Folie à Deux

by ItsLeviOsa-NotLevioSA

"In truth, if the last six years had been any indication, sharing the Head position with Malfoy was going to be awful; living with him insufferable. Then again, although he was as caustic as ever, nothing outrageous had happened between the two yet. True, it was only Wednesday, but for them, it was almost a record." My best attempts to write a believable high school fic. Enjoy!

20. Detox Just To Retox

Chapter 20: Detox Just To Retox or, I'm Just A Creature Of Habit

Rating: M mainly for language, and I can't discount any funny business later on

Disclaimer: I work with only what J.K. Rowling has given me.

---

It was almost midnight by the time the last stragglers had finished or given up on their work and retreated back to their dormitories, meanwhile Toby sat alone on the couches in the Slytherin Common Room, playing idly at a chess board.

As was usually the case, he noticed Liv before she noticed him, but he let his eyes drop down again, ostensibly fixed on his game as she disappeared behind the curve of the staircase. Her footsteps came to a sudden stop as she hit the bottom and was met with a direct view of the couches. Toby tinkered with the piece in his hand, discomfort growing in his stomach as her gaze bore into him, until finally he figured it would be better for them both if he just looked up.

Her eyes were painfully guarded and careful when they met his, and despite the plethora of different ways she had looked at him over the years that couldn't be described as positive, this was the only one that truly felt like a punch to the gut. He didn't smile or adjust his expression in any way; he simply waited for her to react, his heart all the while thrumming in his chest.

She swallowed, her gaze never leaving his, and Toby watched her eyes as they came to a decision. He always knew to look at her eyes. He saw her lips part slightly as she let out a slow exhale, the barest of noises in the silent room, and then she squared her shoulders and made her way over to him.

"Aren't you sick of winning by now?" she asked quietly, attempting a small smile as she picked up the cushion beside him and sat down, placing it back on her lap.

Toby could smell the soft, sweet scent of the perfume she always wore, and he let the white rook slide between his fingers, playing with it for a few moments more before he set it down on the board, two squares away from the black king. Check. "No one else to play with."

"You don't even like playing against people," Liv pointed out.

"I don't?"

"You always complain that they're too slow."

"I always complain that you're too slow."

A laugh spilled from her mouth before she had time to stop it, and God, Toby had missed that wonderful sound. He had to smile a little, and then she smiled at his smile. His heart trembled, and he turned back to the game. The black king moved out of range.

"How'd you even get this good anyway?" Liv asked. She leaned towards the board, inadvertently shifting closer to him as she did so. "What happens if I just—" She pushed a black pawn one space forward; after a brief moment, it slid back into place. "Oh."

"I didn't really 'get good'. I just kinda started off that way."

"So you were like a five-year-old chess prodigy?" she asked, a slight grin tugging at her lips, but her eyes hadn't moved from the board.

"Basically."

"You must've had better hobbies than that, I can't imagine a-"

"Liv."

She paused, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing, "What about sports? You can't've spent all your time-"

"You're not being fair, Liv."

She finally looked at him, and there was an ounce of frustration in those green eyes. "I'm just trying to make conversation, Toby."

"Why didn't you try two weeks ago? You can't just ignore me for that long and then saunter over here and ask me about chess like everything's all normal."

She opened her mouth to argue, and their eyes were locked for another tense, stubborn moment before hers dropped to the table, lips pursing together instead as she drew away from him. She pressed back against the couch, and it was a subtle indication that even though it wasn't going to be very pleasant, she wasn't going to leave him.

That small gesture was enough of a prompt, and Toby sighed, wanting to get this all over with. "Listen. I'm sorry about Hogsmeade, okay?"

He felt her go stiff beside him.

"About asking you to pretend to be my girlfriend. That was…dumb of me to ask, so I'm sorry if I made things weird." He took a deep breath and continued, "But then again, things have been weird between us since Easter, ever since the party, and God, I guess it must be pretty awful because you refused to talk even when I asked you straight out about it, which means you'd rather deal with us not being friends anymore than to just hash out whatever it is."

Liv's mouth was now a thin line, her arms folded tightly over her chest, but she was still staring unrelentingly at that fucking chessboard, and it pushed his next words out of his mouth.

"And what about Horatio? You've been telling me for weeks that you wanted to end it with him, that you didn't see it working out in the long-run, and then the minute we get back you two are thick as thieves all over again."

"I misjudged him."

Toby's head snapped to her at the sudden sound of her voice, but his surprise did little to quell his annoyance. "Like hell you did."

"I did," she repeated roughly. "We spent more time together and I realised that he's a...really great guy. Or at least a good one."

"Then why didn't you just bring him to your party?" He sounded bitter, and he knew it.

Her forehead creased, her taut expression giving way to some confusion. Toby thought he even saw a flicker of hurt at his suggestion, but he carried on. "It was supposed to be Scorp, originally, wasn't it? So why didn't you just bring your new boyfriend? Why ask me instead?"

Liv was quiet, the air stirring uncomfortably between them, but then she finally said, softly and more gently than either of them had been before, "I wanted you to come."

He stared at her. "Instead of him?"

"You don't have to put it like that."

"Like what, Liv?"

She bit her bottom lip, pulling the sleeves of her jumper down so that her hands were hidden inside them. "You didn't have to fill in the role of my boyfriend at the party."

Toby's eyebrows flew up. "What?"

"Us going to the party together, me inviting you...it didn't mean—maybe…" Her eyes lingered on the buttons of his shirt before they unwillingly raised to meet his. "Maybe you think that it meant something else than it did." The discomfort in her eyes was clear.

Don't worry about it, Tobe, he suddenly remembered Scorp saying. It probably doesn't even have anything to do with you.

Toby glared at the memory. Scorpius didn't know anything when it came to Liv.

He ignored the part of him that had sunk at her words, her admission, and instead said in defense, "Why do you think that I think that you inviting me meant anything?"

Liv instantly rolled her eyes, a spark of her old self seeding to the surface, and it made something inside of him ache. "Oh, come on, Toby, don't play dumb. Do you really think I didn't notice how much you were flirting with me? How your arm took up permanent residence on the back of my chair, how I always had to be the one to deny that we were a couple whenever anyone asked?"

Toby's stomach twisted with guilt, because of course he knew he was doing those things, because sometimes it felt so good to be able to pretend, just for a little while, but then something else immediately flared up inside him, displacing the guilt, when he recounted that it wasn't just those things that had felt so nice, those things that he wouldn't have done without a little encouragement.

He had rested his arm on the back of her chair, sure, but she was the one who had leant back against him from the very first time he'd done it, the fabric of her dress brushing against his wrist, strands of her hair dancing against his forearm as they both pretended not to notice. She was the one who had pulled him up for countless dances — not just the fast ones but the slow ones too — where her smile would linger on him for a little too long, and then there were the times he had caught her staring at him when he went to get them a drink or some more food or mingle with the other guests, and of course there was her cousin who he'd only spoken about ten words to before Liv had suddenly appeared beside him, and it hadn't escaped his notice that she'd been all too happy to forget that they weren't a couple then.

"Well, sure, let's pretend it's all coming from my side, then," he said waspishly as the memories continued to play behind his eyes, but there was a triumphant part of him that realised that this was the first time they had ever acknowledged that there was an it between them, and he felt himself ignite at the thought. "If my arm behind you made you so uncomfortable why'd you lean against it, huh? You certainly didn't seem to mind my arms when you kept me on the dance floor with you for about an hour straight. And why'd you have to wear a dress with eight thousand buttons on it, and why didn't you ask any number of your cousins to do it up for you instead of coming all the way over to my room to ask me for help?"

Liv's guilty expression was a twin to his own, mixed with some sort of startled shock that Toby had not only noticed these things but dared to bring them up now, but it wasn't long before she brushed a hand across her flushed cheeks and met his eyes with hers, unapologetic. "Alright, fine, you're right. We both did things that could've been…taken the wrong way."

The momentum that had been building up inside of him vaporised, sucked away from the very air between them, and a look of pure disbelief passed over his face. Taken the wrong way? All of those things put together, what way did she expect him to take them if not in that way?

She's deflecting, he realised immediately. She was being unreasonable, and they both knew it.

He was still so deep in his thoughts that he almost missed what she said next.

"But we're both on the same page, then?"

Toby blinked. And then blinked again. "What?"

"We know where we stand now, right?" she emphasised slowly.

Toby gaped at her. "That's it?" he finally sputtered, dumbfounded. "We're not gonna talk about any of this? You just wanna brush it all under the carpet and pretend like whatever this is between us just doesn't exist?"

"Good," Liv said in satisfaction. "So we're on the same page."

Toby's brain swirled as he stared at her, twisting and reeling in confusion and frustration and indignation and above all, hurt, because how could she possibly say all of this to him? Because looking him in the eyes and saying all of this to him meant that all of those stupid feelings he'd had at the party, all of the stupid feelings he'd had since he was a stupid eleven-year-old kid in love with her were blown to the dust just like that.

And suddenly, for the first time in his life, he couldn't stand to be near her anymore.

He bent down and moved his knight across the board, knocking the black queen onto the table and landing in front of the king as he'd been about to do ten minutes ago.

"You're right," he muttered as he stood up, her face a blur in his periphery. "Winning all the time is boring."

---

"I had an idea."

Will, midway through handing his textbook to Rose the following afternoon, paused. He blinked at her. "What?"

"Well, since you're still finding it a little tricky to perform on demand, I'm going to start asking you to perform spells for me at random during our sessions. That way you'll get used to responding quickly and eventually calmly. And then we can use our last session the week before your exam as a mock practical." She flipped open his textbook, locating the contents page. "How does that sound?"

Will looked surprised. "Are we…still having sessions then?"

Rose's brow furrowed in confusion. "Of course we are."

"But won't you be busy with your exams?"

Her features immediately relaxed back into a smile. "Well, of course I'll be busy, Will, but that doesn't mean I can't make time for you. I'm your tutor."

Will's cheeks went a little red, but he looked pleased. He gave a shy nod.

"Okay, good. Now. Engorgement Charm." She pointed to a paperclip on the table.

Will started, his eyes going wide. "Oh! Um…" He scrambled for his wand, squeezing it tightly in his grasp as he directed it at the table. His eyebrows knit together, and then he whispered, "Two clockwise turns." He took a deep breath, incanted the spell, and then Rose was looking down at a giant paperclip.

"Well done, Will!" she said enthusiastically, clapping her hands. "Great start."

He pursed his lips a little, looking conflicted as he stared at his handiwork. "I can do it with you. I don't get nervous around you."

Rose knocked her elbow gently against his arm. "You did at the beginning."

After a smile, she turned her gaze back towards his textbook, but something caught her eye near the bookshelves. She looked up, and promptly blushed.

Scorpius grinned and ducked back behind the row of books, his blond head disappearing from view. A few moments later he strolled out of the aisle with a few books in his hand, still grinning slyly at her before he turned around and headed for the checkout desk. Her eyes stayed on him until he disappeared from view, and then she lowered her gaze back to the textbook, a stupid smile on her face.

"I read the article about you guys."

She blinked, then looked at Will. He was staring in the direction that she had just been looking in.

She cleared her throat. "Oh? What did you think of it?" she asked casually.

Will shrugged. "It was a little long. All you were doing was holding hands." He turned his head towards her, eyes shy but bright. "And smiling. A lot."

Rose pressed her lips together, shaking her head. "You would think they would have more interesting things to write about," she said, repeating the same thing she had said to Scorpius the morning the article had come out.

"Probably. But you shouldn't pay attention to what they say."

Rose sighed. "They didn't say anything untrue, which is impressive for them, I guess. Really, they didn't even say much of anything that people didn't already know." She rolled her eyes, but the movement was more resigned than annoyed. "It was basically just a refresher course in history." She directed her gaze back to the paperclip on the table and, after a pause, pointed her wand at it until it had shrunk back down to size.

"No one at school thinks that," Will said quietly.

She hesitated. "What do you mean?"

He coughed, hitching his shoulders a little. "Well, no one is saying anything bad about it. At least, not like that." He shrugged again. "People don't care about that kind of stuff anymore, not when they know you."

Rose's gaze softened as she looked at Will's quietly earnest eyes, but then she suddenly frowned. "Wait, what do you mean, "not like that"?"

Will blushed and lowered his eyes to his worksheet. "I don't know," he mumbled. "It's just that, well, everyone thought you guys didn't like each other."

Rose let out a short laugh. "We didn't." She played with the book in her hands, feeling her lips turn up into a genuine smile. "But, you know, fighting all the time got kinda tiring. We're getting old here."

Will snorted softly, which made Rose smile wider, but then her eyes flicked over to the library's clock and she sighed. "We're gonna have to run ten minutes over because of all of this gossiping."

"I don't mind," Will said immediately. "I like—" He suddenly broke off, his eyes fixed on something in front of them. From the telltale flush of his cheeks, Rose didn't have to look to see what he was staring at, but she followed his gaze anyway. She watched as Will bashfully returned the wave that Emmeline was sending him from across the room.

"How's it going with you two?" Rose asked.

"Good," Will mumbled. "We're still just friends." He scratched at his parchment. "She doesn't like me like that."

Rose remembered the countless times she had spotted Emmeline staring at Will in the library when he had been busy looking down at his work, but she knew it wasn't really her place to say anything, as much as she wanted to. She adopted a brightly reassuring tone instead. "You never know. Don't give up hope."

Her gaze instinctively flicked back to the young girl, but her brow creased when she saw that she had just been joined by the familiar boy who often worked in the library with her. He was grinning at Emmeline as he lowered himself down beside her and immediately leant in to whisper something in her ear. Emmeline giggled, and Rose felt her heart sink a little.

"Are you read—" she began to ask, turning back to Will, but his attention was elsewhere; in fact it was exactly where she had been staring before.

She bit her lip and patted him on the arm. "Maybe they're just friends."

"They're best friends," Will mumbled, and he ducked back down, resuming his scribbling a little more vigorously than before.

Rose didn't know what to reply to that, so she stayed quiet and flicked through the textbook as she waited for Will to finish answering his question. She had just turned the page when a sudden movement passed beside their table, and she instinctively looked up. To her surprise, it was the boy Emmeline had been studying with. She shifted a little to let him pass towards the bookshelves, and after a moment, went back to reading.

After another minute, she saw him in her periphery as he re-emerged with a book in hand, and she prepared to move a little to accommodate him, but he passed by Will's side instead. As he did so, the corner of his elbow grazed against the pile of Will's things, and the blank parchment on the top of the heap fluttered onto the ground.

"Oh, sorry!" The boy instantly ducked down and picked it up, returning it to Will with a bashful smile. "Accident."

"S'no problem," Will mumbled back almost unintelligibly, and the boy smiled at him again before wandering back over to his table. Rose looked at her tutee, and she was startled to see that he'd gone even pinker than he had before, all the way to the tips of his ears.

"Will!" she admonished in a whisper, scandalised. "You can't like them both!"

Will immediately sat up straight, defensiveness creeping into his voice as he whispered defiantly back, "Why can't I like them both?"

Her jaw dropped. "Because you said they're best friends!" She pointed a grave finger at him. "Never compromise the sanctity of friendship, Will."

She paused, her gaze flicking back towards the pair. "What's his name?"

"Eli," Will muttered. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then he cleared his throat and abruptly pushed his parchment at her. "I finished."

Rose blinked, giving him a final glance before she took his parchment and began to read over it.

Will shifted beside her, running his fingers along the surface of the table. After a moment, she heard a tiny intake of breath before he quietly spoke.

"Rose, y-you can't tell anyone about, you know, what I said." When she looked at him, he added hastily, "Because they're best friends."

Rose bit her lip against a smile and merely nodded. "I won't say a word," she promised. She looked up to peer at the library clock again and sighed, clicking her teeth. "Make that fifteen minutes."

---

It was a few hours later, after dinner, that Rose emerged from her room with a small, giddy smile on her face, her mind on the package that had just been delivered. She'd stashed it in her wardrobe for now — not that it looked conspicuous at the moment, but she wanted to be extra careful.

She closed her door behind her, excitement still bubbling in her stomach, and she wondered how she was going to wrap it.

"What's got you so happy?"

She jumped a little in surprise and looked up to see Scorpius cocking his head at her curiously, his Potions textbook open in his lap.

She recovered quickly and forced a casual shrug, smiling innocently. "Oh, nothing."

His eyes narrowed a fraction, and then they travelled down to her hand, where she still had her uncle's letter grasped between her fingers. He inclined his head towards it. "Good news?"

She followed his gaze and instinctively squeezed the letter closed a little more tightly. "Oh, um…yeah, but it's not about that. I mean, it's from my uncle." She made her way over to the sofa to join him, but paused for a beat before she sat down. "But he did mention seeing it." It would've been hard not to, given the subject matter.

"What did he say?" Scorpius asked, his tone carefully neutral.

"Only that he'd seen it and he hoped we'd had a nice day out." She bit her lip, and then grinned sheepishly. "And that no one at home is freaking out about it too much." She gave a weak laugh.

Scorpius looked at her for a moment longer, his eyes tracing over her upturned lips. His own twitched a little. "That's good."

Rose nodded, and her eyes passed over their knees, not quite touching. The space felt awkward now, and she shifted a little closer. "I guess it was lucky, then," she said. "Us running into Teddy and Victoire."

Scorpius' brow flicked up questioningly, and she shrugged. "Judging by Harry's letter, we couldn't have made that bad of an impression on them. Plus, Teddy's sort of like his first son, so his opinion would be important to him."

Scorpius paused, considering that, and then he slowly nodded in agreement. "I guess not."

His fingers shifted against the corners of his page, and then he abruptly closed the book, looking at her straight. "So. My parents wrote to me last week."

Rose's mouth fell open, and she stared at him in confusion. "Wait, what?"

He nodded. "I wanted to wait until you'd heard from your family too, so, you know, it wouldn't be one-sided." He paused, and then added seriously, "Sorry."

She continued to scrutinise him, her mind still swimming as she digested the news. After a contemplative moment, she ventured, "So what did they say?"

"Nothing."

At Rose's furrowed brow, Scorpius shook his head. "They didn't mention it at all." He sighed. "Which means they're not taking to it as well as I'd thought."

Rose blinked at him, and she felt her heart sink a little in her chest. "Oh," she said.

But then she thought back to the article, and about her conversation with Will earlier that day, and a realisation sparked in her mind. She chewed at her lip, going back and forth about it a little — maybe it wasn't such a great idea to bring it up, but it felt important enough to—

She swallowed. "I know you didn't read the whole thing, but-"

"I did."

Rose stopped short. "You did?"

His eyes lingered on a space past her head before they shifted to her again. "Given that it would be all my parents were going off of, I figured I should at least know what it was."

Rose stared at him for another moment, and then nodded. "Well, then you know the article talked about other stuff. More—" She tried not to wince before clarifying, "historical-based stuff, and-"

"Didn't we already cover the whole 'disgraced family' thing, Rose?" Scorpius asked dryly. "We're good. You can…speak freely and all that."

"Easier said than done," Rose replied immediately. But then she continued, "So maybe they're reacting to the article as a whole, and, well, maybe that's why they didn't make any mention of it."

Scorpius sighed, his head resting back against the sofa. "That would be wishful thinking. Don't forget that all of that…historical-based stuff isn't exactly news to us."

Rose took in his tired frame, feeling her own body droop a little in disappointment, and she instinctively rested back against the sofa too. After a moment she said carefully, "I thought you said they wouldn't have a problem with it."

His head angled, and then his eyes flickered towards her. "Not with you in particular." A little sardonic smile pulled at the corner of his lips. "But since you brought up the whole our-parents-hating-each-other thing-"

Rose jerked her head up. "I never said 'hate'!" she protested vehemently.

"Right." He straightened up a little, drawing in the side of his mouth. "Regardless, I doubt they've said a word to each other in over twenty years. I don't think the prospect of suddenly being thrown in together is a positive one."

"We were," Rose said without a thought, and she felt her cheeks heat when Scorpius instantly looked at her. She averted her eyes and gestured to the room they were in. "Being made Heads together, moving in together…" She cracked a smile. "And look how that turned out."

Scorpius pressed his lips together. "Somehow I doubt it'll end up in quite the same way."

Rose's eyes traced over his face. Could she imagine bringing him home with her?

It would be awkward at first, downright painful, in fact, especially with a family as big and as close as hers, but Al would be there to help, he could even sleep in Al's room with him if it would make things easier at the start, and he could join in on the Quidditch games that they played on the weekends, he was so good at it, surely they would be impressed—

So she could imagine it, and, if the way her stomach had suddenly gone all tight with anticipation and nerves was any indication, she wanted it. A lot.

They would all like him, she thought fiercely. They'd have to-

"What?" came a voice that was uncharacteristically soft.

She blinked, his face coming back into focus as her thoughts dissipated, and she blushed, feeling caught. She couldn't tell him what she'd been thinking about; it was ridiculous, she was ridiculous, he wasn't even technically her boyfriend yet for God's sake and she was already thinking about bringing him home—

"Nothing," she brushed off, attempting to be casual. He looked at her a little suspiciously, and she cleared her throat. "So, I was talking to McGonagall earlier, and she reminded me that our acceptance letters will start coming in next month."

That actually gave him pause, and his eyes blinked at her. "Merlin, how did I forget about that?"

"I know, me too."

They could have five more years together, at least. The thought swirled in her brain.

"You think we have a fair shot?" she chanced after a moment.

Scorpius was quiet for a while as he thought, and then he slowly nodded. "Yeah, I do, actually."

She bit her lip and smiled. "Me too." And then, because she couldn't help it, she added, "McGonagall didn't mention anything about the article, by the way."

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "I'm sure she has better things to do than read unsubstantiated drivel like that." He paused. "Besides, all that article confirmed is that we've held hands. That doesn't exactly put us on a watch list."

Rose's eyes passed over the clock ticking above the mantle and she groaned. "Yeah, but you know what will? If we're late for rounds."

Scorpius followed her gaze and let out a sigh before making to stand. He offered out a hand and pulled her up.

And then he didn't let go, even as he bent slightly to retrieve his wand from the coffee table, and she withheld a smile as his fingers readjusted to grip loosely around hers as they made their way to the portrait hole.

Once outside, though, he let her hand slide out of his grasp.

She frowned, but before she could question it, he raised an eyebrow at her. "What if McGonagall sees?"

Rose rolled her eyes gently at him and reached her hand out again, winding her fingers back between his. "I'll take my chances."

---

Scorpius looked at the clock on his nightstand blinking red in the darkness.

It was almost three. He sighed and flipped back over, facing away from it. Next to him, Rose slept on, breathing softly, in and out. She hadn't stirred in hours.

He pressed his head deeper into the pillow. It had been like this for over a week now. Rose would drift off easily, but he would lie awake for hours, feeling the warmth of her body beside him, listening to the sound of her slow breaths as he waited for sleep to claim him. After a few nights, he stopped waiting altogether. Not that they spent every night together — in fact, they spent more nights apart — but Scorpius slept worse when they did. His eyes passed over her sleeping face, peaceful and untroubled as she curled slightly into herself, and it was a painful reminder of why that was.

He shifted onto his front as he continued to stare at her, propping his chin up on his crossed arms. What she had said earlier, about the article and their families, had been running through his mind all night. He hesitated, and then reached out a careful hand, gently brushing it against her temple; she made a tiny noise in her sleep and curled into herself tighter. The article itself hadn't bothered him — he'd been telling the truth when he'd said that — but what was keeping him awake now was, well, everything else about it.

After Rose had gotten over her annoyance about the spectator of it all, she'd seemed alright; in fact, Scorpius thought she was almost relieved that, despite the circumstances, the article had opened up a door to a previously untouched topic, but the more she had talked about their families and thus their future and them, the more the guilty, sinking feeling had bloomed in his chest.

He remembered back to a few nights ago, when they had slept in Rose's room for the first time, how after she had fallen asleep, Scorpius' gaze had drifted around the room in the darkness, unable to settle in a foreign place. Moonlight had seeped in from the window by the bed, illuminating the moving picture Rose had framed on her bedside table. Scorpius hadn't known how long ago it had been taken, but seeing her face like that had pulled at a fragment of recollection, so he figured that she must've been school aged. She was smiling and waving next to her brother, who was missing a front tooth, with her parents behind them. His gaze had then dropped to the much smaller picture beside it — this one was unframed, taken on one of those instant cameras, and much more recent. It might've only been a year ago.

The longer he had stared at the pictures, the more they had unsettled him, and, his mind reeling with discomfort, he'd quickly turned over, but the pictures had still burned in his brain, even after he'd closed his eyes.

I think he'll like you.

They had been patrolling on the third floor only hours ago when Rose had said that. He remembered the way her cheeks had tinged pink when he'd looked at her in surprise, but he remembered even more the way that his brain had automatically zeroed in on that muddy picture again.

My dad. Once he gets to know you. She'd paused, blushing harder. It was like that for me.

Then she'd smiled at him, a tiny, reassuring smile that had been timid and excited and scared all at once, and the picture had burned harder in his brain, and that feeling had surged back into his chest and he'd had to look away.

He shifted again, the duvet rustling quietly in the dark. He wondered if she'd ever brought Nathaniel Braithwaite home to meet him. She probably had, and he'd probably liked him. Braithwaite had been boring and harmless, but maybe that's what dads liked. She hadn't hated and fought with him for going on seven years; he probably liked that too.

How was Rose going to explain away all of that? A growing part of him thought she had actually forgotten about it, about everything that had happened before. It certainly felt that way when she smiled at him, when she kissed him and whispered his name in a tiny voice that sent a tremor rocketing through his chest every time. It was enough to make him forget too when she did that, but the thoughts always came back, especially when he was lying awake in the dark just like this.

Maybe she did remember. Maybe she thought about it too. They had never talked about it themselves, not even when she had kissed him after the Quidditch final. She had kissed him and he had kissed her back and they had done other stuff, stuff that tried to say what neither of them were willing to, stuff that evidently they still weren't willing to say now. The closest they had come to it had maybe been the morning when the article had come out, when they'd had to acknowledge for the first time that there was a this, an it, an us. But this, it, us — all of it was a way of acknowledging that something was there without pinpointing exactly what it was or what it meant.

Now Scorpius wasn't a stickler for labelling things like that — in fact with Liv he had much preferred it when the details had been kept a little hazy — but the more Rose talked about families and futures and them, the more she had begun to pick away at the little bubble they had been existing in, letting in shit that Scorpius didn't want letting in. Because then it couldn't be a this, an it, an us anymore — this had to become a something, something that was tangible and real and so fucking fragile, and right now Scorpius didn't know what he wanted that to be.

His chest felt heavy — everything felt heavy, just like it had for weeks, but it was getting worse. And God, if they ended up studying at the same university, this wasn't going to go away, this was going to pick and pry and pull at him for years and years to come, and if they ended up working together in the same place, it would go on forever. The thought felt like water in his lungs, and that weight continued to press down, its hands urging the will from him in some soft, invisible voice—

And yet there was another part of him that couldn't shake the awful, dreaded idea of that weight leaving him, of that feeling that he'd grown so accustomed to going away. Because no matter how much it gnawed and twisted inside of him and kept him awake, there was something else underneath it, something underneath all of that heaviness and confusion and agony that felt so fucking good, better than anything he had ever felt in his life, and he thought that maybe he would just bear it all so he could feel that little bit too.

The sheets suddenly rustled against him as Rose shifted, and as she stretched a little, Scorpius' gaze was drawn to the hem of her shirt as it inched up, revealing the soft, smooth skin at her waist. He swallowed.

He knew what she felt like there. He could recall with crystal clarity the way his hands had skimmed over her that first time; he'd still been in half a trembling daze, as hazy as a dream, but she had felt real enough, her mouth against his had felt real enough, and then she'd been tugging at the belt loops of his jeans, the button, the zipper, and he had let her fingers do as they pleased until his jeans had pooled on the floor. Only a tiny part of him had registered what they'd been doing, what they'd been about to do, and now he wondered if she hadn't stopped them, if she hadn't brushed against him right there and then drawn in a desperate breath and suddenly pulled away, if he would've gone through with it himself.

His fingers twitched, the memories stirring them back to life, and he balled his hand up into a fist and clenched at his sheets. It wasn't like he hadn't wanted to. God, he wanted to. But ever since that night, no matter how much he wanted it, no matter how much his body protested and his brain bleated at him to keep going, something had stopped him every time.

It wasn't because she was a virgin and he wasn't. He wondered if she thought that that was it. Maybe he was just grateful that she hadn't asked him outright yet, whatever she thought. What would he say if she did? Did he even know?

You know, his brain whispered fervently, but Scorpius pushed the thought away before it could dare to complete itself. His hand flattened itself against the warmth of his sheets, heel digging into the crisp softness as it gave way. He was suddenly hyperaware of every inch of his body as it pressed down against his bed, and he closed his eyes. It had been so long.

A tiny groan escaped his mouth, and he tossed over, cool air instantly washing over his front. That helped, a little. After a moment he angled his head over; Rose was as fast asleep as ever, and he reached over and gently tugged her shirt back down.

He stared up at the ceiling as the dull throbbing in his body abated, and soon he pulled the covers back over himself, fighting the urge to check the clock again. The darkness outside was vast and endless — the way it swallowed time and made it everything and nothing all at once made him feel like he would be looking into it forever, but, as always, he must have drifted off at some point because the next thing he knew, Rose was hovering above him, silhouetted by the first light of the day, a soft smile on her face as she shook him gently awake.

"Happy birthday, Scorpius."

---

"Are you sure we have time for this?"

Toby waved a dismissive hand, settling down on the sofa. "If the food runs out before we get there, I'll guilt everyone into donating their breakfast to you as a birthday gift." He paused. "Or you could just glare at the food until it walks onto your plate."

Scorpius snorted and shook his head, but he sat down next to Toby, his gift in hand. It was only at this moment that he got a proper look at his present, and he turned it over a few times, his brow furrowing before—

"Tobe, I'm not saying so's to offend…but have you always wrapped my gifts this way?"

Toby's cheeks coloured, but he shrugged innocently. "What way?"

Scorpius wordlessly held up the present; Spellotaped into oblivion in order to keep all of the corners down, it was wrinkled across almost the entire surface with a tear in one end that was particularly heinous, as if Toby had gradually lost any sense of subtlety and finally ripped it in his fervour.

Toby bit his lip and mumbled, "M'not good at wrapping presents."

Scorpius managed a brief sympathetic look before the laugh took over, and he reached out and patted Toby on the knee. "Well, no one could say you didn't try, mate."

He studied the box, wondering where the best place to start unwrapping the thing would be, but as he reached for the convenient tear, they both heard a quiet murmur from outside, and Scorpius looked at Toby.

"I thought you said she wasn't coming."

Toby stared at the entrance. "I figured she wasn't."

But the door cracked open and Liv slipped in, a perfectly wrapped present in her hand. A pretty smile spread across her lips when her gaze landed on them both. "Oh good, I hoped I hadn't missed you guys," she said brightly. "Happy birthday, Scorp!"

Scorpius stood up to receive her, and she leaned in and pressed her lips lightly against his cheek. "I guess we can't make fun of you for being the baby of the group anymore," she joked softly. "Here you go."

"Thanks, Liv," Scorpius said with a little smile. He took the present from her, and when his eyes passed over its immaculate wrap job, a spark of understanding suddenly hit him. He glanced at Toby as he re-sat beside him.

"Morning, Toby," Liv said pleasantly, dropping down on Scorpius' other side.

"Morning," Toby replied in a voice that was decidedly frostier than usual, not quite looking at her. He turned his gaze back to Scorpius. "Come on, Scorp, or we're gonna miss breakfast altogether."

"Right, okay."

But just as he was about to attempt his second go of Toby's gift, Toby suddenly leaned forward and plucked it out of his hand. "Why don't you do Liv's first?" he suggested briskly. "It'll be faster."

Scorpius blinked. "Uh…sure." He picked up Liv's present, and his lips couldn't help but twitch as he got another look at the broom-themed wrapping paper. He prised open the side and the paper unfurled entirely, and his gaze landed on a nondescript white T-shirt, its only feature a little Quaffle embroidered onto the breast pocket. He pulled that one out, and underneath revealed a pair of plaid pyjama pants decked out in an array of Quaffles, Bludgers and even a few Golden Snitches. He laughed quietly, flapping them out fully to get a good look.

"These are great, Liv, thanks," he said, meaning it. When he folded them and went to place them back into his lap, his attention was caught, and, after an amused pause, he lifted out a pair of cauldron-patterned socks. Liv gave a sheepish laugh and shrugged, ducking her head a little.

"Alright, Toby, your—"

The entrance hole suddenly burst open, and Scorpius broke off as he watched Al come sprinting inside.

"Guys?! Please can you let me switch rounds with whoever's doing them tonight because I—"

He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Toby, Liv and Scorpius all sitting on the sofa, a mess of wrapping paper and clothes in Scorpius' lap and a pair of cauldron-patterned socks still in his hands.

Al's eyes darted between Scorpius and the gifts he was holding. His jaw dropped. "Wha—it's your BIRTHDAY?!"

---

As soon as her dinner plate had been emptied, Rose had been out of the Great Hall and on her way back to the Heads' dorm.

She hadn't seen Scorpius all day; it was the one day a week that they didn't share any classes, and he'd spent the entire afternoon in the greenhouses working on his final Herbology assignment. She knew he would be coming back to their dorm after dinner, though, so she figured now would be as good a time as any to give him his gift.

She gave John the password and entered the dorm, heading straight into her room to retrieve his gift. As she opened her closet and tugged it out, it struck her that she felt absurdly excited to give it to him, and she wanted to give herself a firm shake for her antics, but she couldn't summon up the will when she was just so stupid excited about it, especially now that it was back in her hands.

She clicked the door shut behind her and padded over to where she'd left her school bag, settling herself cross-legged on the floor by the fireplace. After a moment, she put the present on the sofa. After another, she moved it back onto the table.

She stared at it, and then, with a resigned sigh, picked it back up and turned it over in her hands, inspecting it for crinkles and smoothing out the paper.

Five seconds of doing that and she felt even sillier, so she put the gift back down and reached into her schoolbag for the Arithmancy assignment that she'd put off doing that afternoon.

She had just located the right page in her textbook when she heard John's muffled voice from outside, and her heart jumped a little. Almost immediately after, she rolled her eyes at herself, trying to make the situation a little funnier, because really, she was just being so ridiculous, but then the portrait hole swung open and he walked in and she forgot about all of that.

He immediately caught sight of her and paused. Soon after, his eyes narrowed in amusement, and he shook his head. "Weasley, you're putting us all to shame. Did you really bolt up here from dinner to do work?"

She felt a smile slip past her lips as she shut the textbook in her hands. "I wasn't really working," she admitted sheepishly. "I was um…waiting for you, actually."

Scorpius raised a curious brow, and she had to blush a little. "For me?" He took a step closer, and she watched his eyes fall onto the table. "What's that?"

Her eyes flicked back to it before she looked up at him and cocked her head dryly, even though her heart was still skittering with anticipation. "Well, it's a surprise item wrapped in wrapping paper and today is your birthday." She arched a brow at him. "Surely someone of your talents can put two and two together?"

Scorpius eyed her for a moment, and then he shrugged his satchel onto the floor and made his way towards her, an inexplicable hint of conflict settling into his brow. "You didn't need to get me a present, Rose," he said, his voice suddenly soft. "I mean…" The conflict morphed into visible guilt as he lowered himself down onto the sofa. "I didn't get you anything for yours."

Rose took the present from the table and uncurled her legs so that she could go and sit beside him. "We were barely on friendly terms, nevermind gift-giving terms back then," she pointed out. "Plus, it was during the holidays." She stuck her hand out at him insistently.

His eyes moved between hers and the present she was offering him, and she let out an amused exhale. "I needed an excuse to give it to you, anyway," she said easily. "It's been sort of tossed by the wayside and it could do with a new home."

He looked extremely curious now, and she could tell from the temptation in his eyes that he'd been bought; sure enough, after a moment, he sighed and then motioned at her to hand it over.

"You're too good at this guilt-tripping thing, Weasley," he muttered, too fondly for it to mean anything, and she only smiled and watched as he carefully prised it open.

"You can rip the paper, you know," she said after a few moments, a laugh teasing her voice. "I won't think any less of you."

He made a face at her, but then his eyes dropped down to her grinning lips, and that expression fell away. His own lips twitched as he turned back, and then he gave the wrapping paper a final tug, and it pulled apart without a tear.

His eyes and hands suddenly stilled, and Rose watched as he blinked once, twice. Then his head abruptly turned towards her, his eyes wide and mouth agape with shock, and he took her in for a moment before he turned back to the book in his hands.

"Merlin," he breathed after a long pause. "Is this…" He shook his head before he redirected his stunned expression towards her. "Rose, where did you get this?"

Rose shrugged, feeling once again very pleased with herself. "It pays to have ties to the Ministry."

He continued to scrutinise her, his eyes squinting a little, and she relented. "Okay, or an uncle with a modest amount of celebrity and personal investment in the whereabouts of such a thing." She grinned weakly before tilting her head at him. "We talked about it once, remember? Him hiding it in the Room of Requirement. After Snape died, well…call it nostalgia, I guess."

Scorpius blinked, his brow furrowing, and he looked back down into his lap. After a moment, he reached out and hesitatingly touched his finger to the book's cover. It still looked entirely unremarkable, just an old and weathered sixth year's Potions textbook, but Scorpius looked as if he were touching the Holy Grail itself.

Rose swallowed lightly, breaking the silence again. "When we had lunch in Hogsmeade together while we were shopping for that Christmas Ball, you said that if you could improve in only one thing, you would want to improve in Potions." Her eyes traced the cover of the book. "I thought this could help."

He stayed silent for another moment before his eyes caught on hers again, striking with curiosity. "Where's it been all these years?" he finally asked.

Rose hitched her shoulders regretfully. "Probably in a desk drawer. It was wasted on my uncle, really. He was never one for Potions. I don't think that book has seen the light of day for years." When she shifted her weight, her arm brushed against his, and such light contact like that shouldn't have been able to affect her the way that it did, but… "Anyway, you seemed like you really wanted to read it when we talked about it at Hogsmeade last month so I um…wrote to my uncle and asked if you could have it."

Scorpius looked at her dubiously and then said in a slow voice, "Your uncle knew that you were giving this to me and he let you?"

"Not a word of a lie," Rose answered confidently.

"I don't believe it," he muttered warily, but he reached out and gingerly took the book into his hands.

"Aren't you curious to see what's inside?" Rose prompted when he made no effort to open it.

"Did you have to convince him?" Scorpius asked instead. "I mean, do you have any idea how valuable this book is?" He turned it over in his hands, again and again.

"Well, Harry would know that better than almost anybody." She paused before her eyes shifted to his face again. "Do you know how much more valuable that book is now that it's in your hands? It's practically an investment."

He was still quiet, eyes deep in thought as they continued to bear patterns into the cover of the book. Rose considered for a moment, and then reached out and took his free hand.

"Listen," she said, and his eyes flickered before they raised to meet hers. "I'm not giving this to you because I think you'll find it an interesting read, or even because you've said you wanted it." She took a breath. "I'm giving it to you because I don't think another person will come around who deserves having it more than you do."

His gaze dropped, tracing over their entwined hands, and she resisted the urge to run her thumb over his and instead gripped him a little harder and shook. "Scorpius Malfoy, you've been an arrogant prick since the day I met you. Don't go all humble on me now."

He finally gave a quiet snort and lifted his eyes to meet hers, a hint of amusement shining through, and Rose cracked a smile. Her knuckles tingled, and she looked down to see his fingers drawing the barest of trails across them.

"I knew you were into that," he said with quiet satisfaction, a smirk playing at his lips.

Rose rolled her eyes and shoved gently at him, but he caught her hands between his and held there, the book momentarily forgotten in his lap. Her heart did that familiar stutter thing when he looked at her, a look that she thought she could never get used to, no person could get used to that, to him, and she suddenly wondered if he knew that he was looking at her like that, like—

She almost missed the moment that his lips pressed softly against hers, but she came back into herself when the pressure grew, and by the time he'd pulled away her breath had left her.

His forehead rested against hers, and he sighed. "Thank you," he said softly.

She felt her lips form a smile. "You're welcome," she murmured before pulling away. "Now, should I leave you two alone?" she asked, only half-joking as she inclined her head towards his lap.

Scorpius followed her gaze and let out an amused exhale, shaking his head. "I uh...don't think I'm in the right headspace to appreciate it yet. I think I'll read it later, you know, when I can wrap my head around it."

Rose nodded dryly. "So what else are you going to do today?"

Scorpius frowned in confusion. "Um…homework?"

"For your birthday."

Scorpius rolled his eyes, leaning back against the sofa. "I'm not really a birthday person, Weasley, as you might've guessed." He shrugged. "My birthday's fallen during term time for the past seven years so I'm used to not doing much celebrating."

"What, you never do anything special on your birthday?"

Scorpius shrugged again, unbothered, but then he seemed to remember something, and his mouth curved into a little smirk. "Well, actually, last year when I turned seventeen, Toby, Liv and I snuck out to a club in town to see what it was like. Not the one we went to," he added.

Rose raised her eyebrows with interest. "And?"

"To be honest, I don't remember all that much of that night. However, I do remember Liv and I carrying Toby all the way home and then him puking all over himself as soon as we got him into bed." He laughed reproachfully at the memory. "We all had raging hangovers the next morning too, and let me tell you, hungover Toby is the worst Toby, he just moans and complains all day and refuses to do anything. Liv still gets on him about that night."

Rose grinned. "Soooo, there must be something fun that you wanna do."

A thoughtful expression suddenly drew over his face, and when he turned his eyes on her, her own instantly narrowed in suspicion.

"Okay, what?"

---

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," Rose said fifteen minutes later, smacking the rounded edge of the wooden bat against her palm as she hovered behind Scorpius.

He made a noise of amusement as he twisted his key into its chamber, and, after the mechanism gave a little click, he pushed the door to the shed open.

"We'll have to use the school brooms," he said, reaching into the dark and shuffling around for them.

"Oh, did you bring yours home?" Rose asked in surprise.

Scorpius' head paused, and he turned back to look at her. "No. Do you have yours?"

She cracked a grin. "Yeah."

"Oh," Scorpius said, equally surprised. "Alright, then." He disappeared further inside, and, after more shuffling, re-emerged with both brooms in tow. "Here."

"Thanks." Rose took hold of hers as he shouldered his, and he waited for her to tuck the bat under her arm before they each gripped a handle of the Quidditch chest and began to heft it down to the pitch.

"It'll be dark soon," Rose observed as they neared, staring at the shadowed sky overhead.

Scorpius followed her gaze upwards. "We've got at least half an hour of good light." His eyes shifted to her, glinting. "You're not scared of the dark, are you, Weasley?"

She gave a bored sigh. "I just prefer to be able to see the things I'm hitting."

Scorpius blinked at her for a moment before his lips curved upwards, and he shook his head as they deposited the chest onto the ground. He knelt down beside it, reaching out to unclasp the brass buckles.

"You know, I never asked you why you only tried out for the team this year," he commented, and Rose turned her eyes back from the pitch to look at him. He angled his head back just enough to meet her gaze. "I'm assuming."

Rose drew in the side of her mouth and nodded. "I'm not sure," she shrugged. "I mean, I've always enjoyed playing for fun, but I never considered it seriously. Plus, I did a lot of other extra-curriculars before this year and I didn't really have the time to spare."

"Fair enough." He took out the Quaffle and tossed it to her. "Well, you certainly made your mark this year."

Rose smiled but gave a shake of her head, rotating the ball between her fingers. "That was all Al."

"I disagree, but anyway. Sun's going down. Ready?"

"Yep—oh wait, hang on." She held up a hand before extracting the hair-tie she had wrapped around her wrist, and she gathered her hair to pull up into a tight ponytail. "Okay, ready."

She looked back at him for confirmation and was surprised to see that he was studying her, the corner of his mouth lifted just a fraction, and she tilted her head at him. "What?"

He immediately shook his head and said, "Nothing," before he took to the air, shooting one last grin at her behind him.

Rose's gaze flickered to her now bare wrist, then to the ends of the ponytail she could see falling over her shoulder, and she pressed her lips together. Maybe she had been wearing her hair down more than she used to. The fact that he'd noticed made it harder to fight the smile that was threatening to break, so she gave up and followed, meeting him at the centre of the pitch.

He was taking his gloves out of his jacket pocket as she came to a stop opposite him. "Now, don't think I'm gonna go easy on you just because you gave me a once-in-a-lifetime birthday present, Weasley," he drawled.

She rolled her eyes at him theatrically. "Thwarted again."

He grinned back and stretched his fingers out inside his gloves. Rose began to toss the Quaffle between her hands, getting a feel of it again after months without practice. Unbidden, nerves began to bubble in at the base of her stomach.

She watched as he rolled out his shoulders, shifting a little back and forth on his broom. She supposed it had been a while since he'd played too.

"See you out there," he bade, and then she saw his back as he zoomed off towards the goal posts.

When he turned back around to face her, his figure framed perfectly within the middle post, her mind suddenly flashed back to the last time he'd been there, and how she'd been almost exactly here, trying hopelessly to wipe the kiss they'd shared from her mind and force her arm to pummel a Bludger directly at him. The memory was so vivid that now felt like a hazy dream in comparison.

Her eyes caught on the grin he was directing at her, and she abruptly shook the memory away, concentrating on the Scorpius that was in front of her now. She took a breath and, before she could focus too hard on her building nerves, shot forward and hurled the ball towards the rightmost goal—

Where he stopped it, predictably. When he tossed it back to her, she could see the familiar look of concentration that had taken over his expression, and he inclined his head at her in a silent invitation to try again.

She did, but this time she no longer had the slight edge of surprise, and she saw him move before the ball had even fully left her fingers. In the next moment, it was in his hands again. He actually had the nerve to not look smug at all.

She shook her head in disbelief. "How in Merlin's name do you always know?" she called.

"Know what?" he called back, and now a devious grin turned up the corners of his mouth as he threw the ball back to her.

The wind blew through the air around them, ruffling his hair and whipping open the jacket he had left unzipped, and it struck her again how ridiculously heroic he looked up here. It was almost comical, really. Though the butterflies in her stomach didn't seem to be radiating humour so much as…well, other feelings.

She bit her lip and brought her arm back, then made to bring it down hard but slowed at the last second, catching the Quaffle in the air a few feet in front of her with her other hand before bulleting forward and throwing it clear in the other direction.

She thought for a brief triumphant moment that he was going to miss it, but his fingers managed to graze the tip of the ball with just enough force to change its direction; it spun and bounced against the side of the post before he dived down and caught it.

"You almost had me there," he admitted with a smile as he came back up.

"No, it's crazy how you can always tell, I mean—" She didn't try to hide her bewilderment as her brain still attempted furiously to understand. "I don't even play Chaser, so it's not like you know which goal I go for, or that I even have some sort of tell..."

"This is getting you a little bit worked up, isn't it?" Scorpius said in amusement, clearly enjoying her reaction. When she made a face at him, he grinned broadly. "Stop trying to apply logic to everything, Weasley. Oh, and everyone's got a tell."

He tossed the ball back to her again, and in the next five minutes, there were a few more almosts and many more not-even-closes, until—

"This is dumb," Rose announced loudly.

Scorpius barked out a slightly breathless laugh. "See, now that you like me, Rose, you're not trying to hide your impressed face." He lobbed the Quaffle into the air and caught it again before turning his grin on her. "So I'm gonna assume that you've been secretly admiring my Keeping skills for years without any opportunity to tell me." He smirked, eyes gleaming as he approached her. "Go on, here's your chance."

Rose glared at him, then, after a moment spent considering, turned her broom around and descended sharply back down towards the ground. A glance back and she saw that Scorpius had flown out near the center of the pitch in curiosity, the Quaffle tucked under his arm.

She hopped off her broom and picked up the bat from where she'd left it by the chest.

"Are you finally going to club me to death, Weasley?" she heard him call over the sound of the wind. "It would increase your chances of getting a goal off me."

She ignored him, pinning the bat to her side and kneeling down beside the chest. She prised it open again, her eyes instantly finding what she came for. She reached into her pocket for her wand and pointed it at one of the Bludgers, and with a loud rattle, the chains snapped off from around it. She commanded it to hover in the air — still Immobilised — as she remounted her broom, and then she directed her wand at Scorpius, and the Bludger obediently took off until it stopped in the air in front of him. She re-tightened her ponytail before following in its wake.

"So that's why you only brought one," Scorpius teased knowingly when she arrived back in front of him. He hadn't batted an eyelid at the Bludger hovering inches away from his face, which she absolutely did not find attractive at all. "Though I suppose it is easier to catch with two hands. I'm better with these than a bat, anyway. If the goal is saving and not surviving, that is."

Rose instinctively scoffed. "Please, I've seen you with a bat and you—" Her eyes suddenly widened and she abruptly clamped her mouth shut; she had only now remembered the context of her statement, the only occasion in which she had seen him wielding a Beater's bat. Horrified at her slip up, her mind frantically tried to backpedal. "I just meant during games and stuff," she quickly amended, feeling her cheeks heat at the way he was cocking his head at her in open curiosity, his brow furrowed. "You know, you're good at dodging them and your Beaters are good-"

"You shouldn't lie to someone on their birthday, Weasley," Scorpius tsked. "It's bad karma."

Her eyes darted back towards the Bludger before she looked at him again, and then she sighed in resignation. "I was there that night," she confessed at last.

Scorpius' head twitched a little, but he merely waited for her to continue. "Before the prefects' meeting," she elaborated reluctantly, "after we had that fight during Defence and then yelled at each other in the bathroom, you-"

"Were on the pitch," Scorpius finished. "You were there—here?"

Rose nodded, the blush still on her cheeks. "In the stands."

And then he surprised her. After a moment of silence, he cracked a grin, shaking his head. "So that's why you looked as crazy as I did. You're telling me you just sat there in the dark and secretly watched me play for the better part of two hours?"

"Play is a loose term. And not by choice."

"Well, not everyone can be so lucky," he smirked.

"Hardly," Rose rebuked instantly. "You were a nightmare to watch."

Scorpius looked genuinely confused by this. "Why?" he asked, frowning.

Rose let out a short, annoyed breath at the memory. "You were so—" She racked her brain for the right word. "Reckless. I thought you were going to decapitate yourself on one of those posts or break your neck against the ground, and that was before you let the Bludgers loose." She chewed at her lip and dropped her gaze when she found she was suddenly unable to look at him. "It wasn't like you," she added in a soft voice. "You're always so…calm and calculating when you play. This was…something else."

She had shifted her gaze back to him before saying those last words; he was staring at her with unreadable eyes, though somehow she felt as if they were searching for something within hers, unable to quite grasp at it.

Then he suddenly sighed and scratched at the back of his head. "I'm sorry I made you worry," he said quietly. His eyes were shadowed like the rest of his face in the dusk, and they passed over her and down towards the sun as it crested against the horizon.

Silence hung between them for a long moment before Rose broke it. "Last few minutes of light," she commented softly, and that seemed to jar him a little, because when his eyes flicked back towards her, she saw that some of the focus had entered back into them.

"Give me a minute and I'll get the pitch lights on," he offered, already making to fly down, but Rose stopped him with an arm.

"I like your light trick," she said wryly. "With the bluebell flames."

It took a second for realisation to strike him; he shook his head in amusement, his lips curling back into a smirk. "You weren't left wanting that night, huh, Weasley?"

She shrugged as he extracted his wand from inside his jacket pocket and pointed it at the centre hoop, and, just like she remembered, bright blue flames slithered out from its tip and began to wrap themselves around the circular frame until it shone brilliantly in the darkness. As he began to do the same to the second one, she took care of the Bludger.

Scorpius finished with the last post and began to tuck his wand back inside his jacket. The Bludger still hovered beside them, the blue of it reflecting against his face, and it lit up his silver eyes something fierce. "Ready for round two?" he asked.

Rose removed her gaze from him and lifted her chin in the direction of the goals, allowing a little grin. "Just get back in there."

"Yes, ma'am." He tightened the strap of his glove and pulled it taut against his wrist. "Now, you will remember that if I die, this will be the worst birthday ever, right?"

Rose stretched out one of her arms. "Oh, I don't know, I think there've been a couple positives to weigh up."

His eyes flicked down to her lips and back, the sight of her lazy grin compelling his own lips to turn up — he'd been all smiles today, she couldn't help but notice — before he wheeled around and flew back towards his goals.

Her grin didn't last for long, though, and after ten minutes of thwacking and Rose cursing and becoming progressively more and more out of breath, her voice suddenly cracked through the air.

"Okay, this is so DUMB!"

---

"You totally let me have that last one," Rose huffed, swiping aside a stray piece of hair from her forehead as they crossed over the castle's threshold an hour later.

"I didn't," Scorpius said automatically. "I told you, I was distracted by that owl."

She turned to issue a glare at him, and, without thinking, he laughed and crooked an arm around her shoulders, drawing her in close and pressing a light kiss into her hair.

The annoyed expression had melted from her face when he pulled away, replaced by wide, bewildered eyes and slightly pink cheeks that Scorpius didn't think had anything to do with their game. He cleared his throat and averted his gaze to his wrist to check the time. Upon seeing it, a sudden realisation came over him, and he paused.

His eyes flickered back to her face, and, after a quick moment spent pushing away the doubt in his mind, he turned back to her. "Perfect timing," he said.

Her brow knit, puzzled. "Perfect timing for what?"

Even after two hours of playing, even sweaty, with her cheeks flushed and her hair hastily done up in a messy ponytail, she still looked radiant. He inclined his head at her, grinning and suddenly in the perfect mood for this. "Wanna do one last thing?"

Her features were still scrunched up in confusion, but as she took in his expression, a curious smile spread across her lips and she nodded.

Scorpius reached out, winding his hand in hers. "Okay then, this way."

He felt her instantly grip back, and he led them not towards the Grand Staircase but down the opposite way, down the winding stairs that opened up to the basement floor.

Rose craned her head around them when they exited the stairwell, and she squeezed his hand, grabbing his attention. "Why are we going to the Hufflepuff dorms?" she asked in surprise.

"We're not."

She looked at him suspiciously, but he only tugged her back towards him, jerking his head lightly in the opposite direction to the dorms. "This way."

"What, you don't feel like paying Conrad Wells a visit?" Rose asked playfully as she allowed him to lead her. "Surely there's no better way to end your birthday."

"Weasley, have I ever told you how hilarious you are."

"I've rarely seen you doll out compliments, Malfoy, but when you do, you look like you'd rather be stabbing your own eye out with a hot poker."

He angled his head towards her, fixing her with a grim look, but he felt his expression dissolve at the wry smile on her face, and he just shook his head and kept walking. "Have you figured out where we're going yet?"

"I'm deducing." She eyed their surroundings, clearly unfamiliar with them. "I've never been down here before," she admitted. "It sort of makes me think that there're a lot of places in the castle I haven't seen. Maybe I should've been more adventurous." Her tone was tinged with regret.

"There's still time," Scorpius pointed out. "And I'm sure your cousin will be overjoyed at the prospect of helping you out." He parked them to a stop beside a towering painting of a silver fruit-bowl. "Here we are."

Rose looked up at it and cocked her head a little, smiling softly. "Well, my deduction was right, even though I'm not sure why yet." She squinted. "So we just—?" She reached out a hand and mimed tickling the bright green pear in the middle.

"Yep. Go ahead."

She glanced at him before reaching out again, and they watched as the pear twisted and began to morph, elongating and hardening until a green door handle rested in its place, extending out of the painting.

"That's kinda fun," Rose murmured before she pressed down on the handle, and, with a push, the entire painting swung inwards as if it were a door. Warm light shone from the room inside, far brighter than the dim corridor they stood in, and they entered.

Rose instantly gasped. Scorpius' eyes flicked down towards her, and a smug grin threatened at the corners of his lips. He remembered the first time he had been inside here: impossibly cavernous, with a ceiling as high as the Great Hall itself, its walls shimmering with every manner of pots and pans imaginable, and the entire thing lit up with brilliant chandeliers, the Hogwarts kitchens seemed like a strangely hidden treasure. Next to a blazing brick fireplace that took up most of the closest wall to them, four long tables identical to those that stood in the hall above eventually gave way to a food preparation area out of sight, and somewhere further within, a pantry overflowing with food.

He had just turned towards Rose when he heard a familiar voice squeak out, "Master Scorpius!" and he looked to his right to see a little house elf scurrying towards him.

He smiled as she reached them and lowered herself into a little bow.

"Hi Gilly," he said warmly. "Rose, meet Gilly. Gilly, this is Rose."

Rose blinked, but the discomfort only lingered in her expression for a second before she wiped it and smiled at the elf without a trace of tension. "Pleased to meet you, Gilly."

Gilly blushed, pleased, and dipped into a polite little curtsey before waving a hand at them. "Come, come, this way!"

She beckoned them once more before scurrying off again, and now that they were out of her eyeline, Rose's face turned confused again, and she furrowed her brow at him.

Scorpius only grinned and retook her hand in his, leading them to follow in Gilly's steps as she disappeared deeper into the room. There were other house elves spread out around them, some by the sinks, others buffing gleaming pots and pans, though none took much notice of them as they passed by.

Rose wordlessly tugged on his hand.

Scorpius glanced up at Gilly ahead of them and then lowered his head a little, turning to face Rose. "Gilly used to work for my family," he explained quietly. "She used to work in the house of my great aunt Bellatrix, but after the war, she moved back into my family's employment. There wasn't enough work to justify her being with us indefinitely, but my family didn't want to just send her away, so when I left for school, they sent her to work here."

Rose nodded in understanding, but then her features scrunched up again. "I still don't get what we're doing here though."

Scorpius only had time to reply, "You will," before they turned past a row of glass cabinets and into a softly lit area by the entrance to the pantry. There was a single table in the space, and, on its counter, a little chocolate cake with flickering candles. Gilly stood by the table, beaming.

Rose stopped and stared, and Scorpius laughed quietly before turning back to the house elf.

"Gilly, you're the best, thank you," he said with a smile, and she coloured.

"Sit, sit," she quickly encouraged, pulling out one of the chairs with some difficulty, and Scorpius immediately stepped forward to help her. "Master Scorpius has never brought a friend with him on his birthday," she went on, smiling beatifically.

Scorpius only returned her smile.

When both chairs had been pulled out, Gilly bounced the few steps back to where Rose was standing. "Gilly will come back soon," she chirped, and after shooting them both another winning smile, she scarpered out of sight.

Scorpius looked at Rose, who still seemed to be taking it all in. He crooked an amused brow at her, resting his arms on the chair in front of him. "You wanna sit?"

She blinked, but then nodded sheepishly and stepped towards him and the chair he was holding out for her.

"Thanks," she murmured as he pushed her chair in, and he went around to sit on the chair opposite.

"You do like chocolate, right?" he asked as he sat. "Only you were a little critical of it that other week at Hogsmeade."

Rose laughed guiltily, picking up her fork and playing with it. "Chocolate's great." But then she looked up at him, a small, curious smile on her face, and Scorpius let out a little sigh, hitching his shoulders.

"Gilly used to bake me a cake every year on my birthday, and when I had my first birthday here, obviously I assumed that that wouldn't be happening anymore, but that first year, when I went up to my dorm, I found the same one as always on my desk. So I came down here to thank her, and well…" He shrugged again. "It's kind of become a yearly tradition."

He looked around, his gaze straying on the lanterns floating above them. "It's kinda nice down here," he continued. "Nice to get away from everything for a little while, you know?"

Rose hesitated, pausing before she put her fork back down. "Gilly said…" she started, and then she blushed before looking at him again. "So you…usually come down here alone?"

Her expression looked especially soft in the dim glow of the lights, her eyes especially warm. He took a moment before he allowed a small smile. "Yeah."

She caught his smile and ducked her head, her pink cheeks hidden from view. Scorpius felt a pull in his chest, and he let himself wonder for the first time what it would've been like if they could've had more time like this. The thought felt heavy, blanketing the room in a lamenting what-if, and he picked up his napkin, shaking it out over his lap.

"There is one rule though, Weasley," he said firmly. "No singing."

Surprise briefly flitted over her face, but then she clicked her tongue and made a show of peering around them. "Dammit, if only Christian were here, he could've serenaded you with one of Stubby's birthday specials-"

"Speaking of stabbing my eye out with a hot poker," Scorpius interrupted flatly.

Rose let out a burble of laughter and shook her head. She paused, and then cast her eyes around them again, properly this time. Then she bit her lip and leaned towards him. "How about a birthday kiss?" she asked softly.

Scorpius pretended to consider that for a moment. "That seems fair."

Rose shook her head again, pursing her lips against a smile, and she met his gaze before she reached out a hand and caught the strings of his hoodie, twirling them around her finger and hooking them in order to pull him towards her — which, holy shit — before she pressed forward those last few inches separating them and kissed him.

---

The following evening found Rose stretched out on her bed, half-heartedly reading through her completed Transfiguration assignment whilst her eyes periodically flicked back towards the clock on her nightstand. She had just reached the end of her page when she heard a loud thump from outside.

"Rose, you gotta help me open the door," Gen's muffled voice called from the other side of it. "I can't get it with all this shit in my hands."

Rose laughed and got up to let her friend in.

"How much did you bring?" she asked, then spied the pile of girly items threatening to overflow in Gen's arms.

Gen made a dash for the bed and unleashed her burden upon it, burying the similarly girly items that Rose had deposited there on a towel half an hour before. "Not that much," she said a little breathlessly as Rose came up to stand behind her. "I just didn't wanna have to go back to my dorm in case I forgot something."

Gen bounded up onto the bed, her pigtails bouncing a little as she sat. "I thought I was gonna run into your boyfriend on my way in," she said casually.

Rose felt herself flush. "He's in the greenhouses working on an assignment. And you know he's not my boyfriend." Still, the words had sent a little tingle through her, an excited, shimmering spark of anticipation, and she busied herself with putting away her essay.

"Did he like his gift?" Gen asked.

Rose smiled at the memory. "He did." She shut her desk drawer and turned back towards the bed, still smiling, and slipped her socks off her feet before she climbed on.

"And uh…was that the only present you gave him last night?" Gen waggled her eyebrows, grinning mischievously as she rummaged through the pile in front of them.

"Genevieve!" Rose gasped, scandalised, and she grabbed one of the pillows behind her and whacked Gen on the arm with it.

Gen cackled, her eyes still puckishly bright. She held up one of the under-eye mask kits to inspect. "So you did?"

Heat bloomed along Rose's cheeks, and she shook her head. Her eyes fixed on the packaging in Gen's hand. "We haven't done that. Or, you know…much of anything really, come to think of it." That last bit was a little disingenuous; it was something she had given more than a fair amount of thought to.

Gen's eyebrows went up. "Seriously?"

"Don't you think I would've mentioned it if we had?"

Gen shrugged, and she propped up the small mirror on the bed, angling it towards her face before she turned her attention back to the packet and ripped it open. "I mean, I didn't keep you updated on me and Al."

Rose made a face. "Well, yeah, cos it's Al. I didn't really want one, no offence." She paused, something suddenly occurring to her, and her eyes grew wide. "Gen, you and Al…you didn't…?"

Gen blushed immediately, and it was her turn to throw the pillow. "No, you idiot!" she yelped.

Rose let out a relieved laugh, knocking the pillow aside easily, and they both watched as it bounced off the bed and onto the floor. They exchanged a glance, and Gen snickered softly before she unpeeled one of the pads and gently began to smooth it underneath her eye.

Rose bit gently at her lip as she watched her, and she pulled a hand through her hair, finger-brushing out some of the tangles. "But you would've told me, right? If you'd, you know…done it?"

Gen thought for a moment. "I think I would've had to, you know. Cousin ickiness be damned. Who else would I want to talk to about it?"

Rose paused, her fingers still weaving softly through her hair, and she remembered how Scorpius' hands had felt doing the same thing when he had kissed her goodnight after their time in the kitchens the previous day. "Why didn't you?" she asked carefully.

Gen finished with the masks and looked at her, and after a beat she inclined her head. "You want me to braid it for you?"

She scooted over without waiting for a reply, and Rose shifted so that she was facing towards the window. Gen's fingers alighted near the crown of her head, and it instantly reminded Rose of how they used to do this when they were younger; braiding each other's hair and giggling about boys before either of them had had much to do with them at all.

She could feel Gen's fingers separating out sections of hair, and Rose counted once over and once under before Gen finally spoke.

"I wasn't…I wasn't sure if I wanted to, which I figured meant that I wasn't ready, I guess." Under and over, under and over. "But it wasn't like I thought Al wasn't going to be the one that I was going to lose it to. I can't…I can't really think of anyone better than Al, you know?" She sighed. "But, yeah. I don't know, we talked about it, once — well, Al said that he didn't want me to feel like we were edging towards doing it or anything, and we weren't, not really, and Al said that we could talk about it again if, you know…it got to that stage, but then we broke up, and we didn't have to talk about it anymore."

Rose thought back to Nate and what she had done with him when they'd been dating. They'd never really gotten past the kissing stage, though Nate had sometimes felt a little braver, and on those times his hands had slipped underneath the hem of her shirt, sometimes even a little further, but still, they'd never really done anything. She'd done even less with Christian.

"But Malfoy's definitely not a virgin, right?" Gen said, instantly breaking Rose out of her thoughts. "He and Liv…" She trailed off. "I mean, we thought they had…"

Rose's eyes flicked down towards her messy bed. There wasn't an ounce of doubt in her mind that Scorpius hadn't been a virgin for a long time — his comments over the past few years had been telling enough. And then those memories were a baffling reminder that they had spoken more about Scorpius' sex life back when they had hated each other than they had now, when it was — for the first time — of reasonable interest to them both.

When had he and Liv stopped dating? Rose racked her brains, trying to remember. There was the Ball, so before Christmas definitely. Which meant that he hadn't slept with anyone since then, and with a blush, Rose instinctively wondered if he missed it. But then the thought it conjured of him and Liv doing it grossed her out, and she immediately shook her head with a wince, trying to purge the thought from her mind.

"He hasn't said anything to me," she finally answered. "Like, not seriously. But I'm sure he's not."

"So what about what happened that night after the Quidditch final?"

Rose flushed again. The mere suggestion of it sent a well-rehearsed wave of warmth through her entire body, and maybe it was because things between them had never quite gotten to that physical level again that she thought about it so much. Well, one of the reasons.

"That's been the extent of it," she admitted. "I…um…after that night, we've sort of gone backwards a little. Not for lack of trying," she added in a mumble.

There was a pause.

"Does he know you haven't done it?" Gen asked.

Rose cleared her throat. "I think I made it relatively obvious when I stopped us. I mean, I didn't say it outright, but I think he knew."

After a contemplative moment, she turned her eyes away from their dim reflections in the window and looked back down at the bed. "I've sort of wondered if that's why things have slowed down since then. You know, him having done it already. Plus, given that I was the one who instigated it all, and then I was the one who backtracked…maybe he's waiting for some sort of…"

"Verbal confirmation?" Gen offered archly.

Rose's lips twitched and she nodded. "We are pretty worlds apart with this kind of stuff."

Gen looked thoughtful. "That makes sense." Then she paused meaningfully, her eyes serious. "So does that mean that you want to do it now? With him?"

Rose blinked. The question had never been posed so directly at her before; somehow she'd just kind of hoped she would know in the moment. She remembered the surprise she'd felt when he'd stopped them the last time — not because he had, but because her mind hadn't quite caught up with what her fingers had been attempting to do.

"My body does, at least," she finally confessed, colouring.

Of course she'd wondered what it would be like, it was only natural. And now that she'd gotten a small taste of it, that wondering had only grown. In all honesty, Rose had never really been that given to the spectacle of the night itself (she tended to think that the actual act was blown out of proportion) but now that she really thought about what it would be like to do it with him, to share in it with him and…feel him against her in that way, she sort of realised where all of the fascination came from.

"Would you regret it?" Gen asked quietly. "Even if…you know, things didn't…" She trailed off again and hitched her shoulders.

Rose thought about that for a while before she answered, honestly, "If I didn't, I think a part of me would always wonder."

Gen nodded slowly, and then there was a bout of silence between them before Gen said, "Okay, done."

Rose looked up, only catching her finished hair in the mirror for a moment before Gen grabbed it and swung it around to show her the back.

"You look fourteen again," Gen said fondly. Her eyes lit up. "Remember when Jamie Boswell told you he liked your hair in a braid-"

"And I asked you to braid my hair everyday for a week?" Rose finished, laughing in embarrassment. "I remember."

"He was the first boy you ever properly liked," Gen recalled, a small smile on her face as she put the mirror back onto the bed. Rose hummed softly in agreement.

Jamie had been cute and funny and kind and open, always the first one to start a conversation with her or smile at her in the corridors, but now the memories sent an uncomfortable buzz through her stomach, and she dropped her eyes to the bed, feeling inexplicably strange about it all.

She reached out towards the pile of things, grabbing a bottle of nail varnish at random and scanning its label to give her brain something to do.

She felt Gen's eyes studying her for a while, and then Gen shrugged. "So why don't you talk to him?" she said.

Rose furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.

"To Malfoy," Gen clarified. "About what you told me. At least to get some sort of dialogue started."

Then her face grew more serious, the worry in her eyes apparent even with those silly pads underneath them. "But you are happy, Rose, aren't you?"

Rose bit her lip, already feeling the grin threatening to break across; that same bewildered, near-incredulous grin that she had fought day in and day out ever since he had asked her on that Hogsmeade date and told her that this was all real.

Gen's eyes visibly softened at the sight, a hint of deep realisation within them, and she nodded slowly. "Alright, then," she said quietly. She shuffled back to where she had sat before and plucked out two packets of face masks from the bunch, holding them up to Rose. "Okay, panda or tiger?"

---

Liv swung her hands with Horatio's as they walked.

It had been a nice day — one of the nicest in a long time — and she felt more content than she had in a while. Her skin was still warm and tingly from being soaked in a day of brilliant sunshine, and Horatio's hand felt equally warm and soft in hers. Above all, she felt calm. Maybe she didn't get butterflies when she was around him, maybe her heart didn't do that silly jackhammer thing with the raw pulse of excitement like it had done in the past, but that wasn't what she needed from him. In fact, she hadn't realised how much she had come to rely on Horatio these past few weeks, with everything that had happened with Toby, and with Scorpius spending a lot of time with Rose and therefore no longer there to act as a buffer between them, she needed his company in a way that she hadn't needed it before, and she felt herself grip his hand a little tighter.

"Did you have a nice time today?" she asked him, looking up at him with a smile.

He let out a long, relaxed breath. "Yeah, I did. Glad that it's finally warming up now; it was nice today."

"I can't believe we don't have another Hogsmeade weekend until after exams are over," she sighed, their arms still swaying lightly together. "It would've been such a nice time to be out there today. Can you imagine how amazing it'll be after exams when it's warm and sunny?"

"Mm. Sure I can."

Liv remembered the way that the setting sun had brought out the chestnut, reddy hues in his hair, and staring at him in the remaining light of day, she'd been overwhelmed with the sudden urge to kiss him. Horatio was a good kisser, even if her heart didn't do that silly jackhammer thing. But that was okay, she told herself again. It was easy with him that way, not like with…

No. She didn't want to think about Toby, didn't want to be weighed down with the emotions and baggage that threatened to bury her whenever she thought about him or them or any conceivable way that they could be, but it was too late; she could already feel it, snaking into the space between her and Horatio, twisting in between their entwined fingers.

"Can I ask you something?" she said suddenly.

"Shoot."

"You know how you said you had something to ask me when we went to Hogsmeade?"

"Yeah?"

Liv drew in a steeling breath. Even just the fleeting memory of it had dredged up some of that disappointment that had dulled her body that afternoon, when she'd been hoping for some good news after that disastrous fiasco with Toby and Camille. "And you asked me if I could help you with your Runes translation?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Well, I…I thought that what you wanted to ask me was…" She took another, deeper breath before continuing, "I thought you were going to ask me to be your girlfriend."

Horatio stopped walking. His hand dropped out of hers, and he turned to look at her in shock. "Sorry?" he asked, slightly choked.

Liv looked at his dangling hand, and then back at him. "I mean…it's been a while since we started hanging out, and you know…doing stuff, and we've been spending so much time together recently, and graduation is just around the corner and I thought that before then…"

Her voice trailed off; Horatio had looked more and more uncomfortable the longer she had spoken, and he was now running a hand back and forth through his hair and messing it up, no longer meeting her gaze.

With a sinking feeling in her chest, Liv finished quietly, "….Unless I've read the situation wrong."

Still looking as if he had taken a Bludger to the head, Horatio swallowed and then darted a glance behind them to make sure that no one else had appeared in the otherwise empty corridor, and then he shoved his hands in his pockets, taking a small step away from her.

"Listen, Liv, you're a great girl," he said, and Liv's heart took a plunge. "And we've had a lot of fun together — I mean, a lot — and I don't want you to take this the wrong way or think that this spoils everything up until now, but…" He paused, taking a breath, and she waited for the dam to break. "I didn't think that that was what this was."

He had gotten a little sunburnt, Liv noticed suddenly. On his nose and cheeks, but it didn't make him look worse, it actually sort of suited him and God, he was about to ruin everything, and she could feel herself crumbling at the thought.

"What is 'this', Horatio?" she asked slowly, her tone, despite everything, calm.

He shrugged helplessly. "I didn't even think that we were dating!"

But then that did it.

"What?" Liv shrieked. "What about Hogsmeade? And…and everything in the Room of Requirement, and, and, all the time we've been spending together and-"

"I thought we were just having a good time! I mean, I…" He suddenly looked incredibly sheepish, and even before he said his next words, Liv knew that it was going to be bad. "I didn't even think we were exclusive."

Liv gaped at him. "Have you been…doing what we've been doing with other people?"

His sunburnt cheeks tinged red, and she hated how much it suited him, almost as much as she hated the visual reminder of their long afternoon together.

"I thought you were too!" he countered vigorously. "You know, I thought you were okay with that stuff. Like seeing multiple people, you know…the way you were seeing me and Scorpius at the same time."

Liv's eyes flashed, and her jaw dropped, dumbfounded. "I wasn't seeing you and Scorpius at the same time, you prick! I was cheating on him!"

Horatio grimaced, swallowing again. "Oh, yeah, about that. Listen, don't take this the wrong way, Liv, but I'm kinda opposed to dating chicks who cheat on their boyfriends."

"I cheated on Scorpius with you!"

He winced, but seemed oddly determined in his resolve. "Yeah, I know, but uh…I dunno, call me crazy, but chicks who cheat on their boyfriends have some um…deeper issues, you know? Like, insecurity and stuff." He took another step backwards, looking quickly over his shoulder again, though this time it seemed less about checking for witnesses and more about planning his escape route.

Liv still hadn't moved an inch, utterly flabbergasted and rooted to the spot with shock, but as his words sunk in, she could feel herself beginning to shake, and as she stared at the boy who had brought her so much comfort over the past few weeks, and even some for the past few months, a part of her wished she had never brought this up, wished they could just go back to where they'd been five minutes ago, holding hands and lethargic from a day of burning sunlight.

Another part wanted to punch him in his stupidly attractive, sunburnt face.

Chicks who cheat on their boyfriends have some um…deeper issues, you know? Like, insecurity and stuff.

Was that why she had cheated on Scorpius? Insecurity? The memories flooded through her brain, and her mind pored over them, trying to dredge up all of those feelings all over again and understand what they had culminated in.

She'd wanted to hurt him, she remembered fiercely with a sudden sense of clarity. It hadn't been about insecurity; it had been about making him hurt the way she had been hurting, but now she couldn't help but wonder if there had been something else there too, like how maybe Horatio wanting her had been about merely feeling wanted in the first place. She hadn't felt that way in a long time with Scorpius — had she ever, truly felt that way with him at all?

She didn't know what it was like to feel truly wanted, did she? She'd never — except. Except.

Except she had. She'd felt it so strongly that it had scared the sense out of her, pushed some coward part out to the surface and shrunk the rest away from the terrifying, alien feeling. It was the whole reason why she was in this stupid mess in the first place.

"Irregardless," Horatio continued, jolting her from her thoughts, and she looked up to see him walking backwards with his hands raised defensively, "I don't think we'd be that suited to dating anyways. But you're a great person, Liv, and this doesn't mean that we shouldn't hang out as friends, or, you know-"

"IRREGARDLESS ISN'T A WORD, YOU FUCKER!" Liv screeched shrilly, her voice rebounding off the stone walls around them.

With one last, apologetic face, Horatio dipped around the corner, disappearing from sight, and Liv stood there, her eyes still fixed on the space he had been in and her heart — finally — jackhammering in her chest.

After a few moments, she reached up to brush her hair away from her face, and she realised with a jolt of panic that she could feel wetness trailing down her cheek. She stared at the shining tears smeared on the back of her hand, and she immediately wiped them against her skirt before she brought that hand up to her cheek. She scrubbed ruthlessly against the soft skin, her cheek flaring from the friction, and God, why was she crying over Horatio, this wasn't about Horatio—

Her heart continued to ache, and she suddenly wished Toby was here. Toby would know what to say, he always knew what to say to make her feel better, even when she didn't deserve it. But he wasn't, and it was just her crying alone in an empty corridor.

---

Scorpius walked down the corridor, whistling.

Yesterday had been a good day. He felt more settled than he had in a while. There was a certain and foreign lightness to him, like the ever-present weight that had been pressing down on him had been lifted away, leaving only the lingering self-consciousness of a suddenly empty space.

At first, Scorpius' brain had pawed at it suspiciously, but in a panic-stricken moment, he had realised that thinking about it too much might bring that weight back down, and he had instantly relented, because it had been a good day, and it had been his birthday.

He rounded the corner, itching to get back to the Heads' dorm. He hadn't been able to resist opening Snape's book, and he'd only gotten through a few pages, but what he had learned had been running through his mind all day.

Scorpius had assumed that the previous Potions Master had been like him: born so singularly gifted that it was almost unfair, bestowed with abilities from the beginning that could blossom with little honing or guidance. Brewing potions was like breathing to Scorpius; or perhaps even easier. But only a few pages into the book, he realised that he had been wrong all along.

Severus Snape had been careful to excess, testing every possible combination of ingredients to make the perfect potion through painful trial and error — there had been almost no discernible instinct within him, no particular gift, at least not at the beginning.

Scorpius didn't yet know what to make of that. It was strangely validating in a way to know that he was the sole possessor of his certain set of skills, but at the same time, it threw into sharp relief what it was to have so profoundly succeeded through nothing but constant toil and labour in a way that Scorpius would never be able to understand.

Still, he wanted to get back to reading it. And then he wanted to go down to the Potions classroom; his brain was already humming with the things he wanted to try out.

He crossed to the next corridor, and his eyes lifted in surprise at the sight of a familiar face. Though Liv's head was angled towards the ground and half-hidden, he'd instantly recognised her blonde hair.

He raised a hand in greeting, continuing towards her. "What're you doing roaming the corridors at this time?"

Liv looked up at the sound of his voice, her face a little flushed, and because he was in such a good mood, he added, "Where's Horatio? I thought you guys were together?"

Liv looked at him for a moment before a small, disbelieving smile carved its way across her face, and she shook her head.

Maybe if Scorpius hadn't been so drawn up in his own thoughts, or if he wasn't still in the wake of embracing the sudden spell of peace he'd been feeling, he might've realised that something was wrong. He might've noticed the red lining Liv's puffy, miserable eyes, or the thin tracks of tears that had dried against her cheeks.

"We're not together," she said quietly.

"Oh." Scorpius was a little taken aback by her tone, but he asked, "So you finished studying, then?"

"Do you know why?" Liv continued in that same quiet voice, as if she hadn't heard him. She took a deep breath before adding, "Do you know why we're not together?"

Scorpius blinked. His brow furrowed in confusion, but some torpid part of him recognised the look in Liv's eyes, and as it stirred, a familiar sense of dread began to coil in his stomach.

"Horatio doesn't want to date me," she informed him calmly. "That's what he told me. Because he doesn't date" — and here her mouth curled into a sneer — ""chicks who cheat on their boyfriends". He said we must have deeper issues to do that. Insecurity and stuff." Her gaze drilled into him with frightening intensity. "Do you think that's what it was?" she asked, still that deadly calm. "Insecurity? Do you think you made me insecure, Scorpius?"

Scorpius looked at her, speechless. He had no idea what to say to that, he had literally no idea what to say to any of this. He could only stare.

Her expression acquiesced a little, softened slightly as she said, "Maybe not. Maybe that's how I've always been." She paused. "Do you remember why I cheated on you, Scorpius?"

Her words hung in the air, stirring up memories that Scorpius had pushed down and not thought about in months, and as they buzzed in his brain and he stared at Liv's eyes glittering across from him in an empty corridor, he felt an uncanny sense of déjà vu.

Liv sighed and then said, her voice tinged with humour, "That wasn't a rhetorical question."

Scorpius blinked again, the reality of her request finally hitting him. He looked at her then, really looked at her, and his stomach clenched when he saw for the first time a girl who had apologised to him for the sake of their friendship, because she didn't want to be alone, and he finally understood that she had never forgiven him for what she felt he had done.

It was because of that that he racked his brains, dimly recalling a fragment of what she had said to him the night they had reconciled. It was hazy under the fog of his drunkenness, but he remembered.

"You said…" He cleared his throat and tried again. "You said that you wanted to hurt me the way that I had hurt you."

She smiled sadly, her eyes glazed. "Yeah," she whispered. "You…" She paused, stopped, the way that he had. "You never knew how much you hurt me, did you? I never understood what I had done to deserve that." She looked at him, and at last, he saw the tears shimmering in her eyes.

"I loved you for seven years, Scorpius. I stuck by you; I let you mess around with other girls and waited for you to come back every time. I let you back into my bed even when I could still smell their perfume on you." She breathed in deeply through her nose, exhaling it slowly out of her mouth, and she squeezed her eyes shut. "Is that how you repay people who love you?"

Scorpius felt as if he had been punched in the gut. His breath spilled from his mouth and he averted his eyes from her, and when that wasn't enough he shut them completely, but it only made the blood in his head pound harder.

"Liv—" he attempted, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Maybe a part of me knew that our relationship was fucked up right from the start," he heard her confess, and he opened his eyes to see her gaze firmly on the wall behind him. She began to pace. "But it was the only one I knew. I had nothing else to go on." Remorse had crept into her voice, and she shook her head. "I guess Horatio and I were fucked too, what with the way we started, and now…now I…" Her expression suddenly crumpled, and she swiped a hand across her eyes. "And now I've ruined any chance of the only good relationship I've ever had. The only person who's ever cared about me that much, and I fucked it up."

Her face had taken on a completely different shade of sadness, and she ran a hand through her hair, clenching her fist. "And to think what we've had to have put him through for all of these years, and yet Toby's been a better friend to us than either you or I deserved—"

Scorpius' heart thudded to a stop. He stared at her. "What does this have to do with Toby?"

Liv shot him a look of pure disbelief, gaping at him. "Toby has been in love with me for years, Scorpius!"

Scorpius' brain whirred in shock, trying to process but at the same time unable to believe what it was hearing, and he blinked furiously and fought out, "No, that's not true, he told me years ago that it was just a little crush and that he was over it and he didn't mind-"

"WELL HE LIED!" Liv suddenly shouted. "Anyone with EYES could see that! I knew it, but I was in love with you, Scorpius, and I wanted to be with you and not him so it didn't matter!"

There was water in his lungs again, swallowing everything up inside; he was drowning and he couldn't breathe anymore, he didn't think he could even stand anymore, and his eyes dizzily took in the room as it spun around him.

Is that how you repay people who love you? Her words rang in his head, echoing in the cavity of his mind.

Had he known that Liv had been in love with him? And Toby—no. Not yet. He willed then forced his brain to focus on the first part, to remember something. The memories began to appear, slowly, and he felt the room coming back into focus.

After it had ended between them, whenever he'd thought about it, he'd always concluded that they had used each other, that love had never factored into it at all. His heart clamoured against him, and he gulped in a deep breath, because maybe deep down he had always known that she had — he'd just never wanted to think about that aspect of it. Because love like that had never factored into anything for him.

Until…until—

He almost shuddered at the thought; he absolutely couldn't think about things like that right now, not like this.

But it turned out that it wasn't his decision to make. He had almost forgotten where he was, that Liv was only a few steps away from him until she broke through the spiralling vortex of his thoughts by saying quietly, "Do you think she loves you too?"

The vortex vanished and Scorpius froze, instantly knowing the "she" that Liv was referring to. He didn't answer; he didn't even want to think her name.

"Rose," Liv stated, and the very sound speared his heart. "Do you think she loves you?"

It terrified him to even consider those words. His brain refused to acknowledge them and instantly tried to push them away, but it didn't know which way it should push them because Scorpius didn't know which answer was worse.

"How much longer are you going to keep this up, Scorp?"

His gaze snapped back to her as she spoke. "Until you guys are living together? Until you're married, when your families are involved?" She paused and then said quietly, "How long until you break her heart too?"

How did she know, how did she manage to creep inside of his brain and pick him apart with all of the thoughts that had kept him awake through agonising nights? He realised then that the weight had returned to his chest, impossibly heavier than it had ever been before, and maybe that was why he couldn't breathe.

"Do you know how many guys would kill to be with a girl like Rose? Hundreds of them. Hundreds of nice, smart, handsome guys who she hasn't hated for seven years, who haven't shut themselves away because they're so fucking terrified of their own fucking feelings—"

He couldn't listen to this anymore, he couldn't listen to another word that fired from her mouth and ripped through him in the way that only she could, and he couldn't believe that there had been a tiny part of him that had hoped, that had despairingly wrestled with the hope that maybe he had been imagining things, that maybe he had just been overwhelmed by the whole situation and overthinking everything was the only way that he had tried to cope—

But now Liv had taken a sledgehammer to that part because despite what had happened between them, she was one of the people who knew him best in the world, one of the only people who would know that he would wear those stupid fucking Quaffle pyjamas even though they were stupid and ridiculous, and it seemed impossible that that was only yesterday—

He felt himself turn around, away from her. He'd stumbled a few steps before her voice followed him.

"Maybe she'll break yours."

He only paused for half a second before he continued on.

"She will, you know." Liv's voice echoed in the corridor, dancing in the air around him. "She's going to break your fucking heart."

He kept walking, trying to focus on keeping one foot in front of the other with no destination in mind except to get away from this corridor — left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot — but on his next turn, he began to approach the staircase, and now he needed to make a decision.

Do you think she loves you?

He couldn't go back to his dorm now, he couldn't even stomach the thought of seeing her face, so that left his old dorm, but then he remembered Toby and somehow the thought of seeing Toby was even worse.

He could go to the library. In a bout of clarity he knew where he was and the library was only one floor down, which already made it the most appealing option.

His feet moved of their own accord down the stairs. He would stay in the library all night, he didn't care, it wasn't as if he'd be able to sleep anyway, and there were hardly ever people in the Potions section, no one would bother him—

His head was still ringing, the battering echo of Liv's words rattling around in his brain, and he didn't have the energy to respond to them, or to stop them from continuing to scream. A part of him wondered if this would finally be the last straw and all of his sleepless nights would rise up to claim him now and he would just end up collapsing from the exhaustion.

Just one more corridor, he could make it. Maybe he didn't care that much either way.

As he drew nearer, he suddenly remembered that it was a Saturday night, and the library had a strict closing policy as it only opened after midday on a Sunday, but his brain dismissed it and his legs kept moving, he would talk to the librarian, he would figure it out—

Left foot. Right foot.

He just wanted to sleep.

Left foot. Right foot.

He just wanted the voices to go away.

Left foot. Right foot.

Yesterday had been such a good day.

Left foot. Right—

"Hey, stranger."

He looked up, and she was smiling at him, a smile that lit up her eyes, as if Christmas had come early and Scorpius had brought it with him, and whatever strength or resolve that had remained in his body left him then.

For a split second he wanted to take her into his arms, to bundle her in close and feel the warmth of her body and just hold her and never let go, but in the next he wanted nothing more than to turn around and erase any memory of her from his brain, just so this would all go away. He was right back in that Hogsmeade club with her then, torn one way by his better judgement and torn the other because of her, and if he'd known then that this would be the outcome, he would never have dared her to go inside with him.

The lie thrashed about in his brain, but it would come easier with practice.

"You okay?" Rose asked, her brow creasing a little in concern, and she reached out and took his hand in hers.

She's going to break your fucking heart.

He closed his eyes.

No, he wanted to scream. Or maybe he did. Or maybe that was just Liv's voice in his brain again; he couldn't tell the voices apart anymore.

He needed to sleep, he needed to crawl into bed and get out of these clothes and save it all for the morning, and in a sudden, frantic moment, he almost did. But then he looked down at her hands as they softly, almost lovingly, cradled his, and he realised that he couldn't let this go on any longer. For both of their sakes, he had to do it now.

"Rose."

He looked up from their hands to her face, and the sudden confusion in her eyes as she drew back slightly was the first knife in his chest.

He swallowed. "Listen…I…I think…" She was still holding his hand, and, although it killed him to do it, he gently removed it from her grasp. "I think we might've gotten ahead of ourselves."

She looked at him uncomprehendingly, a blank expression on her face. He swallowed again, and it took everything in him to continue.

"I think everything just got a bit…much, in these last few months, and I think—" He had no idea what else to say, fuck, why hadn't he waited until morning when he could've rehearsed something in preparation, because with her right here in front of him looking at him like this he couldn't fucking think of a single thing.

He sighed heavily and dropped his gaze to the floor, and then he said quietly, "It's not right. I don't…I don't think we're right. Together." When she still didn't respond, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. "You know?"

He could've tried to explain himself then, he could've dredged up all of the reasons why, all of the things that had kept him awake while she had slept on beside him, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"We should stop it now," he said finally instead. "Before it gets any worse."

She was looking right back at him, and she continued to stay quiet for another few agonisingly long seconds until Scorpius thought that she really wasn't going to say anything, but then she opened her mouth.

"Did you feel this way when we went to Hogsmeade together? When you…when you asked me to go with you? When we spent your birthday together yesterday?" Her voice was cool, but creeping up underneath it was the tiniest spark of anger.

He regretted it before he even said it. "I've felt this way since we kissed."

Her features slackened in shock, and she drew back immediately. "In the Astronomy Tower?"

He had seen all of the anger drop away for an instant, leaving only hurt, but then suddenly the fierceness returned back to her eyes, and he immediately knew that she was remembering that it was him who had instigated that kiss, he was the fucking idiot who had kissed her and asked her out and it was his fault that she was standing here, looking at him like this.

Liv was right. He didn't deserve her.

"Rose, I never should've kissed you that night. I'm sorry." He meant that apology, he meant it with everything in him.

Her gaze was uncompromising. "Then why did you?"

And he only said, very softly, "I don't know."

He knew. Of course he knew. He had kissed her because he had wanted to, because every time he saw her that's all he wanted to do, because he was selfish and a stupid teenager who had let himself get caught up in too many thoughtless moments with a girl who deserved more than a track record like his could ever give her.

Is that how you repay people who love you?

"Rose…this isn't…" He sighed in defeat. "I'm not what you want. You don't want to be with someone like me."

He was almost afraid that she would ask him what kind of person he was, because after tonight, he didn't much want to know that either.

Instead, she was defiant. "How do you know what I want?"

He hesitated, and then said, slowly, "I don't want it for you. So I'm not gonna stand here and let you go on with it."

She scrutinised him carefully, and then she took a step back towards him, never once breaking his gaze. "Tell me the truth," she said quietly. "Did you ever have real feelings for me?"

Scorpius had taken a lot of hits tonight, but this one was the worst. He squeezed his eyes shut. "You know the answer to that."

Her expression shifted slightly at his words, but remained inscrutable.

"So I'm to think that this is all for my benefit?" she said tensely after a moment. "You would just selflessly push your feelings aside just like that?"

For both of their sakes, he had told himself. When he could sleep properly through the night again, he would consider that to be a fucking start.

"Yes." His brain barely twitched at the lie.

There was an endless moment of silence between them, and then Rose crossed her arms and exhaled sharply. "So what do you want? For things to just…" She smiled a little in disbelief, shaking her head, "Go back to how they were before all of this?"

Scorpius was quiet for a long moment. "I don't think we can go back," he said slowly. "I—I don't want to. We could be…you know, before all this we were-"

"Friends?" Her voice finally broke, dissolving into a forced laugh, and Scorpius couldn't remember feeling worse in his entire life as he did in that moment.

"Rose-" he started, but she waved him away with her hand.

"You know what?" she said, letting out another shaky laugh. She seemed to steel herself, and when she looked at him, her eyes were as fierce and as sharp as ever. "I have to go, actually. I have…homework that needs doing."

"Rose-"

"I'll see you."

She turned on her heel and walked away without sparing him another glance.

As he watched her leave, heavy regret began to sink down in his chest, the kind that burrowed into your heart and ached, and he couldn't stand to be here anymore.

He didn't know how he managed it, but in a blurry few minutes, Scorpius had reached the sixth floor and was croaking out the password to John, and then he was stumbling inside the Heads' dorm — Rose would not come back for hours, if she would at all tonight — and shucking off his shirt and belt and shoes as he made his way towards his bedroom.

But then somehow something caught his attention as he passed the couches, and he inexplicably paused. His eyes flicked towards the package sitting on the table in front of the unused fireplace; he recognised the wrapping instantly. The sight of it steadied him a little, pulling his focus and sharpening it. He'd been out practically all day yesterday, so Artemis must have delivered it to the Owlery instead and…and it seemed that Rose had brought it back for him sometime before going to the library.

He continued to stare at it for another moment, and then he exhaled deeply and walked over to it. Running a hand through his hair, he lowered himself down onto the couch. He couldn't believe that he was bothering to open this now, half-dressed and half-awake, but he needed something to occupy his frantic, overtired mind until it could finally relent enough for him to sleep.

He peeled open the package, the top held closed by his family's crest, and parted it all the way down. Inside — the candles already lit — was a small rum cake. There was another, smaller package underneath it, ostensibly his present, and a birthday card. He took the latter and unfolded it.

Dear Scorpius,

Happy Birthday, darling! We hope you've had a lovely birthday, and we can't wait to see you in a few weeks. Write to us soon. Don't eat all the cake at once.

Love,

Mum and Dad

He stared at the letter for a long time, his eyes tracing over a small portion of it over and over again, until finally he put it down with a heavy sigh. Yesterday had been such a good day.

His eyes raised to the flickering candles as memories of last night flooded his brain. They had shared that chocolate cake and then, when they'd been looking for some excuse to stay, some ice-cream and other sweet things that Scorpius would never usually eat. Maybe they could've shared this too. The candles blurred into orbs of unfocused light that swarmed the back of his vision.

At that ice-cream stand, Rose had told him that she preferred vanilla to chocolate, so she probably would've liked this.

What a stupid fucking thing to remember.

He sighed again, blinking the orbs back into candles, and he leaned forward. "Happy fucking birthday to me," he muttered, and then he blew the candles out.

---

A/N:

Hi guys! First off, I'm sorry that I never uploaded a cookie before this chapter went up in its entirety. Basically, I just majorly derped and forgot to do it, and then when I finally realised, it was erring too close to my usual upload time and I didn't wanna get anyone's hopes up for the real thing. With that said, thank you for your patience and hope you guys enjoyed a bit of a wild chapter after the relative bliss of the previous one ;) I know it might be a point of contention about whether Snape's book survived Goyle's Fiendfyre, but it was never confirmed to have been destroyed, so, well, I took advantage of that. I actually crossed a major achievement with this chapter and passed 200,000 words of content! Whoo! On a more serious vein, obviously the world has kind of gone to shit in these past months; I'm sending out hopes of happiness and health to all of you ❤❤ Stay safe out (in!) there! Chapter titles come from Fall Out Boy's Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes and The Bee Gees' Man in the Middle. Tyfyt, as always xx

P.S. I hope her motivations were made clear, but if you want to get into Liv's headspace this chapter (and tbh for all chapters), listen to Kristin Chenoweth's version of Maybe This Time from Cabaret. It's my go-to Liv song.

Oh, and a question!

Q: Who fell in love first, Rose or Scorpius?

A: Well, that would be telling ;) But for real, I do feel some kinda way about this, so if it's not answered in-fic, I'll answer it at the end :)

Oh and also this isn't a question lmao but someone previously asked about a meme that came to mind for Scorpius, and I came across one by accident that screamed Al and Gen shenanigans to me and made me cackle, so I had to post it here:

WAITER: so, what would you like to order?
GEN: can i get a milkshake with two straws, please?
AL: aw, that's so sw-
GEN: [putting both straws in her mouth] watch how fucking fast i can drink this