The next day dawned drizzly and damp, but despite Rose's worst predictions, the weather did not get worse as the day went on. By the time they were heading back out onto the pitch after a quick lunch, the sun was peeking through the clouds, and the rain had stopped.

Perhaps because of this, the team was feeling downright cheerful as they headed back up to the castle late that afternoon, despite aches from being on a broom for most of the day and a few new bruises from bludger hits.

Roxanne had been right; Rose was not in any mood to do work. She knew that the next day was bound to be terrible if she didn't, but couldn't find it in her to care. Instead, she enjoyed a nice long soak in the bath before heading downstairs for dinner.

"How was practice?" Albus asked when she took a seat next to him.

"Good," she replied. "Long, though. I'm glad we have tomorrow off. I don't know how much longer I could sit on a broom without wanting to die."

After they'd eaten, Rose headed back upstairs with her yearmates and settled in next to the fire with Albus, Colleen, and Damien. Colleen made a half-hearted attempt to bring up Scorpius again, but without Holly there to back her up, she was dissuaded relatively easily. They were discussing the results of the day's Quidditch matches when James climbed through the portrait hole and slumped in one of the armchairs. Rose nudged Albus and jerked her head toward James.

He frowned and stood up. "Be back in a few minutes," he told the others. Rose followed him over to his brother.

James looked up as they approached. "I didn't do it," he said immediately.

"Didn't do what?" Albus asked suspiciously as they settled into the chairs on either side of James.

"Whatever you think I did," his brother said promptly. They both stared at him, until eventually he shifted and said, a little irritably, "Oh, fine. Roxanne's just annoyed with me again."

"Why?" Albus asked, clearly completely caught off-guard.

"She thinks that if I just ask Marion out, it will solve all the problems we've been having." James rubbed his forehead. "Like, officially. I told her to leave me alone."

"Well, why don't you?" Albus asked.

"Out to where, exactly?"

"Just, you know... out..." Albus trailed off, and his brother rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, exactly. This Hogsmeade weekend is for family, and our next one isn't until November. That's a month away, and I'm not asking anyone out a month before the actual date."

"But what if she gets sick of waiting for you and finds someone else?" Albus asked.

"She won't."

Albus looked from James to Rose. "I don't understand how you both can be so damned confident," he said.

Rose shrugged, and James said, "Acting confident is a huge step in that direction, little brother."

Rose was suddenly reminded of something James had once told her. "It's like with wild animals," she put in. "You just can't show them that you're scared."

Albus seemed to consider saying something, but after a moment, he decided not to comment. "I don't understand why I'm the one without a girlfriend," he said instead. "You're both terrible."

"Don't tempt fate," Rose warned him. "Now you'll have some troll asking you out."

He laughed. After a few more minutes, James got up and headed over to the staircase that led to the boys' dormitories, and Rose and Albus rejoined their friends.

Before the evening was over, Holly and Alex both came over to join them. The conversation eventually turned back to Scorpius. Alex seemed almost as keen as Colleen and Holly to hear all about it, and though his interest didn't feel malicious, it nonetheless made her even more uncomfortable than the girls' probing.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said for the third time, shifting uncomfortably.

"Well," Holly said brightly, "I think that there's not a better Slytherin you could have chosen." She tossed her silky blond hair across her shoulder and waited expectantly.

Rose knew what was coming, but Albus didn't. "Why's that?" he asked.

Holly nudged him playfully. "Well, he's really fit, don't you think?"

Albus glanced over at Rose, who was curled up on his other side, with a bemused look on his face. She bit her lip to stop herself from laughing - she had heard more than enough of this already to be even remotely surprised. "I've never really thought about it," he said, turning back to Holly. "He's not my boyfriend."

Rose's smirk was immediately wiped off her face, and she extended her leg a little to kick her cousin. He grinned at her as Holly leaned around him, looking excited. "So he is your boyfriend, then?"

"I heard him telling a few of the Slytherin sixth years that you were his girlfriend," Colleen put in, twisting around in her armchair so she could see Rose's reaction.

With great difficulty, Rose resisted the urge to say, "Of course he did." Instead, she shrugged, trying to ignore how hot her face suddenly felt. "What he says is his business," she said, making a mental note to ask Scorpius exactly what he'd said.

"But-"

"I've already said this once, but apparently it bears repeating," Damien cut in. "Unless any of you were planning to ask Rose out, I don't see why you care so much about who she is or isn't going out with."

"We're curious," Holly told him.

He didn't look impressed. "I'm curious about how you've passed your first four years of Potions, considering that you barely know how to stand a cauldron up the right way, but you don't see me digging into it."

After that, Holly avoided mentioning Scorpius at all, which effectively put a stop to Colleen and Alex's questions as well.

Rose was just as happy for that, but she did find Damien's obvious distaste for the subject a bit odd, and she said so to Albus once the rest of the fifth years had headed up to their dormitories.

"Damien really doesn't seem to want to hear me say anything about Scorpius," she commented.

Her cousin glanced toward the staircase that led to the boys' dormitories to make sure their friend really had gone upstairs before nodding. "You noticed that, too, huh?"

"Yeah. Do you know why?"

Albus considered the statement for a minute before responding. Rose had always liked Damien and gotten on with him quite well - he'd even been her first boyfriend, though they'd broken up within the space of a few months and had never done anything too serious. As with most of their classmates, however, Albus knew him better.

"I'm not sure," her cousin said slowly. "He and Scorpius are pretty good friends, you know. It might just make him uncomfortable to hear people gossiping about his friend." She gave him a skeptical look, and he sighed. "Yeah, I know. It seems like it's more than that, doesn't it?"

An awful idea occurred to Rose. "You don't think he still likes me, do you?

Albus snorted. "Anything's possible, I guess, but I really doubt it."

He sounded very sure of himself, and Rose found herself breathing a sigh of relief. The very last thing she needed was more drama. Talking to her fellow fifth-years about Scorpius already left her with more than enough of it.

"Though, you know," Albus started, and her heart leapt into her throat again. "Maybe part of it is that he doesn't want to think too hard about when Scorpius started liking you."

"Why should that matter?"

Albus smiled slightly. "Well, I mean, like I told you the other day, I think it was probably going on while the two of you were going out, at least subconsciously." He glanced toward the staircase again before adding, "And if that's true, it puts a bit of a different spin on why Scorpius was avoiding him back then."

Rose stared at him. She hadn't really gotten around to putting all those pieces together, probably in part because she hadn't ever really paid close attention to whether Scorpius and Damien were good friends or whether Scorpius had been avoiding him the previous autumn. Now that Albus had laid it out for her, however, she could see why Damien might be so reluctant to hear any of the details, and his comment about telling Scorpius that he wasn't trying to steal Rose back suddenly made a lot more sense.

Albus snapped his fingers in front of her face, and she started. "Rosie, it's not a big deal. Don't think too hard about it. Just hide behind Damien whenever Holly starts going on about it." Rose envisioned herself literally hiding behind Damien and gave a snort of amusement - the other boy was almost as slender as she was, so she doubted he'd do all that good a job of hiding her.

In the comfortable silence that followed this statement, Rose remembered what Colleen had said. "Did Scorpius really tell some sixth years that I was his girlfriend?"

Her cousin snorted. "Not exactly." She didn't take her eyes off him, and after a moment, he elaborated. "I'm pretty sure he didn't use the word 'girlfriend,' but I know they asked him if he was really going out with Rose Weasley, and he said something along the lines of, 'Kind of, yeah.'"

Rose wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that. "Oh."

Albus shrugged. "He was just bragging, Rosie."

"Bragging?"

"Mm." He smiled. "Why don't you ask him about it?"

"Oh, I will."

When Rose woke up the next morning, however, she found that she was not entirely sure that she wanted to get into it with Scorpius, at least not that day. It just seemed like it had the potential to get very, very awkward very, very quickly, and she was finding that not fighting with Scorpius was generally preferable to their arguments.

When she got down to the Great Hall for breakfast shortly after nine, however, she didn't see Scorpius among the Slytherins. It was possible that she'd missed him, of course, but his hair was very distinctive, even when it was his natural color. When she found Noah sitting with Albus at the Gryffindor table, he confirmed that Scorpius was not there.

"He's still sleeping," Noah said cheerfully. "Scorp doesn't really like mornings, especially when he's been up half the night doing schoolwork."

Rose snorted as she poured herself some apple juice. "Scorp?"

Noah shrugged as he began to slather his pancakes with golden syrup. "When you were two, would you have been able to say 'Scorpius'?" He glanced up, and she shook her head. "Neither could I. He was Scorp and I was No until we were about four. I still occasionally use it." He grinned. "He doesn't like it very much, so I've tried to break myself of the habit."

Rose filed that information away for future reference. Next time Scorpius started making fun of her for the profile comment, she'd have something good to pull out.

"Why was he up so late on a Saturday doing work, anyway?" Albus asked curiously as Noah began to eat.

His friend considered the question while he chewed, and after he'd swallowed, he said, "He wanted to get most of it out of the way so he could haunt the library in hopes of bumping into the girl he's not going out with accidentally-on-purpose."

Rose giggled. "Should you really be telling me that?"

Noah shrugged again. "It's not like you don't already know that that's the sort of thing he might do," he pointed out. "And the way I see it, I'm doing him a favor by telling you. Now you'll probably go to the library."

That was certainly one way to look at it, and after Rose had gone back up to the Gryffindor Common Room and gotten a bit of work done, she decided to gather up her books and wander down to the library in hopes of running into the boy she wasn't going out with.

Technically.

"Where are you going?" Roxanne asked as Rose began to stuff books into her bag.

"Library."

"Want some company?"

Rose shook her head as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "No," she said. "I'm okay. Good luck."

Roxanne made a little shooing motion with her hand, and Rose made her way to the portrait hole and climbed out, glad that Roxanne had not decided to insist on following her. Neither Roxanne nor James tended to like the library - they said that it was entirely too quiet and stuffy - but it would be just Rose's luck that now that she finally had a reason to be happy to be in the library by herself, they'd change their minds.

A/N: It's always fun when people are jealous of who you're kissing, I guess, right?

I'd love to hear you thoughts, as always. Thanks for reading!

- Branwen