Rose's mind was occupying two planes of reality. One version of her mind raced with information and sought answers to questions she could barely contemplate, the most prominent of which was, "why?"
The other version of her mind was blissfully blank and completely absorbed in the fact that Scorpius Malfoy was kissing her, and she liked it.
Racing and stalling, her brain fazed in and out of existence, a contradiction her thinking half made carful note of, and her feeling half carefully ignored.
Part of her wanted to stop, to figure out what they were even doing. Scorpius' justification of Rose being a terrible liar, while accurate, was clearly an excuse. Her mind circled back to the ever-present "why" in the grander mystery of Scorpius Malfoy.
Another part of her fought to push her rational and racing mind aside. To succumb to the intoxicating sensation of Scorpius' body pressed into hers, the feel of his hands moving up her back, the taste of his mouth on her tongue.
Her rational mind was struggling to take over when his mouth left hers. She was in a new kind of daze for half a second, not sure what to think, when he found his way to her neck, and nibbled.
That was the point where rational Rose knew she had lost the fight, and blissful oblivion took over.
She didn't know when they decided to leave and walk her back to her common room, but she remembered stopping multiple times along the way to be pressed up against a wall and kissed again. Fuzzy-brain Rose was wildly happy, and getting better and better at convincing her other self that any and all rationalizations and explanations could wait until later.
The brass eagle knocker clicked it's beak at them in annoyance when they arrived, giggling.
"Why does a niffler seek that which shines?" the knocker asked.
Rose saw Scorpius glance at her, but if her brain started working now, it would overwhelm her. He leaned in to kiss her gently one more time, before turning to the knocker and saying, "because those in the dark long for what's bright."
The door swung open. Scorpius leaned in to Rose's ear and whispered "goodnight" before disappearing down the stairs.
Rose stared after him for a few seconds before her daze finally broke. Reasonable Rose emerged at last as she entered the common room and the door closed behind her.
"Oh dear, what have I done?"
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Almost two hours later Dominique, still translucent, came back to find Rose sitting at a work desk in the corner of the common room, staring into space.
"You certainly seemed to be having a good time earlier" Dominique teased.
Rose looked up at her and Dominique sat down at the table. "Oh no, I know that look. That's the look you get when you're overthinking something. What are you making more complicated than it needs to b- Merlin's pants Rose! You have a GIANT hickey on your neck. Tell me everything that happened tonight."
Rose opened her mouth to speak, then paused. "I'm sorry. I'm in a crisis here, and I really want your advice, but I cannot talk to you while you're all see-through." Rose gave a little laugh, glad she still had the brain capacity for humor. "It's been freaking me out since before. Fix that first, and then it's going to be long night."
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"And at some point I just thought, screw it, and just gave in to what I wanted, but of course I shouldn't have, and just because I wanted it to be real doesn't mean he's not just messing around with me, but I really don't want him to be, but if he's not messing around then what IS he doing, and everything's a mess, and tomorrow's Monday, and what do I do?"
"Wow, okay. Well, what do you want to do?" Dominique asked.
"Crawl under a rock and never come out again?" Rose ventured.
"No. I will not have a rock-hermit-person for a cousin."
"Why not? I'll be the one under there, not you. There'll be plenty of shade, and possibly fungus to stare at. It sounds perfect."
"Why don't you just amuse me and come up with a 'plan two'?"
Rose let out an involuntary laugh. "That's how I got into this situation in the first place."
Dominique gave her a stern look.
"Fine, fine! I guess long term I want to know what he's really thinking. And short term I want to pretend none of this ever happened. I just don't know how to do either. Short of going right up to him and asking 'Scorpius, what are your real feeling for me, and why are you doing all these things', I've got nothing. I'm not Lily, I can't just do anything and say whatever's on my mind. My parents are the Gryffindors, not me, remember?"
"Of course I know. I'm here with you, aren't I? And what are we? Ravenclaws! We don't need to resort to the direct approach, how unimaginative! We're going to out-think these circumstances. You're clearly too close to the situation to do this on your own, and that's why I'm here to help you."
Rose smiled at her cousin and pulled her into a tight embrace. "Thank you" she whispered fiercely.
Dominique squeezed her back and pulled away. "Right, first thing's first. Tomorrow. You're going to play it cool. Pretend that nothing's out of the ordinary and everything's dandy. See how he reacts. Report to me at the end of the day, and we'll plan our next move, alright?"
"I don't know if I can manage that, but I'll do my best."
"Good, now let's get some sleep, we're going to need it."
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Be cool, be cool, everything's normal, Rose chanted to herself on the way to her Potions class the next morning. Dominique had rolled her eyes at Rose when she refused to attend breakfast. "It'll be bad enough trying to pretend nothing's different with class as a breakwater. There's no way I'm starting the day facing my family with no distractions." Rose had said.
You don't really want to be a hermit-rock person, Rose tried to convince herself. Picturing herself under a rock like some sort of insect was at least amusing, so she took a deep breath and entered the dungeon.
She spotted Scorpius, and stopped. He was in the middle of some sort of heated whispering with Albus, and so far neither boy had noticed her entrance.
Rose was momentarily distracted from her own issues. She quietly and inconspicuously made her way over to them in order to hear what they were saying.
"Look, I'm sorry okay? But I don't think you're right." "–under control, it's fine." Scorpius was saying.
"It's not," "–know" "–better than you" "–too much" Rose could only just make out parts of Albus' reply.
Rose cleared her throat and both boys looked up at her guiltily.
"Good morning" she said.
Albus opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the arrival of their professor. He managed a quick "Morning" before making his way over to McGrady.
"What was that about?" Rose asked, glad for a neutral topic to cling to.
"How much did you hear?" Scorpius asked, a little withdrawn.
"Not much, but it's rare for you two to fight, isn't it. I thought you kind of got along."
"We do. It's just… a little disagreement. It's fine, no big deal." Scorpius seemed confident, so Rose let it go.
Thirty minutes later she was thinking that might have been a mistake. Without this new topic to talk about, she was back to chanting "act normal" in her head, but it was clear she was failing. She had already messed up the instructions to her brew twice, and where Scorpius' potion was pink and bubbling, hers was closer to purple sludge.
Scorpius eyed her cauldron skeptically. "Are you alright? You seem… distracted…"
"What? No. I'm fine, everything's fine. It's normal. And fine." Rose cringed internally, and then realized she was cringing externally as well.
Scorpius reached for her hand before she added moonseed (which was poisonous) instead of moondew to her potion.
Rose jerked her hand back in surprise and upended her entire cauldron. Every face turned toward their table and their professor was already making her way over.
"What's happened, are you both alright?" she asked, surveying the scene. Rose and Scorpius both were beside the desk, vanishing the spilled mess.
"We're fine" he replied, "I was distracted today and had a bit of an accident and Rose is helping me clean up, I'm sorry."
"Nobody got hurt, which is good, but they could have. Pay more attention to your potion next time, Mr. Malfoy. As I recall you had a spill last year as well. Try not to let it happen a third time. Get Ms. Weasley to help you for the rest of class and you may still have time to finish, her brew looks perfectly fine so far."
The professor walked away and Rose looked guiltily at Scorpius. "I'm so sorry, you didn't have to do that."
"No, it's fine" he looked over at Albus who was still looking at them. "Let's just hurry up, then we'll go talk, okay?"
"Sure."
The extra work actually seemed to help Rose concentrate. Filling her brain so completely was a good distraction, and she somehow made it through the rest of class without causing any other disasters.
When they were done, they made their way over to the same empty classroom they had used to talk after potions two weeks ago, when this whole situation had begun. Thankfully it was NOT the same empty classroom they had ended up in the night before.
"I'm sorry about last night" Scorpius blurted when Rose had closed the door.
"You're… sorry?" Rose said, not sure if she should feel quite so disappointed.
"No. Yes. Kind of? I think I might have taken things a little too far. I got a bit caught up, and I won't do it again, so you can stop jumping a mile every time I reach for your hand." His face looked conflicted, and concerned, which was new. Rose could hardly remember him being anything other than confident and in control.
"No, it's fine, everything's fine. I knew you weren't being serious." Though I had kind of hoped…
"You're clearly not fine, though I can see you're trying to pretend to be. I told you that you were a bad liar" he grinned a bit at that and Rose gave a light chuckle.
"Yes, I remember," she said, and instantly regretted it in the slightly awkward silence that followed.
"…Right. Well, so, like I said, I won't do that again, so, friends?" he held his hand out to her.
Rose didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed, but she took his offered hand.
"Friends," she agreed.