The next day, the first of March, I found Sha in the joint common room at lunchtime. I asked her what was wrong, pretending I didn't know, and it all poured out. When she was done, she just looked so sad that my heart went out to her. I sat down right next to her and put my arms around her and we just sat there like that for a very long time, missing our next classes (Charms, in my case.) After I'd sent a preferably happier Sha to her last class, I went to Neville Longbottom, whose class Sha had missed, and explained, without any specifics. Since he's her stepfather, he kind of got it. You know, just a little. Anyhow, after last class, I found myself waiting outside the fifth-year Transfiguration classroom for one Asher Patrick, former (and hopefully future) best friend of Sha Lovegood. When the class ended, he was in the middle of the mob coming out of the room, by himself, head down.

'Ash!' His head jerked up and he looked at me, then detached himself from the throng. He stood next to me and looked down; he absolutely dwarfed me, despite being two years younger.

'Hey Rose. What's up?'

'What's up is Sha. She's absolutely miserable, and so are you. Talk to her! She needs a friend.' He hung his head sheepishly. 'Now skedaddle. I know that there's a great big pile of homework out there just waiting for you, and I have one of my own.' He obeyed, and I realized that I was quoting Malfoy. I turned myself ninety degrees so that I was facing the wall and banged my head against it repeatedly. After a minute, someone tapped me on the back.

'Rose?' Louis said tentatively. 'Are you all right?'

I stopped banging my head. 'Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant.' We began to walk down the hall.

'What's up?'

'Oh, just that I'm babysitting the planet again. Its not a big problem, I'm just twitchy.'

'Mmm. Twitchy. Anyhow, on a happier note, are you looking forward to the wedding?' This was in reference to the next week's marriage of Victoire Weasley and Teddy Lupin. Remembering this, I smiled.

'Yeah, should be fun. And I think that the entire family has been expecting this since Victoire was conceived. And it probably didn't matter to the family what gender she was, or what she or Teddy wanted, so it's just as well that they fell in love.' Louis laughed.

'Looking forward to wearing a penguin suit and talking to rellies?' I teased.

'And what about you, making polite conversation in a dress? Rosie, if I hadn't seen it before now, I wouldn't believe it.'

'What's this about Weasley in a dress?' Malfoy said from behind me.

'Which Weasley, me or Rose?' asked Louis. 'Because personally, I don't fancy wearing one…' I laughed.

'Rose, then. What's this about Rose in a dress?' Malfoy put mockery into my name.

'Well, Malfoy, my cousin Victoire, Louis's older sister, is getting married a week tomorrow, and unfortunately, that means that I have to put a dress on.' I shuddered. As you may have gathered, I'm not much of a girly girl.

He looked me up and down. 'Nope. Can't picture it.'

'Now picture Louis in a tuxedo.' Malfoy burst out laughing. Actually burst, like he absolutely could not hold it in. Lou and I stared at him, baffled, as he stood in the middle of the corridor positively howling with laughter. Then, after a minute, he stopped mid-laugh and straightened up, completely straight-faced. He looked at me again.

'Okay, now I can picture you in a dress.' He mock-shuddered. I pulled a face at him.

'If I'm so ugly, why are you even here?'

'Because I'm enjoying the company of my good friend Louis.' He gestured at Lou, who pulled a face at him.

'Since when are we friends?'

'Since never. But hush. She doesn't need to know that.' Scorpius put a finger to his lips, no doubt to illustrate what 'hushing' looks like.

'She already knows. It's not like it's a secret that Malfoy hates the Weasley/Potter clan. And as of next weekend, he'll be related to us. Very distantly related, but still.'

Louis cocked his head quizzically at me, but Malfoy knew what I meant and explained.

'My grandmother is Theodore Lupin's aunt on his mother's side. My mum is his cousin. What that makes me is something like a cousin. Second cousin? I think that's right.'

'Have you ever met him?' I asked.

'Nope. No idea what he looks like, even.' Louis and I grinned at one another.

'What he looks like is a…flexible thing. He's a Metamorphmagus.' I rummaged around in my bag for a second, then pulled out my journal, which has pictures and stuff taped in, making it a sort of collage-scrapbook-journal. I pulled the elastic off then ruffled through it, finding the picture I wanted. I held it out to him, pointing to Teddy. 'That's him.'

It was a photograph taken over Christmas, one of many taken at the Potters'. In it, blue haired Teddy was laughing, enjoying a drink with his godfather. I'd seen it plenty of times already, but what interested me was the look on Malfoy's face as he looked at it; his grey eyes held an almost hungry expression.

'Merlin, Rose, how long have you had that book? Since we were two?' Louis asked.

'Longer. It's magicked, so that its that small, but really has thousands of pages. Mum started it before I was born; she wrote in it every day from the time she knew she was pregnant until I was old enough to start writing in it on my own. It's got a picture of her from every day she was pregnant with me; you can see her belly grow as the pictures go, and then there's her holding me for years, and then me sitting on her lap as I get older. Every day up until I came to Hogwarts, there's a photo of us. There're some where she's so pregnant with Hugo that Dad's in the picture holding me, since I couldn't fit on her lap.'

Malfoy smiled, listening to me. 'That's sweet.' Sweet? From Malfoy? Louis and I exchanged shrugs; Malfoy seemed not to notice. He handed me the journal. I flipped back through it to a picture I particularly liked, of our two mums when they were pregnant with us at a family function of some kind, enjoying quiet cups of tea at the kitchen table in our house.

'Look, Louis, there's us!' he laughed.

'You can see Victoire poking her head around the frame.' He pointed, and, sure enough, a small, silver-blond head poked around the edge, giggled, then ducked back into non-sight.

I put the journal away and we continued to the joint common room.

That night, I wrote a letter to Teddy. Why? Because I could.

The next morning at breakfast, there was some strange Hogwartian mosh pit. I chose not to ask.

On Tuesday, I skidded into Muggle Studies late, having been…otherwise occupied at lunchtime. With my lovely boyfriend, if you know what I mean.

So you can imagine, I was kind of lunchtime-make-out-sesh happy. That is, until I reached into the hat to pull the name of my partner for the assignment. Then my happiness evaporated like a raindrop landing on a Salamander; my partner was none other than Scorpius Malfoy, the world's most narcissistic git. Sitting there smugly in his chair in the corner, cleaning under his perfect fingernails with the tip of his quill, I ought to kill him. But I won't, because I don't want to have to do the project alone.

I threw myself into the chair next to him.

'Bitch,' he acknowledged.

'Asshole.' I replied. It was good to know where we stood again.

He raised one of his nearly invisible eyebrows. 'You're blocking the view.' He gestured to two giggling, big boobed blondes.

'Whatever. We both know that you've done them both, and they aren't very good, so let's get on to the project.' He sighed resignedly, but he knew I was right, as per usual.

'So, what's this project on?' Malfoy asked in a bored voice. I started to sigh with frustration, then stopped myself. He was just trying to piss me off.

'We don't know yet. Since Professor Honeycutt is addicted to drawing things from hats, we'll pull two topics, and decide which one we want to do.' I set my books, quill and ink on my desk.

Professor Honeycutt finally came over to us and offered the hat. Scorpius ignored it, which I took to mean that I should draw, so I did.

'Slumber Parties and Hippies.' I nearly laughed out loud; two projects that would both be so laughably easy, I could do them in my sleep.

'Whatber Parties?' Malfoy asked.

'Slumber Parties. You see, sometimes, for fun, Muggle teenagers like to all go to the park and lie down on the grass and go to sleep.'

'Seriously?'

'No. But that was a brilliant look on your face when you thought it was serious.' He pulled a face at me.

'Haha. Hysterical, I'm splitting my sides. Now what does it actually mean?'

'Muggle girls get together and eat junk food and watch movies-you remember learning about movies?-and play games like Truth.'

'What in the name of Merlin's saggiest Y-fronts is Truth?'

'It's a game.'

'How do you play?' He seemed genuinely interested.

'You tell the truth.' He shot me a look.

'Funny enough, I'd figured that much out for myself, thanks.'

''It's harder than it sounds. First, someone asks someone else a question, anything they like. The asked has to answer the question, truthfully, or pass. If they pass, the person who asked the question has to answer a question. If they answer it, they win; if not, the game continues.' He thought this over for a moment, then shook his head.

'Man, that's diabolical. Trust girls.' He ran his fingers through his hair, then said 'Lets play.'

'What?'

'You heard me. Let's play.'

'No.'

'What, are you scared?' His grey eyes held a challenge, one that I couldn't turn down; it must have come in the Weasley genes.

'Of course not. You're on.' We shook on it. 'Not now though. We have to get started on our project.'

And so the day wore past. That night after supper, I was studying by myself in the Prefects Common Room, curled up on a loveseat. Suddenly, someone threw themselves down next to me so hard they sent me sprawling across the floor.

'Why'd you do that?' His grey eyes held a look of intense confusion.

I picked myself up from the floor. 'Hello to you too, scumball.'

'Not the time for it. Why did you get him to invite me to the wedding?'

I shrugged. 'Sometimes you do things just because you can.'

'But you hate me! You knew that I wanted this and gave it to me, even though you hate me!' He shook a piece of gold-edged paper in his hand which I recognized as one of the wedding invitations so painstakingly designed by Aunt Fleur.

I shrugged again. 'Family is family. Who knows, maybe you'll stop being an arrogant prick someday and we'll actually want you around. Y'know, if you get your head out of your ass.'

He ignored the jibe, instead just staring at the piece of paper in his hands. On the edge of the curly-scripted writing, I saw Teddy's scrawl, but I couldn't read it from this far away.

'I shouldn't go.'

'Of course you should. Look, as much as we…dislike each other, this is more important. Teddy wants you there, you want to know, sorry, go, no, wait…You do want to know. You want to know, which is why you want to go.' I'm so clever. 'So go. You can leave with us on Friday, and stay at our place. My parents will be so busy that they won't notice anyone else is there. You can sleep in the guest room.'

'Really? You'll do that?' He looked surprised.

'Teddy is one of my favourite people on the planet. It's a sacrifice for him. I'll deal.'

'Right. We'll deal.' He grinned at me and held out a hand. 'Truce, for Theodore's sake. Just for the weekend.'

'Only if you stop calling him Theodore. His name is Teddy.'

'Deal.'

We shook, and so ended a very strange Tuesday.