Every Rose Has Its Thorn
By Lily Orange
Rose Weasley keeps a diary documenting the painfully excruciating ways she manages to humiliate herself in front of the love of her life, Scorpius Malfoy – who, by familial tradition, she's supposed to hate...
A/N: Sorry about the excruciatingly long wait for another chapter! Thank you for all the reviews, alerts and favourites, it means a lot to me and thanks for your continued support :) Good news is though there are only 5 exams standing between me and complete freedom on Thursday afternoon so I will be able to write whenever I like (within reason though, haha!) so hopefully the updates will come quicker. Hope everybody's okay, enjoy the chapter and please reviewww! :) Xxx
Chapter Two
Still September 1st
In which I attempt to rectify what I did by being effortlessly cool, but it turns out it takes a LOT of effort...
To be honest, although I shouldn't say this, Scorpius Malfoy's lap is so damn comfortable! Well, I was only on his lap for about thirty seconds when I was blushing like a lobster (do lobsters blush? Note to self: look it up in the library when at school) and he was looking at me strangely before I leaped off it and sat in the corner of the carriage by the window. Al was still laughing at the way I tripped over, he wasn't even concerned about the fact I may have seriously injured myself. No, he was too busy practically choking on his own LAUGHTER while he lay down chortling away to himself.
Such a supportive best friend, that Albus Potter.
NOT.
"Are you alright, Rose?" Scorpius asked tentatively.
Well, I thought, no, Scorpius, I'm not alright, as I just embarrassed myself so much I thought I might die whilst lying on your lap. But it's okay, you know, I'll be fine. In two hundred years or so.
Instead of saying what immediately came to mind, I calmly replied, "Yes, thank you, I'm absolutely fine." And proceeded to take a book out of my bag. See how brilliantly I dealt with the situation?
Well, it would have been brilliant if I hadn't have momentarily metamorphosed into a lobster, but we're not all perfect, are we? Not like Ophelia bloody Blake, who was currently probably snogging the face off of my cousin who had some strange status as a school heart throb. I reiterate: WHAT ABOUT THE NOSE-PICKING AND THE RUNNING AROUND NAKED?
Where is the justice in the world? I never picked my nose when I was little (as far as I know – I was too scared that it would fall off if I even touched it) or ran around our garden naked. I was a good girl! For crying out loud, I could read by the time I was eighteen months old! I behaved well all the way through my junior years when my mum and dad taught me stuff (oh how eloquent of you Rose – they taught you "stuff") and it's not me, it's my stupid cousin who has the bloody heart throb thing going on!
Not that I particularly want to be a heart throb, per se, I just kind of want to be... fancied. By a few people. Who are actually cool, not weird. Personally, I feel sorry for Lysander Scamander, as Lily (Potter) loves him and has done ever since she met him, at birth. Lily herself is really pretty – she has copper-coloured hair, not carrot-coloured like mine, and large emerald eyes. According to Uncle Harry and everybody who meets her, she looks exactly like Uncle Harry's mum, another Lily, who died when Uncle Harry was one. They all say that Uncle Harry looks like his dad, another James, too. Apparently James, as in my cousin, was named after Uncle Harry's dad and his godfather, Sirius Black. They were both mischievous, which shows. James is the most mischievous person I have ever met, bar Al, who, once he gets going, can be really bad when he wants to be. Not naughty, just – bending the rules slightly. And obviously, in my new role as Prefect – yes, I, Rose Monica Weasley, am a Gryffindor Prefect! – I can't aid him on these little escapades. Instead I sit in the common room, doing work and the like. It's quite depressing how little of a life I have, to be honest. Maybe that's why I don't possess a heart throb status like James, who has the biggest social life out of anybody I've ever met.
"Er, Rose?" Albus said, waving a hand in front of my face. I snapped out of my reverie where I was having an internal rant at the beautiful people of the world and looked up at my cousin and his best (male) friend, Scorpius. Who also happens to be a Gryffindor (breaking his family tradition of being in Slytherin, just like Uncle Harry's godfather Sirius Black) – so there's no escaping him.
Not that I'd want to escape from him. He's a perfectly amiable boy – bloody hell, I sound like I've swallowed an Austen novel.
"Yes?" I answered, putting my book down.
"Are you sure you're okay? You were kind of, um, muttering to yourself. Rather furiously," Al said in a worried voice, eyeing me as if I was about to explode into flames.
I was MUTTERING? Bloody hell, they could probably hear my internal rant that was probably not internal at all, it was EXTERNAL! That meant they probably heard how I was jealous of James because he was a heart throb! And that I never picked my nose or ran around naked as a child! Actually, that's not shameful, that's a good thing.
"Like I said before, I'm fine," I told him. NOT. I was so not fine. I was too busy being annoyed at James and his similar beautiful people. It was like they were a separate species to me – which they probably were. It would explain the candy-floss hair and the thighs and bum that magically expand every time I touch a piece of cake.
"What are you reading?" Scorpius questioned. I could tell he was only trying to make some sort of conversation to prevent me from going weird on them again. He was okay, he hadn't fallen in MY lap, no, I had to fall in HIS lap. Stupid boy. Stupid door. Stupid lap of the stupid boy that was so stupidly comfortable.
"Pride and Prejudice," I informed him, holding up the cover.
"Great book," he mused.
"Have you actually read it?" I said, snorting with laughter. Scorpius didn't read for fun. In fact, Scorpius didn't even read for school activities if he didn't have to. He could read, obviously, but he just preferred to do other stuff.
And my snort of laughter probably wasn't the most ladylike in the world, adding to the whole horrific candy floss hair and thighs and bum enlarging thing. I was just one big CLOWN.
"I have!" Al piped up, sitting up for the first time of the journey. We were now past the outskirts of London and were chugging through rolling countryside. It was quite picturesque out of the window, actually. I loved the countryside – it was so clean and naturally beautiful.
"Are you sure?" I asked sceptically. Al didn't really tend to read either, in fact, he used to get annoyed by how much I read.
"Well, I read the back cover," he said defensively, and me and Scorpius both chuckled. Actually genuinely laughing, together. Well, it was something.
"I read more than that, I read the whole thing," Scorpius informed us both.
"When?" I demanded, my jaw practically dropping off. Scorpius had read this book? My favourite book in the whole wide world?
"This summer," he replied, looking kind of taken aback by the expression of my face. To be honest, if I had been him, I would have been.
"You – read – this – book – in – the – summer?" I gasped. Al was giving me strange looks now. Understandably.
"Yes," Scorpius said slowly as if talking to an idiot – this wasn't the first time this had happened this morning, I hasten to add. "I do read, Rose."
"I know," I quickly said, covering up the fact that I had just observed he didn't tend to read if he could get away with it.
"In fact, you rabbit on about that woman, Jane Austen, so much, I read all of her books in the summer. I was a bit bored. Only took me a couple of days. They're quite good, actually," he grinned. I was actually stunned. Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy (I sympathise with him about his middle name – mine's Monica, which is quite nice, compared to Hyperion anyway – what were his parents THINKING?) had actually taken MY, Rose Monica Weasley's, advice.
This was a moment to be recorded for the history books. Nobody ever took my advice, especially not Scorpius. They did if it was to do with answering a question in class, but not on life lessons and stuff like books to read. If they did, everybody I had ever spoken to, bar any Muggles, would have read Hogwarts: A History. And everybody would have read every single book written by Jane Austen – and some of Charles Dickens. It was my life goal to read every single book by him.
Some life goal, I hear you say. It is. He was a genius. END OF.
"Are you kidding me?" I said after a couple of seconds.
"No, Rose," he said in that slow patronising voice again, but I didn't care.
"Which was your favourite?" I quizzed him.
"Mansfield Park, probably," he replied. I was pleased. It was my second favourite book by her!
"Who was your favourite character?" I persisted.
"What is this Rose, twenty questions?" Al interjected. He was only jealous because he had not taken the initiative to read anything by the fabulous Jane.
"Yes – who is it?" I asked impatiently.
"Probably... Edmund Bertram," he answered slowly, but this time he wasn't being condescending, he was being contemplative. "He seemed nice but a little dense sometimes."
"He does, doesn't he?" I replied, happy that Scorpius and I actually had a topic we could converse about together. Al was looking a bit put out, but that was his problem.
"Can we talk about something else?" Al whined ten minutes later after I had just given Scorpius a detailed analysis of Edmund Bertram's character. "How about... Quidditch?" he suggested. Instantaneously him and Scorpius went off on a Quidditch-related tangent and I returned to my book, struggling to process what Scorpius had just told me.
I was thinking about it continuously for about half an hour, right until the trolley lady came in and knocked on the door, accompanied by her customary, "Anything from the trolley, dears?"
Al, in his usual insatiable state, purchased a large proportion of the food available, leaving very little for the rest of the train. He spread it out all across the seats of the train for me and Scorpius to dip into. The two boys went straight for the Cauldron Cakes and Chocolate Frogs, but I was rummaging through the hoard to try and find something that was remotely low fat. As previously explained, my body has this weird reaction to chocolate and cake – i.e. it expands. A lot. My mum says it doesn't mean I'm fat, it's because I have a curvy shape and then she attempted to compare me to Scarlett Johansson, this muggle actress, but then I reminded her I have a non-existent chest so there wasn't much of a similarity. My mum has a great shape, curvy but still slim at the same time, and I eat exactly the same as her! Perhaps it's because I'm a midget (well, compared to the rest of my stupidly gigantic family), but I didn't want to end up with an arse the size of Australia, which I was dangerously close to getting. It had gotten to the point that I didn't need a cushion to sit on chairs any more.
THAT WAS HOW BAD IT WAS.
"What are you doing, Rose?" Al asked, looking at me weirdly again. I swear all that boy ever does is look at me weirdly. This must have been the five hundredth and fifty-fifth time he'd done it this morning.
"Looking for something slightly healthy," I muttered back, lifting up a packet of Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans. The two boys exchanged glances and then – burst out laughing. They were laughing at me. ME! And my attempt at being healthy! Well, they could get clogged up arteries if they wanted (not that they knew what arteries were) but I, for one, wasn't. Although, technically, I was eating healthily to try and reduce the size of my arse, not de-clog my arteries. (Note to self: Look in a dictionary in the school library to see if "de-clog" is an actual word.)
"Why?" Scorpius choked between guffaws.
"Because I want to eat healthily!" I retorted, casting aside more and more of the stuff Al had bought. They obviously didn't understand the concept of healthy food on the Hogwarts Express, honestly. And the government were supposed to be tackling obesity!
"What's the point?" Al grinned, stuffing about six Chocolate Cauldrons into his mouth at once. Let me tell you it is not a pretty sight. Auntie Ginny, having grown up with six older brothers, is pretty hot on table manners (like my mum) so he normally does it to annoy her, and me, because he knows I find it disgusting.
I wrinkled my nose and decided to explain to these boys the concept of healthy eating. "Well, Al, we have this thing called a heart. It pumps blood around our bodies. We also have arteries, vessels that take the blood away from the heart. If we eat lots of fatty food, our arteries get clogged up with stuff and the heart has to work twice as hard to pump the blood around our bodies, which could resort in heart failure or a heart attack."
"Nice," he commented before exploding with laughter yet again, "what's the point of having archies? Anyway, if my archies get filled up with fatty gunk then the Healers at St Mungo's will fix me up."
"Arteries, Al, ar-te-ries," I said, correcting him.
"Whatever," he smiled audaciously before ravenously tucking into a pumpkin pasty.
"I'm going to find Pearl," I declared, standing up and almost falling over (fortunately I steadied myself using Al's head instead of going into Scorpius' lap, so I think I managed to stay smooth) and exiting the carriage.
Pearl Isaacs was my other friend in Gryffindor, one of the two girls I shared my dorm with. There was three of us in our year, fifth year, in our house. Pearl and I got on really well, and she was the person I talked too about girly stuff (I seriously need to find a better word than "stuff"!), boys and the like. Al didn't want to hear me drone on about boys I found good-looking, but I offered him girl advice. Not that he really needed it – he was tall and handsome, and girls flocked to him. Just like his older brother really, but Al wasn't as cocky. Thank Merlin – I loved James, but he was a bit too much to handle sometimes.
I found Pearl sitting in a carriage with a mixture of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, plus our other dorm mate, Esther Clarkson. Pearl and I never really talked to Esther that much as she had a boyfriend in Ravenclaw and spent practically every waking moment with him, so she came into the dorm after we had gone to sleep and left before we had woken up. She seemed a nice girl, but we had never really gotten to know her.
"Hi Rose!" Pearl said happily as I came into the carriage. The girls all moved up to make room for me and instantly started asking questions about my summer holidays and whether I'd had a good time.
"I had a really cool time, thanks," I said, leaning back against the wall of the carriage comfortably.
"How's all of your family?" a gossipy-but-nice girl called Lottie asked inquisitively.
"They're all... fine," I replied, mentally going through every single one of my family. "Teddy and Victoire got engaged just after we broke up for the summer."
A loud chorus of "Awwwww..." filled the carriage.
"Was it romantic?" Pearl questioned, listening avidly.
"They were on holiday in Paris and Teddy apparently proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower at midnight," I quickly filled them in. I could have padded out the story a lot more – Victoire certainly did whenever she told it to anybody. She would start by describing the grand hotel Teddy had booked them into, the fabulous meal he took her to and then the romantic walk they had shared through the streets of Paris on a perfect summer evening. They had wandered towards the Eiffel Tower and decided to go up there – they reached the top and at the very moment the clock struck twelve, Teddy got down on one knee, having already given her a red rose, and produced a blue velvet box with a diamond engagement ring inside. She had tearfully accepted his proposal and they had kissed under the moonlight before returning to their hotel. That was when she would abruptly stop and start eyeing the children in the room nervously. Molly and Lucy, Uncle Percy and Auntie Audrey's daughters, were thoroughly mesmerized by the story and demanded that Victoire retell it every time they saw her.
"That's so beautiful!" Esther commented, offering me the box of Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans she had evidently bought for the journey. I politely declined and began to listen to what the other girls were talking about. Then I practically vomited when I realised they were discussing how hot Albus had become over the summer.
"Albus?" I said in shock as they had just gotten onto the subject of his Quidditch-honed body.
"Sorry, Rose, I bet it's weird for you, us talking about your cousin like that!" Lottie apologised.
"Scorpius Malfoy is pretty gorgeous too..." Esther said wickedly.
"What about Mark?" Pearl pointed out. Mark was Esther's boyfriend.
"He's still the most beautiful boy I ever saw," Esther replied, "but Scorpius has become one singularly hot boy. Don't you agree, Rose?"
All of the heads in the carriage turned to look at me, waiting patiently for my response. Scorpius? Well, his lap was comfy if you fell in it, but that didn't exactly qualify as him being HOT! I thought he had always been good-looking, with his pale blonde hair, snow white skin and those piercing silver-blue eyes. In fact, he was more than good-looking. He was absolutely stunning.
"I suppose," I shrugged, my attempt at being nonchalant passable enough to persuade Esther, Lottie and the others, but not Pearl, who raised an eyebrow at me questioningly.
Just because I had confessed to having a teeny tiny crush on him in first year didn't mean I still had romantic feelings for him! I mean, come on, I was eleven – I still believed that Father Christmas was real! Now I knew (from hiding behind the sofa when I was thirteen) that it was actually my mum and dad who put out the presents when Hugo and I had gone to bed.
There was no way on this earth I was attracted to Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy – I mean, come on! Rose Monica Malfoy? That sounds –
Actually, it sounds quite good. SHUT UP BRAIN!