The Music Still Plays On

Chapter 10: Things don't get better

After that tragic day, I wondered how I was ever going to even look at Scorpius again. Eventually, though, I pulled myself together. I wasn't going to let a boy ruin my time at Hogwarts, was I? Still, it was hard to see him every day in the halls, laughing with Tamika, Blaine, and Blair, knowing that he was having just as much fun with them as he once did with me.

As one would expect, James was furious with me after he found me with Scorpius, and immediately demanded an explanation. I wasn't about to tell him that Scorpius and I had been meeting once a week, but I didn't go so far as to insult Scorpius as he did with me. I just told James that Scorpius and I being together was purely coincidental. He didn't seem to buy that one, however.

"Come on, Rosie! What are the odds of both of you being together in an empty classroom like that? You must have had a reason for being there!" he questioned.

"I told you! I hadn't talked to him before that day, I swear!" I lied, almost in tears.

"All right, if you insist. But I'm still writing to your Mum and Dad about this," he said.

"No! You can't!" I cried.

"Why? It shouldn't be a problem if that was the only time you'd talk to him, right?" I groaned. Sometimes James could be so devious.

"Fine then. You can write a letter to them. See if I care!" I shouted, storming off to the Gryffindor girls' dormitory. Needless to say, James did write that letter, and the reply that I got from my parents wasn't that friendly. In fact, several days later, at breakfast, a scarlet smoking envelope was dropped onto the table right in front of me. Having seen Victoire get one last year from Uncle Bill after her grades started took a turn for the worse, I knew that this was a Howler. To make matters worse, McGonagall was walking right past the Gryffindor table when the Howler landed.

"Rose Weasley, getting a Howler? Now there's something I thought I'd never see," she remarked as my face turned bright red. "Open it quickly, dear, the alternative is much worse. Try not to make a habit out of it." Trembling, I opened the corner of the envelope, prepared for the worse. Almost immediately, I heard my father's voice shouting throughout the Great Hall as nearly every student stared.

"Rose Mirabelle Weasley! What's this I hear about you and Scorpius Malfoy? Didn't I tell you to stay away from him? You deliberately disobeyed me, Rose, and if it happens again, you need to expect serious consequences! Your Mum and I are both very proud of all the work you're doing in school, but if we hear about any more funny business, you'll be in more trouble than just a Howler! Understand?" After his tirade was over, I slunk down low into my seat, embarrassed. Well, I guess my goal of not letting the whole school find out about the incident was officially not going to happen. For weeks afterward, I was pestered with rude questions, especially from the Slytherin girls, who were absolutely vile.

"So, are you and Scorpius going out?" Julianne Flint would ask as I walked to Charms class. I usually just kept my head down and ignored them, but sometimes it was too hard, especially when Nellie was with me.

"Hey, Rosie, what's that on your head?" Hollie Harper, a tall, graceful Slytherin girl in James's year, taunted as Nellie and I made our way to the Great Hall for breakfast. "No wonder Scorpius ran away from you!" Nellie grew particularly incensed at this remark, even though I had told her repeatedly that the teasing didn't bother me.

"Don't talk to my friend that way!" Nellie shouted back at Hollie, brandishing her wand.

"Oh, the little mudblood is defending her friend! How sweet," Hollie mocked. "Let's see how you handle this!" Hollie then shouted a curse that caused Nellie to grow an alarming amount of facial hair, which I thought was a bit juvenile, but still cruel nonetheless. Unfortunately, though, I didn't know the countercurse, so I just had to stand there while Nellie's new beard covered her face. More students were crowding around us now, laughing hysterically. Luckily, Professor Quirke, the Transfiguration teacher, happened to walk by a couple minutes later and save Nellie even more embarrassment after she uttered the countercurse. To make things even better, she took 10 points from Slytherin after finding out what Hollie did, which, while pleasing me, incensed Hollie even more. Nellie and I ran as fast as we could to the Gryffindor common room before Hollie could do any more damage. Once we got there, Nellie was a mess.

"Oh my God, Rosie, that was probably the most embarrassing moment of my whole entire life! The whole school probably saw!" Obviously, Nellie was exaggerating, but she was definitely upset.

"Oh, it wasn't the whole school, Nellie," I reassured. "Most people probably were in their classes."

"Well, everyone that mattered saw!" she lamented. "All those Slytherin girls, Isabella, Stuart Creevey..." I was confused as to why she mentioned this last name- Stuart was a third year that liked to hang out with James and his friends. I didn't think that Nellie knew him that well at all. Unless...

"Stuart Creevey? You don't fancy him, do you?" I asked. Nellie blushed.

"Well, I don't know if you would say that I fancy him, but I just love how funny he is! And I like his hair, too- he pulls off that messy look really well. Plus, at breakfast yesterday, he asked me to pass the rolls!" she exclaimed with an excited look on her face.

"What does that have to with anything?" I asked.

"Well, he didn't ask just anyone to pass the rolls. He could've asked Evangelina, or Anastasia- they're way prettier than me, anyway- but he asked me!" Nellie seemed to think that this was important, but I still wasn't seeing it.

"Nellie, you're making too much out of this. Stuart probably didn't notice. I have a much bigger problem on my hands, what with everyone thinking that Scorpius and I were doing all sorts of things a couple weeks ago," I said, exasperated. "I wish everyone would just leave me alone!" I walked out of the common room, wishing that everything would be back to the way it once was.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Soon, the last day of my second year at Hogwarts was here. The backlash from the incident with Scorpius had almost died down, though I was still finding globs of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum stuck in my hair- which was starting to grow back to its normal style- by the Slytherins.

As I packed up my stuff on the last day, everyone around me was reminiscing about the year gone by. I had to admit, a lot had happened over the past year. Hugo and Lily had started their education. I played in my first Quidditch match. I got the worst haircut of my life. And I grew even closer to Scorpius- but now I was thinking that all of that was in vain. If all the time I spent with him only led to awkwardness, was it even worth pursuing his friendship anymore?

I thought about that for a second. Both of us had gone through a lot in our time at Hogwarts, but, overall, I wouldn't be able to imagine forgoing our weekly meetings. Sometimes it was nice to get to know someone who wasn't a Gryffindor, for once. While I pondered this, I listened to Isabella and Marie Kirke converse. They had gotten into a fight several weeks before over some trivial matter and hadn't spoken to each other since then. Needless to say, it had been a pretty tense environment in our dormitory after that. But now, it sounded like they were reconciling.

"So you're not mad at me?" Marie said.

"Of course not! Why would I be? Just because you spilled orange juice on me at breakfast a couple weeks ago? I'm all over that," Isabella answered.

"But you said that it got all over your new robes and that you never wanted to see me again!" Marie countered.

"Yeah, but that was before I learned how to perform the stain-remover spell. I didn't care at all after that."

"So then why didn't you talk to me?" Marie asked.

"Oh, that...I don't remember why, actually. I thought you were the one who was deciding not to talk to me!" Both of them giggled and hugged. After seeing how well Isabella and Marie resolved their dispute, I decided that I should try to patch things up with Scorpius as well. What's the worst that could happen? I mean, he could decide that he doesn't want anything to do with me, but at least we will have talked it out first. Besides, I would rather know how Scorpius felt about things than wonder all summer about it. I was determined to talk to him before I left. I had tried talking to him at the End-Of-Term feast yesterday, but he was surrounded by his friends the whole time and I thought it would be awkward to walk down the Great Hall to the Slytherin table just to talk to him.

After my bags were packed, I rushed down to try to find Scorpius in the sea of students that were leaving at the same time. Initially, Hugo and Lily stuck to me like glue, but eventually I had to tell them to go away. I had to talk to Scorpius alone.

Finally, I was able to find Scorpius. As always, he was surrounded by the rest of the Slytherin students of our year, with Blaine and Blair acting as his wannabe bodyguards. At first, I was nervous, and wondered why I was even doing this. I should just do what would make my parents happy: spend my time with Liam Finnegan or some other boy that's not a Malfoy and forget everything that Scorpius and I did. But I knew that if I didn't talk to Scorpius now and sort through things that I'd be thinking about him all summer, which was definitely not something that I wanted to do. Slowly but surely, I brought my courage up enough to talk to him.

"Scorpius," I said, nervously. "We need to talk." I had intended for those words to be spoken in a more commanding and assertive way, but when I actually said them, I sounded more like a mouse.

"What do you want?" he replied smugly. I could tell from the tone of his voice that this wasn't going to go well.

"I...I just wanted to talk to you...about some...things," I said, still tense. "Preferably alone, but if you want to do it here, that's fine too. Whatever you want." That last part spilled out of my mouth at a lightning-quick rate, almost like I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, which I guess I did. Blaine and Blair looked like they were about to eat me alive as they waited for Scorpius's response.

"You go ahead, guys," Scorpius said, gesturing to Blaine, Blair, and Tamika. "This'll be quick." As Scorpius slowly made his was towards me, I forgot all of what I had planned out to say in my mind. Whatever confidence I used to have around him had totally melted away.

"Listen, Scorpius, I know what happened a couple months ago was hard, but I was just wondering if it was possible for us to get past that. I mean, it'll be different, sure, but I really enjoyed what we had and I don't want to..." Scorpius interrupted me.

"ROSIE! Grow up!" he yelled. I was dumbfounded. I thought he would have reacted a bit better than this. Regaining my composure, I tried again.

"But I just thought that maybe we could..."

"For God's sake! Why can't you understand that it's over, Rosie! In fact, I wouldn't even say that we had anything in the first place. And in case you were wondering, I meant every word I said that day! You can't possibly be naïve enough to think that we can just go back to the way we were! It's complicated! No, I don't want to get past what happened. It needed to happen. We needed someone to tell us that what we were doing wasn't right!" At this point, all of the calm that I exuded before was gone. I was now on the verge of tears. I was determined not to fall down crying in front of Scorpius like a baby, but if he kept on going at the rate he was, it seemed like I didn't have many other options. It seemed like the whole school was watching us argue, something that neither of us had planned on.

"Scorpius, listen to me!" I pleaded.

"No! You need to listen to me for once! Listen right now: I don't want to see you ever again, Rose Weasley!" Scorpius stormed off to join his friends, who applauded his performance. I, on the other hand, was a wreck. I tried to find someone I knew in the crowd of students who were now heading towards the Hogwarts Express, but I was lost in the group of students, all of whom seemed to be laughing at me.

Finally, I spotted Liam Finnegan. While I had been hoping to see one of my relatives or Nellie, Liam would do for now. As we stepped onto the train and into a compartment, Liam attempted to start a conversation.

"Rosie? What's wrong?" he asked. I breathed a sigh of relief. He must have not seen the episode with Scorpius a couple minutes ago, for some reason.

"Oh...nothing," I lied. Even though Liam looked as nervous as I did when I was with Scorpius, he was still a comforting presence. As we sat down in a compartment on the train, he turned and looked at me.

"Rosie? I'm going to miss you over the summer," he said. I smiled. To tell you the truth, I was probably going to miss him, too, and all of the other friends I had made. I would be with Nellie over the summer, though- it seemed that her parents were still not letting her come back to her house, so she took us up on our offer to stay with our family over the summer. I was excited that she would be staying with us- it would be like having a sister, I hoped.

As I watched the English countryside pass by out the window of the train, I thought about what Scorpius had said to me. Maybe he was right. Maybe it would be better if we didn't see each other again. It certainly would be easier. But somehow that didn't seem right to me. Somehow, I knew that there was a way that we could be friends without having to hide it. But it would take time. I shouldn't have expected Scorpius to be willing to resolve our conflict so easily. Sometimes things don't get better as quickly as you thought.

END OF PART 2