chloe, and she listens.
She risks taking her CD outside one fine summer's day when Lily is off getting in trouble somewhere with the other two and Fred is with his girlfriend, finding herself a spot on the bank of the lake and stretching back to let her tanned skin drink up the strong sun, music floating up through the wires and into her ears.
"Oh, Weasley," a voice says, disturbing her from her reverie, and Roxanne tugs the earphones out instantly and groans as she recognises Scorpius Malfoy, the collective Weasley nemesis.
"What the fuck d'you want, Scorpius?"
"Don't try to be spiteful, Weasley, it doesn't suit you," Scorpius replies drolly, sinking down next to her. "I just wanted to know what you're listening to."
"Nothing you'd be interested in," Roxanne replies, lying expertly (being friends with Lily and Chloe has certainly paid off) and casually shuffling her walkman into her bag. "What are you doing out here?"
"Enjoying the sun," he replies, and Roxanne doubts that but accepts it.
"Okay then," she says disinterestedly, but she's never been good at being unfriendly and he looks kind of miserable so she sighs and leans back onto the ground, her fingers threading through the grass.
A shadow falls across her, and suddenly he's lying down next to her, and Roxanne doesn't know how it's happened but their hands are almost touching, his skin a mere whisper from hers.
"I'm sorry about Lily and Dom's prank on you the other day," Roxanne says suddenly, turning her head and shielding her eyes from the sun so she can look at him properly. "It was mean."
He shrugs and his profile is very handsome in the bright daylight. "S'okay. I'm used to it now."
"Yeah, but that still doesn't excuse it," Roxanne replies, and this time she moves her hand deliberately so that her little finger is most definitely touching his. "I'm sorry, I really am. I try to get them to tone it down, but… well, they're Weasleys through-and-though."
"How are you so nice?" he inquires, and he sounds really and truly amazed. "You're a Weasley. A Gryffindor Weasley."
"Well you're a Gryffindor Malfoy," Roxanne replies, turning her head and meeting his eyes quite unexpectedly, stormy-skies-grey into shallow-ocean-blue.
"Fair point," he says with a slight chuckle, turning his face back up to stare at the few clouds that are scudding across the sky. "I still don't know why that happened."
Roxanne smiles and mimics him, returning her eyes to the sky. "I guess the Hat saw something worthy of Gryffindor in you, huh?"
He shrugs and she – impossibly – thinks he might even be smiling.
"I'm glad mini-Potter went into Slytherin, you know," he comments suddenly, almost out-of-the-blue. "People bother less with me being in Gryffindor now."
"Lily's certainly a distraction," Roxanne replies with a sigh, and she's thinking very unfriendly thoughts about how it all seems to boil down to Lily or to Dominique or to one of her other relatives with all the boys they know.
She shuts her eyes to try to block out the mean thoughts, but they flash open again as her world darkens. She discovers Scorpius leaning over her, his grey eyes faintly amused as his hair flops onto his forehead, his head blocking out the sun.
"You don't need to be jealous of her, you know," he tells her gently, and now his hand is not only grazing hers but covering it, and she'd be awfully grateful if her heart could just be marginally less pathetic and stop beating so fast. "I mean, she's attention-grabbing sure, but you – you've got the most distinctive looks of any girl I've seen and I don't think you need to worry about Lily outshining you."
"…Thank you?" Roxanne says, trying to figure out if this is a compliment or not. She flushes slowly, aware that as this is Scorpius Malfoy, it probably is one of his rarer-than-snow-leopards compliments.
"Seriously," he presses, and now his fingers are gliding up to just barely touch her glossy curls. "I mean, you've got nice skin and pretty dark hair and your eyes are so blue, you know?"
"Scorpius Malfoy, you sap," she says in amazement, fake-slapping his arm, and he grins self-consciously and shrugs.
"My cousin Chloe gave me this book "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches," he informs her, and there might even be a hint of a blush darkening his cheekbones. "She said I definitely needed it."
"I have to agree with her," Roxanne says, laughing. "But why are you bothering to use it on me?"
"You know, Roxanne," he says, and now he's extending his hand out to help her to sit up, "You don't see yourself clearly at all, do you?"
"What do you –" she begins, but then suddenly she's interrupted because, sweet Merlin's underpants, he's kissing her, actually kissing her, and Roxanne doesn't know what to do with herself so she just wraps her arms tightly around his neck and kisses him back because he's Scorpius Malfoy and he's a damn good kisser.
Not that she'd tell him that, of course, his ego is big enough as it is.
They become a thing and it's undeniable that they look good together – he all blonde and pale and iceiceice, she all dark hair and dark skin and firefirefire – and even her cousins have to agree that they work together nicely, balancing each other out. And, unbelievably, Scorpius really does love her.
They go out on walks together, plugged into Roxanne's CD walkman, and she introduces him to her favourite Muggle bands and he introduces her to his favourite Muggle authors and they just work, somehow.
(We don't have to psycho-analyse everything - some things just are. And, you know, these are the things that work best.)
a/n: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, please don't do so without reviewing, thank you!