CHAPTER 9

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Rose felt her mouth drop open as she took in the scene in front of her. It was so unbelievable, but there they were. Lily, sitting on Scorpius's lap, in plain sight. The part of her that was still attached to Lily was telling her to leave ASAP, that she was ruining the moment for Lily, but the much larger part, the part of her that was angry at her ex-best friend, told her to stay.

Scorpius whispered something softly in Lily's ear, and Rose gasped as Lily turned bright red and giggled before planting a sweet kiss on Scorpius's cheek.

At the noise, Lily turned to face her ex-best friend. "It's not nice to eavesdrop, Rose."

"I- I- I... I wasn't..." Rose's now pink face gave her away. "I swear, I wasn't..."

Lily raised her eyebrows. "Whatever, Rose. We all know that you just want to win the contest. I didn't think you'd resort to spying, though. Oh well, it's not like you're going to win. Scorpy and I, we've got it made. How many rules have we broken already?"

"Hmm... around 23, I think. Did we count the one in the library?"

Lily grinned at Scorpius. "I don't think so. 24, then. What about you, Rose?"

Rose groaned. She'd completely forgotten about the stupid contest! The contest that had gotten her and Brent together, and from the looks of it, Lily and Scorpius too.

"We've broken a lot of rules, more than you I think," Rose lied. "Not so sure though. Brent and I got lost in each other's eyes..." Rose let her voice trail off, disgusted with herself for sounding so cheesy.

Lily snorted. "You... and Brent? 'Lost in each other's eyes?' What are you, a walking romance novel?"

"No," Rose said defensively.

"Now, if you don't mind," Scorpius drawled, sounding like he didn't care in the least if she did mind. "I'd like to spend some alone time with my girlfriend." The meaning in his words was equally clear and sickening, and it felt like each syllable drove a spike through Rose's heart.

Lily glowed with happiness at his words. "Can you leave?"

Rose didn't need to be told twice. Turning her back on the couple, now deep in conversation, she stormed back up to the Prefect bathroom, where she spent an hour in the bathtub, thinking out loud.

"Oh, I just want to kill Lily, that backstabbing EX-best friend of mine. Now she's dating the ENEMY, not that I care..." Midway through her rant, Rose stopped as one crystal clear thought filled her brain. She did care.

Rose sat in the bath until she found herself becoming extremely drowsy and prune-like all over. She hopped out and pulled on her robes, nearly asleep.

Trudging back up to Ravenclaw tower, Rose went over possible reasons WHY she could be mad that Scorpius and Lily were together. "Reason one: I don't want Lily to get hurt." But after their fight, Rose realized that that wasn't the case. "Reason two: I'm going crazy." Possible, but unlikely. Crossing reason two off on her mental checklist, Rose thought about the last reason that was floating around in her brain. "Reason three: I'm in love with Scorpius Malfoy." It was impossible. They were too different. Rivals in everything. They could never stop fighting. A relationship between them that didn't involve blackmail or pranks? Impossible. Wasn't it?

Before she could answer her own questions, she pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill and wrote a quick , demented- sounding letter to Brent, her sentences running together into a jumbled mess of exhausted words.

Dear Brent,

I hope you are doing okay. I'm so tired, this probably isn't going to make sense, you know how I am at night-time. Well, actually, you don't, because we don't spend time together at night. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just mean, you don't sleep here with me, not WITH ME, but near me, because you're in Gryffindor. Plus even if you WERE in Ravenclaw, you would sleep with the boys. Near them, anyway; I know you aren't gay, which is too bad, because gay people are actually pretty cool. And then we wouldn't be dating, would we?

Anyway, we don't need to go over this, because you AREN'T in Ravenclaw, only smart people are! Are you smart? I don't know if you are or aren't, but I'm not, so maybe you don't have to be smart to be in Ravenclaw! Why aren't you in Ravenclaw? And why isn't there a house for the house elves? They could call it "ELFLAND". But that's not the point.

We need to talk about breaking more rules for the contest. Lily and Scorpius? They've broken over 20 rules already, although they might have been exaggerating. But that's still bad. By the way, they're dating now, and Lily and I aren't friends anymore, we had a fight.

We really need to win the contest because otherwise I might go crazy and end up on a street corner of Diagon Alley, like that one guy who always warns me not to eat pineapple because the ministry is really using them for communication with Dark Wizards. So we need to win. Plus if we don't win, I'll never be able to look at them anymore- Lily and Scorpius- without feeling that bad feeling when you lose, like when we lost to Gryffindor in the House Cup last year, except you were happy, and I cried, and you gave me your jacket because you're nice, and then I lost it and lied to you that I wanted to keep it even though it was hideous. Basically, just meet me at the library tomorrow at noon so we can talk.

From Rose

PS- I don't even LIKE pineapple.

Rose sent the letter, not even proof-reading it (which she would regret), then found herself in front of her bed, where she collapsed, the questions she was trying not to answer floating around in her brain. She fell asleep instantly.