Sparks of Fyre (a Scorose FanFiction)

Chapter Twenty-One (Rose)

(Quick re-cap for anyone who has forgotten what happened since i last updated 300 years ago: Scorpius told Rose she's beautiful and that's literally all that matters—enjoy!!!)

          Rose had been called many things in her life—bright, talented, hot-tempered, to name a few. Following a particularly impressive essay, a professor in her first year had proclaimed her 'her mother's daughter'. Her father's, another had sneered in her second, after yet another Malfoy-retaliation-gone-wrong.

          It might have been that behaviour that warranted such a lack of interest from the students of Hogwarts. Or perhaps it was her studious nature, her abhorrence of alcohol, her standoff-ish persona, as Malfoy had so heartlessly implied.

          Despite the lack of romantic attention she received, Rose knew she wasn't unattractive, either. Her mother had told her many times how pretty she was. She felt it too, sometimes, when her hair was brushed and her cheeks wind-beaten red; when the sun coaxed her many freckles into a cloud across her nose and leaves fell from trees in the vibrant colour of her hair.

          Most of the time though Rose viewed herself in the same way as the rest of the world did—plain. Average. Less than, even, on particularly bad days when she slept in too late to wash her hair or take her brush to battle with its knots. Especially, though, when she stood in the same room as the formidable beauty that was Vritra Bulstrode.

          Beauty, no... she had never felt beautiful like the Slytherin legacy.

          Ron often referred to her as 'his gorgeous girl' when she was a child—something his siblings, namely Aunt Ginny, found great delight in teasing relentlessly (that "she definitely can't be your child then, Ronald").

          Grandma Weasley, akin to her son, would squeeze her cheeks and gush over how grown-up she looked every time she saw her. Roxanne and Lily were particularly overjoyed when she "made an effort" and wore something other than jeans and a jumper—which happened once in a blue moon.

          Never had she believed them. She hadn't ever really felt beautiful.

          Not until then.

          Not until Malfoy looked at her with eyes like ice frosting over a lush forest, with a seriousness she'd never witnessed from him before, and told her she was.

          It wasn't that she needed to hear it from him—or anyone, for that matter—to make her finally believe there was a captivating power in her own looks.... It was more so the sting of sincerity in his words, the softness of his voice as though he were not just claiming it as a formality but swearing it as an oath.

          Malfoy was a trickster by nature, something Rose had been victim to many times, but at the same time, she was beginning to appreciate the humour within his tricks and plays. While she still couldn't fully comprehend the torment he befell on her the past six years, she knew that didn't mean he couldn't be honest with her. It certainly didn't mean he would lie to her—he hadn't so far, and she couldn't imagine why he would begin now, with their friendship on such flourishing grounds.

          That, however, didn't diminish the surface part of her that, by reflex, took his words with a pinch of salt.

          She gaped at him. "You—you can't just say things like that, Scorpius."

          He raised an eyebrow, not in the slightest perturbed by his admission. "And why not, Rosie?"

          "Because." She swallowed her beating heart. "Because you just can't. It's unfair."