A/N: Welcome, all, to another chapter. Again, sorry for the wait - the deeper we get here, the more of a perfectionist I seem to be becoming. A very frustrating trait, non-conducive to writing, I must say.
A few notes before we start: the details of the game that is played here are loosely based on the little information I could find out there in the Potterverse. It is actually described in most detail in relation to the Hogwarts Mystery mobile app game (believe it or not), so is as dutifully canon as I could possibly make it!
And a warning: I have not changed the official rating for the story solely based on this chapter, however reader discretion is advised as we head into slightly more mature territory here.
The Rumour Mill – Chapter 8
Staring at the predatory smirk currently gracing Scorpius Malfoy's face, Rose Weasley was rapidly learning the true meaning of instantaneous regret.
Potentially owing Scorpius an irrefusable favour was like agreeing to go on a blind date set up by Lily, or trying to keep up with Fred and Dominique on a night down at The Three Broomsticks: absolutely no good could possibly come of it. A fact Rose had learned the hard way about both the aforementioned examples at one time or another.
And yet it was too late for sensibilities now. Rose had agreed to his challenge, quite fervently in fact ("Game on, Malfoy. And may the best woman win."), and there was no backing out of it. Besides – she bit the inside of her cheek to distract herself from the not-wholly-unpleasant thrum she felt beneath her ribcage every time she caught Scorpius watching her from across the room – she actually wanted to play. She wanted to beat him, naturally, because he was an arrogant prat. But, to her unending surprise, she was almost as excited for the possibility that he might win, and what he might demand from her. The drinks in her system, her hormone-addled brain and that aching sensation that pulsed erratically behind her navel, all had several unhelpful suggestions of their own as to what he might ask for, and what she'd be embarrassingly willing to concede.
Rose swallowed dryly and forced herself to think clearly. They were, after all, about to enter a battlefield of sorts. But she had the advantage, or so he had claimed: she could choose their arena. That, at least, was an easy decision and she started towards the Wizard's Chess set in the far corner of the room.
"One final rule," came his amused drawl, her heart sinking with it as a hand encircled her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. "Chess is out of the running, I'm afraid."
She whirled around to face him, eyes narrowing. "Malfoy, you can't seriously be cheating before the games even begun? You said I could choose what we played, and I choose chess."
He simply grinned at her, not yet relinquishing his hold on her arm. "You forget, Rosie, that I know who raised you. If you think I'm going to let myself be checkmated in three moves by Ron Weasley's protégé daughter, then you are sorely mistaken. Chess is off limits and that's the end of it."
Rose's urge to thump him was quickly diminished by the light stroking of his thumb along the inside of her wrist. Distracted, she flicked her gaze up to meet his, his attempt at playing innocent entirely ruined by the devious smirk twitching at his lower lip. Rose set her jaw firmly, tearing her gaze and – rather more reluctantly – her hand from his grasp and glanced about the room. Fine, she grumbled internally, if chess was suddenly embargoed, what other options did that leave her with?
The snooker table dominated the centre of the floor – she'd played once or twice when she'd spent time with her muggle grandparents but couldn't say she had any particular skill at it. The same went for Wizarding Darts, although at least if she lost at that she could perhaps physically threaten Scorpius into going easy on her with one of the sharp needles. She'd also spied a stack of board games hiding underneath a sofa, but she'd played Monopoly at the Grangers' too and it had taken hours. She highly doubted her nerves would last her that long, plus Scorpius was actually a business owner in the wizarding equivalent of the fortune five hundred, whilst she could barely remember to pay her rent on time. It didn't seem wise to challenge him at a game involving the rapid exchanging of money, even if the notes were fake and there was the enticing possibility that she might get to send him to jail. So, what did that leave her with?
Taking a large gulp of her drink for courage, Rose turned to Scorpius and raised her chin defiantly, "I propose a game of…. Exploding Snap!"
Scorpius choked on his vodka. "Snap?! Really, Weasley?! Of all the things you could have chosen… Sweet Salazar, a round of croquet might have been more exciting -,"
"What's the matter, Malfoy, scared I'm going to beat you?" she cocked her head.
"Not at all," he narrowed his eyes and mirrored her smirk, "I just hadn't realised that I'd been attempting to seduce a child masquerading in a woman's body, all this time."
"I beg your pardon?!"
"Don't be coy, Weasley. I've been trying to seduce you since we were seventeen, and you know it," he knocked her shoulder playfully as he strode past her towards the card table. "Now sit yourself down and deal."
Rose knew absolutely no such thing and, if she hadn't been almost entirely sure that Scorpius was simply trying to distract her and throw her off her game, she would have pressed him on the matter unrelentingly. Seduce her, indeed! They'd been at each other's throats at seventeen – in fact, she could distinctly remember throwing a Bubotuber bulb at his head in one of their seventh year Herbology classes (the reasoning behind it escaped her now but she was sure it had been entirely justified). He had retaliated by locking her in the girls' lavatories with Moaning Myrtle for the night. Albus had been distinctly non-plussed with the pair of them.
Sitting down across from him, Rose offered him a glare to let him know how unappreciative she was of his underhanded tactics. "Standard or Bavarian rules?" she muttered, curtly.
"Ladies choice," Scorpius slid the deck of cards towards her. She felt his knee bump against hers beneath the table and flinched. He was not about to make this easy for her, she realised.
"Bavarian, then," she said, and watched as the picture images on the cards immediately rearranged themselves accordingly. "How do you want to do this? A straight shoot-out or best out of three?"
"Oh, I think best out of three, don't you?" he grinned at her as he slipped off his blue dress-robe, tossing it across the back of an empty chair and rolling up the sleeves of his white oxford. She narrowed her eyes at him, getting the distinct impression he enjoyed the idea of potentially prolonging her suffering. "You do remember the terms, don't you, Rosie?" his hand shot out, brushing against hers and making her almost drop the cards in her grasp. "Whoever wins gets to ask for one favour, literally anything their heart desires, and the loser cannot refuse."
Rose's breath quickened under his mercurial gaze, her core temperature sky-rocketing. She did her best to roll her eyes at him and swallowed thickly, "'Anything my heart desires' – For Merlin's sake, Malfoy, remind me to cancel your Witch Weekly subscription before your brain entirely turns to mush. Next thing I know, you'll be using this so-called favour to force me into listening to your misguided attempts at poetry."
He chuckled darkly and raised one cocksure eyebrow. "Rest assured, Weasley, I have slightly more ambitious plans for my favour, when I win."
Her eyes followed the curve of his indecent grin and she felt that ache behind her navel migrating southward, beginning to throb at the apex of her thighs. Forcing her attention back to the game, her embarrassingly shaky hands began to deal, dishing out the entire deck in equal amounts between them – the cards giving off little wisps of smoke and the odd spark here and there as they warmed up in her hands.
"Left of the dealer to play first," Rose nodded at Scorpius, the set in her hand thrumming slightly as if in anticipation itself. "Good luck, Scorpius."
"Almost sounds like you want me to win," he muttered, teasingly, and turned over his first card, "Seven chizpurfles."
Rose followed suit with a withering eye roll, "You're deluding yourself if you think I want anything but to totally annihilate you. Five bowtruckles."
He sniggered, "Three crups."
"Eight nifflers," and so the game began. The rules were straightforward even if the stakes were not – should two cards showing the same number of creatures be played one after the other, the first player to call 'snap' by placing a hand on top of the discarded deck would win the round. Then, as was customary with most children's games in the wizarding world, the cards would spontaneously combust at serious risk to life and limb. Rose had played the game countless times when she was younger, although oddly she had never found it quite so hard to concentrate or so nerve-wracking before. She suspected that had a great deal to do with her opponent, who was firmly inside her head in more ways than one. Part of her wanted to wipe the floor with him, whilst another (annoyingly insistent) part wanted to let him bend her over the card table and finally do something about her unwholesome urges.
With each passing turn, it was if the cards themselves were getting more and more excited. Rose felt them growing warm in her hands, Malfoy's set had started to smoke rather concerningly, and she even got an electric shock as she played two bowtruckles on top of Scorpius' twelve nifflers. She was just wondering whether the game somehow absorbed the players' own building tensions when she felt Scorpius' knee sliding between hers beneath the table. Rose's breath hitched as a shudder escaped her, eyes darting up to his face to find him entirely concentrated on the game. Then she felt his foot – somehow bereft of its shoe – stroke purposefully along the outside of her ankle and knew he was up to no good. Her toes curled reflexively and she bit back a gasp.
"Seven bowtruckles," Scorpius muttered, impassively, tossing another card down on the building pile, his stare locking with hers.
Rose frowned and tried to focus on the cards in her hands, even as she felt his knee push forward deliberately, hitching her dress further up her thighs as it went. That ache at her core had started to pulse expectantly. "F-four chizpurfles," she stuttered, trying to kick his foot away to no avail. His knee pressed insistently, dangerously, against her upper thigh. "Malfoy, what on… what on Earth do you think you're doing?"
"Two grindylows. Don't worry about what I'm doing. Worry about why you're worried about what I'm doing," he muttered, casually, his foot beginning to gently nudge her legs apart.
Rose glowered at him, but was having a hard-enough time concentrating as it was without starting to unpick that nonsense. Instead, she tried to squeeze her knees together, but her lower half seemed to have stopped responding to her brain's instructions. "Six… six crups," she breathed, heavily.
"Eleven nifflers." His leg slid tantalisingly close to the meeting of her thighs, and still his face remained impassive.
"Nine grindylo-…" she trailed off as she felt a hand ghost across her bare knee. "S-scorpius -,"
"Nine chizpurfles, SNAP!"
Regaining her senses just in time, Rose blinked, aghast, as Scorpius slammed his palm down on the deck, milliseconds before the cards erupted in a small, controlled explosion in front of them. She glared at him through the subsequent plume of smoke, her cheeks deepening in colour: "You git!" she managed to choke out. "You completely distracted me, that's cheating!"
He fixed her with a smug grin and a shrug, "Is it? I don't recall ever discussing exactly what tactics were and were not acceptable…"
Rose stared at him incredulously, "Typical Slytherin! Trust a snake to need clarification on whether cheating is against the rules!"
"Ah, well I never claimed to play fair, did I? Besides, I let you choose the game, it's hardly my fault if you're not very good at it -,"
Rose's blue eyes flashed, furiously. "Well, I might've been a little less distracted if you hadn't been molesting me underneath the table!" she swatted at his leg which was still pressing, unrelentingly, against hers. He hadn't moved it away even now.
"You say molesting, I say merely stretching my legs. I don't know if you've noticed but I'm actually very tall," he offered her a wicked grin.
Rose had noticed this. She had also noticed that he filled out his shirt rather nicely, that he always smelled weirdly good and that at some point in the evening he had run a hand through his hair leaving it looking wantonly tussled. But none of this had anything to do with the fact that he was also a cheating git.
"You know what?" she snapped, tossing her remaining cards onto the table. "If that's the way you want to play, then so be it. Round two - your deal, Malfoy. The gloves are coming off."
His grin widened, "That's the spirit, Weasley. Besides, best out of three remember? I've not brought you to your knees just yet..." She steadfastly avoided rising to his self-satisfied smirk.
The next round started much the same. The cards, reassembled, hummed excitedly in their palms. Scorpius winked at her, she glared back. "Three grindylows," she slapped it down with a little more force than was strictly necessary.
"Ten bowtruckles."
"Two nifflers."
"Nine crups."
"Six bowtruckles."
"Eleven chizpurfles."
As Rose went to play her next card, she absentmindedly dislodged some of her pinned curls, her usual swathes of red hair tumbling loose across her shoulders. "Five crups," she muttered.
"Nine grindylows."
"Four nifflers," she twisted an errant curl around her finger, her hand drifting along her collarbone and carelessly brushing one velvet dress strap over the curve of her shoulder.
Scorpius frowned but said nothing. "…Eight bowtruckles."
"Ten nifflers."
"Six crups."
"Five chizpurfles," Rose leant forward to place her card on the growing pile – the angle giving Scorpius a momentary glimpse of the swell of her cleavage. She leant back in her chair and chewed on her bottom lip, thoughtfully.
Scorpius took a slow second to respond: "Er, seven grindylows."
Rose pouted and leant across again, feigning obliviousness as his gaze was, predictably, drawn once more to the low cut of her dress. "Twelve bowtruckles," she locked eyes with him, lifting one eyebrow suggestively. He swallowed quickly, tossing a card carelessly onto the table. "Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked after a moment.
"What?" Scorpius blinked, eyes temporarily unfocused, and cleared his throat. "Oh, er, nine crups."
She laughed, "Those are chizpurfles."
"Crups, chizpurfles, could be a swarm of vampire bats for all I care – whatever, your turn," he scowled.
Rose smirked and pulled another card from her hand, "Something ruffled your feathers, Malfoy?" she placed it carefully atop the pile. "Four grindylows."
He narrowed his eyes at her, but she couldn't help noticing how his breathing seemed to falter as the tip of her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "Now who's not playing fair?" he muttered, tersely, "Seven nifflers,"
"Turnabout is fair play, or however the saying goes," she smiled wickedly, subtly squeezing her arms together and causing her chest to strain against its velvet confines, earning a guttural noise from somewhere in Scorpius' throat that made her stomach clench in pleasure. "Three bowtruckles," she added, breezily.
Scorpius looked as if he'd forgotten they were even playing a game to begin with. Leaning forward, eyes darting up from her dress to her lips, his skin flushed, "Be careful, Weasley -,"
"Your turn, Malfoy," she cut him off, teasingly, adding: "I thought you were trying to bring me to my knees? Although I suppose there are more ways than one to achieve that…"
Scorpius' gaze entirely clouded over. Reflexively he threw a card down on the table before reaching out towards her, but Rose had spotted the card he'd just played and dodged his grip to bring her palm down on the pile – "Three nifflers! SNAP!" she cried, happily.
Scorpius froze, half out of his seat on his way over the table towards her, and glared down at their game. "Bollocks," he hissed, momentarily stalled. He glanced between the cards – which had summarily exploded again after Rose's victory and were now smouldering in a heap – and back to his opponent, eyes once again dropping to her lips. He inched fractionally closer and Rose felt her heart hammering behind her ribs, before he seemed to think better of it and sat back in his seat with a grimace.
"Touché, Weasley. But you're not going to get me to forfeit that easily."
Rose snorted in amusement. "I wouldn't dream of it," she grinned at him, "but now you know, you're not the only one who can play dirty."
"Hm," he grumbled, wafting away the lingering wisps of smoke from their last game, "and now I also know what a wretched tease you are."
Rose arched one slim eyebrow, "You started it," and tried to pretend she wasn't immensely pleased to see how flustered she'd made him. "Anyway, that makes it one all by my count. Final round, winner takes all."
As if still trying to rouse himself, Scorpius ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it delectably, and sat up a little straighter in his chair. "Fine. But we play this one straight, no teasing -,"
"No molesting -," she kicked his foot gently.
"Everyone keeps their hands to themselves," he caught her eye and grinned, "…for now, at least."
Rose could only imagine how pink her cheeks must be, a little shiver of excitement reigniting that heat in her lower belly. She held his gaze, that gun-metal grey glinting back at her with a look that promised far more than she dared to admit she wanted. It was a look that she'd seen before, when they'd been at the dingy muggle pub the previous evening, only she hadn't understood what it meant then. Now, it made her want to throw all of her cards down on the table and say wager be damned – he could have his favour, and her, to do exactly as he pleased with.
But Rose had far too much of a competitive streak to roll over quite so easily…
True to his word, as she began to shuffle and deal the cards for their final round – her shaky hands making a fine mess of it this time – Scorpius withdrew his leg from where it was still nestled against hers. Rose almost groaned at the loss of contact between them; she literally ached for him. How embarrassing, came the voice of the very last shred of sanity she possessed. Taking a deep breath to try and compose herself, she silently begged her hormones not to let her totally unravel just yet.
"Scared, Weasley?" Scorpius grinned, mistaking her hesitancy for apprehension and tilting his head to one side in that infuriating way of his.
She narrowed her eyes, playfully. "Of certain things, yes, but you are not one of them."
"Such fighting talk! Guess I won't go easy on you after all," he chuckled. "Five crups," he threw down his first card like a gauntlet.
"Ten grindylows," she followed quickly behind.
"Four chizpurfles."
"Eight crups."
"Three nifflers." The cards flew thick and fast, each party keeping their wandering hands to themselves, their clothes firmly on and their focus unwavering.
"Twelve nifflers."
"Ten chizpurfles."
"Two bowtruckles."
The cards began to fizzle and spit in their hands. Rose was finding it hard to keep hold of hers at all as the edges began to scold her fingertips, the tension mounting with each passing turn.
"Nine grindylows."
"Eleven crups."
"Two grindylows."
"Five chizpurfles." Rose could feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears. She was fairly sure she'd started holding her breath when the round began and, if someone didn't call it soon, she'd be in real danger of passing out from lack of oxygen.
"Two crups."
"Six nifflers."
"Four grindylows."
"Seven bowtruckles."
"Seven grindy-,"
"SNAP!" Knuckles bumping, fingers entangling, they both dived forward over the table, bringing their hands down on the deck at the exact same time. It was a wonder they avoided crashing their heads together.
"Malfoy, get off!" screeched Rose. "I saw it, I called it first!" she glared at him, furiously.
"Au contraire," he smirked back at her, unkindly, "My hand's underneath, meaning I got there first! I win and you lose, Weasley."
Rose glared down at their hands, entwined atop the discarded cards, her heart sinking when she realised the smarmy git was right. She was about to shout something very loud and unladylike when a sudden bang and a snarled curse beat her to it. Their set of Exploding Snap had – rather unsurprisingly when she thought about it later – exploded, singeing Rose's dress and scalding Scorpius' hand in the process.
"Bugger," he hissed, snatching his hand away from the very real flames just a second too late.
Rose was momentarily startled, scowling at the newly charred spots of velvet (Helga's tits, Lily was going to Bat Bogey Hex her into oblivion for that), before rousing herself just in time to grab Scorpius' cloak from the back of the chair and smother the miniature pyre before the felt inlay of the table could catch alight. Only now wondering why she decided to attend tonight wandless, she then turned quickly towards him.
"Let me see," she demanded, grabbing his hand to assess his injuries – a raw, bright red burn mark was already shining along the length of his index finger. Scorpius grimaced in pain, and with no wand at her disposal to cast a cooling charm and no source of cold water anywhere in sight, Rose did the only thing she could think of to help – she sucked his finger into her mouth, trying to salve the wound. The idea was a reasonable one, in principle. She'd done her basic first aid training as part of the Auror programme and she knew it would help to reduce the pain if she could soothe the heat of the burn. What she hadn't fully considered, however, was how Scorpius would react to having her lips, very literally, wrapped around a part of him.
It was the taste of him that brought Rose to her senses: something reminiscent of sea salt and mint. Her eyes growing wide, she glanced up at him, his finger still between her lips, to find him staring at her so intently that she momentarily forgot how to breathe. His skin was flushed, bringing an unusual amount of colour to his pale skin. It made him look more alive, more touchable somehow. His pupils were blown wide, gaze locked on hers, but he held his body rigidly, almost as if he were awaiting permission to move.
Rose's pulse hammered in her ears as she stared back at him. Hesitantly, she let go of his hand, his finger slipping from her mouth, wet and glistening. "S-sorry…" she murmured. "I was just… trying to -," But whatever sentence she was planning on stringing together was wasted on deaf ears.
Scorpius closed the distance between them in a fraction of a second, grabbing a handful of velvet as he tethered himself to her. Rose just about managed a sharp intake of air before all breathing became a physical impossibility – Scorpius' mouth found hers and her eyelids fluttered shut at the sudden and overwhelming tidal wave of sensations. The pressure of him against her, the warmth and smell of his skin closer than ever before, the way his lips claimed hers – coaxing, determined, unrelenting. She felt in equal parts thrilled and irrationally annoyed to discover he was such a bloody fantastic kisser.
Rose stumbled backwards and he followed, not relinquishing his hold, until they bumped against the snooker table. Scorpius' kiss grew more insistent, and any protests she might have had became incoherent thought as she parted her lips for him; the low groan that escaped him as he tasted her for the first time making her physically tremble with want.
"Fuck… Rose," he murmured against her lips, the slight tremor in his voice emboldening her enough to slide her arms over his shoulders, bringing their bodies flush against one another. He felt fantastic, firm and warm and toned, and she got a sense of exactly how much he wanted her as their hips aligned. A shuddering gasp – whether from him, or herself (or more likely the both of them), she couldn't tell.
The hand at her waist slid to her thigh and she was swiftly lifted the necessary few inches until her bum rested on the edge of the table. Scorpius stepped between her legs and bent his head to her neck, making Rose's back arch and press her chest more firmly against him. He groaned against her skin, teeth nipping gently at her pulse point before his tongue darted out to soothe.
Rose felt as if every inch of her was on fire. There wasn't a millimetre of space between them and yet there was still too much, too many layers, too many barriers. She felt his hand come to rest on her knee, slipping just beneath the fabric of her dress, and she let out an involuntary whimper. He smirked, evidently pleased with himself, and Rose somehow found the coherency to glare at him before she grabbed a fistful of shirt and pulled his mouth back down to hers.
It wasn't a soft kiss or a romantic one. It wasn't light and teasing or slow and careful. It was lust and urges and – Gods, she needed him to move that hand higher! Their tongues weren't so much languid and caressing as physically fighting for dominance over the territory that was their mouths. Rose couldn't remember ever having been kissed like this before. She'd had kisses – more than a few in fact – but none that had made her forget the day of the week, where she was, and even her own name like this one had in a matter of seconds.
All too soon for her liking he broke contact, pressing his forehead against hers as he tried to steady his breathing, and looked at her through hooded eyes. Rose could do nothing but stare at him. His lips were swollen, cheeks flushed, and the top few buttons of his shirt were undone – she had no recollection of even doing that. And, oh Merlin, she needed to kiss him again, already. And badly. She was really in trouble here, she realised, belatedly.
His hand squeezed her thigh, "Rosie, I -… I want…" he ground out, apparently struggling to restrain himself long enough to find the words.
Rose bit her bottom lip, "Me too," she admitted, breathlessly. And that was all the encouragement he needed.
Letting out something between a longing groan and a sigh of relief, Scorpius quickly claimed her lips again. A little less desperate this time, a little more sure of himself, knowing that they had time – that she wasn't about to push him away or hex him into oblivion. Both hands came up to frame her face as he explored her mouth, but that was far from where Rose really wanted them. Entangling her fingers with his, she tugged one hand down over her neck, over her collarbone, until he was cupping her breast. She felt him grin against her lips at her boldness and she would have had half a mind to kick him in the shins for being a prat if he hadn't also chosen, in that same moment, to press himself more firmly between her legs.
Rose's few remaining reservations entirely disintegrated as her body reacted to the two new delicious pressure points. The hum at her centre flared into life, becoming an unbridled roar of need and arousal as Scorpius stroked his thumb across the swell of her breast, feeling the sensitive peaks stiffen beneath her dress. Almost involuntarily, she canted her hips towards him, revelling in Scorpius' hiss of pleasure at the friction she created. She could feel him, all of him, pressed against her upper thigh, nudging towards her core, and she was acutely aware of how ready she was for him already. She was painfully concious of the damp spot that had begun to form in her knickers almost as soon as she'd laid eyes on him earlier that evening, and – she realised – he would be about to discover it too, as his hand began to brush her dress up and over her knees.
The thought brought with it a sudden flash of clarity and Rose pulled away from him, breathlessly. She didn't want to stop – Sweet Helga, she'd rather sell her left kidney down Knockturn Alley than put a stop to whatever this was – but she equally felt a little over-exposed in their current environment.
"Scorpius," she raised a firm hand to his chest as he attempted to bring her mouth back to his, "I think… I mean, do you want to -,"
"Yes," he answered, eagerly.
Rose chuckled softly and ran a hand through her dishevelled curls, "You don't even know what I'm going to say, yet."
"Doesn't matter," he shook his head brusquely, still intently staring at her bruised lips. "With you, the answer is always yes."
Rose blinked up at him. She found herself momentarily distracted from the aches and needs of her inner wanton woman by the sudden clench of her heart beneath her ribs. She let out a slow breath and tried to re-orientate herself – not an easy task when your stomach becomes unexpectedly invaded by a horde of chaotic butterflies. "I was going to suggest we went back to the flat…?" she bit her lip, feeling unduly shy in the moment.
But she needn't have worried – Scorpius grinned back at her, wolfishly. "If it's a more comfortable surface that you're after, you know there are at least twelve different bedrooms in this house, right?"
Rose felt her blush surge to the tips of her ears and rolled her eyes, "Yes, and all of them are within a hundred yards of both of your parents, not to mention half of the Wizengamot and the Dutch Crown Princess, who all happen to be milling around your garden at this particular moment."
"I take your point," Scorpius conceded cheerfully, absentmindedly trailing a hand down over her hips to palm her bum. "So, my place or yours?"
Rose frowned, trying to form a coherent thought as he brought his mouth back to that sensitive spot just below her jaw. "I - …I thought your flat wasn't on the Floo network yet?"
Scorpius blinked quickly, lips pausing somewhere around her earlobe. "Er, right, of course it isn't. Your place it is then!"
A sudden, niggling feeling caused Rose's frown to deepen and she was about to enquire how long ago it was that he'd actually submitted his Floo application to the Transportation Department, when Scorpius cut her off with another intense kiss. He ground himself against her thigh, instantly reminding her of the more important matters at hand, and Rose quickly decided her concerns over a potential bureaucratic cock-up could most certainly wait until morning, at least.
With a final toe-curling, nerve shattering, forget-how-to-breathe kiss, Rose allowed herself to be dragged down from her perch on the table and swiftly out into the corridor – practically tripping over herself and her heels trying to keep up with Scorpius' long strides as he pulled her along behind him, evidently in something of a hurry himself. And, in absolutely no time at all, she found herself standing in front of the large fireplace in the Manor's entrance hall once again.
She made to step into the grate when Scorpius' stopped her with a light tug on her hand. "Last chance, Weasley," he asked, an uncharacteristic seriousness to his voice that made her eyes widen in surprise. "Last chance to stop this. Say the word now and I'll let you leave on your own, otherwise…" he trailed off with a look that made Rose grip the mantlepiece for fear her knees might give out.
She peered up at him from beneath thick eyelashes for a moment, then slowly stepped backwards, away from him, into the fireplace. His face fell, momentarily devastated, before she grinned and cocked her head at him: "Get in here, you melodramatic ponce, before I change my mind."
He didn't need asking twice. Scorpius clambered into the fireplace beside her, muttering something about her being a wretched harpy under his breath, and barely giving her enough time to actually call out the address before smothering her lips again as the flames turned green around them.
ET
