AN:I know, it's been an awfully long time! I do apologise and I shall attempt to be prompt about the last few chapters. I'm not abandoning this!
Chapter 6: More Fifth Year
They decide to keep their new relationship between the two of them. Rose is skittish about what others will think and Scorpius finds himself more than a little intimidated by the idea of their fathers finding out.
His stays with the Potters every holiday are grudgingly tolerated by his father, but never mentioned around the dinner table. His mother encourages the visits but has never made mention of inviting Al to stay in return. He cannot imagine either the Potters or the Weasleys being pleased by the idea of Al or Rose eating in the dining room where Hermione was once tortured. It may have been redecorated, but he thinks his father still sometimes hears the screams. It is, Scorpius suspects, why he is so partial to eating on the terrace.
The problem with keeping their little secret is that sometimes he can't help staring at her. She'll push her hair over her shoulder while she's bent over a library book and he'll find himself mesmerised by the soft, pale skin of her neck. His eyes will glaze over as he pictures himself brushing his lips over that skin… tasting it. And then Al will throw a pencil at him and he'll be startled back into reality and Rose will be scarlet under her freckles and determinedly avoiding looking anywhere but the air just in front of her arithmancy homework. In the various Christmas pageants Victoire had directed at the burrow, Rose had always been given such challenging parts as 'passing witch' and 'muggle who needs to be obliviated'.
They're 'finishing their transfiguration essays' in the common room late one Thursday night when their cover is blown.
It had started with Rose biting her lip; an unconscious expression of concentration on her part, but one that drove Scorpius quite mad. He pretended to need a book lying next to her and moved his chair closer to hers so he could reach it. She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow in amusement, but then went back to her work. He loosened his tie, rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He could see her watching him from the corner of his eye. He took a minute to read back through the last paragraph he had written while she tapped the tip of her quill repetitively against the edge of her ink well. He stretched out his arms to full length, brushed her hair 'accidentally' as he did so and subtly checked the common room for night owls. There was not a first year in sight.
"I'm done for the night." He announced. Rose sighed.
"I think I'm going to try get this finished, I've a charms club meeting tomorrow." He moved his chair even closer under the pretence of reading what she'd written.
"You're at least two hundred words over." He stated, resting his head in his hand and angling himself to face her.
"I know!" She replied miserably, resting her forehead momentarily on his shoulder, "But there's just so much to write!"
His free hand came up to frame her face and she closed her eyes at the touch.
"Maybe you could skip charms club tomorrow." He watched her face carefully to see how the idea sat with her, all the while sliding his upper body slowly closer to her along the table. She opened her eyes and smiled her 'I know what you're doing' smile at him.
"But Trudy Gillespie is such a terrible stickler with the register." She told him in mock protest.
"Well, as McGonagall always says, homework before extra-curriculars!" He slid his fingertips into her hair and she rubbed her nose against his, angling her chin just so. He could feel her breath on his lips.
"Surely this would count as an extra-curricular?" She teased, looking directly up at him. She was so close he could only keep one of her eyes in focus.
"Definitely not." He whispered, before finally pulling her mouth towards his own.
They had migrated to one of the couches and become so blissfully wrapped up in each other that they didn't have time to register the creak of the portrait swinging open and the clatter of running feet before James and two of his sidekicks are upon them. Scorpius falls off the couch in his effort to disentangle their limbs. Rose feels cold and strangely exposed without the warmth of his body weight on her. James merely raises an eyebrow.
"Rosie." He says with a nod as he walks by. And then he and the hangers-on disappear up the boy's staircase.
She stares after them in shock.
They spend two days hoping against hope that James has dismissed the affair as beneath his notice. They barely so much as meet each other's eyes in public. And then James cheerfully sandwiches himself between them at dinner and puts an arm around each of them, with no regard for the reek coming off of his Quidditch robes.
"It's about bloody time you two! Should have caught you snogging on the sofa years ago!"
The extended Potter/Weasley clan falls silent and every eye dances between Scorpius who is squirming in James's hold and Rose whose face is emitting enough heat to melt an igloo. Then Hugo demands that Louis dish him some more casserole and its business as usual. Only Al seems unwilling to move on to more interesting topics. He pushes the broccoli on his plate around for a few more minutes and then excuses himself.
"I just thought I'd inform you that if you and Rose screw up this thing you have going, which is pretty much inevitable, I'm not going to choose sides." Al says, taking his seat at the table and glowering at a dish of scrambled eggs.
"Who says we're going to screw it up?" Scorpius asks irritably.
"Anyone who's ever spent ten minutes with you."
Scorpius grabs the tomato sauce and begins rather viciously trying to squirt it onto his eggs.
"Nice Al, that's really nice." He says, whacking the back of the bottle. "You could at least pretend to be happy for us." The bottle makes a wheezing sound as he again tries to squeeze it. "And what about Rose, have you given her this inspiring speech? Judging by how healthy you look I'm guessing you haven't."
"Rose knows what I think." Al replies, stabbing a pork sausage with his fork.
"What, that it's okay to slum it and be friends with a Malfoy, but dating one is too far?"
"Fuck off. Your Daddy issues aren't mine so don't put that on me. And don't expect me to be dancing like a pixie on a sugar high at the news that my two closest friends are together. Whatever way it goes I'll be either a third wheel or stuck in between you lot playing peace keeper." Al says, getting up and grabbing his bag, leaving his breakfast half eaten where it lay. "That's a pretty shite deal however you look at it."
AN: Thank you for reading, if you have, please take a minute to let me know what you thought... single word reviews are better than the great and numbing unknown of silence!