Rose had hoped that the initial letter from her parents would be the end of her having to talk to them about Scorpius, at least until the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately, that hope ended up being entirely in vain; the letter she received from them Tuesday morning was horribly embarrassing, and she was forced to revise her earlier impression that the less her father knew, the happier he'd be. That was clearly turning out not to be the case.

Scorpius - who had used a snackbox to get out of Muggle Studies again, a pattern which Rose was quite sure would lead to several more detentions - found the follow-up letter very funny. Even Rose's pointing out sourly that he was courting another detention didn't deter him.

"Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "Let me see it again."

Rose handed it over. He ignored her scowl and began to peruse her father's messy writing again. Rose herself didn't need to read it again: she remembered what it said only all too well:

Rose,

We've been hearing some troubling things about you and this Scorpius Malfoy boy, and we're worried that you might be rushing into things with him.&

(Rose suspected that 'we' meant 'I,' in this case - she couldn't see her mother getting quite so fixated on it.)

You haven't really answered our last letter yet. Your mother wants to know a lot more than you've told her. If half of what we're hearing is true, you need to slow down. You've disliked this boy for four years for a reason. Don't let your impulses cloud your judgment. It won't end well.&

"Damn Roxanne," Rose muttered. She was quite sure that Roxanne was where most of these 'troubling things' her father referenced were coming from - she couldn't imagine Albus writing things that would cause such concern in her parents - or, rather, her father. Rose's mother was perfectly capable of writing herself if she was really that worried, so Rose suspected that she probably wasn't.

Scorpius handed the letter back, the broad grin still plastered across his face. "They're been hearing troubling things,& Red," he teased, throwing his legs over one arm on his exceedingly comfortable plushy green chair and leaning his back against the other; they were in the Room of Requirement, and while Rose did have some reservations about spending time with Scorpius when he was supposed to be in class again,& she liked his company too much to properly object.

"That's what it says," Rose agreed. "I don't know what he could be talking about, though - there can't be much that's really that& troubling."

He considered that. "I don't know about that," he said slowly. "Your cousins have caught us in some pretty compromising positions. Haven't James and Roxanne walked in on you trying to rip my shirt off?"

She threw the empty chocolate frog box on the table next to her at him. "Stop exaggerating."

He caught it and tossed it to the floor. "Well, Albus caught me with my hand up your& shirt that once, didn't he?" She winced. "Oh, and James and Roxanne definitely did& catch us with my hand on your arse in an empty but well-traveled corridor that once."

Rose winced. She'd managed to forget that they'd had witnesses to about half of those incidents. Thankfully, they'd developed some self-control since then.

"We're just lucky nobody caught us when my hand was up your skirt the other day," the blond boy continued. He looked entirely too pleased with himself. "I mean, we& know I was just touching your leg, but someone else might have jumped to a different conclusion."

She'd almost forgotten about that, too. She didn't think& anyone had seen them then, but she wasn't sure - they really did need to stop getting quite so carried away by the lake. Plenty of other students liked to congregate there, even when it was chilly out.

"Hopefully he didn't hear about that,"& she said. "I don't think even Roxanne would tell them that, though, even if she did somehow hear about it."

Scorpius licked his lips, and Rose's attention immediately went to them. His mouth curved into a suggestive smile. "You can come over here and do some other troubling things with me that they shouldn't know about. There's definitely nobody here to see us now."

"Oh, shut up." Despite her words, though, she tossed the letter back onto the table and got to her feet. A split second later, she realized that she hadn't really thought through how it was going to work while he was in this position, but going back to her chair would have meant that she lost face.

And whatever the situation, that was not something Rose was prepared to tolerate, even if Scorpius was the only one to see her. In fact, especially& not if Scorpius was the only one to see.

By this point, he really should have known better, but he was still clearly taken aback when she slung a leg over him to straddle his stomach.

"I thought you wanted to do troubling things," she teased.

His face was beat red. "Yeah, but - I - er - wasn't expecting you to - well, do this."&

Rose ran her fingers through his hair. "No?" she asked softly, leaning down to brush her lips against his. "You probably should have been, you know."

"Probably," he managed to gasp. "Rose, you are a terrible& person. You know I have Divination in less than an hour."

She nodded, trying to keep an expression of utmost seriousness on her face. "Yeah," she agreed. "I guess you won't have time for any of those cold showers you like so much, huh?"

He snorted and pulled her back down for another kiss. As retaliation went, she was finding this quite enjoyable - the more she kissed Scorpius, the better he seemed to get at it, and he'd started out damn good at it in the first place.

"You know," she said, pulling back, "you never told told me what your& parents said about this whole thing. You put me off because we'd just had that long conversation about your family."

"Oh, that." There was a twinkle in his eye. "Yeah, they're planning to disown me. I guess we really are& going to have to do troubling things in private from now on."

"No, really."

He made a face. "Oh, fine. Get off me, then, or at least let me sit up properly. I can't think like this."

Rose didn't bother to hide her smile as she shifted to perch on the arm of the chair instead. If he was going to be smug about their relationship and his effect on her state of mind, that was an open invitation for her to be, too.

Not that she wouldn't have been anyway, of course… but she might have hid it a little better.

Maybe.

She waited expectantly while he rubbed his face with his hands; he was clearly trying to refocus on the matter at hand rather than on how much he wanted to be kissing his girlfriend. Rose was tempted to start running her fingers through his hair again - she'd discovered that it really was fun to do that, since it tended to elicit amusing reactions from him - but she restrained herself. She wanted to hear the answer to this.

He finally looked up at her. "You're amazing, you know," he told her.

"Stop changing the subject."

"I'm not! You just are, and I thought I'd tell you." She folded her arms, and Scorpius made a face. "Oh, have it your way, then. I actually - er - first wrote home about you ages ago, and we'd exchanged a few letters about it by then. I didn't want to own up to that when I wasn't sure whether you were about to ditch me because, you know. Skeletons in the Malfoy family closet and all that."

"I guess that's fair. Tell me now, though, since I didn't."

He grinned and leaned back against the chair. "Well, initially, my mother said to make sure I didn't make Albus uncomfortable and my father said that this didn't mean I was allowed to complain any more about Rose Weasley than I already do."

Rose was startled into a giggle. "What about after that?"

Scorpius shrugged. "I dunno. Generic parent advice, I guess. My dad asked what Noah and Evy think of you - I mentioned at some point that you're a prefect and talk to Noah a fair amount. When I said that Noah liked you and reminded him that Al absolutely adores you, he said that was good enough for him and he'd really like to meet you."

This seemed like such a radical difference from her father's reaction that Rose had a hard time believing it. It wasn't as though her father had threatened to disown her or anything, but she knew that her brother, James, and Roxanne had all gotten letters from him grilling them for information on Scorpius. She knew that James and Hugo had sent back letters that were vaguely supportive, and in a rare show of unequivocal support, even Roxanne had actually let her read her response before she sent it back - though Rose wasn't entirely sure Roxanne had been equally close-mouthed when she wrote to Fred, Dominique, or her parents.

The bland responses had apparently failed to appease her father, since he'd come back to her for more information.

"What?" She glanced up at Scorpius when he spoke; he was studying her carefully.

"It just - it's not very dramatic, is it?"

"Rose, my father and your parents had their differences, but that was a long time ago," Scorpius pointed out. "And your aunt and uncle like me."

"Then what's wrong with my& dad?"

"Dunno. He's your dad, not mine." After a moment, though, the small smile on his face broadened. "I bet that part of it, though," he admitted, "is that my dad knows& that your dad is probably going to react a little poorly and get a little overprotective, so he's getting a kick out of making himself look very calm and reasonable by comparison. 'Oh, it's all in the past, what's really& important is our children& - oh, and have fun watching my son get nice and close and very, very touchy with your daughter.'"

Rose wrinkled her nose. "Ugh. Slytherins."

Her boyfriend's eyes twinkled. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're dating a Slytherin. And what's more, I'm pretty sure you're enjoying it."

Rose nudged him with her foot. When he grabbed her leg to kiss it, she thanked her lucky stars that she wasn't wearing a skirt that day - that would have definitely distracted her. "Why would he think my dad wasn't over it, too? Didn't you just say it's ancient history?"

"Well, your dad was the one who called my cousin into his office to interrogate her about me. I mean, that's a little overprotective. My father's not an idiot - you don't do something like that if you're feeling totally calm about a situation."

There really was no arguing that. "So your dad's just being nice about it to goad& mine?"

"Nah. Rose, like I've said, my dad loves me." Now Scorpius was trailing his fingers up and down her calves; despite her trousers, it was still distracting, and even more maddeningly, he seemed to be completely unaffected by it. "I mean, he can read between the lines, you know? And I wasn't exactly playing how much I liked you after we started kissing close to the chest in the first place. I think that's piqued his interest." He glanced up at her. "Er - speaking of which, have you decided whether you want to meet him?"

Rose had, in fact, given the matter a great deal of thought. Scorpius had left her an out with everyone but his mother, who even Rose couldn't possibly object to - but while she fully intended to take that out when it came to dealing with Scorpius's grandparents, she wasn't sure whether she wanted to take it when it came to his father. On one hand, the man did still have a dark mark - Scorpius had mentioned as much - but on the other, it had sounded to Rose like Draco Malfoy had hardly gotten through the war unscathed, and from what Albus and her mother, aunt, and uncle had said, she was willing to at least entertain the possibility that he'd changed.

"Yeah, I have."

His fingers stilled, and she realized that he was holding his breath. "And?"

She reach down to intertwine her fingers with his. "Yeah. I do."

He let out an enormous sigh of relief. "Oh. Good." He didn't thank her, but she hadn't really expected him to. "Er - by the way, speaking of my family, they want me to ask you to come to our house during the Christmas holiday."

Rose goggled at him. "They want what?"&

"Oh, come on, Rose, you heard me. Just… like, dinner or something. Or - well, my mum said to invite you to stay for a couple days. Like, overnight and everything."

Rose, who had been about to protest, felt her ears perk up at this. "Overnight?" Scorpius nodded - he seemed to know exactly where her mind had jumped, because there was a small smile on his face now. "Are your parents the type who would set spells to tell them if one of us sneaked out of the room we were supposed to be sleeping in?"

Scorpius shrugged. "I've never had the opportunity to test it before, but I don't think& so."

"Hmm."

He winked at her. "Are you already plotting to take advantage of me?"

"Yeah, right, like you need me to 'take advantage' of you."

Scorpius raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. He ruined the romance, however, by making a face. "Ugh. Now all I can think about is the Christmas holiday, and it's still more than a month away."

"I think we can entertain ourselves until then." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "You should leave for Divination soon."

"I know."

"Are you going to?" He shrugged. "Scorpius, you're going to get another detention."

"Probably, so maybe you should make it worth my while." She pulled her hand away from his and shoved him. "Hey!"

—

A/N: Hey! So there will be one or two more chapters, but at the moment, I do not plan to make that Christmas visit one of them. However, I might be persuaded to write a short story about how Scorpius meeting Ron+Hermione and Rose meeting Draco+Astoria goes... I feel like it kind of wants to be written. :P (And yes - Scorpius is completely right about his father's motivations.)

Anyway. I hope this chapter was as entertaining for you lovely readers to read as it was for me to write, and I also hope it feels like it flows with the pace of the story thus far. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so if you have time to leave a review, please do! Either way, thanks for reading. :)

Branwen