A/N: Ahhh . . . I don't even want to know how long it's been since I've updated this little story. Why I'm Updating Now: t's summer, I don't have school, and I'm not getting anything done with my own origial fic's. Why not write a bit of Potter?

Anyway, I do hope at least some of you catch this new chapter and maybe even read it :) If you do, my deepest apologies for the lack of updatit-y (yes, that is now a word).

Chapter 9

I Get By With a Little Help . . . From My Enemies

When Hogwarts received its first snow of the school year Scorpius was reading beside the dying embers of the Ravenclaw fireplace. It was six in the morning, freezing cold, and was not by any means an unusual occurrence in his schedule. What was, however, unusual was the presence of Rose Weasley making her way past the windows as newborn snowflakes flickered in the sunrise without a murderous look on her face.

The decision was made for him by his determination to prove Professor Grey wrong: Ignore her. You don't hate her, you don't hate her, you don't hate her, he told himself, hoping this wasn't edging on desperation.

She sat in the armchair furthest from him, relaxing against the blue fabric and yawning. Weasley was not a morning person, that much he had learned during their first five years at Hogwarts. Her eyelids drooped in their first class and at breakfast she frequently dropped her wand into her cereal bowl (where the milk was quick to turn blue). Today, however, there was something different edging around her irises, something he had not seen of her often before: determination.

Rose Weasley? Determined? Enthused, yes, but determination had always been a bit of an overachievement on her part.

So the teachers hadn't been joking about slipping something into her drink.

She tipped her head to the side, regarding him without caution. "So," she began, "Since I see you're not about to start the conversation, I will. I need your help."
Scorpius scoffed visibly. He couldn't help it.

Rose leered in response. "Aha. So you can hear me."

"To an extent," he muttered irritably, forcing his gaze away from her and to the pitifully small snowflakes outside the window. Unwillingly his ears tuned in to what she was about to say; he was curious despite all else.

The snippy Weasley continued to talk at him, gesturing wildly with her hands as she spoke, much as she was prone to do when particularly frustrated. "It must come to no surprise to you that you're Ravenclaw's resident library rat."

Nice alliteration, he thought with a smirk.

"You sleep between the shelves, eat lunch against the books, and stroll into the Restricted Section more than any of the other students," she continued, eyebrows knitting tightly together. Apparently this was difficult for her to say. "You spend more time there than your own dormitory. And I'm thinking that this is somewhat helpful. To me. Not . . . admirable, just . . . helpful."

"To you?" he interjected without thinking. Be ignorant, be completely ignorant.

"Yes, to me," Rose snapped. "Is that a problem? Because if it is I could just mention to Professor Robards I think I'm suffering long-term effects from your lovely little crucio spaz and he'll have you out of Hogwarts in no time."

Scorpius cringed. "No need for the blackmail, Weasel. I didn't say I wouldn't do it."

She, in response, rolled her eyes and looked into the fire's dying embers. "Excuse me for being defensive. You haven't exactly been very accommodating in the past, have you?"

"Have you?"
He watched as she seemed to recount on all the times she had prided herself on humiliating him throughout the years. The week-long warts when they were twelve, the hidden puking pastels in his pumpkin juice the year after, and the speak-aloud daydream charm during their O.W.L.'s. It all appeared to be coming back to her, and she smiled impishly at the memories. "D'you remember when - "

"Yes, I remember," he growled before she could go on. "And as you must know, you haven't exactly been a portrait of innocence throughout our . . . acquaintanceship." Rivalry was too strong a word, and it was anything but friendship.

Rose flung her legs over the arm of her chair. "Yes, well, I don't care. What I do care about, however, is whether or not you can help me find something."

He hated the fact that his eyebrows raised unintentionally out of interest.

With an exasperated sigh at her situation she pulled a scrawled drawing out of her robe pocket. Scorpius tried his best to get a better look without leaning in. It appeared to be some form of the letter "S," with a line running through it, ending at the bottom with a swirl. It was completely foreign to him. He shrugged. "And you need me because . . .?"

She crumpled the parchment in her hand to illustrate her point. "I need to crack this symbol, this code. And you need you to find me a book."

Scorpius realized, with intense shame, that his literary curiosity couldn't resist the temptation. Stupid bloody books.

Early morning light shone bright through the library windows as they browsed the Magical Emblems and Symbols aisle. The place was devoid of students; it was the Sunday after the Slytherin-Gryffindor match; naturally, most were still sleeping the morning away in their dormitories.

Already Rose was beginning to tug out her hair in aggravation as they searched. "I've been looking for weeks, weeks, and I haven't found anything."

Scorpius tried to ignore her attitude as he flipped through the pages of a particularly large volume. It was filled to the brim with spell abbreviations, hieroglyphics written by wizards centuries before, and the written forms of parseltongue. "Well, how have you been looking?"

"What do you mean, 'how have I been looking?'" she asked, ripping another book from its shelf.

He cringed. Again. "In order to find something you need to know how to look for it." Rose scanned her book and pulled another towards her, sickeningly disrespectful to the words on the page. Without quite knowing, Scorpius contemplated her silently; Rose Weasley was good – excellent, in fact – at finding answers, but she never took the time to look for them.

She seethed quietly. "I couldn't tell you how I've been looking for them, anyways. I peek through the index, maybe, and -"

"The index?" He shook his head. "Clearly you're insane."

"And clearly you're a pompous, idiotic git."

Scorpius took the book from her and opened to the beginning; a page of runes unfolded before them. "You won't find anything by using the index. It tells you what the publisher wants you to find, not what you want. If this symbol is so obscure, it won't be in the index." He couldn't help snorting. "My god, 'top of our year,' what were they thinking?"

They spent the brunt of their morning among the books in the Magical Emblems section; the ever-ancient Madame Pince kept shuffling past to check on them, instantly suspicious of an alliance between a Malfoy and a Weasley, as anyone who remembered their parents (and, rest assured, everyone did) would be.

"So," Rose began behind him, a somewhat whining tone to her voice, "If you lock yourself up in here all the time, why don't you get top marks? Hm?"

Scorpius tore himself from the pages of The Dark Mark: Its Symbolism to Voldemort and His Followers and put it aside, knowing there was nothing to find in the thick book. "Classes are just . . . classes." Whereas words were . . . words. "I study, I try, I memorize spells, and sometimes I fail. So does everyone. Except you." He said it with distaste.

"Jealous much?" she replied snidely, nose peeking above the thin booklet she was holding.

"Of you? Right."

Their bitter banter was followed by a long silence as they paged through their own texts. It was a silence tinged with, surprisingly, awkwardness, confusing Scorpius even more. If he was completely ignorant around her, then why would their sudden lapse of conversation be deemed awkward? Shaking his head to dislodge these thoughts he was about to say something when a small, freckled head popped around the corner. Ah. A Weasley. He could've been Rose's cousin, he could've been Rose's brother, Scorpius didn't know. It was impossible to keep the Weasley tribe straight.

"Hey, Owen Spinnet needs you," the freckled face spoke. He squinted his eyes at Scorpius, nonverbally voicing his concerns: What are you doing here with her?

Rose barely glanced up. "What for, Hugo."

"Surprise Quidditch practice. Uh, surprise."

"Ahh!" Obviously annoyed, she slammed the book back into its shelf. Scorpius grimaced. "I hate it when he does this! Does he ever bother to think that, though he doesn't have a life, some of us do?" In a rush, she brushed past Scorpius a little too quickly, knocking his book into his face. He rubbed his nose. Just wonderful.

"Sorry," she blurted out.

And with that Rose and Hugo Weasley were gone, weaving through the complicated shelves of books on their way to the pitch. Scorpius stared after them, not bothering to go back to his book. "Sorry?" He didn't think they had ever exchanged such a phrase, such a word, before in their lives. At least not to each other. He shuddered. Indifference, indifference, he repeated to himself, wanting desperately to make it completely true.

It was not only his book session with the Weasley girl that made this particular Sunday unique for Scorpius. It happened just after lunch; he'd retired to the Transfiguration courtyard, knowing the library would be completely filled with students finally awake and hurriedly finishing homework due the following day. The ground was frozen, and a gentle icy mist seemed to settle over the stiff, frost-tipped grass. He was just beginning the most promising book from the library concerning the symbol he'd copied onto a spare piece of parchment when they rounded the corner.

Two Slytherins, by the looks of it. They were tall and dark: dark hair, dark eyes, dark shadows surrounding them. Scorpius Malfoy had a no-policy-policy when it came to Slytherins. Coming from pure Slytherin ancestry, Scorpius was left alone by the Slytherins, respected even. He had realized by now, painfully, that none of the Ravenclaws could ever give him that same type of respect. Anyway, Scorpius always kept cool around them, terrified that one of them would leak to his father what House he was really in.

"Alright, Malfoy?" the tall one (who was he kidding? They were both towering) asked him, peering at his book.

Scorpius just nodded. "Alright."

The other one, a Zabbini, leaned his foot against the stone bench. "How's your father doing?"

How was his father doing? How should he know? And why should he care? He gave Zabbini a shrug. "Well, I suppose." He didn't ask him why; all he wanted was silence from these two tall goons. Maybe they'd leave if they found him too boring for their taste. However, though his eyes wandered back to the page, they kept badgering.

The first one sat down beside him. "I've heard some things about your mother. Up for a promotion at the office, eh? My dad works with her."

Moving up from a secretary? Now, that's hard to do, he thought sarcastically to himself. "Really. I hadn't heard."

Zabbini laughed, a snide, dark chuckle. "You know what I heard? Everyone's saying that you crucioed the living hell out of the Weasley girl."

Scorpius wouldn't exactly call it that. It was more of a mind slip than anything. However, he didn't dare forget what company he was in, and decided to let it go for the moment. "Hey, she bothers me," he replied, keeping his gaze trained specifically on his book, though he didn't quite see it. Somehow Rose's eyes flashed before him: Wide, surprised, pained, and something like disappointment. He rubbed his forehead, not wanting to think about that, not now.

Zabbini was still talking, practically applauding him. "None of us really expected it from you, you know. It was just so . . . different, so revolutionary, so rebellious."

Scorpius looked at him finally. "Rebellious? Against what?"

"Against her type," the other chimed in.

"And what's her type?" asked Scorpius, glancing from one Slytherin to the other. They just laughed in reply, roaring, raucous laughter. Oh, so he had made a joke now, had he? The Slytherins always had their little personal mottos, phrases, even words, isolating them, if only slightly, from the rest of the Houses. They held a different perspective in life: Only the fittest survive. Scorpius wasn't sure he could live with that outlook; he wasn't exactly the "fittest" in anything.

The Slytherin touched the piece of parchment sticking out of Scorpius' book, the one with the symbol scrawled across it; he had copied it in a rush, seeing as Rose had gotten impatient of holding it for him. Both Slytherins looked at each other. They exchanged a look he couldn't read.

"You know what this means?" Zabbini asked him, not harshly, regarding the symbol.

Scorpius didn't know what to say. "Er . . . not . . . entirely."

A nod from the other. It was a knowing nod, filled with understanding he didn't get in Ravenclaw Tower. "Tell me something, Malfoy."

He wasn't sure he wanted to "tell him something," but he gave the Slytherin his rapt attention anyway. Maybe, just maybe, this was the road to the mysterious symbol and he could wash his hands of this strange alliance with Rose Weasley.

"You have plans for the next Hogsmeade weekend?" he asked.

Scorpius pretended to think about it. Of course he didn't have plans, he never had plans. "Not yet, anyway," he replied, tone neutral.

A cold grin slid across Zabbini's sharp features. "Tell you what. A few of us are meeting at the Hog's Head then; we'd like you to come, even if you just show up for a little while. We'd appreciate your . . . enlightenment."

Though Scorpius gave them a look they both stood, not ones for small talk, and made their exit with a few "see you's" and "later's." He watched them leave, even further confused. A few Slytherins, inviting him? They had had no contact outside of the usual classroom activities. Something, he knew, was afoot. And it wasn't enlightenment they wanted from him, he knew: It was enlightenment they would give to him.

A/N: Kudos to anyone who knows the root of this chapter's title. Not that it's a hard one to guess.