DISCLAIMER!

Thank you to everyone who reviews!

A True Dreamer: I don't really like getting into detail with that kind of thing. I tried to get it across how painful it was for her without getting too deep into it. Thank you for continuing to read. :)

alikmionejean: THANK YOU FOR NOT FLAMING ME! :) You have not idea how much I appreciate that. And Marc is Marcus Flint's son, so yes, that's where it came from. His whole name is Marcus too, but everyone just calls him Marc.

Sugarplumjellygum: Thank you! I just naturally write things that are a bit funny, so I'm trying to tone it down with the more serious parts.

Sorry it took so long.

Chapter Three

It hadn't lasted very long, or rather, Marc hadn't lasted. Rose didn't know much about those things, but she'd heard it was supposed to take a while. Unlike her roommates, who were aggravated when it went by quickly, Rose was relieved.

Marc had untied her hands and mouth, telling her that if she told anyone he would make her "rue that day she was born". He'd told her that no one would believe her, anyway. He "let" her be his girlfriend, so she didn't look like such a whore. Wasn't he just the poster child of generosity?

He left her on the ground to cry, and she was glad. Rose would much rather be alone while she tried to pull herself together. Besides, the sooner she left, the sooner she'd have to face Marc again.

"Weasley?"

She frantically wiped the tears from her face and tried to clean herself up. Her wrists were bleeding from the rope that had rubbed against her skin. Her shoulder was scraped from being shoved repeatedly against the rough bark.

She tried to stand up but found she wasn't ready to yet.

"Weasley, are you in here?" The voice was closer now and it wasn't long before Scorpius appeared a few feet away.

She tried not to look at him as he came by her and knelt down. It wasn't hard to read the emotions going though his mind on his face; relief, confusion, anger.

"Rose," he said softly, "What did he do to you?"

She started to cry again, but tried to hide it. "You called me Rose."

"I did."

"Why?"

"Why not? We're friends, aren't we?"

"I guess," She thought that over for a minute... Maybe they were friends. What else could you call it? They were too familiar to be considered acquaintances. "I'm still going to call you Malfoy."

"I don't really think that's fair." he said, looking down by his feet where he found all the candy.

"Why not?"

"You never answered my question."

"Answer mine first."

"Tell me what happened, Rose!"

"I don't think it's any of your business!"

"I think it is!"

"Why do you care?"

"I care because..." he trailed off, still too afraid to tell her the truth. It seemed to him that he would never be able to tell her how he really felt. Ever.

"Exactly," she laughed humorlessly.

Slowly everything started to come together... or maybe it all fell apart. From her wet eyes to the blood on her wrists and candy scattered on the ground, it all made something click in his head.

"He shagged you." That's what Marc had implied, but Scorpius had been hoping that he was lying.

Rose bought a shaky hand up to brush the hair from her face. Scorpius made to help her, but she flinched and pressed herself against the tree. "Please don't touch me," she begged, "Please."

"You didn't want him to, did you?" Scorpius had to ignore the aching in his heart bought on from her pleading.

Rose looked away from him, deeper into the woods. "What is 'hit it and quit it'?" She'd be surprised if he didn't yell at her for avoiding the question.

Scorpius gave her a funny look. "Did you hear about that from Al? That's something Marc and some of the other guys do. Al did it to girls for a while but eventually I convinced him that it wasn't a good idea..."

That's about when Rose realized that she was an idiot. "Oh my god." she sobbed, covering her face with her hands. How could she believe that Scorpius would do something like that in the first place?

She didn't deserve to be in Ravenclaw.

He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn't; he didn't want her to shrink away from him again. "Rose, you need to answer me."

She shook her head. "He's my boyfriend now, Malfoy."

I can't admit it because he's got a tight hold on me, is what he heard. "What?"

"Why do you care?"

"Why won't you tell me the truth?"

Rose felt she was good at putting the attention on something other than herself. "What did Lorcan mean by that? You wanting to get in my pants."

"Stop doing that."

"Malfoy."

He sighed. At least she was talking to him. She could just clam up and shut him out if she really wanted to. "It's nothing. And that isn't true."

"Is that why you're so upset about this?"

"I am not upset, Rose." Upset was a bit of an understatement.

For some reason it hurt her when he said that. She moved her hands from her face and looked at him. He was so close to her. Too close. After what happened, she couldn't stand to be touched, or to be so close to someone. She thought about Marc, and how he would make her kiss him and hold his hand in public. She physically couldn't stand it.

"I need to get back to Hogwarts." she told him, while slowly rising to her feet.

"Don't go by yourself." Scorpius picked up the bag of candy, what hadn't fallen out, and stood up.

"I don't want to bother Marc. I'll be fine." What was the worst that could happen? She'd already been raped. All she wanted to do was go to her dorm, take a shower, and cry herself to sleep.

"I wasn't talking about him."

"Al is probably having fun, I don't want to bother him either."

"I wasn't talking about Albus."

Rose stared at him for a moment, when their eyes met she looked away. "Do you want to go with me?"

"Well, yeah."

"I thought you didn't care about me."

"I never said that. I said I'm not upset, and that's because I'm pissed off. Now if you keep asking me questions I'm going to have to levitate you there. I would much rather carry you but..."

It was amazing that he could make her smile even a little, under the circumstances. "I don't think Marc would like that."

"Marc can suck my-"

"Malfoy."

"Willy. I was going to say willy."

Rose sighed and started to walk away from him. "I don't want you to go with me."

"And why not?" he asked.

"Because I would like to be alone."

"Ah, I see. Now that your dream bloke's shagged you, you're too good to hang out with me. Is that it? You don't need to waste your time with a smarmy git like myself."

"Now why would you say that?"

"Because that's how I feel." He stuck out his arm, handing her the candy. She stared at it for a long moment before taking it from him.

"Malfoy," she said softly, "you act like we were the best of friends."

He shouldn't be getting so worked up. He shouldn't be so transparent.

"If you think I'm mad, wait until Albus finds out."

Rose knew she shouldn't be pushing him away. She could use friends, and usually he was a great one. "He won't find out."

"Oh? You don't think your little boyfriend is telling all our friends about it right this second?"

"Shut up, Malfoy."

"Fine." He said, throwing up his hands. "Fine. I'm done."

Scorpius turned around and headed out of the woods. Rose stood where she was as he left, not moving. Tears slowly fell from her eyes, and when she heard him punching something she cried harder. Now that he was gone, she just wanted him to come back. She hadn't noticed while he was there, but she felt safer with him around. Now she felt vulnerable, and lost. It took her a while before she could pull herself together and head back to Hogwarts.

There were two options for Scorpius. He could get a head start back to school and risk running into Rose, or he could go back to the Three Broomsticks with his new arch rival. Neither appealed to him more than the other, so when he found himself around the corner from the pub he decided to just suck it up and go in.

The boys were just where he'd left them, only they were all a little more… intoxicated.

"Malfoy!" Albus exclaimed, climbing over a couple people to get out of the booth. He ran over and wrapped his arms around Scorpius' head. "We missed you!"

"I'm sure you did." He said, not bothering to free his head. Eventually Al let go and dragged him over to the booth.

"Go on, have a seat!" Scorpius more or less collapsed into the booth.

"Where's Rose?"

Marc was seated across from him, ironically enough. Scorpius could either ignore him or tell him off. "What, you can't keep track of your women now, Flint?" He'd never been the silent, brooding type.

He had the audacity to grin. "Glad to see you're acknowledging that she's mine."

"I'm not acknowledging anything."

"I'm guessing you two had a nice little chat."

"Fuck you."

"Rose already has."

Once the words sunk into his head Scorpius slowly rose to his feet and hit Marc in the face.

The next few minutes were chaos. Al had grabbed Scorpius and was trying to pull him away; Lorcan and Alex were keeping Marc from retaliating.

"He's psycho! Did you just see that?"

"If you touch her again I will kill you."

"Sorry to tell you mate, but she's my girlfriend. I can touch her however I want, whenever I want."

"Albus, you let go of me right now."

"No can do, buddy."

"Albus, fucking let go!"

Scorpius tried shaking him off and when that didn't work, he grabbed an empty mug off of the table and threw it at Marc's crotch. Marc had been covering his head, expecting to be hit there again.

"OUCH, FUCK YOU!"

Albus was laughing too hard to hold onto him, now. Hell, everyone was laughing. Marc was curled up on the ground, holding himself with tears streaming from his eyes. "You fucking deserve- AH!"

Marc had picked up the mug and chucked it at Scorpius' crotch. Now they were both on the ground. "YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!"

Flint laughed, and then he started throwing up.

"That's it." A bartender said, coming over to them. 'You boys have been creating havoc all night. You need to leave."

"Can't we have another round?"

"NOW!"

For all Scorpius knew, Marc got left there. Al had helped him up, and was holding him up as they walked.

"They had sex, Al."

"Ah, yes. I heard."

"Aren't you the least bit upset."

"I'm sure I will be when I wake up. Remind me in the morning?"

"I don't want to have to think about it."

"Ah, well. I'll have someone else tell me."

"I'm sure Marc will be talking about it until he dies."

"Piece of shit.'

Al laughed, and Scorpius wished that he was drunk, that he could wake up and pretend that the whole night had just been a bad dream… or that he wouldn't remember it at all. "Since I won't remember in the morning, can you tell me something?"

"Sure."

"Do you like Rose?"

"I don't know. I guess I do."

"How much?"

Scorpius sighed, not sure how to explain how he felt. "Let me put it this way… she's like whiskey to me. It hurts to like her, but it feels so good at the same time. She brings me so high up, but once I'm all alone I feel like shit. I realize that I'll never have enough of her to satisfy my thirst. I don't want her to be my whiskey. I want her to be my air, or my sun. Or my world."

Al snorted, not able to realize that Scorpius was pretty much spilling his heart to him. It would never happen again, and he was drunk. "Well that's just too cute! Want me to put it on a card for you?"

"Shove off."

"No, no! I'm serious! You're bringing me to tears! I can feel my heart breaking! Oh, god! Oh, Rose! Wherefore art thou Rose!"

"You're a crazy bastard, you know that?"

"Actually, I know who my father is. But that's very nice of you to say."