SLITHER IN! → S. MALFOY

ACT I, SCENE III: TELL ME

C H A P T E R   T H R E E
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                  THE COZY EVENING OF October soothed Rose's nerves like a mint-scented balm as she wrapped the woolen blanket tighter around her legs, listening as it blended in with the muffled shuffling of the pages in the Hogwarts Library.

      Her mother once told her that to her, the potion Amortentia smelled like freshly mown grass, new parchment, spearmint and - before saying the third one, she always used to blush - green apples.

               Rose had no idea why green apples were so embarrassing for her mother to admit, but she never questioned it.

To Rose, the potion would probably smell like books. Or a library. Or tightly woven blankets with large threads which warmed up magically as the evening slipped on a nightgown.

              Rose's eyes scanned the book, her tired eyelids failing to open with each passed blink. Her gaze fell onto her watch - a replica of the watch Harry Potter wore every day. For some reason, her father insisted on the copies being made and handed out to all of his children no matter the age and disregarding the Weasley traditions.

Not like Rose minded. She quite liked the watch.

   The latter showed past eleven p.m, — way past the witch's curfew.

      Sighing deeply, Rose let the blanket slip off of her lap and was prepared to stand up from one of the many rocking-chairs the library possessed, when her ears picked up an approaching voice.

( try really, really, really hard to guess who it could be. come on. )

     The voice she's never believe to encounter in a library.

( really hard. )

        "Granger! We meet again—"
none other than Scorpius Malfoy stepped out from the shadows of one of the aisles. "—you, past curfew — in a library, nonetheless. Now, the library part isn't that much of a surprise, but the curfew, wow—"

"What do you want, Malfoy?"

          One week. One full week the presence of a certain Slytherin didn't overhaul the atmosphere of Rose Granger's school days, one week was given to her as if by Merlin's will, one whole week, and then he was back, like a much-needed full-stop at the end of a question for it to be turned into an accusation.

       The witch's chin struck out, and she felt the book in her lap slip off and fall onto the floor as she got up. Rose, with her slight superiority complex, avoided situations in which there was significant height difference between herself and the confrontator - not that she had many encounters akin to the present.

      Her eyes assessed him. With something like pleasure, Rose noticed that his usually pale skin has gotten even ashier - and the gleaming emeralds coiled around his pupils faded to a musky green. The thought of him suffering was somehow pleasant to her mind, in a sadistic, unknown, unfamiliar way which Rose attempted to suppress every so often.

       She was too engrossed into the task at hand to notice concurrently the swift movement of Malfoy's gaze over her own fragile frame.

      "I just want to talk, geez." He tasted the last word on his tongue like something foreign and grinned. "—geez. Such a Muggle thing to say of me." Realising what he'd proclaimed, Malfoy spat quickly, "—disgusting."