Falling Out

Day Three - Wednesday

The third day, Rose took refuge in the library as much as she could, but avoiding Scorpius wasn't her only goal. Everyone seemed to be talking about the Hallowe'en ball only two days away, and Rose couldn't bear it, knowing that she couldn't go.

She spent the afternoon bent over her parchment, writing out the flobberworm mucus essay. She completed the assigned length, surprised when she looked up to find that the sun had yet to set behind the mountains. Rose sighed, resting her chin on her hands and smiling a little as a scared-looking student flew by the window on one of Hagrid's hippogriffs. The hippogriffs weren't supposed to fly so far from the paddock, but it was the end of the day, when they usually got restless, and Hagrid often humoured them.

Albus slid smoothly into a nearby chair, and Rose allowed herself to smile at him, too. He grinned back at her.

"I came to see if you were still alive, or if you'd perished in the cobwebs back here," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "It's not that bad."

"No," he agreed, "but there's a reason most of the other students find tables that aren't quite so far back. The library's pretty empty, if you'd care to brave the possibility of seeing someone who knows someone who's seen Scorpius recently."

Rose scowled at him. "I'm quite happy here, thank you," she declared.

Albus shrugged. "Hm. Finished your flobberworm essay," he said, pointing to the stack of parchment and the ink-stains on Rose's hands. She nodded, grateful that Albus was not going to keep asking her about Scorpius. "Then you can help me," he said, a grin as rakish as a fourteen-year-old boy could manage crossing his face.

"With what?" she asked, smirking back at him.

"I've run out of synonyms for mucus," he said, "I've used 'gooey,' 'disgusting,' 'bogey-like,' and 'ectoplasmic,' and I'm only on page two."

She laughed, which had obviously been Albus' intention, judging by the grin on his face.

In the end, he did coax her out of her corner for dinner and even talked her into a game of wizard chess, on the condition that they played in the Gryffindor common room. Rose won against Albus that night, but barely, and by the time the game was finished, there was no time to read any more of her mother's diary before going to sleep.