GAH HI EVERYBODY! I'm going to be totally honest, I COMPLETELY forgot about this fic in light of starting so many other projects and a busy summer. I stumbled upon it again like two days ago and started writing and WOW! It's like the ideas are flowing out of me! I'm so sorry it took me this long to update, but I can promise it will be sooner from now on. However, I am working with two stories at once, plus I've got school starting soon. I don't know how this is going to go, but I will not be abandoning either of the stories.

Anyways, if any of you remember, last chapter I asked if you guys wanted fluff or plot. Well, I got mixed reviews, so I've decided to incorporate both. There is a very miniscule piece of information in this chapter that will come into play later, and it's fluffy and does help advance the plot. So I hope I met the criteria :)

Again, I'm so sorry and can promise sooner updates. Thank you to all who are still reading AND who read this ridiculously long author's note.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe and make no money off of this story :) Also, I do not own The Hobbit or any part of LoTR

Chapter 17: Of Libraries and Late-Night Talks

The end of October came and went, the days slowly growing colder. The leaves began to dry to an ugly brown and fall off the trees, causing Hagrid to employ a certain group of Hogwarts students in detention to rake them. As November wore on, the leaves were all blanketed with the first snowfall of the year, which turned out to be more than two feet deep. Herbology was often canceled, much to the disappointment of a certain blond-haired fifth year boy. Classes slowly increased in difficulty, each with the intent of getting the students ready for the upcoming June OWLs. James Potter managed to successfully ask out Alice Longbottom by mid-November, and Fred Weasley asked out Gryffindor Keeper Jessica Finnigan not long after. School and life went on, and most of Hogwarts got over the fact that Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy had suddenly and inexplicably become friends. And it was a cold, snowy December day, two weeks before the students went home for Christmas break, that anything exciting and out of the ordinary began to happen.

It started when Molly and Lorcan finally broke up, after quarreling on and off since the disastrous Hogsmeade weekend back in October. As a result, the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were not speaking to each other, since most Gryffindors were of the opinion that Lorcan Scamander had been rather awful to Molly Weasley. She was like the mother of all the Gryffindors and had helped most of them more than once. The Ravenclaws, who usually didn't give much thought to matters of love, came to Lorcan's defense when a few immature and vile Gryffindor sixth years had decided to poke fun at Lorcan (which ended in him hanging upside down with his underpants exposed in the middle of the corridor). Though the Gryffindors did not approve of this behavior, the Ravenclaw retaliation of attempting to steal all of Molly Weasley's school books for a week had them feuding for the second time that year.

All of this would have been rather unimportant if it had not affected two particular people in the school. As Rose was a Gryffindor and Scorpius a Ravenclaw, they could no longer visit the others' tower without jeering insults and angry glares. As a result, they'd taken to holing up in the back of the library, and it was here that they were found the day that everything changed again.

"If you could have any book in the world, what would it be?" Rose asked.

"Newly Discovered Magical Fungi of Our Time," Scorpius replied.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I love plants, you know that. But I've never gotten it."

"Surely you must have told someone! Your parents would buy it for you, wouldn't they? Or you could get it yourself?"

Scorpius shrugged. It was true, his parents would have bought him any book he wanted. But not many people knew of his Herbology passion, and therefore, not many people would know that was the kind of book he would want. Actually, Rose was one of two people who knew of his obsession, not that he was about to tell her that.

"Favorite...type of tree?" Scorpius asked.

"Type of tree?"

"You heard me."

"Hmm. Maple, I guess," she replied. "I like the leaf patterns. Now, you...favorite...Muggle musical artist."

"Bob Marley," he replied. "You?"

"Taylor Swift. Um..."

"Hey, wait, it's my turn!" Scorpius objected.

"No, it's not. You asked me my favorite Muggle musical artist, too, and I said Taylor Swift. It's my turn."

"Fine," Scorpius replied, making an attempt to return to the Transfiguration questions they were supposed to have been doing.

"If you were approached in a lonely alleyway by a stranger that was clearly taller and stronger than you and asked to hand over all your money or get attacked, what would you do?"

Scorpius gaped at her. "Put some thought into this, haven't we?"

Rose shrugged. "What would you do?"

"Get the hell out of there, what do you think?"

She laughed again. "So would I. Doesn't make me much of a Gryffindor, huh?"

"Naw, but it saves you a broken face. My turn...um...OK, how about a riddle?"

"Sure!" she replied enthusiastically. "I love riddles."

"Alright, then. You're stuck in a haunted house, and the power is out. There are only three doors. Once you enter one of the doors, you can never get back out. One door leads to an angry lion that hasn't been fed in weeks. One leads to a twenty-foot deep pit. And the other leads to an electric chair. Which door do you choose to enter?"

"That's morbid," Rose muttered, leaning back in her chair. "Tell it to me again?"

So Scorpius repeated the riddle. When he'd finished, Rose sat back in her chair. "Hmm. Well, I personally don't think there's any way you can escape from the lion. Am I armed?"

Scorpius shook his head no.

"Okay...do I have anything on my body?"

"Other than clothes, no. And there's nothing in the house except the lion, the chair, and the pit."

"Then I'd go to the pit."

"Why?" Scorpius asked, surprised.

"Because I could use my clothes to make a rope down to the bottom," Rose said matter-of-factly. Scorpius just shook his head at her and laughed.

"No, Rose, you're supposed to choose the chair."

"Why? I don't fancy being electrocuted, do you?"

"No, but I told you at the beginning - the power is out in the house. The chair is an electric chair, so if the power is out, nothing would happen."

"Oh," Rose said, frowning. "That's so obvious in hindsight."

"Most things are," Scorpius agreed. Rose, still frowning, went back to her Transfiguration questions. She answered three of them, still deep in thought, then looked back up at Scorpius.

"My turn. I have a riddle for you."

"Alright," he replied, sitting back in his chair. "Tell it to me."

"It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind stars and under hills, and empty holes it fills. It comes first and follows after; ends life, kills laughter."

"And you say I'm morbid," Scorpius muttered, leaning back in his chair. "Alright. Can't be seen or felt, you can't hear it, and you can't smell it. Right?"

Rose nodded.

"Found behind stars and under hills and in empty holes?" Another nod. "Comes first...follows after...ends life and kills laughter," Scorpius muttered to himself. His brain was working furiously, trying to figure out the riddle, determined to impress Rose. He thought and though, trying to figure out what would end life. A knife? Yes, but that could be felt and seen. Perhaps a poison in the air? But that wasn't found behind stars or under hills...

Round and round Scorpius' thoughts went, for so long that Rose returned to her Transfiguration questions. She had just finished them and was starting on the chapter that they were supposed to read for Charms when Scorpius threw his hands up in the air.

"I have no idea," he confessed, his tone clearly frustrated and a little angry. Rose gave him a gentle smile.

"Then I take it you have never read The Hobbit?"

"The what?"

"Never mind," she sighed, placing a bookmark in her book. "Come here." Warily, Scorpius followed her to one of the huge windows in the library. The sun had already set, and the stars in their multitudes were clearly visible, twinkling brightly in the night sky. Scorpius automatically began searching for the constellations that would be visible, but Rose's voice stopped him before he could find any.

"Now, look behind the stars. What do you see?"

"Look behind the stars? What are you talking about?"

"Alright, in between them, then."

Scorpius tried to ignore how close Rose was to him and squinted at the sky. He strained his eyes to see something between the stars, but there was nothing there.

"I don't see anything, Rose."

"Exactly. What's behind the stars, Scorpius? If you tried to go up and touch the stars, where would you wind up?"

"Space?"

"And space is..."

"Empty?"

"No," Rose sighed, shaking her head, a smile on her lips. "Come on, Scorpius. What color is space?"

"It doesn't really have a color because it's...oh, oh I get it."

"What's the answer to the riddle?" she asked, looking up at him with that same soft smile on her lips.

He looked down at her, only a few inches taller. "Dark."

"Correct," she said softly, and they stood and smiled at each other for a moment, Scorpius admiring the way Rose's eyes shone in the moonlight, she liking how his hair turned silver.

A cough behind them made them turn away from each other to see Madam Pince standing there, glaring suspiciously at them.

"The library is now closed. You have five minutes to evacuate," she said nastily, then left them alone.

"We should go," Rose said, turning from the window. "My stuff's spread out everywhere, and she'll be madder than a hornet if we're not out in five minutes."

"You're a witch, Rose," Scorpius reminded her. "Just use your wand to pack things up."

"Right," she muttered, waving her wand, and watching all her quills, parchment, ink, and books fly perfectly into her bag. She and Scorpius left the library exactly on time, thankfully avoiding Madam Pince's wrath.

"Hey, are you going to the Hogsmeade trip on Friday?" Scorpius asked offhandedly as they approached Ravenclaw Tower.

"Yeah. It's my last chance to buy things for my family for Christmas," Rose admitted. "I tend to put things off until the last minute."

"That's cool," he said, standing hesitantly at the bottom of the staircase. "I have to do my shopping, too..."

Rose nodded, staring at the ground, and Scorpius, too, could feel the tension that had sprung up out of nowhere between them.

"I'll see you around, then," Rose said, glancing up at him and offering him the soft smile she'd worn when she helped him figure out the riddle. Then she had turned and was gone, leaving Scorpius more than slightly stunned.

He entered the tower and slowly climbed the stairs to his dorm, then moved over to his bed in a daze and just kind of collapsed onto it.

"What the hell are you - Scorpius, geroff!"

Apparently, it wasn't his bed he'd collapsed onto after all, but his best friend Dan Thomas's bed. And while the two boys were very close, Dan wasn't happy to have his best friend randomly collapse on top of him - at 11 o'clock at night.

"Sorry, Dan, sorry. Thought it was my bed, sorry."

"Are you even awake, Scorpius? Your bed is on the other side of the room."

"Alright, fine, I was distracted. Again, I'm sorry, Dan. Go back to sleep."

"Nah. If you're that distracted you ought to talk. What's up, man? Girl troubles again?"

"Of a sort," Scorpius sighed, resigning himself to explaining to Dan. "I mean, how do you tell if a girl likes you? How do you tell if you like her? What do you do about it if you DO like her? What if you don't have the guts to ask her out? Dan, why do people even bother with this stuff?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Dan said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Okay. Let me see if I can answer these. How do you tell if you like a girl, well, if you find yourself staring at her a lot, thinking she's pretty, if you enjoy her company, that kind of thing. If you DO like her, then ask her out, and if you don't have the guts, just try being friends with her. As for how to tell if she likes you, you can't. It is physically impossible. As for why people bother with this, well, all I can say is that if it does work out, it's worth it, Scorp."

Scorpius was quiet for a moment before he nodded. "Thanks, Dan."

"No problem. Now get off my bed."

Scorpius laughed but complied, crossing to the other side of the room and flopping down on the correct bed this time. Slowly, he changed into his pajamas and lay back on his bed, his mind going a mile a minute. He wished he could talk to Dan again, but figured he was probably asleep.

Scorpius was on the point of pulling out the most boring book he could find to read in an attempt to lull himself to sleep when Dan spoke again.

"I don't suppose you have any girl in particular in mind, do you?" he asked, and Scorpius knew, even though the room was dark, that his friend was smirking.

"Maybe I do," Scorpius replied evenly, "but I'm not likely to tell you even if I did."

"No matter," Dan replied, and Scorpius heard him rolling over in bed as the springs creaked. "I always knew you liked Rose Weasley anyway."

Ta da! I don't know if that really counts as a "cliffhanger", but that's how I decided to end it. Hope you liked the Hobbit riddle, I just could resist :)

Until next time!

Please review!

Lovelovelove -D-