In the Previous Chapter…
"We feel really really bad for what happened, Rosie. Please can you forgive us?" she asked.
"Only if you give me chocolate" Rose smirked before standing to hug her cousins. "Just never ever hurt my Scorp'us again" she threatened mildly.
"You've been claimed by Rose, Malfoy, good luck" Louis smiled before heading back to the Gryffindor table.
"Scorp'us? Can you help me back up?" Rose asked shyly, embarrassed that she couldn't reach to climb onto the benches. Scorpius chuckled to himself before bending down and lifting Rose back into his lap.
Because of his injury, Scorpius couldn't focus for long periods of time in lessons, so was temporarily off timetable. His teachers would deliver the day's work to their common room and Scorpius would slowly work through it over the course of the day. He wasn't allowed to do school work for longer than 20 minutes at a time, as it would strain his eyes and make him tired, so Scorpius spent a great deal of time between study sessions playing with Rose.
At 5, one of Rose's favourite things to do was actually puzzles. Professor Longbottom had given Rose various puzzles the day before, but she had already finished those, so Scorpius had to think of things for her to do. He ran out of ideas of what to give her by the second day, so went to Professor Parkinson for help.
She had laughed at his predicament, but had nonetheless handed him a small multi-coloured cube. She explained that it was a muggle toy called a rubix cube and that you had to twist it to get all of the squares with the same colour on one side. Scorpius explained it to Rose, who thought it was amazing, and eagerly set to work twisting the cube round and round, arranging the colours.
With Rose occupied by the muggle toy, Scorpius was able to progress with his work. He quickly caught up on his assignments and was soon up to date with all his studies.
About a week later, Madam Patil removed Scorpius' extensive head padding and revealed to him the stitches in his head. She explained that the stitches could be removed in about 2 weeks' time, and that the scarring would eventually fade, but for now the wound was still quite fragile. Scorpius was also put back onto timetable and was soon walking around from lesson to lesson with Rose.
Rose had become addicted to solving the rubix cube, and carried it everywhere, so Scorpius had no trouble keeping her busy in his lessons. When they were doing practical work, he would occasionally let Rose practice a tiny bit of magic of stir his potion or something just to break up her day a bit.
Everything was going perfectly for Scorpius and Rose. They would spend the day in lessons or in the library or their common room, and in the evenings they would mess around for a bit, just having fun. This usually meant tickle fights, pillow fights and on one occasion, a paint fight. Professor Longbottom was rather unimpressed when Scorpius told him what had happened, standing before him with Rose, both covered in multi-coloured paint. Neville had bought the set of art materials for Rose so that she had something to do once she had solved her rubix cube (she finally solved it after 2 week's work), so wasn't overly pleased that they had been used to decorate the Head Pupils' common room and the head pupils themselves, but either way he still helped Scorpius to clean everything up.
At the weekends, Scorpius had permission to take Rose out, so long as they were back before dinner. Most weekends they stayed inside Hogwarts, having fun with the Weasleys and Scorpius' friends, who had all become a lot closer once the 5 excluded boys had returned to school, but occasionally, Scorpius would floo Rose to visit his family or hers, which again broke up her week and let her see her family. The only reason that they visited Scorpius' home was that Rose was eager to visit Draco, who she had become very fond of whilst Scorpius was unconscious earlier in the year.
Hogsmeade weekends were spent with their friends, walking around, buying little bits of this and that, and always ended up with everyone pitching in to buy Rose a huge collection of sweets from Honeyduke's.
It was a week before Christmas, and was again a Hogsmeade Weekend, and the large group were heading to the town for a day of shopping. Scorpius, Al, Hugo, Roxy, Lucy, Louis, Leo, Lorcan and Lysander all had Christmas presents to buy, so had left Lily (who had already done her Christmas shopping) in charge of Rose back up at the Castle.
The group spilt off into smaller groups when they reached the village, so that they could buy their presents and keep them secret, so Scorpius, Lorcan, Lysander and Leo parted from the Weasleys and headed to the Hogsmeade WWW branch.
"Guys, I need you to help me find something for Rose" Scorpius said as they walked into the shop.
"What do you want to get her, mate? Sweets? Toys?"
"Well, I was actually planning on getting her something that she could use both now and when she's back to normal" Scorpius said quietly.
"N'awwwwh, Scorp's getting all sentimental!" Leo laughed, messing up the blonde boy's head.
"Shut up. I just thought it would be nice for her to have something that she could vaguely remember this time by. There's a good chance that she'll remember these last 6 months when she ages again, so I wanted to get her something special."
"Mate, do you remember what I said at the beginning of the year?" asked Leo quietly, almost fearfully.
"Yeah. 'What is with you, Malfoy? What are you like in love with Weasley? Is that why you're caring for her now? So that when she comes back to normal she'll remember exactly how you cared for her and fall head over heels for you? Is that your little scheme?', if I remember correctly?" Scorpius said, slight bitterness showing in his voice.
"Okay, I didn't expect you to remember all of it. But now I have to ask you a bit of it again… Are you in love with Rose?"
Scorpius stopped walking and looked at his feet. "I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know, mate? Are you or are you not in love with Rose?"
"Leo, I have no bloody idea" Scorpius shouted, before storming out of WWW and heading towards the main street.
"Scop! Wait up!" Lorcan shouted, running after him. Lysander and Leo followed him, catching up with Scorpius in a few seconds.
"I don't know if I love her or not" Scorpius tried to explain. "I barely knew her when she was our age, but always thought she was pretty and smart and generally she looked like a nice person" he muttered. His friends all stared at him, although they didn't seem particularly surprised.
"Well, we did wonder why you guys stopped trying to kill each other after about 4th year" Leo laughed.
"I just… before, I would have said that I just thought she was pretty, but now I've actually spent time with her, even if she is only 5, you know, I guess I kinda have fallen hard" he said sadly. "The thing is, in two months' time, Rose is gonna take that aging potion and she'll probably want nothing to do with me" he murmured, sinking to the ground. He sat down cross-legged in the snow and sunk his head into his hands.
"Mate, just because she'll be older again doesn't mean she's gonna instantly forget this. You said so yourself – there's every chance that she will remember this. She'll remember all that you did and went through for her, she's not gonna turn her back on you" Lorcan said, sitting beside Scorpius on the snow.
"Scorp, if she remembers everything, what will she remember from Potions?" asked Lysander cryptically.
"What the hell are you on about, you douche!?" cried Lorcan, smacking his brother's head.
"What were we doing the first lesson Rose was de-aged?" Ly pushed, desperately trying to make a point.
"Ummm….. we were recapping last year's work…." thought Scorpius out loud.
"Exactly. We were brewing ammortentia, weren't we?" Ly said, motioning with his hands for Scorpius to think and continue his sentence, but Scorpius was slightly lost, so he finished it for him. "She loves you, mate. One of the things she could smell in the potion…"
"was me!" Scorpius gasped, suddenly remembering the lesson Ly was on about. "But she loves me at 5, when I'm looking after her. She probably won't love me when she ages again though" he murmured.
"But she might" said Leo, before grabbing Scorpius under the arms and hoisting him up. "But we can worry about that later. Let's go and try and find her a chrimbo prezzie, yeah?" he said before dragging his friend away towards a small trinket shop.