The Great Hall is alive with laughter and chatter when Scorpius and Rose arrive. Earlier in their walk, Scorpius had offered Rose his newly-healed arm - the hallmark of a proper gentleman lies within how he would escort a lady, Grandmother used to tell him - and to his surprise, she'd accepted.
Scorpius wasn't an especially touchy person. It just wasn't in his nature; he absolutely took after his father in that respect. His mother had a notable flair for the dramatics, and was quite an avid hugger, but she was the exception to the rule. Draco Malfoy could never refuse his wife, no matter how awkward he could be with publicly displaying his affections, and Scorpius would never dream of rejecting his dear mother. It struck him as odd that he didn't particularly mind touching Rose, either.
Today marks the first time they'd touched, after all, besides an apocalyptic three-way broom crash in third year. Being hauled by his uninjured arm across the castle grounds was surely an instance he'd remember for years to come.
When they arrive at the foot of the Gryffindor table, Scorpius freezes up. Their late entrance isn't as shocking as he'd expected, as only a few students look up from their dinners. They're not the only late arrivals, either, but Scorpius still feels uneasy. He spots a Slytherin in the year above glance his way, before muttering something to his friend, and Scorpius' anxious brain reels a mile a minute. News of Rose's confrontation with McLaggen must have spread life wildfire already, and rumours will undoubtedly fly now that he and Rose are suddenly friendly with one another, and she is holding his arm in a way that could be easily misconstrued-
Rose awkwardly shifts her weight, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Would you like to sit with us?" She asks, raising a thick eyebrow, unaware of Scorpius' internal debate.
Scorpius blanks for a second, before realising that standing by the Gryffindor table has drawn furter unwanted attention. Specifically, James Potter is staring daggers at him, whilst little Lily Potter looks flustered and confused. Al looks up from his plate of mashed potatoes.
"Rose! Scorpius!" He calls, ignoring the looks of disgust his housemates shoot him for talking with his mouth full. "Over here!"
Rose is still looking at him expectantly.
"I'd love to sit with you and… y-your family," Scorpius nods but avoids her gaze. Rose smiles, but pulls away from him as she walks over to her cousins. For some strange reason, Scorpius finds himself missing her weight clinging to his arm.
Albus is sitting beside Lily, who is opposite James. Rose politely asks the boy beside James to move along, but pushes her luck by asking Scorpius to squeeze in on her other side. There's a lot of shuffling at the Gryffindor table, and a few disgruntled grumbles, but Scorpius slots himself beside her anyway.
"So," a bored voice pipes up from the other side of James, "are you going to tell mum and dad that you punched a sixth year?"
"Hugo!" Rose chides, leaning back to get a better view of her studious younger brother, who predictably has his nose buried in a third-year textbook on divination methodologies. "Didn't even notice you there, you're so quiet. No, I'm not, and you won't either, otherwise I won't let you sit at the Gryffindor table anymore!"
"Who's to say I won't tell, Rosie Posie? You can't send me away!" James grins terribly and reaches out to ruffle Rose's hair, like he's some kind of second-rate villain. She catches his wrist just in time but doesn't actually stop him from messing up her curls. "Punching McLaggen, and in defense of a Malfoy no less! Merlin, your parents won't know whether to laugh or cry."
Scorpius straightens up a bit, reflexively. It isn't that his parents are on bad terms with the Potters and Granger-Weasleys, it's that they're not on any terms with them. Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy have both respectively accepted their sons' friendship, but they haven't actively pursued a reconciliation, and Scorpius has no idea of the Granger-Weasleys' opinions of his father and household. A plate materialises in front of him, so he starts reaching for the carrots to occupy himself.
"Knock it off, James!" Albus rolls his eyes from the other end of the table, before a devious smile crosses his lips. "What they don't know won't hurt them. Anyway, didn't you forget to tell mum you've got detention this week?"
"You're such a Slytherin, you know that Al? No offence." James laughs it off, before suddenly turning to Scorpius. "Anyway, thanks for the game Malfoy. Won me a few galleons." He declares to the table.
Scopius is slightly taken aback, but tries to hide his bewilderment with indifference. He nods. "Anytime."
"Just don't think you'll be beating Gryffindor this season!" James counters unexpectedly, still smiling good-naturedly, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. He looks between Rose and Scorpius, as if trying to discern something from their eating habits.
Lily Potter, who has yet to say a word, suddenly perks up. "Not after I make the Gryffindor team this year!" She announces, proud and completely sure of herself.
Al laughs around a forkful of peas, before being nigh-assaulted by his sister, and the Potter-Weasley end of the Gryffindor table erupts into a cacophony of noise and debate. Scorpius never allowed himself to feel lonely, whenever Al spent time at the Gryffindor table with his family, but now he finds himself enjoying the chaotic spontaneity of his best friend's family, even under James Potter's scrutiny.
Come Monday morning, Scoprius is unceremoniously reminded of exactly why he'd unintentionally avoided Rose Granger-Weasley for most of his Hogwarts career: double Potions with the Gryffindors, alternatively titled "The Bane of His Existence". She was an absolute disaster - a liability, even - one that Al refused to partner with. Before they started, she'd knocked a vial of Gillyweed water off her desk, and almost shouldered her cauldron to the ground in her haste to clean up the mess. Currently, she is pleading with Albus.
"Sorry, Rosie," Al stretches his arms above his head, grimacing at the creaks in his shoulders. "Me and Scor always work together."
"But it's Potions!" Rose exclaims, startling poor Alice Longbottom, who sat beside her, inspecting the ingredients list for the Everlasting Elixir. "I need all the help I can get! I don't need a good mark, I just need to not fail!"
Al twists his face, before flicking through his textbook. "Yeah, well I actually need a good mark." He decides, resolute and firm. "I'm not getting to St Mungo's on an Acceptable."
Scorpius bites his tongue to hold in a laugh. Rose crumples up a piece of parchment into a ball and flicks it at Al's head.
"Poor Alice, are you implying she wouldn't be able to get you as good of a grade as I would?" Al teases, after swatting away the parchment.
Rose flusters, before looking miserable. "It's not that! Uncle Neville would have my head if I got Alice a Troll. In the nicest, most Uncle Neville way, at least."
Alice barely looks up from her ingredients list, but at least has an amused smile on her face. She rolls her eyes and ignores her housemate, accustomed to the bickerings of the Potter-Weasley cousins.
Rose props her arm up on the table and sighs, dejected. "You know mum'll kill me." She mumbles, forlorn and miserable - a last ditch attempt to get Al to reconsider - Scorpius focuses on his own elixir recipe to avoid saying something he doesn't mean, like volunteering to partner with her in betrayal of Al. "You know she hates that I'm not as good at school as she was!"
Al's rebuttal isn't as quick this time. He offers her a weak smile. "You could be if you actually tried. Anyway, Uncle Ron always fights your corner, and you're good at Defense, and charms, and you're a cracking flier. Potions isn't for everyone."
Just as Scorpius is working up the nerve to chime in with his own encouragements, their professor stumbles through the door. Professor Lee is an odd wizard: a new hire, potentially the youngest of Hogwarts' teaching staff, and a bit clumsy. He is scatterbrained, and although he's an informative and helpful instructor, he always seemed to be preoccupied. Like his mind is elsewhere. He'd replaced old Slughorn just last year as Potions master and Slytherin Head of House, around February following an incident with a mandrake plant.
"Good morning, students," he wheezes, dropping a pile of well-worn books onto his private desk at the front of the classroom. "Apologies for my lateness, it seems I misplaced my wand last night."
"Sounds more like a wild night at the Three Broomsticks, to me." Al whispers to Scorpius, nodding at Professor Lee. He did seem disheveled. His dark hair has a greasy sheen, exaggerated by the dim candlelight of the dungeons, and he looks tired, almost pallid.
"Seen as you've all had more than enough time to settle back into life at Hogwarts, today we'll begin brewing the first potion of the year: the Everlasting Elixir." Professor Lee dusts himself off and stands at the front of the classroom, doing his best to look imposing and authoritative despite his youth. Scorpius wagers he could only be in his twenties. His father has never heard of a Mister Septimus Lee.
"Now," Professor Lee begins again, "unlike previous years, where you would choose to work in pairs of your own preference, I have decided to intervene and assign pairs. This has arisen following conversations with your respective Heads of Houses- well, in your case, that would be myself and Professor Longbottom. There will be no arguing, complaining, or reassigning of pairs."
There is a collective groan throughout the classroom, immediately followed by a wave of panicked chittering. Al practically jumps out of his seat. "He can't be serious!" He hisses, clenching his fists. "He's actually serious?" He deflates against the potioneering workbench.
"Chin up," Scorpius frowns. "It's not the end of the world." He quietly disappointed too, in his own way.
Professor Lee waves his wand, and conjures a long, unfurling parchment, seemingly out of thin air. He clears his throat and begins to read his assigned partnerships in a somewhat irritating drone. "Bell and O'Brien, Jones and Davies, Potter and Longbottom… Samuel and Stephens, Malfoy and Granger-Weasley, Lima and Finnegan-Thomas…"
The list goes on and on, but Scorpius stops listening. He glances at Rose, and she stares back at him with wide eyes, looking equal parts relieved and afraid. In a similar sentiment, Scorpius isn't sure whether he should feel happy or not, having just watched her attempt to destroy her potioneering equipment.
"Nice one, Longbottom. Al and Al!" Albus exclaims, not as heartbroken about being split up from Scorpius as he had been mere minutes ago. "Good luck, Rose, Scor!" He claps Scorpius on the shoulder again, as he'd recently grown a tendency to do, a little rougher than usual.
As the rest of their class organises themselves, Al and Rose simply switch places and swap their cauldrons and belongings between themselves. They have it a little easier than some of their classmates, who have to lug iron and pewter across the classroom. As Professor Lee begins rousing up another speech, Rose mumbles a preemptive sorry to Scorpius.
"Why are you apologising?" Scorpius frowns, keeping his voice low enough to avoid Lee's wrath. "You've done nothing wrong."
Their first potion brewing session back at Hogwarts isn't a complete disaster. In fact, Scorpius doesn't entirely mind having Rose as a partner. She knows what she's doing when she concentrates, and she's proficient enough at preparing the individual ingredients needed to make the Everlasting Elixir. The problems arise when she is put in charge of measuring, or is required even an ounce of patience.
"Add the wormwood to the mixture," Rose reads aloud. She picks up her cutting board and is about to tip a whole portion of wormwood into the cauldron, before Scorpius snaps out of his concentration and grabs her wrist.
"Don't." He warns, pulling her arm and the cutting board away from the cauldron. "The recipe says we should add it slowly, and we only need about two leaves- a quarter of your cutting board will do."
Rose looks confused, and only slightly affronted. Scorpius lets go of her wrist quickly, like she's burnt him, and she divides up the chopped wormwood. "Let me see your textbook." She insists, before crowding his personal space and peering over at his annotated copy of Magical Drafts and Potions. "Are you sure? I can't find anything about it here."
"There," Scorpius points at step seven, "add the wormwood gradually, stirring thrice clockwise between each addition, until two medium-sized leaves are dissolved within the mixture." In the margins of the page, he'd written his own notes, which he'd been building on slowly since first year. "Wormwood is poisonous in large quantities."
"Must have missed that class," Rose mumbles absently, reading over his annotations.
Scorpius tries to keep focused and on track. He ignores how her shoulder brushes up against his arm, and silently chides himself for how touchstarved he'd apparently become. "What, in first year?" He teases, glancing over her face to judge her reaction. She merely furrows her brow.
"Cheeky sod," she mutters. She playfully shoves her shoulder in his side.
The rest of their class follows smoothly, without incident, and in the end Professor Lee judges their potion to be a sublime rendition of the Everlasting Elixir; however, only time could truly tell, which was why they were starting off with a longevity potion at the beginning of term. As expected, Albus and Alice perform spectacularly also.
"Who knew Rosie could get an Exceeds in Potions!" Al lightly ribs his cousin, flashing a cheesy smile from across the table. "And all it took was a little Scorpius!"
Before their class finishes, Professor Lee approaches their table with a smile. The fumes created by a classroom full of cauldrons has made Rose and Albus' hair turn frizzy; Lee's hair looks even worse. "Congratulations, you four." He motions to the quartet. "Exceeds Expectations all around. I'm sure your parents will be thrilled, such a promising start to fifth year Potions. Yours especially, Miss Granger-Wealsey."
"Thanks, Professor." Rose nods. She smiles back, but doesn't look entirely comfortable talking about her mother's reactions to schoolwork.
"I've spoken with the rest of the class individually, and would like to quickly reiterate that these are the firm pairings for the rest of the year. Any group work will be undertaken together, is that clear?"
The four of them nod, echoing a chorus of agreements. Lee seems somewhat taken aback, like he wasn't expecting such unanimous compliance. And then he looks to Rose and Scorpius. "Good, good. Now, Miss Granger-Weasley, Mr Malfoy, may I speak to you after class is dismissed?"
Scorpius raises a thin eyebrow. "Of course, Professor." He nods again, and Rose follows suit. Al shoots them a questioning look from across the table, but Professor Lee is already wrapping things up. He starts to pack up his books anyway.
"Remember- our Wednesday afternoon session is purely theory based, so no cauldrons. I'll see you at one o' clock sharp!"
"Good luck," Al tells them. "Hope you don't need it."
One by one, the rest of the students start to filter out of the classroom, lumbering their potions equipment about. Once Professor Lee is satisfied with their exit, he turns to Rose and Scorpius, with a thinner smile. "I didn't mean to cause you any alarm, so you can stop looking so scared, Malfoy."
Scorpius makes the conscious effort to drop his shoulders a bit, and tries to breathe deeper and regularly. "Sorry, Professor. What's this about?"
Professor Lee straightens his posture. "Before we begin, I need you both to know that I simply have your best interests at heart. As your professor, it is my duty to see to the comfort and sensibilities of my students."
Not for the first time, Scorpius gets the distinct impression that Professor Lee isn't acting entirely genuine. He doesn't dislike the man, per say, but something about his behaviour feels strange. Even if he just had a penchant for drinking, like Al had suggested, he found it strange that McGonagall would allow such a badly-put together man to lead a class, especially one so young. However, Scorpius could not deny his skill as an instructor: he was exceptionally good at explaining rather difficult, abstract concepts in potion making, and the mostly successful grades of his students spoke for themselves.
Lee made rather intense eye contact, first with Scorpius, then with Rose. It was slightly unnerving, and made Scorpius even more anxious. "Your pairing is a unique one. At first, I was reluctant to put the two of you together due to your parents'... histories, and the fact that I've never seen the two of you interact around the castle. And yet, the work you've produced today is astounding- so I just wanted to make sure, even though I have told the rest of the class they can't change partners, would the two of you like a different arrangement?"
Rose physically bristles. "Our parents' histories?" She repeats, incredulous, with a rising tone of anger in her voice. "Professor, I can absolutely assure you that Scorpius and I have never felt the need to get involved with our weird, centuries old family rivalry."
"Quite the opposite," Scorpius adds, although a little less confidently than Rose. "We've recently become friends- through Albus, and Quidditch."
"Ah, of course," Professor Lee muses, holding a hand to his chin like he's trying to figure out a particularly difficult puzzle. "I was referring to more recent generations of trouble between your families, but now it makes sense. You both play Quidditch, don't you? Competitive sport is an aggression outlet, after all. Well, never the matter! Of course, I didn't mean to imply anything unsavory between the two of you! In fact, it's quite a relief to hear you get along. If you're both comfortable with this arrangement, we can simply carry on, yes?"
"Yes," Rose and Scoripius decide in unison. Where she was growing somewhat irritated, Scorpius was growing uncomfortable.
"That is all, then- do remember, theory on Wednesday. Thank you, Miss Granger-Weasley, Mr Malfoy." And then Professor Lee casually dismisses them, as if he hadn't just been probing and speculating about their family histories, trying to stoke some sort of fire. He ushers them out of the door, black capelet fanning out behind him, and slams the door soundly at their backs.
"The nerve!" Rose's aggravation immediately bursts. She throws her hands up and starts pacing quickly down the west dungeon corridors. "Giving us- alternative treatment, when he was part of the group that put us together! What, did he expect us to blow up in each other's faces? Throw a fit in the middle of class, refuse to work together?"
"I'm sure he was just… concerned." Scorpius interjects weakly. Now matter how strange Professor Lee sometimes acts, it still feels bad to slander his Head of House. "I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to associate with a Malfoy. Even if Albus is okay with it."
Scorpius had been following her down the corridor, and is stopped abruptly when she turns to face him, fire in her eyes. "We've just started talking, and you're already pulling the "I'm a Malfoy" card? Merlin, Al said you would do this!" She crosses her arms over her chest and chews on her bottom lip, irritated. "What happened between our parents is old news- stuff for the history books, not us. It doesn't concern us at all!"
"I… understand. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like…" Scorpius trails off, staring down at her. "Never mind. I get it, you're right. You're not a bad potions partner, you know- when you're paying attention."
Rose grinns up at him. "Exactly!" She agrees, before holding a hand dramatically over her chest. "I'm not bad! And you've got another thing coming if you think I'm going to let go of the best potioneer in our class! Just don't tell Al I said that."
Scorpius laughs demurely, genuine but restrained. His hair is a mess, falling out of his loose ponytail, and his uniform is covered in soot, but he feels alright. He can feel his cheeks rapidly heating up. "Don't worry, I won't." He promises her. She beams up at him like he'd hung the stars in the sky just for her, and he forgets to chastise himself for how rapidly his feelings are spiralling.