"I thought we were friends, Scorp."

"Friends? Why would I be friends with you, Weasley?"

His cronies laugh and even though he's grinning at them, his eyes give him away.

"You're not even half the actor you pretend to be. Stop being such a jerk, Malfoy."


They'd been together since months now and somehow it felt like eternity to him because he knew everything about her. Then again time had passed so fast. It felt like they'd started dating only yesterday.

"Time's making a fool of us, Rosie." He told her one day and she smiled and agreed with him because really? She felt the same way he did.


"I didn't do it for you, Malfoy."

"I know. But thank you anyway."

They sat in silence.

"I'm sorry, you know?"

"What for, Malfoy?"

"You know exactly what for. I just... The world wasn't ready for a Malfoy and a Weasley together."

"The world would have got used to it. That's not an excuse."

"I know. I'm still sorry though. I never stopped loving you, you know?"


"This was literally the worst idea ever."

"You don't fucking say. I bet Rose - " I begin but Al interrupts me.

"Oh fuck, no, not again, Scorp! I really don't want to drink any of this stuff anymore." Al throws his bottle away from him.

"Like seriously, Scorp, had I known before just how much you talk about Rose, I'd never joined this game."

"I don't talk about her that much." I defend myself but Al just looks at me with raised eyebrows.


"I saw the way you look at her." She whispered. "It's the way you used to look at me, you know?"

He couldn't answer. He couldn't tell her she was right. He wasn't ready to hurt her even more.

"It's over, Scorp. I really can't live like this anymore. I love you, probably always will, but I can't fight anymore. Not with you and not for you either."

"Rose, please..."

"Don't lie to me. We both know I don't deserve that."


People smile and take pictures and hug each other and laugh and make jokes. He doesn't feel like being a part of it.

This isn't a day to be happy, he thinks. Rose is leaving. She won't come back, no matter what she was saying and promising right now. She won't come back. She would never lie next to him again. Suddenly there's a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes.

"Can we talk?" He nods but avoids her eyes nevertheless. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. He repeats this in his head over and over like a mantra.

"I love you, Scorp. You're my best friend. And I wanted you to know that. But I love myself more, I want to see the world. I have to leave, staying here is killing me." She's crying now. On any other day he'd have hugged her to calm her down but under the given circumstances it seems almost inappropriate not to cry.

"I can't let go of you this easily. You'll never come home again." He feels tears running down his face now, too. He wonders if he looks as perfect and heartbreakingly beautiful when he cries as Rose does.

She doesn't deny his accusation. "It never felt like home to me."


"I feel empty."

Her first words since years. One would think that after all that time she'd say hello first. Back then, in Hogwarts, she'd told me once that she hated small talk though.

"If you want something just ask for it!" She had angrily snapped and I hadn't know what to answer at that time. I don't know what to answer right now either. I want to hold her so close that she won't be able to break ever again.

"I missed you," I tell her instead. It's not a lie, I did miss her a lot. Old Rose would have laughed at that. Would have told me to stop being so stupid. New Rose doesn't do that. Instead she raises her head and looks at me.

"Good for you." She says. I wonder when her voice became that cold and nonchalant. I wonder when she stopped caring.

I want to shake her and ask her when and why we stopped being friends. I still want to hug her so tight that she won't be able to breath, too. I can't do that. None of it. So I walk away.

For a moment I think she'll call me or run after me but she doesn't and I don't turn around. I wonder if we'll be awkward now. If we'll avoid each other and then one day we won't have to anymore. One day we'll pretend the other one doesn't exist and never meant anything to us.

I don't want that. I don't want to just stop speaking with her. I want to hug her. As I turn around she's still standing there. Her gaze on the floor, her head down, hidden behind her long red hair.

"Rose." I shout and then I run and I literally jump at her and we fall on the floor together.

"Ouch." She says but she's laughing and smiling.

"I really did miss you, you know?"

"I know, Scorp." I missed you, too. She doesn't say it but I still know she thinks it.


Whispers. Hisses.

His family is full of deatheaters. He'll turn out just like them. What does she see in him? He probably just likes her for her fame. I wouldn't date him if you gave me money for it.

"Good thing it's me dating him then, right?" Rose. She interrupts them and hand in hand we walk away.


Rose. Golden Girl. The calm before the storm. Beautiful. Pale skin. Freckles. Fragile. Rain and freedom. A dying flower.


He doesn't remember when he started to love her. Thinking about it, it seems impossible that there ever was a time he didn't love Rose Weasley.


I still can't believe he's gone. I need him. They say time will heal my wounds. Time will go by, Rosie. Life's too slow without him. I need him. I still crave for his touch and voice and presence. It still feels like he's here.

He was my everything and I was his. Why did he leave me? It's so unfair. We hadn't enough time. I wanted to give my whole life to him but I never got the time. We were supposed to die in each other's arms but he left. Why did he leave me?

I'll do everything to not fight with him anymore. He's an asshole. He misses him just as much as I do. He's such a macho. He never helps in the household. I don't understand why he ever was his best friend. He's a pain in the arse. You're breaking up with me, Rose? I'm sorry. Can we still be friends? Yes.

We had that house in the mountains. I sometimes go there. I remember how he proposed to me. We were sitting on a bench under the trees by the lake. We were so young. I miss him. I hear our song all the time. I look at old pictures. I try to live in the past but even there he's gone. My memories of him are fading. Don't you worry, Rosie. It'll get better. It wont. I'm drowning without him.

They say I shouldn't still love him. I always will. I'll never love anyone the way I loved him ever again. I can't go home anymore. My life is a mess. I'm not ready to clean anything up. I'll always love him. I need time to miss him, to smell his clothes, to cry in the shower, to look at old photographs. I'm still in love with him and I always will be.


Seven Times Scorpius kisses Rose

The first time he kisses her, it's a quick peck on her pink lips when they're eleven. Afterwards she blushes furiously and he runs away.

The second time he kisses her, he holds her hand and looks into her eyes and then he leans in to kiss her slowly. Afterwards they dance for hours and he swirls her around the dance floor.

The third time is just a few hours later when he kisses her goodnight. He's thirteen and his lips tingle. He can't stop smiling the next weeks.

The fourth time he kisses her when he's fifteen and she (finally) broke up with her boyfriend. When he asks her to be his girlfriend she says yes and he swears to god, he's never been that happy.

The fifth time he kisses her angrily. They've only been together for a week now and she just told him she won't be there for a year. He puts all his anger into the kiss and afterwards he loses his virginity.

The sixth time they kiss when she visits him in the Christmas holidays. She looks heartbreakingly beautiful and he cries when she leaves again.

The seventh time they kiss when she comes back to England after that year and they hold each other close and only stop when the train arrives in Hogsmeade.


Rose Weasley is the most liked girl in school. For years she's content with that but the older she gets the more she gets the feeling of missing something. Yes, everybody likes her but does anyone love her? She tells this to her best friend and he laughs at her. "Don't be stupid." He says. "I've been in love with you since ages." He kisses her and that's when she realized she's finally found what she's been looking for.


"'People fall out of love all the time, Scorpius.' That's what he said to me, Rose. They're getting a divorce and that's how he explains it. I..."

"We won't. Fall out of love, I mean." She takes my hand and squeezes it.

"How do you know? How can you promise me we'll still be friends in 10 or 20 or 50 years?"


He's twelve when he starts to notice and admire girls and at the beginning he tries to be cool and make them come to him but a few years later he realises it's so much easier to just tell a girl you like her and then, when he's 24, he asks Al if he can date Rose and Al says that he shouldn't be the one to be asked.

Scorpius is ashamed for a week afterwards because if his parents found out he behaved like an old gentleman in the 1900s, treating a girl like her cousin's property, they would be so disappointed.

He can't look her in the eye for months and suddenly he's twelve again and doesn't know how to act around her and it doesn't help that she comes home one night and shags a girl, even though Al laughs when he tells him because really everyone would expect it to be the other way around. Scorpius as the knight in shining armor and Rose as the bookworm damsel.

And one day Rose comes home and he finally, finally tells her everything and she, too, laughs (maybe it's a Weasley gene to always laugh?) and says that she'd love to date him because he's smart and she quite likes him.