A/N: Hello lovelies! Thank you for following/favouriting/reviewing! You're amazing.

Did you know that Scorpius Malfoy has no canon birthday? So, I have decided it will be on the 23rd of January (for plot-related issues… I have things planned)! So, happy birthday Scorpius from this universe!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Happy reading!

The week zipped by quicker than Rose could have ever expected. The homework came in and out, and she was literally drowning under assignments. She tutored Carmen, who regularly cried about the History project, especially because she wasn't with her best-friend, and Rose often felt like crying with her. S

he attended all her Quidditch practices, and came back absolutely bone-tired. Turns out that Tuesday evening practice followed by Wednesday morning practice was basically another definition of torture.

Who knew right?

That had been Kyle's response, the others knew very, very well, but it STILL didn't discourage him. Boy, they really did love him (or in some cases, were actually dating him, but that was a side-note).

She also unfortunately didn't see much of her boyfriend, which didn't seem quite normal. What was the point of one if you didn't spend time with him? They practically had no lessons together and whenever Rose was in the Common Room with some free time, he was somewhere else, tutoring or Astronomy club (this Astronomy club business was kinda getting on her nerves, but she ignored it). Besides, when they did see each other, they would just study. Conversation had trouble coming naturally and Rose exhausted herself trying to find starters.

And if all that didn't make you want to take a nap, or cry, guess what else she had to do? That's right. Avoid Malfoy. After fleeing from the History classroom (something she never thought she would ever do), Rose had firmly decided she would deal with the whole business next week, taking her time to figure out the rest of her life before she dealt with him.

Turns out avoiding him (and his cheekbones, reminded Irrational) was a lot harder to do than expected. He shared so goddamn many classes with her, and she always seemed to be running into him out of lessons (then again, Rose did have a habit of running into people, down the stairs, in the library. Wait. What? Just kidding Madam Pince! She definitely didn't run in the Library!) What had initially supposed to be avoidance for purposes of alleviating the load of work, had actually turned out to be even MORE work. Curse bad logic.

All that almost led her to forgetting the cursed book's existence (you know, that single most annoying book that was threatening to ruin her life at any given moment?). Except, that, of course, she had about the same amount of the luck as those people who get hit in the head by falling flower pots did (because let's be real, how often did that happen?), and she had forgotten to put the object (yes, she wasn't even going to bother calling it book. It did not deserve to be called a book. She was that petty) away, and guess who had stumbled upon it? That's right. Lizzie.

"What's that, Rosie?" Lizzie asked.

Rose hurriedly looked up from the book she had her nose buried in, and when she saw what Lizzie had in her hands, she grabbed it out. "Nothing?"

"Doesn't seem like nothing," huffed Lizzie.

"Are you looking for anything?" Rose causally tried to turn the conversation away.

Lizzie narrowed her eyes. "Nothing. But be sure of this, I will find out what that book is."

Lizzie had some strangely Slytherin attributes at time, but Rose waited until her best friend had left the room before carefully stashing it in the 'ugly' sweater at the back of her wardrobe (knowing the fashionista Lizzie was, she wouldn't be within a meter of that horrible jumper her mother had insisted had been 'all the hip' when she was her age).

But, still. It slightly perturbed Rose. What if someone did find out about the book? What would be their reaction? Should she tell them eventually? Lizzie would never let her hear the end of it (but then again, Rose knew her full name, including Lizzie's middle name, and if that wasn't a threat, she didn't know what was). She had eventually decided that it was better to leave the book alone, especially as it seemed like the next step was never going to happen anyway. If she could avoid Malfoy Junior (the voice at the back of her head had a coughing fit when she thought that) how much harder could it be avoiding Malfoy Senior?

And yet, despite it all, it went by quickly and she made it to the end of the week. Friday evening finally rolled around. But, noooo. Just patrol rounds and bed was too good to be true. A cute little second-year informed her at lunchtime that their was a meeting for prefects at 8PM with Headmistress McGonagall. Rose felt like hitting her head with a book. It was only the first week back, and already she was exhausted (and avoiding her student duties). Oh joy.

Rose walked down to the Prefect office with Thomas. They didn't talk much, apart from the usual pleasantries, like the weather, how lessons were going, if she had finished the Charms essay etc. Even if their verbal parr wasn't up to top, it was still nice to have someone's hand to hold onto as one strolled down the corridors. (Okay, maybe he was a particularly bad hand-holder, always applying to much or not enough pressure, but still. It WAS nice, she tried to convince herself). What would have been really nice would have been some more kissing, but not much of that had happened since they had come back from holidays. Rose was still trying to understand why exactly he was so miffed.

As they stepped into the office, Thomas immediately dropped her hand, which she completely understood. It was time to be professional. No Professor McGonagall in sight, so they just sat down one of the sofas in the Prefects' office (yes, they did have sofas. Being prefects after all did have it's advantages). There was a light murmur as more of the prefects startled to file in and had hushed conversations.

Rose watched out of the corner of her eye, as Malfoy came into the room. He was immaculately dressed, as always and his hair perfectly was groomed backwards in the style he seemed to favour. If she concentrated hard enough she could smell a whiff of lemongrass, as well at the smell of the air at night, which she knew very well from her Gryffindor Quidditch practices. This only served to remind her of his cheekbones, which she was probably staring at now (was it possible to stare out of the corner of an eye?). He had apparently been looking for her, as his eyes scanned the room and landed on her, and he made a slight move of his head that seemed to indicate he wanted to speak to her.

Thomas gave small huff next to her.

She quickly broke eye contact (again, can you make eye-contact out of the corner of your eye?) and turned back to Thomas. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

Thomas opened his mouth as if to say something, but was interrupted when Headmistress McGonagall strolled in.

But then she saw who was following her. And then her mouth dropped open. And then she had a mini heart-attack.

That's right. You guessed it. The one and only: Draco Bloody Malfoy.

A hush fell over the room as the ex-Death Eater walked in behind the Headmistress. His walk was very stiff and each step was determined. It was a confident step (as it should have been, considering he was only in a room with a bunch of not-scary teenagers). He was wearing a tailored suit, not quite robes, as surely meeting a bunch of the said not-scary teenagers hardly called for something so formal, but it was definitely far more chic than anything else anyone was wearing. Rose suddenly understood where Malfoy (junior. Oh Morgana. This was about to get confusing) had gotten his atrocious clothing tastes.

Atrocious? Whispered the godforsaken voice at the back of her head. She wasn't even sure she was able to tell the two apart any more. Are you kidding me? The suits are absolutely magnificent and make him look sexy.

Sexy? Sexy! Since when did she refer to anyone as sexy? Clearly, the little voice at the back of her head was going crazy (but then again, it wasn't the first time she had thought that). Also, if she thought suits looked good on Malfoy Jr., did that mean she thought Malfoy Sr. looked sexy in suits? Umm. Nope. Gross. There was no way Malfoy Sr. was ever going to be described as sexy.

But back to the subject. The man walked straight up to desk in the Prefect's office, eyes straight forward, not looking anywhere, not even his son. Scorpius seemed to have sat up a little straighter when his father came into the room, and she saw his pass a hand through his hair.

Hair.

The word passed like lightning through her. HAIR! Oh, Morgana.

It was true. Scorpius was a carbon copy of his father, especially the hair. The exact same blond shade, so light it was closer to white than yellow. That same spider-web, silky finery to it's texture. Truly, the only difference was that Malfoy the Younger kept it short whereas Malfoy the Elder kept it long and tied back in a small ponytail. There were also a couple of greying streaks. (It momentarily amused Rose that even people like Draco Malfoy were affected by old age. Merlin knew her mother got exceedingly jealous because already her hair was half grey whereas her father still had a vibrant red head).

His father has the exact same hair, she thought, and then laughed at herself because clearly it was Scorpius (yes, she called him his first name, but only because she was too lazy to call him Malfoy Jr. Morgana, what a mouthful) that had inherited the hair from his father and not the other way round.

But then her thought rang a bell at the back of her head. Where had she already heard that sentence? His father has the exact same hair… His father has the exact same hair… Lovely blond white hair too… Wait. Where did that thought come from? Back to the mental search, Rose. Focus. His father has the exact same hair.

And then it hit her like the proverbial book (was that even a proverb? Who cares. Rose thought the pun was funny). Because, yes, speaking of books, it was exactly in that book she had read that exact sentence. If she remembered correctly it was "Observe the fact that his father has the same hair."

And suddenly it was like her worst nightmare coming true. The book, the stupid goddamn book, had managed to get her to complete a step she had been so sure was never going to come true. She whipped her head back and forth between the two, in a way that surely was going to cause her to get a stiff neck, but that was hardly the point. Oh curse that annoying book. What really worried her was the fact that couldn't remember the note that followed, and those notes always seemed to make her life miserable.

Thomas was giving her a weird look when she was finally able to escape her horrified daze and pay attention to whatever Headmistress McGonagall was saying.

"Rose!" he hissed.

"What?" Rose murmured, sheepishly.

"You have to pay attention."

"I was!" she huffed, but had to admit that wasn't exactly the truth.

If Headmistress McGonagall had noticed anything strange happening between her tow Gryffindor prefects, she certainly didn't comment on it, apart from a stern glance that was probably meant in their direction.

"Alright, students," she began, everyone in the room sat a little straighter and a complete silence fell over the room (a most unnerving one too, if Rose could say anything), "You must all be wondering why I have called you here today, and I am most sorry to be disrupting your Friday plans." Friday plans? You mean, homework, avoiding Malfoy, patrol, avoiding Malfoy, and, did she mention avoiding Malfoy? Boy, that sounded like fun. "As you may or may not be aware, we have started carefully looking at our sixth year prefects to decide who we will pick to be head girl and head boy next year."

When she said that, everything suddenly sat up so straight it was like someone had decided to cast a straightening spell on all of them (Rose knew the feeling. Unfortunate experimentation with the spell for her hair had ended up in unfortunate circumstances).

Being Head Boy or Head Girl was the ultimate honour at Hogwarts, at least according to her. Her mother would probably have finished Head Girl if she hadn't just decided to skip her Seventh Year (or go on a perilous quest to kill the most evil dark wizard of all time, but whatever way you said it, she still hadn't been there) and Rose definitely wanted to live up to her mother. Rose could already imagine the badge pinned on her cardigan next year. She had spent hours staring at Lucy's badge when she had gotten hers.

"And to do that, we have decided to organise a little charity event. Well, 'we'. You will be the ones organising it, and we will judge your work, effort and participation for the event, which will ultimately contribute very heavily to our decision."

It suddenly struck Rose as funny that Headmistress McGonagall was using the royal 'we', except if, Morgana forbid, Draco Malfoy was helping to pick out the Head Students. That was probably not the case, but if it was, this whole charity event was just a sham and Scorpius Malfoy was going to get picked.

Nepotism. Rose was disgusted. Hypocrite, the stupid little voice at the back of her head murmured. Rose promptly decided to ignore it. Okay, maybe, sometimes, the Weasley's helped each other out, but there were so many of them it was kinda hard to avoid. Plus, it wasn't like everyone could boast of having BOTH your parents be part of the Golden Trio (take THAT Albus).

"The event will take place on the weekend before the Easter Holidays and on the school grounds. Think of it as a sort of funfair, you can decide if you want to hold a stall and sell things, organise a game or anything you wish. The aim is to raise money to give to war orphanage."

Rose decided it was probably time to get a piece of paper out to start writing all the things McGonagall was telling them about. Rose also smugly noted she was the first one to do so as she took out a piece of paper and a book to write on, and everyone else scrambled for a quill and piece of parchment after her. She hoped McGonagall had noticed. This should definitely be worth a couple of extra-points.

"Remember this is a competition. The winners will be the ones to raise to most money from their activity. Their will also be no replicates so you had better decide what you want to do quickly."

At the word 'competition', Rose's blood started to rush quicker. Rose was a stickler for competitions (if you hadn't yet noticed) and would do anything (and by anything, she meant she would willingly sacrifice her cousin (Albus) to the mountain trolls if necessary) to win. Ideas started sprouting in her mind, gushing out of her creative like mind in rivets.

But then suddenly, Rose realised Headmistress McGonagall had said 'winners' as in plural. Either, this was a good sign, because it meant there was a possibility for a second place (not that Rose would ever lower herself to aim for the second place, or even dream of going for the second place no) OR it meant more group work, and frankly she had already enough of THAT (see: History: Tuesday, Malfoy. God just thinking about that made her want to cry. She still had to avoid Malfoy until Monday though).

The book she had been using to write on began to feel warm on her knees, and Rose wondered what was wrong with it. She removed the paper she was writing on and peeked at the book.

She almost dropped it out of sheer surprise.

Appreciate Malfoy Hair, an Easy How-to Book was sitting on her lap. Rose scrambled to hide it under her paper again and blushed deeper than crimson. Had anyone seen it? She hoped not, especially not Thomas. Thank goodness, he seemed to be oblivious to whatever Rose had been doing and was contentedly writing notes and listening to Headmistress McGonagall.

A thousand questions rushed into her head. How the heck had the book gotten into her bag? How had it even moved it self? Did someone put it there? Did anyone see it? The book looked back at her innocently (well, if a book could look back at someone, that would probably be how it was right now) and Rose would probably have thrown it across the room if she hadn't been sure to die from embarrassment if anyone ever found out what it was about.

She looked up again to check no one had seen. After a quick scan of the room, it seemed that no one had. Apart from one person. Draco Malfoy was looking at her curiously, a question mark on his face. Rose blushed even deeper and then promptly pretended that they had never had eye contact.

Oh Merlin's saggy underpants, could this be any worse? Draco Malfoy had possibly just caught her looking at a book named Appreciate Malfoy Hair, an Easy How-To Book. This was absolutely mortifying. However, seeing him had reminded her that the step she was completing had included Malfoy Sr. Rose took her courage in both hands and decided against her better judgment to crack to book open and check whatever the consequence of noticing Malfoy Jr. and Malfoy Sr. shared the same obnoxious blond hair was.

Note: This step may, however, have to be completed in very uncomfortable and/or tedious circumstances. It may or may not also entail having to work with someone you do not wish to work with, the book reminded her sweetly. (Once again, fake sweetness. If the book had ever the opportunity of being sorted, it would probably end up being a Slytherin).

Rose took a moment to re-evaluate her sanity. Had she just considered the fact that a book could be Sorted? Clearly, she was over-stressed at the moment.

Oh hell, no. It said work with someone you do not wish to work with. Oh, dear Merlin. That was definitely group work. Was there any hope that the certain someone was Thomas? He had been kinda weird lately… Working with him was probably something she didn't really want to do. But at least it would be her boyfriend. She barely knew the other prefects or hated them with all her guts (or found their cheekbones attractive; WHAT!), so Thomas did sound like the best solution.

"This will be pair work," Headmistress McGonagall continued, and Rose made a mini fist-pump about being right, all while being filled with a sense of crushing doom. "And I will choose the pairs -" expected "- and the pairs will be inter-house to promote unity." Oh well, there went all her chance of being with Thomas. "But I will only tell you the pairs at the end of the meeting, so as to not distract you." Probably a smart move, considering their were a bunch of extremely short-spanned Sixth Year students.

"Now you are probably wondering why Mr Malfoy is here," Headmistress McGonagall told them. Oh, yeah. Apart from the fact he was there, Rose had forgotten he was probably there for a reason. Oops.

"Of course, you will be needing a sponsor for all your events, and Mr Malfoy has graciously agreed to supply us with the funds. I'll let him tell you the rest."

Mr Malfoy (wait, Mr? Since when was she calling him that. Her father had basically raised her to be disrespectful to Malfoy, much to her mother's despair. Curse Headmistress McGonagall for influencing her to be respectful) and cleared his throat. "Of course, As a member of the school board, I have accepted this duty."

Member of the school board? Well, apparently those things were hereditary because she wasn't quite sure putting an ex-Death Eater on a school board was a good idea. Oh well, it was good to know he was spending his probably dirty money on charity work.

"Your partner and you will be meeting me regularly over the course of the next couple of months to discuss the financial aspect of your project, as well as other budgetary issues."

Scorpius Malfoy, working with his father? Well, there you go. Bloody favouritism. Rose quickly looked over at him (corner of the eye, corner of the eye) and saw he didn't look particularly pleased about this. Well, Rose wasn't exactly thrilled, but surely Malfoy should be happy about working with his father?

Oh, there we go! Rose didn't want to work with Malfoy Sr.! All was explained. The stupid book was stupid (yes, Rose knew she was a walking thesaurus, thank you very much). And working with him definitely wasn't going to make her appreciate his hair. Definitely. It would be kinda weird if she started to find man who was literally old enough to be her father attractive.

"Thank you Mr Malfoy. I will now be announcing the pairs. Keep in mind that they were chosen completely randomly." The word randomly suddenly scared her. The fates had had something against her for the last couple of weeks. Letting them decide was never a good idea. "Vance and Robins. Boot and Lovett. Malfoy and Weasley. Fawley and Soares. Right. That will be all. I've pinned the dates of your meetings with Mr Malfoy on the board. Good evening, students."

Rose screamed internally.

WC: 3,677

A/N: Phew! That was another long chapter! Speaking of which, this fic is officially over the 60k word limit! Yay! Please leave a review! I'd love to think what you thought of Draco Malfoy! And very sorry for the sort of déjà-vu you're getting here; I promise it'll be worth it!

See you in two weeks! (Also, I love exclamation marks!)

Butterflies765