Chapter 18

A/N: What's this? A chapter? Indeed it is! I bet you weren't expecting that! Especially as I said the next one was going to be in a month. Disclaimer: I don't own! I hope you enjoy!

Happy reading!

Now, if there was anything more chaotic that eating arrangements at Christmas in the Burrow, it was sleeping arrangements. In the summer, it was slightly easier, as they just pitched a couple of tents outside and that was the end of that. However, in winter, it was cold. Very cold. So the only tent that really worked was the Deluxe tent that Uncle Percy had once been gifted and for which he had no use. This tent was rather marvellous as it had three large, heated bedrooms. So, if one had to do the maths that meant there were 6 bedrooms in the house and 3 in the tent. The parents were given the rooms inside (because their old joints couldn't take camping, Fred would joke), Uncle Charlie got the attic (which was completely renovated and ghoul-free now, thank you very much) and the younger couples got the rooms in the tent. That meant, that the 9 other cousins were all sent to sleep in the Living Room. Well, 7 because Fred and Dom had not arrived yet. Well, 8 because of course, Rose had forgotten to count Malfoy. Seriously, whose idea had it been to invite Malfoy over Christmas? Like, even invite anybody? Wasn't the home already crowded enough without extra people?

Wait. What? She was going to have to sleep in the same room as Malfoy? The obnoxious arrogant prat (she had possibly smelt in the Amortentia)? Ugh. Wasn't her life wonderful? She groaned as she dragged out a mattress for Roxanne. They had all graciously accepted to let Lucy get the sofa because she was the eldest (yes, every one of the cousins had agreed, thank you Louis) and the rest of them fit into a jigsaw of mattresses on the floor. Rose generally tried to have a bed close to the exit (for quick escapes to the toilet during the night) but was unfortunately trapped in the middle of the beds before she could say anything.

She had Lily to her immediate right, who was prone to snoring loudly which was just great and Albus and Hugo's mattresses were perpendicular to her own, as well as Malfoy's, unfortunately, which meant that his head was far too close to hers for Rose to appreciate it. She suddenly had a terrible feeling of foreshadowing that she was going to wake up with his hair in her mouth the next morning. She really needed to get rid of that book. Normally she had it in a deep dark corner of her Dorm room, where she hoped it would return from whatever strange place it a=had come from never to bother her again. Hopefully.

"Why is your nightdress green too, Rose?" Lily asked as they began to settle to bed.

"Shut up, Lily." Rose warned her.

Malfoy snorted.

"Excuse me for a while, I need to go step on someone's face, and hopefully break their nose." Rose announced but she was hit by a pillow from Albus before she could do anything. Well, she wasn't even planning to do anything, because breaking his nose would have made him less handsome. Wait. What? No, no, no, no, no. Stupid Amortentia!

Okay fine! The potion had won! Maybe she found him a teeny tiny bit attractive (with the major exception being his godforsaken hair, thank you very much stupid Appreciate Malfoy hair, an Easy How-To Book) but he had no redeeming qualities, nothing remotely attractive about his personality. And for goodness' sake! She had a boyfriend, a lovely, charming, absolutely gorgeous boyfriend who was everything she had ever dreamed of, right? Unfortunately, she could smell the lemongrass from his shampoo from her bed.

She groaned and pressed her pillow against her face in frustration. Thomas, she told herself. Lovely, lovely Thomas who got you a lovely quill which you are going to use no matter how much you hate using them to send him a letter tomorrow asking him how he is and wishing him a merry Christmas. Aww, he would be so happy. He really was adorable (and a good kisser, sort of)! That's right, Thomas. Who cares about stupid Malfoy and his lemongrass? Ignoring him was going to be so easy she was going to be able to come back from holiday and say: "Malfoy? Oh yeah, he might've been there." when someone asked her about her stay at the Burrow.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Lemongrass. Ugh.

"Is everything all right, Rose?" Lily asked her when they had all snuggled under their quilts.

Ah, Lily: perfect. Just the girl she had wanted to talk to. At this point, she doubted very much that Lily had gotten her the stupid book because it was extremely powerful magic and would have cost her all of her money, but one must never eliminate anybody. "Yeah. Lily, did you get me a book?" she whispered.

Lily looked slightly puzzled. "Well, of course." Aha! Cornered! Lily had just admitted to the crime! She was the one who was making her life hell. She was going to pay! "I always get you a book at Christmas, almost everyone does."

Wait. What? "For Christmas?"

"Yeah, but I sure am not telling you what it's about."

"No, no. I meant in November or something like that."

Lily gave her a disbelieving look. "Rose, do you really think I would give you a book at any other moment than Christmas or your birthday?"

"Fine, fine. But then who did?" she asked herself.

"What's so important about the book anyway? What's it called?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, right." Lily rolled over, clearly bored with the conversation and started to snicker with Lou and Roxy.

Rose pondered on what this meant. She had asked all the members of her family who were susceptible of being the ones who had sent her the book, and yet none of them seemed to be the ones who did. This unfortunately seemed to suggest that it was in fact a very Dark artefact which was probably going to possess her, or something along those lines. Hmm. But then again, why would it be quite that ridiculous? Seriously, why would someone even bother making a book about hair a dark possession artefact? Sure, there had been examples of ridiculously ordinary, and frankly silly, objects being turned dark (she once had the strangest dream about a Zac Effron poster being a horcrux. Sometimes her dreams got a little strange) but this seemed extremely unlikely. She concluded that it had to be not someone in her close family and friend circle but someone more distant, now all she had to do was find out who it was (all while balancing school, tutoring, Quidditch, prefect rounds, and unfortunate emotional confusion). She paused for a moment because after listing all those activities she was suddenly filled with a sense of impeding doom that the teachers were probably going to add them a lot of really heavy and long projects when they came back from the hols. Huh.

Why, oh why had this horrible book come into her life?

And the worse was that she couldn't even check if the step had been fully completed and that the next one was slightly kinder (because it had suddenly dawned on her that it was an inevitability that she was going to have to go through with every one of these stupid steps whether she liked it or not) because the stupid, stupid, annoying book was still stuck in her dormitory. She had initially considered bringing it to Grandpa Weasley, but then ruled against it as she could never have let him see the book in ANY case. Grandpa Weasley was getting more prone to babbling in his sleep with his old age and Grandma Weasely was a VERY light sleeper. She definitely could NOT have Grandma Weasley find out about this or she would never hear the end of it.

Rose woke up the next morning not feeling particularly, well, rosy. Thankfully, most of her cousins hadn't woken up just yet, avoiding her too much noise in the morning, and she carefully sidestepped the lot of them to get some breakfast and finish wrapping up the last of her presents. She noted that Malfoy had disappeared too, which was a great relief and a little bit of a disappointment, because she would have liked to accidentally step on him.

Seeing as it was the 24th of December, putting up the Christmas tree seemed like a priority to many and as soon as the mattresses had been stuffed into the rooms upstairs, Uncle George had hauled of Hugo, Lily, Roxanne and Louis outside to go and chop down a tree or two.

Meanwhile, Rose who had barely had the time to take a sip of tea and get dressed was whisked into the kitchen with only one foot inside her (green) tights. True to her word, Grandma Weasley had every hand in the kitchen and soon Rose was making pie crusts with Lucy who was contentedly humming to herself, while Aunt Ginny argued very loudly with Grandma on why making cranberry sauce was useless because nobody ever ate it. Dominique arrived looking all suntanned but barely had the time to put her bags down before she was given a knife and two kilos of Brussels sprouts.

An absolutely gigantic tree and five snow monsters came back just before lunch. James and Grace appeared just as Louis was trying to strangle Roxanne with some tinsel (for something along the lines of wanting to place the star at the top) and James quickly joined the fight while Grace offered a Christmas wreath with some sort of look of excuse to Grandma Weasley and received a kiss from Ginny and a quick hi from Harry who was busy trying to make the tree stand up after Lily had thought it funny to cast a whomping charm on it, though how she had managed to do it was beyond her, as there was still something in Britain called the Trace. As far as Rose was concerned, Lily wasn't exactly 17 yet.

"Oh, hello Rose. How are you?" Grace asked her as they were kneading dough and mixing cake batter.

Grace McMillan was currently undergoing her first years of study at St Mungo's to become a trained healer. She was extremely good at what she did and had just the right dose of humour and sharpness matching James' rowdy personality perfectly. "I'm fine. And you?"

"Good, good. I really love the outfit, by the way, is it to match the Yule colours?"

Rose looked down at herself. Sure, it was a pretty cute outfit, she had after all opted for one of her nicer skirts because it was Christmas (thinking back on that, she probably shouldn't have worn it already, seeing as cooking had a tendency to get messy), but it was green. "Umm… not really."

"Oh well, it suits you."

It suited her? It suited her! No it didn't. Green was a very ugly colour on her. It reminded her that she needed to go and bully Malfoy into changing them back (all while ignoring him, which sounded hypothetically impossible but Rose was sure she could do it well enough if she wanted to) but she then remembered he and Al had been sent outside to clear the driveway.

("But Grandma, no one is going to come by car!" Albus had complained.

"Are you complaining young man? Because I always need someone to clean the chicken coop!"

"Nope! Didn't say anything! Off we go then Scorpius!" Albus had replied, seemingly terrified.

"Oh, no, not you Scorpius dear. You can stay." Ugh, curse Grandma for always being so polite to all the people who were invited.

"Don't worry about it ma'am, I'd love to help." Oh, and don't forget to curse Malfoy too for sucking up to everyone everywhere. Rose had made a point of not even turning around to mock him, because she was ignoring him, remember, no matter what had happened this morning and the fact that Lily couldn't look at the two of them without a small giggle escaping her lips.)

The afternoon transitioned as smoothly as possible into the evening: which meant that the house had only threatened to burn down twice, once when Fred turned up through the floo with a bunch of indoor fireworks, which only Uncle George guffawed to while the others scrambled desperately to find water and once more when Hugo was pushed to the floor while lighting the candles when Louis barrelled through the living room into Teddy's arms (Victoire who had been waiting with her arms open too sniffled a little and then squashed her brother into a hug once Teddy had managed to get rid of him). Bill and Fleur turned up just after them and Charlie flew in on what seemed to be a dragon from the ground but was actually only a very old broom. Uncle Percy, Aunt Audrey, Molly and her boyfriend Casper Wood turned up during a particularly tense game of Chess between Uncle Harry and Dad (Dad was clearly winning, Rose had already seen how he was going to win, but he was kindly leaving Uncle a bit of hope for winning) and in the commotion to say hello, the board was overturned.

Soon, they were only waiting for Mum, while eating a bunch of chips and watching old Christmas film reruns on an old television Hermione and Grandpa had managed to get to work again (and mysteriously get it connected to the cable, though no one ever mentioned that). Rose heard the door open during a particularly dramatic moment of The Grinch and slipped away without anybody noticing.

"Mum!" she whispered.

"Oh hello darling!" Hermione gave her a hug and Rose ate a mouthful of snowflakes and well as a bit of frizzy greying hair as her mother's hair was not in her usual uptight bun. "It was absolutely hectic at the ministry, a bunch of vampires thought it would be funny to go ambling around drunk in the middle of Muggle London," she explained as she removed her scarf, "Anyway, darling. How are you? What are you wearing? Slytherin colours?" she continued without a pause, "That's great! I was afraid that your father had gone a little too hard on the anti-Slytherin business but it's great to see you're making an effort towards house unity!"

"Umm, not exactly," Rose grimaced as her mother took off her coat.

"What then? Duelling accident?"Her mother laughed, completely unaware that that was exactly what had happened. She then saw her daughter's expression. "Oh really, Rose? I hope this was all during allocated duelling time?"

"Ummm…"

Her mother groaned then laughed again. "Oh well, hopefully you'll get something useful out of it. One time I suffered from consequences of a duel, I managed to get my teeth shrunken."

"What?" Rose was shocked, her mother doing that? No way.

"Don't act so surprised. Now, tell me whoever did that on you got as good," Mum shook out the last pins of her bun out of her head and it flopped out into the same curly, bushy mess Rose had.

"Well, not exactly, but I am planning something-"

There was suddenly a tingling of glass being put down on marble and Rose turned around to see only your favourite blond (please note the irony) put down a half empty glass of water, a slightly guilty, but slightly amused look on his face. Rose glared at him and her mother gave her a strange look she didn't quite know how to interpret.

"Oh Scorpius, hello!"

"Minister." He gave a little nod that seemed to indicate respect and was positively ridiculous on him, according to Rose.

"Oh, please call me Hermione while I'm not at work. Anyway, you've quite grown since the last time I saw you! Growing up to look just like your father, I see."

He bristled slightly at the mention of his father. "If you say so."

"Oh don't take it badly. Your father was quite dashing when he was younger."

"Mum!" Rose exclaimed as Scorpius blushed.

"Oh, just because we spent most of our time trying to plot his demise doesn't mean I didn't have eyes!" Hermione laughed.

"Mum!" Rose repeated. This was not a comfortable situation. Not at all. She couldn't have her mother praising the git. How was she supposed to sort out her own feelings if her mother was going to be like this? Also, had her mother seen the stupid Malfoy's hair? It was godawful, no matter where it was and the incident that very morning had definitely proved it.

"Speaking of Draco Malfoy, some things might be happening at Hogwarts soon…" she said mysteriously.

Rose arched an eyebrow, "What?"

"Oh, never mind, forget I said anything" Rose made a mental note to remember this conversation even though she was sure that in barely a few days she was going to forget, and then it was going to slap her back in the face when she was the least expecting it. Her mind was funny that way.

"Anyway, I heard you've been causing Rosie some grief."

"Well, in all fairness ma'am, everything was totally deserved," Malfoy said with far too much smugness to Rose's taste.

"Hey!" Rose said indignantly.

"Oh, good, good. Our Rosie needs to be put back in her place sometimes," Hermione continued.

"Mum!"

"I know I did when I was younger. Got in some pretty big fights with your father because of that, Rose"

Well, wasn't this just splendid. Her mother was comparing her relationship with her father to Rose and Malfoy's. First of all, their relationship had absolutely nothing in common, from what she had heard. Secondly, she did not want her relationship with the biggest prat in the world compared to one of a happily wed couple! That was not reassuring at all and definitely did not help with her own confused mess of feelings! She was about to complain again, when her father appeared.

"I heard you were talking about me?" Ron asked.

"Oh darling!" they kissed each other and both Rose and Malfoy took it as their queue to leave and rejoin the improvised cinema.

Rose didn't miss the occasion to remind Malfoy that "he shouldn't listen to anything her mother said" to which he replied "yeah, yeah" smirking.

A/N: We got a bit of Hermione! Yay! Please tell me what you thought, any comment is appreciated! Next chapter: does Malfoy have feelings? This is what we will be finding out. Hopefully it should be coming out in about two weeks (I should know better than making promises). Big thank you to all those who have been reviewing. I absolutely love you. Please stay safe out there!

Butterflies765

A little guide to the members of the next-gen characters of the Weasley family and others:

- Rose Weasley: 6th Year, sister of Hugo, daughter of Ron and Hermione

- Hugo Weasley: 4th Year, brother of Rose, son of Ron and Hermione

- Victoire Weasley: 22, sister of Dominique and Louis, daughter of Fleur and Bill, married to Teddy

- Dominique Weasley: 19, sister of Victoire and Louis, daughter of Fleur and Bill

- Louis Weasley: 5th Year, brother of Victoire and Dominique, son of Fleur and Bill

- Molly Weasley: 22, sister of Lucy, daughter of Percy and Audrey, dating Casper Wood

- Lucy Weasley: 20, sister of Molly, daughter of Percy and Audrey

- Fred Weasley: 19, brother of Roxanne, son of George and Angelina

- Roxanne Weasley, 6th Year, sister of Fred, daughter of George and Angelina

- James Potter: 19, brother of Albus and Lily, son of Harry and Ginny, dating Grace McMillan

- Albus Potter: 6th Year, brother of James and Lily, son of Harry and Ginny

- Lily Potter: 4th Year, sister of James and Albus, daughter of Harry and Ginny

- Scorpius Malfoy: 6th year, son of Draco and Astoria

- Teddy Lupin: 23, son of Remus and Tonks, married to Victoire

- Grace McMillan: 19, daughter of Ernie and Susan, engaged to James

- Casper Wood: 23, brother of Jonathan, son of Oliver and Katie, dating Molly