The next few weeks were a mixture of paranoia and secrecy for Scorp.
He did everything in his power to avoid Ann and for the most part he succeeded. It turned out that she was just as displeased with the red hair as she was with the brown. Why, though he was yet to figure out.
Then the secrecy. Every night he was reading a page of Rose's contract seeking out loopholes and hidden messages. Once he could prove it was clean cut he was sure he could get Rose to sign.
So, under the covers that night he looked at the final page. It was the one detailing profit. Scorp was surprised to see that Draco was only asking for ten percent. Taking out the percent of money that would go to other people that left Rose with seventy percent. That was good, really, really good.
It couldn't be too hard to convince her… could it?
"NO!" screamed Rose, "No way in hell!"
"Come on Rosie. I looked over it, there are no loopholes, no hidden messages. Nothing." "I don't care. I won't sign that thing. Oh look here's Al!"
Scorp sighed, She was changing the subject. He turned, a fake grin slowly spreading across his face. But it stopped and receded into his face when he saw Al's companion.
Cassidy was on crutches with a thin bandage on her leg and a sour look on her face.
"What happened?" he exclaimed, fearing the answer.
"Fell out of a window," grumbled Cassidy, "I think Peeves pushed me. And it was the bloody third floor!"
"And all you got was a hurt leg?" he said disbelievingly.
She scowled at him, "I morphed to a cat a few seconds before impact. For the live of me I couldn't get to a bird. And F.Y.I (A/N: my bad attempt at American language. Sorry American readers.) the leg was broken! Madam Bartel patched me up but she wants me off my feet today. Which means no metamorphing."
Angrily, she turned and hobbled up the stairs to find Lily. On the way up she passed Ann. Scorp saw the look of surprise on Ann's face, then disappointment.
He knew what happened.
He jumped up and strode over to her.
"Did you do it?" he accused.
She gave him a look of pure innocence. "Do what?"
"Push Cassidy out the window" from behind him he heard Rose and Al gasp at the accusation.
Ann blinked at him. "She got pushed out of a window? Gosh, how horrible."
Anger seeped into Scorp's face. He opened his mouth to yell at her but…
"You evil little bitch!"
Rose beat him to it. She pushed Scorp to the side and squared off with Ann.
Ann looked stunned. "What?"
"You heard me! What right do you have to judge? One member of a family is not all of them!"
Ann narrowed her eyes. "Listen Weasley. This has nothing to with you. My revenge is on Dursleys and Potters."
"Well bad luck there. I'm related to the Potters by marriage. And your precious Scorpius (A/N: not a mistake. Ann still calls him that) is related by blood!"
Ann blinked and turned to Scorp. "Is that true?" she asked weakly.
He nodded. "Most British pure-blood families are related because we use to inter-breed. If you want to kill all Adam's relations you have an entire country to attack."
Ann shook with anger.
CRACK.
Rose's cheek blazed with a red palm print. Ann quickly grabbed her hair as well.
"You bitch!" screamed Ann. "This is all your fault!" she gave Rose a violent shake. "ALL OF IT!"
A crowd had gathered in the common room now but the people were unsure of to do.
"Stupefy!" yelled Scorp.
Ann went limp and dropped Rose's hair. Rose stumbled and Scorp caught her, leaving Ann to fall uselessly to the floor.
"You okay?" he asked as he lifted her to her feet.
"Yeah I think so." She muttered.
Scorp looked around nervously. "Who's up for pretending this never happened?"
The crowd mumble their agreement and started to shuffle away. Some of Ann's year mates came and picked her up and took her to her room.
Rose sank back into his chest sighing. "You think we should warn Professor Bloom about Ann?"
Scorp shook his head. "No. I want to avoid that; she doesn't deserve it after everything she's been through. Let's see if she backs off for awhile."
Rose pushed away from him. "You're an idiot. She's crazy! She won't give up."
Scorp looked at her pleadingly. "Please Rose. Just do this for me, please."
She shook her head in disgust and turned to leave.
And he let her.
A hand landed on his shoulder. "She's wrong about that." Al said quietly.
"Huh?"
"You're both idiots. Blind foolish idiots." He sighed. "I'm not sure how long I can put up with this… Night mate."
Scorp spent the next few hours sitting in the common room pondering Al's words. For the most part he couldn't work out the meaning. The only thing he got was that if he didn't change something Al was going to be pissed. But what… he just wasn't sure. (A/N: Dense, blind-to-love fool.)
Around midnight he finally decided to go to bed. He only walked a few steps before tripping over something.
It was the contract.
He picked it up, confused. He was sure he left it up stairs. Then he froze. If this wasn't a sign what was? He sat down and picked up a quill. Turning to the last page he quickly scrawled Rose's signature.
He didn't notice the extra paragraph appear on the fifth page. Nor did he notice the black wind sweep violently through the trees.
He simply picked up the contract and went upstairs to bed. Blissfully unaware of the terror he had unleashed on the school.
A/N: Yes! 10 chapters in and we can finally get to the plot. Sorry it took this long people but there was much debate in A-Squad Headquarters (the school library) and we finally got this. Bad news (I know, you're sick of hearing this and all my excuses. Sorry!) My brother has his mid term exams this week and thus gets the computer most of the time. Also I have, like, five tests this week so I'm swamped. I beg forgiveness.
This week's review ploy is… BLACKMAIL! Woo, give it up for blackmail. So my friends and me are in complete disbelieve at the parings that seem to come out during winter (or if you're American or British, summer) and that sparked a quest to find the weirdest HP pairing. Thankfully we didn't find Cassidy's idea of Vernon/Norbert (thanks for the image Cass.). But we did find these.
Harry/Neville, Vernon/Dumbledore, Ron/Ginny, Ron/Percy, Ginny/Bill, Harry/Dudley.
If you don't review I will continue to corrupt your minds with these pairings. Have a good weekend!