When I woke up the next morning, all the events of the previous night came flooding back into my head, making me curl my toes. Seriously. I was attacked by a werewolf, rescued by Scorpius, and then Felicia came along and wanted everything to be back to normal again! I couldn't decide if the night had been wonderful or terrible.

And then I remembered the weird, half word that Scorpius had said.

"I don't hate you, I lo-"

Lo – what? Somewhere inside of me, I really wanted the word to be "love." What else could it be? I tried to rack my brains. Loathe? No, that made no sense; he had just said that he didn't hate me. I racked my brains for every word I knew that started with LO. Lobster, loft, log, locomotive… no, he probably didn't even know what that was. Longitude, lonely, loony – no, hopefully not that, logic, loins – oh, Merlin, I didn't need to be thinking about Scorpius' loins. Lock? Look? Did he mean, "I look at you?" No, that part was obvious, he had been looking me right in the eyes when he said it.

I gave up the search for the magic word and went downstairs to breakfast. I sat opposite Felicia, who smiled at me. This was a nice change. Next to her, James was shoveling food in his mouth. I watched in disgust, wondering how none of that food ever fell out of his mouth again. I tried to look the other way, but at that moment he spoke, spraying the table with eggs and sausages.

"Pass the salt," he said, to no one in particular, but Felicia jumped at the chance and handed it to him.

"So James," she said, grinning widely at him.

He grunted in return, but she seemed to take it as encouragement to keep talking.

"I really had fun this weekend," she said. "And… I was wondering if you wanted to come over for the Christmas holidays?"

This was a pretty early invitation, as it was October, but I decided not to say anything, as I didn't want to argue with either one of them.

James didn't say anything at first but chewed, swallowed, looked at Felicia and said: "Nah."

Felicia looked confused and frowned, which made her beautiful face look tragic. "N – no?"

"No," James repeated, and he was already pouring more ketchup over his sausages.

"But – but why not?" Felicia asked, with a voice that sounded like it was approaching the panic phase.

James shrugged. "Don' li' oo' in 'at 'ay," he said through a mouth full of food.

"Nice, James," I said, "Maybe the trolls understood you."

He scowled at me, and I remembered that he was angry with me. "I don't like you in that way," he said to Felicia.

"But – but – you said – you said that I was pretty…"

"You are," James said. "Just not ideal for me. Besides, I'm going skiing this Christmas."

James was already eating again, oblivious to the heart that was shattering into a million pieces next to him. Felicia's eyes were quickly filling with tears, and her cheeks were reddening.

"Oh," she said simply, and then she was on her feet and running out of the Great Hall, and I decided that I should be a good friend, so I followed her.

I followed her into the girls' toilet. She was wiping her eyes with a piece of toilet paper in the front of the mirror.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I just – I just don't understand," Felicia said, in a voice that was clearly repressing sobs. "I thought he really liked me…"

"James is a real idiot sometimes," I told her, feeling as though I was stating the obvious.

Felicia nodded and turned to look at me. "I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you."

I shrugged. "It's okay."

"And I'm also sorry that I didn't come back to help you last night. I didn't know that you had fallen over," Felicia continued.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Scorpius helped me out. And then we talked afterwards."

Felicia's eyes widened, all her worries forgotten. "You did?"

"Yeah. And he said something, but I didn't quite catch what it was. Do you know any words starting with L – O?"

"Love?"

"That was my first thought too, but other than that?"

Felicia thinks for a moment. "Lox?"

"Like the fish?"

She nods.

"No… no, that really doesn't make much sense," I said.

"Loyal?"

I shook my head and sighed. "I guess it will remain a mystery forever."

Felicia looks in the mirror again, and it is a true testament to her troubles that she doesn't bother to wipe away the mascara running down her cheeks. Suddenly, however, she smiles. "Rose;" she says simply.

"What?" I ask.

She turns back around to face me. "Rose, I just had the best idea ever."

"What?" I repeat.

"Love," she said. "A love potion!"

"For who?"

"James!" she shrieked. "Oh, Merlin, I can't believe that I didn't think of it earlier! Of course!"

"A love potion for James?" I said. Even when I said it aloud it just sounded like a mistake waiting to happen. "I don't know…"

But then I looked at Felicia's happy smile and remembered that I was trying to keep the peace, so I smiled back and said, "That should be fun."

Later I was sitting in the Library with Albus. He hated the Library, but he put up with it that day for my sake. I think that he felt that I deserved some tender care after almost being eaten by a werewolf the night before.

"Al," I said. "Words starting with L –O?"

"Lozenge," Albus said immediately.

"What is that?"

"A diamond shaped figure," Albus said.

I sighed. "No. Try again."

Albus thought. "Lumbago."

"LO, not LU, pea brain," I muttered irritably. "And what is lumbago, anyway?"

"Pain in… you know," Al said. "The loins."

"No, not the loins!" I said, maybe a bit too loudly. I definitely attracted a few stares, among them Ophi, who smiled at me. I wanted to smile back, but I wasn't in the mood for smiling, so I gave him a Death Glare instead to make him stop being so nice.

And then suddenly, Scorpius was standing in front of me. "Hey," he said. He was grinning. "Can we talk?"

"Sure," I said, feeling awkward, and stood up. We walked over to a little more private corner of the library.

"So," he said.

"So," I said. Did he love me? Did he really?

"I just wanted to say that I had a good time last night, when I was talking to you and all," Scorpius said. "I miss being able to talk to you without having to worry that one of your cousins is lurking around the corner, about to spring on me and beat me up."

Oh, Merlin, he hadn't said lust, had he? He hadn't said, "I don't hate you, I lust for you?" No, that would have been too weird.

"Right," I said.

"Anyway," Scorpius continued. "I don't care about your cousins. Rose, will you go out with me?"

I stared at him. And then I gaped at him. Then I closed my mouth, because I had forgotten to brush my teeth that morning, and I didn't want to breathe on him with bad breath.

"Rose," Scorpius repeated, raising one eyebrow.

"Look," I said. "I want to. I really do. It's just… it's just that I don't want to fight with my family. And I don't want to be kicked off the Quidditch team and… I just – just am a little confused. That's all."

"So you don't want to?" Scorpius asked, frowning. He was cute when his white bangs fell in his eyes like that.

"I want to… but I can't. Not right now, anyway. I mean, you have to understand, my parents hate your parents, my whole family has been raised to hate the Malfoys – I just don't know how they would take it."

"Right," said Scorpius. "It's not like my father would do a jig about it, either. I just thought that all of that didn't matter so much."

I sighed. Then a brilliant idea popped into my head. "We could go out in secret!"

Scorpius shook his head. "I don't want to be with you if you're not proud of it," he said, and then he brushed past me and went back to his friends, leaving me alone.

I could feel my throat beginning to burn and my eyes stinging. I took a deep breath. I couldn't cry here. I couldn't cry now. The Slytherins would hear me. Deep breaths, deep breaths.

"Rose?"

I turned around. Ophi was standing there. He was looking concerned.

"Are you okay?" he asked me.

"I'm fine," I told him.

"Good," said Ophi, grinning. "You seemed angry at me earlier, and I was just wondering if there was something wrong…"

"No," I said flatly.

"Fantastic!" Ophi exclaimed, clearly revealing his inability to understand girls. "Because I had a great time on our date and I was wondering – wondering if we maybe should do it again sometime?"

He was looking at me hopefully. I felt like either laughing or crying, but I couldn't decide which, so I ended up making some weird, in between noise that sounded like a squawk. Ophi looked alarmed.

"No thanks," I said, and I walked past him, thinking mostly of going up to my bed and having a good cry into my pillow, when I stopped and said – "By the way, do you know of any words that start with L – O?"

"A – lottery?" Ophi suggested, looking puzzled.

"No, that's not it. Thanks, though," I said, and then I turned around and went upstairs to cry.

My cry, however, was interrupted by Jane and Eurydice, who came upstairs, talking happily about boys and romance.

They stopped when they heard my sniffling. Eurydice, who is clearly the braver of the two, walked over and pulled aside my curtains, and frowned down at my red face.

"Rose!" she cried. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," I muttered, trying to hide my face, but suddenly Jane was there as well, clutching a romance novel and gaping down at me.

"What's happened?" she asked.

"Is it because you're in a fight with Felicia?" Eurydice asked.

"No, we made up."

"Is it because you're in a fight with James?" Jane asked.

"No, he's just a git."

"Is it because of a boy?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "But I don't want to talk about it."

"It's okay," Jane said quickly. "We won't tell a soul."

I remembered Eurydice saying that she would rip out the throat of the girl whose fault it was that she couldn't be Scorpius' girlfriend.

"No, it's okay," I said. "I'll get over it."

"Is it Ophi?" Eurydice asked, clearly deaf.

I sighed. "Yeah, sure, whatever, it's Ophi."

Jane shook her head. "Slytherins," she muttered.

"Look," I tried again. "I would really rather not talk about it."

"It's okay," Jane said, smiling at me.

"Do either of you two know any words starting with L-O?"

They looked surprised, but then Eurydice said, "Loony bin."

"No," I said.

"Low?"

"Loss."

"Lotion."

"Lovemaking," Eurydice said, giggling.

"Lovesick," Jane said, giggling just as much.

"It doesn't have anything to do with love," I told them.

"Loincloth," Eurydice suggested.

"And it definitely doesn't have anything to do with loins!" I shouted.

They jumped.

"Never mind," I said. "I'm sorry. I think I'll just try and sleep a little before dinner."

"Right," Eurydice said, sounding like she thought that I should be in the loony bin.

"Feel better," said Jane, and they left, leaving me to my depressing thoughts.

Thank you for reading, and please review! I'm sorry for the short chapter, but there will be another update very soon.