"Fool For Love" – Chapter 4
Like Haley predicted, Slytherin beat Gryffindor that Saturday during the season's second-to-last Quidditch Match. (They were supposed to play against each other in November, but due to James and Fred getting three months of detentions for exploding all the toilets on the third floor of the castle, the match was rescheduled). Albus – like his father before him – was too good of a Seeker to lose to Michael Harper. Though both James and Haley fought furiously for the win, like Haley had said, with Albus and Scorpius and that strangely large Slytherin, they were pretty much unbeatable.
"You jinxed it!" James pointed a finger at Haley after Madame Seginus blew her whistle, indicating the end of the game.
"I did not," she snapped back, pushing his finger away. "You were the one that only scored six goals this game! Your worst game all season."
"Please," he growled, "if you hadn't let Malfoy score all those points, we would have won!"
"Do not blame the loss of this match on me," she snapped, getting dangerously red.
"I'm not blaming you," he snapped right back. "I'm just saying."
"You were not just saying," she said, poking the end of her broom into James' stomach with each syllable. "You were blaming."
"Ouch!" He rubbed his stomach. "Bloody woman."
"How long do you think we should let them go on before we stop them?" Dominique whispered to me.
"Soon. Haley's pretty feisty with that broom of hers."
Dominique stepped forward to separate them. James then huffed and stomped away, rather immaturely, to go find Fred.
"That was entertaining," I said.
Dominique nodded while Haley glared.
***
"Enjoy watching us kick your House's arse?" Scorpius asked, leaning nonchalantly on the wall.
"I don't know why you lean against walls when you have two working legs," I said, ignoring his question. "It doesn't even look good."
He smirked, "Think whatever you want to think, Rose, but I look amazing leaning against walls."
"Yes, amazing to brainless bimbos that only care about looks."
"Ouch." He put a hand to his heart, "That hurt."
"You'll get over it."
He smiled.
"What?" I asked after a few moments of silence.
"You're amazing, Rose Weasley. Do you realize that?"
"Well, I certainly like to think so," I said, feeling my cheeks burn. "Why do you say so?"
He was quiet for a moment. "You give off that vibe," he decided.
"An amazing vibe?" I asked, grinning.
"Something like that."
"Well, thank you."
"You're welcome."
I glanced at my watch. "Well, look at the time. The entire morning wasted on a Quidditch Game that we didn't even win."
Scorpius grinned cockily.
"I should go catch up on homework."
"I'll see you later?" He asked.
I nodded, "I'll see you later."
And as I turned and walked down the hall, I found myself looking forward to seeing Scorpius later.
***
Haley slumped into her seat, putting her head in her hands. "I think I'm dead."
Dominique agreed beside her. "I love Neville and everything, but is it me, or is he just becoming more boring by the minute?"
"I know what you mean," Hugo said, "the other day, for example, he talked for an hour about puffapods, and not even about the entire falling on the ground and becoming flowers thing – just the pod."
Lily nodded. "It was pretty tortuous."
James grinned. "I'm so glad that I failed by Herbology OWL, so I don't even have to take that class anymore."
"Lucky," Haley muttered. "I think I used up at least 3 rolls of parchment just doodling."
"We have that class next," Albus said, indicating himself and Scorpius, as his face fell.
"I would skip it," I advised.
They all stopped and looked at me.
"Did Rosie Weasley advise her fellow students to skip class?!" James asked in shock, he grabbed his throat. "The apocalypse – is c-coming!" he gasped out.
I hit him with my roll, glaring as Albus and Scorpius also grabbed their throats along with James.
Dominique sighed, "Do you three have to be so immature?"
"Yes," Albus replied.
"It's built into our systems," James said.
"And besides, it's fun," Scorpius grinned.
Haley shook her head. "You guys are very dumb."
The next fifteen minutes were rather disastrous. Hugo, always having admired his older cousins – especially James, had also started to grab his throat and made, what he thought, were apocalyptic sounds. Lily, sitting beside him, smacked him – rather hard, I might add – on the head.
Hugo then let out a loud howl of pain and knocked his pumpkin juice all over Dominique and her wand which seemed to fizzle a little bit, which resulted in her jumping up and grabbing her wand away, and well, that lunch ended rather chaotically.
***
"I told you that you were freaking out over absolutely nothing at all," I told Dominique as we walked out of Professor Swishenflick's office. "Your wand is fine."
"Did you see the smoke that was coming out of it at lunch today?" She asked.
I laughed. "Who knew that mahogany mixed with dragon heartstring reacted with pumpkin juice?"
"No one," she smiled. "They should put a warning on the label or something. Beware: Smokes when pumpkin juice is spilled on it."
We passed Scorpius in the hall.
"How's the wand, Weasley?" he asked Dominique.
"Fine!" she waved it around. "It's supposed to smoke when "exposed to pumpkin juice," she quoted our Charms professor.
He nodded, "Good."
"Want to study tonight?" I asked.
"Sorry, Rose," he said. "I have detention."
"With who?"
"Professor Longbottom," he made a face. "I swear, that guy really hates me. My father was probably really horrible to him when we were younger."
Dominique and I smiled, remembering the stories that Neville told us about the infamous Draco Malfoy.
"What did you do?" Dominique asked.
"Fell asleep," he shrugged. "You guys were right, possibly the most boring lecture I ever had to endure."
We looked at him sympathetically.
"Well look for me if you get out early enough," I told him. "I'll probably be at the library or the common room late."
"I will," he said. "Oh! And that seventh year Gryffindor poof-"
"Andrew Creevey?"
He nodded, "Yeah. That one."
"He's gay?" Dominique asked turned to me, covering her mouth.
"You didn't know?" I asked.
"No!" she exclaimed. "I was going to ask him out next-"
Scorpius cleared his throat. "Creevey told me to tell you that the password to the Gryffindor password has changed."
"To what?" I asked.
He shrugged, "He refused to tell me, which is stupid because I'll just find out." He looked at his watch, "and now, I am officially late to my detention."
He gave us a quick wave and dashed down the stairs to the Herbology greenhouses.
As Dominique mumbled to herself about how embarrassing it would have been if she actually had asked him out, I found myself watching Scorpius leave.
***
A few days later, as I was studying with Scorpius one afternoon for our OWLs, which were just around the corner, when he asked me the question that I had dreaded for weeks.
"Do you ever think of that night?"
I looked up, not answering his question. Truthfully, a week after it happened, all I thought about was that, but then there was period of time where it seemed like a faraway past – something that wasn't really there, a dream that I knew happened. It's not really something a girl would forget, but it was something that I eventually got over.
"Do you?" He repeated.
"Why do you ask?"
"I'm just … curious."
"Well, you know what they say," I said.
"Curiosity killed the cat?"
"Exactly," I nodded.
He leaned back in his chair. "So it's either you think about it all the time or it's that you've forgotten about it. It's lost in your brain – pushed to the back of it."
I bit my lip, "I haven't forgotten about it."
He seemed pleased. "Do you think about it?"
"Sometimes," I answered truthfully.
"Do you ever regret it?" He asked.
I thought for a moment, "I did regret it, I used to wish that it didn't happen. Now, though, it just sort of seems like a part of my life that I grew from. I guess you could think of it like a … learning experience."
"A learning experience?" His eyebrow rose, cutting the tension a little.
I smiled, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. "A learning experience."
"Did you learn a lot?"
I laughed. "I'm not answering that."
He smiled along with me, turning back to his book. "For what it's worth, though," he said, looking up again, "I think about it too."
After a minute of silence, I spoke again. "I'm glad we're friends."
"I'm glad too."
I smiled at that, and turned back to my book.
***
The following morning, we received our OWL schedules.
And thus, began a series of anxiety attacks and screaming sessions that I went through every year when final exams rolled through. Scorpius, never really speaking to me before this year, didn't know that near the end of each school year, I would get extremely moody and would yell at anybody and everybody.
Albus had warned him about my tantrums, I was informed, but he just shrugged the warning off and claimed that, "Rose would never yell at me."
Sadly, he was wrong. During the free period after Potions that day, he was quizzing me on the side-effects of amorentia when he witnessed my first of this year.
"You talk too slow," I snapped. "How the hell am I going to go through an entire year's worth of study material with you talking so slow?"
He looked shocked, at first, as if he had been slapped, but he bounced back quickly. "I'm sorry, would you like me to talk faster?" He asked, starting to talk unreasonably fast.
I glared. "Stop being an arsehole, Malfoy. The goal here is for me to study not for you to prove a point."
"Oh, well, maybe if you stopped complaining so much, Weasley, maybe if you stopped bitching you would learn more."
"I am not bitching."
"Really?" He feigned shock. "Because, to me, it seems that you are, in fact, bitching."
"This is nothing, Malfoy!" My voice rose. "Do you want to hear me bitch and complain because you have heard nothing yet. Nothing!"
Haley and James, hearing us, quickly rushed over and dragged him a safe distance away from me.
"I see you've met the wonderful she-witch that takes over the body of our wonderful Rosie at the end of each year," James said, grinning. "She's pleasant, huh?"
"Absolutely charming," he said, glaring at me.
"I can hear you!" I called to them. They didn't lower their voices.
"Sarcasm only gets her madder," Haley told him.
"Want some advice?" James asked.
"Please."
"Don't study with her. Rose at the end of the year, especially with OWLs coming up is just something you want to avoid."
"He's right," Haley said.
Scorpius nodded.
"It's best just to keep her distance. Let her study alone."
"And if you try studying with her?"
"Well, in third year Dominique was helping her study, she came back with a black eye and, this is completely true, a chunk missing from her arm," James said.
"A chunk?" Scorpius asked.
"We never asked what happened and she never told us," Haley said.
"We just assumed that Rose bit her or something," James said with a smile.
Okay, so now I knew why they all avoided me at this time of year. I knew that I was extremely rude to everyone before exams, but I guess it was that Dominique thing that really scared them away. It wasn't my fault. Sometimes, when I'm really stressed about something, I will take it out on anything. It's just something I do.
So, for the remainder of the week, I studied alone. Occasionally someone would poke their head in to the library or the common room to make sure I was eating and I hadn't passed out from stress yet, but for the most part, I was by myself.
Which, honestly, I didn't really mind. When OWLs came around the next Monday, I was almost positive that I would get A's and O's on the classes that I was interested in taking the following year.
See? Who says studying didn't pay off?
***
The day OWLs were over, I was overjoyed – ecstatic even. I even decided to eat dinner in the Great Hall, and to say sorry for yelling at Scorpius I had even taken a rather bold move – sitting next to him at the Slytherin table.
It always seemed fine to eat lunch with other houses, but at dinner, the rules were different – everyone sat at their own House's tables and that was that. So when I took a seat beside Scorpius, he choked on the glass of tomato juice he was drinking (something I always teased him about – I mean, really, tomato juice?).
"What the hell are you doing?" He asked, taking a napkin off of Albus's plate and wiping his mouth.
"It's nice to see you too," I told him, smiling in greeting at Albus, who didn't smile back.
"You realize what table you're sitting at, right?" He asked, as if I were stupid.
"No, I didn't," I said sarcastically. "I just decided to sit at the table with all the black robes with Slytherin crests and green lining because they just looked so darn pretty."
"No need to get snarky," Scorpius said.
"And we happen to like our robes very much, don't we?" Albus said.
Scorpius nodded, running a hand down the lining of his robes, "Yes, we do."
"What are you doing, Rosie?" I heard Dominique's voice from behind me. "You do realize what table you're sitting at, right?"
"Yes, Dominique, I realize what table I'm sitting at."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Yeah," Albus chimed in. "You sitting at this table during dinner is really wigging me out."
"It's very weird," Scorpius said. "I don't think any House other than Slytherin, much less Gryffindor, has ever sat at this table."
"Should I leave?" I asked, getting rather annoyed.
"Please," Albus said. "You're making us all very uncomfortable."
Okay, so I haven't eaten dinner in the Great Hall for months, at least, and I get kicked off the table I was planning on sitting at?
Do you see why I never sit in the Great Hall?
So, after much less of a fight I should have put up, I went back to the Gryffindor table.
***
"Sorry about the entire table thing," Scorpius told me the next day at breakfast.
I waved it off, "It's fine."
"Well, we should have been nicer," he said.
"Hey, I'm sure if you sat at the Gryffindor table at dinner, you would have been kicked off too."
"By James or someone, though, not you," he said.
"I probably wouldn't have even been eating at the Gryffindor table anyways."
He smiled, then reached into his bag. "Well, to make up for it," he pulled out a green apple.
"Ooh!" I took it, excitedly. "Thanks!"
He smiled. "Forgive me?"
"Of course!" I smiled. "Forgive me about the studying and the yelling thing?"
"You were stressed," he said. "Completely understandable. And really, if you should be apologizing to anyone, wouldn't it be to Dominique?"
"That was two years ago!" I defended myself.
"Okay, okay," he laughed. "Fine then, truce?"
I nodded, "Truce."
***
"Prefect duties for the end of the year," Winston Shaw, our Head Boy, said starting to read from his list.
Honestly, I enjoyed being a prefect. It looked great on a job resume and it came with a shiny badge, and though others may say different, there wasn't much work involved.
Albus groaned from beside me and mumbled something under his breath.
"Your utmost priority is making sure the first years know where to go tomorrow, the last day. Follow them, if you must, drag them to the trains. Second, make sure your commons rooms are in good shape – no one forgets anything, etc. Thirdly, there will be a patrol later on tonight and early tomorrow morning – check your shifts on the list."
Albus snickered beside me, poking me and pointing to a Ravenclaw girl scribbling madly on her notepad the instructions he had given us.
I elbowed him and said, "Be nice."
He continued to laugh. "Check out her quill!" he whispered.
I glanced. Okay, so it was a bit extravagant – probably the size of Prof. Abbott's Transfiguration last essay, at least – and it was blue, silver, green, purple, and I thought I had spotted some yellow in there too, but Albus was still being rude, so I elbowed him again.
He rubbed his side and glared, but at least he had stopped.
"Questions anyone?" Shaw asked, looking around. "No? Then get to it!" and he stepped down from the pedestal he was standing on.
***
Author's Note: Okay, so I've been trying to develop the characters a little before I started getting into any plot development, and I feel, at this point, the characters are pretty developed (hopefully you feel so too) so the next chapter – plot development! :)
Also, thanks for the wonderful reviews!
Disclaimer: JKR owns all.