Not As Originally Planned--Second Half

[mollywheezy]

Rose was rereading her notes for the thousandth time, when Uncle George hurried in with a huge grin on his face. "Guess what, Rose!"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Please just tell me."

"I've hired a Master Potioneer."

"Really?! I thought no one had answered the advertisement."

"Someone has now." George leaned out the door into the front room, and then Scorpius Malfoy walked in.

"Scorpius! You have your license now? Al told me you were working on it. Congratulations!"

"Thank you, Rose."

"Since you two know each other, I'll leave Rose to explain your first project."

"Thank you, Mr Weasley."

"Scorpius, Mr Weasley is my dad. I'm George."

"Thank you . . . George."

George winked and left Scorpius and Rose alone.

"So what are we supposed to work on first?" Scorpius looked at Rose expectantly.

Rose really wished Uncle George had explained this since it was his barmy idea. "Several months ago, I knocked some bottles over while I was making Fever Fudge, and accidentally created a new product. Uncle George has wanted me to replicate my results, but I haven't been able to. I have all of my notes on what I have tried here." Rose handed Scorpius the notebook she was holding.

Scorpius took the notebook and began to skim the contents, impressed at the meticulousness of Rose's notes. "What is this new product supposed to do?"

Rose was not surprised at Scorpius' question, and she would have to tell him, but she could feel her face heating and knew she was blushing. "It will make all the clothing in the room vanish."

"What?!"

Rose smiled at the expression of absolute shock on Scorpius' face. "You look like you're reconsidering working here."

"No, I want to work here, especially as your uncle is the only person who wants to hire me, but why would he want a product that vanishes clothing?"

"Wheezes does have a line of adult products. Uncle George said it would be good for pranking large groups or for parties."

"I don't even want to know what kind of parties he attends."

Rose laughed. "That's what I said!"

"Why don't you give me the details of how this happened and maybe I can think of something?"

Rose reluctantly told Scorpius the entire story, only omitting her sobbing and then falling asleep in the cupboard. She concluded, " . . . and we have plenty of samples of the purple goo if you want to analyze it."

"I'll do that, but it would also help if we knew exactly what was on the table when the explosion occurred and the arrangement of the bottles. You said you were distracted at the time, are you sure you remember each item that was there?"

"Not entirely, to be honest, but I don't know . . ."

"Have you thought of putting your memory in a pensieve?"

"That would help, but where are we going to find a pensieve?"

"My grandmother owns one. I'm certain she would let me borrow it. And I need to go over there tonight to tell her and my mother about the new job anyway."

"Brilliant!"

***

"You got a pensieve!" Rose shrieked by way of greeting the next morning.

"I told you my grandmother would lend it to me."

"So what do we do to make it work?"

"First of all, you need to remove your memory of that day so we can look at it." Rose turned bright red. "Oh, er . . . we don't need the entire memory. Probably just what you were doing before the explosion would be sufficient so we can see what bottles were on the table."

Rose nodded. "I don't know how to remove a memory."

"I could help if that would be all right?"

"Of course."

"Focus on what you were doing right before the explosion. Try to picture the space, especially visualize what was on the table. I'm going to put my wand to your head and remove the memory. Keep concentrating." Scorpius gently touched his wand to Rose's forehead and said the spell to remove her memory.

Rose closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the pre-explosion arrangement of things. She felt Scorpius move close to her. She couldn't hear what spell he used, but she felt his warm breath on her face as he spoke it, and the gentle pressure of his wand tip against her forehead. Rose's spine tingled.

"Got it." Rose opened her eyes as Scorpius placed her memory in the pensieve and stirred the airy, liquidy silver stuff with his wand.

She saw her image rise out of the pensieve, standing at the table, listlessly stirring a potion as she read a piece of parchment. She thought she looked bored, sad, and frustrated, which she supposed was accurate for how she was feeling that day.

Rose glanced at Scorpius to see if he noticed how depressed she had looked, but he was not paying any attention to her pensieve image. He had drawn a diagram of all of the bottles and ingredients on the table and was carefully labeling each one. Rose thought the way his hair fell over his eyes while he wrote was rather sexy.

Scorpius handed her his drawing. "Would you like me to put the memory back into your head or vanish it?"

"Please put it back in. My memory's poor enough without missing any of it."

Scorpius laughed. He picked up Rose's memory from the pensieve, and again touched his wand to her forehead. There were some curls escaping from Rose's plait, which were intermingling with the strand of memory. Scorpius gently moved them out of the way, as he spoke the spell. He thought he felt Rose shiver, but he wasn't sure. He knew he wanted to find more excuses to touch her hair.

Scorpius handed Rose his diagram and her notebook. Rose glanced at her list of ingredients, and Scorpius' diagram, and shouted, "Doxy urine!"

"What's wrong?"

Rose looked confused. "Doxy urine is the ingredient I forgot."

"Oh, I thought that was creative swearing." Rose laughed. "George really uses doxy urine as an ingredient?"

"Yes. Uncle George uses a lot of different ingredients. Why don't I gather the ingredients while you examine the purple goo, and we can try to sort this out?"

A couple of hours later, Rose and Scorpius were ready to try.

"So if this works, we're both going to end up starkers?"

"That's the general idea, yes. There are two storage cupboards at the back of this room, so we can each run into one of them until we can conjure clothes or someone can bring us some."

Scorpius nodded, and waved his wand canceling the enchantment which held the proper measure of each ingredient in stasis over the cauldron.

boom!

Rose's top had vanished, leaving her in her orange bra. Scorpius was shirtless, and missing one sock and one shoe, on different feet funnily enough.

"I guess it isn't strong enough." Rose took her wand out of her jeans pocket, summoned her shirt, and put it back on.

Scorpius was rather disappointed Rose put her shirt back on, "So we can just summon our clothes?" He summoned his, put his wand down, and redressed as well. "Maybe we could have different strengths of this stuff. You know, a regular version and the adult version?"

"That's a good idea. We can run that by Uncle George when he gets back."

"Where'd he go?"

"To visit Louis and Dominique at the Paris shop." Rose continued scribbling notes about the results of the experiment in her notebook.

"Are all of the shops run by family members?"

"Yes. Fred manages the Hogsmeade branch, and James helps him when it's not Quidditch season. Dominique and Louis are in Paris. Victoire wanted to stay home when she had the baby, so Louis went to help there. Roxie does the books for all three stores since she's so good at arithmancy. We do have non-family members who help, too, though."

Scorpius nodded. "Do we want to try again and make everything stronger?"

Scorpius made some calculations. "We can try these amounts."

BOOM!

Rose immediately made a dash for the cupboard. The door slammed behind her. She turned to check the knob to make sure she wasn't locked in again, and ran into something warm and solid.

"This is my cupboard!" she yelled at the warm and solid Scorpius.

"Excuse me, but you didn't specify which cupboard was whose."

"Please leave and go to the other one." Rose couldn't see anything, but knowing she was naked in a cupboard with a naked Scorpius Malfoy was going to drive her absolutely crazy.

Scorpius tried the door knob. "It's locked. I guess this is our cupboard then, unless you have your wand? I left mine on the table."

"Mine was in my pocket." Again, Rose thought unhappily. "So we're stuck." Rose rolled her eyes, even though she knew Scorpius couldn't see her.

"How long will we be in here?"

"Until someone comes to the back room and notices we aren't there. It shouldn't be too long since Roxie will want lunch." Scorpius started to say something, but Rose continued before he could, "It won't do any good to yell for help because there are silencing charms between the shop and the back room."

"Oh." Scorpius sighed. "Well, I certainly can't say my first full day of work was boring."

Rose laughed. "No, working for Uncle George has never been boring."

Rose had an idea and began rummaging around one of the shelves. Aha! She thought the Glory Stix were stored here. They weren't one of the more popular items. Uncle George based them on the Hand of Glory, which only gave light to its owner, but their one lumos spell didn't last very long, and that was all they did.

She cracked one of the Stix. It gave her enough light to see Scorpius leaning against the wall across the cupboard from her. He was extremely fit. His hair was mussed and had fallen into his warm, blue eyes. His cheeks were flushed, from the run across the room, or from embarrassment, she didn't know. His chest and arms were far more muscular than she would have expected for someone who made potions for a living. She supposed he probably had to haul around boxes of ingredients, too. Unfortunately, she couldn't see his arse since he was leaning against the wall. She moved the light lower. Scorpius was very well-endowed. And very aroused. He wasn't the only one.

"What are you doing?"

Rose gasped and dropped the Glory Stix on the floor, which made the light fizzle out. "I was . . . just rummaging through the shelves to see if there was anything that could help us. Some of the more expensive fake wands can actually do one spell, and I thought we might be able to use one of them to open the door, if it would work, but I don't know, but I can't find them so . . ." Rose knew she was completely babbling, so stopped. All sorts of things were going through her mind that she and Scorpius could be doing in this cupboard that did not involve talking.

"Oh," Scorpius replied. He was sure Rose was lying, but he didn't know why. He felt like she had been staring at him, but it was dark in here-he didn't understand how she could be staring. If she were staring, he hoped she liked what she saw. There was a thin strip of light beneath the door, but all Scorpius could see were his own feet. He couldn't see Rose at all, and she wasn't even a meter away from him. Of course, he had a rather lovely view of her bum as she dashed into the cupboard ahead of him. He slid down the wall to sit on the floor. He heard Rose do the same.

Rose wasn't sure how long they sat in the dark cupboard talking and pretending neither of them wanted to do more than talk. Finally, she heard "Rosie? Scorpius? Where are you?"

"We're in the cupboard, Roxie!"

"The purple goo everywhere means you figured it out?"

"Yes. Now please unlock the door and hand us our wands."

Roxanne collected the two wands, waved her own, unlocked the door, and opened it just wide enough to slip Rose and Scorpius' wands through the crack. Both of them immediately summoned their clothing, which turned out not to be the best idea, as a deluge of fabric flung itself through the crack in the open door and draped itself all over the cupboard. Roxanne laughed hysterically at the sounds of scuffling emanating from the cupboard.

"Stop laughing at us!" Rose shrieked. "Do you want to work on this stupid potion?!"

"Apparently, you and Scorpius are doing just fine with the potion." Roxanne managed to answer through her laughter. "I'm going to the flat for lunch. Both of you feel free to join me when you get yourselves sorted out."

Rose ignored her cousin and continued trying to paw through the clothing maelstrom to find hers. She had her jeans and her top, but had yet to find her bra and knickers, which she really needed first.

"Ouch! That's not an appropriate place for your elbow." It didn't help Rose that Scorpius was also trying to dig around to find his clothing.

"That's not my elbow, it's my wand. Sorry."

Rose couldn't help herself. She started to giggle. The whole situation was so ridiculous.

"Um, not that wand! I mean, my real wand, er . . . the magic one . . . um . . ."

Rose doubled over laughing so hard she could not even talk.

"How about I just stand here, and you can get dressed and leave, then I'll get dressed." Scorpius quit feeling around for his clothes and held perfectly still.

"Oh. Kay." Rose gasped, trying to quit laughing. She used another Glory Stix, found her clothing quickly, put it on and left.

Scorpius easily put on his clothes, since they were the only ones remaining, until he tried to put on his jeans. "Rose, I think you have on my jeans."

"Do I? I guess that's why they don't fit right." Rose took them off, then knocked on the cupboard door. "Here. We'll trade."

Scorpius opened the door a crack, thrust Rose's jeans out, and took his. Their hands brushed during the exchange, and it made Scorpius' hand tingle.

After they had lunch and filled Roxanne in on the morning's excitement, they spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the purple stuff, making notes and plans for further testing, and discussing potential names for the new product.

***

When Rose came down to the shop the next morning, Scorpius was already there, making tests on several different types of containers.

"Good morning, Scorpius."

Scorpius looked up from his work. "Good morning, Rose. Sleep well?"

Rose blushed. She was late for work because she had overslept, but that wasn't why she was blushing. Her dreams had been plagued throughout the night by a naked Scorpius who was doing far more in the cupboard than just sitting there talking. "I slept fine, thanks, if a bit too long." Rose attempted a chuckle. "You?"

"Oh fine, thanks." Scorpius returned to the containers, knowing he was completely lying. He had dreamt of Rose walking down the stairs in his townhouse (it belonged to him in the dream, not to his parents) in only her orange bra and matching knickers (Scorpius assumed she had a matching set, even though he had not seen both. Yet. ) The undergarments brought out her fiery hair, which she wore down instead of in a messy plait, as she was now. Scorpius ran his hands through her hair and slowly removed the orange bra and knickers from her fit body . . . Scorpius needed to stop thinking of his dream or he'd have to have another cold shower.

Rose was looking over their notes from the previous day, making further comments. Or at least pretending to. She couldn’t keep herself from staring at Scorpius. She needed to think of an innocuous conversation to keep her mind off of how much she wanted him, but at the moment all she could think to say was, 'Want to go shag in the cupboard?' And she doubted that would be appropriate.

Scorpius had to do something to take his mind off of that dream, and off of Rose. Asking out the niece of his employer wouldn't be a good idea, would it? He'd always thought Rose was attractive, but since she'd had a serious boyfriend before he realized girls were girls, he'd never given going out with her much thought. He certainly was now, though. He also couldn't help thinking about getting Rose naked again, but without the purple shite.

Scorpius turned to look at Rose and conversational inspiration came to him. "So you're a fan of the Chudley Cannons?"

Rose looked down at her Cannons tee shirt. "Yes. I have been my entire life. My dad, too. He's had season tickets for forever. I've always gone to the games with him as often as I can. You're a Cannons fan, too, right?"

"How do you know that? I haven't told you." Scorpius paused, his forehead crinkling. Then he gasped. "You were staring at me in the cupboard! You had some way or some product or something that let you see in the dark and you were staring at me!"

Damn, Rose thought. Me and my big mouth. "No I didn't! I . . .I accidentally saw your boxers when we exchanged jeans." Rose just knew her face and ears were bright red. Damn Weasley blush.

"I think you're lying." Scorpius crossed the room to the cupboard before Rose realized what he was doing. He rummaged in the cupboard and declared, "Aha! Glory Stix!" He came out of the cupboard waving a Glory Stix at Rose accusingly.

Rose gaped at him.

"Well?" Scorpius demanded. "Don't even try to deny it. There are two broken Glory Stix on the floor of the cupboard."

Rose still didn't know what to say. She couldn't tell if Scorpius was truly angry with her or if he was teasing her to get back at her. "Are you angry?"

"That depends. Do I get to see you naked?" Scorpius smirked at her.

"What?!" At least he was teasing instead of angry, Rose realized.

"It's completely unfair that you were examining my naked body for quite some time without my knowledge, and I only got a fast glance at your bum as you ran into the cupboard ahead of me." Scorpius was still smiling.

Rose relaxed and smirked back. "So you want me to strip right now?"

"Good morning!" George's voice boomed. "I thought I'd have a bit of a lie in this morning after the trip to Paris. How are things going here?"

"We figured out the potion," Rose answered, disgruntled at having her conversation with Scorpius interrupted.

"Spiffing!" George beamed at them. "Why are you holding Glory Stix, Scorpius? Those things were bugger all . . ."

Scorpius wildly invented, "Er, Rose and I were discussing the idea of including them with the new potion, which we've given the working title of 'Starkers Syrup'. We thought if people turned out the lights after the Starkers Syrup exploded, there could be Glory Stix around to, er . . . add to the fun?" Scorpius thought he sounded like a complete idiot.

"Hmm . . . That has merit. At least it'd be a way to get rid of the bloody things. Now tell me everything about how this works . . ."

***

George kept Rose and Scorpius so busy over the next several days that they didn't have time to return to their interrupted conversation. Their after work hours were kept busy, too, with their family obligations. Scorpius visited his father, by choice this time to mention the new job, and had the obligatory meal with his grandmother and mother, which was now weekly rather than monthly since he had far more time without working two jobs. Rose had the preliminary bridesmaids' meeting for Lily's upcoming wedding, as well as a shopping trip and the weekly dinner at the Burrow. George was so excited about the new product that he had barely left Rose and Scorpius alone.

"I think we have the Starkers Syrup ready to go! Now we just need to work on designing the packaging. I'll see if Fred has any ideas for that. He's the artistic one. Rose, we are running very low on Confusion Confections. Could you please brew some more Confusion Concoction?" Rose nodded. "And Scorpius, I would like you to brew some Amortentia, please. I've had some product ideas for that for quite awhile, but until you came along, I didn't have anyone who could brew it."

"Of course, George, I'll brew it, but do you think it's a good idea to mix the fumes of Amortentia and Confusion Concoction?"

"Just open the vents. It'll be fine." Scorpius nodded, uncertainly. "Oh, I almost forgot. I wanted to show you both the new packaging." George held a brightly colored label in front of Rose and Scorpius, which said in large illuminated letters, sort of like letters that would begin the paragraphs of a medieval manuscript:

KONFUSION KONFECKTION

Rose and Scorpius stared at the label, and then spoke at the same time.

"You could spell it properly-C's will keep the nice alliteration as well as K's."

"You spelled it incorrectly on purpose, right George?"

"I can spell with a k rather than a c if I want to. K's are more fun."

"More stupid, too," Rose muttered. Scorpius snorted.

"What was that, Rose?"

"Nothing, Uncle George." Scorpius winked at Rose behind George's back.

"Let's get to work then. I'm going to re-label the Konfusion Konfecktion boxes."

***

George took Scorpius and Rose to lunch as the Amortentia and Confusion Concoction stewed. And finally left them alone after lunch to continue working on their potions.

The Amortentia had been left alone long enough over a low fire that the steam was now swirling about the surface just as it should be. The smell assaulted Scorpius' nose as soon as he walked into the back room of the shop. He could smell chocolate, bubble bath, and Orange. Can you smell a color? Maybe it was the Confusion Concoction steam that was making his mind spin. He didn't smell oranges, but Orange-excitement, energy, life, a warm fire, a summer's day. The scent reminded him of Rose, especially her hair. Was he going out with Rose? And if he wasn't, why the hell wasn't he? He would have to sort that out just as soon as his mind cleared.

Rose felt hot from the steam of the two potions, and her brain was all fuzzy. She hated brewing Confusion Concoction, but she certainly could never brew Amortentia. She couldn't tell what she was smelling, though. In sixth year potions class she smelled chocolate, fresh mown grass, and wind. This was definitely not the same smell. There was something alcoholic-Firewhisky, wine, grapes, she wasn't sure. Something spicy-that smell was making her hungry even though she had just eaten lunch. Maybe she wasn't hungry for food? She also smelled an apothecary. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to mix the fumes of Amortentia and Confusion Concoction, even with the vents open. Confused or not, she knew with certainty whom she smelled-Scorpius. Was she really ready to try love again? Once burned, twice shy, Grandma Granger always said. Even though she had been in Ravenclaw, Rose tried to summon whatever shred of Gryffindor courage she had inherited from her family.

Rose shook her head to clear it, at least a little, checked her potion, and declared it finished. She removed the cauldron from the fire, put on the lid, and her mind really did clear as the steam dissipated, although she could still smell the Amortentia.

Scorpius felt less addle-brained when Rose finished the Confusion Concoction. He decided to take action. "What do you smell in the Amortentia, Rose?"

"I'm not sure. I can't exactly place the scents. What about you? What do you smell?"

Scorpius looked into Rose's eyes and answered, "You."

Rose smiled, breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "I smell you, too." Then she kissed him.

Their kissing quickly became very heated snogging . . . until they heard laughter and hastily jumped apart.

"About bloody time, you two!" George chuckled.

Rose and Scorpius blushed, but didn't say anything.

With a twinkle in his eye, George said, "I see you've finished the potions. As soon as they are properly stored, why don't you both take the rest of the afternoon off? And feel free to come in late tomorrow morning. I'll leave you to it, then, shall I?" George winked at Rose, and quickly left the room.

Rose didn't know if it was possible for her face to get any hotter. She loved Uncle George, but he was a bit . . . much, sometimes.

Scorpius immediately picked up several vials and began to ladle Amortentia into them.

"What are you doing?"

"Just what George asked-storing the potions properly so we can leave."

Rose sidled up to Scorpius, running her hand up his arm until she was playing with the hair on the nape of his neck. She whispered in his ear, "I have a better idea. Why don't we return to our storage cupboard and live out the fantasies I'm sure both of us were having the last time we were there."

Scorpius twirled one of Rose's curls around his finger as he whispered back, "I have a far better location in mind for those activities as soon as we finish our work."

Rose huffed in exasperation, but Scorpius kissed her. "If you help me, we'll be able to leave more quickly . . ."

***

Rose and Roxanne sipped their drinks and watched the dancing as they rested for a few minutes.

"See, I found a boyfriend before Lily's wedding all by myself."

"I'm so proud!" Roxanne pinched Rose's cheek, and then rolled her eyes as Rose slapped her hand away.

Rose laughed and turned back to watch Scorpius dancing with her mum, Frank dancing with her Aunt Angelina, her dad dancing with Luna . . .

"Who is that girl Louis is with?"

"I don't know. Whoever he's dating this week. I think she's a friend of Gabrielle's daughter. Not sure though."

The song ended and Frank came to collect Roxanne. Scorpius came to the table a few minutes later. He leaned down to kiss Rose softly.

"Hi, love. Would you like to dance some more?"

"Sit with me for a minute. These heels are killing my feet, and I'm too tall in them anyway."

"So take them off," Scorpius whispered in her ear as he nuzzled her neck playfully.

Rose frowned. "Take off my shoes?!"

"Why not? Luna isn't wearing shoes. If the groom's mother is barefoot, it should be all right for a bridesmaid to be barefoot." Rose nodded, and slipped her shoes off under the table. "Better?"

"Much. Good idea." Rose turned to look into Scorpius' eyes. "But I'm still taller than you even without the heels. Does that bother you?"

"Not at all. You're the perfect height-your breasts are placed so I can look down your cleavage without being obvious about it."

Rose burst out laughing. "Scorpius!"

"What? It's not like I've never seen them before."

Rose rolled her eyes. "True."

"You look beautiful in that dress. I'm not sure if I told you."

"I think you need glasses. Lily just had to pick yellow. She thought it would help her future mother-in-law to like her. I'd say Luna already likes her, since she is her godmother."

"Why does Luna like yellow?"

"Supposedly it's good luck to wear sun colors to a wedding. I look like an omelet covered in catsup with my hair and this dress." Rose laughed.

"No, you look like the warm glow emanating from a fire." Rose blushed. Scorpius ran a finger over her cheek. "Your blush only intensifies the effect."

Rose heard Alice Longbottom's voice through a Sonorous Charm. "We need all single witches to the center of the floor as the new Mrs Dean Thomas throws her bouquet!"

"I should go out there, bridesmaid and everything." Rose shrugged apologetically to Scorpius.

"Stay here. I guarantee you won't need that bouquet." Then Scorpius kissed her, in a very inappropriate way considering all of her family were probably watching. Rose felt happier than she ever had in her life.