AN: Just a little scene that popped into my head, I wasn't sure where I was going with this. But I always liked the idea of Rose and Scorpius together, just not sure what I would do with it.

Rose Weasley tried to studiously ignore the lanky, blonde haired boy sitting near her by the lake on the Hogwarts grounds. She was trying to read her Ancient Runes text, with mixed results, her concentration occasionally broken by the loud yawn at her left elbow.

"You could be studying too, you know," she growled, her teeth clenched as she tried even harder to concentrate on the strange markings in front of her, trying despite her own rapid pulse to commit these things to memory. But her mind was finding it hard to concentrate, and as if sensing it, the boy beside her laughed.

"Do you want me to help you with that? I memorized them all last week."

"No, thank you very much," she said primly, trying hard not to stick her nose into the air. He usually liked it when she did that, and found it very amusing. Rose Elizabeth Weasley was not a girl to be laughed at. She was the cleverest witch in her year, and the daughter of two of the most famous heroes of the last wizarding war. Her dignity would not allow this pompous, weedy, arrogant jacka…

"Ow," she shrieked, as she felt a tug at the back of her head, causing her book to drop to her lap as her hands flew to her curly, reddish brown hair. She turned to glare at her tormentor in exasperation.

"Scorpius Malfoy, I swear if you don't leave me alone I will…"

The skinny, blonde, impossibly handsome boy only grinned wickedly and pointed at the prefects badge on his chest. "You'll what, Weasley?" His gray eyes challenged her playful to do something.

She sniffed, and pointed at a similar badge on her robes. "Think that impresses me, Malfoy. Besides, I'm trying to study here."

"Why, everyone knows you have the best marks in the class," Scorpius Malfoy rolled his eyes as if Rose's marks were a foregone conclusion. "I think you need to be studying less, and paying more attention to me, for example."

"Why you," Rose retorted as she turned her face back to her book, but felt her cheeks redden all the same. At fifteen, she had only ever had one boyfriend, and that was more a relationship of convenience than of real attraction. She had dated Ian Finnegan because he was in her year and in her house, Gryffindor, and he was the only unattached boy at a time when all her other girl friends had 'found somebody'. But it had been more friendship than mutual attraction, and had ended quickly with no tears shed by either party.

"Because I fancy you, I thought we had this discussion already," Scorpius persisted as if this was a long-standing argument, and indeed it was. Ever since a particularly nasty argument between the two fellow prefects while on patrol one night had ended in Scorpius leaning over to kiss her, to REALLY kiss her, full on the mouth, Rose Weasley hadn't quite gotten the thought of it out of her mind. His soft lips on hers, his gray eyes watching her so carefully, begging her not to turn him away."

"Look, Malfoy, just because we serve together as Prefects doesn't make us a 'thing'." Rose sounded matter-of-fact. "In fact it should make us less of one, because we shouldn't be taking off to snog around the school when we should be patrolling."

"Now that is something we haven't tried." Scorpius laughed, but Rose only glared at him.

"Do you really think you can convince me of this?"

"Tell me a good reason why it wouldn't work," he challenged.

Already rehearsed for this in her own mind, Rose answered immediately. "We are related you know, I did the research with Mum once for one of her projects. You are a Black on you paternal grandmother's side, and I'm a Black on my paternal grandfather's."

"So," clearly Scorpius didn't see the point.

"So, we are both members of the House of Black, which means that we are related, which means we can never date one another."

"We are related to a lot of people," Scorpius snorted. "As I recall, your aunt and uncle are most likely related through the Blacks as well, and they seem to have a fine marriage. I don't know about their children," Scorpius did not get along well at all with her cousin James Potter, a year older and captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Her other cousin, Al Potter, was slightly more accepting of Scorpius, but had warned Rose away from " anything too close with him, he's still a Malfoy, and still untrustworthy."

"Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny's children are fine, and the two of them are different."

"How are they different?"

"It's a more distant connection. I'd say Uncle Harry is more closely related to you than to Aunt Ginny."

"Still, it all comes back to that same old gene pool doesn't it. Boy the Blacks were a prolific bunch. It should inspire you, Rosey, not drive you off."

"Don't call me Rosey," she shot back in irritation, before trying to return to her book.

"Besides, I'm not inspired to anything with you!"

"Right," Scorpius chuckled, and Rose felt her temper rise.

"Give me another reason then, Weasley." Scorpius insisted, despite her pointed turning of her back on him.

"You are a Slytherin, and I'm a Gryffindor."

"Again, the point is lost on me."

"Our houses don't get along."

"We do, though."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Imagine the chaos that would ensue if it got out I was dating you."

"Why, Emily Hancock and Tilden Flint are dating, and they are in Gryffindor and Slytherin?"

"They are different?"

"You mean they aren't a Weasley and a Malfoy," Scorpius replied unruffled.

Rose didn't respond, but Scorpius seemed to continue without her. "Because your father, mother, aunts and uncles didn't get along with my father, because he was a Malfoy and a Deatheater, therefore I follow in his footsteps as an arrogant berk, and am not suitable for the likes of the scion of such a heroic family?"

"It's more complicated than that," Rose sighed, as if she were explaining this to a small child. "Could you imagine the outcry from my family, my ENTIRE family if I up and dated a Malfoy?"

"No, actually, I couldn't, " now Scorpius was all seriousness, the laughter was all out of his gray eyes, and for some reason this troubled Rose.

"My grandfather hated your grandfather, my father hated your father, and I'm sure if I go far enough back, there are Weasleys hating Malfoys and vice-versa for generations."

"That just means there is tradition, nothing impossible to overcome," Scorpius began, but Rose turned on him, her curly hair whipping around so fast it nearly smacked him in the face.

"It's more than that. Do you know what your father did to my uncle, to my aunt? How about your Aunt Bellatrix? She nearly killed my own mother!"

So vehement was Rose's attack, that Scorpius was shocked into stunned silence, his pale face whitened considerably.

"I've seen the grave in my Aunt Fleur's garden, the one for that poor house-elf your family mistreated. They killed him for helping Uncle Harry. You're family has been nothing but a source of hurt and pain for my family for years. What if I were to announce one day that I'm off and running off with one of them? How in the world would they feel?"

Scorpius said nothing, and looked as if he was unable to. Something vital had gone out of him with her words, and Rose wished for a moment she hadn't said them, hadn't lost her temper and yelled at this boy. All he wanted was her attention after all, was that too much to ask?

"I suppose you are right, Weasley," he said after a long moment, his tone business-like and brusque. "I suppose there is too much water under that bridge for the likes of us to ever make a go at it. I suppose old blood-feuds like that never die, really, they just keep floating on and on."

He stood up quickly just then, brushing off grass and dust from his robes, as Rose watched him with a confused frown.

"Where are you going, then?" Rose asked in alarm, as he gathered up errant schoolbooks, and began making for the castle.

"Back to my room, with my fellow Slytherins, the untrustworthy lot of us who kill Muggles and torture all those who support them." Scorpius responded as if this was indeed what he planned on doing.

"Scorpius, I never said that," Rose began, but he turned to shake his head at her.

"No, Rose, you didn't, but that's what you think. And the problem is, that everyone else thinks that too." Scorpius didn't look angry, but she could see the hurt etched around his eyes and mouth, and suddenly felt very bad for what she had done. "I thought that you of all people might just understand."

"It's…it's not that simple," she responded lamely.

"Apparently not," he acknowledged, and then nodding his head politely, he turned on his heels to return to the castle, not bothering to look back at her, as she sat by the lake, a rune book in hand. Suddenly Rose felt like the worst, most wretched person on the planet. Watching Scorpius walk away, she tried to tell herself that she shouldn't…but somehow, she couldn't help it.