It was not precisely that they would be lying to anyone if they did not tell their parents about this, Rose Weasley mused as she watched her study partner with a lot more attention than her potions notes. That he did not seem to have the same problem annoyed her, but she tried to keep that annoyance off of her face as she turned her eyes back to her notes. She was clever, to be sure, but even though her mother was rumored to be the most brilliant witch to ever pass through the doors of Hogwarts, Rose was not her mother. She had difficulty, sometimes, with numbers and she had a hard time focusing on and then recanting the nitty gritty details that would ever make her a really good potions mistress.
Asking for help was something that her bold Gryffindor pride-inherited from both of her parents-would simply not allow. But when her grades began to slip, he noticed. Scorpius Malfoy, the only boy her father ever directly forbade to her, though he was joking when he did it. Still, Scorpius scraped at her pride when he suggested that they study for their O.W.L.S. together, and his insight <i>was</i> helpful in ways that Rose didn't want to admit.
They had been destined to be enemies, but Rose did not find Scorpius to be the young demon that her father seemed to have expected. A Slytherin, but she suspected even he regretted it. Thoughtful, cautious, observant, and forever an enigma. To her brash ways, he was strange and dangerous and something she could never quite figure out. Maybe that was why he made it hard to concentrate.
"Fennel for this one."
She blinked and looked at him for a long moment before she had to admit that she hadn't been listening. He looked at her and offered that quiet little smile that annoyed her and warmed her all at once. He knew it, too, the jerk.
"You wrote fen, which was strange. It's fennel." he explained, pointing out her tiny, messy handwriting. She narrowed her eyes down at the page and shrugged before fixing it. "If you could figure out how to add a fen to a cauldron, it probably still wouldn't work." he grinned at her, teasing her.
She made an annoyed noise. His face fell. Sometimes that humor in him was so small, and she felt bad that she ruined it. There was something brittle and fragile about him. She was part of a huge, sprawling, messy family. If her feelings were so fragile, she'd have been dead of it long before ever attending Hogwarts.
"Thanks." she finally said. He looked at her and she couldn't help smiling.
No, it wasn't lying specifically, but Rose knew her father wouldn't approve.
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