Making a mockery of Weasleys was in Scorpius Malfoy’s vast repertoire of talents, and he practiced the art to perfection.
There was nothing spiteful or malicious about it. It was merely the preservation of a noble, unspoken tradition, and the fulfillment of his solemn duty as a Malfoy to make anyone with the last name of Weasley as miserable as possible.
When his dedication to said noble tradition began to waver, everything that made him a Malfoy came crashing down around his ears—namely, getting whatever he wanted and being adored by everyone who was anyone. He blamed it on Rose Weasley and everything that had happened since he’d stumbled across that stupid, stupid picture.
Scorpius found it face-up under a table in the library while working on a paper for his N.E.W.T. Transfiguration class.
It was a picture of the Weasel-girl laughing. He stared for a moment, mesmerized, as her head tipped back slightly, elongating her throat and making her thick hair tumble away from her face. Her wide, curving lips parted in an infectious grin as a laugh Scorpius could not hear escaped her.
He did not dislike it.
Obviously, someone must have slipped him a bit of Befuddlement Draught in his pumpkin juice that morning. It wasn’t even a good picture. The photographer was obviously an amateur—probably the Weasel-girl’s incompetent, Muggle-loving grandfather. The light was all wrong, so that half her face was in shadow, and it hadn’t even been properly cropped to exclude the bony elbow of the person who’d been standing next to her. Her freckles were extremely unflattering in black-and-white.
The picture was in bad shape, too. The edges were yellowed and one corner was torn. A maroon hue in the silhouette of ink splatters lingered as a testament to spilled scarlet inkpot and a bad vanishing charm.
He ran his thumb lightly over the stain. It was the colour of her hair, her lips, her laugh…
Definitely a Befuddlement Draught.
It didn’t stop him from seeing her laughing long after he had tucked the picture into the pages of his Transfiguration textbook, or thinking that he had not laughed like that in a long time. That he had not made anyone laugh like that in a long time.
He imagined making her laugh like that. He imagined her thick red hair falling away as her head tilted back slightly, her broad smile gracing flush-red lips, the soft, helpless vivacity of her laugh, and it was almost enough.
Gryffindor first-year, homesick, alone in the Charms corridor, carrying the entire supply of Droobles her parents had sent her that morning at breakfast.
Gods, the newest Weasley brat was begging to be bullied.
She stared at Scorpius with large, frightened eyes as he flashed his prefect badge and demanded to search her bag. It was only the Droobles he wanted, so he dumped the rest on the floor and confiscated the gum, citing some invented rule about first years not being allowed to have it outside their dormitories. Then, for no reason other than that the red-headed bunny was already so close to tears, he told her sternly that any more violations would merit severe punishment (such as being stripped naked, tied to a tree in the middle of the Forbidden Forest, and left there for a week at the mercy of centaurs, half-giants, and werewolves).
She didn’t actually break down and start sobbing until he had rounded the corner at the end of the corridor. He ought to have been gloating, his frustration sated, but instead, he felt strangely…what was the word?—guilty.
Maybe he was ill.
Scorpius hesitated. He could hear her still crying in the other hallway—perhaps if he went back, if he told her the centaurs didn’t actually eat the students most of the time, she would feel better.
He took a few tentative steps back the way he’d come, mentally steeling himself not to say something…not nice, but by the time he gritted his teeth and walked back into the corridor, the red-headed bunny was not alone.
The thing that struck Scorpius immediately was how the Weasel-girl held her weeping cousin. Her head was bowed, her lips mouthing low reassurances into the other’s hair. Long, lithe arms encircled the little girl’s shoulders and pressed firmly into her back. One jumper sleeve rode slightly up her forearm, revealing pale, thin wrists, with the wrist-bone protruding beautifully from one side like a physical manifestation of her strength. A few odd freckles adorned the back of her hand and the exposed skin on her wrist.
Indisputably, the jumper was hideous. It was one of the awkward, colour-coded Christmas things the mother hen Weasley had been knitting for her clan since the invention of poverty. Judging by the hole in the elbow, it was quite old. Scorpius suspected it might’ve been her father’s, as she herself had been receiving cerulean jumpers for Christmas since first year (this one was a rather dreadful shade of maroon.)
He extended his fingertips before his eyes, sustaining the illusion that he was touching the place on her forearm where skin met wool. The jumper was the colour of her hair, her lips, her sympathy…
He was so going to the infirmary after this.
But even as Scorpius quietly backed away, the image of her embrace was burning itself into his mind. He had never been held like that. He had never held anyone like that.
He imagined holding her like that. He imagined how her body would feel curled up against his, her arms tight across his back, her thick red curls brushing his face as she pressed her lips into his hair, and it was almost enough.
House rivalries came to a breaking point outside Potions in the week leading up to the first Quidditch match.
Potter had provoked it, of course, by insinuating that Slytherin’s most lauded war hero, Severus Snape, would have made a better Gryffindor. Scorpius felt obliged to point out (politely) that Severus had loathed Gryffindor fiercely, as well as the Potter boy’s famous show-off of a father.
Then the Weasel-girl had the nerve to get between them and tell Malfoy not to be such a bastard all the time, just because Uncle Harry had saved his father’s life—
Scorpius flushed, momentarily distracted by the auburn curl tumbling over her shoulder and the firm way her mouth was set, before remembering that he was supposed to smirk and tell her that, being the spawn of a Mudblood and a blood traitor, no one cared what she thought.
He didn’t manage it as cruelly as he might have, but it was sufficient to rile her. A flash of red, the press of flesh on flesh, bone on bone—
She broke his nose.
Feeble old Professor Slughorn took points and gave her a detention, and one of the other Slytherins was told to take Scorpius to the hospital wing. As he sauntered away, his sneer was almost a smile, and the blood pouring from his nose was the colour of her hair, her lips, her fury...
She had lost control because of him, and it was almost enough.
Scorpius didn’t know why he still bothered going home for Christmas.
His parents were not on speaking terms. The day after Scorpius came back, they had a quiet disagreement in the drawing room, and they’d been living in separate ends of the house ever since. Scorpius kept to his room when they weren’t attending fancy dinners or extravagant parties, and endured the silence in a stoic and dignified manner,
Two days before Christmas he took his homework into one of the rarely used guest bedrooms and dug around in the closet until he came up with his father’s old school papers. Most of the N.E.W.T. level material was the same. It was only to make sure he was on the right track, and to check his answers, but Scorpius had no qualms about borrowing entire passages when necessary.
He found the picture folded neatly into his father’s old copy of Quintessence: A Quest.
It took a moment to realize that the girl in the picture was not who he first thought it was. There weren’t nearly enough freckles, and the nose turned up slightly at the end. Yet her eyes shone with the same l’amour de la vie, crinkling a little at the edges and catching light from some source outside the photograph. Her mouth was the same, lips curving into that sincere, amused smile bordering on a laugh. Thick, brown hair tumbled over her shoulders as her head tipped back—a bit cocked to the left, but with all the same spirit...
Scorpius suppressed a grin. It was yellowing, but the edges were crisp. It had obviously been carefully cut from one of the infamous wanted bulletins from the second war. Scorpius noticed dryly a deliberate nick about an inch from the bottom, as though his father had considered cutting off the part with the words, ‘Undesirable No. 2,’ but decided against it at the last minute. The words were bright scarlet and dangerous and forbidden and wonderful.
He stared at the photograph of the smiling Mudblood for a long time. When he finally closed the old textbook, he tucked the clipping gently back inside, taking care not to bend the corners.
After all, his father wasn’t the only one who’d kept a picture.
There was more to it, but Scorpius didn’t realize it at once. When Scorpius happened to pass his father in the hallway that evening, it occurred to him that he wasn’t the only Malfoy who was a coward, and for a moment, it was enough.
Winston Macmillan was the Hufflepuffiest Hufflepuff in the history of Hufflepuffs.
He was a bit short, a bit overweight, and less than a bit pleasant to look at. His brown hair was cut in a bland, plebeian sort of shag that was constantly falling into his eyes. He waved his hands about when he talked (which he did incessantly) and to top it all, he was the president of the Gobstones Club. Scorpius didn’t know what the Weasel-girl saw in him.
Not that he cared.
He leaned back against the willow tree, his Herbology notes neglected, and watched the Weasel-girl and her pet Hufflepuff wade out into the lake, jeans rolled up to their knees. They were holding hands and laughing. The Potter boys waded in after them, splashing the Weasel-girl, and when she splashed back, a war of water-throwing was declared. It was stupid, really. They’d gone to all that trouble to roll up their jeans and they were going to get soaked anyway.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The youngest Potter girl ventured out as well, and was promptly double-teamed by her brothers. Macmillan took the lull in the fighting as an excuse to lean in and press his lips softly to the Weasel-girl’s. When they finally broke apart, the Weasel-girl was blushing.
A stain on a picture, an ugly jumper, a bloody nose, a blush, her hair, her lips, her love…
There was no shade of red quite like Rose Weasley.
Scorpius imagined kissing her like that. He imagined her fingers intertwined with his, her lips flushed as she laughed that beautiful laugh after it all when they were cold and wet and deliriously happy, and it was never enough, but it was all he had.
La Vie en Rose by Pendraegona
Story Notes:
If I were J.K. Rowling, this wouldn't be fanfiction.
Red is sort of the 'love' cliche, and it was an uphill battle to try and present it in a new, fresh way. Maybe I succeeded, maybe I didn't...but it was worth a shot. Um, the pairings are one-sided Scorpius/Rose, Rose/OC, and implied one-sided Draco/Hermione.
Thanks to OliveOil_Med and harry4lif for betaing this story! Oh, because it's been a point of curiosity, "the newest Weasley brat" refers to either Roxane Weasley (George's daughter) or Molly or Lucy Weasley (Percy's daughters). They were on JKR's Weasley family tree. It doesn't really matter, I suppose.