Multi-Fandom One-Shots Part 2

Love Isn't Silly (isn't silly at all) - Scorose (Harry Potter)

"Ready?" Rose asks, as her boyfriend appears on the staircase, camera and what looks like a well over-practiced speech in his hand. She's heard it in all its different stages, with all its different syntaxes; read like an overtly metaphorical play, at first, and then in a breathy, almost incoherent stutter as Rose had kissed playfully along his jawline, whispering: come on Scorpius, it's only March.

She's been up for almost twenty-four hours straight, working on her own speech as Ravenclaw house prefect, and she doubts anything she's written could sound as good as his speech when he's reading it in a broken splutter, writhing under her fingertips like that. There'd been a joke in their somewhere, something about House pride and shouldn't she know better than to interrupt a scholar at his work, and then he'd moaned into her mouth, and there'd been something about another Hogwarts memory neither of them could repeat in their speeches.

Honestly, it's no wonder she was up until three am with associations like that.

Scorpius just gawks at her now, though, and okay, maybe she could have done with a better night's sleep. "I am not turning up to my own graduation with a girlfriend that looks like that." A protest forms in her throat, and: "You're going to take all the attention away from my speech, because you're gorgeous, even when you look like shit." He laughs at her obvious indignation. "Face it, Rose, you're flattered," he says. "You're flattered that I love you, no matter what."

She's not even going to try to deny it. "You're the most ridiculous person I've met, but love is love, I guess."

"At least try and straighten yourself up, a bit. If people are staring at you during my speech, I'd rather it be because you're amazing than because they're -"

"Wondering if there's a reason you always manipulated the rosters so our patrol duties coincided?" Rose laughs, because - way to be the best boyfriend ever, but also way to be transparent to the point of ridiculous.

He leans over slightly, shaking fingers brushing lightly against her chest as he readjusts the knot of her tie, laying it flush against the buttons of her shirt. They move to the hem of her shirt, curling just slightly inwards at the jut of her hipbones as he tugs the fabric taut, smoothing out the wrinkles. His fingers are gentle, un-insistent, but definitely there, and it's the casual intimacy of the gesture -- so different from their usual covert snogging sessions -- that makes her toes curl, her breath hitching in her throat.

"Was that -?" Rose glances down at his hands, which he's stuffed hastily in the pockets of his robes. She can see his fingers flexing, even through the thin fabric of his trousers, and she can't quite tell if he's angry with himself, or if he just really, really wants to touch. "Deliberate?"

Scorpius smirks at her. "Don't be silly, Rose," he says, with a quirk of his lips that makes her want to drag him into the nearest broom closet and whisper in his ear that, honestly, she wouldn't mind if he was.

Being deliberate, that is -- not silly.

Because, if she's being completely truthful, she wants it; there's a heavy heat, coiling low in her stomach as she thinks about being pressed against the castle walls, hands grabbing at the front of Scorpius' robes and just pulling, everything she loves best about Hogwarts yanked, one final time, into her grasp. The thought of his lips hot against hers, wiping any semblance of speech from her mouth but also allowing her to say everything, all at the same time is nothing new, but on this day, in this moment, it also is. All too soon, they're not going to have this, not just the opportunities for snogging in secret passages and Transfiguring broken quills into kissograms for each other, but this -- this easy sense of closeness.

It makes her fantasy all the more desperate.

"Do you --" she asks. "Are you -?" Because scared doesn't quite have the semantics she's looking for and I don't think I can do it without you is too needy, even for her. They're not really star-crossed lovers (her mother actually gets along quite well with Scorpius', thank you very much) and broom closets are actually kind of cramped and graduation day or not, Rose refuses to be a walking, talking teenage cliché. (She's a Ravenclaw, okay, and a Weasley. They write their own versions of life, the universe, and history.)

"Terrified?" he asks, planting a quick kiss on her cheek before taking her hand and beckoning her down the stairs. "Absolutely."

All things considered, she's not sure she can love this boy any more (and that's saying a lot, coming from a girl whose boyfriend once had the guts to kiss her, full on the mouth, right in front of her parents), until he stops at the bottom of the staircase, lowering himself onto a bench. Rose sits beside him, instinctively wrapping an arm around his shoulder, revelling in the way his whole body seems to roll up into her touch. She loves that she can do this, yes, but more specifically -- she loves that she can do this with him.

Because, really -- she's more than willing to accept that she became a teenage cliché the first time she blushed in Scorpius Malfoy's presence now that she knows it was all leading to this.

"But being scared, Rose -" he says, and she glances up at him, waiting, just waiting -- because he always knows what to say. Always has, ever since he waltzed into her life at eleven years old with the declaration that his father's disdainful look towards her was a mandate for them to be friends, always will, because: "That's what makes it worth it."

(Scorpius kisses her then, tenderly at first and then more passionate, his tongue arching into her mouth as his fingers trace circles down the column of her throat. When they pull apart, Rose's tie is askew, again, but he leaves it and they both know that's deliberate. "You really are silly," she laughs against his cheek, because love is about facing fears, sure, but she's never been afraid to tell him that).