A/N: Hello lovelies! Thank you so much for following/favouriting/reviewing! Reviews are the best, they're what keep me writing!

Disclaimer: Nothing apart from the plot belongs to me.

Happy reading!

Rose felt like repeatedly banging her head against her book. Speaking of the book, she quickly put it away before the situation could get worse then what it already was. Now she could focus again on why the gods that were up there somewhere thought it had been a good idea to do this not once, but TWICE to her.

That's right, ladies and gentleman. She now had TWO projects with Malfoy!

The last time she had learned about her unhappy fate had been met with reactions of sadness, despair and imploring the time. This time she was just in cold, cool (psh, yeah. As if anyone had ever called her cool) acceptance. She was going to suffer through this hell whether she liked it or not, all plans of avoiding Malfoy and his cheekbones for the rest of her life were probably doomed to fail anyway. Wait till Lizzie heard about this.

She now knew she would be spending the whole Easter holidays cursing the gods who had thought this would be funny, once these two horrible debacles were over.

"So you're with Malfoy again?" Thomas asked her, almost in accusing tone once she had carefully (read: stuffed) her sheet of paper into her bag.

"Trust me, I'd rather not be," she told him with a bitter smile, "But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

"Looks like you're going to be spending more time with him than with me."

"Are you jealous?"

"No," he said, but his face seemed to indicate the opposite. Oh, poor Thomas. He was actually jealous of Malfoy. Now, that was something utterly ridiculous. No one should ever be jealous of stupid Malfoy. There was nothing to be jealous about! It was quite hilarious, frankly, because it was so absurd. "I barely spend any time with you any more." There was obviously some sort of sadness in his voice, but Rose didn't want to deal with it right now. After all, she was the one who was going to have to spend all her time with him!

"Well, I'm not the one who cancelled one of our study dates," she retorted. "Shouldn't you be finding Alex Robins." Her tone was slightly colder than she had meant, but she wasn't going to let him accuse her of wanting to spend time with Malfoy.

Oh Merlin. Look how cruel she was being to her boyfriend of one-month. And all of this was Malfoy's fault! Oh, how she hated him (well, maybe except his cheekbones. She quite liked those). Rose sighed and made a mental note she would probably forget to make it up to Thomas at one point, though when she didn't really know. They didn't see each other that often any more.

Once Thomas had left, Rose marched to the board and started to note down the dates for when she was supposed to meet Draco Malfoy, another thing to look forward too (please note the sarcasm). January 24st, February 15th, March 2nd. She carefully wrote it down in her organiser and sighed when she realised how much more work this was going to mean. And they hadn't even started Apparating lessons yet…

"Ahem." Someone cleared their throat behind her.

Rose whipped round to find none-other than her dear partner, Scorpius Malfoy. She immediately had to control the sudden urge to frown, and tried to retain a neutral air. (A small part of her brain yelled, CHEEKBONES, and she had to force herself to look him straight in the eyes with an air of defiance and indifference, which was about as hard as it sounded).

"You've been avoiding me," he stated, looking slightly bored.

"Have I?" Rose said as nonchalantly as humanely possible. Yes! that was definitely another Oscar-winning performance. Go Actress-Rose, Go! "I hadn't noticed."

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "You are aware that you are going to have to speak to me at some point. That presentation in History is worth 40% of our final grade."

"Oh really? I didn't know." YES! Perfect performance. Keep those rhetorical questions coming, Actress-Rose!

"And now we've got this, which if we fail, I will lose any chance of becoming head boy."

Rose snorted. "Please, your father is on the school board. Besides, I don't want to fail either. I also want to become a Head student."

"Yes, well. That seems to be the gist of it," he told her impatiently.

A sudden terrible realisation dawned upon her. "Wait. You're telling me-" she took a deep breath.

"Yes?"

"That if we win this things, we will basically both have extremely good chances of becoming head students?"

"Yes."

"Together?" The horror was definitely filling her voice now.

"It would appear so."

Okay, screw cold, accepting Rose. WHEN they were going to win this (no ifs for Rose), they would end up being head boy and head girl together? Oh no. She couldn't decide what was worse. Not being head girl, or having to work REPEATEDLY with Scorpius Malfoy. There was no way this was happening. Maybe she could sabotage the whole thing? Then, she could probably ask her mother to beg Headmistress McGonagall to make her Head Girl even if she failed.

And you accuse MALFOY of nepotism, the little voice named Rational screamed at her. Rose promptly ignored it, as always.

"And don't you even think of sabotaging the project, Weasley," he warned. Well, he wasp probably right. Failing this would fail her for life (and no, Rose wasn't extreme at all, thank you very much. According to her, one project would determine the outcome of all her future). She would just have to grin (or not, actually) and bear it.

"What's all this talk of sabotage?" Draco Malfoy casually strolled into the conversation. Oh great. Exactly what Rose needed right now. Another Malfoy. Was the torture never-ending?

"Father," Malfoy acknowledged him.

"Scorpius," Malfoy said back. Ooooh. This was getting confusing. Too many Malfoy's in a same room. "I see you are working with my son."

Rose nodded. She wasn't exactly scared of him, per say, it was just that the man carried himself like the world was his if he wished it to be. Also, him being with Malfoy Jr at the moment meant that there was too much blond hair around, and that meant Rose was finding it hard to concentrate. Stop, she told herself firmly. Remember this man was once a ferret. That certainly cheered her up.

"Any ideas?"

"No," she simply said. Who cared about manners anyway? Her mother would faint.

"Scorpius?"

"No, sir," he said, a hard look in his eye. Sir? Malfoy called his father sir? That was just sad. Rose felt a little bit of pity, but only a little bit. After all, Malfoy was still Malfoy. She couldn't go around feeling pity for him or it would just confuse her more (see: Christmas, or two weeks ago).

"Well, I'm sure you'll be able to find something that's satisfactory. Any thoughts on when you will be working?"

Rose suddenly felt compelled to retort that it was none of his business, but Malfoy got his timetable out before she could say a word. So she begrudgingly took her own out too. Trust needing Draco Malfoy to make her organise a research session. Merlin, her father would be mortified.

"Monday?" she offered.

"Quidditch. Tuesday?"

"Quidditch. Friday?"

"Tutoring. Wednesday."

"We've got Apparating."

"Oh right, and tutoring for me too. Thursday?"

"Only from 5 to 7 though?" she told him.

"I know, I've got Ancient Runes too."

"Well, then it's settled," said Malfoy Sr. It was crazy how full both of their timetables were. "Well, I look forward to discussing your project on January 24th. Right, Scorpius." He inclined his head slightly.

Boy, what a pathetic way of saying goodbye to your son. If it had been Rose's father, they would've spent at least a minute or two hugging.

"Miss Weasley, give your regards to your parents."

HAH! Regards to her parents? Merlin, the man was a joke. Her father still went red when he heard Malfoy's name pronounced (apart from when he was telling a humiliating story about the man, like the famous bouncing ferret story. Now, that was a good one). The day her father would accept his regards would be the day her mother wouldn't have to threaten him with home-knitted hats (which, retrospectively, didn't sound very frightening to Rose, but her father was apparently very scared of knitted hats).

Rose didn't know what to say apart from: "Thank you."

He started to walk away but then turned back and said: "By the way, that's a rather original hair accessory." He had a small smirk on his face. Avery, very familiar smirk for that matter. Who knew smirks were hereditary?

Rose gave him a puzzled look and slowly brought her hand up to her hair. She hadn't put on any hair accessories that morning, just throwing into its usual extremely-messy low-commitment almost-another-being-to-itself ponytail and hadn't thought much more of it. Truly, if there was a person to indulge in hair accessories it was the man's son. She knew his hair care routine and boy, was it long.

Her hand roamed her hair and eventually she found purchase. She almost shrieked. It was wet and slimy. Rose grabbed the said hair accessory and discovered it was a slug. A SLUG! IN HER HAIR! Rose did let out a small shriek. How immature was that!

She knew exactly who had done this! Obviously it was Scorpius Git-Surpeme Malfoy! Rose whipped round to yell at him but the infuriating blond git had disappeared. How dare he! She was going to have to rid her hair of slime slug immediately! And how dare he humiliate her in front of his father! Maybe that was exactly his purpose. Rose would've thrown the slug to the floor and vanished it if she wasn't so bent on returning the favour.

The meeting ended and rose still hadn't found Malfoy. She started to storm out of the Prefect Study and up to the Gryffindor tower but someone placed an arm on her shoulder.

"Wait up, Rose!" It was Thomas. Rose didn't particularly feel like dealing with him right now.

"What?" she demanded. He recoiled and Rose softened her tone again. "I'm sorry, Malfoy just put a slug in my hair, I'm not in the best of moods."

"Malfoy, again," he grumbled.

Rose rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, I stopped you to remind you we have patrol, right now."

Rose definitely felt like crying, mainly out of sheer exhaustion. "Oh, right."

The patrol passed in a heavy, awkward silence. Thomas was being weird at the moment and Rose was far too brain-dead to bother to try and make sense of whatever was going on, or, for that matter, start a conversation. An hour later, their round finished. Thank goodness it hadn't been a hard one, or Rose might have just sat on the floor and started weeping. They headed back to the Gryffindor common room in silence.

"You've got some, some slime in your hair," Thomas pointed out as the Fat Lady let her in ('the best house ever' was the password. What had the seventh year prefects been drinking when they came up with that one?).

Rose rolled her eyes again and tried to quell the annoyance in her. "I told you, Malfoy put a slug in my hair."

"Oh."

Seriously, if she didn't know better, Rose would've thought he had stopped listening after he heard Malfoy. As they bid each other goodnight (no kisses for him, though).

She walked into the Dorm with such a morose face that Lizzie rushed over to her and pulled her into a hug and asked her to tell her everything. Morgana bless best friends, thought Rose as they consoled themselves to another To all the boys I've loved before marathon.

When Lizzie had fallen asleep, Rose scurried back to her own bed. She pried open her bag and pulled out the book that was the curse of all her existence right now.

Carefully, she replaced it under her mattress and one of Lizzie's old socks. She momentarily considered a sticking spell so that it wouldn't find its way back into her bag but decided against it. It would be a lot more awkward to explain if she got it stuck forever and couldn't move it. The most important thing when hiding an object was to regularly move it around.

The gooddamn annoying book had won this round. She had been so sure she would never see Malfoy Sr in her life (well, maybe not that extreme, but perhaps not in the next year) and yet it had seemed like the book knew. And of course, she had to work with Malfoy on their stupid project. And then he had humiliated and embarrassed her. In front of his father! How dare he!

Rose was positively fuming as she remembered the events of the evening and got out a piece of paper and a pen.

Dear Mum,

You KNEW this was going to happen. That's what you were on about at Christmas. Maybe you could have warned me in advance? Yes, I am talking about Draco Malfoy sponsoring the March charity event. And DON'T contradict me. You knew. Well, my timetable is getting more and more hectic. Wish me luck, hopefully I won't be dead before the Easter holidays (if I feel like I'm dying, I'll keep you updated. I also expect you to plan a nice funeral, because my death will be your fault.)

On another completely unrelated note, did you ever know a really annoying boy? Like a really, really annoying boy who drove you crazy all the time and did the most stupid things, and just thinking about him drove you mad? If so, please tell me what you did. I need to answer urgently.

I'll write again soon (and probably a letter just for Dad. He's going to be sad when he sees this is not addressed to him),

Lots of love.

Rose

WC: 2,343

A/N: And that's the end of our step! A relatively short one this time, and the next one will be a lot of fun… I'd love to know what you thought, so please, please, please leave a review! See you in two weeks time, and until then, take care!

Butterflies765