2. Wake Me Up When September Ends
Author's Note: The title of this story is a song by Kelly Clarkson, this chapter title is a song by Green Day. I don't own these, and I don't own Harry Potter either.
These first few chapters were really just introductory- they were just to clue you in on the Potter-Weasley-Longbottom-Malfoy families and how they all react to one another. This chapter is another of those- just to let you see a bit of Scorpius's nasty side and possibly let you in on one of Rose's fears.
In fact, you might find this chapter a bit shit and useless, tbh, and I was considering making it an outtake- the next chapter will be really long, though, I feel. So I'll leave this in and treat you to some foul language on Rose's part. xD
"Why are we even doing this?" Albus Severus grumbled, pulling the red and yellow scarf tighter around his neck. "It's absolutely freezing. I've already bought all of these bloody ingredients anyway..."
"We're doing this because Professor Rowett is a twat," Rose replied coarsely, stopping in the middle of the school grounds and crossing her arms. It was late September and, although Hogwarts were still offered a few mild days of precious, lingering sunlight, it had been raining all that week and the grass squelched underfoot with bubbling mud. Rose's Potions Professor had, however, decided that it was the perfect day for ingredient discovery. He'd sent all of his students out for an hour with a sheet of mushroom illustrations and a map while he sat inside with a glass of fire whiskey and a packet of biscuits. It was unjust- it was seriously unjust.
"Where shall we look, then?" Albus asked, stopping beside his cousin and rubbing his robe-clad arms with his gloved hands.
"I suppose we could try along the Forbidden Forest hem, and definitely near the greenhouses. I bet loads of stuff grows there." In truth, she didn't have a clue and, let's face it, didn't give a shit. It was chilly and her hair was a mess and she was hungry. It was last lesson of the day, too, so she just wanted to head inside and go to sleep. Instead she was being made to crawl around outside in the dirt to look for mushrooms. With a sigh, she led Albus over to the Forbidden Forest and bent over to glance among the blades of grass. There seemed to be just endless planes of green, no mushrooms in sight. Rose wondered if Professor Rowett had just given them this task to get them out of the way.
"You won't find any there!" an amused voice called out. Rose turned to find Scorpius, grinning at her from beneath a floppy grey hat. It would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. "You've got to go in deep to find the good stuff, Red." To her dismay she noticed, as he came closer, that he already had a few big specimens of ingredient in his plastic box.
"If I wanted your advice, I would have asked for it, Malfoy," she snapped, turning her nose up slightly.
"No you wouldn't," Scorpius laughed, barely phased by her apparent annoyance towards him. "I know you wouldn't. That's why I have to volunteer my expertise without asking." He shook the box in his hand. "I'm serious, though. I went in just a few paces and found all these. There's nothing out here for us to find, it's all in the forest."
"It's forbidden for a reason, Scorpius," Rose told him, crossing her arms. "They wouldn't give us a task that requires us to break the rules in order to complete it."
"They would if they were a bunch of lazy bastards who just wanted to sit in their office, watching us search desperately in vain while they gorged on biscuits," he shot back, shrugging his shoulders. "Besides, a little rule-breaking's good for the soul." He nodded towards the forest and his smile widened. "Want to break the rules with me, Rosie?"
Rose bit her lip. On one hand, now that she'd seen someone collecting mushrooms, the challenge had been set. If no one was doing any work, it was easy to fall behind and blend in with them. But if she ran the risk of letting Scorpius Malfoy get in an easy academic victory... well, that was a whole other story. Besides, the wizarding war was over; what was there possibly to fear in the Forbidden Forest these days?
"You're sure we can find some in there?"
Scorpius smiled charmingly, and rattled his box again. The dull, wet thuds of the mushrooms inside taunted her. "The proof's in the pudding."
Rose looked at Albus, biting her lip. "Shall we?"
Albus backed away immediately. "I... uh... I don't think so," he said, shaking his head surely. "Those mushrooms don't mean that much to me. Have fun, and try not to get eaten by anything in there, will you?" With a wave and a look of incredulity towards his cousin's competitiveness, he jogged back to the group of Gryffindors and Ravenclaws that had congregated in the middle of the field to chat.
Rose glanced back to Scorpius. "I know we're rivals," the blond boy said. "But there's no rule against us working together for once. You never know- I might just surprise you. C'mon, Rosie- I dare you."
And that was all it took. With a smirk and narrowed eyes, Rose nodded and jogged into the dark shade of the wood. Scorpius caught with her and, as he took over and prepared to lead, she grabbed his wrist. "Oh, yeah... Scorpius? Call me Rosie again and I'll stick my wand somewhere extremely unpleasant."
Scorpius chuckled. "I look forward to it, Rosie."
"Shut up."
They found several more specimens of mushroom gathered around the foot of a large tree, but their collection soon become extremely repetitive. They ventured into the forest further- a move that Rose feared was less sensible than she had at first thought when the eerie silence set in. She thought back to all the nightmare-inducing stories that her father and uncle had told her about their adventures in the Forbidden Forest, and bit her lip with nervousness. They were stupid stories, and they weren't true,she told herself. Or, at least, they aren't true anymore...
She felt a gentle tap on her left shoulder, and turned her head. There was nothing there save for endless trees. Scorpius giggled on her other side at the success of his prank. She rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah, because that was mature, Malfoy, really."
He sniggered, but all he said back once he was composed was, "Why do you call me by my last name so much?"
Sneaking a sideward glance at him, Rose replied, "Because your first name is so idiotic."
"I'll have you know that my f-"
Grunt.
"What the hell?" Rose asked, glancing at her Ravenclaw classmate.
Scorpius stared back blankly at her. "What? That wasn't me."
"Oh, yeah, sure it wasn't," Rose replied, rolling her eyes and bending down again to examine the mushrooms clustered around a rock. After forty minutes of looking at fungi, it all seemed to start looking the same.
Grunt.
She stood, ignoring the sound to presume that Scorpius was still busy being an idiot, and pried the lid of the plastic box open in order to deposit one of her ingredient choices inside. Then she looked up at her classmate again, annoyed at what an obvious attempt he made to freak her out, only to find herself alone. Sighing heavily and rolling her eyes yet again, she fixed the lid back on the box and looked around. It was surprisingly dark under the cover of the trees and, since they'd gone in deeper, she found it difficult to tell which the way back to school was.
"Scorpius," she called, words distorted with another sigh. "You are aware that this is even less funny than the stupid shoulder tap thing, right?" As she expected, he didn't emerge, so she began to walk in the direction that seemed most well-lit. "Seriously, stop being an idiot." Against her will, she felt unpleasant chills and tingles shoot up her spine, and felt her temperature drop almost immediately. The irrational – she assumed – fear crept in slowly like black smoke, curling around her and holding her quite gently in its cold embrace. "Scorpius, you twat..." she murmured, her voice slightly weaker now as she quickened her pace through the damp mud and tree roots.
Before long, Rose stopped and turned around. "Scorpius!" she called, a little louder this time. She focused on keeping her voice strong and a little annoyed- Malfoy could be as much of a prankster as her cousin James when he wanted to be, so she knew that hearing her fear would just edge him on. "Get your ass here right now or-"
With a roar – one tinged with hysterical boyish laughter – something collided with her back, knocking her forwards hard enough to make her shriek with alarm. A firm arm around her waist prevented her from collapsing into the dirt beneath her attacker. She squirmed against the hold he had on her and broke free, turning to face a Ravenclaw boy who was verging on being paralytic with laughter. Breathing heavily with lingering fear, relief and adrenalin, she shoved Scorpius as hard as she could away from her. "You're a fucking nutcase," she told him, rapidly blinking away moisture from her eyes. "How could you even do that to me? Fuck you, Malfoy. It wasn't even funny." She spun and walked away from him, the tree line fortunately in her view.
"It was, Rose," Scorpius said, retrieving the box of mushrooms that Rose had dropped onto the floor and falling into step beside her. He put his free hand on her arm.
"Get lost," she snapped, her voice hoarse and more vulnerable than he'd heard her sound in a while.
"Don't," he said, tightening his grip to try and slow her down while she attempted to shake him off.
"Get fucking lost," she said a little louder, yanking her arm out of his grip and taking off at a jog.
Scorpius, a Chaser on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team who did laps of the pitch almost every morning, caught up with her easily and stepped around in front of her. "Hey, hey, Rosie," he said, noticing the genuine annoyance and embarrassment on her face. "It was just a joke. I didn't mean to freak you out, I'm sorry."
She pushed him away again sharply. "Don't even bother, Malfoy. You're just like James, and Merlin knows I had to put up with enough of him in my summer holidays. Come make it up to me once you've grown up a little."
Rose made her way back to the Potions room in silence, and Scorpius followed quietly behind.
