This chapter contains alcohol consumption. Depending on where you live, it's underage drinking, as Rose and company are 18 here. So if you're not okay with that, you can skip this one. Just come back next week. :)

And, the pretty Merida cover photo is by Seanchaithe, at DeviantArt.

1 September 2024

Room 121

Auror Tower

7 A.M.

I made a mistake.

As a student of the Ronald Bilius Weasley School of Catastrophes, I can say that this is not the most substantial I committed, or the most ill-advised. Those would be interviewing for the Auror Program (the former), and trying to convince my mum to get me a house elf because I didn't want to clean my room (the latter).

No, this isn't the worst, or the stupidest; although if my cousins ever hear of this, I suspect I'll never hear the end of it. We'd be camping our wrinkly selves in front of a fireplace, and they'd all be, "Remember that time when Rosie did That Thing when she was training to be an Auror? What an idiot."

I wish we could go back in time; I'd return to the first of March and knock myself unconscious. That way, no more trip to the Ministry, no more personnel amused by my "charmingly quaint answers," no more endorsement stamped 'approved,' no more initiations, no more That Thing, which was about bleeding

Horklumps! I chucked a barrel of horklumps down the sewage to see if they would float! And they don't!

Not really. I'm just buying time. I'd rather eat earwax Every Flavor Beans than admit it, even to a piece of paper. But I realize the need to get this out of my system, because classes start in twenty-four hours.

Here goes.

A few hours ago I was at one of the fields near the third year dorms. There's a bonfire, according to Agnes, and she dragged me and our roommates down from our side of the tower to join the festivities. Deirdre and Gina are nice enough people, but we don't talk much. Hence, we had possibly the quietest corner in the area.

"I got us more beer!" Agnes hollered above the music and the buzz of excited voices. She was levitating bottles in front of her, and she proceeded to nudge our knuckles with the glass until we opened our hands to grab them.

"Another one? Agnes, I really don't think—" Deirdre started, but she was drowned out by whoops of delight from some second years nearby. Poor girl. I saw her lining up her books earlier today; she was probably getting ready for a quiet night in. She squeezed her eyes shut as she chugged, and Agnes burst into appreciative laughter.

"I am going back to the dorms after this one Deirdre, if you wanna come back," Gina said. She signed up for our level's Quidditch team the morning she got here. I smiled at her.

"Don't want to miss the practice games tomorrow, huh?" I said. She nodded.

"The Fitchburg Finches hit me up with a spot in their reserve team right after school, but being an Auror seemed fine too," she shrugged. "Thought I'd keep playing."

"You're from the U.S. and you didn't tell us?" Agnes, who adores foreign cultures, proceeded to grill Gina on all things American. I turned to Deirdre, but I found that she was already talking to this first year I often see reading on the steps of the library. They were giggling about some wizard who married into Muggle royalty when I spotted a familiar blond head across the bonfire.

I know I had a silly grin on my face as I made my way to the other side of the field, excusing myself as I stepped over students in various states of rest on the grass. Malfoy—Scorpius—was staring at the fire, a cup in hand. He would occasionally nod at passers-by, talk briefly with others, but he didn't look like he was with anyone.

"Look at you," I said, plopping beside him. "Mucking about with the hoi polloi, Scorpius?"

"What do you want, Weasley?" he said, taking a swig from his cup. I found myself staring at his hair again, which seemed to glow in the light of the fire. I must have looked like I got my brains sucked out or something, because he when he turned to look at me he had this strange expression on his face.

I was thinking; I need to touch his hair. Just one fistful. I leaned closer to him, and he switched from looking puzzled to looking slightly alarmed. I moved in slowly and stretched my hand out.

"Weasley, what in Merlin's beard—Weasley—Rose!" I jumped. For some reason forever lost to me now, I laughed at this, which probably confirmed to Scorpius that I, indeed, am a nutcase.

"Say it again," I said.

"Say what?"

"My name. Say 'Rose'."

"Rose."

I smiled at that. And then, he yelped as I swept my hand through his hair.

"Are you off your rocker?" he cried, which triggered another giggling fit. He looked about ready to call me thirty different types of insane when he sighed and stared back at the fire.

"You have great hair," I said after probably a couple of minutes of not speaking.

"Thank you." He said after a longer stretch of silence.

"I wish I had hair like yours. Instead, I have the Burning Brush."

"It looks—robust," he said. "And, there's—lots of it," he added.

"My hair can comfortably nest five baby owls," I said morosely. "In pictures, I look like a fire tree." He let out a snort and hastily gulped down the rest of his drink.

I tapped his shoulder. "Hey, Scorpius, let's play a game."

"I'm not a child, Rose."

The group was thinning out, because many initiates were heading back to their dorms. I looked towards my dorm mates—Gina and Deirdre were gone, but Agnes, who found Lionel Dawlish, was playing Exploding Snap with him.

"Come on. It'll be fun, trust me."

"Give me a reason why it'll be fun."

"Because we're both pickled beyond belief! Later, we'll go to sleep, have a massive headache when we wake up, and get rid of it in time for the Welcoming Ceremonies at sundown. By then we'll forget all about this conversation. You'll be—" I poked him weakly in the chest, "—your usual puffed-up self and we'll be nothing but training partners. But right now, we'll play a good game. How's that sound?"

He was staring at me with a blank look on his face; I took it that he was much more intoxicated than I was, and was about to call the whole thing off, when he smirked and said, "Okay."

I staggered away from the fire and approached a grassy hillock. Scorpius was several paces behind me. As I started to climb, he called out, "D'you need help?"

"I can handle it," I said. "You go worry about yourself."

This knoll is not terribly steep, but it was high enough to give us a good view of the party on the field. I was doing cat stretches when he heaved himself over the edge.

"Well, what now?" Scorpius said.

"Now, we roll down!"

"You are corking mad, it—" the rest of his sentence, I didn't hear, because I lay down, stretched my arms above me to rest on the grass, and pushed myself down the hillside. And rolled all the way down. When I reached the bottom I climbed back up to where he was.

"It's refreshing; you should really get to it."

"How refreshing is it to have bits of mud and grass stuck on your person?"

"Just do it, Scorpius, how tight arsed can you get?" I tried to slap his back, but I missed, and I hobbled towards the edge. I was prepared to fall down when I felt two hands clamp my arms and pull me back.

"I think you should go back to your dorm now," Scorpius said, releasing me when I got my footing back. I shook my head so violently I feared my neck would snap.

"You haven't rolled yet," I said. He rubbed his eyebrows for a moment. Then he lay down and pushed to fall. I laughed as I half-walked, half-ran, cheering him on as he tumbled. I came to a stop when he got up.

"See? It's fu—" my 'n' got lost in a deluge of wet-sounding syllables as I hurled. I got sick all over my hands, all over Scorpius' nice robes, and it just kept coming. I pushed him away and sprayed the ground instead. I dimly heard him swear, and say "Scourgify!"

"You're a right mess, Weasley." Scorpius led me away from the field. Somehow, we made it back to the first year dorms and in front of the right room.

"Here you are," he said.

"Well, you better get going, too," I said. "Your head's gonna hurt worse if you don't get enough sleep." He smirked.

"It won't, not really," he said, walking down the hall. "I'm sober as hell. That was fruit juice."

It's not true what they say about forgetting whatever you did in a drunken haze. You do remember. Curiously enough, if Scorpius was not drunk, why did he agree to the whole hill business? To make fun of me? To have something to lord over when training starts? Or, maybe, because he wanted to? I cannot even begin to understand what goes on in his head.

Oh, horrors. I vomited on Scorpius Malfoy's silk-trimmed clothes. When I look back to this day, one of my first as an Auror trainee, I'm going to remember That Thing. Or rather, that series of things.

I better start picking out those earwax beans now.

A/N: So that's it for now. Thank you for reading on; next chapter the real Auror training starts. Tell me what you think!