A/n: Thank you for all the love!

Chapter 4

We Live To Serve

"Rose Weasley, if you don't listen to me one more time, I swear I'll jump out that window and to my death."

"You can try, although I have a feeling you aren't going to be breaking anything more than your nose," Rose replied in a bored voice, as she signed off another sheet of parchment.

"You said you'd let me ramble after you got back, but you didn't, and it's tomorrow already!" Renée whined.

"You're making little to no sense, Ren. I think you should lay off the coffee for a little."

"You pinky promised!"

"Oh my, someone broke a pinky promise? That's positively horrible."

Rose sighed and glanced up as Scorpius poked his head into their office with a little wave.

"If you have time to loiter about and irritate other people, then do some work, Malfoy," Rose snapped, as Renée wailed and clung onto him, whining about how unfair Rose was. Scorpius chuckled and somehow convinced the brunette to go check on what the others were doing for a change of pace. He came and perched on the corner of Rose's desk and she squinted suspiciously up at him.

"What do you want?"

"There's no need to be snarky, Miss Weasley. I'm only here to check on your well-being."

"My well-being would be very well if you weren't here annoying me."

"But I promised your uncle—"

"Scorpius, if you have nothing better to do, then go annoy someone else, because I am not in the mood."

She ignored him and focused on her work, but it didn't stop her from feeling his presence beside her like a bubble of warmth radiating heat at her. After a minute, he started walking his fingers along the top of the stack she was signing.

"Why are you here?!" she yelled, throwing her quill down and looking at him with mounting irritation.

"To do this," he replied, and came to stand behind her. She was about to turn around and ask him what the bloody hell he thought he was doing, but he placed his hands on her shoulders and slowly used his thumbs to put pressure just under her shoulder blade. The relaxing effect was almost instantaneous, as her eyelids fluttered and she groaned softly, her rigid frame going limp from his ministrations.

He slowly massaged her shoulders, easing out the knots and kinks. Rose's head was hanging like a ragdoll's, her chin touching her chest and her eyes closed as she breathed deeply and let the tension leave her body under his skillful hands. It was probably twenty minutes later that he pulled his hands away and she immediately missed the warmth and pressure of them, causing her to flush and mentally chastise herself for reacting that way.

"Better?"

She jerked so violently, the back of her head bumping into his shoulder, as he leaned down and spoke softly in her ear. Rose nodded, her breathing suddenly shallow, as she felt heat rise to her face.

"Yes," she replied breathlessly, when he didn't seem like he would move away until he got a satisfying answer. "Much better, thank you."

"We live to serve," he murmured and she could feel his hot breath on her neck, making the hairs there stand on end. She cleared her throat, an indication for him to move away, but instead of taking the hint, he stretched his arm out and tapped the sheet she had been signing before he interrupted her. Rose unconsciously pulled away so he didn't touch her, especially since he was so close.

"Why have you signed this deal?" he asked nonchalantly, as though he was asking about the weather. More than slightly ruffled by how close he was, she looked where he was pointing and frowned. She re-read the clauses of the deal as his question echoed in her head. She sighed and leaned back, her head once again resting against his shoulder. She froze, her first instinct being to jerk away, but seeing how that would be awkward since she herself had sat back, she simply remained very still, mentally demanding that he move away instead.

But he only flipped the edge of the parchment up to examine the one below it and said in the same low voice, "This one as well. This project demands too much and offers little to no guarantee of its effectiveness."

He moved his head to look at the stack of the ones she'd already signed. "See, this one here as well. Rose, why are you blindly signing deals without even glancing at them?"

It wasn't because his shoulder was brushing against her hair when he moved. It wasn't because she could feel the heat from his body because he was so close. It wasn't even because the distance between them was highly inappropriate for the workplace. It was because when he had turned his head, his lips had touched her ear, and when he spoke, she could feel the vibration against her skin and it went through her like a jolt of lightening, like she was lying on one of those Muggle full-body-vibrating-massage-contraptions.

She squealed almost inaudibly and shrank away from him, her face burning. He must have noticed, because he immediately pulled back and reaching forward, collected all the sheets of parchment she had been signing away from her.

"This," he said, tapping them with his finger, "will be finished by me, while you go home and get some rest. Permission to use your signature?"

She didn't dare look at him because she knew her face was tomato red, and it reminded her of the times when they had been in school, and he had made fun of her endlessly for that. So she simply nodded, bent down to retrieve her shoes, and with a quiet goodnight, was out the door before he managed to stop her for something else.

She had always known it, but with the five years he had been away, she had let her guard down and gotten too used to a life where there was no Scorpius Malfoy constantly hovering over her and noticing the smallest of things; like how she could really use a de-stressing massage, or how she could use someone telling her to go rest because she'd done enough work.

It seemed like she'd have to be reminded again that her version of the horrid Malfoy boy had long since grown up into a trustworthy adult, who, although enjoyed poking fun at her, also knew exactly what to say to her and when to say it.

When Rose awoke, it was to the light of midday streaming in through the curtains and directly at her face. She groaned and sat up, momentarily disoriented as to which day of the week it was and what she was doing in bed so late. She remembered the previous night's – or rather, earlier that day's – happenings and groaned. She would have to deal with him every day of the year from now on and she wasn't quite sure if she was ready for that.

She walked into the office while reading through some files she'd been given on the way there. "Renée, have you catalogued—"

She stopped abruptly, both in what she was saying as well as her walking, as she stared at the scene inside the office.

Scorpius was sitting – or rather, reclining – in her chair and had pulled it away from her desk to face it toward the desk that was adjacent to hers and Renée's. It had originally been placed there for Scorpius's use, but for one or the other reason he had ended up with his own office and they now used the desk for other purposes.

Like how Renée was sitting on it with her feet dangling from the side and giggling.

The very fact that Renée Herington was giggling was more of a shock to Rose than how she and Scorpius were sitting so casually and chatting so amicably, like they were two normal people in a Muggle café in the middle of London, rather than two Division Heads in their office in the Ministry of Magic. Renée giggled again at something Scorpius had said and Rose found herself getting unnecessarily irritated by her silly girlish demeanor.

"Good afternoon. You seem to be having an awful lot of fun for two people who just pulled an all-nighter," Rose said in as normal a tone of voice as she could muster. Renée turned to her with an 'Oh!' and jumping off the desk, staggered and caused Scorpius to immediately reach forward and lay both hands on her waist to steady her. Renée giggled idiotically again and Rose frowned.

"Renée, how many cups of coffee have you gotten through since we last spoke?"

Renée placed her hands on Scorpius's arms as she swayed, and waggled her eyebrows at Rose.

"I've graduated," she slurred and Rose sighed and nodded. She wasn't about to deal with Renée's coffee-drunkenness that early in the workday.

"I don't even need cups anymore. I've moved on to bigger and badder things."

Even though her brain was telling her not to, Rose had to ask, "Like what?"

"Like really big mugs," Renée said in a slow, awed sort of voice, putting her hands together to show Rose exactly how big.

It was a good thing Renée made it a point to constantly remind Rose on a daily basis that, although she looked and behaved like the sophisticated heiress she was, her actual personality was that of a mischievous little girl who liked to get into no end of trouble. Especially when she was high on caffeine and lacked sleep.

"All right, little lady," Scorpius said, standing up and steering Renée toward the door. "I think it's time for your nap."

"I'm not a little lady and I don't nap!" came the indignant reply and Rose thanked Merlin that most of the heavy duty work began in the evening and continued through the night, meaning there wouldn't be many people from Renée's division to see her in her state. Scorpius was probably taking her to the temporary quarters at the end of the hall. It had been installed so the scientist wizards could take the occasional shut-eye in order to avoid constant explosions and fire-hazards that the Ministry had absolutely refused to pay for after the first two dozen times.

Sighing, Rose pulled her chair back to its place and plopped down on it, reaching for one of the towering stacks of parchment on her desk. As she flipped through them, making sure to glance at the clauses and conditions in small script, she noted that all the ones that were in that pile had her magical signature stamped on them and were deals that would actually work on a long time basis, unlike the ones she had mindlessly signed previously. Meaning, the smaller of the two piles to her left were the discarded deals and the three stacks to her right were probably all the reports from the previous days' data collection extravaganza.

She was half way through the sheets labeled 'important', when there was a knock on the door and a man in a white lab suit stuck his head in.

"Am I good," he asked in a nasal voice, pushing up his thick-rimmed glasses. Rose nodded.

"Yes, Professor Ming, how may I help you?"

"Ah," the man said, shuffling inside and burrowing in his pocket for something. Finding whatever it was he had been looking for – which was a small, crumpled piece of parchment – he hobbled over to her desk and stuck the small memo under her nose. Leaning back, she took it from him and scanned its contents with one glance. It seemed like a hurriedly scribbled permission slip to access the level 5 archives in the Ministry library. Rose frowned.

"What happened to the books in the department's library?"

"The ones we want are still in the main system, ma'am."

"Why?"

Ming shrugged like he couldn't care less about why the books were where they were as all he wanted was her seal of approval so he could get what he wanted, and get back to whatever it was he had been doing.

But it wasn't going to be that easy. Rose's frowned deepened and she placed the memo down on the desk with her hand on top of it, forcing Ming to direct his gaze toward her – which he did with some effort.

"Professor Ming, weren't all the data and books related to R&E supposed to be transferred into the department's library three months ago?"

Ming shrugged and stuck his pinky in his year, reaffirming his initial disinterest as to where his information came from. Rose pursed her lips at the man.

One of the reasons why Rose let Renée have her way and overdose on coffee and badmouth the older workers – with cause, of course – was because the members of the 'lab coat division', as everyone called them, were a pain in the arse to deal with. They cared about nothing and no one unless it had some direct connection to their work, and in a way, it handled half the problems that would have otherwise kept Rose busy, but that didn't mean they were any easier to deal with.

She nodded, knowing she wasn't going to get anywhere with the man and gave him what he wanted. He snatched the memo from her so eagerly, his small eyes shining, that she almost felt bad for getting irritated with him. That didn't solve her problem in the least though and she sighed, making a note on one of her note pads to remind Renée about the library transfer.

She had just immersed herself into another stack, when there were two sharp raps on the door. Biting back a sigh, she looked up with a small expectant smile and was rewarded with a pleasant shock. She sat back wide-eyed, her mouth hanging open, as three people walked in with big grins on their faces.

"Hi Rose! It's been so long!"

"What's with that face, eh? I'd think you'd be a little happier to see your beloved cousins."

"And your niece."

Rose stood up with an airy laugh and came around her desk to hug first Dominique, then Teddy and finally kiss the air on either side of Victoire's cheeks. "This is a pleasant surprise," she admitted, honestly happy to see the three of them.

"It is, isn't it," Victoire replied, as she bounced the bundle in her arms and pulled the fuzzy blankets apart. Rose peered into the face of a tiny, gurgling baby girl whose nose was currently morphing from a pig's snout to what looked like a button.

"She can't control it yet," Teddy informed Rose with a grin, brushing his daughter's forehead fondly.

"Oh, she's so darling," Rose cooed, as Victoire placed the baby girl in her arms. "Have you decided what to call her yet?"

"We were debating whether her late grandmother would actually want her granddaughter to be named after her, so after much consideration, we – or Gabriel, rather – decided to call her Adèle Nymphadora 'Weasley-Lupin'."

"Speaking of which, where is he?" Rose looked behind Dominique, expecting to see Victoire and Teddy's six-year-old son – Gabriel Remus 'Weasley-Lupin', as Teddy had jokingly called him once, and the name had unfortunately stuck – prance in at any moment.

Victoire waved her hand and said, "He's with mama and papa. He wanted to come see his aunt, but papa was going to take him to the zoo, so…" she trailed off, the reason excellent enough for why a six-year-old would choose the Muggle zoo over visiting his aunt in the Ministry. Adèle squealed in her arms and Rose swiveled from side to side, smiling at the tiny bundle of joy.

They were laughing as Adèle babbled and waved her little pudgy arms in the air, accidentally entangling her hands in Rose's hair and fascinated by its colour, changing her own blonde head to a violent shade of red.

"There you go, Weasley through and through," Teddy laughed, as his daughter gaggled and stared wide-eyed at Rose's curls in her tiny fists.

There was a light knock on the glass partition just behind Dominique and Rose looked up to see Scorpius standing there and making beckoning gestures at her. She shook her head slightly and turned back to her baby niece, when there was a sharper knock. This time the others noticed and looked up curiously. Rose pursed her lips at Scorpius and he raised his hands as though telling her that he'd tried to be polite and she'd disregarded him. Sighing, she placed Adéle in Victoire's arms and excused herself, feeling her cousins' eyes stare after her.

Curse the bloody glass.

"I should take you up on that suggestion of turning the partition to wood," she said in a low voice to Scorpius, as she motioned for him to walk with her. He snorted.

"Why? Because everyone can see how adorable you look when you're playing with a baby?"

Rose stopped abruptly, her face heating up. She grit her teeth and glowered at the blond. He looked at her with shining eyes, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" she bit out, crossing her arms and scowling up at him. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked over her shoulder at the trio still in the office.

"Won't your cousins be curious to know why I'm here?"

"Did you drag me out of there simply to make small talk?"

Scorpius chuckled lightly and shook his head. "No, actually. I'm here because Jordon told me that you were upset that the library transfer hadn't happened yet."

Rose frowned. Scorpius waved his hand distractedly and said, "Professor Ming. I ran into him on my back from tucking Renée in—" Rose had to roll her eyes at that, because knowing Renée, she'd probably had him do just that. "—and he was standing in the middle of the corridor, staring at a piece of parchment like he wasn't sure what it was. So I offered to clear his confusion and he told me what happened."

"You don't have to be bothered. Renée will take care of it once—"

"Doesn't she have that big meeting this evening?"

Rose tugged at her earlobe as her mind raced to ascertain that piece of information. She finally nodded, recollecting Renée mentioning a dinner with some foreign donors, a while back.

"You still do that thing," Scorpius interrupted her thoughts and she glanced up at him in confusion. He motioned to her ear. "That thing where you pull your ear when you're trying to remember something."

She blushed and dropped her hand. "Anyway," she said, "why the sudden enthusiasm to do something that anybody, especially you, would consider extremely boring?"

Scorpius shrugged. "You're unhappy because it isn't done, yes?"

"Yes," Rose said slowly, eyeing him suspiciously. He smiled at her and her heartstrings fluttered.

"There you have it, then."

"What," she said dumbly. "You're doing it simply to make my life easier?"

He titled his head, that same wide-eyed expression of innocence on his face. She was still debating on how she felt about it. Irritated or unamused.

"No ulterior motives? No underlying context? No hidden agendas?"

"My, Miss Weasley, do you trust your own right hand so little?"

"Renée is my right hand."

"Left hand, then."

Rose narrowed her eyes warily at him. She didn't believe his farce for a second. "What is it that you want, Scorpius?"

"In return for what?"

"In return for being so helpful."

"A pleasant smile in place of your constant frowns and a little less condescension would do the trick, I suppose," he said, tapping his chin as though he was actually considering it. She flushed and stuck her lower lip out. He chuckled.

"Really, Rose. I already finished whatever work I had, so I decided that going out of my way once in a while would do no one any harm. After all," he said, and bowing slightly, brought her hand to his mouth and blew against her knuckles, "we live to serve."

A/n: Two things I wanted to mention: One, Renée is characterized after one of my very good friends; she's all sophisticated on first glance but the more you get to know her, the more you realize how childishly mischievous she is.

Two, there will be one or two more incidents with coffee-induced highs, and I just wanted to tell you that getting so high on a few mugs of coffee is an actual thing, because it's based off my very own embarrassing intolerance to caffeine. So no, I am not exaggerating. Siriusly.

Writing Scorpius is killing me sometimes I have to take a break in between just to cool off and get my thoughts straight. Geez.

Tell me what you think because reviews are the Scorpius to my Rose!

Love~