The Transformation of Ducklings 7/? (HP)
TITLE: The Transformation of Ducklings 7/?
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Rose Weasley-Granger and Scorpius Malfoy aren't about to let decades of enmity between their fathers get in the way of their friendship. As two shy, awkward teenagers wrestling with the onset of first love, they've got enough obstacles to overcome.
NOTE: Have I mentioned katieay's total beta rockitude lately?
DISCLAIMER: J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potter universe and everything it encompasses. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus derives no profit or material benefit therefrom.
PART SIX
If Scorpius didn't hurry up and kiss her, Rose thought she was going to scream. She was so frustrated with him right now, she was tempted to hex him into tomorrow. She'd tried everything she could think of to both give him the opportunity and convey the message that she would really like for him to kiss her, but he'd left her wanting every time.
She could tell he wanted to. The first time he'd Apparated for her, he'd re-materialized so close to her she'd instinctively grabbed him to keep them both from falling over, and she'd heard the catch in his breath as his chest came into contact with hers. Bloody hell, they'd been so close she'd felt it, and would not have been surprised if he'd been able to feel the hammering of her heart as she'd looked up into his incredibly dark, dark blue eyes. His gaze had drifted down to her mouth and she'd started to close her eyes, thinking, this is it, but just as the warm breeze of his breath caressed her face he broke free and stepped back, sweeping aside the lock of hair that had fallen over his brow.
"Sorry about that," he'd said, his voice sounding odd.
"About what?" Rose managed to get out despite her disappointment.
"About nearly Apparating on top of you." A slight flush rose up the sides of his neck.
"You're the one who said it would work better if you used me as your destination."
"I guess my subconscious must've taken that a bit too literally."
She wanted to say, "And what's wrong with that?" Instead she said, "I guess next time, don't concentrate on me so hard."
There wasn't going to be a next time, however, because he'd decided to have her demonstrate her Apparating technique to him, thinking that maybe he could figure out what she was doing wrong and help her correct it. She could have told him that there was no chance she'd manage a successful Apparition with him standing so close, occasionally touching her as he adjusted her stance. Not just light, casual touches, either; no, he had to come up close behind her, the heat from his body sending frissons of hyper-awareness down her back, and reach around her to raise or lower her arms or alter the bend in her elbows. He always apologized just before doing so, too. Once, his hand lingered on her arm a little longer than necessary and Rose closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek in nervous anticipation, the butterflies in her stomach doing the conga as his breath ruffled through her hair, but again he drew back and broke contact.
"Right, now let's see your spin."
"My... my what?" she said thickly.
He came around so that he was facing her. "Spin for me. I don't want you to try to Apparate anywhere just yet, I only want to see you turn."
Her head was already spinning, no thanks to him, but she did as instructed, executing a somewhat wobbly, cross-eyed pirouette that promptly deposited her arse-first on the lawn.
"Bollocks!"
Scorpius reached down to offer her a hand up. "Try to open up your circle a little."
"Sorry?" she said, brushing at the back of her skirt.
"Don't spin so tightly. Like this." He turned to demonstrate.
"Right. Bigger circle. Got it." She tried to recreate the stance he'd put her in before, but he shook his head and came forward to re-position her arms, then stepped back again. "I feel like a bloody idiot. Probably look like one, too."
"It'll start to feel more natural once you have the hang of things," he reassured her. "When you're Apparating for real, it's not as if you stand like this for more than a second or two. Most people simply turn and go."
"You make it all sound so easy."
"It is. Once you've completed your first Apparition, you'll be amazed at how easy it truly is."
She gave him a look of skepticism. "You'd better not be having me on."
A corner of his mouth turned up. "I'm not, I promise."
"I'll hold you to that promise." She took a deep breath. "Here goes."
Trying not to think how ridiculous she must look, and hoping that her mum and Mrs. Malfoy weren't watching, Rose turned on the spot.
And stumbled smack into Scorpius.
This time, he caught her, his hands meeting midway at her back so that she was flush against him, her upraised hands between them. She turned them so that her palms were pressed against his chest.
He wanted to kiss her, she just knew it. She might not be the most experienced girl in the world--that manky Spencer Finnigan didn't count, nor did the parlor games she sometimes joined in on with her Housemates on slow winter nights, one bottle of butterbeer being passed from hand to hand while its brother lay spinning on the floor--but that look on his face was unmistakable.
So then why didn't he?
* * * * *
Ron found that if he leaned back in his chair just so, he could keep an eye on Rose and Scorpius through the open door of his workshop without actually parking himself in the doorway. The lad had already twigged to his surveillance--clever one, that--but as far as Ron could tell, Rose remained oblivious. Which was fine with him, because he knew she wouldn't appreciate it.
He glanced down at the schematics for a new product he was supposed to be working on for the joke shop. He'd been holding them for so long as he kept an eye on his daughter that the edge had become wrinkled by the humidity of his palm. Hermione hadn't been fooled for an instant when he told her he'd be working out here while she visited with Grazia Malfoy, especially since he waited until Rose dragged Scorpius outside and then Apparated directly here from the sitting room. If she thought he was going to turn his back and leave Rose unguarded and alone with that boy, however, she had another thing coming. It didn't matter that they were in his own garden, nor that he was confident that Rose was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
For days now Ron had been trying to reconcile himself to two painfully unpleasant facts: first, that his darling Rosie was growing up, and by summer's end would be an adult; and second, that she genuinely seemed to be keen on Scorpius Malfoy. He could scarcely believe how much she'd grown up since she left for Hogwarts the previous September. When she came into the sitting room to meet Scorpius earlier, he'd been stunned to see how beautiful she was. She'd always been beautiful in his eyes, of course, but for the first time Ron found himself seeing her not simply as his precious little girl, but as an attractive young woman. It had taken only one sideways glance at Scorpius to work out he was seeing exactly the same thing.
Ron knew then that things were out of his hands, but he was damned if he was going to give up that easily. He wanted to give Rose room to make mistakes so she could learn from them. He well remembered how his mum had hovered over him when he was Rose's age, and how much it rankled. He wanted to let his fledgling spread her wings and fly. But he knew, only too well, the hazards of premature flight, and there was nothing he wanted more than to protect her from crashing to earth.
It wasn't the realization that Rose was growing up despite his desire to keep her his little girl forever that had Ron's stomach in knots and had kept him awake the past few nights. It was the whole Malfoy issue.
He'd called in a chit at the Auror Office on Friday before work and had them pull the Malfoy dossier. Since he was no longer an Auror they couldn't just let him walk off with the file, but they gave him use of an empty conference room to sort through the reams of information gathered on the Malfoys, going back to Lucius' first years out of Hogwarts. Ron had been tempted to read the family's entire sordid history, but he had neither the time nor the stomach for it. Instead, he flipped to the back of the dossier and scanned through the information gathered since Draco's return to England ten years ago.
It should have given Ron the reassurance he needed. By all accounts, Draco Malfoy was a model citizen, betraying no inclination to resume the sort of activities that had defined his final two years at school. There did appear to be a tendency to engage in shady business practices--either undercutting a seller or overcharging a buyer--when Muggle-borns were involved, but Ron found nothing blatantly prejudicial, nothing to suggest Malfoy was potentially dangerous. And while he did keep in regular contact with his parents, there'd been no effort to bring them back to England, nor had he petitioned to expunge his father's criminal record. Furthermore, he'd severed all of his old school ties save one: Gregory Goyle managed one of his warehouses. On a hunch, Ron checked an inventory from that particular warehouse for evidence of possible contraband, but again he came up empty-handed.
On the surface, at least, Draco Malfoy had reformed himself.
Ron wouldn't be so easily fooled, however. While he knew Draco to be too much of a coward to try anything overt, he also knew that Malfoy's blood prejudice was too deeply ingrained for him to renounce it completely. It might be buried in his subconscious, manifesting itself in seemingly innocuous ways, but Ron knew it would eventually bubble up to the surface. A nundu can't change its spots.
What bothered Ron even more was the question of how much Malfoy had poisoned his son with his bigotry. Even if Draco hadn't been like his father and openly indoctrinated Scorpius to despise those of less than pure blood, there were other, more subtle ways of teaching prejudice to an impressionable, eager-to-please child. Malfoy was clever, too; he'd been second only to Hermione in all their classes at Hogwarts, and the wisdom gained from experience would have honed his shrewdness. Scorpius could be a walking time bomb and have no idea. The right trigger might cause him to say or do something utterly hateful without even realizing it. And if Rose happened to be around when that moment came--or worse, if she happened to be the target--the effect could be devastating.
That possibility worried Ron more than anything else.
* * * * *
Rose flopped down spread-eagled on the grass and shut her eyes to block out the vertigo that had landed her here in the first place. It seemed as though she'd been practicing turns for hours, and now she was hot and sweaty and dizzy and grumpy and her hair was rapidly disintegrating into its usual out-of-control nimbus. And still she'd neither been kissed nor managed to Apparate even once. She swore profanely, hoping after the fact that Mum was nowhere within earshot.
"Rose, are you all right?"
She opened her eyes to look up at Scorpius, but the sun was so bright she had to shade them with her hand. "Peachy."
"Do you want something to drink? You look a little ill."
It occurred to her that, having thrown up both breakfast and lunch, she hadn't really eaten all day. No wonder she felt so woozy. "No, I'm fine, thanks." With a grunt, she flopped over on to her stomach, bending her knees so that her bare feet waved in the air. "I'm knackered. No more spinning until my head stops spinning."
Leaning back on one elbow, she peered up at Scorpius, who looked rather disheveled himself. Quite fetchingly so, in fact, although his nose had turned pink from the sun; Rose thought she also caught a glimpse of pink scalp peeking through his pale blond hair. She rubbed at the tip of her nose, knowing she'd be peeling there tomorrow since she'd forgotten to put on sunscreen, and said, "Sit down, Scorpius, or else I'll get a crick in my neck trying to talk to you."
He squatted down so that his knees were at eye level, his fingertips pressed against the ground for balance. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable sitting in one of those patio chairs?" he asked, indicating them with a jerk of his chin.
"No, not really. Do you have something against sitting on the ground?"
"I don't want to get my trousers dirty," he said, glancing around him.
"You - What..." Rose didn't have to look to know she had grass stains on her skirt. So she reached out and gave Scorpius a gentle shove that knocked him off-balance. He landed with an "oof."
"I'll have you know that grass stains on the arse are a mark of character," Rose said archly. "I ought to know; I've got character coming out my ears."
He looked cross at first, but recovered and folded his long legs before him lotus-style, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. "When in Rome, I suppose," he said.
Rose giggled.
Scorpius' face blossomed into one of his rare genuine smiles, the kind that always made Rose's stomach do a back-flip. "You have such a nice laugh," he said. His gaze, which had been on her, darted down to fix itself on his hands as the color rose in his face. The smile, though, was still there.
Rose felt her own cheeks grow warm and she, too, felt compelled to look down. "Thanks," she said, plucking out a blade of grass. "I think I sound like an asthmatic sea lion, frankly."
A laugh escaped through his nose. "You do not."
She looked up at him with a grin. "At least I don't laugh like MarJean Bletchley."
"Is she the one who makes that noise like a Fwooper?"
"That's the one," she said with a snort.
He shook his head. "I was once coming down from the North Tower as she and a friend were coming up, and something set her off. In that enclosed a space, it was like being in an echo chamber. I had such an awful headache by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs I went straight to Madam Pomfrey."
"Imagine sharing a dormitory room with her for six years."
Scorpius looked at her and choked out a laugh. "I'll gladly trade that for sharing one with Gopesh Singh for six years."
"Why's that?"
He chewed on his lower lip before answering, "He's a somnambulist." Rose's eyebrows went up. "And he sleeps naked."
All it took was one look, and Rose dissolved into peals of laughter, rolling on to her back, clutching her stomach and pulling her knees up as she surrendered to hilarity. Scorpius took a little longer to let loose, but before long he gave in to the moment and soon was laughing almost as hard as she was.
"Y'know," Rose gasped, scrubbing the tears from her face as her laughter subsided, "you really ought to laugh more, Scorpius."
It amazed her how quickly he sobered, his expression growing thoughtful. "It's easy to laugh when you're around, Rose."
She let out a snort as she rolled back on to her stomach. "Yeah, I'll bet it is."
He made a sound of exasperation. "No, that's not what I mean. It's - It's easier to laugh when I'm with you."
"You make it sound as if your life was one long cloudy, gloomy day before I barged into it."
He reached down and started tugging up blades of grass. "I wouldn't go quite that far," he said. "I had a happy enough childhood."
"Did you?"
He stopped pulling at the grass to look at her. "What do you mean?"
"Well..." She paused to marshal her thoughts. "When Mum and I were at your house the other day, and I got lost?" She looked up at him and waited for his acknowledgement. "It seemed so empty! I mean, I must have been bumbling around for ten, fifteen minutes before I came across another living soul. Luckily for me, it happened to be you."
Twisting around to point in the direction of her house, she continued, "Here, you can't swing a dead Kneazle without hitting someone, it seems. When the whole family gathers for big dinners and such, there's--" She paused to tally up her aunts, uncles, and cousins. "--about two dozen, maybe thirty people, give or take a boyfriend or girlfriend or two, never mind the mob of 'honorary' relatives. And in case you've not noticed, we're a bit on the rowdy side."
Scorpius' eyes had grown wide. "I don't think there are two dozen people in my entire family, even if I include both sides."
"Don't you get terribly lonely in that big house, with no one to talk to?"
"I have people to talk to. There's Mother, and Father when he's around, and sometimes I'll talk to the servants."
Rose gave him a look of pity. "Your parents and house-elves are your best mates?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"There's nothing wrong with it, but it isn't exactly normal, is it?"
"Do you find it so impossible to believe that I had a happy childhood?" he asked sharply.
Rose opened her mouth to respond, then thought better of it, and left the silence for Scorpius to fill. After a moment or two he continued in a low voice, "We lived in Venice until I was around seven or eight. Mother would take me to Papa's--my grandfather's--factory nearly every day, and when she didn't we'd explore the city. On the days we were at the factory, sometimes I'd play with my cousins or the children of Papa's employees, but just as often I'd follow Papa around as he went about his business. He was a very busy man, but he always made time for me, and never grew tired of my questions."
"Dad said something about your grandfather making glass?"
He nodded. "His family's been doing it for centuries. You can find their glass in the windows of some of the most famous cathedrals in Europe."
"Wow."
A pleased look came over his face. "And Venice itself is such a magical city, with the most incredible history." He looked at Rose quickly, then away again. "I hope I can show it to you someday."
The butterflies had now switched to a rousing can-can. "I'd like that too."
He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I was very happy when we lived in Italy. I was happy even after we moved to England, though I missed Papa and his factory terribly, and London is nowhere near as lovely as Venice."
"What about friends? Did you have any here in England before you started at Hogwarts?"
He looked thoughtful, then shook his head. "No, not really, but I didn't feel as though I was missing out. Mother and Father never let me want for anything."
"You don't act as though you've been spoiled."
He looked offended. "I certainly hope not."
"Have you always been so quiet and serious then?"
"I suppose so. I can't recall having ever been... rowdy." He cut his eyes at her.
She sniggered. "Spend time with my family and you'll learn. It's an essential tool for survival."
"I think I'd like that," he said. At her questioning look he explained, "Spending time with your family."
Rose laughed heartily. "You say that now..." The smile slowly faded from her face as she lowered herself to rest her chin on her hands. "Scorpius," she said hesitantly, glancing up at him from beneath her eyebrows, "why did you ignore me on the train ride home?"
He looked horrified. "I-I didn't!" he spluttered. "What on earth gave you that idea?"
"Let me think." Propping herself back up on her elbows, she tapped her index finger against her chin. "I might be mistaken, but it could have something to do with the way you stopped to look in the compartment where I was sitting all by myself and then kept on walking."
His face was ashen. "You saw that?"
"You admit it then!" Rose cried. She pushed herself up to a kneeling position and jabbed her finger in his chest until he flinched. "You admit that you deliberately ignored me!"
"I didn't think you'd seen me," he mumbled. "You looked caught up in your magazine. I wasn't ignoring you, I just didn't want to intrude."
"Yeah, I can't think of anything I'd rather spend a train ride with than an article on 'Twelve Ways to Polish Your Wizard's Wand,'" she scoffed, ignoring the violent flush that came over him. "Besides, how many times have I intruded on you?"
"You've never intruded on me, Rose."
"Are you mad? What about all those times I interrupted you studying in the library? Or the way I'm constantly dogging your heels when we're on Prefect duty? Or the way I invited myself to sit with you in the Three Broomsticks last Hogsmeade weekend?" Her gestures became more animated as her agitation increased, such that Scorpius had to lean back sharply to avoid an inadvertent blow to the head. "Sorry!"
"I'm all right." He eyed her hands warily before saying, "I never thought of those as intrusions."
"Are you telling me you never once thought, 'Bloody hell, not her again. Why won't she just leave me in peace?'"
"Not at all. I mean, the first time you came up to me it took me by surprise because you'd never even spoken to me before--not purposefully, that is--but I - I - I enjoy your company, Rose. Very much so. I look forward to it, even."
"Then why didn't you want to sit with me on the train?" she asked plaintively, silently cursing the tears taking shape in the corners of her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Rose," he said. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I just - it didn't occur to me that you might want me to sit with you."
"Why wouldn't I? Aren't we friends?"
"Are we? Do you really think of me as a friend?"
His simple question cut her to the quick. "Merlin's tits! For someone so clever, you're not very bright sometimes, Scorpius."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"How could you possibly doubt that I think of you as a friend, maybe even as something more, after all the time we've spent together?"
"Erm," he said, before clearing his throat. "Spending a lot of time together at school doesn't make people friends. I've spent more time with any of my dormitory mates than I have done with you, and none of them are friends with me."
"That's because they're a bunch of narrow-minded berks who need an instructor's manual to wipe their own arses." She angrily brushed a curl out of her face.
"They're not all bad, really," he said, shaking his head.
Rose stared at Scorpius for the longest time, trying to make sense out of him. She'd had an inkling for a while now--possibly even from the moment she'd brought him out to the garden--that something was wrong. While he had ignored her on the train (all right, she thought, while he hadn't wanted to intrude), he'd just happened to pass by the joke shop an hour after they arrived in London, even though he'd never been there before, he'd returned again with his mum two days later, and then he'd invited Rose to his house for dinner. By her reckoning, none of that would have happened if Scorpius didn't at least think of her as a friend. She fancied that he was more keen on her than that, but she was willing to consider the possibility that maybe she was being optimistic, or at least projecting her own feelings on to him in the hope he'd respond in kind.
Except that every instinct she had told her she wasn't, that she was dead right about him fancying her. When his hands had been splayed against her back, she could have sworn she felt him pull her just a little bit closer to him. She'd seen him look at her lips and dip his head just a little bit lower, too, right before he pulled back. She'd have to be a fool not to recognize that Scorpius fancied her, and while Rose might be a born romantic, she was no fool.
Which meant something was holding him back. And because she was no fool, Rose had a fairly good idea what that something--or someone--might be.
Rose got to her feet and squared her shoulders, planting one hand on a hip and waggling a finger of the other as she glared down at Scorpius. "You can't fool me, Scorpius. I see now what you're trying to do."
His eyebrows went up. "Really? What's that, then?"
"This is about your dad, isn't it? Your dad and your grandfather. You can't believe someone like me would ever want to be friends with someone like you, because I'm a Weasley and you're a Malfoy."
He was quiet for a moment before looking away, confirming her worst fears before he'd even uttered a word. "Father told me it would be the best thing for everyone if I stayed away from you."
Despite everything, Rose still wasn't prepared for his admission, and staggered as if she'd been struck, her hand straying up to her mouth to stifle the cry that threatened to escape. "What? Why? Because of my mum being a Muggle-born?"
Scorpius stood then, his long, lean body gracefully unfolding until he'd reached his full height, then curling back in on itself as his shoulders slumped and his neck bowed. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he kicked at the ground. "He said I was being selfish, pursuing a relationship with you without considering the consequences." He looked off into the distance. "He said that asking you to deal with our family--with the Malfoy name and all that it implies--would be putting too heavy a burden on you."
Rose sucked in her breath. "You don't - you don't really believe any of that rubbish, do you? After everything that's happened already this summer - I mean, why did you even come here today if you thought he might have a point?"
"But he does have a point, Rose. I can't imagine introducing you to Grandfather and Grandmother Malfoy being anything but an unmitigated disaster. They'd never accept you."
She didn't think she'd ever been so angry in her life - angry at Scorpius' father for saying such a thing, angry at Scorpius for letting it sink in, angry at herself for not seeing this coming, angry at the whole stupid, bloody mess. "So you'd rather take the coward's way out, and admit defeat without even trying, is that it?"
His laugh might have been derisive, but the misery he felt was coming off him in waves. "Guess we're both more like our parents than either of us is willing to concede. You, the daughter of two war heroes, and me, the son of a coward."
Unable to bear it any more, Rose turned on her heel and strode away, pulling at her hair and fighting the urge to scream. She stopped when she reached the fence and leaned her forehead against it, taking several deep breaths, trying to calm herself. The fingers of her right hand reflexively curled around her wand.
"Maybe --" His voice was close. "I shouldn't have come here. It was a mistake. I'm sorry --"
She whirled to face him, whipping her wand out and pointing it at him. "Stop it, Scorpius," she cried. "It was not a mistake coming here, and you are not your father, d'you hear me?" She bore down on him, knowing, but not caring, that he could disarm her in an instant if he wished. "You're as brave as anyone I know, including my parents. D'you think I'd waste a second of my time with you if I thought you were in any way a coward?"
"But you --"
Suddenly he stiffened, his attention drawn by something behind Rose. Before she could turn and see what it was, however, she heard a familiar voice drawl, "Well, well, well. Look what we have here. Lovers' quarrel?"
Horrified, Rose lowered her wand and turned to see her cousins James and Albus Potter standing on the back steps. James, who'd spoken, had a sickening sneer on his face, as though he'd just caught someone nicking sweets from Honeydukes'. Al, for his part, looked merely bemused as he glanced back and forth between Rose and Scorpius. "H'lo, Rose," he said. "Malfoy."
"Potter," he replied coolly, taking them both in.
"What are you doing here?" Rose snapped. Her anger was wholly directed at James; she'd got on well with Al all her life, but James, who went about with an air of disdain as though everyone else was shit he'd accidentally stepped in, was another matter entirely. That he was here, now, given how horrid he'd been to Scorpius over the years, was a nightmare Rose couldn't wake from soon enough.
"Family dinner, Cuz," James said, his sneer turning into a smirk. "I can't wait to see what the main course is going to be."
"We'll see about that," Rose declared. She shoved her wand back in her pocket and grabbed Scorpius' hand. "Come with me. I want a word with my mother."
As of 11/1/08, this fic has been abandoned. Read this for details.
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Rose Weasley-Granger and Scorpius Malfoy aren't about to let decades of enmity between their fathers get in the way of their friendship. As two shy, awkward teenagers wrestling with the onset of first love, they've got enough obstacles to overcome.
NOTE: Have I mentioned katieay's total beta rockitude lately?
DISCLAIMER: J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potter universe and everything it encompasses. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus derives no profit or material benefit therefrom.
PART SIX
If Scorpius didn't hurry up and kiss her, Rose thought she was going to scream. She was so frustrated with him right now, she was tempted to hex him into tomorrow. She'd tried everything she could think of to both give him the opportunity and convey the message that she would really like for him to kiss her, but he'd left her wanting every time.
She could tell he wanted to. The first time he'd Apparated for her, he'd re-materialized so close to her she'd instinctively grabbed him to keep them both from falling over, and she'd heard the catch in his breath as his chest came into contact with hers. Bloody hell, they'd been so close she'd felt it, and would not have been surprised if he'd been able to feel the hammering of her heart as she'd looked up into his incredibly dark, dark blue eyes. His gaze had drifted down to her mouth and she'd started to close her eyes, thinking, this is it, but just as the warm breeze of his breath caressed her face he broke free and stepped back, sweeping aside the lock of hair that had fallen over his brow.
"Sorry about that," he'd said, his voice sounding odd.
"About what?" Rose managed to get out despite her disappointment.
"About nearly Apparating on top of you." A slight flush rose up the sides of his neck.
"You're the one who said it would work better if you used me as your destination."
"I guess my subconscious must've taken that a bit too literally."
She wanted to say, "And what's wrong with that?" Instead she said, "I guess next time, don't concentrate on me so hard."
There wasn't going to be a next time, however, because he'd decided to have her demonstrate her Apparating technique to him, thinking that maybe he could figure out what she was doing wrong and help her correct it. She could have told him that there was no chance she'd manage a successful Apparition with him standing so close, occasionally touching her as he adjusted her stance. Not just light, casual touches, either; no, he had to come up close behind her, the heat from his body sending frissons of hyper-awareness down her back, and reach around her to raise or lower her arms or alter the bend in her elbows. He always apologized just before doing so, too. Once, his hand lingered on her arm a little longer than necessary and Rose closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek in nervous anticipation, the butterflies in her stomach doing the conga as his breath ruffled through her hair, but again he drew back and broke contact.
"Right, now let's see your spin."
"My... my what?" she said thickly.
He came around so that he was facing her. "Spin for me. I don't want you to try to Apparate anywhere just yet, I only want to see you turn."
Her head was already spinning, no thanks to him, but she did as instructed, executing a somewhat wobbly, cross-eyed pirouette that promptly deposited her arse-first on the lawn.
"Bollocks!"
Scorpius reached down to offer her a hand up. "Try to open up your circle a little."
"Sorry?" she said, brushing at the back of her skirt.
"Don't spin so tightly. Like this." He turned to demonstrate.
"Right. Bigger circle. Got it." She tried to recreate the stance he'd put her in before, but he shook his head and came forward to re-position her arms, then stepped back again. "I feel like a bloody idiot. Probably look like one, too."
"It'll start to feel more natural once you have the hang of things," he reassured her. "When you're Apparating for real, it's not as if you stand like this for more than a second or two. Most people simply turn and go."
"You make it all sound so easy."
"It is. Once you've completed your first Apparition, you'll be amazed at how easy it truly is."
She gave him a look of skepticism. "You'd better not be having me on."
A corner of his mouth turned up. "I'm not, I promise."
"I'll hold you to that promise." She took a deep breath. "Here goes."
Trying not to think how ridiculous she must look, and hoping that her mum and Mrs. Malfoy weren't watching, Rose turned on the spot.
And stumbled smack into Scorpius.
This time, he caught her, his hands meeting midway at her back so that she was flush against him, her upraised hands between them. She turned them so that her palms were pressed against his chest.
He wanted to kiss her, she just knew it. She might not be the most experienced girl in the world--that manky Spencer Finnigan didn't count, nor did the parlor games she sometimes joined in on with her Housemates on slow winter nights, one bottle of butterbeer being passed from hand to hand while its brother lay spinning on the floor--but that look on his face was unmistakable.
So then why didn't he?
* * * * *
Ron found that if he leaned back in his chair just so, he could keep an eye on Rose and Scorpius through the open door of his workshop without actually parking himself in the doorway. The lad had already twigged to his surveillance--clever one, that--but as far as Ron could tell, Rose remained oblivious. Which was fine with him, because he knew she wouldn't appreciate it.
He glanced down at the schematics for a new product he was supposed to be working on for the joke shop. He'd been holding them for so long as he kept an eye on his daughter that the edge had become wrinkled by the humidity of his palm. Hermione hadn't been fooled for an instant when he told her he'd be working out here while she visited with Grazia Malfoy, especially since he waited until Rose dragged Scorpius outside and then Apparated directly here from the sitting room. If she thought he was going to turn his back and leave Rose unguarded and alone with that boy, however, she had another thing coming. It didn't matter that they were in his own garden, nor that he was confident that Rose was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
For days now Ron had been trying to reconcile himself to two painfully unpleasant facts: first, that his darling Rosie was growing up, and by summer's end would be an adult; and second, that she genuinely seemed to be keen on Scorpius Malfoy. He could scarcely believe how much she'd grown up since she left for Hogwarts the previous September. When she came into the sitting room to meet Scorpius earlier, he'd been stunned to see how beautiful she was. She'd always been beautiful in his eyes, of course, but for the first time Ron found himself seeing her not simply as his precious little girl, but as an attractive young woman. It had taken only one sideways glance at Scorpius to work out he was seeing exactly the same thing.
Ron knew then that things were out of his hands, but he was damned if he was going to give up that easily. He wanted to give Rose room to make mistakes so she could learn from them. He well remembered how his mum had hovered over him when he was Rose's age, and how much it rankled. He wanted to let his fledgling spread her wings and fly. But he knew, only too well, the hazards of premature flight, and there was nothing he wanted more than to protect her from crashing to earth.
It wasn't the realization that Rose was growing up despite his desire to keep her his little girl forever that had Ron's stomach in knots and had kept him awake the past few nights. It was the whole Malfoy issue.
He'd called in a chit at the Auror Office on Friday before work and had them pull the Malfoy dossier. Since he was no longer an Auror they couldn't just let him walk off with the file, but they gave him use of an empty conference room to sort through the reams of information gathered on the Malfoys, going back to Lucius' first years out of Hogwarts. Ron had been tempted to read the family's entire sordid history, but he had neither the time nor the stomach for it. Instead, he flipped to the back of the dossier and scanned through the information gathered since Draco's return to England ten years ago.
It should have given Ron the reassurance he needed. By all accounts, Draco Malfoy was a model citizen, betraying no inclination to resume the sort of activities that had defined his final two years at school. There did appear to be a tendency to engage in shady business practices--either undercutting a seller or overcharging a buyer--when Muggle-borns were involved, but Ron found nothing blatantly prejudicial, nothing to suggest Malfoy was potentially dangerous. And while he did keep in regular contact with his parents, there'd been no effort to bring them back to England, nor had he petitioned to expunge his father's criminal record. Furthermore, he'd severed all of his old school ties save one: Gregory Goyle managed one of his warehouses. On a hunch, Ron checked an inventory from that particular warehouse for evidence of possible contraband, but again he came up empty-handed.
On the surface, at least, Draco Malfoy had reformed himself.
Ron wouldn't be so easily fooled, however. While he knew Draco to be too much of a coward to try anything overt, he also knew that Malfoy's blood prejudice was too deeply ingrained for him to renounce it completely. It might be buried in his subconscious, manifesting itself in seemingly innocuous ways, but Ron knew it would eventually bubble up to the surface. A nundu can't change its spots.
What bothered Ron even more was the question of how much Malfoy had poisoned his son with his bigotry. Even if Draco hadn't been like his father and openly indoctrinated Scorpius to despise those of less than pure blood, there were other, more subtle ways of teaching prejudice to an impressionable, eager-to-please child. Malfoy was clever, too; he'd been second only to Hermione in all their classes at Hogwarts, and the wisdom gained from experience would have honed his shrewdness. Scorpius could be a walking time bomb and have no idea. The right trigger might cause him to say or do something utterly hateful without even realizing it. And if Rose happened to be around when that moment came--or worse, if she happened to be the target--the effect could be devastating.
That possibility worried Ron more than anything else.
* * * * *
Rose flopped down spread-eagled on the grass and shut her eyes to block out the vertigo that had landed her here in the first place. It seemed as though she'd been practicing turns for hours, and now she was hot and sweaty and dizzy and grumpy and her hair was rapidly disintegrating into its usual out-of-control nimbus. And still she'd neither been kissed nor managed to Apparate even once. She swore profanely, hoping after the fact that Mum was nowhere within earshot.
"Rose, are you all right?"
She opened her eyes to look up at Scorpius, but the sun was so bright she had to shade them with her hand. "Peachy."
"Do you want something to drink? You look a little ill."
It occurred to her that, having thrown up both breakfast and lunch, she hadn't really eaten all day. No wonder she felt so woozy. "No, I'm fine, thanks." With a grunt, she flopped over on to her stomach, bending her knees so that her bare feet waved in the air. "I'm knackered. No more spinning until my head stops spinning."
Leaning back on one elbow, she peered up at Scorpius, who looked rather disheveled himself. Quite fetchingly so, in fact, although his nose had turned pink from the sun; Rose thought she also caught a glimpse of pink scalp peeking through his pale blond hair. She rubbed at the tip of her nose, knowing she'd be peeling there tomorrow since she'd forgotten to put on sunscreen, and said, "Sit down, Scorpius, or else I'll get a crick in my neck trying to talk to you."
He squatted down so that his knees were at eye level, his fingertips pressed against the ground for balance. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable sitting in one of those patio chairs?" he asked, indicating them with a jerk of his chin.
"No, not really. Do you have something against sitting on the ground?"
"I don't want to get my trousers dirty," he said, glancing around him.
"You - What..." Rose didn't have to look to know she had grass stains on her skirt. So she reached out and gave Scorpius a gentle shove that knocked him off-balance. He landed with an "oof."
"I'll have you know that grass stains on the arse are a mark of character," Rose said archly. "I ought to know; I've got character coming out my ears."
He looked cross at first, but recovered and folded his long legs before him lotus-style, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. "When in Rome, I suppose," he said.
Rose giggled.
Scorpius' face blossomed into one of his rare genuine smiles, the kind that always made Rose's stomach do a back-flip. "You have such a nice laugh," he said. His gaze, which had been on her, darted down to fix itself on his hands as the color rose in his face. The smile, though, was still there.
Rose felt her own cheeks grow warm and she, too, felt compelled to look down. "Thanks," she said, plucking out a blade of grass. "I think I sound like an asthmatic sea lion, frankly."
A laugh escaped through his nose. "You do not."
She looked up at him with a grin. "At least I don't laugh like MarJean Bletchley."
"Is she the one who makes that noise like a Fwooper?"
"That's the one," she said with a snort.
He shook his head. "I was once coming down from the North Tower as she and a friend were coming up, and something set her off. In that enclosed a space, it was like being in an echo chamber. I had such an awful headache by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs I went straight to Madam Pomfrey."
"Imagine sharing a dormitory room with her for six years."
Scorpius looked at her and choked out a laugh. "I'll gladly trade that for sharing one with Gopesh Singh for six years."
"Why's that?"
He chewed on his lower lip before answering, "He's a somnambulist." Rose's eyebrows went up. "And he sleeps naked."
All it took was one look, and Rose dissolved into peals of laughter, rolling on to her back, clutching her stomach and pulling her knees up as she surrendered to hilarity. Scorpius took a little longer to let loose, but before long he gave in to the moment and soon was laughing almost as hard as she was.
"Y'know," Rose gasped, scrubbing the tears from her face as her laughter subsided, "you really ought to laugh more, Scorpius."
It amazed her how quickly he sobered, his expression growing thoughtful. "It's easy to laugh when you're around, Rose."
She let out a snort as she rolled back on to her stomach. "Yeah, I'll bet it is."
He made a sound of exasperation. "No, that's not what I mean. It's - It's easier to laugh when I'm with you."
"You make it sound as if your life was one long cloudy, gloomy day before I barged into it."
He reached down and started tugging up blades of grass. "I wouldn't go quite that far," he said. "I had a happy enough childhood."
"Did you?"
He stopped pulling at the grass to look at her. "What do you mean?"
"Well..." She paused to marshal her thoughts. "When Mum and I were at your house the other day, and I got lost?" She looked up at him and waited for his acknowledgement. "It seemed so empty! I mean, I must have been bumbling around for ten, fifteen minutes before I came across another living soul. Luckily for me, it happened to be you."
Twisting around to point in the direction of her house, she continued, "Here, you can't swing a dead Kneazle without hitting someone, it seems. When the whole family gathers for big dinners and such, there's--" She paused to tally up her aunts, uncles, and cousins. "--about two dozen, maybe thirty people, give or take a boyfriend or girlfriend or two, never mind the mob of 'honorary' relatives. And in case you've not noticed, we're a bit on the rowdy side."
Scorpius' eyes had grown wide. "I don't think there are two dozen people in my entire family, even if I include both sides."
"Don't you get terribly lonely in that big house, with no one to talk to?"
"I have people to talk to. There's Mother, and Father when he's around, and sometimes I'll talk to the servants."
Rose gave him a look of pity. "Your parents and house-elves are your best mates?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"There's nothing wrong with it, but it isn't exactly normal, is it?"
"Do you find it so impossible to believe that I had a happy childhood?" he asked sharply.
Rose opened her mouth to respond, then thought better of it, and left the silence for Scorpius to fill. After a moment or two he continued in a low voice, "We lived in Venice until I was around seven or eight. Mother would take me to Papa's--my grandfather's--factory nearly every day, and when she didn't we'd explore the city. On the days we were at the factory, sometimes I'd play with my cousins or the children of Papa's employees, but just as often I'd follow Papa around as he went about his business. He was a very busy man, but he always made time for me, and never grew tired of my questions."
"Dad said something about your grandfather making glass?"
He nodded. "His family's been doing it for centuries. You can find their glass in the windows of some of the most famous cathedrals in Europe."
"Wow."
A pleased look came over his face. "And Venice itself is such a magical city, with the most incredible history." He looked at Rose quickly, then away again. "I hope I can show it to you someday."
The butterflies had now switched to a rousing can-can. "I'd like that too."
He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I was very happy when we lived in Italy. I was happy even after we moved to England, though I missed Papa and his factory terribly, and London is nowhere near as lovely as Venice."
"What about friends? Did you have any here in England before you started at Hogwarts?"
He looked thoughtful, then shook his head. "No, not really, but I didn't feel as though I was missing out. Mother and Father never let me want for anything."
"You don't act as though you've been spoiled."
He looked offended. "I certainly hope not."
"Have you always been so quiet and serious then?"
"I suppose so. I can't recall having ever been... rowdy." He cut his eyes at her.
She sniggered. "Spend time with my family and you'll learn. It's an essential tool for survival."
"I think I'd like that," he said. At her questioning look he explained, "Spending time with your family."
Rose laughed heartily. "You say that now..." The smile slowly faded from her face as she lowered herself to rest her chin on her hands. "Scorpius," she said hesitantly, glancing up at him from beneath her eyebrows, "why did you ignore me on the train ride home?"
He looked horrified. "I-I didn't!" he spluttered. "What on earth gave you that idea?"
"Let me think." Propping herself back up on her elbows, she tapped her index finger against her chin. "I might be mistaken, but it could have something to do with the way you stopped to look in the compartment where I was sitting all by myself and then kept on walking."
His face was ashen. "You saw that?"
"You admit it then!" Rose cried. She pushed herself up to a kneeling position and jabbed her finger in his chest until he flinched. "You admit that you deliberately ignored me!"
"I didn't think you'd seen me," he mumbled. "You looked caught up in your magazine. I wasn't ignoring you, I just didn't want to intrude."
"Yeah, I can't think of anything I'd rather spend a train ride with than an article on 'Twelve Ways to Polish Your Wizard's Wand,'" she scoffed, ignoring the violent flush that came over him. "Besides, how many times have I intruded on you?"
"You've never intruded on me, Rose."
"Are you mad? What about all those times I interrupted you studying in the library? Or the way I'm constantly dogging your heels when we're on Prefect duty? Or the way I invited myself to sit with you in the Three Broomsticks last Hogsmeade weekend?" Her gestures became more animated as her agitation increased, such that Scorpius had to lean back sharply to avoid an inadvertent blow to the head. "Sorry!"
"I'm all right." He eyed her hands warily before saying, "I never thought of those as intrusions."
"Are you telling me you never once thought, 'Bloody hell, not her again. Why won't she just leave me in peace?'"
"Not at all. I mean, the first time you came up to me it took me by surprise because you'd never even spoken to me before--not purposefully, that is--but I - I - I enjoy your company, Rose. Very much so. I look forward to it, even."
"Then why didn't you want to sit with me on the train?" she asked plaintively, silently cursing the tears taking shape in the corners of her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Rose," he said. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I just - it didn't occur to me that you might want me to sit with you."
"Why wouldn't I? Aren't we friends?"
"Are we? Do you really think of me as a friend?"
His simple question cut her to the quick. "Merlin's tits! For someone so clever, you're not very bright sometimes, Scorpius."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"How could you possibly doubt that I think of you as a friend, maybe even as something more, after all the time we've spent together?"
"Erm," he said, before clearing his throat. "Spending a lot of time together at school doesn't make people friends. I've spent more time with any of my dormitory mates than I have done with you, and none of them are friends with me."
"That's because they're a bunch of narrow-minded berks who need an instructor's manual to wipe their own arses." She angrily brushed a curl out of her face.
"They're not all bad, really," he said, shaking his head.
Rose stared at Scorpius for the longest time, trying to make sense out of him. She'd had an inkling for a while now--possibly even from the moment she'd brought him out to the garden--that something was wrong. While he had ignored her on the train (all right, she thought, while he hadn't wanted to intrude), he'd just happened to pass by the joke shop an hour after they arrived in London, even though he'd never been there before, he'd returned again with his mum two days later, and then he'd invited Rose to his house for dinner. By her reckoning, none of that would have happened if Scorpius didn't at least think of her as a friend. She fancied that he was more keen on her than that, but she was willing to consider the possibility that maybe she was being optimistic, or at least projecting her own feelings on to him in the hope he'd respond in kind.
Except that every instinct she had told her she wasn't, that she was dead right about him fancying her. When his hands had been splayed against her back, she could have sworn she felt him pull her just a little bit closer to him. She'd seen him look at her lips and dip his head just a little bit lower, too, right before he pulled back. She'd have to be a fool not to recognize that Scorpius fancied her, and while Rose might be a born romantic, she was no fool.
Which meant something was holding him back. And because she was no fool, Rose had a fairly good idea what that something--or someone--might be.
Rose got to her feet and squared her shoulders, planting one hand on a hip and waggling a finger of the other as she glared down at Scorpius. "You can't fool me, Scorpius. I see now what you're trying to do."
His eyebrows went up. "Really? What's that, then?"
"This is about your dad, isn't it? Your dad and your grandfather. You can't believe someone like me would ever want to be friends with someone like you, because I'm a Weasley and you're a Malfoy."
He was quiet for a moment before looking away, confirming her worst fears before he'd even uttered a word. "Father told me it would be the best thing for everyone if I stayed away from you."
Despite everything, Rose still wasn't prepared for his admission, and staggered as if she'd been struck, her hand straying up to her mouth to stifle the cry that threatened to escape. "What? Why? Because of my mum being a Muggle-born?"
Scorpius stood then, his long, lean body gracefully unfolding until he'd reached his full height, then curling back in on itself as his shoulders slumped and his neck bowed. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he kicked at the ground. "He said I was being selfish, pursuing a relationship with you without considering the consequences." He looked off into the distance. "He said that asking you to deal with our family--with the Malfoy name and all that it implies--would be putting too heavy a burden on you."
Rose sucked in her breath. "You don't - you don't really believe any of that rubbish, do you? After everything that's happened already this summer - I mean, why did you even come here today if you thought he might have a point?"
"But he does have a point, Rose. I can't imagine introducing you to Grandfather and Grandmother Malfoy being anything but an unmitigated disaster. They'd never accept you."
She didn't think she'd ever been so angry in her life - angry at Scorpius' father for saying such a thing, angry at Scorpius for letting it sink in, angry at herself for not seeing this coming, angry at the whole stupid, bloody mess. "So you'd rather take the coward's way out, and admit defeat without even trying, is that it?"
His laugh might have been derisive, but the misery he felt was coming off him in waves. "Guess we're both more like our parents than either of us is willing to concede. You, the daughter of two war heroes, and me, the son of a coward."
Unable to bear it any more, Rose turned on her heel and strode away, pulling at her hair and fighting the urge to scream. She stopped when she reached the fence and leaned her forehead against it, taking several deep breaths, trying to calm herself. The fingers of her right hand reflexively curled around her wand.
"Maybe --" His voice was close. "I shouldn't have come here. It was a mistake. I'm sorry --"
She whirled to face him, whipping her wand out and pointing it at him. "Stop it, Scorpius," she cried. "It was not a mistake coming here, and you are not your father, d'you hear me?" She bore down on him, knowing, but not caring, that he could disarm her in an instant if he wished. "You're as brave as anyone I know, including my parents. D'you think I'd waste a second of my time with you if I thought you were in any way a coward?"
"But you --"
Suddenly he stiffened, his attention drawn by something behind Rose. Before she could turn and see what it was, however, she heard a familiar voice drawl, "Well, well, well. Look what we have here. Lovers' quarrel?"
Horrified, Rose lowered her wand and turned to see her cousins James and Albus Potter standing on the back steps. James, who'd spoken, had a sickening sneer on his face, as though he'd just caught someone nicking sweets from Honeydukes'. Al, for his part, looked merely bemused as he glanced back and forth between Rose and Scorpius. "H'lo, Rose," he said. "Malfoy."
"Potter," he replied coolly, taking them both in.
"What are you doing here?" Rose snapped. Her anger was wholly directed at James; she'd got on well with Al all her life, but James, who went about with an air of disdain as though everyone else was shit he'd accidentally stepped in, was another matter entirely. That he was here, now, given how horrid he'd been to Scorpius over the years, was a nightmare Rose couldn't wake from soon enough.
"Family dinner, Cuz," James said, his sneer turning into a smirk. "I can't wait to see what the main course is going to be."
"We'll see about that," Rose declared. She shoved her wand back in her pocket and grabbed Scorpius' hand. "Come with me. I want a word with my mother."
As of 11/1/08, this fic has been abandoned. Read this for details.