Riding the Hogwarts Express with Scorpius-Malfoy-her-boyfriend took a little getting used to. She generally rode the train with James, Roxanne, and some of their friends, and when she thought about it, she wasn't sure a year had gone by where she and Scorpius didn't get into some argument during the ride.

Which was, in retrospect, really quite impressive - she certainly hadn't managed to do so with anyone else.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

Rose, who'd been watching the bare trees through the train window as she thought, started. "What?" she asked, turning her attention back to the compartment.

Scorpius looked a little amused; his grey eyes were gleaming, and as she studied him, he ran a hand through his hair in a way that vaguely reminded her of her cousin James. Knowing that he'd be horrified by the comparison, though, she kept her mouth shut.

"Oh, you know. This and that." She glanced over at Albus and Noah, who were sitting across from them. Their attention seemed fixed on the chessboard sitting on the seat between them.

Sitting in such an empty compartment was taking some getting used to, too. Usually, she was squeezing into a compartment with twice this many people.

She lowered her voice. "I was just thinking about how you always managed to pick a fight with me."

"Well, there's still time for that." She elbowed him, and he grinned. "Yeah, I was actually just thinking that it's a lot nicer to ride the train with my arm around my pretty girlfriend than it is to stew about the pretty girl I fancy."

She kissed his cheek, and his smile turned into a smirk.

"Gag me," Albus muttered. He appeared to have lost the chess game. The sunlight streaming through the window was making his red hair glow almost as brightly as Rose was sure hers was. "I think I might have actually preferred the feuding."

"No, you didn't," Noah said, glancing up from the box he'd just finished putting his pieces into. "I might have, though the jealous jerk routine was getting a little old."

Scorpius seemed to be ignoring them both, though Rose suspected him of having distinctly ulterior motives when he gently turned her face toward him and leaned in for a kiss.

Rose smiled and kissed him back. His grip on her tightened, and she gave a loud squeak as he pulled her into his lap and opened his mouth.

Before she could decide whether to have some respect for their friends' sensibilities or to just take whatever snogging she could get before a long Christmas holiday, a small box hit Scorpius in the side of the head. In the process of jerking back from Rose, he slammed his head into the window.

He cursed and raised a hand to his head. "Ow."

"Are you okay?" Rose asked, scrambling up to peer at his head.

He leaned around her to glare at his cousin, whose face was buried in his book. "Noah, you're a prat."

Noah shrugged and turned the page. "Serves you right."

Rose exchanged a look with Albus. "It does, you know," the red-haired boy told Scorpius. "You're being a little bit of a prat yourself. You know that if you do starting doing that when you visit her, my uncle might actually kill you, right?"

"Well, only if we get caught - and why do you think I'm getting it out of my system now?"

Albus began to rummage in his bag. "Sure, that's exactly what you're doing." He pulled out a few scraps of parchment. "Hey, Rosie, are you done with your Christmas shopping?"

Rose shook her head. "I meant to do it during the Hogsmeade visit a couple weeks ago, but - er - well, you know."

"That you snuck into the Slytherin dormitories to spend the afternoon kissing your boyfriend instead?"

Noah glanced up from his book again. Rose got the distinct impression that he wasn't actually reading it - he was just using it as an excuse to not get drawn into an extended conversation about Rose and Scorpius's relationship, which he'd told her a week earlier that he'd grown quite bored of hearing about. "Not that I'm not happy for you both, of course," he'd hastened to add. "It's just that the incessant 'Rose Weasley this' and 'Rose that' and 'I'm meeting Rose here' and 'Rose's hair looked so pretty today, don't you think?' has started to get really old, especially since he never says anything new."

"I can't blame them, Al," he said now, referring to Rose's trip into his dormitory. "I wouldn't want to take all my clothes off in some random passage."

Rose felt her face get red, and all laziness in Albus's face immediately vanished. He shot up. "You did what?"

Thankfully, this question seemed to be directed at Scorpius rather than Rose. Whatever her boyfriend said about Albus's feelings about their relationship, Rose continued to feel like there was a little unnecessary protectiveness over her mixed in with everything else. That usually annoyed her, but she didn't want to get into that particular fight today.

When she glanced across the compartment at Noah, his dark eyes were glittering with amusement. She rolled her eyes at him, and he winked back.

"Er -" Her boyfriend suddenly bore a marked resemblance to a trapped rabbit. Rose sat back to watch whether he'd come at Albus with a denial or a demand for privacy.

"Yes?"

Scorpius split the difference. "Not that it's your business," he told her cousin pointedly, "but Noah's exaggerating. We did not take all our clothes off."

Rose winced. The emphasis her boyfriend had put on the word 'all' was both almost certain to be unhelpful and not actually necessary - they really had both remained mostly clothed. It was also her experience that the more you said in your defense, the less effective it was. She wasn't quite sure why it worked that way, but somehow, it did.

Albus, predictably, was not at all pacified. "Great," he said. "Just great. Scorpius, can you at least try to keep your hands off my cousin? For a few hours?"

Scorpius regarded his best friend for a few moments before turning back to Rose. Apparently, he'd decided to switch tactics and start treating the question as though it were simply below him. "So, are you looking forward to meeting my parents?"

Rose felt her face get hot. "Er - yes. Actually."

"Better hope no one mentions it to Jo," Noah told Scorpius, whose smile evaporated and was immediately replaced with a look of horror.

"I thought you liked your cousin Johanna," Albus said. "And I think she's nice."

"I do like her," Scorpius said. "But one of her 'little baby cousin's' first real girlfriend'? And her boss's daughter on top of it? She'll be a complete nightmare."

"She sounds interesting," Rose put in. "I wouldn't mind meeting her at all."

"You wouldn't," he muttered. "It's not you she'd be embarrassing."

That prospect sobered him enough that he stopped kissing Rose incessantly for at least an hour. Albus and Noah seemed to welcome the respite, though Rose was less enthusiastic about it. He seemed to feel better after Evelyn stopped in and he managed to extract a promise from her that she'd try to dissuade her sister from dropping by Scorpius's while Rose was visiting, but just as he was putting his arm around her again, the door slid open again and a dark-haired boy with very messy hair stopped in.

Scorpius's arm returned to his side quickly. Rose grinned - he still hadn't quite figured out just what to make of James.

From the other boy's grin, he knew exactly what was going through Scorpius's head, but instead of drawing attention to it, he leaned against the doorway and started chatting with them about Quidditch and Christmas shopping. Noah seemed even more taken aback than Scorpius when James commented that they should come join the Potter-Weasley cousins for pick-up games of Quidditch over the summer. Thankfully, he vanished soon after that, leaving both Slytherin boys to process what had just happened.

"He's mad," Scorpius muttered. "Albus, your brother is insane."

Albus shrugged. "He's being nice to you. Don't act so shocked, I've told you for years that he can be nice when he wants to."

"But he's being nice to us."

By that point, they were starting to near the station. Rose felt her stomach give a very uncomfortable lurch - she really was interested to meet Scorpius's parents, but there was a fair bit of anxiety caught up in the whole thing, especially since it had just occurred to her that he would be meeting her parents, too - and her father hadn't stopped sending prying letters yet.

Scorpius caught her hand as they got off the train. As he led her across the platform, her eyes immediately went to a tall, thin man with very pale blond hair. The resemblance was remarkable; that had to be Scorpius's father, who she'd never paid much attention to before. The brunette woman next to him had a soft, kind face which broke into a wide smile when she saw them.

Rose let Scorpius lead her toward them, half-wishing that she didn't like Scorpius quite so much. Then she could just sidestep this awkwardness.

Albus, who followed them, gave a quiet snort - he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.

"Hello, Mrs. Malfoy," she said politely, clenching her hands behind her so no one but her cousin could see them tremble. "Hello, Mr. Malfoy."

Scorpius's mother had a very open, genuine smile, which Rose found a little disarming. "Oh, please don't," she said. "'Mrs. Malfoy' is my husband's mother, and I'd really much rather not be . You can call me Astoria." When she saw Rose's hesitation, she added, "Or Ms. Greengrass, if you're more comfortable with that."

Rose nodded. "It's nice to meet you," she replied. Then she turned to Scorpius's father.

He was regarding her with some amusement. "Hello, Rose," he said cheerfully. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Most of it bad, I'm sure," she muttered before she could stop herself.

Scorpius, who had just finished exchanging hugs with his mother, coughed. His father threw an amused look at him before turning back to Rose. "Not recently," he said. "You went from being 'the most obnoxious person in the world' to 'the most brilliant girlfriend ever' virtually overnight."

She glanced at Scorpius, whose face was rapidly turning red. "I did not write that."

"Near enough," Mr. Malfoy said. He offered his hand to Rose, and she took it. His handshake was friendly, and there was nothing in his manner that suggested any consternation about his son's romantic choices.

She managed a small smile. "It's nice to meet you," she repeated. Her stomach had stopped trying to tie itself in knots.

"Likewise." He let go of her hand and turned to Albus, who knew Scorpius's parents fairly well.

"Rose!"

Her stomach immediately began to twist into knots again, and she shoved her hands into her pockets before turning around. "Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad."

They'd already found Hugo, whose eyes were gleaming at the prospect of the very awkward scene that awaited them. Her parents swept her up into hugs, though her father's was a little perfunctory. Once he'd let her go, he looked at Scorpius's father.

"Hello, Weasley," Scorpius's father said cheerfully. He offered his hand.

Rose's father examined it with distaste. "Malfoy," he said after a moment, taking it. It was unclear whether he was more uncomfortable with this or with the considerably more cordial greeting Mr. Malfoy exchanged with Rose's mother.

Once she'd greeted him, she turned to Scorpius. "Hello," she said cheerfully. "I'm Rose's mother, Hermione Weasley. We've met before, of course."

Scorpius smiled tentatively at her. "Hi," he said.

His mother looked like she was trying to hide a smile. "Hello, Ron," she said. "Is my niece still making trouble for you?"

Rose's father finally managed to relax a little. "If she'd just do her damn paperwork-"

Rose realized with a start that they were talking about Scorpius's cousin Johanna. Scorpius had clearly come to the same realization, because now he was looking alarmed in addition to still being a little red.

"Mum, you haven't mentioned Rose visiting to her, have you?"

His mother frowned at him. "No, I don't think so."

Scorpius breathed an enormous sigh of relief and turned to Rose's father. "Hi, Mr. Weasley. It's nice to meet you."

Rose's father looked a little bemused by his daughter's boyfriend's panic, but he shook Scorpius's hand anyway. "You don't like your cousin?" he asked.

"No! I love my cousin, she's just… well…"

Rose's father smiled for the first time since he'd approached them. "Johanna is, all right. I don't think I've mentioned it to her, either."

Scorpius let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you. Um - it's nice to meet you."

"You've said. Speaking of that visit-"

As their parents started to hammer out the finer details of their prospective visits - which included Rose's father expressing new reservations about the whole thing and insisting that if it had to happen at all, all bedroom doors should be charmed in at least half a dozen ways to prevent "inappropriate behavior," and Scorpius's father emphasizing how very happy he and Scorpius's mother were to host the girl Scorpius had clearly become so fond of for a few days - Scorpius sidled closer to Rose.

"I'm off," Albus said. "Mum and Dad must be looking for me."

"I think they're over there." Hugo pointed toward the front of the train. "They were, anyway. James and Roxanne were teaching Lily new jinxes 'for the holiday season.' Better be careful - she might try them out on you."

Albus set off at a run.

"That wasn't that bad," Scorpius said to her. "Right?"

Rose shook her head, though her father had started to glower at Scorpius's father, who had just corrected him when he called Scorpius "my daughter's friend."

"You know they're probably going to put him in my room," Hugo said in an undertone.

"I know."

"You know, you guys could probably bribe me to help you get around any charms they put on the door."

Rose grinned. "I knew I loved you, Hugo."

Her brother smiled back. It was good to have siblings.

"I don't like him," Rose's father declared when they'd finally gotten to the car.

Rose bristled, but before she could say anything, her mother let out a loud laugh. "You barely know him, Ron, and I think you did like him."

Rose's father didn't seem to have a response to that.

Her mother twisted around in the front seat to smile at her. "Well, Rosie, I think he seems very nice, and I'm excited to have him visit."

The knots in Rose's stomach were starting to loosen, and she was a little surprised to find that she was starting to be genuinely excited, too.

Thanks so much to LillyMay77, Elephant1234, DutchScorRosefan, and AthenaGirl4Ever for their reviews since I posted chapter 39! They're greatly appreciated. :) And with that, CINAS is done. I hope you like this ending - I think I'm more happy with it than the old one. As I think I've mentioned, The Wrinkles of the Road is a sequel to CINAS that starts a few years after this ends, so if you like this, check it out. :)

Also keep your eyes open for a couple Scorose one-shots/short stories - I'm in the middle of writing about their Christmas visits, and I also should be putting up a new one-shot about the summer before their fifth year that shows some of Scorpius's very obvious and ridiculous behavior in the next week or two.

Thanks so much for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Branwen