Rose stumbled out of the fireplace after her family. "Dad, WHAT are you talking about?" she asked, catching up to him. Neither of her parents had made any more comments to her about her supposed "boyfriend" on the way to the nearest Floo connection.

"There was a rather interesting article in Witch Weekly last week, you know. Complete with pictures." Her father said this in a tone that gave away nothing. He merely handed her the magazine in question and watched her read.

"Page eleven, dear" her mother helpfully supplied.

Rose flipped to the correct page and was confronted with a giant picture of herself being spun around on a Quidditch pitch while kissing Scorpius Malfoy. She watched her self spin and be gently set down over and over again, brain short-circuiting, when she remembered there was an entire article to read.

A large part of her didn't want to know what it said. She came from a family that was considered to be filled with a bunch of war heroes, and her uncle was Harry Freaking Potter. Rose knew her fair share of gossip column dirt, and indeed had been on the receiving end of articles like this a few times in the past, but she had never paid them any mind. She had simply never cared, or needed to care. The people she loved knew her, and knew what was true; so all the rest had been annoyances at worst, and hilarious at best.

Albus, for instance, was once referred to as a "dark magic doppelgänger" of his father who was apparently secretly trying to take over the wizarding world by throwing socks at people. Everyone had gotten a big kick out of that one. The truth was simply that Albus had chucked a few balled up socks at some reporters who had been following him one day while he was shopping.

This time, however, Rose knew she was going to have some explaining to do. Her family wouldn't have believed a word of the article, obviously, but she knew they would expect the truth from her, and that was going to be awkward. In order to sort out what needed to be explained, she took a breath and began to read.

Exclusive scoop! It has come to the attention of the Wizarding World that one Rose Weasley, niece of Harry Potter and daughter of Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger-Weasley, is now dating Scorpius Malfoy, son of former Death Eater Draco Malfoy, next heir to the Malfoy estate.

Is Rose betraying everything her uncle and parents fought for by embracing pureblood ideologies, OR is she being imperioused? Either way she has clearly gotten mixed up in some Dark magic. Some are even saying she may already be pregnant with the reincarnation of you-know-who himself.

Neither family was available to comment on the relationship, so we can all only guess at this point what's really going on behind closed doors.

"… WHAT!?" Rose exclaimed, "I'm not… we haven't even… WHAT!?"

"Oh sweetie, we know it's a load of rubbish" her mother assured her, "But the picture seems genuine. How long have you been dating Scorpius? And I do hope he's not much like his father was or I may question your tastes."

"I'm, we're not… we broke up. Kind of. It's complicated. There were circumstances. He's very nice, you know. In a kind of annoying way. I'm explaining this all wrong."

"Lemmie see," Hugo said, snatching the magazine from Rose. "Oh, ew. I already have to see them snogging all over school, I don't want to see it at home too." He closed the magazine and set in on a nearby table.

Rose glared at her brother. "Oh shut up, you. You don't even know the whole story."

"We'd love to hear the whole story if you'd like to tell us, love, but it's up to you." Hermione said.

"We just want to know what's going on in your life, before we read about rubbish like that in the gossip column," Ron added.

Rose figured now would not be the best time for the full version of her story, so she simplified a little while sticking close to the truth.

"We were dating, but I didn't know how serious he was about me. We broke up a few weeks ago, but I'm hoping it was a misunderstanding because I still like him."

She looked expectantly at her parents.

Her mother smiled at her. "Well, then I hope you two make up, and if his parents ever do or say anything to you, tell us immediately. We'll always be in your corner, no matter what. Now go get unpacked and ready to leave again, we're all having dinner at the Burrow."

"Thank you." Rose said when her parent's didn't pry. She hugged them and went to her room with her luggage. It looked just how she'd left it, with a Cannon's poster over her bed and a mess on her desk. She smiled to herself, glad to be home.

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Dinner was always an affair at her grandparent's home, the Burrow. Her father was one of seven children, and they always made room for various friends and godchildren. The first night back she went through a familiar conversation about her intentions towards Scorpius Malfoy. To her family's credit they took it in stride and let the subject drop. By the end of the night she was even able to laugh about it with Dominique and Albus.

"Pregnant! Can you believe it?" she giggled.

"Unfortunately I can," said Albus. "You should just hear how many witches claim James, or even I, got them pregnant. And it doesn't happen as much anymore, but according to mom it was even worse with dad when they were younger."

"You?" Dominique laughed. "Shows how good of a journalist they are."

"What, didn't you know?" Albus said, "When I'm not an evil sock throwing monster I'm quite a ladies man apparently."

"Quite an accomplishment for someone who only flirts with cute boys." Rose said with a smile.

"Eh, it's a talent." Albus winked. "Speaking of gossip and cute boys, Rose, why did you break up with Scorpius? I know you were only dating for pretend, but you said he made you happy."

Rose sighed. "It was kind of an accident, I fumbled my words a bit, and then he said I was right, we should stop pretending, and didn't care at all. He just smiled at me like we were still good friends and then went- wait a second, I never said we were only dating for pretend. I only told that to Dominique!"

Rose narrowed her eyes at her younger cousin.

"Don't look at me!" Dominique said, "I didn't tell him."

They both looked at Albus.

"Well, Scorpius might have mentioned something, but I won't tell you much, it's not my place. You should hear it from him. I know he seems confident all the time, but honestly it's usually just a front. At first I thought he was just messing with you, so I confronted him about it, but I then I saw how much you liked him, so I think you should try and give it a shot, for real this time."

Rose's mouth had fallen open.

"And the sooner the better, really. I was making some good progress with McGrady before we switched back to our original seats in Potions. But he's a shy one, so it's going to take a little more work."

Albus didn't even flinch under the stare of his two cousins.

"Well," said Dominique, popping a hand under Rose's chin and tapping her mouth closed, "there you go then." She looked expectantly at Rose.

Rose's brain was going about a million kilometers per hour. If Albus was telling her she should try again with Scorpius, did that mean Albus thought Scorpius had feelings for Rose too? It probably did, he wouldn't encourage her if he thought she had no hope.

She had wanted to try and patch things up with Scorpius anyway. Of course, her solution had been more along the lines of "stop being awkward around him, then start talking to him again, then things will magically fall back into place… somehow". But now…? Did she have the guts to declare her feelings for him directly and see what happened?

She would need an excuse, she knew that. Some reason other than, "Hey, I think I really like you". Not that that wasn't a good enough reason on its own, but Rose was just facing facts, she had never been good at the direct approach. Her brain would stall and her mouth would panic and she needed something to babble about until her brain caught up.

"A present" she said at last, to the confused faces of Albus and Dominique.

"Uh, what? Was that some weird attempt to change the topic? Because that was bad, sweetie, even for you."

"No," Rose said, "I'm going to get him a Christmas present and use it as an excuse to talk to him."

Dominique smiled at her while Albus shook his head good-naturedly. "You never could just do something directly, could you?"

"Nope," Rose assured him, "I always need to have a plan, and I think I've got one now. Where's your mom? I'm going to need her help."

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Note from the author:

Holy cow! I can't believe I have 100 followers for this story. I'm completely floored, thank you all so much for the follows, faves, and comments, they really mean a lot to me.

I've been trying hard to write a few chapters ahead so that I can release them fairly consistently, but I'm all caught up as of here, and have finals coming up next week, so I'm not sure how soon I'll get the next one out, but I'm hoping it'll still be around a week like all the others.

Things are about to wrap up here, only one or two more chapters to go before the end. I've never written or posted anything before, so I just wanted to say thank you to everyone one more time. I for sure would have given up on this forever ago without your encouragement and support.

Here's this chapter a few days earlier than I planned to celebrate 100 followers! 3

(Also it's come to my attention that there a few formatting issues with my story, certain things [like stars to indicate a location change] don't translate well from Word documents to format apparently, so I'm going to try and fix those too.)