[Author's Note] This story was written for Marie E. Brooke as part of the Gift Giving Extravaganza, for the month of May! I'm cutting it very close, lol, but here it is!

This is Part 1 of 3

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Thanks to luvsanime02 for the quick and amazing edit (as always).

Standing at the top of the Astronomy tower at two in the morning, alone and a little bit chilly, is one of Rose's most distinct memories of her seventh year at Hogwarts. She remembers those moments the best—with the most fondness—because it was then, before she even left the common room for the tower, before she became out of breath from the never-ending, winding stairs, when she was still sitting at her seat in the common room, that she opened her folder and felt the closest to Scorpius.

Her notes were always tucked away neatly in their proper categories—she'd developed her own organizing system in fifth year where she sorted her Astronomy notes by relevant authors, specific keywords, and historical magical impact—despite the fact that she'd fallen asleep on them that morning and stashed them away in a hurry, without any semblance of organization, in order to make it to breakfast, and then class, on time.

Rose grinned and flipped through her notes quickly; some of the parchment papers were wrinkled from where she'd fallen asleep on them that morning, before dragging herself to bed for a quick hour of shuteye before breakfast, but others were written in a handwriting different than hers—Scorpius'.

It was two in the morning, and energy was pumping motivation through her system, but the thought of Scorpius kept Rose slumped in her seat.

She remembers remembering how she'd barely paid any attention to Scorpius all day. Rose had become a nocturnal creature, and during the day her motor functions were as slow as a Troll's wit. All she yearned for was her large, warm bed; instead, she had to force herself to appear coherent through breakfast, classes, and various social interactions she suspected she botched like she'd been hit with a particularly potent Confundus Charm. In the background of all of this was Scorpius, a constant but blurry image whenever Rose thought back on the day.

At night, when her mind was aware and functioning again, Rose vaguely remembered laughing at a joke of his during breakfast (when she was fighting not to fall asleep face-first in her porridge), nodding at something he'd whispered to her in Potions class (what had he said? Rose couldn't remember for the life of her, nor what they'd been brewing), and waving a distracted 'goodnight' over her shoulder as Scorpius left the Ravenclaw common room before curfew, too absorbed in homework she wanted to get out of the way to look up.

Except, at some point during the day, Rose must have told him the day's password to her common room, because Scorpius had obviously snuck in during a free period when Rose had been in her dorm catching up on some much-needed sleep to get her through the second part of the day.

And now, in the dead of the night, Rose didn't have to lose any time making sense of her jumbled notes or of the sentences that trailed off because Scorpius had taken care of all of that. He'd finished her sentences, completed her latest constellation chart, and had even corrected her spelling and terrible grammar.

The common room was empty at this time of night, but Scorpius' presence seemed to fill the silence around her, and the strongest urge to hug him overtook Rose so completely that she flipped her folder shut and hugged it tightly, afraid that if she didn't apply pressure to her chest her heart would shatter.

The urge to cry clawed at her throat. Rose knew she could never tell Scorpius how she truly felt about him. She wasn't trying to use him, but how else could it seem to him when they barely hung out anymore? Rose had put Astronomy before her friends, her other classes, even her health—giving up love was just another consequence of her obsession.

Eventually, Rose pulled herself together. She put her folder down on the table, wiped at her dry eyes, and took a few deep and steady breaths. She looked at the mess on her desk—an unstable stack of scrolls of blank parchment, an array of unscrewed bottles of ink and old quills, her discarded and still unfinished homework, and a stack of dog-eared textbooks which she'd arranged to keep her wand propped up so the light from her illumination spell fell on the work in front of her.

Rose knew what others said about her, but hers was the only cozy desk in the common room. All the other desks were always left empty; Ravenclaws had no qualms about dumping work left by another on the floor to use the space. But, somehow, despite being the messiest Ravenclaw in history, Rose had made a reputation for herself with what others had dubbed her 'midnight subject'—always leaving her work on the desk, too tired to clean up after herself—and it had become an unspoken agreement that this was her spot, and no one else messed with it.

Rose grabbed a roll of parchment and tore a piece off one corner. In her characteristically messy scrawl of someone who has more ideas than time to write them down, she scribbled "Thank you." She added a heart, but immediately grabbed her wand and cast an erasing spell on it; she dashed in some x's and o's, but after a moment of hesitation, erased those as well; finally, she dabbed in two dots side by side and a curved line underneath, accompanied by an exclamation mark. Then, she spelled it to fix to her folder where she knew Scorpius would see it the next morning.

In those moments, Rose remembers her self-loathing at being such a coward, promising herself that next time she'd do it—she'd confess her feelings in those daily notes of understated gratitude. Rose stood then, grabbing her folder and rushing out of the common room door. As she headed to the Astronomy Tower to watch the stars—alone and a bit chilly, but with Scorpius closer to her heart than ever—adrenaline rushed her steps, convinced that tonight would be different, that the note would be one word longer than the usual two.

But it never was.