"Merlin's pants! It's cold!"
A bell jingled overhead as a troupe of Weasley cousins shuffled into Madame Rosemerta's, desperate to get out of the snow. The soft January snow that dusted their walk to Hogsmeade was now a blinding blizzard ushering students off the streets and into every shop
"Merlin's pants?" laughed Hugo, brushing past Rose towards the fire. "You sound like Mum."
"Well you look like Dad's Great Aunt Tessie," she retorted, bumping him playfully as she held her hands up to the fire. Albus Severus wedged in between them and Lucy did a little dance to remove the snow from her boots.
"Oy, you lot!" came a familiar voice from a booth by the window. All four heads turned to find James at the center of a round table, waving them over.
Rose quirked an eyebrow. Alice Longbottom, one of her best mates, was sitting to his left, his arm draped around her shoulders. So that's where she had disappeared to this morning. And last night. And… well, every night that week it seemed.
A smirk danced on her lips as the group found a seat at the table, and Alice blushed pink. She gave a little shrug which made Rose laugh.
"What's so funny?" Gavin McLaggen tuned into the girls' silent exchange.
Rose shrugged, and turned to find him leaning perilously close. "Something just made sense, that's all."
Gavin quirked an eyebrow, and a glint she couldn't quite name flashed in his blue eyes. "Hmm."
"What?"
It was his turn to shrug, and his voice dropped low, where only Rose could hear. "Something doesn't make sense to me actually."
The power of his gaze made her blush, and she bought herself a spare moment by brushing a curl from her eyes. "What?"
"How a girl like you doesn't have a date to Hogsmeade. Or to the Valentine's Ball."
She turned completely red. Weasley red. "How do you know I don't have a date to the ball?" Rose asked with as much confidence as she could muster. Gavin saw right through it.
"If you did," he replied, reaching for his butterbeer with a grin at his lips, "then the bloke would be sitting next to you, not me." He took a sip. "Plus, I asked James."
"Well I'm sure you two will make a lovely couple," she teased, reaching for his butterbeer. Gavin laughed and let her have it gladly. Rose took a sip and wiped the foam from her lips before turning back to him.
"So will you?"
Rose wouldn't let him off the hook that easily. "Help him pick out a dress to wear? Sure. James looks great in blue."
Gavin laughed again, this time drawing the attention of the rest of the table. "You're going to make me work for it aren't you?"
"Maybe." Rose's eyes danced.
The challenge appealed to him, and he lay his hand over hers on the mug of butterbeer. "What do you say, Weasley? Go to the ball with me?"
Weasley.
In an instant, Rose was launched out of the pub and into a potion's classroom, a gray-eyed smirk saying the same. "What do you say, Weasley? Go to the ball with me?" Only Scorpius hadn't said it, at least in nothing but a dream.
Rose blinked several times to bring herself back to the present moment. Gavin searched her gaze, his lips twitching in a grin. He knew he had won.
"You know, I think I will."