Rose knew that Scorpius was unlikely to be brooding about the kiss he'd given her that afternoon - it had only been on the cheek, after all, and she suspected he'd only done it to get her off-balance.

She also knew that even if he was brooding, he would be unlikely to actually talk about it. That seemed to be a Slytherin thing - they were so obnoxiously deliberate about everything.

But unlike Albus's Slytherin friends, Rose was often ruled by her instinct, and right now, her instinct was telling her to eavesdrop.

When she entered the library, she saw Scorpius and Noah sitting at a table by the window. Thanking her lucky stars that they were out of the way of foot traffic - being invisible didn't make her intangible, after all - she carefully made her way over to them.

The boys worked in silence for a few minutes. Just as Rose was beginning to feel both embarrassed to be watching them so intently and bored of the monotony, however, Scorpius put an assignment aside and Noah looked up. "You're done with Potions already?" he asked in surprise.

Rose thought that Scorpius looked a little uncomfortable. "Yes."

"Impressive." Noah glanced up at the large clock hanging on the wall. "It's not even eight, and you're done with Transfiguration, Charms, Muggle Studies, and Potions? I should bother you about things you don't want to talk about more often."

"My marks are fine, thanks," Scorpius told him. "I'd better finish up that drawing of bowtruckles, though. I think we're finishing them on Friday."

As Scorpius started rifling through his papers, Noah lowered his voice. "Did you give Rose Weasley something that put her in the hospital wing?"

Scorpius yanked out his drawing so violently that it ripped. "It wasn't supposed to. It was just supposed to make her a little loopy. I don't know what went wrong." He tapped the parchment with his wand to mend the tear. "I think she was just tired."

"Well, I guess now you're even, and you can start avoiding her like the plague?"

To Rose's interest, Scorpius's face seemed to tighten a little. "Guess so."

"How'd she look today?"

Scorpius didn't answer, and after a moment, his cousin looked back up. "Nice try," Scorpius said.

Noah didn't exactly smile, but Rose could see the corner of his mouth twitching. "It worked. If you hadn't seen her, you would have said, 'How would I know?'"

Scorpius exhaled loudly and gave his cousin a very dirty look. "Yeah. I guess it did." He looked down at his drawing. "She was fine. Angry at first, but fine." He put his quill on the paper, but before he'd added anything to the sketch, he looked up again. "You know Alex Finnigan asked her out? For the first Hogsmeade weekend?"

From his shrug, Noah didn't seem to find this information anywhere near as interesting as Scorpius did. "I didn't, but it doesn't shock me. She's a popular girl. Were you expecting people to not ask her out?"

"But she's so arrogant." Scorpius scowled at the parchment in front of him.

"Mm." Rose thought that she could see the hint of a smile on Noah's lips as he jotted something down.

"I bet she's going to say yes to him next time. Or there's somebody else. She's been using some new potion on her hair, you know."

Rose had no idea how Scorpius Malfoy could have possibly known that, but the fact that he'd been paying such close attention made her feel a little less creepy about standing three feet away from them listening in on their conversation.

"I didn't know, no. I don't pay such close attention to Rose Weasley's hair. Did you notice because she spend too much time looking at her hair, or do you get close enough to smell her hair on a regular basis? Because Scorpius, both of those things are pretty creepy."

Scorpius studied his drawing in silence for a moment. His orange hair flopped into his eyes, and he blew it back. "So you don't think she's pretty?" he asked finally.

Noah shrugged. "No, I think she's very pretty. I just tend to avoid crushing on the same girl my cousin is, and you've been weird about her for years."

For the flush spreading across Scorpius's cheeks, Rose gathered that what Noah was saying was more or less the truth. She carefully boosted herself up to sit on the table near them, thanking her lucky stars that she'd come to the library in time to hear this. She would have liked to tell Scorpius off for dismissing instinct so easily, but given the details of the situation, she suspected she'd just have to let this one lie.

"She drives me insane," Scorpius snapped.

"Yeah, well, they must not be mutually exclusive, then."

"They should be." Scorpius let his head drop onto the table and let out a groan that was loud enough to attract attention from several tables over. He lowered his voice but otherwise ignored it. "I don't know. What do you think?"

Noah put down his quill. "I think that the two of you rub each other the wrong way, and you don't help things by baiting her. I have never managed to get into a fight with her, so how you manage it regularly is beyond me. But I also know you well enough to tell that you're really, really into her. You used to hide it better, but this year… not so much."

"She has a pretty face—"

Noah cut him off. "Don't give me that," he said. "For one thing, you're not just staring at her face. Don't try to sanitize it - Albus isn't here."

Scorpius's face got even redder. "No," he admitted. "I'm not." The boy scuffed his foot across the library floor. "But if she hadn't come to the library a couple weeks ago—"

Once again, Noah didn't let him finish. "If you're going to lie to me, at least do a better job of it than that. This didn't start when she came to the library." He let out a disgusted snort. "Merlin, Scorpis, give me some credit."

Scorpius didn't hold his gaze.

"Don't tell me you're not half hoping for her to retaliate so you can keep talking to her."

"It's just that I kind it amusing." He still refused to meet his cousin's eyes.

"Yeah, you've been finding that red hair really amusing," Noah said sarcastically. "And I'm sure whatever she thinks of next will be worse." He ran a hand through his own short-cropped hair, which was significantly darker than his cousin's. "You know, Scorpius, you can't gauge how she feels about you by the way she retaliates."

Scorpius was starting to look like he wished he was doing his care of magical creatures drawing. Rose would have felt bad for him if she wasn't so interested in what he to say next, though she wasn't at all sure what she would do about it. "I know. She could be head over heels for a guy and make him sprout tentacles or something if she got annoyed at him." He groaned again, though this time he managed to do it quietly enough that no one at other tables shushed him, and put his head in his hands. "Noah, this is really annoying."

"You know, if you really do dislike her that much, you should just avoid her."

"I don't, really, I don't think." Scorpius's voice was muffled. "I just don't know how much I like her."

Rose wasn't sure whether she was seeing pity or sympathy on Noah's face. Maybe it was a little of both. "Do you have any idea how she feels about you?"

"No," Scorpius said, "other than the fact that she likes rubbing my nose in my being attracted to her. I really should figure that out." He looked thoughtful. "Though she did get really red when I - er - oh, well, I kind of kissed her when I saw her in the Hospital Wing. Maybe I should have mentioned that."

Noah goggled at him. "Yeah, next time, maybe start with that. You idiot."

"Well, I wasn't planning on it, but she kept biting her lips and looking at mine, and… well… it seemed like a good idea at the time." Noah's look of incredulity hadn't faded in the slightest, so Scorpius added, "And it was just on the cheek!"

His cousin shook his head. "Good job digging yourself in an even deeper hole. Just so we're clear, though, that doesn't mean you get to keep on with the jealous jerk routine every time I spend a couple hours working on Arithmancy or whatever with her. If you do, I might actually have to smack you - I can't believe she hasn't noticed you glaring at me."

A piece of the puzzle clicked into place for Rose. She had noticed Scorpius glaring at Noah - she'd just assumed it was because he didn't like her, not because he did.

Scorpius, at least, had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Noted. Er - sorry." He glanced around the library. "Um - so you're going to think I'm really paranoid, but I don't want to talk about her again unless we're in our common room."

"Why? I understand that she has a lot of cousins and I get that she knows secret passages, but we would be able to see her if she was here. She's not."

"Well, not now," Scorpius conceded. "She's probably only just gotten out of the hospital wing. But I think she has an invisibility cloak."

Noah leaned back in his seat and regarded his cousin with genuine concern. "You're right," he said flatly. "I think you're paranoid. Do you have any idea how rare those things are? Who's going to give one to a fifteen-year old?"

"Yes, I do. But she and Al got really tense at one point when I mentioned them then changed the subject."

"I think you're being paranoid," Noah repeated. "But fine. Look, I thought I wouldn't have to say this to you, but don't do anything rash."

"Eventually she'll say yes to someone."

"Yeah, but do you really want her to say no to you? You'd never live it down, and it's not like you can just avoid her."

"Fair point." Scorpius looked a little disappointed.

They went back to their work, and Rose turned and left, mulling over the conversation on her way back to the common room. She checked the map to make sure there was no one nearby, pulled off the cloak, muttered "Mischief managed," and stowed them both in her bag. To her relief, Albus had retreated to his dormitory by the time she got to the Common Room, so there was no one to stop her when she climbed through the portrait hole and headed upstairs.

Scorpius was uncharacteristically quiet in Transfiguration the next day, which as far as Rose was concerned was all to the best. She still wasn't sure what she wanted from him, which meant that she wasn't sure what to say to him, either. Thankfully, she didn't see him again that day; her Thursdays were generally busy, particularly with the Quidditch practice James had scheduled before dinner, and she had more than enough schoolwork to do.

When she settled into her favorite chair in the Gryffindor Common Room with her books that night, she told herself that she wasn't avoiding the library for any particular reason, but she knew that she was lying to herself, especially after it took her double the time to finish her work that it usually did. By the time she was putting her books away, her cousins had returned from detention and opened their books. She bid them good night and trudged up the stairs to her dormitory, suspecting that she was in for another night of interrupted sleep.

Rose awoke with a start in the early morning hours, her heart pounding in her ears. Rubbing her eyes did not distance her as much as she might have hoped the very, very vivid dream she'd just had; when she closed them, she could almost feel Scorpius's fingers trailing down her back again while he brushed his lips along the curve of her neck.

She fell back onto her bed, covered her face with a pillow, and let out a groan. Just now, she would have loved to jinx him - annoying and self-assured Slytherin that he was - to within an inch of his life.

Or at least his sanity. He seemed to be driving hers away far too quickly for comfort.

Though the memories of her dream had faded by the time she woke up that morning, they hadn't dissipated completely, and she was more than a little worried that she would end up embarrassing herself when she saw Scorpius at Care of Magical Creatures, which she had immediately after breakfast. She took longer than usual to get ready, trying to at least bury the dream deep enough that she wouldn't blush when she looked at him. It really was very disconcerting.

She felt like she'd been reasonably successful; she and Natalia sat near Scorpius, Albus, and Damien, and though Rose felt a twinge in her stomach when she looked at the Slytherin, whose hair was still a bright and ridiculous shade of orange, she didn't think it showed on her face. Certainly no one else seemed to notice.

When the lesson was over, Rose didn't have to hurry to get ready like many of her other classmates did, including the four she was sitting with; while they had to rush to get back up to the castle for Muggle Studies, she had a free period that she was going to be very happy to enjoy in peace.

As she finally slung her bag over her shoulder, however, she realized that Scorpius was still standing there. He looked nervous; he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and she could see him swallow hard even from ten feet away.

"Don't you have class?" Rose asked, fighting to keep her tone pleasant and calm.

He answered her question with another one. "Can we talk?"

A/N: Well, eavesdropping is certainly dropping Rose into some interesting situations, isn't it?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you have the chance to review. Either way, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

- Branwen