"Why did you stop the story?" Antares complains.

"Ask your sister," I say, smiling. I look pointedly toward the phone on her lap. "She seems preoccupied, don't you think?"

"Why do you have to chat with Jake in the middle of Mum's story? It was getting really good and aren't you going to see him in like three hours?"

"I was listening, I swear," Cassi says, but her eyes still haven't lifted from the Muggle device.

"You were?"

"You and Dad kissed, but you were still dating Bryan, and he confronted you in the Great Hall. Now will you continue?"

"Put the phone down," I chastise. "Then I'll continue."

"But what if Jake-"

"If he needs something, he can walk all the way across the street and ring the doorbell."

"Fine."

"If you don't want me to continue…" I leave the question hanging for her.

"No, please do! I want to know how you got Bryan to leave you alone!"

I can't help but grin. She is her mother's daughter; that is certain. "We were in the Great Hall, weren't we? Just after Scorpius and I walked in?"

I had to go to the Hufflepuff table. Bryan's loud, angry invitation left me no choice. I wished Scorpius would squeeze my hand or give me some kind of assurance before I went to face my boyfriend, but he knew as well as I did how imprudent that would have been.

"What do you want, Bryan?"

"You missed the rest of your classes today."

"Professor Li is a disciplinarian," I said, not meeting his eyes as I slid onto the Hufflepuff bench beside him.

"No, she's not," he countered. "You and Scorpius snuck off somewhere else afterward. I know you did!"

His voice was raising. So was my heart rate. "We did not! Professor Li will personally vouch that we were within her classroom the whole time."

"Doing what?" He crossed his arms and pursed his face so tightly it seemed half its usual size. I tried not to laugh.

"Writing lines. Bloody boring stuff."

Bryan moved too close. His breath invaded my nostrils and made me want to choke. "You're lying, Rose Weasley. I know you're lying. You don't write lines in the middle of another class."

"And you're overreacting. Not everything I do is your business."

Bryan took longer to respond than arguments usually called for. "Yes it is," he said, confused.

"Then everything you do is my business, right?"

"Well-"

"Boxers or briefs? How many girls have you snogged? What did you eat for breakfast last Tuesday? What lullaby did your mummy used to sing to you as you fell asleep?"

"That's none of your business!"

"Exactly," I said, turning to my food. Since I'd left my manners somewhere in the vicinity of Professor Li's classroom, I started eating and kept talking. "I wrote lines for hours, Bryan. Deal with it."

Then he did something I'd never seen, in months of dating. He shut up.

When his food was gone, he turned to me, his face softened. "Go for a walk?"

"I have a lot of-" I started, but then realised it was precisely what I needed. Time to talk to him alone. I spent our meal seething over the argument, and still needed time to figure out how to break up with him. Maybe he would spend our walk jabbering on and I could think in peace. "Yeah, okay. Let's go for a walk."

He took my hand-tenderly, for once-and we made our way toward the front doors. I didn't look back to see if Scorpius was looking after me. I knew I needed to break up with Bryan, but I needed time. And it's strange, but I needed to feel more guilty about what I did with Scorpius. If Bryan stayed as tender during the walk as he started, I was sure the guilty feelings would make their way up through the pit of my stomach and transform into a confession. And after a confession, a breakup was sure to follow.

He took me to the tree where he first asked me out. We sat down underneath it, sheltered from the cold drizzle that covered the grounds. There were so many memories I associated with that tree and the day he found me under it. My fight with Scorpius. Feeling alone. Bryan being there to rescue me like a knight in shining armour.

The thing is? I don't think I really needed rescued.

He was cautious with me as we sat there, not trying to cuddle or snog or move closer to me like he usually did. "Something's wrong, Rose," he said. "I don't know what I did, but something is wrong, isn't it?"

Maybe I could have stayed serene if he had started off with something a little more empathetic. As it was, my decision to remain calm was replaced with indignation before I'd taken half a breath. "Of course something's wrong! I'm not sure where you got your ideas of how to be a boyfriend, but they're way off from what I need." I couldn't look at him, staring instead at the rain outside our shelter. The drizzle was so light and so constant I could hardly make out the raindrops. I reached a hand toward it. Even invisible rain could drench me.

"You… don't think I'm a good boyfriend?"

I rolled my eyes. "Let me count the ways…"

"Why didn't you mention something sooner?"

"I couldn't. You were too busy micromanaging my life for me to say anything that wasn't in the script. You took advantage of me," I said, still avoiding looking at him. "You say you love me and everything, but what you actually meant was you were happy to find a shell of a person so you could mould me into some perfect little girlfriend."

"I never meant to-"

"Shut up for a minute, will you? I don't care what you did or did not mean to do. This is what actually happened. You tried to take a Gryffindor and make her into a Hufflepuff. You told me that I liked Madam Puddifoot's and freaking chamomile tea. When did you ever ask me what I wanted to do? You always assumed you knew what I wanted."

I hadn't taken more than shallow breaths since I started ranting, and had to stop to catch up. Bryan took advantage of my silence. "I've known you for six years. I was just doing what I thought you'd like. Don't all girls like romantic things and light tea and having their books carried to class? Dad always told me…"

"I'm not sure your dad knew much about romance either, then. Or else your mother was a lot more traditional than I am. We don't fit, Bryan. And I should never have said yes to you in the first place. You aren't what I need from a relationship."

"I do love you, you know," he said, taking my hand in his. The best I could do to comfort him was not shove it away, even as I thought about how little electricity passed between us. "What do you need from a relationship?"

For the first time since sitting down, I turned to face him and met his eyes. "You should have asked that months ago."

"I'm asking now."

"Banter. Competition. Someone I can argue with until sunset and kiss until dawn. Someone who's not afraid to compliment me, but makes me earn the compliment. Someone I'd be equally happy taking a long walk with, or working on homework, or snogging in a broom closet somewhere."

"Scorpius. You want Scorpius."

His eyes cut too deep into my own. I stared at the dirt. "I do. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have led you on."

"You're right. You shouldn't have. You have to make it up to me."

"Do you not get it? I don't want to be with you anymore!" My voice raised, but I pulled back from it, adding, quieter, "I'm not sure I ever did."

"You said you'd always be here. With me."

No, I didn't. But he sounded hurt and confused. I decided to pick my battles and pretend I actually had made that promise. It still wouldn't have rang true. "Well, here we are. Can you see where that's gotten us? You've turned me into someone I don't recognize anymore."

"I turned you into someone respectable. You should thank me."

"Choose a side, Bryan. You can't say you didn't mean to change me and that you changed me into someone respectable. I'm sick of the games you try and play with me. I'm not some toy. I'm not grooming to be a trophy wife. And I. Want. Out." He had exasperated me to my limit and I pushed myself up and walked into the drizzle of rain.

"Rose! Wait!"

"What?"

"You still haven't told me the truth about your detention."

"There's no reason for me to tell you the truth. We're over."

"You snogged him."

"Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't."

"I knew it. I knew you did. Dammit, Rose! Was this the first time or have you been cheating on me this whole relationship?"

"I sure wish it wasn't the first time. Maybe I would've had the courage to leave you months ago." He reached out for my arm, but I shrugged him off, stomping toward the castle. "Oh, and Bryan?" I added, turning around to face him. "He's a much better kisser than you are."

He kept calling my name, but, thank Merlin, didn't try to run after me. I spent the rest of my walk through the drizzle wondering what the hell I'd just done. Seventeen years of refining myself to be more like my mother. Seventeen years, and I'd finally lost it.

I wanted to regret my outburst, and tried to think about the rumours he would be spreading about me the moment he reached the castle. They might get into the itching ears of Elizabeth Creevey. And anything that made it into her ears managed to make its way into the Hogwarts darkroom. She had an uncanny ability for predicting when and where the drama would break out.

I scurried inside the Entrance Hall, head still down from the rain. "Rose?"

"Scorpius? What are you doing here?"

He wrapped his arms around me, then pulled back suddenly. "You're freezing," he said, taking out his wand and casting a warming spell. "I was worried about you, since you and Bryan took off after dinner."

"I'm all right. But thanks, Scor. I appreciate it."

He placed an arm around my waist and automatically matched my pace as I headed toward Ravenclaw Tower. I wasn't used to him being so close. There was something simultaneously completely alien and perfectly familiar about his touch. "You and Bryan?" he asked, tentatively, as we started to make our way up the stairs.

I smiled. "No such thing."

"So you'll be free tomorrow after dinner?"

"What for?"

"We haven't talked all year, Rose. We have a lot of catching up to do." He pulled me in for a kiss and I leaned in to the pressure.

"As long as you promise the catching up won't all be talking," I mumbled against his lips.

"Did you just break up with Bryan?" Kavya asked, incredulous, when I entered the tower. She perched on the arm of an easy chair, leaning forward and letting her parchment fall on the floor. She didn't even look down as it landed. Automatically, I reached for my wand and placed her homework in a pile on the table.

"Um… I think so? We fought and I told him I kissed Scorpius and that I didn't want to be with him anymore." She raised an eyebrow at me. "I guess that means yes, then."

"It does mean yes. Wait… you told him you kissed Scorpius?"

My face turned the colour of my hair as I remembered the last time I had talked to Kavya. But I decided to play it out and make her ask. "Yeah, that's what I told him."

"Was it a lie?"

I grinned.

"No way. What kind of detention did Professor Li give you?"

I glanced around the Common Room, now full for the evening, and gave her a meaningful look. "I'll tell you later, okay? Anyway, I ran into Scorpius on my way back here."

"And he's your boyfriend now," she said. There wasn't even a hint of a question in her voice.

"Not exactly. But he did ask me out on a date for tomorrow. Nothing special," I added in a hurry. "Just a walk along the grounds after dinner. I don't exactly feel prepared, though."

"Why not?"

I bit my lip, unsure if I should let her know how I'd felt since the beginning of the year. How undergrown and puny and absolutely plain I was. Kavya was my best friend. She had been since first year. I had never kept my insecurities from her for months at a time. It took a minute to decide where to start, but soon the confession came pouring out of me, faster and faster the more words I said. "So I was in Australia all summer and it was winter there and I never saw you until King's Cross, and you had grown up so much and Scorpius… well, you've seen him. He's not a little kid anymore, to say the least. I knew I could never live up to the two of you."

"That's what you thought? Is that why you let Bryan treat you the way he did?"

I couldn't meet her eyes. "It might have had something to do with it."

"And now you've, I presume, thoroughly snogged one of your best friends, but you're worried he doesn't think you're pretty enough."

When she put it that way, it seemed so dumb. I nodded, waiting for her typical "you're beautiful the way you are" speech. Instead, she hopped down from her perch and joined me. "You've had a lot go right today, Rose. Why let something like your hair stop you?" She ran a finger through my frizzy hair. "I know a way to fix it."