Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry this chapter took me so long! But it's here now, so that counts for something, right?

A huge thanks to everyone who reviewed! Also thanks to thestarlitrose for betaing!

~Frosty

She didn't bother showering in the locker room, instead opting to trudge back to the Head's dorm, where she could soak in a tub. Hopefully the hot water would ease her aching muscles. She was more out of shape than she'd thought; too much of her spare time was spent on her reading and homework, obviously.

If Scorpius kept up the intensive training, she foresaw many more baths in the near future. Her poor muscles were in revolt, punishing her for making them work so hard. She was already starting to dread the ache she was going to feel in the morning, once her muscles had had time to really settle into their pained state and stiffen.

Barely five minutes into her bath, her relaxation was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Rose," Albus called, "Scorpius is in the common room and wants to talk to you. Are you decent?"

She scowled towards her idiot cousin, the effort wasted because he couldn't see her.

"I'm in the bathroom behind a locked door. Do you think I'm decent?" she snapped. So she wasn't the nicest person when her relaxing was interrupted, Albus should know better. Scorpius should as well, having interrupted her while she was trying to relax numerous times in the past and paid for each and every one.

"Rose..." Albus persisted. It was a warning that he didn't plan to leave her alone anytime soon. If she wanted to continue her relaxation, then she was going to have to hear whatever it was that Scorpius had to say.

She heaved a sigh that sent ripples across the steaming surface of her bath.

"I'm not getting out of the tub!" she said petulantly. "It's his fault I need the bath in the first place."

Faintly, she head Albus groan in irritation on the other side of the door. "Conjure some bubbles or something, he wants to talk to you."

Normally, Rose would have yelled at him for suggesting such a thing, but the muffled protest she heard from Scorpius at her cousin's suggestion was enough to make her reconsider. She was feeling spiteful enough to make Scorpius feel as awkward talking to her as she'd felt working with the Goldstein twins. It wasn't like he was attracted to her, it would be like catching his sister in the bath; a whole bunch of awkward.

A wave of her wand had a thick blanket of foam covering the surface of the water. The only thing visible was the tips of her shoulders, and even they were covered by the clingy strands of her wet hair. She was perfectly decent; there were dresses in her closet that revealed more skin than was currently visible. Another wave of her wand had the door unlocked.

"Fine," she said, making sure her voice made it abundantly clear that she wasn't happy with the situation.

The door opened and Scorpius stumbled into the room, propelled by Albus' hand placed firmly in the middle of his back. He glared at the Gryffindor over his shoulder before turning to face Rose.

If he hadn't been Scorpius Malfoy, Rose would have been sure that was a very faint blush staining his cheeks. However, he was Scorpius and so he didn't let things frazzle him, and he never let things embarrass him.

She had once asked him why it was that he was never embarrassed and he'd replied that embarrassment was for people who made mistakes and Malfoys never made mistakes. The tone he'd used had implied that he was quoting his grandfather directly. Sometimes it came in handy to have an abundance of confidence, Rose certainly wished she did, particularly when she was blushing as red as a tomato.

"What do you want?" she asked, glaring at him. She was still mad and not about to let him off easy for that stunt he'd pulled on the Quidditch pitch. Her feelings towards him may be changing, but she was still irritated and hurt.

Scorpius stared resolutely at the tiled wall behind Rose. "I know you're not pleased with me at the moment, but they were the best choice for the team."

She huffed, her breath making a puff of bubbles separate from the mass and float away. Still staring at the wall, Scorpius missed this. Not once did his eyes dart in her direction.

"You could have told me before we were on the pitch. I would have been angry, but at least then I wouldn't have been hurt as well." Her words were directed towards the bubbles by her chin, but he heard them just fine in the quiet bathroom.

Surprised, he forgot about his sudden fascination with tiles and looked at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Am I really so unreasonable that you have to wait until we're in public to break bad news to me?" It had been killing her that he thought he couldn't tell her until the last minute. Sure, she'd been upset, but she got over it pretty quickly.

Her Uncle Harry had told her stories of her dad's habit of overreaction in school, and she didn't want her friends to treat her like that. She'd always prided in the fact that she'd inherited her father's temper, yet managed to keep it in check most of the time. Yet here was proof that Scorpius, someone who knew her better than almost anyone, didn't think her capable of keeping her cool. It hurt that he thought of her like that. Like some kind of volcano of anger just waiting to explode.

"Don't do this," he said.

"Do what?"

"Take a decision that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time and twist it around so I'm a bad person! It's such a girl thing to do!"

Rose scowled. "In case you haven't noticed, I am a girl!"

Did he really just see her as some androgynous being who would be just another one of the guys if it hadn't been for an unfortunate shortcoming in the area between her legs? She didn't go out of her way to straighten her hair or pile on the makeup, but Rose didn't think she was completely unfeminine.

"That's my problem!" he growled. He turned around and stormed out of the room. "I noticed you were a girl a long time ago," he finished, too quiet for her to hear.

Bringing her knees up to her chest, Rose hugged them close. She just had to go and have that stupid ... whatever it was; dream, vision, hallucination. It seemed that something important had changed in their friendship during that moment, and the balance had been off ever since. They kept fighting over things that wouldn't have ever been an issue in the past and she couldn't understand it. They were both trying to get back to where they'd been before, but somehow, they no longer quite fit together in the same way, something had changed.

Rose was scared she was the one who had changed. That vision had made her realize that she could be deliriously happy with Scorpius as something more, and it made her resent that he could never give her that.

Locking the door with her wand, she ducked her head under the water to re-wet it before she slathered it in shampoo.


"That went well," Albus said when Scorpius slammed the bathroom door behind him. Towards the end of their conversation, they'd been talking rather loudly, and Albus had heard them through the door... not that his ear had been pressed against it or anything.

"I can't talk to her anymore. Not the way I could before," Scorpius groaned, threading his fingers into his hair. The blond strands stood up at strange angles, making him look incredibly distressed, nothing like his usually composed self.

"Well, why not?" his friend asked, trying to be reasonable. All Albus really wanted to do was bang Scorpius' blond head against Rose's and verbally abuse the both of them until they saw they should be together. Instead, he dragged the blond over to the sofa and sat him down in front of the fire.

"Al, when I saw her fall..." Scorpius ran his hand through his hair again, unable to verbalize what he'd felt. He cleared his throat of the emotion blocking his throat and tried again. "I knew if she died, nothing would ever be the same. I would have died with her. It made me realize I can't not tell her how I feel, and it's probably going to ruin our friendship because she looks at me with the same affection she does you. And you're her cousin. I'm the equivalent of a cousin." There was a mournful look in his eyes as he said the last part. It hurt to have his feelings brutally crushed by the realization that he'd never be more than a family member to her.

"In some places, it's legal for cousins to marry," Albus said helpfully.

"That's not what I meat," Scorpius growled, sounding like he wanted to punch something - probably Albus.

They fell silent at the sound of splashing from the bathroom. Scorpius tried not to picture Rose dunking her head under the water and then emerging, the curls clinging to her exposed skin as she rose from the tub like some sort of sea nymph. "Tried" being the key word.

"You need to figure it out before you break a six-year friendship," Albus ordered. He gave Scorpius a significant look before climbing the stairs and shutting himself in his room. Scorpius needed time alone to think about it and really let that statement sink through his thick skull.

The blond glared after his friend. Albus talked like it was so easy to bear his soul and hope he didn't push away the single most important person in his life because he got greedy and wanted more than she was offering.

He threaded his fingers through his hair once again. If he kept up at the rate he was going, pretty soon he'd be dishevelled enough to pass for an escaped mental patient. Grandfather would be so disappointed in him for allowing himself to look so 'common'. Or worse, he'd end up bald. Scorpius shuddered at the mere thought.

A while later, Rose came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. Forming coherent sentences to get himself out of the hole he'd somehow fallen into was so much easier when she was fully clothed! He was just going to have to give it a try and hope for the best.

"Can we just... forget the whole thing happened?" he asked hopefully.

Rose jumped a little, having not noticed him before he spoke. She thought he would be long gone, not waiting for her in the common room looking thoroughly out of sorts. Making sure her towel was covering all the important parts of her, she turned to face him fully.

"Only if you promise not to treat me like some volatile explosive in the future," she said, crossing her arms. The gesture made her breasts more pronounced, but she failed to notice how her friend's eyes flicked down and then back to her face. Her attention was focused on his left shoulder. For some reason, she couldn't quite look him in the eye when she was feeling so exposed. It was too embarrassing. Even more embarrassing would be his complete lack of interest in her partially exposed state – which she knew she would see should their gazes meet.

It was best that she not look him in those mesmerizing eyes of his.

Scorpius pretended to deliberate, taping a long finger against his chin. He needed to lighten the atmosphere. "What if I continue to treat you like a volatile explosive when I think the situation warrants it, but I take you to Honeydukes and buy you all the chocolate you could possibly eat to apologise every time you get upset?"

Her blue eyes lit up with amusement and she was finally able to meet his gaze. "Like when we were in third year and you got us both detentions for setting James on fire?"

Albus' older brother had been a bit of a trouble-maker in his school days. He'd pushed Scorpius a little too far with his pranks when the blond had found Rose suspended in a large cobweb that stretched across the corridor. Rose had been irritated, but could still see the humour and Halloween spirit of the prank, but Scorpius had been livid. When James hopped out from behind a pillar with his wand at the ready to cast another web, Scorpius had said the first incantation that came to mind, the fire-starting spell they'd just learned in Charms.

Naturally, that had been when a teacher came around the corner. McGonagall had taken one look at the scene and gave Rose and Scorpius a detention, James as well once she'd extinguished the fire.

The Hogsmeade weekend that followed their detention, Scorpius had all but dragged Rose to Honeydukes and bought her armfuls of chocolate in hopes she'd forgive him and speak to him again. She had been giving him the cold shoulder since the detention, unable to deal with him when he'd been the cause of the very first mark on her perfect, detention-free record.

Eventually, she'd had to laugh at his insistence that she still didn't have enough chocolate even when she could barely carry all he'd purchased. She'd told him that he shouldn't believe that chocolate could always buy her forgiveness just because it had worked once, but he'd given her a smirk that clearly said he didn't believe her.

For weeks after that, Rose, Scorpius, and Albus had repeatedly reported to the Hospital Wing for a stomach ache relieving potion. They continued the cycle of chocolate and Hospital Wing until Madam Pomfrey confiscated the rest of their chocolate and sternly told them that if they ever bought chocolate again, she better not see them in her Infirmary.

"Just like that. Except this time, we can carry more chocolate and know to pace ourselves," the blond said with a grin, encouraged by her happy reaction. Maybe they'd be all right after all.

Abruptly, her eyes dimmed again. "I can't go this weekend, I have a date," she said.

When she'd agreed to go on that date with Lysander, she'd known she was going to regret it eventually, she just hadn't thought it would be so soon - and for a different reason. She'd thought Lysander was going to do something completely strange that made her wish she's just stayed at the castle and holed herself away in her room.

Scorpius was completely floored. Albus had warned him this would happen, he just hadn't thought it'd be so quickly after he'd been told. Rose had been amazing for years, so why was it only now that someone else had noticed? He felt a sudden, unreasonable desire to Avada whoever dared to touch Rose. She wasn't his to lay claim on like she was a piece of meat, but he wanted her to be. Merlin, did her ever want her to be his.

"Who is it?" he growled.

He couldn't bear the thought of someone putting his hands on Rose, but he needed to know who it was. There was no way the bloke could be good enough for her. Maybe he could make her see how wrong this mystery man was for her.

Frowning at the menacing tone she'd never heard from her friend before, Rose hesitated. She saw no reason for Scorpius to be so... confrontational about the bloke's name. Lysander was about as intimidating as his mother – which was not at all. Did Scorpius think she was going to get hurt on her date? That Lysander would try to take advantage of her? Both of those were ridiculous notions.

"Why are you so upset?" she wondered. Was this going to be another one of those things that normally wouldn't have caused a problem but was going to tear a huge rift between them because she'd had a stupid bloody hallucination?

She really hoped it wasn't.

If she could go back, she'd would un-see that blasted hallucination. Something more with Scorpius would have been amazing, but Scorpius as a friend was better than no Scorpius at all – and that seemed to be where she was headed. Rose didn't want to lose Scorpius, he was her best friend and it would destroy her.

He drew in a deep breath, nostrils flaring in poorly-hidden anger. "Just tell me."

"Not while you're unreasonably angry like this, you look like you're going to hunt him down and murder him," she said, taking a step back. Suddenly she felt really exposed in just a towel. What had earlier been discomfort at being barely dressed morphed into a feeling of complete vulnerability. Scorpius wasn't going to hurt her - she knew that - but he was awfully threatening.

She transfigured her towel into a modest nightgown, surprised that she hadn't thought of it sooner. There, that was better. She was more covered, but Scorpius wasn't any less angry.

"I need to know who it is," he insisted.

Carefully, like she was dealing with an offended hippogriff, Rose crossed the room and stood in front of him. She'd always known he was quite a bit taller than her, but never had he used that height to purposely tower over her in an attempt at intimidation before then. Merlin, she would fit snugly below his chin if she were to step forward. Subtly, she shook her head to rid it of the slew of images that her imagination provided about holding him tightly and nuzzling her nose against his collarbone.

Reaching up a hand to place one on each of his shoulders, she steered him to the sofa and pressed down until he got the hint and sat. That solved the height difference rather nicely, making Rose the taller one. No more of those pesky imaginings... Except from this height, he could easily bury his face in her chest if she wanted to. Blasted hormones. Rose tried not to blush while she watched him grapple with his anger.

The blond took a deep breath, visibly forcing himself to relax. It was his own fault for not telling her how he felt. Rose was wonderful; the only thing that was surprising about her date was that it hadn't happened a long time ago.

"Never mind," he mumbled. "Have fun on your date."

That said, he stood from the sofa and left the Head's common room, not looking back to see the hurt expression Rose was wearing.

Elsewhere in the Head Dorms, Albus groaned as he hovered over a pair of extendable ears. His friends were both idiots. He was going to need backup if he was ever going to get them together. But first, he had to find out who Rose was going to date and sabotage the whole thing.


"Don't you have any friends your own age?" Lily huffed irritably while her brother dragged her towards an empty classroom.

"It's a Weasley emergency," Albus stated by way of explanation.

She raised skeptical eyebrows. "We haven't had one of those since James and Fred almost got themselves expelled for jinxing McGonagall's knickers to scream dragon mating calls every time she sat down."

"We couldn't let them go down for that stroke of genius," he defended.

Lily pulled herself from his grasp and paced away from him. "All right, we're alone," she said, glancing around the dusty room in distaste. "What's so important that you had to drag me away from that fit sixth year?"

"Rose has a date."

The younger girl's lips split into an excited smile. "That's great! Why does that warrant a Weasley emergency?"

She had long since stopped trying to tell her brother that their last name was Potter, meaning they couldn't actually call a Weasley emergency. It was always a feeble attempt to stay out of whatever trouble followed the words 'Weasley emergency' and it never worked.

Albus had a feeling that Lily was going to hex him if he didn't get to the point soon. She was a little too much like their mum sometimes. Weasley women in general tended to have a lot of fire and Lily was no exception – neither was Rose, now that he was thinking of it.

"It isn't with Scorpius."

The smile slipped right off of her face. "That is an emergency," she murmured. "How's he taking it?"

"Not well. The idiot keeps putting his foot in his mouth and pushing her farther away. It's a wonder he manages to get girls in the first place. They desperately need some help."

Lily twirled a strand of hair around her finger thoughtfully. "It's not girls that are his problem, it's just Rose. He can either treat her like one of the guys or like a girlfriend, when he tries for something in between, it always backfires."

Her eyes rolled at her brother's blank look. "He can either pretend she's genderless and completely smother his feelings or he gets all possessive and fights with her because he can't deal with those feelings."

For a fifteen year old, she was awfully knowledgeable about his friends. Sometimes Lily was scary observant. If she put her mind to work on something other than makeup and boys, she'd be an unstoppable force. The terrifying possibilities were endless.

Always the planner, Albus already knew what they were going to do. "You need to find out who she's going to date and any dirt you can find on him." For once, he was glad his sister was an incurable gossip. "And then we need to somehow sabotage the date. We can't have Rose in a relationship with some bloke. That would ruin everything."