Judge tenderly, if you must. There is usually a side you have not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle waged that you are not having to fight.
- Tracy Lea LaRussa

Chapter 21:

In Which The Unexpected Ones Get Unexpectedly Acknowledged

~ Rose ~

The wind gusted through Rose's hair, tousling it into a flared mane as she rushed between her fellow classmates to the other side of the pitch. Coloured clothes flashed in her peripheral vision, but she paid them no mind. She had one goal and that was to hit the bludger. With a dizzying speed she flung herself in front of it and hit it with mathematical precision and a force unexpected by a girl her size.

A group of redheads whistled and cheered from the bleachers, the thrill of it boosting Rose's confidence more than would be prudent to admit. She pulled the tip of her broom up, elevating herself to oversee the match until her intervention was needed again. That Goyle creature had stones in his head, that much was obvious, but his piggy eyes followed the bludgers alertly enough to trust him half the beaters' job.

Albus was helping George Reed, their team's keeper, defend the goal posts of their teams brilliantly and after two failed attempts of throwing the quaffle through Slytherin's posts, the red, wooden ball ended up in their team's hands, Albus rushed forward, along with the rest of the chasers speeding quickly to the opposite goals.

A silly little tune left Rose's lips as her eyes wandered; the other Slytherin girls were to blame for it, they sang it like crazy! It was supposedly from an amazing new song of the Joyless Hags, but she was too proud to bother asking them more about it. The blond cootie wandered, as if idly, at the fringes of the pitch, his eyes looking for the golden snitch. Rose had no knack for that sort of thing, that slow, patient game of hide and seek with a tiny thing with wings. Hitting bludgers was far more to her liking and she was satisfied she was serving her team so well doing that.

Her attention was diverted as both bludgers went menacingly after Flint, who had the quaffle wedged beneath his armpit. Goyle was hot on their trail and Rose joined in, leaning close to speed up and finding herself side by side to one of the bludgers. Without a hint of hesitation she hit it away, sending it zooming in the opposite direction, while Goyle did the same to the other. There was some kind of sync between the two of them during Firsties Quidditch, which worried Rose. Either Goyle was smartening up during the matches or she… well, she couldn't be getting any dumber, she was Rose Weasley after all.

Scorpius was on the move, following something invisible to her. Their opponents' seeker followed after him, hoping to see what he's seeing. Rose suspected Scorpius was bluffing, leading the other seeker after a bad trail. She thought that was cunning and maybe somewhat mean, given that Jacky Holder wasn't a particularly skilled seeker, or a formidable opponent to any level. He had no reason to lead her astray like that.

It's kind of genius though, she acknowledged silently. It could do marvels in an actual school match if he got into the real Slytherin team next year, although that sort of trick could work only a few times before the other players figured it out.

For a second Scorpius glanced at Rose, or so it seemed, slowing down. She looked at him curiously, only to see the bludger coming his way too late. It brushed the back tip of his broom, throwing him off balance and into a frantic spinning towards the ground. The bludger was after a chaser though so Rose leapt ahead to get it out of the way, having little space in her thoughts to worry about Scorpius.

Soon the field was clear and she noticed Scorpius nonchalantly circling the pitch again, as if nothing had ever happened. Things ended quickly after that, as Scorpius caught the snitch and Bazel whistled the end of the friendly match between the Slytherin and Hufflepuff firsties teams.

As the students walked in, brooms in hands, Albus shook hands with a Hufflepuff chaser before hurrying to Rose's side, doing a quick motion before his face and pushing something hard against her palm. She took the slowly reappearing glasses calmly and made a circular movement with her wrist, hiding them in the loose sleeve of her sports cloak.

"Will take care of it when the crowd clears a bit," she murmured as they walked past Flint and Goyle, who were chattering excitedly to each other.

She saw Albus walking clumsily to the hanger and collecting first a cloak that obviously was too long to be his, then putting it back and taking the right one. He fidgeted with the handle of his locker by the time Rose had entered the girls' locker rooms. They were visibly more empty; it felt like quite a disappointment to Rose that boys were usually more excited about Quidditch than girls, but deep inside she understood that there were things that could interest a girl far more. A girl hurried to the bathroom, too swiftly for Rose to start a conversation. The only other girls in the room were two Hufflepuffs braiding each others' hair, which somehow gave her the feeling it would be slightly inappropriate a time to speak to them.

Her stomach churned with a feeling unfamiliar as she watched them, complimenting each other and giggling about things she could not hear. It wasn't loneliness, not really; Albus was with her all the time so that couldn't be it… She shook away the pointless feeling she couldn't find an answer to; she hated questions she couldn't answer. Instead she changed out of her clothes fast and hurried out of the lockers, having forgotten in her rush to render Albus's glasses invisible. She clutched them beneath her sleeve as her fellow first-year Slytherins walked out the boy's rooms in a tightly-knit group.

Flint glared at her, his look suggesting he was thinking something such as "You're standing far too close for my liking, Weasley," and Goyle was doing his best to mimic the expression. She and him stopped working for the same team as soon as the Quidditch matches were finished. Ryan looked at her somewhat awkwardly and opted to wave at Evannina instead, who was watching from a distance, closer to the castle.

"Good work, Weasley," someone said, patting her on the shoulder for a second. Rose spun around, certain she had imagined it. Scorpius had already retrieved his hand and was swinging his sports' bag over his shoulder indifferently.

"What?" was the only thing Rose could muster.

"The bludger? It was a good save," he said. Rose had to do her best to hide her surprise from further showing before all of the boys. Was the Highness of Scorpius Malfoy actually complimenting her in front of all of his little followers? At that moment Albus appeared behind Goyle, somewhat disheveled, probably due to the lack of properly seeing while getting dressed. "You too, Potter. You played well enough you could be a member of the real Slytherin team."

Albus nodded meekly, somehow less startled by the sudden public show of affection Scorpius was exhibiting.

As soon as Scorpius moved, the rest followed and Rose stayed behind with Albus to cast the invisibility charm on his glasses. Scorpius winked at them as Albus put them on.

"That's far too strange! Come on!" Rose commanded and pulled Albus up the hill, almost trotting to reach the boys.

Felix was asking in a hushed voice, "Why in the world would you congratulate them like that?"

"Yeah, why?" Quincy repeated.

Ryan peered at Scorpius curiously.

"It's about time we pay notice to them. Anyone who isn't blind can see that they'll both make the Quidditch team next year, so if you plan to joining also, you can't just ignore them. They're also relatively good in classes and give points to Slytherin more often than others," Scorpius looked pointedly at Goyle.

"But…" Felix paused, unsure of what to say. "Wasn't that a bit… much?"

"They seem alright to me," Ryan said, gaining three curious pairs of eyes pinning him down. "What?"

Scorpius seemed to pay little attention to Ryan as he pointed out, "Well, apparently neither they nor the Headmistress have no plans to transfer them to another House, so it would look bad if we left two descent students of the House be pariahs." Looking at the confused expression on Quincy's face, he added, "Outcasts." Quincy nodded at that.

From the distance they were keeping, Rose heard most of those and grinned somewhat to herself. Then she pulled it together and grew serious. No, I never needed Malfoy's help to survive in school and I don't plan on starting now. She snorted some and walked up the hill without greeting anybody on her way to the dungeons. It was only when she walked through the common room's passage that she realised how she had left Albus behind her long ago.

She was tidying up her things and laying out her pajamas for tonight when Evannina and Matilda came in. Rose felt an unusual nervousness about them, unlike anything she ever had before. Usually when they entered the first-year girls' bedroom, they simply pretended she wasn't there, ignoring the existence of her bed altogether. They kept on glancing at her as they fussed with their own things, in the most pointless way from Rose's vantage point. She was starting to wonder if someone had poured a confounding potion in the Slytherin table that morning, when Evannina cleared her throat.

Rose paid little mind to it, knowing Evannina couldn't be doing it to draw her attention. Yet, Evannina did it again, thrice as a matter of fact, and finally decided to walk up to Rose's bed. She sat down on Rose's trunk, crossing her thin legs in that little, regal way of hers and coughed lightly.

"Do you need something?" Rose raised an eyebrow as she asked, suddenly uncomfortably aware of her hair which was flying to all directions.

"I have a question." Evannina glanced at Matilda.

"Yes?"

"Matilda wanted me to ask you if you'd be interested in sitting with us at dinner." Matilda was absolutely horrified as Rose looked up at her. She probably saw the Hexing Witch and feared dearly for what would become of her. Rose had managed to build quite a dark and fearsome reputation in her first term at school.

She smiled a somewhat intimidating smile and said, "Well, we are sitting in the same table."

"Matilda meant next to us." Matilda was then on the verge of fainting, her cheeks barely a shade pinker than the Grey Lady's. "So we can discuss things and whatsoever."

"Oh." Rose was then certain that something had been added to that apple juice they all had had for lunch. "I assume I can try it for once," she said, somewhat guarded. She expected them to change their mind and laugh at her naivety any moment now.

"Alright, see you in dinner then!" Evannina said and twining her elbow with Matilda's, she led her lifeless-looking friend to the common rooms.

Letting a moderate amount of time pass, Rose also went there, wondering where Albus had been off to. It wasn't difficult to spot him, gazing at the murky waters of the Black Lake and pointing creatures out for… Ryan. She was quite surprised at how easily Albus had agreed to let Slytherins befriend him… or one Slytherin anyway. Two, considering how little effort it had taken on Scorpius's side to approach him as well.

She sat down on a sofa and Ignis came to sit on her laps, demanding to be stroked with a proud meow. Rose scratched the back of his ears just the way he liked it, although she wasn't in the right state of mind to devote herself completely to her kneazle.

Ignis sensed that and got up, stretched, yawned and raised his lion's tail high, his bum looking like a beating heart as he walked away and into the boys' bedrooms. Her hands idle were left to tap against the arms of the sofa until dinner time. Albus had been having so much fun with Ryan that he hadn't seen her and had walked out with him. Fuming, Rose went to the Great Hall, reaching it before most students.

To her surprise, two figures were waving persistently enough for her to realise they were waving at her. Evannina and Matilda weren't kidding after all after all. She sat down, sandwiching Evannina between Matilda and herself, her anger receding in a mysterious way.

Rose's stomach was still feeling weird, so she stayed put and toyed with the endless tablecloth covering the Slytherin table, observing curiously what Matilda was putting in her plate. She piled a few chicken legs in a corner and filled the rest with mashed potatoes. She also had added a generous portion of mushroom soup in her bowl. "The mashed potatoes are quite something, aren't they?" she asked before realising it.

Matilda looked at her in surprise and a faint smile showed on her face. Her cheeks had gotten back to their usual rosy shade. "My Mum could never cook mashed potatoes properly," she explained. "I can't get enough of those."

"Your Mum does the cooking at home?" Evannina asked, looking at Matilda as if a set of horns had grown out of her forehead.

Matilda nodded. Rose decided to chime in. "So does mine. Although she sometimes threatens Dad and he gives it a go, but he leaves a terrible mess in the kitchen. Mum says he can't keep in order any more than a march of garden gnomes."

Evannina's doll-like face cracked to a smile and mushroom soup almost came out of Matilda's nose as she burst to a fit of hysterical laughing. It took her a while to quiet down and by then she was red as a turnip. "In our home Pippi does the cooking mostly. He was our Uncle Euripides's house elf and mother took him in after Uncle passed away. He's somewhat fidgety, but one of the best cooks one could wish for," Evannina explained.

"My Mum could never have a house elf doing her chores. She's working in the Ministry you see and is in favour of paid labour for the elves."

"I've heard my Dad talking about her," Evannina said. "He doesn't agree with this." Rose frowned at that. "But we treat Pippi well," she hurried to add. "He's got his own room, with my old bed and a bathroom of his own. He's got a view to the grove ahead of our house and the creek that passes through it."

"I agree with my Mum still, but I'm glad you give him a proper bedroom. My Dad says change can't come in a sudden wave like that for such things and I agree with that as well. It will only spite the families that are used to having house elves at their service."

Matilda set down her fork with a slight ding. "My parents had gone to a gathering your Mum had organised, I think. They talked to some friends about freeing their elves after that. I think a couple of them never spoke to my parents again."

"Well, that's their loss then!" Rose said passionately. The conversation made her forget all of her spite and she collected various foodstuffs on her plate, taking small bites as the girls spoke.

The conversation slowly shifted to more casual topics than house elf rights and Rose realised that the two girls weren't snobbish or dislikable anymore than any girl from the other Houses. She came to learn that Evannina's mother was a foreigner had studied in Durmstrang and that Matilda played the clarinet, although she hadn't brought it to Hogwarts with her. Evannina was harsh in her judgments and adamant about her opinions, but she admitted it if she was wrong. Matilda wasn't as meek and cowardly as Rose had thought either. She was bold enough to add a great amount of spicy pepper in her mushroom soup, not a single tear showing as she ate it spoonful after spoonful.

"... And then, she took a sip out of the spoon!" Evannina said, her well-mannered facade slipping away, revealing the girlish excitement any eleven-year old girl should have. "She tasted the potion! Can you believe it?"

Matilda blushed slightly. "Well, it was too alkalic, as I was saying though, wasn't it? We would have never known if I hadn't!"

Rose grinned, thoroughly impressed. She wasn't sure she would ever try to taste an unfinished cure for boils, lest she actually wanted to get the boils. "That sounds quite awesome."

"I dragged her to Madam Pomfrey straight after class of course!" Evannina added.

"Well, I told you we didn't need to do that though. I coughed out a bat's leg, but other than that, nothing was wrong with me," Matilda objected.

"You coughed out what?" Rose asked, her eyes growing wide.

"A bat's leg. I've kept it actually. I think I'll find a nice box for it and send it to my parents. It's a souvenir from my first year." She was beaming brighter than the sun as she said that. "I think I'll keep something strange of every year at Hogwarts, to have to show my children when I grow up."

"Mother has battle scars from each year," Evannina said gravely.

"Battle scars?"

"Yes. They teach them the art of the sword in Durmstrang, as well as some other weaponries. Although some of her scars are from scorching spells and whatnot." Rose imagined suddenly Evannina's mother in a different light; pale and wild, with fierce green eyes like her daughter, scars of different shapes all over, pale and fading, somewhat like the ones on Uncle Bill's face. Her mental image of her was in the least to say intimidating. "When we can go for a student's exchange, I will apply for Durmstrang. I can't wait to see what they can show me there," Evannina whispered piously; there was a strange gleam in her eyes.

Matilda shook her head with meaning to Rose, requesting she did not ask questions about it, so Rose didn't. Those girls were strange, but fun to be with. It was only then that she remembered how she wasn't sitting next to Albus, as she had been doing for all of the school year. Suddenly his absence made her feel like she had lost something important, perhaps a limb. Her eyes scanned across the table and she saw him between Ryan and Scorpius, talking excitedly, from what she could figure about his Silvio Trizzle books.

She wasn't feeling angry at him anymore. She still didn't like Scorpius's interjection much, but it was nice that they could mingle a little more with their Housemates and they both needed the company of other people after all. That night Rose spoke with Evannina and Matilda for a long time. It was a good thing that the next day was a Sunday and they didn't need to get out of bed early, for Rose would have never managed to wake before noon. Albus seemed to be in a similar state, his eyes framed by dark circles of sleeplessness, but gleaming with a strange contentment.

"How are the girls?" he asked her as he slumped down on the sofa next to her.

"They're not bad. I didn't expect them to be like that."

"We could hear you last night," he said with a chuckle.

"We spoke that loudly?" Rose's eyes doubled in size with surprise.

"It would be a miracle if Erb didn't hear what you were saying."

She hid her face in her hands in embarrassment. "Oh, golden hen eggs!" she exclaimed.

"What?"

"That's what Matilda says. It got stuck in my head."

"Ryan uses, 'By the sun and moon above us!' far too often. I won't be able to help myself if I hear it one more time."

"I'll be there to laugh about it when you do!" she retorted with a grin. "So-" Rose's sentence was interrupted by other first-years emerging from the bedrooms, yawning and stretching, but presentable enough to go for breakfast. They all moved in a group toward the Great Hall, boys and girls, part chattering, part still grunting in their sleepiness. It hadn't been until then that Rose noticed how the stairs that led away from the basements weren't very wide if an army of Slytherin students tried to climb them up all at once.

She paid attention to how Evannina socialised with the portraits of popular wizards, quite lots of them with a shady reputation and how Matilda seemed considerably cheerier when Scorpius said, "Good morning," to her. She felt eyes staring at her in the dining hall, although no one did, but soon shrugged the feeling away. It was ever so bizarre, speaking with so many people on the Slytherin table; the strangest of all though, being how openly Scorpius was discussing with her, unlike all the other hushed conversations they had had in public, before leaving the room each in a different direction.

Adelaide Zabini, the fifth-year prefect of the House, was shooting daggers at them, which reminded Rose that not everyone was planning on welcoming her to the House.

It was still difficult for her to learn the new password to the common room every time it changed and she had to spy along with Albus the other students to hear it, since Adelaide did her best to keep her out of it. Rose detested her from the tallest hair to the smallest nail of her body, but she never dared hexing Adelaide. She was too young still and Adelaide knew much more spells than she did. Even the Hexing Witch was no match for her yet. She knew how to pick her battles. Most of the time at least.

"What are you looking for?" Matilda asked, nudging Rose and placing a cupcake in her plate.

"Oh, thanks. Nothing, I thought someone was calling me," Rose lied. Perhaps if the first years realised of Adelaide's disapproval, they would scatter away. She didn't expect to dread so much losing the company of a few Slytherins… but she actually would, if it happened. She was, after all, a Slytherin herself.