Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

The Most Unlikely Lover
By Silver Sailor Ganymede

Rose was deep in concentration and had been for the past three days. Hermione could tell because her daughter kept tying knots in her hair then untying them again, occasionally hissing under her breath when a particularly stubborn curl wouldn't untie. It was one of Rose's strange little habits that she'd had as a child and still hadn't managed to get rid of at the age of seventeen.

"Is there something bothering you, Rose?" Hermione asked, sitting down opposite her daughter, who started upon seeing her.

"You're home early, Mum," Rose observed.

While this was true, Hermione was not going to let her daughter distract her from the matter at hand.

"Rose, I know there's something wrong," Hermione sighed. "Just tell me if there's anything I can do to help."

Rose had always been rather life her father, loud and Qudditch-mad and prone to sulking rather than speaking (Ron, after over twenty-five years of marriage, had still sadly not required an emotional range larger than that of a teaspoon) so Hermione was more than a little shocked when a great number of words poured out of her daughter's mouth at once.

"Why is it that men always don't seem to realise we exist?" Rose sighed, looking more forlorn than Hermione had thought possible. Hugo was the one who went about with a morose glare on his face, he always had been, not Rose. And now it was a boy of all things that had driven her daughter to distraction.

"Seventeen and eighteen year old boys aren't exactly well acquainted with the concept of emotion, darling," Hermione replied. "If he doesn't realise how you feel then you're just going to have to tell him. I recall that your father was quite impossible at that age."

So impossible that he had left her and Harry right in the middle of hunting for pieces of Voldemort's soul, but of course she wasn't going to tell that to her daughter.

Rose just shrugged.

"Do I know this boy?" Hermione asked. She was expecting Rose to snap and tell her it was absolutely none of her business (Hugo had shown her that teenagers were quite brilliant at that particular skill) but instead Rose sighed, put her head in her hands and mumbled a name that Hermione didn't quite catch.

"You're going to have to speak up a little, Rose. I can't hear you."

"Scorpius."

Rose's face had turned almost the same shade as her hair by now. Hermione couldn't help but be a little surprised – she had assumed it would be one of the boys on the Quidditch team or perhaps someone else in her year, but certainly not Scorpius Malfoy. Yes, they had been friends since first year (introduced, she recalled, by the chess-mad Albus who had been delighted to find a decent player among the Ravenclaws when his housemates in Slytherin had proved utterly useless at the game), but this was completely unexpected. Rose was bubbly and outgoing; Scorpius was studious and quiet and probably the shyest boy Hermione had ever met in her life.

"I don't know why I'm evening thinking about him like this," Rose muttered, glowering at the table as she did so as though hoping it would provide her with some answers. "I mean we're not exactly a likely couple anyway. I'm a loud, Quidditch-playing Gryffindor and he's the quiet, shy Ravenclaw bookworm, right? Who would have thought we'd even end up as friends? I mean we wouldn't be friends if it wasn't for Albus, let alone… Oh forget it. I'm just being stupid. It's not going to happen."

"You and Scorpius are only as unlikely as your father and I were at that age," Hermione replied. "We may have both been Gryffindors, but he was loud and Quidditch-loving and I was the bratty little bookworm so far as the rest of our house were concerned. And we would never have been friends if it weren't for your Uncle Harry."

Rose looked up, her eyes widening in realisation. She smiled.