AN: Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers! paprikaniknaks3, Guest, schleifchen, bananagirl.97, Guest, Lala, Belle, Morethanoneotp, Ellen1983, SelarahMorgan and particularly scribbleeexx whose very thoughtful review really helped me to figure out where I needed to go with this chapter. You are all exceptionally wonderful and I appreciate the heck out of you! I'm sorry for the long wait!

Sixth Year: The Fallout

February

Dear Al,

I'm sure by now Scorpious has told you what happened between us last week. Honestly, I don't expect it will last… I was late, he was angry, long distance is hard. I expect he'll write to apologise any day now.

Other than the whole Scorpious thing I'm doing well here. It's been really refreshing to learn under new professors who have different areas of interest to ours. I've been particularly enjoying Herbology here (not that I don't love Uncle Neville!) The Professor is allowing me to help him with a study he's doing on muggle herbal healers and I'm finding it fascinating!

The family and I have been doing plenty of skiing and we went to a lovely little outdoor ice rink in a near by muggle village yesterday. I must admit I felt a little homesick when I got on the ice and thought of all of you skating on the lake. I never thought I'd miss dodging your snowballs as we skated! But enough about me, how are things at Hogwarts? What's going on with you?

With lots of love

Rose

Dear Rose,

Imagine my surprise when I received my first proper letter from you since you left… though I can't blame you for missing MY handsome face and wanting to hear about MY ever fascinating life. On an unrelated note, I'd like to remind you that I told both you and Scorpious that I intended to be Switzerland a while ago.

Since you now profess to miss snowballs while skating you will have to play a game that Fred and I invented next winter. It's rather like Quidditch, except without a snitch, brooms, a keeper, a seeker, a limit on players or a referee. Come to think of it, it isn't much like Quidditch at all! Basically you hex four really big snowballs to go after everyone in a certain radius and everyone has to try to avoid them while also trying to get a quaffle into a bunch of soccer nets that are arranged at random around the playing circle you've created on the ice. You gain points for your team by scoring and lose points by falling. So far we haven't found a definitive way of ending the game as it usually devolves into a snowball fight which is broken up when someone needs to go to the hospital wing. Your mum has already banned Hugo from playing, a very effective manner of encouraging him to do things, as you know!

I've a transfiguration test that I can't afford to fail tomorrow so I must love and leave you!

Al

Dear Al,

Thank you for your letter, I felt as though I were back at Hogwarts while reading it! I get that you want to stay out of it, really I do, but is Scorpious okay? I haven't heard from him in three weeks now and I'm starting to worry.

We tried out your ice quidditch game here, and while it was wildly unpopular with most of the girls it's really taken off with everyone who doesn't mind getting their hair a little messy. Might I suggest that players who have been snowballed to the ground three times be knocked out of the game? The game then ends when there's only one team left standing. We've found it adds a level of excitement, especially when the last player of a team is going up against a whole lot of others, everyone loves an underdog!

I'll be travelling to Poland for a while for my Herbology research so I may be out of touch for the next few weeks. Please let Scorpious know that I won't be able to reply if he writes but that I'd really like to know what he's been up to.

With love

Rose

March

Dear Rose-bud,

I love your modification to the game, though we have found the incidence of hospital wing visits has increased dramatically among the longest standing players, who face a much higher snowball to player ratio. In my opinion this is not necessarily a bad thing as we have a student healer from St. Mungo's under Pomfrey and she has gorgeous… eyes. We have made further improvements to the game as well! We're now playing with three teams rather than two as this increases the need for battle strategy! Sadly the ice is already melting and in a few weeks no amount of freezing charms will be able to save our playing field.

Scorpious is currently a regular barrel of laughs, thanks for that by the way, but there's nothing physically wrong with him so do stop trying to put me in the middle of this. I will consent to letting you know if he becomes deathly ill or is irreversibly maimed, anything else you'd like to know you can write to him about.

Enjoy your time in Poland

Al

Dear Al,

I'm back from Poland and was pleased to find your letter waiting for me. Scorpious still hasn't written. I've already written him twice and am starting to get quite desperate for a break in the silence. What should I do Al? I don't understand how he can be so upset with me for enjoying myself here and getting a little caught up in the excitement. How can we work it out if he won't talk to me?

I'm scared. I feel like I've lost him. I'm sorry to put you in the middle, but you know us best and love us both and I know you won't judge either of us. I'm scared of telling Dad we broke up because I don't want Dad to hate him. Plus I didn't think we had broken up and now it's been two months and I don't know how to explain why I didn't say anything to anyone.

Dom just tells me that long distance never works and that I should have fun while I'm here and keep my chin up. And I can't talk to my best friend about this because my best friend is Scorpious! How ridiculous is it that he's the one I want to talk to about things that he himself has said? I wish I could split him into Scorpious-the-best-friend and Scorpious-the-boyfriend and cry on the firsts shoulder about the second.

I know you don't want to be in the middle and you don't have to tell me how he is, or what he's saying or anything about him at all… but I just need someone that I can tell my thoughts to right now because they're rattling around in my head and driving me crazy!

I'm sorry for laying this all on you… I really am enjoying the travelling and all the research we did in Poland was very engaging. I'm learning that the busier I keep myself the less time I have to think about him. Muggleherbology truly is fascinating and although it doesn't provide quite the adrenaline rush that you might get from trying to wrangle a venomous tentacular, it has plenty of subtle excitement in it! We believe that many of the plants we collected in Poland could be very useful in potion brewing for example!

Please try to floo when you're home in April… Mum and Dad do regularly but I'd rather like to see a familiar face and not have to paste on a fake smile.

With Love

Rose

April

Dear Rosie,

I really am sorry that you're having a hard time. Frankly I'm not charmed that we are all three in this situation when I had no choice in the matter, but it is what it is and there's no going back now. I won't speak about Scorpious except to say that I will not at any point take sides. I know both of you and I know that neither of you are perfect. There was undoubtedly fault on both sides. Much as I do love you, you must admit Rose that you were AWOL from September until Christmas… and it wasn't just Scorpious who wasn't hearing from you. Never the less I love you and I want you to be happy so if you need to talk or write or whatever, I'll be here. And I'll do my best to listen and help. Again, I'm sorry you're having a rough go of it.

I'm glad you enjoyed Poland. Charly (Charlotte, the student healer) was very interested in what you're researching when I was in the hospital wing last week. Do send more details… I may not understand them but speaking about your trip resulted in our first actual conversation. I've only managed to wring a few words from her before and since. It's rather difficult to drop the fact that you'll be of age in a month into conversation when there is no conversation, so have pity on me my beloved cousin!

Enjoy the chocolate I've sent (Dad swears by chocolate when any of us are upset) but please do give Griffin a good rest and some treats before you send him back or he'll be bad tempered with me for weeks!

Al

Dear Al,

Thanks for the chocolate, you do know the way to a girls heart! Your letter gave me a good laugh! A student healer? Really? Isn't that a bit of a reach, even for you? And how are you calling her by her first name if you've barely said two words to her? Tell me, why should I help you woo a woman who you probably only like because you think your reputation with the boys will skyrocket if she pays attention to you? Oh, and lets not forget how attracted you are to her lovely "eyes".

Much as I would love to hinder your rather inept seduction plan, I find the chance to talk about my work with anyone but Mum irresistible! Professor Littman and I have been visiting renowned muggle herbalists in order to collect and catalogue plants they use in the treatment of various maladies. This has been done in the past, but generally it has been done by magical healers looking for treatments for a specific malady and therefore we believe many potentially useful plants have been overlooked for centuries. We take samples and record the herbalist's descriptions of what the plant is used to treat, what it does and any side effects they have observed. Interestingly, what muggles see as irritating side effects can often be what could be useful in a potion.

All of this cataloguing is done in the field, at the moment we are testing the samples we gathered in Poland extensively using various magical techniques. All those we deem useful will be sent to various research centers that Professor Littman is partnering with. For example we just sent a herb with very potent pain relieving properties to a potions lab in Brussels. They may use it to develop potions that your 'Charly' uses on her patients in a few years.

Other than testing samples for Herbology and catching up on the regular class work I missed while in Poland I haven't been up to much. Everything's finally beginning to thaw out a little, which is a relief, winter here is beautiful but brutal! Without the snow or the ice though, there is very little to tempt anyone to brave the cold and so everyone here is spending large amounts of time drinking mulled wine or reading by the fireplaces. I'm missing Hogwarts and all of you, but I'm keeping busy and spending plenty of time drinking with the other sixth years here. It's plenty of fun, but a couple of times a day something will remind me of him. I'll see something he might like in a shop or read a book I want to tell him about or think I've caught a glimpse of his hair…

Then for a little bit everything kind of stops and I feel like I can't breathe. Isn't that stupid? It sounds like something out of one of Aunt Audrey's trashy novels. But I miss him. I just desperately miss him.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to next week when we can floo. I'd better go before I fill another two pages with illegible break up whining.

Love Rose

Dear Scorpious,

I'm guessing you've received my other letters and have either burned them or simply chosen not to respond. Not a word in three months? I must say I'm impressed with the longevity of your ire… I come from a quick tempered family. It's really difficult for me to understand how you can be so cold and unrelenting when all my anger burned away months ago. Damn your Malfoy pride!

I wanted to say that I get it. I get that I was an absentee girlfriend for a while. I get that I made you feel unimportant. I should have listened to you more. I should have made more effort with you. I'm sorry. But you also need to take some share of the blame here. You didn't communicate. You just pretended everything was fine until you snapped. You let me carry on in my happy-go-lucky oblivious way instead of shouting at me or talking to me or really doing anything that might have given me a chance to redeem myself.

I love you and I miss you. And maybe what hurts the most is that I feel like if you missed me half as much as I miss you, you would have thrown your pride out of the window weeks ago and written back. How can six years of friendship be done just like that? I can understand if you don't want to be together anymore, but I can't understand how you can just resign from the office of best friend. Who are you telling your secrets to now? Who are you complaining about your grandfather to? Who sits next to you while you read your fathers letters and then interprets them into regular-dad-writing? Who eats the potatoes that you pick out of your lamb stew? Who takes you to the room of requirement when you need to trash something after the ministry has conducted another 'routine' inspection of the manor? Have you just decided that you don't need any of that anymore?

Please write me. Lets just be friends again.

With all my love,

Rose

May

Rose,

Please stop writing. I thought you would get the message when I didn't respond but clearly you haven't. I don't want to hear from you.

Scorpious