AN: A very big thank you to all those who read, reviewed or added this story to their favourite or alert list when I posted the last chapter. I am heartily in your debt for giving me some motivation to write. Special thanks to my reviewers, I know there were reviews for Chapter 9, if you were signed in I tried to respond, I can't seem to see the reviews at present, so I haven't included your names, but thank you!

I am going to try to finish the never ending process of writing this story by the end of the month, before the Harry Potter play comes out and my conceptions of Rose, Scorpius and Al are completely blown out of the water by whatever it contains... I'm strangely nervous to read it! As always, feedback is much loved and appreciated!

7th year: Winter

At 1 am on New Years day Victoire Weasley slips away from a crowd of old family friends and up the stairs towards the Potter's bedrooms. She makes a beeline to James and Al's rooms, through which she knows she can access a bathroom that none of the other guests will be using. Vic walks through James's room and opens the bathroom door to find Rose sobbing into the toilet.

"Shit! Rose, what's wrong?"She asks, rushing toward Rose and then awkwardly putting a hand on her shoulder. Rose's response is simply to cry harder and then dry heave a few times.

Vic goes to the sink, empties some toothbrushes from a glass and fills it with water. She passes it wordlessly to Rose and then unrolls some toilet paper and hands that to her too. Rose rinses her mouth, blows her nose and attempts to dry her eyes, but the tears are still coming so thick and fast that the loo paper is no help at all.

"I'm s-s-sorry!" She gasps out between sobs.

"Don't be silly Rosie, there isn't a witch in the world who hasn't cried on one bathroom floor or another. I was a regular in that tiny bathroom just below the astronomy tower in my seventh year when Teddy and I tried to date long distance."

"Everybody says long distance never works, but nobody listens!" Rose exclaims nasally before breaking into fresh tears.

"Is this about Scorpius, sweet pea?"

Slowly the whole story comes out. Vic sits patiently through the snot, the hiccups and far too much back story. She holds Rose's hair when she has to throw up and sits leaning against the wall near the toilet paper so she can pass it to her cousin at regular intervals. When Rose is at last finished, she sits dabbing her eyes and sniffing and Victoire asks:

"So are you upset that he cheated on his girlfriend with you, or that he seemed to regret it?"

"Both!"

"Okay, well look at it like this; he clearly still has feelings for you, which is a good thing from your perspective. You were both pretty drunk and not really thinking, so you did a stupid thing that could potentially be really hurtful to another person. When he could think clearly he regretted that action, as any vaguely honourable man should. So I understand why you're upset, but I think the reality of your situation isn't quite as bad as what's going on in your head."

Rose hiccuped and stared. Vic pushed herself up off the floor, pulled open the shower door and produced a wash cloth. She ran it under cold water and handed it to Rose. "Your mascara and eyeliner are all over your face."

"Thanks."

"You know that you and Scorpius are nothing like Teddy and me, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you said you were frightened to start dating him because you'd seen how awkward it was with Teddy and I after we broke up... but you're not us."

"I know that, but the situation is similar and the outcome is the same. We broke up and now it's impossible because he's basically part of my family!"

"It's not the same though hun. My mum always says that you don't choose who you fall in love with, but you choose to stay in love."

Rose thinks about this for a while. "I don't get it."

"What she means is that the initial feelings fade if they're not fed. If you keep choosing the other person, even when they piss you off and stuff goes wrong, you develop a more mature love for that person. Something more than just infatuation, but something that also has to be fed. Teddy and I, we couldn't keep choosing each other anymore. We were doing such different things with our lives and niether of us really wanted to do all that hard work to stay together. I still have love for him, but I'm not in love with him and I can let him go. Someday I hopefully find someone who makes me want to do the hard work. Right now you and Scorpius are holding on to feelings for each other pretty tightly. You're making that choice. Both of you."

"I'm not choosing this."

"You kind of are though. You're keeping up with what's going on in his life from afar. You're encouraging Al to invite him to family parties. You're wearing that dress. And he's actively avoiding you. Which means he's making a whole stack of choices that are all about you, you know? 'Where should I eat dinner? Where is Rose sitting? She's there, okay, I'll sit on the other side of the dining hall.' That thought pattern is consciously all about you. If he wasn't sub-consciously choosing to hold on to you, he'd be much more indifferent to you."

"And this helps me how?"

"Well if you see it, you can deal with it? And maybe stop making unhealthy choices based on the idea that you are doomed to relive my love life. Which isn't THAT bad, by the way!"

Rose snorted. "Yeah, okay." She conceded.

"So, how did you land up in this bathroom?"

"Mum always ducks out of these parties as soon after midnight as she can manage, I didn't want to risk running into her at home."

"Ah, makes sense..." Vic says nodding, and a silence, at last unbroken by gasps and sobs, descends. "I actually really need to use the loo, do you mind?"

Scorpius tortures himself for almost a full day before he apparates to Chelsea's. The smile she greets him with fades from her face as she takes in his grim expression.

"Can we talk somewhere private?" He asks. She leads him silently out of the back door and they sit on the veranda looking out at the snow. She exhales and her breath condenses in the air in front of her.

"You're breaking up with me, aren't you?"

"I... I don't want to. I'm sorry Chelsea."

"What does that even mean?" She demands, crossing her arms over her puffy coat. "And why are you making me do all the work for you? If you want to break up, just spit it out." There's a kind of bitter detachment in her tone that Scorpius knows must be covering her hurt.

"I've been unfair to you. You deserve someone who isn't... I don't know... still stupidly entangled in old shit? Who doesn't..." He trails off and stares at his hands. "I've been unfair to you." He whispers again.

"This is about Rose."

"No!" He says quickly, then backtracks. "Well, sort-of, but not how you think."

"So you're not breaking up with me so you can get back together with Rose?"

"No!"

"What then?"

"It's just all screwed up! I've been... She's been in my life since I was eleven. Almost my entire social circle is her family. We're so tied up in each others lives that I don't know how to be separate from her. I don't know how to get rid of her! Believe me, I want to be rid of her!"

"I don't know if that's true, but you're right, we should break up." She says coldly, staring unseeing at the dead shrubbery.

"Chelsea, I'm sorry."

"Please go."

"I will, but I need you to know that I am so sorry." He stands waiting for her to acknowledge him for a while. she doesn't. "Goodbye, Chelsea." He says at last and then walks down the steps to apparate from the back garden.

He gets home to find Al's owl waiting on his windowsill. But when he unrolls the parchment it's Rose's handwriting he sees. He's tempted to throw the letter into the fireplace, but takes a breath and reads.

Dear Scorpius,

I'm really sorry about what happened last night. I've had some time to think and I've realised that the way we are together has been fairly toxic to us and people around us for a while. Even when we don't mean to, we kind of gravitate toward each other and get so wrapped up in whatever we're feeling for each other, be it anger, resentment or love, that we hurt people. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for the way I insisted we should wait to be together, even though it hurt us and others. I'm sorry that when we finally were together I was so overconfident that it was going to work that I took you completely for granted.

I hope you can forgive me. I hope we can find a way to be friends, to be in each others lives in a non-destructive way, because I miss you.

I love you always
Rose

He stood staring at the parchment. He read it again. Then he read it once more. Merlin, what was he supposed to do with that? She was sorry. He knew she was sorry. He believed her and he missed her and he agreed that they had been destructive. But there was still a proud, angry part of him that wanted to punish her. That wanted to blame her for everything. He knew he had played his part. He knew that it took two people to make all the mistakes that they had made. But then he would have to admit that he was responsible for all the casualties too. Maybe it was worth it. Maybe there could be some kind of peace between them if he did.

He tore off the blank bottom of her parchment and scribbled his reply.

I'm sorry too
-S

It didn't magically make everything better. But maybe it was a start.